September 1, 1974. Jackson County, Oregon.

28-year-old Richard Cowden, his 22-year-old wife, Belinda Cowden, and their two children,

five-year-old David and five-month-old Melissa, are in the midst of a camping trip near

Carbury Creek when they suddenly vanish from their campsite, leaving all their possessions behind.

Seven months later, the entire family's remains are found at a remote location seven miles away,

and it turns out they were the victims of foul play. A local resident named Dwayne Lee little

pops up on the radar as a suspect and eventually goes to prison for another crime,

but without any hard evidence to implicate him, the Cowden family murders remain unsolved.

After that, the trail went cold.

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest episode of The Trail Went Cold.

I'm your host Robin Warder, and since we just passed our third anniversary,

this episode will officially kick off year four of our podcast, and unfortunately,

it's one of the most disturbing cases we've ever covered, the Cowden Family Murders.

It involves the disappearance and subsequent death of a couple named Richard and Belinda

Cowden, as well as their two children. The entire family was abducted and murdered by an unknown

perpetrator while they were on a Labor Day weekend camping trip, and it would be months before

the remains were discovered. This case was actually suggested to me over a year ago by a listener

named Abby, and I confess that I had never actually heard of this story before. One year after this

crime happened, legendary true crime writer Anne Ruehl wrote a column about it in the New York

Daily News, and would later devote a chapter to the case in her book, But I Trusted You.

Once I started delving into the case, I found it to be one of the most frightening and

senseless crimes I've ever researched, and I can't imagine what the motive might have been,

...