Hell and Gone

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...

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, sha...

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 Pap...

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 ope...

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 B...

This week, we continue with the disappearance of Jennifer Wix and her daughter Adrianna. Could Jennifer have left voluntarily and started a new life? Could she have left with someone in that white car and then that person harmed her or Adrianna?  Or, could, as the Wix family suspects, the answers lie closer to where Jennifer was last seen on or around the 100 acres owned by the Bentons? If yo...

On March 25, 2004, 21-year-old Jennifer Wix was in crisis.  Jennifer lived in Robertson County, Tennessee and was a single mother to her two-year-old daughter, Adrianna, who she adored.  She and Adrianna had moved in with her boyfriend, William Joseph “Joey” Benton, and his parents, Cynthia and Franklin Joseph Benton, a few months before in December.  But the situation a...

The morning of Friday May 25, 1979, started out like just another day for Julie Patz; her husband Stan, a photographer; and their children, eight-year-old Shira, six-year-old Etan and two-year-old Ari.  It was a busy morning. Julie ran a daycare out of her Soho loft at 113 Prince Street in New York City, and she was getting her own kids ready for the day and at the same time, preparing for th...

On August 24, 2012, a Vietnam veteran who had been staying at the Lake Lanier Club Apartments off Dawsonville Highway in Gainesville, Georgia with his daughter and grandchildren, was taking a walk through the woods behind the complex. The man liked taking nature walks, and he was also following up on a report that he had made to the apartment management about a missing manhole cover. He later told...

At 1:40 AM on Saturday, September 28, 1974, police got a call about a traffic accident on State Highway 77 in Crittenden County Arkansas, three miles north of the Lake David Overpass. When they got there they found a 1964 Chevrolet which was stopped in the southbound lane of the highway.  Near the abandoned car in a ditch, they found the body of 35-year-old Fred New Jr., a married father of t...

On June 14, 2000, there was a huge storm brewing in northeast Arkansas. It had been raining heavily all day and according to local weather data, tornados had hit. Over 100 trees were downed, power lines were down and homes were destroyed.  Twenty year old Amanda Tusing was hanging out with her fiancé, Matt Ervin, at his apartment in Jonesboro. Amanda lived 40 miles away in Dell, A...

It was around midnight on Sunday August 25, 1996, and 14-year-old Caroline Glachan was out walking on a path by the River Leven in Bonhill, Scotland. She told a friend she was on her way to a date.  Caroline's curfew was 2 am. But she never made it home. In the morning, her mother woke up, alarmed. She started calling Caroline’s friends, but no one had seen her. So she called the police...

In the early morning hours of n July 30 1977, Charles Boatwright was hanging out with his cousin Ronnie Lewis at the home of another cousin of theirs Loy Harriman in Wesley, Arkansas.  According to police statements, the three cousins stayed up all night, and early in the morning, they decided to go fishing in an area called War Eagle.  At around 5 AM they piled into Charles’ truck...

It was around 7 pm on August 13, 1981, and 36-year-old Carol Morgan was working the till at her corner shop in a town called Leighton Buzzard in the county of Bedfordshire, England.  This was a close knit community. Carol owned and ran the shop with her husband, Allen Morgan. Everyone in town knew and loved Carol, who was described by friends and family as warm, caring, genuine and friendly....

On Monday, December 11, 2023 22-year-old Lauren Johansen and her boyfriend, Bricen Rivers, were on vacation in Nashville and out at a bar.  Bricen and Lauren had known each other for years. They had dated on and off since high school and on the surface, seemed happy. But behind the scenes, the relationship was violent. Lauren’s father later told police that Bricen was physically abusive...

On June 27, 2000, Magi Bish drove her 16-year-old daughter, Molly Bish, to her summer lifeguarding job at Comins Pond in Warren, Massachusetts. Molly, the youngest in a close-knit family with her parents Magi and John, sister Heather, and brother John Jr., had started her new job eight days prior.  A bright, athletic, and social teen, Molly had just been to her first prom, was on the honor ro...

In the early morning hours of July 4, 2002, 4-year-old Dannarriah Finley was sleeping in her bedroom in her home in Orange, Texas.  Orange is the easternmost city in Texas, and it’s right across the border from Louisiana on the Sabine River. It feels like a small town. The population was only about 19,000.  Dannarriah lived with her mother, 26-year-old Jaime Arnold, and her two sis...

On Friday, December 12, 1980 at approximately 6:45 in the morning, the Mississippi County Sheriff’s Department got a call about a female body lying on the side of Highway 181, just south of Highway 158. The woman was dressed in a striped red colored dress and velveteen jacket and was five foot five. She weighed around 115 pounds.  It wasn’t hard to figure out the cause of death. B...

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...

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, Heathe...

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 t...

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 Chery...

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 y...

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...

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...