A small team of private investigators have begun looking into the suspicious disappearance of a Tenino woman that occurred four years ago in hopes of turning up new information about the case.
Nancy Moyer, a 36-year-old mother of two, was last seen on March 6, 2009. Two days later, her husband, Bill, from whom she was separated for the two years prior, arrived at her house to drop of their two daughters, who were 9 and 11 at the time.
He found her front door ajar, the TV turned on, and half a glass of red wine sitting on a table in the living room. Her car was parked in the driveway, and her purse, containing her credit cards, keys and wallet, were inside the house.
The police investigation revealed she was last seen buying groceries from Dave’s Thriftway in Tenino after she dropped off a co-worker, whom she carpooled with, from Lacey where they both worked at the state Department of Ecology.
Her disappearance was immediately labeled as suspicious by police, and detectives have been unable to uncover any substantial leads into what happened to her, said Detective Sgt. Ray Brady, from the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office.
A small team of private investigators, lead by Fred Doughty, an ex-cop and a defense criminal investigator, recently decided to re-examine the Moyer’s disappearance.
Doughty said he and two other investigators are working on the case pro bono. They have not yet been in contact with Moyer’s family.
“Our goal is to re-interview family members and all extended family,” he said.
The team, which is based out of Olympia, will be working side-by-side with the detective at the sheriff’s office in charge of the case, Doughty said.
Any new information they accumulate will be given directly to the detective at the sheriff’s office handling the case, he said.
“They are not in any means a part of, or affiliated with, the sheriff’s office,” Brady said. “But we are certainly collaborating with them.”
With cold cases such as this one, Brady said, they are willing to try whatever avenue possible that might turn up a lead.
Shortly after her disappearance, Moyer’s husband was cleared as a suspect and he has been very cooperative with the police’s investigation, Brady said.
Friends, co-workers and search and rescue teams, including K-9s, saturated the area in the weeks following her disappearance however they were unable to turn up any clues.
Moyer did not have any known medical, mental health or substance abuse problems. She also had never left unannounced in the past, and had no vacations planned.
A friend of Moyer’s created a website dedicated to spreading information about the case shortly after she went missing. The website has since been taken down.
Doughty said it was the strange circumstances about the case that interested him in it from the beginning. He said he had been considering looking at it for quite some time.
“These days law enforcement agencies are truly inundated,” Doughty said. “To me, it puts more boots on the ground. We can be helpful, and they know that.”
Brady also said convicted murderer Bernard Keith Howell is still considered a person of interest in Moyer’s disappearance.
Howell was sentenced to serve 26 years in prison after he was pulled over by police in August 2010 near Parkside Elementary School in Tenino with the dead body of a woman he later admitted to murdering in his pickup truck.
Brady said law enforcement’s suspicion of Howell’s involvement is solely based off of the details of his previous crime, but due to the trial and legal counsel, it has made it difficult for police to interview him about any possible involvement in Moyer’s disappearance.
