Episode 154: Darian Hudson – Bite-Sized Crime

When a college student suddenly disappears without a trace, the investigation reveals mysterious clues. Where is Darian Hudson?

Episode Media

Darian and her mom, Stephanie *(NBC Dateline)*

Darian was last seen on October 26, 2017 at a construction site on N Country Club Road in Stillwater, OK *(Google Maps)*

Important locations in Darian’s case *(Google Maps)*

One of Darian’s final tweets *(Twitter/X)*

Darian’s tattoo of a feather, birds, and “Birds of a feather flock together” *(KFOR)*

Episode Sources

Episode Transcript

Welcome back to Bite-Sized Crime. This week I’m bringing you a missing persons case that has remained a mystery for several years, but there is a family that hasn’t given up hope. This episode discusses sensitive topics, so listener discretion is advised.

Darian Michelle Hudson grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas, a city on the banks of the Arkansas River. The oldest of three siblings, Darian was smart and funny, and she had a way of making everyone around her feel good. Her mother Stephanie told Dateline that Darian had a dazzling smile. “If you were having a bad day, Darian would change that. She would just flash that smile of hers… or say something funny. She had this big heart that shone through her smile.”

After graduating from Hutchinson High School in 2012, Darian enrolled at Barton County Community College to earn her 2-year degree. In 2014, she moved across state lines to attend Langston University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. There, she joined the softball team and made lifelong connections with her teammates. Her friend Cameron told Dateline, “We went through everything together in college, the good and the bad. And even when things were bad, she always asked how I was doing. She was always worried about others. It was never about her.”

But as time passed, Darian started pulling away. According to Cameron, it started when Darian started dating her boyfriend. Soon, she was hanging out with a different group of people from work and seeing her teammates less and less.

In the fall of 2017, things started getting worse. Darian experienced a miscarriage, and she and her boyfriend broke up. Then, her beloved dog Zigg passed away, another loss that hit her hard. Her friends and family tried to be there for her, but they could tell that Darian was struggling, and they worried about her mental health. Stephanie told Tulsa World, “Even though we would talk every day… and she would say that she was okay, I don’t believe she was.”

On Saturday, October 21st, Darian called her parents to tell them that she wanted to go to nursing school. She asked if she could move back home to Hutchinson and live with them for a while to save money. Stephanie and Tarus were thrilled to see their daughter so excited about something – perhaps this would be the thing that helped pull her out of her depression. They made a plan to pick up Darian the next weekend and drive her and all her belongings back to Kansas.

But on Thursday, Stephanie got a strange message. Darian hadn’t shown up for work, did Stephanie know where she was? This was quite surprising; Darian had worked as a server at the Chili’s in Stillwater for two years and was very reliable. It wasn’t like her to not show up without finding a replacement. Then, Stephanie started getting more texts and calls from Darian’s friends – no one had seen her in days, and they were all very worried.

Stephanie and Tarus did not waste any time. On October 26th, they made the nearly three-hour drive from Hutchinson to Darian’s duplex in Stillwater, hoping against hope that their daughter would be there. But when they pulled up in front of the house, they could see that the door had been left open. They rushed inside, not sure what they would find. The lights were on, and there were dishes in the kitchen sink, but other than that, everything seemed to be in order. Darian’s clothes and personal belongings were right where she usually left them, but Darian was nowhere to be seen. When they saw that her cell phone had been left behind, it confirmed that something was very wrong.

Darian’s parents immediately drove to the Stillwater Police Department, but they were told that they would have to wait 48 hours before they could file a missing persons report. Frustrated, Stephanie and Tarus decided to start searching on their own. They went back to Darian’s duplex and began canvassing the neighborhood, knocking on doors and asking everyone if they had seen Darian in the last few days. Darian didn’t have a car of her own, so she may have gotten a ride with a friend or neighbor – surely someone had seen her.

Stephanie and Tarus were finally able to file a missing persons report on October 28th. By this time, Darian had already been missing for days, and investigators were racing against the clock. They interviewed everyone in Darian’s life – friends, family, coworkers, and teammates – and were able to get a sense of what the last week had been like for Darian.

Darian had last talked to her parents on October 21st when she asked if she could move back to Kansas. On October 22nd, she posted on Instagram, sharing a collection of videos and photos with one of her best friends. That same day, she and that friend had a conversation on Twitter, during which Darian said, “Well I’m not leaving you any time soon. lol especially now.” Darian tweeted and retweeted several times between October 22nd and 24th, then she went silent.

