What Happened to Randy Leach? Theories in the 1988 Kansas Case

No one knows what happened to Randy Leach. The 17-year-old from Linwood, Kansas, drove his mother’s grey 1985 Dodge 600 to a pre-graduation bonfire on the night of April 15, 1988, and by the early hours of April 16 both he and the car had vanished from Kim Erwin’s family farm east of Linwood.¹ More than 37 years later, neither Leach nor the sedan has ever been found. The Leavenworth County Sheriff’s Office reclassified the case as a homicide in 2002, and it remains open.²

The Last Night Anyone Saw Him

Leach met up with an older friend, Steve Daugherty, between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. on April 15, then drove to a body shop in DeSoto, Kansas.³ Around 10:00 p.m. he arrived at a pre-graduation bonfire hosted by classmate Kim Erwin at her parents’ farm on 166th Street, about seven miles east of Linwood.¹

Estimates of attendance run from 70 to 200 people, with heavy drinking and drug use described by multiple witnesses.⁴ Partygoers said Leach appeared intoxicated, had trouble walking, and mentioned smoking marijuana before arriving. Some remembered seeing him lying in the back of someone else’s car late in the evening.³

Around 2:00 a.m. a classmate left to drive a girl home, planning to return for Leach. When he came back, Leach and the car were gone. No witness has ever come forward to say they saw either leave the property.⁵ His parents, Harold and Alberta Leach, reported him missing to the Leavenworth County Sheriff’s Department later that day.

Why Investigators Suspected Foul Play Almost Immediately

When an officer reached the Erwin property at 7:00 a.m. the morning after the bonfire, the field had been swept and raked clean. There was no sign a party had happened there at all. Not long afterward, the house where the party had been held burned to the ground. A sheriff later acknowledged the fire may have had a suspicious origin.² A new home now sits on the lot.

That combination — a cleaned scene, a destroyed house, no witnesses to a departure, and no trace of a large American sedan in the years that followed — is what carried the case from a missing-person file to a homicide investigation in 2002, even without a body or a vehicle.²

The Main Theories

Three explanations have circulated for decades. None has been proven.

He Drove Off a Bridge

Retired KBI special agent Timothy Dennis suspected Leach, impaired, drove off a bridge into Stranger Creek near Linwood. Divers located an unidentified vehicle in the creek, but it was not Leach’s. The current had pushed it downstream past the pilings of a railway bridge, and Dennis said the shift made it impossible to tell whether Leach’s car could have traveled “100 feet, 100 yards, or 100 miles” from any entry point. The search extended into the Kansas River, where shallow, sandy conditions and strong current made the effort impractical. The bridge has since been demolished, and Dennis retired in 2010 without proving his theory.⁶

He Was Killed

One foul-play theory ties Leach’s disappearance to a drug deal gone wrong. Another, born of the 1980s “Satanic panic,” suggested a ritual killing in a local cave; it drew attention after a man told police in 1988 that he had been abducted by Satanists and had seen a corpse in a cave. Police searched and found nothing, and concluded the man was a drug user who had hallucinated.⁷ Leavenworth County Undersheriff Jim Sherley later told NBC’s Dateline that authorities found no trace of Leach during those searches.⁴

He Left on His Own

Investigators also considered that Leach fled, perhaps fearing consequences for driving impaired. They checked places he was known to visit, including Colorado, and ran his name against military records. Nothing matched.³

Strange Turns the Investigation Took

Daugherty, one of the last people seen with Leach before the party, drew suspicion from Harold Leach, who reported seeing him drive slowly past the family home twice the morning Randy disappeared.⁸ In March 1989, Daugherty showed police a severed foot inside a tennis shoe that he said he had found on the banks of the Kansas River. Authorities searched the area, found no further remains, and concluded the foot did not belong to Leach.⁷ Daugherty, who was in his 30s at the time and once lived in the back of an old store in Linwood that itself later burned down, has since died.

In 1993, a man using the aliases “Terry Martin” and “Lee Harper” approached the Leach family claiming to be a research journalist. He spent months interviewing partygoers and began working with Leavenworth County Sheriff’s Detective Dawn Weston.⁸ On the strength of what the two gathered, Weston obtained warrants and arrested three men for Leach’s alleged kidnapping and murder. The suspects were released almost immediately when the county attorney reviewed the evidence. Sheriff Herb Nye called Weston “a new investigator and overzealous” and said the case “didn’t pan out.”⁷ Weston and the man known as Martin/Harper left the state together for several days afterward, reportedly fearing for their safety. The three men’s names were never released publicly.

