About Death in the West

Death in the West is an award-winning, independently-produced podcast about the history of the American West and its strange crimes and intrigues. We have produced two seasons – Season 1, “The Murder of Frank Little” and Season 2, “Skyjack!” – as well as a one-off, live recorded episode ("The Murder of Maurice Higgins").

Meet the Team

Chad Dundas

Chad Dundas is a journalist, novelist and podcaster. He’s the author of the acclaimed novels Champion of the World (2016) and The Blaze (2020). Champion of the World was a 2016 Boston Globe Best Book of the Year as well as a finalist for the David J. Langum Sr. Prize for Historical Fiction and Reading the West Book Awards. His short fiction has appeared in the Beloit Fiction Journal, Sycamore Review, Sou’Wester and Thuglit. He lives in Missoula, Montana with his wife and children.

Erika Fredrickson

Erika Fredrickson is co-founder of The Pulp, a local independent nonprofit news organization launched in fall 2023 and based in Missoula, Montana. Before co-founding The Pulp, she spent a decade as the arts editor and an award-winning features writer for the Missoula Independent — the alt-weekly newspaper that was a fixture of Missoula's cultural life until its closure in 2018. She is also speaker for Humanities Montana and has written for Montana Free Press, High Country News, and other publications.

Leif Fredrickson

Leif Fredrickson is the Director of Public History in the History Department at the University of Montana. He is a historian of modern America, the environment, cities, and technology. His scholarly research has won several major national awards. As a public historian he has created, led and coordinated digital exhibits, walking tours, policy analysis, oral history collections, among other projects. His public writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Conversation, and The Hill.

Zach Dundas

Zach Dundas is an editor and writer, born and raised in Montana, based in Portland, Oregon. He currently serves as editor-in-chief at Wildsam, a travel and culture publisher, where he oversees editorial strategy and operations for an acclaimed book series, a quarterly print magazine and a digital publishing program. Before joining Wildsam in 2019, he worked as editor-in-chief at Portland Monthly, an award-winning urban magazine; earlier in his career, he covered a diverse array of beats as a reporter for Portland’s Willamette Week and The Missoula Independent. In addition to his staff roles, he’s authored two nonfiction books: The Renegade Sportsman (Riverhead, 2010) and The Great Detective (HMH, 2015).