SPEAKER_01 0:00

On tragedy, we cover cases that involve real people and real events. Episodes may include discussions of violence, criminal behavior, and loss. We share these stories to honor those impacted and to raise awareness that they may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Michael had just moved from Idina, Minnesota, only a few weeks earlier. He was an accomplished golfer, close with his family, and had just started a new job at the Presidential Country Club. While he was getting settled in Florida, he was staying at a Howard Johnson's hotel and was driving a 1979 Pontiac Grand Prix. On the evening of Friday, November 30th, 1979, Michael went to the Palm Beach Kennel Club Dog Track with several co-workers. After the races, he spent the rest of the evening with one of them, Jim Cronin. The two went bar hopping and later decided to call it a night. Michael dropped Jim off at his car, then drove away. That was the last time anyone ever saw him. It is important to remember the context of that Friday night. At the Palm Beach Kennel Club, a full Greyhound race card would start around 7.45 and run until nearly midnight. And nationally televised audiences were watching one of the biggest boxing events of the year. Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Wilfred Benitez, broadcast live on ABC from Caesars Palace. That telecast began at 8 p.m. Eastern, with the main event kicking off close to midnight and ending just after 1 a.m. when Leonard won by TKO. When Michael didn't show up for work the next morning, his friends called his hotel room and there was no answer. By Sunday, they went to the hotel in person. The desk clerk confirmed Michael had not checked out and his car wasn't in the parking lot. On Monday, December 3rd, his boss contacted Michael's parents back in Minnesota to tell them he was missing. Michael had just cashed a check from his family and may have had cash on him that night. But despite police reports, no one ever located his car, several of his belongings, or any sign of him. Michael's father and brother immediately traveled to West Palm Beach to begin their own investigation. They interviewed employees and friends from the golf course, visited the Howard Johnson where Michael had been staying, and took careful notes. They documented what they learned in detail, even keeping a handwritten calendar of events, trying to piece together the timeline of their son and brother's final known movements. Over the years, volunteer dive teams like Sunshine State Sonar and Adventures with Purpose have searched lakes and canals around West Palm Beach. They found other vehicles, but not Michael's Pontiac. More than four decades later, his disappearance remains a mystery. While the rest of the country was focused on sports and nightlife, Michael disappeared into the shadows of West Palm Beach. His car, his movements after dropping off his friend, and the truth about what happened remain unanswered questions. Today, his family and friends continue to search. They've created a website, where isMikeOlson.com, and worked with dive teams to keep his case alive. They want to make sure his story isn't forgotten. So we ask, as they've asked for more than 40 years, what happened to Michael John Olson after he was reportedly last seen at 5 a.m. on December 1st, 1979? Where did his car go, and why has no trace of him ever been found? This is a story of a young man with everything ahead of him whose life turned into a mystery that still waits for answers. This is Tragedy, a true crime podcast. Thank you for joining us tonight. I'm Elisa.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

And I'm Michael. One thing that we're doing a little differently, and those of you that have been following the story will notice we didn't really do a case summary when we started this one. And the reason we didn't do that is there was so much information to go through and so much mystery around what happened. We wanted to get more comfortable with the case, so we started out right away with interviews. Now we've done, we've talked to Paige, we've talked to Jenny, we've read as everything we can possibly get our hands on the box, including new information that we're going to talk about tonight. And we're now we just feel like we're ready for a case summary.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

So let's talk about that new information that we received.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

All right. So you got a it's my understanding we got a FOIA.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

We did. We received a FOIA. It was very exciting.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Well, let's talk about what was in the FOIA. Well, let's first talk about what was exciting about a FOIA in general.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

