48 Hours: NCIS - The Honeymoon is Over: 2

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Just over 48 hours since Erin Corwin’s disappearance, her abandoned Toyota Corolla was found in the desert. Looking over the desert sands, NCIS and local authorities gathered that she had met up with someone there, got into their car and drove off into the desert. The question is, who was Erin Corwin with before she went missing?Investigators will have to look closely into Erin’s social circles in the sleepy town of Twentynine Palms, California.Listen early and ad-free by subscribing to 48 Hours+ on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/4aEgENoSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial, and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. On June 30, 2014, two days after Aaron Corwin went missing, workers with the local water department in the desert town of 29 Palms showed up to a job by the Marine base. A crew member noticed a car, which was strange. They were in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The car appeared to be abandoned, so they called it in to the police.

It was a blue Toyota Corolla. The car Erin Corwin was driving the day she went missing. Erin Corwin's car was located approximately two miles from the back gate of the military base, and that's still significantly far from Joshua Tree National Park's entrance. But why is a car located close to base? NCIS Special Agent Clifton Randolph Jr. and his team tried to make sense of this. Did Erin walk all the way to Joshua Tree to scope out trails for her mom's upcoming visit? They investigated the area, prowled over the sands, and they noticed a second

pair of tire tracks, another vehicle. Seemed to indicate she didn't go wherever she went alone. wherever she went alone. NCIS and San Bernardino authorities followed Erin's shoe prints, walking out of her car and into someone else's. And then they followed the tracks of the second vehicle. With those tracks ending at the black asphalt road out there. It appeared that the second car drove off into the desert. NCIS analyst Ashley DeChelfin remembers when they initially found the car.

Where the vehicle was found was a clue because it was not found in an area you would think. It was a much-needed clue, but still. It's just a question of where is Erin? In the days after Erin Corwin was reported missing, NCIS and the local police department exhausted all leads. Once they found her car with clear evidence she was with someone else, the search for the 19-year-old Marine's wife gathered speed and urgency. It was summertime, which gets very hot. It can be very foreboding that there's literally no water available in that area during the day. And at night, there's nothing to light your way and many dangerous animals that are in that habitat. The harshness of the desert was troubling, to say the least.

And time was not on NCIS's side. Between myself, Cliff, and our program support, the three of us were back and forth, like working long days in and out. And as new leads were developed and information came in, then we just kind of put our heads to the next hurdle or challenge that we needed to overcome. But some challenges were insurmountable. There was still no trace of Erin after 48 hours, and if she was lost in the desert away from her car, it was hard for Lore, Erin's mom, not to think the worst. When I found out they found her car without her, that's when I knew something had happened, and I really kind of had that mother gut instinct that maybe she was no longer alive.

Now, it was not just a question of where is Erin. It was also a question of who had been with Erin in the desert. I'm CBS News correspondent Natalie Morales. This is 48 Hours NCIS. Episode 2, The Honeymoon is Over. This new information, finding Aaron's car and the second pair of tire tracks in the sand changed everything. The authorities needed to go back over what they knew about Erin's life in 29 Palms before she went missing.

They needed to look at 29 Palms as Erin had and retrace her steps in order to identify where she frequented and who she knew. 29 Palms, where Erin was last seen, is a remote desert city over 100 miles outside of LA, and it could not be more different. 29 Palms is sleepy and sparse. Route 62 cuts right through its center. There's a casino, a few hotels, a single Starbucks. For a city, there's a lot of blank, empty space across its 58 square miles. That's about the same size as Disney World. But it used to be bustling a long time ago. In the 1800s, the area was teeming with gold miners. Legend has it, after a long day's work, they would make their way to the town's main water source, a spring surrounded by 29 palm trees.

