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- [00:00]
A
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
B
Guaranteed Human.
- [00:06]
So let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there and everywhere but your AI can't use the data because it's here, there and everywhere? Seems like something's missing. Every business has unique data. IBM helps your AI access your data wherever it lives to change how you do business.
- [00:28]
Lets create smile to business IBM.
- [00:35]
A
10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.
- [00:45]
You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000. This is where mindset comes in. Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. This is Trainer Games.
- [01:02]
B
Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.
- [01:05]
A
This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing if anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues. And it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lilly, A medicine company.
- [01:53]
C
Who is it?
- [01:57]
B
Who is it?
- [02:01]
Why do you want to know?
- [02:06]
In the summer of 1989, during those early days after Dana Stidham went missing, a 19 year old woman from Bella Vista began receiving bizarre sexually explicit calls. According to a police report, she claimed they were made by a man she suspected of being a former classmate and her neighbor.
- [02:28]
C
Did you just pick me at random to call?
- [02:31]
B
Do you know me?
- [02:34]
C
You don't know me?
- [02:35]
B
Then why are you calling me and.
- [02:37]
C
Asking me this question? Why don't you stick your hand in the emotion?
- [02:41]
B
She recognized the caller's voice because the man, quote, lived near her and that after her father left for work, within three or four minutes the calls began as if the caller was watching her house.
- [02:55]
C
Who is this?
- [02:58]
Are you ready to play?
- [03:00]
B
What do you want?
- [03:01]
C
I want you to come with me. Why? Why are you calling me if you.
- [03:06]
B
Don'T even know who I am?
- [03:08]
C
Do you know who I am?
- [03:09]
D
No.
- [03:11]
B
You don't know who I am?
- [03:12]
C
Then why are you calling me?
- [03:14]
B
The young woman had known the neighbor she suspected of making the calls since the fourth grade, which was why she immediately recognized his voice. The caller, who is hard to understand in these actual recordings from 30 plus years ago never identifies himself. Tired of being harassed, and since there was nothing much law enforcement could really do, the woman decided to take matters into her own hands and confront the neighbor by knocking on his door.
- [03:47]
He invites her in, and what she sees inside alarms her. On his bedroom wall, her name had been spray painted in large letters alongside photographs of her cut from their school yearbooks.
- [04:01]
C
Well, the children, I bet I'm not. And I bet that you're really sick.
- [04:09]
B
Remember, the calls came only when her father was not at home.
- [04:14]
C
Hello? Hello? Anybody there?
- [04:19]
B
And then suddenly, after her visit to the neighbor's house, the call stopped. She called the police and gave them his name. Turned out he was already on the Benton County Sheriff's Office list of suspects in connection with the disappearance of Dana Stidham.
- [04:42]
Previously on Paper Ghosts.
- [04:45]
A
I have nightmares about this. I have nightmares that she's asking for help and I can't help her. That she has been found after all these years and she's alive and. And I don't know.
- [04:57]
B
I just want to know what happened to her. 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.
- [05:15]
E
They drive around it and they see some clothing on the side of the road, maybe six feet off the road. They get out and look at it and they're like, hilarious. Like, I'm pretty sure that's Dana's clothes.
- [05:28]
B
My name is M. William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and author of more than 40 true crime books. This is season four of Paper Ghosts. The Ozarks.
- [05:53]
On July 26, the morning after Dana Stidham vanished, Benton County Sheriff's office Detective Mike Sidoriak arrived at the scene of Dana's vehicle wearing a white and blue pinstripe button up shirt, jeans and aviator sunglasses. Sdoriak was photographed kneeling by the driver's side open door of Dana's car, a clipboard in one hand, the other reaching inside the vehicle. Dana's car was all. The Benton County Sheriff's office, which I'll refer to from here as the bcso, had as far as a crime scene, a crime scene, mind you, showing clear signs of staging, as if someone had placed items in certain areas of the car and also taken things.
- [06:40]
F
My name is Nathan Smith. I'm the prosecuting attorney in the 19th Judicial District west, which is Benton County, Arkansas. And I oversee all the felony prosecutions in Benton County. And our county has an Unsolved or cold case murder involving Dana Stim.
- [06:57]
B
Nathan Smith was first elected prosecuting attorney for Benton County, Arkansas, in 2014, reelected in 2018 and again in 2022. He was seven years old when Dana Stidham went missing, Never once guessing her case would drive him to ensure she was never forgotten.
