Speaker 1: Hello everyone in podcast land. If you have ever wanted
Speaker 1: to see us on stage telling jokes and slinging facts,
Speaker 1: and you live out west, you can come see us
Speaker 1: in Portland, Oregon or Vancouver, Canada. Yep. We'll be at
Speaker 1: the Chance Center in Vancouver on Sunday, March twenty nine,
Speaker 1: and then we'll be at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Speaker 1: in Portland on March And if you want tickets and info,
Speaker 1: then the best thing you can do right now is
Speaker 1: to go do s y s K live dot com.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Josh
Speaker 1: T guest producing a way over there. Uh. And that
Speaker 1: makes this Stuff you Should Know super duper mysterious mystery edition.
Speaker 1: That's right, This is a super mysterious one. Super duper
Speaker 1: you could say this a good one. I never heard
Speaker 1: of it. I hadn't either, man, Babe. We should have
Speaker 1: a spin off show just about mysteries and missing persons.
Speaker 1: I've long thought that, Yeah, but then everyone's like, just
Speaker 1: put him on Stuff you Should Know. Yeah, every once
Speaker 1: in awhile you gonna spin it out right? Spin it off?
Speaker 1: The Cleveland Show? Oh man, I never watched that was
Speaker 1: a good I never watched it either. You weren't a
Speaker 1: Family Guy fan, that were you? I mean it's fine,
Speaker 1: but no, I wasn't a fan. Yeah, um, all right?
Speaker 1: What about Laverne and Shirley? What is this Laverne and
Speaker 1: Shirley spin off from Happy Days? Right? That's right, just right,
Speaker 1: let's do this and Mindy spun off too? Uh? What
Speaker 1: is this? Too Close for Comfort? Was that has been off?
Speaker 1: You got this man? Too close for comfort? He wasn't. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know what was it? Oh no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, I don't think that's right.
Speaker 1: What what is this? The ropers? Oh? Well, sure company? Okay?
Speaker 1: What is this after match? Right? I thought? Um? I
Speaker 1: thought Too Close for Comfort was a spin off? I
Speaker 1: think it might be. Well, my first guess was it
Speaker 1: was might have been Ted Nights character from the Mary
Speaker 1: Tyler Moore Show. But that's not true because and too
Speaker 1: Close for Comfort he was a cartoonist, that's right. Remember,
Speaker 1: And the only thing I remember well, I remember a
Speaker 1: lot about that show because I loved it I was
Speaker 1: in love with those daughters. Man, I don't remember them.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was the whole setup, is that their
Speaker 1: daughters lived in the same house or next door or
Speaker 1: something cause trouble. Uh yeah, you know. They were just
Speaker 1: a couple of hell raisers, hell raising beauties. And uh
Speaker 1: who was the guy that was so great? I think
Speaker 1: you're talking about Charles in Charge now I'm thinking it
Speaker 1: too Close for Comfort? But he was a cartoonist and
Speaker 1: he would wear college sweatshirts as part of his character.
Speaker 1: And he wore a Georgia bulldog sweatshirt one time, and
Speaker 1: I was I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 1: It's like, how did they know that? That's the thing?
Speaker 1: All right? You're like, I'm basically on TV right now.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that was him, the Monroe character, j Ted Knight, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: Ted Knight was the lead, the main guy, Jim J.
Speaker 1: Bullock Man, what was he? Hollywood Squares? Among other things
Speaker 1: like too close for Comfort? Does uh? Does this kind
Speaker 1: as a tangent if we haven't actually gotten started. This
Speaker 1: is a preamble, okay preamble? Yeah, yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: good one. And you put this together, Um, where'd you
Speaker 1: get most of the stuff, wrote it myself. Well, there's
Speaker 1: one part that I was like, here, this is just
Speaker 1: easier if I copy and paste from a Chicago Tribune article.
Speaker 1: From that one, it's very good, there's That's one of
Speaker 1: the things about this case is anyone who kind of
Speaker 1: gets involved in this, we'll see there is not a
Speaker 1: lot of information out there. Yeah, and funny enough, one
Speaker 1: of the biggest mysteries of this whole thing is what
Speaker 1: kind of boat that was, which we'll get to. That
Speaker 1: was my bad. Well, no, man, I saw in a
Speaker 1: couple of other articles it called this boat a try Moran,
Speaker 1: which is very much a catamaran. Right, they made the
Speaker 1: same the same they were just okay, yeah, because the
Speaker 1: same thing. So try Hold. I was like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: a try cat, which is a sailboat, and that's what
Speaker 1: I thought it was. No, there's a try Hold speedboat
Speaker 1: called the Runabout that was kind of big in the sixties. Well,
Speaker 1: more specifically, it's a try Hold run about. A runabout
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean it has three holes. But those are
Speaker 1: my favorite boats in the world. Are these fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties fiberglass runabouts. This is their amazing fifties and sixties
Speaker 1: run about of all time with three holes. He thought
Speaker 1: one was crazy, just get ready for three. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the boat will come up and I had to mark
Speaker 1: out try cat and just about. I'm very sorry. So
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here finally now is the disappearance
Speaker 1: of three young women, uh in suburban Chicago and the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen sixties at Indiana Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now it's Indiana Dunes National Seashore, National Lakes Shore, National
Speaker 1: Lake Shore. Um, but at the time it was a
Speaker 1: state park. And this is Saturday, July two, nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: that's right, the three women. That was a twenty one
Speaker 1: year old named Patricia Blow. Yeah, I think so. Um.
