MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: JoAnn Matouk Romain from Detroit

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Speaker 1 Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.
And if you missed it last week, I know summer is over, which should mean the end of your two episodes weekly. Wrong.
I'm full of surprises these days.

Speaker 1 And I'm in my seventh year of Crime Junkie era, which brings a little bit of a tear to my eye. Like, I can't believe how much we've done together for each other and for these cases.

Speaker 1 and it's making me feel a little nostalgic when we had a thousand listeners i thought that meant that we were going to change the freaking world and then that thousand turned into ten thousand and then a hundred thousand and then now millions of you don't just listen like people thought everyone did when they listened to true crime content we have redefined it together which has inspired me to redefine really how I do anything in this space.

Speaker 1 Like if you remember my tour last year from the Deck Investigates, we told you guys the story of Darlene Hulse across 11 cities and you guys showed up for Darlene and her family.

Speaker 1 But I never got to the city of Detroit or even to the state of Michigan with her story.

Speaker 1 And I know so many of you Detroiters have listened and I wanted to meet you face to face and it would be great if I could soon.

Speaker 1 But until then, I wanted to bring you a story that I told a while ago from your own backyard that still needs your help.

Speaker 1 It's one that grabbed me by the jugular and consumed a lot of my brain space, and honestly, still does.

Speaker 1 And unlike last Thursday's episode, this one is a little more recent. So let me take you back to February 2022 when I told you this story.

Speaker 1 It's a cold night in Michigan on January 12th, 2010.

Speaker 1 20-something Michelle Romaine is at home with her two other grown siblings, and since it's after 9, things in the house are kind of like winding down for the night.

Speaker 1 They're just waiting for their mom to get home before they fully lock up and call it a night. Now, you see, earlier, their mom, Joanne, had dropped her son off Michael and then went to go get gas.

Speaker 1 And that was a couple of hours ago, but they figured she probably went to church, maybe she ran some errands, whatever.

Speaker 1 So when Michelle sees headlights in the front window, she assumes that it's her mom. But when she peeks out of the window, her heart sinks because it's actually the police.

Speaker 1 When she opens the door, Michelle's fears only grow because according to what she told producers of Unsolved Mysteries for an episode called Lady in the Lake, the officer immediately confronts her with some troubling news.

Speaker 1 He says that they found her mom's car abandoned in the church parking lot, and he asks Michelle if her mom is missing. Now, what was fear turns a bit into confusion?

Speaker 1 No, they hadn't reported their mom missing. They had just seen her, what, like a couple of hours ago?

Speaker 1 And Michelle's sister is paying attention to what's going on by now, and she looks down at her phone. It is 9.24.

Speaker 1 She knows that Joanne dropped her youngest Michael off at home at six, so it's been like three and a half hours.

Speaker 2 Ashley, is this the first story we've ever covered where the police are actually so like on top of everything that they know someone is missing before the family even does?

Speaker 1 Maybe, but there's actually something else confusing to Michelle. So the car that they found in this church parking lot, it's a silver Lexus that her mom was driving that night.

Speaker 1 You see, that car is registered to Michelle. So she's wondering, like, how did police know to come looking for Joanne? Shouldn't they have been...

Speaker 2 Right, they should be looking for her.

Speaker 1 Right. Now, in that moment, it didn't matter too much to Michelle.
She knew that her mom was driving the car that night and her mom wasn't home. So she needed to figure out what was going on.

Speaker 1 So she and her sister, along with their uncle John, all got together and drove to the church where Joanne's car was parked. Now, they probably expected to see a pretty empty parking lot.

Speaker 1 You know, Joanne's car for sure, maybe a cop car next to it with an officer who ran the plates, if that even, because like, what's the officer going to do just hanging around it?

Speaker 1 But when they pull up, it's like a little bit after 10 p.m. And what they actually saw made all of their jaws drop to the floor.
Britt, it was a full-on crime scene.

Speaker 1 We're talking taped off, officers crawling all over the place, literally helicopters in the air searching Lake St. Clair across the street from the church.
It was unreal.

Speaker 2 Wait, what am I missing?

Speaker 2 I mean, we've covered hundreds of stories now, and in nearly every single one, the police are telling the family they have to wait, I mean, 24, 48, sometimes 72 hours to even report a loved one missing.

Speaker 1 And in michigan they have helicopters out within what three hours well police on the scene are telling michelle that there's a reason for the urgency they have a reason to believe that joanne took her own life they say and they're telling them all of this this is this is not searching for a missing person this is a rescue effort okay but how do they know that like they can't have taken like a mental history on her at this point no they don't and honestly a mental history wouldn't have led them to this conclusion.

Speaker 1 Joanne had no history of depression or any mental illnesses.

Speaker 1 What police say is that when the officer came across her abandoned car and ran the place or whatever, he noticed that there was also a purse still inside.

Speaker 1 But more concerning, he saw footprints in the snow, small high-heeled prints leading from the car out to the lake.

Speaker 1 And when he followed the prints right up to the water, he then saw this area where it looked like someone had kind of like sat down and slid down this concrete wall to the next level, slid down again, like right into the water.

Speaker 1 So they were convinced then and there that Joanne had gone into into the water and they needed to find her. And I'm sure everyone thought they stood a good chance.
The water was like super shallow.

Speaker 1 Literally, Joanne would have had to walk almost two football fields out into the water before the water even came above her less than five foot frame. And the water is pretty clear.

Speaker 1 Joanne was wearing all black that night. So against the icy blue, she should stand out.
But more than anything, a lot of the lake was frozen over.

Speaker 1 So they should be able to look for holes or disturbances in the ice and that should be a dead giveaway. So along with the helicopters, police brought in water search and rescue teams.

Speaker 1 And for the next several hours, they looked and looked and looked, but there wasn't a single sign of Joanne. Not even one additional clue.

Speaker 1 So by 4 a.m., the helicopters were called off and Joanne's car was towed to the police station for processing. Now, the family's natural reaction is, well, what now?

Speaker 1 Because, you know, in their minds, like she clearly didn't go into the lake like police originally thought.

Speaker 1 So then what happened to her maybe someone else was involved but they say that there was no real next move from police they stuck to their guns she went into the water we just haven't found her yet but they say you know maybe the current took her body out further and she'll likely wash up sometime in the next couple of days so that's the next step what just wait for a body?

Speaker 1 I mean, that's pretty much what they tell the family to do. But the family can't just sit around and do nothing.
This makes zero sense to them. Joanne was not suicidal.

Speaker 1 And if something had snapped in her, in no world did they think that she would take her life in that way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was actually going to point that out. Like when you said she's what, like a football field into the water even?

Speaker 1 Two football fields.

Speaker 2 Okay, my point exactly. Two football fields into like this frigid water before she's even able to submerge herself.
Like that's super odd, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, I certainly think so. Again, in January, it is freaking freezing.
And remember what I had said before? After she dropped her son off that night, she was going to get gas to fill up her car.

Speaker 1 She didn't need to fill it up to make that trip to the church parking lot if her plan was just to pray and then get into the water.

Speaker 1 And actually, the fact that she was even going to church that night was all the more reason for them to think that she didn't do this to herself.

Speaker 1 Everyone who knew Joanne said she was a devout Catholic and taking one's own life in that religion is a sin. They said Joanne would never, ever do that.
Now, this is all too bizarre already.

Speaker 1 But what the family also knows and something that they have stressed to police is that Joanne was actually afraid for her life in the weeks leading up to her disappearance.

Speaker 1 She talked about being followed, about her mail being tampered with, and someone potentially listening in on her phone calls.

Speaker 1 So now that Joanne is actually gone, her family is confident that she wasn't just paranoid. Her fears were founded.
And now the family knows something is really not right here.

Speaker 1 So according to reporting by Scott M.