- [07:17]
F
I think the reason cold cases, once they become cold, if you will, tend to stay cold, is simply because, one, they're going to be very difficult to solve. You know, most cases are solved within the first several days, if not immediately, of knowing what happened. Crime is committed today. Video cameras are ubiquitous on people's homes and gas stations everywhere. We have DNA evidence. We have all these kinds of scientific mechanisms that have really been sort of relatively late developing. The other real problem with cold cases is that we don't live in a static environment. There are going to be more crimes, more homicides, more things that come in for police to work on that really will take their focus off of cases where it seems like they've hit a wall or hit a dead end.
- [08:02]
B
So she leaves the store. Do we know if there was anyone that she met up with in the parking lot, in the store, anything like that?
- [08:10]
F
We believe that she did have a conversation with a person in the parking lot before she left. And then from there, really, the evidentiary conclusions kind of diverge as to what happened. There have been reports that she was later seen on the side of the road, or her vehicle was seen on the side of the road with a man, apparently changing a tire or something like that. So it gets kind of spotty as to what happened.
- [08:34]
B
That man Dana spoke to was a threat of inquiry. I decided to focus on early in my investigation. But other questions kept nagging me. Had Dana been abducted right away, or did she go voluntarily with her abductor, only to have things go sideways later that night? And if she had gone willingly, could that mean she knew the person, or had she simply taken off all on her own? Did anyone believe that she'd run away?
- [09:07]
F
One of the things that the investigators did at the time was to eliminate that possibility. Because one of the things you're always gonna look at is, you know, and you see it even with runaway children and things where they have alerts go out for kids, they're trying to figure out, okay, did this kid run away from home? Have they done this of their own accord? But there was simply nothing in Dana's life to indicate that she would do that. Right? Everything would indicate she wouldn't be doing that.
- [09:32]
B
As the first full day After Dana's disappearance progressed, more bad news came, leading anyone who was hopeful she had taken off on her own to lean in a more uncertain direction. Two additional pieces of Dana's clothing, confirmed to be dirty laundry from inside her car, were found on Wellington Road in a grassy area not far from a porno magazine.
- [09:58]
What's more, the receipt from the purchases she made that day at the Phillips grocery was discovered inside Dana's car. Oddly enough, however, the groceries she bought would never be found.
- [10:14]
In addition, belongings confirmed to be from inside her purse were discovered scattered along the grass median nearby. But Dana's purse, a unique large denim bag, was not.
- [10:30]
F
It does appear that that's certainly the theory that the investigators operated on, that those items were thrown out of a car window. And it was always perplexing why they found her car on the side of the road with the keys in the ignition. And so there's all kinds of theories around that. Was it a kind of a sabotage thing to make sure her car wouldn't run? Did she have a legitimate reason? That was just happenstance to pull over. But it certainly seemed at the time, I think, obvious to investigators that her car just being abandoned on the side of the road does seem to be a pretty significant coincidence.
- [11:11]
B
That same day, a local girl came forward to say she saw a tan or cream colored small pickup with a camper parked behind Dana's vehicle that morning. She was certain a man had been kneeling near the back of the car as if he was fixing a flat. She could not describe the man, but said the truck was beat up and appeared to be used on a farm or in the woods.
- [11:37]
Prosecutor Nathan Smith brought up a good point. Did someone sabotage Dana's vehicle so the car would malfunction and break down at some point on her way home? Remember, there is a report of several people seeing an older man talking to Dana in the parking lot of the Phillips just after she walked out of the store.
- [12:00]
I also wondered how aggressive investigators had been with. With regard to questioning people who popped up on their radar. Are there any suspects being questioned that might have had something to do with this?
- [12:14]
F
So, and I gotta be careful here to only say what's been publicly reported, but there were several suspects that officers looked at at the time, folks that you would expect. They looked at a man that was a, I believe, a classmate of hers or someone who knew her from her town. So that was at least one person. And one of the problems with cold cases, and specifically with Dana's case, is that there is some evidence right now that if you looked at it in a vacuum, could tend to support theories one way or the other. And so as this case goes forward, it's really important to narrow down who the evidence really points to.
- [12:57]
B
But the suspects in Dana's case weren't the only ones that the BCSO were looking at, because Dana's wasn't the only disappearance in the area. The ugly reality law enforcement could not ignore was that within a 50 mile radius of where Dana was last seen, no fewer than five additional young women had either gone missing or their bodies had been discovered over a period of five years leading up to Dana's disappearance.
- [13:27]
Which led to the troubling notion that a potential serial killer was roaming through Benton county and the Ozarks, plucking young women off the streets at will and running under every single law enforcement radar available.
- [13:54]
A
10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.
- [14:04]
You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000. This is where mindset comes in. Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. This is Trainer Games.
- [14:21]
B
Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.
