John O’Brien Interview What Happened To Heidi Allen?

Co-author of “Scrapped”Justice And A Teen Informant the real story of Heidi Allen’s kidnapping (Black Rose Writing www.blackrosewriting.com)

It’s the biggest mystery in all of Central New York’s History.
What Happened To Heidi Allen?
Heidi Allen was an 18-year-old cashier working at the D and W Convenience Store in New Haven, New York on Easter Sunday morning in 1994 when she just disappeared.

Two brothers, Gary and Richard Thibodeau were arrested for the abduction of Heidi Allen.
Richard Thibodeau was found Not Guilty. His brother Gary was found guilty and spent 22 years in prison where he died.
Heidi’s whereabouts remain a mystery.

And now, Investigative Reporter John O’Brien and Defense Attorney Lisa Peebles have written Scrapped: Justice And A Teen Informant. The real story of Heidi Allen’s kidnapping (Black Rose Writing).

Q – John, just an observation, but this Heidi Allen case has been rather difficult to follow over the years because of all the names that are put out there.
A – Oh, yes. You need an index to follow it.

Q – People must have brought that up to you before then.
A – Yes, right from the beginning we knew, Lisa Peebles and I knew that it would be tricky to navigate the story telling. We did the best we could. We tried not to use every single name, but, there are a lot of names in there.

Q – I would guess this book took you years to put together?
A – Yes. Three years working together. And of course when we started off I wasn’t working in her office with her. I was a reporter. We started out working on the case, digging in when I was a reporter. Really it took about four years to do the book.

Q – Heidi worked at the D and W Convenience Store for 2 ½ years before Easter Sunday, April 3, 1994?
A – Yes. About two years she worked there. She was 16 when she started there.

Q – Do you know if anyone in Heidi’s family ever raised any concern about her safety working alone in a rural setting like that?
A – I don’t know of her family raising a concern like that working alone, no.

Q – And so Mary Duell was the owner of D and W, along with her daughter Kristine?
A – Daughter in law. I think Kristine was Mary’s daughter in law.

Q – They never took a step back and looked at that situation and said this is dangerous for one person to be working alone in a rural setting?
A – No one has ever said they looked back and thought that was a dangerous situation for Heidi. She shouldn’t have been left alone. It’s a good point. They probably felt that but they never raised it that I know of.

Q – It almost goes without saying that they didn’t have video cameras in stores then?
A – They didn’t in the store for sure. There was no video camera. No surveillance.

Q – CNYCentral.com had it on their website, about your book: “The book tells the story of the investigation into the disappearance and presumed murder of Heidi Allen in 1994.” Presumed. Does someone believe there’s a chance Heidi could still be alive?
A – So, that is unlikely. That is the way to say it. Presumed murder because her body was never found. There’s never been a trace to indicate that she ran away or that she’s alive. The family said she never would have done that. Everyone we talked to said she loved life. She was looking forward to helping other people. She had resumes made up for other jobs. It was a presumed murder, kidnapping and presumed murder is correct.

Q – Heidi wasn’t supposed to be working on Easter Sunday morning was she?
A – That’s right.

Q – She switched hours with a co-worker who wanted to spend more time with her children?
A – Yes we interviewed that co-worker. The customers were all talking about it the day or two before the kidnapping.

Q – Two days before?
A – Yeah. It was common knowledge. The story that the police put out was that no one knew about it, which is not true.

Q – Now see, that changes the question I was originally going to ask you, which was maybe the woman who was originally scheduled to work Easter Sunday morning would have been kidnapped.
A – Right, but because everyone knew about it, everyone knew it was going to be Heidi.

Q – That information could have been filtered up or down to anyone who would’ve wanted to cause harm to her.
A – Right. And there were a lot of regulars in the store the Friday night before Easter.

Q – John, Heidi was only 18 years old. What kind of valuable information could she have provided to law enforcement officials about drug dealing in Oswego, New York? It’s not like she was a high level member of a crime syndicate. Maybe someone just happened along; saw an opportunity an kidnapped her. It had nothing to do with her being an informant. Did anyone ever raise that possibility with you?
A –It didn’t really make sense. When the Thibodeau’s were charged that was sort of what the jury was left with, there was no motive. So, they kind of went with that. It’s strange. It would be strange to have someone randomly go in and grab a girl in broad daylight.

