School of Humans. On Sunday, October seventeenth, twenty twenty one, a thirty nine year old mother of one named Heidi Plank was starting her day. Heidi was leaving her rented townhouse on the west side of Los Angeles near Culver City. She was on her way to watch her eleven year old son Bond play football. Heidi, by the way, was a huge James Bond fan, so that's how she chose her son's and her dog's names based on the Double O seven theme. So her son was Bond and her
labradoodle was seven like Double oh seven. Surveillance camera footage from outside Heidie's house showed her walking out the door. She was dressed in jeans and a white T shirt with a smiley face on it. She had a sweater tied around her waist and it was described in the media as gray, but it was actually more like a grayish color, kind of a gray beige. Heidie was petite, she had long blonde hair. She was he was five
foot three and was carrying a purse with her. She was holding a cup of coffee in one hand, and seven, her dog, was on his leash walking behind her. She put seven in the car and climbed behind the wheel of the silver range Rover with a license plate U eight four zero XO, and drove away. Heidi was divorced from Bond's father. Her ex husband, a sixty three year old hairstylist named Jim Wayne. Jim had a salon in
Beverly Hills. Jim and Heidi were married in two thousand and eight, but they divorced four years later, and at the time Heidi went missing, they shared custody of Bond. Jim told police that the last time he saw Heidi was when she showed up to her son's football game that afternoon. The game, by the way, was in Downy, which was around seventeen miles from Heidie's home, so it would have taken her around half an hour to get there from the townhouse. Several witnesses saw Heidi at that
game and interacted with her. Jim said that she seemed a little bit on edge when she left the game at halftime, which was around four thirty PM, but there was nothing that seemed extremely out of the ordinary until they were looking at these events in hindsight. It was Jim's weekend with Bond, so Jim and Bond went home after the game. Heidi and Jim got along well. Even though there had been some rocky moments in their divorce, they apparently had had a good co parenting relationship for
several years. When Heidi left the game, she told her son that she would call him later, But even though Heidi always talked to her son every single day, she never called him. In fact, Bond never talked to his mother again because that day Heidi Plank vanished, and after she disappeared, it did not take long for rumors to start flying about her ex husband Jim, about her boss, Jason Sugarman, about her boss's links to big money and
powerful people in Los Angeles. In fact, to me, when I first saw Heidi on the news and I about this case, it seemed like a real life version of the movie Chinatown. It's now been over two years since Heidi plant disappeared. There's been no sign of Heidi and no sign of her body. All we have are some rumors about an apartment building in downtown Los Angeles and a devastated little boy without a mother. I'm Catherine Townsend.
If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Heidi Plank was originally from New York State. She was born and raised in Buffalo. In two thousand and one, she moved to California and went
to California State University. Before we dive into Heidie's work life, I want to follow the natural trajectory of the police investigation and take a look at her relationship with her ex husband, Jim, because, as we all know, in any investigation, and especially if there is a contentious divorce, police are
always looking at x'es. I actually did an episode of another podcast called Blood Money, it's about white collar criminals and con artists who kill about this case back in twenty twenty two, so I want to take a look at what has changed since then. So of course police want to know about Heidie's relationship with her ex husband. Jim and Heidi seem to have a friendly relationship, but according to court records, they had had some issues over
the years. Court filing show they had had a battle for custody in the past, and at one point Jim had full custody of their son, and Jim had accused Heidie of drug abuse. Jim also made some comments to the media after Heidi went missing about how they had what he called different parenting styles. He said something about how Heidi was more permissive than he was, which did lead a lot of people to wonder what was going
on at home to make him say that. But in addition to Jim's movements all week and long being confirmed by police, everyone who was close to Heidi said that her relationship with Jim had been good for some time. The last text between Jim and Heidi were not contentious. They were warm. Heidi was thanking Jim for all that he did for their son. Jim told police that he and his son last heard from Heidi at around seven pm that night, October seventeenth. Heidi had responded to one
of her son's texts about the football game. Heidie's son sent another text a little while later, talking about a play he made, but this time Heidi didn't respond. In fact, that was the last time that Heidie's son ever heard from her. Jim and his son were worried for the rest of the weekend, but Heidi was obviously an adult. She was single and dating and had her own life.
