Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: On the morning of March twenty second, nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: at around six thirty am, police came to the one story,
Speaker 2: nondescript home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, that belonged to a quiet,
Speaker 2: unassuming thirty three year old pharmacist named Lee Dixon and
Speaker 2: his wife Karen. Apparently police had gotten a tip to
Speaker 2: do a welfare check from the local prosecuting attorney, whose
Speaker 2: name was Kim Smith, which is just one of the
Speaker 2: many unusual facets of this case that we'll go into
Speaker 2: detail about. Shortly, Kim Smith had gotten a call that
Speaker 2: morning telling her to get someone to check the Dixon home. Now,
Speaker 2: Lee Dixon was already on law enforcement's radar. He had
Speaker 2: recently been embroiled in a scandal after losing his job
Speaker 2: at Consumer's Pharmacy. Apparently there had been an audit at
Speaker 2: that pharmacy and there were drugs missing, including pharmaceutical grade cocaine.
Speaker 2: So a picture was emerging of the quiet, polite pharmacist
Speaker 2: as someone who was potentially involved in the drug trade.
Speaker 2: So police got to the door and they knocked, but
Speaker 2: Lee and Karen didn't answer. Finally, a little two and
Speaker 2: a half year old boy Lee and Karen's son came
Speaker 2: to the door. He told police that his mother was
Speaker 2: sleeping and that daddy went out. Police entered the home
Speaker 2: looking for his parents, and it didn't take long to
Speaker 2: find their bodies. Lee was in the garage, lying face down.
Speaker 2: He had been shot point blank. Police later determined that
Speaker 2: Lee had been shot first, then the killer came for Karen.
Speaker 2: Police found Karen in the living room. She had been
Speaker 2: tied to a chair, and her legs and wrists were
Speaker 2: bound together with masking tape. Her wrists had also been
Speaker 2: wrapped with three different types of cords, an extension cord,
Speaker 2: a telephone cord, and a black cord that was a
Speaker 2: hatched to a recording device. Her blue bathrobe and her
Speaker 2: nightgown were soaked with blood. Police later discovered that she
Speaker 2: had also been shot multiple times, execution style, but unlike
Speaker 2: her husband, Karen did not die right away. Investigators believed
Speaker 2: that her killer, after fatally shooting Lee, told her to
Speaker 2: be still, then shot her in the head. They found
Speaker 2: aspirated blood in her lungs, which meant, according to the
Speaker 2: autopsy report, that she lived for several minutes after that,
Speaker 2: but eventually, of course, her wounds were fatal. There was
Speaker 2: a gunshot wound to Karen's right hand. According to the
Speaker 2: autopsy report, one of her fingers had been almost shot off.
Speaker 2: In her left hand, Karen was clutching a gray, white
Speaker 2: and red child's jacket. Karen was eight and a half
Speaker 2: months pregnant, so her unborn child became the third victim. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: their little boy, the one who answered the door, was unharmed.
Speaker 2: Police later said that he had probably slept through the
Speaker 2: whole thing. What started as a family massacre turned out
Speaker 2: to have ties to another mysterious death, one of a
Speaker 2: man who drowned in under three feet of water. Later,
Speaker 2: there would be allegations that Lee, this quiet local pharmacist
Speaker 2: at the Consumered Pharmacy had been making backdoor deals with
Speaker 2: local criminals to provide the power players of faet ball
Speaker 2: with pharmaceutical grade cocaine. I'm Catherine Townsend. If you have
Speaker 2: a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
Speaker 2: you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
Speaker 2: Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six'
Speaker 2: one four or five. That's six seven eight seven four
Speaker 2: four six ' one four five. This is Helen Gone
Speaker 2: Murder Line. The double homicide of Lee Dixon and his
Speaker 2: wife Karen was shocking in its brutality, but actually it
Speaker 2: wasn't much of a who done it because police very
Speaker 2: quickly announced that they were looking for a single suspect.
Speaker 2: Lee's friend, forty two year old Dennis Flowers. Neighbors told
Speaker 2: police they had not heard shots that night, but witnesses
Speaker 2: said that Dennis Flowers was with Lee at around midnight,
Speaker 2: hours before he was killed. Witnesses also said that they
Speaker 2: had heard a vehicle at the Dixon house at around
Speaker 2: twelve thirty am, and that call that Kim Smith, the attorney,
Speaker 2: made to police. She was tipped off a man named
Speaker 2: Lamar Pettis, an attorney who is the friend and landlord
Speaker 2: of Dennis Flowers. When Lamar talked to police, he told
Speaker 2: them that Dennis had called him just after four am
Speaker 2: with a wild story about how he.
Speaker 1: Had killed two people and was holding hostages.
Speaker 2: We're going to get more into what happened with Dennis
Speaker 2: next and how that night unfolded, but first I want
Speaker 2: to go back and understand the history between these two men,
Speaker 2: Dennis Flowers and Lee Dixon. Let me take a quick
Speaker 2: detour for a minute. We've been covering the Gail Vault
Speaker 2: murder case for the past couple of weeks, and we're
Speaker 2: following some leads in that case. So while we do that,
Speaker 2: I want to go back and explore one of the
Speaker 2: theories we covered in last week's episode, the one that
Speaker 2: involved the drug trade in northwest Arkansas. Last week, we
Speaker 2: talked about the three main theories in Gail's case. One
Speaker 2: that she was involved in some sort of drug trafficking
Speaker 2: or that her boyfriend Ray was, and that Gail was
Speaker 2: killed as a result of that. The second theory was
Speaker 2: that Gail was killed as a result of domestic violence.
Speaker 1: The third was that.
Speaker 2: It was something completely random, a sexual assault by someone else,
Speaker 2: possibly a stranger. As we explore this drug theory and
Speaker 2: how things worked in Northwest Arkansas, I want you to
Speaker 2: keep in mind something that I've said before, which is
Speaker 2: we talk about six degrees of separation, but I think
Speaker 2: in the state of Arkansas you get two degrees at most.
