Speaker 1: School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold
Speaker 1: case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite
Speaker 1: witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially
Speaker 1: be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights
Speaker 1: from family and community members, their statements should not be
Speaker 1: considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
Speaker 1: inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone has
Speaker 1: presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Speaker 1: Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply
Speaker 1: that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime
Speaker 1: is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: On Sunday, October seventeenth, twenty twenty one, a thirty nine
Speaker 2: year old mother of one named Heidi Plank was starting
Speaker 2: her day. Heidi was leaving her rented townhouse on the
Speaker 2: west side of Los Angeles near Culver City. She was
Speaker 2: on her way to watch her eleven year old son
Speaker 2: Bond play football. Heidi, by the way, was a huge
Speaker 2: James Bond fan, so that's how she chose her son's
Speaker 2: and her dog's names based on the double O seven theme.
Speaker 2: So her son was Bond and her labradoodle was seven,
Speaker 2: like double O seven. Surveillance camera footage from outside Heidie's
Speaker 2: house showed her walking out the door. She was dressed
Speaker 2: in jeans and a white T shirt with a smiley
Speaker 2: face on it. She had a sweater tied around her
Speaker 2: waist and it was described in the media as gray,
Speaker 2: but it was actually more like a grayish color, kind
Speaker 2: of a gray beige. Heidie was petite. She had long
Speaker 2: blonde hair. She was five foot three and was carrying
Speaker 2: a purse with her. She was holding a cup of
Speaker 2: coffee in one hand, and seven, her dog, was on
Speaker 2: his leash walking behind her. She put Seven in the
Speaker 2: car and climbed behind the wheel of the silver range
Speaker 2: Rover with a license plate U eight four zero XO,
Speaker 2: and drove away. Heidi was divorced from Bond's father, Her
Speaker 2: ex husband, a sixty three year old hairstylist named Jim Wayne.
Speaker 2: Jim had a salon in Beverly Hills. Jim and Heidi
Speaker 2: were married in two thousand and eight, but they divorced
Speaker 2: four years later, and at the time Heidi went missing,
Speaker 2: they shared custody of Bond. Jim told police that the
Speaker 2: last time he saw Heidi was when she showed up
Speaker 2: to her son's football game that afternoon. The game, by
Speaker 2: the way, was in Downy, which was around seventeen miles
Speaker 2: from Heidie's home, so it would have taken her around
Speaker 2: half an hour to get there from the townhouse. Several
Speaker 2: witnesses saw Heidi at that game and interacted with her.
Speaker 2: Jim said that she seemed a little bit on edge
Speaker 2: when she left the game at halftime, which was around
Speaker 2: four thirty PM, but there was nothing that seemed extremely
Speaker 2: out of the ordinary until they were looking at these
Speaker 2: events in hindsight. It was Jim's weekend with Bond, so
Speaker 2: Jim and Bond went home after the game. Heidi and
Speaker 2: Jim got along well, even though there had been some
Speaker 2: rocky moments in their divorce, if they apparently had had
Speaker 2: a good co parenting relationship for several years. When Heidi
Speaker 2: left the game, she told her son that she would
Speaker 2: call him later, but even though Heidi always talked to
Speaker 2: her son every single day, she never called him. In fact,
Speaker 2: Bond never talked to his mother again because that day
Speaker 2: Heidi Plank vanished, and after she disappeared, it did not
Speaker 2: take long for rumors to start flying about her ex
Speaker 2: husband Jim, about her boss, Jason Sugarman, about her boss's
Speaker 2: links to big money and powerful people in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: In fact, to me, when I first saw Heidi on
Speaker 2: the news and I read about this case, it seemed
Speaker 2: like a real life version of the movie Chinatown. It's
Speaker 2: now been over two years since Heidi Plank disappeared. There's
Speaker 2: been no sign of Heidi and no sign of her body.
