Good Cop/Bad Cop: Solving the Murder of Heather Bogle

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0:47Sandusky County is the kind of place where you would want to raise your kids. It's very warm. It's very welcoming. It's very rural. My name is Chris Hilton. I am the sheriff of Sandusky County in northwest Ohio. This is not the kind of place where a crime like this occurs. It's the place that something like this is a shock. In April of 2015, Heather Bogle went to work at the Whirlpool Corporation located in Clyde, Ohio. My name is Sean O 'Connell. I was the lead investigator of the Heather Bogle investigation. She worked midnights, which means she would clock in roughly at 10, 1030 in the evening.

1:30She worked her shift and she clocked out at approximately 617 that following morning. She was last seen leaving the parking lot of the Whirlpool Corporation. And then she disappeared. She failed to pick up her daughter from school. And this was like clockwork. She never failed to pick up her daughter. The Sandusky County Sheriff's Department tonight is working to solve a mystery. Where is 28-year-old Heather Bogle? Her family is the one that they, within hours, they were posting signs, putting things on Facebook and all the other types of social media. I think somebody has her and they need to bring her home.

2:09Why would they want to kidnap her? I don't know. And as the minutes and the hours went by, people became more and more worried because they could not find her. She doesn't have any enemies that we know of. We just have no idea how this could happen.

2:23Jim Axelrod:She had a lot of chaos going on. A lot of things were going on in her personal life. She was vulnerable at that point. She's an amazing woman, and she's always there for me, and we want her to know we're here for her. This is solved the old-fashioned way, bit by bit, tracking down every potential lead, because you never know when that lead turns into a break. The day after she disappeared, I get a phone call from the sheriff's office that Heather's vehicle had been located. I had road patrol unlock the vehicle, and then we popped the trunk, and we saw something that we did not expect to see. I don't think anybody had a clue about the mystery, the intrigue, and the story that was gonna come out of the opening of that trunk.

3:18A lot of times in law enforcement, we look at things and we try not to see them for what they are. It's almost as if it's not real. But this one was different, says Sheriff Chris Hilton. What they found inside the trunk of Heather Bogle's car was painfully real. What did they find in the trunk? they found a beautiful young woman who had been savagely beaten and murdered. That beautiful young woman was Heather Bogle. When you know what she looked like when you saw the pictures of her and to see what was in the trunk of the car, it was as if they were two completely different things. And when you look at that kind of stuff, it sinks in its own.

4:06Her wounds told a harrowing story. Of torture? Unbelievably awful. And grit, says prosecutor Tim Braun.

4:16Jim Axelrod:A lot of defensive wounds on the hand for blocking, bringing your hands up, protecting. What did that tell you? Told me she'd fought. That she was physically overpowered by someone. Beaten down and then handcuffed. Cause of death? Two shots to the back. Penetrating vital organs in her chest. Heather's body was placed in the trunk of her car, curled up in a semi-fetal position, wearing an oversized Mickey Mouse T-shirt. It looked like it had been posed to create a certain effect. Her hands were coiled up. It looked like a child sleeping to some degree. Heather's hair had been chopped off at the scalp.

4:58Imagine taking, like, a pocket knife and just going like this with it, just picking it up and chopping it off. And her fingernails cut down to the cuticles. Possibly her murderer's attempt to destroy DNA, says Braun.

5:15Jim Axelrod:So somebody had cleaned her up extremely carefully after she had died. Who would want to do this to her? A psychopath. Lord, we're praying for wisdom and understanding, Lord God. And I pray for the family of Heather this evening. Father, I pray for her friends. Shocked, frightened, and grief-struck, the locals turned out in droves, demanding justice for Heather Bogle and holding benefits for her 5-year-old daughter, Mackenzie. The woman who walks out of the Whirlpool factory at 6.17 a.m., Heather Bogle, who is she? A 28-year-old single mother who worked hard at that factory to provide a wonderful life for her daughter.

6:01She was well-liked. With dreams for a better life, Heather had just finished nursing school. She wanted something better than working at Whirlpool. Not that Whirlpool's bad, but she wanted some more for herself and for her daughter. But the days leading up to her death were fraught with tension. She had just failed her nursing board exams and was in the midst of an ugly breakup. For the past year, Heather had been involved in her first same-sex relationship with a woman she met at Whirlpool, Carmela Badia. But they'd just had a big blow-up. There'd been threats made, hadn't there been? Yeah, there'd been, yes, the text messages and the phone calls and some of the exchanges were very, very nasty.

