Criminology - Bonnie Haim

Episode Date: February 6, 2022

Bonnie Haim disappeared in 1993 and her husband Michael was a suspect for many years. People in Bonnie's inner circle knew that the marriage was bad and that she was making plans to get out. When Bonnie disappeared, police suspected Michael but they couldn't put enough evidence together to charge him. They couldn't find Bonnie but the circumstances around her disappearance made most think she had not left voluntarily. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the disappearance and murder of Bonnie Haim. The couple's 3-year-old son, Aaron, told a child psychiatrist some disturbing things about his dad hurting his mommy. Some of these were very specific. But, it took many years for police to close in on Michael Haim. The biggest turning point occurred when Aaron and Bonnie's estate won a civil suit against Michael that forced him to turn over the family home to Aaron. The secret to what happened to Bonnie had been hidden at the home for over 21 years before being discovered. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Listener discretion is advised. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 193 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, what's going on with you, buddy? Not too much on my end. How about you? We just got hit with a big ice storm up here.

I know you're down there in the hot, sunny Florida weather. But here in Ohio, it's kind of nasty right now. Yeah, I don't miss that about the Northeast. Although, you know, and I'm not complaining because people are like, oh, that's, you know, the least of your concerns. But it was, it did get down here into the mid-30s the other night. So I did have to kick that heat on. But I know compared to what you guys are getting up there, I shouldn't be complaining. No, no, you should not be.

Nobody's going to feel sorry for you. I thought I was going to have to break out the snowblower for a second. but didn't come to that. All right. So let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. And we only had two. We had Angela Preciado and Karen Brews. But we really appreciate that.

Yeah, thanks to the people that go out of their way to support the show. It means a lot to us. And we appreciate that. Be sure to go over to patreon.com slash criminology if you'd like to sign up to help support the show. All right. If it's time to jump into this episode. And this week we're talking about a case in Jacksonville, Florida. So we are down towards.

or neck of the woods. This is a case that unfolded almost 30 years ago. It began as a missing person's case and then years later evolved into a homicide. We're talking about the case of Bonnie Hain. Bonnie Lynn Pesuto was born on May 20, 1969 in Scotland to parents Robert and Patricia, who were overseas for military service. She had three sisters and a brother. The family settled in the state of Florida and Bonnie.

attended West Nassau High School in the city of Callahan. She began dating Michael Ray Haim and the two married in September 1987. In 1993, Bonnie and Michael lived in a modest home on Dolphin Avenue in the northern part of Jacksonville. The couple had been married for five years and ended a three-year-old son named Aaron. The two worked together for Michael's aunt's company as well, so they spent a lot of time together and things seemed to be going well for the young family. But, But by early 1993, 23-year-old Bonnie wasn't happy in her marriage. This unhappiness was no secret to Bonnie's friends and family. And even Michael himself would later acknowledge his wife's dissatisfaction with the relationship.

What Michael didn't know was that Bonnie was making plans to leave him. She was going to move out of the house, take Aaron with her, and then divorce Michael. And while many people in Bonnie's circle knew she was unhappy, not everyone knew that Michael was verbally abusive toward her. This occurred often, sometimes even while they were at work together. One of the last straws for Bonnie was when he slammed a car door on her hand. This incident broke multiple fingernails. Bonnie opened up a bank account for herself with her name on it only.

And in order to hide the account from Michael, she had this statement sent to her at work instead of at home. but Michael still ended up finding out about the secret bank account and he was very upset with Bonnie. She closed the account because Michael demanded her to do so and instead she started squirling money away, giving friends money to hold on to for her and also stashing money in her purse. Basically anything she could think of to save up some money. Bonnie had put her plan to leave Michael into motion. Bonnie told Michael's aunt,

Evan that she had saved up the down payment for an apartment of her own in Orange Park, about half an hour south of the home she shared with Michael, and even had found a new preschool for Aaron to attend there. So there's no doubt more if that Bonnie was on the verge of making a fresh start. On January 6, 1993, Bonnie went to work as usual, and it was an uneventful day. She had previously arranged to go to Evans' house around 8 p.m. But she stopped home first at around 7.30. She never showed up to Evans' house. Instead, at 8.30 p.m., Bonnie called her crying.

She said she was okay, but she had Michael had gotten into a fight, and that she thought she should probably just stay home. She even refused Evan's offers of keeping her company or giving her a ride and said she would call her back later, but she never did. on the next morning, January 7th, Michael called his co-workers and said that neither he nor Bonnie would be coming into work that day. He explained that Bonnie had left him the night before. That same day, a hotel employee at a red roof in hotel about five or six miles from Bonnie and Michael's home found Bonnie's purse, full of her belongings, while he was emptying trash into a dumpster behind the hotel. Now, it's not exactly clear how things are.

folded, but Evan got a call about Bonnie's purse. And so she rushed to the red roof end, where she found Michael with police officers in one of the hotel's rooms. The officers had the contents of Bonnie's purse spread out on a bed, and it included $1,250 in cash. Her credit cards, ID, and everything was still apparently in her purse. Michael expressed to police that he didn't know why she would have so much cash, but Ivan knew it was because she was hiding money from him while she prepared to leave Michael. Ivan would later say that she felt Michael only seemed concerned that Bonnie had money in her purse that he didn't know about, and not that she hadn't been heard from all night.

