School of Humans.
On the morning of March twenty second, nineteen eighty four, at around six thirty am, police came to the one story, nondescript home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, that belonged to a quiet, unassuming thirty three year old pharmacist named Lee Dixon and his wife Karen. Apparently police had gotten a tip to do a welfare check from the local prosecuting attorney, whose name was Kim Smith, which is just one of the many unusual facets of this case that we'll go into
detail about. Shortly, Kim Smith had gotten a call that morning telling her to get someone to check the Dixon home. Now, Lee Dixon was already on law enforcement's radar. He had recently been embroiled in a scandal after losing his job at Consumer's Pharmacy. Apparently there had been an audit at that pharmacy and there were drugs missing, including pharmaceutical grade cocaine. So a picture was emerging of the quiet, polite pharmacist as someone who was potentially involved in the drug trade.
So police got to the door and they knocked, but Lee and Karen didn't answer. Finally, a little two and a half year old boy Lee and Karen's son came to the door. He told 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 find their bodies. Lee was in the garage, lying face down. He had been shot point blank. Police later determined that Lee had been shot first, then the killer came for Karen.
Police found Karen in the living room. She had been tied to a chair, and her legs and wrists were bound together with masking tape. Her wrists had also been wrapped with three different types of cords, an extension cord, a telephone cord, and a black cord that was a hatched to a recording device. Her blue bathrobe and her nightgown were soaked with blood. Police later discovered that she had also been shot multiple times, execution style, but unlike
her husband, Karen did not die right away. Investigators believed that her killer, after fatally shooting Lee, told her to be still, then shot her in the head. They found aspirated blood in her lungs, which meant, according to the autopsy report, that she lived for several minutes after that, but eventually, of course, her wounds were fatal. There was a gunshot wound to Karen's right hand. According to the autopsy report, one of her fingers had been almost shot off.
In her left hand, Karen was clutching a gray, white and red child's jacket. Karen was eight and a half months pregnant, so her unborn child became the third victim. Fortunately, their little boy, the one who answered the door, was unharmed. Police later said that he had probably slept through the whole thing. What started as a family massacre turned out to have ties to another mysterious death, one of a
man who drowned in under three feet of water. Later, there would be allegations that Lee, this quiet local pharmacist at the Consumered Pharmacy had been making backdoor deals with local criminals to provide the power players of faet ball with pharmaceutical grade cocaine. I'm Catherine Townsend. 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 or five. That's six seven eight seven four four six ' one four five. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. The double homicide of Lee Dixon and his wife Karen was shocking in its brutality, but actually it wasn't much of a who done it because police very quickly announced that they were looking for a single suspect. Lee's friend, forty two year old Dennis Flowers. Neighbors told police they had not heard shots that night, but witnesses said that Dennis Flowers was with Lee at around midnight,
hours before he was killed. Witnesses also said that they had heard a vehicle at the Dixon house at around twelve thirty am, and that call that Kim Smith, the attorney, made to police. She was tipped off a man named Lamar Pettis, an attorney who is the friend and landlord of Dennis Flowers. When Lamar talked to police, he told them that Dennis had called him just after four am with a wild story about how he.
Had killed two people and was holding hostages.
We're going to get more into what happened with Dennis next and how that night unfolded, but first I want to go back and understand the history between these two men, Dennis Flowers and Lee Dixon. Let me take a quick detour for a minute. We've been covering the Gail Vault murder case for the past couple of weeks, and we're following some leads in that case. So while we do that, I want to go back and explore one of the theories we covered in last week's episode, the one that
involved the drug trade in northwest Arkansas. Last week, we talked about the three main theories in Gail's case. One that she was involved in some sort of drug trafficking or that her boyfriend Ray was, and that Gail was killed as a result of that. The second theory was that Gail was killed as a result of domestic violence.
The third was that.
It was something completely random, a sexual assault by someone else, possibly a stranger. As we explore this drug theory and how things worked in Northwest Arkansas, I want you to keep in mind something that I've said before, which is we talk about six degrees of separation, but I think in the state of Arkansas you get two degrees at most. This case, I believe, really illustrates that.
Now.
