Marvin Irvin

In 1979, Ruth, her brother Calvin West, and Calvin's wife 19-year-old Micki Jo West left for California, with Irvin following not far behind. In March, Ruth and Irvin officially married in Ventura, but by the time they returned to Missouri, their relationship had downgraded, with Ruth claiming Irvin beat her. In August, she and her 4-year-old son fled and took refuge in a motel in Elwood, Kansas, only sharing this information with her mother, her sister, the couple who helped her relocate, and Micki Jo West.[3]

On September 11, Micki Jo West was scheduled to show up to her job at a hospital, but she never arrived. Later that same day, Irvin and two friends broke into Ruth's motel room, dragged her and their son into a car, and drove them back to St. Joseph. When Micki was reported missing, Irvin became a suspect, and he was required to take multiple polygraph tests, but the tests were inconclusive. Ruth West filed for divorce from Irvin in October after another domestic dispute, which resulted in Irvin chasing West barefoot across St. Joseph.[3]

On September 11, 1986, exactly seven years since Micki's disappearance, an anonymous letter was found inside a Kansas City shopping mall. The letter, which was addressed to the St. Joseph police, contained details about the writer being with Marvin Irvin at the time of Micki's disappearance, claiming he killed her. However, the writer left no details about who he/she was, and police were not able to follow up on an exact lead.[4] In 1988, a television reporter named Therman Mitchell received a letter addressed to him. The letter contained details about where Micki's body was, and the writer inviting Mitchell to show him where Micki's body was. Instead of meeting up with the anonymous sender, Mitchell aired a news story on the letter, pleading for the sender to come forward.[5] That same year, Irvin and another woman moved to Ames, Iowa, where Irvin got a job working at railroad tracks. There, on March 30, Janet Huegerich filed a police report because Irvin had shot over her head multiple times.[3] The resulting police confrontation ended with a police chase across multiple counties, with over 20 police officers in pursuit. After his eventual arrest, Irvin pleaded guilty to avoiding arrest and two weapons charges and was sentenced to five years probation.[3]

Irvin returned to St. Joseph not long after. There, on September 17, 1990, meat cutter 31-year-old Patricia Diane Rose visited a local bar named Brew's Blue Town to take a break from work and was due to return, but she never did and was reported missing.[6] A month later, on October 29, 33-year-old Crystal Lynn Simmons also disappeared, last seen at downtown bar.[7] During the investigation, investigators received a tip, saying that Simmons was last seen with a man named Marvin Lee Irvin, and to inspect his truck as evidence.[6]

They followed up on it and received a warrant to search his vehicle. They temporarily removed the seats and discovered a partially wet towel soaked in blood. Further tests on the blood proved it belonged to Simmons, and Irvin was arrested. In November, skeletal remains of two women were found in a cornfield in Kansas, both were later positively identified as belonging to both women.[8] An autopsy on both declared their cause of death as multiple blows to the head.[9]