The Deck - Darlene "Dee Dee" Webb (9 of Diamonds, Florida)

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Our card this week is Darlene “Dee Dee” Webb, the 9 of Diamonds from Florida.The night was still young when 20-year-old Darlene left her friends at a local Daytona Beach bar to go get some shut-ey...e before work the following morning… but little did they know, as she walked out into the darkness of the night, that’d be the last time they’d ever see her. Today, detectives are still as baffled as they were back in 1983.If you know anything about the disappearance of Darlene Webb in January of 1983, please call Crime Stoppers of Northeast Florida at 1-888-277-TIPS. Or, you can reach retired Sgt. Flynt via email at flyntjimmie@dbpd.us. To listen to Park Predators Season 1, Episode 11: The Photographer, visit: https://parkpredators.com/episode-11-the-photographer/ To learn more about The Deck, visit www.thedeckpodcast.com. To apply for the Cold Case Playing Cards grant through Season of Justice, visit www.seasonofjustice.org Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllc The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Follow The Deck on social media and join Ashley’s community by texting (317) 733-7485 to stay up to date on what's new!

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Our card this week is Darlene D.D. Webb, the 9 of diamonds from Florida. The night was still young when 20-year-old Darlene left her friends at a local Daytona Beach bar to get some shut-eye before work the following morning. But little did her friends know as she walked out into the darkness of the night. That'd be the last time they'd ever see her. Today, detectives are still as baffled as they were back in 1983. She's disappeared off the face of the earth. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. . It was early on a Saturday morning when Fran Webb awoke to a call no one ever wants to
Starting point is 00:01:15 get. It was her 20-year-old daughter's boss on the other end asking why she hadn't shown up to work that morning. Right then in there, Fran's stomach dropped. She knew her daughter, Darleen, had agreed to cover Saturday's opening shift at Chick-fil-A after a manager came down with the flu. And everyone who knew Darleen knew she was dependable through and through, like it was completely unheard of for her to be a no-call no-show. So naturally, Fran was worried, but she didn't let herself completely panic just yet.
Starting point is 00:01:45 Nobody's perfect, and Darleen was a busy lady, balancing her college classes with being an assistant manager at Chick-fil-A. Maybe she just overslept or completely spaced the shift that she'd agreed to take on. And this was easy enough to check, because Darleen and Fran lived together. According to NBC News, Fran rushed to Darlene's room and found it empty. Not only empty, but untouched like her bed hadn't been slept in. Puzzled, Fran stepped outside to see if her daughter's car
Starting point is 00:02:15 was out there in the driveway, but it wasn't. And there was something else outside that caught her eye. The porch light was on. And that might not sound like a big deal, but at the webhouse, they had a tried and true routine that the last one home at night was supposed to turn off the porch light. So the fact that the light was still burning really solidified the fact that Darleen hadn't come home at any point during the night. Fran recalled that the last time she'd seen Darleen had been the previous night at around
Starting point is 00:02:44 11 p.m. when Darleen told her she was going out with some friends and promised she wouldn't be out too late. So maybe she'd just ended up staying with one of those friends. It was a usual group that she'd spent plenty of long nights with before, a woman in a man who worked at the mall Chick-fil-A with her, then another guy who worked at a different store in the mall. But when Fran began calling around, none of them knew where she was. Last they knew, she was leaving the bar at around 130 in the morning and walking back to her car, which was parked just a block away in the 600 block of North Grand View Avenue, near Sea Breeze Boulevard. Fran raised to that location, and there it was, still sitting there.
Starting point is 00:03:27 Darleen's white Chevy Chavette. Now, unfortunately, this part isn't well documented in the case file, so detectives today don't know if the car was locked or unlocked when it was found, or if it was broken into or completely untouched. I don't know why today's investigators don't ask Fran herself because she is still around. I don't know if they don't think it's important or maybe they did ask and she just doesn't remember. Our reporting team tried to reach out
Starting point is 00:03:54 to get an interview with Fran for this episode but the family declined for personal reasons. So we couldn't exactly get to the bottom of this ourselves either. But either way, what we do know is that when Fran either peaked inside or got into the car, she noticed that all of Darleen's belongings were there, her coat, purse, money, and reading glasses. The only things missing were Darleen herself and her keys.
