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MySpace BannerMy oldest son, Tom Stump, 41 disappeared from his home on Summerland Key, Florida, on July 24, 1995.
In 2002, when I originally posted Tom's story on this web site, I had no preconceived idea about what happened to my son. I just knew that the circumstances of Tom's disappearance were suspicious and there were many questions that needed answers. Since then, however, I've received information that Tom may have become a threat to a major drug operation that links the Florida Keys with New Orleans. That may or may not be true, but it has opened my mind to new possibilities, especially since learning about another drug-related missing person's case -- Diana Harris -- that involves several of the same people who are linked to Tom's case. (See update at the end of this report.) I'm receptive to receiving further information by private e-mail sent c/o the Real Crimes web site.
I talked with Tom by phone the day before he vanished. He had just rented a van to take his wife, Bernie, and two daughters, Bonnie, 12, and Sally, 8, on a vacation trip. He said he would call me as soon as they got back from their trip.
That evening, Tom and Bernie took the girls and two of their friends out to dinner to celebrate Sally's eighth birthday. The next morning, Tom put gas in the van and went to the bank and to the post office in preparation for the trip.
About 4:30 that afternoon, Bonnie phoned to tell me that they thought her dad had committed suicide. She said, "Dad walked into the woods, walked out, walked into the woods, walked out, walked into the woods and stayed." When I started to ask questions, Bonnie gave the phone to her mother. Bernie told me that she had "found somebody else" and had asked Tom for a divorce. (She later denied saying that.)
At 7:30 p.m., Bernie contacted the Hertz car rental office and told them she needed a new set of keys, because her husband had lost the first set while swimming in a canal. She was told to call back the next day. In her second call, she said the keys were lost when her husband went out in a boat and committed suicide. At 7:53 p.m., she told another individual at the rental agency that she thought her husband had drowned himself in the ocean.
My youngest son, Chad, and I immediately flew to Florida. Tom had discussed his marital problems with Chad and, as confirmed later by Tom's business partner, Scott Haskell, Tom suspected Bernie of seeing Bill Becker, a prominent radio personality, man-about-town, and a friend to many in law enforcement - someone with a lot of "clout." According to a newspaper article, "Bill makes or breaks the politicians in the Keys."
A search had been organized, and 26 of Tom's friends and neighbors were combing the woods. One of Bernie's ex-husbands, an ex-con by the name of Mark Ripin, whom Bernie still considered her "very dear friend," was also involved in the search. When interviewed by police, the children gave different stories. Bonnie continued to maintain that her father "walked into the woods," but Sally said he "drove off in a car," although neither of their cars was missing. The dog that detectives used to track Tom's scene did not go into the woods. Instead, it went directly to the road.
Bernie stated that, during the early morning hours, Sally walked into their bedroom and found Tom cleaning his guns. Tom was a gun collector and owned six guns; according to Bernie, one of those guns, a Glock, was missing. (According to Scott Haskell, Bernie also owned a .380 caliber pistol.) Bernie told a detective that Tom had told her that he had hidden one or more guns in the woods, but hadn't told her where they were.
That detective told me privately that something didn't seem right, and I agreed. Bernie would not allow me to talk to the children and was not happy when I was interviewed by Detective Penley. After taping interviews with Bernie, the girls, and me, Penley stated in her report, "The complainant followed me out to the car and seemed extremely nervous about my conversation with the victim's mother." Detective Penley also stated, "Complainant's demeanor was very upbeat and she spoke of getting on with her life." A few days after Tom disappeared, his business partner and an employee went to Tom's house to get tools from the company truck. As they were leaving, they noticed that the recycle bin contained champagne bottles and the trash bin held black gift wrap paper and black bows. "Somebody was celebrating something," Tom's partner observed. This information appears in Detective Penley's 8/14/95 report.
