Speaker 1: All too often they are cold cases, and this one
Speaker 1: is no different.
Speaker 2: The story is true. That's true. No, it sounds made up.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Gerry and Shannon present True crime.
Speaker 1: Mounsey, Indiana is the locale of our true crime Tuesday Tail.
Speaker 2: This was a story that.
Speaker 1: Began on September twenty eighth, nineteen eighty five. We're talking
Speaker 1: about sixteen year old Ethan Dixon and fifteen year old
Speaker 1: Kimberly Dow. Ethan is on the debate team. He's president
Speaker 1: of the junior class at North Side High School. Tons
Speaker 1: of friends. Kimberly jv cheerleader. She had just been elected
Speaker 1: to the Court of the Homecoming Queen the week before.
Speaker 1: These two were found shot and killed in the hatchback
Speaker 1: in west Side Park on September twenty eighth, nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Happened to be a police officer that found them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just before midnight, this officer from Munsey, Indiana and
Speaker 3: his canine were walking in west Side Park right along
Speaker 3: White River Boulevard, not far from Tillotson. You know that
Speaker 3: is Tillotson and White River. Although parks closed at eleven
Speaker 3: o'clock at night, a few cars were still in the park.
Speaker 3: That wasn't that unusual. He wasn't there to bust people necessarily.
Speaker 3: He gets back to his car with the dog, ready
Speaker 3: to leave the park, and he realizes that there are
Speaker 3: some fresh tire tracks leading to a parked car, and
Speaker 3: he thought, well, you shouldn't be there now. I mean,
Speaker 3: it'd be one thing if you were staying and going
Speaker 3: to leave, but you shouldn't show up now. So his
Speaker 3: headlights sweep the car, and the people in the car
Speaker 3: didn't react to that.
Speaker 1: So he gets out and he walks up to the car.
Speaker 1: Its engine was still idling, and you could see a
Speaker 1: portable stereo visible in the back. Now, kids, back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen hundreds, cars didn't come with great stereos.
Speaker 2: They just didn't.
Speaker 1: The sound quality sucked, so sometimes you'd take your boom
Speaker 1: box and eighties it was a popular item to have
Speaker 1: a big old stereo and you'd put it in the
Speaker 1: backseat to your car so you'd have a better sound system.
Speaker 2: That is what they saw in the back of the car.
Speaker 1: They also saw that the officer also saw two fully
Speaker 1: clothed people.
Speaker 2: A young man and a young woman.
Speaker 1: They were in the front seats and it was Kimberly
Speaker 1: and Ethan that had both been shot.
Speaker 2: In the temple.
Speaker 1: He was shot in the torso, oh, I'm sorry she
Speaker 1: had been shot in the temple. Now, the window glass
Speaker 1: on the passenger side of the car was shattered, so
Speaker 1: whoever who fired those shots in was on Kimberly's side.
Speaker 3: So you can imagine a small town month not tiny,
Speaker 3: but a small town like Munsey, Indiana. The deaths of
Speaker 3: two teenagers like this, very popular kids, was shattering to
Speaker 3: this community and they all wanted to see this thing solved.
Speaker 1: Now, in this day and age, you'd have what cell
Speaker 1: phone records, text messages, emails, all of the things that
Speaker 1: make solving crimes doable. In nineteen eighty five, none of
Speaker 1: that existed, and so on its face there seemed to
Speaker 1: be no rhyme or reason, like you said, just good
Speaker 1: kids at the time. Paul Cox, he's now seventy one.
Speaker 1: He was captain in charge of officer training. Why was
Speaker 1: he there and why was he given the case? What
Speaker 1: that baloney title? Well, the reason he had that bolooney
Speaker 1: title is he was demoted when he chose the wrong
Speaker 1: mayoral candidate in the previous election. So he was sent
Speaker 1: to Siberia of the police agency, which happened to be
Speaker 1: in charge of officer training, but he was also very
Speaker 1: well seasoned, so he was put in charge of this investigation.
Speaker 1: He was pulled from his usual duties and put in charge.
Speaker 1: He took the case file home. Paul did covered his
Speaker 1: family room floor with his contents.
Speaker 2: Interesting that he.
Speaker 3: Focused on Kimberly Dowell's stepfather as a potential suspect in
Speaker 3: this case. Mom claims that the stepfather was home the
Speaker 3: whole time. It didn't actually leave the house until they
Speaker 3: had received word that Kimberly was missing or was gone,
Speaker 3: and that they were trying to find him. Sorry that
Speaker 3: they were trying to find her, and that's why the
Speaker 3: stepdad left the house.
Speaker 1: Not short on tips, he says, no crime has received
Speaker 1: the tips that this double murder did ten or fifteen
Speaker 1: in an hour.
Speaker 2: They were getting didn't peter out for some time.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, the tips never resulted in a solid suspect or
Speaker 1: an arrest.
Speaker 3: There was one of the guys that decided Robert Weller,
Speaker 3: one of the investigators. He played on a hunch on
Speaker 3: what would be the tenth anniversary of the murders, so
Speaker 3: September twenty eighth, nineteen ninety five. He thought that there
Speaker 3: would be a chance that whoever did this was going
Speaker 3: to mark the anniversary of the murders by revisiting that park,
Speaker 3: So they staked out park all night and came up
Speaker 3: completely empty. Now again, all those tips that came in
Speaker 3: ten to fifteen a day that they were dealing with,
Speaker 3: and not one of them leads to a hard suspect,
Speaker 3: but they did have along with the stepfather, they did
Speaker 3: have some suspects. In the middle of True Crime Tuesday,
Speaker 3: were talking about the West Side Park murders out of Munsey, Indiana.