On top of that, her purse with all of her belongs in it was found, which possibly indicated some sort of trouble. He didn't seem to care where Bonnie was. Police obviously had interest in Michael being that he was the last person to see his wife, and they began to question him. He claimed that Bonnie left their house around 11 p.m. After the two of them had gotten into an argument, he mentioned that he couldn't stop her because she was so mad that she just stormed out.

After a while, he asked his mother to come watch Aaron while he went and looked for Bonnie. He claimed that he drove around and searched for her for about 45 minutes before he decided to return home. Despite the concern, Michael claimed he had about Bonnie. He didn't report her missing that night. and he didn't officially report her missing until he had already been contacted by the police about her whereabouts after her purse had been found. Local media quickly became interested in Bonnie's case and they sought out Michael asking him to talk with them. He agreed to and he told the Florida Times Union, I would love her to come back home and work everything out.

He acknowledged that their relationship wasn't perfect stating that everyone, has a few problems, but she never did this before. So Morif, let's kind of break some of this down. Bonnie goes missing. Michael is the last known person to have seen her. He's also her husband. So, I mean, I think it's, it's very apparent that police would want to talk to him, want to kind of look at him. He's going to be kind of suspect number one. I mean, that is just very normal in these types of cases when somebody goes missing. Add on top of that, you know, this stuff about him not seeming all that concerned, really more concerned about the fact that she's got a bunch of money in the purse more so than where she actually is. And the fact that he didn't report her missing

until the police actually reached out to him. I think you can see, right, why they would have at least an interest in him. Yeah, all that stuff put together is pretty compelling, and it makes it look like he's got to be looked at. So obviously that's why police do look at those closest to missing persons, and then when they can rule them out, they move on from there. But I think another issue here is this is someone that is talking about leaving her husband, and she's making this plan behind his back because he's been abusive, you know, apparently. So I think police would have to consider that too and just add that as one of the things that probably makes him look like he may have something to hide here. Yeah. And this plan to leave Michael was not a secret. Now, he didn't know about it, but other people did. So obviously they could come forward. They could tell the police that it's not going to make him look great.

And while police did look closely at Michael, police believe that whatever happened to Bonnie, that it was likely that she was an endangered missing person or the victim of foul play, and they quickly began a search for her. That same day, police located Bonnie's car, a Toyota Camry, parked in long-term parking at the Jacksonville Airport. The airport was very close to the Red Roof Inn where her purse was found, just two miles northwest and just down airport road from each other. Authorities considered whether Bonnie may have decided to flee Michael

and had taken a flight, but they had serious doubts since she had left her purse full of cash and other important items behind. Their investigation quickly revealed that there was no record of Bonnie having purchased any airline tickets, and she wasn't listed on either the passenger manifest for any of the flights out of the airport on the night of January 6th or on the morning of January 7th. It now looked like Bonnie's car had been abandoned at the airport, not actually parked there before she caught a flight. So, Mor, I think there's a part in most of the cases that we do where someone goes missing, especially, you know, when there are circumstances around things left behind. In this case, you've got Bonnie's purse that has quite a bit of money

in it, cards, IDs, pretty much things that she would need if she was going to take off somewhere. You know, and to me, it's always kind of interesting to look at the facts. and how police view them. From my point of view, I just never believe that people would choose to voluntarily leave and leave behind a purse, leave behind all their credit cards and IDs and, you know, clothes and all of that. Whenever I hear those types of things, I kind of automatically go to foul play. Yeah, I think you hit the nail right on the head. Who would want to start off someplace else a new life or whatever they're planning with nothing but the clothes on their back when they have access to different cash credit cards and stuff like that. But the one thing we didn't

mention, her son, most moms aren't going any place without their kids. So for him to not be missing, that would be a red flag, I think, in that a lot of moms would never go any place without their children. Yeah, that's a great point. And it's probably an even bigger telltale sign than, you know, not packing clothes, leaving your purse behind because you're exactly right. You know, most mothers can't even imagine leaving their children behind. And so, you know, when you see that as a fact pop up in one of these stories, don't you kind of automatically think, no, she wouldn't have done that. Yeah, she already had a school picked out for Aaron. So for her to suddenly have this plan of scrolling money away, getting a new place, getting Aaron into a new school,

