Speaker 1: I've been interviewing the families of murder victims since nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine. It's one of the most profound and personal
Speaker 1: aspects of my job, because well, I'm one of them.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, my brother's wife, five months pregnant,
Speaker 1: was strangled to death. Her case remains unsolved. So when
Speaker 1: families tell me how difficult this is to talk about,
Speaker 1: I can empathize. Opening up old wounds, digging back into
Speaker 1: the past is not always worth the pain and vulnerability
Speaker 1: of exposing yourself for the sake of keeping a memory alive.
Speaker 2: I hate to get into this. We've heard the rumor
Speaker 2: and we got a hold to Hanny and Mike, the
Speaker 2: cop State were on the case, and they came to
Speaker 2: the house and told us.
Speaker 1: There was that knock on the door. No family member
Speaker 1: of a missing person ever wants to hear.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking they're lying like hell, because my little girl
Speaker 2: wasn't dead, and that's really all I can talk about that.
Speaker 1: The anguish in Georgia Stidham's voice truly emphasizes how murder
Speaker 1: violates the core foundation of what family represents. When the
Speaker 1: victim is your child, your world is not only shattered
Speaker 1: but everything from that moment on is different. Danis Stidham's
Speaker 1: family had been in emotional purgatory for nearly two months,
Speaker 1: not knowing, wondering and waiting. But then on September seventeenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, the Benton County Sheriff's Office shows up
Speaker 1: to deliver the worst news imaginable. As you heard Dana's mother,
Speaker 1: Georgia Stidham explain, the mere memory of all that she'd
Speaker 1: lost that day was still too difficult to talk about
Speaker 1: in any detail some three decades later.
Speaker 3: I also wanted to ask you about Lawrence. Tell me
Speaker 3: about your husband.
Speaker 2: Oh, he was so sick. He had rheumatoid arthritis, real bad,
Speaker 2: and all the dregs had eating at his insides pretty much,
Speaker 2: and he was just Dana was his everything. She went
Speaker 2: to the stores for anything she thought he needed, she'd
Speaker 2: go pick up.
Speaker 4: And bring to.
Speaker 2: And they were home a lot together, Laurence's Dutch where
Speaker 2: he couldn't work with the kids while I were so
Speaker 2: this crushed them, then, yes it did. It was the
Speaker 2: beginning of the air for him.
Speaker 1: Georgia believes Dana's murder contributed to the death of her husband,
Speaker 1: who died in the years after Lawrence was only fifty
Speaker 1: years old. Dana's cousin and best friend, Christy Smith, recalls
Speaker 1: how harrowing those days leading up to finding Dana's body were.
Speaker 5: Well, this whole time we have been driving around, we
Speaker 5: have been posting flyers. We went all over Missouri, the
Speaker 5: bordering cities of Missouri, all over Fayville, everywhere we can
Speaker 5: think of, at every store that would allow us, we
Speaker 5: posted flyers and never got a response. In the back
Speaker 5: of your mind, you know that if you haven't heard
Speaker 5: something by now, then she is either no longer alive
Speaker 5: or somebody has her and you don't know who it is.
Speaker 5: And then in September we had actually driven by where
Speaker 5: they found her body, going to a place to put
Speaker 5: out some flyers, and I believe it was the next
Speaker 5: day they found her remains.
Speaker 1: For BCSO Detectives. As horrible as the situation was, the
Speaker 1: discovery of Dana's body gave the investigation a much needed boost.
Speaker 1: They now had a crime scene to process. Justice for
Speaker 1: Danis Stidham and her family could begin as the hunt
Speaker 1: for her killer entered a brand new face. Previously on
Speaker 1: Pay for Ghosts.
Speaker 6: So I'll stopped there and Bill will Squahant and I
Speaker 6: saw and a drag creek dead and saw scull and
Speaker 6: some rib bone.
Speaker 7: And it became somewhat alarming when they found a dirty
Speaker 7: magazine with some of van It's clothing.
Speaker 6: So now you have a suspect that worked at.
Speaker 7: The store with Anna, had an issue with email on
Speaker 7: fullet text of harassment and also said have ativity for
Speaker 7: thirty magazines.
Speaker 8: You know, hey, we've got three or four suspects, why
Speaker 8: not add another fifth suspect.
Speaker 1: My name is em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist
Speaker 1: and author of more than forty true crime books. This
Speaker 1: is season four of Paper Ghosts the Ozarks.
Speaker 9: All right, so here this is leading to beale road, woods,
Speaker 9: dirt road. We'll definitely drive in a truck.
Speaker 1: Investigators enter a crime scene hoping to collect fingerprints, footprints,
Speaker 1: tire tracks, blood, and additional bodily fluids, along with hairs, fibers,
Speaker 1: fire debris, a cigarette butt, or any other item that
Speaker 1: might lead them to a killer. Back to the vehicle
Speaker 1: rocker parked up here.
Speaker 2: Offee goes.
Speaker 1: I have seen murdersov with the most obscure, smallest piece
Speaker 1: of evidence lint from a blanket, sweat, DNA, unseen by
Speaker 1: the naked eye, even a single cat hair. The crime
Speaker 1: scene itself, where it is, what the terrain is like,
Speaker 1: how it looks can say a lot about a killer.
Speaker 1: Here's investigative journalists Brandon Howard.
Speaker 7: I went there a few years ago. I was shocked
Speaker 7: to see that it's super rural, still almost forgotten in time.
