The Marina Boelter Case Part 1

Chris reviews a case from her home state of Indiana.  On the evening of December 31, 2014, 18-year-old Marina Boelter finished her shift at a local grocery store, accepted a ride home from a patron of the store, and was never seen again.  There are at least four, separate, viable suspects in this case. 

Transcript

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People just want to know what it's like to be me. How does it feel to see a dead body? Tell a family their loved one has been murdered, talk to a rape victim, catch a killer and get them to confess. Hold on tight, my friends. Get ready for the journey. And welcome to murder with Mannina. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of murder with Mannina. Colleen, I gotta tell you a brief story that happened to me this weekend. I love great stories. So I was at a festival in a little town north of Indianapolis and one of the kids that I trained. I had him as a shy, shy 16 year old kid who joined my Explorer Program, which is a program I was teaching kids to be in law enforcement and how to do traffic stops and how to deal with people and then moved to the inner city kids. Underprivileged. Absolutely. And so they would graduate to our cadet program where we actually paid them a part time salary. They were like 18 years old, because there's that gap between 18 and 21 before you can get hired on to a police department. So I trained him up and he came to me one day and he said that he you know, was looking to apply at this city and it's a great city just north of Indianapolis and would I be okay with it because I was with Indianapolis police department at that time, of course, we're training them to become Indianapolis officers and I said, Hey, you do you do you his family lived up there. He's actually from New Jersey, but he's Indian. And there's a big Indian population in this town. So fast forward to I met this festival with some friends this weekend. And I knew he's on the police department with his festivals being held. And so I text him. And there's a parade and everything. And I look at my friends and I go, he'll be directing traffic somewhere because he's a rookie. So I texted him and said, where are you at? And he told me and I went over there and he pops out of his police car and he's got his vest on and he looks so handsome. And he's all trained up and he's been there for a little over a year and I can't I was so excited when I left. I was like it just kind of warmed my heart to see him because he didn't say four words to me when he first started and he was really kind of almost scared of me. Because evidently I'm intimidating, which cracks me up but he was like, Yeah, I did. I was in a vehicle pursue and I wrecked my car and me I had this gun I pulled my rifle out on him and I'm like, Oh, this is just so fantastic. Bravo. Anyways, it made my heart melt. So anyways, okay, so today, we're going to talk about an almost an eight year old case out of Indiana. Her name is Marina bolter. And it's considered a missing person case because a body hasn't been found, but 99.9% Obviously she's probably dead and she's from Bloomfield, Indiana, which has a population of about 2400 people. So super small SMAD I work in a small town in Bremen, Indiana, and only 3000 people and coming from a big city and then going and working in a small town, everybody knew everybody, and everybody was in everybody's business. And so to be at this point it you know, when this happened in 2014, eight years later in this case hasn't been solved. I want to shed some light on it, I want to talk about it. Because there's a lot of moving pieces to it. There's a lot of players involved. It's an interesting case. And they kind of talk about you know, how I go about if we resolve it. So how I even got introduced to this case of in the missing person, her name is Marina bolter. And I was contacted by a production company, they were going to try to sell a television show and they contacted me to do a sizzle reel. And what that is, is kind of a trailer for a television show, which give it to the network and, and so they contacted me and said, Hey, we want you to go down there with us. Talk to the victim's mother, we want to kind of film some stuff and see if we can sell the show. So at about that time, Colleen and I are starting to develop our friendship we had met at crime con, and I had told her about it and she was you know, you know you were helping me with the contracts and all that bullshit that goes on but I said why don't you come with me to the sizzle so she flew in from California and we go down to Bloomfield, Indiana and she kind of is on the on the roller coaster with me and this is where we are introduced to this case, so Marina bolter was an 18 years old. She was last seen New Year's Eve December 31 of 2014. Around six o'clock when she left her job at a supermarket, a small supermarket IG we still have them ha IGA Yes, we still have them in in southern Indiana but not very many of them. But she was last seen leaving her job around Six. She has not been seen since then. A coworker got a call she was concerned because she didn't arrive for work. So here we are with a missing person she's a white female Marino's a white female, she was 18. She was five, three 120 pounds with blue eyes and blonde strawberry hair. Really pretty girl. And like I said, Her body's never been recovered. And you have to say when someone's been missing, especially at that age, you know that she's 99.9% of the time they're dead. They just are. There are some missing persons of adults and believe it or not, people just don't want to be found. But she was 18 didn't have a lot of resources. She was last seen from the information that I was getting was was wearing pink and white Nike shoes. She frequently wore across necklace. Okay, so I will talk about you know, as this kind of goes on how I