Mitchell Bates, 41, was the only person killed when Amtrak’s Sunset Limited derailed in the remote desert near Palo Verde, Arizona, on the night of October 9, 1995. Bates was working as a sleeping car attendant on the Los Angeles–bound train when two locomotives and eight cars left the tracks after the train crossed a sabotaged trestle; four cars fell roughly 30 feet into the dry wash below. About 78 to nearly 100 passengers and crew were injured, a dozen seriously.

Investigators concluded the derailment was deliberate. At the scene they found 29–39 spikes pulled from a rail joint, a removed joint bar that let a rail shift inward, and wiring placed to defeat the track circuit warning system. Typewritten notes criticizing federal agencies over Waco and Ruby Ridge and signed Sons of the Gestapo were found nearby, but those letters later became viewed as possible misdirection as other theories — including a disgruntled railroad employee or a robbery target in a lonely stretch — were explored. No one has ever been charged in Bates’s death; the FBI maintains the case as an open unsolved homicide and offered a reward for information.

If anyone knew Bates, worked on the Sunset Limited, or was in that desert corridor in October 1995, please share information that could help bring answers.