The Disturbing Disappearance Of Nyleen Marshall

The 25th of June 1983, Helena, Montana. In a remote part of the Helena National Forest in the Alhorn Mountains, just off Warm Springs Creek Road, members of the Capital City Radio Club had got together to enjoy a picnic and some time in the great outdoors. The scenery was beautiful. A shallow river ran through the area and a group of children were playing down by the water.

One of those children was Nile K. Marshall. Nile was four years old and had been born on September 18th, 1978 to parents Nancy and William, who got divorced not long after. Nancy remarried Kim Marshall, who adopted Nile. Kim said she was an angelic child, just the sweetest little girl you could meet. She was at the picnic with Nancy, Kim, her older brother, and little sister.

 It was turning out to be a lovely day, but it would end with so many unanswered questions and a lifetime of [Music] heartache. The children had gone down to the creek to play and Nile had gone with them. When they all started to come back, Nile wasn’t there. She had been playing with two older children while the other kids explored a nearby abandoned cabin.

 The two had walked ahead of Nile, but when they turned around, she was gone. People were calling out her name and went looking down by the water, but she was nowhere to be found. As panic began to rise, everyone tried to hold on to the hope that she was somewhere nearby, but there was nothing.

 There was no trace of her anywhere. Law enforcement were called in, and before long, massive search and rescue operations were underway. The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office knew that the area was going to be a big challenge, so they drafted in the Louiswis and Clark search and rescue teams and helicopters using heat sensing devices were also deployed.

 Over the days that followed, nearly 3,000 searches were carried out. 2,800 volunteers, including many members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which the family were members of, were out in force combing through the area. Many of them didn’t even know the family. They just wanted to help in any way they could.

 Dogs and planes were also used to comb through the area alongside those who were searching on foot. The FBI was soon drafted in and divers were deployed to look in the mine shafts and bodies of water in the area. They even drained a pond believing that maybe she had got too close and fallen in, but draining it turned up nothing.

 They hunted day and night for her, but none of these hunts yielded any results. How had a little girl simply vanished with no trace at all? As she was barefoot, she likely wouldn’t have been able to get very far. She hated walking without shoes. She was only 4 years old, so the idea of her walking off for miles seemed highly unlikely.

 A description of her was issued. She was 3’2, weighing 29 lb. She had brown hair, blue eyes, a small mole above her left eyebrow, and dimples on both of her cheeks. She was barefoot, wearing a yellow shirt and shorts. The surrounding area and terrain of the Elorn Mountains was challenging for the most experienced of visitors to the forest with mine shafts, dense woodland, and steep rocky cliffs.

 For a 4-year-old girl, it didn’t even bear thinking about. One of those who joined in the search was Ken Gardner, who emotionally remembered how frantic the search was. “I can actually kind of feel it right now. I just got kids of my own,” he recalled. He also talked about how they had conducted the grid searches. Stretch your hands out.

 So my arm out to your arm, out to his arm. Huge areas of grid searches. Ralph Dunzo was then with the Louiswis and Clark County Search and Rescue. And he was a key member of the search efforts for a long, long time and even somewhat today. That search still haunts me. He said the searches had now been going on for 5 days and they had been extremely difficult.

 The terrain was challenging and the rain made it even more so. Ralph said, “I think about after day five with the elements and the potential of dangerous critters out on the hillside. It kind of came into our minds that we may not have a successful end to this.” But they were not going to give up. Volunteers, in spite of the dangers, continued to arrive each and every day to pick up where they left off.

 Nobody could bear the idea of Nile being out in the wilderness by herself. Searchers went through the area on their hands and knees, praying they would find anything and holding on to the hope that she had simply wandered off and become lost. A search dog named Juke was also brought in to help.

 Juke had helped find 37 people, and there were hopes that he would be able to find Nile. He did pick up a scent, but lost it soon after. Then some of the children who had been playing down by the creek and catching frogs with Nile told her mother something, something that would take the case in a whole new direction and would force everyone to consider a sinister new possibility that Nile had been abducted.

 Two girls had walked past her as she sat on the rocks by the Beaver Dams on Warping Creek. They said they saw a man dressed in a purple jogging suit. They said he was strange. He walked out from behind the trees and went straight over to Nile. Nile was reportedly heard saying, “My brother can run faster than you.” One of the girls said she didn’t recognize this man and didn’t think he was one of the group who had come together for the picnic.

