INFAMOUS: The Westside Park Murders

0:00Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. Today, I'm as baffled as I am consumed by this case. It's one where two teens, seemingly excelling in every way, go out for a night of fun and then are brutally shot dead in what could almost seem a targeted ambush. And I'm obsessed with this case not only because it took place right here in Indiana, but because some believe answers in this unsolved double murder may have been right under police's noses throughout their nearly 40-year quest for justice. This is the story of the Westside Park murders.

1:11It's around midnight on September 28th, 1985, when Officer Terry Winters of the Muncie Police Department is on patrol in Westside Park, which literally, as its name suggests, is on the west side of the town, and it runs along the White River. It's a Saturday night, just before midnight, and according to a book by Keith Roysden and Douglas Walker, a source we'll rely on very heavily here for this episode, Terry also has his canine partner Max with him. Now, at some point, this real-life Turner and Hooch hop in their squad car to leave, and as they pull out, the headlights catch on some tire tracks that lead to a Volkswagen hatchback idling in a little gravel area of the park.

1:54Now, one of Terry's responsibilities is to scope out any cars left in the park past closing, which was about an hour earlier. So this is literally the gig. And Terry gets out to investigate. There doesn't appear to be any movement coming from inside the car. But as he approaches and puts his flashlight through the open driver's side window, he gets the shock of his life. There are two teenagers, a boy and a girl, shot dead in the front seats. In the book, The West Side Park Murders, Muncie's Most Notorious Cold Case, it says that both the front seats were reclined with, like, sleeping bags draped over them.

2:32and the passenger side window was shattered. The guy who's in the driver's seat has been shot in the torso and the girl who's in the passenger seat was shot in the head. It's not long before the entire place is crawling with police and investigators take note of the fact that there are no signs of a struggle and no signs that point to this being motivated by a robbery. Nothing appears to have been taken from the car as far as they can tell. I mean, like there's even literally a portable stereo still in the back. and they see an open pocket knife just sitting on the dashboard. But the murder weapon, the gun, that's nowhere to be found.

3:10They just find a small empty gun holster under the young man's body. Like he was sitting on it? Well, some accounts say sitting on it. Others just say under the body. Some say it was found in the car more broadly. I think the important thing is that it seems unlikely that it would belong to one of the kids, which could mean that the killer left this thing behind. And it seems they may have left behind something else too. Prints on or in the car. Now, some of those, obviously, though, might belong to their victims, who they learn are 16-year-old Ethan Dixon and 15-year-old Kimberly Dowell. Now, they were able to ID them so quickly because while they were still on the scene processing, this guy named Don showed up.

3:58And Don tells police that he'd been out driving, looking for his stepdaughter, Kimberly, who just never came home that night. I guess she had gone out with a guy that she'd just started dating, Ethan. He picked her up between 9 and 9.30. And the plan was for them to go get some pizza, take it over to Westside Park, eat, hang out. But they just never came back. And while they were concerned when the teenagers didn't return home, I mean, they hadn't called police or anything yet. Which, like, I understand. like teenagers missing curfew or whatever is like kind of par for the course. But it becomes clear that this isn't par for the course that night when police let Don go with them to the car.

4:37And according to the Star Press, it's him who confirms the thing that he was most terrified of. It is Kimberly and Ethan in the car. The events of the night don't just shock Don and Nancy, who is Kimberly's mom. News of the shooting is spreading like wildfire. And while publicly the victims aren't being named, it didn't take long for local parents and teenagers to put two and two together. Both teenagers were students at Northside High School, and by all accounts, like, really standout kids. According to the Star Press, Ethan was on the debate team, he was the junior class president, Kimberly was a cheerleader, recently named as part of the homecoming queen court, and a story in The Sun at the time quotes their principal, describing them as very, very fine people.

5:25Basically saying that, like, they never cause any problems. They were never difficult. So for them to end up like this, it's hard for anyone to fathom. But that didn't mean that they were teenagers, like, who weren't dealing with teenager problems. Because police discover that Ethan had been the victim of bullying. Now, I don't know the full extent of it. It doesn't seem like this is something police ever really fully explore or find the need to explore. But Ethan's parents do say that at one point they had taken a knife away from him that he was keeping on him because of bullying. So when I think about that, I mean, that could be one of the reasons there was that pocket knife in the car.

