Shownotes Transcript
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Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Okay, as all of you know, our 100th episode is coming up. Garrett and I can't even believe that MWMH has almost made it to 100 episodes. It doesn't feel like it. I did want to say that we wouldn't be here without all of you. I mean, essentially, you guys are what makes MWMH MWMH. So, we're going to be talking about MWMH.
So Garrett and I brainstormed and brainstormed about something that we could do special for the 100th episode. We want it to mean something not just to us, but to all of you who have made this even possible. We wanted to do something we had never done before, the biggest celebration yet,
With that being said, we are excited to announce that on February 20th, we will be hosting a special live digital event to celebrate our 100th episode with all of you. It will be a unique experience featuring exclusive merch, possibly strangey-dangey merch, I mean merch.
I'm not saying it's going to be there. Cat's out of the bag. With more merch, obviously, followed by an intimate after party where you guys can hang out with us, ask us anything, maybe even play some fun games. We've put a lot of effort into this experience. It will contain a live story told by me, of course, Garrett's 10 seconds live experience,
and so much more. Again, the MWMH 100th episode live special is on February 20th at 6 p.m. PT, but tickets are on sale now as you are listening to this at momenthouse.com slash murderwithmyhusband, which is linked in the episode notes and our Instagram bio. This is something that Peyton and I are super excited about. We've put a ton of work into this. We really wanted to do an event. We've never done an event. Right.
So this is kind of like a good stepping stone for us. And we're super excited. And I think it was just important to us that we celebrated this episode with you guys. Like that was the main thing we wanted to do. We didn't want it to just be us. We want it to be with you. So we're really excited. And now we're going to have that opportunity. Again, tickets are on sale right now. So if you want to attend, go right now to momenthouse.com slash murder with my husband and purchase your ticket for our 100th
episode. Also, this episode will be exclusive to the live. We're not going to like repost it anywhere or anything. So we're hoping it's going to be a lot of fun. I'm so excited, but nervous. Yeah, I'm nervous too. I hope you guys want to come. Otherwise, it's just going to be Peyton and I just... And our family. And our family talking to nobody.
You have to see Garrett get through his 10 seconds live. You just have to. Oh, my gosh. I'm so nervous. You guys don't even understand. It took me a year just to warm up to these cameras in front of me. And now we're just shooting in people watching. I'm going to be like...
I know. It's going to be scary. All right. Okay. Okay. Enough about our live event that we're probably not going to stop talking about until it comes. Anyways, do you have your 10 seconds for this week's episode? So the other day I was reading through YouTube comments and I thought it was kind of funny because Peyton still gets corrected like probably once or twice a day on YouTube on what Menards is. Every week. All the time. And I just think it's so funny. I think we just got like, oh, I think it was a YouTube comment. I think I saw the comment you're talking about.
Yeah, you guys, you know, I'm not claiming to be the smartest person in the room, okay? But I am a hard worker, so I learned the Menards. It's not what I thought it was, and I will never say that again, okay? Other than that, I've actually just been playing pickleball three times a week. Been trying to just get moving more. It's been freezing cold where we are. Not sure how many of you know this, but I absolutely hate the cold. I hate it. I mean, Peyton does too, but I cannot stand the cold. Last but not least...
I'm wearing a new flannel. Looking snazzy. Looking all snazzy. So, yeah, that's my 10 seconds. My grandma used to tell me when I was dressed nice that I looked snazzy. Really? I like that word, snazzy. Yeah, snazzy. Okay, so our case sources this week are charlieproject.org, NBCnews.com.
apg-wi.com, Facebook, The Gone Podcast, PressPubs.com, and then a couple more that I can't say yet because I think they'll give the case away, but they're obviously linked in our episode notes. So our case this week begins in a hospital in Wisconsin. The date is August 15th, 1980, and Marie and Mike Bushland are welcoming their second daughter into the world.
But Marie and Mike weren't strangers to this hospital or to the intensity of giving birth in said hospital because just 18 months earlier, they had been there doing the exact same thing. Their first daughter was named Leslie Bushland and just 18 months later came Sarah Ann Bushland.
Mike worked at a supercomputer firm called Cray Research, and Marie worked at Amaco Foam Products, which was a plastics manufacturing plant. Honestly, two jobs that I would know nothing about.
And together they were starting their family. They lived in Chippewa Falls where they began raising their two baby daughters together, really living that young family life. But it was only four years after Sarah, the youngest daughter, was born that the marriage began to fall apart. By 1984, Marie and Mike Bushland legally separate.
We don't know why they separated, but honestly, like they don't need to air out their dirty laundry for this story. I don't think it pertains to anything later on.
It was pretty soon after the separation that Marie starts dating a man named Jim Lambert, who was a formal police officer and veteran military police in the army, but he was working out of the forces at the time that he met Marie. You told me so many stories now, I feel like I start to overanalyze everything. You're like, his name's Jim. I'm like, Jim, what?
