MISSING: Dawn Mozino

0:00Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is the truly mysterious disappearance of a 23-year-old woman from southeastern Pennsylvania. And if you just skim the headlines, you would think that police have had a strong suspect in this case for decades. A twice convicted killer who actually knew our victim. However, we got our hands on this woman's diary, and she wrote of not one, but two love triangles that might actually lead to a break in the case. This is the story of Dawn Mozzino.

1:11One day in June 1989, a woman in the Philly suburbs named Kathy sees a report of a missing young woman. And Kathy studies the picture of a girl with curly brown hair, and something about her is so familiar. Her name is Dawn Mozino, and apparently, per this report, she's been missing since May 22nd. Dawn's last known to have clocked out of her shift at Bryn Mawr Hospital, where she serves food to patients. And it would have been sometime at around 3 or 4 p.m. that day. And Kathy can't believe what she's seeing, because never in a million years does anyone expect that they might have information on a case, right?

1:52She doesn't know Dawn at all, but she does remember seeing a girl who looked just like her at a bus stop near the hospital a few weeks ago. At the time, she was driving her two boys home from school, and one of them actually pointed to this group of women waiting for the bus, who were all dressed the same, gray skirts, maroon vests, and a black bow tie. And that is actually one of the hospital's uniforms. And here is the kicker. She specifically remembers seeing Dawn in that group of young women. But Dawn wasn't talking to the other women. She was talking to a man standing nearby. Now, Kathy isn't 100 % positive of the date that she saw Dawn, because the days can totally bleed together if you have the same routine, like picking up your boys from school and driving them home.

2:41But she doesn't want to risk not giving the information to police, especially if it could be valuable. And she definitely does know it was at least around May 22nd. So she tells police about seeing Don, gives them the vague description of a guy that she thinks she was talking to, this Black man, maybe in his 30s. Detective Luther Layton, who everyone calls Lucky, is the lead on Don's case. And so he wants to ask Kathy if she'll identify him in a photo lineup. And she's like, absolutely. Wait, how? Well, because a couple of weeks after Don had gone missing, police already had someone on their radar.

3:18Through their investigation, they came to realize that in Don's address book, there was an entry that said Tom Hawkins with a number beside it. Now, his full name was Thomas Hawkins Jr. And Thomas Hawkins Jr. is a convicted murderer. Nine years before, he sexually assaulted, stabbed, and strangled a 15-year-old girl named Karen Stubbs. This was in 1980. And Britt, he only served six years for that. Six? I know. It seems like prosecutors couldn't prove premeditation for first-degree murder. Like, that's why they ended up offering him, like, a deal for third-degree in exchange for a guilty plea.

4:02But still, six years is astounding to me. Like, this man is clearly dangerous. So, okay, did Dawn just run into this guy once or did she, like, know him? She knew him. I mean, at least that's what her mom said. Like, they actually worked together three or four years before at a local rehabilitation center. And what's wild is, like, when they worked together, this dude bullied her. Like, one day, Dawn's sister, Kath, had to come pick Dawn up from work because someone was being nasty to her. Turns out it was this guy. After this, Kath, like, went and gave Hawkins a piece of her mind. And then shortly after, Dawn left that job to go work at the hospital.

4:40So before this witness, Kathy, even called the police, they had already brought Hawkins in. And his story was weird because he says that two months before Dawn went missing, she had offered to help him get a job at the hospital she worked at. Him, the guy who bullied her at their last job together. Yeah, he says that she had even set up an interview for him on May 12th, which would have been 10 days before she goes missing. but he says that he never actually showed up for that interview and that Dawn was really angry with him about it. But other than that, when they talked to him, he's like, listen, I have not seen or heard from her since that whole thing, like, again, weeks before.

5:22But guess what? They came to learn that that story was BS. The hospital had no record of an interview even being scheduled for Hawkins. Why would he even lie about the interview? Well, that's a good question, right? Like, I'm thinking maybe he was actually near the hospital, like Kathy the witness said, and he wanted to have a reason for that if police ever figured it out. But I also don't know because it wasn't even on the same day. So I don't know, like, if you're going to make up a lie, why make up one that's so easy to dispute and also doesn't even make any sense or actually explain anything away?

