What Was Done in Ina: The Dardeen Family Murders - American Crime Journal

The Dardeen Household Murders, the Lengthy Seek for Solutions, and the Confession That Modified Nothing

On the evening of November 17, 1987, within the small southern Illinois village of Ina, inhabitants 475, somebody entered a white cell house alongside Illinois Route 37 and dedicated an act so savage that Franklin County Coroner Robert Lewis stated the deaths had been, “as brutal a homicide as I’ve seen in twelve or 13 years.”

Inside that trailer, Ruby Elaine Dardeen, 30 years outdated and 7 months pregnant, and her 3-year-old son Peter Sean had been overwhelmed to dying. The beating was so extreme that it compelled Elaine into untimely labor. A child lady was born alive inside that trailer both throughout or after the assault. She was then overwhelmed to dying as nicely. Her grandparents would later identify her Casey Elaine, because the Dardeen’s deliberate to call their child if it had been a lady. If it had been a boy, that they had selected Ian.

The physique of Elaine’s husband, Russell Keith Dardeen, 29, was discovered the next day by hunters in a wheat area close to Rend Lake Faculty, simply throughout the Jefferson-Franklin county line. He had been shot thrice within the head. His genitals had been severed. His pink 1981 Plymouth Horizon had been discovered deserted close to the Benton police station, eleven miles south of the household house, its inside spattered with blood.

No cash was stolen. A VCR and transportable film digicam sat in plain view in the lounge. There was no proof of compelled entry. There was no proof of rape. There was no clear motive for any of it.

The Dardeen household murders have remained unsolved for almost 4 a long time. The case produced greater than 3,000 leads, tons of of interviews, a 25-member activity power, a $30,000 reward, two segments on nationwide tv, examination of no less than two serial killers as doable suspects, and a confession from a person who informed three contradictory variations of what he claimed to have finished.

None of it resulted in a cost. None of it introduced Joeann Dardeen, Keith’s mom, the reply she spent the remainder of her life looking for.

The Household

Russell Keith Dardeen was born June 22, 1958, in Mount Carmel, Illinois. His pals known as him Keith. He was 5 ft 8 inches tall, 145 kilos, with brown hair and inexperienced eyes. He labored as a remedy plant operator for the Rend Lake Conservancy District’s Inter-Metropolis Water System within the Benton space. His supervisor described him as, “fantastic, very punctual, a really reliable employee.” The water district superintendent stated Keith was such a dependable worker that when he failed to point out up for work on the Tuesday morning after the killings, the superintendent personally went to Keith’s house, didn’t get a solution, and notified Jefferson County authorities.

Ruby Elaine Cowling was born August 10, 1957, in Fairfield, Illinois. She was from Albion and had labored as a secretary and part-time bookkeeper for Davenport Workplace Provide in Mount Vernon. Her employer known as her, “a jewel and a very good worker.” She had labored there seven months and was planning to take maternity depart in January when the newborn was due. She married Keith in August 1979 on the Olive Congregational Christian Church.

Their son Peter Sean was born July 5, 1984, in Evansville, Indiana. He was 3 years outdated. His father had purchased him a baseball bat that summer season, too large for the boy however bought as a result of Keith believed Peter would develop into it. Keith stored a video digicam to document each milestone of his son’s life. The household had wrapped a gift for Peter’s third birthday with a card that learn: Pleased Birthday, large brother, from January tenth, a reference to the newborn they had been anticipating.

The minister who had recognized Elaine since she was 9 years outdated and later officiated at her wedding ceremony described her as a china doll. A good friend who had recognized Keith for years stated it was genuinely tough to think about he had an enemy on this planet. The couple had been lively within the small Baptist church in Ina, the place Elaine performed piano and Keith led the singing. Their landlord, Jo Ann Settle, remembered them as a likeable, pleasant couple, very lively locally and within the church. Her favourite reminiscence of the household was Halloween 1987, simply weeks earlier than the murders when Keith dressed because the Tin Man, Peter because the Cowardly Lion, and Elaine because the Scarecrow. They gained finest costume that 12 months.

