When John Boutin vanished from Rawlins in 1983, the world kept churning as if nothing had changed.
At least that’s how it felt to his tight-knit family, who said it was as if nobody was taking his disappearance seriously.
Law enforcement initially wrote it off as a young man who took off on his own accord, though from the start his family insisted he would never leave without contacting family.
Right away, however, they suspected foul play based on their own investigation of the people in his life at that time, his older sister Chris Weber said.
The 24-year-old had been attending a welding program through the state vocational rehabilitation program when he mysteriously disappeared. He left behind all of his possessions in his rented trailer home.
Boutin was one week away from obtaining his certificate but had made cryptic and concerning allegations about potential illegal activity surrounding the welding shop where he trained and worked, including falsifying timesheets and theft, that he’d been secretly documenting in a notebook.
Though considered at first to be a missing person, Boutin’s case reverted to a suspected homicide at some point over the years, according to his missing person record in the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation database.
Now, more than 40 years later, Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken has very little to go on without having direct access to Boutin’s missing person case file, which he said is stored in one of three places but hasn’t been located yet.
But based on his conversations with former investigators, the primary person of interest was Carbon County Welding shop owner, Gerald “Jerry” Williams, who has since passed away but did serve a 10-year prison sentence for homicide in Texas three years after Boutin disappeared.
Bakken said there have been no tips or leads based on the limited information he has on file. Boutin's name was recently run on federal databases for any hits, but none were found nor have there been any reported sightings of him.
He’s not quite sure how Boutin’s case landed at the sheriff’s office, Bakken said, because given his last seen location in town it should have been investigated by the Rawlins Police Department.
Otherwise, Boutin’s case is still open, and Bakken said he would like to get answers and provide closure for the family and encourages anyone with information to come forward.
Boutin’s family also feels it’s never too late for answers, and ultimately, with justice no longer likely possible, they’d just like to locate his remains and finally bring him home.
Attempt To Get Answers
All these years later, Weber still gets choked up when talking about her younger brother to whom she was very close.
Memories pop into her mind like her last visit with her brother and the fact that he’d just agreed to be the best man in his older brother's wedding.
These were happy times and memories play this cruel game—circling like sharks just beneath the surface. With Boutin, the absence of closure adds another layer of cruelty and grief gets swallowed by the gnawing questions of what happened to him.
In this way, the family has been attempting to get answers beginning with their own investigation in the days following his disappearance in January 1983 where even the timeline of who last saw Boutin was murky.
The family documented their search in more than a dozen pages of hand-written notes that were given to law enforcement and shared with Cowboy State Daily.
Here’s what is known: Boutin was officially reported missing by his welding instructor, William “Bill” Heald on Jan. 13, according to the original missing person report from the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office.
The date he was last seen was recorded as Jan. 6, though it’s not clear if this was in the early morning or later that day after welding class.
The area he was last seen is reported to be “downtown area” and motive for disappearing was that the subject “wanted to get back to his previous lifestyle,” Heald said in the report.
The latter comment may be a reference to the fact that Boutin was attending the rehabilitation program for alcoholism on the advice of Weber, who encouraged her younger brother to get ahead of it before it became a problem while also allowing him to learn a valuable trade.
Despite Boutin’s reasons for joining the program, Heald nonetheless took his student out drinking on several occasions, including the last night he was seen.
Boutin and other students told his family this was not unusual and that Heald and Carbon County Welding shop owner, Gerald “Jerry” Williams, reportedly condoned — if not encouraged — drinking, including during the day while at the shop.
Murky Timeline
Heald, who was in his late 30s, was both a welding instructor in the program and was paid to transport the other students to and from class as some like Boutin did not own vehicles, Weber said.
He told the sheriff’s deputy that he and Boutin had just returned from spending the New Year’s Holiday in Green River, where Boutin’s parents and older sister lived with her five children. The men had gone out drinking there but returned to Rawlins on Jan. 3 for classes.
That week, they helped Williams move his residence, according to the report, and went out the evening of Jan. 5.
