COLD-CASE RECORDS COMPARISON REQUEST 2026

 

COLD-CASE RECORDS COMPARISON REQUEST

Wildlife Officers, Forest Rangers, Lottery Hunts and Remote Public Lands, 1970s–1980s

To: Records Custodian, Cold-Case Unit, Conservation Law-Enforcement Division, or Agency Historian

From: Brian “Happy” Bryanson, Founder, CPTSD Cold Case

Subject: Request for preservation and comparison of historical wildlife, forestry, parks and rural law-enforcement records

 

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Brian “Happy” Bryanson. I am a disabled, homebound childhood witness who lives with documented Complex PTSD and dissociative amnesia. I am requesting assistance comparing my recovered childhood recollections with archived records involving wildlife officers, forest rangers, rural law-enforcement officers, hunting programs, former paper-company timberlands and remote recreational areas during the 1970s and 1980s.

IMPORTANT STATUS NOTICE

The information in this request consists of good-faith witness recollections and investigative leads—not proof that a crime occurred or that a particular person committed one. I am asking qualified agencies to preserve this report and compare its details with official records.

Person Identified in My Recollections

Robert Stout Shelton (my deceased biological father)

Born: March 21, 1938 | Died: October 25, 2016

Last associated with Granbury and Hood County, Texas

My father hunted throughout his life and had hunted with his own father before him. I remember extensive travel connected with hunting, fishing, wilderness areas, remote roads and wooded property. The principal states appearing in these recollections are Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado.

I recall my father entering controlled or lottery hunting areas and disrupting organized hunts. Some participants reportedly confronted or attempted to stop him. I remember incidents in which hunters, wildlife personnel, forest rangers, conservation officers or small-town law-enforcement officers may have been killed or seriously wounded.

Scene Descriptions for Records Comparison

1.      A uniformed man was left on a hilly road near a guardrail. His legs extended from the driver-side rear area of a vehicle.

2.      Two uniformed men were placed inside the same patrol or squad vehicle. The vehicle was pushed from a cliff or steep embankment and rolled into thick forest next to a bridge.

3.      A female officer or ranger died from apparent strangulation and head trauma. She is the only woman I presently remember among this group.  She wore an entirely green uniform and drove a green pick-up truck.  Her body would have been located next to an overnight campfire and a large body of water.  She caught my father and I illegally camping as he was on the run from the Pineville Police Department and Sheriff due to the abduction of a small girl.

4.      An older white male officer who had a tan or khaki colored uniform and wore a metal star was shot through the driver-side window of his vehicle while sitting in traffic.  My father shot this man to get me back.  This man had collected me from our car after my father ran away from a scene.  This incident included the gun fire and a grown man pulling a small boy out of the backseat of an official car.

5.      Other rural officers, forest rangers or wildlife personnel may have been killed or wounded after discovering my father’s activities.  He would steal moon shine from stills and then run into forests and other rural spots to hide and wait out the search party looking for him.  He committed many home invasions and then would kill all the family members and burn down the house.  Look for entire families, laid to rest due to fires and then check the other counties and you will see his movements as he evaded law enforcement by trying to stay one step ahead by driving great distances in the night.

6.      I remember a short, heavyset forest ranger with a thick brown beard or similarly uniformed official who allegedly paid my father to murder a family living deep in the woods.  In that recollection, members of the family had been tied to chairs. Their bodies were reportedly thrown into a crystal-clear body of water containing a deep hole near a jurisdictional, property or natural boundary. The location may have been selected because the people involved believed the depth of the water would conceal the victims.

7.      In every small town we ran through he would rob barns and invade houses then let it be known to the locals that he was there to take care of their problems.  He would accept pay to clear our squatters, end family feuds, and advance one person over another for an inheritance.  My grandfather use to accept the same monies to make people disappear by request.  Both my father and grandfather used this bounty hunting type of assassination to get to know who had cash in their house.  Then after earning that cash, they would double-cross the initial payee and disappear them often burning their house down around them.  My father would also steal bodies from local funeral homes and churches and ransom them back to their families.  When they showed for the arranged meeting my father would sniper them from the woods and then take what monies they brought, all their firearms, and any jewelry or cash they had on their persons.

