Latest / Crime Night / The Westside Park Murders

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The Westside Park Murders · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I want you to picture a scene. It's midnight
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: on September twenty eight, nineteen eighty five. We're in Munsey, Indiana.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Right, starting to get that sharp early autumn chill in.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: The air exactly, and you're standing in west Side Park,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: which is this really dark, twenty acre strip of dense
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: trees and gravel lots, just hugging the edge of the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: White River, a.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Pretty isolated spot at that time of night.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Very it is eerily quiet. I mean, the only sound
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: is the water moving over the rocks and the slow
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: crunch of tires on gravel. Officer Terry Winters and his
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: canine partner Max are doing this totally routine sweep.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Just clearing out the stragglers after the park closes.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, simple job.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: But as the squad car rolls forward, the headlights sweep
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: across this deserted lot and catch the reflection of a vehicle.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: It's this small Volkswagen hatchback and the engine is still idling.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: You know. It's the kind of mundane site patrol officers
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: encounter like every single.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Night, right, just teenagers out past curfew exactly.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Just hoping not to get caught. But the imosphere surrounding
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: that idling car shifts the moment you actually get close.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: To it, the stillness is really what gets you. Officer
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Winter steps out of his cruiser. His canine is totally quiet.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: There's absolutely no movement inside that Volkswagen.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Which is an immediate red flag.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: So Winter's walks up to the driver's side. He shines
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: this heavy flashlight right through the open window, and the
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: beam just illuminates this horrific reality. Yeah, there are two
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: teenagers inside. The boy in the driver's seat has a
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: fatal gunshot wound to his chest, awful, and the girl
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: in the passenger seat has been shot in the head.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Both of their seats are pushed all the way back,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: fully reclined. Heavy sleeping bags are draped over them, and.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: The passenger side windows completely shattered.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just fragments of safety glass glittering all over the
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: dark upholstery.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: That chilling discovery in the dark. Yeah, I mean that
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: is the starting line for the journey we are taking
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: with you today, because to understand this nearly forty year labyrinth,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: we're doing a deep dive into this massive stack of
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: original homicide case files, police interrogation transcripts.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Oh, the transcripts are wild they really are.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Plus decades of forensic analysis and investigative journalism, we are
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: mapping out a double homicide that defies like almost every
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: standard rule of a criminal investigation.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about the victims first. We have sixteen
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: year old Ethan Dixon and fifteen year old Kimberly.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Dowell, just absolute standout kids.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Truly going through their backgrounds, these were the golden kids
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: of North Side High. Ethan was a brilliant debater, he
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: was recently elected junior class president, and Kimberly was.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: A cheerleader, just named to the homecoming court.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I mean right, absolutely no disciplinary records, no hidden dark sides.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Their plan for that Friday night was incredibly innocent. They
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: just wanted to grab a pizza, drive to the park,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and eat it together in the car.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Which is what forces investigators to immediately look for a
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: narrative in the crime scene itself, because a scene usually
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: tells a story, you know.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like if it's a robbery, you find chaos.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Exactly, glove compartments, ripped, open, pockets turned out, or if
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: it's say a crime of passion, you usually see signs
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: of a desperate physical struggle.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: But this interior, the Volkswagen was practically pristine.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: It makes no sense.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: There was zero sign of a struggle. A robbery didn't
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: make sense either, because there was this relatively valuable portable
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: stereo just sitting right there in plain sight in the
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: back of the hatchback. It didn't touch it, no, And
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the only physical clues the evidence texts recovered were totally baffling.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: They found this small, empty leather gun holster tucked underneath
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Ethan's body.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Almost as if he had been sitting on.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: It right and on the dashboard there was a pocket
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: knife and its blade was resting open. But here's the kicker.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: There was no murder weapon anywhere in the vehicle or
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the surrounding gravel.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: And then the autopsy reports just added this whole other
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: layer of complexity. The medical examiner confirmed both teams were
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: killed with a point three to eight caliber weapon okay,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: and the time of death was estimated it roughly eleven
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: point zero zero PM by the toxicology screens, completely clean,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: no drugs, no alcohol, nothing in their systems.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: But wait, so that open pocket knife on the dash
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: combined with this other detail from the forensic report, it
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: creates this huge contradiction for me because both Ethan and
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Kimberly tested positive for gunshot residue or GSR on their hands.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the GSR is a sticking point for a lot of.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: People, right because an open blade and chemical residue from
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: a firearm that heavily implies they were awake, aware and
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: maybe fighting back, or even that they fired a weapon themselves.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is totally the most logical assumption until
