Hi, Crime Junkies.
I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And I'm Britt.
And we are back with part two of Bonnie's story.
If you missed last week's episode, pause, go back.
You got to know where we've been to know where we're going.
Because where we left off.
I am sure it's easy for you to understand why people have been suspicious of Bonnie's husband since she went missing in 1997.
Bonnie and Rick's son Josh, even admitted to us that for a portion of his life growing up he wondered if his dad could have done something, because he had everyone in his ear telling him as much.
He said he would even be willing to accept that his dad did it if police could prove it, show him any evidence, even a theory, of how that actually makes sense, and show him that they've looked into everyone else.
But they didn't.
So we tried to.
And I think there is an entirely different side to this story that hasn't been told until now.
When I say that police never really looked into anyone else because they were so suspicious of Rick, I also want to be clear that I don't think they ever really did a thorough enough look at Rick to justify their suspicions.
They never searched his house in those early years.
They only searched it in 2000 when Rick was getting the house ready to sell.
The police.
I guess had heard that he changed out the carpet and there might have been a stain on the subfloor.
So they got a warrant, ripped up the carpet, tested the stain, but it wasn't any kind of bodily fluid.
They didn't do any kind of forensic testing in the garage, which like in my mind.
If your theory is that he followed her, wouldn't it make sense that something happened in the garage?
No one even bothers to check for that.
So they're really just basing their suspicions on Rick on like what?
The fact that she wanted a divorce and the number one mom necklace that Gretchen gave investigators like that's not a lot.
And I think, the fact that he knew where to look for her and on the route that we know she drove home.
And also, I didn't mention this yet, but on phone records, Bonnie had a cell phone with her.
And Rick said that he tried to call her when she was missing.
But police say that the home phone records don't show any calls.
And the cell phone provider says that there had been no activity on Bonnie's cell since like a day or two before she went missing.
But the problem I have with this is they never got Rick's cell phone records.
And when we asked to see Bonnie's records to prove that there were no unanswered incoming calls, the police said they don't have them.
They said there was like some kind of issue getting the records from the phone company.
So they were just told verbally by her provider.
Which I don't know.
I've seen enough human error over the years that like that is not going to like convince it, or I'm not going to convict someone for that, based on.
Yeah.
And I also wonder what the cell provider actually logged like.
Did unanswered incoming calls even register back then?
I mean, there's so many questions.
I don't know for sure since we could not obviously get the actual records.
And I know every provider is different.
And we're talking 1997.
That's a whole different beast.
But I mean I've seen in other true crime cases that date back to the 90s where back then it would only log the calls that would be charged.
And you were only charged if you placed the call or answered the incoming call.
If it was like an actual connected call.
Yeah.
Now the other thing that I see police spend time asking Rick about in, like the transcripts that we got, is a financial motive for wanting his wife gone.
Before Bonnie went missing, the couple cashed out on a life insurance policy for like $18,000.
And they spent a lot of time talking about this check that came for that.
It came after Bonnie disappeared.
But it's like not spicy at all to me.
Rick had taken out a loan against his like profit sharing plan at his company.
And without getting to the weeds on this, it would basically be like taking out money against your 401k or something.
And he was thinking about changing jobs.
But if he changed jobs before it was paid off, there would be this really big penalty.
So they cashed out the life insurance policy that, by the way, was on Rick.
And they did it together.
People knew that Bonnie was aware of it.
Some say that she had to kind of be like talked into it, but she was aware of it.
And like it's a financial decision.
Maybe she legitimately did need to be talked into it, right?
Yeah.
And investigators confirmed that the money did go to paying off that profit sharing thing.
So it's not like he's making money off her going missing.
Did she have any other life insurance policies?
She did.
She had two and they totaled like 50 grand.
But those are life insurance.
Like you get paid out when someone is dead, not if someone just goes missing.
So while he does end up getting that, he doesn't see a dime of that until he has Bonnie declared dead seven years later, in 2004.
Yeah, I guess I don't think money is the driving thing here, no matter what happened, right?
Agreed.
I mean, they never had a lot of money, not before Bonnie went missing, not after.
But they also didn't have money problems.
They lived within their means.
They tried to take care of their kids.
And Rick carried that on after Bonnie was gone.
The kids lived with him in Indy and then in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where Rick eventually moved in 2000 for a new job.
And it was probably a good fresh start for him and for Gretchen and Josh, though Josh didn't go right away.
He was 18 by that point.
He stayed behind in Indy for a couple of years.
But it was good because here in Indy, there was always this cloud of suspicion hanging over Rick.
But without investigators ever really pulling the trigger.
So it's like he can't clear his name.
You just like live in this weird limbo.
And did they ever do any more interviews with him?
Like even ask him about some of the weird stuff?
It doesn't seem like they ask him about the weird stuff.
Well, at least not for a long time.
In 2007, the law enforcement division of the Marion County Sheriff's Department and the Indianapolis Police Department.
So they were two different agencies at the time.
They consolidated.
And that's what we now know as IMPD.
And that is who is the lead agency today.
So around that time, that's when Detective Catherine Byron finally goes up to Michigan and has another conversation with Rick like tenfold.
And Josh gave us that transcript as well.
So I figured you should hear exactly what Rick had to say.
Now again.
I would have loved for you to hear it from his own mouth, but our records request from IMPD was denied.
Right.
So we're having voice actors read this transcript.
This is a taped statement being conducted by Catherine Byron of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
Today's date is April 25th, 2007.
The time is now approximately 1025 a.m., and we are located in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Present are myself and Mr. Richard Schultz.
Okay.
I guess this is a meeting that's been, what, 10 years in the making?
Pretty close.
And I called you about, what, six weeks ago?
Something like that, yes.
