Original subtitles

[Joan] Robert received a ransom note.

It was in his mailbox.

[ominous tones playing]

The ransom note said, "For the last time, no police.

Do exactly as we tell you."

"Remove all posted missing person flyers.

If not, death will be the end result."

"Three million in a black sport bag is the sum of life.

"This is the last chance.

From now on, it is all in your hands."

When I saw that note, I believed that whoever was

involved in this was desperate enough to kill Heddie Braun,

or had done it already.

I need to do whatever it takes to get inside his head.

[siren wailing in distance]

That somebody would chain her up like an animal.

It was almost like time stood still,

that we were in this horrible dream.

It made no sense to me.

She never hurt anybody.

She was loved by everybody.

Why would anybody take my mother?

Why?

[kidnapper speaking]

[Michael] This is the first time I had to get into a kidnapper's head.

I knew how he operated. I knew his personality.

Pitted against somebody else, one-on-one.

And the question is, if he wasn't gonna let her go,

then what was he gonna do with her?

And there's only one answer in my mind.

He was gonna kill her.

[slow, ticking theme music]

[siren wailing]

[theme music intensifies]

[theme music mellows]

[Joan] What I miss most about Mother is her hugs.

She was a good mom. Fair, honest.

Strict when she had to be.

We were best buddies.

I could talk to her about anything.

I never dreamt in a million years

that Mother would be kidnapped.

Walworth County is very rural.

Where we live, everybody knows everybody.

We didn't lock our doors. Very safe.

Pretty much every day, I would go down by my mom and dad.

I'd bring them their mail or check on them.

But on February 4th, my nephew Robert called me up.

He says, "Where is Grandma?"

I says, "I don't know, she's home."

He says, "Well, she called me, and she says some man has her.

"And she said that she was in a closet, and it was dark,

she was cold, and the man says he was gonna kill her."

It was strange that Mother called Robert at work.

Mother would never have bothered

any of us at work with phone calls.

She just celebrated her 88th birthday the day before,

but I know she had a clear mind.

She didn't have dementia.

I says, "I'll go down. I'll get dressed right now.

"I'll go down to Mother and Daddy's and see

"what's going on.

And I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

When I got to Mother and Daddy's house,

their garage door was open and her car was gone.

That was strange. She didn't drive.

Especially in the winter, she didn't drive.

Daddy was sitting in his recliner.

My dad wasn't the healthiest man.

He was legally blind. He couldn't hear the best.

I says, "Where's mother?"

And he says, "Oh, she must be down to the farm."

Which is my brother's house.

And I says, "Well, I'm gonna run down to the farm and see

where mother is, what she's doing."

Because I didn't want to alarm him.

I went to my brother's house, and she wasn't there.

I knew right away something was the matter.

[David] It was a real cold day. I was in a meeting.

Lieutenant kind of whispered in my ear that they had

a missing person.

Those first few hours are very crucial when you have

a missing person, especially in the cold like this.

It was close to the zero mark when all this took place.

You could freeze to death from exposure.

I told him, "Get as many people up there as you can,

start searching the area, see what you can find out."

[ominous tones playing]

[David] The concern, in Heddie's case, is she's elderly,

88 years old.

Maybe she was confused,

and maybe was starting to get some dementia.

Did she get in her car and drive away?

It was a short time later that her car was discovered

down the road.

When we found the car, it was driven into the field.

The keys were in the ignition. The car was unlocked.

I found nothing out of the ordinary in the car.

There was no footprints or anything to go on.

There was no tracks to indicate another vehicle or vehicles.

The discovery of her car down the road made it appear that

she lost control of her car on the slippery roadway and drove

off into a field and then maybe walked away from the vehicle.

I later learned that the kidnapper planned for that.

That's exactly what he wanted.

[door clanking]

The kidnapper taking the car and making it appear that

she drove off into the field, I think it was smart

on his part.

We weren't thinking that this is a kidnapping.

We're thinking that she was out there in the woods somewhere.

So here I am wandering around with, you know,

30, 40 firefighters checking the woods and everything.

That was a red herring.

The search of the woods took an entire day.

