Going West: True Crime - Nancy Moyer // 71

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

In early 2009, a mother of 2 decided to enjoy a glass of wine on her couch and unwind after the long work week. But 2 days later, when her ex-husband went to return their children to her, he came upon a suspicious scene at her house, and she was nowhere in sight. After reporting her missing, investigators began searching for her tirelessly, and the clues just got stranger. This is the disappearance of Nancy Moyer. For bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES https://truecrimedaily.com/2017/05/19/nancy-moyer-mother-of-2-vanishes-on-cold-washington-night/ https://crimeola.com/nancy-moyer-wiki-missing-murdered/ http://charleyproject.org/case/nancy-kareen-moyer https://www.oxygen.com/searching-for/nancy-moyer-washington-convicted-killer-bernard-k-howell https://www.oxygen.com/searching-for/nancy-moyer-disappearance-key-players-investigation https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/9lmuqy/what_happened_to_nancy_moyer/ https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/crime/article25294933.html https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/wa-nancy-moyer-36-tenino-6-march-2009.81468/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/still-no-answers-in-tenino-womans-disappearance/ https://www.crimeonline.com/2019/07/12/a-decade-later-coworker-confesses-to-strangling-missing-mom-nancy-moyer-during-rough-sex-docs/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on TrueCram fans, I'm your host Tee and I'm your other host Daphne and you're listening to Going West. Welcome welcome gang, we have a wild episode for you guys today I had a really interesting time researching this one it is just off the chain crazy. Before we get into that we want to tell you guys about our new bonus episode that's coming to patreon this weekend. So for those of you who don't know or those of you who do know we have a Patreon account and for our $5 subscribers you guys get one bonus episode a month. If you're a $10 tier subscriber you get two and that $10 tier episode is going to be coming out this weekend so stay tuned for that if you are the $10 tier subscriber. And the reason we

have a Patreon is because all of our regular episodes are free, so this kind of gives you guys a chance to help support the show if you so choose, and you get some bonus content, which we try to pick really, really interesting cases for these bonus episodes. Yeah, in this next case is really wild, so you guys gotta go check that out. And if you do wanna subscribe, head over to patreon.com slash going west podcast,

and you guys can subscribe there. The link is also in the description below this episode So check it out and if you want to help the show without spending any money head on over to Apple podcasts and leave us a five star Review it really helps out the show but make sure you leave your name and your location so we can give you awesome people a shout out in the show Which we do at the end of the episode now. Alright guys, this is episode 71 of Going West. So let's get into it. More your vans from your home in March of 2009, investigators suspected foul play in this case all along. Investigators may have finally made a big break in what happened to Nancy.

March of 2009 that Moira disappeared from her Tanino area home. Then that case went cold and police have had no luck solving it. Tonight though things have changed a bit. We have some new information, word of a search outside of Tanino again. I've struggled a lot growing up without a mom's socks, especially when you don't know where she is. She didn't get to see me graduate, she didn't get to see my first dance, me drive a car, any of that.

And it's just been hard since then. That was in 2009, her body was never found. Moir, a single mom, just 36 years old, was presumed dead. We want to believe this is the end, but I think much like the press until there's a body, we're not there yet. Nancy Moyer was born on November 22, 1972, in Olympia, Washington, to parents Sandra and Vern Headland, and she also had a sister whose name is Sharon. The city of Olympia is the capital of Washington State, and it's right on the water in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Growing up, Nancy was incredibly outgoing and fun to be around, so she was definitely

more popular in high school and could be friends with anyone thanks to her super easygoing personality. She was just an all-around kind in caring person. Once she graduated from Olympia High School, she headed over to Ellen's Bird Washington, which is 150 miles or 240 kilometers east of her hometown to attend Central Washington University so she could study accounting and during a summer internship for an agricultural company while she was still in college she met a man named Bill Moyer. They dated for a few years but once she graduated and earned her degree Bill asked Nancy to marry him. And in 1996, when she was 24 years old, they tied the knot, and she went from Nancy Headland

to Nancy Moyer. In 1997, so about a year after their wedding, Nancy got her first big job in her field, which was a fiscal analyst job with the State Department of Ecology. By the way, a fiscal analyst is a person who collects financial data and then analyzes financial activity, and this job was located in Lacey Washington, which is right next to her hometown of Olympia, so she was able to move back to an area that she was familiar with. They ended up moving to a very tiny nearby town called Tanayno, but her commute to work wasn't far at all, maybe around 20 or 25 minutes.

So she continued to work here and she was incredibly happy and absolutely loved her job. At the age of 28 she became pregnant with her in Bill's first child, a daughter named Samantha. Then two years later they had another daughter named Samantha. Then two years later they had another daughter named Amanda. At this point she really felt like she was living her dream life. She had a career she enjoyed, a husband that she loved, and now she was starting a beautiful family of her own. But as time went on, her and Bill's relationship began to fall apart. And she got married fairly young when she was 24 and jumped right into a career. So it seems like she had a feeling that she'd missed out on a lot of things.

And since Bill had been one of her first really serious relationships, she started to feel like as they got older, they were growing apart. So in 2007, when their daughters were 5 and 7 years old, Nancy and Bill separated. But they didn't get legally divorced. They just decided on their own that they would split time with their daughters pretty evenly, so there wouldn't be any strain on their little family. Their arrangement was that Nancy would have them during the weekdays, but on the weekends, Bill had them.