and then just scratch that and say, you know what, I'm just taking off and leaving all my stuff and leaving Aaron here. It had to not sit right with police early on. The investigation of Bonnie's car by police raised some troubling clues. Investigators noticed that the driver's seat of her car was pushed back much farther than they would have expected for a woman of her height, she was on the shorter side, about five foot three. It would have been uncomfortable for her to drive with it that far back. So it really suggested that someone taller had been driving it last when the car was parked at the airport. They believed that someone about Michael's height would have been a perfect fit. They also observed a shoe print on the

floor of the driver's side. It was large and authorities were able to determine that it was fresh. This meant that the footprint belonged to whoever had driven the car to the Jacksonville Airport. This shoe print was a match to one pair of Michael's tennis shoes, which weren't really the most common of shoes. More damning plant and sand particle samples from the shoe print also matched samples taken from the bottom of that same pair of Michael's shoes. Authorities searched the Dolphin Avenue home that the Hame shared inside and out for any signs of Bonnie and any signs of foul play related to her disappearance, but they didn't find anything else.

Despite no clear signs that Bonnie was harmed inside her home, detectives were becoming more and more confident that Bonnie's husband Michael was a suspect in his wife's disappearance. We know from covering so many cases. that police always start with people closest to a victim and roll them out before moving on to other suspects. Police had a child psychologist speak to Bonnie and Michael's young son, Aaron, who was just three years old at the time Bonnie disappeared. Aaron revealed a few chilling things to the psychologist and a CPS worker that would later be revealed in court. Some of them being statements like, Daddy hurt Mommy and Daddy shot Mommy. And Aaron said that afterward, he couldn't wake her up.

Aaron also told the psychologist that his father had thrown the gun he shot his mother with out of the car. He would also from time to time draw pictures of his dad shooting Bonnie in the stomach. These were terrible things that no three old should have knowledge of, and police were horrified that Bonnie's young son may have been witness to his own mother's murder. So, Morph, we've already talked about, you know, how Michael would be on police radar. Then you have the car found with, you know, the seat pushed way back. You've got the shoe print that matches up with a pair of his shoes. And then you add in the statements made by their young son Aaron.

And, you know, for me, this is heartbreaking to think about this little boy, you know, saying things like this, meaning that he witnessed some things that were horrible. Now, we all know that three-year-olds can say some wild outlandish things. But look at the statements that he's making. And I kind of go to their specificity, right? Daddy hurt mommy. Daddy shot mommy. He's drawing pictures.

Very specific of his dad, shooting his mother in the stomach, talking about his dad throwing the gun out of the car. I mean, you would have to think as a psychologist, as law enforcement, this is kid witnessed some terrible events. Although three-year-olds aren't always the best at communicating things, or still learning how to speak and relay what they want to say, it's clear that Aaron witnessed something or believes he did. And to have all these things that he's putting out there, I think it would be hard for police to ignore. It seems like if Michael was responsible that he took steps to drive the car and stash it, to throw the purse in a dumpster.

But the one thing he didn't count for was the fact that his three-year-old son may have been a witness to this and could provide information. So that seems like an oversight on his part. And, you know, I look at it as once in a while I'll take my young son out to do some shopping for my wife for a present. But I'm to the point I don't want to tell him what we're getting because I know he's going to wrap me out. and break the surprise to my wife. So the same thing here. You know, it's three-year-olds can relay certain information and they start talking and using their words and then all of a sudden something you're trying to hide from them comes out.

And investigators and the psychologists were apparently not the only ones to hear the eyewitness statements from little Aaron for a few weeks after Bonnie disappeared. Aaron stayed with his father, but soon after authority stepped in. And Bonnie's family took in Aaron and Michael was only allowed visitations. Bonnie's sister Elizabeth was shocked to hear Aaron say to her daddy shot mommy in the stomach. Aaron began to ask people to take him to find his mom. The detective in charge of Bonnie's case, Detective Henson, would drive Aaron around with a shovel at Aaron's insistence searching for Bonnie. Aaron would later be adopted by family by the name of the Frasers in 1995.

His foster parents would take him out searching for his mom. Once, when they were walking over a bridge, Aaron declared to his foster mother that his father, Michael, had thrown the gun off of that very bridge. She called the police to tell them this information, and they searched the water underneath the bridge. They did find a gun, described as a small rifle or assault off shotgun. And with the help of a marine biologist,

They determined that it had been in the water since around the time Bonnie disappeared. A similar gun of the same brand was found and cataloged in Michael Heem's home. At the time, police searched it early on after Bonnie vanished. In 1994, a year after Bonnie's disappearance, her family, who believed she was dead, held a memorial off of Airport Road in the area where her purse and car were found. But Bonnie's husband, Michael, didn't join them. And, you know, what do you take from that, Morph? I think you can look at that a couple of different ways.

