I missed this one!!

[MelissaLynn]

I live in Moscow, Idaho, and on August 7 there was a segment on the show about Wil Hendrick, a theater student from the University. I missed it! Could somebody tell me the details from it? Thanks!

[everybodylovesrs]

Details: Wil Hendrick was a well-liked student at the University of Idaho. On January 10, 1999, he vanished while attending his friend Katie Payne's party. Rumors started that he might have been killed for being gay, by people he had confronted earlier that night at another party. The next night, his car was found parked outside Katie's home and gone by the next day. It was later found parked downtown and unlocked with his portfolio suspiciously left behind inside it. There were no signs of foul play. His friend, Kathy Sprague, thought he had left town for a new life, but his partner, Jerry Schultz, believed something more sinister. Little evidence has been found to suggest what happened to him.

Suspects: Jerry believes Wil's disappearance could be tied to a shuttle driver who hurled a racial slur at him. This man started driving a refrigerated truck and was heading to Lewiston at the time of Wil's disappearance. No other suspects have ever been identified.

Extra Notes: This case originally ran on the August 7, 2001 episode.

Results: Unresolved. On September 7, 2002, two hunters found Wil's remains dumped in a rural area near Moscow, Idaho. The police still believe his attacker was someone he knew, but no one has ever been arrested in the murder.

[everybodylovesrs]

"UI theater student's body was found three and a half years after he disappeared 10 years ago.

By Joel Mills
November 3, 2008

Editor's note: This story is part of an ongoing series about unsolved murder cases.

MOSCOW - This January will mark 10 years.

Ten years since their son vanished. Ten years of unanswered questions and dead-end leads. Ten years of heartache.

"You always say 'If somebody ever did anything to my kid, I'd kill 'em,' " Keith Hendrick says when discussing the murder of his son Wil. "We've all said that. But when the time comes, the hurt is so great, you don't even think about that."

Wil Hendrick was a 25-year-old University of Idaho theater student when he disappeared in January 1999. He was classified as a missing person until his skull and jawbone were found by hunters three and a half years later in eastern Latah County.

Investigators developed several suspects in 1999. But without a body or a crime scene, the trail quickly went cold, says Moscow Police Chief Daniel Weaver.

"The most critical part of a case is the first 48 hours," Weaver says while recapping the case over a cup of coffee in the police department conference room. "After that, evidence starts to deteriorate and dissipate."

So the investigation into Hendrick's disappearance started the way most missing persons cases do: interviews with the people who saw him last.

"It was a cold morning on Jan. 10, 1999," Weaver recalls. "I was at the station for some reason, probably to pick something up. I was just heading out the door when Jerry Schutz came in. He said 'hey, my partner is missing.' "

Hendrick had been at a party the night before at an apartment on C Street. But Schutz said he never made it back to their home in a trailer court just north of town.

Schutz was worried that Hendrick had gotten drunk, cut across some fields and fallen in a ditch, Weaver says.

Schutz and some friends spent the day looking for Hendrick, along with police and sheriff's deputies. Hendrick's car was found about a day later, parked near Friendship Square in downtown Moscow with the keys left in the console.

"We went through the car, and found nothing unusual," Weaver says.

Interviews with people at the party raised some questions, but ultimately led to the first set of dead ends.

"There was some activity that you could say was maybe somewhat suspicious, but not out of the ordinary at a party," Weaver says.

Hendrick had apparently gotten intoxicated and into a "heated conversation" with some people there, he says. But interviews and polygraph tests of those people, plus searches of their homes, turned up nothing.

Other people at the party remember Hendrick's car parked out front. They also reported hearing a car, possibly Hendrick's, leaving the party at a high rate of speed, throwing gravel in its wake, Weaver says.

Another early suspect was the man who lived below the party. He told police he was asleep when Hendrick wandered into his apartment, "mumbling and talking tough," Weaver says.

"As strange as that would sound to many people, it's not uncommon," he says of drunks stumbling into the wrong home.

Hendrick was tall and was known as a person who liked to fight, and was good at it, Weaver says. But the man told police that he simply turned Hendrick around and sent him out the front door. A search of the apartment turned up no physical evidence, and the man wasn't pursued as a suspect.

But it turned out that he was the last person interviewed by police who saw Hendrick alive.

The next couple of years were filled with hundreds of tips and reported sightings nationwide, including Florida and Las Vegas. The national press latched onto the story because Hendrick was gay, and he disappeared about a year after Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in Wyoming because he was gay.

