The Deck

R&B radio fans in Dayton, Ohio knew Kelly Dee Wilson as her on air name Nikki Brooks. When Wilson turned up murdered in her apartment after her show in March 2000, the community was shocked. 

Rebecca Harvey, an 18-year-old with plans to marry her boyfriend Steven Hendricks, was found dead in a house fire in rural southern Indiana in 1988. Investigators said she was doused with gasoline and set on fire before her killer took off. Steven Hendricks hasn’t been seen since. 

Silene Eaddy, who sometimes asked people to call her Erica, was known for her sharp wit. She was last seen walking away from her adoptive mother’s home in Columbia, South Carolina in 2004. Her body was found later, having been beaten and burned and left in the woods. 

The bodies of Stewart Simmons and Margaret Walden were found in the fall of 1982 on the banks of the San Juan River, right where Colorado meets New Mexico. For years they went unidentified, and were even buried without names to mark their graves. When a Colorado detective decided to find out who they were, he would go on to find out even more … uncovering their names, their stories and the likely truth behind their murders, decades after they were killed. 

The mission for The Deck is to shine a new light on the cases within the cold case playing card decks to hopefully help detectives bring long awaited justice to victims and their loved ones. We have set up a grant under Season of Justice to offer help to those who are out there in the world trying to get these cases solved. Please visit SeasonOfJustice...

The last time Raquel Ramirez’s family saw her, she was sound asleep at home on the couch. For 37 years her family has waited to find out how and why she ended up murdered and left under a highway overpass.

Linda Smith was asleep in her bed in Pocatello, Idaho when she awoke to a man in her bedroom. The man took her, carrying her out through the living room where her little brother Ben was sleeping, and into his van in the back alley. Ben, who was 9 at the time, tried to run after them but was shoved down. He hasn’t seen his sister since, and witnessing her abduction has haunted him for decades.

For years, some law enforcement agencies have replaced the faces of traditional playing card decks with images of missing and murdered people and distributed those cards in prisons hoping inmates would come forward with information needed to crack these cold cases wide open. Now, audiochuck is dealing you in...