The disappearance of 23-year-old Dail Dinwiddie from the Five Points area of downtown Columbia more than three decades ago remains one of South Carolina's most haunting - and enduring - cold cases. Her story is still seared into the public consciousness thanks to the tireless efforts of family and friends, sheriff's detectives and members of the media who continue the search against ever-lengthening odds.
This army of devoted truth-seekers will never stop searching... nor will they ever give up hope that Dinwiddie might still be found. Perhaps even found alive.
To recap: In the early morning hours of September 24, 1992, Dinwiddie - an art student at the University of South Carolina- disappeared from the Five Points region of downtown Columbia, S.C.
The 23-year-old had accompanied her friends to a concert by Irish rock band U2 at Williams-Brice Stadium the previous evening. After the concert ended at approximately 11:15 p.m. EDT, Dinwiddie and her friends went to Jungle Jim's - a nightclub in Five Points that closed down in early 2012.
Dinwiddie and her friends were separated at the club, though, and at around 1:00 a.m. EDT her friends departed - believing Dinwiddie had either found another ride back home or contacted her parents to come and pick her up from the club. At 1:15 a.m. EDT, Dinwiddie asked a bouncer at Jungle Jim's whether he had seen her friends.
Fifteen minutes later, the brown-eyed, brown-haired Dinwiddie - standing all of five feet and weighing only 98 pounds - left the bar, walking north on Harden Street wearing a forest green pullover, faded jeans and a blue L.L. Bean jacket tied around her waist.
No one has seen her or heard from her since ...
The following morning, Dinwiddie's father noticed his daughter was not in her room when he awoke to let the family dog out of the house. Calls to friends produced no information as to her whereabouts, which prompted Dinwiddie's parents to call the police.
Paul Seay of Irmo, S.C. believes he may know what happened to Dinwiddie - and it's a story he has relayed to investigators with the Richland County Sheriff's Department (RCSD) twice in the last seven months.
RCSD is the lead agency investigating Dinwiddie's disappearance. In fact, in addition to overseeing the active pursuit of numerous leads in this case over the past thirty-three years - sheriff Leon Lott has personally followed up with family members on a regular basis, keeping them apprised of new developments in the investigation.
Or just calling to check in... and talk.
As for Seay's theory, it involves a childhood friend, a visit to see an inmate on death row and a case of mistaken identity - one which allegedly thwarted a planned abduction of another woman made by two of the region's most notorious killers.
As incredible and implausible as his story might seem at first glance, cold case investigators have confirmed that while there is nothing to indicate the tale is true - they are nonetheless following up on the lead.
"We have taken the information (Seay) provided seriously and have been actively following up on it," said Master Deputy Allie Salrin, RCSD public information officer. "Dail Dinwiddie's case continues to be an active investigation for our Cold Case unit. At this time, we do not have any investigative information available to the public."
Seay said he obtained information about Dinwiddie during a visit with James Adolph Campbell in a North Carolina prison. Campbell was on death row at the time - expecting a date to be set for his execution.
Seay was accompanied by a childhood friend - Dawn Michelle Atkins - who was also Campbell's ex-wife.
A couple of years older than Seay, Atkins' family moved to Irmo, S.C. in 1978 - to a house a few doors down from Seay's family home. Seay described her as a "free spirit." In 1985, Seay graduated from Irmo High School - and Atkins married Campbell - an inmate who was serving time at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, S.C.
Campbell had already amassed a significant criminal record - including the 1982 assault of a Richland County school secretary that landed him in the custody of the S.C. Department of Corrections (SCDC) for eight years. Evidence of the Atkins/Campbell nuptials was found in a newspaper announcement. They divorced in 1989 - while Campbell was still incarcerated.
Later that year, Atkins married Herbert Branham and in December 1991, the couple had a baby girl.
Campbell was released from SCDC custody in 1992 upon the completion of his sentence. He moved to Rowan County, N.C. near his family and it was there that he embarked on an epic crime binge for the duration of the four months he remained on parole.