Speaker 7: It's a place you go from a paved highway that
Speaker 7: sees thousands of cars to dirt road really quickly uneven
Speaker 7: deep into the woods opens it to a large clearing,
Speaker 7: sort of circular base, a culta sac without any pavement.
Speaker 7: Yet despite being so far off the beaten path, you
Speaker 7: can see not far the liquor store just up the
Speaker 7: road that's crossed the state line.
Speaker 1: And then so you get out, you walk through the
Speaker 1: woods and there's a creek bed there where she was found.
Speaker 6: Right. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I had one detective mentioned that they thought it was
Speaker 7: done hastily, and then they realized other items of hers romance.
Speaker 7: They went back and tossed those and left. But I
Speaker 7: would think that you'd have to be somewhat strong or
Speaker 7: able body to carry a person down into that area
Speaker 7: of the woods and know about it. I don't think
Speaker 7: that anyone just stumbled across that spot.
Speaker 1: In June twenty twenty three, I made my way from
Speaker 1: the Phillips grocery toward the crime scene where Dana's body
Speaker 1: had been discovered, and what struck me first was how
Speaker 1: remote it is. We're talking about a densely wooded section
Speaker 1: of Bella Vista. To get there, you travel along these narrow,
Speaker 1: winding roads, zigzagging through the northern part of the state,
Speaker 1: on the southern edge of the Ozarks. Houses are few
Speaker 1: and far between. One would have to have prior knowledge
Speaker 1: of this area, I imagine, to commit a murder here
Speaker 1: and or dump a body. I was guided by GPS
Speaker 1: and had the global satellite coordinates of the exact location
Speaker 1: where Dana's remains were found, and still had trouble finding it.
Speaker 1: The dry creek Betty's talking about, and she would have
Speaker 1: been found about right here. I parked in what was
Speaker 1: a dirt road cul de sac not yet developed into housing.
Speaker 1: Walking down the steep embankment into a thickly forested valley,
Speaker 1: the road where I had parked disappeared from my view.
Speaker 8: Cover here is remarkable.
Speaker 3: The hill in front of me.
Speaker 8: She's screaming no one's hearing.
Speaker 1: Her standing where Dana's body had been found. The immense
Speaker 1: sadness of this place had an overwhelming effect on me.
Speaker 8: You're talking about an eighteen year old that just graduated
Speaker 8: high school like two months prior. She's got her whole
Speaker 8: life ahead of her, and all that gone in the
Speaker 8: blink of an eye for mother, for her to have
Speaker 8: to live with this, I can't even put myself in
Speaker 8: her shoes. Un she's had to go through over the years.
Speaker 1: That was Bcso Lieutenant Hunter betray Georgia Stidham told Brandon
Speaker 1: Howard in an article he published in twenty fifteen, quote
Speaker 1: and her rest will never bring closure. I'll never get
Speaker 1: her back, but I'd like to see her kill her caught,
Speaker 1: so wouldn't feel like I just let my daughter die
Speaker 1: and I walked away. Sadly, Georgia would not live to
Speaker 1: experience justice. On October twenty sixth, twenty twenty three, she
Speaker 1: passed away, seventy three years old.
Speaker 8: You know, I talked to her and just kind of
Speaker 8: revisited because I had not met her again. You know,
Speaker 8: this was not my case to begin with, so I
Speaker 8: had not met her and basically just went over to
Speaker 8: her house and grabbed it and spoke to her for
Speaker 8: about thirty minutes to an hour and just it's always man,
Speaker 8: it's if he because you don't want her to have
Speaker 8: to relive. Sure, bring all these things back up.
Speaker 3: And so September comes, no Dana.
Speaker 8: I think at that point in time, you're talking about
Speaker 8: six to seven weeks since she disappeared and nothing. And
Speaker 8: then all of a sudden there's a guy who was
Speaker 8: squirrel hunting in an area clear on the other side
Speaker 8: of town, basically on the east side of Bello Vista,
Speaker 8: ran across some remains. Pretty much at that point in
Speaker 8: time they had been skeletonized. So I don't want to
Speaker 8: get to sound like it's a body remains, is I
Speaker 8: think probably the proper term.
Speaker 1: Many thought it was strange, if not suspicious, that the
Speaker 1: hunter had waited a day before calling police about the
Speaker 1: discovery of a body.
Speaker 8: Again, it's unusual and it's weird because he doesn't report
Speaker 8: it right away. He waits a day. He actually sees it,
Speaker 8: looks at it, leaves because he says he was in
Speaker 8: a hurry, goes and talks to a friend, tells the friend, hey,
Speaker 8: I found some human remains. Friend kind of didn't didn't
Speaker 8: really believe him at first, but basically told him, hey,
Speaker 8: you need to report that. So the next day he
Speaker 8: does report it. The skull.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about where this is. This is not a
Speaker 1: place that you would put a body unless you knew.
Speaker 8: Of the place, probably unless you were driving around, which
Speaker 8: you would be really high risk driving around with a
Speaker 8: body in your car looking for a place. So yeah,
Speaker 8: probably you know the statistics and the odds are that
Speaker 8: somebody you ever did this. One person two persons was
Speaker 8: familiar with the area. Bella Vista has a lot of
Speaker 8: cull to sacks, a lot of dead end roades, a
Speaker 8: lot of them are undeveloped.
Speaker 1: Hunter Petray then mentioned something quite interesting, if you recall
Speaker 1: from a previous episode, I began to wonder about a
Speaker 1: group of friends Dana hung around whom she hadn't discussed
Speaker 1: much with her family. Georgia and even Christy knew most
Speaker 1: of the people within Dana's circle, but.
Speaker 2: Not all of them.
