Speaker 1: At the end of the last episode, a source told
Speaker 1: us about a guy named Mike allegedly at a dance
Speaker 1: with Dana and a sinking feeling she had that Mike
Speaker 1: was going to do something very bad to Dana. And
Speaker 1: while you can't spend much time in the world of
Speaker 1: true crime without learning that you should definitely listen to
Speaker 1: your gut. A sinking feeling is not evidence of wrongdoing,
Speaker 1: and it means nothing in the scope of Dana's murder investigation.
Speaker 1: At best, it's hearsay. If my source would have stopped there, however,
Speaker 1: we could write off the information as coming from an
Speaker 1: over excited teenager wanting to be caught up in the
Speaker 1: drama of a local murder. But she didn't. Who told
Speaker 1: you his name was Mike.
Speaker 2: Just some other people that kind of knew her, that
Speaker 2: were a little bit younger than me, that were more
Speaker 2: of her age. They told me because I had been
Speaker 2: telling him to watch out for this guy, that something's wrong.
Speaker 2: And then I think it was a guy that knew
Speaker 2: and Mike he said that, uh yeah, he said, she
Speaker 2: she is missing. You know, some guy named Mike was
Speaker 2: with her that night. And then I, you know, asked him, well,
Speaker 2: what did he look like And then they told me
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, that's the guy. I think he was
Speaker 2: going to kill her. And then next thing I know,
Speaker 2: and I said, well, they found her. And they found
Speaker 2: her a few miles from that wonderland cave in Bella Vista.
Speaker 1: My source wound up talking to a few other friends
Speaker 1: from Bella Vista voicing her concerns about Dana and that
Speaker 1: night she supposedly saw her. And I need to point
Speaker 1: out there was more than one person of interest the
Speaker 1: bcs SO looked at named Mike, and Mike McMillan told
Speaker 1: me I worked at the cave, but not until years
Speaker 1: after Dana went missing, when I turned twenty one. No way,
Speaker 1: I was there that night.
Speaker 2: So they said, well, they hang out at the hill.
Speaker 2: What's that And they said it's up there at Bella Vista.
Speaker 2: They said, you go up there and you go past
Speaker 2: that grocery store about two or three miles and then
Speaker 2: there'll be a little dirt road off to the left
Speaker 2: right before you go up a hill. So I drove
Speaker 2: out there and I seen this little road. It's like
Speaker 2: a Friday or Saturday night because that's where they said
Speaker 2: people her age and then kids from grabbing hung out.
Speaker 2: So I drove out there. I guess they partied out there.
Speaker 2: It was like an open field and there were four
Speaker 2: people out there. There was three guys and another girl.
Speaker 2: And I get out of the car and it's that
Speaker 2: same guy Mike again, this other guy that I knew
Speaker 2: that was a little a little younger than me, Diana's ages,
Speaker 2: and then this kind of longheaded blondish girl. And I said, oh,
Speaker 2: I said, do y'all know Dana Stidham. Didn't she go
Speaker 2: missing around here somewhere? Those guys didn't say that that
Speaker 2: they were drinking beer, you know, out of cans. She says, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what. You better leave here right now,
Speaker 2: because if you don't, she says, the same thing's going
Speaker 2: to happen to you.
Speaker 1: I asked my source the name of the girl on
Speaker 1: the hill as we'll call her. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: she's someone Dana knew very well and was seen by
Speaker 1: several witnesses with Dana that night she disappeared. Unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: can't interview her. She died some time ago. After our conversation,
Speaker 1: I spoke to a detective and related this information. The
Speaker 1: detective knows this source how she can ramble, and how
Speaker 1: tempted I might be to write off what she says
Speaker 1: as hyperbolic nonsense. But the detective stressed to me, quote,
Speaker 1: don't discount what she tells you. After that warning from
Speaker 1: the girl on the hill, my source became unsettled.
Speaker 2: And I went and got in my car and left.
Speaker 2: I was like, I got to get out of here,
Speaker 2: because I don't know what they're going to do, you know.
