Unsolved Mysteries with Dennis Farina - Season 7, Episode 3 | Forensic Files

DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Next on "Unsolved Mysteries," two escaped convicts pull of a daring
bank robbery in broad daylight. Who was the mastermind behind a $10 million heist?
Since he was a boy, author James Ellroy has been haunted by a real-life mystery, his mother's murder.
Now he's searching for her killer. Two women say they were deathly ill when they arrived at Lourdes, France and they left cured.
Was it a miracle? And a young boy is separated from his mother after a bitter divorce.
He hasn't seen her for more than 40 years, but maybe you have. Stories of cunning, deceit, and lies.
See if you can figure out who's telling the truth. I'm Dennis Farina and this is "Unsolved Mysteries."
[theme music] A December day in Gainesville, Florida, 8:30 AM. Nobody move! Just put your hands up and no one will get hurt.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Two men wearing Ronald Reagan masks hold up a bank. In less than five minutes, they make off with nearly half
a million dollars. To the FBI, the MO was familiar. It seemed to be the handiwork of a man named Patrick Michael
Mitchell, alias Richard Joseph Landry, alias Michael Garrison, alias Roger Lanthorn.
By any name, he's one of the most skilled bank robbers in the country. Patrick Michael Mitchell isn't just a bank robber,
he's also a master of disguise. At every one of his heists, he wears a different comic mask.
But the FBI isn't laughing. Mitchell has already bagged some $3 million in cash.
I guess you could best describe him as being confident. He's even vain to a certain extent.
We believe him to have taken the prescription drugs Retin-A, which supposedly help
keep your youthful appearance. He's been described as having an athletic build. He likes the ladies.
He fancies himself as a gourmet cook. Matter of fact, we've even recovered some cookbooks from the trunk of one of his cars.
So far, we've developed at least 25 different aliases he's used in the past 11 years.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): 18 Months before the Gainesville, Florida heist, Mitchell had been serving
20 years for bank robbery. Three years into his sentence, he and two other prisoners
staged a bold escape. Mitchell was the mastermind. None of the guards noticed that the three men were missing.
No alarms were set off. They changed into street clothes, hid in a utility room,
and then simply walked outside. The girlfriend of one of the prisoners was waiting for them.
She had been fooled into believing that the men were out on a weekend pass. The escape went off without a hitch.
One of the convicts was later captured in Atlanta, Georgia. But Mitchell and the third escapee,
Johnny Salazar Stewart, headed for Gainesville, Florida. WILLIAM FLUHARTY (VOICEOVER): They come into a town a month
or two in advance, stay at local hotels and motels. The way I see it, the armored car gets
there between 8:15 and 8:20. WILLIAM FLUHARTY (VOICEOVER): By staking out department stores
for armored car services, they then determine when and where they will make their hit.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Mitchell and Stewart begin planning their next robbery.
They rented a self-storage unit with a clear view of both the bank they wanted to rob
and the armored car company that served the bank. Mitchell pretended to load and unload boxes
from the storage unit while he watched the movements of the armored cars. He never went inside the bank.
Instead, he sent Stewart to scout the interior. This individual after they open an account has a legitimate reason for being in the bank.
He can be there when deliveries are made by the armored car services where he can see actually what they're doing
and how they're doing it after the deliveries are made. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): 7:30 AM the day of the robbery.
Mitchell and Stewart meet at the self-storage facility. Good morning. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): It is now 20 minutes later.
The bank employees begin to arrive. The bank will open in an hour and 10 minutes.
8:00 AM, the armored car leaves to pick up deposits from several stores in the area.
MAN'S VOICE (ON PHONE): I've got a bomb planted and it's ready to go off. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): 8:10, the Gainesville
Police receive a bomb threat. The target is a junior high school in the same police
district as the bank. Hello? DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): 8:22, the armored car guards arrive at the bank with the morning's cash deposits.
At the same time, patrol cars are dispatched to the site of the bomb threat, 32 blocks from the bank.
Police believe that it was Mitchell who phoned in the false alarm to divert them.
[siren] DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): At 8:25, the robbers make their move. [crash]
Don't anybody move! Put your hands up and no one will get hurt. I remember laying on the floor in the back.
I kept thinking, I'll never see my husband or my children again. I remember thinking one of them was
going to shoot me in the back. Keep your hands up. I was thinking he was either going to shoot somebody
or he was going to take someone hostage. I was very frightened. This is a bomb. Nobody move and it won't go off.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): On the way out, Mitchell drops a bag containing $28,000.