Speaker 1: She went. She got in her car, which was eleven
Speaker 1: year old at this point, Buick Sedan ninety five. Buick
Speaker 1: went to pick up her friends and Miller at her house.
Speaker 1: She lived with her folks, and then to her other friend,
Speaker 1: Renee Brule, who was the only one who was married.
Speaker 1: I went to pick her up at her house. They
Speaker 1: were nineteen and twenty and they were like at think
Speaker 1: one of the most twenty two at least. But those
Speaker 1: are nippicky details. They were all late teens early twenties.
Speaker 1: And wait a minute, did you just call me nipicky? No? No,
Speaker 1: no, no no, I think you did. Okay, Um and just
Speaker 1: called me a liar on National TV. I think you
Speaker 1: and and Patricia were friends. They were horse riders, and
Speaker 1: they were friends from these horse stables. But they were
Speaker 1: all three buddies. Not since grade school, but for the
Speaker 1: last couple of years. It seems like right, yeah, and
Speaker 1: um they all lived around Chicago, and that's where they
Speaker 1: were traveling about sixty miles eighty miles I've seen both
Speaker 1: to Indiana Dune State Park to just basically go hang
Speaker 1: out on the on the beach that day again Saturday.
Speaker 1: It was the July four weekend. Yeah, super crowded. They
Speaker 1: were just going to the beach to have some fun.
Speaker 1: Most people think, um, they got to the beach by
Speaker 1: ten am, parked the buick, hiked over the dunes on
Speaker 1: the kind of rickety boardwalk over to beach, and set
Speaker 1: up camp. I think about a hundred yards from shore.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty substantial beach. Either they are they hiked
Speaker 1: a hundred yards and set up near the beach. It
Speaker 1: might be the ladder of the two that sounds more right.
Speaker 1: And on this weekend again because it was July fourth weekend,
Speaker 1: the beach was just absolutely packed. This is Lake Michigan,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty pretty big lake, and this beach
Speaker 1: itself for this park itself and things like twenty six
Speaker 1: miles of shoreline or something like that. But even still
Speaker 1: there's like nine thousand people on the beach that weekend. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw nine to ten thousand people, four to five
Speaker 1: thousand cars in the parking lots, and four to six
Speaker 1: thousand boats in the water. So packed, just packed. It's
Speaker 1: like Jaws or something up in there, Amity Island, fourth
Speaker 1: of July. Um, so the the the renee and and
Speaker 1: Patty set up shop, put down their beach blanket. Uh,
Speaker 1: just kind of close by to this teenage couple, um,
Speaker 1: who are like their beach neighbors. You know, there's and
Speaker 1: everyone was pretty close, kind of elbowed to jowl and
Speaker 1: that what that's called. Okay, um, and this this teenage
Speaker 1: couple kind of factor in big time, but just kind
Speaker 1: of note their presence for now. That's right, So about noon, chuck, um, well,
Speaker 1: actually the teenage couple factor and now they noticed that, um,
Speaker 1: the three women were wading into the water about noon,
Speaker 1: so I guess for about two hours they were just
Speaker 1: kind of hanging out in the sun. They got hot
Speaker 1: enough to go into the water about noon, that's right.
Speaker 1: And that was the last time that this couple saw them.
Speaker 1: Maybe perhaps Um the day went on, they never came back.
Speaker 1: This teenage couple said that their stuff still lay in here. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, they may be off party in somewhere, so
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't think like, these three young ladies
Speaker 1: are missing and perhaps murdered. I think they were worried
Speaker 1: that their stuff might get stolen. I think it was
Speaker 1: his innocent that the 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, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is what you did in ninety six or today
Speaker 1: still if you're a decent person, that's right. So they
Speaker 1: went to a ranger and they said, hey, these uh
Speaker 1: young women were here. They left their stuff. Um. The
Speaker 1: ranger thought the same thing. He's like, well, let me
Speaker 1: just take care of this stuff and collect it, uh,
Speaker 1: and so it doesn't get stolen. They're probably off partying.
Speaker 1: But that was the last that anyone saw these three
Speaker 1: young women. Um, No one to this day knows what happened.
Speaker 1: They vanished literally without a trace. Yeah, there's never been
Speaker 1: any evidence of what happened to them, No trace of them, no, nothing, nothing.
