The murder of Bonnie Haim

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On Christmas Morning of 1992, 23-year-old Bonnie Haim opened presents in her Jacksonville, Florida home on Dolphin Avenue alongside her 3 ½ -year-old son, Aaron. Her husband, Michael Haim, captured these precious moments on video as Aaron excitedly tore through the wrapping paper. Tragically, less than two weeks later, Bonnie suddenly vanished.

After she went missing & some of her belongings turned up under suspicious circumstances, it had been little Aaron who became his mother’s voice. At only 3 ½-years-old, he painted a very dark picture that pointed straight at his father. Sadly, at such a young age, his accounts were inconsistent, meaning that his version of events hadn’t been enough to lead to an arrest.

As the years continued to tick by & Aaron became an adult himself, he no longer had any memory of his mom nor the details of what led to her disappearance that he’d spoken about so many years before.

Moving forward to 2014, nearly 22 years after she disappeared, Bonnie’s story came full circle when Aaron began doing renovations in the backyard of his childhood backyard. Here, he stumbled upon evidence that brought every dark bit of evil that was once hidden, into the light.

When Bonnie went missing in early 1993, she & Mike had been married for five years. They both worked at Bernie’s Tool & Fastener Service, a construction supply company owned by Mike’s paternal Uncle Bernie & his wife, Eveann. While Mike served as the manager, Bonnie handled the company’s accounts while also serving as the IT person. According to Eveann, Bonnie fit in seamlessly with all of her co-workers & their bond naturally strengthened as they worked together throughout the years.

Bonnie came home from work at about 7:30 pm on Wednesday evening, January 6, 1993, twelve days after Christmas. Although she had plans to go to Eveann’s house at 8 pm to finalize plans for a friend’s baby shower, she called Eveann at 8:30 pm to let her know that she was no longer able to come.

According to Eveann, Bonnie was upset & crying as she explained that she & Mike were having a discussion & she just wanted to stay home. Eveann offered to come over or call her back later to check on her, but Bonnie assured her that she would be fine. This was the last time that anyone outside of Mike ever saw or heard from Bonnie.

The following morning, Thursday, January 7, 1993, Mike called a co-worker to let them know that Bonnie had left the previous night & neither of them would be coming in that day.

That same morning, a maintenance worker from the Red Roof Inn five miles from Bonnie’s home, found her purse in a dumpster behind the motel near Jacksonville International Airport. Her purse held more than a thousand dollars in cash, credit cards, keys as well as a photo ID. After it was secured, police were called to the scene.

Since the responding officer knew Bonnie & Mike as well as Eveann & Bernie, he called Eveann to ask if she knew where Bonnie was. After explaining the circumstances of how her purse was found in a random motel dumpster, she & Bernie drove over, arriving just after 8 am. Mike & his dad were already there, in a room speaking with detectives.

When Eveann & Bernie were led to the room to meet them, they saw Bonnie’s purse on the bed with all of its contents laid out. Eveann couldn’t help but notice that Mike seemed far more focused on why his wife had been carrying so much cash with her, rather than where she might be or what may have happened to her.

Based on the money left behind, it was clear that robbery had nothing to do with whatever was going on.

Both Bonnie & her car were still missing at this point & Bernie immediately believed that something terrible must have happened to her. He & Eveann were aware that Mike had been both verbally & physically abusive toward his wife. During an argument at work, the abuse became physical when Mike intentionally slammed Bonnie’s hand in a car door.

After speaking with Mike, they gave him her purse & instructed him to go back home while they began an investigation, starting at the motel. The motel’s security guard mentioned seeing a man standing on the second floor balcony who seemed overly interested in what was going on down by the dumpster, however, he’d checked out before Detective Robert Hinson was able to speak with him.

The security guard also recalled seeing someone who matched Bonnie’s description, a young woman with curly brown hair, brown eyes & a small stature, going into a room on the second floor.

Mike told investigators that after he & Bonnie had gotten into an argument the night before, she’d stormed out of the house at about 11 pm, driving off in her car. When she still wasn’t home by 3 am, he called his mom, Carol, asking her to come to his house to watch Aaron so he could go out in search of his wife. According to Carol, her son came back about 45 minutes later & although he hadn’t been able to find Bonnie, he didn’t report her missing that night.