They’d lived in Ina for about two years, having moved from the Albion space when Keith took the water district job. However by late 1987, they had been planning to depart. The trailer had a For Sale signal within the window. Keith had informed his mom that the realm was turning into too violent and that he deliberate to maneuver the household again to Mount Carmel whether or not or not he discovered work there first. Jefferson County had seen fifteen homicides within the two years previous the Dardeen murders, together with the 1985 killings by Thomas Odle, a Mount Vernon teenager who had murdered his mother and father and three siblings as they arrived house one after the other. Keith had turn out to be so protecting of his household that when a younger lady got here to the door one evening that 12 months asking to make use of the cellphone, he refused to let her in.

He knew the realm had turn out to be harmful. He was making an attempt to depart it.

He didn’t depart in time.

The Evening of November 17 and the Days That Adopted

Authorities positioned the time of dying for all 4 family members inside roughly an hour of each other, within the late hours of November 16 or the early hours of November 17, 1987. The our bodies within the trailer had been useless for about twelve hours earlier than they had been discovered. Keith had been useless between twenty-four and thirty-six hours when hunters found his physique.

On Tuesday, November 17, Keith didn’t report back to his shift. He didn’t name in. His supervisor spent the day making an attempt to succeed in him by cellphone with no reply. By early night, the supervisor known as each of Keith’s mother and father. Keith’s father, Don Dardeen, was divorced from his mom Joeann however lived close to her in Mount Carmel. Don known as the Jefferson County Sheriff’s workplace and agreed to drive to Ina with the home key.

Deputies met Don on the trailer. When the door opened, they discovered Elaine and Peter and the new child lady, all three tucked rigorously into the main bedroom, laid out on the mattress. Elaine had been certain and gagged with duct tape. She and Peter had been overwhelmed to dying, apparently with a baseball bat recovered on the scene. The new child had been overwhelmed to dying inside minutes of her start. The duct tape had been virtually solely faraway from the our bodies earlier than the killer left. Officers found that every one however probably the most microscopic traces had been stuffed into the killer’s pockets and brought away.

Keith was not there. His automotive was not there. Jefferson County Sheriff Bob Pitchford informed reporters at a information convention, “it was a shock to him. He was a suspect within the homicides.”

A young child standing in front of a mobile home with a red car parked beside it. The scene is set in a grassy area.

The seek for Keith continued via the evening and into the next day. At roughly 1:30 a.m. Thursday, November 19, Benton police found the pink Plymouth Horizon deserted close to the police station, its inside blood-stained. 4 DCI brokers and two Jefferson County Sheriff’s officers had been, in Pitchford’s phrases, beating the bushes for indicators of Dardeen. Late Thursday afternoon, hunters close to Rend Lake Faculty, a brief distance from the household’s trailer, alerted upkeep staff that that they had discovered a physique. It was Keith. He had been shot thrice within the head. His penis had been severed and left on the scene. His accidents weren’t the identical sort as these suffered by Elaine and Peter, who had been overwhelmed. The coroner confirmed that Keith’s dying was definitively not a suicide.

The killer had taken Keith’s automotive after murdering him and pushed it eleven miles south to Benton, parking it close to the police station with what investigators interpreted as an act of deliberate contempt. The bloodstained automotive parked with impudence close to the station, as one reporter later wrote, was as if the killer was thumbing his nostril on the authorities and the group.

The killer then cleaned the scene with meticulous care. He wiped surfaces for fingerprints, cleaned swimming pools of blood, eliminated all however hint quantities of the duct tape from the our bodies, and laid Elaine and her youngsters rigorously on the mattress earlier than leaving. One investigator later noticed that the methodical cleanup spoke of a person who had killed earlier than and would kill once more.