- [14:24]
A
Then the space hamster flew his hot air balloon all the way to the bottom of the ocean. Where did that story come from? Book Dream? Nope. It came from a conversation. Meet Meco Mini plus, the AI companion that co creates personalized story adventures with your child in life. Real, real time. What color was the hamster's cape and what did he pack for lunch? Unlock your child's imagination. Discover Miko Mini plus and the magic of AI Exclusively at Costco. 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.
- [15:35]
B
When a small community like Benton county is rocked to its core by the disappearance of a popular, well liked young woman on a summer afternoon in broad daylight, they band together to help. An 8x10 flyer, a paper ghost, was mass produced and tacked to telephone poles in supermarket windows, convenience stores and gas stations. A $5,000 reward was offered for any information leading to Dana.
- [16:07]
A K9 search dog was then brought up to Ealing Circle off Wellington Road, where Dana's brother, Larry Stidham, had found some of his sister's clothing the night she was reported missing, just a half mile from where Dana's car had been located.
- [16:25]
By now, hope for the Stidham family was waning. And that despair would only increase after a pet dog trotting along the grass on the side of Route 71 found something.
- [16:42]
Here's Hunter Petrae, a current lieutenant with the bcso, who you heard in the.
- [16:48]
E
Last episode, I think maybe a week and a half later, further north, there's a dog that brings up, like, a wallet, and it has Dana's ID in it. So at that point, time, you know, it went from bad to worse to now it's like, okay, we think, we're pretty sure, foul play because it was her id. There were some contraceptives that were found.
- [17:14]
B
I appreciated Lieutenant Petrae's sincerity, compassion, and eagerness to see Dana's case resolved. A cold case needs someone in law enforcement fighting for it, or the case will sit in an evidence room and collect frost.
- [17:28]
E
Well, generally, with the passage of time, it doesn't get any easier. A lot of times the detectives, investigators that work those cases are either retired, a lot of times they're deceased, and you can't go back and speak to them directly. So you have to look through the case file. So the best way to do it, the best way that I found, is go back and start from square zero and basically look through everything with a fresh set of eyes and just kind of, kind of get your own gauge and opinion of the case itself. Look for things that may have been missed, things that you can do, people that may have been interviewed that need to be interviewed again, people that you think weren't interviewed need to be interviewed.
- [18:14]
B
Advancements in DNA over the past 10 years, Lt. Petrae noted, have been both the cause of great celebration and. And also disappointment.
- [18:23]
E
The O.J. trial, that kind of brought it to everybody's spotlight, and that was, what, early 90s? So in the 20, 30 years since that, DNA technology has increased dramatically. Like just last year, we solved three of our cold case John Doe. Two of them were John does, and one was a Jane Doe. We had no idea who they were, and we were able to, through DNA and genetic genealogy, figure out who those people were. So now we have leads to try to close those cases out. Victimology, you know, who they associated with. Prior to that, they were just John does and Jane Does. And you had no idea who they were. And you can't start anywhere until you know who they are.
- [19:07]
B
And we know that probably 80% of murders is someone you know in your circle.
- [19:12]
E
That seems to be the consensus, at least. The homicides that I've worked on, very few random stranger homicides. Now, they do happen, but statistically speaking, it's going to be somebody that they're associated with and not necessarily close family or whatever, but somebody that they're somewhat associated with, whether it's an acquaintance, someone.
- [19:36]
B
They ran into, somebody they bumped into.
- [19:38]
E
At the store, you know, knew from another friend slightly, but didn't really know personally. But generally it's somebody that, that they affiliated with or associated with at some point in time.
- [19:51]
B
As I dug deeper into the victimology side, several things about Dana's circle of friends bothered me more than usual. You see, I generally develop a sense, or rather thoughts and theories as I begin working on a corner cold case, knowing of course, they will shape and change and perhaps point me in a new direction as I move forward. But here, as I started talking to sources on and off the record, I could not shake a feeling that there was an important piece of this puzzle missing. Something either few were willing to talk about, those close to Dana were in denial about, or they just didn't know. And something Lt. Petrae said to me pushed me further down this road.
- [20:39]
E
This is the day that Dana went missing. Around 5pm there's a lady who's driving on 3:40, which is the highway basically right there at town center. She says that there's a car that comes into her lane. She has to swerve to miss it. There's a male driving, there's a female passenger, and there looks like there's another person in the backseat. At that point in time, she doesn't really think anything about it.
