Case Details:Deborah Rae Meyer, 15, disappeared on August 4, 1974, while walking from her aunt's home near Seventh and Spruce Streets in downtown Rawlins, Wyoming, toward a local movie theater; she never arrived. Meyer was originally from Red Lodge, Montana, and was staying with her aunt in Rawlins at the time. She is notable for having both upper and lower dentures, an uncommon feature for someone her age that investigators say would aid identification if her remains are ever found; her DNA profile is on file in the national missing-persons database. Meyer's disappearance was one of four disappearances and murders of young women and girls in the Rawlins area between July and August 1974, an episode now referred to locally as the "Rawlins Rodeo Murders." The others were 19-year-olds Carlene Brown and Christine "Christy" Gross, who vanished together on July 4, and 10-year-old Jaylene Dawn Banker, who disappeared August 23. Gross's and Banker's remains were later recovered and both deaths were ruled homicides; Brown and Meyer have never been found.

No credible evidence has surfaced that Meyer left voluntarily; her mother maintained until her own death that her daughter would not have run away. Meyer's parents had her legally declared dead before their own deaths, with the date of her disappearance recorded as her date of death. Investigators have examined several possible connections over the decades, including long-haul trucker and convicted kidnapper Royal Russell Long, who lived in the Rawlins area in 1974 and has been investigated in connection with all four 1974 cases without ever being charged in any of them; he died in prison in 1993. A separate community theory linking the case to serial killer Ted Bundy has also circulated; Wyoming investigators have found no evidence tying Bundy to any Wyoming case, and timeline research indicates he was in the Pacific Northwest earlier that summer before relocating to Utah in August 1974. The case remains open with the Carbon County Sheriff's Office and the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Carbon County Sheriff's Office at 307-328-2782 or the Wyoming DCI at 307-777-7181. Case Number 12943.