MISSING: Dawn Mozino

Police thought they solved Dawn Mozino’s 1989 disappearance when they found out she knew a convicted serial killer. But in her diary, Dawn wrote of not one, but two love triangles that might actually lead police to different suspects.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ashley Flowers?

  When you're out in nature, you learn to trust your instincts. You pay attention to the trail, your surroundings, and you stay alert to protect yourself from harm. But what if the biggest threat isn't the environment at all? On Park Predators, host Delia Diambra explores true crime cases that happen in national parks and remote wildernesses, the places we usually think of as safe and peaceful. Each episode reveals what happened and how much more there is beneath the surface. Listen to Park Predators now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is the truly mysterious disappearance of a 23-year-old woman from southeastern Pennsylvania. And if you just skimmed the headlines,

• 0:45Ashley Flowers?

  you would think that police have had a strong suspect in this case for decades, a twice convicted killer who actually knew our victim. However, we got our hands on this woman's diary, and she wrote of not one, but two love triangles that might actually lead to a break in the case. This is the story of Dawn Mozino.

• 1:43Ashley Flowers?

  One day in June 1989, a woman in the Philly suburbs named Kathy sees a report of a missing young woman. And Kathy studies the picture of a girl with curly brown hair, and something about her is so familiar. Her name is Dawn Mozino, and apparently, per this report, she's been missing since May 22nd. Dawn's last known to have clocked out of her shift at Bryn Mawr Hospital, where she serves food to patients. And it would have been sometime at around 3:00 or 4:00 PM that day. And Kathy like can't believe what she's seeing because never in a million years does anyone expect that they might have information on a case, right? She doesn't know Dawn at all, but she does remember seeing a girl who looked just like

• 2:28Ashley Flowers?

  her at a bus stop near the hospital a few weeks ago. At the time, she was driving her two boys home from school and one of them actually pointed to this group of women waiting for the bus who were all dressed the same. Gray skirts, maroon vests and a black bow tie. And that is actually one of the hospital's uniforms. And here is the kicker. She specifically remembers seeing Dawn in that group of young women. But Dawn wasn't talking to the other women. She was talking to a man standing nearby. Now Kathy isn't 100% positive of the date that she saw Dawn because the days can totally like bleed together if you have the same routine like picking up your boys from school and driving them home.

• 3:13Ashley Flowers?

  But she doesn't want to risk not giving the information to police, especially if it could be valuable. And she definitely does know it was at least around May 22nd. So she tells police about seeing Dawn, gives them the vague description of a guy that she thinks she was talking to, this black man, maybe in his 30s. Detective Luther Layton, who everyone calls Lucky, is the lead on Dawn's case. And so he wants to ask Kathy if she'll identify him in a photo lineup. And she's like, absolutely. Wait, how? Well, because a couple of weeks after Dawn had gone missing, police already had someone on their radar. Through their investigation, they came to realize that in Dawn's address book, there

• 3:55Ashley Flowers?

  was an entry that said Tom Hawkins with a number beside it. Now, his full name was Thomas Hawkins Jr. And Thomas Hawkins Jr. is a convicted murderer. Nine years before, he sexually assaulted, stabbed and strangled a 15-year-old girl named Karen Stubbs. This was in 1980. And Brett, he only served six years for that. Six? I know. It seems like prosecutors couldn't prove- Premeditation for first degree murder. Like, that's why they ended up offering him like a deal for third degree in exchange for a guilty plea. But still, six years is astounding to me. Like, this man is clearly dangerous.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  So, okay, did Dawn just run into this guy once, or did she, like, know him?

• 4:44Ashley Flowers?

  She knew him. I mean, at least that's what her mom said. Like, they actually worked together three or four years before at a local rehabilitation center. And what's wild is, like, when they worked together, this dude bullied her. Like, one day, Dawn's sister Kath had to come pick Dawn up from work because someone was being nasty to her. Turns out it was this guy. After this, Kath, like, went and gave Hawkins a piece of her mind. And then shortly after, Dawn left that job to go work at the hospital. So before this witness, Kathy, even called the police, they had already brought Hawkins in. And his story was weird. Because he says that two months before Dawn went missing, she had offered to help him get a job at the hospital she worked at.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Him, the guy who bullied her at their last job together?

• 5:32Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, he says that she had even set up an interview for him on May 12, which would have been 10 days before she goes missing. But he says that he never actually showed up for that interview and that Dawn was really angry with him about it. But other than that, when they talked to him, he's like, listen, I have not seen or heard from her since that whole thing, like, again, weeks before. But guess what? They came to learn that that story was BS. The hospital had no record of an interview even being scheduled for Hawkins.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Why would he even lie about the interview?

