RedHanded - Episode 320 - Halloween Special Part 1: The Vampiress of Barcelona & The Dardeen Family Massacre

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Spooky season is upon us once again, and that can only mean one thing: another instalment of RedHanded’s Halloween story swap! For the first of two story-swaps this year, Hannah takes us back to pasto-times Barcelona where an Epstein-esque vampiress stalks the city’s children, and Suruthi regales us with the blood-chilling mystery of the Dardeen family killings…Follow us on social media:InstagramTwitterVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Sruti.

And welcome to the first of 2023, our thing we decided to do seven years ago and haven't stopped doing, Halloween Story Swap. If you are new to our Halloween extravaganzas, the whole of October we find the scariest stories we can, but we save four of them for the last two weeks of October in celebration of Samhain, of Halloween, of whatever you want to call it. So for the only time in the Red Handed Calendar, I do not know Suriti's story. Suriti does not know mine. Nope. So we are telling each other these stories. So whatever happens will happen. We've done it many times before and we hope to do it many times again. And the next one you'll be listening to, we will have recorded live in Dallas.

Yeah. But this one, we're in the studio. We're very tired, Mabel, because I've kept her awake. So hopefully she'll be asleep to, we will have recorded live in Dallas. Yeah. But this one, we're in the studio. We're very tired, Mabel, because I've kept her awake so hopefully she'll be asleep for the whole thing. Genius. Let's get to it. Exactly. So I'm taking you to Barcelona. Old and timey Barcelona. Wonderful.

It's a bad time. It's a bad time to be in Barcelona. It's a pretty bad time to be Spanish. At the turn of the 20th century, Barcelona was being ravaged by plague tuberculosis yeah it's deadly it's highly infectious because they hadn't figured out antibiotics yet but an even worse terror was stalking the streets of barcelona and that was a belief that spread through the city just as quickly as tb that the most effective cure for consumption was to drink the blood of children.

What? They don't know loads about germ theory at this stage in history. Look, I'm going to say it. There's people today that seem to think that there are people, some sort of cabal of people, sucking on the innards of children to drink drink adrenochrome which is what makes them look young when in fact what makes them look young is loads of photoshopping and shit tons of botox and just being rich exactly and on a more scary and serious note there are also people who believe that shagging a virgin will cure your your hiv so this is quite way to bring it down hannah sorry

i'm gonna bring it soaring back up for For 20 years, the children in Barcelona's poor neighbourhoods would vanish from their very doorsteps the second their mothers turned their heads. Horror stories were told of a man in black floating through the streets at night hunting children to bottle their blood. And parents used this as a cautionary tale to stop their children from wandering out of their sight.

So truth and myth get a little bit mixy-uppy, but, you know, it's Halloween. Little did these Spanish people know in the olden times, though, that what was actually happening to the deprived children of Barcelona was soon to be understood to be far, far worse. Worse than somebody sucking their blood to cure consumption? Yes. Oh. Maybe you have maxed out.

Maybe you haven't maxed out. Maybe you're maxing out now. This is the peak of my career. Hannah Max Maguire. Hannah Max Power Maguire. So this is the legend of La Vampire de Raval, an alleged serial killer, witch, and procuress of children for catalonia's paedophilic high society so q anon is uh oh here we go there was someone at the wedding

i was at who was a big q and honor do you know what we like take the piss and i'm gonna continue to but then when we do stories like this i'm like very hard to argue with you crazy person just call me suie QAnon. So this woman's name was not Susie QAnon. It was Enriqueta Martí Ripolles. She was born in the outskirts of Barcelona in 1868 to a poor family. And she moved into the city when she was quite young. At 15, she worked as a maidservant to a wealthy family in the upmarket centre of town. It was a world away from the slum district of El Raval where she lived.

The stark contrast between her life to Catalonia's high society became all the more clear to her when the World Fair came to Barcelona in 1888. There's always trouble when the World Fair rolls around. Does anything good happen? No, murder. Murder happen? No. Murder. Murder is what happens. Murder. People being kept in zoos.

HH homes. Fucking industrial scale savagery is what happens when the fucking World's Fair rolls around. That's what they should call it. Industrial scale savagery. Come have a look. You might get murdered. And you also might get some mustard or whatever. I think French's mustard was at World's Fair.

A risk worth taking. Ice cream cones also, I believe. Well, you know what i'd go swings around what's the modern day equivalent of a world's fair where you might get some cool stuff but you also risk being murdered ai conference so at this particular world's fair more than 27 countries took part in a grand event opened by the Queen Regent Maria Cristina and Alphonse VIII of Spain. Barcelona was presented to the world as a prosperous international city, but in reality, the exhibition was a shameless display of luxury and waste. The chasm between the upper echelons of society and the poor was growing bigger and bigger every year. Still, the 20-year-old Enriqueta was fascinated by the wealthy. She studied them and eavesdropped on their conversations intently, desperate to one day

join their ranks. She's like fucking Mr. Ripley. I thought you were going to say Elizabeth Holmes. That too. But she was already wealthy yeah no i think she's like many a con person we've come across yes but she's also a bit galene maxwelly she is a bit i mean i don't know the story but so far also galene maxwell very wealthy already very wealthy yeah she's kind of like she's a cross cross between Anna Anderson, who pretended to be the Princess Anastasia, and the talented Mr. Ripley. Sure. What was the woman in that Netflix thing? Oh, Anna something.

