I Have Killed For You

Speaker 1 This show is supported by Hot and Deadly, a podcast from ID. Hot and Deadly brings you American true crime that is often stranger than fiction.

Speaker 1 Every week, dive into shocking stories of murder and betrayal, from IRS impersonators in Kentucky to a South Carolina businessman deceived by those closest to him.

Speaker 1 You'll hear first-hand accounts from investigators, witnesses, and family members as they share the chilling details behind each case.

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Speaker 3 An all-new 2020 starts right now.

Speaker 4 Family secrets are spilling out.

Speaker 5 I need my daddy.

Speaker 4 A teenager with a strange demeanor. She's clutching a teddy bear.

Speaker 7 How can she be actually 18 years of age?

Speaker 4 And an even stranger story about her missing mother.

Speaker 8 I didn't know Bonnie was gonna go missing.

Speaker 7 Something happened to her. She didn't just disappear on her own free will.

Speaker 4 So you knew something was really wrong?

Speaker 9 Pretty much.

Speaker 10 Has she ever disappeared before? No.

Speaker 11 Whoever has my sister, please let her go.

Speaker 3 Maybe somebody saw her somewhere at a bus station, at a train station, in a cab, at the mall.

Speaker 12 Nathan, you've agreed to walk us through a few areas.

Speaker 13 We're running out of time.

Speaker 14 He said, at times, I feel like I have the devil living inside me.

Speaker 4 Turns out Bonnie wasn't the only missing person in that household.

Speaker 15 Police at Alta need the public's help finding a missing woman. Bonnie Woodward was last seen Friday afternoon.

Speaker 4 It's a missing persons case that will confound an Illinois community.

Speaker 16 I didn't see anything.

Speaker 4 Flooding seasoned investigators with no shortage of witnesses.

Speaker 17 And then possibly tried to get rid rid of, you know, people.

Speaker 4 These interviews happening in this room right here, focusing on one person, one mother of four, whose sudden and perplexing disappearance sets off alarm bells.

Speaker 4 It all started at the end of a day's shift one afternoon in June.

Speaker 7 Bonnie Woodward got off around 3 p.m.

Speaker 19 that day.

Speaker 7 She was working at what was called Unismith Nursing Home here in Dalton.

Speaker 7 It was a normal day of work for her.

Speaker 21 47 years old, worked at the nursing home for over 25 years, I believe, and just a woman who was reliable.

Speaker 4 Being a nurse's aide is, that's a lot of caregiving.

Speaker 9 She had forever.

Speaker 6 She loved what she did.

Speaker 22 She went to work, she worked her shift, and then would come home to her children every night, as well as Gary Wilmirth, who she was dating at the time.

Speaker 3 Gary knew that she had some sort of staff meeting after work from 2 to 3,

Speaker 3 so he really wasn't expecting her home until, you know, 3.34.

Speaker 4 That boyfriend, Gary Wilmorth, says he tries getting a hold of Bonnie around 4 o'clock. But his call goes straight to voicemail.
Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.

Speaker 4 Because everybody was like, she would call if she was five minutes off.

Speaker 9 Oh no she was everything she did was out on a schedule.

Speaker 7 Nobody had seen her.

Speaker 7 This was very abnormal for Bonnie. She was always in communication with her family.

Speaker 22 After she didn't return home, her family members, they reached out, they tried to call her, they tried to text her and no response.

Speaker 4 And by the next morning, when Bonnie doesn't show up for work, her co-workers are alarmed by something they see in the parking lot.

Speaker 7 Her red Chevy avalanche Avalanche was still parked at the nursing home, had not moved from the previous date. Windows had been down even during the overnight hours.

Speaker 21 She loved that truck.

Speaker 4 She worked really hard to get that truck.

Speaker 25 She absolutely loved it.

Speaker 9 So she wouldn't have just left it.

Speaker 7 At that point, it was clear that there was something wrong.

Speaker 7 And Gary reported her disappearance to our department the morning of the 26th.

Speaker 7 When we work on the missing person and we're dealing with an adult, you have to keep in mind the possibility of they just want to take a break.

Speaker 7 They want to get away from family and friends, and that's natural. Also, I have to look into what's usual and what's their history.

Speaker 4 Detectives assigned to the case soon learned that 47-year-old Bonnie Woodward is a force of nature.

Speaker 22 Bonnie survived breast cancer. She was a fierce mother to four children.

Speaker 4 Bonnie has two grown children from her first marriage, Joseph, who's 28, and Jennifer, 26.

Speaker 4 Bonnie is also mom to two stepkids, Heather and Aaron. She adopted them after their father, Bonnie's third husband, passed away.

Speaker 22 Heather was about 17 years old at this time, and Aaron was special needs, and she cared for him every day.

Speaker 4 Bonnie is also a devoted grandmother. She grew up as one of nine siblings, so she has a large, extended family.

Speaker 4 What kind of aunt was she?

Speaker 9 She was the aunt that took a second to actually listen to you if something was going on.

Speaker 4 And she had a big personality.

Speaker 9 Oh, yeah, no, huge personality.

Speaker 9 Very loving.

Speaker 9 Her house is where a lot of the cousins all congregated.

Speaker 9 She had this little case in her living room, and she'd have little figurines and random stuff that had dolphins on it.

Speaker 9 None of it made sense to me, but she loved them.

Speaker 6 So she was the social hub?

Speaker 9 Kind of, yeah.

Speaker 9 She kind of liked having everybody around.

Speaker 4 So you knew something was really wrong?

Speaker 9 Pretty much.

Speaker 26 With the clock ticking, the Alden detectives start their missing person investigation where you'd expect, at the last place she was reportedly seen.

Speaker 22 This is where Bonnie worked?

Speaker 7 Yes, this Unismith nursing home.

Speaker 4 And she was a very consistent employee.

Speaker 7 Yes, didn't miss any work at all and certainly wouldn't miss without calling in.

Speaker 21 And so where was her car parked?

Speaker 7 It was in the spots here.

Speaker 4 And the windows were rolled down?

Speaker 7 Yeah, windows were rolled down so you would have to imagine that she expected to come back to the vehicle.

Speaker 4 Back here, presumably no surveillance was captured.

Speaker 7 No, at that time there was no surveillance back here that we could rely on.

Speaker 26 Without any surveillance footage, officers are hopeful that Bonnie's car may actually give them some clues as to what may or may not have happened.

Speaker 7 The vehicle, there's no significant damage to it or anything like that that would cause us any alarm. And upon looking at the inside, there was no evidence of a struggle.

Speaker 7 So we ended up having this vehicle towed to our police department, secured, until we could process it and also dust it for prints.

Speaker 3 One of the early things was how Bonnie Woodward was really regular with cashing her paycheck.

Speaker 3 The day she disappeared was payday, and she would, every time she was paid on Fridays, she would take that check to the bank.

Speaker 22 That was a ritual. Ritual.

Speaker 3 The check never got cash. She never went to the bank.

Speaker 21 Nothing happened with any of her phone, social media, bank accounts, all went dead as of 4 p.m. that day.

Speaker 7 And so then we have to look at what other troubles that she may have in her life. We have to look at prior relationships.
We have to look at Gary Wilmarth, her current boyfriend.

Speaker 4 And so what did you find when you dug into Gary's background?

Speaker 7 Gary's got a colorful past.

Speaker 3 He's a convicted felon and they've had some domestic issues.

Speaker 16 And just for the record, sir, what is your name, your full name?

Speaker 31 Gary J-R-Y. Okay.

Speaker 32 Wilmarth, W-I-L-M-U-R-T-H.

Speaker 20 Bonnie was the love of my life. And

Speaker 20 she was a good-hearted woman. And

Speaker 20 I mean, she put up with me and I mean that wasn't easy

Speaker 4 when Gary's talking to police he tells them that they've been an on and off couple for about seven years everything good over the past ten months between you two never any arguments or fights

Speaker 20 less little money problem you know because uh construction's slow right but we've been working I mean I'm not a good boy I mean I've had a record myself in the past I've paid my time and Bonnie knew that Bonnie still loved me she didn't care what I did in my past and

Speaker 20 these cops sure did.

Speaker 17 Have you heard anything from her at all since

Speaker 3 Bonnie's daughter, Jennifer, alibied him at home? And Gary was waiting for her to get home because she said they were both there the whole day together.

Speaker 7 And ultimately, he did end up doing a polygraph examination and passed it.

Speaker 4 But as investigators start talking to Bonnie's co-workers, they learn she was last seen getting into a strange car with an unknown man.

Speaker 17 I guess I had never seen the man before.

Speaker 4 The police wondered, could Bonnie be having an affair? Or was it something worse?

Speaker 7 Nothing is out of the realm of possibility. How did she know this person?

Speaker 33 I mean, mom had to have known the person she got into the car with.

Speaker 4 Going into its third day, a baffling mystery is unfolding in Alton, Illinois, a river town outside St. Louis.

Speaker 4 Nurse's aide and mom of four, Bonnie Woodward, vanishes in broad daylight just before her 48th birthday.

