Copyright Newsweek
A Vanished Family Sometime around Thanksgiving 1992, a U.S. Army wife and her two young sons vanished without a trace from their home in Germany. More than 30 years later, the family of Tina Grogan say they are still waiting for answers—and accountability. In 2025, the long-dormant case was thrust back into the spotlight after her husband, former U.S. Army Specialist Dale Grogan, was arrested in Florida on federal sex charges. While in custody, Grogan, 59, of Jacksonville, allegedly attempted to gouge out his own eyes and, while receiving treatment at a hospital, reportedly confessed that he had killed his then-wife and children while stationed in Germany. Those statements prompted the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) to reopen the case. In an exclusive interview with Newsweek, the family of Tina Grogan and the boys recounted the harrowing story of their loss, the lack of help they received from U.S. and German authorities, and how only a chance arrest in 2025 has finally brought renewed attention to the disappearance—and possible murder—of three family members more than three decades ago. The Missing Family Since late 1990, Tina Grogan, 27, and her sons, 6-year-old Dale Jr. and 4-year-old Stephon, had been living on Leighton Barracks, part of the U.S. Army’s Würzburg base in Germany. Her husband, Specialist Dale Grogan, was assigned to the 98th Area Support Group, a unit that provided quality-of-life programs for about 56,000 soldiers and their families. The base, which sat on a hill east of the city, in the Franconia region of northern Bavaria, was a former Luftwaffe aerodrome, and had been occupied by American forces in 1945 and renamed in 1947 to honor Captain John A. Leighton, a U.S. Army Air Forces officer killed in World War II. Thanksgiving 1992—The Last Contact In the days leading up to Thanksgiving 1992, Tina maintained regular contact with her family in the United States. Her sister, Shannon Williams, said they spoke once or twice a week despite the overseas distance. Tina had confided that her marriage was troubled and that she planned to leave Dale and return to the United States. “Tina told me she was going to pack up her and the boys’ stuff and come home,” Shannon recalled. During their final conversation, Tina mentioned she would be busy over the holiday because she “had company coming over.” That was the last time any family member ever heard from Tina or her children. When Thanksgiving Day arrived, Shannon tried calling repeatedly, but no one answered. The phone eventually gave a busy signal, as if the line had been taken off the hook, and not long after, the number was disconnected. Concerned, Tina’s mother, Cheryl Williams, contacted the base and asked to speak with her son-in-law. She was told a message would be sent to him “in the field.” Weeks passed without a response. Christmas 1992 and New Year's 1993 came and went—and there was still no word. Finally, desperate for information, the family asked the American Red Cross to intervene. Through military channels, a message reached Dale Grogan, compelling him to call home. Cheryl later recalled asking, “Dale, where is Tina and the boys? We’ve been trying to reach you since Thanksgiving.” Grogan replied, “I don’t know where they are. Tina packed up her clothes and the boys’ things. They left, and I haven’t heard from them since.” That call in early 1993 confirmed the family’s worst fears—Tina and her sons were missing. The Investigation: A Torso in the River, But No Trace of Tina or the Children Following her appeals to officials, Cheryl convinced Pennsylvania Congressman Austin J. Murphy to contact the U.S. State Department to request an update. The Army opened an official investigation in April 1993, about four months after Tina and the boy’s disappearance. Investigators from the Army CID and German police found belongings in the couple’s apartment and missing carpet, but no clear evidence of foul play. Searches of the surrounding area yielded nothing. Later that year, Würzburg police recovered the torso of a Black woman from the River Main near Frankfurt. While the remains were never proven to be Tina’s, the Army CID was informed. Yet no DNA testing was performed, and years later, German authorities denied that the evidence had ever existed. German police never informed Tina’s family of the discovery, apparently assuming the U.S. Army would do so. Murder Charges Prepared—Then Dismissed A year after the disappearance, the Army prepared murder charges against Specialist Grogan. However, in April 1994, the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division dismissed them, concluding that any conviction was unlikely. A letter from Army congressional coordinator P. Kay Darden to Congressman Murphy said that “no physical evidence linked Specialist Grogan to the disappearance