Being Anna? Anna? Finding Anna, discovering Anna. What's a being Anna? I don't know. Sure. Anastasia Beaverhausen. I'm going to have to look it up.

I have no internet down here. Inventing Anna. Ah, there you go. Yes, that. She's like that. Yeah, she was. But with more blood murder. More blood murder, yeah.

She was, we have to say, an enterprising young woman, albeit in a particularly sinister way. And Enriqueta soon gave up one life of servitude for another. She began working at a very high-class brothel in the city centre where the clientele were rich and powerful and listening to the conversations between the other working girls Enriqueta learned a lot about the sick perversions of these men of means. Well it is a good place to start. If that is your game plan, an upper-class brothel is the place to start. Exactly. And she made many notes. Yes. And do you know something interesting I discovered recently?

So obviously, Baby Blue is a French bulldog. Do you know what French bulldogs were bred for? It's to do with brothels. Ooh! Old-timey brothels. To bite men's balls off. No, the opposite. So it was, it's rumored, I believe this is true, that French Bulldogs were bred by the French upper classes to put in brothels to make men feel like it was less seedy.

Like they were fluffer dogs. They were there to like start a conversation. They'd like hang around. they'd sit on the couch you'd go stroke to them talk to a woman and then you know discuss it was less like it made it feel to them less seedy and it was to like give these men something to talk about that is so interesting that's why they can't do anything except sleep and sit on the sofa but that's why they're so, like, weirdly adorable. How interesting. And kind of gargoyle-y.

Yeah, there you go. Have it. So, she's in this brothel, probably with a bunch of baby blues just hanging around. And in the following decade, business in the port of Barcelona suffered quite miserably after Spain lost the Spanish-American War of 1898, and, of course, fascism was just basically just around the corner. The city's poorest, as they often are, were hit the hardest by this economic collapse, but Enriqueta had learned that no matter what, there was always money to be made.

It just depended on how far one was willing to go, and she was prepared to do anything. Enriqueta's neighbourhood, El Rabal, was notorious at the time for its crime, poverty, red light district and, naturally, nightlife. And it was there that she opened her very own brothel, only this one was no ordinary pleasure house. It catered to a very particular subsection of Barcelona's high society. During the day, Enriqueta would wrap herself up in rags as to not stand out amongst the impoverished population of the neighbourhood, and then she'd beg and queue up for free bread in front of Catholic monasteries, all the while keeping an eye out for homeless children,

or children who looked most abandoned. And then she would lure these children, usually between five and fourteen, back to her brothel, where she would keep them as prisoners. Then she'd clean them up and rent them out to her depraved clientele for a large fee. By night, Enriqueta would shed her rags and drape herself in the finest silks, velvet, French bulldogs and jewellery, as though she were part of the aristocracy herself. She was a regular at Barcelona's Opera House, and she attended all the best parties in the palatial homes of her wealthiest customers, mingling with the upper echelons of Barcelona. But her newfound success in child sex trafficking wasn't to last, because in 1909, the Prime Minister of Spain was dead set on colonising Morocco. The ensuing war for the

colonisation of Morocco had lots of conscription, and what happens with conscription? The poor people go first. And the people of Catalonia were outraged. Barcelona itself descended into chaos and violence flooded the streets. And they were even more outraged that the upper classes seemed to be able to pay their way out of fighting in the war, and they sent substitutes in their place. El Clasico.

I don't know what that is in Catalan, but... Nobody knows what that is in Catalan. Rioters took part in deadly clashes with Spanish armed forces, the ones that weren't in Morocco, one assumes, and the rioters were also convinced that the Roman Catholic Church was in bed with the corrupt middle and upper classes. Que el surprise. Still are. Do you remember when Notreame burnt down and they

did that massive fundraiser i was like you're literally the catholic church you have more money than many many countries why are people donating to you so many people donated so many celebrities were like here have this money and i was like there's there's more important causes there is literally so many other things. So many. They're the Catholic Church. They don't even pay tax. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader.

Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary. That's excessive. She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh, yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals.

They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space

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So, in this uprising against the church, burial chambers and graves were defiled and churches and convents were set ablaze. In the end, over 150 people were killed, 1,700 were arrested, and five were executed. This period, later dubbed La Semana Tragica, which means the tragic week, was a dark time for Barcelona, but for Enriqueta's child victims, it was a godsend. Spain's government announced martial law, and a severe crackdown on crime in the Catalonian capital made it pretty difficult for anyone to run a secret child brothel. And within days, Enriqueta's sinister business was room-blade. Officers stormed the brothel on Minerva Street

and they discovered a number of traumatised children, some as young as three. Yeah. Fortunately for Enriqueta, during the raid, police also arrested one of her clients who belonged to a wealthy and powerful Catalonian family and as a result the paperwork for the entire case

magically disappeared. That's it. So if you're running a secret child sex ring, just also keep down there, chained up, a member of a wealthy Catalonian family. Just keep Prince Andrew. He'll be more than happy to oblige. They'll be like, it's the biggest bust ever. We've made it.

Oh, fuck. You. What do they used to call him've made it. Oh, fuck. You. What do they used to call him? Dirty. Oh, Randy Andy. Randy Andy. Call it off, guys. Randy Andy's down here.