- [21:06]
B
I obtained the transcript of the interview police conducted with this woman. She was 24 years old then and lived in Bella Vista. On July 25, between 5 and 6pm she drove up to the Missouri state line to buy gas. On her way back into Arkansas, not too far from the town center where Philip's Grocery is, a vehicle swerved into her lane. It looked like Dana's car. The guy driving had dark hair. He was a big dude, likely in his 20s. The girl sitting next to him had long dark hair. The source explained to police that the girl she believed to be Dana had perhaps grabbed the wheel and purposely swerved the car into her lane.
- [21:52]
The next morning, July 26, as she was Driving toward Wellington Road, she saw Dana's car parked on Route 71 heading south where it was eventually found. She noticed the driver's side window was rolled down. She then drove up Wellington to a friend's house. By 6:30am that same morning, she was on her way back down Wellington, sitting at a stoplight facing Route 71 in front of her, when she saw a Ford Courier truck, as she described it, parked behind Dana's car with a shell or camper on the back. And there was that same large man again from the previous night, the one driving Dana's car, standing behind it. She assumed he was getting ready to change the tire on Dana's car.
- [22:41]
With Dana's case being the top story on all the local news stations throughout those early days, this would not be the only report from a random person claiming to have seen Dana on the day she went missing or even later on into the evening. What I'm getting from you is that her car is seen kind of all over 71 that day, couple of different.
- [23:05]
E
Places, all relatively around that Phillips area. But one person saying that they saw it south in the northbound lane. And then obviously later on we know that it was found in the southbound lane north of the town center. So those are things that complicate the case. You got three people saying they all saw it at the same location. You got three people saying they saw it, but different locations, different set of circumstances, it just not conducive to getting it solved right away.
- [23:40]
B
It bothered me that so many different people, a list which would continue to grow as I developed additional sources, claimed to have seen Dana at different locations around Bella Vista and even as far away as Gravett, the town where she grew up and had lived most of her life. Here's one of Dana's cousins, Dwight Stidham, who spoke to police a day after Dana went missing about what he had seen, but has never spoken to to anyone else about this since. Tell me what you remember about Dana growing up.
- [24:12]
C
She just well behaved, well mannered girl and always doing stuff for her parents and especially for Lawrence. He had arthritis real bad and that's what finally got him at the end. You know, she was always there for him.
- [24:30]
B
And Dwight, several years older than Dana, is referring to Dana's father Lawrence. Dwight saw Dana a lot growing up. He also knew the town of Gravett and the people within Dana's circle of friends in and out of town fairly well. And not all of them were as straight lace as Dana has been described.
- [24:55]
C
They was a little bit on the wild Side?
- [24:58]
B
In what ways?
- [25:00]
C
In the drinking, in the drugs.
- [25:02]
B
When you say drugs, what kind of drugs are you talking about?
- [25:06]
C
When we talk about drugs around here, it's just your basic drugs. Marijuana, speed. Just different kinds of pills, you know.
- [25:15]
B
When Dana goes missing. Do you remember that time?
- [25:18]
C
Oh yeah.
- [25:19]
B
Tell me about that. Tell me what? How it starts for you, what you remember.
- [25:24]
C
Well, at that time, we was living up in Gravit. We had a little dairy bar up there. It had pool tables and some arcade games in it. And I'd go up there on the weekends and play pool. And it was probably around 6, 7 o'. Clock. It wasn't dark or anything. It was still good daylight and sunny and everything. And me and my nephew, we was going up there to. To play the games, play pool and stuff. And before you get to the little dairy bar, I pulled up to the four way stop and she had pulled up across the street from me, facing me. And she had a girl in the car with her. But I didn't recognize who the girl was or anything. But you know, she just, she waved at me and everything. I didn't think nothing about it. As far as I know, I'm me and my nephew was probably the last two in the family that had seen her alive.
- [26:17]
B
And she didn't look distressed, she didn't look in trouble.
- [26:21]
C
No, she had a big old smile on her face, just waved real big and you know, we just crossed paths there at the four way stop. And it just seemed normal to me.
- [26:33]
B
So between 6 and 7pm on the night Dana went missing, she was out and about with a friend, driving around the town where she grew up in, Smiling, having a good time. That kind of nixes the theory that someone at the Phillips sabotaged her tire or followed her or abducted her that afternoon in the parking lot. This information pointed in the direction of somebody Dana knew.
- [27:01]
E
Another thing that hindered this case. And it's nothing that the investigators did wrong. It's a product of the time that it happened. 89, nobody had cell phones really. So today's day and age, cell phones are tremendous for law enforcement as far as tracking people. We know based off of GPS, they went here, there, 1989. We didn't have that. Also, you know, surveillance cameras, security cameras, it existed, but. But not for most people. So Phillips Grocery, no video surveillance. There's nothing. So those two things kind of complicated the case as well because you don't have video of her driving by a certain location. You don't have GPS location of, hey, she placed a phone Call here.
