48 Hours: NCIS - Where is Erin?: 1

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Erin Corwin was a girl from small town Tennessee when she moved across the country to live with her husband, Corporal John Corwin, on a desert Marine base. They were high school sweethearts, young and in love. But less than a year later, Erin disappears. NCIS investigators leap into action, and the search for the missing Marine’s wife begins.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.

Our whole life being turned totally upside down began on June 29th, 2014. On a beautiful summer Sunday morning, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee with her husband Bill. They were getting ready to go to church when they received an awful call. to church when they received an awful call. My son-in-law called probably around 11 o'clock, 1130 on Sunday morning and told us that Aaron was missing. And I'm like, what do you mean Aaron's missing? Bill and Laura hadn't seen their daughter Aaron in a few months. Aaron recently moved out of the Heavlin family home to start a new life in California with her high school sweetheart and now husband, John Corwin. They moved to a small city called 29 Palms, a blip in the middle of the Mojave. What brought

the Corwins there was the Marine base. John was a Marine, Corporal Corwin officially, and Erin was a Marine's wife. They lived on the base in a small apartment, their first home together. Bill and Lore hadn't seen the new place yet. When John called, Lore had been planning a trip out west to visit Erin later that week. Aaron was 19 years old, almost 20. I was going to go out for her 20th birthday. But then, no one knew where Aaron was. On the phone, Aaron's husband, John Corwin, told Laura that the last place he knew Aaron had gone was Joshua Tree National Park. that the last place he knew Erin had gone was Joshua Tree National Park.

And he told me that she had gone out to Joshua Tree National Park the day before to look for places for her and I to go to take pictures and stuff when I came to visit in a few days. My first immediate thought was Erin got lost. Erin is very directionally challenged. Bill, Erin's father, worried that Erin wouldn't find her way out. I mean, Joshua Tree is just the desert. There's nothing there. There's no water. It's not like you're going to find anything. There's no shelter of any type. So you're just exposed to the elements. In addition to her lack of hiking experience, Erin was not particularly prepared for the outdoors. She was a very petite 19-year-old, 5'2", maybe 115 pounds. She was very shy, extremely naive.

Bill and Lorne knew their daughter. This didn't sound like her. She wouldn't go on an overnight hike spontaneously. She probably wouldn't go on an overnight hike at all. Erin was a homebody. She stayed inside her comfort zone. The Hevelins thought through what might have happened and quickly discounted some possibilities. No, I never thought that Aaron had run away. I didn't think that was even

remotely a possibility. I mean, she just was not a risk taker. Worried, Lohr pressed Aaron's husband, John, for more details. Aaron's husband, John, for more details. The last time John said he saw Aaron was early the morning before. He said she kissed him goodbye around 7 a.m. and he watched her drive off in their car. He went back to sleep. A while later, he got up and spent the day playing video games. By nightfall, Aaron still hadn't come home. She was supposed to be back in time for dinner. But John went to bed. The next morning, according to John,

it had been 24 hours since Erin had driven out of sight. John alerted the authorities. Then he called Lore. He sounded concerned. There wasn't a lot of emotion in his voice, but that's typical John. It's hard to read him, to know what his thoughts are. I'm CBS News correspondent Natalie Morales. This is 48 Hours NCIS, where we take you inside a case NCIS agents say they will never forget. Episode 1, Where is Erin? With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen. Whether you listen to stories,

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Visit audible.ca to sign up. While his 19-year-old wife was missing, John spent most of the day at home. He started wondering, where is Erin? And tried to get in touch with her, but could not by phone. He knows there is not good service in the desert, so he didn't worry too much. But then by nightfall, he was worried. Paul LaRosa is a producer for CBS News and 48 Hours. He reported on Erin Corwin's disappearance. La Rosa had a lot of experience telling true crime stories. He knew that generally when someone goes missing,

the first person investigators turn to when they need answers is the spouse. In this case, that was John Corwin. But he didn't do anything. He didn't call police. He didn't really tell anybody on his base. So to the authorities, it was initially suspicious that John waited to report Erin missing. The sheriff's deputies and the sheriff's office had a lot of questions for him.