• 6:05Ashley Flowers?

  Well, that's a good question, right? Like, I'm thinking, maybe he was actually near the hospital, like Kathy, the witness, said, and he wanted to have a reason for that if police ever figured it out. But I also don't know, because it wasn't even on the same day. So I don't know, like, if you're gonna make up a lie, why make up one that's so easy to dispute and also doesn't even make any sense or actually explain anything away?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  I mean, I could see him probably trying to, like, distance himself from her and specifically from her on that date, because the interview that he missed was 10 days earlier, right?

• 6:36Ashley Flowers?

  Maybe, but like... They didn't know it was a lie at the time and then they didn't have anything on the guy. So at that time, they had to let him go.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Okay, so this guy is already on the radar when Kathy calls.

• 6:48Ashley Flowers?

  Right.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  They offer this like photo lineup. Does she recognize him?

• 6:52Ashley Flowers?

  So she agrees, like, yes, let's do this photo lineup. But by the way, just three days after police had originally talked to him about Dawn, this guy actually committed another murder.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  What?

• 7:05Ashley Flowers?

  Hawkins sexually assaulted, strangled and stabbed his niece Andrea Thomas with a meat fork and staged the scene to look like a burglary. Now, what is interesting is police did not know that it was him who did this at the time. Like, it ends up taking several months for him to get arrested for that. But I just wanted you to know, like, we're talking about a bad, bad guy here.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:29Ashley Flowers?

  A bad guy that Kathy does ID as the one she said was talking to Dawn.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Which, if like, that's the guy that she saw, then Dawn probably isn't just a missing person at this point.

• 7:41Ashley Flowers?

  No, everyone kind of fears the worst. But honestly, Hawkins or no Hawkins, the worst-case scenario was already playing out in the minds of Dawn's family. Because they know it's not like her to just disappear and not contact them. I mean, it took them only hours to report her missing because even though Dawn was 23, she had some learning differences. She actually lived at home with her mom and her sister. Now, she's described as high-functioning but developmentally delayed. And her sister Kath told us that because of this, Dawn followed a pretty strict schedule. And if anything changed, she would always let her mom or her sister know.

• 8:23Ashley Flowers?

  So that day that she went missing, her sister Kath said that Dawn was supposed to come home after work, let the dog out, and then her plan was to either walk the 20 minutes to her boyfriend, Dan Colb's apartment in Wayne, Pennsylvania, or maybe just hop on like another bus over there. Now, Dan also had some learning differences and the two of them had been dating for like three years. They were both super dedicated to the Special Olympics. Dawn actually won medals in like all these different events. And the Special Olympics was something that she really took seriously. So when she was going over to his place, the two of them were supposed to be like getting together so that they could go to a practice together down at the local YMCA.

• 9:05Ashley Flowers?

  But when Kath got home from work early that evening, she noticed that the dog had not been taken out, and there were like half a dozen voicemails from Dan asking why Dawn hadn't met him, why she hadn't come to practice. So all that to say, Dawn's family was adamant that something was wrong when they filed a missing persons report. And police actually heard their concerns. They took the report and then immediately started looking into where she could be, who she could be with, all of that, which is how they wound up at Tom Hawkins. And now that he has been ID'd by their witness, the detective on Dawn's case gets a search warrant for his apartment in Philadelphia.

• 9:48Ashley Flowers?

  Now, there's nothing they find there that directly ties him to Dawn, but they do seize a stack of detective magazines. And it's interesting because they say that they're all underlined and like dog-eared on articles about new police practices and tactics, stuff like that. So Detective Lucky thinks that maybe this guy was like making notes on how to get away Studying. With murders, right? Now, fast forward a little bit. They end up connecting Hawkins to the murder of his niece, and he finally gets arrested and taken to trial on that, which only makes everyone more suspicious of him in connection to Dawn's disappearance.

• 10:29Ashley Flowers?

  So much so that Dawn's family attends every single day of the court hearings because they are fully convinced that Hawkins did something to Dawn, and if police can't get him on that, at least they hope he'll go away and pay for this crime, right? And he'll be off the streets, which he does. The jury convicts Hawkins of first-degree murder, which like in my mind, you must have been a terrible study of those magazines, which by the way, they fully brought up at trial because his DNA and fingerprints were all over the crime scene. And so after the verdict, Hawkins is sentenced to death. And this gives Detective Lucky an idea. He sees this as kind of a unique opportunity. He basically goes to the prosecutor, Bruce Castor, and says, "Look,

• 11:14Ashley Flowers?

