The Unsolved Indiana Dunes Disappearances

In July 1966, three women out for a day at the beach waded into the water of Lake Michigan, got onto a boat and were never heard from again. To this day, not a trace of them has ever turned up and theories of what became of them abound.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone in podcast land. If you have ever wanted
to see us on stage telling jokes and slinging facts,
and you live out west, you can come see us
in Portland, Oregon or Vancouver, Canada. Yep. We'll be at
the Chance Center in Vancouver on Sunday, March twenty nine,
and then we'll be at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
in Portland on March And if you want tickets and info,

(00:23):
then the best thing you can do right now is
to go do s y s K live dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Josh

(00:43):
T guest producing a way over there. Uh. And that
makes this Stuff you Should Know super duper mysterious mystery edition.
That's right, This is a super mysterious one. Super duper
you could say this a good one. I never heard
of it. I hadn't either, man, Babe. We should have

(01:03):
a spin off show just about mysteries and missing persons.
I've long thought that, Yeah, but then everyone's like, just
put him on Stuff you Should Know. Yeah, every once
in awhile you gonna spin it out right? Spin it off?
The Cleveland Show? Oh man, I never watched that was
a good I never watched it either. You weren't a

(01:25):
Family Guy fan, that were you? I mean it's fine,
but no, I wasn't a fan. Yeah, um, all right?
What about Laverne and Shirley? What is this Laverne and
Shirley spin off from Happy Days? Right? That's right, just right,
let's do this and Mindy spun off too? Uh? What
is this? Too Close for Comfort? Was that has been off?

(01:46):
You got this man? Too close for comfort? He wasn't. No,
I don't know what was it? Oh no, I'm sorry.
I was about to say, I don't think that's right.
What what is this? The ropers? Oh? Well, sure company? Okay?
What is this after match? Right? I thought? Um? I

(02:07):
thought Too Close for Comfort was a spin off? I
think it might be. Well, my first guess was it
was might have been Ted Nights character from the Mary
Tyler Moore Show. But that's not true because and too
Close for Comfort he was a cartoonist, that's right. Remember,
And the only thing I remember well, I remember a
lot about that show because I loved it I was
in love with those daughters. Man, I don't remember them.

(02:31):
I mean, that was the whole setup, is that their
daughters lived in the same house or next door or
something cause trouble. Uh yeah, you know. They were just
a couple of hell raisers, hell raising beauties. And uh
who was the guy that was so great? I think
you're talking about Charles in Charge now I'm thinking it
too Close for Comfort? But he was a cartoonist and
he would wear college sweatshirts as part of his character.

(02:55):
And he wore a Georgia bulldog sweatshirt one time, and
I was I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
It's like, how did they know that? That's the thing?
All right? You're like, I'm basically on TV right now.
Oh man, that was him, the Monroe character, j Ted Knight, Yeah, no,
Ted Knight was the lead, the main guy, Jim J.

(03:16):
Bullock Man, what was he? Hollywood Squares? Among other things
like too close for Comfort? Does uh? Does this kind
as a tangent if we haven't actually gotten started. This
is a preamble, okay preamble? Yeah, yeah, this is a
good one. And you put this together, Um, where'd you
get most of the stuff, wrote it myself. Well, there's

(03:38):
one part that I was like, here, this is just
easier if I copy and paste from a Chicago Tribune article.
From that one, it's very good, there's That's one of
the things about this case is anyone who kind of
gets involved in this, we'll see there is not a
lot of information out there. Yeah, and funny enough, one
of the biggest mysteries of this whole thing is what

(03:59):
kind of boat that was, which we'll get to. That
was my bad. Well, no, man, I saw in a
couple of other articles it called this boat a try Moran,
which is very much a catamaran. Right, they made the
same the same they were just okay, yeah, because the
same thing. So try Hold. I was like, oh, it's
a try cat, which is a sailboat, and that's what

(04:21):
I thought it was. No, there's a try Hold speedboat
called the Runabout that was kind of big in the sixties. Well,
more specifically, it's a try Hold run about. A runabout
doesn't necessarily mean it has three holes. But those are
my favorite boats in the world. Are these fifties and
sixties fiberglass runabouts. This is their amazing fifties and sixties
run about of all time with three holes. He thought