And this was going really well for them, and they still got along, apparently there was no anger or animosity between them at all. And all of their friends knew this too, and really admired how great their relationship was, despite the separation. It's also known that Bill still had feelings for Nancy, so since they weren't officially divorced, it was kind of a goal of his to make things right and get back together at some point. But despite his attempts, Nancy was 35 and she was newly single. So she kind of started doing things that she always wanted to do.

Especially since she had the weekends to herself, she now had the freedom to go out and meet people or just spend her nights out. She started off by meeting her co-workers for drinks, but then began making new friends and even started dating. During this time, she also got a few tattoos. On her upper back, she got a tattoo that said, double mint and juicy fruit, surrounding flowers and hearts. A set of cherries on her foot with the letters A and

S to symbolize her daughters. She got the Playboy bunny on her right hip, a high-biscuous flower on her left hip, a band on her arm that consisted of hearts and flowers and stars, and a butterfly on her lower back. Nancy was a pretty private person, so even though she was incredibly sociable and friendly, she wasn't necessarily the type of person that gossiped or someone who told everything to her friends. And this would make things difficult later because about two years after her separation with Bill, on Friday, March 6, 2009, Nancy went missing. At about 5.15pm that evening, she left her job and took the drive home, which again was probably a little more than 25 minutes since it was rush

hour, with her coworker Matthew Van Rush, who by the way was married. They carpooled quite often since he lived on the way, so picking him up and dropping him off at home wasn't unusual for Nancy to do. Matthew later stated that, that night, both he and Nancy were very tired after their long work week. Since it was Friday, it was finally the weekend and they could relax. Nancy told Matthew that when she got home, she was going to just kind of unwind and maybe unplug the phone.

So by all accounts, she seemed like she was probably going to have a night to herself. A bit later though, Nancy went to Dave's thriftway market to get some groceries and a bottle of wine and paid with a check at 6.45 pm. This was later confirmed by a store clerk and the manager. But since there was no surveillance footage, it's unknown if she was followed out of the store or out of the parking lot. And I tried so hard to find out which Dave's thriftway market this was. They have 10 stores in all of Washington, but none currently in T'Ni-No.

However, I did find one source that showed that there is a Dave's thriftway in Tynino, so this would just be up the road from where her house was. But it doesn't appear to exist at all today. And even when they looked up the address on both my phone and Google on my laptop, the building doesn't seem to be a business anymore. And the address is 669 Sussex Avenue East, to 9-0 Washington. So if anyone lives in the area, you just let me know. But anyway, it's more than likely

that she went to this location if it was, in fact, a Dave's Thriftway at the time, like a Facebook page said. I also read in an article that the market was in to 9-0 so we'll just go with that, and this makes the most sense anyway. So again, Nancy checked out from this market at 6.45pm and by this time, it was now dark out because the sun set around 6pm that day. That night, a local police officer happened to be sitting on the same corner where Nancy's

house was running radar trying to catch anyone that could be speeding. This police officer happened to notice that she got home around 9pm that evening and saw her unloading a couple bags of groceries from her car. He also noticed that she was alone and this was the last known time that Nancy Moir was seen. I just want to point out that I also found something that said she got home around 730 or 8 But most articles that I found said said she got home around 730 or 8, but most articles that I found said that she got home at 9. This doesn't make that much sense because if she went to the grocery store and she got out of the grocery store at 6.45 pm, like where would she go for those two hours if she

was already in her hometown. So that timing, I can't be 100% on, but I just want to let you know. So that same evening, Nancy's neighbor believes that he heard something outside that could help piece together the case a bit. After 11 p.m., the next door neighbor heard the sound of a car, then heard a car door closing. But before the door closed, he heard what he assumed to be Nancy saying, hurry up, let's get going. And this wasn't at all alarming to the neighbor because they just figured Nancy was talking to her kids. Not realizing that they were at Bill's house for the weekend, so the car door closed and then the car drove off.

The neighbor didn't see what the car looked like though, nor do they know for sure that that was Nancy's voice. They just think it was likely the voice of a woman. Nancy Moyer lived on the Washington 507, which is a highway. But it's probably not how you're thinking. There are, of course, parts of the Washington 507 that are super busy and there's businesses, but there are also parts of it that are a bit more rural. However, she lived on a main road,

so any number of people could have a bit more rural. However, she lived on a main road, so any number of people could have driven by her home. But again, Tanayno is a tiny town. There's only 1500 or so people that live there. And it's about 25 miles or 40 kilometers away from the nearest city, which is her hometown of Olympia. A couple of days later, which was Sunday, March 8, 2009, Bill Moyer took the girls back to Nancy's home to return them since the weekend was now over. And he always did this on Sundays, but sometimes after he would drop the girls off at Nancy's house, she would then drop them off at her mom's house so that the girls could spend time with her grandmother since they were about 9 and 7 years old at this time.

