Ricky Lynn Nelms

• Missing Since 02/01/1988
• Missing From Wichita, Kansas
• Classification Endangered Missing
• Sex Male
• Race White
• Age 20 years old
• Height and Weight 5'9, 115 pounds
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian male. Brown hair.

Details of Disappearance

Nelms left his parents' Moulton, Alabama home in January 1988 and traveled to Wichita, Kansas with a friend, Jerry Wayne Trussell, to take a job as a roofer.

His parents last had contact with him when he called home sometime in February 1988. He told them he was involved in some kind of court case; his family does not know the full story but they believe it involved cars. Nelms said he was going to go to court, and if he did not get sentenced to jail he was going to go home and take care of his young son.

Nelms has never been heard from again. It wasn't unusual for him to be out of touch with his family for months at a time, so he wasn't reported missing until July 18 of that year.

Trussell is currently in prison serving 25 years to life for the murder of Franklin Harrod, a Kansas man who disappeared in 1997 and whose body has never been found. In 2023, Trussell began cooperating with the police and admitted to responsibility for burying both Harrod and Nelms.

Authorities are trying to find the bodies of both men. Trussell stated they were buried close by each other in a rural area in southern Butler County, Kansas.

Nelms's case remains unsolved.