Lisa Marie Kimmell: DNA Helps Solve Fifteen-Year-Old “Lil Miss” Case
December 20, 2007
In the spring of 1988, Lisa Marie Kimmell's future was full of promise, and at only 18 years old, she had her whole life ahead of her. Friends and family knew Lisa as "Lil Miss," a nickname she received when her grandmother began calling her Little Miss Marie years before.
After graduating from Billings Senior High, Lisa Marie moved to Denver where she worked as manager of an Arby's Restaurant. Life was great for Lisa, but it was all about to change on a fateful spring day in 1988.
On the morning of March 25, 1988, Lisa Marie Kimmell got into her new black Honda CRX with a personalized license plate that read "LILMISS" and started out on a trip from Denver to Billings, Montana, to visit family. She planned to stop in Cody, Wyoming, along the way to pick up her boyfriend, Ed Jaroch. Lisa was excited at the prospect of introducing Ed to her family. Unfortunately, Lisa never made it that far.
After leaving Denver, the last verified account of Lisa's whereabouts would come from Wyoming State Highway Patrolman Al Lesco, who stopped her for speeding near Douglas. Though unverified, some witnesses reported seeing her later that evening, near Casper.
Panicked by the uncharacteristic disappearance of their oldest child, Lisa Marie's parents, Ron and Sheila Kimmell, began a relentless search to discover what had happened to her. Lisa's father chartered a plane to search for any signs of his daughter's black car from the air and, at one point, drove the route from Denver to Billings himself in hopes of spotting her. The family also created posters with Lisa's picture and distributed them widely in hopes of getting a lead on her whereabouts. Unfortunately, there was no sign of Lisa. She had seemingly vanished into thin air.
On April 2. 1988, William Greg Bradford was with a friend on the North Platte River when they happened upon the partially clothed body of a young woman, just downstream from Government Bridge. The body was later identified as that Lisa Marie Kimmell. The teenager had been found, but there was no trace of her black Honda CRX with the unique license plate. The mysterious case would soon become known as the "Lil Miss murder," and investigators asked for the public's help in locating her black sports car.
In the following weeks, police received several tips from people who thought they'd spotted Lisa's car, though none of them resulted in any solid leads.
Despite the fact that Lisa had been missing for eight days, the autopsy revealed that she had only been dead a short time. Lisa had apparently been kept captive for several days before she was murdered and, until years later, only investigators would know the horrible details of Lisa's murder and how she likely spent her last days.
The ensuing investigation would bring out several possible suspects, including the highway patrolman who stopped her for speeding and the sheriff of Natrona County, although all the initial suspects were eventually cleared. A year after Lisa disappeared, someone placed a mysterious note on her grave that said Lisa would be missed and that she'd "always live in me." The note was signed as the fictional character Stringfellow Hawke from the 1980s TV series "Airwolf." The clues led nowhere, and as the months and years sped by, the "Lil Miss" case went cold.
It would be more than fourteen years before police would finally get a break in the case. This happened when investigators ran a random DNA test and came up with a match to a federal prisoner incarcerated in Colorado.
The DNA taken from the crime scene matched that of Dale Wayne Eaton. When investigators questioned one of Eaton's former neighbors, she told investigators that she had witnessed Eaton digging a large hole on his property around the time that Lisa Marie disappeared. After taking the woman's statement, investigators quickly obtained a warrant. Heavy equipment and backhoes were brought in to excavate the ground and, before long, searchers discovered Lisa's car buried over six feet below ground near an old trailer.
In April of 2003, Dale Wayne Eaton was formally charged with first-degree premeditated murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, first-degree sexual assault, and second-degree sexual assault, as well as three counts of first-degree felony murder.
Despite claims by Eaton that he had found Lisa Marie on his property and believed she was there to rob him, it is their belief that she was driving down a deserted stretch of freeway in Wyoming when she detoured to a rest stop, where she made her first contact with Dale Wayne Eaton.
It is speculated that, at this point, Eaton forced his way into Lisa's car and made her to drive to his property. There, in a desolate area of Wyoming, he kept Lisa Marie prisoner for several days and raped her.
At some point, Eaton took Lisa to the North Platte River where he hit her on the head, fracturing her skull. He then stabbed her six times before throwing her off the Government Bridge into the icy water of the river, where her body was later found.
In March 2004, Dale Wayne Eaton was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated robbery, as well as first-degree sexual assault. Eaton was given the death penalty for his hideous crimes.
Although Lisa Marie's murderer was convicted and justice finally served, the story doesn't stop there. Some believe that Dale Wayne Eaton could be the infamous Great Basin Killer.
Though no evidence has turned up to link Eaton to the Great Basin Murders, he has become a person of interest in several homicides that took place in the '80s and '90s within the region. Investigators believe Eaton fits the profile of a serial killer, and it may be more than just coincidence that the Great Basin Murders stopped after 1997 when he was incarcerated.
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