Transcript
Delia D'Ambra (0:01)
Hey park enthusiasts, it's Delia here. You know from listening to park predators that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets, and there is a case that proves this can be true. It is a case you're going to want to hear about. It's the murder of Dana Ireland on Hawaii's Big island, and you can hear all of the details in the newest season of the podcast three. In the newest season of three, hosted by Amanda Knox, who some of you may have heard on my most recent Counterclock Q and A episode, you'll not only dive into Dana's story, but you'll also explore the human cost that can occur when the justice system gets it wrong. This case truly rocked the vacationland community, and under pressure to solve it, police arrested not one, not two, but three men, and all of them were convicted of Dana's murder, but none of them committed the crime. It took years for the truth to finally emerge and the lives of three families have been changed forever. Listen to three now wherever you listen to podcasts.
Amanda Knox (1:00)
Hi crime junkies. Are you looking for more ways to get your true crime fix? I have an option for you that will cost you nothing but give you everything. You can watch all your favorite true crime shows for free on Pluto tv. Follow along as mysteries are unlocked and secrets are revealed on 48 hours, Dateline 24. 7 and forensic files. Still feel like there are things left unsolved? Check out their crime dramas like Tracker and csi. Pluto TV is available on all your favorite devices so you can stay on top of every case from anywhere. Pluto TV Stream Now Pay Never want.
Delia D'Ambra (1:40)
The same expert advice from the pros at a discount tire store while shopping for tires online. Meet Treadwell, your personal tire guide. Treadwell is an online tire buying guide that gives you personalized recommendations. Shop for tires with Treadwell@discounttire.com.
KFC Advertiser (1:57)
The new KFC Dunk It Bucket with juicy Original Recipe tenders, new mashed potato poppers, crispy fries, plus three sauces that fit right on top of the lid so you can dunk anywhere. You can dunk at the game Dunk while security points to the no outside Food sign and dunk as 20,000 people watch you and your Dunk It Bucket get removed from the stadium. Dunk almost anywhere with the new $7 KFC dunk it bucket or get the double dunkin bucket for 25. Prices and participation vary while supplies last. Taxes, tips and fees extra.
Delia D'Ambra (2:28)
Hi park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra and the story I'm going to tell you about today is a harrowing one. It happened more than 50 years ago, but still remains one of the most notorious multi victim homicide cases in the state of Iowa. At least two books have been written about it and television programs for Oxygen and Investigation Discovery have both covered it. A listener wrote to me last year and suggested I feature the case because it seemed like a story that was appropriate for this audience, and after researching the details of the crime, I can say that they were absolutely right. I was simultaneously heartbroken and riveted with the information I read about because despite four people losing their lives in what I can only describe as something out of a nightmare, there was someone who survived this terrible tragedy. An individual that to this day is nothing short of a hero for ensuring justice was served so many decades ago. It takes place in Gitchie Manitou State Preserve, which is located in the far northwest corner of Iowa, right along the South Dakota border. According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the preserve is 91 acres and considered one of the most remote places in the state. It's widely known for having a lot of pink quartzite, an extremely hard rock that begins its lifespan as sandstone but over time transforms into a really durable substance after being exposed to a lot of heat and pressure. Gitchimanitou is a Sioux phrase that when translated into English, means great force of nature or great spirit, and I imagine anyone who's been to this recreation space would agree with that moniker. It truly is a force of nature with its stunning views, unique geological formations, and more than 130 species of plants. It's also a fitting description for the lone survivor in this story, a young woman who became a force of nature when it was time to face the ruthless human predators who murdered her friends and nearly took her life at the same time. This is Park Predators On Sunday, November 18, 1973, a man and woman driving through Gitchimanitou State Preserve in Iowa were having a normal morning test, driving a car they were thinking about buying, when suddenly they noticed something strange laying in a patch of thick grass on the side of the road. As they got closer to the mysterious objects, the more they slowed their car down until finally the man behind the wheel pulled over and got out. He instructed his wife to just stay put in the car while he walked toward the section of tall weeds to investigate. But just a few feet into his trek, he abruptly stopped. Because there, lying face down in the grass, were the bloody bodies of three young men who all appeared to have been shot in their backs and chests with a Shotgun. The victims were clearly dead and laying near a small