On December 31, 2014, 18-year-old Marina Boelter worked her scheduled shift in the deli department at the Bloomfield IGA grocery store. She was eighteen, and the deli was a step toward her dream of becoming a pastry chef.
Family members recalling that day said she was excited to get home to prepare for the New Year’s Eve party. Ashley Boelter later told NBC’s Dateline, “She had just moved into her own apartment and was working hard. She wanted to be able to take care of herself and her son.”
As Marina was leaving the store after her shift, her ex-boyfriend and father of her son, Douglas ‘D.J.’ Lockhart, showed up in the parking lot.
At the time, Marina was on the phone with a man named Toby when she spotted him and said, “Oh sh*t, it’s D.J.” She then promised to call back and hung up.
D.J. confronted her and tried to persuade Marina to spend New Year’s Eve with him rather than attend the party she was planning to attend. She declined.
Following the brief conversation, D.J. watched as Marina walked over to an adjacent gravel lot and got into the passenger side of a silver-and-beige 2010 Mercury Milan with multi-spoke rims and a shark-fin antenna.
The driver was a middle-aged white man with glasses. They pulled out of the gravel lot directly north of the IGA toward Marina’s apartment.
The man whose identity was never publicly disclosed would later tell police he dropped Marina off at a pizza parlour near her apartment. This was at her request because she expressly did not want him to know where she lived.
Her mother, Tressie Palmer, later said that sounded exactly like something her daughter would do. Marina’s cell phone reportedly pinged one last time, ten minutes after she clocked out from her shift at an undisclosed location.
She did not get home to change or make it to the party. Marina Boelter was never seen again.
The Girl Behind the Mysterious Disappearance
Marina Pearl Boelter was born on July 15, 1996, as the youngest child of John Boelter and Tressie Palmer. Her parents described Marina as a happy, outgoing individual who excelled in school.
Her childhood was unconventional, though, considering her parents had an on-and-off relationship. So she spent her early years living with her father and older brothers in Hamilton, Ohio.
During her eighth-grade year, Marina moved to Bloomfield, Indiana, to get closer to her mother, Tressie, and her grandfather, Craven Palmer. After moving from Indiana, Marina started hanging out with the wrong crowd and became increasingly focused on relationships.
While she was still in high school, Marina began an unstable relationship with 22-year-old Douglass D.J. Lockhart. In April 2014, she bore a son named Landen with him at just 17.
To understand why Marina’s disappearance cuts as deep as it does, it also helps to understand the point she was at in life that winter. Motherhood did not come easily for the teen.
In August, a fight between her sister, Faith and her boyfriend in the family home resulted in an object hitting Landen in the head. This caused a traumatic brain injury, and the unfolding chaos caused Child Protective Services to step in and place the baby in foster care.
The incident split the family down the middle. By December, though, Marina seemed to be turning things around for herself and had moved into her own apartment in Bloomfield. She had a job and was working toward getting custody of Landen.
Police Search an Empty Apartment and Chase Early Leads
When Marina failed to show up for her shift the next day, her manager tried calling her, but it went to voicemail. She was known to be motivated and dependable, never missing a shift.
The manager and co-workers were also well aware of Marina’s dedication to regaining custody of her infant son. She was scheduled for a mandatory visitation with her baby on New Year’s Day, and they knew she would never willingly skip a chance to see her child.
Sensing danger, the manager called her mother and the police, reporting Marina as missing. Tressie then drove to Bloomfield to find out what happened.
Officers arrived at Marina’s apartment expecting to find signs of a struggle or forced entry. The door was closed, but it was unlocked. Everything was largely undisturbed, and her clothes were laid out on the bed.
In a statement published by Fox19, Ashley said, “Her belongings were not disturbed. Her purse was not at the house. Her phone, her keys, like all those things, were not at home.” Everything looked exactly the way Marina would have left it walking out the door.
Police immediately went to the IGA grocery store to review records and interview staff who confirmed she clocked out at 6 pm.
