ND ND - Lora Dugan, 14, Medora, 7 April 1972

PonderingThings

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http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2006/01/29/build/state/25-justice.inc

Excellent article about the case. I don't know what family name she went by - Martin is the name her older brother uses, Dugan is her stepfather's name - the article never says.

Lots of details about the case, how the family feels about the case being reopened, etc.. Good read.

Lora Jean was a runaway. Her body was found 3 weeks later, 250 miles from home.

Lora Jean had been found by a rancher checking his cattle on rangeland adjacent to Interstate 94, Dugan said. Nearby, a scenic stop off the highway overlooks the North Dakota badlands. Cornell surmised that the killer had stopped at the lookout and Lora Jean tried to escape by running toward some buildings in the distance. She was caught at a barbed-wire fence.

Her body was found under an old cedar tree a few paces off a worn cattle path. A cross she wore around her neck was found dangling in the tree, and her clothes were strewn on her body. She had been strangled and stabbed in the abdomen, Dugan said.
She had also been sexually assaulted according to the article.

The investigation into the girl's murder was reopened in late November when North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem announced the creation of a cold-case investigations squad. Lora Jean's death is one of 15 unsolved murders and missing-persons cases in North Dakota selected for review by the team.

The cold-case investigators have retrieved the original case file and located the evidence collected where Lora Jean's body was found, including her clothing
 
PonderingThings said:
...Excellent article about the case. ...Lots of details about the case, how the family feels about the case being reopened, etc.. Good read....
Any updates on this recently re-opened cold case? What are the other 15 cases referred to in the article?

Is the case of Barbara Louise Cotton one of them? Hers is the very first listed in the Doenetwork files, and there is a thread on her in WS Cold Cases. She disappeared in April 1981 from a town in ND just north of I-94.
 
This case is now 35 years old. Any updates on the re-investigation?
 
I certainly hope something comes of this renewed investigation,it would be wonderful if teh DNA evidence hit on someone in the system.
Those photos accompanying the Billings article are heart breaking....
 
What's the story here? Does anyone have an update?
 
Greetings everyone. Sorry to revive a thread that has been dormant so long, but there are some developments on Harvey Carignan. First, I discovered this thread because I am a writer attempting to shed some light on the murder of Lora Jean Dugan. It is one of the longest running unsolved cold cases in North Dakota, and I believe Harvey Carignan is responsible for her murder. In researching the case, I ran across this thread.

Harvey Carignan is still alive, in prison at a Minnesota Correctional Facility in Faribault, Minnesota. He is being held in a senior citizens unit, and he will not be getting out anytime soon. I called his case worker yesterday, a gentleman named Michael Johnson, and asked him about the claim that Minnesota prisoners cannot serve a term longer than forty years (a claim made in Ann Rule's book, and repeated by countless blogs and websites.)

Mr. Johnson told me he is not sure where people got that idea. The reality is, Mr. Carignan was recently seen by the board of commissioners (the parole board) and was turned away. His next chance is in 7 years, in 2022, when he will be 95 years old. I asked about his health, and Mr. Johnson could not provide me any information on the subject.

I believe Mr. Carignan is also responsible for several unsolved cases in BC -- possibly Gloria Moody, Gale Weys and maybe Pamela Lorraine Darlington. I have yet to dig into those cases deeply, but I have superficial suspicions based on Harvey's travel habits. He frequently drove from Washington to Minnesota and back on trips to visit his half-brothers in Duluth and Minneapolis.


  • In June, 1973, he attacked Marlys (Mary?) Townsend in Minneapolis.
  • In July, 1973, Harvey is arrested for assaulting his wife, Alice, in Washington.
  • In September of 1973, he was back in Minnesota, assaulting more hitchhikers.

Interesting to note, during the time he was back in Washington, when he assaulted his wife, hitchhikers were being murdered in BC -- Weys, Darlington, and another unidentified woman. While their bodies were discovered between late '73 and May of '74, they were badly decomposed and the RCMP said it was possible some of them had lain dead through the winter, only discovered in '74 after the snow had melted, leaving open a window where Harvey could have murdered them in '73. I am building a timeline and plotting his attributed crimes as well as potential victims and hoping to correlate them with his MO and his whereabouts, excluding time periods when he was incarcerated. I will be checking it out.

The real interest to me however is this travel pattern between Washington and Minnesota. He made several trips back and forth in 1973 along Interstate 94. I would like to be able to prove that he also did in 1972. Lora Jean Dugan's body was discovered near Medora, North Dakota, less than a mile from the interstate, and the crime fits Harvey's MO. Young victim, hitchhiker, crime of opportunity, strangled. The location of her body was one of the places circled on Harvey's infamous maps.

I've probably gone way over my word limit for a first post on this site, so I will leave it there for now. I am blogging this amateur investigation too, but I'll only post the link if it's OK. Thanks for reading, and I would welcome any info you want to share. I'll need all the leads I can get.
 