(04:45):
one was crazy, just get ready for three. So yeah,
the boat will come up and I had to mark
out try cat and just about. I'm very sorry. So
what we're talking about here finally now is the disappearance

(05:06):
of three young women, uh in suburban Chicago and the
mid nineteen sixties at Indiana Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan. Yeah.
Now it's Indiana Dunes National Seashore, National Lakes Shore, National
Lake Shore. Um, but at the time it was a
state park. And this is Saturday, July two, nineteen sixty six,

(05:27):
that's right, the three women. That was a twenty one
year old named Patricia Blow. Yeah, I think so. Um.
She went. She got in her car, which was eleven
year old at this point, Buick Sedan ninety five. Buick
went to pick up her friends and Miller at her house.
She lived with her folks, and then to her other friend,

(05:50):
Renee Brule, who was the only one who was married.
I went to pick her up at her house. They
were nineteen and twenty and they were like at think
one of the most twenty two at least. But those
are nippicky details. They were all late teens early twenties.
And wait a minute, did you just call me nipicky? No? No,

(06:12):
no, no no, I think you did. Okay, Um and just
called me a liar on National TV. I think you
and and Patricia were friends. They were horse riders, and
they were friends from these horse stables. But they were
all three buddies. Not since grade school, but for the
last couple of years. It seems like right, yeah, and
um they all lived around Chicago, and that's where they

(06:34):
were traveling about sixty miles eighty miles I've seen both
to Indiana Dune State Park to just basically go hang
out on the on the beach that day again Saturday.
It was the July four weekend. Yeah, super crowded. They
were just going to the beach to have some fun.
Most people think, um, they got to the beach by
ten am, parked the buick, hiked over the dunes on

(06:57):
the kind of rickety boardwalk over to beach, and set
up camp. I think about a hundred yards from shore.
That's a pretty substantial beach. Either they are they hiked
a hundred yards and set up near the beach. It
might be the ladder of the two that sounds more right.
And on this weekend again because it was July fourth weekend,
the beach was just absolutely packed. This is Lake Michigan,

(07:19):
which is a pretty pretty big lake, and this beach
itself for this park itself and things like twenty six
miles of shoreline or something like that. But even still
there's like nine thousand people on the beach that weekend. Yeah.
I saw nine to ten thousand people, four to five
thousand cars in the parking lots, and four to six
thousand boats in the water. So packed, just packed. It's

(07:40):
like Jaws or something up in there, Amity Island, fourth
of July. Um, so the the the renee and and
Patty set up shop, put down their beach blanket. Uh,
just kind of close by to this teenage couple, um,
who are like their beach neighbors. You know, there's and
everyone was pretty close, kind of elbowed to jowl and

(08:04):
that what that's called. Okay, um, and this this teenage
couple kind of factor in big time, but just kind
of note their presence for now. That's right, So about noon, chuck, um, well,
actually the teenage couple factor and now they noticed that, um,
the three women were wading into the water about noon,

(08:25):
so I guess for about two hours they were just
kind of hanging out in the sun. They got hot
enough to go into the water about noon, that's right.
And that was the last time that this couple saw them.
Maybe perhaps Um the day went on, they never came back.
This teenage couple said that their stuff still lay in here. Um,

(08:48):
you know, they may be off party in somewhere, so
you know, they didn't think like, these three young ladies
are missing and perhaps murdered. I think they were worried
that their stuff might get stolen. I think it was
his innocent that the teenage couple. They were about to leave,
and they didn't want to just leave it there. They
felt kind of somehow responsible for it, like you will, yeah,
which is what you did in ninety six or today

(09:09):
still if you're a decent person, that's right. So they
went to a ranger and they said, hey, these uh
young women were here. They left their stuff. Um. The
ranger thought the same thing. He's like, well, let me
just take care of this stuff and collect it, uh,
and so it doesn't get stolen. They're probably off partying.
But that was the last that anyone saw these three
young women. Um, No one to this day knows what happened.