Speaker 8: I don't know if you know this or not, but
Speaker 8: prior to this, maybe a year or two prior, that
Speaker 8: area was kind of a party spot for kids. There
Speaker 8: was a shooting that took place there and a kid
Speaker 8: died after that kind of everybody was afraid to associate
Speaker 8: with that area. So there were people that were familiar
Speaker 8: with that area as a party spot. So again things
Speaker 8: start running through your mind. Are these people that same
Speaker 8: age group as Dana that knew about this area? Again, unknown,
Speaker 8: but that's a possibility, but yeah, it was a party
Speaker 8: spot for a while. That could sack.
Speaker 3: Did they try to find those people and interview.
Speaker 6: Any of them.
Speaker 8: They talked to some people that had been out there before,
Speaker 8: but they said that they had not been out there,
Speaker 8: you know, since that kid got killed out there with
Speaker 8: the shooting.
Speaker 1: As Dana's body was sent in for autopsy, investigators hoped
Speaker 1: to learn something about her killer. They theorized she had
Speaker 1: been out in the elements since the day after she
Speaker 1: went missing, nearly eight weeks. Her body was skeletonized, torn apart,
Speaker 1: and spread by animals over an area about the size
Speaker 1: of a football field. One particular discovery by the corner
Speaker 1: gave a possible explanation as to how Dana might have
Speaker 1: been murdered.
Speaker 8: When you have passage of time and its remains, that
Speaker 8: also complicates autopsies because you don't have an intact body.
Speaker 8: But they found there was a nick on the collarbone
Speaker 8: that they felt like was from a knife. Now, whether
Speaker 8: she was stabbed, you know, in the neck throat cut,
Speaker 8: we don't know for sure because we can't tell, but
Speaker 8: there was a nick in the collarbone that suggested that
Speaker 8: it was some type of knife attack.
Speaker 3: So that would beat the inside part of the.
Speaker 8: Collars correct, yeah, close to the neck the throat area basically.
Speaker 8: So they did note that and noted that that was
Speaker 8: anti mortem, which would have been prior to death. They
Speaker 8: rolled it a homicide. There was also some things that
Speaker 8: suggested that this was possibly a sexual assault, like what
Speaker 8: the braw the over the shoulder straps were cut with
Speaker 8: some type of sharp instrument down near where they connect
Speaker 8: with the backstrap. It appears that the braw had been
Speaker 8: cut with a sharp instrument.
Speaker 1: Several facts discovered during the autopsy become important for one.
Speaker 1: Dana's clothing white shorts, white shoes, bra white T shirt
Speaker 1: were all found in a hole about one foot deep
Speaker 1: ten or more yards away from where her skull was
Speaker 1: recovered in the creek bed. Her underwear, however, was found
Speaker 1: close to her skull. The corner noted quote based upon
Speaker 1: the presence of a sharply cut inner aspect of the
Speaker 1: left clavicle. There was a violent injury through a cut
Speaker 1: throat or a stab wound to the area. Two rings,
Speaker 1: later identified as Dana's were found near her buried clothes.
Speaker 1: Hares believed to be pulled out of her head were
Speaker 1: also recovered, a lock of which showed heavy damage to
Speaker 1: the roots from all the decomposition. It was also reported
Speaker 1: that the right and left sleeves of Danish shirt had
Speaker 1: been severed at the armpits, jagged cuts as if made
Speaker 1: crudely with the knife. On the upper left front thigh
Speaker 1: area of her shorts. The crime lab found a piece
Speaker 1: of duct tape. Was there any bindings or anything like
Speaker 1: that found?
Speaker 8: Yeah, there was some twine O orangish red twine that
Speaker 8: was there. There was also some found up at the
Speaker 8: cull to sag. They sent a lot of that down. Now,
Speaker 8: there were some knots in it, but the lab could
Speaker 8: not determine or specify that any of those knots were
Speaker 8: used for any type of ligature or binding of Dana.
Speaker 1: The amount of bindings seemed significant. One section was nineteen
Speaker 1: inches long with a two inch diameter or loop tied
Speaker 1: in a double strand overhand knot. Forty three and a
Speaker 1: half inches of baling twine was recovered directly next to
Speaker 1: her body and divided into two pieces, tied together with
Speaker 1: a clove hitch slip knot with a binding knot at
Speaker 1: the end. That type of knot is indicative of binding
Speaker 1: one thing to another and clearly intentional. Still, were the
Speaker 1: bindings connected to Dana's murder.
Speaker 8: That was never conclusively determined that any of that twine
Speaker 8: had been used to tie her up or bind her
Speaker 8: or anything of that nature. But it's interesting, and again,
Speaker 8: you know, it's complicated because that area was a party spot.
Speaker 8: There were people that drove by there and dumped things.
Speaker 8: You know, is this twine involved in this or is
Speaker 8: it just unknown?
Speaker 1: Up on bea lane along the embankment of the cul
Speaker 1: de Sac leading down toward where Dana was found, ten
Speaker 1: additional feat of bailing twine, divided into six pieces and
Speaker 1: enjoined by intricate different types of knots, were located. The
Speaker 1: crime lab concluded that quote none of the cuts or
Speaker 1: knotted regions indicated that these twines had clearly been used
Speaker 1: in ligaturing, restraining, or binding a person. A statement, I
Speaker 1: kind of have a problem with because there is no
Speaker 1: definitive way to answer that question by studying the twine alone.
Speaker 1: After all, an inability to prove something doesn't automatically disprove it.