After we had cleared that entire area,

it was getting to be dark.

And I decided at that point that Heddie wasn't out there.

And I told Sheriff Graves,

I said, "Dave, she's not out here."

[David] I trusted Mike, not just because he's a good cop or a good

detective, I trusted him because he was a tracker.

He was a hunter.

When I arrived at Heddie's house,

that's when it starts to seem kind of strange.

I was gonna make some phone calls at the house,

and I picked up the phone, and it was dead.

We found that the phone line has been severed at the house.

And I remember looking at that phone line, I can vividly

remember that it was a clean cut.

And now I'm starting to think, we got something going on here

bigger than her just driving off,

that this might be a kidnapping.

When the phone lines are cut, her car's missing, the car gets

found on a side road -- all of it comes together, and you say,

this is not someone wandering away out in the field.

This is an abduction.

The phone lines being cut, I think it was a way to

try to confuse the police.

It probably bought him some time to get away.

[Michael] I start to think, this guy, you know, had a plan.

Try to throw us off track as to what actually happened to her.

And it worked. He wasn't a dummy.

He was smart about the whole thing.

But on the other hand, in hindsight,

he probably should have never cut the phone line.

If he would have just left the phone line intact,

that would have never aroused our suspicion even longer.

That would have gave him even more time.

[tinkling sounds]

The police questioned each of us.

They asked us if we knew who would take Mother.

I didn't have a clue.

We're nice people. We didn't really have enemies.

Mother and Daddy were financially secure,

but we didn't have an awful lot of money.

There was no reason to take her.

We couldn't comprehend that.

[David] The Mann family were known to be a wealthy family,

had a huge sand and gravel business.

Dick Mann, I guess you would call him the patriarch of

the family at the time. Heddie was his mother-in-law.

My sister Judy married Dick Mann.

My brother-in-law's mother's phone line had been cut.

She was the first person he was gonna kidnap.

He had started with Dick's mother.

[David] OK, this is starting to make sense.

It tells me that he had a plan to first abduct Dick's mother.

He wasn't successful there because she had more security

in her house.

Now, you know, another part of the puzzle is starting to

come into play.

This isn't just some old couple that lives out in the woods

that she's gone missing.

Now there's a tie to the Mann family.

The Manns were well off.

Now we've got somebody that is associated with somebody

that's got money.

We thought that the next thing that would happen is

the kidnapper would make demands.

I would think that right out of the box, he would say,

"I'm holding this person, and this is what I want."

Because otherwise, why did you abduct this person?

[Michael] We all were puzzled. We haven't got a ransom.

There's nothing.

You got this time frame that nothing's happening.

You're waiting for his move to counter with your move.

And right now, there is no movement.

There had to have been a reason that there was this time --

once again, a time delay.

[David] I thought we would probably hear from him

each day at least.

The longer it goes on, the more you kind of got to

face reality that maybe -- maybe she's not alive.

The weather was very cold, and it got colder

as time went on. I think it was close to zero.

Heddie was on heart medication, and she was gonna need it.

The whole thing is a ticking clock.

I mean, every hour that she's missing, the pressure grows.

[Joan] A couple of nephews got together, and they got

a picture of my mom

and put a missing persons bulletin out.

And got people to put them up in the windows at gas stations,

fast foods, hardware stores, grocery stores.

The nights were the hardest for me because you'd lay down

and hope to sleep, and your mind would wander.

I think that's maybe why I would get up

and drive around the country roads looking for Mother

in case he had let her go.

And I could bring her home.

Just keep praying.

I just wanted my mom home.

My family is everything to me.

I guess that's -- I got that from my mom, because family was

everything to her.

[ominous tone playing]

[David] On Thursday, the ransom note was in the mailbox.

When I saw that note, I believe that

whoever was involved in this was desperate enough

to kill Heddie Braun,

or had done it already.

"For the last time, no police. So do exactly as we tell you.

"Remove all posted missing person flyers.

"If not, death will be the end result.

"Three million in black sport bag is the sum of life.

"In case of dirty or tapped phone,

"death will be the conclusion.

From now on, it's all in your hands."

