She Never Left

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Speaker 5 I was trying to determine what she had on, you know, clothing.

Speaker 7 And he got real quiet and whispered and he said, red blood.

Speaker 9 Chills up and down my spine because I thought, wow, this kid saw this.

Speaker 13 A little boy witnessed something terrifying the night his mother vanished.

Speaker 1 It just was ripping my heart.

Speaker 17 He was so traumatized.

Speaker 19 Everybody's life changed that night. Everybody's did.

Speaker 13 What had happened to his mom?

Speaker 20 I still wake up in the middle of the night.

Speaker 13 Haunted Haunted for more than two decades, he would make a chilling discovery that would unlock this mystery.

Speaker 22 Now you know the whole story.

Speaker 20 Yes, sir. And everything kind of clicked.

Speaker 23 It's just so unbelievable.

Speaker 17 I knew he was telling his mom's story.

Speaker 13 After all these years, would he be the one to solve his mother's murder? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with She Never Left.

Speaker 24 She'd been gone from his life, unaccounted for, for more than 20 years.

Speaker 26 His mother, Bonnie.

Speaker 20 It was odd to be the one that, to be the one that found her.

Speaker 22 Because you'd spend a lot of your life looking for her, right?

Speaker 27 Yes, sir.

Speaker 28 There's a poignant video of the mother and child's last Christmas morning together, December 1992.

Speaker 31 The boy, Aaron, was three and a half.

Speaker 8 We're gonna watch that later.

Speaker 22 You've seen maybe some home movies and some old pictures.

Speaker 20 Yeah, recently I've seen some um a Christmas video.

Speaker 33 You like that?

Speaker 20 And it didn't trigger any memory.

Speaker 22 No memory goes with that.

Speaker 20 No, sir.

Speaker 12 Can't remember so much as a touch or or the sound of her voice.

Speaker 35 But this story is all about memories.

Speaker 36 Memories lost,

Speaker 37 memories later testified to.

Speaker 35 Had the child, now a grown man, really seen something as terrible as all that?

Speaker 25 This is a boy's story, like few others.

Speaker 12 Go back in time to January 1993 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Speaker 42 It's just after the holidays, and there's an argument going on inside that modest starter home on Dolphin Avenue.

Speaker 25 The young wife, just 23, is restless, the story goes, and she walks out the door.

Speaker 12 The phone rang early the next morning in the bedroom of Evan and Bernie Haim across town.

Speaker 47 A funny question at that hour: did they know where Bonnie was, the wife of their nephew, Mike?

Speaker 49 We got a phone call from a police friend of ours, and he knew Mike and Bonnie. He said, where's Bonnie? We just found her purse in the dumpster at the Red Roof Inn and y'all need to get out here.

Speaker 12 A maintenance man had come upon the purse in a dumpster behind the airport motel.

Speaker 52 Inside were Bonnie's ID, keys, credit cards, and more than a thousand dollars in cash.

Speaker 48 Bernie and Yvanne got to the motel just after 8 a.m. Mike was already there.

Speaker 49 By By the time we got there, Mike and his dad, John, were in a room. The detectives were there, and they had her purse on the bed, and they had everything laid out.

Speaker 12 Mike, the husband, seemed perplexed by the amount of cash on the bed.

Speaker 49 He's like, what in the hell is she doing with all this money?

Speaker 4 Given a wad of money like that not taken, robbery was quickly ruled out.

Speaker 57 And I requested him to bring another dumpster right now because we thought maybe Bonnie was in the dumpster where they found found her purse.

Speaker 22 So you're thinking foul play at this point.

Speaker 57 I'm knowing foul play.

Speaker 22 A woman separated from her purse is a very bad sign.

Speaker 57 So well, we're sitting there crying,

Speaker 57 hoping they don't bring out a body out of the dumpster.

Speaker 58 But there was no body and no sign of Bonnie's car either.

Speaker 25 Police handed Bonnie's purse to Mike and advised him it would be best if he just went home.

Speaker 49 The police told him, go home, sit by the phone, wait for a call from her, a ransom call, an accident call, or whatever it might be.

Speaker 29 Homicide detective Robbie Hinson came on duty later that day at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 61 He was assigned the missing person case that would change his life.

Speaker 58 Did you go back out to this airport motel?

Speaker 19 Yes, we did. We spent quite some time out there canvassing the rooms and got the register and saw who was out there and interviewed people, interviewed the security guard.

Speaker 37 And there were stories circulating about strangely acting men, right?

Speaker 22 Yes. Even then, right?

Speaker 19 Yeah, even then.

Speaker 38 A security guard told the detective a man standing earlier on the second floor balcony seemed to be overly interested in the activity below at the dumpster.

Speaker 63 But he checked out before Detective Hinson could talk to him.

Speaker 50 The same security guard also remembered seeing a woman fitting Bonnie's description going into one of those second floor rooms.

