transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
[02:41] We're looking for this missing girl. Her name is Jade Colvin.

Speaker 4:
[02:44] She was a sweet little ray of sunshine. She's an angel, a doll.

Speaker 3:
[02:48] This is a cold case that could just sit there, and no one let it.

Speaker 5:
[02:55] Jade went missing June 10th of 2016.

Speaker 6:
[03:00] At the time, she was fourteen years old.

Speaker 4:
[03:03] But she comes off as much older. She's super cool, super smart, so interesting.

Speaker 7:
[03:10] This one tugged at my heartstrings. We have families, we have kids, some of us have daughters. You don't get to go home and turn off Jade Colvin.

Speaker 6:
[03:21] There were so many people that were involved in this. Lead Detective, Special Agent, Deputy US. Marshal.

Speaker 5:
[03:27] I'm a detective. Everybody came together to figure out what happened to Jade.

Speaker 4:
[03:35] I first met her through one of my best friends, and we were inseparable from that moment. We just always had a dumb good time wherever we were. She loved doing her hair. She was really great at colors. She was very artsy, had great style.

Speaker 8:
[03:52] They were just like sisters.

Speaker 7:
[03:55] I don't think Jade had an easy life.

Speaker 8:
[03:57] Her mama disappeared for periods of time. She was put in foster care. Jade just really hated it. She ran away.

Speaker 5:
[04:06] She kind of went from state to state, place to place.

Speaker 8:
[04:09] It was just hard to keep up with where she was.

Speaker 4:
[04:11] But she always, always, always just went check-in. And then one random day, just nothing ever again.

Speaker 8:
[04:22] Weeks went by, then it's months, then it's years.

Speaker 5:
[04:27] Once I was assigned this case, every trace of her was gone.

Speaker 6:
[04:33] When we initially adopted the case, she had been listed as a runaway.

Speaker 9:
[04:37] How do you know at this point, is this a runaway or is this somebody took her?

Speaker 6:
[04:42] We didn't know.

Speaker 5:
[04:44] Jade's digital footprint last landed in Decorah, Iowa.

Speaker 7:
[04:49] Really remote area that she did not know. She was there for several days and was never seen again.

Speaker 9:
[04:57] The last place Jade was living was here.

Speaker 3:
[04:59] Absolutely. The house was straight on this driveway.

Speaker 9:
[05:03] There's a lot of places to look for a young girl here. I mean, where did you even begin?

Speaker 3:
[05:09] It's a needle in a haystack, I said.

Speaker 7:
[05:12] Who are the last people that were around her? Who lived in the same house or who was at the same place? We don't know where loyalties and alliances lie at this point.

Speaker 6:
[05:23] We got a lot of tips.

Speaker 5:
[05:24] From Massachusetts to Oklahoma to Texas to Minnesota.

Speaker 3:
[05:30] My goal was always like, oh, we're going to find this girl.

Speaker 7:
[05:33] That was the hope every day.

Speaker 8:
[05:35] We never forgot about her. We just always wondered where she was. It was afraid something bad had happened. I would have never in a million years thought it would come to this.

Speaker 10:
[05:52] Natalie Morales reports, Jade Colvin is missing.

Speaker 5:
[06:02] Why is that not going on? I myself have thought of Jade several times. There we go. When not at work. You get to do the eggs. I think of my own children. Whoa! If you went a day not knowing where one of your kids was at, Very careful. You'd go crazy.

Speaker 9:
[06:19] Cheryl Nablo, mother of three, is a detective with the Des Moines, Iowa Police Department. She specializes in finding missing kids.

Speaker 5:
[06:29] Nobody wants to be living in a world where they don't know where their kid is or if their kid is safe.

Speaker 9:
[06:36] In 2022, Detective Nablo joined forces with Deputy US. Marshal Justin Wallace, Detective Chris Webker and Special Agent John Turbett in the search for Jade Colvin. Jade was fourteen when she was reported missing in June 2016 after she ran away from a local shelter for troubled youth.

Speaker 6:
[06:57] We are here to locate kids who run away.

Speaker 9:
[07:01] The US. Marshal's service had adopted Jade's case as part of a statewide effort to find missing children called Operation Homecoming. What are the challenges in finding missing children?

Speaker 5:
[07:15] When somebody goes missing, they want to be missing. They don't want you to know where they are. It's hard to track them down.

Speaker 9:
[07:22] At that point, Jade had been missing for more than five years. Where do you begin?

Speaker 6:
[07:28] You got to start at the beginning. You got to know who the person is, their friends, their family, their whole background.

Speaker 9:
[07:35] They soon discovered Jade had a troubled childhood.

Speaker 6:
[07:39] Jade had a rough go of it growing up.

