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The Heartbreaking Mystery of Justine Vanderschoot · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:38
  It was the second of September two thousand and three when Lynette Vanderschute first began
• 0:43
  to realize that her daughter was missing. There was no sign of seventeen year
• 0:48
  old Justine in the family home, and when Lonette looked outside, she discovered
• 0:52
  that Justine's truck was also missing. At first, she wasn't too concerned,
• 0:58
  thinking that her daughter had probably just gone to visit a friend or her boyfriend.
• 1:03
  Shortly after seeing the truck was Gonelynette tried to call Justine, but there
• 1:07
  was no answer. Later that Daylynette received a phone call from a different person,
• 1:14
  seventeen year old Danny Bezmer, who was dating Justine and had spent time
• 1:18
  with her the previous day. However, just like Lynette, Danny hadn't seen
• 1:23
  Justine or heard from her that day. In fact, the reason he was
• 1:27
  calling was to ask if she had any idea where Justine had gone. Immediately,
• 1:32
  at that point, Linette began to worry. It wasn't like Justine to
• 1:36
  spend the day out of the house without telling family or Danny where she was
• 1:40
  going. Linnette called her husband, her other daughter, and several of Justine's
• 1:45
  friends, hoping that one of them would know where she was, but all
• 1:49
  of them said the same thing. They had no idea. Beginning to Paniclynette
• 1:55
  and her husband Don went to the sheriff's department to report Justine as missing.
• 2:00
  After the sheriff spoke to Justine's older sister, Christine Vanderschut, they doubted that
• 2:05
  they were dealing with the case of a runaway team. Justine didn't have personal
• 2:09
  issues or difficulties with her family. According to Christine, who had called her
• 2:14
  sister the previous night, their phone conversation had been completely normal. Danny told
• 2:20
  investigators the same thing, he had seen Justine last night, and everything seemed
• 2:24
  to be just fine. He'd gone over to the Vanderschute house, spent some
• 2:29
  time with Justine, and then had driven home alone. From the very beginning
• 2:34
  of the investigation, the case was taken seriously and investigators considered the possibility that
• 2:39
  someone kidnapped Justine. It was evident, said Sheriff Edward Bonner, that this
• 2:46
  was not your typical runaway. Everyone started to think was she snatched. Teams
• 2:51
  of volunteers started to post missing person flyers around the area, and Justine's family
• 2:57
  painstakingly drove along nearby roads wondering if Justine had gotten into a car crash.
• 3:02
  However, there was no sign of her or her vehicle. On the third
• 3:07
  of September, the day after Justine was reported missing, the investigation took a
• 3:13
  sudden turn when her missing truck was located only a couple of miles away from
• 3:17
  the Vanderschute house. It had been left in a park and ride lot,
• 3:23
  parked and locked, with no sign of the keys. The truck was thoroughly
• 3:28
  searched, but there were no clues in or around it. It was like
• 3:31
  Justine had just decided to park in this random parking lot, get out of
• 3:36
  her truck, and disappear into thin air. Several more days went by and
• 3:42
  there was no sign of Justine and no more leads. Justine's family and friends
• 3:46
  began to worry that the case was going cold and decided to have a vigil
• 3:52
  at the spot where her truck had been found. Many members of the local
• 3:55
  community came by to show their support, and investigators took the opportunity to do
• 4:00
  the one thing that they do at these viguals that many people don't realize that
• 4:04
  they are doing. They watch the people who attend the vigil and see if
• 4:10
  any of them act suspiciously. They know that it's common for kidnappers or killers
• 4:15
  to attend vigils, funerals, and search parties for their victims, and at
• 4:19
  this point they were beginning to suspect that Justine Vanderschut was no longer alive.
• 4:26
  Out of all the people at the vigil, one stood out. There was
• 4:30
  a man that Justine's family did not recognize, who seemed very distressed, smoking
• 4:35
  a cigarette and pacing around the park and ride lot. When the police spoke
• 4:41
  to the man, he introduced himself, explaining that one of his own daughters
• 4:45
  had passed away as a teenager, leading him to feel a connection to Justine's
• 4:48
  case. He decided to come to the vigil and leave a plaque in his
• 4:53
  own daughter's memory, as well as show his support to the Vanderschute family.
• 4:58
  That man was telling the true and he never became a suspect in the case.
• 5:02
  By September thirteenth, Justine had been missing almost two weeks, and investigators
• 5:09
  decided to dive deeper into her relationships with her friends, hoping that they would
• 5:14
  be able to uncover some more clues. During these conversations with Justine's friends,
• 5:19
  a new piece of information was revealed. Justine's relationship with her boyfriend Danny wasn't
• 5:26
  as unproblematic and sweet as it first appeared. In fact, they had been
• 5:30
  going through a rough patch as of late, and during spring break, Justine
• 5:35
  had gone to Florida and met another boy. Investigators were able to track down
• 5:40
  the second boy and interviewed him, but discovered that there had been no communication
• 5:44
  between him and Justine since August. There was no reason to suspect that he'd
• 5:48
  had anything to do with her disappearance, and he was ruled out as a
• 5:53
  suspect. However, investigators did begin to examine Justine and Danny's relationship more closely.
