Cold Case Files - Ticket to Nowhere

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

Flight 191 crashed in Chicago in 1979, killing nearly 300 people on board. It was the deadliest plane accident in American history. A single mother, Diane Chorba, also died that day, but was she aboard flight 191, or was the crash the perfect cover-up for murder? Check out our great sponsors! BetaBrand: Get 30% off your Betabrand order when you go to Betabrand.com/COLDCASE  Sundance: Try Sundance Now FREE for 30 days! Go to SundanceNow.com and use code COLDCASE SimpliSafe: Take 20% off your Simplisafe System AND your first month is free when you sign up for the interactive monitoring service at SimpliSafe.com/coldcase  Progressive: Take one small step to help your budget. Get a quote today at Progressive.com  Listen to Killer Psyche on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or you can listen one week ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One. On May 25th, 1979, American Airlines Flight 191 took off from Chicago O'Hare International Airport, bound for Los Angeles. The plane had barely lifted off when the left engine broke free, crashing into the wing, then falling to the ground. The plane rolled violently, then crashed, erupting into a ball of flames. There were no survivors. All 271 people on board died, along with two people on the ground when the plane hit. When an accident of that magnitude happens, officials jump into action.

The crash site was investigated, bodies examined for identification, and the technical failures were explained. But there was one mystery about the crash that wasn't so open and shut. One woman, 30-year-old Diane Chorba, also died around the time the plane went down. But did she die aboard the aircraft? Or was the crash a perfect cover-up for murder? From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. Everyone knows the old statistic about how you're more likely to die in a car accident than a plane crash.

But what about murder? According to a UN report, the average person's odds of getting murdered are around 1 in 16,000. But the odds of dying in a plane crash are about 1 in 11 million. The math seems pretty clear on what's a more likely cause of death. However, in Luther, Michigan, in 1979, the outcome wasn't so immediately obvious. It was May 24th, one day before the crash, and 13-year-old Vicki Chorba was getting home from school. When she opened her front door, Vicki expected to see her mother, Diane. Instead, she walked in on another woman, Judy Bean, rifling through her mother's things.

I remember opening the front door and seeing Judy on the floor in front of the bookcase, going through books, papers. It seemed that she was looking for something. And she had told me that my mother had gone to Grand Rapids to pick up truck parts, and that I would be coming and staying with her until she got home that evening. Judy took Vicki and her 9-month-old brother Joshua home with her, where the kids waited for their mom to return.

And figured that she would be back later that night. And she didn't come back. She wasn't back the next day. She never came back. By the next day, Vicki was starting to get scared. Her mom was still missing. Then, to make matters worse, Flight 191 went down in a fiery crash that afternoon. That's when Judy Bean and her husband Ollie sat Vicki down.

They told her that her mother had decided to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to California, and Diane was one of the 273 people killed in the crash. The news of Diane's death sent Vicki reeling. And I cried and I cried. And then for a couple of days I was really sick. I know I was in bed, sick to my stomach, and just felt totally lost. The loss of a parent at any age is traumatic, but for a 13-year-old with an infant brother, it must have been unbearable. Still, underneath all that pain and fear was a question that nagged at the back of Vicki's mind. She would have told me if she was leaving town. That's what made everything not seem right when they said that she was gone, because she always told me when she was leaving. Vicki wasn't the only person asking questions about her mother's sudden and unexplained trip to Los Angeles.

Diane's friend and landlord, Mae Rasmussen, thought it was out of character for the mother of two to pack up without a word. I was sure she was not on the plane. I just couldn't believe that she went on that plane without saying something on a trip like that, you know, because she didn't travel around that much. Concerned, May turns to the Michigan State Police to help confirm whether Diane really was aboard Flight 191 or to find anyone who might know something about her sudden trip to L.A. But

investigators can only find one person who's able to corroborate Diane's travel plans, Judy Bean's husband, Ollie. Mr. Bean claimed that he'd taken her to the Big Rapids, Michigan area, met a person who he did not know, a female, driving an indescribable vehicle, and they left to go to board the airplane in Chicago. That was Detective Sergeant George Pratt, who handled May's initial inquiry. Detective Pratt shared Ollie Bean's story with Diane's family, and they were hopeful

