I saw garage footage that changed it

This security feed was captured at 2.04 a.m. on September 23, 2023. It shows 53-year-old Kristen Laman walking through a resort lobby in North Mertle Beach, South Carolina. From there, she'll head straight to her room and never walk back out. She won't check out of the hotel, and she'll never appear on a single hotel security camera again. For months, Kristen's bizarre disappearance from a South Carolina hotel room will completely mystify everyone, except for one man, but it will take meticulous detective work to uncover who he is, and he's already 400 miles away, confident that he pulled off the perfect crime. It all begins on October 9, 2023, when Lauren Blalock walks into a Duluth, Georgia police station and files a missing persons report. She tells officers, two weeks earlier, her mother, 53-year-old Kristen Laman, had left for a week and get away to North Mertle Beach, South Carolina, and had never come home. It isn't the first time Kristen has gone off the grid, but this time around several things trouble detectives. Her phone is going straight to voicemail. Her bank account has been inactive since September 24. The exact day, a large purchase of bitcoin overdrew her account, and all communication went dark. Detectives sense that something is amiss, but figuring out what it is will be a challenge, since no one's even sure if she crossed a state line. Multiple agencies will need to coordinate their investigation. The circles she ran in makes accessing the truth incredibly difficult, and as investigators are about to discover, more than one person seems to have had a potential motive for harming her. "Is this misty?" "Yes, ma'am. Is the detective recorder with the city of North Mertle Beach police department?" "Yes, sir." On September 29, I believe it was. He had somebody reach out to you and say that she was incarcerated somewhere. "Yeah, actually, I did it. Yeah, a guy named Chris had actually been at it and told me that she was incarcerated, and I just couldn't understand that because I had been looking for so long, and I never found her, so I was just like, I couldn't understand it, but yeah, I do have his numbers." All right, so this forest, Chris, goes, "Is there a chance that her relationship would handle strictly drug related?" "Strictly drug related, nothing else." "Yeah." "Okay, I don't know if you even know what this guy is, but do you know a guy named Frank that kind of ran around in this circle with people?" "Yeah, I know Frank, yeah." "What's Frank's doing?" "Uh, he's just a crackhead too, but he's, I mean, he's harmless." "I suppose they did when picked up the car together." "Yes, okay." So, it bow initially makes it sound like he'd be looked sure if he was going to do it go on this trick to the North Mertle Beach. "Right, Frank actually told me that he packed his things twice and put them in the car and was ready to go, and both times both turned around and said, "No, I'm going to go." "But then I was like, I just believed what he said, and then two days later, I called Jim and I asked him, I was like, "Can't make people tell me she's in this, I can't find her." And he said, "I don't know anything about me locked up, I don't know what she's talking about." So then I was like, "Well, that's really weird." "Have you asked Chris where he heard that from?" "No, I've been afraid to talk to him since then." "Okay." I said, "Where are you afraid of him?" "Oh, because I don't know what happened to her." "Yeah." "And I don't know what happened, so I'm afraid. I'm just afraid because I was her best friend." So, I just wondered, I mean, I don't know if he got nervous because he texted me that, you know what I mean? And he might want to come get the phone for me. I mean, a lot of things are going to remind you, as far as I know, that's the way it went. I'm really not that sure. I mean, I was involved in Christ's life, but not, but I, you know, I run my own business and stuff, so I have to draw a line, as close as I can get to people. It's funny, yeah. So, why did they call him Crackhead Chris? That's what I call him, because I mean, I'll be honest with you, so it'll be a lot more for like 1200 bucks, it's like a 3700, a lot more, so that's why I call him Crackhead Chris, because, you know, he's so intrigued, pretty nice mom, or pretty nice chief, so that's why I call him Crackhead Chris. Misty has given detectives a strong start. Three people stand out for their suspicious behavior. Chris, a drug acquaintance of Christens, who had gone out of his way to feed Misty false information. Then, there's Borneald, her non-committal younger boyfriend, who suspiciously left town, and after claiming that he woke up in a hotel room and Christen was gone. And finally, Frank, who may have joined the couple on their trip to North Murdole Beach. While Borneald is being located, detectives fix their attention on Chris and what he's hiding. Hey, is this Chris? Hey, this is a detective recorder with North Murdole Beach Police Department. How you doing, brother? Will you act for him? Chris? No, you got no, no, no, no. So, let me count 30, you know, I was going on. A grand Christian layman was reported missing. I spoke with a guy named Jim. Jim, he said he haven't seen her or heard him paint for him. I spoke with a lady named Misty. She would text me out like I haven't heard from her or nothing. So, did you, my understanding, she went out of state with somebody? Did you talk to Misty and tell