Keith Hendrick, 72, says he just doesn't know if his son's sexual orientation played into his death. But he adds that Moscow is generally a gay-friendly town.

"(Wil) really liked Moscow," Keith Hendrick says. "A number of people from the gay community showed up to help with the search."

One of Hendrick's friends says the Moscow gay community was put on edge by his disappearance.

"There was certainly fear," says Katherine Sprague, owner of the Safari Pearl comic book store. "There was a lot of disbelief, and a lot of uncertainty. And there was an awful lot of speculation."

Latah County Sheriff Wayne Rausch, who was a detective in the sheriff's office in 1999, developed perhaps the most solid lead in the case to date.

It centers around a truck driver who lived in the same trailer court as Hendrick and Schutz.

"Nothing about what this guy did or said ever really made any sense," Rausch says.

Rausch got a tip from a woman he knows that the truck driver called and told her that he wanted to get his things out of his trailer, and that he was leaving town for Florida. Hendrick would sometimes crash at the man's house when he was out late so he wouldn't have to come home and get into a fight with Schutz, Rausch says.

So when he found out the man suddenly wanted to leave town, Rausch took notice.

"It was highly suspicious activity," he says. "Unfortunately, there wasn't enough information for us to ever really compel him to come in and do an official interrogation. I was very, very frustrated over the fact that I couldn't do anything more with it."

Weaver says the man was tracked down in Florida, but he never cooperated with the investigation. His trailer was searched, but no evidence was found.

"Could he have done it? Sure," Weaver says. But with no definitive evidence, that suspect couldn't be further pursued, he adds.

Rausch says the man could be the one that got away.

"To this day, I still believe that if he wasn't specifically involved in it himself, he knows who was."

Weaver says he hopes a little more public attention to the case will finally help shake something loose.

"Obviously, somebody out there knows something. We're hoping that one of those folks will come forward and give us some information to solve it. It's an open case and will remain so until it's solved.

Moscow police Detective Dave Lehmitz agrees. "The majority of the time, that's how these cases are solved. Someone comes forward."

Each new detective who joins the department reviews the case, says Assistant Chief David Duke, and it is regularly sent off to homicide investigation schools for examination. The hope is that each new set of eyes increases the chance that something missed will be found.

Duke has also been in touch with a group of detectives in California who are starting a cold case organization that can review the Hendrick case, he says.

But Keith Hendrick, a law enforcement officer himself for 38 years, says he understands that not all homicide investigations are slam dunks.

"Most officers have a case like that, that sticks in your craw because you couldn't solve it," he says. "You just have to have something to work with."

Weaver says the Hendrick case does that to him.

"It's one of the most frustrating things that agencies experience, when they have a case, especially a major case, that they can't solve."

The coming holiday season is tough, not because it's the time when Hendrick disappeared, but because his birthday was Christmas Eve, Keith Hendrick says. He and Wil's mother, Leslie Hendrick, tend to mark that day, and the day his remains were found.

And while he says he isn't vindictive over the fact that his son's killer hasn't been brought to justice, Keith Hendrick worries that the person is free to hurt others.

"A lot of people that kill somebody and get away with it, they'll kill another one or two in their lifetime," he says. "We know the good Lord will take care of this one, but we'd like to get him caught so he doesn't do any more."



Lewiston Morning Tribune Nov 3, 2008"

http://www.myspace.com/airjer64/blog/445975094

[Dwayne_bl]

Hey all, I'm trying to find the UM episode where an elderly man was killed and they did not know his identity. They displayed the face of the dead body at the end of the segment in an attempt to identify him. It later turned out he was killed by a woman caretaker or something along those lines.

Any help would be appreciated..

[Kane]

Originally Posted by Dwayne_bl

Hey all, I'm trying to find the UM episode where an elderly man was killed and they did not know his identity. They displayed the face of the dead body at the end of the segment in an attempt to identify him. It later turned out he was killed by a woman caretaker or something along those lines.

Any help would be appreciated..

He was identified as Jasper 'Jack' Watkins. His caretaker, Nancy Jean Siegel was convicted of second-degree murder in the case.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/md/Publi...eftScheme.html

[1990 UM fan]

Originally Posted by Kane

He was identified as Jasper 'Jack' Watkins. His caretaker, Nancy Jean Siegel was convicted of second-degree murder in the case.

http://www.justice.gov/usao/md/Publi...eftScheme.html

aka, the scariest episode ever