The Last Standoff

Published by Harrison Daily Times:

Thirty years after the Haigler shooting — July 3, 1982, on the Highway 7 bridge over the Little Buffalo River — some people in Jasper remember it like it was yesterday. 

According to Ray Watkins, “There are many misconceptions with this story.” Watkins was the sheriff at the time of the incident. 

Watkins drifted in and out of his memory of that day. 

“I was working on my commode when I got the call. They told me there was a hostage situation on the bridge. 

“I said OK,” Watkins remembers nonchalantly, he acted as if this was routine. “So I put my gun on and got in the car and drove down to the bridge.”

When Watkins arrived at the bridge he got out of the car and Keith Haigler leaned out of the side of the bus and said:             “Ray, leave your gun in the car and come over here I need to talk to you.”

“I couldn’t believe he knew my name,” Watkins said. “I walked back and forth the entire time and I could have grabbed a gun at any time.”

Keith told Watkins that he had voted for him to be sheriff in the last election. 

Emory Lamb, Keith Haigler’s self-proclaimed spiritual father, told Watkins he (Lamb) had no business being down there. He was afraid that they would shoot him and he would have died on that bridge, too.

“I told Lamb I do not blame him either, I wouldn’t have come down,” Watkins said. “We were trying to handle this situation with the two of them (Keith and Kate Haigler), we didn’t need a third.”

There were 25 troopers on the bridge behind the police barricade after the Haiglers had hijacked a Trailways bus and blocked the bridge. They were members of the Foundation of Ubiquity (FOU) and believed they would be resurrected in 3-1/2 days.

“If they were going to shoot someone, they would have shot me already,” Watkins said. “I thought, ‘What the hell’s their problem.’ 

“My instructions were to shoot in the right shoulders. When they got off the bus, they got down on their knees, because they thought we were going to shoot them in their knees. The last thing I thought was to shoot anyone in the legs,” Watkins chuckled.

Kate fired three shots out toward the crowd and then she went down. Then she shot the edge of the bridge; she shot Keith; and with the last bullet she turned the gun on herself. 

“She was still alive when I got up there,” he said. “She emptied that .38. If she would have fired one more shot, she would have killed him and she would have still been alive,” 

Lamb had had a motorcycle since he was 18. He rode a Harley Davidson Sportster, owned a hearse but did not belong to a motorcycle club, according to residents.

“Keith dressed like a Hell’s Angel,” Watkins said. “He didn’t even own a motorcycle. He was a look alike.” 

They leaned on those motorcyclists groups to try and get them to come into their organization, residents claim. 

“Emory Lamb was a pawn,” Watkins said. “He was just being used. Keith and Kate planned this whole thing.

“Keith and Kate were planning a big to do where lots of people were coming in and witnessing. About 15-20 people came in and danced and played music,” Watkins continued, “not enough to even cause a big disturbance for me to have to get involved.

“I was aware every time they had one. 

“They told me there would be 300 people for FOU Day, and I only saw four bikes,” Watkins laughed. “There was nothing to be concerned about.”

After the shootings, Kate’s mother came to Jasper from California trying to get all of the literature that was connected with F.O.U. but Watkins had destroyed it all. 

“That stuff is not going to help anyone, not even her,” Watkins said.

“It was a misunderstanding of the Bible. I told somebody to get me a Bible that day on the bridge. And I told Haigler there was nothing in there that said you had to die a physical death, it is a spiritual death. Lamb told me he could feel the earth shake when they came back. He could feel their spirits were there.

“The following year on July 3, I drove across that bridge around nine o’clock at night, there was a big square candle sitting there lit,” Watkins continued. “I picked it up and blew it out and drove straight to Emory Lamb’s with it. Lamb said he had nothing to do with and had no knowledge of it at all.”

Watkins said that Lamb got his name from coins he would hand out. The coins said FOU on them and the coins could be brought back to get a free soda. Watkins said residents started calling him ‘Fou’ after that.

Hubert Roberson, a resident of Parthenon, is the former county clerk who retired eight years ago. 

“Not a whole lot happens here but when something like that happens, it gets people’s attention,” Roberson said.

Roberson was the county clerk who signed the deed for Lamb’s property over to Michael Morris. Morris lived in the house while Lamb was there and took care of Lamb after his wife left. The land is currently owned by Benton Hudson, resident of Jasper. 

“His wife was afraid of him and that’s when she left,” Roberson said. “FOU came down every once in a while going to his store. It closed down and he isolated himself from the community.

“Katie worked in the back of the Ozark Cafe,” he said. “She would come out here and drink coffee with us.

“The news of the shooting reached Germany while it was happening here. My brother called my mother from Germany asking what was happening in Jasper,” Roberson said. “He knew before I did.”

Mary Olson and Emma Hickey remembered playing in the water under the Little Buffalo bridge during the shooting. They had their children playing in the river when the police came to inform them of the situation. 

Many of the state troopers and sheriffs have stayed in the Boone and Newton County area. Local residents said that Watkins did a great job in a situation that no one was prepared to handle. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Watkins said he did the best that he could do. 

Keith and Kate Haigler were members of the Foundation of Ubiquity (FOU). They hijacked a Trailways bus from Highway 65 to Jasper, then planned to be killed and resurrected 3-1/2 days later. They were wounded by State Police sharpshooters on the bridge, then Kate leaned over and fatally shot Keith and shot herself.

 EDITOR’S NOTE: Special thanks go out to the people at Boone County Museum, Bradley House Museum, the Genealogy department at the Boone County Library, the Newton County Assessor and Clerk’s office, the staff at Jasper High School and the great people I have met around the area who have donated time to help me out.