Duncan Templer: A Daughter’s Call for Answers
- Raven Rollins
- Dec 31, 2025
- 6 min read
Some cases don’t end. They just grow quieter.
In the summer of 2013, Duncan Templer, a 51-year-old man from North Dakota, disappeared under circumstances that have never fully made sense. He was last seen on July 24, 2013, along Highway 85 between Cartwright and Manning, a stretch of road surrounded by oilfield traffic, heavy brush, and rugged terrain where visibility is limited and answers can disappear quickly.
According to his family, Duncan Templer was a father first and a Veteran who enjoyed fishing. He was a hardworking man who stayed closely connected to his children and maintained regular contact with them. He was not someone who disappeared without explanation or drifted away from the people who mattered to him. Those closest to him say his absence in July 2013 was immediately alarming precisely because it was so out of character. For his family, understanding what happened to Duncan is not only about resolving unanswered questions — it is about ensuring that he is remembered as a person, not reduced to a set of assumptions made after his death.
When Duncan failed to return home in July 2013, concern escalated into an active search. His semi-truck was located abandoned, with the keys still inside, but there was no sign of Duncan himself. Multiple agencies were involved in the response, including the McKenzie County Sheriff’s Office and the North Dakota Highway Patrol. Searchers combed the surrounding Badlands, including dense brush and trail systems near the highway.
More than a decade after his death, his daughter, Rebecca Schafer, reached out to me directly, asking for help bringing renewed attention to her father’s case because it has never truly been resolved.
In their ongoing advocacy, Duncan’s family has raised concerns that there may have been factors in his life at the time of his disappearance that were never fully examined. According to Rebecca, the family believes Duncan may have been experiencing harassment or undue pressure prior to his disappearance — concerns they say were not adequately addressed during the initial investigation. In the period leading up to his disappearance, Rebecca said, Duncan was dealing with threats from a group of individuals, something the family believes is significant and deserving of closer scrutiny. The threat was serious enough that Duncan purchased a gun for protection.
She has further stated that Duncan was attempting to help a woman in the Watford City area who was experiencing severe abuse at the hands of her significant other and was trying to leave that situation only a few days before his disappearance.
While these concerns have not been publicly adjudicated or fully examined in official findings, the family maintains they are relevant context that was never adequately explored. They maintain that these issues warrant closer scrutiny as part of any renewed review of the case. Their position has remained consistent: when a death is ruled undetermined, unanswered questions should be treated as leads — not dismissed by time or assumption.
Weeks passed with no sign of Duncan. Then, on September 28, 2013 — 66 days after his disappearance — human remains were discovered in the same general area where he went missing. Those remains were later identified as Duncan Templer.
What followed, however, did not bring clarity.
Publicly, many people came away believing Duncan’s death had been ruled a suicide. That assumption has persisted for years.
Rebecca shared concerns about that narrative — that Duncan abandoned his semi and took his own life. According to his family, that account does not align with what they know to be true. They have stated that Duncan had no known health issues, including cancer, and that he appeared well and in good spirits on the day he disappeared.
But according to Rebecca — and consistent with available records — the official manner of death was listed as undetermined. She has emphasized that the family was never informed of any definitive findings indicating suicide, nor were they told there were signs clearly supporting that conclusion. I have personally reviewed the medical examiner’s report in this case, which does not document any gunshot wounds. Rebecca has also shared that the firearm Duncan had recently purchased for personal protection has never been located.
Despite this, a suicide narrative quietly took hold — and with it, a sense that the case was finished.
For Duncan’s family, that perception became one of the greatest barriers to justice. When a death is believed to be explained, attention fades. Questions stop being asked. And families are left trying to reopen conversations the public thinks are already over.
The family further disputes the idea that Duncan simply walked away from his truck. According to information Rebecca has shared, the workday began at Fairview Mountain, where drivers parked their personal vehicles before checking in with management for a morning briefing that lasted approximately fifteen minutes. On the morning of his disappearance, Duncan attended that briefing, got into his semi — which was fueled and ready from the previous driver — and departed the lot at approximately 4:00 a.m., becoming the first driver to leave, with others following behind him.
From there, drivers were instructed to travel to Cartwright to pick up gravel and haul it to a drop location near Manning, typically using Highway 85. The dump process itself was brief, often taking only a few minutes, and depending on traffic, other trucks were sometimes required to remain out of sight until the unloading area was clear. Rebecca has said that Duncan’s failure to return as expected was noticed quickly by fellow drivers, prompting questions about where he was and why he had not come back for another load.
For the family, these details raise questions about what may have occurred during that window of time. Rebecca has explained that cell service in the area was limited, and that the available towers were unable to provide consistent or continuous location pings, causing Duncan’s phone location to appear to jump abruptly between points rather than track smoothly along a route. According to the information she was given, Duncan’s semi was later pinged in the Manning area around 9:50 a.m., and again near the Theodore Roosevelt National Park North Unit scenic overlook at approximately 10:33 a.m. She has also stated that there is no reliable cell service in the area where the truck was ultimately found, further complicating efforts to reconstruct his movements using phone data alone.
They have long pointed to two locations they believe deserve renewed scrutiny: the gravel drop site near Manning and the scenic overlook where the semi was found. Given the intense activity surrounding the July 2013 road-widening project during the oil boom, combined with reports of frequent mechanical issues affecting trucks at the time, the family believes the circumstances surrounding Duncan’s disappearance warrant closer, more thorough examination than they have received to date. While no conclusions have been publicly drawn, they maintain that the timeline, location data, and limitations of available technology raise unanswered questions that remain relevant to understanding what happened to him.
Rebecca has described the case as a “mystery from the beginning,” noting that key details were never fully released to the public and that the family has spent years pushing back against the idea that there is nothing left to investigate. She has also shared that the lack of transparency early on made it difficult to challenge assumptions once they were already widely accepted.
For more than a decade, Duncan’s case existed in a gray area — no longer actively investigated, but never truly solved.
In January 2025, that changed. The McKenzie County Sheriff’s Office publicly announced it was reopening the 2013 death investigation into Duncan Templer, stating that the goal was to reexamine the case in an effort to determine the cause and manner of death better and to provide the family with clarity. In that announcement, the sheriff’s office emphasized that the case was being handled as a death investigation, not formally classified as a homicide investigation at this stage. Still, the decision to reopen the case marked an important acknowledgment by the agency itself: unanswered questions remain, and the circumstances surrounding Duncan’s death warrant renewed review.
For Rebecca and her family, it was a long-awaited step forward.
They continue to seek answers and accountability — not only for their own family, but to correct a public narrative that never aligned with what they were told privately. According to information shared through the family’s fundraising efforts, they are working to secure an independent review, records requests, and additional advocacy support in hopes of bringing long-overdue transparency to the case. The goal, Rebecca has said, is not speculation, but clarity — and to ensure that Duncan’s death does not quietly recede into assumption simply because time has passed.
If you would like to help with their efforts, you can donate here: https://gofund.me/81755a329
An undetermined death is not the same as a resolved one. It means there are gaps. It means there are possibilities left unexplored. And it means that answers may still exist — if the right person comes forward, or if the right detail is finally seen clearly.
Anyone with information related to Duncan Templer’s disappearance or death is encouraged to contact the McKenzie County Sheriff’s Office, which announced the reopening of the case. Information can be routed to the appropriate investigative agency as needed. Even details that may have seemed insignificant at the time could matter now.
McKenzie County Sheriff’s Office - (701) 842-6010
This case is not finished because it was never truly concluded, and thanks to the persistence of a daughter who refused to let her father’s story fade into assumption, it is being spoken aloud again.
