Part 1

July 2, 1966. It was one of those Chicago summer days where the heat didn’t just sit on you; it pressed down, heavy and suffocating, like a wet wool blanket. I’m Renee. I was 19 years old, married for just 15 months, and I felt like I was drowning long before I ever stepped foot near the water.

My friends, Ann Miller and Patricia Blough, felt it too. We were young, we were supposed to be in the prime of our lives, but we were all carrying secrets that weighed more than the humid air hanging over the city. We needed an escape. We needed the wind in our hair and the sound of waves to drown out the noise in our heads. So, we piled into Ann’s car, leaving the grime of the city behind for the golden sands of the Indiana Dunes.

I remember staring out the window as the skyline faded, clutching my purse tight against my lap. Inside, tucked between a compact mirror and a stick of gum, was a letter. A letter addressed to my husband. It was the hardest thing I’d ever written. I wrote that I was leaving him. I wrote that he cared more about his cars and his friends than he did about me. I didn’t know if I would actually give it to him that night. Maybe I just needed to write it down to feel real. Maybe I just wanted to disappear for a little while.

I didn’t know how prophetic that wish would be.

Ann was driving. She was 21, the oldest of us, and usually the level-headed one. But that day, she was nervous. She was three months pregnant, and in 1966, an unmarried girl in that situation didn’t have options. Not safe ones, anyway. There were whispers of a “procedure” she was looking into, something hush-hush across the state line. She was scared, but she was trying to hide it behind a pair of oversized sunglasses and a bright smile.

Then there was Pat. Patricia. She was tough, or at least she acted like it. But I had seen the bruises. Four months ago, her face had been swollen, a dark purple mark blooming on her cheek. When I asked, she mumbled something about “syndicate people.” The horse stables where we all boarded our horses—it wasn’t just a place for riding. It was owned by men with dangerous names like Silas Jayne. Men who burned down barns for insurance money. Men who made people vanish. Pat knew things she shouldn’t have. She was jumpy, constantly checking the rearview mirror.

We arrived at the beach around 10:00 AM. It was packed. Thousands of people, colorful umbrellas dotting the sand like confetti. We found a spot, laid out our blankets, and tried to be normal. We splashed in the water, we laughed, we ate hot dogs. For a few hours, the fear lifted. We were just three girls soaking up the sun on a holiday weekend.

By noon, the sun was high and blistering. That’s when we saw it. A boat.

It was a sleek, white vessel with a blue interior, about 16 or 18 feet long. It had three hulls—a trimaran. It cut through the water smoothly, drawing the eye. The man driving it was handsome, deeply tanned, with dark wavy hair. He looked like a movie star, or maybe just the kind of guy who knew how to have a good time. He brought the boat close to the shore, the engine idling with a low, rhythmic purr.

He waved. We waved back.

He called out to us, his voice carrying over the sound of children playing and waves crashing. He offered a ride. Just a quick spin on the lake to cool off.

I looked at Ann. She shrugged, a playful grin tugging at her lips. I looked at Pat. She seemed to relax for the first time all day. Why not? What could happen in broad daylight, surrounded by thousands of witnesses? We left everything on the blanket. My purse with the letter. Our street clothes. Our shoes. We wouldn’t need them. We’d be back in twenty minutes.

We waded into the cool water, the sand shifting beneath our toes, and climbed aboard. The vinyl seats were hot against our skin. The man smiled—a charming, practiced smile—and revved the engine.

As the boat pulled away from the shore, the people on the beach got smaller. The noise of the crowd faded into a dull hum. I looked back at our blanket, a tiny patch of color on the vast sand. A sudden, cold shiver went down my spine, despite the heat. I touched my wrist, realizing I’d left my watch behind too.

We were moving fast now, the wind whipping our hair across our faces. But instead of turning parallel to the beach for a scenic cruise, the nose of the boat stayed pointed toward the horizon. Toward the deep water.

“Hey,” Ann shouted over the wind. ” shouldn’t we turn back?”

The man didn’t answer. He didn’t turn around. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

I looked at Pat. The color had drained from her face. She wasn’t looking at the water; she was looking at the man’s neck, at a small tattoo or scar—I couldn’t quite see—and her eyes widened in a recognition that was pure terror. This wasn’t a random stranger. This wasn’t a joyride.

The shore was just a thin line now. The water around us wasn’t bright blue anymore; it was a dark, churning navy. We were alone. Completely, utterly alone.

