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Wayne Nathan NANCE
Classification:
Serial killer
Characteristics:
Rape
Number of victims: 6
Date of murders: 1974 - 1986
Date of birth: 1955
Victims profile: Females age 15-39
Method of murder:
Shooting
/ Stabbing
with knife
Location: Montana, USA
Status: Fatally shot during home invasion
on September 4, 1986
Wayne Nance is one of the few unlucky serial killers
to be murdered by his final intended victims. Unfortunately, it would be
too late for at least three people that saw their lives snuffed out by
the homocidal Montana man.
The beginning of the end for Nance occurred when he
invaded the home of co-worker Kris Welles and her husband Doug in
Missoulla. Nance had quietly become obsessed with Kris and obviously
intended to make her pay for some unknown snub towards him by killing
her and her husband on September 4, 1986.
The obsessed slayer clubbed
and stabbed Doug, leaving him for dead in the basement of the couple's
home, and then forced Kris upstairs to the bedroom with the intent of
raping her and most certainly killings her as well. Despite Doug's
injuries, however, he managed to grab a rifle loaded with a single shot
and confront Nance in an upstairs hallway where the two men exchanged
shots, both being hit. Still Doug kept coming and with help from Kris,
clubbed their attacker into submission and shot him dead with Nance's
own pistol. Doug Welles recovered from his injuries.
It soon became evident to authorities that this was
not an isolated incident from Nance. In 1974, when Nance was just
eighteen, Donna Pounds was murdered in a fashion eerily similar to
elements of the Welles' attack. Nance was a close friend of Pounds' son.
A search of Nance's home showed that he was in possession of property
stolen form the home of Michael and Theresa Hook, victims of a 1985
double-murder that also bore similarities to the Welles. crime. In
addition, hairs from the search matched those of a Jane Doe found dead
in 1984. Around that time a woman, unnamed still but believed to be the
Jane Doe, disappeared after staying for a short time with Nance.
Nance is also believed to possibly be the killer of a
Seattle runaway found dead near Missoulla in 1980 and the attacker of a
five-year-old girl in 1974. The youngster had been sexually molested and
stabbed by managed to survive.
Serial-Killers A-Z
Nance, Wayne
An independent truck driver from Missoula, Montana, Wayne Nance had been known as a "weirdo" since his teens, when he boasted of worshipping Satan and once used a hot coathanger to brand himself with Satanic symbols.
By age thirty, Nance appeared to have worked through most of his adolescent problems, impressing his employers and acquaintances as something of an "average guy."
On the night of September 4, 1986, Nance turned at the Missoula home of a female store manager, for whom he sometimes delivered furniture. Meeting her husband outside, Nance clubbed him with a piece of wood, invading the house and drawing a pistol as he forced the woman upstairs, tying her to a bed. Doubling back, Nance dragged her husband into the basement and was binding him to a post when the man regained consciousness. Drawing a knife, Nance plunged it into the victim's chest and left him for dead. While Nance went back upstairs to rape his female victim, the wounded husband freed himself and found a rifle he kept in the basement. Nance met him on the stairs, gun in hand, and both men were wounded in the exchange of shots. Attacking despite his injuries, the husband broke his rifle stock on Nance's skull, then seized the pistol and dispatched Nance with a bullet to the brain. The would-be killer's bind-and-slash technique reminded local officers of an unsolved case dating from 1974.
Housewife Donna Pounds had been raped and murdered in her Missoula home by persons unknown, twelve years before the bungled crime that left Nance dead. Their suspect, then eighteen, had been a friend of Pounds's son, but officers had not suspected Nance of personal involvement in the case. A search of Nance's home turned up a hunting knife and small ceramic statuette stolen from the home of Michael and Theresa Shook, in nearby Hamilton, Montana, after they were murdered in December 1985.
Their killer also tried to burn the house while children slept upstairs, but neighbors had arrived before the fire had time to spread. The body-count for Nance was three and climbing. Female hairs recovered from his camper had been treated with a dye that matched the tresses of a "Jane Doe" corpse unearthed outside Missoula in December 1984. In those days, Nance was working as a bouncer in a local bar, and witnesses recalled a youthful female drifter who had shared his lodgings - and abruptly disappeared - in autumn of that year.