So when the miners would describe where they had been, they opted for 29 palms, and it stuck. You could drive through it in, you know, I don't know, 15 minutes and maybe less. Here's 48 Hours producer Paul LaRosa, who reported on Aaron's case. It's the desert, you know, and the desert draws its own unique brand of people. There are two sides to 29 palms. The side connected to the Marines, which is the majority of the population, and then there's a fraction of folks who are locals, with no connection to the base. The two worlds are starkly different, and yet they're constantly colliding.

It's kind of funky in its own way. I mean, you'd probably be surprised surprised and you'd probably want to visit some of like the sort of offbeat shops there. The locals are known to wear cowboy hats and sport turquoise jewelry. After all, 29 Palms was once a mining town. There's shops that sell crystals, there's a few places to eat. Then there's the Marine Base. places to eat. Then there's the Marine Base. The Marine Base entrance is located in 29 Palms, but the base itself is its own entity that exists just outside of the city limits. Nestled up against a mountain range, the base eclipses the city in size at over a thousand square miles. Marines come from all over the country to serve here at the world's largest Marine Corps training base. And they

bring their families. Toward the base entrance, it feels more like a small suburban neighborhood than a military site, with young families living in cul-de-sacs. The grounds are pristine, surrounded by desert and mountain vistas. There is one main strip of buildings where much of base life takes place. Base like this, you're going to go to the same movie theater. You're going to go to the same watering hole. A lot of the events that are put on on base, everybody goes to, and you're going to run into each other. Special Agent Randolph knows firsthand the small-town feel of 29 Palms. He lived in town and commuted to his office on base every day. There are new people always coming in. There are people always leaving. There are people always returning.

Even NCIS, we don't stay there permanently, but you become a part of the community. If they were going to find Aaron, they had to start looking at this particular community. Most of the population are transplants, far away from their hometowns, because the majority of people are connected to the Marine base, which means families are only stationed here for brief periods of time before a Marine is relocated or deployed. Bottom line, military families don't stay in 29 Palms for too long. This is also true for NCIS personnel who get bounced around depending on where they're needed, like Annalise DeChelfin, who transferred from Camp Pendleton, California to 29 Palms

because her help was needed when it came to finding Erin Corwin. This is my first time at an NCIS field office because prior to that, I had started at our headquarters. Analyst DeChelfin picked up on the close-knit feel of the 29 Palms Marine Base as soon as she arrived. There's not a whole lot there. So you really rely on that base life because if you're a dependent spouse and your husband's deployed, then you're socializing with other dependent spouses and everybody's talking. then you're socializing with other dependent spouses and everybody's talking. Erin started making friends with her neighbors like Nicole Lee, who brought Erin to the nearby horse ranch.

And she was also a Marine's wife. So I think for a 19-year-old in that situation, you're trying to find your social circle, you're trying to find your niche. And I think it's easy to get emotionally invested in things that may not be in your best interest that you realize in hindsight. As the NCIS agents progressed their investigation into Aaron's whereabouts, they zeroed in on these social circles. On a Marine base where everyone knows everyone, the agent's investigation revealed that not everyone is who they say they are. When Erin felt lonely in the close-knit crowd, she'd call back home. It was a big adjustment to live away from home and in such close proximity to other young military couples.

She'd tell her mom, Lore, what her new life was like. There was maybe six apartments in this little quad. It was a little two-bedroom apartment. I mean, didn't need anything bigger. It wasn't fancy, but, you know, it met your needs. On the base, housing is free. For Aaron and John, this was a no-brainer. Plus, the base would be a secure, enclosed neighborhood, giving Aaron's family back home much better peace of mind. You know, he was just starting out in the Marines. He wasn't getting a huge stipend for off-base housing, so they probably wouldn't be living in the nicest

area of 29 Palms. And we just felt, they and we felt like she would be safer on base. Their housing was on one of the many cul-de-sacs in town. All the buildings looked like desert homes, minimalist style with clean lines and neutral colors. Most were equipped with Spanish tile roofs, the ones with clay shingles, to manage the internal temperatures during those hot summer days. In the complex, there were two couples in particular who Erin and her husband John connected with. First, Aisling and Connor Malachy, who lived downstairs. And second, the family who introduced Erin to the White Rock Horse Rescue, Nicole and Chris Lee. The Lees, their kitchens actually touched. She also made friends with the people that lived below them. Young

