I was trying to determine what she had on, you know, clothing, and he got a real quiet and whispered and he said, Red and Blood. Chills up and down my spine because I thought, Wow, this kid saw this. A little boy witnessed something terrifying, the night his mother vanished. It just was ripping my heart, it was so traumatized.
Everybody's life changed that night, everybody's dead. What had happened to his mom? I'd still wake up in the middle of the night. Pong it for more than two decades, he would make a chilling discovery that would unlock this mystery.
Now you know the whole story? Yes, sir. It's just so unbelievable. I knew he was telling his mom's story.
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. She'd been gone from his life, unaccounted for for more than 20 years.
His mother bought it. It was odd to be the one to be the one that found it. You should spend a lot of your life looking for it, right? Yes, sir.
Hello. There's a poignant video of the mother and child's last Christmas morning together, December 1992. The boy, Aaron, was three and a half. You've seen maybe some home movies and some old pictures.
Yeah, recently I've seen some Christmas video. You love it? Yeah. Yeah, it didn't trigger any memory.
No memory goes with it. Yes, sir. Can't remember so much as a touch or the sound of a voice. Okay.
But this story is all about memories, memories lost, memories later testified to. Had the child, now a grown man, really seen something as terrible as all that. This is a boy's story like few others. We're back in time to January 1993 in Jacksonville, Florida.
It's just after the holidays, and there's an argument going on inside that modest starter home on Dolphin Avenue. The young wife, just 23, is restless, the story goes, and she walks out the door. The phone rang early the next morning in the bedroom of Eband and Bernie Haym across town. A funny question at that hour, did they know where Bonnie was the wife of their nephew, Mike?
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. The maintenance man had come upon the purse in a dumpster behind the airport motel, inside where Bonnie's ID, keys, credit cards, and more than $1,000 in cash.
Bernie and Eband got to the motel just after 8 a.m. Mike was already there. By the time we got there, Mike and his dad, John, were in a room, and the detectives were there, and they had her purse on the bed, and they had everything laid out. Mike, the husband, seemed perplexed by the amount of cash on the bed.
He's like, what in the hell is she doing with all this money? Given a lot of money like that, not taken, robbery was quickly ruled out. And I requested him to bring another dumpster right now, because we thought maybe Bonnie was in the dumpster where they found a purse. So you're thinking foul play at this point?
I'm knowing foul play. A woman separated from her purse is a very bad sign. So we're sitting there crying, hoping they don't bring out a body out of the dumpster. But there was nobody, and no sign of Bonnie's car either.
Police handed Bonnie's purse to Mike, and advised him it would be best if he'd just went home. The police told him, go home, sit by the phone, wait for a call from her, or a ransom call, an accident call, or whatever it might be. homicide detective Robbie Henson came on duty later that day at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. He was assigned the missing person case that would change his life.
You go back out to this airport, Montel? Yes, we did. We spent quite some time out there, came us in the rooms and got the register and saw who was out there and interviewed people, interviewed the security guard. And there were stories circulating about strangely acting men, right?
Yes. Even that, right? Yeah, even then. A security guard told the detective, a man standing earlier on the second floor balcony, seemed to be overly interested in the activity below of the dumpster.
But he checked out before Detective Henson could talk to him. The same security guard also remembered seeing a woman fitting Bonnie's description, going into one of those second floor rooms. The detective wondered where was the woman's car. That was still out there.
Yeah, the car was still missing. The airport was nearby, so Henson cruised the parking lots there. It would be a logical place to hide a car. Bingo, there was Bonnie's Toyota Camry.
Maybe she caught a plan, right? It was a theory, how a frustrated wife and mother had taken a time out for herself. Detective Henson pursued that theory, but struck out. There was no indication of her being on any of the manifests on any of the departing flights.
That's where the road runs out, huh? Until the next day, after they process a car, they find a shoe print. A large man's shoe print on the driver's side floor, fresh and very sandy with a trademark from a sneaker. Who's sneaker?
Well, investigators did their thing, and Ivan made a public appeal for help. And if anyone has seen her, or can shed any light on the story, just please, please let us know something. And soon, on the 11 o'clock news, Jacksonville was introduced to husband Mike and little Aaron. The search for his missing mother was growing more feverish by the minute.
