S05 Episode 16: Built On Shifting Sands (Pt.2 of 2)

world of show jumping. His phone number being found in the purse that Patricia Blao left behind on the beach at the Indiana June State Park marks a significant shift in the narrative regarding her fate and that of her two friends, Anne Miller and Renee Blao. To understand why requires understanding a little more about George Jane and the world he operated in, but more specifically, understanding his older

brother Silas. It isn't clear if the connections that were later made between the missing women and the Jane's brothers were fully understood at the time of the women's disappearance. For many who've looked into the case more recently, however, it is an essential one. Silas and George Jane grew up in Lake Zurich, a village on the northern outskirts of Chicago, although their circumstances were a little different. Sixteen

years older. Silas was born in nineteen o seven, the first of four boys from a brood that would eventually swell to twelve in size. The Jane family had a small farm holding not far from the lake, and Silas's father, Arthur, made what little money he could as a truck driver, then later as a supplier of sugar to bootleggers during Prohibition. There was always something a little different about Silas, even

from an early age. One morning, when he was six years old, he appeared at the kitchen door with his face and clothes covered in blood and feathers. When his horrified mother asked the young boy what he'd done, he explained excitedly that one of the geese had bit him so naturally. In order to stop it happening again, he found an axe and chopped every last one of them to pieces. Silas's dad left the family in the early

nineteen twenties. A short time later, in nineteen twenty three, George was born, the product of a new relationship between their mother, Catherine, and a man named George Spunner, who owned a local campsite. George was given the Jane's surname. However, to avoid any unwanted gossip, a year after George was born,

a then seventeen year old Silas raped someone. There are a few details about the crime other than that he was sentenced to several years in prison, and while inside, his brothers DeForest and Frank became increasingly interested in horses, eventually opening up their own ranch in Woodstock, about twenty miles west of Lake Zurich. When Silas was released several years later, it was only natural that he would join

his brothers in their new venture. The Jane brothers specialized in breaking wild horses that they had shipped in from the West for use in the rail industry. Others would be unceremoniously chopped up and sold as dog food. By the nineteen thirties, the brothers, or the Jesse Jane Gang, as they had come to be known, had gained a tough reputation among the local commune. The brothers did little to dispel the nickname, preferring instead to wear it as a badge of honor, most proudly on the days when

they would drive their latest herd through town. Silas in particular, soon developed a liking for the way the townspeople would try to avoid eye contact or coward and shop doorways as they passed. Though George didn't share a father with the brothers, DeForest, or D as he was nicknamed, was quick to take him under his wing. D was a well respected rodeo rider and riding instructor, and as George grew old enough to help out at the ranch, the

pair became increasingly close. Though Silas was jealous of their relationship, he had far too much respect for d to let it show, as detailed in a two thousand and two article in Chicago Magazine written by gine O'sheay. In nineteen thirty eight, DeForest's fiance, May Sweeney was found dead in their home. An autopsy seemed to confirm that she committed suicide by drinking arsenic. The day after May's funeral, d put on his smartest rodeo costume, grabbed his twelve gage shotgun,

and left the house. Having marched up to the cemetery, he stirred over May's freshly dug Grave, placed the shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. It's thought the animosity that would come to define Silas and George's relationship stemmed from this singular moment in their lives. For George, he'd lost the person that was most close to him in the world, but he was also reported to have gained twenty acres of land that had been left to

him in De's will. Silas, on the other hand, had lost one of the few moderating influences in his life, and the land left behind for George drove a thick wedge between the brothers that would be extracted. In DeForest's absence. The brothers continued their horse operation, with Silas now taking more of a leading role. As a convicted felon, Silas was spared having to fight in the Second World War, allowing him to cement further his grip on the family business.