The Neighborhood and the Concern

Ina in November 1987 was a village of 475 folks, surrounded by freshly harvested farmland, bounded by Interstate 57, Illinois Route 37, and Union Pacific railroad tracks. It was not Jefferson County. It was a pocket inside Jefferson County, and that distinction mattered to the individuals who lived there. The county round them had been accumulating violent dying for years. Ina had not. Residents of the village informed reporters within the days after the murders that that they had thought nothing of leaving their doorways unlocked. They stated it with the particular bewilderment of people that had been watching a storm transfer throughout a panorama and believed, till the second it arrived, that it could move them by.

It didn’t move them by.

Jefferson County had recorded fifteen homicides within the two years earlier than November 1987, a charge that had unnerved residents throughout the area and had been a part of the rationale Keith Dardeen was planning to maneuver his household out. The 1985 Odle murders in Mount Vernon, ten miles up Route 57, had damaged one thing within the county’s sense of security. Different unsolved killings had adopted. The violence was actual and documented and broadly recognized. It merely had not, till now, entered Ina itself.

That modified in a single day.

Inside days of the killings, shotguns appeared within the gun racks of pickup vans all through the county. After highschool basketball video games, college students waited inside the varsity constructing for folks to come back in and escort them to the car parking zone. A resident who lived close to the Dardeen trailer informed reporters she prayed that the Lord would defend her when she answered the door, and requested that her identify not be revealed. She had lived via the county’s years of rising violence with out altering her habits. Now she locked her doorways.

Ina Cafe proprietor Joan Sneed stated what everybody within the village was saying, “It’s unbelievable that it could possibly be any person strolling the streets and also you may know him.” The postmaster stated your complete group, “was in shock.”

What made that shock so full was not merely that 4 folks had been murdered. It was the particular nature of what had been finished to them, and the truth that nobody in Ina had seen something, heard something, or seen something in any respect. The killer had come and gone with out leaving a single witness. He had taken a household from a village of 475 folks and disappeared as if he had by no means been there.

Rumors unfold shortly. Due to the genital mutilation and the circumstances of Casey Elaine’s start, hypothesis that the killings had been a satanic ritual ran via the county. A cult professional consulted by police stated the satanic idea was baseless. Satanic teams sometimes mutilate our bodies extra extensively, harvest organs, and depart symbols and candles on the scene. None of that was current. Police additionally explored whether or not the killings had been associated to different unsolved homicides in Jefferson County however discovered no proof connecting them. Franklin County Coroner Robert Lewis stated he believed the murders had been private and deliberate slightly than random, “a really private, deliberate factor.”

Nobody who knew the Dardeens had something unhealthy to say about them. Nobody who was questioned recalled something suspicious. They had been church folks, household folks, quiet and conservative. Investigators discovered a small amount of marijuana within the trailer however concluded it was extra probably left by the killer than by the household. Autopsies discovered no medication or alcohol in any of the victims.

No cash was stolen. No proof of rape. No compelled entry. No motive. A killer who cleaned the scene and laid the our bodies out earlier than leaving. The Dardeen murders produced no idea the proof might maintain.

The Investigation

The preliminary response was substantial. The Jefferson and Franklin County Sheriffs’ Departments, the Illinois State Police Division of Legal Investigation, and the Mt. Carmel Police all joined forces. A 25-member activity power was fashioned on the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Division in Mount Vernon. Thirty investigators labored the case full-time when it first broke. Inside weeks, authorities had acquired greater than 600 leads and performed greater than 200 interviews.

By January 1988, a $30,000 reward had been assembled from a number of sources: $10,000 from the Dardeen household, $10,000 from the American Publishing Firm that owned a number of space newspapers together with the Carmi Instances and the Benton Night Information, and $10,000 added by WSIL-TV in Harrisburg. The Dardeen household supplied to double the reward to $60,000 if data was acquired by midnight on Christmas Day 1987. No credible tip materialized.

