Crime Junkie - MISSING: Jeramy Burt

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

Late one night in 2007, Jeramy Burt left his home to meet up with a friend but never made it. His disappearance opened up a mystery made even more complicated by love triangles, secret recordings, an arrest, and a connection to another missing local man years before. 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/missing-jeramy-burt/ 

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And Britt, when am I going to learn? Oh, God, what now? The ultimate Crime Junkie lesson, that there is no such thing as a straightforward case. Oh, yeah, open and shut doesn't exist. Yeah, if it's straightforward and open and shut, it would be solved. So let me tell you about my week.

So the last case that I just got done with was the Brandon Lawson case, which we released in the fan club this month. Now, our research, writing, recording, editing process isn't like totally linear. So, you know, there have been other episodes between that people have heard. But this is like the next one I dived into after Brandon. And Brandon's case was a doozy, like it literally made our heads hurt. So I said, you know what, after this, I'm going to pick just like a case that's a little more straightforward, a little easier to understand.

And I remembered this case that I'm about to tell you from like years ago. I remember seeing a TV special on it. It seemed, again, kind of one of those open and shut, but you just like couldn't prove it or whatever. And they still needed answers. Basically, a guy goes missing. There was someone kind of shady in his life. And I'm like, you know what, this one's going to be easy to research. But that's the lesson.

Famous last words. Famous last words. If you dig deep enough into any unsolved case, there is a reason it's unsolved. And the complicated web I fell into still has me stuck right smack dab in the middle. This is the story of Jeremy Burt. February 11, 2007 was as average a Sunday as you could get for the Burt family in Idaho. Jeremy Burt, who's in his 30s at the time, spent the weekend in American Falls with his three-year-old daughter Mackenzie. They were visiting some of Jeremy's family that lived there.

And it was so normal, in fact, that Jeremy's sister told the producers of Disappeared on ID that when she heard Jeremy and Mackenzie leaving for the day, she decided to stay in bed and not to get up and say goodbye because she's like, you know what, I'm going to see them again. I'm going to talk to them so soon that I'm just going to stay in and rest. Now, Jeremy made it back to his place in Boise where he lived with his dad, his daughter, and his ex-wife, Kim. Wait, he lived with his ex-wife? That sounds kind of complicated. Girl, you don't know that half of it. So let me kind of take a step back and give you the scoop.

So Jeremy and Kim start dating in like the late 90s. And from what I can pick up, their relationship was really passionate and really passionate isn't always the best thing. Like I've said this to people before, like if there are too many fireworks, you're going to burn your own house down kind of thing. And that seems to kind of have been the case. Like when things were good, they were great. But when things were bad, it was equally as low. But they're making it work in 2002 when Kim finds out that she's pregnant. So at this time, the two decide that like, listen, after all of these years, like back and forth and whatever we've gone through,

like now with a baby on the way, marriage felt for them like the next natural step in their relationship. Right, like let's like make this official. Exactly. But there's a little problem standing in the way. Jeremy is already technically married. What? Yeah. So right out of high school, Jeremy joined the Navy and when he was overseas, he met and married a woman from Japan.

Now, eventually they moved together back to the US, but the marriage didn't work out. And so when his wife returned to Japan, they didn't file for any kind of official divorce. It was almost like, man, just like just a piece of paper doesn't really matter kind of good enough. Like we're living separate lives anyways. It does matter when you want to get remarried because you can't legally be married to two people. Right. So Jeremy had to find a divorce lawyer. Well, this is where things get more complicated.

Jeremy found a local lawyer and according to accounts from both disappeared and dateline, Jeremy started to have an inappropriate relationship with his lawyer. So despite starting up this new relationship, Kim and Jeremy still go ahead with the wedding. So did Kim know about this other lawyer lady? It's a little hard to say. So in her interview on disappeared, Kim said that she knew something was up. But I mean, again, think about it. She's like pregnant at this time. She said she's like tried to talk herself out of it.

