Speaker 1: The Indiana Dunes disappearance is one of the lesser known
Speaker 1: cases in American true crime. One day in July nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, three women went for a day at the
Speaker 1: beach along Lake Michigan in northwest Indiana, not too far
Speaker 1: from Chicago. They vanished that day, and no trace of
Speaker 1: them has turned up since. It's one of our sadder
Speaker 1: true crime episodes because not only are the women presumed dead,
Speaker 1: their families never got even a hint of resolution. Listen
Speaker 1: to this one and see what you think happened.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of Iheartradios
Speaker 2: How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Josh T guests producing away
Speaker 1: over there, and that makes this Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: super duper mysterious mystery edition. That's right, this is a
Speaker 1: super mysterious one. Super duper you could.
Speaker 3: Say, this is a good one. I never heard of it.
Speaker 1: I hadn't either.
Speaker 4: Maybe we should have a spin off show just about
Speaker 4: mysteries and missing persons.
Speaker 1: I've long thought that. Yeah, oh yeah, but.
Speaker 3: Then everyone's like, just put him on Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, every once in a while, pepper it we.
Speaker 3: Gotta spin it out, right, spin it off?
Speaker 1: They said? The Cleveland Show.
Speaker 4: Oh man, I never watched that was a good I
Speaker 4: never watched it either. You weren't a Family Guy fan,
Speaker 4: that were you?
Speaker 1: I mean it's fine, but no, I wasn't a fan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. What about Laverne and Shirley? What is this
Speaker 1: Laverne and Shirley.
Speaker 3: Spin off from Happy Days?
Speaker 1: Right? That's rights?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Oh, let's do this.
Speaker 3: And Mork and Mindy spun off too?
Speaker 1: Uh? What is this? Too Close for Comfort?
Speaker 3: Was that as good off?
Speaker 1: You got this man?
Speaker 3: Too close for comfort? He wasn't. No, I don't know
Speaker 3: what was it?
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I was about to say, I don't think that's right.
Speaker 1: What is this the Ropers?
Speaker 3: Oh? Well, sure, Freese Company?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: What is this? After match?
Speaker 1: I thought? I thought Too Close for Comfort was a spinoff?
Speaker 1: I think it might be.
Speaker 4: Well, my first guess was it was might have been
Speaker 4: Ted Knight's character from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. But
Speaker 4: that's not true because and too Close for Comfort he
Speaker 4: was a cartoonist, that's right, remember, Yeah, And the only
Speaker 4: thing I remember, well, I remember a lot about the
Speaker 4: show because I loved it. I was in love with
Speaker 4: those daughters.
Speaker 1: Man, I don't remember them.
Speaker 4: I mean that was the whole setup, is that their
Speaker 4: daughters lived in the same house or next door or
Speaker 4: something cause trouble. Yeah, you know, they were just a
Speaker 4: couple of hell raisers, hell raising beauties.
Speaker 3: And who was the guy that was so great?
Speaker 1: I think you're talking about Charles in Charge now.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of Too Close for Comfort.
Speaker 4: But he was a cartoonist and he would wear college
Speaker 4: sweatshirts as part of his character. And he wore a
Speaker 4: Georgia Bulldogs sweat shirt one time, and I.
Speaker 3: Was like, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 3: It's like, how did they know that that's a thing?
Speaker 1: All Right? You're like, I'm basically on TV right now.
Speaker 1: That's what? Oh? Man Monroe?
Speaker 4: That was him, the Monroe character, Jim J. Bullock, Ted Knight, Yeah, no,
Speaker 4: Ted Knight was the lead.
Speaker 1: The main guy, Jim J. Bullock. Man, what was he?
Speaker 1: Hollywood Squares?
Speaker 3: Sure? Among other things like Too Close for Comfort?
Speaker 1: Does does this kind of a tangent if we haven't
Speaker 1: actually gotten started. This is a preamble, okay, preamble, Yeah,
Speaker 1: roughly done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a good one. And you put this together?
Speaker 4: Where'd you get most of the stuff?
Speaker 1: Wrote it myself. Oh wow, there's one part that I
Speaker 1: was like, here, this is just easier if I copy
Speaker 1: and paste from a Chicago Tribune article from nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: I read that one.
Speaker 1: It's very good, there's That's one of the things about
Speaker 1: this case is anyone who kind of gets involved in this,
Speaker 1: we'll see there is not a lot of information out there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and funny, And one of the biggest mysteries of
Speaker 4: this whole thing is what kind of boat that was,
Speaker 4: which we'll get to.
Speaker 1: That was my bad.
Speaker 4: Well, no, man, I saw it in a couple of
Speaker 4: other articles. It called this boat a trimaran, which is
Speaker 4: very much a catamaran.
Speaker 1: Right, They made the same so they were just yes, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's same thing. I saw a tryhold. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a tricat, which is a sailboat, and that's what
Speaker 1: I thought it was. No, there's a trhold speed boat
Speaker 1: called the runabout that was kind of big in the sixties.
Speaker 4: Well, more specifically, it's a tryholed run about. A runabout
Speaker 4: doesn't necessarily mean it has three holes. Okay, but those
Speaker 4: are my favorite boats in the world. Are these fifties
Speaker 4: and sixties fiberglass runabouts.
