Crime Junkie - MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: JoAnn Matouk Romain Part 1

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

In January 2010 JoAnn Matouk Romain runs a quick errand to get gas followed by attending a 15-minute prayer service, then she walks into the freezing lake across the street to take her own life. Or at least that's what police say. But from the very moment they notify the family about her case they know something isn't right. And the deeper they look they learn that nothing is what it seems.Click HERE to sign the Romain family's petition.  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/mysterious-death-joann-matouk-romain-part-1/

Hi, Crime Junkies, I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. And you guys, I thought what better way to come back after kind of not regular episodes with one of the most bizarre cases I have come across in a long time. One so twisty, it's gonna make your head spin. I am not kidding.

Brett, I actually touched on this case briefly. It was like late 2020, maybe early 2021 in our fan club. Because along with like full regular episodes every month, sometimes Brett and I will do like bonuses and talk about things that other people in the true crime space are talking about. So like when Unsolved Mysteries came back, we were like, okay, let's like dive in.

And of course, one thing I should know by now is that the story you get on TV is never the full thing. And I just got drawn into this particular episode, Lady in the Lake, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. And sure enough, when you do even like the most like cursory Google search, you'll find more info, which I brought up back then. But I still couldn't let this one go.

So recently I did a true deep dive. And honestly, I think I broke my brain. If you are into the stories where my voice gets really high pitched and I get really worked up and I spin myself into a web, this one is gonna have you tangled up with me. This is the story of the mysterious death of Joanne Matuke Romain.

Number three is Leon 所以 Number five is It's a cold night in Michigan on January 12, 2010, 20-something Michelle Romain is at home with her two other grown siblings and since it's after nine things in the house are kind of like winding down for the night. They're just waiting for their mom to get home before they fully lock up and call it a night. Now you see earlier their mom Joanne had dropped her son off Michael and then went to go get

gas and that was a couple of hours ago but they figured she probably went to church, maybe she ran some errands, whatever. So when Michelle sees headlights in the front window she assumes that it's her mom but when she peeks out of the window her heart sinks because it's actually the police. When she opens the door Michelle's fears only grow because according to what she told producers of Unsolved Mysteries for an episode called Lady in the Lake the officer immediately confronts her with some troubling news. He says that they found her mom's car abandoned in the church parking lot and he asks Michelle

if her mom is missing. Now what was fear turns a bit into confusion, no they hadn't reported their mom missing, they had just seen her what a couple of hours ago and Michelle's sister is paying attention to what's going on by now and she looks down at her phone it is 9.24. She knows that Joanne dropped her youngest Michael off at home at 6 so it's been like three and a half hours. Ashley is this the first story we've ever covered where the police are actually so like on top of everything that they know someone is missing before the family even does?

Maybe? But there's actually something else confusing to Michelle so the car that they found in this church parking lot it's a silver Lexus that her mom was driving that night. You see that car is registered to Michelle so she's wondering like how did police know to come looking for Joanne shouldn't they have been right they should be looking for her right now in that moment it didn't matter too much to Michelle she knew that her mom was driving the car that night and her mom wasn't home so she needed to figure out what was going on.

So she and her sister along with their uncle John all got together and drove to the church where Joanne's car was parked. Now they probably expected to see a pretty empty parking lot you know Joanne's car for sure maybe a cop car next to it with an officer who ran the plates if that even because like what's the officer going to do just hanging around it but when they pull up it's like a little bit after 10pm and what they actually saw made all of their jaws drop to the floor but it was a full on crime scene we're talking taped off officers crawling all over the place literally helicopters in the air searching Lake St. Clair across the street from the

church it was unreal. Oh wait what am I missing I mean we've covered hundreds of stories now and in nearly every single one the police are telling the family they have to wait I mean 24 48 sometimes 72 hours to even report a left-wing missing and in Michigan they have helicopters out within but three hours well police on the scene are telling Michelle that there's a reason for the urgency they have a reason to believe that Joanne took her own life they say and they're telling them all of this this is this is not searching for a missing person this is a rescue effort okay but how do they know that like they can't have taken like

a mental history honor at this point no they don't and honestly a mental history wouldn't have led them to this conclusion Joanne had no history of depression or any mental illnesses what police say is that when the officer came across her abandoned car and ran the place or whatever he noticed that there was also a purse still inside but more concerning he saw footprints in the snow small high-heeled prints leading from the car out to the lake and when he followed the prints right up to the water he then saw this area where it looked like someone had kind of like sat down and slid down this concrete wall to the next level slid down again like right into the water so they were convinced then and there that Joanne

