Twenty-seven years after the strangulation and shooting homicide of a Salem woman, her boyfriend will stand trial in a Phelps County courtroom and answer to a capital murder charge.
The partially clothed body of 21-year-old Judy Lynn Spencer was found the day after she was killed on March 10, 1982, hidden in an old outhouse foundation in rural Dent County, covered with logs and other debris. The ensuing investigation determined she had been strangled with a shoelace from her right shoe and then shot in the neck with a shotgun.
Spencer’s boyfriend, Donald R. “Doc” Nash, 39 years old at the time, was questioned by investigators in 1982 and admitted he had two verbal arguments with Spencer the same night she was murdered and subsequently searched for her, according to court documents.
In November 2007, Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. H. James Folsom sent fingernail clippings collected from Spencer’s left hand shortly after her murder to the agency’s Crime Laboratory. The forensic examination revealed an unidentified male’s DNA profile.
Nash, a Beaufort resident in 2008, voluntarily submitted a DNA sample to a MSHP investigator in March 2008. Two weeks later, on March 28, 2008, Nash was arrested when his DNA sample returned a positive match to the DNA collected from Spencer’s fingernails.
According to the Probable Cause Statement filed with court, the mixture of Spencer’s and Nash’s DNA in the fingernail clippings indicated a physical struggle had taken place. Moreover, Spencer had washed her hair a short time before she was murdered, and Nash’s DNA would not have been present through casual contact.
Additionally, fresh tire tracks at the crime scene indicated a van or truck had been present, and Nash said he drove a Chevrolet pickup truck at the time of Spencer’s murder.
Folsom also indicated Nash’s statements contained inconsistencies related to the length of time he searched for her, according to court documents.
At the time of her death, Spencer worked at a Salem hospital. A former cheerleader, she graduated from Houston High School in 1978.
Originally a Dent County case, Nash’s case was transferred to Crawford County on a change of venue.
Circuit Clerk Sue Brown, with the 25th Circuit Court in Phelps County, said Senior Judge Douglas E. Long Jr., of Waynesville, who will be presiding at the bench, requested the trial be held at the Phelps County Courthouse.
A Crawford County sequestered jury also will be transported to Rolla to hear the case.
Nash’s attorney, Frank Kimberly Carlson, of Union, made application for bail with the State Supreme Court in July, which was denied.
Nash presently is incarcerated in the Crawford County Jail awaiting trial, which begins at 9 a.m. Oct. 26 at the Phelps County Courthouse.
Assistant Attorney General Theodore Allen Bruce, of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, is prosecuting the case.
If found guilty of the capital murder charge, Nash could face life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or death by lethal injection.