Bobby Jack Fowler is a suspect in the murders of Gale Weys and Pamela Darlington. He died in prison in 2006.

Thank you. Yes, I am aware of that, but I'm not sure how certain they are that Bobby Jack Fowler was guilty of their murders. They also attempted to pin a few killings on Ted Bundy that he insisted he was not responsible for, and I'm approaching it from a timeline perspective, including every possible victim before I exclude them.

If Harvey was out of prison, if he was in the general geographic area, and if the crime seemed to fit his general MO, I'm including it as a possibility. Thanks again for your info, though. I'm keeping Fowler (and Bundy, and Randall Woodfield) in mind as possibilities in some of these cases too. My real goal, however, is to figure out who's responsible for Lora Jean Dugan's murder, and I believe the timeline and travel pattern is going to help me do that.
 
I've probably gone way over my word limit for a first post on this site, so I will leave it there for now. I am blogging this amateur investigation too, but I'll only post the link if it's OK. Thanks for reading, and I would welcome any info you want to share. I'll need all the leads I can get.

According to the May 3, 1972 Montana Standard, she was hitchhiking to Lame Deer, Montana or St. Paul, Minnesota. It also said she was wearing only an open jacket when found. Another article states it was an open shirt. Marks on her hands indicated they were tied (which means, to me, anyways, that her captor(s) unbound her hands or she got free herself before she was killed). She had been stabbed once in the abdomen, but death was due to strangulation.

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm176/pleasestandby2/montanadugan_zpssxuveu4f.jpg

This January 29, 2006 Billings Gazette link replaces the dead link in post #1...

http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/cold-case-team-working-to-solve-murder-of-huntley-girl/article_77456096-6de2-11e1-8179-001871e3ce6c.html

I think there have been more advances in DNA technology since 2006 (when the article was written) and retesting evidence again in 2015 might provide the break needed. Apparently, since LE never released any information then, they have nothing from those tests, if they even bothered to do them.

The Spokesman-Review - May 3, 1972 states she was found in a wooded area a quarter mile from I-94, west of the Badlands community of Medora.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19720503&id=SO5LAAAAIBAJ&sjid=h-wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6207,616139&hl=en

In contrast, the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation Cold Case Files website states: April 30, 1972, the body of 14 year old Lora Jean Dugan was found approximately three miles southwest of Medora, North Dakota, in a hilly and wooded area approximately one mile south of Interstate 94.

http://www.ag.nd.gov/BCI/ColdCase/coldcasesumm.html

Anyone looking at a map can see that the latter location would be impossible since I-94 runs north of Medora. Technically, it's not even west of Medora, it's northwest.

https://goo.gl/maps/B7nPg

It doesn't appear that the state has put too much effort into researching this case when they can't even get the location right. Anyone can see what a low priority there is in solving this crime. Since this case involves a kidnapping of a child using the interstate highway system, it should be turned over to the FBI.
 
Harvey Louis Carignan was born May 18, 1927. The 1940 Census shows him living in the State Training School in Mandan, ND, just east of Medora, ND. A news article shows his brother Clinton joined the Army in Minnesota in 1948 and served in Alaska, which is where Harvey was also in the military, apparently at the same time.

A December 21, 1949 Daily Sitka Sentinel article:

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm176/pleasestandby2/harveyhang_zpstwl6i0pr.jpg

An April 25, 1975 Cedar Rapids Gazette article showing a brother was suspected of passing ransom money in the Piper kidnapping:

http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm176/pleasestandby2/harveybrother_zpsegakorag.jpg

An article about Carignan at Findagrave.com, in anticipation of his death:

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=carignan&GSfn=harvey&GSmn=l&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=all&GSob=n&GRid=110153943&df=all&

While Carignan was in reform school, his family resided in Walhalla, ND, on the US Canadian border, The Minnesota Census of 1940 shows that Harvey and another brother were institutionalized at the same time.

https://goo.gl/maps/OxmLr
 
Thank you. I've seen some of that stuff. I also noticed the discrepancy in the location. I think I'll be able to hammer that out. You've given me some more links to check out, for sure. Thanks again!
 
I can't understand why people he is locked up with haven't ganged up on him and killed him!
NDTroy, good luck with your investigation! Let everybody know when your book is published. It should be a best seller!
 
 Lora Jean Dugan

Lora Jean Dugan​

BIRTH 26 Sep 1957 Livingston, Park County, Montana, USA
DEATH Apr 1972 (aged 14)
BURIAL Huntley Cemetery, Huntley, Yellowstone County, Montana, USA

Lora Jean Dugan went missing and was later found murdered. Her killer has not been identified and the case remains unsolved.

A lot of information at the link below...

LINK:
 

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