Larry Stidham was feeling a bit under the weather. While his wife Georgia was at work, he spent the morning and early afternoon of July 25, 1989, resting at his Hiwasse, Arkansas, home, one-hundred ten miles northeast of Tulsa, Oklahoma. When his eighteen-year-old daughter Dana arrived to do her laundry, Larry asked her to go to the store to get him some Alka-Seltzer. Dana was glad to help her ailing dad.

The following day, Larry felt much worse. He had not received his medicine, but a new ailment was weighing far more heavily on him. He was sick with worry as Dana had failed to return from the day before. Larry eventually recovered from his physical ailment, but his worry worsened with each passing day as Dana remained missing. The worry was contagious; it had spread to family and friends.

On September 16, nearly two months after she left on the errand, the worry turned to grief, as most of Dana’s remains were found in a wooded area. She had most likely been stabbed to death.

Thirty-five years later, no one has been charged with the murder of Dana Stidham.

Dana Stidham

Dana had recently graduated from Gravette High School in northwest Arkansas, only a few miles from the Missouri border. She lived in an apartment with her older brother, Larry, and another roommate in Centerton, seven miles north of her parents’ home in Hiwasse (one source, however, says she had several female roommates.)  Dana worked on weekends at the Phillip’s Food Store in Bella Vista, ten miles north of Centerton.

At approximately 3:00 p.m., Dana left home driving her gray 1984 Dodge Omni. After purchasing gas at a local station, she drove to get her father’s medicine at the Phillips Foods store in Bella Vista, four miles from her parents’ home. She had worked there throughout high school and chatted with several store employees and customers for a few minutes. In addition to the Alka-Seltzer, the clerk recalled her purchasing dishwashing soap and sugar. Nothing appeared amiss.

Dana Arrives At The Store . . .

When the door swung open at the Stidhman home shortly after 4:00, Larry was expecting Dana, but it was, instead, Georgia arriving home from work. It was probably the only time in his life Larry was not elated to see his wife, as he was still not feeling well. His ailment, however, was soon eclipsed by concern for his daughter.

When Dana had still not returned by evening, Georgia said she would go look for her. Larry, despite being ill, insisted on going too, thinking Dana may have encountered car trouble.

After searching throughout the late afternoon and evening, the Stidhams found no trace of their daughter or her car. Calls to Dana’s friends yielded no clues as well. They  reported her missing at 9:15 p.m.

. . . But She Does Not Make It Home

As policeman Karen Myers was making her rounds at 6:30 a.m. the following day, July 26, she found Dana’s car in the southbound lane of United States Highway 71 just north of the Bella Vista Town Centre. The keys were still in the ignition and the car’s left-rear tire was flat. The driver’s side window was halfway-down and the driver’s seat was pushed far back, indicating someone much taller than the five-foot-two-inch Dana had last driven the car. Some of her laundry was discovered 1,700 feet from her car.

Dana’s purse and its contents were missing. A receipt from Phillips Foods in the back of the car, time-stamped 3:17 p.m., was consistent with the time store employees remembered seeing her.

Larry and Georgia had searched that section of Highway 71 the previous evening but found no sign of Dana’s car. In addition, Arkansas State Troopers were running radar in the area until midnight and they, too, did not come across the car, meaning the vehicle had been abandoned along the highway sometime in the early morning hours of July 26. Police and Dana’s parents were puzzled that the car was found facing south because both her and her parents’ homes were in the opposite direction.

Dana’s Car Is Found

Earlier that morning, several people, including a Bella Vista police officer on her way to work, had seen a pickup parked behind Dana’s car, and a black man kneeling with tools by the vehicle’s rear tires. At the time, the officer did not know the vehicle was Dana’s. When she returned to the area, the pickup, which she believed was a Chevrolet Ranchero, was gone.

The officer and the majority of people who had noticed the truck believe it was a medium green top with a dark wood grain incisor in the middle; the lower portion is believed to be white. Efforts to locate the man and vehicle failed.

Who Was The Man Seen By Dana’s Car?

On August 5, one-and-a-half weeks after Dana’s abandoned car was located, a dog returned to his owner’s Bella Vista home carrying a treasure in his mouth. It was not a bone or an animal, but a woman’s purse. Inside, multiple items of identification bore the name of Dana Stidham.

Investigators searched the wooded area the dog frequented, just over a mile north of where Dana’s car had been found. Strewn into the weeds alongside the road they found her driver’s license, checkbook, and several photos. Authorities believe the items had been thrown from a moving car.

Fearing the worst, volunteers joined police in combing the lakes and woods surrounding Bella Vista.

A Search Party Is Organized

On September 16, seven weeks after she was last seen, a hunter’s discovery brought the search for Dana Stidham to a devastating end. Most of her skeletal remains were found scattered along a creek bed close to the Missouri border in far eastern Bella Vista, on the opposite side of town from where her clothes were found. Her skull was intact, as was most of her jaw. Several pieces of her jewelry and the clothes she was wearing when last seen were found.