Speaker 3: This is their amazing.
Speaker 1: Fifties and sixties runabout of all time. Yeah, with three holes.
Speaker 1: He thought one was crazy. Just get ready for three.
Speaker 4: So yeah, the boat will come up and I had
Speaker 4: to mark out try cat just about seventy five places.
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry, it was yeah, my bad.
Speaker 4: So what we're talking about here finally now is the
Speaker 4: disappearance of three young women in suburban Chicago in the
Speaker 4: mid nineteen sixties at Indiana Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now it's Indiana Dunes National Seashore, National Lakes Shore,
Speaker 1: National Lake Shore, but at the time it was a
Speaker 1: state park. And this is Saturday, July second, nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: The three women there was a twenty one year old
Speaker 4: named Patricia Blow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so she went.
Speaker 4: She got in her car, which was an eleven year
Speaker 4: old at this point, Buick Sedan nineteen fifty five. Buick
Speaker 4: went to pick up her friends Anne Miller at her
Speaker 4: house she lived with her folks, and then to her
Speaker 4: other friend, Renee Brule, who was the only one who
Speaker 4: was married, went to pick her up at her house.
Speaker 4: They were nineteen and twenty and they were.
Speaker 1: Like nineteen and twenty one.
Speaker 4: I think one on was twenty two at least nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty and twenty.
Speaker 1: One, So was that right? Okay?
Speaker 4: But those are nitpicky details. Sure, they were all late
Speaker 4: teen's early twenties.
Speaker 1: And wait a minute, did you just call me nitpicky?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, no, I think you did.
Speaker 1: No, okay, and has called me a liar on National
Speaker 1: TV TV. I think you just did.
Speaker 4: Anne and Patricia were friends. They were horse riders, and
Speaker 4: they were friends from these horse stables. But they were
Speaker 4: all three buddies, not since grade school, but for the
Speaker 4: last couple of years, it seems like, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they all lived around Chicago, and that's where
Speaker 1: they were traveling about sixty miles eighty miles I've seen
Speaker 1: both to Indiana Dune State Park to just basically go
Speaker 1: hang out on the beach. That day again, it was Saturday,
Speaker 1: it was the July fourth weekend.
Speaker 3: It was out it yeah, super crowded.
Speaker 1: They were just going to the beach to have some fun.
Speaker 1: Most people think they got to the beach by ten
Speaker 1: am park. The buick hiked over the dunes on the
Speaker 1: kind of rickety boardwalk over to the beach and set
Speaker 1: up camp. I think about one hundred yards from shore.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty substantial beach.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Either there, they hiked one hundred yards and set up
Speaker 1: near the beach. It might be the ladder of the
Speaker 1: two that sounds more right. And on this weekend again,
Speaker 1: because it was July fourth weekend, the beach was just
Speaker 1: absolutely packed. And this is Lake Michigan, which is a
Speaker 1: pretty big lake in this beach itself, for this park itself,
Speaker 1: I think it's like twenty six miles of shoreline or
Speaker 1: something like that. But even still there's like nine thousand
Speaker 1: people on the beach that weekend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I saw nine to ten thousand people, four to
Speaker 4: five thousand cars in the parking lots, and four to
Speaker 4: six thousand boats in the water.
Speaker 3: So packed, just packed. It's like Jaws or.
Speaker 4: Something up in there, right Amity Island, fourth of July.
Speaker 1: So the Renee and and Patty set up shop, put
Speaker 1: down their beach blanket, just kind of close by to
Speaker 1: this teenage couple who are like their beach neighbors.
Speaker 3: You know, they mentioned everyone was pretty close.
Speaker 1: Sure, kind of she elbowed a jowl and that's called sure, okay,
Speaker 1: and this this teenage couple kind of factor in big time,
Speaker 1: but just kind of note their presence for now.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So about noon, Chuck, Well, actually, the teenage couple factor
Speaker 1: in now. They noticed that the three women were waiting
Speaker 1: into the water about noon, so I guess for about
Speaker 1: two hours they were just kind of hanging out in
Speaker 1: the sun and they got hot enough to go into
Speaker 1: the water about noon.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: And that was the last time that this couple saw them.
Speaker 4: Maybe perhaps the day went on, they never came back.
Speaker 4: This teenage couple said that there's stuff still laying here.
Speaker 4: You know, they may be off partying somewhere. So you know,
Speaker 4: they didn't think like these three young ladies are missing
Speaker 4: and perhaps murdered.
Speaker 1: I think they were worried that their stuff might get stolen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was as innocent as that.
Speaker 1: Ye as a teenage couple. They were about to leave,
Speaker 1: and they didn't want to just leave it there. They
Speaker 1: felt kind of somehow responsible for it, like you will.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is what you did in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: Six or today still if you're a decent person, that's right.
Speaker 4: So they went to a ranger and they said, hey,
Speaker 4: these young women were here. They left their stuff. The
Speaker 4: ranger thought the same thing. He's like, well, let me
Speaker 4: just take care of this stuff and collect it and
Speaker 4: so it doesn't get stolen. They're probably off partying. But
Speaker 4: that was the last that anyone saw these three young women.