Speaker 22 Alton, it's a nice little town. It's situated on the Mississippi River and the Illinois River.
It has a vibrant downtown, a lot of history, and it's a great place to live and work.

Speaker 4 So with no sign of Bonnie anywhere, her family goes to the media, her older brother tearfully pleading with the public. I want my sister.

Speaker 35 Somebody please call us and let us know what's going on. We don't know nothing.

Speaker 3 Nobody wanted this case solved more than her siblings.

Speaker 11 Whoever has my sister, please let her go.

Speaker 4 Bonnie's sister, Rebecca, and her niece, Rachel, don't hesitate to join in on the efforts, making the 700-mile drive to Alton from their home in Louisiana.

Speaker 4 Why were you concerned enough to get in the car and start driving?

Speaker 9 Well, because she wouldn't just not come home. I just remember having a stack of flyers and going around and putting them on every telephone pole that I could.

Speaker 22 The police naturally talked to the people that had last seen Bonnie. Can I get your last name?

Speaker 34 Bob.

Speaker 22 Wanda Bosley was one of the co-workers that worked with Bonnie at the Eunice Smith Nursing Home.

Speaker 7 We have to find out how Bonnie was during the day. Was she acting appropriate? Was she, you know, upset about anything?

Speaker 37 Okay, and so you you went into this meeting she was in the meeting

Speaker 37 you got out around three o'clock and you what what did you what happened then

Speaker 17 so well at first like in the meeting I just want to say Bonnie's when she talks she's loud and she seemed different to me she was quiet and her voice was more mellow like mine now and I remember thinking man Bonnie seems a little different today After that staff meeting, Wanda says she headed to the back parking lot to get into her car.

Speaker 4 Out of the corner of her eye, she spots Bonnie.

Speaker 4 And she's not alone.

Speaker 17 She was standing, like say if this is the back of her truck, the guy was standing here and I was looking and Bonnie had walked up the side of her truck to the driver's door.

Speaker 17 And the guy was just standing there. I didn't see anything strange, but it kind of seemed strange because I guess I had never seen the man before.
Can you describe the guy for me? He was a white male.

Speaker 17 He looked like he wasn't very tall, maybe 5'8, 5'9 or so.

Speaker 17 He was like a medium-sized guy. His hair was a salt and pepper, more grayer than black.

Speaker 26 Turns out, Wanda is not the only coworker to have witnessed this strange sighting.

Speaker 26 Multiple people report to police seeing this mystery man sitting in a gray or silver sedan similar to a Chevy Malibu waiting for Bonnie to get out of her staff meeting.

Speaker 7 So the gray Chevy Malibu was directly to the right of her vehicle.

Speaker 4 Plenty of people saw him.

Speaker 7 Yeah, after the meeting people would see her interacting with him outside both vehicles and ultimately got into the car with him.

Speaker 22 She did get into the car willingly.

Speaker 22 It did not appear that she was forced or anything like that.

Speaker 15 Police in Alta need the public's help finding a missing woman, 48-year-old Bonnie Woodward.

Speaker 7 The information regarding the person that people had seen on that parking lot was crucial.

Speaker 15 She reportedly was seen talking to someone inside a gray or silver Chevy Malibu.

Speaker 7 So talking to the family and friends, did anybody like a past relationship match the description?

Speaker 17 And you don't know anybody off the top of your head who would have a silver malibu.

Speaker 31 Her ex-boyfriend Chester, Mike Adams. Chester's dad has a 2009 Impala.
If you put Impala and the Malibu side by side, they're just a little bit of difference. It'd be hard to tell the difference.

Speaker 31 That's true.

Speaker 17 Who does this guy sound like to you?

Speaker 6 Chester McAdams.

Speaker 33 That's the only guy I can figure out that fits the description. That's it's Chester.
I mean, I don't like to pinpoint a guy out, but Chester fits every description. And like the silver Impala,

Speaker 22 his dad has a silver Impala.

Speaker 29 Do you know that for sure?

Speaker 6 Yeah, because he used to date my mom.

Speaker 4 Chester McAdams piques the detective's interest not only because he dated Bonnie for a year, but he also has an extensive criminal record.

Speaker 20 Bonnie was hard to see him.

Speaker 20 And then I showed back up in the picture and ran him off.

Speaker 32 Me and Bonnie have been together probably seven or more years.

Speaker 31 We parted about a little over two years.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 31 that's when she got with that Chester guy.

Speaker 16 You and Chester ever have words?

Speaker 31 Oh, big time.

Speaker 33 Big time hate each other. Oh, I mean.

Speaker 31 I run run into him at the bar.

Speaker 32 He was mad because me and Bonnie got back together.

Speaker 20 So I kind of thought maybe

Speaker 20 he was upset and might have did something to her.

Speaker 16 And sir, for the record, I just need your last name.

Speaker 38 McAdam. Capital M, small C, capital A, D, A, M, S.

Speaker 16 And your first, sir?

Speaker 7 Chester. With Chester, it was a very rocky relationship that Bonnie had with him.

Speaker 30 We'd break up, she'd kick me out, and I'd be gone for a week or so, and then I'd be moving back in.

Speaker 32 I've been down that road.

Speaker 30 Okay, so then, you know, then it would be two or three months and then I'd be kicked out again and then

Speaker 32 back and forth.

Speaker 38 And then about two months before Gary got out, she kicked me out and then next thing I know, Gary's living there.

Speaker 3 The family largely was saying, hey, you guys need to look at Chester McAdams. When we found Chester McAdams, he's got a beard, he's got a ponytail.

Speaker 4 Chester clearly doesn't match the description of the man co-workers saw days earlier in the parking lot with Bonnie.

Speaker 4 But what about that tip from Bonnie's daughter Jennifer, who said Chester's father drives a silver Chevy Impala?

Speaker 4 Detectives want to talk it over with father and son.

Speaker 16 Do you ever drive his truck or Impala or anything like that?

Speaker 24 Do you ever allow him to borrow it for any reason?

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 29 I would never ask my dad to borrow his vehicle.

Speaker 40 He'd say no. I know I'd say no, run off to bad children.

Speaker 32 Right, you know, don't even bother asking.

Speaker 16 Well, I mean, we're investigating this missing purge.

Speaker 24 Right. It could be more than missing.

Speaker 16 I mean, we could have a big problem.

Speaker 24 And it could be nothing. It could be nothing.
Right.

Speaker 36 I hope it's nothing.

Speaker 7 Chester McAdams was willing and cooperative with us. Ultimately, did not have direct access to a vehicle that was like that.

Speaker 7 And also, we checked in with his employer and they confirmed that he was at work. So that was a dead end for us.

Speaker 41 The family of a missing elephant woman is now offering a $5,000 reward to anyone who can find her.

Speaker 7 You have crime in this area, but you don't have missing adults too often.

Speaker 44 We have people that run away, but they're always found.

Speaker 7 But this one, she just fell off the face of the earth.

Speaker 13 We need to find my sister. We're running out of time.
Everybody knows the first three days is critical.

Speaker 4 With both Gary and Bonnie's ex cleared, detectives are hitting walls left and right.

Speaker 4 But they're about to be floored by some information that reveals a disturbing coincidence in the Woodward family. Turns out Bonnie wasn't the only missing person in that household.

Speaker 26 Correct.

Speaker 4 Bonnie Woodward's disappearance is the talk of the small town in Illinois she called home. Bonnie Woodward has been missing.

Speaker 28 Friends and family were gathering to pray for her return.

Speaker 13 We need to find my sister. We're running out of time.

Speaker 4 Investigators are frustrated and increasingly concerned.

Speaker 7 We were doing missing person flyers, talking to local media. We were trying to push this out there as much as we can.

Speaker 3 Maybe somebody saw her somewhere at a bus station, at a train station, in a cab, at the mall. We're trying to get any kind of lead that'll take us where we need to go.

Speaker 4 But they're all kind of wild goose chases.

Speaker 4 It's as if she's vanished into thin air.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 And it wasn't without leads. Somebody would say they saw somebody similar in Pontoon Beach, Applebee's in Kansas City, but none of them appeared to have much merit.

Speaker 7 We had to expand our investigation and look into everything about her life that was going on at that time.

Speaker 4 You discover, wait, she's not the only missing person in that household. Right, right.

Speaker 3 It turns out that her stepdaughter, Heather Woodward, had been reported missing to the East Alton Police Department more than a week before.

Speaker 7 East Alton Police Department, which is a separate police department from ours. So we were not aware of that at the time that Bonnie went missing.

Speaker 7 There was nothing 100% that told us that the two were linked. So at that point, we're having to do a dual investigation.

Speaker 4 This is a huge coincidence in a small town that a mother and stepdaughter go missing in the same house. Huge.

Speaker 21 Huge.

Speaker 4 Remember, Heather Woodward is Bonnie's 17-year-old stepdaughter. Bonnie adopted Heather and her brother Aaron after their dad passed away when Heather was just eight.

