Vanished Without a Trace: The Native American Father & Daughter Who Disappeared on a Wyoming Road Trip—And the Secrets Unearthed 18 Years Later

I. The Vanishing

In the crisp, golden light of early autumn 1996, the world seemed wide open for Raymond Little Feather and his 12-year-old daughter, Ember. A quiet, steadfast mechanic and member of the Wind River tribe, Raymond had planned a simple weekend road trip: just him and Ember, driving from their home in Owl Creek to Ember’s grandmother’s house in Riverton. It was a four-hour drive, nothing more. Just a father trying to give his daughter a peaceful break from the heaviness at home.

They left at dawn—Raymond with his rusted thermos of coffee, Ember sketching mountains in the back seat. At 9:15 a.m., they stopped at a gas station on the edge of Lander. The owner remembered them: Ember buying gummy bears, Raymond asking if Highway 33 had reopened after the last rockslide. He was told it had, except for a service road near the tunnel, still blocked. That was the last time anyone saw them alive.

When they didn’t arrive by Saturday evening, concern turned to worry. By Sunday night, worry became dread. Tribal police and volunteers launched searches. Flyers went up, radio stations repeated their names. But there were no clues—no skid marks, no crash, no activity on Raymond’s bank card, not even a ping from his CB radio. It was as if the land itself had swallowed them whole.

Authorities floated theories: a car breakdown, a wrong turn, even whispers that Raymond might have chosen to vanish. But everyone who knew him rejected that outright. Raymond was steady, not reckless. He’d never leave Ember behind. “If something happened to them,” Ember’s aunt Naan said, “it happened to both. And it didn’t happen by accident.”

Rumors swirled: maybe the Buick had plunged into a hidden ravine, or maybe something darker—a criminal group, human traffickers, using the wild country as cover. One rumor stood out: someone had seen a red Buick parked near the old Highway 33 service tunnel, sealed off after spring floods. But then a winter landslide buried the access road. The tunnel, and the rumor, faded from memory. The case went cold.

Two years later, the family held a memorial. No answers—just a candle, a pair of work gloves, and a page from Ember’s sketchbook pinned to a tree. The ground, it seemed, remembered what people tried to forget.

II. Secrets in the Earth

Eighteen years later, in 2014, fate intervened. Another landslide, triggered by a violent storm, shifted the terrain around the old service tunnel. A maintenance crew, sent to stabilize the slope, noticed something red poking from the earth below the treeline. They brushed away dirt and found a car door, warped and rusted. It was a red Buick, crushed and buried deep, compressed by years of soil and rock.

Inside, they found bones: an adult in the driver’s seat, a child in the passenger seat, seatbelt still fastened. A simple bracelet—three turquoise stones—was on the child’s wrist. Forensic teams quickly confirmed: Raymond and Ember Little Feather, missing since 1996.

But how the car was found raised more questions than answers. It wasn’t at the bottom of a ravine or wrecked near a cliff. It was buried, tightly packed in soil, just meters from the sealed tunnel entrance—the very place Raymond had asked about at the gas station. There was no sign of a crash. The ignition was off, the key still inside. The soil’s compression pattern suggested a deliberate burial, not a landslide.

Beneath the car, investigators found an oil-stained tarp—manmade, not natural. No brake marks, no crash impact. Someone had moved, then buried, the car. And someone had wanted it to stay hidden.

III. The Unraveling

The case was reopened as a double homicide. Forensic teams made more discoveries: Ember’s blue sneaker, preserved under roots, found twenty feet from the car. Her school ID, miraculously intact, was in her backpack. Her sketchbook, water-damaged, showed a drawing of a tunnel at the end of a road. Ember had drawn her own fate.

The investigation zeroed in on the tunnel project’s old records. One name surfaced again and again: Dean Moffett, site foreman in 1996. Dean had left the state soon after the disappearance, never to return. A retired tribal worker, Tom Garan, recalled seeing a car near the tunnel after the storm, and a man in a gray truck—Dean. Another worker remembered Dean joking, “These hills will swallow anything.” No one laughed then. No one doubted him now.

A bulldozer, registered to Dean, had been used the week after the storm, when no official work was scheduled. A tribal ranger’s old log noted “heavy machinery sounds near tunnel mouth” on the same day. And a work order, submitted by Dean two days after the vanishing, requested “emergency grading” near the tunnel—a paper trail to a grave.

Then came the breakthrough: a rusted crowbar, a stained rag, and Raymond’s tribal volunteer badge, found deep inside the collapsed tunnel. It hadn’t simply been lost. It had been hidden.

IV. The Truth Comes Out

Investigators confronted Dean and a former coworker, Reed Booker, who had a history of violence and had purchased boots matching prints found on the tarp. Reed cracked first—not with a full confession, but enough. He admitted to helping move the car, at Dean’s orders, after a confrontation with Raymond turned violent. Reed claimed Dean struck Raymond with a crowbar, then shoved Ember into the car. The two men buried the car, wrapped it in tarps, and sealed the soil. Reed was threatened into silence.

Evidence mounted: tire tracks, fuel receipts, personnel logs, the badge, Ember’s jacket burned and hidden nearby. And a chilling 14-second emergency call, long forgotten, surfaced from a retired dispatcher: a desperate man, a screaming child, a call cut off and never traced.

Dean was arrested after a manhunt. In court, he finally broke: “I didn’t mean to kill her,” he said. He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Reed was charged as an accessory.

V. Justice, Memory, and the Land That Remembers

The trial was swift. The evidence was overwhelming. The jury found Dean Moffett guilty on all counts. Reed was sentenced as an accessory to murder. After 18 years, the Little Feather family had answers—and justice.

The community gathered for a burial on tribal land. Two white spruce trees were planted, side by side, just like Ember’s drawing. Her mother placed Ember’s star-shaped charm in the cedar box before it was sealed. Elders sang, children carried sage, and the wind carried prayers.

Every year since, someone ties a red ribbon to the old pine near the trailhead—a quiet act of remembrance. The land, they say, never forgets. Even when people try to bury the truth, the soil keeps its secrets, waiting for rain, wind, and time to set them free.

In the end, it wasn’t just a story about loss, but about the relentless search for truth—and the power of memory to bring the lost home.