Speaker 2: And I went and told a few more people about it,
Speaker 2: and they just said, well, the guy that was with
Speaker 2: Dana that night, he's friends with some dirty cops, so
Speaker 2: you don't want to get involved in it because they
Speaker 2: might do something to you. So about fifteen years ago,
Speaker 2: I knew a die work the Shriff's office that I
Speaker 2: talked to a little bit about it.
Speaker 1: I verified that she had told others about this. What
Speaker 1: she relayed to me next is the mo most disturbing
Speaker 1: part of her account. And you'll hear a name bleeped up.
Speaker 1: It's the name of a police officer.
Speaker 2: What I understand is that Dana went out to man
Speaker 2: cave in Bella Vista that night. The men decided they
Speaker 2: were going to trade off girl friends, and they was
Speaker 2: going to have a sex party, and that they got
Speaker 2: ended up getting in a fight and a lover's quarrel
Speaker 2: broke out, and that that Stidham girl got cut and
Speaker 2: that told him to put her in his car or
Speaker 2: his truck, take her and bury her.
Speaker 1: Previously on Paper Ghosts, Yes.
Speaker 3: It was a young guy close to his age of
Speaker 3: the policeman and he really felt like he may have
Speaker 3: done it.
Speaker 4: You don't have an intact body, but they found there
Speaker 4: was a knit on the collarbone that they felt like
Speaker 4: was from a knife. Now, whether she was stabbed, you know,
Speaker 4: in the neck.
Speaker 2: Something in my mind told me that this guy is
Speaker 2: fixing to kill this girl. Oh my god, this is
Speaker 2: some kind of a murder.
Speaker 1: My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
Speaker 1: and author of more than forty true crime books. This
Speaker 1: is season four of Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 5: The Ozarks.
Speaker 1: Cold case work for me has always been about gathering
Speaker 1: as much information as I can without judging it or
Speaker 1: allowing any bias to seep in. I collect the data,
Speaker 1: do some fact and see what shakes out. And before
Speaker 1: I decide on a line of inquiry, I like to
Speaker 1: know as much about a case as possible. Far beyond
Speaker 1: the public record, so I kept calling people and reviewing
Speaker 1: all the documentation, which, let me tell you, amounts to
Speaker 1: a mountain of police interviews, witness statements, official reports, and
Speaker 1: various other documents associated with the case, some thirty odd
Speaker 1: years old. All these sex party people, my source mentions
Speaker 1: that crowd Dana hung around well for maybe obvious reasons,
Speaker 1: none of them wanted to speak to me about what
Speaker 1: they knew. Make of that what you will. I asked
Speaker 1: Dana's mother, Georgia Stidham, about the now deceased girl on
Speaker 1: the hill. I've bleeped out her name, but that's who
Speaker 1: we're referring to in this exchange. And it's clear that
Speaker 1: Georgia remembers her very well.
Speaker 6: And did she ever mention or did you ever meet up?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 8: And you do not want me to tell you what
Speaker 8: I think of Tell me I think the bitch had
Speaker 8: a lot to do with it, and that a bitch
Speaker 8: is exactly what she was. She came in and told
Speaker 8: me that she was only nineteen and she was working
Speaker 8: with Dana down there at the store, and now she
Speaker 8: was still in school and everything. But she had one
Speaker 8: son that lived with her mom and dad. And she
Speaker 8: was lying all the way through. She was married and
Speaker 8: she had the one son. That was the only truth then.
Speaker 6: It So what kind of person was she? Was she
Speaker 6: a drug at it?
Speaker 8: Was a bitch.
Speaker 6: I got that she was a bitch.
Speaker 9: She was.
Speaker 8: She was smart mouthed, and she wanted to be a
Speaker 8: big and doing things, I guess, and she couldn't quite
Speaker 8: carry it off.
Speaker 6: Was she into drugs? Dope that sort of thing? Yes,
Speaker 6: what kind of drugs?
Speaker 8: All kinds from what I've understood.
Speaker 6: Do you think she was dealing drugs too?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 8: I know she was dealing. Dana had told.
