50 Years After Casper Woman Vanished, Wyoming Man On Renewed Mission To Find Her

It’s a mystery that’s plagued her family and friends for nearly 50 years: What happened to Celeste Wyma Hensley Greub?

The then 20-year-old Casper woman disappeared while camping with her aunt and a family friend in the Bighorn Mountains in August 1976, never to be seen again.

Details surrounding the excursion are thin. 

Even after nearly a half-century, all that’s known is that the trio had been camping near Misty Moon Lake in the Cloud Peak Wilderness when her companions left Celeste alone to climb to the top of the peak because she had been too tired to join.

When the women descended the peak around 5 p.m. that day, Celeste was gone.

A massive two-week search turned up no clues as to what might have happened to her.

Apart from a few false sightings, Celeste was never seen again.

All these decades later, distant family members and searchers like John Morris have not given up on finding Celeste and have renewed their mission to bring her home. 

What Happened?

The backpacking trip had been planned for weeks with an aunt she was named for, Celeste Wyma Dale, flying in from Connecticut, for the event. Also with the women was their friend, Sigrid Howe. 

The trio had set up camp next to Misty Moon Lake, which is about 12 miles from the trailhead into the Cloud Peak Wilderness and a popular stopping point for hikers before the final 2,000-to-3,000-foot climb to the top.

Dale and Howe were ready to climb to the top, but Celeste said she wanted to rest and urged the two women to continue, saying she would wait for them on the trail, according to reporting by the Casper-Star Tribune.

Celeste didn’t have food or water with her, but only a pocketful of candy.

When the older women returned hours later, Celeste was nowhere to be found. 

They weren’t initially panicked, thinking she’d gone off to explore on her own, but when she failed to return, the women contacted authorities.

Widespread Search

What followed was a massive search effort involving local search and rescue, volunteers and professional groups from Colorado as well as military support.

The more than two-week search involved more than 200 people on the ground scouring the rugged wilderness.

A team of dog handlers from F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne were brought in, including one German shepherd that suffered a mild heart attack.

The terrain was unforgiving, many reported. 

One search leader, George Rice, told the Casper-Star Tribune that it would take months of “technical investigation” to cover every inch of the area given the “spaces between boulders [that] you could drop a Volkswagen through” and still not see the bottom even in daylight.

This did not stop the teams from putting in long, grueling days searching by foot, horseback and air. 

In addition to these resources, Celeste’s family also spent between $15,000 to $20,000 to pay for helicopters and food for volunteers, Johnson County Sheriff Gene Netser told the Casper-Star Tribune.

“They have really put up the dough,” Nester was quoted. “If they’re willing to go that far we’re going to do everything we can.”

Cruel Prank

In the days after Celeste disappeared, there were a few reported sightings of her hiking in other areas of the wilderness, though all proved fruitless — save for one supposed sighting that sent up a cheer of optimism among searchers. 

A group of five hikers claimed to have found Celeste on the top of a steep cliff. 

They stood huddled around what appeared to be a body on the ground and yelled down to fellow searchers that they’d found her alive, according to media reports at the time.

This news circulated across the airwaves as Celeste’s family began to celebrate only to learn it was a thoughtless and cruel prank.

“It’s a joke; we were only kidding,” the five told a group of dog handlers who’d climbed up to help.

The brief fleeting sense of hope belied the reality on the ground. 

Nonetheless, Celeste’s father, Robert “Buck” Hensley, held out hope given his daughter’s survival skills, referring to her in one news article as “a very hard worker and strong.”

Though only 5 feet, 2 inches tall and between 115 to 120 pounds, Hensley said he was confident that Celeste could have survived the first three days on the candy she had in her pocket.

By the end of August, however, the searchers and helicopters were sent home without so much as a trace of the missing Casper woman.

Young Couple

In the absence of facts and hard clues, rumors were swirling with Celeste’s then-husband, Alan, front and center. 

After Celeste disappeared, some people who were interviewed by the media said that the young couple were having marital issues and speculated that Celeste may have been upset and left on her own to start a new life.  

This was not true, Alan told Cowboy State Daily, and the media outlet later recanted those claims in a subsequent story.

They were a young couple and had their issues like everyone else, but they were happy and there was no talk of separation or divorce, he said.

Now, 71, Alan said the couple had been married for about two years when she vanished.

The two met when they were young kids, he said. Celeste grew up in Montana, but she would come visit her grandfather who had a cabin in the Crazy Woman Canyon area above his parents’ ranch in Johnson County. 

Alan remembers Celeste and her grandfather coming to his place to buy eggs and other staples from them when she was just a little girl.

Years later, she and her family moved to Casper and opened Wyoming Bandag, a tire retreading company, where both she and Alan were working at the time. 

In fact, Alan had been working in the store the day she went missing.  

