CBS’ ‘48 hours’ to feature Tacoma murder of Kassanndra Cantrell. How to watch
A Parkland woman’s disappearance and murder by her ex-boyfriend in Tacoma will soon be featured in an episode of CBS News’ true-crime series “48 hours.”
It focuses on the story of Kassanndra Cantrell, a 33-year-old reported missing two days after she was seen leaving her family’s home in August 2020. Her mother told authorities it was out of character for her daughter to not be in touch with her. She also had missed an ultrasound appointment for the baby she was happily expecting.
Days later, Cantrell’s car was found abandoned in Tacoma’s Dome District.
CBS’s hour-long documentary — set to air April 8 at 10 p.m. Pacific — promises to show “never before seen” footage of the man who left her car there, Colin Dudley, a former boyfriend of Cantrell. Investigators with Pierce County Sheriff’s Department uncovered surveillance video of Dudley leaving the car there dressed all in black except for blue surgical gloves.
It will be broadcast on television Saturday evening on CBS. Viewers can also watch anytime by streaming “48 Hours” on Paramount+. A preview of the feature is on CBS’ website.
CBS calls Dudley a “mysterious killer known as the ‘Hat Man,’” but his identity and connection to Cantrell are well documented in court records detailed in stories reported by The News Tribune’s former crime reporter Stacia Glenn. She wrote in September 2020 that when detectives interviewed Dudley at his Tacoma residence, he claimed he met Cantrell when he was director of a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” production in which Cantrell was a cast member.
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The two allegedly dated for several months before breaking up in 2006. Dudley was living with a different woman he had been in a relationship with for the past three years when investigators showed up to question him, and he claimed he hadn’t spoken to Cantrell for a long time.
But phone records showed this wasn’t true, the two had communicated repeatedly as recently as February 2020. According to murder charges eventually leveled against Dudley, he was the father of the child Cantrell was expecting. A friend of Cantrell’s reported that she’d been nervous to tell Dudley about the child because he didn’t want children and had an anger problem.
Almost a month after Cantrell had been reported missing, the Sheriff’s Department’s investigation led detectives to a wooded cliff in University Place along Chambers Creek Road. The woman’s body was found in trash bags about 100 yards down.
In November, Dudley, 40, was sentenced in Pierce County Superior Court to 26 years, eight months in prison for first-degree murder in the domestic-violence killing. State records show he’s now incarcerated at Clallam Bay Corrections Center, a remote prison on the Olympic Peninsula.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported when “48 Hours” airs on the West Coast.
