INFAMOUS: Indiana Dunes Disappearances

In the summer of 1966, three young women head to the beaches of Lake Michigan and are never seen again, setting off a mystery that remains unsolved to this day.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ashley Flowers?

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Holiday stress is hard, but talking with a professional can make a difference. BetterHelp connects you with licensed, experienced therapists through a simple questionnaire to provide tailored support. Switch therapists anytime and prioritize your peace and well-being as one of the best gifts you give yourself this holiday season. BetterHelp is in-network with over 125 health plans with copays as low as $15 for eligible members. If you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 20% off your first month. Sign up and get 20% off at betterhelp.com/crimejunkie. That's better H-E-L-P.com/crimejunkie.

• 0:42Ashley Flowers?

  When you're out in nature, you learn to trust your instincts. You pay attention to the trail, your surroundings, and you stay alert to protect yourself from harm. But what if the biggest threat isn't the environment at all? On Park Predators, host Delia DiEmbra explores true crime cases that happen in national parks and remote wildernesses, the places we usually think of as safe and peaceful. Each episode reveals what happened and how much more there is beneath the surface. Listen to Park Predators now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  And I'm Britt.

• 1:17Ashley Flowers?

  And we actually have a special guest today. If you hear a little whimpers or tiffy-taps or anything.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  Or snores.

• 1:23Ashley Flowers?

  For the first time since, like, early days Crime Junkie, Old Man Chuck is in the room while we're recording, so please forgive us, but our 14-year-old man wanted to cuddle today, and I'm allowing it.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:35Ashley Flowers?

  And it's not going to keep me from telling you an incredible story. And that story is a mystery right out of our home state of Indiana. But listen, Britt, the circumstances of this are so foreign that I've heard this story, but it always felt so far away to me. We're talking horse mobsters, illegal medical boats operating out in open waters. There has been no case like this before or since, and that's why it's one of Indiana's most infamous cases.

• 2:36Ashley Flowers?

  The workday has barely started on Monday, July 4th, 1966, when Indiana Dunes State Park, which today is surrounded by Indiana Dunes National Park, like it's like a whole thing. Anyways, Superintendent Williams Smedek is getting a panicked call on his office phone. The caller IDs himself as Harold Blau, and he's like, "Look, my daughter and her friends were at your park on Saturday. It's Monday now, and they haven't come home. My wife and I are super worried." Now, all of these are, you know, these are three young women. Harold's daughter Patricia, she's 19. Her friends Anne Miller and Renee Brule are around the same age, like 21 and 19, respectively. But Patricia still lives at home, and she wouldn't leave for days

• 3:20Ashley Flowers?

  without giving her parents a heads up. And Patricia had even told her mom Saturday, that morning when she left, that she would be home that night for dinner. And the other girls were supposed to be home too, but none of them returned to their Chicago homes just over the state line. Smedek tells Harold, "Okay, listen, I'll look into it." But this uneasy feeling starts to creep in his belly because he might already know something about the missing girls, and it could be bad. You see, two days before, on Saturday, a park ranger had brought a bunch of random items into his office, saying that there were things that had been left on the beach of Lake Michigan by three women who went into the water and boarded a boat around noon that day, but then never returned.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  How did they know that?

• 4:06Ashley Flowers?

  Because there were witnesses. There were some teenagers nearby that had seen them get onto the boat. They saw them leave their stuff, and then they alerted the ranger when they were, like, those teenagers were getting ready to go, and the stuff was still there. Because it seemed like this is the kind of stuff that you, like, wouldn't, you would leave only if you were planning to come back, right? Like, there's like the thermos, some sunglasses, lotion, those kind of things. Even more significant items, too, like cash, a purse, clothes, a pair of shoes. Like, they should have been back. Now, at the time, the ranger wasn't especially concerned when he collected these things, though the Chicago Tribune reports that he did get a description of the boat, at least, which they said was a small boat with white exterior and a blue interior,

• 4:50Ashley Flowers?

  maybe turquoise-ish blue, and it had an outboard motor. They even gave the ranger a description of the driver, which they say was a tan, dark-haired young man. But listen, people leave stuff on the beach all the time, especially on crowded days like the Saturday before the 4th of July. So at the time, he just gathered the things up and dropped them in Svetik's office, but no one was like, out manning a massive search or trying to find the owners of these items at the time. Now, everyone kind of thought that whoever it was that owned these things would eventually come looking for this stuff at some point. But now, with this phone call, a darker thought washes over Svetik. Lake Michigan is notorious for its strong unpredictable currents.

• 5:35Ashley Flowers?

