Our card this week is Tanya Dawn Knight, the three of clubs from Kansas. The search for answers in Tanya's case began after her remains were found by a farmer on June 7, 1997. It's a search that has been ongoing for decades, but when Detective Natalie Bright of the Johnson County Sheriff's Office picked up Tanya's file in 2020, she realized that the reason the case was called might be because of all the time lost early on, and the missteps of those who came before her. You see, Tanya had been reported missing six months before her remains were found, but at the time law enforcement wrote her off as a runaway. Sure, they looked around some, but when someone said that they'd gotten a phone call from Tanya, they were quick to call off ground searches that they had planned for the very field that she would later be found in six months later. Coincidence? Or a strategic misdirection that played right into old tropes? This case has layers, and Detective Bright is going to keep peeling them back one by one until she gets to the truth of what happened to Tanya Dawn Knight. From Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. The Beanfield in Spring Hill, Kansas, where Tanya Knights remains were found, was a couple of acres in size. It was situated alongside Highway 169 and partially bordered by the local cemetery. It was her skull that the farmer found first, and further searches by authorities uncovered more remains. Not buried, but concealed, deep in some hedges along the edge of the property. And despite how decomposed they were, Detective Bright told us investigators at the scene had a suspicion of who these remains belonged to. I think they had a good idea that was more than likely Tanya. She was the only missing person, case out there that I'm aware of, that I think that they were aware of, and when they immediately found her remains, they identified her through dental records. 15-year-old Tanya Dawn Knight had been reported missing six months earlier, back on December 8, 1996. It was her father, Frank, and her stepmother, Judy, who contacted the police after she didn't return home from a sleepover at a friend's house the day prior. The police entered Tanya's information into the National Crime Information Center, listing her as a runaway. But they still checked around town some themselves. There was an even bigger physical search plan for her. But at the last minute, the search was called off. Tanya's step uncle went to the Spring Hill Police Department in person and reported two officials that he had spoke with Tanya on the phone. And he told them that Tanya was fine and that she was going to come back home. As soon as her family life was better, as soon as she got along with her stepmom, she was going to come back. Tanya and her stepmother didn't always get along, and the police seemed quick to accept this explanation for her absence. Family drama should be back kind of thing. When he reported that, they were going to do a search for Tanya in the field over there and by the cemetery. Because of what the step uncle reported, that search was called off. The idea that she had runaway just never added up to her mother, Lori. And she conveyed those feelings to law enforcement. I did have a conversation with them, and I said, you know, she's not her runaway. For one, she didn't take no clothes. She didn't take no money, you know, she didn't take any of that. If you're going to runaway, you take some of that stuff with you. Lori stayed in Arizona where she lived, just on the off chance that she was wrong and Tanya would turn up there. Tanya had moved to Kansas about a year and a half before she went missing to live with her father, stepmother, and step sister. She started doing real good in school, a lot better than she was out here in these schools. And she seemed to like that school and, you know, getting involved in the activities. Despite the long distance, the mother and daughter regularly kept in touch. She would, you know, tell me what she'd done lately, like went spend the night with a friend or, you know, she did get a part-time job at one of the grocery stores there in Spring Hill. And she was, she'd had her drivers permit working on that. The thing that Lori kept coming back to is that they called off the search because apparently Tanya had called someone and said that she had problems with her stepmother and she was gonna, like, lay low. But if that were true, Lori knew that Tanya's first call would be to her. She knew if she was having a problem back there with her dad or anybody, all she had to do was call me or her grandparents out here and we would be on our way together. So she wasn't a runaway and I think parents know their kids better than the authorities. But for six months, you know, it was just, you know, kind of sitting and waiting to see if we heard anything or, you know, try to contact the authorities to see if they'd heard anything yet. So it was, it was pretty upsetting because you worry. At the end of those six months, the very feel that they were supposed to search was now a crime scene, which the smaller Spring Hill PD turned over to the larger Johnson County Sheriff's Office. Their texts were sifting through to collect what was left of Tanya. If that search was not called off, I think they would have found Tanya's remains. Then I think we would have been in a better spot than we are today. I promised you that this case has layers, didn't I? When Tanya's remains were found in June, that's when the step uncle said, I lied. Well, only partially lied, he clarified. He really did believe the call happened. It's just he didn't get the call. His co-workers