Speaker 1: Me that the Girl on the Hill, along with two
Speaker 1: other girls Dana knew, were said to be muling drugs
Speaker 1: from Texas into Arkansas, information I found in a police
Speaker 1: report and an interview with her. In my experience, at
Speaker 1: this level of drug dealing, transporting quantities of dope over
Speaker 1: state lines a federal offense which can get you decades
Speaker 1: in prison, the stakes become very high. Could Dana have
Speaker 1: seen something she wasn't supposed to and.
Speaker 8: She'd lie in line, lie just to get Diana out.
Speaker 8: Diana was on her writer, her house.
Speaker 6: And you're talking about when that night.
Speaker 1: I ended up verifying this with three other sources. Next,
Speaker 1: I needed to understand what Georgia thought about Mike McMillan.
Speaker 1: Detectives Danny Varner and Mike Sidoriac would not let go
Speaker 1: of Mike. Detective Sidoriac had told the reporter quote, we
Speaker 1: want to show that our victim was in McMillan's vehicle,
Speaker 1: referring to that hair found in Mike's truck, which, along
Speaker 1: with one of Dana's hares and George's DNA, had been
Speaker 1: submitted for testing. If you recall, in a previous episode,
Speaker 1: the BCSO was focused on the idea that if Mike
Speaker 1: McMillan had stolen Dana's grave marker, then that behavior somehow
Speaker 1: spoke to his guilt. So when you heard about Mike
Speaker 1: McMillan making the grave marker from your daughter's grave, what
Speaker 1: was your first thought?
Speaker 7: That he was a little chicken shit?
Speaker 6: Why chicken shit?
Speaker 8: He went down there and he took something from a
Speaker 8: little dead girl, and I didn't like it a little
Speaker 8: thing anyway. I don't like Mike McMillan, and I can't
Speaker 8: stand his parents.
Speaker 6: Why do you think he did it?
Speaker 8: Because he's chicken shit? And that's just the truth of it.
Speaker 8: He thought it might him look big.
Speaker 1: If Mike McMillan had been involved in Dana's murder. I
Speaker 1: think the last thing the guy would want to do
Speaker 1: is steal the marker from her grave. If he was
Speaker 1: feeling nostalgic or upset, or, as Georgia said, wanted to
Speaker 1: show off, well, that would make more sense to me.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement seemed to be taking advantage of this situation
Speaker 1: in order to keep someone in their crosshairs, and that
Speaker 1: person was Mike. Still, they weren't the only ones who
Speaker 1: thought Mike knew war than he was saying.
Speaker 6: Did you ever consider him a suspect?
Speaker 8: Yes, I still think you knew who it was for
Speaker 8: a deadder and everything else, and I probably always will.
Speaker 1: When new information from a case comes in, I compare
Speaker 1: it to what I've learned up until that point. A
Speaker 1: new thread can pop out of nowhere and things can
Speaker 1: start to make sense or not. Sidoriak and Varner would
Speaker 1: dialed into Mike McMillan, but they also continued interviewing scores
Speaker 1: of other people. Mike eventually married and moved far away
Speaker 1: from Bella Vista. Here's his ex wife who we met
Speaker 1: in the last episode and so when you guys, you know,
Speaker 1: as the time went on, did law enforcement ever contact
Speaker 1: him again?
Speaker 3: Yes, they actually came and interviewed me first.
Speaker 10: They took him.
Speaker 3: They had him for like six or eight hours, showed
Speaker 3: in pictures, you know, the hole graphic how they do it,
Speaker 3: and he was pretty shaken up after that because it's
Speaker 3: not something you want to see. So little background. My
Speaker 3: step dad was a chief of police in the town
Speaker 3: where we lived, so I grew up around law enforcement
Speaker 3: and all that. They showed up at my work, two
Speaker 3: detectives and asked to speak to me. They asked me
Speaker 3: if Mike had any kind of personal possessions at the
Speaker 3: house that had like pictures of ex girlfriends and things
Speaker 3: like that, and I'm like, well, yeah, I mean everybody
Speaker 3: kind of has something like that from high school that
Speaker 3: you kept your notes in or your little momentos. And
Speaker 3: they were like, oh, well, have you ever seen this
Speaker 3: perse and this, And I'm like no, And they asked
Speaker 3: if they could take it, and I was young and
Speaker 3: naive and I told him yes. So they went to
Speaker 3: my house and got that box. They interviewed Mike shortly.
