The following morning, Monday, Oct. 23, 1972, her kids awoke to find her Ford Mustang in the driveway, but Waymire, 35, could not be found. They soon learned that her still warm body had been found about 7 a.m. by a passing motorist in a shallow ditch along a country road in Clark County. Near her was the bra used to strangle her. Police believe she was dumped from a car.
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Although Waymire’s murder took place before some Clark County officials were born, it’s still a hope that someday families’ of cold cases can get closure, said Major Chris Clark of Clark County’s investigations department. Advancements in DNA testing and overall better technology are making cases like Waymire’s easier to solve.
In 1998, Waymire’s son, Michael Martin convinced officials to test scrapings from beneath Waymire’s fingernails to see if the killer’s DNA was present. Unfortunately, the tests found only the victim’s DNA.
“I’ve looked through all of our cold cases and unfortunately, there was not a lot of forensic evidence available to investigators to go through it again,” Clark said. “With a cold case, it’s very frustrating for law enforcement, I mean 1972 I wasn’t born yet myself. But it’s still frustrating because we don’t like leaving that stuff out there … We want closure for the family. Someone’s still wondering what happened to their family member there and we just don’t like leaving that open.”
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The only suspect every arrested, Clark said, was Waymire’s boyfriend, as he was the last to see her on the night of her murder. However, shortly after his arrest, he was released because Clark County detectives said there was insufficient evidence.
Clark said cold cases, especially ones left unopened for decades, still have a chance of being solved with the help of tipsters.
“We’re constantly looking for any sort of information we might get,” Clark said. “If it’s just a rumor that somebody heard, you know, ‘Hey, I heard this person might know something or might be responsible for it.’ It doesn’t matter, we get tips on cold cases fairly regularly and we follow up on every one of them. … So when we have cold cases like this, the best thing we can do is we can try and rely on someone talking about it or someone hearing something and that panning out and leading us down a road that will lead us to the person responsible for this.”
Anyone with information pertaining to this investigation is asked to call the Clark County Sheriff’s Office at 937-328-2560.
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