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: you apply the specific physics of that environment.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: Okay, walk me through that.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Let's look at the GSR first. A point three to
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: eight caliber handgun is a very powerful weapon. When it fires,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: it doesn't just shoot a bullet, you know, it ejects
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: this high pressure cloud of vaporized lead, barium and antimony.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Like a fine mist.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Now, put that explosive chemical reaction inside the tiny
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: seas cabin of a nineteen eighty five Volkswagen hatchbag. Oh wow. Yeah,
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Firing that weapon twice basically turns the car into a
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: localized pressure cooker. That microscopic metallic dust is suspended in
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: the air and inevitably coats every single.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: Surface, including the victim's hands.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: It's exactly forensics definitively ruled out the teens firing a weapon,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: because the fatal wounds were absolutely not self inflicted and
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: the only gun involved was one the killer took with them.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, So that leaves the open pocket knife on the dashboard,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: and Ethan's personal history actually provides this really tragic context
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: for that.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: He was dealing with severe bullying at school.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: It had gotten so bad that his parents had actually
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: recently confiscated a different knife he had started carrying just
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: for protection.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: So he was scared.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he likely brought this pocket knife to the park
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: just to feel safe, you know, And he probably just
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: placed it on the dash when they reclined the seats
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: to eat their pizza.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. And because the physical
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: evidence inside the car offered so few answers, investigators realized
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: they had to zoom out right. They literally had to
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: map the acoustics and the geography of West Side Park
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: to figure out how a violent double homicide happens in
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: a public space without drawing a crowd.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And the timeline presents this massive spatial mystery because the
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: medical examiner put the time of death at eleven zero PM,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: but Officer Winters discovered the car at eleven.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: Point fifty pm, almost an hour later.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he had been patrolling the park during that
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: hour that he reported hearing absolutely no gunfire.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Which sounds suspicious, but the geography of the park totally
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: explains that silence because it's so long. Exactly West Side
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Park covers twenty acres, but it is not a square.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: It is this very long, very skinny strip of land
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: that's heavily wooded along the river bank.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: Oh, I see right.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: So if Officer Winters was at the far north end
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: of that strip with his cruiser windows rolled up and
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: you know, the police radio buzzing, the.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Dense trees and the ambient noise of the Russian water
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: would just completely absorbed the sound of two gunshots from
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the south lot decisely. But the sound did carry to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: other parts of the park. Detectives tracked down several part
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: goers who confirmed hearing gunfire right at eleven zero pm.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: And they saw something too.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. More importantly, these witnesses reported seeing three figures standing
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: around a vehicle that look like the Volkswagen immediately after
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the shots rang out three people, three people, and they
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: also noted a dark colored car which they specifically described
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: as a Monte Carlo speeding away from the gravel lot.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: So finally law enforcement has a working timeline right, a
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: suspect vehicle and the knowledge that this likely involved multiple perpetrators.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: But investigations are fragile things, because right at the exact
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: moment they need to lock down the perimeter and hunt
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: for that dark car. This absolute wildcard drives straight into
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the middle of their crime scene. The step back Kimberly's stepfather, Dawn.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: He pulls up to the park while the police are
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: literally still ringing up the yellow tape.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is wild.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: He told the officers he was out driving around looking
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: for Kimberly because she had missed her curfew, and he
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: actually became the one to formally identify the vehicle for
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the authorities right then and there.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: And from a law enforcement perspective, statistically, that is a
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: massive red flag. Oh absolutely. When violence happens to teenagers,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: it so frequently originates close to home. So the sudden,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: totally unprompted arrival of a parent at the exact remote
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: location of a double homicide before any news is broken,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: it forces investigators to pause everything.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: They have to look at him.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: They have to completely scrutinize that individual, and.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: The interview transcripts from October fourth showed just how intensely
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: they scrutinized him. Deputy Chief Marvin Campbell brought down in
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: for a six hour interrogation.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Six hours is intense.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: It is now the hard facts were actually in Don's favor.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: He passed a police polygraph test.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Which isn't fool proof, but it counts for something.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Right, And he also provided a completely corroborated alibi. His
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: wife confirmed he was at a local high school football
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: game and then he was home with her until he
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: went out looking for Kimberly at twelve thirty am. But
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: his behavior in that room, his behavior during the interrogation
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: was incredibly cryptic. I mean, when asked directly if he
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: was in the park during the murders, he responded, within
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: my body, I wasn't there.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: What does that even mean?
