Lawrence Stidham was feeling under the weather. It was a Tuesday like any other, same chronic health issues, and staying home sounded like the right idea. Sitting and flipping channels, he hears his daughter arrive. The plastic of the laundry basket clicking against the door frame and the screen door's familiar squeak before clapping shut with a metallic twang. The thud of the basket dropping makes Lawrence turn to call out a greeting, a welcome and his fatigue is forgotten momentarily as he gets a brief embrace and a greeting in return.
It must be Tuesday, they joke. Laundry day at Mom and Dad's! They share a father-daughter chuckle, and Lawrence asks if she wouldn't mind running over to Phillips Foods to pick up his prescription. It should be ready, and he just doesn't feel up to the drive. He promises to switch the clothes over to the dryer if they turn off while she's gone. She waves and heads back out the door into the warm July sun. Lawrence relaxes in for the wait, barely registering the car turning over and pulling away. It's the last time he'll ever see his daughter Dana alive.
The murder of 18 year old Dana Stidham, in the summer of 1989, is one of the coldest unsolved murders in Arkansas.
Stidham was last seen alive leaving Phillips Food Center in Bella Vista on July 25, 1989. Later, that day, her car was found abandoned on Highway 71, north of Belle Vista Town Centre in Arkansas. The only clue to any investigative timeline was the receipt for her father's medication. It was found in her car, time stamped 3:17 PM. There were no obvious signs of a struggle, the car keys were still in the ignition, and her wallet was found intact inside the vehicle.
Two months would pass without news.
The Hunter
Suddenly, on a chilly Saturday morning, Dana's body was found in an isolated, remote and heavily-wooded section of Benton County. It was September 16, 1989. The remains were discovered by a hunter, partially buried in a creek bed. The site was situated far in the eastern corner of Bella Vista, near the Arkansas-Missouri border, in the Newburn Lane area.
He didn’t report finding Dana's partially buried skeletonized remains until the next day.
The police at the time believed that the perpetrator was local, as this area was extremely remote and secluded; happening upon this area seemed improbable. They believed their suspect knew the area and had spent some time there previous to the body disposal event.
According to the most recent NBC local article:
The Arkansas State Medical Examiner's Office in Little Rock, Arkansas said Dana died after being stabbed in the neck - the manner of death was Homicide, but the cause of death could not be determined. The body was badly decomposed and efforts were made to determine if she had been sexually assaulted. Her clothes were found strewn nearby. Dana's purse was found in the area of Chaucer and Hanover Roads in Bella Vista. Personal items, including her checkbook, driver's license and other items were found a few miles north of where her car was found along Highway 71 N.
The Good Samaritan
There were several reports made by various members of the public. At least one mentioned seeing her car along the road where it would eventually be found deserted. According to one tip, she had stopped on the side. Her left rear tire was flattened slightly, and an unidentified man knelt by it with tools.
This person impersonating a mechanic, if that was the ruse, used a common technique to deflate the tire and then play The Good Samaritan role. He was reported as being an African-American male, with no additional details reported.
If this was the case, he tracked Stidham down from a stable location. Letting air out of the tire or otherwise tampering with thy car, could only have been done while she was away from it.
It's also possible this was a crime of opportunity, that the tire was running low on air for unrelated reasons and that The Good Samaritan simply took advantage of the situation. Neither version has been officially confirmed. If The Good Samaritan was the person who killed her, he was presumably an African American male, if the accuracy of the witnesses is to be believed. That unidentified man was never found.
Police also received reports of people seeing:
a three tone Chevrolet Ranchero with a medium green top, a dark wood grain inser in the middle, and the lower part of the truck was white, it may have belonged to the unidentifiable man and was the car the killer drove.
The Suspects
There have been several persons of interest in this investigation. The two primary suspects that have been considered are:
"In 1996, a Benton County Judge ordered then-26-year-old Michael Earl McMillan to submit a hair sample to investigators who were working to solve Dana’s murder. McMillan, who was Dana’s high school classmate, allegedly said to detectives that 'sometimes I think I did kill Dana, but I know I didn’t,' according to local newspaper Tulsa World."
"Another potential suspect, Orville Mitchell Goodwin, surfaced in 2013 when the Benton County Sheriff’s Office reopened the case. According to a report by Arkansas ABC station KHBS/KHOG-TV, investigators at the time used new technology to reexamine evidence and suspects connected with the murder. Those close to the case did not confirm whether Goodwin, accused of shooting a woman in the face in May of that year, was one of the suspects they were looking into."
There were two similar cases, Patricia Guardado and Amanda Tusing, that are also often mentioned in the same conversations as Dana Stidham. To date, no concrete evidence has established that all three are conclusively linked. Dana is survived by mother, Georgia Stidham, who continues to hold out hope that she will live to see justice for her daughter.
Source Material:
http://www.4029tv.com/article/investigators-reopen-1989-cold-case/4387520
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