icwutudidthar Posted:
In the late 1980s, my LASD surveillance team was requested by the
Sheriff’s Homicide to bumist in staking out the turf of a gang known
as the FTRA or Freight Train Riders of America. Their turf was trains
and train right-of-ways from Seattle, Wash., to Mexico. It seemed that
a serial killer was murdering hobos who rode the rails and camped in
outdoor hobo jungle camps along the railroad tracks throughout the
Southwest.
The victim vagabonds were commonly shot in the head at close range
with a small caliber pistol while they slept in homeless encampments
at night. The suspect had to be one of them, because he knew the camps
and was apparently able to closely approach these wary travelers for a
point blank shot to the head. Many of the victims were physically
handicapped in some way. The unknown serial killer had earned the
moniker “Bum Blaster.” Profiles of the serial killer suggested that he
was a “mercy killer” who felt sorry for the poor homeless transients
and effectively put them out of their misery. Others suggested that he
was a cold blooded “thrill killer” who preyed on the most vulnerable
victims, knowing that nobody would demand justice in their behalf, or
even miss them.
My surveillance team was bumigned to covertly monitor some of these
camps of sleeping transients to prevent any further murders in Los
Angeles and to watch for any suspicious activity.
Wanderlust and Rail Buffs
There are people who love trains and everything to do with them.
Behind the County Jail in downtown Los Angeles there are railroad
yards where cars are switched and locomotive engines pull in to refuel
and do maintenance. Early in my career, I had run into these train
enthusiasts, known locally as “the train freaks,” while patrolling the
perimeter of the jail. They could recite the name, origin, and
destination of every train pbuming through the L.A. yards. They could
even tell you the scheduled arrival and departure times. Sometimes
they took photographs of the more famous engines.
This is when I first heard about the FTRA. Like the muffled whispers
about the “Black Hand” of the Mafia in the Italian community, these
“train freaks” whispered of a gang of outlaws that lived to ride the
freight trains in the West. They were robbers, burglars, and hijackers
with colorful names. Cross one of their members and they would get
you. These were desperate and dangerous men. At the time, this
“Homicidal Hobos” idea seemed a little far out for me to take too
seriously. After all, we dealt with some of L.A.’s most dangerous
local gangs. But I became a believer after the Bum Blaster case.
During our nighttime surveillances, I saw the signs of the pbuming of
Freight Train Riders under railroad overpbumes, switching yards, and
along the tracks on boxcars, switching boxes, and lean-to buildings.
Strange monikers, swastikas, lightning bolts, and the letters FTRA,
FTW (F—- the World), STP (Start the Party or Stone Tramp People), and
ATAPAW (Any Time, Any Place, Anywhere) could be seen mixed among the
tagger and traditional gang graffiti. They leave their messages in
signs and FTRA graffiti to let fellow FTRA members know that they were
there, and possibly where they were last headed.
People who abandon our normal American way of life and society do so
for a reason. Who would choose to sleep along the tracks and live in
this underground world to ride the dangerous freight cars? They are
loners, and many are alcoholics, the mentally ill, drug addicts, and
outlaws on the run. They live by panhandling, selling scrap, and
through criminal activities like petty theft, burglary, identity
theft, and food stamp and welfare fraud. They carry weapons like clubs
and canes, knives and pistols. And whether they are the witnesses or
suspects, they can disappear by catching the next freight train out.
The FTRA are the most predatory of this lot.
Nomadic Terrors
Some railroad officials will deny that the FTRA exists at all. Some
say it is an urban legend. But law enforcement investigators believe
that the gang began in the early 1980s in a Montana bar. Started by a
group of homeless and disgruntled Viet Nam veterans, the loosely knit
original members were mostly white men who rode the famous “High
Line,” the name they gave to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Pacific
rail road line (BNSP). They swore to watch their brother members’
backs and to share their food, booze, and women. They had monikers
like Pennsylvania Pollock, Desert Rat, Moose, Muskrat, Hot****, Side
Line, F-Troop, and women like Bubblehead.
Described by many as “bikers without bikes,” members of the FTRA who
ride the original “High Line” often identify themselves by wearing a
black bandanna around their neck with a silver ring band. The FTRA
“Southern Corridor” or the “Midwestern” lines, riders who ride the CSX
out of Georgia or Kansas City Southern through Texas and Oklahoma, are
more recent offshoots of the original gang. The “Southern Corridor”
Freight Train Riders identify themselves by wearing red bandannas with
silver rings. The “Midwest” FTRA identify with blue bandannas and
silver rings. During the winter months many FTRA members migrate to
warmer states, such as California and Arizona. FTRA members often
posses several false identification dogreat timesents for use in obtaining
food stamps and committing welfare fraud. They will usually give false
identifying information and deny they are members of the FTRA when
asked by the police or railroad authorities.
