As 1981 was drawing to a close, a young girl in Canada would disappear while trying to thumb a lift.
Fourteen-year-old Dana Bradley had been hanging out at a friend’s house in St. John’s, Newfoundland on December 14th, but at around five p.m., decided she had better start heading toward home, as her mother was having a birthday celebration that night. Like many young people of the era, she had no qualms about hitching a ride, and according to witnesses, was picked up by a dark-haired male driving a 1973 to 1976 Plymouth Valiant, or possibly a Dodge Dart.
Four days later, on December 18th, a man out looking for a Christmas tree in the woods near Maddox Cove came upon Dana’s battered remains. She had been sexually assaulted, and murdered by several blows to the head from an unknown blunt instrument. Some sources claim that the body was found posed as though for burial, and that the killer had tucked the girl’s school books under her arm.
In 1986, a man named David Somerton from the town of Mount Pearl confessed to police that he had killed the teenager after picking her up hitchhiking. Authorities looked into his involvement and charged him with the murder, but then Somerton recanted his statement, claiming that it had been coerced. As no other solid evidence of his guilt could be found, he was eventually cleared of suspicion in the slaying, though he did subsequently spend two years in jail on a charge of public mischief stemming from the false confession.
Another possible suspect in the homicide, a convicted pedophile named Tom Carey, came to light in 2014 after a neighbor claimed to have recovered memories of not only being molested by Carey as a child, but also of seeing Carey killing Dana Bradley and stuffing her into the trunk of his car. Investigators looked into these accusations, but failed to substantiate them, and in 2016, DNA confirmed that Carey was not responsible for the crime.
The investigation is ongoing.
Crime Immemorial 