They were like, tell us where she went. You know, what did she have with her? Why did you wait 24 hours to report her missing? His version of the story is that I thought from watching television shows that you have to wait 24 hours before you can report an adult missing. But that makes you seem suspicious in the eyes of the investigators. Also, he had no alibi, per se. I mean, he was in his apartment playing video games,

and he's an unemotional guy. I mean, he's not the kind of guy to say, my wife is missing. You know, he's like unemotional and very flat affect. Once John finally did alert the authorities, the local sheriff's department in San Bernardino immediately opened up an investigation. But they needed help for this specific case. The sheriff's department can't just go there and start talking to people. opened up an investigation. But they needed help for this specific case. The Sheriff's Department can't just go there and start talking to people.

They have to go through protocol, right? They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. NCIS, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Most of us may recognize this name from television. NCIS, never heard of it. That's embarrassing. The television show NCIS follows a cast of characters, including NCIS special agents, field agents, forensic specialists, and more through 21 seasons of scripted primetime television drama. But the NCIS is a real-life federal agency.

NCIS is sort of like an in-house FBI for the Navy. There are only about a thousand special agents based all over the world. In Japan, Singapore, Bahrain, Italy, and yes, at the Marine base in 29 Palms, California. They are stationed at the base, and they get involved, holding the Sheriff's Department hand to let them know how the military operates. NCIS Special Agent Clifton Randolph Jr. was alerted by the Sheriff's Department that a Marine's wife was missing. The initial story we received was Erin had gone to Joshua Tree National Park to look for nice hiking routes for her and her mother, who was coming out later on that week.

That was the last time that Corporal Corwin had seen her, driving in their blue Corolla away from the installation. The Marine Base, what Special Agent Randolph called the installation, was the largest Marine Corps base in the world. In addition to housing an NCIS office, there were about 900 families who lived on base. By 2013, that included the Corwins. However, the base was not exactly busy. 48 Hours producer Paul LaRosa remembered the first time he ever drove by the base. If you're driving through 29 Palms and you make a left somewhere and you just drive for about 30 minutes or less,

you'll come to the Marine base, which is huge. But there's a big gate. There's a big gate at the base because there's a lot of security. And we were not allowed out there. If you were a resident of the base, like Aaron Corwin was, every time you came home, you passed through a large gated entrance with a security checkpoint. From there, a sort of main street led to a small downtown area of buildings, including offices, a mess hall, a library, a small hospital, and even a bowling alley.

Housing for the military families branched off this main area into secluded suburban plots and cul-de-sacs. From where NCIS's office is located on the installation, into secluded suburban plots and cul-de-sacs. From where NCIS's office is located on the installation, it's not far from where Aaron Corwin lived with Corporal Corwin. Practically a mile, maybe two. The rest of the base's immense acreage, almost 71,000 acres in total, was taken up by vast military training areas, including airfields and shooting ranges. You know, they fire artillery shells there all the time, and they have, you know, people out in the desert and doing all sorts of things. In the early 2000s, the majority of units in the Marine Corps deploying to Iraq trained here. of units in the Marine Corps deploying to Iraq trained here. Not too far from the base's residential area, there was a sandy stretch protected by mountains named Mini Baghdad.

But when Erin moved to the base, her entire world shrunk to those few miles right inside the gated entrance. In such close quarters, Special Agent Randolph said he got to know his neighbors well. There could have been a chance that you run into her at the grocery store or you pass her at the gym. I might have come across her and not even know it, but there's that person that needs your help, and you need to do everything you can to help. In his office, Special Agent Randolph got to work. His first step was to take what the Sheriff's Department knew and ask himself, what don't we know? There was an immediate concern for what could have happened to Erin that she did not return as soon as he thought she was going to. Special Agent Randolph had questions.

What if Erin didn't go where she said she was headed? What if she just got on the highway and drove? But what if she actually was at Joshua Tree National Park? The park is larger than the state of Rhode Island. How could they ever comb through nearly a million acres of land? Special Agent Randolph thought through all the possibilities with one main focus. Where is Erin? You want to find where Erin is. Where is Aaron? You want to find where Aaron is.

