The McCormick Ranch Murders

On the quiet plains of Stratton, Colorado sits the McCormick Ranch—a place where the earth has given up its dead, but never its secrets. This episode unravels the dark crimes of Michael McCormick, the bodies he buried across his isolated farmland, and the chilling trail that finally exposed him.

But death didn’t end the story.

Today, the ranch has new owners… and they say the land is still whispering. Shadowy figures in the fields, phantom footsteps on old wooden floors, voices calling from places no one should be—whatever was awakened on that property has never gone back to sleep.

Join me as we dig into the murders, the hauntings that linger, and the unsettling truth that some places remember everything.

Transcript

Amanda: 0:02

Some stories don't begin with the killer. They begin with the man who raised him, a father who shadow stretched far beyond the fence line, and a son who learned all the wrong things in the dark corners of a Colorado farm. Tonight we're peeling back the layers of a family where secrets didn't stay buried, but people did. I am your host, Amanda, and welcome back to Let's Get Weirdish In August, 1983, Bert Donahoe failed to call his wife. For all of you ladies out there, you know, that can send us into a paranoid frenzy. Faster than a shooting star. But this woman knew. Her husband promised to call. He had never broken that promise before. She didn't know it, but he had also failed to meet a fellow 18 wheeler driver in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. It's not clear which one of them reported him missing, but someone contacted the Wheat Ridge Police Department. Resulting in an FBI investigation into Burt and his missing Kenworth truck. Almost a year had passed with no answers. Burt was gone. His CB radio silent, his nightly check-ins to his wife just stopped. Investigators had nothing. No witnesses. No trail, just a missing man in a missing truck. But then out of nowhere, a phone call came in, a Kenworth rig, dusty, abandoned, sitting in a storage yard in Oregon matched the VIN of Burt's Missing Truck. When detectives pulled the paperwork, the truth hit fast. The truck hadn't just wandered across state lines. It had been sold at an auction in Arizona by a man named Michael R. McCormick. This wasn't coincidence. It wasn't bad paperwork. It was a smoking gun because if McCormick had possession of Burt's truck, then he knew exactly. What happened on those empty Colorado planes? He knew why Burt never made it to that truck stop. And soon police would learn. He knew where the bodies were buried. Literally, that Kenworth truck cracked open the McCormick Ranch Mystery and the truth buried underneath it. Detectives in Colorado, Arizona, and Oregon start connecting all of the dots. How did it move through Arizona? First, why did McCormick calf possession of it? And most importantly, where was Burt? The more investigators dug, the worse things looked for McCormick. They realized selling trucks, trading them. Moving them across state lines was something Michael had done before, but in this case, the timing lined up way too perfectly with Burt's disappearance. this launched a statewide grand jury investigation, not only into the stolen truck, but also McCormick's entire business operation by January, 1985. A Colorado statewide grand jury convened June of the same year. McCormick was indicted on 14 criminal counts, including theft, fraud, tampering with vehicle records, and charges specifically connected to Burt's Missing Truck. His trial was set for the following April, and his bond was set for$1 million, which he posted and immediately went on the run. Obviously, he wasn't the smartest criminal and tried to avoid paying his bill at a California hotel, which led to his arrest an extradition. Back to Colorado, the judge who clearly wasn't very smart either, again set McCormick's bond for$1 million, which Michael paid and went on the run again. This time he wasn't caught until December 20th. Michael stole a credit card And was using the identity of someone named Bill Kelly. He was able to check in at a Best Western, but when the card was ran later that day, it came back stolen. The manager tried to confront Michael. So he barricaded himself in his hotel room and threatened to kill anyone who tried to enter the manager skedaddled back to his desk and called the police. Obviously, they were able to surround the hotel push their way inside Michael's room. This man was in his boxers trying to climb out of a window. He wasn't gonna go down easy. Police realized he had a gun in his hand. That up until then. He had been hiding with a towel for the next six hours. Michael stood there with that gun in his mouth while police and a pastor worked to calm him down. Once he was calm, he finally told police who he really was. Is it just me or is everybody else picturing this man and his boxers too surrounded by cops and, and a preacher since it was the holidays, Michael was placed in a psychiatric ward in Omaha until the holidays were over and he could be extradited back to Colorado. It was on that flight back that he started talking and talk. He did. He put the blame on his dad. Michael