Missing Missouri woman allegedly kept in cage attended Kansas City-area high school

Cassidy Rainwater, the missing Missouri woman who was allegedly kidnapped in the Ozarks and kept in a cage, has ties to the Kansas City area.

She is listed as a freshman in the 2003 yearbook from Harrisonville High School in Cass County, though she is not pictured.

And a Facebook page created in November 2015 under the name Cassidy Rainwater says she was living in Boulder, Colorado, and was “from Harrisonville, Missouri.”

Rainwater, 33, was officially reported missing to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office in late August. In mid-September, the FBI’s Kansas City office received an anonymous tip from a person who shared photos, including one of what appeared to be Rainwater’s partially nude body inside a cage.

The tip prompted an investigation that led to charges filed against James Phelps, 58, who lives in a rural area near Windyville, and Timothy Norton, 56. Both are accused of kidnapping Rainwater and facilitating a felony, inflicting injury and terrorizing.

The case is drawing national attention, with more speculation than facts about what happened to Rainwater. Adding to the intrigue is that Rainwater’s mother, Tracy Wahwassuck, disappeared when Cassidy was 18.

Wahwassuck — whose maiden name was Rainwater, according to online records — was reported missing in April 2007 in Laclede County. She was 43 and was last seen in Lebanon, east of Windyville.

Her then-boyfriend Leonard Couch told authorities that she had possibly gone searching for arrowheads and never returned.

Media reports from May 2008 say a farmer spreading fertilizer found a shoe and human remains, including teeth, scattered in his field. Then-Laclede County Sheriff Richard Wrinkle said at the time that anthropologists never found any signs of trauma on the bones, which were later identified as Wahwassuck’s.

No charges were ever filed in the case. Couch died in February.

During the investigation into Rainwater’s disappearance, a sheriff’s sergeant learned that Phelps was the last person to have contact with her, court records show. Phelps told the sergeant that Rainwater had been staying with him “until she could get back on her feet,” and that she had been talking about going to Colorado. Phelps also told the investigator that about a month earlier, Rainwater had left in the middle of the night and met a vehicle at the end of the driveway, and he had not seen or heard from her since.

Rainwater is still officially reported as missing, and authorities have released scant information about the case. And that has only fueled the speculation and sensational details about what may have happened at Phelps’ home on 386 Moon Valley Road.

After the FBI shared the anonymous tip with Dallas County authorities, the sergeant returned to Phelps’ property, arrested him and seized his cellphone.

Court records said it contained seven photos of Rainwater “in a partially nude state being held in a cage within the Phelps residence at 386 Moon Valley Road in Lebanon Missouri, within Dallas County.”

Officers then identified Timothy Norton as a person connected with the case. In an interview on Sept. 19, court records say, he told them that he was an over-the-road trucker and that he lived in his truck all the time. In a followup interview the next day, Norton confessed that he knew that Rainwater was being held at Phelps’ home, according to an affidavit.

Norton also said that on July 24, Phelps had contacted him to come to Phelps’ home, and when he got there, he physically restrained Rainwater “by holding her down for a substantial period of time,” the document said.

The mystery deepened on Monday night, when Phelps’ home burned to the ground. Fire crews discovered what appeared to be a makeshift tripwire and called in the Springfield Fire Department’s Bomb Squad, which early Tuesday morning detonated an incendiary device.

This story was originally published October 7, 2021 at 2:40 PM.