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NARRATOR: This program is about unsolved mysteries.
Whenever possible, the actual family members
and police officials have participated
in recreating the events.
What you are about to see is not a news broadcast.
ROBERT STACK: Eric Danowski of Erie, Pennsylvania
was born with a serious liver disease.
After two unsuccessful transplants,
doctors doubted the boy would live to see his first birthday.
Then Eric's plight was publicized
and area churches were swamped by hundreds of worshipers
praying for his recovery.
Today, Eric Danowski is a happy, healthy 7-year-old,
a living testament, some would say, to the mysterious power
of prayer.
When he was arrested at the tender age of 21,
Lionel Luviano was considered one of the most
powerful drug lords in Texas.
But while awaiting trial, Luviano
was transported to a private hospital for medical treatment.
Even though he was under guard, Luviano
soon engineered a bold escape, cleverly
disguised as his own sister.
In South Dakota a night of partying
culminated in terror for three young friends.
However, this was no routine case of drinking and driving.
By the time help arrived, two of the car's occupants
had inexplicably vanished.
Police scoured the area for days,
yet found no trace of the missing couple.
Incredibly, three months later, their bodies
were discovered floating in a ditch
just 75 feet from the crash site.
Police now fear they were victims of foul play,
but how and why remains a troubling mystery.
Join me tonight for this intriguing new case
and much more on another fascinating
of "Unsolved Mysteries."
[theme music]
Over a century ago, the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson
wrote "more things are wrought by prayer
than this world dreams of."
But these days, at least when things are going well,
it seems that many of us are almost too busy for prayer.
It can be quite different, however,
when a life hangs in the balance.
You're about to meet two people, a woman and a little boy,
who believe their lives were changed by prayer.
Friday, December 1, 1991.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
During a follow-up exam, 42-year-old Kathleen Burghardt
is stunned when a sonogram confirms a large lump
in her right breast.
Catherine's doctors feared the worst, cancer.
She was directed to come back on Monday
for a biopsy and possible mastectomy.
I just went into an absolute panic.
I had known two women that were younger than I that
are dead from breast cancer.
So I had this anxiety and this panic
about not having breast surgery or even a biopsy.
I didn't even want a biopsy.
ROBERT STACK: Kathleen had read about the power
of prayer and meditation and done a little bit of both.
But over the weekend, she intensified her efforts.
KATHLEEN BURGHARDT: I went home and I literally told everybody
to leave me alone, that I was going to concentrate
my whole weekend on healing, and that I was going
to have that surgery on Monday.
I put into practice everything that I've
been reading about fasting and went on a fruit juice and fruit
fast and didn't eat any meat or any other kind of meals
and listened to the tapes and did a lot of praying,
got down on my knees and just really asked God to heal me.
Take this away from me, please.
I didn't hear audible voices, but I just
heard a still, small voice in my head,
just like you read about in the books.
I felt the peace that passes all understanding.
I felt very peaceful, very calm, very serene.
The fear went away, the anxiety went away.
I became very convinced that I was healed
and that this was totally gone.
All right, let's see what we got.
ROBERT STACK: On Monday, Kathleen was X-rayed again just
prior to her biopsy.
I don't see any lumps.
There are no lumps in the breast today.
Are you sure these are her pictures?
Yes.
You didn't take any other patients' pictures?
No.
Would you go get the doctor.
Have a seat, we're going to talk to the doctor.
Doctor, this is what I wanted to show you.
The pictures that we took today and the pictures from Friday.
What happened here?
There are no lumps in her breast.
ROBERT STACK: Kathleen's doctor was dumbfounded.
He was cautious and wanted to conduct a biopsy anyway.
But Kathleen was adamant, she was going home.
While I was leaving the hospital I was getting dressed
and I was telling all of the nurses and everybody,
I'm out of here, I'm gone, I'm healed.
I said, this is an early Christmas present from God.
For many years, doctors have called
these phenomena spontaneous remissions
and explained it away, oh, that's
just a spontaneous remission.
But what is that?
This is a healing.
And we have to, as healers, find out how this happens,
what are the mechanisms so that more people
can have this experience.
