Hell and Gone Murder Line: Dana Stidham Part 1

little homesick. She wanted to spend some time with her dad. Her parents, Lawrence and Georgis Didham, lived in Highwasee, an unincorporated area in Benton County. That was about a ten to fifteen minute drive to where Dana lived in Centerton, so Dana drove home. She started to do her big pile of laundry with her dad, and then her dad said he was not feeling well. He asked Dana to run some errands for him, and she said yes. Dana

was planning on coming right back. She had clothes in the wash cycle and her dad said he would put them in the dryer if she wasn't back by the time they finished. There has been a lot of publicity about this case, but no real answers. We're going to try to relive the last day of Dana Sidham's life and see if there's anything that was missed that can help us get closer to finding out what happened to

her anne who killed her. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've 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.

She actually worked at the Phillips food store in high school, so she talked to several people and all of them remembered seeing her when she came to pick up those items that day for her dad. Dana bought Alka Seltzer dishwashing soap and sugar. According to the cashier's receipt, she checked out of the store at three seventeen PM. Detectives said the last time Dana was seen alive that they were aware of was when she was leaving the Phillips

Food Center parking lot. According to multiple media reports, Dana was seen talking to an older man in that parking lot. The man's identity was never confirmed by police, and there was a landscaper who worked nearby. He told police he saw Dana drive out of that parking lot, but he said he could not remember which way she had turned. Over the next few days, volunteers and searchers were looking

for Dana. The disappearance was all over the news, so naturally a lot of tips started flooding in the next morning, July twenty sixth, At around six thirty am, a sergeant with the Benton County Sheriff's Department named Karen Myers was driving south on US Highway seventy one. She was on her way to work near Wellington Road when she saw a car on the shoulder of the road. The vehicle

was parked on the southbound side. She didn't think anything of it until she got to work and the officers were being briefed on the missing woman, Dana Siddam.

the whole time. Police began to believe someone moved that car there in the middle of the night. Last week we dove into Amanda Tussing's case. We pointed out that Amanda and Dana's situations did have some similarities, at least on the surface. Both were petite women with short, dark hair. Both crimes happened in the same general area, and in both cases, cars were found abandoned on the side of the road, with the keys in the ignition and no signs of a struggle. But as we also said last week,

there are a lot of differences. The main difference for me is the time of day. Amanda Tussing disappeared late at night. Dana Sidham vanished in the middle of the day in broad daylight. As many of you know, this case has received a lot of publicity. I've seen it covered in various podcasts on news channels over the years, but every time I see it covered, I kind of hear a variation of the same story that there was a suspect, someone who police believed had something to do

with Dana's disappearance. We briefly touched on this last week. We said there was a guy who Dana knew from high school. This person apparently had some feelings for Dana, maybe an unrequited crush on her.

been missed. I wonder, could someone have pulled Dana over or signaled for her to pull over and then pulled up behind her using that flat tire as a ruse, or maybe she felt the tire going flat on her own, pulled over herself, and then someone pretending to be a good Samaritan took advantage of the situation. These are all situations that Dana's family and friends considered over that summer.

just random trash and it was a coincidence. A couple of days after that, someone's pet dog showed up at the house, and when its owner looked at what it had brought back home. It had Dana Didham's wallet in its mouth. This seemed to be the moment when the case turned around, because before that it seemed as though law enforcement had considered the possibility she might have gone missing on her own. But after that dog showed up with that wallet, the sheriff at the time, Andy Lee,

made a comment. He said, quote, we know when she left the car, she took her purse with her, but we don't believe she would be throwing personal items out end quote. So the rest of the summer passes, Dana's family and friends are no closer to getting answers. The two lead detectives at the time, Mike Sediak and Danny Varner, worked tirelessly on this case. They've talked about it at various times over the years and when they've made comments

to media. To me, it is obvious they cannot stop thinking about this case, and they were frustrated by the dead ends that they seemed to keep encountering. On September sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine, a squirrel hunter named Wayne T. Grantham was out in a remote area on the east side of Bella Vista. He was in a dry creek bed

near the Missouri Arkansas border. He saw a skull. On September sixteenth, nineteen eighty nine, almost two months after Dane has Stidham disappeared, a hunter named Wayne T. Grantham saw a skull while he was out in the woods in Bellavista County. This brings us to another really strange point in this case. Not necessarily suspicious, but it's something that should be delved into, in my opinion, a little bit.