shared all of the family tea, and once they got back to Colorado, he would tell them where Burt's body was. All he wanted in return was leniency in his sentencing. but what about Tom McCormick, Michael's father? the rumors around town were swirling. Tom would hire men to work on his farm and they would never be seen again. And of course their cars would disappear too. I think we can all guess where they ended up, but nobody could prove anything. After all, every man he hired was a vagrant, someone nobody would miss right away. He found a lot of them at the Christian Men's Center for the homeless in Denver, Colorado. He asked them all the right questions, got a family, a wife, any kids, and of course these men said no. He would recruit some of them to steal cars. Which Michael would take and scrap other men. He would take back to the farm there. They would stay in the bunk house, each with his own bedroom, with the rest of the bunk house being a shared living space. Tom being the great guy that he was even hired a cook to prepare all the meals for these men. Things worked out pretty well for these guys. Until they would piss Tom off, usually because they asked where their paychecks were. That money was few and far between according to Michael. Tom solved all disputes in the same way Tom would kill them and make them disappear. Michael McCormick and his wife lived in a trailer on the farm. On more than one occasion, Michael would be woken up to help his daddy get rid of a body, and if that wasn't annoying enough. Michael's wife, Kathy was even told she had to move her whole garden once and was never given a reason why. Probably because Tom had buried a few bodies right around their trailer. One of those men was Jim Irvin Plots and I hope I'm saying his last name right? If not, don't come for me. He was a ranch foreman and some say the cook. Michael says he caught Jim breaking into his trailer. He radioed his daddy, who then strangled Jim Next, for some father son bonding time, They buried Jim's body with a backhoe. Another one of these unfortunate men was Jim Sinclair, a ranch hand who got into an argument with Tom over alcohol. According to Michael, his daddy shot Sinclair in the head with the 3 57 mag, but the most gruesome of the murders that we know of anyway. Is that of Robert Lee? So worse, still don't know if I'm saying that right. Robert had worked as a ranch hand and driver for the McCormick's for years. rumor has it. Robert had been doing the hanky panky with Tom's wife, Sylvia. Sylvia tells Robert that Tom keeps 25,000 in cash on the ranch. so obviously Robert decided he was due that paycheck. He was always promised but never received. The way Michael tells it. One night around one in the morning, he casually walks out of his trailer to find Daddio chasing Robert. Tom tells Michael to catch him and the pair chase Robert into the woods where Tom finally catches him and ties him up. The next day was business as usual until Michael went over to his parents' house for supper. all was quiet and then suddenly all you could hear was banging. Coming from the cellar, Tom is pissed. He screams at poor Sylvia that this whole mess is all of her fault. Blame the woman. Okay? Okay, we hear ya. Then he tells Michael to meet him down in the cellar after they eat and there is Robert tied up duct tape over his mouth and flinging his body into a wall. The men dragged Robert from that cellar to the barn. Michael said Lynyrd Skynyrd was booming from the bunkhouse. so he knew nobody would hear what was about to happen. Tom took a piece of fencing wire and tied it around Robert's feet and hung him from the rafters of the barn. Have you ever seen fencing wire It's a lot like razor wire. It cut into Robert's ankle digging so deep it went all the way to the bone. Michael said it nearly amputated Robert's foot. And just to be clear, when they did find Robert's body, that wire was still around his foot. Tom didn't care. He was having a hell of a good time. What was Michael doing? You ask? He says he had stepped out of the barn to smoke a joint and then he heard a gunshot. Tom told Michael to come back inside. There was so much blood everywhere. Robert was still hanging there upside down from the rafters, but now there was a tarp on the ground underneath him. but that wasn't the worst part. No, the worst part was the skin laying in a wheelbarrow With Robert's testicles laying on top like an ice cream sundae. Nobody knows if Robert was skinned alive or if it happened after his death. It seems like a pretty long joint to miss all of that action. You know what I'm saying? Michael says he was told to dismember the body while his daddy picked the perfect spot to bury him. Robert's remains were wrapped in the tarp, and he was loaded into the bucket of a backhoe, then moved to where he would remain until Michael would eventually confess right behind Michael's trailer. although Tom did pull the tarp back out not wanting to quote unquote waste a good one, Tom is believed to have killed as many as 17 homeless men, but law enforcement think it could possibly be way more upwards of 70. so back in January, 1986. Michael signed a plea agreement in exchange for lighter