Those who knew Bonnie were sure that she would have never willingly abandoned her young son despite the turmoil in her marriage. Her best friend told investigators that Bonnie had been actively planning on leaving Mike & she was going to take Aaron with her. When they’d spoken on the phone the night before, just as Eveann had indicated, Bonnie was distraught & crying & she told her friend she would speak to her in the morning.

According to Bonnie’s sister, when they went out Christmas shopping together, Bonnie told her that her marriage was over. In preparation of leaving her husband, she had opened a secret bank account in her own name, arranging for the statements to be sent to her at work so that Mike wouldn’t find out. When he did manage to somehow find out, according to Eveann, he’d been enraged so Bonnie closed the account.

Her friends indicated that she remained steadfast in her plans of leaving Mike. She’d given money to a friend for safekeeping & had been able to save about $1,250. She was able to put down a deposit for her own apartment & she enrolled Aaron in a new preschool. She planned to leave Mike on January 23 when he was away on a business trip.

Since the motel where Bonnie’s purse was found was so close to the airport, detective Hinson thought to search the parking lots there. That same day, investigators found Bonnie’s 1992 Toyota Camry in the long-term parking lot. While one lone key to the car was found in her purse, the car’s secondary key was found at the couple’s home.

They theorized that maybe Bonnie had flown somewhere to take a break from the stress in her marriage, but there were no indications that she’d taken any flights in between when she went missing on Wednesday night & when her car was found on Thursday.

When the car was processed, investigators noted that the driver’s seat was positioned farther back than what would have been comfortable for Bonnie’s 5’1” stature & was more in line with someone of Mike’s height. They also found a well preserved shoe print on the driver’s side floor mat that was a men’s size 10, the same size that Mike wore. It was also a match to the rare Nike shoes that he owned. The print was left behind from a mixture of sand & plant material that matched what was found on the bottom of his shoes.

While police concluded that the print had been left by the last person to have driven Bonnie’s car, her father, Robert Pasciuto, didn’t feel this was significant. When he was later interviewed for an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that covered his daughter’s case, he said that if someone were to look in his wife’s car, they would also find his shoe print which doesn’t mean he’d ever done her any harm.

However, Bonnie was missing, her purse had been thrown into a dumpster with a significant amount of cash inside & her car had been left at the airport despite the fact she hadn’t taken a flight.

According to Bonnie’s three sisters, Liz, Veronica & Michelle, Bonnie had married Mike, her high school sweetheart, on September 12, 1987 when she was 18-years-old. At the time, she was so happy as she viewed him as the man of her dreams. Two years later, they welcomed their baby boy into their lives & Bonnie instantly took to motherhood.

When Detective Hinson went to the Haim house to look for any signs of foul play, he found nothing in or outside the house despite the use of luminol. Investigators, family & friends searched around the vicinity of the motel as well as the airport where Bonnie’s purse & car had been found while Mike made media appearances, saying that they refused to give up hope in finding her.

Through the investigation, Detective Hinson learned that Bonnie had had a brief affair. When the man in question came down to the station for an interview, he was cooperative, describing their interaction as a one-night stand. He passed a polygraph test & was quickly eliminated as a suspect.

Since there was no question that Mike & Bonnie had been fighting the night before she vanished, Detective Hinson wondered if maybe Mike had snapped after she told him that she was leaving him & taking Aaron with her.

Based on the picture that was coming together, he felt sure that Mike had done something to his wife. Bonnie had been unhappy in their marriage & was in the midst of preparing to leave him. They were arguing that night, her car’s seat was pushed back, his shoe print was in her abandoned car & everyone remained adamant that she would have never willingly left her son behind had she secretly fled.

In an attempt to uncover the truth, Detective Hinson arranged to have a child psychologist interview 3-year-old Aaron since he wanted to determine if the young boy had been witness to anything. Two days after his mother vanished, social worker Brenda Medders spoke with him.

During their conversation, Bonnie’s mother Patty & Mike’s Aunt Eveann were also there to provide the boy comfort. A few hours into their visit, Aaron began opening up, telling Brenda that his daddy shot his mommy. When she asked him what he shot her with, he told her a gun. When she asked him where she was shot, he pointed at his stomach. When Brenda asked Aaron what his mommy had been wearing, he whispered, red blood. He also told her that it happened at nighttime.

