Dail Dinwiddie: How DNA Solved a 27-Year-Old Murder

The Murder of Dail Dinwiddie

On September 24, 1992, 23-year-old Dail Dinwiddie was found dead in her apartment in Columbia, South Carolina. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

Dail was a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. She was a student, a daughter, a sister, a friend. Her murder devastated her family and community.

Investigators worked the case extensively, collecting evidence and interviewing potential suspects. DNA evidence was recovered from the crime scene—but in 1992, DNA technology was still in its early stages.

Despite their best efforts, the case went cold.

27 Years of Waiting

For 27 years, Dail's family lived without answers. They didn't know who killed her. They didn't know why. And they didn't know if justice would ever come.

But investigators never gave up. They preserved the evidence from Dail's case, knowing that one day, technology might advance enough to solve it.

In 2019, that day came.

The Breakthrough

Using advanced DNA technology and forensic genealogy—the same technique used to catch the Golden State Killer—investigators were able to create a genetic profile from the DNA evidence collected in 1992.

They uploaded the profile to genealogy databases and began building a family tree. Through painstaking research, they narrowed down potential suspects.

The DNA led them to Zachary Bunner.

Bunner had been living freely for nearly three decades. He had never been a suspect in Dail's murder. But the DNA didn't lie.

Arrest and Conviction

In 2019, Zachary Bunner was arrested and charged with Dail Dinwiddie's murder.

In 2023—31 years after Dail was killed—Bunner was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Dail's family finally had the justice they had been waiting for.

The Power of DNA and Persistence

Dail Dinwiddie's case is a powerful example of how forensic genealogy and advances in DNA technology are solving cold cases that were once thought unsolvable.

It's also a testament to the dedication of investigators who never gave up on Dail. They preserved evidence. They kept her case active. They waited for technology to catch up.

And when it did, they were ready.

Remembering Dail

Dail Dinwiddie was 23 years old when she was murdered. She should have had a long, full life ahead of her.

Instead, her life was stolen by Zachary Bunner—a man who thought he had gotten away with murder.

But Dail was not forgotten. Her family never stopped fighting for her. Investigators never stopped working her case.

And after 27 years, justice was finally served.

Dail Dinwiddie's case reminds us that it's never too late for justice. Cold cases can be solved. Killers can be caught. And families can finally get the answers they deserve.

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] On the night of September 23rd, 1992, 23-year-old, Dale Dinwitty had plans to attend a U2 concert with around a dozen of her friends in Columbia, South Carolina. After the concert, the group went out for drinks and ended up at one of their favorite bars, jungle Gyms. At around one o'clock in the morning, Dale was separated from her friends after getting lost in a large crowd, one by one, her friends headed home in separate vehicles, each of them, assuming that Dale had caught a ride with someone else.

The next morning, panic spread as Dale's parents realized she never made it home.

Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. I'm Andy. How are you? I am doing wonderful. How are you? I don't know why I said it that way. As soon as I said it, I was like, I said something wrong, but I don't [00:01:00] even know what it was.

It wasn't wrong. That's, it was a little Sure, true. Mandy, I have to say you have maybe found the secret to life and I've been hearing you say this for years. I know. Don't be shocked. It's getting up like two hours earlier than everyone in your house. Yes. I swear by it. I footloose and fancy free my house is, it's a cheat code for life.

It truly is, and I started to tell my husband about it, and I was like, absolutely not. I can't have you ruining this time for me. This is my, oh my gosh, my I know. I know. I've been waking up early forever. You're amazing. I'm the only one, and I love it. But now my husband has decided he wants to start waking up early and I'm like, love you.

I do. I really love you. Absolutely. Yeah. But I also love. My time in the morning without anyone else awake. I like knowing everyone is unconscious, but, uh, no, really, it really has, like I, I'm, I just feel like a new [00:02:00] person. It's, it's wonderful. I love that For you. I could for always cry. I'm so excited. Oh my.

