The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages.
Listener discretion is advised.
I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski.
And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski.
And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases.
Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm your host, Ali, and it will just be me coming to you this week.
Eli is busy with some other projects, but hopefully soon we'll be able to kind of talk
about them with you all.
But he is a little busy this week, so it'll just be me bringing you the podcast.
And I just want to say thank you so much.
I know last week we had an unexpected week off.
I've talked about this before briefly.
I am someone who gets migraines like 15 or plus days a month.
So I can usually work through them.
You know, I have my doctors, I have medications, I have things I can take to kind of help manage
them.
But sometimes they just get out of control and they are beyond what I'm able to kind
of manage and I just have to rest.
If you or someone you love has migraines, I'm sure you understand, but if not, I do
appreciate your understanding and your patience with me while I heal up and get back to the
podcast bringing you a new episode.
So that's what I'm here to do this week.
And I thought we should just go ahead and jump into it.
We are on episode 119 this week.
And just as a bit of a content warning at the top, this case does involve a young person
and there are mentions of sexual assault throughout the podcast.
Today we are talking about the cold case of Heidi Seeman.
And this takes place in August of 1990 in San Antonio, Texas.
But first, a little bit about Heidi.
Heidi is 11 years old in 1990.
She had just finished up her fifth grade year at Stahl Elementary School and was gearing
up for sixth grade while enjoying the summer with friends.
Heidi lived with her mom and dad, Teresa and Curtis Seeman, and her younger sister in San
Antonio.
Heidi's dad at this time in 1990 was a senior master sergeant assigned to the Air Force
Military Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base.
Heidi was a lovely daughter, a great friend, and an incredible sister.
Her parents said she was very responsible and they could always depend on her.
She never caused much trouble.
And she was well liked at her school.
And now a timeline of events.
On Saturday, August 4, 1990.
It was around noon on Saturday and Heidi had spent the night before at a friend's house
and it was time for her to start heading home.
She gathered her things and the plan was for her to walk a mile home.
Her friend was going to walk her halfway and then they would part ways and Heidi would
finish the walk by herself.
Heidi is wearing a collarless white shirt with buttons at the throat, purple jogging
shorts and black and white polka dot shoes.
On the walk, the friends notice a red car with tinted windows drive past them.
Despite the tint in the windows, the girls could see that a man was driving the car and
that he had a mustache.
The girls continue walking, but then they notice that same red car drive past them again.
Undeterred, they keep walking to the halfway point, where they would separate ways.
This point was at Stahl Road and Willow Run in San Antonio.
Today this area is covered with homes and neighborhoods, but in 1990 it appears that
a lot of this area was being developed and many places were under construction.
Heidi and her friends say goodbye to each other and her friend turns around and starts
walking back home.
As her friend is leaving, she notices the red car driving towards them again, but she
keeps walking towards her house.
When the friend turns around to look at Heidi, she notices that both her and the red car
are gone.
It's unclear exactly how long it takes for Heidi to get reported.
She is reported missing that day, that Saturday, but it's unclear exactly when her parents
noticed that something was wrong and when they reported that to police.
The next day, Sunday, August 5, news of the missing little girl had started to spread
and hundreds of people come out to search for her.
The main focus is around a construction site.
Security guards at one of the construction sites reported to police that at around 4
a.m. they heard the screams of a young girl, but they didn't see anything.
Searchers are deployed to this area to search nearby, but they don't find any sign of
Heidi.
The FBI also officially joins the case and the search for Heidi.
Investigators feel confident that they are dealing with a kidnapping.
Detective Sam Bullies us as, quote, we feel there is enough information to carry it as
a kidnapping.
The fact that the family hasn't heard anything since Saturday is an indication this is a
kidnapping, end quote.
Heidi's family are very grateful for all of the help in the case.
The Air Force even sends personnel to help the search.
The family tries to keep their hopes up that Heidi will come home at any moment.
Large scale searches involving hundreds of volunteers, local, state, and federal investigators,
and search and rescue teams are conducted all over San Antonio over the next few days,
but no sign of Heidi is found.
On Wednesday, August 8, Heidi has been missing for four days.
A possible sighting was reported to the FBI tip line.
