February 21, 2024 • 44 mins
In the heat of the Ozarks summer, 1989, an 18-year-old woman goes missing. Dana Stidham vanishes in the middle of the day, from the parking lot of a local supermarket. Everyone in the small town of Bella Vista, Arkansas, is seemingly searching for her. Law enforcement receives scores of sightings and potential leads. Dana’s family is frantic, concerned, but also hopeful… that is, until her car and clothing are found, several early suspects emerge, and a mystery 34 years in the making begins.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
I have nightmares about this. I have nightmares that she's
asking for help and I can't help her. That she
has been found after all these years, and she's alive,
and I don't know. I just want to know what
happened to her, But not knowing as hard picturing the
fear that she must have been in when whoever took
(00:25):
her took her and did whatever they did. I can
only imagine the terror that she was going through in
the last you know, the last thoughts that she was.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Thinking when she died.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
It's horrific for anyone to go through that. And then
I don't know, it's just horrific.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Beneath the folksy, postcard perfect surface of any small American
town lies a hint of evil few can imagine actually
exists within their peaceful lives. Most never come face to
face with it, and yet everyone understands they are, perhaps
closer than they might think, to being swallowed up by it.
(01:12):
Having a loved one go missing creates a grim reality,
forcing family members to experience the worst life can throw
at you. Their only weapon of defense within that struggle hope.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I've always carried hope.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
No matter how long it's been an unsolved murder leaves
behind a quiet sorrow and an intense gravity. In many ways,
an incredible sense of lost identity seeps into everyday life.
It's what some refer to as forever pain.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I think the one thing about Dana's case is that
Bitten County skill to this day, enjoys a very low
crime I'm rate it is extremely rare for it to
be a stranger, a stranger abduction, or at least not
immediately understandable what happened. Right, people don't get kidnapped off
(02:13):
parking lots. I would imagine then people didn't lock their cars,
they left their keys in the car at the grocery store,
I mean they let their doors open. And so not
only for that to happen to a young girl, but
also for it to be not immediately known what happened
creates fear and panic in folks. I would say it's
(02:33):
not an overstated, say that's an earth shattering event in
terms of crime in ben County.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Murder is such a profound tragedy it can take a
lifetime to not only understand what happened to a victim,
but the process, what their loved ones went through.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
It's a part of.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
The true crime experience, rarely given more than a cursory glance.
The certainty of living with enormous loss. Murder moreover, divides
families and sometimes puts neighbors and even friends at odds.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
I'm going to tell you it can go either way.
I have seen small communities that it'll bring them together.
It will bring folks that haven't been together with the
same mindset, and so they start to kind of look
out for each other. It becomes almost like a natural disaster.
Would They tend to talk, they tend to interact, the
(03:32):
division is gone. That's one one thing that I have
actually seen happen in smaller communities, and I can really
only speak to a smaller community, and so I would
say that it sometimes can go either way. I've seen
it bring a community together and they look out for
each other and they're concerned and they start to talk.
And then certainly i've seen it do the other side,
(03:53):
where you have two battlegrounds.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Those varying factors, however, can be an asset to a
cold case investigation, and as I would soon learn, detectives
sometimes play both sides against each other.
Speaker 6 (04:08):
I think you get more from a community when They're
divided because everybody wants their opinion heard, and they want
to explain why they feel the way they do, and
they want somebody to listen and acknowledge that their opinion
counts on this. So I've received more confidential informants, people
(04:29):
then off of the street on patrol that would say, hey,
you know, I know you're working on this, and I
knew that family, or I've seen that family or what
have you, and I just need you to note this,
And then they'll want to recount any story that they
may have had or heard.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
The fact is, murder changes everything, and unsolved murder magnifies
that change, and when murders start to multiply, all hell
breaks loose.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
My name is em William Phelps.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I'm an investigative journalist and author of more than forty
true crime books. This is season four of Paper Ghosts
the Ozarks. I arrived in Arkansas during the spring of
(05:39):
twenty twenty three, there to look into a three decades
old cold case a young woman, Danas Stidham, who'd gone
missing on a beautiful Midsummer day in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
I just see good to me.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Benton County, Arkansas is a community of about three hundred
thousand people and literally built by Walmart, which is headquartered
in Bentonville. One of my first contacts was a woman
who knew more about Dana Stidham than most anyone else.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
My name is Christy Smith. I am Dina Sidam's cousin.
We grew up together in our whole life. She was
a year older than I was. We were pretty much inseparable,
our mothers or sisters. They were together all the time.
We were together all the time. She was more of
a sister than a cousin.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
At eighteen years old, during the summer of nineteen eighty nine,
Dana was at that crossroads stage of life we all
face in our youth, looking forward to the future after
graduating from Gravit High School, deciding which path to take.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
We would always go swimming together, and we went camping
one year in Missouri. And why we were camping, We
went to Whitewater. Our parents dropped us off at Whitewater
while they went shopping, and I remember we got so sunburned,
but we were determined we were not going to leave early.
We were going to stay no matter how red we got.
And then the rest of the Campion trip. We were
(07:14):
just miserable because we were so burned, but we still
we still managed to have fun.
Speaker 7 (07:19):
And what kind of kid was she?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Oh, she was good. She was just like any kid.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
We we were rambunctious when we wanted to be well
behaved when we chose.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
She was pretty quiet when she.
Speaker 7 (07:31):
Was a child ten twelve that area. What did she
talk about she wanted to do in life?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Oh, at ten and twelve, we really we really didn't
have any plans in life. I don't really know that
we ever even talked about.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
The future at that age.
Speaker 7 (07:44):
We lived in a moment.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, we did.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
We lived in the moment and just took every day
as it was and played and enjoyed our lives.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
And Dana and Christie were raised in Gravit, Arkansas, in
the northwest corner of the state, quite close to the
Missouri by Gravit had a population of just fifteen hundred.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Back then, Gravit was not much different than it's now,
very small, very close knit community. We had a very
small school system. In the last several years that has
grown tremendously, but it was very small and we did
kindergarten through sixth was all one school and then eighth
and ninth, was Junior high tenth through Telfa's High School.
(08:24):
Very Small had a community swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
During the summer.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Her dad would after we cleaned the house because I
stayed with him during while my parents worked, after we'd
cleaned the house and he would take us and drop
us at the city pool and we would slim swim
and probably from about one till five and every day
that's what we would do.
Speaker 7 (08:43):
Kids love water.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yes, yes, we do still love water again in the summers.
They lived in highwa See. So at the time they
lived in highwa See. Which have you been to haigwa See.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Very Small.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
There's one dairy queen there at the end of the
dirt road that she lived on. So we would on
a good day we would walk to the dairy queen
and have lunch, always bring her dad something back. So
it was just, you know, just fun, just kids enjoying
life and having fun.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Dana Stidham was enthusiastic about that summer of nineteen eighty nine.
Just after high school, she'd moved out of her parents'
home and into a small apartment in Centerton with her
twenty one year old brother Larry, along with two of
her closest friends. She was spreading her wings for the
first time in her life.
Speaker 8 (09:31):
From what we know, and there's a lot of stuff
that we don't know, but from what we know, she
was at her parents' house doing laundry. It was her
and her dad in the Highwassee area. It was around
two something in the afternoon. We know that Dana placed
a phone call to a friend and that was around
two fourteen PM, and she talked to that friend for
(09:54):
approximately twenty minutes so talking. I think the phone record
show that disconnect at around two thirty five PM. So
she leaves sometimes shortly after that to go to the store.
Her dad wasn't feeling well. She needed some laundry detergent,
so she leaves the house. We know she stops and
gets gas. She gets like five dollars worth of gas,
(10:17):
writes a check for I think ten, and gets like
three dollars cash back or something to that effect. So
short trip to get some gas proceeds on from there
to what was then known as Phillip's Grocery, which is
probably from her house. Back then, you're talking about fifteen
minutes to get their tops.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
A dozen or more people saw Dana at the Phillips
that day. They knew her because she used to work
at the same store.
