On July 15th, 1975, twenty-year-old Diane Merckx went missing from Columbia Park in Kennewick, Washington. Though her body would not be found for nearly two years, another young woman in Kennewick would also go missing only weeks later. In this latter case, though, the victim would be found soon afterward, leading authorities to speculate that the deaths could possibly be related.
Later in the summer of 1975, twenty-year-old Shannon Varley was enjoying her vacation, despite the fact that a high school classmate, Diane Merckx, had disappeared from Columbia Park less than a month earlier.
On August 7th, Shannon returned from a trip to Lake Chelan she had taken with her family, and on the following day, she had plans to go visit her boyfriend in nearby Pasco. Unfortunately for Shannon, her car broke down on the way there; more fortunately, her sister Sandi came to her rescue and gave her a lift to meet her boyfriend for lunch.
Afterwards, Shannon asked if she could borrow her boyfriend’s car to run an errand, if she promised to bring it back before he got off work at four p.m. He agreed, and the pair parted ways. At this point, it seems that Shannon drove her boyfriend’s car to meet another individual, either a man she was dating on the side or simply a casual friend.
According to this man, Shannon left her boyfriend’s El Camino at his house, and then Shannon and this friend went to hang out in Two Rivers Park, where they drank sodas and talked. Shannon evidently left the friend’s house in the El Camino at approximately three-thirty p.m., and was never seen alive again.
When Shannon did not arrive to pick up her boyfriend from work, he contacted her parents, who began calling around to many of Shannon’s friends and acquaintances. Evidently, the friend who Shannon had allegedly gone to see got wind of Shannon’s disappearance, and drove to Columbia Park with his wife to look for her.
In Columbia Park, the same area where Diane Merckx was thought to have been abducted the previous July, the friend spotted the El Camino that Shannon had been driving. The driver’s side door was open, and Shannon’s flip-flops had been abandoned just outside of the vehicle.
The friend phoned police to report the find, and dispatchers later stated that the man was hysterical to an almost absurd degree, which police officers found a little suspicious. They also deemed it unlikely that Shannon would have left the friend’s house at three-thirty and then driven to Columbia Park of her own volition, since she knew she had to pick up her boyfriend at four o’clock. Investigators further found a soda cup inside the car from a Red Steer convenience store, which would have necessitated yet another stop.
The Varley family spent the following few months looking for their missing daughter, but they would have no idea what happened to her until later that fall.
In November of 1975, Shannon’s badly decomposed remains were discovered in a marsh near Umatilla. She had been shot once in the head.
During the course of the ensuing investigation, several suspects emerged, but none had enough compelling evidence against them to make an arrest. The friend who had reported finding the vehicle was questioned, but released, and another promising person of interest a local pimp who had kidnapped a seventeen-year-old girl from Columbia Park only weeks before was dismissed after it was found that his hair did not match the hair found on the victim’s body.
Then, on April 11th, 1977, the body of twenty-year-old Diane Merckx was found buried in a shallow grave in Sacajawea Park in Pasco. She had gone missing from Columbia Park in early August of 1975, shortly before the disappearance of twenty-year-old Shannon Varley.
Unlike Shannon, though, who had been shot to death, Diane Merckx appeared to have been strangled, judging by the ligature found alongside her remains. Detectives also recovered a hair from Diane’s body that presumably belonged to her killer, though the hair did not match the type found on the body of Shannon Varley. However, investigators could not rule out the possibility that the two crimes were connected.
Cold case detectives are still hoping for a breakthrough in either homicide.
Crime Immemorial 