Silas was even able to expand the operation, selling horsemeat as beef on the black market. This endeavor would bring Silas into contact with the Chicago mob, but with his gruff demeanor and the tattoo on his forearm of a snake winding its way around a dagger, Silas wasn't cowered by anyone. But it was through the show horse business that the Jane's brothers really found their fortune. Silas may have had a reputation as a tough guy, but he

was also an electrically charismatic figure. It was a ruthless combination, and one that seemed to work best on well healed men from the city and wealthier Chicago suburbs who came to his stables in search of show horses to buy their children, perhaps keen to prove their macho worth in Silas's presence, the men would think nothing of shelling out anything up to twenty thousand dollars on one of his horses if he said it could turn their children into

championship show horse riders. Only with Silas there was always a catch. Often, when Silas sold a horse on the pretense it was a shure fire competition winner, the new owners would soon receive a call from Silas's stable informing them of the bad news that the horse had suddenly taken ill or broken a leg and had to be killed.

Though disappointing, the owners would often be covered by insurance, and in the meantime Silas could collect champion horse level fees and do away with the animal before it somewhat less than championship qualities were ever discovered, and there were other reasons to be wary of him too, With Silas owning a stables as well as a horse dealership, many of the horses would be kept at the stables, with their young female owners often dropping in to look after them.

It is widely speculated that Silas, a convicted rapist, took advantage of them. At some time in the early nineteen fifties, Silas ordered George to break another horse's leg, but George refused. Having long grown tired of Silas's nefarious practices, he decided in that moment to strike out on his own. Soon after, he bought the Happy Day Stables in Norwood Park. Silas in turn expanded his business, buying the Idle Hour Stables in Park Ridge, with George now essentially set up as

a rival operation. On the afternoon of October sixteen, nineteen fifty five, three young boys fourteen year old Robert Peterson, thirteen year old John Schoeisler, and his eleven year old brother Anton Junior, set off from their home in Jefferson Park and headed to Chicago to watch The African Lion, a Disney documentary that had just been released at the cinema.

But the boys never returned home. Two days later, or three of their naked bodies were found in a ditch in the Robinson Woods, which just so happened to be a couple of miles down the road from Silas's idle Hands stables. Several local residents claimed to have heard screams coming from the direction of the stables the night the boys disappeared. Police made a cursory search at the property and spoke to a few stable hands working at the time they visited, but all denied knowing anything about what

had happened. In nineteen sixty one, George's daughter took the top prize at a local show horse competition, riding a horse that George had reared and trained. The win established George as the leading Jane brother in the business and drew immediate scorn from Silas. After years of festering resentment,

George was now stealing its business too. In response, Silas began a relentless campaign of hate against his half brother, involving everything from damaging property to thinly veiled death threats. Things only got worse for George the more successful his business became. But there was another reason, according to George's wife, Marian, that Silas had become murderously fixated on George, something to do with incriminating information that George had on Silas regarding

what he knew about those three dead boys. George wouldn't go public with the information, according to Marian, for fear of reprisal from Silas, especially since he was suspected of having informers that worked inside the police. Instead, he is said to have told his wife that he wrote it all down in a letter that was only to be

opened if Silas, ever succeeded in having him killed. It was around this time that pat Blow, Anne Miller, and Renee Brule began frequenting George Jane's tri Color farm in Palatine, a village on the northwest outskirts of Chicago. Being keen riders, they would likely have known Sheryl Lyne Rude two. By nineteen sixty five, the then twenty two year old Rude was one of George's top riders. She had also once ridden for Silas, but had left his stable after he

propositioned her for sex. On June fourteenth, not long after Rude had won a competition in Cincinnati, she was once again visiting the Tricolor stables, when George tossed her his car keys and asked her to move a trailer for him. Catching them, Rude jogged over to his Cadillac, pulled open the door, and got behind the wheel, placing the keys

into the ignition. She turned them. A huge explosion ripped through the vehicle, blowing out the windows and raising the car off the ground in a ball of fire and smoke. Cheryl Lynn Rude was killed instantly. Five days later, a man named Stephen Grod confessed to George that the bomb had been meant for him, and that when it didn't work, Silas paid him to shoot George. George informed the police,

and Silas was arrested for attempted murder. However, in March nineteen sixty six, when Grod came to take the stand, he was suddenly overcome with a strange bout of memory loss, remembering nothing of what he'd previously confessed to George. The case promptly collapsed. A few months later, the three young women went to Indiana June State Park and never came home. Did they, as some have speculated, see something at the Tricolor Stables that they were not meant to have seen.