Seems suspicious. Yeah, exactly. Sorry, I'm like overanalyzing everything now. Sorry if there's any Jims out there listening. Like good old Jim. Okay, anyways.
So at this time, Jim was also in the process of getting a divorce, as was Marie. And he had four kids of his own. Danny, who was 11, David, who was nine, Dean, who's five, and Diana, who's three. Okay, honestly, when I was researching, I didn't even notice that all of those were Ds. That's funny. Until just barely.
So remember that Marie has Leslie, who's around five now, and Sarah, who's four. So it kind of honestly feels like yours, mine, and ours, just with a little less kids. So by 1985, both Marie and Jim's separate divorces to their other spouses are finalized.
So they can now kind of really begin their life together. Jim decides to move into a mobile home in Lafayette Township in New Jersey, taking Marie, his son Danny and David, Leslie and Sarah with him. Dean and Diana, which is Jim's youngest kids from his previous marriage, live majority of their time with their mom. But they visit now and then to the mobile home.
Jim and Marie begin working in order to make ends meet, raising four kids together. And they actually get a job at the same place. So they are now going to work together and coming home together. Because of this, they would sometimes work the same shifts, leaving 11-year-old Danny at home to watch the rest of the kids.
Now, there is a book about this case written by Robert M. Dudley, and we have actually attached the free PDF version in the episode notes if anyone is interested in reading it. But according to this book, it was during this time at home without parental supervision that four-year-old Sarah Bushland began being sexually abused by a, quote, family member. Okay.
Official sources never confirm who it is. So messed up. Right. There's obviously rumors of who it is, but I didn't see any like official sources. So I'm not going to like just out someone that I don't know. Sexual abuse of a child just at four. I can't.
But whether it's an adult or another child in the family, this is when this starts, according to the book written on this case, is when the parents are gone, and so this is happening. By December 5th, 1987, Jim and Marie Lambert get married, officially combining their families.
In March of 1988, three months after getting married, Jim and Marie purchased a rural property together near Spooner, Wisconsin, to begin raising their family. This property is a very secluded 65-acre with a two-story house on it that sat about 200 yards away from the main road. So that's a long driveway. That's a long driveway. You turn off and drive all the way out to the house.
I need to say here that the property is just covered in trees, very thick foliage, very private. After buying the property and moving the family out there, it was Jim and Marie living there, still with Danny, David, Leslie, and Sarah. Dean and Diana, Jim's youngest, stayed at the new Lambert home part-time and then with their mom part-time, and Sarah and Leslie would spend alternating weekends with their father back in Chippewa Falls.
According to the book, the sexual abuse of Sarah continued at the new secluded home even after the move. And it goes on to detail that eventually all three girls and at least one of the boys in the family would become victims of abuse by a family member as well. For them. Right. So some not very good stuff happening in this family home. When Jim and Marie found out about the abuse and what was happening in their home, they
They tried to handle it themselves without involving law enforcement, which does happen often. So it wasn't Jim or Marie, according to sources. They told the children to not tell anyone about what had happened and that it would stop. Jim even had a sign hanging in the new family home that basically said, what happens here stays here. Loyalty, like blah, blah, blah. Basically saying, don't tell anyone about this. This happens in our home and we're not going to talk about it.
Which is just not very good. That's not okay. But within a year of moving to the new home, Mike Bushland, who is Leslie and Sarah's father, eventually find out about his daughter's abuse at their mom's house, despite the Lambert motto to keep it a secret. And together, both girls were moved to Mike's house for safety. So removed from their mom's home.
In early 1990, actually on Jim and Marie's third wedding anniversary, a suspicious fire breaks out and destroys the Lamberts' secluded home. Did Mike ever report it? I think so because the girls were like legally removed from the home. So there had to have been social workers. There had to have been something come in and take them out for him to get custody. Okay.
So after this fire of the Lamberts' home, they immediately remodel the small two-story detached garage on the property and move into there for a place to live now that their home was gone. They never take the insurance money and fix the original house.
Jim, yeah, Jim decided to add a second driveway at this point that extended in a semi-circle along the original driveway and back out to the main road. So basically like a big U. So he's adding a separate driveway, but won't spend the money just to rebuild the home. Yeah, to rebuild the home. Yes. Okay. So it came out about 150 yards east of the original driveway and then led back down to the road. Okay.
According to family, it was typically used when exiting the detached garage house. Think like a roundabout, like they only drove on it one way. So our long driveway just became wide as well with two entrances. And I know you're like, why are you harping on and on about this driveway? But it becomes important later on in the story. So I want you to have a clear picture now of what it looks like. It was also around this time in 1990 that Mike Bushland's job moves him out to Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Because of the abuse, Leslie and Sarah move out to Colorado with their father where they continue just growing up. I mean, by this point, Sarah was nine and Leslie was 10. I think your environment at that age begins to matter to you. You begin making friends at school, starting sports.