Speaker 5:
[07:42] Things weren't the easiest for her.

Speaker 9:
[07:46] Detective Nablo learned Jade's mother, LaDawn, had died three years after Jade went missing.

Speaker 5:
[07:53] So I couldn't just reach out to her and talk to her about everything that she knew about Jade.

Speaker 9:
[07:59] Jade's father, Kevin, had lost contact with his daughter. Both parents had struggled with substance abuse, something Special Agent John Turbett explains had an impact on Jade.

Speaker 7:
[08:10] Jade Colvin grew up with, I think, a pretty dysfunctional family situation. It was difficult.

Speaker 4:
[08:18] She didn't hold any of it. She just accepted it for like what it was and dealt with it and didn't let it get to her negatively. Loved her to death. Spent every day together.

Speaker 9:
[08:32] Despite everything, friend Dane Lynn Greer and her mother, Jamie Coopman, describe Jade as easygoing and upbeat.

Speaker 8:
[08:40] There was reason she could have been angry and she wasn't. Like she was very light, light and bubbly. I met her mom, her mom was very unreliable. She kept telling me, oh, how much she loves Jade and all that, you know, and I believe she did. Don't get me wrong. But she just couldn't make the choice for stability. She couldn't overcome her own demons.

Speaker 3:
[09:08] Her mom definitely cared about her.

Speaker 6:
[09:10] I think her mother loved her. The state determined at some point that she was not able to care for her.

Speaker 9:
[09:17] In September 2015, when Jade was thirteen, the Iowa Department of Human Services stepped in, and Deputy Justin Wallace says, LaDon lost custody.

Speaker 6:
[09:28] That's when they took Jade into foster care.

Speaker 9:
[09:31] For the next nine months, Jade was in and out of different facilities and foster care, and she often ran away.

Speaker 6:
[09:39] Run away, been found, run away, been found several times.

Speaker 5:
[09:43] Jade is doing what some other kids do. She's running away from the system. She's not wanting to be placed in a stranger's home.

Speaker 9:
[09:50] When Jade was placed in foster care, LaDon would have limited access to her, and she wanted more.

Speaker 6:
[09:56] She wanted Jade to live with her.

Speaker 9:
[09:58] But without legal custody, Jamie Coopman says LaDon resorted to trying to hide her daughter from authorities.

Speaker 8:
[10:06] I think she was just trying to hide out to stay with her mom, or to stay where her mom could visit.

Speaker 5:
[10:12] Her mom tried to keep her out of the police spotlight, just trying to hide her out different places.

Speaker 9:
[10:19] And according to her aunt, Tandra Bruce, Jade became good at hiding.

Speaker 11:
[10:26] She would change her hair, she would change her appearance.

Speaker 9:
[10:30] So she really knew how to run away and hide.

Speaker 11:
[10:32] She did. She really did.

Speaker 9:
[10:36] At that point, Jade was caught in the middle of a mother trying to do her best, who arranged stays with friends and family, and being placed in foster care, but often living as a runaway.

Speaker 11:
[10:48] I felt so bad, I felt horrible.

Speaker 9:
[10:51] Did you tell her, you can come here anytime? I did. Call me, whatever you need.

Speaker 11:
[10:55] I did. Call me and I'll be here for you.

Speaker 8:
[10:58] She was jumping all over for a while, so it was hard to track her.

Speaker 9:
[11:03] The Iowa Department of Human Services lost track of Jade after she ran away from that shelter in June 2016.

Speaker 11:
[11:11] I had hoped that she was out there somewhere and she would get a hold of somebody eventually.

Speaker 8:
[11:18] And then there is nothing.

Speaker 9:
[11:22] Investigators learned Jade's family and friends spent years searching for her online.

Speaker 3:
[11:28] We saw in the social media accounts that friends and family were trying to reach out to her and continue to look for her.

Speaker 5:
[11:35] Everybody is reaching out to her at her birthday, saying, we love you, we miss you, we just want you back home.

Speaker 8:
[11:41] Every year I'd go on Facebook, happy birthday Jade, please call me. We still love her, anytime she wants to come home. It doesn't matter what kind of trouble you got yourself into. I thought she'd pop back up. We just wanted her to know we were there for her.

Speaker 9:
[11:58] According to Deputy Justin Wallace, Jade's mother, LaDawn, also posted.

Speaker 6:
[12:04] She misses her and wants her to come back.

Speaker 9:
[12:06] Posts like this one from September 2018. It's hurting all of us so much. Please call someone Jade. I'm seriously physically dying of a broken heart.

Speaker 6:
[12:18] There was no response to any of those.

Speaker 9:
[12:21] And when Jade's mother died a year later, there was still no response.