Speaker 54 The detective wondered, where was the woman's car?

Speaker 27 That was still out there.

Speaker 19 Yeah, the car was still missing.

Speaker 64 The airport was nearby, so Hintson cruised the parking lots there.

Speaker 19 It would be a logical place to hide a car.

Speaker 62 Bingo, there was Bonnie's Toyota Cambria.

Speaker 44 Maybe she caught a plant, right?

Speaker 35 It was a theory.

Speaker 31 Had a frustrated wife and mother taken a timeout for herself.

Speaker 36 Detective Hinson pursued that theory, but struck out.

Speaker 19 There was no indication of her being on any of the manifests on any of the departing flights.

Speaker 27 That's where the road runs out, huh?

Speaker 19 Until the next day, after they process the car, they find a shoe print.

Speaker 25 A large man's shoe print on the driver's side floor mat, fresh and very sandy, with a treadmark from a sneaker.

Speaker 51 Whose sneaker?

Speaker 65 While investigators did their thing, Aunt Yvanne made a public appeal for help.

Speaker 66 And if anyone has seen her or has, you know, can shed any light on this story, just please, please let us know something.

Speaker 50 And soon on the 11 o'clock news, Jacksonville was introduced to husband Mike and little Aaron.

Speaker 38 The search for his missing mother was growing more feverish by the minute.

Speaker 13 What had happened to Bonnie when we come back?

Speaker 19 I'm looking for a crime scene, and there was nothing there.

Speaker 11 A secret encounter with another man and a marriage on the rocks.

Speaker 67 Bonnie said, This is it, I'm leaving.

Speaker 16 There is no way she would have walked out the door and left Aaron.

Speaker 40 The old snapshots show a curly-haired young mother and an adoring boy with a beetle cut.

Speaker 25 Who knew that video under the Christmas tree would be their last?

Speaker 22 She didn't have much time left then, did she?

Speaker 67 She did not have much time.

Speaker 67 Only had a couple more weeks to hold her son.

Speaker 59 Bonnie, her sisters Liz, Veronica, and Michelle told us, had married her high school study Mike Hain.

Speaker 31 Back then, they thought she'd done okay for herself.

Speaker 16 I even have a journal entry, and it says, today Bonnie met the man of her dreams. You know, he was cute, and he was charming.
He looked like the total package.

Speaker 39 From high school graduation ceremonies direct to the altar, 18 years old.

Speaker 25 Patty Pacito is Bonnie's mother.

Speaker 53 Were you surprised when she told you they're getting married?

Speaker 10 I mean, they're very young.

Speaker 69 Oh, no, I was not surprised. And she seemed very happy, so

Speaker 69 I wasn't surprised.

Speaker 50 Happier still with the arrival of Erin two years later.

Speaker 33 She was happy for that.

Speaker 56 That's what she wanted.

Speaker 49 She likes being a mom?

Speaker 67 Loves, loves being a mom. Everything circled around Erin.
She works so she can get Aaron everything he wants.

Speaker 39 Bonnie and Mike, in their 20s, both worked for a construction supply company.

Speaker 12 Mike's uncle Bernie was the owner.

Speaker 57 He was my brother's son.

Speaker 29 Mike was the manager of the company.

Speaker 22 Bonnie wore two hats.

Speaker 68 She did the books, and with her knack for computers, she was the IT person as well.

Speaker 49 All the employees just loved her.

Speaker 63 And Yvonne, you got to be pretty good friends with Bonnie.

Speaker 51 Yes.

Speaker 49 Our relationship just grew over the years working together.

Speaker 25 Good mother, good employee, no known enemies, which made her sudden disappearance all the more mysterious. Her abandoned purse and car had investigators following theories of foul play.

Speaker 63 Detective Henson went to the couple's home.

Speaker 19 I'm looking for a crime scene. I'm looking for spatter.
We're luminal the house. I was looking at everything I could look at, and there was nothing there.

Speaker 46 Nothing in the backyard either.

Speaker 12 So police launched a massive search.

Speaker 59 Helicopters scoured the wooded areas near the motel.

Speaker 29 Family members searched it as well.

Speaker 48 Everyone came up empty-handed.

Speaker 12 Mike said he wouldn't stop searching.

Speaker 70 They just haven't given up. The family hadn't given up.
You know, looking for Bonnie.

Speaker 20 Parents and in-laws are.

Speaker 64 Bonnie's father offered a $2,000 reward for information on his daughter.

Speaker 12 Meanwhile, detectives began their routine victimology investigation, asking the question, is there something in my victim's background or life choices that explain why she's gone?

Speaker 10 Early on, they learned Bonnie had a brief affair.

Speaker 53 You had to check him out.

Speaker 19 Yes. He came down to the office, we interviewed him.

Speaker 31 He told detectives it was a one-time, one-night stand.

Speaker 19 He was very cooperative, agreed to take a polygraph. He passed the polygraph.