6:48Lead detective Sean O 'Connell says Carmela was one of the first people he looked at. There was some type of a verbal altercation between Heather and her girlfriend, Carmela, that Wednesday. Heather goes in to work on Wednesday evening and leaves work Thursday morning not to be seen. But after examining Carmela's phone records and speaking to her several times, O 'Connell determined Carmela was not the killer. You were comfortable ruling her out? Absolutely. He was not so quick to rule out this woman, Kiana Boer, a single mother who lived in the apartment complex where Heather's car and body were discovered.

7:34Is it fair to say that your interactions with Kiana Bohr early on raised your suspicion about her? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, from her demeanor, from her reluctancy on wanting to talk to us, yeah, absolutely. But even more than that, it was that Mickey Mouse shirt on Heather Bogle's body. There was some speculation that the shirt that was found on Heather Bogle, again, it's a red XL Mickey Mouse type t-shirt. Kiana Boer was seen to be wearing that same type of t-shirt. Andy says her Facebook postings read like a confession, referenced here in the police report. Kiana's making statements on her Facebook page that I can't believe what happened just happened.

8:19O 'Connell says she also makes mention in another post about doing 8 to 10 years for murder and pleading insanity. The day Heather disappears? The day that she disappeared, yes. April 9th of 2015. He says he became even more suspicious when he learned that Omar Satchel, a man who served time on home invasion and firearms charges, was in Kiana's apartment the night Heather's body was found. Omar Satchel very quickly becomes a person of interest to you. He did. Why? Because of his involvement as far as being in the vicinity of the time of her body being discovered. O 'Connell believed Omar knew Heather, that he sometimes sold her pot.

9:07But even more importantly, O 'Connell says he found a link between Omar's satchel and what possibly could have been the gun used to kill Heather. During the course of my investigation, I find out that Omar may have stolen a small caliber type firearm. Neither the gun nor the bullets were ever found. But O 'Connell claims a source told him that a third accomplice, a friend of Omar's named Karee Jeffrey, dumped the murder weapon. So according to my source, who was standing next to Karee, and Cary walked up along the riverbanks and tossed this black bag containing the firearm using the homicide into the river, which ultimately prompted us to launch a dive team into the river in hopes to recover the bag.

9:53Came up empty? Came up empty. So what would the three of these people have as a motive to kill Heather Bogle? I don't know what their motive would have been. O 'Connell didn't have enough to arrest them, but continued building his murder case against the three. A case newspaper man Matt Westerhold was watching with interest. He and his paper had a long history reporting on the detective. We were concerned because we didn't believe Detective O 'Connell could conduct a legitimate investigation. Westerhold had just found his next big story. Was this bad police work or was he a bad cop? It was both.

10:57There was Kiana Boer before Heather Bogle's murder. I got a house for me and my kids, got a good job at a nursing home, and everything was going real smooth. And then there's Kiana Bourne now. So it's like the dark cloud that's always over my head. And who put that dark cloud over your head? Sean O 'Connell. Kiana says Detective O 'Connell targeted her from the night Heather's body was found. I lived in this apartment right over here. Waiting her apartment. They went out of their way to throw all of our pictures in the trash. And storming the nursing home where she worked. with a warrant for her DNA.

11:39I'm wheeling a resident out the dining room to go get him ready for bed, and the whole, all the detectives, the police come in there, guns out. And they had their guns drawn? Yes. O 'Connell publicly named Kiana a suspect. She lost her job, her apartment, and her reputation. I had to keep my son out of school. I have people in my inbox telling me I'm a monster, and me and my kids deserve to die, and all that type of stuff. because what he told the newspaper and the newspaper put out there. Kiana says she was an easy target, poor, black, and voiceless. She says O 'Connell never even asked her if she had an alibi.

12:20He never did that because he wasn't interested in ruling me out. He was just interested in making me guilty. He was trying to find facts that would fit his theory that you were involved. Kiana had several run-ins with Sean O 'Connell before. He helped put her ex-boyfriend in prison for a mandatory 10 years on a drug charge. She says that's what she was talking about in her Facebook post that O 'Connell found so incriminating. The only reason why I would have posted about the 8 to 10 years is because I was upset that my child's father just got 10 years mandatory for his first drug offense. Here he is doing 10 years for a drug offense, and there are people who get 8 to 10 for murder by pleading insanity.

13:01That's what you were posting? Correct. And it didn't have anything to do with Heather Bogle? No. And that Mickey Mouse shirt found on Heather's body, the one he insinuated belonged to Kiana? Was it your shirt? No. I only owned one Mickey Mouse hoodie, well, sweatshirt in my life. So it's a sweatshirt, not a T-shirt. You don't own a T-shirt. No. Were you involved in the death of Heather Bogle? No. Did you cover up, have any role in covering up Heather Bogle's death? No. Desperate to clear her name, Kiana contacted Matt Westerhold, managing editor of the Sandusky Register. I've never had a criminal suspect come to me and say, hey, I'm being targeted by police for a murder I didn't commit.

