The Deck

A message from Ashley about the future of The Deck

On August 6, 1989, Rosa McMillian was found murdered inside that home. She had been brutally attacked—and sexually assaulted—in her own living room. The crime scene didn't make sense, and a few mysterious items were left behind by whoever killed Rosa. Something else left behind? The killer's DNA. In most cases, that would be enough to close the books. But in Rosa’s case…DNA isn’t what brought answers. In fact, it’s the opposite…and the one thing that would keep a solve out of reach.

On a cold December night in 2018, 25-year-old Kevin Nguyen went to see a band at a Fort Wayne bar and never came home. Surveillance cameras captured his final known hours in eerie fragments before he vanished. What happened next has fueled years of rumors, online theories, and bitter disagreements between investigators and Kevin’s family. With unreleased video evidence, mysterious tips about a possible killing, and no trace of Kevin ever found, his disappearance remains one of Indiana’s most haunting unsolved mysteries.

In February 2013, 21-year-old Kelsie Schelling had just learned she was eight weeks pregnant. Hours after her first prenatal appointment, she drove from Denver to Pueblo - and was never seen again. Kelsie’s body has never been found. But years later, someone was convicted of her murder. How do investigators build a case without a body? And after more than a decade, is there still a chance of finding Kelsie?

For more than three decades, the family of Milagros Nieves never talked about her murder. She’d been stabbed 33 times in the presence of her beloved baby granddaughter. The violence of it, the brutality of it, was too much for her family to relive. But when our team at The Deck started looking into Milagros’ case, they uncovered information that would leave everyone, including investigators, with even more questions.

In July 1984, Clarence and Marjorie Paulson, father and daughter, were reported missing from their home in Minnesota. At first glance, sheriff’s deputies didn’t see any obvious signs of a struggle. Marjorie and Clarence didn’t have driver’s licenses, and the three-wheeler Clarence used to travel was still at his house. Marjorie’s purse and knitting needles were left behind. Neighbors didn’t offer much of an explanation about where they’d gone – the two were considered reclusive, but known to travel into town every so often. But a closer examination of the home revealed more to the story. And six years after reported missing, detectives found the unthinkable.

For the last eleven years, the mystery of who murdered 33-year-old Eddie has haunted the New Castle County Police. It looked to them like Eddie had been targeted – shot just steps from where he lived and in front of his children. But a few BIG questions remain: Who was the man, possibly in disguise, that shot Eddie that day? And was this the same man caught on a surveillance camera near the scene? And WHY would anyone want this otherwise normal-seeming dad dead?

When police arrived at the scene of Angelica Sandoval’s disappearance on February 24th, 2011, what they came across seemed eerily frozen in time: her 1995, four-door, green Oldsmobile sedan was parked on 13th Street, in front of her two-bedroom duplex. Her keys were still in the driver’s side lock, but the back driver’s side door of the car was hanging open, revealing a basket of laundry and her purse still inside the car. The eeriness of that scene - the way that Angelica had seemingly just been plucked away in the middle of such a routine task - left a heaviness that has hung over Alamosa, CO, since that wintry night and left a Detective to work through a maze of potential suspects, leads, small-town gossip, and unanswered questions.

In the fall of 1991, just as the season was starting to change, a couple fishing at sunrise at a small lake in Fayetteville, North Carolina, noticed something floating near the surface of the water. At first, they thought it was a blow-up doll. But upon closer inspection, the couple saw hair on the legs and realized it wasn’t a doll. It was a human being—a person who would be identified as 24-year-old Jimmy Riddle. Jimmy was also known to some of their friends as Jamie, but how much their identity played into their death isn’t clear. What the police have to go on are potential witness statements, items left at the crime scene, and maybe, just maybe, DNA. Nearly 35 years after Riddle’s killing, there’s a new detective on the case…a detective determined to unearth the answers once and for all.