husbands and young wives living in the desert with not much to do. She had a couple other people, but these three couples were tight. They did a lot together. Cooked out a lot, would stay up all night playing board games, whatever, and then would make breakfast together, and the guys would hang out together. Everyone in that complex was sort of like a military Melrose place. This is Beth Ford Roth, a public radio reporter who covered Erin's case once news spread that she was missing. And it had spread to many local news stations. It seemed like the media could not get enough of Erin's story, the missing Marine's wife.

She lives in 29 Palms with her Marine husband, Jonathan, and he reported her missing on June 29. California, where her husband is stationed. Anyone with information? Her Marine corporal husband reported her missing the day after she disappeared. As soon as Beth heard about the case, she followed it closely because it was right up her alley. I am the daughter of a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and was interested in telling the story that a lot of people don't know, which is military wives serve just as much as their husbands do. She made it her life's work to write about its intricacies and pitfalls.

So I wanted to cover not just the dry black and white stuff that goes on a barbecue or a parade or that kind of thing, but just sort of what's it like to raise children on your own when your husband's in Afghanistan? What's it like when he comes back? What kind of support network do they have? I was inspired by my mother, who became an Army wife, just knowing how alone she felt and didn't really find a support system that she needed. So Erin's case felt personal. As Beth covered the story, she came to know the people living in Aaron's

apartment block well. The husbands, all Marines, supported their families financially. The wives were homemakers. The Lees from the horse ranch were older than the other couples by a few years. Christopher was sort of like the leader of the group. The guys generally got along. The three Marines would have cookouts every week. They would drink and just, you know, have a good time together, and they could sort of bond over the different aspects

of what it's like to be in the military and where they were deployed or if they'd been to Okinawa, if they'd been to Afghanistan. Now, the three women were kind of different. Of the three couples, Aaron and John were the only ones without kids. But Ashley Malicki from downstairs was similar to Aaron in temperament, shy and quiet, just trying to be a supportive Marine wife. I remember Ashleen Malicki saying that her husband had an open-door policy, which meant anyone could come in and out, and she sort of went along with that.

Now, Nicole, Chris's wife, was not very popular on base. She was known for being abrasive and maybe even a bit distracted. Neighbors sometimes raised an eyebrow at her parenting of her six-year-old daughter. According to Beth, Nicole would let her daughter wander around alone in the complex, popping into other people's apartments unannounced. So these three couples may not have seen eye to eye on everything, but in order to avoid total isolation, they stuck together. In different circumstances, these couples could have been in college. In a lot of ways, they still behave like college kids. According to multiple accounts, the couples partied often, drank heavily, and made questionable decisions, spending their small stipends on luxuries like new clothes and cars. Erin's days transformed from the quiet routine of church in her hometown horse barn to the rowdy world of young Marines.

So instead of dorm life, it was base life. Unlike most 19-year-olds, whose lives revolve around themselves, Erin's life revolved around the Marines. It was an easy place to feel lost in. The women sort of followed the men's lead because it's important for Marines to get along with each other. It reflects well and it might help their chances of getting promoted in the future. Beth Ford Roth says that the women also had a role to play.

So it's kind of up to the wives to make sure they present a good front, even if maybe they're not going to be best friends with someone, because it's in their husband's best interest to move up the ranks in the Marines. Erin did her best to play her role as a Marine wife. She made friends with the other spouses, did all the requisite socializing, and when she was asked, she would happily help out her neighbors. socializing. And when she was asked, she would happily help out her neighbors. Erin would babysit when Chris and Nicole would go out on dates. Erin just cared for anyone who was vulnerable or smaller than she was, and she really bonded with that little girl and wanted a child of her own.

