Nancy Moyer: The House on the Highway // 598

What is going on true crime fans? I'm your host Heath and I'm your host Daphne and you're listening to Going West. Hello everybody hope you're doing well today. Today's case we got a bunch of emails from you guys because we did mention this case in the episode on Matthew and felt that we covered recently which if you didn't listen to that episode that came out in March that is such an insane story you need to go listen to it. Yeah because for some reason this small town of Tenino weirdly has a lot of cases that are attached to it. Yeah and they're all really bizarre as well they're not like you're running the mill cut and dry true crime case they're all really really suspicious and spooky and eerie this is one of them so thank you to everybody who gave us the green light to cover this one and without further ado let's just dive right in. All right guys this is episode 598 of Going West so let's get into it. I managed from her Washington home along a highway without a trace. Multiple men are believed to have been in contact with her on the weekend she disappeared some even for dates one of whom confessed to killing her but was he responsible or was it possibly the local butcher who is convicted of murder the following year. This is the disappearance of Nancy Moyer. Nancy Hedlund was born on November 22nd 1972 to parents Sandra and Vern Hedlund and grew up alongside a younger sister named Sharon. Nancy was raised in Olympia which is the capital city of Washington state growing up in the Pacific Northwest. Throughout her life she was described as bubbly funny energetic and a very hard worker so after graduating from high school Nancy enrolled in Central Washington University to study accounting where she was a bright and devoted student and then while working as an intern for an agricultural company when she was in college she met her future husband Bill. The two dated for four years and were married in 1997 eventually welcoming two daughters Samantha and Allison. Samantha later remembered proudly quote my mom was really devoted to me and my sister and she always took great care of us. She tried to make the holidays special the birthdays and made sure that we saw every member of our family as much as we could. My mom had a lot of strength she always knew how to handle a situation. So Nancy had secured a great position with the Washington State Department of Ecology in Lacey Washington as a financial analyst where she maintained her role for the 12 years preceding her disappearance but her true passion was being a mother to her daughters. She was described as a loyal and loving mother if that wasn't clear from what Samantha said but Samantha did add quote my mom was everything. So the family of four settled in the small nature oriented community of Tanano Washington which is about 25 minutes south of Olympia and not far from her work in Lacey either. Tanano by the way if you didn't listen to the Matthew Ampelt episode it's surrounded by woods and both natural beauty and many hiking trails so it felt like a good place for them to settle. And Nancy and Bill really enjoyed putting down roots in the area remaining close with their extended families and making plenty of friends. Beginning together and having children so young was kind of taking its toll on Nancy and Bill and Nancy kind of started to long for her independence. So with that Nancy and Bill separated in 2007 two years before her disappearance but I will say it was an amicable respectful split so much so that they never even bothered to pursue a formal divorce. Because Nancy greatly admired how Bill parented their daughters and they continued to care about each other just not romantically. Instead they just focused on keeping their relationship respectful and keeping a stable co-parenting relationship for the sake of their daughters who were 9 and 11 when Nancy disappeared. So Nancy typically kept the girls from Sunday night until Thursday and they would then spend the weekends with their dad so Friday to Sunday. In her free time Nancy had started dating again and was enjoying going out and meeting new people you know she's got this newfound independence. And since she didn't have her daughters on the weekend she went out nearly every weekend and had a really thriving social life. But the day that she was last seen Friday March 6 2009 was an exception. 36 year old Nancy was worn down from a very stressful work week and she had no plans for the evening. She left work dropping a co-worker named Matthew Vandrush off at his home around 5.15 p.m. Now they were good friends nothing more and he described her as quote incredibly responsible saying quote she's the type of person who'd call in if she was three minutes late. Matthew later recalled that she was planning on having a night in that evening saying quote we were both tired it was a long week she said she was gonna go home maybe unplug the phone and chill out. So after saying good night to Matthew Nancy stopped by a grocery store called Dave's Thrift Way and she picked up wine cigarettes and a microwave dinner at 6 45 p.m. so 40 minutes after sunset arriving at her home on route 507 a few minutes later. Sounds like a nice solo night in for Nancy some cigarettes some wine easy dinner. Now let's talk about her health for a second like you just said Heath 36 year old Nancy Moyer lived on state route 507 which of course is a highway but it's probably not really how you're thinking there are of course parts of the 507 that are super busy and lined with businesses but there are also parts of it that are a bit more rural but still she lived on a highway so any number of people could have driven by her home that evening and every other evening and day. Yeah I was kind of looking at photos of her house from the outside and it looks like there's no like gates there's no fenced area it's just the road then there's a front yard and then it's her house so yeah her house is probably like four car lengths away from the road so so very close and of course one lane on each side and as we know by now to 9 0 is it's a very tiny town there's only like 1500 people that live there and again it's about 25 miles away from the nearest city which is her hometown of Olympia so it makes sense that coincidentally there happened to be a police officer running a speed limit radar staked out in front of her house you know along