The last time Ann Vavra-Faris spoke to her twin brother Roy Vavra, she could tell something was off.
Roy, then 38, was living with a female friend on a small ranchette south of Gillette on Highway 50 that he’d just sold to her. A series of black-and-white billboards along the ice-scabbed, two-lane highway urge sinners to repent: “Trust Jesus,” “Jesus Forgives.”
In recent months, Roy had become distant, his sister said.
Typically, he came home to Laramie to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family, but that year, he didn’t show. His cell phone had been turned off, so Ann tracked him down on his landline.
During their last conversation, Ann said Roy wasn’t his jovial self.
“He was standoffish, very quiet,” she said, which was unusual for her normally good-natured, jovial brother.
Shortly thereafter, Roy disappeared on Jan. 24, 2006, never to be seen or heard from again.
The mystery still hangs over the close-knit ranching community and his family and friends: what happened to Roy that day and was he the victim of foul play?
His sister hasn’t given up on finding answers, and now with the help of her cousin, Rachel Heaver, the two are determined to finally solve the mystery and bring Roy home nearly 20 years later.
Deep Ranching Roots
The twins were close, Ann said. They were born in Alaska and given up for adoption by their harried birth mother, who was then in her early 40s with other small children at home and not enough resources to raise them all.
Roy and Ann were quickly adopted by a couple living in Fairbanks, Barbara and Lewis Vavra, who moved with the twins to Laramie after Lewis accepted a teaching position at the University of Wyoming.
The siblings were raised on a small 2-acre spread in Laramie, but spent a lot of time on Barbara’s family 50,000-acre ranch in South Dakota.
Their grandfather, L. Roy Houck, was a prolific rancher who raised cattle and bison and also served as a state senator and lieutenant governor.
Parts of the 1990 movie “Dances with Wolves” were filmed on Houck’s Standing Butte Ranch featuring a herd of his bison.
Roy played an extra in the film. In a photograph, he stares stoically at the camera in Union soldier garb atop one of his grandfather’s many horses.
Rodeo is in their blood. Both Ann and Roy are ropers and traveled throughout the West on the rodeo circuit.
Ann described her brother as a quiet, laid-back guy who loved hard work, fishing and hunting, training horses and roping.
“He was just an all-around good guy,” Ann said.
He was also a “typical cowboy,” his sister said, who made his living mending fences and doing ranch work.
Women were his Achilles heel, Ann said, and he sometimes blurred boundaries when it came to other men’s wives and girlfriends. Could this have gotten him into trouble?
Maybe, or did he go crosswise with one of his friends?
It’s a mystery Ann and her cousin, Rachel Heaver, are determined to solve as Heaver speaks to those in Roy’s close circle and follows up on various tips and clues.
Cousin Connection
It’s safe to say that Ann and Heaver are making up for lost time after connecting six years ago when Ann set out to track down her biological father.
Heaver led Ann to her great-uncle, George Matteson, who had since passed away, though he was in his own right a legendary figure. Heaver’s family, who mostly live in suburban Illinois, are not ranchers. But Matteson, coincidentally, was a renowned cowboy and trick horse rider who once led the famed Rose Parade kicking off the Rose Bowl football game.
Since meeting up online, the two have become close. So close that Heaver feels responsible for helping Ann find out what happened to Roy.
Heaver said that she can see that Roy’s disappearance has left a big hole in her heart and life.
“I told Ann that I understood this has been a big, immovable rock for her,” Heaver said.
She asked her cousin if she wanted her to start making phone calls and talking to those who may remember or know something.
Ann immediately responded, “Oh my God, would you please.”
Heaver’s niece, Charlene Scace, is also leading efforts to find Roy and started the “Where’s Roy Vavra” Facebook group.
The goal is to find the missing pieces in an attempt to sort out what happened, and hopefully, bring Roy home, Heaver said.
What Happened?
The day Roy vanished, he was due to go hunting with his longtime, close friend, Seth Long.
The two were planning to meet up at Roy’s place around 11 a.m. that morning.
When Long drove by Roy’s place on his way to drop his kids off at day care, he saw an unfamiliar white flatbed pickup truck parked in the driveway, according to Sgt. Gary Sams with the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office.
When he circled back to Roy’s place about 30 minutes later, both Roy and the truck were gone.
