[fabsroman]

Hawkeye,

You beat me to it. I was going to write that the problem with this thread is that it is influenced by a lot of unknows and incorrect "facts." Even at a trial, you don't get all the facts and sometimes one witness contradicts another witness, so a jury has a tough job of figuring out who to believe and who not to believe and deciding guilt or not based upon testimony the receive about what happened that night and other incidents.

I am willing to bet that most of us have heard OUR story via word of mouth, and anybody who has played telephone as a kid knows how badly that can get distorted, or we have heard the story through the TV or newspaper, and we all know how much we can trust them to tell it as it is.

So, we can all sit here and argue about whether Claude is a good guy or a bad guy, but we aren't going to get anywhere.

Personally, I think that the game warden would have shot Claude on the spot if that was what he really intended on doing. Why take away their guns and then look through the camp to see if you can find any incriminating evidence before you shoot a person if you really intended on shooting that person anyway. I just believe that if the LEO's really wanted to kill Claude, he would have been dead before he had the chance to shoot back. I also think he got away with murder.

Of course, I am basing my opinion on "facts" that I have read on this thread. Who knows if the game wardens actually took the guns away from the men. I am sure Claude and his accessory had plenty of time to work on their story while they were hauling and burying the bodies.