The Impossible Suicide
One witness said that she saw JoAnn leave the church and then heard her car alarm go off, but when she looked at the parking lot, JoAnn and her car were not there.
The Night She Disappeared
JoAnn Romain lived a very normal, happy life. On January 12th, 2010, she went to a church service at St. Paul Catholic Church, arriving there at around 7:15 pm. The church service lasted around fifteen to twenty minutes, but things quickly got very strange. One witness said that she saw JoAnn leave the church and then heard her car alarm go off, but when she looked at the parking lot, JoAnn and her car were not there.
Police apparently arrived after the car was left on a road by her church, two hours after the church service had ended, but the last person to leave the church said that she had not seen JoAnn’s car at around 9:30 pm. The police said that there were no usable fingerprints or anything that suggested that JoAnn had been abducted. A robbery was also unlikely since her purse was still in the front of her car with $1,500 in cash, although her phone and keys were missing.
The police told her children that they probably should not go to the church to look for her, but they went anyway, finding an ongoing search, looking for JoAnn, who wasn’t reported missing yet.
The Police Theory
The police believe that JoAnn left her car, somehow walked down the incredibly snowy bank of Lake St. Clair, in stilettos, and went into the nearly frozen lake, committing suicide.
There were footprints going down to the lake which matched the theory, however, there were no photographs taken of them, so they couldn’t further investigate and see if the footprints were her shoe size. There was also no hole in the ice, so it is unclear how she would have even gotten into the water to kill herself.
Her family and friends searched for days in the water, which was at most two feet deep, but to no avail. It was also strange because there was no current, so her body couldn’t have floated away on its own.
It was not until seventy days later that her body was found by Canadian fishermen. On March 20th, 2012, her body was discovered on Boblo Island, Amherstburg, Ontario Canada. This was thirty-five miles from where she supposedly went into the water.
She was covered in algae when she was found, meaning that she probably had been in the water for a long time. Her body was so decomposed that it was nearly impossible to tell what killed her. Her cause of death was still ruled as freshwater drowning, even though that could not be proven. The first autopsy revealed no evidence of foul play.
In a second, private autopsy, it was discovered that she had two bruises on her upper left arm that she most likely got very shortly before she died, and also that she had no water in her lungs when she died. This brought up the question: how could she have possibly drowned? It seemed more likely that she was killed, then her body was disposed of in the water.
Was it Murder?
JoAnn’s family believes that she was murdered, and Michelle thinks it was covered up by the police. Before she had gone to church that day she had gotten gas. The gas attendant said that they had a very normal conversation. The question was raised, why would she go and get gas if she was going to kill herself?
There was also the odd thing, that when police found the car abandoned, they went searching for JoAnn, but the car was registered to Michelle. So, the question is: why were the police looking for JoAnn and not Michelle?
Michelle also said that her new purse was torn on the side, but the police didn’t consider it to be evidence because it wasn’t torn on the strap. Because it wasn’t evidence, the police didn’t check for fingerprints on the purse.
Something else that baffled JoAnn’s family and friends, was how the police thought she even got down to the lake? She was wearing four-inch heels and when her body was discovered, her heels were in near-perfect condition, how could that be after hiking in the snow? There were prints found in the snow, but they didn’t seem to match someone wearing high heels.
JoAnn’s phone was still missing when she was found. If someone killed her, they would have had to destroy her phone because it could be traced, but her keys were still on her. However, her keys were in her jacket pocket, zipped up, and her jacket was also fully zipped up on her, which her family said is odd and that she wouldn’t have worn it like that.
On top of all that, because there was no current in the frozen lake, it was impossible for her body to travel that far on its own.
It is because of all of this, that Michelle, very vocally, believes that her mother was abducted outside of their church, chloroformed, and then disposed of in the water.
Murder Theories
At first, it was suspected that JoAnn’s ex-husband, David, was the one who murder her. He was reportedly very upset with the way things had ended between them, and some people thought he might have killed her for it. Michelle said that her mother left her father because she was fed up with him, but a conflicting story said that David left JoAnn to marry her best friend. However, David was later ruled out as a suspect by the police.
A family feud regarding inheritance money had reignited a few weeks before JoAnn’s disappearance, leading Michelle to believe that it was Tim Matouk, JoAnn’s first cousin, who is the one responsible for murdering her.
JoAnn was feeling very anxious in the weeks preceding her disappearance. She was taking lots of phone calls and always thought she was being followed. She even called a security company looking into a private investigator shortly before everything happened.
JoAnn spoke to her brother, Bill Matouk about how she was nervous about Tim threatening her, and Michelle said she left the meeting much more freaked out than she was before. Michelle also remembers her mother telling her that if anything happened to her, Tim should be investigated.
A man named Paul Hawk reported that he saw Tim with JoAnn in the parking lot of the church the night she disappeared, but the police didn’t follow up for two years, and the family only found out about his statement after filing a lawsuit against the police department.
All in all, suicide seems unlikely for JoAnn. She was a deeply devoted Catholic, which means that she considered suicide to be a very serious sin, she didn’t leave a suicide note, she didn’t have a history of mental illness or depression, and she lived a very happy life. So, why would she kill herself? Michelle is sure that her mother was murdered and has spent nearly $200,000 on lawyers and investigators trying to get to the bottom of what really happened. She said that she will never be at peace until her mother’s killer, or killers, are brought to justice.