February 28, 2024 • 47 mins
As the search for Dana Stidham continues, her sudden disappearance baffles family, friends, and police, as everyone grows increasingly alarmed that Dana has met with foul play. Then, a break in the case comes as Paper Ghosts executive producer, host and investigative journalist M. William Phelps heads to Bella Vista to meet with a source who helps him unravel several potential new threads—including, perhaps, a secret life Dana lived that no one knew about. New suspects emerge.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Who is it?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Who is it? Who is this?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Why do you want to know?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
In the summer of nineteen eighty nine, during those early
days after Dana Stidham went missing, a nineteen year old
woman from Bella Vista began receiving bizarre, sexually explicit calls.
According to a police report, she claimed they were made
by a man she suspected of being a former classmate
(00:43):
and her neighbor.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Did you just take me at ramdy to call? Do
you know me?
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Don't know me?
Speaker 5 (00:52):
Then?
Speaker 6 (00:52):
Why are you calling me?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
An asking you this question?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
She recognized the caller's voice because because the man quote
lived near her, and that after her father left for work,
within three or four minutes, the calls began, as if
the caller was watching her house.
Speaker 7 (01:11):
Who is this?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Are you reading, Bud? What do you want?
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Why?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Why are you calling me?
Speaker 8 (01:22):
If you don't even know who I am?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Do you know who I am? You don't know who
I am? Then why are you calling me?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
The young woman had known the neighbor she suspected of
making the calls since the fourth grade, which was why
she immediately recognized his voice. The caller, who is hard
to understand in these actual recordings, from thirty plus years ago,
never identifies himself. Tired of being harassed, and since there
(01:51):
was nothing much law enforcement could really do, the woman
decided to take matters into her own hands and confront
the neighbor by knocking on his door. He invites her in,
and what she sees inside alarms her. On his bedroom wall,
her name had been spray painted in large letters, alongside
(02:14):
photographs of her cut from their school yearbooks.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well, I bet I'm not and I bet that you're
really sick.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Remember the calls came only when her father was not.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
At home, Hello, Hello, is anybody there?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
And then suddenly, after her visit to the neighbor's house,
the call stopped. She called the police and gave them
his name. Turned out he was already on the Benton
County Sheriff's Office list of suspects in connection with the
disappearance of Dana Stidham previously on Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
What happens to her.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
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.
Speaker 9 (03:31):
They drive around it and they see some clothes on
the side of the road, maybe six feet off the road.
They get out look at it and they're like, hilarious, Like,
I'm pretty sure that's Danu's clothes.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
and author of more than forty true crime works. This
is season four paper Ghosts the Ozarks. On July twenty sixth,
(04:11):
the morning after Dana's Didham vanished, Benton County Sheriff's Office
detective Mike sidoriac arrived at the scene of Dana's vehicle,
wearing a white and blue pinstriped button up shirt, jeans,
and Aviator sunglasses. Sidoriak was photographed kneeling by the driver's
side open door of Dana's car, a clipboard in one hand,
(04:33):
the other reaching inside the vehicle. Dana's car was all
the Benton County Sheriff's Office, which I'll refer to from
here as the BCSO had as far as a crime scene,
a crime scene, mind you, showing clear signs of staging,
as if someone had placed items in certain areas of
(04:53):
the car and also taken things.
Speaker 10 (04:56):
My name is Nathan Smith.
Speaker 6 (04:57):
I'm the prosketting attorney in the nineteen Judicial District West,
which is Benton County, Arkansas, and I oversee all the
felony prosecutions in Benton County, and our county has an
unsolved or cold case murder involving.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Dana stem Nathan Smith was first elected prosecuting Attorney for
Benton County, Arkansas in twenty fourteen, re elected in twenty eighteen,
and again in twenty twenty two. He was seven years
old when Dana Stidham went missing, never once guessing her
case would drive him to ensure she was never forgotten.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
I think the reason cold cases, once they've become cold,
if you will, tend to stay cold, is simply because
one they're going to be very difficult to solve. You know,
most cases are solved within the first several days, if not.
Speaker 10 (05:47):
Immediately of knowing what happened.
Speaker 6 (05:50):
Crime is committed Today, video cameras are ubiquitous on people's
homes and.
Speaker 10 (05:54):
Gas stations everywhere.
Speaker 6 (05:56):
We have DNA evidence, We have all these kinds of
sign hip mechanisms that have really been sort of relatively
late developing. The other real problem with cold cases is
that we don't live in a static environment. There are
going to be more crimes, more homicides, more things that
come in for police to work on that really will
take their focus off of cases where it seems like
they've hit a wall or hit a dead end.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
So she leaves the store, do we know if there
was anyone that she met up with in the parking lot,
in the store, anything like that.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
We believe that she did have a conversation with a
person in the parking lot before she left, and then
from there, really the evidentiary conclusions kind of diverge as
to what happened that There have been reports that she
was later seen on the side of the road, or
her vehicle was seen on the side of the road
with a man apparently changing a tire or something like that.
Speaker 10 (06:48):
So it gets kind of spotty as to what happened.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
That man Dana spoke to was a threat of inquiry
I decided to focus on early in my investigation, but
other questions kept nagging me. Had Dana been abducted right
away or did she go voluntarily with her abductor only
to have things go sideways leader that night. And if
she had gone willingly, could that mean she knew the
(07:14):
person or had she simply taken off all on her own.
Speaker 10 (07:20):
Did anyone believe that she'd run away?
Speaker 6 (07:23):
One of the things that the investigators did at the
time was to eliminate that possibility, because one of the
things you're always going to look at is you know
and you see it. Even with runaway children and things
where they have alerts go out for kids, they're trying
to figure out, Okay, did this kid run away from home?
Have they done this of their own own accord? But
there was simply nothing in Dana's life to indicate that
(07:44):
she would do that. Right everything would indicate she wouldn't
be doing that.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
As the first full day after Dana's disappearance progressed, more
bad news came, leading anyone who was hopeful she had
taken off on her own to lean in a more
uncertain direction. Two additional pieces of Dana's clothing, confirmed to
be dirty laundry from inside her car, were found on
Wellington Road in a grassy area not far from a
(08:12):
porno magazine. What's more, the receipt from the purchases she
made that day at the Phillips grocery was discovered inside
Dana's car. Oddly enough, however, the groceries she bought would
never be found. In addition, belongings confirmed to be from
(08:34):
inside her purse were discovered scattered along the grass medium nearby,
but Dena's purse, a unique large denim bag, was not.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
It does appear that that's certainly the theory that the
investigators operated on, that those items were thrown out of
a car window. And it was always perplexing why they
found her car on the side of the road with
the keys in the ignition, and so there's all kinds
of theories around that. Was it a kind of a
(09:08):
sabotage thing to make sure a car wouldn't run. Did
she have a legitimate reason that was just happenstance to
pull over, But it certainly seemed at the time, I
think obvious to investigators that her car just being abandoned
on the side of the road does seem to be
a pretty significant coincidence.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That same day, a local girl came forward to say
she saw a tan or cream colored small pickup with
a camper parked behind Dana's vehicle that morning. She was
certain a man had been kneeling near the back of
the car as if he was fixing a flat. She
could not describe the man, but said the truck was
(09:48):
beat up and appeared to be used on a farm
or in the woods. Prosecutor Nathan Smith brought up a
good point. Did someone sabotage Dana's vehicle so the car
would malfunction and break down at some point on our
way home? Remember there is a report of several people
(10:08):
seeing an older man talking to Dana in the parking
lot of the Phillips just after she walked out of
the store. I also wondered how aggressive investigators had been
with regard to questioning people who popped up on their radar?
Speaker 11 (10:25):
Are there any suspects being questioned that might have had
something to do with this?
Speaker 6 (10:30):
So, and I got to be careful here. I only
say what's been publicly reported. But there were several suspects
that officers looked at at the time, the folks that
you would expect, they looked at, a at a man
that was a I believe a classmate of hers or
someone who knew her from her town, So that was
at least one person. And one of the problems with
(10:53):
cold cases, and specifically with Dana's case, is that there
is some evidence right now that if you looked at
it in a vacuum, could tend to support theories one
way or the other. And so as this case goes forward,
it's really important to narrow down who the evidence really
points to.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
But the suspects in Dana's case weren't the only ones
the BCSO were looking at, because Dana's wasn't the only
disappearance in the area. The ugly reality law enforcement could
not ignore was that within a fifty mile radius of
where Dana was last seen, no fewer than five additional
young women had either gone missing or their bodies had
(11:37):
been discovered over a period of five years leading up
to Dana's disappearance, which led to the troubling notion that
a potential serial killer was roaming through Benton County and
the Ozarks, plucking young women off the streets at will
and running under every single law enforcement radar available. When
(12:19):
a small community like Benton County is rocked to its
core by the disappearance of a popular, well liked young
woman on a summer afternoon in broad daylight. They banned
together to help an eight x ten flier. A paper
ghost was mass produced and tacked to telephone poles in
(12:40):
supermarket windows, convenience stores and gas stations. A five thousand
dollars reward was offered for any information leading to Dana.