According to the missing Persons report, which we have a copy of from the Arkansas State Police, the hunter apparently waited an entire day before reporting what he found. After he saw a skeleton, he went on and continued his hunt. Then the next morning, on September seventeenth, nineteen eighty nine, Wayne Grantham contacted the Benton County Sheriff's office and told him about the remains.

called the police immediately. Police recovered the remains, They sent them to the medical examiner's office, and they identified them as Dana's. The remains were very decomposed, mostly skeletal, so at the time authorities could not determine if Dana had been sexually assaulted.

think the killer had used a knife. There were also a few locks of Dana's hair found, and even though investigators had found Dana's wallet with her id in those closed by the roadside, they never found some things, including that denim purse she had had with her on the day she went missing, and the groceries she got for her dad. Something else was missing from the body. Dana always wore a ring, one that her grandmother had given her. She had been wearing it when she left home, but

it wasn't on her body. On September twenty first, nineteen eighty nine, the medical examiner announced that the manner of death was homicide, but the cause.

moved now. Early on, there were rumors that the area where Dana's body was buried was near a notorious party spot, or that she may have been involved with some drug dealers, but these rumors were not backed up by any evidence, and honestly, those type of rumors about drug dealing, the fact that the party spot was on this dead end road kind of gave me deja vus and made me think about Rebecca Gould's case and in Dana Siddam's case, the rumors seemed equally far fetched. It was another theory

that made more sense. Police wondered, could someone have punctured her tire on purpose, maybe while she was talking to her former co workers the Phillips food store. Then maybe that person followed her out of that parking lot because they knew that her tire would run flat. Some people believed someone impersonating a police officer or an actual police officer could have signaled for Danna to pull over. We'll get back to that in a minute. Back to Dana's

route that day. So it turns out that Dana had a reason for avoiding a convenience store that was much nearer her parents' house, the Dairy Freeze, because a guy she went to high school with, one who apparently had a crush on her, the one we were talking about before, His parents owned that business. So Dana's parents told police that Dana avoided that store she wanted to avoid that guy.

This guy's name is Mike McMillan. This is public information, by the way, It's part of the case case file and included in the paperwork that we got from the Benton County Sheriff's Department after we filed foyer request. Mike was a friend of Dana's. They knew each other from high school, and again, her family said he always liked her, but that the feelings were just not reciprocated. She was not interested. From the beginning, police were apparently suspicious of Mike.

The police asked him if he had an alibi. He said that at the time of Dania's disappearance, he was visiting a girlfriend, but the girlfriend apparently said he wasn't, and then he mentioned another girl's house he supposedly went to. This is pretty vague and we haven't seen the whole case file with his interviews in it, but the bottom line is Mike was out and driving around and police were not able to verify his alibi. Detectives polygraphed him

and he passed. But then it came out in the media that there was this weird quote he was quoted as saying during one of his interviews with police. Quote some times I think I did kill Dana, but I know I didn't.

including the multiple and conflicting witness accounts. There was reportedly someone who came to police and told them that on the day Dana disappeared, on the twenty fifth, she remembered seeing Dana's car and that a woman with long dark hair was in the driver's seat and a man with dark hair was in the passenger seat. She said that the car swerved into her lane in a way that may have been intentional. Then there was another witness who said they saw a car on the side of the

road and a truck behind it. There was a woman and two men there, and apparently one guy crouched down by the car trying to change a tire. Now we know that Dani's tire was partially flat. We don't have the case file, we don't know who these people are, so for me, a big part of this investigation is going to be trying to track down the source of these supposed sightings and find out if they are credible or not. In the meantime, though, let's see if there

are any theories we can eliminate. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, and I really hope to dive more into the case file into some of these questions next week. Last week, we talked about another theory that the Blue Light rapist Robert Todd Birmingham, the one who was arrested in nineteen ninety seven and convicted of two sexual assaults, could have been involved in Dani's kidnapping and murder. So there was a thirty one year old farm laborer

from Pine Tree. He was arrested in Little Rock on September fifteenth, nineteen ninety seven. He farmed for his father in law and was married to a woman named Nanji. They lived on an eight acre plot of land where his parents had a house. The Blue Light rapist story became a national story. There was this quote from the La Times that I found that kind of summed it up.