Speaker 1: From that point on, I think we should take an
Speaker 1: earlier break because of that dumb long preamble. And this
Speaker 1: is a great little spot for a cliffhanger. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we'll be right back, okay, Chuck so Um. About eighteen
Speaker 1: hours after that park ranger collected their things that I'd say,
Speaker 1: around dusk, um, a call came into Indiana Doune State
Speaker 1: Park Ranger station and it was from Harold blah Um
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. Yeah. So they went through her stuff,
Speaker 1: the rangers did. They found a set of car keys
Speaker 1: that um had a little um miniature Illinois license plate
Speaker 1: that matched a license play in the parking lot. Either
Speaker 1: a great coincidence or you could get those custom made
Speaker 1: at some little beach shop, which is probably what happened.
Speaker 1: So they find her car. They found her Buick there
Speaker 1: in the parking lot. Indiana State Police say, we're going
Speaker 1: to take over here because it's pretty clear that this
Speaker 1: is a missing person's case. Yeah, and so they it
Speaker 1: was obvious that they had they had never left the park,
Speaker 1: or at least they hadn't left, you know, in the car, right,
Speaker 1: and they left their car, they left their stuff. That's
Speaker 1: suddenly very highly suspicious. The idea that they were just
Speaker 1: off partying is suddenly kind of a tenuous theory, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: 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. They it seemed like the way they left
Speaker 1: their stuff that they were planning on just getting into
Speaker 1: the water and then coming back from the water. And
Speaker 1: then that was that there didn't seem to be any
Speaker 1: kind of um forethought to their stuff. And then the
Speaker 1: fact that their car was still there and this was
Speaker 1: a full day after they had last been seen, it
Speaker 1: was suspicious. So the like, if they were going to party,
Speaker 1: they would have said at least like, oh, let me
Speaker 1: grab my purse. By now a night had come and gone,
Speaker 1: and the next day it was already you know, halfway done,
Speaker 1: and they there there was nothing that would be a
Speaker 1: hell of a party. Yes, So um, people started to
Speaker 1: get kind of worried and they started to search the
Speaker 1: park and they couldn't find them anywhere. And that's when
Speaker 1: the police became involved, when it was obvious that they
Speaker 1: were no longer in this park, even though they didn't
Speaker 1: seem to have left, which means they just kind of vanished. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they had a pretty big search party. Um. They
Speaker 1: had soldiers volunteering from a missile base, they had obviously
Speaker 1: the sheriff, had the Civil Air Patrol get involved. I
Speaker 1: think ADDIE's dad was a see A pilot. He was
Speaker 1: a colonel. He's a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol.
Speaker 1: Coast Guard gets involved, dive teams, um airplanes, helicopters, sheriffs,
Speaker 1: posse on horseback. Yeah, like they had people combing this area.
Speaker 1: They went back to the nineteenth century to get people
Speaker 1: to search. Uh. They searched about two d and fifty
Speaker 1: cabins and the area. They had a dune buggy trolling
Speaker 1: the seashore at night seeing if bodies were washing or
Speaker 1: the lake shore bodies were washing ashore like it was.
Speaker 1: It was a land, sea and air search of this area,
Speaker 1: and it was a pretty extensive area. Um, But it
Speaker 1: was a really extensive search. The big criticism that's leveled
Speaker 1: today against the whole thing is that they're two full
Speaker 1: days past before the search was mounted. This was ve
Speaker 1: first forty eight. Anybody who's ever seen that show knows
Speaker 1: like those are the most critical moments, are the most
Speaker 1: critical hours and trying to solve a case we because
Speaker 1: it gets colder and colder with every hour that passes.
Speaker 1: So that was a big thing. And one of the
Speaker 1: one of the most startling things about this case is
Speaker 1: that search turned up nothing. Yeah, no evidence of what
Speaker 1: happened to them at all. Yeah. The first little clue
Speaker 1: that they found, um wasn't something they found while searching,
Speaker 1: but inside Renee brules purse that she had left behind,
Speaker 1: there was a letter that she had written to her
Speaker 1: husband that was kind of like, I've had it with you.
Speaker 1: All you do is work on your hot rods and
Speaker 1: party with your friends, and I'm kind of done, hinting
Speaker 1: that she wanted to leave the marriage. The cop you know,
Speaker 1: obviously that's going to be a suspicious kind of thing
Speaker 1: to find, say, go talk to the husband, and they
Speaker 1: interviewed the husband and the family and everyone seemed to agree, like, hey,
Speaker 1: things aren't perfect, but she probably wrote that letter when
Speaker 1: she was really upset. She didn't give it to me. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I might work in my hot rods a
Speaker 1: little too much, but I didn't kill my wife, and
Speaker 1: our marriages is fine overall. And her then the cops
Speaker 1: believed it her face well, her family backed that up
Speaker 1: to everyone, we don't have marital troubles. This seems like
Speaker 1: something Renee would have done, and then just forgotten she
Speaker 1: even had the note. So the cups cleared her husband
Speaker 1: of being involved in any wrongdoing. But it raised a
Speaker 1: longstanding theory that's still around today that we'll talk about
Speaker 1: theories later that um, possibly Renee ran off, and if
Speaker 1: Renee ran off to kind of start a new life
Speaker 1: or whatever, maybe the other women had to maybe maybe.
