The Dateline episode “She Never Left” investigates the 1993 disappearance of Bonnie Haim in Jacksonville, Florida. The 23-year-old mother spent her last night with her 3-year-old son Aaron Fraser. After she went missing, while living with his foster mother Aaron wrote down what he remembered from the night his mother disappeared. He said “daddy hurt mommy” and he remembered watching him dig a hole and burying her. But the little boy couldn’t remember where. The Bonnie Haim case was cold for 20 years before adult Aaron solved the case.
In 2014, while renovating the house that he lived in with his mother, Fraser found her remains buried in the family backyard. Fraser’s father, Michael Haim, was charged with her murder. Prosecutors claimed his wife was planning on leaving him and taking their son.
At his father’ trial, Fraser testified that he has been in therapy since childhood. He also spoke about a “very uneasy” encounter with his paternal grandparents, who reportedly told him that they loved him but that he had been “brainwashed.”
In April 2019, Haim’s husband Michael Haim, 53, who pleaded not guilty, was found guilty of second-degree murder by a jury. In May, he was sentenced to life in prison.
Dennis Murphy interviews Fraser on Dateline, which airs Fridays at 10 pm on NBC.
Aaron Fraser spoke with his local NBC News station after his biological father was sentenced to life in prison for killing his mother. Fraser somberly says, “I have zero memory of her.”
He also has “a lot of unresolved questions” and “there’s a little bit of me that wants to write him (his father) a letter to see if I can plea for him to tell the truth now that he has nothing on the line.”