Speaker 2: This case, I believe, really illustrates that.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I won't say that this is related to Gayle's case,
Speaker 2: because there's no evidence that it is, but I do
Speaker 2: think it's tangential because at least one of the names
Speaker 2: that came up in Gayle's case is also mentioned in
Speaker 2: Lee and Karen's case.
Speaker 1: And again, I want to take a much.
Speaker 2: Closer look at this alleged drug mob that was working
Speaker 2: at that time in Arkansas and crossed over into Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: A lot of the drug deals were made by biker gangs.
Speaker 2: The private and investigator Marty, who told me about Gail's case,
Speaker 2: also has an interesting backstory connected to Lee and Karen's murders.
Speaker 2: Marty is married to the daughter of the main suspect
Speaker 2: in the case of Lee and Karen Dixon's murders, Dennis Flowers.
Speaker 3: Obviously, I've been talking to your husband for a while.
Speaker 3: I wondered if you could just tell people sort of
Speaker 3: how you and he got involved on this case. Well, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a strange situation.
Speaker 1: This is Nana.
Speaker 3: He's always had a passion for cold cases and you know,
Speaker 3: watching unsolved mysteries and all those shows that are on TV.
Speaker 3: And finally I told him when we were dating, I said,
Speaker 3: you know, I can't watch these with you anymore, because
Speaker 3: you know, I've lived this, and he I had. At
Speaker 3: that time, I hadn't told him anything about my past
Speaker 3: because it's something really Catherine that you know, I've always
Speaker 3: been ashamed of and guarded you know, with who I
Speaker 3: shared that with. I was never open about it. It
Speaker 3: was just something I really kept close to my heart.
Speaker 3: And part of it was fear, you know, at one
Speaker 3: point in my life, it was fear of who was
Speaker 3: still out there and and what did they know about me?
Speaker 3: And you know, they think I knew more than what
Speaker 3: I did, and that kind of stuff. Whether it was
Speaker 3: real or not, you know, it was it was still
Speaker 3: a fear and you know, a shame on our family name,
Speaker 3: you know, the Flowers name. Anyway, I just kind of
Speaker 3: told him, you know, I've lived this. I can't I
Speaker 3: can't watch these shows anymore with you. I can't be
Speaker 3: involved in that part of you know, your entertainment or
Speaker 3: your you know, your hobby. But you know, a few
Speaker 3: months into our dating, I kind of shared with him,
Speaker 3: you know, my thoughts on you know, what happened to
Speaker 3: my dad and the history of you know, Northwest Arkansas
Speaker 3: at the time, back in the eighties. And I think
Speaker 3: he was skeptical because I was his daughter, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm his daughter that I've found. I thought he was innocent,
Speaker 3: and I you know, that's what I claimed, and told
Speaker 3: told him that, you know, I think my dad, Jennison,
Speaker 3: I know he is I know he didn't do it.
Speaker 3: I know he was framed. I know he was a setup.
Speaker 3: And he said, well, do you mind if I look
Speaker 3: into it? And I was like, well, no, that would
Speaker 3: be great. You know, I've never had anybody offer to,
Speaker 3: you know, look into it for me. And as an adult,
Speaker 3: you know, I could see things in a different light.
Speaker 3: And the more he dug and the more he looked
Speaker 3: into it, he was like, I agree with you, and
Speaker 3: I think he really had to change of heart.
Speaker 2: This case has been called for years, but in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: the news station KARK did a special report on the case,
Speaker 2: and as part of that they talked to Karen's brother,
Speaker 2: Tommy Bryant. Tommy told Kark that the question of what
Speaker 2: had really happened the night is pregnant sister was viciously
Speaker 2: murdered has never left his mind. He talked about what
Speaker 2: a wonderful person Karen was, but he did admit to
Speaker 2: the reporter Ashley Keats Nolan, who by the way, has
Speaker 2: helped us out in the past a lot on Helen Gone,
Speaker 2: that he was not fond of the guy. She eventually
Speaker 2: married Lee Dixon. Karen and Lee dated in high school.
Speaker 2: Lee Dixon was this nerdy, somewhat shy guy. He ultimately
Speaker 2: became a pharmacist and got the job at Consumer's Pharmacy.
Speaker 2: He married Karen in nineteen seventy two. After Karen and
Speaker 2: Lee got married and relocated to northwest Arkansas, they wanted
Speaker 2: to start a family. She got pregnant with their son,
Speaker 2: and then just a few months before she died, Karen
Speaker 2: had learned that she was pregnant again. Dennis Flowers had
Speaker 2: known Lee since the early eighties. According to early reports,
Speaker 2: police were focused in on Dennis Flowers for a few reasons,
Speaker 2: first because he had been seen with Lee shortly before
Speaker 2: the murders. Secondly because he had a long criminal record,
Speaker 2: and as we'll get into now, there is a lot
Speaker 2: more to this story because Dennis and Lee, even though
Speaker 2: they were very different, had one very important thing in common.
Speaker 2: They were both addicted to drugs, especially pharmaceutical grade cocaine.
Speaker 2: According to the Southern Fried True crime podcast, who did
Speaker 2: an episode on this case, Dennis Flowers had a tough childhood.
Speaker 2: He lost his mom when he was young, and he
Speaker 2: spent time at a juvenile facility after he got caught stealing,
Speaker 2: But his life seemed to kind of turn around when
Speaker 2: he met a woman named Betty Joe Murray. Betty Joe
Speaker 2: already had a daughter from a previous marriage. Dennis and
Speaker 2: Betty Joe raised that daughter, who Dennis adopted. They later
Speaker 2: had two children of their own, Dana and Marcus. Dana
Speaker 2: said that when she was young, her dad was a
Speaker 2: great father. She said she had lots of happy memories
Speaker 2: from that time. For a while, Dennis's life seemed to
Speaker 2: have turned around for the better.
Speaker 1: He got a job.
