These four domestic terrorists held hundreds of people hostage in a cave 750 feet underground
With hazy objectives and a lot of liquor, they seized Carlsbad Caverns
The drinking began the night before and carried on well into that afternoon. By 3 p.m., drunk and carrying guns and fifths of whisky, four men entered Carlsbad Caverns National Park, rode the elevator 750 feet underground, and took the cave hostage.
About 200 tourists and National Park Service employees were in the cavern’s underground cafeteria on July 10, 1979, when Dennis Mark, David Kuczynski, Eugene Hiram Meroney, and William Charles Lovejoy got off the elevator. They had two hostages in tow, Celia Valdez, the elevator operator, and Linda Phillips, a seasonal park technician. They forced the women off the elevator at gunpoint, fired off some shots, and demanded that the others clear out. Valdez escaped in the chaos.
Soon it was just the men — two white, two Native American, all Texan — and the 24-year-old Phillips. None of assailants were aware that over a hundred people were still trapped nearby in the Big Room Cave, Carlsbad’s massive underground heart. The crowd would be stuck there, holed up in 56-degree temperatures, for the next five hours.
Even today no one knows why the men — three of whom hailed from Odessa, Texas, and the fourth from Riesel, Texas — chose to terrorize the iconic cave besides the fact that not much in this rural corner of the southwestern U.S. was likely to grab the attention of the national media. These days Carlsbad Caverns, designated a National Park in 1930 for its spectacular 250-million-year-old underground cave system, receives around 400,000 visitors annually. Forty years ago the number was twice that.
The terrorists’ demands were simple: they wanted a million dollars, a flight to Brazil, and a reporter to record their words. Less than an hour and a half after the first hostage was taken, authorities met the third of the requirements. Ned Cantwell, editor and publisher of the local newspaper, The Carlsbad Current-Argus, arrived ready to report. But when he attempted to call from the surface, the men refused to talk.
“Get your ass down here,” Dennis Mark told Cantwell “They’re screwing us around. We want to tell the world exactly what we need. I’ll guarantee your life.” The FBI hesitated to let Cantwell into the cave, but the journalist was game. Just before 5:30 p.m., he took the long ride down to the underground cafeteria.
By now, the authorities were congregating on the surface. A special agent trained in hostage negotiations arrived from El Paso. A SWAT was put on standby. Below ground, Cantwell was searched and escorted to a room strewn with ammunition and half-empty liquor bottles. They order him to start writing what would become a story picked up by papers all over the country.
“I’m tired of Mexicans coming in and taking our jobs. No, make that all aliens. They ought to kick them all out. They’re making $20 billion in welfare . . . ” complained Mark. Eugene Hiram Meroney, a Native American and “easily the most intelligent and articulate” of the bunch according to Cantwell, talked about how the nation was repressing his people. They expressed frustration over increasing gasoline prices and OPEC. Cantwell is permitted to see the hostage, Linda Phillips. “She is extremely calm considering her plight,” he wrote.
The men casually handled their firearms — two rifles, a shotgun and a pistol. They fired off several rounds but never actually aimed them at Cantwell. “They kept repeating their demands but they weren’t particularly coherent,” Cantwell later told the media. “There was a fifth of whisky that was about half full when I got there and empty when I left.”
Those trapped in the Big Room Cave nearby were frightened and bored. Brenda Burris, a park employee on her first day of work at the caverns, suffered a series of epileptic seizures. Robert Lawler, a claustrophobic Wisconsinite with a heart condition on vacation with his wife and five children, managed to be snuck out by park officials. Some played cards to pass the time.
The terrorists did not expect to make it back to the surface alive. “They say they came here to die,” Cantwell wrote. “I ask if they would accept an alternative. They say not if it is jail. They would rather shoot it out.”
By evening, the liquor ran out. The men, desperate for another drink, tell the FBI they will trade Cantwell for a bottle of vodka. Eventually, after arguing amongst themselves, they release both the journalist and Phillips anyway. They return to safety via the elevator.
Negotiations continued. The FBI promised to knock the charges for the takeover down from a felony to a misdemeanor for attempted false imprisonment, punishable by a maximum of six months in jail. At 8:47 p.m, a little more than five hours since taking their hostage, the men surrendered and emerged from below, still refusing to give a motive for their actions. An inquiring Roswell Daily Record reporter is told by Lovejoy to “kiss me where the sun don’t shine.”
Once the cafeteria was clear of the terrorists, the remaining 104 tourists and employees were ushered to safety. None were hurt but Burris, still recovering from her seizures. Two others experiencing difficulty breathing were hospitalized.
The men were taken into custody and bail was set at $250,000 each. But the deal the FBI struck while the men were still underground, which promised reduced federal misdemeanor charges, rubbed the state the wrong way. Although the legal authorities argued amongst themselves over whether to honor the FBI’s promises and whether the men should be tried in state or federal court, apparently none of it — not the guns, not the hostages, not the subterranean “cavenapping” — was enough to make them renege on the arrangement. On August 2, all four men pled guilty to federal misdemeanors for false imprisonment and the destruction of federal property (which had been shot up throughout the day) and were sentenced to a year in prison.
In August of 1980, the perpetrators of the America’s only subterranean terror incident were freed.
