By Monte Mitchell
JOURNAL REPORTER
It was shortly before 1 p.m. on Jan. 24 when Amanda Clark Miller's cell phone rang.
"Where's John working today?" her friend, Shannon Long Blevins asked.
"Shannon, my sister-in-law just called and asked me the same question," Clark Miller said. "What the hell is going on?"
Blevins hesitated. Then she spoke. Two men had been killed on a tree farm in Virginia owned by the Hudler family.
"Oh, my God. John's in Grassy Creek," Clark Miller said.
"Yeah, but that's not Virginia," Blevins said.
"But it's on the Virginia line," Clark Miller said.
She tried to call her husband but couldn't reach him. She called Dale Hudler. No one answered.
She called the farm office.The secretary answered and began to cry. Ron and Fred Hudler had been shot to death, the secretary told her. There was no word about John.
Now she was frantic. She had to get to the farm. She had to find her husband.
She called her father and arranged to meet him at the First Baptist Church in West Jefferson. From there, he would help her find way to Grassy Creek.
Clark Miller worked in Boone, 40 minutes away.
Her parents had to drive in from Tennessee, just across the state line, and when they arrived at the church about a half-hour after she did, she saw the look on their faces.
"Daddy, do you know something you're not telling me?" Clark Miller asked.
"Oh, baby," he said. "I'm so sorry."
A brutal crime
On the morning of the killings, it was quiet on the tree farm and the expansive operations in Virginia and North Carolina that Ron Hudler ran with his three sons, Bill, Fred and Dale. The harvest had been over more than a month, and now it was all about getting ready for spring.
Fred Hudler and John Miller Jr., a crew leader, had work to do.
Just before 9 a.m., they picked up a dump truck parked off N.C. 16. They chatted with Larry Sheets, a letter carrier, who handed Fred Hudler a letter from his mother.
"When I was in college," Fred Hudler said, laughing, "she always sent me a letter with $20 in it. I bet this one doesn't have it."
Hudler and Miller rode back to the farm in the truck and stopped at a work site in a hollow around a curve about a tenth of a mile from Ron Hudler's house where a crew was cutting trees. Then they drove the truck back to the house to pick up a four-wheeler to haul the cut wood.
About 10, the crew came down from the hills to get gasoline, and as they drove by the house they noticed the dump truck parked in the driveway. They didn't think anything of it and drove on.
Shortly before noon, Bill Hudler, who lived down the road, came by with a friend to see his father. The dump truck's loud diesel engine was still running.
He found his brother's body lying on the brick driveway between their father's home and the 10-bay garage. Fred Hudler was 44, the father of two boys. He had been shot in the head.
Bill Hudler's friend went inside the house and found Ron Hudler's body in the living room. He had been shot in the head too. He was 74.
The 911 call came in at 11:53 a.m., with a report of two dead.
Deputies found Miller's body in the garage on the concrete floor. He had been shot twice in the temple. He was 25.
Sheriff James Williams of Ashe County arrived about noon. He saw the body in the driveway. Deputies told him about the other two. He walked into the garage, then inside the house, being careful not to disturb the scene.
He had no idea what had happened; he knew only that three men had been shot to death and there were no witnesses.
The crime at the Hudler farm was as bad as anything he had ever seen in 34 years in law enforcement. And he knew that the farm's isolation would make solving the case all the harder.
The farm is on Charles Spencer Road, which runs west from N.C. 16. About a half mile from the intersection, it wanders without notice across the state line. It wasn't until Dale Hudler told Williams that the farm's taxes were paid in Virginia that investigators found out which state they were in.
Deputies from Grayson County, Va., soon arrived, followed by Grayson Sheriff Richard Vaughan. The Virginia authorities had thought that they were coming to assist, but now they were the lead agency in a robbery and triple homicide.
Vaughan had taken office Jan. 1. He was just three weeks into his term.
Inside the garage, investigators noticed tire impressions in the dust on the floor. Bullet casings were scattered around the ground. A steel gun-safe, about 6 feet tall, had been pushed out of place and unlocked. Most of the guns were still there, but the cash was missing.
One thing was clear: Someone with a need for cash and prepared to kill had come to this remote spot in the hills.
It appeared that Fred Hudler and Miller had interrupted a burglary and were dead. Ron Hudler, home early from his business trip, also must have been confronted by the burglar. And now he was dead, too.
As news of the killings spread, people couldn't help but wonder who would do such a thing. Was it an outsider or someone they knew?
Investigators worked through the night. They gathered the shell casings. They checked ballistic angles. They looked for fingerprints and footprints, hairs and clothing fibers. The temperature never rose above the 20s, and their breaths hung in the air. Snow swirled on the gusty winds.