Speaker 1 Bernstein that he did for a three-part series in the Gross Point News, in the very first hours and days after Joanne went missing, the family all got together and they started making their list of suspects.

Speaker 1 If Joanne didn't kill herself, there is someone involved in her disappearance. So who could that be? And for a suburban mother of three, that list is longer than you might think.

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Speaker 1 In the research material I have come across, there are three main people the family wondered about early on when Joanne first went missing.

Speaker 1 One was Joanne's husband, who she had been separated from for almost five years at this point. This was her kid's father.
Two was her brother, John Matouk, and the people he was connected to.

Speaker 1 Now, John was actually the one who drove his two nieces to the church parking lot that night Joanne went missing. And three was a cousin Joanne had a tumultuous relationship with named Tim Matouk.

Speaker 1 Now, Joanne's ex, David, doesn't have a reputation for being a violent man, but the three kids who lived in the Romaine house with David and Joanne when they were together knew that the couple had a reputation for fighting, like a lot.

Speaker 1 David would travel a lot for work, Joanne suspected infidelity, and so when he was home, it was like bickering nonstop. It was never ending.
So the couple ended up separating.

Speaker 1 And whether it started before or after the separation, I don't exactly know. But at some point, David was rumored to have started up with Joanne's best friend, which is not a great look.

Speaker 1 And we've seen less complicated love trials end up in tragedy. And there's also the money of it all.
A divorce would have been costly for David.

Speaker 1 And he and Joanne were in the middle of this legal battle. Basically, they were suing some contract workers over black mold that was found on one of their properties.

Speaker 1 And though they were still ways out from closure on that case, if they won, the damages would be in the ballpark of like a million dollars. Now, if Joanne was around, she'd get half.

Speaker 1 If she wasn't, the whole thing would go to David.

Speaker 2 But again, we've seen people kill for less.

Speaker 1 Right. But, you know, when they're making this list, that's all they have.
A bad relationship. He's better off financially.
Does this mean something?

Speaker 1 Maybe, but they needed police to look into him more. So they write down the next name on their list.
John Matouk. Now, it's not so much that they thought John did something directly to Joanne.

Speaker 1 Of the five Matouk siblings, John and Joanne were probably the closest at the time she went missing.

Speaker 1 But John had fallen on some tough times that could have made him a target for some dangerous people. Like there was once a time when John was doing ultra well.

Speaker 1 Like he was a known businessman in town, made tons of money. He was making those like 40 under 40 lists.

Speaker 1 But when business went south, John started borrowing money, doing a little gambling and getting tied up with the wrong people.

Speaker 1 In that article, Scott Bernstein wrote, someone who was with the family in those critical hours when they were brainstorming possibilities said, quote, they took out a legal pad and literally made a list of all the people who John Matuch owed money to and may have been upset enough to want to do him harm by hurting someone close to him, end quote.

Speaker 1 One of those people was a man named Anthony Pippia. According to one or more of Bernstein's sources, Anthony was a bookmaker who John owed a decent amount of money to.

Speaker 1 And Anthony's operation may have been loosely connected to a mob operation out of Detroit.

Speaker 2 And I mean, making someone disappear seems like a mob steramo to me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I agree. This looks like a good angle to go down.
But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 I can't totally wrap my head around this idea that like, if you're hurting someone's loved one to send a message, like, wouldn't it be important that it's super clear that there was a message and like who it was from?

Speaker 1 Like, unless John is just playing this ultra-coy, he seems to be like, well, it's possible that someone did this, but I don't know who. Either way, again, it is just a name on a list for now.

Speaker 1 And then there's one more name that the family adds. Tim Matouk, Joanne's cousin.

Speaker 1 Now, this is a name that is specifically sticking out to Michelle as more than just a hunch, because in the weeks leading up to her mom's disappearance, Joanne specifically told her, if something happens to me, look to Tim.

Speaker 2 Uh, I feel like we should start there. Does she know why her mom said that?

Speaker 1 Well, it happened after one particular call Joanne had with Tim leading up to her going missing. But to understand the call, I need to give you a little bit of a backstory.

Speaker 1 You see, Joanne's parents had been really successful. Like, they had this local wine shop in town that did super well, they were into real estate.

Speaker 1 So, by 1994, when both parents had passed, there was like a $20 million inheritance that was up for grabs.

Speaker 1 And I say up for grabs, but there was a will and it was supposed to be doled out evenly among the five kids.

Speaker 1 But money, especially inheritance money, Britt, I don't know what it does to people, but it makes them lose their GD minds.

Speaker 2 Oh my God, you do not need to tell me twice.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the Matook family was no exception. Two of the five kids, Bill and Rosemary, they were the oldest, were the ones who kept running the wine store.

Speaker 1 And they were basically accused of taking more money like than their fair share. And this got so bad, literally the siblings weren't talking to one another.

Speaker 1 And in 1998, Joanne and John actually filed suit against the estate. And within a couple of years, they won and were each paid like $600,000 in back payments.

Speaker 1 Of course, it's not like that magically fixed the damage that had occurred over the last six years. The family was still very much divided.

Speaker 1 But this whole time, John and Joanne were kind of on the same team, if you will. Again, they've always been super close.

Speaker 1 And when he started having business troubles and legal troubles, like it wasn't just gambling, he'd also gotten busted for a check kiting scheme.

Speaker 1 It seemed like Joanne blamed her cousin Tim or maybe Tim and her brother Bill, for John's problems.

Speaker 2 Okay, I guess I don't get it.

Speaker 1 I don't fully get it either, but it's important to know that at the time, Tim was a police officer. So it's possible that she thought he was maybe feeding information or was the reason he got busted.

Speaker 1 Again, I don't know the specifics. I just know she had this feeling and John shared that feeling as well.

Speaker 1 Now, it's never been proven that Tim was connected or Bill was connected to anything John did or got in trouble for. And Tim wholly denies it as well as Bill.

Speaker 1 Denies it now, denied it then, which was actually the reason Tim called Joanne before she went missing.

Speaker 1 So apparently for a while, like the year before she even went missing, she was telling people she was scared of Tim.

Speaker 1 Scott Bernstein reported, quote, Matouch Romaine's children say that when they were growing up, their mom did her best to keep them away from Tim Matouk, calling him sick and depraved, end quote.

Speaker 1 But no one knows exactly why. It seemed like she was fine telling everyone she was scared or she didn't like him or was uncomfortable with him, but wouldn't actually give anyone specifics.

Speaker 1 Her children feel like she did this because she was trying to protect them, but it doesn't seem like anyone else knows either.

Speaker 1 Or at least if there was a reason that she told people, it's never been officially reported. But things seem to come to a head in late 2009 and early 2010.

Speaker 1 That is when Joanne, after years of not speaking to her brother Bill, went down to his wine store.

Speaker 1 And according to him, she told him to stay away from Tim, that he was causing problems for John, Tim's bad news. And so then that's when Tim calls Joanne and he says, he's like, hey, stop.

Speaker 1 I didn't do anything. You're not making sense.
Stop spreading rumors about me and saying that I'm the reason John has all these problems. And according to Tim, that was the extent of the call.

Speaker 1 But Michelle remembers that call differently. She couldn't hear Tim's side of it, but she was there with her mother when she took the call.

Speaker 1 And she told Unsolved Mysteries that her mom was screaming, telling Tim to leave her and her family alone. And she told Tim to never call her again before hanging up on him.

Speaker 1 And she said, it was in that moment that Joanne turned to her and said, if something happens to me, look to Tim.

Speaker 1 Now there was one more incident that came to Michelle's mind right away, something she just couldn't shake.

Speaker 1 She said that she had drove her mom one other time back to the wine store to see her brother Bill. Now they were dropping in unannounced and Joanne went in alone.

Speaker 1 Michelle says that when she came back out, she was terrified. Michelle told Scott Bernstein, quote, she came out of that store looking like she'd seen a ghost.

