Opinion ID: 2590797
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the murders of june flood and rex tanner

Text: ¶ 3 Pinder owned a lion, which he kept in a pen on his Duchesne County ranch. Pinder kept a baseball bat, which he used to intimidate the beast, near the lion's pen. On a Sunday evening in late October 1998, Pinder used that bat to strike June Flood in the face, the first in a series of brutal and gruesome acts spanning several days, including a double murder and the implementation of a horrific scheme to destroy all evidence of the crime. ¶ 4 Pinder did not commit those acts alone. At trial, Filomeno Ruiz, an ostensible ranch hand, testified that he was present both when Pinder beat Flood and Rex Tanner with the baseball bat and when Pinder subsequently shot and killed the two victims. ¶ 5 Ruiz styled himself a member of the Mexican Mafia and was heavily involved in the drug trade. Pinder's primary purpose for keeping Ruiz at the ranch was to ensure a ready supply of drugs for his own use. At trial, Pinder conceded that Ruiz was a drug smuggling, gun running, mafioso, wife beating, dog killer. Pinder additionally acknowledged that, while Ruiz did some work on the ranch  including feeding the ostriches and the ranch's resident lion  Ruiz was not supervised by Pinder's ranch hand supervisor. In fact, Pinder admitted that Ruiz did very little work at the ranch and agreed that Ruiz was no ordinary ranch hand, but was more akin to a personal employee. Pinder loaned his personal employee an AK-47 [1] for work on the ranch and also provided him training in explosives. It was this personal employee who accompanied Pinder on the night he killed Flood and Tanner. ¶ 6 That night began benignly enough. Pinder and his live-in girlfriend, Barbara DeHart, along with Ruiz and Joe Wallen, Pinder's accountant, dropped in on another ranch employee, David Brunyer. The group gathered around Brunyer's campfire, talking and drinking beer. As the evening wound down, Pinder addressed Ruiz, saying, let's go get some heads, a macabre reference to an earlier discussion in which Pinder had expressed that he had always wanted to own a shrunken head. Pinder, DeHart, Ruiz, and Wallen then departed and returned to the ranch. A short time later, Pinder informed DeHart that he and Ruiz were going to take a drive and have a chat. Before the pair left the ranch, Pinder grabbed the baseball bat used for intimidating his lion and placed it in the truck. Pinder and Ruiz then drove to Flood's house, where they found both Flood and Tanner. ¶ 7 Pinder had sporadically employed Flood and Tanner. However, Tanner had ceased working for Pinder after injuring his leg in a horse accident, and Pinder had ordered Flood off the ranch after accusing her of playing a role in the theft of several documents that would have aided his estranged wife in a then-ongoing divorce dispute, which threatened the loss of the ranch. Pinder, livid with anger, had later reported the theft to authorities. Pinder frequently spoke of his animosity toward Flood and Tanner and had even personally confronted and threatened the couple in connection with various disputes. At trial, the jury determined that Pinder put those threats into action on the evening he arrived at Flood's door, with Ruiz in tow and a baseball bat in hand. ¶ 8 After entering Flood's home, Pinder insisted that they all go somewhere to talk. Flood and Tanner refused to leave and the confrontation quickly turned violent. Using his baseball bat, Pinder first hit Flood in the face and then struck Tanner in the leg. Pinder grabbed a rifle owned by Flood and pointed the weapon at his victims. Ruiz testified that Pinder looked as though he had the devil when wielding the weapon. Pinder, accompanied by Ruiz, then led the two injured victims, Flood holding her mouth and Tanner hobbling, to his pickup truck and drove to a nearby lake located on the ranch. ¶ 9 Pinder parked the truck by the lake, and all four occupants exited the vehicle. As the group walked toward the back of the truck, Pinder shot Flood twice, presumably with a pistol that had been located in the truck. Pinder then shot Tanner multiple times. The murders complete, Pinder began dragging the bodies to the cover of some nearby bushes. When he implored Ruiz to help move the bodies, Ruiz, previously frozen in fear, complied. After covering the bodies with the bushes, Pinder and Ruiz briefly returned to the ranch house before commencing a gruesome course of action intended to destroy all evidence of the murders.