Gene Autry Derringer, 55, was last seen January 20, 1996, in Greenwood, Indiana, in the company of a friend and coworker, Joseph Nowicki. Derringer reportedly acquired a dark-colored Chevrolet pickup that day; Nowicki drove him to a Beech Grove residence to get the truck and then followed him back to Derringer’s home on South Peterman Road. Nowicki said Derringer was intoxicated and sitting in the truck’s passenger seat while an unidentified white woman in her 30s or 40s wearing eyeglasses drove. The woman and the truck were never identified.

Concern grew when Derringer could not be reached for days. On January 28 a son forced entry to the deserted house and found bloodstains on the bedroom walls and on a mattress that had been turned over, plus a bullet lodged in the wall behind the bed; the blood was later determined to be Derringer’s type. His vehicles were present, but two handguns were missing. Derringer’s driver’s license turned up January 30 near a potato chip stand at an Indianapolis gas station. One of the last people seen with him, Nowicki, had a violent criminal history and was treated as a person of interest, though investigators said they had other likely suspects. In 2002 a son had Derringer declared legally dead. No one has been charged and Derringer has never been found.

Does anyone have information about the dark pickup, the unidentified woman, or where Gene might have gone after January 20?