Misty that she was in jail? That, that Christian was in jail? Somebody told, Jim told me that she might be in jail or she even, she even don't want to be by cover Jim. Okay, so Jim told you that and then did you tell Misty that? I told Misty that, I told him that she played in jail as well, because she haven't been there. Okay, okay. Um, who's Jim? Jim is the person that she was paying for it. So, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, I'm just trying to find her, man. Dude, you're not in any trouble. Um, I just saw that someone had told Misty that obviously they knew that she was in jail somewhere and it's, they made so much it came from a guy named Chris. Um, and my understanding, this was the number, but your name's not Chris? No, there's not my name. My name's Hayden. Okay, is your last name, Corda? C-A-R-R? Yes, it's Corda. Okay, all right. Okay, have you heard your name, Crackhead Chris? Uh-huh. Do you say no? No, sir. Okay, I know she was involved in some, some drug stuff. Dude, I, I don't even care, you know, I think she was selling you drug or you were selling her drugs. I don't even care about it. Um, but I, but I do want you to be honest with me about, you know, your relationship with her and what it actually was. The honest with her, you have a relationship with her, I just, I know her. Yeah. I just don't really like missing her around her, and that's about it. Okay, she's not communicated with anyone including her daughter, which, I guess her and her daughters have pretty relationships. That would be pretty bizarre not to at least talk to her. Um, so that's why we're kind of concerned about her welfare. Well, that's the person that you can talk to because I'm good name Jim. Uh-huh. You can ask Jim because she have all, that's what she was saying, that. And, that's the only person I can say, Jim, who are missing, you can ask her one or two. Yeah. Okay. It's obvious to anyone that Chris just lied through his teeth about everything from his own name to the message he sent Misty. But before investigators can figure out why, something unexpected arrives in the mail, a speeding ticket, addressed to Kristen, dated September 22nd, and was issued from Marion County, South Carolina, roughly 45 miles from Myrtle Beach. It's definitive proof that Kristen made it to her weekend trip. The burning question now is, where was she ultimately headed and what went wrong? In a bid to find out, investigators gain access to Kristen's email account, buried in her inbox they find a reservation to a two-night stay at the club Wyndham Resort in North Middle Beach. It's the breakthrough they need for piecing together her last movements and to find out why she never came home. That same day, local detectives head to the hotel to look for those exact answers. This is Kristen Layman checking in at the Wyndham Hill Hotel on Friday, September 22nd. She wasn't alone. Hotel management and security footage confirmed that with her was Bernold Eberhardt, her 42-year-old boyfriend. Resort records also show their departure time, 11 a.m. on September 24th. If the couple left the resort together, this may only be the first step in a long investigation, but moving to that next stage requires evidence, and there's a complete gold mine of its stored on the hotel's hundreds of security cameras. The process of downloading and viewing this footage will take weeks, meanwhile Bernold has just become their number one suspect, or at least, he is until officers retrieve his cell phone data. Because of the early hours of [BLANK_AUDIO] September 24th, Bernold sent several text messages to Kristen's phone. The text messages back up what Bernold allegedly told his friends back in Georgia that he had woken up to an empty bed and hitchhiked back from Georgia. Can you explain to me, I guess, you know, a relation with her and anything you may know about Bo? I guess that was her boyfriend or something? I don't know if it was Bo's or not, but there's just a person she went in, motivates with. Okay. What's Bo's story? What's his deal? What do you mean? I'm just trying to figure out what kind of person he is. Obviously, he was the last person to be with her. Did you mean since the trip or years? Yes. Okay. Have you heard anything about, have you heard anything about why they left? No, I've said, you know, we shall end something to do with it. Have you talked to him since he got back? Yes. Right after he got back in, actually, it was a negative, at least four days after they were supposed to be back on the end of '79, I told him that's the message. The government called about two miles later. He woke up at morning and Sunday morning, and she was gone. And her stuff was gone, and he had the H.I. Home. How about a Frank? We keep saying the name Frank and her phone. Who's that? How did this thing go? Do you know his last name? I don't know. And he mentioned there was a girl named Danielle, who used to be a prostitute, I guess. And I guess when Misty had said something to her about, you know, Kristen going missing and everything, and, you know, she suspected both. The Danielle girl said she wasn't surprised because he used to hit the girl at all times. I guess her front too. The girl's poor for handle. Now Misty, what I understand Danielle was his girlfriend. Okay. So Misty didn't have a contact for Danielle, but she said you did. I was open to talk with her about her experiences with both. Tell us a little bit about Kristen. I mean, we kind of, you know, kind