The Bizarre Disappearance of Randy Leach
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Linwood is a rural town in Kansas that epitomizes small-town living, with a population of less than 500 people as declared by a recent census. It was founded in the late 1800s, where settlers built sawmills on the Kaw River, creating many jobs and commerce for the community.

It got its name by Senator William A. Harris because of his great appreciation for the linwood trees that were abundant in the vicinity of Stranger Creek that runs through the town. It's a very stereotypical Midwestern small town where nothing really happens that you'd call newsworthy until the night of April 15th, 1988 that is, when something happened that disrupted the quiet harmony of the city forever.

Randy Leach was a 17-year-old senior, just on the cusp of graduation, when he went missing at a pre-graduation party on the other side of town. There are multiple theories on what happened to Randy, but it's a case that still remains open with the Leavenworth County Sheriff's Department to this day. His parents, now in their 70s, still long for answers to what could have happened to their son.

In this episode, we will explore exactly what happened on the day of his disappearance and break down the details of a missing persons case that has stumped investigators for over 30 years. Randy was born to Harold and Alberta Leach on July 25th, 1970. Randy had started out life as a small child but quickly grew like a weed according to his mother, reaching 6'2" by the time he was a teenager.

According to his father, he was a hardworking and well-mannered boy, and described by his mother as sweet and good-natured. He grew up on a 10-acre farm and took care of a variety of livestock, including his favorite farm animal, a pig named Porkchop. He earned good grades in school, played for the basketball team, and even sought to break the school's shot put record for track and field.

He was a young man with big aspirations, and by all accounts, he had a genuine zest for life. As a graduation gift, his father Harold had bought him a new riding mower, one that Randy had planned on using to mow lawns over the summer after graduation. He then planned to attend trade school in the fall. The day leading up to his disappearance was fairly mundane,

Randy had mowed a neighbor's lawn and then his own, after which he cleaned the mower thoroughly, making it sparkle like new again, according to his father. But little did Harold and Alberta know, as their son left their home at 6:45 p.m. on April 15th, 1988, it would be the last time they would ever see their boy again. At 7:00 p.m., it was reported by a family member that Randy had made a stop at his cousin's house to hang out.

but his cousin wasn't home. He then decided to drive around Linwood for a while, cruising, killing time. Then at 8:30 p.m., Randy picked up an older friend of his, Steve Dougherty, and from there traveled to a body shop in DeSoto, a town on the other side of the river, to check on the progress of his second graduation gift from his parents.

a 1966 Ford Mustang his father was having restored for him, due to be completed by the cap and gown ceremony on graduation day at the high school. It was to be painted candy apple red, Randy's favorite color. Afterwards, a convenience store clerk confirms that Randy stopped into the gas station at 9:30 p.m. and purchased two candy bars, two sodas, and $3 worth of gas.

Then at 10:00 p.m., Randy arrived at a bonfire party in West Bonner Springs, where a classmate was throwing a pre-graduation party at their family's farm. It was a large blowout where students were celebrating their senior year coming to an end. It's said there were over 100 people in attendance, and it was later confirmed that heavy drug and alcohol use was involved in the festivities. Randy had been reported as acting strange during the party,

but there was some debate on his level of impairment. The mother of the senior who was hosting the party, Annie Irwin, stated that Randy had trouble walking, but did not appear drunk and didn't have a beer in his hand either. But several classmates told police officials later that he had indeed appeared drunk. A friend of his is quoted stating that he had asked Randy, "What's wrong with you?" To which Randy answered, "I don't know. Had he drank too much at the party?"

had he consumed any drugs, including pills, that were in circulation at the event. His mother, Alberta, says it would be strangely out of character for him to do so, but it certainly seemed likely. At midnight, witnesses said they saw Randy in the front seat of his car, a 1985 Dodge sedan registered to his mother. He was reclined in the seat and appeared to be resting, perhaps trying to sober up a bit.

At 1:30 a.m., Randy is reported to be walking around in the crowd, looking for his car keys, which he seemed to have dropped or misplaced somewhere at the party. There is some debate on whether a friend took his keys to ensure he didn't try to drive in such an impaired state, or if he really did in fact drop them somewhere on the grounds.