Jim told reporters, though, that Heidi never failed to respond to her son, no matter what was going on in her personal life or how busy she was, she always made time for him. Actually looking at the court records that document the text messages that Heidie's son sent to her is heartbreaking. On October eighteenth, at seven thirty one pm, Heidi's son wrote in a text message, can you please call me back? I called you two days in a row and you haven't picked up. By Monday morning, Jim
and his son still had not heard from Heidi. That afternoon, Heidie's son texted again, please call or just text me because I want to make sure you're okay and I'm worried about you. Then he sent another text that read, please call mom. I miss you and I'm worried about you. The next day, October twentieth, was the day when Heidi was supposed to pick her son up at school, but she never showed up. Jim reported Heidi missing. At some point, he went into Heidie's townhouse with a friend of hers.
They found Heidi's work laptop there and her work phone. Jim took the laptop and the phone. Now he did turn over the laptop and phone to law enforcement, but apparently it took a few days. And at the time, a lot of people on online comment boards are of course asking if he's so worried about her, why would he wait. But Heidi was an adult, so she probably was not an immediate priority for the police. And of course, in every missing person's investigation, every single decision anyone makes
is under a microscope. But in my opinion, and according to all evidence that has come out, Jim Wayne was totally believable, and Jim, to his credit, immediately went to the police. As we've said, Heidi was an adult. So if Jim had any reason to want to wait so the investigation would not start immediately, he probably could have, but that's not what he did. He went to her house, he told friends he was calling people. He immediately called
the police. He insisted that they investigate, and he commented to the media. Police talked to Heidi's family. Her mom told them the same thing Jim had. Heidi had been behaving normally. She was planning a vacation to New York to visit her mom for Thanksgiving, so she was happy and she was making future plans. Police figured out no one had heard from Heidi at all since October seventeenth,
so they started asking logically about Heidie's love life. Now, at that time, Heidi had been seeing someone who lived in northern California. He was a Silicon Valley executive who worked for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropic arm of Facebook, which is now Meta. Police tracked down Haidie's boyfriend, who, by the way, was completely cooperative. He was verifiably somewhere else on the day when Hidi went missing, and he was cleared very quickly by law enforcement. But this man
did tell the police something interesting. He said that Heidi had sent him a text asking him to come down to LA because she said she was afraid of something. But this guy was unable to make the trip, so actually he told police at first, after Heidie disappeared, he thought that maybe she was annoyed with him for not coming to LA, so maybe she was ghosting him. So now the police kind of hit a dead end because if this wasn't an X, then it wasn't a current.