And I've been listening to you forever and I'm like, ugh, no, I'm not doing that. Uh, I will wake up five minutes before everyone else. Oh, everything. It's just so pristine. I've never been. Get back with me next week when I'm like, you know what? I needed a nap. I love that. I feel like after it's far so good, after all this time we're finally rubbing off on each other a little.

I'm watching more tv and yes, you're waking up early and, and getting things done. So there's okay to say, I'm getting things done. I'm waking up early. They were getting done. I just wasn't happy about it, and some stuff wasn't getting done well. Then also you have time to sit and just enjoy the things that are done.

So that's. That's one thing I love. If there's one thing I love, well, I don't love cleaning, but I love sitting in a clean home. So me too. Doing that in the morning is like my favorite thing in the world. Yeah, I mean truly, uh, it's a cheat code for life, so congratulations, Mandy. That's amazing. Um, before we get into the episode, we have new episodes going on [00:03:00] basically all the time.

When you hear this, the next day, Wednesday will be our fourth installment of the. Hulu documentary and what a wild ride it has been. Can't wait. Wild to discuss it. Yeah, I, I'm, I watched a few minutes and I was like, I have to stop until I can take notes. 'cause I'm like, I'm freaking out. I'm so excited. So if you wanna check out more bonus content, uh, you can go to patreon.com/moms and Mysteries podcast.

But we also have it on Spotify. There is subscriber only stuff. As well as Apple Podcasts. Very easy to find on either of those places. So join us. We're trying to figure out the next docuseries we're going to do, and super excited. Those have been really, really fun. All right, so we'll get right into the story of Dale Dinwitty.

Dale was the type of person that everybody had something nice to say about. She was very quiet, sweet, and deeply driven with a very warm and welcoming nature that really touched everyone around her. Dale was born on [00:04:00] April 20th, 1969 to Dan and Jean Dinwitty. She grew up in Columbia, South Carolina with her younger brother Drew, and though she was very petite at five foot tall and 96 pounds, her presence was anything but small.

Dale attended a private school and later graduated from Randolph College in Virginia in 1991 with a degree in art history. Her classmates knew her as kind and compassionate and thought she was destined for great things. After she graduated, Dale moved back home to South Carolina where she planned to go to graduate school at USC.

Her ultimate goal was to study architecture at Clemson. While she was in college, Dale worked as a nanny for an eight-year-old boy whose mother described her as being a responsible woman who was wonderful with children. While she was still in school, Dale was living with her parents in the Forest Hills neighborhood just down the hill from an area called Five Points.

The five Points area is a [00:05:00] lively area with restaurants and bars and little boutiques located near the University of South Carolina and even late into the night, the streets were always bustling around there. There was nearly the same amount of foot traffic at 2:00 PM as there was at 2:00 AM So it was the kind of place where the people, especially the students around town, felt like nothing truly bad could ever happen there, but Five Points was actually nestled among several less safe neighborhoods.

So even though it was within walking distance of Dale's home, she would still often call her father for rides if she was ready to come home from there. Dale suffered with severe asthma and she was someone who required regular shots and an inhaler at all times. On the night of September 23rd, 1992, me, 3-year-old Dale Dim Witty, was in good spirits as she got ready for the long anticipated U2 concert at Williams Brice Stadium.

So she was excited to be going out with a group of friends that night, and she was dressed casually in a long sleeve olive green shirt, faded [00:06:00] blue jeans, and a bright blue LL bean jacket that she had tied around her waist. She really fit right in with the thousands of other fans that were at the show that night.

So the concert ended around 11:15 PM but Dale and her friends wanted to keep the night going, so they headed to Five Points and eventually they were at Jungle Gyms, which was a crowded bar that they really went to all the time. Dale was seen inside the bar talking to multiple people and really just having a great time with everyone.