And I realized, with a sinking dread in the pit of my stomach, that I would never deliver that letter to my husband.

Part 2

The engine roared, a constant, deafening drone that made conversation difficult. At first, the speed was exhilarating. The wind tore at our hair, whipping strands across our faces like stinging lashes. We were cutting through the waves of Lake Michigan, bouncing hard against the surface. Every impact sent a jolt up my spine, but I smiled because Ann was smiling, and Pat was leaning back with her eyes closed, soaking in the spray.

But time has a way of warping when you’re out on the water. What felt like ten minutes stretched into twenty, then thirty. The shoreline, which had been a comforting strip of beige and green, was now just a hazy gray line on the horizon. The thousands of people at the Dunes, the noise of the families, the safety of the crowd—it was all gone.

The man driving the boat didn’t speak. He stood at the helm, legs braced against the chop of the water. He was handsome in that sharp, dangerous way—dark wavy hair slicked back by the wind, skin tanned to the color of old leather. He wore a confidence that felt less like charisma and more like armor.

I leaned forward, tapping Ann on the shoulder. “Ann,” I shouted over the engine. “Where are we actually going?”

Ann adjusted her sunglasses. She looked nervous now. Her hands were gripping the side of the boat so tight her knuckles were white. She leaned in close to my ear. “It’s okay, Renee. He’s… he’s taking us to the place. For the appointment.”

My stomach dropped. The appointment. The pregnancy. I knew Ann was desperate. In 1966, finding a doctor to “take care” of a problem like hers was illegal and dangerous. She had whispered about a contact, someone who knew a guy in Indiana who operated out of a secluded spot near the water. A “floating clinic,” she had called it.

I looked at the man again. Was he the doctor? Or just the ferryman?

“Pat knows him?” I asked, looking over at Patricia.

Patricia Blough was staring at the man’s back with an intensity that scared me. Pat wasn’t like us. She ran in circles that Ann and I only brushed against—the horse people. The stables. It sounded glamorous, but the underbelly of the Chicago horse circuit was dirty. It was run by the Syndicate. Men like Silas Jayne. I had seen the bruise on Pat’s face months ago. I knew she was terrified of something, or someone.

Pat caught me looking and crawled over, the boat rocking violently. Her face was pale, her lips trembling.

“That’s not the abortion guy’s nephew,” Pat whispered, her voice barely audible over the motor. “Renee, that’s not who Ann thinks it is.”

“What?” I asked, panic rising in my throat.

“I’ve seen him before,” Pat said, her eyes darting to the man at the wheel. “At the stables. He works for Si. He’s a… he’s a cleaner.”

“A cleaner?”

“He fixes problems,” Pat said, her voice cracking. “We have to get off this boat.”

“Get off?” I looked around. “We’re in the middle of the lake, Pat! We can’t just walk home.”

The boat suddenly banked hard to the left, throwing us against the vinyl seats. The engine pitch changed, dropping from a roar to a throaty idle. We were slowing down.

Ahead of us, bobbing in the chop, was a larger vessel. It looked like a houseboat, or maybe a converted cabin cruiser, anchored far from the shipping lanes. It looked deserted. The paint was peeling, and the windows were dark.

The man turned around for the first time. The charm was gone. His eyes were flat, devoid of the warmth he’d shown on the beach. He looked at us like we were cargo.

“Ladies,” he said, his voice smooth but cold. “End of the line. The Doctor is waiting.”

Ann looked relieved. “Oh, thank God. Is it… is it safe?”

The man smirked. “Safe as houses, sweetheart.”

But Pat wasn’t moving. She sat frozen, staring at the man. “You’re Ralph,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “You drive for the Syndicate.”

The man’s smile vanished. He reached under the console of the boat. The air suddenly felt electric, charged with a violence I hadn’t recognized until it was too late. He pulled out a heavy object wrapped in an oily rag. As the cloth fell away, the black metal of a p*stol glinted in the afternoon sun.

“Smart girl,” he said to Pat. “Too smart. That’s always been your problem, Patty. You see too much. You talk too much.”

Ann screamed. It was a short, sharp sound that was swallowed by the vastness of the lake. She scrambled backward, tripping over my legs. “What is this? I just want the procedure! I have the money!”

“Shut up,” the man snapped. He waved the g*n toward the houseboat. “Get on the cruiser. Now.”