parking area not far from an entrance to the preserve. Not long after the couple found the bodies, members of law enforcement from Minnehaha County Sheriff's Office, Lyon County Sheriff's Office, and Sioux Falls Police Department were alerted to the situation and responded to the scene. The available source material seems to indicate that because this type of crime was so unusual for the local jurisdictions, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation was called in to handle the case and process the crime scene. Based on what I found in the source material, this entity used to be called the Iowa Bureau of Criminal Investigations, but it now has a new name. Just so there's no confusion, I want to refer to it by what it's known as now. Anyway, when DCI agents arrived and started trying to piece together what had happened, they walked a short distance away from the three bodies in the grass and into a clearing that seemed like a place you'd have a campfire. There they made another horrific discovery. A fourth victim. A young man dead from a shotgun blast to the head. Sitting near his body was a partially smoked marijuana joint, a guitar leaned up against a tree, and several spent shotgun shells scattered on the ground. DCI agents collected those shells as evidence and quickly determined they belonged to three different caliber shotguns. A 12 gauge, a 16 gauge, and a 20 gauge. Based on everything at the scene, it became pretty clear that the campsite was the location where the initial attack had begun. The victim whose body was there seemed to have been killed there. And most likely the three other victims who'd ended up in the grass had been transported away from the campfire area and then fatally shot. Why? Investigators weren't sure yet. But for the time being, they needed to focus on something else equally as important. Identifying all the victims. After checking the young men's wallets, investigators discovered that the three victims in the field were 15 year old Mike Hadrith and 18 year old Stuart Beatty and Stewart's younger brother, 14 year old Dana Beatty. The lone victim at the campsite was 17 year old Roger Essom. All of the boys were from The Sioux Falls, South Dakota area, a city about 20 minutes northwest of Gitchimanitou. When law enforcement contacted each of the teen's families to break the bad news about the murders, many of the boys relatives reacted how you'd expect. They were devastated and shocked. I was actually able to speak with some of Mike and Stuart and Dana's other siblings, and they told me the same thing, that losing them was absolutely heartbreaking. Stuart and Dana, for Example came from a family of seven siblings and their surviving sister Mary explained to me that even though she was just nine years old when this happened, she remembers her brothers were the most kind hearted and loving people. She doesn't have one bad memory of them. When their family received the news from law enforcement about what had happened to Stewart and Dana, her mother was actually in the hospital and it was one of her older sisters who took the phone call from authorities. Investigators asked all of the victims loved ones if any of the young men had any enemies, but no one could think of a single person who would have wanted to hurt them. According to Investigation Discovery's series no one can hear your scream, which featured this case in an episode titled Gitchimanitou Massacre, the Beatty brothers were from a close knit family and both young men enjoyed playing a guitar that they shared. So I think the instrument that was found at the crime scene was assumed to belong to them. Shortly after the bodies were discovered, word got around town about the brutal killings and residents in Sioux Falls and I imagine Greater Lyon county were gripped with fear. Folks began arming themselves and locking their doors, fearful that the killer or killers who were still on the loose would, would strike again. No one could wrap their minds around why someone would commit such a heinous crime in a peaceful recreation space like Gitchimanitu. Back at the crime scene, DCI agents had wrapped up the evidence collection phase of their investigation and shifted their focus to finding potential witnesses who might have seen what happened leading up to the murders. Later that afternoon, November 18th, they got the surprise of their lives when a 13 year old girl from the Sioux Falls area of South Dakota walked into the Sioux Falls Police Department and told authorities that she'd been inside Gitchimanitou on the night of the crime with Mike, Roger, Stuart and Dana. This young woman's name was Sandra Chesky and she claimed that around 9:30pm on Saturday, November 17, she'd arrived at Gitchimanitou State Preserve with her boyfriend Roger and the other three boys in Stuart Beatty's blue van. For a while they just hung out, smoked two marijuana joints and had a campfire. But then suddenly they'd heard some sounds in the woods that made them think. At first animals were nearby, but then after a bit more rustling, they began to suspect it was actually people. Shortly after that, three silhouettes just appeared out of nowhere about 15 yards away from their campfire. She said that Roger and Stuart went to investigate who the figures were and even yelled out things like who's there? And Hello? But