Speaker 3:
[12:26] LaDawn passed away. She never came to the funeral. She never showed up at the funeral. She would have been there.

Speaker 9:
[12:32] Jade's family and friends still held hope. Jade would surface when she turned 18 and would be free of foster care.

Speaker 8:
[12:41] I had hoped she'd run away and was laying low. And we thought when she turned 18, when it was safe, she would get a hold of us again. And when her 18th birthday came around and she didn't get a hold of us, we knew. We knew something was very wrong.

Speaker 9:
[12:59] As Detective Nablo and Deputy Wallace worked to find Jade, they got help from state and national organizations that shared these missing posters on social media.

Speaker 5:
[13:11] That was huge. That's when a lot of tips started coming in.

Speaker 9:
[13:14] And there would be a potential break in the investigation. A tip from a hospital worker in Minnesota.

Speaker 5:
[13:21] We're not too far away from Iowa. There's this girl, we think maybe that's Jade.

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Speaker 5:
[16:19] We wanted to chase every single lead, every single tip, as far as we could.

Speaker 9:
[16:24] And when Des Moines PD Detective Sheryl Nablo got a tip Jade Colvin might have been in a hospital in Red Wing, Minnesota, she was hopeful.

Speaker 5:
[16:34] A staff member had observed a female come into the hospital, and the person that she was with was kind of controlling the conversation. It drew suspicion, and they thought it maybe looked like Jade. So there was follow up done to get the video footage to try to figure out who that person was. When you have a lead, you work your lead and tell you either prove it's Jade or prove it's false. And ultimately, I was able to identify who that person was, and it was not Jade.

Speaker 9:
[17:06] Additional tips poured in from all over the country.

Speaker 5:
[17:10] You know, ranging from Massachusetts to Oklahoma to Texas, people were definitely paying attention.

Speaker 9:
[17:17] Look at that. Are those all the leads that you explored and the different ways you went about the investigation?

Speaker 5:
[17:23] Yeah, it's a lot of leads. It felt like each tip was hope, right? Cause like she could have been out there.

Speaker 9:
[17:33] The first big break in the case came when Detective Nablo was able to figure out where Jade had gone after she ran away from that shelter in June 2016. Detective Nablo had obtained search warrants and got access to Jade's social media. Instagram messages from March 2017 caught her attention.

Speaker 5:
[17:53] You can see where her mom is coming to get her in Arizona.

Speaker 9:
[17:58] I just talked to mom. Jade wrote to her friend, Dane Lynn, she's coming next week. I'm in Arizona right now. Jade wrote to another friend, I should be back in Iowa today or tomorrow. Detective Nablo learned Jade had been staying in Arizona for several months, and it seemed Ladon was going to bring her back to Iowa. Detective Nablo also got access to Ladon's accounts, and on her Facebook, there was a message mentioning the town of Decora.

Speaker 5:
[18:30] Decora is just a small, rural, Midwest Iowa town.

Speaker 9:
[18:35] As Detective Nablo combed through Ladon's Facebook, she saw messages Ladon had sent to Jade, and uncovered a clue. A mention of someone named James. Investigators learned James was James Bokmerski, a man Ladon had been dating for several months.

Speaker 6:
[18:56] Ladon and him met online. It began a romantic relationship. Ladon would go and stay with him occasionally. I think at one point, he was living with him.

Speaker 9:
[19:07] Deputy Justin Wallace found out James Bokmerski owned a farm in Decorah, Iowa, and had two sons, Brian, age 19, and James Jr., age 21. Investigators gained access to voice messages Ladon had sent Jade detailing a plan for her daughter to stay at the farm while she lived three hours away, dealing with some legal issues.

Speaker 13:
[19:32] You know, live here until you are probably 18 and able to get out of the system if I don't already have you out of the system. And you'll have a good life, baby. It's what I want. I love you.

Speaker 6:
[19:46] It was just a temporary, I'm going to get right with the court and then Jade could come live with me.

Speaker 9:
[19:50] How big a lead is that? Are you thinking we've got a break in this case?

Speaker 5:
[19:53] Yeah, it was huge. I remember going over to the US Marshals office and they were excited.

Speaker 9:
[20:00] The Marshals reached out to local law enforcement near the Buckmersky farm for help talking to the family. And that's when Detective Chris Webker from the Winnipeg County Sheriff's Office officially joined the team. First of all, Decorah, I mean, where are we? What is this town known for?

Speaker 3:
[20:20] God's country.

Speaker 14:
[20:21] It is God's country.

Speaker 3:
[20:25] It's in northeast Iowa, kind of way up in the top corner.

Speaker 9:
[20:30] So, tell me about getting the call to first, you know, start the investigation into this young missing girl, Jade Colvin. Who called you?