A canine search dog was then brought up to Ealing
Circle off Wellington Road, where Dana's brother, Larry Stidham, had
found some of his sister's clothing the night she was
(13:02):
reported missing, just a half mile from where Dana's car
had been located. By now, hope for the Stidham family
was waning, and that despair would only increase after a
pet dog trotting along the grass on the side of
Route seventy one found something. Here's Hunter portray, a current
(13:28):
lieutenant with the BCSO who you heard in the last episode.
Speaker 9 (13:34):
I think maybe a week and a half later, further north,
there's a dog that brings up like a wallet and
it has Dana's ID in it. So at that point
in time, you know, it went from bad to worse
to now. It's like Okay, we think we're pretty sure
foul play because it was her id. There were some
(13:55):
contraceptives that were found.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I appreciated Lieutenant trace sincerity, compassion, and eagerness to see
Dani's case resolved. A cold case needs someone in law
enforcement fighting for it, or the case will sit in
an eminence room and collect frost.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Well.
Speaker 9 (14:13):
Generally, with the passage of time, it doesn't get any easier.
A lot of times the detectives investigators that work those
cases are either retired, a lot of times they are deceased,
and you can't go back and speak to them directly,
so you have to look through the case file. So
the best way to do it, the best way that
I found is go back and start from square zero
(14:36):
and basically look through everything with the fresh set of
eyes and just kind of kind of get your own
gauge and opinion of the case itself. Look for things
that may have been missed, things that you can do,
people that may have been interviewed that need to be
interviewed again, people that you think weren't interviewed need to
(14:57):
be interviewed.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Advancements in DNA over the past ten years, Lieutenant Portray
noted had been both the cause of great celebration and
also disappointment.
Speaker 9 (15:08):
The OJ trial that kind of brought it to everybody's spotlight,
and that was what early nineties. So in the twenty
thirty years since that DNA technology has increased dramatically. Like
just last year, we saw three of our cold case
John Doe. Two of them were John Doe's and one
(15:28):
was a Jain Doe, and we had no idea who
they were, and we were able to through DNA and
genetic genealogy figure out who those people were. So now
we have leads to try to close those cases out victimology,
you know who they associated with. Prior to that, they
were just John Doe's and Jane Doe's and you had
no idea who they were, and you can't start anywhere
(15:50):
until you know who they are.
Speaker 11 (15:51):
And we know that probably eighty percent of murders is
someone you know in your circle.
Speaker 9 (15:56):
That seems to be the consensus at least the homicide
that I've worked on. Very few random stranger homicides. Now
they do happen, but statistically speaking, it's going to be
somebody that they're associated with, and not necessarily close family
or whatever, but somebody that they're somewhat associated with. Whether
(16:18):
it's an acquaintance, someone they ran into, somebody they bumped
into at the store, or knew from another friend slightly
but didn't really know personally, but generally it's somebody that
they affiliated with or associated with at some.
Speaker 7 (16:33):
Point in time.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
As I dug deeper into the victimology side, several things
about Dana's circle of friends bothered me more than usual.
You see, I generally develop a sense, or rather thoughts
and theories as I begin working on a cold case, knowing,
of course they will shape and change and perhaps point
me in a new direction as I move forward. But
(16:58):
here I started talking to sources on and off the record.
I could not shake a feeling that there was an
important piece of this puzzle missing, something either few were
willing to talk about, those close to Dana were in
denial about where they just didn't know. And something Lieutenant
Petree said to me pushed me further down this road.
Speaker 9 (17:23):
This is the day that Dana went missing, around five pm.
There's a lady who's driving on three forty, which is
the highway basically right there at Town Center. She says
that there's a car that comes into her lane. She
has to swerve to miss it. There's a mail driving,
there's a female passenger, and there looks like there's another
(17:44):
person in the backseat. At that point in time, she
doesn't really think anything about it.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
I obtained the transcript of the interview police conducted with
this woman. She was twenty four years old then and
lived in Bella Vista. On July twenty fifth, between five
and six pm, she drove up to the Missouri state
line to buy gas. On her way back into Arkansas,
not too far from the town center where Phillips Grocery is,
(18:11):
a vehicle swerved into her lane. Quote it looked like
Dana's car. The guy driving had dark hair. He was
a big dude, likely in his twenties. The girl sitting
next to him had long, dark hair. The source explained
to police that the girl she believed to be Dana,
had perhaps grabbed the wheel and purposely swerved the car
(18:34):
into her lane. The next morning, July twenty sixth, as
she was driving toward Wellington Road, she saw Dana's car
parked on Route seventy one, heading south, where it was
eventually found. She noticed the driver's side window was rolled down.
She then drove up Wellington to a friend's house. By
(18:54):
six thirty am that same morning, she was on her
way back down Wellington, sitting at a stoplight facing Route
seventy one in front of her, when she saw a
Ford courier truck, as she described it, parked behind Dana's
car with a shell or camper on the back, and
there was that same large man again from the previous night,
(19:16):
the one driving Dana's car, standing behind it. She assumed
he was getting ready to change the tire of Dana's car.
Woul Dana's case being the top story on all the
local news stations throughout those early days. This would not
be the only report from a random person claiming to
have seen Dana on the day she went missing, or
(19:39):
even later on into the evening.
Speaker 11 (19:42):
What I'm getting from you is that her car is
seen kind of all over seventy one that.
Speaker 9 (19:47):
Day, couple of different places, all relatively around that Phillips area,
but one person saying that they saw it south in
the north boundle line, and then obviously later on we
know that it was found in the southbound lane north
of the town center. So those are things that complicated
(20:11):
the case. You got three people saying they all saw
it at the same location. You got three people saying
they saw it, but different locations, different set of circumstances,
just not conducive to getting it solved right away.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
It bothered me at so many different people, a list
which would continue to grow as I developed. Additional sources
claimed to have seen Dana at different locations around Bella
Vista and even as far away as Gravit, the time
where she grew up and had lived most of her life.
Here's one of Dana's cousins, Dwight Stidham, who spoke to
(20:45):
police a day after Dana went missing about what he
had seen, but has never spoken to anyone else about
this since. Tell me what you remember about Dana growing up.
Speaker 8 (20:56):
She just well, behaved well and always doing stuff for
her parents, and especially for Laurence because he had as righters,
real bad and that's what finally got him at the end.
You know, she was always there for him.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
And Dwight, several years older than Dana, is referring to
Dana's father, Lawrence. Dwight saw Dana a lot growing up.
He also knew the town of Gravit and the people
within dana circle of friends. In and out of town
fairly well. And not all of them were as straight
lace as Dana has been described.
Speaker 8 (21:40):
They was a little bit on the wild side in
what ways, in the drinking and the drugs.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
When you say drugs, what kind of drugs are you
talking about?
Speaker 8 (21:50):
When we talk about drugs around here, it's just your
basic drugs, marijuana, speed, just different kinds of peals.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
You know, when goes missing. Do you remember that time?
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Oh yeah, tell me about that.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Tell me how it starts for you.
Speaker 7 (22:06):
What you remember.
Speaker 8 (22:08):
Well, at that time, we was living up from grab It.
We had a little dairy bar up her. It had
pool tables and some arcade games in it, and I'd
go up there on the weekends and play pool. And
it was probably around six seven o'clock. It wasn't dark
or anything. It was still good daylight and sunny and everything.
(22:28):
And me and my nephew we was going up her
to play the games, playpool and stuff. And before you
get to the little dairy bar, I pulled up to
the four ways stop and she had pulled up across
the street from me, facing me, and she had a
girl in the car with her, But I didn't recognize
who the girl was or anything. But you know, she
(22:50):
just she waved at me and everything, and I didn't
think nothing about it. As far as I know, Me
and my nephew was probably the last two in the
family that had seen her.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
And she didn't look distressed, she didn't look in trouble.
Speaker 8 (23:05):
No, she had a big old smile on her face,
just wayed real big and you know, did we just
crossed past her at the four ways stop and it
just seemed normal to me.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So between six and seven pm on the night Dana
went missing, she was out and about with a friend,
driving around the town where she grew up in smiling,
having a good time. That kind of nixes the theory
that someone at the Phillips sabotaged her tire, or followed
her or abducted her that afternoon in the parking lot.
(23:39):
This information pointed in the direction of somebody Dana knew.
