March 6, 2024 • 47 mins
As the 1989 holiday season looms, Dana Stidham’s body is discovered by a local hunter in a Bella Vista creek bed. Law enforcement shifts its focus from missing person to murder… and begins to zero in on a suspect after he is arrested for a bizarre theft. Phelps’s contemporary, real-time investigation branches out and he questions whether the evidence against the chief suspect supports law enforcement’s push to arrest him – and whether Dana’s case is part of a more widespread series of murders by a serial killer targeting victims throughout the Ozarks during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
I've been interviewing the families of murder victims since nineteen
ninety nine. It's one of the most profound and personal
aspects of my job, because well, I'm one of them.
In nineteen ninety six, my brother's wife, five months pregnant,
was strangled to death. Her case remains unsolved. So when
(00:31):
families tell me how difficult this is to talk about,
I can empathize. Opening up old wounds, digging back into
the past is not always worth the pain and vulnerability
of exposing yourself for the sake of keeping a memory alive.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I hate to get into this. We've heard the rumor
and we got a hold to Hanny and Mike, the
cop State were on the case, and they came to
the house and told us.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
There was that knock on the door. No family member
of a missing person ever wants to hear.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I'm thinking they're lying like hell, because my little girl
wasn't dead, and that's really all I can talk about that.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
The anguish in Georgia Stidham's voice truly emphasizes how murder
violates the core foundation of what family represents. When the
victim is your child, your world is not only shattered
but everything from that moment on is different. Danis Stidham's
(01:47):
family had been in emotional purgatory for nearly two months,
not knowing, wondering and waiting. But then on September seventeenth,
nineteen eighty nine, the Benton County Sheriff's Office shows up
to deliver the worst news imaginable. As you heard Dana's mother,
Georgia Stidham explain, the mere memory of all that she'd
(02:11):
lost that day was still too difficult to talk about
in any detail some three decades later.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I also wanted to ask you about Lawrence. Tell me
about your husband.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh, he was so sick. He had rheumatoid arthritis, real bad,
and all the dregs had eating at his insides pretty much,
and he was just Dana was his everything. She went
to the stores for anything she thought he needed, she'd
(02:48):
go pick up.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
And bring to.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
And they were home a lot together, Laurence's Dutch where
he couldn't work with the kids while I were so
this crushed them, then, yes it did. It was the
beginning of the air for him.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Georgia believes Dana's murder contributed to the death of her husband,
who died in the years after Lawrence was only fifty
years old. Dana's cousin and best friend, Christy Smith, recalls
how harrowing those days leading up to finding Dana's body were.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Well, this whole time we have been driving around, we
have been posting flyers. We went all over Missouri, the
bordering cities of Missouri, all over Fayville, everywhere we can
think of, at every store that would allow us, we
posted flyers and never got a response. In the back
of your mind, you know that if you haven't heard
something by now, then she is either no longer alive
(03:52):
or somebody has her and you don't know who it is.
And then in September we had actually driven by where
they found her body, going to a place to put
out some flyers, and I believe it was the next
day they found her remains.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
For BCSO Detectives. As horrible as the situation was, the
discovery of Dana's body gave the investigation a much needed boost.
They now had a crime scene to process. Justice for
Danis Stidham and her family could begin as the hunt
for her killer entered a brand new face. Previously on
(04:40):
Pay for Ghosts.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
So I'll stopped there and Bill will Squahant and I
saw and a drag creek dead and saw scull and
some rib bone.
Speaker 7 (04:49):
And it became somewhat alarming when they found a dirty
magazine with some of van It's clothing.
Speaker 6 (04:55):
So now you have a suspect that worked at.
Speaker 7 (04:57):
The store with Anna, had an issue with email on
fullet text of harassment and also said have ativity for
thirty magazines.
Speaker 8 (05:06):
You know, hey, we've got three or four suspects, why
not add another fifth suspect.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
and author of more than forty true crime books. This
is season four of Paper Ghosts the Ozarks.
Speaker 9 (05:35):
All right, so here this is leading to beale road, woods,
dirt road. We'll definitely drive in a truck.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Investigators enter a crime scene hoping to collect fingerprints, footprints,
tire tracks, blood, and additional bodily fluids, along with hairs, fibers,
fire debris, a cigarette butt, or any other item that
might lead them to a killer. Back to the vehicle
rocker parked up here.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Offee goes.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I have seen murdersov with the most obscure, smallest piece
of evidence lint from a blanket, sweat, DNA, unseen by
the naked eye, even a single cat hair. The crime
scene itself, where it is, what the terrain is like,
how it looks can say a lot about a killer.
(06:36):
Here's investigative journalists Brandon Howard.
Speaker 7 (06:41):
I went there a few years ago. I was shocked
to see that it's super rural, still almost forgotten in time.
It's a place you go from a paved highway that
sees thousands of cars to dirt road really quickly uneven
deep into the woods opens it to a large clearing,
sort of circular base, a culta sac without any pavement.
(07:02):
Yet despite being so far off the beaten path, you
can see not far the liquor store just up the
road that's crossed the state line.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
And then so you get out, you walk through the
woods and there's a creek bed there where she was found.
Speaker 6 (07:15):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (07:16):
I had one detective mentioned that they thought it was
done hastily, and then they realized other items of hers romance.
They went back and tossed those and left. But I
would think that you'd have to be somewhat strong or
able body to carry a person down into that area
of the woods and know about it. I don't think
that anyone just stumbled across that spot.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
In June twenty twenty three, I made my way from
the Phillips grocery toward the crime scene where Dana's body
had been discovered, and what struck me first was how
remote it is. We're talking about a densely wooded section
of Bella Vista. To get there, you travel along these narrow,
winding roads, zigzagging through the northern part of the state,
(08:03):
on the southern edge of the Ozarks. Houses are few
and far between. One would have to have prior knowledge
of this area, I imagine, to commit a murder here
and or dump a body. I was guided by GPS
and had the global satellite coordinates of the exact location
where Dana's remains were found, and still had trouble finding it.
(08:26):
The dry creek Betty's talking about, and she would have
been found about right here. I parked in what was
a dirt road cul de sac not yet developed into housing.
Walking down the steep embankment into a thickly forested valley,
the road where I had parked disappeared from my view.
Speaker 8 (08:45):
Cover here is remarkable.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
The hill in front of me.
Speaker 8 (08:49):
She's screaming no one's hearing.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Her standing where Dana's body had been found. The immense
sadness of this place had an overwhelming effect on me.
Speaker 8 (09:04):
You're talking about an eighteen year old that just graduated
high school like two months prior. She's got her whole
life ahead of her, and all that gone in the
blink of an eye for mother, for her to have
to live with this, I can't even put myself in
her shoes. Un she's had to go through over the years.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
That was Bcso Lieutenant Hunter betray Georgia Stidham told Brandon
Howard in an article he published in twenty fifteen, quote
and her rest will never bring closure. I'll never get
her back, but I'd like to see her kill her caught,
so wouldn't feel like I just let my daughter die
(09:43):
and I walked away. Sadly, Georgia would not live to
experience justice. On October twenty sixth, twenty twenty three, she
passed away, seventy three years old.
Speaker 8 (10:01):
You know, I talked to her and just kind of
revisited because I had not met her again. You know,
this was not my case to begin with, so I
had not met her and basically just went over to
her house and grabbed it and spoke to her for
about thirty minutes to an hour and just it's always man,
it's if he because you don't want her to have
to relive. Sure, bring all these things back up.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
And so September comes, no Dana.
Speaker 8 (10:26):
I think at that point in time, you're talking about
six to seven weeks since she disappeared and nothing. And
then all of a sudden there's a guy who was
squirrel hunting in an area clear on the other side
of town, basically on the east side of Bello Vista,
ran across some remains. Pretty much at that point in
(10:47):
time they had been skeletonized. So I don't want to
get to sound like it's a body remains, is I
think probably the proper term.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Many thought it was strange, if not suspicious, that the
hunter had waited a day before calling police about the
discovery of a body.
Speaker 8 (11:04):
Again, it's unusual and it's weird because he doesn't report
it right away. He waits a day. He actually sees it,
looks at it, leaves because he says he was in
a hurry, goes and talks to a friend, tells the friend, hey,
I found some human remains. Friend kind of didn't didn't
really believe him at first, but basically told him, hey,
(11:26):
you need to report that. So the next day he
does report it. The skull.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Let's talk about where this is. This is not a
place that you would put a body unless you knew.
