Still Missing: Rethinking the D.B. Cooper Case and Other Mysterious Unsolved Disappearances (8 page)

A few months later, after receiving no responses from the show, Lisa finally convinced her mother to clear her father’s clothes out of her closet. Jackie had kept Dick’s shirts and slacks on hangers in the closet since the day he disappeared, seventeen years earlier.

“He’s not coming back, mom, and if he did, this stuff wouldn’t be in style anymore anyway.” Lisa said to her mother, considerately.

Though Jackie gave away, sold and donated most of Dick’s clothing, she never did really move on. Nor did she give up hope that Dick would return to her one day. She never remarried. She really never dated, either. She knew that Dick was the love of her life, and there could never be room for anyone else.

In the late 80s, Lisa found herself living in Murfreesboro, Tennessee with her partner, Karen and daughter Aryn, who was elementary school age at the time. Lisa’s soon to be sister-in-law happened to be a bill collector at a local hospital, and had access to people’s financial information and credit reports.

On a whim, Lisa asked her to run her dad’s social security number and check to see if there was ever any activity on his social security account or if see if there was ever any credit activity under her dad’s name. She reported that nothing showed up. There was no financial activity on anything related to Dick Lepsy from the day he vanished until the present. Again, the small glimmer of hope in Lisa’s heart was quickly extinguished, as she expected, and she resigned herself to move past this latest experience.

Two days later, there was a sharp knock on Lisa’s front door. When she opened the door she was greeted by two men in dark suits and sunglasses, who Lisa describes as looking very professional. Their suits looked expensive. One of them had a purple tie, and Lisa thought that was “wild.”

One of the men, the one who appeared to be the lead, asked, “Are you Lisa Lepsy?”

Lisa responded hesitantly, “Yes, I am.”

The suited man countered, “May we come in for a moment?”

Quick on her feet, she asked for some identification and the men whipped out their wallets quickly and flashed Lisa their I.D. and put them away just as quickly, not allowing Lisa to get a good look at them.

For a brief moment, Lisa thought the men in black suits were there to tell her they had found her father. For a brief moment, the glimmer of hope in her heart returned. She felt that kind of hope in the days after her father vanished, when her father’s station wagon pulled into the driveway and she thought her father was driving, and when waiting to hear of her father’s credit report in the days previous.

“We are investigators for the John Hancock Insurance Company. Did you find your father.”

“No, did you?” Lisa responded incredulously.

“No,” the slightly taller man, and clearly the leader, tersely replied.

Lisa’s heart sank. She was disappointed once again. It was like losing her father all over again.

The men in black suits explained that they saw activity on her father’s account and they were sent here to investigate that activity. “We traced that activity back to a bill collector at a local hospital. What relationship is she to you?”

Lisa said, “Well, she is my partner’s soon to be sister-in-law and I asked her to check on my dad to see if there was any information about him out there. I did it on a whim, really.”

The lead man said aggressively, “Well, we’ve already been to the hospital and talked with your friend the bill collector.

Lisa got the distinct impression that the taller man in black was trying to push her buttons, while the quiet one, the slightly shorter one, studied and gauged her responses. That’s an investigative technique that would take a fair amount of training.

The lead agent then said, “I’m Charles Mitchell, this is ‘so and so.’ We saw activity on your father’s account and I flew out from Chicago and picked up my partner in Detroit, then we flew down to Nashville and drove here to Murfreesboro to investigate this activity.”

The agent then glared at Lisa and pointed toward her chest and asked once again, “Are you sure you haven’t found him?”

Lisa timidly, almost shamefully, responded, “Yes, I’m absolutely sure I haven’t found him.”

Mitchell responded, “Okay, that’s all we need.” The agents quickly started to turn to leave.

Quick on her feet, Lisa stopped them and asked, “Do you have a card or something?”

Mitchell swiftly pulled out a business card and flipped it towards her. As soon as Lisa pulled the card from his fingertips, the two men in black suits turned, walked away, got in their non-descript dark sedan, and drove off. As quickly as they arrived, the men in black suits vanished, never to be seen again.

Lisa was freaked out, to say the least. These guys intimidated and confused her. And topping that off with the cascade of emotions that the subject of her missing father brought up, Lisa was understandably shaken by the whole ordeal.

She grabbed the phone immediately and called her partner Karen, who was at work. Karen could tell she was very upset as she nervously recalled the events that just happened. Just prior to Lisa’s call, Karen had received a call from her soon to be sister in-law, who said that the same two agents stopped by her work and scared the crap out of her. They interrogated her in the same intimidating manner as they did Lisa, got their answers, and were on their way.

Over the next few weeks, the incredibly odd incident gnawed at Lisa. Something wasn’t right. She intuitively knew something about those agents in black suits was wrong. How did they know a credit check was performed on Dick Lepsy? Why would they be monitoring the activities of Dick Lepsy? John Hancock paid $7,500 on a $10,000 life insurance policy and made Jackie Lepsy sign a document that if Dick was ever proven to be alive, she would have to repay the entire amount. Besides that, the statute of limitations for insurance fraud was five years in Illinois, and six years in Michigan. The insurance settlement was paid a decade before this incident!

A few weeks following the agents visit, Lisa pulled out the business card of agent “Mitchell” and studied it closely. On the upper left hand of the card was the name of the lead agent, Charles J. Mitchell. That seemed legit. It was followed by the acronym: FLMI. FLMI stood for Fellow Life Management Institute, a life insurance industry accreditation. That seemed reasonable enough. Below that “Director,” and below that, “Representing the Home Office”

The column on the right of the card stated: “John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company,” just like the agent said. Below that was the agents’ department: “Special Activities/Central.” Below that was the address and phone number of John Hancock Insurance Company and on the bottom right hand of the card was the “John Hancock” logo. The card appeared official.

