00:00:03
[music] We're looking for [music] this missing girl. Her name is Jade Culvin. >> She was a sweet little ray of sunshine.
00:00:24
[music] It's just an angel, a doll. This is a cold case that could just sit there
00:00:29
and no one let it. >> Jade went missing June 10th of [music] 2016. >> At the time she was 14 years old,
00:00:41
>> but she comes off as much [music] older. She's super cool, super smart, so interesting.
00:00:48
>> This one tugged at my heartstrings. We have families, we have kids, some of us
00:00:53
have daughters. You don't get to go home and turn off Jade Coven. >> There were so many people that were
00:01:01
involved in this. >> Lead detective, special agent, >> deputy US Marshall. I'm a detective.
00:01:06
[music] Everybody came together to figure out what happened to Jade. >> I first met her through one of my best
00:01:15
friends and we were inseparable from that moment. We just [music] always had a dumb good time wherever we were. She
00:01:23
loved doing her hair. She was really great at colors. She was [music] very artsy, had great
00:01:29
style. >> They were just like sisters. >> I don't think Jade had an easy life. >> Her mom would disappear for [music]
00:01:37
periods of time. She was put in foster care. Jade just really hated it. She ran away.
00:01:44
>> She kind of went from state to state, place to place. >> It was just hard to keep up with where
00:01:48
she was. But she always always always just would [music] check in and then one random day just nothing ever again.
00:02:00
Weeks went by then it's months then it's years. >> Once I was assigned this case [music]
00:02:07
every trace of her was gone. >> When we initially adopted the case she had been listed as a runaway.
00:02:15
>> How do you know at this point? Is this a runaway or is this somebody took her?
00:02:20
>> We didn't know. >> Jade's digital footprint last landed in Decor, Iowa. >> Really remote area that she did not
00:02:29
know. She was there for several days and was never seen again. [bell] >> The last place Jade [music] was living
00:02:36
was here. >> Absolutely. The house was straight on this driveway. >> There's a lot of places to look for a
00:02:45
young girl here. I mean, where did you even begin? >> It's a needle in a hay stack. I said,
00:02:50
>> "Who are the last people that were around her? Who lived in the same house or who was at the same place?
00:02:57
We don't know where loyalties and alliances lie at this point." >> We got a lot of tips from Massachusetts
00:03:04
to Oklahoma to Texas to Minnesota. >> My goal was always like, "Oh, we're going to find this girl." That was the
00:03:11
hope every day. We never forgot about her and just always wondered where she was. I was
00:03:19
afraid something bad had happened. I would have never in a million years thought it would come to this.
00:03:43
>> [music] [music] [music] >> Why is that not going on? >> I myself have thought of Jade several
00:04:17
times. There we go. Went not at work. You get to do the eggs. I think of my own children. Whoa. [laughter]
00:04:24
>> If you went a day not knowing where one of your kids was at. >> Very careful. You'd go crazy. Cheryl
00:04:31
Nablo, mother of three, is a detective with the De Moines, Iowa Police Department. She specializes in finding
00:04:38
missing kids. >> Nobody wants to be living in a world where they don't know where their kid is
00:04:43
or if their kid's safe. >> In 2022, Detective Nablau joined forces with Deputy US Marshal Justin Wallace,
00:04:53
Detective Chris Webker, and Special Agent John Turbett in the search for Jade Culvin. Jade was 14 when she was
00:05:01
reported missing in June 2016 after she ran away from a local shelter for troubled youth.
00:05:08
>> We are here to locate kids who run away. >> The US Marshall Service had adopted
00:05:15
Jade's case as part of a statewide effort [music] to find missing children called Operation Homecoming.
00:05:23
>> What are the challenges in finding missing children? >> When somebody goes missing, they want to
00:05:28
be missing. and they don't want you to know where they are. It's hard to [music] track them down.
00:05:33
>> At that point, Jade had been missing for more than 5 years. >> Where do [music] you begin?
00:05:39
>> You got to start at the beginning. You got to know who the person is, their friends, their family, their whole
00:05:45
background. >> And they soon discovered Jade had a troubled childhood. >> Jade [music] had a rough go of it
00:05:52
growing up. >> Things weren't the easiest for her. Detective Nablo learned Jade's mother,
00:06:00
Leiddon, had died three years after Jade went missing. >> So, I couldn't just reach out to her and
00:06:06
talk to her about everything that she knew about Jade. >> Jade's father, Kevin, had lost contact
00:06:12
with his daughter. Both parents had struggled with substance abuse. Something special agent John Turbett
00:06:18
explains had an impact on Jade. Jade Coven grew up with, I think, a pretty dysfunctional family [music] situation.
00:06:27
It was difficult. >> She didn't hold any of it. She just accepted it for like what it [music] was
00:06:33
and dealt with it and didn't let it get to her negatively. Loved her to death. Spent every day
00:06:40
together. Despite everything, friend Dne Lynn Greer and her mother Jamie Coupeman
00:06:48
described Jade as easygoing and upbeat. >> There was reasons she could have been
00:06:54
angry and she wasn't. Like she was very light, light and bubbly. I met her mom. Her mom was very
00:07:03
unreliable, but she kept telling me, "Oh, how much she loves Jade [music] and all that, you know, and I believe she
00:07:08
did. don't get me wrong, but she just couldn't make the choice [music] for stability.
00:07:16
She couldn't overcome her own demons. >> Her mom definitely cared about her. >> I think her mother loved her. The state
00:07:24
determined at some point that she was not able to care for her. In September 2015, when Jade was 13, the Iowa
00:07:32
Department of Human Services stepped in and Deputy Justin Wallace says Leiddon lost custody.
00:07:39
>> That's when they took Jade into foster care. >> For the next nine months, Jade was in
00:07:44
and out of different facilities and foster care, and she often ran away. >> Run away, been found, run away, been
00:07:52
found several times. >> Jade is doing what some other kids do. She's running away from the system.
00:07:58
She's not wanting to be placed in a stranger's home. >> When Jade was placed in foster care,
00:08:03
Leiddon would have limited access to her and she wanted more. >> She wanted Jade to live with her.
00:08:09
>> But without legal custody, Jamie Kman says Leiddon resorted to trying to hide
00:08:15
her daughter from authorities. >> I think she was just trying to hide [music] out to stay with her mom or to
00:08:21
stay where her mom could visit. Her mom tried to keep her out of the police spotlight, just trying to hide her out
00:08:29
different places. >> And according to [music] her aunt, Tandra Bruce, Jade became good at
00:08:33
hiding. [music] >> She would change her hair. She would change her appearance. [music]
00:08:41
>> So, she really knew how to run away and hide. >> She did. She really [music] did.
