Criminology - Dale Williams

Episode Date: May 11, 2019

Almost 20 years ago, just before Memorial Day weekend in 1999, Dale Williams went missing. Dale was a devoted father and husband who vanished from his hometown of Nucla, Colorado. Dale owned an auto body repair shop and apparently received a call to help a stranded motorist. He has not been seen since. An unlikely suspect emerged in Dale's case but only served to frustrate both the authorities and Dale's family. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the life and disappearance of Dale Williams. We talked with Dale's daughter Tonee for this episode and her interview provides some great insights into her dad and his mysterious disappearance. You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go. First question. You thought you'd see everyone's idea in the team brainstorm, but you've got a grand total of one. Drawing board or Mero board. Drawing board, right? Because in Mero, the team can add ideas now or later. And with privacy mode, we can keep them anonymous until they're good to share.

Correct. Next, you need the best way to explain your idea, but all you have is a few sticky notes. Drawing board or Meroon. Drawing board, because, you know, in Miro, I could record videos at text, images, links, and digital sticky notes, of course, present my thoughts the way I want. Right again. Now, you're looking for a past idea you thought was just genius. Only you could find, oh, there it is.

Drawing board or Miro are finished and unfinished work lives in one place. And he's one. Join over 60 million people getting ideas noticed in Mero brainstorms. Get your first three boards for free at Miro.com. That's MIRO.com. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 60 of the criminology podcast.

I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. So, Morph, we are into May. The weather's turning. I've been mowing my grass a bunch. That is great news. What it also means is that we're getting really close to. to CrimeCon. We're less than a month away at this point. And there's still time. For those of you

that have made the decision that you're going to go to CrimeCon, kind of last minute, maybe, but that's fine. There's still rooms out there. Make sure if you're buying your badge on the CrimeCon website that you use our promo code, Criminology 19. That'll save you 10%. I don't know about you more, but I'm really looking forward to it. Yeah, I am too. And I just found out that our friend Paul Holes is going to be the host this year of the whole event. So maybe we can con him into buying us some drinks. Yeah, I didn't know he was the host of the whole event. I was looking at the itinerary yesterday and saw that he was doing a couple of things, but didn't realize he was the kind of the host of the whole thing. But that makes sense. I mean, who else in the last year has been

kind of hotter in the world of true crime, if you want to say it that way. Yeah, it should be a fun time down there. So Morph, tell me about your week. You doing good? I still can't get rid of this cough. I've got a dry cough with some gross phlegm once in a while, and it's, it's affecting my voice a little bit, and I'm wondering if that's what caused me in the first place to lose my voice. So still doctoring that and upsetting my wife because she hates to hear me cough. It's one of her pet peeves. So I'm trying to get that out of the way, so it's gone. How about you? Oh, man, you cannot get into your wife's pet peeve you're not going to have a happy happy wife you got to get that fix man all right make sure you edit this out then nope nope leaving it in she will hear it got to so let's do our

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And be sure to check your Patreon feed there because we've got a lot of stuff that we've been putting out and we'll continue to put out. All right, more, if it's time to get started with the subject case for this episode. It was 20 years ago this month, just before Memorial Day weekend in 1999. A loving husband and devoted father of two teenage daughters disappeared without a trace from Nucla, Colorado. The man's name was Dale Williams. Dale owned his own body shop and one day he got a call at work from a motorist who was stranded about 30 miles away near a bedrock Colorado store.

So Dale left his shop to go help the stranded motorist and then he disappeared without a trace. There has not been a single confirmed sighting of Dale Williams since that day. following his disappearance, clues turned up that suggested that Dale Williams may have been the victim of foul play. And that's what we're going to get into today. Right. So if that's the case, who was responsible for Dale vanishing and who wanted Dale gone? I mean, this was a man seemingly without any known enemies. why would that type of man be the target of a person who wanted to make him disappear? And to help us tell Dale's story, his daughter, Tony, joined us. And so you'll hear from her throughout this episode.

To understand Dale's case a bit more, I think it's important to look at the area where he lived in and where he vanished from. Nucla, Colorado in Montrose County is located in the southwest portion of the state, where ancestral peblowans once lived. It was founded in 1904 and became an incorporated town on March 14, 1915. The nearest larger town is Grand Junction, about 340 miles north. At the time of Dales' disappearance, the town of Nucla had a population of less than 1,000 people, and it's named after the word nucleus for the surrounding farms and mines, although it has since come to be associated with the growth of uranium mining in the region.

about 18 miles northwest of Nucla sits the town of Yuravan. It's an old government mining town that was abandoned in the late 1980s. All the residents of the town were moved out and relocated. So this site started out as a radium recovery plant in 1915, and by 1935, it was expanded to include vanadium recovery. That year, the town of Yurbanian, Urvan was officially established to house mine and mill workers and their families. From the 1940s to 1984, the plant operated as a uranium facility.

