Hell And Gone is a true crime podcast from iHeartPodcasts and School of Humans that follows journalist and private investigator Catherine Townsend as she investigates unsolved deaths.
Now in its fifth season, Hell and Gone is going weekly.
Over the past five years of making true crime podcast Hell and Gone, host Catherine Townsend has received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that’s affected them, their families and their communities.
In past seasons of the show, she’s only been able to focus on one case. But now, she’s hosting a new weekly show called Hell and Gone Murder Line. Every Thursday, Catherine features a new case, adds updates to old ones, and helps as much as she can to get the word out about unsolved murders.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine and her team to look into, you can call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
New episodes of Hell and Gone Murder Line start September 26th! In the meantime, if you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend and her team to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello Hell and Gone listeners! We'll be back on September 26th with brand new episodes of Hell and Gone Murder Line. If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On Friday, December 12, 1980 at approximately 6: 45 in the morning, the Mississippi County Sheriff’s Department got a call about a female body lying on the side of Highway 181, just south of Highway 158. The woman was dressed in a striped red colored dress and velveteen jacket and was five foot five. She weighed around 115 pounds. It wasn’t hard to figure out the cause of death - Barbara had massive holes blown into her body by a shotgun. The shots were so violent that pieces of her hair and sku...
On Tuesday July 25 1989, 18 year old Dana Stidham went home to do some laundry. She drove from her home in Centerton to where her parents Lawrence and Georgia lived in Hiwasse, Arkansas. After she put her clothes in the wash cycle, she headed out to run an errand for her dad. His stomach was upset and he needed some medicine. She left the Phillips food store - which is now a Harp’s grocery - in Bella Vista at 3:17 pm. We know this because the receipt was later found in her car, and the cashier a...
On July 25, 1989, 18-year-old Dana Stidham had just graduated from high school in Gravette, Arkansas and had her whole life in front of her. Dana had moved out on her own for the first time to Centerton where she was living with her older brother Larry and a cousin. She was starting her life and excited about the future, but on that day, she had to do some laundry and like a lot of kids that age, she was going to do her laundry at home. And she was a little homesick; she wanted to spend some tim...
On June 14, 2000, there was a huge storm brewing in northeast Arkansas. It had been raining heavily all day and according to local weather data, tornados had hit. Over 100 trees were downed, power lines were down and homes were destroyed. Twenty year old Amanda Tusing was hanging out with her fiancé, Matt Ervin, at his apartment in Jonesboro. Amanda lived 40 miles away in Dell, Arkansas, which is in Mississippi County, with her father Ed, her mother Susan and her twin brother, Andy. She also had...
On March 11, 2021, Shannon Lee Collins, a 48-year-old veteran, came back from a work trip to his home in Pottsville, Arkansas. Then, he seemed to vanish into thin air. Catherine continues her investigation from last week, focusing on two things: one, what angles are the police investigating, and are they making any progress in finding out what really happened to Shannon? And two, what do you do if you suspect foul play but there is no body or sign of a struggle? And what will happen to the famil...
On March 11, 2021, Shannon Lee Collins, a 48-year-old veteran, came back from a work trip to his home in Pottsville, Arkansas. He was working a part time job delivering packages, which sometimes took him on the road out of state. He had been married to his wife Treasa for more than 20 years, and they raised their family together. They had their son Josh, who was in his early twenties, and Shannon’s step daughter Brittany, who was in her early thirties. But Shannon had raised Brittany since she w...
On January 18 2012, a contractor was walking along a road In Dover Township Pennsylvania, called Schoolhouse road in York County when he noticed a plastic bag there. It was heavy and had a weird kind of liquidy consistency. At first he said he thought it might be a dead animal but then he saw the blood and what looked like long, gray human hair and skin he called the police…he realized what he was looking at was a human scalp. The lab confirmed that this was human but they ran the DNA and could ...
On Sunday June 17, 2024, Jay Slater, a 19 year old bricklayer’s apprentice who lived in Lancashire, England was on his first ever foreign holiday - and he seemed to be having a blast. He had gone to the island of Tenerife in Spain with a female friend named Lucy and a guy named Brad. That night he and Lucy went out to a music festival called New Rave Generation. It was held at Papagayo Beach Club, along a strip called Veronica’s Strip that has a ton of nightclubs and neon signs. It was there he ...
