Rumor spreads about 1992 Dinwiddie disappearance in Five Points. Cops say it’s untrue
Rumors spread throughout the Midlands Friday that the nearly 30-year-old disappearance of a Columbia woman had been solved.
Reporters with The State received more than a dozen tips that a man was questioned and arrested in the case of Dail Dinwiddie, who was last seen in Five Points early Sept. 24, 1992. The State ran down the tips and was told they were not true.
“The Richland County Sheriff’s Department investigates all tips thoroughly,” a spokesperson for the agency said. “There is no new information to provide on this missing persons case.”
Tips claimed that a Columbia area lawyer assaulted a woman and told her that she reminded him of Dinwiddie. The man supposedly was arrested after deputies questioned him.
The State contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, Richland County Sheriff’s Department and Columbia Police Department about the tips.
Law enforcement said they knew about the rumors, investigated and found nothing solid to move on so far.
“CPD and its law enforcement partners have since 1992 followed tips and leads regarding the disappearance of Dail Dinwiddie,” a Columbia Police Department spokesperson said. “The investigative action will not change until she is found. “
But a man by the name provided to The State was not arrested, the police department said.
No public records indicate that the man was arrested.
Conjecture about the case may have been stirred up by the anniversary of Dinwiddie’s disappearance on Thursday.
In 1992, Dinwiddie, then 23, was among a group of a dozen friends who attended a U2 concert at Williams-Brice Stadium on the evening of Sept. 23.
She went with friends to Five Points after the concert, ending up at a favorite bar, Jungle Jim’s, which is now closed.
Around 1 a.m., she got separated from the friends, who thought Dinwiddie would get a ride home or call her family. She left the bar once but returned a few minutes later. She eventually told a bouncer goodbye and headed toward Harden and Greene streets.
She hasn’t been seen since.
Her disappearance has haunted her family and investigators. Kathleen Parker, a nationally-known columnist and family friend, has written on the case.
“I run to the mailbox every day to see if there’s a letter,” her mother Jean said in 1997. “Or if there’s a phone call I think maybe it’s Dail calling just to hear my voice or see if I’m all right.”
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott remains in close contact with Dinwiddie’s parents.
“I can seen the pain in their eyes and hear it in their voices,” he said in 2017. “But they are still focused, and that has fueled us.”
Police have looked into more than 1,000 tips over the decades. Investigative records fill an entire filing cabinet and three more boxes at the Columbia Police Department.
The search has led investigators to dig up bones that proved to be from a deer, check properties with ground-penetrating radar, tear up a floor at a Five Points home to find the cause of a foul odor and pull a car from a pond in Lower Richland at the suggestion of clairvoyants, The State reported in 2017.
Investigators traveled across the Southeast and as far away as Las Vegas and Minnesota to interview criminals who claimed to know something or were ready to confess. Their stories were easily debunked, police said.
The same remains true in the day after the anniversary of her disappearance.
This story was originally published September 25, 2020 at 3:47 PM.