314. The Trap She Never Saw Coming - The Murder of Bonnie Woodward

This is a music for your ears. The video is also released on Wednesday with Shopify, which can be used to a real help. Start your tests today for one of your promo. On Shopify.de/recorder. You're listening to an "Ono Media Podcast". Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with my husband, I'm P.E. Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Happy Monday. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. I guess that's it, right? Listening watching, I thought we got. We don't really have any announcements this week, so I think I'm going to get right into my 10 seconds.

“And if you want to skip it, you can skip it. It won't be too long, but we had take days to the vet. It was pretty scary and we thought she was dying.”

He's alive and she's well, and we're still trying to figure out what's going on, so we need to make a vet appointment to, I don't know, like, dig for the further into what's happening with her. A quick little summary is that I was in the room. Daisy came running in and she was, um, what we've now figured out is like a form of inward sneezing. Like she was inward sneezing, but it sounded like she was gasping for air. We thought she was choking on something. We weren't sure what was happening. We took her to the vet and it was kind of getting worse and worse.

And we took her to the ER. Yeah, sorry. We took her to the 24 hour ER. It was late at night. We didn't get home to like 1 AM, but she was doing things. She's never done me for us. She was like, "Pong at her face. Pong at her ears. She was doing the inward sneezing. I would, I don't even know how to mimic it. It was crazy." And she was in distress. She was freaking out, completely discerning. Her body was shaking. I think she might have been having an allergic reaction to something.

At first we thought she was choking because it's like, it's like, it's like, yeah, over and over again.

Don't reply that. Which I guess it is a form of them trying to like clear their airways. Yeah, it was, it took her to the ER. We had them do a bunch of different tests. They didn't. They honestly didn't know what was going on either. Which didn't make me feel great. Other than I look back, I'm like, how did... Yeah, they were kind of just like, "Well, she's, she's breathing now." I'm like, "Okay. I'm being so am I, but..."

But then we took her home and in the next night it happened. And again, no, happening again at 8 p.m. and then again at 3 a.m. The same exact thing. And this is what's so sad. It's like, it's not like she's just doing this. Like, she's so clearly in distress. She's waking us up. Yeah, she doesn't. She doesn't do this normally. Because it's something she would just wake us up and cry.

And when she came, she was sitting in the living room alone and when she came running into gear at the first time, she had her tail in between her legs.

And she was freaking out. Yeah, it's more the way she's acting than... Yeah, and then when it happened again, she was super itchy this time. She was clearly uncomfortable, not happy. It took about two hours for it to go away. And then when it happened to get at 3 a.m. it took about 30 minutes.

“And then it hasn't happened since. So it happened for two days hasn't happened again. The only thing we can assume is it wasn't allergic reaction.”

And she's okay right now. Anyways, these live, we're figuring it out that went around too much, but it was pretty scary. So that's what I got from my 10 seconds. So I have my hair. I haven't buzzed it yet. Right, it's crazy. I got this hair transplant because I like my hair a lot. And I was losing it really fast. And it made a huge difference. Crazy. For those who don't know, I got a hair transplant.

For those who might be new to the podcast, the hair lines crisp, even amazing.

I recommend it. If you want to get a hair transplant, go for it. Don't see why not. But yeah, but now I'm at the point where I like I have a lot of hair and I want to buzz it just because it's getting hot. Also, if you're watching, that's his natural. His hair naturally goes like that. My hair naturally just puffs up like this too. It's crazy.

“Sometimes we've had a couple of comments of people being like, why is he doing his hair like that? That's how he wakes up.”

That's how his hair naturally sits. He has no product in it. Yeah, I get it. I literally get out of bed. And my hair like, what hair just looks like this. I don't know. I don't know. What can I do? Anyways.

That's it. I'm rambling about today. We have a case for you guys. So we're going to hop right into today's case. Our sources for this episode are abcnews.go.com, the telegraph.com, good morning America.com, KSDK.com, my journal, courier.com, box2now.com, medium.com, the cinema. on the cinemaholyck.com, union bulletin.com, Belleville News, Democrat, pod.wave.co, abc.com, and I'll court's audio. We say that we would do anything for the ones that we love, whether that's a pet, a partner, a child.

Now luckily, most of us have never had to test the limits of what that really means.

“But when you're in a situation where someone or something you love is in danger, I think most of us would find that we're capable of a lot more.”

Then we ever thought possible, because there's just something instinctual, even primal inside each of us. Something that takes over when a loved one is threatened. So today, I want you to ask yourself, how far would you go to save a loved one that might be in danger? Would you walk straight into the lion's den into the hands of another predator? And would you be willing to risk your own life to save someone that you love?

I, there's a good question. Because I feel like I feel like I do some crazy shit. I feel like I'd be nuts, you know? Like John Wick, like I'd be nuts. But maybe not.

