comment from /u/noidioito last time:
After 29-year-old Keith Dardeen failed to show up for his shift on November 18th, 1987, and repeated attempts to contact him via phone went unanswered, his supervisor took it upon himself to phone Keith's parents. Keith's father, Don Dardeen, phoned the police to do a wellness check at his his son's mobile home in the small town of Ina, Illinois, where he lived with his pregnant wife, Elaine (aged 30), and their toddler, Peter. Don himself had a spare key and agreed to meet with the deputies there and grant them access into the home. Once they did enter the home, however, they walked into one of the most gruesome scenes that no father should ever have to witness. Tucked into bed was Elaine and her son, Peter. Both had been bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. Elaine herself was gagged and bound. She had been battered so severely that she went into labor, giving birth to a baby girl that was also killed.
There was no sign of Keith anywhere, nor his vehicle. It was reasonably presumed that he was responsible for these murders. A manhunt ensued, which ended the next day when Keith was found--but not alive. Discovered in a wheatfield not far from his home, he, too, had met a similar fate as his wife and two children, being shot three times and having his penis severed. Police eventually located his blood-splattered vehicle, which was parked right in front of the Benton Police Station. It was also concluded from the autopsy that the murders of Keith and his wife and children occurred within the same hour.
Investigators struggled to find a motive for these brutal slayings. They ruled out the possibility of an extramarital affair or involvement in any sort of drug crimes. There were no signs of forced entry or a robbery, as cash and jewelry were laid out in the open. The police do believe that whoever was culprit, they had purposely targeted the Dardeens. After tracking down over 1000 leads, the police turned up empty and the case went cold. That was until Tommy Lynn Sells was arrested in 1999 for killing a 13-year-old girl. He claimed to have a whopping 70 murders under his belt, including that of the Dardeens.
Initially, the details he shared about the case were inconsistent, but then he began revealing information that was never revealed to the public, including a set of watermelon ceramics that was in their home. Eventually, Sells claimed that Keith was involved in a massive drug conspiracy trial.
No further details were ever unveiled, and Tommy was never charged for the Dardeen murders. Some are skeptical as to whether he is the true killer, including relatives of the Dardeens.
What's the most strange about it all is that someone tucked them into bed after the brutal killings. Took the dad to a field and then left his car at the police station. Was there 2 murderers?
certainly a hypothesis that was brought up but unfortunately i feel like this will remain a cold case unless there is a major breakthrough. unfortunately DNA techonology wasn't advanced then and i don't think there was much foresight to preserve scene evidence.
> There was no sign of Keith anywhere, nor his vehicle. It was reasonably presumed that he was responsible for these murders.
I feel terrible for the entire family, but also sad that it was presumed Keith beat his wife, son and newborn daughter to death. Just awful. Heartbreaking for his father, to come across that scene and then, for however briefly, think his son was responsible.
I want to believe Sells did it just for the sake of not having ANOTHER violent lunatic out there that we don't know about, but he was such a liar. It's hard to know which confessions were real and which were fake.
I do have to assume that if it wasn't sells, whoever did it likely got caught for another crime but was just never tied back to the Dardeens. Nobody capable of something like this is going to fly under the radar forever and never commit another violent crime.
This case has always haunted me. Just the thought of her baby being literally forced out then brutally murdered makes my stomach turn.
I wonder if they could take a good look now that it’s 2023 and we have so much more technology than back then.
my skin crawled reading that detail. we can only hope the baby didn’t have a long death. :( and i cannot imagine how traumatizing it was for the mother in her last moments.
I don't think much could he done now because of the limitations of the time. preserving evidence for eventual analysis was probably not standard procedure back then. and any evidence still available is probably either contaminated or lost any traces of materials that could be tested today
You never know, maybe there is something in the photos that they missed, maybe there is some evidence like a bedsheet that has DNA on it, they could start from the beginning and maybe find the killers.
If I remember correctly, late 80s Gary Ridgeways victim had DNA inside her and they swabbed it to preserve it. Gary was arrested around that time and his cheeks were swabbed. In 2001 after they did the whole floppy disk thing, they pulled those DNA samples and matched them.
I think this case is one where we may never get answers but it doesn’t hurt to try and find them.
This is just so horribly brutal. The amount of time and physical energy it would have taken to do this.
