Timothy Willoughby was 24 when he disappeared from his Clayton, Indiana home. He was last seen on June 6, 1978, with his 22-year-old girlfriend Mary Ann Higginbotham; both vanished and at first some thought they had simply left town. Willoughby had recent minor run-ins with the law, including an arrest for auto theft, which fed theories he had fled.

On June 5, 1979 a teenage boy found a welded 55-gallon drum in White Lick Creek in Mooresville containing Higginbotham’s skeletal remains; she had been shot in the back of the head. Attention turned to Willoughby as an initial suspect, but later a confidential informant — identified as an ex-wife of one alleged perpetrator — told police both had been murdered. The informant said Willoughby was lured out, shot, and sealed in a drum and that two associates, Ronald C. Tomasik and James L. Kellam, were involved.

Tomasik and Kellam were arrested and charged in 1983, and the informant provided rings that had belonged to Higginbotham, but prosecutors dropped the case for lack of sufficient evidence. Willoughby’s body has never been found and no one has been convicted. Does anyone have information about Willoughby’s last known days in Clayton or the people he associated with then?