Speaker 3:
[20:38] So, we received a call from the US. Marshals, and they reached out to us and said, hey, do you guys know the Bokmerskys? Can you guys help us go and talk to them? And so, that's ultimately where we started. The goal was to talk to them and say, hey, look, we're looking for this missing girl. Her name is Jade Colvin, and your names were brought up in social media. What can you tell us about her?

Speaker 9:
[21:02] They found Brian Bokmersky first. According to Detective Webker, Brian confirmed Jade had been at the farm. Her mother dropped her off and left. A few days after she arrived, Brian and Jade had lunch at this pizza ranch and took several photos together. So right here, this booth. Yep.

Speaker 3:
[21:29] I mean, you look at this photo, and you see, you know, she has a genuine smile.

Speaker 9:
[21:38] And it seems like they're, you know, sort of goofy face, like, having fun with each other, they got along.

Speaker 3:
[21:43] Teenage kids and everything, and yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 9:
[21:47] Brian told investigators he didn't know what happened to Jade. He said the last time he saw her was two days after their lunch at Pizza Ranch, around 10 p.m., before he said he worked the night shift at Walmart. Brian claimed he texted with Jade until just after midnight, when she suddenly stopped responding. Deputy Wallace wasn't convinced by Brian's story.

Speaker 6:
[22:14] There were several of us thought that we probably weren't getting all the information out of them.

Speaker 9:
[22:19] That included Detective Webker.

Speaker 3:
[22:22] There's something that doesn't feel right about this as to what's going on.

Speaker 9:
[22:25] And there was something else that troubled Detective Webker.

Speaker 3:
[22:29] That was the last time that she ever had any from Facebook, from Instagram, from Snapchat. She never had another digital footprint again.

Speaker 9:
[22:38] And for a teenage girl, how unusual was that?

Speaker 3:
[22:41] Extremely unusual.

Speaker 9:
[22:44] How could Jade seemingly disappear without a trace? According to Deputy Wallace, LaDawn thought it was unusual too. And she went to the farm to confront James.

Speaker 6:
[22:56] We were able to interview one of the friends, who said she drove LaDawn out to the farm in Decorah. The friend stayed in the car while LaDawn went inside the house to talk to James Bakmirsky.

Speaker 9:
[23:07] LaDawn's friend told the Marshals, James claimed Jade ran away. Suspecting there was more to the story, Chris Wepker called special agent John Turbett from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and asked him for help.

Speaker 7:
[23:24] Chris laid out what we knew, what the Marshals had been able to unearth. And as I'm sitting there listening, I said, it's very likely that Jade is no longer alive and we actually need to start treating this as a homicide investigation.

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Speaker 9:
[27:03] So, this here is the farm.

Speaker 3:
[27:05] Yep, so this is the, where Bachmerskis lived.

Speaker 9:
[27:10] Having established Jade was at this farm in Decora, Iowa in March of 2017, Detective Chris Webker hoped new leads could be developed to solve the mystery of what happened to her. This farm really is at the end of the road here.

Speaker 3:
[27:27] It is the house at the end of the road.

Speaker 9:
[27:29] House at the end of the road.

Speaker 3:
[27:31] You can see how secluded it is.

Speaker 9:
[27:36] This is a young girl who has a history of running away. When you get out here, is it possible? Do you think she could have run away?

Speaker 3:
[27:43] Our evidence showed that she didn't.

Speaker 9:
[27:45] If you were to run away from here, I mean, there is just farmland and empty space.

Speaker 3:
[27:51] I mean, direction, you're not from here. I bet you which way we're facing right now. I mean, she's not going to know where she's at.

Speaker 9:
[28:01] When investigators first visited the farm in 2022, James Bokmurski no longer lived here, and the house had been gutted and renovated. But the new owners let them look around.

Speaker 3:
[28:14] We tried to find anything we could in the area, and ultimately we didn't.

Speaker 7:
[28:18] You have this farm where we know Jade is last seen, so we draw a box around the farm and we say, who's living in the farm? Who are the guests at the farm? Certainly, the owner of the property, the one who's having contact with LaDawn and Jade, is James Buckmerske Sr. And then you have these two sons, James Jr. and Brian.

Speaker 9:
[28:37] Having already talked to Brian, detectives were eager to reach James Jr. Turns out he had an alibi. He wasn't living in the area at the time and was never at the farm with Jade. So that left James Buckmerske Sr. to be interviewed.

Speaker 3:
[28:54] We had known from that initial contact with the kids that Buckmerske had moved away and he was in Georgia.

Speaker 9:
[29:04] Special Agent John Turbett made the trip.

Speaker 7:
[29:07] We located the house and it was out in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 9:
[29:12] What's the mindset going into an interview and first interaction with somebody like him?