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Right, And later he told the detective, if I did this,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to tell me I did it.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: And see, this perfectly illustrates the ultimate friction between psychology
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: and the law because those statements, they sound exactly like
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: the evasions of a guilty conscience.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Right, totally like someone trying to fracture reality to avoid
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: a confession exactly.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: But on the flip side, trauma and extreme stress also
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: caused people to dissociate and say deeply bizarre thing wow yeah,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: and law enforcement cannot make an arrest based on strange
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: behavior or weird vibes. Don passed a polygraph, he had
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: absolutely no history of violence, he had zero motive to
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: execute his stepdaughter, and his alibi completely held up.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: But it took until tw thirteen for him to be officially, definitively.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Cleared, which is tragic because focusing so heavily on him
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: in those crucial first days really cost the investigation. It's
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: really momentum.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: It definitely did, and the vacuum left by clearing the
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: stepfather seemed to attract this strange, desperate energy to the case.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Like just two days after the murders, at two any
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: of the morning, a heavily intoxicated man drove his car
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: directly at police officers who were still holding the scene
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: in that same gravel.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Lot, just straight at them.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And when they pulled him out of the vehicle,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: he claimed he was there grieving for his daughter.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Which highlights this really bizarre phenomenon we see in cold cases,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: high profile tragedies act like a magnet for people seeking
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: attention or struggling with their own unrelated psychological issues.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Because his background check showed only a minor burglary record
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: out in California, he had absolutely no local ties to Muncie,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: no connection to Ethan or Kimberly, and he didn't even
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: have any daughters of his own. Wow, it was a
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: foundly strange coincidence. But it just shows how much pressure
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the police were under to find a lead, because they
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: soon started deploying some highly questionable tactics.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the hypnosis.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: They brought in an off duty police officer who had
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: been in the park that night and they put him
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: under hypnosis to try and like enhance his memory of
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: the vehicles in the lot.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: And using hypnosis and forensic investigations is deeply, deeply flawed.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: Why is that? I mean it sounds good.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: In theory, because human memory doesn't work like a hard drive.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: You don't just you know, pull up a video file
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: of the past. The brain actively reconstructs memories every single
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: time you recall them.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, I see.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: So when a subject is hypnotized, they are in a
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: state of extremely high suggestibility. If an interrogator introduces a detail,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: the brain will often just stitch that detail right into
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: the memory to fill in the.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: Gaps, cementing it as a truth.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Exactly cementing it as an absolute truth in the witness's mind.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: And the transcript show the detectives actively fed this hypnotized
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: officer photographs of Dawn, the step father, and photos of
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: the exact make and model of the car. Don Drove
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: repeatedly asking if this was what he saw.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: It's just textbook confirmation bias totally.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: The hypnosis failed to produce a match, thankfully, but it
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: shows a dangerous level of desperation. The police were trying
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to mold a witness to fit their preferred suspect.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: And when you cross ethical lines out of desperation like that,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: you really open the door to the worst kind of
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: opportunists in the criminal justice.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: System, which brings us to the jailhouse informants. This inmate
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: named Steve, sitting in a Virginia prison on armed robbery charges,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: reached out to detectives. He claimed he had this inside
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: knowledge that the murders were the result of a marijuana
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: deal gone wrong in Westside Park and that three men
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: had executed the teens with a shotgun.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: And that single detail about the shotgun immediately contradicts the
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: irrefutable physical evidence. Right, we know it is about point
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: three to eight caliber.