I won't say that this is related to Gayle's case, because there's no evidence that it is, but I do think it's tangential because at least one of the names that came up in Gayle's case is also mentioned in Lee and Karen's case.
And again, I want to take a much.
Closer look at this alleged drug mob that was working at that time in Arkansas and crossed over into Oklahoma. A lot of the drug deals were made by biker gangs. The private and investigator Marty, who told me about Gail's case, also has an interesting backstory connected to Lee and Karen's murders. Marty is married to the daughter of the main suspect in the case of Lee and Karen Dixon's murders, Dennis Flowers.
Obviously, I've been talking to your husband for a while. I wondered if you could just tell people sort of how you and he got involved on this case. Well, yeah, it's a strange situation.
This is Nana.
He's always had a passion for cold cases and you know, watching unsolved mysteries and all those shows that are on TV. And finally I told him when we were dating, I said, you know, I can't watch these with you anymore, because you know, I've lived this, and he I had. At that time, I hadn't told him anything about my past because it's something really Catherine that you know, I've always been ashamed of and guarded you know, with who I
shared that with. I was never open about it. It was just something I really kept close to my heart. And part of it was fear, you know, at one point in my life, it was fear of who was still out there and and what did they know about me? And you know, they think I knew more than what I did, and that kind of stuff. Whether it was real or not, you know, it was it was still a fear and you know, a shame on our family name, you know, the Flowers name. Anyway, I just kind of
told him, you know, I've lived this. I can't I can't watch these shows anymore with you. I can't be involved in that part of you know, your entertainment or your you know, your hobby. But you know, a few months into our dating, I kind of shared with him, you know, my thoughts on you know, what happened to my dad and the history of you know, Northwest Arkansas at the time, back in the eighties. And I think he was skeptical because I was his daughter, you know,
I'm his daughter that I've found. I thought he was innocent, and I you know, that's what I claimed, and told told him that, you know, I think my dad, Jennison, I know he is I know he didn't do it. I know he was framed. I know he was a setup. And he said, well, do you mind if I look into it? And I was like, well, no, that would be great. You know, I've never had anybody offer to, you know, look into it for me. And as an adult, you know, I could see things in a different light.
And the more he dug and the more he looked into it, he was like, I agree with you, and I think he really had to change of heart.
This case has been called for years, but in twenty sixteen, the news station KARK did a special report on the case, and as part of that they talked to Karen's brother, Tommy Bryant. Tommy told Kark that the question of what had really happened the night is pregnant sister was viciously murdered has never left his mind. He talked about what a wonderful person Karen was, but he did admit to the reporter Ashley Keats Nolan, who by the way, has helped us out in the past a lot on Helen Gone,
that he was not fond of the guy. She eventually married Lee Dixon. Karen and Lee dated in high school. Lee Dixon was this nerdy, somewhat shy guy. He ultimately became a pharmacist and got the job at Consumer's Pharmacy. He married Karen in nineteen seventy two. After Karen and Lee got married and relocated to northwest Arkansas, they wanted to start a family. She got pregnant with their son, and then just a few months before she died, Karen
had learned that she was pregnant again. Dennis Flowers had known Lee since the early eighties. According to early reports, police were focused in on Dennis Flowers for a few reasons, first because he had been seen with Lee shortly before the murders. Secondly because he had a long criminal record, and as we'll get into now, there is a lot more to this story because Dennis and Lee, even though they were very different, had one very important thing in common.
They were both addicted to drugs, especially pharmaceutical grade cocaine. According to the Southern Fried True crime podcast, who did an episode on this case, Dennis Flowers had a tough childhood. He lost his mom when he was young, and he spent time at a juvenile facility after he got caught stealing, But his life seemed to kind of turn around when he met a woman named Betty Joe Murray. Betty Joe already had a daughter from a previous marriage. Dennis and
Betty Joe raised that daughter, who Dennis adopted. They later had two children of their own, Dana and Marcus. Dana said that when she was young, her dad was a great father. She said she had lots of happy memories from that time. For a while, Dennis's life seemed to have turned around for the better.
He got a job.