Starting point is 00:04:20 Even more alarming than any of that, though, was what Fran saw inside the car that clearly wasn't her daughters. Here's now retired reserve sergeant Jimmy Flint with a Daytona Beach Police Department. The car seat was kind of laid back and there were cigarette butts in the ass tray. She didn't smoke. She was the type of person, A, she didn't allow you to smoke in her car. And even if she allowed you to smoke in the car, she would not leave the cigarette butts in that car like that.
Starting point is 00:04:55 In that moment, all Hope Fran had that her daughter was safe when rushing out of her body. Those cigarette butts told her something had happened, and her daughter, who didn't live a high-risk lifestyle in any way, had encountered someone who did something to ensure that she wouldn't return home. Fran knew that they had to report their sweet darling missing. Around 2pm that day, Darling's dad went to the police department to do just that. After the report was filed, the family met with an officer at Darleen's car to show him what they'd found. The officer made note of the family's discovery, documented what was found in the car, and
Starting point is 00:05:38 then, I hope you're sitting down, the dude just left. Didn't take anything from the car as evidence, not even the cigarette butts, didn't have the car impounded and searched. Just nothing. If your jaw is on the floor like mine was when I first heard this, I got to be honest, I don't really have a great explanation. I mean, best case scenario, the officer just didn't realize the value that evidence would hold one day?
Starting point is 00:06:06 This was 1983, and the debut of forensic DNA testing was still a few years off. But to me, the more likely scenario is that he was going through the motions and taking a report of a missing girl who he thought would just turn back up on her own. They really didn't have any evidence of any crime being committed. Back in the 80s, if you was an adult, you were 18 or 19 years old. I can remember one time when it was like, you know, you had to be missing for 24 or 48 hours before, because an adult had to write to disappear, you know,
Starting point is 00:06:43 whatever it is. I mean, I wish we could do it more. Back then, because those cigarettes would have been real useful. Maybe the car didn't screen foul play, because there wasn't blood on the seeds or a body in the trunk. But the totality of circumstances
Starting point is 00:07:01 should have been alarming. They certainly were to Darling's family. And yet, because of the supposed lack of evidence pointing toward foul play, investigators wanted to wait things out just a little bit longer before making a big fuss. So that's what they did. Just waited. It wasn't until four days after the report was filed that police went to the local media and Darling's disappearance finally hit the news.
Starting point is 00:07:29 But even then, investigators still weren't ready to put the foul play label on anything. The Orlando Sentinel reported, quote, �Police called her disappearance suspicious, but said they have few facts and no reason at this time to believe foul play is involved. And with that, the tip floodgates were opened. Mostly, suppose sightings of her here and there that were quickly discredited. And it wasn't until February 2nd, 11 days after Darleen was last seen, that the first big tip came across detectives radar. The owner or manager of the Bavarian
Starting point is 00:08:06 Beard Garden reported that around 130 in the morning, she heard a female screaming. They came outside. They didn't see anything, but they saw a dark color car speeding away on Grandview Northbound with their lights off. And she remembers that it had like a temporary tag or something, but she couldn't recall the numbers. This tip was particularly intriguing to police because the Bavarian beer garden was the business
Starting point is 00:08:37 Darleen had parked directly across the street from the night she went missing. Now, I'm sure you're wondering why did the manager wait 11 days to report something that so clearly looked like an abduction? Like even without the context of Darleen's disappearance, what she saw was sketchy at best. Well, here's the kicker. She actually hadn't waited to report this. The woman said she had called in twice, once in the morning hours of January 22nd after she
Starting point is 00:09:05 witnessed the possible abduction, and again after the news coverage of Darlene. But it was only after the second call that the information got to detectives. Whether or not she actually did call on the 22nd hasn't been confirmed. But if she truly did, it's possible that her message fell through the bureaucratic cracks before it made it to the right person. But if she truly did, it's possible that her message fell through the bureaucratic cracks before it made it to the right person. Or maybe whoever at the police department took her information just assumed that she was overreacting to people enjoying a vacation.