5:56I mean, I could see him probably trying to, like, distance himself from her and specifically from her on that date because the interview that he missed was 10 days earlier, right? Maybe. But like, they didn't know it was a lie at the time. And then they didn't have anything on the guy. So at that time, they had to let him go. Okay, so this guy is already on the radar when Kathy calls. They offer this like photo lineup. Does she recognize him? So she agrees. Like, yes, let's do this photo lineup. But by the way, just three days after police had originally talked to him about Don, this guy actually committed another murder.

6:34What? Hawkins sexually assaulted, strangled, and stabbed his niece, Andrea Thomas, with a meat fork and staged the scene to look like a burglary. Now, what is interesting is police did not know that it was him who did this at the time. Like, it ends up taking several months for him to get arrested for that. But I just wanted you to know, like, we're talking about a bad, bad guy here. A bad guy that Kathy does ID as the one she said was talking to Don. Which, if, like, that's the guy that she saw, then Dawn probably isn't just a missing person at this point. No, everyone kind of fears the worst.

7:13But honestly, Hawkins or no Hawkins, the worst case scenario was already playing out in the minds of Dawn's family. Because they know it's not like her to just disappear and not contact them. I mean, it took them only hours to report her missing. Because even though Dawn was 23, she had some learning differences. She actually lived at home with her mom and her sister. Now, she's described as high-functioning but developmentally delayed. And her sister Kath told us that because of this, Dawn followed a pretty strict schedule. And if anything changed, she would always let her mom or her sister know.

7:52So that day that she went missing, her sister Kath said that Dawn was supposed to come home after work, let the dog out. And then her plan was to either walk the 20 minutes to her boyfriend Dan Kolb's apartment in Wayne, Pennsylvania, or maybe just hop on like another bus over there. Now, Dan also had some learning differences, and the two of them had been dating for like three years. They were both super dedicated to the Special Olympics. Dawn actually won medals in like all these different events. And the Special Olympics was something that she really took seriously. So when she was going over to his place, the two of them were supposed to be like getting together so that they could go to a practice together down at the local YMCA.

8:34But when Kath got home from work early that evening, she noticed that the dog had not been taken out. And there were like half a dozen voicemails from Dan asking why Don hadn't met him, why she hadn't come to practice. So all that to say, Don's family was adamant that something was wrong when they filed a missing persons report. And police actually heard their concerns. They took the report and then immediately started looking into where she could be, who she could be with, all of that, which is how they wound up at Tom Hawkins. And now that he has been ID'd by their witness, the detective on Don's case gets a search warrant for his apartment in Philadelphia.

9:17Now, there's nothing they find there that directly ties him to Don. But they do seize a stack of detective magazines. And it's interesting because they say that they're all underlined and like dog-eared on articles about new police practices and tactics, stuff like that. So Detective Lucky thinks that maybe this guy was like making notes on how to get away studying with murders. Right. Now, fast forward a little bit. they end up connecting Hawkins to the murder of his niece, and he finally gets arrested and taken to trial on that, which only makes everyone more suspicious of him in connection to Don's disappearance.

9:58So much so that Don's family attends every single day of the court hearings because they are fully convinced that Hawkins did something to Don, and if police can't get him on that, at least they hope he'll go away and pay for this crime, right? And he'll be off the streets, which he does. The jury convicts Hawkins of first-degree murder, which, like, in my mind, you must have been a terrible study of those magazines, which, by the way, they fully brought up at trial because his DNA and fingerprints were all over the crime scene. And so after the verdict, Hawkins is sentenced to death. And this gives Detective Lucky an idea.

10:36He sees this as kind of a unique opportunity. He basically goes to the prosecutor, Bruce Castor, and says, look, I think this is our guy, but I got nothing. Would you be open to taking the death penalty away if he gives us information about Don? Like her family just wants some closure. and Bruce agrees which to me like this is an offer that even the dumbest criminal would take if they could like if I was facing the death penalty for a case where they had me dead to rights like forget appeals like I'd try to be confessing to anything but I don't think it's just like a confession they want right what they said is they want information I think they want to know like where she is what happened but he says he has no information to give because he had nothing to do with Dawn's disappearance He's sticking to that.