Completely out of the blue, right?
Yeah.
So this is really other than that initial phone call and a couple of scheduling phone calls here and there.
This is really the first time we've had an opportunity to talk.
Correct.
Okay.
And I am recently the new detective reassigned to you wife's case, Bonnie, the missing persons case.
I know it's been 10 years, but what can you remember?
What can you tell me about that?
Can you just kind of start from the beginning for me?
Well, again, the night of July 3rd, 1997, Bonnie was going out with people she worked with.
I believe it was somebody's birthday party for somebody she worked with.
I don't even remember where she said they were going.
But she left the house at 8 a.m.
8, 30 in the evening.
Um and again went, went with uh, people from work who again, because of the nature of her work i, i didn't know any of them because they worked late night evenings and i was home with the kids right.
Um and, and again, i know it's been 10 years.
So um, what did you do what?
What's your best recollection of that evening?
I was home with Gretchen.
Pretty sure Josh spent the night with friends.
But Gretchen and I were at home.
I don't remember specifically what we did.
I don't remember necessarily going anywhere.
But she was only 10.
So we were at home.
She went to bed whatever time she normally did.
Um...
She got up the next morning, I think around 8, 8.30 or something like that.
That's her normal time.
Bonnie wasn't home yet.
And I didn't know specifically who she had gone out with the night before.
So I waited a little while to see if you know if she maybe stayed somewhere else and was going to come home.
And then started looking around the house for trying to find a list of names of people she worked with.
And so later that day in the afternoon...
And I don't remember exactly when in the afternoon.
I think I found a list of some of the people and Anita's name was on there.
That's the lady she said that she was going out with.
I called her house a couple of times and got no answer.
And then later that day, which would be the 4th of July, Anita's daughter called and said that my number had come up on her caller ID a couple of times.
I said I was trying to get a hold of her mom to see if she knew where Bonnie was, and Anita's daughter must have called her.
And then I talked to Anita, and she said, well, as far as she knew, Bonnie had headed home.
So that's when I called the sheriff's department to file a missing persons report late afternoon on July 4th.
And a squad car person at not the right term, but came over and took the statement and said that somebody would be in contact with me in a day or two.
Now just jumping in real quick.
I gave you the short version last time of how he got in contact with Anita, but this is similar to the story that he told 10 years prior.
So, so far, everything is pretty consistent.
I guess at what point did you start to think something was not right?
As soon as I talked to Anita, I think, cause she had said Bonnie had headed home and I knew she hadn't gotten there.
So obviously that was my when I got concerned, cause you know, I thought maybe if again they partied too much or whatever, she stayed with a friend and uh would get home sooner or later, that that next day.
But um once uh, that lady told me that uh, that wasn't the case, and that's that's what triggered the call to the sheriff's department.
Is that a common occurrence?
No that, no that bonnie wouldn't come home, not at all.
So that's why, when i woke up the next morning, or when gretchen woke up i don't remember exactly who got up first i realized she wasn't there.
So then i was trying to find out, uh Again, who she might have been with, or a phone number, or whatever.
But it took me a while to find some stuff around the house.
Right.
That was really kind of before everybody had a cell phone.
Well, actually, she did have a phone.
Did she?
She did have a cell phone.
And again, we tried to call that and got no answer.
And I don't remember who the service was with, but for several weeks after that I called them on a daily basis to see if there had been any activity on the line.
Because first of all, they said, well, you have to wait till you get your statement.
I said, well, I don't want to wait a month.
Then I could explain the situation.
And then I was calling every day or every other day to see if anything or if anybody had used the phone during the course of that time.
It hadn't been used at all.
Hold up.
Was Detective Byron playing dumb about the cell phone to see what he said?
Or did no one look at the cell until 2007?
I'm not sure if she's playing dumb or if she hadn't reviewed like the old notes yet and like wasn't up to speed.
Yeah, but he brings it up.
Like, why bring it up if you're lying?
Right.
Why point it out?
Yeah.
And it seems like he's going out of his way to check the cell.
Also he's saying that he called Anita on the 4th and talked to her before he reported Bonnie missing.
He didn't call her until the next day, though.
Right.
So this is a small inconsistency, but this is 10 years later and he's a day off.
Like maybe it's a slip, but to me, it doesn't change the facts that much.
Yeah, but it, like the slip up, does give him like the reason to know where the timeout lounge is now, which is what back then they said the big mess up was.
Sure.
But I mean they, they can just go back and listen to his recorded interview from 97 and then be right back where we started.
So like to me, it's not like he's like fooling anyone.
I don't know.
Yeah, we could go round and round and round.
So let's just go back to the tape.
OK, and the car never found as far as I can.
As far as I know.
That's what Sergeant Kelly, Mike Kelly, that's what he said was his biggest surprise.
Bodies are much more easy to hide than a big car.
And that was his biggest surprise after the last time we talked which I don't even remember when that was was the efforts that he had gone through to try and find the car.
And did you ever talk to Sergeant Ryan?
Sergeant Ryan.
That's actually who I took the case from?
You know, I believe I got a phone call at some point in time that he think it was that he had taken the case.
And when I moved up here I called him, got his answering service and said that I was, you know, for job reasons was moving up here and left him, at that point in time, my new office number, because I didn't have the home number yet.
When did you move up here?
August of 2000.
But he never called.
It's been at least that long since I've heard from anybody.
Right.
That was probably kind of shocking when you get my phone call.
Yes, because I think I, as I think I told you on the phone conversation, you know I had a meeting with five or six different people from the sheriff's department.
Deputy chief.
I'm sorry, the names.
I wasn't real happy with the way I was being treated.
