Nancy Daddysman was feeling distraught. The forty-two-year-old divorced nursing home worker had recently lost custody of her five children. The cure for her blues, she believed, was a jaunt from her home in the Bluegrass State to visit her boyfriend in Indianapolis, Indiana. She had a problem, however; her car had recently broken down and was not fit for the two-hundred-thirty-mile trek from Bowling Green, Kentucky, to the Hoosier capital. One way or another, though, she was determined to get there.
Nancy had dinner with friends at a Bowling Green Waffle House on September 4, 1998. She asked several of them if they could take her to Indianapolis, but all declined. She then called two more friends asking the same favor, but they also could not help her. After leaving the restaurant, however, she called her boyfriend, Jack Woodbine, saying she had found a ride; more accurately, she was hitchin’ a ride.
Nancy phoned Jack again at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of September 5. She said she was at a pay phone forty minutes from Indianapolis. However, she never arrived at Jack’s home and was not heard from again.
Nancy Daddysman
On September 21, 2000, just over two years later, spelunkers found skeletal remains beneath a bedspread in a small cave near Park City, Kentucky, twenty-five miles northeast of Bowling Green.
An autopsy showed the remains were those of a woman who had been stabbed to death. The victim’s clothes matched those Nancy Daddsyman was wearing when she disappeared and dental records confirmed they were her remains.
The investigation into Nancy’s murder went cold for nine years.
Stabbed to Death
In 2009, over a decade later, thirty-five-year-old David Bell confessed to the murders of several women, including Nancy Daddysman. After picking her up as she was hitchhiking, Bell, while high on methamphetamine, says he initially struck her with a pipe. After Nancy fought back, he stabbed her to death and dumped her body in the cave. A defensive wound on Nancy’s arm matched Bell’s story.
Bell is currently serving a sixty-five-year sentence in Indiana for the 2005 murder of twenty-six-year-old Claire Ellis in Anderson, Indiana, forty miles northeast of Indianapolis. He was connected to the crime after using her cell phone to call his nephew. The killer’s former wife led police to Claire’s body, buried on property they owned while married.
The manner in which Claire Ellis was killed is similar to how Nancy Daddysman met her grizzly end. As he confessed to doing with Nancy, Bell says he picked up Claire as she was hitchhiking and, soon thereafter, hit her on the head with a wrench, continually beating her until she was dead. He then buried her in a shallow grave. I could not find a picture of her.
Bell also confessed to killing an Arkansas woman and led police to a truck containing her underwear. I could not find any source listing her name.
Authorities believe Bell is a serial killer who may have killed up to seventeen women. He claims his first victim was his mother, who was found dead in her bathtub in 1991. Her official cause of death was attributed to a brain aneurysm. Bell claims, however, he tried to electrocute her by throwing a hair dryer into the tub as she was bathing and that her death resulted from her slipping and hitting her head while frantically trying to get out of the bathtub.
Bell claims to be possessed by the devil and says Satan told him to commit the murders. He will not be eligible for parole until 2037.
David Bell
Although he has not been tried for the murder of Nancy Daddysman, investigators believe she is one of David Bell’s victims.
Nancy’s last phone call remains a mystery. She told her boyfriend she was at a payphone only forty miles from Indianapolis, but she was found, and most likely, killed near Park City, Kentucky, approximately two-hundred miles from Indianapolis.
Likely Murdered By Bell
ttps://www.findagrave.com/memorial/101215761/nancy-marie-daddysman
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/104944725/claire-marie-ellis
SOURCES:
- Bowling Green Daily News
- FOX News
- Glasgow Daily Times
- The Herald Bulletin (Indianapolis)
- Unsolved Mysteries
Another great write up, Ian. The website looks great too. Just going to take some adjusting to me. I have been spoiled by you posting them on Facebook.
Where in Iowa did you grow up?