ROBERT STACK: Kathleen has been healthy
for more than three years.
She continues to meditate and pray and go
in for regular breast exams.
But was she actually helped by the power of prayer?
Some are skeptical.
There's no question that the mind exerts an influence
over what happens in the body.
The issue at hand is whether prayer or any other kind
of mental exercise can predictably influence
what happens to a person.
And with respect to prayer, there simply
is no evidence that it does.
ROBERT STACK: Dr. Larry Dossey, former chief
of staff at Medical City Hospital in Dallas,
Texas, takes issue with Dr. Barrett.
One of the best kept secrets in modern medicine
is the scientific data surrounding prayer.
Currently, there are over 130 studies
showing that if you bring prayer into the laboratory,
the hospital, or the clinic and you
do what we call a controlled double blind study,
the prayer works.
The most significant study in the century, I think,
was done by Dr. Randolph Byrd at the University
of California Medical School in San Francisco.
It took place in the coronary care unit, almost 400 people
were involved, they either had a heart
attack or severe chest pain.
Everybody gets treated with state of the art
coronary care techniques.
The difference was that half the people get prayed for.
This was a double blind study, nobody knew who was
and wasn't being prayed for.
The results showed that the prayed for patients
did significantly better.
They needed fewer drugs, there were fewer deaths
and they prayed for group, and nobody in the prayed for group
wound up on a mechanical ventilator.
12 of the people not being prayed for
had to have this done.
ROBERT STACK: Many in the medical community
find Dr. Byrd's study unconvincing.
And even his proponents admit that when it comes to prayer,
you cannot adequately monitor a human control group.
But sometimes, as in our next story, the life of a child
can make scientific studies seem completely irrelevant.
On March 2, 1988, at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, world-renowned organ transplant specialist Dr.
Thomas Starzl worried over one of his patients,
an 11-month-old baby boy, Eric Danowski, who had just
undergone a liver transplant.
By the time he had his first transplant in February of 1988
he was already quite ill.
His outlook became progressively worse because the first liver
was rejected, necessitating a second one which was down
about eight or nine days later.
The second one, I was like, how much more can
his little body take, you know?
He was so frail.
He had bones sticking out of his back,
he was so skinny and had been bedridden
for so long that we weren't--
you know, you had your doubts, you know?
I mean I kept my faith, kept positive attitude.
But in the back of your mind there's always that doubt.
Is he really going to be able to pull through all this,
you know?
ROBERT STACK: Three weeks after Eric's second transplant
his parents were put on alert again.
Dr. Starzl was not optimistic.
Dr. Starzl, how Eric?
I'm afraid not good.
Eric has developed viral pneumonia.
And I give him about a 50-50 chance.
50-50?
What can you do for him?
There's really nothing more we can do.
I think you should prepare yourself for the worst
in the next 48 hours.
48?
I'm sorry.
DEBBIE DANOWSKI: And down inside I guess I
wouldn't accept that, you know?
But hearing is from such a powerful doctor
who has been through so much and has seen
so much that it was a very scary thought coming, you know,
a statement coming from him.
I didn't want to hear that my son wasn't going to live.
There's nothing more the doctors could do
and there was nothing we could do.
And the only thing that we had left
was to hope that the Lord would answer our prayers.
He said that the next 48 hours are very crucial.
ROBERT STACK: That same night, Debbie spoke with Jack Grazier,
a newspaper reporter who had written several articles
about Eric's medical odyssey.
Jack told Debbie he would write another piece asking
his readers to pray for the boy.
The article appeared in the Erie, Pennsylvania,
Daily Times a few days later.
Immediately, churches all over central Pennsylvania
were inundated with worshipers praying
for little Eric Danowski.
DEBBIE DANOWSKI: I felt that heaven was bombarded
that night with prayers.
And I really, really felt strongly
in the power of prayer.
We both went down to the chapel
and we were like, God, whatever you have in store for us,
just give us the strength to deal with it.
Whether you want Eric or whether you're
going to keep them with us.
We want him with us but just give us some strength
and we'll deal with what we have to deal with.