Still, the take is nearly half a million dollars. As for the bomb, it proves to be a fake,
designed to buy the robbers more time to escape. 8:40 AM, a woman who works at the storage facility
sees Mitchell drive away. It is the last sighting of Patrick Michael Mitchell in Gainesville.
Two months later, Johnny Stewart is apprehended. He is convicted for his role in the robbery and for the escape.
He will be eligible for parole in 2026. A year after the robbery, Mitchell's Cadillac
is found in a storage facility in Tallahassee, 150 miles from Gainesville. But Mitchell has left behind nine cookbooks in the backseat.
I think it's imperative that we find Patrick Michael Mitchell because I don't believe that he'll be stopping
with the Gainesville robbery. Based on his previous activities in the past 11 years and his hit frequency, it's not if he's going to hit,
but when he's going to hit. [crash] DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Update-- The long criminal career of Patrick Michael Mitchell
came to an end when he was arrested walking out of a bank he had just robbed in South Haven, Mississippi.
Mitchell pleaded guilty to robbery charges and received two 30-year sentences plus five years for the escape.
Mitchell died of lung cancer while still in prison. He was 64 years old. Next, James Ellroy's novels about crime
top the bestseller lists, but he remains obsessed with a real-life killing, the unsolved murder
of his own mother. Los Angeles, California. MAN'S VOICE (VOICEOVER): He knew the area
and he knew that access road. It was dark and quiet and semi-secluded. It probably went bad right then, right there.
He was living in that split second that separates lust from rage. He was thinking about sex.
He probably wasn't thinking about murder. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): These are the words
of novelist James Ellroy. His dark tales of sexual obsession and violence often top the bestseller list.
But not everyone knows how much truth there is just below the surface of his stories.
MAN'S VOICE (VOICEOVER): The spark point could have been words or a simple gesture.
The combustion occurred, it flared out of control. He hit her and hit her and hit her and strangled her.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): When James was only 10 years old, his mother was beaten, raped, and strangled.
Her partially clothed body was left in a bed of ivy. A strand of her pearls lay scattered in the street.
My mother's crime scene to me is all crime scenes. The crime scene to me is-- it's primal, it's almost oedipal.
The moment of the discovery of her body is in many ways the moment of my birth because it's the genesis of my detective's obsessions
with the murders that they ultimately become consumed by. Like a character in one of his books,
James Ellroy is obsessed with tracking down a killer. Ellroy Hopes that an eye witness known as the blond woman
will come forward and identify the man who killed his mother. James, I'm home. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Jean Ellroy--
divorced, early forties-- was a staff nurse at a Los Angeles factory and lived close
by in the town of El Monte. Jean had custody of her 10-year-old son, James, during the week.
There you are. How was school today? DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Every Saturday, James
would take the bus to stay with his father. Sundays he would return by cab. The schedule ran like clockwork until the afternoon
of June 22, 1958. JAMES ELLROY (VOICEOVER): The yard was full of policemen in uniforms and plainclothesmen.
I wasn't afraid, but I was anxious, I was apprehensive. Are you James Ellroy? Yeah.
Son, your mother has been killed. Where's your father? What? JAMES ELLROY (VOICEOVER): People were surprised that I wasn't
more overtly emotional right after I got the news that my mother had been murdered.
I think they expected me to cry or carry on or display some kind of overt histrionics.
But I took the news internally. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): This picture of James was taken by a press photographer on that same day.
After my mother's murder, all I wanted to read were crime novels, true crime books,
anything pertaining to violent crime and psychosexual aberrants. At age 17, my father died.
I was no choirboy before that time, but boy, oh boy, things got worse. I drank, used drugs, broke into houses
and stole things, drove around in stolen cars, shoplifted, and did spurts of county jail time
from 1965 to 1977. My life was going nowhere and I wanted a real life. I hadn't been with a woman in years and I wanted to write.
I wanted to write dark, evil, perverted, powerful, compelling crime fiction. And I knew I wouldn't be able to do it as
long as I drank and used drugs. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): James' first novel was published in 1982.
More than a dozen followed, the writing fueled by his mother's rape and murder. It bubbled to the surface in "The Black Dahlia," his take
on the 1947 slaying of Elizabeth Short, one of the most infamous unsolved murders
of the 20th century. The book was dedicated to his mother. It's as if Elizabeth Short became
a stand-in for my mother. I wanted to feel the horror of my mother's death and I used Elizabeth Short as a substitute.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Seven years after the book was published, James was ready for the real thing.