Speaker 8 (10:48):
We talked to a couple of those people. We know
that she checked out at three seventeen because the receipt
is time stamped, so it kind of shows. Now we
can't say for certain she left the store left the
parking lot at three seventeen. We know she checked out
at three seventeen. She's seen in the parking lot talking
to a guy. There's individuals that saw her in the
(11:11):
parking lot, older gentlemen. We don't really know how old.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
That's hunt to portray a current lieutenant with the Benton
County Sheriff's Office. What stands out to me in Lieutenant
Petray's comments is that there's no solid evidence to prove
Dana actually left the parking lot alone, no CCTV watching
her drive out. There's only an assumption, based on what
happens over the next twenty four hours, that she left
(11:40):
the parking lot by herself. Secondly, while at the store,
she interacted with several people who knew her. I stood
in the parking lot of the Phillips with a woman
who used to work there with Dana and was there
that last July afternoon Dana was seen. It's called Harps now,
(12:00):
but the parking lot, although long ago repaved, is basically
set up the same. It's two tiered, one level overlooking
the other, so you could literally park on the upper level,
which butts up against a hill and woods, and quietly
stalk the lower level, watching people come and go in
(12:22):
and out of the store. Here's a former co worker
of Dana's.
Speaker 9 (12:28):
She had an aura about her. She was beautiful, but
she just was just so sweet all the time. People
were drawn to her. Really, Yeah, everyone loved her.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Dana was a beautiful young woman, which is important in
this story because she had several young men as well
as several older men chasing after her. Her brunette hair
flowed past her shoulders, feathered and fluffed high. After all,
it was the eighties. Petit Dana was five to two
(12:59):
and about one hundred and five pounds.
Speaker 7 (13:02):
So what was it like around here back then in
eighty nine.
Speaker 9 (13:06):
Well, there's a lot of construction going on, and so
our store would make a lot of sandwiches and food
for the construction guys that would come in. We were
pretty busy doing that. A lot of growth. There's a
lot of new people coming in a lot of growth.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
So it was really secluded the parking lot.
Speaker 9 (13:27):
Then, yeah, I wouldn't want to be out here by myself.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
I asked Lieutenant Petray what old meant in terms of
the gentleman seen talking to Dana in the parking lot
in the afternoon she went missing.
Speaker 5 (13:41):
Fifty could be all.
Speaker 8 (13:42):
It's all relative to the individual that you're talking to,
the witness, So we don't know, and that's one of
those things like there's things we know and there's things
we don't know. That's one of the things that we
don't really know. It's also kind of not baffling but
discouraging that she's supposedly seen, but it's unknown as far
as what direction she's leaving. Now, if you know Harps,
(14:08):
you can basically go north, south, east west from there,
like it's not cornered to where you have to go
one direction. So again that complicates the investigation because we
don't know when she leaves that parking lot which direction
she goes, but we're pretty sure that she leaves the
parking lot. Here's where it gets complicated. There's an individual
(14:32):
and his wife that sees her there at Phillips out
in the parking lot. They later that same day see
her vehicle sitting on the side of the road south
of Phillips, about a mile south, sitting by what's known
as the Bellevista Museum.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
This location will become very important to law enforcement within
twenty four hours and a vital piece of this puzzle.
As I begin to unpack the early narrative of facts
behind what happened.
Speaker 8 (15:05):
Parked on the side of the road, there's a white
van that's supposedly parked in front of it. There's two males,
one guy squatted down by the side of the car
looking at the tire. Supposedly he had a scraggly beard mustache.
It gets more interesting. There's a guy looking at the tire.
There's also a female and another guy on the other
(15:26):
side of the car talking. This guy positively identifies this
girl as being Dana. At that time, he doesn't know
of anything, so later on he comes back, both vehicles
are gone. Okay. Sometime between three and five that same day,
the twenty fifth, there's another individual that sees a truck
(15:48):
parked behind a car, two males and one female. Again
same two males, one female, driver's side tire looks flat.
We know that Dana had a low tire, so that
kind of matches. This guy also identifies her as Dana.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Dana's cousin and best friend. Christy Smith remembers the events
of that day twenty five years ago as if it
all happened yesterday.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
She goes to the house and she is going there
to do laundry. They don't have a washer and dryer
at their apartment, so she goes over there to do
her laundry. Her dad asked her if she can run
to the Grosser store and get him some medication and
a few things that he needs from the store. Of course,
she's always willing to do anything for her dad. She
says that's fine, she'll do that. She goes to the
(16:42):
store and that's the last time anybody's are her.
Speaker 7 (16:45):
And when do you first hear about it?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Later that evening, I would probably say it's five or six,
after Georgia got home from work and Laurence had told her, well,
Dane's went to the store and she's never come back.
Then Georgia calls me, wants to know if I've heard
from her. Calls her son, see if he's heard from her.
None of us have heard from her, So that's when
we start getting nervous, because she didn't If she was
(17:09):
going to the store for her dad, she would go
and she would come back with what he needed. She
would have finish her laundry, she would go home, and
I believe she had a date that night, so she
would have come home and gotten ready for what her
plans were.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Whenever you begin to reinvestigate an unsolved crime, particularly a
cold case, victimology is one of your primary tasks. You
have to get a clear picture of who the victim is,
what they were doing within the context of what happened
and when. Who were her friends, the crowd she hung
(17:57):
around with, how was their home life, boyfriends, ex boyfriends.
I spoke to a lot of people who knew Danas
did them personally at the time she went missing. I
obtained hundreds of pages of documents, including interviews with friends, family,
and others at the time the case broke, along with
(18:20):
exclusive audio which you will hear throughout this season. When
you're young, nobody knows you better than your best friend.
Christy Smith identified intimate details about Dana and her family
no one else could here. For example, she talks about
Dana's parents.
Speaker 7 (18:41):
Tell me about Lawrence and Georgia.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
They been together since Georgia was fourteen, I think Lawrence
was probably sixteen. Very very young couple, you know, had
their moments, married in divorce several times, but only to
each other. They never married anyone else besides each other.
They had a few miss carriages before they were able
to conceive that son and carry him to term, so
he was a nice surprise, and then the fact that
(19:04):
they were able to do it again with Dana was
to them kind of a miracle. They were very proud
of their kids and very attached to their kids, very protective.
Georgia was, again, you know, just a young pair, young mother,
and Lawrence was a young father.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
And Lawrence was great.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Sadly, Dana's father, Lawrence, passed away in nineteen ninety nine
at the age of fifty.
Speaker 7 (19:29):
How was Dana around them?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Dana was very good. She was spoiled.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
She could do whatever she wanted, and as she got
older in junior high and high school, and we all
did things that we probably shouldn't have done in high school,
but sometimes her mom chose to not believe that Dana
was doing the things everybody else was doing. But in
the back of her mind she knew that she was.
And Lawrence, she had Lawrence, you know, wrapped around her
(19:55):
little finger. He just thought she was the world. She
wasn't in any of the clubs. She was very popular,
lots of friends, didn't participate in the club so much.
She wasn't dance, but not not at school. It was
a separate dance class that she would do. She wasn't
in sports in the boys. Every teenage girl was in
(20:15):
the boys.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
And did she have a boyfriend in high school?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
One boyfriend her senior year she had one that she
was more deep into the relationship. I think she had
dated several people. And she dated a gentleman that she
worked with at Harps. You know, throughout high school she
had different boyfriends. One of the football players. She dated
him for a while.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Dana had quit working there about three weeks before her
disappearance and started a new job at Kmart in Rogers, Arkansas. Well,
she had been working for only three days as of
July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty nine. And so, what did
she talk about in high school that she wanted to
do after high school?
Speaker 1 (20:53):
She talked about wanting to go to college or you know,
she would talk about wanting to live somewhere different and
getting married and kind of just doing the married life.
She didn't have any really big plans.
Speaker 7 (21:06):
Was she into art.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
She was. She did like to draw, She liked to paint.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Her dad did a lot of woodwork, so she would
draw pictures and paint on the woodwork. And it wasn't
like the paintings and that sort of art. It was
just kind of like a hobby.
Speaker 7 (21:22):
And so high school graduation comes and she moves in
with Larry, her brother was She lived.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
With me for a while.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
I got married very young at sixteen, and my husband
and I and our little girl. We lived halfway between
Gravet and Hawassee, and she, like everybody is ready to
get out of their parents' house, so she moved in
with us for a few months. We didn't have a
spare room, so she brought her day bed and put
it in the living room and that's where she would sleep,
(21:51):
and then you know, we would all just hang out.
Speaker 7 (21:55):
And did she work at the time.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
She was working at Harps at the time.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
She did that for a few months and then Larry
and his girlfriend they were looking for an apartment and
couldn't afford it on their own, so they all decided, Dana, Larry,
and Dana's friend all decided that they would just get
one together so they could all split the rent and
make it more affordable for all of them. She wanted,
you know, the extra freedom, wanted to have her own
room and all that kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Dana had July twenty fifth off from Kmart. Working had
always been important to her since she was sixteen, and
she had always maintained a job of some sort.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Her parents, you know, didn't have a lot of money,
and Dana was. She was fancying and she liked the
preppy clothes and all that stuff, so she knew if
she wanted that in a car and gas money and
she had work.