Speaker 4: No one to this day knows what happened. They vanished
Speaker 4: literally without a trace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's never been any evidence of what happened to them,
Speaker 1: No trace of them, no, nothing, nothing. From that point on,
Speaker 1: I think we.
Speaker 4: Should take an earlier break because of that dumb long preamble. Okay,
Speaker 4: and this is a great little spot for a cliffhanger.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we'll be right back, okay, Chuck. So about
Speaker 1: eighteen hours after that park ranger collected their things that
Speaker 1: I'd say, around dusk, a call came into Indiana Dune
Speaker 1: State Park ranger station and it was from Harold Blaw
Speaker 1: or Blow Patty's father, and he wanted to know if
Speaker 1: the rangers had seen his daughter because she had been
Speaker 1: reported missing by her family back in Chicago, like you know,
Speaker 1: a few hours before.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they went through her stuff, the rangers did.
Speaker 4: They found a set of car keys that had a
Speaker 4: little minute Illinois license plate h that matched a license
Speaker 4: plate in.
Speaker 3: The parking lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, either a great coincidence where you could get those
Speaker 4: custom made at some little beat shop, right, which is
Speaker 4: probably what happened. So they find her car, they found
Speaker 4: her buick there in the parking lot. Indiana State Police
Speaker 4: say we're going to take over here because it's pretty
Speaker 4: clear that this is a missing person's case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they it was obvious that they had
Speaker 1: they had never left the park, or at least they
Speaker 1: hadn't left, you know, in the car, right, and they
Speaker 1: left their car, they left their stuff. That's suddenly very
Speaker 1: highly suspicious. The idea that they were just off partying
Speaker 1: is suddenly kind of a tenuous theory, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like left all their stuff like purses and personal stuff.
Speaker 1: We should we should talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 1: They left, Yeah, money in their wallets, they left their
Speaker 1: transistor radio, they left their magazines open, they left their
Speaker 1: suntan lotion. It seemed like the way they left their
Speaker 1: stuff that they were planning on just getting into the
Speaker 1: water and then coming back from the water. And then
Speaker 1: that was that. There didn't seem to be any kind
Speaker 1: of forethought to their stuff, and then the fact that
Speaker 1: their car was still there and this was a full
Speaker 1: day after they had last been seen. It was suspicious.
Speaker 4: So the like if they were going to party, they
Speaker 4: would have said at least like, oh, let me grab
Speaker 4: my purse.
Speaker 1: Right by now a night had come and gone, and
Speaker 1: the next day it was already, you know, halfway done,
Speaker 1: and they there was nothing that they'd be a hell
Speaker 1: of a party. Yes, So people started to get kind
Speaker 1: of worried and they started to search the park and
Speaker 1: they couldn't find them anywhere. And that's when the police
Speaker 1: became involved, when it was obvious that they were no
Speaker 1: longer in this park, even though they didn't seem to
Speaker 1: have left, which means they just kind of vanished.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And they had a pretty big search party. They
Speaker 4: had soldiers volunteering from a missile base. They had obviously
Speaker 4: the sheriff, had the Civil Air Patrol get involved. I
Speaker 4: think Patty's dad was a see A pilot.
Speaker 1: He was a colonel.
Speaker 4: He's a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol. Coast Guard
Speaker 4: gets involved, dive teams, airplanes, helicopters.
Speaker 1: Sheriff's posse, and horseback.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like they had people combing this area.
Speaker 1: They went back to the nineteenth century to get people
Speaker 1: to search.
Speaker 4: They searched about two hundred and fifty cabins in the area.
Speaker 4: They had a dune buggy trolling the seashore at night
Speaker 4: seeing if bodies were washing the lake shore. Yea, bodies
Speaker 4: were washing the shore like.
Speaker 1: It was a land, sea, and air search of this area,
Speaker 1: and it was a pretty extensive area. But it was
Speaker 1: a really extensive search. The big criticism that's leveled today
Speaker 1: against the whole thing is that they're two full days
Speaker 1: passed before the search was mounted. This is July fifth,
Speaker 1: the first forty eight, first forty eight. Anybody who's ever
Speaker 1: seen that show knows like those are the most critical
Speaker 1: moments or the most critical hours in trying to solve
Speaker 1: a case, because it gets colder and colder with every
Speaker 1: hour that passes. Yeah, so that was a big thing.
Speaker 1: And one of the most startling things about this case
Speaker 1: is that search turned up nothing. Yeah, no evidence of
Speaker 1: what happened to them at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The first little clue that they found wasn't something they
Speaker 4: found while searching, but inside Renee brules purse that she
Speaker 4: had left behind, that was a letter that she had
Speaker 4: written to her husband that was kind of like, I've
Speaker 4: had it with you. All you do is work on
Speaker 4: your hot rods and party with your friends, and I'm
Speaker 4: kind of done, hinting that she wanted to leave the marriage.