What had happened to Bonnie? When we come back, I'm looking for a crime scene, and there was nothing there. A secret encounter with another man, and a marriage on the rocks. Well, he said this is that I'm leaving.
There is no way she would have walked out the door, and left Aaron. The old Snapchat show a curly haired young mother and an adoring boy with a beetle cut. Who knew that video under the Christmas tree would be their last. She didn't have much time left on the tree.
She didn't know how much time. Only had a couple more weeks to hold her son. Bonnie, her sister's Liz, Veronica and Michelle told us, had married her high school study Mike Hain. Back then, they thought she'd done okay for herself.
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. From high school graduation ceremonies, direct to the altar, 18 years old.
Patty Pacito is Bonnie's mother. Were you surprised when she told you they're getting married? I've been very young. No, I was not surprised, and she seemed very happy, so I wasn't surprised.
Happy or still, with the arrival of Aaron two years later. She was happy for that. That's what she wanted. She likes being a mom.
Moms. Moms being a mom. Everything circled around Aaron. Bonnie and Mike in their twenties both worked for a construction supply company.
Mike's uncle Bernie was the owner. He was my brother's son. Mike was the manager of the company. Bonnie wore two hats.
She did the books, and with her knack for computers, she was the IT person as well. All the employees just loved her. Any man you got to be pretty good friends with. Yes.
Our relationship just grew over the years, working together. Good mother, good employee. No known enemies, which made her sudden disappearance all the more mysterious. Her abandoned person car had investigators following theories of foul play.
Detective Henson went to the couple's home. I'm looking for a crime scene. I'm looking for spatter. We're looming all the house.
I was looking at everything I could look at. And there was nothing there. Nothing in the backyard either. So police launched a massive search.
Helicopter scoured the wooded areas near the motel. Family members searched it as well. Everyone came up empty handed. Mike said he wouldn't stop searching.
Just having gave an up. The family had given up. You look at the money. Parents and in-laws.
Bonnie's father offered a $2,000 reward for information on his daughter. Meanwhile, detectives began their routine victimology investigation. Taking the question, is there something in my victim's background or life choices that explain why she's gone? Early on, they learned Bonnie had a brief affair.
He had to check him out. Yes, he came down to the office we interviewed him. He told detectives it was a one-time, one-night stand. He was very cooperative.
He agreed to take a polygraph. And he passed a polygraph? And of course, as they always do, the detective had to take a hard look at the husband Mike. He told police Bonnie left the house around 11 p.m.
and didn't come back. 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. It wasn't. And just why had Bonnie left?
There was an argument she allegedly, according to him, had stormed out. And he volunteered all that. And now nobody could find her. Investigators heard from friends and family that Bonnie was unhappy in her marriage.
And by Christmas time, just two weeks before she disappeared, Bonnie told her sister it was all over. Bonnie and I were shopping together, and she said, this is Adam leaving. Bonnie told her sister she put a deposit on an apartment and found a new school for Erin. Now family members were wondering if Bonnie broke the news to Mike the night she disappeared.
Even said she and Bonnie had planned to get together that night. But instead, Bonnie had called her crying. They said, Mike and I are having a discussion, and I'm just going to stay home. I said, do you want me to come out there, Bonnie?
She goes, no, I'll be fine. That was the last time anyone on the outside had spoken to her. And there was growing suspicion that Mike had done something to Bonnie. He was always your primary person.
I tried to stay neutral at the very beginning, but there were just too many things that were just screaming at me. Among those things was that shoe print found on the mat of Bonnie's car. When the CSI text entered Bonnie and Mike's house, the first thing they spotted were shoes. Size 10 sneakers.
That matched the print. Many sister 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 Erin. There is no way she would have walked out the door and left Erin behind with him.
And then there was an interview Mike did on TV the night after Bonnie disappeared. His matter-of-fact manner left many viewers baffled. Nicely she just wasn't happy and she wanted to leave and couldn't always stop her from leaving. But Detective Hinson was more focused on the smiling boy on the couch next to Mike.
