Lewis Clark Valley murders

Christina Lee White, 12, disappeared April 28, 1979, from Asotin, Washington after attending a parade with a friend. She had returned to the friend's house and telephoned her mother stating that she felt ill. Her mother advised her to return home on her bike but White never appeared and has not been seen since.[2][3]

University of Idaho student Kristin Noel David, 22, disappeared June 26, 1981 while biking from Moscow, Idaho to Lewiston. Her dismembered remains were recovered July 4 that same year from the Snake River near Clarkston, Washington.[4][5]

Kristina Diane Nelson, 21, and her stepsister Jacqueline Ann “Brandy” Miller, 18, disappeared while walking from Nelson's apartment to a grocery store in downtown Lewiston, Idaho on September 12, 1982.[6]

On the same night, Steven R. Pearsall, 35, an employee of the Lewiston Civic Theater located at 8th Street and 6th Avenue, went missing after going to the theater to use its laundry facilities.[7]

Pearsall and Nelson had worked together at the theater and both attended Lewis-Clark State College and were neighbors.[8][9][10]

The remains of Nelson and Miller were found March 19, 1984, in a rural area 35 miles from Lewiston near Kendrick, Idaho. Investigators were unable to determine a cause of death for Nelson, but determined that Miller had been murdered.[11][12] Pearsall was never located.[13]

Investigators initially suspected Pearsall may have been involved in the Nelson-Miller abduction and murders, but later stated that all three had probably been in or near the theater at the time they vanished and were likely victims of the same killer.[14]

In 1984, Idaho State Police stated that serial killer Ottis Toole had "implicated himself" in the murder of David and was their "strongest suspect", but added that two other men had also confessed to the same crime.[15][16] In 2009, a retired Lewiston police detective who had also interviewed Toole stated that he had ruled him out as a suspect.[17][18]

In 1995, Lewiston police announced that Nelson, Miller, and Pearsall may have been murdered together inside the Lewiston Civic Theater by another theater employee. The unnamed suspect, who was present at the theater the night of the trio's disappearance, had also lived in the home from which Christina White disappeared in 1979.[19] In 1998, authorities from Spokane, Washington who were investigating the killings that would later be attributed to Robert Lee Yates interviewed this same suspect.[20]

In 1998, Lewiston police stated their belief that Kristin David's murder was linked with the other Lewiston-area murders and disappearances.[21] A 2009 news report stated that David had worked for a time at the Lewiston Civic Theater and may have known the same theater employee suspected in the Nelson-Miller-Pearsall case.[22]

In 2011, a 53-minute documentary examining the case, Confluence, was released.[23]

In 2018, a two-part television documentary series examining the case, Cold Valley, aired on the Investigation Discovery network.[24] An Asotin County police detective who appeared on the program reaffirmed the links police had made earlier between the White and Pearsall disappearances and murders of Nelson and Miller, stating they were likely the work of the same killer.[25] The program also linked the unnamed suspect with three other deaths in and outside the region, including an unsolved Chicago murder from 1963.[26]

• List of solved missing persons cases
• List of unsolved murders

Confluence 2011 documentary film about the murders and disappearances.