But when Bill got there, Nancy didn't come to the door. Her car, which was a white Honda Civic Del Sol, was sitting in the driveway and the front door was ajar. All the lights in the living room were on and so was the living room TV. There was a half-drink glass of wine on the coffee table and inside her bedroom, the bedside lamp was also turned on. Bill immediately thought something was wrong. The scene was just too strange. And not only that, but he always dropped off their daughters at around the same time. For her to not be there as highly unusual. Nancy was always there when

Bill dropped off the girls. So Bill waited a few minutes inside with the girls thinking that maybe Nancy had gone over to a neighbors, but she never walked through the door. So he took the girls back to wait at his house until he could get a hold of Nancy. A couple hours later, he returned to Nancy's house with their daughters to find the exact same scene. This is when he really felt like something had to be wrong. He even reached out to Sharon, Nancy's sister, and she hadn't heard from Nancy either, but immediately felt the same uneasy feeling that Bill did. She agreed that Nancy would have never missed the drop off because her kids were her everything. She always looked

forward to the time that they came home. So Bill called police and reported Nancy missing that day at about 5 pm. And at this point it had been about 48 hours since anyone had last seen or heard from Nancy Moyer. When police showed up to the house to investigate, they discovered that Nancy's purse, wallet, car keys, clothes, and other personal belongings were still all inside the house or inside her car. There was no indication that anyone had broken into Nancy's house, and there wasn't an apparent struggle in her home or outside. So since Nancy didn't have a cell phone, they weren't able to track her movements that way. But they were able to check her bank statements, which proved that nothing had been used and nothing really

looked out of the ordinary, which would make sense since her cards were all still in her wallet, which was at her house. There were no large cash withdrawals, nothing that would suggest that she was trying to run away, and there wasn't a motive for that either. She loved her job, she loved her friends, her daughters, and according to everyone that was close to her, she was doing really well and she was very happy. But they did discover that she was $50,000 in debt. After looking through what it was for, it was just normal debt. And technically this could be from maybe her financing her car or from her home mortgage,

which would total up to this bigger number, which is super normal. So the details of this debt were not released, but investigators noted that it was for regular purchases, and there weren't any big red flags that made them think this debt was dire. Right. So it didn't appear to them that she was in debt with like a bookie or because of gambling or something like that. Well, right. Like I'm financing my car. So technically you could say I'm probably 15 or 20 thousand dollars in debt, but like I make my payments, you know? So I think it was something like that. Right, yeah, that makes sense. And the scene at her house was strange too,

especially since there wasn't any evidence of a struggle. Because by the looks of it, Nancy had likely been relaxing on the couch with a glass of wine watching some TV. There were cigarettes in her ashtray out on her front porch, and it seemed like Nancy had a totally casual, easygoing night alone, but she was gone, so it just left police with very little to go off of. Especially since Nancy wasn't dating anyone seriously, she had absolutely no known enemies, she didn't do drugs or have drug problems, no record of mental illness, and she didn't do drugs or have drug problems, no record of mental illness, and she didn't even seem to be suffering from any big personal problems at the time.

But let's dig a little deeper. Investigators first wanted to look into Bill, and see if he knew more than he was leading on. Like we mentioned, he didn't want to separate from Nancy at all, he loved her. So investigators wondered if he had been so angry that she didn't want him back, that he finally snapped. But after interviewing him extensively, they determined that he was not a suspect. Not only had he been with he and Nancy's two daughters that weekend, he just wasn't a malicious guy. And since the girls were about 7 and 9 at this time, they were old enough to

confirm, Dad was with us all weekend. He didn't leave. Yes, he did want to be with Nancy, but he was also very respectful of the fact that she needed space. They had a great co-parenting relationship, and all of their family and friends said the same thing. He would never do anything to her Nancy. And overall, he was a well-rounded and good man. And even Nancy felt this way. She thought he was an amazing dad, she just didn't seem to want to be married to him anymore. She didn't want to be tied down.

She wanted to focus on her kids and growing her career and herself. Bill passed a polygraph test and was incredibly cooperative with police. He was just as passionate and concerned about finding out what happened to Nancy as they were. While police were searching Nancy's home, they took fingerprints off the glass of wine to ensure that it was Nancy who drank it. And when the results came back, it confirmed that the only prints found on the glass were indeed Nancy's. According to a few reports that we read, including an interview we found online with the main detective on this case, there was a second glass of wine found next to the one

that was partially drank from. This could really only indicate that Nancy had a guest over. Whether it was planned or someone just stopped by, this would indicate that there was probably definitely a second guess there, because it was the same kind of wine. So it really wouldn't make sense for her to have poured herself to glasses, you know what I mean?

And from the reports that included information about a second glass, the only DNA on it was also just Nancy's. So that's a little weird. That kind of makes me question the situation. Like maybe she did pour that glass for someone else, but the guest never took a drink from it. And the detective said that they thought it must have been for a guest, but only found Nancy's

fingerprints on it and no other DNA. And I mean, this could mean that someone stopped by. She poured them a drink and they didn't have any of it. And then something happened to Nancy. Or technically, it could mean she poured herself two glasses of wine. But the detective and I lean towards that the second glass was intended for someone else.