Speaker 2: All we have are some rumors about an apartment building
Speaker 2: in downtown Los Angeles and a devastated little boy without
Speaker 2: a mother. I'm Catherine Townsend. If you have a case
Speaker 2: you'd like me and my team to look into, you
Speaker 2: can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder
Speaker 2: Line at six seven eight seven four four six one
Speaker 2: four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six
Speaker 2: one four five. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Heidi
Speaker 2: Plank was originally from New York State. She was born
Speaker 2: and raised in Buffalo. In two thousand and one, she
Speaker 2: moved to California and went to California State University. Before
Speaker 2: we dive into Heidi's work life, I want to follow
Speaker 2: the natural trajectory of the police investigation and take a
Speaker 2: look at her relationship with her ex husband, Jim, because,
Speaker 2: as we all know, in any investigation, and especially if
Speaker 2: there is a contentious divorce, police are always looking at xes.
Speaker 2: I actually did an episode of another podcast called blood Money,
Speaker 2: it's about white collar criminals and con artists who kill
Speaker 2: about this case back in twenty twenty two, so I
Speaker 2: want to take a look at what has changed since then.
Speaker 2: So of course police want to know about Heidie's relationship
Speaker 2: with her ex husband. Jim and Heidi seem to have
Speaker 2: a friendly relationship, but according to court records, they had
Speaker 2: had some issues over the years. Court filing show they
Speaker 2: had had a battle for custody in the past, and
Speaker 2: at one point Jim had full custody of their son
Speaker 2: and Jim had accused Heidi of drug abuse. Jam also
Speaker 2: made some comments to the media after Heidi went missing
Speaker 2: about how they had what he called different parenting styles.
Speaker 2: He said something about how Heidi was more permissive than
Speaker 2: he was, which did lead a lot of people to
Speaker 2: wonder what was going on at home to make him
Speaker 2: say that. But in addition to Jim's movements all week
Speaker 2: and long being confirmed by police, everyone who was close
Speaker 2: to Heidi said that her relationship with Jim had been
Speaker 2: good for some time. The last text between Jim and
Speaker 2: Heidi were not contentious. They were warm. Heidi was thanking
Speaker 2: Jim for all that he did for their son. Jim
Speaker 2: told police that he and his son last heard from
Speaker 2: Heidi at around seven pm that night, October seventeenth. Heidi
Speaker 2: had responded to one of her son's texts about the
Speaker 2: football game. Heidi's son sent another text a little while later,
Speaker 2: talking about a play he made, but this time Heidi
Speaker 2: didn't respond. In fact, that was the last time that
Speaker 2: Heidie's son ever heard from her. Jim and his son
Speaker 2: were worried for the rest of the weekend, but Heidi
Speaker 2: was obviously an adult. She was single and dating and
Speaker 2: had her own life. Jim told reporters, though, that Heidi
Speaker 2: never failed to respond to her son. No matter what
Speaker 2: was going on in her personal life or how busy
Speaker 2: she was, she always made time for him. Actually looking
Speaker 2: at the court records that document the text messages that
Speaker 2: Heidie's son sent to her is heartbreaking. On October eighteenth,
Speaker 2: at seven thirty one pm, Heidie's son wrote in a
Speaker 2: text message, can you please call me back? I called
Speaker 2: you two days in a row. And you haven't picked up.
Speaker 2: By Monday morning, Jim and his son still had not
Speaker 2: heard from Heidi. That afternoon, Heidie's son texted again, please
Speaker 2: call or just text me because I want to make
Speaker 2: sure you're okay and I'm worried about you. Then he
Speaker 2: sent another text that read, please call mom. I miss
Speaker 2: you and I'm worried about you. The next day, October twentieth,
Speaker 2: was the day when Heidi was supposed to pick her
Speaker 2: son up at school, but she never showed up. Jim
Speaker 2: reported Heidi missing. At some point, he went into Heidie's
Speaker 2: townhouse with a friend of hers. They found Heidi's work
Speaker 2: laptop there and her work phone. Jim took the laptop
Speaker 2: and the phone. Now he did turn over the laptop
Speaker 2: and phone to law enforcement, but apparently it took a
Speaker 2: few days. And at the time a lot of people
Speaker 2: on online comment boards are of course asking if he's
Speaker 2: so worried about her, why would he wait. But Heidi
Speaker 2: was an adult, so she probably was not an immediate
Speaker 2: priority for the police. And of course, in every missing
Speaker 2: person's investigation, every single decision anyone makes is under a microscope.
Speaker 2: But in my opinion and according to all evidence, that
Speaker 2: has come out. Jim Wayne was totally believable, and Jim,
Speaker 2: to his credit, immediately went to the police. As we've said,
Speaker 2: Heidi was an adult, so if Jim had any reason
Speaker 2: to want to wait so the investigation would not start immediately,
Speaker 2: he probably could have, but that's not what he did.