And that is we don't often get a response. And so to actually send a FOIA request off to West Palm Beach Police Department, get a response that included new information. And what was most interesting about this information, it was that it was new. That we have all the different documents that we could reference that were in the box that's been collected by the family all these years. And then to get what 30 or 40 pages of new information, some of which actually contradicts some of the things that we thought we knew.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Mm-hmm. So let's just remind our listeners a FOIA is a Freedom of Information Act. It's a formal request for records related to really anything, and specifically here to a missing person's case. And what generally happens in the true crime community is the FOIA's, you get crickets. Sometimes you'll get an email back, like we have in a couple of our other cases where they say, thank you for your Freedom of Information Act request, pursuant to whatever the, you know, the legal terms are. This is an active case and we cannot release any information to now go pound sand. Exactly. Um but this time, um, and I think the reason that we did receive this information is that this is named a cold case. Now that doesn't mean that they've completely disregarded this case, as we'll see by some of the information that um we did release and that we did get in the packet. Um, but I mean this happened in 1979. So I think they are um transparent enough to say, yes, this is a cold case, and that is why we got this packet of information. So first, let's just sort of walk through all the different kinds of documents that we received in this packet of information. All right. So there were several, what's called a supplementary report. Um, and these started as early as December 1st, 1979. Um, and these are um typewritten. I don't know if people know what a typewriter is, but they are typewritten reports um from the detectives and people who are working on the cases. And there are several of those, lots of those.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Um probably Let me let me stop you there first. Did you just assume no one knows what a typewriter is? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Well, I bet you lots of people don't know what a typewriter is.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Um I think if you're over 30, you're probably okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

I mean, fun fact, I was the teacher assistant in typewriting class in eighth grade, which only shows that I was kind of a teacher's pet and sort of like typing, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

It does say that.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Uh so there are also some witness statements. So um signed witness witness statements, not there are things where detectives are reporting what someone said in an in an interview, but there are also official signed witness statements. Um there is the original all points bulletin APB from early on in the case. There is a typewritten request from January 23rd of 1980 to the editor of the Florida Criminal Activity Bulletin that information related to Michael John Olson's disappearance be included in their next bulletin. Very interesting information there. There are some handwritten detective notes, mostly related to the visit that Michael made to the rental agency. And also there are some incident reports. Now, I also want to make it known that these this packet of information starts December 1st, 1979, and the last known piece of recorded information is October 21st, 2024. So they're still working on it. It hasn't completely something that they're not working on at all. They're this is a long series of efforts that have been made to try to determine what happened to him.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Okay, so out of everything we got, what would you say is the most interesting or the most compelling?

SPEAKER_01 9:24

So I think there's actually two things. I'm going to start with this um request for the information about his case to be included in the Florida Criminal Activity Bulletin. And apparently this bulletin had different sections. And in this request, they asked that Michael's case and the information that they provided be included under the quote, missing person foul play suspected section of the bulletin. Which stood out to me. Um and so I started looking back through going from the very beginning, December 1st, 1979, to see if that if those keywords, foul play, were anywhere else in the notes, and they are very early on um in this investigation, and this is actually a hand one of the handwritten um supplementary reports, it also says foul play suspected. So I thought that was really, really interesting because, you know, that is a potential, right? There's been a lot of conversation about did he make a wrong turn, it was dark, did the car go in the water? And you know, you'll talk more later about it.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, and if it falls in line too, is you know, we've had so many searches for the car in places that we believe the car should have been found and it hasn't been found. And a lot of those searches have kind of made the assumption that it was an accident. Now, not all of them. We spoke to Shelly and she did indicate that some of those locations or taken on the theory of it was foul play. But I got the impression that that was the minority.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

And so let's fast forward to the summer of 2023. So around that time, we learn through the information that the family has reached back out to the West Palm Beach Police Department to get an update on what is happening. And because of that reach out from the family, um, several things happened. Um some of the folks who were who worked with Michael John Wilson at that time were either emailed or were called. This is all in the records. Conversations were had with people leaving a message for someone or getting an email back. Um, and then one person who is close to this case, the property that is owned by his family, was actually visited. So this report says um that the officer arrived at the residence and knocked on the door and received no answer at the door. And I think really what this is about is trying to connect back with those people. Most of them did not live in the area anymore, except for this one person who still had property. His family had property. So instead of calling or emailing, they just went directly to the house. So they're renewing their efforts, we can see here, to connect with those boys who worked at the golf course to see if they remembered anything else or something like that. So in August of 2023, continuing this investigation, the detectives were reaching out to some of the dive teams and the bodies of water and just rechecking the maps and seeing what has been covered and what has not been covered. But of note, as you asked, also something very interesting happens. And I want to just read it exactly as it comes out of this report. And it is quote, in reference to obtaining a search warrant to check the property at with a cadaver dog, I spoke with state attorney, then the person is named, who confirmed with a homicide unit at his office and advised that I did not have probable cause for a search warrant. This is very interesting, I think, because of several reasons. This property of note that they went and visited to try to contact this person is the same property now that they're discussing the possibility of getting a search warrant that also includes a cadaver dog.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

And I assume this property belongs to someone that he was associated with that night.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