Nationwide an estimated 30,000 homeless freight train hoppers annually
“catch-out” somewhere on the 30,000 miles of railroad track. Beside
the hobos, tramps, and carneys, there are a growing number of illegal
immigrants and even entire migrant families. Recently it has become a
fad for college students and young adventurous Yuppies to hop a
freight car for “fun.” Such activity is illegal, and is considered
highly insulting to most train hoppers and especially offensive to the
members of the FTRA. Many adventuring armatures have been robbed,
beaten, or worse by genuine transients. Each year nearly one hundred
deaths occur along the railroad lines. This number includes those
transients who die of natural causes. But this number also includes
those whose deaths are presumed accidental when the body is found
after falling from or under the train and there are no eye witnesses
to tell us differently. Finally, there are those who are the clearly
the victims of foul play.
In the late 1980s, the FTRA began systematically stealing high value
merchandise from the trains. They also began doing multiple burglaries
around the train yards specifically targeting firearms. The Union
Pacific Railroad reported taking more than 30 burglary reports a day
at the Colton Yard in San Bernardino, Calif. Firearms and high value
items could be sold for large profits in the underground drug cartels
in Mexico. Some FTRA members formed bumociations with Mexican criminal
groups to facilitate this trade. Members of the FTRA were also known
to commit armed robberies near the railroad tracks and immediately hop
a freight car out of town.
In 1996, a transient with the moniker of F-Troop was found in a boxcar
on a Montana Rail line, shot in the head five times. His real name was
Joseph Perrigo, a 30-year-old train hopper who wore an FTRA tattoo.
Just one of the more than 1,000 transient train riders along the 1,500
miles of the High Line, he was the victim of fellow FTRA member Martin
Moore, also known as Mississippi Bones. The murder was Bones’ payback
for F-Troop stabbing him more than a year before.
Death Tracks
According to retired police officer Bill Palmini, author of “Murder on
the Rails,” the most notorious murderer and FTRA member was Side
Track, or Robert Silveria. His book describes how Spokane, Wash.,
Police Officer Bob Grandinetti had begun dogreat timesenting the FTRA gang
early in the 1980s. He closely followed a series of reported dead
bodies along the High Line between Spokane and Sandpoint, Idaho. Many
of the victims had their shirts and jackets pulled up around their
heads and their pants pulled down. Bob Grandinetti didn’t buy the
railroad’s explanations of accidental deaths.
After a freight train derailed west of Spokane, it was determined that
the brake lines had been deliberately cut and that the suspect had
been killed in the resulting crash. He was wearing the signature black
bandanna and silver ring of the FTRA. Grandinetti compiled
dogreat timesentation on 800 known and suspected FTRA members and noted that
in the1990s there were more than 300 unsolved murders along the rails.
He suspects that many of these murders can be attributed to members of
the FTRA, but the cases were especially hard to prove. In a “Stuff”
magazine article by Christopher Ketcham (2/28/03) Grandinetti is
quoted as saying, “The problem is the suspects and all the witnesses
disappear.”
Silveria was a scarecrow-looking heroin addict who had a tattoo of the
word freedom on his throat. Eventually Side Track was connected to the
FTRA and several of these unsolved railroad murders. He was featured
on “America’s Most Wanted” and dubbed the “Boxcar Killer” by the
media. After his arrest, he confessed to a five-year nationwide murder
spree ranging from Florida to California. One of his victims was
college student Michael Garfinkle who was on a weekend odyssey when
Side Track murdered him in a hobo jungle in the switching yard outside
Emeryville, Calif. But mostly he preyed on the helpless homeless,
killing them for their clothing and social security cards. Perhaps it
was guilt that made him cover the faces of his victims with their
clothing. He confessed to 14 of the unsolved murders.
Back in Los Angeles, my surveillance team was unable to cover all the
hobo jungle camps, and the unknown railroad serial killer murdered
another victim. He probably disappeared after the killing by “catching
out” on an outbound freight train, but the LASD Homicide detectives
were pretty sure they had identified a suspect. A few weeks later,
they told us that their primary suspect had been killed in Mexico. Was
he an FTRA member? We may never know, but the railroad murders in our
area stopped.
Don’t wait to be overwhelmed by the multiple burglary or robbery
reports in and around the railroad tracks snaking across your
jurisdiction. Don’t wait for the lifeless unidentified body to be
discovered in some tramp camp or boxcar one fine morning. Check the
area for FTRA graffiti, photograph graffiti, learn the monikers and
gang symbols, and stop to talk to vagrants and hobos. Watch for the
FTRA gang, because the devil rides the rails.
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