00:08:47
At that point, Jade was caught in the middle of a mother trying to do her best who arranged stays with friends and
00:08:54
family and being placed in foster care, but often living as a runaway. >> I felt so bad. I felt horrible.
00:09:02
>> Did you tell her you can come here anytime? >> I did. >> Call me whatever you need.
00:09:06
>> I did. Call me and I'll be here for [music] you. >> She was jumping all over for a while, so
00:09:11
it was hard to track her. The Iowa Department of Human Services lost track of Jade after she ran away
00:09:19
from that shelter in June 2016. I had hope that she was out there somewhere and she would get a hold of somebody
00:09:28
eventually. >> And then there is nothing. >> Investigators learned Jade's family and
00:09:35
friends spent years searching for her online. We saw in [music] the social media accounts that friends and family
00:09:44
were trying to reach out to her and continue to look for her. >> Everybody's reaching out to her at her
00:09:48
birthday saying, "We love you. We miss you. We just want you back home." >> Every year I'd go on Facebook, "Happy
00:09:54
birthday, Jade. Please call me. We still love her. You know, anytime she wants to
00:09:58
come home, it doesn't matter what kind of trouble you got yourself into." I thought she'd pop back up. We just
00:10:06
wanted her to know like we were there for her. >> According to Deputy Justin Wallace,
00:10:12
Jade's mother, Leiddon, also posted, "She misses her and wants her to come back."
00:10:17
>> Posts like this one from September 2018. It's hurting all of us so much. Please
00:10:23
call someone, Jade. I'm seriously physically dying of a broken heart. >> There was no response to any of those.
00:10:32
And when Jade's mother died a year later, there was still no response. >> Leiddon passed away. She never came to
00:10:40
the funeral. She never showed up at the funeral. She would have been there. >> Jade's family and friends still held
00:10:45
hope. Jade would surface when she turned 18 and would be free of foster care. >> I had hoped that she had run away and
00:10:54
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
00:11:01
18th [music] birthday came around and she didn't get a hold of us, we knew, we knew something was very wrong.
00:11:10
As Detective Nablo and Deputy Wallace worked to find Jade, [music] they got help from state and national
00:11:17
organizations that shared these missing posters on social media. >> That was [music] huge. That's when a lot
00:11:23
of tips started coming in. >> And there would be a potential break in the investigation. a tip from a hospital
00:11:30
worker in Minnesota. >> We're not too far [music] away from Iowa. There's this girl.
00:11:36
We think maybe that's Jade. [music] We wanted to chase every single lead, every single tip as far [music] as we
00:12:00
could. And when De Moines PD Detective Cheryl Neblo got a tip, Jade Culvin might have
00:12:07
been in a hospital in Redwing, Minnesota, she was hopeful. A staff member had observed a female
00:12:15
come into the hospital and the person that she was with was kind of controlling the conversation. It drew
00:12:22
suspicion and they thought it maybe looked like Jade. So, there was follow-up done to get the video footage
00:12:29
to try to figure out who that person was. When you have a lead, you work your lead
00:12:35
until you either prove it's Jade or prove it's false. And ultimately I was able to identify who that person was and
00:12:43
it was not Jade. >> Additional tips poured in from all over the country. >> You know, ranging from Massachusetts to
00:12:50
Oklahoma to Texas. People were definitely paying attention. >> Look at that. Are those all the leads
00:12:57
that you explored in the different ways you went about the investigation? >> Yeah, it's a lot of leads.
00:13:04
It felt like each tip was hope, right? cuz like she could have been out there. >> The first big break in the case came
00:13:13
[music] when Detective Nablo was able to figure out where Jade had gone after she
00:13:18
ran away from that shelter in June 2016. Detective Nablo had obtained search warrants and got access to Jade's social
00:13:26
media. Instagram messages from March 2017 caught her attention. >> You can see where her mom is coming to
00:13:33
get her in Arizona. I just talked to mom. Jade wrote to her friend Dan Lynn. She's coming next week.
00:13:41
I'm in Arizona right now. Jade wrote to another friend. I should be back in Iowa
00:13:47
today or tomorrow. Detective Nablo learned Jade had been staying in Arizona for several months, and it seemed
00:13:54
Leiddon was going to bring her back to Iowa. Detective Nablo also got access to Leiddon's accounts and on her Facebook
00:14:02
there was a message mentioning the town of Dora. >> Decor is just a small rural Midwest Iowa
00:14:11
town. >> As Detective Nablo combed through Leiddon's Facebook, she saw messages Leiddon had sent to Jade and uncovered a
00:14:21
clue. a mention of someone named James. Investigators learned James was James Buckmer, a man Leiddon had been dating
00:14:32
for several months. >> Leiddon and him met online. They began a romantic relationship. Leiddon would go
00:14:40
and stay with him occasionally. I think one point was living with him. Deputy Justin Wallace found out James Buckmer
00:14:47
Murski owned a farm in Dora, Iowa, and had two sons, Brian, aged 19, and James Jr., age 21. Investigators gained access
00:14:58
to voice messages Leiddon had sent Jade, detailing a plan for her daughter to stay at the farm while she lived 3 hours
00:15:07
away, dealing with some legal issues. You're going to live here until you are probably 18 and able to get out of the
00:15:16
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
00:15:23
you. >> It was just a temporary I'm going to get right with the court and then Jay could
00:15:27
come live with me. >> How big a lead is that? Are you thinking we've got a break in this case?
00:15:31
>> Yeah, it was huge. I remember going over to the US Marshall's office and and they
00:15:36
were excited. The marshals reached out to local law enforcement near the Bachmki farm for
00:15:43
help talking to the family and that's when Detective Chris Webker from the Wines County Sheriff's Office officially
00:15:50
joined the team. First of all, decor. I mean, where where are we? [music] What is this town known
00:15:57
for? >> God's country. >> It is God's country. >> It's in northeast Iowa, kind of way up
00:16:05
in the top corner. So tell me about getting the call to first, you know, start the investigation
00:16:12
into this young missing girl, Jade Coven. Who called you? >> So we uh we received a call from the US
00:16:19
Marshalss and they reached out to us and said, "Hey, do you guys know the Black MKIs? Can you guys help us uh go and
00:16:26
talk to them?" And so that's ultimately what we where we started. The goal was to talk to them and say, "Hey, look,
00:16:31
we're looking for this missing girl. Her name is Jade Kovven. And your names were
00:16:36
brought up in social media. What can you tell us about her? [music] >> They found Brian Buckmer first.
00:16:43
According to Detective Webker, Brian confirmed Jade had been at the farm. Her mother dropped her off and left. A few
00:16:51
days after she arrived, Brian and Jade had lunch at this pizza ranch and took several photos together.
