The least populated state in America, Wyoming is seen as a sanctuary for those wanting no part of the hustle and bustle of big cities. With a largest city of only 60,000 people, the Cowboy State rarely makes national headlines. The vast deserts and open ranges provide a sense of tranquility for its few people. Sometimes, however, abundant space and isolation can be dangerous and the desolate highways can prove hellish.

On April 2, 1988, a fisherman just outside Casper saw the body of a nearly nude female lying in the North Platte River. She was identified as eighteen-year-old Lisa Kimmell, and she had died a gruesome death, having been sexually assaulted and stabbed multiple times in her chest area.

The investigation into Lisa’s murder was unique for police in that they had found her body but not her vehicle. Finding the car was the key in solving her murder.

Lisa Kimmell

Lisa grew up in Billings, Montana, the eldest of Ron and Sheila Kimmell’s three daughters.  Her sisters are Sherry and Stacy. A brother, Ricky, died at age three in 1976.

After graduating high school in 1987, Lisa decided to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Sheila was a Regional Manager of the Arby’s Restaurant chain and Lisa became the Arby’s manager in Aurora, Colorado, fifteen miles east of Denver.

As Sheila helped her daughter learn the restaurant management business, the two resided in an apartment complex in Denver during the week. Each had their own separate apartment, so Lisa could get her first taste of living on her own under mom’s watchful eye.

On weekends, Sheila and Lisa made the five-hundred-fifty-five mile trip home to Billings. On Thursday, March 24, 1988, however, Sheila departed a day early, flying to Billings for a much-anticipated skiing trip.

Lisa The Graduate

On the following day, March 25, Lisa, in her prized black 1988 Honda CRXSI with the distinctive personalized ”LIL MISS” license plate, left for home. She planned to drive the nearly five hundred miles to Cody, Wyoming, where she would spend the night with her boyfriend, Ed Jaroch. The following day, the two planned to drive the one-hundred miles to the Kimmell home in Billings.

Lisa called Ed at 4:30 p.m., saying she planned to leave Denver in about half-an-hour and anticipated arriving in Cody around midnight. The weather was nice and there were no more major road construction projects that were likely to have delayed her.

Ed fell asleep waiting for Lisa. When he awoke at 7:00 the following morning, she had still not arrived.

Ed Jaroch

Lisa’s Boyfriend

Ed contacted the Highway Patrol in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. The Wyoming Highway Patrol informed him Lisa had been stopped for speeding along Interstate 25 near Douglas, approximately sixty miles south of Casper, at 9:06 p.m. on March 25. A recording made by Patrolman Alan Lesco and the signature on the ticket verified the driver was Lisa Kimmell.

This incident was the last confirmed sighting of Lisa and showed she was on schedule four-and-a-half hours after leaving Denver. A reported sighting of her inside a Casper grocery store shortly after 10:00 p.m. could not be confirmed.

Stopped For Speeding

Patrolman Lesco had clocked Lisa doing eighty-eight-miles-per-hour. He considered arresting her for going so egregiously over the speed limit, but he decided to give her a break, letting her go with a fine and a stern warning.

It was a decision that would forever haunt him.

Patrolman Alan Lesco

Wyoming Highway Patrol

Eight days later, fisherman Greg Bradford discovered Lisa’s body in the Platte River beneath a highway.  The frigid temperatures had slowed decomposition.

An autopsy found Lisa had been beaten with a blunt object, repeatedly raped, and stabbed six times in the chest and abdomen before being thrown into the river. Natrona County Coroner James Thorpen described the manner in which she was killed as “bizarre torture.”

Lisa’s Body Is Found

A quarter-of-a-mile away, on the Old Government Bridge, police found blood which was identified as the same type as Lisa’s.

Several Casper residents reported seeing unusual lights coming from the little-used suspension bridge in the early morning hours of March 26, a few hours after Lisa was last seen. Based on these accounts of the unexplained activity on the bridge, police believed she was murdered early on the morning of March 26, roughly five hours after she had been stopped for speeding.