11:27Now, Hawkins, to this day, is still sitting on death row because Pennsylvania's governor put a moratorium on the death penalty. But in all this time, he has never come close to confessing to anything relating to Dawn's disappearance. You know, it is interesting to me that Dawn's case seems to be so different. And I say seems because I guess we don't really know what happened to her, right? She's never been found. We can't say that it's, like, not the same MO, but his other two victims, like— They were found quickly, yeah. —found quickly, not even hidden, like— And you're right. So I know we don't know what happened to Don, but we do know a lot about his other crimes.

12:05And what we know is, like, he knew both of the victims, which is the same for Don, right? And, like, his first victim, Karen, she lived in the same apartment complex as his parents. And so, like, they met each other on a few different occasions. And then, obviously, Andrea was his niece. We know that he sexually assaulted and killed both of them in their homes and then staged both crime scenes to look like robberies. And so, like I said, while he knew Dawn and that piece is the same, her home doesn't appear to be any kind of crime scene. He didn't, as far as we know, he didn't stage anything. Honestly, it seems like she never even made it home afterward.

12:40Right. And interestingly, Don is about a decade older than his two other victims, which I think could factor in if Hawkins' crimes are sexually motivated toward adolescent girls. But is that enough to rule him out for Don? Not to Detective Lucky. He is still convinced of Hawkins' guilt. But what if he didn't do it? I mean, I get why they would think that. What are the odds that she knew a now twice convicted killer and he didn't have anything to do with it? But like, what if they were right and wrong? What if a convicted murderer did have something to do with her disappearance, but they were just looking at the wrong one?

13:24In 2001, Detective Lucky gets the shock of his career when he reads the front page headline of the Delaware County Daily Times. And it says, did Bennett kill Don? Now, per this article that he's seeing for the first time. The detective. Yes. Cool. It's basically saying that a guy in prison named Gerald Bennett had written a letter to the paper confessing to Don's murder. And let me preface this by saying, Gerald is the actual worst. He's in prison for strangling his 33-year-old girlfriend, Roxanne Carolyn Lighty. to death, and then sexually assaulting her 13-year-old daughter at knife point for nearly five hours right after.

14:11And this was in 1999, so like 10 years after Dawn's disappearance. And this, I don't know that I've ever dropped an MF-er like on an episode, but this man even self-published a book arguing that he is innocent of the crime and accusing the 13-year-old, a literal child of killing her own mother. Okay, when you said the actual worst, I thought that was hyperbolic, but the actual worst. Now, in this letter that he writes to the paper, he says that he met Dawn in May of 1989 while he was applying for a job at the hospital where she worked, which is eerily similar to Hawkins' story. Yeah. I don't know what to make of that.

14:53It seems like just a weird coincidence. Now, there aren't a ton of details in the letter, And even though they clearly didn't reach out to Lucky, the detective, the paper did get Bruce Castor, the prosecutor, responding on record saying, quote, If Bennett takes authorities to the body, then I will publicly apologize to Tommy Hawkins for indicating that I think he's the killer of Don Mozzino. That's pretty bold. Yeah, especially for a guy who would go on to ascend the political ladder. I mean, he eventually became the acting attorney general of Pennsylvania. And it turns out Bruce called this guy's bluff.

15:34Gerald isn't able to lead them to Don's remains. He can't really even give them any verifiable information on what he says happened. So according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, police determined that he was in an entirely different state when Don disappeared. Then why lie out of the blue like that? He was looking at life in prison or the death penalty and I think trying to save his skin by giving false information in a high-profile missing persons case. The judge in Gerald's case called him, quote, the most dangerous, remorseless, callous defendant I have seen in my 20 years as a judge, unquote.

16:13Which I feel like I can't disagree, but now with Don's case, they're back to Hawkins? Honestly, never really got off him. And again, I get why. But I also, again, ask, what if the obvious thing distracted police from the real thing? What if for all these years, people ignored the one clue that Dawn herself left behind? Her diary. In this diary, which she seems to have started just three months before her disappearance, Dawn doesn't mention Hawkins once. She certainly doesn't say anything about Gerald Bennett. What Dawn does write about is cheating on her boyfriend, Dan. From her writings, it seems like Dawn had been getting a little bored in her relationship with Dan.