  I think this is our guy, but I got nothing. Would you be open to taking the death penalty away if he gives us information about Dawn? Like, her family just wants some closure." And Bruce agrees, which to me, like, this is an offer that even the dumbest criminal would take if they could. Like, if I was facing the death penalty for a case where they had me dead to rights, like, forget appeals. Like, I'd try to be confessing to anything.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:42Ashley Flowers?

  But I don't think it's just like a confession they want, right? What they said is they want information. I think they want to know, like, where she is, what happened. But he says he has no information to give because he had nothing to do with Dawn's disappearance. He's sticking to that. Now, Hawkins, to this day, is still sitting on death row because Pennsylvania's governor put a moratorium on the death penalty. But in all this time, he has never come close to confessing to anything relating to Dawn's disappearance.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  You know, it is interesting to me that Dawn's case seems to be so different. And I say seems because I guess we don't really know what happened to her, right? She's never been found. We can't say that's, like, not the same MO, but his other two victims, like-

• 12:29Ashley Flowers?

  They were found quick, yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Found quickly, not even hidden, like-

• 12:32Ashley Flowers?

  And you're right. So I know we don't know what happened to Dawn, but we do know a lot about his other crimes. And what we know is, like, he knew both of the victims, which is the same for Dawn, right? And like, his first victim, Karen, she lived in the same apartment complex as his parents. And so, like, they met each other on a few different occasions. And then, obviously, Andrea was his niece. We know that he sexually assaulted and killed both of them in their homes, and then staged both crime scenes to look like robberies. And so, like I said, while he knew Dawn, and that piece is the same, her home doesn't appear to be any kind of crime scene.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  He didn't, as far as we know, he didn't stage anything.

• 13:07Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, honestly, it seems like she never even made it home afterward. And interestingly, Dawn is about a decade older than his two other victims, which I think could factor in if Hawkins' crimes are sexually motivated toward adolescent girls.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  But is that enough to rule him out for Dawn?

• 13:27Ashley Flowers?

  Not to Detective Lucky. He is still convinced of Hawkins' guilt. But what if he didn't do it? I mean, I get why they would think that. What are the odds that she knew a now twice convicted killer and he didn't have anything to do with it? But like, what if they were right and wrong? What if a convicted murderer did have something to do with her disappearance, but they were just looking at the wrong one? Let's face it, if student loans are slowing down your financial goals, it might be time for a smarter strategy. That's where today's sponsor SoFi comes in. SoFi is helping you tackle student debt by refinancing your loans with flexible monthly payments that fit your budget. We're talking about the potential to lower your interest rate, reduce your monthly payment, or even pay off your loan sooner,

• 14:12Ashley Flowers?

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• 14:57Ashley Flowers?

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• 16:11Ashley Flowers?

  In 2001, Detective Lucky gets the shock of his career when he reads the front page headline of the Delaware County Daily Times. And it says, "Did Bennett Kill Dawn?" Now, per this article that he's seeing, for the first time...

• 16:28Speaker 01

  The detective.

• 16:29Ashley Flowers?

  Yes.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 16:30Ashley Flowers?

  It's basically saying that a guy in prison named Gerald Bennett had written a letter to the paper confessing to Dawn's murder. And let me preface this by saying, Gerald is the actual worst. He's in prison for strangling his 33-year-old girlfriend, Roxanne Carolyn Lyte, to death. And then sexually assaulting her 13-year-old daughter at knife point for nearly five hours right after. And this was in 1999, so like 10 years after Dawn's disappearance. And this, I don't know that I've ever dropped an MF'er like on an episode, but this man even self-published a book arguing that he is innocent of the crime

• 17:13Ashley Flowers?

  and accusing the 13-year-old, a literal child, of killing her own mother.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Okay, when you said the actual worst, I thought that was hyperbolic, but...

• 17:23Ashley Flowers?

  The actual worst. Now, in this letter that he writes to the paper, he says that he met Dawn in May of 1989 while he was applying for a job at the hospital where she worked, which is eerily similar to Hawkins' story.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:39Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know what to make of that. It seems like just a weird coincidence. Now, there aren't a ton of details in the letter, and even though they clearly didn't reach out to Lucky, the detective, the paper did... Get Bruce Castor, the prosecutor, responding on record saying, quote, "If Bennett takes authorities to the body, then I will publicly apologize to Tommy Hawkins for indicating that I think he's the killer of Don Mozino."