But at around 1:00 AM things took a turn. As the group started to leave, they got separated from each other in this dense crowd. So Dale searched for her friends, even going back inside the bar and checking for them, but she couldn't find any of the people that she knew. Her friends had all assumed that Dale had made it into one of the several vehicles that the group rode in, all, assuming that someone else had given her a ride home that night, but nobody had.

At around 1:30 AM Dale was seen leaving Jungle gyms [00:07:00] alone. She spoke to the doorman briefly and he said that she didn't seem intoxicated or distressed. She was slowly drinking of beer and speaking clearly and seemed to be in a really positive state of mind. The doorman asked if Dale needed a cab, and she said she was waiting for her friends to return.

And this all makes me so sad because in 2025 you would pick your phone up, text your friends, where are you guys? And they would say, oh, we're outside. You know, come on out. Right? And at this time it was like you just, you hoped somebody was waiting for you, but there wasn't any way to communicate. So it just makes it so much more complicated.

At some point she walked off down Hardin Street, and that was the last time Dale was ever seen. The next morning, Dale's father woke up at his usual time that was around 6:15 AM and he went about his normal routine, which included going upstairs to get the family dog from his 16-year-old son Drew's room.

But that morning he noticed something strange. The lights in [00:08:00] Dale's bedroom were still on. Her radio was still playing, and her bed hadn't been slept in. At first. Dale's father tried to stay calm and assumed she was just staying at a friend's house. After waking up his wife Jean, they started making phone calls.

None of Dale's friends had seen her since the bar, and none of them had given her a ride home by 8:30 AM The Dinwoody knew that something was wrong. They called the Columbia City Police Department and reported their daughter missing the search for Dale. Began immediately with officers scouring the streets and alleys and checking in parking lots between jungle gyms and Dale's home.

They looked in ditches and along sidewalks, just hoping to find any sign of where she may have gone, but there was nothing. As the investigators tried to piece together what might have happened to Dale, a theory started to emerge that Dale had not simply just walked away. She had actually been taken, but the authorities were still hesitant to call it an [00:09:00] abduction at first.

Dale's family insisted that she would've never walked home alone at that hour of the night, nor would she have ever accepted a ride home from a stranger. She had always been very cautious and she never had any problem Calling her dad for a ride and having severe asthma made her even more careful. On top of that, she had left her inhaler and her asthma medication behind at home, and those are two things that she would never willingly go without for a long period of time.

With no sign of Dale anywhere, law enforcement expanded their efforts. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division joined in as well as the Richland County Sheriff's Department and eventually the FBI. Unfortunately, though, without surveillance cameras in the five points area, this is 1992, we're talking about investigators Were working with little more than just a few witness accounts.

They had. When Dale's friends found out that she was missing panic set in, and they all went back to five points [00:10:00] and tried to retrace Dale's steps, they asked around and they handed out photos in hopes that someone had seen her after she left Jungle Gyms, but nobody they talked to had any answers. The next day the search had intensified and dozens of high school and college students flooded.

The city plastering all of Columbia with flyers that had Dale's face on them. Word of her disappearance spread very quickly, and it soon became a national news story as the reality set in that Dale hadn't just wandered off, something had happened to her. And we're going to get into the rest of the story after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors.

And now back to the episode. So before the break, we were discussing the disappearance of Dale Denwitty after attending a U2 concert on September 23rd, 1992. Of course this left her family and friends desperate for answers, and at this point there's been extensive searches and of course they're talking to witnesses and her disappearance remains [00:11:00] unsolved with really no clues at this point as to where her whereabouts are.

On September 26th, just three days after she vanished, the police announced a $2,500 reward for information leading to her whereabouts. Dale's father spoke to the state about her disappearance and he desperately tried to make sense of it. He talked about what a caring and responsible person Dale was and how she was just out having fun with friends that night, and it was really uncharacteristic of her not to be home on time.

And he also said that Dale was shy and she was a homebody. Her dad said, quote, this is every parent's nightmare. By the end of the month, police had officially classified Dale's case as a kidnapping. They had no evidence of a struggle, no confirmed suspects, and really no, no motive. All signs pointed to the same terrifying conclusion that Dale had been taken.

