Dana Chisholm

In the early morning hours of 27 February 1995, the parents of 25-year-old Dana Chisholm received a phone call from a man claiming to be an lieutenant with the Metropolitan Police Department. Fearing that something had happened to their daughter, they'd ask officers with the Metro P.D. to check in on Dana...

Just after 1:00 in the morning on February 27th, 1995, Johnny and Jogary Chisholm received a phone call at their home in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The strange man on the other end of the phone spoke loudly and quickly - as if he was almost excited to be talking to them.

Identifying himself as Lt. Lewis Douglass with the Metropolitan Police Department, the man said that he was calling on behalf of Johnny and Jogary's daughter Dana, who was 25 years old at the time and living more than 400 miles away, in Washington D.C. Through bated breath, the man calling himself Lt. Douglass described how Dana had been arrested for prostitution during a sting at the Omni Hotel and thought it best for them to know, despite the call making Dana upset - while she sat behind bars.

Before hanging up, the man gave Dana's parents a phone number for them to call should they need to, but said that Dana would call them herself after being arraigned and released in the morning.

Johnny had a hard time believing that the man who'd called them in the early morning hours had been a police officer - simply because of the way he spoke - but Johnny and his wife would be unable to get in touch with Dana for the rest of the morning. A while later, suspicion began to get the better of him, and Johnny decided to return the man's call at the number he'd provided.

Lt. Lewis Douglass answered his phone... but sounded remarkably different. During the span of this conversation, the Chisholms discovered that the man who'd called them hours beforehand had not been Lewis Douglass, but had only been pretending to be. The real Lewis Douglass - who actually was a police lieutenant in the nation's capital - had never spoken to them before and had no idea what they were talking about. For some reason, though, the anonymous caller had provided the Chisholms with the real Lt. Douglass' work number, perhaps to add a veneer of authenticity to his call.

Surprisingly, though, the real Lt. Douglass did know Dana, the Chisholm's daughter that the anonymous caller had claimed was picked up for prostitution the night before. While there was no record of her having been arrested at all, Lt. Douglass had been to Dana's home in northwestern D.C. weeks prior. She had called the police to report that her television had been stolen, and Lt. Douglass had gone out to file a police report for the missing TV. But he claimed to have not been in contact with Dana since then.

Fearing that something might have happened to her, the Chisholms asked if Lt. Douglass could check in on Dana. He agreed to, making a few calls to Dana's employer and known acquaintances, who all hadn't heard anything. Later that day, Douglass would check in on Dana at her apartment, leaving behind a business card with his name and contact info, along with a note that read "I'll be back," which he left on the front door of the woman's apartment.

Little did he know, the young woman he was looking for was still inside of her apartment, but had been dead for several hours at this point. The clues left behind pointed to a convoluted whodunnit... that remains unsolved nearly three decades later.

This is the story of Dana Chisholm.

Dana Vonde Chisholm was born in York County, South Carolina on August 30th, 1969 to her parents, Johnny and Jogary Love Chisholm. The oldest of three siblings, Dana would have one younger brother, Trevor, and one younger sister, Laci.

Dana would grow up with her family in Rock Hill, the largest city in York County and the fifth-largest city in South Carolina, which is in the northern section of the state, near the North Carolina border. While details of her early life aren't widely known, we do know that Dana was rather intelligent and hardworking, and enjoyed both dancing and cheerleading. Family recall that she read everything she could get her hands on, and - as described by her uncle, William Chisholm to the Washington Post:

"She was a real bright girl, and she always liked doing adult things."

Despite having a good head on her shoulders, Dana did have some troubles during her teenage years. She reportedly got interested in drugs at one point and even ran away from home, but returned home and graduated from Northwestern High School in 1987.

The following year, Dana began attending King's Business College in Charlotte and would graduate a few years later, in 1993.

Later that year, Dana made her biggest move yet - moving out of the Carolinas to the nation's capital of Washington D.C., where she had ambitions of becoming a professional singer. According to those that knew her, Dana was incredibly talented, and some even likened her voice to that of Whitney Houston. But singing only pays the bills for very few, so Dana had to pick up a day job to support herself in the meantime.