Speaker 2: He went to work at the VA, so he had
Speaker 2: steady employment and a happy marriage and what seemed to
Speaker 2: be the perfect family. But then in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: the marriage fell apart. Dennis was in Las Vegas when
Speaker 2: he met a woman named Linda Dientton. He fell for her,
Speaker 2: had an affair with her, and later filed for divorce. Eventually,
Speaker 2: he and his wife divorced and he and Linda got married.
Speaker 2: Dennis got a tattoo to mark their anniversary in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy seven. Then Dennis's life took a dark turn. In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, he fell down at work and hurt
Speaker 2: his back, and this would turn into a chronic pain condition.
Speaker 2: His family says this was kind of the beginning of
Speaker 2: the end for Dennis because that's when he became addicted
Speaker 2: to pain medication.
Speaker 3: My parents are actually divorced. When I was seven years old,
Speaker 3: and so I started going to my dad's on weekend
Speaker 3: spring break during the summer. And so I was fourteen
Speaker 3: when this happened. I was in ninth grade and it
Speaker 3: was so it was the spring break of the eighty
Speaker 3: four when everything happened. But I was a daddy's girl
Speaker 3: named after him. My middle name is Denise, his is Dennis,
Speaker 3: and so, you know, it's just I thought he hung
Speaker 3: the moon. Still do. But you know, like any man,
Speaker 3: he any you know, we're all human, we all make
Speaker 3: mistakes and we trust people. Maybe that don't, you know,
Speaker 3: deserve our trust. And he was no angel by any
Speaker 3: stretch of imagination. But he was a good man. He
Speaker 3: had values and family, friends, you know, he was trustworthy.
Speaker 3: I think he just put his trust in the wrong
Speaker 3: folks and he got caught up in a lot of
Speaker 3: what was going on at the time in northwest Arkansas.
Speaker 3: If you want to describe it as the Dixie Mafia.
Speaker 3: You know something I don't say lightly. It was clearly
Speaker 3: the wild Wild West back in the day.
Speaker 1: In the early eighties.
Speaker 2: As all this was going down, Dennis was introduced to
Speaker 2: Lee Dixon by Ronnie t Again, my sources say that
Speaker 2: Ronnie Tigue is a key player in the drug trade
Speaker 2: in the area at the time. And I mentioned before
Speaker 2: that Ronnie Tig is a name that came up in
Speaker 2: Gaile Vaught's case. Remember Gail's friend Sheila. Sheila is the
Speaker 2: friend who Gayle believes she was supposed to hang out
Speaker 2: with on the weekend right after she was murdered. If
Speaker 2: you listen to the Gail Vaught episode, you know that
Speaker 2: Sheila was not actually in town when Gayle was murdered.
Speaker 2: But she did talk to police afterwards, and when she did,
Speaker 2: she mentioned Ronnie Tigue's name. She said that Ronnie had
Speaker 2: made some comments to her about Gail getting what she deserved,
Speaker 2: about her killer running over her more than once, and
Speaker 2: Sheila indicated that she was scared of Ronnie and his associates. Now,
Speaker 2: it was never proven that anything that Ronnie said had
Speaker 2: anything to do with Gaile's murder. There were no details
Speaker 2: that only the killer would have known. Nothing like that,
Speaker 2: but it is a name that has come up. We
Speaker 2: know that Ronnie was friends with several people who were
Speaker 2: alleged to have been big players in the fayette drug trade,
Speaker 2: and Ronnie Tigue was the guy who introduced Lee and
Speaker 2: Dennis Flowers.
Speaker 1: Lee seemed to.
Speaker 2: Have kind of a similar trajectory to Dennis. He had
Speaker 2: a good job, He was happily married to his wife, Karen,
Speaker 2: who taught elementary school. They wanted a family, and they
Speaker 2: were thrilled when Karen got pregnant for the first and
Speaker 2: second time. But this was the eighties and cocaine was
Speaker 2: definitely the drug of choice. So Lee's job gave him
Speaker 2: access to something that was like gold dust. And suddenly
Speaker 2: this pharmacist who had been kind of this shy, slightly
Speaker 2: nerdy guy, suddenly he's got access to all the movers
Speaker 2: and shakers in Fayetteful. So they started a business transaction.
Speaker 2: Lee would provide the pharmaceutical grade coke and Dennis would
Speaker 2: move it. Pharmaceutical grade cocaine, by the way, was kind
Speaker 2: of the best of the best back then, and to
Speaker 2: this day it is used in surgeries because it's still
Speaker 2: an excellent anesthetic and also a vasoconstrictor, so it was
Speaker 2: used in nasal surgeries and all types of surgeries.
Speaker 1: And it still is. Unlike some of the street stuff
Speaker 1: that's cut with a.
Speaker 2: Lot of cheap additives, pharmaceutical grade cocaine is up to
Speaker 2: ninety eight percent pure. The only way to get access
Speaker 2: to it was to have access to someone with either
Speaker 2: a medical license or a pharmaceutical license.
Speaker 1: So Lee and Dennis for.
Speaker 2: A while were running what was probably a very lucrative
Speaker 2: business side note here. In addition to dealing drugs, there
Speaker 2: were also rumors that Dennis was the guy to call
Speaker 2: if you wanted to book a sex worker, and the
Speaker 2: rumor was that Dennis supplied these women to powerful men
Speaker 2: at parties. Some people, including Ronnie Tige, called Dennis the
Speaker 2: flim flam Man or flimflam Flows because he always seemed
Speaker 2: to be running some kind of scam.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that it was strange. I didn't understand.
Speaker 3: I didn't put a lot together. There was definitely some
Speaker 3: red red flags that I would come home and tell
Speaker 3: my mom, like, well, there was this party, you know,
Speaker 3: and or I went to a club with my dad,
Speaker 3: and you know, there was just a lot of things
Speaker 3: that didn't add up, you know, especially as you're growing
Speaker 3: up and you're like, oh, you didn't go to a
Speaker 3: club and you didn't dance with grown men, you know,
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was just, you know, there was I
Speaker 3: was putting into a lot of dangerous situations. And I'm
Speaker 3: very thankful that I came out where I did, because
Speaker 3: I don't think my dad meant to put me in
Speaker 3: those situations. But definitely there was some there was some
Speaker 3: bad things going on. I was not there to party,
Speaker 3: I wasn't doing the party, and I was just exposed.