Speaker 1: So another interesting thing they learned, uh Ann Miller was
Speaker 1: by all accounts about three months pregnant and had talked
Speaker 1: to her friends by some accounts not all Yeah, like
Speaker 1: like her closest friends had had said she said she
Speaker 1: was pregnant, right, But I don't think they had like
Speaker 1: physical evidence of like a pregnancy test, right right. So um,
Speaker 1: they said that she had friends said that she had
Speaker 1: talked about having to go live in a home unwed mothers.
Speaker 1: She was sort of up against the wall with this. Obviously,
Speaker 1: in the mid sixties it was not a great thing
Speaker 1: to be an unwed mother. Um. And it possibly we
Speaker 1: don't know this either for sure, but she was dating
Speaker 1: a married man and it could have been his baby,
Speaker 1: which would have been problematic as well. Right, another good
Speaker 1: reason to r U N N O f T. That's right,
Speaker 1: I think. So now two of them have a motive
Speaker 1: to to run off and start a new life. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And we should also mention too that Patty was also
Speaker 1: dating a married man supposedly. Um, and they both were
Speaker 1: buddies from this horse stable. And it turns out there
Speaker 1: was a real scumbag. I looked into this guy more
Speaker 1: Silas Jane he Uh was a rapist. He was linked
Speaker 1: to the murder of three boys. He was linked to
Speaker 1: the murder of to the Grime sisters. He was looked
Speaker 1: into for the disappearing and of some heiress in Chicago.
Speaker 1: He had a hit put out on his brother. He
Speaker 1: had a fire bomb planet and in this other woman's car, Like,
Speaker 1: this is a bad, bad dude. And he had an
Speaker 1: affiliation with this horse stable. Yeah, he his brother I
Speaker 1: believe owned the horse stable and Si was like the
Speaker 1: organized crime boss running the the criminal ring out of
Speaker 1: the horse stable. And this was the stable that Anne
Speaker 1: and Patty rode their horses at. I think Anne was
Speaker 1: actually she had a job as a horse exerciser at
Speaker 1: these stables. So they were like really involved in like
Speaker 1: just rubbing elbows with these this organized crime ring. Um.
Speaker 1: And so cops were like, well, wait a minute, this
Speaker 1: is this is kind of huge, like you know, there's
Speaker 1: as far as looking into their backgrounds, this was the
Speaker 1: biggest red flag the cops had turned up that they
Speaker 1: were they were known, not 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. Yeah. And one of the later theories was
Speaker 1: that they witnessed the the rigging of the firebomb on
Speaker 1: this car of this woman and you know they had
Speaker 1: to be taken care of, but we'll get to the
Speaker 1: theories later. Sure. So um, as they as they start,
Speaker 1: these were like the leads that the investigation turned up.
Speaker 1: But the cops also very wisely involved the media pretty
Speaker 1: early on, and um, so other leads started to come in,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's the usual like I saw him
Speaker 1: in Pontiac, Michigan getting off of a bus, or they
Speaker 1: were all in my drug store alive and well, you
Speaker 1: know last week, um, even though they've been missing for
Speaker 1: three weeks, that kind of thing. But there were some
Speaker 1: solid leads that came in and one of the big
Speaker 1: ones was a call from a couple from Indianapolis who
Speaker 1: had been on the beach that day. And I think
Speaker 1: this is the problem with this. There's so little writing
Speaker 1: about this that you kind of have to piece together.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that this is the same teenage couple
Speaker 1: that were their beach neighbors. I'm pretty sure they said
Speaker 1: that they saw them go into the water at noon,
Speaker 1: and while they were hanging out in the water, a
Speaker 1: man probably in his early twenties with dark wavy hair
Speaker 1: well tanned, came up in a try hold run about
Speaker 1: ski boat, which is just stop and look up try
Speaker 1: hole run about nineteen sixties and some will come up.
Speaker 1: They're really cool looking like it looks like the boat
Speaker 1: that Frank Sinatra would drive around on a lake. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's the kind of lake that you would if
Speaker 1: you were like an early twenties guy, pick up like
Speaker 1: girls at the lake in it's just like a fun, cool,
Speaker 1: zippy boat. Yes. And side note, if you are turned
Speaker 1: on by those boats like I am, you can find
Speaker 1: these things and buy them for like, yes, these old
Speaker 1: fiberglass boats and engage in mecaphilia. You can't. You can't
Speaker 1: buy the old wooden boats. You can, but not for bucks.