(09:33):
They vanished literally without a trace. Yeah, there's never been
any evidence of what happened to them, No trace of them, no, nothing, nothing.
From that point on, I think we should take an
earlier break because of that dumb long preamble. And this
is a great little spot for a cliffhanger. Okay, so

(09:53):
we'll be right back, okay, Chuck so Um. About eighteen

(10:23):
hours after that park ranger collected their things that I'd say,
around dusk, um, a call came into Indiana Doune State
Park Ranger station and it was from Harold blah Um
or Blow, Patty's father, and he wanted to know if
the rangers had seen his daughter because she had been
reported missing by her family back in Chicago, like you know,

(10:47):
a few hours before. Yeah. So they went through her stuff,
the rangers did. They found a set of car keys
that um had a little um miniature Illinois license plate
that matched a license play in the parking lot. Either
a great coincidence or you could get those custom made
at some little beach shop, which is probably what happened.

(11:08):
So they find her car. They found her Buick there
in the parking lot. Indiana State Police say, we're going
to take over here because it's pretty clear that this
is a missing person's case. Yeah, and so they it
was obvious that they had they had never left the park,
or at least they hadn't left, you know, in the car, right,
and they left their car, they left their stuff. That's

(11:32):
suddenly very highly suspicious. The idea that they were just
off partying is suddenly kind of a tenuous theory, you know, yeah,
like left all their stuff like purses and personal stuff.
We should we should talk a little bit about that.
They left, Yeah, money in their wallets, they left their
transistor radio, they left their magazines open, they left their
suntan lotion. They it seemed like the way they left

(11:54):
their stuff that they were planning on just getting into
the water and then coming back from the water. And
then that was that there didn't seem to be any
kind of um forethought to their stuff. And then the
fact that their car was still there and this was
a full day after they had last been seen, it

(12:15):
was suspicious. So the like, if they were going to party,
they would have said at least like, oh, let me
grab my purse. By now a night had come and gone,
and the next day it was already you know, halfway done,
and they there there was nothing that would be a
hell of a party. Yes, So um, people started to
get kind of worried and they started to search the

(12:36):
park and they couldn't find them anywhere. And that's when
the police became involved, when it was obvious that they
were no longer in this park, even though they didn't
seem to have left, which means they just kind of vanished. Yeah,
and they had a pretty big search party. Um. They
had soldiers volunteering from a missile base, they had obviously
the sheriff, had the Civil Air Patrol get involved. I

(12:59):
think ADDIE's dad was a see A pilot. He was
a colonel. He's a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol.
Coast Guard gets involved, dive teams, um airplanes, helicopters, sheriffs,
posse on horseback. Yeah, like they had people combing this area.
They went back to the nineteenth century to get people
to search. Uh. They searched about two d and fifty

(13:22):
cabins and the area. They had a dune buggy trolling
the seashore at night seeing if bodies were washing or
the lake shore bodies were washing ashore like it was.
It was a land, sea and air search of this area,
and it was a pretty extensive area. Um, But it
was a really extensive search. The big criticism that's leveled

(13:44):
today against the whole thing is that they're two full
days past before the search was mounted. This was ve
first forty eight. Anybody who's ever seen that show knows
like those are the most critical moments, are the most
critical hours and trying to solve a case we because
it gets colder and colder with every hour that passes.
So that was a big thing. And one of the

(14:06):
one of the most startling things about this case is
that search turned up nothing. Yeah, no evidence of what
happened to them at all. Yeah. The first little clue
that they found, um wasn't something they found while searching,
but inside Renee brules purse that she had left behind,

(14:26):
there was a letter that she had written to her
husband that was kind of like, I've had it with you.
All you do is work on your hot rods and
party with your friends, and I'm kind of done, hinting
that she wanted to leave the marriage. The cop you know,
obviously that's going to be a suspicious kind of thing
to find, say, go talk to the husband, and they
interviewed the husband and the family and everyone seemed to agree, like, hey,

(14:50):
things aren't perfect, but she probably wrote that letter when
she was really upset. She didn't give it to me. Um,
you know, I might work in my hot rods a
little too much, but I didn't kill my wife, and
our marriages is fine overall. And her then the cops
believed it her face well, her family backed that up
to everyone, we don't have marital troubles. This seems like

(15:10):
something Renee would have done, and then just forgotten she
even had the note. So the cups cleared her husband
of being involved in any wrongdoing. But it raised a
longstanding theory that's still around today that we'll talk about
theories later that um, possibly Renee ran off, and if
Renee ran off to kind of start a new life
or whatever, maybe the other women had to maybe maybe.