It's a weird vision in my head right now. I don't know how quite to explain it. Randy Andy. Chained up in a dungeon. And a very angry looking set of FBI agents. Because you know Scotland Yard won't do fuck. Oh, no, they won't do fuck. Anyway, all of that magical disappearing paper

meant that Enriqueta never stood trial for her crimes and soon enough, she was right back on the streets. Naturally, it wasn't long after her release that she resumed her business endeavours. But the only difference now was that she felt like she was bulletproof. So she decided, as every entrepreneur should and would, to branch out. As we told you at the top. As I told you, she doesn't know.

It was about this time that quite a lot of Spain was being ravaged by tuberculosis, and since antibiotics had not yet been discovered getting tb was a death sentence but also we know there was a folkloric belief that had spread throughout the country that drinking the blood of a human child would cure the deadly disease and in that henriqueta saw her opportunity diversify or die yeah that's my motto what does she have lots of children what do they want children's blood. Just gotta fill that niche. And no, I won't say niche. Who says that? Americans.

Ugh. They say niche and they also say penchant. Oh. It's penchant. Penchant. We love you. It definitely is more ridiculous to just put on a french accent when you say the word no it definitely is especially when we spend all of our time slagging off the french

no i won't say penchant i also also won't say route. Anyway, never mind. Router? Router. Seriously, guys, we love you. Oh, my God. So I was just in Boston. And whenever anyone asked me what I did, I was like, oh, I make podcasts. And they would be like, what? And it wasn't until I said podcast.

I mean, podcasts. And they were like, oh! And I was like, wow! Am I that unintelligible? How do we have so many American listeners? I honestly don't know, but I'm not lying. It happened five times. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah. And not like, so Darcy's dad, fine. He's nearly fucking 90. So that one, I was like, that's fine. Other than just normal people our age, middle-aged women, like there was a whole scale of people. Well, there you go. Nuts. And then they all did impressions of my accent.

We deserve it. We deserve it. We deserve it. We've just been doing American accents for five minutes. Anyway, so Enriqueta decides to go back

to the child napping and she went throughout the poverty-stricken slums of Barcelona and over the following three years the people of the city

were gripped in fear as children began to vanish in broad daylight at an alarming rate. And because these children were poor, the authorities didn't do anything about it. In fact, the civil governor of Barcelona, Manuel Portela Valadares, even went as far to issue a public statement claiming that the reports of missing children were all made up.

It's just like those silly poor people asking for attention and not doing it. They've just lost their kids because they're so stupid and poor. Yeah, exactly. Of course, his biggest fear was the government of Madrid intervening and the Catalonians still don't like that. No, famously. So this was excellent news for Enriqueta, who by this point owned a number of apartments all across Barcelona.

She lived in one one used a second to force children into sex work and in the third she butchered children to create her remedies and potions what yep she escalates she's really i'm gonna go to hell for this but like nose to tail yep she figures out what people want pretty quickly and because she thinks she's untouchable she's like well fuck it and she uses the whole product oh god she had realized while she was catering to the twisted appetites of the high society she was missing out on the other half of the market so she began concocting facial creams and ointments from the fat and bone marrow of murdered children and she assured wealthy women the other half that she had yet to tap into that these potions would prevent aging lovely and the women who bought these products were all completely

aware of what the ingredients were but if it meant staying young as adrenochrome has showed us wow they were all too happy to pay a hefty price wow for years the legend of Enrique Martí de Vampires of Rawal stalked Barcelona's poorest children. And it's difficult to say which kids suffered the worst fate. Was it the ones who were trafficked to the depraved politicians, businessmen and aristocrats, or the ones who were murdered, drained of their blood and had their bones crushed for the face creams of high society women. Either way, both sets of children made Enriqueta an absolute fortune. And the cries of Barcelona's poorest people continued to fall on deaf ears. That is, until the 10th of February 1912. What else happened in 1912? I don't know. I'm a big boat and I'm broken. Titanic?

Yeah. Oh. So, on the 10th of February 1912, when five-year-old Teresita Guitart and her mum, Anna, were walking home, outside of their apartment, Anna let go of her daughter's hand to speak with her neighbour, expecting Teresita to run up the stairs

like she always did. But that is not what happened. When Anna entered her third floor apartment, her husband asked where their daughter was. At which point, Anna screamed and ran down the stairs, calling out Teresita's name up and down the street, but it was too late. She was gone. And for the people of Barcelona, this was one too many missing children. This time, people made sure that their pleas weren't ignored by the authorities, and there was an outcry across Barcelona to find the missing five-year-old.

Three weeks passed with no sign of Teresita anywhere, despite her face being in every newspaper in the city and every policeman on the hunt for her. But then, on the 22nd of February, one of Enriqueta's neighbours, a woman named Claudia Elias, noticed a little girl peering out of Enriqueta's neighbours a woman named Claudia Elias noticed a little girl peering out of Enriqueta's upstairs window and she looked just like that little missing Teresita

Police finally raided Enriqueta's apartment five days later and they found not one but dos little girls One was called Angelita and the other had a shaved head

and introduced herself as Felicidad which means Birthday? Happy? Happiness Yeah, close Yeah, good job and the other had a shaved head and introduced herself as Felicidad, which means... Birthday? Happy? Happiness. Yeah, close. Yeah, good job. And Felicidad said that her mother wasn't home.