Speaker 1 Whatever she saw, whatever she heard, whatever she was told in there, it spooked her to the core and in her mind confirmed her belief that she was in danger.

Speaker 1 When she got back to the car, she wanted me to take her immediately to church. She thought she could pray it away.
End quote. So knowing all of this, Tim makes the family's list.

Speaker 1 But who that list goes to is a whole nother question.

Speaker 1 Almost as soon as the search was done, Gross Point Farms Police, which was the responding agency based on where Joanne's car was found, wanted to transfer her case to the Grosse Pointe Woods Police because they said, well, you know, we're saying it's suicide and she lived in Woods territory, so your problem now.

Speaker 2 Wait, are they really not exploring any other options besides suicide?

Speaker 2 Like, I get that's the main theory or whatever, but you said they took her car for processing, so I assumed they were gonna, I don't know, process it for evidence or something and see what that tells them.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't know if they're looking into any other theories. Honestly, it seems like no.
But one of the departments is at least processing the evidence-ish.

Speaker 1 They dusted the car for prints and didn't find any usable ones that didn't belong to Joanne or her family.

Speaker 1 But this is another thing that gives the family like giant WTF moments because they're like, okay, you didn't actually take any prints from us to compare.

Speaker 1 My mom's not here, so I know you don't have her prints. None of us have government jobs.
So what are you comparing these prints to? Like, how are you coming to this conclusion?

Speaker 2 Seriously.

Speaker 1 And also, there was an investigative reporter turned PI who was interviewed by reporter Karen Drew for Click on Detroit.

Speaker 1 And he says that the type of material inside the car isn't even conducive to getting fingerprints lifted using like the normal method with like dust and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 He said you'd have to fume inside with super glue and take photographs, which was never done.

Speaker 2 I mean, maybe they were preserving it for DNA instead. Like, I know it can be the trade-off sometimes.

Speaker 2 You get prints or DNA because testing for one ruins your chances of getting the results on the other.

Speaker 2 Like, swabbing for DNA would smudge the prints, but using glue or even fingerprint dust would disrupt the DNA.

Speaker 1 Right, but they didn't do DNA, specifically because they kept telling the family that there was nothing to point to signs of foul play, so nothing to warrant any criminal investigation like that.

Speaker 2 Okay, what about her purse? I mean, you said the first officer on the scene saw her purse in the car. Was there anything missing out of it? Did they, I don't know, process the purse at all?

Speaker 1 So they did at least look at it to try and see if anything was missing. You know, I would be looking at it to see if it was like a robbery or something.

Speaker 1 And they said that everything normal was in there except for her keys and her cell phone. But again, other stuff was in there.

Speaker 1 Her wallet was in there and $1,500, according to a Marie Claire article by Kristen Igo.

Speaker 1 And police said that all the straps on her purse were intact, so they didn't consider a robbery to be any kind of motive. But when her family saw the purse, they disagreed.

Speaker 1 Apparently, it was like almost brand new and had these kind of like ruffles all over the front, and one of them was torn. Now, Michelle swears it wasn't like that before.

Speaker 1 So to her, it shows her signs of some kind of struggle. But to police, they're like struggle over what? Again, the money is there.
Your mom could have ripped her purse and you didn't know.

Speaker 1 If anything, her purse was even more of a reason for the police to stick to their guns. They kept insisting.
Joanne took her own life. She is going to show up in the water.

Speaker 1 And 70 days after she first went missing, they were right. But finally, finding Joanne didn't bring closure.

Speaker 1 It only opened a can of worms and deepened the mystery as to what happened that cold January night

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Speaker 1 On March 20th, 2010, fishermen up in Amherstburg, Ontario found a body floating in the Detroit River.

Speaker 2 Is that connected to Lake St. Clair, where police say Joanne went into the water?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 So it makes sense that her body could have ended up there.

Speaker 1 Well, hold your horses. I told you nothing about this case makes sense.
So Canadian authorities pull the body out of the water.

Speaker 1 She is fully clothed in all black, just like Joanne was, same height and build. So it's pretty easy to figure out what department they need to call.

Speaker 1 Now, despite the fact that Gross Point Woods has taken over the case by this point, Gross Point Farms detectives are the ones that are sent up there.

Speaker 1 According to Morph Scott Bernstein's reporting for Gross Point News, the Canadian authorities said that the detectives were quick to tell them Joanne suffered from mental health issues and no foul play was suspected.

Speaker 2 But you already said that she had no history. Like, where are they getting this from?

Speaker 1 Well, later they would deny saying that at all. And basically, they were just like, oh, well, everyone was saying she was so paranoid before she died.
So that's probably what we relate.

Speaker 1 Like, she was under duress. Either way, the Canadian authorities do an autopsy and they rule Joanne's death a drowning.
Her body is then transported back to Michigan, where another autopsy is done.

Speaker 1 This autopsy concludes the same findings, but makes an additional note that the death is more than likely a suicide because there was no other trauma to her body that would suggest foul play.

Speaker 1 So, police feel like they finally have the missing piece to their puzzle. They can inform the family that Joanne has been found.
All of their suspicions have been confirmed, and that's that.

Speaker 1 A tragic case, yes, but really nothing more. But Joanne's family absolutely does not buy it.
First of all, like you had pointed out earlier, yes, the waterways were connected.

Speaker 1 So technically, it made sense that Joanne could end up where she was found, which was like 35 miles away from where they said she went into the water.

Speaker 1 But remember what I said about the search that night that she went missing? There was no current. No one can explain how her body would have moved there.

Speaker 1 If it didn't move that night, they should have found her, but they didn't find her, which seems to suggest that the body had moved that night, but it couldn't couldn't move that night because the water wasn't moving.

Speaker 1 So like, how does that work?

Speaker 2 And there is your high-pitched, I am in a circle of what is going on.

Speaker 1 Brett, this is just the beginning, but like that doesn't make sense, right?

Speaker 2 No, it doesn't. It doesn't make any sense.
And I was also thinking about how much ice would have been on the lake. Like that could have slowed a current.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 2 a body couldn't, this is like a crass visual, but just bump up against the ice and not move. It would just kind of get stuck there, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. And okay, so even more than all of that, like if you want to say, okay, she didn't move to your point, like she got caught in the ice, whatever.

Speaker 1 If you want to say that this massive search effort missed her somehow, again, one that the search team calls like their most extensive search ever, then you can say, okay, maybe she went to the bottom of the lake.

Speaker 1 Maybe she wasn't floating. Okay, fine.
Then at the bottom, she eventually would have had to move 35 miles by water currents, being like drug across the bottom of this lake.

Speaker 1 But when she's found, her clothes and her shoes were in in pretty much perfect condition. Like no scuff marks, no drag marks.

Speaker 2 No tears, no rips, nothing.

Speaker 1 Which everyone says would be almost impossible. And again, if you want to say, well, weird stuff happens, maybe her feet were floating or whatever, okay, then riddle me this.

Speaker 1 She was in these like four inch heels. And remember, the way they're saying she got into the water, she like scoots down these two concrete embankments to get in there.

Speaker 1 She has to basically walk two football fields out into the water at this like a gravelly bottom.

Speaker 2 I'm gonna say, you and I grew up like swimming in lakes and ponds and rivers like this is not a concrete pool bottom. Like it's murky and difficult in bare feet in the summer.

Speaker 2 We're talking like sub-zero water in four inch heels.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah. I mean, not only do I think she'd be falling all over the place, but like there's rocks and stuff at the bottom.

Speaker 1 So again, even if you're gonna say she floated 35 miles and her feet didn't touch anything, that's why there's no scuff marks, surely there's getting out there.

Speaker 2 Yes. Would have scuffed her shoes.
Yeah, you gotta be kidding me.