Now you got something concrete that you can start to examine.

You want to try to dissect it and see what

you can pull out of it.

It gives you an insight on what type of person

you're dealing with.

The kidnapper that demands three million dollars tells me that

the kidnapper is desperate.

Dealing with any desperate person is dangerous.

You don't know what they're going to do.

They're unpredictable.

Desperate people do desperate things.

And that's what scared me. That's what worries me.

[Michael] You read this, whoever the kidnapper is,

is serious about what they're doing.

He reiterated twice in there -- death,

he meant business.

And if he doesn't get it his way, he will kill Heddie.

The other thing is too, the ransom note said, "We."

So does he have a partner?

Are we talking more than one person?

Is there one person watching or staying with Heddie

and another delivering these notes and moving

around the community?

[Michael] I later found out that he purposely put "we" in there

because he wanted to give us the idea that we were dealing

with maybe the mob or some group of people that

kidnapped Heddie.

He purposely did it to throw us off.

He was trying to throw us off again.

And at the time, it worked.

The ransom note put the thought in our mind that we were

dealing with somebody like the mob or something.

[David] I was new to being the sheriff.

And I guess you would call this a baptism by fire.

We called in some of the family members into the office I said,

"Can you get three million dollars?"

When we found out there was a ransom,

we started getting money together.

But just in the next hour or two to have

three million was impossible.

It wasn't like, that we'd go dig under the mattress

and find that money.

Daddy's first thing out of his mouth was,

"We'll sell the farm."

[Michael] How much can you get together in the next couple of days?

And I think it was a couple hundred thousand dollars

or something like that.

But now they've got a problem where

they can't deliver three million bucks.

The longer it goes, the worse it gets.

He went through all this work and planning and everything for

a big payback.

And I think he would have been pissed if he didn't get

his three million dollars.

And the question is, if he wasn't going to let

her go, then what was he gonna do with her?

And there's only one answer in my mind.

He was gonna kill her.

[clanking]

Here's another clue that was in that ransom note.

He asked for the missing person's flyers

to be taken down.

So he's got to be still locally in the area.

You pull up to a stop sign,

you see Heddie's picture on the --

you go to the grocery store, you see Heddie's picture.

And I think that's starting to wear on him.

[David] We took the pictures down because it gives them

the feeling that they're in charge.

And we didn't want to upset the kidnapper to the point

where he might do something to her.

You need to control it as much as you can.

And at the same time, try to let them think that

they're in control.

We thought that the next thing that would happen is

the kidnapper would give us a drop point or we would get

instructions, which we never did.

The kidnapper had either used his computer or his landline at

home to register and get it activated.

The FBI determined the location of where it was registered

from, which was then the kidnapper's address.

[David] That was what kind of broke the case.

That was the a-ha moment.

And it was like, OK, now we got a suspect.

[Michael] I can remember that day vividly.

It was getting late at night, and I was either just getting

home, or I got home, and I got a phone call.

"Get your ass back here. Turn around.

We got a suspect."

Unbeknownst to me, it's gonna be somebody that

I know really well, and have known for years.

And the agent goes, "You know him?"

And I go, "Yeah, I know him really well."

[Michael] They're all gathered around, and one of the FBI agents hands

me a photo and goes, "This is the suspect."

And I looked at it, and I'm like, "Holy [bleep], it's Reinier."

Reinier Ravesteijn was a carpenter and a handyman.

He would do handyman stuff out at Dick Mann's place,

and that's why he had so much knowledge of

the family and everything.

Reinier was a resident of the Netherlands,

lived in Amsterdam.

His wife had taken a high school trip there and met him,

and they eventually married, came back to the States.

It hit me like a ton of bricks that I never spotted it

when I read the ransom note.

He says, I want three million dollars delivered

in a black sports bag.

[David] Do you call your gym bag a sports bag?

If I'm going to the gym, I either take a backpack

or a gym bag, I don't call it a sports bag.

Him being from the Netherlands, that's a European slang.

And it was something that I missed.

Every law enforcement guy that read that note

missed "sports bag."

You can be the best detective in the world,

and you still overlook stuff.