The investigation was constructed round a primary analytical downside. The case had no clear motive. No cash stolen. No rape. No recognized enemies. No extramarital affairs involving both Keith or Elaine. A stack of sports activities scores in the home briefly led investigators to surprise about playing money owed, however Keith’s mom informed police her son was so frugal that he bought 50-cent cans of soda at work for a small revenue to construct his son’s school fund. A coworker with whom Keith reportedly had a dispute was investigated and cleared. A person taken into custody early within the investigation was launched after questioning.

Police did have theories. Some believed the household was chosen by mistake and had been the improper goal. Some believed it could possibly be drug-related, not that the Dardeens had been concerned in medication, however that somebody tried to recruit Keith and he refused. Joeann Dardeen developed her personal idea over time. She believed the killer was somebody Keith knew and dropped at the trailer that evening, probably somebody he encountered after work or close to their house. She thought the killer left with Keith, murdered him, returned to the trailer, after which stayed lengthy sufficient to scrub the scene as a result of he was afraid of witnesses.

Captain Mike Anthis of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Division, who led the investigation for years, stated plainly, “The factor that makes this case baffling is you can’t provide you with a direct motive.” He used the Dardeen case to coach new investigators on the significance of avoiding tunnel imaginative and prescient, as a result of it’s important to, “contemplate each doable idea.”

Investigators additionally retained FBI profilers, who got here to the realm and reviewed the proof. They offered what Anthis described as guideposts, however left no extra sure than after they arrived. The crime defied commonplace analytical strategies.

By 1988, the duty power remained lively however the full-time contingent had begun to shrink. By 1992, 5 years after the murders, roughly six officers had been working the case part-time. By 1997, a single detective, John Kemp, was holding tabs on no matter leads got here in. The Southern Illinois DCI workplace confirmed the case was nonetheless being labored, however the tempo of incoming leads had slowed to about one per thirty days.

Joeann Dardeen by no means stopped calling. By means of the Nineteen Nineties, she contacted Kemp roughly as soon as every week, pushing new leads she had heard about, asking for updates, and refusing to let the case settle into silence. I worshipped the bottom he walked on, she informed a reporter in 1997. He was a very good man and a very good father. That’s why I do it. And I’ll by no means hand over.

In 1991, Keith’s highschool class of 1976 introduced a test to the Wabash County Museum in his reminiscence. His mom instructed the memorial reward go to the museum as a result of Keith was one thing of a historian. She accepted the test alongside a museum official in {a photograph} revealed by the Mount Carmel Register. Her expression in that {photograph} is the particular sort of grief that comes from years of ready.

In 1994, Joeann gathered greater than 3,000 signatures from space residents and despatched them to The Oprah Winfrey Present, asking producers to run a phase on the killings. The producers declined, saying the crime was too brutal for daytime tv. America’s Most Needed ran a phase in 1998, but it surely produced no credible leads.

The Suspects Who Have been Not

In the summertime of 1999, a Southern Illinoisan investigation raised the potential for a connection between the Dardeen murders and Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, a Mexican nationwide referred to as the Railroad Killer, who was then needed for eight killings in Texas, Kentucky, and Illinois. Resendez-Ramirez had been recognized as a serial killer who traveled by hopping freight trains, selected his victims close to railroad tracks, and infrequently beat them to dying. The Dardeens had lived close to Union Pacific tracks. The strategy of killing was comparable. And Resendez-Ramirez had been arrested in St. Louis in April 1988, simply 90 miles from Ina, on weapons and different fees, inside months of the Dardeen murders.

Former chief Dardeen investigator Charles Parker, who by 1999 labored for the Jefferson County state’s lawyer’s workplace, stated the similarities had been coincidental however value holding in thoughts. Captain Mike Anthis stated no idea needs to be neglected however that personally he discovered the connection unlikely. State police officers reviewed the Dardeen proof and famous geographic and methodological similarities, however Illinois investigators had been by no means in a position to join Resendez-Ramirez to the crime. After his arrest in Texas later in 1999, no bodily or testimonial proof positioned him in Jefferson County in November 1987.

