On February 17, 1983, 23-year-old White female Janelle Lee Johnson left Riverton for Denver to attend a modeling interview at the Vannoy Talent Center and began hitchhiking back toward Riverton that evening she was reportedly last seen around 9 p.m. at a truck stop in Sinclair, Wyoming. A documented phone call was placed from Rawlins to her workplace in Riverton during the return trip.
A missing person report for Janelle Lee Johnson was filed on February 22, 1983.
On March 1, 1983, county workers discovered the body of Janelle Lee Johnson on Muskrat Creek Road near Shoshoni in Fremont County; she had been partially buried in a shallow grave. Public accounts state Janelle Lee Johnson had been sexually assaulted and strangled, and that she was found without clothing or jewelry.
Investigators collected forensic evidence from the 23-year-old female victim, including seminal fluid and a bite-mark impression, but later reported that critical biological samples became unusable after a cold-storage failure, hampering efforts to identify a perpetrator through testing. The homicide of Janalle Lee Johnson has been linked by investigators to the cluster known as the Great Basin Murders, with Janelle Lee Johnson often cited as the series' first identified victim.
Authorities have not announced any arrests in the killing of 23-year-old Janelle Lee Johnson, and no suspect has been publicly identified by name in this Fremont County case. The case remains an unsolved Wyoming cold case, with state investigators maintaining public cold case resources and soliciting information from the community.