Speaker 9 (23:46):
Another thing that hindered this case, and it's nothing that
the investigators did wrong. It's a product of the time
that it happened. Eighty nine, nobody had cell phones really,
so today and age, cell phones are tremendous for law
enforcement as far as tracking people we know based off
(24:06):
a GPS they went here there nineteen eighty nine, we
didn't have that. Also, you know, surveillance cameras, security cameras,
it existed, but not for most people. So Phillips Grocery,
no video surveillance, there's nothing. So those two things kind
(24:28):
of complicated the case as well, because you don't have
video of her driving by a certain location. You don't
have GPS location of hey, she placed a phone call here.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Even more alarming is the timeline the BCSO developed for
when Dana's car could have made it to the location
where it was found on Route seventy one.
Speaker 9 (24:49):
There's a sergeant who was our sheriff here for a
while after, but he worked for the state police. He
actually around eleven thirty that night, turns up Wellington to
serve a warrant, takes care of his business, comes back
down Willington would have been facing the car in states
(25:10):
that the vehicle was not there at that point in time,
So you kind of have to take that for what
it's worth, and like it's staring you in the face.
So right, Larry didn't see it, the family didn't see it.
You know, you got a state trooper.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Dana's car was parked on that pull off on the
side of Route seventy one between eleven thirty pm and
five am, and the two sources bookending those times are
both law enforcement. Now you take that fact and add
it to a name the BCSO received early into its inquiries,
(25:46):
and the investigation broadens. Mike McMillan, a classmate who allegedly
had a crush on Dana, was seen driving around Bella
Vista between those same hours. Mike was a year older
than Dana. He was preparing to head out to San
(26:06):
Diego for Navy basic training in two weeks. Mike was
a tall, large young man with dark hair. Mike McMillan
was one person law enforcement was laser focused on at
this time. Mike was questioned by police on July twenty seven,
(26:26):
nineteen eighty nine. In the investigator's notes from that interview,
Mike said he was driving his father's truck in Bella
Vista at eleven thirty PM to a friend's house in
a border town. He claimed to have stayed there until
two thirty or three before driving to another friend's house,
leaving there by four am. He had seen Dana a
(26:50):
few days before she went missing. He had actually stopped
at her apartment before that, he had not seen her
for two months. Here's Dana's cousin, Christy Smith once again.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
Mike McMillan.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Was he in high school with y'all?
Speaker 11 (27:07):
Yes?
Speaker 12 (27:07):
He was?
Speaker 3 (27:08):
And what kind of guy was he in high school?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Mike was a good guy, very friendly, just seemed to
be like all the other boys in school.
Speaker 9 (27:15):
He liked Dana obviously.
Speaker 12 (27:17):
Uh huh.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
He did it.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Never It never seemed like it went, you know, too
far or beyond what she was willing, you know, to
have with him. They were friends for a long time.
We all rode the school bus together. I never noticed
anything odd about the way he felt about her.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
And there was someone else in Dana's life. I needed
to find out more about her ex boyfriend and her
former boyfriend.
Speaker 11 (27:45):
Was he looked into right away?
Speaker 12 (27:47):
I believe they interviewed him and possibly his brother early on.
He said he called in sick to work that day
was his alibi. But I I do believe he got
a lawyer fairly early on.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
That is the voice of Brandon Howard, an investigative journalist
from Benton County who has done more reporting on this
case than perhaps anyone I met. Brandon through a detective
I've known quite a while that ex boyfriend, Brandon Mentions,
who was a good friend of Mike McMillan's, was brought
in and interviewed within a week of Dana's disappearance. He'd
(28:27):
met her in nineteen eighty eight at a local mall.
The breakup in April nineteen eighty nine was contentious.
Speaker 9 (28:35):
You know, they had talked to some people, her boyfriend
that she had just broken up with. There were some
issues there, number one, because it ended on bad terms.
There was also an issue with a motorcycle title. From
what I understand, his parents had put up some money
for engagement rings. They were supposed to get married. Dana
(28:57):
was supposedly pregnant. Found out that she wasn't pregnant. That
caused a big riff. They ended up breaking up, tried
to get back the motorcycle title. The family didn't want
to give it back until he paid a certain amount
of money. So all this stuff's going on. So, yeah,
he was a person of interest. But there are people
that saw him that day, that night that he was
(29:19):
at a certain house. He was here, he was there.
He was on a motorcycle two which would have made
it really difficult to do.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
After digging into Dana's ex boyfriend's alibi, reviewing all the
reports and relevant polygraphs, conducting several interviews with people about him,
the ex boyfriend didn't seem to be too high on
the list of people who might have had something to
do with her disappearance. I couldn't exclude him completely, but
(29:47):
I was confident I would be able to. Yet, even
with the ex boyfriend moved from the top of my
list of potential suspects and what now appears to be
a serious crime, the pool of people who had motive
and opportunity in Dana's disappearance was about to grow exponentially.
(30:28):
When a person is missing for more than three months,
they fall under a classification called long term missing person.
Danastdam had been missing about six weeks, half that time
when investigators dug their heels in and focused on those
who could have either helped Dana take off or were
responsible for her disappearance. By now, sadly, most everyone involved
(30:56):
believed that Dana's Didam was no longer alive. With Brandon
Howard's help, my focus shifted towards several people. Remember that
Phillips employee. Well, he lived just off Wellington Road. So
there's this older guy from Phillips, and many of whom
(31:19):
I spoke to who knew him and work there, they
call him a perver. Right now, some of Dana's clothing
had been found close to his house, right like literally
blocks away.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Oh yeah, maybe the first street or so away from
his street.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
So tell me about this guy. I mean, you sent
me the transcript of the interview they did with him.
You've studied at read through. What are your thoughts on
this guy.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
He's probably most troublesome because you can actually put him
in the store in the day of Dana's disappearance, so
you can put him with Dana right before she disappeared.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Now do we know if he is the quote old
guy that she's seen talking to in the parking lot,
because according to his interview, he says.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
No, I don't think there's ever been any definitive answer
as to who that person.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Was Bcso Lieutenant Hunter Portray confirmed this, and he's also
fired from Phillips on July twenty seven, which is two
days after she goes missing. Right, yes, very alarming and
not to forget. At this time, investigators have no idea
(32:31):
what happened to Dana? She is still missing. Her status
is about to change in a remarkable, sad way. But
at this time in the investigation, there are more suspects
than possible answers. And so now why was he fired?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I guess it was a culmination of sexual harassment complaints
that had been launched against Une. I don't know if
there was a specific one in the lead up to
July of nineteen eighty nine, but I think something must
have tipped the scales because it sounded like he had
somewhat of a sort of reputation among the female employees.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
And then we come to a proclivity he has for magazines, right,
they start to get into that in the interview.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
I guess that since he was a receiving clerk and
took in maybe not just groceries, but items that would
be sold in the grocery store, like toys, trinkets, magazines,
he was receiving some X rated magazines or buying something
in the store from the people that would drop them off.
And it became somewhat alarming when they found a dirty
(33:39):
magazine with some of Venus clothing. So now you have
a suspect that worked at the store with Danna, had
an issue with female employees and sexual harassment, and also,
like you said, out of proclivity for dirty magazines, right.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
And as you say, they found one of those magazines
with her clothing.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
So yeah, it's pretty alarming that there's a magazine with
her clothing. There's a guy that likes these magazines and
that same person lives within throwing distance of where those
clothing and magazine are found and works at the store
with Dana and was at least at the store that
they for sure know where Dana was lifting.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
On the other part of this interview is they ask
him what type of vehicle you drive and what does
he say? He says, I drive a Toyota pick up
with a camper. Yes, the guys shift that Phillips ended
at about the same time Dana would have been on
her way out, And we know that these types of
(34:39):
mis in person cases are statistically crimes of opportunity. Until
the BCSO can confirm or discredit his alibi that he
was at home with his wife, he remains a primary
person of interest. Even though they have numerous reports of
people seeing Dana later on that day and in to
(35:00):
the early evening. I asked Brandon what he thought about
those phone calls which you heard at the top of
the episode, the sexually explicit calls made to a young
Bella Vista woman by a neighbor she knew from high school?
Were they significant? Were they even related to Dana's case?
(35:22):
What about the name of the caller she gave the police.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I would argue she has the best opinion for that.
I mean, she grew up with him. I think at
least went to high school with him, and he was
her neighbor. I would think she'd know his boys.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Brandon gave me the name of the caller, which I
am choosing not to reveal. I can say, however, he
was looked at by law enforcement. Now a question I
had for you, and that I'm unsure of, is I'm
curious whether she makes the accusations against the caller as
being before he is a public suspect in Dana's case.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I would say confidently than it's not a public suspect
until at least nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
To add more confusion to the case, two weeks after
Dana went missing, a sixteen year old girl contacted the
BCSO with an incredible story. I communicated with her and
asked if she wanted to tell her own story on
the podcast, but she doesn't want her name or voice used.
The police report and subsequent interview the BCSO did with
(36:29):
her in nineteen eighty nine, however, is beyond revealing.