had gone into the water and they needed to find her and I'm sure everyone thought they stood a good chance the water was like super shallow literally Joanne would have had to walk almost two football fields out into the water before the water even came above her less than five foot frame and the water is pretty clear Joanne was wearing all black that night so against the icy blue she should stand out but more than anything a lot of the lake was frozen over so they should be able to look for holes or disturbances in the ice and that should be a dead giveaway so along with the helicopters police brought in water search and rescue teams and for the next several hours they looked and looked

and looked but there wasn't a single sign of Joanne not even one additional clue so by 4am the helicopters were called off and Joanne's car was towed to the police station for processing now the family's natural reaction is well what now because you know in their minds like she clearly didn't go into the lake like police originally thought so then what happened to her maybe someone else was involved but they say that there was no real next move from police they stuck to their guns she went into the water we just haven't found her yet but they say you know maybe the current took her body out further and she'll likely wash up sometime in the next couple of days so that's the next step what

just wait for a body I mean that's pretty much what they tell the family to do but the family can't just sit around and do nothing this makes zero sense to them Joanne was not suicidal and if something had snapped in her in no world did they think that she would take her life in that way yeah I was actually going to point that out like when you said she's what like a football field into the water even do football fields okay my point exactly two football fields into like this frigid water before she's even able to submerge herself like that's super odd right I mean I certainly think so again in January it is freaking freezing and remember what I had said before after she dropped her son off

that night she was going to get gas to fill up her car she didn't need to fill it up to make that trip to the church parking lot if her plan was just to pray and then get into the water and actually the fact that she was even going to church that night was all the more reason for them to think that she didn't do this to herself everyone who knew Joanne said she was a devout Catholic and taking one's own life in that religion is a sin they said Joanne would never ever do that now this is all too bizarre already but what the family also knows and something that they have stressed to police is that Joanne was actually afraid for her life in the weeks leading up to her disappearance she

talked about being followed about her mail being tampered with and someone potentially listening in on her phone calls so now that Joanne is actually gone her family is confident that she wasn't just paranoid her fears were founded and now the family knows something is really not right here so according to reporting by Scott M. Bernstein that he did for a three part series in the gross point news in the very first hours and days after Joanne went missing the family all got together and they started making their list of suspects if Joanne didn't kill herself there is someone involved in her disappearance so who could that be and for a suburban mother of three that list is longer than you might think in the research

material I have come across there are three main people the family wondered about early on when Joanne first went missing one was Joanne's husband who she had been separated from for almost five years at this point this was her kid's father two was her brother John Matuke and the people he was connected to now John was actually the one who drove his two nieces to the church parking lot that night Joanne went missing and three was a cousin Joanne had a tumultuous relationship with named Tim Matuke now Joanne's ex David doesn't have a reputation for being a violent man but the three kids who lived in the Romaine House with David and Joanne when they were together knew that the couple had a reputation

for fighting like a lot David would travel a lot for work Joanne suspected infidelity and so when he was home it was like bickering nonstop it was never ending so the couple ended up separating and whether it started before or after the separation I don't exactly know but at some point David was rumored to have started up with Joanne's best friend which is not a great look and we've seen less complicated love trials end up in tragedy and there's also the money of it all a divorce would have been costly for David and he and Joanne were in the middle of this legal battle basically they were suing some contract workers over black mole that was found on one of their properties and though they were still ways

out from closure on that case if they won the damages would be in the ballpark of like a million dollars now if Joanne was around she'd get half if she wasn't the whole thing would go to David but again we've seen people kill for less right but you know when they're making this list that's all they have a bad relationship he's better off financially does this mean something maybe but they needed police to look into him more so they write down the next name on their list John Matuke now it's not so much that they thought John did something directly to Joanne of the five Matuke siblings John and Joanne are probably the closest at the time she went missing but John had fallen on some tough times that could

have made him a target for some dangerous people like there was once a time when John was doing ultra well like he was a known businessman in town made tons of money he was making those like 40 under 40 lists but when business went south John started borrowing money doing a little gambling and getting tied up with the wrong people in that article Scott Bernstein wrote someone who was with the family in those critical hours when they were brainstorming possibilities said quote they took out a legal pad and literally made a list of all the people who John Matuke owed money to and may have been upset enough to want to do him harm by hurting someone close to him end quote one of those people was a man named Anthony Pipia

