Heather Dawn Church /// Part 1 /// 339 | Forensic Files

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let's talk some true crime [Music] [Music] Black Forest Colorado about 20 miles northwest of Colorado Springs the church
family lived in a single-family home with four bedrooms the smaller bedroom was used as a family den the house was
nice and it was rather secluded which was just what parents Mike and Diane church wanted they had over five acres
on Easton ville Road this was a family of six Mike and Diane church and their four kids
Heather Kris gunner and sage Mike and Diane were college sweethearts and they worked very hard to build a nice and
happy home for their family this was their dream house and Diane said it was the perfect place to raise children but
things were not always perfect in fact by early 1991 Mike had moved out Diane filed for divorce
Mike was living in an apartment in town closer to his work and Diane stayed in the home with the four children everyone
was working through this tough time Diane sought some counseling Mike had regular visitation an equal time with
the kids and their oldest child Heather dawn church was excelling in school Heather played the violin and even at an
early age she was telling her parents she was going to be an astronaut when she grew up
her parents played along even though they thought it was just a phase and sent Heather to one of those summer
space camps when she returned she was even more excited about becoming an astronaut and told her folks she was the
only kid that did not throw up when in the shuttle simulator as the finalising of the impending divorce drew near Mike
and Diane put the house on the market but Diane and the kids would stay there until it's sold the school year started
up in September of 1991 and the kids were back to being busy on Tuesday September 17th this was to be just
another ordinary day at 6:30 a.m. thirteen-year-old heather dawn church and her younger brothers got on the
school bus they lived out in the sticks so the bus ride was as long as an hour some days
Heather was in the eighth grade at Falcon middle school after school Diane prepared dinner for the kids she
and two of her boys had some commitments at their local church the two middle boys Kris and gunner were involved with
the Cub Scouts they had a meeting on this evening the church was just 15 miles down the road
while the two boys were at Cub Scouts Diane was going to attend a home making class heather explained if she and
five-year-old saige tagged along they would have nothing to do Heather offered to stay home babysit and tidy up the
house this would work out nicely because sage could keep his normal bedtime of about eight o'clock before leaving
Heather and Diane discussed several things two of the most important sage had a flu shot earlier that day and
Heather should look out for adverse reactions and Heather told her mother about a school dance that would be that
Friday she was asking for permission to go Diane agreed as long as Heather went with a group of friends before leaving
Diane checked the doors and made sure they were all locked she hurried Chris and Gunnar into the
back seat of their vehicle and she pulled out of the driveway while leaving the property she noticed that one of the
bedroom windows was slightly open just about five inches she planned to call Heather later on anyway to check in on
Sage so Diane made a mental note to ask Heather to close the window during that call
at 8:30 Diane called home Heather picked up the phone Diane wanted to know if sage was in bed Heather says
no she let him stay up to watch the TV show home improvement they were watching together in the family room after the
show he was going to bed Diane told Heather that she loved her and she and the two boys would be home by 10 p.m.