00:17:00
[music] So right here, this booth. >> Yep. >> I mean, you look at this photo >> and you see, you know, she has a genuine
00:17:13
smile. [music] >> And it seems like they're, you know, sort of goofy face, like having fun with
00:17:19
each other. They got along. >> Teenage kids and and everything. And yeah, absolutely.
00:17:25
>> Brian told investigators he didn't know what happened to Jade. He said the last
00:17:30
time he saw her was 2 days after their lunch at Pizza Ranch around 1000 p.m. before he said he worked the night shift
00:17:39
at Walmart. Brian claimed he texted with Jade until just after midnight when she
00:17:46
suddenly stopped responding. Deputy Wallace wasn't convinced by Brian's story. >> There were several of us thought that we
00:17:55
probably weren't getting all the information out of them. that included Detective Webker.
00:17:59
>> There's something that doesn't feel right about this as to what's going on. >> And there was something else that
00:18:05
troubled Detective Webker. >> That was the last time that she ever had any from Facebook, from Instagram, from
00:18:13
Snapchat. She never had another digital footprint again. >> And for a teenage girl, how unusual is
00:18:18
that? >> Extremely unusual. >> How could Jade seemingly disappear without a trace? According to Deputy
00:18:27
Wallace, Leiddon thought it was unusual, too. And she went to the farm to confront James.
00:18:34
>> We're able to interview one of the friends who said she drove Leiddon out to the farm in Dora. The friend stayed
00:18:40
in the car while Leon went inside the house to talk to James Bachmer. >> Leiddon's friend told the Marshalss
00:18:47
James claimed Jade ran away. Suspecting there was more to the story, Chris Webker called special agent John
00:18:56
Turbett from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and asked him for help.
00:19:01
>> Chris laid out what we knew, what the marshals had been able to unearth. And as I'm sitting there listening, I said,
00:19:10
"It's very likely that Jade is no longer alive, and we actually need to start treating this as a homicide
00:19:16
investigation. >> [music] >> So this here is the farm. >> Yep. So this is the where Bachmer
00:19:41
Merskis lived. >> Having established Jade was at this farm in Dora, Iowa in March of 2017.
00:19:50
Detective Chris Webb hoped new leads could be [music] developed to solve the mystery of what happened to her.
00:19:59
This farm really is at the end of the road. Here >> it is. The house at the end of the road.
00:20:03
>> House at the end of the road. >> You can see how secluded it is. >> This is a young girl who has a history
00:20:12
of running away. When you get out here, is it possible? Do you think she could have run away?
00:20:17
>> Our evidence showed that she didn't. >> And if you were to run away from here, I
00:20:20
mean, there is just farmland and empty space. I [music] mean, direction. Uh, you're not from here. I bet you which
00:20:29
way were we facing right now? I mean, she's not going to know where she's at. [music]
00:20:35
>> When investigators first visited the farm in 2022, James Bachmer no longer lived here, and the house had been
00:20:43
gutted and renovated, but the new owners let them look around. >> We tried to find anything we could in
00:20:50
the area, and ultimately we didn't. You have this farm where we know Jade is last seen. So we draw a box around the
00:20:56
farm and we say who's living in the farm? Who are the guests at the farm? Certainly the owner of the property, the
00:21:03
one who's having contact with Leiddon and Jade is James Bachmer senior. And then you have these two sons, James Jr.
00:21:09
and Brian. >> Having already talked to Brian, detectives were eager to reach James Jr.
00:21:16
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
00:21:24
left James Bachmer senior to be interviewed. We had known from that initial contact with the kids that Bach
00:21:33
Murski had moved away and he was in Georgia. >> Special Agent John Turbett made the
00:21:40
trip. >> We located the house and it was out in the middle of nowhere. What's the
00:21:46
mindset going into an interview and a first interaction with somebody like him? >> I think despite what a lot of people
00:21:53
think, I am really trying to take off the the the police hat and a lot of the the things that come with that and I
00:22:00
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
00:22:07
this young lady that he clearly had out on his property and has never been seen.
00:22:11
When John Turbet knocked on the door, James Bachmer agreed to talk. These are excerpts of the audio interview. I
00:22:19
>> think one of the first things out of his mouth, if not the first, was a >> number of years ago something happened
00:22:23
in Iowa and it's affected my life forever. >> I've knocked on doors a lot in my career
00:22:30
and that would be on the, you know, that would be an outlier for for opening remarks. You're like, okay, is he
00:22:36
thinking of something that, you know, I'm not? I'm making it clear. I'm talking about Jade. And he continues,
00:22:41
>> "Okay, I have that clip. I'm gonna play for you." >> You know what I think? >> What?
00:22:47
>> We got to find answers. >> Yeah, I agree with that. >> All I want to do is to go to my grave to
00:22:53
know that my kids had nothing to do what was going on. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I >> I don't know what they do.
00:22:59
>> It's interesting. He said, "I don't want to implicate my kids." >> Yes. >> But in so doing, is he implicating his
00:23:05
kids? Well, it it seemed like it. So, he immediately is talking about someone being implicated, which says in my mind
00:23:12
he thinks a crime was committed. Now, it's a question of was it me? Was it my boys?
00:23:17
>> James Bachmer confirmed he was in a relationship with Leiddon and that she brought Jade to his farm to hide her and
00:23:25
keep her from being put in foster care. >> What I thought was going to happen, to
00:23:30
be honest, I thought we were going to be a family. He admits that there's a plan
00:23:34
to bring Jade back, you know, to Iowa. He's saying this woman was trying to reunite with her daughter and and get to
00:23:40
a new life. >> Did he say when in that interview he last saw Jade? >> Yeah. >> To my knowledge, she was getting ready
00:23:48
to do a bunch of laundry and I had to go to Norbe for something. >> Norbe, which is like a farm and fleet
00:23:54
store. And the next thing I know, she'd vanished out of thin air. James Bachmer talked for several hours
00:24:03
that day, but after the interview, John Turban and Chris Webker were still no closer to finding out what happened to
00:24:10
Jade. They wondered if there were any additional clues to be discovered back at the farm.
00:24:18
>> 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
00:24:25
that said, "Hey, by the way, I have this barn uh that James Bachmer property is left in in 2018. He was left in a real
00:24:34
hurry and left all of his stuff behind." And so we're like, "Oh, really?" And so
00:24:39
we went there and and found this dusty old phone in a box. >> It was James Bachmer's cell phone.
00:24:50
>> This was a real find. I mean, if you're looking for a smoking gun, you're getting a cell phone instead.
00:24:55
>> This was something that was unbelievable to come across. >> On the phone, they found these photos of
00:25:03
Jade at the farm. [music] There's this one with her mother, Leon, when she dropped her off and left. And this one
00:25:10
from the day after Brian and Jade had lunch at Pizza Ranch of them at a bonfire.
