Paper Ghosts · iHeartPodcasts

Episode 8: “The Boogeymen”

April 10, 2024·1 hr 8 min·5 clips

Jack Linney vomited on the phone when confronted about the crime scene where Dana Stidham's body was found—and still refused to hang up.

The call begins under pressure. The host is trying to hear what happens when Dana Stidham and Shawna Garber are named. Lenny barely gives him anything. After the direct question about Dana's murder, a long silence sits there, broken only by small checks that he is still on the line. Then Lenny gets sick. The host does not treat it like a random illness. He hears the body answering for a voice that keeps backing away. Lenny denies being emotional, but the exchange gets sharper when the host says he stopped by Lenny's house in Arkansas and found no one home. Lenny bristles at once. A knocked door, ordinary on paper, turns into another hard spot in the conversation. The host keeps tightening the space. He asks whether evidence could tie Lenny to Dana's murder, whether Lenny has anything to say to her family, and whether the killer might still be alive. Lenny offers almost nothing. When the host mentions that Dana's mother has died, the narration says Lenny shows no real sympathy. It treats his response as self-protective, even narcissistic, although the transcript includes a brief apology. That judgment is not subtle. Grief enters the call and is quickly folded back into the host's read on Lenny's evasions. Then the places return: Pineville, Anderson, Missouri, and Oscar Talley Road. Lenny seems unable, or unwilling, to keep that map steady. He pushes back, but the host brings up an earlier BCSO account in which Lenny said he passed by that area all the time when he lived in Missouri. That contradiction hangs there. The reported vile phone call at the end shifts the mood from bad feeling to something more concrete: a possible pattern, or at least a report the host cannot leave alone.

As heard by us

A tense interrogation episode built on silence, repetition, and unease.

The episode follows a long, uneasy interview with a suspect connected to the murders of Dana Stidham and Shawna Garber. Much of its force comes from the interviewer’s persistence: he keeps returning to the same denials, an old phone call, travel through Missouri, and the…

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Why you'd press play

Press play for a cold interrogation of suspect Jack Linney that keeps tightening its grip.

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