Eric Haider

All witnesses purchase of interest, and suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now and true crime, and then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go Hello, Like Mother, Like Murder listeners. I am Rachel and I'm Heather. We are the hosts of Like Mother, Like Murder. We bring you the good, the badass, and the crime. Each week we bring you stories from missing and murdered, to survivors and women who empower you, and of course some mom talks sprinkled in. Check us out wherever you get your podcasts at Like Mother, Like Murder, and give us a follow on social media so that we can say Hi, Kay, love you, bye kay love you bye. Hi guys, Welcome to another episodisode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to talk a little bit about right now in true crime. I was trying to wait to record this because I know as soon as I record, things are gonna happen and then I'm gonna have to re record. But it is what it is at this point. If there is any updates. I will be sure to bring those to you, but let's jump to right now. In True Crime, they released the deposition that Roberta and Chris Laundry gave in the midst of everything going on with Gabby Potato's disappearance, their son, Brian Laundry, everything that happened, They go through it, and the deposition is long, long, long, I will say, pretty lies, and Alibis is doing a deep dive into it, so if you want more in depth, I would definitely go there and listen to her episodes that she's done on it. But in my opinion, I think it's all just a whole bunch of deflection on her part, art on her husband's part, and they just don't really take any accountability. They don't make sense when they say that yeah, Gabby, or they really call her Gabrielle more than anything. Gabrielle was close with us. She was like a daughter to us, but they didn't feel the need to ask questions when Brian called and said I'm coming home and Gabby wasn't with him, Like, you don't ask questions about that. That makes absolutely no sense to me. So the deposition was interesting, but in my opinion, it was just a whole bunch of deflection, but needless to say, it is out there if you are interested and want to go read it or check out Pretty Lies and Alibis because she has done her due diligence and gone through it and has recorded an episode on it. Next thing, I want to talk about Susan Smith, who is in prison for killing her two sons way back when inineteen ninety four by drowning them in a South Carolina lake. She is up for parole this year. In November, she is up for parole. She'll have her first parole hearing, I believe November fourth, and I think it'll be interesting to kind of see what direction it takes. I don't foresee her getting out. I know the boy's father and her former husband is going to be one of the people that is going to speak at the parole hearing, and he is a big, big proponent for keeping her locked up because she is an evil human and she has continued to show this while she's been in prison. She has not been an ideal prisoner. She's had like multiple different relationships with different prison staff and that has led to them being fired. And she's just overall not a good person, and she does not need to be out and about roaming amongst us. So I will definitely keep you guys updated on that. All right, last thing I'm going to talk about, which is probably going to take up a huge chunk of this episode, is the disappearance of an eleven year old girl from Livingston, Texas. Her name is Audrey Cunningham. She was last seen this past Thursday. However, I do believe that she might have been gone before that. But they're saying that she was supposed to be on the bus that Thursday, and her dad is offshore working. He had this friend of his that was living with him and was I guess in charge of Audrey and bringing her to and from and he is the one that dropped her allegedly off of the bus stop and she never even got on the bus, never made it to school. And there is a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of speculation surrounding this case. If Audrey was even around Thursday morning when he's alleging that he dropped her off, there is a lot of people coming out of the woodwork. This man is named Don Stephen McDougall, and he has a long as long as my arm wrap sheet. Never should have been allowed to have been around children, in my opinion, allegedly, but he has charges of like enticing a child, and the charges just go on and on and on and on and on. He has Swastika's tattooed on his body. We are talking about not somebody that you would want to have a meal with, much less somebody that you would want around your child. So, Audrey's mom was not an active person in her life. She had lost custody due to some drug use, alleged drug use. And there is a message thread between Stephen McDougall and Audrey's birth mother in the days and the day leading up to her disappearance where he was going to try to organize a meeting between Audrey and her birth mother, saying that Audrey's been asking about you, and it's very apparent and clear from the messages from Audrey's mom that she didn't even realize that Audrey knew who she was or wanted to have anything to do with her. Because it sounds like