Speaker 3: This would have been nineteen eighty five. Sixteen year old
Speaker 3: Ethan Dixon fifteen year old Kimberly Dowell sitting in a
Speaker 3: cart Volkswagen Rabbit looks like listening to music late at night,
Speaker 3: probably making out that's what they do. But for some
Speaker 3: unknown reason, Kimberly was shot in the head, Ethan shot
Speaker 3: in the chest. They never came up with a murder weapon,
Speaker 3: although there was a holster they found in the car,
Speaker 3: but they said it probably wasn't connected to the murders.
Speaker 3: And despite the fact that there were a lot of
Speaker 3: tips that came in, they never really were able to
Speaker 3: solve this crime. And like I mentioned that, one of
Speaker 3: the officers that was investigating thought originally that the stepfather,
Speaker 3: that Kimberly's stepfather, might have been a good suspect early on,
Speaker 3: but it turns out that that was not the case.
Speaker 3: Stepfather had a pretty strong alibi, even though the only
Speaker 3: person who could verify that was his wife, don Vogel,
Speaker 3: saying was his name. They never were able to pin
Speaker 3: it on him, or anybody else for that matter. So
Speaker 3: a couple of the people that were involved in all
Speaker 3: of this, I'm trying to find where the list of
Speaker 3: suspects went. I wanted to point out that again, even
Speaker 3: though this was an absolutely tragic story in that these
Speaker 3: two young these two teenagers, died. Kimberly Diedl's father, not
Speaker 3: the stepfather, but her father, said that one of the
Speaker 3: greatest things that came out of it was that the
Speaker 3: city itself, this town of Munsey, Indiana, came together.
Speaker 1: Some of the suspects and scenarios are as follows. As
Speaker 1: we mentioned, there were numerous tips and leads. There was
Speaker 1: the Monte Carlo driver, the popular car back then, a
Speaker 1: Chevrolet Monte Carlo seen in the park that night. Police
Speaker 1: focused on finding that vehicle as well as a second car,
Speaker 1: released a composite sketch of the car's driver based on
Speaker 1: descriptions from witnesses. The driver of the Monte Carlo became
Speaker 1: a part of lore surrounding the case, but police ultimately
Speaker 1: said that they don't think the man nor the vehicle
Speaker 1: had anything to do with the slayings.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: The other one was the cross town rival. They talked
Speaker 3: about rumors or they'd heard rumors that sixteen year old
Speaker 3: Ethan had gotten in our human maybe an actual fight
Speaker 3: with a teenager from the south side of Muncie. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's pretty specific, but at the time, the idea that
Speaker 3: he felt threatened after this thing lent some special importance
Speaker 3: to the presence of a knife that was found in
Speaker 3: his car. But people were police sorry, were never able
Speaker 3: to actually confirm that a fight had taken place.
Speaker 1: The stepfather's name Kate cap Resurfacing. He was one of
Speaker 1: the first focuses of the police, but never charged, and
Speaker 1: he said that the rumors, by the way, in late
Speaker 1: nineties he did an interview, said they ruined his life.
Speaker 2: You can imagine.
Speaker 1: Then there was the drifter, one of the more chilling
Speaker 1: scenarios that the two young people were targets of a
Speaker 1: random killer who was just passing through. Police looked at
Speaker 1: a similar incident in Kansas five years earlier, but said
Speaker 1: they didn't believe the cases were connected.
Speaker 3: And then finally, one of Ethan's friends said that he
Speaker 3: and Ethan loved Dungeons and Dragons and used to play
Speaker 3: Dungeons and Dragons on a regular basis. The last of
Speaker 3: the potential suspects in this case was quote the Dungeon Master. Now,
Speaker 3: because Ethan and his buddies played Dungeons and Dragons, there
Speaker 3: was some talk, and again this is rumor mill talk,
Speaker 3: but there was some talk that the fantasy that is
Speaker 3: Dungeons and Dragons was somehow acted out and gone horribly wrong.
Speaker 1: I think that that was kind of one of the
Speaker 1: things that was speculated upon in the late eighties with
Speaker 1: a lot of different crimes of like, is it a
Speaker 1: dark thing that the Satanism?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because all these kids were into it, but it
Speaker 2: was kind.
Speaker 3: Of secretive and probably Ozzy Osbourne and ac DC.
Speaker 1: One of the more poignant quotes I read in this
Speaker 1: article was from one of the friends of Ethan. Ethan
Speaker 1: was the kid who was shot and killed, the debate
Speaker 1: team member, the class president. Tom was one of Ethan's
Speaker 1: closest friends. They hung out every day, they played D
Speaker 1: and D to together. They were both on the debate team.
Speaker 1: And Tom says that about Ethan he was really smart,
Speaker 1: very charismatic, loyal to his friends, a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: He was class president, and he said it was such
Speaker 1: a dramatic event with dramatic ramifications that happened to a
Speaker 1: bunch of teenagers, where the smallest thing is dramatic.
Speaker 2: They didn't sleep well at night.
Speaker 1: Nobody did for the rest of high school the next
Speaker 1: two years. Not until Tom left for college did he
Speaker 1: feel safe at night. But I thought that that was
Speaker 1: so so true. A bunch of teenagers were the smallest
Speaker 1: thing is dramatic, so true, right, and then this is
Speaker 1: the biggest thing that could possibly happen to them, And
Speaker 1: how much that how much weight that would come with
Speaker 1: it would come with weight for no matter where you
Speaker 1: are in life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but again, still no solution to that murder of
Speaker 3: Ethan and Kimberly from back in nineteen eighty five,