He went to work at the VA, so he had steady employment and a happy marriage and what seemed to be the perfect family. But then in nineteen seventy five, the marriage fell apart. Dennis was in Las Vegas when he met a woman named Linda Dientton. He fell for her, had an affair with her, and later filed for divorce. Eventually, he and his wife divorced and he and Linda got married. Dennis got a tattoo to mark their anniversary in nineteen
seventy seven. Then Dennis's life took a dark turn. In nineteen seventy nine, he fell down at work and hurt his back, and this would turn into a chronic pain condition. His family says this was kind of the beginning of the end for Dennis because that's when he became addicted to pain medication.
My parents are actually divorced. When I was seven years old, and so I started going to my dad's on weekend spring break during the summer. And so I was fourteen when this happened. I was in ninth grade and it was so it was the spring break of the eighty four when everything happened. But I was a daddy's girl named after him. My middle name is Denise, his is Dennis, and so, you know, it's just I thought he hung
the moon. Still do. But you know, like any man, he any you know, we're all human, we all make mistakes and we trust people. Maybe that don't, you know, deserve our trust. And he was no angel by any stretch of imagination. But he was a good man. He had values and family, friends, you know, he was trustworthy. I think he just put his trust in the wrong folks and he got caught up in a lot of what was going on at the time in northwest Arkansas. If you want to describe it as the Dixie Mafia.
You know something I don't say lightly. It was clearly the wild Wild West back in the day.
In the early eighties.
As all this was going down, Dennis was introduced to Lee Dixon by Ronnie t Again, my sources say that Ronnie Tigue is a key player in the drug trade in the area at the time. And I mentioned before that Ronnie Tig is a name that came up in Gaile Vaught's case. Remember Gail's friend Sheila. Sheila is the friend who Gayle believes she was supposed to hang out
with on the weekend right after she was murdered. If you listen to the Gail Vaught episode, you know that Sheila was not actually in town when Gayle was murdered. But she did talk to police afterwards, and when she did, she mentioned Ronnie Tigue's name. She said that Ronnie had made some comments to her about Gail getting what she deserved, about her killer running over her more than once, and
Sheila indicated that she was scared of Ronnie and his associates. Now, it was never proven that anything that Ronnie said had anything to do with Gaile's murder. There were no details that only the killer would have known. Nothing like that, but it is a name that has come up. We know that Ronnie was friends with several people who were alleged to have been big players in the fayette drug trade, and Ronnie Tigue was the guy who introduced Lee and Dennis Flowers.
Lee seemed to.
Have kind of a similar trajectory to Dennis. He had a good job, He was happily married to his wife, Karen, who taught elementary school. They wanted a family, and they were thrilled when Karen got pregnant for the first and second time. But this was the eighties and cocaine was definitely the drug of choice. So Lee's job gave him access to something that was like gold dust. And suddenly this pharmacist who had been kind of this shy, slightly nerdy guy, suddenly he's got access to all the movers
and shakers in Fayetteful. So they started a business transaction. Lee would provide the pharmaceutical grade coke and Dennis would move it. Pharmaceutical grade cocaine, by the way, was kind of the best of the best back then, and to this day it is used in surgeries because it's still an excellent anesthetic and also a vasoconstrictor, so it was used in nasal surgeries and all types of surgeries.
And it still is. Unlike some of the street stuff that's cut with a.
Lot of cheap additives, pharmaceutical grade cocaine is up to ninety eight percent pure. The only way to get access to it was to have access to someone with either a medical license or a pharmaceutical license.
So Lee and Dennis for.
A while were running what was probably a very lucrative business side note here. In addition to dealing drugs, there were also rumors that Dennis was the guy to call if you wanted to book a sex worker, and the rumor was that Dennis supplied these women to powerful men at parties. Some people, including Ronnie Tige, called Dennis the flim flam Man or flimflam Flows because he always seemed to be running some kind of scam.
I didn't know that it was strange. I didn't understand. I didn't put a lot together. There was definitely some red red flags that I would come home and tell my mom, like, well, there was this party, you know, and or I went to a club with my dad, and you know, there was just a lot of things that didn't add up, you know, especially as you're growing up and you're like, oh, you didn't go to a club and you didn't dance with grown men, you know, And yeah, it was just, you know, there was I
was putting into a lot of dangerous situations. And I'm very thankful that I came out where I did, because I don't think my dad meant to put me in those situations. But definitely there was some there was some bad things going on. I was not there to party, I wasn't doing the party, and I was just exposed. You know, I might be in the bedroom watching TV and eating pizza and the party was going on around me. Or you know, we were going to a club and things are going on in the back room. You know.