 According to Nancy, another child had seen him take a step closer to Nile. The next day, another child said the same thing. The man was in a jogging suit and had apparently spoken to two other children and Nile. A six-year-old boy told the police that Nile had said, “That man wants me to follow the shadow.” One of them said they ignored the man and carried on walking.

 The other child said they were frightened, so decided to leave. Nile stayed standing with him, and within a few seconds, both of them were gone. What made what these children had said even more worrying was that they hadn’t spoken to each other after Nile went missing. This wasn’t a story they had concocted or come up with together.

They were saying this independently. This new information changed everything. Nancy and Kim now believed Nile had been abducted. And so to get her face and name out there, they issued thousands upon thousands of missing persons posters across the country, hoping that someone would see them and know something.

 Plenty of reported sightings and tips came in from all over the United States, but none of them could be corroborated. After 10 days of searching on the 4th of July, as the snow was starting to fall, the search for Nileen Marshall was called off. “For people like Ralph, who had put in such effort, it was devastating.

 We did everything we thought we could do, but we weren’t successful,” he said. The marshals were questioned about what had happened and what they had seen that day. A normal procedure when investigating a missing child. It was later reported that the tactics used had upset the family greatly. An FBI agent told me point blank, “You killed your daughter.

” Nancy went completely nuts and I was taken aback, especially since we had fought to get the FBI’s help. Kim said, “Nancy was stunned when an agent reportedly said, “She’s dead. Get over it.” But Nancy was not prepared to give up or get over it. She wanted to find her daughter and bring her home.

 The marshals were also asked to send over various photographs of Nile, her siblings, and Nancy as a child. And devastatingly, these photos would all be destroyed in a lab fire. A composite sketch was drawn up and there were several people it reportedly resembled, including a man wanted in connection with the kidnap and murder of a child.

 After the sketch went out, the apartment of a suspect was searched and a photograph of a young girl was found. She looked like Nile, but after an investigation, it was determined to not be her. This was yet another lead that went absolutely nowhere. As the months passed, with still no sign of Nileen Marshall, her case continued to grow colder.

 All of those involved were left in a state of limbo. How can you begin to move on when such a huge piece of your heart is missing? That would all change the following year. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had been founded the year before by several advocates, including John and Ray Walsh. John and Ray’s six-year-old son, Adam, had been abducted from a department store in Florida and murdered.

 The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was formed to provide a nationwide and coordinated response when children are reported missing or being exploited. One arm of their organization was a telephone line. The 27th of November 1985, a call came through. The caller was anonymous and wouldn’t identify themselves.

 He said that he was Nile Marshall’s kidnapper and he still had her. This was extremely concerning. Even if it was a hoax, it needed to be thoroughly investigated. No stone could afford to go unturned. This would also not be the last they would hear from this man. 2 months after the call, Childfind received an anonymous letter appearing to be from the same person.

 It said in part, “She is a sweet little girl, and it is because of how much I have grown to love her that I realize how much her family must miss her. But she has adjusted and seems happy. She trusts me and isn’t afraid. We play a lot and she laughs when we clown around. She smiles and acts koi when I tease her. She giggles when we snuggle and hugs me sometimes for no apparent reason.

 I love her and I have her. I just can’t let her go.” But what on earth could a motive have been if they didn’t want money for her return? When you eliminate the request for ransom, if money is not a motive, it must be to have a child of your own, said special agent Neil Patel. The letters also made references to acts of sexual abuse he had committed against Nile.

 But in his mind, as he wrote, he never molested her in any other way. This man said he was taking good care of her. But during the same phone conversation or same letter that he would write, he would also make reference to things that he was having Nile do, which would be sexual abuse, said Tim Campbell of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department.

 The letter was postmarked from Madison, Wisconsin. Dne County Detective Kevin Hughes said he was privy to things that a normal person would not have access [Music] to. Over the next 6 months that followed, more phone calls were made and more letters were received. All I could tell them was that she is okay. I hope Childfind can get the following back to her family.

 I picked Kay up on the road in the Elorn Park area between Helena and Boulder. She was crying and frightened. And as I held her, she was shaking and I decided I would keep her and love her. I took her home with me. I have a nice investment income and I can work at home. So, I care for her myself all the time. I teach her at home and she likes to go with me when I travel.

