Hey there. I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all, true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast crime story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda Teacher's Pet Bone Valley. The list goes on to for the Insider Scoop, find crime story in your podcast app.

A word of warning the following podcast contains descriptions of murder and sexual violence, which some listeners may find disturbing. We all hold particular memories of our mothers for many of us, especially if we cast our mind back to when we were little and dependent. We think of our mother at home, in her favorite room perhaps, or partaking in her favorite activity. Home can simply be a series of scenes featuring our parents through the ages. For Sam Moyer, when she thinks of her mother, Nancy, she imagines her smoking on the porch of her home in ten Ino, Washington. She remembers her enjoying a glass of wine in the kitchen. She remembers the feeling of her mother's arms wrapped around her after she'd crawled into her bed. But she also remembers the day in March 2009 when she arrived at the house with her father and sister. And Nancy wasn't home. Her cigarettes were in their usual spot on the porch. Her wine glass was on the living room coffee table. The front door was ajar, and Nancy Moyer was nowhere to be seen. 15 years later, Sam is still searching for her. I'm Ashley Loeb Blasingame, and you're listening to the Missing a what's the story original podcast series.

This episode and all the episodes in the United States and Canada are brought to you with the help of the Doe Network, a not for profit volunteer organization dedicated to returning the missing to their families and giving the names back to the unidentified. And with them, we've set up a simple way for you to share any tips, ideas, leads, or information which can be passed to the relevant authorities. They believe that all of the cases in this series could still be solved. This is the missing Nancy Moyer.

So I grew up in Rochester, Washington with them and in Washington. I don't know if you've heard of Twilight before, but Forks is in Washington, so the environment is exactly like that. It's raining and cold and wet.

Nancy was well known in the small town, which was home to less than 3000 people.

I didn't hear anyone say anything bad about her, just because she was so friendly and she was kind and she had such a good heart that she got along with anyone that she spoke to and found common interest with them.

Nancy was a warm, fun loving person, and her bond with Sam was a deep one.

I was super close with my mom. I loved her and wanted to spend all my time with her. I still shared my bed with her when I was nine years older. I guess I shared her bed, but, yeah, we were really close.

After a decade together, Nancy's relationship with Sam's father Bill came to an end. But the pair remained on very good terms.

They separated when I was, like, either six or seven years old. It wasn't that hard for me just because I was so young. I just didn't really, like, understand it. I was just going with the flow, like, okay, cool, we're in separate houses now. Parents aren't together. I didn't think of it as a big emotional thing. It was a really amicable split. My mom had started sleeping on the couch for a little bit, and I assume that's just like she was saving up money to find her rental house.

Sam's parents had first met at a garden nursery, which grows plants for wholesale.

And so she was an intern for the nursery. And so I think she had a passion for nature and ecology and whatnot. They specialized in rhododendrons, and so we always had a bunch of, like, big, bushy, really pretty plants outside.

Nancy's passion for nature eventually led her to a job in the state department in the city of Lacey, about a 25 minutes drive from ten. I know where she lived.

She was a fiscal analyst for the Department of ecology. She was the accountant for that department. She was really good with numbers, is what I heard.

Nancy and Bill shared custody of the kids, and before long, they became well used to their routine.

The way that they split the days up was Sunday evening through Thursday morning, my mom would have us, and Thursday night to Sunday morning or Sunday evening, I guess my dad would have us.

As far as Sam was concerned, life was good. Her parents didn't fight or bicker over them. They wanted her and her older sister Amanda to be happy. And they were.

My mom used to have one of those VHS recorders, like a video camera that turned your video into a VHS. And I would go around the house and make, like, home videos and be goofy. And I actually took a tour of our house and showed off our cats. And I brought that to school once for show and tell.

Then late one Sunday afternoon in March 2009, everything changed.

Yeah. So the last day that I would have seen her would have been Thursday when she drove us to the bus stop to drop us off. I do remember my mom was not in the best of mental health. And so around the time that she went missing, we weren't seeing her as often. She was hanging out in her room, sleeping a lot.

