M. William Phelps (2:30)

Beneath the folksy postcard perfect surface of any small American town lies a hint of evil few can imagine actually exists within their peaceful lives. Most never come face to face with it. And yet everyone understands they are perhaps closer than they might think to being swallowed up by it. Having a loved one go missing creates a grim reality, forcing family members to experience the worst life can throw at you. Their only weapon of defense within that struggle.

Christy Smith (3:08)

Hope.

M. William Phelps (3:09)

I've always carried hope.

M. William Phelps (3:13)

No matter how long it's been. An unsolved murder leaves behind a quiet sorrow and an intense gravity in many Ways an incredible sense of lost identity seeps into everyday life. It's what some refer to as forever pain.

Local Expert/Commentator (3:35)

I think the one thing about Dana's case is that Benton county still to this day enjoys a very low crime rate. It is extremely rare for it to be.

Local Expert/Commentator (3:49)

A stranger abduction, or at least not immediately understandable what happened. Right? People don't get kidnapped off parking lots, I would imagine. Then people didn't lock their cars. They left their keys in the car at the grocery store. I mean, they left their doors open. And so not only for that to happen to a young girl, but also for it to be not immediately known what happened creates fear and panic in folks. I would say it's not an overstatement to say that's an earth shattering event in terms of crime in Benton County.

M. William Phelps (4:22)

Murder is such a profound tragedy, it can take a lifetime to not only understand what happened to a victim, but to process what their loved ones went through. It's a part of the true crime experience, rarely given more than a cursory glance. The certainty of living with such enormous loss. Murder, moreover, divides families and sometimes puts neighbors and even friends at odds.

Community Member/Informant (4:53)

I'm going to tell you, it can go either way. I have seen small communities that it'll bring them together. It will bring folks that haven't been together with the same mindset. And so they start to kind of look out for each other. It becomes almost like a natural disaster. Would they tend to talk, they tend to interact. The division is gone. That's one. One thing that I have actually seen happen in smaller communities. And I can really only speak to a smaller community. And so I would say that it sometimes can go either way. I've seen it bring a community together and they look out for each other and they're concerned and they start to talk. And then certainly I've seen it do the other side, where you have two battlegrounds.

M. William Phelps (5:39)

Those varying factors, however, can be an asset to a cold case investigation. And as I would soon learn, detectives sometimes play both sides against each other.

Community Member/Informant (5:51)

I think you get more from a community when they're divided because everybody wants their opinion heard and they want to explain why they feel the way they do. And they want somebody to listen and acknowledge that their opinion counts on this. So I've received more confidential informants, people than off of the street on patrol that would say, hey, you know, I know you're working on this, and I knew that family or I've seen that family or what have you, and I just need you to know this and Then they'll want to recount any story that they may have had or heard.

M. William Phelps (6:26)

The fact is, murder changes everything. And unsolved murder magnifies that change. And when murders start to multiply, all hell breaks loose.

M. William Phelps (6:49)

My name is M. William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and author of more than 40 true crimes crime books. This is season four of Paper Ghosts. The Ozarks.

M. William Phelps (7:20)

I arrived in Arkansas during the spring of 2023, there to look into a three decades old cold case. A young woman, Dana Stidham, who'd gone missing on a beautiful mid summer day in 1989.

Christy Smith (7:36)

Hi, Christy, how you doing?

M. William Phelps (7:38)

Good to meet you.

Christy Smith (7:39)

Good to meet you.

M. William Phelps (7:41)

Benton County, Arkansas is a community of about 300,000 people and literally built by Walmart, which is headquartered in Bentonville. One of my first contacts was a woman who knew more about Dana Stidham than most anyone else.

Christy Smith (7:59)

My name is Christy Smith. I am Dana Stidham's cousin. We grew up together our whole lives. She was a year older than I was. We were pretty much inseparable. Our mothers are sisters. They were together all the time. We were together all the time. She was more of a sister than a cousin.

M. William Phelps (8:20)

At 18 years old during the summer of 1989, Dana was at that crossroads stage of life we all face in our youth. Looking forward to the future. After graduating from Gravette High School, deciding.

Christy Smith (8:35)

Which path to take, we would always go swimming together. And we went camping one year in Missouri. And while we were camping, we went to Whitewater. Our parents dropped us off at Whitewater while they went shopping. And I remember we got so sunburned. But we were determined we were not gonna leave early, we were gonna stay no matter how red we got. And then the rest of the camping trip, we were just miserable because we were so burnt, but we still managed to have fun.

M. William Phelps (9:02)

And what kind of kid was she?

Christy Smith (9:04)

Oh, she was good. She was just like any kid we were. We were rambunctious when we wanted to be, well behaved when we chose. She was pretty quiet when she was a child.