13:49That's never happened. He quickly came to believe O 'Connell was framing her. If you interview Keona Boer, she's very believable, and it seemed obvious that she didn't know anything about this. Westerhold had been covering Sean O 'Connell and his then-boss, former Sheriff Eric Overmeyer, for years, publishing numerous reports accusing them of corruption and incompetence. One headline that the paper ran, the headline is, Sheriff Overmeyer and Detective O 'Connell have a history botching high-profile cases. Right. Fair headline? Yeah, absolutely. We probably documented a half dozen different cases where the families involved, you know, were complaining bitterly about how they were treated by law enforcement.

14:38And there was no doubt in my mind that they were botching these investigations. My guest today is Kiana Boer. Westerhold featured Kiana's story on his webcast several times. Do you consider yourself a victim of Detective O 'Connell's? I very much do. He was determined to keep the pressure on O 'Connell. We like to say that's who we are, that's what we do. In this case, we turned out to be a consistent, persistent watchdog that didn't give up. Despite the public scrutiny, O 'Connell spent a year and two months pursuing his theory that Kiana, Omar, and Kayree acted together to kill Heather Bogle.

15:22even in the face of strong scientific evidence to the contrary. Authorities found DNA under Heather's cuticle, they believed left by her killer. But it didn't come back as Omar Satchel's. It did not. Didn't come back as Keanu Boers. It did not. Didn't come back as Keri Jeffries. It did not. So the fact that the DNA under her fingernails does not belong to any of those three doesn't rule them out in your mind. It does not. But in his report to the prosecutor seeking an indictment, O 'Connell didn't even mention that the DNA did not match. An omission that would soon come out in the open. Just one week later, Detective O 'Connell was taken off the case and placed on leave.

16:06I knew the end was coming. He was forced to resign. He wasn't the only one in trouble. I take full responsibility today. Sheriff Overmeyer was arrested and sent to prison for stealing drugs. Sounds to me like law enforcement in the Sandusky County Sheriff's Department. Not in tip-top shape between Overmeyer and O 'Connell. Well, yeah, if your sheriff, who is the lead officer of your criminal drug task force, has an addiction problem, you got problems. O 'Connell's Bogle file was handed over to the State Bureau of Investigations. What they discovered was not only shocking, says Chris Hilton, who took over as sheriff, it was criminal.

16:55He attempted to indict people for murder that had absolutely nothing to do with it. Is this a case of a cop being overly ambitious? Is this racism or is this incompetence? competence. Anything I could say would be pure speculation. Nobody knows the case better than you. What do you think? I'm going to say it's a little combination of everything you just said. Newly elected Sandusky County Prosecutor Tim Braun agreed. He opened a criminal investigation that led to O 'Connell's arrest and indictment on four felony charges.

17:31Jim Axelrod:He lied. He falsified police reports. He tampered with evidence. He tried to make a case that he didn't have, and he tried to push it through. O 'Connell was charged with misleading a public official and destroying, concealing, and tampering with evidence. You're looking at some serious charges. I'm looking at some very serious charges. Did you mishandle evidence? Absolutely not. Did you knowingly make false statements? Absolutely not. Alter, destroy, conceal, remove evidence? Of course not. So where are they getting it from? They're getting it from speculation. That's not how Chris Hilton sees it.

18:12Was there any reason to focus on Keanu Boer? After the first day or two, I would say no. She had nothing to do with it. And neither, he says, did Omar Satchel or Keri Jeffrey. The BCI investigation showed the three suspects never knew Heather, never met Heather, never sold her pot. But Sean O 'Connell still stands behind his investigation, right or wrong. So you can be wrong, but that doesn't mean you had tunnel vision. I could be detectives are wrong all the time. You were just wrong. I'm not even here to say that I'm wrong because the investigation, I never had the opportunity to close out. That job fell to the new sheriff, and he wasn't going to stop until he got it right.

19:00I knew it was a solvable case. I just knew it had to be done right. I said, we're going to open this up to the point where it just happened. Every lead, every person, everybody is a suspect until we can eliminate them. And that's what we did.

19:32Heather Bogle had been dead for nearly two years when Sheriff Hilton and his team took over the investigation. They had no clue who killed her, but were positive it was not a random killing. We felt that whoever did this had something personal against Heather. Someone she'd just had a huge fight with. Someone who'd written her an angry note, found in the car where she lay dead in the trunk. Someone like Heather's ex-girlfriend, Carmela Badia. To me, she would be a logical person to investigate. I mean, again, when you look at the condition with which Heather was found, there was passion and anger in whoever did that.

