Joyce LePage, a 21-year-old WSU student with a pilot's license and skydiving hobby, vanished on the night of July 22, 1971, after being dropped off at her apartment by friends — her body was found nine months later wrapped in a cut-out piece of green campus carpet at the bottom of a canyon 25 minutes from campus. Six suspects remain viable 55 years later, with agriculture teacher Mike Finch drawing the most scrutiny for his shifting timeline, lack of Thursday-night alibi, army-issue blanket connection, and refusal to take an early polygraph. Ted Bundy's name also appears in the case file, but investigators including the current Whitman County Sheriff consider him the least probable suspect.
Key Moments
Ashley Flowers
“Stevens Hall is being worked on this summer, so I have taken over the building. I play their piano, watch TV, sleep, shower, even bathe in there. It's my private hideaway for the rest of the summer.”
Ashley reads aloud from a letter Joyce wrote to a friend explaining where she had been secretly sleeping to avoid her annoying roommate.
“When they get down there, deputies do find a partial mostly skeletal body wrapped in a green carpet.”
Ashley describes what Whitman County deputies found at the bottom of Hawaii Canyon after repelling down a steep cliff nine months after Joyce's disappearance.
“She's found in the carpet. So presumably she's already dead by Friday. For the life of him, he cannot remember what he was doing that night.”
Brett points out that Mike Finch has no alibi for Thursday — the actual night Joyce was likely killed — despite remembering precise details about the following days.
Crime Junkie is a weekly true crime podcast hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brett Sporman, known for its research-driven storytelling and dedicated listener community called 'crime junkies.' The show covers murders, disappearances, and unsolved cases from across the United States and beyond. It is one of the most-downloaded podcasts in the true crime genre, produced by audiochuck.
Takeaways
1
Joyce's secret dorm hideout placed her at the crime scene Joyce had been secretly living in Stevens Hall — a dorm closed for summer renovations — to avoid her roommate. Her purse, textbook, and love letters were found there alongside a crudely cut 5x5-foot section of carpet. That carpet later turned up wrapped around her skeletal remains at the bottom of Hawaii Canyon.
2
Mike Finch's timeline shifts and has a critical Thursday gap Finch's account changed between his 1971 and 1972 police interviews — notably adding a midnight detour past Joyce's apartment en route to Pasco, and an alibi call placed 'from Spokane.' Yet for Thursday July 22 — the night Joyce almost certainly died — he claims no memory at all, while recalling precise details about every other day.
3
No blood on the carpet means she died elsewhere Forensic examination found no blood on the green carpet or the military blankets Joyce was wrapped in, suggesting she was killed in a different location and then transported to the canyon. Possible stab wound markings were found on her bones, but cause of death was never definitively established.
4
Military blanket links Finch; polygraph refusal deepened suspicion Joyce's remains were wrapped in a US Army Medical Corps blanket — and Finch is a veteran. When police asked him to take a polygraph in the 1970s he initially agreed, then hired a lawyer and refused. He did eventually pass a polygraph in 2013, which led investigators to deprioritize him, though Ashley finds his timeline inconsistencies still unresolved.
5
Case went cold partly due to early investigative failures Joyce's car sat outside a fraternity for at least four days before police found it, and the crime lab processed it without — according to the current sheriff — even dusting for fingerprints. The car was then returned to Joyce's family, potentially destroying key evidence before anyone understood what had happened.
6
Ted Bundy was a person of interest but is least probable suspect A 1977 tip claimed Bundy stayed on WSU's campus the weekend Joyce was killed, and her profile matched his victim type in the Pacific Northwest. However, Bundy denied involvement before his 1989 execution, his first confirmed kill was 1974, and the current Whitman County Sheriff agrees the Bundy theory is the weakest of the six remaining.