What Unsolved Mysteries Leaves Out About JoAnn Romain’s Family, Tim & Bill Matouk

The Unsolved Mysteries episode “Lady in the Lake” examined the death of JoAnn Romain, which some believe was somehow connected to her brother Bill Matouk and cousin Tim Matouk. While the police investigators concluded that JoAnn Romain committed suicide, many, including her children, suspect that she was murdered because of a dispute over the family finances.

“Lady in the Lake” is the penultimate episode of Unsolved Mysteries volume 2 and it detailed the strange circumstances of JoAnn Romain’s disappearance and death. Romain was last seen around 7:15 pm on January 12, 2010, when she attended a prayer service at St. Paul Catholic Church in Gross Pointe Farms, Michigan. Where she went from there is unclear, but one witness reported seeing the space where her Lexus had been parked being empty. Yet it was the Lexus apparently being abandoned at the church which led the police to begin investigating JoAnn Romain’s disappearance, concluding that she had walked down a steep incline to Lake St. Clair, where she drowned herself. JoAnn Romain’s body was discovered over two months later on Boblo Island, nearly 35 miles away.

JoAnn’s children immediately rejected the police’s conclusions, citing their mother’s devout Catholicism and fear of the dark and water as reasons she would never commit suicide by drowning. They came to believe that the Gross Pointe police were actively covering up a murder, based on several oddities regarding the case. One incongruity was that the Lexus JoAnn had been driving that night was registered to her daughter, yet the police immediately started a search for JoAnn rather than her daughter. The police also began investigating the disappearance before her children had noticed their mother was missing. The police also somehow acquired a key to the Lexus the day after JoAnne disappeared, though JoAnne’s car key was later found on her body. JoAnn’s children attempted to sue the city of Gross Pointe for conspiracy to cover up their mother’s murder, but the case and appeal were dismissed, although the District Judge acknowledged there were “disputed facts in this matter that are very disturbing and to this day remain unresolved.”

Many of these unresolved facts involved JoAnn Romain’s brother, Bill Matouk, and her cousin, Tim Matouk. Tensions between the siblings were high, due to a dispute over how their parents’ estate had been split. As a result, Bill was largely estranged from JoAnn and their brother John. Bill Matouk declined to be interviewed as part of the Unsolved Mysteries investigation into his sister’s death, but “Lady in the Lake” did show part of a police interview with Tim Matouk regarding the case.

Tim, who was a police officer at the time of his cousin’s death, reportedly held a specific grudge against JoAnn regarding the family drama and inspired some degree of fear in JoAnn herself, who hired a private security company in the weeks before her disappearance. After one phone call with Tim ended in a screaming argument, JoAnn directly told her daughter, Michelle, “If something happens to me, look to Tim.” JoAnn also told paralegal Nancy Barich that Tim had threatened her directly, specifically stating that “if someone wanted to get rid of you they could do it and you would never be found.” Perhaps most disturbingly, one witness, Paul Hawk, claimed to have seen Tim Matouk at St. Paul Catholic Church at the time of JoAnn’s disappearance – a fact that JoAnn’s children were not made aware of until the discovery phase of their civil suit against the Gross Pointe police years later.

While Tim Matouk and Bill Matouk have both denied any involvement in JoAnn Romain’s death, many outside the family are skeptical. Even before Unsolved Mysteries profiled the case, private planes had been hired to fly accusatory banners with the men’s names over Gross Pointe, with slogans like “Wait until the public finds out who you really are.” Another banner asked why the two men refused to take a polygraph test regarding JoAnn Romain’s death.

About The Author

Matt Morrison
(1839 Articles Published)

Matt Morrison has been writing about comics since before the word
“blogging” was coined. He got his start writing for the
legendary DC Comics digital fanzine Fanzing,
before receiving his own column, The Mount. Since then he has gone on
to write for over a dozen websites, including 411
Mania, Comics
Nexus and The Cult of Nobody. He holds both an MS in Information
Science from the University of North Texas and a BFA from the
University of Texas at Arlington. Known as a font of comic book
history trivia, he has delivered lectures on the history of American
Comic Books, Japanese Manga, Doctor Who, and Cosplay at over a dozen conventions
and served as an Expert In-Residence for a course on Graphic Novels
for Librarians at the University of North Texas. In addition to his
work for Screen Rant, Matt is currently the Editor In Chief of
Kabooooom.com and writes reviews for No
Flying, No Tights – a graphic literature and anime review site
aimed at teachers and librarians. He also maintains a personal blog –
My Geeky Geeky Ways –
which hosts his extensive episode guide for the television series
making up The Arrowverse as well as his
comedic Let’s Play videos. What little spare time he has is
devoted towards acting, role-playing, movie-riffing and sarcasm. You
can follow his adventures on Twitter, @GeekyGeekyWays.

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