that side of the family, her father side of the family, has kind of allegedly brainwashed her towards her mother. It's a whole mess. No child should ever be put through this. But leading up to that, they're having this conversation, and then the next message that Audrey's mom gets is, hey, have you seen Audrey? Question Mark? Question mark, question mark. But she didn't ever have any contact with Audrey. She never met with Audrey. It's been a long time since she's seen Audrey. So what was he doing. Was he trying to create this alibi of, oh, she met with her mom and now she's missing kind of thing. I don't trust Stephen McDougall for a hot second, and I feel like Audrey was put in these situations living with this strange man, whoever the heck he is, and God knows what the circumstances surrounding her disappearance are. But I don't think it's good. I don't have a good feeling about it. And I just have a feeling that everyone is saying Thursday is the day that she went missing, but I think she potentially could have gone missing before that. When is the last time that somebody other than Stephen McDougall saw Audrey alive? And well, that is my question. So they also did find her backpack, and of course they are doing extensive searches of all the different bodies of water that surround that area. They have been moving from one to the next, to the next to the next, and it is really sad to see it all ongoing. Of course, Texas Equisearch has gotten involved and they are trying to assist as well into figuring out what is going on. Where is Audrey. They did arrest Stephen McDougall on separate charges, and I imagine he's probably bonded out by now, but I do feel like there's a lot going on here. He's been on social media saying I didn't do it, I'm not involved, I'm not this, I'm not that well. It's not looking too good for Steven, But I also know that investigators are probably keeping a lot of things pretty tight lipped and they're trying to get down to the bottom of what happened. So I am going to continue to keep you guys updated on this case. It has kind of taken over my social media. It is everywhere, and there's a lot of people speculating online. There's of course a lot of people who are coming out of the woodwork saying all the bad things that Steven McDougall has done over his lifetime to them, to people he knows, and it really just makes you very aware of you really need to be super super aware of the company that you keep, who you let around your children, who you let have access to your children, who you let around you because a lot of the times people just aren't good people, point blank, they're just not good people. And there's nothing wrong with putting those boundaries up and cutting them out of your life. Because when something like this happens, that's what it always comes back to, Oh, this person has been arrested for AB and C and they have a long rap sheet, or this person did this to me back in nineteen ninety two, and this person tried to kidnap me back in nineteen ninety six. It always comes out, and there's always people that are coming out and saying, Hey, this person is not a good person. They never should have been let around kids. So I am going to keep you guys updated on the whole Stephen McDougal of it all, and hopefully we get some resolution in Audrey's case and we figure out what has happened and there can be some little bit of closure for her family. I don't really know what to think about it, it sounds like this family from top to bottom is toxic and they did not protect Audrey in any way, shape or form. So going to keep you guys updated on that, and we are going to go ahead and get started with today's episode. All right, we are jumping into a brand new case today. This one actually came across as a Dateline cold case spotlight and I was intrigued, saved it, and then once I started researching it, I could not not cover it. So today we are going to be talking about the mysterious death of a thirty year old man named Eric Hater. Eric Conrad Hayter was born June ninth of nineteen eighty one in Bismarck, North Dakota, to his father Edwin and his mother, Mary Ellen. He attended and graduated Century High School and attended Bismarck State College in North dak Eric was born pretty premature. He was also born with a heart murmur and also was deaf in one ear, but that once extremely tiny baby eventually grew into a six foot tall man. His family described him as incredibly giving and caring, and his mom gave a particular example that one time he literally gave the shirt off of his back to somebody else that needed it for a job interview. That's just the kind of person that Eric was. His mother, Mary Ellen is quoted as saying in an interview with Dateline, he may have had a weak heart medically, but he had a heart of gold and he cared so deeply for others. Quote. Despite all of this, despite all of the heart issues that Eric had, he didn't let it slow him down. He did have multiple strokes while he was in his twenties, and eventually he ended up having to have a pacemaker put in when he was twenty seven. But despite all of this, he continued to live his life and he was kind of a jack of all trades. He had jobs in food service, motel service, computer