SYSK’s Fall True Crime Playlist: The Unsolved Indiana Dunes Disappearances

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1:01John Polk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Hari Kondabolu. It's a new year. And on the podcast Health Stuff, we're resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that or am I just depressed? Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Indiana Dunes disappearance is one of the lesser-known cases in American true crime.

1:45One day in July 1966, three women went for a day at the beach along Lake Michigan in northwest Indiana, not too far from Chicago. They vanished that day, and no trace of them has turned up since. It's one of our sadder true crime episodes because not only are the women presumed dead, their families never got even a hint of resolution. Listen to this one and see what you think happened.

2:10Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

2:20Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Josh T just producing away over there. And that makes this Stuff You Should Know Super Duper Mysterious Mystery Edition. That's right. This is a super mysterious one. Super duper, you could say. This is a good one. I never heard of it. I hadn't either. Maybe we should have a spinoff show just about mysteries and missing persons. I've long thought that. Yeah? Yeah. But then everyone's like, nah, just put them on stuff you should know. Yeah, every once in a while. Pepper it. Well, you got to spin it out. Right.

2:59Spin it off. What is this? The Cleveland show? Oh, man. I never watched that. Was it good? I never watched it either. You weren't a Family Guy fan, though, were you? I mean, it's fine, but no, I wasn't a fan. Yeah. All right, what about Laverne and Shirley? What is this, Laverne and Shirley? A spinoff from Happy Days, right? That's right, Chuck. Ooh, let's do this. And Mork and Mindy spun off, too. Mm-hmm. what is this? Too Close for Comfort? Was that a spinoff? You got this man. Too Close for Comfort. He wasn't, no, I don't know. What was it? Oh no, I'm sorry. I was about to say, I don't think that's right.

3:39What, what is this? The Ropers? Oh, well sure. Freeze Company. Okay. What is this? After MASH? Right. I thought, I thought Too Close for Comfort was a spinoff. I think it might be. Well, my first guess was it might have been Ted Knight's character from the Mary Tyler Moore show. Man, that was such a good show. But that's not true because in Too Close for Comfort, he was a cartoonist. That's right. Remember? Yeah. And the only thing I remember, well, I remember a lot about that show because I loved it. I was in love with those daughters, man. I don't remember them. I mean, that was the whole setup is that their daughters lived in the same house or next door or something.

4:18Caused trouble? Yeah, you know, they were just a couple of— Hellraisers? Hellraising beauties. And who was the guy that was so great? I think you're talking about Charles in Charge. No, I'm thinking of Too Close for Comfort. But he was a cartoonist, and he would wear college sweatshirts as part of his character. And he wore a Georgia Bulldog sweatshirt one time, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I was like, how did they know that that's a thing? You're like, I'm basically on TV right now. That's what it felt like. Oh, man. Monroe. That was him, the Monroe character, Jim J. Bullock. Oh, I was like Ted Knight.

4:55Yeah, no, Ted Knight was the lead. The main guy. Jim J. Bullock, man, what was he? Hollywood Squares? Sure, among other things, like Too Close for Comfort. Does this count as a tangent if we haven't actually gotten started? No, this is a preamble. Okay, preamble. Yeah, preface. Nicely done, Chuck. Yeah, this is a good one, and you put this together. Where'd you get most of this stuff? Wrote it myself. Oh, wow. There's one part that I was like, here, this is just easier if I copy and paste from a Chicago Tribune article from 1987. I read that one. It's very good. That's one of the things about this case is anyone who kind of gets involved in this will see.

5:35There is not a lot of information out there. Yeah, and funny enough, one of the biggest mysteries of this whole thing is what kind of boat that was, which we'll get to. That was my bad. Well, no, man. I saw in a couple of other articles that called this boat a trimaran, which is very much a catamaran. Right. They made the same mistake. So they were just wrong? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Because it's the same thing. I saw a tri-hold. I was like, oh, it's a tri-cat, which is a sailboat. And that's what I thought it was. No, there's a tri-hold speedboat called the Runabout that was kind of big in the 60s. Well, more specifically, it's a tri-hulled runabout.

6:13A runabout doesn't necessarily mean it has three hulls. Okay. Those are my favorite boats in the world, are these 50s and 60s fiberglass runabouts. This is the 50s and 60s runabout of all time. Yeah. With three hulls. Uh-huh. You thought one was crazy? Just get ready for three.

