Mysteries linger in the wide-open landscapes of Wyoming — cases of missing persons that have remained unsolved for decades.
To keep hope alive, law enforcement agencies across the state maintain a list of these cold cases, ready for the moment when new evidence or a fresh lead might bring long-awaited answers. Each name represents a life, a story unfinished, and a family still searching for closure.
As a community, we all have a role to play in ensuring these cases are never forgotten.
Disappearances have a long history in Wyoming. For at least 13,000 years, people have walked these lands, and countless vanishings have gone unrecorded. These are our coldest cases—those lost to time, with answers that may never come.
Like the one that surfaced in 1996 in the Seminoe dune field in Carbon County, when coyote hunters reported an exciting find to members of the Wyoming State Crime Lab in Cheyenne. The State Crime team investigated the find with a forensic anthropology team from the University of Wyoming.
Professor George Gill, Rick Weathermon, and I visited the scene that spring and recorded an exposed human skeleton found in the windward trough behind a large parabolic sand dune north of Rawlins.
Shot In The Head
Lab analysts determined that the dead man was a Caucasian male about 40 years of age at the time of his death. He had been shot in the back of the head, execution style, with a .44 caliber conical bullet, probably fired from a Smith & Wesson revolver.
The bullet followed a slightly downward trajectory into the victim’s head. The assassin must have held the gun behind the man while the victim was kneeling, then pulled the trigger like an execution. According to ballistics, the murder took place post-1870.
It's highly unlikely that the killer abandoned the dead body in the middle of the dune trough. A burial there would have been quickly blown away, exposing the body to passersby. More likely, the body was left on the leeward side of the active dune nose where it would quickly be concealed by accumulating windblown sand.
Dunes in that field migrate downwind about five meters a year, which would initially bury the victim by passing over him, but then much later exposing him in the erosion trough behind it.
Based on the length of that particular dune, the average rate of dune movement, and the 1996 discovery date, the victim was shot about 1890, confirming the ballistics report.
Skeletal analysis revealed more trauma to the deceased than the fatal gunshot wound. He had a fractured right leg bone (femur) that had been medically repaired and completely healed. Bone growths appeared on some vertebrae, which is not unusual for a lifetime spent in the saddle.
His shoulder blades showed muscle ridging, irregular borders, and arthritic lipping, indicating strong use of shoulders in a pulling motion--traits consistent with someone who may have worked as a teamster. No clothing remnants were found on or near the skeleton.
But who was this victim of an unsolved homicide more than a century ago? Is this a missing person case?
For someone to be recognized as missing, someone else in the vicinity must know you existed in the first place and could no longer be found. Identifying this man was important in reconstructing the crime scene and establishing the possible motive behind his assassination.
The laboratory analysis also recovered a DNA sample from the skeletal remains. But early efforts have so far failed to connect his genetic identity to known living DNA donors.
Consequently, we reviewed historically known missing persons of that period in Wyoming. After sifting through a few possibilities, we uncovered a potential candidate that certainly warrants further research.
Could It Be Frank?
B. F. (Frank) Buchanan was the missing sole eyewitness to the 1889 lynching of Ella Watson and James Averell in the Sweetwater Rocks several miles north of the dune murder scene.
According to Buchanan’s account of the lynching, he had been sitting in Averell’s roadhouse that July day when two boys told him some ranchers just grabbed Watson and Averell and were driving them away in a wagon.
Trouble in the late 1880s had hit the Sweetwater River Valley near Independence Rock like a thunderclap. Tensions escalated around unlawful branding of slick calves, homesteading, and competition over water rights.
Homesteaders like Averell and Watson were caught up in this controversy when ranchers from larger outfits suspected the two of nefarious business practices. One local rancher in particular, A. J. Bothwell, precipitated the confrontation that ended in Averell and Watson’s lynching.
Buchanan followed the ranchers into the Sweetwater rocks several miles north of the Seminoe dune field. He later reported that he fired two cylinders of ammunition at the men who were trying to hang the victims, and then retreated when they fired back at him.
Someone later found the bodies of the hanging victims, and Buchanan told a hastily organized coroner’s inquest what he had seen, identifying each perpetrator.
A No-Show At The Inquest
Unfortunately, Buchanan needed to repeat his eyewitness testimony at a Grand Jury convened to hear the case. But he never showed up for the hearing in Rawlins in October 1889.
The last time Frank Buchannan was seen alive was late 1889 or early 1890, depending on whose research you read. His testimony would have probably convicted the lynchers. There is no statute of limitations on murder, so he became a marked man as long as he was alive.
Buchanan was a teamster, born about 1852 in Georgia, and he became good friends with Averell.
The dune murder skeleton shows bone modification typical for a teamster and suggests a comparable age at the time of death. In addition, recent trace element work indicates t
Buchanan was last seen riding south from the Independence Rock area toward Rawlins, a trail that took him through the dune field near where the body was found.
This evidence and analysis strongly suggest that the coyote hunters may have found the remains of Frank Buchanan. Might he eventually prove to be the dune murder victim?
At least one anonymous person thinks the dune murder victim is Frank Buchanan.
The last time I visited the scene, I found a metal fence post pounded into the ground where the body was found. A rusted octagonal rifle barrel was welded perpendicular to the post, creating a metal cross.
Welded onto the intersection of the post and barrel were two metal letters, “F” and “B,” the initials of the sole eyewitness to the 1889 lynching.
Mark E. Miller can be reached at westrider51@outlook.com
