Mystery at Bootleggers Cove

Havilah Correira was far away, in South Africa doing volunteer work, when her mother called.

Bethany? Missing? No, that couldn't be.

Havilah Correira: I don't think it even hit me. I didn't even come home right away. I just thought, "Oh, I’ll wait it out. She'll show up in a couple of weeks."

And when she returned, and Bethany was still missing? It made Havilah angry if anybody suggested her sister might not come back at all.

Havilah Correira: I just thought she has so much potential, so much life left, so much to offer to others, you know. It can't be over yet.

And, back in Anchorage, it was as if the whole city had decided that same thing.

They came in the hundreds, from the city, from Talkeetna especially, to search for Bethany.

It grew until it was the biggest missing person search ever in Anchorage.

(news report)

Linda Correira: Every time I see a new face walk in this building, it kind of gives me hope and encouragement.

In Talkeenta, population 700, they helped raise $40,000 in reward money.

Glen Klinkhart: There were people who gave up their livelihood. It's a very seasonal economy up there. The people who make their entire year's salary in three or four month period.

Detective Klinkhart, meanwhile -- in his particular way -- was looking, too.

First, he had to eliminate those closest to Bethany, her boyfriend and her family.

Glen Klinkhart: We spent hours talking. I asked them for DNA swabs. There was no, “Well, why do you want that?” It was, “OK.” You know, I asked them for photographs. I asked them for cell phone records. Anything that I asked for, they provided.

They were all quickly ruled out as suspects.

But what about that fire next door? Was Bethany’s disappearance connected somehow?

Of course it was. What happened in his own life screamed that it had to be connected.

The burned building, it turned out, was part of the same complex as Bethany’s apartment.

And hadn't Bethany just been hired to clean -- and show -- apartments?

Glen Klinkhart: So immediately, the detective in me's going, “Showing apartments? Ooh. Well now we've got all kinds of potential suspects.”

Maybe the landlord -- Bethany’s new boss -- could help. Bethany, it turned out, had told her boyfriend that the man - his name was Mike Lawson -- called her shortly before she disappeared to set up a training session. So Klinkhart went to see Mr. Lawson, and recorded the conversation.

(police interview)

Klinkhart: Hi, Mr. Lawson?

Mike Lawson: Yep.

Det. Klinkhart: Hi, I’m Detective Klinkhart, APD.

Glen Klinkhart: He was very cool, very calm. He indicated that yes, he had talked to Bethany. That he had called her. It was about 8 o'clock Saturday morning.

Lawson told Klinkhart he had simply returned Bethany’s call, but he said he had not arranged to teach Bethany how to show apartments that day or any other.

(police interview)

Klinkhart: There were no plans to meet Beth for any kind of reason?

Mike Lawson: No. None at all.

In fact, Lawson told Klinkhart...

Glen Klinkhart: "She doesn't show apartments, I do. There's no plan. We weren't going to meet. It was about some keys. And she said she got them fixed."

Lawson's brother, Bob, lived with Mike. And he was there, too.

(police interview)

Mike Lawson: This is my brother, Bob.

Klinkhart: Hi, Bob.

Glen Klinkhart: His brother, very quiet gentleman, but at one point I’m talking with Mike. And Bob kind of interrupts for a moment and kind of starts to say where he was.

Now that was curious.

The Lawson brothers told Det. Klinkhart they hadn't seen Bethany the day she disappeared.

But their manner seemed strained.

They had alibis, however. They said they had spent all day at home together watching Nascar on television, then went out drinking that night with friends.

And that was that.

And yet Klinkhart's antenna was picking up something.

He pressed Mike Lawson for more.

Glen Klinkhart: I wanted to know what he thought about her, not just what he saw. And he -- I’ll never forget. He said, “Nice girl. Very nice girl.”

(police interview)

Mike Lawson: Met her with her parents. God bless her. She's trying to go to college. Good girl.

Mike told Klinkhart he was a father himself, had two grown children.

So imagine what Klinkhart thought a few days later, when one of Mike's co-workers, a man named Franko, told Klinkhart he was disturbed by the way Mike talked about Bethany in the days after her disappearance.

Franko Besinaiz: His words, he said, "that f---ing b--ch is giving me so many problems." And I was just in disbelief. I couldn't believe he'd say something like that about somebody that has disappeared.

On top of that, said Franko, Mike's fourth wife had just left him, and he'd been talking openly about taking it out on other women.

Franko Besinaiz: He met some girl in a bar and he called her a "bar whore" and he told me that he had basically took his frustrations out on her. He took all his madness out on her. And I said what do you mean by that? And his response was basically “I did her at the same time I was beating her.”

In fact, it was because Franko found Mike's behavior so strange that he called Klinkhart, who showed up at their job site with more questions.

And while he was there, Klinkhart peered through windows into the dirty, messy interior of Mike Lawson’s car for any sign that Bethany had been inside. He needed a search warrant to do any more than that.

So Klinkhart left to get one. And what did Mike do then?

Franko Besinaiz: He was walking around his car, searching his own vehicle just like they did.

Franko said Mike told him he needed a couple of days off to find a lawyer, to take care of some things. And when he returned…

Franko Besinaiz: It was raining, pouring down rain. He pulled up on the job, which was all muddy, dirty, and it was completely detailed, spotless.

Keith Morrison: His car.

Franko Besinaiz: It looked brand new.

Glen Klinkhart: It had been scrubbed.

Keith Morrison: Anything that would have been there was gone?

Glen Klinkhart: Completely gone. I got nothing out of that car.

Well now that was certainly suspicious.

Remember, Mike said he was home watching television the day Bethany disappeared. But was he?

Klinkhart looked up Lawson’s cell phone records. Which told him that just about the time Bethany is believed to have disappeared, there was a flurry of calls from Mike Lawson’s cell phone.

Glen Klinkhart: These calls were made from a cell phone to his own house.

Keith Morrison: The house he said he was in all day.

Glen Klinkhart: To the house he said he was in all day.

It seemed Mike was desperately trying to reach his brother Bob, at their house across town.

And where was Mike when he made those calls? Detective Klinkhart checked cell tower records.

Glen Klinkhart: His phone was down on M Street, making a flurry of calls back to the house.

M Street, where Bethany’s apartment is.

Glen Klinkhart: And there's a two minute conversation between Mike Lawson’s cell phone and his brother's cell phone down in south Anchorage. And that two minute conversation was the one thing I had that told me that there was something' going on and that these brothers --

Keith Morrison: Both of them knew about it.

Glen Klinkhart: They both knew. If I could figure out what that conversation was about, I could find Bethany.

The cell tower records told Klinkhart that Mike Lawson’s cell phone went back to the Lawsons' home for a while, and then traveled 45 miles north, and dropped off the radar for three hours.

Glen Klinkhart: Where did he go? Where can you go? This is Alaska. You drive two hours out and two hours back, you've covered a lot of ground.

Klinkhart's gut told him that wherever it was Mike had gone, Bob would have gone, too.

But it also told him that neither brother would ever tell on the other.

If no one talked, how would he ever find Bethany?

Glen Klinkhart: It became pretty clear by the fall that here we had these two guys right in our sights. But we had nowhere to go.

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