according to one or more Bernstein sources Anthony was a bookmaker who John owed a decent amount of money to an Anthony's operation may have been loosely connected to a mob operation out of Detroit and I mean making someone disappear seems like a mobster I'm out to me yeah and I agree this looks like a good angle to go down but here's the thing I can't totally wrap my head around this idea that like if you're hurting someone's loved one to send a message like wouldn't it be important that it's super clear that there was a message like who it was from like unless John is just playing this ultra coy he seems to be like well it's possible that someone did this but I don't know who either way again it is just

a name on a list for now and then there's one more name that the family adds Tim Matuke Joanne's cousin now this is a name that is specifically sticking out to Michelle as more than just a hunch because in the weeks leading up to her mom's disappearance Joanne specifically told her if something happens to me look to Tim uh I feel like we should start there does you know why her mom said that well it happened after one particular call Joanne had with Tim leading up to her going missing but to understand the call I need to give you a little bit of a backstory you see Joanne's parents had been really successful like they had this local wine shop in town that did super well they were into real estate so by 1994 when both parents

had passed there was like a 20 million dollar inheritance that was up for grabs and I say up for grabs but there was a will and it was supposed to be doled out evenly among the five kids but money especially inheritance money but I don't know what it does to people but it makes them lose their GD minds oh my god you do not need to tell me twice yeah and the Matuke family was no exception two of the five kids Bill and Rosemary they were the oldest were the ones who kept running the wine store and they were basically accused of taking more money like than their fair share and this got so bad literally the siblings weren't talking to one another and in 1998 Joanne and John actually filed suit against the estate and within a couple of years they won and were each

paid like six hundred thousand dollars in back payments of course it's not like that magically fixed the damage that had occurred over the last six years the family was still very much divided but this whole time John and Joanne were kind of on the same team if you will again they've always been super close and when he started having business troubles and legal troubles like it wasn't just gambling he had also gotten busted for a checkkiting scheme it seemed like Joanne blamed her cousin Tim or maybe Tim and her brother Bill for John's problems okay I guess I don't get it I don't fully get it either but it's important to know that at the time Tim was a police officer so it's possible that she thought he was maybe feeding information or was the reason

he got busted again I don't know the specifics I just know she had this feeling and John shared that feeling as well now it's never been proven that Tim was connected or Bill was connected to anything John did or gotten trouble for and Tim wholly denies it as well as Bill denies it now denied it then which was actually the reason Tim called Joanne before she went missing so apparently for a while like the year before she even went missing she was telling people she was scared of Tim Scott Bernstein reported quote matuk romain's children say that when they were growing up their mom did her best to keep them away from Tim Matuk calling him sick and depraved end quote but no one knows exactly why it seemed like she was fine telling everyone she was scared or she didn't like him

or was uncomfortable with him but wouldn't actually give anyone specifics her children feel like she did this because she was trying to protect them but it doesn't seem like anyone else knows either or at least if there was a reason that she told people it's never been officially reported but things seem to come to a head in late 2009 and early 2010 that is when Joanne after years of not speaking to her brother Bill went down to his wine store and according to him she told him to stay away from Tim that he was causing problems for John Tim's bad news and so then that's when Tim calls Joanne and he says he's like hey stop I didn't do anything you're not making sense stop spreading rumors about me and saying that I'm the reason John has all these

problems and according to Tim that was the extent of the call but Michelle remembers that call differently she couldn't hear Tim's side of it but she was there with her mother when she took the call and she told unsolved mysteries that her mom was screaming telling Tim to leave her and her family alone and she told him to never call her again before hanging up on him and she said it was in that moment that Joanne turned to her and said if something happens to me look to Tim now there was one more incident that came to Michelle's mind right away something she just couldn't shake she said that she had drove her mom one other time back to the wine store to see her brother Bill now they were dropping in unannounced and Joanne went in alone Michelle

says that when she came back out she was terrified Michelle told Scott Bernstein quote she came out of that store looking like she'd seen a ghost whatever she saw whatever she heard whatever she was told in there it spooked her to the core and in her mind confirmed her belief that she was in danger when she got back to the car she wanted me to take her immediately to church she thought she could pray it away end quote so knowing all of this Tim makes the family's list but who that list goes to is a whole nother question almost as soon as the search was done gross point farms police which was the responding agency based on where Joanne's car was found wanted to transfer her case to the gross point woods police because they said well you know

