Today’s case is about 3 young women who went missing around the 4th of July holiday. While this time of year is usually the time for parties, these families’ celebrations would soon turn to concern with the disappearance of their loved ones. Today marks the 60th anniversary of this disappearance and there are still no answers. Let’s talk about Renee, Patricia and Ann.
On Saturday July 2, 1966 19 year old Ann Miller took off in her 1955 Buick. She then drove to her 19 year old friend Patricia Blough’s house and picked her up and on to their other friend 19 year old Renee Bruhl. The three friends were going to enjoy the first half of their 3 day 4th of July weekend at the Indiana Dunes National Park in Porter, Indiana, which was about a 60 mile drive. They would stop at a drugstore to pick up some suntan lotion and headed out of town around 8 am expecting to make their destination around 10 am. They planned to spend the day at the beach and be home by Saturday night.
Patricia and Renee had been friends since school and they met Ann after school. The three girls shared a love of horses and rode at the same stable. They all lived in the Chicago area. Renee was a newlywed of 15 months to her husband Jeffrey Bruhl. Ann had worked with horses at the Oak Brook Polo Club and Patricia was a secretary at the Commonwealth Edison Co.
With it being the middle of Summer and a holiday weekend, the park was packed. Reportedly there were 8600 people there and over 2100 automobiles. The girls arrived at the park and placed a blanket about 100 yards from the shore.
Around nightfall on Saturday, Mike Yankalasa and Frances Cicero, a young couple from Chicago who had been sitting near the girls’ blanket noticed the blanket was still there with the girls belongings. They flagged down Park Ranger Bud Conner and told him that there were 3 girls who left all of their belongings on the blanket around noon. They also said they saw the 3 girls in the water talking to some guy in a boat and climbed aboard and took off. They thought it was strange that the girls never returned, especially considering their belongings were left so they wanted to alert the park ranger before they left that day.
Around the same time the park ranger was alerted, the girls’ families were growing concerned when they hadn’t returned home. They would officially report them missing. When the park ranger started an investigation he was surprised at everything the girls left behind. Patricia Blough left a yellow robe, sunglasses, radio, towel and wallet with $5 inside. Ann Miller left a thermos, denim shorts, shoes, polo shirt, bathing cap and comb. Renee Bruhl left a towel, shorts, blouse, cigarettes, suntan lotion and her purse containing $55 in checks. They also found a set of car keys and the keychain was a miniature IL license plate 265-487. They were able to trace it to a 1955 Buick that Ann Miller owned and they found it still in the parking lot.
Indiana Dunes National Park
The scene was unsettling. All of the girl’s belongings were there and the car that brought them. But where were they? Police would interview people at the park. A lifeguard there said he remembered seeing the 3 girls on the day they vanished. He said that they were dressed in their swimming suits and he watched them climb into a motorboat with 3 unknown men. He also remembers cautioning one of the women about dangling her feet in the water. He thought that the boat was about to be 18 to 20 feet long, partly white with a blue interior.
There was an intensive search for the missing young women. Patricia Blough’s father Harold Blough commanded Group 23 of the Illinois Civil Air Patrol. They would send two airplanes and a helicopter to scour the area on July 6th. Also participating in the search were county police on horseback, Indiana State Police, Coast Guard boats and soldiers from a nearby Army missile site. They would search a 2000 acre area but no trace of the young women was found.
Authorities would talk to other people who were at the park that day. The police asked anyone to come forward who had taken pictures or home movies that day at the beach. A man came forward and had been recording home movies that same day of the beach and the water. He offered to let the police study what he had filmed in case it would help in the search.
Between the home movies and witness accounts police would concentrate on two boats that were thought to be there that day. The first one featured a tan, dark headed man who looked to be around 20 years old on a 16-18 foot boat. The girls were seen talking to him briefly and the 3 of them climbed aboard the boat, which was described as having an outboard motor and a blue interior and headed west.
The second boat was larger at 26-28 feet and was operated by three men. Both of the boats were reportedly captured on film and each had 3 females who matched the features of the missing trio but they couldn’t 100% verify that it was them. These sightings were about 3 hours apart so is there a chance that the women could have been on both boats?