M. William Phelps (9:15)

10, 12, that area. What did she talk about she wanted to do in Life?

Christy Smith (9:19)

Oh, at 10 and 12, we really didn't have any plans in life. I don't really know that we ever even talked about the future at that age.

M. William Phelps (9:27)

You lived in the moment.

Christy Smith (9:28)

Yeah, we did. We lived in the moment and just took every day as it was and played and enjoyed our lives and Dana.

M. William Phelps (9:36)

And Christy were raised in Gravette, Arkansas, in the northwest corner of the state, quite close to the Missouri border. Gravette had a population of just 1500.

Christy Smith (9:47)

Back then Gravette was not much different than it is now. Very small, very close knit community. We had a very small school system in the last several years that has grown tremendously, but it was very small. We did kindergarten through 6th was, was all one school. And then 8th and 9th was junior high. 10th through 12th was high school. Very small. Had a community swimming pool. During the summer her dad would, after we cleaned the house because I stayed with him during, while my parents worked. After we cleaned the house then he would take us and drop us at the city pool and we would swim and probably from about 1 till 5 and every day that's what we would do.

M. William Phelps (10:26)

Kids love water.

Christy Smith (10:27)

Yes, yes, we do still love water again. In the summers they lived in Hiwassee. So at the time they lived in Hiwassee. Which. Have you been to Hiwassee? Very small. There's one Dairy Queen there at the end of the dirt road that she lived on. So we would, on a good day we would walk to the Dairy Queen and have lunch. Always bring her dad something back. So it was just, you know, just fun, just kids enjoying life and having fun.

M. William Phelps (10:53)

Dana Stidham was enthusiastic about that summer of 1989. Just after high school, she'd moved out of her parents home and into a small apartment in Centerton with her 21 year old brother Larry, along with two of her closest friends. She was spreading her wings for the first time in her life.

Investigator/Detective (11:14)

From what we know, and there's a lot of stuff that we don't know, but from what we know, she was at her parents house doing laundry. It was her and her dad in the Hiwassee area. It was around 2 something in the afternoon. We know that Dana placed a phone call to a friend and that was around 2:14pm and she talked to that friend for approximately 20 minutes. So talking, I think the phone records show that disconnected around 2:35pm so she leaves sometime shortly after that to go to the store. Her dad wasn't feeling well. She needed some laundry detergent. So she leaves the house. We know she stops and gets gas. She gets like $5 worth of gas, writes a check for I think 10 and gets like $3 cash back or something to that effect. So short trip to get some gas, proceeds on from there to what was then known as Philip's Grocery, which is probably from her house back then. You're talking about 15 minutes to get their tops.

M. William Phelps (12:22)

A dozen or more people saw Dana at the Phillips that day. They knew her because she used to work at the same store.

Investigator/Detective (12:31)

We talked to a couple of those people. We know that she checked out at 3:17 because the receipt is timestamped, so it kind of shows. Now we can't say for certain that she left the store, left the parking lot at 3:17. We know she checked out at 3:17. She's seen in the parking lot talking to a guy. There's individuals that saw her in the parking lot. Older gentlemen, we don't really know how old.

M. William Phelps (12:59)

That's Hunter Petrae, a current lieutenant with the Benton County Sheriff's Office. What stands out to me in Lt. Petrae's comments is that there's no solid evidence to prove it. Dana actually left the parking lot alone, no CCTV watching her drive out. There's only an assumption based on what happens over the next 24 hours that she left the parking lot by herself. Secondly, while at the store she interacted with several people who knew her. I stood in the parking lot of the Phillips with a woman who used to work there with Dana and was there that last July afternoon Dana was seen. It's called Harps now. But the parking lot, although long ago repaved, is basically set up the same. It's two tiered, one level overlooking the other. So you could literally park on the upper level, which butts up against a hill and woods, and quietly stalk the lower level, watching people come and go in and out of the store. Here's a former co worker of Dana's.

Former Co-worker (14:11)

She had an aura about her. She was beautiful, but she just was just so sweet all the time. People were drawn to her.

M. William Phelps (14:19)

Really?

Former Co-worker (14:20)

Yeah, everyone loved her.

M. William Phelps (14:21)

Dana was a beautiful young woman, which is important in this story because she had several young men as well as several older men chasing after her. Her brunette hair flowed past her shoulders, feathered and fluffed high. After all, it was the 80s petite. Dana was 5:2 and about 105 pounds. So what was it like around here back then in 89?

Former Co-worker (14:49)

Well, there was a lot of construction going on and so our store would make a lot of sandwiches and food for the construction guys that would come in. We were pretty busy doing that. A lot of growth. There's a lot of new people coming in.