Speaker 9 After Bonnie adopted them, it was made very abundantly clear they're in the family.

Speaker 11 Like, those are her kids.

Speaker 4 The house is a busy one with Bonnie's adult daughter, Jennifer, and her two little girls, plus Heather, Aaron, and boyfriend Gary, all living under one roof.

Speaker 4 And the family tells detectives there was friction between Heather and Bonnie.

Speaker 3 It was an unhappy teenager, and it was a stepmom giving her chores to do, and there was a little resistance.

Speaker 3 At some point, they argue, and Heather wants to move out, and Bonnie initially doesn't resist the idea.

Speaker 7 Our investigation revealed that around June 10th, Heather went with her teacher. That was Christine Schuffle, and Bonnie knew about this.

Speaker 4 That teacher pictured in the high school yearbook along with Heather. Heather moved in with her just two weeks before Bonnie vanished.

Speaker 4 And now that both Bonnie and Heather are missing, investigators have lots of questions.

Speaker 36 I'm here with the

Speaker 34 Christine Scheffel.

Speaker 7 I wanted to get the history of how she became engaged with Heather's life. And then the number one question is, where is she now? She was last with you, where is she at?

Speaker 46 I have Heather in Alpha Line class as a freshman. For the entire year, she has been re-vocal to myself and all the other teachers of the abuse that goes on at home.

Speaker 46 Things like being slapped or thrown against a wall or woke up at three in the morning to wash every dish in the house, just plain crazy stuff.

Speaker 47 And who's the one she's alleging that does all the

Speaker 7 we knew that East Alton Police Department was aware of these reports and we could not get anything to substantiate these reports.

Speaker 4 Heather painted a picture of your aunt as being abusive. What do you make of those allegations of abuse?

Speaker 9 I can't see it. I can see her being loud with anybody,

Speaker 9 child or not, like just being vocal,

Speaker 9 but not abusive. Like there was no way.

Speaker 46 Heather has been telling everyone for over a year that when she turns 18, she will be kicked out. She called and said that I'm getting kicked out and I need you to come here.

Speaker 3 The teacher is, I believe her heart was in the right place as she's trying to help this 17-year-old child.

Speaker 34 Bonnie called us and wanted Heather back.

Speaker 46 So, and I did tell her she had to go back home. So

Speaker 34 she cried most of the night.

Speaker 12 And then whenever you came back on the 17th, she was gone.

Speaker 40 Right.

Speaker 4 So now, according to this teacher, Heather leaves her home on the 17th. That same day, Bonnie reports Heather as a runaway.

Speaker 20 Bonnie went knocking on doors. It was driving Bonnie nuts because she couldn't find her.

Speaker 7 In obtaining the reports, it was clear that Bonnie wanted to find her stepdaughter and she was not getting the information she wanted from the teacher and she was adamant that no matter what, she was going to find her.

Speaker 4 And now detectives aren't making much headway in finding Heather either. The teacher who Heather had been living with says she has no idea where Heather might have gone.

Speaker 7 There was nothing that we could really prove that she knew where Heather was, but clearly I'm still skeptical. Are they telling the whole truth?

Speaker 48 She never called you back once to say, hey, I'm okay, or don't worry about me, or any of that.

Speaker 7 With her lack of intent on trying to find Heather and if she was that much of a mentor to her, why wasn't she more concerned about Heather's whereabouts if she didn't know?

Speaker 49 To us, it seems odd. Are you concerned about her, Wilfrid? It's odd that she hasn't called you, is what I'm a little concerned with.

Speaker 46 I believe that she's with somebody. I mean, I don't think that she's off by herself, but I think she just doesn't.

Speaker 46 She doesn't want to make sure I don't get in trouble or, you know, I mean, she's a smart kid.

Speaker 4 Heather's teacher's interview only raises more questions for investigators. Are these disappearances linked? And if so, how?

Speaker 4 As investigators, you're fairly convinced that she might have had something to do with the disappearance or at the very least know something.

Speaker 3 We think the two events have to be linked some way. Two missing persons from the same house, one a juvenile and one adult.
Like you almost have to believe they're related.

Speaker 3 Like it's really naive to think they're not.

Speaker 4 After almost a week and no sign of Bonnie, her family's anguish turns pointed, lashing out at that mystery man from the parking lot.

Speaker 35 You let my sister go and I'll come and get her. I want my sister.

Speaker 3 I felt like Heather had the the answers that we needed. We believe she was the key to finding Bonnie.

Speaker 4 And that's when police get a game-changing phone call from a nearby library.

Speaker 7 I had heard it over the police scanners.

Speaker 44 It was very strange.

Speaker 4 It seems someone showed up there with a teddy bear and a story to tell.

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Speaker 4 Summer is in full swing here in Alton, Illinois. Backyard barbecues, Fourth of July fireworks.
Bonnie Woodward used to host these kinds of events, but not this year. She's been missing for a week.

Speaker 4 And in a twist, her teenage stepdaughter is missing too. Until out of the blue, eight days after Bonnie vanished, through these doors walks the missing teenager, Heather Woodward.

Speaker 7 The East Alton Police Department received the call from the library that there's a person saying that she's Heather Woodward.

Speaker 7 With all the speculation going around, I wanted to hear what she had to say.

Speaker 20 They got Heather, took her to the police station, and I thought, man, they're going to find out something now.

Speaker 17 And would you state your name, please?

Speaker 40 Heather Woodward.

Speaker 10 And your birthday, Heather?

Speaker 24 Today.

Speaker 7 Physical condition for Heather was not of anything that was of a concern. There was no injury to her.
Clearly, she had been being taken care of.

Speaker 37 What do you know about the whole situation with Bonnie and everything?

Speaker 8 What I read in the paper.

Speaker 29 Okay. That's it.

Speaker 37 And I guess you read in the paper that you were also

Speaker 37 the scissor runaway also.

Speaker 8 And I was planning on coming home on my birthday. That was the plan, so I didn't have to go back to Bonnie's house.

Speaker 7 I was taken aback that how can she be actually 18 years of age?

Speaker 4 But she's clutching a teddy bear.

Speaker 40 Yes.

Speaker 3 July 3rd is her 18th birthday, so she's a bona fide adult in the state of Illinois, but she talks more like a, well, I don't want to be insulting, but like a grade school student or a junior high student.

Speaker 3 I'm tired. I'm ready for my nap.

Speaker 3 I need my books. I need my books.
I need my books, books, books, books, books.

Speaker 4 She showed up at a library. What did you think?

Speaker 9 That it was absolute.

Speaker 4 What do you mean by that?

Speaker 9 Why are you showing up at a library?

Speaker 4 Who brought you?

Speaker 9 Where did you come from? Where have you been?

Speaker 4 Something doesn't smell right.

Speaker 9 Pretty much.

Speaker 19 What made the decision that you would go to the library?

Speaker 37 Why not to the police department or something?

Speaker 8 Because I always go to the library. I walk there all the time and I wasn't comfortable walking to the police station.

Speaker 37 Do you think you're in any trouble?

Speaker 27 I don't know.

Speaker 8 I'm scared.

Speaker 37 Yes, you had a lot of people concerned about you. We don't know what happened to you.
We don't know what happened to Bonnie.

Speaker 8 I haven't talked to my mom.

Speaker 7 Heather's thought of it was it wasn't that big of a deal that Bonnie had disappeared. It didn't come across to me that she had a lot of concern about where Bonnie was at the time.

Speaker 7 What do you think happened to her?

Speaker 8 I don't know. I thought that maybe she hid to draw me out and then she'll come out now that she knows that I'm home.

Speaker 37 That's what you thought? Why would you think that?

Speaker 8 Because

Speaker 8 sometimes that's just the way Bonnie is. And she could be mean and

Speaker 8 I don't know. She's just mean.

Speaker 7 You know, I gave her the safe space to talk to me about situations in the home and pretty much the extent of it was that she was being made to do chores and clean the house.

Speaker 7 You know, typical things that I think a lot of teenagers and youths do and should be doing.

Speaker 8 Because I'm not going back there to be slave labor in a free babysitter. I just couldn't do it no more.

Speaker 7 From what she told. multiple people, she was being physically and verbally and mentally abused.

Speaker 7 You know, it doesn't go beyond the realm of possibility that maybe she was embellishing more about that relationship between her and Bonnie to pull the heartstrings of people that, you know, were close to her, that could be of assistance to her.

Speaker 4 And one of those people, police begin to realize, may have been that teacher, Christine Scheffel, who took Heather in. Ms.

Speaker 8 Scheffel has been there for me for four years,

Speaker 8 and she was afraid for me to go home because Bonnie can be mean, and sometimes she hits.

Speaker 4 There was an investigation into Bonnie's parenting.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's DCFS, Department of Children and Family Services, and they had been involved before.

Speaker 4 And what did they find?

Speaker 3 It was unfounded. There's no evidence of significant abuse.

Speaker 4 Do you think Heather was manipulating adults into thinking that her stepmother was evil?

