Dawn of Mantis: True Crime, Mysteries and More · Dawn of Mantis Podcast

DOM Ep365 - "Don's Done Gone" The Disappearance of Don Kemp

February 13, 2026·1 hr·10 clips

Don Kemp is the center of the episode. A successful advertising executive in New York throughout the 1970s, he reportedly turned his attention after a severe 1976 car accident that took two years to recover from and, by November 1982, headed north to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The trip falls apart fast. His Chevy Blazer is found off I-80, 350 miles from the destination, with the driver's side door open, the engine still running, the radio on, a half tank of gas, and clothes spilled on the ground. Only one trail remains. A single set of footprints leads away from the vehicle into the frozen prairie, and that one detail gives the crew plenty to chew on. The Carbon County Sheriff's Department is small. The episode notes that around half a dozen officers searched on foot while others took to the air in a small aircraft, trying to make sense of a landscape that could swallow a person whole. The prairie is brutal. The hosts keep circling back to how little cover there is, how empty the country feels, and how hard it would be to hide a person or follow one once weather and distance start working against you. They also get practical. Fuel consumption, idle time, and how long the Blazer could have been sitting there all come up as the group works backward from the condition of the truck. The conversation stays loose. One voice lays out the timeline while the others jump in with questions, jokes, and the kind of side comments that show up when a case feels too strange to stay tidy. The uncertainty stays front and center. The episode does not pretend the facts line up neatly, and it openly treats the disappearance as one with details that are hard to pin down. The crew has fun with the mystery. Even so, it keeps the tragedy in view and never acts like the confusion makes the disappearance less serious. Listeners get invited to weigh in. By the end, the show is still chasing theories, still laughing at the edges, and still asking what happened when Don Kemp stepped away from that truck.

As heard by us

A lonely truck, a frozen prairie, and a case that never stops getting stranger.

Don Kemp's disappearance has the clean, ugly shape of a mystery that never really lets go: an ex-ad executive heads for Jackson Hole, and his Chevy Blazer is found 350 miles short, still running, with the door open and footprints leading into the frozen prairie.

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Why you'd press play

A Chevy Blazer, open door, running engine, and one set of footprints into the frozen prairie.

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