The Carbon County Sheriff’s Office has identified a human skull found 18 years ago south of Red Lodge as a Wisconsin man, and detectives have opened up a case to find his killer.
Rogers “Roger” Lee Ellis left his home in Wisconsin in 1976 after he was facing legal problems related to an arrest for marijuana possession, and he was never heard from again. Authorities believe he was hitchhiking and likely killed by the people he was traveling with, and they disposed of his body in Montana, the sheriff’s office posted on its Facebook page Tuesday.
A hhiker discovered the skull on June 20, 2004, and search teams later discovered additional bones that they determined to be from a man between 15 and 32. But a DNA search from a national database at the time turned up nothing, so the case went cold.