Pauline Dellian “Polly” Tyler Devor, 70, a white female, vanished from her ranch near Cincinnati in Washington County, Arkansas, in mid-June 2007. She was last known to be alive on June 14, and by June 15 she was reported missing. Nearly two years later, in April 2009, investigators searching the family’s sprawling property found scattered fragments of bones and teeth—remains later identified as Pauline—bringing a grim end to the missing-person inquiry that had gripped the rural
community.
Detectives soon focused on Pauline’s only daughter, Delores “Dee” Jean Eggert. On April 20, 2009, Eggert was arrested and charged with capital murder. Prosecutors alleged that Pauline had been beaten and shot multiple times and that her body was burned on the ranch to conceal the crime. In a pivotal turn on August 16, 2010—just before a planned “no-body” capital-murder trial—Eggert stood in a Washington County courtroom and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, admitting she shot her mother. She was sentenced to 30 years in the Arkansas Department of Correction. Authorities said a stolen credit card provided the motive: Eggert feared being prosecuted for the theft and killed her mother to cover it up.
Attention also fell on Pauline’s husband, Bob Devor. Investigators said he staged parts of the crime scene, misled law enforcement, concealed evidence, and helped Eggert access money and a vehicle in the days after Pauline disappeared. A Washington County jury later convicted him of hindering apprehension or prosecution; on appeal, the Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed his sentence of ten years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
In the years since, public records and inmate logs have shown Eggert serving her term in state custody, while the court record preserves the account of how a missing-person case became a homicide with a confession. The arc of the investigation—from the discovery of Pauline’s remains on her own land to the guilty plea and the separate conviction for hindering—left a trail of courtroom findings that resolved the questions of who was responsible and how the cover-up unraveled.
