What is going on to Crime fans? I'm your host Heath, and I'm your host Daphne, and you're listening to Going West.

Howdy folks! Thank you so much for tuning in to the Friday episode of Going West. Hope everybody is having a good week and has a good weekend.

And planned, Heath and I are just doing a ton of moving stuff, we're moving to Portland in about three weeks, so much to do.

Yes, I know, we're kind of crazy people, we're moving yet again. But big thanks today to Drew, who's our editor, who suggested this case.

Yes, thank you so much, Drew, and thank you everybody for tuning in.

Alright guys, let's not waste any more time. This is episode 166 of Going West, so let's get into it.

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One morning in January of 1974, a young school teacher didn't show up to her rural Montana classroom for the day and police were called to investigate.

When her body was found in a field nearby, police arrested a new town resident and it was quickly suspected that he was involved in another murder in a neighboring state.

This is the story of Lana Harding, and it's also the story of Deborah Prattie.

Lana Claire Harding was born on May 19th, 1950 to parents Ethel and Warren Harding in the city of Billings, Montana, but she and her brother Greg spent a lot of their upbringing in Poulson, Montana, which is a very small city that has a lot of outdoor recreation, and it's about a six hour drive northwest of Billings, and it's actually pretty close to the state of Idaho.

Lana moved to a ranch there with her family there, I mean, you know, Poulson, Montana. She moved there when she was about four years old, and that's where her mother Ethel began working for a local county sheriff's office as a deputy clerk, whereas her husband Warren worked in construction.

And actually later on, Ethel would serve three terms in the Montana Senate before she opened a child's ministry. But back to Lana, so Lana went to Poulson High School, and after graduating in 1968 at the age of 18, she followed her passion to become a teacher, and that brought her to a private Christian university, Northwest Nazarene College in Nampa, Idaho, which is a city located outside of Boise, Idaho, just around 20 minutes away.

But anyway, Lana graduated from there four years later in 1972, and from there, 22 year old Lana headed off to Ontario, Oregon, which sorry for all the directions, but Ontario, Oregon is just about 40 minutes northwest of Nampa, Idaho, so it's very, very close.

So after doing some teaching there for a short period, Lana headed back to her home state of Montana to take her very first official teaching job near Conrad in Montana's wheat country.

The very small rural city of Conrad is located in Ponderay County in northern Montana. By the way, I just want to say we heard on some news segments, people say Ponderay County, somebody else said Ponderay County, I'm going to go with Ponderay, so sorry if that's wrong.

So this was not nearby Lana's hometown of Poulson, nor near her birth city of Billings. So this was a whole new place for her, but she was super excited to start teaching at the Pioneer Elementary School near there.

And Lana's students absolutely loved her, one describing her as enthusiastic, fun, and someone who encouraged creativity. And she had actually replaced a very strict and disciplinary teacher, so all of her students were very excited to have her, and she went over all of their hearts.

And to give you guys a little bit more context here, so Pioneer Elementary was a one room school like many rural and small town schools are.

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