Dyanne pulled into the driveway just before 10:15 she noticed that the outside house lights were not on her and
the boys got out of the vehicle and made their way up to the house they went to the patio sliding door which was pretty
common Diane found the door unlocked so she did not need to use her key the door
being unlocked was also common the church family had two cats and they would typically let the cats outside for
the night and Diane says the kids were always forgetting to lock the door after doing so inside the house was dark
Diane turned on some lights and told the two boys to go to bed all three boys shared a room and Diane went and checked
on little sage finding him asleep in his bed wrapped up in the blankets like a burrito Diane went to the family room to
talk to Heather she expected to find her sitting in the dark watching TV as usual
however Heather was not in the family room she was not in her bedroom Diane searched the house it could not
find Heather at all she went outside and walked the property around the house shouting Heather's name
in the dark still nothing no Heather Diane was worried and afraid she called her husband Mike she asked him if he had
Heather was she with him Mike said no he asked if she called Heather's friends or
the neighbors then he asked Diane does it look like someone came in the house before Diane could answer Mike said call
911 [Music] we start off captain by jumping right into the search for 13 year-old Heather
dawn Church now we must keep in mind how large the church family's property is now that guy that we just heard said it
was over five acres there are two really good books on this week's case and we will have those as this week's
recommended reading and maybe next week as well one source says the property was
six acres and the other lists the plot of land at 5.8 acres so both probably very accurate but that's what size of
property we are dealing with now because of the remoteness of where they lived Diane Heather's mother she was thinking
that Heather must have gone outside maybe in search of one of the cats and walked too far maybe she fell twisted an
ankle or busted her knee couldn't walk back to the home that sort of thing on the other hand we have Heather's father
Mike he had a completely different feeling that night Mike said immediately after the phone call with Diane where he
tells her to call 9-1-1 he jumped into his pickup truck racing like a jet to get to his family's home later he would
say he knew right away that someone took his daughter yeah and they have the extra stress already by their families
separating Diane did exactly as Mike said he she called 911 to the El Paso County Colorado Sheriff's Department it
was not customary for this Sheriff's Department to take a missing report until the person in question was gone
for more than 24 hours sadly this included teenagers as well Diane requested that a deputy at the
very least come out to the house this request was denied Diane was told by the deputy on the
phone that she should be calling Heather's friends because 99% of the time missing kids are with a friend or
at a party Diane asked her what about the other 1% because the Sheriff's Office would not send a deputy Diane
started calling her friends and family asking if anyone would come to the house and help look for Heather by the time
Mike arrived others were already there looking for the missing 13 year old after several more calls to 911 was
finally dispatched to the house arriving just before midnight yeah we don't like
how they handled it initially but at least they sent on a cop yeah regardless of how the 9-1-1 calls
were handled the deputy that was dispatched to go to the house the churches have and had nothing but good
things to say about this officer we are talking about sheriff's deputy les Milligan les was very young and very
green officer Milligan went right into action as soon as he arrived on the scene he he took control of the scene
and ordered the El Paso search-and-rescue team to come out to the property ASAP unfortunately they
never found Heather that night in fact they did not even find any clues as to where she may be or what could have
happened Diane later said it was like the girl just vanished into thin air the next morning the questions started the
officers wanted to know everything everything about Heather the house their marriage the divorce everything so they
were looking around the house they're calling friends and family they can't find her now they want to know is it
possible that should want to run away for any reasons yeah law enforcement they're speculating here captain they
want to know could the 13 year old be upset about the divorce yeah so from which from my understanding this was
going to be final the divorce was going to be final just before Thanksgiving so it was coming
soon could she have been upset about the whole situation and maybe she took off Diane believed no that could not be what
happened here she tells the officers that Mike moved out of the house months before and Heather did not seem upset or
to be having any difficulty with the situation at all so she's explaining here this isn't anything new this didn't
just happened this week or last month this has been going on for months and me as a parent and my my husband living
elsewhere us as parents we've not seen any indication from her that she's struggling with this in fact she's
excelling in school mm-hmm Diane told the daily Sentinel many reasons why her daughter Heather why her life was great
and why she would not run away citing that Heather was a very reasonable kid she got really good grades she was
recently accepted into the gifted and talented program at school she asked about going to the school dance on that
Friday right we talked about usually when people were making plans they don't have these underlining plans to
