How Did 3 Friends Disappear Without a Trace? The Indiana Dunes Cold Case | Forensic Files

Hi, crime junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brit. And this is Chuck, the Chuck of Audio Chuck. Please forgive us,
but our 14-year-old man wanted to cuddle today, and I'm I'm allowing it. Totally.
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. I've heard this story, but listen, Brett, the circumstances of this are so foreign,
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. 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 William Spedic 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. You know, these are three young women. Harold's daughter,
Patricia, she's 19. Her friends Ann Miller and Renee Brule are around the same age, like 21 and 19, respectively.
Okay. But Patricia still lives at home and she wouldn't leave for days 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. Spedic 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, 2 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.
How did they know that? 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. Right 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, 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 FedEx 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 the stuff at some point. But now, with this phone call, a darker thought washes over FedEx. Lake Michigan
is notorious for its strong, unpredictable currents. 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, FedEx 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 Anne and Renee. It just like to him feels too
much like of a coincidence not to be. 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 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, gets the confirmation he needs. The car in the parking lot is registered to Anne 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. 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, Ann 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. And is he like away somewhere? No. So, they
live 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. Cuz 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. 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 2 weeks old by that point like when he's
seeing it. M. 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 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. No.
Like standing on the shore, it honestly looks like an ocean. An ocean. I mean, you can get out there at 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. And 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 blood hounds. 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, thinking 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 got to find this boat, like if they're going to
know either way, right? 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. 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? 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 that same afternoon. But for some reason, I think that like those are
mostly discounted. So, a few days into the search, 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 on shore
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 quote unquote outboard motorboat. And like I said,
this stuff isn't washing up hours away. It's washing up like 3 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 Boers, which some find kind of strange. 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, 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 dowsted in [Music] it. Two branches of the same tree.
two pieces of a soul. Where one sister goes, the other will be. For she is but half of the
whole. So, it feels like something fishy is a foot. 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. All the
more reason to be suspicious. I mean, something clearly happened here. The boat didn't douse itself in gasoline.
And it only gets worse from there because the Terraote Star reports that soon authorities announced that the
wreckage is from a rowboat. A metal rowboat. A metal rowboat that was also made of turquoise plywood and collided
with something with enough force to just completely disintegrate it into pieces.
Yes. Right. Like it feels like there's some tunnel vision going on here because the Teroot 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. So
now they think the women pieced out on purpose. Well, at first they play it koi, but by the one week mark, Sergeant
Burke is like, "Yeah, we're pretty sure this was all orchestrated." the boat stuff too, like they blew it up or
that's unrelated. 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, too. They've got those ground searches, boat search,
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. Okay. So, not drowning, but no evidence of foul play
based on what? On the fact that that there's no evidence. But there's also no evidence that it wasn't foul play. I
know. We I feel like we've done this like dance before. Yeah. Oh, Chuck's getting up. What do you want to do,
Bubba? You can get down. Good job, buddy. You were a star. Anyways, the the whole idea of it not being foul play cuz
there's no evidence of foul play. To me, that's bananas. Especially when the one
thing that might have been the evidence of foul play has been discounted. 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 far-fetched 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 it's like it's way less likely. Yeah. Yeah. 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 seen 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. So, what about the
hot rods? Yeah, they decided basically that she may have wanted to just skip town on account of her marital discord.
She didn't even give him the letter, though. And that does nothing to explain the other two disappearing with her. I
know. And they obviously question the husband, by the way. Like, he's in the clear. So her loved ones are like,
"Okay, 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, right? And that was weeks ago. And again, I say it has nothing to do with
why Ann and Patricia would have left. Like they're not giving up their lives in what? Solidarity over a husband's
hobby. Not maybe in solidarity. The Chicago Tribune reports that according to Sergeant Burke, all three, Ann 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
Dineine in a recent interview, so like we find this out way later, that Patricia had been canoodling with a
married man and an had supposedly told friends that she was 3 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 um 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. 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, god forbid. God
forbid. What a shame. Where were the men who got these women and girls pregnant?
Obviously, they were out there living their lives. The women were the ones forced to wear the 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. 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 or 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
the same area where the women are from, Chicago. It at the time does feel worth looking into. And let me just give you a
little like the spark notes on this case. Corki Shamashko reports for NBC News that around 11 p.m. 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 coraled
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 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. Jamashko 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.
Wouldn't it be nine victims if six were already there and then three came home? 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 Corazone Amaro.
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
Shamosko 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 Corazone crawled back out at around 6:00
in the morning, it was just carnage. Shamashko 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 2 days later, a Chicago physician
feels his blood go cold when he sees the same four words on a patient's forearm.
This patient was 24year-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 I you have the wrong guy. Absolutely not. Which like they absolutely do not because his prints are
all over the crime scene. Jamasco 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 happens to a group of women from the same area just 2
weeks after the Indiana Dunes women go missing and everyone's like, "Hey, maybe you should look at this because you got
I truly at this point nothing else other than they walked away and nobody's buying that." ISP Superintendent Robert
O'Neal is like, "Yeah, listen, we're checking on it, but like don't get your hopes up." And Sergeant Burke is even
blunderter 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, Spec isn't tall, dark, or handsome. And he doesn't have resources to get his hands on a boat 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. So the
