The Trail Went Cold

July 4, 1954. Bay Village, Ohio. 31-year old Marilyn Reese Sheppard is bludgeoned to death inside her bedroom and her 30-year old husband, Sam Sheppard, is injured after claiming he was attacked by an intruder. Since Sam was known for conducting extramarital affairs, police believe that he fabricated the story and was responsible for killing his wife, so he is charged with Marilyn’s murder. After...

December 7, 2003. Montgomery, Alabama. 19-year old LaQuanta Riley stops off at her mother’s residence to borrow a jacket from her brother. He sees LaQuanta leave in a dark green car being driven by an unidentified man, but she subsequently goes missing. A few weeks later, LaQuanta’s mother receives a garbled message on her answering machine from a panicked woman whom she believes is her daughter a...

November 28, 2004. Nairn, Scotland. An unidentified man arrives at the front door of 30-year old Alistair Wilson and hands him an empty envelope with the name “Paul” written on it. The man shoots Alistair three times and takes the envelope back before fleeing the scene and the murder weapon is found in a nearby drain ten days later. Investigators explore a number of different theories and eventual...

November 19, 2006. Littleton, Colorado. First Lieutenant Nonnie Dotson, a 33-year old nurse with the United States Air Force, has travelled from San Antonio, Texas to Colorado with her infant daughter and is saying with her brother, Tony Dotson. Nonnie leaves Tony’s residence in order to presumably travel to a nearby shopping center, but she never returns. Even though police track Nonnie’s cell ph...

July 12, 1988. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Four-year old Barbara Jean Horn disappears from the front yard of her home before her nude body is discovered inside a cardboard box resting on a curb in the same neighbourhood. Nearly four years later, a suspect named Walter Ogrod, who had lived across the street from Barbara Jean’s residence, is arrested after he confesses to her murder and after two tr...

July 12, 1988. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Four-year old Barbara Jean Horn disappears from the front yard of her home before her nude body is discovered inside a cardboard box resting on a curb in the same neighbourhood. Nearly four years later, a suspect named Walter Ogrod, who had lived across the street from Barbara Jean’s residence, is arrested after he confesses to her murder and after two tr...

If you like highly detailed and thoroughly researched podcasts, you will love “DNA: ID”. The show has over 100 episodes available to binge on right now. This is a sneak preview of Episode 122 , which covers the case of Patricia Stichler. New Years’ Day 1985 should have rung in an exciting new year for Patti Stichler and her three young daughters. Instead, in the middle of the night on January 1-2,...

March 2, 1996. Culpepper County, Virginia. After leaving her home in Baltimore, Maryland in order to drive to Charlottesville, 25-year old Alicia Showalter Reynolds goes missing and her abandoned car is found alongside U.S. Route 29. Eyewitnesses report having seen Alicia speaking with an unidentified man in a pick-up truck and it becomes apparent that he may have tricked Alicia into pulling over...

Since “The Trail Went Cold” originally launched in February 2016, we have featured nearly 500 cold cases on the podcast, a number of which have wound up being solved or have experienced major developments. As a result, we have now released a total of six special “update” episodes and this is our second episode about updates which took place in 2024. This time around, we’ll share major developments...

On this special holiday bonus episode titled “True Crime Convos”, “The Trail Went Cold” has been teamed up with two other fellow true crime podcasters to converse about our various experiences in the medium. Join me as I chat with Melissa of the “Navigating Advocacy Podcast” and Robert Parmer of “The Broken System Podcast”  about such topics as researching cold cases, working with victims’ familie...

Over the past six years, “The Trail Went Cold” has released three special Q&A episodes in which Robin Warder answered a number of questions that were sent in by our audience. We have decided to put together another episode like this and received some interesting new questions from listeners. Which cases from the podcast do you believe will eventually be solved? Do you intend to cover every uns...

December 18, 1979. Moline, Illinois. 30-year old Cody James and 30-year old Gary Harker leave Gary’s woodcarving shop in Cody’s pick-up truck in order to make a delivery and collect some money, but they never return and the truck is later found abandoned across the state line in Davenport, Iowa. Four months after the disappearances, the pick-up is sold off at a police auction, but the new owners a...

December 23, 1988. Orange County, North Carolina. A quartet of friends – 19-year old Kenneth Dungee, 17-year old Kenneth Newkirk, 17-year old Levern Allen and 17-year old Darius Bannerman – leave their homes in Greensboro in order to drive to Raleigh to go Christmas shopping. While travelling down Interstate 40, their car is violently run off the road by a blue Monte Carlo containing a white man a...