Speaker 8 (11:38):
Of the place, probably unless you were driving around, which
you would be really high risk driving around with a
body in your car looking for a place. So yeah,
probably you know the statistics and the odds are that
somebody you ever did this. One person two persons was
familiar with the area. Bella Vista has a lot of
cull to sacks, a lot of dead end roades, a
(12:00):
lot of them are undeveloped.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Hunter Petray then mentioned something quite interesting, if you recall
from a previous episode, I began to wonder about a
group of friends Dana hung around whom she hadn't discussed
much with her family. Georgia and even Christy knew most
of the people within Dana's circle, but.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Not all of them.
Speaker 8 (12:22):
I don't know if you know this or not, but
prior to this, maybe a year or two prior, that
area was kind of a party spot for kids. There
was a shooting that took place there and a kid
died after that kind of everybody was afraid to associate
with that area. So there were people that were familiar
with that area as a party spot. So again things
(12:47):
start running through your mind. Are these people that same
age group as Dana that knew about this area? Again, unknown,
but that's a possibility, but yeah, it was a party
spot for a while. That could sack.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Did they try to find those people and interview.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
Any of them.
Speaker 8 (13:04):
They talked to some people that had been out there before,
but they said that they had not been out there,
you know, since that kid got killed out there with
the shooting.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
As Dana's body was sent in for autopsy, investigators hoped
to learn something about her killer. They theorized she had
been out in the elements since the day after she
went missing, nearly eight weeks. Her body was skeletonized, torn apart,
and spread by animals over an area about the size
(13:34):
of a football field. One particular discovery by the corner
gave a possible explanation as to how Dana might have
been murdered.
Speaker 8 (13:44):
When you have passage of time and its remains, that
also complicates autopsies because you don't have an intact body.
But they found there was a nick on the collarbone
that they felt like was from a knife. Now, whether
she was stabbed, you know, in the neck throat cut,
we don't know for sure because we can't tell, but
(14:07):
there was a nick in the collarbone that suggested that
it was some type of knife attack.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
So that would beat the inside part of the.
Speaker 8 (14:14):
Collars correct, yeah, close to the neck the throat area basically.
So they did note that and noted that that was
anti mortem, which would have been prior to death. They
rolled it a homicide. There was also some things that
suggested that this was possibly a sexual assault, like what
the braw the over the shoulder straps were cut with
(14:37):
some type of sharp instrument down near where they connect
with the backstrap. It appears that the braw had been
cut with a sharp instrument.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Several facts discovered during the autopsy become important for one.
Dana's clothing white shorts, white shoes, bra white T shirt
were all found in a hole about one foot deep
ten or more yards away from where her skull was
recovered in the creek bed. Her underwear, however, was found
(15:10):
close to her skull. The corner noted quote based upon
the presence of a sharply cut inner aspect of the
left clavicle. There was a violent injury through a cut
throat or a stab wound to the area. Two rings,
later identified as Dana's were found near her buried clothes.
(15:31):
Hares believed to be pulled out of her head were
also recovered, a lock of which showed heavy damage to
the roots from all the decomposition. It was also reported
that the right and left sleeves of Danish shirt had
been severed at the armpits, jagged cuts as if made
crudely with the knife. On the upper left front thigh
(15:54):
area of her shorts. The crime lab found a piece
of duct tape. Was there any bindings or anything like
that found?
Speaker 8 (16:03):
Yeah, there was some twine O orangish red twine that
was there. There was also some found up at the
cull to sag. They sent a lot of that down. Now,
there were some knots in it, but the lab could
not determine or specify that any of those knots were
(16:24):
used for any type of ligature or binding of Dana.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
The amount of bindings seemed significant. One section was nineteen
inches long with a two inch diameter or loop tied
in a double strand overhand knot. Forty three and a
half inches of baling twine was recovered directly next to
her body and divided into two pieces, tied together with
a clove hitch slip knot with a binding knot at
(16:52):
the end. That type of knot is indicative of binding
one thing to another and clearly intentional. Still, were the
bindings connected to Dana's murder.
Speaker 8 (17:07):
That was never conclusively determined that any of that twine
had been used to tie her up or bind her
or anything of that nature. But it's interesting, and again,
you know, it's complicated because that area was a party spot.
There were people that drove by there and dumped things.
You know, is this twine involved in this or is
it just unknown?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Up on bea lane along the embankment of the cul
de Sac leading down toward where Dana was found, ten
additional feat of bailing twine, divided into six pieces and
enjoined by intricate different types of knots, were located. The
crime lab concluded that quote none of the cuts or
(17:49):
knotted regions indicated that these twines had clearly been used
in ligaturing, restraining, or binding a person. A statement, I
kind of have a problem with because there is no
definitive way to answer that question by studying the twine alone.
After all, an inability to prove something doesn't automatically disprove it.
(18:13):
DNA testing was possible, but also unreliable since the material
had been out in the elements for so long. Near
the same time, the lab came back with another find.
They'd located a single Caucasian strand of hair three point
three inches long with the roots still attached inside a
(18:35):
cup and Dana's car, a potentially significant discovery because they
knew immediately that one hair was not Dana's. After the
(19:02):
discovery of her remains, Dana Stidham's murder dominated local news reports.
Benton County was eager to put a face on evil.
You take away someone's sense of safety. Fear seeps in,
fear breeds accusation, reaction.
Speaker 8 (19:21):
And a rush to judgment. That's just human nature.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
In order for me to get a clear picture of
what could have possibly led up to Dana's murder, it
was important to look at the dynamics of Dana's life
from different perspectives. Here's Dana's mother again, Georgia, Can you
just talk to me?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
A little bit about Dana as a child growing up?
What kind of child she was?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
She was a laugh a minute. She was the happiest
kid you've ever met. She was always being sol and snickering,
and she had a slap and all the time.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
What did she talk about as a young kid that
she wanted to do?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
You know, boy boys boys boys.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
And when she was younger, what was she like?
Speaker 8 (20:15):
What did she like to do?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
She was into all kinds of stuff. She painted, and
she did ceramics, and she did all kinds of stuff.
She was really talented.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
And how was her relationship with mom and dad over
the years.
Speaker 6 (20:34):
It was good.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
She had a lot of friends.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yes, she wanted everybody to be her friend.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Three days after Dana's body was found, the BCSO brought
in a classmate whose name was given to them by
several of Dana's friends. I'll call him Stand for the
purposes of the podcast. He was never named as a suspect,
but he did provide some rather compelling information. He referred
to himself as Dana's best friend, but made it clear
(21:04):
he'd never had a sexual relationship with her. He had
seen her the weekend before she disappeared. During Stan's interview,
detective Mike Sidoriac asked about Dana lending a friend a
pair of boots, which she had wanted back on the
day she disappeared. Stan corroborated this information. Zidoriac asked Stan
(21:28):
if he would have pulled up behind Dana as she drove,
would she have stopped? Stan said yes, So you have
the body, the bodies released, the body is buried.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
What happens next?
Speaker 8 (21:44):
So you know, the big thing back then was that,
you know, they took people when they interviewed them. They
polygraphed him, they took their fingerprints, hoping that something would
come back off the chip bag or her clothing that
was sent down Layton's hair follicles, you know, something to
try to tie somebody as far as physical evidence to
the homicide and the abduction.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Or murder, and nothing came back.
Speaker 8 (22:08):
Nothing came back.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Really.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Detectives Mike Sadoriak and Danny Varner had been up the
ass of a local kid, Mike McMillan since almost the
day Dana went missing. Several people I spoke to, including police,
said Mike was an easy target. Mike, however, didn't help
his own cause well.
Speaker 8 (22:31):
He was interviewed He was given several polygraphs, but initially
he was confronted a couple of days after her disappearance.
He could not give well. He tried, but it was
kind of blown out of the water. He tried to
give an alibi that he was visiting a girl down
in Farmington, which is down by Fayetteville, you know, thirty
(22:54):
miles away or whatever, but she basically said, I don't
remember that, you know, I don't think that I was
with you. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lie for you.
I'm not gonna come up with some story for you.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
If I'm a BCSO detective, I'm wondering why in the
hell lie about where you were?
Speaker 6 (23:15):
Then this?
Speaker 8 (23:16):
You know, he was seen that night and I'm talking
about that night. I'm talking about the twenty fifth into
the early morning of the twenty sixth. He was seen
around three o'clock that next morning, and I want to
say it was at the Bentonville Mercantile. Somebody had seen
him there, and he just didn't really have a good
alibi other than just driving around. His mother said that
(23:42):
he had left home earlier that day on the twenty fifth,
and did not come back until you know, way later
the next morning. So I don't know about you, but
I know, like, like I probably can't tell you what
I had for lunch yesterday, but I can tell you
I went if I thought about it. And you know,
(24:03):
just two days later to not be able to come
up with any valid alibi of where you were at
other than something you come up with which was blown
out of the water.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
And what's the connection to Dana with Mike McMillan schoolmates?