And although they had been with their mother majority of the time up to this point, life was going well now living exclusively with their father. And by all accounts, Mike is doing a great job as a single father with the girls. He's hardworking. People notice he makes it a point to teach them responsibility and work ethic, getting money for chores, saving, all of that kind of thing. But as time goes on and the girls turn into preteens, Mike's
it becomes harder and harder to manage them. Like most 13 and 14-year-olds, the girls begin to push their boundaries. And then in either November or December of 1994, the sources kind of differed, Sarah, who was now 13 years old, was arrested for shoplifting. Apparently, Leslie and Sarah had done this previously together. And you know...
They were just at that age where you want to rebel from everything your parents have ever said to you. Do you know like where they were shoplifting at? No, I don't. But I hope it was a good store. Was it like a candy store or was it like a clothing store? Right, right. No, it didn't note that, but I do hope it was. I mean, at least they, you know, got some good stuff. I don't condone shoplifting. Yes, don't do that. By the way.
Obviously, Mike, their father, grows concerned and frustrated with Sarah after the shoplifting incident. He had taught her better than that and didn't understand where all of this was coming from. He ran a strict household and Sarah's actions would have consequences.
And according to Leslie, it was at this point that instead of facing her father's disappointment and punishment, her sister Sarah decided to flee and move back to her mother's home in Spooner, Wisconsin. So she wants to move back with Jim, the step-siblings, and her mother Marie.
And Mike agreed. Spooner was a smaller place. He thought that maybe Sarah would get in less trouble there. Maybe the change in environment at this age is exactly what she needed. And it had been a long time since she had lived with them. So maybe it was all okay. It's so hard, though, because as teenagers, I mean...
You'll get in trouble no matter where you are. They're all crazy, yeah. Right, right. So in the spring of 1995, 14-year-old Sarah officially returns to the Lambert home. Leslie stayed back and continued to live with her dad in Colorado, so the sisters are now split up. As Sarah moved in with her mom and stepfather, it wasn't as good as she had hoped it would be.
With no room for her now, she was forced to sleep in Jim's office that had no door on it. This room was now not only doubling as Sarah's bedroom and Jim's office, it was also the family storage room. So there wasn't much space in there to begin with. It wasn't like a typical bedroom. Jim also kept all of his hunting rifles in there, which was unsettling to Sarah as this is where she has to sleep. And then she turns her head and there's just all these guns. Yeah.
Sarah was also not a fan of Jim. So basically sleeping in his room was probably so uncomfortable as a teenager. She felt like, you know, he was controlling and manipulative and to make matters worse, she felt like her mother Marie was just a little too chill, a little too much like a friend and not a mom. She'd actually offered her daughter Sarah marijuana at 14 years old to smoke with her. Did she ever think about going back to Mike's?
She does later on, but at this point it's still kind of new, the move. And also I think she left her dad's house under this tense, like, I'm not going to obey your rules. So I'm going to go live with mom. It wasn't like this. Okay.
- Okay, you know what I mean? So there was not much structure here for her, but isn't that kind of why she left her dad's in the first place? She didn't like the strict atmosphere. So honestly, it's just a lose-lose either way. Okay, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that does not work.
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Her older stepbrother David, who is now 19, was starting a logging company with Jim. And 15-year-old sophomore brother Dean, he seemed all right. He worked hard in school and whatnot, but it didn't change how Sarah felt at her new home. And to make matters worse, Sarah was now entering her freshman year at Spooner High School in the fall of 1995. That's already the worst year for anyone, and she's the new kid. Like, she just moved back here. No one remembers her.
But as the school year starts and she spends more time at school, Sarah, who's now 15, finds a group of people who are willing to take her in. She has a small circle of friends at school, and that helps a ton. All of the kids are in older grades than Sarah, but that doesn't matter as long as she has friends. And along with these new friends, Sarah had also found herself a boyfriend.
Or maybe he had found her. Because although Sarah was just a 15-year-old freshman, she began dating 21-year-old Travis Lane. Okay. Truly, she's just a little baby that's dating a man. And we all know that that is really not only illegal, but also just nine times out of ten psychologically harmful to a teenager. So she was a freshman in high school and he's a sock.
He's out of high school. He's a sophomore in college. Sophomore in college. Yes. Right. So there's a reason that that's illegal. And it's just because she's so young. She doesn't even understand what's going on. Right. Sarah's relationship with Travis was going fine until her stepfather, Jim and mom Marie found out about it. As one would imagine. Yeah. They yelled at Sarah. She's 15. How could she date a 21 year old? He was no good for her. And she was forbidden to see him. Yeah.
But of course, she didn't stop seeing him, and the arguments and tension began to rise with her mom and stepdad. I mean, Sarah's home life was chaos at this point, and by winter of 1995, nothing much had changed. In December of 1995, Jim Lambert, fearing what he considered to be an out-of-control Sarah,
found Sarah's diary and read it while she was not at home. What he read was catastrophic for every relationship in Sarah's life. According to sources, Sarah was currently pregnant and hiding it from her parents. We don't have the exact wording or the passages from the diary, but whatever she wrote, Jim found out about the pregnancy. They
They grounded her for what I'm sure felt like indefinitely to Sarah. She is not allowed to leave the house except for to go to school. And she is absolutely, absolutely forbidden to see Travis for the rest of forever. Which is hard now too, because she's pregnant. Like she's carrying a child. Yes. So in response to the pregnancy, Jim and Marie schedule Sarah an abortion against her wishes.
