Darlene "Dee Dee" Webb (9 of Diamonds, Florida)

D. Webb The Nine of Diamonds, from Florida. The night was still young when 20-year-old Darlene left her friends at a local Daytona Beach bar to get some shut-eye before work the following morning. But little did her friends know as she walked out into the darkness of the night. That'd be the last time they'd ever see her. Today, detectives are still as baffled as they were back in 1983..

It was early on a Saturday morning when Fran Webb awoke to a call no one ever wants to get. It was her 20-year-old daughter's boss on the other end, asking why she hadn't shown up to work that morning. Right then and there, Fran's stomach dropped, she knew her daughter. Darlene had agreed to cover Saturday's opening shift at Chick-fil-A after a manager came down with the flu and everyone who knew Darlene knew. She was dependable through and through, like it was completely unheard of for her to be a no-call, no-show, so, naturally, Fran was worried.

But she didn't let herself completely panic. Just yet. Nobody's perfect. And Darlene was a busy lady, balancing her college classes with being an assistant manager at Chick-fil-A. Maybe she just overslept or completely spaced the shift that she'd agreed to take on. And this was easy enough to check. Because Darlene and Fran lived together, according to NBC News, Fran rushed to Darlene's room and found it empty.

Not only empty, but untouched, like her bed hadn't been slept in. Puzzled, Fran stepped outside to see if her daughter's car was out there in the driveway, but it wasn't. And there was something else outside that caught her eye the porch light was on.

And that might not sound like a big deal, but at the Webb House, they had a tried-and-true routine. That the last one home at night was supposed to turn off the porch light. So the fact that the light was still burning really solidified the fact that Darlene hadn't come home at any point during the night. Fran recalled that the last time she'd seen Darlene had been the previous night at around 11 p..m. When Darlene told her she was going out with some friends and promised she wouldn't be out too late. So maybe she'd just ended up staying with one of those friends.

It was a usual group that she'd spent plenty of long nights with. Before. A woman and a man who worked at the mall chick-fil-a with her, then another guy who worked at a different store in the mall. But when Fran began calling around, none of them knew where she was last. They knew she was leaving the bar at around 1.30 in the morning and walking back to her car, which was parked just a block away. In the 600 block of North Grandview Avenue, near Seabreeze Boulevard.

Fran raced to that location, and there it was still sitting there, Darlene's white chevy Chevette. Now, unfortunately, this part isn't well-documented in the case file. So detectives today don't know if the car was locked or unlocked when it was found, or if it was broken into or completely untouched. I don't know why today's investigators don't ask Fran herself because she is still around. I don't know if they don't think it's important, or maybe they did ask and she just doesn't remember. Our reporting team tried to reach out to get an interview with Fran for this episode, but the family declined for personal reasons. So we couldn't exactly get to the bottom of this ourselves either.

But either way, what we do know is that. When Fran either peeped inside or got into the car, she noticed that all of Darlene's belongings were there. Her coat, purse, money and reading glasses. The only things missing were Darlene herself and her keys. Even more alarming than any of that, though, was what Fran saw inside the car that clearly wasn't her daughter's. Here's now-retired reserve Sergeant Jimmy Flint with the Daytona Beach Police Department.

After the report was filed, the family met with an officer at Darlene's car to show him what they'd found. The officer made note of the family's discovery, documented what was found in the car. And then I hope you're sitting down. The dude just left didn't take anything from the car as evidence, not even the cigarette butts didn't have the car impounded and searched. Just nothing if your jaw is on the floor, like mine was when I first heard this. I gotta be honest, I don't really have a great explanation. I mean, best-case scenario. The officer just didn't realize the value that evidence would hold one day.

This was 1983, and the debut of forensic DNA testing was still a few years off. But to me, the more likely scenario is that. He was going through the motions and taking a report of a missing girl who he thought would just turn back up on her own.

Just waited.

It wasn't until four days after the report was filed that police went to the local media and Darlene's disappearance finally hit the news. But even then, investigators still weren't ready to put the foul play label on anything, the Orlando Sentinel reported Quote. Police called her disappearance suspicious, but said they have few facts and no reason at this time to believe foul play is involved. And with that, the tip, floodgates were opened. Mostly supposed sightings of her here and there that were quickly discredited.

And it wasn't until February 2nd, 11 days after Darlene was last seen, that the first big tip came across detectives radar.

30 in the morning, she heard a female screaming. They came outside, they didn't see anything, but they saw a dark colored car speeding away on Grandview, northbound, with their lights off. And she remembers that it had, like a temporary tag or something, but she couldn't recall the numbers.