• 18:07Speaker 01

  That's pretty bold.

• 18:10Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, especially for a guy who like would go on to ascend the political ladder. I mean, he eventually became the acting Attorney General of Pennsylvania. And it turns out Bruce called this guy's bluff. Gerald isn't able to lead them to Don's remains. He can't really even give them any verifiable information on what he says happened. So according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, police determined that he was in an entirely different state when Don disappeared.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Then why lie out of the blue like that?

• 18:40Ashley Flowers?

  He was looking at life in prison or the death penalty, and I think trying to save his skin by giving false information in a high-profile missing persons case. The judge in Gerald's case called him, quote, "The most dangerous, remorseless, callous defendant I have seen in my 20 years as a judge," unquote.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Which I feel like I can't disagree, but now with Don's case, they're back to Hawkins?

• 19:07Ashley Flowers?

  Honestly, never really got off him. And again, I get why. But I also, again, ask, what if the obvious thing distracted police from the real thing? What if for all these years, people ignored the one clue that Don herself left behind? Her diary. In this diary, which she seems to have started just three months before her disappearance, Don doesn't mention Hawkins once. She certainly doesn't say anything about Gerald Bennett. What Don does write about is cheating on her boyfriend, Dan. From her writings, it seems like Don had been getting a little bored in her relationship with Dan.

• 19:52Ashley Flowers?

  And somehow, while in this unsatisfied state, she meets this guy named Nick Katona. I don't really know how, but she devotes most of the pages of her diary to venting about her complicated feelings for Dan and Nick. We actually have a copy of Don's diary, which we're going to put in the Fan Club app if you want to see it. But Don's sister Kath actually read some parts of her diary aloud for us to share.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  Wednesday, the 22nd of March, 1989. The day after I saw Nick. I like him so much. The only thing is, I still have feelings for Dan. I love him. Tuesday, the 25th of April, 7:51 PM. But really, what do I do? I'm lonely. Dan will never come up here, I know now. He said he will, but I know he won't, and I feel so bad. When he finds out that all this time I've seen Nick, he'll be so angry. Oh, well, he won't find out. I'll keep it from him, no problem. As long as he doesn't see this diary. Wow, look at how many entries I've made. Did her sister know about Nick?

• 21:03Ashley Flowers?

  No one in her family really knew about Nick. I mean, Kath said that, like, they knew who he was. He came to the house a couple of times. She knew Dawn was friends with this guy. But she had no idea that Dawn was involved with him romantically. Here's the catch, though. Police did. They had this diary from the jump. And sometime in the 2010s, so this is after Detective Lucky had retired, and this new guy was on Dawn's case, Detective McGuire. He lets Kath see the diary. That's how she found out for the first time.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 21:36Ashley Flowers?

  Which I'm sure was, like, so disorienting for her. Because for as long as she remembers, she believed the same thing as police, that Hawkins probably did something to her sister. But these writings, I don't know, she sees something more in them than police clearly do. Like, call it a sister's intuition, whatever. But she saw that Nick was clearly dominating Dawn's thoughts from March 1989 right up until her disappearance in May. And it's clear from her entries that Nick did not treat her very well.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Wednesday, the 12th of April, 1989, 9:38 PM.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Hi. Well, now Nick is on my [__] list. He told me he was going to see me and he didn't call me or stop by. He had done this, I don't know how many times. He stole my heart and now I want it back if he's going to keep on doing this. I mean, I really liked him and so he has to do this all the time. April 1989. Nick called me at 9:30 a.m. this morning and told me he was going to call me later. But he, of course, not. It pisses me off so much.

• 22:43Ashley Flowers?

  It seems like Dawn would drop everything to be with Nick. And Nick kind of just kept stringing her along, basically like booty calling her. He's not taking Dawn on wholesome dates. He's taking her to hotels to have sex. So Dawn talks in her diary about how she's getting frustrated. Like, she is clearly infatuated with Nick, but she knows that she shouldn't be treated like this. She also can't stop. There's this moment where Dawn writes that she's listening to the song "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" by Poison on repeat, which is like a tape she said she bought because it reminded her of Nick, which just like sends me back.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  I would say it's such a relatable moment. I mean-

• 23:23Ashley Flowers?

  It's like you and I, like, in middle school, we'd like lay in your guest room and just sing Caroline, Dawn Johnson.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  I would say complicated.

• 23:29Ashley Flowers?