She told them that she wanted to keep the baby, but they convinced her otherwise. And on February 6th, 1996, Sarah was taken to Duluth to have an abortion. Jim also contacted 21-year-old Travis and threatened him with legal action against a minor unless he repaid him for the cost of the abortion. Okay, so when I was researching this, that's the bone you're going to pick?
Is the cost of the abortion when a 21 year old got your 15 year old pregnant? It just feels weird to me that that's the thing that he threatened him with. You know what I mean? Not the wellbeing of his daughter, just the cost of what, of what, according to him, her mistake made. Right.
I do have to kind of hiatus here because the book at this point mentions nothing else except the book mentions a possible relationship with one of her stepbrothers that she talked about in her diary and Jim finding out about.
They don't go into detail about this, but that also, I think if, I mean, I'm, I mean, the book's pretty professional, so I'm considering it a credible source. If that was happening, they are step siblings, right? They're not blood related, but if that was happening, that would obviously cause even more tension in this family. Right. And there's so much to it. It could be why she wanted to move back. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of
Okay, so that was a lot to unpack. But from here, the tension and fighting grows at home between Jim, Marie, and Sarah as she continues to sneak out and try and see Travis as often as she can despite still being grounded. How is she sneaking out and not getting caught? So I don't think it's necessarily like sneaking out at night. I think it's like she's ditching school to see him. I mean, he's 21. He can drive. He's not doing anything. So on her lunch breaks or, you know, when her parents are at work, whenever she can.
By March 31st, 1996, a still grounded Sarah calls her grandma on her dad's side and tells her that she wants to return to live with her dad. Okay. And Leslie, who had now actually moved back to Chippewa Falls. Okay.
And she told her grandma that she was too scared to ask her dad to come home after everything that had happened. She was scared he wouldn't let her come back, but her grandma reassured her that he would. She just needed to ask him. How far is the dad's house from where she is now? So from Chippewa Falls to Spooner, according to Google, don't come at me if this isn't correct, but according to Google, it says that it's about one hour and 10 minutes away. Okay.
So she could still technically see her boyfriend if she was living with her dad. That's why I'm asking you this question. Yes. So she still could technically. So I'm wondering if it's a way to get around so she can see her. Yes, exactly. Okay. So moving down our timeline on April 2nd, 1996. Now remember she had the abortion in February. So now we're in April.
Jim has a friend over to the house named Brian who is going to stay the night at the Lambert home. Jim and Brian's plan was to have Brian stay the night at Jim's home on the 2nd and then on the 3rd leave for Stillwater, Minnesota to visit some friends together.
Now, Brian is actually from Canada and is not the best character, but has been friends with Jim for a while. According to sources, Brian and Jim were friends because of their shady activity that they did together. Okay.
Again, according to sources, Brian kind of brought out a bad side of Jim because Brian was known for his criminal behavior. Okay, so as I was researching this, I just kind of want to talk about how it said that Brian brings out the bad in Jim because I don't like that saying because Jim is a grown man. Mm-hmm.
Like we're not talking about kids peer pressuring each other here. Like take responsibility for your actions and don't put the blame for your choices and bad behavior on someone else. You're literally a grown adult. So what do they mean though by bringing out the bad? So Jim had been breaking all kinds of hunting and fishing laws for some time. Okay. And at this point he was also suspected of several insurance frauds including the arson to his house years earlier. No way. Yep.
He honestly was kind of a scammer. And I want to clarify at this point, I'm not saying people don't have the ability to change and grow and be better. But at this point in the story, this is what's going on.
On the morning of April 3rd, it was the last day before spring break. And Marie and Jim had agreed that come spring break, Sarah's grounding would be lifted. So she was originally grounded in December. So by April, she was going to be ungrounded. But I thought she was moving back to Mike's. She hasn't asked yet. She just wanted to. She expressed interest in, but she hasn't actually asked her dad yet.
So basically, this was the day of Sarah's freedom, the day that she would finally be able to hang out with friends again and leave the house and kind of do what any teenager wants to do. Because of this, Sarah had plans that morning to go to a friend's house before school and then they could walk to school together. They would finish the school day and then it was spring break.
So she wakes up. Her stepbrothers, David and Dean, are home. Brian, Jim's friend, is there because he had spent the night. And then Jim is obviously there as well. But Marie, her mom, is gone in Chippewa Falls at a funeral. So she's not home. Okay.
