For thirty-six years the skeletal remains known as Christy Crystal Creek lay unidentified after they were found on a Missoula hillside by a bear hunter on September 9, 1985. The woman was a young Caucasian later determined to be 23-year-old Janet Lee Lucas of Spokane, Washington; she had been shot twice in the head with a .32-caliber weapon. No records showed Janet ever lived in Montana, and she had last been seen in the summer of 1983 in Sandpoint, Idaho. She was a mother to a five-year-old son and one of eight siblings.

Janet’s identification came in 2021 after advanced DNA analysis and genetic genealogy linked her to relatives in Spokane. With a name now established, investigators shifted focus to finding who killed her. Authorities have long examined a possible connection to Wayne Nance, the suspected local killer known as the Missoula Mauler, because Janet’s remains were near another presumed Nance victim, 16-year-old Marcella Marci Bachmann, and other details in Nance’s file. No arrests have been announced and the case is an active cold case homicide.

If anyone knew Janet, her movements in 1983, or has information about people she associated with then, please come forward.