ANSWERING A QUESTION IN AN UNKNOWN SERIAL KILLER CASE

     The following will be one element that I will address in an upcoming video on my YouTube channel: “Steve the Amateur Historian”. This video will be focusing on what is widely regarded as the case of the Lewis-Clark Valley Serial Killer. Many believe this one, still unknown person, was responsible for at least five specific murders that happened in the general vicinity of Lewiston, Idaho, a small border town along the Washington/Idaho border.
   

     On April 28, 1979 12-year old Christina White was watching the opening festivities of the county fair, in the small Washington town of Asotin, when she began to feel ill. She went to a nearby friends house to get a wet washcloth to help cool herself off as she had experienced heat stroke in the past. While her friend was working in the backyard, his future stepfather answered the door for Christina and helped her get a wash cloth. A short while later it is stated she left the house to travel five blocks east where she would meet up with her mother. She never made it to that location.
   

     On June 26, 1981, University of Idaho (in Moscow, Idaho) student Kristin David climbed onto her bicycle to ride along the desolate 30-mile stretch of Highway 95 between Moscow and Lewiston, Idaho. She had work in Clarkston, Washington, right across the Snake River from Lewiston, and that is where she was heading on her bicycle. She never made it. One man from Genesse, Idaho, the only real town along Highway 95 between Moscow and Lewiston, stated, with some help with hypnosis, that he saw Kristin in the company of a bearded man driving a brown van. He said it appeared the man was trying to help her with an issue with her bike. This is the closest thing to a suspect that we have ever had in the case of Kristin David, who would go missing during her bike ride. Eight days later a fisherman discovered parts of her body, including her torso, that had stab wounds in it, on the shore of the Snake River approximately six miles west of Clarkston. Shortly after more parts of her body, including her head, were found along the river in Clarkston. Whoever was responsible for killing Kristin David, he was a brutal son-of-a-bitch.
  

      On September 12, 1982 stepsisters Kristina Nelson and Jacqueline “Brandy” Miller, both residing in Lewiston, went out on an evening walk to the town’s Safeway store. On their journey they would have passed the Lewiston Civic Theater, a beautiful stone structure that formerly functioned as a church. They must have gone inside, where they would have encountered Steven Pearsall, who worked as a janitor for the theater as well as a prop building. Kristina Nelson once worked off-and-on at the theater and the two women lived within a block of Pearsall. These three knew each other.
  

      On a side note, Kristin David also briefly worked at the Lewiston Civic Theater.
 

     After September 12th all three of these; Nelson, Miller and Pearsall; would disappear. They would be missing for a long time and it was immediately presumed that the three must have met up at the theater where someone else killed all three of them and deposited their bodies somewhere.
  

    Intriguingly, a man named Lance Voss, who appeared to have murder follow him his whole life, just happened to work at the theater at this time. When questioned on these disappearances Voss admitted he was working all day at the theater building props for an upcoming show with Steven Pearsall. He said Pearsall left at around 9 p.m. and he, himself, left at 9:30 p.m. before returning around 10 p.m. Voss stated that he had suffered and injury and when he returned to the theater he fell asleep in the building’s green room. He slept from about 10 p.m. until 4 a.m. This put him in the building during the time that Nelson, Miller and Pearsall would have all been there. But, of course, he was not going to admit to having anything to do with their disappearance.
 

    On a side note, Lance Voss happened to be doing deliveries during the summer of 1981, going on several drives up and down Highway 95 between Lewiston and Moscow. This means he was constantly driving the same stretch that Kristin David was when she went missing.
 

    On another side note… remember when I was discussing the Christina White disappearance in 1979? I mentioned that her friend’s future stepfather was the one who answered the door for her? Yeah… that future stepfather was none other than… Lance Voss.
 

    Today Voss is the strongest suspect in the case, for obvious reasons, with one investigator saying they were 99% certain he was the killer of all five of these victims.
 

    But things too a shift in 1984. On March 19, 1984 a teenager named Marvin Mead was walking along the rural Highway 3 near Kendrick, Idaho, almost 30 miles northeast of Lewiston collecting cans. As he walked along his hat flew off and as he stepped away from the highway he stumbled onto the skull of a human. Stunned, Mean noticed more remains a few more feet further away from highway. Authorities were called in and they collected the remains. A week later the remains were identified as belonging to Kristina Nelson and Brandy Miller.
 

    The next question then was: Where was Steven Pearsall?
 

    Logic dictated that if all three of these individuals disappeared at the same time and at least two of them were deposited in the same spot then all three of them would be left there. Why weren’t Steven Pearsall’s remains also left there? What was going on?
 