The LA County Sheriff's Department arranged for him to examine the official case
file of his mother's murder. First was the sheriffs what we call murder book. This was the first time I'd ever been asked
by a member of the family of the victim to actually see the crime scene photographs.
And I was very hesitant to show those to him because they're very graphic, and so I warned him.
And if you wish, I'll go through there and pull out the ones that I think he you may not want to see.
No. Thank you, I'd like to see them all. OK. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Physical evidence
from the murder had been stored in a paper bag, locked away for more than 30 years.
James held the nylon stocking used to strangle his mother and he touched her silk dress.
I started sweating, I started shaking. It was locked down, revved in, right on the edge of shell shock--
truly an awe-inspiring moment. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): And then a face stared back at him from the file, the suspected killer.
This man had dark hair and an olive complexion, and he became known as the swarthy man.
Several eyewitnesses saw him with Jean Ellroy just hours before she was killed. Around 10:00 PM, Jean and the swarthy man
pulled into a local drive-in. With Detective Stoner's help, Ellroy tracked down the waitress who served the couple.
Would you like a menu tonight? She had on this beautiful dress, pearls around her neck.
Her hair was done beautifully. That's what made me remember her so well because she was
a beautiful woman and then she had this dress on that I had one like and she looked very prim and proper.
She was very pleasant. And anything for you, sir? Just coffee. He had no accent, he didn't talk with any--
even a southern drawl. He just talked very normally, like you'd expect an average Californian to talk.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Jean and the swarthy man were next seen at a bar called the Desert Inn.
They were with a blonde woman. No one knows her name or how she fit into the evening's plans,
but she seemed to know both Jean and the suspect and she left the bar with them around midnight.
At 2:15 AM, Jean and the suspect returned to the drive-in. The blonde woman was no longer with them.
This time, she was not as neat and prim as she was when I waited on her the first time.
She looked like she had been necking or fooling around some because her dress and her hair
was kind of messed up. But they didn't seem overly friendly together. OK. And-- LAVONNE CHAMBERS (VOICEOVER): And he wasn't saying anything.
He was just too quiet. Coffee. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Just before 3:00 AM, they drove off.
I think the swarthy man decided that the evening wasn't over for him. He either knew about a secluded location or came upon it
and stopped and forced himself on Mrs. Ellroy. Listen, I had a good time. Just to take me home.
I bought you drinks, I bought you dinner. You owe me. I don't owe you anything. If the swarthy man is alive, I would
like to bring him to justice. If we identify the man and learn that he's dead, I want to go back and trace this man's
roots back to his crib to find out why this event happened. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Though not a suspect,
authorities considered the unidentified blonde woman an important material witness in this case.
Jean Ellroy's former co-workers at Airtech Dynamics in Los Angeles may also have information about the identity
of the suspect. JAMES ELLROY (VOICEOVER): The blonde woman knows who killed my mother.
The blond woman knows the identity of the swarthy man. The blonde has told people.
There are people out there who know elements of this case, who know names, who've heard the story.
And it's just a question of tapping into those people. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): If you have any information
about the murder of Jean Ellroy, please log onto our website at unsolved.com Next, two women claim
they've been cured by the waters of Lourdes and that their cure was a miracle. Lourdes France, it's a sacred spot
that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. The story of Lourdes began more than a
century ago, with a 14-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous. On February 11, 1858, Bernadette claimed
that in a grotto just outside of town, she experienced a beautiful vision, a woman
dressed in blue and white. At the woman's command, Bernadette began to dig and uncovered a spring.
Many believe that Bernadette's vision was the blessed Virgin Mary and the spring
a source of divine healing. Nobody is obliged to believe in Lourdes, but I think when you really look and examine all the facts, all
the words, all the gestures that surround all these events that took place in 1858, I think is very difficult really not
to be moved by it in some way. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): In 1933, the Vatican declared Bernadette a saint and a church
was built over the spring. Through the years, Lourdes developed a reputation for healing both the spirit and the body.
Today people from all over the world travel to Lourdes hoping to be cured. The Catholic Church has documented 60 such miracles.
Among them is the case of a French woman named Jeanne Fretel. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: The lord did marvelous things for me.
I am not here to tell you to believe, I am here to tell you what happened to me.
