For thirty-six years, she was known only as "Christy Crystal Creek," a name given to the skeletal remains of a young Caucasian woman discovered by a bear hunter on a hillside in Missoula, Montana, on September 9, 1985. The 23-year-old female, Janet Lee Lucas, had been shot twice in the head with a. 32-caliber weapon. For decades, her identity remained a mystery, a ghost in the cold case files of Missoula County.
Investigators pursued leads, consulted forensic anthropologists, and scoured missing persons databases across the United States and Canada, all to no avail. The trail was cold, and the woman's story was lost to the remote Montana wilderness where she was found.
Janet, originally from Spokane, Washington, had last been seen alive in the summer of 1983 in Sandpoint, Idaho. A mother to a five-year-old son, she grew up in California and Washington with seven siblings. Her family was left with decades of unanswered questions, a painful void where a daughter, sister, and mother should have been. There were no records to suggest that Janet had ever lived in or spent significant time in Montana, deepening the mystery of how she ended up in the woods near Crystal Creek. Her case remained dormant, one of many unidentified victims whose stories seemed destined to remain untold.
The break in the case came in 2021, thanks to advancements in DNA technology. The Missoula County Sheriff's Office's cold case unit, with funding from the Montana Department of Justice, partnered with a private forensics lab to conduct advanced DNA analysis and genetic genealogy. After weeks of intensive research, investigators were able to build a family tree that led them to relatives of Janet Lee Lucas in Spokane. Further DNA testing with these relatives confirmed her identity, finally giving a name to "Christy Crystal Creek." The focus of the investigation then shifted from identifying the victim to finding her killer.
While no arrests have been made in Janet's murder, investigators have long suspected a notorious local figure: Wayne Nance, a suspected serial killer dubbed the "Missoula Mauler." Nance was a bouncer believed to be responsible for as many as six murders in the 1970s and 1980s. Janet's remains were found in close proximity to another of Nance's presumed victims, 16-year-old Marcella "Marci" Bachmann, who was also shot in the head. This, along with other evidence from Nance's case file, has led authorities to pore over the details of his life and crimes, searching for a definitive link to Janet. Justice for Janet Lee Lucas remains elusive, as Nance was killed in 1986 by an intended victim who managed to fight back, taking the secrets of his alleged crimes with him to the grave. The investigation into her death is now officially a cold case homicide.