one who very bravely testified against Robert. She was able to give an accurate description of the house that was owned by Robert's father. He was apparently taking his victims to this vacant property. She knew the house was off a gravel road, that it had a screen door that was hard to open. She knew about the rocking chair with a loose arm, and a lot more details about the layout of the house. She was also able to describe the vehicle he was using. It had two door

bucket seats with no air conditioning. This is all by the way. According to court documents, investigators were also able to link Robert to these crimes through a DNA profile taken from one of his victim's rape kits. In the end, Robert was convicted of the April nineteen ninety seven rape of a woman at her home and when, and the July nineteen ninety seven rape of Shannon Woods. But as those newspaper articles pointed out, those were not the only

attacks happening in that area at the time. Robert Birmingham was accused of two other crimes, one in Cross County one in Lee County, using the same mo victims who had been pulled over on highways and then assaulted, but those two cases never made it to trial. In two thousand, Robert Todd Birmingham was sentenced to life in prison plus eighty years for those convictions. He never admitted to his crimes. He always said he was innocent. Robert Birmingham died while

serving his sentence in twenty twenty. He died of COVID related complications. I can understand why Robert would be considered a suspect in Dana's case. Her car was found parked with the key in the ignition the back tire was running flat. It is possible, but there are some differences, like the fact that the blue light rapist mo was to wear a ski mask. Yes, there's a possibility that

maybe he didn't. In this case, Dana's death happened several years before he was arrested in charge of these assaults, so he might have gotten more sophisticated over time. Maybe he panicked because she recognized him. But the blue light rapist struck at night, this happened in broad daylight. Also, the blue light rapist did not get into women's cars. He got women into his car and drove away. The working theory is that Dana's car was moved by someone else.

And I know the police believed Dana was sexually assaulted, but the forensics or lack of forensics, mean we cannot know for sure. I think there's still a possibility this could have been someone Dana knew, maybe someone who wanted it to look like the blue light rapist or some random psycho abducted Dana.

being found on that duct tape. If someone did have an issue with Dana, if they got into an argument with her, if she was murdered and it was a crime of passion, the crime scene could have been staged to make it look like the motive was sexual assault. There was a young woman who came to the police. She told them that on the day Dana disappeared, she remembered seeing Dana's car. She said a woman with long brown hair was driving and there was a man with

dark hair in the passenger seat. She said that the car swerved into her lane in a way that, looking back, she thought may have been intentional. Was that woman Dana, and if so, could she have been trying to signal that she was in trouble?

changing it. But how much of this is reliable? I did a lot of research into hypnosis and the use of hypnosis and police investigations. It's been used a lot over the years, but it's very controversial. It seemed to gain a lot of traction after the nineteen seventy six Chowchilla kidnapping. This was the case where two men kidnapped an entire school bus full of children and the driver

and they buried the bus underground. The children and the driver were able to escape, and the driver was able to remember the license plate numbers of the cars that abducted them under hypnosis. But that was one single case, and more and more it seems like that might have been an outlier because over the years the use of hypnosis and recovered memories has really been debunked in a lot of cases. It reminds me of some types of

bitemark evidence or in some cases polygraph tests. Some of these technologies that have become known as if not junk science, at the very least pretty unreliable. Researchers have actually done studies on hypnosis. There is a professor of psychology at Binghamton University named Stephen Jaylen, and he's done a ton of research on hypnosis. According to The Guardian, he did studies and he showed that hypnosis did not help memory. It actually armed people's memory, and it led them to

recover as many false memories as real ones. But interestingly, the one thing that it does increase is people's confidence, so even when they're completely wrong, they absolutely believe that their memories are correct, just in general. When I was a kid, I remember when I was first taught about memory, I was told over and over that it was like

a videotape or a tape recorder, always recording. So theoretically, if you could be taken back to that moment, you would be able to accurately remember details, but it turns out that's really not true. Memory does not work like that. It's not permanent. It can change every time. In fact, some studies have shown it changes every time you access the memory.

