Hell and Gone Murder Line: Amanda Tusing

Mississippi County. She lived with her father, ed, her mother, Susan, and her twin brother Andy. She also had an older brother who worked out of state. Matt did not want her to go home that night. It was about a forty five minute drive on a good day and the weather was bad, but Amanda wanted to get home, so she left Jonesboro at around eleven thirty PM, so even if she drove very slowly, she should have gotten home

around twelve thirty am at the latest. Amanda told Matt she would call him from her parents' landline as soon as she got home. She did have a cell phone, by the way, but her family said she never kept it charged, and it was always dying. Matt never got that call. By one thirty am, he was concerned. Matt called Amanda's mother, Susan tussing and woke her up. Susan

told Matt to hang on a second. She said she would check to see if Amanda was in bed, but when she went into Amanda's bedroom, she saw that Amanda was not home. This was totally unlike Amanda. Her family knew something must have happened on that road, so her dad, Ed and her brother Andy got in the car together and drove toward Dell. Meanwhile, Matt left his house in Jonesboro and started driving down Highway eighteen in the opposite direction. Their plan was they would meet in the middle and

hopefully see Amanda. Somewhere along the way, Matt saw Amanda's nineteen ninety two Pontiac grand am parked under a street light. It was on the shoulder of Arkansas Highway eighteen, about a mile west of the small town of Monette. Amanda's car was on the side of the road. It looked like it had been parked there intentionally, in other words, not like she randomly swerved over. Matt got out of his car, stepped out into the darkness, walked over and

looked inside. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I have learned that there is no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have 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. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six

seven eight seven four four six one four five. That six seven eight seven four four six one four five. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Matt called the police. They met him and Amanda's father out on Highway eighteen by the car. Law enforcement showed up shortly after two thirty am. At first, police were thinking maybe her car broke down. The keys were still in the ignition. When they started it up, the car ran perfectly. There was also gas in the tank. They noticed some other things too.

There was a coke can in the drinkholder that was half to three quarters full and it was still chilled with condensation on the side, which police believed indicated to them that someone had taken a drink out of that can pretty recently. They also noticed the radio was turned to Amanda's favorite station with the volume turned down, and the windshield wipers had stopped midwipe on the windshield. The interior of the car did not show any signs of

foul play. Amanda's stuff was inside, her cell phone and her billfold were on the passenger seat. Her cell phone was dead, but again and her parents said that that wasn't necessarily a red flag because it was very often dead. She had a habit of letting her phone run down. And this, by the way, was back way before smartphones. Back in two thousand, cell phone reception was very spotty in those areas. In some of those areas it still is.

I talked to Amanda's cousin, Jonathan, about the case. Her cousin was born after Amanda disappeared, but Amanda's family has never stopped trying to figure out what happened to her.

a body of water called Big Bay Ditch. The couple saw what they thought were some clothes floating in that water. Then they realized that they were looking at a body. It was Amanda Tussing. Amanda Tussing's body had been found. This was twelve miles in the opposite direction of where she was driving. She was driving east. Her body was found to the west. An autopsy revealed that Amanda had

water in her nasal passages, but not her lungs. Law enforcement have said publicly that they believe Amanda was dead before her body was thrown into the water, but they reportedly could not decide on a definite cause of death because it could have been a dry drowning where the victim dies of choking on the water but water never actually gets into the lungs. Amanda had no visible injuries except a small bruise on the back of her head.

There were no obvious signs of sexual assault, but because she had been in the water for days, it must have been very hard to know for sure. The police also had more bad luck. The heavy torrential rains had washed away a lot of potential clues. Gary Etter, the original detective on the case, told kait Regionate News quote the medical Examiner's office checked and said that she had no physical injuries other than being in the water and the impact of the elements. I think whoever did this

probably did it before. That's what I'm thinking, due to no evidence end quote Detective Etter. By the way, in my opinion, from what he said in public, it really does seem like he deeply cared about this case. Last year, in twenty twenty three, the Craighead County Sheriff's Office assigned a new detective named David Bailey to this case, and he has said that he's reviewing everything with a fresh eye. So who left Amanda there floating in that ditch while

they were figuring this out? By the way, law enforcement did not say there's no immediate danger to the public, which is what they say a lot during these cases. In fact, they said kind of the opposite in Mississippi County. In Craighead County, they told women traveling alone to be careful and to take extra precautions. Mississippi County Sheriff Leroy Meadows told a local paper, quote, I would urge people