  So complicated, yeah. Anyway, so after who knows how long of this, but at least three months of entries, she and Nick seem to be on the fritz come May when she disappears.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  And police never talked to this Nick guy.

• 23:44Ashley Flowers?

  No, here's the thing, they did once. Radnor Police confirmed to us that they brought Nick in for an interview, but they wouldn't tell us when that was, or what was asked, or what was answered, or not answered.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Or anything.

• 23:58Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and we tried to get the case file for Dawn's case, but our FOIA was denied because police said that it is an active investigation.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Okay, then what about Dan? Like, did they look at him at all? Like, maybe he found out about Nick, confronted Dawn, things got out of hand?

• 24:12Ashley Flowers?

  No, so Dan isn't really considered a suspect at all, like, by anyone, including Kath. He has a solid alibi. I mean, A, there are all those voicemails that he left on Dawn's answering machine. Keep in mind, this- Is the 80s, so they're either coming from his apartment or payphone.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Landline, yeah.

• 24:29Ashley Flowers?

  And then someone at the YMCA confirmed that Dan did attend the Special Olympics practice that night. And Kath told us that she knows Dan really well. He is this really sweet man, who, get this, still calls Dawn's mom every single evening for the past 36 years to say goodnight. And the thing that really sticks with me, that I was so surprised by, is he wouldn't even have a motive, because Kath says that to this day, Dan still doesn't know that Dawn was cheating on him. As Kath told us, like, they didn't want to break his heart. And I, like, when I heard that, I was like, we're putting this out like-

• 25:08Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, like, should we be saying this right now?

• 25:10Ashley Flowers?

  I checked with our reporter, and she checked with the family. I was like, listen, like, someone needs to tell him before this episode comes out.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:16Ashley Flowers?

  But we talked this up and down with Kath, and she said she is confident that he is not gonna hear this, and it's not going to get back to him. She says, he doesn't even know what a podcast is, he doesn't have a smartphone, so he is living in a very, like, sheltered bubble. So all this to say, that Dan was and is quickly ruled out. Nick, on the other hand, is a different story.

• 25:43Ashley Flowers?

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• 26:27Ashley Flowers?

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• 26:46Ashley Flowers?

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• 28:01Ashley Flowers?

  After Kath reads her sister's diary, she really pushed police to explore the lead on Nick Moore. Like, in all this time, things with Hawkins hadn't progressed at all. And it's not like he was going anywhere, so like, let's just be sure, right? Make sure every other avenue is explored to ensure nothing was missed and that if Hawkins is still where we end up, like, in the end, so be it. Yeah, he's right here. We know where he is. Yeah, but like, might as well, right? But when she's pushing for this, Detective McGuire drops a bombshell. He tells Kath that Nick had actually taken his life in September 2011, which is before she is now coming to him asking for this. So now they're like, there's nothing we can do.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  I mean, that seems like it might be like relevant information to have before now.

• 28:51Ashley Flowers?

  At the time, they didn't have any details for Kath about the circumstances around or leading up to his death, which, mind you, was over 20 years after Dawn disappeared. But yeah, I mean, to say that Kath didn't have some follow-up questions like that seemed to have not been asked, like, that's an understatement. And so this in 2013 is where she kind of becomes at odds with not just police, but her own family a little because Dawn's mother is still in the Hawkins camp with police. And Kath thinks that they've been so focused on Hawkins that they've been neglecting to follow up on other important leads like this one. So by 2023, Kath ends up working with a former social worker turned civilian criminologist named Clark Williams,

• 29:36Ashley Flowers?

  who's pretty legit, like, he's helped solve some cold cases. And Clark starts his investigation with Dawn's diary and methodically tracks down almost everyone Dawn ever mentions, including Nick's family, since Nick isn't around. And really, he was reaching out to them, most of all, to find out what contributed to Nick's death. And his family told Clark that he was in love with a woman who had a serious illness. And when that woman died, Nick just couldn't go on. They also say, and I find this part real interesting, that he never mentioned anyone named Dawn to them ever.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Okay. I mean, even if Nick didn't want to get into like his sex life with his parents, you're telling me someone you know goes missing. They're all over the news.

• 30:24Ashley Flowers?

  Didn't even mention her as like a friend.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  And you don't say anything.

• 30:28Ashley Flowers?

  It makes you wonder.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:30Ashley Flowers?

  Right? Like, why wouldn't Nick go to the police when his friend goes missing? Like, why not tell your family that your friend is missing? Like, you were clearly like in the same orbit. Even if you didn't do anything, like, could you offer information?