Speaker 7 (22:46):
Did she ever talk about or mention that anybody was
being weird around her, stalking her or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
The only two things I remember was she would talk
about the gentleman of the store, the older guy. Yes,
the older guy worked in produce or meat or something,
I can't remember.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
What would she say about him?
Speaker 1 (23:08):
She would just say that he would tell dirty jokes
or talk dirty to him and things like that.
Speaker 7 (23:13):
And did she ever talk about him following her out
to the parking lot or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
No, there was a police officer, the officer that she
told me once that scared her a lot. She said
that he would stop her for random reasons. He was
married and he would he would try to get her
to go out with him, and that she had told
me before that that scared her.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
This was a piece of information that obviously needed to
be explored more closely. There was also a report Dana
had claimed to be pregnant near the time she went missing.
Could these two pieces of information be connected? I was
intrigued when Christy told me that Dana had a date
(23:56):
that night, mainly because the timing of her heading out
to the store near three pm and then driving straight
back to her parents' house to give her dad the
medicine and grab her laundry all fit into that timeline.
But Dana never made it back by nine point fifteen
(24:18):
pm on the night of Dana's disappearance, her brother, Larry Stidham,
senses something is off, and so he calls the Benton
County Sheriff's office to say he and his family.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
Are concerned about her.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
She hadn't returned after going out to the store on
an errand it's been almost ten hours. This is not
something Dana would have done normally. I had wanted to
interview Larry, of course, but he had passed away at
the age of forty seven in twenty fifteen. Larry gives
a description of Dana's car so the Bella Vista Police
(24:54):
and Benton County Sheriff's Office can begin searching for it.
He says she's driving a gray Plymouth Horizon hatchback. The
Sheriff's department puts out a bolo be on the lookout,
and officers on the road conducting normal nightly patrols are
now actively searching for a gray Plymouth Horizon.
Speaker 8 (25:14):
So I think it was actually Larry that called and
spoke to Danny Varner at the time, who was a sergeant,
filed the missing person's report, gives a vehicle description. Less
than an hour later, I think nine forty something is
when the bolos put.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Out that gray Plymouth Larry described.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
There was an issue.
Speaker 8 (25:36):
Larry gave the wrong description of the vehicle, again not intentional,
but it didn't help. He called back an hour hour
and a half later, ten something and corrected that Varner
called Bellavista. Let all the patrolmen know up there. Hey,
we had the wrong description of the vehicle. Here's the
correct description.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Dana was actually driving in gray nineteen eighty four Dodge Omni,
which was the sister vehicle to the Horizon, an easy
mistake to make. By this time, around ten thirty PM,
Larry and many family members and friends are themselves out
driving around, particularly north and south on Route seventy one,
(26:19):
the main thoroughfare running by the Phillips. The family knew
something was wrong. Dana was independent and would go off
on her own from time to time, but she would
not blow her father off if he needed medicine or
leave her laundry at her parents, especially if she had
a date. At the very least, she would stop at
(26:42):
a payphone to call someone and let them know where
she was.
Speaker 8 (26:47):
They're making phone calls talking to friends, Hey have you
seen Dana. Nobody's seen her or her car. Larry specifically
says that, you know, we drove a seventy one to
the state line. We drove back. We did not see
her car.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I went back to something Christy told me that date
Dana had scheduled. Was she running late and decided to
stop at her apartment change and head out on her
date without telling anyone. If she was spotted one point
three miles south of Phillips on Route seventy one near
the Bella Vista Museum with the possible flat tire between
(27:28):
what would have been approximately three twenty five and five pm,
she would have been heading in the direction of the
apartment she shared with Larry and her girlfriends. The flat
tire could have set her back. Moreover, who was Dana
going out with that night? Had anyone tried tracking the
guy down to interview him. Turns out it was an
(27:50):
older dude whose family owned a farm in Hahihwasse.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
He still lives there.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Parents are gone, but he's taken over the farm and
he's a little bit older than this and was just
the one time daything. They'd never been out before.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Dana's family calls the guy and he claims she never
showed up. He's also got an alibi. He's been home
all night with his family waiting.
Speaker 7 (28:13):
On her, and so they file the mists in personal report.
And you all are driving around right, yes? Are you
driving up and down seventy one?
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
We drove everywhere we could think of.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
My first thought was did she have an accident, Did
she go off of the side of the road in
a ravine or something? And nobody can see her car.
So we take the normal rask that she would have
taken to go to the store looking for her car
or anything that we might find, and we don't.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
We can't find anything.
Speaker 7 (28:42):
And you don't see her car.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Right, no, nowhere.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
So Dana's family is out searching for her, and they
drive north and south on Route seventy one, which Dana
would have had to take in either direction, but don't
see her car anywhere.
Speaker 8 (29:00):
Family didn't see it. You know, you got a state
trooper people looking for it, just not there. And we
know that she was supposed to meet an individual and
she never showed. So all this is adding up that
something's not right, like she didn't just go somewhere. Something's
not right. She's missing, vehicles missing, nobody's heard.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
From her as friends, family, and law enforcement are out
looking for her. The first major break comes in the
form of a phone call. Someone had called a general
store in Haiwassee, a small local grocery that Dana had
once worked at.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
It was four.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Pm, about forty five minutes after she left the Phillips
parking lot nine miles away. The caller is a young
woman and she says this quote, tell him I really
want to go home, and that's it. But then a
second call to that same small general store.
Speaker 8 (30:00):
Around eleven o'clock that night. If you remember, I told
you that somebody had called the store. The store around
four something. Somebody calls at eleven and says that Dana's dead,
and Mike knows what happened to her.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
At the time that second call was made to the
general store in Highwasse, Dana's brother, Larry Stidham, was out
driving around, anxious and desperate to find any sign of
his younger sister. Two miles or so up the road
from the Phillips grocery in Bella Vista, Larry turned off
(30:50):
Route seventy one and on to Wellington Road and began
driving slowly searching.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I believe Larry was driving around and he went up
the road in found some of her clothes that had
been in her car. So then he called me because
he couldn't be sure that they were her. So he
called me, and I went to my husband and I
went up there and looked and verified that they were
clothes of hers.
Speaker 8 (31:15):
That point in time, it's gone from Okay, we don't
think something is quite right too. There's some worry going
on now because now we've we've found some of her clothing,
clothing she was wearing, clothing that she had in the car.
So they find the clothing, they pick it up, which
is not ideal, but at that time, nobody knows about DNA. Man,
(31:37):
it just doesn't cross anybody's mind. Again, it's just a
product of the time that they were in picks it up, realized, Hey,
this is Dana's clothing. You know, we got to report this.
They reported, the sheriff's office goes out there, collects the clothing,
and then just nothing. Man. You know, Dana hasn't been
heard from, she hasn't shown up, nobody's seen. Everybody's panicking,
(32:02):
everybody's being interviewed. Hey, when's the last time you saw her?
You know, who was she with? All that type of
stuff was going on. So now it's like, okay, we
think we're pretty sure foul play.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
That older employee from Phillips that Dana had once mentioned
was perpetually inappropriate, a guy several folks I spoke to
referred to as a perverb. Well lo and behold. He
lived in a small house just off Wellington Road, near
where Dana's clothing was found. Here's someone who worked with
(32:37):
the guy, a woman who doesn't want to be identified.
Speaker 9 (32:42):
He was weird, just creepy. It was a tall, older man.
Heah six three six four, kind of gaunt, and he
was like in his fifties. I think back then, and
I was in my early twenties. But oh, everyone in
our department talked about how it didn't like him, gave
(33:03):
them the creeps.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Did he say things to the women or did he
do things?
Speaker 5 (33:08):
Or was he just like a creepy dude.
Speaker 9 (33:10):
It was is a creepy dude. But I do know
that some of the girls felt he was kind of handsy,
got in your space, just inappropriate behavior.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
The Benton County Sheriff's Office had interviewed several people at
the Phillips that evening, including a young man who worked
there and had once dated Dana, a relationship that did
not end on good terms. While police are talking to him,
this older man, the pervert, his name comes up during the.
Speaker 8 (33:40):
Interview, so you know, he talked about another individual that
worked there got with the last name of him, the.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
Dirty old Man.