Her parents held a press conference on September 30th where they pleaded for her safe return and they begged for any information or clue [00:12:00] that could bring her home. Days passed with no breakthroughs, and on October 2nd, police provided an update stating that they had gotten about 300 leads and interviewed over a hundred people, but unfortunately, they still didn't have any significant new information.

That night, America's Most Wanted aired a one minute segment on Dale's disappearance in hopes of generating new leads. Within two months, the case had generated more than 800 tips, and over 250 people had been interviewed. When the police ran out of new names, they circled back and re-interviewed the same witnesses in case there was anything they had missed, but no one had seen or heard anything.

The frustration at this point is really palpable. A police spokesperson really summed it up when they said, quote, we don't have any way to eliminate anybody. We can't tell you she's dead. We can't tell you she's alive. She's just missing Dale's parents. Dan and Jean were just in agony, wondering [00:13:00] what happened to their daughter.

They would lay awake night after night, scared to even go to sleep because the phone might ring and they might miss a call about Dale. That breaks my heart. Can you imagine? Me too? Can't I know They're finally able to get any rest and they can't really even sleep because they're, you know, you can't miss that call.

Yeah. Dale's mom, Jean sometimes would even drive down to the police station in the middle of the night just to speak with the officers and feel like something was being done. Dan had trouble just sitting still. One night without really even thinking about it. He just got in the car and drove all the way past the state line, stopping at all the rest areas and gas stations along the way to hang missing persons flyers.

In his desperation, he tracked down people who had been in the five points area on the night. Dale vanished and convinced them to talk to the police too. Meanwhile, her parents stayed in close contact with the investigators. They just refused to let up or to lose hope. One thing I did wanna say in this [00:14:00] case is that it sounds like her parents did have a very good relationship with the investigators.

Yeah. I thought that was very sweet that Dale's mom would go to the police station, that they would, they were welcoming of her doing that, you know, just to kind of give her any comfort that they were able to, um, when they had so few answers that they could give her. Two weeks after Dale vanished, U2 displayed her face on the video screen at their concert, which ensured that thousands of their fans saw her photo.

Her friends and loved ones stood outside the venue and gave out flyers while encouraging people to come forward with any information they might have. Their hope was that maybe someone had seen something that night and didn't realize its significance. At the time back in Columbia, Dale's friends attempted to reenact the night she went missing.

They retraced her movements in five points and tried to see things from Dale's perspective. While they were actively on the ground searching, Dale's family and other volunteers worked [00:15:00] tirelessly from a makeshift command center where they made calls, printed flyers, and did everything possible to keep the search for Dale alive.

Dale's parents tried to maintain a sense of normalcy for their son Drew, but nothing about their lives felt normal anymore. Drew later said that while his parents did shield him in public as best as they could, they were very open about the investigation. In private. They became so consumed with grief, fear, and paranoia that for months they actually made Drew carry a pager and a cell phone everywhere he went.

But as time went on, Dale's parents realized that the only way they would be able to cope with her disappearance was to allow their son drew to live his own life. That's just so loving to be able to take yourself out of it and to realize you have to let your kid be a kid. Right. And you know, to not let this completely change his life, or not completely change his life, but you know that they're so observant to making sure that he's [00:16:00] okay as well, aside from their own fears and everything.

I think that's incredible. Of course. Yeah. So the dims were determined to prevent another tragedy like theirs, so they turned their grief into action. Every fall, they gave safety talks to incoming freshmen at USC and warned them about the dangers of being alone at night. Dale's parents hoped that if just one life was saved, her story wouldn't be in vain.

But as the years passed, the weight of not knowing became unbearable. By 1997, after five years had passed, Dale's parents sat down with the state to reflect on their heartbreaking journey. Jean said that she still clung to hope and that she still ran to the mailbox every day to see if there was a letter.