Speaker 4 And of course, as they always do, the detective had to take a hard look at the husband, Mike.

Speaker 39 He told police Bonnie left the house around 11 p.m.

Speaker 29 and didn't come back.

Speaker 26 He said he went out looking for her around 3 a.m., drove by her mother's house to see if her car was there.

Speaker 43 It wasn't.

Speaker 29 And just why had Bonnie left?

Speaker 19 There was an argument. She allegedly, according to him, had stormed out.

Speaker 41 And he'd volunteered all that, huh?

Speaker 19 And now nobody could find her.

Speaker 63 Investigators heard from friends and family that Bonnie was unhappy in her marriage.

Speaker 25 And by Christmastime, just two weeks before she disappeared, Bonnie told her sister it was all over.

Speaker 67 Bonnie and I went shopping together and she said, this is it, I'm leaving.

Speaker 36 Bonnie told her sister she'd put a deposit on an apartment and found a new school for Erin.

Speaker 25 Now family members were wondering if Bonnie broke the news to Mike the night she disappeared.

Speaker 37 Evan said she and Bonnie had planned to get together that night, but instead, Bonnie had called her crying.

Speaker 49 She says, Mike and I are having a discussion and I'm just going to stay home. You know, I said, do you want me to come out there, Bonnie? And she goes, no, I'll be fine.

Speaker 52 That was the last time anyone on the outside had spoken to her.

Speaker 36 And there was growing suspicion that Mike had done something to Bonnie.

Speaker 22 He was always your prime person of interest.

Speaker 19 I tried to stay neutral at the very beginning, but there were just too many things that were just screaming at me.

Speaker 15 Among those things was that shoe print found on the mat of bonnie's car when the csi techs entered bonnie and mike's house the first thing they spotted were shoes size 10 sneakers yeah that match the print

Speaker 16 bonnie's sister's suspicions of foul play were based on her love for her three and a half year old son there is no way she would have left aaron there is no way she would have walked out the door and left aaron behind with him

Speaker 36 and then there was an interview mike did on tv the night after bonnie disappeared.

Speaker 15 His matter-of-fact manner left many viewers baffled.

Speaker 72 Basically, she just wasn't happy and she wanted to leave and

Speaker 72 I couldn't really stop her from leaving.

Speaker 30 But Detective Hinson was more focused on the smiling boy on the couch next to Mike, little Aaron.

Speaker 19 I wanted the

Speaker 19 child interviewed. The child? Yeah, I wanted Aaron.

Speaker 18 A three and a half year old boy.

Speaker 19 Yes, I wanted him interviewed.

Speaker 50 And what a horrifying story the boy would tell.

Speaker 73 Coming up.

Speaker 5 I was trying to determine what she had on, you know, clothing. And he got real quiet and whispered and he said, red blood.

Speaker 22 Mommy was wearing blood. Wow.

Speaker 9 Chills up and down my spine.

Speaker 11 When dateline continues.

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Speaker 29 Police had only the husband's story about what happened the night his wife Bonnie Haim supposedly walked out the door.

Speaker 24 Or was there another witness?

Speaker 47 Detective Henson began wondering what the three and a half-year-old boy Aaron might remember.

Speaker 19 I want to see if he just has seen anything. I don't know if he has a story.
I just want somebody that's a professional to talk to him.

Speaker 22 Very sensitive kind of interview. How'd you find the person to do it?

Speaker 19 I was really fortunate to have Brenda be the one to do it.

Speaker 24 Brenda was Brenda Meadows with the state's child protection team.

Speaker 43 A social worker who had interviewed dozens of kids, Aaron would be the child she'd never forget.

Speaker 56 He had this bold cut that went all the way around his eyes and he had these big, big eyes.

Speaker 30 Bonnie's mother, Patty, and Mike's aunt Yvanne, sat in that day to make Aaron more comfortable.

Speaker 12 His mother had gone missing just 48 hours before.

Speaker 54 Did you know much in advance?

Speaker 56 The only thing I really knew was that the mother

Speaker 6 had disappeared, that they suspected foul play he was traumatized I could tell a few hours and a happy meal later Aaron began opening up and the story he told was alarming Aaron tells me that his daddy shot his mommy shot shot yes oh and I asked shot her with what and he said a gun I asked him where he shot her and he said in the stomach and he pointed you know but I'll never forget the most poignant moment was when I said, I was trying to determine what she had on, you know, clothing.

Speaker 7 And he got real quiet and whispered and he said, red blood.

Speaker 69 And I remember.

Speaker 22 Mommy was wearing blood. Wow.

Speaker 9 Chills up and down my spine because I thought, wow, this kid.

Speaker 35 saw this.

Speaker 37 Did you believe him or did you think he was reciting a movie he'd seen or something?

