something is not right. someone said the motel owner had checked out and left town. they saw her in line to get onto an airplane. but her prized carts horned up with the ex con behind the wheel. we thought, oh my god, it was him, he killed her. was it really that simple? her personal life was really complicated. a younger boyfriend. the man was charismatic. drop dead gorgeous. and, and estranged husband. caught him having sex in room 11. the case really started to sizzle when somebody torched the motel. someone was trying to destroy some evidence or something. this is a murder mystery of epic proportions. people were obsessed with this case. can this get any more bizarre? hello, and welcome to dateline. she moved there for her own piece of heaven on earth. life on a sunny island in florida. when she vanished, her friends knew it wasn t her idea to leave. but that was about all they were sure about in this complicated missing persons case. the here is
At haley s motel. longtime friends nancy ambrose and susan fox. had always been her lifetime dream to have her own resort. haley s came on the market. at the time it was pretty rundown. and we were like, oh, you ve got your hands full here. we knew that them could do it. the two of them could turn this around. and they did. tom did the fixing. sabina had the ideas. they invited the whole town to their quirky events. dress up parties. hello. welcome to haley s motel. please join me for a tour. this is her with jackie moe, her ever-present parrot. she was the star of her own promotional videos for the hotel. i hope you like our room so far. all the activities we offer you. neighbor barbara hines.
She would not even allow people to smoke around her. she would not allow people to smoke at the hotel property. she was kind of a health fanatic. she was. had a private personal trainer. she was very in the health. so they arrested corona. threw him into a county jail. in the mueller earning, drove over to haley s motel to talk to sabina husband tom. and tom said he hadn t seen sabina in a couple of days. he hadn t file a missing persons report, but did after police came around. was he like? what was the impression of the guy? he was concerned for her well-being. she wouldn t answer her phone, he couldn t find her. and something else, according to tom. sabina never let anybody drive her car. not even him. now there was a stolen car, a missing woman, and unknown criminal. not adding up to a good
The whole background of their courtship, their marriage, and how it disintegrated. how did it disintegrate? he told me that it just slowly, grew apart. and that they stay together, because they were very good friends. and they owned a business together. but, this seemed unusual. well they stayed married, they moved in with other people. remember, in the year before subpoena went missing, tom started dating a new woman. and, sabrina took up with a handsome younger man, who once worked at the motel. his name was bill. bill number. the man was very charismatic, drop dead gorgeous. years later, sabina was 49. and bill was 39, and very different than tom. tom, meanwhile, was sabina s business partner. things got dicey, they found
Insurance company was not so sure. right around the time of that memorial service at the beach, tom went to court to take the first step to get that money. wasn t it tom to petition the court to declare her dead? yes. if she s declared dead, he gets a lot of insurance money. he gets the ownership of the motel. correct. yes, funny tom had told the detectives before he held a 100,000 dollar policy on sabina. when he filed papers to declare her dead, it turned out there was a second larger life insurance policy, that he forgot to mention. it came up later, it was 300,000. the revelation made the newspapers. attorneys for the insurance companies argued that, under florida law, sabina had to be missing at least five years, before she could be declared dead. and any insurance money, paid