But I don't know. I mean, if you just watch the episode on this case, you'd probably think that it's as straightforward as that. But I think it was potentially messier than that. So really like who's to say. But at some point, what I do know is that Kim for sure knows what's going on, like some point after they get married. And she reaches a breaking point where she doesn't want to be part of this love triangle anymore. So after their baby Mackenzie is born, but before their one year anniversary, the two decide to divorce. Jeremy continues to date his lawyer who is a woman named Jeannie, but he just can't quite totally quit Kim.

Well, I mean, yeah, you said they ended up living together again. I assume sometime between the divorce in 2007, he breaks up with Jeannie. If only it were that simple. We might not be telling the story. So even after the divorce, Kim and Jeremy can't stay apart. And before you know it, they're back in this love triangle, but just with different labels. Because instead of like wife, Kim is now the other woman to this lawyer who was the other woman. It is very, very messy.

Oh my goodness. Now, at some point during all of this, Jeannie, the lawyer gets into some trouble with the law. She is accused of forging a judge's signature on a case that she was working at, which is a huge deal. Yeah. At some point, Jeremy decides that he's going to help the authorities put Jeannie away for this. And so he starts recording their conversations and those tapes along with Jeremy eventually testifying end up being key in securing a conviction against Jeannie. Now, Jeannie is disbarred.

She's given a year in jail and 14 years probation. And Jeremy's mom told Debbie Bryce from the Idaho State Journal that there was even a restraining order to keep Jeannie from Jeremy. Okay. So I mean, that's a pretty defined way to end a relationship. Like there's, in my opinion, no coming back after someone testifies against you, gets a restraining order out for you and also, you know, sends you to jail. You would think so, wouldn't you? Oh my God. But the heart can make you do some wildly irrational things.

After Jeannie got out and while she was on probation, she would still contact Jeremy. She would show up at his work site, she would bring him lunch. And Markey Davis, who is the PI for the Burt family, told podcaster Ed Denzel on unfound episode titled Jeremy Burt cause and effect part two, that on at least one occasion, Jeannie actually stayed the night at Jeremy's house after she was released. Okay, wait. So Jeremy is like into this again. This isn't her coming by unwanted. And like harassing him.

No, I don't know what the relationship is, but it seems like he can't quit her either. So did this happen like before Kim moved back in then? Girl, your guess is as good as mine. I do not have the specific details of like who was moving in and out when and who was with who. I mean, it's very, like I said, very messy. Yeah, I need a string board for this for sure. Exactly. Just for this relationship.

But we know at some point Kim moves back in to try and work on things to try and reconcile, though all three still seem to be in the picture. And this is where we are in February 2007 when Jeremy comes home from this trip to again, his house with his dad, his daughter and his ex wife. That's why he's living with her. So he gets back to the house, but it's just his dad there because Kim is in Las Vegas for a work conference. Kim and Jeremy connect over the phone that evening. Now it's interesting because Kim told the producers have disappeared that she had asked Jeremy to come out to Las Vegas since Valentine's Day was right around the corner. But he said that he couldn't because he had to work. But that PI who talked to Ed Denzel said that Jeremy was the one who wanted to go and Kim told him that it didn't make sense because she's like, I'm listening.

I'm going to be working the whole time. You're going to be bored. Like it's not worth the money to have you fly all the way out here or just to sit around in a hotel room waiting for me. So it's a small inconsistency and I don't know what it means just yet, but it's like weird and it stuck out to me. But either way, they just kind of talk as normal that evening. And Jeremy even gets to talk to his mom who called just to make sure that he made it home. Okay. Around 10 30, a freshly showered and dressed up Jeremy asked his dad to watch McKinsey so he can go meet up with his friend.

This guy named Greg because he wants to talk about hunting. Jeremy was a big hunter. Like he just got this new bow. This was his thing. So him going to meet up with a friend to talk about it like not so weird. Totally normal. Yeah. So it did stick out to his dad that he kind of like got a little dressed up to do so.

Like dude isn't in a suit and tie, but he's like he showered. He had on this like black turtleneck. He cleaned up. Yeah. Yeah. So Jeremy leaves and his dad Van had no idea that when he walked out of that door that Sunday night and took off in Kim's car that that would be the last time he'd ever see his son. But there is one last person Jeremy makes contact with before he goes completely off the grid. The next day, February 12th, Kim gets a call from Jeremy when she answers.

