Nancy Mae Richards was born on December 9, 1946 to Elwyn and Olive Richards in Weiser, ID. Elwyn Warren Richards was born on December 18, 1908 in Union, Utah and Olive Luella McDaniel was born on October 17, 1916 in Caldwell, Idaho. The couple got married on July 10, 1934 in Weiser, Idaho and had seven daughters together: Shirley Thelma (b. 1935), Donna (b. 1939), Charlotte (b. 1942), Margery (b. 1943), Mary (b. 1945), and Nancy (b. 1946); they also had a daughter named Patricia Beverly Richardson in 1941 that sadly died shortly after birth. On October 16, 1940 at the age of thirty-two Elwyn got drafted into WWII, and upon his discharge from the service, he moved his family to Washington state, where he got a job as a welder with Boeing.

Nancy graduated from Bellingham High School in 1965 and (per her senior year bio), and during her time there was in the French club, pep club, stage crew, and the orchestra; she also said that she would describe herself as an ‘ambitious’ person and that ‘happiness’ was important to her. Those that knew her described her as ‘quiet and shy,’ but clarified that she was also a ‘friendly person.’ She married John Henry Winslow at the age of twenty-two on October 22, 1968 in Seattle and had three children with him: two daughters and a son. John Henry Winslow was born on January 5, 1938 in Quitman, Missouri and was drafted into the Korean War on January 13, 1956.

In July 1970 Nancy was twenty-three years old and was newly separated from her husband; she stood at 5′ 5″ tall, weighed 125 pounds, and had ‘steel-gray’ eyes, and where she was a natural brunette, at the time she had been wearing a ‘neck-length brown wig.‘ She had been last seen on the evening of July 26, 1970 wearing a blue dress with white flowers that had ‘full sleeves’ getting into a gray 1952 Plymouth sedan (one report said it was a 1951) that was described as an ‘older model vehicle’ after she walked out of her POE: Tom’s Beaver Inn. She was new at the establishment and worked there as a waitress at the time of her disappearance; she left her kids in the care of a babysitter (at the time, her daughters were three and five and her son was two). She was reported as missing the following day by her estranged husband after she failed to return home to relieve the babysitter; the kids were eventually sent to live with him.

On the afternoon of Sunday, August 9, 1970 ‘Mr. and Mrs. R. Avril Birge of Yew Street’ (who had been camping in the area) spotted the badly decomposing body of Nancy Reynolds lying on a ‘sandbar’ in the middle of the north fork in the Nooksack River, about thirty-five miles NE of Bellingham and a quarter mile away from the Bridge Camp Grounds; she had a pair of nylon stockings wrapped around her neck and died due to strangulation. She remined unidentified until the following day when the Whatcom County ME Dr. Robert Roon positively identified the body as belonging to Nancy (thanks to a check of her dental records).

After the discovery some members of Whatcom County LE searched the general area where Winslow was discovered looking for evidence, and while combing the river found two sweaters (they later said they were going to check with her husband to see if he recognized them). Nancy’s husband John Henry Winslow was employed as a ‘sub-contractor’ at the time his wife was killed and had been nearby living in Seattle at the time of his wife’s murder. A spokesman for Tom’s Beaver Inn said Nancy completed her first full day that Sunday and had worked only a half shift the day before, which had been her first day on the job. LE said they were interested in speaking with a man that was ‘around 5’7″ tall with blonde hair’ that was last seen leaving Nancy’s POE with her at around 10 PM on July 26, 1970. 

Officers spoke with a wide variety of friends, family members, acquaintances and coworkers of Winslow’s, and were trying their hardest to track down the patrons that were at Tom’s Beaver Inn on the night she was last seen alive. Some of the leads in the case included a ‘lock of hair’ that had been found on the Camp Creek Bridge located roughly one-quarter mile away from where Nancy’s body was found. Sheriff Bernie Reynolds of the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Department said a sample of the hair was sent off to the FBI lab to determine if it was human (I found no update regarding this). Reynolds also said his office (along with the city police) were checking out the possibility of an ‘all night party’ that Winslow may have attended on the evening of July 26, 1970, and were also interested in speaking to people that attended the event. According to investigators, the ‘clues are few.’

