Evidence Uncovered In Landfill Camcorder, Briefcase Could Tie Suspect To Murder

After four days of digging through a stinky landfill, Bonner County authorities pulled out a briefcase Monday they hope will help solve a year-old murder mystery.

“So much for the needle-in-a-haystack skeptics,” said Sheriff Chip Roos.

“We were prepared to dig up an acre and a half, but we uncovered a lot less than that before we found what we were looking for.”

Crews recovered a briefcase and camcorder that could link a suspect to the murder of Paul Gruber.

Gruber, 53, disappeared in January 1994. His body was found last August.

He had been shot to death, and his body had been wrapped in a plastic waterbed mattress and buried about four feet beneath his home near Muskrat Lake.

Last week, an informant told authorities the suspect had dumped some of Gruber’s belongings and other evidence in the Colburn landfill.

The landfill had since been closed and sealed. Roos went to county commissioners and was granted $50,000 to crack open the dump and dig for evidence with a backhoe.

“It’s something we had to do,” Roos said. “You can’t put a price on justice, and we easily spent less than the $50,000.”

Authorities had a good idea of where the garbage bag of evidence had been tossed, but Roos still thought detectives had only a 50-50 chance of finding the items.

“I’m a little amazed myself,” Roos said, adding that crews found three other briefcases before uncovering the one they were looking for.

“I never imagined we would find more than one. I’ve only owned two myself and still have them both.”

Roos wouldn’t be specific about what was in the briefcase. At the very least, he said, it confirms the informant is telling the truth. At best, it will provide damning evidence tying the suspect to the murder.

The suspect, who has moved out of the county, has been implicated in taking some of Gruber’s other personal property, collecting his mail, forging checks and making withdrawals from Gruber’s bank by using an automatic teller machine.

Authorities still were searching parts of the landfill Monday. An investigator with the Idaho attorney general’s office is helping with the case.

The attorney general’s office took over from the local prosecutor, Tevis Hull. Hull said he knows and went to church with the murder suspect and has a conflict in the case.

Roos said he doesn’t know if the new evidence will lead to charges against the suspect.

“We are taking our time to do it right and don’t want to miss anything,” he said.

, DataTimes