He was in a line of schoolmates that were questioned.
Speaker 8 (24:20):
Yeah, and he was also really good friends with well,
I say really good friends. They kind of lived together.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
I think I bleeped out his name. But Hunter Portray
is referring to Dana's ex boyfriend, so he starts looking suspicious.
Speaker 8 (24:35):
Well, from people that were taught to he was somewhat
infatuated with her and had tried to make advances on her,
and she had rejected him because she was seeing some
other people at the time and basically didn't want anything
to do with him. You know, there's some people that
said that, you know, he was kind of infatuated with her,
(24:56):
wanted to go out with her, and she just kept
rejecting him, and he would get upset about. So there's
a motive there.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, could be strong person of interest for sure, right,
as were others.
Speaker 8 (25:08):
As were others. Yeah, at this time. You know, again,
there's no physical evidence, there's no witnesses to tie. But
there's a lady that saw him driving, supposedly and saw
a brunette girl in the truck with him. Now we
don't know necessarily if it was that day the day before.
It's kind of vague, but we it makes it seem
(25:28):
like it might have been that night. He didn't deny it. Now,
he didn't say he said that, you know. Obviously he
didn't admit that it was Dane in the truck, but
he didn't really deny that somebody could have been in
this truck. He didn't deny that when he was questioned,
did he go to Bella Vista? Could have You know,
you're this person saying that you didn't go down to
(25:50):
Farmington and see her?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Is she a liar?
Speaker 8 (25:53):
Well, you know, if she said that, I'm not calling
anybody a liar. So it wasn't real hard to deny.
The only hard denial that he gave was that he
didn't kill Dana.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
So he did deny that was he one of the
kids who partied in that spot up by Beale Road.
Speaker 8 (26:11):
According to him, though most.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Everyone was polygraphed, including Mike McMillan.
Speaker 8 (26:18):
The first polygraph he passed, but later on he was
given another polygraph because things just wouldn't go away.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
I spoke to Mike. He didn't want to appear on
the podcast because he said, quote talking about this now
just keeps it going and fans the flames. The best
thing for me to do is live my life. I
don't live in the past. The BCSO, however, hyper focused
on Mike after he revealed some rather odd behavior that December,
(26:51):
just after Dana is buried, before there is even a
gravestone on her plot, the BCSO finds out Mike McMillan
is going out to her grave every other night and
talking to himself while out there.
Speaker 8 (27:07):
People that were talked to said that he was supposed
to leave for Basic He was basically adamant that he
didn't want to go to the navy. You know, Dana
turns up missing, and then all of a sudden he's okay,
I'm ready to go to the Navy. It's fine, you know,
let's go. So he leaves and goes to Basic. There's
issues that happened there, quite a few. He goes a wall,
(27:29):
but he comes back at one point in time, this
was prior to on a wall. But he's on leave,
I guess, and comes back and he goes out to
the cemetery, instills her temporary grave marker and keeps it
in his house, keeps it in his bedroom.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Which makes Mike an even bigger target now for the Bcso.
Speaker 8 (27:53):
He was out there with another juvenile female who witnessed this,
and it mean, it even gets stranger than that for
someone that they never dated other than just being classmates.
He had the most intimate feelings for her that I've
ever seen of somebody that wasn't physically in a relationship
(28:14):
with somebody, made statements like he loved her, went out
to the cemetery like six or seven nights and would
stand out there and according to this other witness, would
just say things like he's talking to her just weird
man Like to me, that screams guilt.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Mike had indeed left for the Navy right after Dana
went missing, but he had signed up long before. He
told me. He didn't go a wall. He finished boot
camp and returned home. Likewise, it wasn't as if he
backed his truck up into the cemetery and loaded Dana's
gravestone and took it away. He stole a plastic grave
(28:55):
marker with her name on it, where the stone would
later be placed. But when the BCSO heard about Mike
stealing the grave marker, of course they were eager to
get him on record, lock him down to a statement. Still,
this hunter portray points out, so far all of this
(29:17):
is nothing more than circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 8 (29:21):
Not enough to arrest somebody. But again, you're putting the
spotlight on yourself. Now, being a thief doesn't make your murderer,
but you still her temporary grave marker. You also carry
around a photograph of her in your wallet For somebody
that doesn't want to be in the spotlight. I guess
you're not helping yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Under a subpoena, Mike is brought in after the BCSO
hears about the grave marker theft. He tells detectives he
never dated Dana and never even asked her out. He admits, however,
to seeing her the day before she went missing. Usual,
how you been fine, take care type of thing. He
(30:04):
then claims he took the grave marker quote just to
have something to remember. I wasn't trying to hurt anybody.
During a phone call, Mike told me it was the
stupidest thing I ever did in my life because now
every move he made was scrutinized by the bcso he
(30:25):
had a target on his back. And after Mike confessed
to stealing the grave marker during his interview with detectives,
they stopped the interview, read them his rights, and arrested him.
(30:50):
Dana's ex boyfriend was brought back in for questioning right
around the same time Mike McMillan was charged with stealing
the grave marker. It'd spoken to a new girlfriend Dana's
X was dating at the time Dana went missing. Detective
Mike Sidoriak explained to her where dana had been found
and wanted to know if Dana's X had ever taken
(31:13):
her the new girlfriend, out to that Beal Lane area
to have sex.
Speaker 8 (31:19):
She said no.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Sidoriak pushed harder, asking if he was ever violent, to
which she repeatedly and emphatically answered no. Sidoriak and Varner
then went back to focusing on Mike McMillan. I asked
journalist Brandon Howard why he believed the BCSO became so
(31:42):
fixated on Mike. A large part of it, of course,
was the grave marker theft, but there had.
Speaker 6 (31:48):
To be more.
Speaker 7 (31:50):
They find what appeared to be several hairs and what
they think is enough evidence to move forward with testing
it against hairs from Dana's mother, I think, to try
and prove that maybe she was in that vehicle.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Those hairs were found during a search of Mike's truck.
Mike McMillan told me quote by then it wasn't whether
I did it or not. They wanted me to have
done it. The BCSO ends up interviewing Mike again later
on and are convinced Mike is their guy.
Speaker 7 (32:23):
I would call that a marathon interview of probably six
to eight hours, where they try and essentially break him
to admit to what he's done to Dana, which she
never does. I would say he's actually kind of adamant
compared to other suspects that he has no involvement. And
it goes on and on, and he has his statements
(32:44):
and they do their best to get him to admit
to something that he feels he didn't do, and that's
the end of it. And he's named publicly the newspaper's
report that his hair was being tested in the case,
one of only two publicly named suspects.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
So during my interview with Mike, I asked him about
his name being published. He said, quote, Yeah, they put
my picture on the front page of the newspaper next
to Dana's with a story. And from that moment forward,
I was the guy. No matter what anyone said or
(33:19):
additional evidence pointing in any other direction, people looked at
Mike as Dana's killer. Here's Hunter portray Again.
Speaker 8 (33:28):
You can't rule him out, just based off the sheer
fact that he can't come up with an alibi. You
know that they took the grave marker, and again that
makes him a thief, not a murderer. He sure hasn't
helped himself any you know, by doing some of those things.
But yeah, you can't rule him out. And if you
had to make a list, you would probably put him
(33:48):
at the.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Top, you know.
Speaker 8 (33:50):
Sodorak he had McMillan at the top of his list.
And I think they had actually consulted or collaborated with
the FBI profilers and they came up with the same
conclusion as far as who did this, but again you're
talking about you got to have enough to make an
a risk.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
I wondered if Georgia Stidham could offer any insight into
Dena's thoughts about Mike.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
He said he was creepy. They got along good, they
seemed to, but Mike, Mike wondered what he wanted and
he was spoiled and thoughted.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Ought to have it, and she just wasn't interested that
way in him.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
No, No, she liked him were well as a friend,
but that was all.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
So she didn't really talk about Mike a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Then she didn't have a lot to say about him,
just that he was you telling.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Christy Smith, Dana's cousin, was sitting nearby when I spoke
to Georgia. After Georgia encouraged her, Christy told me a story.
Speaker 10 (34:50):
Well, there was one time, and it was probably we
were in junior high or just starting in high school.
It was the summer, and I was saying with them
during the summer, and Mike walked down because he you know,
he just flipped up the dirt road for her, and
he walked down the dirt road to come and see us,
or come see her and her dad did not like
(35:11):
that at all. Boys didn't come to see danam when
she was at home and that young, so he random
he made him leave.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
He ran them off.