Speaker 7 I knew. I could tell from the way he delivered it all that it was

Speaker 17 what he had seen. It was just,

Speaker 60 you know, I've interviewed, I'm sorry, I've interviewed lots of kids, but this was like,

Speaker 56 I knew,

Speaker 5 such a huge moment.

Speaker 7 And it was always like when he would talk

Speaker 17 about these things, he would whisper when he was talking about.

Speaker 7 the things that were so horrible that he'd seen.

Speaker 22 Is there any doubt in your mind that he saw his father shoot his mother?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 7 And I said, you can take it to the bank.

Speaker 64 You took it as literally true.

Speaker 22 Oh, yeah. That statement that he gave.

Speaker 19 I'd tell people all the time, I'd say, you either believe him or you don't.

Speaker 29 And that would be the question to tear apart Bonnie's family.

Speaker 64 Believe the boy or not.

Speaker 46 Some relatives, like Mike's own aunt and uncle, were persuaded by the child.

Speaker 37 Your nephew was a killer?

Speaker 57 I know for sure he did. They did Bonnie.
He killed Bonnie.

Speaker 57 All the evidence was there.

Speaker 42 But Mike also had two unlikely defenders, Bonnie's mother and father.

Speaker 50 Bonnie's mom had been in the room for parts of Aaron's interview, although she wasn't there when the social worker said he made the most disturbing statements.

Speaker 37 He actually tells the social worker, Daddy shot Mommy.

Speaker 13 Oh, no.

Speaker 25 And I saw blood on her middle section.

Speaker 69 I don't think he ever made the statement.

Speaker 52 Aaron's statement wasn't recorded, wasn't required back then.

Speaker 35 More than anything else, Patty said she just didn't think Mike Mike was capable of hurting her daughter.

Speaker 54 Detective Robbie Henson knew he couldn't make an arrest based on the statement of a three-and-a-half-year-old child.

Speaker 61 It was a circumstantial case with a classic stumbling block.

Speaker 10 There was no proof Bonnie was even dead.

Speaker 22 And no body in no case.

Speaker 19 No body, no case.

Speaker 54 The case would remain a mystery, haunting both the detective and the little boy.

Speaker 73 Coming up.

Speaker 76 I do not

Speaker 76 want

Speaker 76 my dad

Speaker 77 to kill

Speaker 77 other

Speaker 77 people.

Speaker 50 Little Aaron was not done talking, not by a long shot.

Speaker 25 Young Aaron Haim told a horrific story of watching his father shoot his mother.

Speaker 54 But a three-and-a-half-year-old eyewitness wasn't enough for Detective Robbie Hintson to make an arrest.

Speaker 19 You poor Kirill Hard need to get nowhere. And still, it's just a missing person's case.
We don't have the body.

Speaker 63 But Hintson and the child protection team still felt that Aaron might be in danger because of what he said he witnessed.

Speaker 25 The state removed Aaron from his father's custody and sent him to live with his aunt Liz.

Speaker 65 Mike was allowed to see his son twice a week.

Speaker 41 Liz said those visits took a toll.

Speaker 67 He would start pounding the floor and I would always have to scoop him up and hold him as he just

Speaker 49 fell apart every visitation.

Speaker 58 The stress added up for Liz too, affecting her family and her health.

Speaker 12 One solution was to put Aaron in a foster home where Mike wouldn't be allowed to visit.

Speaker 67 The best place for him to be was in foster care so we can discontinue the visitation and maybe start moving

Speaker 67 into a

Speaker 15 healing cycle.

Speaker 48 And Liz did something else.

Speaker 43 She successfully petitioned the court to have Aaron declared a protected witness.

Speaker 67 And that's what we called it was Aaron's in protective custody now.

Speaker 61 Aaron, now five years old, went to live with foster parents Ronnie Frazier and his wife Jean.

Speaker 74 I never wanted to take Bonnie's place at all. That would not be the right thing to do.

Speaker 74 I just wanted him to have the best life he could.

Speaker 24 In the beginning, all Gene Frazier really knew about Aaron was that his mother was missing.

Speaker 40 But about six months after he moved in, the boy began dropping hints that he knew something more about his mother's fate.

Speaker 53 Something sinister.

Speaker 74 He started talking occasionally about his dad shooting his mom.

Speaker 46 It went on this way for a few months.

Speaker 24 Glimmers of information, then Aaron backing off.

Speaker 53 Over time, that changed.

Speaker 74 He got to where he would say so much I would have to write it down. And then he got where he would dictate it to me, what he wanted me to write.

Speaker 37 Foster mom Jean wrote it all down in a notebook and shared it with the mental health professionals caring for Aaron.

Speaker 47 In one session, Jean on the right listened as then six-year-old Aaron spoke with his social worker.

Speaker 65 Aaron's psychologist taped it.

Speaker 77 Well, I'm wondering, since you obviously are such a smart pants, can you read this?

Speaker 76 I do not

Speaker 76 want

Speaker 77 my

Speaker 77 dad to kill

Speaker 77 other

Speaker 77 people.

