On December 30, 1987, 20-year-old Marie Kline answered the door at her home near Elkhart, Indiana.

She never came back inside.

For years, her father Wayne held onto the sound of that doorbell, the sound of his daughter leaving the room, and the questions that followed.

This episode of A Heavy Weight follows Marie’s case, the investigation that stalled, the family that kept pushing, and the DNA evidence that finally gave them some answers.

Listen now wherever you get podcasts.

In September 2024, Indiana University student Gregory Gabler was arrested after a reported assault inside an on-campus dorm. He was originally charged with serious felony offenses, but in 2026, the case ended with a plea to felony criminal confinement resulting in bodily injury, six years of probation, a no-contact order, and no prison time.

In this episode, we break down the timeline, the plea deal, the survivor-centered questions this case raises, and why campus sexual assault cases often leave the public asking whether the legal outcome matched the harm.

Two young women. Two Minnesota roads. Two cold cases still waiting for answers.

In part one, we look at the unsolved homicide of Juanita “Wendy” Wear, a seventeen year old who was last seen at a party in Farmington in December 1976. She was reported missing on December 25, and nearly two months later, her body was found by juveniles in a construction area in Apple Valley. The public record is painfully thin, but the silence around Wendy’s case is part of the story.

In part two, we turn to JoAnn Bontjes, a twenty one year old beauty salon operator from Sherburn who disappeared after spending an evening with friends in Trimont in October 1975. Her car was found abandoned along Highway 4. The next day, her body was found in a rural ditch. Nearly fifty years later, new DNA testing has brought renewed attention to her case.

These cases are not known to be connected. But together, they ask us to sit with what remains after a young woman disappears: the roads, the rumors, the evidence, the unanswered questions, and the people still waiting for the truth.

In June 1987, twenty-two year old Anita Carlson was working the late shift at Pete’s Place West, a gas station and convenience store just outside Bemidji, Minnesota. Anita had recently graduated from Bemidji State University with honors and was building toward a future in broadcasting. But sometime after customers last saw her around 11 p.m., Anita disappeared.

The next morning, her car was still behind the store. Her purse was inside. The store was in disarray. Days later, Anita was found in a wooded area off State Highway 89. Her murder remains unsolved.

Two young men disappeared from South St. Paul on May 2, 1993. Eleven days later, Chad Birkeland’s body was recovered from the Mississippi River near Hastings. Todd Hanson was never found, and the case remains unresolved.

A woman works an overnight shift she wasn’t supposed to take.

Sometime between 3:10 and 4:30 in the morning, Toni Monette is stabbed to death inside a 7-Eleven in Mounds View, Minnesota. She’s found in the store’s back room. Nothing is taken. No clear motive is ever established.

More than 40 years later, the case remains unsolved.

A woman gets into a van at 3 a.m. and disappears.

Days later, Eden Young is found beaten to death in a quiet yard miles away from where she was last seen. Her clothing is discovered along a highway. Investigators later say her killing wasn’t random.

But no one is ever charged.

Eden Young wasn’t the only one.

In the early 1990s, multiple women connected to sex work in the Twin Cities were found dead — beaten, strangled, left in fields and along roads.

Advocates said there was a pattern.

Law enforcement wasn’t sure.

An 18-year-old leaves work to run an errand and never returns.

In August 1973, Teresa Osborne disappeared after picking up pastries from a bakery in Seymour, Indiana. Ten days later, her body was found in the trunk of her burned car in a remote wildlife refuge.

Investigators interviewed hundreds of people and followed countless leads, but no one was ever charged.

A detail uncovered months later suggests Teresa may have been afraid of “some man or men” before she vanished.

More than fifty years later, her case remains unsolved.

Seventeen-year-old Hailey Buzbee left her home in 2026 after months of online communication with a man she thought she knew. What followed exposed the realities of grooming and the gaps in a system still trying to catch up.

https://www.change.org/p/pass-hailey-s-law-pink-alert-and-mandated-grooming-awareness-education-in-schools?utm_medium=custom_url&utm_source=share_petition&recruited_by_id=5757cf30-e8a5-012f-1742-4040b91ba155

In 1993, Lola Fry went to a party in Indianapolis and never came home.

The people who were with her told police a story — but it’s one that has never fully made sense.

Lola disappeared along with her car. Neither have ever been found.