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E211: Laura Van Wyhe
3.9k Plays1 year ago
Laura Van Wyhe was ready to set down roots, open a business, and create a life for herself and her young son. Then, early one morning just days after her 21st birthday, someone cut her life short. The details of where Laura was found, how she was dressed, and the items found on or near her were nearly as perplexing as the question of who would want to harm such a beautiful soul.
For further information about the case, check out the Bonaparte podcast and the website https://championforlaura.com/
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Transcript
Purpose and Spirituality of Travel
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People enjoy travel for a variety of reasons. Many of you likely gladly traveled recently to visit family for the holidays. Others travel because of the adventure. New places, new people, new experiences.
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Still others feel that travel is a way of learning to understand themselves better through better understanding others. Then there are those for whom traveling is an integral part of their spirit. It's an impulse continually working in them because an unfettered life of travel is eye-opening, freeing, necessary.
Laura Van Wie's Life and Transition
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Through much of her teenage years, that's exactly how the young woman at the center of our case this week lived her life. She had already lived independently in multiple places. She was art and freedom embodied. But recently, the beauty she found in life had grown immensely.
00:00:59
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Thanks to the recent birth of her son, she learned that roots, as well as wings, had value, and as such had made plans to plant those roots in Iowa City, Iowa as the first step in paving a path for her small family's future.
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She was as determined as she was inquisitive.
The Tragic Case of Laura Van Wie
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Someone, however, cut that future short, just as she was on the cusp of beginning new adventures. Someone had left her for dead. This is the case of Laura Van Wie.
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Oh.
00:02:12
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Welcome to coffee and cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Alison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron. We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement.
00:02:28
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So justice and closure can be brought to these families. With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, because as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
Events Leading to Laura's Death
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It was October 25th, 1996, and Laura Van Wie, who lived with her mother, Leanne Thomas, was frantically running around the home packing everything she or her 14-month-old son, Samson, may need over the course of the next day or so.
00:03:06
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Reporter Pilar Melendez for The Daily Beast interviewed Laura's mom, who reported how prepared Laura had wanted to be for the trip, stating, quote, she was always packing so much stuff and was so nervous to make sure her son had everything he needed. But she was also excited that she was going away for the weekend, end quote.
00:03:28
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Laura had just turned 21 on October 23rd, so the trip, only two days later on the 25th, was almost like a belated birthday celebration for her. She was going out of town with her ex-boyfriend and her son Sampson's father, Donald Knight III, called Donnie.
00:03:46
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While Laura lived in Iowa City, Iowa with her mother, they were headed to the small town of Bonaparte, Iowa, population roughly around 400 people, to the home of Donnie's mother, Rebecca Reynolds Knight, who was running for a seat in the Iowa House of Representatives and had a parade the next morning on October 26th as part of her campaign. While Laura and Donnie had had a turbulent relationship that we'll get into more here in a bit, they were still amiable.
00:04:16
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And according to some sources, including Donnie, had begun having more serious conversations again about the future. And that might be true since Laura's mother recalled to Melendez how excited Laura had been.
Discovery and Investigation
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Donnie and his brother Ben showed up to pick up Laura and Samson, and they began the nearly 80 minute drive south to his mother's house. Fast forward to 1.45 a.m. on October 26th,
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Truck driver Dan Clyde was driving down US Route 136 just outside of Cahoca, Missouri and began slowing down knowing he was nearing an intersection. Just off the side of the road, something that looked like a hay bale caught his attention, but did so enough that he decided it best to stop the truck and go back to have a closer look.
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When he did, he discovered that what he had seen wasn't a hay bale at all, but the body of a woman and an unconscious woman who, because of her injuries, was barely clinging to life. Clyde took action and ran the quarter mile to the nearest gas station to contact law enforcement. Police, when they arrived,
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and saw that the woman needed immediate and specialized attention, had her sent to Blessing Hospital in Quincy, Illinois, a 45 minute drive from Cahoca, a small town itself with only around 2000 residents. While the woman fought hard to cling to life, unfortunately, only about three hours after having been found, she passed away, never able to give authorities a clue about what had happened to her.
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According to InWestIowa.com, a coroner's inquest determined the 21-year-old died of brain trauma, massive blood loss, and blunt force trauma to the head and legs. Specifically, her head, pelvis, hips, and legs.