Starting point is 00:09:35 Back in the day, when spring break and everything was going on here, it wouldn't be uncommon to hear someone scream it. And so because when they went outside, they never saw anybody. All they heard was the scream, but by the time they got outside, there was no screaming, there was no struggle, there was no pushing or in the car. Since the woman couldn't remember the license plate number or offer a better description of the vehicle, there wasn't much detectives could do but keep the information in their back pocket and keep pressing on. In March, there was another glimmer of hope. A family came forward to the police and said that they were sure they'd seen Darlene at an ice cream shop called the Big Dipper in Northern Daytona
Starting point is 00:10:22 Beach. They said they'd seen her on March 21st. And here's the kicker. They hadn't just laid eyes on her. They had this whole weird interaction with her. According to the family, the mystery woman seemed confused and asked them for a ride to the Salvation Army. She said that she'd been living on the streets in downtown Daytona Beach, so like the good
Starting point is 00:10:54 people they were, the family agreed to take her to the Salvation Army and even offered to buy her ice cream, which she accepted. And then she said, boy, is it nice to have a family? They described her as being like 20 years old age, five, four, five, six, hundred and twenty pounds with long brown hair. And now they showed these people a photograph of her and they said, yeah, that's her. Investigators race to the Salvation Army showed them pictures of Darlene and they said it
Starting point is 00:11:25 looked like a woman who came in on March 21st right around the same time that the family said they brought a young woman there. According to staff, the woman didn't have any form of ID on her and she said her name was Cheryl Darnesky. She seemed confused and quote quote unquote, mentally unstable. They said she claimed to work at a local radio station, W-Z-I-P. So, police made their way to W-Z-I-P and started showing workers there a picture of Darlene. And they were like, yeah, that looks a lot like a woman who works here named Cheryl Darnesky.
Starting point is 00:12:02 They agreed with what the reporting family and the Salvation Army people said, that she seemed kind of off. They also noted that Cheryl didn't have a permanent address and was currently staying at a local campground, but no one knew which campground. This was the best lead they'd had since Starleen went missing. So investigators wasted no time going around to local campgrounds, and while they didn't find Cheryl or Darleen, or whoever this woman was, they did get some interesting information from a manager of one of the campgrounds.
Starting point is 00:12:35 He said a couple of weeks prior, a woman named Darleen stayed there, along with a man and two children. They stayed in a small camp, but they'd left over two weeks ago. And that's kind of where the paper trail ends for that wild goose chase of a lead. I don't know if police ever tracked down the darling from the campground. And Sergeant Flint said he's pretty sure police never spoke to the Cheryl from the radio station.
Starting point is 00:13:04 Did she ever show back up to work? Did they dig and find out that Cheryl Darnesky was her real identity? She wasn't darling. I don't know. For my own sanity, I want to assume that they followed up on these things as best they could, determined that the whole thing was some kind of mix-up and decided that Cheryl was a different person. But I can't say that for sure. And I can't help but wonder if there was more that could have been done.
Starting point is 00:13:29 So the Cheryl Darnesky lead faded out, and by the time April rolled around, the investigation was losing steam fast. So detectives turned back to the most solid tip they'd received yet. The woman who'd heard the female screaming the night darling disappeared. The manager of the Bavarian beer garden. Yes, the woman had already told them she couldn't remember the license plate number, but detectives were hopeful that info was maybe just tucked away in her mind somewhere. So, they set her up with a hypnotist. Surprisingly, under hypnosis, the woman was able to recall some numbers, but no letters. The problem was, she gave them three different versions of what the numbers
Starting point is 00:14:10 could have been, so ultimately, it was nothing police could trace. That hypnosis session was kind of investigators' best shot at a Hail Mary. Because after that, Darleen's case went ice cold. It would stay that way for over a year until September of 1984, when a tipster came forward and got everyone's hopes up all over again. Here's a voice actor reading from a supplementary report. We've changed the tipster's name to a pseudonym. I was contacted by a Walter Griffin, employed by the city of Daytona Beach as a street sweeper. Mr. Griffin advised that he had recently written the paper about the missing girl, Darleen Webb.