Speaker 77 Very good reading.

Speaker 75 And me either.

Speaker 77 Me either.

Speaker 38 Then Aaron asked his social worker to read what he said.

Speaker 77 My dad killed my mom.

Speaker 77 Then he threw the pocketbook away in a different place, somewhere near our house, in a dumpster.

Speaker 77 He buried my mom.

Speaker 77 We digged it the hole. You know, Aaron,

Speaker 77 man, that's a

Speaker 77 really

Speaker 77 important memory to have, but it's sort of a bad one too, isn't it?

Speaker 77 I'm sorry that you have to have that memory.

Speaker 74 He knew exactly what had happened, and he just couldn't find her.

Speaker 48 But Aaron seemed determined to try.

Speaker 46 He would periodically ask Jean to take him out to search for Bonnie.

Speaker 41 On one such trip, Gene remembered something eerie the child did before they left her house.

Speaker 74 Said, can we go look for my mom? And we go out to get in the car and he runs to the backyard and I'm going, where are you going? He said, to get a shovel.

Speaker 74 Like, silly, you know, because he knew that she was buried. He just didn't know where.

Speaker 54 And Aaron did the same thing with Detective Henson as well.

Speaker 19 He'd say, I want to go search for my mom. And so we would put him in a car seat and off we'd go.

Speaker 44 Henson too thought the body might be buried but he and Aaron never did find anything.

Speaker 63 His investigation grew colder even as his relationship with the boy grew stronger.

Speaker 35 And the Frasiers for their part did everything they could to give Aaron a normal life, the chance to be a kid again.

Speaker 74 He was into racing bicycles. He had motorcycles.
He had played baseball. He took karate.

Speaker 74 And the most fun he had was fishing. He was a great fisherman.

Speaker 54 Today, Aaron is grateful for the family who embraced him.

Speaker 22 Tell me about the Fraziers. How did your life change once they came into your life?

Speaker 20 They're just special people, people of incredible character. Opened their home to me, loved me like their own son.
I never had to ask for anything. They gave me unconditional love.

Speaker 20 If I needed something,

Speaker 20 they were always there.

Speaker 41 Aunt Liz remained devoted to Aaron and shared his gratitude toward the Fraziers.

Speaker 67 They have been fantastic. That was the best thing that happened to Aaron.

Speaker 25 By 1999, Aaron, now 10, had been living with the Fraziers for six years, and the couple wanted to adopt him.

Speaker 16 He bonded with them and they're amazing, so why would we pull him away or make something not permanent?

Speaker 61 To make that happen, Liz went to court and had her sister declared legally dead.

Speaker 55 Mike's parental rights were also revoked.

Speaker 29 Aaron Haim became Aaron Frazier.

Speaker 40 But Liz wasn't through with Mike just yet.

Speaker 15 She sued him on behalf of Aaron for the wrongful death of Bonnie.

Speaker 29 Is Michael contesting this as he saw the site?

Speaker 67 He didn't even show up for court.

Speaker 52 In 2005, a judge ruled in favor of Aaron and Liz.

Speaker 15 They won and won big.

Speaker 67 It ended up being a $26 million

Speaker 8 award, of course.

Speaker 22 Which was fantasy money.

Speaker 67 Oh, yeah, fantasy money. It's not real.
Because Mike didn't have $26 million.

Speaker 15 By then, Mike had moved to North Carolina and remarried.

Speaker 58 But he did still own shares in Uncle Bernie's company and the key to the old house on Dolphin Avenue.

Speaker 30 At age 16, Aaron got the shares and became the owner of the house.

Speaker 52 Growing up under the loving care of the Frasiers, Aaron thrived. He graduated from high school and married his wife, Alyssa.

Speaker 19 I don't think that you realized how much you meant to me through the years.

Speaker 30 And Detective Robbie Henson remained close by just in case he needed him.

Speaker 19 And so I just told him, I said, if you you ever, you know, I love you, if you ever need me, I'm here. And so I told him, I said, call me no matter what.

Speaker 44 Little did he know, a call one Sunday afternoon from Aaron would turn this whole case upside down.

Speaker 13 Coming up, the chilling discovery that will change everything.

Speaker 20 We start digging up against the house. I see a piece of plastic and I was like, oh, that's weird.
And everything kind of clicked.

Speaker 19 I just pulled to the side of the road.

Speaker 11 When dateline continues.

Speaker 33 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 33 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 33 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 33 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 50 Aaron Frazier, the little boy with the bowl haircut, is now in his 30s.

Speaker 30 When we sat down to talk to him, it had been more than two decades since he last saw his mother, Bonnie.

Speaker 40 And in a story about memory, we discovered a deep irony. When it comes to the murder investigation that ripped open his childhood, the Aaron of today doesn't remember a thing.

Speaker 54 Did you know any of your history about what had happened?