Search and rescue alongside K-9 teams combed the nearby woods, fields and a small pond behind the grocery store complex. The tracking dogs lost her scent at the edge of the property.
Because her ex-boyfriend was spotted confronting her in the parking lot, D.J. was the first person of interest, and police pulled him in for immediate questioning. D.J. provided the details confirming they argued but insisted Marina walked away and entered a gold sedan.
Investigators then tracked down Toby Deems, and he confirmed the 6.04 pm phone call with Marina before she abruptly hung up. He was able to provide an alibi for that period and the rest of the night, which authorities verified.
Two Men, One Secret
Despite the appearance of stabilisation in the months before she went missing, Marina’s romantic life was still complicated in a way that would create several persons of interest over the years.
D.J. Lockhart himself was described by Marina’s sister-in-law, Ashley, as violent to his girlfriend. “he was abusive towards her. He broke her collarbone.”
D.J. and Marina had broken up by December 2014, but D.J. clearly hadn’t let her go, considering he was at Marina’s job trying to convince her to go with him.
The party in question was at Toby Deem’s house. Aside from being a married man and longtime friend of Marina’s mother, he was also having a secret affair with Marina since late summer that year.
Deem had helped Marina find an apartment near his home and had promised to help her regain custody of Landen. Tressie learned of the affair before Marina disappeared but tolerated it.
Investigators would later ascertain that Marina was on the phone with Deem when D.J. confronted her at the parking lot of the Bloomfield, Indiana IGA.
The Mystery Man in the Milan
Indiana State Police soon put out an all-points bulletin for the driver of the Mercury Milan. The alert specifically asked the public to be on the lookout for a gold, beige, or silver 2009 to 2011 Mercury Milan with multi-spoke rims.
Spurred by the news coverage of the Milan, the driver, who was a heavy-set man in his 40s or 50s and regular at the IGA, voluntarily surrendered to the police. He admitted having picked Marina up because he recognized her from work.
The man then told detectives she requested a ride to a closed-down pizza restaurant near her housing complex because she did not want him knowing where she lived. He claimed to have dropped her there alive and well.
Upon running the driver’s name through law enforcement databases, they however realized he had prior criminal convictions for abduction and attempted rape. Police ran the driver through a polygraph, and the man passed the test.
Forensic testing of the vehicle yielded no blood or DNA evidence connected to a crime. So they released him.
Marina’s family would come to know the details about the man’s priors much later, and it became a source of their many frustrations with the way the police handled the case.
The Aurora College Killer Neighbor Next Door
During the first week after Marina’s disappearance, police canvassed her apartment complex to interview the neighbors and run background checks on the registered residents. Their systems immediately flagged Vernon Gayle Briner, who had a violent criminal history.
He was previously known as the Aurora College killer, previously convicted of murder and rape in 1977. Briner was sentenced to 35 years before being paroled in 2012.
Afterwards, he moved to Bloomfield, where he was legally required to register as a Tier 1 sex offender. When questioned by the police, Briner denied any involvement in Marina’s disappearance.
Unwilling to take the convicted murderer’s claims at face value, especially considering her door was found unlocked, the Indiana state police escalated the investigation, obtaining a search warrant for Briner’s property.
Forensic units and investigators then executed the search warrants on his apartment, vehicle, and surrounding property. The teams utilized chemical agents to check for hidden blood stains and combed his living space for any signs of a struggle or any of Marina’s missing belongings.
The forensic search provided zero physical evidence of Marina’s blood, fingerprints, and belongings inside the apartment.
Six Weeks Later
On February 12, 2015, D.J. Lockhart was killed in an unrelated stabbing at the Bloomfield home of a man named Michael Rogers. Investigators indicated that Lockhart went to Rogers’s house uninvited and physically assaulted him.
He knocked Rogers to the floor, repeatedly punching him in the head. While pinned down, Rogers managed to grab a knife and stabbed D.J. in the chest.
He got out from under D.J, called emergency services, and applied physical pressure on the wound to try and save his life. D.J. was pronounced dead at the scene once paramedics arrived from a stab wound to the heart.