Speaker 3: You know, I might be in the bedroom watching TV
Speaker 3: and eating pizza and the party was going on around me.
Speaker 3: Or you know, we were going to a club and
Speaker 3: things are going on in the back room. You know.
Speaker 3: I can remember going to one and they said that
Speaker 3: it was snowing in the back room. Well I'm you know,
Speaker 3: at that age, I'm like, what, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: know that there's cocaine going on in the back room,
Speaker 3: But now I do, you know, then you put it together.
Speaker 3: So just numerous things like that that I was exposed
Speaker 3: to it at a young age.
Speaker 2: For a while, As we said, business was pretty good. But,
Speaker 2: as it so often happens in cases where people become
Speaker 2: involved in drug dealing, Dennison Lee got in over their heads,
Speaker 2: and investigators were already following the drugs and the money.
Speaker 2: It turned out that about a week before the double homicide,
Speaker 2: State auditors were at Lead Dixon's pharmacy. They were counting
Speaker 2: drugs and Lee came up short. When Lee developed his
Speaker 2: addiction to pharmaceutical grade cocaine, according to multiple sources, he
Speaker 2: started to violate what I call the Scarface rules. They're
Speaker 2: from the movie Scarface, from the scene when Frank, the
Speaker 2: gangster who took Tony under his wing, is at the nightclub.
Speaker 2: He says something that I think is very applicable. Even
Speaker 2: though this isn't over the top movie, I can say,
Speaker 2: as someone who's investigated fraud and murder for a long
Speaker 2: time now, this advice is actually very sound and very
Speaker 2: applicable to people in the drug trade. So Frank tells
Speaker 2: Tony two things. He gives them two rules. One, don't
Speaker 2: underestimate the other guy's greed. Lesson number two, never get
Speaker 2: high on your own supply. Lee seemed to be violating
Speaker 2: this rule. He and Dennis were both addicts by the
Speaker 2: winner of nineteen eighty three, they owed a lot of
Speaker 2: money to their suppliers. According to the Southern Fried Homicide podcast,
Speaker 2: they owed around forty thousand dollars, which in today's money
Speaker 2: would be around one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: The people they owed money to were looking to collect.
Speaker 2: Dennis was scared. He reportedly checked himself into the hospital
Speaker 2: for back pain, but Ronnie t came to visit. After that,
Speaker 2: Dennis called Lee and Lee brought him a gun. After
Speaker 2: leaving the hospital, Dennis went into rehab and it seemed
Speaker 2: like he actually made progress while he was there.
Speaker 3: They involved a family on intervention days, and it was
Speaker 3: a lot for him to go through that through the
Speaker 3: amount of time. You know, I've never done drugs or
Speaker 3: I've never been through a rehab like that, but I
Speaker 3: know it's not a picnic, but definitely for the emotional
Speaker 3: side of it, for people to come in, you know,
Speaker 3: your loved ones and write letters to you and tell
Speaker 3: you how their drug abuse and their alcohol abuse you
Speaker 3: know affected them. You know, the tears that were shed,
Speaker 3: you know during that during that time, you know, it
Speaker 3: was just it was a really painful. But at the
Speaker 3: same time healing experienced because we had we were so
Speaker 3: hopeful that things were going to get back on and
Speaker 3: even kill you know, that we were going to kind
Speaker 3: of have a rebirth, you know, if anything, just back
Speaker 3: to a norm of him, you know, not relying on
Speaker 3: the drugs and the drinking, and we were getting ready
Speaker 3: actually to move closer to him, and I was just
Speaker 3: really hopeful at the time.
Speaker 1: Dennis was released on March fourteenth.
Speaker 3: He'd gotten out to rehab and they were living in
Speaker 3: Fadeville at the time, and spring break came up just
Speaker 3: right after that, and so we went down for the
Speaker 3: week of spring break, and it was just a real
Speaker 3: loving time, you know, because we had really bonded and
Speaker 3: shared some close things, just our feelings about how he
Speaker 3: had heard us, and you know, I think he was
Speaker 3: really trying to make amends on spring break. I really
Speaker 3: felt like that in my heart, and really, you know,
Speaker 3: we had some great memories, you know, ordered pizza and
Speaker 3: you know, watch movies and just hung out. Just just
Speaker 3: that precious time that you look back and think, thank
Speaker 3: the Lord that you had.
Speaker 2: Now I know that a lot of people who were
Speaker 2: deep into addiction are definitely capable of incredible highs followed
Speaker 2: by crushing lows, but according to people around Dennis, he
Speaker 2: did seem sincere. But then on March sixteenth, Dennis and
Speaker 2: Lee were hit with some more bad news. Auditors were
Speaker 2: coming to Lee's workplace, Consumer's pharmacy. The auditor found there
Speaker 2: were a lot of drugs missing, over eight ounces of
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical cocaine, as well as a lot of pills and
Speaker 2: other drugs. At this point, Dennis and Lee knew that
Speaker 2: the house of was about to fall down, so Dennis
Speaker 2: and Lee apparently hatched a plan. At this point, they
Speaker 2: decided that they would rob the pharmacy. They would steal
Speaker 2: drugs and give the drugs to Dennis's wife, Linda, to
Speaker 2: drive across state lines and sell in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Then they would have one.
Speaker 2: Of their associates send a kid over to kind of
Speaker 2: ransack the pharmacy so that they could stage a burglary there.