6:04Yeah, but then why would it be on the dash and not in Ethan's hand? Like thinking he was maybe trying to protect himself or something. If that's what it was, and again, like I'm making all the assumptions. But if that's what it was, part of me wonders if he had the knife on him for like all the reasons we just talked about. But then maybe him and Kimberly were like, you know, doing things teenagers do sometimes when they're in the park. And like maybe he pulled that out of his pocket or something, like put it on the dash to be more comfortable. So I don't know. Like this is a weird fact that like I can't quite like put it in a box, but it's worth people knowing.

6:38Like it's something you'll read if you look into this story. Now, there's nothing in the source material about police at the time finding anything in the way of evidence, like blood or prints on the knife or even the holster for that matter. And going back to the knife, though, like it is important to say that I don't think like that was ever actually used. So like nothing like blood or whatever on that. But speaking of the holster, police never find any evidence that Ethan owned a gun. So it's definitely seeming like the murder weapon belonged to the perp. And then maybe this holster also belonged to the perp.

7:13And the autopsy confirms that Kimberly was killed by a gunshot wound to the left side of her head, which most likely killed her within seconds. Ethan died from massive blood loss caused by a gunshot wound to the left side of his chest. And both of them were shot with a.38 caliber, which they for sure did not fire. I mean, like, obviously, no gun at the scene. I think that, you know, speaks for itself. But they do check for gunshot residue on their hands anyways. And even though the results that came back later were positive, that still didn't really change anything for police, like because there could be explanations for that.

7:49Again, I think not finding the weapon there made it clear. Right. That this was a homicide. The gunshot residue, they're in a car that's a pretty small enclosed place. They were both shot. Right. That's explainable. Right. Oh, and the other thing I wanted to note about their autopsies, neither of them showed any signs of drugs or alcohol in their systems. While even in Kimberly's exact time of death is unknown, the ME estimates that it could be about 11 p.m., so roughly an hour and a half to two hours after they left Kimberly's place and about 50 minutes before Officer Terry discovered their bodies, which was around 11.50 p.m.

8:27Which, speaking of Terry, how did he not hear the gunshots? Like, he was in the park. He was. It's possible that he was just out of earshot, though, when the shooting happened. Like, I've never seen anything about his exact location at the time, like at 11 o 'clock, if it's known. But I know he's supposed to be on duty at the time. According to the Star Press, the park is like a little over 20 acres. So if you look at it on Google Maps, it's like a very long, skinny, like, strip. So my thinking is if he's like patrolling all of it, maybe he could be on the opposite side or at least a ways away.

9:03But even though he doesn't appear to have heard anything, there are others who did hear the shots. Investigators talk to people who say that they were in the park when gunfire rang out. I don't know who these people are who are at the park at 11 p.m. or how police even found them, but good job. Some of those witnesses say that they just booked it when they heard the bangs. But others claim to have been close enough to the parking lot to see three people around Kimberly and Ethan's car after the gunshots. And through these witness accounts, cops determined that there were between 10 and 12 other cars in the park that night, not including Ethan and Kimberly's car.

9:42And investigators zero in specifically on two cars that were parked the closest to Kimberly and Ethan around the time of the shooting. But these cars weren't there when Terry showed up. So there is a red one and then there is a black or some kind of dark colored one often described as a Monte Carlo. And it was this black one I think that they're most interested in because it was specifically said to have left right after the shots rang out. So these are either really good witnesses they have to find. Or suspects. Or suspects, right. And according to Roysden and Walker's book, within two days of the murders, they actually might have found one of them.

10:27In the early hours of September 30th, so just two days after the murders, two Muncie police officers notice a car parked in Westside Park. Now, nothing in the book about what this car looked like, so I don't know if it fits the description of the cars that they were previously looking for. But considering what has recently gone down in this park, they're like checking out everything. And as they head towards this car, it like starts up and drives at them. Police were able to block the vehicle somehow. And when they finally talk to the driver, they can tell that he has definitely had too much to drink.