The woman said she had called in twice, once in the morning hours of January 22nd after she witnessed the possible abduction. And again after the news coverage of Darlene. But it was only after the second call that the information got to detectives. Whether or not she actually did call on the 22nd hasn't been confirmed. But if she truly did, it's possible that her message fell through the bureaucratic cracks before it made it to the right person. Or maybe whoever at the police department took her information just assumed that she was overreacting to people enjoying a vacation.

They hadn't just laid eyes on her, they had this whole weird interaction with her.

According to the family, the mystery woman seemed confused and asked them for a ride to the Salvation Army. She said that she'd been living on the streets in downtown Daytona Beach, so like the good people they were. The family agreed to take her to the Salvation Army and even offered to buy her ice cream, which she accepted. And then she said, Boy is it nice to have a family.

And they were like, Yeah, that looks a lot like a woman who works here named Cheryl Darneski. They agreed with what the reporting family and the Salvation Army people said that she seemed kind of off. They also noted that Cheryl didn't have a permanent address and was currently staying at a local campground, but no one knew which campground. This was the best lead they'd had since Darlene went missing. So, investigators wasted no time going around to local campgrounds. And while they didn't find Cheryl or Darlene, or whoever this woman was, they did get some interesting information from a manager of one of the campgrounds, he said. A couple of weeks prior, a woman named Darlene stayed there, along with a man and two children.

They stayed in a small camp, but they'd left over two weeks ago. And that's kind of where the paper trail ends for that wild goose chase of a lead. I don't know if police ever tracked down the Darlene from the campground, and Sgt. Flint said he's pretty sure police never spoke to the Cheryl from the radio station.

Did she ever show back up to work? Did they dig and find out that Cheryl Darneski was her real identity? She wasn't Darlene? I don't know. For my own sanity, I want to assume that they followed up on these things as best they could. Determined that the whole thing was some kind of mix-up and decided that Cheryl was a different person.

But I can't say that for sure, and I can't help but wonder if there was more that could have been done. So the Cheryl Darneski lead faded out. And by the time April rolled around, the investigation was losing steam fast, so detectives turned back to the most solid tip they'd received.

Yet the woman who'd heard the female screaming the night Darlene disappeared. The manager of the Bavarian beer garden, yes. The woman had already told them she couldn't remember the license plate number. But detectives were hopeful that info was maybe just tucked away in her mind somewhere. So they set her up with a hypnotist.

Surprisingly, under hypnosis, the woman was able to recall some numbers, but no letters. The problem was she gave them three different versions of what the numbers could have been. So ultimately, it was nothing police could trace. That hypnosis session was kind of investigators best shot at a hail Mary, because after that, Darlene's case went ice cold. It would stay that way for over a year, until September of 1984, when a tipster came forward and got everyone's hopes up all over again.

Here's a voice actor reading from a supplementary report. We've changed the tipster's name to a pseudonym.

And he believes that it was a Saturday morning when he was turning the corner sweeping the street, he heard a girl screaming. When he looked around, he saw a white male with long hair pulling a girl into a car. Vehicle, believed to be a 75-77 Monte Carlo white with a black top vehicle, had a nameplate on the front.

Unknown female appeared to be about 18-20 years of age. Long hair vehicle was parked on the northwest corner lot. He advised that this is not an unusual thing to see at that hour in that area. The bars are letting out, people are horsing around with each other.

After reading the story in the paper about the girl Darlene Webb, from the time frame plus the same location, he feels it could be the same girl.

Because even with all of the time that had passed, still no one had come forward with one bad thing to say about Darlene. According to the Orlando Sentinel, everyone, from family members to co-workers, said she was quote reliable, dependable and conscientious.

Fran said Quote In our hearts, we know she is still alive. Until they show me the actual body or other physical evidence, I'll go on looking for her. And that's exactly what they did. Darlene's family continued searching, putting up posters around town advertising a reward, scouring the streets of Daytona Beach, looking for anything that could lead them to her. But they kept coming up empty handed.

As the years passed by, there were small breaks in the clouds. Every so often, investigators would be notified of unidentified remains somewhere in the country that loosely matched Darlene's description. They'd wait with bated breath. But dental records or DNA would ultimately bring police right back to the drawing board. And they stayed at that drawing board until 2006, when there finally seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel. Coming all the way from California, in the form of a photograph you see. In July 2006, authorities in Los Angeles County suddenly decided to go public with some evidence that they'd recovered. In the 80s while investigating a convicted murderer, slash rapist and suspected serial killer.