Speaker 8 (33:50):
Yeah. From reports from people that were interviewed, Yeah, there
was an issue with grassing the females that worked there.
There was also an individual that supposedly called him out
in his truck masturbating reading a dirty magazine. But it's
real interesting because he lived at that time less than
a half mile off of Wellington.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
With a growing list of suspects. Within that first night,
Bella Vista Police and the Benton County Sheriff's Office are
specifically looking for Dana's car. The thought is find the car,
find Dana, or at least begin to figure out what
might be going on. Law enforcement, family, and townspeople are
(34:33):
driving north and south on Route seventy one, snaking in
and out of side roads, but nobody sees a car
even remotely resembling Dana's. The call that came into the
Highwassi General Store at four PM and the one later
on that night felt particularly important. There was something striking
(34:56):
about those calls. Remember this is nineteen eighty nine. There's
no instant reporting of anything. The only people who know
Dana is missing are those involved in searching for her.
So whoever makes that call knows she's missing.
Speaker 8 (35:14):
I hate to assume anything because I've been doing this
job for too long, but it's a red flag. Like
it's screams whoever made that phone call actually had some
type of knowledge about something going on, And then you
can combine it with the supposed phone call. It makes
your skin crawl.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
And then what happens the next day.
Speaker 8 (35:34):
So the next morning, there's a lady named Karen Myers.
She was a sergeant there with Bella Vista, lived just
across the state line. She was on her way to
work that next morning around six six point thirty in
the morning, and she sees this vehicle on the side
of the road there at Wellington in the southbound lane
facing south, and there was another vehicle that was parked
(35:58):
behind it. What kind of vehicle so initially it was
possibly a small truck or a larger car. Later it
changed to again small truck or possibly a station wagon.
She doesn't know at that point in time that anything's wrong.
She proceeds on to work, and in fact, I think
(36:19):
she made some type of comment of the fishing must
be good in that area. So she proceeds on to work.
And it's from what I understand is like, those vehicles
are there, but there's really nobody outside the vehicles that
she notices. She just notices the vehicles, so she proceeds
on to work. Later on she starts thinking, she goes
(36:40):
back and runs the tag the license plate. At that
point in time, we know for sure that it's Dana's vehicle,
and then all hell kind of breaks loose from there.
She contacts Sheriff's office Sedoriac Barner. They go up there
and they process the vehicle.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Danny Varner, who went to school with Dana's parents, and
Mike Zadoriac are the two Sheriff's office detectives now taking
control of the investigation. What they find when they look
at Dana's car begins to tell them that this case
might not have the outcome everyone is hoping for.
Speaker 8 (37:19):
Keyser in the ignition, vehicle is unlocked, driverside window is
halfway down, rear tire is low but not completely flat.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Drivable, and what I find to be very important is
the driver's seat was adjusted pushed back for a much
taller person, so Dana wasn't the last person to.
Speaker 5 (37:44):
Drive the vehicle.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
The cars parked on Route seventy one, heading south toward
the Phillips just north of this area, and the opposite
direction is the Missouri border. If you drove down Wellington
Road toward Route seventy one, this area where Dana's car
is found would be directly across the north side of
(38:07):
seventy one a median, then the south side of seventy one.
Speaker 5 (38:12):
What significant is.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
That scores of people, police and Dana's family members traveled
by this area all throughout the previous night and early
morning and no one reported seeing any vehicle. Now it's
there with a low tire.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
Like somebody let the air out of the tire.
Speaker 8 (38:32):
Maybe we know from the family that the tire did
have a slow leak that was later confirmed. So there's
the receipt from Phillips that's in the car with the
timestamp on it from the day prior. But the groceries,
the alkacelser, the sugar, the laundry detergent is not in
(38:55):
the car. Again, there's a lot of different theories about
why was that not in the car? Did she go
somewhere take that out then something happened. Did she stop
for somebody they give her a ride, she'd take them
with her. Again, like I said at the beginning, These
are some of the unknown things that we just don't know.
(39:17):
But all in all, the vehicle it doesn't appear that
any kind of struggle took place. It's disheveled, but we
know from talking to some of her friends that, you know,
if she had a drink she finished the dream, you know,
she'd throw it on the floorboarder, you know, just normal.
Speaker 5 (39:35):
Any bottles or cans or anything found in the car.
Speaker 8 (39:37):
There was a chip bag, a Muncho's hip bag that
we took again, could have been hers, could have been
somebody else. We sent fingerprints down and no fingerprints have
ever matched that chip bag. But the groceries itself, they
were not in the vehicle. Her person stuff was not
in the vehicle. But again the keys were in the
(39:58):
vehicle and it was unlocked, which was, according to the family,
not calmon practice something that she would have done. You know,
it's unusual.
Speaker 5 (40:07):
And how is the family responding to this finding.
Speaker 8 (40:11):
Well, from the time that she went missing that previous night,
they're distraught, you know, they know, you know, and I
don't want to speak for them, but you read through
the reports and stuff, you know that they know that
it's not good. The situation is not good one, because
she would have come back on her own that day,
(40:31):
and she didn't.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
And then we hear that they found her car at
Bella Vista, and that's when it really hit me that
something was not right, because she would never just abandon
her car on the side of the road. She lived
for that car, so she wouldn't just leave it. And
if something would have happened, she would have called one
of us, because we would always we would have helped
her in any way. We would have came to god
(40:53):
her no matter what time of night it was. But
we hadn't heard from her.
Speaker 7 (40:57):
And you you all had driven by that era where
the car was found and you didn't see the car,
and then all of a sudden it shows up. Yes,
So what are you being told by law enforce?
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Well, all that we were told was that they had
driven that highway throughout the night and they hadn't seen it.
And then at six o'clock that morning or something, an
officer drove by, and once she got to work and
heard about Dana missing, she remembered seeing the car on
her way into work, and that's when they went back
and found her car there.
Speaker 7 (41:28):
And so what happens next.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Well, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
I know that they went the Lawrence and Larry went
to where the car was while Mike Sedorac and Danny
Varner were out there doing you know, forensics on the
car whatever they did, and they just kind of stood
by the sidelines and watched what was going on. Then
they towed the car into the to the police department
(41:53):
or to the impound.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Still, that phone call to the general store near eleven
PM seems so important. Dana's dead and Mike knows.
Speaker 5 (42:04):
What happened to her.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Who is Mike? Did Dana ever date or even know
anyone named Mike?
Speaker 5 (42:12):
You guys have no idea who Mike is.
Speaker 8 (42:14):
Well, initially we didn't, but later on we did. There
was a Mike that was associated with that store, whose
parents owned that store. So another thing that complicates the
case is you've got three or four different possible scenarios
and then you've got all of these people that supposedly
swear that they saw that day, you know, south of Center,
(42:36):
a van, a truck, No, it's a station wagon.
Speaker 5 (42:40):
Maybe Mike had access to a truck.
Speaker 8 (42:43):
Had access to his dad's truck.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
There was one more important piece of information. The Sheriff's
office obtained that following morning. Mike, they now knew, was
a classmate of Danis and had reportedly been infatuated with her,
and she routinely rejected his advances, and the Sheriff's office
learned that Mike had been out all night long. He
(43:10):
was seen in his father's truck driving around Bella Vista
on Route seventy one as late as three am, and
as alibi that he was with a girlfriend all night
in another town.
Speaker 5 (43:23):
The Benton County.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Sheriff's Office spoke to her and she says she never saw.
Speaker 5 (43:29):
Him coming up.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
Next on paper ghosts the ozarks.
Speaker 5 (43:38):
You can actually put him in a store.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
In the day of Fdaana's disappearance, so you can put
him with Dana right before she disappeared.
Speaker 8 (43:46):
Wasn't there very long? I supposed to meet the people.
So I stopped there in bilis Quahan and then walked
around little bed and stood, and as if I was
walking out, I saw in the dregtory dead and saw
a skull and some rib bones.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Who there there?
Speaker 8 (44:01):
Are you reading?
Speaker 7 (44:01):
Boy?
Speaker 6 (44:02):
What do you want?
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Why?
Speaker 8 (44:10):
Why are you calling me if you don't even know
who I am?
Speaker 7 (44:13):
Thanks a lot?
Speaker 6 (44:15):
Do you know who I am.
Speaker 8 (44:18):
You don't know who I am, then, why are you
calling me?
Speaker 7 (44:21):
Paper Ghosts?