would investigate it, but I just kind of wanted to go over everything. So we go down there to Bloomfield in we like to call it the sticks and it was the sixth Was it not calling boy, it was backwoods like, like cell phones. Like I didn't get any bars on my cell phone. And were a little concerned because GPS was kind of in and out and I didn't know that area at all. So we get down there and we start talking to her mother Tressie. And she's a colorful character, to say the least. Oh boy, she was she was a running hashtag. Yes, running. And she was a lot of fun. And so this kind of develops, but what we kind of learned was if we got to learn a little bit about the backstory, we'll touch on it briefly. She had a boyfriend her boyfriend was named DJ. They had a child together. They were kind of an on and off again. relationship. And but they had a baby together a four month old baby and so evidently, the baby was over at Marina, sister's house and Marina sister. Yes. Was with her boyfriend at the house. And they got into a fight in it. Yes. Because the baby's injured. Yes. And the baby was only four months old, four months old. So this all happened baby. The baby had had had a his brain was bleeding. He got hit man. So it was a severe injury. Right? So So PBS took the baby away and put them in foster care, right? So when you look at just that, that's an interesting dynamic, right, like, so obviously, there's some family turmoil after that, the sister kind of went on the run, because she was on probation and they had drug tested her and she had, I think been on or tested positive for some drugs during that, that type of thing. And so the family kind of divided a little bit because marinas father and face father, I think were trying to hide her or help her kind of get away. They were helping faith and that infuriated Marina and also and also tres, tres, he also said that faith in Marina never gone along. Right? Right. And don't forget, Tracy is marinas mother and she has been to, I don't even know how to put it so that you can understand that they the fighting, fighting toofer Try and find her daughter Marina, and really just trying this relentless. Thank you relentless as the word. And so when we went down to her home, and we were talking about or just the passion that she showed, and just what she told us about her daughter, and we went inside her room and saw these things, and literally relentless is a perfect word for that. So obviously, there's some tension that the families kind of divided up, but as the investigation goes on, we learned that when she left work, she was on the phone with somebody and I think that somebody was was Toby, and we'll get to Toby in a minute. So she's on the phone with a guy named Toby. And somebody I think DJ pulls up or JJ walks up and she says, an interesting comment. Oh, shit, there's DJ. Okay. And then she gets into a vehicle obviously, she gets on the off the phone with DJ, she gets into a vehicle. And she is dropped off supposedly a mile away from from where she worked, but close to her apartment at this abandoned pizza place, apparently, directly across the street from where she was living was a closed down pizza place, right? And she asked the man who gave her a ride to drop her off there because she didn't want him to know where she lived. Right? And that's, I mean, this is according to him. Yeah, it's according to him. So we've got the J of course, you've got to look at DJ a little bit. Just because of course when you have these types of cases, the significant other, the baby daddy, all those people are your prime suspect. So looking at DJ, we've got this This person who I evidently was a regular at the IGA that that picked her up so and that's so interesting because he hasn't really been identified yet. And that like a name hasn't popped out and that that blows my mind strange because that town is so small. You've got regulars people know everybody and he literally supposedly, from where they are in the investigation was the last person to see her alive. So it's like why don't we not know his name. So that's a concern and so there's your second suspect or your, your second person of interest, right? You've got your person of interest. You try to build it a little bit to be, you know, to see if they become a suspect. So, boyfriend unknown guy who picks her up. And we don't know anything else about him. So evidently that night though, she was invited to a New Year's Eve party, right. And Toby's house, it tells us pretty interesting because, okay, so let's talk a little bit about Toby. Toby is a family friend of Tressie. Right. Marinas mother, they've known each other for a very, very long time was pretty slow. Marina was born. Yes. To the point where Toby was like, you know, around Tressie, when she was pregnant with Marina is like, oh, I can feel the baby move. Right? jacked up. I had read something about that. So he's been in the picture. And supposedly, during this time, he was having an affair with Marina. Okay, so there's your third person, right, obviously, and he was helping her get an apartment or he did help her get an apartment to kind of get on her own to get her shit back together, you know, for the ultimate goal of getting their child back. Right. That was the except he was married. Except a court now what I mean yet, right? This is how this case is getting muddy that he was married. Right? So then you got to look at that person as well. You know, his wife. Did anybody interview his wife, that's somebody else. So anyway, she was supposed to go to this party. never showed up at this party. You know, people are starting to call and evidently, I think I think it was DJ. And then DJ also had a party that he wanted Marina to go New Year's Eve. So she had a couple of options. One dress she gets involved once they can't figure out where she is and they kind of go to her apartment. And interestingly