Speaker 11 (35:19):
I mean, she was always his friend, but and I
don't remember him ever saying anything or or doing anything,
and she never complains too bad about him.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
But he just wouldn't take no for an answer.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
I must say hearing this, Mike's actions feel more like
those of a love struck kid than a brutal killer.
When you put yourself in the shoes of a teenager
in the throes of unrequited love and then the person
you love is murdered, visiting her grave every night makes
a little more sense. On the day Dana disappeared, we
(35:56):
know that she needed to go to the store for
her dad was a general store right there in Highwaseee,
down the road she could have gone to, yet Dana
made the extra trip into Bella Vista, out of the way.
Several sources had told me Dana avoided that High Wassie
store because Mike McMillan hung around there all day long.
(36:17):
His parents owned it.
Speaker 11 (36:20):
He would write her notes about, you know, wanting to
go out with her and stuff, and she would tell
him that she disliked him for a friend, and he
would just keep trying and asking.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Cindy McMillan married Mike in nineteen ninety four, five years
after Dana was murdered. At the time, the BCSO was
still pursuing him as its main suspect. I spoke to
Cindy in order to get an overall picture of who
her husband was. Behind closed doors. I was in the
minority of those unconvinced that Mike was involved with Dana's death. Look,
(36:55):
I found it very hard to believe that Mike McMillan
had something to do with Dana's murder, which was methodical,
organized and very well planned out. I can't help but
feel that if Mike killed her, he would have left
behind some sort of physical or trace evidence.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
What kind of guy was he?
Speaker 4 (37:18):
So he when I met him, very charismatic, very handsome,
very charming, funny, you know, fun to be with all
of that, He did tell me about Dana. So the
fact that he talked about her, you know, and told me,
because obviously I told him about my ex husband, my
first husband, I didn't think anything of it. He did
(37:39):
tell me that he'd been investigated because he took the
grave marker, which I would have never known that was
a crime.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Right, But he was a nice guy. Mike was upfront
about his history. He didn't hide anything. This sort of
description of Mike was something I had heard from several
others who knew him.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
When he talked about Dana's case. What did he have
to say about it anything in particular, Just.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
It was terrible.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
It was really hard for him because he left her
the Navy, and he was sad that he didn't get
to go to our funeral. That was why he went
to the grave and took the grave marker.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
But he didn't know.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
And when they started talking about it, you know, someone
stole our grave marker. He turned it in because he
didn't know. You weren't supposed to take it.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
So the public image is that of a teenager who
was allegedly infatuated with Dana and had chased her romantically
throughout their youth. According to Mike, this is quote just
not true. Everyone from that time knows this. After high school,
Mike says he hardly ever saw her. In talking to
(38:50):
family and friends, I learned that Dana had never ever
felt threatened by the guy he had never done anything
violent toward her. He shipped off to boot camp and
misses her funeral. He comes home, goes out to her
grave night after night, which he admits during an interview,
(39:10):
and on one of those nights he takes her grave marker.
His easy admission of this to me says that he
wanted to be forthright but didn't think these facts would
be incriminating. Instead, he was arrested and charged, Yet that
case went nowhere and was eventually dropped. Then Cindy McMillan
(39:35):
tells me this, He.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
You know, I think that there was a policeman or
a sheriff and he really felt like he may have
done it.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
That's what Mike thought, that some sort of police law enforcement.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
Yes, it was a young guy close to his age,
and maybe he dated Dana. I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
This was not the first time I had heard of
this same life local police officer, and Mike confirmed from
me that he and others had heard Dana was dating
a married police officer around the time she went missing.
Certain Stidham family members told me a different story that
a cop had stopped Dana on occasion and she'd complained
(40:18):
that the guy creeped her out. He had a wife
and kids, but would pull her over as an excuse
to hit honor. It's not Mike Sidoriak or Danny Varner,
I want to be perfectly clear about that. But I've
repeatedly seen this CoP's name on reports associated with Dana's
investigation as someone who had even interviewed suspects in this case.
(40:46):
As I developed sources into twenty twenty three, I spoke
to someone who had grown up in the Bella Vista
area and knew Dana socially. She was also familiar with
the crowd around Dana at the time and hung around
some of them. She doesn't want to be identified, so
I'm disguising her voice. What she has to say is disturbing,
(41:07):
but also, I might add, problematic. I asked the detective
I know who's spoken to the same source about her quote.
Don't discount what she says. My source claims she was
out one night during the summer of nineteen eighty nine
at a place called the Wonderland Cave, a bar in
(41:28):
Bella Vista. Underage kids sometimes snuck into well.
Speaker 6 (41:33):
When I got there, I walked in and the first
thing I noticed was there was this guy standing in
the middle of the dance floor that I'd never seen before,
with his arms crossed, and he kind of had this smile,
like a smirk, like something was going on with him
(41:53):
that night. And then I noticed there was a girl
with him, and then I looked at him, and I
the first thing I thought was, he's got this funny
look on his face.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
What did he look like?
Speaker 6 (42:05):
Five nine five t and it was a little bit muscular,
kind of a husky, I would call him husky, And
he appeared Betty didn't really ever go out to dance,
so it seemed like that it was unfamiliar for him
to be at a dance club and that it was
(42:27):
something new to him. And then I noticed there was
a girl with him, and it was so strange because
she was kind of in the background, and I thought
I looked at the situation and I thought, well, who
is she? And then I realized, I know who that is.
(42:48):
That's the girl that works up at the grocery store
down the road here at Bella Vista, because I had
briefly met her and talked to her. That's that Dana
Stidham girl. And I looked at him again. I thought, well,
what's he gonn't acting that way. I could see her,
(43:10):
but it was like she was just dancing around everywhere
behind him, just fluttering around and dancing kind of out
of control. Like maybe. I thought about it later and
I thought, well, maybe uh, he had given her something
to drink or something. And when I looked at him again,
this was just in a matter of you know, a
(43:33):
minute or two, I thought, something's not right here. Something
in my mind told me that this guy is fixing
to kill this girl. Oh my god, this is some
kind of a murder.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
My source claims that she went home, called the local
police and explained that this girl she casually knew, Dana Stidham,
was with a guy whose name she didn't know, but
she sensed that Dana was in big trouble and.
Speaker 6 (44:03):
That something was wrong there, and something told me that
he was fixing and plotting and planning to kill Hart.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Well, let me just stop you right there. So do
you recall the date the exact date of this.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
No, I don't.
Speaker 6 (44:19):
I think it was either right around the time of
when she was reported missing. It had to bend the
time because after I talked to the police, they were like, no,
there's nothing going on. You're just that's crazy. There's nothing
going on.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
I spoke to law enforcement and they verified she called them. Also,
the Wonderland Cave is four miles south of the Phillips Grocery. Remember,
Dana was seen heading south on Route seventy one the
night she disappeared, and just a two minute drive from
Blowing Springs Park. If you recall, in the previous episode,
(45:02):
Dana was supposedly seen at the park with Orville Mitch
Goodwin on the night.
Speaker 8 (45:07):
She went missing.
Speaker 6 (45:09):
I told him I thought something was going on, and
that it seemed like this guy was that something had
told me, you know, so you know I think. I
also then called the Bellavist police station and told them
and they were like, oh okay. Then the next thing
I know is somebody says that Dana Gry she didn't
go missing. I said, I told y'all, I tried to
(45:32):
tell y'all there's something going on.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
The entire scene had a major impact on this woman.
She could not shake it, and so she started asking
around trying to find out the name of the guy
she allegedly saw at the cave that night with Dana Stidham.
Speaker 6 (45:48):
You know, we were maybe at somebody's house, and just
somebody had mentioned it to me, somebody that knew the guy.
They told me his name is Mike.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Coming next on Paper Ghosts the Ozones.
Speaker 6 (46:06):
All of a sudden, he says, Linda, I see a skull.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
I says, oh, surely not. But I went back there
with him and we saw the skull.
Speaker 6 (46:16):
I said, y'all know Dana Stidham, didn't she go missing
around here somewhere? And she says, yeah, you better leave
there right now. She says, because if you don't, the
same thing's gonna happen to you.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I thanks, you bitch had a lot to do with it,
and that a bitch is exactly what she was.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Please listen and subscribe to my other podcasts, Crossing the
Line with m William Phelps and White Eagle, wherever you
get your favorite shows. Paper Ghost Season four is written
and executive produced by me Em William Phelps, script consulting
by Rose Bachi, sound design by Matt Russell, executive production
(46:59):
by Catherine in Law, and audio editing and mixing by
Brandon Dicker Taka Boom Productions. The series theme number four
four to two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps
and Tom Mooney
I've been interviewing the families of murder victims since nineteen
ninety nine. It's one of the most profound and personal
aspects of my job, because well, I'm one of them.
