Is it D.B. Cooper? An unidentified victim, an unlikely place.
It began at the old Grist Mill in rural Clark County. A group of kids, passing the time on a gray afternoon, hurled rocks at the base of a rotting grain silo. One stone struck with a hollow thud, and something rolled out—something small, pale, and unthinkable. A human hand.
The remains belonged to Barbara Derry, an 18-year-old whose life was violently ended with a single stab to the heart. Her family’s grief was immediate and consuming—but as days turned to months, and months to years, that grief began to mix with a corrosive sense of betrayal. The investigation faltered, leads evaporated, and Barbara’s case went cold.
Too heartbroken to speak publicly, Barbara’s Derry’s last living sibling, Ilene, refused to share her story and tried to prevent her daughter, Jauna—Barbara’s niece—from speaking out. But Jauna had a story to tell. Jauna described the fond memories of the teenage girl she shared a bunkbed with, the void her murder left behind, and the disappointment that justice never came.
Later, Barbara’s name resurfaced—this time in connection to a man suspected of killing multiple women in Dole Valley. Investigators now believe Barbara may have been one of his earliest victims, her murder an ominous prologue to the violence that followed.
This episode revisits the chilling discovery at the Grist Mill, traces the life and loss of Barbara Derry, and examines how her unsolved case fits into the broader hunt for one of the Pacific Northwest’s most elusive suspected serial killers.