But when the officers began questioning Felicidad, in inverted commas, it became very clear that they had found Teresita. Teresita explained to the officers what had happened on the day she went missing. Instead of running into their apartment, she wandered around the corner and was approached by Enriqueta. She took the little girl's hand and said, come pretty, come, I have sweets for you. No. No, it's like the original unredacted and unruined Roald Dahl books. And the five-year-old went willingly at first until she realised how far away they were going from her mum. But when she tried to run away, Enriqueta threw a black cape over Teresita's head and carried her away into the shadows.

Teresita explained to officers that Enriqueta would often leave her and Angelita alone in the apartment for hours, and that there was one room that they were forbidden from entering. But one day, when Enriqueta was away, they both ventured inside and found a bag full of children's clothes and a bloodstained knife. Angelita, the other girl in the apartment, also told police that before Teresita had arrived, there was a six-year-old boy in the house called Pepito who she used to play with. But then one day, Angelita woke up in the middle of the night to strange noises. And when she opened the door to Enriqueta's forbidden room, she saw Enriqueta pick up little Pepito, place him on the table, and calmly plunge a knife into

his chest. You're not going to lock the door to a secret room when you're murdering children? No, she's just like, you're not allowed in here. My words are the lock. So it was clear to all of the investigators that the two girls they had found were very lucky to be alive. When officers searched the rest of the vampire's lair, they found the bag of children's clothes. And upon emptying it, they found a pile of very little human bones. In the kitchen, they found yet another pile of children's clothes and the bloody knife that the girls had described.

And this is all before they've gone into the forbidden room. And when they did, it got a lot worse. There they discovered 50 vials of human blood and fat that had been harvested from the bodies of murdered children. Alongside the vials were pots containing creams and ointments which had been packed ready for sale. There was also a desk on which they found ancient looking books wrapped in parchments, full of recipes for black magic potions. It's kind of like perfume. So the police tracked Enriqueta down and they arrested her.

And they found all of her other apartments around the city. And when they searched them, they made more morbid discoveries. Two of these apartments had fake walls and ceilings, inside which were hidden remains of dead children in jars. In another apartment, they found boxes of strange notes written in code. And in that apartment's garden, they dug up the skull of a three-year-old child and the bones of children aged three, six and eight. In total, police discovered the remains of what they believed to be around 10 children. But when you take into account just how long Enriqueta had been operating,

there were bound to be many more. And as horrifying as these discoveries were, the one that caused the biggest uproar in the press was a list of names, featuring some of the most influential Catalan bourgeoisie. People were convinced that these names were Enriqueta's paedophile clientele, and that she kept the list as some sort of collateral. That week, the news of the discoveries and the rescue of the two little girls was on the front page of every newspaper in Catalonia, along with a photo of Enriqueta Martí herself and the headline, La Vampires, La Raval.

And when her sensational murder trial began, Enriqueta was faced with such overwhelming evidence that she had no choice but to admit all of her crimes. As for the list of names of the Catalan bourgeoisie that was found in one of her apartments, to the outrage of the public, the police never released it. They never made the names public. Because Randy Andy is still in that dungeon to this day.

People were convinced, rightly so, that the powers were protecting the depraved lawyers, doctors, merchants, writers and politicians that were on that list. The outrage grew even worse when it was revealed that Enriqueta had attempted suicide by slitting her wrists in her cell before her trial had finished. Fearing another riot, precautions were taken to make sure somebody was watching her 24-7. The people of Catalonia had been utterly engrossed with the press stories and daily updates of Emmerichetta's trial. But then, just a month later, in mid-April 1912, a big boat got broken. The Titanic sank.

And the story of the Vampires of Barcelona disappeared from the front pages. But not for long. It was only a few months later that she was back in the press. Because the news had broken that Enriqueta had been lynched by her fellow prisoners. People speculated that her murder had been orchestrated by those on her list of clientele for fear that she'd spill the beans. I would speculate that if you're in a woman's prison for kidnapping and murdering children, they will do it for you.

You don't need to get involved. And so, with that, the legend of Enriqueta Martí Ripolles, in many ways the Epstein of her time, came to a very Epstein-esque end. And so that is the horrifying story of the Vampires of Barcelona. But I don't want to say it, but I have to. There might be a bit more to it.

Historians have since claimed that Enriqueta was simply a mentally ill woman whose only crime was kidnapping Teresita. These historians argue that this time was wracked with civil unrest, so Enriqueta was used as a scapegoat by the authorities and politicians to account for numerous missing children in the area during that time yeah yeah i don't know but the uh the list of high-flying clientele has never resurfaced so i know what i think yeah and it's not like we haven't come across story size before we did that italian soap maker lady yes yes and chili like I don't know. I believe it. I believe 75% of it, I think. Yes.

Yes. So there you go. That was very good. Thank you. Thank you. I feel sufficiently horrified. Excellent work. Excellent work.

Okay. Your turn. I'm ready. Ready? My body is ready. Okay. Let's do it. In Illinois in 1924, the Reverend Lawrence Haight fell in love with a woman named Elsie Sweeten.

Okay. For almost a year, the Reverend Haight and Elsie exchanged subtle cheeky smiles and winks during Sunday Mass. During Mass? Yeah, because she's one of his parishioners. It didn't end there. They didn't end with the little winks. They met up secretly after dark.

Listen, you can't fuck with a wink. No. Starts many a love story. But you can apparently, in this case, fuck a married reverend. Because the only thing stopping these two being together and openly professing their love for one another was the small issue of them both already being married to other people, just to be clear.