operations, dirt work, lumbermill, and also as a pipe layer. In his free time, he enjoyed traveling, socializing, reading, playing darts, playing pool and cards, fishing, working out, and all types of water activities. So despite all of his medical complications and issues, Eric was the kind of guy that could not be stopped and could not be slowed down. He had two children and was engaged to be married to a woman named Jody. So we are going to Now fast forward to three years after Eric had his pake snake replacement. We are on May twenty fourth of twenty twelve, and this was a Thursday, and it was right before Memorial Day weekend. So Eric had just started a new job working with Kofel Plumbing and Heating and this company and the project that Eric was working on at the time of his death was a sore main project. Now, I always say that word weird. Swer is the word I'm trying to say. I do not say it correctly. I cannot say it correctly. Swer, I'm going to spell it out. So he was working on that project, and that project was completed off of Highway twenty two in Dickinson, North Carolina. So this was pretty far from Bismarck. So the group of guys that were working on this project usually carpooled together, so there was a pickup spot and a drop off spot in Bismarck and then they would all go to the work site in Dickinson. So that day of May twenty fourth, Eric's mom dropped him off and it was pretty typical for Eric's fiance Jody, to meet him back at the pickup spot in Bismarck around six thirty pm to pick him up and bring him home. But for whatever reason, on this May twenty fourth of twenty twelve, Eric did not show up at the pickup site. Jody of course attempted to call him, but his phoney immediately went to voicemail, which she thought was odd, very unusual for him to not a have his phone on or b return her calls or pick up, so that was definitely out of the ordinary. Pretty quickly, authorities got involved because nobody could get a hold of Eric and nobody knew where Eric was, which was very out of the ordinary for him just to not be around and to disappear. So the Dickinsons Police Department was notified and they started their investigation. So that day, Jody, Eric's fiance said that she had talked to him earlier in the day around twelve oh four pm. She said everything seemed normal, and that was pretty much around the time that the crew had returned from lunch, and they of course contacted the job foreman who is named Jack Bettenhausen. He is the person that was kind of overseeing the project, and they contacted him to figure out kind of a timeline of what happened. They had returned from lunch around noon. Eric talked to Jody at twelve oh four and everything seemed to be going fine. About fifteen minutes later, the crew that was working with Eric did not know where he was. They could not locate him, and a couple of hours later they decided to call a cell phone, but again it went straight to voicemail. The job site foreman really couldn't offer a whole lot in regards to Eric's state of mind because he said Eric was generally pretty quiet and didn't really interact with them that much, so he didn't really have any insight on what Eric's state of mind was on that day. However, he did bring up that Eric had requested a vacation for the Memorial Day weekend, but they told him that it was going to be denied and that he was not going to be able to take that vacation, and the foreman kind of insinuated that maybe Eric was upset about the denial and maybe he just decided to walk away from the job site and basically just leave his job. So despite not being able to find Eric, they really didn't think much of it. They went ahead and left that day and they had Eric's lunchbox, his backpack, and his paycheck that had been distributed that day to all of the workers, but by morning there was still no sign of Eric, and Eric's fiance very much said there is no way that Eric would ever, ever, ever walk away from a job. He is not that kind of person. He doesn't know how to quit, and he had a very very strong work ethic. It is very unlike him to do that. So the family immediately knew something was wrong, but the people that Eric was working with didn't seem to think that him not being around was really any big deal. It basically was like he had vanished into thin air. Eric, of course, was reported missing on May twenty fourth, and they start interviewing all of the coworkers about the happenings of the day, the different jobs that they were doing, and they found out that Eric was last seen in and out of one of the trenches. He was working to seal a pipe and collecting tools. That was just part of what he was doing that day, and the rest of the crew in the midst of him doing that was to start backfilling the different holes, and there was another man whose job was to be in the loader moving dirt and that process lasted about five minutes. So every one of the people that were working that day told the police that they didn't realize that Eric was gone until the foreman had tried to reach him on a cell phone around one point thirty. During the initial search, they were able to ping Eric's phone and it was pinged in the area of the job site. So they pretty much did a extensive ground