Speaker 1: DNA testing was possible, but also unreliable since the material
Speaker 1: had been out in the elements for so long. Near
Speaker 1: the same time, the lab came back with another find.
Speaker 1: They'd located a single Caucasian strand of hair three point
Speaker 1: three inches long with the roots still attached inside a
Speaker 1: cup and Dana's car, a potentially significant discovery because they
Speaker 1: knew immediately that one hair was not Dana's. After the
Speaker 1: discovery of her remains, Dana Stidham's murder dominated local news reports.
Speaker 1: Benton County was eager to put a face on evil.
Speaker 1: You take away someone's sense of safety. Fear seeps in,
Speaker 1: fear breeds accusation, reaction.
Speaker 8: And a rush to judgment. That's just human nature.
Speaker 1: In order for me to get a clear picture of
Speaker 1: what could have possibly led up to Dana's murder, it
Speaker 1: was important to look at the dynamics of Dana's life
Speaker 1: from different perspectives. Here's Dana's mother again, Georgia, Can you
Speaker 1: just talk to me?
Speaker 3: A little bit about Dana as a child growing up?
Speaker 3: What kind of child she was?
Speaker 2: She was a laugh a minute. She was the happiest
Speaker 2: kid you've ever met. She was always being sol and snickering,
Speaker 2: and she had a slap and all the time.
Speaker 3: What did she talk about as a young kid that
Speaker 3: she wanted to do?
Speaker 2: You know, boy boys boys boys.
Speaker 3: And when she was younger, what was she like?
Speaker 8: What did she like to do?
Speaker 2: She was into all kinds of stuff. She painted, and
Speaker 2: she did ceramics, and she did all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2: She was really talented.
Speaker 3: And how was her relationship with mom and dad over
Speaker 3: the years.
Speaker 6: It was good.
Speaker 3: She had a lot of friends.
Speaker 2: Yes, she wanted everybody to be her friend.
Speaker 1: Three days after Dana's body was found, the BCSO brought
Speaker 1: in a classmate whose name was given to them by
Speaker 1: several of Dana's friends. I'll call him Stand for the
Speaker 1: purposes of the podcast. He was never named as a suspect,
Speaker 1: but he did provide some rather compelling information. He referred
Speaker 1: to himself as Dana's best friend, but made it clear
Speaker 1: he'd never had a sexual relationship with her. He had
Speaker 1: seen her the weekend before she disappeared. During Stan's interview,
Speaker 1: detective Mike Sidoriac asked about Dana lending a friend a
Speaker 1: pair of boots, which she had wanted back on the
Speaker 1: day she disappeared. Stan corroborated this information. Zidoriac asked Stan
Speaker 1: if he would have pulled up behind Dana as she drove,
Speaker 1: would she have stopped? Stan said yes, So you have
Speaker 1: the body, the bodies released, the body is buried.
Speaker 3: What happens next?
Speaker 8: So you know, the big thing back then was that,
Speaker 8: you know, they took people when they interviewed them. They
Speaker 8: polygraphed him, they took their fingerprints, hoping that something would
Speaker 8: come back off the chip bag or her clothing that
Speaker 8: was sent down Layton's hair follicles, you know, something to
Speaker 8: try to tie somebody as far as physical evidence to
Speaker 8: the homicide and the abduction.
Speaker 3: Or murder, and nothing came back.
Speaker 8: Nothing came back.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: Detectives Mike Sadoriak and Danny Varner had been up the
Speaker 1: ass of a local kid, Mike McMillan since almost the
Speaker 1: day Dana went missing. Several people I spoke to, including police,
Speaker 1: said Mike was an easy target. Mike, however, didn't help
Speaker 1: his own cause well.
Speaker 8: He was interviewed He was given several polygraphs, but initially
Speaker 8: he was confronted a couple of days after her disappearance.
Speaker 8: He could not give well. He tried, but it was
Speaker 8: kind of blown out of the water. He tried to
Speaker 8: give an alibi that he was visiting a girl down
Speaker 8: in Farmington, which is down by Fayetteville, you know, thirty
Speaker 8: miles away or whatever, but she basically said, I don't
Speaker 8: remember that, you know, I don't think that I was
Speaker 8: with you. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lie for you.
Speaker 8: I'm not gonna come up with some story for you.
Speaker 1: If I'm a BCSO detective, I'm wondering why in the
Speaker 1: hell lie about where you were?
Speaker 6: Then this?
Speaker 8: You know, he was seen that night and I'm talking
Speaker 8: about that night. I'm talking about the twenty fifth into
Speaker 8: the early morning of the twenty sixth. He was seen
Speaker 8: around three o'clock that next morning, and I want to
Speaker 8: say it was at the Bentonville Mercantile. Somebody had seen
Speaker 8: him there, and he just didn't really have a good
Speaker 8: alibi other than just driving around. His mother said that
Speaker 8: he had left home earlier that day on the twenty fifth,
Speaker 8: and did not come back until you know, way later
Speaker 8: the next morning. So I don't know about you, but
Speaker 8: I know, like, like I probably can't tell you what
Speaker 8: I had for lunch yesterday, but I can tell you
Speaker 8: I went if I thought about it. And you know,
Speaker 8: just two days later to not be able to come
Speaker 8: up with any valid alibi of where you were at
Speaker 8: other than something you come up with which was blown
Speaker 8: out of the water.
Speaker 1: And what's the connection to Dana with Mike McMillan schoolmates?
Speaker 1: He was in a line of schoolmates that were questioned.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and he was also really good friends with well,
Speaker 8: I say really good friends. They kind of lived together.
