Colorado family hopes murder suspect will reveal location of man missing for 25 years

He played Santa Claus during the holidays and hand-delivered gifts to local children. He drove teenage royalty in the high school's homecoming parades with his rebuilt classic cars. He picked up broken down motorists and fixed their cars. 

But his body has never been found. 

Dale Williams was presumably murdered by a childhood friend 25 years ago. 

His willingness to help others appears to have contributed to his disappearance.

Williams, a 42-year-old owner of an auto body shop in Nucla, went missing after answering a call for a stranded motorist in 1999. An unknown female phoned his shop at noon on a Thursday and said she needed help with her vehicle about 10 miles away. 

Williams left in his white Ford F-150 to assist her.

No one has seen him since that day. 

"He was truly a staple in the community with things he did," Williams's daughter, Tonee Lawrence, recently told CBS News Colorado about her father. "He wasn't shy about donating his time, money and efforts toward others."

Lawrence had just graduated high school when her father went missing. She and her younger sister helped search teams look for her father. 

"We definitely did not think it was an accident," she said.

She knew her parents had recently helped a young woman escape a troubled marriage and leave the state. But she knew little, she says, about the details of that situation.

Williams's pickup truck was found five weeks after his disappearance, completely submerged where the waters of the Dolores and San Miguel Rivers converge. That location is approximately five miles from the town of Bedrock, the location where the woman claimed her vehicle had broken down.

In the bed of the submerged pickup, investigators found a .22 caliber rifle. It was registered to a man named James Daniel Bishop, a 43-year-old who had grown up in the Nucla area with Williams. Bishop, who goes by "Dan," had purchased the rifle three years earlier at a Nucla hardware store. 

Local, state and federal authorities arrested Bishop in October. He is charged with a single count of 1st Degree Murder. 

Lawrence and her younger sister were told of the arrest by investigators in a phone call. 

"It was pretty emotional. We immediately called (her father's other relatives)....It wasn't expected, we were kind of surprised, surprised that somebody had finally been arrested. But not surprised who they arrested."

"They do have a very strong circumstantial case." 

Dan Bishop began corresponding with a 30-year-old woman from Ukraine in 1993. He told her he was building a house. 

Bishop helped her get a visa with U.S. immigration. The woman flew to Colorado with her young son to marry Bishop and live in the new house with her new husband and his two children. 

But the house was a fantasy, according to the woman. Bishop was evicted from his Grand Junction apartment her first night with him. 

They moved into his mother's house in Naturita. 

"She told me Dan has a tendency to lie," the woman recently told CBS News Colorado. "Over time, I learned he does it a lot." 

Worse, she said, Bishop believes what he says.

According to case documents, Bishop would later believe Dale Williams played a role in his failed marriage. 

Shortly after they moved to Naturita, Dan Bishop introduced his wife to Dale Williams. She learned Bishop and Williams graduated from high school together. She also learned Williams owned an auto body shop nearby.

Money was extremely tight then, according to Elvira Stavrowsky. (She pronounced her first name 'el-VEER-uh')

"It was a struggle," she said. Bishop was a truck driver, not affluent, and was unemployed often and for lengthy periods of time, Stravrowsky recalled. Work was scarce for her as well and she was still trying to obtain a green card.  

Dale Williams hired her to work in his shop. 

"Dale was very helpful. I worked hard, and I think he appreciated that I worked hard. I learned how to install windshields. I did body work."

Over time, her marriage worsened. 

"I learned Dan has a problem with anger," Stavrowsky said. "He loses his temper really fast." Bishop never hit her, she said, but was verbally abusive and often hit furniture and walls during tirades.

"One time, I wanted to bike in the mountains." Bishop was upset about how she planned to conduct the ride. "He started driving into shrubs and trees." She and her son safely got out of the car that day. 

"I told Dale about the situation. It was new to Dale," Stavrowsky said. "It kept happening a lot. It was getting uglier and uglier. I could not take it anymore. I asked (Dale) if he could help me."

Stavrowsky then moved out of Bishop's mother's home and into a Nucla apartment owned by the Williams family.    