00:25:15
>> There was a number of photos with them at that bonfire roasting hot dogs [music] and stuff like that.
00:25:25
They're the last known photos of Jade. On Bach Mursky's phone, there were also text messages Jade had sent, including
00:25:33
the ones Brian had mentioned when he said he worked the night shift at Walmart, the same night Jade was last
00:25:40
heard from. [music] >> Those last text conversations were monumental in my opinion.
00:25:46
>> So, let's go through these a little bit. Here it is. Jade reaching out to him
00:25:50
around a little after midnight. >> It says, "Hey, Brian, it's Jade." And I always love this because uh you know,
00:25:56
the typical teenager saying, "Jade, you know, >> she's just checking in with him?
00:26:02
Is it going okay? Tired yet?" >> Yeah. Just, you know, just the typical conversation.
00:26:08
>> 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
00:26:14
break like within >> ultimately planning to talk again that night on March 30th.
00:26:19
>> And then he's like, "Well, I guess just text me when you can." This is 2:00 already. 2:03. He's on his break.
00:26:27
>> Yep. And fully expecting that Jade's going to be texting >> and doesn't get anything.
00:26:32
>> Those text messages along with Brian's time sheets from Walmart help confirm his story and cleared him. We're able to
00:26:41
cooperate things he's telling us. We kind of took him off of the table. Ask him if you could.
00:26:47
>> As Chris Weber and John Turbett continue to search through information from Bach
00:26:51
Mursky's phone, they say they made an important discovery. Several deleted messages.
00:26:59
Those were mostly family that was reaching out to find Jade, to talk to Jade, >> including messages from Leiddon, who
00:27:08
sounds desperate to reach her daughter. Please let my baby girl know I love her and need to talk to her.
00:27:15
>> He's selectively removing what we would consider evidence or or helpful information. suspicious behavior then
00:27:21
>> I would think so. >> But it would be two seemingly random photos found on Bakerski's cell phone
00:27:30
that changed the course of the investigation. One of his kitchen and one of his bedroom taken just 2 days after Jade had
00:27:39
that last text exchange with Brian. >> Describe for me what you see here. This is from the time frame of April 1st,
00:27:51
2017. >> So, this is a a picture of the Bachmer kitchen. This is a very unique picture
00:27:58
where everything is cleaned up. Everything is organized. There's no garbage laying around. It's clean.
00:28:04
>> Was it a crime scene? >> And as we talk to people, Brian included, he talks about the condition
00:28:10
of this house uh when he had lived there and been there. He does not say that they were good
00:28:16
housekeepers. I mean, it was it was not good. So, to see pictures like this, this is way out of what law enforcement
00:28:22
knew. This is way out of description. >> And in another photo on the phone taken
00:28:27
2 months later on June 5th, 2017 of Brian and James Jr. in that same bedroom, investigators say it appeared
00:28:36
the bed was new, that the bed in the earlier photo had been removed and replaced. The mattress is smaller.
00:28:45
There's no headboard anymore. [music] And you can see the condition of the room is back to messy. You're thinking,
00:28:53
[music] you know, evidence has been cleaned up. We are now looking at all of these
00:28:59
pieces and [music] it seems undeniable. It is time to tell him that case facts show us that you were involved in the
00:29:12
death of Jade Culvin. [music] >> The more time we spend in this investigation, the case facts just
00:29:31
continue to all point in one direction and at one person. And that one person was James Bachmer.
00:29:36
>> James Bachmer senior. >> More than two years into the investigation to find Jade Kulvin,
00:29:43
special agent John Turbett believes he knows what happened to her. >> I thought James Bachmer had killed and
00:29:50
disposed of Jade's body. >> Now he needed to prove his theory. Armed with the photos from the cell phone, he
00:29:58
went back to Georgia. >> The second interview is going to be different than the first. I I actually
00:30:04
open with, "Hi, James. I'm John from Iowa. Do you remember me?" "How are you, buddy?" "You remember me?" "No, I'm
00:30:12
John. I'm the officer from Iowa that talked to you about 5 months ago. We sat right in at your kitchen table."
00:30:17
>> And he's like, "No." And I'm like, "Okay, so that would obviously something would be really wrong if a human being
00:30:24
could not remember that." >> And I'm not even going to lie. I'm not even close to being sober.
00:30:29
>> He tells you that he's drunk. He can't seem to remember things. Did you believe
00:30:32
him? >> I didn't. If you recall in that first interview, his level of detail was
00:30:38
fantastic. Then we get back and it's like, he doesn't know me for starters. He can't place Leon or Jade. And that
00:30:44
all seems remarkably unbelievable. >> Turbet pressed on and he asked Buck Mki about those photos from his phone.
00:30:54
>> A couple days after this little girl's never seen or heard from again, ever. This is your bedroom. So, you cleaned
00:31:01
your bedroom. Great job. See how clean that is? >> No. >> The floors are shiny. You see that?
00:31:07
>> So, I guess you're thinking that there was >> evidence there that I tried to get rid
00:31:12
what you're saying cuz And I'm telling you right now, I'll guarantee you there isn't.
00:31:17
>> Guarantee you there isn't. >> What are you thinking when you hear that? >> Well, I mean, as you listen to that
00:31:24
clip, he says, "Well, you must think I've, you know, hidden evidence or destroyed evidence." And I'm like, well,
00:31:29
it's getting hard for me to reach any other conclusion at that point. >> According to Turbet, Bachmer had an
00:31:36
explanation for why he took those photos. >> He floats the idea, hey, I was going to
00:31:42
sell or lease the property, but I don't think that was ever proven to be the case.
00:31:46
>> The truth is good. We'd agree, right? >> The truth is, but I don't know what you
00:31:50
want. >> Just the truth. >> And what is the truth? Because I don't know what it is. What is it? The truth
00:31:56
is where Jade ended up. >> All right. Where? >> Well, I'm I'm I'm going to ask you that
00:32:01
question >> and I'm asking you because I don't know. >> I'm pleading with him to just talk about
00:32:06
the truth. And he's admitting the truth is good, but we're not quite having a truthful conversation. At that point, it
00:32:12
is time to tell him that based on everything, the case facts show us that you were involved in the death of Jade
00:32:19
Culvin. And it's a very important moment. All right, let's listen to you're saying that to him
00:32:25
>> at this point is that the case back show us you were involved in Jade's, you know, Jade's death.
00:32:30
>> You do know where Jade's at. >> Dead. >> Yeah, I told you last time she >> Yeah, you keep saying death.
00:32:35
>> She's dead. >> She's dead. >> Why do you say that? >> She's dead. >> I think James Bachmer just wanted to
00:32:44
know, had we somehow pieced this all together? >> The truth of James. I already >> We should talk about that.
00:32:53
>> A long time ago. Figured >> I'd go to the grave before I'd tell the truth. >> About this?