Speaker 2: He went to her house. He told friends he was
Speaker 2: calling people. He immediately called the police. He insisted that
Speaker 2: they investigate, and he commented to the media. Police talked
Speaker 2: to Heidie's family. Her mom told them the same thing
Speaker 2: Jim had. Heidi had been behaving normally. She was planning
Speaker 2: a vacation to New York to visit her mom for Thanksgiving,
Speaker 2: so she was happy and she was making future plans.
Speaker 2: Police figured out no one had heard from Heidi at
Speaker 2: all since October seventeenth, so they started asking logically about
Speaker 2: Heidie's love life. Now, at that time, Heidi had been
Speaker 2: seeing someone who lived in northern California. He was a
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley executive who worked for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative,
Speaker 2: the philanthropic arm of Facebook, which is now Meta. Police
Speaker 2: tracked down Heidie's boyfriend, who, by the way, was completely
Speaker 2: cooper He was verifiably somewhere else on the day when
Speaker 2: Heidi went missing, and he was cleared very quickly by
Speaker 2: law enforcement. But this man did tell the police something interesting.
Speaker 2: He said that Heidi had sent him a text asking
Speaker 2: him to come down to LA because she said she
Speaker 2: was afraid of something. But this guy was unable to
Speaker 2: make the trip, so actually he told police. At first
Speaker 2: after Heidie disappeared, he thought that maybe she was annoyed
Speaker 2: with him for not coming to LA, so maybe she
Speaker 2: was ghosting him. So now the police kind of hit
Speaker 2: a dead end because if this wasn't an X and
Speaker 2: it wasn't a current relationship, who else would have a
Speaker 2: motive to want to hurt Heidi. Meanwhile, Jim Wayne, Heidie's
Speaker 2: ex husband, was playing detective and tracking down his own leads.
Speaker 2: He got the ven number for Heidie's Range Rover, but
Speaker 2: according to court documents, her location services wasn't on. He
Speaker 2: tried to find my phone feature on iPhone and Apple Watch,
Speaker 2: but those had also been turned off. At this point,
Speaker 2: Jim told the media he was starting to suspect this
Speaker 2: could be something that was planned. He believed this was
Speaker 2: not a random disappearance, and he mentioned the legal troubles
Speaker 2: that Heidie's boss, Jason Sugarman, had been having Then there
Speaker 2: was another big break in the case. Jim checked the
Speaker 2: text messages on Heidie's phone, the one he had access to,
Speaker 2: and he found messages from a couple who lived in
Speaker 2: a luxury building in downtown LA and this couple said
Speaker 2: that they had Heidie's dog. The people who found seven
Speaker 2: lived in the Hope and Flower Building in downtown Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: located at twelve oh one South Hope Street. We'll get
Speaker 2: into the history of the building in a little bit,
Speaker 2: but basically, it's one of these luxury downtown high rises
Speaker 2: that have sprung up over the last couple decades in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. It bills itself as a luxury high rise
Speaker 2: with rooftop views and a lot of amenities, but a
Speaker 2: lot of residents have complained over the years that the
Speaker 2: developers have neglected this building, that there's trash in the hallways,
Speaker 2: dog poop everywhere, and management that is unresponsive. And I'm
Speaker 2: not talking about just a couple of complaints. If you
Speaker 2: look at yelperviews, there are hundreds of complaints on there
Speaker 2: from current and former tenants. So there's something strange going
Speaker 2: on in that building. In my opinion. But getting back
Speaker 2: to Heidi, this couple said that around seven pm on
Speaker 2: the evening of October seventeenth. Now remember this was just
Speaker 2: a few hours after the game, and right after Bond
Speaker 2: got that last text from Heidie's phone, they said they
Speaker 2: found the dog seven roaming the hallways of that building.