My mind was racing, trying to make sense of the nightmare. This wasn’t about the abortion. Or maybe it was, and that was just the bait. This was about Pat. It was about the things Pat had seen at the stables—the insurance fraud, the horse kllings, maybe even the bmbing that had k*lled Cherie Rude the year before. Pat was the target. Ann and I… we were just collateral. We were loose ends.

“Please,” I stammered, thinking of my letter in the purse back on the beach. Thinking of my husband. I didn’t mean it. I don’t want to leave. I just want to go home. “I won’t say anything. I don’t even know who you are.”

“Get. On. The. Boat,” the man commanded.

He forced us to climb from the small trimaran onto the deck of the houseboat. The water churned dark and deep between the two hulls—a black abyss waiting to swallow us. I stepped across, my legs shaking so badly I almost fell.

The deck of the houseboat was silent. There was no doctor. There were no nurses. There was just the smell of gasoline, old fish, and something metallic—like copper.

As we huddled together on the deck, the man tied off the small boat and hopped aboard. He wasn’t alone. The cabin door opened, and another man stepped out. He was older, heavier, wearing a butcher’s apron that looked disturbingly out of place on a boat.

“These the three?” the older man asked, wiping his hands on a rag.

“Yeah,” the driver said. “The loudmouth, the pregnant one, and the stray.”

The stray. That was me.

Pat grabbed my hand. Her grip was iron-hard. “Renee,” she whispered, tears streaming down her face. “I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

“What do we do?” Ann sobbed, clutching her stomach.

“We swim,” Pat whispered. “On my signal, we jump.”

I looked at the water. It was miles to shore. We were strong swimmers, Ann and I, but Pat… Pat was terrified. And there were men with g*ns.

“We can’t outswim a b*llet,” I whispered back.

“We have to try,” Pat said. Her eyes were wild. “Because we aren’t leaving this boat alive.”

The driver raised the w*apon. “Inside. All of you.”

We were heralded into the cabin. It wasn’t a clinic. It was a kill room. The windows were covered with thick tarps. The floor was covered in plastic sheeting. In the center of the room was a simple table with straps.

The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. There was no abortionist. There was no medical help. The entire trip—the casual meeting on the beach, the boat ride—it was a trap set by the Chicago Syndicate to silence Patricia Blough. And because Ann and I were with her, because we had seen the man’s face, we were part of the cleanup.

I thought of my purse sitting on the sand. The sun would be setting soon. The park rangers would be walking by. Someone would find the keys. Someone would call my dad. But it would be too late.

“Who goes first?” the older man asked, picking up a length of heavy rope.

The driver looked at us, his eyes lingering on Pat. “Save the loudmouth for last. She needs to know what happens when you cross Si Jayne.”

He pointed the g*n at Ann. “You. On the table.”

Ann froze. She couldn’t move. She was paralyzed by a terror so deep it shut down her body.

“No!” I screamed. I don’t know where the voice came from. I lunged forward, not thinking, just reacting. I grabbed a heavy glass ashtray from a side table and swung it at the driver.

It was a pathetic, desperate attempt. He caught my arm easily, twisting it until I heard a snap. Pain exploded in my shoulder. He shoved me backward, and I fell hard onto the plastic-covered floor, gasping for air.

“Feisty,” he sneered. He aimed the g*n at my head. “I hate feisty.”

“Wait!” Pat screamed. “Don’t touch her! I’m the one you want! I’m the one who talked to the Feds! Let them go! They don’t know anything!”

The driver laughed. It was a dry, hollow sound. “Oh, Patty. You know the rules. No witnesses.”

He cocked the hammer of the p*stol. The sound was deafening in the small cabin.

“Say your prayers, ladies,” he whispered.

And then, the shooting started.

Part 3

The sound of a gunshot in a confined space isn’t like in the movies. It doesn’t echo; it slaps you. It’s a concussion that sucks the air out of the room, leaving your ears ringing with a high-pitched whine that drowns out your own screaming.

The first shot hit Ann.

She didn’t even have time to cry out. One moment she was standing there, hands over her stomach in a protective instinct for a baby that would never be born, and the next she crumpled. She fell onto the plastic sheeting, a dark red bloom expanding rapidly across the chest of her swimsuit.

“Ann!” I screamed, crawling toward her, ignoring the agony in my broken arm.

Pat was moving, too. The chaos had given her a split second of opportunity. While the driver was distracted by Ann falling, Pat launched herself at the older man—the one in the apron. She was fighting like a wild animal, scratching at his eyes, kicking, screaming. She knew this was the end, and she wasn’t going to go out begging.