- [27:54]
B
Even more alarming is the timeline the BCSO developed for Wendana's car could have made it to the location where it was found on Route 71.
- [28:04]
E
There's a sergeant who was our sheriff here for a while after, but he worked for the state police. He actually around 11:30 that night turns up Wellington to serve a warrant, takes care of his business, comes back down. Wellington would have been facing the car and states that the vehicle was not there at that point in time. So you kind of have to take that for what it's worth and like it's staring you in the face. So right. Larry didn't see it, the family didn't see it. You know you got a state trooper.
- [28:40]
B
Dana's car was parked on that pull off on the side of Route 71 between 11:30pm and 5am and the two sources bookending those times were are both law enforcement. Now you take that fact and add it to a name the BCSO received early into its inquiries and the investigation broadens. Mike McMillan, a classmate who allegedly had a crush on Dana, was seen driving around Bella Vista between those same hours in a truck.
- [29:17]
Mike was a year older than Dana. He was preparing to head out to San Diego for Navy basic training in two weeks. Mike was a tall, large young man with dark hair.
- [29:32]
Mike McMillan was one person law enforcement was laser focused on at this time. Mike was questioned by police on July 27, 1989. In the investigators notes from that interview, Mike said he was driving his father's truck in Bella Vista at 11:30pm to a friend's house in a border town. He claimed to have stayed there until 2:30 or 3 before driving to another friend's house, leaving there by 4:00am he had seen Dana a few days before she went missing. He had had actually stopped at her apartment before that he had not seen her for two months. Here's Dana's cousin, Christy Smith, once again, Mike McMillan. Was he in high school with y'?
- [30:22]
C
All?
- [30:22]
B
Yes, he was. And what kind of guy was he in high school?
- [30:26]
A
Mike was a good guy, very friendly. Just seemed to be like all the other boys in school.
- [30:31]
B
He liked Dana obviously. Uh huh. He did.
- [30:35]
A
It never seemed like it went, you know, too far or beyond what she was willing, you know, to have with him. They were friends for a long time.
- [30:44]
B
We all rode the school bus together.
- [30:46]
A
I never noticed anything odd about the way he felt about her.
- [30:53]
B
And there was someone else in Dana's life I needed to find out more about. Her ex boyfriend and her former boyfriend was he looked into right away.
- [31:03]
C
I believe they interviewed him and possibly his brother early on.
- [31:10]
F
He said he called in sick to work that day was his alibi. But I do believe he got a lawyer fairly early on.
- [31:19]
B
That is the voice of Brandon Howard, an investigative journalist from Benton county who has done more reporting on this case than perhaps anyone. I met Brandon through a detective I've known quite a while. That ex boyfriend Brandon mentions, who was a good friend of Mike McMillan's, was brought in and interviewed within a week of Dana's disappearance. He'd met her in 1988 at a local mall. The breakup in April 1989 was contentious.
- [31:51]
E
You know, they had talked to some people. Her boyfriend that she had just broken up with. There were some issues there. Number one, because it ended on bad terms. There was also an issue with a motorcycle title. From what I understand, his parents had put up some money for engagement rings. They were supposed to get married. Dana was supposedly pregnant. Found out that she wasn't pregnant. That caused a big rift. They ended up breaking up. Tried to get back the motorcycle title. The family didn't want to give it back until he paid a certain amount of money. So all this stuff's going on. So, yeah, he was a person of interest. But there are people that saw him that day, that night, that he was at a certain house, he was here, he was there. He was on a motorcycle, too. Which would have made it really difficult to do.
- [32:42]
B
After digging into Dana's ex boyfriend's alibi, reviewing all the reports and relevant polygraphs, conducting several interviews with people about him, the ex boyfriend didn't seem to be too high on the list of people who might have had something to do with her disappearance. I couldn't exclude him completely, But I was confident I would be able to.
- [33:07]
Yet even with the ex boyfriend moved from the top of my list of potential suspects in what now appears to be a serious crime, the pool of people who had motive and opportunity in Dana's disappearance was about to grow exponentially.
- [33:34]
A
10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.
- [33:44]
You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract worth $250,000. This is where mindset comes in. Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. This is trainer games.
- [34:01]
B
Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.
- [34:04]
A
Then the space hamster flew his hot air balloon all the way to the.
- [34:09]
B
Bottom of the ocean.
- [34:11]
A
Where did that story come from? Book dream? Nope. It came from a conversation. Meet Mikomini the AI companion that co creates personalized story adventures with your child in real time. What color was the hamster's cape and what did he pack for lunch? Unlock your child's imagination. Discover Miko Mini plus and the Magic of AI Exclusively at Costco. Come for the Black Friday seasonal savings stick. 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.