Speaker 2: Some reports said that the dog was on the twenty
Speaker 2: ninth floor, others said the twenty eighth, but whichever it was,
Speaker 2: Heidi was not with seven. Jim went to pick up
Speaker 2: seven and brought him home. And since I know that
Speaker 2: people will ask, and I'm also an animal over, I
Speaker 2: will tell you all right now. The dog is absolutely
Speaker 2: fine and apparently doing well. So what was Heidi doing
Speaker 2: at the Hope Flower Building? Jim and her friends said
Speaker 2: they weren't aware of anyone she knew in that building
Speaker 2: or any connection she had there, And even stranger than that,
Speaker 2: why would she leave her dog who went everywhere with
Speaker 2: her roaming the hallways. According to news reports, the building
Speaker 2: management OMNI property were kind of uncooperative at first, but
Speaker 2: police got a search warrant and after that, Heidie's friends
Speaker 2: and family said the building did give them the access
Speaker 2: they needed and became more helpful. Meanwhile, some of them
Speaker 2: were wondering if the thing that Heidie had been afraid
Speaker 2: of could have been connected to her job and her boss,
Speaker 2: forty eight year old Jason Sugarman. According to Heidie's LinkedIn page,
Speaker 2: she worked for Coldwell Banker between two thousand and five
Speaker 2: and twenty fifteen, then Douglas Element, so she was working
Speaker 2: in real estate before she moved on to her job
Speaker 2: at a company called Camden Capital Partners. This was Jason
Speaker 2: Sugarman's company, and it's a company that is described as
Speaker 2: quote an investment advisory firm that handles wealth mannment and
Speaker 2: legacy planning for prominent high net worth individuals. This could
Speaker 2: be completely legitimate. There are lots of firms like this,
Speaker 2: but it's also very vague, and Jason Sugarman would soon
Speaker 2: show up in more headlines. Jason Sugarman is connected to
Speaker 2: a lot of people in power. His father in law
Speaker 2: is Peter Gruber, the owner of the Dodgers, and Jason
Speaker 2: was facing some serious legal issues, including federal fraud charges.
Speaker 2: He was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Speaker 2: According to the indictment, starting in twenty thirteen, Jason and
Speaker 2: his business partner, Jason Galanis, stole forty three million dollars
Speaker 2: from pension funds of a Native American tribe of the
Speaker 2: Sioux Nation. These guys, who were known in the press
Speaker 2: as the Two Jasons, were apparently trying to acquire this
Speaker 2: global financial conglomerate made up of insurers in Europe and Bermuda,
Speaker 2: as well as some investment advisors based in the United States.
Speaker 2: In twenty fourteen, Jason go Llanas and his father, John
Speaker 2: Galanis obtained tribal bonds. They convinced the tribe they would
Speaker 2: sell them and use the proceeds to invest in the tribe.
Speaker 2: But instead, according to the authorities, they didn't. They just
Speaker 2: basically straight up stole the money. And what's worse, this
Speaker 2: was not some kind of Bernie made off type of
Speaker 2: scenario that started out as a legitimate investment. According to
Speaker 2: the sec these guys knew they were planning to steal
Speaker 2: right from the beginning. So it's kind of a long
Speaker 2: and complicated story with this money. But to sum it up,
Speaker 2: Jason Galanas and Jason Sugarman were accused of stealing millions
Speaker 2: of dollars from the Native American tribal corporation and from
Speaker 2: these companies they acquired. In January of twenty seventeen, Jason
Speaker 2: galanis pled guilty to criminal charges in connections with this fraud.
Speaker 2: He was sentenced to one hundred and seventy three months
Speaker 2: in jail. The indictment read quote Sugarman benefited immensely from
Speaker 2: the scheme. Indeed, to a large extent, he was the
Speaker 2: biggest winner from the fraud, ending up with voting control
Speaker 2: over corporate assets that were acquired with bond proceeds and
Speaker 2: from which he ultimately siphoned almost nine million dollars in
Speaker 2: cash for his direct and personal benefit. Quote. So we
Speaker 2: know Jason Sugarman was accused of financial fraud. We also
Speaker 2: know that he has powerful friends, including Hunter Biden. He
Speaker 2: even has ties to Hunter Biden's now notorious Laptop of shame,
Speaker 2: because emails from that laptop, in addition to photos of
Speaker 2: Hunter smoking crack and sex workers, reportedly show that Jason
Speaker 2: was a director and shareholder of a company called Burnham
Speaker 2: Financial Group. If this name sounds familiar, that's because it's
Speaker 2: the same group that allegedly pitched a major deal to
Speaker 2: Hunter's Chinese business partners back in twenty fifteen, and one
Speaker 2: of Jason Sugarman's partners who was also mentioned in that
Speaker 2: SEC indictment is Devon Archer, the longtime friend and business
Speaker 2: partner of Hunter Biden. Devon Archer, by the way, was
Speaker 2: convicted for his involvement in that same tribal scam in
Speaker 2: two thousand eighteen. Hunter Biden's lawyer, by the way, has
Speaker 2: totally denied all this. He said Hunter's client had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the Native American bond scheme and that
Speaker 2: the timing was just a coincidence. According to the Sun newspaper,
Speaker 2: the lawyer said Hunter's name had been used without his
Speaker 2: permission and that he had taken steps to ensure that
Speaker 2: his business interests were not associated with the defendants in
Speaker 2: the tribal bond case. So what does all this have
Speaker 2: to do with Heidi Plank, a woman who, by the way,
Speaker 2: had no background in finance when she started working for
Speaker 2: Jason Sugarman's company. She was the bookkeeper for that company.
