Murder of Lisa Marie Kimmell

Lisa Marie Kimmell (born July 18, 1969, in Covington, Tennessee) was raised in Billings, Montana, and after graduating high school in 1987 took a job managing an Arby's restaurant near Denver, Colorado, commuting weekly between the two cities with her mother, Sheila. On March 25, 1988, Kimmell left Denver heading to Billings, planning to stop in Cody, Wyoming, to pick up her boyfriend. She was stopped for speeding near Douglas, Wyoming, just outside Casper, at 9:06 p.m., which became the last confirmed sighting of her; an unconfirmed sighting placed her at a Casper grocery store around 10:00 p.m. that night. She was reported missing the next day when she failed to arrive to collect her boyfriend.

Eight days later, on April 2, 1988, a fisherman found Kimmell's body floating in the North Platte River near Casper. An autopsy determined she had been bound, beaten, and raped over a period of at least six days before being taken to the Old Government Bridge, struck in the head with a blunt object, stabbed six times, and thrown into the river. Her distinctive black 1988 Honda CR-X, bearing a personalized Montana license plate reading "LIL MISS," was never recovered at the time, and her case — including efforts to locate the car — was profiled on Unsolved Mysteries within weeks of the discovery, and later on A&E's Cold Case Files.

The case remained unsolved for 14 years. In the summer of 2002, investigators reexamining cold cases developed a DNA profile from Kimmell's rape kit, which the CODIS database matched to Dale Wayne Eaton, then incarcerated at Englewood federal prison in Littleton, Colorado, on an unrelated weapons charge. Eaton's DNA had entered CODIS in 1997 following his arrest for kidnapping a family at gunpoint after offering roadside assistance; he had escaped custody before being recaptured in Shoshone National Forest while armed, elevating the offense to a federal charge. Following the DNA match, neighbors reported having seen Eaton digging a large hole on his property in Moneta, Wyoming, roughly 75 miles from Casper. A 2002 excavation of the site recovered Kimmell's Honda CR-X, still bearing the "LIL MISS" plate.

Eaton was charged with eight crimes connected to the case, including first-degree premeditated murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, first-degree sexual assault, and second-degree sexual assault. A fellow inmate, Joseph Francis Dax, testified that Eaton described picking Kimmell up as a hitchhiker, making unwanted sexual advances, and the encounter escalating into kidnapping, rape, and murder after she tried to end the ride. Eaton was convicted on all charges and sentenced to death on March 20, 2004. His appeals of the conviction were unsuccessful, but a scheduled February 2010 execution was stayed in December 2009, and his death sentence was overturned in 2014; the state dropped efforts to reinstate the death sentence in September 2021. Eaton's forfeited property was awarded to the Kimmell family in a wrongful death lawsuit, and the buildings on it were burned down on July 18, 2005, what would have been Lisa Kimmell's 36th birthday.