I mean, I understood, or I still understand, I guess, that I'm a, I'm a suspect, but I'll often thought, you know, I'm a victim too and nobody was telling me anything right and uh, not that I I mean, I watch too much TV, I know.
Not that I expect to get all the inside information, but it would.
It would be nice to at least have been told some of what was found out or whatever.
But uh, at that point in time they told me that they had pretty much done everything that they could do.
And uh and again, I got assurance from you know, two or three levels up from the people that I had been talking with, that everything was being done, that could be done.
And, um, that they were just going away for something to happen.
Either they find the car or they find Bonnie, or somebody comes forward and says I get something or I know something.
And if something like that ever happened, they would contact me.
Quick pause.
I gotta be really honest here.
Ten years on, Rick is seeming pretty reasonable.
I know.
Like, no one seems to be doing much outside of just thinking he's kind of sus.
And they're basically like well, we hope we find her or her car, or someone confesses and we'll just let you know if that happens.
It's very much like a, like, don't call us, we'll call you vibes.
Yeah.
And have they done any actual searches for her or the car in the past 10 years?
Like, I know the family did, but what about the actual detectives on the case?
So they did extensive searching.
Like, they did multiple air searches.
I know with, like, a helicopter looking for signs of her car.
I know they also did several water searches over the years.
But they didn't have sonar back in 1997.
Mm-hmm.
So they had to use a police dive team.
And when they did that, they didn't find anything.
And they did a lot of legwork, too.
But all the legwork was very much like around this, like any idea that could help them prove like the Rick did it theory.
So they went to all these storage units in the Indianapolis area, I think looking for her car.
They checked all of the bus records and cab records, thinking that if Rick got rid of her in her car he would have had to get a ride back home.
But they never found that he was on any bus or took any cab.
No storage units either.
So going back to the tape, in this interview, they ask Rick what he thought could have happened.
What is your theory?
Ten years.
What has gone through your mind in ten years?
You know, the TV guy, Scott, asked me that over the phone.
And it's like, you know, I don't know.
I guess you know it's as I told him originally.
I said I don't think she would just voluntarily leave, especially her children.
If she encountered something that she couldn't get herself out of, I mean, you'd think again, the car would have been found by now.
If she had an accident, I mean, the car would have been found right away.
So, I mean, I don't know.
I don't know how you hide something like that for that long a period of time.
Unless, and I still don't think, I don't think she voluntarily ran away.
And if she did, I don't think she would stay away this long.
Right.
It'd be pretty hard for someone to conceal herself and a car for this amount of time.
But the other thing is is if somebody took her, How do they hide the car for this long a period of time?
I mean, I watch TV and stuff like that.
That's based on real events, but, you know, it gets stretched or whatever.
I mean, you could park a car in your garage, but would you leave it sit there for 10 years and nobody else would see it?
That doesn't seem to make any sense.
So I don't know.
I guess inside, I don't think that she would have voluntarily run away.
So I think again, either she had too much to drink that night and encountered a situation that she couldn't get herself out of, but what that could be, I don't know.
So just like a quick behind the scenes real quick.
So in the transcript the part where he says you could leave it in your garage, but like would you do that for 10 years and nobody would see it?
That is actually highlighted and starred like someone found it important.
I don't know who, but it kind of seems like someone was like ah, maybe he's like slipping up and telling us what he did, like
Which, like, sure, too bad they didn't look in the garage right after she disappeared.
They waited, like, what, a decade for that to actually happen?
Three years.
It was three years when they went back to check.
But, like, also there's no way it was in the garage.
Gretchen was there.
She lived there.
Josh was there.
He lived there.
They would have known.
Yeah.
Her family, Bonnie's family, came the next week.
Like, they're all driving around in the cars that they had.
And I don't know.
Again, I don't know what it means.
I only brought it up because I feel like it just gives you a little bit of context and a sense that I think that they might have come into this interview with a strong opinion.
And this is really, you know what Josh has been saying that all the work that they're willing to do is to try to look at Rick, try to get Rick to slip up.
And it doesn't seem like they're really looking for other investigative avenues, even 10 years later, when she and the car still haven't been found.
And there were some marital problems.
Right?
Yeah, there was.
And who doesn't?
I mean, what?
What marriage is without problems?
What were the issues?
Do you remember?
You know, I spent a lot of time thinking about that over the years.
And you know Bonnie, I think, and again, in thinking back, you know she changed quite a bit after her mother died.
Her mother died two years before this happened, I believe.
And she died of some type of cancer, but I mean, it was two months after being diagnosed.
Oh, it was quick.
I think it hit her pretty hard.
And then I started getting things, you know, we don't have anything in common.
And I was comparing again over the years.
That's what I saw in her appearance.
Her mother was a genealogy person, and her dad was a fisherman and stuff like that.
They had nothing in common.
And I said, well, we're not unlike anybody else.
I mean, we each have our own interests, but what we have in common is the family.
And it just seemed like she just started getting more and more unhappy with Lots of things.
She said a couple of times she wasn't happy because her family didn't come to visit her often enough.
She... She always had to go see them.
And just... She had changed.
And again, I don't know if it was her mother, or Or she had just became unhappy with me or life in general.
But she...
Just things that didn't bother her before seemed to start bothering her.
Did she ever talk about suicide?
Never.
Never?
Again, she talked about thinking about wanting to get a divorce.
I said, well, you know, you should.
There should be some intermediate steps between going from I'm unhappy to a divorce, which is what I was trying to talk her into before she disappeared.
And she seemed to be listening to that after a while.
You know we had a fairly long conversation that night, before she left, about if we did divorce, what would, what would happen?
She wanted to keep the kids and the house.
And I said, well, I don't know if I can do that.
Now he goes on to say some of the same things he did in 1997, that financially he didn't know if they could swing two places, but he was willing to try.
