What lies beneath

Three months after Lana and Chuck disappeared, there was a surprising development:  Lana’s toxicology report revealed she had an elevated level of carbon monoxide in her system when she drowned.

Exhaust from boat engines contains the highly toxic, odorless gas.

Despite all the troubling questions surrounding her death, could this be the answer?  Was the couple simply swimming dangerously close to her boat’s exhaust?

Tom Stempien, Lana’s father: That was BS.

Tammy Swanson, Lana's cousin: I don’t know who would swim with the motor running. You shut if off.

Hansen: So if she was in the water voluntarily, she would have shut the boat off.

Swanson: Absolutely.

Could carbon monoxide have somehow leaked into the boat’s cabin, overcoming the couple?

Lana’s family says if her boat was releasing dangerous levels of odorless gas, they would know.  After police returned “Sea’s Life” to them, they actually used it to search the lake.

Hansen: Did anybody feel dizzy, sick, nauseous?

Chris Crowley, Lana’s cousin:  No. We didn’t experience any problems and some of my cousins and friends spent days on the boat.

The toxicology report revealed something else:  there were only negligible levels of alcohol in Lana’s system, eliminating the theory that Lana and Chuck were partying and accidentally fell overboard.

For Lana’s dad, it was just more reason to suspect foul play.

Tom Stempien: There’s a rat in the woodpile, there’s something happened here.

But if foul play was involved, who would harm two successful young attorneys enjoying a boating trip?  Speculation has run the gamut from wild theories like pirates, or a mafia hit—to the possibility the couple had a disagreement with someone on shore that somehow turned ugly.

Tom Stempien: Had an argument out there at the marina and followed them out and did away with them? I don’t know.

But where was Chuck? 14 months after he and Lana disappeared, there is still no sign of him anywhere.

Jack Cote, attorney working with the Stempien family: I would have expected his body to have surfaced at about the same time and in the same general vicinity as Lana’s.

Hansen: Do you see it as at all strange that Lana’s body is found two weeks after the incident, yet all these months later we still haven’t found chuck’s body?

Det. Robin Sexton, Michigan police department: It is not unheard of for bodies to enter the water and never be recovered.

Michigan state police divers have scoured Lake Huron repeatedly for Chuck’s body, but they say searching this vast lake, with depths of up to 300 feet, is a challenge.

Det. Sgt. Larry Schloegl, Michigan state police: You’re looking at 22 miles across—  I don’t think some people realize the amount of the search area that we have here.

Still, Lana’s family is increasingly haunted by the question of what happened to Chuck Rutherford.

Hansen: Here we are, a year later —

Tom Stempien:  No Chuck. I keep asking myself, praying to the Lord ‘Where is he? Bring him to me,’ you know.

Chuck’s family has never spoken to the media, and has declined repeated requests by Dateline for either an interview or statement. But Detective Sexton says the family just wants privacy.

Det. Sexton: They want answers to the questions just like the Stempiens do.

Patrick Quinlan, a college buddy of Chuck’s who’s kept in touch with him over the years, says Chuck’s friends are still in shock.

Patrick Quinlan, friend of Chuck's: It’s just bizarre to have a buddy just disappear.

Bizarre... and to some people, suspicious.

But Chuck’s college pal is angered by suggestions that because he’s still missing, Chuck was somehow involved in Lana’s death.

Hansen: Do you think there’s a possibility that Chuck is still alive?

Quinlan: Nah.

Hansen: That he had something to do with Lana’s death and somehow was able to get off the boat?

Quinlan: He’s not a violent, hot-tempered person.

One thing that has emerged since Chuck and Lana disappeared is that their relationship seemed to be in trouble.

Andrew Jarvis, the attorney for Lana’s family, has taken sworn statements from her friends and other witnesses describing outbursts of anger and jealousy by Chuck.  In one incident at this bar, they say Chuck was so drunk and verbally abusive to Lana, he had to be forcibly escorted outside by two police officers.

And just two months before Lana disappeared, another man says he saw the couple having a violent argument outside this restaurant.  He contacted police after recognizing Lana and Chuck on television

Reggie Grimmet:  He was trying to force her into the vehicle as he was hitting her. This man was really, really out of control and crazy.

Lana’s friends say she’d become frightened by Chuck’s outbursts  and shortly before her fateful boating trip, she made a troubling comment after watching a television story about the murder of Laci Peterson.

Andrew Jarvis, Lana’s  friend and now-Stempien laywer: “If anything happens to me or I disappear, Chuck would be a person of interest.”

Tom Stempien: I didn’t know. Had I known before, he’d of been a “person of interest” with me, guaranteed.

Lana’s dad says he only learned about Chuck’s behavior after his daughter died.

Hansen: Did you ever have any indication at all that he mistreated your daughter in any way?

Tom Stempien:  No.

Hansen: No sense that he had a dark side?

Tom Stempien:  No. If she would have told me all the things that I’ve heard, he never would have been on that boat.

Is it possible there was some kind of heated domestic dispute on board “Sea’s Life”?

As Dateline first reported in January, the last time Lana used her phone before she disappeared, she was leaving a message for another man, a man friends say Chuck had been jealous of in the past.

And now, Dateline has obtained a recording of that message:

Lana’s voice message: “Hey, when you called me, I was in the middle of Lake Huron, heading to Mackinac. I’m not really, really sure what day I’m going to get to Boston, but I was in the middle of the lake when you called, so I’m calling you back. I’ll be in Mackinac in probably  about an hour, so you can call me back. Bye.”

Though it’s a short message, Andrew Jarvis believes Chuck may have been upset when he heard Lana returning another man’s call—especially if she was planning to meet up with him on an upcoming trip.

Jarvis: My opinion is that that phone call was a catalyst to something happening on that boat.

Hansen: You have to wonder, if she’s calling another man, does he overhear it? Is there some sort of disagreement that leads to an accident or a tragedy?

Det. Sexton: I don’t know. It’s a possibility we’ll look at it. But how would you prove that?

Tom Stempien says he’s not sure what to think about his daughter’s death anymore, but he now believes her boyfriend may still be alive.

Tom Stempien:  I’ve just heard so many stories about Chuck, you know. I gotta firmly think about maybe he is walking.

Hansen: So you think that’s a possibility?

Tom Stempien: Yeah, could be.

But Chuck’s family disagrees so strenuously, they took the case to court.

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