Book Profiles Wyoming Couple’s ‘Homicidal Love Story’

Two of Wyoming's most infamous killers are the subject of a new book. Alice & Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story recounts the tale of Alice and Gerald Uden, an elderly couple convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 2014.

Prosecutors claim Alice shot her third husband Ronald Holtz in the back of the head while he was sleeping in December of 1974, then buried his body in an abandoned mine shaft on the Remount Ranch 26 miles west of Cheyenne. In 1980, she convinced her new husband Gerald to kill his ex-wife and her two sons, who lived in Lander, and dump their bodies into Fremont Lake outside of Pinedale.

After the murders, Alice and Gerald moved to a small town in Missouri, where they lived for 33 years until the cold case was reopened in 2013. Their respective murder trials drew international attention after their daughter Erica Hayes described learning that her parents were killers in People Magazine.

The true crime story is the 17th book from author Ron Franscell. The Casper native and University of Wyoming grad was a long-time journalist and former president of the Wyoming Press Association. His first novel Angel Fire was published in 1996 and was later named one of the San Francisco Chronicle's 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century West. His critically acclaimed 2008 biography The Darkest Night was written about two childhood friends and next-door neighbors in Casper, who were abducted in 1973.