8
Lewiston Tribune
UNSOLVED
M o n d ay, M ay 1 9 , 2 0 1 4
joyce lEpage
A bright future doused At behest of her family, a third generation of investigators picks up search for the killer of a promising young WSU student in summer of 1971 By WILLIAM L. SPENCE
P
of the Tribune
ULLMAN — It’s been almost 43 years since Bruce LePage’s sister was murdered, but he still has difficulty talking about her. Joyce LePage was a 21-yearold Washington State University student when she disappeared in the summer of 1971. Her decayed body was found nine months later, wrapped in a carpet and dumped in a ravine south of Pullman. Had she not been killed, she could have lived her life three times over by now. She would have been 64, two-and-a-half years older than Bruce. “She was a very friendly, outgoing girl,” said LePage, who retired several years ago after farming his family’s land near Pasco. “She was a profuse writer. If she were still around, I think she’d have been a high school or college English professor.” There’s some question about where exactly Joyce died, but the carpet she was wrapped in came from the Stevens Hall women’s dormitory. The assumption is that’s where she was killed. WSU officials say this is the only homicide — solved or unsolved — to have taken place on the Pullman campus. The search for her killer is the oldest active cold case for the university police, as well as the Whitman County Sheriff’s Office. It’s been handed down from one generation of investigators to the next — and now, thanks in part to her brother’s efforts, it’s been taken up by a third.
Bruce LePage has spoken with Whitman County Sheriff Brett Myers and WSU Police Officer Jeff Olmstead several times over the last few years, encouraging them to continue working on Joyce’s case. When his father was alive, Bruce deferred to him, letting him decide how hard to push the investigation. After he died three years ago, though, Bruce felt the burden passed to him — and if whoever killed Joyce is still out there, he wants them found. “I wouldn’t be doing my sister right if we didn’t take another look at all the persons of interest and eliminate them to the best of our
ABOVE: In April 1971, three months before her murder, Joyce LePage poses with (from left) cousin David, brother Bruce, brother David, brother Steve and their father, Walter LePage. Bruce had just dropped out of college to run the farm while Walter recovered from a broken kneecap. photo courtesy Bruce Lepage
RIGHT: LePage’s dead body was found wrapped in a carpet stolen from Stevens Hall at WSU.