But a friend of his, John Burns, was acting as a designated driver of sorts for many partygoers and making trips to take people home who couldn't safely make the drive. He had told Randy he would be back to give him a ride home after he finished with his current carload. At 2:05 AM, Mrs. Irwin, the property owner, sees Randy inside waiting to use the restroom.

At 2:15 AM, Randy's girlfriend, who was leaving the party, says she saw Randy still waiting in line for the restroom as she said her goodbyes. At approximately 2:30 AM, John Burns returns to the Irwins farm to take Randy home, but instead finds that he and his car were gone, and assumed someone else had found his keys and driven him home.

Early the next morning around 6:00 AM, his parents wake to discover that their son had never made it home from the night before. They knew of the party, but had no idea Randy was even planning to go to it. The pair wait for a while in the driveway as their concern grew for their son's whereabouts. It was unlike him to miss his 12:30 AM curfew.

Then something odd happened. Harold Leach notices a friend of Randy's, Steve Dougherty, drive by their home on a country road that lies just behind their house. The speed limit for said road was 55 miles per hour, but the friend crept past, only driving about 10 miles per hour.

This instance later proved to be quite odd indeed, because Harold learned later that Dougherty was one of the last people to see Randy that night at the party. And it was very early in the morning for someone to be driving by who had just been partying a few hours before.

Harold and Alberta decided to call a few of Randy's other friends to see if he'd been at the party and if anyone had heard from him afterwards, worrying that perhaps he'd broken down somewhere and reached out for a ride, but no one had received a call from him. Alberta immediately called her brother, Richard Rose, who was a police officer with the Lawrence Police Department at the time, and asked him to look into it.

He arrived at the Irwins farm a little after 7:00 AM to investigate and found that the farm had been swept, raked and completely cleaned. There were no cups, beer cans, trash or anything. Rose said, "You couldn't have even told there was a party there."

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At 8.30 a.m., Harold and Alberta arrived at the Irwin's farm to investigate for themselves.

The farm had indeed been thoroughly cleaned and any remaining trash or debris was currently smoldering in the fire pit and turning to ash. Harold Leach questioned Kim Irwin, Randy's classmate who threw the party, about his whereabouts. She was noted as pretty upset and quiet, but stated that she had seen him at the party, but didn't know where he was now. Alberta Leach went into the Irwin home to speak with the mother, Annie Irwin.

Their conversation seemed strange and short, and is recorded by police as the following. "What can I do for you?" Annie asked. "I want to know where my son is," Alberta said. "Can I get you a beer?" Erwin replied. Alberta turned down the offer and reiterated again that she wanted to know where her son was, but Erwin said that she didn't know. She expressed that she thought one of the boys from the party took Randy home.

What strikes me as strange here in this situation is why had the farm been meticulously cleaned? Why was the trash and residual items of the event burnt immediately? And who offers someone a beer at 8:30 AM, especially to a mother who is distraught and very concerned about her son's whereabouts? This all plays into one of the theories, which we will discuss later.

The next morning on April 17th, Randy's parents filed the missing persons report immediately after the 24-hour waiting period has passed.

The next day on April 18th, the missing person's alert is put out by police, seeking information on the location of Randy Leach, a 6'3", 220-pound, 17-year-old white male with blue eyes, brown hair, and a mole on his left earlobe. Last seen wearing a blue T-shirt, blue jeans, and white tennis shoes, driving a 1985 Dodge 600 gray four-door sedan.

The initial investigation was slow to start, something that deeply frustrated Harold Leach. But the police had no evidence to suspect any foul play or otherwise. Their first instinct was that Randy had simply ran away, which was vehemently denied by his parents as something he'd never do. But as the investigation ramped up a few weeks after his disappearance, the Irwins' home where the pre-graduation party took place mysteriously burned down.

To my knowledge, there was never any official charges of arson and it was ruled as accidental, but it certainly seems suspicious that the location where young Randy had disappeared from is now reduced to a pile of rubble and charcoal.

Still, the investigation slowly churned ever forward, but the Leaches weren't satisfied with the progress that the Leavenworth County Sheriff's Department was making on the case and hired two private investigators to look into their son's disappearance. This proved unhelpful, however, to Harold and Alberta because the detectives came to the conclusion that Randy had just ran away, but this is something they refused to believe.