Dana ended up finding a job at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington D.C., where she worked as a secretary. Michael J. Horowitz, her boss, later described to the Washington Post:

"She was a bright young woman with such intelligence and a thousand-watt smile. At the same time, I had a sense that there was some troublesome aspect to her life."

Some of Dana's fellow coworkers recall her being late often and occasionally absent, but seeming distraught or distracted some of the time. Despite this, however, she was seemingly well-liked by almost everyone she knew, with not many having a bad word to say about her.

Dana lived at an apartment at 3808 Argyle Terrace NW, in the northern section of town, near Rock Creek Park. There, she rented the basement from a woman that lived in the upper portion of the home with her son. This was a relatively affluent neighborhood at the time, with it being reported that one of their neighbors was the former director of the FBI, William Sessions; along with Senator Jay Rockefeller, who lived just down the street.

Sadly, it was here - in this supposedly safe neighborhood - that Dana's life would come to an end less than eighteen months after moving to D.C.

On February 27th, 1995 - the same day that Dana's parents had received a phone call from someone pretending to be Metropolitan Police Lieutenant Lewis Douglass - the real Lt. Douglass had stopped by Dana's apartment, looking for her. Sadly, though, he had found no trace of Dana there, with the young woman not answering her door or responding to attempted phone calls. Lt. Douglass left behind a note and a business card on Dana's door but seemed to have left it at that.

At around 6:00 PM, Dana's coworkers at the Hudson Institute reached out to Dana's landlady, Cynthia Ford, who lived upstairs above Dana's rented basement. Because she had not shown up to work that day and had not told anyone her whereabouts, these coworkers were worried for Dana and wondered if Cynthia could check in her apartment to see if she was okay.

Cynthia agreed to do so, entering in through Dana's apartment door to look for any trace of her. Moments later, inside of the littered apartment, Cynthia discovered Dana lying face-up on the hallway floor, near her bedroom.

Authorities were called to the scene, and Metropolitan Police began to arrive at the property at approximately 7:00 PM. Dana - who at first had been believed to be merely unconscious - was visibly deceased. According to Sergeant Michael Farish of the Metro P.D., who spoke to reporters with South Carolina's The Herald:

"She appeared to have been dead for a while prior to us finding her."

The medical examiner estimated that Dana had been deceased for approximately 24 hours before her discovery, putting her time of death at around 9:00 PM that day before she was found (February 26th, 1995). It was believed she had been asphyxiated to death with a cord, which was still wrapped around her neck at the time her body was found. She might have been raped, but authorities never publicly revealed whether she had been or not.

Shockingly, though, it was later determined during the autopsy that Dana had been approximately four weeks pregnant at the time of her death.

Investigators with the Metro P.D. began investigating Dana's death inside of her apartment, finding that there was no sign of a broken window or door... there wasn't any sign of forced entry, for that matter.

However, not too far away from the apartment, a key was discovered by a TV reporter reporting upon the case, which was later found to be a key to Dana's apartment. Investigators weren't sure whether this was a spare key she had left outside in case of emergencies - which the killer had found or stumbled upon, perhaps - or if this was a key that she might have given to someone she at one point trusted.

It was reported that a note had been found on the back door to Dana's apartment, which read "I'll be back." This was later determined to have been a note left behind by Lt. Lewis Douglass, who had attempted to get in touch with Dana earlier that day - February 27th - when he left behind the note along with a business card of his. However, it was reported that Douglass had left behind the note on the front door of the property, with it being theorized that the killer had moved the note to the back door, for whatever reason.

[However, Lt. Douglass has refused to speak to reporters in the years since, so it's hard to know whether this was a fact or merely a rumor.]

Surprisingly, none of Dana's neighbors had recalled seeing or hearing anything out-of-the-ordinary on the night she lost her life; not even her upstairs neighbors, who rented out their basement to Dana. Despite this being a rather-affluent community - full of neighbors who knew each other - no one had seen or heard anyone suspicious coming or going on the evening of February 26th, 1995... nor the following morning, February 27th.

With a lack of leads developed outside of Dana Chisholm's apartment, investigators focused on the scene of the crime: Dana's apartment itself, where she had been killed. The apartment had been ransacked by her killer either before or after her death, looking for something... or anything. It was hard to tell because of how scattered everything was at the scene.

