Home / Crime and Justice / DNA Breakthrough Solves 1990 Montana Nursing Home Murders
DNA Breakthrough Solves 1990 Montana Nursing Home Murders
11 Jun
Summary
- A man was arrested decades later for two 1990 murders at a Montana healthcare center.
- Advanced DNA analysis linked the suspect to the killings of two elderly residents.
- The arrest came over three decades after the crimes, thanks to improved forensic methods.
A man has been arrested in connection with two separate decades-old killings at a Montana rehabilitation center. Nickie Dean Gardiner, 69, faces charges of deliberate homicide for the deaths of Bertha Scott and Nancy Lagerquist in 1990. Both women were residents at Riverside Health and Rehabilitation in Missoula when they were killed. Authorities announced the charges this week following advanced DNA analysis that linked Gardiner to both cases. He is currently held on a $5 million bond.
Lagerquist, 87, was abducted and killed in July 1990, her body later found in the Clark Fork River. Scott, 86, died in May 1990 and was found to have been strangled, with evidence of sexual assault uncovered during a later exhumation. Investigators utilized improved forensic DNA methods, including Y chromosome analysis from fingernail clippings, to develop usable DNA profiles from evidence preserved since the original investigations. This scientific advancement ultimately led to Gardiner's arrest over thirty years after the crimes.