Little Erin. I wanted the child, interview. The child? Yeah, I wanted Erin.
Yes, I wanted them interviewed. And what a horrifying story the boy would tell. Coming up. I was trying to determine what she had on, you know, clothing.
And he got real quiet and whispered. Mommy was wearing blood. Wow. Chills up and down my spine.
When Dateline continues. The police had only the husband's story about what happened tonight. His wife Bonnie Haim supposedly walked out the door or was there another witness. Detective Hinson began wondering what the three-and-a-half-year-old boy Erin might remember.
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 me. She's a sensitive kind of interview.
How'd you find a person to do it? I was really fortunate to have Brenda be the one to do it. Brenda was Brenda Metters with a state's child protection team. A social worker who interviewed dozens of kids, Erin would be the child she'd never forget.
He had this bowl cut that went all the way around his eyes and he had these big, big eyes. Bonnie's mother, Patty, and Mike's Aunt Ivan, sat in that day to make Erin more comfortable. His mother had gone missing just 48 hours before. Did you know much in advance?
The only thing I really knew was that the mother had disappeared, that they suspected foul play. He was traumatized. I could tell. Maybe a minute later, Erin began opening up and the story he told was alarming.
Erin 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. And he got real quiet and whispered and he said, read. And I remember. Mommy was wearing blood.
Wow. Chills up and down my spine because I thought, wow, this kid saw this. Did you believe him or do you think he was reciting a movie he'd seen or something? I knew.
I could tell from the way he delivered it all that it was, what he had seen. It was just, you know, I've interviewed, I'm sorry, I've interviewed lots of kids. But this was like, I knew such a huge moment and it was always like when he would talk about these things he would whisper when he was talking about the things that were so horrible that he'd seen. Is there any doubt in your mind that he saw his father shoot his mother?
No. And I said, you can take it to the bank. He took it is literally true. Oh, yeah.
Statement that he gave. I tell people all the time, I'd say you to believe him or you don't. And that would be the question to tear apart Bonnie's family. Believe the boy or not, some relatives like Mike's own aunt and uncle were persuaded by the child.
You're enough, he was a killer? I'm no for sure. He did Bonnie. He killed Bonnie.
All evidence was there. But Mike also had two unlikely defenders, Bonnie's mother and father. 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.
He actually tells a social worker, daddy shot Mommy. Oh, no. And I saw blood on her middle section. I don't think he ever made the statement.
Aaron's statement wasn't recorded, wasn't required back then. More than anything else, Patty said she just didn't think Mike was capable of hurting her daughter. Detective Robbie Henson knew he couldn't make an arrest based on the statement of a three and a half year old child. It was a circumstantial case with a classic stumbling block.
There was no proof Bonnie was even dead. And nobody, nobody, no case. The case would remain a mystery, haunting both the detective and the little boy. Coming up.
Mike, my dad to kill other people. Little Aaron was not done talking, not by a long shot. Young Aaron Hay told a horrific story of watching his father shoot his mother. But a three and a half year old eyewitness wasn't enough for Detective Robbie Henson to make an arrest.
You work real hard and you get nowhere. And still, it's just a person's case. We don't have a lie. But Henson and the child protection team still felt that Aaron might be in danger because of what he said he witnessed.
The state removed Aaron from his father's custody and sent him to live with his aunt Liz. Mike was allowed to see his son twice a week. Aaron said those visits took a toll. He would start pounding the floor and I would always have to scoop him up and hold him as he just fell apart, every visitation.
The stress added up for Liz too affecting her family and her health. One solution was to put Aaron in a foster home where Mike wouldn't be allowed to visit. The best place for him to be was in foster care so we could discontinue the visitation and maybe start moving Aaron into a healing cycle. And lifted something else.
She successfully petitioned the court to have Aaron declared a protected witness. And that's what we call it was Aaron's protective custody now. Aaron now five years old went to live with foster parents Ronnie Frazier and his wife Jean. I never wanted to take Monty's place at all.
That would not be the right thing to do. I just wanted him to have the best likely good. In the beginning, all Jean Frazier really knew about Aaron was that his mother was missing. About six months after he moved in, the boy began dropping hints that he knew something more about his mother's fate, something sinister.