It was theorized that during this ransacking of Dana's apartment, the killer might have discovered previous business cards left behind by Lt. Lewis Douglass with the Metro P.D., who had been there weeks beforehand to take the report of Dana's stolen television. It was believed that that killer might have used this information to make the call to Dana's parents just a few hours after her supposed time of death, in the early morning hours of February 27th.

While this ransacking meant that police had a hard time identifying any kind of smoking gun, they did discover records kept by Dana herself, which included dates and times of interactions and encounters with various men. These were namely men that Dana had romantic or sexual encounters with in the past, which - as reported by the Washington Post - included telephone numbers and even workplace references for most of them. These were men that ranged from:

"...50-something married businessmen who lived in the outer suburbs to sports-car-driving club-hoppers to police officers."

This revelation - that Dana had been seeing multiple men in the year-and-a-half that she had lived in D.C., and had been keeping explicit notes of her interactions with each - was huge for investigators. It pointed to Dana being more involved in the region than anyone had suspected. As described by Sgt. Michael Farish to the Washington Post in 2011:

"She lived two very separate lives. We all think about the small-town girl who comes to the big city, meets predators who prey on her and that leads to her demise. But that is not the case here. Dana was very savvy... She ran those 976-DATE-type ads. We talked to several of the men. She'd sleep with these guys then say things like, 'My roommate moved out, and I could really use some help with the rent.' It wasn't blackmail, exactly, but the message was definitely that it might be in their best interests to pay her."

To investigators, it seemed like Dana had been involved in sex work, but it was possible that she didn't see it that way. Because she was deceased, there was no way of getting her input, but it seemed like she had entered into romantic or casual relationships with these men, and then asked for money later on... perhaps subtly using the threat of exposing them to their family, friends, or colleagues to ramp up the intensity of the ask. I'm not quite sure if this qualifies as "sex work," but perhaps it was.

To me, this makes it likely that the ransacking of Dana's apartment was done for the killer to search for and remove any trace of himself, such as telephone records and other details written down by Dana.

Investigators would go on to interview the many men that Dana had records of, which informed them how she had spent much of her 18 months in Washington D.C. Many of these men were considered persons of interest in Dana's death - especially those that she had solicited money from after entering into romantic or sexual relationships - but due to a lack of information, none were ever developed into significant suspects. The evidence just wasn't there.

Shortly thereafter, though, an odd lead would begin to develop in the background of this investigation.

Sgt. Michael Farish was a supervisor for the Metropolitan Police Department's homicide division at the time of Dana Chisholm's murder and was one of the only detectives interviewed by reporters at the time. For that reason, he was the only investigator quoted in the scant newspaper coverage of the case.

Shortly after Sergeant Farish began looking into Dana's murder, he began receiving phone calls from a mysterious man with a raspy voice, who never gave his name. However, this man called whenever Farish was gone and left voicemails at Farish's desk, telling him that he should return his calls - without leaving behind a return phone number.

However, after a couple of weeks, this man called when Farish was at his desk, and as Farish later recalled to the Washington Post in 2011:

"He said I knew why she was dead - because of her lifestyle."

This mystery man recounted details of Dana's private life to Sergeant Farish, including her constantly going out to clubs to drink and meet men, having sex with multiple men at the same time, etc. This rather-abrasive caller seemed to put the blame on Dana for her own death, wanting Sergeant Farish to tell the public about Dana's private life. But while Farish wanted to earn the man's trust to hopefully learn more about him, he ended up doing the exact opposite.

"I lied, I admit it," Farish later said to the Washington Post. "He was so adamant that I put those details out there that I put out just the opposite hoping to draw him out."

In a Washington Post article from March of 1995, Farish had portrayed Dana as a n "all-American type girl... the cheerleader, the type of girl that any mother and father hopes their son brings home." It seems like this treatment in the press irked the caller.

These calls continued sporadically for a couple of months, with the man expressing resentment towards Sergeant Farish for how he portrayed Dana in the press: as a young, "All-American," naive woman that had been taken advantage of by her killer(s). Eventually, this man wanted to meet up with Farish to talk about Dana's murder. Farish agreed, allowing the other man to choose the spot where they'd meet up.

