ASH FORK, Ariz. — Almost as soon as Heikki and Ana Ingstrom moved here, trouble started.
In phone calls to friends and relatives, Heikki, a legendary Utah ultra-marathon runner, said animosity in the town was growing against the couple because Ana was Mexican and was teaching at the local school.
"He was getting really frustrated," said Barry Makarewicz, who stayed in touch with his longtime friend during the year after Heikki left a good job, his adopted hometown and his beloved running community in Salt Lake City.
Makarewicz says he spoke to Heikki on the phone six months ago. "I could tell that things were really going badly."
A week later, Heikki was dead.
"The common joke around here is that everyone is in the witness protection program. I don't know what people do. People come down here and they disappear." — Daniel Repony, who recently retired to Ash Fork and is restoring an old air field
Ash Fork, population 450, is the flagstone mecca of the United States. The decorative rock is mined in quarries near here, and for acre after acre, bundles of flagstone are lined up ready for shipping.
When Ana was hired as a math teacher in the Ash Fork School District, Ana and Heikki Ingstrom rented a mobile home six miles from town, off a county road on barren land in an area called Kaibab Estates.
This is water-hauling country.
There are some rural Arizona communities with no central water system and no wells. The water is down 2,000 feet, out of reach of most affordable residential drilling. So, like their neighbors, Heikki and Ana paid a penny a gallon to fill up at communal water-filling stations in Ash Fork and cart their water back home.
Right away, the couple began to meet people in the community.
Karen Myers lives in another mobile home a football's throw from where Heikki and Ana lived. She was the only witness to an incident police say killed Heikki.
"He is missed," Myers said. "I think about him all the time, but all I see is him falling. Over and over, him falling."
Myers and a collection of relatives moved in mid-October. Myers hadn't unpacked her alarm clock yet and went over to ask if the Ingstroms could give her family a wake-up knock the next morning. "That's how we met," she said. "I'd only known him a couple of months before he died, but we knew him pretty well.
"That guy loved dogs. Man, did he love those dogs."
Along with cats, turtles and birds, Heikki also had Maxie, a very protective heeler, and Amadeus, a big Heinz-57.
"Then he heard about someone with puppies," Myers remembered. "He was going to take one but ended up with three."
As well as Myers thought she knew Heikki, she knew nothing about his life before Arizona.
Myers was from Provo, but she didn't know about Heikki's roots in Utah. She knew nothing about his immigrating from Finland or his job as a counselor for young people under psychiatric care in Primary Children's Medical Center.
She knew nothing about his running, his trophies, his win in the grueling Wasatch Front 100-Mile Endurance Race or his third-place finish in a 50-mile race in Lake Tahoe a couple of years earlier when he was 44.
But Myers ended up knowing more about circumstances leading up to Heikki's death than anyone else. She became a prime witness to a life far removed from his friends and family in Utah. Police say she was a suspect in the case at one point.
She saw Heikki come out of the brush with a bloody eye when he said he'd been beat up out back.
She gave him bandages and Neosporin for his injuries the night he said someone came to his back door and punched him in the face. And she watched him fall the next day.
"I know Heikki had some problems, but nobody deserves this lack of justice." — Erja Springman, Heikki Ingstrom's sister
On Christmas Day in 2005, news was delivered to Ingstrom family friends that Heikki had died a few days earlier in a Phoenix hospital after apparently collapsing from a massive brain hemorrhage.
By then, he had been away from Salt Lake City for nearly a year. Friends in the running community found out through e-mails and phone calls.
Some have spent the past six months trying to piece together what happened in that year after Heikki left Salt Lake City.
He married a woman few people knew about. A handful of Heikki's friends met Ana S. Valdez Cordova at his funeral in Tucson. She did not return multiple phone requests asking her to help with this story.
Initially, the couple lived in Tucson. Heikki worked in landscaping. But he'd been in Tucson only a few weeks when he stepped off a curb wrong and slipped a disc in his back. One of his legs was partially paralyzed, and Heikki couldn't walk, much less run.
"That had to be the catalyst for his decline, the inability to run," Makarewicz said. "That was his whole world, and when he couldn't run for so many months, I am convinced that was the beginning of the end."
Initially, he liked Ash Fork. It was beautiful in an austere way, he told friends.