Christy Smith (15:07)

A lot of growth.

M. William Phelps (15:08)

So it was really secluded. The parking lot then?

Former Co-worker (15:10)

Yeah, I wouldn't want to be out here by myself.

M. William Phelps (15:14)

I asked Lt. Petrae what old meant in terms of the gentleman seen talking to Dana in the parking lot the afternoon she went missing. 50 could be old.

Investigator/Detective (15:26)

It's all relative to the individual that you're talking to the witness. So we don't know. And that's one of those things. Like, there's things we know and there's things we don't know. That's one of the things that we don't really know. It's also kind of not baffling, but discouraging that she's supposedly seen leaving, but it's unknown as far as what direction she's leaving. Now, if you know Harps, you can basically go north, south, east, west from there. Like, it's not cornered to where you have to go one direction. So again, that complicates the investigation because we don't know when she leaves that parking lot, which direction she goes, but we're pretty sure that she leaves the parking lot.

Investigator/Detective (16:11)

Here's where it gets complicated. There's an individual and his wife that sees her there at Phillips, out in the parking lot. They later that same day, see her vehicle sitting on the side of the road south of Phillips, about a mile south, sitting by what's known as the Bella Vista Museum.

M. William Phelps (16:32)

This location will become very important to law enforcement within 24 hours and a vital piece of this puzzle as I begin to unpack the early narrative of facts behind what happened.

Investigator/Detective (16:48)

Parked on the side of the road, there's a white van that's supposedly parked in front of it. There's two males, one guy, squatted down by the side of the car looking at the tire. Supposedly he had a scraggly beard, mustache. It gets more interesting. There's a guy looking at the tire. There's also a female and another guy on the other side of the car talking. This guy positively identifies this girl as being Dana. At that time, he doesn't know of anything. So later on, he comes back, both vehicles are gone. Okay. Sometime between 3 and 5 that same day, the 25th, there's another individual that sees a truck parked behind a car. Two males and one female. Again, same two males, one female driver, side tire looks flat. We know that Dana had a low tire, so that kind of matches.

Investigator/Detective (17:49)

This guy also identifies her as Dana.

M. William Phelps (17:53)

Dana's cousin and best friend, Christy Smith, remembers the events of that day 25 years ago as if it all happened yesterday.

Christy Smith (18:03)

She goes to the house, and she is going there to do laundry. They don't have a washer and dryer at their apartment, so she goes over there to do her laundry. Her dad asks her if she can run to the grocery store and get him some medication and a few things that he needs from the store. Of course, she's always willing to do anything for her dad. She says that's fine. She'll do that. She goes to the store and that's the last time anybody saw her.

M. William Phelps (18:28)

And when do you first hear about it?

Christy Smith (18:32)

Later that evening, I would probably say it's five or six. After Georgia got home from work and Lawrence had told her, well, Dana's went to the store and she's never come back. Then Georgia calls me, wants to know if I've heard from her, calls her son, sees if he's heard from her. None of us have heard from her. So that's when we start getting nervous because she didn't. If she was going to the store for her dad, she would go and she would come back with what he needed. She would finish her laundry, she would go home. And I believe she had a date that night. So she would have come home and gotten ready for what her plans were.

Trainer Games Host (19:09)

10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.

Narrator/Announcer (19:20)

You are the fittest of the fit.

Trainer Games Host (19:22)

Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract worth $250,000.

M. William Phelps (19:28)

This is where mindset comes in.

Trainer Games Host (19:30)

Someone will be eliminated.

Narrator/Announcer (19:32)

Pressure is coming down.

Trainer Games Host (19:35)

This is Trainer Games.

M. William Phelps (19:37)

Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.

Christy Smith (19:40)

Shh. You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs.

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Narrator/Announcer (20:09)

Come for the Black Friday seasonal savings. Stay for the award winning reporting for a limited time, access to the Washington post is just 99 cents. That's unlimited access to all of the posts for only 99 cents every four weeks. That's a great deal for the first year. After that, it'll cost $12 every four weeks. You can cancel anytime. But don't wait. This Black Friday seasonal offer won't be here for long. Go to washingtonpost.com iheart and grab this deal before it's gone. That's washingtonpost.com iheart.com.

M. William Phelps (20:48)

Whenever you begin to reinvestigate an unsolved crime, particularly a cold case, victimology is one of your primary tasks. You have to get a clear picture of who the victim is, what they were doing within the context of of what happened and when. Who were her friends? The crowd she hung around with? How was her home Life, boyfriends, ex boyfriends.