A pox. I know. And so the reverend and his lover decided the only way for them to be together once and for all was to murder their other halves. Why they skip past any other kind of more administrative way, I don't know, but they go straight to murder. Haight and Elsie decided that arsenic poisoning would be their method of choice. Ah, classic. Very 1924.

Oh, absolutely. Very in vogue. Yeah, you can just buy it at the ironmonger. Exactly. Maybe the cobbler. So Elsie put the poison in her husband's tomato soup and the reverend put it in his wife's coffee. But when their respective spouses did eventually die

within months of one another, tongues, that presumably had seen all the winking got a wagging ken just wait months so as it turned out like i said the pair's lustful glances during sunday mass weren't as subtle as they'd thought and people had long suspected them of doing some canoodling. And when the autopsies of their spouses revealed traces of arsenic, the Reverend and Elsie were both tried and found guilty of murder and locked up. But that is not the story I'm here to tell you guys about today. You'd think a village like Ina, and I have checked that is how I pronounce it, I-N-A, in Illinois, which has a population of less than 2,000 people and is no bigger than 2.4 square

miles. You'd think in a place like that, that the case of the reverend and his murdering mistress would have been the maddest thing to have happened there and for 60 years it kind of was but then in the late 80s a crime was committed that was so heinous that it shook the state of illinois and has haunted jefferson county ever since yes i've gone brutal brutal brutal brutal i feel like the cogs of my brain are turning very slowly. They may. It may do. It is not unconnected to a case that we have covered in the past. Okay.

So in 1986, Russell and Ruby Dardeen. Okay. For everybody who knows, stop screaming. Along with their two-year-old son, Peter, moved into a trailer on the outskirts of Aina which had a population by this time of 400. Confusingly the couple both preferred to go by their middle names which was Keith and Elaine. They decided to move there to this particular trailer

and this particular town after Keith landed himself a new job at the water treatment plant. And for about a year, the young family were living the small-town Midwestern American dream. Keith loved his job at the plant. Elaine started working at an office supply store. And in their free time, they played in a band in the local Baptist church. I wish I knew the name of the band, but I don't. Let's have a guess. What would you name your band if you were in a local baptist band the only thing i can think of because you said office supply is dunder mifflin

there we go i thought you were gonna go more biblical but i'll take it i'll take it so in this band keith sang vocals and el played the piano. Life couldn't have been happier or more peaceful for the Dardines. It's exactly what they wanted and exactly what they hoped for when they'd moved to Aina. Then, the following year, the couple got the happy news that their family was about to get a new member. Elaine was pregnant. With their family growing, Keith wondered if it was time to move out of their mobile home. But having another Dardine on the way wasn't the only reason Keith thought about moving his family. With their family growing, Keith wondered if it was time to move out of their mobile home. But having another Dardene on the way wasn't the only reason Keith thought about moving his family.

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Although the village of Aina was a pretty chill place to live, Jefferson County was quickly becoming a very violent place. Over the previous two years, there have been no less than 15 homicides in the area. The first had been committed by a teenager in Mount Vernon, Thomas Odle, who'd slaughtered his parents and three siblings one by one after they returned to the house in 1985. I believe Mount Vernon is where George Washington was from. Well, there you go. And I know that. Claim to fame. Because of Hamilton. So when in May 1987, a 10-year-old girl was raped near Aina, Keith decided enough was enough, and he put the trailer up for sale. He told his mother that he was going to move his family back to his hometown,

Mount Carmel, 80 miles away in Wabash County, Illinois, by that January. But then came the 18th of November 1987. Keith didn't show up for work that day, nor did he call in to let his supervisor know. In fact, nobody picked up the phone at the Dardines mobile home that entire day. Keith's boss even tried to call Keith's parents, but they hadn't heard from him either. Keith's dad, Don, decided to contact the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and he agreed to drive to Keith's trailer to meet the sheriff there with a key. And on arrival, the first thing that they all noticed was that Keith's car was missing and then they went inside and what they found in that trailer home

is the stuff of absolute nightmares three bodies were tucked into the same bed under a blanket elaine had been bound and gagged with duct tape and sexually mutilated before being bludgeoned to death. Their son, three-year-old Peter, had suffered the same fate as his mother. And as for the third body, it wasn't Keith. He was nowhere to be found. Because remember, at this point, Elena's still pregnant. She was, when she was still alive, seven months pregnant. Oh no. And she'd actually gone into labour during her brutal attack. And baby Casey, which is what Keith and Elaine were going to name their baby, had barely been on this planet for more than a few moments before she had been

beaten to death. The weapon that had been used in the attack was a baseball bat that Don had given Keith for his last birthday and had been left behind by the killer. It was still lying by the bed and there was also no sign of forced entry and all of the valuables that the family owned were still in the trailer home. And with Keith missing, he immediately became suspect number one. And the manhunt began. Now this manhunt was short-lived, because after just two days, hunters in a wheat field not far from the Dardine trailer discovered Keith's body. Oh, OK. So it wasn't him. He'd been shot three times in the head. And his penis had been cut off.

