[Amanda] In late October of 2008, a 36-year-old mother of three failed to show for a meeting at her son’s school at 3:15 pm that was schedule to plan the class Halloween party and she appeared to have vanished without a trace. Her dark blue dodge Caravan would be found two days later by a hunter, abandoned on a trail past a gas well on Kortwright Road in Busti, about two miles from her home. What happened to her remains a mystery to this day, and as I researched her story, I kept find stories of other missing mothers… I’m Amanda Morgan, and this is New York’s Dark Side.
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[Amanda] When I started researching this episode, I quickly got invested, because what I didn’t expect was to find so many more stories of missing mothers and the story of a Jane Doe who has yet to be identified. For those of you that know me personally, this week has been bittersweet. I had the privilege and pride to watch my son graduate from high school this week, ending one chapter of life and preparing to move on to the next, even though I have been joking that it seems like every day the contents of that next chapter change, I know he’ll figure out his path. The women that we will talk about today, did not have that same privilege that I did. Their children did not get to have the joy of their mother cheering them on at so many of their life’s milestones. Instead, they’re left with a mystery as what happened to them. I’m left feeling the heart ache of their stories while adding additional names to my list for future coverage in upcoming episodes. These are stories of Corrie Anderson, Marquita Mull, Patricia Laemmerhirt, and the still unidentified Rails to Trails Jane Doe…
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[Amanda] Tuesday October 28th started out like a normal day for Busti resident 36-year-old Corrie Anderson. Corrie worked part time in the library at Jamestown Community College. On this day, she worked her shift at the library and got done at her usual time around noon. After work, Corrie stopped to see her boyfriend who worked at the Lake County Dodge car dealership that was on Washington Street at the time and left there between 1 and 1:10 pm. After leaving the car dealership Corrie stopped back at her house on Wellman Road in the town of Busti. What happened to Corrie from there is a mystery.
[Amanda] When Corrie failed to show up to her meeting at the school and didn’t pick up any of her children, the family notified police right away. This was completely out of character for Corrie, she was very devoted to her children. There was also a significant amount of concern from Corrie’s family that her disappearance may be a result of her estranged husband Ken whom Corrie had an order of protection in place. Corrie and Kenneth had met in 2000, marrying shortly after. Corrie had two daughters from a previous marriage. In 2001, Corrie and Kenneth would welcome a son. They been married for five years before their separation, when Corrie learned that he was still married to his previous wife. Kenneth was not happy about the separation and continued to try to reconcile. He would even go so far as to put a GPS tracker on her car. This is when Corrie sought the order of protection against Kenneth, which he would violate in 2007, the year before Corrie’s disappearance. Corrie had sent an email to a relative prior to her disappearance describing how Kenneth would try to make her feel insane and that he was trying to drag his feet on trying to get the terms of their separation worked out because he had “control issues”.
[Amanda] After calling the police to report Corrie missing, her family would go to her house. This solidified to them that something was wrong when they found that her van was missing but there was a shoe that she had been wearing that day lying at the bottom of the staircase. The mate to the shoe was not in the house.
[Amanda] It seems like from the start, Law Enforcement took Corrie’s disappearance very seriously. Member so Chautauqua County Sheriffs worked with both New York State Police and all the law enforcement agencies in the county to search for Corrie. They searched on foot and by air, using ATVs, horses, helicopters, and search dogs, but Corrie seemed to have vanished without a trace.
[Amanda] On Thursday October 30th, a hunter would find Corrie’s 2005 dark blue Dodge Caravan was found by a logger abandoned on a trail just past a gas well on Kortwright road. The van was well out of sight from the road, but its location was not far from Corrie’s house, only about a mile away. The van was taken to a lab in Batavia New York to search for any evidence that might help track down what happened to Corrie. They continued to search the area around where the van was found however the weather would not cooperate with them long and the search had to be called off as the New York weather dumped snow upon the region.