Really relationship. Who else would have a motive to want to hurt Heidi. Meanwhile, Jim Wayne, Heidie's ex husband, was playing detective and tracking down his own leads. He got the ven number for Heidie's Range Rover, but according to court documents, her location services wasn't on. He tried to find my phone feature on iPhone and Apple Watch, but those had also been turned off. At this point, Jim told the media he was starting to suspect this could
be something that was planned. He believed this was not a random disappearance, and he mentioned the legal troubles that Heidie's boss, Jason Sugarman, had been having. Then there was another big break in the case. Jim checked the text messages on Heidie's phone, the one he had access to, and he found messages from a couple who lived in a luxury building in downtown LA and this couple said
that they had Heidie's dog. The people who found seven lived in the Hope Flower Building in downtown Los Angeles, located at twelve oh one South Hope Street. We'll get into the history of the building in a little bit, but basically it's one of these luxury downtown high rises that have sprung up over the last couple decades in Los Angeles. It bills itself as a luxury high rise
with rooftop views and a lot of amenities. But a lot of residents have complained over the years that the developers have neglected this building, that there's trash in the hallways, dog poop everywhere, and management that is unresponsive. And I'm not talking about just a couple of complaints. If you look at yelper views, there are hundreds of complaints on there from current and former tenants. So there's something strange
going on in that building in my opinion. But getting back to Heidi, this couple said that around seven pm on the evening of October seventeenth. Now remember this was just a few hours after the game, and right after Bond got that last text from Heidie's phone, they said they found the dog seven roaming the hallway of that building. Some reports said that the dog was on the twenty ninth floor, others said the twenty eighth, but whichever it was, Heidi was not with seven. Jim went to pick up
seven and brought him home. And since I know that people will ask, and I'm also an animal lover, I will tell you all right now, the dog is absolutely fine and apparently doing well. So what was Heidi doing at the Hope and Flower Building. Jim and her friends said they weren't aware of anyone she knew in that building or any connection she had there, And even stranger than that, why would she leave her dog who went
everywhere with her roaming the hallways. According to news reports, the building management Omni Property were kind of uncooperative at first, but police got a search warrant and after that, Heidie's friends and family said the building did give them the access they needed and became more helpful. Meanwhile, some of them were wondering if the thing that Heidi had been afraid of could have been connected to her job and
her boss, forty eight year old Jason Sugarman. According to Heidi's LinkedIn page, she worked for Coldwell Banker between two thousand and five and twenty fifteen, then Douglas Element, so she was working in real estate before she moved on to her job at a company called Camden Capital Partners. This was Jason Sugarman's company, and it's a company that is described as quote an investment advisory firm that handles wealth management and legacy planning for prominent high net worth individuals.
End quote. This could be completely legitimate. There are lots of firms like this, but it's also very vague, and Jason Sugarman would soon show up in more headlines. Jason Sugarman is connected to a lot of people in power. His father in law is Peter Gruber, the owner of the Dodgers, and Jason was facing some serious legal issues, including federal fraud charges. He was under investigation by the
Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the indictment, starting in twenty thirteen, Jason and his business partner Jason Galanis, stole forty three million dollars from pension funds of a Native American tribe of the Sioux Nation. These guys, who were known in the press as the two Jasons, were apparently trying to acquire this global financial conglomerate made up of insurers in Europe and Bermuda, as well as some investment
advisors based in the United States. In twenty fourteen, Jason Galanas and his father, John Galanis obtained tribal bonds. They convinced the tribe they would sell them and use the proceeds to invest in the tribe, but instead, according to the authorities, they didn't. They just basically straight up stole the money. And what's worse, this was not some kind of Bernie made off type of scenario that started out
as a legitimate investment. According to the sec these guys knew they were planning to steal right from the beginning. So it's kind of a long and complicated story with this money. But to sum it up, Jason Galanas and Jason Sugarman were accused of stealing millions of dollars from the Native American Trie Tribal Corporation and from these companies they acquired. In January of twenty seventeen, Jason Galanis pled