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: Handgun, exactly.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: But high profile cold cases function like an illicit stock
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: market in prisons, information, even entirely fabricated information, is the
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: currency inmates trade to like short sell their own sentences.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: They're just hoping a desperate detective will offer leniency in
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: exchange for a lead.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Right, They're like parasites feeding on a tragedy, and the
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: real world cost of this is devastating. Ethan's family was
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: so desperate for closure that they actually paid out of
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: their own pockets to fly Indiana detectives all the way
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: down to Virginia to follow up on a supposed witness
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: to Steve's story, and it was completely made up, a
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: complete fabrication.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: While detectives were burning all this time on jailhouse economies,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: they were also casting these massive geographical nets trying to
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: see if this was maybe the work of a transient killer.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Like a s serial killer.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they looked really closely at Rafael Rosendez, who was
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: known as the Railroad killer because in nineteen eighty six,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: just a year after the Munsie murders. Rezendas killed a
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: couple in Texas using a point three to eight caliber weapon.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: Oh wow.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: And he was known to travel through Illinois and India.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the weapon match and the proximity are pretty compelling,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: I have to admit, But looking at his broader history,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the connection kind of.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Fades, right because to rule out a serial killer, you
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: really have to analyze their AMMO, their modus operandi, which
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: is how they commit the crime to ensure success, and
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: their vittomology, which is why they select a specific target.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: And Risenda's was different very He.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Primarily targeted homes situated near rear road tracks, invading the
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: domestic space. His violence was almost always characterized by brutal
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: physical beatings or strangulation.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: So the execution style shooting of two teenagers in a
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: vehicle parked in a public park that just does not
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: fit his psychological signature at all, exactly. So, dismissing the
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: serial killer theory brought investigators right back to local geography,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: and it led them to a tip that introduced the
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: absolute most viable suspect of the last forty years, Jimmy Swingley.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: And this is where the scattered puzzle pieces really start
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: to form a highly disturbing picture. I mean, the introduction
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: of Swinglee completely changes the trajector of this entire cold case.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: It totally does.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: So.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: A local resident approached the police with a tip. He
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: claimed his house had recently been robbed by his neighbor,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Swingley. But more importantly, he said Jimmy had confessed
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: to the West Side Park murders.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Just openly confessed to his neighbor. Yeah.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: According to this neighbor, Jimmy claimed a drug deal had
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: gone bad, resulting in the teenager's deaths Now, this matched
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: the early witness accounts of three men in the park
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: and the fleeing dark car, because Jimmy frequently drove a
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: dark Chrysler Cordoba, which.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Is a large two door car very similar to a
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Monte Carlo.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Right. But the critical piece of the neighbor's tip was
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: this highly specific detail. The neighbor said Jimmy told him
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: that during the chaos, a gun was pulled and the
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: holster fell off and was left behind.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: In the car.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: And that is what investigators call a holdback detail because
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: it wasn't public exactly, the police had never publicized that
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: an empty leather holster was found underneath Ethan's body. For
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: a neighbor to know that piece of evidence exist, it
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: strongly suggests the information came from someone who was actually
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: inside that volkswagon on the night of the murders.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: But the issue here is the motive. The neighbor claimed
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: it was a drug deal gone bad, but every piece
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: of background research and the toxicology reports confirm Ethan and
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Kim had zero involvement with narcotics.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Well, we have to reevaluate what a drug deal gone
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: bad means in this specific context.