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onmolecule dot com and save twenty percent with promo code unexplained. Again, save twenty percent with promo code unexplained at Onmolecule dot com. That's O N molecule dot com. By September nineteen sixty six, it had been two months since Pat, Anne, and Renee disappeared, and police had found no sign of them or either of the boats that they were said to have board

it on the day they went missing. With everything that had been found going on in the girls private lives, Sergeant Edward Burke of the Indiana State Police was certain of only two things that the women had not accidentally drowned at the beach, nor had they been involved in any boating accident. Since no boats or any other people near the water that day were declared missing, it seemed only reasonable to assume that the men who they joined

on the boats knew something about their whereabouts. Though the search of the beach had finished up months before, thousands of leaflets with pictures and details of the women continued to be printed up and distributed throughout the area. Harold blow Pat's father remained convinced the women had been abducted and most likely murdered, believing it was simply inconceivable that one of them hadn't found a way to let their

parents know they were okay. Keeping up his own investigation, He continued to fly back and forth over the Indiana June's area and shores of Lake Michigan in the forlorn one in a million hope that he might spot something to help find them. By nineteen sixty seven, George Jane was growing tired of running from his brother and having to watch over his and his family's shoulders wherever they went. When his two daughters got married that year, he paid

Silas not to cause any trouble for them. The payoff, along with the promise that he would quit competing in horse shows, appeared to do the trick, and an uneasy truce was established. George's paranoia, however, remained enough so that he had a transmitter secretly placed on Silas's car to alert him whenever his brother got too close. In nineteen

sixty nine, the transmitter stopped working. Realizing the battery had likely cut out, George sent someone to try and covertly replace it for him, Having snuck on to Silas's farm. The man, Frank Michelle Junior, was just in the process of swapping out the battery when he was spotted by one of Silas's guard dogs. Almost as soon as they began to bark. Silas was at the door with his gun, Spotting Frank fiddling with his car, he opened fire and

killed him. Enraged once again by his brother's actions, Silas approached Edwin Neffield, a police officer from Markham who'd worked for him in the past, a man on the inside, just as George had suspected, and asked him to arrange a hit on George, but to do it right this time. Neffeld recruited a man named Melvin Adams, who in turn recruited another man, Julius Barnes, to carry out the job. On October twenty eighth, nineteen seventy, a car parked up

across the street from George's home in Palatine, Illinois. While Adams got out and popped the hood to make it look as though something was wrong with the vehicle, Julius crept over to the Jane's household, where he heard laughter bubbling up from out of the basement window. Peeking through it, he saw the forty seven year old George sitting at a table playing cards with his wife Marian, and his

daughter and son in law. Julius aimed a gun at George's heart and pulled the trigger the family screamed at the sound of the gun blast and watched in horror as George stumbled to his feet, clutching at his shirt, where a flower of red was steadily blossoming. Then he

fell to the floor and died. A short time after George's murder, Marian discovered the stash of letters he'd been keeping in the event of his death, though she found nothing linking Silas to the murders of Robert Peterson and John and Anton Shusler, the three young boys found dead close to Silas's stables in nineteen fifty five. George had made a record at the numerous times that Silas tried

to have him killed. Marion later insisted that George knew more about the murder of the young boys, but have perhaps decided against exposing his brother because of the shame it would bring to his family, partly on account of the letters, and due to the statement of Melvin Adams, who was granted immunity and returned for his testimony. Julius Barnes, Edwin Neffelt, and Silas himself, along with one other acquaintance,

were all convicted for their part in George's murder. Then at some point down the line, a curious coincid students involving Neffield, who'd organized the hit on behalf of Silas,

is said to have come to light. According to one source, after Pat Blow, Anne Miller, and Renee Brule went missing, Neffeld apparently lodged an insurance claim for a boat matching the description of the one the women were seen boarding around noon on the day they disappeared, the inference being that Silas had arranged to have them taken care of, having possibly witnessed the failed attempt on George's life at the Tri Color Stables, with Edward Nefhfeldt perhaps once again

doing the dirty work. Nehfeld is alleged to have told his insurance company that the boat was destroyed in a fire, However this is not being confirmed. By nineteen seventy, with the women having been missing for four years, the case was effectively dormant. Pat's father, Harold, however, had refused to give up hope, and though the grief at his daughter's loss could be crippling, he continued doing whatever he could