or death of his family.” Under the NATO Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), an acquittal in a U.S. court-martial would have prevented later prosecution in Germany. The German prosecutor received a copy of the translated investigation but also abandoned the case in July 1994, citing a lack of jurisdiction and evidence. Specialist Dale Grogan was honorably discharged from the Army in March 1994 and relocated to Florida, where he remarried and had more children. A Letter Out of the Blue Nearly a decade after Tina and her two sons vanished, in 2001, German authorities finally sent a letter to Cheryl Williams, Tina’s mother, acknowledging for the first time that a torso of a Black female had been recovered from the River Main years earlier. The correspondence, sent by the Würzburg Kriminalpolizei, said that the remains had never been positively identified and that it had “not been proven that the body is that of Mrs. Grogan.” However, the letter provided no details on when the discovery was made, whether any forensic testing had been performed or what had become of the evidence. For Cheryl and her family, the revelation was devastating—this was the first they had ever heard about human remains possibly linked to Tina. No one from the Army CID had ever informed them of the discovery, leaving the family to wonder for years what, if anything, the Army had known. Determined to find answers, Shannon Williams and several relatives decided to travel to Germany in 2002 to meet directly with investigators. The trip was entirely self-funded; the family sold personal belongings, including furniture and a car, and borrowed money from friends and relatives to cover airfare and lodging. “We had to sell what we could to make it happen,” Shannon explained, “because no one was helping us—not the Army, not the State Department, nobody.” When they finally met with police in Würzburg, they were told that the female torso had been turned over to U.S. Army authorities years earlier, but no records were available to show what had happened after that transfer. Shannon recalled being stunned: “They were so cold about it. They said they’d given it to the Army. We said we didn’t know anything about that, and they said, ‘That’s why you’re here.’” And with that, the meeting was over. The family returned home heartbroken and frustrated, with no DNA testing conducted and no indication that the remains—or any other evidence—had been preserved or examined. They were left with more questions than answers. The Tina Grogan case was officially classified as a "cold case" in December 2002. Cold Case and a Family’s Long Years Of Struggle For Tina’s family, the Army’s decision not to prosecute Dale Grogan in 1994 left a deep sense of betrayal. After their 2002 trip, Cheryl and Shannon received no further contact from the Army CID or German authorities. Despite years of letters and calls, officials told them the case was “inactive” or sealed under NATO jurisdictional limits. Cheryl wrote repeatedly to members of Congress seeking a review but never received a substantive reply. Through the 2000s, she and Shannon spoke periodically with reporters and veterans’ advocates, determined to keep the case alive. In 2010, even as Cheryl faced serious health problems, she continued writing to Army and congressional offices. Shannon said, “My mother spent the rest of her life trying to get justice for Tina and the boys.” Cheryl Williams died in 2021, never learning what had happened to her daughter or her two grandsons. Renewed Efforts—Project: Cold Case and Public Awareness After Cheryl’s passing, Shannon and her daughter Arielle Garcia took over efforts to reopen the investigation. From 2019 to 2023, Project: Cold Case (PCC)—a Jacksonville-based nonprofit founded by Ryan Backmann—worked closely with the family to revive visibility of the case. Shannon first submitted Tina, Stephon and Dale Jr.’s names to PCC in October 2019 and later provided Cheryl’s contact information. In September 2020, PCC proposed featuring the case in its Cold Case Spotlight series, a collaboration with the University of North Florida’s Applied Journalism class. The resulting feature was published on March 14, 2022, publicly summarizing the case for the first time in years and providing Army CID contact information. The publication helped reconnect the family with retired service members who remembered the Würzburg base and the events of 1992, though no new evidence emerged. It looked as if the case would go cold all over again. Then, in early 2023, PCC received two separate emails from a man who identified himself as a former neighbor of the Grogan family while they were living on Leighton Barracks in 1992. In his first message, sent in February, he described hearing what he called “a violent disturbance” coming from the Grogan apartment on the night