mother’s affair with the man. “My mom really had a thing for married guys there for a while,” she told New Times. She knew her mom was afraid — Wells hid knives in her trailer in case she had to defend herself — and Brenda believed she harbored a dark secret. “I remember very vividly her telling me, ‘You have no idea about the nightmares that I have,’” Brenda said. “‘You have no idea about the things I’m trying to deal with inside my head.’” Unlike most of her mom’s boyfriends, Brenda liked Keith. “A little crazy, but not in a bad way,” she recalled. “He was defi- nitely the best boyfriend that my mom ever had.” She’s bonded with Keith’s daughter, passing along information about their respective parents. But since hearing of her mom’s alleged confession, she believes she and Lindsey King have more in common than they’d prefer. Brenda now suspects foul play in her mom’s death. Wells died two hours after returning from a five-day stint in the hospital, she said, and she didn’t seem ready to die. Shortly before she passed, she texted “911” to her daughter, who lived in the trailer next door. By the time Brenda saw it and checked on her, Wells was dead. The county didn’t perform an autopsy, and Brenda didn’t have the money to pay for one. Wells was cremated. Brenda now wonders if her mother was silenced — Wells had always left her trailer unlocked. When asked about her willingness to go on the record with her suspicions, Brenda offered New Times a warning. “If I disappear,” she said, “it’s not because I wanted to.” Desert dumping ground New Times contacted the man at the center of Wells’ confession. Because he has not officially been accused of wrongdoing in what is still considered to be a missing person’s case, New Times is not revealing his name. Garrulous and amiable, the Yavapai County man spoke to New Times in person for more than an hour. The rambling interview covered a wide range of topics, including true crime television shows, classic cars, and serial killers. Shown a photo of King and Wells together, he said he wouldn’t know King “if he stepped on my toe,” though he admitted that he was familiar with Wells and with Bill Wilkins and knew the pair had dated. Asked about speculation that Wells and Wilkins may have had something to do with King’s disappearance, he was doubtful. “She didn’t seem like that kind of person,” he said. “And Bill — I certainly didn’t think he was going to go kill someone over her. But you never freaking know.” He did agree that the circum- stances of King’s disappearance, as related by New Times, sounded “suspicious.” “If he went on a hike and died, some- body would find him,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense, you just walk out there and disappear.” The man denied having anything to do with King’s disappearance. He said that he and Wells had just been “friends,” though text messages obtained by New Times may suggest otherwise. Those messages come from Wells’ iPhone and laptop. Dated from 2020 to 2023 — many years after Keith disappeared — they only hint at a relationship and its nature. The man wrote that a photo of Wells at the Black Cat Bar was “hot.” She called him “honey.” She complained about her health and money, and he sometimes offered to help financially. They discussed meeting each other. Wells sometimes got angry with him. “I’m not going to be in the middle of someone else’s relationship!” Wells once texted the man. “I deserve better!!! If you are unhappy... change your life!” “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” the man wrote back stoically. Brenda said that after she spoke to Waldrip, she got a call from someone at the sheriff’s office asking if she could bring her mom’s devices to its headquarters in Prescott. She didn’t have a working car, so they asked her to drop them off at the Seligman substation. She balked — Seligman is such a small town, an act of flatulence is like the shot heard round the world. “There’s no way I would drop off anything that I wanted to have taken serious to the cops up here,” she said. “I just wouldn’t do it because it’s all about who you know and who you are.” Instead, Brenda gave the devices to Keith’s daughter, who shared them with New Times. Waldrip said he sent his reports of what he’d uncovered — including the tale of the septic tank and the news that Brenda had Wells’ devices — to the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office. They seemed to garner little interest until he wrote directly to Sheriff David Rhodes about the case. In 2024, he said, he met with volunteer investigator Theresa Higdon and Detective Sergeant Charles Owens, her supervisor. Waldrip said Owens was “defensive” and explained how difficult it would be to remove a septic tank from the property where Keith was last seen. Higdon and Owens also met with Lindsey King earlier this year. Owens assured her that her dad’s case was on the “front burner” and said Waldrip had brought up some good points. The case had been in disarray, he noted, but the investi- gation was again moving forward. In an interview with New Times, Higdon said the sheriff’s office welcomed Waldrip’s research but was still trying to “validate” it. Officially, the investigation is still a missing person’s case, not a homicide inquiry. Higdon complained that the cold case unit is often hampered by the fact that Yavapai County is a well-known “dumping ground” for the corpses of victims murdered elsewhere. She said the Keith King case is one of 50 to 75 currently being worked by her unit. She said she was aware of the septic tank theories, but she did not say whether the sheriff’s office had plans to dig one up. The haunting Those septic tanks may hold the key to finding Keith, or what’s left of him. According to documents on file with the Yavapai County Recorders’ Office, Wells’ parents sold the property that holds them in 2023. On a recent visit to Seligman by New Times, Brenda pointed to the area behind the house where Keith had parked his RV. There were two septic tanks on the property, one for the house and one for a dilapidated mobile home out front. Jacob Stelljes now owns the property. He confirmed that there were two septic tanks on the property, only one of which had been pumped. He told New Times that he granted sheriff’s deputies access to his property five or six months back, but “nothing came of it.” Lindsey King said that in her meeting with Owens last year, the sergeant said that in order to obtain a warrant to unearth the septic tanks, he first needed to The Ghosts of Seligman from p 11 Lindsey King (left) met private detective Kelley Waldrip (right) while she was working at The Main Ingredient in Phoenix. (Danielle Cortez) >> p 13 Lindsey King thumbs through old photos of her dad. (Danielle Cortez)