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Further testing revealed no signs of sexual assault, and the toxicology report testing for drugs and alcohol came back clean. More specifically, the autopsy report read that the young woman had, quote, bilateral subarachnoid hemorrhage.
00:06:38
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and contusions of the frontal lobe of the brain and multiple bilateral compound fractures of the bones in her legs." Further, the autopsy obtained by the Daily Beast reported that the woman had, quote, little inside her cardiovascular system at the time of her death, end quote, because she had lost so much blood.
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Though what made that observation so odd concerning the massive blood loss, among so many other odd details that would soon come to light as well, was the noticeable lack of blood surrounding the woman's body.
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In fact, the only blood there on the side of the roadway, as specified by Missouri Highway Patrol Officer Bruce Clemens, who was one of the first at the scene, was under the woman's body. As a result of that detail, along with no skid marks, no vehicle debris, or any other indication of an accident having happened here, other than the body of the victim having all appearances of having been struck by a vehicle,
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led Clemens to announce that it was his opinion that if the woman had been struck by a vehicle, it most definitely was not in the location where her body had been discovered. And that led to even more questions.
Laura's Relationships and Family Dynamics
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Though the question of this woman's identity
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was quickly answered within the first few hours. The woman was Laura Van Wie. Laura was born on October 23, 1975 to William Van Wie and Leanne Thomas in Iowa City, Iowa.
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and grew up there alongside her older sister, Sarah. From the time she was little, she was a beautifully independent soul. She was driven, artistic, interested, and brilliant. An article by Senac Sengupta for the Cinemaholic cited Laura's mother, Leanne, recollecting, quote, when Laura was a child, she was extremely exuberant. She loved animals, dance, and theater, almost anything and everything, end quote.
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As she grew, Laura grew into herself and maintained the love of the arts, an interest in health and homeopathic medicine and nature. The Des Moines Register cited Laura's mother as saying the following, quote, Laura was very gentle. She was very naive, but she was a genius. Her IQ was insane. She never went to college. She wanted to be a midwife. She was like an earth mother, end quote.
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Laura followed her own path in life, and those who knew her admired her for it.
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There was some tension at home and at school though in her teen years, as fiercely independent children like Laura tend to not always want to follow conformity and rules. According to the podcast Bonaparte, which centers on Laura's case, Laura dropped out of Iowa City West High School, hung with a crowd of free-spirited youth who didn't always make responsible decisions, and moved out of her mother's home and into a group home.
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Though Laura did briefly attend an alternative school, Community Education Center, she dropped out of that school as well. Laura's older sister, Sarah, who had been away at college while these changes happened, moved back to Iowa City to help Laura to get back on the right track and not lose sight of her potential. During her late teens, somewhere around late 1992 or early 1993, Laura began dating a boy
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named Donald Knight III, who we met earlier, called Donnie, by those who knew him. Although he was around five years older than Laura, friends with many who were in Laura's friend group and had his own past struggles with substance abuse, perhaps due to the aftermath of physical abuse he suffered as a child, he seemed good for Laura. Donnie was fun to be around, and he and Laura seemed to feed off of one another.
00:10:38
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both free spirits. The two ran off to California, where they lived on a small sailboat and sailed up and down the West Coast, before later making their way to Hawaii, where they lived for a bit before coming back home. Like a lot of young couples, their relationship was a bit rocky, continually breaking up and getting back together. Despite the lack of stability in the relationship, when Laura found out that Donnie had gotten her pregnant,
00:11:05
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she was ready for the responsibility of being a mom. She gave birth to a little boy named Samson in August of 1995, through a home birth in the duplex she shared with Donnie on Grant Street in Iowa City. Laura's mom, Leanne, stated to the Cinemaholic, quote, she was so over the moon when Samson was born, she was the most devoted mother, end quote. Perhaps that's why the devotion to raising her son as she envisioned
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that Laura had made several significant changes in her life after his birth. By 1996, she began hanging out with friends from her childhood more than the one she met later in life. She decided that she wanted to open her own childcare center and went through the process of not only filling out all the necessary paperwork to open one, but also creating a client list. And she broke up with Donnie.