Speaker 1: I think I bleeped out his name. But Hunter Portray
Speaker 1: is referring to Dana's ex boyfriend, so he starts looking suspicious.
Speaker 8: Well, from people that were taught to he was somewhat
Speaker 8: infatuated with her and had tried to make advances on her,
Speaker 8: and she had rejected him because she was seeing some
Speaker 8: other people at the time and basically didn't want anything
Speaker 8: to do with him. You know, there's some people that
Speaker 8: said that, you know, he was kind of infatuated with her,
Speaker 8: wanted to go out with her, and she just kept
Speaker 8: rejecting him, and he would get upset about. So there's
Speaker 8: a motive there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, could be strong person of interest for sure, right,
Speaker 3: as were others.
Speaker 8: As were others. Yeah, at this time. You know, again,
Speaker 8: there's no physical evidence, there's no witnesses to tie. But
Speaker 8: there's a lady that saw him driving, supposedly and saw
Speaker 8: a brunette girl in the truck with him. Now we
Speaker 8: don't know necessarily if it was that day the day before.
Speaker 8: It's kind of vague, but we it makes it seem
Speaker 8: like it might have been that night. He didn't deny it. Now,
Speaker 8: he didn't say he said that, you know. Obviously he
Speaker 8: didn't admit that it was Dane in the truck, but
Speaker 8: he didn't really deny that somebody could have been in
Speaker 8: this truck. He didn't deny that when he was questioned,
Speaker 8: did he go to Bella Vista? Could have You know,
Speaker 8: you're this person saying that you didn't go down to
Speaker 8: Farmington and see her?
Speaker 2: Is she a liar?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, if she said that, I'm not calling
Speaker 8: anybody a liar. So it wasn't real hard to deny.
Speaker 8: The only hard denial that he gave was that he
Speaker 8: didn't kill Dana.
Speaker 1: So he did deny that was he one of the
Speaker 1: kids who partied in that spot up by Beale Road.
Speaker 8: According to him, though most.
Speaker 1: Everyone was polygraphed, including Mike McMillan.
Speaker 8: The first polygraph he passed, but later on he was
Speaker 8: given another polygraph because things just wouldn't go away.
Speaker 1: I spoke to Mike. He didn't want to appear on
Speaker 1: the podcast because he said, quote talking about this now
Speaker 1: just keeps it going and fans the flames. The best
Speaker 1: thing for me to do is live my life. I
Speaker 1: don't live in the past. The BCSO, however, hyper focused
Speaker 1: on Mike after he revealed some rather odd behavior that December,
Speaker 1: just after Dana is buried, before there is even a
Speaker 1: gravestone on her plot, the BCSO finds out Mike McMillan
Speaker 1: is going out to her grave every other night and
Speaker 1: talking to himself while out there.
Speaker 8: People that were talked to said that he was supposed
Speaker 8: to leave for Basic He was basically adamant that he
Speaker 8: didn't want to go to the navy. You know, Dana
Speaker 8: turns up missing, and then all of a sudden he's okay,
Speaker 8: I'm ready to go to the Navy. It's fine, you know,
Speaker 8: let's go. So he leaves and goes to Basic. There's
Speaker 8: issues that happened there, quite a few. He goes a wall,
Speaker 8: but he comes back at one point in time, this
Speaker 8: was prior to on a wall. But he's on leave,
Speaker 8: I guess, and comes back and he goes out to
Speaker 8: the cemetery, instills her temporary grave marker and keeps it
Speaker 8: in his house, keeps it in his bedroom.
Speaker 1: Which makes Mike an even bigger target now for the Bcso.
Speaker 8: He was out there with another juvenile female who witnessed this,
Speaker 8: and it mean, it even gets stranger than that for
Speaker 8: someone that they never dated other than just being classmates.
Speaker 8: He had the most intimate feelings for her that I've
Speaker 8: ever seen of somebody that wasn't physically in a relationship
Speaker 8: with somebody, made statements like he loved her, went out
Speaker 8: to the cemetery like six or seven nights and would
Speaker 8: stand out there and according to this other witness, would
Speaker 8: just say things like he's talking to her just weird
Speaker 8: man Like to me, that screams guilt.
Speaker 1: Mike had indeed left for the Navy right after Dana
Speaker 1: went missing, but he had signed up long before. He
Speaker 1: told me. He didn't go a wall. He finished boot
Speaker 1: camp and returned home. Likewise, it wasn't as if he
Speaker 1: backed his truck up into the cemetery and loaded Dana's
Speaker 1: gravestone and took it away. He stole a plastic grave
Speaker 1: marker with her name on it, where the stone would
Speaker 1: later be placed. But when the BCSO heard about Mike
Speaker 1: stealing the grave marker, of course they were eager to
Speaker 1: get him on record, lock him down to a statement. Still,
Speaker 1: this hunter portray points out, so far all of this
Speaker 1: is nothing more than circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 8: Not enough to arrest somebody. But again, you're putting the
Speaker 8: spotlight on yourself. Now, being a thief doesn't make your murderer,
Speaker 8: but you still her temporary grave marker. You also carry
Speaker 8: around a photograph of her in your wallet For somebody
Speaker 8: that doesn't want to be in the spotlight. I guess
Speaker 8: you're not helping yourself.
Speaker 1: Under a subpoena, Mike is brought in after the BCSO
Speaker 1: hears about the grave marker theft. He tells detectives he
Speaker 1: never dated Dana and never even asked her out. He admits, however,
Speaker 1: to seeing her the day before she went missing. Usual,
Speaker 1: how you been fine, take care type of thing. He
Speaker 1: then claims he took the grave marker quote just to
Speaker 1: have something to remember. I wasn't trying to hurt anybody.
