MEDORA, N.D. — Lora Jean Dugan’s torn 14-year-old body was found under an old cedar tree a few feet from a worn cattle path in 1972.

How did Dugan end up off Interstate 94 in the Badlands of western North Dakota — 260 miles from her home in Huntley, Montana? Who took her life? Why is her murder still one of the unsolved cases listed by the North Dakota Attorney General’s Office 53 years after her death?

Such questions have haunted her family, according to the Billings Gazette, as well as Billings County Sheriff Dean Wyckoff, since he was a boy.

One of the first things Wyckoff did when he took office in 2023 was reopen Dugan’s case, Wyckoff told Forum News Service recently. Outside of a few news stories in 1972, and one exposé published by the Billings Gazette in 2006, Dugan’s case h

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