Speaker 4: The cop, you know, obviously that's going to be a
Speaker 4: suspicious kind of thing to find, say, yeah, go talk
Speaker 4: to the husband. And they interviewed the husband and the family,
Speaker 4: and everyone seemed to agree, like, hey, things aren't perfect,
Speaker 4: but she probably wrote that letter when she was really upset.
Speaker 4: She didn't give it to me. Know, I might work
Speaker 4: in my hot rods a little too much, but I
Speaker 4: didn't kill my wife, and our marriages is fine overall.
Speaker 4: And and then the cops believed it.
Speaker 1: Her face well, her family backed that up too. Everyone,
Speaker 1: we don't have marital troubles. This seems like something Renee
Speaker 1: would have done, and then just forgotten she even had
Speaker 1: the note. So the cops cleared her husband of being
Speaker 1: involved in any wrongdoing. But it raised a long standing
Speaker 1: theory that's still around today that we'll talk about theories
Speaker 1: later that possibly Renee ran off, and if Renee ran
Speaker 1: off to kind of start a new life or whatever,
Speaker 1: maybe the other women had too.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe so.
Speaker 4: Another interesting thing they learned Anne Miller was by all
Speaker 4: accounts about three months pregnant and had talked to her friends.
Speaker 1: By some accounts, not all Yeah, like like her closest
Speaker 1: friends had had said.
Speaker 3: She said she was pregnant.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, But I don't think they had like physical
Speaker 4: evidence of like a pregnancy rest right, right, So they
Speaker 4: said that she had friends said that she had talked
Speaker 4: about having to go live in a home for unwed mothers.
Speaker 3: She was sort of up against the wall with this.
Speaker 4: Obviously, in the mid sixties it was not a great
Speaker 4: thing to be an unwed mother. And possibly we don't
Speaker 4: know this either for sure, but she was dating a
Speaker 4: married man and it could have been his baby, which
Speaker 4: would have been problematic as well.
Speaker 1: Right, another good reason to r u nnoft.
Speaker 3: That's right, okay, I think.
Speaker 1: So now two of them have a motive to run
Speaker 1: off in certain new lives. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And we should also mention too that Patty was also
Speaker 4: dating a married man, supposedly, and they both were buddies
Speaker 4: from this horse stable. And it turns out there was
Speaker 4: a real scumbag. I looked into this guy more, this
Speaker 4: Silas Jane. He was a rapist. He was linked to
Speaker 4: the murder of three boys. He was linked to the
Speaker 4: murder of to the grind sisters. He was looked into
Speaker 4: for the disappearance of some heiress in Chicago. He had
Speaker 4: a hit put out on his brother. He had a
Speaker 4: fire bomb planet and in this other woman's car, Like,
Speaker 4: this is a bad, bad dude. And he had an
Speaker 4: affiliation with this horse stable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He his brother, I believe owned the horse stable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Si was like the organized crime boss running the
Speaker 1: criminal ring out of the horse stable. And this was
Speaker 1: the stable that Anne and Patty rode their horses at.
Speaker 1: I think Anne was actually she had a job as
Speaker 1: a horse exerciser at these stables. So they were like
Speaker 1: really involved in like just rubbing elbows with this organized
Speaker 1: crime ring. And so cops were like, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this is this is kind of huge, like you know,
Speaker 1: there's as far as looking into their backgrounds. This was
Speaker 1: the biggest red flag the cops had turned up for
Speaker 1: sure that they were known, not that they were like
Speaker 1: criminals themselves, but just that they were like they came
Speaker 1: in close contact with a really dangerous, violent criminal and
Speaker 1: his gang.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And one of the later theories was that they witnessed
Speaker 4: the rigging of the firebomb on this car of this woman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, they had to be taken care of.
Speaker 3: But we'll get to the theories later.
Speaker 1: Sure, So as they start, these are like the leads
Speaker 1: that the investigation turned up. But the cops also very
Speaker 1: wisely involved the media pretty early on, and so other
Speaker 1: leads started to come in, and you know, there's the
Speaker 1: usual like I saw them in Pontiac, Michigan, getting off
Speaker 1: of a bus, or they were all in my drug
Speaker 1: store alive and well, you know last week even though
Speaker 1: they've been missing for three weeks, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But there were some solid leads that came in, and
Speaker 1: one of the big ones was a call from a
Speaker 1: couple from Indianapolis who'd been on the beach that day.
Speaker 1: And I think this is the problem with this. There's
Speaker 1: so little writing about this that you kind of have
Speaker 1: to piece together. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that this is
Speaker 1: the same teenage couple that were their beach neighbors. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. They said that they saw them go
Speaker 1: into the water at noon, and while they were hanging
Speaker 1: out in the water, a man probably in his early
Speaker 1: twenties with dark wavy hair, well tanned. Came up in
Speaker 1: a try hold run About ski boat, which is just
Speaker 1: stop and look up Tryhole run About nineteen sixties and
Speaker 1: some will come up. They're really cool looking like it
Speaker 1: looks like a boat that Frank Sinatra would drive around
Speaker 1: on a lake totally, and it's the kind of lake
Speaker 1: that you would if you were like an early twenties
Speaker 1: guy pick up like girls at the lake in It's
Speaker 1: just like a fun, cool, zippy boat.
