In 2021, I was living in sunny Southern California, working in film. My childhood in the mountains of Northern California felt far away.
The news of a neighbor’s murder brought me back.
Richard “Dick” Grayson Drewry was a cattle rancher who lived in Humboldt County, Ca. He was 85 when he was found murdered, execution-style outside the home his pioneer grandparents built.
His murder is unsolved.
Article about our new documentary on the unsolved murder of Dick Drewry by ABC Eureka. @keelymbc https://t.co/p0TDKacikF
— UNWON – Forgotten America (@americaunwon) December 4, 2024
For years we had seen and felt a dark new presence in my rural community, but I always told myself it would stay in the shadows.
Dick Drewry’s murder disturbed that illusion.
Cartels in California
In spring 2024, three years after the murder, with no answers to the questions I asked anyone who would listen, I headed home with a documentary film crew— my sister and co-director Michaela Brazil Gillies, cinematographer and editor Ryan Francis and producer Graham Kelley.
I had been accepted to the Palladium Pictures’ documentary film incubator in Washington, D.C., and given the chance to make a short film. We chose to investigate Dick’s murder.
Whatever we found, there would be a story.
I grew up right smack in the middle of the infamous “Emerald Triangle”—Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties, the birthplace of large-scale commercial marijuana production.
Most locals believe Dick Drewry was killed by some member of foreign-organized crime. His son Patrick told me the family went armed for months, believing the cartel was after them. Bell Springs Road, where the family ranches, is particularly infamous for illegal cannabis production, made famous by the Netflix docuseries “Murder Mountain.”
Some say Dick shot a dog who was after his cattle, and the dog belonged to a Bulgarian crime boss who put a hit on Dick’s life.
“We’ve seen Bulgarians, Russians, the Chinese moving in and trying to take over the illegal industry here,” Sheriff William Honsal of Humboldt County told me. “It’s not just marijuana. We’ve seen our homicide rate go sky high, as well as human trafficking, labor trafficking, sex trafficking. You look at this and go, this got to be a third-world country. No, this is Northern California, this is what’s going on.”
I believe rural America has been ignored for far too long.
“This is a different group of people here now,” says Katie Delbar, a Mendocino County rancher. “People in the 60s who grew illegally were different. Now we have people from all over the country, all over the world, you hear 3-4 languages when you go to town. They’re here for one reason: To make money.”
There are an estimated 6,000 illicit marijuana grow sites on American public land, all over the West—California, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Colorado and Washington. The porous Southern border provides a constant labor stream.
“Sometimes ranching and pot growing are in competition,” Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall said. “Fences have been cut, some of the water sources are being developed to provide water to marijuana.
Cattle are shot to feed people in these grow sites. We’ve got some bad folks in competition for water, in competition for land.”
The problem persists in the wake of marijuana legalization. Tests show that much of the cannabis sold in legal dispensaries comes from black market grows.
I spoke with a couple of local farmers for the film. Casey and Lido Oneill grow vegetables, raise animals and produce cannabis through their private label. Their parents were part of the first wave of back-to-the-landers who came to the Mendocino-Humboldt area in the wake of the 1960s hippie movement.
The brothers live near the Drewry Ranch, on the south end of Bell Springs Road. Lido had a camera near the place where Dick was killed. He says it was off that day because of the snow.
The brothers agree that the organized criminal element has gotten worse in the wake of California legalizing marijuana, as extreme regulations block small players and embolden criminals.
“Regulations are designed with bad actors in mind,” Casey says. “But bad actors don’t care about regulation.”
At the Scene of the Crime
After weeks of looking into the local rumors of organized crime behind Dick’s killing, my investigation takes a different direction. I have begun to hear rumors about water and a neighbor. This neighbor, according to the rumors, is in his 70s.
He is originally from Berkeley but came here to Humboldt to grow weed. The rumor was, he had reached a water agreement with Dick Drewry. Then Dick, who neighbors told me was very opposed to cannabis, found out that his neighbor was using the water to grow.
He ended their agreement.
One source said this neighbor may have been trying to go legal, following those onerous regulations laid out by the state of California so he could be a legitimate operation. But he needed a water source to do that, the rumors say, and Dick Drewry cut him off.
“Water is your motive,” Jenny, a cowgirl who runs cows near the Drewry Ranch, told me. “Water is going to be the motive for a lot of murders.”
What we found over the course of our investigation shocked me and disturbed some of my own illusions about my hometown, the community I know and love, and how it has changed. While our documentary was only 20 minutes long, viewers may find themselves walking away with more answers and resolution than they are used to seeing in the true-crime genre.
Small-Town Rumors
I chose to come home and share this story because I believe rural America has been ignored for far too long. All of my reporting work at UNWON focuses on untold stories, particularly in the rural American West.
In California, our government focuses on urban areas while ignoring the rural communities that make up a significant part of our state, both geographically and culturally.
California feeds the nation; more than 25 percent of the food consumed in the U.S. is produced in the Central Valley. Yet for our farmers and ranchers, water is scarce.
The government is taking out hydroelectric dams that Northern California’s agricultural communities rely on for water supply in order to facilitate fish habitat, even as a constant flow of organized criminal groups bring labor across the Southern border to meet the increasing global demand for marijuana.
The government does nothing to stop it.
In Mendocino County, ranchers go armed, living in fear of organized drug trafficking organizations as well as unaffiliated criminal growers, now forced to worry about the water systems they have built over generations to care for their cattle and steward their land.
Yet Sheriff Kendall told me that to this day, California governor Gavin Newsom has never returned his phone calls.
Keely Brazil Covello is the co-director and co-producer of “High Country Murder,” a production of Palladium Pictures film incubator. Co-directed and co-produced by Michaela Brazil Gillies, the film’s other credits include director of photography Ryan Francis, editor Ryan Francis and creative producers Graham Kelley and Ryan Francis. “High Country Murder” is A Go West Media production in association with Naknek Films.
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