saying there was a man crouching beside the car. Then we have the officer under hypnosis reportedly saying it was a car with wood grain panel. Are any of these leads reliable? If there was a guy crouching by Dana's car, was it a good Samaritan or could it have been something more sinister? We should find out was that guy actually there and if so, was he a good Samaritan

or something more sinister. Dani's case eventually went cold. And this is just my opinion, but from what I read, it seems as though police were laser focused on Mike over the years, and that might have meant that other leads were not followed as thoroughly as they should have been. Then in twenty thirteen, Dana's case made headlines again. On May eleventh of that year, a fifty four year old woman named Annette Rapoley was found barely alive by two

men on horseback near her home in Bella Vista. She had been beaten, shot in the face, and left for dead, according to court documents. In addition to the gunshot wounds, she had a wound on her chest that appeared as though she'd been kicked. The man charged with attempted capital murder and aggravated robbery in this case was Orville Mitchell Goodwin, now sixty two. This made police remember the sixteen year old who gave the police that tip about Orvile Goodwin.

He was a resident of Bella Vista and he had been in the area at around the time when Dana vanished. Orville Goodwin targeted a Net because they were acquaintances. He came over to her house one day to go with her to cash a five hundred dollars check that she had gotten from a neighbor. Then he brutally attacked her. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison for a

Net's attack. According to prison records, he's been paroled. The Benton County Sheriff's office reopened Dana's case in twenty thirteen. At the time they said they planned to question Mike again, and they also mentioned Orville's name, But it seems like the case against orvald never went anywhere. There were no concrete facts. I keep coming back to victimology. What was Dana doing on the day she disappeared. She wasn't headed out to a party or to a date. She was getting groceries.

up with a camper shell. This was someone who other employees told law enforcement had a habit of sexually harassing women. So my question is, was that person the worker who had a history of sexually harassing women who came to the store the same guy, the older guy whom Dana was seen talking to in the parking lot, And what about the landscaper, the one who said that he saw her driving out of the parking lot. Where was he

and how does he fit into this? By the way, someone who have never seen mentioned in any media reports was Dana's ex boyfriend, but he is mentioned in the police report.

girlfriend's house and stayed there until five pm. And I know it's a small town, but it turns out that there are connections between a lot of these people that really haven't been explored. For example, Danny and Mike were close friends. I've heard they lived together at one point, but I really don't know if that's true. That's just something I heard. I've not been able to confirm that. After Danny called in sick that day to work, he

said he was with his girlfriend until five pm. Then he said he drove to a friend's house, but that friend wasn't home, so he went back home, and then later that night another friend of his, whose name police have by the way, came over at around ten pm. So, as we said before, Mike also spent a large part of the evening just driving around side Note this was

nineteen eighty nine. A lot of the men in this case had alibis that were not I would say ideal, as in, there was some missing time they were driving around, they were with one person, maybe their significant other, and not a lot of witnesses saw them. Now this is not to suggest at all they were lying about anything. It's just not that easy to verify. I would love

to go back and re explore those alibis. In addition to that, I do think it's important to remember back then people were not accounted for twenty four to seven in the same way they are now. People did not have GPS, they didn't have cell phones. It was very common to be out for several hours and for people not to be able to reach you period. And in that part of the world, there are not a lot

of witnesses driving around at night. But I keep coming back to Dana her habits, her victimology because despite tips from that young woman who thought she saw Dana out that night. Without more evidence, I actually would find that pretty hard to believe. Dana knew that her father needed his medicine, She was not dressed for a night out. She had laundry in the washing machine, She had other clothes in her car, probably more laundry to do. She was home to see her dad and spend some time

with him. Every indication was that this was a young woman who was headed home. We can't discount without more evidence, the theory that she stopped to check her tire. But the car was drivable, and she was only about four miles from her parents' house. So I wonder would she not have driven home and gotten her dad or her brother or someone else to deal with that tire. She could have run another errand while she was out. Maybe she stopped by to see someone she knew, someone the

police don't know about. Dana's father and brother have passed away. Her mother, Georgia, died in twenty twenty three. Before she died, Georgia told NBC, quote, I don't want to go to my grave not knowing nobody should ever have to lose a child.

even years and decades later. We're going to go a lot more in depth on some of these angles next week, because it turns out there were a lot of unsolved disappearances around Bellavista, Arkansas, near that time, including the body of a woman in a suitcase that has never been solved. What happened after Dana drove out of that Phillips food

store parking lot. Was this a love quarrel gone wrong, a sexual assault both neither, or could there have been as some people believe, a serial killer stalking Bellovis to Arkansas. I'm Katherine 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, Katherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.