of get to feeling that she possibly deals drugs. Possibly used to be a, I don't know, she's still in that. You know, she'd been in and out of trouble. None of us, that's neither here nor there. We don't, couldn't care too much about that. That's, you know, that's some George's stuff. But I mean, would anybody have a reason to harbor? You know, she owed people money or not that I don't want. But she ran and she runs in that circle, right? Is she dealing in, like, big quantities or are we just talking nickel and dime support that I have the kind of thing? Was he your camping one time or what's that? Is we're just two vans or a boyfriend girl friend or? Is she, you know, one of them to think the boyfriend didn't get what that is? Okay. If Bornold is telling the truth, it raises a whole new possibility, like that Kristen ran into trouble while out alone on Saturday night, possibly with a local, or maybe with one of her out-of-state contacts. Officers know that the hotel security footage will quickly verify Bornold's story and by now they found plenty of it, but that's not how things are going to pan out. Instead, the footage is about to plunge investigators into a deeply unsettling mystery. At 156 am, the resort garage cameras capture the couple's vehicle returning to the property. Inside the car, a heated argument is taking place. Bornold appears to be pinning her leg down with one hand, preventing her from jumping out the open passenger door. At 158 am, she enters a stairwell from the parking garage and struggles to find the door to the lobby. At 204 am, Kristen is seen entering the hotel lobby alone. She heads to the front reception desk holding a credit card. It looks as though she's trying to secure a new hotel room, presumably to avoid Bornold. But whatever happens next, her attempt fails. She walks to the elevator alone and back to the room she shares with the guy she just tried to jump out of a moving car to avoid. 10 minutes later, Bornold appears at the parking garage cameras carrying a bag of take-out food and alcohol. And he's headed to the same room, Kristen's already in. Once the door closes on that room, Kristen is never seen on camera again. Hours of sifting through footage produces absolutely nothing. She's not caught on a single corridor or elevator. She isn't at the reception desk when Bornold checks out. It's like she vanished into thin air. Which, since she hasn't, can only mean something else happened to her. Something so dark, it's almost incomprehensible. I don't know why he would text you that. That's why I thought maybe he had something to do with it in the beginning. But, you know, I don't know. Now, it's totally intense. That guy, she was with. I mean, I didn't know who she was with. And now, if I'm talking to find out, you know, she went with an aka boyfriend or whatever. Yes, what do you know about him? He's a piece of track one. I mean, now I feel like he's a piece of track foot. And he's just another dope boy too, you know, just a dope, you know. He was 10 years younger than she was and she really liked him a lot. I mean, she would even cry over him. And I was like, "What is your goal?" And I was like, "What is your goal?" She said, "Right now, just to beat my ego." And I was like, "It's all, I still understand that, but whatever." So she just kept on going all the way in like, I don't know. So she looked at him. She lived with Jim. She ran in a room from Jim. And the guy, the old guy, he would come over like five nights a week pretty much. Pretty much after 11 o'clock, his truck would be there, you know what I mean? 'Til the next day. And then, you know, he would leave and then he would come back the next day or whatever. But I always say about an average about five nights a week, he would spend with her. So she looked at him as like a boyfriend and he looked at her as, "What, do you think?" She wanted to commit this from him and he didn't want to give it to him. Okay. Well, she's selling him drugs too or was he selling her drugs? Or was drugs not really a part of the situation? We drugs were, they both dealt drugs, but like, they didn't really, she didn't deal with his comfort. She didn't deal with her customers and like, they just sort of kept it separate. Okay. What do you think happened when she was up here? What do I think happened when I think that she would, they were both out of college, like, you know that. So I think that she probably started talking shit and she started talking shit. And I think it probably escalated and you probably lost control. It snapped. That's what I think. To talk into the girls that used to be around him a lot, like, would work for him. They said that he would get done all the time. Work for him, isn't it? Like to his baby. Okay. What do you guys think happened? You know, it's tough to say right now. We're waiting on some surveillance video. Yeah. We've got some surveillance video from the hotel that they stayed at. But we're waiting on some of it to download. They're, they're high definition cameras and there's like 150 cameras. So, you know, we know that they enter the room on Saturday. Yeah. We know that he leaves in the vehicle on Saturday. But we never see where she goes. So we have to go through frame by frame and look and see basically what happens to her. Because we've got cameras on every exit of that building. So there's no way she leaves the other scene or on camera. But you know, I mean, I'm really, I'm really mad. I'm really mad. I'm really