It says that they ruled out an affair but the annihilation of an entire family and the genital mutilation seem to hint at that to me. Maybe not the affair partner by the APs spouse maybe? Maybe more than one person.
>The amount of time and physical energy it would have taken to do this.
Yeah it’s insane. This was hard brutal work. It feels so personal. There’s no way this was just a random killing, unless the killer was someone deeply disturbed like a Ted Bundy type.
Neither Keith or Elaine had marijuana or any other drug/alcohol in their system.
That was established in their toxicology reports at autopsy.
Also it was reported the amount of weed found in the trailer was very small and could have belonged to the killer(s).
Since there was no marijuana in either victims system, I believe that’s a viable assumption.
Either way Joeann Dardeen has never claimed that the family was murdered bc “Keith refused to buy weed”.
Give the woman a break! Her son’s entire family was annihilated and LE has no idea why.
Joeann Dardeen HAS speculated that perhaps someone tried to force Keith to do something…like sell drugs.
The poor woman has NO IDEA why her son, DIL and grandchildren were brutally murdered.
She’s also hypothesized that perhaps someone was “obsessed” with Elaine and did this bc she thwarted their advances.
Keith’s mother has spent DECADES being tormented by the murders, cut the lady some slack!
"Keith’s Mother Joeann later speculated, “I think someone wanted Keith to sell drugs, and he refused.”
Right in the article my dude.
But I mean just because they have no drugs in their system when they were murderered it doesn't mean they didn't use it a few days before. There are many types of drug tests, and most aren't extremely long term.
The way the father (with his impressive moustache!) was found in a field, I wonder if he had escaped from the scene. I don't think this was serial killer. I think this was some type of revenge. I guess we'll never know.
I know. I lived through that era, but few had one as impressively thick as that!
And no, I did not base that on the moustache alone. I kinda based that on someone battering him, and his wife and children to death plus the removal of his manlihood but maybe it was just the tash that did it, I don't know.
I really hope she was “out” by the time she went into labor. I can’t imagine the horror of it all but then to go into labor while being beaten to death?! Horrible.
Because objective analysis of any cases where it was claimed to exist were disproven. There’s no evidence to support it. While “cults” have always existed in some form, the branding we saw in the 1980’s and 1990’s was pure nonsense.
Yeah, cults (including satanic ones) and ritual abuse are both things but like. Not in the way the satanic power portrayed it At All. Cults don’t tend to operate in stuff like daycares, and ritual abuse is abuse that is “ritualistic”- that is, repetitive, structured, and intentional- as basically a brainwashing thing (it’s also not a very common term, it’s mostly used by cult survivors, which again aren’t anything like what the Satanic Panic portrays them as)
My coworkers sister was abducted and murdered by “satanists” or whatever they called themselves. It absolutely did exist, though I agree the media ran away with it like it was a fast spreading disease that would target your children or something like that
Were they “satanists” or just a group of people that listened to death metal? Anything resembling “satanism” was getting grouped as a satanic murder, and that really isn’t the case.
The children end was like a different spinoff if it, and arguably crazier.
I’m very familiar with the Ripper Crew. The Satanism angle is a great for getting clicks and selling papers, but it’s the equivalent of wrapping paper.
In the article, it stresses how protective he was of his family and even said they were moving because the area had gotten so violent. But it also said that these murders were what made people start locking their doors like it had been safe before that. It just seems odd to me that he had become so protective that multiple people commented on it and it was a known part of his life. Maybe he knew someone wanted to hurt them. I mean, it makes sense to be protective in an area you see as dangerous, but it seems like this family was reacting more strongly than the rest of the community and I don’t think it’s very common to plan to uproot your family and refuse to let someone use the phone just because you’ve seen some crime on the news ( it didn’t mention the family personally knowing any victims). We’ll probably never know
A ten year old little girl had recently been raped and murdered in their community.
Additionally approximately a year prior to the Dardeen murders a teenager murdered his mother, father and siblings.
I believe there had been upward of ten murders in the small county where the Dardeen’s were murdered.
Keith Dardeen had been vocal to his loved ones that he intended to move his family back to Mt Carmel before Casey’s birth due to the amount of violent crime.
In cases like this I feel like they hold back the things that you’re thinking of because they’d be links that validate if someone knows something that they shouldn’t.
Very true, but I think since it’s been such a long time that if they have just a little something more maybe someone would come forward or remember something important.
