Season's Grievings (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:00In December of 1990, a very concerned father was pacing around his kitchen, hoping that his daughter would call. But the phone stayed silent. And as it did, you know, an anxious pit formed in his stomach. He was really worried about his daughter. He thought maybe she was in trouble. And also, he was worried that he himself might have accidentally just done something that could make things even worse. But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, that, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, please hack the Follow Button's Facebook account and go ahead and delete their date of birth so that nobody wishes them a happy birthday.

0:40Okay, let's get into today's story.

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1:53On the night of Friday, December 7th, 1990, A 39-year-old woman named Janet Dennis set four dinner plates on the kitchen table at her home in a suburb of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She had just finished making dinner for herself and her three kids, who at the current moment were watching a Christmas movie in the living room. Janet hummed along to the TV as she brought the food over to the table, and then she called her kids to come over and eat. The kids got up, they rushed over, they sat down, and as they began eating, Janet told them about all these fun holiday plans that she had made for them over winter break.

2:25So Janet really loved Christmas. She typically would decorate her house like the instant Thanksgiving was over. And earlier that same day, she had gone to a toy store and filled the entire backseat of her car with gifts for the kids. But Janet really wanted this Christmas to be especially memorable for her kids, because the past few months had been really tough on them. Back in July, Janet had divorced their father, Leroy, and so now the kids only saw their dad about once a week. Now, Janet knew the kids missed him terribly, but actually, Leroy had never really been a very present father, which was part of the reason that Janet had asked for the divorce in the first place.

3:05They'd been married for 16 years, and for most of that time, Janet had pretty much felt like she was just a single parent, on top of being the primary breadwinner for the family. And this was because Leroy owned and operated this ranch that was located about 90 miles away in a rural town called Ceiling, and this ranch really had never made much money. And so Leroy had begun working all these crazy long hours to basically avoid hiring extra help. But because of that, he was usually gone before sunrise every single day, and he didn't get home until very, very late. So he's gone all the time working, but for not much return, not much money.

3:42And so for years, Janet had picked up the slack. She worked as a school nurse. That way she could, you know, make some money, and then also she could be home to meet the kids after school every single day. And then when she was home, she managed the house by herself as well. And so that was ultimately really why a judge awarded her full custody of the kids back in July when the divorce was finalized. I mean, Leroy undeniably loved his kids, but he simply couldn't provide for them. And besides, at this point, he was now living on that ranch and ceiling 90 miles away full time. And so, you know, his kids' schools and social lives were here in Oklahoma City.

4:20It just, it wasn't a match. And so now, Janet put another serving of mashed potatoes on her plate. And as she did, she reminded her 12-year-old son, Tad, who was her oldest child, that he had a wrestling tournament at school in the morning, and that they had to leave really early so they could get to the competition on time. After dinner, Tad helped his mom clear the table, and then they all went out to the living room to finish watching that Christmas movie together. And then when it was over, Janet followed her kids upstairs and helped get them all ready for bed. And then once they were all tucked in, she came back downstairs to finish cleaning up the kitchen.

4:52Now, this was about the time that Leroy, if they were still married, would be coming home from work. But now that Janet was divorced, she got to spend her evenings however she wanted. She thought about heading out to the garage to grab all those gifts she had purchased out of the car and bring them in to wrap them. But then, as she was about to head out, she saw a pair of headlights pull into her driveway.

5:17At 5.30 the next morning, Janet's 12-year-old son, Tad, shut off his alarm clock and rolled out of bed to get ready for his wrestling competition. Once he had his stuff together, he went downstairs, expecting to find his mother in the kitchen already making breakfast. But he didn't see her in there. So he just went down the hallway to her bedroom, and he opened up her door, and he looked in and there was his mom still lying in bed with the covers pulled all the way up over her head. So Tad, thinking this whole thing was a little bit odd because his mom was all over everything, he still called out for her to wake up because it was time to get ready to go.

5:51But his mom didn't move. And so he walked into the bedroom right next to the bed and pulled down the covers to shake her awake. But when he did that, he realized his mom is not in the bed at all. What he was looking at underneath the covers was actually a pile of pillows arranged to make it look like she was still sleeping in bed. Which was really weird, because to Tad, it now seemed pretty obvious that his mother had actually left the house, but for some reason she seemed to want him to think that she was still home. And so just to make sure, Tad left the bedroom and ran to the garage to check.