In nineteen ninety six, my brother's wife, five months pregnant,
was strangled to death. Her case remains unsolved. So when
(00:31):
families tell me how difficult this is to talk about,
I can empathize. Opening up old wounds, digging back into
the past is not always worth the pain and vulnerability
of exposing yourself for the sake of keeping a memory alive.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I hate to get into this. We've heard the rumor
and we got a hold to Hanny and Mike, the
cop State were on the case, and they came to
the house and told us.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
There was that knock on the door. No family member
of a missing person ever wants to hear.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I'm thinking they're lying like hell, because my little girl
wasn't dead, and that's really all I can talk about that.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
The anguish in Georgia Stidham's voice truly emphasizes how murder
violates the core foundation of what family represents. When the
victim is your child, your world is not only shattered
but everything from that moment on is different. Danis Stidham's
(01:47):
family had been in emotional purgatory for nearly two months,
not knowing, wondering and waiting. But then on September seventeenth,
nineteen eighty nine, the Benton County Sheriff's Office shows up
to deliver the worst news imaginable. As you heard Dana's mother,
Georgia Stidham explain, the mere memory of all that she'd
(02:11):
lost that day was still too difficult to talk about
in any detail some three decades later.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
I also wanted to ask you about Lawrence. Tell me
about your husband.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Oh, he was so sick. He had rheumatoid arthritis, real bad,
and all the dregs had eating at his insides pretty much,
and he was just Dana was his everything. She went
to the stores for anything she thought he needed, she'd
(02:48):
go pick up.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
And bring to.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
And they were home a lot together, Laurence's Dutch where
he couldn't work with the kids while I were so
this crushed them, then, yes it did. It was the
beginning of the air for him.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Georgia believes Dana's murder contributed to the death of her husband,
who died in the years after Lawrence was only fifty
years old. Dana's cousin and best friend, Christy Smith, recalls
how harrowing those days leading up to finding Dana's body were.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Well, this whole time we have been driving around, we
have been posting flyers. We went all over Missouri, the
bordering cities of Missouri, all over Fayville, everywhere we can
think of, at every store that would allow us, we
posted flyers and never got a response. In the back
of your mind, you know that if you haven't heard
something by now, then she is either no longer alive
(03:52):
or somebody has her and you don't know who it is.
And then in September we had actually driven by where
they found her body, going to a place to put
out some flyers, and I believe it was the next
day they found her remains.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
For BCSO Detectives. As horrible as the situation was, the
discovery of Dana's body gave the investigation a much needed boost.
They now had a crime scene to process. Justice for
Danis Stidham and her family could begin as the hunt
for her killer entered a brand new face. Previously on
(04:40):
Pay for Ghosts.
Speaker 6 (04:41):
So I'll stopped there and Bill will Squahant and I
saw and a drag creek dead and saw scull and
some rib bone.
Speaker 7 (04:49):
And it became somewhat alarming when they found a dirty
magazine with some of van It's clothing.
Speaker 6 (04:55):
So now you have a suspect that worked at.
Speaker 7 (04:57):
The store with Anna, had an issue with email on
fullet text of harassment and also said have ativity for
thirty magazines.
Speaker 8 (05:06):
You know, hey, we've got three or four suspects, why
not add another fifth suspect.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
and author of more than forty true crime books. This
is season four of Paper Ghosts the Ozarks.
Speaker 9 (05:35):
All right, so here this is leading to beale road, woods,
dirt road. We'll definitely drive in a truck.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Investigators enter a crime scene hoping to collect fingerprints, footprints,
tire tracks, blood, and additional bodily fluids, along with hairs, fibers,
fire debris, a cigarette butt, or any other item that
might lead them to a killer. Back to the vehicle
rocker parked up here.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Offee goes.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I have seen murdersov with the most obscure, smallest piece
of evidence lint from a blanket, sweat, DNA, unseen by
the naked eye, even a single cat hair. The crime
scene itself, where it is, what the terrain is like,
how it looks can say a lot about a killer.
(06:36):
Here's investigative journalists Brandon Howard.
Speaker 7 (06:41):
I went there a few years ago. I was shocked
to see that it's super rural, still almost forgotten in time.
It's a place you go from a paved highway that
sees thousands of cars to dirt road really quickly uneven
deep into the woods opens it to a large clearing,
sort of circular base, a culta sac without any pavement.
(07:02):
Yet despite being so far off the beaten path, you
can see not far the liquor store just up the
road that's crossed the state line.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
And then so you get out, you walk through the
woods and there's a creek bed there where she was found.
Speaker 6 (07:15):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (07:16):
I had one detective mentioned that they thought it was
done hastily, and then they realized other items of hers romance.
They went back and tossed those and left. But I
would think that you'd have to be somewhat strong or
able body to carry a person down into that area
of the woods and know about it. I don't think
that anyone just stumbled across that spot.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
In June twenty twenty three, I made my way from
the Phillips grocery toward the crime scene where Dana's body
had been discovered, and what struck me first was how
remote it is. We're talking about a densely wooded section
of Bella Vista. To get there, you travel along these narrow,
winding roads, zigzagging through the northern part of the state,
(08:03):
on the southern edge of the Ozarks. Houses are few
and far between. One would have to have prior knowledge
of this area, I imagine, to commit a murder here
and or dump a body. I was guided by GPS
and had the global satellite coordinates of the exact location
where Dana's remains were found, and still had trouble finding it.
(08:26):
The dry creek Betty's talking about, and she would have
been found about right here. I parked in what was
a dirt road cul de sac not yet developed into housing.
Walking down the steep embankment into a thickly forested valley,
the road where I had parked disappeared from my view.
Speaker 8 (08:45):
Cover here is remarkable.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
The hill in front of me.
Speaker 8 (08:49):
She's screaming no one's hearing.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Her standing where Dana's body had been found. The immense
sadness of this place had an overwhelming effect on me.
Speaker 8 (09:04):
You're talking about an eighteen year old that just graduated
high school like two months prior. She's got her whole
life ahead of her, and all that gone in the
blink of an eye for mother, for her to have
to live with this, I can't even put myself in
her shoes. Un she's had to go through over the years.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
That was Bcso Lieutenant Hunter betray Georgia Stidham told Brandon
Howard in an article he published in twenty fifteen, quote
and her rest will never bring closure. I'll never get
her back, but I'd like to see her kill her caught,
so wouldn't feel like I just let my daughter die
(09:43):
and I walked away. Sadly, Georgia would not live to
experience justice. On October twenty sixth, twenty twenty three, she
passed away, seventy three years old.
Speaker 8 (10:01):
You know, I talked to her and just kind of
revisited because I had not met her again. You know,
this was not my case to begin with, so I
had not met her and basically just went over to
her house and grabbed it and spoke to her for
about thirty minutes to an hour and just it's always man,
it's if he because you don't want her to have
to relive. Sure, bring all these things back up.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
And so September comes, no Dana.
Speaker 8 (10:26):
I think at that point in time, you're talking about
six to seven weeks since she disappeared and nothing. And
then all of a sudden there's a guy who was
squirrel hunting in an area clear on the other side
of town, basically on the east side of Bello Vista,
ran across some remains. Pretty much at that point in
(10:47):
time they had been skeletonized. So I don't want to
get to sound like it's a body remains, is I
think probably the proper term.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Many thought it was strange, if not suspicious, that the
hunter had waited a day before calling police about the
discovery of a body.
Speaker 8 (11:04):
Again, it's unusual and it's weird because he doesn't report
it right away. He waits a day. He actually sees it,
looks at it, leaves because he says he was in
a hurry, goes and talks to a friend, tells the friend, hey,
I found some human remains. Friend kind of didn't didn't
really believe him at first, but basically told him, hey,
(11:26):
you need to report that. So the next day he
does report it. The skull.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Let's talk about where this is. This is not a
place that you would put a body unless you knew.
Speaker 8 (11:38):
Of the place, probably unless you were driving around, which
you would be really high risk driving around with a
body in your car looking for a place. So yeah,
probably you know the statistics and the odds are that
somebody you ever did this. One person two persons was
familiar with the area. Bella Vista has a lot of
cull to sacks, a lot of dead end roades, a
(12:00):
lot of them are undeveloped.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Hunter Petray then mentioned something quite interesting, if you recall
from a previous episode, I began to wonder about a
group of friends Dana hung around whom she hadn't discussed
much with her family. Georgia and even Christy knew most
of the people within Dana's circle, but.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Not all of them.
