On the morning of September 11, 1979, nineteen-year-old Micki Jo West left her mother's home on Olive Street in St. Joseph, Missouri, for the last time. A compassionate and outgoing young woman, Micki worked as a nurse's aide at the St. Joseph State Hospital. She was last seen at 6:00 a.m., dressed in her white uniform and a khaki coat, beginning the familiar four-block walk to the bus stop at 15th and Messanie Street.
She never arrived at the hospital, and when a coworker called her mother that evening, a desperate search began for the young woman who had seemingly vanished.
Micki Jo West, a white female, had recently separated from her husband and was living with her mother and stepfather. She remained very close to her sister-in-law, Ruth Ann West, who was also her best friend. This friendship, however, placed Micki in a dangerous position. Ruth was estranged from her abusive husband, Marvin Lee Irvin, a former St. Joseph police officer with a history of violence. Believing Micki knew where Ruth was hiding, Irvin had threatened her. Fearful, Micki had started carrying a hammer in her purse for protection.
Immediately following her disappearance, suspicion fell on Marvin Irvin. He was questioned by police but denied any involvement, and he managed to pass a polygraph test, which stalled the investigation. The St. Joseph Police Department later admitted to mistakes in the early stages of the case, including the failure to search Irvin's vehicle. For years, the case grew cold, leaving Micki’s family with no answers. The only strange developments were a series of anonymous letters sent to police, beginning on the seventh anniversary of her disappearance, all claiming Irvin was the killer. Police now believe Irvin wrote the letters himself to taunt them.
The break in the case came more than a decade later, through a series of horrific discoveries. In 1990, Irvin became a suspect in the disappearances of two other St. Joseph women, 31-year-old Patricia Diane Rose and 33-year-old Crystal Lynn Simmons. A tip led investigators to search Irvin's truck, where evidence was found. Soon after, the bodies of both women were discovered buried in a cornfield in Highland, Kansas, a property that had once belonged to Irvin's family. Both had died from blunt force trauma.
Faced with overwhelming evidence and the possibility of a death sentence, Marvin Lee Irvin confessed. In October 1991, he pleaded guilty to the first-degree murders of Patricia Rose and Crystal Simmons. As part of his plea deal, he also confessed to killing Micki Jo West twelve years earlier, pleading guilty to second-degree murder in her case. He admitted he had abducted Micki that September morning to force her to reveal Ruth's location. In his confession, he claimed that after she told him, he became enraged, stabbed her four times in the chest, and shot her twice.
Irvin told investigators he had buried Micki in the same Kansas cornfield where his other victims were found. He led authorities to the location, but despite extensive searches, her remains were never recovered. Investigators noted that Irvin seemed to be toying with them and may have moved her body at a later time. One of Irvin's former girlfriends, granted immunity, testified that he had come to her home with Micki's body in his truck and forced her to help him bury it.
Marvin Lee Irvin was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the three murders. He is currently incarcerated at the Jefferson City Correctional Center in Missouri. While the legal case is closed, the final chapter for Micki Jo West's family remains unwritten. Her body has never been found, denying her loved ones the chance to lay her to rest. The search for Micki continues, a painful reminder of a life cut short by brutal violence.