Speaker 4: Yes, and side note, if you are turned on by
Speaker 4: those boats like I am, you can find these things
Speaker 4: and buy them for like twelve hundred bucks.
Speaker 3: Yes, these old fiberglas.
Speaker 1: And engage in mechophilia.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 4: You can't buy the old wooden boats. You can, but
Speaker 4: not for twelve hundred bucks. Oh okay, those are really expensive.
Speaker 1: But the fiberglass ones you can get for fairly cheap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's what this guy's supposed to restore it. And
Speaker 1: you know, sure, it's pretty cool. Yeah are you going
Speaker 1: to Are you saying that this is what you're gonna do? Now?
Speaker 4: No, I'm not saying that, but I'm just I've looked
Speaker 4: into it because they're just so like stylish and cool
Speaker 4: and they had like this one was turquoise interior. They
Speaker 4: all have those, like like the ver sixties sort of colors.
Speaker 1: And diamond dusted upholstery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they're pretty sweet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, this is a white try hole runabout
Speaker 1: with turquoise interior, and that this couple from Indianapolis who
Speaker 1: called in later said that they saw these the three
Speaker 1: women get on the boat with this guy and drive off.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's a big one huge. They also get
Speaker 4: another report from witnesses who said these girls came back
Speaker 4: at some point, got something to eat, and we're hanging
Speaker 4: out on the beach. And then a third lead that
Speaker 4: came in and said they actually got on another boat,
Speaker 4: this big cabin cruiser and this was about three pm
Speaker 4: with three dudes and the boat didn't have a name
Speaker 4: on it that we could discern. So in that first
Speaker 4: week they get some boat wreckage. It washes ashore, some syrofoam,
Speaker 4: some seats, an oil can looked probably like.
Speaker 3: A busted or wrecked boat.
Speaker 4: But the police said, listen, we got two boats we're
Speaker 4: targeting here, and none of the stuff from this wreckage
Speaker 4: or potential wreckage is from those boats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they didn't think so at least, yeah, right, so,
Speaker 1: but the weird thing about that boat wreckage is that
Speaker 1: no boat was reported wreck that weekend on Lake Michigan,
Speaker 1: certainly not in the area around Indiana Dune State Park.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's a big one. And then secondly, like
Speaker 1: you said, it doesn't seem to match any of the
Speaker 1: boats that they were looking for. So if you step
Speaker 1: back and take these leads all together, a timeline, a
Speaker 1: possible timeline emerges where Patty and Renee wade out into
Speaker 1: the water around noon, go on like a little pleasure
Speaker 1: cruise on the little try hole, run about shortly after,
Speaker 1: come back to shore, go get something to eat, hang out,
Speaker 1: and then at three go out in another boat, a
Speaker 1: bigger boat which is possibly also manned by the same
Speaker 1: guy who is in the try Hole right about with
Speaker 1: a couple of his friends.
Speaker 4: And that boat definitely had the name sanded off of it,
Speaker 4: which was a huge.
Speaker 1: Red flat exactly. It's very fishy.
Speaker 4: They found sandpaper and red paint on the beach that
Speaker 4: had been sanded off.
Speaker 1: So the cabin cruiser seems to have been largely disincluded
Speaker 1: from suspicion by the cops because from what I saw
Speaker 1: the cops talk to some guys, three guys in a
Speaker 1: cabin cruiser who were there that day, who said.
Speaker 3: We try to pick up some girls.
Speaker 1: And they wouldn't go. One of them said I'm married,
Speaker 1: I can't go, and none of them did. Could have
Speaker 1: been them maybe. The other thing that really kind of
Speaker 1: seemed to have disincluded the cabin cruiser was that someone
Speaker 1: was actually filming. This is nineteen sixty six. They were
Speaker 1: filming home movies on the beach that day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was inevitable, I think you think so. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 4: I found it astounding.
Speaker 3: Oh really yeah, no.
Speaker 4: Man, that's where all those old great color Super eight films.
Speaker 4: I bet there were ten of those cameras on the
Speaker 4: beach there probably right now. And this guy was, you know,
Speaker 4: because he was filming the day. He was doing a
Speaker 4: lot of panning back and forth, which was very fortuitous
Speaker 4: because it kind of proved out some of this stuff
Speaker 4: they saw. And of course this is old film and
Speaker 4: it wasn't like zoomed in or anything, but they did
Speaker 4: see what looked like these three women on this little
Speaker 4: runabout just like everyone said, So that was like a
Speaker 4: pretty good find.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the cabin cruiser there like it looks like there's
Speaker 1: three women on there, and they could be similar, but
Speaker 1: maybe they don't think so. So the cop seemed to
Speaker 1: have zeroed in on that. The three women waited out
Speaker 1: into the water around noon. The guy came up in
Speaker 1: the Tryhole run about shortly after they got on the
Speaker 1: Tryhole run about, and that was the last time anyone
Speaker 1: saw them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and apparently too.
Speaker 4: It wouldn't have been the weirdest thing in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 4: like to go off with the stranger on his boat.
