A Deadly Serial Killer Against A Determined Man
The Missoula Mauler!
September 3, 1986: It was close to midnight. Doug Wells was pulling up the car to his local street, and his wife, Kris Wells, sat next to him.
A few feet away from their house, Doug and Kris saw a camper van parked in front of their home. It was an odd choice for a parking slot because this was no recreational spot for a camper.
Mr Wells stopped the car and walked upto the camper to see its occupants. On the driver seat sat a man who was sleeping. Wells theorised that this driver picked a random spot to relax, which somehow happened to be right in front of his house.
Doug and Wells proceeded into their house, not waking up the campervan guy.
A few minutes later, Doug emerged from the house to dump the trash into the bin. But in his dimly lit front lawn, he saw something startling:
The guy in the campervan was standing in front of the house.
Doug was alarmed. Cautious not to get too close to him, Doug shouted from a distance:
“Who are you”?
“What do you want”?
The easy entry
The campervan guy introduced himself as Wayne Nance, a co-worker of Doug’s wife at the furniture store. He said he was driving by the street and found a person snooping around Doug’s house, peeking through the windows.
Mr Nance said he knew it was Kris’ house, and he wanted to make sure that the stranger was not a harm to her. But he also saw that the house was locked.
So, according to Wayne Nance, he stayed put until Kris Wells showed up so that he could alert his colleague against a possible intruder.
Doug Wells was taken aback by this story. He was recovering from the sight of a stranger standing on his lawn, and now the has to deal with another possible intruder.
“Did you see the guy again”? asked Doug.
Mr Nance said he didn’t have a flashlight and therefore couldn’t check properly. He offered to do a combined search with Doug if he was handed a flashlight.
Doug was convinced and invited Nance into the house. He didn’t know that there was not even an iota of truth in the tale Wayne Nance had spun.
The revelation
Once inside, Wayne Nance wasted no time losing his charade of a good samaritan. He shut the door behind and out came a metal pipe he was hiding.
Nance swung the pipe at the back of Doug’s skull. He turned around in agony as Nance launched another fierce strike at his face. Despite bleeding profusely, Doug resisted, pushing and dodging the brutal assault. But it was hardly enough.
Kris heard the outcries from upstairs and rushed to the scene. She saw her husband soaking wet in blood and Wayne Nance launching continuous punches and kicks at his body.
Nance saw Kris, drew his pistol, pointed at her and asked her to tie up her husband. The shocked wife had no other go but to abide by his terms. She tied up her husband, all the while hoping that Nance was here to rob and not to kill.
Wayne on his way
Having got Doug tied up, Nance took Kris upstairs and tied her up in the bedroom. But he knew Doug had a fight in him, and it was unfinished business until he was totally incapacitated.
So Nance went downstairs, dragged Doug down to the basement, tied him to a pole and began beating him frantically. He then drew a blade and pushed it deep into Doug’s chest.
As Nance retrieved the blade, now soaked in Doug’s blood, he fell over. Nance knew he had taken care of the ‘Doug’ part of his job.
Wayne went back to Kris’s room, where she had made significant progress in slipping out of Wayne’s restraint. She had almost reached her landline, about to dial for help, when Nance came in.
He overpowered Kris’ efforts to seek outside help and had her tied up again. Nance checked Doug one more time, and he saw him exactly in the same position as he had left him earlier.
Wayne believed it was all under control, but was it?
The rising phoenix
Nance went upstairs to exercise his animalistic cravings on Kris. But what he didn’t realise was that Doug wasn’t done. He was far from dead.
By this time, Doug had one long stab wound in the chest, multiple wounds on his face, head and body, but none of that was going to deter his indomitable spirit. He had a wife to protect, and he was going to fight till his last breath.
Doug somehow wriggled out of the restraint and reached out to his rifle. He was a gunsmith but had just one bullet to play with on that fateful night.
Doug loaded the rifle with this lone round and started climbing the stairs, leaving a trail of blood spots behind him. He knew he had just one shot, and he had to make it count.
The wounded husband followed his wife’s screams, and when he reached the hallway, he sensed footsteps approaching him. He went back to the stairs aimed the gun towards the hallway, ready to fire the moment Nance showed up.
And fire he did, right into the stomach of Nance Wayne. The killer Wayne didn’t expect this resilience, and he collapsed on the floor. Doug mustered every bit of his strength and started beating Nance with the gun.
He was out of rounds, but the gun was still a potent weapon in the hands of a man determined to throw a fight at his attacker.
The desperate Nance
As revealed later, Nance wasn’t a killer with a personal vendetta; he was a deadly serial killer on a spree. He had finished up several individuals, leaving no trace of evidence ever.
But now, he was up against a Doug who couldn’t be stopped with a stab and more than a dozen wounds.
Nance rushed into the room where Kris was tied up and took his gun. Three rounds were fired, and Doug evaded two while one penetrated his leg. But for a man with a serious chest wound, a bullet in the leg was no biggie.
He quickly moved towards Nance and swung his rifle at him like a baseball bat. Nance had more rounds left, but a wounded Doug was all over him. And the gun slipped out Nance’s grab.
Doug then collected this pistol and fired one right into the head of Wayne Nance.
And that was it.
The deadly serial killer Wayne Nance was killed by a tough, unassuming Doug Wells.
The Missoula Mauler
Several days later, the police officers received the DNA report of Wayne Nance. He was an identified serial killer, responsible for at least six deaths- from 1974 to 1986. But who knows how many more were there!
Among the force, the unidentified Nance was known by a name:
The Missoula Mauler
Hailing from Missoula, Montana, Wayne’s first kill was at the age of 18. He raped and killed a woman named Donna. Unfortunately, the investigative officers found Donna’s husband a top suspect, and Wayne slipped under the radar.
The 15-year-old Devonna Nelson, the 16-year-old Marcella Bachman, who was also Nance’s girlfriend, were some of his other victims.
Before approaching Doug and Kris, he had pulled a similar job in another family; where he killed the husband Mike, raped and stabbed his wife Teresa and then set the entire house on fire to kill the kids. The kids were saved, but there was no trace of Nance.
It was supposedly after this murder that Nance got a job at the furniture store, where he met his boss- Kris Wells and later her husband, who turned out to be Nance’s nemesis.
Kristen and Doug eventually recovered from their injuries. Had it not been for this couple, who knows how many more people would have been dead.
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