On the night of December 2nd, 1976, three girls - 13 year old Teresa Williams, 14 year old Crystal Donita Parton, and 13 year old Cynthia Mabry were hanging out together at the Fairview Estates apartments in Russellville Arkansas. At some point that day, all three girls disappeared. 

The girls were planning to run away to Texas. The last person to see them alive was a man named James B. Grinder. They got into his car and no one ever saw any trace of the girls again. 

Until 10 years later, Thanksgiving day of 1986, when a couple were deer hunting south of Brock Cemetery when they found a human skull laying near a tree. 

This was just the beginning of an investigation into an Ozark serial killer. 

 

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On Friday, October 27, 1989, 10-year-old Amy Mihaljevic rode her bike to Bay Middle School in Bay Village, Ohio. She was excited about yearbook photo retakes, but after classes ended Amy’s mother expected a daily check-in call, and although Amy phoned her saying her choir tryout went well, she never came home. 

Investigators learned Amy had actually walked to the nearby Bay Square Shopping Center with friends after school. An unknown caller had convinced her to meet them there to buy a “gift” for her mother — a story that wasn't true. Witnesses saw her speaking with a man in the parking lot before she vanished. Months later, on February 8, 1990, a jogger discovered Amy’s body in a rural cornfield in Ashland County, ending the search but leaving behind a haunting mystery.

 

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

IG: @hellandgonepod

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On August 3, 2009, police found Shannon Hercutt dead inside her car, which had plunged off a cliff just off of Walker Trail in Sevier County, Tennessee. At first, the Tennessee highway patrol said Shannon had died in a car accident. But a few days later, Shannon Hercutt’s manner of death was changed to homicide. Who killed Shanoon Hercutt? 

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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On December 20, 1984, 12-year-old Jonelle Matthews returned home from a Christmas choir concert in Greeley, Colorado, and appeared to settle in for the evening, leaving her shoes, clothes, and a note from a phone call before mysteriously disappearing.

When her father and sister arrived home later and couldn’t find her, police were called and quickly announced that they believed Jonelle had been kidnapped, as there were no signs she had left voluntarily. Jonelle remained missing until 30 years...

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

Or you can send us a message on Instagram @hellandgonepod

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On Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1997, 16-year-old Karen Mitchell vanished in Eureka, California. Originally from Whittier near Long Beach, she had moved north a few months earlier to live with her aunt and uncle, hoping the rural setting would suit her nature-loving personality better than Southern California.

That afternoon, Karen caught a ride with her aunt to Bayshore Mall, then left around 2:45 p.m. to walk about a mile along Broadway (US 101) to her daycare job...but she never arrived. When her aunt came to pick her up hours later, Karen was gone. Despite immediate searches and her mother’s desperate trip north, Karen Mitchell was never seen again. 

 

If you have a case you’d like us to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Or, you can send us a message on Instagram @hellandgonepod

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Hi, Hell and Gone listeners! We're excited to share with you a sneak peek at iHeartPodcasts' latest release, Paper Ghosts!

Paper Ghosts: In the heart of Texas, teens are dying. Suspicious suicides, strange accidents, and brutal murders litter 1980's Parker County. Weatherford, the same town where the series

“Yellowstone” was filmed, is the hardest-hit. Locals have many theories: the KKK runs rampant... a corrupt sheriff’s department... or could the Weatherford Police Department be covering up all of these crimes to protect a sadistic killer?

 

Desperate to keep its deepest, darkest secrets from being exposed, could one sick individual be at the root of it all?  Or are the killers working in tandem? M. William Phelps digs in and, after being warned to stay away (or else), he begins to

piece together answers in many of these decades-old cold cases.

Listen to Paper Ghosts on the iHeartRadio App or wherever you get your podcasts!

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On June 10, 2006, 21-year-old Deidre Harm was headed to a night out with friends. She had a four-month-old daughter, Vegas, and had hired a babysitter to watch her. She and her friends went out downtown in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. And then, she never came home. She never called her babysitter. She simply disappeared. 

For months, Deirdre’s friends and family looked for her, sharing her missing poster all around town. But they found no trace of her. Police eventually began to believe that they were on the trail of a serial killer. The investigation spanned 19 years and several states - and focused on a man living a double life.  A man who police believe is responsible for at least three murders, and there could be other victims out there. 

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

Follow us: @hellandgonepod 

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On Sunday June 17, 2024, Jay Slater, a 19-year-old bricklayer’s apprentice who lived in Lancashire, England was on his first ever foreign holiday. And he seemed to be having a blast.  

He had gone to the island of Tenerife in Spain with a female friend named Lucy and a guy named Brad. That night he and Lucy went out to a music festival called New Rave Generation. It was held at Papagayo Beach Club, along a strip called Veronica’s Strip that has a ton of nightclubs and neon signs.

It was there he met two British men and somehow they made a plan to go on to their Airbnb. 

The next morning, Lucy got one last frantic call from Jay just after 8 am, saying he was lost, didn’t know where he was, and was panicked. He never showed up again. 

So was Jay kidnapped and murdered, did he wander off into the wilderness or did something else happen to him? 

This case is wild. It has exposed the seedy underside of this island and the criminal underworld that are operating there, including drug lords and mobsters dubbed the timeshare killers. And everyone from police detectives to psychics and TikTok stars have descended on this tiny island in the Canaries to find a young man who was partying and vanished without a trace right in the middle of an island full of tourists.

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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On Monday September 30, 2004, 18-year-old college student Brittany Phillips was found dead in her apartment in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She was a student at Tulsa Community College, went to her evening chemistry class with her friend Lydia. 

She was found lying next to her bed. Clothing was found scattered all around her in a haphazard way, and the balcony doors to her second floor apartment were open. Investigators believed she had been dead for at least a couple of days. 

News reports said that she had been raped, and strangled, but he medical examiner’s report stated that there was no definitive evidence of sexual assault. 

What happened to Brittany Phillips? And could her killer already be behind bars, or is he still out roaming the streets? 

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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On Monday September 27, 2004, 18-year-old Brittany Phillips, a student at Tulsa Community College, drove home from campus with her friend Lydia. They just took a chemistry test, and Brittany was looking forward to hanging out and celebrating her nineteenth birthday, which was coming up on October 4. 

But then as the week rolled on, Lydia didn't hear from Brittany. And then, she noticed that Brittany didn’t show up for their next class on Wednesday. Lydia was unsure if she was overreacting, but her gut told her that something was wrong. 

She called in a welfare check, and when first responders and police arrived, they found Brittany’s body in the bedroom of her apartment. News reports said that she had been raped, and strangled. 

In the two decades since, ex-boyfriends and strangers have been questioned, sex offenders have been investigated, DNA swabs have been taken, but there are still no suspects. And the information that we found made me question if a lot of the “facts” that have been reported about this case are true at all. 

We’re going to be going back to the beginning and ask some fundamental questions. Could the timeline of Brittany’s murder be off by up to 48 hours? Was Brittany definitely raped? Was this the work of someone who knew her and staged the crime scene, or could it have been a serial killer? And could that person still be out there? 

And finally, could police have been on the wrong trail all this time?

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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