Beneath the blue waters

When Lana Stempien’s body was discovered, she was wearing nothing but jewelry, and police are convinced she went into the water that way.

Detective Sexton, Michigan P.D.: Over that period of time, the clothing wouldn’t disintegrate or wash off. Also, the clothing would’ve left marks.

Were Lana and her boyfriend Chuck just enjoying a romantic skinny dip when something went tragically wrong?  It’s a theory her family refuses to accept.

Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent: This skinny dipping theory doesn’t work for you?

Tammy Swanson, cousin: No.

Hansen: People go skinny dipping all the time—romantic couples?

Swanson: No. Why is your jewelry on?

The Omega watch
Tammy Swanson says her cousin always removed her jewelry before swimming and always put it in exactly the same place.

Swanson: She would have put her rings through the watch clasp and put it through the steering wheel.

Hansen: She did the same thing every time?

Swanson: Yes. So why was her jewelry still on?

What’s more, Lana’s Omega watch, which sells for $1,500, was a treasured gift from an old boyfriend. And, she’d just spent $300 to have it cleaned and re-sealed.

Swanson: It was a very precious piece of jewelry to her.

Hansen: Does it make sense to you that she would go into the water voluntarily with this prized possession?

Chris Crowley, Lana Stempien’s cousin:  Not at all, she wouldn’t do it.

Too cold for swimming
Plus, there was the weather.

Swanson: It was cold. It wasn’t a hot day where you would just go in the water.

But what about drinking?  Police found an empty bottle of vodka on Lana’s boat, raising the question of whether the young couple had just been partying too much and become careless. 

Andrew Jarvis, a friend of Lana’s who worked with her in the Detroit law department, and also boated with her, says that just wouldn’t happen.

Andrew Jarvis, Lana’s co-worker: She would never, never drink when she was operating that boat. She was extremely safe. If she were gonna have a drink or two, she would wait until she got to shore.

It would be months before a toxicology report would reveal what, if anything, was in Lana’s system. The initial state autopsy concluded the cause of Lana’s death was drowning. And with no obvious signs of trauma, the official report lists the manner of death as “accident.”

Detective Sexton: It gives appearance of being a boating accident. We have questions, but right now, there is no definitive evidence that there’s foul play involved here.

Hansen:  Can you rule out foul play?

Detective Sexton:  No, we cannot.

Without hard evidence, lead investigator Detective Robin Sexton says any talk of foul play is pure speculation.

But Jack Cote, a lawyer who has 25 years experience reconstructing the events surrounding the disappearance of boaters, believes Lana’s Omega watch is one of many indications that something suspect was likely involved.  He volunteered his services to both Lana Stempien’s and Chuck Rutherford’s families when he first heard about the case.

Jack Cote, helping the Stempien family in the investigation: The possibility of foul play in my mind is at least 50/50 if not higher.

Hansen: The autopsy showed no obvious signs of trauma. Does that rule out foul play?

Cote: No. Because you can have an absence of trauma and still drown.

Hansen:  Pushed overboard?

Cote: Yes.

Though Cote says the Rutherfords have told him they no longer need his help, he’s still working with the Stempiens.

Lana's torn shoe
He believes one of the most intriguing clues is Lana’s size 8 ½ New Balance running shoe, found lying on her boat with a knob from the boat’s GPS bracket strangely wedged in the sole.

Cote: If you took a hammer and tried to pound that in, you would have difficulty doing that.

Swanson: That was very odd. The Coast Guard told us that the only way that the knob could have been embedded in her shoe was with force.

Hansen: Does that indicate to you that there was some sort of struggle on board this boat?

Swanson: That there was something.

Cote: Something out of the ordinary?

Swanson: Something out of the ordinary, something happened.

Cote also points to a suspiciously large tear in the back of the same shoe as one more hint of a violent struggle.

Hansen: It’s a struggle that is somehow related to, or lead to, the demise of these two people?

Cote: It could very well be.

Whose fenders?
And then there are the mysterious fenders—which boaters use to protect their boats when they tie up to another boat.

Tom Behan, who first spotted Lana’s abandoned boat, worried when he noticed a pair of blue fenders oddly tied together, dragging from a line behind the boat.

Tom Behan, spotted “Sea’s Life”: Probably 30 to 50 feet away from the boat, which was immediate suspect to me. Why is this line hanging off the back of the boat?  As a safe boater, you don’t ever allow that to happen.

The blue fenders, sometimes called bumpers, disturb Lana’s family because her fenders were white—they say she didn’t own any blue ones, and hadn’t purchased any.

Swanson: There were no blue bumpers. her parents agree she never had blue bumpers.

Hansen: How can you be so sure that she didn’t purchase these?

Swanson: Cause I myself called different marine stores and have printouts of what she purchased, and that was not something she’d ever purchased.

Cote: If they didn’t buy them, who tied to them to their boat? The only explanation is some third party.

Was another boat moored to “Sea’s Life”? And if it was, who was on it— and why were they there?

Police downplay the possibility because when the Coast Guard arrived shortly after Behan first saw Lana’s boat, the blue fenders were gone.

Detective Sexton: Sometime between when he left and they arrived, these fenders, and no disrespect to him, if they existed, disappeared. The Coast Guard never saw them.

Behan: Those fenders were there. There was absolutely no question about it. Absolutely, 100 percent sure.

Cote: So the question is… where did they go? The possibility of foul play is very high on the agenda.

GPS mystery
What’s even more disturbing to Lana’s family is her GPS.  At 1:22 a.m., some 12 hours after anyone heard from Lana and Chuck, police say someone appears to have activated the tracking device.

Detective Sexton: We had no idea what was going on. It appeared the track started at that time in the morning for no apparent reason.

Crowley: It’s very puzzling, very peculiar for no one to have seen them and for nearly 12 hours to go by, and then for the GPS to be turned on is just not explainable.

Hansen:  What are the possibilities do you think?

Crowley: I don’t think it points to them accidentally falling off the boat in the middle of the afternoon.

Was someone on board Lana’s boat in the middle of the night, tampering with the tracking device in the darkness?

Adding to the mystery, Dateline has learned that part of the memory on the GPS was suspiciously blank.  The company that makes the unit says that could only happen if someone intentionally deleted information, perhaps in an effort to cover the boat’s whereabouts.

Hansen: Is it possible that somebody was messing around with this GPS, deleting information?

Detective Sexton: I guess it’s possible.

Detective Sexton cautions that police are still analyzing the data from the GPS and are not prepared to draw any conclusions from it. 

But Lana’s friend Andrew Jarvis, who volunteered to act as the family’s attorney, asked a technician who previously made minor repairs to Lana’s GPS to analyze that same data.

Andrew Jarvis, Lana’s friend and now-Stempien family attorney: There is no other explanation other than somebody physically erased that information—somebody who didn’t want anybody to know where that boat had been.

But who would do that, and why?  And why was the knob embedded in Lana’s shoe? Why was her shoe torn? Where did those blue fenders come from? And why was Lana naked except for the jewelry she always took off before swimming?

They were lingering and disturbing questions. And the most troubling one: Where was Chuck?

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