6:33So, yeah, the boat will come up. And I had to mark out TriCat in just about 75 places. I'm very sorry. That was, again, my bad. So what we're talking about here finally now is the disappearance of three young women in suburban Chicago in the mid-1960s at Indiana Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan. Yeah, now it's Indiana Dunes National Seashore, National Lakes Shore. National Lakes Shore. But at the time it was a state park. And this is Saturday, July 2nd, 1966. That's right. The three women, there was a 21-year-old named Patricia Blau. Yeah, I think so. She went, she got in her car, which was an 11-year-old at this point, Buick sedan, 1955 Buick.

7:26Went to pick up her friends, Ann Miller, at her house. She lived with her folks. and then to her other friend, Renee Bruhl, who was the only one who was married, went to pick her up at her house. They were 19 and 20 and they were like— 19 and 21. I think one of them was 22 at least. 19, 20, and 21 is what I saw. Oh, is that right? Okay. But those are nitpicky details. Sure. They were all late teens, early 20s. Wait a minute. Did you just call me nitpicky? No, no, no, no. I think you did. No. Okay. Did you just call me a liar on national TV? TV. I think you just did. Anne and Patricia were friends.

8:04They were horse riders, and they were friends from these horse stables. But they were all three buddies, not since grade school, but for the last couple of years, it seems like. Right, yeah. And they all lived around Chicago, and that's where they were traveling about 60 miles, 80 miles. I've seen both to Indiana Dune State Park to just basically go hang out on the beach that day. Again, it was Saturday. It was the July 4th weekend. Crowded. Yeah. Super crowded. They were just going to the beach to have some fun, as most people think. They got to the beach by 10 a.m., parked the Buick, hiked over the dunes on the kind of rickety boardwalk over to the beach, and set up camp, I think, about 100 yards from shore.

8:46That's a pretty substantial beach. Wow. Either there or they hiked 100 yards and set up near the beach. It might be the latter of the two. That sounds more right. And on this weekend, again, because it was July 4th weekend, the beach was just absolutely packed. This is Lake Michigan, which is a pretty big lake. And this beach itself or this park itself, I think is like 26 miles of shoreline or something like that. But even still, there's like 9 ,000 people on the beach that weekend. Yeah, I saw 9 ,000 to 10 ,000 people, 4 ,000 to 5 ,000 cars in the parking lots, and 4 ,000 to 6 ,000 boats in the water.

9:21Packed. Just packed. It's like Jaws or something up in there. Right. Amity Island, 4th of July. So the Renee and Patty set up shop, put down their beach blanket, just kind of close by to this teenage couple who are like their beach neighbors. I imagine everyone was pretty close. Sure. With that many people. Sheik, elbow to jowl. Isn't that what that's called? Sure. Okay. And this teenage couple kind of factor in big time, but just kind of note their presence for now. That's right. So about noon, Chuck, well, actually the teenage couple factor in now. They noticed that the three women were wading into the water about noon.

10:08So I guess for about two hours, they were just kind of hanging out in the sun. They got hot enough to go into the water about noon. That's right. And that was the last time that this couple saw them. Maybe. Perhaps. The day went on. They never came back. This teenage couple said their stuff's still laying here. You know, they may be off partying somewhere. So, you know, they didn't think like, these three young ladies are missing and perhaps murdered. I think they were worried that their stuff might get stolen. Yeah, I think it was as innocent as that. Yeah, the teenage couple, they were about to leave and they didn't want to just leave it there.

10:46They felt kind of somehow responsible for it like you will. Yeah, which is what you did in 1966. Or today still if you're a decent person. That's right. So they went to a ranger and they said, hey, these young women were here. They left their stuff. The ranger thought the same thing. He's like, well, let me just take care of this stuff and collect it. And so it doesn't get stolen. They're probably off partying. But that was the last that anyone saw these three young women. No one to this day knows what happened. They vanished literally without a trace. Yeah, there's never been any evidence of what happened to them.

11:20No trace of them. No nothing. Nothing from that point on. I think we should take an earlier break because of that dumb, long preamble. Okay. And this is a great little spot for a cliffhanger. Okay. So we'll be right back.

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14:28Okay, Chuck. So about 18 hours after that park ranger collected their things, I'd say around dusk, a call came in to Indiana Dune State Park Ranger Station, and it was from Harold Blau, Patty's father. And he wanted to know if the rangers had seen his daughter, because she had been reported missing by her family back in Chicago, like, you know, a few hours before. Yeah, so they went through her stuff. The Rangers did. They found a set of car keys that had a little miniature Illinois license plate that matched a license plate in the parking lot. Yeah. Either a great coincidence or you could get those custom made at some little beach shop.

