Gloria Crummett

A 16 year old is discovered in a remove area north of Reno, NV
Gloria Jean Crummett was a talented young artist with a “delicious full-bodied giggle” who loved to laugh. The second-youngest of six siblings, she was affectionately nicknamed "Wiggin" by her family because as a toddler, she would tug on people's hair to see if they were wearing a wig. Her family also remembers her calling the morning glories her mother planted "morning glorias." A protective friend to the underdog, Gloria once acted as a self-appointed bodyguard for a classmate who had to wear a full-body cast and was being teased. Though she could be moody as a teenager, her family said the sun would always peek through the clouds. Gloria was a Caucasian female, and a child of the 1970s who, her family wrote, "trusted too much."

On July 16, 1971, ten days before her sixteenth birthday, Gloria was reported missing in Reno, Nevada. She was last seen riding on a motorcycle with an unidentified man. It was known that she sometimes frequented the Sun Valley area and was acquainted with people involved with motorcycle gangs. The search for the teenager ended in the most tragic way possible. On July 26, 1971—what should have been her 16th birthday—her body was discovered in a remote, desolate area north of Lemmon Valley, a community on the northern edge of Reno.

The Washoe County Sheriff's Office launched a homicide investigation, but the case quickly grew cold. There was little evidence to work with, and authorities were unable to identify the man last seen with Gloria or any other viable suspects. For years, her family was left with no answers, only the enduring pain of their loss. The case remains one of several unsolved homicides from that era that haunt the Reno area.

Investigators have since explored a possible connection between Gloria's murder and other killings of young women in the same vicinity during the 1970s and early 1980s. Her death bears an eerie resemblance to the murder of 20-year-old Julia Woodward, whose body was found in a remote area of nearby Hungry Valley in March 1979. Later that same year, in November, the remains of 17-year-old Jeannie Smith were found by hunters in Lemmon Valley. All three young women had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head, leading some investigators and researchers to theorize that a serial killer may have been active around Reno during that decade. Another similar case, the 1981 killing of 16-year-old Cindy Cook, is also sometimes linked to this potential series of murders.

In 2019, an arrest was made in the 1979 murder of Julia Woodward after advances in DNA technology identified a suspect, Charles Gary Sullivan. However, no definitive link has been publicly established between Sullivan and Gloria Crummett's case. Gloria's murder remains officially unsolved, a persistent cold case on the files of the Washoe County Sheriff's Office.

Gloria's surviving siblings remember their precious younger sister and hold out hope for a breakthrough. "Taken from us forever by a hand still unknown," her family wrote in a memorial. "Our hope is that the person who did this will someday be brought to justice. May God bless and keep you, little sister." She is buried at Our Mother of Sorrows Cemetery in Reno. As of late 2023, her case remains open and active. The Washoe County Sheriff's Office continues to seek any information that might finally bring closure to Gloria's family after more than five decades of waiting.