penalties on the fraud and theft charges. He would give investigators the location of Burt's Body, but of course, he gave inaccurate information. And claimed he had memory issues for over a week when being asked where the location was. Tom was also arrested for second degree murder, but because Michael continued to change his story so many times, they ended up letting him go, so he never had to pay for his crimes. whether it was for him killing the guys himself or just helping his son cover it up. this left Michael in jail on his own on, And Tom ended up passing away in Aurora, Colorado on November 15th in 1997. Finally, he led detectives to Burt's Body in Byers, Colorado, 100 miles away from the family ranch. Michael told investigators, nobody scares me more than my father, cause I've seen him kill. He was basically trying to say he was forced to do this, and you know. Maybe he was, but at the same time, you know, right from wrong. And on the other hand, we don't have Tom's confession. We don't know if he was just a dad whose son was killing everybody and he was helping hide the bodies and that's something we probably will never know. He told him that his dad had wanted Burt's truck. So his dad bashed him over the head with a sledgehammer. As soon as Bert's remains were confirmed, McCormick said something that changed the entire investigation. There are more. He didn't hesitate, He didn't act confused. He didn't pretend that he maybe remembered something else. He spoke like someone who had seen the graves with his own eyes because he had, he took them straight to the ranch. He told investigators that transient men, drifters, workers, and ranch hands had been murdered and buried on the property over several years. And like I said a minute ago, He claimed his father, Tom McCormick, was the one who killed these men. He only moved the bodies and helped bury them, and we really don't know what's true. Was it him? Was he shifting blame on his dad? Investigators still debate on that to this day, but one thing was true, there were more graves. The entire 2,800 acre McCormick Ranch became a search zone. I'm talking forensic specialist archeologists, cadaver dogs, ground penetrating radar mapping teams, search and rescue crews and deputies from multiple counties. Michael was given about a dozen stakes to mark the locations of where he believed bodies were. They searched, tree lines, old equipment dumps, abandoned outbuildings, wind breaks, creek beds, trash pits, even former whale sites, all based on McCormick's descriptions. Every time he said, look over there, they found soil that had been disturbed years before. Long enough for bones to settle, but recent enough that the layout matched the way he described the burials. Three bodies were recovered on the McCormick Ranch, James Irvin Plotz, James Perry Sinclair, Robert Lee Soch. Like I said, I don't know if I'm saying those last names right, but both James went by Jim McCormick was found guilty in June of 1987 of Murder and Kidnapping. In the case of Herbert Donahoe. His convictions were for two counts of first degree murder, and one count of second degree kidnapping. He was sentenced to life in prison for murder, plus the four years for kidnapping with both running consecutively. to the sentences from his theft and fraud case, even though Michael McCormick was sentenced to life in prison. The story does not end here. A 2006 appeals court ruling. Resulted in his release after his attorney claimed that Michael's trial lawyer had been ineffective and that Michael had not been treated fairly. He pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to time served of 18 years. When Michael McCormick walked out of prison, most people assumed his story was finished, but his darkest chapter hadn't even happened yet. He leaves his wife Kathy, who stood by him through all of this, and instead of laying low, he stepped right back into business. real estate liquidation and property deals. The kind of work that puts you around A lot of vulnerable people. He was also using the name Rex instead of Michael. He was around a lot of money with very little oversight. That's where he meets Michelle Lee Thompson, LA Ramir, a realtor. A colleague and according to some reports, someone he had a relationship with, and naturally things took a violent turn. Michelle went missing. Supposedly on April 4th, 2010, Michael confided in his brother telling him that he was obsessed with Michelle. Not only that, but Michael confessed to feeling suicidal. Why his brother didn't immediately call police is anyone's guess. did Michelle not know? I know he was going by the name Rex, but That is a very small town and there is nothing but cattle, ranches. Everybody knows everybody. You would think somebody would say, Hey girl, that man's a killer. But maybe she only thought that he killed men. So I don't know. The logic isn't loing for me, though. But we don't victim shame here because none of this is Michelle's fault. These are just Amanda afterthoughts, if you will. Michael left his brother's home on April 7th, 2010. He quite literally takes Michelle and heads to Granby. He let her make one phone call. She called her roommate and