The Purse on the Spillway: How a 27-Year Secret Broke Open

The Purse on the Spillway: How a 27-Year Secret Broke Open

Something deliberate and precise broke a 27-year silence: a dark burgundy purse, open and bone-dry, left on an eight-inch concrete ledge of a padlocked spillway walkway at Calloway Reservoir. The purse contained a Missouri driver's license for Nicole Whitfield, a woman who drowned in the same reservoir in October 1996-so why would someone place her never-wet purse there in March 2023?

In this episode, we recount the events surrounding Nicole Whitfield’s disappearance and death and the decades-long file that closed as accidental, the earlier, similar death of Cynthia Forde in October 1993, and the details that later tied both cases to a delivery driver’s routes-what finally reopened the questions about those nights?

Person: Nicole Whitfield Date: October 4, 1996 Location: Calloway Reservoir Case: Accidental death ruled by Sheriff Dale Pruett Person: John Mason

- The purse was found on a spillway ledge eight inches wide, bone dry, before 7:00 a.m, on a March morning in 2023. - Nicole Whitfield’s body was recovered 80 yards from the boat ramp at Calloway Reservoir, 22 feet down, on October 4, 1996. - Nicole was 49 years old in fall 1996 and had worked 30 years at the Merritt County Assessor’s Office and volunteered every Thursday at the Merritt Public Library for nine years. - A neighbor reported an unmarked white van near Clearfield Drive in the days before Nicole disappeared; Dunbar Provisions used unmarked white delivery vehicles on north Merritt routes in 1993-1996. - John Mason drove for Dunbar Provisions from 1993 through 1996 on the north Merritt route and was observed watching Nicole’s parked Buick during her Thursday shifts at least four times before October 3, 1996.

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