00:33:01
>> Yes. >> I'd go to the grave before I' I'd talk about this? >> Yes. >> Did you take that as a confession?
00:33:11
>> Uh, that's about as close as you could probably get. At the end of that interview, any doubt I had, if there was
00:33:18
any, had been removed. >> You've got the right guy. >> We've got the right guy. >> In August 2024, James Buckmer was
00:33:28
charged with murder in the second degree. >> My heart just dropped. Eight years after Jade was reported
00:33:37
missing, her friends and family, including her aunt Tandra Bruce, finally learned the teenager they cared so much
00:33:45
about was never coming back. >> You just don't want to believe it. It hurt me so bad.
00:33:53
>> That she's gone. >> Yeah. That she's gone. >> Assistant Iowa Attorney General Scott
00:34:00
Brown felt the evidence against James Bachmer was strong. Jade was at James Bachmer's residence.
00:34:08
He was the last person to have seen Jade alive. >> He had those cell phone photos of James
00:34:13
Bachmer's clean kitchen and bedroom and the deleted messages from Jade's family.
00:34:20
>> Communications like where Liddon is looking for Jade. >> And he had James Bachmer's own words
00:34:30
>> a long time ago. Figured I'd go to Gray before I tell the truth. >> Why would you make that statement if you
00:34:36
had nothing to do with Jade Culvin's death, >> but what Scott didn't have was Jade's
00:34:42
body. >> Jade Culvin has never been recovered. Her body was never found. Usually, there
00:34:49
is a body. So, a jury would look at that and okay, obviously a crime has been committed.
00:34:54
But here we have to prove that a crime [music] was committed, that Jade is missing, and that she didn't leave on
00:35:01
her own. >> And with the case about to go on trial, would it be enough to convince a jury of
00:35:07
Bach Mursk's guilt? >> How do we make that not only make sense, [music] but make sense beyond a
00:35:12
reasonable doubt? Is it enough? Certainly, that was a concern here. >> [music] >> For more than three years, Deputy US
00:35:28
Marshal Justin Wallace says a dedicated and passionate group worked tirelessly to try and find out what happened to
00:35:37
Jade. >> There were so many people that were involved in this. All of us put in a lot
00:35:44
of work, a lot of time, a lot of effort. That team included detective Cheryl Neabau, Detective Chris Webker, and
00:35:54
Special Agent John Turbett. >> There was never a doubt that we had the right person.
00:36:01
>> The murder trial against James Bachmer, now gay-haired, began in August 2025.
00:36:08
Prosecutor Scott Brown explains [music] how Bachmer's actions after he claimed Jade had run away pointed to his guilt.
00:36:18
Why isn't he calling law enforcement? Hey, there was this girl that was staying at my place and now people can't
00:36:26
find her. Why wouldn't he do that? >> The defense argued there was no evidence Jade Culvin was dead or that James
00:36:35
Bachmer had killed her. There was no DNA. They said no murder weapon and no damning Google searches. But there was
00:36:44
Jade's history of running away. Brown says that's irrelevant. >> She did have a history of running away,
00:36:54
but she always resurfaced. She always stayed on her cell phone. Why would she stop using her cell phone? That was a
00:37:01
big hurdle for them. Special Agent John Turbett and Detective Chris Webker say throughout the week-long trial,
00:37:08
Bakerski, who did not testify, showed little emotion. >> He seemed emotionally detached. He just
00:37:16
tried to stay stoic. >> And there was information the jury wouldn't hear. [music] James Bachmer had
00:37:23
a criminal history, including a prior charge for harassment. And in 2013, Bachmeri spent nearly a year behind bars
00:37:32
after being charged with child endangerment against his own children and took a plea to a lesser offense of
00:37:42
assault. Deputy Justin Wallace described some of the violence as alleged in court
00:37:47
documents. He had a metal chair with a battery hooked up to it and when the boys
00:37:54
misbehaved, he put him in the chair which essentially shocked them. >> Oh my gosh. I mean, when you hear that,
00:38:02
are you already thinking the worst of what he could have done to Jade? >> It definitely does creep to the
00:38:07
forefront of your mind. >> Deputy Wallace believes Leon didn't know about his history of violence.
00:38:13
>> She probably did not have any idea of who he truly was. That's something Jamie
00:38:18
Coupeman believes as well. >> I know Leiddon would not have taken Jade somewhere that she thought this of all
00:38:25
things would happen. >> As for a motive for why Bachmer Murki would kill Jade Culvin.
00:38:31
>> There was some evidence that we had that he was attracted to Jade. He took all
00:38:37
those photos of her. >> When the jury began deliberations, Scott Brown was confident in the case he
00:38:45
presented. Within several hours, we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder
00:38:50
in the second degree. >> James Bachmer was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Considering he's 67 years old, it is
00:39:03
essentially a life sentence. Jade's aunt Tandra Bruce was relieved. >> And when you heard the verdict, what did
00:39:12
you think? I thought finally justice is being done. >> I was super grateful that the family was
00:39:19
able to get that outcome in the case. It makes it all worth it. This was about justice for Jade.
00:39:25
>> Looking back on it, it kind of seems pretty amazing how it came together. >> Everybody just kept their head down and
00:39:30
kept going. >> I think it it gives a lot of people hope that there are people who are as
00:39:34
passionate and committed as the team that went into trying to find out what happened to Jade Culvin. Yeah, this was
00:39:42
very special for us, but but there are a lot of of police officers out there doing the exact same thing.
00:39:51
>> But everyone involved believes the case is not over yet. >> My hope is to get Jade someday. This
00:40:00
isn't one that's going to stop for for me. We all agree that we're going to continue to see if we can find out where
00:40:07
she is and bring her home to them. Just because James was charged and convicted doesn't mean that she still
00:40:16
doesn't deserve [music] to be found. >> I want to bring her home. I want to have
00:40:23
a proper burial for her. I want somebody out there. They know something to please
00:40:28
come forward. >> Until then, those who love Jade continue to struggle with their grief.
00:40:36
I have pictures and you know I just want to [music] think of her as when she was
00:40:42
happy. >> I talk about her. I don't let people forget about her. She didn't deserve any of this. And I never want
00:40:51
anybody to think that she did anything wrong or that [music] it was any way her fault.
00:40:57
I [sighs] I [snorts] just wanted more people to know about her that she existed and she
00:41:04
was a person. She got everything she didn't deserve in life. She deserved the entire world. And
00:41:13
she would have made the world a better place every day [music] that she would have been here. [snorts]
00:41:39
>> [music] [music] >> Welcome to Postmortm. I'm your [music] host, Ann Marie Green, and today we're
00:42:03
discussing the case of 14-year-old Jade Culvin. She was reported missing in June
00:42:08
of 2016 after she ran away from a local shelter in Iowa for troubled youth. But then her case went unsolved for years
00:42:18
until a new team of investigators set out to find answers, following leads all the way to a remote farm in Dora, Iowa.