and air search that lasted for a few weeks trying to figure out where Eric could be. From the very beginning of this, in agreeance with Eric's Beyonce Jody Mary Ellen, Eric's mom, knew that her son did not walk away from the job site, knew that he would never do something like that. Five days after Eric had disappeared, the police began excavating the construction site based on the directions that the crew gave them. Basically, they're looking to see if Eric was buried alive in this area that they were working. One of the detectives on the case is quoted as to have said, we had been told and led to believe that the portion of the ditch had been back filled prior to Eric's disappearance. End quote. We had already went further than the information we did have at hand end quote. But in all of their searches that they did, they came up empty handed and there was still no sign of Eric. So of course he is based another person who has just pretty much vanished into thin air. But his family never gave up the fight and they wanted to keep Eric's story out there, keep Eric's name out there. Of course, they were hopeful that he was still alive, but as time passed it got less and less hopeful that Eric was going to be found. The family went on to hire a private investigator, and the company was called Discovery Investigations, Incorporated, and they basically had discovered that there was going to be some additional excavation in the area where Eric disappeared. They were going to be adding some drainage functions, so they had a canine come out to the site, and this canine had a hit in this one particular area. So they went ahead and convinced this new company that was coming in to dig where the canine had made the indication that there might be something more there. So they started digging and they discovered a red glove that had human remains in it and upon further excavation, they revealed the rest of Eric's remains and immediately the Dickinson Police Department was contacted. And I should note that this happened May twenty first of twenty fifteen, so this was a whole three years after Eric had vanished from this construction site. This family was working so hard behind the scenes trying to figure out what had happened to Eric and keep the story out there. Hired the private investigator, which eventually led to Eric's remains being found at the site that they had been at they had previously dug not even ten feet away from where Eric's remains ended up being found. They were able to positively identify the remains as those of Eric due to some medical records, distinguishable tattoos, and also his wallet and cell phone, and different clothing that he was found to be wearing. According to the lead sergeant, Eric's body was facing a water pipeline, which was the same one that the crew that Eric was working on that day was installing at the time that he disappeared, and he was in a squatting position and bent over to the interior side of the body. And they went on to say that Eric's body was positioned in a manner that was consistent with dirt being pushed on top of it while it was seated near the pipe, or while it had been standing and had been forced to the ground end quote. His hard hat was also positioned underneath the face, like it had been knocked off when the dirt hit the body. Awful and tragic to even think about that, Literally, you're being buried alive, I can't even imagine. So they transferred Eric's body to the University of North Dakota Forensics Lab and they were able to officially mark his time of death because he had a pacemaker. It was marked as twelve nineteen PM, which was literally only five minutes after his coworkers had began backfilling the trenches, and the cause of death was ruled to be undetermined, of course, because there's not really an official way to say what exactly happened leading up to that. Of course, the news of Eric's body being found absolutely devastated his family, but even more so, they really wanted answers as to what exactly happened to Eric that day. All of the different people that Eric worked with that day seemed to indicate that Eric was upset about not getting vacation and time off, and that he simply just walked away from the job, and that just really didn't make sense to the family. They thought that maybe something had happened accidentally, but that it was kind of covered up, which if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. That's kind of how this looks in my opinion. Allegedly, so they kind of were upset that they were misled to think that, oh, he was upset about this, so he just walked away. And the whole time, if they knew he was buried alive and it was like an accidental workplace type of situation, they weren't coming forward and really saying what they knew. Jko Fell, who was the owner of Kofel's Plumbing and Heating, had told the Grand Forks Herald newspaper that he was very sorry to hear that the body that they located was Eric, and he also said that his company and the different employees who were working with Eric that day were cooperative with the police and they did not have any further comment after that Dateline attempted to contact them and it was unsuccessful. The main sergeant that was working the