Speaker 2: But their plan hit some snacks. Linda was supposed to
Speaker 2: rent a car to drive to Oklahoma. When she got
Speaker 2: to the rental car place, she had no credit card,
Speaker 2: so she could not get the vehicle. Secondly, there was
Speaker 2: a problem with their fake robbery. In the early morning
Speaker 2: hours of March eighteenth, a kid did show up and
Speaker 2: throw a rock through the pharmacy window, but when police
Speaker 2: got to the scene, they pretty much knew immediately this
Speaker 2: had been an inside job because all there was was
Speaker 2: a fairly small rock sized hole in that window. There
Speaker 2: was no blood or sign of a struggle, no shelves
Speaker 2: were disturbed, the door was still locked, and there was
Speaker 2: there's no way that anyone could have gotten inside and
Speaker 2: taken those drugs because they could not have crawled through
Speaker 2: that tiny hole in the window. The bottom line was
Speaker 2: that police were not fooled. They knew immediately that this
Speaker 2: was Dennis and Lee. The walls continued to close in
Speaker 2: on them both. Two days after the botched burglary, on
Speaker 2: March twentieth, Lee was fired from Consumer's Pharmacy. So now
Speaker 2: Lee had lost everything. He had lost his job, He
Speaker 2: knew that he was probably going to lose his pharmaceutical
Speaker 2: license and maybe his freedom. According to some sources, it
Speaker 2: was at this point that Lee started asking around about
Speaker 2: possibly making a deal to avoid prison. But Lee never
Speaker 2: had that option because just over twenty four hours later,
Speaker 2: Lee and his wife were found dead. So, as we
Speaker 2: said before, police immediately zeroed in on Lee's partner in crime,
Speaker 2: Dennis Flowers.
Speaker 3: You know, again, it's spring breaks, so I'm staying up late.
Speaker 3: But the last time that I saw him, I was
Speaker 3: reading in bed. I'm an avid reader, always have been.
Speaker 3: And he came in and it was late, it was
Speaker 3: about midnight, and he came in and he told me
Speaker 3: we had plans for the next day, and we talked
Speaker 3: about the next day, that what we were going to do,
Speaker 3: and he gave me a kiss and that was it.
Speaker 3: And I woke up the next morning and he was gone.
Speaker 3: So that's kind of how we ended it. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: we had plans for the next day, So there's no
Speaker 3: signals for me that anything was, you know, anything but
Speaker 3: normal in the time of the death. I mean, he
Speaker 3: tucked me in at midnight. So when I was interviewed
Speaker 3: by the detective, you know, after the murders, you know,
Speaker 3: I could account for his whereabouts because he was with
Speaker 3: me and my brother at the time, you know, as
Speaker 3: of midnight. Now clearly what happened after that, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know all the detailed, but I could tell
Speaker 3: you that he chucked me in at midnight and that
Speaker 3: murders were supposed to have happened, you know before then
Speaker 3: or you know right around then.
Speaker 1: What's the last thing you remember?
Speaker 2: Just him tucking you in?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like like I said, we made
Speaker 3: plans for the next day. We had a full schedule
Speaker 3: planned and you know he told me that he left
Speaker 3: me and gave me a kiss and shut the door.
Speaker 3: That was it.
Speaker 2: Police were trying to piece together what had happened. In
Speaker 2: the early morning hours of March twenty second. At around
Speaker 2: four am, police had gotten a call from a chicken
Speaker 2: farmer near Fayetteville. His name was Orrin Tisdale. Oren said
Speaker 2: someone had broken into their family home. The man had
Speaker 2: a gun, and Oran and his wife said that this
Speaker 2: man had a syringe sticking out of his arm. They
Speaker 2: said that he went out to his car, a white
Speaker 2: Ford Tempo, but when the man tried to get away,
Speaker 2: they said the man's car stalled and that he had
Speaker 2: started walking after that and then vanished. Police quickly determined
Speaker 2: that this man had been Dennis Flowers. Police went to
Speaker 2: the Tisdale farm. They found the white car that belonged
Speaker 2: to Lee and Karen Dixon.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 2: It was stalled and there was a forty four magnum
Speaker 2: pistol inside the vehicle. They never confirmed if this was
Speaker 2: the murder weapon, but after Dennis left the Tisdale home,
Speaker 2: he disappeared and police launched a massive man hunt for him.
Speaker 1: Police got another.
Speaker 2: Tip from one of Dennis's longtime associates, the attorney named
Speaker 2: Lamar Pettis, who we mentioned at the top of the episode. Now,
Speaker 2: what exactly went down in this phone call between Lamar
Speaker 2: and Dennis Flowers is a story that has changed over
Speaker 2: the years, so we're gonna look at this in depth.
Speaker 2: At the time, Lamar told police that Dinni had called
Speaker 2: him at around four thirteen am that morning. He said
Speaker 2: Dennis told him that he had killed two people and
Speaker 2: had another two people hostage. Lamar told police that he
Speaker 2: urged Dennis not to hurt the hostages, to leave them alone,
Speaker 2: and to walk away. Police based a huge part of
Speaker 2: their investigation on this information from Lamar. In fact, this
Speaker 2: was a big part of the reason why Dennis became
Speaker 2: their main and really their only suspect. One thing that's
Speaker 2: a little bit strange, and the Southern Fried True Crime
Speaker 2: podcast calls us out as well, is that there was
Speaker 2: a delay because this phone call happened at four thirteen
Speaker 2: am between Dennis and Lamar, Yet police did not come
Speaker 2: to the Dixon home until around six thirty am. Lamar
Speaker 2: told police that after he hung up with Dennis, he
Speaker 2: started researching what his obligations were under attorney client privilege,
Speaker 2: and only after some delay and some research did he
Speaker 2: decide to make some phone calls. I've I find this
Speaker 2: really unbelievable because I understand that there's such a thing
Speaker 2: as attorney client privilege, and that this was his friend
Speaker 2: and his tenant. But Dennis had allegedly confessed to killing
Speaker 2: two people, and also Lamar knew that there were potential
Speaker 2: hostages there in danger, and I cannot imagine him not
Speaker 2: calling the police right away. But Dennis's family did not
Speaker 2: believe that he would have been capable of something like this.
Speaker 2: They just did not believe he would be capable of
Speaker 2: viciously murdering not just his friend Lee, but Lee's heavily
Speaker 2: pregnant wife. Police charged Dennis Flowers with the murders of
Speaker 2: Lee and Karen Dixon. They launched a man hunt, and
Speaker 2: the search for Dennis Flowers went on for another ten days.