Speaker 6: After that, and he was shaken up about them coming again.
Speaker 3: Was just playing these pictures that they said Ordina out
Speaker 3: in front of him. It would shake anybody yet, but
Speaker 3: he's like, I didn't do it. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it did it.
Speaker 1: You know, I was able to obtain the recording of
Speaker 1: this marathon interview. Detective Danny Varner begins.
Speaker 11: She shouldn't hear about the skeletal The folks still don't know,
Speaker 11: but got there do.
Speaker 1: The audio in that previous clip has degraded over time,
Speaker 1: but Detective Varner says, little old skeletal remains and that's it.
Speaker 1: Her folks still don't know. Well, but God does, don't
Speaker 1: he And Mike McMillan responds, Yeah, he does. That's what
Speaker 1: I am counting on. Werner then used a carefully chosen
Speaker 1: tactic by trying to align Mike with the harshest criminals,
Speaker 1: strategically in my opinion, to scare him.
Speaker 11: Like we interview people all the time, We've interviewed murderers,
Speaker 11: ripest murderers, child molestors, and watching you here today, you've
Speaker 11: got the gestures in that seat and you're cool. I
Speaker 11: won't say you're I'm playing right, man. You're cool.
Speaker 12: You've learned to live with this and it's been your lifestyle,
Speaker 12: and it makes it easy by the way you talk,
Speaker 12: and by your way you deny your.
Speaker 1: Our man, they accuse him. They put tremendous pressure on
Speaker 1: Mike to admit he killed Dana, but he continues to
Speaker 1: say what he has always said, even interrupting them at
Speaker 1: times to stand up for himself.
Speaker 11: And you know, we got you, man.
Speaker 10: It's gonna look a lot better on you. You just say, listen,
Speaker 10: I don't do it.
Speaker 11: I think you did.
Speaker 13: If you put me into afore you getting wrong and.
Speaker 1: Somebody get away, then Danny Varner does something we don't
Speaker 1: expect upstanding officers to do. He lies.
Speaker 14: I don't think so much.
Speaker 11: I don't have somebody else to think.
Speaker 10: A pan in her car, Well, you got somebody else
Speaker 10: getting little murder.
Speaker 1: The BCSO did not have Mike's fingerprints inside Dana's car.
Speaker 1: They had no fingerprints. In fact, lying, however, is totally
Speaker 1: within the boundaries when you're interviewing a suspect, and I
Speaker 1: understand why detectives sometimes do it. This of you was
Speaker 1: conducted close to the time Mike willingly gave his blood
Speaker 1: and hair for DNA comparison. As I stated in an
Speaker 1: earlier episode. People like to put a face on evil.
Speaker 1: It helps them deal with the pain and loss. But
Speaker 1: as Mike McMillan told me, they decided that I had
Speaker 1: done this and that was it.
Speaker 10: Both of you.
Speaker 11: I agree with that it's been none. And Andrew tell
Speaker 11: us michaelcmillan that if you get it.
Speaker 1: Varner then gets into the grave marker Mike was arrested
Speaker 1: for stealing.
Speaker 10: Tell us how long he was after at the cemetary. Oh,
Speaker 10: it's been five minutes. It's been five hours.
Speaker 11: What do you think?
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter this night, of course, had been years before.
Speaker 1: As the interview continues, they talk about how Mike's alibi
Speaker 1: fell apart when they interviewed the girl he claimed to
Speaker 1: have been with that night. They talk about how the
Speaker 1: truck Mike drove was his dad's and it fit the
Speaker 1: description they had of the person parked behind Dana that morning,
Speaker 1: evidence that was all highly circumstantial at best. They then
Speaker 1: focused on a picture of Dana they found inside Mike's house.
