A Dateline to Remember.

June 20^th 2014

The evening started out just like any other.  A great dinner and some evening cocktails, usually wine.  After the kids were situated for the evening whether at home or at a friend’s house, our Friday nights usually consisted of watching a movie or perhaps the NBC show Dateline.  On this night Dateline won out.  A new episode was airing and it had something to do with Aspen so I was more than interested on how the press would drag Aspen through the mud once again.  They liked doing that.

Tonight’s episode, “Mystery on Sunrise Drive” was about an Arizona businessman that was blown up inside a Lincoln Continental at the La Paloma Country Club in Tucson but it had some sort of connection to Aspen.  As it turns out, it was about the murder of Gary Triano (November 1, 1996) and involved his ex-wife who was living in Aspen at the time of the murder.  So why, you might ask, is this a topic of one of my stories?  Read on and I will explain why.

Back in late 1990 my future wife, Julie and I moved back to Aspen after nearly 9 years of living in southern California.  I was able to secure a job with the Aspen Ski Company prior to arriving in Aspen doing their IT support for the Ticket Sales department as well as the newly constructed Little Nell Hotel.    As the ski season winded down there was less work for me at the Ski Company and they encouraged me to branch out to earn money in the summer months while still being on call with the Ski Company.  It seemed like a good arrangement and so, I started Accomplish(ed) Computing and let local businesses know I was available to support their IT needs.  I leased a 2-room office in the building above the Cooper Street Pier and set up shop.  Not long after that a gentleman moved into the office next to mine and soon, he became a customer and an occasional “drinking buddy.”  We actually went out for lunch on a fairly regular basis.  He was a very tall, soft spoken man who rarely had much to say.  Occasionally he would open up and I would get a small glimpse into his personal and professional life.  Turns out, according to him, he was in the business of buying bankrupt business and liquidating them for a tidy profit.  At the time he was un-winding a Carbondale business by the name of “Frozen Moments” that had been in the business of making items that looked like real food or beverages that were spilling or had made a mess.  They were very lifelike and he had many of them scattered around his office.

We continued our business and personal relationship for about 8 months until I was offered a job with a company in Durango.  We did not keep in touch after I left and I really never gave him another thought, that was until the evening of June 20th 2014.

Is that who I think it is?

The episode started out in its usual fashion with short snippets from the various characters to be interviewed throughout the next 60 minutes.  It mostly centered on Gary and his failed business dealings.  How many enemies he had accumulated and worst of all, his hostilities with his second ex-wife by the name Pamela Phillips.  Pamela was where the Aspen connection came into this story.  From the beginning she was a prime suspect in Gary’s murder but there was little evidence to prove it.  The episode went over all the people, and there were many, who would have been happy to see Gary dead.  From bankers to Tribal leaders of nearby Indian casinos and of course, his ex-wife to name a few.  Gary, it seems, was a con artist and his empire was crumbling around him.  In fact, even the Lincoln Continental he was driving at the time was not his, but loaned to him by a friend.  The episode focused for the first half on Gary’s death, the method of his death and the many suspects who could have arranged such a thing.

It was not until the second half of the episode that another character was introduced and he was the suspected hitman.  They aired a picture of him right before a commercial break.  “Holy Crap, Julie come here!” followed by “is that who I think it is?” upon backing up the ½ second clip of the show before cutting to the commercial break.

When the episode resumed the facts of the case were made clearer.  Through the efforts of the Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff’s Department with some help form the Aspen Police Department, a connection between Pamela Phillips and Ronald Young was made, both of which resided in Aspen at the time of the murder.  Ron was the man who had his office next to mine back in 1991.  The same man I had drinks with and frequently had lunches with.  The same man who had me do some computer work in his home while his daughter was there.  This mild-mannered, soft-spoken, Giant of a man was being tried for being the hitman.  And there were rumblings that it might not have been his first hit.  More on that later.  It seemed that Ron had recorded many of his conversations with Pamela Philips regarding the hit as well as her failure to pay him all of the $400,000 she owed him.  These recordings eventually landed them both securely behind bars for the rest of their lives.

I tell this story as you can imagine the shock of watching an episode of Dateline only to see someone you knew and had business dealings with in your past.  Not something that happened every day.  It appears that Ron may be the man behind the car bomb that took the life of Aspen’s Drug Kingpin, Steven Gradow back in late 1985.  Oddly enough, Grabow was driving a borrowed Jeep at the time of his murder.  The bombs were nearly identical including how they were triggered.  Dynamite sticks with a blasting cap with the pull trigger wire on the cap wrapped around the drive shaft. As soon as the car was put in gear and set in motion the bomb would go off.

In fairness, Ron was never charged in that car bomb and much like Gary Triano, Steven Grabow had plenty of people who would be all too happy to see him gone.  Especially due to the fact that Steven was about 30-days from going on trial for drug trafficking charges and many believed he would be giving up the names of his co-conspirators in order to save himself, people like Bobby Erra, a noted Miami Gangster who had been implicated in a drug ring that was sending millions of dollars of drugs to Aspen and other places throughout the United States.

Is it ironic that the bombs were nearly identical or that they both had a connection to a particular person or people in Aspen?  You decide for yourself but as for me I hope I never see someone I know on an episode of Dateline.