Conservation Officer Wesley Clayton Frame Jr., 29, was killed on November 10, 1978, in the Peterstown area of Monroe County while enforcing a complaint about trash dumped into a stream. Frame, a West Virginia Department of Natural Resources conservation officer and U.S. Navy veteran, had taken Jerry Elbert Collins before a magistrate, who fined Collins $25 and ordered the trash removed. A separate outstanding bad-check warrant from Giles County, Virginia, led officers to arrange for Frame to accompany Collins while he cleaned up the stream.

Before the cleanup, Collins and Frame returned to Collins’s home so Collins could change clothes and get his pickup. Collins emerged from a bedroom with a .30-30 deer rifle, pointed it at Frame and ordered him to leave. Frame backed against the door and attempted to calm Collins; Collins fired, killing Frame instantly. Collins fled the state with his family but was located and arrested in Akron, Ohio, that evening, extradited to West Virginia and tried in April 1980. A jury convicted Collins of first-degree murder without a recommendation of mercy. Frame left a wife and son and was buried at New Bealls Mill Cemetery in the Gassaway area of Braxton County.

Did anyone in the area have contact with Officer Frame or Collins around November 10, 1978?