There's just a click on the other end and the call gets disconnected. So like weird. She thought that maybe there was a bad connection or whatever. Like she doesn't really think about it. It's not until the next day, February 13th, that the communication from Jeremy's phone starts to get concerning. Wait, he just never came home? Like isn't that concerning to Van? So this is one of those things I couldn't find spelled out explicitly.

Van told the disappeared team that that first day, like when he woke up in the morning and Jeremy wasn't there, that he wasn't worried. He thought maybe he ended up like going hunting. But it's weird to me that by the 13th, he wasn't trying to like call Jeremy or even call Kim asking if like she had talked to him. I mean, and again, I'm missing a lot of things. Like there have never been like any like things spelled out about the communication going back and forth in those first days. So I don't have enough detail that I can like lay it out for you. But I have to think that if they had been in touch and Kim had known Jeremy hadn't come home in two days, I think she would have immediately been concerned when she got a text from Jeremy that said, hey, we need to talk.

And that text was eventually followed by 17 text messages, which Kim says were a bunch of like goodbyes and talk of Jeremy leaving to start a new life. Now she texts back and the two of them like text back and forth well into the night. And something to Kim is just feeling off because at some point she kind of takes a step back and she's like, wait a second. Anyone who knows Jeremy knows he doesn't like to text specifically if he has something important to say like he's going to call you. He's going to do it face to face. He wouldn't be saying like, hey, I'm leaving you and my baby girl. Like he's not going to say that over text messages, especially and like continue to have a conversation. You could see it even being like when I'm going to send a text and then never respond. But right to keep going with the conversation.

Like she said, like if that's uncommon for him in general, red flags, it wouldn't be happening here. Right. So she tries to call him, but the calls just keep going to voicemail. So she keeps calling over and over. And on one of the calls, the phone actually picks up as soon as it picks up. She says, Jeremy, please don't do this. And on the other end, she hears this deep sigh. And then the call just ends. So Kim, now like fully sure something is wrong, calls Van, his dad.

And once Van hears about the messages, like now he's concerned too. So everyone now on high alert keeps trying to reach Jeremy, but everyone keeps getting his voicemail. When Kim returns from Las Vegas, her and Van go to report Jeremy as a missing person. Now they knew because of the text messages that police weren't going to take this as seriously as they were. Right. Especially because like, you know, he's been gone for days at this point. Van thought it was normal or at least not concerning at first. Right.

Kim has this record of him in text, like literally in print saying he's going to leave to start a new life. Like we've seen police not take reports over a lot less, you know. Right. Now here's the difference. So they do actually take the report, though it's not like they're going to like mount search efforts, right? Because I mean, Kim was right. Like they see all this and they're like, oh, it sounds like he kind of just wanted to walk away. But Kim does something else in hopes of getting them to look for Jeremy.

She also reports her car as stolen since he took it and both are missing. So she figures like, okay, if they're not going to do an all out search for him because they think he wanted to go away, then at least I can get them looking for my car, which like I think will lead us to him. Right. The car didn't want to start a new life. It's just along for the ride. Exactly. But days pass and then weeks and there's no sign of Jeremy, no sign of the car.

So are police trying to track his phone or see if he's using like his credit card or using his bank accounts or anything? You know, not fully. Like it seems like they looked at his phone a little, maybe his bank like in relation to the stolen car, but they weren't like trying to triangulate a signal or track down callers from what I can tell. So whatever they did do wasn't helping locate him. And that's it. Like they really didn't try to locate him until something big changed the way police looked at this case. Debbie Bryce reported that on May 18th, this is now three months since Jeremy drove off in Kim's car.

Cowboys who were riding out in the desert, like in this pretty remote part of the desert, came across a car totally burnt to a crisp. They reported it to police and though there was nothing inside that identified it in no license plate, police were able to run the van and see that the car was reported stolen three months before by Kim. Wait, so where in the desert is this? Like, I guess how far from Jeremy's house where he was last seen. I don't have the exact coordinates of where it was found, but when I googled Jeremy's street and I mapped out to like the county where this car was said to have been found in,

it's like a two hour drive south. So this car has probably been there for a while then. Yeah, it's not like we're finding on the other side of the country and we're thinking, you know, Jeremy potentially could have driven in. I mean, we're two hours from the place that he was last seen. Right, right. Now, what's interesting to me about finding the car is not so much the car itself, but specifically that location. First off, there was like nothing usable found in the car. I mean, definitely no body.

