Marcella Cheri Marci Bachmann was sixteen when she ran away from her Vancouver, Washington home in the winter of 1984. Troubled family circumstances prompted her departure; her fifteen-year-old brother Derek later said he had tried to talk with her before she left. Marcella travelled to Missoula, Montana, and for a time lived with a man named Wayne Nance, using the name Robin.

On December 24, 1984 a hiker found the partially exposed remains of a young woman in a shallow grave near Middleton Dam in Missoula County. The victim had been shot three times in the head and remained unidentified for years as Debbie Deercreek. Photographs of Marcella and hair consistent with hers were recovered from Nance’s possessions; he told investigators she had left town around the time of the killing. Nance was later killed in 1986 during an attempted double murder and never stood trial for the Missoula homicides.

After more than two decades of searching, Derek Bachmann used the Doe Network and in 2006 a DNA match confirmed that Debbie Deercreek was Marcella Cheri Bachmann. Her family was then able to bring her remains home for burial. Does anyone have information about Marcella’s time in Missoula or about Wayne Nance’s associates from that period?