This week, we’re resurfacing an important old episode for you because we just learned more information about a person of interest who’s never been ruled out. His name is Mark Douglas Burns, and he's a terrifying individual. He came up in a Crime Junkie episode we dropped in the fan club in which Burns confessed to murdering a young mom in her home back in 2001. And the overlaps between him and Tonya’s last known movements cannot be ignored. Re-listen to today's episode closely... and then go check out the episode on Sue Gunderson Higgins in the Crime Junkie Fan club and tell me what you think. Could Mark be the missing link? Tonya Teske was a free-spirited 18-year-old who chose to live her life on the open road by hitchhiking around the mountain west. On August 13, 1997, she was last seen in Montana at a truck stop before her body was discovered two days later on the side of a highway in Idaho.

In the early hours of June 30th, 2014, 33-year-old Nefertiri, who went by “Neffie”, was kidnapped from her own front yard. In the dark, she was dragged into her car, away from the townhome she shared with her mom and three children. Even though Neffie’s kidnapping was witnessed, it would be almost nineteen hours before police learned that Neffie was missing. After an investigation failed to find out what happened to Neffie, a Delaware court declared her legally dead. But her body has still never been found. Could the identity of Neffie’s kidnapper lie with friends she saw hours before she vanished? Or is the suspect a convicted killer out for revenge?

In September of 1964, Terry and Alan Westerfield were dropped off at the movies and were never seen again. For the last six decades, the Fayetteville Police Department has been trying to unravel the mystery behind their disappearance.

In March 1999, 22-year-old Lindsay Wells was reported missing from her Simi Valley home, where she lived with her fiancé and his mother. Since she was reported missing, police have fielded sightings of Lindsay near a Simi Valley 7-Eleven, buying a train ticket headed to Tijuana, and at Disneyland, but these tips never yielded a lead. Since then, the case developments have included work with a psychic medium, an undercover wire operation, and searches with cadaver dogs. Lindsay remains missing.

In recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we are sharing the story of Marjorie “Christy” Luna to honor her life and amplify the voices of survivors. From the outside, Greenacres seemed like a picture-perfect place to grow up — where kids roamed barefoot between the park, school, and corner store. But beneath that storybook setting, something darker was unfolding, and it came to a head one May evening in 1984 when Christy disappeared. More than 40 years later, her friends are revisiting their childhood memories, uncovering how abuse and violence can exist in plain sight — often hidden or left unspoken. By sharing Christy’s story during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we hope to raise awareness, support survivors, and remind others that their voices matter.

The year 2008 had barely gotten started when 40-year-old Jason Vesper found himself in the middle of a family argument with his wife and teenage son. In the early hours of January 2nd, Jason left the family home in Scottsbluff to go for a short drive and blow off some steam. It was his MO when he needed to decompress. As Jason walked into the dark towards his pickup, with snow still lying thick on the ground, no one could have predicted the horror that would unfold over the next few minutes. Jason’s last moments were caught almost entirely on surveillance footage – except for a short window in which he was viciously and deliberately murdered. What exactly transpired between Jason and his killer during that period was never captured on film. Why did Jason become a target during a spur-of-the-moment drive? And was the killer – or killers – closer to home than anyone could have imagined?

In 1973, Janet Couture was murdered in her home, and for more than five decades the case remained unsolved. Despite years of investigation, the breakthrough came only in 2025, when a longtime suspect with a violent history was finally arrested.

In the early hours of December 30, 2018, deputies with the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office were called to the Penniman neighborhood of Williamsburg, initially for a report of shots fired. Then, they were called again: A 20-year-old had been fatally shot in his home. They spend the next several days talking to Mason’s friends, searching for surveillance footage, and collecting evidence. Since then, investigators have canvassed the neighborhood, turning over every possible clue that might help piece together what happened on December 29, 2018. They believe they might be close to answers — as long as they’re able to track down the man who might know what happened.