M. William Phelps (21:20)

I spoke to a lot of people who knew Dana Stidham personally at the time she went missing. I obtained hundreds of pages of documents, including interviews with friends, family, and others. And at the time the case broke, along with exclusive audio which you will hear throughout this season.

M. William Phelps (21:40)

When you're young, nobody knows you better than your best friend. Christy Smith identified intimate details about Dana and her family no one else could. Here, for example, she talks about Dana's parents. Tell me about Lawrence and Georgia.

Christy Smith (21:58)

They been together since Georgia was 14. I think Lawrence was probably 16. Very, very young couple. You know, had their moments, married and divorced several times, but only to each other. They never married anyone else besides each other. They had a few miscarriages before they were able to conceive their son and carry him to term. So he was a nice surprise. And then the fact that they were able to do it again with Dana was, to them, kind of a miracle. They were very proud of their kids and very attached to their kids, very protective. Georgia was again, you know, just a young mother, and Lawrence was a young father, and Lawrence was great.

M. William Phelps (22:37)

Sadly, Dana's father, Lawrence, passed away in 1999 at the age of 50. How was Dana around them?

Christy Smith (22:46)

Dana was very good. She was spoiled. She could do whatever she wanted. And as she got older in junior high and high school, and we all did things that we probably shouldn't have done in high school. But sometimes her mom chose to not believe that Dana was doing the things everybody else was doing. But in the back of her mind, she knew that she was. And Lawrence, she had Lawrence wrapped around her little finger. He just thought she was the world. She wasn't in any of the clubs at school. She was very popular. Lots of friends didn't participate in the club so much. She was in dance, but not at school. It was a separate dance class that she would do. She wasn't in sports, into boys. Every teenage girl was into boys.

M. William Phelps (23:30)

And did she have a boyfriend in high school? One boyfriend.

Christy Smith (23:33)

Her senior year, she had one that she was more deep into the relationship. I think she had dated several people, and she dated a gentleman that she worked with at Harps, you know, throughout high school, she had different boyfriends. One of the football players, she dated him for a while.

M. William Phelps (23:48)

Dana had quit working there about three weeks before her disappearance and started a new job at Kmart in Rogers, Arkansas, where she had been working for only three days as of July 25, 1989. And so what did she talk about in high school that she wanted to.

Christy Smith (24:05)

Do after high school she talked about wanting to go to college or, you know, she would talk about wanting to live somewhere different and getting married and kind of just doing the married life. She didn't have any really big plans.

M. William Phelps (24:21)

Was she into art?

Christy Smith (24:23)

She was. She did like to draw. She liked to paint. Her dad did a lot of woodwork, so she would draw pictures and paint on the woodwork. And it wasn't like the paintings and that sort of art. It was just kind of like a hobby.

M. William Phelps (24:37)

And so high school graduation comes and she moves in with Larry, her brother.

Christy Smith (24:43)

Well, she lived with me for a while. I got married very young at 16. And my husband and I and our little girl, we lived halfway between Gravett and Hiwassee. And she like, everybody is ready to get out of their parents house. So she moved in with us for a few months. We didn't have a spare room, so she brought her daybed and put it in the living room and that's where she would sleep. And then, you know, we would all just hang out and.

M. William Phelps (25:10)

And did she work at the time?

Christy Smith (25:12)

She was working at Harps at the time and she did that for a few months. And then Larry and his girlfriend, they were looking for an apartment and couldn't afford it on their own. So they all decided, Dana, Larry and Dana's friend, all decided that they would just get one together so they could all split the rent and make it more affordable for all of them. She wanted the extra freedom, wanted to have her own room and all that kinds of stuff.

M. William Phelps (25:35)

Dana had July 25th off from Kmart. Working had always been important to her since she was 16. And she had always maintained a job of some sort.

Christy Smith (25:47)

Her parents, you know, didn't have a lot of money and Dana was. She was fancy and she liked the preppy clothes and all that stuff. So she knew if she wanted that and a car and gas money and she had work.

M. William Phelps (26:00)

Did she ever talk about or mention that anybody was being weird around her, stalking her or anything like that?

Christy Smith (26:08)

The only two things I remember was she would talk about the gentleman at the store.

M. William Phelps (26:15)

The older guy?

Christy Smith (26:17)

Yes, the older guy worked in produce or meat or something. I can't remember.

M. William Phelps (26:21)

What would she say about him?

Christy Smith (26:22)

She would just say that he would tell dirty jokes or talk dirty to him and things like that.

M. William Phelps (26:28)

And did she ever talk about him following her out to the parking lot or anything like that?

Community Member/Informant (26:33)

No.