It belongs to a family member of someone who was worked at the golf clubs. And they still own it. Um they owned it in 1979 and they still own it today. And according to these records, um, what they were told is that um the family only comes down the property once a year.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Understood.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Mm-hmm. So I think those are the things that really stood out as like I went through these and these are the things that are highlighted as far as what stood out in the supplemental reports. Also, the other document that stood out, and you know, we looked at these together, is um one in particular witness statement. And this was taken in December of 1979, so like three weeks after. And it's a retelling. This is a signed witness statement. So it's a little different from maybe when a detective write type writes or types down what someone has relayed. But this recounts um Friday night the 30th, um, up until the time that Michael was last seen. And it's signed by the person who's making this witness statement. So I thought this was really interesting because it's a firsthand account from the person who was last known to be with Michael John Olson.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

All right, we're just going to read it.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Oh, you want to read the whole thing?

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Why not?

SPEAKER_01 14:43

All right. So this says on Friday, November 30th, 1979, I went to the dog track at about 7.15 and got a table in the clubhouse. Michael Olson got there at about 7.35 and Dave Prescott got there about 8 p.m. We stayed at the dog track until about 1.15 a.m. Then Michael and I went to the Wildside Bar on Okeechobee Boulevard. After we left the wild side, we went back to the dog track and picked up Michael's car. I parked my van at the church on Cherry Road just west of Congress Avenue and we went in Michael's car to Mr. G's. We stayed at Mr. G's until they started to close and had turned on the lights. When we left, Michael dropped me off at my van. I last saw Michael driving toward Congress and Cherry Road. I had to be at work at 6 30 a.m. and I went to work at that time. Michael was supposed to be at work at 9 or 10 a.m. He never showed up. Michael was wheeling some of the races at the track and I believe he wound up losing, but I don't know how much. He seemed to like the job here a lot and got along with everything that I know of. I never heard him say anything going on anywhere else or home. He seemed happy here. And then it's signed and witnessed.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Yeah, and what's interesting about the statement to me is that there's a couple of contradictions based on what we already know. You know, we've got situations where he's won a lot of money based on witness statements, and we have situations now where he's lost money. And what makes this one compelling to me is it's very close to the event.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Yeah, within two weeks is December 18th. Um and then of course we know that he disappeared on December 1st, so just a little over two weeks. But there are also um detective recounts of statements, not an official witness statement, but where they're recounting an interview that, as you just noted, say different things. Right. Right. Wheeling trifectos, which we didn't really know you've been to a dog track. I I don't think you were betting you were working there. I've never been to the dog track. Uh I didn't know what that meant. So we had to look it up. Um and you know, wheeling trifectas seems to mean that you are playing like multiple bets at once. And if you win a whole bunch of trifectos, then you're gonna win a lot of money in 1979. But then there's other parts like this one that I just read, um, where it says he wound up, I believe he wound up losing. So it's just really not clear.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Uh yeah, but also that you gotta keep in mind when we talk to Jenny, uh, which is obviously an episode all of our listeners have already heard, there was conversations about he won four or five trifectas. And, you know, what's interesting about that as well is even statistically, that would be nearly impossible. So we have the story being told from statistically nearly impossible to win all the way to losing money. Um and again, we uh when we talked about it with Jenny, it was this is a 180 in the story, which is why this is a very strange account, especially now that we know we see it signed.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

And this one is, you know, you have to go back to source of truth. We've talked about that before as well. And the source of truth, the closer we get to the event, the closer to the source of truth we get when it comes to the documents and the accounts that we can consider fact.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Mm-hmm. And money is a recurring theme. There's the did he win money, did he lose money? There's this check that he had supposedly cashed from family for rent. So we hear this money coming up a lot.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Aaron Powell Yeah, we hear about he was flashing money, then we also hear that no one no one thought he was flashing money, depending on which, you know, which one of the guys you're speaking you're we're speaking with.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Mm-hmm. Something else that we learned uh in this information are the surrounding the efforts that the police department um obviously we know they are continuing to work on this case, but right out of the gate, they were doing some, I thought, really interesting things that I wouldn't have necessarily thought about. Um, you know, this the last time he was reportedly seen was 5 a.m. And so what kind of people are gonna be out at 5 a.m.?

SPEAKER_00 18:55

I don't know, Lisa. How many, what kind of people are gonna be out at 5 a.m.?