From the moment someone is reported missing and the last person to see that person being a corporate core woman, Aaron's husband, you're racing the clock because you don't know the circumstances that are involved in this person's disappearance. There was one big problem working against the NCIS agents and Aaron. Time. You've got to get on it quick because that person might need you sooner than later and time is not on your side. So Special Agent Randolph dispatched a team of NCIS experts. I provided analytical support to Cliff Randolph in the Aaron Corwin investigation. analytical support to Cliff Randolph in the Aaron Corwin investigation. Analyst Ashley DeChelfin was sent to the 29 Palms Marine Base from another NCIS office on the Camp Pendleton Marine Base

only a few hours away. When she arrived in 29 Palms, she met her colleagues, got up to speed on the investigation, and dove right into work. I do database checks regularly, review social media, open source information, so whatever's in the news and outlets and looking for information. She scrubbed through Erin's social media. It was 2014 and Facebook was all the rage. What was the last thing Erin posted on her profile? When was she last active online? Basically going onto the internet and searching for all potential information that could be of interest in your investigation. Like Special Agent Randolph, Analyst DeChelfin understood what was at risk

if she missed any detail that could prove vital. I absolutely felt the pressure and the stress surrounding Erin's disappearance because, as Cliff mentioned, we had limited time and we wanted to find her as soon as possible. So I got to work right away. In order to find Erin, the agents needed to learn who Erin was. They needed to understand her, her personality, her temperament, what she liked and disliked. And they needed to understand her relationships, her marriage, and her family.

So they picked up from California and headed to Erin's hometown, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where Erin's life began. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where Erin's life began. Erin was born on July 15, 1994. When she was two weeks old, her birth mother placed her in foster care. But very soon, Erin found her home. Erin came to the house when she was 17 days old. She was an incredible sweet baby. We were blessed to be chosen to be her parents. By the time Erin turned three, the Heavlin family officially

adopted her. She joined a house full of siblings. We fostered several children. We adopted five of them, and Erin was the fourth adopted child. Bill and Lore also had two biological children. They all lived together in a nice house in a small city of Oak Ridge, about 25 miles west of Knoxville, Tennessee. It's a hidden city tucked along the Black Oak Ridge Mountains. And for much of its history, it was kept a secret. One of its nicknames is the city behind a fence. Oak Ridge, Tennessee, if you don't know anything about it, was an atomic city. Oak Ridge, Tennessee did not exist before World War II.

And the military built Oak Ridge, Tennessee for people to develop the atomic bomb. Paul LaRosa visited Aaron's hometown, and he noticed a through line from Aaron's childhood in Oak Ridge to her future on the Marine Base in California. You couldn't just leave Oak Ridge, Tennessee and go for a drive out into the country. There was a gate. Everything was controlled. It was sort of a sheltered, closed town. And Erin herself was very sheltered. She was homeschooled.

So much of her life took place in the family home. On Sundays, the family went to the local church. It was the family, and it was the church, and it was the horse ranch, and that's it. Now, the horse ranch, the East Tennessee Riding Club, was Erin's favorite place in the world as a child. According to Lore, it was like her second home. Erin spent all her time at the stables, you know, in Tennessee. I mean, you know, her mother famously said she would sleep there if she could. Erin's mother, Lore, said she was a quiet and shy girl, and sometimes she seemed to be more comfortable

around animals than people. Erin loved the animals, horses, cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, but they all loved her too. She was like a calming force, and they knew they could trust her, and they knew that she was the one to respect and listen to. Good boy. Shake. Erin could even train cats. This was her leading her cat through tricks. Lay down one more time. Good boy. Erin was an animal whisperer. She could get them to do things that the average person would not be able to. So when Erin discovered the East Tennessee Riding Club and began to experience working with horses.

She excelled. When she first started, I assured her we would never get a horse. And we ended up with two. We spent many, many, many, many hours here. Another local family, the Corwins, were also frequent visitors. Erin and John met at the barn. They met when Erin was in fifth grade. She was 10.

John was just a year older. John's younger sister had a horse there also, and Erin went to their house a couple different times. In a small city with a sheltered life, Erin found the Corwin family house exciting. She would go and play, but she was always especially shy around John. John seemed shy around Erin, too.

John Corwin was a very quiet young man. They grew up together slowly and patiently at first. And then once she turned, I think she was 15 and they kind of reconnected and, you know, did a lot of texting and messaging on Facebook and that kind of stuff. And they started dating on her 16th birthday. And John actually asked me if it was okay if he took her out on a date. And John actually asked me if it was okay if he took her out on a date. John was a serious and stoic teenager. His aspirations were always clear to him.