Speaker 1: During a phone call, Mike told me it was the
Speaker 1: stupidest thing I ever did in my life because now
Speaker 1: every move he made was scrutinized by the bcso he
Speaker 1: had a target on his back. And after Mike confessed
Speaker 1: to stealing the grave marker during his interview with detectives,
Speaker 1: they stopped the interview, read them his rights, and arrested him.
Speaker 1: Dana's ex boyfriend was brought back in for questioning right
Speaker 1: around the same time Mike McMillan was charged with stealing
Speaker 1: the grave marker. It'd spoken to a new girlfriend Dana's
Speaker 1: X was dating at the time Dana went missing. Detective
Speaker 1: Mike Sidoriak explained to her where dana had been found
Speaker 1: and wanted to know if Dana's X had ever taken
Speaker 1: her the new girlfriend, out to that Beal Lane area
Speaker 1: to have sex.
Speaker 8: She said no.
Speaker 1: Sidoriak pushed harder, asking if he was ever violent, to
Speaker 1: which she repeatedly and emphatically answered no. Sidoriak and Varner
Speaker 1: then went back to focusing on Mike McMillan. I asked
Speaker 1: journalist Brandon Howard why he believed the BCSO became so
Speaker 1: fixated on Mike. A large part of it, of course,
Speaker 1: was the grave marker theft, but there had.
Speaker 6: To be more.
Speaker 7: They find what appeared to be several hairs and what
Speaker 7: they think is enough evidence to move forward with testing
Speaker 7: it against hairs from Dana's mother, I think, to try
Speaker 7: and prove that maybe she was in that vehicle.
Speaker 1: Those hairs were found during a search of Mike's truck.
Speaker 1: Mike McMillan told me quote by then it wasn't whether
Speaker 1: I did it or not. They wanted me to have
Speaker 1: done it. The BCSO ends up interviewing Mike again later
Speaker 1: on and are convinced Mike is their guy.
Speaker 7: I would call that a marathon interview of probably six
Speaker 7: to eight hours, where they try and essentially break him
Speaker 7: to admit to what he's done to Dana, which she
Speaker 7: never does. I would say he's actually kind of adamant
Speaker 7: compared to other suspects that he has no involvement. And
Speaker 7: it goes on and on, and he has his statements
Speaker 7: and they do their best to get him to admit
Speaker 7: to something that he feels he didn't do, and that's
Speaker 7: the end of it. And he's named publicly the newspaper's
Speaker 7: report that his hair was being tested in the case,
Speaker 7: one of only two publicly named suspects.
Speaker 1: So during my interview with Mike, I asked him about
Speaker 1: his name being published. He said, quote, Yeah, they put
Speaker 1: my picture on the front page of the newspaper next
Speaker 1: to Dana's with a story. And from that moment forward,
Speaker 1: I was the guy. No matter what anyone said or
Speaker 1: additional evidence pointing in any other direction, people looked at
Speaker 1: Mike as Dana's killer. Here's Hunter portray Again.
Speaker 8: You can't rule him out, just based off the sheer
Speaker 8: fact that he can't come up with an alibi. You
Speaker 8: know that they took the grave marker, and again that
Speaker 8: makes him a thief, not a murderer. He sure hasn't
Speaker 8: helped himself any you know, by doing some of those things.
Speaker 8: But yeah, you can't rule him out. And if you
Speaker 8: had to make a list, you would probably put him
Speaker 8: at the.
Speaker 2: Top, you know.
Speaker 8: Sodorak he had McMillan at the top of his list.
Speaker 8: And I think they had actually consulted or collaborated with
Speaker 8: the FBI profilers and they came up with the same
Speaker 8: conclusion as far as who did this, but again you're
Speaker 8: talking about you got to have enough to make an
Speaker 8: a risk.
Speaker 1: I wondered if Georgia Stidham could offer any insight into
Speaker 1: Dena's thoughts about Mike.
Speaker 2: He said he was creepy. They got along good, they
Speaker 2: seemed to, but Mike, Mike wondered what he wanted and
Speaker 2: he was spoiled and thoughted.
Speaker 3: Ought to have it, and she just wasn't interested that
Speaker 3: way in him.
Speaker 2: No, No, she liked him were well as a friend,
Speaker 2: but that was all.
Speaker 3: So she didn't really talk about Mike a lot.
Speaker 2: Then she didn't have a lot to say about him,
Speaker 2: just that he was you telling.
Speaker 1: Christy Smith, Dana's cousin, was sitting nearby when I spoke
Speaker 1: to Georgia. After Georgia encouraged her, Christy told me a story.
Speaker 10: Well, there was one time, and it was probably we
Speaker 10: were in junior high or just starting in high school.
Speaker 10: It was the summer, and I was saying with them
Speaker 10: during the summer, and Mike walked down because he you know,
Speaker 10: he just flipped up the dirt road for her, and
Speaker 10: he walked down the dirt road to come and see us,
Speaker 10: or come see her and her dad did not like
Speaker 10: that at all. Boys didn't come to see danam when
Speaker 10: she was at home and that young, so he random
Speaker 10: he made him leave.
Speaker 2: He ran them off.
Speaker 11: I mean, she was always his friend, but and I
Speaker 11: don't remember him ever saying anything or or doing anything,
Speaker 11: and she never complains too bad about him.
Speaker 2: But he just wouldn't take no for an answer.