ROBERT STACK: Within a few days it seemed that a miracle
was taking place.
Eric experienced a sudden and unexpected turn around.
Less than a week later, it was Eric's first birthday.
His family and medical team gathered to celebrate.
Hi, Dr. Starzl.
Well, I've got some pretty good news for you folks
on his birthday.
What?
Looks like Eric has beaten the virus.
Really?
Are you serious, doctor?
Mm-hmm.
That's great.
DEBBIE DANOWSKI: I feel in my heart
that Eric's recovery was definitely a miracle.
He was just such a very sick little boy.
I've had some of the best doctors in the world state
that medically there was nothing more
that they could do for him.
It was the first day that I think
I felt like a really sense of relief
that he was going to make it.
Did prayer give Eric a booster?
I don't know.
When I was young, I would probably
have scoffed at the idea.
But I've seen things and uncovered things
over the last nearly 40 years that
make me unwilling to be nihilistic about any
possibility.
And I think that includes prayer.
ROBERT STACK: Eventually, Eric underwent
a third liver transplant, this one a resounding success.
Today Eric is eight years old and going strong,
more than able to keep up with his big brother.
Thankfully, Eric was far too young to remember his ordeal.
His parents have told him about it, though,
and he thinks he understands.
When I found out how sick I was I
realized that I was very sick and a lot of people
were praying for me.
I want to make one thing perfectly clear,
if you've got appendicitis, you ought to have an appendectomy.
We're not advising people to give
up drugs and surgical procedures and just wing it with prayer.
On the other hand, you should feel free
while you're doing that, while you're
having surgery for your appendicitis,
to get prayed for, too.
Because there are studies which show,
literally, that prayer increases the healing
rate of surgical wounds.
So we ought to do what works.
I think this just falls in the category of common sense.
ROBERT STACK: Did prayer help Kathleen
Burghardt and Eric Danowski?
Each of us must decide for ourselves.
While prayer can never take the place of medicine,
it seems to offer a powerful assist.
Next, authorities need your help to capture
a fugitive drug lord who escaped from custody
dressed as a woman.
[theme music]
August 4, 1994.
21-year-old Lionel Luviano was arrested
in Houston, Texas, the culmination
of a six month sting operation.
Despite his youth, Luviano was a key figure
in an international drug ring that reportedly moved
nearly a quarter of a million dollars in the heroin
every month.
Since the tender age of 17, Luviano had enjoyed
a Playboy's lavish lifestyle.
Cars, motorcycles, expensive clothes,
and plenty of girlfriends.
The one thing he had never planned on
was serious jail time.
But with his arrest for heroin trafficking,
Luviano faced the very real possibility
of spending the best years of his life behind bars.
Lionel Luviano, however, had no intention of trusting
his fate to the legal system.
Shortly before his arrest he had wrecked his motorcycle
and sustained serious injuries.
While Luviano awaited trial, authorities
have no choice but to let him continue
his medical treatments outside of jail in a private facility.
Luviano was transferred to a guarded room in Houston's LBJ
Hospital, where he would be shackled to his bed 24 hours
a day.
Luviano shared room 3B3 with a total stranger
named Vasquez Martinez, the recent victim
of an armed robbery.
A week past uneventfully.
Then on October 4, visitors arrived unannounced.
Three individuals, two women and a man,
walked into LBJ Hospital, did not
have to go through any security measures
as this is not an institution, walked up to the third floor,
Lionel Luviano's room.
We're here to see our friend Vasquez Martinez, please.
Yes, sir.
ROBERT MASAITIS: They indicated they
were going to visit the individual across the bed
from Lionel Luviano.
Vazquez.
ROBERT MASAITIS: The guard was in a position
to see them walk over to the other individuals bed
so he felt comfortable in the fact, as would anybody,
that they were just visiting the individual across the bed who
was not a prisoner and he was able to have visitors
at any time of the day.
ROBERT STACK: On that day, behind the door of room 3B3,
an incredible escape began to unfold.
Vazquez, we got some business to take care of.
Shh.
ROBERT STACK: In reality, the three visitors
were one of Luviano's sisters and two other family members.