Speaker 13: Oh there, sure, I'm taking out? Oh good, okay, Well,
Speaker 13: I know I screwed up. I'm taking a little mark
Speaker 13: or do, but I don't get where all the rest
Speaker 13: of the ship comes from.
Speaker 10: I mean, I understand it's just a little town and
Speaker 10: get one of the things that I don't understand. How
Speaker 10: even after I walk in and say, hey, look I did,
Speaker 10: I'm sorry they did. You know I was stupid for
Speaker 10: doing it. That's mitly what happened.
Speaker 13: Mike asked me whether or not I who took the marker,
Speaker 13: and I said, yeah, I did, And he said, well,
Speaker 13: hold on, we need to.
Speaker 10: Read your rus I remember that perfectly because that's important
Speaker 10: to me. I got arristed that day.
Speaker 1: Throughout this entire interview, they kept ratcheting up the pressure
Speaker 1: on Mike. At one point, they raised the idea of
Speaker 1: capital felony murder charges, which brought in the possibility of
Speaker 1: the death penalty. This approach, which potentially crosses a line
Speaker 1: into intimidation, was specifically designed to scare Mike into a confession,
Speaker 1: but Mike kept insisting that he did not kill Dana.
Speaker 10: To get me contend to something mindy and do it,
Speaker 10: which is all at all? Could you take her for
Speaker 10: a rise?
Speaker 1: Love Warner got into the polygraphs they had given to
Speaker 1: over a dozen people by that Mike had taken one
Speaker 1: during the early days of the investigation, and passed years later,
Speaker 1: he took a second one. During the second polygraph, he
Speaker 1: was asked if he was with Dana the day she disappeared,
Speaker 1: if at the time Dana was killed, he did anything
Speaker 1: to cause her death, and was he present when Dana's
Speaker 1: body was left in that creek bed. Mike answered no
Speaker 1: to each question. In the official report, the polygraphist said
Speaker 1: the results created quote such a pattern as to indicate
Speaker 1: he was deceptive in answering all of the relevant questions.
Speaker 1: When asked about his responses and how he'd scored on
Speaker 1: the test, Mike said, quote, sometimes I think I did
Speaker 1: kill Dana, but I know I didn't. The polygraph examiner
Speaker 1: concluded that, in his opinion, Mike was responsible for the
Speaker 1: death of Dana Stidham. During his interview with Sidoriak and Varner,
Speaker 1: the two detectives brought up that failed polygraph.
Speaker 10: How can they help? If I asked him, you can't.
Speaker 5: The same questions.
Speaker 10: I didn't have anything to do with Ames Todham's dead.
Speaker 1: If you were to read press reports only about Mike McMillan,
Speaker 1: you'd walk away feeling that he was hiding something and
Speaker 1: possibly committed this crime. But listening to him in these interviews,
Speaker 1: how direct and sharp, he is not one bit nervous.
Speaker 1: It clear he is emphatically denying any involvement this, mind you,
Speaker 1: As he is poked and prodded and accused of it
Speaker 1: over and over for years and years, he sticks to
Speaker 1: his story and never waivers. They thought they could break me,
Speaker 1: Mike told me when I interviewed him. Throughout the police interview,
Speaker 1: Mike continues to repeat himself, I didn't.
Speaker 10: Have anything to do with things. Tom's dead. Did you
Speaker 10: ever do anything by yourself? Took dance Jim.
Speaker 1: Such benign questions which have very little to do with
Speaker 1: evidence and everything to do with tunnel vision and closing
Speaker 1: a case. I obtained the FBI report from the hair
Speaker 1: blood analysis, the only forensic evidence in Dana's case. The
Speaker 1: BCSO says it has, and here's a quote from it.
Speaker 1: The DNA sequences from the hair and specimen from Georgia
Speaker 1: Stidham are different. Therefore, Dana's dittum can be eliminated as
Speaker 1: the donor of the head haair found inside Mike McMillan's vehicle.
Speaker 1: The BCSO had no forensics to back up what I
Speaker 1: would call a very weak, circumstantial case against Mike McMillan.