They sifted through all the ash and found no usable evidence, but I think the location tells us something. After speaking to the lead detective on the case, reporter Brian Moran reported in the Idaho news that quote, when they tried to go down in a four wheel drive vehicle, they had to walk the last couple hundred yards because it would have wrecked the truck they were in. End quote. So it's not like the car got stuck and then burned. Like to me, it was like deliberately placed there with no intention to ever leave that spot. The detective was quoted in that same article as saying quote, clearly, in my opinion, the intention was to hide it and destroy evidence.

It, the car, made it down there. There obviously had to be somebody else there to help get whoever drove it down there out. End quote. Okay, but is that Jeremy and someone else or two completely different people who maybe, you know, did something to Jeremy? I mean, that's the million dollar question, isn't it? And now like this is the point where police are on board to get to the bottom of it. The problem is they're like three months behind now. Yeah.

Witnesses are going to be like hard to come by. So they look at that digital trail that you asked about earlier, his phone and his bank. And here's what they find. There is some activity on his debit card from the night that he left. So at 10 30 p.m. So this is like right around the same time Jeremy left his Boise home. He made an ATM transaction somewhere in Boise. Okay, but that's kind of broad. Like Boise isn't teeny tiny.

It's like the state capital. Do we know where or for how much we don't all of this is assumptions on my part. But because it was so close to the time of him leaving, I'm thinking that it has to be near his house. And I mean, depending on the bank and like whatever limits you set on your account, I mean, you can usually withdraw between like what, like 250, maybe $600. So at least I don't think there's any way he's like draining his account to start a new life. Like he might have told Kim those text messages. Now the next transaction made on his card is like 90 minutes later at a Chevron station in Mountain Home, Idaho,

which actually is kind of along the way to the desert where his car was found. Now the disappeared show made it seem like maybe he was fueling up, but the family PI told Ed Denzel that he bought like some snacks there. Now this is all we're told that is on his bank cards. After this, there's nothing. I mean, but he got cash out, right? So that doesn't mean he stopped spending or wasn't alive after that. He just didn't use his card.

Well, true. But here is what is interesting that people often point out about this timeline. Like money aside, he leaves home and stops at the ATM about 1030. And then this convenience store, like I said, the transaction is 90 minutes later. So you're looking around like midnight. But when you map Jeremy Street to the city of Mountain Home where that Chevron station is, it's about a 41 minute drive. Now granted, I don't have the exact addresses so you can add some time on both ends,

even add a couple minutes to stop at the ATM, but that doesn't double the time. Like where was he? And bigger question, who was he with? Well, I mean, wasn't this whole thing about him going out to see his friend and talk about his new bow and hunting? Like that's at least what he told his dad. Did anyone, you know, ever try to talk to this friend at any point? So I actually had a ton of questions around his friend. So this guy named Greg.

But what's out there is pretty limited and it seems pretty limited because police, I think ruled out pretty quickly any notion of Jeremy actually making it to this guy's house. So apparently Jeremy did try to call him at some point in the night, but Greg didn't answer. And, you know, when I hear people talk about it, they say they called him in the middle of the night. So I don't know if that's, you know, what is the middle of the night? Is that 1030? Is it actually midnight? Is it three o'clock in the morning? I have no idea. I just know at some point he called Greg.

Greg didn't answer. And then that's it. He couldn't get ahold of him the next day. So Jeremy and Greg didn't actually have like solid plans to meet up that night. It doesn't seem like it, but that doesn't mean that Jeremy wasn't actually planning on stopping by, right? Like, again, this is why I would want to hear more from Greg. I'd love to hear a more in-depth interview from him. But again, exactly what time was this call?

