Janet Lee Lucas (formerly "Christy Crystal Creek")

Case background and investigation

In September 1985, a hunter tracking a bear came across scattered human bones on a hillside in the Crystal Creek drainage east of Missoula, Montana. According to the forensic laboratory Othram and the Helena Independent Record, the remains were those of a small woman, about five feet tall and roughly 100 pounds, with brown wavy hair. Her skull had two close-range .32 calibre bullet wounds. The Missoula County Sheriff's Office opened the matter as case number 8509102.

With no name to attach to her, investigators called the woman "Christy Crystal Creek." The site was one drainage over from Deer Creek, where the body of another unidentified young woman, nicknamed "Debbie Deer Creek," had been found on December 24, 1984. That woman was identified in 2006 as Marcella Bachmann, a 16-year-old from Vancouver, Washington, through DNA work at the University of North Texas, the Independent Record reported.

Identification of the Crystal Creek remains proved much harder. A 2006 Independent Record article described the work of Sydney Bacon, a University of Montana forensic anthropology graduate who studied the skeleton for her master's thesis. Bacon noted extensive and distinctive dental work, including fillings in most teeth and two root canals, and said the care appeared to have stopped about a year before death. Repeated checks against dental records in national databases produced no match. Early estimates put the woman's age at 18 to 21, and examiners thought she might have had both Caucasian and Asian ancestry; both assessments later turned out to be inaccurate.

According to Othram, the case was entered in NamUs as UP10760. With funding from the Montana Department of Justice's Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, the sheriff's cold case unit sent skeletal material to Othram, which produced a DNA profile suitable for genealogy. Investigators, including Special Deputies Susan Lane and Diana Parker, researched family trees of DNA relatives and confirmed the result by testing a relative. In May 2021 the woman was identified as Janet Lee Lucas, 23, of Spokane, Washington, who had last been seen in Sandpoint, Idaho, in the summer of 1983.

No one has been charged in Lucas's death. Investigators have long regarded Wayne Nance, an East Missoula man, as the suspected killer, according to the Independent Record and Othram. Nance was shot dead in 1986 by a homeowner during an attack on a couple in their house, and he was never tried for or convicted of any killing. The link to Lucas is a suspicion held by investigators and has not been proven in court.

How and when Lucas came to Montana is not known, according to Wikipedia's summary of the case.