What's going on?
Shut up.
Never mind.
ROBERT STACK: Vasquez Martinez would soon
realize were the three strangers had in mind.
Believing they were armed, Martinez could only
look on in stunned disbelief.
Meanwhile, Lionel is in the midst of a total makeover.
A shave.
Here's your clothes.
ROBERT STACK: A simple, full cut, two peace crepe suit.
Then a wig, a dash of makeup, and the transformation
was complete.
I think-- I look OK?
Yeah.
You look great. Come on.
Yeah.
[non-english speech]
ROBERT STACK: Lionel Luviano was about to make his escape,
masquerading as his own sister.
The guard outside of the hospital room
was not surprised when he saw two women and a man
leave the room, that's what he had
observed walk into the room.
ROBERT STACK: Luviano's sister stayed behind.
With a concealed gun she kept the bewildered Vasquez Martinez
from sounding the alarm.
She would later slip away during the commotion
following the discovery of Luviano's escape.
The clever charade had gone exactly as planned.
Eventually, Luviano's accomplices will be captured.
But to this day, the cross-dressing drug lord
remains on the lam.
Lionel Luviano was looking at approximately 20 years
in prison.
Being that it being a federal prison,
he would approximately do 19 of those years.
There's very little good time given in such like this.
So I'm sure that this played quite heavily on his mind,
his desire to escape.
Lionel Luviano led a very extravagant lifestyle when he
was free in the Houston area.
There's no doubt in my mind that he is attempting to still
live that type of a lifestyle.
He's 21 years old and had all the luxuries of an extremely
extravagant individual.
[theme music]
ROBERT STACK: Lake Andes, South Dakota, December 12, 1992.
At 6:00 in the morning a car stopped
at a remote intersection at the edge of the Yankton
Sioux Indian reservation.
It was cold.
The road was icy.
All three of the car's occupants had been drinking.
[interposing voices]
[screaming]
The car jumped the highway and came
to rest on a frozen over ditch.
The driver of the car was 20-year-old Arnold Archambeau.
One of the passengers was his girlfriend,
Ruby Bruguier, age 19.
The other passenger was Ruby's cousin, 17-year-old Tracy Dion.
Hello?
Anybody down there?
ROBERT STACK: By the time help arrived,
Tracy was the only person still in the car.
Are you OK?
ROBERT STACK: For some unexplained reason,
a reason Tracy still cannot understand,
Arnold and Ruby had apparently just
walked away and abandoned her.
I was really scared because, gee, Ruby's my cousin,
you know?
How can she leave me, you know?
If she got out, how come she didn't want to help me out?
Or why didn't Arnold try to help me get out, too, you know?
ROBERT STACK: Why did Arnold and Ruby leave
their best friend trapped in an overturned car
in the bitter cold?
For three months there were no signs
whatsoever of the young couple.
They had quite literally vanished into thin air.
Then came the morning of March 10,
1993, and a tragic discovery.
The body of Ruby Bruguier was found floating in the ditch.
The next day, Arnold's body turned up
just a few yards away.
What could have happened to Arnold
Archambeau and Ruby Bruguier?
The area surrounding the ditch had been repeatedly
searched in the weeks after the accident.
Yet The bodies were found just 75 feet from the crash site.
In this incredible and bizarre case,
every answer seems to give rise to another disturbing question.
And one question in particular haunts
every aspect of the investigation,
were Arnold Archambeau and Ruby Bruguier
the victims of foul play?
Arnold and Ruby were both Yankton Sioux.
They grew up together on the reservation,
began dating in high school, and soon fell in love.
Arnold was a very nice young man.
He's never been in any serious trouble of any kind.
I pushed him and pushed him and I got him graduated and he was
crowned king in his senior year, you know,
when he was at the prom and all this.
He was really popular.
Ruby is a real gentle person.
She's always laughing, you know?
She jokes around.
She never said any harsh words to us.
You know, of she'd done anything wrong
she always told us that she did do something wrong.
ROBERT STACK: In 1991, Arnold and Ruby became parents when
their daughter Erica was born.
