What lies beneath

When Lana Stempien’s body was discovered, she was wearing nothing but a necklace, a ring and her treasured Omega watch. 

Chris Hansen, Dateline correspondent: Did it disturb you that she was found unclothed?

Tammy Swanson, Lana’s cousin: Very disturbing. Why was she naked? 

Were Lana and her boyfriend Chuck just enjoying a romantic skinny dip when something went tragically wrong?   

Detective Robin Sexton calls it a plausible theory, but it’s another theory Lana’s family angrily rejects.

Tom Stempien, Lana’s father: Sexton said to me ‘Well, you know, people go skinny dipping.’ I said, ‘68 degree water?’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’

Hansen:  But they wouldn’t be the first couple in the history of boating to go for a skinny dip and have the boat get away from them.

Tom Stempien: If Lana would have went skinny dipping, she would have thrown the anchor out.And on the bow, all she had to do is pull a pin and the anchor would have gone down in the water.

Then there’s Lana’s jewelry: her family insists she always removed it before swimming and habitually 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.

Hansen: Took the rings off, took the watch off, put it on the steering wheel.

Swanson: 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's cousin: Not at all, she wouldn’t do it.

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.

Tom Stempien says as much as his fun-loving daughter was known to enjoy a good party and a few drinks, she never had a drink until she was safely on shore.

Tom Stempien: No. she would never drink when she was running the boat. Never.

It would be months before a toxicology report would reveal what, if anything, was in Lana’s system. But 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.”

Det. Robin Sexton, Michigan State Police: 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?

Det. Sexton: No, we cannot.

Without hard evidence, Detective Sexton has always cautioned that any talk of foul play is pure speculation. But Lana’s father has always believed there’s something suspicious about his daughter’s death.

Hansen: Did you think foul play right from the get go?

Tom Stempien: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I personally don’t think it was just an accident.

One person who agrees is Jack Cote, an attorney who specializes in maritime mysteries and is working with the Stempien family.

Jack Cote, attorney working with the Stempien family: 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.

Both Cote and Lana’s family believe one of the most intriguing clues is Lana’s size 8 and a half New Balance running shoe, found lying on her boat with a knob from the boat’s GPS bracket strangely wedged in the sole.

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.

Hansen: Something out of the ordinary.

Swanson: Something out of the ordinary, something happened.

Then there are the mysterious fenders, which boaters use for protection when they tie up to a dock or another boat.

Tom Behan, the boater who called the Coast Guard after spotting “Sea’s Life,” was disturbed by a pair of blue fenders, oddly tied together dragging from a line behind Lana’s boat.

Tom Behan, saw “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 fenders are especially troubling to Lana’s family because they say hers were white. She never owned any blue ones.

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.

Hansen:  No blue fenders?  

Swanson: No.

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

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

Cote: The possibility of foul play is very high on the agenda.

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.

Det. 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.

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.  Because it’s difficult to accidentally erase information, experts say that could mean someone intentionally deleted the data—perhaps in an effort to cover the boat’s whereabouts.

Hansen: It’s possible that somebody was messing around with this GPS, deleting information ?

Det. Sexton: I guess it’s possible.

Detective Sexton, who had the GPS analyzed by the FBI, says he isn’t prepared to make any conclusions about it. 

But Andrew Jarvis, a friend of Lana’s who worked with her in the Detroit law department, and is now the Stempien’s attorney, believes the missing information is highly suspect.

Andrew Jarvis, Lana’s friend, now-Stempien family attorney: To me that GPS unit is the key to what happened.

Jarvis asked a technician who’s made minor repairs on Lana’s GPS in the past to analyze the data from Lana and Chuck’s trip  and says the technician concluded there’s only one way to explain the missing data.

Jarvis: 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?  Why was the knob embedded in Lana’s shoe? Where did those blue fenders come from?

And why was Lana naked except for the jewelry she always took off before swimming?

Lingering— and disturbing— questions.

It was a deepening mystery with one particularly troubling question:  Where was Chuck?

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