Based on the way he described what happened, Brenda had no doubt that Aaron had been in the room when his mom died.

Bernie & Eveann Haim also believed Aaron as they knew that Bonnie would have never abandoned her son, but surprisingly, Bonnie’s mom & dad, Patty & Robert Pasciuto, believed that their son-in-law was innocent.

Although Patty had been there for part of Aaron’s conversation with the social worker, she hadn’t been present during the damning parts. The interview wasn’t recorded & Patty believes that her grandson never made these statements since she didn’t believe that Mike was capable of harming her daughter.

Bonnie’s father Robert also wasn’t convinced by what their grandson had told Brenda, questioning his credibility as Aaron had also said that his mom’s car was in a lake, which wasn’t true. Both he & Patty believed that their daughter had willingly left. During the Unsolved Mysteries episode, Robert argued that every year, thousands of women surprise their families when they suddenly leave.

Although Detective Hinson believed that Mike had murdered his wife, there wasn’t enough evidence to make an arrest since Aaron was so young. There is no universal minimum age at which a child becomes a credible witness, but rather, courts look at a child’s competency & credibility. Since Aaron told the social worker that his mom’s car was in a lake, in addition to the fact that he wasn’t always consistent about what exactly happened, his credibility was questionable.

Since Mike maintained his innocence & there was also no evidence to prove that Bonnie was even dead, the case sadly stalled & decades went by.

According to Bonnie’s older sister, Liz Peak, Aaron also told her about what happened that Wednesday night, saying, Daddy shot mommy in the stomach. Although he may have been young at the time, his story never changed & he even drew pictures of his dad shooting his mom.

After his mom vanished, Aaron only continued living with his father for a few weeks before he moved in with Liz & her family. Mike was allowed to see him twice a week, but these visits took a toll on the little boy who was upset each time he was forced to spend time with his dad.

In 1995, Liz made the difficult decision to place her nephew with foster parents Ronnie & Jean Fraser so Mike would no longer be able to see Aaron. Within about six months of moving in with the Frasers, Aaron began telling them that something bad had happened to his mom, specifically, that his dad had shot her. According to Jean, he initially seemed hesitant to talk about it, but as time went on, he talked more & more freely while Jean wrote it all down in a notebook.

Aaron told her that when his mom got shot, he was in the living room standing on his tippy-toes, looking out the window. His dad took her pocketbook with him in the car while he was there, sitting in his car seat. He threw the gun from the car after his mom was dead & then he buried her after they dug a hole.

Jean shared these writings with the mental health professionals who had been working with Aaron. At 6-years-old, these conversations with the psychologist were recorded as Aaron voiced the story of what his dad had done to his mom & how he was scared that his dad would kill other people.

Aaron was distraught that he had been unable to find his mom, maintaining that she had been buried somewhere. At such a young age, he grabbed a shovel as he & Jean climbed into the car so she could drive him around, helping him look for the spot where she might be buried.

He remained fearful that his dad would come & get him one day so he slept with a brick under his pillow until he was about 12-years-old.

When Aaron’s testimony was laid out in a document six years after his mom vanished in 1999, Circuit Judge Frederick Tygard took away Mike’s parental rights, ruling that it would be in the best interest of the child, who had fear & hatred toward his father. The judge wrote that Aaron was at serious risk for abuse from his father since he was the sole witness to the murder of his mom.

In the meantime, Jean & Ronnie did everything they could to give Aaron a normal, happy childhood. He loved riding bikes, taking karate classes & fishing.

Bonnie’s sister Liz sued Mike on behalf of Aaron for the wrongful death of his mom & in 2004, a civil judge deemed Mike Haim liable for Bonnie’s death & ordered him to pay $26.3 million to Aaron. This was money that Mike, who had since remarried & moved to North Carolina, didn’t have.

However, he did still have shares in his Uncle Bernie’s company as well as the keys to his & Bonnie’s old house on Dolphin Avenue. At 16-years-old, Aaron was awarded the shares as well as the home.

Jean & Ronnie Fraser had custody of him until Aaron was officially adopted in 2009 after a judge officially declared his mother dead. At this point, Aaron’s last name was changed from Haim to Fraser. After graduating from high school, he married his wife Alyssa.

All the while, Detective Hinson remained in contact with Aaron as he grew up & he always reminded him to call him if he ever needed anything.