- [35:16]
B
When a person is missing for more than three months, they fall under a classification called long term missing person. Dana Stidham had been missing about six weeks half that time when investigators dug their heels in and focused on those who could have either helped Dana take off or were responsible for her disappearance. By now, sadly, most everyone involved believed that Dana Stidham was no longer alive.
- [35:48]
With Brandon Howard's help, my focus shifted towards several people. Remember that Phillips employee? Well, he lived just off Wellington Road.
- [36:02]
So there's this older guy from Phillips and many of whom I spoke to who knew him and worked there. They call him a pervert. Right. Now, some of Dana's clothing had been found close to his house, right? Like literally blocks away.
- [36:19]
C
Oh yeah, maybe the first street or so away from history.
- [36:23]
B
So tell me about this guy. I mean, you, you sent me the transcript of the interview they did with him. You've studied it, read through it. What are your thoughts on this guy?
- [36:33]
C
He's probably most troublesome because you can actually put him in the store the day of Dana's disappearance. So you can put him with Dana right before she disappeared.
- [36:44]
B
Now, do we know if he is the quote, old guy that she's seen talking to in the parking lot? Because according to his interview, he says no.
- [36:54]
C
I don't think there's ever been any definitive answer as to who that person was.
- [36:58]
B
BCSO Lt. Hunter Petrae confirmed this. And he's also fired from Phillips on July 27, which is two days after she goes missing. Right?
- [37:11]
C
Yes, very alarming.
- [37:13]
B
And not to forget, at this time, investigators have no idea who what happened to Dana. She is still missing. Her status is about to change in a remarkable, sad way. But at this time in the investigation. There are more suspects than possible answers. And so now, why was he fired?
- [37:37]
C
I guess it was a culmination of sexual harassment complaints that had been launched against him. I don't know if there was a specific one in the lead up to July of 1989, but I think something must have tipped the scales because it sounded like he had somewhat of a sordid reputation among the female employees.
- [37:56]
B
And then we come to a proclivity he has for magazines. Right. They start to get into that in the interview.
- [38:05]
C
I guess that since he was the receiving clerk and took in maybe not just groceries, but items that would be sold in the grocery store, like toys, trinkets, magazines, he was receiving some X rated magazines or buying some within the store from the people that would drop them off. And it became somewhat alarming when they found a dirty magazine with some of Dana's clothing. So now you have a suspect that worked at the store with Dana, had an issue with female employees and sexual harassment, and also, like you said, had a proclivity for a dirty magazine.
- [38:39]
B
Right. And as you say, they found one of those magazines with her clothing.
- [38:45]
C
So, yeah, it's pretty alarming that there's a magazine with her clothing. There's a guy that likes these magazines, and that same person lives within throwing distance of where those clothing and magazine are found and works at the store with them and was at least at the store the day they for sure know where Dana was last seen work.
- [39:07]
B
The other part of this interview is they ask him what type of vehicle you drive. And what does he say? He says, I drive a Toyota pickup with a camper.
- [39:18]
C
Yes.
- [39:19]
B
The guy's shift at Phillips ended at about the same time Dana would have been on her way out. And we know that these types of missing person cases are statistically crimes of opportunity. Opportunity.
- [39:33]
Until the BCSO can confirm or discredit his alibi that he was at home with his wife, he remains a primary person of interest. Even though they have numerous reports of people seeing Dana later on that day and into the early evening.
- [39:51]
I asked Brandon what he thought about those phone calls which you heard at the top of the episode. The sexually explicit calls made to a young Bella Vista woman by a neighbor she knew from high school. Were they significant? Were they even related to Dana's case? What about the name of the caller she gave the police?
- [40:14]
C
I would argue she has the best opinion for that. I mean, she grew up with him, I think, at least went to high school with him. Angie was her neighbor. I would think she'd know his voice.
- [40:23]
B
Brandon gave me the name of the caller, which I am choosing not to reveal. I can say, however, he was looked at by law enforcement. Now a question I had for you that I'm unsure of is I'm curious whether she makes the accusations against the caller as being before he is a public suspect in Dana's case.
- [40:46]
C
I would say competently that it's not a public suspect until at least 1996.
- [40:53]
B
To add more confusion to the case. Two weeks after Dana went missing, a 16 year old girl contacted the BCSO with an incredible story. I communicated with her and asked if she wanted to tell her own story on the podcast, but she doesn't want her name or voice used. The police report and subsequent interview the BCSO did with her in 1989 however, is beyond revealing.
