Mysteries at Bedtime

On a quiet April night in 1991, 20-year-old Angela Hammond made a routine call to her fiancé from a payphone in the small town of Clinton, Missouri. She was four months pregnant, cheerful, and had just dropped a friend home. But what happened next would spark one of the most haunting and baffling missing persons cases in American history.While on the phone, Angie suddenly became alarmed by a strange man circling the parking lot in a truck. Her fiancé, Rob Shafer, was still on the line when he heard her scream—and then, silence. He raced to the scene, even passing a suspicious vehicle speeding in the opposite direction. But Angela was gone, and no trace of her has ever been found.Was it a random abduction? Or was Angela targeted? And who was the mysterious man with the “fish mural” on his truck?In this episode of Crime at Bedtime, we journey back to that fateful night, revisiting every chilling detail, from Angela’s final moments and Rob’s frantic search, to the strange inconsistencies that followed in the investigation.Featuring eyewitness accounts, evolving theories, and the lasting impact on those who loved her, this is a story that still grips the nation more than three decades later.Somewhere, someone knows what happened to Angela Hammond.This is her story.Clinton Missouri Police Department Chief Kevin Miller1-660-885-2679Missouri State Highway Patrol Missing Persons Clearinghouse1-800-877-3452

In June 2025, a 19 year old woman in Lyon, France, was placed into a medically induced coma. For the next three weeks, she lay still in a hospital bed, kept alive by machines while her body healed. But inside her mind, something extraordinary was happening. Clélia Verdier was falling in love. She was getting married. She was giving birth to triplets she named Mila, Maïlée, and Miles. She was burying the little boy who died shortly after birth. She was watching her two daughters grow from babies into seven year old girls with distinct personalities and bedtime stories and walks in the park. When Clélia finally opened her eyes, the first thing she did was ask the nurses where her children were. And when her parents arrived, she told them they were grandparents. What happens to a woman who lives an entire life inside her own mind. Who grieves children no one else can remember. And who has to find a way back to a reality that no longer feels real.

On the afternoon of Saturday 3 May 2014, neighbours in the exclusive gated community of Reynolds Great Waters at Lake Oconee, Georgia, gathered for a Kentucky Derby watch party. Two of the invited guests never arrived. Three days later, a neighbour found 88 year old Russell Dermond's decapitated body in the garage of his million dollar lakefront home. His head was missing. His 87 year old wife Shirley was nowhere to be found. Ten days later, fishermen discovered Shirley's body floating in Lake Oconee, weighed down with cinder blocks. There were no signs of forced entry. Nothing was stolen. The community's security cameras were not recording. Twelve years on, Russell's head has never been found, no arrests have ever been made, and the FBI calls it one of the strangest cases they have ever investigated. Someone walked into that house. Someone knows what happened.

January 12, 1981. A dog wandered into the woods north of Houston and returned home carrying a decomposed human arm. Search parties found two bodies. A young man, bound and beaten to death. A young woman, strangled and posed in prayer. For 40 years, they remained unidentified. Buried in anonymous graves. Forgotten. Until genetic genealogy finally gave them their names: Harold Dean Clouse Junior, 21, and Tina Gail Linn Clouse, 17. A young couple from Florida who had moved to Texas with their one-year-old daughter, Holly. But when the families learned the truth, they asked one question investigators had never considered: where is the baby? No infant's body had been found with Dean and Tina. No Baby Doe cases matched. Had she been taken by the killers? Was she still alive? The search led to barefoot women in white robes, a nomadic religious cult called the Christ Family, and a baby left at an Arizona church. This is the story of a 42-year mystery, a daughter who grew up not knowing her own name, and a reunion that defied all odds.

February 27, 2026. Albuquerque, New Mexico. Retired Air Force Major General William McCasland left his home between 11:10am and 12:04pm. He took his wallet, hiking boots, a .38-calibre revolver, and a red backpack. He left behind his phone, glasses, and wearable devices. Seventeen days later, despite helicopters, drones, search dogs, and 700 homes canvassed, there was no trace of him. But McCasland was not the first. Six months earlier, government contractor Steven Garcia walked out of his Albuquerque home carrying only a handgun. He left his phone, wallet, keys, and car behind. He was never seen again. Monica Reza disappeared whilst hiking in California. Anthony Chavez vanished from Los Alamos. Melissa Casias was last seen walking on a highway, her phones wiped clean. By April 2026, the list had grown to ten. Ten scientists, government contractors, and military experts. All connected to America's most classified nuclear and aerospace programmes. All disappeared or dead under mysterious circumstances. And on April 16, 2026, the White House announced it was investigating. This is the mystery of the vanishing scientists.

On a warm June evening in 1768, a 69-year-old paralysed man named Owen Parfitt sat outside his sister's cottage in Shepton Mallet, England, dressed in his nightshirt and propped up on his folded greatcoat. Just a dozen yards away, farm workers laboured in full view of the porch. Around 7 PM, Owen's elderly sister Mary and a young neighbour, Susannah Snook, went inside to fetch him before an approaching storm. Minutes later, they returned to find Owen gone. The chair remained. The greatcoat remained. But Owen Parfitt—a man who couldn't move by himself—had vanished. The farm workers had seen nothing. Heard nothing. An exhaustive search through the storm and the days that followed found no trace. Owen had been a sailor in his youth, regaling locals with wild tales of piracy, smuggling, and black magic across Africa, America, and the high seas. Mary went to her grave believing the Devil had taken her brother as payment for his wicked life. Others suspected "men from Bristol" had silenced him to claim hidden treasure or stop his garrulous tales. Investigations in 1813, 1814, and 1933 uncovered no answers. More than 250 years later, Owen Parfitt's disappearance remains one of England's most baffling unsolved mysteries. Did the Devil claim him? Was he murdered? Or is there another explanation buried somewhere in the fields of Shepton Mallet?

In 2016, a 13-year-old genius named Max Loughan went viral with an extraordinary claim: CERN destroyed our universe. Not with an explosion—but by shifting us all into a parallel reality. When scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider smashed particles together in 2012 and discovered the Higgs boson, Max believed the sheer energy tore a hole in spacetime, sliding humanity into a neighbouring universe almost identical to our own. Almost. The proof? The Mandela Effect. Millions of people remember Kit Kat having a hyphen. It never did. They remember C-3PO being all gold. He's always had a silver leg. They remember the Mona Lisa with no smile. She's always been smiling. They remember the Monopoly Man wearing a monocle. He never has. Are these false memories—or scars from our original universe? Max's theories spread across the internet, educating millions. Then, in 2018, he vanished. Social media went silent. No interviews. No updates. Some say he simply grew up and chose privacy. Others wonder if he knew too much. Did CERN's experiments break reality? Are we living in a parallel universe? And what happened to the boy who tried to warn us?

In July 2002, NBA champion Bison Dele sailed from Tahiti aboard his catamaran, the Hakuna Matata, with his girlfriend Serena Karlan, French captain Bertrand Saldo, and his troubled older brother Miles Dabord. On July 8, all communication ceased. Twelve days later, the boat returned to Tahiti—renamed, repainted, with patched bullet holes—and only Miles stepped off. Two months later, he tried to buy $152,000 in gold using Bison's passport. Before authorities could question him, Miles overdosed on insulin in Mexico and died without regaining consciousness. He'd confessed to his girlfriend that a fight had spiraled into three deaths, bodies weighted and thrown overboard. But FBI forensics found no evidence supporting his story. Was it murder for money, or a tragic accident gone wrong? The bodies were never found, and the Pacific Ocean keeps its secrets.