Volume 11 · Chapter 6
Vanished Innocence
Mona Rae Minyard
Victim: Mona Rae Minyard
Case at a glance
- When
- Late December 1962 (body found December 31, 1962)
- Where
- Rockwood area, east of Portland, Oregon
- Perpetrator
- Unknown; no one was convicted (neighbor Joseph Walton Holmes was a suspect)
- Victim
- Mona Rae Minyard
- Outcome
- Unsolved; no one has ever been convicted of Mona’s murder
The case
Mona Rae Minyard was born in Portland, Oregon, on April 21, 1956. In 1962 she was six years old, lived in the Rockwood area east of the city, and attended Rockwood Elementary School. She had two brothers, and her mother Joyce’s partner, Sam Lane, intended to adopt all three children.
In the last days of December 1962, Mona left home on an errand to a neighborhood store and did not come back. Her disappearance set off a search in the community just after Christmas. On December 31, 1962, her body was found. She had been sexually assaulted and killed. Detectives looked closely at a neighbor, Joseph Walton Holmes, but no one was ever convicted of her murder.
Mona was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Gresham, in the section set aside for children. Her family chose to put the surname Lane on her grave marker, the name she would have taken after the adoption. Decades later, a woman who had been a seven-year-old classmate in the same neighborhood wrote about how the killing changed the way local families watched their children. The case was never solved.
Read the full story
This case is told in full in True Crime Case Histories, Volume 11 by Jason Neal.
Get Volume 11 on AmazonCase photographs
2 photos
Where it happened
Why this case
“Cases like Mona’s get little attention now because most of the people who could have answered questions are gone. She was six, sent on a small errand, and nobody was ever held responsible. Her family chose to put the name Lane on her grave, and I wanted readers to remember her by both names.”
— Jason Neal, author of True Crime Case Histories
