Dateline NBC - A Flight to Nowhere

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

In this Dateline classic, an airplane mechanic goes missing. His wife says he left on a flight with a mysterious passenger. But when details emerge about the mechanic’s life on the ground, police begin to question his marriage. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired May 30, 2008.

There's a wide, flat valley nestled between the Pine Nut Mountains and the majestic rise of the Sierra Nevada. If you drove up through that pass, you'd be gazing on Lake Tahoe. But in the valley is a small desert town called Minden, Nevada. Just off the highway north of town is the M Mindentaho Airport and the spotless hangar where Rob Bawden had built a business and made a reputation as one of the finest aircraft mechanics in the whole valley. He was just totally meticulous about everything he did. And yet, Rob himself was afraid to fly.

He called me up, I have to go on a test flight tomorrow, and I really don't want to go. Rob's business thrived. He bought his dream house with a white picket fence and a sweeping view of the mountains. That was like his pride and joy. His sister Barbara, just like brother Tim, had about given up on the idea that Rob would ever have a family. And then when he found Karen, you know, I knew he'd fall in love. Karen? He met her at the airport. She'd gotten a job fueling airplanes. And as Karen's daughter Katie remembers it, she had never seen her mom so happy. He was the most amazing guy that my mom had ever met.

They mooned over each other for a year or so. And then in the summer of 2000, Rob and Karen got married. And she and Katie and her three other teenage children moved into that house with a white picket fence and the view. But soon the honeymoon ended. When they would get in fights, he would get really violent punch holes in the walls. He would overwhelm them with flowers and gifts and I love you's and cards. And then it would be like walking on eggshells. Typical abusive relationship. Right.

Rob's brother, Tim, didn't quite see it that way. He had a hot temper, but as far as harming anybody, never. No question, the winter of 2006 was very tense. But as winter gave way to spring, their marriage seemed to bud anew as well. They planned an anniversary trip. But it was not to be. On the 16th of August, their plans for a second honeymoon for a fresh beginning vanished.

And, here's the thing, so did Rob. There would be stories about a rushed departure on a sleek golden eagle, about the hush-hush work he had left to do, with a man named Ramos. But for now, he was simply and mysteriously gone. The alarms did go off. It was like something was wrong. This isn't right. His wife, Karen, told Barbara she'd assumed he'd be back,

but his sister wanted answers. I said, where is he? Oh, he's with some guy named Ramos. Like, who the hell is Ramos? Her story was this guy Ramos was Like, who the hell is Ramos? Her story was this. This guy Ramos was going to pay Rob $10,000 under the table to work for him for a month on his airplanes. Karen insisted she wasn't worried. She knew why Rob had gotten into that plane.

Rob was repairing airplanes for drug runners. So she did not want to get the police involved... I said, I don't care what she wants. Even if he's with Ramos, help us find Ramos. Barbara decided to call the police, report her brother missing. Detective Ron Elgus of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office handled the case.

His first step? Inviting Karen down to the station to ask her about her husband. I mean, I love the man with all my heart. He is the most gentle, nice person can be, and then it's like a light switch, and he is like the most violent, hole-in-the-wall, smash furniture, extreme, and it'd be over something stupid.

Which confirmed they had a rocky marriage. But what, the detective wondered, did Karen know about this guy named Ramos? A little over a month ago, this guy came to his hangar and he offered him a job. This guy's name was what? His name was Ramos. He knows the guy's

planes, these planes are used for drug running. She also handed investigator Algus a crumpled piece of paper. A note, she says, was posted on Rob's hangar door at his business the day he flew away. She said that Rob had put the note on the door where it was typewritten about being gone for the day and that she had added stuff to help justify to everybody where he was so that if someone asked questions about where he was, they would know that he was with Ramos. Do you have any other ideas of what could have happened?

My heart is telling me that Rob has taken this job with these people to make the fast buck. So, according to Karen, he left just like that. Suddenly disappeared from his own life without telling a soul to work for drug smuggler. Really? Investigator Elgus went out to the airport now to see if he could back up Karen's story. Did anybody see a plane take off that morning or land? Nobody saw any plane take off at 421 on that day or that morning. A little checking with the FAA revealed no flight plans filed

for a Cessna 421 Golden Eagle at the Minden Tahoe Airport on August 16th. Today, Rob disappeared. And as for the people who work out here... It's a very tight community. They all watch each other's back and they all take care of each other. Karen's telling us that Rob just left. This community of people are saying, that's not Rob. Rob doesn't do that. His friend Kelly Rosser was concerned about Rob's disappearance, so he went

over to Rob's hangar. He didn't like what he saw. There was an airplane that he'd been working on. There were tools scattered all around underneath the airplane, And that was really, really odd because he never ever left anything. I mean, if we went to lunch, we put all the tools away. And so the fact that these tools were laying around on the floor was alarming for me. A few days later, Kelly returned. And I saw the note which said that he was gone with Ramos, which I'd never heard of anybody named Ramos.

