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