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On September 17th, 1966, Diane Kiddell met a boyfriend for a drink at a local nightspot.
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After leaving the bar, she disappeared. Officials weren't sure whether she ran
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away from the responsibilities facing a single mother with four young children or perhaps had been the victim of foul
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play. That question was answered 27 years later when her daughter came forward with a fantastic tale of something she
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saw when she was 5 years old. [Music] In 1956, 21-year-old Diane Kiddell went to work
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in her father's grocery store in Peoria, Illinois. She needed the money since she was
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recently divorced and was raising her 2-year-old daughter Susie. And it was in that store one day where she met a
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bachelor from town, Gene Kiddell. Gene wasn't the best-looking guy in the world, but he is a good talker. He's a
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very good talker and he was able to woo her. The couple dated for a year, fell in love, and eventually married.
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They moved to Phoenix, Arizona where Gene found work in the growing construction industry.
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Together, Gene and Diane had three more children, Greg, Kelly, and Lori. My siblings and I were really close,
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yeah. It was a lot of great childhood memories. Over time, Diane and Gene decided that it was best for all
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concerned if they divorced. On September 17th, the couple met for dinner at a nearby restaurant to discuss
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the final details of the property settlement and visitation. By all accounts, the meeting went well.
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Afterwards, Diane dropped Gene off at his apartment. From there, Diane drove to the Amber Inn
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where she met Bob Marlin, a man she had been casually dating since her separation.
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A few hours later, Gene Kiddell called Diane at the house and when the children said she still wasn't home, he went over
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to babysit and fell asleep on the sofa. The next morning, Gene said he found his
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wife's car in the driveway, but there was no sign of her. Gene called the police department and reported her
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missing. I know she arrived home. Her car was there. Her purse was in the house. Her
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keys were in the house on the table in the kitchen. Diane did not take any clothes with her that we learned of and
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there was no reason for her to run away. There was no no motive there. Missing persons investigators couldn't
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understand why Diane would have left town without her children. Her neighbors, her mother, and her
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brother all indicated that Mrs. Kiddell would never leave her children for any length of time. They described her as an
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excellent mother. Very concerned about her children. When police went to interview Bob
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Marlin, the man Diane was with at the bar, they were told an incredible piece of news.
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Bob Marlin suffered a heart attack and died the day after his date with Diane. Whatever Marlin might have known about
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Diane's disappearance went with him to his grave. [Music] Two days after Diane Kiddell's
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mysterious disappearance, Gene Kiddell moved back into the family home to look after the four children.
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My father's explanation to not only his children, but to neighbors and anybody
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that that would inquire about my mother's sudden disappearance was that my mother
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had run off with with a boyfriend. Gene provided police with a list of men he said Diane had been dating since the
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separation, but they all were dead ends. Over time, the Kiddell children adjusted
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to life without their mother. Although they all hoped that someday she would return.
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[Music] But 4 months later, tragedy struck once again. Around 9:00 at night, while Gene
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was at a nearby laundromat, a fire broke out in the Kiddell's home. The blaze quickly engulfed the entire
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house and the four children were trapped in their bedrooms. [Music] Susie, the oldest, led the others around
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the flames. [Music] But Lori ran back into her bedroom for her Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal.
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I fell on the floor. I was burned. I was crying. I wanted my mother. And my older sister Susie came in. The
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house was ablaze around us and so she laid on top of me. She said that they're coming for us now,
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Lori. They'll help us. Uh she said I love you. And she said I'll never ever leave you.
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[Music] And at that point we died and she held me. [Music] Susie gave her life protecting Lori from
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the flames. Although Lori suffered third-degree burns over 50% of her body. I was
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continually loved by my sister as she held me and died protecting me. The trauma,
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the nightmares, the horror of it, that doesn't go away. I just tried to overcome that with
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knowing that I was loved, that I was valuable enough to die for. What can you say? I mean, when you see
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that, it takes your breath away. I mean, you you you realize that that person made the ultimate sacrifice.
