25 years after Danny Moser was found beaten outside a Wyoming roller rink, his family still seeks answers

There is a phrase Lauren Moser hears almost daily: “You are just like your dad.” It’s something she says she’s proud of, but it comes with weight. Her dad is Danny Moser. He was only 27 years old when he was killed in October 2001. Lauren, who was 4 at the time, is now older than her father ever got to be. Of all dads, why hers? Why did Lauren have to grow up without him? Now, 25 years later, those questions remain unanswered. When Lauren was born in 1997, her family called her Danny’s mini-me. “It was so stinking special,” Danny’s sister, Jamie Haigler, said. “He was so, so incredibly in love with Lauren.” But Lauren says she doesn’t remember her dad. All she knows of him comes from photographs and the stories she’s heard. “From what I’ve been told, I walk, talk, act, sound, exactly like him,” she said. “I don’t have any physical memories.” For Lauren, the loss is as much about the relationship she never got to have as it is about the father she never knew. “I more so grieve what could have been or what I lost,” Lauren said. At 1:04 a.m. on October 20, 2001, a Mills police officer found Danny lying in a pool of blood in the parking lot outside the Wagon Wheel Roller Skating Rink in Mills, Wyoming. He was alone. “When officers arrived, Danny was unconscious, bleeding, and suffering from catastrophic injuries, including severe trauma to his head, skull, and torso,” Commander Ryan Cox of the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) told Dateline. “My mom called me at about 1:15. I was in bed,” sister Jamie remembered. “She said, ‘Something happened to Danny. Meet me at the hospital.’” Cox says Danny was taken to Wyoming Medical Center in Casper, where he was put on life support. He succumbed to his injuries two days later. The Natrona County coroner determined that Danny’s death was a “homicide resulting from severe blunt force trauma to the head.” Jamie says the chaos of that night quickly devolved into confusion. “Everybody was trying to figure out who he was with, what he was doing,” she said. “Why would he even be in that situation?” Jamie is still learning to live with the loss of her only sibling. “We were each other’s best friends,” she told Dateline. She and Danny grew up in Casper and spent a lot of time outside, following their parents around “hunting, fishing, camping.” Their mother loved dogs, and Danny inherited that love. Rarely seen without a dog by his side, he had plans to take over their mother’s dog grooming business. Lauren does remember her dad’s dog, Devin, a chocolate Lab she and her cousins grew up with. “We would actually take naps on his belly,” she said. Devin died on the 10th anniversary of Danny’s death. “That was so freaking special that that dog was so connected to my dad.” But on the night Danny was attacked, he was alone when police found him. And investigators were left trying to figure out how he ended up in the roller rink parking lot. Investigators were able to piece together a timeline of Danny’s final hours, tracing his movements to shortly before he was found. According to a December 2001 Mills PD media release, provided to Dateline by the DCI, “Danny was involved in a verbal altercation at the Sandbar lounge in Casper between 7:00 PM and midnight. Danny was involved in another verbal altercation with a friend at the Cattleman’s Club in Casper between midnight and 12:45 AM.” The release states that surveillance images showed Danny leaving the Cattleman’s Club alone, although it does not specify the time. The club is less than a mile from the roller rink where Danny was discovered at 1:04 a.m. Investigators recovered Danny’s wallet and checkbook near his body. He also had cash in his pockets, “which led investigators early on to rule out armed robbery as the primary motive,” Cox told Dateline in an email. ”Crime Scene investigation indicated Danny was involved in a physical altercation with unknown persons and may have been trying to flee when he was struck by a vehicle,” Mills PD stated in its December 2001 media release. “Suspects and suspect vehicles continue to be cultivated and evaluated, with no definitive results to date.” In the month following Danny’s death, the Mills PD Homicide Task Force identified two individuals wanted for questioning in the case. “Surveillance from the last known location of the victim provided poor quality images of two people, John Doe #1 and John Doe #2, who appear to have been watching the victim and then leave immediately behind him,” a bulletin provided by Wyoming DCI states. The Wyoming DCI took over Danny’s case in 2013 at the request of Mills PD. Twenty-five years later, authorities continue to believe more than one individual was involved. “Based on historical witness statements and physical evidence, investigators have long operated under the premise that multiple individuals were involved in the events leading to his death,” Cox wrote. Danny’s family says he was known to stand his ground, particularly when he’d been drinking. “He was 10 foot tall and bulletproof,” Jamie said of her brother. In reality, that wasn’t true. “My dad was only 5’3” and 100 pounds soaking wet,” Lauren explained with a laugh. Jamie says the friends who were with Danny on his last night have been interviewed extensively. Cox told Dateline the DCI has “evaluated numerous persons of interest and leads” but has not publicly named specific individuals. Investigators hope advances in forensic technology and DNA testing could help identify those responsible for Danny’s death. “Over the years, items of evidence have been submitted for modern forensic and DNA processing; while recent laboratory re-testing has not yet yielded the specific investigative leads we had hoped for, biological and physical evidence remains secured for ongoing analysis as technology advances,” Cox wrote. While investigators continue to search for answers, Lauren has now spent much of her life looking for them herself. “If I don’t keep it relevant, it goes right under the rug, and everybody is so hush-hush,” she said. “I want his name to be known.” She began really digging into her dad’s case when she was just 16. Lauren says she’s spoken with the Mills PD officer who found her dad. “He basically gave me everything that he possibly could as far as information and tried to steer me in the right direction,” she said. “I just couldn’t get anywhere.” Lauren has turned her family’s tragedy into a pursuit of justice. She’s studying criminal justice and hopes to open her own private investigations business. As she learns more about criminal investigations, Lauren says she has pressed the DCI to share more information about her father’s case. “We just cannot get any help or any answers,” she said. In his email to Dateline, Cox acknowledged the family’s frustration but said investigators must protect certain information to preserve the integrity of the case. “The Division of Criminal Investigation deeply understands the Moser family’s pain, frustration, and urgent desire for answers. Our sole objective is to deliver justice for Danny and build an airtight case for court,” he wrote. Protecting information “is the only way to ensure the evidence remains legally viable and that Danny’s killer can be held accountable.” Danny’s family is looking for accountability, too. “If there is someone out there hiding in the shadows that I never get to meet or never get to say my piece to, that’s OK with me,” Lauren said. “But the thing is, someone somewhere has to be held accountable for how long I’ve had to wait without answers.” Jamie says it’s hard living in Casper, the town where she and Danny grew up, where everyone knows what her family has been through. “I would like to see some justice for Danny,” she said. But Jamie sees her brother’s spirit in Lauren every day. And now, Lauren has a daughter of her own, whom she named Danny in honor of her father. “She knows all about her Papa Danny,” Lauren said. “I try to raise her exactly like I was raised, you know, with the memories that I’ve been told.” If you have information about Danny’s case, please call the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation at 307-777-7181. You can also submit an anonymous tip through the official DCI Cold Case portal. If you have a story to share with Dateline, please submit it here.