1983 Custer County missing person case solved after decades without answers
Published at | Updated at
Trey Baylor, Courtroom Insider
CHALLIS — A 1983 Custer County missing persons case was solved after the victim’s family asked law enforcement to take another look.
According to a statement from the Custer County Sheriff’s Office posted Oct. 29, Lois Ford and her vehicle, a 1978 Ford Thunderbird, disappeared without a trace.
Ford was 40 when she went missing and was last known to be living in Challis.
In the decades since her disappearance, Ford’s family has searched on and off, according to the statement, with the help of law enforcement, private detectives and even psychic mediums, but Ford’s family was unable to determine what had happened to her.
In 2025, the family contacted the Custer County Sheriff’s Office and asked them to investigate. The case was assigned to Dave Walls, an investigator with experience in missing persons cases that have gone cold.
According to the statement, Walls currently serves as the department’s records and evidence supervisor. In the initial investigation, it was discovered that Ford had never been officially reported as a missing person, due to miscommunication between Ford’s family members.
After entering Ford into the national database as a missing person, Walls reached out to investigator Karl Noah of the Idaho State Police, for assistance. Together, the pair combed through hundreds of Jane Doe cases across Idaho, Oregon and Nevada.
A break finally came in the case when Walls discovered an alias close to Ford’s name in court records from Ada County from 1992. According to the statement, handwriting analysis confirmed that the signatures on the court records more than likely belonged to Ford.
With this new information, Walls had proof of life for Ford in the Boise area in 1992.
Walls reached out to Detective Tim Cooper with the Ada County Sheriff’s Office.
Recently, Cooper made national headlines linking “The Unknown Wanderer” found dead in Boise with the 1982 Tylenol murders.
Cooper searched the Idaho State Fingerprint Repository and discovered additional aliases potentially associated with Ford, ultimately leading to a 1993 Ada County Coroner Case.
Walls reviewed the case and scene photos and determined the decedent was Ford, and positive identification was made by family members.
According to the Custer County Sheriff’s Office, Ford had been homeless at the time of her death and had been for some time, with mental illness likely a contributing factor.
“The children and grandchildren of Lois Ford were able to reclaim their mother and grandma and give her name back to her,” according to the statement. “The Custer County Sheriff’s Office thanks Det. Tim Cooper with the Ada County Sheriff’s Office as well as Investigator Karl Noah of the Idaho State Police for assisting in this investigation.”