Speaker 20 I knew it in the back of my mind, but I don't have a memory of it happening. I know a lot of things that happened, but I don't remember how I learned them.

Speaker 15 He has no memory of Bonnie or Mike, his biological parents.

Speaker 71 Nor does he remember telling Brenda Meaders that his father shot his mother.

Speaker 37 So telling this social worker this story,

Speaker 32 I saw daddy hurt mom.

Speaker 22 That's not an act of memory for you?

Speaker 31 No, sir.

Speaker 42 As he got older, Aaron heard from Aunt Liz and Detective Henson more details about his missing mother, Bonnie, and of his own role in the investigation.

Speaker 22 Was that kind of out of body hearing all this stuff coming into this thing about

Speaker 37 what three and a half year old you said and did?

Speaker 20 Yeah, that's the way it feels, almost like I'm watching a movie of somebody else. It doesn't even feel like it's me.
Like I know it was.

Speaker 20 I have the emotion that it was, but putting that together with what my brain is telling me as far as memories go it says there's a little bit of a disconnect aaron's memories begin after all of that so when your brain kind of turns on and you're aware of where you are how old are you and where you're living i would guess i was about

Speaker 20 four and a half five years old is my earliest memory um i can remember being coming to the frasiers

Speaker 54 my adoptive parents But even with the Fraziers, he doesn't remember everything.

Speaker 45 Like those stories told of him searching for his mother.

Speaker 22 When you were out with the Fraziers, do you remember asking asking if we could bring a shovel along? Is that...

Speaker 20 No, I don't have an active memory of that.

Speaker 22 That's not a true memory for you. No, sir.

Speaker 44 Aaron also remembered nothing about the house he lived in on Dolphin Avenue.

Speaker 58 He became the owner after the wrongful death suit.

Speaker 20 I didn't really want anything to do with the house. I didn't have any desire to have it.
I was, you know, it was a tough

Speaker 20 spot about my life.

Speaker 39 Renters lived there until 2014.

Speaker 15 When they moved out, Aaron realized the house was a wreck.

Speaker 25 His do-it-yourself repairs started inside, but in the backyard, he found the swimming pool and an outdoor shower were also in shambles.

Speaker 20 It needed to be completely redone and it's going to be an expensive project.

Speaker 65 Aaron decided to fill in the pool and remove the shower.

Speaker 58 He and his brother-in-law Thad rented a small excavator one weekend and the two of them went at it.

Speaker 55 That's Sunday, a snafu.

Speaker 44 They broke a pipe near the outdoor shower and had to find the leak, so they grabbed their shovels.

Speaker 20 We start digging up against the house. So I see a piece of plastic.
I think when I was digging with the shovel, I broke the bag. And I was like, oh, that's weird.
There's a coconut in here.

Speaker 20 Why would somebody bury a coconut in a bag right here?

Speaker 43 But it wasn't a coconut.

Speaker 20 I picked it up. Immediately, I didn't know what it was.
I handed it to Thad. He was looking at it.
We looked back in the hole and we could see some teeth. Teeth, teeth.
We could see her teeth.

Speaker 20 And then at that point in time,

Speaker 20 you could see the top portion of her eye socket on the skull.

Speaker 20 you know, and everything kind of clicked, and we stopped what we were doing.

Speaker 43 It was a horrifying discovery.

Speaker 51 Aaron, like Hamlet, was holding a skull.

Speaker 36 He believed it was his mother's.

Speaker 71 How do you absorb that?

Speaker 20 Yeah, I mean, it was just what was happening, but it was odd to

Speaker 20 be the one that found her.

Speaker 46 Aaron immediately called Gene Frazier, who was in church.

Speaker 74 I saw a missed call from him, so I called him back and

Speaker 74 he said,

Speaker 74 what's Detective Robbie's phone number? And I said, why? And he said, I found her. I found my mom.

Speaker 19 I get on the phone with Gene and she said, Rob, we need you now. We need you right now.
And I thought something might have happened to our family. And she says, we found a body in the backyard.

Speaker 19 I said, what backyard? And she says, on Dolphin Avenue. And I said, what are you talking about? And so I'm arguing with her because I had searched that area.

Speaker 61 As he raced to the house, Henson called a friend in the sheriff's department to go to the scene.

Speaker 19 And he called me back. I said, is it a dog? And he goes, no, it's a human skull.
And I just pulled

Speaker 19 to the side of the road to

Speaker 19 try to compose.

Speaker 19 Excuse me, try to compose myself like I am now.

Speaker 52 Henson was retired by then, but when he arrived at the house, he faced a fact every detective dreads, haunted by the search not made.

Speaker 19 But I knew when I got there I had missed her.

Speaker 19 Which is a hard thing, is it?

Speaker 32 You're beating yourself up for that, huh?

Speaker 19 I'm not so much beating myself up. It's just I would have much rather found her than have him find her.

Speaker 68 Now, all these years later, Dolphin Avenue was a crime scene.