As part of their investigation, Indiana State Police planned to question 24 year old Richard Speck concerning the disappearance of the three women. He had received a lot of notoriety recently. He was a seaman who was accused of breaking into a dorm and killing 8 Chicago nurses less than 2 weeks after the girls disappearance. Subsequently there was nothing to tie him to the crime and the 3 missing women did not appear to know any of the slain nurses.
Despite exhaustive searches, the three young women were not found. In an article on the one year disappearance of their vanishing in the Niles Daily Star, there were some more specific details. It said that witnesses watched a 16 foot motorboat draw up close to the beach. Patricia Blough was standing in the water talking to the man onboard. She then returned to the beach, talked to her girlfriends and then waded back out to the boat and then back to the beach again. A few minutes later the 3 women waded out to the boat and climbed up a rope ladder. Patricia Blough sat by the young man while Ann and Renee sat in the rear seat of the boat, never to be seen again.
A theory at the time was perhaps the boat was in an accident. The police didn’t think that was the case since no reports were received. They didn’t believe it was drowning as all three girls were excellent swimmers. They entertained the theory of the girls leaving as a choice. Part of this reason was an unmailed letter they found in Renee Bruhl’s purse that she had left behind on the beach.
The letter was addressed to her husband and was written about 10 days before her disappearance. She expressed wanting a separation from her 21 year old husband Jeffrey. She thought he spent too much time working on a hot rod car. When asked about the letter, Renee’s husband and family discounted it. They believe that she must have been temporarily upset when she wrote it. They theorized that if she wanted to run away she would have taken her contact lenses, keys and more clothing.
Indiana Dunes National Park
Another reason that the authorities believed the girls may have carefully planned their disappearance was when they recovered Ann Miller’s car in the parking lot of the State Park. They believe that she had placed additional clothing in the car, but when the car was discovered the clothing was missing. Authorities also claim that the girls had taken an out of the way route to the beach that day.
The article also says that on July 23, 1966 Olaf Johnson, a Swede who resided in Chicago and was a specialist in ESP volunteered his time. He said that he was sure the three girls were in Saugatuck, Michigan and had bleached their hair blond and altered their hair styles. Police on July 29 questioned waitresses and bartenders at the resort and supposedly received tentative identification of the missing trio.
Johnson himself also went to Saugatuck on August 14th and a waitress at a nightclub positively identified the girls as being in the club on July 30th. They were accompanied by a man and when the waitress went to inform the bartender of their identities they left with their drinks unfinished. She agreed that all three wore short blond hair styles. Patricia Blough’s mother said that several months before she disappeared her daughter said that she would like to be a blonde. Her daughter even bought the bleaching prep but she did not use it at home. When the girls disappeared, she searched the home and couldn’t find the bleach.
There were two mentions of Saugatuck in some of Ann Miller’s belongings that the police investigated. One was a house and the other a riding academy. All three girls were horse enthusiasts. Patricia Blough owned a race horse and the two other girls liked to ride. Patricia’s horse had won purses totaling $1,419 (which would be close to $15,000 today) after her disappearance so the prize money was never picked up. She also had several hundred dollars at her home.
However, an assistant horse trainer who was acquainted with Patricia Blough (some accounts refer to him as her boyfriend) said that she told him the night before she disappeared that she wanted to get out of the area for a while and would be going to Kentucky with friends in the morning for the weekend.
With this case of three missing women and no clues except the possible sighting of them boarding a boat on the day of the disappearance, over the decades this case seems to have been taken over by speculation. Honestly there is more speculation in this case than any that I’ve covered in a long time. So bear in mind that none of these theories I’m going to mention are necessarily based on fact or can be verified, but who knows there could be some truth to them so that’s why I’ll go down the rabbit hole and talk about them.
The first theory is pretty straightforward and is that the boat they were on encountered trouble and crashed. There was some debris found from a boating accident near the Bailly Generating Station of Northern Indiana Public Service Company in Lake Michigan a few days after the disappearance but without knowing exactly what boat the girls may have left in, they couldn’t really tie it to the disappearance.