You can come down on the side of, you know, this was your wife. If there's a memorial being held for her, how can you not attend as the husband? I think some people might look at it as he knows he's being looked at. The family is probably giving off that vibe that, hey, we believe you had something to do with our daughter's disappearance, so it would be extremely uncomfortable for him to show up there. But, I mean, I do think it's worth analyzing. Yeah, and we're going to get into it a little bit later. There was a riff in Bonnie's family with some support of Michael, but others in the family

thought he was guilty and had something to do with her disappearance. So that may have been an uncomfortable situation as well, having this rift going on and then showing up. And we see that quite often. right especially when you're talking about a husband and wife someone disappears or someone is murdered i think it's hard for some family members of the person that's gone missing or has been murdered to really think that this person that they've known for how many years thought okay was a good husband or at the very least they had feelings for would be capable of doing this to their

loved one. And so you do sometimes see that rift in a family where, you know, people get divided. Some people believing, okay, no doubt this person had a hand in it. Maybe we don't know yet what it exactly was. And then other people in the family just saying, there's no way. I just can't come to grips that this person could have done something. Yeah, I think we've seen different cases where it goes both ways where the family suspects a spouse is responsible and then ultimately it's proven that they weren't. And then we have the reverse where a family supports the spouse and ultimately it is proven that they were responsible. And, you know, the Jeffrey McDonald case sort of comes to my mind because I think originally his wife's family supported him and thought there was no way.

But I think the more they looked into it, the more they started to look at the details and the facts and things that he said, they slowly over time felt there was no way that he wasn't responsible. So it's interesting when you look at that dynamic, what's going on with a family. We mentioned that Aaron was adopted in 1995. And while it was difficult for Bonnie's family, to have him be adopted by someone outside the family, they felt that this was the best way to keep him safe and create stability for him without the constant reminder of what happened to his mom.

When Aaron was in the eighth grade, he wrote an essay titled Mystery Essay about Bonnie's disappearance. What he was really writing about was her murder in graphic detail. This is something Aaron had done. since before he could write. Asking his foster mother, investigators, even his teachers to write down what he said and then have them read it back to him. Each time he would describe Bonnie's murder at the hands of his birth father, Michael Hame. In mystery essay, Aaron wrote about looking out the window to their backyard and seeing what he called or what he described as his mother's murder. He wrote,

I was standing on my tippy toes. I watched as he shot her. I thought to myself, no, don't shoot her. That's my mom. This essay detailed the events directly after Bonnie was shot. Aaron said that he recalled seeing Michael take off Bonnie's jewelry before dragging her to the car. He even included claims that Michael's parents, his very own grandparents, had helped Michael get rid of Bonnie's body. The problem with all of Aaron's memories was that there was no physical evidence to back these things up.

There was nothing found in the Hame home that matched what Aaron claims he saw. And most importantly, there was no sign of Bonnie Hain. And with no body, it was hard to build a case against Michael. In an effort to bring attention to Bonnie's case, her family, along with police, agreed to cooperate with the TV. show Unsolved Mysteries. And an episode about Bonnie's case aired on January 12, 1996. Although the airing did cause Bonnie's case to get some new attention, no new leads came from it, and no one came forward to claim that they had seen Bonnie after she went missing. It was clear during the episode of Unsolved Mysteries that there was some kind of rift in Bonnie's family, with some family

members including Bonnie's own father, Robert, standing by Michael, despite Aaron's statements. On the episode, Robert stated that the credibility of a child is something that you have to judge in perspective, which is why he decided to believe Michael. Aaron had said a few things that didn't end up being true. For example, Bonnie's car was found at the airport, not in a lake, as Aaron had once said. Sadly, this rift within Bonnie's family would only get deeper with time. Six years after she vanished, Bonnie was legally declared dead in 1999. This allowed Aaron to be able to be fully adopted by his foster parents. Michael's parental rights were terminated by circuit judge Frederick Tigart and Aaron's last name was changed from Hame to Frazier.

Judge Tygart wrote of his decision. Aaron Hame is at serious risk of abuse from his father because he is the only living witness to the murder of his mother. And morph when I read this, it really jumped out at me. I mean, here you have a judge. who, you know, when you talk about judges and attorneys and people like that, they are very careful with their words because they know there are dangers with saying certain types of things. But here you have a judge who comes out and says that Aaron is the only living witness to the murder of his mother. I mean, that was a direct quote. It really says a lot. about, you know, what this judge thought after looking at all the known facts.

Yeah, he didn't mince words. And one interesting thing is here you have the police on one end that don't have enough to charge Michael with anything. Yet they probably think he's the guy. But here's this judge on the other end of the legal system that doesn't pull any punches. He says flat out, this guy is the murderer. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.