Speaker 8 (12:22):
I don't know if you know this or not, but
prior to this, maybe a year or two prior, that
area was kind of a party spot for kids. There
was a shooting that took place there and a kid
died after that kind of everybody was afraid to associate
with that area. So there were people that were familiar
with that area as a party spot. So again things
(12:47):
start running through your mind. Are these people that same
age group as Dana that knew about this area? Again, unknown,
but that's a possibility, but yeah, it was a party
spot for a while. That could sack.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Did they try to find those people and interview.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
Any of them.
Speaker 8 (13:04):
They talked to some people that had been out there before,
but they said that they had not been out there,
you know, since that kid got killed out there with
the shooting.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
As Dana's body was sent in for autopsy, investigators hoped
to learn something about her killer. They theorized she had
been out in the elements since the day after she
went missing, nearly eight weeks. Her body was skeletonized, torn apart,
and spread by animals over an area about the size
(13:34):
of a football field. One particular discovery by the corner
gave a possible explanation as to how Dana might have
been murdered.
Speaker 8 (13:44):
When you have passage of time and its remains, that
also complicates autopsies because you don't have an intact body.
But they found there was a nick on the collarbone
that they felt like was from a knife. Now, whether
she was stabbed, you know, in the neck throat cut,
we don't know for sure because we can't tell, but
(14:07):
there was a nick in the collarbone that suggested that
it was some type of knife attack.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
So that would beat the inside part of the.
Speaker 8 (14:14):
Collars correct, yeah, close to the neck the throat area basically.
So they did note that and noted that that was
anti mortem, which would have been prior to death. They
rolled it a homicide. There was also some things that
suggested that this was possibly a sexual assault, like what
the braw the over the shoulder straps were cut with
(14:37):
some type of sharp instrument down near where they connect
with the backstrap. It appears that the braw had been
cut with a sharp instrument.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Several facts discovered during the autopsy become important for one.
Dana's clothing white shorts, white shoes, bra white T shirt
were all found in a hole about one foot deep
ten or more yards away from where her skull was
recovered in the creek bed. Her underwear, however, was found
(15:10):
close to her skull. The corner noted quote based upon
the presence of a sharply cut inner aspect of the
left clavicle. There was a violent injury through a cut
throat or a stab wound to the area. Two rings,
later identified as Dana's were found near her buried clothes.
(15:31):
Hares believed to be pulled out of her head were
also recovered, a lock of which showed heavy damage to
the roots from all the decomposition. It was also reported
that the right and left sleeves of Danish shirt had
been severed at the armpits, jagged cuts as if made
crudely with the knife. On the upper left front thigh
(15:54):
area of her shorts. The crime lab found a piece
of duct tape. Was there any bindings or anything like
that found?
Speaker 8 (16:03):
Yeah, there was some twine O orangish red twine that
was there. There was also some found up at the
cull to sag. They sent a lot of that down. Now,
there were some knots in it, but the lab could
not determine or specify that any of those knots were
(16:24):
used for any type of ligature or binding of Dana.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
The amount of bindings seemed significant. One section was nineteen
inches long with a two inch diameter or loop tied
in a double strand overhand knot. Forty three and a
half inches of baling twine was recovered directly next to
her body and divided into two pieces, tied together with
a clove hitch slip knot with a binding knot at
(16:52):
the end. That type of knot is indicative of binding
one thing to another and clearly intentional. Still, were the
bindings connected to Dana's murder.
Speaker 8 (17:07):
That was never conclusively determined that any of that twine
had been used to tie her up or bind her
or anything of that nature. But it's interesting, and again,
you know, it's complicated because that area was a party spot.
There were people that drove by there and dumped things.
You know, is this twine involved in this or is
it just unknown?
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Up on bea lane along the embankment of the cul
de Sac leading down toward where Dana was found, ten
additional feat of bailing twine, divided into six pieces and
enjoined by intricate different types of knots, were located. The
crime lab concluded that quote none of the cuts or
(17:49):
knotted regions indicated that these twines had clearly been used
in ligaturing, restraining, or binding a person. A statement, I
kind of have a problem with because there is no
definitive way to answer that question by studying the twine alone.
After all, an inability to prove something doesn't automatically disprove it.
(18:13):
DNA testing was possible, but also unreliable since the material
had been out in the elements for so long. Near
the same time, the lab came back with another find.
They'd located a single Caucasian strand of hair three point
three inches long with the roots still attached inside a
(18:35):
cup and Dana's car, a potentially significant discovery because they
knew immediately that one hair was not Dana's. After the
(19:02):
discovery of her remains, Dana Stidham's murder dominated local news reports.
Benton County was eager to put a face on evil.
You take away someone's sense of safety. Fear seeps in,
fear breeds accusation, reaction.
Speaker 8 (19:21):
And a rush to judgment. That's just human nature.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
In order for me to get a clear picture of
what could have possibly led up to Dana's murder, it
was important to look at the dynamics of Dana's life
from different perspectives. Here's Dana's mother again, Georgia, Can you
just talk to me?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
A little bit about Dana as a child growing up?
What kind of child she was?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
She was a laugh a minute. She was the happiest
kid you've ever met. She was always being sol and snickering,
and she had a slap and all the time.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
What did she talk about as a young kid that
she wanted to do?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
You know, boy boys boys boys.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
And when she was younger, what was she like?
Speaker 8 (20:15):
What did she like to do?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
She was into all kinds of stuff. She painted, and
she did ceramics, and she did all kinds of stuff.
She was really talented.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
And how was her relationship with mom and dad over
the years.
Speaker 6 (20:34):
It was good.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
She had a lot of friends.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yes, she wanted everybody to be her friend.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Three days after Dana's body was found, the BCSO brought
in a classmate whose name was given to them by
several of Dana's friends. I'll call him Stand for the
purposes of the podcast. He was never named as a suspect,
but he did provide some rather compelling information. He referred
to himself as Dana's best friend, but made it clear
(21:04):
he'd never had a sexual relationship with her. He had
seen her the weekend before she disappeared. During Stan's interview,
detective Mike Sidoriac asked about Dana lending a friend a
pair of boots, which she had wanted back on the
day she disappeared. Stan corroborated this information. Zidoriac asked Stan
(21:28):
if he would have pulled up behind Dana as she drove,
would she have stopped? Stan said yes, So you have
the body, the bodies released, the body is buried.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
What happens next?
Speaker 8 (21:44):
So you know, the big thing back then was that,
you know, they took people when they interviewed them. They
polygraphed him, they took their fingerprints, hoping that something would
come back off the chip bag or her clothing that
was sent down Layton's hair follicles, you know, something to
try to tie somebody as far as physical evidence to
the homicide and the abduction.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Or murder, and nothing came back.
Speaker 8 (22:08):
Nothing came back.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Really.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Detectives Mike Sadoriak and Danny Varner had been up the
ass of a local kid, Mike McMillan since almost the
day Dana went missing. Several people I spoke to, including police,
said Mike was an easy target. Mike, however, didn't help
his own cause well.
Speaker 8 (22:31):
He was interviewed He was given several polygraphs, but initially
he was confronted a couple of days after her disappearance.
He could not give well. He tried, but it was
kind of blown out of the water. He tried to
give an alibi that he was visiting a girl down
in Farmington, which is down by Fayetteville, you know, thirty
(22:54):
miles away or whatever, but she basically said, I don't
remember that, you know, I don't think that I was
with you. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lie for you.
I'm not gonna come up with some story for you.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
If I'm a BCSO detective, I'm wondering why in the
hell lie about where you were?
Speaker 6 (23:15):
Then this?
Speaker 8 (23:16):
You know, he was seen that night and I'm talking
about that night. I'm talking about the twenty fifth into
the early morning of the twenty sixth. He was seen
around three o'clock that next morning, and I want to
say it was at the Bentonville Mercantile. Somebody had seen
him there, and he just didn't really have a good
alibi other than just driving around. His mother said that
(23:42):
he had left home earlier that day on the twenty fifth,
and did not come back until you know, way later
the next morning. So I don't know about you, but
I know, like, like I probably can't tell you what
I had for lunch yesterday, but I can tell you
I went if I thought about it. And you know,
(24:03):
just two days later to not be able to come
up with any valid alibi of where you were at
other than something you come up with which was blown
out of the water.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
And what's the connection to Dana with Mike McMillan schoolmates?
