Nance was born in 1955 in Missoula, Montana, and worked for a local furniture shop, delivering into people's homes.
Between 1974 and 1986 he killed at least five people in and around Missoula, shooting and stabbing them; the victims included a young woman taken from a bar, a couple killed at their home, and a woman whose remains were found years later. Several of the cases had gone unsolved and were not connected.
On September 4, 1986 he broke into the home of Doug and Kris Wells, a couple he knew through his job, tied them up and attacked them. Both fought back. He shot Doug Wells, who was wounded, and Kris Wells got free, and in the struggle that followed Doug Wells shot him with his own rifle. Nance died.
There was no trial. The Missoula investigation afterwards connected him to the earlier killings, and the case is documented largely through a book written by a detective who worked on it.
He is one of very few in this archive killed by the people he attacked, and the account of his earlier crimes exists because he was stopped in a house rather than in a courtroom: none of the five killings was ever tested in evidence.