that the new information might bring them some answers. So the Chorba family hired attorney Michael Mars to investigate Ollie's claims. If he was telling the truth, there had to be some evidence that explained Diane's quick departure. A boarding pass, an eyewitness, a passenger manifest, something that would explain how Diane ended up on that doomed flight,

or if she was on board at all. And they came to me because they had been told that Diane had taken this flight and was either flying on someone else's ticket or on standby or something like that. And so they asked me to see if I could find out if she was on the flight. Mara's first step was to find the team responsible for processing the crash site. So we turned to medical examiner Robert Kirshner. At this point, it was July of 1979, two months since the crash, and Dr. Kirshner's team was still working to identify all 273 bodies. The process was proving to be a difficult one, and progress was slow. All of the bodies were badly

charred, and identification was going to be a long and arduous process. Dr. Kirshner started his search for Diane by going over the passenger manifest. It was the most likely indicator that she might be among the unidentified bodies. But that lead soon turned up empty. Here's Attorney Mars to explain. First of all, her name was not on the passenger manifest. So the question was whether there was anyone on the plane who was traveling under an alias. We first made the determination that there was no one who was flying on the plane under an alias, that we could account for all the names on the passenger manifest. With no Diane Charba listed on the plane under an alias, that we could account for all the names on the passenger manifest. With no Diane Charba listed on the passenger manifest

and no indication that she was traveling under an alias, investigators were forced to turn to the physical evidence. It was no easy task. The medical examiner's team was dealing with hundreds of bodies, many still unidentified. So finding a match for Diane would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Dr. Kirshner started again, this time comparing Diane's description and dental records

to the unidentified remains, hoping for a miracle. Here's Kirshner with the results. Of those bodies that we were unable to identify, none of them fit the physical characteristics of Diane Chorba. They were mostly men. Of the few women who were in that group, they were all older. Also, she was pregnant at the time, and we found no evidence of any pregnant women on board.

So we could basically exclude the fact that Diane Chorba had been on that flight. The search for Diane was at a dead end, and one thing was becoming increasingly clear. She never got on that flight. But if she wasn't killed in the crash, then where was she? Mara shared her suspicions with the Chorba family. I directly informed them that I believed that she was a victim of foul play and that I believed at least at that point in time that she was dead

and that someone had killed her. Diane Shorba had been missing and assumed dead for 10 months when it was decided she was not aboard Flight 191. But that confirmation brought up more questions than it answered. Was Diane out there, alive somewhere? Had she gotten fed up with single motherhood and bailed? Or was it something more sinister? And if the worst case was true, who killed Diane Chorba? Police were now treating her case as a missing persons, and their first step was to revisit the last person to see Diane alive. So Detective Pratt paid a visit to Ollie Bean.

Pratt doesn't paint the best picture of Ollie. He was known to drink heavily. He was known to be a rounder. He could handle himself in many of the bar fights that he would become involved in. As investigators dug deeper into their only lead, the picture got worse. He was violent and known to have a wandering eye. Word around town was that Ollie had relationships with several women, while his wife Judy was forced to look the other way. I was the stay-at-home wife that took care of the kids, the cooking, the cleaning,

and his girlfriends were the ones that would go out with him, drinking or whatever. That was Judy Bean, the woman who Vicki found rifling through her mom's papers the day Diane went missing. Little did Vicki know, she and Judy were more entwined than she could possibly imagine. In December of 1977, two years before Diane's disappearance and the deadly crash,

Judy Bean discovered that her husband Ollie was seeing another woman, her friend, Diane Chorba. Not only were the two having an affair, Diane was also pregnant with Ollie's child. Nine months later, Diane gave birth to Vicki's little brother, Joshua. As if that weren't enough, Judy discovered that Diane was pregnant again in February of 1979, less than a year after Joshua was born. Ollie was yet again the father.