At around 8 a.m., a man was headed into work and noticed a stalled out pickup truck.
When the man stopped to offer help, the driver refused his offer.
The truck was a white 1972 Ford pickup with a full-length toolbox.
The front left fender had a lot of black on it, according to the witness.
The driver of the stalled out truck was a white man, about six foot tall, with black
hair and sunglasses on, and extremely rough looking.
When the man who had stopped to offer help walked back to his truck, he says he saw a
girl tied up and gagged in the bed of the truck.
The man drove to work and told his coworkers what he had seen.
The man himself was hesitant to call police, so one of his coworkers called and reported
it.
Eventually, police are able to talk to the man directly and get his statement.
However, another witness calls the tip line saying the same thing—that between 7.30
and 8 a.m. in the morning on I-35, the witness saw the truck and slowed down to ask if they
needed help when they saw the little girl in the back.
He drove off to call police.
A search is done in the area where the truck was stalled at and in nearby abandoned houses,
but again, nothing is found related to Heidi.
Police continue every day with large searches happening on weekends when the most volunteers
can show up.
A reward fund swells to over $23,000, but still, no sign of Heidi is found and no other
sightings of her are reported.
On Saturday, August 25, exactly three weeks since Heidi disappeared, a farmer, Jack Campbell,
is out on his 460-acre ranch with his son riding an ATV when he catches the smell of
something bad and notices a bunch of buzzards.
He drives over to the area to investigate and notices a human skull.
He then sees a trash bag and knows that there's a body inside.
He hops on the ATV and gets to a phone as quick as possible to call police.
When the police arrive, they find a body that had been wrapped in blankets and placed inside
two trash bags that were then duct-taped together.
Restraints had been used.
The body had been found in a cluster of cedar trees about 75 feet off of Hayes County Road,
220.
Police begin to process the scene.
Heidi's body was in advanced stages of decomposition, but they do believe that she had been out
here for at least two weeks, but investigators also believe that she was likely killed shortly
after her abduction.
Due to the state of her body, police are doubtful that they'll be able to get a cause of death.
Her body is sent for an autopsy and to confirm her identification.
They'll have to use dental records to confirm that it's Heidi due to the state of her body.
It's not revealed at this time in 1990, but years later, they do say that Heidi's cause
of death was by strangulation and that she had been sexually assaulted before her murder.
Heidi's case is handed over to the military police to investigate after her body is found.
However, it appears that investigators make little progress in the case after the discovery
of the body, at least to the public.
Behind the scenes, investigators are working on a case and it's coming together quite
slowly.
The next update doesn't come until March of 1992, a year and a half after her murder.
Military police announce that they're holding a suspect for questioning.
The suspect is Air Force Major Robert Eric Duncan.
Duncan had been in charge of organizing searches for Heidi and had acted as president of the
Heidi Search Center, an organization that was founded after Heidi went missing to help
families of missing children get the resources that they need.
He was president for about a year.
Duncan was a former supervisor of Heidi's father.
However, it seems that due to Heidi's father, Curtis, Duncan either lost his supervisor
position or was transferred somewhere else.
It's unclear exactly what happened, but something happened with his job where he lost
either his rank or some significant position.
It's unclear exactly how Curtis would have caused this, but this is what police believe
would have motivated Duncan to murder Heidi.
Duncan first came to police attention when he began to call the sheriff's wife, who
was a reporter at the paper.
Duncan would call her and ask her about the investigation and whether FBI agents were
in the area, and he also wanted to discuss strange dreams he was having.
According to a statement that she made to police, Patty Hastings says, quote, he again
began telling me about his dreams, and I again cut him short, end quote.
Investigators conduct a search of his home and interrogate him.
However, after just two days, military police release Major Robert Eric Duncan.
When asked about it, the Air Force spokesperson says, quote, I really don't know why.
He just hasn't been charged.
It's still an open investigation, end quote.
In February of 1996, so it's been five and a half years since Heidi's murder, and police
say that they have a new suspect, Jerry Nabor.
Nabor in 1996 is in prison serving time on drug charges.
He was known to have a heavy meth addiction.
The affidavit for the suspect states that a witness saw a young girl just inside a rear
door of the suspect's apartment about the time of Heidi's abduction.
