Even going by the other content on this forum, this case is particularly horrific. Some aspects of this crime took me aback when I first read about them, so I think it’s only proper to advise this before I describe the scene. I feel a description is necessary as it is pertinent to the suspects involved.

1987, Ina, Illinois. The Dardeen family appear to be the victims of a brutal home invasion but the circumstances make it unclear if that is the best category for the crime. When father Keith failed to turn up to work, concerned bosses called the police and the bodies were discovered – Keith bound and shot, found in a field near the trailer, his penis had been cut off. His son Peter (3) and wife Elaine are found beaten to death in the trailer they occupied. To make matters worse, Elaine was pregnant at the time and the attack sent her into labour. The newborn girl was subsequently also beaten to death and tucked up in the parents’ bed along with her mother and brother. The baseball bat used to kill them was inserted into Elaine, and the killer(s) had taken time to tidy up before leaving. In a final act of insult, Keith’s car was left parked outside the local police station.

Suspected serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells confessed to the crime before he was executed for another murder, but this seems very unsatisfactory to me. It appears that he was already on death row when he made this confession along with up to 70 others, prompting many to believe that he was emulating Henry Lee Lucas’s technique of buying time by admitting to anything they threw his way. This is backed up by some reports stating that he was giving multiple answers to questions that only the killer would have known (i.e. guessing), but without seeing the crime details ourselves it is impossible to say. There is a long list of his potential victims available online and I don’t see any that resemble this case.

I do not believe Sells is the killer. Mutilation of the husband plus the brutality inflicted on the pregnant wife seems too personal for a stranger. The car being left by the police station is also an odd act, one that also points away from Sells because he was transitory and would be less likely to know where the police station was in that part of Illinois. Considering the town was apparently already reeling from a series of unsolved murders (details seem scant online unfortunately), this looks more like a message to the people of the area, something a transitory killer probably wouldn’t bother with.

It is very hard to come up with any theories because we just don’t know what order things happened in, other than the killings all took place within an estimated 1 hour. Was Keith witness to his family being killed, then driven to the field to be murdered? Was he carjacked on the way home, killed and then the perp(s) checked his wallet to find his address? How does a single killer subdue a father in this situation? The possibilities are endless, and each one steers us towards very different motives and type of suspect. It does not look like this will be one of those crimes swept up in the current DNA ancestry operations, which is a great pity.