Speaker 9 (36:33):
There was a female that made a statement that Dana
had been seen at Blowing Springs Park.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
This girl says she was at the park in Bella
Vista on July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty nine, with two
guys in their twenties. She had driven herself there. It's
around nine pm. She is sitting on a picnic table
when another thirty something dude from just across the Missouri
state line named Orville Mitch Goodwin, whom she was somewhat
(37:01):
familiar with, pulls into the park in his green pickup
with a camper on the back. The two guys she
met at the park walk up to Goodwin's vehicle, she follows.
She tells police that when she looks into the cab
of the truck, Dana is sitting next to Goodwin. The
insinuation is that Dana, because she worked at the Phillips
(37:24):
knew Goodwin because he was routinely showing up at the
store picking up garbage for a guy he worked with.
He also hung around another guy who worked for Ozark Beverage,
which did business at the store.
Speaker 9 (37:38):
Now, from what we know, miss said that he didn't
know Dana from talking with her family friends. They didn't
know Mitch. Mitch was older. It's not somebody that would
have been on the outside looking in would have been
in her circle of friends.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
They questioned the teenage witness intensely about minor details. She
seemed to answer each question very clearly. She claims Goodwin
pulled in from Route seventy one and parked for about
fifteen minutes with Dana by his side. She was asked,
quote any doubt in your mind that the girl that
(38:22):
was in the passenger seat at that time was Dana Stidham.
Her answer one hundred percent positive than this. She says
Goodwin left at about nine point thirty with Dana and
returned an hour and fifteen minutes later without Dana. Not
(38:42):
long after she reports this to police, she claims Orville
Mitch Goodwin starts calling her, threatening to kill her if
she mentions anything to police about what she saw. The
phone call threat she says carried on for two years.
Speaker 9 (39:02):
Could he have done it, Yes, But you also have
to kind of look at the credibility of your witness
that's given the statement. And you know, people say they
see aliens all the time, and maybe they do. Maybe
I don't know. I don't want to get into that,
but you have to kind of take it with a
grain of salt, like, Okay, this person supposedly saw Dana
in this in this truck with Mitch Goodwin, but nobody
else can corroborate that. There are other people that were
(39:25):
at the park that can't corroborate it.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
In the years after he is accused of having been
involved with Dana's disappearance, Orville Mitch Goodwin pleads guilty to
first degree attempted murder and is sentenced to twelve years
in prison. The crime, Goodwin shot a woman named and
Net rapidly in the face and left it for dead
(39:49):
in a Bella Vista Creek bed near the Missouri border.
If not for a man on horseback riding by who
saw in that bloodied and laying on the ground, she
would died there. He was interviewed, right.
Speaker 9 (40:03):
Yeah, he was interviewed, and again didn't know who she was, and.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
He had an alibi, I believe.
Speaker 9 (40:10):
Possibly now there is a person who claims that the
guy that was in the van or the guy that
was parked on the side of the road that saw
Dana outside with these two guys, thinks that the person
had red hair and thinks that it matches the description
of Mitch Goodwin. So again, just something else to complicate
(40:34):
the case. You know, hey, we've got three or four suspects,
why not add another fifth suspect.
Speaker 11 (40:41):
You know, people don't make the best witnesses.
Speaker 9 (40:44):
No, but you know, people are adamant in their own
mind that hey, I heard a gunshot at eleven oh two,
and I called my friend and let them know about it,
and there one hundred percent positive And then you get
the phone records and it's like nine o'clock. But they're
(41:06):
sitting there telling you like it's one hundred percent truth
that it was eleven o'clock. But you have physical proof
that nor your time is off. So people, I don't
think intentionally always do that, sure, but a lot of
times their mind plays tricks on them and they think
that it's a certain time where they think that they
saw a red shirt, and then you find the person
in it's a blue shirt.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
That's why forensics is so important.
Speaker 9 (41:28):
Correct, That's why physical evidence and that's why prosecutors like
that to try cases. You know, you're when you're talking
about circumstantial which is in this case, we have a
lot of circumstantial evidence that's hard to take to court,
and that's hard to get a jury to convict somebody.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
The plethora of circumstantial evidence that BCSO had on several
persons of interest was about to get a huge boost
from physical evidence as September nineteen eighty nine came around.
I'm calling him Stephen, which is not his real name,
and I'll get to why he asked me to change
his name in a minute. On September sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine,
(42:11):
Stephen had some free time on his hands, so he
decided to go out and scout locations where he and
his buddy could go hunting and maybe even do a
little hunting himself. That day, it was early afternoon, Stephen
wound up on Beal Lane Circle, a dead end in
Bella Vista so close to the Missouri state line you
(42:33):
could probably hit it with a football throw. Stephen parked,
got out of his truck and started walking through the woods.
Speaker 7 (42:44):
I was supposed to meet some people, so I stopped
there and did a little score hunting and walked around
a elemit instead. And as I was walking out, I
saw in a dry creek bed and saw a skull
and some rib bones. So next morning I called the
police and took him down there, and they said, oh,
I'm sure it's just a bear skull or a deer sculls,
(43:06):
I know, the difference to human skull and the bear.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
Where exactly was this?
Speaker 7 (43:12):
It was right behind actually from where I stood, like
in the fall. I'm sure in the summer you couldn't
see it, but in the fall you could see up
to a liquor store that was just over the state
line there. It was on the east side of Ela Vista.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
And what did you think when you first saw that skull?
What went through you?
Speaker 5 (43:28):
Well?
Speaker 7 (43:29):
I wasn't sure. I mean because it's kind of pretty
close to Peer Ridge Battlefield, So I thought maybe it
was an old skull or whatever. I could tell. It's
fairly small. It wasn't a big person. But that's what
I told them there too, you know, when they said
it was a deer skull, said, no, No, it's a
human skull, fairly small.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
And were you familiar with the case of Dana Stidham
that was in the news.
Speaker 7 (43:51):
No, I had never never heard of it.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
And so you called the next morning. What made you
wait a day or half a day or whatever.
Speaker 7 (44:01):
Well, like I was supposed to meet somebody, we were
going to doub hunting, met them and they said, well
maybe I said, well, you know, it's not going anywhere.
In hindsight, yes, I should have immediately called them, but
you know, like I said, I didn't. I didn't think
it was afresh. You know, if that w ever saw
you know, any kind of flesh or anything like that,
I definitely.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Would tell me it. Describe exactly what you saw.
Speaker 7 (44:23):
Just there was skull and some bird roe and rib
boons in a dry creek bed. Really all I saw
it initially.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
And was it together, the body together.
Speaker 7 (44:32):
It was, you know, scattered over probably fifteen or twenty feet.
She was buried in a shallow grave of an animals
got to heed.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
And you didn't see any of her clothes or anything
like that.
Speaker 7 (44:41):
When I took him back the next day and we're
showing him around. Actually, the cop that I was following
him after it kind of showed him more the boones.
When we were walking back, he actually stepped on a
piece of skin that had some duct tape, and I
think there was some clothing there too. Really yeah, and
(45:02):
I planted. He I just stepped on.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Some So he steps on a piece of so the
duct tape was taped to clothing and then that had
skin on it.
Speaker 7 (45:11):
I believe, so that it was all kind of stuck together.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
This man who stumbled across Danastidam's body is talking about
an area of Bella Vista, about five point five miles
a ten minute ride from the Phillips Grocery and that
Route seventy one area where Dana's car was found. It
was an undeveloped Could de Sac far off the beaten path.
The creek bed is about one hundred and seventy feet
(45:36):
from the Cold de Sac. Only four tenths of a
mile northeast from where Dana Stidam's body was found. In
these woods is the Ozark Beverage Company, where Orville Mitch
Goodwin had just told the BCSO a friend of his
worked and he had visited on numerous occasions. The reason
why the man I am calling Stephen didn't want his
(45:58):
name used.
Speaker 7 (46:00):
Because I had somebody's driving up sitting in front of
my house in a truck, and after three or four times,
you know, I stuck out the back and stuck up
the truck in my shot and they took off, and.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
This person. Do you think it was a copper?
Speaker 7 (46:14):
I'm sure the killer?
Speaker 3 (46:19):
Next time on paper ghosts, I'm thinking they're lying like hell,
because my little girl wasn't dick.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
Something's not right here. Something in my mind told me
that this guy is fixing to kill this girl. But
he never moved because there was his arms folded, his
smirky smile on her to dance him, and I, oh,
my god, this is some kind of a murder.
Speaker 12 (46:47):
They find what appear to be several hairs I think
maybe some blood spots in the car, and then they realized,
you know, other items of her remains. They went back
and tossed those and left.
Speaker 13 (46:58):
But I would think that you 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 3 (47:11):
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 Ghosts Season four is written
and executive produced by me M William Phelps, script consulting
by Rose Bachi, sound design by Matt Russell, executive production
(47:32):
by Catherine Law, and audio editing and mixing by Brandon
Dicker Takaboom Productions. The series theme number four four to
two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom
mo
Who is it?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Who is it? Who is this?