Every time the phone rings, she thinks maybe it's Dale calling. They described the endless cycle they were in and how their minds were really never at rest, but investigators weren't ready to give up on Dale's case yet either. Over the years, they had done hundreds of interviews. They dug through dirt drain lakes [00:17:00] and even ripped up a house floor when the new tenants reported a foul smell coming from a section that had been replaced.

Police had even met with psychics for the first time in their careers. Literally, they were doing anything they could to try and find Dale. One tip they got was actually promising. There was a convicted drug dealer who was looking to cut a deal on his 20 year prison sentence, and he claimed that he was present when three men abducted and killed Dale, the man even named the three suspects, and they were shockingly already on the list of prime suspects.

According to the man, Dale's body had been stuffed into the trunk of a car, and then the car was dumped into a lake on private property. In lower Richland Police took this claim very seriously and they sent divers to the lake. Shockingly, they did find a submerged vehicle. A crane was brought into remove the car from the water, but when they pried the trunk open, it was empty.

There had never been a body inside of it, and this [00:18:00] tipster had been lying. Investigators were disappointed, but they pressed forward that same year. Five new detectives were assigned to review the case files and conduct re interviews of 32 individuals. They chased every possible lead trying to uncover anything that may have been overlooked, but in the end, there were no new breakthroughs.

The DIMS remained in their Columbia house for over a decade because they were afraid to move in case Dale ever found her way back. In 2005, they made the difficult decision to leave. The family moved just around the corner though, so they felt like they were still within reach just in case. By October of 2000, the police were still searching for answers.

It had been eight years with no significant leads, but then out of nowhere a new name entered the conversation, and that name was Aldo Rivera. Reinaldo was a serial killer who operated in Georgia and South Carolina. He had been arrested in [00:19:00] Georgia, but at the time of Dale's disappearance, he was actually attending USC.

So the authorities started looking into him as a possible suspect in Dale's disappearance. The Columbia Police Department and the Richland County Sheriff's Department both wanted to speak with Rayo in regards to Dale's case. They felt that the possibility that he could have been in the five points area and targeting young women on the nightdale went missing, just was too big to be ignored.

As they dug deeper, they noticed a pattern with him. Around 30 women had come forward and reported that Ronaldo had approached them. In the past, these women had eerily similar stories. Ronaldo would wait in parking lots, calling women over to his car or van under the pretense of asking them for directions, and then he would shift the conversation to start talking about his photography and his business plans and ideas.

Before he would eventually ask the victim if they had ever considered modeling. It was noticed [00:20:00] that Ronaldo's victims all had strikingly similar features. They were all petite and slender and had shoulder length blondish hair just like Dale, one of Ronaldo's victims and survivors. 18-year-old. Chrissy Lee Barton later spoke about the scary encounter that she had with Rayo.

It was October of 2000, and she was just stopped at a stop sign. When Aldo approached her car, the cars that were behind Chrissy Lee started to honk because Ronaldo was actually holding up traffic trying to talk to her. So he suggested that they pull over into a nearby parking lot and continue their conversation.

Chrissy Lee complied, and when they stopped, Ronaldo introduced himself as a professional photographer and he asked her if she had ever considered doing any modeling. When Chrissy Lee asked him for proof of his credentials, he didn't have anything to show her, so she actually started to feel off about the whole thing and tried to brush him off, but [00:21:00] Aldo was persistent about taking photos of her right that moment.

Chrissy Lee suggested that Aldo could follow her to her stepfather's apartment, and she actually tried to lose him in traffic along the way. She was weaving in and out of the different lanes, but he stayed on her tail and pulled into the apartment complex right behind her. Ronaldo parked his car right next to hers and followed her inside.

Once they were inside the apartment, Chrissy Lee went to the bathroom, leaving Ronaldo alone in the living area. Aldo used this opportunity to grab a knife from the kitchen, and he attacked Chrissy Lee from behind. She was raped and sodomized as the attack left her slipping in and out of consciousness.