Records Requested, Approximately 1970–1989

·         Hunting and fishing license applications issued to Robert Stout Shelton

·         Controlled-hunt, lottery-hunt and special-permit applications

·         Participant, winner, alternate, guest and check-station records

·         Hunter-safety, guide, outfitter and hunting-club records

·         Hunting complaints, trespass reports and weapons violations

·         Conservation-officer and forest-ranger deaths, disappearances, shootings and assaults

·         Line-of-duty and off-duty deaths initially classified as accidents

·         Unresolved patrol-vehicle crashes, rollovers, cliff falls and abandoned vehicles

·         Officers or rangers found beside guardrails, wooded roads or remote traffic routes

·         Missing hunters and unexplained deaths during controlled hunts

·         Drownings or unidentified remains recovered from unusually clear lakes, springs, quarries, reservoirs or deep natural pools

·         Reports concerning many isolated families that disappeared from wooded property

·         Former paper-mill and timber-company land leases

·         Corporate hunting lands, timber tracts and employee recreation areas

·         Ranger-station logs, dispatch records, radio logs and handwritten field reports

·         Historic maps showing patrol districts, hunt boundaries, timber leases, fire roads, gates, guardrails, cliffs and deep-water features

·         Burial plots of honor for those murdered in the course of their duties

·         Graves that had been dug up for the purpose of ransom and/or looting

Requested Cross-Agency Routing

Please compare these descriptions with cases involving state wildlife agencies, forestry commissions, state parks, local game wardens, county sheriffs, state police, highway patrol, the United States Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, tribal authorities and former paper or timber companies.

I particularly ask that records not be excluded merely because a death was originally classified as a hunting accident, traffic accident, drowning, vehicle rollover, disappearance, suicide or exposure. The scenes I remember may have been staged to resemble accidents.  Remember that all his decisions were based on finding ways to make quick cash and then fade off into the night.  His father was committing the same crimes before he was and many techniques for evidentiary distortions would have been applied.  I would wake up in the woods of one place my father would begin his crime spree and then by that night he would have a full tank of gas.  He would then drive us deep into the night for many hours and park us again in a wooded area he could use as camouflage for our car, then mayhem and repeat.

I would appreciate receiving names of anyone you can connect to his crime spree and know that I wish to mourn the loss of the officers and rangers the most.  They were doing their job but had no idea who they had come across.  My father was an intergenerational criminal taught by the most sadistic man I ever knew my grandfather.  Many times, from the back of that car or at my mammy’s house I witnessed 5 or more men try and wrangle my father into submission and yet he could fight his way free, and we would be on the run again. 

If your agency does not possess the appropriate records, please preserve this request and forward it to your conservation-law-enforcement division, agency historian, records custodian, cold-case unit, inspector general or the successor agency holding the historical files. Please also provide the name of any archive or company repository holding records from former paper-company timberlands or any large industrial company that would allow hunting on their acreage before they harvested all the trees to make various products.

Available Supporting Material and Communication Accommodation

I can provide additional written narratives, victim sheets, timelines and related cold-case materials. I can also attempt to separate what I personally remember seeing from information I inferred or learned later.

Because I am homebound and investigative contact can aggravate my documented disabilities, I require predictable, trauma-informed communication by email only. Please do not telephone me, schedule an unexpected appointment or arrive without prior written agreement.

Please acknowledge receipt, provide a report or reference number, and tell me what office will retain or review this information.

My purpose is to have these leads objectively compared with surviving records so that unidentified victims and fallen public servants may finally be recognized and returned to their families.

 

Respectfully,

Brian “Happy” Bryanson

Founder, CPTSD Cold Case

“Send the Dead Home”

Email: CPTSDcoldcase@gmail.com

Communication: EMAIL ONLY