I can remember going to one and they said that it was snowing in the back room. Well I'm you know, at that age, I'm like, what, you know, I don't know that there's cocaine going on in the back room, But now I do, you know, then you put it together. So just numerous things like that that I was exposed to it at a young age.
For a while, As we said, business was pretty good. But, as it so often happens in cases where people become involved in drug dealing, Dennison Lee got in over their heads, and investigators were already following the drugs and the money. It turned out that about a week before the double homicide, State auditors were at Lead Dixon's pharmacy. They were counting drugs and Lee came up short. When Lee developed his addiction to pharmaceutical grade cocaine, according to multiple sources, he
started to violate what I call the Scarface rules. They're from the movie Scarface, from the scene when Frank, the gangster who took Tony under his wing, is at the nightclub. He says something that I think is very applicable. Even though this isn't over the top movie, I can say, as someone who's investigated fraud and murder for a long time now, this advice is actually very sound and very applicable to people in the drug trade. So Frank tells Tony two things. He gives them two rules. One, don't
underestimate the other guy's greed. Lesson number two, never get high on your own supply. Lee seemed to be violating this rule. He and Dennis were both addicts by the winner of nineteen eighty three, they owed a lot of money to their suppliers. According to the Southern Fried Homicide podcast, they owed around forty thousand dollars, which in today's money would be around one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. The people they owed money to were looking to collect.
Dennis was scared. He reportedly checked himself into the hospital for back pain, but Ronnie t came to visit. After that, Dennis called Lee and Lee brought him a gun. After leaving the hospital, Dennis went into rehab and it seemed like he actually made progress while he was there.
They involved a family on intervention days, and it was a lot for him to go through that through the amount of time. You know, I've never done drugs or I've never been through a rehab like that, but I know it's not a picnic, but definitely for the emotional side of it, for people to come in, you know, your loved ones and write letters to you and tell you how their drug abuse and their alcohol abuse you
know affected them. You know, the tears that were shed, you know during that during that time, you know, it
was just it was a really painful. But at the same time healing experienced because we had we were so hopeful that things were going to get back on and even kill you know, that we were going to kind of have a rebirth, you know, if anything, just back to a norm of him, you know, not relying on the drugs and the drinking, and we were getting ready actually to move closer to him, and I was just really hopeful at the time.
Dennis was released on March fourteenth.
He'd gotten out to rehab and they were living in Fadeville at the time, and spring break came up just right after that, and so we went down for the week of spring break, and it was just a real loving time, you know, because we had really bonded and shared some close things, just our feelings about how he had heard us, and you know, I think he was
really trying to make amends on spring break. I really felt like that in my heart, and really, you know, we had some great memories, you know, ordered pizza and you know, watch movies and just hung out. Just just that precious time that you look back and think, thank the Lord that you had.
Now I know that a lot of people who were deep into addiction are definitely capable of incredible highs followed by crushing lows, but according to people around Dennis, he did seem sincere. But then on March sixteenth, Dennis and Lee were hit with some more bad news. Auditors were coming to Lee's workplace, Consumer's pharmacy. The auditor found there were a lot of drugs missing, over eight ounces of pharmaceutical cocaine, as well as a lot of pills and
other drugs. At this point, Dennis and Lee knew that the house of was about to fall down, so Dennis and Lee apparently hatched a plan. At this point, they decided that they would rob the pharmacy. They would steal drugs and give the drugs to Dennis's wife, Linda, to drive across state lines and sell in Oklahoma.
Then they would have one.
