Barbara Nelson was a 34-year-old White/Caucasian female from the Edgerton area whose disappearance began on August 5, 1982, while she was working at the Mini Stop-N-Shop in the Town of Albion, near Edgerton, Wisconsin. She was married and had a 3-year-old daughter. Law enforcement continues to list August 5 as the date associated with the homicide investigation because that was the day she was abducted, although investigators later said they believe she was killed the following day.
Nelson was working at the convenience store when she was abducted. Police have described the incident as involving a robbery followed by her kidnapping from the business. The people responsible apparently took her away from the Albion area in an older pickup truck, beginning a journey that eventually carried the case from Dane County into rural Walworth County. Investigators came to believe that two people were involved in the abduction and killing rather than a single attacker.
One of the most important witness accounts came from the area east of Elkhorn on the day after Nelson disappeared. A teacher driving home reportedly encountered a pickup stopped along a rural road and saw a person being pushed into the cab. One individual then entered the driver's seat while another climbed into the truck. Investigators believed the sighting could have been Nelson with her abductors and developed composite sketches from witness information gathered during the investigation.
Five days after the abduction, on August 10, Nelson's partially decomposed remains were discovered in a cornfield along Bray Road, approximately three miles east of Elkhorn. The condition of the body showed that the crime had been especially violent. Nelson had been shot twice, and investigators reported that her face and head had also been badly beaten. Authorities classified the death as a homicide and began working across jurisdictional lines, with the Dane County and Walworth County sheriff's offices involved in trying to identify those responsible.
Investigators also recovered unusual physical evidence away from the location where Nelson's remains were found. Her shoes were discovered several miles from the body along with the base of an automobile jack. The jack component carried a stamped letter "U," although detectives could not establish with certainty that it belonged to the killers or their vehicle. Because of its proximity to Nelson's shoes, investigators nevertheless sought help identifying what type of vehicle the jack might have come from.
Witness information led authorities to two suspects who would have been in their 20s at the time. The driver was described as approximately 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall with a slender-to-medium build, medium-brown straight hair reaching roughly to the collar, and dark eyes that may have been brown. The second suspect, believed to have been the passenger, was described as being of approximately the same height and build. Composite drawings of both were created and have remained central to the investigation.
Their vehicle was distinctive enough that detectives have repeatedly appealed to the public to identify it. The current law-enforcement description calls it an older-model pickup, possibly from the 1960s or early 1970s, painted dark blue or dark green. Its pickup box had a rail that flared upward and outward at about a 45-degree angle, with protruding rear fenders and round headlights and taillights. The driver's door contained a noticeable square or rectangular discolored area that appeared rusted, bleached or covered with primer, possibly indicating that a business sign or other marking had once been attached there. Investigators have said a 1961 or 1962 Studebaker Champ closely resembles the truck described by witnesses.
Over the decades, detectives investigated numerous tips and interviewed several people, but none of those inquiries resulted in an arrest. Authorities acknowledged having persons of interest and at one point said they were pursuing information suggesting that someone involved could have been local, but they did not publicly identify a suspect. In 2015, evidence preserved from the case was sent to an outside forensic laboratory for newer DNA testing techniques that had not been available when Nelson was killed. Investigators hoped that even a small DNA profile could identify one of the two suspects and potentially lead them to the other.
The homicide remains officially unresolved. The Dane County Sheriff's Office continues to publish Nelson's case as an active unsolved investigation and still displays the suspect and vehicle information. No arrest, criminal charge, trial or conviction has been publicly announced in connection with Barbara Nelson's abduction and murder, leaving the identities of the two people investigators believe were responsible unknown more than four decades after the crime.
