‘It screamed out for justice.’ Story of girl who vanished decades ago and the Idaho tie to be featured on ‘Dateline NBC’
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IDAHO FALLS — The case of a 12-year-old who went missing nearly 40 years ago and the former Idaho gubernatorial candidate convicted of her murder will be featured in a new two-hour ‘Dateline NBC’ Friday night.
Jonelle Matthews vanished in December 1984 after being dropped off at her empty home by a family friend following a Christmas concert in Greeley, Colorado. When her father returned home an hour later, Jonelle was gone.
“She walked off the face of the earth and it stayed that way for the next 35 years,” ‘Dateline NBC’ correspondent Dennis Murphy tells EastIdahoNews.com. “Everyone was asking – where is Jonelle Matthews?”
The only suspects in the case were Jonelle’s father and the friend who dropped her off at home. They were never arrested and the case seemed to go cold. But in July 2019, the girl’s body was found by workers digging a pipeline in a rural area near Greeley. She was wearing the same outfit as the day she disappeared and dental records confirmed it was Jonelle.
Murphy visited the site where Jonelle was found with Greely Police Department Detectives Robert Cash and Mike Prill.
“I was out in this crusty, snowy prairie plain with the two cops. They said this is it – we are standing right here where she was found. She had been abducted from the sanctity of her home without her shoes and at some point along the way, she was ditched into a shallow grave right here in the snow,” Murphy recalls. “I told them I felt like we were on sacred ground. They had been looking for this child for 30 years. She was 12 years old, wearing braces, and when they dug her body up, she still had the braces on.”
With the discovery of Jonelle’s body, detectives began poring over evidence gathered in the case decades ago. There were old VHS and reel-to-reel tapes along with 20,000 pages of affidavits and other documents.
“They had it all digitized and they notice there’s one name who is mentioned way back then only two times. It’s a guy named Steve Pankey from Idaho and they start to wonder what this guy’s story is,” Murphy says.
Shortly after she disappeared, Pankey went to the police station and said he had information about Jonelle but asked for immunity from prosecution. He acted “odd” and told officers he had secrets they would be interested in hearing but would not reveal them unless they promised not to charge Pankey.
“He did that over and over and they thought this guy was a real goofball,” Murphy explains.
Pankey kept up to date on the case throughout the years even as he moved his family to several states before settling in Idaho. He ran unsuccessfully as a Constitution Party candidate for Idaho governor in 2014 and in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2018, the year authorities named him as a person of interest in the girl’s death.
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Pankey was eventually charged and a trial was held but a jury could not reach a consensus on a verdict so a mistrial was declared in 2021. Last October, he was found guilty of felony murder, second-degree kidnapping and false reporting in the disappearance and death of Jonelle. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
In addition to interviewing the detectives, Murphy also spoke with Jonelle’s parents, Jim and Gloria Matthews, Weld County D.A. Michael Rourke and others for the episode entitled ‘Footprints in the Snow.’
“I was surprised at how much this story affected me. It just screamed out for justice,” Murphy says.
‘Dateline NBC’ airs Friday at 8 p.m. on KPVI Channel 6. Watch our entire interview with Murphy in the video player above.