Detectives also feel that Nance may be connected with the death of a Seattle runaway, found buried near Missoula during March of 1980. With the suspect permanently silent, we may never know how many other crimes "weird" Wayne committed in the years before he pushed his luck too far.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia
of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans
Guns save lives
By Phil Valentine
- WorldNetDaily.com
September 12, 2003
The gun-haters
start with the basic premise that guns are bad. You shouldn't have them
in your house because they're dangerous, they say. I should let you know
right from the start that handguns are used for protection against
criminals in America nearly 2 million times per year. That's up to five
times more often than they're used to commit crimes and nearly 128 times
the total number of murders in the United States. Those stats alone are
good enough to blow any anti-gun argument out of the water, but there's
more. According to the National Crime Victimization Surveys, people who
use guns to defend themselves are less likely to be attacked or injured
than people who use other methods of protection or don't defend
themselves at all.
Robert A. Waters chronicled many
such stories in his book "The Best Defense" (Cumberland House). In one
of the most gripping accounts, Waters tells of a psychotic serial killer
who brutalized his victims before killing them. One woman was found dead
with a gun shoved in her vagina. Wayne Nance was one of the most
sadistic killers in American history, and he attempted to make a couple
in Missoula, Mont., Kris and Doug Wells, his 11th and 12th victims. That
proved to be his fatal mistake. You see, Nance had chosen a couple who
kept guns in the house.
Nance had been stalking Kris, and
when Doug surprised him outside the couple's home, the killer shot him
in the back of the head. Dazed and bleeding from a deep scalp wound,
Doug struggled with his assailant from the garage into the house. Amazed
that Doug was even still alive, Nance pounded him with a length of pipe
and finally prevailed. After grabbing Kris and tying her to the bed
frame in the couple's bedroom, Nance took Doug to the basement and tied
him to a post. Doug, a gunsmith by profession, had earlier placed an
antique lever-action Savage Model 99G Take-Down rifle near his workbench
in the basement. He knew that if he could get to it, he and his wife
might have a chance.
Doug had been shot, bound and
beaten nearly to death, but Nance still stabbed him in the chest with an
oak-handle kitchen knife, puncturing one of his lungs. The killer then
left to have his way with Kris, most assuredly intending to kill her
afterward, as he had done with so many of his other victims. Somehow,
Doug managed to muster enough strength to break loose from the
clothesline that bound him. He grabbed the Savage, loaded it, and waited,
knowing that if he headed upstairs for the bedroom, Nance would surely
use Kris as a shield. Doug banged the butt of the rifle against the wall
to get Nance's attention. The ploy worked. Nance raced back toward the
basement stairs, and as soon as he came into view Doug let him have it
with the Savage.
In the meantime, Kris had managed
to free herself except for one arm. Hearing the shot, she feared that
Nance had killed her husband. Doug managed to stumble up the stairs, and
when he saw the wounded Nance begin to rise, proceeded to pummel him
with the butt of the rifle. As Nance crawled toward the bedroom, Doug
continued to beat him with the gun until the butt splintered. By then,
Nance was in range of the still-tethered Kris, who began to kick and
punch him. Nance pulled his gun from its pouch on his belt and fired at
Doug, missing him. His second shot caught Doug just above the knee, but
Doug kept coming, beating Nance with the barrel of the rifle. In the
process, he knocked the lamp off the bedside table, plunging the room
into darkness. Doug heard another explosion, and as he lunged for the
table where he kept a pistol, he hit the switch for the overhead light.
When he grabbed the handgun and trained it on Nance, who lay on the
floor convulsing and twitching, Doug saw that the criminal had shot
himself.
Wayne Nance died a few hours
later. Doug Wells miraculously recovered from his wounds, and his wife,
Kris, was not physically harmed. Care to wonder what would have happened
had Doug Wells not had a gun in the house? Want to guess how many other
innocent victims Wayne Nance might have slain had Doug Wells not killed
him? This is but one example of literally millions of times that guns
have saved lives, something the anti-gun nuts don't want you to know.
But now you do.
