Whodunnit?
Read our cold case file and see if you correctly predicted the killer’s identity…
When Erin Corwin moved to California from Oak Ridge in Tennessee, in September 2013, she must have been excited to be starting a new chapter in her life.
She was moving in with her new husband, Jon, a Marine who was posted there. The two had met as children when he was just 10 years old, and they became closer five years later when they reconnected on Facebook.
They’d started dating at 16, but as Jon carried out his training, their romance remained long-distance. Yet that didn’t stop them getting married in Las Vegas in November 2012, four months after Jon proposed, before he was deployed to Japan.
By the following year, the pair had decided they had been apart for long enough. Jon had then been moved to California. They decided that Erin would join him and they’d live together as man and wife.
It must have felt like a dream come true for Erin, to have a husband and home of her own. She hadn’t had the easiest start in life, being fostered at just three weeks old.
Thankfully, the couple who took her in, Lore and Bill Heavilin, adopted her when she was three-and-a-half. Yet, she remained a quiet girl, only really coming out of her shell around animals – especially her pony, RyeLeigh. It was at the stables where she housed him that she’d first met Jon.
The move must have been daunting for Erin. She was just a teenager at the time. Yet, she told her mum she’d settled in quickly, meeting new neighbours, other marines and their families.
One couple that Erin and Jon became particularly close to was Christopher Lee and his wife, Nichole. Christopher and Nichole were slightly older than Erin and had a six-yearold daughter, Liberty, but that didn’t stop them spending their evenings together, having barbecues and watching films.
Then on 28 June 2014, Erin,
then 19, went out for a hike around Joshua Tree National Park, but she failed to return home. Jon phoned Lore to pass on the worrying news and, despite them guessing that Erin had just got lost, Lore – who was already coming to visit the couple in a few days – decided to move her flight forwards. But that wasn’t the only news that Jon had for his mother-in-law. He called back later to tell her that Erin had been having an affair with their neighbour, Christopher.
By the time Lore arrived in California, Erin’s car had been found abandoned. That was when the pair started to get worried and feared the worst. Where was their girl?
The house was filled with food for Lore’s arrival and there was no other sign that she had disappeared voluntarily.
Despite the police mounting a search, Erin remained missing and her loved ones faced fresh anguish every day, not knowing where she was. Then, on 16 August, there was finally a breakthrough – but it wasn’t the one that everyone had been praying for.
Erin’s body was found in an abandoned mineshaft, so badly decomposed that she needed to be identified by dental records. Chillingly, a piece of rope was dangling round her neck.
Her family and loved ones were devastated. What on earth had happened to their beautiful, quiet girl?
‘Erin’s car had been found abandoned – where was their girl?’