If I would have caught it at the time, that sometimes can

make a case, you know?

To this day, it just baffles me how something can boldly be

flashing right in your face, and you don't pick up on it.

I knew Reinier through my old partner at

the Sheriff's Department.

My partner was the brother-in-law to Reinier.

Now we got the upper hand on him.

I spent enough time with him to know his inner workings

and how he thought.

They immediately asked me to sit down and write down

everything I knew about Reinier.

I wrote down in that sheet of paper everything that I had

knowledge about, especially his mindset.

You know, what kind of mind are we dealing with?

He was arrogant, selfish, egotistical, cocky.

He liked to be in control.

He thought of himself being really intelligent,

and knowing more than you.

Reinier had been arrested by us in the past

in a disorderly conduct case, bar fight.

Wasn't a pushover by any means.

He was a tough dude.

Their next question out of their mouth was,

"Would he kill her?"

And I'm like, "Yes, he would kill her."

I didn't have to hesitate.

Based on what I knew of Reinier and everything, I felt that

he'd kill Heddie.

[David] When he said that, it's like, holy cow.

You've got a detective who knows him better than

anybody, saying he could do a homicide.

She may already be dead, because it's been four days.

You want to get to her as fast as you can.

The clock is still ticking.

But we didn't immediately move on him, because we had no clue

where she was.

We didn't go into his house, because at that point,

if she's not there, then what?

Reinier could just button up and not say anything.

"I'm not gonna tell you where she is."

So what do we do next?

And the answer was, we're gonna follow him around

a little bit and see if he leads us to her.

[David] It was a risk, but everything was a risk.

You think to yourself, the longer this goes on,

the worse things get for her. It's very tense.

At that point, he's not taking care of her, and she's freezing

out in the cold, or she's gone. She's dead.

[David] The SWAT team crept up on the house

and placed a tracker

on Reinier's vehicle in hopes that he would lead us

right to her.

Once Reinier got to his house, he just didn't seem to move.

He didn't leave the residence that night.

[Joan] She's gone now four or five days without her medicine.

That was a concern to me.

I know Mother is a tough woman, a strong woman,

determined woman.

The bottom of your heart drops out

because she's little.

Somebody's got to take care of her.

I felt that was my job.

And I was worried

because it was so cold, and she's so small,

and she didn't like the cold.

I'm OK.

In the morning, we followed him around, and it's like he's not

leading us anywhere.

He went to the hardware store to pick something up,

and then he went to McDonald's.

He's not really doing anything.

I mean, if I've got somebody held captive somewhere,

I'm gonna be checking on 'em,

and he wasn't doing any of that.

Sometimes we wondered if he knew he was being followed,

and he was just driving around.

You find a beacon and you know the cops are on to you

and you're still gonna go through with the plan?

That's not rational.

And that's what worried us all about his personality.

He was irrational. He didn't care.

Deep down inside, he thought

he could get away with it.

I think he continued on because he just has -- had that kind of

ego that I mean, just wasn't gonna give up.

Maybe he was in it for the thrill

to see what exactly -- what's gonna happen next.

[David] He wasn't really leading us to Heddie.

The longer that day went on, the more concerned I got

that we're never gonna find her.

He was headed towards the county line.

The agent looked at me and said, "You're the Sheriff.

What do you want to do?"

I was in command and four days was long enough.

Don't let him leave the county, stop him.

Take him down.

It was gonna be a takedown with shock and awe.

We wanted to rattle his cage.

One vehicle pulls in front of him, one pulls behind him,

lights come on, and I watched the whole takedown take place,

taking him out of the vehicle.

[Michael] The thought process was that if he was gonna disclose to

anybody about what he did and how he did it,

it was gonna be to me.

And he rolls his head and looks up at me and he goes,

I'll talk to Bambi.

I'll tell Bambi.

[Michael] Was it a case of good cop, bad cop?

Yeah, I guess you could say that.

We all had planned that that's what we were hoping for.

They lifted him off the ground, and they put him in

the back seat with me.

And now it came time to ask my questions.

And I was hoping that she'd be alive.

[David] I knew Mike was up to the challenge.