Christy Smith (26:34)

There was a police officer that. She told me once that scared her a lot. She said that he would stop her for random reasons. He was Married and he would try to get her to go out with him. And that she had told me before that that scared her.

M. William Phelps (26:50)

This was a piece of information that obviously needed to be explored more closely. There was also a report Dana had claimed to be pregnant near the time she went missing. Could these two pieces of information be connected?

M. William Phelps (27:07)

I was intrigued when Christy told me that Dana had a date that night. Mainly because the timing of her heading out to the store near 3pm and then driving straight back to her parents house to give her dad the medicine and grab her laundry all fit into that timeline. But Dana never made it back. By 9:15pm on the night of Dana's disappearance, her brother Larry Stidham senses something is off and so he calls the Benton County Sheriff's Office to say he and his family are concerned about her. She hadn't returned after going out to the store on an errand. It's been almost 10 hours. This is not something Dana would have done normally. I had wanted to interview Larry of course, but he had passed away at the age of 47 in 2015.

M. William Phelps (28:04)

Larry gives a description of Dana's car so the Bella Vista police and Benton County Sheriff's office can begin searching for it. He says she's driving a gray Plymouth Horizon hatchback. The Sheriff's department puts out a bolo. Be on the lookout. And officers on the road conducting normal nightly patrols are now actively searching for a gray Plymouth Horizon.

Investigator/Detective (28:29)

So I think it was actually Larry that called and spoke to Danny Varner at the time, who was a sergeant, filed the missing person's report, gives a vehicle description less than an hour later. I think 9:40 something is when the.

M. William Phelps (28:44)

BOLO's put out that gray Plymouth Larry described. There was an issue.

Investigator/Detective (28:50)

Larry gave the wrong description of the vehicle. Again not intentional, but it didn't help. He called back an hour, hour and a half later, ten something and corrected that. Varner called Bella Vista, let all the patrolmen know up there, hey, we had the the wrong description of the vehicle. Here's the correct description.

M. William Phelps (29:10)

Dana was actually driving a gray 1984 four door Dodge Omni, which was the sister vehicle to the Horizon. An easy mistake to make. By this time around 10:30pm Larry and many family members and friends are themselves out driving around, particularly north and south on Route 71, the main thoroughfare running by the Phillips. The family knew something was wrong. Dana was independent and would go off on her own from time to time. But she would not blow her father off if he needed medicine or leave her laundry at her parents. Especially if she had a date. At the very least, she would stop at a payphone to call someone and let them know where she was.

Investigator/Detective (30:01)

They're making phone calls, talking to friends. Hey, have you seen Dana? Nobody's seen her or her car. Larry specifically says that, you know, we drove up 71 to the state line. We drove back. We did not see her car.

M. William Phelps (30:17)

I went back to something. Christy told me that date Dana had scheduled. Was she running late and decided to stop at her apartment, change and head out on her date without telling anyone?

M. William Phelps (30:32)

If she was spotted 1.3 miles south of Phillips on Route 71, near the Bella Vista Museum with a possible flat tire between what would have been approximately 3:25 and 5:00pm she would have been heading in the direction of the apartment she shared with Larry and her girlfriends. The flat tire could have set her back.

M. William Phelps (30:55)

Moreover, who was Dana going out with that night? Had anyone tried tracking the guy down to interview him? Turns out it was an older dude whose family owned a farm in Hiwassee.

Christy Smith (31:08)

He still lives there. Parents are gone, but he, he's taken over the farm and he's a little bit older than us and was just a one time date thing. They'd never been out before.

M. William Phelps (31:17)

Dana's family calls the guy and he claims she never showed up. He's also got an alibi. He's been home all night with his family waiting on her. And so they filed a missing person report. And y' all are driving around, right?

Christy Smith (31:32)

Mm, yes.

M. William Phelps (31:33)

Are you driving up and down 71?

Christy Smith (31:36)

Uh huh. We drove everywhere we could think of. My first thought was, did she have an accident? Did she go off of the side of the road in a ravine or something? And nobody can see her car. So we take the normal routes that she would have taken to go to the store looking for her car or anything that we might find. And we don't, we can't find anything.

M. William Phelps (31:56)

And you don't see her car, right?

Christy Smith (31:59)

No. No where.

M. William Phelps (32:02)

So Dana's family is out searching for her, and they drive north and south on Route 71, which Dana would have had to take in either direction, but don't see her car anywhere.

Investigator/Detective (32:14)

Family didn't see it. You know, you got a state trooper, people looking for it, just not there. And we know that she was supposed to meet an individual and she never showed. So all this is adding up that something's not right. Like she didn't just go somewhere something's not right. She's missing, vehicle's missing, Nobody's heard from.