Speaker 1: The case, including the second polygraph, which Mike allegedly failed,
Speaker 1: was sent to the district attorney. Mc millan has never
Speaker 1: been charged. But why after trailing him and pressing him
Speaker 1: for years. The simple answer is they had no evidence
Speaker 1: against him, because no matter how much the BCSO believed
Speaker 1: that Mike McMillan had murdered Dana, they didn't have any
Speaker 1: tangible proof to support such an accusation or make it stick.
Speaker 1: Here's former Benton County Prosecutor Nathan Smith, whom you've heard
Speaker 1: in previous episodes.
Speaker 14: Sometimes in cases there's too many suspects and they all
Speaker 14: look good, right.
Speaker 9: Part of the problem with that is if you have
Speaker 9: one or two other pretty good suspects, that's almost by
Speaker 9: definition reasonable doubt. And so when you have multiple suspects
Speaker 9: out there from a time where it was difficult to
Speaker 9: collect the kind of evidence we get today routinely, that
Speaker 9: could be a problem. I can't imagine the pressure in
Speaker 9: nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety to make an arrest, to
Speaker 9: make the arrest, and I actually think looking back that
Speaker 9: the investigators who worked on it at the time probably
Speaker 9: should be commended for not making you an arrest simply
Speaker 9: because if the evidence isn't there, you don't want to
Speaker 9: start the process.
Speaker 14: Now, just stepping back a minute too, the murder scene
Speaker 14: or where the body dumps sight, so, was there evidence there,
Speaker 14: any type of evidence that could lead to somebody like,
Speaker 14: is there something to test if you know, you develop
Speaker 14: a good suspect.
Speaker 9: Well, I guess at this point I've got to be
Speaker 9: careful not to, you know, get out in front of
Speaker 9: the skis of the actual investigation. But certainly anything that
Speaker 9: we have today it becomes easier and easier going forward
Speaker 9: to do those kinds of testings. Now that the real
Speaker 9: issue is if you're referencing DNA or whatever, unless you
Speaker 9: just say, in a normal case, is was their DNA
Speaker 9: evidence preserved that can be tested today? Do you remember
Speaker 9: nineteen eighty nine that wasn't a thing people were doing, right,
Speaker 9: They didn't think about doing that. So I think it's
Speaker 9: really going to be just leaning into the facts more
Speaker 9: and trying to uncover any additional information.
Speaker 1: Although Mike McMillan somewhat faded from the public picture as
Speaker 1: a suspect, the BCSO were still searching for a piece
Speaker 1: of evidence that could tie him to the murder which
Speaker 1: they would never find. And yet the entire time the
Speaker 1: BCSO was pursuing Mike McMillan, there was a different suspect.
Speaker 1: They had their eye on, a guy unknown to the public,
Speaker 1: a much better suspect who was being looked at once again,
Speaker 1: when all of a sudden, Dana's case took a remarkable turn.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to overestimate the depth of loss of family
Speaker 1: experiences when a young person is murdered, or the feelings
Speaker 1: associated with that loss as they manifest and increments over time.
Speaker 1: You see, grief is universal. It comes in five stages denial, anger, bargaining, depression,
Speaker 1: and acceptance, with pangs of guilt being an unofficial sixth.
Speaker 1: Dana was eighteen years old. She missed out on so
Speaker 1: much life, but even more than that, she was missed.
Speaker 1: Time doesn't change that, and I think law enforcement especially
Speaker 1: must be careful when a case runs cold. What they do,
Speaker 1: what they say, what they don't say, how they respond
Speaker 1: to suspects, and undoubtedly to victims' families. Dana's cousin, Christy Smith,
Speaker 1: put it quite sincerely to.
Speaker 15: Me, it was a lost a lot of family that
Speaker 15: was very sad and very worried and very confused. The
Speaker 15: police didn't seem too worried. Still, it just seemed like
Speaker 15: there was a lot of things that should have been
Speaker 15: done that wasn't. That I don't believe was handled correctly.
Speaker 15: Like they only kept a car for a few days
Speaker 15: and then they gave it back to her parents. I mean,
Speaker 15: if the last place she was known to have been
Speaker 15: was in her car, why would you not keep the car,
Speaker 15: you know, for future reference, right. I think it was just,
Speaker 15: you know, we weren't I don't believe that our police
Speaker 15: departments at that time were handled to handle a case
Speaker 15: like this.