the highway which by the way her house was also right across the road from a set of railroad tracks so if you're on her porch looking forward there's railroad tracks right on the other side of the highway and then behind the railroad tracks there's a large patch of woods and then down a little ways a cemetery now her house is a small two bedroom one bathroom home totaling 950 square feet built in 1920 it's on a big grass lawn but also next to other homes on the highway so when she got home police officer actually noticed her parking her car out front and unloading her grocery bags that evening and this was the last reported sighting of Nancy Moyer hours later Nancy's neighbor believed that he heard her but no one else claimed to have seen her after she arrived home that night so according to this neighbor someone pulled into Nancy's driveway around midnight and he heard Nancy say hurry up let's get going or at least as far as he recalls but then he fell back asleep after hearing this exchange so he wouldn't have remembered that this was important for at least a day and then maybe hurry up let's get going could have been something else entirely well two days later on sunday march 8th between 4 30 and 5 p.m. like clockwork her ex-husband bill stopped by the house to drop off their daughters as usual and found the house empty with the front door a jar after waiting there for a few minutes bill and the girls headed back home and decided that they would try again later but bill acknowledged quote she's never been more than an hour late on drop-off day never so at first he's kind of wondering if maybe she had left to take a walk and just lost track of time but when she didn't turn up or call later that night he returned to her house really starting really starting to grow concerned here and that's when he noticed that she had left behind her house keys her cell phone and her purse and her car was still parked in the driveway so if all those things are in the house the door is a jar she didn't go anywhere because her car is there you know it's not like she went to go run errands or something it's not painting a good picture obviously we have no idea what time Nancy left the house or was taken from the home but I will say later the determination was made about the time based on when the usage in her gas heating spiked you know due to the open door it's bringing in a winter draft and that spiked between 9 p.m. and midnight which is interesting that they were able to determine this because I mean that's just kind of a cool thing yeah like the only way we have a timeline yeah the only timeline is that hey when that door was left open the the heater began to spike or the gas began to spike because the heat turned on boom there's our timeline which this is also a pretty normal window as well you know it's Friday night make sense for her to leave the house anytime between 9 and midnight if she's going out with somebody you know it's not like it spiked at 3 in the morning when your mind would go to oh somebody broke into her house or crept into her house in the middle of the night and something happened from there this gives us a little bit of like I guess more of a normal feeling if you will well Nancy's coat was the only thing that appeared to be missing besides Nancy herself so if she was going out briefly and brought her coat that makes sense but I will say the leaving willingly thing doesn't really match up anyway because she didn't bring her keys or her phone and she left her door ajar so it seems like maybe this paints more of the picture of she's stepping outside to check on something to have a cigarette you know to see who's outside her house because somebody outside you know maybe more so those things yeah because she also left her purse behind so so it's kind of like with the coat being gone and then the purse and the keys being in the house it's like okay well it would make sense if maybe somebody came and knocked on her door and she's like oh let me grab my coat and step outside to talk to you or whatever it feels something like along the lines of that totally agree so of course this was all exceedingly out of character for Nancy to leave the door ajar leave everything behind and especially the fact that she wasn't there when bill brought her daughters back because she was always so excited when she got to to have them you know during sunday to thursday so that night bill filed a missing persons report now there was no evidence that anybody had entered the house to abduct her or been inside with her that night except for the discovery of two wine glasses that had been left out indicating that she may have been hosting someone even possibly unexpectedly because of course we know that she told her coworker matthew that she was just gonna have a night in hence why she bought a microwave dinner and a bottle of wine that sounds like a solo gal's night to me but it's also possible that both glasses are for her i've done that many times where you have a glass from the night before you just haven't washed it yet because let's be honest wine glasses are really annoying to wash well yeah and the one thing that could help us determine if that white glass was supposed to be for somebody else as if there was any sort of dna on that second glass but when they tested it it didn't appear that there was any like foreign dna so i'm assuming she just maybe she was expecting somebody to come over and then they just didn't use that second wine glass or whatever i don't know yeah we'll definitely get into the dna stuff later too but yeah you're totally right it's definitely it's definitely really weird but it does not seem like somebody was hanging out with her you know but then also it doesn't seem like she really was going out on the town with anybody considering the fact that she left all of her stuff behind and there was no activity on her bank cards after the transaction that she made at the grocery store on friday night right so at the very least that would tell us that you know if she did go out with somebody that night like she didn't use her cards especially because her purse was at home yeah exactly so it's yeah i mean it's i'm not saying that it's impossible that she couldn't have gone somewhere with someone right but it doesn't seem as likely agreed well as expected bill was the first person of interest of course the ex-husband but he was very cooperative