(15:33):
So another interesting thing they learned, uh Ann Miller was
by all accounts about three months pregnant and had talked
to her friends by some accounts not all Yeah, like
like her closest friends had had said she said she
was pregnant, right, But I don't think they had like
physical evidence of like a pregnancy test, right right. So um,

(15:54):
they said that she had friends said that she had
talked about having to go live in a home unwed mothers.
She was sort of up against the wall with this. Obviously,
in the mid sixties it was not a great thing
to be an unwed mother. Um. And it possibly we
don't know this either for sure, but she was dating

(16:16):
a married man and it could have been his baby,
which would have been problematic as well. Right, another good
reason to r U N N O f T. That's right,
I think. So now two of them have a motive
to to run off and start a new life. Yeah.
And we should also mention too that Patty was also
dating a married man supposedly. Um, and they both were

(16:39):
buddies from this horse stable. And it turns out there
was a real scumbag. I looked into this guy more
Silas Jane he Uh was a rapist. He was linked
to the murder of three boys. He was linked to
the murder of to the Grime sisters. He was looked
into for the disappearing and of some heiress in Chicago.

(17:02):
He had a hit put out on his brother. He
had a fire bomb planet and in this other woman's car, Like,
this is a bad, bad dude. And he had an
affiliation with this horse stable. Yeah, he his brother I
believe owned the horse stable and Si was like the
organized crime boss running the the criminal ring out of

(17:23):
the horse stable. And this was the stable that Anne
and Patty rode their horses at. I think Anne was
actually she had a job as a horse exerciser at
these stables. So they were like really involved in like
just rubbing elbows with these this organized crime ring. Um.
And so cops were like, well, wait a minute, this

(17:44):
is this is kind of huge, like you know, there's
as far as looking into their backgrounds, this was the
biggest red flag the cops had turned up that they
were they were known, not not that they were like
criminals themselves, but just that they were like they came
in close contact with a really dangerous, violent criminal and

(18:04):
his gang. Yeah. And one of the later theories was
that they witnessed the the rigging of the firebomb on
this car of this woman and you know they had
to be taken care of, but we'll get to the
theories later. Sure. So um, as they as they start,
these were like the leads that the investigation turned up.

(18:27):
But the cops also very wisely involved the media pretty
early on, and um, so other leads started to come in,
and you know, there's the usual like I saw him
in Pontiac, Michigan getting off of a bus, or they
were all in my drug store alive and well, you
know last week, um, even though they've been missing for
three weeks, that kind of thing. But there were some

(18:48):
solid leads that came in and one of the big
ones was a call from a couple from Indianapolis who
had been on the beach that day. And I think
this is the problem with this. There's so little writing
about this that you kind of have to piece together.
I'm pretty sure that this is the same teenage couple
that were their beach neighbors. I'm pretty sure they said

(19:11):
that they saw them go into the water at noon,
and while they were hanging out in the water, a
man probably in his early twenties with dark wavy hair
well tanned, came up in a try hold run about
ski boat, which is just stop and look up try
hole run about nineteen sixties and some will come up.

(19:32):
They're really cool looking like it looks like the boat
that Frank Sinatra would drive around on a lake. Um,
and it's the kind of lake that you would if
you were like an early twenties guy, pick up like
girls at the lake in it's just like a fun, cool,
zippy boat. Yes. And side note, if you are turned
on by those boats like I am, you can find

(19:53):
these things and buy them for like, yes, these old
fiberglass boats and engage in mecaphilia. You can't. You can't
buy the old wooden boats. You can, but not for bucks.
Those are really expensive. But the fiberglass ones you can
get for fairly cheap. Yeah. Well that's what this guy
is supposed to like restored and you know it's pretty cool.