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An incident that happened in Bozeman, Montana in August 1996 was the final straw. According to the Bonaparte podcast, Laura Donnie Sampson, who was one, and Donnie's brother Ben decided to take a road trip out west in a van. The van, however, had broken down on them just outside of Bozeman and
00:12:19
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When taken to the repair shop, the group had found out that the necessary parts would take a while to arrive, meaning they would be stuck there for roughly a week. An argument arose and quickly grew in intensity until Laura said that Donnie became physically violent. According to the podcast, Donnie later admitted that he and Laura were both
00:12:40
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mutually violent in arguments, often scratching, pulling hair, and shoving. However, the podcast goes on to say that Laura had had enough and didn't want her son to grow up thinking that physical violence was acceptable, so she had ended the relationship.
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Despite their breakup, Laura and Donnie continued to work on their relationship and to keep it amicable for Samson's sake. They were in regular contact and saw each other often. There were even some rumors that they were talking about giving their relationship one more chance. With that in mind, Donnie had invited Laura and Samson to go to Bonaparte, Iowa, where he grew up for a party.
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As I mentioned in the introduction to this episode, it was a common belief that the party was a belated celebration of Laura's 21st birthday.
Inconsistencies and Suspicions at the Bergman's
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However, the Bonaparte podcast clarifies that, if that were indeed the intent of the party, only Donnie himself seemed to be aware of it, as most thought it was a small get-together, only around a dozen guests or so, mostly family members, for Donnie's mother, who was running for a seat in the Iowa State House of Representatives.
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Regardless of the reason, Laura had been excited to attend and had bundled into the car with Sampson alongside Donnie and Donnie's brother Ben. The four arrived in Bonaparte at Rebecca Reynolds' night's house sometime around 7.30 p.m.
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For much of the night, nothing particularly notable happened until a man arrived at the residence who had worked for Rebecca Knight in placing signs for her campaign. Whoever this individual was, he's not been named in the research, Laura believed he was the individual who had sexually assaulted a friend of hers, and Laura publicly accused him of doing so at the party.
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Whether he did assault a friend or if this were a case of mistaken identity is unknown. After the confrontation, however, the man left the party. By around 11 PM, Lara was ready to get Samson to bed and to go to bed herself. We do not have concrete answers as to why Lara and Samson didn't stay at Donnie's mother's house nor stay in Bonaparte since the plan was to attend a parade in Bonaparte early the next morning.
00:14:55
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According to the Bonaparte podcast, Donnie stated that there hadn't been an extra bedroom at his mother's house, and that was the reason Laura and Samson had left. However, he's the only one to have given this reason from my understanding. Instead of staying in Bonaparte, Laura and Samson went home with Donnie's sister, Sarah Bergman, and Sarah's husband, Tony, who lived in Cahokim, Missouri, a 25-minute drive south of Bonaparte.
00:15:23
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What is interesting about this choice to go to Tony and Sarah's was that with two children of their own, a five-year-old and two-year-old, and living in a two-bedroom trailer, there also wasn't an extra bedroom at their residence either. According to police reports, both Tony and Sarah gave the same account of the drive home from Bonaparte.
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that Tony had started driving before realizing that he was likely to have been intoxicated to be driving and turned the wheel over to Sarah, who drove the rest of the way. According to the Bonaparte podcast, Sarah and Tony, who, after leaving the party, became the last people we know to have been around Laura before she was found just a few hours later, have said that Laura mentioned camping on the drive home.
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an idea that had excited their five-year-old daughter. So the plan was hatched to build a tent of sheets and pillows in the Bergman's living room, in which Laura, Samson, and their oldest daughter would, quote-unquote, camp out for the night. They said they arrived home around 11.45 p.m. and were in bed by 12.15. Sarah said she set an alarm for 6.30 a.m., which she snoozed until 6.50. As I stated a moment ago, the plan was that
00:16:38
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That next morning, they were to all get up and head back to Bonaparte for the parade, somehow related to Donnie's mother's election campaign. However, when Sarah walked into the living room the next morning, she said she saw her daughter, saw Samson, who was naked with a wet diaper on the ground near him, but no sign of Laura.