When they first started dating, he already knew he was going to be a Marine. At 17, John began the process to join the Marine Corps. He took tests for aptitude and strength, and he planned to go to basic training and boot camp the summer after he graduated high school. And meanwhile, despite their young age, Erin and John became serious fast. They started talking about marriage. Erin, full of excitement, told her mom. We knew how young and naive she was, and we had hoped that they would wait a couple years so that she could get a little bit more maturity under her belt. The couple went to John's senior prom together. Aaron was barely 18 when he proposed.

This may sound a bit early for marriage, but it isn't that uncommon for a military couple. Young Marines who choose to enlist right after high school will move to whatever location the military assigns them. And for many young Marines, the path ahead includes marriage. Married couples get preference when it comes to securing housing on base. The reason why they wanted to get married was to get on the base housing list. And you had to be married and they knew John was getting ready to be deployed. So John, like many Marines before him, wanted to start this journey with his high school sweetheart. But Lore wasn't sure Erin understood the reality of marrying a Marine.

We had quite a few conversations on what life as a military wife would be. I tried my hardest to prepare her mentally, emotionally for what was in her future. At 18 years old, John chose the Marines, and Erin chose John. She went to Las Vegas for the Marine Ball, and they got married while they were in Vegas. On a beautiful fall afternoon in 2013, Erin was stuck inside unpacking boxes. The tree-lined view from her childhood bedroom in Tennessee was replaced with the sandy expanses and cacti of 29 Palms, California.

By all accounts, she was still a newlywed. She and John had not yet celebrated a year of marriage. Despite a condo full of boxes, Erin was alone. And she moved out there, got their apartment all set up before John got home from his deployment. John's deployment at Okinawa, Japan, continued on for another few months, and Erin's new life as a 19-year-old Marine's wife began. If she ever felt isolated in Oak Ridge, life on the Marine base challenged her even more. Erin went from living in a house full of siblings to an empty apartment.

All she could do was wait for John to come home. I think Erin was enjoying some aspects of being a Marine wife and other aspects I think it was harder than what she anticipated. Erin tried to develop a routine. She went to the commissary a few times a week to pick up groceries. Otherwise, she spent her time watching TV and scrolling Facebook. She texted her friends back in Tennessee often. After a few months, John came home. But not much changed for Erin.

John was not deployed again after she moved out there. But being in artillery, he went out in the field every month for at least five days, sometimes more. And so she would be home alone during those times that he was out in the field. She was lonely. But one day, according to her mother, Lore, things started to improve when Erin made her first friend on base. Erin was busy unloading her saddle out of her car when she bumped into her next-door neighbor.

Nicole and Erin clicked because of the horses. Nicole Lee lived right next door to Erin and John. She was a fellow Marine's wife. And when Nicole saw Aaron carrying a saddle, she invited Aaron to come by the ranch where she kept her horse, the White Rock Horse Rescue. It was just a 40-minute drive from the Marine base, and with Nicole's invitation, Aaron was immediately reminded of her favorite place on earth, the riding club in Tennessee. She probably felt a pang of homesickness and excitement.

Erin first came here with Nicole to look at horses, introduced me and said I want to find a horse. I need a horse. I rode when I was back home. She had a horse and she had to leave it and so now she was homesick. And so she decided that getting a horse, riding it, would give her some pleasure, some happiness. Isabel Megley is the founder and CEO of this desert rescue ranch. But she was never tucked away in an office somewhere. Isabel preferred to be outside with the horses and the people who volunteered to take care of them. to be outside with the horses and the people who volunteer to take care of them. I rehabilitate rescued horses that have been abused,

and then I also take in horses that aren't abused and find them homes. And then I always invite any individual who would like to come and volunteer at the ranch to help me, because we have no paid employees. 48 Hours producer Paul LaRosa met Isabel while he was covering Aaron's story. He reached out to her for an interview, but she never got back to him. He figured they'd visit the horse ranch anyway. So we go there, and the horses are everywhere, right off the public road. And the ranch itself is absolutely not fancy. I mean, it's very rugged. It's, you know, in a desert community. It's out in the open. And, you know,

you just see horses running back and forth. There's a few structures that look like they're down on their luck. While La Rosa was videotaping the sites on the ranch, he noticed a small group of people approaching him. It's sort of a ragtag bunch of young children and young people and this older woman. And I said, are you Isabel Megley? I said, we're from CBS News, blah, blah, blah. I sent you an email. I called you. And she said, oh, yeah, I meant to call you back.