Speaker 2: And then there's what happened next. Jim Wayne said that
Speaker 2: on October twenty first, right after Heidi went missing, he
Speaker 2: got a phone call from someone at the SEC asking
Speaker 2: questions about Jason Sugarman. And then it got even more bizarre.
Speaker 2: Because CBS Los Angeles was following the story of Heidi Plank,
Speaker 2: they were somehow able to acquire some surveillance video that
Speaker 2: had been taken outside Heidie's house. There's video of Jason
Speaker 2: Sugarmant after Hiding went missing, ringing her doorbell and then
Speaker 2: leaving muffins on the doorstep. The news station says this
Speaker 2: video is from a day or two after Hiding went missing.
Speaker 2: They weren't more specific than that, But if you look
Speaker 2: at this footage, it's odd because Jason walks up to
Speaker 2: the door, rings the bell just once and then kind
Speaker 2: of seems to PLoP the muffins down, and then he's
Speaker 2: out of there. He doesn't hesitate, he doesn't try to
Speaker 2: look inside. So now I'm wondering was he really expressing
Speaker 2: concern or was he trying to make it look like
Speaker 2: he was expressing concern and looking for Heidi. Was he
Speaker 2: going through the motions so that he would appear on camera,
Speaker 2: or was Heidi's disappearance totally unconnected to him? But perhaps
Speaker 2: he wanted to see if someone was there who would
Speaker 2: give him that work laptop, which remember was inside her house.
Speaker 2: What did the SEC want to talk to Heidi about.
Speaker 2: Heidi obviously is not here, so it's only speculation, but
Speaker 2: she reportedly told friends and family that the company had
Speaker 2: some tax filings that were due. She had complained that
Speaker 2: her boss, presumably meaning Jason Sugarman, had her name on
Speaker 2: so much of their corporate paperwork. Now, if this is true,
Speaker 2: it's a major flag for fraud investigators. In fact, this
Speaker 2: case seems to have a lot of red flags for
Speaker 2: potential fraud investigators, including the fact that Heidi was the
Speaker 2: person being asked to sign off on these complex transactions.
Speaker 2: Jim Wayne told the media that after Hiding went missing,
Speaker 2: he called her office. He said that Jason didn't seem
Speaker 2: like he was worried about Heidi or what happened to
Speaker 2: her at all, but he did say Jason Sugarman was
Speaker 2: very worried about that work laptop. Remember this was the
Speaker 2: work laptop that had been inside Heidie's house. Jim had
Speaker 2: taken it out of there and later handed it over
Speaker 2: to police. Jim Wayne told the Daily Mail quote, while
Speaker 2: I was on the phone with his assistant, I heard
Speaker 2: Sugarman in the background barking at his assistant to tell
Speaker 2: me make sure he knows I want my laptop. There
Speaker 2: was no concern at all from my ex wife's employer.
Speaker 2: It's a multimillion dollar company. They didn't offer to hire
Speaker 2: a private investigator or put up a reward. The only
Speaker 2: thing they really seemed concerned about was Heidie's computer end quote. Again,
Speaker 2: Heidi's job was financial controller for Camden Capital Partners, which
Speaker 2: reportedly gave her a salary of one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars a year and bonuses, and Jim made
Speaker 2: a comment he said she always had spare cash lying around.