Like his gesture to see if she wouldn't completely throw in the towel.
He reiterates that they weren't shouting that night.
Nothing got out of control.
They were out on the front porch in the view of Gretchen inside and close to other neighbors.
They don't live out in the country.
They like lived in a subdivision.
So at this point in the interview, that's when Detective Byron asks him about Bonnie's affair.
Point blank.
It's 10 years later.
Was Bonnie having an affair?
Not that I know of.
Not that you know of?
I'm sure you've heard that over the years.
Several people have asked.
But not that I know of.
And you didn't remarry?
No.
Over the ten years?
No.
Gone about on a few dates, but it just doesn't feel right.
Still that hope.
Really?
Tell me about that.
I'm hoping she'll come back.
It's not very likely, but I hate to give up hope.
Has this been weighing on you for the last six weeks?
Yes.
I mean, not to mention ten years, but has it?
No.
Has my phone call brought it to surface again?
No.
No?
Because it's always there.
It never goes away.
You know, the kids are, you know, Gretchen's out on her own, more or less.
Josh works or whatever.
He's gone.
I'm sitting here with the dog at night.
And, you know, that's it.
It never goes away.
And yeah, we haven't sat down and had a face-to-face contact with anybody outside of the three of us for a long time.
But again, I, you know, I've been up here for six and a half years.
I haven't had any desire to date anybody or whatever in that period of time.
Went out a couple of times when I was in Indy, right?
Not right away, but after a while, it just wasn't right, and I still feel that way.
It's like you know, you just do what you have to to get by day by day.
And I know I had nothing to do with her disappearance, so that's what gets me through, day by day.
I would love to know what happened.
Sometimes I'm leery about wanting to find out how It happened, because I don't know if I want to know the details, but I would sure like to know what happened.
When you say the details, what do you mean?
Well, I mean if somebody murdered her, I don't know what I want to know, all of the details.
Okay.
You know, did she suffer, that type of stuff?
I don't need to know that stuff.
I'm not a...
I'm not a tabloid type of person or whatever.
I mean, I watch the major news events or whatever, but the gory details don't really interest me.
Like the Virginia Tech stuff.
I mean, obviously you want to know that stuff is going on, but the the tapes or whatever that were released, which I I never did see.
I don't really need to know all that type of stuff, but uh Again, I think we all like to know what happened, but how, or I'm not sure who?
We'd like to know who, if something like that did happen.
That's the most difficult part of it all is not knowing what happened.
The lack of closure.
Although, you know, I've thought about that over the years, too.
I don't know that they're in a situation like this that there ever is closure.
I think there's a, again, you know what resolution.
Yeah.
Um and and close.
I don't know what most people mean when they say closure.
It gives you uh, you know what happened.
And I guess going forward from there and dealing with that is easier than what we've been dealing with for 10 years.
And that's, we don't know what, uh, Is there anything you found out that you can tell me or us?
No, not yet.
Um, like I said, I was just recently reassigned to the case.
Um, so I'm starting over looking at it with fresh eyes.
So I'm in the process right now, sorting through everything and seeing what I can do.
So unfortunately, no, I don't really think I have anything new to tell you.
I wish I did.
Um, I'm confident that this case can be resolved.
I do believe that.
What is that based on?
Detective Byron basically just says, based on the facts of the case, she thinks it's solvable.
And everyone deserves that, especially Bonnie's family, her kids.
She wants them to know that their mom didn't leave them.
And then she hard pivots back to the morning of July 4th, asking what his first thoughts were.
But he just says more of the same that he said back in 97.
It does feel like he's a little all over the map, though.
Like he said earlier in the interview, that he doesn't believe that she just walked off, that she had to have encountered some kind of situation that she just couldn't get herself out of.
But then he talks about her like maybe coming back someday, even if that's like some slim possibility.
But maybe we're just getting a bite-sized version of what his mind has been doing for the last 10 years.
Like families of the missing say that ambiguous loss is the hardest.
Without knowing what happened, everything is a possibility.
And listen, I'm not out here trying to be like the defender of Rick.
I'm just saying that, like I've gone back and forth more times than I can even count on cases we've covered over the last eight years.
I've gone back and forth more times than I can count on this very case alone over the last few months.
And I'm not the one living with it day in and day out.
But like Rick, this is something he actually says.
He tells Detective Byron he is living it every single day.
He and the kids still talk about her.
He sees things all the time that remind him of Bonnie.
And he is much more emotional, he says, as he's gotten older.
Just very sentimental.
And it's at that point that Detective Byron brings the conversation back to a more focused question.
She asks Rick if there is anything that he thinks she should know.
And it's not new information that he brings up.
He's like, you know, I'm pretty frustrated with Detective Mike Kelly.
He was the OG detective.
Because apparently he went on a local TV segment about Bonnie's case and talked about her leaving the bar the same time as that John guy we talked about.
But he's like, that's how I had to find out about this John guy Mike Kelly never told me.
Oh, it was on a TV show.
That's what bothered me is why he felt he could disclose that on, what was it, national TV, on TV.
But he never felt that he should tell me that beforehand.
Because, again, I kept calling and asking if he was coming up with anything or whatever.
Obviously, I was curious and wanted to know, but he, for the longest time, he wouldn't call me back.
And that's what kind of triggered my.
I think I wrote a letter to the sheriff saying you know, I just don't think I'm being treated right.
Again, from my naivety, and I just thought people should at least be telling me what's going on.
But as far as what I can tell you, it's like I said.
She left home that night at 830 and I haven't heard or seen a thing from her since then.
Now, at first this was like one of the only things I couldn't wrap my head around from his whole second interview.