from the beginning offering up an alibi which was that he was at home with his daughters all weekend and he also consented to a polygraph examination which he passed so bill was very quickly cleared of suspicion and he just kept his focus on raising awareness about his missing ex-wife and caring for his daughters saying quote the kids so far they're handling it okay some nights are better than others also out of an abundance of caution the police officer that was staked out near her house you know the guy that was doing the speed checks was also questioned as was her co-worker Matthew van deris who was married and spent the weekend with his wife and son so both men were eventually cleared and the officer claimed to have left the area before seeing anybody else near Nancy's home now with no leads and no workable evidence that foul play had befallen Nancy her desperate family put up a reward which along with donations topped out at over a hundred and five thousand dollars for information in the two weeks following her disappearance but sadly even with this it couldn't help rally the community and unfortunately it didn't help generate a single tip with valuable time already lost Nancy's co-worker and friend Bev organized search for nearly two years Bev organized searches almost every single weekend focusing on the young teneno trail and its surrounding wooded areas Bev later explained quote my goal is to find her she doesn't deserve to be lying out there somewhere I hope to hell she's not but if she is we have to find her the thirst and sheriff's lieutenant chris mealy assured the public saying quote we've been non-stop on it we've exhaustively worked this case we're interviewing people every day and learning as much as we can so scent dogs and cadaver dogs were marched around the vicinity of Nancy's home but found no leads that way either one scent dog led his handler from her home out to old highway 99 which by the way old highway 99 intersex state route 507 from her house to get up to the highway it's only like a seven or eight minute walk and then it's like a minute drive it's 0.3 miles so it's it's right there but then the dog lost its scent it's kind of just crazy to see highway 99 because that it literally is the highway that runs through the tiny little town that I'm from yeah it's long it's very long yeah I know highway 99 very well didn't we cover a case about highway 99 you know it was a different highway in Oregon wasn't it it could have been you know with the fact that it is a very long highway it's it's definitely possible oh wait no I'm a thing of highway 20 that case we covered so long ago but anyway yeah I think yeah highway 20 is the the highway that goes out to bend right yeah yeah exactly exactly that was a crazy case too well alongside Matthew's wife Betsy they put together so Matthew and Betsy put together a website offering a description of Nancy as well as an outlet for valuable tips he said sadly quote there's a hole in my life and there's a hole in the office I can't give up she's a really warm and kind person she just would do anything for you if she could her response to people who didn't treat her well was to be kind in return but sadly you know like you said Heath her co-worker and friend Bev is putting together these volunteer searches you know here is Matthew making a website of her families doing everything they can despite all of these people trying within weeks the investigation stalled and the sheriff's office and community alike were at a loss bill said quote we kind of feel like we're getting to the end of what contributions we can make it kind of feels like we're beyond our ability to help at this point after about a month of Nancy's absence bill admitted that his daughters were beginning to question if their mom was ever coming home saying quote they understand that she's missing it's been too long for us to make any promises that she's absolutely going to be coming home but at this point nobody has given up on the possibility of her coming back either if something reminds them of her they become a little more sad a little more withdrawn the day-to-day has become twice as hard as it ever was and that's a that's a really tough situation to be in because you don't want to lose hope you don't think that your daughter's mother is never going to be coming home and you also don't want it's hard because what are you supposed to tell your children you know mommy is coming back we don't know if mommy's coming back they're starting to ask questions I know especially without a crime scene like obviously they believe something happened to her but it also looks like she just walked outside for a cigarette and got like beamed up into the sky like there's no proof there's no blood there's no hopped over furniture like there's nothing pointing to something happening to her specifically but the crazy part here is the fact that despite the lack of like solid leads and evidence in Nancy's case there actually are multiple persons of interest in this case most of whom remain persons of interest to this day and they're all like pretty good ones like they all are kind of like oh yeah they could have done it yeah it's kind of crazy how but it's the thing is is you could say that about all these persons of interest that we're going to talk about like you said yeah and that's the crazy part it's not like oh there's like three or four where you're like and probably not it's like they all feel possible they all feel really possible so the first was a male co-worker of Nancy's named Erin Huntley who seemed to be the office catch remember this is at the Washington State Department of Ecology which is about a 30 minute drive from Nancy's house so based on rumors around the office Erin and Nancy had a brief and very casual romantic relationship when Erin was questioned about this he was honest about the nature of their relationship prior to her disappearance saying that they had been involved but he was proven to be with another woman at the time of Nancy's disappearance so he was seemingly ruled out however there was another co-worker who seemed even more interested in her than Erin was he even left a message on Nancy's answering machine about having a date with her planned for that Saturday evening which was the night after she disappeared but when she didn't show up on their date this co-worker this guy named Jim Roth stopped by her house