According to Seay, it was during this time that Campbell - still angry over the divorce - supposedly hired Terry Lee Hutto to abduct Atkins and bring her to him. Seay says Campbell provided Hutto with a photo of Atkins - and information about her clubbing habits as best he knew them. At the time, Atkins had a nine-month-old baby girl and it is unclear whether her nightlife had been impacted by the arrival of her young daughter.
"I don't know that she was in fact still doing the club scene in September 1992 when Dail Dinwiddie went missing," Seay said. "But, according to James Adolph Campbell, the former husband, she used to go clubbing in the Five Points region back in the 1980's, and as far as he knew she still did. That's why he instructed Terry Lee Hutto to look for her there with the picture of Dawn that Mr. Hutto had been provided. And Wednesday and Thursday nights were when she usually went to the clubs."
Campbell's record was marked by horrific acts perpetrated against women who angered him. While he was on trial for the murder of Katherine Price in 1992, the assistant prosecutor pointed to Campbell's pattern of committing violent crimes against women.
"He was mad at a girlfriend each time," she said. "That's what compels him to do what he does."
Seay's theory is problematic for many reasons. For starters, there is no evidence Campbell and Hutto ever knew each other, ever met each other or were ever even in the same place at the same time. They were never incarcerated together, there is no overlap in their geographic locations and there is no documentation of a relationship between them of any kind.
"I'm not sure that Mr. Campbell and Terry Lee Hutto ever met in person," Seay acknowledged. "For all I know, Hutto had the picture of Dawn Atkins mailed to him. All I know is Mr. Hutto was supposedly hired to do the abduction between May and September 1992."
Instead of abducting Dawn Atkins, though, Seay claimed Hutto grabbed Dail Dinwiddie that fateful early morning by mistake as she departed from Jungle Jim's.
"The woman who was supposed to be abducted, Dawn Atkins, closely resembled Dail Dinwiddie in appearance and age," Seay said. "And she, too, was known to frequent bars in the Five Points area in the early 1990s."
Both women were blonde and petite - standing approximately five feet tall. There was an age difference, though, as Dail Dinwiddie was 23 years old - while Dawn Atkins was 28 years old at the time.
Under cover of darkness, though, could a kidnapper have gotten confused?
According to Seay's theory, Hutto took Dinwiddie to Campbell's home in Rowan County, N.C. - only to find out that completing his job of delivering the young woman to Campbell would be impossible. That's because Campbell had been arrested on September 16, 1992 - a week before the Dinwiddie abduction - for the murder of Katherine Price on September 9, 1992.
Later, Seay contends, a missing persons report made Hutto realize he had grabbed the wrong girl.
Seay claimed Hutto killed Dinwiddie and left her body in a field near Campbell's North Carolina home. According to Seay, Campbell claimed this information had been communicated to him in a letter from Hutto - a jailhouse letter. However, this part of the story seems implausible - even to Seay - considering how closely inmate mail is monitored. He believes Campbell must have learned of Hutto's alleged mistake - and Dinwiddie's disappearance - via other means.
The Rowan County field referenced by Seay was a preferred drop off spot for Campbell, who frequently made use of the location to victimize women during the post-incarceration crime binge that culminated in his arrest for the murder of Katherine Price. She was left in a field in the Millbridge area of Rowan County, which is described in court filings.
As for Hutto, he is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of Nadine Poole in Pelion, S.C. on September 25, 1992 - the day after Dinwiddie went missing. The proximity between Dinwiddie's abduction and the murder of Poole further complicates the timeline presented by Seay, although it doesn't necessarily rule it out.
Several law enforcement sources familiar with the status of the investigation have told FITSNews Seay's tip regarding Campbell, Hutto and Atkins was a "dead end" - but RCSD clearly put resources into running the thread to ground.
And, as noted, the agency has not publicly excluded the theory... at least not yet.