Roy left a note on the counter saying he’d be back by their scheduled meeting time. He also left behind his keys, wallet and pickup.
When Roy failed to turn up, he was reported missing by his roommate a few days later.
His friends and family were at a loss as to where he might have gone.
Because there were no discernible signs of struggle, investigators believe that Roy knew the person he’d left with, Sams said.
Nothing appeared to be missing. Roy left seemingly with only the clothes on his back. Nothing else was missing except the clothes on his back and his signature “Classic” rope brand black ball cap.
An eyewitness would later report seeing Roy the day he disappeared at the Little Store, roughly 2 miles from his house on the corner of Force Road and Highway 50.
The witness said Roy was wearing a denim shirt and blue jeans and was with a guy who had short, blonde hair who was driving a “small, white truck” that may have been “a Ford Courier or some type of vehicle used as a courier,” according to information in the file.
It’s not clear from the report if the men were standing in the parking lot next to the vehicle or sitting inside of it.
Meanwhile, multiple searches by law enforcement and Roy's family scoured the area looking for any trace of him.
Sketchy Deal
One person who quickly rose to the suspect list was Troy Doud, Sams said.
Roy and Doud were friends and, in fact, had planned to go into business together raising and selling roping steers. Roy had given Doud $125,000 toward the proposition from the sale of his home.
Days later, however, Ann said Roy had changed his mind about going into business with Doud. He asked Doud for his money back but was told he’d already spent it, according to Ann.
“So there was some conflict there,” she said.
Details of that deal remain sketchy. There was no contract to verify the amount or nature of the agreement, Sams said, because Doud told investigators that the deal was a verbal one sealed with a handshake.
Despite saying he’d spent the money, Doud later returned the full sum to Roy’s parents months after Roy disappeared when the family came to Gillette for a dinner held by Roy’s friends.
Dog Acting Funny
Doud’s role in Roy’s disappearance was further intensified when Roy’s dog started acting funny, lying down in an area of Doud’s riding arena and digging holes near Roy’s house.
“If I recall, we had two people telling us that Roy’s dog was acting strangely,” Sams said. “He would go and lay in that part of Doud’s arena.”
This wasn’t normal behavior for Roy’s dog, Sams said, and as such, it prompted authorities to bring in cadaver dogs and start digging.
They dug up a large area of Doud’s arena with an excavator, Sams recalled, but nothing was discovered in any of the locations.
The cloud of suspicion encircling Doud remained when he left town shortly after Roy disappeared, Ann said.
Criminal Past
Doud has a history of violence.
In April 1991, Doud, then 25, kidnapped his estranged wife at gunpoint, beat her and briefly held her hostage at his home until she was able to escape, court records state. He was charged with felony aggravated kidnapping and assault and battery and was facing up to 20 years to life in prison.
After a jury found him guilty, Doud jumped bail and fled to Florida while awaiting sentencing, according to reporting by the Associated Press (AP). He was also convicted in May 1992 of stealing 14 quarter horses from a Casper woman, according to the same media report.
He was eventually located two months later in Tampa and brought back to Wyoming to face sentencing.
Former Campbell County District Judge Dan Price II sentenced Doud to 20 to 22 years in prison but later suspended that sentence after 18 months in jail. In lieu of incarceration, Price released Doud with 10 years of supervised probation, according to media reports at the time.
Attention Seeker
All leads appeared to dry up until four years later when investigators were contacted by an Iowa man who claimed he could lead them to Roy’s body that he said was buried in rural Campbell County.
Jason D. Larson, 30, told investigators he had a dream in which he’d helped a couple of other guys bury Roy’s body.
Larson lived in Gillette at the time Roy disappeared but was never considered a suspect, according to the Casper-Star Tribune.
With nothing else to go on, the sheriff’s office took a shot and flew Larson out to Gillette.
Sams, then a deputy, accompanied former investigator Kevin McGrath out to the location where Roy’s body was supposedly dumped only to realize the guy was lying.
“I think he was wanting to get out of trouble in Iowa,” Sams said, recalling that he was wanted on some minor alcohol offenses.
He also wanted attention, Sams said, which he got from Campbell County Circuit Judge Terrill R. Tharp, who sentenced him to six months in jail for false reporting and ordered Larson to pay $2,000 in restitution to cover the money he wasted, according to media reports at the time.