Her relationship with Bishop was "a waste of two years," she said. She wanted to return to Ukraine, but her 7-year-old son begged her to stay in the U.S., so she did. 

Bishop was already incensed by her new arrangement, Stravrowsky explained. Bishop swore to exact revenge on Williams for helping her. 

"He said, 'I'll kill that son of a bitch and drop his body in the mine. Nobody will find him.'" 

She didn't take him seriously. In fact, Stravrowsky's younger sister followed her to Colorado and lived with Bishop for a short time as she attended school. 

"I didn't know at that time he was dangerous," Stravrowsky said, "only that he was a bad husband. (Her sister) said, 'No, he's fine. He's hoping you will come back.'"

"Dan begged me to come back, but I knew he wasn't going to change," Stravrowsky said. Bishop could not manage his anger and the lies "were constant," especially about money, she said.

In August of 1988, "I wrote him a letter explaining that I was leaving." She left his debit card and didn't care if leaving him cost her green card. "When Dan went to work, we left town. At that time, I couldn't drive on a highway." She was used to driving around Nucla but was not ready to pull a trailer on a highway through several states.

Dale Williams and his wife, Diana, drove the woman and her son halfway to Texas. Another couple took over from there and finished the drive. 

"I needed their help," Stavrowsky said of the Williamses. 

An arrest affidavit written by Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Brandon Ludwig contains details of what then allegedly happened. 

• Someone broke into the auto body shop owned by Dale Williams prior to his disappearance. A torn-up photograph of Dale, Diane, Dan Bishop, and his wife Elvira Bishop - the only picture of the two couples together, according to Stavrowsky - was found outside the shop. On it were placed several .22 caliber bullets.
• Shortly after that, a handgun stolen from the auto body shop during that break-in was found in the drop-box of a video rental store. That store was then the employer of Diana Williams, Dale's wife. 
• Investigators learned Bishop gave his cousin, Veldon Barnes, a Corvette the same day Dale Williams disappeared. Barnes was a convicted felon who, while incarcerated in the Mesa County jail in 2000, was overhead by another inmate saying, "[I]f they ever caught me for what I had really done I'd be on death row or a life sentence." 
• The inmate also heard Veldon make a comment about authorities not charging someone with murder if they were unable to find a body, according to the affidavit. Barnes, it should be noted, has passed away since Williams's disappearance.
• After Williams's disappearance, Bishop was recorded on surveillance cameras at the Nucla post office tearing down posters which pleaded for information in the case.
• Investigators searched Bishop's Nucla property in October 2023. This included an excavation in hopes of locating Williams's body. It was not found. 
• Bishop was interviewed by investigators 10 days before his October arrest. He admitted standing down the street from the auto body shop with his cousin, Veldon, as Dale Williams left town on the stranded motorist call. Bishop accused his now-deceased cousin of killing Williams. He also said his rifle found in the truck's bed had been missing since Stavrowsky left him.  

The affidavit also confirms one more relevant detail -- that Stavrowsky and Dale Williams formed a sexual relationship in the weeks before her departure. Once settled, Stavrowsky stayed in Texas and kept a low profile.

"I hid for a long time," Stavrowsky said. "I was embarrassed and ashamed that (Diana) lost her husband over this."

"I still could not believe (Bishop) could do that. I would like to forget all this stuff. I would like to help his family. They think I'm part of this and I probably am. But Dan needs to be punished for this."

Tonee Lawrence, Dale Williams's daughter, called the relationship's discovery a difficult one to accept. But it doesn't define her perceptions. 

"We didn't find out about the affairs until later in our lives. It doesn't change anything about my father, about how I think about him. He was a great father."

She has mixed emotions, too, in anticipation of Bishop's prosecution.  

"It's two different emotions - happy and relieved that there's been an arrest. But we still don't have proper closure because we don't know where my father's remains are. We don't have that closure."

"We're actually hoping that he takes a plea bargain to tell us where the remains are. A plea in exchange for information where my dad is."

Bishop is jailed on a $1 million bond. He is scheduled to appear in Montrose County Court on Wednesday. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty.