Park Predators - The Ambush

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

When two bodies are discovered in the sand dunes of Indiana Dunes National Park, it doesn’t take authorities long to identify the victims as young people who’ve been missing for nearly a week. In a matter of days the mystery of their murders unravels, but the killer is someone who was right in front of investigators all along.View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-ambush Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @parkpredators | @audiochuckTwitter: @ParkPredators | @audiochuckFacebook: /ParkPredators  | /audiochuckllcTikTok:  @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia Diambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place in a park we've been to before on this show, Indiana Dunes National Park in Northern Indiana. Earlier this year, I told you the story of 15-year-old Janus China White, who was killed in this exact same recreation space back in August of 1995. Her case remains unsolved, and if you haven't listened to the episode about it, please do. The FBI needs a list like you who may be from Northern Indiana to help out. The couple in today's story fell victim to a killer in the fall of 1997, just two years after Jonas was killed. The crimes are not related as far as I can tell, mostly because they're very different, and the perpetrator in today's

case was identified. But like I emphasized before when talking about this specific geographic region, it's right on the water. The 1,500-acre park butts up to the southern end of Lake Michigan, and there are more than 50 miles of trails that wind through sand dunes, wetlands, prairies, and wooded areas. And it was along one of those paths that a man ambushed two unsuspecting young people who had their entire lives ahead of them. Leaving their families with a form of justice, they weren't quite sure what to do with. This is Park Predators. You know what I'm going to do. Shortly after 10.30 p.m. on Sunday, October 12, 1997, a woman named Olga Gomez was sitting in her family's home in Merrillville, Indiana, waiting for her daughter, 19-year-old Cynthia, to walk in the front door. As Olga sat and watched the minutes tick by, she was growing more and more worried.

Cynthia, who sometimes went by the nickname Cindy, was late, much later than Olga expected her to be. She'd been gone all weekend with her friend 24-year-old Stephen Jimenez to visit some folks in Bloomington at Stephen's alma mater, Indiana University. They'd planned to go to a party that some of Stephen's friends were throwing at a Hispanic fraternity there and then spend the rest of their time just hanging out. Cynthia and Stephen had left on Friday and were due to return any minute. And Olga was certain of this because she'd just talked to Cynthia on the phone. You see, Cynthia had called from a friend's house in Portage, Indiana. and told her mom that she and Stephen would be leaving shortly and come home soon. And for those of you wondering, Portage was only about 25 minutes away from Merrillville,

so not far at all. But the longer Olga waited and waited, it eventually became clear that Cynthia was not coming home. So she gave it some time, but then the next night, around 11 p.m. Monday, October 13th, she and Cynthia's dad, Vow, contacted the Mariville Police Department and reported Cynthia missing. By the next day, Stephen's mom and dad did the same thing, except they filed his missing person's report with the Lake County Sheriff's Department, which is a different agency than Maryville PD, but still in the same geographical region. At the time, the Jimenez family lived in the city of Crown Point, which is in Lake

County, not Marival City proper. For the next two or three days, the families waited for updates from investigators, but no major developments came in. Olga told the press about how strange and disconcerting the situation. was, telling the Times, quote, this is totally out of the norm for Cynthia. There's absolutely no reason they should have gone anywhere when they left Portage. They were tired and broke and just wanted to come home and get some sleep.

They never made it home. End quote. Stephen's mother, Guadalupe, told the same newspaper that her son had a habit of going to stay with friends for a few days every now and then, but she emphasized that no matter where Stephen stayed, he always kept in touch, and she knew who he was with. In other words, he was usually accounted for by someone, whether it was a person in his family or a friend, but this time, something just felt different. To keep pushing for answers, Cynthia's dad, Val, drove around Lake County looking pretty

much anywhere he thought the couple might be. Olga stayed on the phone asking Cynthia's friends if they'd seen her and Stephen, but no one had. Stephen's mom did the same thing and called around to his friends and colleagues, but also had no luck in figuring out where he was. To assist the family in their search, people supporting the effort posted flyers with Stephen and Cynthia's names, pictures, and police contact information on them. The posters were spread around at their former high school in Merrillville, hoping that someone would come forward with a lead.

Then, on Thursday, October 16th, four days into the investigation, everything in the case changed. Around 1.45 p.m. that afternoon, a man living in Lake County close to Indiana Dunes National Park named Stephen Murphy called the city of Gary Police Department to report that a young man had come to his house and said he'd found two bodies inside the park. Mr. Murphy explained that this young man claimed the bodies were about 300 yards away from the shoreline of Lake Michigan, near an area known as West Beach, almost right on the Lake County, Porter County line. Mr. Murphy told authorities that he'd been home from work on a break to let out his dog

when this young man knocked on his door and stated that he and his cocker spaniel had found two corpses in a grassy alcove in the dunes. According to Mr. Murphy's statements, the guy who had made the discovery remarked that the bodies looked like they'd been in the park for at least a few days. Investigators with the various law enforcement agencies

involved in Cynthia and Stevens' case responded to the scene and discovered a young woman and man dead in the sand dunes. They both appeared to have been shot in the back of their head with a small caliber round. It took less than a day for authorities to positively ID them as Cynthia and Stephen.

Because the landscape they'd been found in was technically federal property, local authorities called in the FBI to help investigate. Based on what officers had gathered from speaking with Cynthia and Stephen's friends and family members, the last time anyone had heard from the couple

or seen them alive was on Sunday night around 10.30 p.m. That's when Olga had talked with Cynthia on the phone, and when Stephen and Cynthia's friends in Portage had watched them drive off in her white 1992 Toyota Paseo. Interestingly, that friend's house was only a few miles away from where Cynthia and Stephen's bodies were found. So the question investigators needed to answer

was what had happened right after they were last seen. Had they stopped at the beach intentionally, or had they been forced there? Not long after Cynthia and Stephen were found dead, authorities learned that her vehicle had been spotted near West Beach before their bodies were found, so like two days after they were last seen. Turns out, according to coverage by Rann Rockhill for the Times,

sometime on Tuesday, so the day after Cynthia was initially reported missing, residents living on county line road very close to the eventual crime scene, had noticed a small white car parked in front of a house, and it appeared to be abandoned. The car had stood out like a sore thumb because when neighbors spotted it, it was on fire. They'd called the Gary Police Department to report the incident, and officers did respond, but all they did was put out the flames and slap a sticker on it to, I guess, notify the owner that they needed to come and get it. According to the source material, the officers who extinguished the fire didn't tow the vehicle away or look up who it belonged to. They just left it on the street, I assume, hoping that whoever it belonged to would return

and collect it. I will say, though, it's a little unclear from the coverage whether or not the Gary PD officers did or did not check the license plate number to see who it was registered to. Some sources say they didn't do that, while others say they might have, but nothing came up to let them know that it was associated with Cynthia and that Cynthia was a missing person. One possible reason for that is there could have been a delay between when the Marriville Police Department put Cynthia's name and information into the statewide missing persons database and when

the officers in Gary, which was a different jurisdiction, found her car. Basically just a miscommunication or lack of communication between the different law enforcement agencies during those first few days of Cynthia and Stephen being missing. Anyway, on October 17th, the day after Cynthia and Stevens' bodies were found, they were sent down to Indianapolis for autopsies. But the The results of those examinations weren't going to be available for a day or two, so while investigators waited, an FBI evidence response team combed through Cynthia's car looking for clues. There was some fire damage in it, but overall, the interior was still intact.

The FBI team went through it with a fine-tooth comb looking for trace evidence, fibers, and fingerprints that they hoped a possible suspect or suspects had left behind. Not long after that, the preliminary results of the autopsies came in, and according to Daniel Yovich's reporting for the times. The examiner determined that neither Stephen or Cynthia had any defensive wounds on their bodies or anything that suggested they'd struggled with their killer. The couple's official cause of death was determined to be single gunshot wounds to the head. Their wallets had been found in Cynthia's charred car, and jewelry they'd both been wearing

was still on their bodies, so it didn't appear as if robbery was the motive for the crime, which only made the case that much more puzzling to investigators. Stephen was still fully dressed when he was found, but Cynthia was discovered nude, which prompted investigators to speculate if perhaps she'd been sexually assaulted. To get to the bottom of that question, they made sure to conduct additional lab tests. But none of the available source material goes into detail about what the results of those tests were. Still, it's not like investigators were working with nothing. All of the forensic evidence the FBI's response team collected from Cynthia's car and the crime scene

was then sent to the National Crime Lab in Washington, D.C. for analysis, and behavioral profilers there began developing a suspect profile. Meanwhile, back in Indiana, the police chief in Portage told reporter Rayan Rockhill that it was unsettling just how much about the double murder remained unknown. As far as all the investigators could tell, there appeared to be no logical motive for the crime, and very few leads pointing toward a suspect. Based on all the interviews authorities had done so far with the victim's loved ones,

and friends, there was no indication that Stephen and Cynthia were involved in illegal activities or kept company with bad people. The police chief remarked, quote, Our worst fear is that it's a random situation, but we really don't know. We don't have any concrete information to suggest anything at this point. End quote. Some of Cynthia's high school classmates told the times that the West Beach area of the National Park was a spot young people visited often.

Cynthia and her friends had been there several. times in the past and no one in her friend group viewed it as unsafe or somewhere you shouldn't go after dark. Most people who were interviewed by the press said Cynthia and Stephen weren't involved romantically. They were just friends. One scenario folks speculated could have happened was that Cynthia and Stephen had decided at the last minute to walk the beach at night before going home. It was free to do that and it could have just been a split-second spontaneous decision, but there was also the possibility that they'd been intercepted by someone and taken to the beach under duress. No one knew for sure. The one thing investigators did keep hearing over and over,

though, was what good people Cynthia and Stephen were. Stephen was described as a smart, athletic guy who'd played football and wrestled in high school and graduated from Indiana University in 1995 with a degree in political science. His sister-in-law told the times that he enjoyed playing guitar and regularly ran three miles every day. Overall, he was known for being an upbeat, extroverted person, and at the time of his death had just taken a new job for a decorating company in Chicago. Cynthia was a former homecoming queen who'd graduated from high school in 1995. At the time of her death, she was just a few days away from turning 20 years old.

She came from a big family and had two sisters and a brother, plus both sets of grandparents and many other aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews in her extended family. She was earning a degree at Purdue University Calumet and worked as a family. physical therapy assistant at a medical clinic not far from her home. Her mother later told reporter Susan Earler that Cynthia loved working with people and wanted to have a career in health care. On October 20th, four days after her body was found and one week after she was reported missing, her family held her funeral and laid her to rest at Ridglawn Cemetery and Gary.

The reverend who spoke at her memorial service alternated between Spanish and English while delivering Cynthia's eulogy, and at one point said, quote, Cynthia was an innocent who became a victim. In many ways, Cynthia touched the lives of so many people. She left a trail of goodness and love. I can almost hear Cynthia where she is, close to God. I want people that knew me to be at peace. All of you have been thrown into a real trial of faith because of what has happened.

We are not going to be able to understand completely what the Lord's plans are, and the Lord knows that. And yet, in the middle of this, God is begging us to trust in him, and trust Cynthia to God's tender care, end quote. The next day, Stephen's family, which included his parents, six brothers, and two sisters, held his memorial service in Crown Point. He was eventually buried at Calumet Park Cemetery in Merrillville. During his memorial service, one of his brothers played a guitar and sang over his casket,

and his mother spoke briefly, saying, quote, Thank you, Jesus, for sharing him with us. Goodbye, my love. End quote. Sadly, Stephen was the second child in the Jimenez family who died in what many people would consider the prime of his life. According to multiple news sources, one of his older brothers, Bernard, was murdered during a random robbery in February 1992. Reporting by the Times stated that Bernard and his fiancé were walking up to his house in Gary when a guy came up to them and robbed them at gunpoint. The suspect shot Bernard in his chest and killed him.

The suspect, a man named Willie Donald, fled the scene but was eventually caught and later convicted of murder and robbery. Bernard's fiancé wasn't harmed in the attack, but she and three children witnessed the horrific incident, and I imagine had to deal with the difficult after effects, as did the rest of the members of the Jimenez family. And Stephen's murder only compounded their pain. One of his older sisters told reporter Erica Harrington that the family was shocked to be experiencing another tragic loss that involved such brutal violence.

She said her brother Stephen had big dreams of maybe getting into the entertainment industry one day and pursuing a career in music. He was very laid back, easy to hang out with, and loved exercising. Above all, though, he loved, and I mean loved music. He played guitar for seven years and enjoyed listening to bands like the Beatles and Pearl Jam, but he also liked jazz music too. After both victims' families said their goodbyes, they waited to hear from law enforcement about what was going on with the case or if there were any suspects. But those answers didn't immediately come, which I imagine had to be frustrating because by that point there was a $9,000 award for information up for grabs, $2,000 of which had come from

the FBI and another $2,000 which came from the Gomez family. According to Susan Earler's piece for The Times, Cynthia's family remained home. hopeful that justice would be served. Her father implored anyone who might have information about the case to come forward. He said that he and his wife and the rest of Cynthia's loved ones weren't fixated on punishing the killer because that wasn't what they thought Cynthia would want. He emphasized that they simply wanted answers and for the responsible party to be held accountable for the crime. Behind the scenes, authorities continued to diligently work the case and they were about to receive a piece of information

that would reignite the investigation and take it from being at risk of going stagnant to red-hot. On Wednesday, October 22nd, a week after Cynthia and Stephen were found dead, investigators learned that the night that they were overdue, a suspicious car had been seen in the general area of West Beach, right in the time frame officials believed the murders had occurred. The witness who saw this car also got a good look at the man who'd been driving it.

And wouldn't you know it, his description was a dead ringer for the guy who'd knocked on Mr. Murphy's door back on October 16th. You know, the young man who'd first reported finding Cynthia and Stephen's bodies. Now, I know we haven't talked a lot about that guy yet because honestly, not much was really known about him until well after the murders. But I think in investigators' minds at the time, it didn't make a lot of sense that he'd reportedly been seen near the crime scene on Sunday the 12th, and then again, four days later on Thursday the 16th, when he said he'd found the bodies.

That just seemed very suspicious. So with this information in hand, authorities realized they needed to ask this guy a few more questions and brought him in for an interview. He was identified as a 20-year-old named DeWan Sees who lived in. in Gary. He'd been enlisted in the Marines for a little while, but was administratively discharged in August 1997 for unknown reasons. It seems from the source material that he did initially provide a statement or statements to a park investigator after he found Cynthia and Stevens' bodies. But it doesn't appear that the information he gave was very in-depth. However, fast forward to

October 24th, and now homicide investigators had a lot more reasons to question him, so they drilled down. What fueled authorities' growing suspicions about Dewan were, one, his vehicle was a match for the car that witnesses had seen near the crime scene on Sunday the 12th. Two, he closely resembled the driver of that car. Three, two additional witnesses had come forward and positively identified him as a man they'd seen walking in the direction Stephen and Cynthia had gone shortly before hearing two gunshots. Four, he lived with his father, twin brother, and sister in a house about three miles away from the crime scene. And five, he'd been arrested earlier that summer for a shooting that involved someone else using a gun he owned to commit a crime.

In that incident, Duon was never actually charged with anything and ended up cooperating with authorities. But I think the fact that he owned guns and had previously been detained was just another reason why investigators working the homicide case felt he was worth taking a closer look at. According to the National Park Service, on Friday evening October 24th, law enforcement questioned him at length and identified several discrepancies in his story. Still, he denied killing Cynthia and Stephen. Investigators eventually asked him to take a polygraph, which he did, but the results indicated he was deceptive.

The whole time they'd been talking to him, FBI agents had been scouring his house looking for anything that might physically connect him to the crime. They'd seized his car and went through his personal belongings, which included finding several rounds of 9-millimeter ammunition. The same kind of rounds that authorities suspected had been used in Cynthia and Stevens' murders, though that wasn't a detail anyone but investigators knew. Unfortunately, though, even with the circumstantial evidence piling up and Duane agreeing to submit hair samples, authorities didn't have enough evidence or probable cause to arrest him.

So they ended his interrogation around 9.30 p.m. and then a detective drove him home. Two hours later, around 11.40 p.m., he called the Portage Police Department and spoke with the detective who'd driven him to his house. He told the detective that he was at his grandmother's house in Gary and wanted to know how long it would take authorities to get to him before he took his own life. Over the phone, he confessed to killing Cynthia and Stephen and told the detective that the pistol he'd used to carry out the crime was still hidden in his car. The longer the phone call went, the more DeWan became increasingly distraught and repeatedly told the detective that he was so afraid of going to prison that he wanted to die by suicide.

For a brief few minutes, the investigator patched in DeWan's pregnant girlfriend to try and help talk him down, but it didn't work. About four minutes after he dialed Portage Police, DeWan took his own life. He survived briefly before eventually dying at Methodist Hospital in Gary the following morning. I know, not the ending you were maybe expecting. Well, it wasn't the scenario authorities or the victim's family saw coming either. DeWan's death only added more questions to an already complicated and frustrating case. The main question everyone wanted answered was why. Why had he chosen to kill Cynthia and Stephen?

Unfortunately, he never revealed the answer. The detective who'd spoken with him on the phone at the time of his suicide told the times, You could say it was just in a way, but it's a tragic way to end this thing. If he was going to do this, I wish he had told me everything, end quote. That same detective would later tell reporter Ken Koski that he believed DeWan had committed the crime because he was emotionally unstable and had recently had issues in his own relationship. According to police, on Sunday October 12th, shortly before the murders, DeWan had attended a church service with his girlfriend. At some point during that service, she'd publicly accused him of cheating.

The detective who last spoke with Dewan told the times that he believed that incident in the church had deeply embarrassed Dewan and caused him to go into a rage. The detective theorized that later that night, when Dewan saw Cynthia and Stephen at the beach, he randomly lashed out in violence, despite having no connection to them. Another investigator who worked the case remarked that no one would likely ever know why DeWan killed Stephen and Cynthia. It would require evaluating his mental state, which wasn't possible in light of his death. A retired FBI profiler who spoke with reporter Daniel Yovic said one possible explanation for DeWan's decisions was that he might have been,

quote, mentally unstable based on his actions, end quote. The profiler also suggested another reason could have been that in DeWan's mind, Cynthia and Stephen represented a life he would never have. This profiler surmised that DeWan's suicide could have been related to his religious beliefs and the idea that he felt so overwhelmed with guilt for what he'd done that he saw death as his only recourse. The Portage detective who was the last person to speak with DeWan was convinced that DeWan felt bad about the crime. He told Ken Koski that, in his opinion, it would explain why Dewan returned to the crime

scene with his dog four days after the murders and conveniently discovered Cynthia and Stephen. The detective said, quote, It was bothering him that nobody was finding these bodies, and that's when he went and found them, end quote. The Times did a full breakdown of Dewan's final call with police, but because that part of the story involves death by suicide, I don't want to go into further detail. The main thing you should know is that overall,

the detective who handled the situation appeared to do everything possible to prevent Dewan from taking his own life. It just didn't go the way anyone wanted. Another after-effect of DeWan's suicide was that Cynthia and Stevens' families were left with nothing but confusion and sadness. Olga Gomez told reporter John Reed that neither she nor her husband knew anything about how the crime had occurred or what the motive was. They were completely in the dark and couldn't wrap their minds around why this had happened. She told the press that she hoped time would reveal more answers. She stated, quote,

Maybe then the puzzle will make sense to us as well. Maybe we can answer the questions and let them rest in peace." From what I gathered reading the source material, it seems Cynthia and Stephen's loved ones really grappled with trying to understand the tidbits of evidence that were publicized, as well as the circumstances that had led their children to enter the National Park. Even though West Beach was a place that Cynthia and her friends had hung out in the past, her mom told the times that it wasn't somewhere she would normally visit late at night, especially after just having been out of town all weekend with friends.