we're saying it's suicide and she lived in woods territory so your problem now wait are they really not exploring any other options besides suicide like I get that's the main theory or whatever but you said they took her car for processing so I assumed they were gonna I don't know process it for evidence or something and see what that tells them well I don't know if they're looking into any other theories honestly it seems like no but one of the departments is at least processing the evidence ish they dusted the car for prints and didn't find any usable ones that didn't belong to Joanne or her family but this is another thing that gives the family like giant wtf moments because they're like okay you didn't actually take any prints from us to compare my mom's not here so I

know you don't have her prints none of us have government jobs so what are you comparing these prints to like how are you coming to this conclusion seriously and also there was an investigative reporter turned PI who was interviewed by reporter Karen Drew for click on Detroit and he says that the type of material inside the car isn't even conducive to getting fingerprints lifted using like the normal method with like dust and stuff like that he said you'd have to fume inside with super glue and take photographs which was never done I mean maybe they were preserving it for DNA instead like I know it can be the trade-off sometimes you get prints or DNA because testing for one ruins your chances of getting the results on the other like swabbing for DNA would smudge

the prints but using glue or even fingerprint dust would disrupt the DNA right but they didn't do DNA specifically because they kept telling the family that there was nothing to point to signs of foul play so nothing to warrant any criminal investigation like that okay what about her purse I mean you said the first officer on the scene saw her purse in the car was there anything missing out of it did they I don't know process the purse at all so they did at least look at it to try and see if anything was missing you know I would be looking at to see if it was like a robbery or something and they said that everything normal was in there except for her keys and her cell phone but again other stuff was in there her wallet was in there and 1500 dollars according to a Marie Claire

article by Kristen Igo and police said that all the straps on her purse were intact so they didn't consider a robbery to be any kind of motive but when her family saw the purse they disagreed apparently it was like almost brand new and had these kind of like ruffles all over the front and one of them was torn now Michelle swears it wasn't like that before so to her it shows her signs of some kind of struggle but to police they're like struggle over what again the money is there your mom could have ripped her purse and you didn't know if anything her purse was even more of a reason for the police to stick to their guns they kept insisting Joanne took her own life she is going to show up in the water and 70 days after she first went missing they were right

but finally finding Joanne didn't bring closure it only opened a can of worms and deepened the mystery as to what happened that cold january night on march 20th 2010 fishermen up in amersburg ontario found a body floating in the detroit river is that connected to like st claire where police say Joanne went into the water yeah it is so it makes sense that her body could have ended up there well hold your horses i told you nothing about this case makes sense so canadian authorities pull the body out of the water she is fully clothed in all black just like joanne was same height and build so it's pretty easy to figure out what department they need to call now despite the fact that gross point woods has taken over the case by this point gross

point farms detectives are the ones that are sent up there according to more of scott bernstein's reporting for gross point news the canadian authorities said that the detectives were quick to tell them joanne suffered from mental health issues and no foul play was suspected but you already said that she had no history like where are they getting this from well later they would deny saying that at all and basically they were just like oh well everyone was saying she was so paranoid before she died so that's probably what we were laid like she was under duress either way the canadian authorities do an autopsy and they ruled joanne's death a drowning her body is then transported back to michigan where another autopsy is done this autopsy concludes

the same findings but makes an additional note that the death is more than likely a suicide because there was no other trauma to her body that would suggest foul play so police feel like they finally have the missing piece to their puzzle they can inform the family that joanne has been found all of their suspicions have been confirmed and that's that a tragic case yes but really nothing more but joanne's family absolutely does not buy it first of all like you had pointed out earlier yes the waterways were connected so technically it made sense that joanne could end up where she was found which was like 35 miles away from where they said she went into the water but remember what i said about the search that night that she went missing there was no current

no one can explain how her body would have moved there if it didn't move that night they should have found her but they didn't find her which seems to suggest that the body had moved that night but it couldn't move that night because the water wasn't moving so like how does that work and there is your high pitched i am in a circle of what is going on right this is just the beginning but like that doesn't make sense right no it doesn't it doesn't make any sense and i was also thinking about how much ice would have been on the lake like that could have slowed a current like uh-huh yeah like a body couldn't this is like a crass visual but just bump up against the ice and not move it would just kind of get stuck there right yeah and okay so even more than all of that

