The Bad Route Rest-Stop Killing:

A cold case that refused to stay buried

On a cold November morning in the mid-1980s, a burned-out car sat like a ghastly question mark at the Bad Route rest area along Interstate-94 near Glendive, Montana. Inside that question was a man named Dexter Stefonek, a retired paper-mill worker making the long drive from the Pacific Northwest back to Wisconsin — a routine trip that would end in arson, a concealed body, and a mystery that persisted for decades. In January 2024 Dawson County investigators announced they had identified a person of interest in the case and formally closed the file, but they also made clear no criminal charges would be filed because the evidence available was not enough to meet the legal standard for prosecution. That duality — a cold case both “solved” in the court of public closure and still unresolved in the legal sense — is what keeps Bad Route in true-crime conversations nearly 40 years on. 

What happened at Bad Route

According to news accounts compiled from contemporaneous reporting and later cold-case reporting, Dexter (sometimes reported as “Dex”) Stefonek left his son’s farm in Oregon in November 1985 intending to drive back to Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Within roughly 24 hours a passerby found his car ablaze at the Bad Route rest area on I-94 — the vehicle had been doused with gasoline and intentionally set on fire. The rest area is a lonely stretch of Montana highway, and the burned vehicle raised immediate suspicion of foul play rather than an accident. 

Weeks and then months passed. On March 8, 1986 — roughly four months after the car was discovered — a local couple combing a remote private dumpsite about a dozen-plus miles from the rest area came upon belongings that led them to a body: a wallet with Stefonek’s driver’s license, scattered clothing, and a foot sticking out from under a discarded mattress. The body was later identified as Stefonek’s; investigators concluded he had been beaten and shot twice in the back of the head, and his remains had been concealed before discovery. Those facts hardened the case into a homicide investigation rather than a disappearance or accidental death. 

Because the crime took place on an interstate rest stop — a place used by transients, truckers, and long-distance drivers — investigators faced the perennial cold-case problem: a high likelihood the perpetrator was a transient, and a small number of reliable witnesses who could place a person or vehicle at the scene. Two eyewitnesses from the day the car burned later described seeing a white Chevy 4x4 pickup with Arizona plates at the rest-stop parking lot, and another witness said a man in a parka carried plastic containers (suspected to be gasoline) away from the vehicle. Composite sketches and witness descriptions were circulated and the case received national exposure — including an episode of Unsolved Mysteries in the late 1980s — but it nonetheless languished for decades. 

The long arc of a cold case: investigations, reopenings, and renewed attention

The Stefonek homicide stayed largely dormant until cold-case techniques, renewed detective interest, and improved forensic databases began to coalesce in the 2000s and 2010s. Local law enforcement reopened and revisited old interviews, travel patterns, and leads. The case attracted attention from amateur sleuths and true-crime podcasters, who kept the story in the public eye and occasionally turned up useful context or witnesses for investigators to re-contact. The sparsity of forensic evidence from a burned vehicle and an outdoors burial site, however, limited what modern DNA testing could reliably extract. Still, investigators remained vigilant, re-checking travel logs, license plate sightings, and links to known offenders who had later been arrested elsewhere. 

Then, in January 2024, Dawson County authorities publicly named a person of interest: Charles Gary Sullivan, a man who by that time was already convicted and serving time for a decades-old murder in Nevada. According to the Dawson County Sheriff’s Office, Sullivan matched — in several important respects — the eyewitness descriptions and travel pattern investigators had pieced together: vehicle type, license region, age, and the timing of his presence in the broader region appeared to align with the statements from witnesses at Bad Route. Investigators traveled to Nevada to interview Sullivan, but he invoked his Fifth Amendment right and declined to speak. Because prosecutors concluded the available evidence would not be sufficient to obtain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, they elected not to charge Sullivan and closed the Stefonek case while publicly identifying him as the likely killer to provide the victim’s family with some measure of closure. 

Who is the person of interest — and why no charges?

Charles Gary Sullivan had previously been arrested decades after the Nevada murder when DNA testing and cold-case review tied him to a 1979 homicide — a breakthrough that culminated in a plea and a prison sentence in the 2020s. Reports from Nevada outlets and the Nevada Attorney General’s office document the arrest, the linkage via DNA, and eventual sentencing: Sullivan was charged in connection with the 1979 murder of Julia Woodward and later received a sentence (reports vary on precise timing of hearings and dates due to plea and sentencing processes). He has been described in prosecutorial filings and media coverage as having a transient lifestyle at times, and investigators in multiple jurisdictions had examined whether he could be connected to other unsolved crimes. 