00:42:27
So joining me today is 48 hours correspondent Natalie Morales who reported on Jade's case. And once again,
00:42:33
Natalie, it's always good to have you here. Thanks again for having me, Amory. Now I should point out this is a case
00:42:39
about the passion and the persistence of so many investigators who really work together to try to solve this yearslong
00:42:47
mystery of what happened to this missing young girl. Absolutely. Uh I want to give everyone the quick reminder as per
00:42:54
usual. If you have not watched or listened to this episode, it's called Jade Culvin is missing. Go check it out
00:43:00
and then come back for this conversation. All right, Natalie, we learn very early on in the hour, Jade
00:43:06
Culvin's had a tough, tough childhood. Both her mother, Leiddon, and her father Kevin, they struggle with substance
00:43:13
abuse. Jade is only 13 when she's placed in foster care, but she's in and out of
00:43:20
different facilities, and she runs away a lot. So when she ran away in 2016, in a way this was part of a pattern. So I'm
00:43:29
wondering why for Jade's family and for her friends, why they thought this was different. Well, I mean, she literally
00:43:36
just fell off the map. You know, as you mentioned, she did frequently run away. She ran away from a shelter. She was
00:43:42
hiding from the foster care system. Her mother, Leon, also tried to hide her from the system as well. She didn't want
00:43:48
her daughter to be in foster care. She wanted her daughter to be with her. But as you mentioned, Leiddon and Jade's
00:43:54
father, both had a history of substance abuse. Kevin, the father, also had lost contact with Jade. She was officially
00:44:02
reported missing in 2016 by the shelter when when she ran away. Her reaching out
00:44:07
to friends and family. That all stopped in March of 2017. And that's when friends and family started to think,
00:44:14
okay, this is unusual, but it was when she would have turned 18. She would have aged out of the foster care system. and
00:44:22
some of her family and friends, that's when they started to fear something had happened to her. So, I mean, I hate to
00:44:28
to say this, but you know, I mean, plenty of young women go missing. They disappear into the night, and often
00:44:36
those cases are not followed up on. What encouraged authorities to keep looking for Jade after so many years? Well, the
00:44:44
investigation into her disappearance really picked up in 2020, and it was with the US Marshalss. They had this
00:44:51
statewide operation called Operation Homecoming. It was an effort to find missing children. Now, Jade's case was
00:44:58
one of 24 young adults that they were looking into. And the incredible thing is they were able to solve and find all
00:45:06
but two of them. Unfortunately, Jade was one of them and another person who is still missing. In 2022, this team of
00:45:15
various agencies has called in as well. And I want to give credit to the people involved. Detective Nablo is with the De
00:45:23
Moine PD. She joined forces with the deputy US Marshal Justin Wallace who then called in Detective Chris Webb in
00:45:31
Dora, the sheriff's office there. And the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, brought in special agent
00:45:36
John Turbett, all in the search of Jade Coven. Detective Nablo, she was the one who went to Instagram and Facebook and
00:45:45
and she subpoenaed them and and said, "I need to get access to Jade Coven social
00:45:51
media account." And that's when she discovered that Jade completely stopped communicating with anyone in March of
00:45:59
2017. And as you know, you have teenagers. I have teenagers. So, um, for them not to have any kind of social
00:46:06
media presence, very unusual. So this team once they saw that they said something here is wrong. As special
00:46:14
agent John Turbet said if we can't find her we want to get justice for Jade. In fact um mentioning special agent uh
00:46:23
John Turbet I want to play a clip. He explains why Jade's case was so important to his team.
00:46:29
>> We have kids. Some of us have daughters. And you see your your own uh loved ones
00:46:35
in some of these situations. Jade's picture was uh hung up on my, you know, whiteboard and I I looked at it every
00:46:43
day for a couple years and and she was smiling and that's how I always wanted to remember. I'm like, that's why I'm,
00:46:49
you know, trying to find her. >> So, you hear that passion right there with the special agent talking about how
00:46:55
this case resonated. It really hit home to him. Yeah. You know, I I totally get that. When I think about the pictures
00:47:01
that were in the hour, I kept on thinking she looks like any kid, you know, in my own daughter's high school.
00:47:08
So, I totally get what in what investigators felt. Um, I also thought it was really interesting that she was
00:47:15
still, despite all of this dysfunction, really close to her mother. And this is something that the detectives kind of
00:47:21
pick up as well. Investigators, they find new evidence. And what they find is that after Jade ran away from the
00:47:28
shelter in 2016, they're discussing a plan Leiddon had hatched for Leiddon to bring Jade to this farm in Dora, Iowa.
00:47:38
It's owned by a man that she's been dating not for a very long time. His name is uh James Bachmeri. And this is
00:47:45
the plan that Jade would stay there until she's 18. At that point, she'd be free of the uh foster care system.
00:47:52
Leiddon will continue to live three hours away because she's dealing with some legal issues. It is quite an
00:47:58
elaborate plan. Yeah. I mean, Leiddon had, as you mentioned, was dating Buck Murky for all of four months. Bachmer
00:48:07
Murki was virtually a stranger to Jade as well when Jade got dropped off there. Uh, but the idea was, you know, Leiddon
00:48:15
really wanted her to be with her eventually. Uh, she didn't want her daughter in the foster care system. She
00:48:21
didn't trust the foster care system. And everyone, I should point out who we spoke to, they all said that they
00:48:28
believe Leiddon did this from a place of love. You know, they she wasn't putting
00:48:34
her daughter there certainly not to endanger her. She was a mother who thought she was doing her best at the
00:48:39
time despite all of her demons. Unfortunately, Leiddon died 3 years after Jade went missing. So
00:48:47
investigators as they started their search, they didn't have the ability to go talk to Leiddon.
00:48:52
>> Did anybody in the family call police when she went missing from the farm? Not
00:48:57
initially, because after she disappeared from Buck Morski's farm, they believed that Jade was running away again from a
00:49:05
situation that she didn't want to be placed in. So Leiddon goes back to Bachmursky's farm at one point and she
00:49:12
went to investigate. She asked James Bachmeri, you know, where's my daughter? What happened to her? And he also told
00:49:18
her, "Well, I she ran away." So, you know, and again, going back to the fact that Leiddon really did not trust the
00:49:25
system. She's not going to be the one who who goes to the police and and raises alarm bells. Now, we did hear
00:49:33
from Jade's aunt in the hour. Her name is Tandra. She clearly cared very deeply for her niece. Well, I wondered about
00:49:41
whether or not, you know, family could have intervened before she ended up in foster care.