Speaker 3 I don't know if she was intentionally manipulating adults, but that was definitely what happened.

Speaker 4 One thing's clear to investigators. Heather was in someone else's care in the two weeks after she left that teacher's house, during that critical time when Bonnie went missing.

Speaker 4 So So now, of course, detectives are curious, who was she with and why is Heather protecting them?

Speaker 8 And then I went to stay at a Fred's house.

Speaker 29 It was a...

Speaker 8 Just a friend.

Speaker 8 Don't want to get him in trouble.

Speaker 8 So, just a friend.

Speaker 27 They helped me.

Speaker 8 And they knew the situation, so.

Speaker 37 Well, you know, I have to ask who it is.

Speaker 22 She was very resistant to talk at all about where she had been or what she's been doing and who with.

Speaker 8 They're not gonna get in trouble, are they?

Speaker 37 Well, I don't know about that.

Speaker 8 They don't know nothing. They don't like Bonnie.

Speaker 8 I don't... I don't want to know where Bonnie's at.

Speaker 4 And as seasoned investigators, you thought...

Speaker 6 She's hiding something?

Speaker 3 Yes, and we had to push hard enough to get that information.

Speaker 8 They told me they they didn't know Bonnie was missing, and I don't want to get him in trouble.

Speaker 27 And then it'll be all my fault.

Speaker 8 I didn't mean to cause him trouble, and I didn't know Bonnie was going to go missing.

Speaker 4 So now, another layer to this mystery.

Speaker 3 She was painting a pretty ugly picture of her stepmother.

Speaker 4 And might that have motivated somebody to try to protect her?

Speaker 6 Sure.

Speaker 4 Are they just Good Samaritans or something else?

Speaker 7 There's maybe more to this than just taking care of Heather.

Speaker 4 The trail will lead detectives down these winding roads into truly uncharted territory.

Speaker 21 We didn't see that coming from a mile away.

Speaker 23 Bonnie Woodward disappeared in Alton June 25th at about 3 in the afternoon after getting off work.

Speaker 23 Her family members haven't seen or heard from her since that day.

Speaker 4 Bonnie Woodward has been missing for over a week. Her boyfriend of seven years, Gary Wilmerth, says he catches glimpses of her in every passing stranger.

Speaker 20 There was times that could be at a store, past somebody on the street, could be their color of their hair.

Speaker 20 I remember talking to her grandbabies, and they said,

Speaker 20 Are you going to bring grandma grandma back?

Speaker 20 You got a picture of these little bitty girls looking at me.

Speaker 2 Where's grandma?

Speaker 20 I just thought in my heart she was going to come back.

Speaker 20 And I wasn't taking no for an answer. She was coming back.

Speaker 4 And investigators say they aren't taking no for an answer either.

Speaker 4 Bonnie's now 18-year-old stepdaughter, Heather Woodward, who also strangely went missing a week before Bonnie, has now suddenly reappeared.

Speaker 13 Okay, Heather, we just need to ask a few things here.

Speaker 4 After hours of questioning from detectives, Heather seems finally ready to reveal the identity of the people she says helped her run away.

Speaker 8 They're not gonna get in trouble, are they?

Speaker 37 I don't know about that, but I want to at least know what, what, where you've been.

Speaker 37 I want to make sure that we're safe.

Speaker 8 I stay with some people from from the church.

Speaker 37 Do they have any kids your age?

Speaker 8 Nathan.

Speaker 8 And he's my best friend. Okay.

Speaker 37 So it's Nathan Carroll's family.

Speaker 37 Okay.

Speaker 22 The police department had learned that she had been at the Carroll house.

Speaker 22 Heather had told Roger Carroll and Monica Carroll that she had run away from home because Bonnie was mean to her and that she had gone to the Carroll house to hide from Bonnie until she turned 18.

Speaker 7 Both Monica and Roger were in the medical field and their son Nathan was typical 16 year old high school student.

Speaker 7 There was no criminal history on record for them, no police involvement, no arrests or anything like that.

Speaker 3 The Carols go to the same church in Wood River. So the Carrolls get to know Heather, I think, during church-related activities.

Speaker 4 And one of those church activities they went to, a graduation party for Heather and other seniors, just two weeks before Bonnie went missing.

Speaker 7 We obviously had to explore the avenue of are they involved with Bonnie.

Speaker 44 I think the police were like, well, they had, you know, Heather at the house, then what else do they know?

Speaker 7 We went to their listed address in the Jersey County area.

Speaker 7 They're living in among 60 acres of property. It's just a lot of wooded open land.

Speaker 4 What jumps out at you about Roger Roger Carroll?

Speaker 3 He's in his 40s with the brownish-gray hair, 5'10-ish. His primary car is a silver 2005 Chevrolet Malibu, which is the suspect vehicle description.

Speaker 7 We tow the vehicle to our police department and ultimately process this vehicle for any evidence related to our case.

Speaker 4 This investigation is now shifting into high gear. Monica and Roger Carroll come in for questioning.

Speaker 29 You are Roger William Carroll Jr.

Speaker 33 I don't want to answer any more questions until we speak with our attorney.

Speaker 36 Okay. You decided to

Speaker 10 invoke your right to counsel, correct?

Speaker 40 Yes, sir.

Speaker 4 Heather Woodward, Bonnie's stepdaughter, is also called in again the very same day and pressed for more information about the day Bonnie went missing.

Speaker 37 What do you know about Bonnie leaving and what happened whenever she left or was the brand in the camp?

Speaker 53 I mean, I know that she got in the car with some guy and they drove off. That's all I know.

Speaker 37 Did they talk about the car?

Speaker 53 Yeah, it was a silver and gray car, Malibu.

Speaker 8 That's it. That's all I know.
Does that

Speaker 37 sound like any car that you're familiar with?

Speaker 8 No.

Speaker 22 Other size Roger's car.

Speaker 29 Okay.

Speaker 33 But Roger wouldn't hurt a fly.

Speaker 4 Investigators then confront Heather with a new piece of information. They found out that she and the Carols were together at a lake house in the days just before Bonnie went missing.

Speaker 7 They went down to Monica's parents in Goreville, Illinois on a small trip, just the four of them.

Speaker 26 And detectives grow even more suspicious when Heather shares that Roger and his son Nathan returned home by themselves on the same day Bonnie disappeared.

Speaker 53 Roger and Nathan came home on Friday. We came home on Saturday, me and Monica.

Speaker 37 Why did they leave on Friday?

Speaker 53 Monica told me that he just wanted to get home and he made Nathan go with him.

Speaker 3 He brought Nathan with him, got up and left at seven o'clock in the morning on June 25th, Friday morning, the day Bonnie disappeared.

Speaker 37 Now, the question I have here is, the guy that meets with Bonnie up at the nursing home, he's in a gray Malibu, silver gray Malibu.

Speaker 37 How do I know that Roger's not the one that met with Bonnie up there that Friday?

Speaker 23 I don't know.

Speaker 53 Roger.

Speaker 53 Bonnie's never met Roger, so I don't know why she gets a car with him.

Speaker 37 What if he told her, hey, I know where Heather is. Why don't you come with me and

Speaker 11 pick her up?

Speaker 37 I don't Do you think Bonnie would have gotten a car with him then?

Speaker 53 No, she doesn't care about me.

Speaker 4 So you have a lot of circumstantial evidence, but nothing that cracks the case open.

Speaker 3 It is all circumstantial.

Speaker 22 There wasn't enough to link Roger Carroll or Monica Carroll to Bonnie's disappearance. However, both of them at that time were charged with harboring a runaway.

Speaker 26 Both Roger and Monica plead not guilty to this charge, but this turns out to be a helpful tool for investigators.

Speaker 7 In getting those charges, we can also get fingerprints, we can get photographs.

Speaker 4 And then you put Roger in a lineup.

Speaker 3 We did. We used this mugshot primarily with the employees at Unismith.

Speaker 4 And that did not come up with a match?

Speaker 3 It did not. That resulted in no positive IDs.

Speaker 4 The family members must be chomping at the bit at this point.

Speaker 3 They are, but sometimes the cases move when they want to move.

Speaker 4 Did you feel like there had to have been somebody out there that knew more than they were saying?

Speaker 9 I think anybody that is just trying to locate a loved one often feels like somebody's not talking or somebody's lying.

Speaker 4 Summer winds to a close without Bonnie Woodward and without answers until news of a body found on the banks of the Mississippi River here in Alton, Illinois leaves her loved ones holding their breath.

Speaker 4 Every time a body comes up, we call.

Speaker 6 51 days exactly. She's been gone and we have not one solid answer.

Speaker 4 That body, it turns out, is not Bonnie

Speaker 4 But a break in the case is coming. The lab results from Bonnie's abandoned truck are back, and the results are stunning.
The crime lab comes back with a very significant hit.

Speaker 40 Yes.

Speaker 42 You understand what we're trying to tell you right now?

Speaker 28 There's new physical evidence in this case.

Speaker 21 I said we have to jump now. This is our time.