From the start, it was a struggle.
Arnold and Ruby were still kids themselves and hardly
ready to settle down.
On Saturday, December 11, 1992, Ruby, Arnold, and Tracy
embarked on an all night party spree.
At around 6:00 the next morning, they
ended up back at Tracy's house where they had left the baby.
Tracy's father was waiting for them.
Hey, Charlie.
Arnold.
Just came to get Erica.
Hi, kids.
Hi.
You kids been drinking pretty heard tonight, huh?
Just a little.
Why don't you guys leave her here
and come back later this afternoon pick her up, then?
All right.
Tracy?
Um, I think I'm going to go with these guys
for a while longer, dad.
OK.
You guys drive careful now, OK?
Bye.
See ya.
We left from there and that's when
we came up to that stop sign.
That's all I remember is just him,
you know, us looking and, you know, saying there
ain't no cars and him spinning out from the stop sign.
And it was just the snap of a finger.
Next thing I know we end up in a ditch.
[screaming]
Somebody help us.
Help.
Arnold, help.
We were upside down in the ditch and just Ruby
and I was in the car, you know, Arnold wasn't in the car.
I don't know where he was.
Ruby was crying.
She was saying, oh my god, oh my god.
She just kept hitting the car.
The next thing I know, the door was opened a little ways
and she had enough room where she slid out.
And then so I was going to reach over
and then it was just like that, the door went shut.
Somebody, Ruby, please help me.
Ruby.
TRACY DION: I know if that was me and I had gotten out,
I wouldn't have left without trying to get Ruby out,
you know?
Why she left, I don't know.
Why Arnold left, I don't know.
If they left together, I don't know.
I don't know why.
ROBERT STACK: By daybreak, the police were
already searching the area.
Even though the spot where the car had come to rest
was frozen solid, the authorities
feared that Arnold and Ruby had wandered
off and fallen through the ice in some other location.
BILL YOUNGSTROM: We walked around the ice part.
We had one officer walk on the opposite side of the railroad
tracks thinking maybe they wandered off toward the lake
area, which was also frozen.
I've been to a number of accidents
where there hasn't been somebody around,
the driver hasn't been there, no passengers there.
And a lot of times it's because they've
been partying, out drinking, I mean, we do have a DWI law.
That was initially my first thought.
Maybe Arnold was out drinking and didn't
want to get arrested.
So we figured he'd show up in a few days.
I know he wouldn't hide, you know,
he would of came home to us or called us and told us,
I'm over here.
Don't worry about me.
But we never heard anything from him.
And I thought, well, gee, you know,
it's not like her to leave her baby this long
so maybe there is something wrong somewhere
or maybe she's hurt or she can't get to us, you know?
ROBERT STACK: The police never found
any evidence that Arnold and Ruby
had fallen through the ice.
Over the next three months, deputy Youngstrom
turned the search into a personal crusade.
He worked tirelessly investigating
every possible lead.
Day after day he came up empty, until the spring thaw.
In early March, a passing motorist
saw a body in the ditch just 75 feet from the accident site.
It was Ruby Bruguier.
I was very shocked the morning that I
received the radio transmission that they had found a body.
Of course, it wasn't broadcasted any names across but I knew
immediately who they had found.
It was either going to be Ruby Bruguier or Arnold Archambeau.
Her glasses were missing, both shoes were missing,
her clothes were intact, it appeared
to be the same clothes that she had
on the night of the accident.
But the body was very decomposed,
it was hard to recognize.
And, in fact, we had to get down to look at a tattoo
to get a positive identification on the body.
At that time, our department decided
that we would start pumping the ditch out and about noon
the next day we found the body of Arnold
submerged in the water about 15 feet away
from where we found Ruby.
Arnold's body was very well kept.
His skin color was fine, he was not frozen to the ground,
the clothes were not frozen to the ground.
There is a question mark as far as in our investigation
if he was wearing the same clothes that he
was the night of the accident.
ROBERT STACK: Deputy Youngstrom was completely baffled.
How could two bodies found in the same location
be in such different states of decomposition?
And how could they end up in an area that had already
been so thoroughly searched?