At the stated time, Farish drove out there, eagerly awaiting to meet the man who was so opinionated about Dana Chisholm's murder. But this man never showed up, and from this day forward, went silent. Farish didn't receive any more phone calls from the mystery man, nor did anyone else (that we know of).

It's unknown if this was the same man who had called Dana's parents early on the morning of February 27th, 1995 - just hours after she had died - pretending to be another officer with the Metro P.D. But it's widely believed that these two men were one and the same, due to the details of their voice and speech patterns matching up.

Police had been able to trace the call made to Dana's parents' home, determining that the call had been made on a payphone at Fourth Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington D.C. This was approximately four miles away from Dana's apartment, but just a couple of blocks away from the D.C. police headquarters - leading some to believe that this killer may have been a police officer. If you recall, some of the men in Dana's notes had been police officers; at least two had been officers with the Metro Police Department. If anyone would know how to cover up their involvement in a crime like this, I'd imagine it to be a police officer.

Whoever this mysterious caller had been, he had also lied and told Dana's parents that she had been arrested for prostitution, which was evidently untrue. While we can semantically argue over whether or not she had been involved in sex work, she had not been arrested for prostitution or soliciting sex work or anything like that... in fact, as far as I can tell, Dana was not arrested for any crimes in the leadup to her death. But this caller seemed to enjoy telling Dana's parents that she had been arrested for sex work, which seemed oddly similar to the mysterious caller that had pressured Sergeant Farish into portraying Dana as a sex worker in the press.

This leads me to believe that this man not only killed Dana but likely wanted to destroy her reputation afterward. I'd be surprised if this man wasn't intimately involved with Dana, or at least obsessed with her to an unhealthy degree. It's even possible that he was the father of her unborn child, who was killed along with Dana nearly thirty years ago.

In the weeks before her death, Dana had spoken to her parents and told them that she planned on driving home for a weekend to discuss something "big" with them. It's believed that she had been planning on telling her parents about her pregnancy; details of which she had already told some of her friends and coworkers, who recall her being less-than-positive about the news. Some coworkers recalled her crying at her desk when she first found out she was pregnant, which definitely makes it seem like the pregnancy wasn't planned.

While the case remains unsolved, many hold out for answers to this day. Sergeant Michael Farish continued to monitor the case for years, with the most recent press coverage of this story - a Washington Post article from 2011 - detailing how he continued to search for answers and held out hope for some kind of resolution.

While not much has happened in this story over the ensuing decade, I can only share in that hope - that answers will one day be found. Until such a time, the story of Dana Chisholm will remain unresolved.

Episode Information

Writing, research, hosting, and production by Micheal Whelan

Published on March 5th, 2022

Music Credits

Original music created by Micheal Whelan through Amper Music

Theme music created and composed by Ailsa Traves

Sources and other reading

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/after-16-years-and-a-mystery-caller-dc-homicide-commander-still-haunted-by-case/2011/03/31/AGcYElGH_story.html?fbclid=IwAR2bRjxG75Wqkb3e6beTaA-bnH3Utviqxj0RGSBkgIosyBSGXXXkGelm7w0

https://www.newspapers.com/image/632194497/?terms=dana%2BVonde%2Bchisholm

https://www.newspapers.com/image/627541933/?terms=dana%2BVonde%2Bchisholm

https://www.newspapers.com/image/627552135/?terms=dana%2BVonde%2Bchisholm

https://old.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/h93w60/who_killed_dana_chisholm_its_believed_her_killer/

https://mpdc.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mpdc/publication/attachments/chisholm_dana.pdf

https://mpdc.dc.gov/publication/dana-chisholm-homicide-victim

https://old.reddit.com/r/UnsolvedMysteries/comments/h928e0/what_happened_to_dana_chisolm_dc_women_found/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56335686/dana-vonde-chisholm

https://www.newspapers.com/image/627549606/?terms=dana%2Bchisholm

https://www.newspapers.com/image/756524277/?terms=dana%20chisholm%20rock%20hill&match=1

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/from-post-archives-dc-killing-ends-quest-for-new-life-sc-woman-called-all-american-type/2011/06/02/AGHIW0GH_story.html