Speaker 80 It's a possible break in a cold case, the disappearance of this young mother more than two decades ago.

Speaker 25 That search turned up much more than just Bonnie's skull.

Speaker 55 There were her disintegrating bones, bones, her ring, the acrylic fingernail she wore, even her pants, all found in the dirt beneath the shower.

Speaker 29 Four months later, DNA testing confirmed the remains were Bonnie's, and the medical examiner ruled Bonnie's death a homicide.

Speaker 63 In August of 2015, Mike Hayne was charged with second-degree murder and taken into custody in North Carolina.

Speaker 81 Can you think of anything from Jacksonville that would come back to you?

Speaker 81 Yeah, my wife, that new wife. Okay.

Speaker 81 That's why we're here.

Speaker 81 I will not make any statements at all.

Speaker 65 Mike wouldn't face a jury for another four years, and the case was far from a sure thing.

Speaker 64 There was little forensic evidence, and the state's key witness, Aaron, had no memory of the crime that he could testify to.

Speaker 22 What amazes everybody is that you could argue that you solved your own mother's murder.

Speaker 20 Yes, sir.

Speaker 22 Not a detective, not an investigator, just by the happenstance of this day.

Speaker 42 In his own quiet, unassuming way, Aaron just nodded.

Speaker 32 The question, a painful one.

Speaker 63 Now he would bookend the case against his father.

Speaker 22 What he found as an adult, what he witnessed as a child.

Speaker 73 Coming up.

Speaker 79 I called my mom.

Speaker 82 You see him trying to hold back that anguish.

Speaker 13 The showdown. 26 years in the making.

Speaker 41 Did you, in fact, harm your wife?

Speaker 70 Absolutely not.

Speaker 13 Would the jury believe father or son?

Speaker 48 More than two decades after Bonnie Hain disappeared, five years after her son unearthed her remains.

Speaker 46 Are you responsible for the death of her?

Speaker 38 Bonnie's husband, Mike, went on trial for her death, charged with second-degree murder and pleading not guilty.

Speaker 35 Upon conviction, he was facing up to life in prison.

Speaker 41 While forensic evidence was lacking, prosecutors Alan Mizrahi and Mac Heavener said there was one overwhelming fact, circumstantial though it might be.

Speaker 73 A buried wife in your own backyard is a pretty hard piece of evidence for any defendant to overcome.

Speaker 32 The state believed it had an eyewitness to the alleged murder, little Aaron Hain, but he couldn't remember that awful event.

Speaker 24 The judge ruled the social worker who interviewed Aaron could testify, but not about the details of what Aaron said, only about who he identified as the person who hurt his mother.

Speaker 83 Did Aaron indicate that his mother had been hurt?

Speaker 56 Yes, he did.

Speaker 83 And did he identify who did that to his mother?

Speaker 56 Yes, he did.

Speaker 82 And who did he say?

Speaker 56 His daddy. His father.

Speaker 22 You guys had a good day on the stand with that testimony.

Speaker 75 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 31 That was a win. That was a win.

Speaker 38 But jurors would hear Aaron on the witness stand telling a different story about the gruesome discovery of his mother's remains under the outdoor shower.

Speaker 20 Tell the jury what you found next. I was digging the hole.

Speaker 35 I noticed sitting just a few feet away at the defense table was Mike, his biological father.

Speaker 20 I picked up the coconut object and it ended up being the top portion of her skull.

Speaker 83 So once you start seeing that it's human remains, what do you do?

Speaker 20 We set the top portion of the skull back in

Speaker 51 the hole, and

Speaker 79 I called my mom,

Speaker 20 who I refer to as my mom, Gene Frazier.

Speaker 82 Aaron's not the kind of person that shows emotion. You see him trying to hold back that anguish, that trauma.

Speaker 61 The defense did not cross-examine Aaron, but it challenged the meaning of Brenda Meader's testimony about daddy hurting mommy.

Speaker 22 Now, you never determined as to what he was talking about, tide-wise.

Speaker 56 I did ask, was it during the daytime or nighttime? And he said nighttime.

Speaker 84 Okay, but you didn't try to establish whether it was yesterday, a year ago, did you?

Speaker 56 No, not due to his age.

Speaker 54 Janice Warren was one of Mike's attorneys.

Speaker 86 When did daddy hurt mommy? How did daddy hurt mommy? How do we know daddy didn't hurt mommy's feelings and make her cry? That doesn't mean he killed her.

Speaker 24 The defense reminded the jury there was no forensic evidence linking Mike to his wife's death.

Speaker 65 His attorneys say it was a bad police investigation, overly focused on the husband, and one that ignored critical evidence.

Speaker 30 For example, there was this letter received by authorities in 1996.

Speaker 85 Three years after she went missing, an anonymous letter was sent saying the body is buried in the backyard.

Speaker 29 So as a result of that anonymous letter, do they come back again?