By the time the Ingstroms moved to Ash Fork, Heikki's state of mind, the couple's living conditions and Heikki's safety all went downhill quickly, along with his excessive drinking.
A sketchy accounting of these factors comes from police reports and his conversations that fall with family and friends in Salt Lake City, neighbors and a cousin in Finland.
It started with racial slurs directed toward Ana Ingstrom. Some locals apparently did not want a Mexican-born teacher in the school.
Heikki stood up for Ana in heated conversations with residents of the town.
Four more assaults followed, according to what Heikki told people:
In late October, someone broke into their mobile home, killed their pet parakeets, laid them out in a line on the bed and left a threatening note.
In November, Heikki said he was in a bar in the nearby town of Williams. He was talking to residents about his wife and the Ash Fork School District and was followed by two men when he left. Heikki pulled over and one of the men attacked him.
Two weeks later, Heikki was walking in the pinyon pines and juniper trees behind his trailer home. He told neighbors and Ana that he came upon a guy walking who asked directions to Chino Valley. As Heikki turned and pointed to give directions, the man hit him in the head with brass knuckles and took off. He was bruised and bloody when he came home, according to Myers.
Another time, Heikki stopped his car on a road to get one of his dogs back in; another car pulled up, someone got out and assaulted him.
Heikki did not report any of these events to police. After his death, detectives weren't able to confirm that any of the harassment or assaults had happened.
About Dec. 10, Ana was suspended from her teaching position. She told police she was disciplined because she allowed students to play rap music after completing their school work. The school principal told police she was suspended for listening to the music and for using a student's cell phone.
Ana did not attend the hearing. She resigned Dec. 22, the day before Heikki died.
"It really was an extended period of trouble," said Makarewicz, who was in the closest contact with Heikki in the last months of his life.
A few days before he died, Heikki called a cousin in Finland and said the harassment was getting so bad they were going to have to move.
"Get out of there," the cousin said. "It sounds like the Wild West."
"That is exactly what this place is," Heikki reportedly told him.
"We don't have any evidence that this was a homicide. It appears to be an accidental death." — Lt. Rex Gilliland, head of criminal investigations, Coconino County Sheriff's Office
Much of the investigation into his death has focused on an event two days before Heikki died.
On Dec. 21, Heikki walked over to his neighbor's trailer to ask for help.
"He was totally bloody, all bloody," said Myers.
Heikki said he was going out the back door when a heavyset white man grabbed him, punched him in the face and took off running.
In an interview at her Ash Fork home, Myers said she gave Heikki some medical supplies and called police and paramedics.
Before they arrived, Heikki called his wife, who had traveled to Tucson that morning, to tell her what had happened. "You aren't going to like the way my face looks," he told her.
But when paramedics arrived, Heikki refused medical attention and wouldn't tell the police who had assaulted him. Later he told his neighbor it was the same man who'd hit him a few weeks earlier after asking directions to Chino Valley.
"Ingstrom said he didn't want to say anything to me because this had happened several times in the past, and if he said anything, someone might hurt his dogs," deputy Ron Knoll said in a report he wrote after responding to the scene.
Myers went over to check on Heikki the next day and called for him through the front door. Heikki stirred, and as she watched, he fell backward out the back door of the trailer. She presumes he hit his head. Heikki crawled up and into the house and was standing inside. Maxie, Heikki's mean dog, was loose, so Myers couldn't get too close.
When Myers turned to walk back home, Heikki called to her again.
"It was the way he said it that got me. He said 'Karen, Karen,' like he was calling for help," Myers said.
She watched as Heikki collapsed inside his home. He never regained consciousness. A helicopter flew him to a Phoenix hospital. Ana called Makarewicz in the middle of the night while Heikki lay in a coma.
It was left to Makarewicz to coordinate with nurses in Phoenix, notify his family about the injuries — and tell Heikki's family he was married.
Erja Ingstrom flew to her brother's side immediately. Heikki was pronounced dead Dec. 23.
Police initially investigated the case as a homicide. They found the trailer in disarray and blood throughout the living area.
Ana Ingstrom was under suspicion at first.
