December 18th, 1979, Moline, Illinois.

30-year-old Cody James and 30-year-old Gary Harker leave Gary's wood carving shop in Cody's pickup truck in order to make a delivery, but they never return, and the truck is later found abandoned in Davenport, Iowa.

Four months after the disappearances, the truck is sold off at a police auction,

but the new owners are shocked to discover Cody and Gary's bodies concealed beneath some debris in the truck bed,

and it turns out both men have been bludged into death.

It is theorized that the crime was drug-related, and even though photographs of two potential perpetrators

emerged decades later, the murders are never solved. After that, the trail went cold.

The trail went cold. and I'm not going to be. I'm not. I'm not.

I'm not.

And so.

And so.

And so. Hello, everyone and welcome to our latest episode of The Trail Went Cold.

I'm your host, Robin Warder, and for our last featured cold case of

2004, we're going to explore one of the strangest holiday-themed mysteries we've ever covered,

the 1979 murders of Cody James and Gary Harker. As you probably know, it's become tradition

for the Trail Went Cold to count down to Christmas by covering

cases which took place on or around December the 25th, and while searching for examples,

I came across a write-up about this case on the Unresolved Mystery subreddit, and it completely made

my jaw drop. I'll add the disclaimer that even though some sources out there state that the two victims originally went missing on Christmas Day, upon further research, I discovered that wasn't accurate, and they actually disappeared one week earlier on December the 18th.

But even so, I think that's close enough to qualify this as a holiday-themed mystery, and the story is so strange that I

still felt I needed to do an episode. Cody James and Gary Harker were close friends who lived in

Moline, Illinois, and were supposedly scheduled to make a delivery to nearby Rock Island

...