00:17:01
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As time passed and Laura didn't show back up, Sarah stated that she and Tony began looking for her. Since the Bonaparte podcast was the only source in which I was able to hear a timeline of Sarah and Tony's actions and looking for Laura, I'll summarize their findings here.
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According to the podcast, Tony noticed that his black jacket and his pocket knife, usually kept on a shelf by the door, were both missing. They say Tony first went to the nearest gas station, the same one which the truck driver had gone to to use the phone to call police after finding Laura. But Tony didn't see Laura there.
00:17:38
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Tony then went to his parents home. The trailer in which Tony and Sarah lived was on Tony's parents property and Tony and Sarah's trailer had no phone of its own. That's why Tony went to his parents to use their phone. He had heard something on the radio about a body having been found nearby. So he used their phone to make several phone calls. He called dispatch to ask about the body and to give a description of the missing Laura. However, the descriptions didn't match.
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The podcast explains that dispatch didn't have a correct description. He called his mother-in-law, Rebecca Knight, to let her know that Sarah would be driving to Bonaparte with the children and that he would be staying in Cahoca to look for Laura. A bit later, Tony went to the police station with a picture of Laura to try to get more answers. While there, according to the podcast, he was able to see a more detailed description of the scene the truck driver had come upon that morning and saw the detail of the black satin jacket.
00:18:36
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and knew immediately that it was his. Tony then called Sarah to tell her to give Donnie the news before sitting down with police to go over details from the previous night. Afterward, Sarah returned home and she and Tony went to Quincy, Illinois to identify the body while Donnie drove to Iowa City to give Laura's mother, Leanne, the life altering news that her baby girl had passed. Many have wondered what could have prompted Laura to leave the trailer
00:19:05
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and to have left Samson behind. Sarah and Tony have reported their belief that Laura left to go buy diapers for Samson. After all, they said they found him naked with a pee-soaked diaper open next to him. Individuals close to the case have also stated in reports that Laura had inadvertently left her purse and diaper bag and bone apart the night before. However, this explanation just doesn't cut it for Laura's family.
00:19:36
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They argue that had Lara really left to get diapers, she wouldn't have left Samson there without letting Sarah and Tony know she was stepping out. And besides that, Sarah and Tony had a 24 month old. Samson was 14 months. Surely she would have used a diaper there that was already in the trailer, they argue, and not left on foot in the middle of the night. I have to agree with them and add in another detail.
00:20:05
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Yes, it is true that it's reported that she had forgotten Samson's diaper bag, which is why we assume Sarah and Tony speculate that's the reason why she left to go get some. But just precisely, how was she supposed to do that since she had also forgotten her purse and money in Bonaparte? When you think about that detail,
00:20:27
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This explanation simply falls apart. But what makes this case so confusing are the unexplainable details about the scene where Lara was found.
Staging and Mysterious Circumstances
00:20:37
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I'm hesitant to say crime scene since, if we believe Clemens, there are more than one.
00:20:44
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Instead, let's discuss the scene of discovery. First, let's start with clothing Laura was discovered wearing. Despite the temperature only being in the 50s, Laura was found wearing multiple layers of clothing. Two shirts, a jacket, a bra, underwear, tan pants, and maroon sweatpants.
00:21:06
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She was barefoot. Now, I don't know about you, but that last detail alone is enough to give pause. Here was a woman bundled for potential cold weather, but with no shoes on. Where were they? Several reports stated that the sweatpants she was wearing didn't belong to Laura. Where had those come from? Additionally, reports noted that Laura's shirt had grass stains and was soaked in blood.
00:21:36
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but the jacket she wore over everything else was pristine. The condition of the jacket most definitely didn't match the rest of the scene. What's more, the jacket emblazoned with Mike Sanders Masonry, West Point, Iowa, was also not Laura's. Even though Laura had been wearing her own green jacket earlier in the evening when she was found, she was wearing this black satin jacket
00:22:06
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that belonged to Donnie's brother-in-law, Tony Berkman. If Laura's body had been staged here, it appeared as though the jacket had been put on her after she had sustained her injuries. But why? And why Tony's jacket? How had it gotten here?
00:22:27
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And as odd as confusing as all of these details were, they didn't even come close to being as inexplicable as the other items found on and near Laura. Let's start with the items on Laura's person. In the right pocket of the jacket was an open pocket knife. This too belonged to Tony and not to Laura, and it was found in the right pocket while Laura was left-handed.