Speaker 1: Those are really expensive. But the fiberglass ones you can
Speaker 1: get for fairly cheap. Yeah. Well that's what this guy
Speaker 1: is supposed to like restored and you know it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah are you gonna Are you saying that this is
Speaker 1: what you're gonna do now? Uh No, I'm not saying that,
Speaker 1: but I'm just I've looked into it because they're just
Speaker 1: so like stylish and cool and they had like this
Speaker 1: one was turquoise interior. They all have those, like the
Speaker 1: sixties sort of colors and diamond dusted upholstery. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're pretty sweet. Yeah. So yeah, this is a white
Speaker 1: try hole runabout with turquoise interior and um that this
Speaker 1: couple from Indianapolis who called in later said that they
Speaker 1: saw the three women get on the boat with this
Speaker 1: guy and drive off. Yeah, so that's a big one. Huge.
Speaker 1: They also get another report from witnesses who said these
Speaker 1: girls came back at some point, got something to eat, eat,
Speaker 1: and we're hanging out on the beach. And then a
Speaker 1: third lead that came in and said they actually got
Speaker 1: on another boat, this big cabin cruiser. Uh. And this
Speaker 1: was about three pm with three dudes and the boat
Speaker 1: didn't have a name on it that we could discern.
Speaker 1: So in that first week they get some boat wreckage. Uh.
Speaker 1: It washes a shore, some styrofoams, some seats, an oil
Speaker 1: can looked probably like a busted or wrecked boat. But
Speaker 1: the police said, didn't listen, We've got two boats were
Speaker 1: targeting here, and none of the stuff from this wreckage
Speaker 1: or potential wreckage is from those boats. Yeah, they didn't.
Speaker 1: They didn't think so at least. Yeah right, so, um,
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 Doune State Park.
Speaker 1: That's a big one. And then Secondly, like you said,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to match any any of the boats
Speaker 1: that they were looking for. So if you step back
Speaker 1: and take these leads all together, a timeline, a possible
Speaker 1: timeline emerges where Um, Patty and and Renee waited out
Speaker 1: into the water around noon, go on like a little
Speaker 1: pleasure cruise on the little try hole, runabout uh 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 hall about with a
Speaker 1: couple of his friends. And that boat definitely had the
Speaker 1: name sanded off of it, which was a huge red flag. Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's very fishy. They found sandpaper and red paint on
Speaker 1: the beach that had been sanded off. So the cabin
Speaker 1: cruiser seems to have been largely disincluded from suspicion by
Speaker 1: the cops because from what I saw, the cops talk
Speaker 1: to some guys, three guys in a cabin cruiser who
Speaker 1: were there that day, who said we Um tried to
Speaker 1: pick up some girls and they wouldn't go. One of
Speaker 1: them said, I'm married, I can't go, and none of
Speaker 1: them did could have been them maybe. Um. The other
Speaker 1: thing that really kind of seemed to have dis included
Speaker 1: the cabin cruiser was that someone was actually filming this
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. They were filming home movies on the
Speaker 1: beach that day. Yeah, that was inevitable, I think you
Speaker 1: think so. Yeah, sure, I found it astounding. Really No, man,
Speaker 1: that's where all those old great color Super eight films.
Speaker 1: I bet there were ten of those cameras on the
Speaker 1: beach then you're probably right now, and they were. This
Speaker 1: guy was, you know, because he was filming the day.
Speaker 1: He was doing a lot of panning back and forth,
Speaker 1: which was very fortuitous because it kind of proved out
Speaker 1: some of the stuff they saw. And of course this
Speaker 1: is old film and it wasn't like zoomed in or anything.
Speaker 1: But they did see what looked like, uh, these three
Speaker 1: women on this little runabout Uh, just like everyone said.
Speaker 1: So that was like a pretty good find. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: cabin cruiser there like, it looks like there's three women
Speaker 1: on there and they could be similar, but maybe they don't.
Speaker 1: So so the seemed to have zeroed in on that.
Speaker 1: The um the three women waited out into the water
Speaker 1: around noon the guy came up in the Tryhole run
Speaker 1: about shortly after they got on the Tryhole runabout, and
Speaker 1: that was the last time anyone saw them. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: apparently too, it wouldn't have been the weirdest thing in
Speaker 1: nineteen six, like to go off with a stranger on
Speaker 1: his boat. They the thing I read said that dudes
Speaker 1: are always pulling up on their boat and like, hey ladies,
Speaker 1: you know, let's take a ride. That sounds like the
Speaker 1: fourth of July. It's fun, it's fun. It sounds like
Speaker 1: the seventies. Yeah, maybe or the eighties. Right, what about
Speaker 1: the no, not the nines? Not then people were not
Speaker 1: voting in the nineties. Um, should we take another break?
Speaker 1: Oh sure, all right, let's take another break. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about the further investigations, right for this So it took
Speaker 1: one more thing about the boat that we should say
Speaker 1: is despite having eyewitnesses, despite having film seemingly show them
Speaker 1: in this boat, nothing ever came of it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the cops even put out the word. They were like,
Speaker 1: surely someone knows this boat or this boat owner to
Speaker 1: try haul turquoise interior. Not a crazy boat, but not
Speaker 1: the most common thing in the world. Right, But they
Speaker 1: never found it just kind of vanished along with the women. So, um,
Speaker 1: mystery novels. That's pretty good, do you think so? Yeah? Thanks? Um.
