American murder victim who died at age three in a quadruple family homicide, his parents and newborn baby sister were also killed.
On the evening of 18 November 1987, police went to the mobile home of his father Keith Dardeen, 29, and his family outside Ina, Illinois, after he had failed to show up for work that day. There they found the bodies of Keith’s wife and son, both brutally beaten. Ruby Elaine Dardeen, 30, who had been pregnant with the couple’s daughter, had been beaten so badly she had gone into labor, and the killer or killers had also beaten the newborn to death.
The killings had apparently taken place the day before. Investigators at first believed that Keith was the prime suspect. The next day, however, his body was found in a nearby field. He had been shot and his genitals mutilated; his car was found parked near the police station in Benton. Forensic examination showed he had been killed within an hour of his family.
No suspects were identified in the quadruple homicide until the 2000s, after serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells, following his conviction and death sentence for murdering a teenage girl in Texas, claimed to have committed the crime. However, he was never charged since prison authorities there would not let him leave the state to assist police in Southern Illinois with their investigation, and they as well as the Dardeen family have doubts about his account of the killings. The case is otherwise cold.
Link to Wikipedia biography