    Suddenly the collective attitude that these three individuals were all murdere together in the theater that night began to shift. Suddenly there was a growing attitude that maybe Steven Pearsall wasn’t a victim after all, but rather the perpetrator. It was quite simple: His remains were not found because he was the killer of these two women and therefore only their remains were ever found. This did not make a lot of sense to those who knew Pearsall and who described him as a quiet, easy going fellow with anything but a troubled past. In the few pictures I have seen of him he definitely has a kind, pleasant demeanor to him. But pictures can be deceptive. One reoccurring poster on a 2009 forum on these cases, an man who some believe is either Lance Voss or someone working on his behalf, expressed directly that if Steven Pearsall could be found the case would be wrapped up right away.
 

    The lack of a recovering of Pearsall’s remains, combined with the fact that he has never been found, have made it nearly impossible for anyone else to be indicted and possibly convicted on the murders of Nelson and Miller as there’s always going to be the, at least slight, possibility that Pearsall killed them and then split town, disappearing into obscurity.
 

    Even though many feel the disappearance of these three are directly tied to the murder of Kristin David and the disappearance of Christina White, my focus will be on these last three victims, and the lingering question of whether Steven Pearsall was a victim or a perpetrator. I’ve never really bought the idea that he was the killer, even with the possibility lingering. As his story appears to go, he was working at the theater most of that day before leaving. He came back to the theater around midnight for two reasons: one, to do his laundry there, as he often did, and two, to practice on his clarinet, which he had accidentally left at the theater before. Certainly some attackers and killers take advantage of victims of opportunity, but even so, Pearsall could not have known that these two women would randomly show up there that night. Meanwhile, he knew where they lived, being practically a next store neighbor. He’d have much better odds attacking these women by getting to them in their apartment. He was also described as something of a “big brother” to these two younger women, showing they had, by all accounts, a pleasant and innocent connection with each other.
 

    It just didn’t make sense to me that Pearsall would be guilty, but the key question still lingered. Why would these three be killed at the same time but not deposited in the same area. Certainly the killer could have just chosen to spread the victim’s remains around, but without knowing who the killer was, much less what they were thinking, this doesn’t do much to answer the question of why Pearsall’s remains were not left with Nelson’s and Miller’s.
 

    I started thinking over how this murder may have gone down. The general consensus as to what happened, at least for the crowd that feels Pearsall was a victim and not a killer, is that somebody attacked Nelson and Miller in the theater. Pearsall either heard the attack or walked in by chance while it was happening and whoever the killer was they had to then kill Pearsall as he was a potential witness.
 

    Regardless who killed at least Kristina Nelson and Brandy Miller, what we do know for certain is that after they were killed they were transported elsewhere, no doubt by vehicle, where their remains were tossed out not too far from the highway. We know, even without seeing it, that the killer must have moved the victims into a vehicle and left town to get rid of the bodies. This, I feel, would have been surprisingly easy, at least in terms of moving bodies to a car and driving away without being seen. First off, it would have been after midnight, meaning most locals would have already been asleep and thus not problematic witnesses. Furthermore, when I used Google imagery to check out the street view of the general area around where the theater is located I found only one streetlight within the block of the theater’s front entrance. And we cannot even know if that streetlight was there back in 1982. What I am getting at is: the area around the theater would have been extremely dark, making it difficult for any possible witnesses to see the killer transporting the victims to a car.
 

    All this said, what about Lance Voss? Just about everyone who’s looked into this case feels Voss was guilty of these murders. But how do we, aside from the fact that he admitted to being at the theater that night, show Voss was responsible for these murders and not Steven Pearsall.
 

    Let me make this clear, as it will hopefully be… the following observation, I am well aware, does not definitively prove Lance Voss’ guilt nor does it 100% prove Steven Pearsall’s innocence. But it does provide what I feel is the likely reason why Pearsall’s remains were not left or found along with the remains of Kristina Nelson and Brandy Miller. It’s not a particularly wild observation. It just is what it is.
 

    If Voss is responsible for these murders than, obviously, Voss would have to relocate the victim’s bodies to a vehicle, his vehicle. There’s no reason to think he’d have any other vehicle than his own. It’s not like he could magically know that three potential murder victims were going to show up and be at that theater after midnight. The odds of that were very long. Also, since Voss was doing a little traveling on the night of September 12th, going to a pizza place from 9:30-10 p.m., by his own account, before returning to the theater.
 

