Over the last few weeks, rumors have torn through Hardy County—bones in a backyard, a surgical plate, and whispers that eighteen-year-old Patricia “Patty” Vaughan may have finally been found.

But rumors aren’t answers.

In Episode 5, Joey Grimes corrects the record—publicly and personally—then follows the evidence and testimony where it actually leads: into the silence that swallowed Patty’s name, into one of the earliest known survivor accounts connected to Doug Sager, and into the disturbing discovery along Route 259 that reignited this case.

This episode includes:

• Major factual corrections about Patty’s background and identifying details
• Why so many locals say they never even heard Patty’s name until now
• An early survivor account that predates Patty—showing Doug’s pattern years earlier
• A clear breakdown of what’s confirmed (and what is not) regarding the bones, plate, and ongoing testing
• A witness who lived beside Doug’s former land—and what he learned about the chicken houses tied to multiple accounts

This episode includes discussion of sexual assault, coercion, grooming, violence, and traumatic experiences. Listener discretion advised.

If you want to support records requests, travel, forensic consultation, and ongoing reporting, you can donate here:

Donate: https://app.redcircle.com/shows/cef31eb2-a731-4b09-b2e4-f6b293fd4f4a/donations

Facebook Group (Missing: Patricia Vaughan): https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1RyvCFadui/

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/TheGrimesFiles

TikTok / Instagram / updates and documents are posted as this case develops.

If you worked with Doug Sager, knew him, trucked alongside him, or you have information about Patty Vaughan—or any woman you believe may be connected—reach out. Confidentiality respected.

Contact: joeyg@mcwgp.com

On Thanksgiving night in 2009, the Sitton family gathered in Jupiter, Florida for a warm, ordinary holiday—full of food, laughter, piano music, and the kind of comfort only family can create. But sitting quietly among them was a man who hadn’t come to reconnect. He had come with a plan.

This episode of The Grimes Files tells the full, chilling story of Paul Michael Merhige—how a lifetime of untreated mental decline, deep resentment, and quiet fixation turned into one of the most devastating family massacres in recent American history.

We take you from Paul’s early struggles and escalating obsession, to the days of preparation leading up to Thanksgiving 2009, where he shaved his entire body, bought ammunition, mapped out his escape, and waited for a moment when his entire family would be gathered under one roof.

Inside the Sitton home that night, we walk through the moments of calm before the violence: the conversations, the TV humming in the living room, the kids falling asleep, and six-year-old Makayla Sitton joyfully playing piano for her cousin one final time. And then, we follow the horror minute-by-minute as Paul retrieved a handgun from his car and opened fire—killing his twin sister Carla, his cousin Lisa Knight and her unborn child, and young Makayla, while wounding others who tried desperately to hide or flee.

From there, we cover Paul’s calculated escape, the multi-state manhunt, the media frenzy, and the break that came when a motel employee recognized him after seeing the case featured on America’s Most Wanted. His quiet arrest, days later in the Florida Keys, shocked even seasoned investigators.

Finally, we explore the courtroom aftermath: Paul’s guilty plea, the decision to remove the death penalty, the heartbreaking victim impact statements, and the seven consecutive life sentences that ensure he will never walk free again. We look at how the Sitton, Knight, and Merhige families have carried their grief forward, honoring the memories of Makayla, Lisa, Carla, and Baby Knight while navigating the lifelong aftershocks of trauma.

This is the full story of a Thanksgiving that became a nightmare—and a family whose strength, faith, and commitment to remembrance refuse to let their loved ones be defined only by the violence that took them.

Help keep The Grimes Files independent and investigative.

Donate here:

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Stay connected for case updates, behind-the-scenes research, new episodes, and more:

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Hosted, written, and produced by Joey Grimes.

Thank you for listening and supporting independent true crime journalism.

