The Deck

Our card this week is Anita Carlson, the 10 of Spades from Minnesota.  In late June 1987, the town of Bemidji, Minnesota, was gearing up for Independence Day weekend. Celebrations quickly turned to panic when Anita Carlson, a college graduate with hopes of working in TV production, went missing from her nighttime job at Pete’s Place, a convenience store at the intersection of Highways 2 and 89.  B...

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Our card this week is Rosa McMillan, the 9 of Hearts from North Carolina.  On August 6, 1989, Rosa McMillian was found murdered inside that home. She had been brutally attacked—and sexually assaulted—in her own living room. The crime scene didn't make sense, and a few mysterious items were left behind by whoever killed Rosa. Something else left behind? The killer's DNA. In most cases, that would b...

Our card this week is Kevin Nguyen, the 10 of Spades from Indiana. On a cold December night in 2018, 25-year-old Kevin Nguyen went to see a band at a Fort Wayne bar and never came home. Surveillance cameras captured his final known hours in eerie fragments before he vanished. What happened next has fueled years of rumors, online theories, and bitter disagreements between investigators and Kevin’s...

Our card this week is Kelsie Schelling, the 10 of Spades from Colorado. In February 2013, 21-year-old Kelsie Schelling had just learned she was eight weeks pregnant. Hours after her first prenatal appointment, she drove from Denver to Pueblo -  and was never seen again. Kelsie’s body has never been found. But years later, someone was convicted of her murder. How do investigators build a case witho...

Our card this week is Milagros Nieves, the 3 of Clubs from Connecticut. For more than three decades, the family of Milagros Nieves never talked about her murder.  She’d been stabbed 33 times in the presence of her beloved baby granddaughter. The violence of it, the brutality of it, was too much for her family to relive. But when our team at The Deck started looking into Milagros’ case, they uncove...

In July 1984, Clarence and Marjorie Paulson, father and daughter, were reported missing from their home in Minnesota. At first glance, sheriff’s deputies didn’t see any obvious signs of a struggle. Marjorie and Clarence didn’t have driver’s licenses, and the three-wheeler Clarence used to travel was still at his house. Marjorie’s purse and knitting needles were left behind. Neighbors didn’t offer...

Our card this week is Edwin “Eddie” Heath Sr., the King of Hearts from Delaware. For the last eleven years, the mystery of who murdered 33-year-old Eddie has haunted the New Castle County Police. It looked to them like Eddie had been targeted – shot just steps from where he lived and in front of his children. But a few BIG questions remain: Who was the man, possibly in disguise, that shot Eddie th...

When police arrived at the scene of Angelica Sandoval’s disappearance on February 24th, 2011, what they came across seemed eerily frozen in time: her 1995, four-door, green Oldsmobile sedan was parked on 13th Street, in front of her two-bedroom duplex. Her keys were still in the driver’s side lock, but the back driver’s side door of the car was hanging open, revealing a basket of laundry and her p...

In the fall of 1991, just as the season was starting to change, a couple fishing at sunrise at a small lake in Fayetteville, North Carolina, noticed something floating near the surface of the water. At first, they thought it was a blow-up doll. But upon closer inspection,  the couple saw hair on the legs and realized it wasn’t a doll. It was a human being—a person who would be identified as 24-yea...

Our card this week is Tonya Teske, the 2 of Spades from Idaho. This week, we’re resurfacing an important old episode for you because we just learned more information about a person of interest who’s never been ruled out. His name is Mark Douglas Burns, and he's a terrifying individual. He came up in a Crime Junkie episode we dropped in the fan club in which Burns confessed to murdering a young mom...

Our card this week is Nefertiri "Neffie" Trader, the Queen of Hearts from Delaware. In the early hours of June 30th, 2014, 33-year-old Nefertiri, who went by “Neffie”, was kidnapped from her own front yard. In the dark, she was dragged into her car, away from the townhome she shared with her mom and three children. Even though Neffie’s kidnapping was witnessed, it would be almost nineteen hours be...

Our card this week is Terry and Alan Westerfield, the King of Diamonds from North Carolina. In September of 1964, Terry and Alan Westerfield were dropped off at the movies and were never seen again. For the last six decades, the Fayetteville Police Department has been trying to unravel the mystery behind their disappearance.  If you have any information about the disappearance of Terry and Alan We...

