Fifty-year-old Vietnam veteran Roger Kelly lived in Bend, Oregon, and worked as a truck driver for Scott Transportation, a hauling company based out of La Pine.
On the morning of January 9th, 2000, Roger left Wells, Nevada, heading toward Fernley, where he was scheduled to drop off a load of building components the following morning.
He drove all day, and at around nine p.m., he pulled his truck into the dirt parking lot of the Best Western motel in Fernley, right off Interstate 80. After getting out of the vehicle, he opened the engine compartment and shined a flashlight into it, making some adjustments with a wrench. Authorities believe that this was when he was approached by his killer.
It is unclear whether there was some type of confrontation, but whatever the case, Roger was shot once in the chest by the unknown assailant. He collapsed to the ground next to his truck and was pronounced dead at the scene when emergency services arrived.
Strangely, the murderer had left the weapon behind; it was a modified long gun with a handgun grip, crudely welded, with a long piece of silver pipe protruding from the barrel. Detectives were unable to retrieve enough DNA evidence from the firearm to make any comparisons.
Although no one had seen the shooting occur, witnesses did report a suspicious individual in the vicinity of the crime. This person was a white male in his late twenties or early thirties, standing between five-foot-seven and five-foot-eleven, and weighing approximately one hundred thirty-five to one hundred fifty-five pounds. According to the composite sketch, the suspect also had blue eyes, straggly brown shoulder-length hair, and a mustache.
Police delved into Roger’s background to see if there was any reason he might have been targeted but came up empty. He had substance abuse problems in the past, but a post-mortem showed no signs of drugs in his system.
There were reports that he might have been involved in an argument at a fueling station in Wells, Nevada earlier in the day. Roger’s daughter Amy Quintana told investigators that her father had won a few hundred dollars playing video poker while putting fuel in his truck and that someone might have witnessed his win and followed him with the intention of robbing him. Roger’s wallet was found untouched at the scene, however, leading authorities to conclude that there must have been another motive.
His daughters also statedthat Roger had been acting stressed and a little “off” in the days before his death, but they attributed this to some problems he was having at work with his company’s dispatchers failing to find him a backhaul and possibly shorting him out of money.
More than a quarter century has passed since Roger Kelly was gunned down in a Nevada parking lot, and the case is still sadly unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 