A man who worked at the Cudjo Key landfill contacted police to report a strange occurrence in which a woman arrived at the landfill with a pickup truck that matched the description of Tom's pickup. The man said he helped the woman empty the truck and was struck by the unusual nature of the items she was getting rid of - a marriage license, photo albums containing wedding pictures, and personal items that obviously belonged to a man. The woman didn't give her name, paid with cash so there was no receipt, and all the items were bulldozed into the transfer truck.
Six days after Tom's disappearance, Bernie left on vacation with the children. She returned home by herself, and the girls went to Chicago to visit their other grandparents. Bill Becker, then, began sleeping over at her house.
My husband and I hired a private investigator. He is the one who found out about Tom's preparations for a trip with his family on the day he became missing -- that he filled his pickup with gas, went to the bank, and stopped the mail. The sheriff's department supplied me with copies of their interviews with no problem, but when I requested the May-August calls to and from Tom and Bernie's home, which Detective Penley had subpoenaed, there was no information about any calls beyond the beginning of July. When I questioned the sheriff about this, he stated in a letter, "I have been assured that if they are not included they do not exist." That makes no sense at all, in light of all the calls that I know were made to and from that house in the days surrounding Tom's disappearance. Many of those calls were to me at my home in Ohio.
In March, 1997, I placed an ad in two newspapers that service the Florida Keys, Citizen and The Key Noter. The ad read: "A reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of person or persons responsible in the disappearance of Tom Stump on July 24, 1995. All information confidential. Send information to (a Post Office Box)." I included Tom's picture. In May, 1997, I called the Citizen and asked them to run the ad a second time. I was told by Randy Erickson, who was in charge of advertising, that the State Attorney had forbidden him to run the ad again. When I contacted State Attorney, Kirk Zuelch, he said his office had nothing to do with the decision and that Mr. Erickson had informed him that the paper had made the decision not to run the ad. I also received a letter from Bernie's attorney saying that I should not run ads seeking information about Tom's disappearance.
In 2000, Tom was declared legally dead, and Bill Becker and Bernie were married.
In February, 2002, Detective J. Norman gave Bernie and Bill lie detector tests. Reportedly they passed. Detective Norman's official conclusion was, "Stump committed suicide; Stump has relocated to an unknown area; or Stump died as a result of accident, negligence or homicide." What kind of conclusion is that?
Who benefited from Tom's death? His wife received $150,000 in insurance money, plus the house, savings, etc. His partner, Scott Haskell, received the stocks and bonds that were in his and Tom's name and also several acres of land.
It's impossible for me to believe that Tom committed suicide and hid his own body. It is equally hard to believe that he deserted his family. He was not that kind of person. Tom was co-owner of a successful construction business and was proud of all that he and his partner had accomplished. He was a very hard worker, but above all, a dedicated father. He went in to work early each morning so that he could be there when his daughters came home from school. He was devoted to those little girls -- helped them with their homework, prepared their dinners, and made sure that they did their chores. Even if his marriage to Bernie was rocky, he still had those children to live for. To walk out on his family or, worse, commit suicide on his youngest daughter's birthday - there's no way in the world that he would have done that.
My daughter-in-law and I had always gotten along. Since Tom's disappearance, neither Bernie nor my granddaughters will speak to me. Not only have I lost a son, I have lost an entire a family. But, whether Bernie and her new husband like it or not, I am and always will be Tom Stump's mother, and I will continue to search and dig until I find out what happened to my son.