daughter, who knew Tanya did, but she didn't want to get involved. So he stepped forward, thinking that he was helping. Law enforcement obviously interviewed the girl, but it's not like things got cleared up. Yes, she said she really had gotten a call, and she didn't want to come forward herself, so she told her father, who then told Tanya's step uncle. But the details of the call were shaky, not the kind of things anyone should feel confident enough to call off a search for a missing teen. According to the friend, Tanya said all this stuff about wanting to stay away till her home life got better. Except, let's be clear here, Tanya never even said her name on the call. His friend thought that whoever it was sounded like Tanya. Now I'm not saying that she didn't get the call, but we're dealing with teenagers here. It's possible she was pranked. Another part of dealing with teenagers is they apparently ask zero follow-up questions. Who was Tanya with? Friend doesn't know, can't say. Though Tanya mentioned being in Overland Park a little over 30 minutes away. So you might be thinking, okay, well, where exactly did she call from? Let's just pull those records. It's 1996 when this took place, we're not talking about the dark ages. But Detective Bright told our reporter, Annie Roderick-Jones, that phone records are not part of the case file that was passed down to her in 2020. You know, I'm not 100% sure why those phone records were not obtained. It could have been because of the delay in time. It could have been because six months later when her remains were found, they'd go, "Factor, maybe that phone call wasn't important or maybe it wasn't real, they're not 100% sure." And I think when it was initially reported, they believed them, you know, because you're going to believe a family member. And I think that's maybe why they didn't initially get those phone records is because they wanted to believe that she did talk to them. It seems unlikely that Tanya talked to anyone after she was reported missing. Detective Bright believes that she may have been in that soybean field for nearly the entire time her family was looking for her. Because with her remains, they also found her bra, one clasp torn, and more to the point, the jeans that she was last seen wearing the night that she went missing. "She was wearing a dark t-shirt and she was wearing a darker color windbreaker, I think like a dark blue one." Those items were never found, though there is some conflicting information out there that the jacket was found. Detective Bright confirmed that it was not nor were the pair of Nike's that she was known to be wearing. It was found though.
As an item of clothing that Tanya's parents said was not hers. In the Spring Hill, Kansas, soybean field, where Tanya night's remains were found, there was something discovered that her parents said they didn't recognize. There was a white t-shirt that was out there. It had kind of an interest in saying on it, it said, if you don't like my attitude, dial 1-800 each. Detective Bright wouldn't tell us what size this shirt was, or if anything was found on it, like blood or biologics. She's pretty tight-lipped when it comes to this. Though she confirmed a fact we found reported in the Olathe Daily News that, quote, "imperfections" described in the article as being, quote, "compatible with puncture" were found on this shirt. The conclusion that's easy to jump to when you're listening to a true crime podcast, and you know that this shirt was found near a homicide victim, is that those "imperfections" were caused by a weapon, but that's never been determined. Those could have just easily been caused by natural decay, or even animal activity. But it still begs the question, was it the killer's shirt? Was it just a piece of clothing that she owned, but her parents didn't know about? I mean, God help me if I tried to walk out of the house with a cuss word on my shirt when I was 15. Maybe she borrowed it from someone that she was hanging out with before she died. Bright is extra careful to clarify that she doesn't actually know who owned this shirt, when our reporter Annie asked if it could have been Tanya's. That's a great debate. There is not a definitive answer if that's her t-shirt on. We have different reporting. I have somebody that says it was hers, and I have numerous people that says it was not. Hers or his or theirs, this t-shirt was found inside out, as were her jeans, and that, combined with her torn bra class, begins to paint a picture for me about the motive for this crime. I don't have to stretch my imagination to get there. Sexual violence against women and girls is an all-too-familiar reality, a motive as old as time. Detective Bright won't comment on whether there were signs of a sexual assault. But truth is, much like Tanya's cause of death, they might not know. Six months of decom in an open farm field exposed to all of the elements and wildlife doesn't leave much for investigators to work with. The seasons that we go through in Kansas are very harsh. We have extreme colds, we have extreme heat, and we have rain, we have everything in between. But just because the cause of death was unclear doesn't mean the manner was. Along with some sort of traumatic injury, the specifics of which Detective Bright wouldn't get into, the totality of what they were looking at told a clear story. I think the circumstances surrounding Tanya's death are very suspicious in nature. There's no way that was a natural death. Making up for lost time, the Johnson County Sheriff's Office did something unique to try and solve the now homicide investigation they had on their hands. What