traveling alone to be careful. It would be wise to make sure you know who is trying to stop you, or drive to a lighted area before stopping. End quote. This is very good advice. I just want to point out that Amanda did stop under a street light, and her parents said she was very safety conscious and they had told her they had drilled it into her she should only park in well lit areas late at night. So even if she had followed that advice, I'm not

sure that it would have helped her. Amanda's car had some partial fingerprints inside, but according to police, nothing usable. According to law enforcement, her car did not look like it had been wiped clean. This led investigators to believe that the perpetrator probably did not get inside the car. Detective Etter said something else in that interview with the

news channel. He told them, quote, the first thing that comes to your mind, and I'm not saying it was a law enforcement officer, first thing that comes to your mind is that a law enforcement officer would know how to conceal the evidence.

all at the same time. Police did take a close look at Matt Amanda's fiancee, which is completely normal. According to Amanda's family, they got along very well. They had occasional minor arguments about things like where he was going to go to school, but they apparently had a very good, loving relationship and were very happy. They were supposed to get married the next year. In June. Amanda's cousin said that Matt did not appear to be a person of interest for long.

went back to Matt's apartment. It was getting late and the weather was bad, and Matt did not want Amanda to get on that road. Amanda still lived at home with her parents, and she had a curfew, so if Amanda normally called her parents before heading home. Why did she head out so late that night? Could she and Matt have been arguing? They grilled Matt hard. They questioned him several times, but police said he was totally cooperative,

that he had passed polygraphs three separate times. Police also considered another possibility very early on, that Amanda could have been pulled over by a member of law enforcement.

But her mother said not necessarily. She told police that Amanda normally kept her driver's license like that in her front pocket. Apparently she never kept it in a purse or a billfold. Amanda was wearing her diamond engagement ring when she was found, so between that and the wallet that had been left on her seat, detectives took this as even more evidence. The motive was obviously not robbery.

Investigators believed Amanda was killed somewhere else and then thrown into the water, but the question is where and why, because the only injury they found was a bruise on the back of her head. A few years after Amanda disappeared, law enforcement gave photos to the TV station Regionate News, and they are haunting. You could see one of the clues that can of coke in the drink holder that was partly empty. It was chilled with condensation on the

night she disappeared. Now a lot of people have wondered if the coke can was a clue that maybe she had stopped somewhere on the road during her drive. It was late at night, and that is a pretty remote strip of highway. There are only a couple of gas stations along it. Police did apparently check surveillance footage from one of these convenience stores and said they did not see Amanda on it, but that's not proof that she

wasn't there. And someone else also brought up another interesting possibility. I was reading a lot of online comments and they mentioned the were vending machines at a couple of these places, So even if she didn't go in, maybe she stopped

at a vending machine. Now, Matt apparently told investigators he wasn't sure if she had taken the drink from his house or not, so that's another part possibility she might have taken it from her fiance's home because she was not in the car that long before something stopped her on that dark stretch of road. There was a witness who reportedly said that he saw her at a gas station, but police couldn't confirm this, and again they reportedly pulled

surveillance footage and didn't see her in it. I don't know times or details, because remember this is still an open investigation, so we don't have access to any of the case files. In the photos that were released to the media, you can see a basketball on the foreboard. Amanda played sports in high school. She was an accomplished athlete. There's also a Bridle magazine in the car. She was clearly excited about her upcoming wedding and probably looking at dresses.

Both Amanda's parents say they believe she may have been stopped by someone, maybe someone impersonating a police officer, or that she had some kind of car trouble.

In two thousand and three, the sheriff in a neighboring county, Jack McCann of Craighead County, said that they had gotten a major tip that someone had told them there was some sort of note in Amanda's coffin. I don't know if it was a confession or information, but it was apparently something that could have helped lead to the killer's identity. Amanda's body was exhumed, there was no note or anything

else inside that casket besides her remains. To me, this really does show how police were willing to act on any tip. I'm sure that after going through the trauma of unearthing their daughter's body, the fact that the coffin had no evidence must have been another devastating blow for Amanda's parents. Around that same time, a psychic detective rolled into town with a court TV show called Haunting Evidence. I'm sure many of you know how I feel about psychics.

On this podcast, Apparently their paranormal investigation did not provide any credible leads. Then, in two thousand and seven, an anonymous person told the Sheriff's department that they had heard people allegedly discussing Amanda's murder, but nothing came to that either. In so many of these cases, we see this over and over. People over the years will claim either that they did it or they know someone who did it.