disappear well I understand that law enforcement has to look at all these different angles but it's sad that you
see in so many cases that parents or loved ones have to try to convince law enforcement of what they believe yeah
yeah and she also pointed out back to the dance she said you know I've not only did I give her permission to do
this thing so it's not like we got in some kind of argument she wanted to do something and I said no right I gave her
permission to go to the dance to which we have Heather telling her mother great I have a new outfit I'm going to save
that outfit to wear it to the dance yeah it seems like something that she was looking forward to seems like something
that she was making a big deal to herself and she recently applied for the school yearbook staff as well now
obviously we don't know all that was said to investigators or exactly how they arrived at this
conclusion but I will say that very early on the Sheriff's Office said publicly and to the media and this is an
exact quote it's unlikely the girl ran away in fact very quickly in the investigation the Sheriff's Department
brought in the FBI to investigate this as a likely abduction but it was that morning that next morning where things
would start to get a little weird so it's during this questioning that Diane remembers the open window this is the
window to the master bedroom she opened it and forgot to close it before she left and thence all it open when pulling
out of the driveway rain like you stated before she went around locking all the doors making sure that her kids were
safe when she's pulling out of the driveway she notices this window but the fact that you're hearing this the next
day I think it would raise a little bit of alarm I agree I agree she tells law enforcement that she meant to tell
Heather about the open window when she called home at 8:30 p.m. the night before but states that she forgot to she
told them that all of the doors were locked when she left the house but when she came home the sliding glass door to
the patio was unlocked she added that other than a couple of items nothing was out of place no signs of a struggle no
forced entry and in fact five year-old sage was asleep and perfectly fine when she arrived home at 10:15 p.m. now I
don't think we know this information like you said one room one site reports 5.8 acres one reports six acres but I
wonder how far away from the road the house actually was I don't know the exact distance but the description that
I've seen a few times is that it's it's a long driveway that we're talking about
right that there's a decent amount of distance between the house and in the yard so if you're an investigator I
think I get what their what they're thinking about I mean you're looking at this
thing like well is this even a crime scene there there's no clues here no evidence and I'm guessing but I would
bet some of the detectives were probably wondering if Heather went with someone willingly or opened the door willingly
for her then abduct her right because it could be a friend that she went with possibly a boyfriend or a a male friend
that she maybe hasn't told the family about yeah we do know about the dance now the thing about this master bedroom
window when Diane went to show them show law enforcement exactly which window she
was talking about she found the window was now closed she told them she did not close the window and they asked everyone
who was there that night looking for Heather if any of them had closed the window and everyone says no so they are
dusting the window in other areas of the home for fingerprints upon further examination they found that the screen
to the window was askew so they take the screen off and quickly notice it was actually in the track but it was
backwards a technician inspected the metal frame all in all windows and the screen the
tech found three possible fingerprints and so remove these fingerprints or the latent fingerprints these were submitted
to the automated fingerprint identification system or a ffice for short in hopes that a match would be
found in the national databases but no such match was found the investigators did not like that the church is called
so many friends that night people who walked through the house and property possibly disturbing the crime scene but
I mean what are you gonna do if you call the Sheriff's Office and they offer no help yeah at first you're going to call
your friends relatives and such for help sounds like a bunch of malarkey and but Johor sh-shit i mean like you said
it it's very similar to Jon Benet Ramsey case where they had a lot of people inside the crime scene basically but
like you said when you're calling for help and nobody shows up what what what else are you supposed to do so the
morning after the disappearance after questioning Diane says she got tired of doing nothing so everybody is out that
night and all the next morning looking for Heather meanwhile Diane is supposed to just kind of sit tight inside the
home she I mean as a parent you got to be going freaking crazy here she says she got tired of doing nothing while
everybody else was out looking for Heather so she decided to calm herself by cleaning the house she started off by
doing some dishes and then she turned on the vacuum cleaner she's vacuuming the carpet when one of the investigators
standing outside he's just outside the house right he heard the vacuum he heard the noise he went running into the house
and he yelled at Diane wanting to know what she was doing why are you doing this we need to process the scene well
in the days after Heather vanished lieutenant Bill Mastretta of the El Paso Sheriff's Department kept the media and
the public informed he said the FBI was brought in and the FBI was conducting interviews at Heather's middle school
the Sheriff's Department in the FBI together were questioning classmates teachers counselors friends neighbors