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Well, there would be like milkmen, right? We used to get milk delivered, so they're coming super early. And so they did go and talk to people who are doing that that route. And they didn't necessarily talk to that we know of talked to newspaper people, but those are the people who are gonna be out that time of morning. So they went and they talked to those people who are following the same route every day. There's probably not a lot of traffic out at 5 a.m. Did you see anything? And no one reported um seeing anything from those people who were out and about at that time. Also, because we know that they had been to at least two bars, uh, we did find out in this information that they did take pictures and go to those bars and show the pictures to the people who worked at the bar like within a week of him being missing. And there was no reports that we can find of anyone saying that they recalled seeing them. Of course, it doesn't mean they weren't there, but nobody said, Oh yeah, I saw that guy. And this was a memorable night, right? Because this was the night the big fight was on. Right. So this is a big deal. Sugar Ray Leonard, right? Like he's ever everybody knows Sugar Ray Leonard. This is a big, you can only go to certain places if we didn't have pay-per-view in 1979. So there are going to be a lot of people out and about at these bars late into the evening, particularly for the purpose of watching this fight, which we know went into about 1 a.m.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

One thing I want to get into is we talked about before before we started recording today, is there's this timeline issue now between when the track, you know, the last race, because we believe they stayed to the twelfth race, um, which should have ended approximately 12 a.m. And then the fight started when?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

According to reports that I can find, the telecast started at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, but the main event, the Sugar Ray Leonard Benitas, did not start until around midnight and ended around 1 a.m.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Aaron Powell Okay. So now they would have had to leave, you know, pretty soon if they intended to catch the beginning of the fight to in where were in well, where were they gonna be watching that at?

SPEAKER_01 20:59

I believe they were going to watch that at Mr. G's. Um but here's the here's a discrepancy. So I'm I'm really glad you're bringing this up because the witness statement that I just read said that they stayed at the dog truck until 115.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Which at this point, if they've missed the fight. The broadcast, I mean it's gotta be right. Like I just can go back and find out what time things ended. And then they went to the wild side after that. And then they went to Mr. G's.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

So they didn't even go to see the fight. They talked about going to see the fight, but they went to that's what I was getting at the timeline, and they didn't go to Mr. G's first. So either way, they would have missed the fight, even if they went to Mr. G's, and yet they go to the wild side first. They now they've completely missed the fight. They go to Mr. G's afterwards. And this is a flip-flop for when they were going to meet the other the other guys.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

That's right. We haven't talked about that. It's going to be a good thing. Yeah, there were um several people at the dog track. It wasn't just um Michael and the last person that was seen with him. There were other people, and there has This plan, right? Again, we're talking about 1979. You can't you can't send someone a quick text, oh, hey, we changed our plans. Um, they've come in separate cars and they were supposed to go to a particular bar at a particular time. And so one of the boys that was with them that night, he went to that place. That was the plan. Well, they didn't show up. They they ended up going to the wild side.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

And see, my issue with that when you start digging into that fact, when you get into a situation that you can't call and update your plans because there's no pagers, there's no cell phones, there's none of this. You had to know when you switch plans, you were now automatically not going to see that person. And so was that intentional? Um, was did they was it was it a loose plan? It could have been like, well, we maybe, maybe we'll see you there. You know, hopefully we see you there. Um it could have been very loose, but it could have been something that the intention was to to stand this guy up. We don't know.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah. And I really like what you said about source of truth. There is a difference between a signed witness statement and someone's recollection of what someone said. So while we love all this information that came, I think it you have to be kind of careful with all of these supplementary reports. Now, I'm not saying that the detectives are misconstruing what people have said, but it's not directly from that person. It's an interpretation or a recollection of what someone said in an interview, which is a lot different than a signed witness statement. Correct. Or something like an email or something from that particular source. Uh additionally, they did do, I thought, a really comprehensive um investigation of all of several guests at the hotel. And I think this was mainly about trying to determine had there been any disturbance, anything that anyone had heard at the Howard Johnson um that evening, because you know, there's a possibility that he did make it back to the hotel and then for some reason left. But there are several um supplementary reports about, I would say, four or five different people or couples who were in the room above or the room next to, um, and they did a lot of due diligence in speaking to those people. And and there was one recounting of a disturbance, I believe it was from the room above the room that Michael was in at that time. And remember, he had moved rooms just at that hotel. Um, but that didn't really end up um producing anything um substantial. So I think what is important to know is that it does seem like the West Palm Beach Police Department took this pretty seriously. We have seen in other missing pace persons cases that sometimes it feels like, you know, the police just think, oh, they, you know, took off, or oh, they're involved in some sort of nefarious behavior. Oh, they're adult. They can go do whatever they want to do. Now he was 20, that's an adult. Um, but they they did a lot um in the beginning to try to really determine maybe what had happened.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Well, let's be fair to some of the stories we heard as well, because you know, I would say not exactly the beginning. You know, we did talk to his family and they they even they had these guys waiting around um and they indicated that, well, you know, he's a he's a grown man, he can go wherever he wants to, that they was needlessly being worried. Obviously, his family knew that wasn't true. But, you know, it is nice that we've seen a lot of these additional documents. They got more engaged faster than we had originally thought they did. This was one of those kind of contradictions. We thought there was really nothing going on for weeks, and you know, we're finding that's just not true.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