Oh my god. Yep. And then the following day, authorities also found Keith's car. And no, it hadn't been hidden in a ditch, torched or crushed. It was parked outside of a police station in the city of Benton, Illinois, about 11 miles south of the Dardenne trailer, next door to the Franklin County Courthouse. And no one had tried to hide this car, obviously, and no one had even tried to clean this car up, because the interior of the car was covered in blood. So with their prime

suspect now found murdered like the rest of his family, the police had to start looking for somebody else. The coroners deduced that all of the Dardeen family members had been murdered within an hour of one another and that they'd been dead for 12 hours at least before they'd been found. Keith Dardeen, of course, had been dead for over 24 hours, though, by the time he was discovered. The biggest question was why was Keith found somewhere else?

Why wasn't he found with the rest of the family in the trailer? And whether he was killed in the trailer and then moved, or whether he was killed in the wheat field itself where he was found, was a huge question. They just didn't know. It was clear from the way elaine peter and baby casey had all been tucked into bed and the fact that the crime scene had been thoroughly cleaned that the killer or killers were confident that they had plenty of time to do what they needed to do like yeah that kind of repositioning of the bodies like the covering them up the cleaning

the trailer that's not somebody who was in a massive rush. No. And the fact that the killer had beaten a newborn baby to death and sexually mutilated Keith, Elaine and Peter led to rumours that this had possibly been the work of, who do you think? It's 1980s. It's Halloween. Michael Myers. Satanists. So yeah, the standing theory was that the family had been killed in some sort of ritual sacrifice.

Ah, okay, okay, okay. But these were, of course, just rumours. And we can all laugh and shake our heads maybe not laugh but you know what i mean at the way in which the 1980s person's brain jumped to that the police's brain jumped to the idea of satanism but like the same exact thing is going on with the fucking delphi case yes right yeah yeah you know i reserve my judgment until we have a conviction there but anyway getting back to the story i had today so basically yeah the police are kind of sure that this is what could have happened but it really

is reminiscent of cases that we've seen before it's like they don't have much else so they're like cult satanic cult yes of course so they bring in a cult expert for god's sake but and i'm very proud of this cult expert because this cult expert denounced the rumors okay and he's like this is no fucking cult killer oh i thought you said a cult expert oh no cult c-u-l-t the things that exist a cult okay yes the things that exist exactly and he denounced these rumors he said that if these murders had been a ritual sacrifice the bodies would have been much more mutilated. Their organs would have been harvested.

There would have been satanic symbols left behind and things like candles lit. But none of these were the case. Nothing like that had been in the vicinity of the murder. Yes, Keith's penis has been cut off. Yes, everyone's been sexually assaulted, but there wasn't anything specifically cultish or occult-y anywhere near the crime scene. So when the news of the murders was made public, Einers, by this point 500 residents, were gripped in fear that the killer or killers could still be among them. And it makes sense because in a town that small

to go target one particular trailer home it really feels like it's somebody who lives there who bears some sort of grudge or something it would probably be hard to fathom that just like somebody is going through town and just happens on this family and murders all of them and then moves one of them etc so people are terrified and rightly so So the police considered every possible motive for the slaughter of the Dardines. Marital infidelity, drugs, gambling debts, everything. But nothing added up. No. And can you imagine the pressure?

A seven-month-old gestational baby was beaten to death after his mother went into labour, like, during an attack. The pressure on the Sheriff's Department must have been immense for them to solve this case. But the problem was that nothing added up. There was no evidence that either Keith or Elaine were having an affair, which ruled out the killer being some sort of jealous, jilted lover. And a book of sports scores found in the trailer

had led to speculation that maybe one of them was in a huge amount of gambling debt. But Keith's parents made it clear that Keith did not gamble. Keith's mum actually insisted that he was incredibly frugal and even sold cans of soda at work for 50 cents to save for his son Peter's college fund. Oh no. He was not a man who was going to take risks with their financial stability. Then there was a very small amount of weed that was found in the trailer.

But police believe that this could have been left behind by the killer. So again, I'm sure that pointed at people being like, oh my God, look, they must have been up to their eyes in drugs debt. There's no proof of that whatsoever. Because none of the family had any drugs or alcohol in their systems when they were autopsied even if that were true killing all of them and a baby over a drug's debt is so extreme 100 yeah you're never getting your money then no quite so regardless the brutality of the killings had detectives convinced that the murders were personal

and, like I said, that the Dardines were not chosen at random. The County Sheriff's Department teamed up with the Illinois State Police to investigate. 30 detectives took the case on full time. They gathered over 150 pieces of evidence and interviewed 100 people, which in a town of like 400 to 500 is basically everybody. They even followed over 1,000 leads. But every single one of these leads proved fruitless. Not one of the DNA samples they had found at the crime scene belonged to the killer. And nobody that the detective spoke to who knew the Dardines

could think of a single reason why anyone would want to hurt them. Soon enough, the police met a dead end in the investigation and had no choice but to begin working on other cases. Even two FBI profilers who reviewed the evidence were stumped as the crime didn't align with their analytical methods. And soon enough, the case of the Dardine massacre went cold. But Keith's mother, Joanne, refused to give up and did what she could to make sure her son and his family were not forgotten.

She regularly phoned the single detective who was still assigned to the investigation throughout the entirety of the 1990s, offering him possible new leads from our own investigation and just generally keeping the pressure on. Joanne even managed to get together 3,000 signatures from local residents on a petition to have the story spoken about on the Oprah Winfrey show.