Speaker 7:
[29:18] I think despite what a lot of people think, I am really trying to take off the police hat and a lot of the things that come with that. And I need to sit down with James and I need to be John and he needs to be James. And can we have a good conversation about this young lady that he clearly had out on his property and has never been seen?

Speaker 9:
[29:37] When John Turbett knocked on the door, James Buckmerske agreed to talk. These are excerpts of the audio interview.

Speaker 7:
[29:45] I think one of the first things out of his mouth, if not the first, was, A number of years ago, something happened in Iowa and it's affected my life forever. I've knocked on doors a lot in my career and that would be on the, you know, that would be an outlier for opening remarks. You're like, OK, is he thinking of something that, you know, I'm not, I'm making it clear, I'm talking about Jade and he continues.

Speaker 9:
[30:08] OK, I have that clip. I'm going to play for you.

Speaker 17:
[30:11] Do you know what I think? What? We've got to find answers.

Speaker 7:
[30:15] Yeah, I agree with that.

Speaker 17:
[30:16] All I want to do is go to my grave to know that my kids had nothing to do with what was going on.

Speaker 7:
[30:22] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17:
[30:24] I don't know what they do.

Speaker 9:
[30:25] It's interesting. He said, I don't want to implicate my kids.

Speaker 7:
[30:28] Yes.

Speaker 9:
[30:29] But in so doing, is he implicating his kids?

Speaker 7:
[30:32] Well, it seemed like it. So he immediately is talking about someone being implicated, which says, in my mind, he thinks a crime was committed. Now it's a question of, was it me? Was it my boys?

Speaker 9:
[30:43] James Bokmurski confirmed he was in a relationship with LaDon and that she brought Jade to his farm to hide her and keep her from being put in foster care.

Speaker 17:
[30:54] You know what I thought was going to happen? What? To be honest, I thought we were going to be a family.

Speaker 7:
[30:59] He admits that there's a plan to bring Jade back, you know, to Iowa. He's saying this woman was trying to reunite with her daughter and get to a new life.

Speaker 9:
[31:08] Did he say when in that interview he last saw Jade?

Speaker 7:
[31:12] Yeah.

Speaker 17:
[31:12] To my knowledge, she was getting ready to do a bunch of laundry, and I had to go to Norby's for something.

Speaker 7:
[31:18] Norby's, which is like a farm and fleet store, and the next thing I know, she'd vanished out of thin air.

Speaker 9:
[31:26] James Bokmerski talked for several hours that day, but after the interview, John Turbin and Chris Webker were still no closer to finding out what happened to Jade. They wondered if there were any additional clues to be discovered back at the farm.

Speaker 3:
[31:44] When he got back, we came up with the plan of what else can we find, and that's when we came across a neighbor that said, hey, by the way, I have this barn that James Bokmerski property is left in. In 2018, he was left in a real hurry and left all of his stuff behind. And so we're like, oh, really? And so we went there and found this dusty old phone in a box.

Speaker 9:
[32:14] It was James Bokmerski's cell phone. This was a real find. I mean, if you're looking for a smoking gun, you're getting a cell phone instead.

Speaker 3:
[32:21] This was something that was unbelievable to come across.

Speaker 9:
[32:27] On the phone, they found these photos of Jade at the farm. There's this one with her mother, LeDawn, when she dropped her off and left. And this one from the day after Brian and Jade had lunch at Pizza Ranch, of them at a bonfire.

Speaker 3:
[32:41] There was a number of photos with them at that bonfire, roasting hot dogs and stuff like that.

Speaker 9:
[32:51] They're the last known photos of Jade. On Bokmerski's phone, there were also text messages Jade had sent, including the ones Brian had mentioned when he said he worked the night shift at Walmart. The same night, Jade was last heard from.

Speaker 3:
[33:08] Those last text conversations were monumental, in my opinion.

Speaker 9:
[33:12] So let's go through these a little bit. Here it is, Jade reaching out to him around, a little after midnight.

Speaker 3:
[33:19] It says, Hey, Brian, it's Jade. And I always love this because, you know, the typical teenager saying, Jade, you know.

Speaker 9:
[33:26] She's just checking in with him.

Speaker 3:
[33:28] Is it going OK?

Speaker 9:
[33:30] Tired yet?

Speaker 3:
[33:32] Yeah, just, you know, just the typical conversation.

Speaker 9:
[33:35] And she's like, if you want to call on your hour break, we still can if you want. So they're planning for his break, like within.

Speaker 3:
[33:41] Ultimately planning to talk again that night on March 30th.

Speaker 9:
[33:45] And then he's like, well, I guess just text me when you can.

Speaker 1:
[33:49] This is two o'clock already.