The case had been featured on America’s Most Needed in 1998 and in 1997 was the topic of a ten-year anniversary investigation by the Southern Illinoisan, which famous that authorities had been nonetheless working greater than 30 theories and that the 5 lacking items of the 5,000-piece puzzle, as Anthis put it, may nonetheless floor. They’d not surfaced but.

Tommy Lynn Sells

On the final day of 1999, Tommy Lynn Sells reduce the throats of two younger women in a cell house close to Del Rio, Texas. One in every of them, 10-year-old Krystal Harris, survived and gave authorities an outline that led police to Sells inside two days. He was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to dying for that homicide and for the 1999 stabbing dying of a 13-year-old lady in San Antonio.

A police officer escorts a handcuffed inmate wearing an orange jumpsuit down a corridor. The officer is wearing sunglasses and a dark uniform, while the inmate has visible tattoos and looks towards the camera. — A Bexar County Sheriff Deputy escorts Loss of life Row inmate Tommy Lynn Sells to the Bexar County Jail, Feb. 22, 2001. Photograph: Bob Owen

Whereas awaiting trial in Texas, Sells started confessing to murders he stated he had dedicated whereas drifting throughout the nation for twenty years. He claimed accountability for as many as 70 killings throughout a number of states. He was convicted of 1 extra homicide in Texas and executed on April 3, 2014.

Among the many crimes he confessed to had been the Dardeen household murders.

Sells had been born in Oakland, California, and raised in Missouri, spending time in St. Louis and within the Missouri Bootheel. He supported himself via carnival work, day labor, and theft. He traveled consistently, driving freight trains and hitchhiking. By his personal account, he had dedicated his first homicide at age 15 and had been dwelling on the streets and transferring throughout the nation since. He claimed the childhood sexual abuse he endured between the ages of seven and 14 had turned him into what he described as a darkish soul.

He informed investigators that in November 1987, he had been passing via southern Illinois and encountered Keith Dardeen. His account of how they met modified throughout a number of tellings. In a single model, Keith picked him up whereas he was hitchhiking and introduced him house for a meal. In one other, he met Keith at a pool corridor within the space. Within the third and most detailed model, recounted in Diane Fanning’s 2004 guide By means of the Window, Sells obtained off a freight practice close to Ina, noticed the Dardeens’ trailer with its For Sale signal, drank beer whereas watching the house, after which knocked on the door claiming he was involved in shopping for the trailer.

Within the first two variations, Sells claimed that after the meal, Keith made a gay advance towards him, which threw him right into a blind rage.

Within the third model, there was no invitation, no meal, and no proposition. There was solely alternative and calculated predation.

In all three variations, the violence that adopted was the identical. Sells compelled Keith at gunpoint to search out rope or tape to bind his spouse and son. He compelled Keith to drive to the sector close to Rend Lake Faculty, the place he severed Keith’s genitals, telling him he was taking them again to Elaine, then shot him and left him there. He returned to the trailer, the place he beat Peter, then Elaine, then the new child, to dying.

Within the Fanning guide account, Sells watched Casey Elaine be born. He checked out Elaine, noticed her desperation and hope, smiled, after which raised the bat.

He informed three completely different tales about how the evening started. In all three, the ending was the identical. The query investigators might by no means reply was whether or not any of the tales had been true.

The issues with the Sells confession had been vital and documented.

Jefferson County prosecutor Gary Duncan, who had dealt with the case for seventeen years till his retirement in 2008, laid them out with precision. When Sells was requested about particulars of the crime that had by no means been made public, he initially answered incorrectly. He then self-corrected and gave the fitting reply. Duncan stated it was doable Sells merely deduced the right response. He additionally claimed to have shot Keith in a selected seat of the sufferer’s automotive, however bodily proof disproved that declare. In one other account, he stated he sexually assaulted Elaine with a blunt object after her dying, a element that was in line with proof but in addition the sort of element that had appeared in earlier reporting and will have been absorbed by a person who adopted media protection of crimes he might or might not have dedicated.