I don't know.

“Anyways, let us know what you were doing in on Instagram or somewhere.”

Today, I want to take you to a little town located on the Mississippi and Illinois River. A place with a lot of history and a vibrant social scene called Altan, Illinois. And it is here in 2010 that a 47-year-old grandmother named Bonnie Woodward is quietly living out her life.

Now, Bonnie's had quite the story so far to the year 2010, she has two grown children from her first marriage, Joseph and Jennifer,

and Jennifer actually still lives with Bonnie with her two little girls. Bonnie is also the mom to two stepkids from her third marriage. And those stepkids are 17-year-old Heather and her brother Aaron, who is living with a disability. And plus, Bonnie herself is a breast cancer survivor. So, just to recap, it is 2010, 47-year-old Bonnie is living in Illinois.

And she has a lot of people living in her home with her, her daughter, Jennifer, and her two little kids, and then also her two stepchildren, 17-year-old Heather and her brother Aaron. Bonnie is pretty used to putting her own needs aside and being the caretaker, because she came from a family of nine siblings.

So, she always knew what it meant to rely on herself.

But that also taught Bonnie how to stand out. Those who knew her said she had a huge larger-than-life personality that her house was the place the extended family always congregated, that she loved to host, she loved to nurture, which makes even more sense when you hear what Bonnie did for a living. She had worked for the past 27 years as an aid at a nursing home in town. So, both her professional and her personal life was all about taking care of other people.

And luckily, she did have one person that she could lean on in times of need at this point,

“and that was her live-in boyfriend Gary Wilmouth, which was important,”

because things weren't all smooth sailing in their pretty packed home. So, this sort of piece together family had been struggling with how to manage the 17-year-old who lived with them, Heather. See, Heather's dad, this is Bonnie's third husband. Had passed away suddenly back in July of 2000 when Heather was just eight years old, so by that point, Heather wasn't in touch with her biological mother, so for most of her life, Bonnie had played that role.

And she actually adopted Heather and her brother, Erin, not long after their father, her third husband passed away. But those who knew the family said Bonnie treated Erin and Heather no different than her own two kids. She worked hard to give them the same opportunities, the same life,

But, like any teenager, Heather at 17 had been unhappy living in this packed house for some time.

“She had run away from home on a couple of occasions, she always came back, at least until around June 10, 2010.”

It was this time, after another argument, that Heather stormed out of Bonnie's house and said, "She was going to stay with a teacher, a woman named Christine Sheffel." And by June 25, Heather still had not come home, so she left on June 10. 15 days later, she still had not come home, and this was very clearly wearing on Bonnie. Still, she put on a brave face, she continued to go to work to care for her patients,

and then that Friday afternoon on the 25th, Bonnie had a staff meeting from two to three PM,

then she was planning to leave right after her to head home for the weekend.

So she punched out around 3 PM that day, and co-workers saw her go to the parking lot to her red Chevy avalanche. Now, usually from there, Bonnie was home around 330. But that day, the clock kept ticking.

“Again, 17-year-old Heather has run away, she's been gone for 15 days.”

Bonnie is at work, and in the time from getting in her car to being home by 330, more and more time is passing, and she's not showing up. And so her boyfriend who lives at the house, Gary, is starting to get worried. And by 4 PM, he begins trying Bonnie's cell phone. But his calls are going right to voicemail, which is more than enough to set off alarm bells for Gary,

because not only is Bonnie the kind of person who does everything on a schedule, since she has Erin, she would absolutely let someone know if she was running late, or wasn't going to be able to make it home to take care of him. That alone is enough to say that this just random disappearing is very uncharacteristic of her.

“So the rest of the day and into the night, Gary is calling around a people to ask if anyone has seen Bonnie.”

And when she still isn't home, the following morning, Gary calls work to see if she showed up for her shift. Her coworkers are like, no, she's not here. We haven't heard from her, but also her car, her red car, is still in the parking lot at work. So this is when Gary goes to the police to report Bonnie missing, which means from walking out of work to getting into her car. She somehow disappeared.

Oh my god. Now when police show up to Bonnie's workplace on June 26th, they obviously immediately search her car and find a few strange things. For starters, it hasn't been moved from its parking spot that it was initially parked in yesterday, but now the windows are rolled down and the car is unlocked. So it's almost like Bonnie or someone got in and back out after she left work.

So someone has been in this car since she walked out of work. So to the family, this feels like a bad sign because if Bonnie had just run away or needed a break, there's no way she's just going to leave her truck behind. She loved the car and had worked hard to buy it. She wasn't just going to leave it. But after looking closer at the truck, police don't find anything suspicious.