case told Dateline that they did a thorough investigation and it was conducted by the Dickinson Police Department, and they did present it to the Stark County State Attorney and they declined to file any criminal charges. And he said that the decision not to file charges does not mean that he doesn't believe a crime was committed, just that the nature of the event makes it difficult to develop probable cause for a case and it is unclear who is responsible. And with that, they decided to go ahead and close the case. They did add that anyone who may have information that could help reopen Eric's case could call the police department. So, of course the family is frustrated. They want answers, They want to know what exactly happened to a that day, and he had two kids. It is so sad and tragic that this had to happen. His daughter, Brin was twelve when her dad went missing, and for three years she had no idea if he was still out there, if he was alive. And when they found Eric's body three years later, she was fifteen. She was at the construction site and she said it was really really hard, but she doesn't regret it. And she said that she said hello and goodbye to him all at the same time, which, oh my god, breaks my heart. Into The family runs a Facebook page Justice for Eric Hater. I will be sure to link it in the show notes. But that is the story of Eric. It is really hard for me to try to wrap my head around this one because obviously he was a hard working, normal guy. It very well could have been a workplace accident, but there is absolutely no way that that crew of people and the person who was supervising them didn't realize that something had gone majorly wrong and that Eric had essentially been buried alive. There is no way that that occurred. And it's really sad that they tried to paint Eric in a light of like, oh, he must have just gotten upset and walked away, when they knew very well that that more likely than not wasn't the case, and they just tried to come up with this story of, oh, he was upset because he got denied vacation time. That's crap. It makes no sense to me. And if that is the case where they truly didn't know, it really makes you kind of wonder there like protocols expect on these different sites. When they have all these different men working, the different things that they are required to do, and the different safety measures that are in place to protect them, it really scares you that that could happen to anybody and you don't even know it. That is scary. His family very much wants somebody to be held responsible for Eric's death, as I think they should be. I do believe in agreeance with the family that there was some type of cover up here, and it's really sad and unfortunate that it had to come to this because it never should have happened in the first place. Eric never should have ended up in that predicament and that situation being buried alive, and it never should have gone three years without anyone knowing what happened to him. They never should have left that site without completely covering all of their bases and trying to figure out where Eric was, what happened Eric. It just completely breaks my heart that this happened to him and his family had to go on for three years not knowing what happened, and then finding out what did happen and knowing that they were so close the whole time, terrible, sad, tragic. His mother, Mary Ellen, says that she is not done fighting for her son, and as long as she's alive, she's going to keep fighting. I'm going to post the Facebook page. They are asking anyone with information about Eric's case to call the Dickinson Police Department at seven oh one four five six seven, seven five nine. Somebody out there knows something. Somebody out there knows what happened. Probably one of those men that were working that day. I think eventually one of them is going to have a change of heart and come forward with the truth, because I can never ever ever keep something like that to myself, knowing even if it was an accident, Knowing that I know something like that happened and I wasn't forthcoming with information to help the family get peace, it is just so so sad. So that is the story of Eric cat. It is a little bit off the regular path that I do for my episodes, but it's unsolved, and I do feel like there are people that need to be held responsible for this, and I feel like it's important that we tell Eric's story because the case technically has been closed until more people decide to come forward. So let's put the pressure on those people to come forward and tell the truth about what they know that happened that day in May of twenty twelve. I thank you guys so much for listening. This is officially episode one hundred and one, and I am looking so much more forward to the next ninety nine episodes. I am so grateful to have all of you here with me and listening weekly and following along on social media. And if you enjoy the podcast, please rate it, subscribe to it, and share with all of your friends. We are out here trying to get justice for all of these unsolved cold cases that do not get a lot of attention. That is what we're here for. So I appreciate you, and I hope you guys have a fantastic week coming up. Bye.