Former Douglas County District Attorney and longtime Senior Judge Steve McMorris said the memories return every time he passes the sign on Highway 50 memorializing Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Gary Gifford.

“Every time I drive by that sign up there it just rings a bell,” McMorris said on Wednesday. “That day was chock full of so many things. It’s been on my mind for 50 years.”

On the 50th anniversary of the murder of Trooper Gary Gifford by a bank robber, law enforcement officials gathered with members of the Gifford Family at the Zephyr Cove Restaurant to remember Gifford, who was murdered on Oct. 14, 1975, near Cave Rock after struggling with a fleeing bank robber.

McMorris was assistant district attorney under Howard McKibben when the robbery, murder and hostage crisis occurred at Lake Tahoe.

Gifford conducted a traffic stop near Cave Rock for a vehicle matching the one reported to contain the man who had just robbed the Round Hill branch of Nevada National Bank, taking $4,250 before running out the back and jumping into a vehicle he’d borrowed from a federal officer in San Diego.

Gifford spotted the vehicle and pulled it over. He might have had cover from a reserve deputy from another county who was there, but that officer was either waved off by Gifford or determined that it was just a traffic stop.

Gifford was a U.S. Navy sailor who was posted to Fallon Naval Air Station, and who served briefly as Fallon’s Police Chief.

Gifford’s parents were interviewed by The R-C just before a court hearing in the trial of his killer.

“He wrote us then that he never wanted to leave Nevada,” Dee Gifford said as she and her husband waited outside the courtroom for the trial to begin. “It took him a long time to get into the highway patrol,” Gifford’s father Vance told The R-C in 1976. “There was such a long waiting list.”

McMorris recounts what happened that day, from Ken Meller’s own lips, to what he heard in several hearings, in court for the trial and at the Supreme Court when he defended the death sentence Meller received.

McMorris, a Genoa resident, is likely the only official who worked on the Gifford murder who is still active. He sat on the East Fork Justice Court bench in place of East Fork Justice of the Peace Laurie Trotter on Oct. 10.

Meller’s trial took place in the historic Minden Courthouse and was presided over by District Judge Noel Manoukian.

Defense attorney Gary Armentrout argued that Meller was not guilty by reason of insanity, something backed up by what was described as a suicide note Meller had written just before the robbery and murder.

Armentrout couldn’t argue Meller didn’t do it, because a busload of tourists had stopped right across the highway and witnessed Gifford’s fight for his life.

McMorris said they thought they were witnessing a movie being made.

After a fight, Meller was able to throw Gifford and as the trooper lay prone, face down and unconscious alongside the road, Meller pressed the handgun to the back of Gifford’s head and pulled the trigger.

“It had the appearance of a coup de grace,” McMorris said.

The jury didn’t buy that Meller didn’t know what he was doing, R-C News Editor Sally Lyda reported. They found him guilty of capital murder and robbery.

At the time, capital murder resulted in an automatic death sentence and on Sept. 3, 1976, Manoukian ordered Meller’s execution.

That was not to be after the U.S. Supreme Court found that Nevada’s death penalty was unconstitutional.

Meller was killed after kidnapping a prison doctor on Oct. 13, 1989, a day short of 14 years after he’d murdered Gifford. McMorris said the timing makes him think Meller committed suicide by cop.