Mark Mathes was 40 when he was killed in Phoenix, Arizona, in February 2002. The men confronted him on the back patio, beat him with a baseball bat and the butt of a shotgun, and placed his badly injured body in a car trunk. Reports differ on whether he was still conscious in the trunk.

The group drove to a remote area near Crown King known as Swastika Mine, stripped Mathes and removed a finger with wire clippers while Nelson struggled to take off a ring. Mathes was thrown over a guardrail into a ravine and Gaines shot him twice with a shotgun. His remains were discovered later when hunters found a spine and jawbone. Arrests followed; Jeremy Johnson and Jessica Nelson pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and kidnapping and testified against others, and Patrick Bearup was convicted of first-degree murder and kidnapping and sentenced to death.

Does anyone have information about Mathes’s life in Phoenix or about people who knew him at the time?