They started with a lasagna dinner at Heald’s home the night of Jan. 5 before going out later that night at around 9 p.m. While at the Heald’s, Boutin called his brother in Colorado.
Heald and Boutin started the night at the Golden Spike before going to the American Legion after the first bar shut down.
Afterwards, Heald said the two men split up at the American Legion when Boutin left the club by himself at around 2:30 to 3 a.m. with Heald leaving shortly thereafter, according to the report.
Heald would reportedly tell the Boutin family a different version later, saying that Boutin had allegedly been kicked out of the bar for drunkenly insulting a female bartender.
Questionable Timecards
The next day, Heald said that Boutin had reported for welding classes on Jan. 6, but that Heald had not.
It’s still not clear to the Boutin family if Boutin disappeared in the early hours of Jan. 6 after leaving the bar or if he actually showed up for class.
When interviewed by the Rawlins Times following Boutin’s disappearance, Carbon County Deputy Sheriff, Harold Newbrough, who was in charge of Boutin’s investigation, told the reporter that Boutin was last seen after he finished welding classes that day.
However, when Weber and her mother, Luanne Boutin, later asked Williams to see Boutin’s timecards, they said the handwriting was not Boutin’s nor had he signed them.
When asked about the lack of signatures, Williams reportedly told the women that Boutin was too depressed to initial them.
The women also noted that the duties written on the timecards stated Boutin had been welding though he’d actually helped Williams move for which Williams told them he planned to pay Boutin $6.20 an hour for his time.
This had been a bone of contention for her son, Luanne noted, because he felt like he wasn’t getting adequate welding training time and was eager to earn his certificate.
The family later requested that Newbrough take those timecards into custody as evidence, but it’s not clear if that was done.
Gone A Week
Regardless of whether Boutin disappeared in the early morning or after class, the family wasn’t notified until nearly a week later.
Luanne received a call on Jan. 12 from Jana Meeks at the Department of Vocational and Rehabilitation, who called the family home in Green River, about 123 miles away, to see if Boutin was there.
He wasn’t, Luanne confirmed.
Meeks then asked Luanne if she thought Boutin could have gone to Denver to sell drugs as was allegedly reported to her by Williams and Heald.
“I told her no way. I knew my son well,” Luanne wrote.
From the start, Luanne didn’t buy the story of Boutin running off to Colorado to manufacture drugs. He was also close to his family and would never leave without telling someone.
“I told them that John did not leave Rawlins on his own. That if he did leave it was in a bag…dead,” Luanne wrote in her notes.
Not Getting Answers
Heald reportedly told the women that he had shown up at Boutin’s trailer on Jan. 7 as well as the following week to pick him up for work as he was paid by the department to do as Boutin and some of the other students did not have transportation.
Heald said he “tooted the horn as usual” but Boutin did not come out. His landlord, on the other hand, told Luanne that nobody had been by Boutin’s trailer to pick him up after Jan. 5.
When she called Williams to inquire about her son, she wrote that she was surprised by his antagonistic reaction. He seemed upset with her for calling, as she documented in her notes, and said Williams screamed at her in response.
Williams reportedly told Luanne that he’d already reported Boutin missing to the Rawlins Police Department and had spent five hours searching for Boutin himself, according to Luanne.
This turned out not to be true as she learned when she later checked in with the Rawlins Police Department during a visit to Rawlins on Jan. 18 at which point she learned no report had been taken and submitted one herself.
Williams also allegedly told Luanne that the police had told him that they’d checked for Boutin as far away as Laramie but had not found him.
When Williams later met with Luanne and Weber in person, his anger did not soften, Luanne reported, with Williams calling the police on them because he felt like they were assaulting him with accusations and insinuations that he knew more than he was letting on.
Luanne, however, explained that they were simply trying to ascertain a clearer understanding of what might have happened to their son.
The Rawlins Police Department did not return Cowboy State Daily’s request for information about that incident.
In the end, Luanne and Weber took Boutin’s welding supplies and spare shoes and left.
