While Montana's murder rate is relatively low, there are still unsolved murders that have lingered on the books for decades.
Law enforcement arrested a 69-year-old Clinton man Monday afternoon on suspicion of homicide related to the killing of two elderly Missoula women almost 35 years ago.
Nickie Dean Gardiner was booked for deliberate homicide and currently sits in the Missoula County Detention Center on a $5 million bond. His arrest is in connection to the the murder of two elderly women in 1991, according to a search warrant obtained by the Missoulian.
Charging documents associated with the case were sealed as of Tuesday morning.
The case involves the death of 87-year-old Nancy Lagerquist and 85-year-old Bertha Scott, who both lived at Riverside Health Care Center on East Broadway.
On July 2, 1991, staff members from Riverside Health found that Lagerquist had gone missing from the center in the middle of the night. Her window screen had been cut, according to reporting from the Missoulian.
Police responded and searched the area. Lagerquist was found dead in the Clark Fork River later that morning.
Scott, who died at the health center in earlier that summer, was exhumed in August 1991 after staff from the center reported the death as unusual. Her death was then reclassified as a homicide.
Scott was sexually assaulted, according to the state medical examiner, and DNA was recovered, but no suspects were identified in the initial stages of the case.
A search warrant from the Missoula Police Department (MPD) on Dec. 10, 2025, showed that new testing through DNA company BODE Technologies connected the DNA recovered from Scott to a potential match from Gardiner.
"There is probably cause to believe that Nickie Gardiner was involved in the death of Bertha Scott," the search warrant, which sought additional DNA and fingerprints, said.
The City of Missoula allocated an additional $3,380 to BODE Technologies on May 12, 2026, according to the city's accounts payable section of the Missoula City Council Agenda.
MPD told the Missoulian on May 13 that they could not discuss the payment.
"This expenditure relates to a very sensitive cold case that we cannot discuss further because of confidential criminal justice information," the police department said in a statement.
Gardiner is set to be arraigned in Missoula County District Court in front of judge Shane Vannatta on Thursday, June 11 at 1:30 p.m.
Griffen Smith is the local government reporter for the Missoulian.
Originally published on missoulian.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.
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