[Amanda] After Corrie’s van was found, law enforcement officials would question Corrie’s estranged husband Kenneth. They would also conduct a search of his home but if any evidence was pulled from his home, it doesn’t appear that it was released publicly.
[Amanda] In 2016, police would receive a reliable tip that sent them back to do another search of the area where the van was discovered. They launched a large-scale search, including the use of search dogs and metal detectors. The weather was also vastly improved from their prior attempts at searching the area and they felt that it was because of this that they located and secured some evidence, including Corrie’s keys and her other shoe.
[Amanda] Later in the year, on November of 2016, Kenneth Anderson would be accused of abducting his current wife from New York and sexually assaulting her. An article by Spectrum News, Kenneth and his wife were found at a Days Inn in Richmond Kentucky by police. His wife at the time had a restraining order against him, just like Corrie had, and he had violated it. His wife would report to police that Kenneth had assaulted her and threatened to lock her in a basement and take her children. He was charged with kidnapping, domestic violence, and 1st degree sexual assault. With this news, New York State Police began working with the law enforcement officials in Kentucky to see any potential new leads would come from this arrest. Much like Corrie had described in the email to a relative before her disappearance, Kenneth’s wife in 2016, would describe Kenneth as extremely controlling and that he had a history of assaulting her. Kenneth was held in a Madison County Detention Center. His current wife would return to New York and had plans to meet with New York State Police soon after according to an article in Huff Post. While Kenneth Anderson was and still is considered a person of interest in this case, he’s never been charged.
[Amanda] In a September 2019 episode of Unsolved, Senior Investigator on the case Jeremy Smith would state in an interview that while the case was currently cold, it may not stay that way for long as investigators had DNA evidence from Corrie’s house and the Dodge Caravan. Smith met with the Chautauqua County District Attorney Patrick Swanson to try to work on using new DNA technology to try to help separate the DNA to try to pin it to direct individuals.
[Amanda] On September 26, 2021, Corrie’s mother Vicki would get a call that human remains had been found off the Chautauqua Rails to Trails in Portland, New York by hikers in a shallow grave. Vicki would later say in a statement to Spectrum News that she had been driving at the time she received the call, and she had to pull over and just cried because of the emotions of wondering if this would be the time they found Corrie and all the memories that came to the surface along with that. Not long after receiving that call, she heard that investigators had found a second set of remains the following day as they were conducting a grid search from the area the first set of remains was found. There were concerns that the second set of remains was likely too new to be Corrie and the first set may have been too old. They were found about 10 yards from each other and according to an article in the Jamestown Port-Journal there had been no attempts to bury the second victim.
[Amanda] Unfortunately, that would prove to be true. The second set of remains that had been found would later be identified as 50-year-old Marquita Mull by the Mercyhurst Forensic Anthropology Department based on her dental records. Marquita had been a resident of Buffalo, New York and was last seen on June 15, 2021 in Buffalo- 60 miles away from where she was found. She was reported missing to authorities in Buffalo on July 18th. Investigators thought that because Marquita was a resident of Erie County thought it was possible the other victim was also from Erie County, though there is no concrete evidence that the two cases are connected. Marquita’s family would tell WKBW that Marquita had no known connections to the area where her body was found and that they believed that someone had potentially killed her in Buffalo where she went missing, and then dumped her body in Portland. Marquita didn’t have a car, making it incredibly unlikely that she would have been able to get there of her own accord. Marquita was a mother of three, just like Corrie. Her sister would state in that same article that while Marquita struggled with mental illness, she did a lot to help other people that were struggling, including helping to feed people with unstable housing and she did other things to help volunteer in the community. She would go on to state something that I found to be just a very powerful reminder towards anyone struggling with mental health issues- “Don’t judge her by her depression, when she did act out, when she did have problems, when she didn’t know how to control it, because depression is a mean thing”.