Q – But, not so strange. At last count I heard there were something like 200 serial killers on the prowl in the United States.
A – Wow. But, she did work as an informant and she was providing information to police. There are multiple people, I think three or four who described things that she was saying to them. She was afraid. It was getting more serious. She told one of her friends there was a guy, a coke head nearby and she was worried. She told her boyfriend she was worried. So, she was doing something. Her identity as an informant was revealed to the public in a way, the dropping of her index card by a deputy, a sheriff’s deputy who was in charge of her, right in the parking lot at the D and W. So therefore the bad people easily could have found out that she was an informant.

Q – Why didn’t the police put a guard in that store find another job for Heidi?
A – Right, yeah, they didn’t do anything to protect her. They didn’t even let her know that they had dropped the card. So, she was unaware and they did nothing to watch over her. She’s just a kid. I talked to a police expert and he said they would never use someone that young but, if they had to they would do it with the parents’ permission and they would have very close supervision of her to protect her, more so than an older informant.

Q – There is a witness, Christopher Bivens who saw Heidi being led into a van. But he did not tell that to police right away. Why didn’t he call police immediately?
A – Bivens waited a few days before he made that call and that was after a $20,000 reward is offered. He waited a week.

Q – And so you’re saying the motivation would have been the money?
A – Well, it could’ve been the money. But, he denied on the stand he wasn’t interested in money, but that clearly seems to be a possible motive.

Q – One of the things that is so confusing if you have two brothers charged with the kidnapping of Heidi. One brother is convicted and the other is set free.
A – Well, yeah. The difference between the two trials was in the prosecution of Gary, they had two jailhouse informants who claimed that Gary made incriminating statements in jail and those two informants were not allowed to testify at his brother’s trial because Richard didn’t make any admissions to them. So, that was the one big difference. Also, at Richard’s trial the jury learned that Heidi had a diary and that the Thibodeaus names never came up. She never wrote about the Thibodeau’s.

Q – Richard Thibodeaus van was searched by police and they found nothing to link him to Heidi. No evidence whatsoever.
A – Yeah. Nothing in there. No evidence, right. And they did a very thorough search. Nine bags of evidence and shipped it off to the FBI nothing came back showing that Heidi was in the van at all. If there was a struggle in that van obviously hair or clothing, all kinds of stuff would have been in there.

Q – Gary Thibodeau had a very odd look on his face when it was announced he was guilty.
A – You mean after it was announced?

Q – Yes. After it was announced.
A – Oh, yeah. I’ve watched a lot of verdicts come in. As a reporter you always watch the reaction of the defendant and I’ve never seen anything like that. He threw his head back. He was just blown away. Mouth open. He was clearly thinking he was going to get found not guilty. And there was no evidence. Just the informants really.

Q – He didn’t stand up. He didn’t pound the desk. He didn’t say “what?”
A – Yeah, like “what the hell just happened? How can this be?”

Q – What’s this about Heidi’s bracelet? It was found in her cousin’s mailbox 10 years after Heidi disappeared?!
A – Yeah.

Q – No one ever found out who put it in the mailbox?
A – No. The bracelet was such a bizarre twist that came out during the hearing, Gary’s hearing in 2015. Heidi’s cousin Missy told Lisa Peebles about it. She told how her and a friend; well first, she had her sister which is Missy and her sister were in a bar talking about the kidnapping. It was obviously the most important thing in their lives in talking about how Missy had given Heidi this bracelet for her high school graduation. Well, the other person in the bar was Michael Bohner who hung out at bars all the time. So, he may have overheard that conversation. Fast-forward to 2006, Missy finds that bracelet that she got for Heidi in her mailbox in an envelope that didn’t come through the U.S. Postal Service. It was just there. In an envelope. It was just so bizarre. It was a sign that someone was telling her that was from Heidi. That was the last piece of Heidi that ever surfaced from the kidnapping. Lisa then tried to get that information into the hearing and get Missy to testify but the judge wouldn’t allow it and it was one of many bizarre rulings from this judge Daniel King that hampered the case.