They'll do it sometimes for their own reasons. Sometimes if they're incarcerated, they may want to impress other inmates, and the more publicity a case has, the more rumors start flying. But police were willing to listen because there was a real lack of physical evidence. In this case. There were zero suspects and no clear motive. There was one single hair found on Amanda's body. They did DNA testing, but

it turned out that it was Amanda's own hair. The Sheriff's department admitted that law enforcement was up a creek, and what I take from that is that they were just stuck no forward movement on the case. Amanda's father did an interview with kt Channel eight, and it was heartbreaking. He talked about the fact that Amanda was found on Father's Day. The reporter asked him if he was affected every single Father's Day. He got tearful and said, yeah,

but it's no different from other days. He's affected every single day by his daughter's murder. So police are left with a few different possibilities. Was Amanda killed by someone random, maybe someone who was just passing through the area. Detectives don't think so. They think the location of the body is a big clue. They point out that it's near an access point that they believe only someone local would

know about. But what about a local serial killer. Several people have suggested that Amanda might have been killed by someone impersonating a police officer. Now, there was one very high profile case a serial rapist who was preying on women in Arkansas in the late nineties. The papers gave him the name the blue Light Rapist. His real name was Robert Todd Birmingham. He was convicted of raping two

women in eastern Arkansas in nineteen ninety seven. The reason he was given that nickname was because he had blue lights on top of his car. He pulled women over and impersonated a police officer. One of Robert's victims, a seventeen year old whose first name was Shannon, told detectives he pulled her over while she was traveling alone on a state highway. She said at first she thought she

was going to get a speeding ticket. After he signed for her to pull over and she did, Robert came up to the window of her car carrying a gun. He told her to cover her face with a shirt and to get out of her car, then he forced her into his vehicle. Once he got Shannon into his vehicle, he claimed that his buddy was going to take her to Little Rock to pick someone up, but instead he drove her to a remote location and raped her. He told her that if she would kiss him back, he

wouldn't hurt her. After the assault, he forced her to redress and took her to a field. He made her lie down and wait until he was gone. Robert was convicted of those two rapes, but he was suspected of committing more. There were other attacks women who were pulled over in the same area with blue Mars lights and then sexually assaulted, but Robert was never convicted of those attacks. Side note. In twenty seventeen, lawmakers passed Shannon's law name

for Shannon. This law increased the penalty for anyone caught illegally possessing blue emergency lights. Robert was sentenced to life in prison. He died in prison of COVID related complications in May twenty twenty. But Robert was convicted in nineteen ninety seven, which of course, was three years before Amanda's death. But there were still lingering questions about these other alleged

blue light assaults. Were these copycat rapes or could there have been another blue light rapist out there one who wasn't caught. There was another young woman, eighteen year old Dana Stidham, who went missing from Bella Vista, Arkansas, on July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty nine. On that day, Dana was on her way home. She had gone out to run some errands for her dad, who wasn't feeling well. He asked her to pick some stuff up for him,

so she went to Phillip's food store Bella Vista. She bought some Alka seltzer and some dishwashing soap and sugar. This is all according to receipts. She left at three seventeen PM. Now there was another grocery store closer to her house. But later one of the detectives on the case talked to reporters and said that Dana avoided that store because a guy whose parents owned the store back

then hung out there a lot. Now, apparently this guy had a crush on Dana, but the feelings were not reciprocated. The last time that Dana was seen alive was when she left that food store after running her errand for her dad. She used to work at Phillip's Food store, so she knew a lot of people there and they all remembered talking to her. She talked to people she knew in the store and in the parking lot. Police said they also talked to another witness, someone who was

apparently doing some landscaping near the store. Now, this person apparently told police that they saw Dana lee, but they weren't sure which way she turned when she drove out. After that, Dana never came home home. On July twenty sixth, at around six thirty am, a police officer was driving southbound down US Highway seventy one when they saw Dana's nineteen eighty four Dodge Omni abandoned on the shoulder near