On the night of Saturday, November 21, 2015, Victor Collins, a 47-year-old former police officer who worked in loss prevention at Walmart, was hanging out with some friends, Owen McDonald and Sean Henry, who all also worked at Walmart, and 31-year-old James Bates. The four friends went back to James' house in Bentonville, Arkansas to watch a Razorbacks football game. According to court documents, these four guys were drinking. At some point, the guys went out to the back patio to have some beers...
On November 30, 1963, just eight days after president John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas - across the country in Los Angeles, friends of a 23-year-old actress named Karyn Kupcinet were getting concerned. She was supposed to get to their house to eat at 6:30 PM but arrived an hour late at 730 PM. When she did arrive, she was acting strangely. She barely touched her food and was acting like she was under the influence. At 8:30 PM that night, they sent her home in a taxi. A few days ...
On September 14, 2018, in Galesburg, Illinois, a 23-year-old graduate of Western Illinois University named Tyler Smith headed out to party with some friends. The next day, he was due to report for drills. But he never showed up. And twelve hours later, his body was found in the Cedar Fork Creek area, just two blocks from where he was last seen the night before. Since then, Tyler's family has been trying to find out what happened to him: did he fall, did he drown, or was he murdered? And after li...
On September 14, 2018, in Galesburg, Illinois, a 23-year-old graduate of Western Illinois University named Tyler Smith headed out to party with some friends. Tyler had dreams of becoming a police officer. He was super athletic, played football in high school, and after graduating from Western Illinois University, he applied to and was accepted into the police academy in San Jose, California. Tyler hoped to eventually possibly become a DEA agent or working with a K9 unit. He was starting his life...
It was April 12, 1971, a 27-year-old woman named Pauline Storment was walking down South Duncan Avenue in Fayetteville, Arkansas, just a few blocks from her apartment. She didn't know someone was following her in the darkness. And then, while she was walking and just a few blocks from her apartment, her attacker came out of the darkness and attacked her, stabbing her eight times in a frenzied attack that lasted several minutes. It was a hot night so at 9:45 pm when Pauline started screaming a lo...
On Sunday October 17, 2021 in Los Angeles, a 39-year-old mother of one named Heidi Planck went to watch her 11-year-old son Bond play football. When Heidi left the game, she said that she would call her son later, but even though she ALWAYS talked to him every day she never called him. In fact Bond never talked to his mother again. Because that day, Heidi Planck vanished. If you have a case you’d like the Hell and Gone team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line a...
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been covering two cases in Arkansas: the murder of Gail Vaught, whose body was found on March 17, 1980, and Dennis Flowers. Police believe that Dennis was responsible for the execution style murders of Lee Dickson, a pharmacist who had become addicted to cocaine and started dealing it with Dennis, and Lee’s wife Karen Dickson who was eight months pregnant. A few days after the brutal double homicide, Dennis’ body was found under extremely mysterious circumstances, ...
On the morning of March 22, 1984, at around 6:30 am, police came to the one-story nondescript home in Fayetteville, Arkansas that belonged to a quiet unassuming 33-year-old pharmacist named Lee Dickson and his wife Karen. When police came to the Dickson home, they knocked, but Lee and Karen didn’t answer. Finally, their young son came to the door. He told the police that his mother was sleeping and that daddy went out. Police entered the home looking for his parents, and it didn’t take long to f...
Catherine Townsend continues her investigation into the death of Gail Vaught. On the morning of Friday, October 17, 1980, a man was on his way to work, driving his truck down Highway 16 that runs between Siloam Springs, Arkansas near the Oklahoma border through the Ozark National Forest near Searcy when he saw something out of the corner of his eye down a small dirt road. It looked like a person lying in the road. The driver doubled back and saw to his horror that it was the body of a young woma...
On the morning of Friday, October 17, 1980, a man was on his way to work, driving his truck down Highway 16 that runs between Siloam Springs, Arkansas near the Oklahoma border through the Ozark National Forest near Searcy when he saw something out of the corner of his eye down a small dirt road. It looked like a person lying in the road. The driver doubled back and saw to his horror that it was the body of a young woman, lying rolled over on her right side with her head and shoulders face down. ...