For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. And this judge's order of completely separating Aaron from his father to keep him safe, even though no charges had been filed yet against Michael Hame, was a call that is very similar to a case that is extremely well known. On December 7, 2009, 28-year-old Susan Powell disappeared, presumably from her West Valley, Utah home. She and her husband, Joshua Powell, were both.

both no call, no shows to work that day, their two young sons, Charlie and Braden, were also missing from daycare. Around 5 p.m., Joshua returned with Charlie and Braden. He claimed he had taken them camping in the desert. He said he had last seen Susan around 1230 that morning when he left to go camping. She had stayed behind, feeling too sick to camp in the Utah desert in December. the temperatures had been freezing and some of the area had seen rain and snow, Joshua claimed he forgot what day it was and he didn't go to work or call in because he didn't realize it was a Monday. Susan's phone was later found in Joshua's car. A month after Susan disappeared, Joshua took their children and moved into his father's house in their home state of Washington. Joshua claimed

that Susan had left. Her own family supported their son, law while they looked for their missing daughter. But friends and colleagues knew of Joshua's verbal and physical abuse, as well as Susan's plans to leave Joshua. She even had a date picked out, April 6, 2010. That's the date she was going to leave him if their relationship didn't improve. A secret safe deposit box Susan had contained a handwritten note with instructions not to let Josh read it. The note outlined the state of their relationship and also contained foreshadowing details. The note read that if Susan were to die, her death may not be an accident, even if it looked like one. Braden, who was two when Susan went missing, drew a picture of him and Charlie camping with their father, Joshua.

A camp counselor asked about Susan, and Braden said that she was in the trunk. But he wasn't sure why she was back there. Charlie, who was just four at the time, told investigators that the family had gone on a night drive. to Dinosaur National Park, and they had come home without Susan. He said that his mom had stayed as he described it where the crystals are. Charlie also told a teacher in Washington that his mom was dead. In September 2011, Stephen Powell, Joshua's father, was charged with possession of child pornography. This led to Joshua temporarily losing custody of the boys and having to undergo

psychiatric evaluation. In the meantime, he was allowed supervised visitation with his children. In February 2012, during a scheduled visit, Joshua told Charlie and Braden that he had surprises for them, and they excitedly ran inside his home

ahead of the visitation supervisor. Joshua locked the door behind them, preventing the worker from following them inside. In mere moments, while the worker was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, the house exploded. Joshua had attacked his son, with a hatchet and then set the house on fire, killing them and himself.

It was a horrible and shocking crime. While the Powell case was similar to the Hame situation in many ways, the main difference here was that Charlie and Braden seemed to enjoy visiting their father. They wanted to have a relationship with him, while Aaron seemed distraught each time he visited his father, Michael Hame. It's unknown what would have happened. if Aaron had not been so carefully watched around his father. But it's hard not to look at the fate of Charlie and Braden Powell and think something

terribly similar could have happened. I think we have to be glad that Aaron was kept so safe. Charlie and Braden didn't forget about their memories of Susan or their camping trip. They drew it and they recounted the details over and over. they were getting older, learning more words and understanding more things. And with Joshua not having custody of them, there was more time for others to try and coax what they did know about Susan's disappearance out of them. It's possible that Joshua didn't initially plan to take his own life or kill his sons.

He perhaps thought he could get away with Susan's murder and then move on. Their children were young at the time. He could simply lie to them and keep things from them. As they got older, though, it was clear that this was not a possibility, and he was losing control. Despite their mother still being missing, their words could have meant consequences for their father. But luckily for Aaron, his father, Michael, just seemed to move on without trying to fight for custody of him. In 2000, Michael moved to South Carolina, funded by Bonnie's life insurance payout. He still owned the Dolphin Avenue House, which he began to rent out.

Renders there would find the lease oddly specific. But there was nothing too sinister about the special terms they agree to, which included no digging in the backyard, no landscaping, no personal gardens, and no patio additions. Nothing that would disturb the yard was allowed. Joey Jenrette, who rented the home for about two years, noticed that his dog Bandit would often wind, bark, and dig near the pool in the shed. Bandit would also run around the pool in circles repeatedly. While this seems like a clear sign that something may have been under the pool, it was determined that the pool had actually been built in 1959. The same year the home was built, multiple decades before Bonnie had gone missing.

As far as his opinion of Michael Haim, Genrette felt that Haim was odd, shady, and mean-spirited. But he had felt fine living in the home. A renter who lived there after Jenret moved out recalled, the lease specifying that tenants wouldn't have any dogs in the backyard with another renter recalling that she had to keep her dogs in the master bedroom when she left the home. A change perhaps prompted by bandits persistent barking near the pool. So obviously, more if we've got a lot of strange things going on here, I think first and foremost, you know, let's talk about Michael Hame moving on or trying to move.

on and specifically kind of just giving up or not fighting for custody of Aaron. Okay. I think that says one thing. Then you look at moving on, but not getting rid of the Dolphin Avenue home. Okay. You don't want to sell it. You don't want to, you know, have that money to put towards another home or whatever. You have to analyze that.

