The I-90 Corridor: Montana's Highway and Its Unsolved Deaths

550 Miles of Open Road

Interstate 90 bisects Montana from the Wyoming border near Billings all the way to the Idaho line near Lookout Pass — roughly 550 miles of two-lane divided highway crossing some of the most remote terrain in the contiguous United States.

For most of those 550 miles, there is nothing. Prairie. Rimrock. River breaks. Long stretches where you can drive 40 miles without passing a town large enough to have a gas station that stays open past 8 p.m.

This emptiness is part of why Montana is Montana. It is also part of why crimes committed along this corridor are extraordinarily difficult to investigate — and why several deaths along I-90 and the roads that feed it have never been solved.

The Highway as a Crime Scene

Law enforcement has long recognized major highways as vectors for certain categories of crime. Transient populations, minimal witnesses, easy escape routes, and the geographic complexity of multi-agency jurisdiction all make highway corridors challenging.

Montana's I-90 runs through the jurisdiction of at least seven county sheriff's offices, the Montana Highway Patrol, and in some stretches the FBI. Coordinating investigations across those agencies is difficult. Evidence at rural highway scenes deteriorates quickly. Witnesses — truckers, travelers — may be a thousand miles away before investigators even know a crime occurred.

Known Cases Along the Corridor

Several unsolved homicides and suspicious deaths have occurred in the I-90 corridor in Montana over the past four decades. Specific case details vary and many remain under active investigation, but the pattern is consistent: victims found near the highway, insufficient evidence to charge a suspect, cases going cold.

Some of the victims were hitchhikers. Some were local residents whose bodies were transported and dumped. Some were travelers whose last known location was a fuel stop or rest area on I-90.

The Montana Highway Patrol and county sheriff's offices have worked with the FBI's Highway Serial Killings initiative — a database that tracks homicides occurring near major U.S. highways — to identify potential links between cases.

The Truck Stop Problem

Criminologists have documented the phenomenon of serial killers who operate along trucking routes, targeting vulnerable individuals at rest stops and truck stops. The FBI's Highway Serial Killings initiative was created in part to track this pattern nationally.

Montana has several major truck stop and rest area locations along I-90 and I-94. Law enforcement has examined whether any deaths in the vicinity of these locations may be linked.

No public arrests have been made in connection with any linked highway series in Montana, but investigators continue to work the cases.

Billings: The Hub

Billings, Montana's largest city, sits at the junction of I-90 and I-94. It serves as the commercial and transportation hub for a vast region of eastern Montana and northern Wyoming.

Yellowstone County — which includes Billings — has a disproportionately high number of unsolved homicides relative to its population, a fact investigators attribute in part to the transient population that moves through the city on its way to somewhere else.

The Billings Police Department maintains an active cold case unit. Cases from the 1980s and 1990s have been revisited as DNA and forensic genealogy tools have become available. Some have been solved. Others remain stubbornly open.

What Would It Take to Solve These Cases?

Investigators who work cold cases in rural Montana will tell you the same things: more forensic resources, better inter-agency coordination, and — above all — tips.

Most cold cases are eventually solved not by technology but by information. Someone knows something. A deathbed confession. A former girlfriend who finally decides to talk. A family member who suspected something for years and finally calls.

The Montana Department of Justice maintains a cold case tip line. Information can be submitted anonymously.

The highway runs through some of the loneliest country in America. But the truth about what happened along it is known by at least one person.

That person is still out there.

Montana Blotter covers public safety records from all 56 Montana counties. Tips about cold cases can be submitted to the Montana Department of Justice at 406-444-2026 or to the FBI's Montana field office.