Was this like time when he's asked if he thought Bonnie was having an affair and he says he doesn't think so, because it seems like such a big part of the narrative now?
Yeah.
But...
Maybe he really had no idea.
I mean remember her friend Anita and John.
I mean they clearly knew John's in the affair with her, but they're not talking to Rick.
And if I go back to news reports from those very early days, even early years, an affair is not mentioned.
So it's possible he really was in the dark, even when police weren't.
Now, a year after that interview with Rick, the case ends up getting transferred again to a new lead detective, Sergeant Daniel Kistner, who he's the one who we talked to for this episode.
And he and another detective decide to go back up to Michigan in 2008.
And in that time, they did a nearly seven-hour interview with Rick.
Now we don't have the transcript of that one and Sergeant Kistner wouldn't give it to us, but he told us that Rick had vivid memories of his whole life, except for the weeks leading up to Bonnie's disappearance.
He kept saying that he couldn't recall many of the details, and Sergeant Kistner said that the interview got pretty tense when he called him on it and suggested that he knew more.
And after that, IMPD ended up getting a search warrant for Rick's place up in Michigan.
And they collected all the electronic devices in the house.
And Sergeant Kistner says they were also looking for that number one mom necklace, which now, all these years later, was nowhere to be found.
So they take these devices.
What were they looking for on them?
Because I assume that, like, they weren't the same phones or computers they had in 97, right?
Literally anything.
I mean Sergeant Kistner said they were looking for anything that could have had a connection to Bonnie's disappearance, like maybe in messages in documents or browser search history.
Sergeant Kistner says they did find out that Rick was keeping an eye on local Indianapolis news, but not for anything specific.
And they didn't find anything else that could have been connected to Bonnie's disappearance.
So nothing comes of that search.
And Josh told us that IMPD returned their computers and phones a couple of years later, but they returned everything broken.
And and this is the real kicker to me I get why the relationship is strained between them and police, because I guess when they were doing the search of the house they found like a tiny amount of weed.
When they were searching in Josh's room or somewhere on Josh whatever.
And he legit got charged for it.
Sergeant Kistner said that he had no idea that happened.
He said that would have been done by like Michigan police and he never would have done that.
He was just there to find out what happened to Bonnie.
Like he wouldn't have had any interest in busting a kid for weed.
Listen, I'm not saying the police are wrong about their theory, but I genuinely still don't know what I think.
But I fully get why the kids would be frustrated with them.
Like this whole scenario that's unfolding, feels really frustrated and pointed and not backed by much.
Yeah.
And like, at least from the way that Rick tells it like, or from what I've seen from his transcripts.
Right,
Like he's the one asking for updates and not getting much.
Josh and his dad and relatives are the ones out there searching for the whole weekend before the sheriff's office put anyone on the case.
They're learning stuff through the media.
Yeah.
And now even the kids are treated like criminals.
And Josh's wife Crystal, told us that part of the reason Gretchen doesn't like talking to people is because they always accuse her of knowing more.
That, like she was in the house that night and you know, maybe it's not as big as her covering up for something, but that she has to have like some secret piece of information locked away in her brain about whether her dad left the house that night or if she heard her mom come home and something happened.
And listen we heard this from multiple sources in our reporting.
We heard it from investigators even their own uncle Mike.
But this is where I'm saying, just like, hold on for one second.
I get so many things look bad.
But for one second, if we kept an open mind, if we believed Gretchen that she doesn't know anything more,
Her mom left.
She went to bed.
When she woke up, her mom wasn't there, but her dad was and everything was normal.
What if there is nothing more to tell?
What if we don't know what happened to Bonnie, because her family truly doesn't know, and that is the only place anyone has really looked.
Remember Diane, Bonnie's like neighbor, friend or like who lived close to her?
Yeah.
She was one of the people who instantly became suspicious of Rick.
This is, can I tell you something spooky that happened?
Always.
It was my like full body chills when I was going through the file and like all of the interviews.
So losing her friend and never knowing what happened obviously is just something that never left her.
And when our reporter was interviewing her, she said that over the years, at like all different stages of life, she had gone to mediums three different ones, all separate.
And each one told her the same thing.
They all said, it's not who you think that did it.
What?
What does that... Maybe nothing.
What does that mean?
I know.
If not... Because she thinks, like she said, as soon as... She's always thought that.
She's always thought it's Rhett.
And listen.
Even She's asking the same question you started to ask because she was like If not him, then who?
Yes.
She's like, if not him, then who?
If it's some random person...
You don't need to make her car and her purse and her credit cards and all that disappear.
Yeah.
Diane thinks it had to be someone she knew, which is why she just like, kept coming back to Rick, then kept going to mediums who kept saying she was wrong.
Like, I mean, OK, but what if it is someone she knew, just someone else?
Yeah.
What if?
Or an accident?
Yeah.
Or what if she walked off?
Like I know it's almost unheard of but recently I came across the case of Brenda Heist.
I was not familiar with this before, but her daughter reached out to me and she is who I've had in the back of my head as I've been telling this story.
Because I know the easy answer is the husband.
But it wasn't that way in her case.
Brenda, very much the same scenario.
She was divorcing her husband.
And on the day she disappeared she was supposed to go look at apartments after dropping her kids off at school.
And then she just vanished.
And just like Rick, her daughter told us that her dad lived under suspicion for years.
Everyone said Brenda would never leave her kids.
She has to be dead.
And then guess what?
11 years later, Brenda was found alive and well.
She just left.
Didn't plan it.
Just like that morning, said, you know what?
I'm going to start over.
And...
Sure.
Yes.
Accident is still an option, too.
But accident feels less likely the more bodies of water that are searched over the years.
Which bodies of water is like what people have always said?