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it doesn't sound like, from the diary at least, Nick was taking the relationship seriously. So maybe he wasn't taking it seriously at all. Like, he didn't think that it mattered.

• 30:51Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, maybe. But it also makes me think about the fact that Nick would sometimes randomly like show up at her house unannounced when it was convenient for him. So like, I don't know, maybe he showed up at the hospital or the bus stop and picked her up that day she disappeared. And, you know, because of her strong feelings for Nick, it's possible that Dawn might blow off other plans to hang out with him. And then maybe something happened between them. They got in a fight or Dawn confronted him about like being a total flake. I mean, all of these are just like, I'm just like spitballing. These are theories. But I mean, as we know, theories that no one even looked into by this point. And it's all speculation. There's nothing to suggest that's what actually happened. But again, we have to speculate because police did not do the legwork that we can

• 31:35Ashley Flowers?

  actually like cross any of this off. Did they search his car? Did they search his place? Did they do anything but talk to him one time? TBD who knows when?

• 31:42Speaker 01

  I mean, did Nick have any kind of record over the years? Anything that would indicate he was capable of doing something to Dawn?

• 31:49Ashley Flowers?

  We look, we tried looking it up. So I don't know a whole lot about Nick or who he was in the years after 1989. On his like official record, we found that he got a DUI in 1992, which is three years after her disappearance. And then in 1996, Nick's charged with reckless endangerment, simple assault, and terroristic threats. I'm not sure what the story is behind these charges because our attempts to get the records were denied. And Nick's father has passed away. His mother didn't respond to our request for comment. So

• 32:18Speaker 01

  We're here.

• 32:19Ashley Flowers?

  We were here. So actually, I mean, this is a good point to call out. Like if anyone out there listening knew Nick Katona in Coatesville, PA in 1989, like would love to hear from you. [email protected]. Now, the one problem I have with this Nick angle is motive. I mean, he seems like a kind of grade A a-hole, right? Like who I wouldn't want my sister to date. But I mean, like everything we know just kind of makes it seem like, like you said, he didn't care about Dawn.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, almost to the point where he wouldn't have done something like this because he didn't care about her enough

• 32:53Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  To act on anything. Does that make sense?

• 32:55Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't know if he had another partner. Like, was he having an affair? Or like, you know, the way she had a boyfriend? But we don't see Any evidence in her diary or anything that Dawn was like threatening him in any way. So it doesn't feel like there's a real reason that he would need her out of the picture. But there was someone else mentioned in Dawn's diary who was having an affair, who Dawn had threatened to expose and who really needed Dawn to go away. From her writings, it is clear to the criminologist Clark that for the most part, Dawn lived out her life in like this five mile radius.

• 33:36Ashley Flowers?

  She would hang out at the Kmart with a group of friends near Dan's apartment in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and at the local Wawa. Our reporter Jennifer Amell even took a drive with Kath to all the areas that Dawn would frequent. And they traced the route that Dawn would usually take from her house, her shortcut through the park, past where Dan lived, and then to Kmart. And this was the hub of her social life. That is where she met her best friend Carol, who has a similar learning disability. Now Carol is mentioned in Dawn's diary. And basically, what happens is Dawn finds out a few months before her disappearance that Carol is seeing a married man named Hampton. Now, one thing I haven't mentioned about Dawn is that she was quite religious.

• 34:21Ashley Flowers?

  She grew up Catholic and she would go to church often and belonged to a few Bible studies. And it's interesting because Dawn never wrote about her own affair with Nick behind Dan's back as something sinful. But Kath thinks that Dawn would have probably viewed Carol's affair with Hampton as something more serious because he was married. So Dawn actually had gone to, per her diary, gone to Hampton's wife and told her about the affair.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Oh, and I can't imagine Carol and Hampton were like thrilled about that.

• 34:56Ashley Flowers?

  No, I mean, Dawn probably thinks she's doing the right thing here. But yeah, Carol and Hampton are really mad at her for this. So Kath thinks that maybe there was some kind of confrontation about this between Hampton, his wife, and Dawn. But there is no solid evidence of this. And Dawn doesn't write about any specific incident in her diary. We do know, however, that Dawn's very last entry before she disappeared is about this situation. Her last diary entry is on May 17th, 1989. This is five days before her disappearance. And Brett, I'm gonna have you read it for me.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Well, these few days have been hell with Carol and Hamp. They're getting more in trouble, plus his wife is asking for things, I know, which really isn't that much. Other than that, everything is okay. Dan is such a honey. Nick is a bastard. That's all it is. Well, I guess I'm going to go. Talk to you later. Dawn.