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: What do you mean?
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: It doesn't necessarily mean the teenagers were the buyers. Westside
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Park had a real reputation as a location for illicit
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: transactions after dark.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: Oh I see.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: So if Jimmy Swingley's confession to his neighbor is accurate,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: the most tragic probability is that Ethan and Kimberly were
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: simply in the wrong place at the absolute worst possible time, Just.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Two innocent kids eating pizza in their car.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who either witnessed a violent transaction between three other
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: men or they were just caught in the crossfire of
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: an escalating argument.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: That is just heartbreaking and Jimmy's behavior immediately following the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: murders really points toward consciousness of guilt.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: What did he do?
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: He fled Indiana and relocated to Florida, and while he
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: was down there, he was pulled over for a routine
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: traffic violation. When the Florida police asked for his identification,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Jimmy gave them a fake alias. He told them his
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: name was Kevin Dixon.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: He used the exact last name of the sixteen year
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: old boy who had just been murdered in his hometown.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Jigs In Yeah, I mean that is a deeply unsettling
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: psychological tell. Some violent offenders incorporate elements of their crimes
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: into their daily lives as a way to exert power,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: or as this twisted private joke, it's sickening. It demonstrates
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: a profound lack of empathy, a callousness that swingly unfortunately
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: proved he possessed in the years that followed.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Oh totally, because Jimmy's criminal record escalated dramatically.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: His time in.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Florida involved numerous offenses, but he eventually returned to Indiana,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: and in nineteen ninety nine, his capacity for violence became
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: undeniable when he murdered a man named Brian Inco in his.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Own apartment, and it was brutal.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Jimmy cut the man's throat so severely he nearly decapitated him.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: He received a sixty five year prison sentence for that homicide.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: So investigators are looking at a man with a proven
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: history of extreme lethal violence, a man who fled the
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: state after the nineteen eighty five murders, who literally used
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: the victim's name as an alias, and whose neighbor knew
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: a non public friends in detail about the crime scene.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And if you dig into the investigative files, they reveal
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: that even Jimmy's own family feared him.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Really, Yes, his.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Mother told police she fully believed Jimmy was capable of
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: the West Side Park murders. She also provided this incredibly
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: dark glimpse into their family history. Jimmy was reportedly in
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the room when his own brother, Jackie, died under circumstances
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: officially listed as undetermined back in nineteen eighty one.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's alarming, and.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: It gets weirder. Nine months after Jackie died, Jackie's wife
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: gave birth to Jimmy's baby.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it just paints this picture of a life completely
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: surrounded by chaos, betrayal, and violence.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: So with all of that circumstantial weight, the challenge for
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: modern law enforcement is reallying the gap between a highly
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: viable suspect and actual physical proof.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Right, which brings us fast forward to twenty eighteen. Detective
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Nathan Sloane takes over the cold case files and he
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: decides to force the issue. Sloan secures a judge's warrant
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: to forcibly collect Jimmy's DNA in prison.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: He was probably expecting a fight.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: He totally was.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: He walks into the facility expecting a physical altercation, but
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Jimmy is surprisingly cooperative. He allows the detective to swab
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: his cheek and he actually sits down for a forty
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: minute interview.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Did he say anything useful?