The families didn’t really buy into this theory as all three girls were said to be experienced swimmers.
Another theory that I saw mentioned that would go along with the first one in being accidental is that they fell into the sand dunes and perished. Some unconfirmed reports have the girls eating and walking along them on that day.
The second theory is the illegal abortion one. It is reported that Ann Miller told friends a few days before her disappearance that she was 3 months pregnant. There are also rumors that the father was a married man. She discussed possibly going to a home for unwed mothers. Other information online says that Patricia was also possibly pregnant by a married man.
With two possible pregnancies, the theory is that the girls were going to have illegal abortions that day. The man described on the boat matches the physical traits of Ralph Largo Jr., who supposedly confirmed that he was at the beach that day. Largo was in the business of performing illegal abortions for women in need. The speculation is that they were scheduled to meet up that day and the procedure or procedures went awry causing the death of the girls and they were dumped in the water to cover it up. If that is true, then what happened to Renee? Unless she was pregnant as well and suffered a medical complication and was disposed of or was killed as well because she was a witness.
The third theory is concerning a Horse Syndicate Connection. All three girls loved horses and would frequent the Tri-Color Stables in Palatine, Illinois and knew George Jayne. He was a wealthy and well known horse dealer. George Jayne was in a bitter feud with his step-brother Silas Jayne. Silas was a notorious leader of a horse syndicate, which was an underground club that dealt with buying, selling and betting on race horses.
George Jayne
In mid June of 1965 (the year before the disappearance) the step-brother’s feud would escalate. A 22 year old woman named Cheryl Rude was a professional rider and also worked for George Jayne for several years and Silas Jayne before that in a secretarial role. She went to bring George Jayne’s 1965 Cadillac around to the door of his office so they could go on an errand. When she turned the ignition on, it had been rigged with a bomb which exploded, killing Cheryl Rude instantly.
George Jayne would tell a coroner’s jury that his brother Silas threatened to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 him on numerous occasions and he believed that Silas was responsible for planting the bomb that killed Cheryl Rude. There were no charges filed against him for that but Silas Jayne would be indicted on a charge of offering two men $15,000 to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 his brother just days after the bomb explosion that killed Miss Rude. However, the star witness in the case developed a last minute case of amnesia before testifying, reportedly due to intimidation tactics, so the charges didn’t stick.
It would take over 30 years, but in late 1997 James Blottiaux would be charged with the murder of Cheryl Rude. It came out that he had been given $10,000 by Silas Jayne to rig the car to blow up in hopes that it could 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 his brother George. Silas Jayne was dead at the time of Blottiaux’s arrest. James Blottiaux would admit his guilt in the crime and said that he saw Rude get in the car, but did nothing to warn her. He was sentenced to 200-300 years in prison.
Okay so how this becomes a theory in the girl’s disappearance is that the girls rode horses occasionally at Silas Jayne’s stable and boarded their horses at George Jayne’s stable. George’s contact information was also found among one of the girl’s belongings that was left behind. It was speculated that perhaps the girls had witnessed the rigging of George Jayne’s car or the death of Cheryl Rude.
After the girls disappeared, Silas Jayne allegedly told a sheriff that he had 3 bodies buried under his house. Law enforcement had planned to search his property but the sheriff that witnessed it was killed in a farming accident before the search was formed. Because of that and the witness to the supposed confession now gone, the lead was left cold. It was also reported that one of Silas Jayne’s workers had a blue and white motorboat that he often took to the Indiana dunes. When investigators inquired about the boat, they were told that it was destroyed in a fire.
The fourth theory would be that some type of violence happened to them on the boat that day. It was unknown for sure, but the girls didn’t appear to know the man or men of the boat they got on to. Add to the fact that after that event they were never seen again, makes this an understandable theory.
On a Websleuths thread about this case from 2014, Patricia Blough’s brother Robert would post. He was touched at the continued interest in this case and added some additional very interesting information. He said that he and his sister were close. In the time before she disappeared she told her brother that she had a friend who was involved in organized crime. He later found out the friend was George Jayne.
