Overview of Nancy Moyer
A young mother disappears from her home, leaving behind her purse, keys, car parked in the driveway, and the front door left ajar. Nancy Kareen (Hedlund) Moyer was born November 22, 1972, in Olympia, WA where she grew up. She attended College at Central Washington University majoring in accounting. While she was interning with an agriculture company, she met Bill Moyer. Soon after her college graduation in 1996, they married. Nancy was 24 years old.
They soon had two daughters, Amanda and Samantha (Sam). Though they grew apart and separated in 2007, she and Bill remained friends and had a good co-parenting arrangement for their girls. Everyone describes Nancy as bubbly, upbeat, a social butterfly, sweet, and she loved to laugh.
The day Nancy went missing
Friday, March 6, 2009, was a typical Friday for Nancy. It was the end of a long week at work with the Department of Ecology in Lacey, Washington, and she was ready to go home. She routinely carpooled with a co-worker, Matthew, and they left work in her car roughly about 5:15pm. She dropped him off at home which was roughly about 5 miles from work. Nancy continued on to the grocery store near home, approximately another 13-mile drive. There she picked up a quick dinner, wine & cigarettes. Her check indicated the purchase was at 6:45 pm. She arrives home located less than 2 miles from the store where a Tenino police officer was stationed at the corner running radar. The officer states sometime between 9 pm and 9:30 pm he witnessed a woman he believed was Nancy entering her home alone with some bags. It is not known if the time he stated was incorrect or if Nancy made another stop before she arrived home. Unfortunately, the officer would be the last known person to see Nancy alive.
Nancy is discovered to be missing
Late Sunday afternoon, March 8, 2009, was a routine Sunday for Bill Moyer. He and the girls drove to Nancy’s house after spending his weekend with them. Bill was surprised to find the door open and no sign of her inside despite her car being in the driveway. They waited a bit noticing the lights and TV were on, a glass of red wine was on the coffee table and the car parked out front. He took the girls back to his place when Nancy didn’t return home shortly.
Bill returned a bit later and she was still not there. Upon realizing her purse with her wallet, ID and credit cards as well as her keys were in the house, he contacted the police to file a missing person report.
Bill has been ruled out as a person of interest early on and he also took a polygraph test to contribute to his cooperation with the investigation. Nancy’s family stands by Bill and neither believe Nancy would leave intentionally without her children.
The investigation
The detectives who investigated the home determined that there was no sign of forced entry, no evidence that pointed to a struggle, nor anything specifically indicating another person was there that evening. Her cigarettes and lighter were sitting at her chair on the porch where she routinely sat to smoke.
Further investigation by detectives revealed the spike in Nancy’s utility bill the night she disappeared, a result in her door being left open. This narrowed the window of Nancy’s disappearance to late Friday night or in the very early hours of Saturday morning due to the electricity use peaking around midnight as the temperatures outside dropped.
An answering machine held a message mentioning a date. The man in the message turned out to be a co-worker who was then interviewed by police. He claimed he had an intimate encounter with Nancy and that on the night in question he saw the door open and went in to look for Nancy. He’d never been to her house before and oddly states though he touched the door, he left it open as he found it when he exited the house.
Neighbors also were eventually interviewed. They reported that around midnight Friday they had heard a woman’s voice say “Hurry up” and a car door shut. They didn’t think too much of it and went back to sleep.
Friends, family and co-workers searched for months. A few leads that came in including another murder case investigators thought could possibly be connected. In 2010, a woman named Vanda Boone was murdered by a man named Bernard Howell. He was arrested with her body in the back of a truck after a witness reported seeing him acting oddly along a trail near town in Tenino. He left the area driving toward town and was eventually pulled over and Vanda was discovered. Bernard Howell was a door to door meat salesman and Nancy’s daughter Sam remembers her mom buying a small amount of chicken and seafood from him. Nothing else. However, investigators did find the same brand of steaks in the freezer. Family mentioned the amount of meat was unusual as Nancy did not typically keep much in the house. However, there have been no other links to Howell and no charges ever filed against him regarding Nancy’s case.
The case stalled for several years with only a few leads and no answers.
Then, in 2018, James Basinger began a podcast, Hide and Seek, and started researching Nancy’s case. During this same timeframe, Eric L. Roberts phones in to 911 claiming to have killed Nancy and was tired of holding it inside.
Interviews with Roberts by investigators and James Basinger reveal supposed details of the murder. However, he recants and eventually charges are dropped. To this day, he has not been re-charged for Nancy’s murder, nor has anyone else. He remains a person of interest.
Where the case is today
Since 2019, a few sets of human remains were discovered in areas not far fromTenino and each time Nancy’s family hoped each time they would be able to bring Nancy home. Unfortunately, Nancy remains missing to this day. Nancy is a 36 year old, petite, caucasian woman with dark brown hair and brown eyes. At the time of her disappearance. She had both ears and her navel pierced along with the following tattoos: an armband with stars, hearts and flowers on her right upper arm, a butterfly on her lower back, the words "Doublemint" and "Juicyfruit" with flowers and hearts on her upper back, a hibiscus flower on her left hip, a Playboy bunny on her right hip, and cherries with the initials A.S. on her right foot. There is currently a $30,000 reward for anyone with information leading to Nancy’s return.
