By Chris Bartholomew
The Great Basin murders took place from 1983 to 1997 and involved women ages 18 to 35. The states involved were Utah, Wyoming, Nevada and Idaho. In each case, the women were violently attacked, killed and their bodies dumped along remote highways in the Great Basin. Authorities believe as many as three serial killers may have been at work in this area at the same time.
Four of the victims were never identified. Some were hitchhikers, prostitutes or women who frequented truck stops. At least one victim was described by police as an "all-American girl."
At least three of the victims' bodies were posed in the shape of a cross after death, which investigators consider significant because it points to a serial killer.
In addition to the nine known Great Basin murders, two young women were murdered in the Casper, Wyoming area. One of them, a 21-year-old girl, was found naked and strangled along I-25 north of Casper in 1982. She was last seen hitchhiking. The other Casper victim was found 14 miles south of I-25 in 1986, fully clothed. She had been run over 25 feet from the roadway. She was last seen walking to a friend's house. Both cases remain open.
Dale Wayne Eaton has been convicted and sentenced to die for the 1988 rape and murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell, known as 'Little Miss.' A week after she was reported missing, fishermen found her half-naked body along the North Platte River, a few miles south of Casper. Blood smeared on the bridge led investigators to believe that Kimmell's body had been thrown from the bridge.
A note appeared on Lisa's grave approximately one year and four days after Lisa disappeared. The police felt there was a link between the letter and the killer, and the letter was kept on file. Fourteen years later, a random DNA retest from the rape kit taken from Lisa Kimmell's autopsy was reviewed again, and there was a hit from the database. The note was written by Dale Wayne Eaton.
Since Eaton was linked to Kimmell's death, an FBI profiler has examined the case and said that Eaton could well be a serial killer. The care Eaton took in stabbing Kimmell indicated it wasn't his first time, the profiler said. He moved the knife around in her chest to make sure he would stab the heart and not the ribs.
The autopsy found that she had been murdered just a day or two before her body was found, even though she had been missing for nine days. He bound her and held her hostage northwest of Casper in an old, converted school bus where he lived. He raped her repeatedly over six days, and then hit her in the head, stabbed her six times and dumped her body in the North Platte.
Kimmell's car, a black Honda CRX with "LIL MISS" vanity plates, wasn't recovered until years later. Eaton had buried it in his yard in Moneta, Wyoming. A search of Eaton's property yielded Honda parts and two Arby's employee visors. Kimmell had worked at Arby's. Detectives began digging and discovered that Eaton had turned the Honda CRX into a septic tank. Profilers believe that he kept the car as a trophy.
While he was in federal lockup awaiting trial for killing his cellmate, a sample of Eaton's blood was taken routinely. In July 2002, a DNA lab found a match between Eaton's blood and semen found on Lisa Kimmell's body.
He pled guilty to assault charges in 1997 for trying to abduct a family of three whose car had broken down. He offered them a lift but then pulled a gun. The family got away. The 1997 attempted abduction indicates Eaton was looking for others.
The Kimmell case was classified as a Great Basin murder by investigators. Police believe that more than one person was involved in the murder of 'Little Miss' but Eaton is not a cooperative killer, he won't even discuss the other cases of the Great Basin Murders.
The perpetrator, or perpetrators, of the nine murders, eleven if we are to include the two from Casper, have never been arrested. Authorities are unsure if they are all connected.
A year before Kimmell was murdered, a 24-year-old woman disappeared while jogging along a road in Fremont County, the same county where Kimmell's car was unearthed. She has never been found.
In 2003, a jury of his peers found Dale Wayne Eaton guilty of Lisa Kimmell's rape and murder and sentenced him to death. Today he sits on death row, awaiting his due.
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 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.
Editor's note: this article was written in 2009. A federal court vacated Dale Wayne Eaton's death sentence in 2014 on the ground that his trial lawyers had been ineffective, and the state's later attempt to have it reimposed did not succeed. His conviction for the murder of Lisa Marie Kimmell stands and he remains in Wyoming custody. The Great Basin murders themselves are still unsolved.