Speaker 1: So the weeks and months wore on, and as it did,
Speaker 1: like there are fewer and fewer people actively looking for them.
Speaker 1: As it happens, it just happens that way. But sadly,
Speaker 1: Harold um blow Um kept this vigil basically for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. He just kept that stuff is
Speaker 1: always just heartbreaking. Yeah. I don't know if he was
Speaker 1: if he kept actively searching, but I know. Um. He
Speaker 1: did some traveling even later on in life, to go
Speaker 1: check out leads that he had heard about. He kept
Speaker 1: in contact with cops and reporters who were working the case. Um,
Speaker 1: and even afterward, after other groups stopped searching, he chartered
Speaker 1: his own plane so that he could fly reconnaissance flights
Speaker 1: looking for evidence all to nothing. Um. He never found
Speaker 1: any any trace of his daughter or what happened, and
Speaker 1: he he was convinced that all of them were dead
Speaker 1: or they were being held against their will, right he was.
Speaker 1: He was like my daughter, you know, he said, we're
Speaker 1: not overbearing parents. He's like, she's got all the freedom
Speaker 1: in the world. Do what she wants, she wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to run away. Um, because like we're the coolest basically. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a psyche that got in touch. And this
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. A psychic said, I visualize a cabin
Speaker 1: on Lake Michigan, not too far from the beach, blanket
Speaker 1: with dark colored sand, a rickety rickety wooden stairs up
Speaker 1: from the beach. The cabins on a bluff, and it
Speaker 1: has a lawn chair outside with its bottom out. One
Speaker 1: of the cops investigated, drove as far as he could drive,
Speaker 1: then did some hiking and found a cabin that met
Speaker 1: this exact description, right down to the chair with the
Speaker 1: bottom rotted out. And this was nine years later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you hear stuff like that, you're like, man,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't believe in psychics calling the cops
Speaker 1: with clues being super accurate. But it turns out there
Speaker 1: was no body there because she said to dig, and
Speaker 1: they dug for three days and found nothing. But unless
Speaker 1: it was a prank, it was a weirdly eerily accurate description. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean, if you have an old, abandoned cottage,
Speaker 1: there like a fifty chances be a lawnchair with the
Speaker 1: bottom rusted out. That's my theory. 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 to kind of
Speaker 1: grow and take different shape and be argued over. And
Speaker 1: there's like, um, a handful. Most of them are fairly sensible. Actually,
Speaker 1: some are kind of pedestrian, some are kind of sensational.
Speaker 1: But because no evidence has ever come forward, um, the
Speaker 1: like each one is just about as likely as the other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and well, um, I think we should mention before we
Speaker 1: do that that that drowning Miller and Blou were both
Speaker 1: really good swimmers, yeah, like super good. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think that's supposed to be minutes right, surely not Miles.
Speaker 1: I saw Miles really yeah. Let me let me look.
Speaker 1: You do some tap dancing. That's like serious elite athlete
Speaker 1: endurance swimming. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Miles. I'm looking,
Speaker 1: I'm looking. I don't want to get to nitpicky, but well,
Speaker 1: if they were swimming thirty miles and they were international
Speaker 1: champion athletes, so regardless, they probably did not drown. It
Speaker 1: is possible that the boat crashed and they did drown
Speaker 1: and washed up somewhere because you know, Lake Michigan is huge,
Speaker 1: forty miles of shoreline. Um, it is the deadliest of
Speaker 1: the Great Lakes. But it's uh, it's possible that they
Speaker 1: washed up somewhere and didn't you know, weren't ever found. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because remember that that search didn't start for two full
Speaker 1: days after they were um noticed to be missing. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's one of the more mundane theories. It gets
Speaker 1: a little more sensational when you look at Wiley's theory, right.
Speaker 1: Dick Wiley was a crime reporter who, um, 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 Ann Miller being pregnant.
Speaker 1: It was Anne who was pregnant, right, that am Miller
Speaker 1: had gone out there with her girlfriends that day because
Speaker 1: she was she planned on getting an illegal underground abortion. Um.
Speaker 1: It's very not believable to me. So, yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of people don't believe it, but because
Speaker 1: so little has been written about this case and this
Speaker 1: guy is one of the kind of authorities on it,
Speaker 1: there's there is some credence to it. Not that she
Speaker 1: would have gone to get an underground abortion, but that
Speaker 1: that would be performed on a boat. That's the big, huge,
Speaker 1: one of the huge flaws in that just seems weird.
Speaker 1: It's what, I can't imagine a more terrible place to
Speaker 1: perform a delicate procedure like an abortion on a house boat.