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Well, Jimmy flat out denies having anything to do with
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Ethan and Kim's murders, and he immediately deflects, pointing the
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: finger right back at Dawn, the stepfather basically just leaning
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: on those thirty year old small town rumors.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: But Detective Sloan has the trump card exactly.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Sloane has the DNA from the empty holster found underneath
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Ethan's body, so he sends Jimmy's cheek swab to the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: state lab.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: And this is the exact moment where the brutal reality
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: of forensic science intersects with a compelling names narrative. Because
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: the lab results came back and the DNA from the
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: hulster did not match Jimmy Swingley, it's just.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: A crushing result for the investigation.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, all that momentum gone.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: It is, but we have to understand the science of
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: why that might have happened. The original crime scene reports
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: noted the holster was found underneath the body, yes, but
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: it was also described as damaged and covered in mud.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Oh right, And DNA is a very fragile biological blueprint,
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: exposing it to environmental moisture, soil and the microbial breakdown
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: that happens over nearly forty years that will relentlessly degrade
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: the delicate nucleotide chains.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: So it might just be too degraded to match exactly.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: The negative result doesn't definitively prove Jimmy wasn't one of
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: the three men in the park. I mean, someone else
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: in that group could have dropped the holster. But in
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: a court of law, a negative DNA match on the
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: primary piece of physical evidence is a wall a prosecutor
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: simply cannot.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Climb over, right, It's reasonable doubt, absolutely, and the failure
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: to secure a science match leaves this massive vacuum of answers.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: And we know that in the modern era, an unsolved
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: mystery with a vacuum effects will always be filled by
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Internet speculation.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: In twenty twenty three, this.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Completely unverified post appeared on a true crime reddit forum.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: The user claimed their neighborhood drunkenly confessed to the West
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Side Park murders.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Let me guess a completely different story, totally different.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: This supposed killer claimed he did it out of high
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: school jealousy, like he liked a girl, saw her at
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the park with a boy he hated, and shot them both.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: The post went into really disturbing detail, claiming the killer
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: shot the girl on the head and shot the boy
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: in the chest, specifically to watch him suffer before taking
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: a souvenir from the car.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: And it's a narrative that feels terrifyingly plausible for a
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: teenage homicide, you know, which is exactly why it gained
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: so much traction online.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: But the facts completely dismantle the internet lore. Because the
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: reddit poster specifically claimed the killer used a point two
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: two caliber weapon. We know, base on irrefutable ballistics from
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the autopsy that Ethan and Kim were killed with a
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: point three to eight caliber weapon.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: You can't argue with ballistic right.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: And Furthermore, the police inventory of the vehicle showed absolutely
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: nothing missing that could serve as a souvenir, especially since
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the highly stealable portable stereo was left completely untouched.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: And this is just a masterclass in how public fascination
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: pollutes the reality of cold cases. Internet sleuths often project
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: their own dramatic narratives onto real tragedies, blending local rumors
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: with literal.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: Fiction, and it creates all this noise.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: It creates a massive secondary layer of noise that investigators
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: have to sift through, which ends up diverting precious resources
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: away from legitimate leads.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Which brings us back to the tragic reality for the
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: families of Ethan Dixon and Kimberly Dowell. I mean, law
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: enforcement cleared the stepfather, they mapped the timelines, they dismissed
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the serial killers, and they zeroed in on a highly
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: violent suspect in Jimmy Swingley, who, by the way, is
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: currently scheduled for release from prison.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: In twenty thirty, which is terrifying.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: It is yet, despite all the interrogations and the DNA swabbing,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: no one has ever been charged for what happened in
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: that gravel lot. Almost forty years later, the families are
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: still waiting for justice that remains just out of reach.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: It is a profound and really lingering injustice. But as
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: we close these files today, there was one final, incredibly
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: unsettling detail about the psychology of that night to consider.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: What's that?
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Well, we know the killer left that small empty lutter
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: holster in the call right underneath Ethan's body. But they
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: took the weapon. They made a conscious choice to take
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: the point thirty eight caliber handgun.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: Why do you think they did that?
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: That's the question. Did they take it because it was
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: a prized possession, like a tool they fully intended to
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: use again, or in the blinding panic of the violence
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: they had just unleashed, did they run from that idling
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: Volkswagen stepped to the edge of the gravel lot and
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: just hurl the weapon into the dark, rushing waters of
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: the White River. Wow, we're out there. The gun that shattered,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: the piece of Muncie, Indiana, and still hiding its secrets.