Starting point is 00:14:54 He advised that about a year ago, while working on the east side of the river, he was at the intersection of Seabreese Boulevard and Grandview. It was about 3 or 4 a.m., and he believes that it was a Saturday morning. When he was turning the corner sweeping the street, he heard a girl screaming. When he looked around, he saw a white male with long hair pulling a girl into a car. Vehicle believed to be a 75 to 77 Monte Carlo white with a black top. Vehicle had a name plate on the front. Unknown female appeared to be about 18 to 20 years of age, long hair, vehicle was parked on the northwest corner lot.
Starting point is 00:15:29 He advised that this is not an unusual thing to see at that hour in that area. The bars are letting out, people are forcing around with each other. After reading the story in the paper about the girl Darleen Webb from the time frame, plus the same location, he feels it could be the same girl.
Starting point is 00:15:45 Investigators agree that woman very likely could have been Darlene, especially looking at this eyewitness account alongside the tip from the beer garden manager. So detectives provided the car description to local units, but this really didn't get them any further. They still didn't have a license plate or anything to narrow down their search. Whether this tip helped solidify the fact that Darlene hadn't run away on her own or not, I don't know. But it seems that it was around this time that police finally did accept the fact that
Starting point is 00:16:18 she had been met with foul play. Because even with all of the time that had passed, still, no one had come forward with one bad thing to say about Darlene. According to the Orlando Sentinel, everyone from family members to co-workers said she was, quote, reliable, dependable, and conscientious. Everyone talked to her. They all knew her and said how she, you know, she sang in the church choir and you know, she was an altar girl. So it was unusual for her just to happen to her. Even as the years slipped away with no sign of Darlene, Fran waited. Full of hope that one day her little girl would come waltzing through the door. She avoided changing her
Starting point is 00:17:04 phone number and going on vacation, and she refused to turn the porch light off, because as she told NBC News, quote, the last person's not home. Fran clung to the hope that her daughter was still out there somewhere, even putting Christmas presents under the tree trusting that she'd come back one day to open them. And she felt she had reasonable grounds for that hope, because as she told the Orlando Sentinel, she regularly consulted with a psychic, who told her that Darleen was alive in Florida, but in captivity, and either brainwashed or under the influence of drugs. Fran said, quote, drugs. Fran said, quote, in our hearts, we know she is still alive. Until they show me the actual body or other physical evidence, I'll go on looking for her. And that's exactly
Starting point is 00:17:53 what they did. Darleen's family continued searching, putting up posters around town, advertising a reward, scouring the streets of Daytona Beach looking for anything that could lead them to her, but they kept coming up empty handed. As the years passed by, there were small breaks in the clouds. Every so often, investigators would be notified of unidentified remains somewhere in the country that loosely matched Darling's description. They'd wait with baited breath, but dental records or DNA would ultimately bring police right back to the drawing board. And they stayed at that drawing board until 2006,
Starting point is 00:18:33 when they're finally seen to be light at the end of the tunnel, coming all the way from California in the form of a photograph. You see, in July 2006, authorities in Los Angeles County suddenly decided to go public with some evidence that they'd recovered in the 80s while investigating a convicted murderer or slash rapist and suspected serial killer. William Bill Bradford had been convicted of two killings in 1988, but investigators had good reason to think he was responsible for far more than those two slangs.