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8-year-old Kelly also died in the fire. 9-year-old Greg survived. Gene Kiddell arrived at the scene just
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as firemen were pulling the children from the blaze. Investigators found a melted pot on the
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stovetop burner. The knob was in the on position. As a result, the fire was ruled
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accidental. After spending 4 months in a hospital burn unit, Lori went back to live in the
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family home her father had rebuilt after the fire. But 1 year later, there was an incident
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that helped Lori realize the terrible truth of what happened to her mother. It happened when Lori and her father
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went to a friend's funeral. His name was Michael, a boy from the neighborhood who
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was killed in the Vietnam War. Daddy, when is he going to wake up? He's not. He's dead. They're going to bury
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him today. Wake him up! Wake him up! And I began to cry and I threw a very large distraction, a very
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large fit trying to make people understand that we needed to wake Michael up, that I wasn't
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going to permit them to bury Michael in the ground. I was the only living person that now knew the
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But it took another 27 years for Lori to reveal the deep, dark family secret she
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had been harboring. [Music] In 1993, after Diane Kiddell had been missing for 27 years, her only surviving daughter
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Lori walked into the Phoenix Police Department with a written statement. It described a terrible secret she had been
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too afraid to reveal. To whom it may concern, I need to convey to authorities what I witnessed as a
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child. First, I must greatly impress the fear I have of my father's violent retaliation.
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I was often told when I was a child by my father, I brought you into this world, I can take you out.
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The letter went on to say that as a 5-year-old child, Lori saw her father beat her mother to death
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and then bury her in the backyard. At first, Lori thought her mother was sleeping as hibernating animals do. She
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said she once asked her father if she could dig a hole in the backyard to feed her mother.
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As a 5-year-old, I thought my mother was sleeping. I thought that my father made
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my mother go to sleep. And I thought he buried my sleeping mother in the hole in the backyard.
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I wasn't confused on where she was. I wasn't confused on who did it. I was
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confused between sleeping and death. She's only sleeping. Only after she went
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to her friend's funeral did she realize that her mother would never wake up.
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[Music] Detective Ed Reynolds at first wasn't sure what to think. I've been lied to by
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some pretty good liars and I've been fooled by a lot of people and when that
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happens you tell yourself, well, I'm not going to let that happen again. I'm not
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going to fall hook, line, and sinker for every story that comes down the pipe. And in this case though, she did seem
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very believable, very truthful, very sincere in what she said, but I still I wanted more than just a story. I I
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wanted proof. Lori said that her father poured a concrete patio over her mother's grave
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the day after he buried her. The home had long since been sold by her father, who was now remarried and living
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across town. Reynolds was hesitant to ask the new owners for permission to dig up their
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concrete patio without more evidence than a 27-year recollection. I became very frustrated.
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I became angry. I thought that possibly the officials didn't believe me. I was terrified that my father would
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find out that I had confessed. Reynolds looked all over the country for the technology that could look
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underneath the concrete patio without damaging it. The search took almost a year and led to
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a non-profit agency in Colorado called NecroSearch, which brings applied sciences to law
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enforcement. In this case, NecroSearch recommended a ground penetrating radar system.
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To take a look within the ground and to see if it's disturbed. That's what we do
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in geophysics. Just because we find a disturbance could be could be caused by many things.
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The proof and the substantiation is going to have to be a careful excavation. When the radar was pulled across the
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cement decking, it revealed a ground disturbance 6 ft long by 2 ft wide in the corner of the patio.
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The very spot on the concrete where Lori Romaneck had taken me to earlier when we
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had walked through the backyard, where she suspected the body of her mother was buried.
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When police removed the concrete, they had to dig only 10 in before making a grisly discovery.
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A piece of human skull. Within hours, they uncovered the rest of the remains in the shallow 2-ft grave.
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They also discovered a bra and a girdle. Around the skeleton's neck were women's
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stockings. Lori Romaneck was not at all surprised. No, I I don't need any medical
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detectives to prove to me that that's my mother. There was no identification on the
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remains and bacteria in the shallow grave eliminated the possibility of DNA testing.
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Even the teeth were too badly damaged by bacteria to analyze the tooth pulp, usually a rich, protected source of DNA.