“Run, Renee!” Pat shrieked, her voice tearing at her throat. “Get out!”

The driver turned the g*n toward Pat, but the older man was in the way, grappling with her. They crashed into the table, sending surgical tools—fake props for a fake clinic—clattering to the floor.

I scrambled to my feet. The door. The cabin door was five feet away. If I could get to the deck, if I could jump into the water…

I lunged for the handle. My fingers grazed the brass knob.

Bang.

The second shot tore through the wood of the doorframe, inches from my head. Splinters sprayed into my face. I flinched, stumbling, and the driver was on me. He grabbed my hair, yanking my head back so hard I thought my neck would snap. He threw me against the wall.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” he hissed. His eyes were wide, fueled by adrenaline and the detached cruelty of a man who had done this before.

I slid down the wall, gasping. I looked over at Pat. The older man had pinned her down. He was heavy, suffocating her. She was thrashing, but she was losing energy.

“Why?” I sobbed. “We didn’t do anything!”

The driver walked over to me, looming tall. “You picked the wrong friends, sweetheart. You were in the wrong place. That’s just bad luck.”

He looked over at Ann’s body, then back to the older man. “Wrap her up. We need to weigh them down before the sun sets.”

“We aren’t done yet!” the older man grunted, holding Pat down. “This one’s still fighting.”

Pat stopped struggling for a second. She turned her head, her cheek pressed against the plastic, and looked at me. Her eyes were filled with a sorrow so deep it felt like the bottom of the lake.

“Tell… tell them it was Si,” she wheezed. “If you… if you make it…”

She knew I wouldn’t make it.

The driver walked over to Pat. He looked annoyed, like he was dealing with a stubborn piece of machinery rather than a human being. “Si sends his regards, Patty.”

He raised the weapon again.

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch. I heard the shot, and Pat’s struggling stopped. The silence that followed was heavier than the gunfire. It was the silence of a tomb.

Now it was just me.

I huddled in the corner, shaking so violently my teeth clattered together. I thought about the letter in my purse. Dear Tim… I thought about the fight we had that morning about him spending too much time in the garage. It seemed so stupid now. So incredibly meaningless. I just wanted to see him one more time. I wanted to tell him I loved him.

The driver turned to me. He looked tired now. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by the mundane reality of the cleanup.

“Don’t worry,” he said softly, almost gently. “It’ll be quick.”

He didn’t raise the gn this time. He nodded to the older man. “Don’t waste the bllets. Use the rope.”

The older man grabbed the length of thick hemp rope from the table. He walked toward me. I tried to kick, I tried to scream, but my voice was gone. My body had given up.

He looped the rope around my neck. It was rough and smelled of oil.

“Hold still,” he grunted.

As the rope tightened, cutting off my air, my vision started to tunnel. The edges of the room turned black. I saw the sunlight streaming through a crack in the tarp—a thin beam of golden light filled with dancing dust motes. It was beautiful.

I thought of the beach. The sand between my toes. The cold water.

I thought of the boat ride. The wind in my hair.

I thought of my mom.

The pressure in my head built until it felt like it would explode. My lungs burned. The darkness rushed in, swallowing the cabin, the men, and the bodies of my friends.

The last thing I felt was the boat rocking gently beneath me, like a cradle.

Darkness.

Then, water. Cold, rushing water.

I wasn’t breathing, but I could feel the cold. I felt the weight of something heavy tied to my ankles. I felt the sensation of sinking. Down. Down. Down.

The light from the surface grew fainter, turning from gold to green to a deep, impenetrable blue.

I drifted past Ann. She was floating peacefully, her hair fanned out around her face like a halo. I drifted past Pat. She looked small now, the fight gone from her.

We descended into the depths of Lake Michigan, into the freezing dark where the pressure holds you tight. We settled into the silt at the bottom, hidden from the world.

Above us, the boat engine started up again. The propeller churned the water, a distant buzzing sound that slowly faded away as they drove back to the world of the living.

They left us there. Three girls who just wanted a day at the beach.

The fish came. The currents shifted. The seasons changed.

Winter came, and the ice locked the lake in a gray prison. Spring came, and the ice melted.

We waited.

We waited for the police divers. We waited for the sonar. We waited for someone to find us.

But the lake is vast. It is an inland sea, and it keeps its secrets well.

Part 4

Fifty years is a long time to wait in the dark.