Speaker 1 There's like no world in which I can make this make sense. And while we're at it, let me tell you something else they find on Joanne that doesn't make any sense.
They find her keys.

Speaker 1 Now, remember, those keys were missing from her purse. So at first glance, maybe this is not super weird.
Right. Except Joanne's keys had already been returned to the family before her body was found.

Speaker 2 Wait, I'm confused.

Speaker 1 As you should be. And honestly, it was confusing for Michelle when the keys showed up in the first place.

Speaker 1 Karen Drew reported that the day after Joanne went missing, her keys showed up at the police station, which was awfully convenient.

Speaker 1 And more convenient is that no one knows how they got to the station, who had possession of them, who brought them by, nothing.

Speaker 2 I mean, did one of the family members bring like the spare set so police could move the car and stuff?

Speaker 1 No, and here's how they know this. I'm telling you, this case is a total mind f ⁇ k and I am just getting started.
So stay with me.

Speaker 1 So police say that the keys magically showed up the day after Joanne goes missing. Fine.

Speaker 1 Well, according to more reporting done by Scott Bernstein, when they're returned to the family in early February, so like a week or two after Joanne goes missing, again, before her body is found, like immediate red flags go up because her daughter Michelle knows that these weren't the keys her mom had with her the night she went missing.

Speaker 1 You see, they had two sets, a normal set and a spare set. Six weeks before Joanne went missing, she was showing her house, like an open house kind of thing.
And during that, her car keys went missing.

Speaker 1 So she had been using the spare set. Everyone had been using the spare set.
They never found the originals.

Speaker 1 Well, when the keys get returned to her, again, early February before the body is found, it's the set that went missing six weeks before.

Speaker 2 Oh my God, I have literal chills.

Speaker 1 What? Britt, it makes no sense.

Speaker 1 Again, between the cops showing up looking for Joanne, when Michelle says they should have been looking for her and then these missing keys showing up, the Romaine family have basically been over the local PD since long before their mom's body was found.

Speaker 1 And they've already hired their own investigators.

Speaker 1 But now that Joanne's been found and Gross Point departments just want to call this a suicide and close the case, that's when things really start moving for the family.

Speaker 1 Because her family's like, fine, close it. We're going to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get the records.

Speaker 1 And they start pulling records of their own related to Joanne's activity before her death.

Speaker 1 Now, while they're getting these records, they also hire someone to do an independent autopsy at the University of Michigan. Now, we know two autopsies have been done already.

Speaker 1 It'd be kind of weird to find something different now, but weird is synonymous with this case because this autopsy notes two really critical things.

Speaker 1 One, there were some contusions on her left arm that hadn't been noted before. Now, remember how I said Michelle thought that her mom's purse had been ripped?

Speaker 1 She says that she always wore it on her left shoulder. So this kind of reinforced for her the idea that someone had potentially grabbed her mom.

Speaker 1 Now, the second thing found in the autopsy, and this is even more concerning, was that it was found that Joanne died of a dry drowning. Okay,

Speaker 2 care to explain that?

Speaker 1 It means there was no water in her lungs. Apparently, this is like super rare.
It only happens in like one to two percent of cases.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I've heard the term because it's something that happens to little kids in pools sometimes. Like it's kind of like a,

Speaker 2 and there's water and their body freaks out, but you don't necessarily see it right away or know it right away. It's not like a traditional drowning, but...

Speaker 1 No water, Brett. Okay.

Speaker 1 I mean, how did she die?

Speaker 2 Not only no water, Ashley, that means there's air in her lungs, right?

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 And I at least am under the impression that air rises to the top of water. So she would be floating, right?

Speaker 1 She should have been floating then.

Speaker 1 Again, this, like, we said before, the only way it makes sense for her to end up where she did was to be at the bottom of the lake and then move that way because they didn't find her on the top.

Speaker 2 But if there's no water in her lungs, there's nothing keeping her underwater. She's full of air.

Speaker 1 She should have been floating on the top. Okay, okay, okay.
Now, Brett, okay, so that's already weird.

Speaker 1 They get this autopsy, which again is just like reconfirming every fear, every suspicion, every worry that they've had.

Speaker 1 And when they start getting the reports in, what was a confusing case turns into total mind ⁇ ery.

Speaker 1 And I can't even just like throw in bits and pieces that seem odd to like piece this together for you. I almost need to re-walk you through that night according to what the official records say.

Speaker 1 So let's rewind to January 20th, the night Joanne goes missing.

Speaker 1 Just like the original story started, Joanne drops her son off at their house around six and says she's going to go get gas.

Speaker 1 By 6.25, she was at the gas station and the attendant there said she was totally normal, like friendly, whatever, nothing out of the ordinary.

Speaker 1 Then they know Joanne went to her normal church for a seven o'clock prayer service.

Speaker 1 According to the Lady in the Lake episode, reports show that there were 10 to 15 other people there and witnesses saw Joanne. Now, this is like not a whole church service.

Speaker 1 It's like a quick prayer thing and everyone's out the door again by like 7.15.

Speaker 1 At 7.20, one witness hears a car alarm go off and sees lights flashing, but this only lasts for like 10 to 15 seconds, top. So they think it was just a fluke.

Speaker 1 Maybe someone hit the alarm button instead of the unlock, so they didn't pay much attention to it. Between 7.25 and 7.35, the last patron at the church leaves.

Speaker 1 She was a little nervous because, again, she's the last one walking out alone in the dark parking lot.

Speaker 1 So as she's making her way to her car, she has her eyes darting like from left to right, looking all over the parking lot, being vigilant, but she doesn't see any other cars.

Speaker 2 Except for Joanne's Lexus, right?

Speaker 1 No, not even Joanne's Lexis.

Speaker 2 Wait, but hold up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, no, listen. You're trying to process what everyone was at the time.

Speaker 1 According to witness statements, it seems like her car left and then at some point came back to the parking lot, which doesn't quite fit, right? Right.

Speaker 1 But let me just keep going because, you know, maybe the witness was wrong.

Speaker 1 Either way, the car is for sure back in the parking lot by 8.58 because that is when an officer sees Joanne's car all alone in the parking lot and runs the plates.

Speaker 1 There's nothing sus about what comes up, so he marks no action on this report. Now, this officer makes no notes of any footprints or anything weird that's standing out to him.

Speaker 1 He just runs the plates, looks good, on his way.

Speaker 2 So he writes no action, but he goes to Joanne's house at like 9:30 or whatever time that was. He does that anyway?

Speaker 1 No, this officer writes no action and then really takes no action. It's just a car in a parking lot and he's on his way.

Speaker 1 But someone shows up at the Romaine's house at 9:24 asking about missing Joanne. Again, from the registration that is tied to Michelle.
At 9:30, the U.S.

Speaker 1 Coast Guard's digital records show that Gross Point Farms contacted them to help with a search.

Speaker 1 There's also a report listing the official start time of the Gross Point Farms investigation as 9.30 p.m. And at 9.38, the Coast Guard launches crews and they're on scene looking for Joanne by 9.51.

Speaker 1 Then at 9.58, a different officer comes by the parking lot and runs the Lexus's plates. Not the same guy who did before, totally different officer.

Speaker 1 And he's the one who says he sees those concerning things, the footprints leading away from the car towards the lake. And so he calls it in.

Speaker 2 What do you mean he calls it in? Like the Coast Card is already on the scene.

Speaker 1 Doesn't make much sense, does it?

Speaker 2 I don't even think I understand. Like they're saying something else initially kicked off the investigation.

Speaker 1 I'm so confused. No, no, no, no.
They're saying it was a concerned officer who saw the footprints that kicked off their investigation.

Speaker 2 At 9.58.

Speaker 1 At 9.58.

Speaker 2 But they're already searching for her at 9.38.

Speaker 1 You got it.

Speaker 2 Uh, no, I do not. How is any of this explained?

