Kim Langwell called her daughter at 5:15 p. m. and said she had a few errands to run before coming home. They were all supposed to go to dinner that evening.
Tiffany heard her mother’s voice, normal and cheerful. That was the last time anyone heard from her. Kim, a 34-year-old single mother who had raised Tiffany alone after her daughter’s father left, was a reliable woman. She had worked hard to build a stable life for them in Bowmont, juggling three jobs before landing a good position at the local oil refinery.
She was dating a man named Ken and was engaged to be married. Nothing about that evening suggested anything was wrong. But by 6:30 that night, when Ken arrived at her house to pick her up, she wasn’t there. He and Tiffany tried her phone, but she didn’t answer.
It wasn’t like her. Ken drove the route from her work to her home, checked stores, called friends, but found no trace of her. Then he spotted her car in the parking lot outside a pharmacy. The car was locked, and she was gone.
He tried to convince himself she’d gone somewhere with a friend and left her car behind, but the thought didn’t sit right. He went home. By morning, her car was still sitting there. She hadn’t come home and hadn’t called.
Ken called the police. Detectives found her phone inside the car, left behind, a detail that felt very wrong. Tiffany told them about her mother’s ex-boyfriend, a man named Terry. Kim had broken up with Terry over six months earlier after a volatile and controlling relationship.
But he’d asked her to stop by his house that evening to hold some shelves while he mounted them to the wall. Tiffany said she’d called Terry that night. He told her Kim had only stayed a few minutes and left. Friends revealed darker details.
Terry had been increasingly aggressive and controlling during the relationship. He demanded to know where she was and who she was with. He threatened her when she tried to leave and once choked her during an argument. Kim had been genuinely scared of him.
She’d confided in her friends that if she ever disappeared, they should look in Terry’s backyard. The police questioned Terry. He repeated his story about the shelves, saying Kim left within minutes. He claimed he’d gone to a local bar about four hours later.
But witnesses placed his tow truck near the parking lot where Kim’s car was found. An employee saw Kim’s car still in Terry’s driveway at 5:50 p. m. , contradicting the “brief visit” story.
Kim’s family confronted him, and he mocked them. He casually told them he was going to take a polygraph but that he’d probably fail it. Kim’s family was convinced he was responsible, but the police had no physical evidence. Terry’s house was searched, and nothing was found.
The case stalled. Then another suspect emerged. Kim’s friends revealed that her boss, Frank, had been obsessed with her. He was married but openly flirted with her, wrote her over 100 love letters, and drove past her house daily, sometimes parking across the street just to watch her.
Kim had kept the letters and given them to friends, asking them to hold on to them in case anything ever happened to her. Frank denied everything, claiming he barely had feelings for her and had never written letters. He had an alibi—a receipt from a store—but there was still a gap of time between Kim leaving work and the start of his alibi. Yet again, no physical evidence linked him to the crime.
Years passed. The investigation went cold. Terry refused to answer questions. Kim’s family lived with the uncertainty, receiving silent phone calls from a person who never spoke.
Then, 25 years later, a documentary team took on the case. They interviewed Frank, who still denied everything. When they approached Terry, he fled out his back door. He was forced to sit down and answer questions, and his story shifted.
He now claimed Kim had only come to pick up the rest of her belongings, not to help with shelves. It was a contradiction no one missed. Investigators reopened the case and prepared to charge Terry with murder. Then, just before the trial began, a witness came forward after seeing the documentary.
The man said Terry had once told him he killed his ex-girlfriend and buried her on his property. Police secured a new warrant. Ground-penetrating radar revealed a section of concrete beneath Terry’s bedroom floor, about the size of a human body, where rebar had been cut away. They began digging.
Under the concrete, they found a blanket. Inside were human remains. They were identified as Kim Langwell. Terry was arrested and charged with murder.
He is currently awaiting trial. Kim’s daughter has also filed a civil suit in an attempt to prevent him from funding his defense. Kim had told her friends where to look, and after 25 years, she was finally found exactly where she said she would be. —
Joan Delisandro was a happy 7-year-old who loved ballet and the Girl Scouts.