Speaker 4: The thing I read said that kids are always pulling
Speaker 4: up on their boat and like, hey, ladies, you know,
Speaker 4: let's take a ride. That sounds like the fourth of July.
Speaker 4: It's fun, it's fun. It sounds like the seventies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe sure, or the eighties.
Speaker 1: Right, what about the night No, not the nineties.
Speaker 3: Not the nineties. People were not boating in the nineties. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Should we take another break? Oh sure, all right, let's
Speaker 4: take another break. We'll talk about the further investigations, right
Speaker 4: for this, So Chuck.
Speaker 1: One more thing about the boat that we should say is,
Speaker 1: despite having eyewitnesses, despite having film seemingly show them in
Speaker 1: this boat, nothing ever came of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the cops even put out the word. They
Speaker 4: were like, surely someone knows this boat or this boat
Speaker 4: owner to tryhul turquoise interior. Not a crazy boat, but
Speaker 4: not the most common thing in the.
Speaker 1: World, right, But they never found it, just kind of
Speaker 1: vanished along with the women.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so mystery novels, that's pretty good, do.
Speaker 1: You think so?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Thanks? So the weeks and months wore on, and as
Speaker 1: it did, like there are fewer and fewer people actively
Speaker 1: looking for them. As it happens, It just happens that way.
Speaker 1: But sadly, Harold Blow kept this vigil basically for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he just kept that stuff is always just heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know if he was if he kept
Speaker 1: actively searching, but I know he did some traveling even
Speaker 1: later on in life to go check out leads that
Speaker 1: he'd heard about. He kept in contact with cops and
Speaker 1: reporters who were working the case, and even afterward, after
Speaker 1: other groups stopped searching, he chartered his own plane so
Speaker 1: that he could fly reconnaissance flights looking for evidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all to nothing. He never found any trace of his
Speaker 1: daughter or what happened, and he was convinced that all
Speaker 1: of them were dead or they were being held against
Speaker 1: their will.
Speaker 3: Right he was.
Speaker 4: He was like my daughter, you know, he said, we're
Speaker 4: not overbearing parents. He's like, she's got all the freedom
Speaker 4: in the world do what she wants. She wouldn't have
Speaker 4: to run away because like.
Speaker 3: We're the coolest.
Speaker 4: Basically, there was a psychic that got in touch, and
Speaker 4: this is pretty interesting. A psychic said, I visualize a
Speaker 4: cabin on Lake Michigan, not too far from the beach,
Speaker 4: blanket with dark colored sand, rickety wooden stairs up from
Speaker 4: the beach. The cabin's on a bluff, and it has
Speaker 4: a lawn chair outside with its bottom out. One of
Speaker 4: the cops investigated, drove as far as he could drive,
Speaker 4: then did some hiking and found a cabin that met
Speaker 4: this exact description, right down to the chair with the
Speaker 4: bottom rotted out.
Speaker 1: And this was nine years later.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you hear stuff like that, You're like, man,
Speaker 4: you know, I don't believe in psychics calling the cops
Speaker 4: with clues being super accurate. But it turns out there
Speaker 4: was no body there because she said to dig, and
Speaker 4: they dug for three days and found nothing. But unless
Speaker 4: it was a prank, it was a weirdly eerily accurate description.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but I mean, if you have an old abandoned.
Speaker 4: Cottage there, like a fifty to fifty chancer is gonna
Speaker 4: be a lawn chair with the bottom.
Speaker 3: Exactly rusted out.
Speaker 1: That's my theory.
Speaker 3: Maybe it could be coincidence.
Speaker 1: I'm with you, though, it is pretty interesting at the
Speaker 1: very least. So the case remains open. And again, not
Speaker 1: a hint, not a trace, Nothing has ever surfaced metaphorically
Speaker 1: or literally that suggests what happened to those three women,
Speaker 1: And so theories have been allowed to kind of grow
Speaker 1: and take different shape and be argued over. And there's
Speaker 1: like a handful. Most of them are fairly sensible. Actually,
Speaker 1: some are kind of pedestrians. Some are kind of sensational.
Speaker 1: But because no evidence has ever come forward, like each
Speaker 1: one's just about as likely as the other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and well.
Speaker 4: I think we should mention before we do that that
Speaker 4: drowning Miller and Blow were both really good swimmers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like super good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that's supposed to be twenty thirty
Speaker 4: minutes right, surely not Miles.
Speaker 1: I saw Miles. Really Yeah, let me look you do
Speaker 1: some tap dancing.
Speaker 4: That's like a serious elite athlete endurance swimming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was miles. Okay, I'm looking,
Speaker 1: I'm looking. I don't want to get too nitpicky, but.
Speaker 4: Well, if they were swimming thirty miles and they were
Speaker 4: international champion athletes, okay, so regardless, they probably did not drown.
Speaker 4: It is possible that the boat crashed and they did
Speaker 4: drown and washed up somewhere, because you know, Lake Michigan
Speaker 4: is huge, sixteen hundred and forty miles of shoreline.
Speaker 3: It is the.