Wellington Road. The keys were still in the ignition, the driver's side window was halfway down and the rear tire was slightly deflated but not totally flat. Again, there was no obvious sign of anything being wrong with the car, and no sign of foul play. But this time Dana's purse was missing and the driver's seat was way back, as if a taller person had been the last one driving. Dana had been doing laundry that day, and her laundry

was found scattered several feet away from the car. The search for Dana went on for months, then in September of nineteen eighty nine, a hundred found Dana's remains in a creek bed near the Arkansas Missouri border. Her clothes were buried in a shallow grave nearby. She had a

cut on the her left shoulder blade. It's been reported that detectives were not sure of the actual cause of death, but they are withholding details, so I can't be sure about that, and obviously this is still an open investigation. But they have made some facts public, like the fact that detectives had suspicions about that guy, the one who had a crush on Dana, the one who attended the

same high school she did. They questioned this person, but in the end, the Benton County Prosecutor, Brad Butler, said he didn't believe he had enough physical or circumstantial evidence to file any charges. We're going to talk more in depth about Dana Stidham's case in a future episode, And I just want to be clear. I always hate when people make really tenuous connections between cases that are obviously not connected. I have no reason to believe right now

that these two cases are connected. Dana was found in a grave. Amanda was found in a body of water. Dana's clothes were buried nearby. So, at least from what we know what's come out publicly, it does seem like, at least on the surface, there could be more evidence that Dana's case may have been some type of a sex crime. Amanda disappeared at night, Dana disappeared in the middle of the day. But there were also some similarities. Both women were petite, Dana was five foot two and

one hundred pounds with short dark hare. The crimes happened near each other. Both women's cars were found abandoned on the side of the road with the keys and the ignition, and there were similar theories discussed in both cases, including the possibility someone impersonating a police officer could have pulled them over. I found something very interesting in the court documents. After the blue light rapist's conviction, the circuit court allowed

a second victim to testify in court. They allowed this so that they could establish the rapist pattern his MO. So what's interesting here is that two of Robert's victims had some similarities. The reason this is interesting to me is not because Robert kill Amanda, we know he didn't, he was in jail at the time, but because maybe the methods he used can give us some insight into other predators. Robert would tell these women they were being charged with DWI, but he said perhaps he could work

something out with them. He also apparently would do body searches, and then that was the excuse he used to put his hands on these women and cross the line physically. He did not get into the women's cars, he followed them in his car. Also, both of Robert's victims had families that were out of town at the time when their attacks took place. And this is something that piqued my curiosity. Was this something he knew beforehand because he recognized these women or was this something he found out

while questioning them initially and used his advantage. So the killer could have been someone impersonating a police officer, but there is also another possibility the killer could have been a real police officer, either one that was on duty at the time or off duty in a patrol car. Law Horrisment definitely seemed to consider this possibility. The sheriff made the comment to news station eight that a police

officer would know how to hide evidence. In fact, detectives spoke to several police officers from Mississippi County and Craighead County. They apparently ruled a lot of people out and gave a lot of polygraph tests to members of law enforcement. One person they focused on was reportedly a police officer who lived in the nearby town of black Oak. That would have been one of the towns that Amanda Tussing

would have gone through on her way home. True crime author George Jared, who we worked with on the Rebecca Gould case, discussed this theory in his book Whispers and the Willows, and in his book he said that he discovered through his law enforcement sources that that officer's name was Johnny Williams. Apparently a lot of women were complaining back in the day that Johnny would follow them home. He wrote in the book that police interviewed Johnny Williams

multiple times. Amanda's cousin wasn't sure about the name when we brought it up, but the family has said over the years they have heard that there was someone in law enforcement who police apparently suspected, couldn't get enough evidence on and hoped would give a deathbed confession when he began to get sick. Johnny got a terminal illness in two thousand and nine. He passed away the following year. Now, Johnny Williams was never publicly named a suspect, never arrested

or charged in connection with anything involving Amanda's case. We have no idea if he had any information at all, but any information he would have had went to the grave with him in twenty ten. So who killed Amanda Tussing? There are still a lot of possibilities to consider. One is that Amanda did stop at a convenience store on her way home and got that can of coke. Maybe so someone saw her there and followed her out of

the store. Now that person might have been a police officer, or it's also possible that the person who got her to pull over wasn't a police officer at all. Maybe it was someone faking car trouble, maybe they got her to pull over another way, or maybe she pulled over first. It was raining really heavily that night. Maybe she was sitting in her car until the rain passed and someone saw her park there. In that moment, sitting inside that

dark car with zero visibility, she was very vulnerable. Whether it was a law enforcement officer, someone impersonating a police officer, or just a sick and twisted random person. It seems likely that it was someone who lived in the area and they could be still out there. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced

by Gabby Watts. Music contributed by Ben Sale Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance. Noah Camera mixed and scored this episode. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plush channel on Apple Podcasts. You can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gone Pod.

If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six ' one four five. School of Humans