and claimed to find her door open so apparently this guy he goes to her house and he lets himself in but Nancy didn't appear to be home so then he just apparently left which is weird because we know that Bill went there you know less than or maybe around 24 hours later on Sunday night and the door was still ajar so it's almost like he's saying yeah I went there the door was cracked open and then I left with the door still cracked open well yeah I went in I went into her house is what he's saying and then I didn't see her so then I left but I didn't close the door that's fucking weird which maybe he's leaving it how he left it maybe he's like oh maybe she went for a walk and I don't want to lock her out or whatever like but it is it's kind of interesting well I think that what makes us even more suspicious is the fact that Jim quit the Washington Department of Ecology shortly after Nancy disappeared so obviously that that doesn't look very good he was interviewed by the police but was not officially announced as a suspect according to Jim he and Nancy had met up a few times for dates and he had invited her over to his house once though he had never been over to hers yet here he is showing up at her house when she's you know miss this date the next night and by the way Jim also had kids with his ex but was divorced so similar to how Nancy and her husband had split so that Friday night the night that Nancy vanished Jim claimed that he was home with his two sons and this alibi was cleared by the boys' mother but strangely she would not permit police to question her sons about the evening to confirm so she's saying it almost feels like she's like slightly kind of covering for Jim in a way because she's like yeah no you can't talk to my kids about whether or not Jim was there that night but does she just not want to potentially traumatize her children or is she trying to cover something up yeah it could be one of the other I guess you know which we hate which is it my mind goes to the more nefarious option for some reason but of course it's us maybe it's not like that well he also told police that the house was quiet except for the tv which had been left on and you know basically the house was empty and Nancy was nowhere inside which also just lends credence to the idea that she had stepped outside for a brief moment while she was hanging out at home having some wine watching tv by herself I don't know though I just still still feel like this is so weird and suspicious the fact that on you know the night that or sorry not the night but the next night after Nancy goes missing the first person that's there at her house is a person that's a never been at her house before ever and b he leaves the door open after he doesn't find Nancy in the house like I don't know I just feel very weird about him well police wonder that too they're like why would you feel comfortable like letting yourself into her home if you haven't been there yet so then detective started wondering if maybe he claimed to have gone over there after she didn't show up for their date on saturday night you know in order to justify his fingerprints that had already been there maybe as a result of him being there on friday night yeah so then maybe he didn't go there and he's saying the door was a jar in this and I went in there and she wasn't there and then I just left so that he would have reason for his dna to be in the house if it actually was well one of the things we have to consider here is a bit of context we have to talk about the fact that Nancy's home was only 950 square feet that's not super big so when he went into the home because you know he was the one that noticed that apparently the tv was on and she wasn't there so is it one of those things where the door was left a jar and maybe he walked in like like a foot in and kind of hollered in the house and said hey Nancy are you here or was he like actually inside inside the home was he you know walking around in the living room that matters here I think I agree and I don't know I don't know what the answer is I wish we had that answer I know but and to be fair if he knows her well they work together on a regular basis they've been out on dates before maybe it wouldn't be weird to step inside it's also fair to be like hey maybe he tried to call her which we also are not privy to that information and then he's kind of like wait I hope she's okay and goes to her house to check on her like I do feel like that's a nice thing to do I guess my point is is like if the house was like 4000 square feet and the tv was like in the very back of the house and somebody had to go in and like you had to like physically walk through the house in order to tell that that tv was on whereas with Nancy's house it was probably right there it was probably right there yeah and obviously again we don't have that information but it is one of the questions that kind of runs through my mind here well I will say you know I don't know where this tv was I'm assuming it was in her living room but I will say just looking at the zillow listing of this house just based on the photos it looks like when you go through the front door you walk into the living room there's like a little fireplace there's a little kitchen table so it's very possible that he just poked his head in and said Nancy are you there yeah that's what I mean exactly it's like you know did he go all the way in maybe not and Jim did consent to a polygraph test but he was so overwhelmed and nervous that a conclusion could not be drawn which doesn't automatically make him guilty of course but it's good to note and this kind of goes along with it too I'll say that when he was first interviewed by detectives Jim said that he and Nancy had previously tried and wanted to have sex but that he was kind of struggling under the pressure and he couldn't perform so maybe he's just like a nervous guy you know it could be maybe it riddled with anxiety and that's why he went over to her house that's why he couldn't pass the polygraph because he's so nervous this is why he couldn't sexually perform with Nancy and he also said that so the night that that happened where he could not sexually perform that Nancy stayed over and got up the next morning and that they had breakfast together at his house before she went home so it it didn't like necessarily you know destroy the evening she stayed over they had a nice time