00:49:46
>> And and Tandra did. She actually took Jade in and her two younger sisters for
00:49:50
for a little over a year. I believe it was when Jade was 9 or 10 years old. According to Jade's aunt in that year
00:49:57
that Jade was there, uh she really blossomed. And at that time, Tandra, you know, she had three kids of her own. Her
00:50:05
husband had just died. She was also putting herself through school. Um she even apparently moved a couple of times
00:50:12
to be in a house that so that each of the girls could have their own room. Uh she bought them beds. She bought them
00:50:18
new clothes. She even took them to you know Build-A-Bear for birthday parties. It seemed like this was the only time in
00:50:24
her life that she had a semblance of normaly in in all those years growing up. At one point Tandra told us that
00:50:32
Kevin uh Jade's father did get clean. Um he regained custody. So, she would have
00:50:38
liked to have done more for them, but at that time she felt, well, Kevin, her brother, seemed to have gotten his act
00:50:44
together. And to this day though, Tandra says she regrets she couldn't do more and that she couldn't keep them. That is
00:50:53
tough. I mean, it sounds like she did an awful lot. All right, so then fast forward uh to 2022. The US Marshalss
00:51:00
reach out to local law enforcement near Bachmursky's farm for help talking to the family and that is when Detective
00:51:07
Chris Webker from the Wishy County Sheriff's Office officially joins the team. James Bachmer is no longer living
00:51:15
there. The house has been gutted. It's been renovated. There are new owners. They allow law enforcement to look
00:51:22
around. Natalie, in reporting uh for this hour, you also went to Decora to to see what this location looked like. Um I
00:51:31
thought it was really interesting because there's this kind of really wide drone shot and immediately as I saw that
00:51:36
shot, I thought there's no way she ran away. Where is she going to run away to? It really gave me a sense of how remote
00:51:42
at least it felt. And goodness knows you looked cold. Um >> it was freezing. >> Yes.
00:51:48
>> We went there in the middle of January, I should point out. And I've done shoots
00:51:53
in this type of weather where it is just it's so cold. I know sometimes it gets so cold you can't I can't even say my
00:52:00
own name because there's too many syllables in my name. Like you can't move your mouth properly. And it looked
00:52:04
that cold there. >> Oh yeah. Your eyes are tearing up. You know it was -14°. If it had been I believe 3° colder. The
00:52:11
drone that we used would not have been able to fly. It would have been frozen in the air. Um our crew wore speaking of
00:52:18
my eyeballs freezing. They were wearing ski goggles and ski gear uh so that they
00:52:23
wouldn't freeze. And you know, I really should highlight the importance of going
00:52:27
to these locations and seeing them in person because when you stand in the middle of nowhere like that in that
00:52:33
farm, it is beautiful, but you also know the situation that this young girl was placed in. She was completely isolated
00:52:41
on this remote farm. It's kind of hilly. And as you saw by that shot, it was over
00:52:45
200 acres. Um there is really nowhere to go if you're running away because the town downtown decor which is really cute
00:52:54
and quaint it's about eight miles from the farm. And as we were driving with Detective Webker he said look where we
00:53:00
are. I mean these are all they're all farms farming people here. These are good salt of the earth kind of people.
00:53:06
And if somebody saw a teenager walking alone on the side of the road there they would certainly stop and ask if if she
00:53:14
needed help. So, right away he knew this is not a case of Jade running away. Welcome back. Before the investigators
00:53:24
[music] track down James Buckmer cuz he's moved out of state, they find one of his sons. His name is Brian. He'd
00:53:32
been living in Dora at the time of Jade's disappearance. According to detective Webker, Brian confirmed that
00:53:39
Jade had been at the farm and he said that the last time that he heard from her was just a few days after she
00:53:46
arrived when they were texting during his night shift at Walmart and she suddenly stopped responding. Why didn't
00:53:52
Brian report Jade missing back then? Well, Brian says he did eventually follow up with his father about what
00:53:59
happened to Jade. Uh Bob Murski at the time gave him a lot of excuses. said that she might even be a cam girl
00:54:06
somewhere. However, there's some evidence as well that Brian didn't believe his dad. I mean, Buck Murki did
00:54:12
have a criminal record. As you see in the hour in 2013, we report that he spent nearly a year behind bars after
00:54:19
being charged with child endangerment against his own children. He pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of assault,
00:54:26
but he did serve some time. In the hour, we learn details of this child endangerment case from uh court
00:54:34
documents. Bachmer used a metal chair hooked to a battery to shock his sons when they misbehaved.
00:54:42
I mean, we saw your facial expression. >> Yeah. I mean, it was pure horror because
00:54:47
if he's able to do that to his own kids, what is he capable of doing to a young girl who's not even his own kid?
00:54:54
>> Absolutely. In 2023, investigators tracked down Bachmurski at his new home in Georgia. He spoke with special agent
00:55:03
John Turbett for several hours, and he indeed confirmed that he had been in a relationship with Leiddon, and Jade had
00:55:09
stayed with him at his farm back in 2017. Now, Mcmmer said that the last time he saw Jade, she was getting ready
00:55:16
to do laundry. He said he ran out to a local store and then when he came back, she had vanished. Different story than
00:55:22
what he told his son, by the way. But then about a year and a half after Jade went missing, he sold that farm and he
00:55:30
moved to Georgia. Right. And it was interesting because according to special agent John Turbet, his decision to
00:55:36
relocate and the timing of the move uh not long after Jade disappeared, that all added to their suspicions. You know,
00:55:44
when he moved to Georgia, he also started using an alias. He was going by the name Bob Sage. So he, the agents
00:55:51
told us, seemed to be like a guy who was trying to hide. Now, he also had some other criminal charges from Iowa,
00:55:57
including a probation violation from 2018. So there was some indication there was extra heat on him from law
00:56:04
enforcement. Special Agent John Turbet. When he got there, he saw, you know, this guy clearly seems to be like he's
00:56:11
hiding out in this new location. It certainly seems like he left Dora in a hurry. He pretty much abandoned a lot of
00:56:18
his belongings at a neighbor's barn. And when the neighbor lets investigators know, hey, I still got all this stuff
00:56:24
here. They really strike gold. Uh they find Bachmk's old cell phone and there's some shocking new evidence. Right. That
00:56:34
phone really became the key to their investigation because on that phone they found deleted text messages from Jade's
00:56:42
family trying to find her, including from Leiddon. you know, desperately trying to get a hold of her daughter.
00:56:48
They also found photos of Jade at the farm, the last photos of Jade alive, which also suggested to investigators he
00:56:56
took a lot of photos of Jade. So, they thought perhaps this showed some attraction that Buck Murki had to Jade.