Yeah, I mean, that just makes a whole lot of sense. It doesn't really make any sense to pour yourself two separate glasses of wine. And I'm not going to speculate too much on that, but but it is a little bit strange. And for the second glass, since Nancy's DNA was found on it, it's not like somebody drank from it and then wiped off their fingerprints because Nancy's fingerprints were found on it. So it must have just only been touched by her. So far, we have the neighbor as a possible witness. Again, they didn't see anything, but they did hear something likely around 11.30pm. The main investigator on the case, whose name is Detective Haller, with the thirst in County Sheriff's Office, believes that this is the time Nancy went missing anyway because

he saw a spike in her gas bill. When Bill arrived to the house that Sunday, he had noticed that the heat was on, and the heater had been running for the last two days according to her gas bill. And there was a spike after 11pm on Friday. Remember, her door was left open and it was a very cold winter night in Washington. So Detective Haller believes that she was abducted, her door was left open and it was a very cold winter night in Washington. So, Detective Haller believes that she was abducted and then the door was left to jar, causing the heat to turn on around 11.30pm or midnight that evening. And so, for those of you who may be a little

bit confused by that, basically what we're saying is that because that front door was left open, the heat had probably kicked on because she probably had it set on an automatic setting to heat the house whenever it dropped below a certain temperature and it was very cold so basically the heat was just heating the outside essentially. And by cold he means 30 degrees Fahrenheit or negative one degrees Celsius. So definitely cold enough to make the heat kick on if the door doors left open. So the investigators noticed that Nancy had two voicemails on her landline. She also had four missed calls.

These calls and voicemails, by the way, are all from the same person. One of Nancy's co-workers named Jim Roth. Apparently, he and Nancy were casually dating, and even went on a date a few weeks prior to her disappearance. And they even had a date planned for Saturday, March 7, which was just a day after Nancy went missing. After he tried calling her Friday night those four times, he showed up at her house Saturday for their date. He told investigators that when he got there, her front door was wide open, but Nancy wasn't in the house. He said that he called out her name and peaked around a little bit, but then decided to leave. Of course, this made

police a little bit suspicious. He was very, very romantically interested in Nancy, had called her the night she went missing, and went to her house the day after without reporting anything to police. But Detective Haller says that his alibi for the evening of March 6, 2009 checked out, which by the way was just him being home with his kids that night. That was his alibi. What I wonder is if Jim felt suspicious at all when he got to the house. Because when Bill got there, he got a weird vibe. Especially if Jim was supposed to have a date with her, she hadn't returned any of his

calls for a whole day, and then he goes to her house to find her door open and her absolutely nowhere in sight. And then he leaves and keeps the door open, which the detective wondered about too. And when he asked about that, Jim said that he just left it how he found it, even though it was freezing outside. And he had never been to her house before. Like I said, they had just started seeing each other.

So he had apparently looked her address up and just went over there. The weird thing about this is that Nancy liked her space and her privacy. She had never had a man over to her house in T'Nayno, not even to pick her up for a date. And that was on purpose. She just didn't want men coming to her house, but then Jim just shows up there. Seems a little bit suspicious. And in my mind I wonder, you know,

is it possible that he told his kids to tell police that, you know, daddy was home that night? It's just a little weird that he went there to this seemingly suspicious scene and he just kind of left. Yeah, yeah. And that he went to her house at all, sorry. Right, yeah, and I know that a lot of you guys hate

when we speculate, I shouldn't say a lot of you guys, but when we talk about missing person's cases, that's what we're gonna do, because that's how you solve missing person cases is thinking about all these different angles. And we've said this before in different episodes, but we have to put out every single thought or angle

that we could possibly think of to try and figure out what might have happened in this situation. And obviously we're not investigators, but that's what investigators do too. You have to question all these kinds of things, especially in unsolved cases, so that hopefully someone can figure out what happened. Right. And I do think that it's a little strange to leave that door open when it's so cold outside. I mean, even as just a good gesture, you could say, oh well, the heat's on, it's just heating the outside.

Maybe I'll just shut this door. Because at that point, he had already kind of searched through the house and called out her name, and she wasn't there. So he would assume, okay, well, she's not home. I'm just going to close this door. But I can also see it from the other side, though, that other perspective of, okay, this is not my house. I'm just not going to touch anything. Right. I get that. And the weird part to me is that he Googled her address and

just showed up because I don't know what their plan was, but it definitely wasn't for him to go to her house. So they just started dating and he just kind of shows up at her house. If she was there, she would have hated that. Yeah, it sounds like from what you have described her as, she's very, very independent and she did not like people in her business. So here's a little more about the date that they had a couple weeks prior. Their relationship had more developed more recently, but it appeared to be mostly sexual, at least at this point. It's not like they were dating seriously, it was just very casual. So I really shouldn't say date,

per se, she just kinda went to his house and that night they were going to have sex, but he couldn't get things going on his end. And then she slept over and left the next morning, after the two had breakfast together in his kitchen. But then his story changed later about this, and he told a different investigator that he didn't have any trouble performing that night, and they did have sex, and that was it. And then she went home. So it was a completely different story.

It just doesn't make sense why he would change his story about a night that is seemingly irrelevant to Nancy's disappearance since it happened like two weeks before. And another really weird thing that I read about in an interview with Detective Ben Elkins, who is another detective on this case, is that when he asked Jim Roth if he knew where Nancy's body was, would he tell him? And Jim kind of laughed and said no. And when Ben asked him again because he was so shocked by Jim's response, Jim once again laughed and very bluntly said no, he wouldn't tell him.