(20:13):
Yeah are you gonna Are you saying that this is
what you're gonna do now? Uh No, I'm not saying that,
but I'm just I've looked into it because they're just
so like stylish and cool and they had like this
one was turquoise interior. They all have those, like the
sixties sort of colors and diamond dusted upholstery. Yeah. Yeah,
they're pretty sweet. Yeah. So yeah, this is a white

(20:34):
try hole runabout with turquoise interior and um that this
couple from Indianapolis who called in later said that they
saw the three women get on the boat with this
guy and drive off. Yeah, so that's a big one. Huge.
They also get another report from witnesses who said these

(20:56):
girls came back at some point, got something to eat, eat,
and we're hanging out on the beach. And then a
third lead that came in and said they actually got
on another boat, this big cabin cruiser. Uh. And this
was about three pm with three dudes and the boat
didn't have a name on it that we could discern.
So in that first week they get some boat wreckage. Uh.

(21:19):
It washes a shore, some styrofoams, some seats, an oil
can looked probably like a busted or wrecked boat. But
the police said, didn't listen, We've got two boats were
targeting here, and none of the stuff from this wreckage
or potential wreckage is from those boats. Yeah, they didn't.
They didn't think so at least. Yeah right, so, um,

(21:40):
but the weird thing about that boat wreckage is that
no boat was reported wreck that weekend on Lake Michigan,
certainly not in the area around Indiana Doune State Park.
That's a big one. And then Secondly, like you said,
it doesn't seem to match any any of the boats
that they were looking for. So if you step back
and take these leads all together, a timeline, a possible

(22:02):
timeline emerges where Um, Patty and and Renee waited out
into the water around noon, go on like a little
pleasure cruise on the little try hole, runabout uh shortly after,
come back to shore, go get something to eat, hang out,
and then at three go out in another boat, a
bigger boat which is possibly also manned by the same

(22:25):
guy who is in the try hall about with a
couple of his friends. And that boat definitely had the
name sanded off of it, which was a huge red flag. Exactly.
It's very fishy. They found sandpaper and red paint on
the beach that had been sanded off. So the cabin
cruiser seems to have been largely disincluded from suspicion by

(22:47):
the cops because from what I saw, the cops talk
to some guys, three guys in a cabin cruiser who
were there that day, who said we Um tried to
pick up some girls and they wouldn't go. One of
them said, I'm married, I can't go, and none of
them did could have been them maybe. Um. The other
thing that really kind of seemed to have dis included

(23:07):
the cabin cruiser was that someone was actually filming this
nineteen sixty six. They were filming home movies on the
beach that day. Yeah, that was inevitable, I think you
think so. Yeah, sure, I found it astounding. Really No, man,
that's where all those old great color Super eight films.
I bet there were ten of those cameras on the
beach then you're probably right now, and they were. This

(23:29):
guy was, you know, because he was filming the day.
He was doing a lot of panning back and forth,
which was very fortuitous because it kind of proved out
some of the stuff they saw. And of course this
is old film and it wasn't like zoomed in or anything.
But they did see what looked like, uh, these three
women on this little runabout Uh, just like everyone said.

(23:51):
So that was like a pretty good find. Yeah, the
cabin cruiser there like, it looks like there's three women
on there and they could be similar, but maybe they don't.
So so the seemed to have zeroed in on that.
The um the three women waited out into the water
around noon the guy came up in the Tryhole run
about shortly after they got on the Tryhole runabout, and

(24:13):
that was the last time anyone saw them. Yeah, and
apparently too, it wouldn't have been the weirdest thing in
nineteen six, like to go off with a stranger on
his boat. They the thing I read said that dudes
are always pulling up on their boat and like, hey ladies,
you know, let's take a ride. That sounds like the
fourth of July. It's fun, it's fun. It sounds like
the seventies. Yeah, maybe or the eighties. Right, what about

(24:36):
the no, not the nines? Not then people were not
voting in the nineties. Um, should we take another break?
Oh sure, all right, let's take another break. We'll talk
about the further investigations, right for this So it took

(25:17):
one more thing about the boat that we should say
is despite having eyewitnesses, despite having film seemingly show them
in this boat, nothing ever came of it. Yeah, and
the cops even put out the word. They were like,
surely someone knows this boat or this boat owner to
try haul turquoise interior. Not a crazy boat, but not