He was almost done with school. He had already picked out a trade school for after graduation, and he was simply in love with the red 1966 Mustang that was soon to be his. There's no way he'd leave his life behind on a whim. From there, the case made very little headway, but rumors of satanic cult activity in the area was soon proposed as a possible explanation for what had happened to Randy.

Satanic panic was a huge fear among parents in the 1980s after all, and you wouldn't know it. Later that year, a man told police he had been kidnapped by a cult and held in a cave for two weeks. He described his captors as being Satanists and very violent. They regularly threatened to cut off his arms. They also showed him a dead body at the rear of the cave that was strung up by a noose. The man told authorities that it very well could have been the body of Randy Leach.

The police investigated the caves thoroughly and never found any evidence of a body or of any criminal activity whatsoever. It was chopped up to a hallucination, brought on by the man, who is known to be homeless and an active drug user. The sheriff did see fit to have the cave entrance bulldozed through to prevent possible further criminal activity to take place from within.

There were however two people who were considered persons of interests, Kelly Powell and Robert Marble, merely because they had been found with Dungeons and Dragons handbooks and a satanic bible in the back of Marble's car. Nothing connected them to the crimes, other than the small minds of townsfolk and incompetent law enforcement who feared such things. They were quickly dismissed as suspects after being run out of town.

The case was growing stale until March of 1989, where Steve Dougherty, the same friend from the night of the party, discovered a severed foot in a tennis shoe on the banks of the Kaw River. But after forensic analysis, it was determined not to belong to Randy Leach, but instead to a man of Hispanic descent. The police went ahead and searched the river thoroughly as a precaution, but also found nothing related to Randy's case.

The severed foot was a peculiar find, but unfortunately wasn't the big break that all involved were hoping for. From there, the trail went cold. It wasn't until 2002 when someone at the Kansas Bureau of Investigation took interest in it and revived the investigation. After a thorough review of the details, the KBI stated they suspect foul play and thought that Randy was slain.

They continued to ask the public for new details for the next 12 years until 2014 when Alberta and Harold learned that the KBI now suspected Eric Montgomery as the prime suspect in the possible abduction and murder of Randy Leach. He had been arrested in the early 1990s for two homicides that took place in the year 1990 that occurred seven miles from the home of Alberta and Harold in Lynwood.

But putting these pieces together now in 2014 was too little too late. Montgomery had died in 2010 in prison and thus was unable to confess to having involvement with Randy's disappearance.

To this day, Randy's parents still seek answers on what happened to their only child on that fateful night. Recently, they had even sued the Leavenworth County Sheriff's Department to release all of their records pertaining to the case so that they may perform their own review on what the authorities had been working on over the last 30 years. But a judge ruled against them, which was devastating to the family.

Even though Randy Leach was declared legally deceased in 2001, the case is still open with the Sheriff's Department, making all data and evidence closed to the public. It is the opinion of many commenters that the family should be able to have access to the records. It could lead to the final resolution of the greatest mystery that has ever befallen the city of Linwood. But even more importantly, it could finally help Harold and Alberta gain some closure.

Many speculate that perhaps the Sheriff's Department is hiding something. Perhaps they were negligent at the beginning of the investigation and bungled the case way back in 1988, and are now burying their mistakes. Is this true though? We may never know. But someone within the department must be sympathetic to the Leach's plight. Someone had stuffed the Leach's mailbox full of copies of police records pertaining to the case of Randy Leach.

Although Harold didn't disclose the exact nature of the documents, they proved unhelpful to him and his wife, and only fueled their curiosity and longing for closure even more. So what did happen to the 17-year-old on the night of April 15th, 1988? Well, we've laid out the facts and speculations. Now let's do a deep dive into the theories we've touched on so far. Let's begin with the two most unlikely theories.

Number one, Randy ran away. Again, this seems highly unlikely. By all accounts, he was happy at home with his parents and if he was going to take off, one would expect for him to at least attend his graduation, getting his diploma first, which would make him gaining good employment elsewhere much easier than without it.

If his goal truly was to leave town and start over somewhere fresh, with a new life, one would imagine that he'd want to be able to secure a good job as soon as possible, which would require at least a completed high school education. Not to mention his beloved 1966 Mustang. Surely, he would have waited for it to be finished before skipping town. Theory number two is that he was ritualistically murdered by a local satanic cult.