but years later when he was interviewed for a second time he changed his story alleging that Nancy had come over and they were able to have sex but that she went back home that same evening which is literally completely opposite from what he said before and how do you confuse that yeah also you know it's not one of those things where it's a fleeting thought because of the fact that Nancy had vanished and he was telling police this this is not something that you would probably forget this is a story that you would probably be able to relay 10 years down the road when you're interviewed again and it's not a story that you would need to lie about it doesn't matter if you had sex or not and if she slept over not yeah the investigation so why would you lie about that yeah it does seem very very strange that the story changed yeah well Jim passed away in 2017 so you know like eight years after Nancy went missing due to natural causes and Nancy's friend Bev said with noted frustration quote there was never going to be any kind of resolution if it had been him so it seemed like there just wasn't enough to prove that he had done it or not done it but that people are obviously a little bit suspicious of him and had been for years now although this next thing it's a personal thing to share we do want to mention it because it could possibly be relevant basically after searching Nancy's home detectives came to the conclusion that she was experimenting with her curiosity with the bdsm community just based on different items that they found in her house but it didn't appear that she ever brought men back to her home maybe wanting to keep these men separate from her home life with her daughters and keep her daughter safe so still it could prove that she was experimenting with different people aside from Jim and Erin so had she invited one of these men back to her house that night making an exception for somebody or had someone possibly even followed her home so just two months after Nancy disappeared her home was cleared out and it was placed up for rent but the original search of Nancy's home led to a second theory one that is very strange to me it was the involvement of a meat salesman who went door to door making sales and deliveries because this guy lived just down the street from Nancy her daughter Samantha described him as awkward but claimed that she thought that he seemed harmless when she was a kid well clearly that was not the case because the meat in Nancy's freezer which Samantha remembered as lemon pepper chicken and either shrimp or prawns was from this local meat salesman from a local butcher and he was later indicted on murder charges so Samantha wondered if maybe this guy returned to Nancy's home for another sale ahead of her disappearance saying quote I kind of do wonder if he came back because they found steaks in her freezer and I don't remember buying steaks there's something so disturbing about a butcher murderer I mean especially in this situation because according to bill quote Nancy is kind of almost vegetarian and so I look and she's got shelves worth of meat in there I was like what is this for didn't really fit didn't make sense because it's not something that she would have typically purchased well here's the story of the murder charge so on the evening of Sunday August 8th 2010 only a year and a half after Nancy vanished 26 year old Bernard Howell who was just 10 years younger than Nancy was pulled over after a report from a man who alleged that Bernard had asked for help disposing of a body and in the front passenger seat of his vehicle was a figure stuffed inside of a sleeping bag so obviously incredibly suspicious because there's a fucking sleeping bag in his front seat a human shaped one yeah the officer who pulled him over investigated further and found a warm body upright next to him in the car that day Bernard was apparently angry about something and had been out walking a hiking trail looking for a confrontation and zeroed in on his unsuspecting victim the woman he murdered later identified a 60 year old Brazil born Vonda Boone had been walking the Yelm Tenino trail which coincidentally had been where Bev was focusing her search for Nancy Bernard then pulled a knife on her and attempted to knock her out with it totally randomly but when Vonda didn't lose consciousness Bernard slit her throat and then strangled her as she fought back for as long as she possibly could and this is horrific but according to her autopsy her injuries were so severe that it appeared as if Bernard had attempted to decapitate her while she was still alive and by the way I want to say that I saw the picture of Bernard what he looked like after he was arrested he looks he looks crazy like just the photo of him he looks like he would be he would have a sleeping bag with a body in it in his car maybe it's the the deep blue eyes yeah I don't know yeah maybe it's that well also inside Bernard's vehicle were plastic bags zip ties a 10 pound weight and bungee cords yeah so I'm not really buying the whole I was just really angry that day and I wanted to confront somebody that day because it seems like you were kind of premeditated with having all those things in your car it seemed like you really wanted to kill someone it's it's clear he's like a violent individual who has these disturbing plans even the fact that you're like you go out on a hiking trail and you just do this to this random woman who you don't know right when you see her like and the violence of it as well it says a lot and then on top of that you're also a butcher right so Bernard was arrested on the spot and then he was taken into custody and he explained that he had merely happened upon Vonda's body while walking along the same trail yeah no and that he had simply taken her into his vehicle in order to save her family the cost of a burial what a story and you know on top of that like it gets even more stupid because he had sex with her dead body and he admitted to having sex with her dead body so what the hell nobody is buying that story that you just happened upon a dead body and you're like oh i'm gonna do the i'm gonna do the nice and good thing and spare her family of burial costs imagine thinking that story is gonna work yeah what now well detectives also had no reason to believe that they had known each other before this interaction and believe that he had been either walking or