Nan Cecile Dixon, 73, left her Grass Valley, California, home on September 21, 1978, driving a yellow and green 1976 Datsun B210 to visit her brother Harry Leighton in Seven Troughs, Nevada to reclaim a $6,000 investment. She never arrived and was reported missing the next day. A Texaco receipt shows she bought $4.18 of gas in Lovelock, Nevada, confirming she reached the area near her destination.

Four years later, in 1982, coyote hunters found Dixon’s Datsun in a ravine below a turnoff for Seven Troughs on Eagle-Picher Mining Company property, about 27 miles north of Lovelock. The tires were scuffed but inflated and the tank half-full. Inside were four empty cartons of a cigarette brand Dixon did not smoke, pieces of black electrical tape (one reported to have a hair and apparent tissue attached), apparent bloodstains on the trunk mat and a tire rim, and an unsigned suicide note. Authorities ruled the case a suicide and closed it; the car was sold at a sheriff’s auction and the physical evidence was lost. Dixon’s body has never been found and the case remains unsolved, with family and others suspecting foul play.

Did anyone travel between Lovelock and Seven Troughs in September 1978 who might remember a Datsun or unusual activity along that stretch of road?