There is no damage to the vehicle. There's no evidence of a struggle having occurred inside. However, they do notice her paycheck is still sitting on the seat. This is the one that she had received the day before.

And her family said the first thing Bonnie always did when she got her paycheck was just take it right to the bank and deposit it.

Yet there it is. So this is when the police decide to look a little closer at Bonnie's digital footprint. And they find there has been no online activity from her. There's no bank withdrawals or deposits. No use of our cell phone since the day before.

And unfortunately, there's also no security footage of the parking lot to show where Bonnie might have gone after she walked out of work. But luckily, there are a few eyewitnesses that spotted something interesting. When police are talking to Bonnie's coworkers, one of them a woman named Wanda Bossley says, "She saw Bonnie during her two-pm meeting and to her something about Bonnie was definitely off."

She was quiet internalizing. Something was clearly bothering her.

“But then Wanda also went to the parking lot around the same time Bonnie did.”

And she said, "When she was in the parking lot, she saw Bonnie standing behind her red truck, talking with someone." Was a guy maybe in his forties?

Once she had never seen before.

She says he was maybe five eight or five nine. He was white. He had a medium build with salt and pepper hair. Wanda wasn't the only one who saw this guy lurking in the parking lot though. Other co-workers said, "Actually, I saw a man in his silver sedan, like a Chevy Malibu,

waiting in the parking lot during the staff meeting." A few of them said, "They also saw Bonnie in him talking afterwards." And then, other co-workers say, "No, we didn't only see her talking to this guy. We actually saw her willingly get into his car and the two of them drove away." I feel like I used to trust eyewitnesses a lot.

No, I don't. You know what I'm saying?

I mean, they aren't the most reliable.

“Like we've come to realize eyewitnesses are great, but they mess up a lot.”

I do think there are a lot of eyewitnesses in this case. Versus one. Like a one-off or something. Dripping into an ad and it is a rocket money. I have been using it for years.

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So naturally, the first place investigator's start is with those close to Bonnie,

which in this case happens to be her boyfriend Gary. They need to figure out who's this mysterious guy. What was going on in Bonnie's life? How why would she disappear? The two Gary and Bonnie have been in a relationship on and off for about seven years by this point.

And they also learn that Gary has a bit of a rap sheet. He's a convicted felon. He's had some domestic issues in the past. But Gary says Bonnie knew all about his checkered history. It didn't bother her the two were on good terms.

So the police have him take a polygraph and he passes it with no problem. Plus, he obviously doesn't fit the description witnesses gave about the guy that Bonnie was last seen talking to in the parking lot. So they do move on from Gary pretty quickly. And eventually, they start looking into Bonnie's exes. And they discover a former boyfriend named Chester McAdams.

Now, Chester's father owns a 2009 Chevy in Paula, which could be confused for a Malibu, which according to eyewitnesses is the car. The mystery man was driving so. Okay. Police are kind of leaning into this. They also discover he has his own criminal history.

Apparently Bonnie had seen Chester during one of those off periods with Gary. And at one point, the two guys had some heated exchanges. Actually, once or twice over Bonnie. So investigators start to think, is it possible that Chester was jealous that Bonnie had picked Gary and he wanted Bonnie back in his life. So he kidnapped her, maybe she even ran away with him willingly.

So police look Chester up and they find that he also doesn't match the description. The eyewitnesses gave Chester has a ponytail and a beard. The guy they described was kind of clean.

He fully cooperates with them.

“He also says, I, okay, I don't have that car.”

That's my father's car and I don't drive its car.

Like he would never let me borrow his car.

So they check out his alibi and sure enough. His boss says he was at work during the time Bonnie disappeared. Which means now both Gary and Chester were two like recent love interest. Yeah, the main suspects are cleared of suspicion. But there's one thing that sets off alarm bells, which I've already informed you guys of.

And it's the fact that Bonnie is not the only person who's technically missing from her household recently. They still have 17 year old Heather, who ran away from home, who is still at my age. Now, Bonnie's family had actually filed a missing person's report to a different police station about a week earlier. Just saying like she said she ran away to her teacher's house. Like she willingly left, but we haven't seen her and now we're going to file a report.

And so when police respond to Bonnie's missing person's report, they're like, "Wait, what are the chances that not one but two people in the last week have been reported missing from the same like household?" Yeah.

“Mom and her stepchild that she's adopted.”

So the police seem to think this isn't really a coincidence.

The investigators on Bonnie's case start comparing notes with the investigators working Heather's case. And they find that as her family had said, Heather's last known location was at her teacher, Christine Sheffield's home. Which is why police then pay Christine a visit. So they've now almost merged these two investigations. Yeah.