Speaker 2: Finally they found him, but they couldn't get any information.
Speaker 1: Out of him.
Speaker 2: Dennis Flowers was found floating face down in a pond
Speaker 2: just one hundred yards away from the Tisdale farm.
Speaker 1: He was found where a.
Speaker 2: Red and blue plaid shirt with a white pullover shirt,
Speaker 2: corduroy pants, and cowboy boots. He had three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty one dollars and some change in his back pockets,
Speaker 2: as well as two cigarette lighters and a spoon. The
Speaker 2: medical examiner, doctor Fawmi Malik, ruled that Dennis had died
Speaker 2: by drowning in less than three feet of water. The
Speaker 2: cause of death was listed as drowning associated with cocaine toxicity.
Speaker 2: The manner of death was suicide. After Dennis Flower's body
Speaker 2: was found, the medical examiner, doctor Fowmi Malik, determined that
Speaker 2: he had died by suicide as a result of drowning
Speaker 2: in less than three feet of water. We mentioned doctor Malik,
Speaker 2: who is notorious in the state of Arkansas for his
Speaker 2: mini botched autopsies back in the day. So often I
Speaker 2: sometimes feel like we need to do a Hell and
Speaker 2: Gone very Special episode just to cover all of his cases.
Speaker 2: Needless to say, back in the day, he was known
Speaker 2: for tailoring his forensic conclusions on what law enforcement said
Speaker 2: they wanted, and many people believed that this case was
Speaker 2: no exception. Some people wondered why it took so long
Speaker 2: to find the bodies that were so close to the
Speaker 2: potential last place where Dennis Flowers was seen. But honestly,
Speaker 2: as an investigator, that's not really the part that I
Speaker 2: find strange, because sadly, I've seen many other cases where
Speaker 2: unfortunately police failed to find bodies that were nearby. I'm
Speaker 2: thinking of Ebbie Stepek's case. Ebbie's body was found in
Speaker 2: drain pipe just a few feet from her abandoned car
Speaker 2: in a West Little Rock park, almost three years after
Speaker 2: she went missing. And sometimes many times bodies do sync
Speaker 2: to the bottom of bodies of water and then float
Speaker 2: up a few days later as gases are released.
Speaker 1: But even though the.
Speaker 2: Autopsy mentioned skin slippage, I have seen the autopsy report,
Speaker 2: and I've seen photos of the body, this body appears
Speaker 2: to have no distortion or bloating that one would expect
Speaker 2: if Dennis's body had been in the water for ten days.
Speaker 2: Tommy Bryant told k r K that one of the
Speaker 2: law enforcement officers who had been on the scene made
Speaker 2: a comment and said something like he looked like he'd
Speaker 2: been in the water for ten hours, not ten days.
Speaker 2: According to the autopsy, Dennis had needle marks in his
Speaker 2: arms as well as crystals in his lungs, and this
Speaker 2: was indicative of long term drug use. Of injecting drugs,
Speaker 2: Dennis's blood tested negative for alcohol and for other drugs.
Speaker 2: Dennis had over ten times a fatal dose of cocaine
Speaker 2: in his blood, but Dennis had a massive amount of
Speaker 2: cocaine in his stomach according to the autopsy report, over
Speaker 2: twenty ounces, and he also had a lot of water
Speaker 2: in his lungs.
Speaker 1: The autopsy report.
Speaker 2: Noted something called emphysema aquasum, which means that the lungs
Speaker 2: were very heavy and very spongy. According to some literature
Speaker 2: that I was reading on drowning deaks, this often happens
Speaker 2: when someone is conscious and struggling to live. They're fighting
Speaker 2: for their life and so they end up fighting to
Speaker 2: breathe and ingesting a lot of water. This seems like
Speaker 2: a horrific way to die, and this led a lot
Speaker 2: of people to believe that Dennis did not kill himself voluntarily,
Speaker 2: that someone had forced him to take those drugs to
Speaker 2: od and then to make sure that he drowned in
Speaker 2: that pond. They also wondered if he had really been
Speaker 2: out there for ten days, because there were reports that
Speaker 2: this area had already been searched. Rumors started to circulate
Speaker 2: that people in the drug trade, potentially bikers, had held
Speaker 2: him hostage for several days and then finally drowned him
Speaker 2: in the pond. But there were elements of physical evidence that,
Speaker 2: at least on the surface, appeared to match Lamar and
Speaker 2: the Tisdale stories. The Tisdale's saying he showed up at
Speaker 2: the house, the fact that Dennis was with Lee that night,
Speaker 2: and the things that Dennis had said in front of
Speaker 2: the Tisdale's to his attorney on the phone about two
Speaker 2: people being dead, one of them working at consumer pharmacy.
Speaker 2: The stuff that he said did lead police to believe
Speaker 2: that he had been the killer. It's definitely possible, in
Speaker 2: fact almost certain, that Dennis was there when Lee and
Speaker 2: Karen were murdered, but Dennis's family have serious doubts about
Speaker 2: whether Dennis was the sole person responsible. They wonder whether
Speaker 2: he was forced into something. They also don't believe that
Speaker 2: he drowned in under three feet of water. In a
Speaker 2: lot of online forums, a lot of people are wondering
Speaker 2: if the manner of death suicide should be changed to
Speaker 2: our canicide. There was another podcast called Coroner Talk. They
Speaker 2: did an interview with the coroner in this case, and
Speaker 2: they also talked to some experts and seemed to come
Speaker 2: to the same conclusion. They don't believe that the evidence
Speaker 2: supports the fact that the body was out in the
Speaker 2: water that long. The Coroner Talk podcast is very interesting.
Speaker 2: We're going to put the link in this episode, and
Speaker 2: if you're curious about more of the forensics, I highly
Speaker 2: suggest that you check it out.
Speaker 1: There were other pieces of evidence that didn't seem to
Speaker 1: make sense.