Speaker 4: Deadliest of the Great Lakes. But it's it's possible that
Speaker 4: they washed up somewhere and didn't you know, weren't ever found.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because remember that that search didn't start for two
Speaker 1: full days after they were noticed to be missing.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So that's one of the more mundane theory. It gets
Speaker 4: a little more sensational when you look at Dick Wiley's theory.
Speaker 1: Right. Dick Wiley was a crime reporter who basically, I
Speaker 1: guess he reported on the case almost from the outset
Speaker 1: and really stuck with it for years and years and years,
Speaker 1: and he developed a theory that Anne Miller being pregnant.
Speaker 1: It was Ann who was pregnant, right, Yeah, that Anne
Speaker 1: Miller had gone out there with her girlfriends that day
Speaker 1: because she was she planned on getting an illegal underground abortion.
Speaker 3: It sounds very not believable to me.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a lot of a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: believe it. But because so little has been written about
Speaker 1: this case and this guy is one of the kind
Speaker 1: of authorities on it, yeah, there's there is some credence
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 4: Not that she would have gone to get an underground abortion,
Speaker 4: but that that would be performed on a boat.
Speaker 1: That's the big, huge, one of the huge flaws in
Speaker 1: that it just seems weird. It's what, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: a more terrible place to perform a delicate procedure like
Speaker 1: an abortion on a house.
Speaker 3: Boat on fourth of July in Lake Michigan.
Speaker 1: Well that's another thing too, is Okay. So what what
Speaker 1: Wiley's theory is is that Anne went out there to
Speaker 1: get this abortion, and Patty and Renee went there as
Speaker 1: moral support, and they went out and met this guy
Speaker 1: who took them to the houseboat for the abortion to
Speaker 1: be performed. Well, the abortion was botched, killing Anne, and
Speaker 1: the abortionists said well we've got to kill you two
Speaker 1: now as well, and they got rid of all three
Speaker 1: bodies and that's what happened to them.
Speaker 3: That'd make a heck of a movie.
Speaker 1: A lot of There are a lot of holes in
Speaker 1: this theory, including the fact that why would you perform
Speaker 1: an abortion on a houseboat? But there is some things
Speaker 1: that kind of give it a little bit of credence.
Speaker 1: In particular, there was a couple named the Largos. Was
Speaker 1: it I always want to call her wand but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Was it Helen? Yeah, it is Helen Actually, Frank and
Speaker 1: Helen Largo. They actually did have an undergrown abortion clinic
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six in Gary, Indiana, which was very
Speaker 1: close to the state park, and their nephew, Ralph bore
Speaker 1: a striking resemblance to the description of the man in
Speaker 1: his early twenties who came up in the tri Hoole runabout.
Speaker 4: Right, And I think Ralph is verified as being there
Speaker 4: that day as well so, and.
Speaker 1: He lived with Frank and Helen Largo. So the Wiley's
Speaker 1: theory that this guy came up and got them to
Speaker 1: take them to go get this procedure done again, why
Speaker 1: would you do it on a houseboat when your clinic
Speaker 1: is twenty miles away? And then Secondly, why would you
Speaker 1: set up this kind of highly illegal procedure in front
Speaker 1: of that many witnesses? And then thirdly, why would they
Speaker 1: leave their stuff on the beach the way that they
Speaker 1: did if they knew they were going for this appointment? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this theory is bonkers, So we'll discard Wiley's theory.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The other one, obviously, was the Silas Jane, the criminal
Speaker 4: dude from the Stables. People say that they think that
Speaker 4: they may have witnessed the car bombing of Sheryl Lynn
Speaker 4: Rude and that he was just getting rid of them
Speaker 4: and snuffing them out. There is every reason to believe
Speaker 4: that this guy would have done that looking at his history,
Speaker 4: if they did possibly witness this rigging of a car bomb.
Speaker 1: He also had an associate who supposedly bore a resemblance
Speaker 1: to the man in the try Hole. Yeah run about.
Speaker 3: Tan wavy hair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, early twenties. And I saw this and I could
Speaker 1: not verify it elsewhere, But there is a widespread rumor that,
Speaker 1: or an unsubstantiated claim that that associate to cy Jane
Speaker 1: Silas Chain put in an insurance claim for a boat
Speaker 1: that had gone down around that time. Interesting, which would
Speaker 1: definitely account for things. It would also account for why
Speaker 1: there was no boat reported missing. You wouldn't report a
Speaker 1: boat missing if you used it to cover up a
Speaker 1: triple homicide.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because that's the biggest thing to me is if
Speaker 4: there were other people on this boat and it was
Speaker 4: an accident, someone would have said, hey, my dark haired,
Speaker 4: wavy haired son is missing and he has this boat.
Speaker 1: And there were no missing person from those three.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what's more, even if like that guy was just
Speaker 1: a total loner who had no friends or family, somebody
Speaker 1: would say, a boat like that probably would have been
Speaker 1: towed by car and trailer, and that car and trailer
Speaker 1: would have just been left there. Over time, somebody would
Speaker 1: have noticed that there was this abandoned car and trailer
Speaker 1: hanging out in the parking lot at the state park.