Update, April 2004: In March 2004, I was contacted by a woman named Christine Hill, whose mother, Diana Harris, disappeared from Big Pine Key, Florida, in October 1981, after phoning an out-of-state friend from a "party house" belonging to attorney Mitchell Denker. Diana told her friend a big drug delivery was scheduled, the guard dogs were out, and she was afraid the phones were tapped. Like Tom, her body was never found. Christine had been running names from her mother’s case report through a search engine, and the name “Mark Ripin†took her to the Tom Stump case on the Real Crimes web site. From information in Tom’s case report and on his message board, Christine learned that Mark Ripin was questioned in both Diana's and Tom's missing persons cases, and that other people who were linked to Diana's case were also linked to Tom's case. Among those people is Bernie Ripin/Stump/Becker, who was married to Mark Ripin when Diana disappeared and was married to Tom Stump when Tom disappeared, and who has stated on record that she once lived in Mitchell Denker's house. In 2003, Denker was convicted of two felonies -- Transporting Monetary Instruments and perjury, sentenced to prison, and disbarred in the state of Florida. (For the full story, return to the home page and click on the link to "Diana Harris.")
Rose Stump, Tom's mother
P.S. In a town near us they are putting down bricks around the downtown with family names on them. We had one with Tom's name. I guess this will be the closest to a tomb stone we can give him. This memory stone to honor Tom's life on earth has the symbol of a buckeye leaf to signify Tom's closeness to his Ohio Roots. May Tom rest in peace.
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My mother, Diana Lynn Harris(Kuipers), 27, disappeared from Big Pine Key, Florida, in July 1981. I was ten years old at the time. My brother and I were in Michigan, visiting our father. After our mother’s disappearance, our grandmother raised us.
When I turned 17, I returned to Florida to begin my personal investigation of Mom’s disappearance. I’ve been at it ever since. Information I’ve recently uncovered leads me to suspect that my mother may have become a threat to an ongoing, major drug operation and that she might not have been the only person to lose her life for that reason.
I recently ran names connected to Mom’s disappearance through a search engine. When I ran the name “Mark Ripin†– an ex-convict, who was questioned in regard to my mom’s case -- I landed on the Real Crimes web site. My heart dropped into my shoes when I discovered that Mark Ripin was also questioned as a possible suspect in the “Tom Stump Missing Persons Case,†and that several other individuals linked to my mother’s case are also linked to Tom Stump’s case.
On the web site I learned that Tom Stump disappeared from Sugarloaf Key, Florida, in 1995. Like my mom, his body was never found. At the time of his disappearance, Tom was married to Mark Ripin’s ex-wife, Bernie Ripin/Stump. A few days prior to vanishing, Tom was telling people that he suspected Bernie of having an affair with radio talk show host Bill Becker. As soon as she was legally able to do so, Bernie married Becker.
I recognized some of the names on the web site and on the message board as people my mom knew back in 1981. Mark Ripin, the ex-con; Mark’s then-wife Bernie; and their attorney friend, Mitchell Denker, were part of a tight knit group of friends who partied together -- and some of whom actually lived together -- during that time period. My mom was introduced to that group by a new boyfriend, Gary Vincente Argenzio, who, I’ve now found out, was another ex-convict and a close friend of Mark Ripin. Mark Ripin was then, and still is, a close friend of Bernie’s fourth and current husband, Bill Becker, who was Bernie’s live-in boyfriend in 1980 and again began living with her after Tom Stump vanished in 1995.
In October 1981, Mom phoned a friend in Michigan from a hot tub at attorney Mitchell Denker’s “party house†on Big Pine Key and told her that a big drug drop-off was scheduled and she was afraid the phone might be tapped. She also mentioned guard dogs. That’s the last anybody ever heard from her. I’ve since been told by someone in law enforcement that certain police officers attended functions at that party house and that some lost their jobs because of the activities there.
My grandmother filed missing person’s reports in both Michigan and Monroe County, Florida. Nobody at the party house reported Mom missing.
One week after Mom vanished, Gary Argenzio stole a boat that belonged to a man named Robert Thompson. Mitchell Denker told me that Gary also stole two motorcycles from him and possibly a gun. Mark Ripin has since told me that he and Denker owned a boat together, and Denker once allowed Gary to take this boat out and Gary ran it with no oil and blew the motor. Is that why Gary took Robert Thompson’s boat instead of Denker’s?