Speaker 1: Four chan. Well that's another thing too, is okay? So
Speaker 1: so what what Wiley's theory is is that um and
Speaker 1: went out there to get this abortion, and UM, Patty
Speaker 1: and Renee went there is moral support, UM and they
Speaker 1: went out and met this guy who took them to
Speaker 1: the house boat for the abortion to be performed. Well,
Speaker 1: the abortion was botched, killing Ann and the abortionists said, well,
Speaker 1: we've got to kill you two now as well, and
Speaker 1: they got rid of all three bodies. And that's what
Speaker 1: happened to them. That 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 house boat? Um? But there is
Speaker 1: some things that kind of give it a little bit
Speaker 1: of credence. In particular, there was a couple named the
Speaker 1: largos Um What what was it? I always want to
Speaker 1: call her Wanda, but it wasn't. Was it Helen? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is Helen actually Um Frank and Helen Largo they
Speaker 1: actually did have an underground abortion clinic in Um nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six and Gary, Indiana, which was very close to
Speaker 1: the state park. And their nephew, Ralph bore a striking
Speaker 1: resemblance to the description of the man in his early
Speaker 1: twenties who came up in the the try hole runabout right.
Speaker 1: And I think Ralph is verified as being there that
Speaker 1: day as well so, and he lived with Frank and
Speaker 1: Helen Largo. So the Wiley's theory that like this guy
Speaker 1: came up and got them to take them to go
Speaker 1: get this procedure done. Um again, why would you do
Speaker 1: it on a houseboat when your clinic is twenty miles away?
Speaker 1: And then secondly, why would you set up this kind
Speaker 1: of highly illegal procedure in front of that many witnesses?
Speaker 1: And then thirdly, why would they leave their stuff on
Speaker 1: the beach the way that they did if they knew
Speaker 1: they were going for this appointment. Yeah, none. This theory
Speaker 1: is bonkers, so we'll discard Wiley's theory. Yeah. The other one,
Speaker 1: obviously was the uh Silas Jane, the criminal dude from
Speaker 1: the Stables. People say that they think that they may
Speaker 1: have witnessed the car bombing of Cheryl Lynn Rude and
Speaker 1: that he was just getting rid of them and snuffing
Speaker 1: them out. There is every reason to believe that this
Speaker 1: guy would have done that looking at his history if
Speaker 1: they did possibly witness this rigging of a car bomb.
Speaker 1: He also had a an associate who supposedly bore a
Speaker 1: resemblance to the man in the tri hole. Yeah, run
Speaker 1: about tan wavy hair yea early twenties um and I
Speaker 1: saw this and I could not verify it elsewhere. But
Speaker 1: there's a widespread rumor that are an unsubstantiated claim that
Speaker 1: that associate to Sigh Jane Silas Jane Um put in
Speaker 1: an insurance claim for a boat that had gone down
Speaker 1: around that time. Interesting, which would definitely account for things.
Speaker 1: It would also account for why there was no boat
Speaker 1: reported missing. You wouldn't report about missing if you used
Speaker 1: it to cover up a triple homicide. Yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: the biggest thing to me is, uh, if there were
Speaker 1: other people on this boat and it was an accident,
Speaker 1: someone would have said, hey, my dark haired, wavy haired
Speaker 1: son is missing and he has this boat. And there
Speaker 1: were no missing person from those three. Yeah. And what's more,
Speaker 1: even if like that guy was just a total loner
Speaker 1: who had no friends or family, somebody would say, a
Speaker 1: boat like that probably would have been towed by car
Speaker 1: and trailer, and that car and trailer would have just
Speaker 1: been left there. Over time, somebody would have noticed that
Speaker 1: there's this abandoned car and trailer hanging out the parking
Speaker 1: lot at the state park. Nothing like that ever turned up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other theory in regards to Silas Jane is that
Speaker 1: these young women did witness this car bombing and knew
Speaker 1: that they needed to disappear before they were disappeared on purpose.
Speaker 1: So this is they like faked their own disappearance. And
Speaker 1: that's Patty blows brother's theory. Yeah. Yeah, he showed up
Speaker 1: on a forum called Webb Sleuths and apparently he's verified.
Speaker 1: He's like, yes, I'm her brother, and he said that
Speaker 1: he thinks that they did go to stage the disappearance,
Speaker 1: but that the guy who was going to help them
Speaker 1: was actually in the employee of Silas Jane, and this
Speaker 1: helping them disappear actually turned into this triple murder, and
Speaker 1: that their bodies were disposed of. That's what her brother thinks.
Speaker 1: And that the one um who wasn't one of the stable,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, that she was just there to help them disappear.
Speaker 1: I don't get caught up in this. I don't know,
Speaker 1: because like, why would she have gone out? I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean bad marriage, who knows. Maybe it's a little thin,
Speaker 1: but I think it makes sense for his sister the
Speaker 1: other two, it doesn't necessarily make as much sense for
Speaker 1: maybe for Anne if she saw, if she was in
Speaker 1: danger as well. I don't know. I think the most
Speaker 1: likely thing it's it's like the Peter is it Peter Principal? No,
Speaker 1: the ocams razor? Is it the trolley problem Akam's razor?