mad. Really, really miss her. Because, I mean, I just think about her a lot. And I don't understand what happened. Yeah. I guess he's telling, or he told some people that, hey, I woke up and she was just gone. Hey, is this Tamika Williams? Yes. Hey, this is Detective McCarter with the City of North Marlots Police Department. Yes, sir. I'm very cold off of it one second. Yes, ma'am. Maybe described maybe your relationship with one old was a good bad or like so. I don't know how serious you guys were, but your name was brought up. I don't even really think I've ever heard him yell honestly even like upset with anyone else. Do you remember what the reason was for your relationship ending with him? Was it like a mutual thing or was he just not serious enough for you? For whatever reason, Tamika's experience with Borno doesn't match what Misty has heard about his violence unless she has her own reasons for staying silent, but another ex soon will, and she doesn't hold anything back. I was in a relationship with him and he was abusive. He almost killed me on two occasions. I was abused physically. I have had guns pulled out on me. One time he hit me in the head with the handle of his gun. I know in my heart he killed that lady. That is him on that video in the parking deck. I have children. I need to stay anonymous from him. He's been so drunk and on a rampage that he prepared the apartment to kill me and my kids. Things are staring at an impossible puzzle, but they are certain Borno is at the center of it. Kristen, it seems, never left the hotel room, which was empty and spotlessly clean by mid-day on September the 24th, which can only mean detectives have missed something, a crucial piece of footage that will explain Kristen's disappearance, something involving Borno. With this in mind, detectives retrace his every move, and they spot a detail they almost missed. On the morning of Sunday, September 24th, the parking garage camera activates, even though it's a mild beach morning, Bernold ever hearts wearing a heavy black hoodie and gloves. And he's pushing what looks like a hotel luggage cart. Only instead of suitcases, loaded onto the rack, is a bulky, tightly tied mass wrapped in white bed sheets, the same bed sheets used in their room. As for the object inside, it's the size and shape of a human body. The footage is absolutely chilling and deeply disturbing. Detectives now believe that Bernold may have murdered Kristen during that long window while they were both inside the room. He then wrapped the body in a bed sheet to hide it and had driven away with her in the trunk of the car. With enough evidence for the arrest, officers in Georgia prepare a SWAT team to detain Bornold. Bornold is going to jail, but detectives still have one major task ahead of them, finding Kristen, and returning her to her family. There is also a burning question that needs to be answered. What exactly happened in that hotel room and how did he kill her? The first step is locating her, and the North Meadow Beach Police figure that should be as straightforward as tracking the vehicle's GPS trail. But it won't be that simple. Detectives discover that the SUV was dropped off at an Avis lot in College Park, Georgia, late on September 24th. However, because it was a standard rental return, there was no saved GPS tracking data to map his route. To make matters worse, no employees witnessed the drop off to verify who was behind the wheel. What detectives do have, however, is the vehicle itself. When forensic teams processed the trunk with chemical reagents, it lights up, and the blood is a biological match to Kristen Layman. Cell tower mapping also shows that Kristen's phone traveled alongside Bernold's the entire way back, confirming it was in his possession. Even without the physical evidence of a body, Bernold Eberhardt is taken into custody by Decalbe County Police SWAT team on March 3rd, 2024, and then extradited to South Carolina to face murder charges. Once in custody, he completely refuses to speak to detectives. There is one grim consolation for Kristen's family, however, he has just given police a screenshot of where he left her body. On March the 9th, 2024, search teams scour a wooded lot on the Whitehall Forest Court in Decalbe County, Georgia, hidden among the brush right behind an industrial dumpster. Researchers find skeletal remains. They are still partially wrapped inside the White Windem Hotel bedsheet, but due to their advanced stage of decomposition, the medical examiner is forced to rule her official cause of death as undetermined. Investigators conclude that during a heated argument, Bernold snapped. Fueled by drugs, alcohol, and a latent uncontrolled rage, he killed Kristen, most likely by strangulation. After dumping her remains, he emptied her bank accounts with an untraceable purchase of bitcoin. He'd hoped he'd pulled off the perfect murder, but he completely underestimated the digital footprint he left behind, and the drive of both her family and detectives to bring her home. On February 17th, 2026, Bernold Eberhardt took an Alfred plea to the charge of murder. He received 30 years in prison. For Kristen's family, the sentence brings to an end a painful search for answers, but while Bernold is paying the price for his crime, no sentence can undue the loss of a beloved mother, daughter, and friend. We would like to extend our sincere condolences to the friends, family, and loved ones of Kristen Laman, may she rest in peace.