like if you want to say okay she didn't move to your point like she got caught in the ice whatever if you want to say that this massive search effort missed her somehow again one that the search team calls like their most extensive search ever then you can say okay maybe she went to the bottom of the lake maybe she wasn't floating okay fine then at the bottom she eventually would have had to move 35 miles by water currents being like drug across the bottom of this lake but when she's found her clothes and her shoes were in pretty much perfect condition like no scuff marks no drag marks no tears no rips nothing which everyone says would be almost impossible and again if you want to say well weird stuff happens maybe her feet were floating or whatever

okay then riddle me this she was in these like four inch heels and remember the way they're saying she got into the water she like scoots down these two concrete embankments to get in there she has to basically walk two football fields out into the water and there's like a gravelly bottom i'm gonna say you and i grew up like swimming in lakes and ponds and rivers like this is not a concrete pool bottom like it's murky and difficult and bare feet in the summer we're talking like subzero water in four inch heels well yeah i mean not only do i think she'd be falling all over the place but like there's rocks and stuff at the bottom so again even if if you're gonna say she floated 35 miles and her her feet didn't touch anything that's why

there's no scuff marks surely there's getting out there yes would have scuffed her shoes yeah you gotta be kidding me there's like no world in which i can make this make sense and while we're at it let me tell you something else they find on joanne that doesn't make any sense they find her keys now remember those keys were missing from her purse so at first glance maybe this is not super weird okay except joanne's keys had already been returned to the family before her body was found wait i'm confused as you should be and honestly it was confusing for michelle when the keys showed up in the first place caron drew reported that the day after joanne went missing her keys showed up at the police station which was awfully convenient and more convenient is that no one knows

how they got to the station who had possession of them who brought them by nothing i mean did one of the family members bring like the spare set so police could move the car and stuff no and here's how they know this i'm telling you this case is a total mindfuck and i am just getting started so stay with me so police say that the keys magically showed up the day after joanne goes missing fine well according to more reporting done by scott Bernstein when they're returned to the family in early february so like a week or two after joanne goes missing again before her body is found like immediate red flags go up because her daughter michelle knows that these weren't the keys her mom had with her the night she went missing you see they had two sets a normal set and a spare set

six weeks before joanne went missing she was showing her house like an open house kind of thing and during that her car keys went missing so she had been using the spare set everyone had been using the spare set they never found the originals well when the keys get returned to her again early february before the body is found it's the set that went missing six weeks before oh my god i have literal chills what it makes no sense again between the cops showing up looking for joanne when michelle says they should have been looking for her and then these missing keys showing up the romaine family have basically been over the local pd since long before their mom's body was found and they've already hired their own investigators but now that joanne's been found

and gross point departments just want to call this a suicide and close the case that's when things really start moving for the family because her family's like fine close it we're gonna file a freedom of information act request to get the records and they start pulling records of their own related to joanne's activity before her death now while they're getting these records they also hire someone to do an independent autopsy at the university of michigan now we know two autopsies have been done already it'd be kind of weird to find something different now but weird is synonymous with this case because this autopsy notes two really critical things one there were some contusions on her left arm that hadn't been noted before now remember how i said michelle thought

that her mom's purse had been ripped she says that she always wore it on her left shoulder so this kind of reinforced for her the idea that someone had potentially grabbed her mom now the second thing found in the autopsy and this is even more concerning was that it was found that joanne died of a dry drowning okay care to explain that it means there was no water in her lungs apparently this is like super rare it only happens in like one to two percent of cases yeah i mean i've heard the term because it's something that happens to little kids in pools sometimes like it's kind of like a and there's water and their body freaks out but you don't necessarily see it right away or know it right away it's not like a traditional drowning but

no water brit okay i mean how does she die not only no water actually that means there's air in her lungs right mm-hmm and i at least am under the impression that air rises to the top of water so she would be floating right she should have been floating then again this like we said before the only way it makes sense for her to end up where she did was to be at the bottom of the lake and then move that way because they didn't find her on the top but if there's no water in her lungs there's nothing keeping her under water she's full of air she should have been floating on the top okay okay okay now brit okay so that's already weird they get this autopsy which again is just like reconfirming every fear every suspicion every worry that they've had and when they start getting

the reports in what was a confusing case turned into total mind fuckery and i can't even just like throw in bits and pieces that seem odd to like pieces together for you i almost need to rewalk you through that night according to what the official records say so let's rewind to january 20th the night joanne goes missing just like the original story started joanne drops her son off at their house around six instead she's gonna go get gas by 625 she was at the gas station and the attendant there said she was totally normal like friendly whatever nothing out of the ordinary then they know joanne went to her normal church for a seven o'clock prayer service according to the lady in the lake episode reports show that there were 10 to 15 other people there and witnesses