And then it becomes even more strange when he starts to rent out the home and you have all these stories from renters about the backyard. Well, obviously, something's going on in that backyard. And Michael wants people to stay away from it. No digging, no building. And then it gets to the point where he doesn't even want dogs out there. Yeah. If I was a runner and I moved in,

I'd be questioning that stuff. Why is he so strange about the stuff in the backyard? If it was the entire house and he had all these strange rules for all kinds of different things, you might just dismiss it as this guy's just overprotective of his home and his property. But the fact that he seemed to want nothing to do with people or dogs, spending much time in that yard or doing stuff in that yard just seems to draw more attention to it in my mind. And I'm sure there's a good chance at the, these renters had no idea what had happened or what had transpired with Bonnie. But if they had,

they would have been very suspicious, right? Yeah, I think so. After years of Bonnie's case being unsolved, investigators were still certain that Bonnie hadn't just simply disappeared on her own. They were looking at a murder and they still hadn't found her body. Despite that, they felt there was one clear suspect, her husband Michael Hain. In the early 2000s, Michael Hame was sued for the wrongful death of Bonnie on behalf of Aaron and Bonnie's estate. In September 2004, Judge Brad Stetson ruled in favor of Aaron and Bonnie's estate by default in a hearing that Michael didn't even show up for. In April 2005, when Aaron was in high school, Michael was ordered to pay $26.3 million to Aaron and to Bonnie's estate for her wrongful death.

Judge Stetson said of Aaron's statements, Aaron said his father shot his mother. This type of statement can't be fabricated or fantasized by a child of such tender age. There's clear and convincing evidence that Michael Hayme murdered his wife. After the legal victory for Aaron, Bonnie's sister, Elizabeth Peake,

released a statement in which he said, this victory has in no way brought closure to Bonnie's death. Closure will only come when Bonnie is found and given the borough and respect she deserves. No one expected Michael to be able to pony up millions of dollars, but the wrongful death suit was part of an effort to keep Bonnie's case alive in the public eye and to help provide for Aaron in his future, since Bonnie was robbed of the chance to help her son with his future.

Michael had to give up what he did have, and that included his home on Dolphin Avenue in Jacksonville, Florida, as part of the settlement in the wrongful death suit. And more of it, I do think we see this in a lot of cases where a civil suit is brought against someone who is believed to have been the perpetrator of a crime, a murder. Obviously, the bar is much different between a civil suit and a murder trial. I think the best example of that is O.J. Simpson. They couldn't get the murder conviction, but I feel like they pretty easily got the civil verdict.

Yeah, I think that's one way to make someone pay, although I think the families would prefer that they pay in a different way with prison time. But it's just one small victory on the way to getting justice. On December 15th, 2014, Aaron and his brother-in-law were working on the house on Dolphin Avenue. Though it had been Aaron's childhood home before Bonnie disappeared, he really no longer had any memories there. The house had been rented by different people over the years, and by this time it was in pretty bad shape. Aaron decided to fill in the unused pool and get rid of the outdoor shower, instead of repairing and maintaining them in the process of pipe burst or was broken, and the actual location of the leak was tricky to find.

He began digging in an effort to figure out where the leak was and began breaking up a concrete slab near the shower, he hit a bag, which broke open from the impact of his shovel. He looked inside the bag and picked up what he thought was a coconut show, which he thought was a really strange thing to be buried in the outdoor shower. He and Thad looked back into the hole they were digging and noticed several teeth and what looked like an eye socket. This is when Aaron realized that he was not holding part of a discarded coat. He was not holding part of a discarded had coconut shell in his hands, it was part of a human skull. And he immediately knew in his heart.

It was the remains of his mother, Bonnie Hame, who at that point had been missing for almost 22 years. Despite Aaron's suspicion that this body was his mom's, official identification had to be made. DNA testing still needed to be performed before the identity of the skeleton found buried in the backyard on Dolphin Avenue could be definitively linked to Bonnie Hame. But what a strange coincidence it would be for someone else to have been buried in the backyard of the last place that Bonnie was seen, the place that Aaron claimed he saw her shot. Upon hearing the news of remains being found in the backyard, Joey Jenrett, the former renter, immediately remembered his dog bandit's behavior. And he told reporters, I believe she was killed there. And I believe she was buried there. In August 2015, the DNA testing finally revealed that the remains found by Aaron in his childhood backyard were indeed that of his mother, Bonnie. A 22 caliber shell casing was found buried with the remains.