17:05And somehow, while in this unsatisfied state, she meets this guy named Nick Katona. I don't really know how, but she devotes most of the pages of her diary to venting about her complicated feelings for Dan and Nick. We actually have a copy of Dawn's diary, which we're going to put in the fan club app if you want to see it. But Dawn's sister, Kath, actually read some parts of her diary aloud for us to share. Wednesday, the 22nd of March, 1989. The day after I saw Nick. I like him so much. The only thing is, I still have feelings for Dan. I love him. Tuesday, the 25th of April, 7.51 p.m. But really, what do I do?

17:52I'm lonely. Dan will never come up here, I know now. He said he will, but I know he won't, and I feel so bad. When he finds out that all this time I've seen Nick, he'll be so angry. Oh, well, he won't find out. I'll keep it from him, no problem, as long as he doesn't see this diary. Wow, look at how many entries I've made. Did her sister know about Nick? No one in her family really knew about Nick. I mean, Kath said that, like, they knew who he was. He came to the house a couple of times. She knew Don was friends with this guy, but she had no idea that Don was involved with him romantically. Here's the catch, though.

18:31Police did. They had this diary from the jump. And sometime in the 2010, so this is after Detective Lucky had retired and this new guy was on Don's case, Detective McGuire. He lets Kath see the diary. That's how she found out for the first time. Wow. Which I'm sure was like so disorienting for her because for as long as she remembers, she believed the same thing as police, that Hawkins probably did something to her sister. But these writings, I don't know, she sees something more in them than police clearly do. Like, call it a sister's intuition, whatever. But she saw that Nick was clearly dominating Dawn's thoughts from March 1989 right up until her disappearance in May.

19:17And it's clear from her entries that Nick did not treat her very well. Wednesday, the 12th of April, 1989, 9.38 p.m. Hi. Well, now Nick is on my list. He told me he was going to see me and he didn't call me or stop by. He had done this, I don't know how many times. He stole my heart, and now I want it back if he's going to keep on doing this. I mean, I really liked him, and so he has to do this all the time. April 1989. Nick called me at 9.30 a.m. this morning and told me he was going to call me later. But he, of course, not. It pisses me off so much. It seems like Dawn would drop everything to be with Nick, and Nick kind of just kept stringing her along, basically like booty calling her.

20:03He's not taking Dawn on wholesome dates. He's taking her to hotels to have sex. So Dawn talks in her diary about how she's getting frustrated. Like she is clearly infatuated with Nick, but she knows that she shouldn't be treated like this. She also can't stop. There's this moment where Dawn writes that she's listening to the song Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Poison on Repeat, which is like a tape she said she bought because it reminded her of Nick, which is like, sends me back. I would say it's such a relatable moment. I mean, it's like you and I, like, in middle school, we'd like lay in your guest room and just sing Carolyn Don Johnson.

20:41I would say complicated. Yeah. Anyway, so after who knows how long of this, but at least three months of entries, she and Nick seem to be on the fritz come May when she disappears. And police never talked to this Nick guy. No, here's the thing. They did. Once, Radnor police confirmed to us that they brought Nick in for an interview, but they wouldn't tell us when that was or what was asked or what was answered or not answered. Or anything. Yeah, and we tried to get the case file for Dawn's case, but our FOIA was denied because police said that it is an active investigation. Okay, then what about Dan?

21:20Like, did they look at him at all? Like, maybe he found out about Nick, confronted Dawn, things got out of hand. No, so Dan isn't really considered a suspect at all, like by anyone, including Kath. He has a solid alibi. I mean, A, there are all those voicemails that he left on Don's answering machine. Keep in mind, this is the 80s. So they're either coming from his apartment or payphone. Landline, yeah. And then someone at the YMCA confirmed that Dan did attend the Special Olympics practice that night. And Kath told us that she knows Dan really well. He is this really sweet man who, get this, still calls Dawn's mom every single evening for the past 36 years to say goodnight.

22:00And the thing that really sticks with me that I was so surprised by is he wouldn't even have a motive because Kath says that to this day, Dan still doesn't know that Dawn was cheating on him. As Kath told us, like, they didn't want to break his heart. And I, like, when I heard that, I was like, we're putting this out. I was going to say, like, should we be saying this right now? I checked with our reporter and she checked the family. I was like, listen, like, someone needs to tell him before this episode comes out. Yeah. But we talked this up and down with Kath. And she said she's confident that he is not going to hear this.