He said that in early May of 1966, 3 months before the disappearance, she came home with her face badly bruised and swollen and looked like she had been beaten up. She claimed that she had fell off her horse. He said at the time the family naively believed her. Around that same time Patricia’s mother found some scratch paper where Patricia had written “trouble, trouble, I’m in so much trouble”.
He said the week before she disappeared he was sick in bed with a fever. His sister came into his room troubled and told him that she was making out her will. She said that she wanted him to have her horse Hank if anything happened to her. He said he was only 15 years old and had no way to get all the way to the farm and couldn’t pay the boarding fees so he declined. She seemed hurt but understood his reasons.
Later that same day she entered his room and told him that she was going to tell him something but he had to promise that he wouldn’t tell under any circumstances. Her brother agreed that he wouldn’t tell. She thought for a few seconds and said “I can’t tell you” and walked out of his room. She disappeared a few days later.
He also said that the weekend before the disappearance, Patricia and her friends also went to the Indiana Dunes National Park. She had initially asked Robert to join her and he agreed but she left early in the morning and didn’t tell him. He asked her why she didn’t take him and she said “you wouldn’t have wanted to come. We met guys there.”
Robert Blough ultimately thinks that Silas Jayne was involved in his sister’s disappearance. From what he has heard about the possible sightings that day he said that after they got on the boat around noon, they possibly returned a little later. They then may have took a short walk down the beach and got into the same boat and left again. He said the man with the dark wavy haired man is suspected to have been an associate of Silas Jayne named Ed Nefeld who owned a similar boat. Nefeld kept his boat a few miles away from the dunes and put in a claim with his insurance shortly after claiming it was destroyed in a fire.
Silas Jayne
It might surprise you to know what job Ed Nefeld held at the time of the girl’s disappearance. In 1966 he was a patrolman for the Markham Police Department. He would be promoted to the Chief of Detectives in 1968 and then abruptly resigned from that role in 1971 when his connection in the murder for hire of George Jayne came to light. Nefeld would plead guilty to conspiracy to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 George Jayne and was sentenced to 1 to 3 years in prison. As part of a plea deal the murder charge against him was dropped in exchange for becoming a prosecution witness against his co-defendants.
In February of 2023 NBC’s Dateline would post an article about the triple disappearance. They would interview Patricia Blough’s sister Janice. She had some interesting details to add and would also reference some of the theories that I just mentioned.
Janice was just 2 years younger than Patricia and loved her sister dearly. She said that they grew up in a rough household without love. They took comfort in and would do anything to be around horses. Patricia was eventually able to buy a horse of her own. She also recounted the day before she disappeared she said that her sister wasn’t normal and looked scared.
She also remembered another conversation she had with her sister shortly before she vanished. Patricia started crying (which she never did). She said “I’m in terrible trouble”. Janice knew that her sister was dating a married man and asked her if she was pregnant. Patricia responded: “I wish it was that easy”.
Indiana State Police Information in the article would reiterate law enforcement’s belief that they were last seen boarding a Tri-Maran type boat, white with turquoise interior. It was occupied by a white male, well tanned with dark wavy hair wearing a beach jacket and was 20-22 years old.
Janice said that she had heard the rumor of performing abortions, possibly on the water and something went wrong. She also said that they investigated a possible connection between Patricia’s racehorse and the disappearance. She said that Patricia only paid $1500 for the horse and the original owners were mad that after they sold it, it started winning. When asked, she refused to sell it back to them. Police could never find anything that pointed toward that having a hand in the disappearance though. She said that since that day when the girls vanished, she has always believed that her sister is dead.
When researching this case I couldn’t help but think of another case, many years later, with some similarities. It was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and I bet a lot of you fellow UM fans know exactly which case I’m talking about. It is, in my opinion, one of the most disturbing segments ever shown on there so just a warning before I talk about it.
