Unsolved Homicide: Hugh Duggins Found Dead Near Alderpoint Road Six Years Ago

Most likely, six years ago today, the person who killed Hugh Duggins dumped him near Alderpoint Road. His body was found on January 21, 1916 2016 in a remote area of southeastern Humboldt County less than 48 hours after he died.

At first, law enforcement believed that Duggins had died of non-criminal causes. But months afterward, in August, they released information that he had been strangled either by hands or by a ropelike object. The official term was “asphyxia by neck compression.”

They believe he was most likely dumped in the remote area miles from his home after he was killed.

A $10,000 reward offered by a friend failed to turn up any significant leads in the case.

A friend wrote the following biography of his life:

Hugh was born in New Jersey, grew up in Oklahoma, and lived in Alderpoint for many years. (I used to tease him that he was a three-time loser.) He couldn’t stand his parents but he was close to his brother and sisters.

A younger Hugh Duggins

In Oklahoma he worked at a box factory where he claimed to have put together a million cardboard boxes. I called him on that but the numbers checked out.

I first met Hugh at the hospice party at the community park. I was looking for a carpenter and Milton introduced us. “Here’s an honest man,” he said. And it was true, Hugh always rounded down on his hours. He was only available because he was recently busted for growing on his patron’s land.

He was mostly just the electrician and handyman at the time of the indoor grow but there was a property line discrepancy on some land he owned adjacent so he went down too. He could have gotten a little jail time but he chose a lot of probation instead because he didn’t want to leave his dog behind. Part of the deal was that Hugh could have no contact with his previous boss, hence he was free to work for me. I set him to work building a cabin in my backyard.

Hugh always gave a sucker an even break, taking on practically anyone, any hard luck case, to be a dope-growing partner. There was a judge who had 1500 acres and during the eighties Hugh grew weed all over that land with a multitude of partners. The judge got a third, Hugh got a third, and his partners got a third. They grew up the plants in two gallon containers in a greenhouse, banged and shook all the dirt off the three-foot females, bundled fifty or so together, and hiked an hour or more out to a good spring in the middle of nowhere. The bare-root plants recovered and grew just fine.

This arrangement worked well for all until one of Hugh’s partners got greedy and badmouthed some lies about him to the judge. He was ousted off the 1500 acres, just shrugged it off, and grew somewhere else. He was an easy-going sort.

For all the hundreds of pounds of weed that Hugh grew over the years he ended up with nothing, just his little fixer up in Alderpoint, and a succession of old beater trucks. Hugh shared a lot with his girlfriends and friends and didn’t really care about money.

Hugh met his best friend Mike out in the hills and they worked on some weed scenes together. One day Hugh was working on some project with Mike when he got a call from his girlfriend. She said she was leaving him. Later that day they got to Mike’s house and his girlfriend was packing and leaving him. That bond of both getting dumped on the same day solidified their friendship.

Hugh was completely without guile. Once he was hanging out in the bar at the Benbow Inn where Mike was the bartender. Another guy walked in, ordered a drink, and said, “You’re here a lot Hugh.”

“Yeah,” Hugh said, motioning to Mike, “because he gives me free drinks!” Mike came around the bar, grabbed Hugh by the scruff of his shirt, and said, “Shut the fuck up!” They had one other big falling out but were mostly best friends for decades.

Hugh could do it all: plumbing, carpentry, electrical, welding, mechanics, and his specialty: fence building. Once he said, “I work for all these guys and they can’t do anything! But they always have more money than me.”

Hugh was a storyteller and it turned out I was also. After I’d known Hugh a couple years I said, “Hey Hugh, every time I tell you something or start a story you launch into your story about some guy you knew once who did some memorable thing back in Oklahoma or wherever. So tell me, how many guys were there?” Hugh thought for a moment and then said “Oh, about a hundred and fifty.”

Once Hugh was working under his truck and a guy dropped by with a pound to sell. “Just put it in the front seat of the car,” Hugh said. “He’ll be by later.”

After awhile the buyer came by to check out the weed. “It’s on the front seat,” Hugh said. The guy took the pound, put the money on the seat, and left. Later a friend came by and asked how the weed had looked. “I don’t know,” Hugh said. “I never saw it!”

I thought Hugh might like some company so I introduced him to my crazy friend Jenny who needed a place to live. I warned him about her but I guess he was up to the challenge.