Speaker 9:
[33:52] He's on his break.

Speaker 3:
[33:53] Yep. And fully expecting that Jade's going to be texting and doesn't get anything.

Speaker 9:
[33:58] Those text messages along with Brian's time sheets from Walmart help confirm his story and cleared him.

Speaker 3:
[34:06] We're able to corroborate things he's telling us. We kind of took him off of the table.

Speaker 9:
[34:13] As Chris Webker and John Turbett continued to search through information from Bakmursky's phone, they say they made an important discovery. Several deleted messages.

Speaker 3:
[34:26] Those were mostly family that was reaching out to find Jade, to talk to Jade.

Speaker 9:
[34:31] Including messages from LaDawn, who sounds desperate to reach her daughter. Please, let my baby girl know I love her and need to talk to her.

Speaker 7:
[34:41] He's selectively removing what we would consider evidence or helpful information.

Speaker 9:
[34:46] Suspicious behavior, then.

Speaker 7:
[34:48] I would think so.

Speaker 9:
[34:50] But it would be two seemingly random photos found on Blackmerski's cell phone that changed the course of the investigation. One of his kitchen and one of his bedroom, taken just two days after Jade had that last text exchange with Brian. Describe for me what you see here. This is from the time frame of April 1st, 2017.

Speaker 3:
[35:19] So this is a picture of the Blackmerski kitchen. This is a very unique picture where everything is cleaned up. Everything is organized. There's no garbage lying around. It's clean.

Speaker 9:
[35:30] Was it a crime scene?

Speaker 7:
[35:32] And as we talk to people, Brian included, he talks about the condition of this house when he had lived there and been there. He does not say that they were good housekeepers. I mean, it was, it was not good. So to see pictures like this, this is way out of what law enforcement knew. This is way out of description.

Speaker 9:
[35:50] And in another photo on the phone taken two months later, on June 5th, 2017 of Brian and James Jr. in that same bedroom, investigators say it appeared the bed was new, that the bed in the earlier photo had been removed and replaced.

Speaker 3:
[36:08] The mattress is smaller. There's no headboard anymore. And you can see the condition of the room is back to messy.

Speaker 7:
[36:18] You're thinking, you know, evidence has been cleaned up. We are now looking at all of these pieces. And it seems undeniable. It is time to tell him that case facts show us that you were involved in the death of Jade Colvin.

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Speaker 7:
[37:52] The more time we spend in this investigation, the case facts just continue to all point in one direction and at one person.

Speaker 9:
[37:58] And that one person was James Bokmerski.

Speaker 7:
[38:00] James Bokmerski, senior.

Speaker 9:
[38:02] More than two years into the investigation to find Jade Colvin, Special Agent John Turbett believes he knows what happened to her.

Speaker 7:
[38:11] I thought James Bokmerski had killed and disposed of Jade's body.

Speaker 9:
[38:17] Now he needed to prove his theory. Armed with the photos from the cell phone, he went back to Georgia.

Speaker 7:
[38:24] The second interview is going to be different than the first. I actually opened with, Hi James, I'm John from Iowa. Do you remember me? How are you buddy? You don't remember me? No. I'm John. I'm the officer from Iowa that talked to you about five months ago. We sat right in at your kitchen table. And he's like, no. And I'm like, okay. So that would obviously something would be really wrong if a human being could not remember that.

Speaker 17:
[38:50] I'm not even gonna lie, I'm not even close to being sober.

Speaker 9:
[38:53] He tells you that he's drunk, he can't seem to remember things. Did you believe him?

Speaker 7:
[38:57] I didn't. If you recall in that first interview, his level of detail was fantastic. And then we get back and it's like, he doesn't know me for starters. He can't place LaDon or Jade. And that all seems remarkably unbelievable.

Speaker 9:
[39:13] Turbett pressed on and he asked Buck Mursky about those photos from his phone.

Speaker 7:
[39:18] A couple days after this little girl's never seen or heard from again ever, this is your bedroom. So you cleaned your bedroom. Great job. See how clean that is? No. The floors are shiny. You see that?

Speaker 20:
[39:31] So I guess you're thinking that there was evidence there that I tried to get rid of what you're saying. And I am telling you right now, I guarantee you there isn't.

Speaker 9:
[39:41] Guarantee you there isn't. What are you thinking when you hear that?

Speaker 7:
[39:46] Well, I mean, as you listen to that clip, he says, well, you must think I've hidden evidence or destroyed evidence. And I'm like, well, it's getting hard for me to reach any other conclusion at that point.

Speaker 9:
[39:58] According to Turbett, Bakmursky had an explanation for why he took those photos.