As an adult, Aaron no longer had any memory of what led to his mom’s death nor any real memory of his biological mom or dad. He heard all about the investigation as well as what he had voiced as a young boy so many years before from Aunt Liz & Detective Hinson, but it felt as if he was listening to something out of a movie, rather than something that happened to him.

Although he’d gotten ownership of the home he’d lived in as a young child with his mom & biological dad, he truly didn’t want anything to do with the house. Renters had been occupying it up until 2014 & when they moved out, Aaron realized just how much work it needed.

He immediately got busy, starting with the inside of the house while realizing that the swimming pool & outdoor shower needed an overhaul as well. Although his family encouraged him to just fix the pool since removing it would be so much work, Aaron ultimately decided to dig it up & fill the hole in with dirt & sod.

Over the weekend of December 13, 2014, he & his brother-in-law, Thad, rented an excavator & got started. As they were digging, they unfortunately broke a pipe near the outdoor shower. As they lifted the slab to find the leak on Sunday, December 14, they grabbed shovels & began digging up against the house when Aaron noticed a piece of plastic. Thinking he broke through a bag, he looked more closely & wondered why a person would have possibly buried a coconut inside.

As he picked it up, he had no idea what he was holding, so he handed it to Thad. When they looked back down into the hole, they noticed teeth, which was when they realized they were looking at human remains. Everything suddenly clicked & the reality hit Aaron that he was holding his mother’s skull.

Not knowing what to do, he immediately called his adoptive mom, Jean Fraser, asking for a now retired Detective Hinson’s phone number. When Jean called Hinson & explained what Aaron had found in the backyard of his childhood home, he just assumed they were likely animal bones as he’d previously searched the yard so many years earlier.

As Hinson drove toward the home on Dolphin Avenue, he called a friend from the sheriff’s department who was closer, asking if he could go over & take a look. When he confirmed that they were human remains, Hinson was shocked & overcome with emotion. He struggled to accept that he’d missed that specific area of the yard during his previous searches for Bonnie.

As experts got to work in the backyard, they were able to recover Bonnie’s disintegrating bones, her wedding ring, the acrylic fingernails she wore as well as the pants she’d been wearing when she was murdered.

Four months later, DNA testing confirmed that the remains were Bonnie’s while the medical examiner ruled her manner of death a homicide by unspecified means. The ME found a circular injury or defect to her pelvic bone that was consistent with a gunshot wound that appeared to have occurred either during life or right at death.

At 3 ½ -years-old in 1993, Aaron had always said that Daddy shot mommy & buried her. Investigators found a spent .22-caliber shell casing in Bonnie’s backyard grave & Mike owned a .22-caliber rifle.

However, because more than two decades had gone by, it was impossible to say where the bullet casing had come from.

In August 2015, nearly 23 years after Bonnie’s murder, Mike Haim was taken into custody in North Carolina & charged with second-degree murder. When faced with the knowledge that his wife’s remains had been found, he refused to make any statements & another four years would pass before his trial began.

More than 26 years after Bonnie vanished, 53-year-old Mike Haim’s trial began in Jacksonville in early April 2019 where he entered a not-guilty plea. If found guilty, he faced a sentence of up to life in prison.

Although the evidence was circumstantial, the fact that Bonnie & Mike had been actively arguing on the night she vanished, paired with the fact she was preparing to leave him & take their 3-year-old son with her, to prosecutors, that in itself was overwhelming since she’d wound up dead & buried in their backyard.

The floor mats of Bonnie’s Camry displayed a shoe print that clearly matched Mike’s size 10 Nikes that had no doubt been left there after he’d just finished digging his wife’s grave.

The state believed that Aaron, at 3 ½ -years-old, had no doubt witnessed his mom’s murder, but now as a 29-year-old, had no memory of the crime or his biological mother. The judge allowed social worker Brenda Medders to testify, the person who first spoke with Aaron about what he saw on the night of his mom’s murder.

The judge would not allow her to testify about the details of what Aaron had said so many years ago. She was only able to discuss who Aaron had identified as the person who hurt his mom, telling the jury that he told her that Daddy hurt Mommy.

Dr. Heather Walsh-Haney, a forensic anthropologist, testified that Bonnie had been buried before her body began to decompose. Although there was a circular perimortem defect to her hip bone, she couldn’t definitely conclude that a gunshot caused the defect, but it did resemble a gunshot wound.

