In late June 1987, the town of Bemidji, Minnesota, was gearing up for Independence Day weekend. Celebrations quickly turned to panic when Anita Carlson, a college graduate with hopes of working in TV production, went missing from her nighttime job at Pete’s Place, a convenience store at the intersection of Highways 2 and 89. By the end of the weekend, Anita had been found dead. Nearly 40 years later, investigators are still trying to figure out what happened that night.

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.