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So, detectives had to use other means to identify the skeleton. The first clue was a tree root from a
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neighbor's mulberry tree that had grown through the skull. The root was sent to
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Dr. Thomas Harlan, a dendrochronologist at the University of Arizona. By studying the age of the tree root and
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the manner in which it penetrated the skull, Harlan was convinced that the body was placed in the ground before the
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tree root. Since the root was 15 years old, the body was placed in the grave before
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1978. This will tell us the age of the tree root growing over the body means that
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the body had to be there before the tree root was there. Otherwise, it would have been cut,
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disturbed, would not have gone across. Um, this gives a minimum age for the body to
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be in that position. Forensic anthropologist Dr. Laura Fulginiti analyzed the skeletal remains
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and determined it was a Caucasian woman between 5 ft 4 and 5 ft 5 in in height. The pelvic bones indicated that the
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woman had given birth to at least two children and was between 20 and 40 years of age. All were consistent with Diane
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Kyddell. Dental X-rays are commonly used for identification. Unfortunately, Diane
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Kyddell's dentist was no longer in practice and her dental X-rays had been destroyed.
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As a last-ditch effort to identify the remains, Dr. Fulginiti decided to try a technique called skull photograph
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superimposition. What you basically are doing is taking a picture of the person in life and
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superimposing it onto the skull of the person that you think it might have been.
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Dr. Fulginiti photographed the skull in the same position and size as the photograph of Diane Kyddell taken
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shortly before she disappeared. A canine tooth that was slightly ajar. It's it just stuck out slightly from her
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mouth. We were able to line that tooth up with the tooth in the photograph. I have no questions. I'm sure that it's
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her. Police immediately arrested 61-year-old Gene Kyddell and charged him with murder.
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Lori Romaneck was now ready to tell a judge and jury what really happened on the night her mother disappeared.
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For years, Gene Kyddell told family and friends that his wife Diane abandoned her children and ran off with a
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boyfriend. But Lori Romaneck told a very different story about what happened to her mother
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on the night of September 17th, 1966. Lori said her mother was wearing her blue double-breasted dress when she left
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to meet her father for dinner at a local restaurant. After dinner, Diane drove Gene home to
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his apartment. Later, witnesses saw Diane at the Amber Inn having drinks with a boyfriend.
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Around 11:00 p.m., Gene called the house to speak with Diane and when he learned
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that she wasn't there, went over to the house to wait for her. When Diane returned home around
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midnight, the couple fought, waking 5-year-old Lori and her older sister Susie. The two girls went to investigate.
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When she saw her children, she took her defense down and it was at that point that my father delivered her last blow
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and she whipped back and hit her head and slid to the floor. [Music] Gene saw the girls run from the hallway
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and they hid in the closet. [Music] When the children eventually came out of hiding,
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they saw their mother's lifeless body on the pool deck and they saw their father
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digging a hole in the backyard. [Music] The next day, Gene Kyddell poured a fresh layer of concrete over his wife's
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grave for what he thought would be an eternity. Lori describes her father as an alcoholic, cruel, and violent. We're
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talking about the fact that my father would beat my mother. Violently. My father would attempt to beat his
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children, my siblings and I. And when my mother was alive, she would intervene. And she would not permit my father to
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beat his children. She was very strong on that issue. Lori also says that her father
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threatened to kill her if she ever revealed the tales of her mother's death.
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This was something that Lori says that she never forgot. And she had just been terrified for her
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whole childhood and then adult life of her of her father, even after she got married and left the house and they
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barely had a relationship at some points. It was she remembered the thing the whole way through and somehow, I
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mean, I don't think there's anyone that really could exactly describe what was going on in
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that head of hers all those years. In 1995, Gene Kyddell was convicted for the murder of his wife Diane
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and was sentenced to life in prison. I think it says that the memory of a 5-year-old, even though it's some 29
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years later, is sufficient to convict. But again, remember the one unanswerable question was if what she saw wasn't what
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she saw, how could she have led us to the body? And she did. My father single-handedly murdered my
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mother, murdered my two siblings, and attempted a murder on me, and a murder on my
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brother. I think that my father will more meet his calling upon his death. I I pray for my father.
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I think that this judicial system will have nothing in the comparison of the wrath of God.
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And that I'm sorry for. My father will have to answer and be held accountable.
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What does a man tell our creator God when God says, "What did you do to that
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beautiful wife and lovely children I gave you?" And my father will reply, "I
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beat them. I murdered them. I burned them up in a horrible fire." What will be my father's punishment?
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I'm sorry. That causes me the grief that I feel today for him. [Music] [Music]
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[Applause] [Music]