From 1983 to 1995, women were vanishing along America’s highways—pulled from truck stops, gas stations, on-ramps, and interstate corridors stretching from Tennessee to West Virginia. Their bodies appeared miles from where they were taken, often strangled, discarded, and left unidentified for decades. The press called them the Redhead Murders. Later, law enforcement whispered about another pattern: the I-81 Strangler.

But these weren’t isolated series.

They were a network of predators using the interstate system as their hunting ground.

In this episode, we break down the victims, the trucking routes, the law enforcement failures, and the long-haul drivers tied to multiple states and multiple murders—including Jerry Leon Johns, Henry Wise, Sean Patrick Goble, and Warren Luther Alexander. We look at the survivors who escaped, the victims who still have no names, and the cases that overlap in terrifying ways.

And we connect this landscape directly to the disappearance of Patty Vaughan in 1982—because the world she vanished into wasn’t random. It was already full of men who knew how easy it was to make a woman disappear along America’s highways.

This is Truck Stop Killers.

Follow & Contact

Stay updated on the investigation:

@thegrimesfiles on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Submit tips (confidential):

@thegrimesfiles or joeyg@mcwgp.com

Support the Investigation

Every donation helps fund travel, records, FOIA requests, interviews, and boots-on-the-ground work.

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Once a year, the archive doors open.

This Halloween, The Grimes Files presents a chilling anthology of real stories that blur the line between truth and terror. From a 1950s Hollywood murder born out of jealousy and disguise… to a wealthy Connecticut neighborhood hiding secrets behind its gates… to the haunting mystery of a young woman known only as “Orange Socks.”

Each case in The Halloween Files 2025 unearths a different kind of darkness — the kind that lingers in quiet suburbs, behind bedroom windows, or down lonely country roads. Together, they form a portrait of what fear really looks like when it’s rooted in reality.

Step inside the evidence room. Turn off the lights. And remember — every file you’re about to hear is true.

👁️‍🗨️ Written, narrated, and produced by Joey Grimes.

🎧 A Grimes Files Special Presentation

💀 Support the investigation:

https://app.redcircle.com/shows/cef31eb2-a731-4b09-b2e4-f6b293fd4f4a/donations

On a quiet Friday night in 1965, six friends stopped for gas in Villa Rica, Georgia.

Moments later, nine gunshots shattered the stillness.

Twenty-seven-year-old Arthur James Hill lay dying beside his car—shot by a white service-station attendant named Buner Lee Green.

Green claimed self-defense.

An all-white jury believed him.

Their deliberation took just twenty-two minutes.

Nearly sixty years later, The Grimes Files reopens the case — the shooting, the trial, and the silence that followed.

Using original court records, FBI and Department of Justice files, and firsthand accounts, host Joey Grimes uncovers how a small Georgia town buried a civil-rights killing in plain sight — and how the same men who defended the shooter later stood on courthouse steps at a Ku Klux Klan rally.

This is the story of Arthur James Hill:

Unarmed. Unmarked. But not forgotten.

🔎

In This Episode

Rare DOJ and FBI files obtained under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act

The 1965 shooting, the biased trial, and the all-white jury’s 22-minute verdict

The segregationist attorney who helped free the shooter — and later spoke at a Klan rally

What happened when the FBI reopened the case decades later

🎙️ The Grimes Files — The Death of Arthur James Hill (1965)

🕯️ True crime. Real history.

💰 Support future investigations

Every donation helps fund new case research, archival access, and travel costs.

Donate here👉 https://app.redcircle.com/shows/cef31eb2-a731-4b09-b2e4-f6b293fd4f4a/sponsor

🔗 All links, episode sources, and updates:

https://linktr.ee/thegrimesfiles

This isn’t just a story from the highway — it’s what happens when silence hides the truth.

In this episode of The Grimes Files, Joey Grimes traces the violent trail of long-haul trucker Doug Sager, whose life on the road stretched from the mountains of West Virginia to the Deep South. Behind the wheel of his rig, Doug carried more than freight — he carried the kind of darkness that left fear, silence, and unanswered questions scattered across America’s highways.

