The Trail Went Cold - Episode 345 - Gary McCullough and Lena Chapin

The Trail Went Cold

Robin Warder

True Crime, Tv & Film

4.5 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

May 11, 1999. Barry County, Missouri. 34-year old Gary McCullough vanishes from his farm and his abandoned pick-up truck is found on a rural road five days later. Suspicion is directed towards Gary’s wife, Sandy, who was having an affair with another man named Kristopher Klemp and the couple immediately move in together before they get married. In 2006, Sandy’s 20-year old daughter, Lena Chapin, disappears and is not officially reported missing for years. Since Lena had previously made a tape-recorded confession that Sandy killed Gary and she helped her mother dispose of his body and cover up the crime, investigators believe that Sandy may have also gotten rid of Lena, but since no trace of Lena or Gary can be found, no charges are ever filed. On this week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we cover the shocking story of two unsolved missing persons cases which took place nearly seven years apart from each other and are likely connected. If you have any information about the disappearance of Gary McCullough, please contact the Barry County Sheriff’s Office at (417) 847-3121. If you have any information on the disappearance of Lena Chapin, please contact the Dent County Sheriff’s Office at (573) 729-3241. Additional Reading: https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Lena_Chapin https://unsolved.com/gallery/missing-witness/ http://charleyproject.org/case/liehnia-may-chapin https://charleyproject.org/case/gary-g-mccullough https://www.newspapers.com/image/662732108/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/662732205/ https://www.thesalemnewsonline.com/news/local_news/article_0a03aaf2-d453-11e5-8f33-331b77b7d700.html https://www.thesalemnewsonline.com/news/article_5c50244a-da37-11e5-9200-33fc9d2ba192.html https://web.archive.org/web/20211021151348/https://www.cassville-democrat.com/story/2329323.html https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/true-crime/unsolved-mysteries-lena-chapin-what-happened/ “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 doing a weekly livestream show on Vokl every Thursday from 7:00-8:00 PM ET as part of their “True Crime Thursday” line-up. For more information, please visit their website. “The Trail Went Cold” is going to be appearing on podcast row at “Crimecon” at the World Center Marriott in Orlando, Florida on September 22-24, 2023. To get a 10 % discount on the purchase of tickets to the event, please use our specialized promo code, “COLD23”, by visiting https://www.crimecon.com. 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	May 11th, 1999.
0:03.2	Berry County, Missouri.
0:05.7	34-year-old Gary McCullough vanishes from his farm and his abandoned pickup truck
0:09.9	has found on a rural road five days later.
0:13.0	Suspicion is directed towards Gary's wife Sandy, who was having an affair with another
0:17.2	man, and they immediately move in together before they get married.
0:21.4	In 2006, Sandy's 20-year-old daughter, Lena Chappin, disappears and is not
0:26.3	officially reported missing for years.
0:29.8	Investigators come to believe that Sandy killed Gary and later got rid of Lena because she
0:33.7	assisted with the cover-up that no trace of the two missing victims is ever
0:37.8	found. After that the trail went cold. Oh, uh, uh, uh,
0:54.0	uh, uh, yeah. So you can.
1:03.0	Oh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Hello everyone and welcome to our latest episode of The Trail Went Cold.
1:21.0	I'm your host Robin Warder and this week we'll be covering a
1:25.0	pair of missing persons cases which took place nearly seven years apart but are
1:29.2	connected to the same family. The 1999 disappearance of Gary McCullough and the 2006 disappearance of Lena Chappin.
1:37.0	As I'm sure many of you know, this story was featured on one of the episodes on the Unsaw Mysteries reboot which launched on Netflix three years ago, and as you can imagine, I've received numerous requests to cover it.
1:50.0	Before he went missing, Gary McCullough had been Lena Chapman's stepfather, and his wife Sandy was having an affair with another man named Chris Clem.
1:59.0	While the authorities immediately suspected that Sandy and Chris were responsible for Gary's disappearance,
2:04.8	they felt powerless to do anything about it without a body or strong physical evidence of foul play.
2:10.9	The case would go in an even more disturbing direction in 2006 when Lena disappeared, but she was not officially reported missing for years, since Sandy just told everyone that her daughter had decided to run away with another man, even though she left a young son behind.
2:25.9	While Lena was only 13 years old at the time Gary vanished, she had once made a tape-recorded confession
	...

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