And this is so weird because if he would have said yes, that would mean that he was compliant and wasn't trying to hide anything. But by saying no, it just makes you kind of feel like he's hiding something. And I get it, I mean no one wants to get caught doing something that will put them in prison for the rest of their life. But you shouldn't really tell a cop no on a hypothetical question. It just puts a lot of doubt on you as a potential suspect. Yeah, and on top of that, Jim took a polygraph and the test was inconclusive. Remember, Bill Nancy's ex-husband passed his, but then Jim didn't. And Jim didn't want to take his

at first, which is fair, but it can be looked at as kind of suspicious. And we say this every time we talk about polygraphs, but we know a lot of people are very adamant that they're irrelevant, but we like to bring it up because it's also worth mentioning. Unfortunately, we really don't have any other information on Jim. He's been interviewed multiple times, but his alibi checked out and there was no evidence that connected him to what happened to Nancy. And that's the whole issue in this case. There really is no physical evidence

that anything even took place at all, which makes it incredibly difficult to pin anything on anyone. All we know is that he doesn't have a criminal history and that some of their coworkers thought that Jim was kind of strange. And he even made a lot of the other employees uncomfortable. He just seemed to rub some people the wrong way.

But again, doesn't mean you're guilty of any sort of crime, but it may make people look at you a little differently. There was another man that caught police's attention while investigating Nancy's circle, and his name is William. Nancy's sister Sharon told investigators that she had gone out with him on a few occasions and that they had met at a local bar. Police soon found out that he was also a sex offender, which obviously raised many red flags. But after some more digging, they found out that he had an airtight alibi for the night that she had disappeared, and when they interviewed him,

he told them that he was the one to break up with Nancy. Nothing bad had happened, and there was no animosity between them whatsoever. What they had was very casual. Again, so please decided not to press him any further, and they cleared him. About a year and a half after Nancy disappeared, something horrific happened in the tiny town of Tanayno. A 26-year-old man named Bernard Howell, who was a door-to-door meat salesman, was pulled over by a police officer.

And in the passenger seat of his delivery truck, was a deceased woman wrapped in a sleeping bag. The woman was 60-year-old Vanda Boone, and Bernard had murdered her that same day on the Yelm-Tenino Trail, which is a beautiful, single path for walking or cycling that is surrounded by trees for the most part. It's 14.5 miles or 23 kilometers long and runs between the towns of Tenoe and Yelm hence its name, the Yelm Tanayno Trail. So while Vanda Boone was walking this trail

that warm summer day, Bernard snuck up behind her and smacked her in the back of her head with a hammer, and she was still alive at this point. So he pulled her off the path and used a knife to try cutting off her head. Then he put her in the sleeping bag and put her in the passenger seat of his truck. And by the way, this was a totally random and senseless crime.

Very, very horrific and brutal. And the reason why this is relevant is because, as we said, Tanayno is a very small town. And at this time, it had a population of about 1,700 people. So please are thinking, what are the odds a woman goes missing and then a year later a local brutally murders another woman randomly. Not just that, but Bernard lived less than a mile away from Nancy Moir, and she had his brand of meat inside her freezer at the time of her disappearance.

Later, Nancy's daughter Samantha picked Bernard out of a photo lineup as the man who would sometimes sell Nancy meat, and she even remembered what kind. Samantha specifically remembers her mom buying lemon pepper chicken and seafood from him, but in her freezer were steaks, so this would mean that Bernard had been to Nancy's house before and had met her on more than one occasion. When her family found this out, they thought it was odd, because Nancy apparently never ate red meat, and she was mostly a vegetarian, and then suddenly she had multiple steaks in her freezer. It was just really odd to them.

When police discovered that Bernard had a murdered woman in his delivery truck and brought him in for questioning, he said that he didn't kill her, but that he had found her dead on the trail. His reasoning for having her in his truck was that he was going to get rid of her body so that her family didn't have to worry about burial costs. What the actual fuck?

Cuz the stupidest lie ever. Yeah, that's a good one bud. He's trying to make it seem like he's doing a good deed. Oh, I just wanted to save her family from burial costs or what? What a line. So obviously investigators were not buying this totally ass-in-line story. So they kept questioning him, and after some time he confessed to killing her. He said that he was high on meth when he did it.

Detective Haller, who remember was a big part of Nancy's case, caught news on this murder and decided to question Bernard about Nancy and see if there was a connection. But when he got to the station, Bernard would not talk about it. He didn't wanna take a polygraph, he denied ever selling her meat and even ever seeing her or going to her house. This was a red flag to Detective Hallor

because we know he had sold her meat before and this was confirmed by the meat in her freezer and by her daughter Samantha's statements. Bernard was sentenced to just 27 years in prison for the murder of Vanda Boone, meaning that he'll probably be released at the latest when he's just 54 years old, which will be in the year 2038. During his sentencing, he apologized for killing Vanda and said, Your Honor, God knows how sorry I am.

Christ willing, I'll have a family someday. Nancy's case went cold for another eight years, but in July of 2019, a man named Eric Roberts confessed to killing Nancy Moyer. He called 911 and said that he couldn't live with the guilt anymore, and he had to tell them that back in 2009, he accidentally strangled Nancy with a scarf during rough sex and killed her. The weird thing about this confession though is that he said this all happened at his house. The reason this is strange is because of the scene left at her house.

