Terrifying & True | Westside Park Murders: Kimberly Dowell & Ethan Dixon’s Unsolved Case

Kimberly Dowell and Ethan Dixon were found shot inside a parked Volkswagen at Muncie’s Westside Park, beginning a cold-case investigation that has lasted more than 40 years.

Late on September 28, 1985, a police officer clearing the Indiana park discovered the Northside High School students in Ethan’s still-running car. Ethan, 16, had been shot in the chest; Kimberly, 15, had been shot in the head. A third bullet shattered a window. Investigators recovered a knife and an empty gun holster, while witnesses described other people and vehicles—including a dark Chevrolet Monte Carlo—near the scene.

This episode follows the first chaotic weeks of tips, competing timelines, and theories that ranged from family conflict to a robbery or drug deal gone wrong. It examines attention directed toward Kimberly’s stepfather as well as later statements involving convicted murderer Jimmy Swingley, while making clear that suspicion and jailhouse claims never became proof.

Decades later, DNA taken from the holster did not match Swingley, and no one has been charged with killing Kimberly and Ethan. Terrifying & True revisits the evidence, the dead ends, and the two teenagers whose deaths became Muncie’s most enduring unsolved homicide case.

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🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
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