Not The Husband

As soon as he heard the news, Alan said he immediately high-tailed it to Johnson County to assist in the search. 

“It was really troubling,” Alan said. “We were up there on that search for two weeks.”

Today, he realizes after watching many true-crime programs that he may have been a suspect back then, which makes him chuckle.

But even 50 years ago in the heat of the search, Alan doesn’t believe that he was ever considered a suspect in her disappearance.

The theories that he recalls hearing about what might have happened is that Celeste either walked back out on the same trail she’d taken in or that someone had ambushed and taken her. 

He’s certain that she didn’t wander off on her own. 

She wasn’t the type of person to do that, he said, noting that it would been hard to do from the middle of nowhere without her car and money.

As to his own theories, Alan believes she that she likely is in Misty Moon Lake where they were camping. 

Someone may have knocked her over the head with an object and thrown her in or perhaps she decided to wash up or cool off and accidentally fell in.

The lake was never searched because of the limitations and the lack of equipment available to do so at the time. 

May Be Preserved

Misty Moon Lake, also known as Mistymoon Lake, sits at an altitude of 10, 224 feet in the Bighorn Mountains, according to a U.S. Geological Survey.

It’s not clear how deep it is.

Jim Stafford, geohydrologist with the Wyoming State Geological Survey, was not available for comment, but the Lake Monster lists it on its fishing website as being 108 feet at its deepest point with an average of 40 feet. 

Lake water temperatures aren’t included, but given the altitude and average air temperatures, it’s presumed to be likely very cold, if not freezing.

Had Celeste fallen into the water, her body likely would have gone into cold shock, leading to increased heart rate and breathing or hypothermia that may have caused her to lose conscientiousness and drown, Alan surmised.

Alan isn’t sure if Celeste knew how to swim, but said she was an “outdoors girl” who loved horses.

Given the temperatures, if Celeste is in the lake, her body may be preserved due to the cold, experts say.

Money In The Bank

Alan’s not ruling out foul play, he said.

He remembers hearing stories about suspicious disappearances happening in that area as well as seeing missing person posters hanging on the walls of the local ranger station.  

Regardless of what happened, he was devastated that his wife had disappeared. 

He also was a young guy who wanted to be married with a family, which left Alan in a quandary at the time of what to do now that his young wife was missing. 

Because a missing person can’t be legally declared dead in Wyoming until he or she has been missing for seven years, Alan said his attorney suggested he file for a divorce on the grounds of abandonment after two years.  

It’s not clear if Celeste was ever officially pronounced dead as that information is only made public through the Wyoming State Vital Records Department after 50 years. 

Celeste disappeared in 1976, so falls one year shy of becoming public record. It won’t be until next August when those records are unsealed.

Consequently, the Wyoming Vital Statistics Services are unable to provide any information for deaths prior to 50 years, including confirmation that a record even exists, according to a spokesperson for the department. 

Some part of Alan said he held out hope she would return. Though he gave Celeste’s car back to her parents, he kept her money in the savings account.

“I wanted her to have money in the bank in case she would show up,” he said.

Later, he married his current wife Sharon, who is the brother of John Morris Jr., who has since become one of Celeste’s biggest champions and is doing everything he can to help bring her home. 

Nefarious Circumstances

Morris feels a connection to Celeste, not just through marriage, but because his father, John Morris Sr., was one of the lead searchers for Johnson County when she went missing.

Morris has a thick manilla envelope full of his father’s documents from the search, including logs, notes and cards and letters from Celeste’s aunt, Wyma Dale, who had been with her niece on the camping trip after flying to Wyoming from her home in Connecticut. 

Morris shared the contents of the search file with Cowboy State Daily and current Johnson County Sheriff Rod Odenbach.

The documents outline the meticulous, behind-the-scenes details of the search, like physical descriptions of some of the searchers for identification purposes, including the “good looking” Sue Halfpenny, Bonnie Henrickson’s “colorful fishing hat” and search leader Dick Amundson, who’s described as “husky and sturdy.” 

The notes also include times in and out as well as people who were interviewed and other search logistics.

Also in the file are letters and a card from Dale thanking the searchers for their help in trying to find her niece. 

Morris said his dad had suspicious that someone close to Celeste, but not Alan, may have had something to do with her death based on his findings. 

Missing Case File

Morris Sr. also told his son he believes Celeste is in Misty Moon Lake because he traced her boot tracks to the west edge of the lake, where they promptly stopped with no other tracks found.

“He always said, ‘If you want to solve that case, drain Misty Moon Lake and you’ll find Celeste at the bottom with a rope and rock tied around her neck,’” Morris said.

That last cryptic detail comes from a receipt Morris said his father saw for a 50-foot piece of rope the group had bought from a local store on their way to go camping. 

The rope was found at the campsite, but 20 feet of it was missing, Morris Sr. told his son.