  Like, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the women, maybe even their captain too, had gone for a swim or gotten into an accident and found themselves outmatched by Mother Nature. Like, we live here, so many people underestimate Lake Michigan. Yeah. Yeah, so, once he hangs up with Harold, Svetik starts rifling through the items. He's looking for clues. And I mean, to be fair, he doesn't even know that the women who left these things were Patricia Ann and Renee. It just like, to him, feels too much like of a coincidence not to be. Mm-hmm. But that's the first order of business, right? Now, when he finds a keychain with car keys and a miniature Illinois license plate, and realizes that the plate has what looks like a pretty legitimate plate number, he

• 6:19Ashley Flowers?

  gets this idea. He calls a few employees, sends them out to check the parking lot near the dunes, and sure enough, there is a car with that exact plate in the lot. And sure enough, when they run down the plate number with Chicago PD, Svetik gets the confirmation he needs. The car in the parking lot is registered to Ann Miller from the Chicago suburb of Westchester, which makes this official. He has got a triple disappearance on his hands, and something of that magnitude is above his pay grade. So that's when seasoned Indiana State Police investigator, Detective First Sergeant Edward Burke steps in to help the investigation. And he doesn't waste any time.

• 7:02Ashley Flowers?

  One of his first moves is to go through the purse that had been left on the beach. And it turns out that purse belonged to Renee. And he knows it's hers because inside he finds this rather intriguing letter. Now, Anne and Patricia lived at home with their parents, but 19-year-old Renee is actually married and lives with her husband at the time. And this letter that they find was addressed to him.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Is he like away somewhere?

• 7:27Ashley Flowers?

  No, so they lived together. I mean, I assume they see each other like on the daily, but it seems like maybe they were a couple that liked to get thoughts down on paper when there were like big things, which I think is what this was. Because basically in this letter, there are some issues that she brings up, like her husband spending way too much time with his buddies, tinkering with hot rods, which like, sounds light and almost cute, but it wasn't either of those things to Renee. She even threatens to split up over this.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 7:54Ashley Flowers?

  But it looks like, I mean, maybe she had second thoughts about giving this to him? Because according to the date scribbled on this letter, it's like two weeks old by that point, like when he's seeing it. So Sergeant Burke isn't quite sure what to make of it, but he also doesn't have time to really ponder this. Feeling like Svetik might be right about the woman's fate, he calls the US Coast Guard to search the lake near the park way at the southern end. And boy, does the Coast Guard have their work cut out for them. Because Lake Michigan is enormous. I said, you guys, everyone underestimates it. Lake is like not even the right word. Over 22,000 square miles enormous is how big we're talking about. And even if you've seen the lakes on like a map in school or geography or whatever, like, it doesn't give you a sense for it.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  No, like, standing on the shore, it honestly looks like an ocean.

• 8:43Ashley Flowers?

  An ocean. I mean, you can get out there at some point and literally not see land on any side of you. It is huge. So it's not all that surprising when they end the day empty-handed. So first thing next morning Sergeant Burke gets a huge ground search going to complement the Coast Guard's efforts. He wants every last square inch of the park covered and also a good stretch of shoreline beyond the park. It's a hell of a task and for it, he assembles a hell of a search party. A bunch of troopers and park rangers, obviously, and even soldiers from a nearby base. Deputies from Porter County Sheriff's Office, citizen volunteers who will eventually be joined by their bloodhounds.

• 9:24Ashley Flowers?

  And with the Coast Guard still at it, they're searching literally plane, train and automobile here. And maybe not literally, but almost, you get what I'm saying? And by the end of the day, the searches have covered 40% of the park almost and still there is just nothing. Now, the Chicago Tribune reports that while the search is put on hold overnight Sergeant Burke orders a patrol to man the shore until sunrise. The thinking being that like if the women maybe drowned, their bodies could wash up soon? And while drowning from a boating accident is only one theory, it's not at all out of the question that they also could have met with foul play. So they gotta find this boat, like if they're gonna know either way, right?

• 10:06Ashley Flowers?

  And while there are some sightings of white boats with blue interiors, they don't find a boat that could have been in the area, like the boat when the girls went missing.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Are they sure they even got on a boat in the first place? I know we have that one sighting of the three girls getting on the boat, but did anyone else see that happen?

• 10:24Ashley Flowers?

  They're not sure of anything. I mean, you're right, all they have to back up even this boat story, like from the beginning, is just the word from those teenagers who alerted the ranger. But I will say, over the first couple of days as this goes on, like when the story starts making news, people start coming forward, they start getting some more witness tips and that does seem to support the boat story. More people who say they saw the women climb onto a white boat with a dark haired, well tanned man that day. And actually, there are even a few reports of them being seen on a larger boat, like this time with three men. And that was at some point as well, like that same afternoon. But for some reason, I think that like those are mostly discounted. So a few days into the search,

• 11:06Ashley Flowers?

  the idea of some sort of fatality-causing boat accident starts to gain traction. But according to more reporting in the Chicago Tribune, "Random Boat Debris Starts Washing Up Onshore Not Far From The Park." Pieces of seats, styrofoam, scraps of metal, plywood, turquoise plywood. And they can tell that this wreckage came from what the reporting refers to as a "outboard motorboat." And like I said, this stuff isn't washing up hours away. It's washing up like three miles away, near some sort of power plant. Now, at this time, there haven't been any reports of a missing boat. No reports of a crash, or of missing or injured boaters, which some find kind of strange.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  But it also might just mean that the guy who owned the boat isn't around to report it missing, or couldn't call it in before something happened.

• 11:59Ashley Flowers?

  Right. Or destroying the boat was intentional because they find something weird among the wreckage. The debris is strewn with cans of oil and gasoline. Some of the plywood is even doused in it.