They're looking for Bonnie, but now they're also interested in finding Heather. When they get there, they realize Heather is no longer there. Her teacher Christine says Heather stayed with her starting on the 10th, the night she ran away. But she actually left on the 17th and she didn't know where the teenager was headed. Christine also tells the police the reason that she even helped Heather out,

because like why would a teenager run away to a teacher's house? According to Christine, she tells police that according to Heather, she had been suffering a lot of abuse at home. Heather told Christine and other teachers that she would be slapped or thrown against a wall or woken up in the middle of the night to do chores.

Heather apparently called Christine around the 10th to say she was being kicked out of her house and had nowhere else to go. But around the 16th, Bonnie called Christine and said, "Hey, Heather said she was going to your house and she needs to come home." So Bonnie had talked to the teacher and then the teacher Christine told Heather,

“"Hey, you need to go home. Like your mom called, you need to go home."”

Just kind of weird that both the mom and daughter are missing. Like it's obviously tied to someone that knows them. Why are you looking at me like that? I'm not looking at you like anything. Okay, you go.

Apparently when Christine told Heather to, she spent the night crying and then when Christine left to do something the next morning on the 17th, she returned to find that Heather had just left her house and Christine assumed okay. She just went back to Bonnie's because that's what I told her to do the night before. But now we know she didn't go back to Bonnie's and no one knows where she is.

That was when Bonnie filed a missing person's report. Heather had been missing ever since and then Bonnie disappears. The freak, okay. So now Bonnie's disappeared. This is where a police have caught up to in the investigation.

But then eight days after Bonnie's disappearance, there is a wild turn in this case. On July 3rd, 2010, police get a phone call from a local library. They say they have a woman there who says her name is Heather Woodward and she'd been reported missing.

So police stripes the library. I'm so confused. Pick her up, bring her into the station for questioning. There's nothing clearly visible on Heather that would be of concern. She doesn't look bruised or injured or even unkempt for that matter.

She just turned herself in after being missing. And when officers are like, what's your birthday? She's like, it's today.

I'm 18, which is why she claims she finally came forward to put this missing person's case to rest.

Because now she legally doesn't have to go back to Bonnie's house if she doesn't want to. She's 18. She's got an adult. Okay. But she doesn't want there to be a missing person's case on her.

So she's turned herself in and said, hey, I'm fine. I'm good. Take me off the list. Okay. But I do have to say her behaviors a little weird in this interview.

She's not really acting like an 18 year old.

Oh, wait.

Are you saying older or younger?

Younger. Because hear me out.

“During this interview, she is holding a teddy bear.”

Like clutching it and she's acting more like a little girl. Like the thing she's saying. Quote. I'm tired. I'm ready for my nap.

I want my daddy. Does she look like an 18 year old? Yes. Yes. And so closer a little weird because she's coming and being like, I'm 18.

I don't need to go home. But then she's also acting really young like in an odd way. Yeah. And so this is when they're like, yeah, Heather, okay, like you don't have to go home technically you're 18. But we need to talk to you about Bonnie because she's been like she's missing.

No one knows where she is. And we need to know if you know where your step mom is. But Heather doesn't act that alarmed. That her stepmother's missing. She says she has no idea what happened to her.

But she's just guessing that maybe Bonnie went into hiding to try and draw her out. She's like, maybe my mom wanted me to come home. And so she went missing and hopes that that would bring me forward. Look for her. Yeah.

“When when police ask her about the situation at home with Bonnie, they're like, okay, well, you know, how was it at home with Bonnie?”

She doesn't mention anything about abuse like she's told her teachers. She just tells police that she ran away from home because she was forced into doing free labor like chores and babysitting the types of things most teenagers do around the house. So now the police are realizing, okay, we think Heather lied to her teachers. We don't think she was abused. We think she's acting young on purpose.

We think she's being manipulated. Like police decide this or like me think that this is all enact. Especially after they find a report from the department of children and family services that said they had been called to Bonnie's home regarding Heather in the past. They found claims of abuse to be totally unfounded. And eventually they ask her, okay, you left.

You went to your teacher's house. Where did you go after that? Because it's still been a while. And Heather says, oh, I went to a friend's house, but she doesn't want to get them in trouble. She claims that the person she was with doesn't like Bonnie and that it's all her fault that Bonnie went missing.

Now, finally after a bit of more pressure from the police, Heather gives them a name.

Well, actually three people's name. So this whole thing like Heather is just a mess. Police are like, what? I'm just confused. He's going on here.

Yeah.

“So either way, Heather ends up telling police, here's three names you need to know.”

A 16 year old boy named Nathan Carroll and his parents, Monica in Roger. She says this is where I was. They don't like my mom and they probably had something to do with her disappear. Why did she come back? Like, why?

Why come back? I mean, you input like they're just like this is so odd. She says she came back because she didn't want to have a missing person's report on her when she was fine. Okay. So obviously, police are like, okay, Heather.

