BOISE, Idaho—As days turned into years, Brett Woolley came to accept that his father’s murderer would never be found—and that his family’s private tragedy had become a Wild West legend, the kind of thing folks shared when they were a few too many drinks deep into the night.
Nearly 40 years ago, Dan Woolley was shot in the parking lot of a small-town bar. The shooter crossed the street to the town’s other tavern, ordered a drink, and declared, “I just killed a man.”
And then he disappeared, leaving no trace.
Until a sunny summer morning last year, when word came that the man who shot Dan Woolley was living in Texas under an assumed name.
Brett didn’t want to hear it. “I didn’t want him to be found. I was fine with it like it was,” he said that November, voice choked. “It’s like it just happened yesterday, all over again.”
And as the accused shooter’s story came to light—along with lurid rumors involving the pro rodeo circuit, and a reputed Las Vegas casino crime boss—it became clear that the legend of Dan Woolley’s death would only grow.
The town of Clayton sits smack in the middle of Idaho, nestled deep in a canyon alongside the Salmon River. Today just seven people live in the town proper, though the village was in a veritable heyday when Brett Woolley was growing up in the early 1970s.
“I mean, Clayton had a Little League team. People probably wouldn’t believe that now,” said Alison Steen, Brett’s longtime girlfriend. “Clayton Silver Mine was running and they employed about 75 people year round, you had the Forest Service, all the ranchers—it was a very viable little community.”
But a hardscrabble one. Many kids, like Brett, lived in homes with limited plumbing and worked from a young age to help support their families.
If Brett’s childhood living conditions were rough, his father’s were downright primitive. No running water, no money to speak of—as a child, Dan Woolley would catch and milk the skittish range cattle for extra cash. He expected the same work ethic from his kids.
On Sept. 22, 1980, Dan Woolley and his friends were working on the family’s property, building a garage. Brett was in the house, recovering from a motorcycle wreck. When his father asked if 19-year-old Brett wanted to head into town for a beer, he declined.
Instead, Brett settled in with a dirt bike magazine while his mother puttered around the house. He was interrupted a few hours later by knock on the door. Then he heard his mother’s wail.
Brett went downstairs and heard the news.
“I’ve never …,” he said, stopping to draw a shuddering breath. “Hearing my mother like that? They were getting ready for their 28th anniversary. Dad was 52.”
The story of what happened at the Sport Club bar has changed a hundred times over the years.
In most versions, however, a few details stay constant: A couple of Montana boys who worked the mines were at the bar. In some versions, they flirted with a woman there; in others, they took umbrage when the woman’s boyfriend came storming in and hit her for some imagined slight.
In most accounts, a scuffle broke out between the Montana boys and the man, identified by witnesses as a former pro rodeo cowboy named Walter Mason.
Mason was a bully and not well liked, most people say, but he did have one friend: Dan Woolley. Dan was friends with everyone, described as someone you could count on to share a beer or lend a hand.
As the fight between Mason and the Montana boys spilled into the parking lot, the bartender and Dan Woolley jumped in. Maybe they were trying to keep Mason from getting beaten too badly, or maybe they were just trying to break things up. Either way, witnesses said, Mason broke free of the melee and ran to his truck.
Police reports say Mason came back with a gun and fired at least twice. One of the Montana boys was shot in the arm. Dan Woolley was shot in the face.
Nearly four decades later, a woman in Texas came across a Facebook post on a page dedicated to unsolved crimes in Idaho. The details seemed familiar; the suspect was a lot like her mother’s common-law husband, but with a different name. Eventually, she reached out to Brett Woolley’s girlfriend, Steen.
They came to believe he was the same man when the stepdaughter described Mason’s elaborate, leather-bound photo album, holding photos from his pro rodeo days. Brett remembered seeing the same album once as a teen when he was in Mason’s Idaho home.
Walter Mason, living under the name Walter Allison, was arrested on Oct. 10, 2019, at his home in East County, Texas.
After law enforcement arrived on his Texas doorstep, “Mason made the admission that he had shot Mr. Woolley,” said Justin Oleson, the Custer County prosecutor. “I think it’s interesting that Mason told the officers it was self-defense when Woolley was trying to get these Montana guys off of him.”
Mason was brought to Idaho, appointed a defense attorney, and housed in a rural county jail for a time. He pleaded not guilty and then the case stalled. Now 87 years old, Mason has “all sorts of medical issues that old folks have,” Oleson said.
He’s since been transferred to a long-term care facility, said Mason’s public defender, David Cannon.
“They have made a determination that he’s not competent to stand trial,” said Cannon. “I think it’s unlikely it would change.”
Once again, Brett Woolley has come to terms with the fact that Mason will likely never face a jury.
Now he’s making plans to preserve his father’s legacy, lest it be overcome by the shadow of his death. Tourism, not agriculture, is now the dominant industry in the Sawtooth Valley, and Woolley fears that his dad’s work-hard, play-hard, calloused-hands and worn-out-coveralls way of life will be lost to history.
He dreams of opening a “dude farm” of sorts, where city folks can take their kids to learn how to milk a cow, drive a tractor, or break a steer.
If people don’t remember anything about his dad but the day his life ended, Brett figures, at least his lessons will be passed on.