Of their associates send a kid over to kind of ransack the pharmacy so that they could stage a burglary there. But their plan hit some snacks. Linda was supposed to rent a car to drive to Oklahoma. When she got to the rental car place, she had no credit card, so she could not get the vehicle. Secondly, there was
a problem with their fake robbery. In the early morning hours of March eighteenth, a kid did show up and throw a rock through the pharmacy window, but when police got to the scene, they pretty much knew immediately this had been an inside job because all there was was
a fairly small rock sized hole in that window. There was no blood or sign of a struggle, no shelves were disturbed, the door was still locked, and there was there's no way that anyone could have gotten inside and taken those drugs because they could not have crawled through that tiny hole in the window. The bottom line was that police were not fooled. They knew immediately that this was Dennis and Lee. The walls continued to close in on them both. Two days after the botched burglary, on
March twentieth, Lee was fired from Consumer's Pharmacy. So now Lee had lost everything. He had lost his job, He knew that he was probably going to lose his pharmaceutical license and maybe his freedom. According to some sources, it was at this point that Lee started asking around about possibly making a deal to avoid prison. But Lee never had that option because just over twenty four hours later,
Lee and his wife were found dead. So, as we said before, police immediately zeroed in on Lee's partner in crime, Dennis Flowers.
You know, again, it's spring breaks, so I'm staying up late. But the last time that I saw him, I was reading in bed. I'm an avid reader, always have been. And he came in and it was late, it was about midnight, and he came in and he told me we had plans for the next day, and we talked about the next day, that what we were going to do, and he gave me a kiss and that was it. And I woke up the next morning and he was gone.
So that's kind of how we ended it. So, I mean, we had plans for the next day, So there's no signals for me that anything was, you know, anything but normal in the time of the death. I mean, he tucked me in at midnight. So when I was interviewed by the detective, you know, after the murders, you know, I could account for his whereabouts because he was with me and my brother at the time, you know, as
of midnight. Now clearly what happened after that, you know, I don't know all the detailed, but I could tell you that he chucked me in at midnight and that murders were supposed to have happened, you know before then or you know right around then.
What's the last thing you remember?
Just him tucking you in?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, like like I said, we made plans for the next day. We had a full schedule planned and you know he told me that he left me and gave me a kiss and shut the door. That was it.
Police were trying to piece together what had happened. In the early morning hours of March twenty second. At around four am, police had gotten a call from a chicken farmer near Fayetteville. His name was Orrin Tisdale. Oren said someone had broken into their family home. The man had a gun, and Oran and his wife said that this
man had a syringe sticking out of his arm. They said that he went out to his car, a white Ford Tempo, but when the man tried to get away, they said the man's car stalled and that he had started walking after that and then vanished. Police quickly determined that this man had been Dennis Flowers. Police went to the Tisdale farm. They found the white car that belonged to Lee and Karen Dixon.
There.
It was stalled and there was a forty four magnum pistol inside the vehicle. They never confirmed if this was the murder weapon, but after Dennis left the Tisdale home, he disappeared and police launched a massive man hunt for him.
Police got another.
Tip from one of Dennis's longtime associates, the attorney named Lamar Pettis, who we mentioned at the top of the episode. Now, what exactly went down in this phone call between Lamar and Dennis Flowers is a story that has changed over the years, so we're gonna look at this in depth. At the time, Lamar told police that Dinni had called him at around four thirteen am that morning. He said Dennis told him that he had killed two people and
had another two people hostage. Lamar told police that he urged Dennis not to hurt the hostages, to leave them alone, and to walk away. Police based a huge part of their investigation on this information from Lamar. In fact, this was a big part of the reason why Dennis became
their main and really their only suspect. One thing that's a little bit strange, and the Southern Fried True Crime podcast calls us out as well, is that there was a delay because this phone call happened at four thirteen am between Dennis and Lamar, Yet police did not come
to the Dixon home until around six thirty am. Lamar told police that after he hung up with Dennis, he started researching what his obligations were under attorney client privilege, and only after some delay and some research did he decide to make some phone calls. I've I find this really unbelievable because I understand that there's such a thing as attorney client privilege, and that this was his friend
and his tenant. But Dennis had allegedly confessed to killing two people, and also Lamar knew that there were potential hostages there in danger, and I cannot imagine him not calling the police right away. But Dennis's family did not believe that he would have been capable of something like this. They just did not believe he would be capable of viciously murdering not just his friend Lee, but Lee's heavily pregnant wife. Police charged Dennis Flowers with the murders of
Lee and Karen Dixon. They launched a man hunt, and the search for Dennis Flowers went on for another ten days. Finally they found him, but they couldn't get any information.