And they begin looking into the 16 year old Nathan Carroll and his parents. They find that his parents both Monica and Roger were in the medical field. They went to the same church as the woodwards. They did somehow know Bonnie. They had no criminal history, no records of police involvement.

And to detectives, this seems like they were really just opening up their doors to Heather, who also told them stories about being abused at Bonnie's house. So police decide to pay Roger and Monica a little visit. They go to this giant 60 acre property near Jerseyville, Illinois.

And when they get there, one of the first things they realize is Roger, the dad sort of bits the description of the man.

The eyewitnesses say Bonnie was talking to in the parking lot today. She went missing. He's in his 40s. He has brownish gray hair. He's clean cut.

He's about five foot 10. And he drives silver, 2005. Interesting. Chevrolet Malibu. Which it would also make sense why she got in his car willingly.

Because if he's like, hey, you're runaway daughter is at my house. Then he then she would get in. So police are like, okay, we thought Heather was just a little kuku, but maybe she was onto something. Like, she knew more than she was, she was just being weird about it. But it does sound like, not that she's kuku, but she's lied about all this abuse.

Yes. But they were just confused about Heather. They were confused about Heather, but now they're like, I'm there understanding what's happened. Yeah, they're like, okay, wait, Heather clearly knew more. She was hinting that these people might know something.

She clearly knew they knew something. Also, I'm just confused how do.

Right. I hurt them. Like that also is that's. That's pretty outlandish.

“Again, going back to the fact that police barely quickly decided that Heather was pretty manipulative.”

That a lot of her behavior was manipulative that day. I'm curious to see where this goes. Like, if she told them, my mom's hurting me, my mom's a bad person. You know, like, I, it'll be interesting. So that day, police show up. They're like, hey, you know, we have Heather.

She came in. She's like, she's been staying with you. She also said you might have something to do with her mom. Bonnie's disappearance. We need to take your car in for evidence. And not only that, they sit down and talk to the car rolls.

And they're pretty cooperative with the investigation. But they say that while they were helping Heather escape, what they thought was an abusive household,

they claim they never actually met Bonnie.

They just knew of Bonnie. Okay. So after this brief discussion with the car rolls, the police do some more digging. And they learn, ah, there is more to the story here. Heather didn't just stay with the family while she was waiting for her 18th birthday.

So she could cancel her missing persons report. She went on vacation with them four days before Bonnie's disappearance. This family, plus Heather took a trip to Goreville, Illinois to the car rolls Lake House. So the next day, police call Heather back in for round two.

And they're like, hey, we found out that you didn't tell us, but you went like, you left the city. And you went to their Lake House for vacation. What happened there? And Heather offers something useful.

She admits, yeah, I did go with them, but says on the day Bonnie disappeared, Nathan, the 16 year old, and Roger his dad left the Lake House to go home early. They left at 7 a.m. that morning because, quote, Roger just wanted to go home and he wanted Nathan to go with him.

“Now police are starting to think, okay, did they go to this Lake House plan this out?”

And then Nathan and Roger go home and lure Bonnie away from the parking lot with a promise of delivering Heather. Did they ask for money? Was it a bribe? If Roger and Bonnie didn't really know each other, why would she've just gone into his car?

Unless she was promised, she would finally be reunited with her missing daughter.

Police decide to strategize using this. They think they're in the right direction. They're just really confused. Like they have all the puzzle pieces. They just don't know how to fit them together. They don't have enough evidence to suspect Roger or his family did anything to Bonnie. But they can arrest Roger and Monica for harboring a teenage runaway, which they do.

And this allows them to get fingerprints and photographs put them in a line-up. And meanwhile, Roger and Monica both plead not guilty to the charges. Still, police start passing Roger and Monica's mugshots around Bonnie's workplace. Unfortunately, none of her co-workers ID either of them as a match for who Bonnie was talking to. Oh, interesting. Okay.

Not concretely at least. However, in September, the Prince from Bonnie's truck come back from the parking lot.

“And guess whose prints are on the truck that was left in the parking lot at work?”

Yeah, I mean, you have the father Roger Carroll. So it turns out he definitely knew Bonnie and if he didn't know her, he touched her truck. But still Roger denies it repeatedly. He's like, "No, I have no idea how my fingerprints could have got there.

I'm probably being framed." Oh. But now the police are more suspicious of him than ever.

And he has to say this because remember, they told police they'd never met Bonn.

They'd never seen her in person. They'd never had me contact with her. Oh, yes, they had to deny everything then. So when police are like, "Well, your fingerprints are on her truck. He then has to deny it or change his story."

So, police are suspicious and they get a warrant to search the 60-acre property. But what I wanted to do was not to get the most of the students. The master of the truck has left Topucha soft behind the internet. It's like a master. I mean, they can say that they're in the back.

