Nickie Dean Gardiner, 69, has been charged with deliberate homicide in the deaths of two women—Bertha Scott and Nancy Lagerquist—who were killed at a Missoula, Montana healthcare facility in May and July 1990. Authorities say advanced DNA testing produced usab
The door closed decades ago, but investigators didn’t stop knocking.
This week. authorities announced that Nickie Dean Gardiner. 69. has been charged with two counts of deliberate homicide tied to the killings of two women at a healthcare center in Missoula in 1990. The cases have haunted families and the local community for more than three decades—until DNA testing finally connected evidence preserved from that era to the man now facing prosecution.
Gardiner was charged for the deaths of Bertha Scott and Nancy Lagerquist. both residents at Riverside Health and Rehabilitation (formerly Riverside Health Care Center). Missoula County officials said the deaths occurred in May and July of 1990. and that advanced DNA analysis linked Gardiner to both cases.
He is being held at the Missoula County Detention Facility on a $5 million bond, according to authorities.
Riverside’s role has remained part of the story since the beginning. When the facility was contacted on June 10 about whether Gardiner had ever been an employee there, the company said he was not.
A $10,000 reward was offered in September 1990 for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the women’s killings.
The killings and what investigators found at the time
Nancy Lagerquist, 87, was abducted from Riverside Health Care Center and killed in early July 1990, according to archives from the local newspaper, the Missoulian. During a bed check, staff found she was missing. The newspaper reported that her window screen had been cut.
Pete Lawrenson, then chief of the Missoula Police Department, told the outlet that Lagerquist died between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m. on the day she was reported missing. Lawrenson said the death was caused by “blunt force trauma to the chest and abdomen, most likely during sexual assault.”
Her body was found in the Clark Fork River downstream from the nursing home. Police said she had been killed with a sharp object in 1992. Officers added that they believed the killer entered through a window, carried her from the room, and killed her near the river.
Police also sought information about a man an employee saw near the scene. A witness saw the man at 4 a.m. walking in a parking lot east of the nursing home on the day Lagerquist died.
Two months earlier, Bertha Scott was killed
Investigators were already working Lagerquist’s death when they learned there might be a connection to Scott’s earlier killing. Scott, 86, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, died in early May 1990, the Missoulian reported.
Riverside staff found Scott dead in bed with her arms and legs restrained. Investigators initially thought she died of natural causes because she had heart issues. What shifted the case, the newspaper reported, was a nurse who remembered slight bruising on Scott’s neck.
Scott’s body was exhumed three months after her death during the investigation into Lagerquist’s killing. Underneath the neck bruise, a medical examiner found signs of pressure and “soft strangulation,” which left no ligature marks, according to the Missoulian.
After Scott’s remains were exhumed, investigators collected semen from her body and confirmed she had been sexually assaulted, according to the local newspaper.
Evidence traveled through multiple labs
Investigators sent the semen evidence to the Federal Bureau of Investigation lab in Quantico, Virginia. The hope was that officials could gather a DNA fingerprint from the semen.
But FBI investigators could not determine whether the DNA pattern belonged to Scott or the suspect, according to the Missoulian. New tests were then ordered from a lab in North Carolina.
By September 1991—just over a year after Scott was killed—the North Carolina lab confirmed that the DNA pattern from the semen belonged to Scott, not her killer, the newspaper reported.
Then the case went cold again.
Families sued, even as criminal answers lagged
The families of both victims sued Riverside for negligence, according to a 1993 newspaper report. They alleged in civil lawsuits that the facility was negligent and failed to provide the women a “safe environment from would-be assailants.”
The criminal case had its share of false leads and dead ends. In April 1992, authorities considered a Florida killer named Lloyd Wayne “Buddy” Allen, according to a Missoulian report. The idea was that he may have killed the women because he was in the Missoula area during October 1991 and possibly earlier.
Investigators ruled Allen out after checking jail records and finding he was incarcerated in mid-1990 when the women were killed.
Gardiner’s past record entered the file
Newspaper archives show that Gardiner—now charged in both deaths—was sentenced to 13 months in a Montana state prison for felony DUI, according to archives from the Independent-Record newspaper.
A Missoulian report of public records in 2015 also showed he was listed as a violent offender.
How DNA testing reopened the door
This week’s announcement pointed to a different turning point: improved forensic DNA methods combined with biological evidence preserved from the original investigations.
Missoula County officials said in the news release that “improved forensic DNA methods” helped develop “usable DNA profiles from the samples collected in 1990.” The Montana State Crime Lab and Bode Technology conducted new DNA testing over the past year on biological evidence preserved from the original investigations. the release said.
Authorities also developed Y chromosome DNA profiles from one of the victims’ fingernail clippings. According to officials, the tests showed the DNA belonged to Gardiner.
In the release, officials wrote that “Gardiner has no known connection to either victim, and investigators have found no explanation – other than criminal activity – for the presence of his DNA on both victims.”
The case had already been reopened multiple times since 1990—three times in all. In addition to the Missoula Police Department and other agencies, the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit also worked the case.
That cold case unit is made up of retired federal law enforcement officers from the FBI and Homeland Security. Sheriff Jeremiah Petersen said in the release: “Their knowledge of advanced laboratory investigation is second to none.” He added. “They are an invaluable resource to Missoula County. Our thoughts now turn to the family and those who were impacted by these crimes.”.
Where the case stands now
For Riverside Health and Rehabilitation and for the families of Bertha Scott and Nancy Lagerquist, the question has never been only who did it—it has been when the evidence would finally line up with answers.
With Gardiner facing two counts of deliberate homicide and held on a $5 million bond, investigators say DNA profiles built from samples collected in 1990 are now strong enough to bring charges.
The next chapter will move from the lab to the courtroom, but for the people who lived through those deaths—then watched the search restart again and again—the moment is still unmistakable: for more than three decades, they carried a case that DNA couldn’t crack. Now, it has.
Montana nursing home Missoula County cold case DNA testing deliberate homicide Nickie Dean Gardiner Riverside Health and Rehabilitation Bertha Scott Nancy Lagerquist Missoula Police Department