Speaker 2: Jim Wayne said that someone at Jason Sugarman's office had
Speaker 2: told him they believed that Heidi was quote siphoning off
Speaker 2: money from the company end quote. So, according to Jim Wayne,
Speaker 2: someone at Jason Sugarman's office was allegedly implying that Heidi
Speaker 2: might have embezzled funds. But when Jim talked to The
Speaker 2: Daily Mail, he said he did not believe Heidi was
Speaker 2: to blame at all, and he said if there was
Speaker 2: any wrongdoing, it was from someone at that office, not her.
Speaker 2: Jim said, quote Heidi knows all of Jason's and the
Speaker 2: company's secrets. She knows where the bones are buried. This
Speaker 2: whole thing just stinks. Something just isn't right, and I
Speaker 2: can't put my finger on it. End quote. After Hiding
Speaker 2: went missing, Jim filed a petition for temporary emergency custody
Speaker 2: of their son, and these court papers, in my mind,
Speaker 2: provide further evidence that there was no motive for Jim
Speaker 2: to do anything to Heidie, because, according to the court documents,
Speaker 2: Jim and Heidi shared custody of their son, and Jim
Speaker 2: did not pay Heidi any alimony or child support. He
Speaker 2: had paid her a lump sum in twenty twelve and
Speaker 2: nothing since then. So the bottom line is Jim Wayne
Speaker 2: had no obvious financial motive to do anything to Heidi.
Speaker 2: In fact, if he did do something to her, it
Speaker 2: would ensure that he would never get the support that
Speaker 2: he was asking for. Some people had suggested that Heidi
Speaker 2: might have disappeared voluntarily, and we do have to look
Speaker 2: at that possibility. According to court documents. In the past,
Speaker 2: Jim had alleged Heidi had some mental health issues. He
Speaker 2: said that she was addicted to adderall and had some
Speaker 2: kind of breakdown. In twenty fifteen, Jim talked to Los
Speaker 2: Angeles magazine about what happened that day. He said that
Speaker 2: Heidi had begun acting strangely while they were driving back
Speaker 2: to her house, that their son had been in the car,
Speaker 2: and that after they got back to his place, Heidi
Speaker 2: freaked out, trash Bond's room and crawled out a window.
Speaker 2: Then he said, she started running through the neighborhood. Police
Speaker 2: were called and when they got there, they found Heidi
Speaker 2: switching an electrical circuit breaker on and off. It seemed
Speaker 2: like reading through these court papers, Heidi. It had some
Speaker 2: kind of a break with reality. According to court records,
Speaker 2: Heidi agreed to check herself voluntarily into a psychiatric hospital.
Speaker 2: But after that incident, Heidi got better. She got a job.
Speaker 2: She started working for Camden Capital Partners, first as an
Speaker 2: assistant and then by twenty seventeen, is the financial controller.
Speaker 2: After the initial flurry of media activity, the case got
Speaker 2: pretty quiet for a couple of months. Then on November fourth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, police announced they had found Heidi's Range
Speaker 2: Rover in the parking lot of a residential building that
Speaker 2: was a few blocks away from the Hope and Flower
Speaker 2: building where seven was found. And after that police announced
Speaker 2: another break they had more video footage of Heidi footage
Speaker 2: that had been taken on that same day. On October seventeenth,
Speaker 2: at around six thirty pm, hours after she left her
Speaker 2: son's game, she was in downtown La, walking in an
Speaker 2: alley between eleventh and twelve streets. This is the little
Speaker 2: alleyway that runs behind the Hope and Flower building where
Speaker 2: the dog was found. She appeared to be wearing the
Speaker 2: same clothes and the sweater that she had been wearing earlier.
Speaker 2: She was wearing this weather she had tied around her waist.
Speaker 2: One of her friends told a local news station KTLA
Speaker 2: that Hidie looked like she was taking her dog for
Speaker 2: a quick walk. Now, there were some people out there
Speaker 2: who said that Heidie's hair looked darker, like she was
Speaker 2: wearing a wig. But I've looked at this footage and
Speaker 2: to me, that appears to be just a late afternoon lighting.
