He Told Police, 'Daddy Hurt Her.' Decades Later, He Found Her Body

Bonnie Haim murder trial begins this week in Florida
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 8, 2019 11:15 AM CDT
He Told Police, 'Daddy Hurt Her.' Decades Later, He Found Her Body
Stock photo.   (Getty Images / barbol88)

When Aaron Fraser was 3, his mother disappeared, and the little boy told police he had seen his father shoot and kill her, News4Jax reports. He was removed from his father's Florida home, and eventually adopted by another couple, after his father became the main suspect in his mother's 1993 disappearance. But Bonnie Haim's body was never found, and police couldn't charge Michael Haim with anything—until December 2014, when Aaron Fraser, who had won the deed to his childhood home in North Jacksonville after suing his biological father for wrongful death, started demolishing it. As the excavator rolled over the outdoor shower near the swimming pool, a gruesome discovery: Fraser and his brother-in-law eventually found, buried in the dirt underneath the concrete slab, what they originally thought was a coconut. It turned out to be Bonnie Haim's skull, the Florida Times-Union reports.

Soon thereafter, Michael Haim, now 52, was charged with murdering his wife of five years. His trial, at which his now-29-year-old biological son will testify, starts Monday. According to charging documents, Bonnie Haim had been planning to leave her husband, and had put aside $1,250 for safekeeping with a friend by January 1993. She planned to move on Jan. 23 of that year, while Michael Haim was on a business trip, but on Jan. 6, she canceled plans with a relative to, she said, discuss her marriage with her husband. The following day, a hotel worker at a Red Roof Inn near the airport found a purse with Bonnie Haim's ID; police found her car in the airport's parking lot. Michael Haim told police his wife ran off after an argument, but friends said she never would have left her son. (They blamed alligators for a man's death. Eighteen years later, his wife was convicted.)

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