00:22:54
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There are some who speculate that this element was staged as well. However, it could be explained away if Tony normally carried the pocket knife in his jacket pocket. But why was the pocket knife open? That's the detail I can't explain, especially since pocket knives, as opposed to something like a switchblade that opens by pressing a button, can't accidentally open. It must be pried open instead.
00:23:21
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Gripped in her hand when she was found was an upright cup. She had a multicolored animal design baby blanket bundled under the jacket in such a way that first responders had initially believed she was pregnant. She also had a glass baby food jar with colored sand in it and a paper plate with a scoop of baby food or cooked rice on it. Strange.
00:23:47
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Given the location and state of Laura, particularly since Samson was not found with her, doesn't make sense. If she needed items for Samson, why was he back in the trailer with Sarah and Tony? If Laura intended to leave him behind to get diapers, as Sarah and Tony suggested,
00:24:06
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Why take these items? Additionally, near her body, a bag of clothing containing both clothes for Laura and for Samson was found hanging in a tree. Why take a bag of clothes if she were just going for diapers? Why was the clothing bag hanging in a tree? And if Laura had her own coat, why was she wearing Tony's? Where were her shoes? Why hadn't she borrowed a diaper?
00:24:37
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And if that isn't why she left, why did she leave? What happened? And finally, if she did take Samson with her, as all of the previous items seem to indicate, how did he get back to the trailer? Now, there were also other items of note around and near Laura. Beside her was a branch from a cockle burr bush, and its burrs were also on her clothing.
00:25:04
Speaker
While there were no bushes like that on the side of the road where her body was found, there were bushes like that in the cornfield on the other side of the road, between the Bergman's trailer and where Laura was left for dead. The distance between the two, only a few tenths of a mile. The look of the burrs seemed as though a struggle may have taken place near such a bush.
00:25:29
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Indeed, in the cornfield, police were able to locate a footprint that matched Laura's shoes, but she was no longer wearing shoes on her feet. Where did they go? In a case like this one with so many questions looming, we at least have some theories.
Theories and Suspects
00:25:48
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The following represent a few of them. Theory number one, Laura left the Bergman trailer for one reason or another, whether to get diapers or for some other reason.
00:25:59
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And she was the victim of a hit and run or of a random attack. I bring up this theory first because it's the hardest to justify. If the attack had been accidental or random, then how was the jacket seemingly placed on her after the accident occurred as most believe it was? How would they have gotten into the Bergman home to get it?
00:26:23
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Why did she have all of these items for Samson, but not bring Samson with her? A stranger certainly wouldn't have taken Samson back to the trailer. Additionally, Laura's mom, Leanne Thomas, told the Daily Beast, quote, Laura would never leave Sam alone in the apartment. It doesn't make any sense.
00:26:41
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She wouldn't leave him anywhere, and if she felt like she had no other choice but to leave in the middle of the night to get diapers, she would have taken him. I also find it hard to believe that if she did leave Sam behind, how nobody in the trailer heard her leaving or Sam crying. He was an infant. He couldn't sleep through the night." Besides that, Samson co-slept with Laura and many argue without her next to him would have woken up.
00:27:10
Speaker
But perhaps the best counter argument to Laura leaving to get diapers was again, that fact that the Bergman's had a 24 month old and with Samson only 14 months, surely she could have made a diaper from the Bergman's work temporarily until she got her diaper bag back in the morning when they were going back to Bonaparte anyway. And if this were a hit and run, why was there a struggle in the cornfield across the road from where Laura was discovered?
00:27:42
Speaker
Theory number two. Rumors abounded around the small town that Mr. Clyde, the trucker who had discovered Laura's body was the one responsible for her death and that secretly Laura's mother had received a settlement from the trucking company. I will also quickly dismiss this theory because it seems these are nothing more than rumors. No such settlement was made and Clyde's truck was tested for blood and flesh as would have been present had he struck someone.
00:28:11
Speaker
The truck was free of both. This truck driver was not their man. Theory three, the man whom Laura had accused of sexual assault at the party. Many are hard pressed to think of anyone who would have wanted to harm Laura, which is why their mind goes to the man from the party. They wonder, could he have been angry enough at the accusation that he had harmed Laura?