Another vehicle that was missing was a car that belonged to Mom’s friend Donna. Donna thought it was taken by a man named “Mark†who lived on No Name Key, which is where Mark Ripin and his wife Bernie lived at that time. However, she also added that she believed that man was Mitchell Denker’s cousin, who worked at Denker’s law office. It’s possible she may have confused Mark Ripin with Mitchell Denker’s cousin, Michael Gilbert, who died of a drug overdose in the ‘80s. Which one was it?
After Argenzio ran off to Mexico, Denker allegedly found Donna’s car on a side road. He has stated that he believes Gary Argenzio took the car, perhaps to transport Mom’s body, and claims to have checked it for forensic evidence and found none. Denker is an attorney, not a forensic expert. Why didn’t he turn the car over to the authorities for a professional work-up?
Detective Richard Conrady and Detective Lynn McNeil of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department were originally the lead detectives in Mom’s case. In June 1995, when Mom’s case was being re-investigated as a possible homicide, Detective Phil Harrold questioned Mitchell Denker. Denker told Detective Harrold that Mom was murdered and suggested that she speak with Argenzio’s friend Mark Ripin. Ripin told him he believed Argenzio killed Mom and dumped her body in the ocean.
In July 1982, Gary Argenzio was arrested in Mexico, but he wasn’t charged with Mom’s murder. Instead, (under the name “Gary Vincentoâ€), he was charged and found guilty of stealing Robert Thompson’s boat. Mitchell Denker’s cousin, Michael Gilbert, a member of Denker's law firm, defended Gary Argenzio pro bono. Argenzio was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison.
In May 1990, I contacted Mitchell Denker by phone, and he informed me that he’d sold the party house in 1984. He said he was going to Turkey on business for two weeks and to call him when he got back. When I called him again, he acted like he’d never before talked to me.
In 1992, Gary Argenzio was convicted of another felony. Five days later, he died in his Broward County home in Dania, Florida, allegedly of pneumonia.
But I wasn’t going to give up. Approximately January 1995, I again contacted Mitchell Denker. This time he told me that he thought Gary Argenzio might have buried my mother in Denker’s back yard. As a result of Denker’s new statement, I was able to convince the Sheriff’s Department to reactivate my mother’s case. When questioned in June 1995 by Detective Harrald, Denker said it would have been impossible to bury a body in his yard because of the guard dogs and the coral. Detective Harrald told me the yard had been cemented over so it could not be searched or dug up.
Mitchell Denker asked Harrold if his original statement from 1981 still existed. When Det. Harrold assured him it did not, Denker and Mark Ripin informed him that Argenzio had admitted to smashing Mom’s head into the wall of Denker’s house. Both men stated that they saw the hole in the wall with blood spatters, but Denker described the hole as being in his bedroom and Ripin described it as being by the back door. Detective Lynn McNeil, who investigated the case in 1981, recalled no such damage. She also told me that she and Det. Conrady had checked the woods in the yard for any evidence and had found none. How could the back yard have had woods on it, when Denker said it was solid coral?
In July 1995 – at approximately the same time my mother’s case was reactivated – Tom Stump disappeared from his home on Sugarloaf Key. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Department was investigating both the Stump case and Mom’s case simultaneously and was interrogating Mark Ripin in regard to both missing persons cases. Yet apparently nobody found anything the slightest bit suspicious about the fact that the same man was linked to both cases.
In the summer of 2003, Mitchell Denker was convicted of two felonies -- Transporting Monetary Instruments and perjury. He was sentenced to five months in prison and disbarred in the state of Florida. This proof that Denker was as much of a crook as Mark Ripin and Gary Argenzio caused me to start wondering if all three men might have been involved in my mother’s disappearance. I immediately requested that Detective James Norman of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department provide me with reports from their 1981 and 1995 investigations. Det. Norman informed me that the files from 1981 did not exist. I was not surprised to hear this, because my Grandma had been trying to get those files for years and had been told they didn’t exist. I was stunned, however, to be told now that former Sheriff William Freeman had deliberately destroyed all case files from the years 1981-1983 and some from 1984. Det. Norman said he couldn’t say why for sure, but had heard a rumor about a big drug bust called the “Big Pine 29†that occurred on Big Pine Key during that time period. Mitchell Denker was the defense attorney for one of the suspected drug smugglers.