we do in the Kansas City metro area, when we believe we have a big murder case or a very complex case, they call it a metro squad and they invite numerous detectives from all over the area to come together as a team. The detectives immediately scramble and they start really trying to backtrack Tanya's timeline and trying to figure out where she was last. Obviously, that starts with her parents. Her father Frank told investigators he last spoke to Tanya around 2pm on December 7, 1996, which was a Saturday. She asked to go spend the night somewhere and her dad said that she was able to. That friend was Rachel, but when Tanya didn't return home the next day and her parents called Rachel's house, guess what? Rachel was unaware that Tanya had said that she was going to go spend the night at her house. This switcheroo is like right out of the how to fool your parents' playbook. Who among us hasn't told a similar white lie to pull one over on mom and dad so you can be young and free because they just don't understand what it's like to be 15. She doesn't want stepmom and dad to know that she's going to go to kind of the party house, maybe drive around town for a few hours and so I get it. She picked a safe friend where I think she would get dads approval to spend the night. Investigators discovered that the two friends Tanya actually went out with that night were Sarah and Crystal, so investigators spoke to them. Sarah at the time had her driver's license so the girls told investigators they drove around, hung out and met up with a boy, pretty typical teen stuff. As the night went on. Sarah and Crystal wanted to go to Alita, which back in the mid-90s, Alita was kind of the more popular type town. They had more things to do because they had pool halls, they had some restaurants. That was just a great place to go hang out. Well, Tanya did not want to go with them and according to Sarah and Crystal, she wanted to go to another friend's house in Spring Hill, Kansas. That friend is someone we're calling Sean. Now, we're using a pseudonym for him at the request of detectives as they are actively working this lead. He was 16, so just a little bit older than Tanya, though he didn't go to high school with her. He had dropped out. Now, why Tanya wanted to go to Sean's rather than continue hanging out with her friends is a little unclear. But Sean's house was known to teens back then, according to Detective Bright. His house was kind of one of those split-style ranch houses. You had a garage portion out front. That's where the kids hung out. That was the hangout spot for a lot of kids back then. They didn't go into the main portion of the house. And there was a lot of times where mom and dad were not interacting with whoever was in that garage. The girls told police that they dropped Tanya off at Sean's house sometime between 8 and 10 p.m. on the night of December 7th. Sarah and Crystal told Tanya that they're probably going to spend the night in Olathe and they may not make it back. And they said if they don't come back by midnight, they're not going to be able to pick up Tanya. Back then in the 90s, if you're out past midnight and you're a younger kid driving, you're probably going to get pulled over by the cops. Fair enough. So it appeared Tanya might be flying solo the rest of the night. According to Detective Bright, Sean, on the other hand, wasn't. There was another boy at his house that night, who I'm going to call Luke, because they both are still people of interest. Now these two boys told police a pretty typical story. They hung out with Tanya, they played video games, drank, smoked a little weed. And then sometime around midnight, Tanya decided to head out. She lived just a little over a half mile from Sean's house. So she was just going to walk, like she did a lot since she didn't have her driver's license yet. Now, walking in December sounds bananas to this girl from Northern Indiana, but I looked up the temperature, would have been in like the 30s around midnight, so could be doable for a kid living in the Midwest. So the boys say that she left the house on foot, and Sean's mom still awake at the time, backed that up. So Sean's mom was first interviewed in 1997, right after Tanya's remains were found. And then she was re-interviewed shortly after that for a follow-up. She actually had a close relationship with Tanya. And that when Tanya was over at their house, she would talk to her. She said she did ask Tanya if she wanted to write home, and Tanya refused. She did see Tanya leave on foot from looking out the bedroom window on the second floor of their house. Investigators in 97 didn't seem to bulk at the story, but Detective Bright has some concerns. First off, Sean's house was about a block from where Tanya's remains were found. Literally right around the corner was a street that dead ended into a local cemetery, the one that is next to the field where she was found. And by the way, that cemetery was a local hangout for teens back then. But you might be thinking, well, Ashley, what if she was picked up by someone else on her walk home after she left? And they put her there in the field. Well, authorities considered that back in the day and they looked at neighbors in the area. There was a few people that I've been reported that maybe were violent with spouses or something like that, but nothing to the extent of what happened to Tanya. By all accounts, the last people who saw Tanya were Sean and Luke in Sean's house and then leaving it. Oh, and Sean's mom. But did she? Like are we a thousand percent sure about that? Maybe, but you know, you really are separated from the other kids.
