CASPER — Memories fade, and as the old saying goes, time heals all wounds.
However, the wound and resulting scar inflicted on Casper 52 years ago this month can still be painful for those who experienced it.
Those who walk through Casper’s Highland Cemetery in Section 182 see the evidence of two lives lost far too soon on an oval gravestone that simply reads, “Sisters.”
Below that, two bouquets and a heart are etched on the stone, followed by their names and the date they died.
Amy Allice Burridge November 16, 1961 – September 25, 1973.
Becky Thomson Brown June 19, 1955—July 31, 1992.
Ron Franscell, a best-selling author and former Casper resident, wrote about the kidnapping and murder of an 11-year-old girl who lived next door and played baseball with him and other guys on the street.
Amy Burridge was thrown from a more than 100-foot-high bridge in Fremont Canyon southwest of Alcova, and her body ended up in the North Platte River.
He also detailed the kidnapping and rape of her 18-year-old half-sister Becky Thomson, whom he had admired and respected since he was 16. She was also thrown off the bridge and miraculously survived.
His 282-page account of the crimes, “The Darkest Night,” published in 2008, reached the New York Times Best-Seller List. It also propelled Franscell into the true crime genre, alongside renowned authors like Vincent Bugliosi, who wrote about the Charles Manson murders.
Count him among those who will never forget, but who have long accepted a world in which evil manifests itself, as it did on September 25, 1973, in the criminal minds of Jerry Jenkins and Ronald Kennedy following a day of drinking.
Those minds descended deeper into the depths of depravity, which they had flirted with for much of their lives.
Both men, who were in their late twenties at the time, had had several run-ins with the law and had spent considerable time in prison.
Franscell described how, upon returning from a Middle East assignment with The Denver Post following 9/11, he came across a publication featuring photographs of people falling from the World Trade Center towers.
He then reflected on the terror his former neighbors felt on that dark night at the bridge.
‘Evil Was There’
“When I came back without doing any research or anything, I described this book as, ‘When evil came to my hometown,’” he said. “It doesn’t take but a day of research to realize that the evil was there.”
Franscell wrote his book 30 years after Amy and Becky’s horrific experiences.
He had previously worked with Becky at the Casper Star-Tribune and recalls normal conversations and a woman who appeared to have overcome her past trauma.
But when he dug deeper into the story between 2003 and 2004, after Becky apparently took her own life in 1992 by falling off the bridge for the second time, he discovered her hidden struggles.
“It’s a story about Becky’s search for equilibrium,” he told me. “She just wanted to have solid ground beneath her feet.” “She clearly never found the answers she sought.”
Lisa Icenogle, the Casper College Public Relations Editor and News Coordinator, knew Becky Thomson Brown as a friend. She was a girl when she met Amy at a friend’s house and recognized her from afar.
Becky and I worked together as young women at a Casper radio station before moving on to other stations. She was among the last people to speak with Becky.
Becky confided in Icenogle about events that had occurred years before.
“It was just something she shared with me,” Icenogle explained. “I’m not sure how we got into the conversation. I remember our conversation and what she told me about that night.”
Icenogle describes Becky as a good listener with a funny sense of humor, as well as a “really lovely person on the inside and out” and a “really great person whose life was cut way too short.”
Trying To Help
Their friendship led to Icenogle trying to help Becky in her last days. Becky had received notice that one of her assailants was going before the parole board.
“That was really freaking her out,” Icenogle said. “She was definitely dealing with it, and it still haunted her.”
Icenogle said she received a call from Becky with a message to give her a call the day that she died. She tried to call Becky several times at her work and at home and got no answer.
The pair had a secret ring code that they would use so Becky knew it was her, but Icenogle said Becky never picked up the phone.
“Several days before that, she told me she needed my strength,” Icenogle said. “I thought, ‘I really let her down.’”
Icenogle said now 52 years removed from the the girls’ kidnapping, murder and attempted murder, the story has faded from most people’s minds.
“I remember it, but I don’t dwell on it,” she said. “If I think about Becky, I think about the fact that I lost a really good friend the night that she died and that was really hard.
“I don’t go back to 1973. I go back to when she passed away.”
Franscell believes a time may come when the horrific acts of Jenkins and Kennedy and the suffering of their victims will be forgotten, but 52 years is not enough space.
The now New Mexico-based author wrote how the pair slashed Becky’s station wagon tire at a Casper store to create a need for help. The girls had been on an errand for their mom.
They then deceived the sisters, saying they were going to help fix the tire, then kidnapped them at knifepoint.
Kennedy beat them as Jenkins drove through the dark night to the even darker Fremont Canyon, both lying to the girls about their intentions as they went.
At the canyon bridge site, they acted out their lust, cowardice, selfishness and fed their demons.
One sister died physically, the other was mortally wounded to her soul, burdened with the weight of survivor’s guilt for a sister she couldn’t save.
The criminal pair were tried, convicted, and initially sentenced to die. Their terms were converted to life sentences after a Wyoming Supreme Court ruling a few years later.
Bungee Jump
Franscell points to an Idaho bungee jumping company that scheduled jumps from the bridge in 2024.
It brought back memories and events from 1973 for many people, prompting several Casper residents to express opposition to the event.
The owner of the bungee jumping company called Franscell and asked a similar question. He pointed out that the crimes occurred 50 years ago and asked, “When are you going to let go of this thing?”
“All I could say is, when the memory doesn’t have any meaning anymore, when people stop talking about it,” he went on. “When parents stop telling their kids to be careful going to the store.”
In his book, Franscell describes how the two suspects were secretly transported out of Natrona County and housed in separate jails in Fremont and Hot Springs counties to avoid vigilante justice.
On September 1, 1973, the Casper Star-Tribune reported that Natrona County Sheriff Bill Estes stated that “feelings are running very high.”
According to the article, a fire broke out at one of the suspects’ homes.
As the 52nd anniversary approaches, Kennedy, the only person still alive responsible for the crimes, is listed as a prisoner at Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution. He is 79.
Jerry Jenkins died of a heart attack in prison on October 28, 1998.
On the crime’s 30th anniversary in 2003, Franscell descended into the river gorge to spend a dark and cold night in the same location where a severely injured and violated Becky Thomson bravely shivered through a September night to await another dawn.
Her testimony was crucial in convicting the pair.
Franscell believes it is appropriate to place a plaque marking the spot “for a few hundred years what happened there.”
“At some point, people will have forgotten and it will just be a plaque,” according to him. “I don’t think we should forget. I believe we simply need to let go of our fears and hatred.
“It doesn’t help that one of the two murderers is still alive.” And I believe there will be a time when he isn’t. That might start the process of putting this memory aside.