Speaker 2: First, there were the things that were missing, including a
Speaker 2: gold watch that Dennis always wore, and then there were
Speaker 2: the things that were in plane sight. Dennis's wallet was
Speaker 2: found near Lee and Karen's bodies in that house, but
Speaker 2: his family considers this the ultimate sign of a stage
Speaker 2: murder scene. They wonder could Dennis have really been dumb
Speaker 2: or high enough to leave that wallet out in plain sight,
Speaker 2: or could someone have.
Speaker 1: Planted it there.
Speaker 2: There were reportedly thirty two different fingerprints taken from the
Speaker 2: Dixon home. None of them were a match to Dennis flowers.
Speaker 2: There was only one single print that was a match
Speaker 2: to Dennis, and it was found on a full seven
Speaker 2: up can, So there was one single perfect fingerprint.
Speaker 1: The soda can was full.
Speaker 2: We come back to what Tommy Bryant said to KRK
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, because after he explained that one of
Speaker 2: the officers said that man hasn't been in the pond
Speaker 2: for ten hours, let alone ten days. Apparently, according to Tommy,
Speaker 2: the officer also made another comment. He said, quote someone
Speaker 2: paid a lot of money for that hit.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 2: KRK also talked to the attorney Lamar Pettis in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: and it's interesting because Lamar told Kark a different story
Speaker 2: than the one that can be found in the transcripts
Speaker 2: in the case file. He told Kark in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: that Dennis had made a comment telling him that two
Speaker 2: people were killed and that he would never hurt a child.
Speaker 2: So when Lamar talked to KRK, he said Dennis did
Speaker 2: not confess to the two murders. And as we all know,
Speaker 2: saying two people were killed is completely different than saying
Speaker 2: he killed two people. Lamar told the news station he
Speaker 2: thinks Dennis got mixed up with a bad crowd, but
Speaker 2: he does not believe he's capable of murder. I took
Speaker 2: another look back at the case file, the part that's
Speaker 2: been made public. There's a transcript of Lamar's interview with
Speaker 2: the investigator Doug Fogley. There's no audio of that transcript,
Speaker 2: but we have to work with what we have. In
Speaker 2: the transcript, Lamar is quoted is saying that Dennis did
Speaker 2: say he killed two people, and Dennis said he had
Speaker 2: two hostages there that.
Speaker 1: He didn't plan to hurt.
Speaker 2: Lamar told police that at that time, Dennis was also
Speaker 2: concerned about his wife, Linda, getting money for her and
Speaker 2: the kids, and also for his first wife. He apparently
Speaker 2: said that he loved her and that he had regrets,
Speaker 2: and then he said something else. According to Lamar, Dennis
Speaker 2: Flowers said that he never wanted to kill anyone, but
Speaker 2: that quote, someone was trying to blackmail me.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 2: The investigator Doug Fogley asked Lamar to clarify this. Lamar
Speaker 2: said again, Dennis told him someone was trying to blackmail me.
Speaker 2: Lamar said that after he hung up, and this was
Speaker 2: around four fifteen am, he told his wife Dennis said
Speaker 2: he just killed two people. He said he was going
Speaker 2: to call around and see what he could reveal due
Speaker 2: to attorney client privileges. Then Lamar called his law partner
Speaker 2: and during that conversation, he said Dennis had told him, quote,
Speaker 2: I've killed two people.
Speaker 1: They were blackmailing me. End quote. So which is it?
Speaker 2: Did Dennis say that he killed two people or that
Speaker 2: two people were killed? Was that something that Lamar thought
Speaker 2: he heard? And then he sort of attributed to Dennis
Speaker 2: when he made the next phone call. Figuring out this
Speaker 2: phone tree is such an important part of figuring out
Speaker 2: this case. And also what did he mean about that
Speaker 2: blackmail when he said that? Was he referring to Lee
Speaker 2: and Karen or he referring to someone else, maybe someone
Speaker 2: who forced Dennis to leave his wallet there for some reason.
Speaker 2: Tommy Bryant has made it clear that he believes that
Speaker 2: Dennis Flowers did not act alone. He said to KRK,
Speaker 2: quote the idea that a man would brutally murder two people,
Speaker 2: tie one of them up, and yet was dumb enough
Speaker 2: to leave a thumb print on a seven up can.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you pick up a can with
Speaker 2: your thumb with no other fingerprints. Tommy called the murders,
Speaker 2: cold calculated, and point blank. He said he believes law
Speaker 2: enforcement wanted to close this case fast, so that's why
Speaker 2: after Dennis's body was found, police were very quick to
Speaker 2: rule this suicide and put an end to what they
Speaker 2: believe was a very ugly affair in their town.
Speaker 1: He believes that for political.
Speaker 2: Reasons, the authorities wanted to get this case off the
Speaker 2: front pages of the newspaper. Tommy said that after he
Speaker 2: asked for a copy of the case file, he was
Speaker 2: shocked at the lack of evidence he said police had.
Speaker 2: He said the thing that struck him most was that
Speaker 2: the one fingerprint they had was the single one on
Speaker 2: the seven up can.
Speaker 1: He said.
Speaker 2: When he asked police about the evidence and how they
Speaker 2: knew that they had the right guy, he claims police
Speaker 2: told him, quote, he left his billfold there so we'd
Speaker 2: find it so we'd know it was him, end quote.
Speaker 2: And Tommy has made clear he does not believe that
Speaker 2: that is a satisfactory conclusion.
Speaker 1: He said he doesn't buy that theory.