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Why do you want to know?
Speaker 3 (00:22):
In the summer of nineteen eighty nine, during those early
days after Dana Stidham went missing, a nineteen year old
woman from Bella Vista began receiving bizarre, sexually explicit calls.
According to a police report, she claimed they were made
by a man she suspected of being a former classmate
(00:43):
and her neighbor.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Did you just take me at ramdy to call? Do
you know me?
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Don't know me?
Speaker 5 (00:52):
Then?
Speaker 6 (00:52):
Why are you calling me?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
An asking you this question?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
She recognized the caller's voice because because the man quote
lived near her, and that after her father left for work,
within three or four minutes, the calls began, as if
the caller was watching her house.
Speaker 7 (01:11):
Who is this?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Are you reading, Bud? What do you want?
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Why?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Why are you calling me?
Speaker 8 (01:22):
If you don't even know who I am?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Do you know who I am? You don't know who
I am? Then why are you calling me?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
The young woman had known the neighbor she suspected of
making the calls since the fourth grade, which was why
she immediately recognized his voice. The caller, who is hard
to understand in these actual recordings, from thirty plus years ago,
never identifies himself. Tired of being harassed, and since there
(01:51):
was nothing much law enforcement could really do, the woman
decided to take matters into her own hands and confront
the neighbor by knocking on his door. He invites her in,
and what she sees inside alarms her. On his bedroom wall,
her name had been spray painted in large letters, alongside
(02:14):
photographs of her cut from their school yearbooks.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well, I bet I'm not and I bet that you're
really sick.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Remember the calls came only when her father was not.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
At home, Hello, Hello, is anybody there?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
And then suddenly, after her visit to the neighbor's house,
the call stopped. She called the police and gave them
his name. Turned out he was already on the Benton
County Sheriff's Office list of suspects in connection with the
disappearance of Dana Stidham previously on Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
What happens to her.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
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.
Speaker 9 (03:31):
They drive around it and they see some clothes on
the side of the road, maybe six feet off the road.
They get out look at it and they're like, hilarious, Like,
I'm pretty sure that's Danu's clothes.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
and author of more than forty true crime works. This
is season four paper Ghosts the Ozarks. On July twenty sixth,
(04:11):
the morning after Dana's Didham vanished, Benton County Sheriff's Office
detective Mike sidoriac arrived at the scene of Dana's vehicle,
wearing a white and blue pinstriped button up shirt, jeans,
and Aviator sunglasses. Sidoriak was photographed kneeling by the driver's
side open door of Dana's car, a clipboard in one hand,
(04:33):
the other reaching inside the vehicle. Dana's car was all
the Benton County Sheriff's Office, which I'll refer to from
here as the BCSO had as far as a crime scene,
a crime scene, mind you, showing clear signs of staging,
as if someone had placed items in certain areas of
(04:53):
the car and also taken things.
Speaker 10 (04:56):
My name is Nathan Smith.
Speaker 6 (04:57):
I'm the prosketting attorney in the nineteen Judicial District West,
which is Benton County, Arkansas, and I oversee all the
felony prosecutions in Benton County, and our county has an
unsolved or cold case murder involving.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Dana stem Nathan Smith was first elected prosecuting Attorney for
Benton County, Arkansas in twenty fourteen, re elected in twenty eighteen,
and again in twenty twenty two. He was seven years
old when Dana Stidham went missing, never once guessing her
case would drive him to ensure she was never forgotten.
Speaker 6 (05:34):
I think the reason cold cases, once they've become cold,
if you will, tend to stay cold, is simply because
one they're going to be very difficult to solve. You know,
most cases are solved within the first several days, if not.
Speaker 10 (05:47):
Immediately of knowing what happened.
Speaker 6 (05:50):
Crime is committed Today, video cameras are ubiquitous on people's
homes and.
Speaker 10 (05:54):
Gas stations everywhere.
Speaker 6 (05:56):
We have DNA evidence, We have all these kinds of
sign hip mechanisms that have really been sort of relatively
late developing. The other real problem with cold cases is
that we don't live in a static environment. There are
going to be more crimes, more homicides, more things that
come in for police to work on that really will
take their focus off of cases where it seems like
they've hit a wall or hit a dead end.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
So she leaves the store, do we know if there
was anyone that she met up with in the parking lot,
in the store, anything like that.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
We believe that she did have a conversation with a
person in the parking lot before she left, and then
from there, really the evidentiary conclusions kind of diverge as
to what happened that There have been reports that she
was later seen on the side of the road, or
her vehicle was seen on the side of the road
with a man apparently changing a tire or something like that.
Speaker 10 (06:48):
So it gets kind of spotty as to what happened.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
That man Dana spoke to was a threat of inquiry
I decided to focus on early in my investigation, but
other questions kept nagging me. Had Dana been abducted right
away or did she go voluntarily with her abductor only
to have things go sideways leader that night. And if
she had gone willingly, could that mean she knew the
(07:14):
person or had she simply taken off all on her own.
Speaker 10 (07:20):
Did anyone believe that she'd run away?
Speaker 6 (07:23):
One of the things that the investigators did at the
time was to eliminate that possibility, because one of the
things you're always going to look at is you know
and you see it. Even with runaway children and things
where they have alerts go out for kids, they're trying
to figure out, Okay, did this kid run away from home?
Have they done this of their own own accord? But
there was simply nothing in Dana's life to indicate that
(07:44):
she would do that. Right everything would indicate she wouldn't
be doing that.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
As the first full day after Dana's disappearance progressed, more
bad news came, leading anyone who was hopeful she had
taken off on her own to lean in a more
uncertain direction. Two additional pieces of Dana's clothing, confirmed to
be dirty laundry from inside her car, were found on
Wellington Road in a grassy area not far from a
(08:12):
porno magazine. What's more, the receipt from the purchases she
made that day at the Phillips grocery was discovered inside
Dana's car. Oddly enough, however, the groceries she bought would
never be found. In addition, belongings confirmed to be from
(08:34):
inside her purse were discovered scattered along the grass medium nearby,
but Dena's purse, a unique large denim bag, was not.
Speaker 6 (08:47):
It does appear that that's certainly the theory that the
investigators operated on, that those items were thrown out of
a car window. And it was always perplexing why they
found her car on the side of the road with
the keys in the ignition, and so there's all kinds
of theories around that. Was it a kind of a
(09:08):
sabotage thing to make sure a car wouldn't run. Did
she have a legitimate reason that was just happenstance to
pull over, But it certainly seemed at the time, I
think obvious to investigators that her car just being abandoned
on the side of the road does seem to be
a pretty significant coincidence.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That same day, a local girl came forward to say
she saw a tan or cream colored small pickup with
a camper parked behind Dana's vehicle that morning. She was
certain a man had been kneeling near the back of
the car as if he was fixing a flat. She
could not describe the man, but said the truck was
(09:48):
beat up and appeared to be used on a farm
or in the woods. Prosecutor Nathan Smith brought up a
good point. Did someone sabotage Dana's vehicle so the car
would malfunction and break down at some point on our
way home? Remember there is a report of several people
(10:08):
seeing an older man talking to Dana in the parking
lot of the Phillips just after she walked out of
the store. I also wondered how aggressive investigators had been
with regard to questioning people who popped up on their radar?
Speaker 11 (10:25):
Are there any suspects being questioned that might have had
something to do with this?
Speaker 6 (10:30):
So, and I got to be careful here. I only
say what's been publicly reported. But there were several suspects
that officers looked at at the time, the folks that
you would expect, they looked at, a at a man
that was a I believe a classmate of hers or
someone who knew her from her town, So that was
at least one person. And one of the problems with
(10:53):
cold cases, and specifically with Dana's case, is that there
is some evidence right now that if you looked at
it in a vacuum, could tend to support theories one
way or the other. And so as this case goes forward,
it's really important to narrow down who the evidence really
points to.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
But the suspects in Dana's case weren't the only ones
the BCSO were looking at, because Dana's wasn't the only
disappearance in the area. The ugly reality law enforcement could
not ignore was that within a fifty mile radius of
where Dana was last seen, no fewer than five additional
young women had either gone missing or their bodies had
(11:37):
been discovered over a period of five years leading up
to Dana's disappearance, which led to the troubling notion that
a potential serial killer was roaming through Benton County and
the Ozarks, plucking young women off the streets at will
and running under every single law enforcement radar available. When
(12:19):
a small community like Benton County is rocked to its
core by the disappearance of a popular, well liked young
woman on a summer afternoon in broad daylight. They banned
together to help an eight x ten flier. A paper
ghost was mass produced and tacked to telephone poles in
(12:40):
supermarket windows, convenience stores and gas stations. A five thousand
dollars reward was offered for any information leading to Dana.