Her hair is short and curly now and she has really grown. She is about 45 in and around 50 lb. She has all four of her permanent upper and two of her lower in sizes at this time. She takes a bath and brushes her teeth every day. She would gladly recount to you trips to San Francisco, New York, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Nashville, Chicago, Puerto Rico, and Canada.

 We were even in Britain for a month last year, and she loved it. Nobody questions passports. His letter said that he no longer used her first name, Nileen, but rather her middle name, Kay. He also said that his little sister and parents had been killed in a car accident when his sister was only nine.

 At around the same time the letters were received, Nancy and Kim also began receiving phone calls. The calls were coming from a public phone booth in Madison, Wisconsin, with special agent Ken Miller of the Madison FBI office saying there were about three calls. The letters had been traced to the same area. The FBI determined that the calls and the letters were from the same man.

 They were even able to find the exact phone booth the man had called from. But after this, there were no more phone calls. They abruptly stopped. Like everything else in this case, this promising lead was now obviously going nowhere. And the truth that have felt so close now felt further away than ever. Nancy said what this man said in his letters tied with the numerous sightings of her daughter across the states.

 If they were traveling, maybe some of those sightings had been legitimate. In June 1989, Nile’s uncle saw a composite sketch of a man and a woman wanted for child abduction. He believed that on the first day of the searches for his niece, he saw this couple in amongst the people there. In November 1990, an episode of Unsolved Mysteries would feature a segment on Nile’s case.

 It would also show an age progressed image of what she could have looked like at the age of 12, how old she would have been when the episode went out. One viewer who watched the episode got in touch. He thought that one of his classmates was Nile. It wasn’t, but this tip would close another child abduction case.

 Monica Boner had been abducted by her non-custodial father, Guo. After this tip was called in, she was found alive and finally returned to her mother after 8 years of being missing. August 1991, 42-year-old Richard James Wilson had been on probation since 1984 for the sexual assault of a minor. He would then talk to Livingston police.

 He said he had not only murdered a woman from Great Falls, but he also said he had killed Nileen Marshall. He told the police where they would find the remains of the woman, but they didn’t find anything. They then took him to the Elorn Mountains to give him the opportunity to show them where Nileen was, but yet again, it led to nothing. He couldn’t tell them where a specific mine shaft was that he had spoken about.

So, the police decided to search the minehaft that was closest to the one he had described. Nothing was there. Wilson did have a history of mental illness, and he would later walk back what he had said. Jefferson County Sheriff Tom Dawn said that his confession needed to be taken with a grain of salt due to the fact his story kept changing.

 The decision was made to release him. There was not enough evidence to hold him. Lewis and Clark County Attorney Mike McGrath [Music] said. The marshals would later move to Japan as Kim had to work out there and then they would be moving to Mexico. In 1995, Nancy flew out to Mexico by herself to have a look at houses.

 And when it was time for Kim and the children to leave for Mexico, they all headed to the airport, excited to join Nancy. Their lives would then be turned upside down once again. Nancy had been found in her hotel room in Mexico City. The door had been kicked in and she was found hanging with her hands tied behind her back.

 She had also been badly beaten and her wedding ring had been stolen. It was initially determined that she had taken her own life, but Kim was not having it. He hired a private investigator due to the lack of development in his late wife’s case. She went to her hotel room that night and was not awake in the morning. NY’s sister Mickey said, “I suspect murder.

” Kim said the State Department told him not to push for a murder inquiry as this could mean his wife’s body would not be released. Kim was sure Nancy had been murdered, but he wanted her body back. So, he decided not to push further. NY’s body was flown home and she was buried in Texas. Flash forward to 1998.

 The episode of Unsolved Mysteries that featured Nileen’s case was on television again, and one of the people tuning in was a nurse from New Orleans. It immediately piqued her interest. She remembered something odd that had happened to her at work a couple of years prior. A woman calling herself Helena had come into the hospital with a man as she was due to have a baby.

 As with all hospital admittances, there were questions. What were their names? What was her medical history? What was their address? But these were questions they clearly were uncomfortable answering. Before the staff knew it, they were gone. The FBI were able to track this woman down. And when they did, she said she couldn’t remember much about her upbringing.

 But she thought her mother’s name was Nile. Blood was drawn to compare to Nileen’s biological father. And despite this being a promising lead, it was yet another dead end. I guess I’ve had my hopes up on this. Tim Campbell from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department said, “But sometimes when you have something really good that stands out, it turns out not to be so good.