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Season four is written and executive produced by Me and
William Phelps. Script consulting by Rose Bachi, sound designed by
Matt Russell, executive production by Catherine Law, and audio editing
and mixing by Brandon Dicker. Series theme number four four
to two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and
(44:44):
Thomas Mooney
I have nightmares about this. I have nightmares that she's
asking for help and I can't help her. That she
has been found after all these years, and she's alive,
and I don't know. I just want to know what
happened to her, But not knowing as hard picturing the
fear that she must have been in when whoever took
(00:25):
her took her and did whatever they did. I can
only imagine the terror that she was going through in
the last you know, the last thoughts that she was.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Thinking when she died.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
It's horrific for anyone to go through that. And then
I don't know, it's just horrific.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Beneath the folksy, postcard perfect surface of any small American
town lies a hint of evil few can imagine actually
exists within their peaceful lives. Most never come face to
face with it, and yet everyone understands they are, perhaps
closer than they might think, to being swallowed up by it.
(01:12):
Having a loved one go missing creates a grim reality,
forcing family members to experience the worst life can throw
at you. Their only weapon of defense within that struggle hope.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I've always carried hope.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
No matter how long it's been an unsolved murder leaves
behind a quiet sorrow and an intense gravity. In many ways,
an incredible sense of lost identity seeps into everyday life.
It's what some refer to as forever pain.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I think the one thing about Dana's case is that
Bitten County skill to this day, enjoys a very low
crime I'm rate it is extremely rare for it to
be a stranger, a stranger abduction, or at least not
immediately understandable what happened. Right, people don't get kidnapped off
(02:13):
parking lots. I would imagine then people didn't lock their cars,
they left their keys in the car at the grocery store,
I mean they let their doors open. And so not
only for that to happen to a young girl, but
also for it to be not immediately known what happened
creates fear and panic in folks. I would say it's
(02:33):
not an overstated, say that's an earth shattering event in
terms of crime in ben County.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Murder is such a profound tragedy it can take a
lifetime to not only understand what happened to a victim,
but the process, what their loved ones went through.
Speaker 5 (02:51):
It's a part of.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
The true crime experience, rarely given more than a cursory glance.
The certainty of living with enormous loss. Murder moreover, divides
families and sometimes puts neighbors and even friends at odds.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
I'm going to tell you it can go either way.
I have seen small communities that it'll bring them together.
It will bring folks that haven't been together with the
same mindset, and so they start to kind of look
out for each other. It becomes almost like a natural disaster.
Would They tend to talk, they tend to interact, the
(03:32):
division is gone. That's one one thing that I have
actually seen happen in smaller communities, and I can really
only speak to a smaller community, and so I would
say that it sometimes can go either way. I've seen
it bring a community together and they look out for
each other and they're concerned and they start to talk.
And then certainly i've seen it do the other side,
(03:53):
where you have two battlegrounds.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Those varying factors, however, can be an asset to a
cold case investigation, and as I would soon learn, detectives
sometimes play both sides against each other.
Speaker 6 (04:08):
I think you get more from a community when They're
divided because everybody wants their opinion heard, and they want
to explain why they feel the way they do, and
they want somebody to listen and acknowledge that their opinion
counts on this. So I've received more confidential informants, people
(04:29):
then off of the street on patrol that would say, hey,
you know, I know you're working on this, and I
knew that family, or I've seen that family or what
have you, and I just need you to note this,
And then they'll want to recount any story that they
may have had or heard.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
The fact is, murder changes everything, and unsolved murder magnifies
that change, and when murders start to multiply, all hell
breaks loose.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
My name is em William Phelps.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
I'm an investigative journalist and author of more than forty
true crime books. This is season four of Paper Ghosts
the Ozarks. I arrived in Arkansas during the spring of
(05:39):
twenty twenty three, there to look into a three decades
old cold case a young woman, Danas Stidham, who'd gone
missing on a beautiful Midsummer day in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
I just see good to me.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Benton County, Arkansas is a community of about three hundred
thousand people and literally built by Walmart, which is headquartered
in Bentonville. One of my first contacts was a woman
who knew more about Dana Stidham than most anyone else.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
My name is Christy Smith. I am Dina Sidam's cousin.
We grew up together in our whole life. She was
a year older than I was. We were pretty much inseparable,
our mothers or sisters. They were together all the time.
We were together all the time. She was more of
a sister than a cousin.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
At eighteen years old, during the summer of nineteen eighty nine,
Dana was at that crossroads stage of life we all
face in our youth, looking forward to the future after
graduating from Gravit High School, deciding which path to take.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
We would always go swimming together, and we went camping
one year in Missouri. And why we were camping, We
went to Whitewater. Our parents dropped us off at Whitewater
while they went shopping, and I remember we got so sunburned,
but we were determined we were not going to leave early.
We were going to stay no matter how red we got.
And then the rest of the Campion trip. We were
(07:14):
just miserable because we were so burned, but we still
we still managed to have fun.
Speaker 7 (07:19):
And what kind of kid was she?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Oh, she was good. She was just like any kid.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
We we were rambunctious when we wanted to be well
behaved when we chose.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
She was pretty quiet when she.
Speaker 7 (07:31):
Was a child ten twelve that area. What did she
talk about she wanted to do in life?
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Oh, at ten and twelve, we really we really didn't
have any plans in life. I don't really know that
we ever even talked about.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
The future at that age.
Speaker 7 (07:44):
We lived in a moment.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yeah, we did.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
We lived in the moment and just took every day
as it was and played and enjoyed our lives.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
And Dana and Christie were raised in Gravit, Arkansas, in
the northwest corner of the state, quite close to the
Missouri by Gravit had a population of just fifteen hundred.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Back then, Gravit was not much different than it's now,
very small, very close knit community. We had a very
small school system. In the last several years that has
grown tremendously, but it was very small and we did
kindergarten through sixth was all one school and then eighth
and ninth, was Junior high tenth through Telfa's High School.
(08:24):
Very Small had a community swimming pool.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
During the summer.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Her dad would after we cleaned the house because I
stayed with him during while my parents worked, after we'd
cleaned the house and he would take us and drop
us at the city pool and we would slim swim
and probably from about one till five and every day
that's what we would do.
Speaker 7 (08:43):
Kids love water.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yes, yes, we do still love water again in the summers.
They lived in highwa See. So at the time they
lived in highwa See. Which have you been to haigwa See.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Very Small.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
There's one dairy queen there at the end of the
dirt road that she lived on. So we would on
a good day we would walk to the dairy queen
and have lunch, always bring her dad something back. So
it was just, you know, just fun, just kids enjoying
life and having fun.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Dana Stidham was enthusiastic about that summer of nineteen eighty nine.
Just after high school, she'd moved out of her parents'
home and into a small apartment in Centerton with her
twenty one year old brother Larry, along with two of
her closest friends. She was spreading her wings for the
first time in her life.
Speaker 8 (09:31):
From what we know, and there's a lot of stuff
that we don't know, but from what we know, she
was at her parents' house doing laundry. It was her
and her dad in the Highwassee area. It was around
two something in the afternoon. We know that Dana placed
a phone call to a friend and that was around
two fourteen PM, and she talked to that friend for
(09:54):
approximately twenty minutes so talking. I think the phone record
show that disconnect at around two thirty five PM. So
she leaves sometimes shortly after that to go to the store.
Her dad wasn't feeling well. She needed some laundry detergent,
so she leaves the house. We know she stops and
gets gas. She gets like five dollars worth of gas,
(10:17):
writes a check for I think ten, and gets like
three dollars cash back or something to that effect. So
short trip to get some gas proceeds on from there
to what was then known as Phillip's Grocery, which is
probably from her house. Back then, you're talking about fifteen
minutes to get their tops.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
A dozen or more people saw Dana at the Phillips
that day. They knew her because she used to work
at the same store.
Speaker 8 (10:48):
We talked to a couple of those people. We know
that she checked out at three seventeen because the receipt
is time stamped, so it kind of shows. Now we
can't say for certain she left the store left the
parking lot at three seventeen. We know she checked out
at three seventeen. She's seen in the parking lot talking
to a guy. There's individuals that saw her in the
(11:11):
parking lot, older gentlemen. We don't really know how old.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
That's hunt to portray a current lieutenant with the Benton
County Sheriff's Office. What stands out to me in Lieutenant
Petray's comments is that there's no solid evidence to prove
Dana actually left the parking lot alone, no CCTV watching
her drive out. There's only an assumption, based on what
happens over the next twenty four hours, that she left
(11:40):
the parking lot by herself. Secondly, while at the store,
she interacted with several people who knew her. I stood
in the parking lot of the Phillips with a woman
who used to work there with Dana and was there
that last July afternoon Dana was seen. It's called Harps now,
(12:00):
but the parking lot, although long ago repaved, is basically
set up the same. It's two tiered, one level overlooking
the other, so you could literally park on the upper level,
which butts up against a hill and woods, and quietly
stalk the lower level, watching people come and go in
(12:22):
and out of the store. Here's a former co worker
of Dana's.