Tina and her sons disappeared. According to his recollection, there was yelling, loud banging and what sounded like furniture being moved or thrown. Concerned, he said he went to the apartment door—with another nearby resident—and knocked to check on the family. When Dale Grogan answered, he appeared agitated but told them that everything was fine and that he and Tina were “just arguing.” The neighbor and his companion left, but he later wrote that he had regretted that decision for more than 30 years, adding, “Worst mistake I ever made was not calling the police.” In a follow-up message sent to PCC in July 2023, the same man expanded on his account, explaining that he and an upstairs neighbor had gone together to the Grogan apartment because the sounds of fighting had grown louder and more alarming. Grogan again came to the door, reportedly insisting that the situation was under control and promising to “keep it down.” The men left shortly afterward, unaware that it would be the last time anyone heard from Tina, Dale Jr. or Stephon. The neighbor told PCC that he had carried guilt ever since and had long wondered what became of the family. In November 2023, PCC forwarded both of the man’s emails to the Army CID, providing his contact information and noting that Cheryl Williams, Tina’s mother, had died and that Shannon Williams was now serving as the family’s point of contact. These emails represented the first new eyewitness information related to the disappearance in more than two decades. Yet, despite the combined efforts of Shannon, Arielle, Ryan Backmann and Project: Cold Case, the Army CID took no official steps to reopen the investigation. 2025: A Breakthrough After Two Decades Everything changed in early 2025, when Dale Grogan, by then 59 years old, was arrested in Nassau County, Florida, during a multiagency sting operation targeting people attempting to solicit minors for sex online. On January 15, the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office (NCSO), in coordination with the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and several Florida law enforcement agencies, launched Operation Deviant Nightfall and Operation Deviant Sunrise. The four-day operation focused on identifying and arresting people suspected of using online platforms to prey on children. At a March 27 news conference, Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said: “Between January 15 and January 19, we did a four-day operation, and the focus of the investigation was to target individuals who utilize the Internet and social media platforms to prey on children and solicit them for sex.” During the sting, police accused Dale Grogan of initiating an online conversation with someone he believed was a 14-year-old girl on the adult networking app Skip the Games. The chat soon turned sexual, and Grogan arranged to meet the minor in person, police said. When he arrived, he was arrested, and deputies said they found condoms in his left front pocket. While in custody, Dale Grogan reportedly began exhibiting increasingly erratic and self-destructive behavior, attempting to gouge out his own eyes while being held in the county jail, prompting deputies to intervene and transport him under guard to a nearby hospital for emergency treatment. He was placed under medical supervision and evaluated for self-harm risk while recovering from his injuries. It was during that hospital stay, according to Leeper, that Grogan allegedly made a spontaneous and shocking statement to a hospital employee. Without prompting, Grogan reportedly confessed that while he was serving in the U.S. Army and stationed in Germany, he had killed his wife and two children. The hospital worker immediately notified law enforcement, and the information was relayed to NCSO investigators, who in turn contacted U.S. military authorities. Leeper later confirmed that the statement had been shared with the Army CID, which subsequently began reviewing the decades-old disappearance of Tina Grogan and her two sons. The county sheriff said, “Whether he did or not, I don’t know. They’re looking into that.” The confession, though not yet corroborated by evidence, was the first direct admission ever linked to the case and effectively prompted the Army to revisit the long-cold investigation. Family Notification and Renewed Army CID Action Remarkably, Tina’s family only learned of Grogan’s arrest not through any law enforcement or military agency, but from Project: Cold Case, which contacted them after seeing the public news release. On April 1, Army CID reached out to PCC to correct contact information on the organization’s website—marking the first official action on the Grogan case in 23 years. On May 16, Army CID announced a $15,000 reward for information related to the case. Around this time, Backmann, also PCC executive director, contacted