After a few years he got tired of her yammering at him but he didn’t know what to do, how to get rid of her. Once she left, went back home to Wyoming or somewhere, and when he heard she was back in the area he locked all the doors when he left for work. He told me she had crawled back in through a window.

“Well, get her out!” I said.

“But she’s already back in,” he said, as if it were a fait accompli.

After years of listening to him complain about how she wouldn’t leave I called Adult Protective Services to report elder abuse. “Has she been there awhile?” the outreach worked asked.

“Yeah, for like five years,” I said.

“And she has her belongings there?” he said.

“Oh, yeah, she’s got all her crap there. She uses his house like a storage container.” She was a hoarder who constantly collected old rags for her discordant art and fashion projects.

“Well if she’s been there for years and has her stuff there then she has to be legally evicted.”

I told Hugh he would have to evict her and her little girl if he wanted her out. He refused. “It would hurt her credit rating,” he said.

Hugh complained about her and wanted her gone. Other times he spoke affectionately and protectively about them, especially the kid, and it sounded like he liked them there. Finally I said, “Hugh, do you like them there or not?!” He hemmed and hawed but I finally pinned him down: he did like them there.

Hugh was very intelligent but kind of a throwback. I don’t think he was ever really a hippie although he had had long hair, a beard, smoked pot for years, and took LSD. He was not easy to label and kind of a redneck. He agreed with the death penalty and thought vicious murderers should fry. I told him I believed state-sponsored execution was worse than random murder.

“Hugh,” I said. “Someday they’ll look back at these days and say how barbaric capital punishment was.”

“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully.

Hugh loved food. When he came into my kitchen he always eyed the counter to see what was available, even a crumb or a crust didn’t escape his feral attention. (It was annoying when he reached into the cereal box for a handful.) When my friends were here from Mexico and cooking delicious food Hugh was served a dish as well. One day I said, “Hugh, whenever the girls make a nice meal you never say thanks or how good it was.”

“Huh?” he said, and after that he praised the meals effusively. I was heating up my boringly healthy bachelor food one day and I asked him if he wanted some.

“Oh, I guess,” he said.

“No, not ‘oh I guess,’” I said. “You gotta really want it or not!” He wanted it.

One of Hugh’s running themes was how self-important people could act, afraid “they” were after you, etc. It reminds me of those who cover up the camera on their computers, like really? You really thinking someone’s spying on you?

Hugh lost a lot of money over the years investing in art, guitars, vintage motorcycles and any other schemes his brother or friends talked him into. Hugh almost always said yes, yes to the adventure of it all.

He used to say the more nicknames you had the more well-liked you were. He had many: Hu-man, Hughster. Huey, Baby Huey, Hu, and Huge.

Hugh thought locals and people he knew spent too much time making money and not enough spending it. “If I had as much money as you all do I’d be having way more fun,” he said.

“What would you do Hugh, if you had a lot of money again?” I said

He thought about it then said, “Get an old convertible and drive it down Main Street in Garberville with the top down.”

They found Hugh’s body a few miles down Murder Mountain, ten miles from his truck. He had done nothing wrong, it could have been his kindness that killed him, as he would pick up almost every hitchhiker. He took Jenny in, gave her a place to live, helped support her, and so had a more interesting life in his last five years…

I was the only one who realized Hugh was missing. We had a standing Scrabble date for 2pm (we played while I watched my sports talk show) and I thought it odd when he missed two days of the game he loved to play. I called around to his friends, here and in Ukiah where he sometimes went, and called his home but there was no answer. I had heard on the news that an unidentified body had been found near Alderpoint but his best friend Mike assured me that his sources with the county had told him it wasn’t Hugh.

A couple days later I double-checked and got a description from the coroner.

It sounded like Hugh.

Hugh Duggins: 6/9/44 to 1/20/16

 

If anyone has any information about the death of Hugh Duggins, please contact the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department at 1-(707)-445-7251.

Earlier Chapters:

• Deceased Man Found near Alderpoint Road This Morning
• Man Found Deceased Near Alderpoint Road Still Unidentified
• Man Found Near Alderpoint Road Showed No Evidence of Dying from a Crime, Says Coroner’s Office
• Toxicology Report Comes Back Clean for Body Found Near Alderpoint Road
• Hugh Wray Duggins: ‘I’ve loved and been loved’
• Who Killed 71-Year-Old Hugh Duggins? $10,000 Reward Offered
• Cold Case Humboldt: Today, Hugh Duggins Would Have Been 77, But Instead the Person Who Killed Him Walks Free