and church associates but ground and aerial searches turned up nothing lieutenant Mastretta said the case was
taking no positive direction and we are just continuing at it with no new leads [Music]
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talk about one lead that did come in so first we need to understand that with a lot of these missing kid cases the
community really comes together we're talking missing fliers everywhere pictures of Heather seen all over town
they were not just posting missing flyers at local businesses far and wide middle school kids made big signs with
poster board in small wooden handles standing in crowds and on the sides of streets holding the signs high as cars
drove by asking everyone have you seen this girl there was also a command center of sorts
set up this place was for volunteers to meet and man the phone lines there were phones set up with a tip
number that people could call on Monday October 13th in the morning less than one month after Heather disappeared a
call came in the caller an anonymous female caller said there is a body at the Fox Run of Regional Park area this
is in Black Forest this sent the Sheriff's Department 30 members of the El Paso search and rescue team to
tracking dogs and two helicopters on an all-day search that covered 400 acres but turned up nothing
well afterward the Sheriff's Office publicly urged the caller to call again but this time with more details because
of the size of the park right they would get another call this time another anonymous female caller sending them on
another fruitless search later information provided by several and law enforcement would state that both calls
were believed to be hoaxes even before the searches were conducted but they had to follow up on all tips and leads well
it's amazing how sick individuals are it's it's very strange that that stuff even happened
and it's unclear if law enforcement believes that both calls came from the same person but they have stated it's
believed both calls came from a teenaged girl from a teenage sounding girl it says strange that somebody would be
sitting there watching the case unfold and and want to make something up to waste law-enforcement time what's the
motive yeah it it just doesn't make any sense but to this day captain the caller
or callers have not been identified well they have been identified as real piece
of [ __ ] that's singer you're a real [ __ ] stain yeah so we talked about the community coming together but then we
also talked about these asshats of society with these harmful and hurtful fake calls which destroy the parents and
loved ones of Heather and compromised search efforts and the investigation itself yeah but I much rather prefer to
talk about people coming together in helping one another one of many instances was when we see this case this
is the the Matthews family they reached out offering friendship to Mike and Diane Church Jim and Gloria Matthews
were able to offer the churches their sympathies and they were two people that can truly understand and empathize just
exactly what the churches were going through seven years before Heather Church went missing and the believed
abduction of Heather Church 12 year old Janelle Matthews was believed to have been abducted from her home this is in
Greenlee Colorado about a two-hour drive north of Black Forest Colorado Janelle was dropped off at the family's home
after she attended a Christmas choir concert she was last seen walking into her empty home by her friend and her
friend's father when they dropped her off at the house later Janelle's parents found the house empty but Janelle's
shoes placed neatly in the family room near a space heater with TV on there was no sign of a struggle or
forced entry but police said they believe the 12 year old was abducted from the home her case remains unsolved
to this day now over 34 years later and recent developments her body was finally
located just a little over two months ago in July of this year the body was found by oil field workers about 20
miles from her home I believe they are putting in a pipeline in that area and that's how they found the remains police
have named Idaho resident and 2-time candidate for governor 68 year-old Steve panky as a person of interest and
continued to investigate this case I would expect further movement in this case and that could and hopefully come
very soon so what we know here captain with as the police say we're working this case with really no leads really no
clues we're working it we need it to take some kind of direction all we really know at this point is that
something happened to Heather Dawn Church on September 17 1991 between the hours of 8:30 p.m. when her mother
called home and talked to Heather Heather was just fine and 10:15 when her mother arrived at the house yeah at
least were pointed in that direction I think law enforcement is going okay based off what her parents are saying
based off what people are saying around the community we don't think that she took off on her own there's some
evidence to suggest that somebody came through the house so so if she is alive she is in danger the search and the
investigation was huge is rather big and I think lieutenant ken hilt of the Investigations Division of the El Paso
County Sheriff's Office summed up the search best in his summary for the case where he states a detailed crime scene
search was conducted of the church home search and rescue teams coupled with search dogs
scoured the area fingerprints were recovered and forwarded to both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the
Colorado Bureau of Investigation both local and national media took part in the quote where's Heather
missing-persons campaign as the El Paso County Sheriff's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation combined efforts
