Diane Washer

Real Name: Diane Washer
Nicknames: No known nicknames
Location: Covington, Kentucky
Date: July 20, 1994

Case[]

Details: On the evening of July 20, 1994, thirty-nine-year-old Diane Washer and her estranged husband, Jimmy, had an argument about money. She had received a $10,000 SSI settlement because of her bad back. As she tried to get to the phone, he tried to attack her, so she hit him with the receiver and called 911. However, by the time police arrived, he had left. She told them that she was okay and left too. Shortly thereafter, she vanished.
A few days later, Jimmy asked Diane's family where she was, but they had no idea what had happened to her. A few weeks later, their daughter, Lisa, went to her home and discovered that she had left behind pills that she needed to help her back pain. She knew something was wrong. On August 24, her family reported her missing, and investigators soon focused on Jimmy as a suspect.
Suspects: Jimmy became the prime suspect because he never reported Diane missing. He took a polygraph test, but the results were inconclusive. He was never ruled out as a suspect.
Extra Notes:

This case first aired on the August 21, 2001 episode, about Dr. Emily Craig.
This case was already solved by the time it was aired.

Results: Solved. In summer 1997, three years after Diane vanished, deputies searching for an illegal marijuana field found a crushed skull and several other bones in a creek in Boone County, Kentucky. Further searches of the area turned up a total of seventeen bones. They were brought to a forensic anthropologist named Dr. Emily Craig, who found that some of them had flesh on the end. She determined that the death was between 12 and 36 months (1 to 3 years) before they were found. She found that the victim was a 35–40-year-old woman who was about 5'3". A bone from her lower back apparently had arthritis, or some sort of back pain. She had also suffered from massive head trauma at the time of her death.
Police soon found a match to the profile: Diane. In June 1998, she was positively identified through DNA testing. An informant came forward to claim that a local house painter named Larry Freeman was responsible for her death. When he was brought in for questioning by police, he confessed that they got drunk and then went joyriding. He claimed that he lost control of the car, and she was ejected from the passenger seat. He then took her body and threw it into the creek. This was an area where he had been raised. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to twenty years in prison. He has since been released.
In 2017 Larry was arrested for DUI and sentenced to four years.
Links:

Man charged in '94 death - December 12, 1998
Freeman vs. Kentucky
Larry Freeman Inmate Profile