Murder of Lisa Marie Kimmell

Lisa Marie Kimmell was born July 18, 1969, in Covington, Tennessee, and raised in Billings, Montana. After graduating from Billings Senior High School in 1987, she took a job managing an Arby's restaurant in Aurora, Colorado, near Denver, where she and her mother, Sheila, commuted weekly between Denver and Billings.

On March 25, 1988, Kimmell left Denver heading to Billings, planning to stop in Cody, Wyoming, to pick up her boyfriend. Wyoming Highway Patrol records show she was stopped for speeding near Casper, Wyoming, at 9:06 p.m. that night — the last confirmed sighting of her, aside from an unconfirmed sighting at a Casper grocery store around 10:00 p.m. She was reported missing the next day after failing to arrive to collect her boyfriend.

Eight days later, on April 2, 1988, a local fisherman discovered 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. Evidence indicated she had been taken to the Old Government Bridge, struck with a blunt object, and stabbed six times in the chest and abdomen before being thrown into the river; the head wound alone would have been fatal within minutes. Investigators and media, including the television program Unsolved Mysteries, sought sightings of her distinctive black 1988 Honda CR-X bearing a Montana "LIL MISS" personalized license plate, viewed as key to identifying the killer.

The case remained unsolved for 14 years. In the summer of 2002, investigators reviewing cold cases developed a DNA profile from Kimmell's rape kit evidence, which the CODIS database matched to Dale Wayne Eaton, then incarcerated at a 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 in Wyoming; he later escaped custody and was recaptured 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 uncovered Kimmell's buried Honda CR-X, still bearing its "LIL MISS" plate. Eaton was subsequently charged with eight offenses connected to the case, including first-degree premeditated murder, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, and sexual assault. A fellow inmate testified that Eaton described picking up Kimmell after she offered him a ride, making unwanted sexual advances, and then kidnapping, raping, and killing her after she attempted to have him leave the car.

Eaton was convicted on all charges and sentenced to death on March 20, 2004. His conviction was upheld on appeal. A scheduled February 2010 execution was stayed in December 2009, and his death sentence was overturned in 2014; prosecutors dropped efforts to reinstate it in September 2021, and his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Eaton's property was later awarded to the Kimmell family in a wrongful death lawsuit and was burned down on July 18, 2005, what would have been Kimmell's 36th birthday.