At the time Nancy was killed in July 1970, Ted Bundy was living in Seattle and was in the process of earning his degree in psychology from the University of Washington (he official re-enrolled the previous month). He was in a new(ish) relationship with Liz Kloepfer and was living at the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Ave NE in Seattle. In June 1970 he got a job at a medical instrument company called Pedline Supply (he was there until the end of 1971). In April 1966 he sold his 1933 Plymouth Coupe and bought a pale blue 1958 VW Bug (as it was smaller, more reliable and got better gas mileage than the clunky old car).

Often referred to as ‘Seattle’s Forgotten Serial Killer,’ Gary Grant was born on June 29, 1951, in Renton, and spent most of his early life in extreme poverty: his parents suffered from financial difficulties and the family lived in a trailer park on the city’s outskirts. Grant’s mother was an alcoholic, and because of this he was often forced to watch his parents engage in physical violence. In his late adolescence, he was frequently mentally overstrained and stressed out, and had lost all interest in school (he often avoided going altogether); he dropped out completely in the mid-1960’s. Near the end of the decade, he signed up for the Army but was reassigned to the Navy, however in the very beginning of his service he was bullied by some marines and as a result he developed signs of PTDS and mental illness and refused further service (citing health reasons); he was dismissed from the military a few months later. Following this, in the late 1960’s Grant returned to Renton, where a wave of murders started shortly after.

On the evening of December 15, 1969 Grant attacked his first victim: nineteen-year-old Carol Adele Erickson, who had been making her way home along a dirt road that ran parallel to the Cedar River after she left the Renton Municipal Library. During the attack, Gary stabbed her with a knife then dragged her into nearby bushes, where he had had sex with her corpse. When he was finished, he physically abused Ericksons corpse, and left lacerations on her neck. In the middle of the day sometime in September 1970, Grant attacked seventeen-year-old Joanne Mary Zulauf and hit her on the head with a stone then dragged her into the woods, where he raped then strangled her to death. Her naked remains were discovered on September 22, 1970; four days after the murder, Gary gave his girlfriend a watch he had stolen from Zulauf’s remains as a present for her birthday.

On April 20, 1971, Grant committed his two final murders: while walking by a house, he saw two six-year-old boys, Scott Andrews and Bradley Lyons playing outside. He threatened the children with a knife and took them into the woods roughly a mile and a half two away from the Bradleys’ residence. He then beat them, then stabbed Andrews and strangled Lyons. After he killed them, Grant covered their remains with leaves and branches; they were discovered two days later. As of April 2026, the seventy-four-year-old Grant is alive and serving his sentence at the Monroe Correctional Complex.

Nancy’s father Elwyn passed away at the age of eighty on February 2, 1989 in Grandview, WA and according to an article published in The Weiser American on April 15, 1946, in addition to being a welder by trade he also opened his own metal shop in Washington. Olive died at the age of eighty-three on March 20, 2000 in Grandview, ID. Shirley Thelma Richards-Jacobson died on September 11, 2017 in Seattle at the age of eighty-two and according to her obituary, she married Leonard Jacobson on April 1, 1956 in Grandview and she worked at Topside Cannery, Prosser Pack and People for People providing private care to Seniors until she retired. Shirley moved to Cleburne, Texas in 2007 and was an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Nancy’s sister Mary Joan Richards died on March 5, 1996 at the age of fifty-one, and Donna Jean Richards-Cervine’s died on December 26, 2022 in Sunnyside, WA at the age of eighty-three. Charlotte L. Richards is also deceased (I was unable to find anything else about her). Nancy’s sister Margery Guthridge is still alive and resides in Yakima, WA.

According to his obituary, John Winslow died at the age of eighty-six on June 15, 2024 after suffering a cardiac event, with his wife and daughters by his side. He was the youngest of seven children and was married ‘at least’ three times in his life, and he had four sons with Shirley Woods, went on to have one son with his wife Linda Grindle, and shared three children with a woman named Katie Armstrong. Winslow resided in Nome and Homer in Alaska between 1978 to 2016 and moved to Dayton, OH in 2023. His children said that he was a ‘kind and loving father who loved all of his children deeply. He was very generous, often giving his last dollar to anyone in need.’