Speaker 1 Honestly, very poorly.

Speaker 1 According to Karen Drew, who did amazing reporting on this case, literally like won an ME for it, there is one handwritten report from the Coast Guard that states that they were actually called by the Gross Point Farms police at 10.35.

Speaker 1 So Gross Point Farms stick with that 9.58 time. They're basically saying everything else has to be a mistake.
All the digital records are wrong. Okay.

Speaker 1 And they're saying that one handwritten report got it correct. And they're saying all the family has it wrong too.

Speaker 1 They never showed up at 9:24 because, according to them, they didn't know anything was wrong then.

Speaker 1 They say that they showed up much later, and Michelle and her sister must have just gotten it all mixed up, which they say, you know, is to be expected when you're getting these like traumatizing news that your mom's missing.

Speaker 1 Except Joanne's family have some digital records of their own that back up their version of events. Between 9:29 and 10:32, they call their mom's cell phone 13 times.

Speaker 1 In the Gross Point news, it said eight of those 13 calls were before 10 p.m., before the plate was even supposedly run.

Speaker 1 So why on earth are these grown adults blowing up their mom's phone if they don't know she's missing? I mean, it matches their story perfectly.

Speaker 1 Cops show up at 9.24, you talk to them, you find out what's going on, and within five minutes, you're calling your mom over and over again, hoping that this is some kind of horrible mistake.

Speaker 1 It doesn't work the other way.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 Because in that scenario, it shows that you're blowing up your mom just because it's 9.30 and she wasn't home. You call her a bunch of times.

Speaker 1 And then after police show up at your house, at what they say is 10.24, you only make like one or two more calls. Like, how does it make sense?

Speaker 2 I mean, it doesn't.

Speaker 1 Yet, this is the story everyone's sticking with.

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't like any of this, but just for the sake of argument, what if you said this was all some terrible clerical error, digital error, human error, error across the board, whatever.

Speaker 2 The times are wrong. What's important is that they got the search crews out there as soon as they knew a woman was missing.
Do the times really even matter that much?

Speaker 1 Well, I think they do combined with everything else we know. Police looking for Joanne and not Michelle, who again, the car was really registered to.

Speaker 1 The missing keys turning up that no one can explain.

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Speaker 1 Listen, all of the facts in Joanne's case are baffling, but of all of the stuff that has been reported and re-reported, somehow this tidbit doesn't get the attention I think it deserves because this is the one thing that I read that made me like scream from the rooftops that nothing makes sense besides some big conspiracy because it's the one thing you can't explain away.

Speaker 1 So let me read you a direct quote from Scott Bernstein's second article in the Gross Point News from back in 2020.

Speaker 1 It says, quote, quizzically, the call officer Andy Roger placed to the Coast Guard at either 9:30 or 10:30 p.m., depending on who you ask, was actually the second call regarding a missing woman in the water that the Coast Guard logged that evening.

Speaker 1 Another identical call came in at 6 p.m., reporting a woman going into Lake St. Clair by St.
Paul's an hour earlier and her family in a frantic state looking for her.

Speaker 1 This was 80 minutes before Matouk Romaine went missing. End quote.
The article goes on to say that Joanne was with people at this time. It couldn't have been her.
And sure, maybe it wasn't her.

Speaker 1 Maybe it was someone else. Yet, quote, there were no other reports of a missing woman or anybody else going into the water in that vicinity made to any of the Grosse Pointe Police or St.

Speaker 1 Clair Shores Police Departments that night. The Romains feel the first call is another sign of a cover-up.
End quote.

Speaker 2 So, just to clarify, the Coast Guard has this call on record, but the police have no reports to match it.

Speaker 1 Right, there is no explanation for it. And like I said, there was zero search effort for this other person as far as I can tell.
Like, not a.

Speaker 1 So, if this call was real and not somebody like missing their cue for this weird staged thing, which I can't even begin to explain, why not go looking for this woman? Why does that woman get nothing?

Speaker 1 And then, like, a couple of hours later, on the same day, under seemingly exact same circumstances joanne has an army out looking for her i mean i would assume they would say it has something to do with the footprints the officer said he found leading from the car or whatever you know into the lake i mean to be honest i can't find anyone's official response to this question of what happened with this first call that's part of why it's such a loose thread for me like i obsess over it but let's say it was the footprints let's talk about everything wrong with those for a second.

Speaker 1 When the family got the files, there were no photographs of women's high heel footprints. Not by the car, not by the water.

Speaker 1 Now, later, the officer who originally found them changed his testimony and said that they weren't by the car, they were actually by the road or by the water.

Speaker 1 My question is: what made you even go to the water in the first place? Honestly, this whole thing is really freaking hard to buy, even if there was a GD breadcrumb trail.

Speaker 1 Because hang on, I need to show you this, right? You guys can all see this picture too, if you're listening in the Crime Junkie app.

Speaker 1 So, here is the church, and to get to the water, you have to walk across a road, then walk across a median.

Speaker 2 And then across another road. Like, this is not what I was picturing at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, again, like, he's saying that there was no footprints by the car to begin with, but even I'm saying, even if there was, like, wouldn't you lose those across the road?

Speaker 1 Or it just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2 Well, and like, it's a road. People could also be walking along a road.
What's so weird about footprints along a road?

Speaker 1 Yeah. But, anyways, that aside, they get these pictures and there are no high heel prints by the car.

Speaker 1 In part five of the Dateline Detroit story on this case, they said that there were work boot prints, but nothing that came close to matching Joanne's tiny size five feet and definitely no heels.

Speaker 1 And the very few photos that they do have from down by the water, where police say she went in, there's nothing. I mean, like, there is something.
It's like this mess of activity.

Speaker 1 It doesn't look like someone, to me, at least sat down and like scooched down, but there's zero high heel prints. And I actually have a picture of that too.
I'll send to you. Hang on.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Ashley. So kind of on this note, the first snow we had, I was getting out of Justin's car on kind of like a slope and I basically fell out.

Speaker 2 I was also wearing pointy-toed flats, which was probably not the best option.

Speaker 2 And even though it looked like a horse fell out of his passenger seat, you could still tell that like I had very defined footprints once I did find my footing. I had pointy-toed flats on.

Speaker 2 You would be able to tell from this picture if there was anyone in tiny four-inch heels anywhere in the vicinity of this.

Speaker 1 Well, the one thing I will say about that is like, to your point, you got your footing again and like got back up and moved.

Speaker 1 Like, again, if she truly is like going down into the water, it would be a mess of activity. And I can see there not being any prints.
But then it goes back to there's still not any prints.

Speaker 2 Right. Like, like, she didn't, like, roll across the road either.
She had to have walked across the road, across the median.

Speaker 1 Right. And they don't have.
any pictures of prints like that.

Speaker 2 Even like she would have had to walk at least close to the end of this embankment to scoot down. There's still no prints.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And listen, looking at this, I think you can definitely say, like, oh, there's some activity happening down by the water.

Speaker 1 But like, I look at this picture, and I mean, at least for me, granted, I'm not a trained officer, but my initial impression is not, oh my God, someone walked into the water and killed themselves.

Speaker 1 But even if, again, if you somehow, maybe this is something trained officers know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 But if that was your first impression, Teresa Baldez reported for the Detroit Free Press that there was no hole in the ice near that area. So again, I ask you, tell me how any of this makes sense.

Speaker 1 I'm literally giving myself a headache and I can't imagine how the family feels because I mean, Britt, can you even like put yourself in their shoes for like two seconds if this was your mother's story?

Speaker 1 Like it's clearly so wrong. There is so clearly something else going on here and it feels like no one's listening.

Speaker 2 I mean, I agree there's something else going on, but what?

Speaker 1 Well, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it?

Speaker 2 So did anyone ever look into the people on the family's list or were law enforcement so set on the suicide theory they didn't even do that?

