Norman “Snake” Brooks and his collection of mostly female followers lived in rural Oregon in the 1970s, calling their church the Children of the Valley of Life and running businesses including 24-hour diners and a rescue service for stranded drivers. When a dead body was found near the group’s encampment, Detective Roy Dirks set out to investigate. Dirks never made it home. In her latest for Alta Journal, “Things That Could Not Be Avoided,” author Ruby McConnell tracks Brooks’s dramatic ups and downs and the ultimate showdown that led to Dirks’s death. McConnell joins Alta Live to share the details of this complex case, explain why Brooks was compared to famed killer Charles Manson, and answer our many questions about Dirks himself, a character just as complicated as the man who (may have) killed him. Join us for a fascinating look into this little-known slice of Oregon true crime.

About the guest:

Ruby McConnell is a writer and geologist who writes about the intersection of the natural world and human experience. She is the author of the critically acclaimed outdoor series A Woman’s Guide to the Wild and A Girl’s Guide to the Wild and its companion activity book for young adventurers, and Ground Truth: A Geological Survey of a Life, which was a finalist for the 2021 Oregon Book Awards. She lives and writes in the heart of Oregon country. You can almost always find her in the woods. She’s on X at @RubyGoneWild.

Here are some notable quotes from today’s event:

  • On first hearing about Snake Brooks: “I first heard about it about 10 years ago, and I’m a geologist, not typically a true-crime writer, but I came across it because at some point the communal group that Snake Brooks had started had moved into hand-dug caves in the forests outside Eugene. And as a geologist, I loved that.”
  • On whether the Brooks group was a cult: “That’s sort of the crux of this story: the nature of the group. Norman Brooks was a Black man in a very white place with a very troubled racial history. The whole concept of whether or not it was a cult and his mind control or not over the other members of the group was a legal thing of legal contention. And so I would say that question is best posed to people who were in that group who have had time to reflect. I don’t know that how they would have answered back then is how they would have answered with several decades of reflection. What I can say, to be fair to everyone, is that they had registered as their own church, they had paperwork, they certainly were living communally, they certainly were contributing large sums of money primarily to Snake’s endeavors, and it does seem that he was a figurehead for the group.”
  • On the overlooked women in this story: “Don’t ignore women and don’t underestimate what women will do to protect themselves, their children, and their way of life. Everything about this story has focused on Snake and Roy Dirks, but ultimately, that’s two men. And there were 18 women in this story who go largely unnamed—largely unrecognized. Ultimately, it was their feelings, the protection of their children, and what was happening to them as a side effect of the man in their life that brought this conflict to a head.”

Check out these links to some of the topics brought up this week.