The Screenwriter with No Hands: The Strange Disappearance — and Solved Mystery — of Gary DeVore

The Writer Who Vanished

Gary DeVore wrote about men making desperate choices. Then, one night in 1997, he made one himself — and paid the ultimate price. Driving home from New Mexico after finishing a screenplay, DeVore disappeared somewhere on the dark highway between Santa Fe and California. For a year, no one knew what happened.

When his Ford Explorer was finally found submerged in the California Aqueduct in 1998, the details felt ripped from a movie: skeletal remains, a missing laptop, and hands that had somehow vanished.

For decades, this became one of Hollywood’s most enduring modern mysteries — until investigators, and a persistent private eye, revealed what really happened. Gary DeVore wrote about men running from secrets — and may have died trying to escape his own.

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From “Back Roads” to the Back of the Line in Hollywood

Before his disappearance, DeVore was a respected if low-profile screenwriter. Born in 1941, he earned his first big credit on Back Roads (1981), a dusty romantic dramedy starring Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones.

DeVore became known for his rewrites — Raw Deal, Timecop, and countless others he quietly touched up during the heyday of the Reagan-era action boom. He was, in short, a fixer: the kind of screenwriter studios called when a script needed grit and pace. But these rewrites came with pay but no credit and with no credit, DeVore struggled to find support for his own writing.

In 1997, he was working on a new project reportedly inspired by U.S. military actions in Panama. According to his wife, he hinted it was his most serious script yet — and maybe his most dangerous.

That comment would take on a life of its own after his disappearance.

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The Night Gary DeVore Disappeared

On June 27, 1997, DeVore called his wife from a Denny’s in the Mojave Desert just after 1 a.m. He was tired, but in good spirits. That was the last anyone heard from him. He never made it home. For twelve months, no trace of his Ford Explorer or its driver was found, despite extensive searches.

Then, in July 1998, divers found his vehicle submerged under a bridge along the California Aqueduct. Inside were his skeletal remains — but two vital items were missing: his laptop and his hands.

However, as intriguing as this sounds, it’s a red herring. Like so many Hollywood mysteries, the story of Gary DeVore has a twist — but not the exciting kind.

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The Real Story Behind His Death

The truth, uncovered by Hollywood private investigator Dennis O’Keefe, is far less cinematic — and far more tragic.

A police blockade had been set up along the highway that night. DeVore, who was carrying a gun in his vehicle, likely panicked at the sight of flashing lights ahead. To avoid trouble, he turned off his headlights and attempted a U-turn in the dark.

With no visibility and adrenaline clouding his judgment, he drove straight off the road and into the aqueduct below. His Ford Explorer sank instantly, where it remained hidden underwater for nearly a year. The mystery wasn’t a government plot — it was a midnight accident made by a man trying not to get caught with a gun.

As for his missing hands, the explanation is just as simple. DeVore would have been gripping the steering wheel tightly upon impact. The force of the airbag likely tore his hands from the wheel, fracturing bones. As his body decomposed underwater, the smaller bones could have floated away or been carried downstream. Poetic irony aside — a writer with missing hands — this detail has a perfectly reasonable explanation.

All credit goes to Dennis O’Keefe, whose findings were documented in the film The Writer with No Hands. Ironically, that documentary’s subject, Matthew Alford, dismissed O’Keefe’s practical conclusions in favor of conspiracy. But the facts O’Keefe uncovered remain the most plausible account.

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A Mystery Made in Hollywood

Conspiracy theories have long surrounded DeVore’s death. Some claimed he was silenced for his script on U.S. operations in Panama. Others suggested intelligence involvement, secret files, or hidden truths. Speaking of his screenplay, it wasn't a mystery. DeVore was writing a modern adaptation of the Robert Mitchum film, The Big Steal.

DeVore's screenplay takes the story of The Big Steal and moves it from Mexico to Panama. The story followed members of the American military as they robbed thousands of dollars in Panamanian drug money. This story happened to coincide with a conspiracy regarding American politicians and military leaders having been blackmailed by Panamanian Dictator Manuel Noriega. Throw in DeVore's reported friendship with a CIA liaison to Hollywood and you have a further recipe for conspiracy.

The more rational explanation was always right there — but it wasn’t as thrilling. A panicked turn in the dark, a tragic mistake, and a car lost beneath the desert water. The hands that wrote so many Hollywood stories were gone — but not by design. Just by gravity, fear, and bad luck.

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The Legacy of Gary DeVore

DeVore’s life and death continue to fascinate because they reflect the same tension his films captured: men at the edge of control, trying to steer out of danger. In Back Roads, he wrote about two wanderers chasing a better life and ending up lost in the middle of nowhere. That irony endures.

The real story of Gary DeVore isn’t about government secrets or missing evidence. It’s about a man whose instinct to run led him somewhere no one could find him — until it was far too late.

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Closing Reflection: The Story Hollywood Got Wrong

For years, Hollywood and the true-crime world sold the disappearance of Gary DeVore as a sinister mystery. But the truth is more human — and more heartbreaking. A writer, alone on a highway, made a bad decision and vanished into darkness.

As journalists, filmmakers, and storytellers revisit his story, we’re reminded that not every twist hides a conspiracy. Sometimes the final act of a Hollywood mystery is just what it appears to be — a tragedy written by fate, not by shadowy hands.

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