Nancy Moyer’s Family ‘Cautiously Optimistic’ After Break in Decade-Old Case

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Ten years after Nancy Moyer went missing in mysterious circumstances from her Tenino home, her family are the closest they’ve ever been to knowing what happened in March 2009, following an arrest Wednesday of Moyer’s coworker and former neighbor. 

“I guess I would say the family is cautiously optimistic. We want to believe this is the end, but I think much like the press, until there’s a body … we’re not there yet,” Bill Moyer, Nancy’s husband, said in a press conference Thursday morning at the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office. 

Bill Moyer and daughter, Samantha, now 19, spoke briefly after Thurston County Sheriff John Snaza gave a brief update on the case for assembled representatives of the media. 

At first, she wasn’t sure what to say. 

“It’s crazy,” she said. “I never expected the case to go this far after it being cold for 10 years.”

Prodded by TV news reporters, Samantha, 9 years old when her mother disappeared, remembered not being worried at first that her mother wasn’t home, thinking she might have been on a walk or had gone out for groceries. She also talked about all the things her mother would have missed in the past decade. 

“It’s just been hard since then,” she said. “I’ve struggled a lot. Growing up without a mom sucks, especially when you don’t know where she is. … Lots of milestones. She didn’t get to see me graduate, she didn’t get to see my first dance, me drive a car, any of that. It would help so much to find her to find out what happened to her.”

Moyer’s older daughter was 11 in 2009, and did not attend the press conference Thursday.

Moyer, 36 at the time, was last seen March 6, 2009. While the investigation went cold, In the past year, the case has been featured on the Investigation Discovery channel and a podcast called “Hide and Seek,” launched by Kennewick resident James Baysinger. The 10-year anniversary of Moyer’s disappearance was this March. 

Snaza was clear in his press conference Thursday that the case is by no means closed. Law enforcement have a complicated investigation ahead of them. 

“The whole family needs closure, her sister needs closure, her parents need closure, the rest of the family all need closure,” Bill Moyer said. “Not knowing is a hard thing and unless you’re in that situation I don’t really think you can fully understand it.