Aldo then strangled Chrissy Lee until he believed she was dead. Aldo left Chrissy Lee's unconscious body lying on the floor while he left to go move his car down the street. He then went back to the apartment to clean up any evidence he might've left behind, and that's when he noticed [00:22:00] that Chrissy Lee was still alive.

Renado made a second attempt to strangle her to death with a towel before grabbing another knife and stabbing her repeatedly in the neck, severing her jugular vein somehow against all odds. Chrissy Lee survived. She regained consciousness and managed to crawl to the phone and call nine one one. When police arrived, they found that the door was locked from the inside and that Ronaldo had escaped through a back window.

News of the attack spread quickly, and when a description of the suspect was released, two people came forward to say they thought it was Ronaldo Rivera. Those two people were his coworker and his sister-in-law, which I give, those are pretty props to big. Yes. Those are like mm-hmm. Those people are huge.

I would definitely, um, weigh their opinion very heavily for sure. Absolutely. And it has to take a lot to call on someone that you work with every day. Right. And someone that you are related to. Right. Um, so I mean, [00:23:00] they must have known he was trouble. So authorities soon found him in South Carolina in a motel room after an apparent suicide attempt.

Once he was taken into custody, he not only admitted to attacking Chrissy Lee, but he also confessed to the rape and murder of 21-year-old Marni Glisa in September of 2000 and 17-year-old Tabitha Bosel. In June of 2000, Marni GLIs was an army sergeant stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia, and on the morning of September 5th, 2000.

Her husband, who was actually deployed in Kuwait at the time, had tried to call her, but he wasn't able to reach her, so he contacted her commanding officer, who then went to her home with another officer to check on her. When they arrived, they noticed right away that something was wrong. Marnie's husband's car was still in the driveway with the windows down and bags of groceries sitting untouched on the passenger seat.

Marnis cellphone wallet and a receipt showing that the groceries were purchased at [00:24:00] 11:12 AM the day before were found. Among the items left behind in the car, the officers knocked on the door several times, but there was no answer. But there were lights and ceiling fans inside the home that were on the army.

Officers felt concerned enough to call the police to come check things out. When the police arrived, they found a gruesome scene. Marni was on the bedroom floor at the foot of the bed, barely clinging to life. She was making gurgling noises and one of her fingers twitched just slightly. She was fully nude except for an unfastened bra draped over her shoulders and her body showed clear signs of a struggle.

Her neck and wrists were tightly wrapped with a white medical tape and severe abrasions on her wrist. Suggested that she had fought desperately to try and free herself. The injuries on her wrists were so deep they were equivalent to second degree burns. Marni had bruises on her chest, knees, and pelvic area, as well as scratches and [00:25:00] abrasions all over her body.

Her back had indentation marks from the bed rails, which indicated that she had been pressed up against them for quite some time. Doctors determined that oxygen deprivation had led to severe and irreversible brain damage. Marnie's brain continued to swell until eventually it shut down her breathing and doctors had to put her on a ventilator.

Three days later, she was declared brain dead and her family made the difficult decision to remove her from life support. The medical examiner later concluded that Marni had been sexually assaulted, and that her cause of death was the delayed result of ligature strangulation. Months earlier in June of that same year, 17-year-old Tabitha Bosel was walking to her telemarketing job in Augusta, Georgia when she encountered Ronaldo Rivera.

It's unknown exactly how he convinced her to go with him, but he lured her into his car, completely unaware of the horror that awaited her. [00:26:00] Aldo drove Tabitha to a secluded area where she fought for her life as he raped and sodomized her before, strangling her first with his arm, and then with her own shirt.

After Tabitha was dead, Aldo disposed of her body in a wooden area off an exit on Interstate 20 and tossed her clothing on the side of the highway for months. Tabitha's fate remained a mystery, but all that changed on October 14th when Aldo, who was now in custody led investigators to her remains.