• 12:18Ashley Flowers?

  Do me a favor: put all five fingers up. Now, put one down if you have workout saved on Instagram that you haven't gone back to. Put one down if you were gonna go to a workout class this week, but there's just none that the times worked out for. Put one down if you don't like working out at home because you don't know what to do and you need someone to push you. Put two fingers down if you want to stop this game. Babe, we are the same. I don't have a lot of time, and honestly, I'm not even someone who likes working out. But Ladder actually changed that. I literally had to waddle into the studio to record this because my butt is so sore. Ladder is quick. I'm not wasting time wandering around or doing reps of something that won't matter. I'm in, I'm out. I have a coach along the way who can help me make 30 minutes with weights feel better than two hours of whatever I was doing before. And it's $1 a day.

• 13:03Ashley Flowers?

  So if price was ever stopping you before, you're officially out of excuses. Remove the guesswork with Ladder and get a real coach in your ear telling you exactly what to do for every workout. No thinking, everything planned for you. If you have an iPhone, head to ladder.fit/crimejunkie and take a quick quiz to find your perfect Ladder plan. Use my link and get a free seven-day trial with no credit card and $10 off your first month if you join.

• 13:31Ashley Flowers?

  Remember being a kid around the holidays and anytime you would ask for something, mom would always say, "Wait until the holidays." Well, with Mint Mobile's holiday deal, there's no waiting. Right now, this second, all of their plans are $15 a month. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with premium wireless for $15 a month. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number. Choose from three, six, or 12-month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. It's so easy. Sign up online and get premium wireless service for $15 a month. So what are you waiting for? To get your new wireless plan for $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com/crimejunkie.

• 14:16Ashley Flowers?

  That's mintmobile.com/crimejunkie. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com/crimejunkie. Limited time offer, upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required, $15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabyte may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. So it feels like something fishy is afoot. And yet, pretty quickly, authorities announced that the wreckage couldn't have anything to do with the missing women because there were no reports of a boating accident.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  All the more reason to be suspicious. I mean, something clearly happened here. The boat didn't douse itself in gasoline.

• 15:08Ashley Flowers?

  And it only gets worse from there because the Terre Haute Star reports that soon, authorities announce that the wreckage is from a rowboat. A metal rowboat.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Hmm, a metal rowboat that was also made of turquoise plywood and collided with something with enough force to just completely disintegrate it into pieces.

• 15:31Ashley Flowers?

  Yes? Right, like it feels like there's some tunnel vision going on here. Because the Terre Haute Tribune reports that when investigators are asked about three different possibilities, right, so like drowning, foul play, or a planned disappearance, their response is telling. They say that there is no evidence of drowning or foul play.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  So now they think the women pieced out on purpose?

• 15:56Ashley Flowers?

  Well, at first they play it coy, but by the one week mark Sergeant Burke is like, "Yeah, we're pretty sure this was all orchestrated."

• 16:04Speaker 01

  The boat stuff too? Like they blew it up or that's unrelated still?

• 16:08Ashley Flowers?

  Still unrelated. They're not even trying to make sense of the wreckage. And I get why they start doubting the drowning theory, like maybe a little premature, but I mean, they've devoted so much manpower to searching the southern end of Lake Michigan and from like every angle to, they've got those ground searches, boats, whatever, like divers are even in there. And with everything, they're thinking like if the women did drown, like someone should have found something by now that indicated that.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Okay, so not drowning, but no evidence of foul play. Based on what?

• 16:42Ashley Flowers?

  On the fact that, that there's no evidence, like-

• 16:46Speaker 01

  But there's also no evidence that it wasn't foul play?

• 16:49Ashley Flowers?

  I know. I feel like we've done this like dance before.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:52Ashley Flowers?

  Anyways, the, the whole idea of it not being foul play because there's no evidence of foul play, like to me that's bananas, especially when the one thing that might have been the evidence of foul play has been discounted, right?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and listen, I get that walked off on their own is always a theory when you have a person go missing. But to me, it seems super farfetched to think about three women with three different lives, three different sets of circumstances, all committing to disappearing at once on purpose. It's not not possible, it's just-

• 17:26Ashley Flowers?

  It's like, it's way less likely.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:29Ashley Flowers?

  I think mostly they think this because there start to be some supposed sightings, I guess, like near and far, one like on a bus or like in a bar or a club or whatever. And these are like miles and miles away with strange men. Sometimes they're even seeing like hitchhiking, according to the Chicago Tribune. And all of these, like, they never turn out to be legit, but investigators run each one down and they keep coming in. So I'm sure that's playing a role here. But I also suspect that it has a lot to do with the letter that they found in Renee's purse, the one to her husband.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  The one about the hot rods?

• 18:08Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, like, so they decided, basically, that she may have wanted to just skip town on account of her marital discord.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  She didn't even give him the letter, though. And that has nothing to explain the other two disappearing with her.

• 18:22Ashley Flowers?

  I know. And they obviously questioned the husband, by the way, like, he's in the clear. So her loved ones are like, OK, we hear you, but also, are you serious right now? Like, she's 19 years old and her feelings were hurt over, like, something you can probably work through.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:40Ashley Flowers?

