Kriti Mehrotra
When 22-year-old college student Rebekah Gould was heinously murdered in the fall of 2004, it left not only her loved ones and her community but also the entire nation baffled to its very core. After all, as carefully explored in NBC’s ‘Dateline: Secrets in the Ozarks,’ a broken piano leg was used to hit her twice over the head before she was strangled to death with a formal necktie. However, it wasn’t until 18 years later that her perpetrator was finally brought to justice — which even removed the dark cloud of suspicion hanging over her then-boyfriend, Casey McCullough.
Who is Casey McCullough?
It was reportedly back in 2002/2003 when Casey came across Rebekah for the first time while working at the Melbourne branch of Sonic, just for them to soon feel a connection unlike any other. The truth is the former was rising the ranks within this drive-in restaurant, whereas the latter held the post of a carhop, but there was never a divide between them in any way, shape, or form. Instead, there was comfort, driving their casual conversations to soon always turn either deep or flirty — so, of course, they evolved from friends to much more by the time 2004 rolled around.
However, Rebekah left her job shortly thereafter to attend Fayetteville’s Northwest Arkansas Community College, yet it seemingly didn’t affect her romantic relationship with Casey too much. That’s because they often made efforts to visit one another, and the former even ensured to regularly stay weekends at his trailer on the McCulloughs’ family estate in the nearby town of Guion. In fact, this is precisely what she’d done through September 17-19, 2004, only to then drive her beau to work on 20th morning, run errands, and return home to get ready to go back to college.
But alas, Rebekah never made it — and a welfare check called by her mother the next day revealed her car, dog, purse, etc., still in the trailer, along with a flipped-over mattress to hide blood. Therefore, considering the circumstances surrounding her disappearance turned death — Casey’s living room even had a piano missing a leg — he was quickly identified as a person of interest. The fact he hadn’t returned home that fateful night and then made some contradictory statements regarding the following morning in the ensuing months honestly did not help his case either.
Casey going out for a movie and dinner with friends before deciding to crash at one of their places for the night initially seemed more convenient than anything else, yet it was corroborated. As for his statements, while he’d told detectives he’d briefly popped into his home to grab a change of clothes for work on the morning of the 21st, he allegedly told a reporter in June 2005 that he hadn’t returned. Though the then-youngster has since asserted he had indeed stepped foot into his trailer prior to work, but he hadn’t noticed the bloody mattress, the missing piano leg, or the smell of bleach.
Casey McCullough Continues to Serve as an Assistant Manager at Sonic
Despite most of the circumstances as well as claims going against Casey, he was never once arrested or charged for his girlfriend Rebekah’s death because there was no concrete evidence. Rather, he had an alibi (he was at work); his actions made it seem like he was genuinely heartbroken; plus, he did cooperate with the authorities to the best of his abilities at every step of the way.
In the end, it turned out it wasn’t Casey but his first cousin William Alama Miller who’d mercilessly slain Rebekah upon meeting her for the very first time, seemingly for no reason at all. It hence comes as no surprise that even though the former is innocent, he prefers to stay well away from the limelight these days. Nonetheless, as per the last reports, we do know he still serves as an Assistant Manager at Melbourne’s Sonic and continues to reside in the same trailer; the only difference is he now has a family of his own.
Read More: Angela Neubauer and Tiffany Moore: Where Are Rebekah Gould’s Sisters Now?