On April 19, 1973, she grabbed a few boxes of cookies and told her mother she’d be back in a few minutes. She was going to deliver them to a neighbor who had just pulled into their driveway. When she didn’t return, her mother grew worried. The neighborhood was quiet and safe, but by evening there was still no sign of her.
Her parents searched, then called the police. A massive search began, involving hundreds of volunteers and firefighters. Joan’s mother remembered her daughter’s words about the neighbor with the new car. The only family with a new car was the McGawans.
She went to their door and spoke to 26-year-old Joseph McGowan, a school chemistry teacher. He said he hadn’t seen Joan. Something felt off to her, but the police found nothing suspicious in his home. With no other leads, detectives brought Joseph in for a polygraph.
He showed clear signs of deception. Under pressure, he asked for a priest. After speaking with him, Joseph confessed. He said Joan came to the door with cookies, and he invited her inside to pay.
He claimed he didn’t have the exact change, became deeply upset, and attacked her. He dragged her to his bedroom, hit her multiple times, and committed horrific acts. He then killed her, wrapped her body in an old sofa cover, placed it in his trunk, and drove to a national park 20 miles away. He hid her body behind a large rock.
He said he cleaned the bedroom and returned home. He even joined the search efforts the next day. He told police he felt completely calm that night and slept without issue. Forensic evidence contradicted part of his story.
Joan’s injuries were worse than he admitted, and her clothing was missing. The attack was brutal, and investigators believed he had planned it. He was arrested, tried, and pleaded guilty to murder, though he continued to deny the assault. Psychiatrists concluded he had hidden dark urges for years.
He was sentenced to life in prison, but parole was possible under the law at the time. Twenty years later, he became eligible. Joan’s mother fought to stop his release. She pushed for a new law in New Jersey, making anyone convicted of murdering a person under 14 for the purposes of assault ineligible for parole.
The law passed. A federal version followed. Joseph’s parole was denied multiple times. During one hearing, he changed his story, admitting he attacked Joan out of anger about his own miserable life.
Another evaluation by a former FBI agent concluded Joseph was a significant danger and shouldn’t be released. Joseph remained in prison for the rest of his life, dying in 2021 at age 74. Joan’s mother continued her advocacy work, raising the age limit in the law to 18 and helping pass a law removing the statute of limitations for murder cases in New Jersey. —
Drew Shadine was a 22-year-old college student known for her warm personality and community involvement.
On November 22, 2003, she finished her shift at a clothing store, bought a purse, and walked to her car. She called her boyfriend, Chris. They had been talking for a few minutes when she suddenly went silent. He heard her say, “Oh my god, okay,” and then the line went dead.
Chris assumed the call dropped. Three hours later, she called back, but only silence came through. He heard the sound of buttons being pressed, and then nothing. She never answered his callbacks.
When Drew didn’t show up for her waitress shift that night and missed her usual contact, her roommate called the police. Officers initially dismissed it, noting Drew was an adult. But when campus police found her car still in the mall parking lot, unlocked, with no signs of a struggle, and a small knife sheath lying on the ground nearby, the case escalated. Video footage showed Drew shopping for Christmas gifts, wearing specific black shoes.
It also revealed a middle-aged man in all black, walking with a cane, who repeatedly entered a connected grocery store but never bought anything. He was seen following young women through the mall. Her phone records revealed her last call was pinged from a cell tower in a neighboring town, half an hour away. Investigators identified the man as 50-year-old Alfonso Rodriguez.
His criminal history was extensive: attempted assault at 21, subsequent attacks on two other women, and a 23-year prison sentence for an attempted abduction and stabbing. He had been released just seven months before Drew disappeared. On his release, he moved in with his mother in Krouton, the very town where a black shoe was found by the riverbank a few days later. Drew’s roommate identified the shoe as hers.
Rodriguez denied involvement, claiming he’d been at the mall to watch a movie that wasn’t playing. He agreed to a search of his car. Inside, they found a receipt for a pocketknife matching the sheath found near Drew’s car. The knife itself was found submerged in cleaning solution, and the car contained traces of blood.
