The Dryden Cheerleaders

An Interview with John, brother of Bethanie Dougherty

Welcome to Season 2 of Last Seen In The Twilight Zone. We’re starting off this season with an incredible and very clarifying conversation we got to have with Bethanie Dougherty’s brother, John.  We’re deeply appreciative of John and the story he shared with us about his sister who’s been missing from Killawog, NY since April 2nd 2008.

The Rumor Mill

First and foremost we just wanted to give a huge THANK YOU to all of our listeners and Patreon supporters. Having your support truly means the world to us. We're going to batch our episodes into seasons, with this episode being the last for season 1. We will be back releasing episodes on Monday June 1st and we'll be back even sooner, here on Patreon recording those episodes live. We love the live recording feature, it means that even though our episodes aren't hitting the airwaves until June 1st--you all get to join us LIVE while we record season 2 and get the juicy sneak peak! Of course, those LIVE recording won't be released until each episode airs--so you've gotta catch us live to be in on the action. We took this episode to catch you all up on our plans for the spring and to tell you all about the JUICY gossip we've recited from our amazing listeners. Since our very first episode, we've had listeners reach out to us and give us the inside scoop. We always have questions and you guys always seem to have the answers. So enjoy this little special episode, join us while we record season 2 over these next 10 weeks and season 2 drops June 1st 2026.

The Dryden Cheerleaders

Today, we go to a small rural town in upstate New York.  Tucked into the rolling hills of Dryden, the town was founded in 1797 on land that was once part of the Central New York Military Tract — territory taken from the Onondaga and Cayuga Nations and later granted to veterans of the Revolutionary War. Some people like to frame that kind of history as the beginning of a curse, taking land from the Native Americans, But Dryden didn’t grow out of tragedy — it grew into a quiet, hardworking community. Over the decades, it became the kind of place families moved to for stability. By 1936, the town had its first official high school, Dryden High School — a sign that the town was putting down roots. For generations, Dryden felt safe.  The kind of safe where doors stayed unlocked.  Where kids walked home from school.  Where everybody knew everybody. Life moved in an easy, predictable rhythm…  until 1989. That’s when the town’s sense of security began to crack. I’m not going to dive deep into every case from that period today — this episode is about the two young cheerleaders. But it’s important to understand the backdrop. Because what happened to them didn’t land in a vacuum. It landed in a town that, in just a few short years, would be forced to face more loss than most communities see in a lifetime. We’ll come back to some of those other stories another time.

Mystery at the Maternity Ward

On the morning of Tuesday, March 6th, 1962, Binghamton General Hospital felt like any other maternity ward in America. Dozens of newborns lined up behind glass. Nurses moving quickly. Parents resting upstairs, believing their babies were safe in the nursery. It was admittedly busy, but nothing about that morning suggested that anything was amiss. The earliest signs were subtle. A baby refusing a bottle. Another on the pediatrics floor crying inconsolably. One mother insisted something was off while trying to bottle feed, only to be told her daughter was just “fussy.” A nurse noticed the whole floor seemed to be fussy, fickle eaters. By Friday, the maternity ward would completely erupt into crisis. Babies would begin vomiting, seizing and slipping away faster than staff could chart their symptoms. The nurses found in the staff office, breaking down while the doctors would be scrambling to recover & to find the cause.  The truth of how it happened — and who was blamed — would raise deeper questions about the hospital culture, and the dangerous confidence America had placed in modern maternity care. Sources: https://www.pbs.org/video/the-salt-babies-zkdws8/ https://time.com/archive/6625294/medicine-death-in-the-formula/ [https://time.com/archive/6625294/medicine-death-in-the-formula/]   https://www.nytimes.com/1962/03/12/archives/6-babies-die-in-2-days-at-binghamton-hospital-salt-found-in-sugar.html [https://www.nytimes.com/1962/03/12/archives/6-babies-die-in-2-days-at-binghamton-hospital-salt-found-in-sugar.html]   https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DS19620530.2.47&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN-------- [https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DS19620530.2.47&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------]

Lives Lost on Lisi Lane

March 22nd, 2013. A quiet residential street in Binghamton. Lisi Lane. Inside one home on that street, police would discover a crime scene so brutal that even seasoned investigators were shaken. This is the story of betrayal, domestic violence, obsession, and a case that would take six years — and two trials — to bring justice.