(25:38):
the most common thing in the world. Right, But they
never found it just kind of vanished along with the women. So, um,
mystery novels. That's pretty good, do you think so? Yeah? Thanks? Um.
So the weeks and months wore on, and as it did,
like there are fewer and fewer people actively looking for them.
As it happens, it just happens that way. But sadly,

(26:00):
Harold um blow Um kept this vigil basically for the
rest of his life. He just kept that stuff is
always just heartbreaking. Yeah. I don't know if he was
if he kept actively searching, but I know. Um. He
did some traveling even later on in life, to go
check out leads that he had heard about. He kept
in contact with cops and reporters who were working the case. Um,

(26:22):
and even afterward, after other groups stopped searching, he chartered
his own plane so that he could fly reconnaissance flights
looking for evidence all to nothing. Um. He never found
any any trace of his daughter or what happened, and
he he was convinced that all of them were dead
or they were being held against their will, right he was.

(26:45):
He was like my daughter, you know, he said, we're
not overbearing parents. He's like, she's got all the freedom
in the world. Do what she wants, she wouldn't have
to run away. Um, because like we're the coolest basically. Um.
There was a psyche that got in touch. And this
is pretty interesting. A psychic said, I visualize a cabin
on Lake Michigan, not too far from the beach, blanket

(27:09):
with dark colored sand, a rickety rickety wooden stairs up
from the beach. The cabins on a bluff, and it
has a lawn chair outside with its bottom out. One
of the cops investigated, drove as far as he could drive,
then did some hiking and found a cabin that met
this exact description, right down to the chair with the
bottom rotted out. And this was nine years later. Yeah,

(27:32):
I mean, you hear stuff like that, you're like, man,
you know, I don't believe in psychics calling the cops
with clues being super accurate. But it turns out there
was no body there because she said to dig, and
they dug for three days and found nothing. But unless
it was a prank, it was a weirdly eerily accurate description. Yeah. Yeah,

(27:54):
But I mean, if you have an old, abandoned cottage,
there like a fifty chances be a lawnchair with the
bottom rusted out. That's my theory. Maybe it could be coincidence.
I'm with you, though, it is pretty interesting at the
very least. So the case remains open. And again, not
a hint, not a trace, nothing has ever surfaced, metaphorically

(28:21):
or literally that suggests what happened to those three women,
And so theories have been allowed to to kind of
grow and take different shape and be argued over. And
there's like, um, a handful. Most of them are fairly sensible. Actually,
some are kind of pedestrian, some are kind of sensational.

(28:41):
But because no evidence has ever come forward, um, the
like each one is just about as likely as the other. Yeah,
and well, um, I think we should mention before we
do that that that drowning Miller and Blou were both
really good swimmers, yeah, like super good. Yeah, and I
think that's supposed to be minutes right, surely not Miles.

(29:04):
I saw Miles really yeah. Let me let me look.
You do some tap dancing. That's like serious elite athlete
endurance swimming. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Miles. I'm looking,
I'm looking. I don't want to get to nitpicky, but well,
if they were swimming thirty miles and they were international
champion athletes, so regardless, they probably did not drown. It

(29:27):
is possible that the boat crashed and they did drown
and washed up somewhere because you know, Lake Michigan is huge,
forty miles of shoreline. Um, it is the deadliest of
the Great Lakes. But it's uh, it's possible that they
washed up somewhere and didn't you know, weren't ever found. Yeah,
because remember that that search didn't start for two full

(29:49):
days after they were um noticed to be missing. Right,
So that's one of the more mundane theories. It gets
a little more sensational when you look at Wiley's theory, right.
Dick Wiley was a crime reporter who, um, basically I
guess he reported on the case almost from the outset

(30:10):
and really stuck with it for years and years and years,
and he developed a theory that Ann Miller being pregnant.
It was Anne who was pregnant, right, that am Miller
had gone out there with her girlfriends that day because
she was she planned on getting an illegal underground abortion. Um.