Speaker 85 Go to the back house and look? They don't.

Speaker 65 And that is the problem.

Speaker 29 Attorney Tom Fallis suggested maybe that letter was sent by the real killer.

Speaker 18 I mean, our theory of defense was that she was killed somewhere else, and then somebody else came and buried the body to point the blame at the husband.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 31 The last witness called by the defense was, to everyone's surprise, Mike Haim himself.

Speaker 65 After 26 years in the Bonnie Haim case, it would truly boil down to jurors believing either father or son.

Speaker 70 And she left.

Speaker 62 Composed and speaking in a monotone, Mike described his wife's state of mind the night she disappeared and told the same story he'd told all along that Bonnie walked out on it.

Speaker 70 She had been unhappy for

Speaker 70 maybe a month, maybe two. I can't put my finger on how long, but it had been going on where she wasn't real her bubbly self like she was at one time.

Speaker 70 I was wanting and trying to find out what was making her so unhappy.

Speaker 12 Mike said he told Bonnie he was so concerned about her state of mind that he'd spoken to her mother.

Speaker 70 I don't think she appreciated me calling and getting her mother involved in our relationship.

Speaker 10 Around 11, he he says Bonnie grabbed her keys and drove off.

Speaker 41 Where'd you think she was going?

Speaker 70 I didn't know.

Speaker 70 I thought she might have gone to her mom's house to ask her about our conversation.

Speaker 3 But by 3 a.m., when she didn't return, Mike says he went to look for her.

Speaker 10 He drove to her mother's house, didn't see her car, so he says he drove around a while longer, then returned home.

Speaker 70 I was very upset because I didn't know really what to do.

Speaker 48 The final question from Defense Attorney Tom Fallas was one Mike had to address.

Speaker 41 Basically, everybody wants to know, did you in fact harm your wife?

Speaker 70 Absolutely not. I love my wife and I would have never hurt my wife.

Speaker 28 Memories fade.

Speaker 36 Prosecutor Alan Mizrahi, as expected, didn't buy anything Mike said.

Speaker 47 Why, he asked, didn't Mike call Bonnie's mother at 3 a.m.

Speaker 30 when she hadn't returned?

Speaker 70 I talked to her the next day.

Speaker 75 Okay.

Speaker 83 The next day after her purse was in a dumpster, right?

Speaker 75 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 70 It didn't alarm me until they called me with her purse.

Speaker 42 It did alarm you because at 3 a.m.

Speaker 83 you're driving around the city allegedly looking for her.

Speaker 64 That is correct.

Speaker 19 Isn't it true, Mr.

Speaker 51 Hayden, you weren't looking for her.

Speaker 42 You were dumping the car at the airport.

Speaker 70 Isn't that true? That's absolutely true.

Speaker 39 Isn't it? The trial was brief, just four days.

Speaker 25 Deliberations, brief as well.

Speaker 63 In less than two hours, a verdict was announced.

Speaker 87 We, the jury, have found the defendant guilty of murder in the second degree.

Speaker 13 Guilty.

Speaker 40 And that wasn't all.

Speaker 59 The jury also found that Mike killed his wife in front of their three and a half-year-old boy.

Speaker 87 The crime was committed in the presence of a victim's family member, to wit, her son, Aaron.

Speaker 52 And that finding exposed Mike to a harsher sentence, life in prison.

Speaker 43 After decades waiting for this verdict, there was relief tempered with sadness.

Speaker 16 It was a little bit hollow,

Speaker 16 you know, hearing the guilty, because I was expecting like, oh, I'm going to be elated, you know, and just be like, yes.

Speaker 16 And that's not what I felt like. I still just wanted to collapse.

Speaker 16 And it was still empty because

Speaker 16 she's still not here.

Speaker 36 Mike was sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 50 And even after that verdict, Bonnie's family remained split.

Speaker 46 Her mom still thinks Mike is innocent.

Speaker 54 but she does share the family's grief.

Speaker 37 When have you missed her the most?

Speaker 35 Her other children that she may have had.

Speaker 35 I just, I don't have the words to express.

Speaker 66 The time missed.

Speaker 38 After the trial, Bonnie's sisters organized a celebration of her life in a garden dedicated to her.

Speaker 16 Tomorrow is her 50th birthday.

Speaker 66 Well, she kind of want me to say that.

Speaker 52 Friends, family, and prosecutors gathered, as well as Aaron, who, despite having no memory of what he witnessed, in the end prevailed.

Speaker 22 Do you think you were some kind of an agent of justice here, Aaron, that it should come to you finally to be the one to find her?

Speaker 20 Yeah, I think, I mean,

Speaker 20 God had a plan that this is what he wanted. You know, I was ready to do it to be able to find her after all these years.

Speaker 20 You know, I think God had his hands on it.

Speaker 20 He wouldn't have let all this happen

Speaker 20 for no reason.

Speaker 13 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.

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