Was it normal for him to just drop by without notice? Was it normal for him to come by so late? But I don't have those answers. I just know that they never met up. So the question becomes, if they didn't meet up, where did Jeremy go that night? Okay, but like, what about the cell phone? Like, can't they get those records to fill in the pieces of Jeremy's night? Maybe they could have, but here's the issue.

For years, people have been reporting on the last calls made from Jeremy's phone, which actually the calls continued like after the bank activity stopped. His cell phone was active until February 14th. Oh, wow. We don't have a detailed call list. I think the most the police have ever said publicly is what they said on disappeared, which was that 36 calls were made and most of them were to his own voicemail. And other calls not made to his voicemail were pretty short, like one minute,

which made them think that maybe he was like calling, but not like getting an answer on the other line. Okay, but who else would he be calling? Well, they've never said, but the family PI said that a lot of those calls were made by what they believe are burner phones. But here's the thing, there is one call that sticks out to everybody across the board. On the 13th, there is this six to seven minute call to a pay phone in mountain home. Which isn't at the same place where he stopped at a gas station? Bingo.

But again, I don't know what that means because if the bank transaction was the day he went missing on the 11th, maybe technically 12th, and this calls on the 13th, what, is he just hanging out in mountain home? But to get back to the issues with these records, so they aren't as detailed as everyone even assumed. So I think everyone was under the impression that, listen, if they're pulling these records, they're also probably tracking the location data of the phone, trying to figure out. Right, right. Again, where's it being?

Is he sitting in this Chevron station for like two days doing nothing? But the PI, Marky Davis, said that everyone learned in 2014, that is seven years after Jeremy went missing, that the location data was never pulled. And by then it was too late to actually do it. Right. So the cell records just seemed to add more questions than answers. And with nothing else to go on, police start to take a closer look at Jeremy's life. And they start asking the important question.

If Jeremy didn't want to walk away on his own, who would have the motive to want him gone? And the answer just gets even more complicated. Obviously, the first thing police hear about is Jeremy's involvement in putting away his ex or maybe current girlfriend thing, whatever him and Jeannie are at this point. And that's something that they have to look into. Like maybe she has an axe to grind. Like maybe her coming around after she got out on probation wasn't like to get back together, but rather to get revenge, maybe.

According to the Idaho State Journal, when police talked to Jeannie, she initially said she hadn't been in contact with Jeremy in months. But there was, quote, evidence to the contrary, end quote. So why lie about like being in contact with a missing guy unless you're trying to distance yourself from something worth hiding is what like I keep coming back to. Right. So my question is the police polygraph Jeannie? They did. They actually polygraphed her along with Kim and Van, possibly even more people, but they have never commented on the results of any of those polygraphs. And I assume they were just polygraphing Van and Kim out of caution, you know, like just to rule them out,

check their stories and get them off the list to move on. Maybe. But I told you, things get complicated. You see, in the time between when Jeremy goes missing and then the three months later when his car is found, Markey Davis said on Unfound that Kim got married. Wait, what? To who? I don't know.

From what I understand, like they actually end up divorced eventually, but it raises a lot of questions, right? Yeah. I mean, it seems like this whole like love triangle thing might be a square or at least more complicated than they thought. So were the police actually looking at Kim as a suspect? Not I can tell. I guess what I should say is like no suspects or persons of interest have been named in this case. And before anyone gets to pointing fingers, she wasn't even the only one who moved on quickly. Allegedly, Jeannie got engaged to someone as well on Valentine's Day, which is just a couple of days after Jeremy went missing.

Um, yeah. And the guy that she's alleged to have gotten engaged to supposedly lives in a town really close to where Jeremy's car was found. So none of this feels good, right, but none of it proves guilt. It just proves how messy all of their personal connections really were. Right. But I guess here's my thing. Moving on quickly when you're in, you know, this messy love triangle situation relationship thing. Like that's okay.

That's one thing, but getting married and or engaged so quickly. Like that makes me as a crime junkie, like just wonder if there's any legal reason for either of these things to happen. Like, you know, you don't have to testify against a spouse legally. Sure. Yeah. But because I kind of had that thought too, but like if you're going to jump there, that would mean that a spouse was probably involved, right? Like neither of you could testify against one another. Right.