20:15Carmela, who'd been quickly cleared by O 'Connell, went straight to the top of Hilton's suspect list. So you guys are basically... I was done. It sounds like she was done, too. She was brought in for questioning. The last month, I'll agree with everybody, it was f***ing horrible. It was rocky. It was... You didn't know what was going to happen next. But the sheriff would soon rule out Carmela when he found a new suspect. Investigators started digging through Heather's social media and Gmail accounts. And suddenly, there it was. Stored in Heather's GPS records by Google, an electronic trail of coordinates showing Heather's exact movements from the moment she left work at 6.17 a.m.

21:01Is this your aha moment? Absolutely. We knew we had something. We could at least say definitively this is where she went after she left work that morning. At 6.30 a.m., 13 minutes after leaving work, Heather's phone GPS places her in a trailer home a few miles from the Whirlpool plant. We find out later that day it belongs to Daniel Myers. Well, who was Daniel Myers? We had no idea at the time. We find out very quickly that Daniel Myers worked with Heather. We find out that he worked with her that night. we find out that he left approximately the same time that morning. That's when we went, aha, we got something.

21:49Investigators knocked on Daniel Meyer's door. He was cooperative, but not overly. He kind of distanced himself from knowing Heather. They recorded their conversation. Did you know her at all? Very, very little, very little, just more, very, I mean, very limited conversation. One of the things he says that really makes the hair stand up, like, why are you still investigating this, is what he's asking. Like, this is done, it's over with, it's been two years. I guess it's a little odd that, you know, you guys are... I know it's a cold case, and you guys are just, you know, grasping at straws trying to figure it out.

22:31When I listened to it, I was like, oh, my God. this might be our guy. This might be our guy. And then the clincher was at the end of that interview, they asked for a DNA sample. I'm going to pass on that. I didn't really know the girl or anything like that. He's the first person that said no. Investigators returned two days later with a warrant for his DNA to match it against the DNA found under Heather's cuticle.

23:01Jim Axelrod:We've got a search warrant for your DNA. Okay. So what we wanted you to do is to be a little more forthcoming to help us narrow this thing down. Because you know what? We're narrowing it down. Okay. They got their sample, and results came back five days later. My major came into my office, and he says, Sheriff at DNA belongs to Danny Myers. I think we almost wanted to break into tears. It was like we have him. We got him. They learned this man who said he barely knew Heather Bogle had contributed$125 and wrote a warm condolence note on her GoFundMe page and made sure people knew he was at Heather's funeral.

23:47He signs the registry book at her funeral?

23:51Jim Axelrod:Yes. It's a kind of guy who's trying to look normal. He's trying not to do anything that would trigger in anybody's mind that maybe Danny Myers is just a little different. It turns out Daniel Myers had been hiding in plain sight all along. Shortly after Heather's murder, a Whirlpool employee sent an email to Detective Sean O 'Connell saying she knew someone capable of this crime. And she point blank told us I was going to tell him I thought it was Daniel Myers. But O 'Connell, already fixated on his three suspects, never followed up. If you had worked the whirlpool angle a little harder, do you think Daniel Meyer's name might have surfaced?

24:34I don't know how we could have worked it any harder. I mean, what more could we have done? It didn't take Sheriff Hilton very long to figure it out. Just five months after opening the new investigation, he and his team arrested the single father at a summer campground. And the only thing that he ever said was, oh my God, they're here to get me. And then we took him into custody, and that was pretty much the last thing he said to us. I think you've got a story to tell. We'd like to hear it, okay? Searching the trailer, investigators never found the gun or bullets that killed Heather, but they did find damning evidence.

25:13New floorboards bought less than a week after her murder. Meaning what? Meaning we believe we found where she was murdered in his trailer. And he would have replaced the subflooring because it was covered in blood? Blood, possible bullet holes, any number of reasons. You've got to cover it up. The trailer yielded other secrets. He liked to keep women's underwear in his safe. Slowly, they began piecing together a disturbing picture of a sexual predator, a man focused on control, domination, and humiliation. He had videos of himself with women and other women. And he was very disturbing when it comes to his sexual fetishes.

26:03After Daniel Myers' arrest, 10 women came forward saying he raped them. None of them went to the police beforehand and said,

26:13Jim Axelrod:this guy at the plant sexually attacked me in his trailer. They were all embarrassed and ashamed by it. Investigators say Myers picked women he thought would stay silent. and what better way to solidify that than to find ones that are vulnerable. And Heather Bogle was vulnerable. She was reeling over her nasty breakup with Carmela. And, they learned from Myers, she was also upset over a text her brother sent calling her too stupid to pass her licensed practical nursing exam. And here's Daniel Myers. Come tell me all about it. That's right. She went to his trailer, says Braun, expecting a friend, but finding a killer.