guilty to criminal charges in connections with his fraud. He was sentenced to one hundred and seventy three months in jail the indictment read quote. Sugarman benefited immensely from the scheme. Indeed, to a large extent, he was the biggest winner from the fraud, ending up with voting control over corporate assets that were acquired with bond proceeds and from which he ultimately siphoned almost nine million dollars in cash for his direct and personal benefit end quote. So we know Jason
Sugarman was accused of financial fraud. We also know that he has powerful friends, including Hunter Biden. He even has ties to Hunter Biden's now notorious Laptop of shame because emails from that laptop, in addition to photos of Hunter smoking crack and sex workers, reportedly showed that Jason was a director and shareholder of a company called Burnham Financial Group. If this name sounds familiar, that's because it's the same group that allegedly pitched a major deal to Hunter's Chinese
business partners back in twenty fifteen. And one of Jason Sugarman's partners who was also mentioned in that SEC indictment is Devon Archer, the longtime friend and business partner of Hunter Biden. Devon Archer, by the way, was convicted for his involvement in that same tribal scam in twenty eighteen. Hunter Biden's lawyer, by the way, has totally denied all this. He said Hunter's client had nothing to do with the Native American bond scheme and that the timing was just
a coincidence. According to the Sun newspaper, the lawyer said Hunter's name had been used without his permission and that he had taken steps to ensure that his business interests were not associated with the defendants in the tribal bond case. So what does all this have to do with Heidi Plank? A woman who, by the way, had no background in finance when she started working for Jason Sugarman's company. She was the bookkeeper for that company. And then there's what
happened next Next. Jim Wayne said that on October twenty first, right after Hiding went missing, he got a phone call from someone at the SEC asking questions about Jason Sugarman. And then it got even more bizarre. Because CBS Los Angeles was following the story of Heidi Plank, they were somehow able to acquire some surveillance video that had been taken outside Heidie's house. There's video of Jason Sugarman, after Hiding went missing, ringing her doorbell and then leaving muffins
on the doorstep. The news station says this video is from a day or two after Hiding went missing. They weren't more specific than that. But if you look at this footage, it's odd because Jason walks up to the door rings, the bell just once and then kind of seems to PLoP the muffins down and then he's out of there. He doesn't hesitate, he doesn't try to look inside. So now I'm wondering, was he really expressing concern or was he trying to make it look like he was
expressing concern and looking for Heidi. Was he going through the motions so that he would appear on camera, or was Heidie's disappearance totally unconnected to him? But perhaps he wanted to see if someone was there who would give him that work laptop, which remember, was inside her house. What did the SEC want to talk to Heidi about? Heidi obviously is not here, so it's only speculation, but she reportedly told friends and family that the company had
some tax filings that were due. She had complained that her boss, presumably meaning Jason Sugarman, had her name on so much of their corporate paperwork. Now, if this is true, it's a major flag for fraud investigators. In fact, this case seems to have a lot of red flags for potential fraud investigators, including the fact that Heidi was the person being asked to sign off on these complex transactions. Jim Wayne told the media that after Hiding went missing,
he called her office. He said that Jason didn't seem like he was worried about Heidi or what happened to her at all, but he did say Jason Sugarman was very worried about that work laptop. Remember this was the work laptop that had been inside Heidie's house. Jim had taken it out of there and later handed it over to police. Jim Wayne told the Daily Mail, quote, while I was on the phone with his assistant, I heard Sugarman in the background barking at his assistant to tell
me make sure he knows I want my laptop. There was no concern at all from my ex wife's employer. It's a multimillion dollar company. They didn't offer to hire a private investigator or put up a reward. The only
thing they really seemed concerned about was Heidie's computer end quote. Again, Heidie's job was financial controller for Camden Capital Partners, which reportedly gave her a salary of one hundred and forty five thousand dollars a year and bonuses, and Jim made a comment he said she always had spare cash lying around. Jim Wayne said that someone at Jason Sugarman's office had told him they believed that Heidi was quote siphoning off
money from the company end quote. So, according to Jim Wayne, someone at Jason Sugarman's office was allegedly implying that Heidi might have embezzled funds. But when Jim talked to The Daily Mail, he said he did not believe Heidi was to blame at all, and he said if there was any wrongdoing, it was from someone at that office, not her. Jim said, quote, Heidi knows all of Jason's and the company's secrets. She knows where the bones are buried. This
