In the early morning hours of September 11, 1979, 19-year-old Micki Jo West left her home in St. Joseph, Missouri, to catch a bus to her job as a nurse's aide at the St. Joseph State Hospital. It was a routine she followed regularly, but on this day, she vanished somewhere between her front door and the bus stop. Dressed in her white uniform and shoes, Micki, who wore glasses with her name printed on the lens, was never seen or heard from again. In the time leading up to her disappearance, Micki had reportedly received threats and had taken to carrying a hammer in her purse for protection. Her family was immediately concerned, and their fears only grew as days turned into years with no sign of Micki or any credible leads in her case.
The investigation into Micki's disappearance continued for years, but with little evidence, it eventually went cold.
Her family, particularly her father, never gave up hope of finding answers, contacting authorities whenever an unidentified body was discovered. The mystery took a strange turn in 1986 when a series of anonymous letters began to surface around St. Joseph. The author of these letters claimed to have witnessed Micki's murder. Despite the disturbing nature of these letters, they did not immediately lead to a break in the case. The community was left to wonder about the fate of the young woman who had seemingly vanished into thin air, her last paycheck from the hospital remaining unclaimed.
A resolution to the agonizing mystery finally came in 1991 when a former police officer named Marvin Lee Irvin confessed to Micki's murder. Irvin was connected to Micki as he was married to her best friend and sister-in-law. He had been a suspect early in the investigation but had passed a polygraph test at the time. In his confession, Irvin provided a gruesome account, stating that he had stabbed and shot Micki before burying her body in a cornfield in Highland, Kansas. His confession to Micki's murder was part of a larger admission of guilt, as he also confessed to killing two other women and led police to their bodies in the same cornfield. Despite extensive searches of the area described by Irvin, Micki Jo West's remains have never been found. Marvin Lee Irvin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Micki's case and is serving a life sentence for his crimes. The case, which began as a missing person report, concluded with a murder conviction, but without the recovery of her body, Micki's family was denied the final closure of laying her to rest.Last Seen: Sep 11, 1979