He started talking occasionally about his dad shooting his mom. It went on this way for a few months, glimmers of information than Aaron backing off. Over time, that changed. 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. Foster Mom Jean wrote it all down in a notebook and shared it with the mental health professionals caring for Aaron. In one session, Jean on the right, listened as then six-year-old Aaron spoke with his social worker. Aaron's psychologist taped it.
Well, I'm wondering, since you obviously are such smart kids. Can you read this? I do not want my dad to kill other people. Very good meeting, and now, me either.
Then Aaron asked his social worker to read what he said. My dad killed my mom. Then he threw the pocketbook away in a different place, somewhere near our house in a dumpster. He buried my mom.
We digged it the whole. You know, Aaron, that's a really important way to have that sort of a bad one, too. I'm sorry that you have to have that memory. He knew exactly what had happened, and he just couldn't find her.
When Aaron seemed determined to try, he would periodically ask Jean to take him out to search for Bonnie. On one such trip, Jean remembered something eerie that the child did before they left her house. He 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.
Like, silly. You know, because he knew that she was buried, he just didn't know where. And Aaron did the same thing with Detective Hinson as well. He said, I want to search for my mom, and so we would put him in a car seat and off we'd go.
Hinson, too, thought the body might be buried, but he and Aaron never did find anything. His investigation grew colder, even as his relationship with a boy grew stronger, and the freshers for their part did everything they could to give Aaron a normal life, the chance to be a kid again. He was into racing bicycles, he had motorcycles, he had baseball, he took karate, and the most fun he had was fishing. He was a great fisherman.
Today, Aaron is grateful for the family who embraced him. Tell me about the freshers. How did your life change once they came into your life? 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. If I needed something, they were always there. Aaron lives remained devoted to Aaron and shared his gratitude toward the freshers.
They have been fantastic. That was the best thing that happened to Aaron. By 1999, Aaron now 10 had been living with the freshers for six years, and the couple wanted to adopt him. He bonded with them and they're amazing, so why would we pull him away or make something not permanent?
To make that happen, Liz went to court and had her sister declared legally dead. Mike's parental rights were also revoked. Aaron Haim became Aaron Frazier, but Liz wasn't through with Mike just yet. She sued him on behalf of Aaron for the wrongful death of Bonnie.
He didn't even show up for court. In 2005, a judge ruled in favor of Aaron and Liz. They won, and won big. They ended up being a $26 million reward, of course.
Which was fantasy money. Oh yeah, fantasy money is not real, because Mike didn't have $26 million. By then, Mike had moved to North Carolina and remarried. But he did still own shares in Uncle Bernie's company and the key to the old house on Dolphin Avenue.
At age 16, Aaron got the shares and became the owner of the house. Growing up under the loving care of the freshers, Aaron thrived. He graduated from high school and married his wife, Alyssen. I don't think you realized how much you meant to me through the years.
And Detective Robbie Henson remained close by, just in case he needed it. And so I just told him, I said, if 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. Little did he know, a call one Sunday afternoon from Aaron would turn this whole case upside down.
Coming up, the chilling discovery that will change everything. We'll 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.
I just pulled to the side of the road. Sorry. I saw Daddy hurt. That's not an active memory for you.
No, sir. 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. Was that kind of out of body hearing all this stuff come into this thing about what three and a half year old you said? 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. 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? About four and a half, five years old is my earliest memory. I can remember coming to the Frasiers, my adoptive parents.
But even with the Frasiers, he doesn't remember everything. Like those stories told of him searching for his mother. When you were out with the Frasiers, do you remember asking if we could bring a shovel along? No, I don't have an active memory.
That's not a true memory for you. Yes, sir. Aaron also remembered nothing about the house he lived in on Dolphin Avenue. He became the owner after the wrongful death suit.
I didn't really want anything to do with the house. I didn't have any desire to have it. I was, you know, a tough spot about my life. Renters lived there until 2014.
When they moved out, Aaron realized the house was a wreck. As do-it-yourself repairs started inside, but in the backyard, he found the swimming pool and an outdoor shower were also in shells. It needed to be completely redundant, it was going to be an expensive project. Aaron decided to fill in the pool and remove the shower.