If for whatever reason Eric decided to pick her up that night and she got into his car, why would she leave her front door unlocked and open with all the lights on and not bring any of her essential belongings? Eric Roberts was a co-worker and neighbor of Nancy, so he definitely knew her. And apparently she was casually dating his nephew, Aaron Huntley, at the time of her disappearance. At the time of his confession, Eric was 53 years old, meaning that he would have been 43 years old at the time of Nancy's disappearance. Nancy was 36 and Aaron, the nephew, was 34. So not sure why Eric would be having sex with Nancy if she was dating his nephew anyway, but people can do what they want to do.

Interestingly enough, Eric Roberts was interviewed about two months after Nancy went missing, and so was his nephew Aaron Huntley. They both denied knowing anything about her disappearance. Five years later, in 2014, Detective Ben Elkins interviewed Eric Roberts' ex-girlfriend, who had mentioned to him that Eric had a weird conversation with her mother about Nancy. And he got very upset when her mother asked Eric what could have happened to her. Apparently Eric said, what are you? The fucking police?

Eric's ex-girlfriend also stated that, at times, Eric could get pretty violent, especially during sex, and that he would sometimes choke her to the point that she had to scratch him to get him to stop. She also described Eric as having a jekyll and hide type personality. Later, someone else claimed that Eric poured concrete on his property shortly after Nancy went missing. The same person who claimed this also claimed to have a conversation with Eric about Nancy, and asked if he knew anything about it. And Eric said, maybe I do.

He also apparently claimed to have had sex with her, and this was all before his confession in 2019. Since there was no actual evidence, police could never search his property until he called 911 last July to confess. During Eric's confession, he said that he didn't think anyone would be able to find her. And during his official interview with police, he was incredibly upset and was crying and just overall very emotional and tense. Eric told police that he killed Nancy near the Chahalus River, which is about 20 miles

or 32 kilometers west of Tanayno, which is different from his original story, that he accidentally killed her during rough sex at his house. When police asked where her body was, he said he didn't know what to say. Then, he once again said he killed her at his house and that he was drunk or high at the time, and he freaked out and didn't call for help. After this, Eric told them that he would take them to where her body was, and he took detectives to his backyard, and he just stared over at his fire pit where the concrete slab was and he didn't say a word Then he said something so insane quote I don't want to incriminate myself any further

But if I was going to get rid of a body on my property it would be right there and quote And he said this as he pointed at the concrete. Yikes. And it's just weird that he said he didn't want to incriminate himself, yet here he is confessing to a murder and basically telling them where he put her body. He's kind of giving them the runaround. Even though he kept changing things and recanting information, police arrested him on suspicion of second degree murder while they searched his home and property. But unfortunately, they didn't find any remains and any evidence that linked Eric to Nancy.

We do know that they found a zipper and part of a fur coat in the fire pit, but that seemed to be it and they didn't even know who that belonged to or what it was from. Eric Roberts recanted his entire confession and said that he didn't know why he told police that he murdered Nancy and that he didn't have any sexual relationship with her at all. And then he blamed the medication he was on for saying any of it. Since they found some unknown weapons on his property, they continued to hold him on separate charges, but all the charges were eventually dropped and Eric Roberts was free to go.

To this day, Nancy Moir has never been heard from or seen again. Her banking account was never touched, as we know since her wallet was left in her home, and her family has expressed great concern about her whereabouts. Because they're incredibly confident that she was met with foul play and that she did not leave on her own free will. Alright folks, from here on out, we're going to be doing some speculating. Since this case is unsolved, we're going to discuss the suspects that have come up in the investigation and this podcast episode and talk about why they're suspects. We're going to stick to the facts as much as possible,

but like any unsolved case, like Heath said earlier, there's going to be some speculating, because we want to try to figure out what could have happened to this poor woman. So if you're not into weighing out the options and you're good with what you've been given so far because you hate speculation with your whole heart. This is the end of the road for you today, friend. But if you're interested to hear about what could have happened to Nancy Moyer, keep on listening. You still here?

Let's put on our sleuthen caps. Let's start with Eric Lee Roberts. So obviously, it's very terrifying that he confessed on the phone and then during a whole extensive interview and then later says that he doesn't remember confessing at all and basically his medication made him do it. We don't know what medication he was on and what it was treating, but I do think it's very

interesting that his ex-girlfriend described him to have a jekyll and hide personality. We don't know his mental health history, but it's possible that he does have some type of personality disorder like dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder, which would make sense why he doesn't remember confessing. I think he's a good suspect because he lived so close to Nancy and he knew her and worked with her, and the police didn't search his home until a whole 10 years later.