I contacted Sheriff Richard Roth to ask him about Mom’s files. Sheriff Roth told me that, in 1981, he was a detective and remembers this incident. He said it wasn’t an uncommon thing back then for the Sheriff to get rid of old case files. However, when Mom’s files were destroyed they were not old at all! My Grandma was still communicating with detectives about the case.
But I did receive the reports from the 1995 investigation, which is how I got the names to run through the search engine. When Mark Ripin’s name took me to the Tom Stump case, I posted a question on the message board, asking if anyone had heard of “Mitchell Denker.â€
Someone responded by quoting a post by Mark Ripin in which he cryptically asked: "What’s the connection? Manny the shark hunter, Mitchell Denker, the lawyer?" (I’ve since found out that Manilito “Manny†Pluig, a shark hunter who swims with the sharks, was hired by Bernie Ripin/Stump/Becker to aid in the search for Tom. The answer to Ripin’s question could well be: “Both men swim with the sharks,†one literally, one figuratively.)
Someone else posted a quote from Bernie’s deposition in which she admitted to living in Mitchell Denker’s house. Since Bernie was married to Mark Ripin at that time, that would seem to suggest that they both were on the premises when Mom vanished. Bernie has since told me she knew my mom and my mom showed her photos of my brother and me. Yet, Bernie didn't bother to report Mom missing, even though Bernie's own husband said he saw a hole in the wall that was made by Mom's head.
Another thing I find bewildering is that, when requestioned by police in 1995, Mitchell Denker -- a practicing attorney who should know the law -- stated that in his opinion there was more than enough evidence to indict Gary Argenzio for my mom's murder, but the Sheriff’s Department hadn’t seemed interested in pursuing it. He specifically cited Mom's disappearance and missing body and Argenzio's flight with Robert Thompson’s boat. Yet, back in 1982, when Argenzio was tried for stealing that boat, Mitchell Denker’s cousin, a member of his own law firm, defended Argenzio for free, and nobody even mentioned my missing mother. In fact, Mark Ripin testified in Argenzio's behalf.
My mom was a wonderful mother, and I loved her dearly, but she led a difficult life. After an abusive marriage that ended in divorced, she witnessed her brother shoot himself in the mouth. She attempted to self-medicate by smoking marijuana, but that did little to erase the gristly vision. She relocated to Florida in an effort to escape that awful memory, and continued to smoke marijuana. But she never used hard drugs until she met Gary Argenzio, and I doubt that she had any idea what she was getting into when she started her association with that group of people.
I had my mother for only ten years, but I thank God for every one of them. I have beautiful memories of my life with her. She worked hard, cooked wonderful food, and was never too busy to play with my brother and me. She was a very affectionate mother and, no matter how tired she was or how weighed down by worries, she gave us unstinting love and attention.
My mom was my world. For 25 years I’ve been trying to find out what happened to her, and I will not stop until I get an answer that makes sense.
Christine Hill (Diana Harris’s daughter)
You can read both my Mom's and Tom Stump's Stories at the Real Crimes Site at http://www.realcrimes.com, where you'll also see the first 3 chapters of "Two Gone Missing". Please also take time to read some of the other stories on this site, all very sad & shocking cases!!!
I also want to thank all the Good Police Officers who work so very hard on solving each and every missing person & homicide case. Thank You for trying so hard to bring the missing home and for putting so much effort into bringing the familes closure!!
Debra Wilhite
Patty Vaughan
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