Speaker 1: Is that they've drowned. I mean, that's possible. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing, Like Lot in Lake Michigan's the deadliest great
Speaker 1: lake of all of them, all five, I think it
Speaker 1: accounts for out of all five, it accounts for half
Speaker 1: of the deaths in any given year. UM. But most
Speaker 1: bodies do turn up. Most bodies are recovered. So if
Speaker 1: three of them or four, or however many people were
Speaker 1: on that boat that bow down, you'd think some trace
Speaker 1: of at least one of them would have eventually turned up,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, it's a true mystery. It's also possible
Speaker 1: that they were taken away by somebody. They weren't planning
Speaker 1: on disappearing, They weren't planning on leaving. Um, they just
Speaker 1: went on a pleasure cruise with the wrong person who
Speaker 1: murdered them. Um. If a guy got three women out
Speaker 1: on a boat and got it out into the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere on this enormous lake, and then pulled a
Speaker 1: gun on him, Um, like you could. You could one
Speaker 1: person could conceivably stay in control of three under a
Speaker 1: situation like that. Um. And that's that's a sadly enough,
Speaker 1: that's a real possibility that that was their fate. They
Speaker 1: just went with the wrong person. That seems unlikely to
Speaker 1: me too, that like a serial killer just picked up
Speaker 1: three women. Here's the thing. There's one serial killer in
Speaker 1: particular that some people really like for this. His name
Speaker 1: is Richard Spec. So Richard Spec is actually not a
Speaker 1: serial killer, is a mass murderer because he killed eight
Speaker 1: women at a nursing college in one night, which makes
Speaker 1: him a mass murderer, not a serial killer. He did
Speaker 1: that on July thirteenth, nine sixty six, in Chicago. On
Speaker 1: July second, nineteen sixty six, he was dropped off at
Speaker 1: a dock about twenty miles away from Indiana Dunes State Park.
Speaker 1: He was not tan with dark wavy hair, though that
Speaker 1: is very true. He was a real cre though he
Speaker 1: was a super big creep. Um had a terrible personality,
Speaker 1: not a charmer, not good looking. To the idea that
Speaker 1: he could get three like women into a boat of
Speaker 1: his is kind of unlikely. Also, he was well known
Speaker 1: as a very sloppy, opportunistic killer. And that this if
Speaker 1: they were killed by somebody, this seems to have been planned.
Speaker 1: The fact that their body has never turned up suggests
Speaker 1: that who if they were killed by somebody, they would
Speaker 1: have had to a plan to have killed them, because
Speaker 1: they would have had to have brought along all the
Speaker 1: weights needed. And yet stuff whatever it is like, any
Speaker 1: one of those theories is just as likely as the others.
Speaker 1: Good stuff, sad, tragic, but I love a good mystery. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about Um, the disappearance
Speaker 1: of Patricia Blau and Miller and Renee Brule. You can
Speaker 1: go read the Chicago Tribune article on it, the Northwest
Speaker 1: Indiana Times article, web Sleuse, and the Charlie 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, Hey guys,
Speaker 1: I'm writing to say thank you. Um You see, I
Speaker 1: recently divorced and I spent about half the time I
Speaker 1: used to spend with my three young kids. She goes,
Speaker 1: stay with me. I'm not going anywhere depressing. She said.
Speaker 1: The divorce was the right move, and we're co parenting
Speaker 1: quite amicably, and it's all good. I've got a full
Speaker 1: life in meaningful relationships and lots to do at a time.
Speaker 1: But the quiet of um my day at times when
Speaker 1: it is a kid free house is something that's gotten
Speaker 1: some getting used to. I realized without even thinking about it,
Speaker 1: that have taken to playing old episodes like Bizarre Ways
Speaker 1: to Die. It's an oldie, it's a real oldie. She's like,
Speaker 1: just because they make me feel in a totally well
Speaker 1: adjusted and not insane way, like I'm in the company
Speaker 1: of pals. I've been a listener for about five years.
Speaker 1: Only recently have I come to appreciate that I'm always
Speaker 1: cheered up and made you feel less lonely by hearing
Speaker 1: you guys talk to each other and to all of
Speaker 1: us in podcast listener land. So thanks for what you do,
Speaker 1: Thanks to the team who helps you, Like Jerry Uh,
Speaker 1: you could do a good thing for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate it. Big hugs from Catherine in Chicago, Chicago,
Speaker 1: how appropriate. Thanks a lot, Katherine, We really appreciate that.
Speaker 1: It's good to hear. Keep on keeping on, keep on trucking. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch of this, like
Speaker 1: Katherine did to let us know how you're doing, we
Speaker 1: want to hear that. You can go on to um
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com, check out our social links,
Speaker 1: and you can send us an email to stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.