Why the Case Has Not Moved

Harold and Alberta Leach searched for their son relentlessly: Harold conducted flyovers of the Linwood area in 1988, and the couple personally searched caves, dug in areas where remains were suspected, and knocked on doors.⁹ Family friends said they looked “every day.”¹⁰ Volunteer efforts have included sonar sweeps of Stranger Creek, Elephant Walk Lake (also called Bear Lake), and the Kansas River, along with cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating radar. In January 2021, the group Adventures With Purpose searched Sarcoxie Lake near Linwood, a rock quarry and cave near Bonner Springs, a pond near the Kansas River, property near the Erwin farm, and two additional ponds. All came up empty.¹¹

The deeper obstacle has been access to the official file. Alberta Leach has described communication breakdowns with investigators from the start, and Harold once said sympathetic officers left internal police documents in the family’s mailbox.⁷ In 2016 the Leaches sued Leavenworth County under the Kansas Open Records Act to force release of the investigative file.¹² In January 2018, District Court Judge David King denied the request, ruling that the Kansas Open Records Act does not require disclosure of criminal investigation records regardless of case age, and that criticism of an investigation does not create the public interest needed to override that protection. The county argued release could jeopardize the still-active investigation.¹³ Harold Leach died on January 28, 2021, without ever learning what happened to his son.¹⁰

In 2024, two retired detectives, Joe Langer of the Leawood Police Department and Mark Rokusek of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, volunteered to help. Both have more than 30 years of experience, and Rokusek was a rookie officer when Leach vanished. Leavenworth County Sheriff Andy Dedeke met with them but denied them access to the file, telling them they were “free to investigate what we could” independently but asking them not to work the case through official channels. The KBI also declined, citing a policy against sharing investigative files with people outside active law enforcement.³ The sheriff’s office said it met with the KBI in September 2024 to discuss “continued efforts,” and Undersheriff James Sherley said an investigator remains assigned to the case.

Where the Case Stands and How to Help

Leach was born July 25, 1970. He was 6 feet 3 inches tall, 220 pounds, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a mole on his left ear.² The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has produced age-progressed images at ages 39, 44, and 51; his NCMEC case number is 721790 and his NCIC number is M296332055.¹⁴ The missing car is a grey 1985 Dodge 600 four-door sedan with Kansas plate LVJ8721.³

A reward of up to $25,000 is available for information, with combined reward amounts reaching as high as $30,000.¹⁵ The Governor of Kansas offers a separate reward of up to $5,000 for tips leading to the case’s resolution.⁵ Anyone with information can contact the Leavenworth County Sheriff’s Office or the KBI at 1-800-KS-CRIME.

1
Lawrence Journal-World. 20 Years Gone
2
Doe Network. Case 6DMKS – Randy Wayne Leach
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KSHB. Renewed Hope in 36-Year-Old Cold Case of Missing Linwood Teen Randy Leach
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NBC News. Parents of Linwood, Kansas Teen Randy Leach Continue Fight for Answers
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Kansas Bureau of Investigation. Most Wanted – Randy Wayne Leach
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Topeka Capital-Journal. Kansas Investigator Suspects Missing Man of 30 Years Randy Leach Died After Driving Into Creek
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Lawrence Journal-World. Bizarre Events Surrounding Leach Case
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Tonganoxie Mirror. List of Occurrences, Oddities Surrounding Case Numerous
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In Search of Randy Leach. In Search of Randy Leach
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FOX4 Kansas City. Harold Leach, Father of Missing Man Randy Leach, Dies
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FOX4 Kansas City. Team Searches Leavenworth County Ponds, Properties in Search of Teen Missing for 32 Years
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Kansas City Star. Leach Family Lawsuit Over Records in Randy Leach Disappearance
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Topeka Capital-Journal. Leavenworth County Judge Denies Release of Records on Randy Leach’s Disappearance
14
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Randy Wayne Leach Missing Poster
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WIBW. Those in Search of Randy Leach Hope New Feature Will Uncover New Information