In the summer of 1978, 15-year-old Devonna Louise Nelson ran away from Seattle and disappeared. In early 1980 a freight train crew near Interstate 90 in Missoula, Montana, found badly decomposed remains at the bottom of a road bank; the victim had no shoes or underwear, her dress was hitched up around her neck, and the medical examiner determined death resulted from a stab wound to the chest. She was initially unidentified and called Betty Beavertail before forensic work in February 1985 confirmed the Jane Doe was Devonna Nelson, a discovery that raised questions because she had been from Seattle, more than 400 miles away.

No arrests were ever made in Devonna’s murder. Investigators have long suspected Wayne Nance, who was in Seattle around July 1978 and is linked by physical evidence to other violent crimes, but no definitive connection to Devonna’s case was established. Nance was killed during a violent home invasion in 1986, and because he was never charged in Devonna’s death the case remains officially unsolved.

Did anyone who knew Devonna in Seattle or who lived along I-90 near Missoula in 1978 notice anything unusual that summer?