Starting point is 00:19:09 In fact, at his own trial, Bradford addressed the jury saying, quote, Think of how many you don't even know about. On an out-of-funked website, LA Law Enforcement published 54 photographs taken by Bradford because investigators believed that to be his MO, photographing young women before sexually assaulting or murdering them, and 54 of the photos recovered from his apartment showed women they had yet to identify. Now why LA authorities waited two decades to try and identify women in these photos? I don't think they've ever explicitly stated the why.
Starting point is 00:19:48 But anyways, not long after those photos were published for all to see, authorities 25-hundred miles away in Daytona Beach get a tip that photographed 33 for a striking resemblance to Darlene Webb. You can see that photograph as well as photos of Darlene for comparison on our website, thedeckpodcast.com. Soon enough, Daytona Beach authorities announced that they were taking another look at Darlene's case, specifically looking closely at the possible Bradford connection. But right away, things weren't entirely adding up. Investigators in LA were positive that Photo33 was taken at Bradford's apartment in California. And according to the Orlando Sentinel, Darlene had never gone to California. So, either she had just randomly decided to travel there,
Starting point is 00:20:49 somehow without her car, or Bradford had picked her up in Florida, driven her thousands of miles back to California, taken her photo and then killed her. By the way, as far as I know, these photographs weren't dated, so I don't think there was a way to know if Photo-33 was taken before or after Darling
Starting point is 00:21:06 disappeared. Either way, this is all a bit of a stretch, but this was Detective's best lead yet on a case that was more than two decades old, so they persisted. They worked alongside LA County investigators to learn more about Bradford, and they discovered that he actually did live in Florida, specifically the Panhandle in 1980. And he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman while he was there. Now that was three years before Darling went missing, but it was at least something, because it showed that he was familiar with the state, and up to no good during the time he was there. When Fran was shown photo 33, she thought the picture could possibly be her daughter,
Starting point is 00:21:51 but it could just as likely be a doppelganger. She noted that below the nose looked a bit different, and her certainty that it was Darlene couldn't be more than 50 percent. All they had was pictures and so the family was saying that they was like 50 percent or less that was her but without the body comparing the DNA and the dental records you can't prove it and we don't know if those photographs were all of those people keel. Now Los Angeles authorities did seriously look into the possibility of a connection between Darlene and Bradford. They even sent a detective to Daytona Beach to gather more information.
Starting point is 00:22:33 But as far as I can tell, they never questioned Bradford himself about Darlene. I mean, it's possible they did interview him and he just didn't have anything noteworthy to say so they didn't report anything noteworthy to say, so they didn't report back to Daytona Beach? I don't know. But if this whole possible Bradford connection to Darlene got your attention like it did mine, I recommend checking out the full episode we have on him and his victims on the show Park Predators. The title of that one in the first season is called The Photographer.
Starting point is 00:23:03 I'll link out to that in our show notes. But anyways, with nothing concrete to prove the theory true, the lead eventually fizzled, like so many before it. But whatever hope might have remained in the back of people's minds that Bradford held the answer to Darling's disappearance, died with him when he succumbed to cancer while on death row in 2008. For all of Darleen's loved ones who believed photograph 33 to be her, I'm sure this was a crushing blow.
Starting point is 00:23:34 After 25 years, it probably seemed like this was their last chance at closure, but they kept pushing for justice and looking for answers. And in 2009, Fran learned something she hoped would finally set police down the right path. Fran told investigators that she found out the female friend who was out with Darleen the night she disappeared. We're gonna call her Beth. Well, she found out the Beth had never been formally interviewed.
Starting point is 00:24:01 Detectives checked the case file and Fran was right. Beth's name wasn't in there. In fact, it looked like none of those three friends who were out with Darlene that night had been interviewed before. Now, I suppose you could make an argument that investigators didn't think there was foul play at first, so maybe they didn't think it necessary to properly interview those who last saw her. But remember, eventually, police did come around to the fact that she didn't disappear on her own.