11:03And when they ask him about it, he says he's grieving. Grieving what, sir? They ask him exactly that. Like, what are you grieving for? And he replies, you know what for? Oh, my God. My daughter answers like random questions like this all the time. And it's frustrating then. It's infuriatingly frustrating here. Prepare to stay frustrated because that's about all the info that this guy gives. And this information about this guy is actually only in the book. So it is super limited. The authors don't even use his real name. But we do know that this guy gets arrested for driving under the influence.

11:42And he later tells police that he was just upset about the murders. Yeah, we all are. But most of us aren't melting down in the spot where they were found. So, like, what's your story, dude? Who is this guy? I don't know much. Like, truly. Like, I just know that he had a criminal record. He had even served some time. But it sounds like primarily for a minor burglary charge, like, in another state, California, actually. Nothing violent like murder. So maybe for that reason, maybe because they didn't find anything to link him to the killings, maybe something else, this guy kind of just falls off the radar.

12:19At least from the reporting perspective. I don't know what category police put this guy in. Suspect, person of interest, or some bizarre encounter. Just some weird thing. Yeah, that they don't know what to make of. Either way, we don't hear much more about him. Instead, police around this time seem far more interested in someone close to Kimberly. Her stepfather, Don. Because not only was it pretty convenient that he showed up at the park that night while they were still processing the scene, but the Star Press reports that police also discover that two witness accounts might lead back to Don and the car that he was driving that night, possibly putting him at the park before the shooting.

13:02So on October 4th, they bring Don in for a formal interview, and they talk to him for about six hours. And in that time, Don's story is unchanging. He said that when Kimberly wasn't home by 11 p.m., her mother Nancy got worried. And when she still wasn't home an hour and a half later, Don went out looking for her. He's like driving around, checking out local McDonald's, whatever. And then he was heading to the park where Nancy had thought that they might have gone. And that's when he came across all the police activity and he was told what happened. So the Star Press reports that police asked Don if he will take a polygraph, which he agrees to.

13:39Braver than me, Don. But it actually plays out in his favor. Don passes it. But that's not enough to close the book on him. Because while the answers he was giving were deemed to be truthful by a machine and some guy reading the machine, other answers that he was giving to Deputy Chief Marvin Campbell in follow-up questions were like kind of freaking weird. Like, for example, when asked if he was in the park, Don replies, quote, within my body, I wasn't there. Okay, is that a no then? I think it's trying to be. And I, like you, like Deputy Chief, like we all find this kind of sus. Yeah. And in another statement during the interview, Don said, quote, if I did this, you're going to have to tell me I did it.

14:29And listen, Deputy Chief Campbell isn't going to put words in his mouth, but he doesn't believe him in like what he's saying. And he doesn't believe the polygraph results either. The hang up is Don's alibi. I mean, it's rock solid. Kimberly's mother, Nancy, said that Don went to a football game earlier in the night, but was home before the shootings even took place. and that he only went back out around 12.30 a.m. to look for Kimberly. And, like, that's great. I guess my biggest hang-up about him as a possible suspect is why. Like, what would his motive even be for killing Kimberly and Ethan? That's the other problem.

15:07There isn't one. So it's not quite adding up. And listen, we've contacted Muncie PD to ask, like, why they were so hot on Don early on. Like, there could be things on police's radar that they didn't make public. maybe a motive we're unaware of. But as of this recording, we haven't heard back from them. Now, it's no surprise that after this initial interview, Don lawyers up. The Star Press reports that his lawyer tells police he will not let Don be interviewed again without a lawyer in the room. So essentially, Don stops cooperating, which then Deputy Chief Campbell seems to suggest that Don is now somehow hindering the investigation.

15:43But the police have nothing that they can really make stick to Don as their guy. And, I mean, the thing is, they can't make anything stick to anyone. For a brief moment, they looked at one of their own, actually, Officer Terry Winters, the police officer who discovered the bodies, which was, like, honestly, my first crime junkie guess when I got into this case. Maybe your first Nancy Drew guess. The amount of times that I've looked into real cases and it turned out to be the person patrolling who finds the bodies, but not here. This guy was asked to turn over his guns for analysis. It's determined they were not used in the killings.