Yes. Oprah can do anything. She can, apart from solve this case. Because the producers refused. can do anything. She can, apart from solve this case. Because the producers refused. They said that the murders were too gruesome for daytime television. Oh, come on. They missed a trick there.

Even America's Most Wanted initially refused to do a segment on the Dardine case. Oh, wow. Again saying because it was too horrendous and it was going to scare the fuck out of people. Jeez. But America's Most Wanted finally gave in in 1998.

Still, it didn't help find any new leads. Now, for a short while, the police were hopeful that they'd identified the killer to be Angel Materino Resendez, otherwise known as the Railroad Killer. Okay. Wow. All right, Carl Panzram. 1999 and police thought that his mo fit the dardine murders but in the end illinois police couldn't find any solid evidence tying him to the case so they stopped pursuing it it had been almost 13 years since the slaughter took place in that little trailer in aina and hopes for solving the case were dwindling fast. But then came New Year's Eve 1999. The big one. The big. Everyone scared.

Y2K. It's going to ruin your life. Et cetera, et cetera. So while the rest of the world was either celebrating the coming of the new millennium or in a panic about a potentially looming global technological meltdown, another serial killer in Texas was about to be caught. And this is where everybody's ears are going to prick up all over the place because this is the man that we've already covered.

Tommy Lynn Sell. Oh, oh, oh, oh, him, him, him. OK, OK, OK. The coast-to-coast killer. He sexually assaulted and stabbed 13-year-old Kayleen Harris to death and slit the throat of 10-year-old Crystal Searles. And she lived. Yes. Yes.

Exactly. Crystal didn't die and she managed to walk for a quarter of a mile with a severed trachea to find help. And at just 10 years old, Crystal helped the police make a composite sketch of Tommy Lynn Sells, picked him out of a lineup and testified in court. As a result, Sells was convicted and sentenced to death. But not before he began confessing to countless other killings he claimed to have committed during his 20-year murder spree. One of these confessions was the murder of the Dardine family,

and there were three versions of that story. Okay. According to Sells, he had been living in St. Louis. St. Louis? St. Louis? We always do this. I think it's St. Louis. St. Louis. He had been living in St. Louis, about 90 miles from Jefferson County, in the mid-1980s, around the same time as the murders.

He made a living by working as a travelling carny, doing odd manual labour jobs and stealing. Can you say you make a living by stealing? Sure. And occasionally, he'd also hitchhike or jump on a freight train, no matter where it was going. He has a very adventurous spirit. And it was during these aimless travels that Tommy Lynn Sells claimed that he got to know the village of Aina.

He said that it was in November 1987 that he met a man named Keith Dardeen at a truck stop near Mount Vernon. In the second version of the story, he says it wasn't a truck stop, but actually a pool hall. But according to him, they both got talking and Keith invited Tommy Lynn Sells back to his place for dinner. Why? Exactly. After the meal, Sells claimed that Keith asked him to have a threesome with him and Elaine. With his seven-month pregnant wife? Yes, with their child who presumably can't go anywhere else because they live in a trailer yeah i'm not buying that there's not like another room that they can lock this child peter up in and cell says that when he was offered this he went absolutely

fucking mental and lost it and he said i was so pissed off that I took it out to the maximum limit. Rage don't have a stop button. It does if you're not a fucking psychopath. Yep. Sells then drew his gun and forced Keith to drive to the wheat field where he cut off his penis and killed him. Because he was so outraged at the proposition of... Dinner and a threesome.

Dinner and a threesome. Which obviously never happened. Right. Sells then said he returned to the trailer and murdered elaine and her son peter he explained that he was so blinded by rage that he killed the baby elaine gave birth to during the murder too now in the third version of the confession cells didn't say anything about keith asking him to have a threesome at all instead cells claimed that he had jumped off a freight train near Aina, and it was then that he spotted the for sale sign outside the Dardene trailer, because remember, Keith wants to sell up so that he can move his family into a different home.

And Sells said that when he saw this sign, he saw it as a good opportunity to kill some people. Simple as that. He bided his time, drinking some beers, waiting for just the right moment to strike. Sells then knocked on the door and spoke with Keith, pretending to be a potential buyer, before pouncing on him. Sells then claimed to have overpowered Keith and forced him to bind and gag pregnant Elaine and Peter with duct tape. After this,

Sells said that he made Keith drive to the wheat field where he cut off his penis and told him that he was going to quote give it to his wife. Sells says that he then shot Keith and left him for dead and he claims that he then drove back to the trailer, raped Elaine and then beat her, Peter and her newborn baby to death. Finally, Sells said that he cleaned up the scene and drove Keith's car to the police station in Benton where he left it. Now Sells made these confessions along with numerous others about various unsolved murders and rapes in 2000 after he had been arrested. At which point he was already on death row in Texas.

Now, many people have speculated that he was trying to pull a Henry Lee Lucas here. If you don't know him, he's the confession killer. There is a pretty extensive Netflix documentary on him that you can go and check out. And basically, what Henry Lee Lucas did and what people are accusing Tommy Lynn Sells of doing is where you basically confess to loads and loads of cold cases and you force them to not kill you because you dangle information to solve other cases. Because no one's going to put you to death if you're saying, I did this and I did this and I did this and I did this.