Two pregnancies with another woman was too much for Judy to bear. Three months later, Diane disappeared. The revelation of the affair left Detective Pratt with two potential suspects, both with plenty of motive and opportunity. Judy is being spurned, so to speak. Her husband is running around with another woman, bearing children. Then, of course, you have to look at Mr. Bean, Ollie Bean, the size of him, the contact with her on a continuing basis. So I would say that they probably both were suspect of possibly causing harm to Diane Chorba.

Had Judy gotten fed up with Ollie's infidelity and killed his pregnant mistress? Had Ollie panicked and killed Diane in a desperate attempt to save his marriage? Or had they worked together? Investigators felt certain that they were closing in on Diane's killer. But even with two likely suspects, the lack of any physical evidence, witnesses, or even a body put the case at a stalemate. The investigation stretched on year after year, and eventually, Diane's case went cold. Six years after Diane Chorba disappeared, her daughter Vicki has grown into a life of her own. She's given birth to her first child. And becoming a mother seems to sharpen her perspective

on her own mother's disappearance. That was the first time I thought to myself nobody would ever leave their children. You know, after you give birth to your children, it's kind of hard. I mean, you fall in love. You fall in love. That's Vicky Chorba, all grown up. And motherhood has made her more certain than ever that her mother isn't just missing. She's dead, and her killer is out there on the loose. I knew that she did not just up and leave and that something bad had happened. And I set out to find her over the years.

And I knew that she wouldn't be alive when I found her. In search of her mother, Vicki goes back to where the investigation left off. She pays a call to the Michigan State Police, hoping to reopen her mother's case. Detective Sergeant Gary Schaefer takes the call and pulls up Diane's file. It was more a missing persons investigation in the beginning. You don't have a body. You don't have any evidence. We had absolutely no evidence. All we had was what people were telling us.

Those people are Judy and Ollie Bean. Judy had revealed Diane and Ollie's affair during the original investigation. But Ollie stuck hard to his story about Diane meeting a mystery woman and catching a ride to the airport. Detective Schaefer thought Judy might know more about her husband's story than she let on. Judy Bean probably was the key to the case. If we could get her to tell us the truth, because I felt that she knew what was going on, and if anybody would tell us, it would have to be her.

Vicki and Detective Schaefer were both convinced Judy Bean was holding on to some vital piece of information, so the two decided to work together, running a sting. Wearing a police wire, Vicki makes a series of phone calls to her old family friend, Judy. I'd call her on Mother's Day. I'd call her on a holiday. Man, I'm really missing my mom, and we'd talk a little bit, and she would describe, I'd ask her to describe the last time she'd seen her. And each phone call over a period of time, her story changed.

And I knew that she knew something. Here's some audio from one of the calls between Vicki and Judy. When he come home, he didn't say where she was at? Um, I don't even remember now. and Judy. Despite her changing stories, Judy refuses to give up even a hint of foul play. So the sting drags on. For nine years, the phone calls continue. And Vicki hopes that Judy will slip, revealing some glimpse of Diane's fate. But for nine years, Judy never falters.

You know, everyone's saying that Ollie did something to Mom. Vicki, I honestly couldn't tell you. I really don't know. In the 15 years since Diane's disappearance, the Bean family has become even more afraid. They relocated to Oregon, but their problems just followed them to the new home. According to Judy, the main problem was Ollie, who terrorized the family with almost constant physical and emotional abuse.

He could see something on TV in the middle of the night, like a wife cheating on a husband, and he could drag me out of bed and beat up on me and say I was cheating on him or just take it out on all the kids. You didn't have to have a reason for it. Just whatever the mood struck him. On more than one occasion, Judy tried to take the children and leave. But each time, Ollie found a way to stop her. And more often than not, it involved violence. Like if I would ever try to leave or get near the door, he'd drag me back and start beating on me.

