Wayne Nance Victims

Case background and investigation

Wayne Nathan Nance was a furniture mover in Missoula, Montana, who investigators believe was responsible for at least six killings in Missoula and Ravalli counties. He was never arrested, charged or tried for any of them. According to the Missoula County Sheriff's Office, as reported by NBC Montana, he was killed by an intended victim in 1986 before any case against him could be brought, so the allegations have never been tested in court.

The earliest death attributed to him is that of Donna Pounds, 39, who was shot in her home near Missoula in April 1974. According to The Lineup's account, Nance was a friend of her teenage son and witnesses placed him near the house, but there was not enough evidence for an arrest at the time; Wikipedia gives the date as April 11, 1974.

During the 1980s the remains of three unidentified young women were found in the Missoula area and given nicknames based on nearby landmarks. One, found in 1980, was identified in 1985 as Devonna Nelson, 15, according to Wikipedia. A second, found in 1984, was identified in 2006 as Marcella Bachmann, 16. The third, found by a hunter south of Missoula in September 1985 with two gunshot wounds to the skull, was identified in May 2021 as Janet Lee Lucas, 23, of Spokane, Washington, through genetic genealogy work by the sheriff's cold case unit and the laboratory Othram. The sheriff's office said at the time that it was reviewing the Nance file for any link to Lucas.

On December 12, 1985, Michael and Teresa Shook were killed in their home in Ravalli County. According to The Lineup, the intruder tried to set the house on fire while the couple's three young children were inside; the children were rescued the next morning and survived. Items taken from the Shook home were found among Nance's belongings after his death.

Late on September 3, 1986, Nance went to the Missoula home of Doug Wells, his manager at the furniture store, and Wells's wife Kris. Accounts in The Lineup and Wikipedia say he struck and stabbed Doug Wells and tied up both of them. Wells freed himself, loaded a rifle he had been repairing and shot Nance. Both of the Wellses survived. Nance died in hospital the following day.

Searches after his death produced the evidence on which investigators based their conclusions. Because there was no trial, the number of victims remains an estimate, and authorities have continued to ask the public for information, most recently about Lucas's movements in 1983 and 1984.