saw joanne now this is like not a whole church service is like a quick prayer thing and everyone's out the door again by like 715 at 720 one witness hears a car alarm go off and sees lights flashing but this only lasts for like 10 to 15 seconds top so they think it was just a fluke maybe someone hit the alarm button instead of the unlock so they didn't pay much attention to it between 725 and 735 the last patron at the church leaves she was a little nervous because again she's the last one walking out alone in the dark parking lot so as she's making her way to her car she has her eyes darting like from left to right looking all over the parking lot being vigilant but she doesn't see any other cars except for joanne's lexus right no not even joanne's lexus wait but hold up yet

no no listen you're trying to process what everyone was at the time according to witness statements it seems like her car left and then at some point came back to the parking lot which doesn't quite fit right right but let me just keep going because you know maybe the witness was wrong either way the car is for sure back in the parking lot by 858 because that is when an officer sees joanne's car all alone in the parking lot and runs the plates there's nothing suss about what comes up so he marks no action on this report now this officer makes no notes of any footprints or anything weird that's standing out to him he just runs the plates looks good on his way so he writes no action but he goes to joanne's house at like 9 30 or whatever time that was

he does that anyway no this officer writes no action and then really takes no action it's just a car in a parking lot and he's on his way but someone shows up at the romaine's house at 9 24 asking about missing joanne again from the registration that is tied to michelle at 9 30 the u.s. coast guard's digital records show that gross point farms contacted them to help with a search there's also a report listing the official start time of the gross point farms investigation as 9 30 p.m. and at 9 38 the coast guard launches crews and they're on scene looking for joanne by 9 51 then at 9 58 a different officer comes by the parking lot and runs the lexuses plates not the same guy who did before totally different officer and he's the one who says he sees those concerning

things the footprints leading away from the car towards the lake and so he calls it in what do you mean he calls it in like the coast guard is already on the scene doesn't make much sense does it i i don't even think i understand like they're saying something else initially kicked off the investigation i i'm so confused no no no they're saying it was a concerned officer who saw the footprints that kicked off their investigation at 9 58 at 9 58 but they're already searching for her at 9 38 you got it uh no i do not how is any of this explained honestly very poorly according to karen drew who did amazing reporting on this case literally like one an emmy for it there is one handwritten report from the coast guard that states that they were actually called by the

gross point farms police at 10 35 so gross point farms stick with that 9 58 time they're basically saying everything else has to be a mistake all the digital records are wrong okay and they're saying that one handwritten report got it correct and they're saying all the family has it wrong too they never showed up at 9 24 because according to them they didn't know anything was wrong then they say that they showed up much later and michelle and her sister must have just gotten it all mixed up which they say you know is to be expected when you're getting these like traumatizing news that your mom's missing except joanne's family have some digital records of their own that back up their version of events between 9 29 and 10 32 they call their mom's cell phone 13 times in the

gross point news it said eight of those 13 calls were before 10 p.m before the plate was even supposedly run so why on earth are these grown adults blowing up their mom's phone if they don't know she's missing i mean it matches their story perfectly cops show up at 9 24 you talk to them you find out what's going on and within five minutes you're calling your mom over and over again hoping that this is some kind of horrible mistake it doesn't work the other way right because in that scenario it shows that you're blowing up your mom just because it's 9 30 and she wasn't home you call her a bunch of times and then after police show up at your house at what they say is 10 24 you only make like one or two more calls like how does it make sense i mean it doesn't yet this is the story

everyone's sticking with i mean i don't like any of this but just for the sake of argument what if you said this is all some terrible clerical error digital error human error error across the board whatever the times are wrong what's important is that they got the search crews out there as soon as they knew almost missing the times really even matter that much well i think they do combined with everything else we know police looking for joanne and not michelle who again the car was really registered to the missing keys turning up that no one can explain and what if i told you that there was another missing persons report from that same day same church parking lot same lake that got zero attention that report will change everything you know about this case

and i'm gonna have to tell you about that next week or you can listen right now if you're in the fan club don't forget to come back next week for part two or you can join our fan club on our website crimejunkiepodcast.com to listen right now you can also find all of the source material for this episode on the website as well and be sure to follow us on instagram at crime junkie podcast we'll be back next week with part two crime junkie is an audio chuck production so what do you think chuck do you approve