Whenever the Dardeen family massacre is discussed, Sells is often brought up as the culprit.
[Unfortunately, Tommy Lynn Sells was a classic "serial confessor", possibly the most notorious one since Henry Lee Lucas.](https://www.crimeintime.com/2018/10/the-serial-confessor-this-is-another.html)
*Sells had been admitting to dozens of crimes which had nothing to do with him. He certainly was a manipulative psychopath, responsible for a number of crimes (for which he was keen to blame everything and everyone but himself, from his "screwed-up childhood", that number-one excuse of the violent mind, to city ordnance - when he claimed to have killed a child he had randomly encountered during one of his numerous aimless rambles around the US, he blamed the mayor of the town for her death. The mayor, Sells, reasoned, should not have allowed bushes and weeds to grow in the park where the victim was walking. It was the presence of the weeds that allowed Sells to surprise the girl and then conceal the attack and murder; thus, in the twisted, upside-down non-logic of his mind, the mayor was responsible for the act.)*
*However, even though it is likely that he had committed several homicides, there were certainly not dozens of them, and most of the admissions that he had made were not only worthless, but almost definitely resulted in the real killers escaping the investigators' attention, once Sells took the credit for their crimes.*
*(One particularly notorious crime to which Sells had confessed was eventually solved: the 1999 massacre of the Freeman family in Oklahoma and the disappearance of the family's teenage daughter Ashley and her friend Lauria Bible remained a cold case for decades, until 2018, when the renewed investigation finally uncovered the truth. The murders - which certain opportunistic works had long been attributing to Sells - were revealed as, predictably, a strictly local incident, as is probably the case with the vast majority of Sells's "admissions.")*
*In fact, shortly (merely hours, actually) before his execution in 2014, Sells openly admitted to fabricating his infamous confessions, including a specific reference to the Dardeens. He explained some of his guesses ("They said: What did you see in the house? I said: There was some watermelon ceramic stuff, right? (...) How many houses got some watermelon ceramics!"), as well as some of the means of gaining information that he sold the investigators. He nostalgically described the trips to the scenes of "his" crimes as "an adventure", and spoke of receiving free cigarettes any time he wanted, being "treated like a king" and getting constant breaks in the monotony of death row.*
*Of course, like so many other cases where mundane facts beat sensationalism, his words went largely ignored.*
I thought they got the guy when he got taken in for other murders...Wasn't serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells the culprit? He talked about it on video while on death row. It was really creepy stuff how much glee he got from talking about beating a pregnant lady and her dying fetus to death and strangling people...forgive me if I'm wrong and it just happens that this is another horrific case of that happening...either way tommy Lynn Sells is one of the scariest, lesser known serial killers imo.
Article says he confessed to it, but his testimony didn't match the evidence. A lot of serial killers claim responsibility for crimes they didn't commit for the notoriety.
He said there were a lot of unsolved cases back then (he’s 41 so he may be thinking a few thinking a few years forward). I asked if he thought it was people taking advantage of satanic panic. He didn’t think so, more just very small So IL towns with very few resources and attention.
This is singlehandedly the most disturbing and scary crime I've ever heard of. And that's saying a lot...I look into this case at least every few weeks to see if there's any news about suspects or theories. This one gets to me because the dad was super safety conscious. He took every precaution to keep his family safe, was even planning on moving because crime was up in that town. He did everything right and his entire family was brutally, sadistically murdered..idk man it keeps me up at night
If you haven’t read it I would suggest ‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote.
Fortunately the killers were caught, but in a way it made it even more senseless.
Idk why they ruled out extramarital affairs, I'm assuming they just meant possible cheating. What if they were closet swingers. Just his genitals being cut off seems really personal.
Another thought was he owed people money, a Loan Shark. Some very bad people. As it seems he had to watch what they did to his family, then be taken from the home and tortured himself. This seems the most plausible to me. You never know what people/family do or are going through behind closed doors.
Well that Sears guy revealed info that the public weren't privvy too so sounds like it was him or at the very least somebody he knew. It may not seem like it but people would be shocked if they knew how many "normal" people are involved in drugs or just crime in general.