Speaker 14 I'm thinking I'm going to die.

Speaker 54 It's crazy. Absolutely crazy.

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Speaker 18 Okay, we are recording.

Speaker 14 I said, stop it. Just stop doing this.
Let me go. Just let me go.
I'll do anything you want me to do. Just let me go.

Speaker 4 Tonight, a third woman in danger who broke the bizarre mystery.

Speaker 23 Bonnie Woodward disappeared in Alta.

Speaker 4 Of a missing mother.

Speaker 8 It didn't mean to cause no trouble. And I didn't know Bonnie was going to go missing.

Speaker 4 Who's been hiding daughter Heather? And could Bonnie have ended up in the same place? Family members must be chomping at the bit at this point.

Speaker 7 It was a needle in a haystack. We had 60 acres of property.
We didn't know where to look, what to look for.

Speaker 12 Nathan and I, you've agreed to walk us through a few areas that are of interest in our investigation.

Speaker 3 We got to hit on the prints.

Speaker 4 And on a scale of one to ten of your suspicion level, where did it go?

Speaker 43 Yeah, it spiked. Any idea what they were?

Speaker 55 Little pieces of white things, but I don't know exactly what it was.

Speaker 21 The family's falling apart, and we have to jump now. This is our time.

Speaker 7 She now is starting to put everything together and is fearing for her own life at the same time.

Speaker 25 He said, I have killed for you.

Speaker 56 I have killed for you.

Speaker 4 That sounds like bingo.

Speaker 4 Summer has turned to fall in Alton, Illinois. 48-year-old mom and nurse's aide Bonnie Woodward hasn't been seen in over three months.
That's an eternity in a missing person's case.

Speaker 22 We didn't know technically if she was alive or dead in the months that followed. None of her family members heard from her.

Speaker 4 But the Illinois State Police Crime Lab has been busy processing evidence, including fingerprints found on Bonnie's truck.

Speaker 4 In September, Prince come in.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 I got a phone call from my evidence technician who told me we got to hit on the prints. It's Roger Carroll's.
So Roger Carroll's fingerprints are on this driver's door.

Speaker 4 And on a scale of one to 10 of your suspicion level, where did it go?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it spiked.

Speaker 4 Roger Carroll is brought in again for questioning while police, now with probable cause, conduct a massive search at the Carroll's sprawling rural residence.

Speaker 7 It was a needle in a haystack. We had 60 acres of property.
We didn't know where to look, what to look for.

Speaker 28 Neighbors are stunned by the police operation.

Speaker 54 It's crazy. Absolutely crazy.
Couldn't believe it, the amount of police that were coming by.

Speaker 3 And we had more than 60 police officers.

Speaker 7 Multiple agencies.

Speaker 3 We had a lot of people. We had cadaver dogs.

Speaker 4 And an airborne search.

Speaker 3 And an airborne search, yes.

Speaker 7 Well, there was probably

Speaker 7 close to 30 firearms at this residence. Multiple crates of ammunition were also seen.

Speaker 20 Oh, I thought they was going to find a body or something.

Speaker 7 The cadaver dogs did alert on certain areas of the property, but subsequent digs of those areas revealed no results.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, this time in the police interrogation room for a second interview, Roger is more chatty.

Speaker 29 My mom, she's like, oh my God, did you do this?

Speaker 17 I'm like, mom, no, I didn't do it.

Speaker 4 Roger tells investigators that he invited Bonnie's daughter, Heather, to stay with him and his family, only after becoming concerned about her account of a troubled home life.

Speaker 10 So then Heather called you guys?

Speaker 36 Yes.

Speaker 30 I could hear her crying.

Speaker 33 She was just frantic, you know.

Speaker 29 Oh my god.

Speaker 33 Bonnie called and said that she's going to come get me tomorrow that I had to pack my stuff up and I don't know what I'm going to do.

Speaker 38 Right.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 she kind of played on your soft hearts and said, can I come stay there?

Speaker 33 She never said, can I come stay.

Speaker 30 Just to be honest about it, I'm the one who said, hey, you know, this is a bunch of crap.

Speaker 29 Why don't we just go, you know, she can stay with us. Okay.

Speaker 30 Okay. I'm the one that said that.

Speaker 10 As far as Bonnie,

Speaker 10 you've never had a conversation with that woman.

Speaker 57 And you've never

Speaker 10 been face to face with that woman.

Speaker 10 You know where she lives, but you've never, other than you've driven by there, like two times, right?

Speaker 40 Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 10 And you've never been in her vehicle. And you've never had occasion to handle her vehicle or touch her vehicle.

Speaker 40 That's correct.

Speaker 4 But there's one little detail investigators have been deliberately coy about when talking to Roger Carroll.

Speaker 3 So finally, I was, at the end of the interview, I was like, how do we explain it? That your fingerprints are all over her driver's door. He stumbled just a bit and says.

Speaker 30 Then I've been trained. I mean, no, there's no way that my fingerprints are on that car door or my DNA is on that car door.

Speaker 29 There just is no one.

Speaker 3 He's asking, like, my prints aren't on that door. I'm like, well, yes, they are.

Speaker 29 I don't see. There's no way my fingerprints are all over the door of that car.
They are.

Speaker 3 So he denied it still. The interview terminated pretty quick after that.

Speaker 4 Not only were his fingerprints found on her car, but he denied ever having met her or ever been there and ever been in that parking lot. So what do you make of that?

Speaker 9 That he's lying.

Speaker 7 There's a third interview with Heather. Heather states firm during this interview that she didn't have anything to do with it.

Speaker 21 Bonnie went missing around two to three o'clock in the afternoon

Speaker 37 and his prints are on Bonnie's truck.

Speaker 37 What do you think? I don't know.

Speaker 5 If I've never want nothing to happen to Bonnie, I mean I sometimes I

Speaker 5 you know she's mean but I wouldn't do that to her.

Speaker 5 I didn't tell him to touch Bonnie.

Speaker 5 She was the only thing I knew.

Speaker 39 I wouldn't hurt her.

Speaker 26 The police processed Roger's gray sedan, but here's the thing. They don't find any fibers or DNA belonging to Bonnie or even her fingerprints.

Speaker 26 And they don't come up with much at the Carroll house either.

Speaker 7 After the search in September, there was really no evidence found at the residence that 100% put Bonnie there at the Carroll property.

Speaker 3 When you take somebody to trial for first-degree murder, you better be right and you better be ready

Speaker 3 because you only get one shot.

Speaker 22 We still didn't have Bonnie's remains. We didn't know if Bonnie was alive or dead at that time.
And what we did know is that Roger Carroll was lying.

Speaker 22 Roger Carroll, based on the lies that he told, was charged with the offense of obstruction.

Speaker 7 Family members and friends felt that he needed to be charged with murder. But based on it only being a circumstantial case at this point, that would have been quite a stretch for us.

Speaker 6 So the case goes cold.

Speaker 4 Your aunt is still missing.

Speaker 22 What was that like for your family?

Speaker 9 I know that it was very hard emotionally for many family members.

Speaker 4 It would take eight years and one newly installed prosecutor combing through a pile of Madison County cold cases. And the first one you stumbled on was Bonnie Woodward.

Speaker 4 First one, Bonnie Woodward, to breathe life back into Bonnie Woodward's investigation.

Speaker 4 Jennifer Mudge decides to try to open a cold case, but even before you can relaunch anything, you get a startling phone call.

Speaker 3 I got a call from Roger Carroll's neighbor, and he's asking me, he's like, do you know what's going on at the Carroll's house?

Speaker 14 I said, God, Roger, stop it. Just stop doing this.

Speaker 14 Let me go. Just let me go.
I'll do anything you want me to do. Just let me go.

Speaker 14 I'm fighting. I'm fighting with everything that's within me.
What are you thinking at the time? What am I thinking? I'm thinking I'm going to die.

Speaker 4 Roger Carroll had been charged with obstruction of justice in the disappearance of Bonnie Woodward.

Speaker 4 But now, eight years later, he's being accused of something else altogether by, of all people, his wife of over 30 years, Monica.

Speaker 7 In March of 2018, we receive information from the Jersey County Sheriff's Department that there was a domestic situation in which Roger had caused injury to Monica.

Speaker 58 I didn't know his connection, right?

Speaker 43 I didn't know this was the Bonnie Woodward suspect.

Speaker 43 So I went the next day, met her several hours from here where she was kind of hyped out and interviewed.

Speaker 57 Okay, we are recording.

Speaker 14 He told me I was fat, disgusting. So fat and disgusting that nobody would want to have anything to do with me.

Speaker 21 The first thing you notice on the dash cam is A, the injuries to her face, and B,

Speaker 21 beyond the injuries, just the fear.

Speaker 57 She said for the most part it was a good marriage until there was some infidelity like a few years prior that she had recently figured out more infidelity and then had filed for divorce.

Speaker 14 He was really withdrawn after serving with the divorce papers. I thought he would be happy because just a couple weeks before it he said, I want a divorce.