Army CID to discuss arranging a meeting with the Grogan family. Though CID was not yet ready to engage directly, Backmann relayed both the news of Grogan’s arrest and the reward update to the family. With the family’s permission and in coordination with Army Public Affairs Officers, PCC issued a news release to local media on May 22. Later, on June 26, PCC organized a conference call between Shannon, Arielle and Army CID representatives to share updates and establish ongoing communication. Federal Charges and Pending Trial Court filings show that Dale Grogan was formally charged in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida with multiple federal offenses, including attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity and related crimes stemming from the January sting. He was indicted by a federal grand jury, entered a plea of not guilty and remains held without bond in the Nassau County Jail pending trial. During an October 20 status conference before U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard, Grogan’s defense attorney, Sabra Barnett, requested additional time to address concerns regarding his psychological state, which the court granted, rescheduling the next hearing for November 17 and setting a tentative trial date for December 1. On October 24, Barnett filed a formal notice under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 12.2, indicating the defense may raise mental health issues or expert testimony related to Grogan’s mental condition. That same day, she submitted a motion requesting a competency hearing to determine whether Grogan is fit to understand the proceedings and assist in his defense. Magistrate Judge Monte C. Richardson granted the motion on October 28 and scheduled a competency hearing for November 4, in the U.S. District Court in Jacksonville, Florida. At that hearing, both the defense and prosecution are expected to present psychological evaluations and testimony concerning Grogan’s mental state. The outcome will determine whether the case proceeds to trial or if Grogan will be sent to a federal medical facility for further evaluation and treatment until deemed competent. If convicted, Grogan faces a potential sentence of 10 years to life in federal prison under federal statutes designed to protect minors from online exploitation. Seeking Justice and Closure After Three Decades For Shannon Williams and her daughter Arielle Garcia, justice for Tina, Dale Jr. and Stephon means far more than an arrest or a news headline—it means official recognition, accountability and answers. After decades of silence from both U.S. and German authorities, the family’s greatest hope is that the U.S. Army will fully reopen the 1992-93 investigation and pursue murder charges against Dale Grogan, even if the victims’ remains are never found. Both women believe the Army bears a moral responsibility for failing to protect Tina and her children and for allowing the case to go dormant for so long. “There are programs in place now that protect military spouses and families,” Arielle said. “It’s unimaginable that this could have happened—but those programs exist because tragedies like this kept happening.” The family’s vision of closure is not about vengeance, but acknowledgment. They want Tina, Stephon and Dale Jr. officially declared deceased, so that death certificates can finally be issued—a symbolic but deeply personal step that would affirm what the family has long known: that they are never coming home. Shannon, now the last surviving member of her immediate family, hopes that renewed attention to the case will push Army CID and federal prosecutors to act, and that someone who served with Dale in Germany might still come forward with information. For her and Arielle, closure would mean ensuring that Tina’s story is remembered, her children’s names are spoken and the truth—no matter how painful—is finally recorded in the public record. “We’ve carried this for 30 years,” Shannon said. “We just want justice, and peace for them.” Tobias Meyjes and Ryan Backmann contributed to this report. How to Share Information About the Grogan Case If you have any information regarding the disappearance or deaths of Tina Grogan, Dale Grogan Jr. or Stephon Grogan, you are encouraged to contact the U.S. Army CID or Project: Cold Case using the details below: U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division Army CID Cold Case Unit (520) 706-8685 Tip Line: 1-844-ARMY-CID (1-844-276-9243) Online: https://www.cid.army.mil/Submit-a-Tip/ Email: usarmy.belvoir.usacidc.mail.crime-tips@army.mil Project: Cold Case Website: https://www.projectcoldcase.org Email: info@projectcoldcase.org Tip Submission: https://www.projectcoldcase.org/contact-us/ You can also provide information anonymously through either CID’s tip portal or Project: Cold Case’s contact form.