00:28:36
Speaker
The problem here is that had he been responsible, he would have had to have waited around, followed the Bergmans back to Cahoca, lay in wait, and then somehow have drawn Laura out of the trailer in the middle of the night. My guess is that if he had knocked on the door of the trailer, she wouldn't exactly have welcomed him in. We also have to contend with the fact that he's never been named a person of interest nor named at all in the research.
00:29:04
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Finally, had this theory been the scenario that happened, why did Laura have a bag of clothing, a baby blanket, a plate of cooked rice, etc., with her when she was found? Again, my guess would be that a stranger wouldn't go back into the Bergman's trailer multiple times to get items from the home to scatter around, stage a scene.
00:29:26
Speaker
Theory four, something related to the Bergmans. Obviously, since Sarah and Tony were the last adults we know who saw Laura, suspicion naturally fell on them. Further, their actions to protect themselves have drawn suspicion. According to an article by Emma McClatchy for Little Village Magazine, quote, Tony and Sarah Bergman lawyered up and Trooper Clemens told the Gazette he was, quote, frustrated the couple refused to take lie detector tests.
00:29:54
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Rachel Smith, sister of Sarah Bergman and Donald Knight, also declined to take the test. The Bergman's rebuffed media interviews, and though investigators did execute a search warrant of their home, the results weren't made public."
00:30:10
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Despite the fact that lie detector tests aren't historically the most accurate and are inadmissible in court, when someone refuses to take one, suspicions increase. What's interesting to me is that those who put stock in this theory, they don't point fingers at Tony as the one responsible, but at Sarah. But that could be because those accusations themselves came from Tony.
00:30:38
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In a phone conversation from 2020 with Tony, the Bonaparte podcast plays an audio clip.
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of Tony's portion of that conversation as he was trying to settle an identity theft situation happening at the time. But when the conversation, seemingly out of the blue, turned to Laura. In the clip, Tony Bergman recalls when Laura's body was found in 1996 and says, quote, this is the first time in my life I've ever doubted Sarah's story now.
00:31:10
Speaker
I don't know. I can't prove nothing. But I think bleeped out name of a person might have come down that night because I think he was sleeping with Sarah. And I think Laura got upset and was going to tell me. And that's when whatever happened." End quote.
00:31:30
Speaker
Those who want to believe this theory might question if this man, who was named by Tony, were responsible. Why bring suspicion back to Sarah's home? But they speculate that it could be to draw attention and pin the violence on Tony himself, to get him out of the picture as well. After all, if Tony were responsible, I seriously doubt he would have put his own jacket on Laura as part of the staging because you wouldn't want to heap suspicion on your own head.
00:31:59
Speaker
To play devil's advocate here, there is zero proof, as Sarah has maintained as well, that she was being unfaithful. I would also assume that the Bergman's vehicle had been analyzed at the time for evidence of having hit Laura. And why the need for all the other items found on or around Laura? If staged, what story could they have been trying to tell?
00:32:23
Speaker
Without a scrap of evidence to support this theory, it is currently nothing more than a vicious rumor set to ruin Sarah's reputation and given only by a potentially embittered Tony, who also believed that Sarah was behind his identity theft. Theory five, Donnie. This theory stems from the fact that most deaths occur at the hands of someone we know, and for women, that person is more than likely a current or past partner.
00:32:52
Speaker
Since the two were no longer together, some suspicion has turned on Donnie. Further adding to this theory is that Donnie's only real proof of his alibi comes from immediate family. Donnie's alibi, you see, was that he was at his mother's home in Bonaparte and that he and two of his brothers had been playing video games all night. Those who put faith in this theory argue that he would have known where the Bergmans live. Lara would have answered the door for him.
00:33:21
Speaker
Lara may potentially have been planning on leaving with him, only for it to turn violent. After all, their fights had gotten physically violent before. And if she had left with Samson, Donnie could have brought him back. Let's play devil's advocate here as well, though. Like the Bergmans, Donnie also has never been named a person of interest.