Speaker 1 Well, at some point, one agency or another at least talked to these people.

Speaker 1 Who, just for a reminder, we had Joanne's husband, who she was separated from for years at that point and who was rumored to have been having an affair with her best friend.

Speaker 1 There was also connections that her brother John had to some seedy people, specifically one guy named Anthony, who he was said to have owed money to.

Speaker 1 And there was Joanne's cousin, Tim Matouk, who she told people she was afraid of in the weeks and months leading up to her disappearance. So Joanne's ex-husband had an alibi.

Speaker 1 He couldn't have been the one to physically do something to her.

Speaker 1 According to Scott Bernstein's reporting, he was actually at dinner with his two daughters around the time something is thought to have happened to her.

Speaker 1 Though notably, he took a polygraph that was inconclusive and showed signs of deception, although everyone seems to think that he was lying about having an affair with her best friend, not about doing anything to Joanne, because two years after Joanne died, he was actually married to that very best friend.

Speaker 1 Now, John took a polygraph and passed. Again, I think that was more to see if he knew who could be responsible.

Speaker 1 And though it seems he doesn't, no one has ever ruled out the idea that his deaths or his relationships with unsavory people could have been the reason that this happened to Joanne.

Speaker 2 Oh, what about that Anthony guy connected to John?

Speaker 1 Well, interestingly, he has never been asked to take a polygraph. Police said that they talked to him and felt like he had nothing to contribute to Joanne's case.

Speaker 1 And actually, another person that's never been asked to take a polygraph, or at least according to the source material I have found, is Joanne's brother Bill, which I find kind of strange because she seemed to have a decent amount of interaction with him before she went missing.

Speaker 1 Again, after years of them like not talking at all, and I'm kind of surprised that there wasn't more interest in their conversations.

Speaker 1 Like from his perspective, he says that all of the conversations were pretty benign.

Speaker 1 And I'm not saying he had anything to do with it, but it would seem important to me to make sure he's 100% on the up and up about what they talked about.

Speaker 2 Right. So what about Tim? He seemed like the one the family was the most interested in at the time.
I assume he talked to police and took a polygraph?

Speaker 1 Uh, they kind of talked to him, but honestly, the way police went about it raised even more suspicion that they were trying to cover something up.

Speaker 1 So remember how Gross Point Farms passed the case to Gross Point Woods? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, apparently, they then reached out to the state police not long after to ask them to step in, fearing that there might be some conflicts of interest.

Speaker 1 But they weren't just like, here's everything, please take an impartial look at it.

Speaker 1 According to a deposition statement by one of the state troopers, the police reached out and specifically asked them to quote unquote clear Tim. And this trooper, she's like, um,

Speaker 1 we don't clear people, we investigate them. Like,

Speaker 1 that's not how this works.

Speaker 2 That's like, if that happens at the end of an investigation, yay. But we don't start with that, like, as the goal.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And it was so weird to her that she actually reported that to her supervisor and they ended up declining to get involved in that specific area.

Speaker 2 Do not blame her.

Speaker 1 So I don't know how many times he was actually talked to or by whom.

Speaker 1 I did read that he never did agree to take a polygraph, but it's important to note that one of the PIs that the family hired has come out and said that he doesn't think Tim is being dishonest and he probably doesn't have anything to do with this.

Speaker 1 Tim has made a formal statement on his cousin's case stating, quote, On a very tragic night, the night Joanne went missing in January 2010, I was on duty working for a Michigan state police narcotics task force in Warren.

Speaker 1 My location that night has been verified and confirmed by testimony of Michigan state police troopers and corroborated by cell phone records.

Speaker 1 After a lengthy five-year lawsuit, not one but two federal courts dismissed the case against me. Any allegations connecting me to the death of Joanne are false.
End quote.

Speaker 2 Sounds like the state police might have a conflict with Tim too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, seems like it to me.

Speaker 2 So what can you tell me about these lawsuits he's talking about in that statement?

Speaker 1 Well, Joanne's family ended up suing the police and a number of individuals alleging a cover-up by police.

Speaker 1 It went on for years, but ultimately, like Tim said in his statement, it was dismissed twice, actually, because they appealed the first decision.

Speaker 1 Though, the judge did make an interesting comment in their ruling, stating, quote, there is no evidence that someone who wanted to kill Miss Romaine knew the police would cover it up.

Speaker 1 The court, however, acknowledges there are disputed facts in this matter that are very disturbing and remain unresolved.

Speaker 1 While the circumstances surrounding Miss Romaine's disappearance and death remain a mystery and, in fact, are somewhat suspicious, the fact is that the plaintiff fails to create a genuine issue of material fact to hold the police liable.

Speaker 1 End quote.

Speaker 2 So basically, yeah, it's all shady as hell, but you couldn't piece it together enough to tell us what it means, so we just have to dismiss it.

Speaker 1 Exactly. And honestly, it's the same problem I have when I keep looking at this case.
The question is, why? And how big is this whole thing? That's what really is tying me up.

Speaker 1 Like, something is definitely off, right? We all agree. That judge agrees.
Something is very, very wrong here. People are being dishonest, but is everyone in on it?

Speaker 1 The Grosse Pointe Farms Police, the Gross Point Woods Police, the Michigan State Police, the Coroner's Office, the Coast Guard. That is fucking everyone.

Speaker 2 Well, two coroner's offices, because didn't she have an autopsy in Canada too? Yes.

Speaker 1 Listen, I know there are corrupt cops, there are corrupt departments, there are corrupt agencies, but every single one of them in this area seems so far-fetched, honestly, so terrifying. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But there is this one other piece that you need to know, another agency that was involved. Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 Honestly, I want to tell you that it makes this whole thing make more sense, but it might just add more layers to this mystery.

Speaker 1 And it involves a meeting that Joanne might have had with the FBI before she vanished.

Speaker 2 The FBI? Are you kidding me?

Speaker 1 Nope. Scott Bernstein wrote in his coverage for this case that, quote, a highly placed source inside the Patrick V.

Speaker 1 McNamara Federal Building in Detroit says Matouk Romain met with federal authorities at a restaurant in the days prior to her disappearance.

Speaker 1 That source said he fears that news of that meeting might have leaked, end quote. Now, no one on record from the FBI will confirm or deny that Joanne met with or had plans to meet with the agency.

Speaker 1 So maybe there is something huge there, but again, what? And what is so big that they're going to look the other way while all these other departments cover up a murder?

Speaker 2 Okay, but what if they aren't looking away? What if they're conducting their own investigation? What do you mean? I mean, I feel like we've seen this before.

Speaker 2 There is a bigger fish, a bigger investigation. So smaller ones get shut down or kind of moved to the side to not blow some bigger, wilder, ongoing investigation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it's been 12 years at this point and nothing has happened. And again, I come back to what the heck is so big that every agency in the area is working together to cover it up.

Speaker 2 Or maybe the FBI is working with them to make this look like something else. Like, I don't know what's happening.
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like your brain is starting to short circuit like mine is. But I have one last thing to throw your way that involves the FBI in a way.

Speaker 1 And I'm literally telling you about this the way I found out about it. Like I was in that point in my research where I thought, okay, this is, this is it.

Speaker 1 I have to to retire after this one because like I'm literally losing my marbles with this case. Like I have to be wrong because stuff this big only happens on TV.

Speaker 1 And then literally like my last source material that I was like reading before I was like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump into writing, I come across another case that happened just months after Joanne that might have nothing to do with hers, but it echoes all of the same terrifying circumstances in the exact same area.

Speaker 1 So the same year Joanne went missing and was found, but in September, another Gross Point resident and local bank president, David Widlock, went missing.

Speaker 1 Now, he was supposed to give his wife, who was traveling, a wake-up call on September 20th, but he never phoned in. Now, this was odd, but like so many other stories we've told, she didn't panic.