From down here, in the silence of the deep, time moves differently. We watched the seasons change by the temperature of the currents. We felt the vibrations of the search boats in those first few weeks—the frantic churning of propellers as the Coast Guard and the volunteers crisscrossed the water. They were so close sometimes. We wanted to scream, to send a bubble of air up to the surface to say, “We are here! We are right here!”

But the dead don’t speak.

We watched the investigation unfold from the other side. We saw the park ranger find our belongings on the beach two days later. He gathered up my purse, Pat’s sandals, Ann’s clothes. He didn’t know he was holding the last artifacts of our lives.

My heart broke—or the ghost of it did—when I saw my father call the ranger station. I saw the panic in his eyes when he realized my car was still in the parking lot. I saw Tim, my husband, reading the letter.

He cried. He crumpled the paper in his fist and wept. He didn’t understand. He thought I had left him. He thought I had run away to start a new life because of a silly argument. For years, he wondered if I was out there somewhere, maybe in California or Florida, living a life without him. He didn’t know that I never left Indiana. He didn’t know that my last thought was of him.

The police tried. They really did. But the Syndicate was good at what they did. Silas Jayne, the man Pat was so afraid of, was a ghost in the system. He intimidated witnesses. He burned down evidence. He killed his own brother to secure his empire.

We watched as the theories spun out of control.

Some said we drowned. But we were strong swimmers, and three bodies don’t just vanish without a trace in a drowning accident. Some said we were kidnapped by a “sex ring.” Some said we ran away to join a commune.

The truth was simpler, and far more brutal. We were inconvenient.

Years passed. The 1960s turned into the 70s. The fashion changed. The cars changed.

Silas Jayne went to prison, but not for us. He went down for conspiracy to murder his brother, George. While he sat in his cell, people started talking. Witnesses who had been too scared to speak before began to whisper.

They talked about the “Horse Syndicate.” They talked about the hitmen. They talked about the “cleaners.”

They talked about a man named Ralph.

In the 1990s, a new generation of detectives opened our file. They looked at the faded photos of three smiling girls. They looked at the report about the “three-hulled boat” seen by witnesses. They connected the dots that Pat had seen in her final moments.

They found the stables where the b*mbing happened. They found the link between Pat and the illegal horse killings. They realized that Ann’s pregnancy was just a convenient lure, a way to get Pat isolated on the water.

But justice is a tricky thing when the perpetrators are dead or dying. Silas Jayne died of leukemia in 1987, taking his secrets to the grave. The man on the boat—Ralph, or whoever he really was—disappeared into the wind, another phantom of the criminal underworld.

They dug up driveways. They searched ranches. They scanned the lake bottom with high-tech sonar.

They found shipwrecks from the 1800s. They found old cars dumped for insurance fraud. But they never found us.

We are still part of the Indiana Dunes now. We are the whisper in the wind when the sun sets over Lake Michigan. We are the sudden chill you feel when you swim out too far.

Sometimes, I see families on the beach. I see young girls laughing, putting on sunscreen, taking selfies with devices I don’t understand. I want to warn them. I want to tell them to hold their friends close. To never get on the boat with the handsome stranger. To forgive their husbands for the small things, because you never know when the last time you see someone will be the last time.

My letter to Tim is gone now, lost to time or evidence lockers. But if I could write one more, it would be this:

Don’t look for us in the fleeing. We didn’t run. We didn’t leave you. We were stolen.

We are the Indiana Dunes Three. We are Ann Miller, Patricia Blough, and Renee Bruhl.

And we are still waiting to come home.

The water is cold, but the memory of the sun on that July day keeps us warm.

Epilogue: The Cold Case

To this day, the disappearance of the Indiana Dunes Three remains one of the most haunting unsolved mysteries in Illinois and Indiana history.

Kenneth Hansen, a man connected to the Silas Jayne crew, was later convicted for the 1955 murders of three young boys—a crime that shared shocking similarities in its brutality and disposal methods. Many detectives believe Hansen or his associates were the men on the boat that day.

In recent years, amateur sleuths and cold case units have looked at the possibility that the women were buried on one of the sprawling horse ranches owned by the Syndicate, rather than dumped in the lake. But without bodies, there is no DNA. Without DNA, there is no closure.

The families have aged. Parents have died without knowing the fate of their daughters. Husbands have remarried, though the question always lingers in the back of their minds.

If you go to the Dunes today, the beauty is breathtaking. The sand is soft, the water is blue. But remember us. Remember the three girls who stepped onto a white boat and sailed into a mystery that has lasted more than half a century.

Don’t let our story be washed away by the tide.