Our True Crime Podcast · Our True Crime Podcast

341. Missoula Mauler: Wayne Nance

·52 min·3 clips

Doug Wells went back outside, found Wayne Nance by a bush, and heard him calmly say, 'It's Wayne.'

1. Our True Crime Podcast covers Wayne Nance, the Missoula Mauler, and the murders connected to Missoula, Montana, West Riverside, Ravalli County, and the Pacific Northwest. 2. Jen and Kim host the episode, with Edward October narrating the cold open and the pair guiding the case chronology and reactions. 3. The episode asks how Wayne Nance moved from a normal-seeming delivery driver to a man linked to multiple killings, home invasions, and missing women. 4. The Doug and Chris Wells story begins on September 3, 1986, when an orange-and-white Ford pickup sits on Parker Court and Wayne Nance steps out from behind a bush. 5. Doug Wells finds Nance with a black baton and then a Ruger pistol, while Chris Wells is forced to tie Doug up and watch the situation unfold. 6. The narration says Wayne Nance had been harassing Chris for months, and he also searched the house for money and the store payroll. 7. The episode then shifts to Wayne Nance’s youth in Clinton, Montana, where he was born on October 18, 1955, to George Edwin Nance and Charlene Mae Mackey. 8. Friends remembered Wayne claiming to worship Satan, branding himself with occult symbols using a hot coat hanger, and saying he wanted to commit a murder before age 19. 9. The hosts note that Wayne joined the U.S. Navy in 1974 and served until 1977, a period investigators later reviewed for possible crimes. 10. After Charlene Nance died in a single-car crash on Deer Creek Road on April 4, 1980, Wayne dropped out of the University of Montana and worked at The Cabin as a security guard. 11. Captain Larry Weatherman describes him as someone with no close friends, minimal family contact, and an existence on the town’s edges. 12. Police also found knives and primitive weapons in Wayne Nance’s possession, including a carved wooden sword and sharpened implements that looked like something out of another time. 13. The Donna Lorraine Pounds case begins on April 11, 1974, when Wayne entered a West Riverside home, used Harvey Pounds’ .22 rifle, and bound Donna with white clothesline. 14. The episode says Donna was raped at gunpoint and shot five times in the head, while witnesses later placed Wayne near the house carrying a black gym bag. 15. The Devonna Louise Nelson case follows, with her body found near Interstate 90 in Missoula in 1980 and identified only years later as the runaway called Betty Beavertail. 16. The Marcy Bachman segment connects DNA, photo booth strips, a strand of hair, and an alias named Robin to a 16-year-old from Vancouver, Washington. 17. The Christine Crystal Creek section uses later forensic genealogy to identify Janet Lee Lucas, a 23-year-old mother from Spokane, Washington, after decades as a Jane Doe. 18. The hosts’ style is conversational, reactive, and full of side comments, with Jen and Kim interrupting the chronology for reactions, comparisons, and short digressions. 19. Listeners who like Montana true-crime timelines, offender profiling, and missing-person identifications will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a tightly edited, spoiler-light, purely archival presentation may skip it.

As heard by us

A direct, chronological retelling of the Shook family attack in rural Montana, with the Conan the Barbarian detail front and center.

The account moves through Wayne Nance's attack on the Shook family in rural Montana with a plain, chronological focus. It lays out the December 12, 1985 home invasion, the Conan the Barbarian introduction, the demand for money, and the shot that hit Teresa Shook in the leg…

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Why you'd press play

Wayne Nance's night in rural Montana starts with a lie and turns violent fast.

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