‘Con Man’
Luanne’s worst fears about the program appeared to be coming true. She had repeatedly cautioned Boutin about his budding friendship with Heald, who she felt was a “con man” who was giving Boutin “a line of ‘B.S.’ about starting a business” together after Boutin completed the certification program.
Luanne also wrote in her notes that Heald reportedly told her he was carrying a loaded pistol under the seat of his pickup truck for which he had no concealed carry permit.
Despite her fears, Boutin brushed off his mother’s concerns, telling her the program was almost over and not to worry.
As for his explanation of what happened to Boutin, Heald denied telling Meeks that Boutin had gone to Denver to sell drugs. Instead, he told Luanne to relax because Boutin “was out looking for work” for them, according to Luanne’s notes.
Dubious Dealings
Heald further told Luanne that Boutin had been upset with Williams because Boutin was not getting his full eight hours per day of paid training. Instead, it was more like three to four hours per day if any, though Williams allegedly had the students falsify their timesheets so he would get paid.
This was confirmed by another classmate to whom her daughter, Chris Weber, spoke to who said he hadn’t learned even a half of what his welding certification purported he knew.
He also said that Williams would encourage students to drink and would threaten them to withhold their certificates if they “didn’t keep” their “mouths shut about things,” Luanne wrote in her notes.
Missing Pages
When Luanne and Weber searched Boutin’s rental property, they found everything intact. No possessions were missing, except what he was presumably wearing the day he disappeared, including a blue ski jacket, a green T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans.
He’d left behind an orange backpack and two cartons of cigarettes in the refrigerator, which was further evidence to Luanne that he hadn’t left on his own.
“We knew that our son had not left Rawlins,” Luanne wrote.
Three days later, when the women returned to check Boutin’s trailer again, they found his door unlocked despite his landlord insisting he’d locked it.
During their search this time, they found a notebook with several pages torn out. They later turned it over to law enforcement and were told it had been sent to the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation for testing.
Given the family’s record, Bakken said he assumes the notebook has been sent though there’s no documentation of it in the limited file.
Weber felt a sense of dread at the discovery of the missing pages, she said. She suspected this was the notebook that her brother had referenced during his visit to her home two weeks prior.
He told Weber he was documenting all the alleged nefarious wrongdoings at the welding shop that he planned to turn over to authorities after he had his certificate in hand.
Much like her mother, Weber was not a fan of Heald. She found his swearing crass and didn’t like the way he reportedly encouraged Boutin not to take his Antabuse alcohol medication because it caused damage to the lungs and liver.
She felt guilty that she had suggested her brother sign up for the program.
The next day when it came time for Boutin to return to Rawlins with Heald, Weber had a sinking feeling.
“I grabbed him and hung on to him,” Weber said. “I said, ‘Johnny, please don’t go.’ I just had an overwhelming feeling that this was a bad deal and he shouldn’t go.”
That was the last time that she saw her brother.
No Arrests Made
Williams and Heald are no longer alive to speak for themselves.
Though Williams had been flagged as a person of interest, Bakken said it’s not clear if Heald was considered a suspect or a conduit of information.
Weber was later told that Heald reportedly left Wyoming for Maine shortly following Boutin’s disappearance. An obituary search indicates that a man matching Heald’s name and birthday died in 2003 in Maine at 58 years old.
Williams also left Rawlins.
Three years later, he was convicted of murder on March 10, 1986, in Huntsville, Texas, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. There are no details listed about the nature of his crime.
He was incarcerated in Texas on a 10-year sentence beginning in 1986, according to the Texas Office of Inspector General.
Bakken would assume that a Carbon County Sheriff’s Investigator would have followed up with Williams following his arrest, but without having access to the complete case file, he can’t say for sure that it was done.
Williams died at age 63 in 2001 in Cherokee County, Texas, according to a record matching his birthdate on Find A Grave.
The One Who Got Away
Willow Rain Frosty, who back then went by the name Valerie Butterfield, was one of the last people to see Boutin before he disappeared.
