‘Hell And Gone’ Podcast Investigates Unsolved Ozark Murder Mystery

IZARD COUNTY, AR — Rebekah Gould was brutally murdered in the rugged Ozark Mountains over 14 years ago and her killer is still free today — but an in-depth investigation brings hope the mystery could finally be solved.

CrimeFeed journalist Catherine Townsend shines a light into the darkest corners of the slaying on the new podcast Hell and Gone, which details her years-long quest to crack the disturbing — and often frustrating — case.

“I’m from that area, and so I’ve been going back to the Ozarks since I was a kid,” Townsend, a licensed private investigator, said during an October 16 appearance on The Dr. Oz Show. “Every time I go home, I’d hear rumors about this case, and I kept thinking, ‘If everyone in town seems to know what happened and who killed Rebekah, then why hasn’t her case been solved?’”

On September 20, 2004, Gould was staying near the town of Guion for the weekend. Around eight o’clock that morning, she dropped her boyfriend, Casey McCullough, off at his job. She then headed to the Possum Trot, a convenience store where she grabbed a cup of coffee and breakfast sandwich. Before returning to her boyfriend’s house, she made one last pit stop at a gas station. After that, nobody would ever see or hear from Gould again.

Her family knew something was terribly wrong when the college student failed to pick up her younger sister so the two could head back to school near Fayetteville. Worse, police found Gould’s Chevrolet Cavalier, phone, purse, dog, and the uneaten sandwich at her boyfriend’s place. Her blood was splattered throughout the home — but she seemed to have vanished into thin air.

One week later, searchers discovered Gould’s partially clothed body lying in a heavily wooded area at the bottom of a steep embankment while vultures circled above. An autopsy revealed she had died from a blow to the head. The weapon, concluded the pathologist, was likely a piano leg missing from McCullough’s property.

“Rebekah was a beautiful, smart young woman,” said Townsend, who got to better know the victim as a person while working closely with the Gould family for the podcast. “She had her whole life ahead of her, and so I kept thinking, ‘This could be me. This could be my sister, my friend.”

Though Hell and Gone has now launched, Townsend refuses to move on from her quest for answers about what happened to Gould so long ago. “I’m not stopping until I get justice for Rebekah,” she said.

For additional details on Rebekah Gould’s disappearance, read more about the case on CrimeFeed and subscribe to Hell and Gone.