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In 1992, seventeen year old Kelly Wilson vanished in Gilmer, Texas. A short walk from a video store to her car became one of the most debated missing person cases in Texas history. What should have been a focused, evidence driven investigation was quickly consumed by the national Satanic Panic that overtook the early nineties. Gilmer followed the same pattern seen in McMartin, Kern County, and the West Memphis Three. Fear replaced facts. Rumor replaced procedure. And Kelly’s case fell into the same trap that swallowed so many investigations during the Satanic Panic era.

In this episode we retrace Kelly Wilson’s last known steps, the slashed tire, the missing keys, and the early suspects who should have remained at the center of the case. We examine how the entire investigation veered into claims of ritual abuse when the Kerr family CPS probe began producing pressured child testimony that expanded only after repeated, leading interviews. These accusations mirrored every hallmark of the Satanic Panic movement. No physical evidence. No forensic support. No verified ritual activity. Only fear, group reinforcement, and stories that grew bigger every time a child was pushed for more.

Using criminal profiling, forensic standards, and lessons taken from documented Satanic Panic cases, we outline the scenario that best fits the facts. The Texas Attorney General later confirmed what the FBI had been saying for years. Real ritual crime leaves clear signatures. Gilmer had none. What it had were misidentified bones, contaminated interviews, and a case that lost its direction the moment panic replaced logic.

If you follow true crime, Satanic Panic history, missing person investigations, or the impact of moral hysteria on criminal justice, this episode brings clarity to one of the most misunderstood cases of the early nineties.

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In this Episode we dive into the case of Michael Ronning, a convicted murderer who spent years bragging about killings no court ever proved. His life stretched from Michigan to Arkansas to Florida, and everywhere he went the same pattern followed: a missing girl, an unexplained death, and a story he couldn’t resist inserting himself into.

Was Ronning a forgotten serial killer, or a drifter who loved the attention that came with pretending to be one? Andrea and Paul sift through the timeline, the victims, the confessions, and the contradictions he left behind. Some of his claims line up a little too well. Others fall apart the second you touch them.

This episode pulls apart the myth of Michael Ronning and the messy truth underneath it.

“Some killers stay silent. Ronning couldn’t shut up long enough to hide anything.”

“Every place he bragged about had a real victim. That is not a coincidence.”

“He confessed to murders he couldn’t possibly have committed. The question is why he wanted the credit.”

“The courts only proved one killing, but the geography tells another story.”

“Was he a serial killer, or just a man who enjoyed the spotlight a little too much?”

“This is the problem with Ronning’s case. The truth and the lies sound exactly the same coming out of his mouth.”

A drifter who loved headlines. A murder tied to a $700 lockbox. A string of claims that crumble under basic scrutiny. We dive into the volatile life and crimes of Michael Ronning, exploring the one confirmed homicide and the many cold cases he tried to claim from Michigan to Arkansas to Florida. Our goal isn’t to glorify him—it’s to separate what really happened from what he wanted people to believe.

We walk through Dana Lynn Hanley’s case step by step: the short construction job, the glimpse of cash, the abduction, the eyewitness who remembered his face, and the conviction that followed. From there, we map the suspected cases Ronning attached himself to, including the Rebecca Sue Hill connection, and ask a hard question: are we seeing a serial predator with a ritual, or a chaotic opportunist who killed when it was easy and bragged when it was useful? Using our AI-assisted profiler “Cade Mercer,” we test the behavioral evidence and the lack of consistent signature—finding rage, proximity, and impulse instead of ritual, planning, and control.

We also zoom out to the limits of 1980s forensics—decomposition in swamps, missing biological material, inconsistent evidence handling—and look at how modern tools like CODIS, touch DNA, and forensic genealogy could still help. If Ronning’s DNA is in the system, could renewed testing answer lingering questions or clear false trails? Along the way, we challenge the habit of pinning unsolved cases on notorious names and talk about what responsible true crime work looks like: careful distinctions, transparent uncertainty, and respect for victims and families.

“Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
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A police lieutenant turns the key, presses the brake, and his truck erupts. He lives. The case almost disappears. We set out to learn why a 1972 Springdale, Arkansas bombing barely made the paper and what the town didn’t (or wouldn’t) say out loud. Along the way we sketch the real backdrop: a rural region on the cusp of change, where Walmart and Tyson were still rising, Sundays went quiet, and a hard-edged meth trade simmered under the surface.

We walk through the device itself—DuPont gelatin dynamite, electric blasting caps, a likely brake-trigger—and how ATF and the FBI traced components that later surfaced in a routine DWI stop. The names matter here: a farmhand with easy access to explosives, a serially arrested dealer named Dennis Eugene Cortis who joked about “a bomby night,” and witnesses who remember him bragging at house parties the cops already knew about. The evidence lines up enough to raise eyebrows—brand continuity, relationships, and loose talk—but not enough to become a clean courtroom story.