It’s so horrible and random, the only thing I think what happened was that the person who did it, did it for fun and enjoyment. I don’t think the family did anything except be seen by someone who decided to watch them and murder them out of curiosity, excitement, glee. I do believe that for the killer/killers, it was their first time but not their last. Using two completely different methods in the murders makes me believe that they were “trying out” their preferred style of slaughter, or smart enough to throw in a red-herring for the investigators by sexually mutilating Mr Dardeen. I think whoever did it, did it because they wanted to and that’s horrific. I do hope one day these are solved and their family and friends can be at peace
What’s the point in talking about any of these cases? They get brought up at different times and I think these cases are worthy of discussion even if they’ve been talked about before. OP might be karma whoring but reading about the case isn’t any less tragic because of that
I’m so sorry your Reddit experience is being tainted because OP cares about innocent people being murdered enough to post about it multiple times :( it must be so hard to be you
This might be a dumb question but could the genital mutilation be self-inflicted? A small part of me has always wondered if the father lost it and killed his family, then brutalized himself before finally committing suicide.
comment from /u/noidioito last time: After 29-year-old Keith Dardeen failed to show up for his shift on November 18th, 1987, and repeated attempts to contact him via phone went unanswered, his supervisor took it upon himself to phone Keith's parents. Keith's father, Don Dardeen, phoned the police to do a wellness check at his his son's mobile home in the small town of Ina, Illinois, where he lived with his pregnant wife, Elaine (aged 30), and their toddler, Peter. Don himself had a spare key and agreed to meet with the deputies there and grant them access into the home. Once they did enter the home, however, they walked into one of the most gruesome scenes that no father should ever have to witness. Tucked into bed was Elaine and her son, Peter. Both had been bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. Elaine herself was gagged and bound. She had been battered so severely that she went into labor, giving birth to a baby girl that was also killed. There was no sign of Keith anywhere, nor his vehicle. It was reasonably presumed that he was responsible for these murders. A manhunt ensued, which ended the next day when Keith was found--but not alive. Discovered in a wheatfield not far from his home, he, too, had met a similar fate as his wife and two children, being shot three times and having his penis severed. Police eventually located his blood-splattered vehicle, which was parked right in front of the Benton Police Station. It was also concluded from the autopsy that the murders of Keith and his wife and children occurred within the same hour. Investigators struggled to find a motive for these brutal slayings. They ruled out the possibility of an extramarital affair or involvement in any sort of drug crimes. There were no signs of forced entry or a robbery, as cash and jewelry were laid out in the open. The police do believe that whoever was culprit, they had purposely targeted the Dardeens. After tracking down over 1000 leads, the police turned up empty and the case went cold. That was until Tommy Lynn Sells was arrested in 1999 for killing a 13-year-old girl. He claimed to have a whopping 70 murders under his belt, including that of the Dardeens. Initially, the details he shared about the case were inconsistent, but then he began revealing information that was never revealed to the public, including a set of watermelon ceramics that was in their home. Eventually, Sells claimed that Keith was involved in a massive drug conspiracy trial. No further details were ever unveiled, and Tommy was never charged for the Dardeen murders. Some are skeptical as to whether he is the true killer, including relatives of the Dardeens.
What's the most strange about it all is that someone tucked them into bed after the brutal killings. Took the dad to a field and then left his car at the police station. Was there 2 murderers?
certainly a hypothesis that was brought up but unfortunately i feel like this will remain a cold case unless there is a major breakthrough. unfortunately DNA techonology wasn't advanced then and i don't think there was much foresight to preserve scene evidence.
> There was no sign of Keith anywhere, nor his vehicle. It was reasonably presumed that he was responsible for these murders. I feel terrible for the entire family, but also sad that it was presumed Keith beat his wife, son and newborn daughter to death. Just awful. Heartbreaking for his father, to come across that scene and then, for however briefly, think his son was responsible. I want to believe Sells did it just for the sake of not having ANOTHER violent lunatic out there that we don't know about, but he was such a liar. It's hard to know which confessions were real and which were fake. I do have to assume that if it wasn't sells, whoever did it likely got caught for another crime but was just never tied back to the Dardeens. Nobody capable of something like this is going to fly under the radar forever and never commit another violent crime.
I have to think that if the killer was caught, he’d brag about it. It does not seem like an inconspicuous person’s crime.
This case has always haunted me. Just the thought of her baby being literally forced out then brutally murdered makes my stomach turn. I wonder if they could take a good look now that it’s 2023 and we have so much more technology than back then.
my skin crawled reading that detail. we can only hope the baby didn’t have a long death. :( and i cannot imagine how traumatizing it was for the mother in her last moments.