- [41:21]
E
There was a female that made a statement that Dana had been seen at Blowing Springs Park.
- [41:28]
B
This girl says she was at the park in Bella Vista on July 25, 1989 with two guys in their 20s. She had driven herself there. It's around 9pm she is sitting on a picnic table when another 30 something dude from just across the Missouri state line named Orville Mitch Goodwin, whom she was somewhat familiar with, pulls into the park in his green pickup with a camper on the back. The two guys she met at the park walk up to Goodwin's vehicle. She follows. She tells police that when she looks into the cab of the truck, Dana is sitting next to Goodwin. The insinuation is that Dana, because she worked at the Phillips, knew Goodwin because he was routinely showing up at the store picking up garbage for a guy he worked with. He also hung around another guy who worked for Ozark Beverage which did business at the store.
- [42:26]
E
Now from what we know, Mitch said that he didn't know Dana from talking with her family friends. They didn't know Mitch. Mitch was older. It's not somebody that would have been on the outside looking in, would have been in her circle of friends.
- [42:48]
B
They questioned the teenage witness intensely about minor details. She seemed to answer each question very clearly. She claims Goodwin pulled in from Route 71 and parked for about 15 minutes with Dana by his side. She was asked, any doubt in your mind that the girl that was in the passenger seat at that time was Dana stidham? Her answer.
- [43:16]
100% positive. Then this. She says Goodwin left at about 9:30 with Dana and returned an hour and 15 minutes later without Dana.
- [43:30]
Not long after she reports this to police, she claims Orville Mitch Goodwin starts calling her threatening to kill her if she mentions Anything to police about what she saw. The phone call threat she says carried on for two years.
- [43:50]
E
Could he have done it? Yes. But you also have to kind of look at the credibility of your witness that's given the statement. And, you know, people say they see aliens all the time, and maybe they do. Maybe, I don't know. I don't want to get into that. But you have to kind of take it with a grain of salt, like, okay, this person supposedly saw Dana in this. In this truck with Mitch Goodwin, but nobody else can corroborate that. There are other people that were at the park that can't corroborate it.
- [44:16]
B
In the years after he is accused of having been involved with Dana's disappearance, Orville Metch Goodwin pleads guilty to. To first degree attempted murder and is sentenced to 12 years in prison. The crime, Goodwin shot a woman named Annette rapely in the face and left her for dead in a Bella Vista creek bed near the Missouri border. If not for a man on horseback riding by who saw Annette bloodied and laying on the ground, she would have died there. He was interviewed, right?
- [44:50]
E
Yeah, he was interviewed. And again, didn't know who she was.
- [44:54]
B
And he had an alibi, I believe, possibly.
- [44:59]
E
Now, there is a person who claims that the guy that was in the van or the guy that was parked on the side of the road that saw Dana outside with these two guys, thinks that the person had red hair and thinks that it matches the description of Mitch Goodwin. So again, just something else to complicate the case. You know, hey, we've got three or four suspects. Why not add another fifth suspect?
- [45:29]
B
You know, people don't make the best witnesses.
- [45:32]
E
No, but, you know, people are adamant in their own mind that, hey, I heard a gunshot at 1102.
- [45:44]
And I called my. My friend and let them know about it, and they're 100% positive. And then you get the phone records and it's like 9 o', clock, but they're sitting there telling you like it's the 100% truth that it was 11 o', clock, but you have physical proof that no, your, your time is off. So people, I don't think intentionally always do that.
- [46:06]
C
Sure.
- [46:06]
E
But a lot of times their mind plays tricks on them and they think that it's a certain time or they think that they saw a red shirt and then you find the person and it's a blue shirt.
- [46:14]
B
That's why forensics is so important.
- [46:16]
E
Correct. That's why physical evidence, and that's why prosecutors like that, to try cases you know, when you're talking about circumstantial, which is in this case, we have a lot of circumstantial evidence.
- [46:31]
That'S hard to take to court, and that's hard to get a jury to convict somebody.
- [46:36]
B
The plethora of circumstantial evidence the BCSO had on several persons of interest was about to get a huge boost from physical evidence as September 1989 came around.
- [46:49]
I'm calling him Stephen, which is not his real name. And I'll get to why he asked me to change his name in a minute. On September 16, 1989, Stephen had some free time on his hands. So he decided to go out and scout locations where he and his buddy could go hunting and, and maybe even do a little hunting himself that day. It was early afternoon. Stephen wound up on Beale Lane Circle, a dead end in Bella Vista, so close to the Missouri state line, you could probably hit it with a football throw.
- [47:26]
Stephen parked, got out of his truck, and started walking through the woods.
