Search for answers in Idaho woman’s 1983 disappearance ends after decades of mystery
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KIVI staff
CHALLIS (KIVI) — A family searching for answers in the disappearance of their lost loved one finally knows what happened to her thanks to the work of Idaho cold case detectives.
The case centers on the disappearance of Lois Ford, who was last known to be living in Challis in 1983 when she vanished, seemingly without a trace.
Over the decades, family members searched for Lois through the help of law enforcement, private detectives and even psychic mediums, but her fate remained a mystery.
The case was brought to Custer County Sheriff’s Office investigator Dave Walls in 2025, who soon learned that, because of confusion between family members, Ford had never been officially reported as a missing person.
That became the first step in Walls’ investigation, along with combing missing persons databases in Idaho, Oregon and Nevada and searching through hundreds of unidentified “Jane Does” for any sign of her.
Those searches failed to turn up new leads. Walls soon turned to coroner’s offices across the West, along with searching historical accident investigation archives for signs of Ford’s 1978 Ford Thunderbird — also unaccounted for in her disappearance.
Walls made a new break in the case when he found court records for an alias similar to Ford’s name and, through handwriting analysis, encountered multiple historical documents seemingly signed by her.
“This basically showed proof of life in the Boise area in 1992,” Custer County sheriff’s officials stated.
This development prompted Walls to reached out to the Ada County Sheriff’s Office and experienced cold case investigator Det. Tim Cooper, whose work recently made national headlines with the identification of Boise’s “Unknown Wanderer” and speculation of a possible link to the infamous Tylenol murders.
Walls also searched Idaho’s State Fingerprint Repository, which turned up several other aliases possibly linked to Ford.
Cooper used that information to search historical Boise Police Department records and soon found documentation of multiple contacts between BPD and Ford.
The new information would lead Walls and Cooper to an Ada County Coroner case from 1993, which revealed Ford had been interred under another alias, with coroner’s investigators unable to locate her next-of-kin.
Walls verified the deceased in that case to be Ford, sheriff’s officials noted, as did her surviving family members.
Documents revealed Ford had been homeless at the time of her passing, and mental illness was believed to have played a role in her death.
“The children and grandchildren of Lois Ford were able to reclaim their mother and grandma and give her name back to her,” sheriff’s officials wrote.
The Custer County Sheriff’s Office thanked Detective Cooper and Idaho State Police investigator Karl Noah for their help in bringing a resolution to the decades-old disappearance.