Danny is now in the Navy, the oldest brother, and Leslie is obviously still living with her dad in Chippewa Falls, so they're not there. And then Diana, the youngest daughter, Jim's youngest daughter, is living with her mother full-time at this point. Jim and Brian leave for Minnesota that morning, but not before Brian makes the observation that Sarah is acting weird. Now, when I read this, my first thought is,
how would he know? He doesn't even know her. Yeah. How would he know that she's acting weird if he doesn't even know how she acts normally? So that observation was weird to me that that was noted. Do you know if Jim is still reading her diary?
So I don't know, but I know that it's on Sarah's mind and we'll get to that. 16 year old Dean, Sarah's stepbrother agrees to give Sarah a ride to her friend's house before school. Like she had planned. He drops her off and Sarah and her friend follow through with their plan that day to walk to school, you know, and they get there just in time for first period.
Around noon, Travis, her 21-year-old boyfriend, probably 22 now, drives to the school and picks Sarah up for lunch. Together, they drive to one of Travis's friends' house to spend the lunch hour, and then Sarah returns back to school.
During the second half of the day at school, Sarah asked one of her neighbors if they could give her a ride home after school because she needed to get something to bring to her friend's house. This was the same friend that she had been at earlier that day. But according to that friend, this wasn't really the reason that Sarah needed to go home before coming over after school.
She wanted to go home to get her diary. According to her friend, Sarah was worried that because her grounding was over that day, Jim might try to, you know, steal her diary again and find a way to extend the punishment or he already had. And she didn't want to give him any reason to do so. So she just wanted to get home and find her diary, cover her bases. Do you think she just, I guess, stopped writing in it?
Right. I, I, I understand. But also how many times did you just do the same thing? Stupid over and over again. Or get one of those diaries you see on commercials where like you put your fingerprint or something, you know, a lock and a lock. And so I do want to say here, like, obviously Jim has said he was leaving the Minnesota. So if you're like, how would he have been home to get her diary? I think she was like thinking, when was the last time I saw my diary? What if you already had it? She just wanted to make sure that her diary was in her possession. Got it.
it. So there's obviously something going on then. Otherwise she wouldn't care. Right. That was really the only thing that mattered to her, according to her friend. And her friend even says her attitude had changed from the morning to after, like during the second half of school, like the only thing she was worried about was getting home to her diary. So she doesn't know if like something had happened or like someone had said something, but she, that's all she was focused on.
So at 3:16 p.m., school lets out and instead of getting a ride home with the neighbor, which would have been the faster option, Sarah has to stand around and wait for the bus that drives her route.
On the bus, Sarah sits next to another friend, a different one, and she smokes a cigarette, obviously very sneakily because this would not be allowed on a school bus. Yeah. Friend number two on the bus invites Sarah over later that weekend because it was Easter and they were going to be celebrating. And Sarah agrees and says that she probably can because she's no longer grounded. Yeah.
At 3.45 p.m. on April 3rd, 1996, the same day, Sarah exits the school bus at the end of the Lamberts' long and secluded driveway. So their house was so far out there that the bus drove right up to her driveway. Okay.
David, the second oldest brother, was the oldest one living at home, was the only person home at this time when Sarah gets off the bus. Dean, 16-year-old Dean's whereabouts are unknown according to most sources. So friend number two on the bus watches Sarah get off and says,
notices a dark colored pickup truck pull up onto the Lambert's driveway behind the bus. - Okay. - Friend number two notes that the truck kind of looked like Sarah's old boyfriend Steve's truck, but she couldn't be sure. Her friend, watching all of this through the bus window, sees Sarah walk over to the passenger side of the pickup truck once she's off the bus. And she claims that it's evident from Sarah's body language that Sarah knew whoever was inside of the truck. Like she wasn't alarmed, she was talking.
Her friend's brother, who was also on the bus with them, claims that he then sees Sarah actually get into the passenger side of the truck, but no one else notes this. Like, no one else sees this except him. Another student on the bus notes that the pickup truck then backs out of the driveway and heads east all while their bus is, like, pulling off to leave.
Sarah's neighbor is stopped on the street waiting on the bus to go. You know, when they like put the little stop sign out. So he stopped there. He's just kind of watching, you know, waiting to go. He noted while sitting there that there was a pickup truck in the Lambert's driveway by the bus, but he recognized it as belonging to Travis's father. So Sarah's current
So we got, okay, one second. So someone thought it was Steve, Sarah's old boyfriend. Yes. But then the neighbor said, no, that's Travis's father's, her current boyfriend's truck. So now two different witnesses have said it's a truck that belongs to two different people. Okay.
This neighbor also seems to believe that there was three people in the truck when he looked over. He says that the truck went west instead of east when it left. Oh, man. When information is like this, it's like, well...
So once again, our witnesses statements are differing. A student on the bus later said that Travis would often wait for Sarah in her driveway, like at the end of school. So it wasn't weird to assume that it was him. Most of them that like just thought that it was him. And this was the last time that Sarah Ann Bushland was ever seen. Just gone. Gone. No one's ever seen her since. No way. Yep. Wait, that's the, that's it? No. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah.
