Jesmond’s Most Wanted

Not in the book — the roadside outlaws of the Jesmond years, beginning about 2003

Walter’s cabin sat near Jesmond, in the Cariboo, on a road quiet enough that anything new got noticed. Starting around 2003, something new appeared each year: a stranger standing at the roadside, dressed for trouble and endlessly patient, with a hand-lettered wanted poster mounted below. Walter painted a fresh outlaw onto weathered board every year, and the crimes were serious — cattle rustling, purse-snatching, chicken theft, impersonating a deceased C&W star, whistling country music at night. The perpetrators were local, at least by name: Lillooet, Pavilion, Cache Creek, Boston Bar, 100 Mile, Horsefly. Concerned citizens were urged to phone in tips to 1-800-COW-GONE, 1-800-BAD-EGG, or 1-800-SAW-SCAR. Rewards ranged from $2.00 to one king-size bucket of K.F.C., except where cancelled entirely due to low cattle prices.

Passersby stopped for photographs. Some, at highway speed, reportedly waved.

Corporate Sponsorship

One year Walter’s son Dale heard from a dumbfounded acquaintance who had been up hunting in the Clinton country. Deep in the Cariboo, a long way from anywhere, they had driven past a figure standing at the roadside — which was startling enough — wearing a Safe Software shirt. Dale’s company. How, they wanted to know, could that possibly have happened?

The explanation was simple. Dale had passed along some surplus company swag, and Walter, outfitting that year’s outlaw, dressed the part with what was on hand. It is fair to say that Safe’s marketing department, whatever it dreamed for that shirt, never imagined its most effective placement would be on a wanted fugitive a hundred kilometres from the nearest trade show — still generating word of mouth years later, one baffled hunter at a time.

The Case of Lillooet Lill

Lill — wanted for gambling, vagrancy, spitting in public, and other nefarious offenses, last seen at the Clinton Ball — took up her post at the roadside in 2008. She lasted about a week. Then she vanished: someone pulled over, took her, and drove off. Walter figured that was that.

Months later, at home in Coquitlam, the phone rang. It was the Clinton RCMP. Was he Walter Lutz? He was. They had recently been recovering stolen goods from a property, the officer explained, and among the recovered items was — well, a lady. They’d asked around Jesmond. Folks said she belonged to him. Would he come and collect her?

So in due time Walter presented himself at the Clinton detachment and walked out of the RCMP lockup with Lill under his arm — proving once again that the Mounties always get their man . . . nequin.

The Posters

Click any poster to see it full size with its transcription — Walter’s own ratings included. Where a photograph of the outlaw survived, the poster below is stamped mugshot on file; more are still being rounded up from the family albums.

The Curator

The outlaws were only the roadside wing of the collection. Up at the cabin, the shed wall hung with a century of Cariboo iron — traps, tongs, hames, handsaws, and a horse skull presiding over it all — its own open-air museum, admission free, curator usually on the premises.