On November 18, 1987 29-year-old Russell Dardeen, who went by his middle name Keith, did not show up to his 7 a.m. shift at a local water plant.  

This was very unlike Keith, who lived in a mobile home in the tiny town of Ina, Illinois. The area back then had a population of just 460. He lived with his family: his wife 30-year-old Ruby Elaine, who also went by her middle name, and their 3-year-old son, Peter. 

Elaine was seven months pregnant. They were excited about the new baby, due January 11, and already had potential names picked out: If the baby was a girl they were going to name her Casey, if it was a boy, he would be Ian. 

Keith’s shift supervisor went to the mobile home and knocked on the door, but no one answered. So then he called Keith’s parents, Russell and Joanne Dardeen. Neither of them had heard from Keith or anyone else in the family. 

Both Russell and Joanne spoke with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office, and they agreed to do a welfare check.

An officer knocked on the front door. No answer. So they went around to the back. The door was unlocked. When police entered the trailer, they found three dead bodies in the main bedroom in the same bed. 

There was blood everywhere.The victims had been beaten to death. It was Elaine and her son Peter, and police later said that during the prolonged attack the killer beat Elaine so severely that she went into labor and gave birth to her daughter, and then the killer, or killers, beat the baby to death. 

Then they neatly wrapped Elaine, her baby and Peter in the bedding and tucked them into their waterbed. And Keith was nowhere to be found. 

Even now, 38 years later, people in Ina, Illinois and law enforcement who worked this case describe it as the most horrific murder that anyone has ever seen.

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On December 17, 2013, 20-year-old Heather Elvis headed out on a first date in Carolina Forest, South Carolina, west of Myrtle Beach in Horry County. 

Heather grew up in this area, which is known for its beautiful beaches. Her parents and her younger sister described her as a kind fun-loving young woman who had dreams of working in cosmetology.

After graduating from high school in 2011, Heather was making her dreams happen. She was working two jobs. She was a hostess at the Tilted Kilt in Myrtle Beach and at the House of Blues in North Myrtle Beach. She was  also studying cosmetology. She had moved into an apartment in Carolina Forest with a friend of hers named Brianna. Even though the population was just over 23,000, their apartment was located in a huge, busy subdivision. 

But Heather's life had taken a pretty dark turn over the past few months. She had gotten into a relationship with a man much older than her, and it had been dramatic.

She was starting to date again, and her friends and family said that she seemed more like herself. It seemed like life was finally getting back to normal. 

But something happened after Heather got home that night. She got a call, and then, she changed into her favorite outfit, and she went out, driving her green Dodge Intrepid. After that, she vanished.  

Where did she go that dark that night? And what happened to Heather Elvis?

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On January 7, 1995, 43-year-old Connie Townsend’s home burned to the ground in Brockwell, Arkansas in front of over 20 witnesses. 

Connie was moving out of her house that day. She had separated from her estranged husband, David Townsend years earlier. David had been staying with his parents, Dale and Ramona, and also with his girlfriend of three years, JoAnn Ellis. 

But according to Connie’s daughters, Stacy and Amber, David was angry that day and had threatened Connie. They also said that David had threatened to burn the house down in the past. 

Connie’s body was found in a utility room; she was lying face down with a pair of sewing scissors underneath her body. 

Investigators said that Connie had died of smoke and soot inhalation, and according to the autopsy report there was no tissue left. 

And it seemed like after investigators went through the charred remains of her trailer, they had a lot more questions. Was Connie’s death due to an accidental fire, or murder and arson? 

We had heard from Connie’s daughters that Connie’s  body was found in a junk room, a bedroom that they kind of used as a utility room.  If there was a fire, why would Connie shut herself into a closet in the back of the utility room, a place where there was no escape?  Or could someone have put her in that closet?

If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. 

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On January 7, 1995, at around 12:50 pm, two women, Monica Jones and her girlfriend Cheryl Edwards were driving down Highway 56 near Brockwell, Arkansas when Cheryl saw smoke coming from a trailer at the residence of 43-year-old Connie Townsend. 

The two women pulled over and ran up to the trailer to try to help. At around that same time, another woman, Billy Browning arrived. Monica and Cheryl both desperately tried to get inside the trailer, but the heat was too intense. 

The trailer was already engulfed in flames. 

By the time the first officer from the Izard County Sheriff's Office and the Calico Rock fire department arrived on the scene, it was chaos. 

According to the police report, the officer noted that there were about 20 to 25 people standing in the yard. 

Connie Townsend burned to death while it seemed like half the town stood outside, and multiple people told police about threats that she had allegedly received, some of them earlier that day. And yet, 30 years later no one has ever been arrested or charged in connection with her death. 

If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. 