(30:31):
It's very not believable to me. So, yeah, a lot
of a lot of people don't believe it, but because
so little has been written about this case and this
guy is one of the kind of authorities on it,
there's there is some credence to it. Not that she
would have gone to get an underground abortion, but that
that would be performed on a boat. That's the big, huge,

(30:54):
one of the huge flaws in that just seems weird.
It's what, I can't imagine a more terrible place to
perform a delicate procedure like an abortion on a house boat.
Four chan. Well that's another thing too, is okay? So
so what what Wiley's theory is is that um and
went out there to get this abortion, and UM, Patty

(31:15):
and Renee went there is moral support, UM and they
went out and met this guy who took them to
the house boat for the abortion to be performed. Well,
the abortion was botched, killing Ann and the abortionists said, well,
we've got to kill you two now as well, and
they got rid of all three bodies. And that's what
happened to them. That make a heck of a movie.

(31:37):
A lot of There are a lot of holes in
this theory, including the fact that why would you perform
an abortion on a house boat? Um? But there is
some things that kind of give it a little bit
of credence. In particular, there was a couple named the
largos Um What what was it? I always want to
call her Wanda, but it wasn't. Was it Helen? Yeah,

(31:58):
it is Helen actually Um Frank and Helen Largo they
actually did have an underground abortion clinic in Um nineteen
sixty six and Gary, Indiana, which was very close to
the state park. And their nephew, Ralph bore a striking
resemblance to the description of the man in his early
twenties who came up in the the try hole runabout right.

(32:21):
And I think Ralph is verified as being there that
day as well so, and he lived with Frank and
Helen Largo. So the Wiley's theory that like this guy
came up and got them to take them to go
get this procedure done. Um again, why would you do
it on a houseboat when your clinic is twenty miles away?

(32:42):
And then secondly, why would you set up this kind
of highly illegal procedure in front of that many witnesses?
And then thirdly, why would they leave their stuff on
the beach the way that they did if they knew
they were going for this appointment. Yeah, none. This theory
is bonkers, so we'll discard Wiley's theory. Yeah. The other one,

(33:04):
obviously was the uh Silas Jane, the criminal dude from
the Stables. People say that they think that they may
have witnessed the car bombing of Cheryl Lynn Rude and
that he was just getting rid of them and snuffing
them out. There is every reason to believe that this
guy would have done that looking at his history if

(33:26):
they did possibly witness this rigging of a car bomb.
He also had a an associate who supposedly bore a
resemblance to the man in the tri hole. Yeah, run
about tan wavy hair yea early twenties um and I
saw this and I could not verify it elsewhere. But
there's a widespread rumor that are an unsubstantiated claim that

(33:52):
that associate to Sigh Jane Silas Jane Um put in
an insurance claim for a boat that had gone down
around that time. Interesting, which would definitely account for things.
It would also account for why there was no boat
reported missing. You wouldn't report about missing if you used
it to cover up a triple homicide. Yeah, because that's
the biggest thing to me is, uh, if there were

(34:15):
other people on this boat and it was an accident,
someone would have said, hey, my dark haired, wavy haired
son is missing and he has this boat. And there
were no missing person from those three. Yeah. And what's more,
even if like that guy was just a total loner
who had no friends or family, somebody would say, a
boat like that probably would have been towed by car

(34:37):
and trailer, and that car and trailer would have just
been left there. Over time, somebody would have noticed that
there's this abandoned car and trailer hanging out the parking
lot at the state park. Nothing like that ever turned up. Yeah.
The other theory in regards to Silas Jane is that
these young women did witness this car bombing and knew
that they needed to disappear before they were disappeared on purpose.

(35:01):
So this is they like faked their own disappearance. And
that's Patty blows brother's theory. Yeah. Yeah, he showed up
on a forum called Webb Sleuths and apparently he's verified.
He's like, yes, I'm her brother, and he said that
he thinks that they did go to stage the disappearance,
but that the guy who was going to help them
was actually in the employee of Silas Jane, and this

(35:24):
helping them disappear actually turned into this triple murder, and
that their bodies were disposed of. That's what her brother thinks.
And that the one um who wasn't one of the stable,
uh yeah, that she was just there to help them disappear.
I don't get caught up in this. I don't know,
because like, why would she have gone out? I don't know,

(35:44):
I mean bad marriage, who knows. Maybe it's a little thin,
but I think it makes sense for his sister the
other two, it doesn't necessarily make as much sense for
maybe for Anne if she saw, if she was in
danger as well. I don't know. I think the most
likely thing it's it's like the Peter is it Peter Principal? No,
the ocams razor? Is it the trolley problem Akam's razor?