22:35And it's not going to get back to him. She says he doesn't even know what a podcast is. He doesn't have a smartphone. So he is living in a very, like, sheltered bubble. So all this to say that Dan was and is quickly ruled out. Nick, on the other hand, is a different story. After Kath reads her sister's diary, she really pushed police to explore the lead on Nick more. Like in all this time, things with Hawkins hadn't progressed at all. And it's not like he was going anywhere. So like, let's just be sure, right? Make sure every other avenue is explored to ensure nothing was missed and that if Hawkins is still where we end up, like, in the end, so be it.

23:20Yeah, he's right here. We know where he is. Yeah, but like, might as well, right? But when she's pushing for this, Detective McGuire drops a bombshell. He tells Kath that Nick had actually taken his life in September 2011, which is before she is now coming to him asking for this. So now they're like, there's nothing we can do. I mean, that seems like it might be like relevant information to have before now. At the time, they didn't have any details for Kath about the circumstances around or leading up to his death, which, mind you, was over 20 years after Don disappeared. But yeah, I mean, to say that Kath didn't have some follow up questions like that seemed to have not been asked, like that's an understatement.

24:03And so this in 2013 is where she kind of becomes at odds with not just police, but her own family a little. Because Dawn's mother is still in the Hawkins camp with police. And Kath thinks that they've been so focused on Hawkins that they've been neglecting to follow up on other important leads like this one. So by 2023, Kath ends up working with a former social worker turned civilian criminologist named Clark Williams. who's pretty legit, like he's helped solve some cold cases. And Clark starts his investigation with Dawn's diary and methodically tracks down almost everyone Dawn ever mentions, including Nick's family, since Nick isn't around.

24:48And really, he was reaching out to them, most of all, to find out what contributed to Nick's death. And his family told Clark that he was in love with a woman who had a serious illness, and when that woman died, Nick just couldn't go on. They also say, and I find this part real interesting, that he never mentioned anyone named Dawn to them ever. Okay. I mean, even if Nick didn't want to get into, like, his sex life with his parents, you're telling me someone you know goes missing. Yeah. They're all over the news. Didn't even mention her as, like, a friend. And you don't say anything. It makes you wonder.

25:26Yeah. Right? Like, why wouldn't Nick go to the police when his friend goes missing? Like, why not tell your family that your friend is missing? Like, you were clearly, like, in the same orbit. Even if you didn't do anything, like, could you offer information? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't sound like, from the diary at least, Nick was taking the relationship seriously. So maybe he wasn't taking it seriously at all. Like, he didn't think that it mattered. Yeah, maybe. But it also makes me think about the fact that Nick would sometimes randomly, like, show up at her house unannounced when it was convenient for him.

25:57So, like, I don't know, maybe he showed up at the hospital or the bus stop and picked her up that day she disappeared. And, you know, because of her strong feelings for Nick, it's possible that Don might blow off other plans to hang out with him. And then maybe something happened between them. They got in a fight or Don confronted him about, like, being a total flake. I mean, all of these are just like, I'm just like spitballing. These are theories. But, I mean, as we know, theories that no one even looked into by this point. And it's all speculation. There's nothing to suggest that's what actually happened.

26:28But again, we have to speculate because police did not do the legwork that we can actually like cross any of this off. Did they search his car? Did they search his place? Did they do anything but talk to him one time, TBD, who knows when? I mean, did Nick have any kind of record over the years? Anything that would indicate he was capable of doing something to Don? We tried looking it up. So I don't know a whole lot about Nick or who he was in the years after 1989. On his, like, official record, we found that he got a DUI in 1992, which is three years after her disappearance. And then in 1996, Nick's charged with reckless endangerment, simple assault, and terroristic threats.

27:04I'm not sure what the story is behind these charges because our attempts to get the records were denied. And Nick's father has passed away. His mother didn't respond to our request for comment. So we're here. We were here. So actually, I mean, this is a good point to call out. Like, if anyone out there listening knew Nick Katona in Coatesville, PA in 1989, like, would love to hear from you. Tips at AudioChuck.com. Now, the one problem I have with this Nick angle is motive. I mean, he seems like a kind of grade A a-hole, right? Like, who I wouldn't want my sister to date. But I mean, like, everything we know just kind of makes it seem like, like you said, he didn't care about Don.