December 14, 1981. St. John’s, Newfoundland. 14-year old Dana Bradley leaves her friend’s residence to head back home, but she never arrives and eyewitnesses report seeing her hitchhiking and climbing into a vehicle driven by an unidentified man. Four days later, Dana’s body is found in a remote wooded area and she has been killed by multiple blows to the skull with a blunt instrument. Over the next four decades, investigators explore a number of different leads, included a confession from a suspect that is later recanted and an account from a witness who claims he was present when Dana’s murder took place, but these leads never pan out and all attempts to identify the killer are unsuccessful. On this week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we return to our podcast’s home country of Canada to explore what is probably the most famous unsolved cold case from the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

If you have any information about this case, please contact the Newfoundland & Labrador divisional headquarters of the RCMP at (709) 772-5400 or the Crime Stoppers tip line at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

Additional Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Dana_Bradley

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/dana-bradley-s-murder-investigation-active-after-25-years-police-1.583989

https://www.saltwire.com/newfoundland-labrador/news/no-justice-for-dana-126077/

https://www.thewesternstar.com/news/local/man-claims-he-witnessed-dana-bradley-murder-26053/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/new-dna-evidence-discovered-murder-dana-bradley-1.3601040

https://www.saltwire.com/newfoundland-labrador/news/no-evidence-found-by-group-looking-to-connect-cars-to-dana-bradley-murder-43741/

https://theindependent.ca/uncategorized/an-alternate-history-of-the-dana-bradley-murder-investigation/

https://www.thetelegram.com/news/local/some-dana-bradley-murder-suspects-cleared-with-new-dna-127053/

https://vocm.com/2021/12/14/dana-bradley-40-years-since-disappearance-and-murder/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/st-johns-cold-cases-missing-women-1.3608745

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“The Trail Went Cold” will be appearing at the True Crime Podcast Festival, taking place at the Westin Park Central Hotel in Dallas, Texas on August 27-28, 2022. To purchase tickets, please visit https://truecrimepodcastfestival.com/

“The Trail Went Cold” is now doing a weekly livestream show on  GetVokl every Thursday from 7:00-8:00 PM ET as part of their “True  Crime Thursday” line-up. For more information, please visit their website.

The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote.

All music is composed by Vince Nitro.