Lisa’s curiosity got the best of her and she called the number on the card. To her dismay, the phone number was disconnected.

She then looked up the number of the John Hancock Corporate Headquarters and called. She was relieved when a John Hancock service representative answered.

“That sounds really strange to me, can you fax me the card?”

A couple days later the representative of the insurance company called back and told Lisa that there was no record of a Charles Mitchell ever working for or working with John Hancock Insurance, and that John Hancock didn’t even have a “Special Activities/Central” department. Furthermore, the voice on the phone explained that that is not how John Hancock would investigate a situation such as this. To top it off, the voice on the phone said the insurance company wouldn’t investigate a claim this old, for such a small amount of money. After she hung up, Lisa was puzzled, and remains puzzled to this day. Just who were the mysterious men in black?

Lisa called her mother and told her of the incident and Jackie was deeply disturbed. “Why would the insurance company be interested in Dick? The statute of limitations had long expired and the settlement wasn’t for that much money.” Jackie was just as mystified as her daughter.

By the early 1990s, Jackie had found her groove as a registered nurse and worked at Mercy Grayling Hospital, just a few blocks from her longtime home on Maple Street. She never remarried, nor did she really date. Raising her children single-handedly had kept her very busy, as had going back to school and getting her nursing degree. But deep down in her heart, she knew that Dick was the love of her life. He was the only one she could spend her life with. Something happened to him, something that kept him from reaching out to his family, his children. No one knew what that something was, but if Dick was alive, he would have been in touch at some point.

Dick had been gone nearly 25 years by now. In a conversation between Jackie and her sister Mary Kay, the subject of psychics came up, particularly a psychic in Traverse City with whom Mary Kay was familiar by the name of Madame Melody.

“You’ve got to go see her!” Mary Kay insisted.

Jackie did just that. She called and set up an appointment at the shop on Front Street where Madame Melody worked, and went to see her the following week. After introducing herself at the reception counter, Jackie followed Madame Melody back into the reading room, sat down and made herself comfortable.

Madame Melody sat across from Jackie and looked her over. One of Jackie’s rings caught her eye.

“That ring: you’re not the first owner of that ring, are you?” Madame Melody asked with certainty. “That ring is very old. That ring has a lot of history.”

Jackie explained, “My husband bought this for me when we were first married. He found it at an estate sale in Chicago. It’s very old, indeed.”

Right after they were married, Dick went to a large old home for an estate sale of a very wealthy woman in the Chicago area. He loved looking at antiques, jewelry and trinkets at estate sales and antique shops. He found the unique ring in the deceased wealthy woman’s jewelry box and bought it for Jackie.

Madame Melody inquired, “Is your husband a spirit?”

Jackie responded truthfully, “I don’t know.”

“Your husband is a spirit, and he’s standing next to me right now, and he’s telling me to tell you something. He won’t let me do anything until I tell you this. He wants you to know that it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t leave. Somebody killed him and put his body in a car, drove to the woods in the middle of Kalkaska, and set the car on fire. He wants you to know that he didn’t leave you. He didn’t leave your children. He loves you and it wasn’t his fault.

Jackie was flabbergasted! She nearly fell out of her seat. How could Madame Melody know this? After Jackie drove back home to Grayling, she called Lisa and told her, “I went to see the ‘hoodoo voodoo lady,’ and this is what she said…!”

Jackie gave a surprised Lisa the details of what Madame Melody had told her. After their conversation was finished, Lisa pondered what her mother had said.

“For the first time in my life, I actually considered that someone could have murdered my father,” Lisa would later say. “I had always thought that maybe he killed himself or went someplace to start a new life. I was haunted by the question of why wasn’t I a lovable enough child for my father to even say goodbye to.”

Jackie eventually retired from Mercy Grayling Hospital, and got to spend time with her grandchildren. She was even blessed with some great-grandchildren. She stayed in her house on Maple Street, the same house she bought with Dick in the 60s, until the end of her life.

When Jackie’s health began declining, she found herself on the receiving end of the care she had provided for so many as a nurse. Her family rallied behind her and tried to make her as comfortable as possible. A few weeks before her passing, the children approached Jackie to discuss her funeral plans. They asked if she wanted Dick’s name on her headstone. She did. saying, “Yes, I loved him so much. He was the love of my life.”

Family photo of Dick and Jackie Lepsy with their children,
Lisa, David, Chris and Richard

She felt that Dick had in fact died on the day he disappeared. When Jackie was on her deathbed, Karen joked with her and said “Jeez, Jackie, you’re gonna find out what happened to Dick and you’re not gonna come back and tell us!” Jackie laughed.

Jacqueline Sue Lepsy passed away on January 28, 2012. She was buried at the Elmwood Cemetery in Grayling. Her name is carved into the right side of her headstone. Carved into the stone on the left side of the headstone is the name Robert Richard Lepsy. The date of his death is October 29, 1969. He never had a memorial service. He never had a funeral.

Did Dick Lepsy flee his stressful life, leaving his car in the airport parking lot and his family in Grayling to fly off into oblivion? Where did he fly off to? Was Dick Lepsy murdered, a victim of a professional hit, or was he a victim of random violence and his car staged in the airport parking lot to cover up the crime? Did Dick Lepsy leave his car in the Airport parking lot and wander off to commit suicide? If so, where is his body?

Who were the men in black? What did they want with Dick Lepsy? What did they know? Dick Lepsy, where are you? Dick Lepsy, who are you?

On October 29, 1969, a man about six feet in height, weighing around 180 pounds, with dark brown hair and brown eyes and wearing a raincoat and loafers disappeared without a trace, leaving his family behind, and leaving his car in an airport parking lot. All’s he had with him was the clothes on his back.