Civic theater case still unsolved

Their faces are etched in Don Schoeffler's mind.

When the now-retired Lewiston police detective spent a year investigating the 1982 murders of Kristina Nelson, 21, Jacqueline (Brandi) Miller, 18, and Steven Pearsall, 35, everything reminded him of the case.

Nelson and Miller, stepsisters from Boise, vanished on the same night as Pearsall. Their disappearance in the vicinity of the Lewiston Civic Theatre on Sept. 12, 1982, left detectives with little to go on at first.

Schoeffler soon believed something afoul had met all three, though it would be two years before the remains of Nelson and Miller were discovered.

Pearsall's body has never been found, but Schoeffler doesn't view him as a suspect.

Neither does Pearsall's father. Fred Pearsall, of Lapwai, conducted his own investigation into the disappearance and believes his son was killed and buried at the theater. Schoeffler doesn't believe anyone is buried there, but he does think one or two of the three died inside.

The detective still hopes a piece of evidence may one day be found to resolve the case.

Pearsall was the last of the three to be seen, dropped off at the theater by his girlfriend shortly before midnight. Three people, including a police officer who happened to be driving by, saw him enter the building's basement door. He planned to do laundry while practicing his clarinet.

That clarinet was later found inside the theater when officers began their investigation. The fact Pearsall left an instrument behind made them pause.

"Mr. (Fred) Pearsall, he said Steve would have never left without a musical instrument, he would never leave, because that was just a part of him," Schoeffler said. "They said that he was extremely attached to that, and he wouldn't go anywhere without it."

It was one of many indicators that led investigators to believe the three disappearances were not voluntary.

An uncashed paycheck was found at Pearsall's apartment, and his car remained parked at a friend's house.

Nelson and Miller had gone from Nelson's apartment on the 200 block of Fourth Street, just a few houses from where Pearsall lived, to a downtown grocery store earlier the same evening. Miller lived nearby.

Nelson had previously worked as a janitor at the theater, a job later held by Pearsall. Police believe they stopped by the civic theater on their way to or from the store.

Nelson's boyfriend intended to meet her later that Sunday night, but fell asleep and didn't come to see her until Monday afternoon. There he saw a note tacked on the front door inviting him in while she was gone. He couldn't wait, but returned the next day to find nothing had changed. She later failed to show up at her job at Skippers, and he called the police.

Both women's purses were in Nelson's apartment, as was her cat. A 10-speed bicycle, her main means of transportation, was there.

"We had gone through the homes; nothing was disturbed, their personal identification was in the apartments," Schoeffler said.

No physical evidence turned up, even in a search of the rafters and basement at the theater. And Luminol tests that would have identified blood at the scene turned up false positives because of lead paint in the building.

"We looked in every nook and cranny," for any physical evidence or traces of a struggle, Schoeffler said.

Fred Pearsall believes his son was killed because he witnessed something that night inside the theater. Now 85, he remembers searching everywhere in and around the theater, even resorting to hiring a water witcher in an attempt to find his son.

"His mother hired a psychic; the psychic told him he was at a place near where a building had burned," said Chris Pearsall, stepmother to Steven Pearsall.

A former corporal in the U.S. Air Force, Pearsall returned home to attend Lewis-Clark State College and became active in the theater. He painted backdrops for the group's productions.

He was shy, but made friends easily, especially when he was acting. He loved to be a comic, even imitating Jerry Lewis, Chris Pearsall said.

"He was easygoing, soft-hearted, he didn't even want to take the dog to the vet to be put to sleep," she said.

If he were alive, his parents said, Pearsall would have contacted someone. But relatives on both coasts never heard from him.

It also wasn't like Nelson or Miller to take off. Harold Nelson, the girls' father and stepfather, said he placed fliers both near his home in Boise and around Lewiston in search of the girls.

"I didn't know what had happened; I suspected the worst at the onset," he said. "Kristi or Jacquie, I don't think either one, I don't think either one would take off and not tell anybody."