The bodies were immediately autopsied,
but the results only served to deepen the mystery.
There was no way of determining the time of death
and there seemed to be no evidence of foul play.
The coroner concluded that Arnold and Ruby
had both died of exposure.
Death by exposure is kind of to me
it's just like they froze to death
and I cannot actually buy that.
They may have froze to death, but they didn't
freeze to death at that ditch.
That's impossible that they could have been
there the entire three months.
I myself personally walked that ditch several times
during that period.
I've gotten written affidavits from people that's also
walked it, people that had nothing to do with the case.
They couldn't have been there.
They couldn't have been missed.
ROBERT STACK: Police were further baffled
by the discovery of two items that seemed to support
the theory that Arnold and Ruby had not died
in the ditch on December 12.
Bill, you want to come over here?
I got some thing here.
We found a tuft of hair alongside the road.
This hair was later determined by the forensic laboratory
to belong to Ruby Bruguier.
That hair couldn't have stayed there for three months.
In my opinion, it was when whoever brought the bodies back
to the ditch, that's when that piece of hair
fell off of Ruby prior to being placed back in the ditch area.
At the time we pulled Arnold's body from the ditch
I found a set of keys in his pocket.
The keys were a car or vehicle key and what
appeared to be two house keys.
I still have these keys in my possession and to this day,
I have not found the vehicle nor the house that these keys fit.
Hi Arnold, what are you doing?
Nothing, just driving around.
ROBERT STACK: Soon, another startling revelation.
A witness claimed to have seen Arnold accompanied by three
other people on New Year's Eve, almost three weeks
after he was reported missing.
All right. We'll tell you when.
OK, then.
All right, later.
Later.
In my mind, it is a very credible sighting.
She talked to Arnold, knows Arnold personally,
and wasn't a doubt in her mind that it was
Arnold that she was talking to.
Do you think you were mistaken when you
seen Arnold on New Year's Eve?
No.
ROBERT STACK: Authorities brought the witness
in for a polygraph exam.
She passed.
Later, the couple she identified as being
in the backseat of the car also underwent a polygraph.
They denied being there but they did failed a polygraph.
And we questioned those two people thoroughly afterwards
and they held to their story that they were not there
that night, they never seen Arnold or Ruby
during those three months and said that they
were at home that evening.
ROBERT STACK: How did the bodies of Arnold Archambeau and Ruby
Bruguier end up in the very ditch
where they crashed their car three months earlier?
A bizarre coincidence?
An oversight by the police?
Or perhaps something far more insidious.
Didn't die there.
They had to die someplace else.
Someone had to come and put them back in there
again to make it look like that that's where they died.
I believe that someone done that, you know,
someone killed Arnold.
I really do believe that.
But how, I don't know.
Ruby and Arnold had a daughter.
She's going to grow up without a mother and father.
They were taken from her.
When she asks me the question, what
happened to my mom and dad?
I don't want to say, I don't know.
I want to be able to tell her what happened.
Mama.
[theme music]
ROBERT STACK: Time has not dimmed image, Al Henderson
and Jean Moore during happier days,
before Jean's unexplained disappearance, before Al fell
under a cloud of suspicion.
During a courtship that spanned some 20 years, Al built
a multimillion dollar real estate empire,
Jean rose through the corporate ranks
to become a regional bank escrow officer.
In December of 1991, Al proposed marriage and Jean accepted.
She was very happy and we were making plans for the wedding.
She was just real, real happy once she had decided that it
would be OK to marry me, then she got more excited about it
with each passing day.
ROBERT STACK: However, Jean's engagement
did little to alter her children's
opinions of Al Henderson.
The longer I knew him, the less genuine he seemed.
I know he said that he loved her many times,
but he also had a habit of putting her
down in front of other people.
And to me, that just didn't sound like love.
When your mother asks you to be nice to somebody who they
like, you go along with it even though you've tried to talk--
like I did--
I tried to talk my mom out of being around the guy.
ROBERT STACK: Jean Moore followed her heart.
A few months after the proposal she and Al
set off from their home in Apple Valley,
California to vacation in Laughlin,
Nevada, a scaled down version of Las Vegas.