This also involves 3 females. Joan Rogers and her two daughters 17 year old Michelle and 14 year old Christie left their family’s dairy farm in Willshire, Ohio on May 26, 1989 for a vacation in Florida. It was the first time they had left their home state. The Rogers were enjoying their vacation when on June 1st Joan Rogers was lost and searching for their hotel and encountered a seemingly nice man who gave her directions. He offered to meet them later and take them on a sunset cruise of Tampa Bay.
The Roger’s family was last seen at their hotel’s restaurant around 7:30 pm that night. It is thought that they met with the stranger at his boat between 8:30 – 9 pm. After that the family disappeared. But no one really knew it for a while because no one knew about their meeting to go on a boat cruise.
Three days after the sunset cruise, on June 4, 1989, three bodies would be found in the same general area in the Tampa Bay. The scene was horrific. The three female bodies were found floating face down, bound with a rope around the neck that was connected to a concrete block and were naked below the waist. Autopsies showed the 3 victims had been thrown in the water alive. Due to their undress it is believed that they were also sexually assaulted.
The ropes tied to a concrete block and then around the victim’s neck ensured that they would die from either suffocation or drowning and that their bodies would never be found. However they would be in the hot temps and underwent decomposition while underwater. This caused the gases from that to allow the bodies to surface. The decomposition would cause the identification of the 3 victims to take a little longer.
Meanwhile Hal Rogers in Ohio was concerned why his wife and daughters hadn’t come home from their vacation to Florida. He wasn’t positive the exact time they had planned on returning but knew they should have been home so he reported them missing. On June 8th a housekeeper at the Days Inn said the family’s room had not been disturbed and their beds had not been slept in. Fingerprints found in the room matched the three murder victims and dental records were compared as well. In a heartbreaking set of events, the Rogers family had been found murdered.
The only clue the police had to go on was a handwritten note written on a brochure found in their car. A photo of the note was released to the media and put on billboards in the Tampa Bay area in hopes of identifying the writer. In 1992 JoAnn Steffey would come forward and say that the handwriting matched the handwriting on a work contract that she had with her former neighbor. His name was Oba Chandler.
Oba Chandler’s handwriting was a match and a palm print found on the brochure in the Roger’s car was also a match. He was charged with the Roger’s family’s murder. Chandler would admit to meeting them and gave them directions but claimed that he never saw them again. A former employee of Oba Chandler’s testified that he bragged about dating three women on the bay on the night of the murders. One of his daughters testified that he told her that the police were looking for him because he killed some women and he was afraid to return to Tampa. Chandler was found guilty of the murders and sentenced to death in 1994. He was executed by lethal injection in November of 2011.
So you can probably see why the Roger’s family murders remind me of this disappearance. Three trusting females climb on a boat with a friendly stranger and are never seen alive again. I even looked up to see if it was even possible for Oba Chandler to have been around in 1966. Well he was around and would have been 20 years old then (the mystery man on the boat was thought to be around that age) and Chandler was originally from Cincinnati which was only a few hundred miles from the park. I am unsure of where he lived in 1966 but he is suspected of an attempted rape in Cincinnati in 1965.
Oba Chandler was an evil sadistic man. He was a complete waste of oxygen. The judge who sentenced him said he was a man with no soul. Some of the jurors were scared of him and said that he would stare at them and make their skin crawl. One of his daughter’s called him a monster who got what he deserved. In all of his years on death row, Oba Chandler did not get one single visitor.
Okay now for my thoughts on this case. There is really so much to wade through with all of these theories and the actual facts in this case being so few. All we really know is the 3 girls went to the beach that day. We don’t know if there were any other plans but in this case we just have to not get caught up in all the speculation and rely on logic. What most likely happened.
As far as the sightings, I don’t put a lot of faith that the lifeguard saw the three girls in question. I’m not saying absolutely that it wasn’t them but remember there were 8600 people there that day so three young girls in bathing suits wouldn’t have stood out at all. His sightings was also a larger boat with 3 men on it which doesn’t match the other, in my opinion, more credible sighting.
I do believe that the sighting by the young couple from Chicago was valid. They saw the three girls and even saw the blanket where their belongings were found so we know they were talking about the missing girls. They literally saw them get on the boat with one man on board. They said it was around noon. This would make sense that they would get on a boat, because how else would they have disappeared since their car was still in the parking lot.