Out of him.
Dennis Flowers was found floating face down in a pond just one hundred yards away from the Tisdale farm.
He was found where a.
Red and blue plaid shirt with a white pullover shirt, corduroy pants, and cowboy boots. He had three hundred and fifty one dollars and some change in his back pockets, as well as two cigarette lighters and a spoon. The medical examiner, doctor Fawmi Malik, ruled that Dennis had died by drowning in less than three feet of water. The cause of death was listed as drowning associated with cocaine toxicity.
The manner of death was suicide. After Dennis Flower's body was found, the medical examiner, doctor Fowmi Malik, determined that he had died by suicide as a result of drowning in less than three feet of water. We mentioned doctor Malik, who is notorious in the state of Arkansas for his mini botched autopsies back in the day. So often I sometimes feel like we need to do a Hell and Gone very Special episode just to cover all of his cases.
Needless to say, back in the day, he was known for tailoring his forensic conclusions on what law enforcement said they wanted, and many people believed that this case was no exception. Some people wondered why it took so long to find the bodies that were so close to the potential last place where Dennis Flowers was seen. But honestly, as an investigator, that's not really the part that I find strange, because sadly, I've seen many other cases where
unfortunately police failed to find bodies that were nearby. I'm thinking of Ebbie Stepek's case. Ebbie's body was found in drain pipe just a few feet from her abandoned car in a West Little Rock park, almost three years after she went missing. And sometimes many times bodies do sync to the bottom of bodies of water and then float up a few days later as gases are released.
But even though the.
Autopsy mentioned skin slippage, I have seen the autopsy report, and I've seen photos of the body, this body appears to have no distortion or bloating that one would expect if Dennis's body had been in the water for ten days. Tommy Bryant told k r K that one of the law enforcement officers who had been on the scene made a comment and said something like he looked like he'd been in the water for ten hours, not ten days.
According to the autopsy, Dennis had needle marks in his arms as well as crystals in his lungs, and this was indicative of long term drug use. Of injecting drugs, Dennis's blood tested negative for alcohol and for other drugs. Dennis had over ten times a fatal dose of cocaine in his blood, but Dennis had a massive amount of cocaine in his stomach according to the autopsy report, over twenty ounces, and he also had a lot of water in his lungs.
The autopsy report.
Noted something called emphysema aquasum, which means that the lungs were very heavy and very spongy. According to some literature that I was reading on drowning deaks, this often happens when someone is conscious and struggling to live. They're fighting for their life and so they end up fighting to
breathe and ingesting a lot of water. This seems like a horrific way to die, and this led a lot of people to believe that Dennis did not kill himself voluntarily, that someone had forced him to take those drugs to od and then to make sure that he drowned in that pond. They also wondered if he had really been out there for ten days, because there were reports that
this area had already been searched. Rumors started to circulate that people in the drug trade, potentially bikers, had held him hostage for several days and then finally drowned him in the pond. But there were elements of physical evidence that, at least on the surface, appeared to match Lamar and
the Tisdale stories. The Tisdale's saying he showed up at the house, the fact that Dennis was with Lee that night, and the things that Dennis had said in front of the Tisdale's to his attorney on the phone about two people being dead, one of them working at consumer pharmacy. The stuff that he said did lead police to believe
that he had been the killer. It's definitely possible, in fact almost certain, that Dennis was there when Lee and Karen were murdered, but Dennis's family have serious doubts about whether Dennis was the sole person responsible. They wonder whether he was forced into something. They also don't believe that he drowned in under three feet of water. In a lot of online forums, a lot of people are wondering if the manner of death suicide should be changed to
our canicide. There was another podcast called Coroner Talk. They did an interview with the coroner in this case, and they also talked to some experts and seemed to come to the same conclusion. They don't believe that the evidence supports the fact that the body was out in the water that long. The Coroner Talk podcast is very interesting. We're going to put the link in this episode, and if you're curious about more of the forensics, I highly suggest that you check it out.
There were other pieces of evidence that didn't seem to make sense.