biking along that trail and that the opportunity to kill presented itself to him and he took it you know just being with or near this woman walking by her and there's nobody else around he just said this is the moment but like why i'll never be able to understand the mindset of like what goes through the mind of a killer in that way where they see somebody out in the woods on a hiking trail and instead of just minding your fucking business and going about your day you decide oh there's there's nobody around right now i think i'm in a murder this random person well of course there's some mental health stuff involved here but it also seems like there was possibly some drug use involved because after his arrest he told officials at the prison that he was hearing voices and that he longed for them to leave him alone and when the press got in touch with his father who by the way his name is also bernard howell he said that he believed that his son was using methamphetamine adding quote i hope he goes where he gets some medical help because he does have a screw loose yeah so even your dad is saying that but i also think that there was probably a possible motive in sexual assault as well just given that the fact that he did sexually assault her body i mean this is a sick individual without a doubt but bernard was evaluated for his mental competency sorry and was actually found fit to stand trial as we know it's very hard to prove um guilty by reason of insanity yes it is and a little bit on vanda sadly she had just moved to the area only five months earlier and was still very much in the process of putting down roots and making friends in the area and she had actually moved to the pacific northwest from long island new york to work at a local massage therapy studio and study new age enlightenment the owner of radiance herbs and massage in olympia where vanda worked described her as an amazing masseuse as well as a bright light and a beloved asset to their team who always had a kind word to say and this wonderful woman is just on a hike in her beautiful new home and encounters one of the people imaginable i hate that people can't just live their lives without the fear of some asshole ruining their day and possibly their life truly well inside bernard's car were multiple knives though they weren't sure which one if any of them may have been the murder weapon in april of 2011 he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was charged with nearly 27 years in prison so he is still in prison this doesn't feel like enough time no it doesn't but after he completes his sentence he will be required to serve three years in community custody as well as undergo substance abuse treatment as we mentioned bernard lived very close to nancy only about a mile or 1.6 kilometers away from her house so he was questioned in nancy's disappearance but maintained that he had never met nancy despite the fact that her daughters recognized him as selling her meat before and it is possible that with all of his customers that he has he really didn't remember her and wasn't involved it's i think it would make more sense for nancy's daughters to remember him because he is the one guy with the meat that comes to the door but in his plv he's like this is just one of many women that i see on a regular basis doing door-to-door meat sales which is such a crazy concept by the way but it is a little weird given the proximity in his obviously horrific nature yeah just the fact that he was able to do something like that to another person you have to kind of take that all into consideration but actually sorry really quick yeah something i he seems very impulsive and violent of course and we know he has knives like you said he nearly decapitated vanda before she was even deceased so he doesn't really strike me as the kind of guy who could get nancy out of her house and then take her somewhere else and kill her maybe that he would just do it there and then also why nancy like i i think this is really a weird connection and it's definitely possible but weirdly he's not my biggest suspect in my mind yeah the the crazy butcher guy is not the guy that because yeah i i do agree like if he was a person who took opportunities that were presented to him he probably would have killed her right there and then we would have had maybe some blood evidence around nancy's home i don't it's not like she would have left with the butcher the meat salesman guy yeah and then with the neighbor saying that he heard nancy saying okay hurry up like let's get going or whatever it was that wouldn't match up either if he really even heard her say that so i don't know i don't know and that's probably why he has never been connected to nancy's disappearance though notably he refused to take a polygraph examination regarding nancy's whereabouts nancy's home was searched diligently before it was put up for rent and multiple items were removed for DNA testing but for whatever reason were held for years in police custody before being tested this included her purse and the wine glass that she had been drinking out of as well as the other wine glass taken from the home which detectives thought may have been set out for someone else that night there were also cigarette butts and an ashtray removed from the front porch of her home and a pack of cigarettes was found in the side pocket of a camping chair that was placed on her porch which i gotta say as a former smoker that is uh that's a very common place where people that's usually where i kept my cigarettes too in my little uh the little drink holder yeah of a camping chair that would totally make sense it i actually wanted to ask you because i know bev felt like she was likely taking a smoke break out front when whatever happened to her at you know maybe somebody stopped by and either convinced her to come with them under false pretenses or abducted her and actually a big reason that she thinks this is because of the fact that those cigarettes were left outside in the camping chair cup holder and she doesn't think that nancy would have done that on such like a cold damp night because the cigarettes would have gotten soggy which like i know i think about me with joints like i would leave a joint outside not in the rain i just would leave it outside even if it was cold like i don't think about that did you think about that as a cigarette smoker like oh my cigs are gonna get