Right after Christmas, I posted a Google street view of the area where Officer Keeton was parked when he was shot, almost 3/4 of a mile west of the Houck exit. The photo this week is the street view of the Hawthorne exit on I-40 (Exit 354) where Officer Beckstead stopped Greenberg a second time not knowing he had just shot and killed a fellow officer. It is 7 and 1/2 miles east of the first shooting location and only five miles from the New Mexico state line. In the photograph you can see the sandstone marker honoring Don Beckstead on the right shoulder of the highway just before the exit sign. The X on the photo marks the approximate location of the cheerleaders' vehicle that was passing the second stop when the shooting took place. Greenberg took the Hawthorne exit right after the shooting, and although many thought he was turning around to go west, but it appears that he got off the freeway in order to discard the stolen Arizona license plates. The NMSP investigator theorized this because when he later ditched his wife's Pontiac LeMans about 3 miles west of Gallup, it had the original California license plates on it and the Arizona plates that Officer Keeton ran a check on were nowhere to be found.
My blog next week will talk about the Devil's Highway (U.S. 666) and its connection to these murders. Stay tuned if haunting spirits and the macabre interest you.
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