First, there were the things that were missing, including a gold watch that Dennis always wore, and then there were the things that were in plane sight. Dennis's wallet was found near Lee and Karen's bodies in that house, but his family considers this the ultimate sign of a stage murder scene. They wonder could Dennis have really been dumb or high enough to leave that wallet out in plain sight, or could someone have.
Planted it there.
There were reportedly thirty two different fingerprints taken from the Dixon home. None of them were a match to Dennis flowers. There was only one single print that was a match to Dennis, and it was found on a full seven up can, So there was one single perfect fingerprint.
The soda can was full.
We come back to what Tommy Bryant said to KRK in twenty sixteen, because after he explained that one of the officers said that man hasn't been in the pond for ten hours, let alone ten days. Apparently, according to Tommy, the officer also made another comment. He said, quote someone paid a lot of money for that hit.
End quote.
KRK also talked to the attorney Lamar Pettis in twenty sixteen, and it's interesting because Lamar told Kark a different story than the one that can be found in the transcripts in the case file. He told Kark in twenty sixteen that Dennis had made a comment telling him that two people were killed and that he would never hurt a child. So when Lamar talked to KRK, he said Dennis did not confess to the two murders. And as we all know, saying two people were killed is completely different than saying
he killed two people. Lamar told the news station he thinks Dennis got mixed up with a bad crowd, but he does not believe he's capable of murder. I took another look back at the case file, the part that's been made public. There's a transcript of Lamar's interview with the investigator Doug Fogley. There's no audio of that transcript,
but we have to work with what we have. In the transcript, Lamar is quoted is saying that Dennis did say he killed two people, and Dennis said he had two hostages there that.
He didn't plan to hurt.
Lamar told police that at that time, Dennis was also concerned about his wife, Linda, getting money for her and the kids, and also for his first wife. He apparently said that he loved her and that he had regrets, and then he said something else. According to Lamar, Dennis Flowers said that he never wanted to kill anyone, but that quote, someone was trying to blackmail me.
End quote.
The investigator Doug Fogley asked Lamar to clarify this. Lamar said again, Dennis told him someone was trying to blackmail me. Lamar said that after he hung up, and this was around four fifteen am, he told his wife Dennis said he just killed two people. He said he was going to call around and see what he could reveal due to attorney client privileges. Then Lamar called his law partner and during that conversation, he said Dennis had told him, quote, I've killed two people.
They were blackmailing me. End quote. So which is it?
Did Dennis say that he killed two people or that two people were killed? Was that something that Lamar thought he heard? And then he sort of attributed to Dennis when he made the next phone call. Figuring out this phone tree is such an important part of figuring out this case. And also what did he mean about that blackmail when he said that? Was he referring to Lee and Karen or he referring to someone else, maybe someone who forced Dennis to leave his wallet there for some reason.
Tommy Bryant has made it clear that he believes that Dennis Flowers did not act alone. He said to KRK, quote the idea that a man would brutally murder two people, tie one of them up, and yet was dumb enough to leave a thumb print on a seven up can. I don't know how you pick up a can with your thumb with no other fingerprints. Tommy called the murders,
cold calculated, and point blank. He said he believes law enforcement wanted to close this case fast, so that's why after Dennis's body was found, police were very quick to rule this suicide and put an end to what they believe was a very ugly affair in their town.
He believes that for political.
Reasons, the authorities wanted to get this case off the front pages of the newspaper. Tommy said that after he asked for a copy of the case file, he was shocked at the lack of evidence he said police had. He said the thing that struck him most was that the one fingerprint they had was the single one on the seven up can.
He said.
When he asked police about the evidence and how they knew that they had the right guy, he claims police told him, quote, he left his billfold there so we'd find it so we'd know it was him, end quote. And Tommy has made clear he does not believe that that is a satisfactory conclusion.
He said he doesn't buy that theory.