During World War II, some of the uranium used in the Manhattan Project. And I think most people know that was the research and development project that produced the first nuclear weapons, including the bomb that the United States dropped on here. Urashima, some of that uranium was mined and milled in Yoravann. Now, after the town was evacuated, it was demolished and the site was placed on the list of Superfund sites on June 6, 1986. So to give a little background, a super fund site is a location that is going to get some government money, right?

Or government funds are going to be set aside, allocated for the cleanup of this site because it was contaminated at some point with some type of hazardous material or substance. So that's what a super fun site is and Eurovan was placed on that list. The area around Nucla has a couple of prehistoric caves at an ancient Pueblo settlement inhabited around 1,100 AD and later abandoned. So I think, maybe some of the listeners can visualize this is really a remote and open area. Yeah, just picture the opposite of Times Square, right? In New York City, it's not that. It's essentially the opposite of that. Nuclear made headlines in 2013 when it became the first and only Colorado town to make gun

ownership mandatory. And I remember this morph. I mean, this was a big deal. You know, obviously, anything to do with guns and gun ownership here in the United States makes the media nowadays because it's a hot topic. And in 2013, this was a very big deal. I don't remember the specifics of it. I honestly don't. It seems to me that it was maybe a, if I remember correctly, it was a in direct response to people feeling like some group was trying to take their guns away is what I believe. But I could be wrong. No doubt it's a hard swing the other way, right? From what we think of as people that are in favor of much greater gun control, less gun ownership. This is a swing in the completely opposite direction.

Yeah, I think we've all heard of the right to carry in certain states. And in this town, they made it mandatory. We've talked about these kind of small rural towns and other cases that we've covered on this podcast. Again, Nucla had less than 1,000 people. It's the kind of town where most people really might know everyone else that lives there. And the kind of town where a lot of people probably felt safe to leave their doors unlocked. but in 1999, that safety net was ripped away when one of their very own vanished without a trace. Well, when you're talking about a town with less than a thousand people, I think you'd be in some

cases pretty close to knowing most people. I think my daughter's high school has a thousand people. I mean, to put it in perspective, right? You're talking about a high school of a thousand versus a whole town. I don't know that she knows everybody in her high school, but I think, that's a great way to put it into perspective. Dale Dwayne Williams was born on July 15th, 1956. After high school, he attended auto body school and together with his father started an auto body business soon after graduation. Dale and his wife, Diana, had two daughters, Tony and Sarah, and the family resided in Nucla. He loved his family. He was very devoted to them. Dale owned pro body shop located at 584 Main Street in Nucla and Diana ran a local

video store called Showtime Movie Rentals. Sadly, Morp, there are people listening to this podcast right now that have never physically rented a movie in their life. Unless they streamed it or downloaded it. Well, and that's what I mean physically. The days of Blockbuster walking into a video store and picking out your movie and hoping they have a copy of it available, those days are long gone. And I don't know if that makes me feel old. I don't know if that makes me feel nostalgic. And I don't know if I should feel either because what we have now is so amazing if you think about it. You know, if you and I get talking about a movie, 10 minutes after that conversation is over, I can probably find it on one of the streaming services and start. watching it. I don't need to get in my truck and head down to a shop and browse through aisles and aisles to find that movie and hopefully find that movie. But there is something nostalgic, right, about Blockbuster and Showtime and some of these video stores. It's really a different era,

if you think about it. There's no doubt that in 1999, when Dale went missing, that video stores were at their height of their popularity. Besides that, the couple also installed windshields commercially. So, I mean, you've got to take a look at this family. You know, father's running an auto body shop. The mom's running a video store on the side. If that's, you know, as if that's not enough, on the side, they're installing windshields. Dale was considered outgoing.

He was considered hardworking, and he would have to be, right? To, you know, get all of this done. He was well known around town. He was active in the community. Dale participated in various events and organizations. When you read comments from those that knew him, every person said Dale was extremely friendly. He would always lend a hand. He was just involved in a lot of the things,

going on in Nucla. But above all, and this is what really comes out, he was a family man. And he was never too busy to spend time with his family, even though he was running essentially a couple different businesses. He made it a priority. We would go up into the mountains and picnics. And my dad was really active in Nucla community events and organizations. He would drive the homecoming girls.

He played Santa Claus. He, you know, he, he would pretty much attend any event that was happening within the community pancake breakfast. And, you know, anything that they were putting on, he would be supportive of those things. And spend plenty of time with us girls while we were, you know, doing our school activities and with friends and stuff like that. He was, he was a very involved person. His brother, my uncle Dick, and my grandmother, his mom, you know, they all lived in the same area as well in Nucla. So, you know, he was, he was stug over to my grandma's at least every single day, once a day to help with stuff or to eat lunch with her, you know, things like that. Or meet her up at a restaurant or, you know, he definitely made time for family.

since my dad was so involved, he knew everybody. He knew everybody in town. And so, you know, there was, maybe there was another body shop. I don't really remember. There was like a tire shop there. And I don't really think there was anybody else that did like body work. I think he was the only person that, you know, if you hit a deer, he was the only person that you would take your car to get a fixed unless you went out of town.

Dale was a people pleaser who didn't like upsetting anyone or making them feel wronged in anyway, and he was always willing to help someone in need. So it wasn't unusual when Dale did just that on May 27, 1999. That day, Dale had a busy day ahead of him working in his shop. Just before noon, on his lunch break, he played a game of darts with his friend, Pastor Tom Ross, who brought along his young son. It wasn't unusual for people to just kind of stop in and talk to my dad and, you know, have a soda or something like that, play a game of darts. for, you know, 20 minutes or whatever while during the workday. And he would make time to, you know, just to visit with people.

The phone rang and Dale answered it. And from the way that Dale was speaking, Tom thought the caller was a woman, although this has never been confirmed. The caller told Dale that her car broke down about three quarters of a mile from a store in Bedrock. Bedrock was about 30 miles away and that she needed assistance. And we talked about how rural this area is. I'm just not sure how many options there were for somebody at that point in time who was stranded.

Dale told the caller that he would bring his record. And according to Pastor Ross, the woman must have said something along the lines of, oh no, I just need a jump because then the conversation switched to Dale telling the caller that he would just bring his truck, a white 1994 Ford F-250 long bed. So Dale hung up the phone and started talking with Tom, letting him know what he was doing and where he was going before he left. Tom thought the phone call was strange because first off, Dale was not a mechanic. He did body work. But nonetheless, it wasn't surprising to Tom that Dale would go out to try and help someone who was in trouble. Like we talked about, this was the type of person that Dale Williams was. After the call, Dale and Tom said their goodbyes and parted ways. And besides the fact that Tom thought it was a little strange that Dale would go, there really wasn't. anything alarming about this call, right?

Nothing unusual, nothing in Dale's demeanor that hinted at the fact that he was worried or anything like that about going to help this person. He left his work area as if he was coming back very soon. He left the shop completely unlocked, lights on, car doors open, hood up, the whole bit. And he left. After he left his shop, Dale stopped at first. barrel gas in Naturaita at around 12.15 p.m. and spoke with Tammy Lawrence, who was the wife of Dale's good friend, Steve Lawrence. Dale informed Tammy that he wouldn't be able to fix her windshield

that afternoon, but we'll get to it as soon as possible. Tammy said that was fine. Dale seemed to be in a hurry and told Tammy that he had to help a stranded motorist near bedrock. That was the last time Tammy saw him. And Tammy thought it was strange that Dale stopped into the office to tell her that he was going to work on a windshield that it wouldn't be ready right away when he could have just called. I don't know what you think about that, Mike. Well, it is 1999, right? Cell phones are out. There's no iPhones, but they're cell phones, right? In 1999, Dale had a cell phone, but like a lot of people back then, he didn't use it to just carry on conversations. number one, a lot of times it was expensive, right, to use a cell phone in the 90s.

So he carried one, but it was for emergencies. So I guess he was old school. Stop in, have a face-to-face conversation. It's something that we don't do a lot of today. Yeah, back in 1999, when cell phones really started coming out, I didn't always carry mine. I sometimes would. Sometimes I'd forget it. It just wasn't something that I brought with me all the time.

but when Dale did have it, he would use it only in cases of emergency. And we're going to hear a little bit about the cell phone reception throughout that area a little bit later in the episode. It was spotty at best back then. Tony believes that it's possible that her dad didn't go to feral gas just to let Tammy know when he'd be fixing her windshield and that Dale may have had an ulterior motive. Now that I'm, you know, reflecting on these things, I kind of think that he may have been looking for Steve to go with him.

Like maybe he felt uneasy about something or something like that. Because that was just, I agree with Tammy. I think that that's really weird that he would just stop by and say, hey, I'll get to your windshield later. Later that evening, Dale didn't return home for dinner.

Now, Diana didn't worry at first because she assumed that he was working late at the shop, but she called over there a couple of times. and Dale never answered. So eventually she went to bed around 10 p.m. She woke up a couple of times throughout the night to find that Dale was still not home. When Diana got up the next morning at dawn, then she was really surprised to find out that Dale never made it home the night before. And that's when she really got worried. She jumped into her car and drove to Dale's body shop. When she first arrived, she noticed,

She noticed that the door was unlocked. The hood was still up on a van and Dale's tools were sitting in front of the vehicle as if he had just walked away from it for a few minutes. But Dale was nowhere to be found. On top of that, his pickup truck was not parked outside. So this is when the alarm bells for Diana really started to go off. She's extremely worried. She drove to her mother-in-law's house.

Dale wasn't there either. So together, Diana and Dale's mother, they went to the local junkyard. And this was a place that Dale frequented quite often. So they checked for him there. No sign. They continued searching for Dale for hours. When they could not find him, Diana reported him missing to police and an investigation began. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, soon took over the investigation. Diana told police that Dale wasn't the type of person to just leave home and not return. She knew something was very wrong. This was a man that had no history of taking off or disappearing for any lengths of time,

so his family feared that something sinister may have happened to him. Investigators pieced together Dale's activities on May 27th. They spoke with Pastor Tom Ross and Tammy Lawrence, and through Tom, learned about the mysterious phone call. Soon after, they discovered that the caller used a cell phone that was later reported stolen. What's interesting here is that the caller said she was near Bedrock, but back in 1999, there was no cell phone service in Bedrock, and there's still no service there today. Bedrock is an area in a valley with high cliffs, so it seems highly unlikely that the person

who called Dale actually called from Bedrock, but where did the caller actually call from? And it wasn't just Bedrock that had no cell service. The neighboring areas of paradox in your van also didn't have any cell phone service. The caller most likely had to be wherever the nearest cell phone service was. It's not known if detectives questioned the original owner of the phone, but they never found out the identity of the caller. And more if we kind of delved into phones and plans and things in the 90s, but then you talk about coverage. It was spotty in populated areas, right? I mean, if you think about it, the 90s was when kind of cell phones really first started to become popular with the masses.

They didn't have all of the towers that they have today. So I can only imagine what it was like out in a very rural area like the one we're talking about. It had to be frustrating. It says when it comes to cell phone coverage. And I live in a more populated area than Nucla. now and I still have to go outside and walk around and hold my phone up to the sky trying to get a signal. And it's 2019. I've never understood that. When I want to talk to you, I have to text you and then you call me from your landline. It's like the Stone Ages, Morp. Yeah, so you can only imagine

what it was 20 years ago in the nuclear area. A witness came forward who claimed that they saw Dale's truck parked at his body shop around three or four people. on May 27. This is after Pastor Ross saw Dale leave. So this was confusing, right? This is the sort of monkey wrench that gets thrown into the mix that really does nothing but raise more questions than provide any type of answers. It just causes a bunch of confusion. I have heard that also. and I'm not sure how solid that is, that information is. However, if I do believe that if my dad's truck was seen back at the shop, I don't think my dad drove it there.

So the truck was supposedly seen back there in the afternoon, I think around three or four or something like that. And then there was also a reported site. at the Natarita family market. And I don't think that one's true at all because that was like around five or six or something like that. I do think that the one at the shop is possible.

But, you know, this happened on a Monday, May 27th, and that year was on Monday. And so if my dad's truck was back at the shop in the afternoon around two or three, you know kids would have been getting out of school people would have been you know the main street would have been pretty busy for nukela there would have you know there would have been more than more than one person that would have saw this and from what I understand it was only one person that reported it we have to talk a little bit more about this possible siding of dale's truck

in front of his shop after pastor Ross saw him leave to help the person who called on the phone If the truck was really in front of his shop at this time, then either Dale or someone else drove it back there. If it was Dale, then it's possible that he really did find a motorist in need, help them out, and then return to the shop. In that scenario, that scenario would indicate that something actually happened to Dale later on. But if that's the case, you would think that the motorist that called Dale would have come forward by now and said, okay, that was me. I called. Dale came out. He jumped my car.

He did whatever he needed to do. He was a great guy and he left. Right? More if I mean, that's only natural. Yeah. In a small town like that, you know, word would have gotten around about this call. and Dale missing, you think that person would have come forward? Well, it's not like this was not a publicized case.

It didn't happen in New York City, but it received media attention. So the other possibility is that someone other than Dale drove the truck back to the shop. If it was the person that had harmed Dale, why would they risk driving his truck back to his shop on his turf when anyone could have easily seen them driving it, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I think the third option and one that always exists is that perhaps the witness was just simply mistaken. And it really wasn't Dale's truck at all at his shop later that afternoon. And you heard Tony mention that this sighting apparently happened when it was broad daylight and in a busy time of the afternoon when school was letting out. Other people would

have likely reported seeing the truck too, but no other witnesses came forward. Tony also mentioned that another witness reporting seeing a man matching Dale's description at a Naturae to market around 6 p.m. that day. Police were unable to confirm either of the two sightings, and it strongly believed that the second sighting at the market was not Dale Williams. And this had to be frustrating for Dale's family. They were probably grasping on to every piece of information that came in and holding out hope that Dale was out there someplace, and that he might be found safe. But these unconfirmed or unlikely sightings of Dale couldn't have helped either Dale's family or police. It couldn't have helped the William's family because it probably got their hopes up.

And it also didn't help police because they had to look into these possible sightings. Two days later on May 29, organized searches for Dale began. Dale's oldest daughter, Tony, who was away at college, drove back to Nucla when she learned her father was missing. The community, family, friends, everyone searched all day in various areas around Nucla and surrounding towns. These ground searches involved about 40 people, all looking for Dale. And then on May 31st, an air search was conducted. Okay, so when my dad disappeared, I can't remember specifically which day it was that I was called. I think it was the 29th because that was graduation.

So I had driven back over from Delta to Nucla and they had organized a community search party, which, you know, there were several hundred community members involved in that. search and we searched all day. We couldn't find anything. People from my dad and moms, the church that they went to every now and then. So these were, you know, these were really good community members that were, you know, in those sensitive areas, I guess. And they didn't see anything. They couldn't find nothing. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.

For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Dale's friends and family, creative flyers, they posted them around town. Diana put flyers up in the local post office. So although she was extremely worried, Diana was being very proactive, right? And it makes sense. She wanted to get the word out about Dale.

She definitely wanted to get out his photo. So these flyers were a great idea. But just two days after she started putting them up, Diana noticed that the flyers were gone. So she put more up. When she returned again, she found that the flyers had been taken down. And in her mind, she knew someone was deliberately taking down her flyers. And so she reported it to the CBI.

And you have to wonder, who in the world would do such a thing? Why would someone deliberately take these flyers down, possibly hurting the chance of Dale being found? And amazingly, investigators did not. not mess around. They put up a camera at the post office and sure enough caught the person taking the flyers down on camera. And it didn't take long for police using that camera footage to identify the person who was ripping down the flyers. But when police and Dale's family learned who that person was, it was a real curveball for everyone. The person on the video was an ex-friend of Dale and Diana's. About a year prior to Dale's

disappearance, Dale and Diana helped the ex-friend's wife relocate out of Colorado, and they didn't tell the ex-friend of her location because he had reportedly been abusing her. A few weeks later, someone broke into Dale's shop. Pictures of Dale and Diana and the ex-friend and his wife were torn up and left at the scene. Several 22-caliber bullets were scattered on the shop floor. the only thing missing from the shop was Dale's gun. Two weeks after the break-in, someone put the gun in the video drop box at Diana's video store. It's not known if fingerprints were recovered from the gun.

So very creepy. Obviously, I think we can surmise more that this ex-friend of the couple didn't take them helping out his ex-wife very well. He didn't like it. He didn't like the fact that they helped. her relocate out of Colorado. Now, we don't know for sure that this is the person that broke into Dale's shop, tore up the pictures, stole the gun, and then later put it into the video drop box at Diana Store. But it's hard not to come to that conclusion under the circumstances

we talked about. Yeah. And to your point, I think the police probably honed in on him, because of the fact he was the one ripping down those posters, because the pictures that were torn up included his photo, and because of this animosity that he probably harbored towards Dale Williams. And because of that, they took a really close look at this guy. They questioned him about the missing poster flyers, but he never gave a real reason for tearing them down, and he stopped doing it. They also questioned him over Dale's dissonable. and the break-in, and he denied any involvement in either case. And the details of this person are kind of murky.

We really don't know if this ex-friend of Dale's remains a person of interest in his disappearance. But you have to think about this entire incident and how shocking it must have been for Dale's family. Here's someone that you once considered probably a pretty good friend. taking down flyers that are helping to find a missing Dale Williams, couple that with the break in at Dale's shop, the torn up photos. And like you said, Morf, this guy had to be at the top of the suspect list for police. But it sounds like they talked to him. And obviously,

we know they didn't garner information or have any strong evidence to. move forward on, or we'd be talking about that. It wasn't until about five weeks after Dal Williams went missing that there would be a major break in the search for him. On July 4th, a family who was swimming and fishing in a local swimming hole made a startling discovery when they found a truck submerged in 13 feet of water. That truck turned out to be Dal Williams missing pickup truck. In that area, it's in a confluence where the two rivers meet and it's a local swimming haul. The truck was under 13 feet of water and a good amount of that was silt, of course, but only

locals really knew about that swimming hole. And the people who found the vehicle were new residents and it was a family and they were fishing and swimming down there. And the son, who's now, he's one of my really good friends for obvious reasons. His lure got stuck on the truck, so they thought it was a refrigerator. So he went down to unreleased his lure. When he slammed down to release his lure, he was standing on the hood of the truck. And I thought it was a refrigerator. So he figured out that it was a vehicle, and he was able to go get his arm into there.

to the window and you pulled out the dash cover, which had a pro-body shop embroidered on it. And then that's when they went and called the police. He was trying to get the registration out, but he wasn't able to get in there and get it. It was after this family discovered the submerged truck that they contacted the Montrose County Sheriff's Office. And like you said, Morph, the truck was found submerged under 13 feet of water. but there was no body inside it. The vehicle was in an upright position, but filled inside with mud and sand up to the dashboard. And there was a whole bunch of agencies involved in removing this vehicle, the Montrose County

Sheriff's Office, the Colorado State Patrol. There was a dive team involved, but they got it out. It took them about an hour to remove data. truck from the river, and it took them about another hour to dig out all the sand and mud from the cat. The vehicle remained at the scene for several hours while police investigated. Then it was towed off and held in evidence. So when this truck was first found, police considered the possibility that Dale may have had an accident and crashed the truck into the river, but that was unlikely. right where the truck was found was not along a curve in the road it really wasn't along any type of

area that might easily lead to Dale driving the truck into the water the Montrose County undersheriff said at the time someone would have had to make a fairly sharp and abrupt turn for the vehicle to be put into the river it's suspicious in nature but doesn't necessarily mean that a crime has been committed. Even if we were able to prove the pickup was deliberately driven into the river, we still would not know if Dale Williams drove it into the river. So it's hard to speculate, this guy said. We can't rule out foul play, but we can't find anything to confirm foul play. But this was a big break and the details about the truck and how it was found alarmed both investigators and Dale's family.

That was pretty devastating. And a lot of it was because of the way that they found the truck. The physical attributes of the vehicle, the way that it was driven in, were not how my father would typically drive that truck. For instance, one of the windows was rolled down just a portion. And my dad didn't do that. he it was either all the way up or all the way down he was one of those guys that enjoyed the fresh air more than an air conditioning air it was turned into the river at a very sharp angle i think

to the with the wheel turning to the left and um it was put into low gear so it would crawl like the and it was the four-wheel drive vehicle so he put it whoever drove it into the into the river had it in low gear in four-wheel drive. So it just kind of drove itself at a very slow rate. The window was rolled down just enough to maybe get somebody's arm in there to kind of steer it in. And the ignition was on, the headlights were on, and the windshield wipers were on. The only thing that was missing from Dale's pickup truck was his toolbox. And that led to even more questions and yielded more clues.

The toolbox was missing. And that was bolted to the back of the vehicle. I know that they have considered that it could have come off in the river, but the area that that was in is a swimming hole. And so the current is not, you know, it's not like this raging river that's, you know, going to carry you away if you accidentally step in the, you know, get in the wrong area of it. The tools are found on the opposite side of the swimming.

hole in a mountaine area. And that, I feel like that that was done on purpose to kind of lead investigators away from that area. And, you know, it's just too weird that all of these tools were scattered throughout this area that's completely the opposite direction of. where the truck was found. And they were scattered. They're like randomly throughout.

Like somebody just started throwing tools out their window as they're driving down the road, you know, up in that area. And they're still finding stuff that belong to my dad that people will turn in. And most of my dad's good tools had his initials engraved on it. So that's how they've been identifying him as my dad's. If robbery was a motive in Dale's disappearance, you would think that his tools might have been of some value and not discarded along the road. But Tony explains why that may not have been the case.

Maybe certain ones, but my dad was kind of the guy that he would go to an auction like in Grand Junction that he knew there was going to be a bunch of tools at, and he would just buy a lot of it, and then bring it home and sort through what he didn't want, what he wanted. And he put some in his toolbox and put the others in his shop, some of them get thrown away, But, you know, after once he died, my mom gave us, you know, some stuff that she had given my brother-in-law and my husband a toolbox filled with tools. And when we moved from Denver to Georgia, you know, we had so many tools that were just like the same size of ranch after the same size of ranch. So we'd have, you know, five to 12 ranches of the same size. and that's just my dad.

He would just go buy tools and keep up. We asked Tony to tell us a little more about the location of where her dad's truck was found and how close it was to where he was heading when he got the call from the person asking for help. Where they found the truck is actually in an old mining government town called Eurovan. And it was shut down in the late 80s. the government shut it down and moved all the residents out. And Yoravan is pretty much ridden with mill tailings from uranium. So there's a lot of mines and stuff up there.

Well, where that truck was found was on the outside of Yuravan. And there is a connecting dirt road between Yuravan and Bedrock that's not very well known. So supposedly where the caller was was not far from the bedrock store. And then that road, it's only like a couple miles from the entrance of that road, maybe one mile. And then you drive down this road a couple miles. And then there's that swimming hall right there. And that swimming hole is a good 20 minutes from Nucla. We don't think that the truck went into the river immediately.

We think that somebody hit it somewhere for a little bit of time and then put it into the river a little, a few weeks later, a week later, something like that. On land near the swimming hole, truck tracks were found in some mud. And this is where, you know, I think timing, investigation, trying to figure out the timing of things gets, interesting. What they figured out is that some cows had been moved through this area in the days leading up to the discovery of the truck, but there were no cow tracks in the mud. They could tell that the truck had, you know, essentially wiped them out. It had also run over some cow droppings. So based on all of this, it's pretty likely that the truck was put into the river, not too long before it was found by the family.

If the cows just went through days earlier and the truck has run over some of the cow droppings, I think you can make that conclusion. It's not definite, but highly probable. The CBI continued their investigation into Dale's disappearance, but had little to go on, and they were tight-lipped with the information they had. About five years after he disappeared, Dale's case went cold. Police and Dale's family believed Dale was killed the day he disappeared or shortly after. Police actually declared him dead and called this a homicide investigation.