M. William Phelps (32:34)

Her as friends, family, and law enforcement are out looking for her. The first major break comes in the form of a phone call. Someone had called a general store in Hiwassee, a small local grocery grocery that Dana had once worked at. It was 4pm about 45 minutes after she left the Phillips parking lot nine miles away. The caller is a young woman and she says this quote, tell him I really want to go home and that's it. But then a second call to that same small General Store around 11 o' clock that night.

Investigator/Detective (33:17)

If you remember, I told you that somebody had called the store, the store around 4 something. Somebody calls at 11 and says that Dana's dead.

Investigator/Detective (33:29)

And Mike knows what happened to her.

Trainer Games Host (33:40)

10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.

Trainer Games Host (33:50)

You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.

M. William Phelps (33:59)

This is where mindset comes in.

Trainer Games Host (34:01)

Someone will be eliminated.

Narrator/Announcer (34:03)

Pressure is coming down.

Trainer Games Host (34:06)

This is Trainer Games.

M. William Phelps (34:07)

Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.

Investigator/Detective (34:11)

Shh.

Christy Smith (34:12)

You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs.

Meco Mini Plus Advertiser (34:17)

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Narrator/Announcer (34:40)

Come for the Black Friday seasonal savings stay for the award winning reporting for a limited time access to the Washington Post is just 99 cents. That's unlimited access to all of the Post for only 99 cents every four weeks. That's a great deal for the first year. After that it'll cost $12 every four weeks. You can cancel anytime. But don't wait. This Black Friday seasonal offer won't be here for long. Go to washingtonpost.com iheart and grab this deal before it's gone. That's washingtonpost.com iheart.

M. William Phelps (35:16)

At the time that second call was made to the general store in Hiwassee, Dana's brother Larry Stidham was out driving around, anxious and desperate to find any sign of his younger sister. Two miles or so up the road from the Phillips Grocery Inn, Bella Vista, Larry turned off Route 71 and onto Wellington Road and began driving slowly, searching.

Christy Smith (35:43)

I believe Larry was driving around and he went up the road and found some of her clothes that had been in her car. So then he called me because he couldn't be sure that they were hers. So he called Me and I went. My husband and I went up there and looked and verified that they were clothes of hers.

Investigator/Detective (36:01)

At that point in time, it's gone from, okay, we don't think something's quite right to there's some worry going on now because now we've found some of her clothing.

M. William Phelps (36:12)

Clothing.

Investigator/Detective (36:12)

She was wearing clothing that she had in the car. So they find the clothing, they pick it up, which is not ideal, but at that time, nobody knows about DNA, man. It just doesn't cross anybody's mind. Again, it's just a product of the time that they were in, picks it up, realize, hey, this is Dana's clothing. We, you know, we got to report this. They reported the sheriff's office, goes out there, collects the clothing, and then just nothing, man. You know, Dana hasn't been heard from. She hasn't shown up. Nobody's seen her. Everybody's panicking. Everybody's being interviewed. Hey, when's the last time you saw her? You know, who was she with? All that type of stuff was going on to. Now it's like, okay, we think. We're pretty sure, foul play.

M. William Phelps (37:00)

That older employee from Phillips that Dana had once mentioned was perpetually inappropriate. A guy several folks I spoke to refer to as a pervert. Well, lo and behold, he lived in a small house just off Wellington Road near where Dana's clothing was found.

M. William Phelps (37:21)

Here's someone who worked with the guy, a woman who doesn't want to be identified.

Former Co-worker (37:28)

He was weird, just creepy. It was a tall, older man. He's 6, 3, 6 4, kind of gaunt. And he was, like, in his 50s, I think, back then. And I was in my early 20s. But, oh, everyone in our department talked about how they didn't like him. Gave them the creeps.

M. William Phelps (37:50)

Did he say things to the women or did he do things, or was he just, like, a creepy dude?

Former Co-worker (37:56)

He was just a creepy dude. But I do know that some of the girls felt he was kind of handsy. Got in your space, just inappropriate behavior.

M. William Phelps (38:05)

The Benton County Sheriff's Office had interviewed several people at the Phillips that evening, including a young man who worked there and had once dated Dana. A relationship that did not end on good terms. While police are talking to him, this older man, the pervert, his name comes up during the interview.

Investigator/Detective (38:29)

So, you know, he talked about another individual that worked there.

M. William Phelps (38:32)

Guy with the last name of the dirty old man.

Investigator/Detective (38:36)

Yeah. From reports from people that were interviewed, yeah, There was an issue with harassing the females that worked there. There was also an individual that supposedly caught him out in his truck masturbating, reading a dirty magazine. But it's real interesting because he, he lived at that time less than a half mile off of Wellington.