Because of the bridge’s remote location, police theorized the killer lived in the area.

Old Government Bridge

Casper, Wyoming

No significant leads surfaced in Lisa Kimmell’s murder until 2002, fourteen years later, when the CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) database matched DNA found on her body to that of fifty-seven-year-old Dale Eaton, incarcerated at the Englewood Federal Prison in Littleton, Colorado, on weapons and kidnapping charges.

Eaton had abducted a family at gunpoint in 1997 after he found them tending to their stalled car. He escaped shortly after his arrest but was quickly apprehended in the Shoshone National Forest. Found to be in possession of a weapon, Eaton’s crimes were elevated to the federal level, and he was required to submit a DNA sample.

Eaton had also earlier been charged with, but acquitted of, voluntary manslaughter in the death of his cellmate, Clay Palmer.

Dale Eaton

At the time of Lisa Kimmell’s murder, Eaton lived in Moneta, Wyoming, approximately seventy-five miles northwest of Casper and an hour’s drive from where she had been stopped for speeding. Police located the people who lived next door to him in 1988; they had seen Eaton digging a large hole on his property shortly after Lisa’s disappearance.

An excavation of Eaton’s property yielded Lisa’s buried car.

Lisa’s Car

After Fourteen Years Underground

Authorities theorize Eaton spotted Lisa at a rest stop near Casper where he abducted her. Joseph Dax, a fellow inmate in Littleton at the time of Eaton’s arrest, said he told him Lisa gave him a ride during which he made sexual advances toward her. When she rebuffed him and ordered him out of her car, an irate Eaton overpowered her and kidnapped her.

In contrast to their initial belief that Lisa was killed during the early morning hours of March 26, investigators now believe Eaton took her to his home and held her captive for six days, during which he repeatedly raped and tortured her before murdering her and dumping her body in the Platte River.

Eaton Angered At Being Rebuffed

Dale Eaton was charged with eight crimes, including first-degree premeditated murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, and first-degree sexual assault.

In March 2004, he was convicted of all charges and sentenced to death.

Convicted And Sentenced

Eaton’s property was awarded to Ron and Sheila Kimmell in a $5 million wrongful death civil lawsuit. On July 16, 2005, on what would have been Lisa’s thirty-sixth birthday, they had the buildings burned.

Civil Judgement Granted

Eaton, the only Wyoming inmate on death row, was scheduled to be executed in February 2010, but he was granted a stay in December 2009. In 2014, his death was again delayed after a judge determined he had not received adequate defense at his trial. His new defense attorneys brought a new series of appeals seeking to prohibit him from being resentenced to death.

In May 2020, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear Eaton’s case and remanded it back to Natrona County. Wyoming prosecutors initially argued the death sentence should be re-imposed, but Eaton’s life was again spared.

On March 25, 2022, exactly thirty-four years after the last confirmed sighting of Lisa Kimmell, Dale Eaton was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Now seventy-nine-years-old, he is incarcerated at the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution near Torrington.

Eaton’s Life Is Spared

Eaton disposed of Lisa’s body in a popular fishing area and kept her car as a trophy of his killing. Profilers say such actions are indicative of a serial killer and this led investigators to suspect him of more murders.

Eaton is a suspect in the Great Basin Murders, a series of unsolved murders occurring in the Pacific Northwest between 1983 and 1997.

Eaton May Be A Serial Killer

Twenty-four-year-old Amy Bechtel disappeared while jogging in the Wind River Mountains approximately fifteen miles south of Lander, Wyoming, on July 24, 1997.

Lander is nearly seventy miles southwest of Moneta, where Eaton lived, but it has been established that he was in the Lander area around that time and has been named a suspect in Amy’s disappearance.

Amy Bechtel

Investigators are certain Dale Eaton murdered Lisa Kimmel. Lingering questions, however, still bother them.