whole thing just stinks. Something just isn't right, and I can't put my finger on it. End quote. After Hiding went missing, Jim filed a petition for temporary emergency custody of their son, and these court papers, in my mind, provide further evidence that there was no motive for Jim to do anything to Heidie, because, according to the court documents, Jim and Heidi shared custody of their son, and Jim did not pay Heidi any alimony or child support. He had paid her a lump sum in twenty twelve and
nothing since then. So the bottom line is Jim Wayne had no obvious financial motive to do anything to Heidi. In fact, if he did do something to her, it would ensure that he would never get the support that he was asking for. Some people had suggested that Heidi might have disappeared voluntarily, and we do have to look at that possibility. According to court documents, in the past, Jim had alleged Heidi had some mental health issues. He said that she was addicted to adderall and had some
kind of breakdown. In twenty fifteen, Jim talked to Los Angeles magazine about what happened that day. He said that Heidi had begun acting strangely while they were driving back to her house, that their son had been in the car, and that after they got back to his place, Heidi freaked out, trash Bond's room and crawled out a window. Then he said, she started running through the neighborhood. Police were called, and when they got there, they found Heidy
switching an electrical circuit breaker on and off. It seemed like reading through these court papers, Heidi it had some kind of a break with reality. According to court records, Heidi agreed to check herself voluntarily into a psychiatric hospital. But after that incident, Heidi got better. She got a job. She started working for Camden Capital Partners, first as an assistant and then by twenty seventeen, is the financial controller. After the initial flurry of media activity, the case got
pretty quiet for a couple of months. Then on November fourth, twenty twenty one, police announced they had found Heidi's Range Rover in the parking lot of a residential building that was a few blocks away from the Hope and Flower building where seven was found. And after that police announced another break they had more video footage of Heidi, footage
that had been taken on that same day. On October seventeenth, at around six thirty pm, hours after she left her son's game, she was in downtown La walking in an alley between eleventh and twelve Streets. This is the little alleyway that runs behind the Hope and Flower building where the dog was found. She appeared to be wearing the same clothes and the sweater that she had been wearing earlier. She was wearing thisweater she had had tied around her waist.
One of her friends told a local news station KTLA that Heidi looked like she was taking her dog for a quick walk. Now, there were some people out there who said that Heidie's hair looked darker, like she was wearing a wig. But I've looked at this footage and to me, that appears to be just a late afternoon lighting. It clearly looks like Heidi. She's wearing the same clothes she was wearing that morning, and her dog is walking
with her. Heidie's friends told local news stations that this was a major break in the case because if the couple's timeline was correct and they had found the dog roaming the halls at around seven pm, that narrowed down the window of time when Heidi went missing to around half an hour or so. In the surveillance video from the alley, Heidie was wearing the same sweaters she had tied around her waist earlier, so she probably went there
right after she left the game. Also, people who watched the video pointed out you could see Heidie's purse, and by the way, this was at the height of COVID, she seemed to have a mask in one hand, which meant that she was probably visiting someone in that building, so it seemed like she either parked her car, took her purse out, and was on her way up to the building, or it's also possible she had been visiting someone in the building, already left her purse in the apartment,
and ducked out for a quick dog walk. And again, none of Heidie's friends or family had any idea who lived in that building, who Heidie might have been going to see, or what she was doing there. But another one of Heide's friends told reporters they had talked to building staff and apparently they recognized Heidi and her dog. Seven Attention focused more and more on the Hope and Flower Building, the last place where Heidi was seen alive.
As I said before, this, Hope and Flower Building was very controversial if you look at the yelperviews the residence. Claim that there has been theft, drug use, dogs defecating on their terraces, piles of trash in the hallway. They claimed that their secured parking spaces are constantly vandalized and broken into. After Haidi disappeared, I got several messages from people who were friends of hers. I also went to a prayer vigil for Heidi that was held at the
Hope and Flower Building. I met some of the residents there, and later some of the former residents contacted me and talked to me about the LAPD investigation. They told me that the police had been in that building, that there had been a foul stench coming from the trash chute. They had heard a rumor that a bloody mattress or possibly even a body had been taken from the building.