Dennis's family also does not believe that Dennis, after leaving the Tisdale home, took a massive amount of cocaine on his own drowned himself in a pond and floated there for ten days. I'm going to circle back for a second to Gail Vaut's case because some people who've contacted me have pointed out that some of the names that have come up as being involved in the drug trade that Gail's boyfriend was allegedly involved in, came up in
this double homicide. Now, after this case, we can clearly see that the people who sold drugs in Fayettebule did seem to be able to make things happen, to make people pay, and to make them disappear. I believe that there is a substantial body of evidence that does point to the fact that Dennis Flowers may not have acted alone.
There are a lot of questions and a lot of red flags in these murders, But when it comes to Gail Vought, I still don't think, at least according to what we've seen and found so far, that there is any evidence that the drug trade was involved in the same way in Gail's case. Again, I believe that there are compelling reasons why other people may have been involved in Dennis Flower's death.
There were the heavy.
Lungs, the signs of struggle, the fact that the body showed very few signs of being out in the elements after ten days. There was also the circumstantial evidence, the fact that we know that Lee was desperate, that he, with the help of dentists, had robbed his own workplace, and that to avoid jail time, he may have started asking questions about how to become an informant. And even if he didn't, the people that he was running drugs for may have been afraid that he would start asking
those questions. There are compelling reasons why people high up in what they call the Ozark drug mafia could have wanted Lee and Dennis Flowers dead. Another commenter on a story about this case actually at the bottom of the Coroner Talk podcast episode says that it's from a former police officer, and this person claims to have worked in the area in Arkansas when Lee and Karen were murdered
back in the day. He said, back then he believed some of his colleagues thought that police suffered from tunnel vision. When it came to this case, he said he had his own theory, which actually I find somewhat plausible, so I'm going to repeat it. This person said that he always believed that motorcycle gang members from Oklahoma City were
the ones who really killed Lee and Karen Dixon. He said he believed they forced Dennis Flowers to ring the doorbell that night at the Dixon house because Ifnis was there, these guys knew Lee and Karen would answer the door. Then this person believes they got Dennis to leave his wallet there as sort of collateral. They tied Karen to a chair and forced Dennis to go with them as a hostage.
What happened after that is unclear.
Maybe Dennis was supposed to come back for Lee and Karen, maybe he couldn't, or maybe he got scared and ran.
There are other possibilities too.
It is possible that with all this going on, that Dennis did leave his wallet there in a panic, but the timing still doesn't make sense. I believe it's very possible, based on the condition of the body, that Dennis was kept hostage for several days by someone else.
What do you think he meant by he was being blackmailed? Well, you can take it probably several different ways. But you know, I think that him and Lee were involved in some shady business as far as the cocaine and the pharmacy came up short, and I don't know if it's money that he owed my dad owed somebody some money, or that's I mean, that's speculation on my part. I don't
know what the black male comes down to. And I don't even doubt you know that they could have been threatening to us, you know, as his children being there. You know, I don't know. I don't know what the black mail per se is. It's aft speculation and what we you know, we'll never know exactly what happened, and
I've come to terms with that. I would like to I would like to hope there's still people alive that do know exactly what happened, But you know, I've come to terms with I may never know, other than I know that, you know my dad, he would have never killed anyone, let alone a pregnant woman. And you know, his fingerprints were not on the tape that balance over, you know. I mean, so that in itself is like you know, you scratch your head, well, there's fingerprints on it,
but they're not his. So why can't we run those friends and find out who they belonged to.
After KRK did their report, they reported that the State Crime lab did find several other sets of fingerprints at that crime scene. They were tested in the nineteen eighties, but there were no matches. Then KRK reported that in twenty fifteen, Fayetteville police ran the Old Prince again, but
apparently there were no matches found. But all of these families, Lee's, Karen's, and Dennis's believed that somewhere out there, someone knows something about an entire family being murdered in one night, a little boy left without parents, and another man's children wondering what really happened to their dad out in that pond.
You know, he was the life of the party as far as if you knew him, you loved him. He made you feel special, he made you feel listened to. You know, he could make you smile instantly. He was just a great guy. And I think he was definitely a people person, and I think that's a great quality. And also I think for him it was his demise.
At the same time, Tommy told k r KAY that his sister Karen's unborn baby was a girl. He said that every time he visits those three graves, he hopes that someone might come forward someday. 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, Executive producers of
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. 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 seven eight seven four four six one four five that six seven eight seven four four six one four five
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