Seay's tale is an elaborate - potentially unverifiable - story based on a conversation he allegedly had with Campbell on June 23, 2006 while Campbell was on death row in North Carolina. According to him, the condemned inmate allegedly revealed his part in Dinwiddie's disappearance as information he was withholding from authorities until it would be advantageous for him to use it.
According to Seay's account of their conversation, Campbell called it his "backup plan" - something he intended to use in exchange for clemency or a stay of execution.
And what became of Campbell's bid for clemency? That is another story full of twists and turns. As it happens, Campbell's moment to deploy what Seay insisted was his "backup plan" - i.e. disclosing alleged details of Dinwiddie's disappearance - has not arrived.
Campbell's execution had not yet been scheduled on June 23, 2006. But soon thereafter, a date was set for February 9, 2007. Before that appointment could be kept, though, North Carolina placed a moratorium on all executions. The last time North Carolina executed a prisoner was August 18, 2006.
Meanwhile, we cannot ask Dawn Atkins to verify the facts of the case. She died in 2020 at the age of 56.
Also, it is important to note that criminals who are seeking to trade information for consideration related to their sentences have not historically been paragons of virtue - or purveyors of unvarnished truth. Meaning even if Seay's account of what Campbell told him is 100% accurate, the alleged claims at the heart of his narrative might not be.
Seay's lead in the Dinwiddie case isn't the first convoluted narrative detectives have chased in this case. Five years ago, FITSNews published a story on the saga which included what many believed was a similarly promising lead.
While investigating a sexual assault case involving a prominent Columbia, S.C. attorney, we received additional circumstantial information from an alleged victim suggesting this subject of the investigation might have been in a position to have some connection to Dinwiddie's disappearance.
But beyond an eerily specific statement attributed to the lawyer by his alleged victim, there was very little to go on.
"More likely than not, it is yet another wild goose chase," our founding editor Will Folks noted at the time. "Still, the fact law enforcement agencies are continuing to leave no stone unturned in this case is reassuring... just as the unwavering faith of the Dinwiddie family in the face of ever-lengthening odds is nothing short of inspiring."
Dail Dinwiddie's face has been printed on countless flyers and billboards. Her story has been told in numerous documentaries, podcasts and news features. Anniversaries of her disappearance have come - and gone. Through it all, her story remains etched into the memory of a state still searching for answers. Decades have passed, suspects have died and theories have come and gone -- but the core truth remains the same: Dail vanished without a trace.
And for now, no one other than the individual(s) who abducted her that early September morning know for certain what became of her.
It may not be Paul Seay's lead that solves this mystery, but somewhere out there is the missing piece of this puzzle -- and someone who is holding it.
Unsolved Carolinas - sponsored by our friends at Bamberg Legal - is devoted to highlighting cases which have fallen off the front page. In every unsolved case, someone out there could know something that provides a missing link - a critical clue that could bring peace to a family in pain and help them write the next chapter of their stories. If you know someone who is missing - or has been a victim of an unsolved homicide - email us your story.
Callie Lyons is a relentless investigative journalist, researcher, and author known for exposing hard truths with heart and precision. As a journalist for FITSNews, she dives into high-profile and murky cases -- like that of Mica Francis Miller -- with fearless resolve and a sharp eye for detail, whether it's tracking white-collar crime, uncovering religious abuse, or examining the often-bizarre behavior of those who believe they're above the law.
Callie made waves with her groundbreaking 2007 book Stain-Resistant, Nonstick, Waterproof and Lethal, the first to reveal the dangers of forever chemicals, a story that helped inspire the film Dark Waters and influenced global scientific dialogue. Her work has appeared in numerous documentaries, including Toxic Soup, National Geographic's Parched: Toxic Waters, and more recently Citizen Sleuth, which examines the complexities of true crime podcasting.
Whether she's navigating environmental disasters or the darker corners of society, Lyons operates with one guiding belief: "Truth never damages a cause that is just."