Sells had a documented historical past of constructing false confessions. Authorities in a number of states investigated his claims and located them both unverifiable or contradicted by proof. Texas authorities refused to permit Sells to be transported to Illinois to help investigators with a direct examination of the crime scene, saying they’d not let him depart the state.

In a 2010 interview with the Southern Illinoisan performed on the Polunsky Unit dying row facility in Livingston, Texas, Sells confirmed his confession to the Dardeen murders. He stated he couldn’t swear he’d give the reporter the solutions she needed, however that he’d strive. He acknowledged realizing folks had doubts. He stated Keith met him at a Mount Vernon truck cease, invited him for a meal, after which made a sexual advance. He stated he killed Keith first, then went again for the household.

When requested why he killed the kids, he stated, “I don’t have a solution for you. I can’t reply it. In case you’ve by no means been that pissed then it’s arduous to … you understand. Rage don’t have a cease button.”

He stated he couldn’t bear in mind half the murders he had dedicated. He stated his reminiscence was fogged in the best way all his reminiscences had been fogged, as a survival mechanism developed throughout years of sexual abuse as a baby. He stated dying was a welcome aid. He stated he had come to peace with himself within the final ten years. He stated Texas would kill him first.

Joeann Dardeen, requested about Sells earlier than his execution, stated, “Tommy deserved to die for what he did, however I needed him to remain alive till I do know positively he didn’t do it.” She was not satisfied he had. She dismissed his account of Keith making a sexual advance as opposite to all the pieces she knew about her son. Keith was not the kind of man to ask a stranger house to his household, she stated. He was not the kind of man to make a gay proposition. The conclusions of everybody who knew Keith had been blended with parts of Sells’ recollections to reconstruct the most certainly sequence of occasions, however these reconstructions rested on a confession from a person who had given three completely different variations and had recognized histories of embellishment.

Gary Duncan stated the case in opposition to Sells was constructed on a questionable confession and no bodily proof. He stated there was a good risk that the precise killer was nonetheless on the market. He stated it was the sort of case that will hang-out everybody concerned. There’s simply no finish to that.

Jefferson County State’s Legal professional Douglas Hoffman, nonetheless, stated every week after Sells’ execution in 2014 that Sells remained the primary suspect. Sheriff Roger Mulch agreed. A county deputy who had interviewed Sells in his Texas cell informed reporters that Sells knew confidential particulars of the crime that had not been made public. Whether or not these particulars had been genuinely confidential, or whether or not Sells had pieced them collectively from sources investigators had not recognized, was by no means established with certainty.

Tommy Lynn Sells was executed by the state of Texas on April 3, 2014, for the homicide of Kaylene Harris. He was by no means charged with the Dardeen murders. The case stays formally open and unsolved.

What Joeann Dardeen Did

Within the almost three a long time between the murders and her personal dying, Joeann Dardeen of Mount Carmel didn’t cease.

She known as the investigating detective, John Kemp, roughly as soon as every week all through the Nineteen Nineties. She despatched signatures to Oprah. She wrote letters to space media. She spoke to each anniversary reporter who got here calling, from the primary anniversary in November 1988 via the tenth in 1997 and past. She gathered petitions. She watched America’s Most Needed air a phase and produce nothing. She developed her personal idea of the crime. She tolerated after which dismissed the Sells confession with attribute readability.

She didn’t consider the killer was a drifter who occurred upon the For Sale signal. She believed the killer was somebody her son knew, somebody Keith invited into the trailer that evening, who left with Keith, murdered him, after which got here again to eradicate the witnesses. Somebody who knew the household nicely sufficient to know the format of the house, who took the time to scrub the scene and prepare the our bodies as a result of he was afraid of recognition slightly than afraid of witnesses within the standard sense.