Speaker 21 They had separate bedrooms, but while she slept in her bedroom, she not only locked the door, but she put a dresser up against the door because she was scared.

Speaker 4 Monica tells Detective Nick Manns about the alleged attack, in which as she's getting ready for work, she says Roger corners her in the laundry room.

Speaker 14 Roger is looking out the garage door, like making sure Nathan has left.

Speaker 14 He turned and he acted like he was going to have normal conversation.

Speaker 14 And he reached over to the back of my head grabbed my hair and jerked me and then dragging me around by my hair with his right hand he was hitting me in the head with the taser gun and how do you know it was a taser gun what was it doing because it shocked me so he drags it up your neck he drags it up my neck

Speaker 14 He looked shocked

Speaker 14 and I was screaming, Roger, don't do this. Roger, don't do this.
I started screaming, Nathan, Nathan, screaming for Nathan as hard as I could, screaming for help.

Speaker 4 Nathan, unfortunately, had already left early for work.

Speaker 14 So then I knew all my help was gone.

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 14 I remember when he hit me up here, he hit me and drug.

Speaker 14 And the shocked look on his face, I said, God, Roger, stop stop it. Just stop doing this.

Speaker 14 Let me go. Just let me go.
I'll do anything you want me to do. Just let me go.

Speaker 14 And he had this shocked look on his face.

Speaker 14 It's like he was surprised that I was still talking.

Speaker 4 Monica says she somehow manages to get a hold of the taser and throws it into the next room.

Speaker 59 You still have some abrasion, some little swelling there.

Speaker 14 I had blood.

Speaker 14 Pretty much every place that these things are, I had blood smear.

Speaker 59 All these red marks are from

Speaker 14 him.

Speaker 43 During this time, Monica does what so many victims unfortunately have to do, but it's a survival thing is, how am I going to get out of the situation?

Speaker 43 And she starts to de-escalate it slowly, verbally, de-escalate the situation.

Speaker 14 I was just thinking, don't get him agitated. Talk him down.

Speaker 14 And I said, Roger, you've been a good dad.

Speaker 14 You were a good husband, but you're not the man that I married 30 years ago.

Speaker 14 And he'd said it before you. He said, I know.
I'm not that same person. He said, I am a monster.

Speaker 14 He said, I have so much anger and hate in me and I can't control it no more.

Speaker 14 He said, at times I feel like I have the devil living inside me.

Speaker 43 Eventually that got to the point where he allowed her to get up and get ready for work and go.

Speaker 14 As soon as I got in my car, I hit the lock button, put it in reverse,

Speaker 21 and took out.

Speaker 43 Then she provided us information that she knew him to possess firearms and she believed him to be suicidal at the time.

Speaker 14 He says,

Speaker 14 I've been thinking about just going out into the woods and never coming back.

Speaker 4 Detective Mann says he went to search for Roger the morning of the alleged attack.

Speaker 43 Well, we believe he's a danger, obviously, to her and to our community, but also to himself.

Speaker 57 So I'm driving down this road, which is Creek Road, which is where he lives.

Speaker 58 And this is actually, that would be his house at the time.

Speaker 57 He and Monica lived there.

Speaker 58 That was their home.

Speaker 43 I keep going up this hill.

Speaker 58 You can see it's pretty rugged terrain.

Speaker 43 I don't even realize at that time that this is his property. So I go up here and I go left and I drive across this field and I get out of my car.

Speaker 43 And when I get on his trail, I see something down there and I keep moving closer and it's

Speaker 15 him.

Speaker 58 Roger was lethargic.

Speaker 43 I fell in his jacket pocket, which turned out to be a bag of needles, of syringes. Then I found a vial of what I knew to be insulin.

Speaker 43 I asked asked him if he was diabetic and he said no, that he had hurt his wife and that he was trying to kill himself.

Speaker 43 But I called my dispatch and said send an ambulance this way. What's the ambulance? No, this guy's not diabetic.
He took insulin.

Speaker 30 Attention Brighton Rescue in Creek Road for 52-year-old male took an overdose of insulin and suicide attempt.

Speaker 4 But what Detective Mann soon learns is that his fellow investigator, Scott Gallicky, has been looking at Roger Carroll as Bonnie Woodward's possible killer.

Speaker 21 Immediately,

Speaker 21 Scott and I said, The family's falling apart, and we have to jump now. This is our time.

Speaker 4 Because at that point, you double down on every member of the Carroll family.

Speaker 3 Right, we need a talker.

Speaker 6 They need a talker, and they're about to get one.

Speaker 4 And investigators get a story they had not prepared for.

Speaker 4 Newly installed prosecutor Jennifer Mudge is working hard with police to try to solve Bonnie Woodward's cold case. They believe they can break it if a Carroll family member talks.

Speaker 4 As detectives are talking to Roger Carroll's wife, Monica, they get intriguing new info. She remembers her husband taking a peculiar interest in Bonnie Woodward's daily life before she disappeared.

Speaker 7 Monica talked about conversations that she thought was odd about where specifically Bonnie worked, what type of work schedule she had.

Speaker 26 I don't remember what shifts she worked or, you know, the days, but I remember those were in conversation.

Speaker 25 I just remember thinking that it was very odd that he's asking all these details.

Speaker 7 She now is starting to put everything together and is fearing for her own life at the same time.

Speaker 25 Looking back on it now, I've been scared for a long time, but I just

Speaker 56 wasn't

Speaker 25 to the point to admit it yet.

Speaker 4 But the really chilling words about Roger, that was still to come.

Speaker 25 He said, I have killed for you.

Speaker 24 I have hurt a lot of people,

Speaker 29 but I killed for you.

Speaker 4 And I think that's Bonnie.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, Roger is released from the hospital after his insulin overdose and is brought directly into police custody.

Speaker 4 Where Detective Gallocky greets him again after eight long years.

Speaker 4 Roger, how are we doing? What's going on?

Speaker 58 Remember me? He's got Goliki.

Speaker 4 So after all that, you sit down with Roger.

Speaker 4 Years later from the last interrogation.

Speaker 6 Yes. Is he a different man?

Speaker 3 Yes, we both aged a lot, and probably me more than him. After the domestic, he was clearly suicidal.
And so when I see him, it's not his best day.

Speaker 3 You know what I had to say a word, but if you want to hear me out,

Speaker 3 I think it might be worth your while, but it's your prerogative. You're driving this bus.

Speaker 3 I had started it with, hey, Roger, you don't have to say anything if you don't want, but we've opened this case. This train's coming down the road.

Speaker 3 I think what's going to happen now is that this is a homicide investigation and it's moving in that direction. I was basically telling him charges on this case are now imminent.

Speaker 3 But some of the intimate details and the specific details, only you know. It's the right thing to do for Bonnie yourself.
It's also the right thing for you. There's no way

Speaker 3 you're enjoying living with this.

Speaker 4 But if Detective Galicky is counting on a crisis of conscience from Roger Carroll, he's about to be disappointed.

Speaker 3 We've opened this case. This train's coming down the road like I'm giving you an opportunity to try to mitigate the circumstances.
Are you comfortable with the whole situation?

Speaker 3 That guy interviewed him for an hour and some change and really for 55 minutes he just didn't speak.

Speaker 4 Since Roger completely clams up, they bring his wife Monica in again. And turns out she does have more to share.

Speaker 19 So you had a feeling that something...

Speaker 56 Something went right?

Speaker 12 Something...

Speaker 52 Something happened.

Speaker 19 Otherwise, I think you would have questioned it. Your internal feelings.

Speaker 56 Said that something went right. Yeah.
That things weren't right.

Speaker 56 When he said that he's killed people

Speaker 56 for me to protect me and Nathan.

Speaker 56 I know that's not right. I know it's not right that

Speaker 56 he should kill someone.

Speaker 56 Feel that he has a right to kill someone to protect me.

Speaker 4 And you're not aware of anything else in your history with Roger or,

Speaker 19 you know, with Nathan that he would be talking about other than

Speaker 19 Bonnie Woodward. Right.

Speaker 56 The only person that came to my mind would be Bonnie.

Speaker 4 Monica says Roger issues her a stark warning about Bonnie's family.

Speaker 56 He made it sound like

Speaker 52 it'd be my fault if something happened to our family.

Speaker 40 If I ever talk.

Speaker 56 So I didn't want to be the one

Speaker 56 to be the cause of our family.

Speaker 39 Being tore a poor.

Speaker 39 I didn't want to hear it.

Speaker 56 Because I recall I told him I didn't want to hear it.

Speaker 7 We knew that Monica was not there at that time. And we were also pretty confident that she didn't show up until a day later.

Speaker 4 That's when Monica describes approaching their son Nathan with her suspicions.

Speaker 56 I told Nathan that Roger told me I have killed for you.

Speaker 56 And he was like, Don't ever repeat that, Mom.

Speaker 40 Don't ever repeat it.

Speaker 4 But what might it take for Nathan to start talking?

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This is going to be catastrophic.

Speaker 50 We're fighting for our marriages and the girls are just putting us through hell.