He and his brother-in-law Thad rented a small excavator one weekend and the two of them went at it. At Sunday, a snafoo, they broke a pipe near the outdoor shower and had to find the leak, so they grabbed their shells. We started 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. Why would somebody bury a coconut in a bag right here? It wasn't. A coconut.
I picked it up. Immediately, I didn't know what it was. I hinted at Thad. He was looking at it.
We looked back in the hole and we could see some teeth. Teeth, teeth. We could see your teeth. And then at that point in time, you could see the top portion of her eye socket on the skull and everything kind of clicked and we stopped what we were doing.
It was a horrifying discovery. Aaron, like Hamlet, was holding a skull. He believed it was his mother's. How do you enjoy that?
Yeah. I mean, it was just what was happening. It was odd to be the one that found her. Aaron immediately called Jean Frazier who was in church.
I saw a missed call from him, so I called him back and he said, what's the detective for all these phone numbers? And I said, why? He said, I found her. I found my mom.
I get on the phone with Jean and she said, well, we need you now. We need you right now. I thought something might have happened to her family. And she says, we found a body in the backyard.
I said, what backyard? And she says, on Dolphin Avenue now. And I said, what are you talking about? And so I'm arguing with her because I had searched that area.
As he raced to the house, Hinton called a friend in the sheriff's department to go to the scene. He called me back. And he goes, no, it's a human skull. And I just pulled to the side of the road to try to compose.
Excuse me, try to compose myself like I am now. Hinton was retired by then, but when he arrived to the house, he faced a fact every detective dreads haunted by the search not made. And I knew when I got there I had missed her, which is a hard thing is an interesting stuff for that. I'm not so much beating myself up.
It's just I would have much rather found her than have him find her. Now, all these years later, Dolphin Avenue was a crime scene. It's a possible break in a cold case that disappearance of this young mother more than two decades ago. That search turned up much more than just Bonnie's skull.
There were her disintegrating bones, her ring, the acrylic fingernail she wore, even her pants all found in the dirt beneath the shower. Four months later, DNA testing confirmed the remains wore bodies. And the medical examiner ruled Bonnie's death a homicide. In August of 2015, Mike Hane was charged with second-degree murder and taken into custody in North Carolina.
He was taken anything from Jacksonville that would come back to you. Mike wouldn't face a jury for another four years, and the case was far from a sure thing. There was little forensic evidence, and the state's key witness, Aaron, had no memory of the crime that he could testify to. What it means to everybody is that you could argue that you solved your own mother's murder.
Yes, sir. Not a detective, not an investigator, just by the happenstance of this day. In his own quiet, unassuming way, Aaron just not. The question, a painful one.
Now he would book another case against his father, what he found as an adult, what he witnessed as a child. Coming up. I called my mom. You see him trying to hold back the anguish.
The show down. 26 years in the making. Did you, in fact, harm your wife? Absolutely not.
Would the jury believe father or son? More than two decades after Bonnie Hane disappeared, five years after her son unearthed her remains. Are you responsible for the death of a wife? Bonnie's husband, Mike, went on trial for her death, charged with second-degree murder and pleading inoculation.
Upon conviction, he was facing up to life in prison. While forensic evidence was lacking, prosecutors Alan Mizrahi and Mac Hevener said there was one overwhelming fact, circumstantial though it might be. A buried wife in your own backyard is a pretty hard piece of evidence for any defendant to overcome. He believed it had an eyewitness to the alleged murder, little Aaron Hane, but he couldn't remember that awful event.
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. Did Aaron indicate that his mother had been hurt? Yes he did. And did he identify who did that to his mother?
Yes he did. And who did he say? His daddy. His father.
You guys had a good day on the stand without testimony. Oh yeah. That was a win. That was a win.
I was a win. 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. Tell the jury what you found next. I was digging the hole.
Sitting just a few feet away, the defense table was Mike, his biological father. I picked up the coconut object and it ended up being the top portion of her skull. So once you start seeing that it's human remains, what do you do? We set the top portion of the skull back in.