The trouble is that there’s no way to prove that the receipt or rope existed. 

That’s because Celeste’s missing person case file — if it ever existed — was likely destroyed with the other pre-1977 files that were in a metal storage container when water seeped into the sheriff’s office and ruined everything, according to Odenbach, who searched for it. 

“They turned to mush,” he said. “Everything was completely ruined.”

Only about a dozen or so files from 1976 still exist, though Celeste’s was not among them.

Limited Information

Nor was Celeste ever listed in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database, which was created by the FBI in January 1967, according to the agency’s website. 

Odenbach has no idea why Celeste wasn’t entered, but said his office plans to do so next week via what’s called a “delayed entry.” 

This is an exception carved out for cases like Celeste’s with very limited information, including no case number.

Odenbach said he plans to work with Celeste’s family to try to fill in the missing pieces, so at least she’ll have an official record should tips or other information come in from other police agencies across the country. 

As to whether any tips or sighting about Celeste have trickled in over the years, Odenbach isn’t aware of any. 

The last known movement on Celeste’s case that he’s aware of happened in the late 1990s following the discovery of unknown female human remains in Fox Park in Albany County in 1999.

A man contacted law enforcement to say that the silver engraved ring with the initials “M.S.S.” on the outside had some connection to Celeste and her family.

It turned out not to be true, and the unknown woman was eventually identified in 2024, according to the Doe Network.

‘Scary’ Good Hunches

Receipt or not, the question remains: why would anyone want to kill Celeste?

According to Morris, the motive might have been money.

He said his father was told that Celeste stood to inherit quite a bit of money, which may have provided a motive.

The circumstances didn’t sit well with him, he noted, and he talked about it frequently to family and friends over the years. 

More so, Morris said his dad was a man with keen instincts. 

“My dad was scary,” Morris said. “He had hunches and he was hardly ever wrong.” 

Morris said Celeste’s case always bothered him and he frequently talked about it to his family and others. 

Alan, however, is skeptical of the theories. 

Still, regardless of how Celeste may have gotten there, both men are in agreement that she is likely at the bottom of that lake. 

Now What?

Morris is content to go with his dad’s hunches and is now working hard to try to find the right volunteers to help him.

Both the Johnson County and Big Horn County sheriffs, where the lake is, do not have budgets — nor the necessary equipment — to pursue a 50-year-old cold case without definitive evidence she’s in the lake given their already active search and rescue seasons.  

Though some Wyoming search and rescue groups like Tip Top Search and Rescue in Sublette County have the costly underwater search tools like side-scan sonars and remotely operated vehicles (ROV) equipped with cameras and a claw, they typically focus on real-time rescues.

For this reason, John Linn, leader of the underwater team for the group, told Cowboy State Daily in an earlier interview involving the David Crouch missing person case that they only do recoveries at the Sublette County Sheriff Office’s request.

They typically don’t do cold cases unless there’s credible information given the associated costs and risks of high-elevation recoveries.

Out-Of-State Volunteers

However, there are out-of-state volunteer groups like Keith Cormican, director of Bruce’s Recovery out of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, that will travel to do the recoveries at the family’s request. 

In fact, the group successfully recovered a missing kayaker from Wisconsin in September after he disappeared in June 2024.

Using sonar, they found the remains of 43-year-old Wesley Dopkins 420 feet down in the lake.

Morris called Cormican, who said he expressed interest in potentially coming to Wyoming for the search.

Cormican confirmed he has spoken to John, noting that he would need more details as to how or why Celeste would have been taken up to the lake before committing.

“It is a very interesting case and I’m willing to look into it further,” he said.

Part of his calculus would be the logistics of the search area and the cost of pulling it off, he said.

Because Misty Moon Lake is in Big Horn County, Morris needs the sign-off of the sheriff’s office.

Sheriff Ken Blackburn said he’d be open to exploring options to bring in outside efforts for the search but wouldn’t invest his office’s resources without verifiable evidence that she’s in the lake.

“Short version, I’ll do anything we can to support the mission,” Blackburn said, noting he and his office would want to be very closely briefed on any effort and would probably want a couple of his team there for oversight purposes.

He also said such efforts would require permission from the U.S. Forest Service. 

He also did not know how deep the lake is, but said the water is incredibly clear. 

In fact, he flew over it several times this summer while searching for missing Minnesota hiker Grant Gardiner, who went missing in late July while summiting Cloud Peak and whose remains were recovered in the following month. 

He didn’t see any bodies, but if it’s that deep, they wouldn’t be visible at that depth.

Regardless of the challenges, Morris is on board to pick up where his dad left off and bring Celeste home. 

He’s already making lots of phone calls and trying to line up other resources, and said he hopes to make it happen. 

“Her family deserves that,” he said.

Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.