down in that garage, and what are the chances that you just happen to look at your bedroom window around midnight till 30 and see her leave in? Our reporting team reached out for comment, but as of this recording we haven't gotten a response. The implication is obvious. Could Sean's mom have been covering for something? Maybe something Sean did or Luke did or both? David Bright wouldn't tell us if either of the boys admitted to any physical relationship with Tanya that night. But at least one of the boys admitted to something else in later interviews. They were into hardcore drugs, such as meth. Not just into them, but doing them that night. Now look, someone doing hard drugs does not a murderer make. But it just put some huge red flags around Sean and Luke's story. Like you lied to the police once, are you lying again? And then there's just some obvious, logical things Detective Bright points to you. If Sean and Co's story is that Tanya left the house that night, okay fine, but then what was her plan? What happens when she shows up at home in the middle of the night, after drinking, after maybe smoking weed? She had lied about where she was staying. She and her stepmother already had issues. Would have been an afterschool special in the making. I think she would have been questioned, like I thought you were spending the night at someone, so maybe she could say, hey, it fell through or nothing happened, but they're going to be like, where were you? What would Tanya say to that? Obviously, she's not going to tell her dad that she was hanging out with two boys who were doing meth. So she would have to compound the lie, making it even worse and more than likely getting caught. Now, her second option would have been to go to someone else's house. Rachel did live close by, but that would have had some of the same problems, if not more. Which she have tried to go stay with her friends, maybe, but it's also was really late at night. You're 15 without cell phones, you probably have to knock on doors or windows. I don't know if Tanya would have done that. And this went down today, with ring cameras and whatnot, not to mention cell phones and social media, most of Tanya's night would have been traceable in some way. But in the mid-90s, investigators were flying a little more in the dark. But also, I think they had a hard time seeing what was right in front of them, because as fancy as it sounds to have the metro squad come swooping in, none of those investigators took some of the basic steps that Detective Bright would hope to see in a case like this. Like Sean's house, the last place that Tanya was confirmed to have been at, it was never searched. Neither was a car that the boys might have had access to that night. Phone records weren't gathered either, although Detective Bright says at least in that regard attempts were made at some point. We come to found out that during that specific time frame, I think their household phone, 'cause back then they had the landline phones, theirs was not working. As quickly as Tanya's murder investigation had kicked into gear, the metro squad disbanded. After your metro squad disbands, because they have to go back to their home agencies, it falls onto the lead agency. What meant the Johnson County Sheriff's Office was back in charge, but one year turned to two, then three, then you get the idea. Detectives came and went, as did potential leads, but there was nothing that ever stuck. So by the time Detective Bright was handed Tanya's case in 2020, many hands had touched it, and a lot of time had passed. Not how I work these cold cases is I read everything, I make notes, and then I want to see what evidence we have. And Tanya's case is one of the lucky ones where they still had evidence. No floods or fires destroying some off-site warehouse where they keep old evidence. It was right there, still packaged up, almost begging to be examined for the first time ever. Were any of those tested when this initially happened? No. Nothing was tested at all. Not from the crime scene. Got it. What is that like when you come into that, like? I was pissed. By 2020, more than 20 years after Tanya was murdered, the only items Detective Bright could find that were ever tested were some items that weren't actually at the scene where her remains were found. And they were items she felt weren't even relevant to the investigation, though she wouldn't elaborate on what those were. But somehow, the original detectives in 97, not to mention every detective after, failed to realize that the items found at the scene were never tested. It was so unfathomable, such a major misstep in an investigation that at first Detective Bright thought there had to be a logical explanation. I thought that maybe I just, oh, it was in a different folder. Because that's the other thing with these cases and I know that you have to hunt for a lot of stuff because they're old and they get misplaced. And we actually made a phone call to the crime lab. I said, "Hey, what do we get from the crime scene?" and she was like, "Let me call you back." That's not exactly what you want to hear in a situation like this. So she waited, hoping upon hope that she was wrong. And so we got a phone call a few hours later and I was like, "There's no way. There's no way that this was missed." And basically she calls back and said, "Well, hope you're sitting down because she goes, I think this was missed. It hasn't been tested." And so my immediate response to that was stress and panic because I know we're fighting a pill battle now due to time