Speaker 1: Nothing like that ever turned up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The other theory in regards to Sila's Jane is that
Speaker 4: these young women did witness this car bombing and knew
Speaker 4: that they needed to disappear before they were disappeared on purpose.
Speaker 4: So this is and they like faked their own disappearance.
Speaker 1: And that's Patty Blouse's brother's theory. Oh yeah, yeah, he
Speaker 1: showed up on a forum called web Sleuths and apparently
Speaker 1: he's verified. He's like, yes, I'm her brother, and he
Speaker 1: said that he thinks that they did go to stage
Speaker 1: this disappearance, but that the guy who was going to
Speaker 1: help them was actually in the employee of Silas Jane,
Speaker 1: and this helping them disappear actually turned into this triple murder,
Speaker 1: and that their bodies were disposed of. That's what her brother.
Speaker 3: Thinks, and that the one who wasn't one of the
Speaker 3: stable people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that she was just there to help them disappear.
Speaker 4: I don't know got caught up in this. I don't know,
Speaker 4: because like why would she have gone out?
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, bad marriage, who knows. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's a little thin, but I think it makes sense
Speaker 1: for his sister the other two. It doesn't necessarily make
Speaker 1: as much sense for maybe for Anne if she saw
Speaker 1: if she is in danger as well. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think the most likely thing it's like the Peter
Speaker 4: is it Peter principal?
Speaker 3: No, the Ockham's razor? Is it the trolley problem? Ockham's razor?
Speaker 3: Is that they drowned. I mean that's possible, didn't wash
Speaker 3: a shore.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing like in Lake Michigan's the deadliest
Speaker 1: great lake of all of them, all five. I think
Speaker 1: it accounts for out of all five, and it counts
Speaker 1: for half of the deaths in any given year. But
Speaker 1: most bodies do turn up. Most bodies are recovered. So
Speaker 1: if three of them or four, or however many people
Speaker 1: were on that boat that bow down, you'd think some
Speaker 1: trace of at least one of them would have eventually
Speaker 1: turned up.
Speaker 4: You would think, so, you know, yeah, it's a true mystery.
Speaker 1: It's also possible that they were taken away by somebody.
Speaker 1: They weren't planning on disappearing, They weren't planning on leaving.
Speaker 1: They just went on a pleasure cruise with the wrong
Speaker 1: person who murdered them. Right, if a guy got three
Speaker 1: women out on a boat and got it out into
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere on this enormous lake and then
Speaker 1: pulled a gun on him, like you can, you could
Speaker 1: one person could conceivably stay in control of three under
Speaker 1: a situation like that. And that's that's, sadly enough, that's
Speaker 1: a real possibility that that was their fate. They just
Speaker 1: went with the wrong person.
Speaker 4: That seems unlikely to me too, that like a serial
Speaker 4: killer just picked up three women.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. There's one serial killer in particular that
Speaker 1: some people really like for this. His name's Richard Speck.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so Richard Speck is actually not a serial killer.
Speaker 1: He's a mass murderer because he killed eight women at
Speaker 1: a nursing college in one night. Yeah, which makes him
Speaker 1: a mass murderer, not a serial killer. He did that
Speaker 1: on July thirteenth, nineteen sixty six, in Chicago. On July second,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, he was dropped off at a dock
Speaker 1: about twenty miles away from Indiana Dunes State Park.
Speaker 3: He was not tan with dark wavy hair.
Speaker 1: Though that is very true.
Speaker 3: He was a real creep though.
Speaker 1: He was a super big creep, had a terrible personality,
Speaker 1: not a charmer, not good looking. So the idea that
Speaker 1: he could get three like women into a boat of
Speaker 1: his is kind of unlikely.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, he was well known as a very sloppy, opportunistic killer.
Speaker 1: And that this if they were killed by somebody, this
Speaker 1: seems to have been planned. The fact that their bodies
Speaker 1: never turned up suggests that who if they were killed
Speaker 1: by somebody, they would have had to have planned to
Speaker 1: have killed them, because they would have had to have
Speaker 1: brought along all the weights needed and right that stuff.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is like, any one of those theories is
Speaker 1: just as likely as the others.
Speaker 3: Good stuff, sad, tragic, but I love a good mystery.
Speaker 1: Yep. Well, if you want to know more about the
Speaker 1: disappearance of Patricio blow Ann Miller and Renee Brule, you
Speaker 1: can go read the Chicago Tribune article on it, the
Speaker 1: Northwest Indiana Times article, Web Salutes, and the project. All
Speaker 1: those are great resources on this case. And since I
Speaker 1: said that, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 4: Hey guys, I'm writing to say thank you.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 1: See.
Speaker 4: I recently divorced, and I spent about half the time
Speaker 4: I used to spend with my three young kids.
Speaker 3: She goes to stay with me. I'm not going anywhere depressing.
Speaker 3: She said.
Speaker 4: The divorce was the right move, and we're co parenting
Speaker 4: quite amicably, and it's all good. I've got a full
Speaker 4: life in meaningful relationships and lots to do ninety nine
Speaker 4: percent of the time. But the quiet of my day
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Speaker 4: even thinking about it, that I've taken to playing old
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Speaker 1: It's an oldie, It's a real oldie.
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