A canine search dog was then brought up to Ealing
Circle off Wellington Road, where Dana's brother, Larry Stidham, had
found some of his sister's clothing the night she was
(13:02):
reported missing, just a half mile from where Dana's car
had been located. By now, hope for the Stidham family
was waning, and that despair would only increase after a
pet dog trotting along the grass on the side of
Route seventy one found something. Here's Hunter portray, a current
(13:28):
lieutenant with the BCSO who you heard in the last episode.
Speaker 9 (13:34):
I think maybe a week and a half later, further north,
there's a dog that brings up like a wallet and
it has Dana's ID in it. So at that point
in time, you know, it went from bad to worse
to now. It's like Okay, we think we're pretty sure
foul play because it was her id. There were some
(13:55):
contraceptives that were found.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I appreciated Lieutenant trace sincerity, compassion, and eagerness to see
Dani's case resolved. A cold case needs someone in law
enforcement fighting for it, or the case will sit in
an eminence room and collect frost.
Speaker 4 (14:13):
Well.
Speaker 9 (14:13):
Generally, with the passage of time, it doesn't get any easier.
A lot of times the detectives investigators that work those
cases are either retired, a lot of times they are deceased,
and you can't go back and speak to them directly,
so you have to look through the case file. So
the best way to do it, the best way that
I found is go back and start from square zero
(14:36):
and basically look through everything with the fresh set of
eyes and just kind of kind of get your own
gauge and opinion of the case itself. Look for things
that may have been missed, things that you can do,
people that may have been interviewed that need to be
interviewed again, people that you think weren't interviewed need to
(14:57):
be interviewed.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Advancements in DNA over the past ten years, Lieutenant Portray
noted had been both the cause of great celebration and
also disappointment.
Speaker 9 (15:08):
The OJ trial that kind of brought it to everybody's spotlight,
and that was what early nineties. So in the twenty
thirty years since that DNA technology has increased dramatically. Like
just last year, we saw three of our cold case
John Doe. Two of them were John Doe's and one
(15:28):
was a Jain Doe, and we had no idea who
they were, and we were able to through DNA and
genetic genealogy figure out who those people were. So now
we have leads to try to close those cases out victimology,
you know who they associated with. Prior to that, they
were just John Doe's and Jane Doe's and you had
no idea who they were, and you can't start anywhere
(15:50):
until you know who they are.
Speaker 11 (15:51):
And we know that probably eighty percent of murders is
someone you know in your circle.
Speaker 9 (15:56):
That seems to be the consensus at least the homicide
that I've worked on. Very few random stranger homicides. Now
they do happen, but statistically speaking, it's going to be
somebody that they're associated with, and not necessarily close family
or whatever, but somebody that they're somewhat associated with. Whether
(16:18):
it's an acquaintance, someone they ran into, somebody they bumped
into at the store, or knew from another friend slightly
but didn't really know personally, but generally it's somebody that
they affiliated with or associated with at some.
Speaker 7 (16:33):
Point in time.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
As I dug deeper into the victimology side, several things
about Dana's circle of friends bothered me more than usual.
You see, I generally develop a sense, or rather thoughts
and theories as I begin working on a cold case, knowing,
of course they will shape and change and perhaps point
me in a new direction as I move forward. But
(16:58):
here I started talking to sources on and off the record.
I could not shake a feeling that there was an
important piece of this puzzle missing, something either few were
willing to talk about, those close to Dana were in
denial about where they just didn't know. And something Lieutenant
Petree said to me pushed me further down this road.
Speaker 9 (17:23):
This is the day that Dana went missing, around five pm.
There's a lady who's driving on three forty, which is
the highway basically right there at Town Center. She says
that there's a car that comes into her lane. She
has to swerve to miss it. There's a mail driving,
there's a female passenger, and there looks like there's another
(17:44):
person in the backseat. At that point in time, she
doesn't really think anything about it.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
I obtained the transcript of the interview police conducted with
this woman. She was twenty four years old then and
lived in Bella Vista. On July twenty fifth, between five
and six pm, she drove up to the Missouri state
line to buy gas. On her way back into Arkansas,
not too far from the town center where Phillips Grocery is,
(18:11):
a vehicle swerved into her lane. Quote it looked like
Dana's car. The guy driving had dark hair. He was
a big dude, likely in his twenties. The girl sitting
next to him had long, dark hair. The source explained
to police that the girl she believed to be Dana,
had perhaps grabbed the wheel and purposely swerved the car
(18:34):
into her lane. The next morning, July twenty sixth, as
she was driving toward Wellington Road, she saw Dana's car
parked on Route seventy one, heading south, where it was
eventually found. She noticed the driver's side window was rolled down.
She then drove up Wellington to a friend's house. By
(18:54):
six thirty am that same morning, she was on her
way back down Wellington, sitting at a stoplight facing Route
seventy one in front of her, when she saw a
Ford courier truck, as she described it, parked behind Dana's
car with a shell or camper on the back, and
there was that same large man again from the previous night,
(19:16):
the one driving Dana's car, standing behind it. She assumed
he was getting ready to change the tire of Dana's car.
Woul Dana's case being the top story on all the
local news stations throughout those early days. This would not
be the only report from a random person claiming to
have seen Dana on the day she went missing, or
(19:39):
even later on into the evening.
Speaker 11 (19:42):
What I'm getting from you is that her car is
seen kind of all over seventy one that.
Speaker 9 (19:47):
Day, couple of different places, all relatively around that Phillips area,
but one person saying that they saw it south in
the north boundle line, and then obviously later on we
know that it was found in the southbound lane north
of the town center. So those are things that complicated
(20:11):
the case. You got three people saying they all saw
it at the same location. You got three people saying
they saw it, but different locations, different set of circumstances,
just not conducive to getting it solved right away.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
It bothered me at so many different people, a list
which would continue to grow as I developed. Additional sources
claimed to have seen Dana at different locations around Bella
Vista and even as far away as Gravit, the time
where she grew up and had lived most of her life.
Here's one of Dana's cousins, Dwight Stidham, who spoke to
(20:45):
police a day after Dana went missing about what he
had seen, but has never spoken to anyone else about
this since. Tell me what you remember about Dana growing up.
Speaker 8 (20:56):
She just well, behaved well and always doing stuff for
her parents, and especially for Laurence because he had as righters,
real bad and that's what finally got him at the end.
You know, she was always there for him.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
And Dwight, several years older than Dana, is referring to
Dana's father, Lawrence. Dwight saw Dana a lot growing up.
He also knew the town of Gravit and the people
within dana circle of friends. In and out of town
fairly well. And not all of them were as straight
lace as Dana has been described.
Speaker 8 (21:40):
They was a little bit on the wild side in
what ways, in the drinking and the drugs.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
When you say drugs, what kind of drugs are you
talking about?
Speaker 8 (21:50):
When we talk about drugs around here, it's just your
basic drugs, marijuana, speed, just different kinds of peals.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
You know, when goes missing. Do you remember that time?
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Oh yeah, tell me about that.
Speaker 3 (22:04):
Tell me how it starts for you.
Speaker 7 (22:06):
What you remember.
Speaker 8 (22:08):
Well, at that time, we was living up from grab It.
We had a little dairy bar up her. It had
pool tables and some arcade games in it, and I'd
go up there on the weekends and play pool. And
it was probably around six seven o'clock. It wasn't dark
or anything. It was still good daylight and sunny and everything.
(22:28):
And me and my nephew we was going up her
to play the games, playpool and stuff. And before you
get to the little dairy bar, I pulled up to
the four ways stop and she had pulled up across
the street from me, facing me, and she had a
girl in the car with her, But I didn't recognize
who the girl was or anything. But you know, she
(22:50):
just she waved at me and everything, and I didn't
think nothing about it. As far as I know, Me
and my nephew was probably the last two in the
family that had seen her.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
And she didn't look distressed, she didn't look in trouble.
Speaker 8 (23:05):
No, she had a big old smile on her face,
just wayed real big and you know, did we just
crossed past her at the four ways stop and it
just seemed normal to me.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
So between six and seven pm on the night Dana
went missing, she was out and about with a friend,
driving around the town where she grew up in smiling,
having a good time. That kind of nixes the theory
that someone at the Phillips sabotaged her tire, or followed
her or abducted her that afternoon in the parking lot.
(23:39):
This information pointed in the direction of somebody Dana knew.
Speaker 9 (23:46):
Another thing that hindered this case, and it's nothing that
the investigators did wrong. It's a product of the time
that it happened. Eighty nine, nobody had cell phones really,
so today and age, cell phones are tremendous for law
enforcement as far as tracking people we know based off
(24:06):
a GPS they went here there nineteen eighty nine, we
didn't have that. Also, you know, surveillance cameras, security cameras,
it existed, but not for most people. So Phillips Grocery,
no video surveillance, there's nothing. So those two things kind
(24:28):
of complicated the case as well, because you don't have
video of her driving by a certain location. You don't
have GPS location of hey, she placed a phone call here.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Even more alarming is the timeline the BCSO developed for
when Dana's car could have made it to the location
where it was found on Route seventy one.