Yeah, you're in the middle of the street, huh? But they don't believe you. Egal, it's just a challenge. Make the whole thing like this. And if they work, the house is closed.

That's it? Safe, like this. It's a story. Now, equipped with a huge team, including cadaver dogs and helicopters, police execute that warrant that same September.

Because again, they're pretty sure they're on the right track. They find about 30 guns in the home along with 200 rounds of ammunition. And while the cadaver dogs do hit on a few areas of the property, after digging those areas up, they don't find anything. In fact, they conduct a couple searches of the property that fall,

and it leads them nowhere.

Shockingly, though, they don't find anything proving Bonnie ever sat inside. No fibers, no DNA, no fingerprints. The car is actually immaculate. So at that point, detectives are kind of reaching a stalemate. They're pretty sure Bonnie has been killed.

There's been no activity on any of her counts.

She would never leave her family like that, so unexpectedly.

But they don't have a body. They can't prove it. They think they have the right family or people. But there's zero evidence to show that Bonnie ever went to the carols property, let alone gotten Rogers' car, even though his fingerprints were on her truck.

“So right now, the only thing they have is Rogers' prints on Bonnie's car.”

And if you other just strange random things, Heather told the police. Which is hard, because it doesn't mean you've killed someone. Is it extremely weird? Yes. And should you be convicted of killing someone?

Is there enough evidence? Probably not. Probably not. I don't know. So as police are still talking to Heather,

“she's just like dropping information here and there.”

That's not really tied to anything specifically, but when you put it all together, just is a little confusing. She says that when she ran away to stay with them, Roger the dad wouldn't let her use bones or computers or anything.

In fact, she said she couldn't make contact with anyone outside the house, while she stayed with them. And that she wasn't allowed to tell the police. She had been staying with them on their property,

which is why it took her so long to say it during her first interrogation,

but she obviously did tell them. This is certainly alarming, again, not enough for an arrest warrant, so eventually police move on. And then five years later in 2015, the charges against Monica for harboring a runaway are dropped.

Roger's charges remain, and Bonnie's missing person case runs cold. Then, 2018, eight years after Bonnie's disappearance, a domestic dispute, herns this case on its head. By this point, Monica and Roger are no longer a united front. Rogers been cheating on Monica, frankly she's had enough. Here we go. And divorced to her, she figures, he won't be shocked once she finally serves him papers. Turns out she's wrong. On March 2nd of 2018, Monica's getting ready for work. When Roger corners her in the laundry room of their home. He grabs her by the hair, starts dragging her around the house, hitting her with a taser gun.

Oh my gosh. Monica starts screaming for Nathan, who's no longer a 16 year old kid. He's now 25, but still lives with them. Except Nathan's already left for work, so Monica's alone with Roger and she's on her own. Now apparently this wasn't out of the blue Monica claims she'd been afraid of Roger for some time. She'd been sleeping in a separate bedroom, putting a dresser in front of the door at night. But this, this confrontation was next level. Monica tries to talk Roger down from this bit of rage, hoping she can rationalize with him, but he tells her, he's not the same person he was. He's a lot of anger, he can no longer control, he's a monster, the devil is living inside of me.

At some point, according to Monica, she says, he says to her quote, "I have killed for you." Now the second Monica is out of the house. She rushes to her car, she drives to the courthouse to get a restraining order, but this makes its way to the police. So obviously the police are like, "Wait, these two suspects in this cold case, that we were pretty sure we had the right people, but we can never put anything together, nothing made sense." Now hate each other. Now she's filing a restraining order against him, so police find out that she had also said that he had killed for her during this dispute and they're like, "Wait. He's in our suspect list, and he's telling his wife while beating her that he's killed for her."

So they're starting to be like, "Wait, is this tied to our case?"

“Also, well, I'm just curious where this goes because what does killing someone else's mom have to do with killing for her?”

Right. So after this incident, Monica knows that she has to tell police everything she can about her husband. Like, she's now turned fully against her husband, so she's going to talk to police.

And while she says that, you know, her and Bonnie, or Bonnie and Roger, never had a close connection that she's aware of, there were a few things that stood out to her.

Keep in mind, this is her story. She claims her husband, Roger, had taken a weird interest in Bonnie's day-to-day life before she disappeared. He had asked Heather, who was staying with them, about where she worked, what her schedule was like, what days of the week she was there.

Yeah, so they go to find him after this dispute, and they discover him with a bag of syringes and insulin.

He claims he's trying to die by suicide because he quote, "her is wife bad."

“Police are like, okay, calm down. Yes, there's been a domestic dispute. Yes, your wife is talking to police, but you need to put the things down. He is arrested on charges of domestic abuse.”