And believe me, it is a stranger adventure. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): In 1937, when Jeanne was 23,
her abdomen grew rock hard and painful to the touch. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Blood seeped from her nose, mouth,
and intestines. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: It was a terrible mess. It was a constant trial.
When the doctor says, there is nothing I can do for you, you just have to wait patiently for the death.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Jeanne had 13 operations over 11 years, but nothing helped.
Eventually, she was diagnosed with tubercular peritonitis. There is no known cure.
On four different occasions, her priest administered last rites. Finally, two of Jeanne's friends insisted
on taking her to Lourdes. Her doctor was so sure that she would not survive the trip that he told her friends
to tag along a coffin. When Jeanne arrived at Lourdes, she had been virtually comatose
for three months. She was immediately taken into the church. One of the priests who served mass that day,
Father Albert Roque, remembers her clearly. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: When I approached Jeanne, is I asked myself,
would she be able to take holy communion or would she vomit [inaudible]? DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Father Roque
tried to place a tiny piece of the wafer between Jeanne's lips. One of Jeanne's friends had to help.
INTERPRETER: I closed her mouth myself and she instantly opened her eyes. And she looked at me and asked, where I am?
INTERPRETER: I repeat, instantly the moment I pushed her chin up and her lips met, she came out of the coma
she had been in during July, August, September, and October. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Jeanne
was moved into the grotto itself, to the very spot where St. Bernadette saw the blessed Mother.
Jeanne says something extraordinary happened. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: I had the feeling that somebody was taking
me under the arms to sit me up. And I turned around to see who it was that held me
and thank them. I had that feeling again. This time, that two invisible hands were taking my two hands
and putting them on my stomach. I was instantly and permanently cured. The Lord says, ask and you shall receive, but I never asked.
I received without asking. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Jeanne stood up for the first time in years.
She was taken to bathe in the water from Saint Bernadette's spring. The next day, she was examined by a group of doctors.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Virtually every one of Jeanne's symptoms had disappeared.
She returned to her own city and her own doctor, the same doctor who didn't expect her to survive the trip.
A professed atheist, the doctor was amazed. [speaking french] INTERPRETER: And was then he said,
I do not believe in miracles, yet I have to believe because you should be in your grave today.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): After more than 11 years of illness, Jeanne was finally able to live a normal life.
In 1950, she took vows to become a Benedictine nun. The church referred Jeanne's case to the National Medical
Committee of Paris, a review board made up of both believers and nonbelievers. A very rigorous comparison was made between her medical status
before the illness and her medical status after the illness. The Medical Bureau's findings were then
to say, in our eyes, this according to science is just inexplicable. They then passed on these findings to the church.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): The Catholic Church officially declared Jeanne's cure a miracle.
[speaking french] INTERPRETER: If you believe in it, good for you. If you do not believe in it, too bad.
It is true. I tell about my healing 50, 100 times a day. It matters not. Everything is for the Lord, without a doubt.
I accept everything with joy. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Next, our story continues with an American woman who
tells of her amazing recovery after bathing in the waters of Lourdes. For thousands of believers, the waters at Lourdes, France
have undeniable healing powers. One of those believers is Lorraine Hendricks. Inhale.
Good. Now exhale. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): When Lorraine was only 14 years old,
she came down with a mysterious illness that her doctors could not diagnose. She can barely hold her head up, her eyes rolled involuntarily,
and she could not keep food down. It was very frightening. Every day you went to the hospital and you saw this child
and you saw her getting weaker and sicker. And there was no answers. They couldn't give her medication because they
didn't know what to give her. You could see the color in her eyes leaving, you can see your color is changing,
you see the weakness getting worse. And there's nothing you can do. When all else failed, a psychiatrist examined Lorraine.
He, too, was at a loss. Finally, a friend of Lorraine's parents suggested that they take her to Lourdes.
Lorraine made the trip with her parents and grandmother. According to Lorraine's parents, her kidneys had begun to fail
and the stress of the trip left her weaker than ever. She kept saying, please, Mommy.
I felt I was doing something to this child and I should have stayed in the States.
What was I doing here in a strange country? I couldn't speak the language and she's so deathly sick.
OK. She can rest here. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): An American volunteer was asked to stay with the family.
The volunteers suggested that Lorraine's family takes and time a long while Lorraine
waited to visit the waters. You look tired. Why don't you go for a walk or take a rest or something?