next theory that comes up, it might even be more of a stretch, I guess, is what I
should say. And it all starts with this guy named Dick Wy 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 Wy believes, are you ready for
this? I'll answer it for you. No, you're not. He believes that the women died aboard an abortion boat. A what? WY is
absolutely certain that the disappearances can be traced back to an abortion boat. You just keep repeating
that like it's going to make more sense the second time around. What the is an abortion boat? It's exactly what it
sounds like. He He says it's a boat on Lake Michigan where illicit abortions are performed. Is that a real thing? If
you ask Dick Wy, yes. And the theory he has behind this abortion boat is wild. Now, we know that Anne may have been
pregnant and that Patricia may have been seeing a married guy, right? Well, WY posits, what if Anne and Patricia were
both pregnant by married men? Nothing to back this up, I assume. Just kind of a combining of their two possible
scenarios. It seems that way. I like like he doesn't give any explanation other than like a what if. 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 196 whatever and years before Roie 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, WY believes that
there was this married couple operating an illicit abortion clinic in Gary, Indiana. For those of you who don't
know, that's one like on the coast of Lake Michigan near Chicago and Indiana Dunes. So like right in that area. Can
we prove that that part is real? The this duo and their clinic? I actually have 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 is 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 Wley'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. 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? 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. Where is WY getting all this from? This is the thing. We
don't know. And we tried to get to the bottom of it. Believe me, because all you got to 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 Wy 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. Like, there was one
person she even got on the phone. when 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 WY 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 as there's even an Amazon listing for it still. It's called Life and Death
Through the Lens. 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 worldwide web that we could find. And there's a 2012 New York Daily News
interview with WY that references a 120,000word manuscript, but here we are like 13 years later and that manuscript
has yet to see the light of day. So if you're going to believe this theory, you just have to like take him at his word.
And his word like I don't know. I think it it it bears emphasizing that WY seems
to be blessed with a very active imagination. His Facebook persona, for example, is like very much a conspiracy
obsessed angry grandpa who posts like in all caps. Cool. 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. And I 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. This man is on his Just so you
know, I'm thrilled about having my voice recording this. Okay, this post is in all caps.
Literally 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/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 vestage 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 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 roles as a person. Sort of like changing the
name applied to an illegal criminal alien to a poor undocumented person. Wow. Ashley, what? And listen, not to
make this episode about WY 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 got to say like this
inflammatory 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 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? I care about things that actually affect my life, my daughter's life. like the
fact that insurance companies are like us over right and left and basic healthc care 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 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. I did. And I sh you not. It says that like these healthc care centers are supposed to address the
needs of men. Women's healthcare should address the needs of men, who by the way
is WY is like that's who we're worried about. Like, right. Anyways, so I know I got a little sidetracked, but I wanted
to show you who Wy is while also saying like give us some perspective and and like I wanted to show you who he was
with, but also saying like let's not let the thing that Wy said take over this episode. Like I swear to God if all the
comments on this episode become about Mother's Day, I'm going to quit. So like I need everyone to stay
focused. So to bring it back to Dick Wy, 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. 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. I'm in. In fact, the Chicago
Tribune reports that while Patricia and Renee had been high school classmates, Patricia met Anne at the Oakbrook Polo
Club where they both boarded their riding horses. And Anne 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 like bought into the idea that the women would have like gone off on their
own. Even if all of the other weird [ __ ] 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. Like, 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. I was going to 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. 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. Yes. Okay. So Rene's were the marital issues that we know and 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 Deline 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 crier, some people aren't, and Patricia was not. 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. Don't tell Dick Wy. I know. 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." Which is saying a lot
in 1966. 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 like 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, like the mob.
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 going to 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 a hit on one of the nation's wealthiest aeryses 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 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 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 Silus and George wasn't getting it. Now 1965 is when
really hit the fan. By this point, George owned Riding Stables. And one day in June of that year, George asked one
of his employees, a 22-year-old named Cheryl Lyn RDE, 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 when
investigators convinced his hired henchmen to turn states evidence. But fast forward to March of 1966 on the eve
of Silus's trial on conspiracy charges. The whole case gets dropped when the prosecution 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 the women
were acquainted with these guys. We know for a fact all three women rode at George's stables and Indiana State
Police confirmed that for us. But is Silas the married man or George? I don't get why the women are made to disappear
in July of ' 66. No. So, I I don't think that either of them were Patricia's Paramore. 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. 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 or knew something about that
and that is what led to their deaths. But you'd think that something would have happened to them like before the
trial was set to start in March. 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 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 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. And by the way,
guess who owned a blue and white power boat? 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 like supposedly once worked for Silus did own one. And supposedly this boat that he supposedly
owned, he often took to the Indiana Dunes. Did they find this supposed boat? No. They wish like the 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 5 minutes ago. Yeah. 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 much for that whole like spontaneously combusting rowboat thing, right? 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 any information about what happened that day on the shores of Lake Michigan, please contact the
Westchester Police Department at 78345006. And if you're as offended as I am by House Resolution 7, head on over
to congress.gov/cont- us to find your representatives contact information and tell them that women's healthcare should
be about women. Novel concept, right? You can find all the source material for this episode on our website,
crimejunkypodcast.com. And you can follow us on Instagram, crimejunkie podcast. We'll be back with
another video episode, but don't forget we have hundreds of podcast episodes. Just search for Crime Junkie wherever
you get your podcasts. [Music]