Speaker 9 (12:28):
She had an aura about her. She was beautiful, but
she just was just so sweet all the time. People
were drawn to her. Really, Yeah, everyone loved her.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Dana was a beautiful young woman, which is important in
this story because she had several young men as well
as several older men chasing after her. Her brunette hair
flowed past her shoulders, feathered and fluffed high. After all,
it was the eighties. Petit Dana was five to two
(12:59):
and about one hundred and five pounds.
Speaker 7 (13:02):
So what was it like around here back then in
eighty nine.
Speaker 9 (13:06):
Well, there's a lot of construction going on, and so
our store would make a lot of sandwiches and food
for the construction guys that would come in. We were
pretty busy doing that. A lot of growth. There's a
lot of new people coming in a lot of growth.
Speaker 5 (13:25):
So it was really secluded the parking lot.
Speaker 9 (13:27):
Then, yeah, I wouldn't want to be out here by myself.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
I asked Lieutenant Petray what old meant in terms of
the gentleman seen talking to Dana in the parking lot
in the afternoon she went missing.
Speaker 5 (13:41):
Fifty could be all.
Speaker 8 (13:42):
It's all relative to the individual that you're talking to,
the witness, So we don't know, and that's one of
those things like there's things we know and there's things
we don't know. That's one of the things that we
don't really know. It's also kind of not baffling but
discouraging that she's supposedly seen, but it's unknown as far
as what direction she's leaving. Now, if you know Harps,
(14:08):
you can basically go north, south, east west from there,
like it's not cornered to where you have to go
one direction. So again that complicates the investigation because we
don't know when she leaves that parking lot which direction
she goes, but we're pretty sure that she leaves the
parking lot. Here's where it gets complicated. There's an individual
(14:32):
and his wife that sees her there at Phillips out
in the parking lot. They later that same day see
her vehicle sitting on the side of the road south
of Phillips, about a mile south, sitting by what's known
as the Bellevista Museum.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
This location will become very important to law enforcement within
twenty four hours and a vital piece of this puzzle.
As I begin to unpack the early narrative of facts
behind what happened.
Speaker 8 (15:05):
Parked on the side of the road, there's a white
van that's supposedly parked in front of it. There's two males,
one guy squatted down by the side of the car
looking at the tire. Supposedly he had a scraggly beard mustache.
It gets more interesting. There's a guy looking at the tire.
There's also a female and another guy on the other
(15:26):
side of the car talking. This guy positively identifies this
girl as being Dana. At that time, he doesn't know
of anything, so later on he comes back, both vehicles
are gone. Okay. Sometime between three and five that same day,
the twenty fifth, there's another individual that sees a truck
(15:48):
parked behind a car, two males and one female. Again
same two males, one female, driver's side tire looks flat.
We know that Dana had a low tire, so that
kind of matches. This guy also identifies her as Dana.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Dana's cousin and best friend. Christy Smith remembers the events
of that day twenty five years ago as if it
all happened yesterday.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
She goes to the house and she is going there
to do laundry. They don't have a washer and dryer
at their apartment, so she goes over there to do
her laundry. Her dad asked her if she can run
to the Grosser store and get him some medication and
a few things that he needs from the store. Of course,
she's always willing to do anything for her dad. She
says that's fine, she'll do that. She goes to the
(16:42):
store and that's the last time anybody's are her.
Speaker 7 (16:45):
And when do you first hear about it?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Later that evening, I would probably say it's five or six,
after Georgia got home from work and Laurence had told her, well,
Dane's went to the store and she's never come back.
Then Georgia calls me, wants to know if I've heard
from her. Calls her son, see if he's heard from her.
None of us have heard from her, So that's when
we start getting nervous, because she didn't If she was
(17:09):
going to the store for her dad, she would go
and she would come back with what he needed. She
would have finish her laundry, she would go home, and
I believe she had a date that night, so she
would have come home and gotten ready for what her
plans were.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Whenever you begin to reinvestigate an unsolved crime, particularly a
cold case, victimology is one of your primary tasks. You
have to get a clear picture of who the victim is,
what they were doing within the context of what happened
and when. Who were her friends, the crowd she hung
(17:57):
around with, how was their home life, boyfriends, ex boyfriends.
I spoke to a lot of people who knew Danas
did them personally at the time she went missing. I
obtained hundreds of pages of documents, including interviews with friends, family,
and others at the time the case broke, along with
(18:20):
exclusive audio which you will hear throughout this season. When
you're young, nobody knows you better than your best friend.
Christy Smith identified intimate details about Dana and her family
no one else could here. For example, she talks about
Dana's parents.
Speaker 7 (18:41):
Tell me about Lawrence and Georgia.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
They been together since Georgia was fourteen, I think Lawrence
was probably sixteen. Very very young couple, you know, had
their moments, married in divorce several times, but only to
each other. They never married anyone else besides each other.
They had a few miss carriages before they were able
to conceive that son and carry him to term, so
he was a nice surprise, and then the fact that
(19:04):
they were able to do it again with Dana was
to them kind of a miracle. They were very proud
of their kids and very attached to their kids, very protective.
Georgia was, again, you know, just a young pair, young mother,
and Lawrence was a young father.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
And Lawrence was great.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Sadly, Dana's father, Lawrence, passed away in nineteen ninety nine
at the age of fifty.
Speaker 7 (19:29):
How was Dana around them?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Dana was very good. She was spoiled.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
She could do whatever she wanted, and as she got
older in junior high and high school, and we all
did things that we probably shouldn't have done in high school,
but sometimes her mom chose to not believe that Dana
was doing the things everybody else was doing. But in
the back of her mind she knew that she was.
And Lawrence, she had Lawrence, you know, wrapped around her
(19:55):
little finger. He just thought she was the world. She
wasn't in any of the clubs. She was very popular,
lots of friends, didn't participate in the club so much.
She wasn't dance, but not not at school. It was
a separate dance class that she would do. She wasn't
in sports in the boys. Every teenage girl was in
(20:15):
the boys.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
And did she have a boyfriend in high school?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
One boyfriend her senior year she had one that she
was more deep into the relationship. I think she had
dated several people. And she dated a gentleman that she
worked with at Harps. You know, throughout high school she
had different boyfriends. One of the football players. She dated
him for a while.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Dana had quit working there about three weeks before her
disappearance and started a new job at Kmart in Rogers, Arkansas. Well,
she had been working for only three days as of
July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty nine. And so, what did
she talk about in high school that she wanted to
do after high school?
Speaker 1 (20:53):
She talked about wanting to go to college or you know,
she would talk about wanting to live somewhere different and
getting married and kind of just doing the married life.
She didn't have any really big plans.
Speaker 7 (21:06):
Was she into art.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
She was. She did like to draw, She liked to paint.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Her dad did a lot of woodwork, so she would
draw pictures and paint on the woodwork. And it wasn't
like the paintings and that sort of art. It was
just kind of like a hobby.
Speaker 7 (21:22):
And so high school graduation comes and she moves in
with Larry, her brother was She lived.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
With me for a while.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
I got married very young at sixteen, and my husband
and I and our little girl. We lived halfway between
Gravet and Hawassee, and she, like everybody is ready to
get out of their parents' house, so she moved in
with us for a few months. We didn't have a
spare room, so she brought her day bed and put
it in the living room and that's where she would sleep,
(21:51):
and then you know, we would all just hang out.
Speaker 7 (21:55):
And did she work at the time.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
She was working at Harps at the time.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
She did that for a few months and then Larry
and his girlfriend they were looking for an apartment and
couldn't afford it on their own, so they all decided, Dana, Larry,
and Dana's friend all decided that they would just get
one together so they could all split the rent and
make it more affordable for all of them. She wanted,
you know, the extra freedom, wanted to have her own
room and all that kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Dana had July twenty fifth off from Kmart. Working had
always been important to her since she was sixteen, and
she had always maintained a job of some sort.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Her parents, you know, didn't have a lot of money,
and Dana was. She was fancying and she liked the
preppy clothes and all that stuff, so she knew if
she wanted that in a car and gas money and
she had work.
