The Kidnapping of Kari Swenson

Kari Swenson was a 23-year-old Olympic biathlon competitor training in the mountains near Big Sky, Montana, on July 15, 1984, when she was captured by Don and Dan Hiking — a father and son pair of mountain survivalists who had been living in the wilderness and had decided they wanted a young woman to bring into their group. She was chained to a tree in their camp. When two friends came searching for her the following day, a confrontation occurred: Don Nichols shot and killed one of the searchers, and a bullet that missed Kari wounded her instead. The two men fled back into the wilderness.

Kari Swenson survived her wound and was rescued. The incident triggered a massive manhunt across the Montana wilderness involving hundreds of law enforcement officers and hunters. The Nichols pair — who had been living off the land for extended periods — evaded capture for months, surviving a winter in the mountains with extraordinary skill. They were finally captured in January 1985 after a ranger spotted their camp.

Both men were convicted. Don Nichols received a life sentence for the murder of Alan Goldstein, who had been killed during the rescue attempt. His son Dan received a shorter sentence. The case drew extraordinary national attention because of Kari's athletic prominence, the wilderness setting, and the genuinely bizarre ideology of the perpetrators, who had envisioned building a remote survivalist community with a captured woman as a founding member.

Kari Swenson recovered from her wounds and went on to compete in the 1988 Winter Olympics. She subsequently worked as a veterinarian in Montana. The case has been the subject of books and television coverage and remains one of the most unusual kidnapping cases in American history — a crime rooted entirely in a delusional survivalist vision.