A Boise High School graduate, Nelson attended LCSC for art classes and the possibility of becoming a veterinarian. Miller later followed her stepsister to Lewiston, and was working as a baby-sitter at the time of their disappearance.

They were a part of his life that he'll never forget, Harold Nelson said. "They were my daughters; I loved them both," he said.

Pearsall was initially classified as a suspect, said former Lewiston Police Lt. Alan Johnson, but was quickly ruled out after interviews and a psychological profile led investigators to believe he had been killed along with Nelson and Miller.

Their instincts always turned to the same man.

"Pretty early on," Johnson said detectives were able to connect the murders to a missing Asotin girl who disappeared three years earlier. The case still shares the same person of interest with the disappearance of Christina White.

The man of interest was also at the theater the night Miller, Nelson and Pearsall disappeared. He told police he briefly left for the former Red Baron pizza parlor downtown, but returned to the theater at about 10 p.m. and fell asleep. He told police he didn't wake up until 4 the next morning, and didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"We started doing a bunch of background checks on him. We found some information out of a California authority that gave us more of a positive lead on what had happened to the three girls primarily," Schoeffler said.

Nelson and Miller's bodies were found in a canyon below the Juliaetta-Kendrick Grade March 19, 1984, when a teenager collecting cans and attempting to retrieve a hat that blew off his head discovered remains 60 feet down an embankment.

Detectives said dental records provided the only positive identification. But clothing remnants found with the remains helped police determine both were wearing the same clothes Nelson and Miller were wearing when they disappeared.

Investigators never released how Nelson and Miller died, and Johnson said the pathologist's determination continues to be withheld as part of the investigation. There was evidence of trauma, he said.

Schoeffler set up a polygraph test with their person of interest shortly after the bodies were discovered. The man initially agreed and sat through a taped interview that detectives said had inconsistencies. But Schoeffler said the man later retained an attorney and backed out of a lie detection examination.

"I know it just upset us because we knew we had him," Schoeffler said. "We took our tape recordings, we even sent our recordings to a voice stress analyst."

Other leads came up, but nothing as strong as that one person of interest.

He can't be named because he hasn't been charged. But Johnson said the case's original detective, now-deceased Capt. Duane Ailor, once sought to file criminal charges.

Prosecutors declined to charge the case for the simple reason that Pearsall was still missing, and his absence could create a hole for a jury, Johnson said.

"Until you have a definitive location for Steven, you put 12 people on a jury and they are going to have reasonable doubt," Johnson said.

The fact the case has never been to court bothers Schoeffler. Retired and living in Arizona, he still questions little pieces of his investigation when a similar case appears on the news. He wonders if there is someone else he could have talked to who would have pointed him in the right direction.

"We always ask that question; if there was something we didn't see at the time, you're always second-guessing yourself. I'm still second-guessing myself."

Johnson got involved in 1997, when now-retired Chief Jack Baldwin asked a group of retired police officers to review the police department's case. The group, Officers Without Legal Standing, reviewed the cases in order to provide a different look on leads that might not have been explored.

Their review gave police a few avenues to investigate, and others still come up, though less often.

"In August there was a location that was excavated. It was an area of interest for us," Johnson said recently. "Irregularities appeared in the ground and we got permission from the property owner to excavate."

Another location was excavated last month. Both excavations were near the same spot in Asotin County. No excavation was ever done at the theater, Johnson said, because no information ever led police to believe anyone was buried there.

The cases now lie dormant, but Johnson notes they are not forgotten.

"Every once in a while someone comes forward with something to look at," Johnson said. A dental record from remains in another county might have a partial match to Pearsall, but is later ruled out upon further review.

Johnson was the case's primary investigator until earlier this month, when he retired to take a job with the Nez Perce County Sheriff's Office. The case remains in the hands of Lewiston police detectives, but Johnson said he wants to be there if it is ever solved.

So does Fred Pearsall. He still thinks about his son almost every day, and would do anything to find him.

"It would be nice to get it straightened out. I could give Steven a decent burial," he said.

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Gary may be contacted at bgary@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2262.