enough, she didn't lock the door that day or didn't lock the door didn't have you know, and I buy that I absolutely buy that in small towns. People in dreamin Indiana did lock the people in Delphi, Indiana, where Abby and Libby were murdered didn't lock the doors. They locked the doors now. I don't know that that's really suspect. Tracy go I agree with that. I never locked we never locked our doors. Yeah, yeah. So mom's gonna involve goes over to the apartment. And it's telling investigators she didn't she didn't get home because I know my daughter. If she wouldn't, number one wouldn't go to a New Year's Eve party and her work clothes. Right. And if she were home, it would have looked like a cyclone hit hit, because clothes would have been all over the floor. She would have would have looked like she had changed. According to mom, it didn't appear that and I. And that is really valuable information. When mom comes into picture and starts telling you like, No, there's no way that my daughter was here, right? Mom's know, mom's now. And so she entered it just based on that. And then like I said, she wasn't overly concerned with the fact that the door wasn't locked. Her purse wasn't there, her cell phone wasn't there. Investigators start to get in a little bit. And what's so interesting that you know, the information is they were telling the family originally because of the type of phone you know that they weren't able to track it and that bullshit and relentless trustee that knew where Marina bought her phone and it was Walmart rolls over to the Walmart gets with the manager, they literally are able to get in contact with the phone company which is just so crazy to me. That trustees doing that and it pings. But the investigator says it doesn't help them. It okay and right at the pizza store. Yeah. Right and dropped off. Exactly. So and then as people are calling her cell phone that evening about coming to the party and stuff it goes directly to voicemail and we all know most of the time unless you're on it, you know and somebody calls in and you hit you know, send a voicemail that can happen very quickly or your phone's dead right so if you call a phone that's dead, it just goes straight to just go straight to so pretty quickly into the investigation. Her phone has died. Okay and there to even no longer be in or it was stolen or it was discarded some well possibly but even if it was discarded, we would still be able to get pinged. Right. Like it would still be a looping so, but I would think that it's just dead or turned out okay. Right. So anyways, investigation is so now we've got what we've got DJ boyfriend, we've got the regular and that just still kills me I can't believe we're calling the regular the regular but we don't know the regular name is. So how regular is the bizarre right? We'll talk about that later. But that's one of the most bizarre pieces in this puzzle we've got all of these people that start kind of showing up, right, and then Mom starting to get involved Mom's doing a lot of searches. And I don't know, and I haven't found anything but I don't think dogs were sent out to the area of where the pizza is, one of the first things you got to start to think about is getting the dogs out there especially, especially since we're pretty convinced or investigators were pretty convinced that she was kind of at least dropped off or you know, murdered or whatever in near that pizza place. So you got to start right there. And not only that, that just the environment, the whole little town. Yes, it's a densely wooded area. And in fact, there was a quote, We found where somebody said, if you want to murder someone do it in Greene County. Yeah, this is Greene County. Yes. And this is when you see the pictures of the woods surrounding that little town, you would understand why. Yeah, exactly. So first couple of days, the investigators are working, and then it kind of dies off a little bit. There isn't a lot other than Tressie is trying to put up posters and all these types of things. And as she was doing protests, Oh, yes. And every buddy is kind of snowing in the town that they're they're trying to figure out who this unknown person is. That picked her up. And evidently, it took three weeks for him to finally pop up. And that's an interesting thing. Because when you when you look at small towns, and of course that begs the question of why did it take you so long? It was highlighted on the news. I mean, this isn't national news or anything, but it was highlighted, you know, why did it take him three weeks to come forward? Why so long? Right. They're not giving still not giving his name. So not giving any criminal history details. And I don't know why. But that's somebody that you got to pound in the interview. Right? Because, right last person, possibly. So they interview him and he he agrees and he says, Yeah, I absolutely picked her up, and I dropped her off near the pizza place. He didn't realize that. Supposedly, from what he said that where he dropped her off was so close to her apartment, right across the street. Yeah, yep. Yep. And so anyway, that's pretty much all he gives police and, and unfortunately, there's no cameras, there's no video. There's no security cameras, none of that stuff. You go a shame. You go into these small towns, they still don't have them to this day. But there definitely wasn't any there. But he does. You know, he does tell us one thing. He confirms the fact that he was with her. Right. And that's super, super important when we're interviewing people. Where do they position themselves? Disease? You know, what do you said I didn't drop her off. I mean, he's positioning himself that he absolutely did pick her up. So did give him a lie detector test. And he did pass. And we'll talk a little bit about that later as well. I have questions about Absolutely. So we talk we go back to Toby a little bit. married