Starting point is 00:24:31 So, why didn't they at least question Beth then? How the hell did this slip through the cracks? To me, this is truly inexcusable. You know, some critics of this show say that it's all police bashing, and I'm too hard on past detectives. Police bashing is not what this is about. We want to highlight the work that new investigators are doing to try and solve these cases. It's not an easy job to have to pick up the baton and run with it, especially when someone buried the baton 30 years ago and didn't leave a map for you to find it. Everything is clearer in hindsight, I know that. But excusing poor police work doesn't help anyone.
Starting point is 00:25:13 How do we ensure that mistakes don't happen again if we don't recognize them as mistakes? And for no one who put eyes on this case to realize that Beth had never been talked to before. For that to have come from Fran decades later, that is a mistake that can be learned from. Never assume all of the basics were covered. And always cover the basics. However, it came to be that this is the situation they were in. Detectives in 2009 weren't gonna stand for it,
Starting point is 00:25:47 and they wanted to correct what previous detectives failed to do. They reached out to Beth who agreed to meet. And by the way, Beth said she had been contacted by police after darling went missing, but she confirmed that an actual interview never happened. So finally, she and investigators sat down for a conversation that should have happened 26 years prior.
Starting point is 00:26:11 Here's what Beth had to say. Back in the day, she, Darleen, and two guys that they knew often went out to the Beach Comer Club on Friday nights, like it was an established routine for them. They would meet up at the guys' apartment after work and then go to the bar from there. And that's exactly what they did the day Darlene disappeared. They all met at the apartment, Beth hopped in the car with Darlene to carpool and the guys drove separately to the beach comor.
Starting point is 00:26:38 Beth didn't remember Darlene carrying her purse into the bar. She might have just slipped the money that she needed into her pocket and left her purse behind. Which is an important detail to police because it meant that Darleen could have just not made it back to her car that night. A scenario I wasn't even considering up until I learned this from the detective. I'd always thought that she made it back to her car
Starting point is 00:27:00 and could have been taken from there just because her purse was there. But now, that might not have been the case. At the bar, Beth said that they just drank beer, and there were no drugs involved whatsoever. After hanging out for a bit, Darleen announced that she needed to leave early, but Beth couldn't recall why she needed to leave early.
Starting point is 00:27:20 Beth told her it was fine, she just catch a ride with the guys back to the apartment. She said Darleen didn't seem intoxicated, and she didn't recall anything happening at the bar or any strangers looking at her weirdly. At the end of the interview, Beth added that she thought Darling had a boyfriend at the time, someone who was away at college who went by the nickname Tree. But things get a bit confusing here because Beth later clarified and said that Tree wasn't Darleen's boyfriend. He was a coworker of theirs at Chick-fil-A.
Starting point is 00:27:51 But she did think Darleen had a boyfriend at the time who was away at college. Whoever Tree and the mysterious boyfriend were, that's still a bit unclear to this day because Sergeant Flint told us that to his knowledge, no follow-up was done. Flint also noted that after Beth was interviewed, neither of the two guys who were out with them that night were talked to. Now if we give 2009 investigators the benefit of the doubt, maybe they assume that those two
Starting point is 00:28:21 guys wouldn't have anything different to add than what Beth told them. But it's a whole in the story, and it means that the police department now, all these years later, had to try and fill in these holes and these cracks left by 2009 investigators and before. And I can't help but wonder if those two guys saw something Beth didn't. Like, maybe they had a different angle at the bar, and they did see a stranger looking at Darlene weirdly, or perhaps they had a different perspective of how she was acting that night. But until those two men are spoken to, that's something we just don't know the answer to. If they're still around and hear this, police are looking for anything. They would love to talk to you, even if you don't think you have anything meaningful to add. Trying to piece this thing together has been an uphill battle,