On July 2, 1966, Renee Bruhl, Patricia Blough, and Ann Miller vanished from Indiana Dunes State Park after boarding a turquoise-trimmed boat with a well-tanned man, leaving their belongings and Ann’s car behind. Days later, random boat debris washed ashore near the dunes, hinting at a possible tragedy—covered widely by the Chicago Tribune, yet no bodies were ever found. Could this chilling case connect to the July 13 Chicago massacre of eight student nurses by Richard Speck, armed with a gun and hunting knife, just weeks later? The women, avid horse riders, also frequented Tri-Color Stables, owned by George Jayne, whose brother Silas Jayne ran the notorious ‘horse syndicate’—a shadowy network tied to horse killings, insurance scams, and murders, including the 1965 car bombing of Cheryl Rude. With Silas’s phone number among their possessions and his chilling claim of three bodies buried under his home, could the syndicate have silenced them? Join us as we explore the evidence, theories, and haunting questions surrounding this Indiana Dunes National Park cold case.

For even more stories like this one, join the Crime Junkie Fan Club today: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/fanclub?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=episode_description&utm_campaign=signupfanclub

Follow Crime Junkie: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crimejunkiepodcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CrimeJunkiePodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrimeJunkiePod Crime Junkie is created and hosted by Ashley Flowers.

About Ashley Flowers Ashley Flowers is the top female podcaster in the U.S. and the host of Crime Junkie, the #1 podcast among women and the #1 true crime podcast globally. As the Founder of audiochuck, she has built a top-tier podcast production company that has garnered over 2.6 billion downloads, captivating audiences with its gripping storytelling through 10+ chart topping podcasts. Ashley and her team are dedicated to creating responsible true crime content that respects victims and their families.

Follow Ashley: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ASHLEYFLOWERS/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ash_flowers TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ashleyflowerscrimejunkie Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashleyflowers.af/

Check out these other great crime channels: @KendallRae The Man Who Faked His Death For A New Life With His Mistress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cduAfy9ZAw4 @CoffeehouseCrime Hidden Cameras Accidentally Reveal Her Killer... He Had Many Secrets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdkBpdmKQtA @48hours Could Angela Prichard Have Been Saved? | Full Episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ7dmWyZ3R8 @LawAndCrime Missing Mom's Disappearance Now Being Investigated as a Homicide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSm0eITqMSk

Brief Summary

Three young women disappeared from Indiana Dunes State Park in 1966, leading to a complex investigation and various theories about their fate.

Key points

The Mysterious Disappearance. Three young women go missing after a trip to Indiana Dunes State Park, sparking a massive search effort.
Unraveling Clues. Investigator Sergeant Burke finds a letter in one of the women's purses, hinting at personal issues.
The Search Begins. Authorities launch a large-scale search for the missing women, covering vast areas of Lake Michigan.
Suspicion of Foul Play. As debris washes up on shore, authorities begin to suspect foul play in the women's disappearance.
A Shocking Crime. A brutal crime involving multiple young women captures attention, raising fears about the missing trio.
The First Random Mass Murderer. Richard Speck becomes known as the country's first random mass murderer, with his prints all over the crime scene.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Lake Michigan is notorious for its strong, unpredictable currents.

Discussing the dangers of Lake Michigan in relation to the missing women.

3:37WatchMar 21, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from Crime Junkie

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.