The two had first met at the Department of Human Services where Frosty had gone to sign up for a daycare license. The young 20-something mother of three small children was going through a divorce and had just moved to Wyoming from Oklahoma to be close to her mother and stepfather, who had moved to Rawlins to work in the oil field.
When the two met, sparks flew, Frosty said, describing the encounter as “love at first sight.” She later learned that both she and Boutin had told their families that the two would marry one day.
After that first meeting, Frosty kept her eyes open for Boutin, hoping to meet again. That happened the night of Jan. 5, when Boutin saw her at the Golden Spike, where she’d gone for ladies’ night with some of the women from her daycare class.
The two instantly bonded and spent the night talking and dancing. Heald was there also, Frosty said, and kept buying rounds, drinking two to their every one drink and getting very intoxicated. She said Heald, despite being married, was hanging all over one of the women in the group.
It was a magical night for both, Frosty said. The couple shared life stories and even jokingly began making wedding plans.
After the bar closed, the group retreated to the parking lot where they talked briefly in the frigid parking lot before getting in their respective cars to head home.
Boutin told her he had to be up at 6 a.m. and would be tired the next day, but it would be worth it.
No Show
Frosty invited Boutin over for dinner two nights later and he also planned to go with her to her parent’s home that coming weekend to celebrate her stepfather’s birthday.
She briefly contemplated inviting Boutin home with her but didn’t want to appear too forward.
Now, she wishes she would have issued that invitation.
When Boutin failed to show up for dinner, she initially thought it might be a misunderstanding. Maybe he’d lost the number she’d given him that night or got busy with school.
She was shocked days later when her mother called to tell her that she’d just read that Boutin had gone missing in the local newspaper.
Frosty said she immediately went to the sheriff’s office to report what she knew. Their reaction was disappointing, Frosty said.
She said Newbrough told her that he was an adult, and if he wants to disappear, it's his right to do so and that he’d likely show up in a few weeks.
“And I'm like, ‘No, he didn't just go voluntarily,’” she told Cowboy State Daily in a recent interview. “I told him this doesn't feel right. Something was very wrong.”
She then tracked down Boutin’s parents and wrote them a letter to which they immediately responded and invited her to their home.
“They were amazing,” she said. “They embraced me like I was family.”
In the ensuing weeks and months following Boutin’s disappearance, Frosty did her own searching along the railroad tracks and other remote spots in rural Carbon County where a person might dump a body.
Her mind raced with what might have happened and she thought maybe he’d gotten hit by a train on his walk home. Oddly, the town was mum after he vanished and she didn’t hear any rumors or anything about what might have happened.
In the ensuing years, she’s never forgotten him or given up on trying to find him and even consulted multiple psychics all of whom confirmed that Boutin was dead.
Boom Town Violence
This era was marked by increased violence as people came to southwest Wyoming in droves to cash in on high-paying oil and gas jobs.
This included Naomi Kidder who disappeared from Rawlins in June 1983. Like other transplants, Kidder had temporarily moved to Rawlins with friends from Buffalo to work on a seismograph crew and disappeared while attempting to hitchhike home to see her young daughter.
Her body was found on a remote ranching property in Natrona County, outside Casper, three months later, and to date, her murder remains unsolved.
The primary suspect, according to the Natrona County Sheriff’s Office, is Larry DeWayne Hall, a suspected serial killer from Indiana.
Hall is currently serving a life sentence in a federal prison in North Carolina for the abduction of a 15-year-old girl, whose body was found in an Indiana cornfield. And though he’s suspected of upwards of 50 murders of young women and girls, he has yet to be formally charged with any of them.
In response to a letter from Cowboy State Daily inquiring about his role in Kidder’s murder, Hall insinuated he had knowledge of Kidder’s murder but didn’t share details.
Crime Up 71%
Prior to Kidder’s death in May 1981, two Rawlins girls, ages 9 and 12, were abducted in broad daylight from a convenience store and murdered by Frank J. Delapena, of Williston, North Dakota, who suffocated them and left their bodies at an I-80 rest stop, according to reporting by the Casper-Star Tribune.