00:33:45
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Reporter Emma McClatchy for Little Village Magazine wrote, in an email to Little Village on behalf of Donald Knight, his wife, Taryn Knight, categorically denied Thomas's claims that Donald was ever physically abusive towards Fan Y or threatened her life. Quote, Donald did not kill her. He is actively working with and champion to do whatever he can to solve this, Taryn wrote.
00:34:12
Speaker
Noting that there were multiple witnesses to Donald staying at the Bonaparte house the night Van Wy was killed, end quote. And she's right. Just because the only corroboration of Donnie's alibi came from family doesn't mean that it isn't true. Theory number six. This theory is related to a seeming break in the case that came in 2008.
New Leads and Ongoing Efforts
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A letter was sent to local law enforcement from an inmate
00:34:39
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saying that he had eyewitness testimony to provide related to Laura Van Wy's case. When police arranged a face-to-face meeting with him, he informed them that he saw an argument happening in the spot near where Laura was found. The argument was between two men and a woman. Problematically, the description he gave of the woman didn't match Laura Van Wy.
00:35:04
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Additionally, another person the prisoner identifies as being present when asked by police denied anything like the prisoner's description happening.
00:35:14
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But before we discounted completely, the prisoner did give an interesting detail. He said that one of the men had a cut on his hand and that the blood from the cut had gotten on the woman's shirt. When Lars' clothing had been analyzed on the morning of October 26th, officials had found paint chips embedded in her clothes, as well as hair, fibers, and blood. It just so happened that when re-examined,
00:35:41
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After this inmate's account, there was a blood stain on Laura's shirt, consistent with the story the informant had told, and it was a previously unidentified blood stain. Once analyzed, the DNA profile indicated that it had come from a male.
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With advances in DNA technology, hopefully answers will soon be possible. The DNA evidence was entered into CODIS with no matches. DNA swabs were taken from those close to Lara, like Samson, the man from the party accused of sexual assault, the man rumored to have been having an affair with Sarah, Donnie, and Tony Bergman. None of them matched. It was also recently sent to Parabon,
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Speaker
in hopes that a genetic genealogy match could be made, and in that way, find the perpetrator. When those results come back, we might finally be able to gain justice for Laura and for those who love her. Understandably, tests like these take time, and although the DNA was sent to pair bond quite some time ago, we are still waiting on results to the question that will be key to answering all of the others. Who?
00:36:58
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was responsible for Laura's death. Only then can we begin to unravel the wise. Regardless of who is responsible for Laura's death, most agree that the strangeness of the condition in which Laura was found tells us something.
00:37:16
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Childhood friend and esteemed litigator and champion said the following on her website championforlaura.com, quote, While I'm no homicide detective, I think it's likely that Laura's body was staged. She was wearing clothes that did not belong to her and if she really left the Bergman's home to buy diapers and left her baby behind, it's hard to come up with any plausible explanation for the baby item she had with her. The evidence is confusing.
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Speaker
and could support any number of scenarios. But I think it's possible that the truck driver who found her interrupted the people who were doing the staging, so they did not finish the job." In closing, I would like to express my utmost appreciation and respect for the podcast centered entirely on Laura's case called Bonaparte. I am indebted to their thorough research, interviews, and the care with which they handle every aspect of Laura's case.
00:38:14
Speaker
Please make sure to check out the podcast to hear even more details concerning the case. And while you're there, leave them a review and share Laura's story with others. I would also like to express my heartfelt support of Laura's friends and family who are continuing the daily difficult battle of fighting for answers, including her good friend and champion.
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the one who pushed for the creation of the podcast, and one of the individuals responsible for the reward offered for information in this case. At the time of writing, there is a $25,000 reward for tips that lead to an arrest in Laura Van Wise's case. If you would like to submit a tip anonymously, you may call 1-855-SOLV-25, or you may submit tips electronically
00:39:08
Speaker
at championforlaura.com.
00:39:12
Speaker
Again, please like and join our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast to continue the conversation and see images related to this episode. As always, follow us on Twitter, at casescoffee, on Instagram, at coffee cases podcast, or you can always email us suggestions to coffeeandcasespodcastatgmail.com. Please tell your friends about our podcast so more people can be reached to possibly help bring some closure to these families. Don't forget to rate our show and leave us a comment as well. We hope to hear from you soon.
00:39:41
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.