It is possible that the girls got on two different boats. The first sighting was around noon and the second incident of girls going on a boat was around 3pm. Could the girls have taken a ride on the boat and then were brought back safely and then embarked on another boat later in the afternoon and never returned. It is possible.
I didn’t list this as a theory but there was some talk about the girls going missing on purpose. I don’t see that as logical at all. If you’re leaving, chances are you have some sort of plan or idea of what you’re going to do. They left with only their bathing suits, not even wearing shoes, with purses, money and belongings left behind laying out there for anyone to take. Also Ann’s car was left behind which made no sense if you were running away. I believe the girls were definitely planning on returning back to the beach later that afternoon.
I don’t really think there was a boat accident. If the boat they had gotten in had crashed then the unknown man on board would have also gone missing but there were no other missing persons reported in that area during that time that we know about. Also I would just think a boat crash with 4 people on board there would be some evidence of it, especially in those populated waters at that time of year.
I also don’t think the illegal abortion theory is logical. We are supposed to believe that 3 women, dressed in bathing suits, all went on board some floating abortion clinic or got a ride in a boat to a houseboat where they were performing illegal abortions. That doesn’t make any sense to me. If they were pregnant and were considering an abortion, you would think it would be more carefully thought out and in a more private setting.
I’m still on the fence with the whole horse syndicate angle. At first I thought it seemed far fetched, but the more I read about how vicious and diabolical that Silas Jayne was, the more I thought that it was at least possible. Also after reading what Patricia Blough’s brother had to say I started to wonder. Patricia spent time at both Jayne’s brothers’ stables, said she had a friend involved with organized crime and appeared to have been beaten. Also two of Patricia’s siblings have said that she was having an 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇 with a married man. I’m unsure of their marital status at the time but could the married man have been Silas Jayne or George Jayne?
It seems that Patricia was certainly panicked about something before she disappeared. With her telling her family in vague terms and even making out her will it was definitely something serious, in her mind anyway. But we don’t know if whatever she was experiencing had anything to do with her disappearance.
I think it’s interesting that Patricia’s brother’s statement about one of Silas Jayne’s workers matched the general description of the mystery man and had a similar boat. But to put much credence in this horse syndicate theory and Silas Jayne’s worker being involved, we would have to know what had Patricia so upset and if it was bad enough for one of the Jayne’s brothers to have her followed and make her and her two friends disappear.
The violence on the boat is the theory that I think is most logical. It may seem unlikely that 3 women could be overcome by one man, or possibly 3 men depending which sighting was correct, but that’s an easy enough answer. They were in the middle of Lake Michigan which would have made a quick escape very unlikely. So they were pretty much at the mercy of the person in charge of the boat, especially if the man had a weapon. Now that we know Patricia Blough had visited the park the weekend prior and met guys, that makes me wonder if the unknown man was someone she had met the weekend before. Had she made plans with him to meet him there that weekend and bring her friends along?
It’s hard to speculate on a theory why. If it was just some random act of violence then it could be any of a number of reasons. Sadly people don’t need a reason to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 other people. It’s hard to think about the fear those girls must have experienced as whatever happened to them that day that caused them to not return to their homes or families. Sadly, I definitely think the 3 girls died the day they went missing.
I did mention Oba Chandler because I believe the Roger’s family experienced something similar to what I think the Indiana Dunes girls probably did. Do I think Oba Chandler is capable of committing this crime…absolutely. Do I think that he actually did it, not really. Although the sadistic and callous nature of the Roger’s murders makes law enforcement think that they weren’t the first murders that he had committed, nothing ties him to it and we can’t definitively place him in that area around that time.
This is such a sad case. Three friends enjoying the summer and wanted a carefree day at the beach to start the holiday weekend. No one could have predicted the tragic and baffling outcome of the day. With plenty of theories but nothing new in the last 60 years it seems unlikely but perhaps one day we can find out what caused that day to turn from sunshine to sinister.