Right. So I believe that that maybe is the reason that any of these people are jumping in this relationship. We'd almost have to think that like Kim and her new husband and Jeanne and her new fiance were somehow like all in on this, which I think is super unlikely. So then you have to say, okay, well, the two of them are they both in this situation? One's innocent. One's guilty. Who's more guilty? But the thing is maybe none of them.

And maybe this is all a red herring. But what I find really interesting about Markey's interview, like the biggest thing that came out to me beyond the new relationships is that she said that after Jeremy went missing, Kim actually took his computer and was quote, reluctant to give it to police. And when they did finally get it, files were missing. And I don't know what exactly, like what files were missing. And you can't even prove that Kim was the one who deleted them. Right. It's just all. Like various side eyes.

Strange. Right. So strange. But I mean, don't think you can solve it just yet. This is all circumstantial. And the strangeness is just beginning. Markey Davis says she has, with her own ears, heard one of the tapes where Jeremy is talking about another local missing man named Aaron. This is a guy that went missing a couple of years before, but apparently Jeremy allegedly says if I ever go missing, something bad happened to me.

Did he know this Aaron guy? So there's no proof that they were friends, but he like obviously knew this guy's name. Right. Like if he's on a recording talking about it and granted, like he could have totally gotten this from a newspaper. And I could see that maybe being a thing because what's wild to me is how oddly similar their disappearances were and how strange of like a connection they shared. So according to Joe Paris for KTVB, Aaron went missing from Boise in 2004, around 7 30 p.m. Just before he had dropped off his three year old son with his mother and now Aaron and she weren't together at the time. This was just part of their custody arrangement.

And this is the first thing that to me is the same. They're both around the same age. They both have a kid. And so, you know, when you talk about like, oh, did he maybe just see the name of the newspaper and saw some similarities to himself. And it was just an offhanded thing. Maybe. But to go back to Aaron's story for just a quick second. According to that same article, Aaron takes a call from his roommate at like 7 15.

When the call comes in, he was on the line with someone else and he said, listen, I'm like near my house. Then this call comes in. His roommate says like, hey, I need you to come home really quick. And then poof. No one sees or hears from Aaron again. Not even his roommate. Can you just call and ask him to come home? Well, his roommate says that he didn't see him, but it doesn't totally add up to people who look at this case because according to the Charlie Project website.

His car ends up being there at his house, the car that he would have been driving. So it got there somehow. Now, I don't want to dive too deep down the rabbit hole of Aaron's story because we could get lost. His story has a complicated list of players just like Jeremy's. A number of people who do weird or shady things before even an after he goes missing. But here is why Jeremy and Aaron are so often connected because it's more than just, oh, they were kind of the same age. Oh, they both had a three-year-old when they went missing. They're from the same area, stuff like that.

Yeah. According to Markey Davis's investigation and what she said on Ed Densel's podcast, they both had a connection to Gina. Wait, how? Well, in another episode of Unfound, Ed Densel spoke directly to Aaron's mom. It's a long interview, like three hours, but we'll link out to it on our website if you want to hear her tell Aaron's full story. But Aaron was connected to a woman named Constance. Constance worked with Genie at the same law practice. Now, there are comments that I found online connecting Aaron and Genie directly together in the same like forgery mess that Genie was tied up in.

And Aaron's mom confirmed it saying that she basically wanted Aaron to lie in court for her. Okay, but did he? As far as I understand, he went missing before that ever happened, which I think when people hear that, they might look at that as suspicious. But I, maybe I'm like losing it, but I almost see this as potential evidence against Genie's involvement, right? Right, because she like needed him. Why would she get rid of him? And what I understand, he was like, no, I'm not going to lie for you, which, you know, if someone's not going to do it, they actually could be another witness and you look even worse. But let's say by some stretch of the imagination that she did have a hand in Aaron's disappearance because he wouldn't testify against her.

Like, why wait then until after you serve time and get out on parole to make Jeremy disappear? Because I mean, like he was the real crux of the case. He was the main witness. He was the one that had the recordings. So like, if you're making people disappear, so you don't have to go to jail, like you got rid of the wrong guy. That doesn't make sense. Yeah, but I mean, maybe there's more of a connection than we even know about if Jeremy is on this voice recording talking about Aaron's disappearance. Maybe, but I mean, we have no way of knowing without Aaron here and without Jeremy.

