On the night of February 1, 1993, motorists on State Route 24 (SR 24) east of Yakima, Washington, saw a man wandering on the highway near Rivard Road in the town of Moxee.

They turned to warn other drivers after passing him, but when they returned, they found the man had been struck by another vehicle which had left the scene; he was quickly pronounced dead.

He was not identified as David Glenn Lewis for another 11 years, after a police officer discovered a photograph of his distinctive glasses in an online missing-persons report.

[1] How and why the 39-year-old Lewis traveled 1,606 mi (2,585 km) from his home near Amarillo, Texas, where he was last confirmed to have been seen three days earlier, to Central Washington, is not known.

A former judge teaching a class in government and working in private practice, Lewis had remained in Amarillo over the previous weekend so he could watch Super Bowl XXVII while his wife and daughter went shopping in Dallas.

In 1986 he was elected judge of the court-at-law in Moore County;[3] four years later he left that position to run, unsuccessfully, for the 69th District Court judgeship.

He had planned to stay over the weekend so he could watch the Dallas Cowboys, his favorite team, play in Super Bowl XXVII, their first appearance in the National Football League's championship game in 14 years.

During the day, a member of the Lewises' church in Dumas reported seeing Lewis hurrying through the Southwest Airlines terminal at Amarillo International Airport.

[4] At 10:30 p.m. that night, a police officer patrolling downtown Amarillo saw a red Ford Explorer, the same color, make and model as Lewis's car, parked outside the Potter County courthouse.

[4] The next day, February 1, a Dallas taxi driver later recalled taking a man looking like Lewis from a hotel to the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

[1] Law enforcement in Washington began attempts to determine their John Doe's identity,[2] while in Amarillo police opened an investigation into Lewis's disappearance.

[4] When police investigated Lewis's financial activity over the weekend, the narrative grew complicated, suggesting he or someone with access to his account had made plans to travel outside the area.

Another plane ticket, this time from Los Angeles to Dallas, was purchased under similar circumstances on the day Karen Lewis reported her husband missing.

Friends said he was also talking about his upcoming career possibilities and pointed to his continued community involvement in the Boy Scouts and United Way.

Police asked Karen Lewis to take a lie detector test; she refused, leading to tensions with the family.

[4] In 2002, the police closed the case, saying that the purchased plane tickets had led them to conclude that Lewis had disappeared of his own volition, with no sign of foul play.

The motorists who had found the body recalled having seen a Chevrolet Camaro heading in the opposite direction after they turned around, but it was never located, nor did any other witness come forward.

[2] Early in 2003, Pat Ditter, a Washington State Patrol (WSP) detective in the Yakima area, read a Seattle Post-Intelligencer series on the problems involved in investigating long-term missing-person cases.

Law enforcement typically assigns them low priority and databases of such cases did not, at the time, communicate, making for fewer matches between missing persons and unidentified decedents than there could be.

The series had focused on the shortcomings of the federal National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database, a proprietary tool commonly used by police agencies at all levels.