In the summer of 1978, fifteen-year-old Devonna Louise Nelson, a runaway from Seattle, vanished. For more than a year and a half, her whereabouts remained a complete mystery. Then, in the cold of early 1980, the crew of a freight train moving slowly near Interstate 90 in Missoula, Montana, made a grim discovery. At the bottom of a road bank, resting against a fence, were the badly decomposed remains of a young female.
She had no shoes or underwear, and her dress was found hitched up around her neck. The cause of death was determined to be a stab wound to the chest.
The condition of the body made immediate identification impossible. For years, she was a Jane Doe, given the name "Betty Beavertail" by investigators, a reference to the nearby Beavertail Hill State Park. Her case was a mystery with no name and no leads. It wasn't until February 1985, five years after she was found, that forensic investigation finally gave Betty Beavertail her name back: she was identified as the missing teenager, Devonna Nelson. The discovery that the unidentified victim was from Seattle, over 400 miles away, added another layer to the perplexing case.
No arrests were ever made in Devonna's murder, and the case grew cold. However, suspicion has long been cast upon one man: Wayne Nance. Known as the "Missoula Mauler," Nance is a suspected serial killer believed to be responsible for several murders between 1974 and 1986. Investigators learned that Nance, a Montana native, had been in Seattle around July 1978, the same time Devonna disappeared. While he was linked by physical evidence to other violent crimes, a definitive link to Devonna's murder was never established.
The investigation into Wayne Nance came to an abrupt end on September 4, 1986. While committing a violent home invasion, Nance was shot and killed by one of his intended victims. Because he was never charged, tried, or convicted of Devonna Nelson's murder, her death officially remains an unsolved homicide. While authorities strongly suspect Nance was her killer, his own violent death means the full truth of what happened to the fifteen-year-old girl may never be known for certain.