Then you're going to have to go through all the evidence for those things. Do you know what I learned the other day? If you're on death row, you can request to just be killed. You'd be like, I'm done. I don't need to wait. And then I think it's within 60 days if you make the request. I believe. So let's take a look at whether we think this is true or not. Was Tommy Lynn Sells just wasting police time by confessing to the Dardeen case?

Well, for one, a lot of the details that he gave to the police about the Dardeen case sound very compelling. They sound like they fit the story. But a lot of what he said had already been widely reported in the press. And he was a killer. Of course he was fascinated with reading about horrible shit in the paper. Yeah, and he's in prison. He's bought his shit.

Quite. But Sells kept on insisting that he was the killer. And he even offered to go with police to Ina and lead them to direct pieces of evidence that they hadn't found yet. But this never happened. Because Texas law prevents inmates on death row from leaving the state.

And remember, he'd have had to go to Illinois to do it. Right. And authorities weren't even willing to make an exception in this case. Now, many friends of Keith and Elaine's had their doubts about Sells' version of events. Not least because the whole part of Keith inviting a stranger that he'd met at a truck stop or a pool hall home to have dinner and then to have a threesome with his wife didn't really fit.

Keith, like all the residents of Ina, was pretty wary of strangers at the time due to the rise in violence and homicides in the area. And we know that. He was trying to fucking sell his place and move into a different house. He wasn't just going to randomly invite Tommy Lynn Sells, who, if you haven't seen a picture of him,

looks fucking insane, back to his house with his pregnant wife and child. But I don't know if that's enough to make me think it wasn't tommy lynn sells because obviously in his third version of events he's like i just turned up at the house so like i don't think how he got in the house is enough to make it seem like he didn't do it but even if you believe sells a third version events where he just turns up at the house and pretends to be a potential buyer, would Keith have let him in then? Well, kind of seems like not because Keith's friends even

remember a time when Keith refused to let a young girl into the trailer one night to use the phone because he was so on edge about the rise in local violence. And black-eyed children. Quite. You should be fucking scared of them they're fucking scary and as for the sexual proposition well obviously we don't even need to

really talk about that it's completely ludicrous but there was one detail that sellers had given the investigators that made some of them absolutely certain that he was the killer cells described a set of watermelon ceramics that were on a shelf inside the Dardines trailer. These ceramics were never photographed or reported on anywhere, and only those who had been inside the trailer would ever have seen them. And that's quite niche. That is quite compelling.

Watermelon ceramics. So it's now time to learn a little bit more about Tommy Lynn's cells. He was born in southeast Missouri. And he began drinking by the age of seven. And was molested by the age of eight. He started doing drugs at ten. And tried to rape his own mother by thirteen. Oh my god.

And he had got his first kill under his belt by the age of 50. Jesus. By his 20s he was drinking heavily and taking drugs every single day and then he started drifting around the country as a carnival worker. Honestly he is like everybody's nightmare. Yeah it's like a myth. Yeah. And it was during the 80s that police confirmed that Sells was running drugs from Florida to Indiana. Now, why is this important? Because later, Tommy Lynn Sells withdrew all three versions of his confessions to the Dardeen murders and told officers a new one, implying that Keith was running drugs. Right.

When police found Keith's car outside the police station by the courthouse, it was also the same week a very, very large drugs conspiracy trial had just been concluded in that courthouse. Sell said that somehow, some way, Keith had gotten himself involved in organised crime. He said, quote, Now, Sells was executed on the 3rd of January 2014 by lethal injection. When asked if he had any final words, he just said no. Now, Crystal, the girl whose throat Tommy Lynn's cells cut when she was 10 years old

and who survived and who had brought Tommy Lynn's cells down, was present at his execution. Which is just so fucking horrific. I can't even. Has that girl not been traumatised enough? But obviously, you know, if it's her decision. her decision yeah right she obviously chose to be there yeah and officially the dardine family murder remains unsolved to this day i'm pretty convinced i am i think i'm watermelon convinced yeah i think that is very compelling and also tommy lindsell's like

he was a drifter killer he was on the loose for fucking ages he was killing from when he was 15 like there's no way i don't think he could have done this like he's very very capable and i think i'm not here to tarnish keith's name but could a reason that he was so freaked out by letting people into the house be because he was involved in something druggy i don't know why did tommy lindells, if he didn't leave the car parked by the Franklin Courthouse? I don't know. Is it to do with the drug stuff? We'll never know because, like we said, he's dead.

And he was a liar when he was alive anyway. Yeah. Another case that Tommy Lynn Sells has been linked with is, of course, the Dali Routier case. Oh, yeah. Now, look, I don't know. I need to go back and listen to our dali rutie episode i feel like maybe i gave her too much the benefit the doubt in that i really tried to look at it from both sides but a lot of people who think she is innocent say that the man who broke it and killed the children was in fact tommy lynn cells because he was in the area at the time but on reflection i kind of think she probably did it.

But there you go. That's what Bob Roth thinks. So there you go, guys. That is it. That is the Dardeen family murder. There you go. Horrible. Horrible, horrible stuff.

But we did it. But we did it. And that is part one of Halloween for 2023. And tune in next week where we will be in the Lone Star State yes we will get some fucking barbecue

yeah we're gonna get some fucking barbecue gonna make some friends great and if you're there we'll see you yeah we will see you at Obsessed Fest

we'll be the ones that look like us precisely we'll see you there and then we'll also see everybody else here also next week for something else. Hooray.

Bye. Bye. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years.

I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you

get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.