man, family friend. And then what what would be the motive there? Right. What would be right, Toby's? He owns a motorcycle shop? Yes. Called demon motorcycles, I believe. Right. Right. So anyways, when we talked when Tracy was interviewed a little bit, and I think you may know a little bit more about this. She was kind of okay with Toby, but kind of not. Is that kind of what you learned a little bit about? Yeah. Because you asked her this your signature question one of them, which is Who would you talk to first and the ratio? Right back, Toby? Yeah. And so I do this on every single interview that I do when I talk to the family when I have to go and talk to the family and say, you know, your loved one is missing, your loved one is killed. I always ask this question. Tell me if you were the investigator in this, who would you interview first? And I mean, it's it's it's kind of common sense to me, right? The family or the closest people. You're talking about a mother that had some serious problems growing up some, you know, serious issues as an adult has lost several of her kids, which trying to get them back. I mean, we're not talking about someone who hasn't been through some shit. Right but loved her daughter was very close to her daughter and was very relentless, like you said and committed to finding her. So by the time I get down there to film the sizzle reel, or, or whatever, you know, there's have been a lot of time gone by it had been what, like, almost four years, or whatever, when we got down there. And so she's been living it and breathing in and she says, I would talk to Toby. Right. And so that's, that's just huge, huge information. She said she knew about the relationship and the affair. And it was one of those things. Well, it was helping her and the main goal was to get her kids back. She was not great with the affair, but okay with that, and he got to understand Tressie and I don't know, like you said, she's just a walking hashtag. But if you had to describe dressy, how would you describe her? Well, you know, the the shows that are so popular, like the tiger King shows, and that where you have those really pronounced, very disturbed the Duck Dynasty characters. She was on that level for sure. Yeah. 100% on that level, entertainment wise. Messed up beyond belief, but you just fell in love with her because she had such good intentions. It was. She was a she's a really interesting character. Yeah, really lovable actually, in the end, right. So what's interesting is, we're doing this with a production company. And we get what we need, and then calling and I because I said, hey, you've really, if you want to know what it's like to be me, you need to come hang out with me. And interestingly enough, we were headed to Ohio to talk to another subject whose aunt was murdered. Very colorful character as well. And so we were just literally driving from Indiana, to Ohio. And then trustee calls us back. And when What did she tell us? Oh, my gosh, she said to Chris, Chris. Somebody tried to kill me today. And no, the production company called you. Yeah. And the production company said, somebody tried to kill Tressie. Today, can you go up there and check on her and go up there? That was like a four hour drive from where we were right. And I set up you said, Absolutely, yeah. And you said to me, Wow, this is amazing, because I really would love for you to meet trustee and hear her story, just so you get a sense of the kind of people I meet when I'm investigating crimes in areas like this. Yeah. And so we went back for our drive. And in the process, Tracy called and we had her on speakerphone. And right away, we just it was all we had, we had to silence the speakerphone. And because we were laughing so hard, only because she's so colorful. Yeah. And so I was concerned because she was doing so much work, to try to get figure out what her daughter was and find out who killed her. And I think she was starting to get into a dangerous zone because she was in my least in my opinion, based on what we knew, at that point, was the only one that was trying to move this case along. Not saying she might have come close, but we really she had such a dysfunctional life that we're not 100% Sure why somebody would try to kill her on that particular day. It didn't seem by the way, like that. Was that unusual for right, which was part of the, you know, aspect of it that was darkly humorous, kinda of and they and again, like we really cared about her right? Yeah, I really really want to help her you still want to find the right so what's interesting is like and I you know, it when you start investigating these cases, and you really sit down with them and what I mean by sitting down with them is sitting down with them and the way in my experience when you sit down with somebody in their own element, meaning their home where they're most comfortable, where they've got a mirage of of their loved one up and you spend time in their living room and you're talking to them and they're comfortable and they're letting you in to every aspect of their life which Tressie Did you you can't help but care about these people again, it's it's as basic as learning the story behind the story. So Colleen and I learned the story traits Yeah, learn learn the story behind the story with a trustee and a little bit about Marina, and a little bit about their lives. So we left there after I don't know three hours of being in her home chant trying to champion for her right like because you just you get a tattoo you get a relationship with these people. Well, you know what, Chris? It's what you always say which is the story behind the story, how it changes things, how it colors everything. And that day I've told you many many times literally changed my life because I was the kind of person that would say anybody who had all five of their 6am I losing track five six have her kids taken away