You can hear Crime Wire Investigates beginning at 9 p.m. Eastern.

On June 8, 2008 the tiny town of Weleetka, Oklahoma was rocked to it’s core when two young girls, Skyla Whitaker, 11, and Taylor Placker, 13, best friends, were found shot to death while walking along County Line Rd.   The tragic case brought immediate national media attention and an aggressive investigation, OSBI and FBI included.  Hundreds of tips and suspects later, the case may be closer to a resolution as agents are honing in on a specific gun purchased at a gun show.

On July 15, 2011, Ashley Celeste Taylor, 23, was reported missing from Okmulgee, OK, a town near Weleetka, supposedly after an argument with her fiance, Kevin Sweat.  Sweat was subsequently arrested and confessed to her murder, telling officials that her remains were buried off of Highway 75.  In early August, 2011, searchers found human bone fragments, pieces of clothing and glasses consistent with Ashley’s on the property of Kevin Sweat’s father, near Weleetka.

The investigators are now turning a closer eye to the theory that Kevin Sweat could be responsible for the slaying of the young girls along with his fiance, Ashley Taylor.  New information is being discovered daily.

Listeners will hear first hand information about the connections between these unsolved cases and the people surrounding them, in the hope that the pieces of the puzzle are fit together to bring resolution.

For more background information, read here:

Join famous Las Vegas True Crime and Mob Author, Denny Griffin, along with his special guests, discussing all things MOB!

The popular 1995 movie Casino was a fictionalized account of the Las Vegas era of Chicago Outfit enforcer Tony Spilotro and Outfit associate Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal. One of the scenarios addressed in the film is the skimming of money from the casinos and into the pockets of several Midwest crime bosses. The skim was real, not a creation of Hollywood.

On tonight’s show co-hosts Andrew DiDonato and Denny Griffin will talk with retired FBI agent Lynn Ferrin. Lynn was the Las Vegas case agent for the skim investigations called Operation Strawman. Lynn will tell us the real story about how the skim was run, by whom, and how the feds brought it down. He’ll also comment on the movie and how law enforcement was portrayed in the film. If you’re a Mob buff, a Las Vegas or Casino fan, you won’t want to miss this show.

Crime Wire will devote a full hour to a story about a grandson who found his grandfather’s killer after more than 40 years. Dr. Clem Pellett, an oral surgeon who lives in Washington State, will share an old family story that focuses on two men: Clarence Pellett…a grandfather that Dr. Clem Pellett never knew…and a drifter named Frank Dryman.

On April 4, 1951, Clarence Pellett picked up hitchhiker near Shelby Montana. The hitchhiker was Dryman, then a 19 year old drifter who was carrying a gun. Dryman shot and killed Clarence Pellett and left him by the side of a mountain road. Dryman took the car and drove to Canada where he was later arrested for the murder.

After several trials and appeals, Dryman was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, then paroled in 1969. Less than two years after his parole, Dryman disappeared. Corrections authorities listed him as “absconded”. And that is where the old family story stopped for nearly 40 years.

In 2009, Dr. Clem Pellett came across some newspaper clippings about the murder, which had occurred two years before he was born. With the help of three private investigators, Dr. Pellett found Frank Dryman living as a notary public and operating a wedding chapel in Arizona. Dryman, who had been changed his name, was arrested and returned to Montana.