M. William Phelps (38:58)

With a growing list of suspects within that first night, Bella Vista police and the Benton County Sheriff's Office are specifically looking for Dana's car. The thought is, find the car, find Dana, or at least begin to figure out what might be going on. Law enforcement, family and townspeople are are driving north and south on Route 71, snaking in and out of side roads, but nobody sees a car even remotely resembling Dana's.

M. William Phelps (39:31)

The call that came into the Hiwassee General Store at 4pm and the one later on that night felt particularly important. There was something striking about those calls. Remember, this is 1989. There's no instant reporting of anything. The only people who know Dana is missing are those involved and searching for her. So whoever makes that call knows she's missing.

Investigator/Detective (40:00)

I hate to assume anything because I've been doing this job for too long, but it's a red flag. Like it screams, whoever made that phone call actually had some type of knowledge about something going on. And then you combine it with the supposed phone call. It makes your skin crawl.

M. William Phelps (40:18)

And then what happens the next day?

Investigator/Detective (40:20)

So the next morning, there's a lady named Karen Myers. She was a sergeant there with Bella Vista, lived just across the state line. She was on her way to work that next morning around 6, 6:30 in the morning. And she sees this vehicle on the side of the road there at Wellington in southbound lane facing south. And there was another vehicle that was parked behind it.

M. William Phelps (40:45)

What kind of vehicle?

Investigator/Detective (40:46)

So initially it was possibly a small truck or larger car. Later it changed to again small truck or possibly a station wagon. She doesn't know at that point in time that anything's wrong. She proceeds on to work. And in fact, I think she made some type of comment of the fishing must be good in that area. So she proceeds on to work. And it's from what I understand is like those vehicles are there, but there's really nobody outside the vehicles that she notices. She just notices the vehicles. So she proceeds on to work. Later on she starts thinking. She goes back and runs the tag, the license plate. At that point in time, we know for sure that it's Dana's vehicle. And then all hell kind of breaks loose from there. She contacts sheriff's office, Sdoriak Varner. They go up there and they process the vehicle.

M. William Phelps (41:44)

Danny Varner, who went to school with Dana's parents, and Mike Zadoriak. Are the two sheriff's office detectives now taking control of the investigation? What they find when they look at Dana's car begins to tell them that this case might not have the outcome everyone is hoping for.

Investigator/Detective (42:05)

Keys are in the ignition. Vehicle is unlocked. Driver side window is halfway down. Rear tire is low, but not completely flat, drivable.

M. William Phelps (42:19)

And what I find to be very important is the driver's seat was adjusted, pushed back for a much taller person. So Dana wasn't the last person to drive the vehicle. The car is parked on Route 71, heading south toward the Phillips, Just north of this area. In the opposite direction is the Missouri border.

M. William Phelps (42:43)

If you drove down Wellington road toward Route 71, this area where Dana's car is found would be directly across the north side of 71. A median, then the south side of 71. What's significant is that scores of people, police and Dana's family members, traveled by this area all throughout the previous night and early morning, and no one reported seeing any vehicle. Now, it's there with a low tire. Like somebody let the air out of the tire, maybe.

Investigator/Detective (43:19)

We know from the family that the tire did have a slow leak that was later confirmed. So there's the receipt from Phillips that's in the car with the timestamp on it from the day prior. But the groceries, the Alka Seltzer, the sugar, the laundry detergent is not in the car. Again, there's a lot of different theories about why was that not in the car. Did she go somewhere, take that out. Then something happened. Did she stop for somebody, they give her a ride, she take them with her? Again, like I said at the beginning, these are some of the unknown things that we just don't know. But all in all, the vehicle, it doesn't appear that any kind of struggle took place. It's disheveled. But we know from talking to some of her friends that, you know, if she had a drink, she finished the drink, you know, she'd throw it on the floorboard or, you know, just normal clutter.

M. William Phelps (44:21)

Any bottles or cans or anything found in the car?

Investigator/Detective (44:23)

There was a chip bag, a Muncho's chip bag that we took. Again, could have been hers, could have been somebody else. We sent fingerprints down, and no fingerprints have ever matched that chip bag. But the groceries itself, they were not in the vehicle. Her purse and stuff was not in the vehicle. But again, the keys were in the vehicle, and it was unlocked, which was, according to the family, not common practice, something that she would have done. You know, it's unusual.

M. William Phelps (44:53)

And how is the family responding to this finding?

Investigator/Detective (44:57)

Well, from the time that she went missing that previous night, they're distraught. You know, they know.