because things degrade and you have bacterial interference with stuff like that. And forensically, I know you're kind of in a bind a little bit and I immediately was like, this is the first thing that has to get done like ASAP, like today. What if anything they have found as a result of testing items detected right wouldn't share with us? But I know that if they found DNA, they don't have anything that is currently suitable for a database like CODIS. Who she appears to be hopeful that at least one piece of evidence might give them what they need one day. I will say that it's good and we can do something with it and in the future it's only going to get better and I know that eventually we'll get something maybe a little more clearer in the future with it. This is just me spitball in here but I kind of wonder if it was the white shirt. You know, the one that read, "If you don't like my attitude, dial 1-800 each." Testing on that t-shirt is still ongoing, according to Detective Bright. Whether that has been at all useful forensically or not remains to be seen, but Detective Bright has put a lot of work into that shirt as a clue, according to her investigators never really looked into it much, which feels like another missed opportunity. I have been tracking down, trying to find where that shirt came from for the last six years. She's also been tracking down some of the main players in this case like Sarah, Crystal, Sean and Luke. She's even gone down the rabbit hole with that step uncle who lied about Tanya calling him. And she's talked to the girl who claimed that the call did happen. Now, exactly what was said in all these interviews or if any new leads or inconsistencies were revealed, that's not fully known as we weren't given access to the files, but it sounds like most have roughly the same old stories, albeit now with fading memories. Though there is one last story that we do need to tell. And it's actually more of a theory that a PI hired by Tanya's family shared with the Johnson County Sheriff's Office. He claimed that her murder involved several people. Now, in most cases, when he talks about this, he uses nicknames for the people. But we know who this theory is built around, specifically two of Tanya's friends that we've talked about, Sarah and Crystal, and one that we haven't, Steve McCarley, who this PI named publicly in an episode of The Status Pending Podcast. One of her closest friends was Steve McCarley, and she hung out with him quite a bit. The PI believed the motive revolved around typical teen jealousy type stuff over boys. The PI theorized that shortly after Tanya left Sean's house, she was lured to the cemetery next to the field where she was then attacked. Now admittedly, he has no proof of this. He had actually never investigated a murder before, but this theory became a public narrative. These girls were talked about on the Justice for Tanya Facebook page run by the family. But for Detective Bright, working this case today.
She's not convinced of their involvement. Sarah and Crystal, I don't think that they were involved. I think that from what I've reviewed and the evidence that I have seen and talking to Sarah and Crystal and we short up their alibi that night, I do not believe that Sarah and Crystal were involved. That alibi put them staying about 10 miles away with a friend in Olathe as they had suggested to Tonya might happen. We did reach out to Sarah and Crystal, but we haven't heard back from either of them. Steve McCarley died in 2019, so he's not someone that even Detective Bright got a chance to interview. Past investigators did, though, because he was a little too overzealous in helping with the case. And considering this case hasn't been solved, Detective Bright admits that she can't entirely rule Steve out. But for her, she keeps going back to the people that Tonya was last known to be with that night. I believe Sean and Luke know what happened to Tonya. They were one of the last people to see her. And when I've done re-interviews with individuals, there's a level of cooperation. I think that goes a long way, especially with these cases. And when you get kind of some pushback from them when you can tell they have information and they're holding back. And I think, you know, that raises red flags for me anyway. Detective Bright calls both Sean and Luke persons of interest in this case. This year, she traveled to Arizona to speak with Luke, where he had moved shortly after Tonya's murder. According to her, "It didn't go as well as I wanted it to. It's important to point out that no one has been arrested in this case, which means for Tonya's family, no one has been held responsible. Now almost 30 years later, something Tonya's mother Lori is all too aware of." You know, I am hit with the reality every day that the person or persons responsible is walking around free as if they didn't do anything. Their family gets to see them. They get to spend time with their family. I don't. We don't get to spend time with Tonya. I would like to see them arrested. I want to see them face to face in court. I wouldn't like to know why, but I doubt I'd ever get that answer. And, you know, they need to be put away for good. If you have any information about the murder of Tonya Don Knight, please call the Johnson County Sheriff's Office directly at 913-715-5560. Or you can also email their tip line at
[email protected]. The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck in our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.
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