Does Missoula Have A Serial Killer?

by Travis Mateer

Last week I wrote a post about someone potentially dying outside due to cold weather, but that wasn’t what my source supposedly witnessed on December 5th, according to the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office. By the end of the week, though, a body HAD been found by people looking for a Christmas tree.

A woman’s body was found in the Gold Creek area by people looking for a Christmas tree on Thursday evening.

Missoula County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Jeanette Smith says law enforcement responded to a report of a deceased person whose body was found in the area of Montana Highway 200 and Gold Creek.

When Reddit heard about this body, the speculation included wondering if a serial killer was operating in Missoula again like Wayne Nance did decades ago.

There was even a specific claim made about “hunting”.

When I tried bringing attention to the possibility that a serial killer like Wayne Nance could be active in this area over a year ago, my compromised ability to attend City Council meetings led to my first criminal charge of a protective order. This was the case the city dismissed against me earlier this month, but a second alleged violation is scheduled to go to trial this week.

Six months after suggesting a serial killer could operate like Nance because our Sheriff Offices don’t appear competent or even remotely capable of investigating murders, I wrote this post about the potential of a serial killer killing in and around Missoula, which included this excerpt from the book about Wayne Nance:

While the sheriff’s department didn’t explicitly link the two killings, the talk of the town did. The townspeople were already swept up in rumors about devil worship in neighboring Idaho, where only months before, in November, a young newlywed couple from Rathdrum, in northeast Idaho, mysteriously disappeared. Word had spread that the couple had been abducted and sacrificed by a satanic cult, that Rathdrum was the center of a devil-worshipping cult. In the minds of Missoulians then and now, Rathdrum, though two hundred miles away, is considered to be just over the hill. And it was no big stretch of the open-minded imaginations of many Missoulians to believe the tales that linked satanism with news reports of cattle mutilations reported in the Plains states to the east, beginning in the fall of 1973, and in eastern Montana in 1974. The animals were found with their lips, udders, and genitals removed, cut off with what was alleged to have been “surgical precision.”

No one with a badge ever caught Wayne Nance. Instead, it was a citizen who fought back and ended this man’s reign of terror. If it wasn’t for that capable citizen, who knows how many more people would have been murdered.

Like the rumors swirling around Rathdrum, Nance claimed to be inspired by the devil. Here’s a little context from Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

Wayne Nance was born on October 18, 1955, in Clinton, Montana to George Edwin Nance (August 20, 1928 – April 4, 2004), a long-haul truck driver, and Charlene Mae Mackie (February 2, 1936 – April 3, 1980), a waitress. Nance lived in a motor home outside of Milltown, Montana, which is east of Missoula and was described by teachers and classmates as an academically gifted yet eccentric individual who was also a juvenile delinquent. Friends claimed that during his adolescence, Nance frequently boasted of worshipping the devil, and had even used a hot coat hanger to brand himself with Satanic symbols. He also had bragged about wanting to commit a murder before he was 19-years-old. Nance graduated from Sentinel High School in 1974.

When you look at some of the presumed early kills attributed to Nance, you see how vulnerable people, like homeless runaways, were often the targets (emphasis mine):

After his discharge from military service, Nance visited Seattle, Washington in July 1978, where 15-year-old runaway Devonna Nelson went missing. On February 27, 1980, her badly decomposed body was discovered by the crew of a slow-moving freight train on a road bank close to the Interstate 90 in the city of Missoula resting against a chain-link fence. Because of the condition of the body, her remains were not identified until February 16, 1985. She had no shoes or underwear, and her dress was hitched up around her neck. Nelson had been stabbed in the chest. Prior to her identity being confirmed, she was dubbed “Betty Beavertail” after the nearby Beavertail Hill State Park. Nance is suspected of killing Nelson, but has not been definitively linked to the crime.

The body of Marcella Cheri “Marci” Bachmann, 16, was found in an advanced state of decomposition on December 24, 1984, by a wildlife photographer. The body had been buried in a shallow grave and her decomposed leg was protruding out of the frozen ground. Strong evidence indicates that Nance murdered Bachmann. Investigators found hair similar to Bachmann’s in Nance’s home. She had run away from Vancouver, Washington, due to conflict with her family members.

Another aspect common to serial killers is their involvement in a branch of the U.S. military. While Nance served in the Navy, another serial killer from Montana, who killed around the same time as Nance, spent time serving in the army. This killer was the distinction of being the first serial killer to be profiled by the new approach of profiling developed by the FBI.

David Gail Meirhofer (June 8, 1949 – September 29, 1974) was an American serial killer who confessed to four murders in rural Montana between 1967 and 1974 — three of them children. Meirhofer killed himself shortly after confessing, and was never tried in court.[2]

In the early 1970s when Meirhofer’s crimes were ongoing, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had been refining a method of psychologically profiling criminal offenders, and Meirhofer would be the first serial killer to be actively investigated using this technique. Offender profiling is now a contemporary method used to discover clues pertaining to the characteristics of an unknown offender from evidence at the scene of the crime, and to psychologically profile the perpetrator concerned.

…

After graduating in 1967, Meirhofer worked several odd jobs before being drafted into the Army in the fall of 1968. He enlisted in the Marine Corps on October 1, spending the next few months at a military base in San Diego, California, as part of the Signal Corps.[5] After completing his basic training, he was sent to MCAS Cherry Point, before being dispatched to fight in the Vietnam War in 1969, serving in the 5th Communications Battalion.[5] For his achievements in deploying communication systems and controlling military formations during armed assaults, he was awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal and the Vietnam Campaign Medal. In August 1971, he returned to the United States, where he continued his military service at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.

If you’ve read the book by Dave McGowan, titled Programmed To Kill, then you’ll understand why the entire idea of a LONE serial killer might be a complex strategy of misdirection intended to downplay or cover up just how many military-trained killers with ties to programs, like the Vietnam Phoenix Program, are out there operating. There’s even a theory that the fear created by serial killers provides a convenient excuse for THE STATE to expand its surveillance capacity.

While I keep my eyes on local headlines, I don’t expect local media to do ANYTHING to make this case of a possible serial killer, because that is not the role of local media. If people are afraid, they don’t go out and spend money, and if Missoula had a reputation for harboring a killer (or killers), then tourists might select a different spot to vacation.

For this reason alone, you might want to consider supporting a citizen journalist who spent 7 years working at a target-rich environment for psychopaths (homeless shelter), and now exhibits the kind courage in reporting the paid punks for Lee Enterprises only dream about. And you can provide this support in the form of digital dollars at Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF).

Stay tuned, there’s definitely more to come.

Thanks for reading!