I’ve now spoken with many people who knew Deborah and have learned a lot about her. Not just why she was in Rawlins but about herself as a person and her family.
Deborah liked to be called by “Debbie”, her nickname. She lived with her parents, Don and Diane Meyer, and her two younger siblings in Red Lodge, Montana. She attended Red Lodge High School and i’m in the process of getting more photographs of her.
Debbie was known to be very sweet and kind to those around her. By all accounts, she came from a happy loving family who were all never the same after she disappeared. Debbie liked to have fun, go to parties, and hang out with her five closest friends (all girls). Her father was a crop duster for Red Lodge Airways and he was teaching Debbie to fly and take care of the plane prior to her disappearance.
I have heard different reasons as to why she was in Rawlins. One was that she was going through a rebellious phase so her parents sent her away from Red Lodge for that reason. The other is that her mother was recovering from surgery so she sent Debbie to live with her aunt in the Rawlins area. While in Wyoming, Debbie lived with her aunt near Seventh and Spruce Streets. She worked as a waitress at a local restaurant where her aunt also worked.
According to her friends, Debbie was not happy about being in Rawlins. However, they do not believe she ran away. She had no prior history of doing so and she wasn’t even known to hitchhike.
On the night of August 4th 1974, Debbie called her best friend and spoke to her over the phone for some time. She mentioned she planned to go see a movie at some point during the night. Meyer left her aunts house to walk to the local movie theater but she never arrived and she never returned to her aunts house.
The Rawlins area LE felt Debbie was a runaway just like Carlene Brown and Christy Gross a month earlier. However, Deborah never picked up her last paycheck from work and she left all of her personal belongings behind. Her parents and friends never believed she left them behind though.
Deborah’s father was known to fly his plane from Montana to Rawlins frequently to search for his missing daughter. Both her parents and friends would do this every so often in hopes of finding her. For years, they all never gave up hope that Debbie would be found alive. However, many who knew her have come to accept she was probably abducted and murdered that night.
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