Investigator/Detective (45:03)

You know, and I don't want to speak for them, but if you read through the reports and stuff, you know that they know that it's not good. The situation is not good one, because she would have come back on her own that day and she didn't.

Christy Smith (45:19)

And then we hear that they found her car at Bella Vista. And that's when it really hit me that something was not right, because she would never just abandon her car on the side of the road. She lived for that car, so she wouldn't just leave it. And if something would have happened, she would have called one of us because we would have helped her in any way. We would have came and got her no matter what time of night it was, but we hadn't heard from her.

M. William Phelps (45:42)

And you, you all had driven by that area where the car was found and you didn't see the car, and then all of a sudden it shows up?

Christy Smith (45:50)

Yes.

M. William Phelps (45:50)

So what are you being told by law enforcement?

Christy Smith (45:54)

Well, all that we were told was that they had driven that highway throughout the night and they hadn't seen it. And then at 6 o' clock that morning or something, an officer drove by. And once she got to work and heard about Dana missing, she remembered seeing the car on her way into work, and that's when they went back and found her car there.

M. William Phelps (46:14)

And so what happens next?

Christy Smith (46:16)

Well, I'm not sure. I know that they went the Lawrence and Larry went to where the car was while Mike Sidoriak and Danny Varner were out there doing, you know, forensics on the car, whatever they did. And they just kind of stood by the sidelines and watched what was going on. And then they towed the car into the police department or to the impound.

M. William Phelps (46:40)

Still, that phone call to the General Store near 11pm Seems so important. Dana's dead and Mike knows what happened to her. Who is Mike? Did Dana ever date or even know anyone named Mike? You guys have no idea who Mike is?

Investigator/Detective (47:00)

Well, initially we didn't, but later on we did. There was a mic that was associated with that store, whose parents own that store. So another thing that complicates the case is you've got three or four different possible scenarios, and then you've got all of these people that supposedly swear that they saw her that day. You know, south of the center. A van, a truck? No, it's a station wagon.

M. William Phelps (47:26)

Maybe Mike had access to a truck.

Investigator/Detective (47:29)

Had access to his dad's truck.

M. William Phelps (47:32)

There was one more important piece of information the sheriff's office obtained that following morning. Mike, they now knew, was a classmate of Dana's and had reportedly been infatuated with her, and she'd routinely rejected his advances.

M. William Phelps (47:50)

And the sheriff's office learned that Mike had been out all night long. He was seen in his father's truck driving around Bella Vista on Route 71 as late as 3am and his alibi? That he was with a girlfriend all night in another town. The Benton County Sheriff's office spoke to her and she says she never saw him.

M. William Phelps (48:19)

Coming up next on paper ghosts, the Ozarks.

Christy Smith (48:24)

You can actually put him in the.

M. William Phelps (48:25)

Store the day of Dana's disappearance. So you can put him with Dana right before she disappears.

Investigator/Detective (48:32)

Wasn't there very long. I was supposed to meet some people, so I stopped there and did a little squirrel hunting and walked around a little bit, stood and as I was walking out, I saw dry creek bed and saw a skull and some rib bones.

Christy Smith (48:44)

Who is this?

Christy Smith (48:46)

Are you reading flies? What do you want?

Christy Smith (48:51)

Want?

Narrator/Announcer (48:55)

Why are you calling me if you.

Christy Smith (48:57)

Don'T even know who I am?

M. William Phelps (48:59)

Thank you a lot.

Christy Smith (49:01)

Do you know who I am? No. You don't know who I am? Then why are you calling me?

M. William Phelps (49:07)

Paper Ghost Season 4 is written and executive produced by me, M William Phelps, script consulting by Rose Bacci, sound design by Matt Russell, executive production by Kathryn Law and audio editing and mixing by Brandon Dickard. Series theme number 442 is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Thomas Mooney.

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You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract worth $250,000.

M. William Phelps (49:58)

This is where mindset comes in.

Trainer Games Host (50:00)

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Narrator/Announcer (50:02)

Pressure is coming down.

Trainer Games Host (50:05)

This is Trainer Games.

M. William Phelps (50:07)

Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.

Christy Smith (50:09)

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Christy Smith (50:29)

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Narrator/Announcer (50:40)

Come for the Black Friday seasonal savings. Stay for the award winning reporting for a limited time. Access to the Washington Post is just 99 cents. That's unlimited access to all of the posts for only 99 cents every four weeks. That's a great deal for the first year. After that, it'll cost $12 every four weeks. You can cancel anytime. But don't wait. This Black Friday seasonal offer won't be here for long. Go to washingtonpost.com iheart and grab this deal before it's gone. That's washingtonpost.com iheart this is an iheart podcast.

Christy Smith (51:13)

Guaranteed human.