Speaker 7 (22:46):
Did she ever talk about or mention that anybody was
being weird around her, stalking her or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
The only two things I remember was she would talk
about the gentleman of the store, the older guy. Yes,
the older guy worked in produce or meat or something,
I can't remember.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
What would she say about him?
Speaker 1 (23:08):
She would just say that he would tell dirty jokes
or talk dirty to him and things like that.
Speaker 7 (23:13):
And did she ever talk about him following her out
to the parking lot or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
No, there was a police officer, the officer that she
told me once that scared her a lot. She said
that he would stop her for random reasons. He was
married and he would he would try to get her
to go out with him, and that she had told
me before that that scared her.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
This was a piece of information that obviously needed to
be explored more closely. There was also a report Dana
had claimed to be pregnant near the time she went missing.
Could these two pieces of information be connected? I was
intrigued when Christy told me that Dana had a date
(23:56):
that night, mainly because the timing of her heading out
to the store near three pm and then driving straight
back to her parents' house to give her dad the
medicine and grab her laundry all fit into that timeline.
But Dana never made it back by nine point fifteen
(24:18):
pm on the night of Dana's disappearance, her brother, Larry Stidham,
senses something is off, and so he calls the Benton
County Sheriff's office to say he and his family.
Speaker 5 (24:28):
Are concerned about her.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
She hadn't returned after going out to the store on
an errand it's been almost ten hours. This is not
something Dana would have done normally. I had wanted to
interview Larry, of course, but he had passed away at
the age of forty seven in twenty fifteen. Larry gives
a description of Dana's car so the Bella Vista Police
(24:54):
and Benton County Sheriff's Office can begin searching for it.
He says she's driving a gray Plymouth Horizon hatchback. The
Sheriff's department puts out a bolo be on the lookout,
and officers on the road conducting normal nightly patrols are
now actively searching for a gray Plymouth Horizon.
Speaker 8 (25:14):
So I think it was actually Larry that called and
spoke to Danny Varner at the time, who was a sergeant,
filed the missing person's report, gives a vehicle description. Less
than an hour later, I think nine forty something is
when the bolos put.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Out that gray Plymouth Larry described.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
There was an issue.
Speaker 8 (25:36):
Larry gave the wrong description of the vehicle, again not intentional,
but it didn't help. He called back an hour hour
and a half later, ten something and corrected that Varner
called Bellavista. Let all the patrolmen know up there. Hey,
we had the wrong description of the vehicle. Here's the
correct description.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Dana was actually driving in gray nineteen eighty four Dodge Omni,
which was the sister vehicle to the Horizon, an easy
mistake to make. By this time, around ten thirty PM,
Larry and many family members and friends are themselves out
driving around, particularly north and south on Route seventy one,
(26:19):
the main thoroughfare running by the Phillips. The family knew
something was wrong. Dana was independent and would go off
on her own from time to time, but she would
not blow her father off if he needed medicine or
leave her laundry at her parents, especially if she had
a date. At the very least, she would stop at
(26:42):
a payphone to call someone and let them know where
she was.
Speaker 8 (26:47):
They're making phone calls talking to friends, Hey have you
seen Dana. Nobody's seen her or her car. Larry specifically
says that, you know, we drove a seventy one to
the state line. We drove back. We did not see
her car.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I went back to something Christy told me that date
Dana had scheduled. Was she running late and decided to
stop at her apartment change and head out on her
date without telling anyone. If she was spotted one point
three miles south of Phillips on Route seventy one near
the Bella Vista Museum with the possible flat tire between
(27:28):
what would have been approximately three twenty five and five pm,
she would have been heading in the direction of the
apartment she shared with Larry and her girlfriends. The flat
tire could have set her back. Moreover, who was Dana
going out with that night? Had anyone tried tracking the
guy down to interview him. Turns out it was an
(27:50):
older dude whose family owned a farm in Hahihwasse.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
He still lives there.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Parents are gone, but he's taken over the farm and
he's a little bit older than this and was just
the one time daything. They'd never been out before.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Dana's family calls the guy and he claims she never
showed up. He's also got an alibi. He's been home
all night with his family waiting.
Speaker 7 (28:13):
On her, and so they file the mists in personal report.
And you all are driving around right, yes? Are you
driving up and down seventy one?
Speaker 1 (28:21):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (28:21):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
We drove everywhere we could think of.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
My first thought was did she have an accident, Did
she go off of the side of the road in
a ravine or something? And nobody can see her car.
So we take the normal rask that she would have
taken to go to the store looking for her car
or anything that we might find, and we don't.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
We can't find anything.
Speaker 7 (28:42):
And you don't see her car.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Right, no, nowhere.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
So Dana's family is out searching for her, and they
drive north and south on Route seventy one, which Dana
would have had to take in either direction, but don't
see her car anywhere.
Speaker 8 (29:00):
Family didn't see it. You know, you got a state
trooper people looking for it, just not there. And we
know that she was supposed to meet an individual and
she never showed. So all this is adding up that
something's not right, like she didn't just go somewhere. Something's
not right. She's missing, vehicles missing, nobody's heard.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
From her as friends, family, and law enforcement are out
looking for her. The first major break comes in the
form of a phone call. Someone had called a general
store in Haiwassee, a small local grocery that Dana had
once worked at.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
It was four.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Pm, about forty five minutes after she left the Phillips
parking lot nine miles away. The caller is a young
woman and she says this quote, tell him I really
want to go home, and that's it. But then a
second call to that same small general store.
Speaker 8 (30:00):
Around eleven o'clock that night. If you remember, I told
you that somebody had called the store. The store around
four something. Somebody calls at eleven and says that Dana's dead,
and Mike knows what happened to her.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
At the time that second call was made to the
general store in Highwasse, Dana's brother, Larry Stidham, was out
driving around, anxious and desperate to find any sign of
his younger sister. Two miles or so up the road
from the Phillips grocery in Bella Vista, Larry turned off
(30:50):
Route seventy one and on to Wellington Road and began
driving slowly searching.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I believe Larry was driving around and he went up
the road in found some of her clothes that had
been in her car. So then he called me because
he couldn't be sure that they were her. So he
called me, and I went to my husband and I
went up there and looked and verified that they were
clothes of hers.
Speaker 8 (31:15):
That point in time, it's gone from Okay, we don't
think something is quite right too. There's some worry going
on now because now we've we've found some of her clothing,
clothing she was wearing, clothing that she had in the car.
So they find the clothing, they pick it up, which
is not ideal, but at that time, nobody knows about DNA. Man,
(31:37):
it just doesn't cross anybody's mind. Again, it's just a
product of the time that they were in picks it up, realized, Hey,
this is Dana's clothing. You know, we got to report this.
They reported, the sheriff's office goes out there, collects the clothing,
and then just nothing. Man. You know, Dana hasn't been
heard from, she hasn't shown up, nobody's seen. Everybody's panicking,
(32:02):
everybody's being interviewed. Hey, when's the last time you saw her?
You know, who was she with? All that type of
stuff was going on. So now it's like, okay, we
think we're pretty sure foul play.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
That older employee from Phillips that Dana had once mentioned
was perpetually inappropriate, a guy several folks I spoke to
referred to as a perverb. Well lo and behold. He
lived in a small house just off Wellington Road, near
where Dana's clothing was found. Here's someone who worked with
(32:37):
the guy, a woman who doesn't want to be identified.
Speaker 9 (32:42):
He was weird, just creepy. It was a tall, older man.
Heah six three six four, kind of gaunt, and he
was like in his fifties. I think back then, and
I was in my early twenties. But oh, everyone in
our department talked about how it didn't like him, gave
(33:03):
them the creeps.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
Did he say things to the women or did he
do things?
Speaker 5 (33:08):
Or was he just like a creepy dude.
Speaker 9 (33:10):
It was is a creepy dude. But I do know
that some of the girls felt he was kind of handsy,
got in your space, just inappropriate behavior.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
The Benton County Sheriff's Office had interviewed several people at
the Phillips that evening, including a young man who worked
there and had once dated Dana, a relationship that did
not end on good terms. While police are talking to him,
this older man, the pervert, his name comes up during the.
Speaker 8 (33:40):
Interview, so you know, he talked about another individual that
worked there got with the last name of him, the.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
Dirty old Man.
Speaker 8 (33:50):
Yeah. From reports from people that were interviewed, Yeah, there
was an issue with grassing the females that worked there.