Okay, but like, would someone like Kim know? I mean, she knew about Jeremy's plan to kind of trap Genie. I think maybe she'd know more about this whole ordeal, how it went down, who was involved. Well, she might have, but we may never know because of what happened to her. Juliet Mir reported for NBC News that in July 2016, Kim took her own life. What? Yeah. You know, I obviously have no idea what was going on in Kim's life or what led to this.

I mean, when you look at this in the context of the case, nothing really new or groundbreaking happened in Jeremy's case from the time he went missing until 2016 when she took her own life. And some people like to look at this as a sign of guilt, but I don't know. I mean, I also see a really hurt woman, like a man she spent at least a decade with went missing. She was married and divorced and then married again. And I mean, I can see that being too much and like, right, I don't have all the details surrounding her death. So unfortunately, people are just left to speculate. But Kim's death wasn't the only thing that happened in 2016. Genie was making waves too.

Her new husband, a man who was decades her senior, whom she met on a sugar daddy site named Michael, tried to kill her. Oh, my God. According to Kevin Jenkins, who was reporting for the spectrum. Now, this guy, Michael, he too was an attorney, but still a licensed one unlike her. And Kevin Jenkins reported that he pled guilty to trying to shoot her in the middle of the night after some kind of disturbance. Now, the case got really messy. Like outside of any official legal proceeding, Michael allegedly says that it was self-defense or Genie was the aggressor. But in a court of law, he pled guilty and said it was a result of mental illness and or paranoia from a mixed bag of prescription drugs.

Like he was on like a sleeping pill or an anxiety pill, something like that. And it caused him to kind of, he says, get paranoid and snap. Now, when Genie is asked about it, she doesn't want to talk about it. That spectrum article from 2016 said she didn't show up for court and could have been held in contempt, though I don't know if she ever was. A quote from the detective on the case reported, she said, quote, we always had this unwritten rule between us that our problems stayed with us. We don't get outside law enforcement involved. We'll take care of it in the house. So when he went to the police, I was kind of surprised.

End quote. So, I mean, on one hand, if Genie is, you know, a victim of domestic violence, this isn't that out of the ordinary. A lot of people in abusive relationships do have this kind of, you know, will handle our marital problems at home kind of mentality. So I can kind of see that being this, you know, like you said, unspoken agreement. And, you know, nothing from this case in 2016 proves that Genie had anything to do with Jeremy going missing. Yeah. It's just like this strange footnote. I mean, it's all just strange.

There have been no significant developments with Jeremy or Aaron's cases in years. Even the last meaningful reporting that was done was in 2018. The one by NBC, they did this big article, and then that's when Ed Denzel did his, like, two-parter on the Unfound podcast. And really, like, there's been nothing since then. Like, nobody's even talking about these men. So two fully grown men have seemingly vanished into thin air, and they left behind families that are still mourning their loss every day. And I especially think about Jeremy's daughter, Mackenzie. I mean, she spent her whole life with her dad's disappearance looming over her, no answers.

And then she lost her mom in this really terribly tragic way. And I can't help but feel like there is someone out there who has the answers, whether they were involved or someone confided in them after the fact. There are a lot of puzzle pieces already put together, but there are some big ones still missing. So if you have one of those pieces, you can submit a tip anonymously at Crimestoppersswidaho.org. And if you're as caught up in the web of this case as I am, and you really want to dive into it more, I highly recommend checking out the two-parter on the Unfound podcast about Aaron and Jeremy. They're both called Cause and Effects, part one and two. And it is definitely like the most comprehensive accounts of these cases told directly from people either related to the victims or the investigations.

And there are tons of like extra details that I couldn't even go into. Like I think the work Ed is doing to get this information on these underreported cases out there. It's like so important. So again, if you have any information on what happened to Jeremy Burt or Aaron Barnard, you can submit a tip anonymously at Crimestoppersswidaho.org. We will link out to all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?