6:29And sure enough, his mother's car was gone. And now Tad, like he really didn't know what to do. Because in his entire life, his mother had never just left without telling him. And so Tad went back to the kitchen and he looked over at the clock on the oven and saw it was already 6am, which meant he was already going to be late to his wrestling tournament. He wondered if maybe his mom had just like run out to the gas station or something quick like that and she'd be home any minute. But a few more minutes passed by and she still didn't come home. And so at this point, Tad was becoming really anxious and he started to worry that his mom had maybe gotten into a car accident or something, so he did the only thing he could think of.

7:06He went over to the kitchen phone, and he called his dad, who was out at the ranch in the ceiling. And when his dad picked up, he told him everything that was going on. Now, Leroy was, you know, admittedly sort of confused by this whole thing, but he told his son, don't worry, your mom's going to be home any minute, I'm sure of it. But he also told him that just in case he would start driving over to their house right now just to make sure everything was okay. Two hours later, Tad heard the sound of his father's truck pull into the driveway. And the instant he heard it, he jumped off the couch to go unlock the front door.

7:39When his dad walked into the house, the first thing he asked his son was, is mom home? And Tad said, no, she's still not here. Leroy nodded, but reassured his son that, you know, his mom was going to be home soon, that she would have a good explanation, it's okay. But, you know, as Tad followed his father all around the house at this point, basically looking for Janet and looking for any sign of maybe where she had gone, Tad began to notice a look of concern growing on his father's face. And that sort of gave Tad this sick feeling in his stomach that maybe something's really wrong here. And then, sure enough, at some point, his dad, after searching the whole house and just sort of standing there for a moment, he turned to Tad and he said, we've got to call the police.

8:26Two days later, on Monday, December 10th, Lieutenant Detective Craig Gravel with the Oklahoma City Police District knocked on the door to Janet Dennis' house. He had spoken on the phone that morning to Janet's ex-husband, Leroy, and now he heard Leroy's voice again, but from inside of the house right in front of him, calling to his kids to go on upstairs for a minute. And then a moment later, the door opened and Leroy invited Gravel inside. So even though it had been two days now since Leroy had called 911 and reported Janet missing, Gravel had only just been assigned to her case that morning.

8:59His captain had wanted to wait out the weekend before investigating formally because there had been no signs of violence at her home, and generally speaking, most adults who get reported missing show up within 48 hours. But that morning, when the case landed on Gravel's desk and he'd begun reading over the details, his gut told him that something had happened to her. From all appearances, she was a very responsible and loving mother with no history of just disappearing like this. So Gravel had immediately put out an alert to all the police stations in the area to be on the lookout for Janet's car, which was a red Chevy Blazer.

9:35And then he had called Leroy and asked if they could speak. And so now Detective Gravel stepped inside of Janet's home and right away he noticed how tidy and how covered in Christmas decorations it was. I mean, the whole house seemed so festive, which made Gravel think that Janet very likely had planned to be home for the holidays. And so he followed Leroy into the kitchen. They sat down at the table, and the first question he had for Leroy was, have you heard from Janet since we spoke this morning? But Leroy said no. He said all he knew was that Janet had disappeared at some point between maybe 9 p.m.

10:10on Friday night when the kids went to bed and they had seen her when they went to bed, and 6 a.m. the next morning when Tad had called him saying, mom's not here. And Leroy said, you know, despite the fact that, you know, Janet is his ex-wife and there wasn't a whole lot of love lost there, he said he was really worried because Janet would never just leave their kids alone. Never. However, he did tell the detective that while he had been just walking around the house for any clues about where she might have gone, he said he had noticed that her toiletries bag was gone. So now he didn't really know what to think that sort of did suggest that maybe this was planned, but just very out of character.

10:46Gravel nodded and then asked Leroy, could he think of any place that Janet might go to, maybe to go blow off steam or something? Like someplace, if she was really stressed, where would she go? Leroy said, you know, in the past, Janet had gone to Las Vegas to gamble, but again, she would never just go without warning and also would never just leave the kids unsupervised. Leroy said at a minimum, she would have let him know if she was going away, because again, they have kids together. Even though they were divorced, they still basically were on decent terms. Gravel nodded and wrote down everything Leroy said.

11:20Now, to him, Leroy was definitely a suspect, but at this moment, he seemed to be cooperating. So, Gravel wrapped up the interview and headed out, because for right now, what he really wanted to do was go speak to another person who had also called the police station that weekend about Janet Dennis.