the looming silhouettes didn't reply. Within a few seconds of the two boys going to check things out, a shotgun blast pierced the night air, and Roger immediately fell to the ground. Sandra said that right after that, a second shot rang out, and Stuart began to yell that he'd been shot. The three attackers then emerged from the woods, got Stuart on his feet, and forced him, Sandra, Dana, and Mike down a path that led away from the teens campsite. When the group got to the end of that trail, one of the three assailants put Sandra in a pickup truck. But the other two attackers marked Mike, Dana, and Stewart in the opposite direction toward Stewart's van. Sandra also told police that the three men claimed they were members of law enforcement who were doing drug raids in the area, which is why she said she'd chosen not to resist them. She told producers for Oxygen's Killer Siblings that she believed she could trust the men since they'd claimed they were the cops. Like she honestly thought that as long as she did what they told her to do, she wouldn't get in trouble for smoking that marijuana joint with her friends. She told authorities that two of the guys in the group kept referring to the man who'd put her in the pickup truck as the Boss. When she described the men to police, she said that the heaviest set in the Trio was called J.R. and the other one, who wasn't the boss or J.R. was a thinner man with blond hair who had gone by the nickname Hatchet Face. Sandra told police that after the boss separated her from Mike, Dana, and Stuart, he drove her out of the preserve, and she never saw any of the boys again. While she and the man were riding around in his pickup, he'd asked her where she lived and promised to take her home. But after a few hours of driving country roads, seemingly not in the direction of her house, Sandra realized she might not be going home. And something was definitely wrong. She told investigators that the whole time this was happening, the boss kept telling her that Stuart was going to be okay, because the guns they were using weren't actually loaded with real bullets. Instead, they had tranquilizer cartridges in them. The Boss even claimed that the round he'd shot Stewart with had misfired, which was why he was screaming out in pain. But the round that had hit Roger had fired properly, which is why he was still back at the campsite, seemingly unresponsive. Her captor eventually took her to an abandoned farmhouse, where they met up with the two other assailants. And then the man who went by the initials JR Sexually assaulted her in the boss's truck. Then the boss ordered her to go into the farmhouse with him, but she refused. She told police and eventually producers for Investigation Discovery that she believed in her gut that if she stepped foot through that building's front door, she wasn't going to come back out alive. And by some miracle, her adamant refusal worked because the boss ended up not making her go inside. Instead, he put her back in the pickup and drove her home. She said when they pulled into her driveway around 5:00 in the morning, he told her not to tell anyone about what had happened or else he'd come back and kill her. Now, as astonishing as Sandra's story was, homicide investigators weren't quite sure what to make of it. On one hand, they had a 13 year old girl who claimed she was the sole survivor and only eyewitness of a brutal attack that had left four of her friends dead. She might hold the key to solving the crime, but they also had to consider the possibility that she'd known the perpetrators or was maybe even involved herself to figure out which one it was. The police asked Sandra to take several polygraphs and she passed all of them with flying colors. So from that point on, it seems like investigators took her story at face value and began treating her less like a potential suspect and more like the valuable eyewitness that she was. To keep her safe from the suspects who were still at large, authorities had her live temporarily at the county's detention center so she would be protected at all times. Over the course of the next few days and several follow up interviews, she provided investigators with more and more details about what she remembered from the night of November 17th. For example, she described the pickup truck she'd been forced into as an older model Chevy with brownish colored painted. She also said it had a cracked windshield, gun rack inside on the back window, and a unique looking glove compartment in the dashboard. She also met with a forensic sketch artist to help police come up with a composite drawing of the man she'd come to know as the boss and his other accomplices. After developing those sketches, authorities spent several more days driving Sandra around on roads in a 50 mile search grid adjacent to Sioux Falls. They wanted to see if she could pick out anything she recognized from the night of the crime. Like the farmhouse, for instance. They spent day after day doing this, but every time they took her by a structure that looked like a farmhouse, she'd tell them that it wasn't the right one. After about two weeks of doing this, things were not looking good. But then, in late November, something astonishing happened. While on yet another drive with investigators, Sandra did a double take at a random farmhouse.