Like it had to have been a body of water that she went into.
And that's why the car has never been found.
But the currently detective on the case, Nicholas Hubbs, says that there have been more than 20 water searches for Bonnie's car in the past 10 years, lots with sonar now that they have it, including some done by a private group.
And while cars have been found, none of them are Bonnie's blue 1990 Mercury Sable with plate number 99G9645.
But I have to wonder, are we like making a wrong assumption there?
About what?
About the car being in water.
Because, like on its face, you read about this case and it's like oh, like her car.
You know it was entered into like whatever, whatever database, the license plate or the VIN number,
It's never popped up.
So like it has to be in water because that's why nobody's ever found it.
Maybe not.
So I was shocked when I talked to Josh and we learned that investigators actually messed up in 1997.
Now, he's telling us this and we're like, there's no... Let's double check, yeah.
Turns out he's right.
You see, the way it used to work in 1997 was that an officer would make the report, make a phone call to the auto desk to have a vehicle entered into NCIC and it would either get entered as stolen or they would give information to have someone enter it as missing.
So it looks like, in Bonnie's case, when a deputy called it in here...
They only entered Bonnie as missing.
Now they noted that her car was gone too, but I don't think they actually entered the vehicle into the system at the same time.
It wasn't until some point in 1999, when another detective comes across this case and is doing all of his like checks and balances, that he discovers the vehicle is not in the system as missing or stolen.
Now, when this was realized, they were able to go back and see if any agency had run the plate in the missing two years.
But no one had.
But to me it also means that maybe no one was actively looking out for it, which the detective admitted to us was a missed opportunity.
So if the plate is never run, then the car is hidden somehow, right?
Which is why I think people keep coming back to water.
But ultimately, Like, I don't know.
I just like, but we know it's not in the water.
So like if it's an accident, I just have a hard time believing the accident thing.
Like when you think about the route from the bar to her home, it's not a super rural area.
An accident on land would have been noticed in like almost all the routes she went home.
And the bodies of water on her way home have been searched.
So, like, someone hid the thing.
Okay, so let's just play this out.
So, like, that's not an accident to me.
You know what I mean?
Let's just play this out for a second.
How would Rick get rid of his wife's body and car in like kind of a short amount of time?
We're talking about like what, four, five hours maybe?
This is what I'm saying.
Show me how it happened.
Like the easy answer is a body of water.
That's why everyone keeps talking about water.
But which one?
I don't know if anyone's been to Indy recently.
Like we don't just have like massive remote bodies of water.
No, not really known for mass bodies of water.
Yeah, we have like plenty of little ones all over, but most of them aren't open access.
There are like houses around them where people would see.
You might even see tire tracks that would stand out.
For sure.
Or there's like guardrails if the water is close to the road.
And, like I said, the ones that have places that you could easily drive something into between Broad Ripple, that area and her house.
Those have been searched.
Okay, but again, the focus is on the area between the bar and her house, right?
The person we have saying she was headed to her house was the guy she was having an affair with right.
Yeah.
That's how we know she's going, no, in air quotes.
Everything is based on that.
And investigators, they've always said they deem him credible and not involved in her disappearance.
But I mean, since I don't have their records, I don't know all the ins and outs of why, other than the fact that they say he passed a polygraph.
And unfortunately, he died in 2006, so we couldn't talk to him now.
But we did get in touch with John's daughter, Kim.
And what she told us was brand new information to us and to investigators, when we passed it along to them.
So she was 16 back in 1997.
She didn't live in Indy.
She actually lived in Texas with her mother.
But by some stroke of cold case luck, she was visiting Indianapolis to see her dad that 4th of July weekend.
She told us that her dad was actually planning to introduce her to Bonnie at an outdoor concert on the 4th, called Uncle Sam Jam.
I guess the concert had one of her favorite bands, the Barenaked Ladies.
We actually checked this.
The concert did happen that weekend, so she is spot on.
And she said that her dad hadn't introduced her to other women.
And so she took this as him.
This was big.
Yeah, this was like he's like very smitten with her.
She knew.
But she says that Friday, Bonnie never showed up.
And she remembered her dad getting really worried and him saying that this wasn't like her.
She said it pretty much ruined the entire day because he seemed so worried about it.
Wait, I thought John gets told that she's missing on Saturday by Anita.
That is what John told police, yeah.
But his daughter is saying that he knew something was wrong on Friday.
Yes.
Now, it's not like he could call her house or show up to get her, right?
Like they're having a secret affair.
But she had a cell.
Like he could have called her.
So, and this is the thing.
Kim told us that she thinks he did try her cell, but he couldn't reach her, which brings me back to those cell phone records.
Yes.
It feels even more likely to me that no activity means that like calls didn't connect.
Not that no one tried calling.
Right.
But why didn't he try calling Anita or anything, though?
Like there were other people that he spent time with that knew Bonnie that he could have.
Like seen what happened?
Yeah, like have you heard from her?
Whatever.
I thought about this.
The innocent explanation, which I do think is very believable, is that he didn't think that she was like missing, missing.
I mean, he knew things at home were tough.
She was about to leave her husband.
He might have just assumed that things got complicated at home.
The thing that I can't wrap my head around is in that scenario though, why not tell police that you were supposed to meet her on Friday and she didn't show up?
Yeah, that feels like kind of a big piece of like the timeline puzzle, right?
When we told Sergeant Kistner about this, he said he had never heard anything about Bonnie not showing up to meet John at the concert on Friday.
And he doesn't know why John wouldn't have mentioned that.
And, like this was one of the moments where he's like.
You know, it's really frustrating to have come on to this case so many years after, when it's already too late to get questions answered from John, who again died in 2006.
Now, he said he did go door knocking at one point and talk to one of John's good friends.