There was also an individual that supposedly called him out
in his truck masturbating reading a dirty magazine. But it's
real interesting because he lived at that time less than
a half mile off of Wellington.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
With a growing list of suspects. Within that first night,
Bella Vista Police and the Benton County Sheriff's Office are
specifically looking for Dana's car. The thought is find the car,
find Dana, or at least begin to figure out what
might be going on. Law enforcement, family, and townspeople are
(34:33):
driving north and south on Route seventy one, snaking in
and out of side roads, but nobody sees a car
even remotely resembling Dana's. The call that came into the
Highwassi General Store at four PM and the one later
on that night felt particularly important. There was something striking
(34:56):
about those calls. Remember this is nineteen eighty nine. There's
no instant reporting of anything. The only people who know
Dana is missing are those involved in searching for her.
So whoever makes that call knows she's missing.
Speaker 8 (35:14):
I hate to assume anything because I've been doing this
job for too long, but it's a red flag. Like
it's screams whoever made that phone call actually had some
type of knowledge about something going on, And then you
can combine it with the supposed phone call. It makes
your skin crawl.
Speaker 5 (35:32):
And then what happens the next day.
Speaker 8 (35:34):
So the next morning, there's a lady named Karen Myers.
She was a sergeant there with Bella Vista, lived just
across the state line. She was on her way to
work that next morning around six six point thirty in
the morning, and she sees this vehicle on the side
of the road there at Wellington in the southbound lane
facing south, and there was another vehicle that was parked
(35:58):
behind it. What kind of vehicle so initially it was
possibly a small truck or a larger car. Later it
changed to again small truck or possibly a station wagon.
She doesn't know at that point in time that anything's wrong.
She proceeds on to work, and in fact, I think
(36:19):
she made some type of comment of the fishing must
be good in that area. So she proceeds on to work.
And it's from what I understand is like, those vehicles
are there, but there's really nobody outside the vehicles that
she notices. She just notices the vehicles, so she proceeds
on to work. Later on she starts thinking, she goes
(36:40):
back and runs the tag the license plate. At that
point in time, we know for sure that it's Dana's vehicle,
and then all hell kind of breaks loose from there.
She contacts Sheriff's office Sedoriac Barner. They go up there
and they process the vehicle.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Danny Varner, who went to school with Dana's parents, and
Mike Zadoriac are the two Sheriff's office detectives now taking
control of the investigation. What they find when they look
at Dana's car begins to tell them that this case
might not have the outcome everyone is hoping for.
Speaker 8 (37:19):
Keyser in the ignition, vehicle is unlocked, driverside window is
halfway down, rear tire is low but not completely flat.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
Drivable, and what I find to be very important is
the driver's seat was adjusted pushed back for a much
taller person, so Dana wasn't the last person to.
Speaker 5 (37:44):
Drive the vehicle.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
The cars parked on Route seventy one, heading south toward
the Phillips just north of this area, and the opposite
direction is the Missouri border. If you drove down Wellington
Road toward Route seventy one, this area where Dana's car
is found would be directly across the north side of
(38:07):
seventy one a median, then the south side of seventy one.
Speaker 5 (38:12):
What significant is.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
That scores of people, police and Dana's family members traveled
by this area all throughout the previous night and early
morning and no one reported seeing any vehicle. Now it's
there with a low tire.
Speaker 5 (38:30):
Like somebody let the air out of the tire.
Speaker 8 (38:32):
Maybe we know from the family that the tire did
have a slow leak that was later confirmed. So there's
the receipt from Phillips that's in the car with the
timestamp on it from the day prior. But the groceries,
the alkacelser, the sugar, the laundry detergent is not in
(38:55):
the car. Again, there's a lot of different theories about
why was that not in the car? Did she go
somewhere take that out then something happened. Did she stop
for somebody they give her a ride, she'd take them
with her. Again, like I said at the beginning, These
are some of the unknown things that we just don't know.
(39:17):
But all in all, the vehicle it doesn't appear that
any kind of struggle took place. It's disheveled, but we
know from talking to some of her friends that, you know,
if she had a drink she finished the dream, you know,
she'd throw it on the floorboarder, you know, just normal.
Speaker 5 (39:35):
Any bottles or cans or anything found in the car.
Speaker 8 (39:37):
There was a chip bag, a Muncho's hip bag that
we took again, could have been hers, could have been
somebody else. We sent fingerprints down and no fingerprints have
ever matched that chip bag. But the groceries itself, they
were not in the vehicle. Her person stuff was not
in the vehicle. But again the keys were in the
(39:58):
vehicle and it was unlocked, which was, according to the family,
not calmon practice something that she would have done. You know,
it's unusual.
Speaker 5 (40:07):
And how is the family responding to this finding.
Speaker 8 (40:11):
Well, from the time that she went missing that previous night,
they're distraught, you know, they know, you know, and I
don't want to speak for them, but you read through
the reports and stuff, you know that they know that
it's not good. The situation is not good one, because
she would have come back on her own that day,
(40:31):
and she didn't.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
And then we hear that they found her car at
Bella Vista, and that's when it really hit me that
something was not right, because she would never just abandon
her car on the side of the road. She lived
for that car, so she wouldn't just leave it. And
if something would have happened, she would have called one
of us, because we would always we would have helped
her in any way. We would have came to god
(40:53):
her no matter what time of night it was. But
we hadn't heard from her.
Speaker 7 (40:57):
And you you all had driven by that era where
the car was found and you didn't see the car,
and then all of a sudden it shows up. Yes,
So what are you being told by law enforce?
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Well, all that we were told was that they had
driven that highway throughout the night and they hadn't seen it.
And then at six o'clock that morning or something, an
officer drove by, and once she got to work and
heard about Dana missing, she remembered seeing the car on
her way into work, and that's when they went back
and found her car there.
Speaker 7 (41:28):
And so what happens next.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Well, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
I know that they went the Lawrence and Larry went
to where the car was while Mike Sedorac and Danny
Varner were out there doing you know, forensics on the
car whatever they did, and they just kind of stood
by the sidelines and watched what was going on. Then
they towed the car into the to the police department
(41:53):
or to the impound.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Still, that phone call to the general store near eleven
PM seems so important. Dana's dead and Mike knows.
Speaker 5 (42:04):
What happened to her.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Who is Mike? Did Dana ever date or even know
anyone named Mike?
Speaker 5 (42:12):
You guys have no idea who Mike is.
Speaker 8 (42:14):
Well, initially we didn't, but later on we did. There
was a Mike that was associated with that store, whose
parents owned that store. So another thing that complicates the
case is you've got three or four different possible scenarios
and then you've got all of these people that supposedly
swear that they saw that day, you know, south of Center,
(42:36):
a van, a truck, No, it's a station wagon.
Speaker 5 (42:40):
Maybe Mike had access to a truck.
Speaker 8 (42:43):
Had access to his dad's truck.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
There was one more important piece of information. The Sheriff's
office obtained that following morning. Mike, they now knew, was
a classmate of Danis and had reportedly been infatuated with her,
and she routinely rejected his advances, and the Sheriff's office
learned that Mike had been out all night long. He
(43:10):
was seen in his father's truck driving around Bella Vista
on Route seventy one as late as three am, and
as alibi that he was with a girlfriend all night
in another town.
Speaker 5 (43:23):
The Benton County.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Sheriff's Office spoke to her and she says she never saw.
Speaker 5 (43:29):
Him coming up.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
Next on paper ghosts the ozarks.
Speaker 5 (43:38):
You can actually put him in a store.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
In the day of Fdaana's disappearance, so you can put
him with Dana right before she disappeared.
Speaker 8 (43:46):
Wasn't there very long? I supposed to meet the people.
So I stopped there in bilis Quahan and then walked
around little bed and stood, and as if I was
walking out, I saw in the dregtory dead and saw
a skull and some rib bones.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Who there there?
Speaker 8 (44:01):
Are you reading?
Speaker 7 (44:01):
Boy?
Speaker 6 (44:02):
What do you want?
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Why?
Speaker 8 (44:10):
Why are you calling me if you don't even know
who I am?
Speaker 7 (44:13):
Thanks a lot?
Speaker 6 (44:15):
Do you know who I am.
Speaker 8 (44:18):
You don't know who I am, then, why are you
calling me?
Speaker 7 (44:21):
Paper Ghosts?
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Season four is written and executive produced by Me and
William Phelps. Script consulting by Rose Bachi, sound designed by
Matt Russell, executive production by Catherine Law, and audio editing
and mixing by Brandon Dicker. Series theme number four four
to two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and
(44:44):
Thomas Mooney
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