Speaker 52 They make everything about themselves. I can't.

Speaker 50 Hopefully this doesn't end in a bloodbath.

Speaker 52 Watch the Hulu original, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for von subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 60 It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 49 911, what is the address of your emergency?

Speaker 60 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker.

Speaker 61 He's fallen asleep, so she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 52 Is there any way you can get out of the building? I don't know without waking him. scared

Speaker 52 this 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of ashland into a crime scene we've got something big going on here the first thing hit my mind is a monster

Speaker 60 a new series from abc audio and 2020 the hand in the window Out now wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 4 Investigators are drilling down on the Carroll family, and the story of what they think might have happened to Bonnie Woodward is beginning to take shape.

Speaker 3 Monica, she's not present. She's not a co-defendant on the incident.

Speaker 39 I honestly do believe

Speaker 56 Eddie did away with Bonnie Woodward.

Speaker 39 I don't know how.

Speaker 2 I don't know how.

Speaker 22 We doubled down on the theory that Nathan was likely with Roger at the time that Bonnie disappeared.

Speaker 21 Nathan was 16 years old at the time that this crime was committed. Nathan is now 24.

Speaker 21 You're talking about a kid versus an adult. So I think maybe you focus on him.

Speaker 22 We made several attempts to talk to Nathan when he refused to talk to law enforcement.

Speaker 21 We served him with a subpoena to come testify in front of the grand jury. I made a decision to grant him immunity at the time if he would tell us the full truth.

Speaker 21 And then fate sort of took over from there.

Speaker 4 What did he say that tipped his hand to you that he was about to spill the whole truth?

Speaker 21 He held up the immunity paper and said this is good no matter what I tell you and I said yes.

Speaker 21 He put his hands on the rail and boy that testimony was ripping.

Speaker 22 He broke down and he started crying, and he said he was going to tell us everything.

Speaker 3 That's kind of a thing maybe you see on TV with people breaking down in the courtroom and spilling the beans in the courtroom, but it really never happens. But it did.

Speaker 22 Sitting in the room was 12 grand jurors, myself and Jennifer, and Nathan's attorney.

Speaker 22 It was absolute silence. You could hear the clock tick.

Speaker 21 It's like watching the weight of the world being lifted off this young man's shoulders.

Speaker 22 He told the entire story about what happened that day.

Speaker 21 He says that he's on vacation with his whole family. They have Heather there.

Speaker 21 And his dad said to him the night before, you and I are leaving early tomorrow.

Speaker 21 They drove to Eunice Smith nursing home. And his dad said, good, she's at work.

Speaker 3 Then after they get home, Roger changed clothes, clipped his fingernails, he shaved and retrieved his Stoger nine millimeter from the house and left and left Nathan there by himself.

Speaker 21 He told Nathan he was going to get Bonnie. Nathan set up a tent in the backyard.

Speaker 22 The tent in the backyard was essentially a death trap to lure Bonnie to the backyard and not into the residence.

Speaker 21 He's eating lunch. Next thing he hears is eight or nine gunshots and they're close.
They're in his driveway. He walks outside and that's when he sees feet with tennis shoes on and tan scrubs.

Speaker 21 There are a few things that stay with me like he remembers that he was eating leftover deli meat sandwiches from Heather's graduation party. If you're making a story up,

Speaker 21 you don't go that detailed into what kind of lunch you're having.

Speaker 26 But the next detail may be the most disturbing of all.

Speaker 26 Nathan tells the grand jury that his dad had him light a fire in the backyard and testifies he watched as his father loaded Bonnie's body into a bucket loader, a tractor with a scoop on the front of it, and bring her to that burn pit.

Speaker 21 And they start a massive fire.

Speaker 21 It had to be stoked all day, all night, every couple of hours. And Roger had Nathan help him do that.

Speaker 22 When you heard the scope of what he confessed to, what went through your mind?

Speaker 3 I don't think we thought fire or burned on a brush pile.

Speaker 4 Talk about being haunted.

Speaker 3 Right. Like not only is Roger creating a horrible thing to him, for him to live with, it seems like he created a horrible thing for his son to live with.

Speaker 4 After his grand jury testimony, Nathan brings investigators back to the house.

Speaker 4 What you're about to see is the actual video police captured as Nathan brings them back to where he says the crime took place, a spot first identified eight years earlier by cadaver dogs.

Speaker 7 During our search in September of 2010, we had 60 acres that we had to worry about. Now we have a few hundred feet.

Speaker 12 Nathan, you've agreed to just walk us through a few areas that are of interest in our investigation involving your father and the investigation of missing person Bonnie Woodward.

Speaker 7 Nathan points out the back corner of the residence where he found Bonnie's body and saw her, where the shot had come from.

Speaker 55 This is where she

Speaker 55 laid.

Speaker 55 I never saw the full body.

Speaker 57 I was standing over there.

Speaker 55 Okay. And I saw feet.

Speaker 7 It was in that site that we did find a nine millimeter cartridge, which was significant because Nathan had identified that Roger had used a nine millimeter handgun ultimately that day in shooting Bonnie.

Speaker 22 The second site that Nathan took law enforcement to was what we refer to as the burn pit.

Speaker 4 Followed by the creek where Nathan says he saw his dad dump Bonnie's ashes.

Speaker 7 So we had a site number three for where this was dumped into the creek bed.

Speaker 13 It was that tractor with the bucket end on it. Correct.

Speaker 55 Little pieces of white things, but I don't know exactly what it was.

Speaker 15 You don't know any idea what they were?

Speaker 55 My best guess would be bone, but I don't know.

Speaker 22 Law enforcement were able to find 27 pieces of what they believed to be bone fragment that were collected and sent off to the lab to see if any DNA or any connection could be made to Bonnie.

Speaker 30 All right, gentlemen.

Speaker 47 Thank you.

Speaker 22 Based on the version of events that Nathan gave, we felt comfortable charging Roger Carroll with first-degree murder of Bonnie Woodward.

Speaker 45 A man linked in 2010 to the disappearance of Bonnie Woodward today has been charged with her murder.

Speaker 20 I thought, wow, I mean, they're actually charging somebody for murder.

Speaker 4 But not so fast. Some critical evidence will be unveiled in court, which could upend the case.
The DNA on those bone fragments, it's not what police expected.

Speaker 4 Roger Carroll pleads not guilty to the murder of Bonnie Woodward, but he's facing some tall odds. He may just not understand how tall.

Speaker 4 One of the key pieces of evidence turned out to be a sassafras tree.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 4 Tell me how you decided that you were going to try to bring that into the courtroom.

Speaker 21 I'll be honest, we didn't decide it. It was kind of thrust upon us by an investigator in Jersey County, and all of us were kind of like, yeah, go ahead, whatever.

Speaker 4 It isn't every day a tree becomes a star witness in a murder trial, but this was never your ordinary everyday case. So how would it factor in?

Speaker 4 Well that and over a hundred other key pieces of evidence are finally being presented in court nearly a decade after Bonnie Woodward went missing.

Speaker 20 I thought everybody give up. I mean, I didn't know what else to do.
And him being charged with Bonnie's murder gave me life again.

Speaker 20 And I thought, let's do it.

Speaker 22 The why question is very difficult in this case because there's not a clear-cut motive.

Speaker 4 Given what you were up against, the fact that you didn't have a body, you didn't really have a motive, you didn't have a weapon, how confident were you that you could get a guilty verdict?

Speaker 21 My partner and I said this is just never going to get any better. We have everything we're ever going to get, so we thought we'd swing the bat.

Speaker 26 In my years as a prosecutor, I did five cases where the victim's body wasn't found, and it's a gamble. So sometimes what you'll do in lieu of that is you have the person declared dead.

Speaker 26 It can, depending on the case, really help the jury.

Speaker 22 We took note that now it had been eight years that Bonnie had not been seen.

Speaker 22 So one of the first steps we had to take was to have Bonnie officially declared deceased and we're able to obtain a death certificate based on the circumstantial evidence that she had not been seen.

Speaker 62 My name is Jennifer Schock and I was juror number two.

Speaker 4 What had you heard about the case? I hadn't.

Speaker 62 I truly came in there not knowing anything prior.

Speaker 4 And when you realized how big a case you were deliberating on, what was your reaction?

Speaker 62 A little nervous to have that much pressure put on me to basically decide somebody's future.

Speaker 26 In opening statements, the prosecution detailed what they say happened during Bonnie's kidnapping, including the fact that Roger Carroll's fingerprints were found on her car.

Speaker 26 They also brought in Roger Carroll's suicide attempt.

Speaker 4 The jury must decide if Roger is guilty of first-degree murder. The earlier charges against him and Monica for harboring a runaway, Heather, would be dismissed.

Speaker 4 The defense opened up by vowing to poke holes in the state's case, particularly taking aim at the son, Nathan Carroll, telling the jury his story changed only after being granted immunity, or what they called a golden ticket.