Speaker 1: I must say hearing this, Mike's actions feel more like
Speaker 1: those of a love struck kid than a brutal killer.
Speaker 1: When you put yourself in the shoes of a teenager
Speaker 1: in the throes of unrequited love and then the person
Speaker 1: you love is murdered, visiting her grave every night makes
Speaker 1: a little more sense. On the day Dana disappeared, we
Speaker 1: know that she needed to go to the store for
Speaker 1: her dad was a general store right there in Highwaseee,
Speaker 1: down the road she could have gone to, yet Dana
Speaker 1: made the extra trip into Bella Vista, out of the way.
Speaker 1: Several sources had told me Dana avoided that High Wassie
Speaker 1: store because Mike McMillan hung around there all day long.
Speaker 1: His parents owned it.
Speaker 11: He would write her notes about, you know, wanting to
Speaker 11: go out with her and stuff, and she would tell
Speaker 11: him that she disliked him for a friend, and he
Speaker 11: would just keep trying and asking.
Speaker 1: Cindy McMillan married Mike in nineteen ninety four, five years
Speaker 1: after Dana was murdered. At the time, the BCSO was
Speaker 1: still pursuing him as its main suspect. I spoke to
Speaker 1: Cindy in order to get an overall picture of who
Speaker 1: her husband was. Behind closed doors. I was in the
Speaker 1: minority of those unconvinced that Mike was involved with Dana's death. Look,
Speaker 1: I found it very hard to believe that Mike McMillan
Speaker 1: had something to do with Dana's murder, which was methodical,
Speaker 1: organized and very well planned out. I can't help but
Speaker 1: feel that if Mike killed her, he would have left
Speaker 1: behind some sort of physical or trace evidence.
Speaker 3: What kind of guy was he?
Speaker 4: So he when I met him, very charismatic, very handsome,
Speaker 4: very charming, funny, you know, fun to be with all
Speaker 4: of that, He did tell me about Dana. So the
Speaker 4: fact that he talked about her, you know, and told me,
Speaker 4: because obviously I told him about my ex husband, my
Speaker 4: first husband, I didn't think anything of it. He did
Speaker 4: tell me that he'd been investigated because he took the
Speaker 4: grave marker, which I would have never known that was
Speaker 4: a crime.
Speaker 1: Right, But he was a nice guy. Mike was upfront
Speaker 1: about his history. He didn't hide anything. This sort of
Speaker 1: description of Mike was something I had heard from several
Speaker 1: others who knew him.
Speaker 3: When he talked about Dana's case. What did he have
Speaker 3: to say about it anything in particular, Just.
Speaker 2: It was terrible.
Speaker 4: It was really hard for him because he left her
Speaker 4: the Navy, and he was sad that he didn't get
Speaker 4: to go to our funeral. That was why he went
Speaker 4: to the grave and took the grave marker.
Speaker 2: But he didn't know.
Speaker 4: And when they started talking about it, you know, someone
Speaker 4: stole our grave marker. He turned it in because he
Speaker 4: didn't know. You weren't supposed to take it.
Speaker 1: So the public image is that of a teenager who
Speaker 1: was allegedly infatuated with Dana and had chased her romantically
Speaker 1: throughout their youth. According to Mike, this is quote just
Speaker 1: not true. Everyone from that time knows this. After high school,
Speaker 1: Mike says he hardly ever saw her. In talking to
Speaker 1: family and friends, I learned that Dana had never ever
Speaker 1: felt threatened by the guy he had never done anything
Speaker 1: violent toward her. He shipped off to boot camp and
Speaker 1: misses her funeral. He comes home, goes out to her
Speaker 1: grave night after night, which he admits during an interview,
Speaker 1: and on one of those nights he takes her grave marker.
Speaker 1: His easy admission of this to me says that he
Speaker 1: wanted to be forthright but didn't think these facts would
Speaker 1: be incriminating. Instead, he was arrested and charged, Yet that
Speaker 1: case went nowhere and was eventually dropped. Then Cindy McMillan
Speaker 1: tells me this, He.
Speaker 4: You know, I think that there was a policeman or
Speaker 4: a sheriff and he really felt like he may have
Speaker 4: done it.
Speaker 3: That's what Mike thought, that some sort of police law enforcement.
Speaker 4: Yes, it was a young guy close to his age,
Speaker 4: and maybe he dated Dana. I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 1: This was not the first time I had heard of
Speaker 1: this same life local police officer, and Mike confirmed from
Speaker 1: me that he and others had heard Dana was dating
Speaker 1: a married police officer around the time she went missing.
Speaker 1: Certain Stidham family members told me a different story that
Speaker 1: a cop had stopped Dana on occasion and she'd complained
Speaker 1: that the guy creeped her out. He had a wife
Speaker 1: and kids, but would pull her over as an excuse
Speaker 1: to hit honor. It's not Mike Sidoriak or Danny Varner,
Speaker 1: I want to be perfectly clear about that. But I've
Speaker 1: repeatedly seen this CoP's name on reports associated with Dana's
Speaker 1: investigation as someone who had even interviewed suspects in this case.
Speaker 1: As I developed sources into twenty twenty three, I spoke
Speaker 1: to someone who had grown up in the Bella Vista
Speaker 1: area and knew Dana socially. She was also familiar with
Speaker 1: the crowd around Dana at the time and hung around
Speaker 1: some of them. She doesn't want to be identified, so
Speaker 1: I'm disguising her voice. What she has to say is disturbing,
Speaker 1: but also, I might add, problematic. I asked the detective
Speaker 1: I know who's spoken to the same source about her quote.
