Dena Dean
In my bio, I mentioned that I got bitten by the true crime bug in 1998 when a girl I knew from high school was murdered. Dena Ann Dean was two years younger than me and only 16 at the time of her murder. I had just graduated in May of 1998, and Dena went missing in June of that year. I grew up in a small community in West Tulsa known for being an impoverished area of the city. I wish I could say things like this didn’t happen here, but unfortunately, another incident would strike our community a decade or so later (more about that in a follow-up post). I didn’t know Dena well, even though we went to school together since elementary. However, my twin sister was in the band with her and knew her very well. Dena was a little on the shy side but was well-liked by most who knew her.
Missing
I remember hearing that Dena was missing during that summer of 1998, but honestly, I didn’t think much of it because, for one, I was only 18 and had no real grasp of what the world was like, and two, I assumed she must have just run away and would come home eventually. However, there were many strange things surrounding the case from the very beginning. Dena had gone to a local grocery store (my sister worked at this store) to pick up a friend from work. Her car was found in front of the store with the door open and her purse inside.
Murdered
I will never forget the day I found out that Dena’s body had been found. It was just a few miles from where I lived, at the end of a road where my friend lived. The road was closed down, and every news station you turned to had the same headline: “West Tulsa Teenager’s Body Found.” This set off a multi-decade-long search for the killer and left our small community in shock. Though I didn’t know Dena well, I learned a few things that really left me scared.
The Evidence
While this is still an unsolved case, there is some pretty strong evidence that seems to point to a certain person who was in Dena’s life at the time of the murder. I didn’t know it at the time, but Dena and I had a mutual friend named Michael. I had met Mike about a year earlier as he worked at the grocery store that Dena disappeared from, and he was also a friend of a friend and my sister’s friend. I hung out with Mike a lot over a few-month period, and he had even been to my house a few times. One day, Mike showed up at my house by himself, which was odd because he always came with other friends. I had a bedroom that was a converted garage, so I had a door leading to the outside in my bedroom. Mike knocked on that door one day and asked if he could come in. I did not allow him to come in, and I didn’t really think much of it at the time. Now I look back and wonder what he was doing there.
What I found out about Dena is that she was actually dating Mike at the time, and she told him that she was pregnant just before she went missing. The evidence showed that she was actually not pregnant, but you have to wonder if this set off something in Mike that caused him to kill her.
Once the police started investigating, they found many strange things about Mike. His dad had called the grocery store to try to get his time records altered to show he was working at the time of the disappearance. The spot where the body was found was a pretty remote site, right down the street from Mike’s house, and you would really have to know it was there.
Conclusion
Most of West Tulsa knows this case well and has their theories about what happened. I know my friends and I still do, and we hope the police keep pursuing it and eventually bring this killer to justice. Dena’s family and friends still meet every June to remember her and bring attention back to the case, as it deserves.
Links
If you want to know more about this case I highly suggest you checkout the series Killer Unknown on ID and these other links below. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