That's 10 years to get rid of evidence. Obviously we're not psychologists so we can't diagnose him, but I do think that that's an interesting point. The other point that I think is interesting is that his ex-girlfriend had explained that he was sometimes violent during sex. I don't know what level of violence he would go to. I mean, we know that he would strangle her and she had to scratch him to stop, but we don't know how far that could have been taken or how dangerous that really

was, so I can't speculate too much on that. But I do think it's an interesting point. Right. I just think the whole fact that he confessed is so weird and it's hard not to talk about and speculate about because It's like why would he do that? Right, and we have seen this in another case We saw this happen in the Amy Maholvich case where a man stood up in church and explained that he had killed Amy Maholvich But they later found out that he was also suffering from some mental disorders So they had to write this guy off. Like anything, if we're going to talk about this case, we have to talk about the guy who

confessed to murdering this girl. Right. And again, I'm not sure what medication he was on, so I don't know how that could affect his, you know, memory or what he says, but he legitimately, recently in an interview was like, I don't know why I said that, and I don't even remember saying it at all. So that, to me, is really worrisome in general about his mental health, because if he doesn't remember this entire day of confessing and calling the police and showing them his backyard, like, does he have blackouts? Like, what does that say

about him, you know? Right. And I can't say for sure, but this does make him a pretty good suspect. The fact that he, indeed, did know Nancy and lived very close. Now let's talk about Bernard, who remember murdered 60-year-old Van de Boone. So originally, when questioned by police, he denied murdering Van de Boone, but then later confessed. So we know he's capable of murder, and we know he sold meat to Nancy. If he's guilty, it would make sense that he denied this because I'm sure he didn't want to tack more years onto his sentencing. But if he's innocent, then maybe he was afraid if he answered any questions about her that they would pin her disappearance on him. Since Tanayno is so small and since they lived so close and had come in contact at least

a couple times, I think it's definitely possible that he did something with Nancy. Just hearing about him murdering Vanda Boone makes me feel like that maybe wasn't the first time he did that. He was only 26 years old but obviously that desire to kill was in him. Yeah, and we also have to think about the fact that he was going to be released from prison at the age of 54. So in his mind, he's thinking, okay, well, I still have a shot at having some sort of my life after getting out of prison. And at this point, like, why would I tell them about another woman that

I murdered? I would never get out of prison at that point. Exactly. It's not like he was in prison for life and is kind of like, oh well, what do I have to lose? He would have the rest of his life after age 54 to lose. So I think that it's pretty safe to say that he's a really good suspect in this case, especially just knowing about the meat in the freezer, and

like you said, and the contact, and the fact that this is such a small town, and nothing really like that ever really happened in that town, it definitely makes you question this guy Bernard. A lot of people connected to this case, Nancy's co-workers and detectives are a bit suspicious of Jim Roth, who remember as Nancy's co-worker that she had been casually dating. The fact that he showed up at her house after she didn't answer some of his phone calls when they had only just started casually seeing each other, he told police he wouldn't tell them where Nancy's body was if he knew, his polygraph test was inconclusive, he changed

his story completely about his previous date with Nancy, there's just some questions surrounding him. But nobody know crime, so the detectives could never really look into him as much as they wanted to when Nancy originally disappeared. Jim Roth passed away from natural causes about eight years after Nancy went missing. And since he had been a person of interest in a disappearance case, it would have been legal for detectives to look through his home after his death

to see if they found anything suspicious that could link him to Nancy's case. But detectives didn't find out until later that he had passed. So by then, it was too late. But they did go ahead and ask Jim's girlfriend if they could peek around his belongings, and she said no, she didn't want the police snooping around in his business. This is a huge bummer because at that point he was deceased, so this

wouldn't have gotten him into any trouble. It kind of seems like she was afraid that his name would be tainted and his sons would be affected, but obviously more important than that is getting justice for a missing woman and her family, but there was nothing police could do. And obviously if they were allowed to look through his belongings, there's a possibility that they could have cleared him on any sort of suspicion if she had just let them go and check through his stuff. And if you think about it, it's kind of a little suspicious that she wouldn't let them

because maybe she was afraid of what they might find, and that's weird. That's true as well, but I can also, again, see it from the other side. She could have just been like, all right, we've told you everything we know. Like leave this whole situation alone, my family alone leave his family alone We don't want to deal with this anymore So I do kind of understand that but the fact that he was a suspect early on in this case You know these are things that police need to know they need to be able to look through his belongings And I also think the fact that he left that door open when it was so cold outside

I don't know why that sticks with me so much, but it just does. I agree, and since Jim knew where Nancy lived, because he looked her address up on Google, that means he absolutely could have gone to her house the evening before as well, aka the night she went missing. But investigators said that his alibi checked out, and all we know about his alibi is that he had his children that night So he was with them. It's safe to say that there are suspicions surrounding him But there's no real evidence linking him and we're not so sure there was a motive either

Obviously he was infatuated with her and he made this clear to police as well So there's always the possibility that maybe she started feeling the same way her co-workers did that he was kind of weird and she rejected him and canceled their date. Or maybe he wanted to hang out with her Friday night, but she wasn't answering his calls because maybe she really did unplug her phone that night. And at some point in the evening, he just showed up and she wasn't too happy with that since she has a thing against inviting men over. But since Jim had an alibi for that Friday night, we can't speculate much on this. Except I did read something that Detective Haller said

that I forgot to mention earlier that he had changed his story again another time where he said that he actually went by her house on that Friday. But then he took that back too. So it's just really weird and I do wish that we knew what the voicemail said, but that information was never released. Right. It just is kind of strange calling her four times and then the next day, which is just happens to be the day that she goes missing. He shows up to her house and she's not there. It's almost as if he was kind of putting himself in the right place at the right time.