  And that was weeks ago.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And again, I say it has nothing to do with why Anne and Patricia would have left. Like, they're not giving up their lives in, what, solidarity over a husband's hobby?

• 18:53Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, not maybe in solidarity. The Chicago Tribune reports that, according to Sergeant Burke, all three, Anne and Patricia included, have, quote unquote, "personal problems," but he wouldn't say what those are, which isn't to say, like, we don't know what he's getting at. Because, long story short, what we know is that Patricia's sister, Janice, tells Dateline in a recent interview, so, like, we find this out way later, that Patricia had been canoodling with a married man. And Anne had supposedly told friends that she was three months pregnant and might enter a, quote unquote, "home for unwed mothers," which is very much a thing in 1966. But it is such an antiquated concept in, like, the year of our Lord 2025, well, at least for now, that I-

• 19:38Ashley Flowers?

  I asked you to do some digging and give the crime junkies a quick explainer for the young folk listening. Can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been, right? So, being a pregnant unwed woman in the 60s, give it to us.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Obviously, like you said, like I knew about the concept, but I wanted to read up a little bit before this episode. So I found an article on Scary Mommy, which I'll link to if you want to go deeper. There's even like a book on this. But basically, there were these homes where families of unmarried pregnant girls and women hid their daughters away while they were pregnant, so no one would have to see them because-

• 20:10Ashley Flowers?

  God forbid.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  God forbid. What a shame.

• 20:13Ashley Flowers?

  And where were the men who got these women and girls pregnant?

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Obviously, they were out there living their lives. The women were the ones forced to wear this scarlet letter in the form of that baby bump. Then, once they gave birth and their babies were adopted out voluntarily or otherwise, then, and only then, could the women and girls be returned to polite society.

• 20:36Ashley Flowers?

  Society, love it. So, these are supposedly some of the personal problems that Sergeant Burke is referring to, although, put a pin in that because we're going to circle back to it later. But personal problems are not, the women's families don't agree. And they are just more convinced by the day that the disappearances weren't by choice. And on July 14th, this is just 12 days in, that fear starts to gain traction when a brutal crime captures the attention of, well, everyone. Now, it's very different, but it involves multiple young women being held and killed at a single time by a single person and from

• 21:17Ashley Flowers?

  the same area where the women are from, Chicago. So, it at the time does feel worth looking into. And let me just give you a little, like, the spark notes on this case. Corky Shmashko reports for NBC News that around 11:00 PM on the night of July 13th, a man armed with a gun and a hunting knife climbed through the first floor window of a Chicago townhouse where six student nurses were sleeping in two upstairs bedrooms. He crept up the stairs, woke up all six, and corralled them into a third bedroom, binding their hands behind their back. And he spent the next few hours walking them out of the room, one

• 21:56Ashley Flowers?

  by one, and killing them, one after another. Some of them by stabbing, some by strangulation, and some by a combination of the two. And I don't know why this next detail bothers me so much, but his victims weren't even just the six women in the house when he broke in, because three more residents had the great fortune of being gone when the bloodshed started, and the even greater misfortune of coming home while it was unfolding. Shumashko writes that eight women were tortured and killed over like four and a half long hours that night. At least one victim was sexually assaulted, although I would wager that she probably wasn't the only one.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Wouldn't it be nine victims if six were already there and then three came home?

• 22:43Ashley Flowers?

  It would have if one woman didn't have the right combination of courage, quick thinking, and honestly, maybe sheer luck to survive. Her name was Corazon Amorau, and seeing her last chance at survival, she actually crawled under one of the beds while the killer was out of the room. And from her hiding spot, she heard each of her roommates get marched out of the room, followed by what Shumashko describes as muffled cries and then silence. And somehow, he just didn't notice. Like, there were so many victims that this dude lost count. And so when Corazon crawled back out at around 6 o'clock in the morning,

• 23:25Ashley Flowers?

  it was just carnage. Shumashko writes that she was so traumatized and so terrified that she climbed onto the ledge of a second-story window and just started screaming. I mean, for all she knew, the killer was still inside somewhere. So, once she was safe, she gave police a pretty damn detailed description of the perp, right down to his "Born to Raise Hell" tattoo. And that ends up being the key, because just two days later, a Chicago physician feels his blood go cold when he sees the same four words on a patient's forearm.

• 24:04Ashley Flowers?