And there was a mark, possibly from a bullet on the pelvis bone. But due to the state of Bonnie's remains, no definitive cause of death could be determined. on August 24th, 2015, Michael Hame was arrested at the age of 49 in Waynesboro, North Carolina for the murder of Bonnie Lynn Hame on January 6, 1993. He was extradited to Florida, where he was eventually released on a $200,000 bail. In December of 2017, Michael was allowed to leave the state of Florida, which he had been ordered to remain in since his arrest to be able to travel. home to North Carolina and see his current wife for the Christmas holidays. So no surprise to me whatsoever morphed that Michael Hame was arrested, right? This revelation, the remains being found, the remains being definitively identified

as Bonnie. What did shock me was the $200,000 bail. I thought that was maybe a little low. But then I think even more shocking is that, you know, he's allowed to leave the state, go back to North Carolina. I don't know. Maybe that happens all the time, but it just didn't seem right to me. It doesn't, it didn't sit right with me. Yeah, especially since we're not talking about some kind of white color crime or embezzlement or something along those lines, this is a murder we're talking about that if he was guilty, he covered up and took extreme.

measures to make sure that her body was never found. So for him that get that kind of bow and then on top of that be able to move around, it was a little bit surprising to me when I read it as well. And we already talked about the first couple judges calling him out and basically saying in blunt language that he was responsible. With this third judge, though, apparently setting that bow was a little bit softer than his first two judges. On April 8, 2019, the trial against Michael for Bonnie's murder finally began, 26 years after her death. Both Michael and Aaron, who was now 30 years old, testified. Michael, in his own defense, and Aaron for the prosecution is their key witness.

The defense wanted Aaron's statements from 1993 thrown out, which would have probably been only a minor problem for the prosecution now that Bonnie's Bonnie had been found in the backyard of a home Michael had owned and lived in at the time. It was argued that Aaron didn't remember the things he claimed happened, happened in 1993 because he had barely been a toddler and that even as a child he told different stories about what happened to his mother, including one of Bonnie being pushed by Michael and even run over by him. We can look back now and see that this was probably a very young mind

trying to make sense of what he had seen. But in the end, the details Aaron provided were allowed to come out in court. Two inmates who had shared a cell with Michael also claimed in court that he admitted to strangling Bonnie before burying her because she was having an affair. Michael's mother, Carol, stated in her testimony that she went to the Dolphin Avenue home to watch Aaron on the night that Bonnie disappeared. She recalled that Michael had been gone looking for Bonnie for around 30 to 45 minutes that night. Michael claimed to her that when Bonnie left that night, that he thought Bonnie was going to Carol's house.

He also later told his mom that the reason he called off work the next day was because he had been out looking for Bonnie, so he hadn't slept at all. Bonnie's plans had always included Aaron being with her. As we mentioned, she had chosen a preschool for him, and he was definitely a part of her plans moving forward after a divorce. It seems that if she had taken off from the house that night to leave, she would have taken Aaron with her. To disappear without even checking on Aaron was completely. unlike Bonnie. This, coupled with Aaron's childhood memory of seeing Michael shoot Bonnie in the backyard, made it hard to believe that Bonnie left, met some kind of misfortune, and then somehow ended up buried in the backyard of the Dolphin Avenue home, which is what Michael and his

defense team wanted the jury to believe, but jurors didn't buy it. On April 12, 2019, Michael Hame was found guilty of the second-degree murder of his wife, Bonnie Hane. Jurors deliberated for just 90 minutes before returning their unanimous. verdict. On May 21st, 2019, Michael Hame was sentenced to life in prison. His attorneys immediately filed an appeal, claiming that a life sentence was a violation of the guidelines that were in place when Bonnie was murdered. At the time in 1993, the recommended sentence for Michael's crime would have been seven to 22 years in prison. However, there were aggravating circumstances, like causing lifelong trauma to Aaron by committing the murder in front of him.

That made the life sentence legal. Another aggravating factor was the rift it caused in the family and the fact that Aaron was separated from his entire biological family. While the appeal argued that trauma was inherent in a death of a family member and should not be an aggravating factor, the court decision noted the speculation around Hames's involvement in the disappearance caused the divide in the family that still remained at the time of trial. In May 2021, the First District Court of Appeal upheld Michael's conviction in life sentence. An opinion, 11 pages long, explained how the judge has concluded that the record supports the

trial court's conclusion that Aaron suffered severe emotional trauma from his mother's murder. Though Michael Haim is still in prison and will likely never be released, there are some lingering questions. Was Michael truly only gone for 30 to 45 minutes the night that Bonnie disappeared and he called his mother over to watch Aaron? If Michael had dropped off the camera and walked home and discarded Bonnie's purse, it would have taken hours. The only way 45 minutes fits is if he had a ride home from the airport. And more, if this was really kind of something that jumped out at me, you know, early on, I wanted to wait to talk about it later. I'll pose the question to you. If your wife went missing, would you only spend 30 to 45 minutes looking for her?

And I already know your answer. It's no. And for every spouse out there listening to this, that same answer would be no. If you really thought your spouse was missing, I'm not talking about, you know, walking out of the house because they need time to think. Maybe there was a spat or something like that. I'm talking about if you really thought your spouse was missing, you're not going to stop after 30 minutes. And I think what you just talked about, more of some of these questions, kind of point to a very logical answer.

