Heidi Allen missing 25 years ago, never found – what happened

Heidi Allen missing: 25 years ago today, Heidi Allen went missing. She’s never been found.

At the time of her disappearance, Allen was set to graduate from Onondaga Community College with a degree in human services. She would have been 43 years if still alive today.

Heidi Marie Allen, who was 18-years old at the time – April 3, 1994, was employed as a clerk at the D & W Convenience Store located at the intersection of New York State Routes 104 and 104B in New Haven, New York.

That morning, she had opened up the store by herself at approximately 5:45 a.m. The last recorded transaction on the cash register was at 7:42 a.m.

The investigation into her disappearance led authorities to believe that Allen had been taken against her will from the store after it emerged that her jacket, purse and car keys were all left behind at the store, while her maroon station wagon was left undisturbed in the store’s parking lot.

Money was discovered in the cash register and on the counter (suggesting robbery was not the motive.)

A man named Richard Thibodeau and his brother, Gary Thibodeau, were later charged with Allen’s kidnapping the same year.

As the last customer known to be in the store before Allen went missing, Richard said that he had merely purchased two packs of cigarettes at 7:30 a.m. then left.

In June of 1995, Gary was convicted of first-degree kidnapping in Allen’s case, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. In September of that same year, Richard was acquitted of all charges, while Gary attempted to appeal his conviction in 1999 but was denied.

Gary died in 2018 and maintained his innocence in her disappearance since his conviction in 1995.

The many twists to Heidi Allen missing story:

Before Allen went missing, her cousin, Melissa Searles, gave her a gold bracelet with her name on it. Searles eventually revealed that the bracelet mysteriously turned up inside an envelope in her mailbox in 2004; for reasons which remain unclear, Searles had not told the police or anyone for that matter, about the bracelet showing up in her mail for years.

Also, at some point before Allen’s abduction, a Deputy whom Heidi was working with as a confidential drug informant, had unknowingly dropped an index card with Allen’s name and picture, indicating her as such, on the floor of her workplace and site of her disappearance.

In 2013, a woman named Jennifer Wescott was secretly recorded telling a female friend, Tonya Priest, that her then-boyfriend Roger Breckenridge and two of his friends, James Steen, and Michael Bohrer had brought Heidi over to her trailer home after her vanishing.

In the secret recording, Wescott also said that James Steen admitted to killing Heidi and hiding her body.

According to her, Steen also told that he, Breckenridge and Bohrer had kidnapped Heidi because she was planning on going to the police about drug dealers. None of the three men have ever been charged in connection with Heidi’s case.