He was in a line of schoolmates that were questioned.
Speaker 8 (24:20):
Yeah, and he was also really good friends with well,
I say really good friends. They kind of lived together.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
I think I bleeped out his name. But Hunter Portray
is referring to Dana's ex boyfriend, so he starts looking suspicious.
Speaker 8 (24:35):
Well, from people that were taught to he was somewhat
infatuated with her and had tried to make advances on her,
and she had rejected him because she was seeing some
other people at the time and basically didn't want anything
to do with him. You know, there's some people that
said that, you know, he was kind of infatuated with her,
(24:56):
wanted to go out with her, and she just kept
rejecting him, and he would get upset about. So there's
a motive there.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, could be strong person of interest for sure, right,
as were others.
Speaker 8 (25:08):
As were others. Yeah, at this time. You know, again,
there's no physical evidence, there's no witnesses to tie. But
there's a lady that saw him driving, supposedly and saw
a brunette girl in the truck with him. Now we
don't know necessarily if it was that day the day before.
It's kind of vague, but we it makes it seem
(25:28):
like it might have been that night. He didn't deny it. Now,
he didn't say he said that, you know. Obviously he
didn't admit that it was Dane in the truck, but
he didn't really deny that somebody could have been in
this truck. He didn't deny that when he was questioned,
did he go to Bella Vista? Could have You know,
you're this person saying that you didn't go down to
(25:50):
Farmington and see her?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Is she a liar?
Speaker 8 (25:53):
Well, you know, if she said that, I'm not calling
anybody a liar. So it wasn't real hard to deny.
The only hard denial that he gave was that he
didn't kill Dana.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
So he did deny that was he one of the
kids who partied in that spot up by Beale Road.
Speaker 8 (26:11):
According to him, though most.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Everyone was polygraphed, including Mike McMillan.
Speaker 8 (26:18):
The first polygraph he passed, but later on he was
given another polygraph because things just wouldn't go away.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
I spoke to Mike. He didn't want to appear on
the podcast because he said, quote talking about this now
just keeps it going and fans the flames. The best
thing for me to do is live my life. I
don't live in the past. The BCSO, however, hyper focused
on Mike after he revealed some rather odd behavior that December,
(26:51):
just after Dana is buried, before there is even a
gravestone on her plot, the BCSO finds out Mike McMillan
is going out to her grave every other night and
talking to himself while out there.
Speaker 8 (27:07):
People that were talked to said that he was supposed
to leave for Basic He was basically adamant that he
didn't want to go to the navy. You know, Dana
turns up missing, and then all of a sudden he's okay,
I'm ready to go to the Navy. It's fine, you know,
let's go. So he leaves and goes to Basic. There's
issues that happened there, quite a few. He goes a wall,
(27:29):
but he comes back at one point in time, this
was prior to on a wall. But he's on leave,
I guess, and comes back and he goes out to
the cemetery, instills her temporary grave marker and keeps it
in his house, keeps it in his bedroom.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Which makes Mike an even bigger target now for the Bcso.
Speaker 8 (27:53):
He was out there with another juvenile female who witnessed this,
and it mean, it even gets stranger than that for
someone that they never dated other than just being classmates.
He had the most intimate feelings for her that I've
ever seen of somebody that wasn't physically in a relationship
(28:14):
with somebody, made statements like he loved her, went out
to the cemetery like six or seven nights and would
stand out there and according to this other witness, would
just say things like he's talking to her just weird
man Like to me, that screams guilt.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Mike had indeed left for the Navy right after Dana
went missing, but he had signed up long before. He
told me. He didn't go a wall. He finished boot
camp and returned home. Likewise, it wasn't as if he
backed his truck up into the cemetery and loaded Dana's
gravestone and took it away. He stole a plastic grave
(28:55):
marker with her name on it, where the stone would
later be placed. But when the BCSO heard about Mike
stealing the grave marker, of course they were eager to
get him on record, lock him down to a statement. Still,
this hunter portray points out, so far all of this
(29:17):
is nothing more than circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 8 (29:21):
Not enough to arrest somebody. But again, you're putting the
spotlight on yourself. Now, being a thief doesn't make your murderer,
but you still her temporary grave marker. You also carry
around a photograph of her in your wallet For somebody
that doesn't want to be in the spotlight. I guess
you're not helping yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Under a subpoena, Mike is brought in after the BCSO
hears about the grave marker theft. He tells detectives he
never dated Dana and never even asked her out. He admits, however,
to seeing her the day before she went missing. Usual,
how you been fine, take care type of thing. He
(30:04):
then claims he took the grave marker quote just to
have something to remember. I wasn't trying to hurt anybody.
During a phone call, Mike told me it was the
stupidest thing I ever did in my life because now
every move he made was scrutinized by the bcso he
(30:25):
had a target on his back. And after Mike confessed
to stealing the grave marker during his interview with detectives,
they stopped the interview, read them his rights, and arrested him.
(30:50):
Dana's ex boyfriend was brought back in for questioning right
around the same time Mike McMillan was charged with stealing
the grave marker. It'd spoken to a new girlfriend Dana's
X was dating at the time Dana went missing. Detective
Mike Sidoriak explained to her where dana had been found
and wanted to know if Dana's X had ever taken
(31:13):
her the new girlfriend, out to that Beal Lane area
to have sex.
Speaker 8 (31:19):
She said no.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Sidoriak pushed harder, asking if he was ever violent, to
which she repeatedly and emphatically answered no. Sidoriak and Varner
then went back to focusing on Mike McMillan. I asked
journalist Brandon Howard why he believed the BCSO became so
(31:42):
fixated on Mike. A large part of it, of course,
was the grave marker theft, but there had.
Speaker 6 (31:48):
To be more.
Speaker 7 (31:50):
They find what appeared to be several hairs and what
they think is enough evidence to move forward with testing
it against hairs from Dana's mother, I think, to try
and prove that maybe she was in that vehicle.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Those hairs were found during a search of Mike's truck.
Mike McMillan told me quote by then it wasn't whether
I did it or not. They wanted me to have
done it. The BCSO ends up interviewing Mike again later
on and are convinced Mike is their guy.
Speaker 7 (32:23):
I would call that a marathon interview of probably six
to eight hours, where they try and essentially break him
to admit to what he's done to Dana, which she
never does. I would say he's actually kind of adamant
compared to other suspects that he has no involvement. And
it goes on and on, and he has his statements
(32:44):
and they do their best to get him to admit
to something that he feels he didn't do, and that's
the end of it. And he's named publicly the newspaper's
report that his hair was being tested in the case,
one of only two publicly named suspects.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
So during my interview with Mike, I asked him about
his name being published. He said, quote, Yeah, they put
my picture on the front page of the newspaper next
to Dana's with a story. And from that moment forward,
I was the guy. No matter what anyone said or
(33:19):
additional evidence pointing in any other direction, people looked at
Mike as Dana's killer. Here's Hunter portray Again.
Speaker 8 (33:28):
You can't rule him out, just based off the sheer
fact that he can't come up with an alibi. You
know that they took the grave marker, and again that
makes him a thief, not a murderer. He sure hasn't
helped himself any you know, by doing some of those things.
But yeah, you can't rule him out. And if you
had to make a list, you would probably put him
(33:48):
at the.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Top, you know.
Speaker 8 (33:50):
Sodorak he had McMillan at the top of his list.
And I think they had actually consulted or collaborated with
the FBI profilers and they came up with the same
conclusion as far as who did this, but again you're
talking about you got to have enough to make an
a risk.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
I wondered if Georgia Stidham could offer any insight into
Dena's thoughts about Mike.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
He said he was creepy. They got along good, they
seemed to, but Mike, Mike wondered what he wanted and
he was spoiled and thoughted.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Ought to have it, and she just wasn't interested that
way in him.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
No, No, she liked him were well as a friend,
but that was all.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
So she didn't really talk about Mike a lot.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Then she didn't have a lot to say about him,
just that he was you telling.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Christy Smith, Dana's cousin, was sitting nearby when I spoke
to Georgia. After Georgia encouraged her, Christy told me a story.
Speaker 10 (34:50):
Well, there was one time, and it was probably we
were in junior high or just starting in high school.
It was the summer, and I was saying with them
during the summer, and Mike walked down because he you know,
he just flipped up the dirt road for her, and
he walked down the dirt road to come and see us,
or come see her and her dad did not like
(35:11):
that at all. Boys didn't come to see danam when
she was at home and that young, so he random
he made him leave.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
He ran them off.