"She was our No. 1 suspect when we started," said detective Sgt. Dean Wells of the Coconino County Sheriff's Office. He conducted a four-hour interview with her, and Ana had alibis for all of the times when Heikki said he was assaulted.
Ana, according to police, still believes her husband was murdered.
The Pima County medical examiner ruled Heikki's death an accident. Another county medical examiner agreed.
Detective Dan Bracco said he thought there had been an assault.
But in the end, police did not believe Heikki's story about getting punched Dec. 21.
"I'm not saying he didn't get assaulted, but it didn't happen the way he said it did," said Wells, who took over the investigation from Bracco. "What we've been fighting with is what did happen."
There were no footprints or tire tracks outside the back door and no signs of a scuffle, Wells said.
In the hospital, Heikki had abrasions covering much of his face. His nose was injured and scraped. His face was bruised and his left eye blackened. His lips were fat and bruised.
Police have concluded Heikki did have some injuries from Dec. 21 — although they are no longer investigating that assault — but they surmise that he died from falling down in front of his neighbor on Dec. 22.
"Even if he was involved in a previous assault, it obviously didn't cause his death on that day," Lt. Rex Gilliland said in an interview.
"I don't think they tried very hard to investigate it. I got the sense that they really didn't give a damn." — Barry Makarewicz, Heikki's friend
The medical examiner confirmed Heikki died from three bleeds in his brain. He couldn't tell whether the injury happened Dec. 21 when Heikki said he was assaulted or Dec. 22 when Myers saw him fall.
But Heikki also had a lacerated liver, an acute injury the medical examiner didn't necessarily relate to a fall. This fact forced Wells to agree Heikki might have been assaulted. "He did have several internal injuries," Wells said.
But these varied injuries have only added more confusion for Wells. "It appeared more like if you were to be thrown out of a car, which is one of the things we've explored, but he had no other injuries on hands, arms or legs. It was more like a road rash, not consistent with an assault."
Well said he did all he could. He polygraphed the neighbor, interviewed witnesses. "There were a lot of different rumors that we had to track down," Wells said. "None of them panned out."
Gilliland, who supervised the investigation as head of the criminal division of the Coconino County Sheriff's Office, said officers couldn't confirm any of the four earlier assaults or the one on Dec. 21.
He said police could find no witnesses or evidence to support anything Heikki said.
The sad fact that Heikki was a heavy drinker when he died seems to have given police an easy cause for any injury, critics of the investigation say.
Interviews with dozens of friends revealed that drinking was a factor — albeit mostly benign — all of his adult life.
He liked beer but was never a "fall-down" drunk. He never fought or got ugly. He remained functional. Never missed a day of work.
But just before Heikki died — when he wasn't running and spent most of his time walking the northern Arizona terrain with his dogs — he was drinking 10 beers and some vodka every day, according to his wife. He had been drinking in each of the cases reported.
"Hey, I don't doubt that in a drunken state that he didn't get in a fight or two," Gilliland said. "Unfortunately, he didn't tell anybody who he got in a fight with, and we'll never know."
Investigators also couldn't prove Heikki and Ana were harassed.
"We don't have anything to support that very general allegation that there was some racially motivated harassment going on," Gilliland said. "I don't see any foul play."
"In memory of Heikki Ingstrom, 1958- 2005. Long may you run." — Inscription on plaque at a memorial bench at the top of Memory Grove
Heikki's mother still lives in Salt Lake City's Avenues neighborhood. She is a proud, independent woman.
Senja Ingstrom declined to be quoted for this story. She is fiercely protective of her son. Like Heikki, she is an animal lover and a champion of underdogs. Like Heikki, she is an intensely private person, but she did provide background about her family.
Eventually, Senja Ingstrom will give away the rest of her son's trophies, but she wanted the first batch to go to the local friends who sweated, trained and crossed the finish line with him.
She attended a gathering of elite runners who met recently in Salt Lake City's Memory Grove to honor Heikki near a bench that has been installed in his honor.
"On behalf of the running community, we all owe a big thank you to Heikki," Bill Johnston told the others. "He was a wonderful person and a great companion."
Jon Harper collected $100 from friends and bought the sturdy bench where the hillside blocks the eastern morning sun and branches take over shading the area as the sun rises overhead. It's close to the collecting pool for City Creek, where Heikki and his oldest friend in Salt Lake City, Dwight Anjewierden, used to meet as children and throw balls for Heikki's dog.