soggy um yeah sometimes i would definitely be aware if i knew it was gonna rain i would be like aware that i needed to bring them inside but not if just if it's cold and on a covered yeah if it's on if it's if they're on a covered porch in a chair i'm not i'm not gonna be concerned because because they're they can just they can just be there you know whenever i'm ready to go out and have a cig i can just go out there and just grab one out of that cup holder and whatever or even if it's on the table like i just feel i don't know i wouldn't my thought i wouldn't be as concerned let me say that i do agree with bev though i do personally think that she was outside having a cigarette when something happened maybe somebody drove by and saw her maybe the some maybe somebody did stop by and she had a cigarette outside to talk to them while wearing her coat with everything else left inside that makes so much sense now after that point in which she possibly went outside to have a cigarette with her coat on from that point on i have no idea i mean i really don't i don't know if she was abducted if somebody lured her away from the house we just don't know well we do have one other suspect which to many people is the person that is likely responsible for this probably the most credible and i think nancy's family actually feels the same way they do but first i'll say that some of nancy's clothing and her bedding were also removed from her house for testing but these items weren't tested until 2019 and none were found to contain foreign dna though maybe an earlier search would have revealed more i don't know why the hell they waited so long but like he said earlier there was no foreign dna found on any of the items in her home as far as like fingerprints on the door handle or things like that it has not been released if they were like up yep here's matthew's thumbprint on the the fridge right like we don't know any of that or wait did i say matthew i meant um jim sorry i meant jim jim yeah we we don't we're not privy to any of that since sorry to spoil her case is still open but let's talk about this other guy so that same year again 2019 a decade after nancy vanished another strange suspect revealed himself further deepening the mystery of nancy's case revealed himself he did no i mean yeah but i mean he literally came out and said he did it yeah so on july 9th again 2019 at 3 p.m a man called 911 to report that he had been the one responsible for nancy's murder he claimed that he had been quote holding it inside for 10 years and that he was tired of doing so so he admitted his fear of reporting it over the phone knowing that it was a recorded line but that without question nancy was deceased initially when an officer came to speak with him because he didn't want to do it over the phone which i feel like how is it better to have an officer with a body cam on yeah i don't know your statement in person i don't know because this officer is recording their interaction so basically when he went there eric alleged that nancy had attacked him right and that her killing had been self-defense but that he panicked and buried her in the woods yes so eric is the guy i think his name is eric roberts from what i read online he's the guy that made that 911 call but it's really weird because he said this and then after this confession he asked the officer if he could stop recording so that they could speak more candidly and then eric alleged that he had been with her on the night she disappeared he's like changing his story suddenly and saying that they had been hanging out they had consensual sex but that he accidentally gotten too rough with her and strangled her with a scarf by accident which could make sense if she is leaning more towards that type of sex and then he kills her by accident we have seen this in other cases but in eric's own words he said quote i didn't mean for it to happen it wasn't supposed to happen she hadn't moved in a really long time and she was not breathing so it's hard because i don't know if i can believe anything that eric says because at first you say that you're kind of the victim here that she attacked you you were defending yourself and then you change it up to make yourself still seem like somewhat of a victim we're getting a little closer to intentionally killing her by saying that i accidentally killed her so we went from self-defense to an accident yeah so it absolutely does feel very hard to believe him because that is a very very very different story so then he says that he hastily put nancy's shirt back on before panicking and removing her body from his home because he is saying this happened at his house which would then mean that he picked up nancy and brought her over to him which again is just it's kind of hard for me to believe that she would leave her door a jar and leave everything inside including her cell phone but one thing that i have to go back to is the fact that her neighbor heard her say you know hurry up let's get going yeah maybe it was just like oh yeah i'll stop by really quick or let's go somewhere but again you live on a highway and you're leaving your door a jar unless that jim lied and her door was he left her door a jar and it was closed when he got there like i don't know it's all it's all too confusing i know it's all screwed up well when asked why he didn't attempt to get help for her eric said quote i just freaked out i don't think i even had working phones at the time which it's very possible that that's true and he panicked because he really didn't try to kill her it's kind of interesting to me that in 2009 when a lot of people have smartphones already you don't have a cell phone or a working phone but okay eric whatever yeah i mean i don't know it's they live in a pretty rural place so it's possible and by the time he realized that she was gone he said it was too late he then told authorities that her body was buried in a pit on his property when remember before he said he buried her in the woods now he's she's on my property well get this this is a really weird connection this man eric was the uncle of erin huntley which as you guys will remember is the other co-worker that nancy had dated casually before her disappearance yeah and eric by the way had also worked at the department of ecology with nancy and erin and jim and bev yeah it's kind of crazy that all of these people are connected to nancy's work