It wasn't until 9 p.m. that Clark Miller rode out with her husband's parents and other family members. She had spoken by telephone to Williams, who had known her since she was in high school, and he had confirmed her husband's death. It still didn't seem real.
A Grayson County deputy blocked the road before they could reach the scene.
Her husband's body was still in the garage, several hundred yards away, although she didn't know that. She saw a neighbor who was an Ashe County deputy and grabbed him.
"You have to help me, you have to help me," she told him.
He promised to get someone out to talk to her. It's cold, he told her. Get back in the car with the baby and stay warm.
An Ashe deputy who had played football with her husband at Ashe County High School came out.
"I identified John's body," he told her. "It was him."
A success story
John Miller hadn't intended to get into the Christmas-tree business. A construction worker, he had lost his job in the housing slump shortly before his daughter, Halei, was born. He felt that the Hudlers had really helped him out, and he was grateful for the job.
The Hudlers were among the wealthiest families in Ashe County. They had an estimated 1 million trees on their farms and harvested about 100,000 Fraser firs a year.
Ron was a retired executive from General Motors and EDS, the data company that GM bought from billionaire Ross Perot. He was divorced, and he and his three sons ran Hudler Carolina Tree Farms.
Hudler had been born in Detroit, but his family had roots four generations deep in Ashe County. The rolling hills of Christmas trees at the end of Charles Spencer Road offered isolated beauty for Ron Hudler after a high-powered career in the automotive industry.
He had been a success in the Christmas-tree industry, as well, winning a coveted chance to present the White House Christmas tree in 1995, where he and Hillary Clinton posed together for photos.
Fred was an outdoorsman who operated a small business as a river and fishing guide. He loved to coach his two sons' youth sports teams.
His brothers were also well known and well liked. Dale Hudler is the operations manager of the Christmas-tree business and had been elected the mayor of West Jefferson in November. Other tree farmers know Bill Hudler as a person to turn to for fixing technical and mechanical problems. Their sister, Deb Holroyd, is an attorney who lives in Virginia Beach.
There had been rumors around Ashe County that Ron Hudler sometimes had a lot of cash on hand, maybe $20,000, $30,000 or much more. He had a reputation for being generous. When a farm worker took a child to the dentist, Hudler had been known to pull money from his pocket for the bill.
Authorities initially focused on the 50 migrant workers who had been on the farm that holiday season, questioning those who were still around and trying to figure out how to contact those who had already left.
One of the Hudlers mentioned the name of Freddie Hammer, an Ashe County man who had a firewood business and did odd jobs on the side for Ron Hudler, including construction and other work. Hammer had been to the farm's main office in West Jefferson and asked about Ron Hudler two days before the killings. Someone there had told him that Ron Hudler was out of town and wasn't expected home until the end of the week.
Vaughan had never heard of Hammer, but Williams was familiar with him. Williams told Grayson authorities that Hammer was a suspect in the disappearance of an Ashe County man the year before. Williams also knew that Hammer had once been convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer years ago, although he didn't know the details. And he knew that Hammer had worked for Ron Hudler until they'd had a falling out.
An inconsistency
Near midnight on Jan. 24, authorities arrived at Hammer's white frame house about 7 miles down N.C. 16 from the Hudler farm.
Hammer said he didn't trust Ashe County deputies. The investigators told him that they were from Virginia, and he agreed to talk.
He told them that he had done odd jobs for Ron Hudler. He knew all about the gun safe. One of his jobs had been to haul it from Detroit to Grassy Creek. He had seen Hudler open it, and knew that it took two keys. But he said he didn't know anything about the killings. He told them that he had been in Todd that morning, working a construction job at a customer's home.
Todd is in southwest Ashe County, about 30 miles from where the murders happened, but the twisting mountain roads made it easily more than a half-hour drive. If Hammer's alibi checked out, he could be crossed off the list of suspects.
The next morning, Williams was in his office in Jefferson when Leonard Houck, the chief of the New River Volunteer Fire Department, stopped by.
Everyone was talking about what had happened in Grassy Creek. Houck mentioned that he had seen Freddie Hammer near the Hudler farm that morning. It was about 9:10 or so. Houck remembered the time because he had been listening to the local obituaries on the radio. He was sure about the time. When he was driving south on N.C. 16, he saw Hammer driving his burgundy-and-white Ford flatbed truck north about a mile or so from the turnoff to the Hudler farm.
Williams listened with interest. Hammer had said that he had been on the other end of the county, over in Todd. And now here was someone Williams trusted saying that Hammer had been near the Hudler farm.
"Why would he lie about that?" Williams wondered.
• Monte Mitchell can be reached in Wilkesboro at 336-667-5691 or at mmitchell@wsjournal.com.