In 2010, 55-year-old Joann Romain from Michigan went to church and never returned. And when they found her body, many oddities were discovered.

The Family Of Joann RomainThe Mysterious Death Of Joann Romain

Shortly before that, Joann Romain convicted her husband of treason and they broke up, and the care of their three common children completely fell on Joan’s shoulders. Nevertheless, everyone described this woman as happy, cheerful, and very positive. And also balanced and fully adequate.

Joann Romain had no enemies and serious problems, including financial ones. Nothing indicated that it could become the center of an intricate and sinister unsolved mystery.

On the evening of January 12, 2010, Joan left the house to get into her car and drive to the local church for a service. Joan was a devout Catholic and never missed a service.

Other parishioners saw her that evening in church and described her as habitually cheerful, pointing out that there was nothing strange or unusual in her behavior. Also, many saw how after a while Joan left the church premises.

However, late in the evening, when patrolman Keith Colombo drove past the church, he noticed a lone car in the church parking lot. He thought. that this is strange since the church had already been closed for a long time and no light was on anywhere in it.

Colombo checked the license plate on his database and found that it belongs to Joann Romain, and when he decided to open the car, suspecting that something bad might have happened to the owner, he found inside a purse with documents in the name of Joann Romain and a wallet with $ 1,500 in cash. There was no mobile phone in the purse.

Joann Romain

Near the car in the snow, Colombo found a lone trail of footprints that led down to the embankment of the almost frozen Lake St. Clair, to the double fence.

At one point the chain of footprints broke off, and there was a strong dent in the snow as if Joann had sat on it for a long time, and then got up again and walked on.

Everything pointed to the fact that the woman just got out of her car herself, went to the lake, and then probably fell through the ice. No traces of strangers were found near the footprints and there were no signs of a struggle. Colombo suspected suicide and called other police officers.

Soon after, the police launched a search and rescue operation and combed all the places around the lake, but no sign of the missing Joann Romain was found. She did not return home either.

The official version was voiced that Joann most likely committed suicide and drowned herself, falling through the ice. But since her body had not been found, no more could be said.

In the meantime, far more bizarre evidence began to emerge. So some parishioners said that they heard the alarm go off in Romain’s car during the service, but there was no one around and inside the car too.

Also, one of the last parishioners who left the church after the service stated that when he left, there were no cars in the parking lot. So it turns out that Joann Romain left the church, and then returned there again?

Another eyewitness claimed to have seen a suspicious black van “lurking” on a corner near the church parking lot.

It was also determined that, despite her outwardly cheerful demeanor, Romain had some serious personal problems in the days leading up to her disappearance. According to Michelle, Joann’s daughter, her mother has been acting rather strange lately, saying that she is being followed and that her phone is being tapped, although she never clarified who she thought was following her.

Romain also told her daughter that someone was checking her mail and that certain people were breaking into her house at night. And then she got so paranoid that she changed all the locks on the doors.

It is not known what all this has to do with Joann’s disappearance, but it certainly shows that her life was not as clear-cut as it seemed at first glance.

For 2 months after Joan’s disappearance, her case went nowhere in the investigation, and then a fisherman stumbled upon her body in the Detroit River on the Canadian side. This place was 30 miles from Joan’s car, and the fact that the body was found right there looked very strange.

The fact is that at the time of Joann’s disappearance, there was practically no current in Lake St. Clair, and if someone had drowned on the lake that day not far from the shore, his body would not have been carried away anywhere, but it would have lain almost in the same place until spring.

The body looked badly decomposed, so it was very difficult to determine the cause of death. It was tentatively stated that drowning was most likely the cause, and authorities quickly came to the verdict that it was simply suicide.

But, in addition to the strangeness of the location of the body, many other suspicious points gradually appeared in the investigation.

Family and friends unanimously stated that Joann was a devout Catholic who loved her children very much, and she was not taking any medication or undergoing therapy for any mental health problems, and therefore would never have voluntarily killed herself.

Also, there was no suicide note on Joann’s body and in the car, and even if she did commit suicide, her family insisted that Joann was so afraid of the depth and dark water that it is almost impossible that she chose the method of drowning in the lake. as a way to commit suicide. During her lifetime, she never even went to the shores of the lake.

The clothes and shoes on the found body also raised many questions. Joann wore boots with very high heels, which seemed completely inappropriate for both church and a snowy winter day. And the gas tank in her car was filled to capacity as if she refueled just on the eve of a visit to church. Why would someone who was planning to commit suicide fill their car with gas?

Other odd details were that her mobile phone was never found, and her shoes not only didn’t match the weather, they also looked brand new, as if she had worn them for the first time.

A coat was also found on Joann’s body, buttoned up to the very chin, which, according to the family, she never did, she always did not fully zip up. And all the pockets of her coat were also carefully buttoned, which was also not at all typical of Joann.

When the Joann Roman case was studied by blogger Terry Meurer, co-creator of the show Unsolved Mysteries, he spoke about it this way:

“A couple of key things that I find interesting is the fact that her coat was zipped up when she was found, and she never, ever zipped up her coat all the way. I know it sounds like a small clue, but it’s one of the things that catch my eye.

Terry Meurer, co-creator of the show Unsolved Mysteries

What happened to her cell phone? He was never found. Imagine that you are a 55-year-old woman in very high heels, who is very religious, loves her children to death, and she is standing alone in the churchyard in the dead of winter in the cold. You stand there in this church and you see what her path would be if she went and entered this lake, and it seems absolutely meaningless.

Terry Meurer, co-creator of the show Unsolved Mysteries

Statistically, it’s so rare that someone kills themselves by drowning by stepping into a freezing lake in the middle of winter – it’s just hard. For me, this is beyond all powers. It is unfortunate that in this particular case, the autopsy did not show anything. They even performed three autopsies and found very little information about the cause of death.”

Terry Meurer, co-creator of the show Unsolved Mysteries

Despite the fact that the police firmly believed it was a suicide, Joann Romain’s friends and family are still convinced that something more sinister than suicide happened that night and that she was the victim of something violent that, for some reason, possibly deliberately hidden by local authorities.

They believe that the police version makes no sense, because, for Joann, suicide would mean that she voluntarily went out into the evening at minus 12 Celsius (quite a severe frost for the average American), and then walked for a long time through a snowy area to an icy embankment, and all this in bulky boots with high heels.

After that, she went down a steep frozen embankment, slipped through two fences, fell down from a height of one and a half meters, and then plunged into the icy water (and there was very shallow water) to commit suicide.

It doesn’t really make much sense, and yet the police keep insisting that it was a suicide. In addition, there are many cases where the police did not manage the initial investigation, for example did not take proper photos of the crime scene, in particular tracks that cannot be confirmed that they belonged to Joann Romain at all, because the officers also did not measure, did not take casts and did not photograph the prints.

Whether it was all just incompetence or a cover-up is anyone’s guess, but it can certainly be seen as something very odd.

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