In March 1999, 22-year-old Lindsay Wells was reported missing from her Simi Valley home, where she lived with her fiancé and his mother. Since she was reported missing, police have fielded sightings of Lindsay near a Simi Valley 7-Eleven, buying a train ticket headed to Tijuana, and at Disneyland, but these tips never yielded a lead. Since then, the case developments have included work with a psyc...

Our card this week is Marjorie "Christy" Lunda, the 4 of Spades from Florida.  In recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we are sharing the story of Marjorie “Christy” Luna to honor her life and amplify the voices of survivors. From the outside, Greenacres seemed like a picture-perfect place to grow up — where kids roamed barefoot between the park, school, and corner store. But beneath tha...

Our card this week is Jason Vesper, the 10 of Diamonds from Nebraska. The year 2008 had barely gotten started when 40-year-old Jason Vesper found himself in the middle of a family argument with his wife and teenage son. In the early hours of January 2nd, Jason left the family home in Scottsbluff to go for a short drive and blow off some steam. It was his MO when he needed to decompress.  As Jason...

Our card this week is Janet Couture, the Jack of Diamonds from Connecticut. In 1973, Janet Couture was murdered in her home, and for more than five decades the case remained unsolved. Despite years of investigation, the breakthrough came only in 2025, when a longtime suspect with a violent history was finally arrested. If you have any information about other crimes George Legere may have been invo...

Our card this week is Mason Worthington, the Wild Card from Virginia.  In the early hours of December 30, 2018, deputies with the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office were called to the Penniman neighborhood of Williamsburg, initially for a report of shots fired. Then, they were called again: A 20-year-old had been fatally shot in his home. They spend the next several days talking to Mason’s friends, se...

Our card this week is Jeffrey Dale Nichols, the 6 of Diamonds from Utah. Early one June morning in 2004, Jeffrey Nichols told his girlfriend he was meeting his ex-wife in a shopping center parking lot to buy a set of golf clubs.  But his ex-wife told police they were getting together at a McDonald's for a family meeting.  No matter which version is true, one thing is for certain: After the morning...

Our card this week is Kenneth "Kenny" Floyd, a Wild Card from Colorado. When Kenneth “Kenny” Floyd was found dead inside his apartment in Aurora, Colorado, in 1995, detectives found a clue they hoped would lead right to his killer — a trail of their suspect’s blood leading from Kenny’s door to the front of his building. That blood evidence allowed investigators to develop a DNA profile that they t...

Our card this week is Lois West, the Ace of Hearts from Virginia.  One morning in August 1986, a contractor showed up to work on the floors in a vacant house in Williamsburg, Virginia. When he arrived, he found a woman on her side in the mostly-full bathtub. In her wake were a trail of clues: a U.S. Army class ring,  a mysterious hat with feathers, and sightings in what were likely her final hours...

Our card this week is Daphne Hope, the 8 of Spades from Colorado.  In the summer of 2001, Daphne Hope vanished… and for over seven long years, her case disappeared into the reams of files at the Denver Police Department. And even when new detectives did start digging, no one has been able to piece together exactly what happened to Daphne. Over the years, theories about her disappearance have varie...

Our cards this week are Ronda Taylor and Bonnie Ryther, the King of Clubs and 9 of Diamonds from Florida.  There is a man serving a life sentence in a Florida prison for his part in the 1989 murder of a 29-year-old pregnant woman named Donna Callahan. Two brothers were ultimately convicted for her abduction – and each of them pointed to the other as the ultimate preparator. But only one of them wo...

In September 1980, a Holiday Inn hotel in rural Iowa became the scene of a shocking double murder: a couple was found dead in their hotel bed, covered in lacerations. And the scene around them is one of the strangest and most puzzling I’ve ever come across in all my work. It’s one of the reasons this case has gained notoriety over time: I mean, to this day, the hotel where the couple lost their li...

Our card this week is Tangie Sims, the 9 of Diamonds from Colorado. When a young woman was found brutally murdered in an Aurora, Colorado alleyway in October 1996, one eagle-eyed detective zeroed in on forensic evidence he hoped would lead him to her killer. But one by one, that evidence ruled out every person they thought may have killed 25-year-old Tangie Sims and eventually her case went cold....