Sam and Amanda got ready to go to their mom's house. As per their usual routine. Sam packed some circus peanuts, a marshmallow candy that both she and Nancy loved. She had saved the last few in the bag for her mother.

So I remember my dad was trying to call my mom earlier that day because he needed to figure out, like, a payment situation for our daycare. But he couldn't get a hold of her, and so he was like, okay, we'll just have to do it when I drop you off.

Sam and her family drove the short distance to Nancy's house. When they pulled up outside, something was immediately amiss. The front door was wide open, and.

We were like, okay, that's weird. But we assumed, like, her cigarettes were in her chair outside. Maybe she had just ran back inside to use the bathroom and didn't shut the door because she was running right back out or something. But we go inside the house and start calling for her, but she's nothing anywhere. And we go out the back door and start looking around and can't find her anywhere. But when we were inside, we saw her purse and her keys and everything. So she has to be around somewhere. So she's probably just taking a walk, because she took walks sometimes and, you know, forget the open door. Maybe it was an accident.

The front door aside, Nancy's house was otherwise undisturbed. There was nothing valuable missing, no sign of a struggle or forced entry. However, the lights were on, as was the television in the sitting room, where the empty wine glass and a mug also sat on the coffee table. If Nancy had left of her own accord, then surely she'd have switched off the tv or the lights.

It was kind of like a small neighborhood. There was a gas station right by our house. She could have just been running there for some reason, but I don't remember how long we were there. I can assume it was, like, half an hour. And we didn't find her, so we went back. We said, okay, she'll come back. We'll just go back later. And so I don't remember how long we waited in between, but we went back two other times.

But there was still no sign of Nancy anywhere. Sam left the bag of circus peanuts on Nancy's coffee table next to the unfinished glass of wine so that she could enjoy them once she returned.

The last time had to be around eight or 09:00. And each time, nothing had changed. She just wasn't showing up. And we called her name every time we came back, and nothing. I could tell that my dad was stressing out or getting a little worried.

Sam was just nine years old at the time, and the whole devastating experience forced her to grow up very fast.

I never even knew that people could go missing. I didn't know that bad things happened to people. I couldn't fathom that my mom would just disappear. So I wasn't actually worried too much for her. But I could tell that my dad was getting different.

That night, Bill phoned up several of Nancy's friends to check if any of them had heard from her, but none had. Bill telephoned the police and reported her missing.

So I don't really remember what happened. When we got back from my mom's house, I'm pretty sure we kind of just went to bed. But I do remember the next morning going to school and telling a bunch of my friends about it, and they were all weirded out, and they're like, well, I'm sure you'll find her. I'm sure she'll turn up.

Bill did everything he could to shield what was happening from his daughters, particularly in those first few days. If Nancy suddenly turned up safe and sound, he didn't want to stress them out unnecessarily.

It's only been a day. We're all in third grade. We don't know what's going on. And that's when we started hanging around family a lot more. We were close with family, and we would hang out with them on holidays and stuff, but we were definitely seeing them a lot more. And that's kind of what I noticed.

But while the kids played carefree and ignorant as to what was truly going on, the adults were having some very serious conversations. Nancy wasn't the kind of person to up and leave without telling anyone. She had no history of going missing, no unexplained absences from work. When it came to her kids, she'd never missed a pickup or a drop off. Every Thursday, she was there to meet her daughters at the front door like clockwork.

I mean, it was 100% out of character for her.

Thurston county police searched Nancy's home. Then they began speaking to her family, friends, and colleagues, and they slowly began to piece together Nancy's last known movements.

So Thursday, she dropped us off. And then she had Thursday night to herself, which I don't think she did anything. I haven't heard anything about that day. Friday, she carpooled to work with her friend Matthew.

Nancy left the Department of ecology at around 515 pm on March 6, accompanied by Matthew Vandrush.

So I remember my mom. She told her co worker that night that she was just gonna have a relaxed weekend in and unplug the phone and hang out.

Nancy dropped Matthew off at his home. Her next stop was the thriftway market. There she purchased cigarettes, two bottles of wine, and a microwave dinner. This was confirmed by a receipt later found in the home.