Q – Was the bracelet in a sealed envelope by any chance?
A – It was a sealed envelope but, it had no stamp on it.

Q – Would the FBI have been able to get any DNA out of it?
A – They might have but it wasn’t until 2015 that Missy told anyone about it and her reason for that was a little strange and you can sort of see it she didn’t want to upset the family anymore. They had issues in the family so she kept it to herself. But, the envelope is long gone. This is nine years later that Lisa (Peebles) finds out about it. It would’ve been a great thing to examine.

Q – And fingerprints too.
A – Yeah. They do get fingerprints to. It’s a good place to get them.

Q – She waited too long. That’s too bad.
A – And another side to that bracelet involving Bohrer is that he had these notes that he wrote when he was supposedly investigating the case and he told how he was working with the psychic who told him that she saw Heidi was kidnapped by three men and a woman and that Heidi hid a bracelet in the vehicle she was kidnapped in as a way to try and get help identify the kidnappers. And that’s in Bohrers’s writings which is just bizarre. The possible scenario is that he took that and held onto it as a souvenir and for whatever reason decided he wanted to let the family know that someone out there had that bracelet. In the end the judge didn’t want to hear anything about it.

Q – There’s this tape where Tonya Priest is talking to Jennifer Westcott. Tonya says that James “Thumper” Steen admitted to taking Heidi. The fact this tape exists admitting other people were involved in Heidi’s kidnapping means what? I ask only because a guy by the name of John Mark Karr falsely confessed to murdering Jon Bennett Ramsey.
A – Okay well this phone call just to be clear was set up by the police. Now, Tonya Priest came to them and told them what “Thumper” has said to her, the admission he made to her. So, they set it up where they were going to monitor the call, recorded it. Tonya was sitting next to a police officer. On the other end was Jennifer who had no idea they were listening in. She thought she was talking to a friend. It wasn’t like the guy in Thailand you’re talking about and called the police and claimed he did it.

Q – I’m not exactly sure how it went down, but he made an admission to somebody. He was brought back to the states from Thailand and it was determined he had nothing to do with Jon Bennett’s murder.
A – Okay but, what’s different here is not only was she talking to a friend but, she named three people, Steen, Breckenridge and Bohrer who it’s just the unlikely coincidence that those three guys, the same ones that were admitting to 14 other people that they were involved in the kidnapping of Heidi or the disposal of her body. So, it’s not just the call, it’s the people, the unrelated people who reported confessions from these same three guys. I think that’s pretty powerful.

Q – When I listen to that tape, if I were Jennifer I would’ve thought the questions were a little strange. It sounds like a set up. It doesn’t sound like two friends talking.
A – I disagree. It does sound like a friend. When you’re listening to it now, it does sound like it was set up. In the back of our mind we’re kind of making the connection. I think it did sound like a friend. The way she got her to talk was to make up a story, Tonya made up the story about her ex-husband being in prison and he’s going to use this information against me to take my kids away. So, she had a story that would make sense that she would make sense talking to Jennifer. It’s not like she called and said, hey, what can you tell me about the Heidi Allen kidnapping. She had a pretty good story and it seemed like Jennifer went for. She did go for it.

Q – What happened to Heidi could happen to anyone. That seems to be the main message here. No one is safe. No one should be working alone, without some kind of security in a rural setting. That comes out loud and clear.
A – Yes. It could happen to anyone. You’re right. People should not work alone. The other thing that could happen to anybody is what happened to Gary Thibodeau. He didn’t do anything. But, they decided he did. They just sunk their hooks into him and they weren’t going to let go. They weren’t going to look anywhere else. So, there’s two victims whose lives were ruined or taken in this whole tragic story.

Q – Is it true Richard Thibodeau is afraid to go out in public because he fears he will be arrested for the littlest thing?
A – He’s not that way anymore. In the beginning he probably was. But no, he’s not right out there. Even before these guys went to trial, they were talking to reporters all the time because they were innocent. That’s such an unusual thing for people charged with murder and kidnapping. But, getting back to his fear of going out, yeah, initially it was very hard for him to go out in public at all. His kids were young and they got razzed at school. So those were tough times. I think the community now knows he was acquitted, yes. So, at least back then they knew there wasn’t enough evidence. Now they know these guys didn’t do it.