She stated in 1997, “Police inform me they’re hoping whomever did it’ll have one drink too many in a tavern and say one thing. I’m simply hanging in there.”

She stated in an interview marking the tenth anniversary, “I worshipped the bottom he walked on. He was a very good man and a very good father. And I’ll by no means hand over.”

She by no means obtained the reply.

The final main public accounting of her search appeared within the 2014 reporting round Tommy Lynn Sells’ execution, when she was 76 years outdated. She was skeptical of Sells. She needed justice for the fitting man. She didn’t consider Tommy Lynn Sells had given her that.

Whether or not she died realizing who killed her son, his spouse, her grandchildren, and a child lady who lived solely lengthy sufficient to be given a reputation, the document doesn’t say.

What the Document Leaves Behind

The Dardeen case was not ignored. It was lined in newspapers throughout Illinois for years, investigated by dozens of detectives, examined by FBI profilers, featured on nationwide tv, and the topic of a real crime guide revealed in 2004. The case file on the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Division incorporates 1000’s of pages.

And it stays unsolved.

The again door was unlocked. No compelled entry. No theft. No rape. A killer who certain a pregnant lady with duct tape, beat her 3-year-old son to dying, watched a untimely toddler be born after which killed her, eliminated virtually all proof of the duct tape earlier than leaving, wiped the surfaces clear, laid the our bodies rigorously on the mattress, took the useless man’s automotive eleven miles south and parked it close to a police station, after which was by no means recognized, charged, or convicted.

These info, taken collectively, produce an uncomfortable conclusion- this was not random. It was not panicked. It was not the act of a person who misplaced management and fled. It was deliberate and methodical and arranged, and the one that did it has, as of this writing, by no means confronted penalties.

Investigators say the case remains to be open. The passage of almost 4 a long time means witnesses die, reminiscences fade, and bodily proof loses no matter evidentiary worth it as soon as held. The Sells confession created the looks of decision with out offering the truth of it. Jefferson County has a primary suspect who was by no means charged, a confession with documented inconsistencies, and a prosecutor who retired saying the precise killer may nonetheless be on the market.

Joeann Dardeen known as her son’s case a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. She stated she had 4,995 items in place.

She died ready for the final 5.

What We Know and What We Do Not

The next has been established via coroner’s studies, court docket information, police statements, and contemporaneous reporting:

Keith and Elaine Dardeen and their son Peter had been killed inside roughly an hour of each other, within the late hours of November 16 or early hours of November 17, 1987. Casey Elaine was born throughout or instantly after the assault on her mom and was killed inside minutes of her start.

All 4 had been killed by blunt power trauma to the top, except Keith, who was additionally shot thrice within the head. The probably homicide weapon for the trailer victims was a baseball bat Keith had purchased Peter earlier that 12 months.

Keith was transported in his personal automotive to the sector close to Rend Lake Faculty, the place he was mutilated and shot. His automotive was then pushed to Benton and parked close to the police station.

The killer cleaned the scene, eliminated almost all hint proof of duct tape, and organized the our bodies on the main bedroom mattress earlier than leaving.

No compelled entry. No theft. No rape. No clear motive. No recognized suspect who was charged.

The next stays unknown:

Who killed the Dardeen household. Whether or not Tommy Lynn Sells was accountable or whether or not his confession was fabricated, embellished, or partially correct. Whether or not the crime was the work of 1 particular person or a number of. Whether or not the killer knew the Dardeens personally or chosen them randomly. Whether or not the killer has ever confronted penalties for any crime associated to that evening. Whether or not the case will ever be formally resolved.

The Dardeen household murders are thought of unsolved in Jefferson County, Illinois.

It has been almost 4 a long time.

New Timeline: Timeline of Occasions: The Dardeen Household Murders – American Crime Journal |