  This patient was 24-year-old Richard Speck. Having grown up in Texas, Speck is new to the Chicago area, where he's been staying with his sister and her husband. And like so many killers before him, he's like, "No, officers, I swear to you, you have the wrong guy, absolutely not." Which, like, they absolutely do not, because his prints are all over the crime scene. Chamosco reports that the assistant DA, who eventually prosecutes him for eight counts of capital murder, gives him the dubious distinction of being the country's first random mass murderer. Random being the operative word, since organized crime was definitely a thing in Chicago before this guy, but you get what I'm saying. So this random massacre

• 24:49Ashley Flowers?

  happens to a group of women from the same area just two weeks after the Indiana Dunes women go missing. And everyone's like, "Hey, maybe you should look at this, because you got," truly at this point, "nothing else, other than they walked away," and nobody's buying that. ISP Superintendent Robert O'Neill is like, "Yeah, listen, we're checking on it, but like, don't get your hopes up." And Sergeant Burke is even blunter, saying like, "There is no suggestion Speck was near, let alone at, Lake Michigan, the day that the women went missing." And even if he was, let's just say that, in addition to not being a criminal mastermind, Speck isn't tall, dark, or handsome, and he doesn't have resources to get his hands on a boat,

• 25:33Ashley Flowers?

  or even to charm or lure three victims aboard a boat. I will admit that it's a little intriguing that he worked as what the Chicago History Museum calls a quote-unquote "apprentice seaman", but I won't waste any of your time on him. Like, at the end of the day, it is decided by all that this is just an intriguing coincidence and nothing more.

• 25:56Ashley Flowers?

  Do me a favor. Put all five fingers up. Now, put one down if you have workout saved on Instagram that you haven't gone back to. Put one down if you were gonna go to a workout class this week, but there's just none that the times worked out for. Put one down if you don't like working out at home because you don't know what to do and you need someone to push you. Put two fingers down if you want to stop this game. Babe, we are the same. I don't have a lot of time and honestly, I'm not even someone who likes working out. But Ladder actually changed that. I literally had to waddle into the studio to record this because my butt is so sore. Ladder is quick. I'm not wasting time wandering around or doing reps of something that won't matter. I'm in, I'm out. I have a coach along the way who can help me make 30 minutes with weights feel better than two hours of whatever I was doing before. And it's $1 a day.

• 26:41Ashley Flowers?

  So if price was ever stopping you before, you're officially out of excuses. Remove the guesswork with Ladder and get a real coach in your ear telling you exactly what to do for every workout. No thinking, everything planned for you. If you have an iPhone, head to ladder.fit/crimejunkie and take a quick quiz to find your perfect Ladder plan. Use my link and get a free seven-day trial with no credit card and $10 off your first month if you join.

• 27:09Ashley Flowers?

  Remember being a kid around the holidays? And anytime you would ask for something, mom would always say, "Wait until the holidays." Well, with Mint Mobile's holiday deal, there's no waiting. Right now, this second, all of their plans are $15 a month. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with premium wireless for 15 bucks a month. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can even bring your current phone and your number. Choose from three, six, or 12-month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. It's so easy. Sign up online and get premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. So what are you waiting for? To get your new wireless plan for 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com/crimejunkie.

• 27:54Ashley Flowers?

  That's mintmobile.com/crimejunkie. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/crimejunkie. Limited time offer. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.

• 28:22Ashley Flowers?

  So the next theory that comes up, it's, it might even be more of a stretch, I guess is what I should say. And it all starts with this guy named Dick Wiley, who, according to the New York Daily News, was supposedly the first reporter on the scene the morning that the women were reported missing. Now, he only covered the case briefly. It's not like he was deeply involved. And within a few years of the disappearances, he quit journalism altogether and jumped into a career in law enforcement down in Florida. But he couldn't get the disappearances out of his mind, like they became his own personal Roman Empire, if you will. So Dick Wiley believes, are you ready for this? I'll answer it for you. No, you're not.

• 29:07Ashley Flowers?

  He believes that the women died aboard an abortion boat.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  A what?

• 29:14Ashley Flowers?

  Wiley is absolutely certain that the disappearances can be traced back to an abortion boat.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  You just keep repeating that like it's gonna make more sense the second time around. What the f is an abortion boat?

• 29:27Ashley Flowers?

  It's exactly what it sounds like. He says it's a boat on Lake Michigan where illicit abortions are performed.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Is that a real thing?

• 29:34Ashley Flowers?

  If you ask Dick Wiley, yes. And the theory he has behind this abortion boat is wild. Now, we know that Ann may have been pregnant and that Patricia may have been seeing a married guy, right?

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 29:48Ashley Flowers?

  Well, Wiley posits, what if Ann and Patricia were both pregnant by married men?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Nothing to back this up, I assume? Just kind of a combining of their two possible scenarios?

• 30:04Ashley Flowers?

  It seems that way. Like, he doesn't give any explanation other than like a what if.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:08Ashley Flowers?

  I'm not sure how or why, but basically, he just says that in the course of his personal investigation, he learns that that's the situation. Now, he says that puts them both in a pickle because it was 1960 whatever. And years before Roe v. Wade gave us, you know, brief bodily autonomy before controlling women became everyone's top priority again. And we've already talked about what a moral stain out of wedlock pregnancies were back then. And in all seriousness, back alley abortions absolutely were a thing in 1966. Botched back alley abortions were too. So basically Wiley believes that there was this married couple operating an illicit abortion clinic in Gary, Indiana.

• 30:51Ashley Flowers?

  For those of you who don't know, that's what, like, on the coast of Lake Michigan, near Chicago and the Indiana Dunes. So like, right in that area.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Can we prove that that part is real? That this duo and their clinic?

• 31:01Ashley Flowers?