Speaker 1 She was an attorney. He is the president of a bank.
She knew that they led busy lives.

Speaker 1 And honestly, part of her must have even guessed that maybe he wouldn't call because she also had the front desk at her hotel give her a wake-up call. So she went about her day.

Speaker 1 According to Naima Jabali Nash for CBS News, that same morning around 7 a.m., a maintenance worker at David's office building noticed his car parked at the office.

Speaker 1 And when they went to go see him, there were some overturned pieces of furniture and files in disarray in his office. The office employee phoned the police, who in turn called David's wife.

Speaker 1 Now, she was just about to turn off her phone and go into court when she got that call from police asking if she'd heard from him, which obviously had her rushing home to figure out what was going on.

Speaker 1 When police started looking into his disappearance, there was more than just that ransacked office to make them worried.

Speaker 1 According to Douglas Belkin's reporting for the Wall Street Journal, a.38 caliber revolver that belonged to David was missing from his office.

Speaker 1 And strangely, there was a brand new.38 semi-automatic still in its packaging that was left at the office.

Speaker 2 And was that purchased like recently?

Speaker 1 It was, but why he bought it, no one really knows. Like this guy wasn't a gun nut by any stretch.

Speaker 1 So those who knew him, they figured something must have been going on in David's life to make him want extra protection. Next, police checked the surveillance footage from David's office building.

Speaker 1 Joe Swickard for the Detroit Free Press reported that it showed David leaving his office at around 8 p.m.

Speaker 1 the night of the 19th, and he was holding something in his arms, like a package or maybe a thick folder. He just left his car behind at the office and never showed up on camera again.

Speaker 2 Was he totally alone when he left?

Speaker 1 Yeah, which makes the question of who ransacked his office an odd one, right? Like, did he do that? Did someone come later?

Speaker 1 Like, there wasn't any reporting about whether or not anyone else was seen on footage in the building that could have done that.

Speaker 1 I mean, there was one other woman that we know was in the building that Sunday was actually a coworker of David's, but she was totally cleared of any involvement.

Speaker 1 Days were turning into weeks and rumors began to spread. Rumors that David had a gambling problem before he moved to Michigan.

Speaker 1 According to a Business Insider article written by Katya Watchel, quote, two former coworkers have said that Woodlock used to have a 3,000 a day gambling problem in Vegas before he relocated to Michigan in the 90s.

Speaker 1 The sheriff slammed the allegations and the acting CEO of the bank also said that Widlock did not have gambling problems. End quote.
People started talking about the bank's financial troubles.

Speaker 1 Maybe David had run off with money that he was trying to raise to save the bank. And some of it was true.
The bank was in a bad spot.

Speaker 1 According to Douglas Belkin, the small community bank was, quote, significantly undercapitalized. David needed to raise something like $10 million to keep things afloat, but actually he was doing it.

Speaker 1 Before he went missing, things were looking up and he was meeting with a bunch of potential investors and sourcing some good leads.

Speaker 1 That same Wall Street Journal article said that he had already had like eight of the 10 million secured. So for like a hot minute, everyone's like, well, maybe he just took the money and started over.

Speaker 1 But this was just a rumor because there was no money missing. But there was a clue in those meetings he was taking to get the money.

Speaker 1 Apparently, there was this one meeting that he took with a potential investor that had him worried.

Speaker 1 So worried that according to Joe Swickard, he had reached out to a retired FBI agent to set a meeting about some guys he'd met with.

Speaker 1 He didn't name names yet, but it seems like maybe he'd wanted to let someone know about something that he'd come across.

Speaker 1 What that might have been was hard to tell though, because when police went to check his emails, work files, search history, all of that that goes into like a digital trail that might give them a clue, they found nothing.

Speaker 1 Not that everything was like innocent or had, you know, no clues, but like literally nothing was there.

Speaker 1 It seems that before David walked out of his office and into some vast abyss on September 19th, he, or someone, managed to erase most of his digital data that might help police.

Speaker 1 Mitch Hotz reported for the Oakland press that his iPad, work computer files, and GPS were all wiped.

Speaker 1 According to the sheriff that was quoted in that article, quote, the experts we talked to say it was a sign of someone erasing his life. Something's not normal there, end quote.

Speaker 2 So they think he erased all of that?

Speaker 1 Well, it seems that way because officials begin to insinuate that this was a sign David walked away or could have been making preparations to take his own life. But if it was the latter, where was he?

Speaker 1 Well, that question would be answered less than a month after David went missing, when his body was found in the St.

Speaker 1 Clair Lake, the same lake police say Joanne first went into, and his death was ruled a suicide by drowning. But just like Joanne's case, David's family couldn't buy it.

Speaker 1 Not him, not the David they knew. And especially not knowing all the weird stuff that they found out about after he went missing.
Like, for example, David didn't even know how to sync his devices.

Speaker 1 He definitely didn't know how to professionally wipe all of his data. They're saying someone else had to have done that.
And what was he carrying out of the office building?

Speaker 1 No one ever found that package or file folder. And what the heck was this whole meeting with the FBI about? Surely that had something to do with it.

Speaker 1 So they paid for a second independent autopsy, and the results were a bombshell, or should I I say, a bullet shell.

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Speaker 1 Even though the first coroner, by the way, the same exact coroner who called Joanne's death a straight drowning right when her body was brought back to Michigan from Canada and totally dismissed the fact that there was no water in her lungs and there were contusions on her arm, even though that same guy said that this was a drowning too and likely a suicide, the second coroner found a freaking bullet hole in the back of David's neck and the bullet still lodged in his head, the angle of which many reports called quote-unquote execution style.

Speaker 1 However, Gross Point police aren't so quick to jump to the idea that this was an execution.

Speaker 1 They said that they were still going to investigate it as a potential homicide, but that suicide was still possible. I'm sorry, hold up.

Speaker 2 How do you miss a bullet hole and a bullet still inside someone's head during an autopsy.

Speaker 1 This is where you can get real conspiratorial. The most innocent explanation is laziness or like really poor job performance.

Speaker 1 I don't have any copies of the actual autopsy report, but if there was maybe water in this guy's lungs, then...

Speaker 2 I mean, not that this coroner would even check for that because we know he didn't before.

Speaker 1 Right, but let's say he learned a lesson from Joanne's case and checked, and there was water in there. You know, maybe he's found water and it's like, meh, good enough.
Case closed.

Speaker 1 If you you don't believe that this was just, you know, again, laziness or incompetence, well, then someone didn't want anyone to know that he was shot and wanted this whole thing to just go away.

Speaker 2 Okay, but that would be such a risk. Again, what, like nine, ten months ago, you had another family do their own autopsy.

Speaker 2 You're gonna look so shady or at the very least, like a fool if you missed this. I mean, I don't disagree.
Did he ever have to explain himself?

Speaker 1 Kind of, but the explanation is very unsatisfying.

Speaker 1 I guess at first he kind of alluded to it being like bad equipment that he had at his lab, but I don't think that the higher-ups appreciated that very much because then he had to do this whole press conference where he was like, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 Stuff I have is great. I'm given all the tools I need to do my job.
Just the way that the bullet was in his head was like, it was blocked when I did the x-ray. It's like a total fluke.

Speaker 2 Okay, but someone else was able to find it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And again, like I like to say, the hole was still there, right? Like in the back of his neck.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like something you should notice, I guess, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So I listen, either they're hiding something or this guy is just really bad at his job.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 Anyways, they searched the water again after this new cause of death was determined and they found a gun registered to David in the water six feet from where his body was found.

Speaker 1 This is the same gun that was missing from his office.

Speaker 2 So is that significant? Like was his body lodged somewhere or could he have floated further away from it?

Speaker 1 So I couldn't find any detailed reports of exactly how he was found or if there was no current or anything that would have moved it like in Joanne's case.