• 6:00
  If he had found out that Justine had cheated on him, maybe he
• 6:03
  had a motive to hurt her after all. In the initial police interviews,
• 6:09
  Danny hadn't come across as suspicious. Danny shared that as soon as he became
• 6:14
  aware that Justine's family had not heard from her, he'd started searching for his
• 6:17
  girlfriend, going to her workplace and her school to see if anyone had seen
• 6:23
  her. Investigators had been able to confirm his story. Danny had also been
• 6:29
  upfront about visiting Justine the night before she disappeared, and was able to prove
• 6:33
  that he had gone home alone. He'd gone to seven eleven during his drive
• 6:39
  home to buy a drink, and police once again confirmed his story. He
• 6:44
  also had an alibi for the rest of the night. After going to the
• 6:46
  seven eleven, he had gone back to the apartment that he shared with his
• 6:50
  roommate, twenty year old Brandon Fernandez. Brandon confirmed that he and Danny had
• 6:56
  been in the apartment for the rest of that night and neither of them left.
• 7:00
  However, once investigator started to look more closely at Danny, they also
• 7:05
  became aware that Justine had not gotten along with his roommate Brandon because she found
• 7:11
  out that he was cheating on his girlfriend. It turned out that Danny and
• 7:15
  Brandon's alibi wasn't actually air tight. Instead of spending time at their apartment alone,
• 7:21
  they'd been with two other friends. When the additional two friends were interviewed,
• 7:27
  they initially tried to back up Danny and Brandon's alibi, but their story
• 7:30
  quickly fell apart, and one of them, a young man named Clayton,
• 7:34
  agreed to help the cops. Clayton called Brandon, telling him that he thought
• 7:40
  he should go to the police about what he knew. Brandon was quick to
• 7:44
  reply saying, quote, no, don't go talk to the police. Stick
• 7:47
  to the plan. The whole conversation was recorded by the police. Now knowing
• 7:54
  that Brandon wasn't telling them the whole truth, the police contacted a profiler from
• 7:58
  the FBI to help help them reinterview Brandon and Justine's boyfriend, Danny. The
• 8:03
  FBI profiler used different techniques to interview Brandon, eventually asking him have you ever
• 8:09
  seen anyone die? The question shook Brandon up, and the FBI profiler immediately
• 8:16
  played the recording of the incriminating phone conversation. Finally, Brandon admitted the truth.
• 8:22
  He'd tapped Justine's phone to prove that she was cheating on Danny, and
• 8:26
  then the two of them had decided to punish her. They had convinced Justine
• 8:31
  to come for a ride in Brandon's car, and then they played a mixtape
• 8:35
  which wasn't filled with sentimental love songs. It was actually a recording of her
• 8:41
  phone conversations with the boy that she was cheating on Danny with. Finally,
• 8:46
  they'd parked in an isolated area where Danny zapped Justine with a taser and then
• 8:52
  strangled her. Brandon agreed to lead investigators to the site where he and Danny
• 8:56
  disposed of Justine. Taking them to a spot on the hillside, the police
• 9:01
  found Justine's necklace lying on the ground, as well as a patch of disturbed
• 9:07
  ground that looked as if somebody had recently dug and then filled in a hole.
• 9:11
  In the morning, investigators carefully unearthed the contents of the hole. They
• 9:16
  found Justine's body covered in a thick tar like substance. Brandon and Danny dug
• 9:24
  a grave for Justine, and then they had poured the tar like liquid onto
• 9:28
  her, hoping that it would help to decompose her body faster so that she
• 9:33
  couldn't be identified. Then they'd filled in the hole with the dirt, as
• 9:37
  well as covering with an old mattress. However, Justine's autopsy revealed that Brandon
• 9:43
  and Danny had been wrong about one thing. They had not actually killed her
• 9:48
  before burying her. Her throats and digestive system were full of dirt from the
• 9:54
  grave. She had been buried alive. Although Annie insisted that Brandon had been
• 10:01
  the one to strangle Justine, both men admitted to digging the grave and burying
• 10:05
  her, which was ultimately the cause of her death. Both killers were charged
• 10:11
  with murder, and there was plenty of evidence to show that it was premeditated.
• 10:16
  Brandon sentence was fifteen years to life and Danny's was twenty five years to
• 10:22
  life. Both men have tried to apply for parole, but each time the
• 10:26
  requests were denied. That's ten Minute Murder for today brief and bingeable True crime.
• 10:41
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