Connections to a Killer

 

Courtney Atlas mystified me.  I found him odd in a way I could not fully describe.  I met him in 1976 through Donna Atlas, his wife.  Donna was my supervisor at the Montana State Health Department Laboratory. 

Courtney didn’t have a regular job when I met him.  I asked Donna about that one day. “He lives by his wits,” Donna told me.   What that meant, I eventually determined, is he relied on money siphoned from his wealthy mother.  Even given that, he would not so much as shovel snow from his mother’s sidewalk on Helena’s Southside.

Donna asked me to do that for her mother-in-law.  And I did.

When I mentioned something about Courtney to someone a few years older than me, they immediately responded with this: “He killed Pam Dorrington.  But the police were never able to prove it.”

Pam disappeared in February of 1968.  Part of her body appeared in the water near the docks at the Gates of the Mountains in June of that year.  Courtney was Pam’s landlord at the time of her murder.

One Thursday in 1977, I received a call from the Montana Electrical JATC (the apprenticeship program).  If I wanted to start an electrician’s apprenticeship, I needed to quit my job at the state and show up at a local electrical shop on Monday.  I told the program director I would call him on Friday with a firm answer on that.

When I arrived at work on Friday, I told Donna about the call.  “To begin an apprenticeship,” I informed her, “I have to quit working here today.  I don’t feel right about doing that.”

Donna didn’t hesitate.  “It’s an opportunity, Mitch.  Don’t worry about this place.  You call and tell them you will be there on Monday.”

I didn’t see much of Donna after that Friday.  In 1983, Donna perished when her house burned down the foundation.   Her charred body was discovered in the basement.

“Courtney killed her,” I announced to myself.

The following year, Courtney was convicted of Donna’s murder and sentenced to 100 years in prison.

A couple days ago, I read in our local newspaper where Courtney, from his prison cell, finally admitted to killing Pam Dorrington.  He sexually assaulted her after she was dead and dismembered her body before disposing of it.

Not merely an odd man.  An evil man.

Courtney Atlas

—Mitchell Hegman

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