Speaker 7:
[40:03] He floats the idea of, hey, I was going to sell or lease the property, but I don't think that was ever proven to be the case. The truth is good, we agree, right?

Speaker 20:
[40:12] The truth is, but I don't know what you want.

Speaker 7:
[40:15] Just the truth.

Speaker 17:
[40:16] And what is the truth?

Speaker 20:
[40:17] Because I don't know what it is. What is it?

Speaker 7:
[40:20] The truth is where Jade ended up.

Speaker 20:
[40:22] All right, where?

Speaker 7:
[40:23] Come on, I'm going to ask you that question.

Speaker 20:
[40:25] And I'm asking you because I don't know.

Speaker 7:
[40:27] I'm pleading with him to just talk about the truth, and he's admitting the truth is good, but we're not quite having a truthful conversation. And at that point, it is time to tell him that based on everything, the case facts show us that you were involved in the death of Jade Colvin. And it's a very important moment.

Speaker 9:
[40:46] All right, let's listen to... You're saying that to him.

Speaker 7:
[40:49] At this point, it's that the case facts show us you were involved in Jade's, you know, Jade's death. You do know where Jade's at?

Speaker 20:
[40:55] Dead?

Speaker 7:
[40:56] Yeah, I told you last time.

Speaker 20:
[40:57] Yeah, you keep saying death.

Speaker 7:
[40:59] She's dead. She's dead.

Speaker 20:
[41:02] Why do you say that?

Speaker 7:
[41:04] She's dead. I think James Bachmerski just wanted to know, had we somehow pieced this all together.

Speaker 20:
[41:11] You know what? I already...

Speaker 7:
[41:15] We should talk about that.

Speaker 20:
[41:17] A long time ago, I figured, I'd go to the grave before I'd tell the truth.

Speaker 7:
[41:24] About this?

Speaker 20:
[41:25] Yes.

Speaker 9:
[41:27] I'd go to the grave before I'd talk about this.

Speaker 7:
[41:31] Yes.

Speaker 9:
[41:33] Did you take that as a confession?

Speaker 7:
[41:35] That's about as close as you could probably get at the end of that interview. Any doubt I had, if there was any, had been removed.

Speaker 9:
[41:43] You've got the right guy.

Speaker 7:
[41:44] We've got the right guy.

Speaker 9:
[41:48] In August 2024, James Bokmerski was charged with murder in the second degree.

Speaker 11:
[41:54] My heart just dropped.

Speaker 9:
[41:59] Eight years after Jade was reported missing, her friends and family, including her aunt, Tandra Bruce, finally learned the teenager they cared so much about was never coming back.

Speaker 11:
[42:12] You just don't want to believe it. It hurt me so bad.

Speaker 9:
[42:17] That she's gone.

Speaker 11:
[42:18] Yeah, that she's gone.

Speaker 9:
[42:21] Assistant Iowa Attorney General Scott Brown felt the evidence against James Bokmerski was strong.

Speaker 21:
[42:28] Jade was at James Bokmerski's residence. He was the last person to have seen Jade alive.

Speaker 9:
[42:35] He had those cell phone photos of James Bokmerski's clean kitchen and bedroom and the deleted messages from Jade's family.

Speaker 21:
[42:44] Communications like where LaDonna is looking for Jade.

Speaker 9:
[42:49] And he had James Bokmerski's own words.

Speaker 20:
[42:54] A long time ago, figured I'd go to gray before I'd tell the truth.

Speaker 21:
[42:59] Why would you make that statement if you had nothing to do with Jade Colvin's death?

Speaker 9:
[43:03] But what Scott didn't have was Jade's body.

Speaker 21:
[43:07] Jade Colvin has never been recovered. Her body was never found. Usually, there is a body. So a jury would look at that and say, OK, obviously, a crime has been committed. But here, we have to prove that a crime was committed, that Jade is missing, and that she didn't leave on her own.

Speaker 9:
[43:25] And with the case about to go on trial, would it be enough to convince a jury of Bokmerski's guilt?

Speaker 21:
[43:33] How do we make that not only make sense, but make sense beyond a reasonable doubt? Is it enough? Certainly, that was the concern here.

Speaker 9:
[43:50] For more than three years, Deputy US. Marshal Justin Wallace says a dedicated and passionate group worked tirelessly to try and find out what happened to Jade.

Speaker 6:
[44:04] There were so many people that were involved in this. All of us put in a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of effort.

Speaker 9:
[44:13] That team included Detective Cheryl Nablo, Detective Chris Webker, and Special Agent John Turbett.

Speaker 7:
[44:20] There's never a doubt that we had the right person.

Speaker 9:
[44:25] The murder trial against James Bokmerski, now gray-haired, began in August 2025. Prosecutor Scott Brown explains how Bokmerski's actions after he claimed Jade had run away, pointed to his guilt.