He said if I ever took the kids and left, he would hunt me down and kill me. He said nobody was ever going to take his kids from him. So Judy was forced to stay until one night things got worse than they'd ever been. The Bean family sat down to eat dinner and watch a movie. Something set Ollie off, and he started arguing with his now 15-year-old son, Joshua. Then he's punching Josh and hitting him and beating up on him and saying all kinds of things. And I asked him, please don't do that. And he started beating on me. That was Judy describing what, by now, must have been a standard experience at the Bean household. Ollie started with his son, then went on to beat his wife. But the rest of the night did not go as Ollie had planned. Because his 22-year-old daughter, Teddy Beth, had had enough. Teddy

decided to put an end to her father's reign of terror, for good. Teddy handed me the baby, and he'd come back up onto the porch. She opened the door and shot him seven times. And he ended up in a wheelchair. Ollie Bean lived, but he would never walk again. Teddy Bean was cleared by a grand jury, and she never even stood trial. Instead, her father Ollie was charged with assault, after multiple witnesses testified to his long history of abuse.

Just like that, Ollie Bean's hold over Judy seemed to disappear. Now that he could no longer physically intimidate her, Judy almost immediately packed up her kids and her belongings and left. After 26 years of abuse, Judy and her children were finally safe and out of Ollie's reach. But would that be enough for her to finally open up about what had happened to Diane Chorba?

Michigan's cold case detectives thought it was worth a shot. In 1999, 20 years after Diane went missing, Detective Gary Schaefer decided it was time to talk to Judy again, face to face. So, cold case detectives headed to Judy's new hometown, Condon, Oregon. The population of Condon in 1999 was about 600, so it wasn't hard for the detectives to track Judy down and bring her in. And they started questioning me. It was Gary Schaefer that was questioning me, and I think he questioned me for a couple hours, and I kept saying the same story over and over and over again. Just like she'd done for the last 20 years, Judy stuck to her story.

She said the last time they saw each other, Diana was headed for O'Hare Airport to board Flight 191. This time, that story didn't sit right with detectives. Here's Detective Schaefer. I kept telling her I didn't believe her about the aircraft. The aircraft crashed true enough. A lot of people died true enough. But Diane Chorba was not on that aircraft. Detectives know Judy is lying because they know Diane never boarded flight 191. So they keep questioning her about the specifics of her story, about her husband, and about what

might have gone wrong that afternoon. Whether it was the freedom from Ollie, or just pure exhaustion from two decades of lying, Judy finally decides it's time to come clean. Right out of the blue, she says, he told me he shot her. And once I said those words, I couldn't take them back. I said, I guess I'm in a lot of trouble now. And I knew I just had to go on and tell the whole story. Judy starts her story at 8.30 a.m. on May 24, 1979, the day before the plane crash. Judy was home, getting ready for the day, when she saw Ollie and Diane drive up to the house together.

And she was out in the car. And they left, and then he came back a couple hours later, and he'd come in the house, and he was upset, and he said he'd killed Diane. According to Judy, Ollie walked into the house, grabbed a chainsaw, and told her to get into the car. As the two drove back to the scene of the crime, Ollie started talking, and he told her exactly how he killed Diane. She was walking in front of him, and he called her name because he didn't want to shoot her in the back of the head. And she turned around, and he said, this one's for Judy, and he shot her in the head.

Finally, the two arrived at the dead end of a dirt road in the forest. Judy remembers pulling over and seeing Diane's body face down in a hole. Ollie buried Diane and covered her grave so that no one could disturb it. He cut the tree down on her body, and we went home. And he got her purse out of the car, and he gave me her earrings and her rings and her necklace, and he told me to put those away.

And then he cut up all of her identification, everything in her purse, and burned it. With Judy's story, Detective Schaefer brings Ollie in for questioning. Unsurprisingly, Ollie sticks to the same old story. Here's Detective Schaefer. He told us again that Diane Chorba was on that aircraft, and obviously she was not.

And he terminated the interview, basically. Wouldn't go any farther. Ollie's unwillingness to talk didn't help the case. So far, detectives had Judy's word against Ollie's. But at least it was a start. So the investigators headed back to Michigan in search of evidence that might substantiate Judy's story. But first, Detective Schaefer thought it was time to give Vicki Chorba some long-awaited answers.