Like, oh, I just stumbled upon her door open and she wasn't there, so I couldn't have been me. But it's weird that he didn't call the police because he called her multiple times. She didn't answer. And then he just shows up at her house to a kind of odd scene and he's like, oh well, bye. While I was sifting through web sleuths, I noticed some people were suspicious of Matthew,

who was Nancy's other coworker and the guy she dropped off at home the night she disappeared. He apparently had a whole blog dedicated to Nancy and a ton of people were talking about how they thought it was kind of creepy how invested in her he was. And yes, they had been co-workers for about two or three years since he had more recently moved to Washington state with his wife and kids from the Midwest, so they had known each other for a little while. But I think the way that he words things made a lot of web sleuths uneasy. I haven't found said blog, but here's a post someone on web sleuth shared. So it starts off with this.

They said, I just read Matthew's blog post and it's a little creepy, more than a little creepy, and then here's the excerpt from the actual blog itself. You should see the love around here. Someone brought in donuts on Friday when we got the stack of flyers. Sorry, I know you hate missing treat days. If it's any consolation, Debbie has been ready to make raised dips since Monday, but she said, well, wait, because it's your favorite. Talk about loyalty. Seriously though, everyone's real worried and we're working real hard to find you. I need you to be strong for us and hang in there a little longer. I can't tell you how many people are pulling for you. Please be strong. We all

miss you. Talk to you again soon. Matthew. So I guess he kind of wrote different posts as if he was addressing Nancy and we don't have too much else to say about Matthew, but maybe he was just quirky and a caring co-worker. A lot of these comments were also much earlier on in the investigation, so people are bound to nitpick at every little thing. But then all these other potential suspects came in. And I think the others we mentioned are probably more likely in this case. Yeah, there was nothing that Matthew did that was that seemed dangerous. I think he just seems like he's kind of a... I don't know, reading that blog post, you're kind of like, okay.

Yeah, it's a little strange. It's definitely a little strange. I wonder if he was actually questioned by police, though. He was, but again, they just didn't, you know, they didn't think he seemed weird. He had an alibi. He was home with his family, too. It's just, he didn't seem like he was a dangerous guy or like he would have any motive at all to kill Nancy but of course there's so many things that would happen behind the scenes that we don't know about or that he wouldn't say if it were true. Right, right. And it's also completely possible that Nancy was the victim of a random abduction or was even taken by someone else entirely who the police haven't ever looked at.

Maybe she was followed home from the grocery store, or had been dating other men, or had previously dated other men who were stalking her. The problem with this case is the possibilities are endless since there's virtually no clues whatsoever. No evidence was left behind, and Nancy's just gone without a trace. If you guys want to know even more about this case, check out the podcast Hide and Seek. I haven't gotten a chance to finish it yet, but it's an amazing one story podcast hosted by James Basinger and it's centered around Nancy's case. I know that James'

approach is much more investigative and he interviewed a lot of people in this case and really tried to figure out what happened to her. So go check that out if you're interested in hearing more about this intense story. At the time of her disappearance, Nancy Moore was 36 years old, five feet tall, and 120 pounds, and had brown hair and brown eyes. Earlier we went

into all of her tattooes because she has seven of them so this would make her much easier to identify. If you have any information about the disappearance of Nancy Moir, please contact the Thurston County Police Department at 360-786-5530. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everyone and next week we'll have an all-new case for you guys to dive into. It's time for the shoutouts. Thank you so much to Tasha from Morristown, Tennessee, Christina from New York City, and Katie from South Carolina. And a big thanks to Maggie from Long Island, New York, Renee, and Omaha, Nebraska, and Savannah, and New Jersey.

Thank you so much to Courtney, who is a fellow Oregonian, Jill in Columbia, Maryland, and Jake from my cock small, Switzerland. Yeah, Jake, yes, I love the funny reviews. What was the other one that I fell for? Oh my God. Cleetaurus. Oh yeah, Cleetaurus. Yeah, Jake, that's god. Cleetoris. Oh yeah, Cleetoris. Yeah.

Jake, that's awesome. Love you, brother. Thanks for making a fool out of me, Jake. Dang. Thank you so much to Shannon and Central Illinois, Victoria and California and Jen and River and Eugene, Oregon. Hey. Woohoo, Eugene.

Thank you so much to Rachel and to L. Utah. Hope I said that right. Probably not. Thank you to Alexa and Rachel and to Al Yuta. Hope I said that right, probably not. Thank you to Alexa and Oregon, another Oregonian, and thank you to Carrie and California. And last but not least, big thanks to Natasha and Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Jessica and Nova Scotia, Canada, Isabella and Australia, Zola, and Alberta, Canada, and Nick and Australia. We love the shit out of you guys. Thanks for all the nice words. It means a lot to us. We love reading the happy things.

Yes, we do. We really do. We love all of your positive reviews. Just make sure if you want a shout out in the show to head on over to Apple Podcast, leave your name and your location. Alrighty, now let's get to the shout outs for the patrons. Thank you so much to Katarsana. I think that's how you say that. Katarsana. Katarsana. Thank you so much.

Hopefully one of those is right. We appreciate you. And big thanks to Heather, Jane, Sarah, Amy, and Empty. Big thanks to Anna, Celia, Brittany, Debbie, and thank you to Mel. And then we have Sierra, Reena, Sandy, Bridget, Brienne, and Tristan. And last but not least, big shout outs and thanks to Morgan, Jesse, Natalie, Abigail. Thank you Patricia, thank you Kelly, and Jennifer. You guys are the best. Yes, thank you guys so much. And if you guys want bonus episodes,

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