Great Basin Murders: History and Key Facts

The Great Basin Murders is the name given to a series of murders of at least nine women committed between 1983 and 1997 across the states of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and Idaho. It is named after the Great Basin geographical area since most of the victims had their bodies dumped near interstate highways that traverse through it.

Most victims were teenage or adult females who were sexually assaulted then murdered – either by strangulation, stabbing, or shooting – and then abandoned on hilltops, deserted expanses, snowdrifts, or rivers. Some of their bodies were posed post-mortem. This initially led to speculation that all killings were the work of a single serial killer, who was nicknamed "The Great Basin Killer". This assertion has since been abandoned, as over the years it has been established that multiple unrelated serial killers operated in the area and that a majority of the killings were committed by different perpetrators. Of the nine murders linked to the Great Basin Murders, nearly half of the cases (Lisa Kimmell, married couple Patricia Walsh and Douglas Scott Zyskowski, Barbara Kaye Williams and Irene Vasquez) were solved with convictions of their killers. The remainder are unsolved and may be the work of one or more killers.

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