BENTONVILLE — Benton County Sheriff Kelley Cradduck hopes a fresh perspective will solve a 24-year-old murder case.
Dana Stidham, 18, was last seen alive shortly after 3 p.m. July 25, 1989. Her skeletal remains were found on Sept. 17, 1989. An investigation has been open ever since.
Cradduck said his office will take a new look at Stidham’s case.
At A Glance
Who To Call
Anyone with information concerning Dana Stidham’s death, can call the Benton County Sheriff’s Office at 479-271-1009.
“We only have two choices,” Cradduck said. “We can do nothing or continue to looks for answers. Doing nothing is not an option. If it was my daughter I would expect law enforcement to continue to look for justice in this case.”
Shawn Holloway, a major at the Sheriff’s Office, has started to review the file to get familiar with the case. The next step will be to digitize and organize thousands of documents that are in case file boxes. Audio tapes from the case also will be converted to a digital format. Holloway said he was afraid to listen to the audio tapes because he feared doing so could damage the old tapes.
“I think there will be new areas to pursue as we continue to comb through the case file,” Cradduck said.
Holloway plans to contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation to see whether the bureau can provide any resources or information that will aid in the investigation.
Cradduck and Holloway would not discuss suspects, but Holloway did say, “There’s a group of people that interest us.”
Holloway was referring to individuals investigators may have considered suspects over the past two decades.
“We are not ruling out this was done by one individual,” Cradduck said.
Stidham was going to a Bella Vista grocery store to purchase medication for her father when she was last seen alive.
Her gray Dodge Omni was found along U.S. 71 in Bella Vista. The driver’s side window was half down. The right rear tire was low, but still drivable. Some of her clothes were later found off Ealing Circle in Bella Vista. A squirrel hunter found her remains in a shallow creek off Beal Lane near the intersection of Arkansas highways 340 and 94.
Her remaining clothes were found buried about 8 to 10 feet from the body. Rings belonging to her were found 3 feet from her clothes. Another ring believed to have been worn by her on the day she disappeared has never been found.
The state medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, but the cause of death could not be determined.
“No one deserved to die like Dana did,” her mother, Georgia Stidham, said around the 20th anniversary of her daughter’s death. “It’s especially tough because someone out there knows how Dana died.”
Stidham’s case is a priority right now for Cradduck, but he also knows his office has other unsolved cases.
“They are all important,” Cradduck said.
Cradduck plans to put together a cold case unit to look into unsolved murders in the county.