Cold Cases · Spotify Studios

Lewis Clark Valley Murders

June 19, 2023·43 min·2 clips

A fisherman finds garbage bags on the Snake River, and police recover body parts from six bags.

1. Cold Cases covers the Lewis-Clark Valley murders across Esotan, Washington, and Lewiston, Idaho. 2. Carter Roy hosts the show and frames the episode as a story of missing people and long-unsolved crimes. 3. The episode asks how five young people disappeared between 1979 and 1982 and why one man became the focus. 4. Christina White is 12 when she leaves the Esotan County Fair on her bike in April 1979. 5. Betty Wilkes lets Christina ride to a friend’s house, and Christina later calls home about heat stroke symptoms. 6. Chief Tom Pryor immediately launches a search because Christina is so young and Esotan is a tight-knit town. 7. Gary White arrives with a theory that someone from the county fair took Christina. 8. Gary and local man Jim Pope use a helicopter to search from above, then Gary follows the carnival 150 miles to Tri-Cities. 9. The search turns up no clear answer, and Christina’s disappearance goes cold. 10. Kristen David disappears on June 26, 1981, while biking from Moscow to Lewiston. 11. James Archibald reports seeing a blonde woman on the roadside near a van and a man who smiles at him. 12. When officers arrive, the woman, van, and bike are gone, and James is accused of making a false report. 13. A fisherman later finds Kristen David’s body in garbage bags on the Snake River on July 4. 14. Police recover six bags in total and identify the victim as Kristen David, a 22-year-old University of Idaho journalism major. 15. The episode says Kristen’s case draws in two states, three counties, and the FBI, but no suspect is identified. 16. Christina Nelson, Brandy Miller, and Steven Pearsall vanish on September 12, 1982, after leaving a note that they are going to the shop. 17. Detectives first suspect Steven because he knew Nelson and Brandy through the Lewiston Civic Theater, but his clarinet, car, and uncashed paychecks stay in town. 18. Investigators then focus on Frank Thompson, who worked at the theater and had access to Christina White’s friend’s house. 19. John Jeffers and later Jackie Nichols keep reopening the cases, while Gloria Boebertz sends Jackie research that leads the FBI to take over. 20. The episode uses interviews, case chronology, and documentary-style narration, and it will appeal most to true-crime listeners interested in cold-case investigations, but less to anyone avoiding graphic violence or unresolved stories.

As heard by us

A patient cold-case account that lets the evidence build suspicion without forcing certainty.

The Lewis Clark Valley case unfolds as a slow, widening investigation, beginning with the helicopter search in April 1979 and moving through a cluster of disappearances that keeps suspicion moving across the valley.

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Why you'd press play

Press play when you want a careful case file that keeps tightening its grip on a long-unsolved cold case.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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