Over the years, detectives have followed up on all leads they received, even ones that have taken them out of state. Dow Williams' case was featured on the show Unsolved Mysteries. That episode aired on September 27, 2000. Although it sparked some interest in the case, it didn't lead to any new leads for investigators. In 2001, the families of homicide victims and missing persons was formed. The acronym is F-O-H-V-A-M-P. At the time, there were approximately 2,000 missing persons in Colorado, and 11 of them originated in Montrose County.

There were also roughly 1,250 unsolved murders. For years, this organization pushed for legislation. to allow more resources for unsolved murders and missing persons. They also looked into missing person cases that had been unsolved for more than two years. Dale Williams case was one of them and is currently listed on the organization's website. And this organization has been pretty influential over the years. In 2007, they helped get a cold case task force formed within the Department of Public Safety. They also helped get a law pass that required the CBI to maintain a database of unsolved murders.

And essentially, this law requires all law enforcement agencies to report unsolved murders to the CBI that have been open for three years or more. It also allows cold case family members to ask local agencies to call in CBI's cold case homicide team to assist with their investigation. And if the agency declines, it must send a written explanation to the family members. So these are all good things in my eyes, morph and something that, you know, this group that was formed has worked very hard over the years to get some of this. stuff done. Yeah, I think it's a good thing also to stay in touch with the families and let them know that efforts are being made to keep them in the loop and to keep the investigations going. For the first several years after Dale disappeared, investigators kept Tony and her younger sister in the dark about the investigation. Not once did they ever ask the girls about the last time they saw

their father. But that changed in 2012 when a new investigator was assigned to the case. He remains in contact with Dale Williams family? They didn't really keep me in me or my sister in the loop of the investigation until about 2012. And my sister and I were not even asked the last time we had seen our father until 2013. So, you know, that's quite a significant amount of time to not be even questioned about it at all. So they kind of kept us out of the loop, and we're just very recently getting, you know,

where our investigator, and this is a new investigator that's on it right now, so that's probably why, and he's been with us since 2012. So he is the one that interviewed us, but the prior investigators, I have no idea what the early investigating was,

Like I've heard from my uncles and Brooks Bennett, who is the career investigator, that they did everything that they could, that they knew what to do. And I know that that was, my dad's case was the first type of case or incident that had happened in that area. So now that I'm much older and able to process all this. as an adult, I truly do think that that is true. I think that they did what they could at the time with the knowledge that they had. In October 2016, human remains were found by hunters in the sawmill mesa area of the Uncompagre Plateau. That area is about 30 miles northeast of Nucla. During a subsequent search of that area, several bones and pieces of clothing were discovered. But the remains were identified in 2017 as belonging to Jerry Reed, age 57, who disappeared from Nucla in March 2014.

His cause of death was determined to be hypothermia due to exposure. And this is one thing that we really haven't talked a lot about yet, Morph, but there are hundreds of mines in the area around Nucla. People have speculated over the years that Dale's body was thrown down one of the mine shafts, And if that's the case, it's very likely that it will never be found. Investigators believe that the person who called Dale on the day he disappeared was responsible for his disappearance. But the problem is they don't know who this person is. We asked Tony about one theory that has been mentioned by some of the people in town. My dad might have ran into some information or a situation that he shouldn't have been in or known of.

And I'm referring to like some drug activity. If not, I'm not saying that my dad was involved in drugs. And I know that that has been a rumor, you know, going around over the past few years and stuff. But when it initially happened, I say this happened two years ago. But, you know, even when I was in school, people would tell me that, oh, your dad's running drugs. I'm like, really? Because this is a really small town. I think that somebody in my family would know that, you know, if that was going on,

especially my uncle, you know, my dad's brother, they, or my dad's best friend, you know, Steve, he was always there. So I don't think that my dad was involved in drugs, but there were some of his friends that were very good friends at the time who had just started getting into the drug scene in 99, 2009, 2000. And, you know, it might, it might be very possible that my dad overheard some information that he wasn't supposed to. And I think that's tough, right? more for a surviving family member. To hear that type of gossip, that type of stuff run through the town, everything that we've talked about indicates that Dale was a great guy, hardworking family man. To then years later hear that, well, maybe he was into drugs, maybe he was doing this,

maybe he was doing that. that would be tough to take, especially if there's no substance behind the rumors, which as far as I know, there isn't. And we talk about all the times that police get bogged down with false tips and leads and rumors, and that kind of information seems like that could cause that to happen in this case. Yeah, I think especially if they're false, right? All it does is eat up the resources of the police and keep them, from investigating things that are real.