It was there, April 9, 1992, that Al reported Jean missing.
No one has seen or heard from her since.
Today, most of those acquainted with this case
are convinced that Jean Moore met with foul play.
Since Jean vanished, her children's
simmering disapproval of Al Henderson
has turned to outright suspicion,
pitting them against the man their mother planned to marry.
What follows is Al Henderson's account of Jean's last day.
It was Thursday, April 9, 1982.
According to Al, Jean wanted a final chance
at her lucky slot machine before checking out of their hotel.
Al told us that he dropped her off
at a side entrance of a nearby casino
and went to find a parking place.
When I did not find one, then I
returned to the valet parking.
Can my wife pick up the car later?
Thank you.
AL HENDERSON: Got the ticket, went inside the casino
where Jean was waiting for me.
Here's the claim check for the car.
AL HENDERSON: Our plan was that we would meet back at our hotel
room at a quarter of 12.
ROBERT STACK: Al claims he left Jean in the casino
at around 9:30 AM.
Once outside, he planned to flag down a taxi
and return to their hotel.
There was no cab there.
So after waiting a couple of minutes and the cab
didn't come, I thought, well it would be nice,
I could go play the slots with her a little bit.
ROBERT STACK: But Al found Jean's favorite slot
machine already in use.
AL HENDERSON: I felt, well, because someone was there
playing it she may have decided to go
shopping or some other thing.
From a quarter of 10 to 10:15 I played the machine
that she liked, hoping that she would come back
and I would be able to get up and just say,
here's your machine.
Have fun.
ROBERT STACK: 12:15 PM.
Can you take these bags to security?
We're checking out.
ROBERT STACK: Still believing that nothing was wrong,
Al returned to the hotel and checked out.
He then took a cab back to the casino to find Jean.
When I saw that the car was right where it had been left
and spoke to the valet and nobody
had brought a ticket for the car,
then I began to become alarmed.
ROBERT STACK: Al says he thoroughly searched the lobby,
the shops, and the gaming area.
Jean Moore was nowhere to be found.
Over the next few days Al questioned dozens
of people and distributed thousands of these flyers
in the Laughlin area.
Despite the offer of a $25,000 reward,
not one helpful call was received.
After a certain amount of time I
had to figure that something terrible has happened.
ROBERT STACK: Jean's children reached the same conclusion,
but they are convinced that Al Henderson
knows more about Jean's fate than he has admitted.
The more we find out about what supposedly happened,
as compared to what can be verified,
the less I'm inclined to believe that he's
telling the full truth.
In my opinion, Al has not said everything
that had happened then.
The reason I say that is because, number one, the story
has changed a couple of times.
ROBERT STACK: In his original statement to police,
Al Henderson insisted repeatedly that he dropped Jean
off in front of the casino and gave
her the valet ticket there.
But Al told us that he left Jean at a side entrance
and gave her the ticket inside the casino.
I'll meet you back at the hotel about quarter to 12.
Did she leave anything in the room?
ROBERT STACK: Other details made Jean's children uneasy.
For starters, Jean had left most of her jewelry
in the hotel room.
And her engagement ring--
It seemed very odd to me that she had left her engagement
ring that she was so proud of.
I thought it was very strange.
She was not one to go out without her purse
or without her jewelry.
Within a couple of days or within a day,
I knew that he was involved.
In my heart, I know he was involved.
When I got off the plane, when I flew in to Bull Head, which was
across the river, the first place I went to
was the police station.
I asked then if there was anything on my mother
and I let them know my feelings on what had happened.
ROBERT STACK: Al had given police
precise details about his last morning with Jean.
Authorities turned up an impartial
that could validate his account, a network of surveillance
cameras monitoring virtually every square inch
of the casino 24 hours a day.
Al Henderson says he pulled into the valet area
at around 9:15 AM.
Surveillance tapes confirm the arrival of Al's Cadillac
that morning.
Cameras in the lobby also recorded
Al's entry into the casino.
Beyond this point, Al and the surveillance footage
seem to disagree.