Michelle told her that she had been kidnapped to. Please tell her mama she loved her and to please pick up her son who was only four years old. And if that doesn't speak to the kind of woman that she was, I don't know what will. she doesn't call police. She knows what's about to happen, but she wants to make sure that her baby is taken care of and that gets me in awe of my mama feels she couldn't say where she was. Only that she was with Michael McCormick. Her roommate immediately called police, who then found her car at a gas station in the town of Parker. The police ran a check on Michael's vehicle registration I, and found an address in Saddlehorn court In Granby ranch. Police didn't find them at that address, so they started scouring the entire neighborhood. They found one of Michael's vehicles at 1 0 9 Timber Court, Granby police and SWAT teams surrounded the home and tried so many times to get them to respond from inside. They even cut a hole in the wall and pushed a phone inside to try and negotiate with Michael, but they didn't know Michelle was already gone. At 5:21 AM Thursday, April 8th, 2010, a gunshot rang out. before law enforcement could arrest him, confront him, question him. Michael McCormick had turned the gun on himself. He had ended his life the same day he took Michelle's. Leaving behind, no confession, no explanation, and once again, no answers. investigators were left with a dead suspect, a murdered woman, and a mountain of unresolved questions connected to the McCormick Family's long and violent history. The man who once led deputies to bodies buried on a Colorado Ranch, ended his story in a cabin in Grand County after kidnapping and murdering a woman who possibly trusted him at one point. And to me, that is one of the saddest parts of this story. Michael McCormick didn't just kill once and he didn't just cover up for his father because even after prison, The violence continued until the day he made sure nobody could ever question him again. And the thing is, even if he truly had just been covering up for his dad, seeing that for years as a child has to warp your brain. So no matter which way we look at it, this man should have never been allowed to walk the streets again. If prison wasn't what they thought he needed, they should have put him right into a psychiatric facility, but still, he should have never left prison. And how they really got that overturned is beyond my wildest imagination. Even if these murders started when Michael was a child, he could have told someone, and yeah, he may have been scared of his dad, But when you're an adult, a grown man, what do you have left to lose? Why would you continue to hide that secret and why would you continue to help? But it's just like the story of Robert. Even if Michael was smoking the fattest blunt, known to man, there's no way his daddy could have skinned Robert without him going in at some point. Shout out to all my hunters out there. If you know, you know, and I'm not trying to be crass about the situation. I'm just laying all these facts out for you because I want you to really think about this. He says, by the time he was done, his daddy came out and got him, and he walked into that mess. There's just no way that's possible. He helped, he had to have. The house is gone now, but the barns still stand. And how do I know this? My husband is working on the property that butts up to this one, and he sees them every day. The house burned down Due to a lightning strike in 1998. And it's weird because a lot of the guys who are working out there did not know anything about this. A guy was telling him the other day that he thought something was weird out there because all of the crane parts were getting shipped in the wrong order. that may sound like a small thing, but Corbin said he was really serious when he was talking about it being weird. So Corbin tells him what happened out there And the guy was mind blown. Literally had no idea. But it's still a running ranch. Chuck and Leslie K Clapper are the new owners. They were on Discoveries, portals to Hell, season two, episode 14. And funny enough, I saw it a few months ago. I may have had a little fomo. And yeah, you can think that's weird. Okay. But if you know me, you know that I'm so into this stuff. I do not support serial killers or killing of any kind. But from a psychology standpoint, I'm a little obsessed with understanding their minds. But don't worry, the next time he sees the owners, he promised he would ask them if I can come take a tour and do an interview with them. Will he? Actually, probably not, but he did promise. Okay. The reason the clappers were on portals to hell is because they reached out to Jack Osborne. they were having a slew of paranormal activity, obviously. Okay. A gumbo pot of it, if you will. They're seeing full body apparitions. They're being touched, they're seeing shadow figures, and they always feel like they're being stalked. And if you are wondering who in their right mind would buy this property after the horrors that happened on it. You're not the only one, Chip and Leslie aren't at fault here. They had no idea that this had happened. I Chip had actually seen a bunch of men on