Speaker 2: It clearly looks like Heidie. She's wearing the same clothes
Speaker 2: she was wearing that morning, and her dog is walking
Speaker 2: with her. Heidie's friends told local news stations that this
Speaker 2: was a major break in the case because if the
Speaker 2: couple's timeline was correct and they had found the dog
Speaker 2: roaming the halls at around seven pm. That narrowed down
Speaker 2: the window of time when Heidi went missing to around
Speaker 2: half an hour or so. In the surveillance video from
Speaker 2: the alley, Heidie was wearing the same sweater she had
Speaker 2: tied around her waist earlier, so she probably went there
Speaker 2: right after she left the game. Also, people who watched
Speaker 2: the video pointed out you could see Heidie's purse, and
Speaker 2: by the way, this was at the height of COVID,
Speaker 2: she seemed to have a mask in one hand, which
Speaker 2: meant that she was probably visiting someone in that building,
Speaker 2: so it seemed like she either parked her car, took
Speaker 2: her purse out, and was on her way up to
Speaker 2: the building, or it's also possible she had been visiting
Speaker 2: someone in the building, already left her purse in the apartment,
Speaker 2: and ducked out for a quick dog walk. And again,
Speaker 2: none of Heidi's friends or family had any idea who
Speaker 2: lived in that building, who Heidi might have been going
Speaker 2: to see, or what she was doing there. But another
Speaker 2: one of Heidi's friends told reporters they had talked to
Speaker 2: building staff and apparently they recognized Heidi and her dog.
Speaker 2: Seven attention focused more and more on the Hope and
Speaker 2: Flower Building, the last place where Heidi was seen alive.
Speaker 2: As I said before, this Hope and Flower Building was
Speaker 2: very controversial if you look at the yelper views. The
Speaker 2: resonance claimed that there has been theft, drug use, dogs
Speaker 2: defecating on their terraces, piles of trash in the hallway.
Speaker 2: They claimed that their secured parking spaces are constantly vandalized
Speaker 2: and broken into. After Heidi disappeared, I got several messages
Speaker 2: from people who were friends of hers. I also went
Speaker 2: to a prayer vigil for Heidi that was held at
Speaker 2: the Hope and Flower Building. I met some of the
Speaker 2: residents there and later some of the former residents contacted
Speaker 2: me and talked to me about the LAPD investigation. They
Speaker 2: told me that the police had been in that building,
Speaker 2: that there had been a foul stench coming from the
Speaker 2: trash chute. They had heard a rumor that a bloody
Speaker 2: mattress or possibly even a body had been taken from
Speaker 2: the building. Then the news broke. The LAPD was searching
Speaker 2: Shaqida Canyon landfill, which was about forty miles away, the
Speaker 2: same landfill where the Hope and Flower Buildings trash was dumped.
Speaker 2: The police has not revealed much about what they have
Speaker 2: found inside the Hope and Flower building, but on their
Speaker 2: website they did state that quote, forensic evidence was located
Speaker 2: inside the building, which has led detectives to believe an
Speaker 2: incident occurred resulting in Plank's death end quote. The LAPD
Speaker 2: stated that they believed something bad did happen to Heidi
Speaker 2: and that they believe that it happened to her at
Speaker 2: that downtown building, and they said they believed that Heidi
Speaker 2: Plank was dead, but they didn't give any more specifics.
Speaker 2: They didn't talk about what the evidence was. They haven't
Speaker 2: asked the public for information, so really it's been kind
Speaker 2: of a black hole. In December of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: over two years after she went missing, Heidi Plank was
Speaker 2: officially declared dead. A judge ruled she had died at
Speaker 2: around nine pm on the night she disappeared on October seventeenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. There have been a few theories put
Speaker 2: forward by people commenting online by armchair detectives. One theory
Speaker 2: was that Heidi maybe was in trouble, maybe she did
Speaker 2: something at work, Maybe she knew too much and something
Speaker 2: led her to voluntarily go missing. I'm not buying that theory.
Speaker 2: First of all, I don't think there's any way that
Speaker 2: this woman would have left her son with no explanation.
Speaker 2: And secondly, other than her son, she loved her dog
Speaker 2: more than anything in the world, and I don't believe
Speaker 2: she would have just dumped her dog at this building.
Speaker 2: And of course, anytime you do have someone with a
Speaker 2: background of mental health issues or potential substance abuse, you
Speaker 2: have to ask could that have happened again? Again, I
Speaker 2: think that that's very unlikely, mainly because she was acting normally.
