I doubt that this murder case is directly connected to Dickie's disappearance exactly a week later, but it does show that the Blue Earth County Sheriff's Department was already involved in a homicide investigation of a case involving teenaged boys.
Were there any possible links between this murder case and Mapleton or to anyone who knew Dickie or his friends?
There are a couple of other really eerie cases around this time (well,
very roughly around this time) involving gas stations and young people. There's Andrew Lepley, Crow Junction CO, 1976, he worked at a gas station, was very athletic, was soon to graduate high school and planned to join the air force and attend a state college. He disappeared out of the gas station during his shift, the money was gone from the register and the microphone of the citizens band radio had been torn out. Suspicious looking character & vehicle seen around there before Andy disappeared. This was Memorial Day weekend, so you can bet there were plenty of travelers in and out of the area that day.
Then there's Nancy Perry Baird, 23yo, East Layton UT, July 4 1975. Last seen working at the Triangle Oil Company's Fina gas station at 200 South Highway 89. A police officer on patrol saw her there less than 15 minutes before she was discovered missing at 5:30 P.M. Purse and car were left at the station. She had a child, it's unlikely she went anywhere voluntarily.
View NamUs missing person case MP11575 for Nancy Perry Baird missing from Layton, Utah. Date of last contact: Jul 04, 1975. NCMEC case number: --.
namus.nij.ojp.gov
Looking at the Mankato case, the victim was pretty much in the same life stage as Andy Lepley: right at the end of high school, an athlete, 18yo, Robbery occurred on Sunday. And listening to "Meanwhile in Mankato," it's absolutely incredible how the murderer sort of... just went right back into mainstream society, blending in, like it had never even happened. (I mean, you do wonder how exactly that happened, and wonder if that same type of systemic issue wasn't a factor in Dickie's situation, I'd hope not.) The thing is, though, they caught this guy quite quickly in 1965. If Dickie were abducted (a big "if," agreed), I don't think it was the work of someone like that. If Dickie were an abduction, the abductor made Dickie completely disappear, and so "efficiently" that decades later, we're all still scratching our heads wondering what happened, completely unsure as to whether there even IS a "perp" per se in the case. Same with Andy and Nancy. If Dickie was an abduction, it was done by someone that a) travels, and b) is crafty and makes sure he covers his tracks. And discussing all of that makes me even more concerned we might be looking at a stranger abduction because... who locally could make this little boy just-- vanish? Could an actual accident of any kind do that? It sounds like no. And I also don't think you're going to get the level of collusion one would need to make that happen in a lot of different scenarios we might think of. If someone did this to Dickie locally, that person is a true SK type murderer (either active or dormant) but jmo. And murderers of that type tend not to murder in their own backyards so they can live free to kill again. Gacy's a notable exception in that he did murder in his own backyard-- but he in the end proves the rule of why such types avoid it because that's how they got him. Unless Dickie ran away, I continue to wonder about abduction.