But the grocery store was only, like, a five minute drive from her house, and there was a cop running radar on the road in front of her house.

The officer in question was monitoring drivers on the road in front of Nancy's house, which was just off a major highway where speeding was a common occurrence.

That said he saw her come out of her car around nine or 930. But I'm pretty sure the receipt at the grocery store was six or 630. So there's, like, a three hour time difference, which we've never figured out.

This unaccounted for window has always puzzled investigators. Where did Nancy go during this time? Did she meet anyone? There had been a second glass found next to Nancy's wine glass in the sitting room, albeit unused. But the only fingerprints found on either belonged to Nancy. Sam, for her part, thinks the simplest explanation is probably the most likely one.

I haven't heard any good reason other than that the cop was wrong about the time. That's the only thing that I could think of.

Whether it was at 06:30 p.m. or 09:00 p.m. the officer in question said he saw Nancy unloading her groceries from the car before entering the house alone.

There was a spike in the heating that night because it was winter time and there was snow outside, so the heat spiked around, I think they said, 1130 that night, and that's when they assumed that she went missing, because the heat never turned off after that, and the door was open from Friday to Sunday.

Detectives discovered this by checking in with Nancy's utility company. They also spoke to her neighbors, one of whom recalled being stirred awake by a female voice in the early hours of the morning, and they were able to make out a few words.

Hurry up. Get in the car. Around. I don't remember what time they said, whether it was midnight. One, two. It was in the middle of the night, and they had just assumed that it was her trying to get me or my sister to the hospital or, you know, like an emergency type of situation because the boy sounded like they were in a rush and trying to hurry this person. But that's what happened that night.

They also reported hearing a door slam, a car engine starting, and a vehicle driving away. It couldn't have been Nancy's car. They heard hers was still parked in the driveway. The fact that the heat spiked just after 09:00 p.m. on Friday was a significant discovery. This information, coupled with the neighbor's testimony, allowed the police to narrow the window of Nancy's disappearance to somewhere between 09:00 p.m. on Friday. And when the voice was heard near her home in the early hours of Saturday morning. The first person of interest the police identified came as a result of a message left on Nancy's answering machine. It was left by a co worker of Nancy's. He had phoned her house four times that weekend. I leaving two messages. When police spoke to him, he said that he and Nancy had arranged to go on a date on the evening of March 6. Interviews with Nancy's coworkers confirmed that she did indeed have a date that weekend. It was to be their second date, their first having occurred a few weeks prior. The police also learned that Nancy's colleagues had searched online for her home address. And what's more, that after she didn't return his calls, he had visited her home on the 7th, the Saturday.

So he told detectives that he had googled her address because he had never been there before and then showed up and saw that the door was ajar. So he let himself in and walked around, and when he couldn't find her, he left. But since the door was already ajar, he just left it open. And then he just left and came back for work on Monday.

The police ultimately decided that there wasn't any evidence pointing blame for Nancy's disappearance at her co worker, who has since passed away. That, however, doesn't diminish Sam's discomfort at his story.

I just think it's gross that he would even think to try to find where she lives, especially as just a co worker that you're supposed to go on a date with. Like, I don't think they worked in the same department, so it's not like they were friends before this or anything. I just think it's really weird and creepy and just unsettling for someone to do that and to leave the door ajar and not think to contact anyone because of the weird circumstances. Like, as a kid, I didn't think it was that weird. But as an adult, that's crazy weird. And it's even weirder that you're there in the first place.

Hey there. I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all, true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast crime story comes in. Every week, I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda Teacher's pet Bone Valley. The list goes on for the Insider scoop. Find crime story in your podcast app.

Less than a week after Nancy's disappearance, an award of $55,000 was put for any information that led to her being found, and the family began speaking to the media to raise awareness about Nancy's case.

They did a bunch of news interviews. We passed out flyers everywhere. I remember, I think it was my dad, my sister, and there was somebody else in the car. It might have been my grandfather or an uncle or something. But we were just driving to every location we could and asking them if we could put a flyer in their window.