15:15Right. Which is probably what happened. So they find her car. They found her Buick there in the parking lot. Indiana State Police say, we're going to take over here because it's pretty clear that this is a missing persons case. Yeah. And so they it was obvious that they had they had never left the park or at least they hadn't left, you know, in the car. Right. And they left their car. They left their stuff. That's suddenly very highly suspicious. The idea that they were just off partying is suddenly kind of a tenuous theory, you know. Yeah, like left all their stuff, like purses and personal stuff.

15:50We should talk a little bit about that. They left, yeah, money in their wallets. They left their transistor radio. They left their magazines open. They left their suntan lotion. It seemed like the way they left their stuff that they were planning on just getting into the water and then coming back from the water. And then that was that. There didn't seem to be any kind of forethought to their stuff. Right. And then the fact that their car was still there, and this was a full day after they had last been seen, it was suspicious. Like if they were going to party, they would have said at least like, oh, let me grab my purse.

16:29Right. By now, a night had come and gone, and the next day was already halfway done, and there was nothing. That would be a hell of a party. Yes. So people started to get kind of worried and they started to search the park and they couldn't find them anywhere. And that's when the police became involved, when it was obvious that they were no longer in this park, even though they didn't seem to have left, which means they just kind of vanished. Yeah, and they had a pretty big search party. They had soldiers volunteering from a missile base. They had obviously the sheriff, had the Civil Air Patrol get involved.

17:08I think Patty's dad was a pilot. He was a colonel. He was a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol. Coast Guard gets involved, dive teams, airplanes, helicopters. Sheriff's posse on horseback? Yeah, like they had people combing this area. They went back to the 19th century to get people to search. They searched about 250 cabins in the area. They had a dune buggy trolling the seashore at night, seeing if bodies were washing, or the lakeshore, seeing if bodies were washing the shore. Like it was a land, sea, and air search of this area. And it was a pretty extensive area, but it was a really extensive search.

17:50The big criticism that's leveled today against the whole thing is that two full days passed before the search was mounted. This was July 5th. The first 48. First 48. Anybody who's ever seen that show knows like those are the most critical moments or the most critical hours in trying to solve a case because it gets colder and colder with every hour that passes. So that was a big thing. And one of the most startling things about this case is that search turned up nothing. Yeah. No evidence of what happened to them at all. Yeah, the first little clue that they found wasn't something they found while searching, but inside Renee Bruhl's purse that she left behind, And there was a letter that she had written to her husband that was kind of like, I've had it with you.

18:39All you do is work on your hot rods and party with your friends. And I'm kind of done hinting that she wanted to leave the marriage. The cop, you know, obviously that's going to be a suspicious kind of thing to find. So go talk to the husband. And they interviewed the husband and the family. And everyone seemed to agree like, hey, things aren't perfect. But she probably wrote that letter when she was really upset. She didn't give it to me. you know I might work on my hot rods a little too much but I didn't kill my wife and our marriage is fine overall and then the cops believed it well her family backed that up too they don't have marital troubles this seems like something Renee would have done and then just forgotten she even had the note so the cops cleared her husband of being involved in any wrongdoing but it raised a long standing theory that's still around today that we'll talk about theories later that possibly Renee ran off.

19:35And if Renee ran off to kind of start a new life or whatever, maybe the other women had too. Maybe. Maybe. So another interesting thing they learned, Ann Miller was by all accounts about three months pregnant and had talked to her friends. By some accounts, not all. Yeah. Like her closest friends had said. She said she was pregnant. Right. But I don't think they had like physical evidence of like a pregnancy test. Right. Right. Right. So they said that she had friends said that she had talked about having to go live in a home for unwed mothers. She was sort of up against the wall with this. Obviously, in the mid 60s, it was not a great thing to be an unwed mother.