Speaker 1: As investigators continued to reinterview co workers and employees at
Speaker 1: Phillip's grocery, a name emerged, a name that had been
Speaker 1: there all along. He's never been mentioned publicly in this case,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to call him Jack Lenny, a local
Speaker 1: older guy with a reputation for not only hanging around
Speaker 1: Phillips Grocery daily, but sexually harassing women throughout his entire
Speaker 1: adult life. And by reputation I mean a documented trail
Speaker 1: of serial sexual harassment of the worst kind wherever this
Speaker 1: dude went. By the time I met investigative journalist Brandon
Speaker 1: Howard in twenty twenty three. He had done a lot
Speaker 1: of work on Jack Lenny And to be clear, this
Speaker 1: is not the same man from earlier in the podcast,
Speaker 1: the guy I referred to as the perverb who liked
Speaker 1: dirty magazines and lived up near Wellington Road, close to
Speaker 1: where Dana's car was found.
Speaker 16: Well there was another suspect at the store who worked
Speaker 16: in the area and was sexually harassing some of the women.
Speaker 16: But beyond the harassment in the store, he was also
Speaker 16: following them on the highway, and he had a long
Speaker 16: history of picking up hitchhikers, harassment at other stores in
Speaker 16: the Bellevista area, and vehicles that seemed to match more
Speaker 16: closely with what witnesses reported seeing behind Dania's vehicle the
Speaker 16: day she disappeared. That made me way more interested in
Speaker 16: him and how little he was fleshed out.
Speaker 1: Brandon means and I agree that this suspect was not
Speaker 1: pursued anywhere near as aggressively as Mike McMillan, which raises
Speaker 1: the question, why the hell not.
Speaker 6: Let's talk about him for a minute. What's his background like?
Speaker 16: This is a person who's well educated, as I would say,
Speaker 16: a few degrees, but works way below their station, does
Speaker 16: lots of construction jobs, can't keep jobs very long. Had
Speaker 16: actually been in the teaching profession, but potential harassment incidents
Speaker 16: also derailed that career. They were also the victim of
Speaker 16: a major brain injury that seemed to unencumber their potency
Speaker 16: for sexual deviancy and self control.
Speaker 6: So you're saying the suspect had a brain injury and
Speaker 6: ever since then has been out of control with sexual
Speaker 6: harassment and even sexual assault.
Speaker 16: Sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm looking at the timeline you created,
Speaker 1: and what just blows my mind is it's not one, two,
Speaker 1: three girls over a period of time.
Speaker 6: It's five, six, seven, eight who don't know each other,
Speaker 6: definitely telling the same story about this one guy.
Speaker 16: Voracious appetite is the best. I mean, he's insatiable. It
Speaker 16: seems that woman or job or building as in a
Speaker 16: grocery store or outlet he frequents, has not had a
Speaker 16: story of some unnerving incident of harassment or behavior we
Speaker 16: would consider stalking. I would consider stalking.
Speaker 6: I mean, this isn't cat calling. This is be way
Speaker 6: beyond that sort of thing.
Speaker 16: It's frightening. It seems, you know, like someone, it seems
Speaker 16: to check all the boxes for a sexual predator, going
Speaker 16: into the store with a hood on their face, standing
Speaker 16: behind the women, oggling them, making circles around the store,
Speaker 16: sneaking up behind them, waiting for them in the parking
Speaker 16: lot after work, following them on the highway, trying to
Speaker 16: pull them over, in some cases, groping them.
Speaker 1: You start looking into this guy, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that I do is I look to exclude people
Speaker 1: with this guy. Can you exclude him from Dana's case?