The t-shirt Dana wore was plastered with several pieces of duct tape.  Also found were several feet of bailing twine tied in knots investigators have called “distinct.”

The Bulk Of Dana’s Remains Are Found

Evidence of stab wounds were found on Dana’s left shoulder blade and neck. Her death was ruled a homicide, but the manner of death could not be definitively determined because her sternum was never found, probably having been devoured by animals. She had also likely been sexually assaulted, but her body was too decomposed to say for certain.

The secluded wooded area where the remains were found led investigators to believe Dana Stidham was likely killed by someone local who was familiar with the area.

Though it had taken nearly two months to find Dana Stidham’s remains, it took authorities less than two minutes to develop a suspect in her murder.

Police were initially confused by why Dana had driven four miles to Bella Vista to get her father’s medicine when she could have purchased it at the Hiwasse Dairy Freeze convenience store only a few blocks from her parents’ home. It was soon clear why she bypassed the quicker option.

Dana Was Likely Murdered

The Hiwasse store was owned by the parents of Michael McMillan who was often at the store. He and Dana had gone to high school together and McMillan had asked her out multiple times. Dana was not interested in such a relationship and rejected him each time. She told friends McMillan continued pestering her to the point where she was uncomfortable in his presence.

Even though it meant driving a few miles, Dana was more at ease picking up the Alka-Seltzer at the Bella Vista store.

Dana Had An Unwanted Admirer

In December 1989, three months after Dana was buried, McMillan was arrested for stealing the temporary headstone on her grave. He admitted doing so, was fined, and said he committed the act because he wanted the marker as a memory of Dana.

Dana’s Headstone Is Stolen

Seven years later, investigators located the truck McMillan had been driving on the evening Dana disappeared. Its new owner allowed them to search the vehicle, and, despite the passage of several years, hair samples were found which closely matched Dana’s. They were, however, not enough to make a definitive match.

McMillan agreed to an interview with police and submitted to a polygraph test. He failed the test and made a seemingly cryptic statement, saying “Sometimes I think I did kill Dana, but I know I didn’t.”

The court ordered McMillan to submit his hair samples to be tested against those found on Dana’s clothing. His samples bore similarities to those found on the clothing, but, again, could not be deemed a legally sufficient match.

The Benton County Prosecutor did not believe the evidence was strong enough to charge Michael McMillan with Dana Stidham’s murder.

Michael McMillan

Another person of interest in Dana’s murder is Orville Goodwin. In 2013, he was convicted of attempted murder after shooting Annette Rapalee of Bella Vista in the face. He was sentenced to twelve years in prison with an additional ten years suspended. At the time of the incident, the sixty-two-year-old Goodwin lived in Pineville, Missouri, fifteen miles northwest of Bella Vista.

Police have not confirmed if Goodwin knew Dana, only saying advancements in technology have led them to investigate him for possible involvement in her murder.

Orville Goodwin

On May 7, 1990, the remains of an unidentified woman were found near Maysville, Arkansas, also in Benton County, approximately twenty miles west of where Dana’s remains were found six months earlier.

In September 2022, DNA identified the woman as twenty-eight-year-old Donna Nelton, an Arkansas native who was living in California when she disappeared. She and her boyfriend, George Bruton, made frequent trips to Arkansas and they had been hitchhiking in the area.

Donna Nelton

A drug dealer with an extensive criminal past, including convictions for auto theft, bank robbery, and burglary, Bruton was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List in September 1979, after shooting two police officers in Utah. He was captured three months later following a shootout with law enforcement in Fort Smith, Arkansas, one-hundred-ten miles south of Maysville.

Bruton was sentenced to prison but he was paroled in 1988 and soon began a relationship with Donna Nelton, whom he is believed to have murdered in 1990. He was soon convicted of further drug-related crimes and was implicated in several murders in the Kansas City area. He was returned to prison where he died in 2008.

I could not find any source stating if George Bruton is declared a suspect in the murder of Dana Stidham or if he has been ruled out.

George Bruton

Thirty-five years after vanishing during a grocery-store errand, no one has been charged with the murder of Dana Stidham.

Still Seeking Answers

Twenty-one-year-old Wayne Grantham, the hunter who found Dana Stidham’s remains, waited a day before reporting the discovery. In newspapers articles published shortly after the finding, he denies Benton County Sheriff’s Office reports that he did not initially report the discovery because he did not want to disrupt the area for hunting. He said he waited to report what he found because he knew of Civil War relics in the area and initially believed the remains may have been from the era.

A Minor Controversy

SOURCES:

• Arkansas ABC Station KHBS/KHOG TV
• Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
• Bella Vista (Arkansas) Weekly Vista
• Dateline NBC
• Enter the Razorback