I just never got around to it. And I said, well, we're here now and we want to talk to you. So once we were face to face, she was happy to talk to us. Isabel is a very weathered person. I mean, she's been outside a lot during her life. You can tell. Isabel was exactly the sort of person Aaron knew well, a fellow animal whisperer with a menagerie of pets following her around the land.

And when Nicole introduced the two of them, Aaron knew exactly how Isabel could help her. And so when she found her horse, Aaron was with Cassie. It was like her partner. It was decided Aaron would volunteer on the ranch. She would pay to adopt a horse and take care of it, and then she'd be able to ride. Many military families from the 29 Palms base enjoyed the ranch.

For Nicole, it was a family affair. She'd spend the day at the ranch with her Marine husband, Christopher Lee. Now, that included Aaron. So it was like a threesome. So when they would come, they would all take their horses and play with them, and then they would leave together. And they would have a good time, the three of them. It was very rarely the four. So where was John? Aaron was not supported by John for this activity because he was not interested in it. He would come here with his motorcycles or his things to play in the dirt. And that's what he would do while she would ride. And she'd say, please come over and watch me ride my horse. He said, I'm not interested. So they were never cozy together. I kept waiting. But he was very difficult to

interact with. Isabel felt she came to know their relationship well. Aaron was always fighting with John over what John told her to do. And so she would come here and say at least I'm free. And she was a different person. The only one he couldn't control was her relationship with the horse. Erin would pile in with the Lee family for the ride to and from the horse ranch. Thanks to them, she could see her horse whenever she wanted. Her relationship with the local community grew, while her marriage strained. I'm a very good judge of animals,

and people go right along hand in hand with that. Isabel welcomed the Marine families onto her ranch, and she observed. Later, she became a valuable source for the NCIS agents working to find Erin Corwin. On Monday, June 30, 2014, Erin had been missing for 48 hours. News spread across the Marine base quickly. It was big news for such a small area. Analyst Ashley DeChelfin had her eye on Erin's social media.

She made note of the people who seemed to be close to Erin, who had recently tagged her in a post, who had commented. She searched through Aaron's Facebook friends and looked through their friends to figure out how people knew each other. There was a lot of useful information publicly available. Analyst DeChelfin just had to determine which leads were worth following, what was real, and what was speculation. In such a small community, this proved difficult early on. Everybody was talking about it. Everybody was commenting on it on social media. People were looking for her. There was buzz on base. And at certain points,

it even became like a bad game of telephone. Before long, the news about Aaron reached Isabel's horse rescue. The phone rings and Aaron, Corin's girlfriend called me and said, have you seen Aaron? And I said, no. But she went missing. I said, missing? She said, yeah. And then the detectives started coming. the detectives started coming. With that was an awareness of all the things I had been watching that happened was a key part of the investigation. With any missing person, you want to return that person to their family and their loved ones because they care about that person. And from working a case like this, you develop a care for the livelihood of that person.

You don't want to see anything bad happen. But in the back of your mind, it's a race against time, and you know that you're running out of it. For a concerned mother, the waiting game was misery. We really had no clue what happened. It was almost like we were walking in a different world. Kind of numb. After the 48-hour mark, with no sign of Erin, it was all hands on deck for the NCIS agents. As the days go by, it's becoming more and more likely that you're not going to find her alive. NCIS paired up with San Bernardino's search and rescue team.

They had three main objectives to determine a safe plan of action, to locate Erin Corwin and to bring her to safety. First, they had to assess the situation based on the story John told. They needed to look for clues. Special Agent Randolph and his team knocked on doors on base, asking if anyone had any information about Erin, any other story to corroborate or contradict her husband's. Was John Corwin telling the truth? This season on 48 Hours NCIS,

the search for a missing Marine's wife uncovers secrets that nobody expected. She was so trusting and always saw the good in people that she did not see the warning signs that I'm sure were there. 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.

Jamie Benson is the senior producer for Paramount Audio. Special thanks to 48 Hours executive producer, Judy Teigard, CBS Studios senior vice president, Rob Luchow, and Paramount Audio vice president, 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 Nadolsky. 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

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