It was the middle of the night on September 3, 1986 when Doug Wells discovered his employee, 30-year-old Wayne Nathan Nance, lurking in the bushes outside his house.
When asked what he was doing there, Nance said that he had just been passing by and had spotted a prowler. He asked Doug for a flashlight to look around, but when Doug let him inside the house, Nance struck him in the head and proceeded to tie up both Doug Wells and his wife Kris.
Nance then stabbed Doug in the chest and left him to die in the basement, forcing Kris up the stairs with the intention of raping her.
Also in the basement was a rifle that Doug had been repairing. Despite his injuries, he managed to free himself from his bonds and load a single shell into the rifle. He then shot Nance at the top of the stairs. Doug and Kris survived; Nance died in the hospital the following day.
Was it just the happy ending of a foiled home invasion—or had Doug Wells put a stop to the crime spree of the notorious serial killer known as the Missoula Mauler?
“Betty Beavertail” and Others
In the early 1980s, authorities began finding the heavily decayed bodies of young women near Missoula, Montana. In fact, the bodies were so decomposed as to make identification impossible at the time, and so each one was given a nickname based on nearby landmarks.
The first was “Betty Beavertail,” a young runaway who was found stabbed in the chest, her dress hitched up around her neck, near Beavertail Hill State Park. She was later shown to be Devonna Nelson, who had disappeared two years earlier, when she was only 15.
Next was “Debbie Dear Creek,” named for the drainage basin near her shallow grave, where a wildlife photographer spotted her decomposing leg. She was discovered in 1984, and not identified as a 16-year-old Marcella Bachmann until 2006.
The skeleton of “Christy Crystal Creek” was found with two bullets in her skull in September of 1985, just three miles from where Bachmann’s body had been interred. She was not identified as a 23-year-old Janet Lee Lucas until 2021.
Wayne Nance is suspected of killing all three women – but if he did, they weren’t his first victims, or his last.
Janet Lee Lucas
Photo Credit: Missoula County Sheriff's Office“He Would Kill Someone Before He Turned Nineteen”
The life and crimes of Wayne Nance are detailed in John Coston’s book To Kill and Kill Again, where a young Nance is described as “a boy dressed in the garb of a dirthead to certify his antithesis position, to show that he was not a belonger.”
Stories circulated that he worshipped the devil and that he had used a hot coat hanger to brand himself with satanic symbols. More chilling still, he was “bragging that he would kill someone before he turned nineteen.”
Was that someone Donna Lorraine Pounds, a woman whose teenage son was friends with Nance, and whose house Nance often visited? When Donna Pounds arrived home from her part-time job at a Christian bookstore, she encountered an intruder in her master bedroom.
He was armed with her husband’s .22 caliber rifle, and he bound her with white clothesline before raping her and then dragging her to the basement, where he tied her to a chair and shot her five times in the back of the head.
Witnesses said that they saw Nance around the Pounds house that day, but there wasn’t enough evidence to arrest him for the crime.
It was only years later, after Nance’s death, that authorities found evidence in his home suggesting that Donna Pounds had, in fact, been his first victim.
“Conan the Barbarian”
On the evening of December 12, 1985, a man with a gun walked into the house of Michael and Teresa Shook and their three children. He called himself “Conan the Barbarian,” and demanded the couple’s money.
He fired what may have been intended as a warning shot, hitting Teresa in the leg, before locking the children in their shared bedroom.
Michael was hit in the head, tied up, and stabbed in the chest with a butcher knife—almost the exact same M.O. that would fail to kill Doug Wells the following year. Teresa was forced upstairs and tied to the bed where she was raped before being stabbed to death herself.
The killer then left and returned two hours later, stealing several items from the home, including an elk statue, a hunting knife, and a collection of silver dollars.
Possibly to cover his tracks, he then attempted to set fire to the place using crumpled magazines and furniture, with the three children still trapped inside.
The fire smoldered but didn’t catch, which allowed the children to be rescued the following morning, when Greg Lakes, a family friend, arrived at the house around 8am the following morning. The children, who were aged 7, 4, and 2, were treated for smoke inhalation, but survived their ordeal.
At the time, witnesses reported seeing a pickup similar to Nance’s leaving the property, but before Nance could be directly linked to the crime, he was killed by Doug Wells in the midst of a similar attempted home invasion.
After his death, authorities found the items that had been taken from the Shook home among Nance’s possessions.
Was Wayne Nance the Missoula Mauler?
Marcella Bachmann and Wayne Nance
Photo Credit: WikipediaBecause he was killed before he could go to trial, Wayne Nance was never formally charged with any murders, and has therefore never been found guilty.
Yet, postmortem evidence has linked him to several of the crimes of the killer known as the Missoula Mauler, and authorities suspect that Nance may have claimed even more victims than are known.
Nance was linked to the murder of Donna Pounds, had photographs of himself with victim Marcella Bachmann (“Debbie Deer Creek”), and was in possession of items taken from the home of the Shook family when he died.
He is also the only suspect in the deaths of both Devonna Nelson (“Betty Beavertail”) and Janet Lee Lucas (“Christy Crystal Creek”). Were there others? Unfortunately, we may never know…
Read John Coston's book about the case today!
To Kill and Kill Again
Featured photo: Wikipedia