Officers from both the county and the sheriff's department found human skeletal remains buried beneath leaves and debris in a secluded wooded area in Columbia County. And we have more to get into after one last break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. And now back to the episode. So before the break, authorities are investigating Ronaldo Rivera.

At this point, he has confessed to multiple murders, but they're trying to see if there is a connection between him and Dale Denwoody. These stunning [00:27:00] confessions drove authorities to intensify their efforts to determine whether or not Ronaldo was involved in Dale's disappearance. He fit the profile. He also had a history of attacking petite blonde women, and he had been in the Columbia area at that time.

Reynaldo is also responsible for the murders of 18-year-old Tiffany Wilson and 17-year-old Melissa Denes in 1999. But unfortunately, the details about their murders are not widely known. Ronaldo told authorities that he raped around 200 sex workers in the DC area as well as South Carolina, but that he didn't kill anyone prior to 1999.

Police suspect that there are other victims of Ronaldo that they just don't know about, but in the end he was never officially tied to any other cases, including Dale. In August of 20 12, 20 years after Dale vanished, investigators made another push for answers and announced a $20,000 reward for information, as well as an age progressed photo of what Dale [00:28:00] might look like.

At 43 years old, police still had no conclusive evidence that Dale was dead or alive, and they hoped the image would reignite public interest and to generate new leads. Dale's parents, Dan and Jean, made another heartfelt plea for someone to come forward. Jean was emotional, as she said. Quote, I don't know that Dale is safe or where she is.

I don't really think that someone from Mars came here and took her, but someone did. 20 years after the abduction of my child, I still cannot rest easy because I don't know where she is. Quote. The family even took an unusual approach and they release their personal phone numbers in hopes that someone somewhere might be willing to call them instead of the police.

I think that's amazing they did that. But it scares me because me, you hear so much. Yeah. Like even families who don't have anything out there like that, like their personal phone number. We know we're friends with somebody who got like a false lead [00:29:00] on their, in a text message, but it was a scam. Right.

There's just people out there that just do. Things that you can't understand just to be a nuisance. So the years continued to pass, but the pain never dulled for the Denwitty. In 2018 on the 25th anniversary, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lot spoke to the state about the impact the case had on his department.

He said that Dale's parents still called regularly, sometimes in the middle of the night because they were unable to sleep. Sheriff lot said quote, I can see the pain in their eyes and hear it in their voices, but they are still focused and that has fueled us. That actually gave me chills. 'cause man, that is just, I can't imagine going through this all those years and still even the police still getting these calls, it has to break their heart too to know that they don't have anything new to give them and they have to just be waiting for the day that they can.

Dale's brother Drew also spoke about how their family had never given up and said they want answers [00:30:00] more than anything. By this time, investigators had followed up on more than a thousand tips, but none of them had led to Dale. The search had led investigators to dig up bones that ended up being from a deer checking properties with ground penetrating radar, and tearing up off a floor at a five points home to find the cause of a foul odor and pulling a car from a pond.

Investigators had traveled across the Southeast and as far as Las Vegas and Minnesota to interview criminals who claim to know something or claimed that they were ready to confess. But the stories they told were all easily debunked. The FBI state and local authorities still check for new suggestions monthly and investigate any captured serial killers or kidnappers who have any ties to Columbia and DNA from any unidentified bodies is compared to Dale's DNA.

In the fall of 2021, nearly three decades after Dale vanished, a new rumor began to spread through Columbia, that the police had finally identified a person of interest in her [00:31:00] disappearance. The speculation started when Fitz News reported that a woman had come forward to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to report a sexual assault, and during this woman's interview, she revealed something chilling.

She said the man who allegedly assaulted her had made a very unsettling comment. They said, you remind me of Dale Dinwitty. Investigators were immediately interested in who this perpetrator was, and we're not going to name the person because the charges against them were later dropped. But the suspect was a prominent attorney in Columbia who was also accused of committing lewd acts on a minor in 2002 and 2004.