William Bill Bradford had been convicted of two killings in 1988, but investigators had good reason to think he was responsible for far more than those two slayings. In fact, at his own trial, Bradford addressed the jury, saying, Think of how many you don't even know about. On a now defunct website, L.A. Law Enforcement published 54 photographs taken by Bradford because investigators believed that to be his M..O. Photographing young women before sexually assaulting or murdering them. And 54 of the photos recovered from his apartment showed women they had yet to identify. Now, why? L.A. authorities waited two decades to try and identify women in these photos. I don't think they've ever explicitly stated the why.

But anyways, not long after those photos were published for all to see, authorities 2,500 miles away in Daytona Beach, get a tip. That photograph, 33, bore a striking resemblance to Darlene Webb.

You can see that photograph, as well as photos of Darlene for comparison on our website, TheDeckPodcast.

Com. Soon enough, Daytona Beach authorities announced that they were taking another look at Darlene's case, specifically looking closely at the possible Bradford connection. But right away, things weren't entirely adding up. Investigators in L.A. were positive. That photo, 33, was taken at Bradford's apartment in California, and according to the Orlando Sentinel, Darlene had never gone to California.

So either she had just randomly decided to travel there somehow without her car, or Bradford had picked her up in Florida, driven her thousands of miles back to California, taken her photo and then killed her. By the way, as far as I know, these photographs weren't dated, so I don't think there was a way to know if Photo 33 was taken before or after Darlene disappeared. Either way, this is all a bit of a stretch. But this was detectives best lead yet on a case that was more than two decades old.

So they persisted. They worked alongside L.A. County investigators to learn more about Bradford, and they discovered that he actually did live in Florida, specifically the Panhandle, in 1980, and he allegedly sexually assaulted a woman while he was there. Now, that was three years before Darlene went missing.

But it was at least something, because it showed that he was familiar with the state and up to no good during the time he was there. When Fran was shown photo 33, she thought the picture could possibly be her daughter, but it could just as likely be a doppelganger. She noted that below the nose looked a bit different, and her certainty that it was Darlene couldn't be more than 50 percent.

I don't know, but if this whole possible Bradford connection to Darlene got your attention, like it did mine. I recommend checking out the full episode we have on him and his victims on the show Park Predators. The title of that one in the first season is called The Photographer. I'll link out to that in our show notes. But anyways, with nothing concrete to prove the theory.

True, the lead eventually fizzled, like so many before it. But whatever hope might have remained in the back of people's minds that Bradford held. The answer to. Darlene's disappearance died with him when he succumbed to cancer while on death row in 2008. For all of Darlene's loved ones who believed Photograph, 33, to be her, I'm sure this was a crushing blow. After 25 years. It probably seemed like this was their last chance at closure, but they kept pushing for justice and looking for answers.

And in 2009, Fran learned something she hoped would finally set police down the right path.

Fran told investigators that she found out the female friend who was out with Darlene the night she disappeared. We're going to call her Beth. Well, she found out that Beth had never been formally interviewed. Detectives checked the case file and Fran was right. Beth's name wasn't in there. In fact, it looked like none of those three friends who were out with Darlene that night had been interviewed before.

Now, I suppose you could make an argument that investigators didn't think there was foul play at first. So maybe they didn't think it necessary to properly interview those who last saw her. But remember, eventually, police did come around to the fact that she didn't disappear on her own. So why didn't they at least question Beth then how the hell did this slip through the cracks? To me, this is truly inexcusable.

You know, some critics of this show say that it's all police bashing, and I'm too hard on past detectives. Police bashing is not what this is about. We want to highlight the work that new investigators are doing to try and solve these cases. It's not an easy job to have to pick up the baton and run with it, especially when someone buried the baton 30 years ago and didn't leave a map for you to find it. Everything is clearer. In hindsight, I know that.

But excusing poor police work doesn't help anyone. How do we ensure that mistakes don't happen again if we don't recognize them as mistakes? And for no one who put eyes on this case to realize that Beth had never been talked to before. For that to have come from Fran decades later, that is a mistake that can be learned from. Never assume all of the basics were covered and always cover the basics.

However, it came to be that this is the situation they were in. Detectives in 2009 weren't going to stand for it, and they wanted to correct what previous detectives failed to do. They reached out to Beth, who agreed to meet, and, by the way, Beth said she had been contacted by police after Darlene went missing, but she confirmed that an actual interview never happened. So, finally, she and investigators sat down for a conversation that should have happened 26 years prior. Here's what Beth had to say.