And it's that most likely Michael was not out looking for Bonnie. He was out covering things up. I think the big question is, was Michael gone longer than his mother, testified to or did someone give him a ride home, right? You said it. To do all the things that he's believed to have done in trying to cover up Bonnie's murder, it's hard to think he could have gotten all that done in 30 to 45 minutes walking. He would have needed help. He would have needed a ride. And if that was the case, who did he get it from? You also have to ask the question, when did Michael actually bury Bonnie.

We talked about the sand and plant mixture. That really points to him burying her before he took her car to the airport. But Aaron at the time had remembered seeing him put Bonnie in the car. Now, it's possible that he got a little bit of that mixed up, but could Michael Hame have been scrambling, trying to figure out where to bury Bonnie and then ultimately deciding that the backyard was the safest? place. I think what troubles many people about this is that when authorities searched the backyard, they didn't see anything that led them to believe that someone had been literally just buried there.

So if he did, how did he conceal it so well? I think a lot of people point to the possibility that maybe early on Bonnie's body was hidden someplace else and then later moved back to the haem yard and buried. But you said it more if, you know, still at this point, there are many nagging questions that I don't know that we'll ever get the answers to. What I can say is at the very least, justice has been served. Aaron no longer has any childhood memories of his mother or the life he shared with her in their home on Dolphin Avenue. Thankfully, the horrible things he shared as a child were documented at the time. The only memories he now has, of his mom or of finding her remains and realizing what he had found. It's almost as if things

have come full circle that Aaron is the one who shared information early in his life that implicated his father in Bonnie's murder. And decades later, he helped solve the case when he found his mother's remains. If he hadn't been so afraid of his father, so vocal about what he saw, Michael's custody may have never been terminated, and he may never have been found liable for Bonnie's death civilly and the Dolphin Avenue house may never have changed owners. And more freely, if you think about it, that was Michael's undoing, right? Could they have solved it without the discovery of the body? It's possible, but my thought is much more unlikely.

When you break it down, this civil case and the verdict going to Aaron and Bonnie's estate, meaning that Michael had to turn the house over, that changed everything. And you know that he must have been extremely worried, maybe even thinking, okay, now it's just a matter of time. Somebody's going to dig in that backyard. Somebody is going to uncover what I did so many years before. Yeah, you have to wonder if he was counting days and hoping that someone didn't dig up that backyard the way he tried to keep renters from doing. I absolutely believe. He was probably

extremely worried that entire time. You know, we talked about some issues of domestic violence in this episode. You know, so many children see domestic violence regularly and all too often see it prove fatal, but they're helpless to do or say anything about it. This includes Charlie and Braden Powell, who just didn't seem to have the right words to express what happened or tell people where their mother was. Aaron Frazier's testimony is really one of the rare times. Although it was three decades delayed that a child was able to use their voice for justice. Aaron stated in his victim impact statement. I always knew my mom was buried. I just didn't know where. After 26 years of questions, doubt, and their family being irreparably damaged, hopefully Aaron and the rest of Bonnie's

family can find some peace and that the division and rift within their family will be healed. So Morph, as we wrap up this episode, it's a tragic case all the way around. I mean, obviously a devoted mother lost her life, Bonnie. Her son, Aaron was forever changed by what happened. To me, I always find it hard to understand how a husband, in the case of Michael Hame, can take the life of his wife. I get it. Marriage is crumble. People fall out of love. People get divorced. All of that, I can understand how it happens. What I can't understand is how someone can make the decision to end the life of a person who they obviously loved at one point in time, even if they're not in love with them at that specific point in time. On top of that, Michael Hame didn't just end the life of his wife.

He did it in front of his son and caused irreparable damage to Aaron on top. of the fact that he took his mother away from him. How does how does someone do that? And maybe partly, that's why we're so fascinated with true crime. I do believe this. Part of it is because we're trying to figure out how these individuals can do the things that they do. How can they make these decisions?

You know, what's going on in their mind that allows them to move forward and do these things that we can't even imagine doing. Yeah, and unless Michael Hame suddenly opens up about what happened that last night, we're probably never going to know what really went down, how it unfolded, and how much of it Aaron saw. But just very frustrating to see Aaron's life just changed, almost like a butterfly effect. That one decision by Michael Hain just changed the entire question. course of his son's life to where he had to go live his life with a new family, no mom.

I feel so bad for him and to have these memories that he might not remember them on the surface, but they're there someplace. And they've stayed with him most likely over these years. And that's got to be something that's hard to deal with to know that you hold these things in you, that these images. and these things you saw when you were little, but he's had to live with that his whole life, and that's got to be really, really tough to do.

And you can't forget about Bonnie's family. Not only did they lose Bonnie, but they lost out on many, many years of really being able to see Aaron, day in, day out. You really feel for them as well. Tough case all the way around. Thanks goes out to Sunny Landon for writing and research, assistance in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so yet,

take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review as well, but keep telling your friends about the criminology podcast. That word of mouth really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. So Morph, that's it for another episode of criminology. But we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with an all new episode. So until then, for Mike.

And Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.