from CPS and her grandson adopted taken away and adopted out. Like how could I care about a person that would suggest ask their children to such a horrific childhood upbringing, whatever. And then when we learned her whole story and how and saw the whole picture, what you have said to me all along, just resonated, which is that she loved her child children just as much as anybody, anybody literally doing the best she could with the, with the cards. And that's that was what I like when I left that day or that evening, when we, you know, spent, I just thought to myself, this is, you know, this is what we don't see, right, that the datelines in the 2020s would never sit in this living room. And can I just interject one little thing, like an example of how she was so well intentioned. So she had she would finish her sentences often with and I think Jesus would be pretty proud of me for that and tap herself on the back. So she told us about how she beat the shit out of a guy at a Denny's restaurant who was abusing his kid and all the patrons stood up and applauded and the manager didn't even press charges. And then she saw the kid many years later, and he thanked her and said that his dad had never been that abusive to him since she beat him up. And then she told us about that if the cops abandon the case, or that, you know, they stopped searching for Marina that she was going to kill 33 pedophiles before she died. She said I am not dying until I kill 33 pedophiles. Right? And I think Jesus would be pretty proud of me for that. She said 33 Because that 33 is my favorite number. Yeah. So it's just that that give a sense of her right. And the kind of the life that Marina had you start to see the whole tapestry. Absolutely. So and the relationship they have they loved each other so much that mother and daughter Yeah, yeah. So anyways, we're kind of going through this door journey with her. But when we go back, we look a little bit about Toby. So interestingly enough, Toby was having a party in New Year's Eve party that night. And he says that he when the police start interviewing people at the party, and a couple of people at the party said Yeah, Toby kept asking me to call Marina, which I think is a little weird. Why wasn't that odd? Yeah, that's odd. Right? That's, that's odd. So maybe because he didn't want his wife to see him calling? Well, maybe right? It's so weird that he invited Marina right and he and his wife were having the bike what Right, right kind of characters this you know, and that's so when investigators did eventually catch up with Toby, he did say that when he when that she was on the phone with him, when the acts are on again, off again, boyfriend DJ pulled up. He's the one that said that she said, oh shit, it's DJ, which I think is interesting as well. But like, Did Did he really say it? Or is Toby making that up to kind of shed light off of him like, it's just like, it's so weird. And these people are just so involved. It's not like they're so like once having an affair, once a baby daddy once in a relationship, and then we've got this unknown person. So we've got all of these people. And then just to throw a little bit more into this, um, there's another person that pops up during the investigation, and he is a convicted murderer that lives in marinas apartment complex, and by the way, is the only other person that lives in the apartment building and the apartment, and Marina didn't know what the owner never told her. Right. So we've got DJ, Toby, the Aurora killer and his name is Gail. Sorry, burnin Gail Breiner. And then the unknown person, which I don't think it's the unknown person at all. So that's where we are with Marina bolter. Stay tuned. And what's so interesting is, which we'll talk about in the next episode, but how each of the suspects has a very distinct kind of motive, or character quality that would it's not like you're just looking at him. Maybe I don't know, maybe if they were the only suspect you'd be saying absolutely. 100% How could it not be this person? Right. Right. And what's interesting about this, and I don't know where the investigation is on this, but it doesn't appear from the very kind of brief conversation I've had with a family member that the police are working on it. So you hate to say, you hate to say that this case is cold. When you have four to five people right in this area. That's that town that is so small, so small, and so close knit. I don't know how something can be cold when you've got four or five really, really, really warm possible persons of interest, or suspect. So anyways guys Joy As for part two, the missing person case of Marina bolter and can you and you're going to be talking about how you would invest, I am going to investigate this case, how I if somebody said look, go down to Bloomfield and do you. We will talk about that on part two. And we'll try to get this thing moving a little bit and at least get it out into the, into the podcasting world with listeners to see if maybe they can come up with something so good because I have so many questions, Chris, that I am so eager to have you answer. Yes, absolutely. Again, guys, thanks so much for all your support. Remember to rate and review this podcast tell your family and friends. We really appreciate all of the nice words and comments and reviews that you give us and again, stay safe in this crazy world with all of these crazy things that are happening in our community with our rights. We wanted to get into that but just stay safe keep your head on a swivel take care of one another. And we will see you again next time on murder with Mannina. If you have a cold case you'd like Chris to review submitted through our website at murder with mannina.com and follow us on Instagram and Facebook at murder with mannina and Twitter at murder W mannina. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode of murder with Mannina.