to solve the case in the years that followed detectives continue to pursue hundreds of leads which came in from all
parts of the country in addition to being featured in national publications and television shows the FBI's
behavioral science unit produced a suspect profile the suspect profile that was released to the media was a
summarized version of the profile and it is as follows the unknown subject is a male in his early to late 20s shy
introverted and a loner subject is unable to achieve sexually whatever he wants with women and has difficulty with
women in general the subject would probably have knowledge of the victim and her family after the crime the
subject would have behavioral changes which would be noticeable by associates persons close to the offender would
notice changes which include an increase in alcohol or drug use a deterioration and personal appearance sleeping
disorder a desire to be alone possibly failed to show up for work after the abduction I'm wondering since
we have little to no clues how they're given this possible age range of the purpose I think that they're basing a
lot of this off of previous crimes that they have a similar similar victimology and maybe even a similar modus operandi
where somebody's coming into an actual home that's very rare and abducting a child from inside the home the victim is
13 years old what we are also seeing here what is what is released it's interesting on a few different levels
because one we are getting a summarized version they're getting there they're going okay this version we're going to
release to the media so that they share it with the public because we do need the public's help
but there's another version of this profile that would have been given to law enforcement to two agencies actually
working the case yeah now I don't know how much they would vary I imagine in some cases they vary greatly but this
specific case we don't know what we do see here is typical things of what we see in other profiles it's it's all kind
of vague stuff but they're saying to the public with this profile we're looking for somebody that has changed this is a
dramatic change for this person this person committed an abduction this would be a dramatic change therefore their
appearance their behavior their mannerisms their their routine their drinking or drug use all of that is
going to be affected and change as well right because of this big change so if you've noticed a big change in your
cousin your your uncle your your brother your husband boyfriend whomever right that might be somebody that we might
want to talk to this is also trying to ring bells with employers do you have somebody that showed up and they were
missing work and when they return to work are they are they cover you know covered in scratches or do they look
like they've been in a fight or something like that I feel like some of the things we see
here captain are kind of repetitive from other profiles the the age of late 20s is one that we typically see with the
victim of this age and I think that they come up with that age now profilers will
tell you that age is by far the hardest thing to come up with but typically when
we see a victim in their early teens female victim early teens I often see that late 20s is kind of where they put
that that number for age yeah I also if that has an effect I mean if you look at Heather and the pictures I've seen
she looks like a young 13 yeah and so I wonder if they take that into account as
well I think the thought with with being late 20s is is simply this it's it's one
they're old enough to show some some form of sophistication some form of not being so impulsive and also they're old
enough to have committed more petty type crimes but similar nature where they may
not have been locked up they these may have been things where they made a pass at a young girl maybe it's a relative
maybe it's somebody close to the offender but maybe it was never reported usually those types of crimes we need
those to occur for something like this to take place usually there's escalation going on yeah that the the offender will
escalate into abduction and then I mean I'm sorry to say up a possible murder so
that's why I think we have the age of 29 plus it it's you wonder why they don't go higher than that but you also wonder
does that factor in that that this there is some impulsiveness because of the risk level of going into somebody else's
home yeah I would also lean towards the idea though as law enforcement I mean this is not something I would want to
share with the family but the way she's abducted the lack of clues we have no sightings it seems like we
have no leads coming in and and she's been gone for quite a while at some point you have to start leaning towards
the idea that that she might not be alive anymore yeah and and then that that doesn't really change the profile
much but I think as far as drinking and all those things those will get even more escalated because of a murder the
really weird thing the strange things to me that stand out one there's no blood no evidence of any type of struggle
inside their home and then on top of that if she wasn't abducted from inside the home removed from the home the the
little boy was sleeping right I mean he didn't wake up and hear screams or see anybody strange in their home this was
all if she's removed from inside that home this all went down very stealth like now the case as mentioned was
featured on several different TV shows Diane Church she was really the one she was the face of this investigation she
did countless interviews she handled the newspapers and TV interviews on a national level she was on several
programs including but not limited to the Oprah Winfrey Show and the Jerry Springer Show
The Oprah Winfrey Show captain am i showing my age here it wasn't it recent more recently just called Oprah did when