Speaker 11 (35:19):
I mean, she was always his friend, but and I
don't remember him ever saying anything or or doing anything,
and she never complains too bad about him.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
But he just wouldn't take no for an answer.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
I must say hearing this, Mike's actions feel more like
those of a love struck kid than a brutal killer.
When you put yourself in the shoes of a teenager
in the throes of unrequited love and then the person
you love is murdered, visiting her grave every night makes
a little more sense. On the day Dana disappeared, we
(35:56):
know that she needed to go to the store for
her dad was a general store right there in Highwaseee,
down the road she could have gone to, yet Dana
made the extra trip into Bella Vista, out of the way.
Several sources had told me Dana avoided that High Wassie
store because Mike McMillan hung around there all day long.
(36:17):
His parents owned it.
Speaker 11 (36:20):
He would write her notes about, you know, wanting to
go out with her and stuff, and she would tell
him that she disliked him for a friend, and he
would just keep trying and asking.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Cindy McMillan married Mike in nineteen ninety four, five years
after Dana was murdered. At the time, the BCSO was
still pursuing him as its main suspect. I spoke to
Cindy in order to get an overall picture of who
her husband was. Behind closed doors. I was in the
minority of those unconvinced that Mike was involved with Dana's death. Look,
(36:55):
I found it very hard to believe that Mike McMillan
had something to do with Dana's murder, which was methodical,
organized and very well planned out. I can't help but
feel that if Mike killed her, he would have left
behind some sort of physical or trace evidence.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
What kind of guy was he?
Speaker 4 (37:18):
So he when I met him, very charismatic, very handsome,
very charming, funny, you know, fun to be with all
of that, He did tell me about Dana. So the
fact that he talked about her, you know, and told me,
because obviously I told him about my ex husband, my
first husband, I didn't think anything of it. He did
(37:39):
tell me that he'd been investigated because he took the
grave marker, which I would have never known that was
a crime.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Right, But he was a nice guy. Mike was upfront
about his history. He didn't hide anything. This sort of
description of Mike was something I had heard from several
others who knew him.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
When he talked about Dana's case. What did he have
to say about it anything in particular, Just.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
It was terrible.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
It was really hard for him because he left her
the Navy, and he was sad that he didn't get
to go to our funeral. That was why he went
to the grave and took the grave marker.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
But he didn't know.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
And when they started talking about it, you know, someone
stole our grave marker. He turned it in because he
didn't know. You weren't supposed to take it.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
So the public image is that of a teenager who
was allegedly infatuated with Dana and had chased her romantically
throughout their youth. According to Mike, this is quote just
not true. Everyone from that time knows this. After high school,
Mike says he hardly ever saw her. In talking to
(38:50):
family and friends, I learned that Dana had never ever
felt threatened by the guy he had never done anything
violent toward her. He shipped off to boot camp and
misses her funeral. He comes home, goes out to her
grave night after night, which he admits during an interview,
(39:10):
and on one of those nights he takes her grave marker.
His easy admission of this to me says that he
wanted to be forthright but didn't think these facts would
be incriminating. Instead, he was arrested and charged, Yet that
case went nowhere and was eventually dropped. Then Cindy McMillan
(39:35):
tells me this, He.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
You know, I think that there was a policeman or
a sheriff and he really felt like he may have
done it.
Speaker 3 (39:46):
That's what Mike thought, that some sort of police law enforcement.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
Yes, it was a young guy close to his age,
and maybe he dated Dana. I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
This was not the first time I had heard of
this same life local police officer, and Mike confirmed from
me that he and others had heard Dana was dating
a married police officer around the time she went missing.
Certain Stidham family members told me a different story that
a cop had stopped Dana on occasion and she'd complained
(40:18):
that the guy creeped her out. He had a wife
and kids, but would pull her over as an excuse
to hit honor. It's not Mike Sidoriak or Danny Varner,
I want to be perfectly clear about that. But I've
repeatedly seen this CoP's name on reports associated with Dana's
investigation as someone who had even interviewed suspects in this case.
(40:46):
As I developed sources into twenty twenty three, I spoke
to someone who had grown up in the Bella Vista
area and knew Dana socially. She was also familiar with
the crowd around Dana at the time and hung around
some of them. She doesn't want to be identified, so
I'm disguising her voice. What she has to say is disturbing,
(41:07):
but also, I might add, problematic. I asked the detective
I know who's spoken to the same source about her quote.
Don't discount what she says. My source claims she was
out one night during the summer of nineteen eighty nine
at a place called the Wonderland Cave, a bar in
(41:28):
Bella Vista. Underage kids sometimes snuck into well.
Speaker 6 (41:33):
When I got there, I walked in and the first
thing I noticed was there was this guy standing in
the middle of the dance floor that I'd never seen before,
with his arms crossed, and he kind of had this smile,
like a smirk, like something was going on with him
(41:53):
that night. And then I noticed there was a girl
with him, and then I looked at him, and I
the first thing I thought was, he's got this funny
look on his face.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
What did he look like?
Speaker 6 (42:05):
Five nine five t and it was a little bit muscular,
kind of a husky, I would call him husky, And
he appeared Betty didn't really ever go out to dance,
so it seemed like that it was unfamiliar for him
to be at a dance club and that it was
(42:27):
something new to him. And then I noticed there was
a girl with him, and it was so strange because
she was kind of in the background, and I thought
I looked at the situation and I thought, well, who
is she? And then I realized, I know who that is.
(42:48):
That's the girl that works up at the grocery store
down the road here at Bella Vista, because I had
briefly met her and talked to her. That's that Dana
Stidham girl. And I looked at him again. I thought, well,
what's he gonn't acting that way. I could see her,
(43:10):
but it was like she was just dancing around everywhere
behind him, just fluttering around and dancing kind of out
of control. Like maybe. I thought about it later and
I thought, well, maybe uh, he had given her something
to drink or something. And when I looked at him again,
this was just in a matter of you know, a
(43:33):
minute or two, I thought, something's not right here. Something
in my mind told me that this guy is fixing
to kill this girl. Oh my god, this is some
kind of a murder.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
My source claims that she went home, called the local
police and explained that this girl she casually knew, Dana Stidham,
was with a guy whose name she didn't know, but
she sensed that Dana was in big trouble and.
Speaker 6 (44:03):
That something was wrong there, and something told me that
he was fixing and plotting and planning to kill Hart.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Well, let me just stop you right there. So do
you recall the date the exact date of this.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
No, I don't.
Speaker 6 (44:19):
I think it was either right around the time of
when she was reported missing. It had to bend the
time because after I talked to the police, they were like, no,
there's nothing going on. You're just that's crazy. There's nothing
going on.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
I spoke to law enforcement and they verified she called them. Also,
the Wonderland Cave is four miles south of the Phillips Grocery. Remember,
Dana was seen heading south on Route seventy one the
night she disappeared, and just a two minute drive from
Blowing Springs Park. If you recall, in the previous episode,
(45:02):
Dana was supposedly seen at the park with Orville Mitch
Goodwin on the night.
Speaker 8 (45:07):
She went missing.
Speaker 6 (45:09):
I told him I thought something was going on, and
that it seemed like this guy was that something had
told me, you know, so you know I think. I
also then called the Bellavist police station and told them
and they were like, oh okay. Then the next thing
I know is somebody says that Dana Gry she didn't
go missing. I said, I told y'all, I tried to
(45:32):
tell y'all there's something going on.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
The entire scene had a major impact on this woman.
She could not shake it, and so she started asking
around trying to find out the name of the guy
she allegedly saw at the cave that night with Dana Stidham.
Speaker 6 (45:48):
You know, we were maybe at somebody's house, and just
somebody had mentioned it to me, somebody that knew the guy.
They told me his name is Mike.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Coming next on Paper Ghosts the Ozones.
Speaker 6 (46:06):
All of a sudden, he says, Linda, I see a skull.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
I says, oh, surely not. But I went back there
with him and we saw the skull.
Speaker 6 (46:16):
I said, y'all know Dana Stidham, didn't she go missing
around here somewhere? And she says, yeah, you better leave
there right now. She says, because if you don't, the
same thing's gonna happen to you.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
I thanks, you bitch had a lot to do with it,
and that a bitch is exactly what she was.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
Please listen and subscribe to my other podcasts, Crossing the
Line with m William Phelps and White Eagle, wherever you
get your favorite shows. Paper Ghost Season four is written
and executive produced by me Em William Phelps, script consulting
by Rose Bachi, sound design by Matt Russell, executive production
(46:59):
by Catherine in Law, and audio editing and mixing by
Brandon Dicker Taka Boom Productions. The series theme number four
four to two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps
and Tom Mooney
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.