• 35:53Ashley Flowers?

  So the literal last thing Dawn writes is that Hampton's wife is trying to get more information out of Dawn about her husband's affair.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:00Ashley Flowers?

  And by the way, it's worth pointing out that Hampton had an apartment right down the road from Dan and the Kmart, where we know she hung out. And Hampton is a black man. So if the witness Kathy really did see Dawn on the 22nd, and she really was talking to a black man, and it wasn't Hawkins, could it have been Hampton?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Do they ever find out if Dawn got on the bus that day? Or like talked to any of the people who would have been waiting at the stop at the same time? They were all like in the same hospital uniform. I assume they knew each other.

• 36:30Ashley Flowers?

  We don't really know. So because we don't have the files, all we know is that police did interview the bus driver, like the guy who did that route. He didn't remember seeing Dawn get on, but like, I mean, that's just relying on a guy's memory who sees probably hundreds of people passing each day.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  And would Hampton have known where Dawn lived? Because if she did get on the bus and made it to Wayne, like she could have been intercepted before she even gets home.

• 36:55Ashley Flowers?

  I, here's the thing. I know Carol, who is best friends with Dawn, definitely knew where she lived.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:00Ashley Flowers?

  So she could have told Hampton whether he knew outside of that or not. So yeah, if Dawn made it to Wayne, as she usually would after work, Hampton would know exactly when and where to like bump into her on her walk home. But yeah, to your point, it would have had to have either been at the bus stop, like before she got on, or at the bus stop after she got off, but before she got to her house. Because the consensus is she never actually made it back inside her house the day she went missing.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Right, because the dog hasn't been let out.

• 37:27Ashley Flowers?

  Right.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  The voicemails, et cetera, et cetera. And did the police ever question Hampton?

• 37:31Ashley Flowers?

  So Kath told us that police have spoken to both Carol and Hampton several times over the years, though, by the way, the two have long stopped seeing each other. But she told us that police recently interviewed Hampton and said that they are currently not looking into him any further, but have not officially ruled anyone out. Kath also tells us that Carol's brother is actually a detective in the next town over, so Carol would cooperate with police whenever they wanted to ask questions, but she would always bring her brother with her. And being a good brother and hip to police tactics and sensitive to Carol's disability, her brother has advised her to say as little as possible.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Okay. And what about Hampton's wife? Like, we still have another player here. Did they stay together?

• 38:18Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, I actually want to talk to her more than anyone since, like, she's the one trying to get Dawn to give her more information right before she went missing. The thing is, she passed away in 2021. In her obituary, her family said that she was diagnosed with diabetes when she was nine and it was like she was in and out of nursing homes all her life due to that. And despite Hampton's unfaithfulness, they actually stayed together until her death. And we tried to get a hold of Hampton, of course, but we weren't able to. Kath also told us that over the years, she would run into Carol around town. One time, actually, in the grocery store, Kath, like, turned into the aisle, saw Carol, Carol, like, stopped dead in her tracks, stared at Kath, and then, like, turned around,

• 39:02Ashley Flowers?

  like, quickly to avoid her. I don't know what Kath makes of this, other than it was odd and it's, like, stayed with her. But, like, it was something that she brought up to us, so I just wanted to share. And listen, I think these new lines of inquiry coming from the diary are really interesting. But Clark doesn't want to get tunnel vision, so he's still working on even more different leads. Like, he learned from Dan that he used to work at the Kmart they all hung out at, and apparently there was this guy called Maurice Beal, who worked there too and would hang around their group. Dawn knew him. But not super well. But it turns out that Maurice had a long criminal history.

• 39:45Ashley Flowers?

  From 1990 to 1994, Maurice was convicted of drug possession, criminal conspiracy, and assault. He also had reckless endangerment and false imprisonment charges, but those ended up getting dropped. And then in 2003, he's charged with the most serious crime, sexually abusing his then-girlfriend's eight-year-old daughter and stabbing her big sister multiple times when she tried to escape him. Thankfully, big sister survived. Maurice went to court for these charges, but was never convicted because the judge declared a mistrial. And I find this interesting because on the surface, when you look at the victim type,

• 40:27Ashley Flowers?

  you're like, oh, eight-year-old girl, 20-something woman, very different, right? But I've seen in past cases that a certain type of predator preys on those who they deem weaker or like easily manipulated. So you might see the same perp go after the elderly and children and those who are disabled. So what if Maurice thought that he could target Dawn because of her disability? And then maybe really underestimated her? I don't know. As of now, Maurice is incarcerated for another assault and harassment charge. We did reach out to him as well, but he hasn't responded. And we also sent a letter to Tom Hawkins in prison, but we didn't hear back from him either.