(36:08):
Is that they've drowned. I mean, that's possible. But here's
the thing, Like Lot in Lake Michigan's the deadliest great
lake of all of them, all five, I think it
accounts for out of all five, it accounts for half
of the deaths in any given year. UM. But most
bodies do turn up. Most bodies are recovered. So if

(36:28):
three of them or four, or however many people were
on that boat that bow down, you'd think some trace
of at least one of them would have eventually turned up,
you know. Um, it's a true mystery. It's also possible
that they were taken away by somebody. They weren't planning
on disappearing, They weren't planning on leaving. Um, they just

(36:49):
went on a pleasure cruise with the wrong person who
murdered them. Um. If a guy got three women out
on a boat and got it out into the middle
of nowhere on this enormous lake, and then pulled a
gun on him, Um, like you could. You could one
person could conceivably stay in control of three under a
situation like that. Um. And that's that's a sadly enough,

(37:12):
that's a real possibility that that was their fate. They
just went with the wrong person. That seems unlikely to
me too, that like a serial killer just picked up
three women. Here's the thing. There's one serial killer in
particular that some people really like for this. His name
is Richard Spec. So Richard Spec is actually not a
serial killer, is a mass murderer because he killed eight

(37:33):
women at a nursing college in one night, which makes
him a mass murderer, not a serial killer. He did
that on July thirteenth, nine sixty six, in Chicago. On
July second, nineteen sixty six, he was dropped off at
a dock about twenty miles away from Indiana Dunes State Park.

(37:55):
He was not tan with dark wavy hair, though that
is very true. He was a real cre though he
was a super big creep. Um had a terrible personality,
not a charmer, not good looking. To the idea that
he could get three like women into a boat of
his is kind of unlikely. Also, he was well known
as a very sloppy, opportunistic killer. And that this if

(38:18):
they were killed by somebody, this seems to have been planned.
The fact that their body has never turned up suggests
that who if they were killed by somebody, they would
have had to a plan to have killed them, because
they would have had to have brought along all the
weights needed. And yet stuff whatever it is like, any
one of those theories is just as likely as the others.

(38:39):
Good stuff, sad, tragic, but I love a good mystery. Well,
if you want to know more about Um, the disappearance
of Patricia Blau and Miller and Renee Brule. You can
go read the Chicago Tribune article on it, the Northwest
Indiana Times article, web Sleuse, and the Charlie Project. All
those are great resources on this case. And since I

(39:00):
said that it's time for a listener mail, Hey guys,
I'm writing to say thank you. Um You see, I
recently divorced and I spent about half the time I
used to spend with my three young kids. She goes,
stay with me. I'm not going anywhere depressing. She said.
The divorce was the right move, and we're co parenting

(39:21):
quite amicably, and it's all good. I've got a full
life in meaningful relationships and lots to do at a time.
But the quiet of um my day at times when
it is a kid free house is something that's gotten
some getting used to. I realized without even thinking about it,
that have taken to playing old episodes like Bizarre Ways

(39:42):
to Die. It's an oldie, it's a real oldie. She's like,
just because they make me feel in a totally well
adjusted and not insane way, like I'm in the company
of pals. I've been a listener for about five years.
Only recently have I come to appreciate that I'm always
cheered up and made you feel less lonely by hearing
you guys talk to each other and to all of
us in podcast listener land. So thanks for what you do,

(40:04):
Thanks to the team who helps you, Like Jerry Uh,
you could do a good thing for a lot of people,
and I appreciate it. Big hugs from Catherine in Chicago, Chicago,
how appropriate. Thanks a lot, Katherine, We really appreciate that.
It's good to hear. Keep on keeping on, keep on trucking. Uh.
If you want to get in touch of this, like

(40:24):
Katherine did to let us know how you're doing, we
want to hear that. You can go on to um
Stuff you Should Know dot com, check out our social links,
and you can send us an email to stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more
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(40:47):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.