” Various age progressed images have been released over the years showing what she could have looked like at age 25, 33, and 43. No trace of Nile Marshall has ever been found, not even the clothes she was wearing. Walk into the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and you walk past a three decade old mystery. My gut tells me she’s deceased.

 On a sunny Saturday afternoon in June back in 1983, 4-year-old Nileen Marshall vanished from a ham radio picnic in the Elhorn Mountains. We have went back to the area where she went missing. We still have no solid leads. Surgers pushed into the night. It became even more intense in terms of the priority and the need to find this young child before dark.

 I can kind of actually feel it right now. I just got kids of my own. Ken Gardner was one of those volunteers. Archive news clippings detail the efforts of him and hundreds of others. By now you’re cold and the weather’s bad and you’ve lost just hope that that you’re going to find her. at least find her alive.

 But you also get this. Maybe today. Maybe there’s something today. Derek Vanlucian worked on the case when he was with the Montana Division of Criminal Investigations. You know, she’s out there and not been found. And it’s something that nobody has answers to at this point. The case has become a favorite topic of internet sleuths on chat boards and websites.

 And and we kind of look at this too, just to kind of see what’s out there. And we check the internet. For the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the case remains open. We ran uh cadaavver dogs through there for body parts. We had an excavator that we dug up a lot of spots with. If Nylen’s body remains in the mountains above Boulder, after 33 years, there may be little left to find, but some still have hope and have not stopped looking.

Whenever I’d hunt or chase cattle in that part of the country or something, my eyes were always looking for yellow. As the years have passed by, the case of Nile Marshall has been the subject of much discussion and debate. Sheriff Dittle said, “I probably would say somewhere around two inquiries a month.

 If somebody has seen something or somebody has heard something or somebody has a question or somebody will send something to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, it’s always out there.” For those who are part of the searches, the theories about what happened to her are many and varied. I think she was abducted and sold and will probably never know her real identity, said Ralph Dunzo.

 Ken Gardner said he thinks she is still alive. For the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the case is still open and will remain so until they have answers. Nile is listed on the missing person’s clearing house website, which is a real-time list compiled with information from the FBI about a person and their case.

 Clearing houses are a network basically between states. So, if we have a case that crosses state lines, we can contact the clearing house manager in another state and we work together to try and locate the missing people, said Jennifer Vitz of the Montana Department of Justice. As soon as an agency enters a missing person record into the FBI missing person’s file, some of that information is posted to the website.

 The search for Nile was the biggest the area had ever seen. For her family, the agony of not knowing and not having answers was unbearable. Her older brother, who was six when she went missing, told his mother that his heart wanted to cry. “I really miss Nile,” he said to Nancy. “I really love her and I want to play with her.

 Do you think we’ll ever find her? Nile’s little sister was just under two at the time, and she loved playing with dolls with her. According to Nancy, when Nile went missing, her sister had trouble eating and sleeping, and she didn’t want to play with dolls anymore. Law enforcement have returned to the scene many times over the years.

No evidence has ever been found. In 2018, the Fine Nile Marshall Facebook page made a post. It said that handwritten letters had been sent to businesses in Jainsville, Indiana, and Edertton, Wisconsin relating to Nile Marshall. They were postmarked from Cincinnati, Ohio with no return address. The post said they were being investigated by law enforcement.

 It has now been 41 years since Nile Marshall went missing. As with all unsolved disappearances, there are so many questions that we will likely never have the answers to. Had Nileen become lost and succumbed to the elements, or had she been the victim of something much more calculated and sinister? Were those letters and calls cruel hoaxes, or were they actually truthful? If she was abducted, a 4-year-old might have been told a story by somebody, and this man might have taken her as his own, and she believes that’s her father when in reality, she

was abducted. Detective Hughes said, “The only thing that we can hope is that with the passage of time, anyone who knows anything might come forward and bring some much needed closure to this case.” On screen now are the age progressed images of what she could look like at various stages in her life. Nile’s case is classified as a non-family abduction.

 If you have any information relating to the disappearance or whereabouts of Nileen K. Marshall, please contact the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office at 1406225475 or Childfind of America at 1 800-4265678. We are so grateful to all of our viewers and all of our patrons. And we’d love you to consider joining our little community over on Patreon.

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