And something that we've seen in some of the other stories that we have covered is there appear to be some of the local law enforcement who are more engaged than others in this particular case. This first detective, we I can see there are lots and lots of notes and things from him. And then later when we get into the more like 2022, 2023 documents, there's a very involved detective. And even the family speaks very highly of her. And um, I she is no longer in that position. And unfortunately, what they recount to us is once someone else was assigned this case, this activity that we see that I just was going over in 2023, it really declines. Um, and they they don't have that same level of engagement that they had before. And for those of you who have listened um to our cases, we have that exact same thing happened in another case with Ian Rogers, in that the first detective on the case, his mom really recounts to us that she was very, very engaged and very supportive. And I think she went on maternity leave. And then another detective was assigned, and and that didn't go as well as she had hoped initially. So we've we've seen this now a couple of times. I guess people are people, right? So maybe you just chalk that up to people's characteristics, but I think it's interesting that we've seen it more than once at this point.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Agreed.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

And let's talk about what's next for us given all this new information that we've learned.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

All right. We've actually recently spoken to a statement analyst, and that conversation was wildly interesting. And so we've provided a lot of the stuff that pulled we pull out of this FOIA that was firsthand accounts and had them analyze it. And some of the results that we've got back for them is is highly interesting and certainly paints a a new picture or a new direction to consider. Now we're not going to go into it yet because we haven't done his interview yet, but that one's coming. And I can tell you it's gonna be it's gonna be something you're gonna want to hear.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Right. And this is another area of expertise that I was not even aware of, much like when we were discussing Jody Kilgore's case and we came across a geographic profiler. I didn't even know that existed before. Now, um, I obviously know that behavior profiling is a thing, and you know, it's great when we talked about that on the case as well. But learning these new things about geographic profiling, statement analyzing, I didn't even know these things existed. And so uh I think it is really interesting that we're learning about these different areas of expertise and how all of these I talked about a puzzle at the beginning. That's right. This is another piece of the puzzle is someone who's really linguistically looking at the words that someone is saying or typing, depending on what the statement consists of, and really digging into that to maybe tell us a little bit more about what that person is actually saying. It's kind of like reading between the lines, as we would have said in the past.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Oh, yeah. I mean, and so now, does this type of work necessarily is it admissible in court? The answer is no. But can it establish probable cause? Maybe. And so we're hoping this this new direction um could maybe jar a little piece of the truth loose. You'll have to stay tuned.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

That's right. Even with these new findings, there are still more questions than answers. And this is where you, our listeners, can help. If you knew Michael, if you lived or worked in the West Palm Beach area in late 1979, or if you remember anything unusual around that time, no matter how small, we want to hear from you. Even a memory, a rumor, or an overlooked detail could make a difference. You can contact the West Palm Beach Police Department directly with any information about Michael's disappearance. You can also share tips anonymously through the family's website, www.whereismikeolson.com. Every piece of information matters and every voice helps move this case forward. You've been listening to Tragedy, a true crime podcast. Our purpose is to honor victims by sharing their stories through the voices of friends, family, and those whose lives were forever changed. If today's episode resonated with you, we encourage you to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast so these important stories continue to be heard. Together, we can preserve their memories and ensure their voices are never forgotten. If you have ideas for cases we should cover or questions about what you heard, you can connect with us through our Facebook group, Tragedy a True Crime Podcast, on X at Tragedy Podcast, by email at Tragedy a True Crime Podcast at gmail.com, or by visiting our website www.tragedy a true crime podcast.com. Thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us next time.