Thousands of sightings of Lisa’s car, easily recognizable because of the distinctive “LIL MISS” license plates, were reported in the days after police believed she had either been murdered or was being held captive. The sightings, many of which were from law enforcement officers, came from several northwest states as well as Canada, but there was no pattern to them.

None of the witnesses said the woman driving the car with the LIL MISS license plate showed any sign that she was in trouble.

Questions Still Remain

Several people claim they had seen Lisa in the company of a man who did not resemble Dale Eaton. Multiple composites were made of the man, but they showed few similarities.

Police believe Lisa was held captive from March 26 until several hours before her body was discovered on April 2. Three of the sightings deemed the most reliable, however,     occurred on March 26 and 27, during the time police believed she was imprisoned at Eaton’s home.

At approximately noon on March 26, roughly ten hours after Lisa was presumed being held by Eaton, a young woman resembling her was seen driving in Buffalo, Wyoming, approximately one-hundred-fifteen miles north of where her body was found near Casper and one-hundred-eighty miles east of Ed’s home in Cody. Donna Kirkpatrick, wife of the Johnson County Sheriff, recalled the car’s LIL MISS license plates and that the lone occupant was a young woman wearing a pink sweater. After seeing a picture of Lisa, Donna was certain it was she who had been driving the car.

Two hours later, a gas attendant in Buffalo reported seeing the car with the LIL MISS license plate, also being driven by a woman resembling Lisa. This time, however, she was accompanied by a man who did not resemble Eaton. The attendant said the male companion was small, one-hundred-thirty-five to one-hundred-forty pounds, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a nice complexion.

A composite drawing of the man based on the attendant’s description was made. He has never been identified.

Was This Man With Lisa?

On the following day, March 27, Diana Houston was driving in downtown Casper, over one-hundred miles from Buffalo but only about twenty miles from where Lisa’s body would be found six days later. She reported seeing a car with the LIL MISS license plate being driven by a woman resembling Lisa around 1:45 p.m.

This time, the woman was wearing a yellow sweater and was alone.

Were The Sightings Of Lisa?

Lisa’s parents and friends are not sure if she owned either a pink or yellow sweater. Patrolman Lesco, the last confirmed person to see her, remembered she was wearing a black and white sweater.

If these sightings were of Lisa, they raise several questions:

• If she were captive on March 26, who was the woman resembling
her seen driving what is thought to be her car in Casper and Buffalo?
• If it was Lisa who was driving the car on March 26, and she was not
under any duress, why was she in Buffalo, more than two hours off the
course of her planned route?
• If she were alive and not captive during those days, why hadn’t she arrived at her
boyfriend’s or her parents’ home?
• If she were in jeopardy, why had she not signaled for help?

Investigators have not been able to answer these questions other than by inferring that all the sightings were of another girl resembling Lisa Kimmell.

 

Is There More To The Story?

At the time of her murder, Lisa was working in Denver but her car still had Montana license plates.

I believe people from different states, both today and in 1988, can have the same vanity license plate, i.e. a resident of Colorado, Wyoming, etc. could also have had a LIL MISS license plate. Many people who reported seeing the LIL MISS license plate in the days after Lisa was believed to have either already been murdered or was being held captive were certain they were Montana plates, but the only explanation I can think of is that they were from another state.

Another Lil Miss?

Another lingering question surrounds a note found on Lisa’s gravesite on November 13,1988, six months after her murder. It was singed “Stringfellow Hawke,” a character from the short-lived television series Airwolf, about a withdrawn pilot who lives in a remote cabin and uses a secret military helicopter to search for his missing brother.

The letter’s author has never been identified.

Who Left The Note?

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8701970/lisa-marie-kimmell

SOURCES:

• Billings Gazette
• Casper Star Tribune
• Denver Post
• Great Falls Tribune
• Unsolved Mysteries