Testing matched Drew’s DNA. Another woman’s shoe and a second knife with Drew’s blood on it were also found. Rodriguez was arrested. Drew’s body was found five months later, submerged in a river a few miles west of Krouton, frozen under the winter ice.
She had been attacked and had died about three hours after her abduction. Rodriguez was convicted and sentenced to death. But years of appeals followed. A 2021 appeal succeeded, overturning the death sentence due to concerns about his developmental issues.
In 2023, he was re-sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Drew’s memory is honored by a scholarship at her university and memorial gardens in her hometown. —
Salem Figar was a 19-year-old French student planning to spend Christmas with her cousin in England. On December 18, 1995, she accepted a ride from a family friend, a truck driver, who dropped her off at a truck stop in Folkestone.
He arranged for a second driver to take her to Newbury. There, she tried to call her cousin from a pay phone, but the call wouldn’t go through. The driver asked other truckers for help, and a third man, in a white Mercedes truck, agreed to take her to Salisbury, saying she could catch a bus from there. Investigators later found that no such bus existed, and the third driver remained unidentified.
Salem was never seen alive again. Her body was found on the side of a highway on December 29th, in the opposite direction she was supposedly headed. She had been strangled and assaulted. No DNA was found, and her clothing and personal belongings were missing.
Police suspected the third driver, and a sketch was released. A month later, a worker called in with a tip: the sketch looked like his co-worker, 36-year-old truck driver Stuart Little. Stuart drove a white Mercedes truck with refrigeration. He refused to give a DNA sample, and when he finally did, police matched blood found in his truck’s sleeping area to Salem.
In his garage, they found her personal belongings. The tagograph showed a suspicious gap in his driving log, corresponding to the time her body was dumped. Another driver identified Stuart in a lineup. Under pressure, he admitted to giving Salem a ride but claimed all contact was consensual, and her belongings were simply forgotten.
A witness placed him by a warehouse the day before her body was found, burning something near his truck. Police found Salem’s underwear there, stained with blood. Receipts showed Stuart had bought a shovel, an axe, and a saw. He was arrested and convicted of murder, sentenced to life in prison with a possibility of parole after 20 years.
His parole has been denied. —
Male Bush was a 24-year-old nurse and mother to a 16-month-old son, Noah. She and her boyfriend, Cody, had recently moved into a new apartment complex in Hinton, Alberta, eager to settle down. On September 16, 2021, Cody came home from work to find the apartment empty.
Their son’s stroller was inside, and lunch was half-prepared on the table. Male and Noah were gone. Police started searching and a neighbor claimed to have seen Male running from the complex toward the road, without her son. But when police reviewed CCTV footage, they noticed something far more disturbing: the same neighbor was seen carrying two large garbage bags to a dumpster.
Inside them, they found Noah’s body and Male’s phone. Investigators immediately turned their attention to that neighbor, 53-year-old Robert Major. To avoid disturbing the family waiting in the next apartment, police asked Cody and his relatives to leave for a “thorough examination. ” As soon as they were gone, police entered Robert’s apartment.
In the bathroom, they found Male’s body in the tub. Robert was arrested. His criminal history was extensive—over 24 charges, mostly sexual offenses. He had admitted to psychiatrists he enjoyed his crimes and was highly likely to reoffend, yet he’d been released after short sentences.
Because Canadian law removed offenders from a registry after a year without reoffending, Robert had been completely off the radar. He moved to Hinton without anyone knowing his past. Robert confessed partially, admitting he killed Male and Noah. He had no motive to explain, but investigators believed he acted out of pure violence and opportunity.
He claimed Male had come to his apartment, though he wouldn’t say why. He strangled her and then killed her child, possibly fearing identification or to prevent noise. He was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility in 25 years. The family continues to advocate for a new law, known as Noah’s Law, to keep repeat offenders on public registries for life.
As of now, the legislation still hasn’t passed.
