The Trail Went Cold - Episode 106 - Karen Denise Wells

The Trail Went Cold

Robin Warder

True Crime, Tv & Film

4.5 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2019

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

April 12, 1994. Carlisle, Pennsylvania. 23-year old Karen Denise Wells has left on a cross-county road trip from her hometown in Oklahoma in order to visit her friend, Melissa Shepard, in New Jersey. After checking into a motel, Denise phones Melissa and asks her to come meet her there, but when Melissa arrives, Denise has vanished. Later that morning, Denise’s abandoned rental car is discovered 35 miles away on a remote road. The gas tank is empty and it turns out there are 700 miles on the vehicle’s odometer which cannot be accounted for. Investigators eventually start noticing discrepancies in Melissa’s story, leading them to believe she is withholding information about Denise’s disappearance. What actually happened to Karen Denise Wells? Why did her vehicle wind up in such a remote area? Where did those additional 700 miles on her odometer come from? This week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold” chronicles one of the more baffling missing persons cases we’ve ever covered. Additional Reading: http://charleyproject.org/case/karen-denise-wells https://www.abc27.com/news/midstate-mystery-the-disappearance-of-karen-denise-wells/ https://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2009/04/evidence_sparse_in_15yearold_d.html “The Trail Went Cold” is on Patreon! Visit www.patreon.com/thetrailwentcold to become a patron and gain access to our exclusive bonus content. The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote. All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

Transcript

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0:00.0	April 12th, 1994.
0:03.9	Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
0:06.6	While driving from Oklahoma to New Jersey to see her friend Melissa Shepard,
0:10.7	23-year-old Karen Denise Wells checks into a motel.
0:14.0	Denise phones Melissa and asks her to come meet her there,
0:17.5	but when Melissa arrives, Denise has vanished.
0:20.5	Later that morning, Denise's abandoned rental car has discovered 35 miles away on a rural
0:26.5	road with an empty gas tank and there are 700 miles on the vehicle's odometer, which cannot be accounted for.
0:34.0	Discrepancies eventually open up in Melissa's story,
0:37.2	leading to speculation that she is withholding information
0:40.0	about Denise's disappearance, but no trace of Denise is ever found.
0:45.2	After that, the trail went cold. Oh, uh, and uh, and uh, and uh, and uh, and, uh,
0:55.0	uh, uh, uh, for, uh, uh,
0:58.0	uh, I'm not. Oh, uh, uh,
1:04.0	and uh,
1:05.0	uh, uh, uh, uh,
1:07.0	uh,
1:08.0	uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of the Trail Went Cold.
1:27.0	I'm your host Robin Warder and we've got a very bizarre missing persons case to cover today.
1:32.0	The 1994 disappearance of Karen Denise Wells.
1:37.0	This case is a suggestion from a listener named Jason, and since I recently saw a thread about
1:41.9	it on the Unresolved Mystery Sub-reddit, I thought it would be an ideal time to do an episode.
	...

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