according to state records . Less than two years after his parole , Dryman was listed by the Montana Department of Corrections as `` absconded . '' He had disappeared . And that is where the `` old family story '' stopped for nearly 40 years , until last year when Clem Pellett came across some old newspapers clippings of the murder , which had occurred two years before he was born . `` So what I knew of it -LRB- was -RRB- ` never pick up a hitchhiker , ' and ` your grandfather died begging for his life , ' '' he said . `` It 's hard -- this is someone I never knew , but as I read , I thought , ` You know , this poor man who happens to be my grandfather -- his death just got kicked to the curb , ' and that became the issue . '' Over the course of a year , Clem Pellett worked closely with the Montana Parole Board and with Department of Corrections officials , who supplied him with an old post office box number in Glendale , Arizona , and details about Dryman 's
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- For Clem Pellett , tracking down his grandfather 's killer was not his original mission . `` I was just putting together an old family story ... and these serendipitous events happened , and we accidentally caught him , '' Pellett , of Bellevue , Washington , told CNN in a phone interview Wednesday . That `` old family story '' focuses on two men : Clarence Pellet -- a grandfather that Clem Pellett never knew -- and a drifter named Frank Dryman . According to the Montana Department of Corrections , on April 4 , 1951 , Clarence Pellett picked up a hitchhiker near Shelby , Montana . The hitchhiker was Dryman , then a 19-year-old drifter who was carrying a loaded gun that , according to the state , he used to shoot and kill Clarence Pellett on the side of windswept Montana road . Dryman took the car and drove to Canada , where he was later arrested for the murder , according to the Montana Department of Corrections . After several trials and appeals , Dryman was convicted in Montana and sentenced to life in prison , then paroled in 1969 ,