Through survivor testimony and firsthand accounts, we revisit the stories of the women whose lives crossed paths with Doug — including Ellen, who endured years of abuse; Peaches, a woman who never came home from a Mississippi motel; and a survivor in New Jersey who couldn’t speak until she was shown proof that Doug was dead. Their stories connect through time, geography, and the interstates that defined the 1980s trucking world.

As Joey digs deeper, the investigation leads to a truck stop that no longer exists — the Panhandler Truck Stop and Restaurant near Martinsburg, West Virginia — where witnesses remembered a young woman found strangled in 1985. The records are gone, the site bulldozed, but the silence remains. From there, the story threads into the Redhead Murders and the unsolved killings that haunted I-81 and I-95, the same routes Doug drove every week.

This episode is about more than one man — it’s about the women who vanished, the ones who survived, and the investigators still trying to connect the dots before the last traces of evidence fade away.

Because the files may be gone, but the stories aren’t.

If you’d like to help keep these investigations going, you can support The Grimes Files directly through this link.

https://app.redcircle.com/shows/cef31eb2-a731-4b09-b2e4-f6b293fd4f4a/donations

Every donation helps fund records requests, interviews, and outreach to families still waiting for answers.

If you have information about Patty Vaughan, Doug Sager, or any of the women who disappeared along his routes, please reach out. Even the smallest detail could help bring answers.

If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse, help is available. In the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text START to 88788.

If you are thinking about suicide, dial 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

You are not alone.

In June 1982, twenty-year-old Kelly Bergh Dove vanished from her overnight shift at the Imperial gas station on South Main Street in Harrisonburg, Virginia. A wife. A mother. A middle child who had already faced more than most her age. That night, she called 911 not once, not twice, but three times — each call sharper and more urgent than the last. Her final words: “Please hurry, he’s back.”

By the time police arrived, Kelly was gone. Her purse sat on the counter. A cigarette smoldered in the ashtray. No robbery. No forced entry. No struggle. Just absence.

Forty years later, Kelly’s disappearance remains one of the Valley’s most haunting mysteries. And her story doesn’t exist in isolation. Just weeks earlier, in neighboring West Virginia, another young woman — Patty Vaughan — also vanished. The same highways, the same culture of night-shift gas stations, and a landscape where women working alone were left vulnerable.

This episode steps back from the Patty Vaughan series to widen the lens: to understand Kelly’s story, the danger of that era, and how the echoes of 1982 still shape the search for answers today.

This isn’t just a podcast. It’s an investigation. And if you’re listening, you’re part of it now.

Harrisonburg Police Department — (540) 434-4436

Crime Solvers of Harrisonburg & Rockingham County — (540) 574-5050

Text tips: Send “HPD” plus your message to CRIMES (274637)

For information on the disappearance of Patty Vaughan in Hardy County, WV: contact the Hardy County Sheriff’s Office or the West Virginia State Police

Even the smallest detail could matter.

Patty Vaughan didn’t just vanish — she disappeared into the orbit of a man. To understand her fate, we have to understand his life.

This episode traces the story of Galen Douglas Sager, from his childhood in the small mountain town of Mathias, West Virginia, to the tragedies and violence that followed him into adulthood. Through survivor testimony, family accounts, and records still being gathered, we examine how silence and protection allowed Doug’s violence to escalate — from broken marriages and a manslaughter conviction to the disappearance of an eighteen-year-old girl and years of abuse that scarred those closest to him.

Ellen, his second wife, offers the clearest window into what happened behind closed doors: captivity, manipulation, sexual violence, and the constant threat that disobedience meant death. Patty didn’t survive to tell her story. Ellen did. And through her words, we see how Doug perfected the silence that kept him hidden for decades.

This isn’t just Doug’s story. It’s the story of his survivors, and of the voices that can no longer speak.