16:18And as far as I can tell, no one seems to place his police vehicle anywhere near the shooting at the time of the shooting. So by early October, police are in a long way like circling back to the Monte Carlo tip. Because you see, they had gotten a tip from someone pointing at their neighbor. This guy named James, or he goes by Jimmy, Swingley. And just an FYI, the book is the only place that he is officially named and we couldn't corroborate this anywhere else. But according to Royston Walker's book, someone who lives down the street from Jimmy reports to police that his house was robbed and he is convinced that Jimmy did it.

16:55He is also confident that Jimmy knows about the murders of Ethan and Kimberly or was maybe involved in them. Which are all like pretty bold allegations. Did this tipster happen to mention why he felt Jimmy was involved? Like he felt this pretty strongly. I know. If he did, I don't know. Like, all I know is that we get to him somehow or like that they make this suggestion. And I do know that police look into this afterwards and maybe give it some weight because on October 7th, they release a description and a sketch of someone that they're looking for who they also associate with the black or dark colored Monte Carlo.

17:33So I said it kind of all comes full circle. And while there's no mention of this publicly at the time, Deputy Chief Campbell later indicates that this sketch looked a lot like our guy, Jimmy. White male, about 24 years old, 150 to 160 pounds, slender build, brown hair, parted down the middle, acne-scarred face. And this guy apparently wears gold wire glasses. But on the other flip side of this, this guy apparently looked a lot like other people, too. Yeah, like you just described a guy in Indiana. Yeah, because when they put this sketch out to the papers or whatever, they get a lot of calls. like somewhere between 100 and 200 calls about it.

18:15Police take all these calls and they kind of narrow them down to get a list about like a dozen people. And they do this by like seeing who was named the most. But none of those actually lead to a huge breakthrough. Not even the Jimmy stuff, I guess, because I don't see him come back up yet. So they're starting to hit a wall early on, which is maybe why police decide to cast a wider net, looking beyond just their crime, even to other crimes that feel kind of similar or happen not too far away. Like maybe if this is part of some larger pattern, that will tell them something about their killer and where to find them.

18:52And I know specifically they looked at two cases. There was one that was local, one that wasn't. The first was an assault of a woman that took place in the summer at another park in a nearby county. And in that attack, the suspect might have had or been in a Monte Carlo. Then in the second case, that one happened five years earlier, a few states away in Kansas, where two young people were shot while sitting in their car. And on the surface, both of those, like that crime and this one have similar elements, but ultimately police can't connect them in any way to one another. Same with the other one.

19:28So they're kind of at another dead end and investigators turn their focus to some more like experimental investigative tactics like hypnosis. Hypnosis. That means they have someone to hypnotize. Like who? It's mostly those witnesses that were at the park that night to see if they can remember any more details about like the car. I'm assuming car license plate, whatever. Here's the problem, though. Like the way they were doing this hypnosis veers like pretty far into unethical territory, if you ask me, because according to the Star Press, before being hypnotized, one of the witnesses, who was actually an off-duty officer who was in the park that night, listen, I know, I hear it, like I have the same questions, but it sounds like this guy, they vetted him, because I have the same like, oh, like Terry things, like, we've seen this before, he's vetted, he has an alibi, whatever.

20:18I mean, alibi, he's always in the park, but I think he was with someone else that night. But anyways, this guy was shown some pictures of cars, including the one that Don was driving that night, which was Nancy's car. And then he's shown a photo of Don before the hypnosis. So he's kind of been fed info. Which is what it feels like. It feels like they're being like, here's the guy that the chief is very interested in. Jog your memory. Yeah. But even them doing this, again, I said it's unethical, but even when they did it, like nothing tying Don to the killings even comes from this. So whatever they were trying didn't even work.

20:54But I do think it gives a glimpse to where investigators' heads were. For Deputy Chief Campbell, all roads were still leading back to Don. And he, at that point, is tired of Don's perceived unwillingness to cooperate. So he decides to try and put pressure on publicly.