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13:47Later that morning, so on Monday, December 10, 1990, Detective Gravel pulled up to the home of Arthur Olson, who was Janet's father. Arthur had also called the station that weekend, repeatedly, to ask if any progress had been made on his daughter's case. When Arthur opened his door, he looked frazzled, and he asked if Gravel had found his daughter yet, or had any idea where she might be, or if she was okay. Gravel told Arthur that no, they still did not know where she was yet. However, he said that Leroy had told him that occasionally, Janet would go to Las Vegas to gamble, to blow off steam. But Arthur echoed the same sentiment as Leroy when he brought this up, which is like, yeah, Janet would occasionally go to Las Vegas, but she would never do that without first making sure her kids were okay.

14:33She would never just leave in the middle of the night. That is not something she would do. And also, Arthur said if she had gone to Vegas, like if that's where she was now, she wouldn't be alone. She would have gone with her new boyfriend. And when Arthur said this, that caught Gravel by surprise. because Leroy, the ex-husband, had definitely not mentioned a new boyfriend. In fact, no boyfriends had been mentioned at all. And so Gravel asked Arthur to tell him more about this boyfriend because this is the first he was hearing of him. At which point Arthur said, well, you know, my daughter's actually been keeping this boyfriend a secret, both from Leroy and from the kids.

15:08Arthur said the guy's name was Jim Umbenhauer, and he was a soldier stationed at Fort Sill, which was an army base just a few towns over. But then this look of regret crossed Arthur's face. He told Gravel that he had actually only just met Jim for the first time this past weekend, after Janet was already missing. And the reason he met with him is he gave Jim a key to Janet's house. Gravel at this point looked up from his notepad and asked Arthur, like, what does that mean? Why did you do that? Now Arthur went from looking regretful to looking straight up embarrassed, as he explained. And he told Gravel that just a few hours after Janet was reported missing, Jim had actually called him.

15:51And Jim had told him that some of his belongings were actually at Janet's place. And that Janet would definitely not want Leroy to find those things because their relationship was a secret. So Jim had told Arthur that his plan was to wait until Leroy took the kids out somewhere. And then when the house was empty, he would sneak in using the key that he was asking Arthur for. and he would just grab up all his stuff. That way, you know, Leroy wouldn't find it. Gravel, when he heard this, was shocked. Because to him, it was like so obviously a bad idea for Arthur to have given Jim that key. Because as far as Gravel was concerned, Janet's house could be an active crime scene.

16:30But Arthur seemed to guess what Gravel was likely thinking here because he said, you know, he knew now that that had been a mistake. But back on Saturday, he just didn't believe Janet was truly missing here. Like, he expected her to come home. Like, this couldn't be a big deal, right? But now he said he was absolutely sick with guilt. Shortly after this, Gravel wrapped up their interview, and then he hopped in his car, and he drove right back to the station. His top priority now was to track down the secret boyfriend, Jim Umbenhauer. But as soon as he got back to his desk, he learned there was actually a more pressing lead for him to follow up on.

17:08Janet's car had been located at the Oklahoma City Airport. An hour later, Detective Gravel turned his car into the long-term parking garage at the Oklahoma City airport. He was there to follow up on a lead about Janet Dennis, who had disappeared from her house overnight on Friday, leaving her three young kids unattended. And right away, Gravel saw another police cruiser at the far end of the garage parked behind a Chevy Blazer. Janet's Chevy Blazer. And so Gravel, he pulled up behind the other cruiser, and then he got out and just began walking around Janet's car, getting a look. And eventually he walked up and cupped his hands over his eyes so he could look through the window into the back seat.

17:47And when he looked in there, he saw it was completely full of new toys, which he assumed were Christmas presents for her kids. And when Gravel saw those presents, he instantly had a bad feeling in his stomach, like his gut was telling him that Janet did not drive her car to this location. Somebody else did. And also, at this point, Gravel also had proof that she wasn't in Las Vegas. So right before Gravel had come out to the airport, his team had called into this centralized database that could access all of the hotel reservations in the Las Vegas area, and there were no reservations anywhere in the entire city under Janet's name.

