Bonnie Lee Schultz was 45 years old when she vanished from Indianapolis, Indiana, on July 4, 1997. NamUs lists her as missing from the area of 62nd Street and Allisonville Road, and records that she was last known to be driving a blue 1990 Mercury Sable station wagon. She was described as a White woman with brown hair and brown eyes, about 5 feet 5 inches tall and approximately 140 pounds.
The case information also notes that she was believed to have had a light tan purse and cellular phone with her, and that she was wearing navy blue pants, a white, light blue, and dark blue striped shirt, sandals, a wedding ring, a gold watch, and a herringbone necklace.
The hours before Bonnie disappeared appear to have unfolded during a painful and unsettled period in her personal life. Reporting from WTHR said the Schultz family lived on the northwest side of Indianapolis in July 1997 and that Bonnie and her husband, Rick, had spoken that night about problems in their marriage; according to that report, after 26 years of marriage, Bonnie wanted a divorce. The Charley Project similarly reports that Bonnie and Richard had been married for more than twenty years and had two children together, and that Richard later said they had been having marital problems and had discussed divorce. Bonnie had spent much of her life as a stay-at-home mother before recently beginning part-time work, a change that placed her in a new social world at a time when her home life was under strain.
According to The Charley Project, Bonnie went out that night and met with a male coworker with whom she had been having a relationship, as well as a friend. The same source reports that both said Bonnie was very upset when she first arrived, telling them she had argued with Richard and that he did not want to agree to a divorce, but that she became calmer as the evening went on and appeared fine by the time she left. She left alone in her car. What should have been an ordinary drive turned into the beginning of a decades-long absence: Bonnie did not return to her family’s home, and there has been no confirmed sighting of her since.
When Bonnie failed to come home, Richard initially thought she might have stayed at a coworker’s home, according to The Charley Project. He reported her missing at about 5:00 p.m. the following day after she still had not returned. Her blue four-door 1990 Mercury Sable station wagon, bearing Indiana license plate 99G9645, also disappeared and has never been found. That missing vehicle has remained one of the most haunting features of the case, because Bonnie and the car both seemed to vanish without leaving behind the kind of physical trail that might have helped investigators determine whether she was harmed, left voluntarily, encountered someone after leaving, or suffered some other fate.
The investigation has long carried unanswered questions and painful suspicion. The Charley Project reports that Bonnie’s boyfriend passed a polygraph related to the case, while Richard’s polygraph indicated deception; WTHR later described the case as a continuing puzzle for family and police as the years passed without Bonnie or her vehicle being found. Still, public sources do not establish what happened to Bonnie, and suspicion is not the same as proof. What remains is the story of a mother, wife, and working woman whose life was in transition when she disappeared, leaving her family and community with decades of uncertainty. In overview, Bonnie Schultz was last known to be in Indianapolis on July 4, 1997, leaving the area of 62nd Street and Allisonville Road in her blue Mercury Sable; she, her car, and the answers to what happened to her have never been recovered from the silence that followed.Last Seen: Jul 4, 1997
