Tom Stump
My oldest son, Tom Stump,
41 disappeared from his home on
In 2002, when I originally posted Tom's story on this web site, I had no
preconceived idea about what happened to my son. I just knew that the circumstances of Tom's
disappearance were suspicious and there were many questions that needed
answers. Since then, however, I've
received information that Tom may have become a threat to a major drug
operation that links the
I talked with Tom by phone the day before he vanished. He had just rented a
van to take his wife, Bernie, and two daughters,
Bonnie, 12, and Sally, 8, on a vacation trip. He said he would call me as
soon as they got back from their trip.
That evening, Tom and Bernie took the girls and two of their friends out to
dinner to celebrate Sally's eighth birthday. The next morning, Tom put gas in
the van and went to the bank and to the post office in preparation for the
trip.
About
At
My youngest son,
A search had been organized, and 26 of Tom's friends and neighbors were
combing the woods. One of Bernie's ex-husbands, an ex-con by the name of
Mark Ripin, whom Bernie still considered her "very dear friend," was also
involved in the search. When interviewed by police, the children gave different
stories. Bonnie continued to maintain that her father "walked into the
woods," but Sally said he "drove off in a
car," although neither of their cars was missing. The dog that detectives used to track Tom's
scene did not go into the woods.
Instead, it went directly to the road.
Bernie stated that, during the early morning hours, Sally walked into their
bedroom and found Tom cleaning his guns. Tom was a gun collector and owned six
guns; according to Bernie, one of those guns, a Glock, was missing. (According
to Scott Haskell, Bernie also owned a .380 caliber pistol.) Bernie told a
detective that Tom had told her that he had hidden one or more guns in the
woods, but hadn't told her where they were.
That detective told me privately that something didn't seem right, and I
agreed. Bernie would not allow me to talk to the children and was not happy
when I was interviewed by Detective Penley. After taping interviews with
Bernie, the girls, and me, Penley stated in her report, "The complainant
followed me out to the car and seemed extremely nervous about my conversation
with the victim's mother." Detective Penley also stated,
"Complainant's demeanor was very upbeat and she spoke of getting on with
her life." A few days after Tom
disappeared, his business partner and an employee went to Tom's house to get
tools from the company truck. As they
were leaving, they noticed that the recycle bin contained champagne bottles and
the trash bin held black gift wrap paper and
black bows. "Somebody was celebrating something,"
Tom's partner observed. This information appears in
Detective Penley's
A man who worked at the Cudjo Key landfill contacted police to report a strange occurrence in which a woman arrived at the landfill with a pickup truck that matched
the description of Tom's pickup. The man said he helped the woman empty the
truck and was struck by the unusual nature of the items she was getting rid of
- a marriage license, photo albums containing wedding pictures, and personal
items that obviously belonged to a man. The woman didn't give her name, paid
with cash so there was no receipt, and all
the items were bulldozed into the transfer truck.
Six days after Tom's disappearance, Bernie left on vacation with the
children. She returned home by herself, and the girls went to
My husband and I hired a private investigator. He is the one who found out
about Tom's preparations for a trip with his family on the day he became
missing -- that he filled his pickup with gas, went to the bank, and stopped the
mail. The sheriff's department supplied me with copies of their interviews
with no problem, but when I requested the May-August calls to and from Tom and
Bernie's home, which Detective Penley had subpoenaed, there was no information
about any calls beyond the beginning of July. When I questioned the sheriff
about this, he stated in a letter, "I have been
assured that if they are not included they do not exist." That makes no
sense at all, in light of all the calls that I know were made to and from that
house in the days surrounding Tom's disappearance.
In March, 1997, I placed an ad in two newspapers that
service the
In 2000, Tom was declared legally dead, and Bill Becker and Bernie were
married.
In February, 2002, Detective J. Norman gave Bernie and Bill lie detector
tests. Reportedly they passed. Detective
Who benefited from Tom's death? His wife received $150,000 in insurance money, plus the house, savings, etc. His
partner, Scott Haskell, received the stocks and bonds that were in his and
Tom's name and also several acres of land.
It's impossible for me to believe that Tom committed suicide and hid his own
body. It is equally hard to believe that he deserted his family. He was not
that kind of person. Tom was co-owner of a successful construction business and
was proud of all that he and his partner had accomplished. He was a very hard
worker, but above all, a dedicated father. He went in to work early each
morning so that he could be there when his daughters came home from school. He
was devoted to those little girls -- helped them with their homework, prepared
their dinners, and made sure that they did their chores. Even if his marriage
to Bernie was rocky, he still had those children to live for. To walk out on
his family or, worse, commit suicide on his youngest daughter's birthday - there's
no way in the world that he would have done that.
My daughter-in-law and I had always gotten along. Since Tom's disappearance,
neither Bernie nor my granddaughters will speak to me. Not only have I lost a
son, I have lost an entire a family. But, whether Bernie and her new husband
like it or not, I am and always will be Tom Stump's mother, and I will continue
to search and dig until I find out what happened to my son.
Update, April 2004: In March 2004, I was
contacted by a woman named Christine Hill, whose mother, Diana Harris,
disappeared from Big Pine Key,
Rose Stump, Tom's mother
P.S. In a town near us they are
putting down bricks around the downtown with family names on them. We had one with Tom's name. I guess this will be the closest to a tomb
stone we can give him. This memory stone to honor Tom's life on earth has the
symbol of a buckeye leaf to signify Tom's closeness to his Ohio Roots. May Tom rest in peace.
