Kalispell's only unsolved murder is 11 years old

Eleven years after the only known unsolved murder in Kalispell’s history, the victim’s family is still looking for closure.

Sometime during the night of April 16, 2003, Darlene Wilcock, 26, was strangled to death in a room on the second floor of Kalispell’s Motel 6. Her naked body was discovered the following day by a motel employee.

Although two suspects remain and the likelihood of one of them being the perpetrator is high, no arrests have ever been made.

Now, with another in a growing number of anniversaries of the murder behind them, Wilcock’s family is reaching out again looking for the information they need for her killer to be arrested.

“In some ways it’s kind of like day one all over again,” Wilcock’s sister Holly Blouch said, “because it brings up all of the emotions, all of the memories, all the frustrations, concerns, questions.”

In the years since her sister’s murder, Blouch and her sister Diane Hall and other family members have pursued every option they could find of to bring the killer to justice.

“We have talked to a lot of people, and every tip we get, every person that comes up to us and tells us something, immediately we go to the detectives and tell them and they look into it and follow up on it, but sometimes those are false leads, sometimes they are just people looking for attention and sometimes it’s just not enough information to proceed,” Blouch said.

The efforts by Blouch and her family have encompassed an immense amount of time — so much that it’s difficult to calculate.

“Hours, weeks, months, years,” Blouch said. “For me it goes beyond just the valley. I’ve reached out to ‘America’s Most Wanted,’ talk-show hosts, anybody and everybody trying to seek information, and we even have a private investigator who’s been trying to help us out with it, too, and he reached out to ... ‘20/20’ and things like that.”

The most aggravating response they ever received came from the staff of one of those television shows, who responded to their queries by saying not enough time had gone by and urging them to call back later.

“I’d rather them say, ‘We’re not interested’ than say not enough time has gone by,” Blouch said.

Kalispell Police Chief Roger Nasset remembers the crime well, along with its challenges.

“Unfortunately, one of the most complicated places to do a homicide investigation where DNA plays a critical role is a hotel room because it is very likely to find multiple DNAs in there,” Nasset said.

He was one of the two detectives first assigned to the case and he continues to go back to the evidence.

“We’ve actually reopened the case as recently as 2011 to do a cold-case investigation where we brought in one of our own investigators that was unfamiliar with the case, had them open it up and spent about two months completely sifting through it and trying to decipher and see if there was anything we missed in the initial investigation,” Nasset said.

“Even though it’s an 11-year-old case, it’s on our minds on a regular basis.”

Like Wilcock’s family, Nasset is convinced the killer is known and that all they need is the right evidence to charge the perpetrator.

“We firmly believe we’ve spoken to the individual responsible, but because of multiple different things that have convoluted the case, as far as being able to bring it to an actual arrest? We’re not there yet,” Nasset said.

Hall said their understanding is that without better evidence showing which of the two suspects committed the crime, it would be impossible to get a conviction because either man could point out that there is just as much evidence against the other, creating reasonable doubt.

An earlier, third suspect was Richard Dasen, Sr., a man eventually convicted of sexual abuse of children, promotion of prostitution and four counts of prostitution and sentenced to two years in the Montana State Prison followed by 18 years of probation.

Dasen’s DNA was found in the room where Wilcock was murdered, but it was later deemed inadmissible because it could have ended up there during a previous encounter involved in the prostitution case. Dasen is no longer considered a suspect, according to Hall.

Despite all the challenges in bringing a resolution to the 11-year-old case, Nasset remains optimistic.

“There’s always hope,” Nasset said. “There’s always the chance that the person responsible will say something or has said something and somebody out there will get a twinge of conscience and say something to us, whether it would be for the Crimestoppers reward that would be available or just for doing the right thing.”

Anyone who may have any new information is asked to contact the Kalispell Police Department at 758-7780 or Flathead Crimestoppers at 752-8477.

(Jessie Davis writes for The Daily Inter Lake)