A week later, the first of many community searches took place, which saw volunteers, Nancy's friends and family amongst them, search the area around her home. Leading the charge was a woman named Bev, a colleague and close friend of.

Nancy's, and my mom said co worker was running a bunch of search parties. We were never allowed to go to the search parties, but I know that there were hundreds of them done and that those people searched everywhere they could.

Sadly, the searches never turned up anything of value to the case. In the course of speaking to the people who had last seen Nancy, coworkers, neighbors, family, the police spoke to Sam and her sister. For two young girls, this was an understandably odd experience.

I didn't know how to process it. I also didn't know if this was, like, a normal thing that a lot of people did or it was just interesting, I guess. But he took our DNA samples, which I thought was weird. I didn't know why he really, like, I couldn't have figure out why he needed them. I knew that it was to find my mom, but I was like, why do you need a piece of my hair? Me to spit on this Q tip?

Sam's next meaningful encounter with the detectives in charge of the case came over a year later when she was asked to take a look at some photos.

He brought a picture, and it was just a bunch. It looked like a yearbook page. Basically, it was just a bunch of men on this page, and he wanted me to point out if any of them looked familiar. I don't remember if he did this with my sister, but I pointed out the first one, and that was Bernard Howell.

Bernard Howell was a 26 year old door to door meat salesman who operated in the area. On the night of August 10, 2010, over a year and a half after Nancy first went missing, a woman out walking her dog along a hiking trail spotted him acting strangely just off a path near the 507 highway in Tenaino. Bernard Howell's truck was parked near an access point to the trail, and the dog walker witnessed him going back and forth from the woods to his vehicle. She got home and told her husband about the suspicious man she'd witnessed. He drove past the area to observe that the man and his truck were still there and wrote down the license plate number. Later that night, Bernard Howell approached a man in a pickup truck and asked him if he could help him move a body. The stranger declined and flagged down a passing police officer. He pointed out the truck, which was now driving away, but was promptly pulled over. In the passenger seat of Bernard Howell's truck, he made a grim discovery. It was the body of a woman wrapped up in a sleeping bag and plastic sheets.

It wasn't Nancy. The woman in question was a 60 year old massage therapist named Vonda Boone, whom he attacked and killed after meeting her on the Yelm Tenino trailhead. Bernard Howell eventually pled guilty to her murder and is currently serving a 27 year prison sentence. Why were the detectives investigating Nancy's disappearance interested in Howell? Nancy had met him before.

So he is the meat salesman that sold my mom meet one time.

Sam remembers Bernard Howell visiting Nancy's home.

But I had only seen him the one time when he stopped at our place. I'm pretty sure my mom was out smoking, and so I was out in the yard playing, and he came up to us. I didn't really know how to pick up on people's energy when I was younger.

But even then, Sam felt that this wasn't a good guy, kind of shady. She pointed at his picture for detectives to see.

They took the piece of paper away and were like, okay, that was very helpful. Thank you. So I'd given them what they wanted, I think.

Ultimately, though, the authorities were unable to find any evidence connecting Bernard Howell with Nancy's disappearance. Given her young age when it happened, it took Sam time to even begin to process her mother's disappearance, it was not immediate.

It took about three months for me to figure things out. I had a breakdown on the playground to one of my friends, and I just remember telling her, I was like, it's been three months. There's no way that she's coming back. Like, she's been gone this long. There's no way. And, you know, she tried to reassure me, but we're again in third grade, and there's only so much you can do. And she was just as clueless as I was, as everybody else was. So, you know, it was after about three months that I realized that it was really bad. And I had set in my mind that no matter what anyone says, it's just not going to help because my mom is gone, and they're not going to be able to bring her back by saying words.

In 2013, with the investigation stuck in a holding pattern, a private detective began looking into Nancy's case on his own accord, but he failed to uncover any fresh leads. And then six years later, in 2019, a podcaster named James Basinger began looking into Nancy's disappearance for a podcast, which came to be known as hide and seek. Nancy's family was collaborating with the podcast, and during production, there was an unexpected development. On July 9, a man named Eric Roberts called 911 and confessed to Nancy's murder.