- [47:31]
D
I was supposed to meet some people, so I stopped there and did a little squirrel hunting and walked around a little bit and stood. And as I was walking out, I saw in a dry creek bed, saw a skull and some rib bones. So next morning, I called the police and took them down there, and they, they, they, they said, oh, I'm sure it's just a bear skull or a deer skull or something. I said, yeah, I know the difference between a human skull and a bear.
- [47:58]
B
Where exactly was this?
- [48:00]
D
It was right behind, actually, from where I stood. Like, in the fall, I'm sure in the summer you couldn't see it, but in the fall, you could see up to a liquor store that was just over the state line. There. It was on the east side of Bella Vista.
- [48:12]
B
And what did you think when you first saw that skull? What went through you?
- [48:16]
D
Well, I wasn't sure, I mean, because it's kind of pretty close to Peerage battlefield. So I thought maybe it was an old skull or whatever. I could tell it was fairly small. It wasn't a big person. But that's what I told them there, too, you know, when they said it was a deer skull, I said, no, no, it's a human skull, fairly small.
- [48:35]
B
And were you familiar with the case of Dana Stidham that was in the news?
- [48:39]
D
No, I had never, never heard of it. Didn't know anything about it.
- [48:44]
B
And so you called the next morning. What made you wait a day or a half a day or whatever?
- [48:49]
D
Well, like I said, I was supposed to meet somebody we were going dove hunting, met them, and they said, well, maybe we should. I said, well, you know, it's not going anywhere. In hindsight, yes, I should have immediately called them. But, you know, like I said, I didn't. I didn't think it was fresh. You know, if I would ever saw, you know, any kind of flesh or anything like that, I definitely would tell.
- [49:09]
B
Describe exactly what you saw.
- [49:11]
D
Just there was skull and some vertebrae and rib bones in a dry creek bed. Really all I saw initially.
- [49:17]
B
And was it together, the body together.
- [49:20]
D
It was, you know, scattered over probably 15 or 20ft. She was buried in a shallow grave and the animals got to her.
- [49:26]
B
And you didn't see any of her clothes or anything like that.
- [49:29]
D
When I took him back the next day and we're showing them around, actually, the cop that I was, I was following him after it, you know, kind of showed him where the bones were. We were walking back. He actually stepped on a piece of skin that had some duct tape and I think maybe some clothing there too.
- [49:47]
C
Really?
- [49:48]
D
Yeah. Hey, you just stepped on something.
- [49:53]
B
So he steps on a piece of duct. So the duct tape was taped to clothing and then that had skin on it?
- [49:59]
D
I. I believe so. I mean, it was all kind of stuck together.
- [50:02]
B
This man who stumbled across Dana Stidham's body is talking about an area of Bella Vista, about 5.5 miles, a 10 minute ride from the Phillips grocery.
- [50:12]
C
And.
- [50:12]
B
And that Route 71 area where Dana's car was found, it was an undeveloped cul de sac, far off the beaten path. The creek bed is about 170ft from the cul de sac, only 4/10 of a mile northeast from where Dana Stidham's body was found. In these woods is the Ozark Beverage Company, where Orville Mitch Goodwin had just told the bcso a friend of his worked and. And he had visited on numerous occasions.
- [50:43]
The reason why the man I am calling Stephen didn't want his name used.
- [50:48]
D
Because I had somebody driving up, sitting in front of my house in a truck. And after three or four times, you know, I snuck out the back and stuck up the truck with my shotgun. They took off.
- [50:59]
B
And this person, you think it was a cop or.
- [51:02]
D
I'm sure it was a killer. Killer.
- [51:07]
B
Next time on paper, ghosts, I'm thinking they're lying like hell because my little girl wasn't dead.
- [51:15]
D
Something's not right here. Something in my mind told me that this guy is fixing to kill this girl. But he never moved. He just stood there with his arms folded, this smirky smile on her, this dancing and I oh my God, this is some kind of a murder.
- [51:34]
F
They find what appear to be several hairs, I think maybe some blood spots in the car. And then they realized, you know, other items of hers remain. So they went back and tossed those and left. But I would think that you'd have to be somewhat strong or able bodied to carry a person down into that area of the woods and know about it. I don't think that anyone just stumbled across that spot.
- [51:59]
B
Please listen and subscribe to my other podcasts, Crossing the Line with M. William Phelps and White Eagle. Wherever you get your favorite shows. 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, Takaboom Productions. The Series theme number 442, is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Moody.
- [52:39]
A
10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental mental breaking points.
- [52:50]
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B
Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.
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E
Shh.
- [53:11]
A
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- [54:13]
B
Guaranteed human.