Stephen's dad expressed similar concerns and said that the couple being at the beach just didn't make sense. He theorized that it was possible they'd been driven there by their attacker. Something I'm hung up on is the fact that Stephen was dressed while Cynthia was reportedly found nude. And police have never elaborated on this detail. We could theorize about why this was the state they were in, but I don't want to speculate on something I can't.

back up with credible information. People who knew Duwan told the press that his unraveling seemed rather abrupt, starting back in 1995 after the death of his mother from cancer. For most of his youth, he was generally viewed as a well-behaved young man with no apparent red flags. But then, after starting to hang around with the wrong crowd and being swiftly discharged from the Marines during his boot camp stage, things seemed to go downhill for him fast. About two months before the crime, one of his neighbors said he'd started causing problems and broken into her house, which had ended with Dewan threatening to shoot her. She speculated that his behavioral evolution could have been related to potential drug use, but she didn't really know. What she was

certain of about Dewan, though, by October 1997, was, quote, he was as cold-blooded a man as I ever knew, end quote. In fact, she was so certain he was bad news that she posted two no-tresspassing signs on her house, one of which specifically cautioned any residents of Duan's household to stay off her property, or else she'd have the police arrest them. Contrary to that characterization of him, though, was a description from another neighbor who told the times that DeWan was an ideal young man. They remarked, quote, he was really and truly a sweet child. Something must have happened to cause him to snap like this, end quote. Now, how in the world two people can have such vastly different perspectives on or experiences with the same person is wild to me.

But that's life, I guess. According to news coverage, law enforcement eventually recovered a 9-millimeter pistol from DeWan's car and compared it to the slugs that the medical examiner had removed from Cynthia and Stephen's bodies. But I couldn't find any reporting that definitively stated whether it was a match. But I think it's safe to assume it was because no one else has ever been named as a suspect in this crime. other than Duan Cease.

About a week after the case came to a close, the Northwest Indiana Hispanic Coordinating Council in East Chicago held a memorial service for Cynthia and Stephen to show the organization's support for their families. Around the same time, members of a Hispanic fraternity at Indiana University, which is one place Stephen and Cynthia had visited the weekend before they were killed, held a rally in their honor.

In early November, something else beautiful happened when hundreds of people showed up at a candlelight ceremony for Stephen and Cynthia and their families. The service took place in a church on All Souls Day and was intended to help bring healing and peace to the victim's loved ones and those in the community who were still grieving. In February 1998, several months after the crime, the Sigma Lambda Gamma sorority at Purdue University Calumet, where Cynthia was a student, held a benefit dinner to raise money for two annual scholarships in her and Stephen's memory. The funds were intended for one full-time Hispanic male student and one full-time Hispanic female student,

and applicants were required to submit an essay and go through an interview process with Cynthia's parents. And that part of the scholarship process was intentional and meant as a way for Olga and Val to really determine if a candidate held the same values as their daughter. I could go on and on because it would be easy to share story after story of how much Cynthia and Stephen meant to their communities and families. and that's a good thing. They should be remembered as more than just murder victims. There are lights that I'm sure still shine bright in the hearts of those who are lucky enough to share space with them while they were alive.

A harrowing detail I read while researching this episode that I want to leave you with involves Stephen Murphy, the homeowner who Dewan first reported finding the bodies to. He told reporter Daniel Yovic that it wasn't until a few days after DeWan died by suicide that he was informed DeWan was Cynthia and Stephen's killer. He'd been at a Notre Dame game basically living his life with much of the case out of sight out of mind.

It wasn't until he returned that he realized what he'd missed. He told the newspaper that it was unsettling to know that a murderer had been in his home, standing right next to him at one point. But isn't that how it goes sometimes? Killers walk among us, in some cases, right up to our front door. and we're none the wiser.

If that doesn't make you just a little bit more vigilant, I don't know what will. Park Predators is an audio-check production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpreditors.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. I think Chuck would approve.