middle of the night. haunted for more than two decades, he would make a chilling discovery that would unlock this mystery. now you know the whole story. yes, sir. everything kind of clicked. it s just so unbelievable. i knew he was telling his mom s story. hello and welcome to dateline. aaron fraser was only 3 years old when his mom left the house, never to be seen or heard from again. police soon learned that aaron may have witnessed the unspeakable, the murder of his own mother. the boy would become a man before the whole truth was revealed. and though memories faded, the evidence pointing to the killer couldn t stay buried. here s dennis murphy with she never left. she d been gone from his life, unaccounted for, for more than 20 years. his mother, bonnie. it was odd to be the one that found her. because you d spent a lot of your life looking for her, right? yes, sir. there s a poignant video of the mother and child s last christmas morning toget
father shoot his mother. but a 3 1/2-year-old eyewitness wasn t enough for detective robbie hinson to make an arrest. you work real hard and you get nowhere. and still it s just a missing persons case. we don t have a body. but hinson and the child protection team still felt that aaron might be in danger because of what he said he witnessed. the state removed aaron from his father s custody and sent him to live with his aunt liz. mike was allowed to see his son twice a week. liz said those visits took a toll. he would start pounding the floor and i would always have to scoop him up and hold him as he just fell apart. every visitation. the stress added up for liz, too, affecting her family and her health. one solution was to put aaron in a foster home, where mike wouldn t be allowed to visit. the best place for him to be was in foster care, so we could discontinue the visitation and maybe start moving aaron into a healing cycle.
and she said, we need you now. we need you right now. and i thought something might have happened to her family. and she says, we found a body in the back yard. i said, what back yard? and she says, on dolphin avenue. i said, what are you talking about? and so i m arguing with her. because i had searched that area. as he raced to the house, hinson called a friend in the sheriff s department to go to the scene. and he called me back. i said, is it a dog? and he goes, no, it s a human skull. and i just pulled to the side of the road to try to compose excuse me. try to compose myself like i am now. hinson was retired by then, but when he arrived at the house he faced a fact every detective dreads. haunted by the search not made. i knew when i got there i had missed her. which is a hard thing as an investigator
at this point? i m knowing foul play. a woman separated from her purse is a very bad sign. right. so we re sitting there crying, hoping they don t bring out a body out of the dumpster. but there was no body and no sign of bonnie s car, either. police handed bonnie s purse to mike and advised him it would be best if he just went home. the police told him go home, sit by the phone, wait for a car from her, ransom call, an accident call, or whatever it might be. homicide detective robbie hinson came on duty later that day at the jacksonville sheriff s office. he was assigned the missing person case that would change his life. did you go back out to this airport motel? yes, we did. we spent quite some time out there canvassing the rooms and got the register and saw who was out there and interviewed people. interviewed the security guard. and there were stories circulating about strangely acting men, right? even then,
right? yes. even then. a security guard told the detective a man standing earlier on the second floor balcony seemed to be overly interested in the activity below of the dumpster. but he checked out before detective hinson could talk to him. the same security guard also remembered seeing a woman fitting bonnie s description going into one of those second floor rooms. the detective wondered where was the woman s car? it was still out there? yeah. the car was still missing. the airport was nearby, so hinson cruised the parking lots there. it would be a logical place to hide a car. bingo. there was bonnie s toyota camry. maybe she caught a plane. right. it was a theory. had a frustrated wife and mother taken a time out for herself? detective hinson pursued that theory but struck out. there was no indication of her being on any of the manifests on any of the departing flights. that s where the road runs out, huh? until the next day, after they process the car, the