did it make the change from The Oprah Winfrey Show to just Oprah I don't know I'm not the head of the thing I feel
like when I was a kid it was the the Oprah Winfrey Show well the national spotlight and the huge focus on this
case even just at the local level sparks what this week's recommended readings author would call the usual confusion
and lunacy this next part is from the book The Devil's right-hand man callers reported Heather look-alikes at a credit
union in Pueblo at a Taco Bell in Colorado Springs and at a mall in Aurora Diane would remember her missing
daughter once was cited in four states in one day and as far away as Israel investigators checked out a white van a
blue truck an old green barn where satanic rituals allegedly were held they even went so far as to research
important dates for practitioners of witchcraft and Satanism and rode around El Paso County for hours with a mental
patient who claimed to have information about the crime psychics pop one offer to Diane an eerily exact
description of the last meal she prepared for Heather and the boys saying quote you cooked hot dogs because you
were in a hurry and the boys liked them but Heather didn't like hot dogs and she
told you she would fix a peanut butter sandwich for herself the woman was able to offer Diane a little more other than
to say she thought Heather was dead another psychic Dorothy Allison of New Jersey told members of Diane's support
group that she saw a property with lots of trees a building with a triangular roof a tan pickup truck and a man named
Brown except there was something unusual about the spelling on September 13th 1993 almost two years to the day when
Heather vanished an unkempt scruffy drifter named Timothy belbek walked into the Colorado State Police Station and he
had a story to tell four days earlier he found quote a body off of rampart Range Road the officer
Tim spoke with told him that's not our jurisdiction you're going to need to go to the El Paso County sheriff's office
and so he did right there he told a deputy that down a deep ravine that four days earlier he found a body and an old
rusted-out beat-up 1960s Chevy the front door to the vehicle was open and the car
was filled with dirt from likely a mudslide near the vehicle amongst some larger rocks
Tim spotted what he later determined to be a human skull he freaked out and ran back up to the top and left the area
the deputy listened to Tim's story and then told him to take his information to the state police vehicle death would be
their investigation so Tim did so there he met officer Quinn tana after being turned away twice finally
someone wanted to talk with him Quint Anna and Tim got in the officers state trooper vehicle and made their way back
out to rampart Range Road there the two slowly worked their way down to the vehicle just as Tim had said sure enough
there was this old rusted-out blue-and-white 1961 Chevy Impala with the door open in the car full of dirt
the officer looked around and thought that a body it should be easy to find right I want everybody to to note that
when Tim is reporting this information all three times he's saying that he found a body but it turns out that there
was just a skull there he had it only in fact found a skull right after more searching they did find a small pile of
bones now the officer bagged up the skull bagged up the bones and took all of this all of Timothy's information and
his full story and how and why he found the skull officer Quinn Tana then with the skull went to the El Paso Sheriff's
Department again where he too was told that it sounded like a car fatality so it was his the it was the state police's
investigation the state police's case officer Quinn Tana put the bags in his work car and drove to meet his family
eventually he's going to take Polaroids of the skull and he believed that that maybe the the body didn't have anything
to do with the victim at all he thought maybe it was left there from decades and
decades and decades ago that it could have even been like a Native American or anything of that nature right at this
time so now he's got these these polaroid pictures of the skull in his work car and he goes to meet his family
and I they were meeting either to like go shopping or or go out to eat something
of that nature he's meeting them there now keep in mind this is almost two years to the day when Heather
disappeared and still at this point in our timeline there have been ribbons put up all over the neighborhoods to to you
know cheer on the return of this girl there were missing posters put up there Heather's picture all over town so his
daughter officer Quint Anna his daughter gets into his vehicle and she's rummaging around she finds the Polaroids
of the skull and she's looking at them and in and unfortunately officer Quinn tana once he realized that his daughter
was in the car he realized he had some things in there he didn't want her to see she's looking at these pictures and
he's trying to tell her you know hey I think this is what was going on that's this is why dad has these pictures it's
his daughter that says you found Heather you found Heather Don Church she recognized the
layout of the teeth so the the picture of the skull there is no lower jaw just the upper teeth there right and she
recognized the two large incisors flanked by two crooked laterals this matched up with a lot of the pictures
that they had posted around town of Heather know it's very distinct look yeah so on the second anniversary of
Heather's disappearance the State Police announced that they had recovered the body of missing 13 year-old Heather Don
Church investigators were quite skeptical about Timothy Bell Beck's story how did he find the skull so well
hidden this was not a spot where people go this isn't you know there's no traffic in this area he had to climb