Darian’s best friend from community college told investigators that she had FaceTimed with Darian on the 24th, but hadn’t heard from her again after that. Darian hadn’t shown up for work, and on the 25th, her friends started blowing up her mom’s phone, wondering where she was.

Given Darian’s turbulent life the past few months and her sudden silence, her family worried that she may have been suffering a mental health crisis. It was just so out of character for Darian to not contact anyone, to go dark on social media. Her friend Cameron told Dateline, “Even with everything going on in her life, I know she wouldn’t have left on her own without telling anyone… She would not want us worrying about her.”

Other than those few interactions, investigators didn’t have much to go on. They checked local bus records, but there was no indication that Darian had left the city. Lieutenant Jeff Watts with the Stillwater PD told KFOR that there didn’t seem to be any reason for Darian to go missing. “There was information that she was possibly moving back to Kansas but we don’t have anything to confirm that. She had just paid up on her rent here, so there’s nothing for us to believe that she was getting ready to move immediately.”

Darian’s case was entered into the National Crime Information Center database and added to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in the hopes it could generate some leads. But weeks passed without any progress.

Then, in early December, investigators learned that someone had tried to use Darian’s credit card at a hotel in Oklahoma City, 60 miles south of Stillwater. When they tracked the man down, he said he had found the card inside a purse at a construction site in Stillwater. The man claimed that he had been working at the corner of Country Club Road and McElroy Road where a new Catholic church was being built. One day, as he and his co-workers were leaving, he spotted the purse hanging from a drainage pipe, so he grabbed it. Later, he found the credit card inside.

Armed with this information, investigators visited the construction site and spoke to the workers. Several of them remembered seeing a woman matching Darian’s description on October 26th. One worker had spotted her sitting on the ground near the woods at the southern edge of the construction site and had gone over to check on her. When he spoke to the woman, she just stared blankly. Worried that she was hurt or sick, he called some other workers over to help. But again, the woman wouldn’t engage with them.

This was the first real lead investigators had gotten in weeks. The construction site was three miles from Darian’s house on the outskirts of Stillwater. If the mysterious woman really was Darian, how had she gotten there, and what was her purpose?

Police canvassed the area near the construction site, hoping that someone had seen which direction Darian had gone. The man who owned the property next to the church told investigators that he had seen the woman too – the same day the workers had talked to her. He said that as he was waiting for his grandchildren to get off the school bus, he saw the woman come up out of the creek that ran through his property. She made it through his electric fence and approached the children as they walked down the driveway. By the time the man made it to where they were, the woman was gone. He watched as she walked back to the main road and turned west, headed towards Country Club Road.

On December 4th, Stillwater PD brought search dogs and drones to scour the construction site and the surrounding woods. For two days they searched, but all they found were Darian’s hooded sweatshirt and her wallet. It was confirmation that the sightings had indeed been her, but it didn’t really give investigators any clear answers. Lieutenant Watts told KFOR, “Each person we talked to led us to somebody else and like all missing person cases, we want to rule out any foul play… It’s concerning because her wallet had her identification in it, her money, her credit card, and stuff like that, so for her to leave that would indicate that she probably wasn’t thinking clearly.”

After that, Darian’s case went quiet. The leads dried up, and investigators ran out of people to interview. In 2019, two years after Darian vanished, Lieutenant Watts spoke with Tulsa World about the case, calling it a complete mystery. “You always want to find the person alive. At this point, we just don’t know. Anything is possible. It just seems to me that if she had run away, by now something would have surfaced somehow, someway. None of this makes sense. Somebody knows something.”

The Stillwater Police Department collaborated with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to add Darian to a Cold Case Playing Card. This investigative tactic, used by departments across the country, involves putting cold cases on decks of playing cards that are distributed to jails and prisons. When inmates use the cards, it can jog their memories and lead to new information for investigators.

As of this recording, Darian Hudson is still missing, but her family has not given up hope. They post pictures on social media every day, determined to keep her story alive. Stephanie told Tulsa World that she wanted to be strong for her other children and that she knew someone would come forward and do the right thing. “I believe that she’s still out there, and I’m going to continue to believe that until someone tells me otherwise.”

Darian Michelle Hudson was last seen on October 26, 2017, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She is described as a Black woman with a light skin tone, black hair, and brown eyes. She is 5’3” tall and has ear and nose piercings. She also has a tattoo on the back of her right shoulder of a feather, five small birds, and the words, “Birds of a feather flock together,” in script. At the time of her disappearance, Darian was 23 years old. She was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and a dark-colored coat.

If you have any information on the disappearance or whereabouts of Darian Hudson, please contact the Stillwater Police Department tip line at 405-742-8327. And please share Darian’s story. Someone out there knows something.