Speaker 9 (24:49):
There's a sergeant who was our sheriff here for a
while after, but he worked for the state police. He
actually around eleven thirty that night, turns up Wellington to
serve a warrant, takes care of his business, comes back
down Willington would have been facing the car in states
(25:10):
that the vehicle was not there at that point in time,
So you kind of have to take that for what
it's worth, and like it's staring you in the face.
So right, Larry didn't see it, the family didn't see it.
You know, you got a state trooper.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Dana's car was parked on that pull off on the
side of Route seventy one between eleven thirty pm and
five am, and the two sources bookending those times are
both law enforcement. Now you take that fact and add
it to a name the BCSO received early into its inquiries,
(25:46):
and the investigation broadens. Mike McMillan, a classmate who allegedly
had a crush on Dana, was seen driving around Bella
Vista between those same hours. Mike was a year older
than Dana. He was preparing to head out to San
(26:06):
Diego for Navy basic training in two weeks. Mike was
a tall, large young man with dark hair. Mike McMillan
was one person law enforcement was laser focused on at
this time. Mike was questioned by police on July twenty seven,
(26:26):
nineteen eighty nine. In the investigator's notes from that interview,
Mike said he was driving his father's truck in Bella
Vista at eleven thirty PM to a friend's house in
a border town. He claimed to have stayed there until
two thirty or three before driving to another friend's house,
leaving there by four am. He had seen Dana a
(26:50):
few days before she went missing. He had actually stopped
at her apartment before that, he had not seen her
for two months. Here's Dana's cousin, Christy Smith once again.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
Mike McMillan.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Was he in high school with y'all?
Speaker 11 (27:07):
Yes?
Speaker 12 (27:07):
He was?
Speaker 3 (27:08):
And what kind of guy was he in high school?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Mike was a good guy, very friendly, just seemed to
be like all the other boys in school.
Speaker 9 (27:15):
He liked Dana obviously.
Speaker 12 (27:17):
Uh huh.
Speaker 5 (27:18):
He did it.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Never It never seemed like it went, you know, too
far or beyond what she was willing, you know, to
have with him. They were friends for a long time.
We all rode the school bus together. I never noticed
anything odd about the way he felt about her.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
And there was someone else in Dana's life. I needed
to find out more about her ex boyfriend and her
former boyfriend.
Speaker 11 (27:45):
Was he looked into right away?
Speaker 12 (27:47):
I believe they interviewed him and possibly his brother early on.
He said he called in sick to work that day
was his alibi. But I I do believe he got
a lawyer fairly early on.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
That is the voice of Brandon Howard, an investigative journalist
from Benton County who has done more reporting on this
case than perhaps anyone I met. Brandon through a detective
I've known quite a while that ex boyfriend, Brandon Mentions,
who was a good friend of Mike McMillan's, was brought
in and interviewed within a week of Dana's disappearance. He'd
(28:27):
met her in nineteen eighty eight at a local mall.
The breakup in April nineteen eighty nine was contentious.
Speaker 9 (28:35):
You know, they had talked to some people, her boyfriend
that she had just broken up with. There were some
issues there, number one, because it ended on bad terms.
There was also an issue with a motorcycle title. From
what I understand, his parents had put up some money
for engagement rings. They were supposed to get married. Dana
(28:57):
was supposedly pregnant. Found out that she wasn't pregnant. That
caused a big riff. They ended up breaking up, tried
to get back the motorcycle title. The family didn't want
to give it back until he paid a certain amount
of money. So all this stuff's going on. So, yeah,
he was a person of interest. But there are people
that saw him that day, that night that he was
(29:19):
at a certain house. He was here, he was there.
He was on a motorcycle two which would have made
it really difficult to do.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
After digging into Dana's ex boyfriend's alibi, reviewing all the
reports and relevant polygraphs, conducting several interviews with people about him,
the ex boyfriend didn't seem to be too high on
the list of people who might have had something to
do with her disappearance. I couldn't exclude him completely, but
(29:47):
I was confident I would be able to. Yet, even
with the ex boyfriend moved from the top of my
list of potential suspects and what now appears to be
a serious crime, the pool of people who had motive
and opportunity in Dana's disappearance was about to grow exponentially.
(30:28):
When a person is missing for more than three months,
they fall under a classification called long term missing person.
Danastdam had been missing about six weeks, half that time
when investigators dug their heels in and focused on those
who could have either helped Dana take off or were
responsible for her disappearance. By now, sadly, most everyone involved
(30:56):
believed that Dana's Didam was no longer alive. With Brandon
Howard's help, my focus shifted towards several people. Remember that
Phillips employee. Well, he lived just off Wellington Road. So
there's this older guy from Phillips, and many of whom
(31:19):
I spoke to who knew him and work there, they
call him a perver. Right now, some of Dana's clothing
had been found close to his house, right like literally
blocks away.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
Oh yeah, maybe the first street or so away from
his street.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
So tell me about this guy. I mean, you sent
me the transcript of the interview they did with him.
You've studied at read through. What are your thoughts on
this guy.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
He's probably most troublesome because you can actually put him
in the store in the day of Dana's disappearance, so
you can put him with Dana right before she disappeared.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Now do we know if he is the quote old
guy that she's seen talking to in the parking lot,
because according to his interview, he says.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
No, I don't think there's ever been any definitive answer
as to who that person.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Was Bcso Lieutenant Hunter Portray confirmed this, and he's also
fired from Phillips on July twenty seven, which is two
days after she goes missing. Right, yes, very alarming and
not to forget. At this time, investigators have no idea
(32:31):
what happened to Dana? She is still missing. Her status
is about to change in a remarkable, sad way. But
at this time in the investigation, there are more suspects
than possible answers. And so now why was he fired?
Speaker 1 (32:50):
I guess it was a culmination of sexual harassment complaints
that had been launched against Une. I don't know if
there was a specific one in the lead up to
July of nineteen eighty nine, but I think something must
have tipped the scales because it sounded like he had
somewhat of a sort of reputation among the female employees.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
And then we come to a proclivity he has for magazines, right,
they start to get into that in the interview.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
I guess that since he was a receiving clerk and
took in maybe not just groceries, but items that would
be sold in the grocery store, like toys, trinkets, magazines,
he was receiving some X rated magazines or buying something
in the store from the people that would drop them off.
And it became somewhat alarming when they found a dirty
(33:39):
magazine with some of Venus clothing. So now you have
a suspect that worked at the store with Danna, had
an issue with female employees and sexual harassment, and also,
like you said, out of proclivity for dirty magazines, right.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
And as you say, they found one of those magazines
with her clothing.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
So yeah, it's pretty alarming that there's a magazine with
her clothing. There's a guy that likes these magazines and
that same person lives within throwing distance of where those
clothing and magazine are found and works at the store
with Dana and was at least at the store that
they for sure know where Dana was lifting.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
On the other part of this interview is they ask
him what type of vehicle you drive and what does
he say? He says, I drive a Toyota pick up
with a camper. Yes, the guys shift that Phillips ended
at about the same time Dana would have been on
her way out, And we know that these types of
(34:39):
mis in person cases are statistically crimes of opportunity. Until
the BCSO can confirm or discredit his alibi that he
was at home with his wife, he remains a primary
person of interest. Even though they have numerous reports of
people seeing Dana later on that day and in to
(35:00):
the early evening. I asked Brandon what he thought about
those phone calls which you heard at the top of
the episode, the sexually explicit calls made to a young
Bella Vista woman by a neighbor she knew from high school?
Were they significant? Were they even related to Dana's case?
(35:22):
What about the name of the caller she gave the police.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I would argue she has the best opinion for that.
I mean, she grew up with him. I think at
least went to high school with him, and he was
her neighbor. I would think she'd know his boys.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Brandon gave me the name of the caller, which I
am choosing not to reveal. I can say, however, he
was looked at by law enforcement. Now a question I
had for you, and that I'm unsure of, is I'm
curious whether she makes the accusations against the caller as
being before he is a public suspect in Dana's case.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I would say confidently than it's not a public suspect
until at least nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
To add more confusion to the case, two weeks after
Dana went missing, a sixteen year old girl contacted the
BCSO with an incredible story. I communicated with her and
asked if she wanted to tell her own story on
the podcast, but she doesn't want her name or voice used.
The police report and subsequent interview the BCSO did with
(36:29):
her in nineteen eighty nine, however, is beyond revealing.