down into this ravine to find this skull why did he tell police he found a body when he said he only saw a skull right
why would he call a skull body why did he wait four days before reporting what he found Tim's story is pretty
complicated let's say okay what we know is he's he's a drifter he is somebody that is may just be passing through the
area right he states that he was staying when he had money he would stay at the Pink Panther motel but on a night about
five days before he led Quinn Tana to the skull he says he was forced to camp in his truck because he didn't have
enough money for the motel so he's trying to sleep in his truck he's sitting in there drinking whiskey for
his camping trip and he's he said that he saw like I don't know if they were teenagers or
just young adults that parked some distance away and they were they were partying as well and throughout the
night they were kind of tossing rocks down into this ravine and when the rocks would land down below he could hear them
bouncing off of what he thought was metal now we do know that there was a vehicle down in that ravine right this
dude does not have much money he's a drifter his he's thinking there's metal down there I can turn that metal into
money so the next day he decides to climb down into the ravine looking to pull all that scrap metal out of the
ravine and turn it into walking around money he finds the car down there that's a good sign
he said he saw a washing machine down there as well this is a place that people were dumping large sized
throwaway objects probably for a very long time it's when he's down there conducting the search for scrap metal
that he says he saw the skull amongst some of the rocks near the vehicle these rocks were you know bigger bigger
rocks almost bowling ball-sized but he said what stood out for him was the color of the skull was significantly
different than the color of the rocks so he went to investigate when he saw that
it was a skull he did in fact freak out when he returned you know gathered his thoughts got back to to normal he
thought well if it's a vehicle fatality right because it's right by this vehicle
mm-hmm he's thinking he should report it because the family of this missing person should know what happened to
their loved ones exactly he tells one of his drinking buddies hey I'm going this
is what I found and I'm going to report it the drinking buddy quickly points out
if it's not a vehicle fatality if it was foul play they might think you did something so that kind of talks him out
of reporting a couple days go by and Timothy starts thinking well maybe there would be a reward involved even if it
was a vehicle accident it's a missing person or if there was foul play Timothy thinks well maybe I should report it due
to there being a possible reward so his whole story is complicated and I'm sure the investigators when they find out
that this was a missing 13 year old girl you found her skull your story is strange you didn't report it for a few
days they you're a drifter yeah yeah they don't like this guy they're they're looking at him is okay not only did we
find her but we now may possibly have for the first time a suspect in this whole case mm-hmm they walked around him
and then Tara Gatien room going trying to smell if he's a piece of [ __ ] or not
yeah in the end though captain they ended up believing Timothy story they were probably able to
back up some of the things that he was telling them right so the other thing too with him being a drifter I don't
know how they ruled him out but I know they ruled him out fairly quickly they may have been able to figure out that he
wasn't even in the area when Heather went missing right so now we have recovered the body but really that did
nothing for the investigation other than rule out a runaway scenario now they knew she was abducted and killed but
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Source: https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-4ainr-c1af6d

Heather Dawn Church /// Part 1 /// 339 Part 1 of 2 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com September 17th, 1991 Heather Dawn Church vanishes. She was abducted from her home in Black Forest, Colorado. Join as we go year by year through the investigation. Beer of the Week - Killer Cupcake Panda by Flying Monkey Craft Brewery Garage Grade 4 and 3 quarter bottle caps out of 5 We have the best sponsors and it’s time that you experience the awesomeness! www.ButcherBox.com/Garage - use code GARAGE at checkout for 2 lbs ground beef in every box for the life of your subscription PLUS $20 off your first box! www.SimpliSafe.com/Garage - get FREE shipping and a 60-day risk free trial!

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Brief Summary

The episode details the abduction and eventual discovery of Heather Dawn Church's remains in 1991, highlighting the investigation's challenges.

Key points

The Church Family's Dream Home. Mike and Diane Church built a happy home for their family, but things were not always perfect.
Heather's Aspirations. At a young age, Heather expressed her dream of becoming an astronaut, showcasing her bright future.
The Night of Disappearance. On September 17th, 1991, Heather stayed home while her mother and brothers went out, leading to her mysterious disappearance.
Community Efforts in Search. The community rallied together to search for Heather, posting flyers and making signs.
Hoax Calls Disrupt Investigation. Two anonymous calls claiming to have found Heather's body were believed to be hoaxes.
Discovery of Remains. After years, Heather's remains were found, reigniting the investigation.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Heather was telling her parents she was going to be an astronaut.

Heather's aspirations

5:12WatchOct 2, 2019

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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