    Through my research I managed to find what kind of car Voss drove over various periods of his life and, during 1982, the car that he drove was a gold 1971 Chevy Camaro. This is an important detail to know because it presents to us the type of vehicle Voss would have had at his disposal to get rid of these victims which, if he is the killer, we have three victims.
 

    Now I am not a car expert by any stretch of the imagination, but the element we are going to discuss here is not based around a matter of automobile comprehension but just through the use of our eyes. Like most vehicles from the 1960s and 70s the 1971 Chevy Camaro, whose appearance did not change much throughout the early 70s, is a fairly beefy vehicle. There’s plenty of room to place a couple bodies in there, maybe one in the front passenger seat and two in the backseat? But therein lies the problem. Even with it being the early morning hours of September 13th, only the most ignorant of criminals are going to place the bodies of people they just killed in an area of their car where they can be seen. And Lance Voss, if he is guilty, is not an ignorant criminal… cause he’s never officially been caught. There’s been a few instances in the past of serial killers, getting more and more cocky over time, leaving victims they’d just killed in their passenger seat or backseat, only to be pulled over by the police and have their murderous runs end.
 

    There is no reason to believe Voss would toss these bodies in with himself and then drive through town hoping that no random Lewiston residents, much less police, would see these dead, limp bodies sitting in his car at his side. Regardless of the method of killing, it would potentially show… even at night. A strangulation would show colorful striations on the throat. Any beating would show as the victims would have blood splattered on their bodies. Voss would have blood on himself as well. Another reason for him to not take any unnecessary risks like leaving his victims out in the open.
 

    When killers need to transport their victims they practically all do the same thing: put the victims in the damn trunk! There is little doubt Voss would do this as well. You keep your victims hidden and even if you’re pulled over by the police, if you play it cool, the police won’t even search the car enough to check the trunk.
 

    Speaking of trunks, let’s get back to the build of a ’71 Camaro, as I was beginning to do. These models were fairly built, not as much as some cars, but still larger than a select few. But have you ever looked at this type of car from a profile view. Nearly the whole front half of the vehicle is all under the hood. If you look the vehicle over from front to back things just seem to get smaller and small. The hood area is huge. The seating area, fairly decent-sized. The trunk? Well…

        THE TRUNK SPACE OF A '71 CAMARO

 

    Without a ’71 Camaro available to me for my own personal examination I had to settle for pictures of the trunk space of said vehicle. I, surprisingly, found a good many photographs depicting the trunk space of a ’71 Camaro, some of which included articles such as a spare tire to really show the overall dimensions of this space. In one picture I found of a Camaro with a spare tire in it the main thing I noticed was that the tire, on its side, was almost as tall as the trunk as a whole. Camaro’s from this year had trunks with literally no depth! Another image I found depicting a fairly beat up ’71 Camaro showed the trunk space gutted out, literally showing a trunk from this model of car with as much open space as humanly possible, and still, as I stared at the imagery it was made abundantly clear to me, once again, that these cars had very small trunks. Not only are the dimensions of these trunks small, both horizontally and vertically, but only in the middle does the trunk even dip down with the areas along the left and right sides of the car as well as towards the back of the trunk being elevated, providing minimal space. I would have a hard time putting three gym bags in such a space, much less three human bodies.
 

    I hope you get where I am going with this.
 

    If we accept that Lance Voss would have hidden the bodies of his victims in his trunk (unless you want to believe the unlikely scenario that I took a chance putting them next to himself as he drove… but you’re asking a lot in that scenario), there is absolutely no way he could have fit, all at once, the bodies of Kristina Nelson, Brandy Miller and Steven Pearsall into his trunk.
 

    It is my theory, and therefore my belief, that Voss realized rather quickly that he was not going to be able to hide these bodies without doing at least two trips. This was risky, but it’s what he had to work with. Considering the fact that Nelson and Miller were left nearly 30 miles from the theater itself leads me to believe that Voss transported Pearsall’s body first. My logic in this is that, if Voss wanted to only make two trips, the first trip would have to be quick as there would still be a body or two being stashed in the theater. Now it’s unlikely that anybody else would show up at the theater in the middle of the night, but I hardly believe that would have led Lance Voss to believe he did not have to act with a sense of urgency.
    

I believe he quickly stuffed Steven Pearsall’s body in his trunk and relocated it somewhere just a little outside of Lewiston, just far enough away that hopefully somebody wouldn’t find it. He may have even stashed it with the intention of coming back and relocating it further from town after he got rid of Nelson and Miller’s remains. But again, considering how much time he must have taken in transporting their remains so far from Lewiston, I doubt he had the plan of stashing Pearsall somewhere with the plan of returning and moving him even further away from civilization. This gives me the feeling that Pearsall’s remains were left not too far from Lewiston, mostly likely much closer than the other two victim’s remains were.