Delapena, 29, was arrested shortly thereafter in Hugo, Colorado. As he awaited extradition to Wyoming, he hanged himself in his jail cell.
The murder of these two young girls rocked the community as crime rose as high as 71%, with a 7% increase in statewide crime in 1980, according to reporting by the Los Angeles Times.
These grisly homicides follow on the tail of other unsolved murders that occurred in Rawlins during the summer of 1974. Known colloquially as the “Rawlins Rodeo Murders” when four girls were murdered or disappeared.
Two of the girls, 19-year-olds Carlene Brown and Christine “Christy” Gross, who vanished on their way home from a rodeo. Gross’s skeletal remains were found nearly a decade later, with her death determined to be homicide from blunt force trauma to her head. Brown remains missing.
Also missing is 14-year-old Deborah Meyer, who was last seen walking to a Rawlins movie theater in August 1974. Jayleen Banker, then 10, disappeared from the Carbon County Fairgrounds that same month. Her partially clothed body was discovered in a field eight months later.
Royal Russell Long, a long-haul truck driver, is suspected in these disappearances and murders, though he was never convicted. Long was ultimately convicted of kidnapping 12-year-old Sharon Baldeagle and another teen, who was able to escape and report him to police. Baldeagle has yet to be found.
Long pleaded guilty to two counts of kidnapping for the purpose of committing indecent liberties and received two life sentences. He died of a heart attack in a Wyoming prison in 1993 and was never convicted of any other crimes though he’s suspected in several additional missing people and homicides across the West.
Boutin Gets Attention
Despite the lack of coverage of Boutin’s case, his parents were invited to appear on national television in connection with another missing person three months before Boutin disappeared.
The missing man was Don Kemp, a 34-year-old advertising executive who left the East Coast for Jackson following a debilitating car accident with the goal of writing a book about AbrahamLincoln’s assassination, according to the Casper-Star Tribune.
Kemp’s abandoned SUV was found still running and parked on an exit ramp off I-80. His body was found three years later shortly from the area where he disappeared.
His death was ruled an accident by authorities who said he wandered off in his confused state and succumbed to the elements, though his mother, Mary Kemp, insisted it was a murder based on phone calls received after he disappeared.
Mary and Luanne became close confidants, Weber said, and the Boutins were also invited to appear on the show but could not get to Rawlins for filming due to inclement weather. Kemp’s story was featured on the television show "Unsolved Mysteries" in 1987.
No New Leads
Over the course of four decades, Weber has had limited contact with investigators in her brother’s case.
Likewise, there has been no new tips or leads other than a terrifying phone call to the family about Boutin’s body being buried in a remote place where he’d never be found.
Weber said she called then-Sheriff J.R. Colson in 2015 to ask for copies of everything related to her brother’s investigation and offered to drive from Utah to Rawlins to pick it up, but she said she was told that the case file was put away in file boxes.
Instead, Colson sent her copies of the original missing person report made by Heald as well as the report taken by the Rawlins Police Department. He said Boutin’s record was run on the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) in April 2015, but none were found.
Colson also offered to make her the contact person should any new information come to light or his remains be found and said he’d help her with any necessary documentation to have him declared dead.
Weber said her family has not yet done that.
She also recalled someone from the sheriff’s office calling her years ago to see if she still wanted Boutin declared missing to which she said yes.
In 2016, retired homicide detective, Janet Franson was able to get Boutin entered into the system.
Weber provided her DNA as did her brother, Mel.
Franson was initially hopeful when a skull discovered by a hunter in the Red Desert in Sweetwater County in April 2024 was determined to be a male between the ages of 25 and 35.
However, DNA and dental records from the skull entered into CODIS have not yet found a match, according to Sweetwater County Coroner Dale Majhanovich, so it can’t be Boutin.
If remains are discovered, Weber is hopeful that Boutin’s large turquoise ring she believes he was wearing might help identify him.
Both Weber and Bakken ask anyone with information that may lead to locating his body to call the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office at: 307-324-2776 or DCI at 307-777-7181. Tips can also be submitted anonymously on DCI’s website.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