May 18, 2024. Redding, California. 39-year old Nikki Cheng Saelee-McCain texts her sister from a hospital and says she is planning to drive to her mother-in-law’s house, but she soon cuts off all contact with her family and disappears. One week later, Nikki’s abandoned truck is discovered 50 miles away in a remote section of Tehama County, but searches of the area fail to find her. Prior to her di...

August 22, 1965. South Bend, Indiana. 49-year old Edward Banish is murdered inside his home after being stabbed seven times. Over two months earlier, Edward’s 18-year old son, Scott Banish, had gone missing after an apparent drowning accident in Lake Michigan, but eight days after his father’s murder, Scott is discovered to be alive and admits to having faked his own death. Even though Scott seems...

Listen to Murder, She Told: an award-winning true-crime podcast created by victim’s advocate, Kristen Seavey that mostly covers lesser-known unsolved cases.  This is a preview of the episode about Ludger Belanger on “Murder, She Told”, which was originally published on November 19, 2024.  Ludger Belanger went missing while hunting in rural Washington, Maine in 1975. Though on the surface, it seeme...

January 12, 1994. Albuquerque, New Mexico. After dropping off a friend at a restaurant, 16-year old Jonathan Francia is carjacked and abducted from the parking lot in his mother’s Chevrolet Camaro. Five days later, the burned-out vehicle is discovered in the Arizona desert nearly 300 miles away and Jonathan’s charred remains are inside the trunk. A suspect named Paul Richardson is soon arrested an...

August 30, 2013. Castaic, California. An overturned abandoned SUV belonging to 19-year old Bryce Laspisa is discovered at the bottom of a steep embankment near Castaic Lake, but even though most of his personal possessions have been left behind, Bryce himself is nowhere to be found. While beginning his sophomore year at Sierra College in Rocklin, Bryce had been displaying erratic behaviour and see...

August 30, 1990. Westerville, Ohio. The mother of 22-year old Tony Lombardi returns home, assuming her son is at work. Forty-five minutes later, she claims that she hears the sound of a door closing followed by footsteps and she soon discovers Tony’s body on his bed. He has been shot through the head and a gun is lying on the floor next to him, but police rule Tony’s death to be a suicide. However...

On December 23rd, 1974, three girls from Fort Worth, Texas vanished: Rachel Trlica, Renee Wilson, and Julie Mosely. After almost 50 years, the case has become steeped in misinformation and sensationalized mythos. In their series on the Fort Worth Missing Trio, Gone Cold attempts to cut through the misconceptions and confusion surrounding Julie, Renee, and Rachel’s disappearances. This is a preview...

November 29, 1980. Duncan, British Columbia. 32-year old Granger Taylor drives away from his family’s farm in his pick-up truck, but never returns. Granger had developed an obsession with UFOs and claimed he started communicating with them and he leaves behind a note in which he states that he is going away on a 42-month interstellar voyage on an alien spacecraft. Five-and-half years later, human...

December 12, 2014. Beaver County, Pennsylvania. A severed head belonging to an elderly woman is discovered in a rural wooded area about thirty feet from the nearest road, but the rest of her remains cannot be found. The head has rubber balls inside its eye sockets and since it has been embalmed, investigators are unable to extract any DNA to make an identification, so the victim becomes known as “...

November 1, 1974. North Adams, Massachusetts. After leaving a dance at a local lodge, 18-year old Kim Benoit goes missing. Two weeks later, Kim’s body is discovered at the bottom of an embankment in a remote area twelve miles away and it is determined that she was the victim of strangulation. In October 1976, 17-year old Cynthia “Rocky” Krizack goes missing after leaving her home in the nearby tow...

September 12, 1983. Wyoming, Ohio. 59-year old Dorothea Irwin is found stabbed to death inside her residence. Since she was in the midst of selling the house and said she was meeting an interested buyer, it is theorized that this person murdered her as part of an elaborate set-up. Suspicion turns towards Dorothea’s son, John “Jay” Irwin, who had previously spent time in prison for fraud and encour...

March 10, 2005. Foley, Missouri. 13-year old Bianca Piper is reported missing by her mother, Shannon Tanner, who claims that she dropped Bianca off on a rural road about a mile from their residence. Bianca struggled with numerous mental health issues, included attention deficit hyperactive disorder and bipolar disorder, and had just gotten into a dispute with her mother. According to Shannon, she...