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So an hour later at 4.37 p.m., David, Sarah's stepbrother who was home, makes a call to Jim, who was in Minnesota with Brian, and lets him know that Sarah never came home from school that day. And she has her diary, huh? No.
Not that we know of. Okay. Not that we know of. At this point. Right. At this point. So this call is corroborated via phone records. We know what happened. Jim then calls Marie, Sarah's mom, and tells her essentially like that he's in Minnesota. And although she's at a funeral, she needs to handle this, like this situation. Cause Sarah's not like Sarah's gone missing or something. So Marie leaves Chippewa Falls to head back to Spooner.
At 6.20 p.m., Marie arrives home at the Lambert house in Spooner and calls Jim once again. She tells him that she has called Sarah several times and she hasn't answered and has searched the property and can't find her. She begins calling friends and whoever she can think of to try and track down Sarah.
By 8 p.m., Marie is beyond worried. No one seems to know where her daughter is. She calls Jim once again, who is still in Minnesota with Brian and emphasizes how worried she is. Now, I don't know like what's going on here and why Jim like seems to not help. Like anytime she calls, he's just like, whatever. I'm guessing he's annoyed. Right. I'm guessing he's taking this dance. Well, it's not my daughter or something. So this is just basically Marie saying I'm worried and him saying, OK, well, it's no big deal. Like, go find her. Yeah. Yeah.
After the second call to Jim, Marie drives to Sarah's friend number one house, the friend that Sarah had been with that morning, and talks to her.
Sarah's friend's mom describes Marie as acting frantic when she showed up to try and find Sarah. Sarah's friend and the mother tell Marie that neither of them had seen Sarah that afternoon. But Sarah's friend decides to go with Marie to Travis's apartment and ask in person about Sarah. When they get there, Travis tells both of them that he hasn't seen her since lunch.
They also drive to Travis's father's house in Trego, which Sarah must have gone to before or else like why would they feel the need to go check there? But when they get there, they discover that Travis's father was actually sitting in jail at that time on drug charges. Okay, so truck. Truck. Like what's up with the whole truck situation? Whose truck is it? We don't know.
We don't know. Like no one actually knows who was in that truck. No one saw who was driving. No, but did the police look at Travis's dad's truck? The police haven't been informed yet. Oh, she hasn't reported this yet. She's still just trying to find her. I'm saying in the future. Oh, okay.
Are we getting to that? We'll get to that. Okay. So now imagine this like whole scenario because Sarah wasn't even supposed to be in contact with Travis, right? Her good behavior was the reason that her grounding was getting lifted. So I don't even want to know how these conversations are going for Marie after her friend told her that they, you know, okay, well, her and Travis are actually still in contact. They spent lunch together today. So we should probably go talk to him. Like, can you imagine that reality in that conversation? Yeah.
So after this, Marie heads home and arrives on the Lambert property at 9.30 p.m. She goes inside and calls more of Sarah's friends. She confirms that people saw Sarah get off the bus and converse with someone in a dark truck in their driveway. The color of the truck depends on who you talk to. Oh, my gosh. Witness statements contradicting themselves seems to be a consistency in this case. You know, you would think like, okay, it's a blue truck. There's no way we can get this wrong. The truck is blue. Right.
- Right. - But then someone else is like, "No, the truck is red." - Right. - And I'm just like, how? How is that possible? - Well, because you're not actually taking no in that moment unless you're a super MWMH like me. Like, unless you're sitting here going, "Oh my gosh, that could be a dangerous situation. A girl walking up to a truck that I don't know who drives."
You're not going to get the license plate. You're not going to even pay attention to the color. You know what I mean? Totally. So at 1030 PM for the last time, Marie calls her husband, Jim, who is hanging out with friends while she runs around trying to basically find her daughter. And Marie has checked and knows that Sarah did not take any money, additional clothing or belongings that day.
She expresses her concern for Sarah to Jim, but he decides to stay overnight and still water with Brian at a friend's house anyways, so he doesn't come home even though Sarah is missing. So they go to sleep. By the next morning, April 4th, around 9 a.m., Jim calls Marie and tells her he and Brian are coming home. But on the way, they stop for a shopping trip at Sporting Goods to buy gunpowder. Sarah is still not home. Jim's...
I told you. I told everyone. Jim, I knew Jim was sus from the beginning. So around noon, Jim finally arrives home and Marie notes that he looks unusually tired. He tells Marie that he wasn't in a rush to get home because Sarah's disappearance is really not that big of a deal. According to him, it was Sarah's first day of freedom and she was probably just at a friend's house enjoying it. But a still concerned Marie, who's checked all of Sarah's friend's house,
convinces him to help and so jim looks at some tire tracks in the driveway and they look again at sarah's usual hanging out spots like around town at this point they still haven't notified the police so after they've checked everywhere they can think of and there's still no sign of sarah marie and jim go to washburn county sheriff's office in shell lake and report sarah missing as a runaway
I don't know if Marie and Jim said she was a runaway or even agreed to it being reported as a runaway, but this is how her disappearance is officially filed, that she is a runaway. She's not a missing endangered child.