  I actually had the same question. Google couldn't tell me, so I reached out to the Indiana State Police. They were super duper helpful. And they confirmed that the couple he's talking about was a real couple. Their names are known by police. But as far as the whole illicit abortion operation part of it goes, police don't know. They say that they have never been able to substantiate that part of Wiley's story. But the story goes that one of the women's procedures went south. Either Ann or Patricia, they died. And with this being an illegal enterprise, the other two had to just be disposed of.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Is he saying that they did this procedure on the boat? Like, or like the boat that picked them up and was supposed to take them to where the abortion would happen?

• 31:47Ashley Flowers?

  Well, okay, so supposedly that young, dark, handsome captain was actually this couple's relative? And the thought is that he escorted them to a larger boat? And remember, if you, like, a couple of witnesses saw them on a larger boat? And the thinking is maybe like, that's where the procedures happened or were supposed to have happened?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Where is Wiley getting all this from?

• 32:09Ashley Flowers?

  This is the thing, we don't know. And we tried to get to the bottom of it, believe me, because all you gotta do is spend a few minutes on Google to realize like, how wide this theory has spread? Not so much in traditional reporting, more like in blogs and on web forums and all of that stuff. And so, of course, we thought like, okay, what better way to evaluate these claims than to go straight to the source? I mean, Dick Wiley is still alive and kicking, so we did our damnedest to talk to him about this case. Our reporter Courtney was like, straight up giddy at the prospect of interviewing him. And she reached out to him on Facebook, she called every number she could find, no dice.

• 32:51Ashley Flowers?

  Like, there was one person she even got on the phone, we got like a very like gruff wrong number before they hang up. So, all we know is that he claims to have interviewed more people, more times, and with more tenacity than the actual investigators, he says. And based on those interviews, this is what he has uncovered. But the more we dug in, the more it seems like all roads on the abortion theory just lead back to Wiley himself. Like, this man talks a big game, there is no doubt about that. But I don't know if he actually has the work to show, like, show your math, right? Like, how did you get the answer? I don't think he's been able to do that. And he supposedly had plans to publish a book on this case, like, since the early aughts.

• 33:36Ashley Flowers?

  There's even an Amazon listing for it still, it's called "Life and Death Through the Lens", which, and it had like a publication date way back in 2004, I think, except the book is not available, not on Amazon, not anywhere else in the world wide web that we could find. And there is a 2012 New York Daily News interview with Wiley that references a, like, quote, hun- like, I think it was like 120,000-word manuscript. But here we are, like, 13 years later, and that manuscript has yet to see the light of day. So, if you're gonna believe this theory, you just have to like, take him at his word. And- Like, I don't know, I think it bears emphasizing that Wiley seems to be blessed with

• 34:19Ashley Flowers?

  a very active imagination. His Facebook persona, for example, is like very much conspiracy-obsessed, angry grandpa who posts like in all caps.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 34:29Ashley Flowers?

  And you know, your girl loves like a good conspiracy theory. Like, that's my jam. It's who I intend on being a little bit when I'm older, but I also don't want to sugarcoat the fact that his posts get really ugly at times, to put it mildly. And the man specifically seems to have a mild fixation on reproductive rights in general, which I think is relevant considering his theory.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:53Ashley Flowers?

  And I have to give you just a little bit of context. So I printed out one of his posts. This is one of his public posts that he made on May 9th, 2021.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Okay, this post is in all caps.

• 35:05Ashley Flowers?

  Literally.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Want to wish all mothers a last Mother's Day. Yes, I said last Mother's Day. Just now, over TV, the name has been changed to Birthing Person Day. I hope all you women slash mothers see the respect the Democrats have for your kind of devotion to America's youth. Let me be one of the first to announce support for renaming all abortion centers, abortion doctors, and Planned Parenthood groups killing centers from this day forward as a last vestige of true patriotic Americanism, our mothers. Yesterday, my dear Aunt Shirley was buried at 90 years old. The devoted mother to four wonderful children and the surrogate mother of more than 30

• 35:49Speaker 01

  foster children in her busy lifetime. She was more than a birthing person. She was God's angel sent to earth to become a mother, not to be a murderer of children or killing centers where confused women go who don't have the ability to be a mother. Thank God she was already in heaven today and didn't have to bear being demoted from a truly loving mother to just another person the Democrats can add to their voter rolls as a person. Sort of like changing the name applied to an illegal criminal alien to a poor undocumented person. Wow, Ashley. What?

• 36:30Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm. And listen, not to make this episode about Wiley or getting like to extreme ends of like either side or getting people fired up, but like, I don't know, I'm having a hard time holding my tongue these days, you guys. I gotta say, like, this inflammatory sh- like, I think we're all over it, right? Like, everyone's working to divide us as a people because the truth is we're stronger together. And if we're distracted by issues like what things are called, like, we can't come together on issues that matter. Like, who gives a flying f- what the day is called? It's not hurting anybody. It doesn't take away from me, I'm a mom, like, live your own life, worry about your own damn self. Like, if it makes someone, like, feel included, great, why would I care?

• 37:12Ashley Flowers?