It was only a matter of time before Erin joined her neighbors in motherhood, another duty of a Marine wife. But this she was excited for. Her babysitting on the base struck a chord in her heart. Back home in Tennessee, Laura noticed her daughter nurturing children often. She was very tender-hearted, very attentive to people, like the younger kids at the barn and at church absolutely loved Erin because when they talked to her, she made them feel like the most important person there. It was in those moments that the true Erin would come out of her shell. She looked at them. She got on their level if they were younger. And she wasn't one of those people that looked around to see who else she could talk to while they were talking to her.

They were her focal point. Erin missed her own childhood home full of kids. After four months of living in 29 Palms, she couldn't wait to get back home for Christmas in Tennessee and spend some time with her family. We got to spend, I think, like 10 days with them or so. Soon after the visit was over, Lore got a call from Erin. And right after they got back, she found out she was pregnant. From the very beginning of their relationship, John and Erin both wanted to have children and start a family together. Erin was very excited to be pregnant.

I mean, they wanted, and they're both great with kids. It was the beginning of 2014. John and Erin couldn't be happier, gushing about the pregnancy. Erin took to Facebook, guess what, I'm pregnant, with images of a stork flying through the clouds. Her Facebook friends, people from Tennessee and 29 Palms, congratulated her, so excited for her new chapter. She was in her first trimester, around eight weeks. And by the end of January, maybe the first part of February, she miscarried. Erin wasn't sure how to deal with something like that. I mean, she was a baby.

For anyone, a miscarriage is a painful experience. But for such a young couple, it was devastating. Territory they were not equipped to navigate. I don't think either one of them knew how to handle that grief process, to lose the baby and the hormones doing crazy things to you. The miscarriage took its toll on John and Erin. But it was not the first issue they had in their marriage. When John finally arrived to 29 Palms after his deployment, Erin said she sensed a shift in him. He wasn't the sweet boy she came to love in Tennessee anymore.

He started to harden and became distant. The two started fighting more and more. Here's reporter Beth Ford Roth again. They went from having sort of a sweet, romantic dating relationship where they'd go out for French fries and a soda to a full-on marriage with the possibility of being parents or not being parents, what it's like to have to pay bills, what it's like to have to get along with people who aren't from Tennessee. And so that the change would be difficult, I think, for anyone, but they were 18, 19 years old.

Beth thinks that at 19, Erin and John were still trying to figure out who they were. John, as I think any teenage husband, would have difficulty communicating his sorrow, his grief, or understanding how his wife felt. And there was a split there. From afar, Aaron's mother, Lore, noticed the couple was struggling. I think that's kind of when things kind of started spiraling. Just over 48 hours after Aaron's disappearance, in the rolling sands of the Mojave Desert, the authorities gathered around Aaron's blue Corolla. NCIS Special Agent Randolph needed to keep track of all the evidence found by Aaron's car. Looking around that vehicle, trying to find any clue that would have led to where she went to next

from that location where that vehicle was parked and if anybody else was there with her. The car was found just a stone's throw away from the Marine base. It was clear she was not alone when she left for the desert. Specialists were called in to look at the tire tracks. The desert sand held the tread well and the specialists were able to create three-dimensional impressions of the tracks. The design of the tread and its dimensions can help positively match the tire to a type of vehicle. Investigators determined that the car that had pulled up next to Aaron was a Jeep. Now this was something the NCIS agents could work with. But first, they had to question Aaron's husband, John, again, the last known person to have seen

her. When was the last time you saw her? Where did she say she was going to go? Does she have any friends? And that's where Jessica comes in. Jessica, known as Jessie, was Aaron's closest friend back home in Tennessee. Aaron and Jessie texted daily, often hourly, ever since Aaron moved to 29 Palms. Jessica Trenton reached out to John Corwin the day after Aaron disappeared. She disclosed information related to those messages that she had with Aaron because she was concerned that Aaron didn't return. Analyst DeChelfa knew it was time for NCIS to use its network and reach to locate Jessie