And for those reasons, his house was actually raided in March of 2021. The police that were investigating the assault of the woman in 2021 looked into the possibility that this attorney had been involved in Dale's disappearance as he was known to seek out the attention of younger women, and he frequently hung out in the [00:32:00] five points area.

He even loved the Bar Jungle gyms and he was good friends with one of the bartenders that was actually working on the night. Dale was last seen. However, despite this being a very promising need at first, the police ended up being able to prove that there was no connection there. It was just another rumor that had gotten people's hopes up, so upsetting it.

May of 2022 investigators spoke with the Deck podcast about Dale's case. They said that after decades of investigating, there were still some indisputable facts that shaped their theory of what happened that night. The last confirmed sighting of Dale was at 1:30 AM on September 24th, 1992, and the last person confirmed to have seen her was a doorman at Jungle Gyms.

He saw her walking north away from the bar and in a hurry, despite five points being crowded that night. No one else ever reported seeing her after that moment. Investigators had concluded that Dale likely made it out of the crowded bar district before she was [00:33:00] abducted, and they believe she was taken somewhere isolated and away from potential witnesses.

They haven't been able to rule out the possibility that she was taken right there in the middle of the nightlife without anyone noticing, but they believe she had walked away from the area. Police are sure of one thing and that's that Dale was taken against her will. One of the lead investigators, detective Reese, is convinced that she was abducted and murdered by someone that she didn't know, and that the killer planned the crime in advance and just waited for the right moment to strike.

It's believed that Dale was being held against her will during the final minutes of her life. On September 24th, 2022, exactly 30 years after Dale disappeared, the Columbia Police Department released a public statement that included messages from her parents, quote, our family and friends still hope and pray each day that someone will come forward with information that will lead us to Dale in quote.

But no new information is [00:34:00] surfaced and no one has ever been charged. Dale's case remains the oldest missing person's case in Columbia, South Carolina. At the time of her disappearance, Dale was five feet tall and weighed 98 pounds. She had light brown hair with blonde highlights, brown eyes, and dimples.

She was last seen wearing an olive green long sleeve shirt, theta blue jeans, a bright blue LL bean jacket that was tied around her waist and new white running shoes. If you have any information, please call the Midlands Crime Stoppers at 8 8 8 2 7 4 6 3 7 2, and all tipster can remain anonymous. I was actually very surprised to hear that this was the longest missing persons case.

Me too, in South Carolina. Me too. But it's so, it's just so shocking and that there were so many people around. For her to, that's one of the most frustrating, I feel like, things to, um, to come to terms with and to accept is that it was not, uh, you know, it was a very [00:35:00] crowded night. It was a crowded place, and it's just that thought of right.

Uh, how is there not someone who has seen something that just didn't, hasn't come forward, or maybe didn't realize they saw something that was, uh, could be valuable information to the police. Whether it's just seeing a car that seemed like it was out of place, or a person that didn't look like they belong there or anything.

You know, a lot of times people see things like that and don't report it. You know, we've talked about that before about, um, just not knowing if something is important or not. That's like just one of the hardest things about this case is because there was so many people there and just not even knowing who they were, you know, who all was there.

There's no way of knowing to even find them and ask them any questions and um, yeah, it's just really sad to think about a day a time when there's no surveillance cameras. There's not a lot of cell phones, so there wasn't, um, there's not a lot of leads that they had to go on, and that's just really sad.

Absolutely. And then all the friends who left thinking the other friend had her, [00:36:00] like, I can't imagine waking up the next morning and thinking, oh my gosh, I thought she rode this person. But it seemed like her friends and family really rallied and did as much as they could. Yeah, the police interviewed so many people.

Um, and I don't know, I just, I, I am so hopeful in all of these cases that. Families will get answers. They'll get answers. Yeah. Yeah. And I hope it's sooner rather than later for her family especially. Definitely. Okay guys, that was our story for this week. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back next week.

Same time, same place. New story. Have a great week. [00:37:00] Bye.