20:20And it possibly we don't know this either for sure, but she was dating a married man and it could have been his baby, which would have been problematic as well. Right. Another good reason to R-U-N-N-O-F-T. That's right. Okay. So now two of them have a motive to run off and start a new life. Yeah. And we should also mention, too, that Patty was also dating a married man, supposedly. Yeah. And they both were buddies from this horse stable. And it turns out there was a real scumbag. I looked into this guy more, Silas Jane. he was a rapist he was linked to the murder of three boys he was linked to the murder of the Grimes sisters he was looked into for the disappearance of some heiress in Chicago he had a hit put out on his brother he had a firebomb planted in this other woman's car like this is a bad bad dude and he had an affiliation with this horse stable yeah his brother I believe owned the horse stable and Cy was like the organized crime boss running the criminal ring out of the horse stable.

21:32And this was the stable that Ann and Patty rode their horses at. I think Ann was actually, she had a job as a horse exerciser at these stables. So they were like really involved in like just rubbing elbows with this organized crime ring. And so cops were like, well, wait a minute. This is kind of huge. Like, you know, as far as looking into their backgrounds, this was the biggest red flag the cops had turned up. For sure. That they were known. Not that they were like criminals themselves, but just that they were like – they came in close contact with a really dangerous, violent criminal and his gang.

22:13Yeah, and one of the later theories was that they witnessed the rigging of the firebomb on this car of this woman. Yeah. And, you know, they had to be taken care of. Yeah. But we'll get to the theories later. Sure. So as they start, these were like the leads that the investigation turned up. But the cops also very wisely involved the media pretty early on. And so other leads started to come in. And, you know, there's the usual like, oh, I saw them in Pontiac, Michigan getting off of a bus. or they were all in my drugstore alive and well, you know, last week, even though they've been missing for three weeks, that kind of thing.

22:55But there were some solid leads that came in. And one of the big ones was a call from a couple from Indianapolis who'd been on the beach that day. And I think this is the problem with this. There's so little writing about this that you kind of have to piece together. I'm pretty sure that this is the same teenage couple that were their beach neighbors. Okay. I'm pretty sure. They said that they saw them go into the water at noon. And while they were hanging out in the water, a man, probably in his early 20s, with dark wavy hair, well tanned, came up in a tri-hole runabout ski boat. Which is, just stop and look up tri-hole runabout 1960s.

23:39And some will come up. They're really cool looking. Like it looks like a boat that Frank Sinatra would drive around on a lake. Totally. And it's the kind of lake that you would, if you were like an early 20s guy, pick up like girls at the lake in. It's just like a fun, cool, zippy boat. Yes. And side note, if you are turned on by those boats like I am, you can find these things and buy them for like$1 ,200. Yes. These old fiberglass boats. And engage in mechaphilia. You can. You can't buy the old wooden boats. You can, but not for$1 ,200. Oh, okay. Those are really expensive. But the fiberglass ones you can get for fairly cheap?

24:17Yeah. Well, that's what this guy supposedly has. And like restore it and, you know. Sure. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Are you saying that this is what you're going to do now? No, I'm not saying that. But I'm just, I've looked into it because they're just so like stylish and cool. They are. And they had, like this one was turquoise interior. They all have those like very 60s sort of colors. Diamond dusted upholstery. Yeah, yeah. They're pretty sweet. Yeah. So, yeah, this is a white tri-hole runabout with turquoise interior. And this couple from Indianapolis who called in later said that they saw the three women get on the boat with this guy and drive off.

24:58Yeah, so that's a big one. Huge. They also get another report from witnesses who said these girls came back at some point, got something to eat, and were hanging out on the beach. And then a third lead that came in and said they actually got on another boat, this big cabin cruiser. And this was about 3 p.m. with three dudes, and the boat didn't have a name on it that we could discern. So in that first week, they get some boat wreckage. It washes ashore some styrofoam, some seats, an oil can. Looked probably like a busted or wrecked boat. But the police said, listen, we got two boats we're targeting here, and none of the stuff from this wreckage or potential wreckage is from those boats.

25:44Yeah, they didn't think so at least. Yeah. Right? So, but the weird thing about that boat wreckage is that no boat was reported wrecked that weekend on Lake Michigan. Certainly not in the area around Indiana Dune State Park. That's right. That's a big one. And then secondly, like you said, it doesn't seem to match any of the boats that they were looking for. So if you step back and take these leads all together, a timeline, a possible timeline emerges where Patty and Renee wade out into the water around noon, go on like a little pleasure cruise on the little tri-hole runabout shortly after, come back to shore, go get something to eat, hang out, and then at three, go out on another boat, a bigger boat, which is possibly also manned by the same guy who was in the tri-hole runabout with a couple of his friends.