‘This is a nightmare’: In Wisconsin, family mourns two brothers missing in Missouri
Taylor Moeller knew instantly it was bad.
As soon as her boyfriend, Justin Diemel, didn’t answer her calls at 11:24 a.m. on July 21, she sensed something terrible had happened.
The two had been together for eight years. Justin, 25 and his brother Nick, 35, were supposed to be flying home to Wisconsin from their business trip in Missouri. But they never arrived and Justin wasn’t picking up the phone.
“If his flight was late he would have told me it was late,” Moeller said Friday at the family home near Green Bay. “He literally finds a way to tell me everything.”
The brothers had gone to northwest Missouri on business for the livestock company they owned together. On July 21 they went to a farm in Braymer, about 70 miles northeast of Kansas City, reportedly to look at some calves.
Then they vanished.
Over the next several days, a search for the missing brothers led law enforcement to their rental truck, abandoned in a commuter lot off Interstate 35 near Holt, and to the Braymer farm of a man now jailed on suspicion of moving the truck. The search was labeled a death investigation. On Tuesday investigators searching the farm found human remains that have not yet been identified, according to Clinton County Sheriff Larry Fish.
Back home in Shawano County, Nick’s wife, Lisa Diemel, took care of their four children while she and Moeller held out hope the men would be found alive.
The two women spoke in the garage of their in-law’s home in rural Wisconsin. The rest of the family mingled inside the house as Lisa’s 3-year-old son wandered in and out.
The family didn’t waste time when they realized something was wrong, they said.
“Getting started you have to call your local county and file a missing persons report and have a police officer come out to your house and pray that they take it as seriously as you do,” Lisa Diemel said.
Lisa said she didn’t know how seriously law enforcement took the report, or whether anything would have changed if news got out quicker.
For the first few days the brothers were missing, Lisa said she was constantly on her computer, talking to reporters. After authorities labeled the search a death investigation on July 26, she stopped that and disconnected from the news, she said.
Since then, she has focused on caring for her kids, managing the family’s affairs and waiting for answers, she said. She’s filed paperwork in court to have the brothers declared dead, allowing her to take charge of the livestock business.
“The last four or five days have been the worst for me,” she said. “The reality has set in.
“This is absolutely the most horrific thing. The unknown is horrific. You have nightmares.”
The only person charged in the case is Garland Nelson, the Braymer man accused of moving the brothers’ rental truck after they visited his family’s farm. Nelson, who has spent time in prison for cattle fraud, is being held without bond on a charge of tampering with the vehicle.
The Diemel family declined to comment on Nelson’s arrest or the state of the investigation. Regardless of what answers they get in the next weeks and months, Lisa said, she doesn’t think they’ll ever have closure.
“This is a nightmare we’re gonna live the rest of our lives,” she said.
Nick Diemel
Lisa, 33, has known Nick for half her life.
They met on the school bus when she was 12. Lisa had just moved to Nichols, Wisconsin, from Colorado to live with her grandmother.
They were high school sweethearts and later married. They had four children together.
“We wanted to get married; we knew that we were committed and forever,” she said.
Nick was the strongest person she’s ever met, Lisa said.
He wasn’t afraid speak his mind, and was quick to stand up for what’s right and the people he loved, she said.
He supported her while she was getting her nursing degree. He taught the children to hunt, fish and play sports. When they went to an arcade in town, she said, Nick almost seemed to buy more tokens for himself than for the kids.
“Nick was like a big kid,” Lisa said. “He thought he was a basketball star even though he was short as can be.”
The night before the brothers disappeared, Lisa said, the power went out at their home in Wisconsin. The area was placed under a tornado warning.
On the phone, Nick asked her how the kids were and whether they were driving her crazy.
The next morning, he told her he would be home soon.
Lisa said she has spent much of the last two weeks hugging her children and talking to them as they process what happened to their father.
The two older children, ages 17 and 12, are “trying to detach from the situation,” Lisa said.
The younger two, ages 1 and 3, aren’t old enough to understand what’s happening, she said.
When a plane flew overhead the other day, she said, the 3-year-old looked up and commented that his dad was on a plane, heading home.
“I don’t even know how to approach that,” Lisa said.
“I feel so bad for (the baby) because she’ll never get to know what a great dad he was,” Lisa said. “She’ll never feel his love like the other ones do.”
Last week, Lisa got permission from a Wisconsin court to take over as special administrator of the brothers’ business.
She owns Nick’s half while her in-laws own Justin’s part.
Lisa flew to Missouri last week to be present for part of the investigation but flew straight back after “a horrible day,” she said.
“It’s just the most robbed feeling.”
Justin Diemel
Taylor Moeller, 25, has been stuck with a feeling of helplessness for two weeks.
Living in Wisconsin, she could do nothing but trust law enforcement in Missouri to do their job.
And although she and Justin had been together for eight years, she said, she couldn’t help with any legal processes because they weren’t married.
“I’ve spent Sunday through Sunday crying all day, everyday, nonstop,” Moeller said. “I’m not sure I have any tears left to cry.
“I cannot believe this is my life. How is this happening in our life?”
She’s known Justin since they were 16.
A few years after they started dating, she learned he had originally reached out to her, in part, because of a bet.
As Justin explained it, he and his friend had decided to each text her and see which one she would start talking to, she said.
She doesn’t even remember hearing from the friend, she said.
Justin was shy at first, she said. It took him a year to work up the courage to meet her parents.
Now, she said, he’s open with her family. He’s the funniest person she knows, she said, always making faces and using weird voices to make her laugh.
“He has the best giggle, the best smile, he just cared about everyone,” Moeller said.
If a car was stuck in a ditch in the winter, she said, Justin would insist on stopping to help, even if they were running late.
Their relationship was full of movie dates, adventures and road trips.
Exactly a year ago, she said, they traveled to Badlands National Park.
Her favorite memory with him was when they went hunting as teenagers and she shot her first buck.
“He literally jumped out of the stand and was jumping up and down,” Moeller said.
She doesn’t know what comes next, now that he’s gone.
“I have no idea what life looks like from here on out, because Justin was my life,” Moeller said. “Now my other half is gone, so nothing feels right.”
Diemel’s Livestock
Despite a 10-year age difference, Justin and Nick “had a special bond,” Lisa said.
About a decade ago, she said, they went into the livestock business together, investing in herds of animals.
They started Diemel’s Livestock about four years ago. They had farms for cattle across the Midwest, and raised calves in Wisconsin. This year, Lisa said, was probably their biggest year so far.
They were passionate about the business, and their lives revolved around it, the women said.
They each had their own roles. Nick handled much of the business end, while Justin handled a lot of the labor, the women said.
Nick and Justin seldom went a day without speaking to each other.
“Justin would come home from work and Nick would be calling and I was like ‘seriously you were with him all day,’” Moeller said.
Business aside, Justin was a good uncle to the kids, Lisa said, playing with them and helping to get them to and from Sunday school and sports practice.
As the story of the brothers’ disappearance made national news, the women received notes from community members, telling of memories of the brothers. They received messages from strangers, too.
“It’s incredible the amount of people that care, and we appreciate it,” Moeller said. “We just can’t thank everybody personally.”
They are still trying to wrap their minds around the events of the last two weeks and what happened to the Diemel brothers.
“What little regard for somebody’s life,” she said. “They didn’t just impact me and Taylor. They impacted our children, our families, all of their friends, all of their business partners that they worked with.”
“They were great people,” Moeller said. “They didn’t deserve anything that happened to them.
“It’s nothing good from here on out.”
This story was originally published August 4, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