• 41:12Ashley Flowers?

  Ultimately, there's no solid evidence tying any of these people to Dawn's disappearance.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  So where does that leave the case, Kath, her sister, now?

• 41:23Ashley Flowers?

  Well, I mean, like I said, the old timers still have their money on Hawkins. And I get why. Because if Kathy's ID really was right and she really saw Hawkins on the 22nd, then he is one of the last, if not the last person to see Dawn alive. Bruce, the prosecutor, even has a framed newspaper clipping of the Hawkins trial with the headline, Hawkins sentenced to die. So it's not like it's water under the bridge. For him. And Bruce told us that he is still convinced to this day that Hawkins abducted and killed Dawn. He is just confidently waiting to be proven right. Now, there is a new detective on Dawn's case now, Detective Brian Bell.

• 42:04Ashley Flowers?

  And Kath tells us that this guy's finally going down all the rabbit holes that police should have gone down back when this was still fresh in people's minds. And though Detective Bell declined to comment on the record, my impression is that while he respects where the investigation has been, he is also trying to come at this from like a very different angle and explore the unexplored, so to speak. And the Mozino family is thrilled to have a detective who is doing the hard work to look at past previous biases. The reality is, it's been 36 years. And the Mozino family still doesn't know where Dawn is. They know nothing more today than the day she stepped out of work and vanished.

• 42:47Ashley Flowers?

  So they're taking every tip that comes their way, even the ones that might seem far fetched to some people. Like one that came about two years ago. That's when Kath was contacted by what's called a remote viewer, which is a person who says they'll psychically find where missing loved ones are located. And listen, Kath was skeptical, but like, what does she have to lose at this point? Well, this remote viewer zeroed in on one particular park and gave this very detailed description. And Kath thinks that the park that this remote viewer described was an exact match to the one that Dawn would cut through to get to the Kmart or the Wawa, the park that's nestled between the apartment buildings where Dan and Hampton lived.

• 43:32Ashley Flowers?

  It's also right down the street from the house that Carol lived in.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  And did they know anything about this park beforehand?

• 43:39Ashley Flowers?

  No, according to Kath, not much. Like all she says the remote viewer was given was the FBI's Vicap report, which had Dawn's name, picture, height, weight, that's it.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  And just to be clear, is the remote viewer saying that Dawn's remains are in this park? Or just something happened there? This is like an important part to the case, like why?

• 43:58Ashley Flowers?

  She thinks that's where her remains are. And listen, I'm in the nothing to lose camp. If we can get a search done in this area, what would it hurt? I mean, the park isn't too big. There's like a playground and a baseball diamond, and it's a highly residential area. There are pockets of dense foliage where human remains could possibly be hidden. But also like committing a crime here and not having anyone see or hear anything is pretty far fetched unless it was in the middle of the night or it happened somewhere else and maybe she was just disposed up there. Because whatever happened to Dawn, we know had to have happened in the late afternoon. For her part, Kath is a bulldog for her sister's case. She actually contacted us to cover this story,

• 44:42Ashley Flowers?

  and I'm glad that we can do our small part to bring awareness to Dawn's case. Kath says that she has had this recurring dream. She's driving through this neighborhood in Wayne, just past the park. And there, walking up the hill is Dawn. Kath pulls the car over, tells her sister to get in. But for some reason, Dawn won't answer, won't even like look at her. She just keeps walking up the hill. And then Kath wakes up. If you have any information on the disappearance of Dawn Mozino on May 22, 1989, please contact the Radnor Township Police at 610-688-5600.

• 45:36Ashley Flowers?

  You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. If you want to listen to more episodes like this and all of our episodes completely ad-free, be sure to join our fan club. You'll also get early access to new episodes every week.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  And you can follow us on Instagram at @crimejunkiepodcast.

• 45:56Ashley Flowers?

  We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

• 46:24Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir, and that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Growing up in a small town, I know how deeply a crime can shake a local community. And I know that what makes the headlines is rarely the full story. That's what Kylie Lowe explores on her show Dark Down East. She digs into cases from Maine and New England using original reporting, archival records, and conversations with the people who knew them best. Each episode takes you inside the communities these stories shaped and the families who never stop searching for answers. Listen to Dark Down East wherever you get your podcasts.