Speaker 2: Dennis's family also does not believe that Dennis, after leaving
Speaker 2: the Tisdale home, took a massive amount of cocaine on
Speaker 2: his own drowned himself in a pond and floated there
Speaker 2: for ten days. I'm going to circle back for a
Speaker 2: second to Gail Vaut's case because some people who've contacted
Speaker 2: me have pointed out that some of the names that
Speaker 2: have come up as being involved in the drug trade
Speaker 2: that Gail's boyfriend was allegedly involved in, came up in
Speaker 2: this double homicide. Now, after this case, we can clearly
Speaker 2: see that the people who sold drugs in Fayettebule did
Speaker 2: seem to be able to make things happen, to make
Speaker 2: people pay, and to make them disappear. I believe that
Speaker 2: there is a substantial body of evidence that does point
Speaker 2: to the fact that Dennis Flowers may not have acted alone.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of questions and a lot of
Speaker 2: red flags in these murders, But when it comes to
Speaker 2: Gail Vought, I still don't think, at least according to
Speaker 2: what we've seen and found so far, that there is
Speaker 2: any evidence that the drug trade was involved in the
Speaker 2: same way in Gail's case. Again, I believe that there
Speaker 2: are compelling reasons why other people may have been involved
Speaker 2: in Dennis Flower's death.
Speaker 1: There were the heavy.
Speaker 2: Lungs, the signs of struggle, the fact that the body
Speaker 2: showed very few signs of being out in the elements
Speaker 2: after ten days. There was also the circumstantial evidence, the
Speaker 2: fact that we know that Lee was desperate, that he,
Speaker 2: with the help of dentists, had robbed his own workplace,
Speaker 2: and that to avoid jail time, he may have started
Speaker 2: asking questions about how to become an informant. And even
Speaker 2: if he didn't, the people that he was running drugs
Speaker 2: for may have been afraid that he would start asking
Speaker 2: those questions. There are compelling reasons why people high up
Speaker 2: in what they call the Ozark drug mafia could have
Speaker 2: wanted Lee and Dennis Flowers dead. Another commenter on a
Speaker 2: story about this case actually at the bottom of the
Speaker 2: Coroner Talk podcast episode says that it's from a former
Speaker 2: police officer, and this person claims to have worked in
Speaker 2: the area in Arkansas when Lee and Karen were murdered
Speaker 2: back in the day. He said, back then he believed
Speaker 2: some of his colleagues thought that police suffered from tunnel vision.
Speaker 2: When it came to this case, he said he had
Speaker 2: his own theory, which actually I find somewhat plausible, so
Speaker 2: I'm going to repeat it. This person said that he
Speaker 2: always believed that motorcycle gang members from Oklahoma City were
Speaker 2: the ones who really killed Lee and Karen Dixon. He
Speaker 2: said he believed they forced Dennis Flowers to ring the
Speaker 2: doorbell that night at the Dixon house because Ifnis was there,
Speaker 2: these guys knew Lee and Karen would answer the door.
Speaker 2: Then this person believes they got Dennis to leave his
Speaker 2: wallet there as sort of collateral. They tied Karen to
Speaker 2: a chair and forced Dennis to go with them as
Speaker 2: a hostage.
Speaker 1: What happened after that is unclear.
Speaker 2: Maybe Dennis was supposed to come back for Lee and Karen,
Speaker 2: maybe he couldn't, or maybe he got scared and ran.
Speaker 1: There are other possibilities too.
Speaker 2: It is possible that with all this going on, that
Speaker 2: Dennis did leave his wallet there in a panic, but
Speaker 2: the timing still doesn't make sense. I believe it's very possible,
Speaker 2: based on the condition of the body, that Dennis was
Speaker 2: kept hostage for several days by someone else.
Speaker 3: What do you think he meant by he was being blackmailed? Well,
Speaker 3: you can take it probably several different ways. But you know,
Speaker 3: I think that him and Lee were involved in some
Speaker 3: shady business as far as the cocaine and the pharmacy
Speaker 3: came up short, and I don't know if it's money
Speaker 3: that he owed my dad owed somebody some money, or
Speaker 3: that's I mean, that's speculation on my part. I don't
Speaker 3: know what the black male comes down to. And I
Speaker 3: don't even doubt you know that they could have been
Speaker 3: threatening to us, you know, as his children being there.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know. I don't know what the
Speaker 3: black mail per se is. It's aft speculation and what
Speaker 3: we you know, we'll never know exactly what happened, and
Speaker 3: I've come to terms with that. I would like to
Speaker 3: I would like to hope there's still people alive that
Speaker 3: do know exactly what happened, But you know, I've come
Speaker 3: to terms with I may never know, other than I
Speaker 3: know that, you know my dad, he would have never
Speaker 3: killed anyone, let alone a pregnant woman. And you know,
Speaker 3: his fingerprints were not on the tape that balance over,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, so that in itself is like
Speaker 3: you know, you scratch your head, well, there's fingerprints on it,
Speaker 3: but they're not his. So why can't we run those
Speaker 3: friends and find out who they belonged to.
Speaker 2: After KRK did their report, they reported that the State
Speaker 2: Crime lab did find several other sets of fingerprints at
Speaker 2: that crime scene. They were tested in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: but there were no matches. Then KRK reported that in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, Fayetteville police ran the Old Prince again, but
Speaker 2: apparently there were no matches found. But all of these families, Lee's, Karen's,
Speaker 2: and Dennis's believed that somewhere out there, someone knows something
Speaker 2: about an entire family being murdered in one night, a
Speaker 2: little boy left without parents, and another man's children wondering
Speaker 2: what really happened to their dad out in that pond.
Speaker 3: You know, he was the life of the party as
Speaker 3: far as if you knew him, you loved him. He
Speaker 3: made you feel special, he made you feel listened to.
Speaker 3: You know, he could make you smile instantly. He was
Speaker 3: just a great guy. And I think he was definitely
Speaker 3: a people person, and I think that's a great quality.
Speaker 3: And also I think for him it was his demise.
Speaker 2: At the same time, Tommy told k r KAY that
Speaker 2: his sister Karen's unborn baby was a girl. He said
Speaker 2: that every time he visits those three graves, he hopes
Speaker 2: that someone might come forward someday. I'm Catherine Townsend This
Speaker 2: is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is
Speaker 2: a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's
Speaker 2: written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by
Speaker 2: Gabby Watts. Music contributed by Ben Sale, Executive producers of
Speaker 2: Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you have
Speaker 2: a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
Speaker 2: you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
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