According to a firearms expert, the .22-caliber shell casing found near her remains suffered significant corrosion which made the markings on the casing of little value. But, the expert determined that the casing had been fired.

When Aaron took the stand, his estranged biological father sat only feet away at the defense table while he discussed finding his mom’s remains buried under the outdoor shower of his childhood home. A naturally stoic person, Aaron did all he could to hold the anguish back as he spoke.

According to Duval County Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi, when Mike moved out, he banned the renters from doing any landscaping or digging in the backyard.

According to Joey Jenrette & his wife, who rented the home from Mike for two years in the late 1990s, from the moment they moved in, their dog, Bandit, constantly barked & scratched at certain areas around the pool & storage shed. Each time they let him out, he circled the pool, continuously running laps before he would suddenly stop in a certain area, look at the ground & begin barking.

Although Joey had only met Mike twice, he saw him as an odd & shady guy who seemed mean-spirited.

According to their rental agreement, they were not allowed to use Aaron’s room in any way & they couldn’t make any changes to the backyard, including planting flowers.

Property records indicate that the home was built in 1959 & the pool was installed that same year. The only upgrades to the property happened in 1995, two years after Bonnie vanished, when a $763 aluminum carport & a $2,300 screened-in porch were installed.

Mike’s defense attorney reminded jurors that there was no forensic evidence that tied him to his wife’s murder, arguing that there was enough reasonable doubt in the case to find him not guilty.

When Mike was called to the stand to testify in his own defense, he remained emotionless while maintaining his original story, that Bonnie had driven off that night & never came home. He said she’d been unhappy for the previous 1-2 months, no longer her bubbly self. He claimed that he loved his wife & would have never harmed her.

The trial concluded after only four days & the jury returned with a verdict after 90 minutes of deliberations, finding Mike Haim guilty of 2nd degree murder. They also determined that he’d killed his wife in front of their 3 ½ -year-old son, a decision that gave him the harshest sentence of life in prison.

Even after the verdict & sentencing, Bonnie’s mom Patty still believed that Mike is innocent.

Aaron Fraser felt a sense of relief that his mother’s story had come full circle. Because he found her remains after so many years, Mike Haim’s freedom came to an end & he finally faced justice for what he’d done.

Although he has no memory of his mom, he recently got a VHS tape from the Christmas of 1992 that was turned into a DVD & it was a special moment for him to see the interaction & love he shared with his mom before she was taken from him.

After the trial, Bonnie’s sisters organized a celebration of life in a garden that was dedicated to her one day before she would have celebrated her 50th birthday. Aaron was there as well.

Bonnie had been missing for 22 long years before her son inadvertently stumbled upon her remains. Although he may have been only 3 ½-years-old when his mother was shot & killed in front of him, what he found proved that what he had told the social worker as well as his family members so many years before, had been true. He had been aware enough to know that the man he should have been able to trust, had done the worst thing possible.

23-year-old Bonnie Haim had been a young mother, a daughter & a sister when she suddenly vanished. Those close to her knew that she would have never willingly walked away from her precious son. They had been correct, as the cruel reality was, Bonnie had been there all along. She was stolen from a little boy who needed her & had always been the center of her world.

Aaron Fraser grew up carrying the weight of a memory no child should ever have. He had been the little voice to speak for his mom when she was no longer able to speak for herself, to tell others what his father had done. At such a young age, he was aware enough to know that his father was a scary, dangerous man that he no longer wanted to live with.

Before his memories faded as he grew, little Aaron continued to search for his mommy, knowing she had been buried & was out there somewhere. For over two decades, her body remained hidden in the backyard of the very home where her family should have been safe. This allowed Mike Haim the freedom to carry on with his life, to move forward & remarry.

In the end, it had all come back around to Aaron, the only other witness to his mother’s fate, who had been the one to finally unearth the truth.

This case is a reminder that children see & understand far more than people may think. Bonnie should have had many decades of life ahead of her to see her little boy grow into the fine young man that he had, to be there on the day that he married the love of his life. Instead, her high school sweetheart ended her life in a moment of violence, never once showing an ounce of remorse or accepting the responsibility of what he did.

Although Michael Haim may refuse to speak the truth aloud, as he spends the rest of his days behind bars, his mind & his soul can’t escape the truth.

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