Speaker 1: Don't discount what she says. My source claims she was
Speaker 1: out one night during the summer of nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: at a place called the Wonderland Cave, a bar in
Speaker 1: Bella Vista. Underage kids sometimes snuck into well.
Speaker 6: When I got there, I walked in and the first
Speaker 6: thing I noticed was there was this guy standing in
Speaker 6: the middle of the dance floor that I'd never seen before,
Speaker 6: with his arms crossed, and he kind of had this smile,
Speaker 6: like a smirk, like something was going on with him
Speaker 6: that night. And then I noticed there was a girl
Speaker 6: with him, and then I looked at him, and I
Speaker 6: the first thing I thought was, he's got this funny
Speaker 6: look on his face.
Speaker 3: What did he look like?
Speaker 6: Five nine five t and it was a little bit muscular,
Speaker 6: kind of a husky, I would call him husky, And
Speaker 6: he appeared Betty didn't really ever go out to dance,
Speaker 6: so it seemed like that it was unfamiliar for him
Speaker 6: to be at a dance club and that it was
Speaker 6: something new to him. And then I noticed there was
Speaker 6: a girl with him, and it was so strange because
Speaker 6: she was kind of in the background, and I thought
Speaker 6: I looked at the situation and I thought, well, who
Speaker 6: is she? And then I realized, I know who that is.
Speaker 6: That's the girl that works up at the grocery store
Speaker 6: down the road here at Bella Vista, because I had
Speaker 6: briefly met her and talked to her. That's that Dana
Speaker 6: Stidham girl. And I looked at him again. I thought, well,
Speaker 6: what's he gonn't acting that way. I could see her,
Speaker 6: but it was like she was just dancing around everywhere
Speaker 6: behind him, just fluttering around and dancing kind of out
Speaker 6: of control. Like maybe. I thought about it later and
Speaker 6: I thought, well, maybe uh, he had given her something
Speaker 6: to drink or something. And when I looked at him again,
Speaker 6: this was just in a matter of you know, a
Speaker 6: minute or two, I thought, something's not right here. Something
Speaker 6: in my mind told me that this guy is fixing
Speaker 6: to kill this girl. Oh my god, this is some
Speaker 6: kind of a murder.
Speaker 1: My source claims that she went home, called the local
Speaker 1: police and explained that this girl she casually knew, Dana Stidham,
Speaker 1: was with a guy whose name she didn't know, but
Speaker 1: she sensed that Dana was in big trouble and.
Speaker 6: That something was wrong there, and something told me that
Speaker 6: he was fixing and plotting and planning to kill Hart.
Speaker 3: Well, let me just stop you right there. So do
Speaker 3: you recall the date the exact date of this.
Speaker 2: No, I don't.
Speaker 6: I think it was either right around the time of
Speaker 6: when she was reported missing. It had to bend the
Speaker 6: time because after I talked to the police, they were like, no,
Speaker 6: there's nothing going on. You're just that's crazy. There's nothing
Speaker 6: going on.
Speaker 1: I spoke to law enforcement and they verified she called them. Also,
Speaker 1: the Wonderland Cave is four miles south of the Phillips Grocery. Remember,
Speaker 1: Dana was seen heading south on Route seventy one the
Speaker 1: night she disappeared, and just a two minute drive from
Speaker 1: Blowing Springs Park. If you recall, in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: Dana was supposedly seen at the park with Orville Mitch
Speaker 1: Goodwin on the night.
Speaker 8: She went missing.
Speaker 6: I told him I thought something was going on, and
Speaker 6: that it seemed like this guy was that something had
Speaker 6: told me, you know, so you know I think. I
Speaker 6: also then called the Bellavist police station and told them
Speaker 6: and they were like, oh okay. Then the next thing
Speaker 6: I know is somebody says that Dana Gry she didn't
Speaker 6: go missing. I said, I told y'all, I tried to
Speaker 6: tell y'all there's something going on.
Speaker 1: The entire scene had a major impact on this woman.
Speaker 1: She could not shake it, and so she started asking
Speaker 1: around trying to find out the name of the guy
Speaker 1: she allegedly saw at the cave that night with Dana Stidham.
Speaker 6: You know, we were maybe at somebody's house, and just
Speaker 6: somebody had mentioned it to me, somebody that knew the guy.
Speaker 6: They told me his name is Mike.
Speaker 1: Coming next on Paper Ghosts the Ozones.
Speaker 6: All of a sudden, he says, Linda, I see a skull.
Speaker 2: I says, oh, surely not. But I went back there
Speaker 2: with him and we saw the skull.
Speaker 6: I said, y'all know Dana Stidham, didn't she go missing
Speaker 6: around here somewhere? And she says, yeah, you better leave
Speaker 6: there right now. She says, because if you don't, the
Speaker 6: same thing's gonna happen to you.
Speaker 2: I thanks, you bitch had a lot to do with it,
Speaker 2: and that a bitch is exactly what she was.
Speaker 1: Please listen and subscribe to my other podcasts, Crossing the
Speaker 1: Line with m William Phelps and White Eagle, wherever you
Speaker 1: get your favorite shows. Paper Ghost Season four is written
Speaker 1: and executive produced by me Em William Phelps, script consulting
Speaker 1: by Rose Bachi, sound design by Matt Russell, executive production
Speaker 1: by Catherine in Law, and audio editing and mixing by
Speaker 1: Brandon Dicker Taka Boom Productions. The series theme number four
Speaker 1: four to two is written and performed by Thomas Phelps
Speaker 1: and Tom Mooney