No, no, no. This family absolutely needed some help. And what I did was to try to be as calm as I could to allow
the parents to have some time to be away just so that everyone would have a breathing space.
Because they seemed to be a family that was just in absolute crisis when they arrived.
I think at that point, death looked like a welcome relief to me. I would have accepted it, and I guess I felt it was very near.
I'll be right here, OK? DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): As she drifted in and out of sleep, Lorraine had a vivid dream
that made her feel that everything would be all right. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
In verdant pastures, he gives me-- LORRAINE HENDRICKS (VOICEOVER): Within seconds, the next thing
I knew, I was standing next to my body and I was walking with a beautiful woman.
I don't know who it was. I remember we were walking about four or five feet above the ground.
I remember her saying to me, you must go back now. And I said, I don't want to go back.
That body is dying. And she said, yes, you must go back to prove to others he still exists today.
And I opened up my eyes and my mom was standing over me. And we proceeded to get ready to go
down to the baths at that time. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Lorraine was so ill that a complete immersion in the water
seemed out of the question. Even though church officials say it never happens, Lorraine recalls that the attendants
poured water over head. --pray for sins now at the hour of our-- LORRAINE ECHEVARRIA (VOICEOVER): I tried to do everything
I could while she was sick. I did the fasting and the prayers and everything. I could actually physically feel a release within myself,
in my chest area, that I didn't even know the tightness existed until that moment.
When she was through with the bath and came out, she looked exactly the same. There was no change.
I did not expect that she would be healed or cured. I expected that perhaps her family would receive
some consolation, that perhaps they would receive strength to make it through whatever
they had to go through. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): That evening, Lorraine's grandmother spent the night in Lorraine's room.
LORRAINE HENDRICKS (VOICEOVER): I never stirred, I never moved. And I was asleep before you knew it.
And then it was about five hours later. I woke up, 11 o'clock at night, and I was
starving, absolutely hungry. I didn't have any pain. I just felt like-- I felt terrific.
I could fly if I needed to. I got up out of bed and looked at myself in the mirror
and I was me again. I was whole, I was 100%. I just-- oh, god. It was all I could do for them to contain me.
I got better. Look at you. Her eyes, they were beautiful. The color was in her face.
She had rosy cheeks and she was so energetic and full of life. You knew that she was touched.
You stood there and you were witnessing what God just did. I remember sitting at the window, it was about one,
two o'clock in the morning, listening to the church that's local, their chiming every hour, and just feeling so glad
to be alive and to be healthy. And everything was just great. I was just-- I couldn't believe I was that blessed.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): The church is very cautious about declaring an apparent cure or recovery
to be an actual miracle. We don't diet her sincerity, but she never underwent any medical investigation
after the healing, and so there will always remain in the minds of the doctors and of the church
a certain kind of doubt. We appreciate that Lorraine believes that she has truly
been touched by God, but we can't give to her situation the same qualification that we gave to Jeanne Fretel
and recognizing the case of Jeanne Fretel as, indeed, a miracle. I believe that I was healed at Lourdes
and that it is a miracle. I believe with every ounce within me Lourdes is a part of me now.
It is my life and there is no doubt whatsoever that I was touched and that I was healed.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): What really happens at places like Lourdes? If someone arrives deathly ill and leaves with no trace
of sickness, perhaps it doesn't really matter whether or not we call it a miracle.
Next, a man searches for the mother he was forced to leave when he was just four years old.
Vancouver, British Columbia. March of 1949, Annie Currie, an English war bride, said goodbye to her two little boys.
She and her husband, Donald, were getting divorced. Donald had been given custody of both sons, Darrell,
three years old, and Jim, five. Now adults, they haven't seen their mother for over 50 years.
I was never given the sense that I could say how much I missed her, that I could ask
questions about where's my Mom. She's a big question mark and I would like to hear her voice.
I would like to hear what she has to say about her life. I'd like her to know me.
Jim Currie is a lot like most people searching for lost parent, but there is one
unusual twist to this story. Jim has spent most of his life looking for other people's
parents, as well. Jim is a senior investigator for a California public defender's
office, an advocate for defendants who may be facing the death penalty. How are you doing?
I've had adopted defendants before and had to find their mothers, and I've and been
very successful in doing that. It just is very ironic to me that I can find so much about these people's history
and I can't complete my own. It's very frustrating. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Jim's parents met
in 1943, during World War II. Donald Currie was 23, a Canadian sergeant serving in England.
