The Bizarre Case of Bonnie Haim

The chances of solving cold cases decades after someone goes missing are slim. Even with the advances in DNA technology, cold cases are notoriously tough to crack after years have passed.

Witnesses may no longer be around, evidence may have been tampered with, and the culprits may have passed away, taking their secrets to the grave.

However, the story of Bonnie Haim—a mother of one who was missing for decades—is a unique one in the archives of cold cases.

Bonnie wasn’t just missing, though; she had been murdered. Her murder had a witness, her three-year-old son, though his recounting of the event was disbelieved at the time.

“Daddy hurt her,” he told the police, though this was brushed aside as a toddler telling tall tales.

As the years passed, Bonnie’s killer managed to quite literally get away with murder despite young Aaron Fraser being able to tell the police that his father had killed his mother.

Only years later would Aaron be able to finally get justice for Bonnie’s death, this time offering the authorities undeniable evidence to prove he was telling the truth all along.

A Toxic Marriage

Little is known about Michael and Bonnie Haim’s backgrounds. We do know they worked together at Michael’s aunt’s construction supply company.

Eveann Haim oversaw operations, while Bonnie was in charge of the business’s accounting.

Eveann was privy to the ups and downs of Michael and Bonnie’s relationship, noting her nephew could be violent toward his wife.

On one occasion, around Christmas 1992, Michael slammed Bonnie’s hand into the car door, injuring her terribly.

By this point, the pair had welcomed a baby boy, Aaron. However, this couldn’t bring the young couple any closer together. If anything, it was noticed that the volatility in their relationship was only getting worse.

So much so that Bonnie quietly decided she was leaving Michael. She knew she couldn’t simply up and leave; Michael was too controlling and unpredictable to let that happen.

So, she made a plan to escape the marriage: she opened up a separate bank account and began squirreling money aside to save for her eventual exit.

However, Michael soon discovered that his wife was saving in a secret account, and the bank account was quickly closed upon his demand.

Still, this didn’t stop Bonnie from continuing with her plan. Instead of using a bank account, she decided to put cash aside, giving it to her friends for safekeeping.

By the beginning of 1993, she had around $1250 saved. Today, that would equate to just under $3,000; it is not a great deal of money, but it would certainly help Bonnie with her plan to run away with Aaron.

She was able to put a deposit on an apartment for her and her son and had the date set in her mind: when Michael was away with work, she and Aaron would flee, leaving no trace of their whereabouts for Michael to find.

Sadly, her plan would never come to fruition. Michael made sure of that.

Bonnie’s Disappearance

Bonnie didn’t show up for work as scheduled on January 7, 1993. This was unlike her; she was never late, much less would she simply just not show up without communicating with her employers.

This alarmed them enough to contact the authorities, who quickly got in touch with Michael Haim.

When the police spoke with him, he said he and Bonnie had an argument on the evening of the 6th, after which she stormed out of the house late at night.

After this, he told authorities that he called his mother to take care of Aaron while he headed out and looked for his wife.

The mother and son’s stories corroborated one another: Michael headed out, searched for 45 minutes, returned home, and went to sleep.

The following morning, he didn’t call the police to report his wife missing. Instead, he rang work to let them know he wouldn’t make it that day due to sickness.

It was apparent Michael wasn’t overly concerned about his wife’s vanishing, though this in itself wasn’t enough to charge him with a crime.

Then, investigators found a clue: Bonnie’s purse turned up inside a dumpster behind a motel, and her car, a Toyota Camry, was subsequently found abandoned at an airport parking lot.

Naturally, the police honed in on these two pieces of potential evidence, specifically her car.

The driver’s seat in her vehicle was noted to be much further back than would have been suitable for Bonnie to drive—her feet simply wouldn’t have reached the pedals.

A closer inspection showed that the driver would have to be around the same height as Michael Haim to drive comfortably in the car. But, again, this was far from incriminating.

Still, the police were suspicious of Michael and would use child protective services to interview 3-year-old Aaron Haim to see if the child could offer up any more information.

The little boy would say something incredibly ominous to the interviewer: “Daddy hurt her.”

This led the police to further believe their suspicions to be correct: that Michael had taken Bonnie’s life.

Sadly, the words of a three-and-a-half-year-old child didn’t weigh too heavily against Michael.

Even Bonnie’s parents didn’t believe the little boy’s version of events, noting that the child had said other things that were untrue.

In one instance, Aaron stated that his mother’s car was “in the lake.” This “lie” led many adults in Aaron’s family to believe he was lying about Michael hurting Bonnie.

In fact, some believed that the young boy had been told to implicate Michael in Bonnie’s disappearance.

Michael and Aaron’s relationship didn’t survive the ordeal. The young boy eventually went into care and wound up being adopted.

His surname was changed to his adoptive family’s name, and he is now known as Aaron Fraser.

The Lawsuit

Despite being adopted and being given a chance at a new life, Aaron never forgot what he saw as a toddler. It stayed with him for years, and he would draw pictures depicting his mother’s murder.

In 1995, the child’s claims would be partially verified.

He recalled his biological father throwing a shotgun out of their moving car, with the gun falling into the river below.

A subsequent search of the river saw the shotgun being recovered. Although Michael denied it was his, one similar to this gun was found in his home.

Still, there was no justice for Aaron or his mother. Michael Haim was still free.

So, in the early 2000s, Aaron and his new family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Michael. The Fraser clan wanted to ensure that Aaron not only got justice but was vindicated for being called a liar when he was just a toddler.

In the spring of 2005, Aaron finally won a $26.3 million settlement against Michael. Part of the settlement required him to hand over the Haim family home to Aaron.

This would be Michael’s undoing and cause the Bonnie Haim case to crack, although it would take another decade before it crumbled.

Aaron’s Horrifying Discovery

In late 2014, Aaron decided to renovate the single-story, three-bedroom ranch house he’d lived in until he was three.

The Jacksonville, Florida, property was in desperate need of modernization, so Aaron roped his brother in to help him with some manual labor.

Aaron was all too aware of the secrets the house held, though there was one he had no clue about: his mother was buried in the backyard.

**Bonnie’s backyard where her remains were found.**

The property had a swimming pool and outdoor shower, both of which Aaron and his brother were smashing up with an excavator.

After the excavator did the bulk of the work, the men began hitting away at the concrete with sledgehammers to hack it away.

Eventually, something in the dirt caught Aaron’s eye: a plastic bag. Something hard was inside. Upon pulling it out, Aaron discovered it was a coconut.

He was puzzled: Why would someone bury a coconut, especially this deep, in a plastic bag? A closer inspection of the coconut revealed a full set of teeth and eye sockets.

He was holding a human skull—not just any skull, but that of his mother.

The disturbing find, no doubt, sent Aaron into a state of shock. However, alongside the shock perhaps came feelings of relief, knowing his mother was finally found and could be laid to rest.

In the summer of 2015, Michael Haim was finally arrested and charged with Bonnie Haim’s 1993 murder.

If finding Bonnie’s body in his former home wasn’t incriminating enough, alongside her was a .22 caliber shell casing, which matched one of Michael’s rifles.

Michael’s defense was weak. He argued that Aaron’s statements given when he was a toddler ought to be rejected from the trial due to them being “contradictory.”

The trial opened up old wounds for Aaron. When asked about finding Bonnie’s skull, he admitted it was his only memory of physically interacting with his mother.

Michael Haim was found guilty of murder almost three decades after the fact. He was handed life in jail.

Aaron Fraser, despite a lifetime of therapy, suffers from PTSD over witnessing the death of his mother and subsequently finding her remains.