Nor had anyone at the Minden Tahoe Airport. Who's not telling me the truth, and who's not providing the information that should be there? Because people don't just get plucked off the face of the earth for no reason. August decided to visit Karen at home. And what did he find? The butcher block. The butcher block?

I counted the knives, and there was one missing. Where was that missing knife? And, more to the point, where was Rob Botten? Weeks went by without a single word from the missing aircraft mechanic, Rob Bodden. Had he flown off with a man named Ramos for a job in the drug-running business? It was Sunday, the 10th of September, 2006, three weeks since Rob's disappearance.

A man's body, shot twice in the head, had been discovered in the desert. I knew it was Rob. It was. It looked as if Rob had been shot somewhere else, his dead body hauled out of the desert. Back at the station, investigator

Elgus examined the crime scene photos. And right there by the body, plain as day, he saw it. A knife. But wait a minute. The man had been shot. There were no stab wounds,

so why worry about a knife? Because Investigator Elgus felt sure it wasn't just any knife. It had to have come from Karen's butcher block. And sure enough, he was right. It did. There was no question in my mind at that point that she either was directly involved or involved. It was almost midnight. He called Karen anyway.

I asked her, I said, need you to come down to the station? Need to talk to you. She must have known the jig was up. Possibly. I basically confronted her on the fact that we had found Rob's body, that he'd been murdered, and we thought she did it. Are you saying you think I've killed my own husband? Yes, ma'am.

I guess I have to get an attorney. And that's where the conversation ended. So it did. Except, by now, a lot more information had surfaced about Karen Botten. Turns out she was on probation for embezzling $44,000 from the DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles. My advice always was get rid of her. And he just couldn't, didn't have the heart to do that. According to Rob's friend, Kelly Rosser,

she was running up debt on her credit cards, which happened to be in Rob's name, and forging checks from his business account. Authorities determined Karen had stolen more than $20,000 from her now-deceased husband. And so she was charged with grand theft. Armed with this new information, Detective Algas got a warrant to search the Bodden home and made a startling discovery.

There was a letter from Rob saying that he had left and he found a better life for himself to go ahead and take his wallet and she can have all his property. To Detective Elgus, it was a clear cover-up attempt. And within days, Karen was faced with another charge, murder. But without a murder weapon, or physical evidence, or witnesses, could it possibly stick? The evidence in this case will establish... The murder trial of Karen Botten began in January 2008.

Mark Jackson prosecuted the case. After she shot and killed her husband, she drove his dead body to that desert area, believing that she had committed the perfect murder. Her motive? In two words, greed and liberty. Greed. You will learn that the defendant was stealing money and that she continued to steal money after his murder and liberty. If the authorities were made aware of those actions,

because she was on probation, she could go to prison. On probation for embezzling tens of thousands of dollars from an old employer, the DMV. Rob had known about that, had protected her. But things had changed. Rob confronted her about two weeks prior to his murder about some additional theft. She had made some unauthorized charges on his credit card. Wrote her a note, in fact, asking where she got his credit card. The prosecutor showed the note to Rob's accountant. The $1,985.81, is that Rob's handwriting?

Yes. Due by August 5th, is that Rob's handwriting? Yes. What I argue to the jury is I think for everybody there comes a point where enough is enough. And for Rob, enough was in August of 2006. He was going to turn her in. He was going to turn her in. She would go to prison.

Couldn't let him do that. Absolutely not. It's a great motive for murder. And a murder that needed to be covered up. And that's the reason the prosecutor said that Karen told that story about Rob flying away with a fellow named Ramos. No one saw Ramos. No one saw an airplane. No one saw the victim. Just physically, how could this woman have done what she supposedly did to this man? Rob was shot with military precision, so Karen would have to have been an excellent marksman.

And there was no recovered murder weapon. Also, he had to weigh more than 250 pounds. How did she move that dead weight out of the hangar and into the desert without leaving so much as a trace of evidence behind? Prosecutor claimed she used a strap to attach her husband's dead body to a red hydraulic lift or cherry picker that was used to hoist aircraft engines in his very own hangar. Just by touching a little knob on that cherry picker, a child could lift that body and then wheel it over to the pickup truck and drop the body. And then? Karen eased the truck out of the hangar, said the prosecutor, drove it 11 miles east to a remote area of desert, parked on a slope, and pushed his dead body off the tailgate.