And this was recent, like just about a year ago.
The guy's name is Brad Beach.
And Brad told him that John took Bonnie's disappearance really hard.
Kistner said that Brad told him that John carried guilt, that he should have followed her home or like he should have done something to protect her.
Like we tried talking to Brad ourselves, but we never got a response.
We also reached out to Kim's two half brothers, who are John's sons from a previous relationship, but neither of them responded to our messages.
So we really only had Kim to talk to about who her dad was.
And I mean, she said that he was, quote, a drinker even before Bonnie went missing.
So she doesn't know like how much Bonnie's disappearance impacted him in the following months and years, because really after that they didn't talk often.
Was she staying with him, though, that night?
Like.
Can she at least confirm that he came home and was there after he said he waved goodbye to Bonnie?
No, she actually stayed with a different family member while she was in town which, like listen, I'm not saying that John's story isn't true or that he had anything to do with Bonnie going missing.
What I'm saying is like the double standard is wild.
Like you have John, with no one to verify his story, and you have Rick, who has his daughter at home saying nothing happened, and Rick's the liar.
John might have called Bonnie on Friday.
We know Rick says that he did, but there's no activity on her phone.
But Rick is the liar.
Like, it doesn't seem fair.
Now, we also tried talking to Anita because, like, I have a million questions for that woman.
But she ignored us.
Know who else she ignored?
Bonnie's kids.
Josh said that he has tried a bunch of different times to talk to Anita over the years, like even reached out to her daughter and said that she pretty much just hung up on him.
And I was talking about this with one of our reporters and they were like well you know, she made it clear to detectives that she was suspicious of Rick.
She's always thought that the kids were very much on his side.
So like maybe she wouldn't want to talk to them.
OK, I get it.
Maybe.
Maybe.
But then I found out that Diane tried to reach out to her, too.
I mean, everyone right now is looking for answers and clues.
And the same way people are like, oh, Gretchen must know something.
I think everyone wants to talk to Anita, thinking there's some hidden clue like locked away in her brain.
They can dissect every word Bonnie said that night or her exact movements, like, whatever.
Mm-hmm.
So Diane got Anita's name from one of the detectives.
She called her and she's like, hey, I know everything about Bonnie and Rick and what was going on.
And Diane's like, at this point, still pretty hardcore Rick did it.
Yeah.
But she's like.
I would love to know more about what happened before Bonnie came to the party that night.
And this is what Anita told her.
I would never betray her trust.
And Diane's like, no, like, you don't understand.
Like, I want to know so we can figure out.
She trusted me, too.
We're on the same team.
I want to know if Rick's involved and maybe this will help.
And her response was, I would never tell anything about Bonnie to anyone.
Listen girl, if I am missing and there is even a chance that I did not walk away and someone killed me, spill my secrets.
Like, what are we doing here?
You know I love to yap.
You don't have to worry.
But, like, is Bonnie gonna know you shared something?
Right.
And sharing it, again, like, with another friend of hers, that...
She was clearly confiding in like, again, like I said, like she trusted me, too.
We're on the same team.
Right.
Feels like the safest person.
And like also someone who can identify with what you're feeling like as someone who has a friend missing and like they confided in you, they trusted you.
It's really odd.
I don't know if Anita still feels this way almost 30 years later.
But again, like, I mean, to us, she definitely didn't seem to want to talk about Bonnie even now.
And if you want to say she's scared or whatever, Rick died in 2022.
So if she was keeping quiet because she was afraid of him, that shouldn't be a problem anymore.
And I don't know if it was ever a real problem to begin with because I did a thing.
I know the thing you did, but I don't actually know what came of it yet.
So I'm actually like dying to hear.
So, okay.
So, as some of our listeners may know, I have become friends with Alison Dubois over the last like year or so.
Mm-hmm.
And some people will recognize her name because of the show Medium.
That's based off her life and the actual work that she did to help law enforcement solve cases.
That's what I knew her from.
Some people will know her from Real Housewives, where she was the guest at an epic dinner party and predicted the downfall of a marriage.
We all love her for different reasons.
Anyway, something in this case just really stood out to me.
So that moment where I like I read the transcript of what Diane told our reporter, where she or I listened to it as well.
But she's telling our reporter that over the years she went to three different mediums and all three said the same thing.
It's not who you think.
So I got this idea.
He's like, I know a medium.
Yeah.
What if I ask the medium?
I know.
I know.
Listen, guys, I know it doesn't prove anything, but like, I don't know.
What if?
It's 30 years on.
Like, what do we have to lose?
Police are only looking at Rick.
I'll try anything at this point.
So I first asked Josh if it would be OK.
He gave us his permission.
So I flew Allison out to Indy and I had her do a reading.
And let me preface this by telling you how she works.
When she came to Indy, she had no idea what case we were going to talk about.
There is no way she would have known.
Even if she would have known, like there's like very little.
This is the most in-depth story that's ever been done on Bonnie's case.
So when she does a reading, what I give her is someone's picture and their first name.
Not like a picture of them and their family or like – Just them.
Just them and their first name.
So she takes it.
She goes into a room.
And like we had cameras and stuff.
Like she does like this weird scribble thing or whatever.
And she's able to make a connection, which I asked her before.
I'm like, hey, if someone's missing –
Like, what do you get?
Yeah.
And she's like, I cannot connect if they are not dead.
So the fact that she was able to make a connection told me that Bonnie is not out there alive and well somewhere.
Now, she when she started talking about Bonnie, she said that she was very nurturing.
She would have never walked away.
And whatever happened to her wasn't an accident either.
Someone targeted her.
And it was someone she did not know.
Girl, I'm telling you, I did not tell her anything about Bonnie's family or husband or kids or affair.
