Hello websleuths and Happy Easter. I am a new user here and this has been my pet case for a number of years and I have many (conflicting) thoughts and theories as to what may have happened that night the Dardeens were murdered. In my opinion, the murderer is almost certainly not Sells for many reasons, some of which I will not get into right now.
I have seen a number of rumors and theories online from other Dardeen "researchers" that there was a woman at Keith's church who was unhealthily infatuated with him, possibly named Susan. Keith repeatedly spurned her advances and propositions. This Susan had a mentally-ill brother with a bad temper named Paul who was a helper at the church. It is said that after it was announced in the church that Elaine was expecting, this Susan, infuriated, began to plot the murder with her brother, essentially manipulating him into carrying it through. She had allegedly told Paul that Keith had attempted to rape her, that Elaine had been making fun of him, and that the Dardeens were attempting to kick him out of the church. A part of me wonders whether or not the mysterious young woman who came to the Dardeen trailer to ask to use the phone and was refused entry by Keith could have been this Susan. Supposedly Susan is still alive and Paul has deceased, but I cannot trace this rumor back to the person who first originally said it, and of course, I have yet to confirm whether the two were actually real.
(According to people on Facebook who were in his congregation, after moving to Ina, Keith and Elaine went to Spring Garden Community Church which was somewhere in Spring Garden Township, which contains Ina, the town of Bonnie to the north, and surrounding unincorporated small settlements. The church and the building have not existed since at least the early 2000s and I have been unable to find any more information about this church, let alone what its address might have been. At some point I would like to corroborate with people who were in that congregation whether or not Susan or Paul were real people.)
Whether or not the Susan and Paul story is online hearsay, I 100% believe the murder had to have been done by someone from the area who had known Keith and Elaine since their move to Ina, whether or not either of them had any meaningful interactions with the murderer(s). The brutality and bizarre staging of the entire crime make no sense for a professional hit or a case of mistaken identity. If the killer was a drifting SK using the railroads to move around (like Sells) it doesn't make sense why they wouldn't have parked the car closer to the railway in Benton.
Given that Keith and Elaine were only in Ina for about a year this would narrow it down to someone from the church, someone from Keith or Elaine's work, or someone who had enough information on and rapport with the Dardeens to know where they lived and what their schedule was. If the killer was "let in" then this may be the most likely reason, especially if it's someone from the same church who Keith might have implicitly trusted more than others. Though I think it is just as likely that the killer got a hold of the keys to the trailer - the house keys could have been on the same keyring as the car keys.
The staging of Keith's murder also makes me imagine it's a local. Keith was scheduled to work at 11 that Tuesday and it is likely he might have picked up his killer or was "intercepted" on his way there while making his way down I-37.
A quick map I made of the primary locations involved. His body was positioned only several feet away from the Jefferson-Franklin county border, which the perp(s) might have known would complicate investigative efforts. Keith's body was also dumped about 1000 feet away from the property of Rend Lake College, just off to the side of one of the main roads leading there, meaning whoever killed Keith and mutilated him might have wanted his body to be discovered.
While I understand a rural midwestern county might not have much in the way of funding investigations into complex cold cases, the lack of interest the Jefferson County Sheriffs Dept has taken with this case in recent decades upsets me, especially with the many revolutions that have taken place in forensic technology since the late 1980s. Even something as simple as correcting the facts and being open with the information on this case (within reason) has yet to be done. As many other cold case murders are being solved due to DNA it boggles me that a crime like this, with different crime scenes spanning miles, has absolutely zero DNA from the killer(s). I would be very surprised if more than just a handful of crime scene items have been even run through CODIS.
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