But now, prosecutors, when all of this comes to a head, they're determined to get Roger on first-degree murder charges too, because now that they have Monica in their back pocket saying, no, he was being weird. He was talking about Bonnie. He was doing all of this. They think that they can get him for this. So on March 29, 2018, a grand jury hearing takes place, and the star witness is someone the prosecution made a deal with, a promise of immunity in return for their confession. And the one person who according to Monica and Heather, as remember, a long time ago, Heather told police, I was with Monica at the layhouse when Bonnie disappeared, who went home though, Roger and their 16-year-old son at the time, Nathan.

“So police decide to give Nathan immunity in return for his testimony against his father, Roger, who they are claiming killed Bonnie Woodward.”

It's just so hard. There's no body. They haven't found anything. So this is Nathan's story, which I mean, he is a huge part of this. This is what he tells the court. On the morning of June 25, 2010, Roger told Nathan, they were leaving early from the layhouse, leaving the girls there, to head to the nursing home where Bonnie worked. When Nathan asked Roger why, he told Nathan she was, quote, a bad person, she was mean and aggressive and abusive, and she needed to go away and never come back. Nathan says he also explicitly told him he was going to kill her.

So it just fills out of the blue, and even when they're like, what's the motive here, Nathan? He's like, I don't know, she said that she was a bad person. So he says when they get back to town, they scooped out the nursing home, Roger drove Nathan home to their house near Jerseyville, grabbed a gun and went back to the nursing home. So now Nathan's like, yeah, I was home. Later that afternoon, Nathan remembered hearing eight or nine gun shots in the yard, and when he went outside, he claims he saw his dad Roger standing next to Heather's mother, Bonnie, who was now shot to death.

Roger told Nathan that he used Heather as bait to get Bonnie to come with him from work, because what mother wouldn't take the opportunity to rescue their runaway daughter if they could. And unfortunately, Bonnie never got the chance to even see or say goodbye to Heather, because Heather and Monica, at this point, are still back at the layhouse.

“Roger moved Bonnie's remains under a pile of brush, he lit it on fire, and meanwhile Nathan wasn't structured to keep raking the calls to make sure the body was fully burned.”

See the next week, Nathan claims he would come outside every couple of hours to stoke the fire and make sure nothing was left of her body. He says after this, they disposed of any remaining ashes in the creek, and then Nathan was ordered to mow the lawn where the blood had pooled from Bonnie's bullet wounds.

You can't imagine having an experience that at 16, 17 years old.

And now she also just doesn't have a mom anymore. What is happening? Nathan said after that day, he wasn't encouraged to forget about Bonnie, and this is weird. He said his father talked to him every night about it for years. Oh, my, he's nuts. So following nuts, the grand jury hearing authorities returned to the Carroll's 68-year property once more, that April Nathan led to him to the exact spots the crime occurred. He took them to the place Bonnie was shot where her body was burned, where her ashes were dumped, and through that process police found 27 pieces of human bone fragments along with shell casings from a nine millimeter revolver.

This is the same gun Nathan told the court his father had used to kill Bonnie. Wow.

So again, this is just like the creature like this is the grand jury, and so Roger is now charged with first degree murder.

The case against him was bolstered even further when the DNA testing on those bone fragments found on his property came back 25 of them were proven to belong to Bonnie.

Yeah, I think that he wanted to kill someone, and when Heather came to them, this was the perfect excuse.

“He was going to look like the hero for rescuing a teenage girl. He's a household.”

Annie gets to kill someone. He seems like from the way it's described to be the leader of this house, which is very ironic because he's also abusive himself. Right, so you killed someone for supposedly being abusive. So by the time Roger's trial came around in March of 2020, Heather and Monica had also made a deal with authorities. Neither one of them were facing charges due to their willingness to cooperate with the investigation. Monica testified against her husband at trial and talked about his abuse towards her, his obsession with tracking Bonnie back in 2010 before the murder, and how she did see the fire and the cleanup after the murder.

So. Yeah, I mean, it's a little suspect, right? Like that's, I mean, it's a little suspicious. I mean, this is why she's not, this is why she's even getting. If you're innocent, you don't need anything in exchange for testifying. Yeah, it's a little hard because there's a.

Very good chance that she knew exactly what was happening and just turned a blind eye. Even if it didn't come out of her house, I can say that I can say that it's.

We'll never know and allegedly because yeah.

She was never tried for anything but it just seemed a little sourced to me. And interesting enough at testimony when Monica's testifying against Roger. She also mentions how Roger and Heather. Bonnie's stepdaughter, 17 year old daughter who was staying with them after running away. Took a long walk together just the two of them.

The day before he left the lake house to kill Bonnie. So Monica's like, yeah, he went and killed her mom. But the day before that, my husband and this 17 year old girl went for really long walk together.