00:57:05
Now, the phone also contained, as you saw in the hour, these photos, which really became key evidence. One photo
00:57:12
shows his very clean kitchen, which was very unusual and out of the norm according to those who knew and saw the
00:57:19
condition of that home. And also a bedroom photo that was taken 2 days after Jade disappeared. And then
00:57:28
contrast that to a photo of the bedroom taken a couple of months later. The first photo showed a bed with a
00:57:35
headboard. The second photo showed there was no more headboard. It looked like that mattress was new according to
00:57:42
investigators. So, it appeared to the investigators that it looked like if there was a scene there, it might have
00:57:48
been cleaned. Now, we should mention that the cell phone um also helped investigators clear Brian, the son,
00:57:56
because they found those text messages that Jade was was having with Brian as he worked that night shift at Walmart.
00:58:04
So, it checked out with his story. Something that I kept on thinking of was, okay,
00:58:11
if she's been killed, she's got to be somewhere on this farm, but it's huge. Were investigators able
00:58:19
to search the farm? How do you go about searching a property that large? Well, as Detective Chris Webker from the
00:58:25
Wesique County Sheriff's Office, you know, said, it was really like looking for a needle in a hay stack. They
00:58:31
searched the 200 plus acres. They used cadaavver dogs. They didn't find any human bones or DNA, but I will say they
00:58:39
did find a pile of bones. They were animal, I should say, not human. Um, the dog did not signal on any human scent
00:58:48
there. Uh, Bachmer Murski, though, we should point out, according to to Chris Webb, he was a skilled hunter. Um, I
00:58:56
asked Weber what struck him about those animal bones since it's not unusual to hunt in Iowa.
00:59:03
He was an avid outdoorsman that knew how to handle himself and how to harvest animals and then discard them
00:59:10
>> and being able to handle and kill animals like that. >> Yeah. >> You think the same could be said for for
00:59:17
humans and just being able to discard people? >> He definitely had the knowledge of of of
00:59:23
where he lived and and how to do things that way. Yes. That gives you the creeps
00:59:28
just hearing that and and knowing the possibilities when you see a property of that size what he might have been able
00:59:35
to do. >> So even though investigators have not found Jade's body, they do have some
00:59:41
damning new evidence from Buckmy's phone. Special agent John Turbett went back down to Georgia to interview Bach
00:59:48
Murski again, but this time Bach Mursky's demeanor is completely different. He claimed to be drunk and
00:59:56
that he couldn't remember any details, but special agent Teret pressed him about Jade. And I want you to listen to
01:00:03
a clip of what Bachmki said to him. >> I'd go to the grave before I tell the truth about this.
01:00:10
>> Yes. >> I'd rather go to the grave than tell what happened here in this case. Yeah.
01:00:17
Turbett said, "Uh, this was as close to a confession as you could get because Buck Murki is saying there is so much
01:00:24
here you are never going to know and I'm never going to tell you." Yeah. Well, clearly investigators and prosecutors
01:00:31
believe they have enough by August of 2024. James Buckmer is charged with Jade Culvin's murder. His trial began about a
01:00:40
year later, and I I have to say, it seemed to me like the prosecution had a real challenge. I didn't think this case
01:00:47
was particularly strong, even though there's a lot of evidence. There's no blood, there's no murder weapon, there's
01:00:53
no body. >> Yeah. And the no body being the big part of that, this case was purely
01:00:59
circumstantial. Um, you know, but Bachmurski, by his own words, admitting Jade was at his
01:01:06
residence under his care right before she disappears. That cell phone evidence that they had was key. I mean, those
01:01:14
deleted messages along with those photos that seem to show the before and after Jay disappeared. He replaced that bed.
01:01:23
He cleaned that kitchen. He took pictures of it. Bach Murski, however, explained he was cleaning and doing all
01:01:29
of this because he was planning to sell the farm, which he eventually did. But most incriminating were those words you
01:01:36
just heard. You know, his own words. I'd go to the grave before I tell the truth.
01:01:42
>> But here's the thing. If I was the defense, I would just say, "Well, you don't even have any proof that she's
01:01:47
dead." And that was that was a big part of the defense's argument. They tried to
01:01:50
say there's no evidence she's dead. They said she had a history of running away.
01:01:55
You know, in fact, they even hired their own investigator who said there were unconfirmed sightings of her. It is hard
01:02:03
to combat the the fact though that Jade was at Buck Murky's residence under his care and then poof, she just disappears.
01:02:13
Nobody ever heard from her again. Well, the prosecution did their job. Uh the jury found Bokorski guilty of murder in
01:02:21
in the second degree. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison. So he's 67 years old. So that's essentially a life
01:02:28
sentence for him at the time. In the hour, Jade's aunt Tandra said that the sentence was a relief. Do we know how
01:02:36
the rest of Jay's family felt about this? Well, Tandra and and I think you could see that in in the interview. She
01:02:42
she struggles. I mean, she really wants to be able to find Jade's body, give her
01:02:47
a proper funeral. The whole family hopes that someone watching the show or listening to this who has any
01:02:53
information will come forward. You know, I think that's what they're all looking
01:02:56
for is some sense of closure, if there is such a thing. Yeah. Um, all of the investigators that we spoke with though
01:03:03
said this is still not done for them. It is still an open missing person's case with the De Mo PD until they find Jade's
01:03:12
body. >> I totally get that. Still so many loose ends. You really do want to know what
01:03:17
happened to her um before you could really have peace. I can get it. So listen, Natalie, I want to ask you about
01:03:23
something that you had actually mentioned at the top of the podcast. In addition to Jade, there was another
01:03:30
missing child that US Marshalss were not able to locate. This is part of this Operation Homecoming. What do we know
01:03:36
about that last case? >> Yeah. Yeah. Really important because again, we use this as an opportunity to
01:03:43
call out anybody who may know something. Uh Frederick Workman is the name of of the young man. Um he was reported
01:03:51
missing from De Moine in August of 2013 when he was about 15 years old. A lot of
01:03:56
work has been done on his case. However, that case remains open as well. So again, if anybody has any information,
01:04:04
they can contact the US Marshall's office at 5154008140 or they can submit a tip to the National
01:04:12
Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I know there's going to be all kinds of people as soon as they hear
01:04:17
this podcast are going to be getting online and looking this case up and hopefully hopefully it'll make a
01:04:21
difference. Um Natalie, once again, another really really fascinating hour and at least you know Jade's family got
01:04:29
some closure. It would be really really nice if they could find out the rest of the story about what happened to this
01:04:36
this young woman who had I mean so much potential, so many possibilities, right?
01:04:40
[music] And it's just so tragic that she really never got to find out who she was
01:04:45
in life. Yeah, so true. Well, thanks again, Natalie. [music] Thank you, Anmarie. And to all of you out there, if
01:04:51
you like this episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcast or Spotify.