Before Randy Leach had disappeared, there had been rumors of satanic activity in Leavenworth County, but zero evidence has been brought forth to confirm this. It was only spoken about in hushed whispers among elderly townsfolk, simply rumors and gossip. But let's say they did exist. Wouldn't one of the dozens of people left at the party have noticed anything suspicious related to this? One would surely think so.

At the time, it was unfortunately a popular explanation to what had happened that night, primarily due to the satanic panic of the 1980s, as mentioned previously. But this theory is widely dismissed by investigators today. These two theories cannot be ruled out. However, let's review three others that seem much more plausible.

Theory number three, he was abducted and murdered by Eric Montgomery. This is a man previously unknown to the people of Linwood who was not seen anywhere near the pre-graduation party and is only connected to the case by a thin thread. This man had participated in two other homicides that happened almost a year after Randy Leach's disappearance, seven miles north of Linwood.

Could Randy have found his keys, decided to drive despite his obvious impairment, and then perhaps picked up Montgomery as a hitchhiker somewhere down the road? At which point the man would murder Randy and dump his vehicle and body into the river, where it would be covered in sand and silt and never found? It's possible, but the facts just don't add up.

If there was more concrete evidence to tie Montgomery to the case, one would assume they would have thought of this possibility before 2014 after so much time had passed. In many commenters' opinions, this was simply the KBI grasping at straws, desperate for an explanation and a way to close the case. Theory number four, Randy's older friend, Steve Dougherty, murdered him out of jealousy and disposed of his vehicle and body.

Dougherty was in his 30s at the time and not a very successful man with few possessions and even lived in a small nook at the back of a convenience store. Perhaps Dougherty grew envious of the boy after seeing his 1966 Ford Mustang being restored at the body shop before the party. Maybe he was jealous of someone so young who had so many things going well for them while his own life was in shambles. Steve was one of the last people to see Randy Leach at the party after all.

And let's not forget the strange occurrence where he was seen driving very slowly by the Leach's house that same morning at little after 6:00 AM. Harold Leach states that he had always suspected that Dougherty was somehow involved in his son's disappearance and at the very least knew more than he let on. Steve was a Vietnam veteran. He very easily could have been living with PTSD and then somehow snapped the evening of the party, killing Randy.

But unfortunately, we may never know because Dougherty died at Overland Park Regional Medical Center in 1996 at the age of 44. And finally, theory number five, which I personally find to be the most reasonable explanation. Randy Leach had been acting strange at the party, obviously impaired.

A shared theory among commenters is that perhaps he had mixed a dangerous amount of alcohol with drugs, namely pills, whether taken willingly or that had been slipped into his drink. Perhaps the young man succumbed to an overdose during the 15-minute gap where he'd been seen last by his girlfriend at 2:15 a.m., waiting in line for the bathroom, and then at 2:30 a.m. when his friend had returned to drive him home but saw his vehicle gone from the residence.

It could have simply been a tragic accident in which the Irwins responded with panic. Responsibility for the boy's death would be placed on them since it was their property at which the party took place. Certainly there would be legal ramifications and very likely jail time for the two adults.

At this time, they would scramble to hide the body and his sedan until everyone had gone home for the night. After which Mr. Irwin would drive the car and the body into the nearby river to hide the evidence. After returning, the Irwins would meticulously clean and burn all evidence of the party before the leeches would arrive early that following morning.

Once the investigation was in full swing and they were continually questioned by the authorities, perhaps they panicked even further, worried that the police would eventually request to search their home with a forensics team, at which point they decided to commit arson and burn their own house down to finally destroy any possible lingering evidence that Randy Leach had OD'd in their home.

There is no evidence that confirms this theory, but it does seem like the simplest explanation to what could have happened to Randy that night. It still doesn't explain why the Leavenworth County Sheriff's Department is so tight-lipped about the investigation, unwilling to work with Harold and Alberta in regards to the case files. Hopefully this information can eventually come to light, but may not until after Harold and Alberta Leach, who are approaching their late 70s, pass away from this life.

At which point, if this does happen, I hope that some friend or family member continues the fight for Randy, potentially solving this 34-year-old cold case. This investigation is still ongoing, and it is asked that if anyone has any information on the night of Randy Leach's disappearance, reach out to the In Search of Randy Leach Facebook group and share the details with the admins there.

May we remain hopeful that one day we will finally know what actually happened to this son of Linwood, Kansas.