Speaker 2: This woman's employed, she had a good relationship with her
Speaker 2: friends and family, and she had a son who she
Speaker 2: called every day. There were some other rumors going around,
Speaker 2: including one by an amateur detective who posted on YouTube.
Speaker 2: She said she had talked to people in the Hope
Speaker 2: and Flower building. She told the Sun newspaper that she
Speaker 2: heard Heidi went to a party there on the night
Speaker 2: she disappeared, that she had gotten adderall from a man
Speaker 2: she was dating, and then apparently overdosed, possibly because the
Speaker 2: drugs were laced with fentanyl. Then, according to this person,
Speaker 2: the people in the apartment panicked and Heidie's body was
Speaker 2: thrown down the garbage chute. But I have to say
Speaker 2: there was absolutely no evidence that these rumors were true,
Speaker 2: and honestly, not all parts of this story make sense.
Speaker 2: For example, Heidi didn't look like she was dressed to party.
Speaker 2: She looked like she was out on an errand when
Speaker 2: she was seen on the camera with the dog, it
Speaker 2: was early evening, six thirty or seven pm. And finally,
Speaker 2: if there was a whole party full of people as
Speaker 2: this person described, it seems really hard for me to
Speaker 2: imagine that no one from the party talk, the whole
Speaker 2: thing got completely covered up, and that they threw a
Speaker 2: body down the trash chute without it being found. But
Speaker 2: I do have a lot of questions about that building
Speaker 2: and about the people on the penthouse floor. Jim Wayne
Speaker 2: has said he was told by police that up to
Speaker 2: five people know what happened to Heidi. But which five people?
Speaker 2: Five people in the apartment building, And if that's true true, again,
Speaker 2: it's very hard for me to imagine a world where
Speaker 2: there was not surveillance footage showing those people. Even though
Speaker 2: it was COVID, and a lot of places were probably
Speaker 2: being rented off the books, surely they must be able
Speaker 2: to get the names of the people who were in
Speaker 2: the apartment on that day. The whole thing is very bizarre,
Speaker 2: and I don't think I've ever actually seen a case
Speaker 2: where a dog was found in a location that was
Speaker 2: completely foreign to everywhere in the victim's life, and there's
Speaker 2: no trace of the victim. Jason Sugarman kind of disappeared
Speaker 2: from public view after Hiding went missing, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to say again, he has not been charged with anything
Speaker 2: or any sort of wrongdoing in connection with her disappearance.
Speaker 2: On January tenth, twenty twenty three, the United States District
Speaker 2: Court for the Southern District of New York entered a
Speaker 2: final judgment against Jason Sugarman. Jason was ordered to pay
Speaker 2: over ten point two million dollars in connection to the
Speaker 2: scheme to defraud pension funds. Devon Archer was sentenced to
Speaker 2: a year and a day in prison. He appealed, and
Speaker 2: he is still out on bail. In January twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: a judge denied his appeal, so his case is continuing
Speaker 2: to work its way through the court system. Bond and
Speaker 2: seven are living with Jim Wayne. Jim told Los Angeles
Speaker 2: Magazine six months after Heidi disappeared. Quote our son wants
Speaker 2: to know what happened to his mother. I want to
Speaker 2: know what happened to Heidi. I still think her boss
Speaker 2: has something to do with this in one way or another.
Speaker 2: End quote. There was another update story done in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, near the two year anniversary of her disappearance.
Speaker 2: Heidie's family posted a billboard of her in Los Angeles
Speaker 2: right now, they hope that someone will come forward. The
Speaker 2: family has created an email address Heidi Plank h EI
Speaker 2: D I P L A n C K at ProtonMail
Speaker 2: dot com. The Los Angeles Police Department is asked anyone
Speaker 2: with information call the Missing Persons Unit at two one
Speaker 2: three nine nine six one eight zero zero. I'm Katherine Townsend.
Speaker 2: This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line
Speaker 2: is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced
Speaker 2: by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her
Speaker 2: research assistance. Music contributed by Ben Solee. Executive producers of
Speaker 2: Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley. If you
Speaker 2: have a case, you'd like me and my team to
Speaker 2: look into. You can reach out to us at our
Speaker 2: Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four
Speaker 2: four six' one four. Five that's six seven eight seven
Speaker 2: four four six' one four.
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