But as she was pulling the body out of the bed of the pickup truck, the knife came out with the body. And we believe that the knife was used to cut the strap. Remember, that knife turned out to be a perfect match to the one in Karen's kitchen. But it wasn't the murder weapon. Rob had been shot twice in the head with a.22 caliber gun. But where was that missing weapon? The prosecution had a theory involving a trip to Lake Tahoe

that Karen and her daughters took the weekend after Rob's murder. It has a very large lake, one of the deepest lakes. She went on one of those boats. Right after the killing? Right after the killing. We put the evidence on to establish that she had an opportunity to get rid of the gun. And then there was one last witness,

someone the prosecutor initially didn't think existed. It turned out he did exist and was about to testify. Would he help prove Karen's story? Could you please state your name? Richard Ramos. Prosecutor Mark Jackson believed Karen Bodden had killed her aircraft mechanic husband, then dumped his dead body in the desert. Karen maintained her husband flew off with a man named Ramos. A ghost, an invention, surely. Or was he?

Investigators put their best tools to use in the search, and sure enough, Ramos existed. And here he was to take the stand in court, Richard Ramos of La Habra, California. Do you own a Cessna 421? Yes, sir. Ramos owned a Cessna 421 Golden Eagle, exactly the model of airplane on which Karen Bodden said her husband flew the coop, except for a minor detail or two. Sir Ramos, are you involved in dealing drugs, using airplanes to haul drugs? No, sir. Have you ever flown your Cessna 421 into the Minnetonka Airport located

here in Douglas County? No, the airplane has not been operable since I bought it in December of 99. Were you involved in any capacity in the murder of Rob Bodden? I don't even know the name. This is the one and only Ramos that's associated with a twin engine airplane. Anywhere in the whole country? Anywhere in the world. Whoa. The state has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant killed Rob Bodden and that that murder, that killing was willful, deliberate and premeditated. So there it was, the prosecution's case for conviction. Too bad, said the defense, that it was absolute drivel. Karen Bodden did not kill her husband. Defense attorney Jim Wilson belittled the prosecution's theory that Karen put two bullets in her husband's head

to prevent him from sending her to prison. To bolster their case, the defense called Rob's own accountant, who testified earlier, remember, for the prosecution. And Rob had told you on multiple occasions that he would not turn Karen in. At least twice, that I recall. So much for the motive she needed to kill him to keep herself out of prison. So why would she have told that crazy story that Rob had flown off with some guy named Ramos, a man in a flight nobody at the airport remembered?

The airport accommodates 80,000 flight operations per year. Felt like it. With that much going on, wasn't it possible that Ramos, or a man with a similar name, had slipped in and out of the airport unnoticed? As for the murder weapon, the bullets retrieved from Rob's head only confirmed that he was shot with a.22 caliber handgun. The prosecution told the jury such a gun had been stored for years in Rob's hangar and was now missing. Must have been the gun Karen used.

Really? asked the defense. They're trying to put a gun in the hand of Karen Bodden that hasn't been seen since early 2001. That is speculation. As was the suggestion that Karen threw that missing gun into Lake Tahoe. In fact, the whole case of the defense really amounted to little more than suspicious speculation. Remember, there were no fingerprints, not a smudge of DNA, no blood in the hangar or anywhere. If the state's theory is correct and the murder occurred the way they say it did, that was one heck of a cleanup job. The jury never heard from Karen Botten,

but she agreed to talk with us. When you make a bad choice and you keep doing it, it becomes a compulsive habit. Karen admits she stole from her previous employer, the DMV, and then later on from her own husband. And I did do some financial revenges on him. Yeah. But for all their squabbles, she said, Rob stood by her. How did that work? Because he loved me. And so why didn't she report her loving husband missing? He took a job. He wanted to make the money that he was offered.

Thing was, as Karen had said, the job was not exactly on the up and up. Rob was repairing airplanes for drug runners, and so she says she was selective with what she told investigators. How much do you tell him? I don't want Rob to look bad. I want him to come back and everything go back to normal. And as for the prosecutor's suggestion that Karen had shot her husband in the head and then thrown the gun away, perhaps into Lake Tahoe? Nonsense, she said.

I don't know where I would put it. In the water? No, I mean... On your person? Yeah, I mean... You can hide one of those things, can't you? I don't know. I couldn't even imagine it being in my hand.

I don't know. Aren't guns heavy? But the jury had to work without Karen's story, had to work with the evidence that they were given, even if that was mostly circumstantial. Did I love my husband? Missing? Well, you didn't kill him.

Oh. No. A broken-hearted widow or calculating killer, the jury reached its decision. We, the jury, in the above entitled matter, find the defendant, Karen Bodden, guilty of the crime of first-degree murder. I knew I was going to be found guilty. The fact that I committed a crime before, I knew that I was doomed.

Karen Bodden was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 24 years when she's around 70. Maybe there was an accident? Accident? No. No. If you're asking me, did I kill my husband? No, I did not kill my husband. Even unintentionally? No. No. I you're asking me did I kill my husband, no, I did not kill my husband. Even unintentionally? No. No. I'm not a violent person. I never have been. I love my husband. Once a con, always a con? In her world, absolutely. She'll always be a con.