He went on to tell me what had happened, what she had said. I excused myself and went in the bathroom and had it broke down in there. I cried for about a half hour, I'd say. And I come back out out and it's like, okay, now what do we do? What's next? Detectives were asking themselves the same question. They had a plausible story and a solid motive, but there was still one huge missing piece of the puzzle. They needed to find Diane's body. So detectives contact Judy Bean again and fly her back to Michigan. Then they ask Judy to lead them to Diane's body.

Judy accompanies officers up into the wood she visited with Ollie 20 years ago. But after two decades, the landscape has changed quite a bit, and Judy's memory's faded. They search for days, but are unable to find Diane Chorba's remains. So investigators are forced to make a difficult decision. Indict Ollie Bean for murder and try their case without a body or let Diane's case go cold again, likely for good. Investigators decide this is as close as they'll ever get to an airtight case. So the trial moves forward.

Ollie Bean is arrested and tried for the murder of Diane Chorba. Michigan Assistant Attorney General Mark Bloomer zeroes in on how he'll make his case. And for the second time in this investigation, everything hinges on Judy Bean. She was so terrified of her husband, and he had so cowed her and controlled her all of their married life, that that was the explanation for why she didn't come forward.

And I had to be able to develop that in front of the jury. Raise your right hand. You swear the testimony you're about to give only the truth regarding this man. Judy agrees to testify for the prosecution and takes a stand across from her ex-husband, Ollie Bean. Here's more audio from the courtroom. For the record, I'm looking at you right now, Mrs. Bean. Am I accurate if I describe that you were physically shaking?

Yes. Why is that so? Because I'm scared. Scared of what? Of everything that's going on, and I'm scared of Ollie. What would happen? With her ex-husband sitting just a few feet away, Judy starts to describe what she saw in the woods over 20 years ago.

Now what of her could you see? Her legs. One foot, because her shoe was up. 20 years ago. Take a second. Ollie's defense takes an unsurprising tack, sticking to the story he's always told. He claims Judy is mistaken. Diane got on Flight 191, and her body was simply lost among the wreckage. For the last 20 years, Oliver Bean has been telling everybody who would listen

that she got on that plane and she was among the victims. We proved she wasn't there, and he still kept telling that story. The problem is, by now, the remains from Flight 191 have nearly all been identified, and there's still no ticket under Diane's name and no chorba on the flight manifest. Ollie's defense holds little water, and after three days of trial and over 10 hours of deliberation, the jury returns their verdict. Ollie Bean is convicted of murder in the second degree.

At a sentencing hearing, Vicki Chorba reads a statement to the court. I have no closure. He took from her everything that she had or ever could have. And I would like him to tell us where her remains could be found. Ollie sits silent in the courtroom and reveals nothing about Diane's remains.

He's sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison, finally bringing an end to the decades-long investigation. For Vicki, however, the case is far from over. We're over here, right? Is that where we're at? And this road dead ends about a quarter of a mile back or so. Check it out. We're going to walk back there and look then. That's Vicki and a group of friends out in the woods of Luther, Michigan,

on an autumn day in 2001. Vicki's still searching for her mother's body and foreclosure. Where's my mother's body? What did you do with her? That's all I want to know from him. The team spreads out and begins another search, but there's not much to work with. Judy Bean's memories from a decade earlier are their only guide,

and it doesn't get them very far. Well, they all look alike, Robin. The team searches for three hours, but they come up with nothing. Still, Vicki plans to keep searching those woods until they find what they're looking for. Maybe next time I come up here, I can take my boys fishing and camping and relax and not have to look anymore, just put it all to rest.

Next time we come up, maybe we can go visit the cemetery and put some flowers there on Grandma's grave and talk to her and just have a place to go. As of the recording of this podcast, March 2019, the remains of Diane Chorba have still not been found. Thank you. producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at aetv.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at aetv.com slash real crime.