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Rachel Doyle Moved In Six Weeks Before. Eighteen Days Later, a Ditch.
Published 2 months, 3 weeks ago
Description
Every Tuesday for four years, Rachel Doyle drove across Millhaven to sit with her housebound grandmother, and she always texted if she was running late. On the third of December 2019 she texted, ate dinner with Edna, and drove home with two sweet potatoes and a bunch of cilantro in the back seat. Six weeks earlier she had signed another year's lease. Eight days later a cardboard box with her name on it came down Callaway Creek with her kitchen inside it.
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Rachel Doyle, 28, of Millhaven, Harmon County, Oklahoma, was last seen on 3 December 2019. A box of her belongings was recovered from Callaway Creek on 11 December. Her body was found in a drainage ditch on a farm road south of Ferris on 21 December, and the pathologist determined she had been strangled. Gregory Dempsey, 41, a self-employed handyman who had worked three days in her apartment nine months earlier, was arrested on 17 December after her blood was identified in his truck bed. In January 2020, through his attorney, he submitted a written statement admitting he killed her and saying it got out of hand; he maintained he had not gone there intending to hurt her. In the autumn of 2020 a Harmon County jury convicted him of murder in the first degree and abuse of a corpse, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A second file was reopened after his arrest: the 2014 disappearance of Sandra Platt, 31, from an adjacent county, whose body was never found. His DNA matched baseboard trim preserved from her apartment, where he had done repair work. No charge has been brought in that case. The DNA established access, not responsibility, and Dempsey has said nothing about Sandra Platt.
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This episode is a work of fiction written for True Crime 24 Hours. Rachel Doyle, Gregory Dempsey, Sandra Platt, Harmon County and every witness, document and laboratory result described in it are invented. Any resemblance to a real case is unintended.
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Rachel Doyle, 28, of Millhaven, Harmon County, Oklahoma, was last seen on 3 December 2019. A box of her belongings was recovered from Callaway Creek on 11 December. Her body was found in a drainage ditch on a farm road south of Ferris on 21 December, and the pathologist determined she had been strangled. Gregory Dempsey, 41, a self-employed handyman who had worked three days in her apartment nine months earlier, was arrested on 17 December after her blood was identified in his truck bed. In January 2020, through his attorney, he submitted a written statement admitting he killed her and saying it got out of hand; he maintained he had not gone there intending to hurt her. In the autumn of 2020 a Harmon County jury convicted him of murder in the first degree and abuse of a corpse, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A second file was reopened after his arrest: the 2014 disappearance of Sandra Platt, 31, from an adjacent county, whose body was never found. His DNA matched baseboard trim preserved from her apartment, where he had done repair work. No charge has been brought in that case. The DNA established access, not responsibility, and Dempsey has said nothing about Sandra Platt.
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This episode is a work of fiction written for True Crime 24 Hours. Rachel Doyle, Gregory Dempsey, Sandra Platt, Harmon County and every witness, document and laboratory result described in it are invented. Any resemblance to a real case is unintended.