Starting point is 00:29:09 and even the smallest bits of information and insights could be a gain changer for them. Since Beth's interview in 2009, Darleen's case has seen little movement, but Darleen hasn't been forgotten. She has friends who still call into the police department to check on her case. In fact, that's how Sergeant Flint first got involved in the case when one of Darlene's high school classmates called him up. And I've been communicating with her, I talked with her like a couple of weeks ago. And she's giving me like bits and pieces of information as they you know that she was a straight-up type of person she was real dependable and she always
Starting point is 00:29:50 wondered what happened with the case and she asked me was the cigarette butts that were tested and I says what cigarette butts and so that's how I found out about the cigarette butts being in the anstery. It's those cigarette butts that will always haunt retired Sergeant Flint. He can't help but look back and wonder what would have happened if the case had been taken more seriously from the get-go. Knowing what I knew now, we would have processed that car. We were taking those cigarette butts from the car. That would have been a lot of help. But Flint doesn't live in the past. The mistakes of 40 years ago can't be undone,
Starting point is 00:30:35 so he presses on with what he can do. I still go into Namus and look in the case file and and look in the case file. And I've even tried to look at unidentified bodies in the immediate area. 90 miles away, just to see if there's anything close to it and nothing. Flint knows that Darlene's case will be a tough one to crack, but that doesn't stop him from trying. The reason why I said tough cases because her body has never been,
Starting point is 00:31:07 she's never been recovered. We don't know whether she's dead or alive. So if we had a body rather live or dead, that would give us really a starting point to try to make sense of what happened. She's like, she's disappeared off the face of the earth. We always want to believe that the person is alive. But she hasn't been heard from, and so I can't say that she's dead.
Starting point is 00:31:36 I just wish we had something to give the family closure, one way or another. But I'm hoping one thing, with this podcast, that maybe that will jog somebody's memory, or maybe someone has told a loved one that they did something and they just didn't know where it was at. And maybe they're listening to this and says,
Starting point is 00:32:01 well, you know, that's what this person told me he did, but he didn't tell me where, and that might be a lead. You can only hope. There's always hope. It could be slim, but there's always that possibility of hope. I'm thinking that stranger things have happened before. It's that sliver of hope that keeps frang going. In 2013, she told the news journal, quote,
Starting point is 00:32:29 if she's passed on, then I'll close the book on it. But until then, I'm not closing the book. Mother's got instincts? She's alive somewhere, and I know she is. I just got to find her. We asked, retired Sergeant Flind what kind of tips he's looking for in this case. A witness that saw her either being abducted,
Starting point is 00:32:52 a witness that can give us a better description of the car, a witness who may have heard something from the suspects over time, who knows who could have been another inmate know, another, inmate who was bragging about, but he did something a long time ago, or it could have been somebody that was maybe given a deaf big confession, but they didn't give him enough information. You know, just say that, hey, I did something bad.
Starting point is 00:33:19 Back when I was a young man, and I killed a girl, but I did it in Daytona, but that's all they said. And they just didn't think that there was enough information to bring that forward. If any of that describes you, if you know anything at all about the disappearance or murder of Darlene Webb in January of 1983, or even if you knew anything about her life leading
Starting point is 00:33:45 up to her disappearance, like maybe you were the boyfriend that she might have had that was away at college. Please call Crime Stoppers of Northeast Florida at 1-888-277-TIPS. That's 1-888-277-84-777. Or you can reach retired Sergeant Flint directly via email at flintjimmy at dbpd.us. That's F-L-Y-N-T-J-I-M-M-I-E at dbpd.us. I'll include his email and the number for crime stoppers in our show notes. Darlene was last seen wearing a printed skirt, a white blouse, and white flats. She had on a gold necklace with a buttercup pendulum with a diamond, a gold chain with her first name engraved on it, a necklace with the Virgin Mary Pendulum, and her sea
Starting point is 00:34:42 breeze high school classroom. She's 5'5-5'9, 120-130 lbs with brown hair and brown eyes. She would be 61 years old today. And don't forget, if you want to take a deeper dive into William B. Bradford and his crimes, check out the episode titled The Photographer on Season 1 of Park Predators. Again, that's going to be linked out right in the show notes. The Deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. So, what do you think chuck?
Starting point is 00:35:22 Do you approve? Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?

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