Annie Frye was a 19-year-old country girl from Wales. The two fell in love and were married that same year.
In 1944, London was being bombed by the Nazis. Annie was pregnant when a bomb blast
knocked her to the ground. She miscarried. When Annie became pregnant again, Donald sent her to live with his parents in Vancouver.
Jim was born on December 20, 1944. At the time, Donald was still stationed in England.
Are you getting tired? She's in a foreign country, she doesn't know anybody except from my dad's immediate family.
She makes the best adjustment she can, but it's a lonely kind of existence for her
and I think fraught with a lot of fear whether or not my dad was going to make it home.
In June of 1945, the war in Europe was finally over. After more than a year of separation from his wife,
Donald came home. Annie. Donald! Donald, that's Jimmy. That's your son. Jimmy, this is Daddy.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): It was a moment of joy, but it was short-lived. The war had changed Donald Currie forever.
It was a very traumatic experience for my father. He thought war was wrong. He told me once, you will never know how much it can change you
when you see your closest friends blown into 1,000 pieces in front of your eyes and you can do nothing about it.
I think he lost a lot of faith. He closed down emotionally to protect himself. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): In 1945, a second son, Darrell,
was born. Donald got a job working nights as a customs official. Annie was left alone and she began
spending time with one of her neighbors, a much older married man. The friendship turned into an affair.
A relative broke the news to Donald and he sued Annie for divorce and for custody of the boys.
[inaudible] the petition of Mr. Currie implicitly. He's a clean, wholesome individual
with a fine war record. I hereby grant a decree in his favor against Anne Ellen Currie.
My understanding of the judgment against my mother was that my dad was to have sole custody of both children
and she was to have no hesitation rights. It would be up to my father whether or not she would
be allowed to see the children. Mr. Currie, you must realize that there is more good than evil in this girl,
so do not burn your bridges. She has been a clean and decent girl until she met the correspondent.
The judge's decree doesn't indicate hostility toward her. It indicates that even there may be something worth salvaging,
that she was under the blandishments of an older and more sophisticated man. In spite of all the negatives I've heard
and on the surface it being a very nasty divorce, there was still something that came through for the judge
this was basically a good person. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): With the divorce final,
Donald made some hard choices. He put his son, Darrell, up for adoption. JIM CURRIE (VOICEOVER): There was a sense in me at the time
that it was the last time I would see him. He needs his brother, he needs me. Look at him.
I don't have to. I know what he feels. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Despite Annie's pleas,
Donald did not bend. JIM CURRIE (VOICEOVER): I don't remember any hugging, I don't remember any arguing.
But I do remember it being sad. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Donald then moved to Los Angeles with Jim.
Donald married twice. Although both stepmothers were kind to Jim, he still longed for the mother that he barely remembered.
My dad was always very reticent to talk about his early life and my mother in particular.
Anything that would lead my dad to believe that I wanted to find her was very upsetting to him.
DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): After his father's death, Jim began to search for his mother.
He never found her, but he did wind up finding his brother, Darrell. He and Jim have been reunited, but Darrell has no memory
of his mother or father. There's unconditional love that a mother has for her son,
and I feel like that was pulled away from me. I don't think I'd have to say a word to her for hours.
If I met her, I don't think I'd have to say anything. DENNIS FARINA (VOICEOVER): Annie Currie is 5'2".
She has a medium build and may speak with a British accent. This enhanced photo shows how she might look today.
Annie's last name may now be McDonald from a second marriage. If you have any idea where she might be,
please log on to our website at unsolved.com. [theme music]

Brief Summary

This episode features a bank robbery, James Ellroy's mother's murder, miraculous cures at Lourdes, and a man's search for his mother.

Key points

The Daring Bank Heist. Two men in Ronald Reagan masks execute a bank robbery in Gainesville, Florida.
James Ellroy's Dark Past. Author James Ellroy is haunted by the unsolved murder of his mother.
A Miracle at Lourdes. Jeanne Fretel claims to have been miraculously cured by the waters of Lourdes.
A Miraculous Recovery. Lorraine Hendricks recounts her incredible healing after visiting Lourdes, feeling transformed and alive.
The Church's Skepticism. Despite Lorraine's belief in her miracle, the church remains cautious about declaring it as such.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I remember thinking one of them was going to shoot me in the back.

A bank robbery victim recalls her fear during the heist.

6:54WatchMar 9, 2017

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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