At this point, after Jim and Marie file the report, they go home, and Mike Bushland, Sarah's dad, was not informed that his daughter had not been seen until two days later on April 6th when his ex-mother-in-law calls him and tells him what's going on. That is so messed up. The Lambert family did not spread the news around town about Sarah's disappearance until weeks later on April 18th when Spooner Advocate did an article about her disappearance.
Marie told the newspaper that she was unsure if Sarah was just a runaway or if she was abducted. Now, I have to say here, if you even attach the word runaway to a missing child, the level of concern that's going to be given to them is going to drop drastically. Like zero. So if you are even the slightest bit worried, you do not say that word. Mm-hmm.
Like even if they are a runaway, it's still dangerous, right? So you just want people to look for her. According to Leslie, Sarah's sister, she felt like in this time following the disappearance, there was no sense of urgency from adults, especially Marie, which is why she believes police initially did not search for Sarah or investigate anything.
And Leslie, who was a teenager at this point, just kind of went along with it because of course the police are doing what they need to be doing. But there's no one looking for Sarah. Police actually come out in those days and tell the public that they believe there is no foul play, that she hasn't been kidnapped, and they urge Sarah to call someone who recognizes her voice and tell them that she's okay.
I just find it weird they can say that. It doesn't sound like they've really done an investigation on the whole thing. True. And also, Sarah is still under 18. Like, it's illegal to run away as a minor. She's 16 at this point? 15. Oh, she's still 15 at this point. Okay. So technically what she's done is illegal and a call home should not work in this case because legally she has to be home. To go back home. I did forget to say, going back to the fact that they didn't call,
her dad until two days later. Wouldn't that be one of the first places you check? Is that she ran home to her dad? They just assume that she's not there. I just find that weird. Super suspicious. I just find that weird too. So in the following months after Sarah went missing, and yes I say months because nothing is being done, tensions at home between Dean
Dean, David, and Jim grow immensely. Now we are unsure if this is because of the disappearance or whatnot, but six months later, David moved all of his stuff out of the house and off the property for good while Jim was at work and couldn't stop him. Dean followed suit not even a month later at 17.
Something is going on. Something is happening. Neither son has seen much of Jim since like they didn't keep in touch after that. About three years go by as Sarah Bushland remains another name on a list of runaways that no one is looking for.
In August of 1998, Mike Bushland held out hope that his daughter, who he really didn't believe was a runaway, would somehow come home on her 18th birthday. But the day passes without any word from Sarah.
In July of 1999, police finally decide to reopen the investigation into Sarah's disappearance, and they acknowledge that Sarah is most likely an endangered missing person after not coming forward at this point. Okay, well, it's been four years now. Right. It might be a little too late. Right. So they conduct a search of the Lambert family property where Sarah went missing and comb through a trash dump on the property. Jim actually helps during this search, and police find nothing.
In August 2000, police search a nearby lake and find nothing. 11 more years go by. Oh my God. Until 2011, when a cold case team is called in by the local sheriff to take another look at Sarah's disappearance. They spend two weeks going over everything, but nothing new is uncovered.
Two years later, on May 16th and 17th, 2013, a group of more than 70 officials made up of Washburn County officers and Wisconsin's Division of Criminal Investigation searched the Lambert property again. They searched the home and the outbuilding with cadaver dogs. The dogs react to multiple locations around the house and the outbuildings, but nothing of significance is found.
In February of 2017, reporter Kevin Duran covered the story and featured interviews with Leslie and Mike. The station ended up putting a $5,000 reward up and some more stations followed suit and aired coverage on the case. So 2017 is really the first time we see any major coverage about her disappearance. That sucks that it's so much later. So much later, yes. Right.
In April of 2017, Marie Lambert dies of COPD, which is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Okay. According to Google, COPD refers to a group of diseases that cause airflow blockage and breathing-related problems. Was that expected? Do you know? I don't know. Well, it is a disease, so I'm sure she had been diagnosed. Okay. But just two months later, Jim Lambert dies of COPD. What? What?
So mom and stepdad die of the same thing, COPD, within two months of each other. Oh my gosh. What is going on? Right. Just a week after Jim dies, investigators searched the Lambert property. Once again, nothing is found.
After this search, the local sheriff admits that more should have been done in the first place, but the protocol for missing teens wasn't there at the time. He says the Department of Justice, the FBI, and National Center for Missing Endangered Children are all working on the case now. The last known update we have is that in 2019, a new lead investigator was appointed to the case after the last one retired. That's it? That's it for as far as coverage of the case. What? And I don't...
I don't know why there's been, and maybe there has been investigation into the truck. Yeah. What's up with this whole truck? Nothing has been released to the public about it. I feel like I'm the only one that cares about the truck. Maybe they are looking into it. I'm going to go find this truck. At this point, like you've talked to all the witnesses who saw it. Yeah. I don't even know.