you've got jim who she worked with and also kind of was seeing at one point erin who she worked with and was kind of seeing and then you've got eric who she wasn't seeing but she did work with yeah so it seems or i mean apparently according to eric they were in a sexual relationship so she has she's kind of in a relationship with three different guys at her work like a casual either sexual or slightly romantic relationship with yeah that's just wild to me yeah and i will say as well bev remembered eric showing up to help with one of the ground searches of the forested area surrounding the community after nancy's disappearance so that would be pretty interesting if he was behind it and went to the search to stay close well we know that sometimes killers end up doing that they want to stay close to the investigation because they they want to know what are you finding how close are police to catching me he explained to police that he had transported nancy's body to a remote parcel of his property and burned her remains in a fire pit behind his home and again that their relationship was purely sexual in nature but they still don't have her body and despite the lack of evidence enclosure her family has taken to the belief that eric is to blame for the murder like he said nancy's ex bill said quote i really think this is the guy i don't see a reason anyone confesses something like that unless they did it but unfortunately for nancy's loved ones and the investigation eric recanted his confession just a day later maybe because he was lying or maybe because he realized the gravity of what he was admitting to after consulting with a defense attorney who likely informed him that the police didn't have any actual evidence against him eric explained that he had been on medication and that he didn't even remember making the confession so that's kind of crazy you literally admit to doing it then your attorney says hey they don't have any evidence here and then you're like oh so i might not go to okay well i didn't do it i was actually just looped up and this is a way for him to kind of get it off his chest and tell them yeah but then not have to take the fall for it yeah not have to take responsibility for it like a weird best of both worlds situation because and since they didn't have any evidence that said he did it and because he recanted the confession and he's not allowing them to search his property they can't search it to potentially find her body because they have nothing to be able to get a warrant for yeah so yeah which is the reason why you know without sufficient evidence here he was released and he has denied any involvement since then it's just crazy just crazy so if he did it or any of these other guys that we have talked about did it if it was somebody that knew her we can imagine that she either did have a plan or that it was a last minute hey i'm popping by to see you thing and something escalated from there yeah whether she willingly left her home or she didn't well two years before eric confessed in 2017 nancy's case was reclassified as a homicide from the onset of the investigation no one who knew nancy believed that she had left of her own volition citing the fact that she was a proud devoted mother and that she would have never left her beloved daughters matthew vandrush maintained quote there's absolutely no way she would do anything for those kids nancy had no known history of mental illness or substance abuse and had no desire to leave behind the life that she adored the life that centered around her children the only indication that she may have possessed the motivation to life behind were her bank statements because when her financial records were searched in hopes of finding any indication as to where she went it was discovered that she was in about $50,000 of credit card debt or over 77,000 by today's standards detectives mused that perhaps she was looking for a way out of this immense financial pressure that she found herself in but anybody who knew nancy said that this had not even been a consideration when it came to nancy's whereabouts her sister sandra explained that nancy was the one who when they were growing up quote always talked her friends out of running away and always stayed close to home grounded is a good word for her i don't know what she would have wanted to run away from she had a good life she has a good life her loved ones believe that she was most likely killed the night that she disappeared thirst and sheriff lieutenant chris mealy stated quote the big red flag is that we don't have any big red flags it's like she just walked away but that's not in her character samantha admitted that she and her sister allison really struggled under the weight of their mom's fate saying quote growing up without a mom sucks especially when you don't know where she is she didn't get to see me graduate didn't get to see my first dance drive my first car any of that it would help so much to find her to find out what happened to her nancy was about four feet 11 inches tall and weighed about 120 pounds and a dark brown hair and brown eyes she had multiple tattoos pierced ears and a pierced belly button if you have any information about the disappearance of nancy moyer please call the teneno police department at 360 264 2626 thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of going west yes thank you guys so much for listening to this episode let us know what your thoughts are on this case we're gonna post photos of nancy and everything involving her case on our socials we're on instagram at going west podcast we're on tiktok as well as facebook so give us a follow let us know this is truly such a confusing case like i really don't know what to believe i don't know who is behind it i feel like eric makes so much sense obviously but we still don't have the rest of the story like yeah she left everything behind because we were supposed to come right back and she did close the door but i dropped her or i picked her up and i was gonna drop her off like we don't we don't we still don't have like all the pieces because this case is still open and like you said there's a lot of players in this case that could be responsible you got eric jim bernard like too many too freaking many so thank you guys so much for tuning in and we will see you on tuesday all right guys so for everybody out there in the world don't be a stranger summer