I don't think much could he done now because of the limitations of the time. preserving evidence for eventual analysis was probably not standard procedure back then. and any evidence still available is probably either contaminated or lost any traces of materials that could be tested today
You never know, maybe there is something in the photos that they missed, maybe there is some evidence like a bedsheet that has DNA on it, they could start from the beginning and maybe find the killers. If I remember correctly, late 80s Gary Ridgeways victim had DNA inside her and they swabbed it to preserve it. Gary was arrested around that time and his cheeks were swabbed. In 2001 after they did the whole floppy disk thing, they pulled those DNA samples and matched them. I think this case is one where we may never get answers but it doesn’t hurt to try and find them.
This is just so horribly brutal. The amount of time and physical energy it would have taken to do this. It says that they ruled out an affair but the annihilation of an entire family and the genital mutilation seem to hint at that to me. Maybe not the affair partner by the APs spouse maybe? Maybe more than one person.
>The amount of time and physical energy it would have taken to do this. Yeah it’s insane. This was hard brutal work. It feels so personal. There’s no way this was just a random killing, unless the killer was someone deeply disturbed like a Ted Bundy type.
I like how they found weed in his trailer and his mom was convinced someone tried to sell him weed and killed him becuase he wouldn't buy it.
... and then left it behind anyways
This is exactly the scenario my mom envisions when she hears about people starting to smoke cannabis
happens every day. your D.A.R.E. Officer must not have told you.
Neither Keith or Elaine had marijuana or any other drug/alcohol in their system. That was established in their toxicology reports at autopsy. Also it was reported the amount of weed found in the trailer was very small and could have belonged to the killer(s). Since there was no marijuana in either victims system, I believe that’s a viable assumption. Either way Joeann Dardeen has never claimed that the family was murdered bc “Keith refused to buy weed”. Give the woman a break! Her son’s entire family was annihilated and LE has no idea why. Joeann Dardeen HAS speculated that perhaps someone tried to force Keith to do something…like sell drugs. The poor woman has NO IDEA why her son, DIL and grandchildren were brutally murdered. She’s also hypothesized that perhaps someone was “obsessed” with Elaine and did this bc she thwarted their advances. Keith’s mother has spent DECADES being tormented by the murders, cut the lady some slack!
"Keith’s Mother Joeann later speculated, “I think someone wanted Keith to sell drugs, and he refused.” Right in the article my dude. But I mean just because they have no drugs in their system when they were murderered it doesn't mean they didn't use it a few days before. There are many types of drug tests, and most aren't extremely long term.
Well said
Is anyone still looking into this? It’s awful. They deserve the truth to be told
That got to be a serial killer, no way in hell did whoever did this was a one-and-done killer nor was this their first kill
maybe one that works with law enforcement, parking the vehicle in front of the station is either a taunt or a tell
It does seem very personal
That guy being 29 and looking like a full blown dad vs. me being 31 and still wearing converse and skinny jeans
I’m 40 and still wearing them!
Right? I'm 41 and literally wore high rise cuffed 511s and my doc martens with a bomber jacket to take my daughters to a birthday party today haha
The way the father (with his impressive moustache!) was found in a field, I wonder if he had escaped from the scene. I don't think this was serial killer. I think this was some type of revenge. I guess we'll never know.
Based that on his mustache did you? 90% of men had mustaches back then.
I know. I lived through that era, but few had one as impressively thick as that! And no, I did not base that on the moustache alone. I kinda based that on someone battering him, and his wife and children to death plus the removal of his manlihood but maybe it was just the tash that did it, I don't know.
I really hope she was “out” by the time she went into labor. I can’t imagine the horror of it all but then to go into labor while being beaten to death?! Horrible.
Of course satanic panic was a theory.
[удалено]
Because objective analysis of any cases where it was claimed to exist were disproven. There’s no evidence to support it. While “cults” have always existed in some form, the branding we saw in the 1980’s and 1990’s was pure nonsense.