Q – Had the focus not been on the Thibodeau brothers who would authorities been focusing on? The public certainly would have been demanding answers.
A – They had some leads. They knew about Michael Bohrer and they did no background checks on him to dig up his history of abducting women and running them off the road and following them home from work and grabbing them and shoving them into his car. They could’ve known that. To Lisa Peebles credit she dug that up herself. I know the DA (District Attorney) Oakes was surprised to hear about it. That’s their job and they failed. They knew about him. They knew his mail had built up for two weeks which was an indication that someone is gone, fled. They actually interviewed him back then, the FBI interviewed him but they didn’t do a good hard look at him.

Q – How soon did the FBI come into the Heidi Allen case?
A – They came in pretty soon but they did not take over the case. They were just helping out as were the State Police. So, the FBI had a behavioral, a criminologist, Clint Van Zandt who gave like a profile of the kidnapper kidnappers. So, they used him for that. They also did some surveillance to help with the investigation but, it was a Sheriff’s Department case. The State Police actually wanted to take it over right away because they’re much better equipped, better trained investigators, better access to a crime lab. But, the sheriff at the time Nellis had a long-running grudge with the top trooper in that area and he just wouldn’t let him do it.

Q – When James Steen was on the stand and was asked about this guy Roger Breckenridge and he said he would talk a lot but you never know if he was telling the truth. That would be a problem wouldn’t it?
A – Well yeah. Of course these guys lie all the time. They’re criminals. Steens is in prison for life for a double murder. Breckenridge is constantly in and out of jail. Their credibility is terrible. But the evidence is what you look at. The number of times they made admissions about kidnapping Heidi adds up. Why are they lying about that over and over to people? It just doesn’t make sense.

Q – Is it at all possible that somewhere down the road someone will come forward with information that will finally reveal what happened to Heidi?
A – It absolutely could. The problem is there’s no one willing to listen. If someone could come forward to me or Lisa, we could follow it up and take it to a different agency. Or, there is a new Sheriff up there and he had nothing to do with the Sheriff’s office when all of this was going on. Maybe he would listen.

Q – If new information came about, wouldn’t the federal government be the way to go?
A – It would have to be pretty strong evidence for the FBI to get involved at this point. My hope was that Steen who’s never going to get out of prison would just give it up. I wrote him a letter right away when I was a reporter. I said this is your chance to do something good. You’ve done some terrible things. He wouldn’t bite. I tried him again and again. And Bohrer , there was a moment in the hearing were Lisa Peebles was questioning him on the stand and he was talking about seeing the Where’s Heidi sign every day and he broke down. He was crying. Lisa wanted to keep asking why are you crying? The judge shut him down. We’re going to take a break. She’s always wondered, I’ve always wondered, was he about to confess? Why would the man be crying? He talked to me about what guilt does to people. I think it has weighed on him all these years and that may have been the moment that’s passed because of Judge King and the DAs office objected and the judge let him take a break. He never did talk about why he was crying.

Q – Maybe someone reading this interview will place a call to you or Lisa, or send you or Lisa and e-mail and once and for all this case will be solved. It could happen.
A – It could. Let’s get some justice for Heidi and for Gary (Thibodeau) even though Gary is gone and for Richard Thibodeau. I think it’s pretty clear to the public he had nothing to do with it, neither of them did. But let’s follow through and get some justice for Heidi.

Please, if you have any information that would s solve the Heidi Allen kidnapping once and for all, contact:

John O’Brien
Investigator
Federal Public Defender’s Office
4 Clinton Square, 3rd Floor
Syracuse N.Y. 13202
Website: nyn.fd.org
Office: 315-701-0080 Ext. 205
Cell: 315-459-1336
Fax: 315-701-0081

And/or:
Lisa Peebles – Federal Public Defender
4 Clinton Square, 3rd Floor
Syracuse N.Y. 13202
Office 315-701-0080
E-Mail: Lisa_Peebles@fd.org