and learn everything she may know. We contacted our agent out there close to Jessica, asked him to get all that information from Jessica. My name is Sean Nash. I'm a special agent with NCIS, assigned to the Memphis, Tennessee office, and I was asked to run some leads on the Aaron Corman investigation. The NCIS Tennessee office was small. Only two agents ran it, including special agent Sean Nash. We cover all of Tennessee and all of Arkansas. So if there's anybody that needs to be interviewed, anybody needs to be interrogated, evidence needs to be collected, that kind of thing. If an NCIS office across the world needs

something done in those two states, they call us and ask us to do it for them. Special Agent Nash made his way to Jesse as soon as he got the call. Luckily, Jesse was ready to tell all. She told him that initially she was nervous to share information. But now her fear for Aaron's well-being overcame her loyalty. Jessica was very concerned about her friend Aaron

and was upset. So she was very cooperative and helped us in any way that we needed. Special Agent Nash's main objective was to copy everything off Jesse's phone, especially her text messages with Aaron. The text messages explaining the locations she might have gone would be important. Timelines would be important. The 29 Palms NCIS office was very eager to get these because this would explain who she was with prior to her disappearance. The NCIS has a digital system for things like this. The software itself can extract a variety of data from devices, including call logs, texts, photos, browsing history, and more. We tried to download

her information from her cell phone. The system should duplicate all the info and data from Jesse's cell phone onto the NCIS database. Special Agent Nash linked Jesse's phone to it using a laptop and tried to begin the download. Unfortunately, there was a problem. An error message popped up. She had just gotten a new phone, brand new phone. Her other one had broken. And so the system did not have the updates phone, brand new phone. Her other one had broken. And so the system did not have the updates for her brand new phone. Even with some of the best available tech, it was no match for an updated smartphone.

They'd have to do it the old-fashioned way. Special Agent Nash looked through all her messages, cataloged them manually by taking pictures of Jesse's phone with his phone. And during the manual search, we identified several text messages that were important to the investigation. As he combed through Jesse's texts with Aaron, Special Agent Nash found a name. Christopher Lee was a Marine that was the next-door neighbor of Aaron Corwin at the time, and there were some text messages that involved him and Aaron Corwin.

According to the text between Aaron and Jessie, Aaron was planning on meeting Chris Lee in Joshua Tree National Park the day she went missing. Chris Lee, Nicole Lee's husband and Aaron's neighbor. The day before Aaron went missing, she had texted her friend Jessica. Apparently this surprise trip is super important. You know, I had heard of Chris Lee before. I knew that they had hung out together.

It seemed kind of odd to me that she'd be going out there with, you know, just Chris. That's the question on everyone's mind. Why would Erin go into the desert alone with her neighbor, Chris Lee? What surprise could he possibly have for her? And why didn't she tell her husband about it? You know, because she was a secret, so I could tell her my secrets. That's next episode on 48 Hours NCIS. From CBS News and CBS Studios, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Original reporting by 48 Hours producer Paula Rosa. Anthony Batson is the senior producer for 48 Hours. Thank you. Megan Marcus. Our podcast was written and produced by Jay Venables, Isabel Kirby-McGowan,

Kara Schillen, Max Johnston, Megan Adolsky, and Ian Enright. Additional reporting and recording by Isabel Kirby-McGowan, Jay Venables, and Megan Adolsky. Our executive producers are Megan Adolsky and Ian Enright. Theme and music by Epidemic Sound. Original music from Goat Rodeo with additional music from Paramount. Final mix by Rebecca Seidel. Ian Enright is our fact checker. Our production manager is Megan Adolsky. I'm Natalie Morales. If you're enjoying this show, be sure to give it a rating and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting. If you liked 48 Hours NCIS, check out the rest of our 48 Hours podcasts by searching 48 Hours on your favorite podcast app.

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