The tape shows two views of the area where Al said he
gave the valet ticket to Jean.
Additional cameras should have picked up glimpses of Jean
as she moved about the Casino.
I have reviewed four of those tapes of the areas
that Mr. Henderson said that they were in.
In the tapes that I have reviewed, the surveillance
tapes that I have reviewed, we do not see
Jeannie in any of those tapes.
I can't really comment on that.
I can only tell you what happened.
I accept no responsibility for what
their tapes show or don't show because I
am not an expert in that field.
I can just tell you what happened.
ROBERT STACK: Al's assertion that he played
Jean's lucky slot machine should also have
been backed up by the cameras.
In examining the tapes for the time frame
Al gave us, 9:45 to approximately 10:15,
the machines that he told security
was her favorite machine, we do not
see Al playing those machines.
Well, the only response to that
is that he was evidently looking at the tape
of the wrong machine.
I have checked with the surveillance personnel
for the hotel and they have advised me
that this is the group of machines
that Al Henderson told the security personnel was
Jeannie's favorite machine and asked if they would
make a copy of them for him.
He was instructed they could not do that, that they would
turn them over to the police.
So these are the surveillance tapes
for the machines Al told security
was her favorite machine.
ROBERT STACK: Investigators began to wonder if Jean
had been and Laughlin at all.
Eventually, they found a waitress
who had served Al and Jean on Monday, April 6,
the day they arrived.
Have you had any luck in the casino yet?
Other than the coffee shop, we have nobody seeing
Jeannie in the Laughlin area.
How would you like your steak cooked?
ROBERT STACK: The question remained, where
was Jean Moore between the Monday
sighting and the Thursday report that she was missing.
A few weeks later, a witness came
forward with a possible answer.
A friend of Jean's has made the stunning claim
that she saw the couple 150 miles away
from Laughlin at a gas station in their home
town of Apple Valley.
When?
April 8, 4:30 PM.
The day before Jean was reported missing.
We have a witness who remembered the time
because they were en route to a school function
and that would've been only at that time
and pinpointed the time and date.
I've provided several people with copies of my telephone log
from Call USA showing that I made a call from Laughlin
to the Victorville area at a little bit
after 3:00 on that day.
I had another call, I think it was at 6:59 on that day.
So you got less than four hours and it's physically impossible,
even if all you did was drive from Laughlin
and turn around and go back, you can't
do it in less than six hours.
ROBERT STACK: Phone records verify
the calls were made from Laughlin on Wednesday,
as Henderson says.
Furthermore, Al's bookkeeper told
us that he called her from Laughlin that same Wednesday
evening.
And so we discussed various things.
And then he says, well, just a minute.
Jeannie wants to say hi, too.
So Jeannie got on the phone and she was just happier than happy
could be because she had run into a stroke of luck
on one of the poker machines.
ROBERT STACK: Less than 24 hours later, Jean Moore
would be reported missing.
Since then, precious little has surfaced to suggest
she will ever return.
The riddle of Jean Moore's disappearance,
reportedly from a busy casino in broad daylight,
has defied explanation.
Does Al Henderson know more about Jean's fate
than he has acknowledged?
Or is he something of a victim himself,
burdened with false accusations during a time
of crushing personal loss?
Unequivocally I had nothing to do with the disappearance
of Jean Moore.
I had offered the $25,000 reward.
I think that my net worth has gone down from around $2.5
million to $1 million.
If I could get her back I'd get the whole $1 million.
I would do anything to get her back.
[theme music]
ROBERT STACK: For generations, the Ouija board
has been a source of entertainment and fascination
for people of all ages.
But is it more than just a game?
Next week, we'll bring you the remarkable tale
of a restless spirit named Patience Worth.
Some believe that Patience used the Ouija
board as an instrument to communicate
from the realm of the dead.
Also, we'll bring you the intriguing case
of a young army enlisted man who mysteriously vanished in 1993.
Did he simply tire of military life and go AWOL?
Or was he involved in secret operations
that could have led to his death?
Join me next time, perhaps you hold the crucial clue
that can help solve a mystery.
[music playing]
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