the side of the road in one of these fields and he stopped and asked, Hey. Can I rent this field? And they were like, uh, yeah, if you rent the whole thing. So Chip goes, why don't I just buy it instead? And they were all too quick to agree. We're in the market to buy a house right now and we've been looking for a couple of months because we wanna find the perfect house. And I found one three days ago, but when I got to looking at the history of the property, it had been sold every two years for like the last 10 years. So I messaged the realtor and I may or may not have asked him if the place was haunted, because I may talk big game, but I don't wanna live with any hanks in my house. He said no, but Corbin said he thinks he was lying. So that one's definitely off the list. Do you wanna know how the clappers found out what happened on their property? Let's go back to the day that Michael took investigators to Burt's body. Then turns around and says, Hey, there's more At my family ranch. And they show up out there. You know, you remember with all the stakes? The clappers already owned the property by then, so they're just chilling running their farm. Okay? Got the heebie-jeebies all the time, but didn't know why CBI shows up with Michael. Michael casually gets outta the car, gets the stakes from the investigator, and just starts sticking'em in the ground. Chip is like, Hey, what is happening here? And that's when detectives tell him that serial killers used to own his property. He even talks to Michael himself and Chip tells Jack Osborne about watching him stick stakes in the ground. I would have a note the hell on outta there, right? Then Michael also told Chip. That there were more bodies, but he couldn't remember exactly where they were. He did stick all 13 stakes in the ground though, so we're talking about more bodies on top of the 13 stakes. But even though he put those 13 stakes out, we already know they only found three bodies. And Michael says that's because the farm had changed so much over the years. He couldn't exactly remember the layout of where he had put those bodies. Well, him and his daddy, Leslie Clapper, told Jack Osborne during her interview that sometimes when she was in bed before the house burned down, She would feel somebody sit on the bed and she would turn around thinking, okay, it's my husband Chip, but nobody would be sitting there. They've had so many employees quit over the years For one reason or another, but the majority of the reason was because they would be touched or see something that they couldn't explain. One of their sons also tells Jack that they were working in one of the barns and look up and they saw an old man's face staring in the window. They go out, there's nobody there. Michael was only in his fifties when he passed. if you ask me. That sounds more like Tom. the family, thinks that the spirits who were there are the men whose bodies were never recovered. She also told a reporter at a BC news that every now and then the plow will dig up a shoe or a piece of clothing. The family has also said that if there are more bodies, they would just like them to be found and return to their families. Pretty noble and I love that. But I still would've gotten rid of the place. And if nobody would buy it, I probably just would've let it sit. And the thing is, I wonder why investigators haven't come back To open up more of the ground, especially since the clappers are on board with that, they want these men's bodies to be found. And rightfully so because with the way forensics deal with DNA today, surely they would be able to find some of the family members and lay these bodies to true rest. You definitely need to check out this episode and listen to the experiences that the entire family has had and watch the investigation portion too. If you do shoot me an email. I wanna hear what you think about it. And I wanna know if you've heard of this case before, because a lot of people haven't. We hear about all of the notorious serial killers like Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy, you know the regulars, but you don't hear about these other people very often. This is just one of the many. So what do you guys think? Do you think that Michael did it and his daddy helped him? or do you think Tom was the front man? And Michael being the child just did what he was told to do. I'm on the fence honestly. Either way, both should have went to jail for life and Michael should have never been able to get out. But we don't live in a perfect world, and I just hope wherever those bodies are, that those men can find peace, especially if they're still hanging out around the ranch. And like always, if you have your own story that you wanna share, send me an email at, let's get weirdish pod@gmail.com. But in the end. This wasn't just a story of a killer. It was the story of a father, a family, and a legacy that should never have taken root. Lives were stolen, trust was shattered, and a town was forever changed. Thank you for walking through this journey with me. I'll see you in the next episode. Where the truth might not set you free, but it'll definitely keep you up at night. So until next time, keep it weird.