Speaker 21:
[44:42] Why isn't he calling law enforcement, hey, there was this girl that was staying at my place and now people can't find her? Why wouldn't he do that?

Speaker 9:
[44:54] The defense argued there was no evidence Jade Colvin was dead, or that James Bokmerski had killed her. There was no DNA, they said, no murder weapon, and no damning Google searches. But there was Jade's history of running away. Brown says that's irrelevant.

Speaker 21:
[45:15] She did have a history of running away, but she always resurfaced. She always stayed on her cell phone. Why would she stop using her cell phone? That was a big hurdle for them.

Speaker 9:
[45:26] Special Agent John Turbett and Detective Chris Webker say throughout the week-long trial, Bokmerski, who did not testify, showed little emotion.

Speaker 7:
[45:37] He seemed emotionally detached.

Speaker 3:
[45:39] He just tried to stay stoic.

Speaker 9:
[45:42] And there was information the jury wouldn't hear. James Bokmerski had a criminal history, including a prior charge for harassment. And in 2013, Bokmerski spent nearly a year behind bars after being charged with child endangerment against his own children. And took a plea to a lesser offense of assault. Deputy Justin Wallace described some of the violence as alleged in court documents.

Speaker 6:
[46:13] He had a metal chair with a battery hooked up to it. And when the boys misbehaved, he put them in the chair, which essentially shocked them.

Speaker 12:
[46:22] Oh my gosh.

Speaker 9:
[46:23] I mean, when you hear that, are you already thinking the worst of what he could have done to Jade?

Speaker 6:
[46:29] It definitely does creep to the forefront of your mind.

Speaker 9:
[46:32] Deputy Wallace believes LaDon didn't know about his history of violence.

Speaker 6:
[46:37] She probably did not have any idea of who he truly was.

Speaker 9:
[46:41] That's something Jamie Koopman believes as well.

Speaker 8:
[46:44] I know LaDon would not have taken Jade somewhere that she thought this, of all things, would happen.

Speaker 9:
[46:50] As for a motive for why Bakmursky would kill Jade Colvin?

Speaker 21:
[46:55] There was some evidence that we had that he was attracted to Jade. He took all those photos of her.

Speaker 9:
[47:04] When the jury began deliberations, Scott Brown was confident in the case he presented.

Speaker 21:
[47:10] Within several hours, we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder in the second degree.

Speaker 9:
[47:18] James Bakmursky was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Considering he's 67 years old, it is essentially a life sentence. Jade's aunt, Tandra Bruce, was relieved. And when you heard the verdict, what did you think?

Speaker 11:
[47:37] I thought finally justice is being done.

Speaker 5:
[47:41] I was super grateful that the family was able to get that outcome in the case. It makes it all worth it. This was about justice for Jade.

Speaker 3:
[47:49] Looking back on it, it kind of seems pretty amazing how it came together.

Speaker 7:
[47:52] Everybody just kept their head down and kept going.

Speaker 9:
[47:55] I think it gives a lot of people hope that there are people who are as passionate and committed as the team that went into trying to find out what happened to Jade Colvin.

Speaker 7:
[48:05] Yeah, this was very special for us, but there are a lot of police officers out there doing the exact same thing.

Speaker 9:
[48:15] But everyone involved believes the case is not over yet.

Speaker 3:
[48:21] My hope is to get Jade someday. This isn't one that's going to stop for me. We all agree that we're going to continue to see if we can find out where she is and bring her home to them.

Speaker 5:
[48:35] Just because James was charged and convicted doesn't mean that she still doesn't deserve to be found.

Speaker 11:
[48:45] I want to bring her home. I want to have a proper burial for her. I want somebody out there, they know something, to please come forward.

Speaker 9:
[48:55] Until then, those who love Jade continue to struggle with their grief.

Speaker 11:
[49:00] I have pictures and, you know, I just want to think of her as when she was happy.

Speaker 8:
[49:06] I talk about her. I don't let people forget about her. She didn't deserve any of this. And I never want anybody to think that she did anything wrong, or that it was any way her fault.

Speaker 4:
[49:24] I just wanted more people to know about her, that she existed and she was a person. She got everything she didn't deserve in life. She deserved the entire world, and she would have made the world a better place every day, that she would have been here.

Speaker 16:
[49:46] When beloved family patriarch Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. It's a homicide.

Speaker 22:
[49:56] Absolutely.

Speaker 16:
[49:56] The blame game in this family went round and round. This is Blood is Thicker, the Ferris wheel.

Speaker 22:
[50:03] I don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy.

Speaker 16:
[50:07] Binge the full series, Blood is Thicker, the Ferris wheel, on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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