Dawson County’s public stance in January 2024 was careful: investigators and the county attorney concluded that while the pattern of evidence — witness descriptions, vehicle type and plate region, and Sullivan’s criminal history — made him the most likely suspect, the county lacked a smoking-gun piece of evidence such as DNA from the Stefonek scene that would match Sullivan. In short, the standard for naming a suspect is not the same as the standard for bringing criminal charges; prosecutors must be reasonably confident they can prove guilt in court beyond a reasonable doubt. Where that confidence is missing, investigators often take the pragmatic step of closing a cold file after identifying a most-likely suspect — especially with family consent — rather than dragging a case into a prosecution destined to fail. Dawson County said the Stefonek family supported the decision to formally close the file. 

Why Bad Route still matters

The Bad Route case highlights several enduring issues in American criminal justice: the limits of forensic science on certain types of crimes (arson, outdoor concealment), the complexities of prosecuting crimes committed in transient spaces like interstate rest stops, and the tensions between the public’s desire for closure and the legal system’s requirement for proof. It also underscores how cold-case breakthroughs sometimes come not from a single dramatic new discovery but from the gradual accumulation of information — old eyewitness statements revisited, travel logs re-assembled, and links to offenders identified through DNA databases that did not exist when the crime first occurred. 

Additionally, the case illustrates the human side of long investigations: the emotional toll on families who must wait decades for even a tentative answer, and the moral question facing detectives who know who they believe committed a crime but do not have the admissible evidence to secure a conviction. Dawson County’s decision to publicly name a person of interest while declining to press charges is an attempt to balance those competing obligations: honesty to the public and compassion for a grieving family on one hand, and adherence to due process and prosecutorial ethics on the other. 

The role of media, public interest, and amateur sleuths

Bad Route’s place on Unsolved Mysteries and ongoing coverage by Montana outlets contributed to a persistent public interest that likely pressured and helped investigators keep the case on the books. Local reporting and national true-crime coverage can sometimes be noisy or speculative — so investigators walk a fine line between using publicity productively and avoiding misinformation that could taint witness memory or a future jury pool. In Stefonek’s case, decades of media attention meant the story never truly faded from public view, and when new leads or forensic possibilities emerged investigators had an audience ready to come forward. 

What remains unknown — and what closure looks like

Even with a named person of interest, key questions remain unanswered: the motive for Stefonek’s murder, whether additional crimes are linked to the same suspect, and whether any new forensic technology might someday produce evidence strong enough to support prosecution. Some of those unknowns are structural — evidence destroyed by fire or the environment simply cannot be replaced — and some are investigative: witness memories fade, and records disappear. Nonetheless, Dawson County’s move to identify a likely suspect and close the case reflects a pragmatic approach to closure when traditional prosecution is not feasible. For Stefonek’s surviving family, a named suspect — even one who cannot be charged — is an important endpoint after a decades-long wait. 

The rest area itself: public safety and memory

Bad Route remains an official Montana rest area on I-94, and the Montana Department of Transportation lists its status and scheduled renovations alongside other interstate rest stops — a reminder that these places, while ordinary and utilitarian, are also part of the social geography where crimes sometimes occur and where communities remember those events. The physical site is now also part of the story of why investigators keep cold files open and why modern law enforcement continues to revisit old crimes with new tools. 

Final note: unsolved in law, settled for the family?

The Bad Route rest-stop killing of Dexter Stefonek is a lesson in how criminal investigations can end in different ways: some end in conviction, some in acquittal, and some — like this one — in administrative closure after a person of interest is identified but not indicted. For readers and observers, it’s an imperfect kind of resolution. For the family of Dexter Stefonek, the 2024 identification of a likely suspect and the sheriff’s announcement offered a long-awaited name and an explanation strong enough for them to accept closure. For the broader public and for justice systems, the case is a reminder that truth and proof are not always the same thing. 

Sources:

Dawson County / local reporting and historical coverage of the Bad Route case; reporting on the Nevada conviction that led investigators to a person of interest:

Ranger-Review — “Person of interest in 1985 Bad Route Rest Area murder identified, case has been closed.” (Dawson County reporting / Jan 19, 2024). 

Unsolved Mysteries case page / online documentation of the Stefonek episode and timeline. 

Montana Right Now / ABC-FOX Montana — “Montana Murder Mysteries: Bad Route Rest Stop Killing” (feature on the cold case). 

MysteryDelver (long-form case summary and timeline of the Bad Route killing). 

Nevada local reporting (MYNews4 / KOLO / Reno outlets) on Charles Gary Sullivan’s arrest, conviction and sentencing in the 1979 Julia Woodward cold-case — documents his DNA linkage and later sentence. 

KRNV https://www.kolotv.com

Las Vegas Review-Journal

Montana Department of Transportation — official rest-area list and status (Bad Route rest area). 

Montana Department of Transportation