History Repeats Itself Along the Rio Grande
Keeping Tabs Weekly, Spring 2025
Last fall, actor Powers Laine—the famous method actor known for his search for authenticity in films like Oh the Humanity: The Hindenburg Disaster, The Ghost Camaro about the Helge Meyer Bosnian humanitarian missions, and James Bond’s Older Brother, the story of author Ian Fleming’s adventurous sibling Peter—vanished while on set in southwest Texas. Production was initially suspended as the search for Laine expanded to include local, state, and federal officials. By Thanksgiving, however, Single-Frame Pictures and director Alfonso Francisco issued a joint statement to announce the film had been shelved. The search was called off shortly thereafter.
Lechuza Land, a biopic of the late ornithologist Westin Thomas, was a passion project Laine sold to Single-Frame Pictures after his Oscar nomination two years ago. Based on a screenplay by Laine himself, the film was to shine a spotlight on the circumstances of Thomas’s disappearance in 1982 while researching the mythological lechuza, an owl-like nocturnal monster said to roam the regions along the Texas-Mexico border.
Both of Thomas’s research assistants initially described a violent confrontation between Thomas and an unseen attacker the night of July 25th that summer while camping outside San Pedro, Texas. Before retiring that night, Thomas allegedly told his assistants that he believed they’d accidentally pitched their tents in the lechuza’s territory. The creature, he told them, was extremely hostile toward those it perceived as aggressors. They would move camp immediately after sunrise, he assured them. Hours before dawn, however, both assistants were awakened by Thomas’s screams. By the time they reached the ornithologist’s tent and shone their lights on the remnants of it, Thomas was gone. Local law enforcement would later take photos of his shredded tent and the bloody tatters of his sleeping bag, but a three-day search for Thomas uncovered nothing.
The San Pedro Sheriff’s Department has claimed for more than thirty years that the photos of the scene were destroyed in a station fire.
Powers Laine learned about the Thomas disappearance through fellow actor Brett Trasken when both were filming in Mongolia in 2015. Trasken, who has a reputation for enthusiasm for stories of cryptids—creatures believed to exist but which have not been proven to be more than tall tales—told Laine about the Mongolian death worm, which opened the conversation to other supposed creatures.
“I’d heard about la lechuza in other circles,” Laine told Rolling Stone shortly before filming began in Texas. “But Brett really knew the story. So, I tried to meet with one of Professor Thomas’s assistants who was there that night. I tried to speak with the police in San Pedro. No one wants to talk. But the more I learned, the more I was convinced that there was a creature out there, at least there was all those years ago.”
Laine’s script for Lechuza Land was optioned immediately by Single-Frame Pictures, and Francisco signed on as director once it was announced that Laine intended to take on the lead role.
“He [Francisco] is worried about shooting on the actual location where Professor Thomas vanished,” Laine said in his last interview. “But why would we do this on a backlot or a soundstage? Authenticity is what the audience expects from me. That’s what I’ve always given, and not even a ghost story can keep me from doing it differently.”
When asked about the “risk” of repeating Thomas’s supposed violation of the lechuza’s territory, Laine took exception. “We’re being very respectful. That’s the key with any adaptation of something that actually happened: respect the story’s boundaries.”
Lechuza Land was only on its third day of filming when Laine vanished while walking to the set. He was last seen the night of October 7 outside the Tequila Cantina in San Pedro, where he rejected a ride back to the shooting location five miles away. Witnesses said he had not been drinking anything stronger than energy drinks. When he failed to check in by morning, the cast and crew began to search for him. His cell phone was discovered along the San Pedro Access Road paralleling US Highway 281.
Among Laine’s possessions was the book Nowhere to Hide, an abbreviated field guide to so-called cryptids published as fiction but widely held to be nonfiction. In it, author Abraham MacCamran described lechuza as “not a creature to forgive a slight, and aggressively reactive to those who approach it with arrogance, real or simply perceived.”
Last week, a white beret—Laine’s signature head covering—was discovered on the Texas side of the Rio Grande River. A faded drop of blood tested positive for a DNA match to the missing actor.