After a thorough investigation, the Greene County Prosecutor officially ruled that no criminal charges would be filed against Michael Rogers. Under Indiana State law, the incident was classified as a justified act of self-defense.
Police have also repeatedly reiterated that Lockhart’s death had nothing to do with Marina’s disappearance. Not everyone related to the Marina case accepted this.
Ashley told the Greene County Daily World, “David and I have never given up on the idea that D.J. had something to do with it. It seems too weird that we didn’t have answers, then he died, and we still don’t.”
Federal Escalation and Custody Battles
With the local and state grid searches coming up empty on remains or clothing, the FBI’s violent criminal apprehension program took over the digital profile of the case.
Federal analysts entered Marina’s particular ‘Love’ purse and her cross necklace into national databases. Their goal was to cross-reference her case with unidentified remains discovered near highways across the Midwest to determine if a transient serial killer was the one responsible.
As the investigation stalled, the family had to pivot towards protecting Marina’s infant, Landen, as he was still stuck in the foster care system. Ashley Boelter and Marina’s brother, David filed for guardianship and were successful.
The case fractured the family into two camps. One was built around Tressie, who firmly believed that Marina’s ex-boyfriend, D.J was innocent. She and her father actively aligned with D.J, physically searching alongside him and defending his character to the media.
The second camp was set around Marina’s father, John, David, and Ashley. This side of the family deeply distrusted D.J.
They pointed to his history with violence as part of the reason why Marina may have disappeared and were furious with Tressie for supporting him.
Regardless, Tressie Palmer spent the rest of her life trying to find her daughter. She campaigned for answers and even dyed her hair purple in honor of Marina.
Grief and substance abuse unfortunately took a toll on her, causing Tressie to post on the family’s Facebook page that Marina had been found alive. The viral nature of this post forced advocacy organizations and the Indiana State police to issue formal public corrections clarifying the claim was false and that Marina was still missing.
Tressie Palmer passed away in March 2021 without ever learning the truth of what happened to her daughter.
Since then, the campaign to keep Marina’s case alive has fallen to Ashley Boelter. She said there was no ATM or parking ot cameras anywhere near the scene, and Marina apparently deactivated her Facebook account months before she vanished.
This has led investigators with a negligible digital footprint to trace. The search has not been free of cruelty, though.
A person contacted Ashley through the official Find Marina Boelter Facebook page claiming to have her and was demanding money for information.
The FBI intervened and found that the extortionist was running a scam from Iowa with no helpful knowledge of the case. Ashley has kept pushing in search of the truth, saying, “There’s no way with how small the town is, that nobody knows what happened to her. We just want an ending, as opposed to the torment of never knowing what happened. How could nobody know? It just doesn’t make sense.”
Still Missing After Ten Years
Marina Boelter’s case had never been closed. In 2024, Green County Prosecutor Jarrod Holtsclaw called the case a death investigation considering the absence of contact from Marina to anyone she knew.
He told Fox59 News, “It has been extremely frustrating in that despite countless hours of work by numerous local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, we have not even been able to locate Marina, let alone determine what has happened to her.”
For Marina’s sister, Faith, the anniversary of Marina’s disappearance had become a ritual she has learned to live inside. She told local news outlets, “Each year doesn’t get any easier; it just becomes more manageable with coping skills. At the end of the day, we still have no answers.”
“You think of a new year as a fresh start. For us, that’s not how it goes,” Ashley added. “Thanksgiving comes, and she’s not there. Christmas comes, and she’s not there.”
Marina Pearl Boelter would be twenty-nine years old at the present. She has a small scar from a lip piercing and a tattoo of a star with butterfly wings on her foot.
Anyone who has information is asked to contact the Indiana State Police at 812-384-4411 or the Bloomfield Police Department. Marina’s case remains open with the FBI’s ViCAP database, Charley Project, and NamUs.
For more stories on unsolved disappearances, explore our articles on Brian Laspisa and Amy Wroe Bechtel.
