Remains that baffled police for 36 years just identified as a missing Washington woman

In 1985, a hunter looking for bears discovered skeletal remains near a creek in Montana.

For 36 years, officials have worked to identify those remains, the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office said. They collaborated with forensic experts for decades. They scoured missing persons databases across the country and in Canada.

The woman’s identity was such a mystery that her unknown remains were referred to as “Christy Crystal Creek” — until now.

Officials said Monday that the Sheriff’s Office finally knows the identity of the remains found nearly four decades ago.

They belong to Janet Lee Lucas, a 23-year-old from Spokane, Washington, officials said.

“After weeks of intense genealogy research, we were able to identify DNA relatives and family trees which led us to the Janet’s family in Spokane,” the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. “After conducting numerous interviews and confirming our conclusions with additional DNA testing of relatives, we are now able to conclusively identify Christy Crystal Creek as Janet L. Lucas.”

Lucas was born in 1960 and grew up in California and Washington with seven brothers and sisters, officials said. She was last seen in Sandpoint, Idaho, in 1983, two years before her remains were found.

Her son was 5 years old when Lucas went missing, officials said, and he has spent much of his life searching for his mother.

There were no records that Lucas ever lived in or spent time in Montana. Officials said what happened to her is a mystery.

“We cannot rest on our success of having finally identified Janet,” Detective Captain Dave Conway said in the news release. “We must now seek justice for Janet. Our focus has changed from ‘who is Christy Crystal Creek?’ to ‘what happened to Janet Lucas?’”

The woman’s death will now be investigated as a cold case homicide, Conway said. Officials are also investigating if there is a connection to Wayne Nance, a suspected serial killer who was accused of killing six people in Montana between 1974 and 1986.

This story was originally published May 10, 2021 at 11:37 AM with the headline "Remains that baffled police for 36 years just identified as a missing Washington woman."