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