[Amanda] The first set of remains was described as that of an unidentified female victim between 15 and 35 years old. She was between 4 foot 11 and 5 foot 7 inches. They were able to use dental records to determine the woman was not Corrie Andrews or that of several other missing women. I’ve shared a flyer on the show’s webpage for this episode and on social media that was created by WNY Missing and Unidentified Person’s page. According to December 2022 article in the Times Observer, a name that had cropped up as a potential match for the Jane Doe was Patricia Laemmerhirt, who had been reported missing in April of 1976 by her husband, however the shirt found with the remains likely rules her out. The striped shirt was determined to be likely sold in the early 1990s which rules her out but gives law enforcement a potential timeline for how long the Jane Doe may have been buried in the area. It’s uncertain if Marquita Mull’s body being discovered in the area of the Jane Doe connects the two cases in any way. In January of 2022, it was announced that the remains of the Jane Doe had been sent to the FBI for more advanced DNA testing, the results of which have not been publicly released as of this episode. If you have any information on Marquita Mull’s disappearance or on the Rails to Trails Jane Doe, please reach out to investigator Jacob Stahley of the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s office at 716-753-4973 or you can send an email to UnsolvedChautauqua@sheriff.us . Marquita Mull’s family wants answers as to what happened to her. There is a Justice for Marquita Mulll Facebook page which I’ve linked in the show notes and webpage for this episode. I’ll also be sharing it on my social medias.
[Amanda] Patricia Laemmerhirt, who was 27 when she disappeared back in 1976 also has never been found. Patricia lived in Westfield, New York with her husband Ernest Laemmerhirt Junior on North Portage Street. In March of 1976, she told her brother Albert Sam that there were marital issues occurring between her and Ernest and he came to retrieve her from Westfield and took her to stay in Dunkirk, New York with their mother. She would later return to Westfield to stay with Ernest. On April 5th Ernest would call Patricia’s brother asking if he had seen Patricia, stating that he had not seen or heard from her since the two days earlier. Suspicious of Ernest’s story, Albert would break into the home to look for clues for her disappearance and would find that all her belongings, including all her clothes were gone. He would tell the Buffalo News- “There was not one sign that my sister had ever lived there. Her drawers were all empty. No clothes, nothing”. Ernest would report that he thought she may have gone to Chicago, Illinois. Like Corrie Anderson and Marquita Mull, Patricia was a mother, leaving behind two children. In 1993, Patricia’s brother Albert would get permission from and commission the cost of excavating the property that Patricia had previously shared with Ernest. While they were unsuccessful with finding Patricia, District Attorney James P Subjack would say in an article in the Buffalo News that the publicity that Albert continued to garner with his search for her was bringing new leads in their investigation. Unfortunately, there’s never been any evidence of a crime and without finding her remains, there’s not much for police to go on. The search of the property in 1993 did end up recovering some bones, but they turned out to be animal bones, likely pig or cow, left over from a time some butchering had taken place on the property. They also found a bread wrapper from 1974 though, proving that the concrete floor of the basement had been poured sometime after that. If you have any information on the disappearance of Patricia Laemmerhirt, please reach out to New York State Police-Fredonia at 716-679-1549.
[Amanda] We’ll end with the story that we started with… Corrie Anderson. Corrie’s mom Vicki is still searching for answers, telling The Post-Journal in 2021- “I guess my biggest thing is closure – I would like to know that. I’m to the point I just want there to be closure for all of us. I know whether she’s still here some place or not, she’s with the lord. I have a very strong faith and that’s helped me”. Jeremy Smith, the lead investigator back Corrie’s case is also very invested in finding answers to what happened to her. It’s a case that he has been involved with from the start and he wants to see it through. He urged anyone with information regarding Corrie’s case, even if it might seem small, to call New York State Police at 716-665-3114. At the time of Corrie’s disappearance she had chin-length blond hair. She has green eyes, is 5 foot 11 inches, and weighed about 170 pounds. She was last seen wearing wire rimmed glasses, black corduroy pants, and a black leather jacket.