Then the news broke. The LAPD was searching Shaquita Canyon landfill, which was about forty miles away, the same landfill where the Hope in Flower Buildings trash was dumped. The police has not revealed much about what they have found inside the Hope and Flower building, but on their website they did state that quote, forensic evidence was located inside the building, which has led detectives to believe an incident occurred resulting
in Plank's death end quote. The LAPD stated that they believed something bad did happen to Heidi and that they believe that it happened to her at that downtown building, and they said they believed that Heidi Plank was dead, but they didn't give any more specifics. They didn't talk about what the evidence was. They haven't asked the public for information, so really it's been kind of a black hole. In December of twenty twenty three, over two years after
she went missing, Heidi Plank was officially declared dead. A judge ruled she had died at around nine pm on the night she disappeared on October seventeenth, twenty twenty one. There have been a few theories put forward by people commenting online by armchair detectives. One theory was that Heidi maybe was in trouble, maybe she did something at work, maybe she knew too much and something led her to
voluntarily go missing. I'm not buying that theory. First of all, I don't think there's any way that this woman would have left her son with no explanation. And secondly, other than her son, she loved her dog more than anything in the world, and I don't believe she would have just dumped her dog at this building. And of course, anytime you do have someone with a background of mental health issues or potential substance abuse, you have to ask
could that have happened again? Again, I think that that's very unlikely, mainly because she was acting normally. This woman's employed, she had a good relationship with her friends and family, and she had a son who she called every day. Or some other rumors going around, including one by an amateur detective who posted on YouTube. She said she had
talked to people in the Hope and Flower building. She told the Sun newspaper that she heard Heidi went to a party there on the night she disappeared that she had gotten adderall from a man she was dating, and then apparently overdosed, possibly because the drugs were laced with fentanyl. Then, according to this person, the people in the apartment panicked
and Haidie's body was thrown down the garbage chute. But I have to say there was absolutely no evidence that these rumors were true, and honestly, not all parts of this story make sense. For example, Heidi didn't look like she was dressed to party. She looked like she was out on an errand when she was seen on the camera with the dog, it was early evening, six thirty
or seven pm. And finally, if there was a whole party full of people as this person described, it seems really hard for me to imagine that no one from the party talk. The whole thing got completely covered up, and that they threw a body down the trash chute without it being found. But I do have a lot of questions about that building and about the people on the penthouse floor. Jim Wayne has said he was told by police that up to five people know what happened
to Heidi, But which five people? Five people in the apartment building, And if that's true, again, it's very hard for me to imagine a world where there was not surveillance footage showing those people, even though it was COVID and a lot of places were probably being rented off the books. Surely they must be able to get the names of the people who were in the apartment on
that day. The whole thing is very bizarre, and I don't think I've ever actually seen a case where a dog was found in a location that was completely foreign to everywhere in the victim's life, and there's no trace of the victim. Jason Sugarman kind of disappeared from public view after Hiding went missing, and I'm going to say again he has not been charged with anything or any
sort of wrongdoing in connection with her disappearance. On January tenth, twenty twenty three, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a final judgment against Jason Suggermant. Jason was ordered to pay over ten point two million dollars in connection to the scheme to defraud pension funds. Devin Archer was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. He appealed and he is still
out on bail. In January twenty twenty four, a judge denied his appeal, so his case is continuing to work its way through the court system. Bond and seven are living with Jim Wayne. Jim told Los Angeles magazine six months after Heidi disappeared, quote, our son wants to know what happened to his mother. I want to know what happened to Heidi. I still think her boss has something to do with this, in one way or another. End quote. There was another update story done in twenty twenty four,
near the two year anniversary of her disappearance. Heidie's family posted a bill of her in Los Angeles. Right now they hope that someone will come forward. The family is created an email address Heidi Plank H E I D I P L A n C K at ProtonMail dot com. The Los Angeles Police Department is asked anyone with information call the Missing Persons Unit at two one three nine nine six one eight zero zero. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is
a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance. Music contributed by Ben Solee. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six
one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five. School of Humans