18:26Now, of course, she could be there with somebody else, maybe under their name, but this at least suggested, very strongly suggested, that she was not there. And so now Gravel was confident that Janet had not skipped town for some spur-of-the-moment gambling trip. Now, at this point, if something had happened to Janet, well, Gravel's primary suspect at this point was Janet's new boyfriend, her secret boyfriend, Jim Umbenhauer. However, Gravel still had not looked into him yet, which meant if he was involved in any way in Janet's disappearance, well, by today, by now, he could be anywhere. And so as Gravel is thinking about this, he was interrupted by the sound of a vehicle approaching.

19:07And he turned and he sees a car pull up right behind his cruiser. And then after they parked, this guy got out wearing a full army uniform. And he walked over to Gravel and he introduced himself as Jim Umbenhauer. Late that afternoon, Gravel sat in an interview room at the station across from Janet's secret boyfriend, Jim Umbenhauer. And Jim was hooked up to a polygraph machine. So back at the airport, Jim had claimed that he'd been worried sick about Janet all weekend, and he'd been literally driving around town looking for her car. He claimed he had no idea that it, the car, or Detective Gravel, would be at the airport when he arrived.

19:45And it had just been like a total coincidence that he had just happened to find Janet's car at the exact moment police had found it. To Gravel, this felt like a fairly obvious lie, because the chances of Jim just running into Janet's car at the exact moment that police are finding it and that he's arriving to look at it, it just felt like not possible. And Gravel figured that Jim must have already known where Janet's car was and had somehow learned that the police had found it and so he had just sort of shown up. Gravel knew it was actually common for killers and kidnappers to actually intentionally insert themselves into an ongoing investigation of their victims to, like, you know, influence the investigation or just keep a pulse on what's happening under the guise of being really helpful.

20:29And right away, Gravel had gotten the sense that Jim was doing just that. So Gravel had immediately asked Jim to not only come back to the station to talk, but to take a polygraph test. And Jim had agreed. And so now the polygraph examiner, so the person actually administering the polygraph, nodded to Gravel that they were ready to start. And so Gravel asked Jim, why did you ask for a key to sneak into Janet's house that past weekend? Now, Jim looked genuinely surprised that Gravel even knew about that. But he told Gravel that he had simply gone over there to get a box of love letters from Janet's bedroom that were between he and Janet.

21:07He said that Janet had wanted to keep their relationship private, especially from Leroy. As a precaution, he had, you know, asked Arthur to get the key to go in and get the letters. And he said, you know, the letters were actually right now out in his car. Now, Gravel knew that would be easy enough to verify, so he just moved on. And he asked Jim, where were you on Friday night, which was the last night that Janet's kids had seen her. And Jim actually said that he had been at Janet's house that night, which caught Gravel completely off guard. Jim explained that he had gone over to Janet's house after the kids had gone to sleep so that he and Janet could secretly spend some time together.

21:43Now, at this point, Gravel really had to just stop for a second and collect his thoughts before asking more questions. because he really had not seen this coming. I mean, all day he had been trying to place someone at Janet's house after 9 p.m. on that Friday, and now here was Jim admitting he had been there at the house on that Friday night after 9 p.m., making him the official last known person to have seen Janet. After a minute, Gravel told Jim to just go on, tell me more about your last time seeing Janet. And Jim explained that he had stayed at Janet's house for a few hours and he had left really late to drive back to Fort Sill because he was actually supposed to deploy to Afghanistan the very next day, but when he got back to base that night, he learned that his deployment had actually been delayed for a few weeks.

22:29So Jim said the next day he had called Janet's house to tell her the good news, that they had a few more weeks together before he went overseas. But he said Janet didn't answer the phone. A family member had, and they had said that Janet was missing. Gravel just sat back in his chair, taking all this in. To him, it just seemed impossible that Jim would be the last person to see Janet before she just vanished, and then he also just so happened to find her car at the exact moment the police arrived to investigate? So Gravel began asking Jim more questions, predominantly about his personal life. And it was at that point that he learned that Janet was not Jim's only girlfriend.

23:08Right now, he was actually living with another woman in a town closer to Fort Sill. Now, Jim admitted that he knew this looked bad, but he swore that the relationship with this other woman wasn't working, and he really just wanted to be with Janet. But Gravel, at this point, felt like he had heard enough. I mean, this guy really had dug himself a hole. And so what he really wanted to do was just discuss the results of this polygraph test with the examiner in private. So he ended the interview and sent Jim home. And once Jim was gone, Gravel turned to the examiner, and the examiner said, yep, Jim failed his test, which meant he had been lying throughout the interview.