If anybody could get him to speak, it would be Mike.

He trusted Mike more than the rest of us.

His whole demeanor, when they put him in the back

seat, you could just see that there was a big burden.

You could tell that this had all been weighing on him.

I think it was a sense of relief that he could finally be

done with this.

It helped me formulate a plan, and I decided at that point.

I wasn't screaming at him. I wasn't spitting in his face.

First thing I said to him was, "Is she alive?"

And he says, "She's alive."

I said, "Where? Where is she at?

Where, Reinier, where?"

And then he started to lean away from the seat and reach

into his back pocket.

And in his hand that was handcuffed,

he's holding a set of keys.

We drive into the backyard, and lo and behold,

there's two construction trailers back there.

[David] Heddie was being held in a utility trailer.

Some of the SWAT guys probably did walk by the trailer,

but a logical person would not expect someone to put

an 88-year-old lady into a utility trailer in the middle

of the winter.

[Michael] I unlock the lock,

and I peer into the trailer, and the trailer is just

full of crap all over the floor.

And I look down on the floor, and I can see

a bundle of blankets,

and I figure it's got to be Heddie down there on the floor.

And I reach down to touch her and touch her hands,

and she awakes or comes to life.

And I said, "Heddie, we're the police.

We're here to take you home."

And she goes, "What took you so long?"

And I go, "You're one tough lady."

And she goes, "I'm Norwegian."

She was definitely in a weakened state.

I personally don't think she would've lasted

a whole lot longer.

And inside the trailer, the whole entire floor was

lined with tarps and stuff.

Seeing the plastic on the floor of the trailer, if she did die

on him, he had a plan to dispose of her.

He says he would never hurt her, but I don't know what

other purpose that plastic would have served if it's not

to cover up a body.

If we hadn't found her, that plastic would have been

utilized in the next day or two.

I think it's total bull [bleep]. That's what I think.

I mean, "never ever wanted her to get hurt," stutters --

Come on, I mean really?

I'm not a blooming idiot.

You know he's not telling the truth.

He felt so bad when he put, "death would result,"

in the ransom note.

Oh yeah, I bet you he shed a tear over that.

Yeah, yeah, bunch of bull [bleep].

[siren wailing]

[David] The whole family was in the waiting room.

Best moment of my career was walking in and telling that

family that she was OK.

Great moment.

Never forget it.

[Joan] We were all crying, even the SWAT team.

We were happy.

They got her on the right heart medicine and put her in

intensive care. You could see she's OK.

She's talking. She's breathing.

Dave Graves was there and he told us that it was Reinier

that had taken my mother.

It was just a shock.

He had worked at times for my brother-in-law.

He swore a lot.

Carried on, got loud. I wasn't a fan of his.

Uh -- he just wasn't my kind of person.

I was never comfortable around him.

Seemed like he wanted that money so badly,

and I didn't know why.

I never heard a reason whatsoever why he took her.

When I listen to that, I think he's full of crap.

That's a nice way to put it.

He did the least he could do to keep her alive, and then later

on to say she was happy, she was warm.

Are you kidding me?

She wasn't happy. She wasn't warm.

She was hungry. She had no medicine.

She had chains on her ankles.

And when she'd urinate, it would roll down her leg

and froze her toes.

Did a lot of damage to her nerves.

They didn't know if they'd have to amputate or not,

but they didn't.

That was the worst part, that somebody would chain

her up like an animal.

It's hard to think about her going through that.

We had animals at the farm growing up.

We never treated 'em like that, never.

[Joan] He was sentenced the 18th of December

in 2003.

One year to the date of his sentencing, my mother died.

I went to the nursing home where Mother was,

and I held her in my arms.

She buried her head,

and I had her like this.

And that was our goodbye.

It is hard to think about the stuff that Mother

went through.

I do believe it had shortened her life some.

[David] It feels good to have caught the person who did this.

And sometimes I wonder

if deep down inside,

he knew he couldn't pull it off.

I was pitted against somebody else one-on-one.

I was able to catch him.

It was a big game to him.

And he wanted to play a little bit more.

But then he came to the point where it's over.