So Eric Roberts, Washington co worker of my mom's, and he was also a neighbor to my dad's house, which is the house that my mom and my dad had got together. And he was also the uncle of one of the men that my mom dated that was also a co worker. So he's very connected.

Eric worked at the department of ecology with Nancy. He lived just a few doors down from the house she and Bill previously shared. He had previously been interviewed by James for the podcast. He wasn't a person of interest. His admission of guilt came as a complete shock to almost everyone.

It felt out of the blue to me. I had never heard that he was a suspect, and I didn't really even. I never even heard of him, to be honest. We didn't really know our neighbors that well. But it was not an out of the blue or shocking thing to my mom's sister, who my mom had told her about Eric and my mom's sister, Sharon. She told detective Haller that he needs to look into this guy because my mom and had hung out with him before, and he just was a weird guy. My aunt just, he gave her weird energy, and so she said, you need to follow this guy, figure him out. He might have something to do with this. And Detective Howler had one conversation with him and cleared him. And so he was never looked at again until he confessed.

Eric Roberts told the police that he and Nancy had had a sexual relationship and that he had killed her on the bank of the nearby Chehalis river. But when pressed for a location for Nancy's body, he changed his story, saying he had actually murdered her in his home before strangling her with a scarf. It emerged that Eric Roberts had previously been arrested on suspicion of domestic violence toward his then girlfriend. Inconsistent as his story was, detectives took his confession seriously and arrested him on suspicion of second degree murder.

They tore apart his property, like, digging everywhere throughout, just going through his house and tearing everything apart as well. And there were things that they collected. I think there was a coat or a piece of a coat or something that they instantly had to get tested. And the things that were instantly tested, nothing came up. And the things that were eventually tested, that took a longer amount of time because they weren't priority. Nothing has come up.

During his second interview with the police, conducted after the search of his home, Eric Roberts made a sudden about face and recanted his confession, saying he had nothing to do with Nancy's disappearance.

He said that he was on these meds that were messing him up and that he had actually called 911 about a, like, stray dog that was on his property or something. I don't know. This guy's crazy. He just kept changing his story.

It had felt like they were so close to finding answers. And then, as so often happens in missing person cases, it fell flat. The lead disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived. These days, Sam is living in Arizona.

I moved in the summer of 2021, and so I'm about to get my own apartment, and I just got a new job, and everything is going great for me, so I'm really happy.

And as for the status of the investigation into Nancy's disappearance.

So the case has gone cold again, and the best detective ever has, unfortunately, but also, fortunately, gotten promoted. And so he's no longer on her case. And I'm not sure who the current detective or if they have a current detective on her case just because it's cold right now, and it's probably not a priority. So I just tell people that it's a cold case.

Nancy has now been missing for over 15 years, but Sam remains hopeful that the events of March 6, 2009, will eventually come to light.

I just want it solved. One of my friends I have a where's Nancy Moyer sticker on my car and she asked me about that and she just thought it was the funniest thing, how I was so nonchalant about explaining her story and I just had to tell her. Like, I've told this story so many times in interviews to friends, to people I've just met. Like, I can't really get emotional when telling the story unless someone asks me something that I've never heard before or makes me think about something that I haven't thought about.

The missing is a what's the story? Original podcast series. It's hosted by me, Ashley Loeb Glassingame, and this episode is made with the support of Doe Network. They're a non profit volunteer organization who are dedicated to returning the missing to their families and giving the names back to the unidentified. They believe this case is one which could be solved and it could take just one person to come forward with information. They've set up a dedicated email address where you can share tips, leads or information. Missing podcast tips@dohnetwork.org dot. You can also visit their website, www.dotnetwork.org, to find information on hundreds of unsolved missing persons cases. For more images and detail on this episode, you can visit www.themissingpodcast.org. all of this information and the ways to get in touch are in the show notes. This episode was produced and edited by Jack O'Kennedy, executive producers for what's the story? Are Daryl Brown and Sophie Ellis?

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