to find her. Whenever the weight of it threatened to completely consume him, he would jump into his car and drive out to Chesterton, Indiana, to speak with Sergeant Burke. Although Burke had long since moved off the case, he made an effort to keep on top of any new information that came in, no matter how small. By then, he'd come to the conclusion that the women had staged their disappearance in order to escape the various problems in

their lives. Blow would often leave their meetings with a renewed sense of hope and optimism at the prospect of maybe one day seeing his daughter again, but the fog of grief was never far away. Returning the moment, he remembered just how unlikely it was the pat would not have got some kind of message to them by the Sergeant Burke retired the following year and took up a

security post in Saudi Arabia. Harold Blow and his wife moved to Florida, from where Harold continued to trade letters with Burke, discussing their various theories until the day he died. In the early nineteen seventies, the case of the missing women was taken over by Sergeant Michael Carmen of the Indiana State Police. While familiarizing himself with the case, he and State trooper Lou Weber came across an intriguing letter written from a self described psychic in Montana, claiming to

know where the women's bodies were located. It read, I visualize a cabin on Lake Michigan, not too far from where the girl's beach blanket was found. There is dark colored sand. There are rickety wooden stairs leading up from the beach to a cabin on a bluff with a broken lawnchair outside. Carmen discovered that the letter had never been acted on, and with no new substantial leads cropping up since Burke's retirement, he figured it was at least worth the hour or so it would take to have

a look. Handing the letter to Webber, the state trooper made his way to the Indiana June State Park. After parking his cruiser as close as he could to the shore, he continued the rest of the way on foot. After walking almost two miles east from the spot on the beach where the women had been sitting on that fateful day, he came across an area of dark sand. Looking up, he also spotted a crooked line of rickety wooden stairs leading up from the beach and at the end of

that an old, dilapidated cabin. When he spotted the broken lawn chair with the fabric torn out and flapping in the wind, he turned immediately and ran to the car. Webber returned to the beach an hour later, joined this time by Sergeant Carmen and two other officers. Over the next three days, the four of them dug and dug, turning over every grain of sand they could find in the cabin's vicinity, until eventually empty handed, they were forced

to admit defeat. The bodies of the women, if they had ever been there at all, were not there then. Silas Jane was released from prison in nineteen seventy nine after spending less than ten years in jail for arranging the murder of his half brother George. Despite regularly reporting a yearly income of only five thousand dollars, Silas somehow found the money to buy homes for each of his sisters,

as well as a string of new Cadillacs. When he eventually died in nineteen eighty seven, succumbing to leukemia, he was reported to be worth well over a million dollars, close to two and a half in to day's money. In the mid nineteen nineties, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and fire Arms looking into the disappearance of Helen Brack, a well known socialite also with ties to the horse industry, who went missing in nineteen seventy seven, stumbled upon something unexpected.

While interviewing informants regarding the bracch case, one let slip that a man named Kenneth Hansen confessed to them that he'd murdered those three young boys in nineteen fifty five, found near Silas's stable. Hansen, who would have been twenty two at the time, was an employee of Silas's who

worked at those same stables. At a subsequent trial, it was speculated that Hansen picked up the boys on their way home from the cinema in Chicago and drove them to Silas's ranch under the pretense of showing them the horses. Hansen was in the process of raping John and Anton Shusler when Robert Peterson caught him in the act. In

a panic, Hansome murdered all three of them. When Silas is reported to have found out what happened, no doubt, fearful that Hansen would expose his criminal activities and of what Hanson's crime would mean for the reputation of his stables, he helped Hanson dispose of the bodies and covered the whole thing up. This was the secret that George's wife, Marion believed George took to the grave and ultimately cost

him his life. There were rumors that Silas once confessed to a cell mate while in prison for George's murder that he knew where pat Blow, Anne Miller, and Renee Brule were buried. It is also said that sometime before he died, Silas told a sheriff that three bodies were buried under his home. Supposedly, plans were made to search Silas's property until the sheriff involved was killed suddenly in a farming accident. Neither of these claims have been verified.

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