Early one June morning in 2004, Jeffrey Nichols told his girlfriend he was meeting his ex-wife in a shopping center parking lot to buy a set of golf clubs. But his ex-wife told police they were getting together at a McDonald's for a family meeting. No matter which version is true, one thing is for certain: After the morning of June 8th, 2004, Jeff was never seen again. And not only does his story include an honest-to-god, real-life burn book – we also found a clue that had been sitting in plain sight for the past 20 years that just might prove someone is lying

When Kenneth “Kenny” Floyd was found dead inside his apartment in Aurora, Colorado, in 1995, detectives found a clue they hoped would lead right to his killer — a trail of their suspect’s blood leading from Kenny’s door to the front of his building. That blood evidence allowed investigators to develop a DNA profile that they traced to one particular island in the Caribbean, bringing them closer than ever to finding answers for Kenny’s close-knit family. But a series of volcanic eruptions on the island destroyed the very records investigators needed to ID Kenny’s killer. Still, the genealogist working on Kenny’s case is hopeful that if more people with ancestry from that island, or the East Coast of the United States, upload their DNA profiles to GEDMatch and select the option to opt-in for law enforcement, she’ll be able to fill in the rest of the suspect’s family tree….and if she can do that, investigators might be able to finally close this case.

One morning in August 1986, a contractor showed up to work on the floors in a vacant house in Williamsburg, Virginia. When he arrived, he found a woman on her side in the mostly-full bathtub. In her wake were a trail of clues: a U.S. Army class ring, a mysterious hat with feathers, and sightings in what were likely her final hours.

In the summer of 2001, Daphne Hope vanished… and for over seven long years, her case disappeared into the reams of files at the Denver Police Department. And even when new detectives did start digging, no one has been able to piece together exactly what happened to Daphne. Over the years, theories about her disappearance have varied wildly – from sex work and drug deals to a serial killer. There was even speculation that Daphne wasn’t missing at all, that she was hiding in protective custody. And then there’s the man she lived with at the time – what might he know about her disappearance?

There is a man serving a life sentence in a Florida prison for his part in the 1989 murder of a 29-year-old pregnant woman named Donna Callahan. Two brothers were ultimately convicted for her abduction – and each of them pointed to the other as the ultimate preparator. But only one of them would go on to confess to over a dozen other murders. That man is now considered, by some, to be one of the deadliest killers on Florida’s Gulf Coast. And if his original confessions are to be believed, then not one, but two Fort Walton Beach cases could be closed. Right now, one detective is making it his mission to find out once and for all: Can he prove Mark Riebe is the serial killer everyone thinks he is? And was he–or someone else entirely–responsible for the murders of Ronda Taylor and Bonnie Ryther?

In September 1980, a Holiday Inn hotel in rural Iowa became the scene of a shocking double murder: a couple was found dead in their hotel bed, covered in lacerations. And the scene around them is one of the strangest and most puzzling I’ve ever come across in all my work. It’s one of the reasons this case has gained notoriety over time: I mean, to this day, the hotel where the couple lost their lives is still visited by true crime fanatics. Despite multiple suspects – and three agencies contributing to the investigation – no one has ever been arrested or charged in connection with Rose and Roger’s deaths. But… we have an exclusive update – something is about to happen in the Rose and Roger case that just might solve this nearly 50-year-old mystery.

When a young woman was found brutally murdered in an Aurora, Colorado alleyway in October 1996, one eagle-eyed detective zeroed in on forensic evidence he hoped would lead him to her killer. But one by one, that evidence ruled out every person they thought may have killed 25-year-old Tangie Sims and eventually her case went cold. And it stayed cold until new detectives revisited old evidence with new technology, took a look at one particular family tree and finally found who they’d been looking for.

Nothing causes the true crime community to stir more than a case with the open-ended question of did he? Or didn’t he? Well, except that is, when the question is did SHE? For longer than 32-year-old Thomas Mather was alive, a rural town in Iowa has been haunted by their only unsolved homicide. The former Sheriff told us it’s the only who dun it they have left. Does no foreign DNA evidence and strange behavior mean that Dawn Mather had to have been involved in killing her husband? Or does an unidentified fingerprint and tire tracks prove she didn’t?