On May 21, 2023, Dr. John Forsyth, a 49-year-old ER doctor, was due to work the evening shift at Mercy Hospital in Cassville, Missouri. He had already worked the overnight shift the day before and finished up at 7 am. After that he went to crash for a few hours before starting his next shift that night. This was a normal day for John. He had a habit of pulling long shifts and working between 80 and 100 hours per week. But John never showed up for work that night, and it wasn’t long before his fa...
It was Thursday night, November 1, 2007, and 18-year-old Justin Gaines was getting ready for a night out with his friends at Wild Bill’s, a club in Duluth, Georgia. Justin was a freshman in college. He had just started at Gainesville State college, which was about an hour away from where his family was. Justin was 5 '11, 210 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair in a buzz cut. He was a handsome, clean cut, preppy guy. Justin didn’t take a wallet out with him that night, so he had no credit cards...
On the evening of Sunday, September 14, 2014, 15-year-old Cassie Kay Compton went out for a pack of cigarettes down the road from her small white house in Stuttgart, Arkansas...and never came back. At least that’s the official story. We know a few things for sure: Cassie had been spending the weekend with a friend of hers named Hunter, and Cassie slept over there on Saturday night. Hunter’s mother has said that this was not out of the ordinary. In fact, Cassie spent a lot of time at her house be...
On February 15, 2024, 11-year-old Audrii Cunningham, a fifth grade student at Creekside Elementary in Livingstone, Texas, never made it to the bus stop. And when she didn’t come home after school, her family knew that something was very wrong. Audrii lived with her dad, and on that property, there was someone else living there: a 42-year-old friend of the family’s who lived in a camper. And even though he had a very disturbing criminal record, this man was allowed to babysit for Audrii. Once Aud...
This episode continues the investigation into the disappearance of Ieshia Jackson. It was Halloween night 2020, and 22-year-old Ieshia was getting ready to go to a party. She lived in El Dorado, Arkansas just a short distance away from her mother, her younger brother, and the rest of her family, but because she had had a couple of break-ins at her new home, she was staying at her uncle’s. Ieshia and her mother were very close and normally spoke a few times per day. So by November 2, 2020 when La...
It was Halloween night 2020, and 22-year-old Ieshia Jackson was getting ready to go to a party. She lived in El Dorado, Arkansas just a short distance away from her mother, her younger brother, and the rest of her family, but because she had had a couple of break-ins at her new home, she was staying at her uncle’s. Ieshia and her mother were very close and normally spoke a few times per day. So by November 2, 2020 when Laquita had not heard from her daughter, she was getting worried. Laquita, he...
Catherine continues her investigation into the disappearance of Jason Lierl. In January of 2022, Jason Lierl was visiting friends in Madison County Arkansas when he disappeared off the face of the earth. Jason was last seen in Madison County, Arkansas. His abandoned car was found in the parking lot of a mall in Fayetteville, Arkansas. His car keys, motorcycle and other belongings were found in different places, spread across Arkansas and Missouri - but to this day, no trace of Jason has ever bee...
In January of 2022, Jason Lierl was visiting friends in Madison County Arkansas when he disappeared off the face of the earth. Jason was last seen in Madison County, Arkansas. His abandoned car was found in the parking lot of a mall in Fayetteville, Arkansas. His car keys, motorcycle and other belongings were found in different places, spread across Arkansas and Missouri - but to this day, no trace of Jason has ever been found. What happened to Jason Lierl? If you have a case you’d like Catherin...
Sometime between the evening of September 2 in the early morning hours of September 3, 1994, 35-year-old Billie Jean Phillips was brutally beaten to death at her home in Alabam, Arkansas. The case soon became the biggest story in Madison County, and there was a long list of potential suspects. But in 2002, there was an arrest in the Billie Jean Phillips murder case. One that would shock the community. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
On Saturday September 3, 1994, a federal poultry inspector named Chic Philips was taking his seven-year-old son MacKenzie back to the home of his mother and Chic’s ex-wife, 35-year-old Billie Jean Philips. When they arrived, Billie Jean’s son ran inside the house and walked back to the bedroom he saw his mom lying on the floor a few feet from the bed with her head kind of propped up against a wall. She wasn’t moving. So the little boy ran outside to the car and told his dad, “Mommy fell painting...