In the hole, and I called my mom, what I refer to as my mom, Gene Frasier. Aaron's not the kind of person that shows emotion. You see him trying to hold back the anguish that trauma. The defense did not cross-examine Aaron, but it challenged the meaning of a rendered veteran's testimony about Danny hurting mommy.
Now you never determined as to what he was talking about, tie-wise. I did ask was it during the daytime or night time and he said nighttime. Okay, but you didn't try to establish whether it was yesterday or a year ago? No, not due to his age.
Janice Warren was one of Mike's attorneys. 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 it killed her. The defense reminded the jury there was no forensic evidence linking Mike to his wife's dad. His attorneys say it was a bad police investigation, overly focused on the husband and one that ignored critical evidence. For example, there was this letter received by authorities in 1996.
Three years after she went missing, an anonymous letter was sent saying the body is buried in the backyard. So as a result of that anonymous letter, do they come back again? No, they don't. And that is the problem.
Attorney Tom Fallis suggested maybe that letter was sent by the real killer. 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. Yeah. The last witness called by the defense was to everyone's surprise Mike Haim himself.
After 26 years in the Bonnie Haim case, it would truly boil down to jurors believing either father or son. And she left. Composed and speaking in a monodone, Mike described his wife's state of mind the night she disappeared and told the same story he told all along that Bonnie walked out of it. She had been unhappy for 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 or bubbly self like she was at one time. I was wanting to try to find out what was making her so unhappy. Mike said he told Bonnie he was so concerned about her state of mind that he'd spoken to her mother. I don't think she appreciated me calling and getting her mother involved in our relationship.
After 11, he says Bonnie grabbed her keys and drove off. Where did you think she was going? I didn't know. I thought she might have went to her mom's house to ask her about our conversations.
But by 3 I am and she didn't return, Mike says he went to look for her. He drove to her mother's house, didn't see her car, so he says he drove around a while longer, then returned home. I was very upset because I didn't know really what to do. The final question from defense attorney Tom Vallis was one Mike had to address.
You've been hearing a lot of people who point their finger at you, literally calling you a murderer. Yes, right? Basically, everybody wants to know, did you in fact harm your wife? Absolutely not.
I loved my wife and I would never hurt my wife. Prosecutor Alan Mizrahi, as expected, didn't buy anything Mike said. Why he asked, didn't Mike call Bonnie's mother at 3 a.m. when she hadn't returned?
I called her the next day. The next day after her purse was in a dumpster, right? Yeah. Okay.
They didn't alarm me until they called me with a purse. It did alarm you because at 3 a.m. you're driving around the city, allegedly looking for. That is correct.
Isn't it true, Mr. You weren't looking for her. You were dumping the car at the airport. Isn't that true?
Absolutely not. The trial was brief, just four days. Deliberations brief as well. In less than two hours, a verdict was announced.
I gave the jury a valid advantage guilty of murder in the second degree. Guilty, and that wasn't all. The jury also found that Mike killed his wife in front of their three and a half-year-old boy. The crime was committed in the presence of a victim's standing member, two-way person on hearing.
And that finding exposed Mike to a harsher sentence, life in prison. After decades waiting for this verdict, there was relief tempered with sadness. It was a little bit hollow, you know, hearing the guilty because I was expecting like, oh, I'm going to be elated, you know, and just be like, yes. And that's not what I felt like.
I still just wanted to collapse. And it was still empty because she's still not here. Mike was sentenced to life in prison. And even after that verdict, Bonnie's family remained split.
Her mom still thinks Mike is innocent, but she does share the family's grief. One of you, Mr. the most. Her other children that she may have had, I just, I don't have the words to express the timest.
After the trial, Bonnie's sisters organized a celebration of her life in a garden dedicated to her. Tomorrow is a 15th birthday. Friends, family, and prosecutors gathered, as well as Aaron, who despite having no memory of what he witnessed, in the end, prevailed. 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?
Yeah, I think, I mean, God had a, God had a plan that this is what he wanted. You know, I was, I was ready to do it. To be able to find her after all these years. You know, I think God had his hands on it.
He wouldn't, he wouldn't let all this happen for no reason. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.
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