Speaker 21 Nathan was on the stand for a good two to three hours, maybe more. I mean, just like in the grand jury, you could hear a pin drop in that courtroom while he's testifying.

Speaker 4 Because family secrets are spilling out in this courtroom.

Speaker 21 I mean, he's telling a cold, hard, disgusting story that

Speaker 21 clearly there was no doubt that was truthful.

Speaker 4 Nathan testifies that he heard gunshots and told the jury in gruesome detail how he helped his father burn Bonnie's body.

Speaker 43 I think Nathan realizes dad tried to kill his mom and that's just crossing the line. If you think about Nathan, he is a young, a child.

Speaker 43 And he's being controlled by dad and he witnesses something horrific.

Speaker 6 The son, Nathan, testifies.

Speaker 4 And I'm told that it was a very stirring, powerful testimony.

Speaker 21 What do you remember of it?

Speaker 62 I remember that after Nathan testified, it was completely silent. It was just a silence through the whole entire courtroom afterwards.

Speaker 42 Nathan's testimony doesn't really make sense. Nathan keeps saying he's reluctant, he did it anyway.
Why would Nathan help his father do it? What's in it for him? It's a big mystery.

Speaker 21 Nathan can be hard to read. He was ashamed.

Speaker 4 He knew what he had done was wrong.

Speaker 21 He knew what his father had done was wrong, and he knew that helping clean up was wrong. He was very remorseful.

Speaker 22 A lot of the trial was built around corroborating what he was telling us was the truth. We didn't want the jury to just have to take Nathan's word for it.

Speaker 22 We wanted to show that it fit and matched all the forensic evidence in this case.

Speaker 4 But the defense just keeps chipping away at that evidence, including those 27 bone fragments that were found on the property. In fact, there's a rather big bombshell in store for the jury.

Speaker 42 Bones were found, but they're not the bones of the ceasefire.

Speaker 22 We were never actually able to find DNA of Bonnie Woodward on these bone fragments.

Speaker 22 We were able to say that these were bone fragments believed to be of human origin, but we could not definitively say that they were Bonnie Woodward's.

Speaker 42 In fact, it's not clear if they're human bones or animal bones or whether they're bones that were from an Indian burial many years ago.

Speaker 4 Prosecutors argued that the bones were degraded by the fire, which Nathan described that burned Bonnie's body.

Speaker 4 And to prove that there actually was a fire on the property, the prosecution used an unexpected method and witness.

Speaker 3 Nathan identified the burned spot on this ridge behind the house. And where the burned spot was, is a sassafras tree.

Speaker 3 The sassafras tree has a scarred spot on the bark several feet up the tree.

Speaker 43 So we go over there, cut down the tree.

Speaker 3 Cut slices out of the tree.

Speaker 3 We sent them off to a botanist. He examined the tree, its age, its growth rings, and said that tree was damaged in the early growing season of 2010, spring or or summer.

Speaker 4 That tree damage, according to the testimony of a botanist from the University of Wisconsin, was reminiscent of a fire and appears to have happened at the same time Nathan claimed Bonnie's body had been burned.

Speaker 4 As a prosecutor, why is that critical?

Speaker 21 That fire, others have testified, had to be quite large to burn a body like that, down to the fragments that we found.

Speaker 42 There's a question, was there actually evidence of a fire? Or is it a fire around the time of 2010? Or is it not a fire? That's questionable.

Speaker 26 Heather Woodward, Bonnie's stepdaughter, takes the stand and tells jurors that she told Roger about Bonnie's whereabouts and her work schedule.

Speaker 4 How did Heather do on the stand? What was her testimony like?

Speaker 21 It was pretty short, and I think the way that Heather was in the police interviews is the way she was on the stand.

Speaker 5 If I've never want nothing to happen to Bonnie, I mean, I can sometimes, you know, she's mean, but I wouldn't do that to her.

Speaker 22 Her testimony, it pretty much tracked with that, but it was clear to those involved that she had not participated in her mother's death.

Speaker 4 What made her cry on the stand, do you remember?

Speaker 21 Every time she cried, it was because she said, I never wanted this to happen to Bonnie. I never meant for this to happen to Bonnie.

Speaker 4 Bonnie's boyfriend Gary took to the stand too and told the jury about what was lost when Bonnie's life was cut short.

Speaker 20 He wouldn't look back at me for nothing. I kept looking across where he was and he wouldn't look at me.
So I started talking to the jury to my right and I said he took away a good woman, mother.

Speaker 20 I let him know what kind of person Bonnie was.

Speaker 26 I have an old supervisor before I started my very first nobody case, which I'll never forget.

Speaker 26 He said, always remember the jury can see the soul of your victim reflected in the eyes of those who love them.

Speaker 4 When it was their turn, the defense team laid out a case that pointed the finger at Nathan as Bonnie's killer and argued that without him and the so-called golden ticket, the state's case was just circumstantial.

Speaker 21 Nathan didn't have a choice. If Nathan didn't help his father dispose of this crime, Nathan's dead man.
And let's not forget, he was a barely 16-year-old boy.

Speaker 22 Roger did not testify at trial. It's his choice whether or not to to testify, and he decided not to.

Speaker 42 He was advised not to testify. Many attorneys advise their clients not to testify because, for one thing, they think it will shift the burden.

Speaker 42 They think the jury is going to look at whether they believe the defendant and suddenly the defendant has to prove his innocence, which he normally doesn't have to do.

Speaker 4 After five days, the case is now in the hands of the jury.

Speaker 6 It was back and forth all the way.

Speaker 22 Those moments are always very tense.

Speaker 62 We would get close and then somebody would say something else and then it would throw everything off.

Speaker 4 What What was the hang-up then?

Speaker 4 The cases have been presented and now the verdict is in the hands of the jury.

Speaker 62 It was back and forth all the way, truly, till the end. We were back and forth.

Speaker 21 And we

Speaker 62 thought we would get close and then somebody would say something else and then it would throw everything off.

Speaker 4 What was the hang-up then?

Speaker 62 We all agreed that he definitely, he definitely had a hand in this. The hang-up was basically, did he do it or was he covering for someone else that did it?

Speaker 4 When you finally reached a decision, what was the feeling in the room?

Speaker 62 Relief. We truly did our due diligence on deliberating correctly.

Speaker 22 We were notified that the jury had a verdict, so we all went back to the courtroom and those moments moments are always very tense.

Speaker 26 Roger Carroll was found guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 4 And so when the verdict was read how did the courtroom respond?

Speaker 62 Crying from both sides, happy on Bonnie's side, sad on Roger's side and again Roger never he never made any emotion. He just

Speaker 24 sat there.

Speaker 17 He didn't even

Speaker 4 react.

Speaker 4 What went through your mind when you heard the verdict? Bonnie.

Speaker 21 That finally she could

Speaker 21 be at rest.

Speaker 21 I don't believe in the word closure. It doesn't exist in my mind.

Speaker 21 But that Bonnie can now rest peacefully.

Speaker 4 By the time of sentencing, the charges against Roger for domestic violence and obstruction were dropped.

Speaker 22 At the sentencing hearing, Roger was given the opportunity to make a statement to the court, and he chose to use that time to be defiant.

Speaker 21 He said, I don't have anything to be sorry for. I won't apologize because I've done nothing wrong.

Speaker 4 And that says a lot about his mindset.

Speaker 11 Sure does.

Speaker 32 When I heard

Speaker 20 jury found him guilty, that was a blessing to my ears to hear.

Speaker 20 I wish he could have got more time than he did.

Speaker 21 He was charged with first-degree murder while using a firearm. He received 40 years in the Department of Corrections for the murder, plus 25 years for the gun enhancement.

Speaker 20 At least they did lock him up, and I give them that. The police finally making him pay for what he did.

Speaker 32 Roger Carroll

Speaker 20 robbed her kids, her grandkids, friends, family.

Speaker 20 But we won't never forget her

Speaker 20 and we won't forget him.

Speaker 4 People describe her as somebody who had a really loving heart.

Speaker 9 I know she definitely did. Like even

Speaker 9 especially with family, like

Speaker 9 didn't matter what you did.

Speaker 9 She would figure out a way to just make it better.

Speaker 4 You really loved her.

Speaker 9 Oh yeah, like

Speaker 36 she was great.

Speaker 20 Sometimes I'll look up at the sky and

Speaker 20 tell her I don't know if I'll be there, but I hope someday I will and see you again.

Speaker 44 So many of Bonnie's loved ones wishing they could see her again. Bonnie Woodward's killer, Roger Carroll, is appealing his conviction.

Speaker 6 He was granted permission for that appeal by the Illinois Supreme Court, and his case will likely be argued this fall.

Speaker 4 That's our program for tonight. Thanks for watching.
I'm Deborah Roberts.

Speaker 44 And I'm David Buer from All of Us here at 2020 and ABC News.

Speaker 18 Good night.

Speaker 51 It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at Whitehouse Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.

Speaker 52 I know there's going to be a twist, won't they? A massive twist. At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up cover-up in this case.

Speaker 51 I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker.
Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.