New Evidence Hearing in the Unsolved Case of Heather Danyelle Teague

It was August 26th, 1995 that Heather Danyelle Teague disappeared from Newburgh Beach in Henderson County, Kentucky.  Twenty-two years later her family, and authorities, are still searching for answers.  What happened the Heather?  Did someone, as a witness described, abduct her at gunpoint and drag her into the nearby woods?  If that happened, who exactly was it?  And what exactly did he do with Heather?  Family members are hoping that an upcoming evidence hearing will help shed some light on the lingering questions that haunt and plague them.

For the last two decades, the story of Heather's disappearance has been in and out of the news.  But, the Teague family has never stopped looking for answers.  They have pounded the pavement, gone door-to-door . . . doing detective work of their own.  They have consulted private investigators.  They have challenged the findings of local authorities and detectives. They even contacted The Montel Williams Show and enlisted, on national television, the guidance of famed psychic Sylvia Browne.  Their search has been relentless, massive.  But, still, no Heather.

You remember Heather, right?  And the story of her disappearance?  According to an eyewitness, who happened to be peering through a telescope at the precise time of the abduction, Heather was dragged into the woods (on the Kentucky side), at gunpoint, by a tall, bearded, shirtless, white man.  That eyewitness account led Kentucky State Police to the beach and into the nearby woods to look for Heather.  They found part of her swimsuit and other "evidence" that suggested a crime had been committed.  But the two missing components of the investigation were the two most important ones: the perpetrator and the victim.

Five days after Heather's disappearance, the Kentucky State Police, through subsequent investigation of a variety of tips, focused on Marty Dill of Henderson.  Dill fit the eyewitness' description and he owned a red Ford Bronco which was spotted near the crime scene.  As authorities approached his home to serve a search warrant, Dill committed suicide.  Complicating matters was the fact that at a later grand jury hearing, Dill's wife pleaded the fifth and refused to share any details about her husband and his alleged involvement in Heather's disappearance.

According to a recent article in Madisonville's newspaper, The Messenger, it's the initial 911 call (that implicated Dill) that will be the subject of an upcoming hearing on June 5th of this year.  The Teague family reviewed the call for the first time back in 2008.  But, after listening to it again recently, they are convinced that two copies of that recording exist.  They asked to review the KSP's complete "chain of custody", but their request was initially denied due to Kentucky's Open Records Law.  On June 5th, they will challenge that denial.

And they will do so to get answers.  The answers that have eluded them since 1995.  A search for answers that has led Heather's mom, Sarah, to the top of countless courthouse steps to demand justice for her daughter.  A search that led them to national television to get try to get answers from a nationally renowned psychic.  I saw that episode of The Montel Williams Show, by the way, and Sylvia Browne vaguely described the area where she felt Heather's body would eventually be found.  It wasn't.

And, so now, the Teague family will go back to court.  They'll implore authorities to examine the evidence again.  And the Teagues will pour over it again.  Hoping to find anything, the tiniest thing, they may have missed.  And they'll do it to try and find what they miss the most- Heather Danyelle Teague.

You can follow the family's continued search for answers in this case on their official Facebook page, Where is Heather Danyelle Teague?