A popular theater student disappears from a party and is later found dead.

William Hendrick

His portfolio and keys were found

CASE DETAILS

The University of Idaho sits in the picturesque rural setting of Moscow, Idaho. Little happens out of the ordinary here, so when a local university student suddenly disappeared, the town was in shock. On an early January morning in 1999, Wil Hendrick mysteriously vanished without a trace.

At 25, Wil Hedrick seemed very happy about where he was headed. He was well-liked in the theater department and had a good job on campus. Some believed his disappearance was related to the fact that he was openly gay. But all that was known was that he disappeared after a college party. That evening began with hard work. Wil and his partner of five years, Jerry Schutz, were remodeling their kitchen:

“Wil decided he wanted to go to Katie’s party. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to go to sleep. And at about midnight, he said, ‘OK, I’m going to go and I’ll be home in a few hours.’”

When Wil arrived at his friend Katie Payne’s house, two parties were in full swing. On the third floor there were mostly former athletes from the local high school. According to Katie, her party on the second floor was for her friends from the college theater department:

“Because of the two different worlds that were kind of colliding that night, my concern was that there could be a possibility for some sort of confrontation since Wil has no problem being open with how he is and with every opinion.”

Throughout the night, Wil was concerned about another friend, Karen. Karen was having trouble with her boyfriend, a local resident who was attending the third-floor party. According to Wil’s friend, Kathy Sprague, Wil would often become belligerent if he had too much too drink:

“If somebody yelled a slur at him, he’d respond. He takes the bait.”

By about 2:30 AM, Karen had gone home, leaving Katie to keep Wil from getting into trouble:

“And then I thought I want to make sure that Karen got home OK, so I called her house, found out that she was OK, found out she was asleep, and I walked back outside on to the porch, and Wil was gone.”

Katie noticed Wil’s car was still parked out front and assumed he had gone upstairs. By the next morning, the car was gone. Wil’s partner, Jerry, was immediately concerned when Wil didn’t come home:

“It was about 11:30, 12:00 when I called Katie’s, and I said, ‘Can you wake Wil up and send him home? We’ve got some stuff to do today.’ And she said, ‘Well, he’s not here. He didn’t stay here last night.’ And I started calling around to all the theater students, trying to find out if he’d gone to somebody else’s house, continued drinking, passed out on their couch. And nobody had seen him.”

When Wil hadn’t shown up by Monday morning, nearly 36 hours after the party, his friends combed the city searching for him. A big break came when they found his car parked on a downtown street. Jerry examined the car and was surprised to find it was unlocked and that Wil had left his portfolio inside:

“That portfolio carried all of Wil’s artwork—his drawings, his make-up sketches. Everything that was important to him was in that portfolio.”

On the dashboard were his work keys from the university. According to Dan Weaver, Chief of the Moscow Police Department, Wil’s car was thoroughly searched for any evidence that may have suggested foul play:

“We did go through the car with a fine-tooth comb with crime lab folks. There wasn’tt any blood or any hair samples that weren’t Wil’s. There wasn’t anything in there that would indicate that any kind of foul play occurred, at least in the car.”

Finding the car only raised more questions about Wil’s disappearance. Wil’s friend, Kathy Sprauge, thought it was possible that Wil left voluntarily to start a new life:

“Wil had a lot of trepidation about school, and I think he shared that with me because we had that in common. Sometimes you just get overwhelmed, and his comment was, ‘I’d like to tour the country. I’d just like to take off someday.’ I was like, ‘Wow. And not tell anyone?’ ‘No.’ I said, ‘Not even your parents? You know, what about your commitments?’ He’s like, ‘No, I’d just go.’”

But Katie Payne was not as optimistic. She believed that Wil’s sudden disappearance was somehow related to the events that took place in her apartment building the night of her party:

“My hypothesis, I guess you should say, is that something happened, and it got out of control. And it probably didn’t mean to happen, but then whatever happened got covered up simply because… it became so huge.”

Jerry believed the car might hold the most important clues to Wil’s disappearance. When the police released the car, he discovered disturbing details:

“I found out that there was mud caked on the inside wheel wells of the car. So, there was no reason for mud to be caked on the inside of the wheel wells. And then the other odd thing was that somebody had moved the seat all the way to its far back position, indicating to me that a large person may have been the last person to drive Wil’s car.”

Desperate for answers, Jerry pursued a theory that someone they both knew might have crossed Wil’s path early that January morning. Two months prior to Wil’s disappearance, Jerry had fired a van driver who worked for his shuttle service. According to Jerry, the man became angry and used a sexual slur:

“He subsequently went to work for a long-haul trucking outfit. And on the morning of Wil’s disappearance at approximately 4:30, 5:00 in the morning, he checked out a refrigerated truck from the dispatch in Lewiston, 30 miles south of here. There is a coincidence there in that the last time Wil was seen was about the time this driver would have been going to Lewiston.”

Update:

More than two years after Wil disappeared, two hunters found his skull and jaw bone in a rural area outside Moscow, Idaho. No other remains were found. The cause of death could not be determined, but police believe Wil was murdered. They also suspect that Wil knew his attacker.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season eleven with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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