Speaker 16: Yes, I would argue no. The best exclusion probably would
Speaker 16: have been his alibi, which initially was that he was
Speaker 16: not in the area and that he was at a
Speaker 16: family reunion. That's refuted by the evidence that they found
Speaker 16: that he worked the week of Dana's disappearance in Bella Vista,
Speaker 16: a full work week, I think, even some overtime. Now,
Speaker 16: the biggest attraction is that most of the sexual harassment,
Speaker 16: if not all, the sexual harassment incidents at the store,
Speaker 16: occurred in nineteen ninety three, four years after Dana's murder,
Speaker 16: but we know he was in the area in nineteen
Speaker 16: eighty nine.
Speaker 1: I began looking deeper into this dude's life, talking to
Speaker 1: my sources in Benton County and beyond about him. I
Speaker 1: also heard there were recorded interviews that BCSO had done
Speaker 1: with him about Dana's case, which I set out to find.
Speaker 1: Each source. I spoke to, many of whom you'll soon
Speaker 1: hear in the podcast. Knew Jack Lenny very well, including
Speaker 1: no fewer than five in law enforcement, and every single
Speaker 1: one of them said the same thing. Lenny could most
Speaker 1: certainly be responsible for Dana's murder, but also additional homicides
Speaker 1: throughout the Ozarks. And wouldn't you know. As Lenny's name
Speaker 1: pops up on the bcso's radar in late nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: something happens, something incredible, something changing the entire dynamic of
Speaker 1: Dana's case. It's December two, nineteen ninety and elderly couple
Speaker 1: Linda and Randy Grohler are walking along Oscar Tally Road,
Speaker 1: just east of Indian Creek in Anderson, Missouri, only twenty
Speaker 1: minutes north of Bella Vista, where INA's body was found
Speaker 1: the previous year. The main route near Oscar Tally Road
Speaker 1: is fifty nine or North Main Street. Oscar Tally is
Speaker 1: off that the rollers live in a small house near
Speaker 1: the end of the road, and we.
Speaker 7: Had came home, got her dinner going in the oven,
Speaker 7: and we went for a walk because I have back problems,
Speaker 7: so one of the deals is take a hike. And
Speaker 7: we went for a walk and we were picking up
Speaker 7: cans for the church to sell for our sighting aluminum cans.
Speaker 7: You know, you do what you can. And on the
Speaker 7: way back we were just within maybe a block and
Speaker 7: a half of the house. There was just around the
Speaker 7: curve up there. It was a deserted house.
Speaker 1: That deserted house was on its last legs, just waiting
Speaker 1: for the right gust of wind to come along and
Speaker 1: flatten it.
Speaker 7: To grass had grown and the leaves, everything had been
Speaker 7: knocked down. And Rady told me, he says, it's looking
Speaker 7: as grass because it's kind of windloan and stuff, and
Speaker 7: maybe we'll find some cans in here. And I said okay,
Speaker 7: And then he was all of a sudden, he says, Linda,
Speaker 7: I see a skull. I says, oh, surely not. But
Speaker 7: I went back there with him and we saw the skull,
Speaker 7: and then on further looking we could see the rest
Speaker 7: of the body on the kind of a lean to
Speaker 7: on the old house, on a concrete slab. We could
Speaker 7: see the rest of the body.
Speaker 1: If you are enjoying Paper Ghosts, check out my weekly podcast,
Speaker 1: Crossing the Line with m William Phelps wherever you get
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. Coming up next time Paper Ghosts.
Speaker 17: The stoll was detatched from the body and the ribcage
Speaker 17: was detached from the body. You know, the only clothes
Speaker 17: that was on the body that we found was where
Speaker 17: the elves and legs were in ten shows it had.
Speaker 17: She had ten of.
Speaker 11: Shoes on it.
Speaker 3: He can validate there was a party. He can validate
Speaker 3: that the kids said there was a screen.
Speaker 7: I'm not tooting my horn here, but I'm not out
Speaker 7: to give up on it, and I have reason to
Speaker 7: believe that it will be solved.
Speaker 1: Paper Ghosts Season four is written and executive produced by
Speaker 1: me Em William Phelps and Catherine Law. Script consulting Rose Bachi,
Speaker 1: audio editing and mixing by Brandon Dickert, and sound design
Speaker 1: by Matt Russell. The series theme number four four to
Speaker 1: two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mooney.