  I care about things that actually affect my life, my daughter's life, like, the fact that insurance companies are, like, f- us over right and left and basic healthcare isn't considered a human right. I also don't care if it's called the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of America or the Gulf of f- whatever. And while we're on the topic of meaningless rhetoric intended to, like, pit people against each other, there is even a proposed resolution in the House right now that expresses support for pro-women's health centers. Like, I posted about this, I don't know if you saw it.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  I did.

• 37:42Ashley Flowers?

  And I sh- you not, it says that, like, these healthcare centers are supposed to address the needs of men. Like, women's healthcare should address the needs of men, who, by the way, is Wiley, is like, that's who we're worried about.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:55Ashley Flowers?

  Anyways, so, I know I got a little sidetracked, but I wanted to show you who Wiley is while also saying, like-

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Give us some perspective.

• 38:04Ashley Flowers?

  And like, and I wanted to show you who he was, but also saying, like, let's not let the thing that Wiley said take over this episode. Like, I swear to God if all the comments on this episode become about Mother's Day, I'm gonna quit. To bring it back to Dick Wiley, that's who he is, he hasn't shown any proof of his findings that could be verified by other journalists or police. While his theory might be one of the loudest ones on the internet, it is not the only one. Because what if I told you that there is another theory out there? One that is every bit as wild, every bit as fantastical, every bit as conspiratorial. And it is the one that seems the most likely to be true.

• 38:47Ashley Flowers?

  Now, to explain this theory, I need to tell you a little bit more about Ann, Patricia, and Renee and their shared love of horses. I know, you're a horse girl.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  I'm in.

• 38:58Ashley Flowers?

  In fact, the Chicago Tribune reports that while Patricia and Renee had been high school classmates, Patricia met Ann at the Oakbrook Polo Club, where they both boarded their riding horses, and Ann also worked there. In fact, at the time of the disappearances, Patricia owned a racehorse named Hank, and he was one of the biggest reasons that her dad Harold never bought into the idea that the women would have gone off on their own. Even if all of the other weird shit could be explained away, which it can't, so like, there's so much that doesn't make sense, Harold knew that his daughter would not abandon Hank. It wasn't possible. It was something that he said over and over and over again, including to Sergeant Burke.

• 39:42Ashley Flowers?

  She would never have left that horse behind. You guys know how much I love Charlie. Charlie's like my mini horse. That's how I feel.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  I would say, I am a horse girl. I grew up with a horse that I would have never in a million years left behind for anything. He was my baby.

• 39:55Ashley Flowers?

  You horse girls are next level, too. So, anyway, so, remember how I told you to put a pin in the women's personal problems?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:02Ashley Flowers?

  Okay. So Renee's were the marital issues, that we know. Ann's was this potential pregnancy. And I think Patricia's had to do with the wide world of horse racing. So when her sister Janice sat with Dateline for an interview in 2023, she talked about some weird stuff going on with Patricia at the time leading up to her disappearance. Like how she was acting strangely the day before she disappeared, scared even. Although Janice didn't elaborate, she also described this conversation they had had recently, or like before they went missing. And Patricia was crying, which alone is super out of character. Now, some people are criers, some people aren't, and Patricia was not.

• 40:46Ashley Flowers?

  And she told Janice that she was in a lot of trouble. Janice's mind immediately went to the married boyfriend we know that she might have had. So she asked if she was pregnant.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Don't tell Dick Wiley.

• 40:57Ashley Flowers?

  I know, I'm sure he already knows this. But according to Janice, she wasn't pregnant. That's not it. Whatever it was, was worse in her mind than that because her response was, quote, "I wish it was that easy."

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Which is saying a lot in 1966.

• 41:12Ashley Flowers?

  I know. And Janice wasn't the only person close to Patricia who noticed something was off before she disappeared. A friend of hers had told Sergeant Burke's team way back at the beginning of the investigation about this weird situation in March of that year when Patricia had some sort of bruising on her face. And the friend was like, WTF, what actually happened to your face? I mean, it looked like she got straight up clocked. And according to the Chicago Tribune, Patricia said that she was in trouble with some quote-unquote "syndicate" people.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Like, the mob?

• 41:46Ashley Flowers?

  This is where the horse mob comes in. So get this. And I'm going to give you a little backstory for just a sec, but I promise we are like coming back around and you're gonna want to know this. So apparently, the 1960s equestrian scene in Chicago was run by a rough crowd known as the Horse Syndicate. And at the center of this Horse Syndicate was a man by the name of Silas Jane. Silas had been playing fast and loose in the industry since the late 1930s when he opened a place called The Green Tree Stables and embarked on a long and storied career of lying, cheating, and stealing his way to the top. And defending his interests by any means necessary, including possibly by ordering

• 42:30Ashley Flowers?

  a hit on one of the nation's wealthiest heiresses in 1977, by the way. Now, most of his brothers were cut from the same cloth, but one of them wasn't. His much younger half-brother, George. And that infuriated Silas. By 1952, according to the Chicago Tribune Magazine, George had also joined the stable business. And the thing was, whereas Silas made his money kind of in the shadows, George made his by being a generally competent business owner. And now that the brothers were competitors, that was something Silas just could not have, which led to poor George having some seriously bad luck. Like in 1952, when his house went up in flames

• 43:12Ashley Flowers?