That’s where small-town dynamics cut in. FOIA requests yield lab notes but not a complete record. A grand jury is rumored yet untraceable. Prosecutors may have done the math—stack drug manufacturing and theft for decades inside, or risk an attempted murder case with thin forensics and 1970s procedures. And then there’s the twist of family: Cortis’s mother slipping him tools to escape the county jail, sending him on a run that added more crimes in Oklahoma before the time finally stuck.

Read more or get your SWAG here: Paul G Newton's Blog — Paul G. Newton

What emerges is a candid portrait of how communities navigate scandal when the truth threatens comfort. It’s Arkansas true crime with all the texture: meth networks, ATF trails, missing records, and the stubborn persistence it takes to keep asking hard questions long after the headlines vanish. If stories like this keep you curious—where evidence ends and influence begins—hit play, subscribe for more deep dives, and leave a review to tell us what we should dig into next.

“Thank you for listening to Things I Want to Know.
You want these stories, and we want to bring them to you — so hit the support link and keep this circus, and the mics, alive.
Then do us a favor and rate and subscribe; it helps the show find more people like you — the ones who like their mysteries real and their storytellers unfiltered.
And if you want to wear a little of this madness, grab some Andrea-approved gear at paulgnewton.com.
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A nameless girl lay in a Florida forest for decades, filed under Judy Doe and lost to a noisy era of serial predators and thin evidence. Forty years later, genetic genealogy restores her identity—Rebecca Sue Hill, a teenager from Arkansas—and forces us to confront how a single misidentification can bury a case and mute a family’s questions for a generation.

We walk through the case from both ends: an Arkansas disappearance in the early 80s and a body found near Lake Dorr in 1984. The environmental realities—Florida heat, rapid decomposition—shrunk the evidence window, while a misstep in Little Rock prematurely closed Rebecca’s missing status. That mistake separated two investigations that needed each other. Add in a crowded field of suspects and confessors—Christopher Wilder’s east coast rampage, Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole’s performative admissions—and it becomes clearer why the truth stalled. The most compelling person of interest, Michael Roaning, is documented in Lake County the day before the remains were found and later tied to an Arkansas murder. He traded information in other cases yet stayed quiet here, raising the hard question: is silence strategy or distance from the crime?

We also unpack the science that put a name back on the headstone. Investigators leveraged genealogical matches and family mitochondrial lines to verify identity, proving how modern DNA can correct the record even when it can’t deliver a conviction. From there, we examine offender profiles that fit the facts: a traveling, organized killer moving along interstate routes, focused on control over chaos. And we face the collateral damage of the earlier mistake—the Arkansas woman once buried under Rebecca’s name is nameless again and needs exhumation and testing to get her identity back.

If you care about true crime that values accuracy over easy answers, this story matters. Come for the forensic insights and case mapping; stay for the hard truths about how systems fail, and how science, persistence, and community can still make things right. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who loves investigative storytelling, and leave a review to help others find the show. Your feedback and tips can move cases like this forward.

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The story starts on a quiet May evening in 1991 and never really stops echoing. A nine-year-old sets out to sell costume jewelry in a tiny Arkansas town where people wave from porches and the fields hold the day’s last light. By week’s end, she’s found in a ditch four miles away, and everything residents believe about safety, trust, and “being home before dark” begins to crack.

We walk you through what happened and what didn’t: kids who saw a light-blue car and a man with long hair; a grocery stop that raised more questions than it answered; and a case that leaned on one hair in a suspect’s car—then fell apart when the wrong hairs were sent to the FBI. The ex-wife who first pointed to him never made it to the stand, and without cross-examination, her statement vanished. With no solid DNA and water erasing traces, the courtroom math never added up. Along the way, we unpack how small agencies in 1991 worked without homicide units, how early DNA limits changed everything, and why eyewitness memory—especially from children—can both illuminate and mislead.

This isn’t a tidy true-crime tale. It’s a study in the limits of process, the cost of a single forensic error, and the burden families carry when “closure” is an empty word. We talk candidly about motive theories—from robbery gone cruel to a witness silenced—and why each sits on uncertain ground. We also explore how modern tools, offender registries, and renewed records searches might open doors that stayed shut for decades. If you lived in or around Hickory Ridge back then, your detail—an unfamiliar car, a sudden move, a changed routine—could matter more than you think.