“I think she's implying at trial that Heather was told during that walk before this happened.”

That he was going to kill Bonnie and safer. That's what Monica's implying at trial. This is nuts. Also, a lot of, I just, I'm trying to think about the daughter psyche, the son psyche. Like there's just so much involved that I don't know what to really think.

Between the witness testimony, the physical evidence found at the scene and a forensic wood anatomy expert who confirmed there was a significant fire on the property back in May or June of 2010.

There was more than enough for jurors to deliberate on and they found Roger Carroll guilty of first-degree murder.

Yeah. I mean, obviously. That October 2020, Roger was sentenced to 40 years for first-degree murder and 25 years for gun enhancement and connection to the murder. Yeah.

During that hearing, Bonnie's son offered up these words, quote.

“My mother was a good hearted, dedicated mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, friend, and coworker.”

Since Roger Carroll senselessly took her from our family, she's missed the birth of two grandchildren countless holidays, birth days homecoming, my discharge from the army and my wedding. I was unable to dance with my mother at my reception. And now, because Roger Carroll destroyed my mother's remains in an attempt to avoid prosecution,

he's also robbed us of the ability to properly lay her to rest. Roger Carroll doesn't deserve to spend one more day enjoying the freedom I defended while in the army. Good point. 100%. But as everyone is currently screaming and as I can tell it's bothering Garrett,

there's one part about this case that's probably eating us away. Yeah, and I feel like it's just... There's motive. You're just, oh, I was thinking something else. What were you thinking?

Like the daughter. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Like I'm just... Anyways, you can go, maybe I'll address somebody. Is there manipulation there?

Yeah, like what's happening, what's going on? I... And it's hard because she's young and she still has a life, so I don't want to call her out of... The police didn't address anything and they moved on past it.

Yeah. I mean, she was... Like, what's going on? Here's the thing. Sometimes we have cases that are just so...

Open and shut, you have all the evidence. The motive makes perfect sense. I don't mean that. And it makes sense. But at least to us, we can like apply a motive that we can somewhat understand.

You can put a bow on it. They go to prison, blight, blight, blight, blight. In this case, we have the people. We have the answers of what happened.

We have the bow on the case of him going to prison and serving time.

But the thing we don't have is like... The main thing people listen to true crime for, which is why. Why do people do this?

“Why would he do this if he didn't even know Bonnie?”

Why would you kill someone? And sometimes that happens in true crime cases where the motive truly is bewildering. And it's going to leave you unsatisfied because you're like, what? Yeah.

Why would this happen? What is the motive?

Now, all of the sources I read have inferred the same thing about Roger.

He was told by Heather that Bonnie was mean, aggressive, and abusive. And he decided to kill Bonnie to protect Heather and his own family. But I can't help but wonder if there's more to the story here, which is where Garrett stepping in. Is Heather that convincing?

She got people.

“She just barely met to fall in love with her and kill for her.”

It's none of it makes sense. She also liked her teacher. I also hard to bring it up because I know she was a minor during this. And it's like, though I want to open that case.

If the police never even opened that can of worms,

maybe it just wasn't, it didn't matter. And maybe they went over it and didn't. Well, here's the thing. The state doesn't really have to prove a motive. They just have to prove that someone killed someone.

And that's all they were going for, which I get. But which they did. But we believe no one in their right mind would meet someone. And then go randomly kill someone for that person days after meeting them. Correct.

I mean, yeah, you could say that, but also the burden nots. And we're just up happened. So maybe he did just want to kill somebody. That is kind of the feeling I'm getting from all the sources. Everything is that he was aggressive.

He was dominant. He had a god complex and wanted to kill someone. He wanted to kill someone. So when Heather came in and he felt like, oh, I can kill someone. Which I wanted to do, but also claim myself to be the hero and protecting everyone.

It's probably what happened. Yeah. Nots. Dad, very sad. The son doesn't have a mom.

The daughter doesn't have a mom. That's horrible. And again, anyone else has involved me in this case is alleged. Besides Nathan, who admitted to helping at 16. Which is also why I'm just not going to dress it because it sounds like they have a figure out.

I mean, yeah, I mean, they put away the person who holds the trigger. That's mine. Alright, you guys, that is our episode for this week. And we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

I hate it. Goodbye. Welcome to National Park After Dark, where your host, Cassie and Danielle, Join us every Monday as we visit a new park through stories of true crime, animal attacks,

“fatal accidents, miraculous survivors, and other incredible tales that you need to hear to believe.”

Our hope is that by sharing inspiring tales in our passion for protecting our planet's wild places, inspires you to explore them yourselves. Find us on your favorite podcasting streaming platforms, watch us on YouTube and follow our adventures on all socials at National Park after dark. And remember to enjoy the view, but watch your back.