Harper hopes the bench will become a landmark for Salt Lake's running community. He hopes it becomes part of the culture. He can imagine runners making arrangements to gather for weekend runs and coordinating with each other: "I'll meet you at Heikki's bench."
"He is sadly missed on this planet," said Richard Barnum-Reece, editor of Utah RunnerTriathlete magazine.
"I sure miss him," longtime friend and running colleague Tim Seminoff said. "I can't believe I won't see him running out of City Creek or popping out of some canyon."
"He was an enigma. It's almost fitting that there would be some air of mystery around his death." — Tim Seminoff, Heikki's running companion
Most of Heikki's friends and family remain unsatisfied with the investigation of his death. Each seems to have dealt with the unanswered questions in a different way.
Heikki's sister, Erja Springman, has decided to pursue justice in her brother's death. "I still have so many questions, so many questions."
She said she is looking at the best way to proceed, whether that is contacting attorneys, county prosecutors in Arizona or the FBI.
"Something is just not right with this," she says.
Some friends and family members say investigators in northern Arizona didn't work hard enough, verifying the series of bizarre events there.
Todd Martin, owner of the Emigration Market in Salt Lake City, met Heikki in college and stayed in touch throughout the years. He attended Heikki's funeral in Tucson, which took place two weeks after his death. His friend was beat up, Martin said, and unrecognizable.
"He was murdered. There is no question in my mind," Martin said. "Now why he was murdered? I don't know."
Martin wonders if it is possible to get someone like U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, involved.
Makarewicz is resigned.
"I've kind of resolved myself that they'll never know and that this is how it is going to die," Makarewicz said. It is painful for the family to relive the details, and the effort is probably futile anyway, he believes.
"I really don't think they will ever get to the bottom of it. I've resolved myself that he is gone and maybe we don't know the true story, but that no one is ever going to be brought to justice for it."
Seminoff, Heikki's running friend, said he's going to keep his memories of Heikki's life prior to 2005.
"I prefer to remember him as a runner."
"Heikki gave us all a gift. . . . So please, honor Heikki by being gentle and kind and always try to look on the bright side as he did." — Comments by friend Barry Makarewicz on Jan. 21, 2006, at Heikki's memorial service in Salt Lake City
Michael Dunn graduated from East High School with Heikki.
Years later, he became reacquainted with his classmate when the two would meet, running on Salt Lake roads and in City Creek Canyon. "By then, he was a legend in the running community," Dunn said.
Dunn was a marathoner, and motivated by Heikki, he decided to try the Wasatch 100 in 1997. In passing, Dunn told his running colleague he was preparing to take his first stab at the brutal race.
Dunn started off that year doing pretty well, but 75 miles into the race he'd had enough. He was sick, he was tired. "Everything in my body said to stop."
At 2:30 in the morning, during a rest at Brighton Lodge, he decided to quit. "It was the desperation point," Dunn says. The next phase of the race was to climb Catherine's Pass, an uphill grind to 10,700 feet. "I just knew I couldn't do it."
Dunn was sitting on the floor, trying to eat a little, trying to drink a little, with his knees drawn up and his head in his hands.
"Mike?"
Dunn looked up to see Heikki. Dunn was shocked. Heikki should have been a couple of hours ahead.
"I've been sick," Dunn told him.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sick, too," Heikki said.
"No, you don't understand, I'm going to quit."
"Don't do that," Heikki urged. "Let's finish together." If they had to walk the rest of the way, they would, Heikki told him.
As Dunn explains it now, the offer would be like Lance Armstrong asking someone to take a bike ride. "If Tiger Woods says, 'C'mon, let's play golf,' it doesn't matter how bad you feel, you go play golf."
So, Dunn got up, and the two took off.
"In his gentle, unassuming way, he literally coached, mentored and loved me through that race."
Several hours and 25 miles later, as the two ran down the finishing chute together in Heber, Heikki stepped aside and gestured to Dunn to be the first across the finish line.
"That was typical of a million things he did," Dunn said. "He had the biggest heart of anyone I've ever known."
In official race statistics for that year, they are listed side by side with the same time.
E-mail: lucy@desnews.com