Son digs up mother's skull over two decades after murder
Bonnie Lynn Pasciuto Haim was just 23 years old at the time of her disappearance from Jackson, Florida in January of 1993.
Bonnie was employed as an accountant at a company owned by her husband’s Auntie. Her husband, Michael Haim, worked alongside her.
The petite brunette went missing from her home on the night of January 6th after cancelling plans with her relative and employer, Eveann. The two had plans to meet that night but Bonnie cancelled via phone stating that she couldn’t go as she had gotten into a fight with her husband. Eveann would later describe Bonnie as distressed and said she sounded like she had been crying. That was the last time anyone would hear from the 23 year old.
The following morning Bonnie neglected to show up for her shift at work. In her absence, Michael called into the office explaining that his wife had voluntarily left the house of her own accord at around 11PM the previous night. He claimed that he went out for around an hour to look for her after calling his mother over to take care of their 3 year old son, Aaron, but she was nowhere to be found.
The following day Bonnies handbag, containing her identification, bank cards and personal effects was found discarded in a bin around the back of a hotel an hour or so from the airport. Her car was later discovered in the airport car park. It seemed as though she had thrown away her life and hopped on a plane to start over anew, a theory that her own father subscribed to.
Others were not so sure. Family members, friends, co-workers and even her husband’s Auntie, Eveann, had a feeling that Michael Haim had something to do with Bonnie’s sudden disappearance. They told investigators that Michael was controlling and abusive and went on to describe several incidents of verbal and physical abuse they had witnessed around the office. In fact, Bonnie had been planning to escape her husband for several months. She had enrolled their child in a new school, put a deposit down on an apartment, opened up a new personal bank account for herself and had friends holding on to her money for her so she could secretly save without Michael finding out. But Michael did find out and he was angered beyond belief. No one will ever know of the ways he punished Bonnie for trying to escape him, but soon after he found out, the personal bank account that she had opened was quickly closed and cancelled.
After she went missing Michael didn’t seem to care at all. He let the residual anger of what he believed to be Bonnie’s deceit fester inside of him. When people asked about Bonnies whereabouts he could only rant and seethe about the lies she told him, the money she had hidden and the escape she tried to make.
Police hauled the car away for testing and quickly noticed that the car seat was pushed back and positioned in a way that would fit a man of Michael’s stature. They also found a fresh sneaker print that matched the same type of shoe that Michael wore. Earth trapped in the grooves of his shoe soles also matched a sample of earth found in the print.
It seemed highly probable that Michael had played a role in his wife’s disappearance and that he had likely harmed her due to the recently discovery that she had planned to leave him for the constant abuse he had inflicted on her. To add weight to the idea that Michael had disposed of his own wife, his son, Aaron, admitted to a caseworker that he “saw daddy hurt mommy” but his accusations against his father were not taken seriously at the time. To make things worse, his own grandfather did not take his account seriously and maintained that he believed Michael was innocent and that Bonnie had ran away of her own accord and was still alive somewhere.
By 1999 she had not made contact with anyone and was later declared dead.
Aaron was put up for adoption and continued to stand by his statement. He claimed that his father killed his mother with a shotgun and forced him to go with him to dispose of the murder weapon by throwing it off a bridge. He recalled his memories in conversations with relatives and even drew pictures of what he witnessed that night in 1993. He scribbled a stickman representing his father holding a crudely drawn shotgun shooting another stickman representing his mother in the torso. “Daddy shot mommy in the stomach” he would tell people.
Eveann Haim believes that toddler witnessed the murder of his own mother that night and was part of the disposal.
Aaron’s foster parents helped him take his father to court in the mid-2000’s and he was awarded over $26 million dollars as well as the old family home. Michael had been renting out the property for several years and forebodingly forbid his tenants to renovate the backyard.
At the end of 2014 while Aaron was doing yard work he found a solid object under a paving slab and crouched down to inspect it. He saw what he believed to be a shard of coconut wedged in the dirt and kneeled down to get a closer look, picking it up and turning it in his hands. The realization of what he was actually looking quickly set in as eyes moved over the larger piece still stuck in the dirt and he slowly began to identify the features- an eye socket, a tooth, a jaw. It suddenly dawned on him that he had discovered his own mother’s skull. He contacted the local police and the skull fragments were taken away for testing and were eventually identified as belonging to Bonnie Haim.
Michael Haim will be sentenced next month for 2nd degree murder.
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