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On June 1, 1987, Theresa Ann Bier was about to go on an adventure… into the woods to look for Bigfoot. Theresa was sixteen years old, and was wrapping up her freshman year at Fresno High in Fresno, California.  She was one year behind a lot of her classmates, which wasn’t surprising because she  was living in a very abusive environment with her uncle John Richmond, his two young sons, and his 17-year-old girlfriend. 

Theresa’s plan was to skip school June 1 and drive into the Sierra Nevada Mountains for the day with a 43-year-old friend of her uncle’s, Russell “Skip” Welch. But Theresa never came home, and soon, the man who took her into the woods was rambling about Theresa being taken by a monster. 

The case made local news, and on Friday, June 19, 1987, The Fresno Bee published a newspaper article about this case with the headline  “Man blames Bigfoot for missing girl.” But this was more than a tabloid story. This case would involve allegations of sex slavery, serial killers, drug use, Bigfoot colonies - and at the heart of this story, a system that completely failed a young woman on every single level - a system that allowed a sixteen year old to vanish without a trace. 

If you have a case you’d like Catheerine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

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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, just cash, a couple fake IDs, and his cell phone. He caught a ride with his friends to the club. But when they arrived, his friends didn’t want to pay the cover charge and left. Justin saw someone in line who he knew and was able to get in for free and went into the club on his own. He said that it was no problem. He would find a ride. This was something he did often.

A while later, in the early morning hours of November 2, 2007, Justin walked out into that parking lot in Duluth, and no one ever saw him again.  

If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

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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 Audrii went missing, people started taking a look at what was really going on behind the closed doors of this house in rural Texas. We talk about stranger danger, but with this case, sometimes the most terrifying people can be living inside our home.

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.

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In 2012, six years after 21-year-old college student Nina Ingram was strangled at her apartment in Fayetteville, there was an arrest and a man named Rico Cohn was charged with Nina’s murder. But after a key witness died suddenly, the criminal case against Rico was dismissed. 

His legal team filed a CIVIL LAWSUIT against the Fayetteville Police Department, suing several officers who worked on his case as well employees as the Arkansas State Crime Lab. 

They alleged that the case against Rico Cohn was weak, basically nonexistent - that there was no physical evidence against Rico Cohn and that the witness, Randee Applewhite, told them that she was NOT at all sure that Rico had committed the crime. 

Eventually, the lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed. And the ENTIRE case against Rico Cohn was sealed by a judge. Now as we said last week the lawsuit is obviously only one side of the story. But there are a lot of details in the civil lawsuit about investigations that were done by Rico’s attorneys for both the civil and criminal lawsuits - and about leads that the Fayetteville Police Department allegedly failed to follow up on.  

One of them was a person described as Person of Interest B - who, from reading through the events of the case file, appeared to match the description of Jarvis Allan Harper, a man who worked with Nina Ingram at the Sixth Street Walmart at the time she was murdered. 

So we went back and tried to figure out how did Jarvis's name first come to the attention of the Fayetteville Police Department and if there were other leads that should have been investigated. 

What else did the police miss?

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Sometime after ten pm on April 21, 2006, 21-year-old college student Nina Ingram was brutally murdered inside her apartment in Fayetteville, Arkansas. 

The cause of death was ligature strangulation, and The Arkansas State Crime lab ruled the death a homicide. Despite  the fact that detectives interviewed dozens of Nina’s friends, coworkers and her significant other, they had no viable suspects for years. 

The Fayetteville Police Department considered this a cold case, their only unsolved one at the time since the 1970s. But then in 2012 they arrested and charged  26-year-old Rico Tavarous Cohn with Nina’s murder. 

But the case against Rico Cohn was not as solid as it appeared to be on the surface. He spent over three years behind bars, and then, the case against him was dismissed.

Three years later in 2018, Rico filed a civil lawsuit against the Fayetteville Police Department detectives and employees at the Arkansas State Crime Lab who he alleged violated his civil rights. 

This lawsuit claimed that there were several people of interest who police interviewed who were potential suspects...suspects that the lawsuit alleges were overlooked. 

The person who murdered Nina has never been found. This person is still out there. Could the answers to finding Nina’s killer be there and is this person still out there?  

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Sometime after 10 p.m. on April 21, 2006, 21-year-old college student Nina Ingram was brutally murdered inside her apartment in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It became big news, at the time it was one of only two unsolved murder cases in Fayetteville since the 1970s. 

Police interviewed Nina’s neighbors, her boyfriend, her friends and family but failed to identify a single suspect. 

Her case went cold. Until six years later in 2012 when a 26-year-old man named Rico Tavarous Cohn was arrested and charged with Nina’s murder. 

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 at 678-744-6145. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.