Back On The Radar
Doud, who still remains a key person of interest in Roy’s disappearance, reinserted himself onto the police radar with a 2019 letter he wrote to the former director of the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, Forrest Williams, suggesting he may have some information to share.
By then, Doud was serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for murder.
He was found guilty in 2013 of shooting Jeffery Sewalt three times in the head at his house in Erath County, Texas, and killing him.
According to court documents filed in Doud’s appeal before the Texas Supreme Court, Doud killed Sewalt over a loan.
Sewalt, who ran a car dealership, had loaned Doud $16,000 and was holding the title to Doud’s pickup truck as collateral. The truck title was found at Doud’s house after the shooting. He claimed that he’d paid Sewalt back with interest to regain it, but no such bank records were found, stated court documents.
Though Doud did not specifically reference Roy in his letter, he told Williams he may have information “concerning serious felony events in northeast Wyoming,” according to the letter shared with Cowboy State Daily.
Before he shared this information, Doud asked to be transferred to the Wyoming State Penitentiary for a meeting with DCI investigators.
“I foresee this matter taking some time to be resolved, due to its complexity and seriousness,” Doud wrote in the letter.
Doud was not brought back to Wyoming, however. Instead, former Campbell County Sheriff’s Investigator Troy Hipsag flew down to the Texas prison to meet with Doud and his attorney.
No deal was made, nor was any confession forthcoming in relation to Roy or any other alleged criminal activity.
Hipsag told the Gillette News Record in 2022 that he felt Doud held the key to unlocking the mystery.
“The information is absolutely about Roy,” Hipsag told the news outlet. “He didn’t say this. It was inferred.”
What information Doud holds is still unknown.
He did not return Cowboy State Daily’s request for an interview sent to the Polunsky state prison in Livingston, Texas, where he’s currently incarcerated on a life sentence.
Not The Only One
Sams admitted he’s intrigued about that conversation and said Doud remains a person of interest in Roy’s disappearance.
But he’s not the only one, Sams said, as he continues to sift through the more than 475-page case file that has recently been digitized.
There are other people still on their radar, Sams said, and more investigative avenues to explore, even all these years later.
This case is anything but cold, Sams clarified, and in fact has been revived with tips brought to them by Heaver and other information that continues to trickle in.
Similar Disappearances
In his quest to figure out what happened to Roy, Sams is also eager to explore similar disappearances like that of Lenny Dirickson.
Heaver’s niece, Charlene Scace, learned about Dirickson from a podcast and noticed the similarities between his case and Roy’s.
Like Roy, Dirickson, then 39, disappeared under mysterious circumstances from his dairy farm near Cheyenne, Oklahoma, on March 14, 1998.
Also like Roy, witnesses described seeing an unknown white pickup truck in his driveway the morning he disappeared. Dirickson went out to greet the stranger, who Dirickson later told his son was there to look at one of the stud horses he had for sale.
Then he set off with the man to look at horses in nearby Mobeetie, Texas, and Elk City, Oklahoma, according to information on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).
Dirickson told his son he’d be home later that day but was never seen again.
Heaver’s niece, Charlene, noted the striking similarities of the description of the stranger to Doud.
Could the two disappearances be related? Maybe, and it’s a thread that Sams said he plans to check out.
No Body
To date, there is no indication that Roy is still alive, a stark reality that both Ann and Heaver understand.
At this point, they just want to find Roy and bring him home.
Sams said that in the past two decades, there have been no records of Roy on the Social Security Administration, credit bureaus, banks, and the National Crime Information Center (NCIC).
This indicates that he’s either completely adept at living under the radar or, more likely, that he’s deceased, Sams said.
His DNA has been entered into the national database, CODIS, that will identify Roy if his remains are found.
Not having a body effectively negates having a crime scene from which to work, but Sams is nonetheless optimistic that they can still solve the case.
As it stands, investigators are operating under the assumption that Roy was a victim of foul play and that someone out there knows something that can piece the case together.
“We believe every case is solvable,” Sams said. “I’d like to motivate those who might know something, but who are hesitant, to come forward.”
Anyone with information is asked to contact Sams directly at 307-687-6176. Tips can also be submitted anonymously at the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation website.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