  for who knows what reason while he and his family were out of town. Brotherly relations took an especially dark turn after George's horse beat Silas's horse at a jumping competition in the early 1960s. And before he knew it, it wasn't just George's property at risk. A hit was carried out on one of his best horses. His stables were being shot up, and George himself was surviving brushes with death damn near on the weekly. Everywhere he went, someone was trying to run him off the road or blow up his house. Like no joke, one day, he and his wife found dynamite affixed to their back door, and it had actually fizzled out before it could cause any damage. But clearly, a message was trying to be sent, clearly by Silas,

• 43:57Ashley Flowers?

  and George wasn't getting it. Now, 1965 is when shh really hit the fan. By this point, George owned Tri Color Riding Stables. And one day in June of that year, George asked one of his employees, a 22-year-old named Cheryl Lynn Rood, to move his car for him. So she hopped into the driver's seat, turns the key in the ignition, which is when the car exploded in spectacular fashion. It had been rigged with dynamite, which meant that George had just survived his most dramatic brush with death yet. But Cheryl wasn't so fortunate. She was killed instantly. And for once in his life, Silas came so close to paying for it

• 44:41Ashley Flowers?

  when investigators convinced his hired henchmen to turn state's evidence. But fast forward to March of 1966, on the eve of Silas's trial on conspiracy charges, the whole case gets dropped when the prosecution's star witness, one of Silas's henchmen, was struck with what the Chicago Tribune Magazine reporters called a, quote, "baffling attack of amnesia." Now, this is where the women come back in. So, March of 66 is when Patricia had a busted face. The one that had to do with the trouble that she was in with some syndicate people. And by the way, no one questions that they, like, the women were acquainted with these guys.

• 45:23Ashley Flowers?

  We know for a fact, all three women rode at George's stables, and Indiana State Police confirmed that for us.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  But is Silas the married man? Or George? I don't get why the women are made to disappear in July of 66.

• 45:37Ashley Flowers?

  No, so I don't think that either of them were Patricia's paramour. He seems to have been, I think the guy she was dating was like another shady character in the horse scene, like, not even related. And we don't know for sure why someone would have hit her, or threatened her, or whatever. But there is one possible, and like, the prevailing theory that I've seen come from the Chicago Tribune magazine, and it comes from a quote by retired Sergeant Fred Miller of the Westchester PD. And basically, what he says is that there was always a strong suspicion that their disappearances had something to do with the car bombing. Namely, that maybe one or more of the women overheard something,

• 46:19Ashley Flowers?

  or knew something about that, and that is what led to their deaths.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  But you'd think that something would have happened to them, like, before the trial was set to start in March.

• 46:31Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, but I guess it depends on maybe what they knew? And why or how they knew it? Like, I think there's a world where their importance, like, as potential witnesses only increased once Silas's conspirators were scared into submission, maybe? Like, I don't quite know. And that's just speculation on my part, but I think it's like, maybe the best theory? Because, well, get this, so, among all of the belongings left behind, investigators, like, and I'm talking about the women's, on the beach, investigators found not only George's phone number, but also a phone number for Silas's wife, Martha? So like, I mean, clearly, like, they have those for a reason.

• 47:11Ashley Flowers?

  And, by the way, guess who owned a blue and white powerboat? Well, actually, I don't know exactly who, but like, I don't, I don't have a name, which would be really helpful right now, I know. But I know that a man, an unnamed man, who was reported to have supposedly once worked for Silas, did own one. And supposedly, this boat that he supposedly owned, he often took to the Indiana Dunes.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Did they find this supposed boat?

• 47:37Ashley Flowers?

  No, they wish. Like, Kai's wife told them that that boat got destroyed in a fire, which leads me to the last kernel of information that we were able to glean from ISP. They say that as of December 2024, so like, five minutes ago.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:54Ashley Flowers?

  They no longer dismiss the possibility that the boat wreckage that washed ashore way back in 1966 was related to the women's disappearances. So, so much for that whole spontaneously combusting rowboat thing. And I wish I could wrap this story up with a pretty bow. But what that leaves us with are family members, like Patricia's sister Janice, who are running out of time to learn the truth about what happened to their loved ones way back in 1966. So if you have information about what happened that day on the shores of Lake Michigan, please contact the Westchester Police Department at 708-345-0060.

• 48:36Ashley Flowers?

  And if you are as offended as I am about House Resolution 7, head over to www.congress.gov/contact-us to find your representative's contact information. Tell them that women's health care should be about women. Novel concept, right?

• 49:06Ashley Flowers?

  You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  You can also follow us on Instagram at @crimejunkiepodcast.

• 49:15Ashley Flowers?

  We'll be back next week with another episode.

• 49:53Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?

• 50:02Speaker 02

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir. And that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Growing up in a small town, I know how deeply a crime can shake a local community. And I know that what makes the headlines is rarely the full story. That's what Kylie Lowe explores on her show Dark Down East. She digs into cases from Maine and New England using original reporting, archival records, and conversations with the people who knew them best. Each episode takes you inside the communities these stories shaped and the families who never stop searching for answers. Listen to Dark Down East wherever you get your podcasts.