Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

Up in the northeast corner of Montana, hours and hours by car from the big rustic ranches of the famously wealthy, is the winding Missouri River of Lewis and Clark -- and a small, forgotten town which once carried the stain of an unenviable reputation.

Poplar is the name of the place. A generation ago, it was so frequently soaked in the blood of violent death it was known as "stab city."

This is a vexing story about how a mystery may have been solved.

It happened in 1979. Summer was here. School was out. The party was on.

Kim Nees, 17, school valedictorian, national honors graduate, was celebrating. She was finally about to escape this town for college.

Pam Nees: I was a little sister, she was a big sister. I was a pain in the butt…

Back then, Kim’s sister Pam was just 14.

Pam Nees: She always had to take me with her, and that was the way it is, you know?

But around midnight, June 15, 1979, Kim was restless. She wanted out -- this time without her little sister.

Pam Nees: Just come and got the truck. Didn't say what she was doing. Didn't say where she was going.

Keith Morrison: And she took off?

Pam Nees: Yes.

The scene is burned into her memory, as is the face of her father in the morning, less than eight hours later.

Pam Nees: He carried me upstairs and sat me next to my mom and said, “something terrible has happened.” He said, “Kimmy's dead.” And I just…

Keith Morrison: You go numb?

Pam Nees: It still sometimes isn't there, you know? It's like -- I can't believe this.

At 7 a.m., at a well known party spot just half a mile outside town, police had found the family pick-up abandoned. Officers followed a trail of blood from the truck, down a rutted dirt track 250 feet or so, to the Poplar River. There they found the battered body of Kim Nees.

Dean Mahlum: The term I have used is overkill.

Dean Mahlum was an undersheriff, and later the county sheriff, in charge of the murder investigation.

Mahlum: There were 20 or 21 blows received to Kim’s skull, any of which could have caused her death.

Keith Morrison: There was rage involved?

Mahlum: There was a high level of rage. Someone was very angry.

We drove an old truck, from the same year, but different color, to the last place Kim was seen: a gas station, at about 12:45 a.m.

Then we drove to the crime scene itself, where, that night, there was no shortage of evidence.

Blood was everywhere inside the cab of the pick-up.

There were more than two dozen fingerprints.

Foot prints were left in and around the trail where Kim’s body was dragged to the river.

And on the truck, near the passenger door, there was a palm print in what appeared to be blood.

The FBI prepared a report. The bloody palm print, it said, would have to have been 'left by the unsub.'

That's FBI lingo for an unknown subject.

The murderer.

Mahlum: We worked very, very very hard at determining whose that was. And obviously we had a very vested interest in talking to that person.

In addition, a sweep through town had turned up what the FBI called an 'extremely bloody towel' on a fence in town, less than a mile from the crime scene. A lab report linked two hairs on the towel to Kim Nees and said the 'hair evidence suggests a possible connection between the towel' and the murder.

Keith Morrison: Was that blood on the towel ever tested?

Mahlum: I believe it was sent to the Montana state lab. It was not Kim’s blood that was on the towel.

Did the blood, then, belong to her killer? Kim’s cash and credit cards were still in her purse. This was not a robbery. Nor was there any indication of sexual assault.

The lack of any apparent motive in the murder of a pretty 17-year-old girl led many people to wonder if perhaps the standard crime scene scenarios did not apply.

In fact, rumors were already around town that this was not a man who committed the murder, or a woman even, but a group of girls -- Kim’s contemporaries. Their supposed motive? Jealousy. Kim was attractive, she was successful, she was class valedictorian, boys loved her and she was about to leave Poplar behind for good.

Keith Morrison: There were stories around town that this may have been some kind of killing involving some local girls.

Mahlum: That was one of the, again, if you will, the theories that folks around town had. That there may have been three or four of Kim’s peers that were involved with her death.

Bobbi Clincher heard the talk. She lived down the block from the Nees family.

Keith Morrison: What did you hear?

Clincher: Her grandfather had told me they're looking at the girls. He said all indications are that it was girls.

A list of names appeared on FBI documents -- those girls, and Kim's boyfriend, too.

Interactive Murder in Big Sky Country It's a story that takes us to a small town in Big Sky Country, and to a summer when life seemed full of possibilities — but one terrible night would change everything. Dateline NBC

They were other teens, but all of them were cleared when their prints didn't match those found at the scene.

Clincher: I felt bad for her parents.

Bobbi Clincher's connection to the Nees family was more than neighborly. Her son, Barry, had even dated Kim’s sister Pam.

Like many kids in town, Barry had been listed as a suspect in the documents, too.

As the mystery deepened, mothers and fathers questioned their own children, wondering if there was some code of silence they could crack.

Keith Morrison: Did you question him harshly about it or...?

Bobbi Clincher: Yes. He said repeatedly he didn't know anything about it. The only thing he knew was what he had heard, what he'd been told.

And as the investigation stalled, the Nees family took it upon themselves to try to solve Kim’s killing themselves, writing heart-rending letters to the local paper.

Keith Morrison: Your dad tried very hard and your family, your whole family tried hard to get people to help.

Pam Nees: Yeah, we put out a $10,000 reward.

Keith Morrison: Begging for help. How did the community respond?

Pam Nees: They didn't.

Keith Morrison: At all?

Pam Nees: Not really. It seemed like they didn't care.

Summer passed, and so did fall and winter.

More names surfaced. More fingerprints were compared. These were more dead ends.

Keith Morrison: Did you ever kind of give up on the idea that you'd figure it out?

Mahlum: No. Never. There was no doubt in my mind that we would solve this, this homicide.

And the sheriff's patience would be rewarded, but the answers he was sure he would get would wait for years -- and come from a place he never would have suspected.

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