    Voss could then take more time getting rid of Nelson and Miller, thus driving them so far away from Lewiston. He would have the luxury at that point, having no more bodies to deal with back at the theater. He would have also had the potential issue of needing to “clean up” the crime scene. In the 2011 film “Confluence”, done on these five murders that occurred, I noticed that one of the investigators on that case said that when they tried to do tests for blood in the theater their tests went nowhere as lead-based paint would give off a positive result in the same way blood wood and, being a very old structure, much of the theater was covered in lead-based paint. This would certain help effect, or rather break down, the crime scene.

 
    Would Voss try and clean things up first? Or would he clean up after getting rid of the bodies? There’s logical reasons for each side. If someone shows up while you’re getting rid of the bodies, that doesn’t bode well. But also, if you take the time to clean up before getting rid of the bodies, what if someone randomly shows up and you have three bodies to conceal in one building? I only ask this question as it may relate to his story of events. With him having to kill the three after midnight, as Steven Pearsall did not even return to the theater till around then, it would have taken a while to get rid of the victims and try and clean up any possible crime scene. And how much time would be necessary to clean said crime scene depends entirely on how the victims were killed. Being stranded would be a much easier crime scene to clean than, say, a shooting. But if Voss had to kill two women at almost the same time, and then deal with Pearsall coming in afterward, it’s practically impossible to believe that all three victims were strangled. Voss would have to be a freak of nature for that to be the case.      

    It would taken him nearly an hour itself just relocating Kristina Nelson and Brandy Miller to the vicinity of Kendrick and then drive all the way back to Lewiston. I would think, even working as quickly as possible, it would take him at least 30 minutes to relocate the body and then return to the theater. With some possible time also necessary for cleaning up the crime scene and dealing with deciding what to do with the victims and then moving them to his car, I feel like the earliest Voss would have been done with everything would have been around 2:30-3 a.m. And that depends entirely on when these victims were killed, a time figure that we cannot and do not know. This fits conveniently with his claim that he slept till somewhere around 4 a.m. He has himself at the crime scene, but sleeping just long enough to miss the crime itself as well as the aftermath.
 

    It was expressed that the door leading in and out of the theater was a heaving door that made a loud sound when it closed, a sound that, no doubt, would have awakened someone in the vicinity of the theater’s green room, where Voss says he slept. This door would have had to open several times though! When Nelson and Miller arrived… when the killer arrived (possibly)… when the killer moved the bodies to whatever vehicle they had… when they returned to clean up the crime scene…
 

    But Lance Voss just slept through it all. It’s truly bizarre that this guy wants the world to believe he slept in a room right next to where two or three people were murdered and the clamoring of the door or, you know, the screaming and struggling that would have been going on. But he slept like a baby… if you believe him. I don’t.
 

    This is my perspective. Lance Voss did not have a trunk large enough to relocate three victims at once and thus he had to move them in a couple shifts. He moved Steven Pearsall by himself and then Kristina Nelson and Brandy Miller later. Hence, these two women ended up together near Kendrick and Pearsall was not there with him. Voss stashed him elsewhere. That’s what I feel happened and it explains why these three were not found together. I also find it a lot more likely than the idea that a apparently passive and artistic guy who worked at a theater would randomly attack two girls he knew there and successfully vanish of the face of the earth. I know it was the early 80s and it was easier back then for people to “disappear”, but honestly, I just don’t see Steven Pearsall being the killer in this dynamic. I also don’t see him being responsible for the Kristin David and Christina White murders which, again, many believe are the work of the same killer who took the lives of Nelson and Miller. I personally question whether Kristin David’s murder is connected but, at the same time, the best way in which her murder connects with the other four is specifically in relation to Lance Voss’ potential guilt in her murder (again, the fact that he was doing delivery runs up and down the same highway she was riding her bike down).
 

    It’s going to take a little more for law enforcement to truly bring someone to justice for the murders of these five victims but, despite the opposition by some, I think Lance Voss is the strongest overall suspect with logical explanations for his possible involvement with each victim. I mean… he was likely the last person to see Christina White alive! But again, my primary focus here was addressing the question of why Steven Pearsall did not end up discarded with the bodies of Kristina Nelson and Brandy Miller and I feel I provided a fairly logical explanation based on what little evidence we have on the matter, namely, Voss’ 1971 Chevy Camaro.