She knew nothing about her life.
But she said that someone had been watching her.
And isn't that something that John had mentioned?
Everyone has always just assumed that someone is rich.
Yeah.
But when she's telling me this and again, I'm not even, like at this point, confirming for her anything.
You're just listening.
Yeah.
But she's saying that this person who was watching her targeted her.
And she said this was someone who has a record for burglary.
She said he lived nearby Bonnie, but not in a house, which was like very specific.
And she thinks her remains are more likely in a wooded area somewhere with walking paths.
And she kept saying that, she kept seeing this scene where there were birds flying over this wooded area near a housing development.
That she said was it was built up but it still had some homes under construction, which sent me into like a property record spiral, because So I was like OK, where would have been wooded in 97, with houses being built but still undeveloped almost 30 years later?
Long story short, my best guess is the Eagle Creek area.
It's like a big city park.
There's tons of walking paths.
And that's like on the west side, like out where she would have lived.
And I did this kind of like vague call out on social media a few weeks ago about like asking people to send me housing developments that would have been under construction around like late 1997, early 1998.
And, to be honest with you, I don't even like know my next steps or what searching these areas would entail.
I know at a minimum, I think I'll be doing a lot of hiking when the weather warms up.
So if it really is someone that Bonnie didn't know not Rick, not John how does this person encounter her?
Because John waves goodbye to her while she's in her car headed home.
So I have this like.
And I kind of talked it out eventually with Allison after she did her whole reading.
Because one of the things she said in her reading before she knew anything was that she was like seeing someone walking in between the homes.
Like, she's like, Bonnie keeps showing me someone walking in between the homes.
And...
I wonder if she did make it home but not inside.
I think about them sitting on the porch having this talk about their marriage.
They're trying to like not probably not be around Gretchen and have her hear everything.
Not in the house.
Right.
But if they're sitting outside, she's telling Rick outside what her plan is.
She's going to like go away.
She's not going to be home till late.
So say there was somebody who had seen her, targeted, watched her.
I mean, if they were there earlier...
They know that she is going to be alone pulling into the drive very late at night, early morning hours.
If they were following her somewhere else, they see her pull in.
There is a world where she gets attacked in her driveway.
And yes, there are houses very close.
But if it is swift, if it is quick.
It happens in her car and he leaves with it.
He leaves with it.
How would anyone know?
It's not like she has to stop.
It's like she made it almost all the way to the.
Again, this is just.
I have nothing to base this on.
Her car stops in the driveway of her own volition.
He's not flagging her down.
She doesn't have to pull over.
It's where she's supposed to be stopping.
Right.
And so, as the conversations kept going with Allison, there's like there's so much more that she told me.
But I'm trying to keep it brief.
But I did eventually give her Rick's picture because he died, too.
And she was like, this man.
No, she's like, he is not violent.
She's like, he is a perfectionist.
He probably could be verbally like mean to Bonnie, but he has never killed anyone in his whole life.
And listen, I know people are going to think whatever they want to think of this.
I believe in stuff like this.
Some people will not and that's okay.
The thing that I like think about though, is Allison aside.
If that's true, if Rick did nothing, it would be really sad to think that he had to live the rest of his life painted as a murderer by so many people.
He never got remarried.
He said he thought about Bonnie all the time.
I don't know.
And listen, you guys, I'm serious.
There is so much more that Allison said about Bonnie.
But again, I realize there are skeptics.
I'm trying to keep it brief.
So if you want to hear the whole thing, Even the stuff that like, I gave her a moment to say like, does she have anything to say to her son?
I mean, it was fascinating.
I'm going to drop the entire conversation as a fan club extra for anyone who's interested.
Again, I'm just trying to give you the big takeaways here.
But I will leave you with something else that gives me like little tiny chills.
Like I've always seen about the critics.
They're like, oh, Ashley, eye roll.
And like I know it's a little bit generic, but it was like the last little like moment I had when putting together this episode.
So I asked our reporter, like as I'm finishing up, like, hey, go to Josh.
See if he has just any final thoughts that he wants to share when we close out our episode.
At the same time I was about to go like, do my stuff with Alison Dubois.
You know it's different places, different times, whatever.
So I go do my thing with Allison and when I ask her to like say, does she have anything to say to her son?
And the first line out of Allison's mouth was she said he never stopped looking for me and then she called him baby boy, she said a bunch more stuff or whatever.
And so I come back to finish.
You know the outline for this episode and the first line I get in my note from the reporter was Josh has never given up searching for his mom.
Oh my chill, like and it's.
It is a true statement.
Although he and his wife, crystal moved to florida in 2023, they worked with dive teams.
Before they left they were looking for any sign of bonnie.
They scoured maps for any bodies of water that could be hidden or that could hide a car.
Now one place, he says he hasn't been able to search our quarries north of indianapolis, but he's not even sure if there would be access to put a car in the water there.
He says not knowing what happened to his mom has been brutal.
It has made it harder for him to trust people.
And it's only compounded by the unanswered questions of whether his father, his own father, was involved in her disappearance.
Now, Josh doesn't believe that he was.
He doesn't think that his father was capable of that kind of violence.
And he thinks that if he had done something, the guilt would have eaten away at him.
He thinks someone else out there might hold the answers and he hopes that one day they'll come forward to give him and his family the relief of finally laying Bonnie to rest.
And I don't know, I really do believe that there's hope for that.
So if anyone out there has information about Bonnie's disappearance or her missing vehicle, please contact the currently detective, that's Detective Nicholas Hubbs at Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
The phone number is 317-327-6160.
Or you can email us, tips at audiochuck.com.
You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, CrimeJunkie.com.
And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.
We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production.
I think Chuck would approve.
