Hell and Gone Murder Line: The Dermonds

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 2:45 p.m. to walk about a mile along Broadway (US 101) to her daycare job...but she never arrived. When her aunt came to pick her up hours later, Karen was gone. Despite immediate searches and her mother’s desperate trip north, Karen Mitchell was never seen again.    If you have a case you’d like us to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Or, you can send us a message on Instagram @hellandgonepodSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was Friday night, 31 October 1986—Halloween night at the Torah High School yeshiva in Long Beach, New York. Chaim Weiss, a 15-year-old student was alone in his dorm room sleeping. The next morning a faculty member went into Chaim’s room and saw his feet propped against the headboard - then, on the floor, he saw something covered in blood. He had been bludgeoned to death. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On November 12, 1960, eight-year-old Gloria Kowalewicz walked over to her nearby Catholic church, St. Mary of Mount Carmel in Chicago. But she never made it to morning mass. And sixty-four years later, we'd finally get answers as to what happened to little Gloria.  If you have a case you’d like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. @hellandgonepodSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the early morning hours of Saturday October 31 - Halloween, 1981, 39-year-old Ronald Sisman and his new girlfriend, 20-year-old Elizabeth Platzman, were hanging out at his apartment in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.  Later that day, police were called to the building by one of Ronald’s neighbors and when they went in, they found Ronald and Elizabeth’s bodies were in the middle of the chaos - they had both been fatally shot, execution style multiple times. Was this a robbery gone wrong? Or were both parties involved in something worse?  If you have a case you’d like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Elderly couple David and Mina Swan lived in a quiet neighborhood in Clearwater, Florida. But on Saturday September 29, 2018, a neighbor of theirs was concerned when their newspapers started piling up outside. The neighbor called Mina’s daughter, and the pair of them went inside the house. What they found was horrific. David and Mina were at the kitchen table slumped over in pools of blood. The police have admitted that they are stumped, and over three years later the case is still unsolved. Who would have killed David and Mina Swan?  If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In May 2014, 88-year-old Russell Dermond was found decapitated in the garage of his lakefront home in an exclusive Georgia community. His wife, Shirley, was missing. Ten days later, her body surfaced in Lake Oconee. More than twelve years later, no one knows who killed the Dermonds – or why. This week, Catherine Townsend digs into the theories, new DNA evidence, and the questions that still haunt Lake Oconee. If you have a case you’d like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.  IG: @hellandgonepodSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the early morning hours of on July 30 1977 in Wesley, Arkansas a 20-year-old University of Arkansas Student Rex Terrell, who worked the overnight shift was found lying in a pool of blood and gasping for breath. It looked like he had been shot multiple times.   The whole community wanted to know, who would want to shoot a likable, kind and hard-working young man with seemingly no enemies, and leave him there to die in a pool of his own blood?  If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was a really hot night in the middle of summer - July 4, 1988, in San Angelo, Texas.  Seventeen-year-old Shane Stewart was gearing up for the Fourth of July holiday celebrations by picking up his girlfriend, eighteen-year-old Sally McNelly, and they were going to watch the fireworks.  After that, Shane and Sally disappeared. They never made it home.  That was almost forty years ago - and since then this case has been caught up in rumors of Satanic Panic, a devil worshipping cult, a man who was arrested with blood and fingernails in his house, and whispers of a police conspiracy. But it all started with two missing teenagers.  If you have a case you’d like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023, 21-year-old Ellie Baxter went to check on her parents at their home on Mersea Island, off the Essex coast, 64-year-old Carole Baxter and 61-year-old Stephen Baxter.  She knocked on the door, but no one answered. Ellie looked through the living room window and saw her parents sitting in their usual reclining chairs. But they weren’t moving – they were both sitting upright in their chairs dead.    **This episode is in collaboration with Red Collar, a podcast by Catherine Townsend focused on financial crimes and con artists who kill. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the summer of 1980, sixteen-year-old Maria Rodriguez was living with her boyfriend Milton Colbert Jr. in Long Branch, New Jersey.  When came home from his work shift - he looked around for Maria for a few minutes, and when he opened the closet door, he saw Maria’s body. She had been strangled to death with a belt.  If you have a case you’d like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.  IG: @hellandgonepodSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.