Speaker 9 (36:33):
There was a female that made a statement that Dana
had been seen at Blowing Springs Park.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
This girl says she was at the park in Bella
Vista on July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty nine, with two
guys in their twenties. She had driven herself there. It's
around nine pm. She is sitting on a picnic table
when another thirty something dude from just across the Missouri
state line named Orville Mitch Goodwin, whom she was somewhat
(37:01):
familiar with, pulls into the park in his green pickup
with a camper on the back. The two guys she
met at the park walk up to Goodwin's vehicle, she follows.
She tells police that when she looks into the cab
of the truck, Dana is sitting next to Goodwin. The
insinuation is that Dana, because she worked at the Phillips
(37:24):
knew Goodwin because he was routinely showing up at the
store picking up garbage for a guy he worked with.
He also hung around another guy who worked for Ozark Beverage,
which did business at the store.
Speaker 9 (37:38):
Now, from what we know, miss said that he didn't
know Dana from talking with her family friends. They didn't
know Mitch. Mitch was older. It's not somebody that would
have been on the outside looking in would have been
in her circle of friends.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
They questioned the teenage witness intensely about minor details. She
seemed to answer each question very clearly. She claims Goodwin
pulled in from Route seventy one and parked for about
fifteen minutes with Dana by his side. She was asked,
quote any doubt in your mind that the girl that
(38:22):
was in the passenger seat at that time was Dana Stidham.
Her answer one hundred percent positive than this. She says
Goodwin left at about nine point thirty with Dana and
returned an hour and fifteen minutes later without Dana. Not
(38:42):
long after she reports this to police, she claims Orville
Mitch Goodwin starts calling her, threatening to kill her if
she mentions anything to police about what she saw. The
phone call threat she says carried on for two years.
Speaker 9 (39:02):
Could he have done it, Yes, But you also have
to kind of look at the credibility of your witness
that's given the statement. And you know, people say they
see aliens all the time, and maybe they do. Maybe
I don't know. I don't want to get into that,
but you have to kind of take it with a
grain of salt, like, Okay, this person supposedly saw Dana
in this in this truck with Mitch Goodwin, but nobody
else can corroborate that. There are other people that were
(39:25):
at the park that can't corroborate it.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
In the years after he is accused of having been
involved with Dana's disappearance, Orville Mitch Goodwin pleads guilty to
first degree attempted murder and is sentenced to twelve years
in prison. The crime, Goodwin shot a woman named and
Net rapidly in the face and left it for dead
(39:49):
in a Bella Vista Creek bed near the Missouri border.
If not for a man on horseback riding by who
saw in that bloodied and laying on the ground, she
would died there. He was interviewed, right.
Speaker 9 (40:03):
Yeah, he was interviewed, and again didn't know who she was, and.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
He had an alibi, I believe.
Speaker 9 (40:10):
Possibly now there is a person who claims that the
guy that was in the van or the guy that
was parked on the side of the road that saw
Dana outside with these two guys, thinks that the person
had red hair and thinks that it matches the description
of Mitch Goodwin. So again, just something else to complicate
(40:34):
the case. You know, hey, we've got three or four suspects,
why not add another fifth suspect.
Speaker 11 (40:41):
You know, people don't make the best witnesses.
Speaker 9 (40:44):
No, but you know, people are adamant in their own
mind that hey, I heard a gunshot at eleven oh two,
and I called my friend and let them know about it,
and there one hundred percent positive And then you get
the phone records and it's like nine o'clock. But they're
(41:06):
sitting there telling you like it's one hundred percent truth
that it was eleven o'clock. But you have physical proof
that nor your time is off. So people, I don't
think intentionally always do that, sure, but a lot of
times their mind plays tricks on them and they think
that it's a certain time where they think that they
saw a red shirt, and then you find the person
in it's a blue shirt.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
That's why forensics is so important.
Speaker 9 (41:28):
Correct, That's why physical evidence and that's why prosecutors like
that to try cases. You know, you're when you're talking
about circumstantial which is in this case, we have a
lot of circumstantial evidence that's hard to take to court,
and that's hard to get a jury to convict somebody.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
The plethora of circumstantial evidence that BCSO had on several
persons of interest was about to get a huge boost
from physical evidence as September nineteen eighty nine came around.
I'm calling him Stephen, which is not his real name,
and I'll get to why he asked me to change
his name in a minute. On September sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine,
(42:11):
Stephen had some free time on his hands, so he
decided to go out and scout locations where he and
his buddy could go hunting and maybe even do a
little hunting himself. That day, it was early afternoon, Stephen
wound up on Beal Lane Circle, a dead end in
Bella Vista so close to the Missouri state line you
(42:33):
could probably hit it with a football throw. Stephen parked,
got out of his truck and started walking through the woods.
Speaker 7 (42:44):
I was supposed to meet some people, so I stopped
there and did a little score hunting and walked around
a elemit instead. And as I was walking out, I
saw in a dry creek bed and saw a skull
and some rib bones. So next morning I called the
police and took him down there, and they said, oh,
I'm sure it's just a bear skull or a deer sculls,
(43:06):
I know, the difference to human skull and the bear.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
Where exactly was this?
Speaker 7 (43:12):
It was right behind actually from where I stood, like
in the fall. I'm sure in the summer you couldn't
see it, but in the fall you could see up
to a liquor store that was just over the state
line there. It was on the east side of Ela Vista.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
And what did you think when you first saw that skull?
What went through you?
Speaker 5 (43:28):
Well?
Speaker 7 (43:29):
I wasn't sure. I mean because it's kind of pretty
close to Peer Ridge Battlefield, So I thought maybe it
was an old skull or whatever. I could tell. It's
fairly small. It wasn't a big person. But that's what
I told them there too, you know, when they said
it was a deer skull, said, no, No, it's a
human skull, fairly small.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
And were you familiar with the case of Dana Stidham
that was in the news.
Speaker 7 (43:51):
No, I had never never heard of it.
Speaker 3 (43:56):
And so you called the next morning. What made you
wait a day or half a day or whatever.
Speaker 7 (44:01):
Well, like I was supposed to meet somebody, we were
going to doub hunting, met them and they said, well
maybe I said, well, you know, it's not going anywhere.
In hindsight, yes, I should have immediately called them, but
you know, like I said, I didn't. I didn't think
it was afresh. You know, if that w ever saw
you know, any kind of flesh or anything like that,
I definitely.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
Would tell me it. Describe exactly what you saw.
Speaker 7 (44:23):
Just there was skull and some bird roe and rib
boons in a dry creek bed. Really all I saw
it initially.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
And was it together, the body together.
Speaker 7 (44:32):
It was, you know, scattered over probably fifteen or twenty feet.
She was buried in a shallow grave of an animals
got to heed.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
And you didn't see any of her clothes or anything
like that.
Speaker 7 (44:41):
When I took him back the next day and we're
showing him around. Actually, the cop that I was following
him after it kind of showed him more the boones.
When we were walking back, he actually stepped on a
piece of skin that had some duct tape, and I
think there was some clothing there too. Really yeah, and
(45:02):
I planted. He I just stepped on.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Some So he steps on a piece of so the
duct tape was taped to clothing and then that had
skin on it.
Speaker 7 (45:11):
I believe, so that it was all kind of stuck together.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
This man who stumbled across Danastidam's body is talking about
an area of Bella Vista, about five point five miles
a ten minute ride from the Phillips Grocery and that
Route seventy one area where Dana's car was found. It
was an undeveloped Could de Sac far off the beaten path.
The creek bed is about one hundred and seventy feet
(45:36):
from the Cold de Sac. Only four tenths of a
mile northeast from where Dana Stidam's body was found. In
these woods is the Ozark Beverage Company, where Orville Mitch
Goodwin had just told the BCSO a friend of his
worked and he had visited on numerous occasions. The reason
why the man I am calling Stephen didn't want his
(45:58):
name used.
Speaker 7 (46:00):
Because I had somebody's driving up sitting in front of
my house in a truck, and after three or four times,
you know, I stuck out the back and stuck up
the truck in my shot and they took off, and.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
This person. Do you think it was a copper?
Speaker 7 (46:14):
I'm sure the killer?
Speaker 3 (46:19):
Next time on paper ghosts, I'm thinking they're lying like hell,
because my little girl wasn't dick.
Speaker 4 (46:27):
Something's not right here. Something in my mind told me
that this guy is fixing to kill this girl. But
he never moved because there was his arms folded, his
smirky smile on her to dance him, and I, oh,
my god, this is some kind of a murder.
Speaker 12 (46:47):
They find what appear to be several hairs I think
maybe some blood spots in the car, and then they realized,
you know, other items of her remains. They went back
and tossed those and left.
Speaker 13 (46:58):
But I would think that you 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 3 (47:11):
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 Ghosts Season four is written
and executive produced by me M William Phelps, script consulting
by Rose Bachi, sound design by Matt Russell, executive production
(47:32):
by Catherine Law, and audio editing and mixing by Brandon
Dicker Takaboom Productions. The series theme number four four to
two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom
mo
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