21:14In September 1986, Deputy Chief Campbell says publicly that a person related to the case refuses to come in for a second interview. And though he didn't explicitly say Don's name, everyone pretty much knows that's who he's talking about. And when asked about a motive, the chief says, all they have are rumors and no real motive in this case. Listen, I don't know what the rumors are that he's referring to. You're going to tell me. If they're even real. But again, nothing really happens in the case and a full year goes by. And really, even then, nothing happens in the case itself. That like full year, that's just when Kimberly's family is hit with yet another tragedy.

21:57Because on Christmas Eve 1987, Kimberly's mother, this is Don's wife, Nancy, unexpectedly dies of a heart attack. The police at the time decide to have an autopsy done on Nancy to rule out any kind of foul play, which Don even agrees to, like presumably to get these guys off his back. And ultimately nothing is found. It was a heart attack. So over the next few years, Kimberly and Ethan's case just kind of stalls out. There are rumors that swirl through Muncie about what could have happened to them. But there doesn't seem to be anything like tangible police latch on to. Like what? Yeah, so I don't have examples about like if if the rumors that the chief was talking about were in relation to Don.

22:41I don't know any rumors in relation to him, but they ran the gamut really. Like, I mean, there was one that centered around the son of a politically connected family. Then there was one about someone who showed up at a party dressed as Rambo on the night of the murders. And then in one of the wilder accusations, a guy was convinced that a woman he knew might have committed the murders. And he thinks this woman, who I assume is like his girlfriend or something, like someone he knows intimately, basically he assumes that she mistook Ethan for him in the car and like thought she caught him cheating and then committed the murders.

23:16Again, there's no real meat to any of those stories. So police continue to look high and low and wide and far. And they do get at least one decent lead that they do follow in the early 90s. Two investigators go to interview a man named Steve, who's in prison on an armed robbery charge. Unclear if Steve reached out to them or how his name might have come up. But he tells investigators that the murders stemmed from a marijuana deal that had gone bad in the park. He said the three men involved in the deal decided to mess with or take it out on a couple parked in a car. which feels like a promising tip knowing there was at least that one sighting early on of three people outside of the kid's car.

24:03But it feels a little less promising when they're told the couple was killed with a shotgun, which like we know isn't true. But still detectives are like, OK, listen, we got we got to at least like continue following this through. Like this line of investigation might lead somewhere. And the victim's family wants that also. So much so that Ethan's family pays for a trip to Virginia where a woman supposedly can corroborate Steve's story. But unfortunately, when the detectives get down there and interview her, she ends up admitting that the whole thing is a hoax. And another inmate tells police that the whole thing was Steve's effort to try and get some kind of deal or get like early release.

24:42You know, we see this all the time and it's so incredibly heartless, right? Like, yeah, you're messing around with police, wasting their time. But the most devastating part is giving Kimberly and Ethan's families this like little tiny glimmering bit of hope. And then it just gets ripped away just like that. Yeah, I don't, I just don't, I don't think criminals have the same code of ethics, right, that you and I do. Like, they're just operating in, like, a completely different field. And, like, in their minds, everyone is fair game. Like, I don't think they see a difference between, like, someone they know or someone they're in jail with or a victim's family.

25:19Anything to save their own skin. Right. So, I mean, you get how it goes. Same as in so many cold cases. Random tips and pointing fingers and a case file that gets dusted off just every so often for a fresh set of eyes to take a crack at it. And that's where it was in 2012 when Detective Nathan Sloan first starts working Kimberly and Ethan's case. Now he spends about two weeks locked away with this case file. And when Detective Sloan emerges, there is a familiar name on investigators' radar again. I swear to God, Ashley, if you say it's Don. It's not Don. It's someone else. You see, while the deputy chief all those years ago was paying so much attention to Don, more and more tips about Jimmy Swingley kept coming in.

26:08Remember, he's the one who'd been accused of robbing that guy's place and the guy accused him of also maybe being involved in the murders. Well, here's what's interesting. So the first tip about him came in like a week into the investigation. And then a couple of months into the investigation, they got another tip, a more specific tip from someone said to have been close to Jimmy. And this guy said that Jimmy had come to his house on the night of the murders. And he told this guy that a drug deal went bad and the teenagers ended up dead. And there were two other men with Jimmy. So three guys again?