But at the same time, I think it sullies the memory of what appears to have been a really good man. And I think that's sad. I think that's sad for the family to hear that type of stuff if it's not grounded in any type of fact. We wanted to know if there's any possibility in Tony's mind that her dad could have disappeared voluntarily. I think he was killed. And it's sad to say that. And I'm so positive that that is what happened that I don't even entertain when people, as nice as they are. And I really appreciate

people reaching out to us and saying, hey, I saw a guy and so-and-so and blah, blah, blah. And he looked just like this stale character, you know, I don't even entertain stuff like that anymore. I don't pass it on to the investigators because they themselves have told me we think your dad is dead. They've had him declared dead. That is what they think. They think it was a murder or a homicide and that's what they think. So our investigator is very good and I trust him 100%. And if that's what they think at this point in time, then I'm.

going to agree with it. And I agree with it anyway. I think that I don't think he's alive. And I think for me, this goes back to us talking about Dale and him being a family man, making time for his family. Those type of people don't normally leave their family voluntarily. It just doesn't happen. I think about myself, more if I'm sure you would put yourself in that category,

you know, having kids, your family becomes kind of everything. Now, not everybody feels that way, right? Not everybody's a family type of guy or not every woman's a family type of woman. But if you are, the likelihood that you are just going to up and leave your family is very low. And I think based on everything we know about Dale and his character and his history that you're absolutely right, that he wasn't the type of guy that would just abandon his family. Yeah, what we know just does not mesh with these rumors that, you know, people have floated around. Diana Williams remarried and still lives in Nucla, as does Dale's brother. Tony discussed the possibility that someone who had something to do with her dad's disappearance

or might have information about his case might still be living in the Nucla area. I think there's several people that know, actually. I don't think that this was carried out by one individual. I think that there was a couple people involved probably. And I think what the biggest problem is is that when my dad disappeared 20 years ago, he was 42. So many people have moved away from Nucla. because it's just not a sustainable area to live in anymore.

And people are dying. So they're just getting old, you know. And it's bad to say, but if somebody doesn't come forward, then, you know, whatever the information is that is being withheld, it could die with somebody because they're too scared or they're afraid they're going to get in trouble or, you know, whatever the reason is, nobody's coming forward. And the lips, it's so weird because lips are just still down there.

And I don't, I don't understand why. It's been 20 years. And, you know, my mom still lives there. They bring her water bill or their water bill payments to my mom. She doesn't work full time for the video store anymore. So, you know, these people see my mom every single day. And even though she's remarried and tried to move on with her life, somebody knows something and they have to look my mom in the eye, you know, when they're paying their water bill and just know that they know something. Especially like my dad's close friends, I'm sure that they think that I don't know who knows something personally.

I just don't know. You know, the people that I thought would know something, they've long since moved away. They've been questioned the whole bit, you know, and nothing's come out of it. So I don't, I just don't, you know, we just don't know anything. Yeah, I just don't know about this one, Morp. And obviously, we don't know about a lot of the ones that are unsolved. But to me, when you get into these very small towns as, Nucla is, is it possible that an individual or individuals could keep something like this

quiet in that small of a town for someone not to, you know, get drunk one night and start running his mouth or something like that? I just don't know. It kind of, to me, feels like somebody outside of the area. But I could be wrong. I mean, it's, It's just a guess on my part. And you mentioned earlier that this isn't New York City. This is a very small town with less than a thousand people. And you would think a lot of people know each other well and overhear things. And for that kind of secret to stay a secret, you would think would be tough.

So it makes you wonder if the person that did it moved the way or possibly it is from someone that wasn't in that town. Yeah, maybe someday we'll know. Hopefully, though, police will catch that big break that they need to solve the mystery. But, I mean, this is a real mystery of what happened to Dale Williams. And these are the ones that, you know, they kind of eat at you a little bit. You just want to know what were the details. What really happened to Dale Williams? Dale's family created a Facebook page called missing Dale Williams to.

to help in their search for him, if you'd like to learn more about Dale's case, please visit their page. And please, if anyone has any information regarding the disappearance of Dale Williams, contact the Colorado Bureau of Investigation at 970-248-7500. Special thanks to Dale Williams' daughter, Tony,

for joining us in this episode. also thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at TruecrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistance. If you like to show and you haven't done so yet, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can also give us a review. All of that goes a long way. I know it seems trivial, but it's not. You know, people look at that type of stuff when they're evaluating whether or not to listen to a podcast and keep on telling your friends about the podcast.

We hear from a lot of people that, you know, say, I turned on my whole office to the podcast. You just can't measure the impact that something like that has because it becomes exponential, right? This person tells this person, that person tells two people. Those two people tell two people. The next thing you know, you have these big branches. And that is great for us. You can find us on social media on Twitter with a handle at Criminology Pod or by searching Facebook for Criminology Podcast. You can also join our discussion group on Facebook, which is Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. All right. Morf, that is it for another episode of Criminology. Folks, we will be back with you next Saturday night with an

all-new episode. So for Mike. And Morph. We'll talk to you then. Take care, everyone.