If this episode moves you, share it with someone who grew up in the Delta, hit follow so you don’t miss future deep dives, and leave a review to help others find the show. And if you know something—anything—about that night, call the Arkansas State Police. Let’s try again to turn an open question into an answer.

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A simple errand, a stamped receipt at 3:17 p.m., and a car left on US 71 with the keys still in the ignition. We walk through the last verified hours of 18-year-old Dana Stidham and sort what’s true from what’s been repeated for decades. No theatrics—just timestamps, locations, and choices that still demand answers: the unfixed flat, the Omni facing the wrong way, and a seven-week silence broken by a hunter who waited before calling his discovery in.

We unpack why those details matter in a rural 1989 Bella Vista—before cell phones, before robust DNA workflows, and before trails cut through deep Ozark terrain. We look at early suspects and fragile alibis, including a boyfriend whose grief blurred lines but not evidence, and we press on the questions that keep resurfacing: Was the tire sabotaged? Did someone move the Omni to misdirect the search? What did investigators document about the tire, trunk, and missing items that could signal a souvenir? Along the way, we separate rumor from record on “serial killer” talk in the Ozarks and focus on what the case can actually sustain.

We also examine behavior that sets off alarms—the delayed call from the man who found remains—and consider what modern profiling says about witness conduct versus narrative control, without leaping past the facts. Then we outline our next steps: FOIA requests for the officer sighting, tire photos, and evidence inventories; outreach to Benton County; and an open invitation for locals who remember that stretch of US 71 to come forward with specifics. If you drove those roads, worked those shifts, or owned a similar pickup, your memory might tighten the timeline.

If this case gripped you, share the episode with someone who knows northwest Arkansas, subscribe for updates as records come in, and leave a review with the one question you want answered most. Your perspective could nudge a detail out of the past and into the file that finally moves.

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Ever wondered what dark secrets lurk beneath the surface of America's quiet small towns? In this episode, Paul and Andrea pull back the curtain on two shocking criminal cases from Northwest Arkansas that time has nearly forgotten.

The conversation begins with a puzzling 1972 case where Lieutenant Carl Martins, a young Springdale police officer, survived when a bomb detonated under his car right at the police station. Despite involvement from the FBI, ATF, and even a grand jury investigation, the case went cold with surprising speed. Why would someone attempt a mob-style hit in a town of barely 30,000 people? And why did the story fade from newspapers after just six mentions? The hosts theorize about possible motives while planning to file Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover the truth behind this mysterious attempted murder.

Even more disturbing is the 1974 murder spree of Shirley Marie Curry, a mother who, enraged over losing custody of her children, embarked on a killing rampage across multiple towns. In a single evening, she murdered her two sons, her ex-husband, her daughter, and her ex-husband's half-sister before attempting to kill a sixth victim. When captured, her chilling question to officers—"I missed the sixth one, didn't I?"—revealed her calculated bloodlust. Despite the severity of her crimes, she was initially declared mentally ill and legally irresponsible before eventually spending the remainder of her life in prison.

These forgotten cases reveal how even seemingly quiet communities harbor dark histories that rival more notorious crime capitals. Join Paul and Andrea as they resurrect these cold cases and discuss what they tell us about America's hidden criminal past. Have stories like these been buried in your hometown too? Visit paulgnewton.com for more content as they continue their investigation into these Arkansas mysteries.

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Buried in declassified government archives lies a chilling reminder of how fragile democracy can be from within. Operation Northwoods represents one of the most disturbing chapters in American military planning – a moment when the nation's top generals unanimously approved a scheme to attack their own citizens as a pretext for war.

The story begins in 1962, with the United States still reeling from the Bay of Pigs disaster. As Castro consolidated power just 90 miles from Florida, Pentagon leaders grew desperate for justification to launch a full-scale invasion. Their solution? A series of false flag operations targeting Americans themselves. The document, signed by every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, methodically outlined proposals including blowing up US ships, staging terrorist attacks in Miami, orchestrating aircraft hijackings, and even potentially sacrificing Cuban refugees – all to be blamed on Castro's Cuba. The clinical language belies the human cost: sailors unwittingly serving as bait, pilots unaware they'd been penciled into death scripts, and Miami families reduced to chess pieces in a geopolitical game.

What saved countless American lives was President Kennedy's firm rejection. When presented with these proposals in March 1962, he drew a moral line that his generals had been willing to cross. The document remained classified for decades until its 1997 release stunned the nation. For veterans who had saluted these same commanders, the betrayal cut especially deep. Operation Northwoods serves as a stark reminder that democracy's greatest threats sometimes wear familiar uniforms, and that vigilance against such internal corruption remains our only safeguard. The plan lies entombed in archives, whispering how close America came to consuming itself – and how one president's moral clarity prevented catastrophe.

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