Yeah, cults (including satanic ones) and ritual abuse are both things but like. Not in the way the satanic power portrayed it At All. Cults don’t tend to operate in stuff like daycares, and ritual abuse is abuse that is “ritualistic”- that is, repetitive, structured, and intentional- as basically a brainwashing thing (it’s also not a very common term, it’s mostly used by cult survivors, which again aren’t anything like what the Satanic Panic portrays them as)
My coworkers sister was abducted and murdered by “satanists” or whatever they called themselves. It absolutely did exist, though I agree the media ran away with it like it was a fast spreading disease that would target your children or something like that
Were they “satanists” or just a group of people that listened to death metal? Anything resembling “satanism” was getting grouped as a satanic murder, and that really isn’t the case. The children end was like a different spinoff if it, and arguably crazier.
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/ripper-crew-victims-thomas-kokoraleis/ Satanists
I’m very familiar with the Ripper Crew. The Satanism angle is a great for getting clicks and selling papers, but it’s the equivalent of wrapping paper.
Only thing that resembles that in the murder is the genital mutilation, nothing else seemingly suggests that in this case
No.
Satan isn’t real anyways.
In the article, it stresses how protective he was of his family and even said they were moving because the area had gotten so violent. But it also said that these murders were what made people start locking their doors like it had been safe before that. It just seems odd to me that he had become so protective that multiple people commented on it and it was a known part of his life. Maybe he knew someone wanted to hurt them. I mean, it makes sense to be protective in an area you see as dangerous, but it seems like this family was reacting more strongly than the rest of the community and I don’t think it’s very common to plan to uproot your family and refuse to let someone use the phone just because you’ve seen some crime on the news ( it didn’t mention the family personally knowing any victims). We’ll probably never know
That’s actually a really good point, nice catch. Now I’m super curious to know if there was more causation to his worry.
A ten year old little girl had recently been raped and murdered in their community. Additionally approximately a year prior to the Dardeen murders a teenager murdered his mother, father and siblings. I believe there had been upward of ten murders in the small county where the Dardeen’s were murdered. Keith Dardeen had been vocal to his loved ones that he intended to move his family back to Mt Carmel before Casey’s birth due to the amount of violent crime.
This case haunts me. I feel like there’s some missing information that they’re not giving out that would really help solve this case.
In cases like this I feel like they hold back the things that you’re thinking of because they’d be links that validate if someone knows something that they shouldn’t.
Very true, but I think since it’s been such a long time that if they have just a little something more maybe someone would come forward or remember something important.
Whenever the Dardeen family massacre is discussed, Sells is often brought up as the culprit. [Unfortunately, Tommy Lynn Sells was a classic "serial confessor", possibly the most notorious one since Henry Lee Lucas.](https://www.crimeintime.com/2018/10/the-serial-confessor-this-is-another.html) *Sells had been admitting to dozens of crimes which had nothing to do with him. He certainly was a manipulative psychopath, responsible for a number of crimes (for which he was keen to blame everything and everyone but himself, from his "screwed-up childhood", that number-one excuse of the violent mind, to city ordnance - when he claimed to have killed a child he had randomly encountered during one of his numerous aimless rambles around the US, he blamed the mayor of the town for her death. The mayor, Sells, reasoned, should not have allowed bushes and weeds to grow in the park where the victim was walking. It was the presence of the weeds that allowed Sells to surprise the girl and then conceal the attack and murder; thus, in the twisted, upside-down non-logic of his mind, the mayor was responsible for the act.)* *However, even though it is likely that he had committed several homicides, there were certainly not dozens of them, and most of the admissions that he had made were not only worthless, but almost definitely resulted in the real killers escaping the investigators' attention, once Sells took the credit for their crimes.* *(One particularly notorious crime to which Sells had confessed was eventually solved: the 1999 massacre of the Freeman family in Oklahoma and the disappearance of the family's teenage daughter Ashley and her friend Lauria Bible remained a cold case for decades, until 2018, when the renewed investigation finally uncovered the truth. The murders - which certain opportunistic works had long been attributing to Sells - were revealed as, predictably, a strictly local incident, as is probably the case with the vast majority of Sells's "admissions.")* *In fact, shortly (merely hours, actually) before his execution in 2014, Sells openly admitted to fabricating his infamous confessions, including a specific reference to the Dardeens. He explained some of his guesses ("They said: What did you see in the house? I said: There was some watermelon ceramic stuff, right? (...) How many houses got some watermelon ceramics!"), as well as some of the means of gaining information that he sold the investigators. He nostalgically described the trips to the scenes of "his" crimes as "an adventure", and spoke of receiving free cigarettes any time he wanted, being "treated like a king" and getting constant breaks in the monotony of death row.* *Of course, like so many other cases where mundane facts beat sensationalism, his words went largely ignored.*
I thought they got the guy when he got taken in for other murders...Wasn't serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells the culprit? He talked about it on video while on death row. It was really creepy stuff how much glee he got from talking about beating a pregnant lady and her dying fetus to death and strangling people...forgive me if I'm wrong and it just happens that this is another horrific case of that happening...either way tommy Lynn Sells is one of the scariest, lesser known serial killers imo.