Back in the day, she, Darlene and two guys that they knew often went out to the Beachcomber club on Friday nights. Like it was an established routine for them. They would meet up at the guy's apartment after work and then go to the bar from there, and that's exactly what they did. The day Darlene disappeared, they all met at the apartment. Beth hopped in the car with Darlene to Carpool, and the guys drove separately to the Beachcomber.

Beth didn't remember Darlene carrying her purse into the bar, She might have just slipped the money that she needed into her pocket and left her purse behind. Which is an important detail to police because it meant that Darlene could have just not made it back to her car that night. A scenario I wasn't even considering up until I learned this from the detective. I'd always thought that she made it back to her car and could have been taken from there just because her purse was there. But now that might not have been the case. At the bar, Beth said that they just drank beer and there were no drugs involved whatsoever.

After hanging out for a bit, Darlene announced that she needed to leave early, but Beth couldn't recall why she needed to leave early. Beth told her it was fine, she'd just catch a ride with the guys back to the apartment, she said. Darlene didn't seem intoxicated, and she didn't recall anything happening at the bar or any strangers looking at her. Weirdly. At the end of the interview, Beth added that she thought Darlene had a boyfriend at the time. Someone who was away at college, who went by the nickname Tree. But things get a bit confusing here because Beth later clarified and said that Tree wasn't Darlene's boyfriend. He was a co-worker of theirs at Chick-fil-A.

But she did think Darlene had a boyfriend at the time who was away at college, whoever Tree and the mysterious boyfriend were. That's still a bit unclear to this day because Sergeant Flint told us that, to his knowledge, no follow-up was done. Flint also noted that after Beth was interviewed, neither of the two guys who were out with them that night were talked to. Now, if we give 2009 investigators the benefit of the doubt, maybe they assume that those two guys wouldn't have anything different to add than what Beth told them. But it's a hole in the story. And it means that the police department, now, all these years later, had to try and fill in these holes and these cracks left by 2009 investigators and before.

And I can't help but wonder if those two guys saw something Beth didn't. Maybe they had a different angle at the bar and they did see a stranger looking at Darlene weirdly, or perhaps they had a different perspective of how she was acting that night. But until those two men are spoken to, that's something we just don't know the answer to. If they're still around and hear this, police are looking for anything. They would love to talk to you, even if you don't think you have anything meaningful to add.

Trying to piece this thing together has been an uphill battle, and even the smallest bits of information and insights could be a game changer for them. Since Beth's interview in 2009, Darlene's case has seen little movement, but Darlene hasn't been forgotten. She has friends who still call into the police department to check on her case. In fact, that's how Sergeant Flint first got involved in the case when one of Darlene's high school classmates called him up.

And she always wondered what happened with the case. And she asked me, was the cigarette butts ever tested? And I says, What cigarette butts? And so that's how I found out about the cigarette butts being in the ashtray.

She's never been recovered, we don't know whether she's dead or alive. So if we had a body, whether alive or dead, then that would give us really a starting point to try to make sense of what happened. She's like, she's disappeared off the face of the earth.

We always want to believe that the person is alive, but she hasn't been heard from, and so I can't say that she's dead. I just wish we had something to give the family closure one way or another. But I'm hoping, one thing with this podcast, that maybe that will jog somebody's memory.

Or maybe someone has told a loved one that they did something and they just didn't know where it was at. And maybe they're listening to this and says, Well, you know, that's what this person told me, he did, but he didn't tell me where. And that might be a lead. You can only hope, there's always hope.

Could be slim, but there's always that possibility of hope. I'm thinking that stranger things have happened before.

And I know she is, I just got to find her. We asked retired Sergeant Flint what kind of tips he's looking for in this case.

And I killed a girl, but I did it in Daytona. But that's all they said, and they just didn't think that there was enough information to bring that forward.

Darlene was last seen wearing a printed skirt, a white blouse and white flats. She had on a gold necklace with a buttercup pendulum with a diamond, a gold chain with her first name engraved on it, a necklace with the Virgin Mary pendulum and her Seabreeze High School class ring. She's 5'5 to 5'9, 120 to 130 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. She would be 61 years old today. And don't forget, if you want to take a deeper dive into William B.

Bradford and his crimes. Check out the episode titled The Photographer on season one of Park Predators again. That's going to be linked out right in the show notes.

The Deck is an audiochuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast..com. So what do you think, Chuck, do you approve?