So Leslie and Mike Bushland are still out there and wanting answers about what happened to Sarah. Leslie has decided to keep her last name Bushland in hopes that if Sarah comes looking for her, she can find her.
They also run a Find Sarah Bushland Facebook page. Leslie would also like people to know that they can email her at lesliesmall at yahoo.com if they have any information. She says that at this point she doesn't even need to see prosecution. She just wants answers. Sarah was blonde-haired, green-eyed, a social butterfly, according to Leslie. She could fit into any group and bounce around from one click to the next and always fit in.
Sarah babysat for extra money and a child who she babysat said that Sarah was her beacon of hope who helped her become a happier child. She claims that Sarah was a big sister to her. Sarah was quick-witted and funny and Leslie knows that every person that's missing deserves someone out there to be looking for them. Sarah was last seen wearing a blue jacket, jeans, a Tweety Bird shirt,
and black Reebok sneakers. If you have any information of Sarah's disappearance or whereabouts, the Washburn County Sheriff's Department number is 715-468-4700 and callers can remain anonymous. I can't believe she's just gone like that. Right. Just gone. So everyone who knows this case basically says that there's three theories.
Sarah got into that truck and something happened to her. Sarah got into the truck and was returned home and then something happened to her. Sarah never got into the truck, went straight home and something happened to her there. So I'm gonna tell you what I think. I think that...
Somehow Jim's involved. I don't know why. Something that seems suspicious. And I know I can't just put blame on someone. Right. So don't come at me because it's just a theory. This is just Garrett's theory. You're not convicting him. You know how like when you lose something and you go back to the same place and you search for it over and over and over because you just that gut feeling is like, I know this is there. Yeah. I don't know. It's how I kind of the police kept going back to.
the house over and over and over. I don't know. It just seems suspicious. So I actually thought that too, because it's like, what, why that? Why search that four or five times? Like, what is it? Almost like if they think that Jim had something to do with it or the parents had something to do with it. Or that was the last plane she was seen. Not Mike and Leslie. Right. So I don't know. That's kind of, that's kind of Garrett's theory. Well, so my thing is, is
Okay. A couple of things. Jim was in Minnesota, right? At a friend's house. But then years later, apparently this is rumored. I didn't see this on an official source. Brian came out and said he wasn't actually with Jim that day.
Now, I don't know if that's like a rumor, so that's why I didn't include it. But that, I mean, chew on that, if you will. Why did they leave? Just to go hang out with friends. No, no, no. Why did the two other boys leave? Did anything ever come out about that? Nothing ever came out about that. Okay. But I do have to say that Leslie...
Has gone after all this happened. Leslie went back and tried to confront Jim about where Sarah was. She was like, can you please talk to us? Can you give us more details? And Jim pointed a gun at her.
What in the world? And at the other kids. Everyone that was in the house. He freaked out and pointed a gun. Now, I've heard this isn't very abnormal behavior for Jim, but I do feel it's weird that when confronted about Sarah, he got aggressive enough to point a gun. But also, Jim has no motive. There was zero. It seems like there was zero motive to do something to her. So I can't really blame somewhere. I mean, if we're just talking theories here, I'm not like all gung ho on Jim.
And like you said, yeah, I mean, there's so it's just anything's possible. Honestly, anything's possible. Another detail is that Marie actually gave Leslie the diary after all of this happened. After Sarah had been missing for a while and Leslie was looking into it and trying to figure out what happened. Marie gave her the diary. Nothing came from it. Half the pages were torn out and missing. Half the pages of Sarah's diary are gone.
And I feel like there's an, I don't think Sarah would have done that.
I don't either. And it just brings us back to the point that like, she literally couldn't even function at the second half of that day. Cause she was so worried about the diary. So I did say that the, you know, the stepbrothers might've been home and there might've been other people, maybe someone else found it, contacted her. So she was like, I gotta get, I don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. Yeah. Uh, there's, there's also the option that, uh,
She was abused by a family member and maybe that family member was at the house and read the diary and discovered that the diary discussed the abuse and got nervous. You know what I mean? So like, there's just so many options. Or the people in the truck could have just, apparently there was like some groups of people in this town that was like one side hated the other side, like big, a bunch of guys that hated each other. And apparently Sarah's boyfriend was in one of those sides. So maybe the truck had to do with
That rough housing. You know what I mean? So point remains, Sarah's missing. Yeah. She has no answers and there's people out there who care about her and want to know what happened. And I'm...
I'm sure that Sarah, like we need justice for Sarah as well. Like forget all theories aside, this is about Sarah and finding her and figuring out what happened for her loved ones who still care. Totally. But that is the case of Sarah Ann Bushland. Okay, you guys. So before we leave, I just want to remind you about the special live digital event that we are hosting for our 100th episode. Again, we want all of you there. I think it's going to be really fun. There's a lot of interactives.
things that we can do during it and that we're planning on doing. So once again, you can buy tickets for that right now at momenthouse.com slash murder with my husband. And we will see you guys next week with another episode. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.