Speaker 1 There are just references to this fact throughout some of the articles that I do have, where journalists point out that it's strange that it's six feet away.

Speaker 1 Some allude to this as proof he couldn't have shot himself, but they don't provide details to back that up. So I really don't have enough information to weigh this piece of evidence properly.

Speaker 1 But the police and the coroner must have believed it was still at least possible that he shot himself because ultimately the manner of death is ruled indeterminate.

Speaker 1 And the case was still kind of treated like a, well, it could be anything.

Speaker 1 So did anyone do any tests to see if the angle of of the shot was even possible to be self-inflicted you said earlier some reports were saying it was like execution style well i don't think there are any like csi reconstructions done but the coroner who did the independent autopsy told the detroit free press that suicide was possible but would have taken a freaking contortionist to pull off and listen That's all, folks, in David's case.

Speaker 1 There are no more answers today than there were back in 2010. And you know who predicted that? Bill Matouk, who was was quoted in a 2010 Detroit Free Press article about David.

Speaker 1 He said, quote, maybe it will be the same way in our case. We're just never going to know, end quote.

Speaker 2 Wait, why was Bill in this article about David? I mean, was it about both cases? They did happen. Same lake, kind of

Speaker 2 same time.

Speaker 1 No, it was just about David, but apparently they knew one another, at least casually, because I think David frequented the wine store, maybe more. I don't know.

Speaker 2 So, we have two people, same town, same lake.

Speaker 2 We know they were connected at least by family acquaintances, both rumored to have met with the FBI before going missing, both deaths ruled suicide by drowning, both autopsies wildly wrong by the same coroner, and both cases still completely unresolved.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know if they have anything to do with one another, but it's hard not to go looking for answers in every other case that feels even a little similar when answers are so hard to come by.

Speaker 1 And do you want to know like one more thing about Joanne's case that is super weird? Are you like on overload already?

Speaker 2 I mean, any good crime junkie isn't going to be able to turn down an offer like that. So lay it on me.

Speaker 1 Okay, so back when Michelle and her team had gotten the records from police, they actually found out about a couple of witnesses who might have seen some really critical things, but police kind of just dismissed them.

Speaker 1 The first was a woman who, according to Karen Drew for Click on Detroit, saw a man running down the road near the church at 7:50. She described what he was wearing, which included this like scarf.

Speaker 1 Well, police actually found a scarf on the road that matched what the witness described.

Speaker 1 They collected it, they put it into evidence, but just like with Joanne's car, they said there was nothing to suggest foul play or warrant any like testing of the scarf.

Speaker 2 Okay, maybe not then, but what about now?

Speaker 1 Well, coulda, woulda, shoulda, because they don't have it now. They gave the scarf to Goodwill in 2015.

Speaker 2 They gave a piece of evidence to Goodwill.

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 Well, that just made all of my thrifting trips a lot weirder. What? Could they even do that?

Speaker 1 I didn't know that that was something they did. And again, in their minds, they were like, oh, well, again, we've closed the case.
We called it a suicide, but you also did that forever ago.

Speaker 1 And you're like in all this litigation with the family. Like, I don't, why?

Speaker 2 What's the harm in keeping a scarf in a box? That's all we're asking you to do.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, anyways, they're like, sorry, it's gone.
Now, the other witness statement is possibly even more infuriating.

Speaker 1 The family found out that a week after Joanne went missing, so again, way before her body's even found, a man named Paul Hawk was watching the news and saw Joanne's story.

Speaker 1 And right away, he went into the police station and described a disturbing scene that he saw the day she disappeared.

Speaker 1 According to Dateline Detroit, on that night, he was traveling north on Lakeshore Drive and he saw a heavyset woman in all black sitting on the break wall of Lake St. Clair.

Speaker 1 He said she was sitting really still and she was kind of like slumped over. And he said that he saw two vehicles illegally parked on the road and one of them matched a description of Joanne's car.

Speaker 1 There were two men that he said were standing near the cars and one of them like motioned for him to just like, come on, keep passing through, like nothing to see here, go on.

Speaker 2 So honestly, this is the first thing that fits what we know about the case, at least a little bit.

Speaker 2 It explains the disturbances in the snow, why one of the witnesses who was at the same prayer service as Joanne said she came out and the parking lot was empty, didn't see the Lexus at all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and to this guy's credit, like he's coming with this a week after she goes missing. So this is long before like the public would know any of this information.
Right.

Speaker 1 But it still doesn't give us like the why of it all. It just starts to piece it together a little bit.

Speaker 2 So was this guy able to give a description of the guys he saw?

Speaker 1 Well, kind of. You see, he grew up playing football with the Matouk brothers, and he thought that it was actually John Matouk he saw.

Speaker 1 But years later in 2012, he said that he actually ran into John at a bar and realized that he was confused.

Speaker 1 So at that point, he worked with a sketch artist that the family had hooked him up with and apparently did like this composite sketch. And that composite sketch was a closer match to Tim Matouk.

Speaker 2 Okay, but that's two years in between the sighting of these guys by the road and the drawing. Plus, he's seen John, so he knows that's not what he looks like or what he remembers, supposedly.

Speaker 2 Plus, by this time, the family has already had their suspicions of Tim, right?

Speaker 1 Right. And again, Tim Matouk had an alibi.
Remember, he was on duty with the state police working surveillance.

Speaker 1 Though something that the family always points out and something that I do find interesting is that no one had actual eyes on him. He was on that stakeout and he was available by radio.

Speaker 1 And as far as we know, there wasn't any point where like people couldn't get a hold of him. That's why they testified to him being on duty.

Speaker 1 But even if that's a little sus, like his cell records show that he was in Warren 2. So there is a lot putting him there and not near where Joanne went missing.

Speaker 2 Unless someone kept his cell for him.

Speaker 1 Girl, you can spiral all day on stuff like this. Trust me, I have been in this hole for weeks, but it goes back to why.

Speaker 1 Why is everyone sticking their neck out to cover up this crime if there is a crime to cover up?

Speaker 1 But I get why people are stuck on this thing because, in the back of my head, I'm like, this all can't be a coincidence. If something is just too big to believe, that's not a reason to write it off.

Speaker 1 I feel like that judge who said, like, yes, all of this is wrong, but for what? Give me any explanation. Honestly, I'll take anything because nothing makes sense anymore.

Speaker 2 So I assume because Tim had an alibi, this guy's witness statement doesn't really mean much to anybody.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't even think the alibi is the reason they wrote it off. I mean, remember, it wasn't Tim in his mind until two years later.

Speaker 1 He came into the station a week after Joanne went missing and police wrote it off pretty much right then.

Speaker 1 And the reason they did that was because they said it didn't matter who he saw because it never happened.

Speaker 1 Or if it did, whatever he saw had nothing to do with Joanne's case, because they say in his initial statement that he said it was dusk when he saw this.

Speaker 1 But we know that Joanne left the prayer service at about 7.15, which, Britt, you and I know, like Michigan in January at 7.15, it's like dark as midnight. Pitch black, yeah.
Right.

Speaker 1 Now that witness, Paul Hawk, died just this past December in 2021. So there won't be any more statements from him about it.

Speaker 1 There wasn't any info online about how he died, but it likely wasn't linked to the case at all. A lot can happen in 12 years, and it's all the more reason to push for justice sooner rather than later.

Speaker 1 I don't know what's next for the Romaine family in their fight for justice.

Speaker 1 I follow their Facebook page, which we're going to have linked right here in the show notes, and I suggest you follow as well.

Speaker 1 Because if this case makes you as mad as it has made me over the last few weeks, I'm sure there's going to be a time when the family needs your help, and we all want to be ready for them.

Speaker 1 You can find all of the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

Speaker 2 And be sure to follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.

Speaker 1 We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

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