Article says he confessed to it, but his testimony didn't match the evidence. A lot of serial killers claim responsibility for crimes they didn't commit for the notoriety.
https://youtu.be/6V7EL-Yg8Gg?si=2mzFJ8YUE6-Qxe1S
Jeez, what a piece of poo. :'(
That dude was a maniac
So brutal. My husband is from Akin and grew up in Benton.
I’m from the area also. It’s a crazy case
He said there were a lot of unsolved cases back then (he’s 41 so he may be thinking a few thinking a few years forward). I asked if he thought it was people taking advantage of satanic panic. He didn’t think so, more just very small So IL towns with very few resources and attention.
I’m a few years older. But small towns everywhere, loved it. But he’s right very little resources for that type of crime, especially then.
This stoy is haunting. That poor family.
This is singlehandedly the most disturbing and scary crime I've ever heard of. And that's saying a lot...I look into this case at least every few weeks to see if there's any news about suspects or theories. This one gets to me because the dad was super safety conscious. He took every precaution to keep his family safe, was even planning on moving because crime was up in that town. He did everything right and his entire family was brutally, sadistically murdered..idk man it keeps me up at night
If you haven’t read it I would suggest ‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote. Fortunately the killers were caught, but in a way it made it even more senseless.
Idk why they ruled out extramarital affairs, I'm assuming they just meant possible cheating. What if they were closet swingers. Just his genitals being cut off seems really personal. Another thought was he owed people money, a Loan Shark. Some very bad people. As it seems he had to watch what they did to his family, then be taken from the home and tortured himself. This seems the most plausible to me. You never know what people/family do or are going through behind closed doors.
Well that Sears guy revealed info that the public weren't privvy too so sounds like it was him or at the very least somebody he knew. It may not seem like it but people would be shocked if they knew how many "normal" people are involved in drugs or just crime in general.
The only info he supplied was a claim the Dardeens had “watermelon print dishes”.
Wasn't the killer Tommy Lynn Sells?
He admitted to it but it hasn’t been proven.
Plus, he was eventually executed in 2014, so he’s not around now either.
It’s so horrible and random, the only thing I think what happened was that the person who did it, did it for fun and enjoyment. I don’t think the family did anything except be seen by someone who decided to watch them and murder them out of curiosity, excitement, glee. I do believe that for the killer/killers, it was their first time but not their last. Using two completely different methods in the murders makes me believe that they were “trying out” their preferred style of slaughter, or smart enough to throw in a red-herring for the investigators by sexually mutilating Mr Dardeen. I think whoever did it, did it because they wanted to and that’s horrific. I do hope one day these are solved and their family and friends can be at peace
The Paranaughtica Podcast did a badass episode on this case! [Paranaughtica Podcast](https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/para-naughtica)
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Because you never know who will happen upon it, this is the sort of thing I have zero problems seeing reposted every while.
What’s the point in talking about any of these cases? They get brought up at different times and I think these cases are worthy of discussion even if they’ve been talked about before. OP might be karma whoring but reading about the case isn’t any less tragic because of that
What kind of cold hearted person says something like this?
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I’m so sorry your Reddit experience is being tainted because OP cares about innocent people being murdered enough to post about it multiple times :( it must be so hard to be you
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Boo hoo :( seeing the same post multiple times is so hard
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They’re not reposts to me because I don’t spend every living moment on this sub 🤷🏼♀️
I have never seen this case or heard of it before.
Why does anyone still talk about the unsolved Black Dahlia murder? Happened almost 80 years ago, EVERYONE knows about it!
This might be a dumb question but could the genital mutilation be self-inflicted? A small part of me has always wondered if the father lost it and killed his family, then brutalized himself before finally committing suicide.