The girl was tied to the chair, and her mouth was covered with something, like a bandana,
and she appeared to be crying.
When the witness asked who she was, Nabor responded that she was just a meth addict
that he had found somewhere.
Police take hair and blood samples of Nabor and send them for comparison.
However, just a few months later, at the end of May of 1996, Heidi's father, Curtis Seeman https://www.dps.texas.gov/apps/coldCase/Tips/tipForm/56,
files a murder charge against Duncan.
The murder charge was filed under military justice rules that permits one soldier to
file charges against another soldier.
So that's what her father did against Duncan.
Now, Duncan had planned to retire from the Air Force on June 1st, but since this was
filed at the end of May, he wasn't allowed to retire until the case was settled.
Duncan's lawyer said the family was, quote, obviously distraught.
They've been planning a retirement for some time now.
The good news, and he's happy about this, we're going to have our chance to defend
this case, end quote.
It takes the entire summer of 1996.
However, in September of that same year, the case against Duncan is dropped by the Air
Force.
It was ruled that there was not sufficient evidence to proceed with the charge of premeditated
murder.
It's also released at this time that the DNA results for the other suspect, Nabor,
came back and there was not a match.
The case goes cold for years.
In 2010, so it's been 20 years since Heidi's murder, the local paper runs Heidi's story
and talks with retired Hays County Sheriff Paul Hastings, and he has strong opinions
on this case.
He says, quote, she was kidnapped by Major Duncan.
It pretty much looks to me like Duncan is guilty.
Unfortunately, there isn't that one piece of physical evidence that can be attached
to anybody.
Unless somebody comes forward and says, I did it, I'm not sure it can be resolved.
Have you ever seen a case like this before?
We have a situation where we know who did it.
We know what a horrible crime it was, and yet nothing has happened, end quote.
However, Duncan has maintained his innocence over the years and in 2010 says that he is
working on a book about the case.
However, as of 2025, it does not appear that any book has ever been written by Duncan that
I could find at least.
At the same time in 2010, other investigators who worked the case firmly believe that it
was Jerry Naboor who murdered Heidi.
However, again, the DNA results from 1996 seemed to have cleared him.
But that is all we know about the murder of Heidi Seeman.
So if you know anything about the murder of Heidi Seeman in August of 1990, please call
Texas Crime Stoppers at 1-800-252-8477.
All tips are anonymous.
You can also submit a tip online through the Texas Rangers Cold Case website and there
will be a link to that in our show notes as well.
But that is the case of Heidi Seeman.
This is a case that I actually had never heard before.
I came across it, you know, as I'm searching for cases to cover.
I noticed Heidi's picture and I had never seen it before.
I had not come across it even while searching, you know, through all these cold cases.
I hadn't seen her picture before.
So when I clicked on it and read more about her case, you know, I was really surprised
that I had never heard about Heidi's case at all, that, you know, I'd never come across
it.
To me, 1990 doesn't feel like that long ago.
I know, I know it is a long time ago.
It's 35 years at this point.
But to me, it doesn't seem that long ago.
So this case feels like it's something that I should have heard, that it should have come
up before now in my lifetime.
But, you know, it's always shocking how many kids go missing in America that just never
get that national coverage that I personally think all missing people should get, but especially
children, especially children should have national coverage.
And, you know, for Heidi's case, I never really found any coverage outside of Texas, which
is unfortunate because we know kids can move across state lines quickly in cases like this.
Heidi's case, I think, brings up a lot of questions.
For me, it did.
I'm sure for a lot of you listeners, it did as well.
Some of the questions I had, you know, if I could sit down with police and just like
ask anything I wanted, get all the questions.
One thing that to me seems just bonkers is these witnesses that have come forward over
the years.
You know, we have the two witnesses with the pickup truck seeing a young girl gagged and
bound in the bed of a pickup truck.
And then the other witness who saw a young girl in this man's apartment.
In both of those cases, I deeply want to know who this girl is.
Like, it's shocking to me.
It's shocking to me that, you know, somebody could see a child in this predicament of being
in the bed of a truck in this way.
Like, obviously that's not good and still be able to like walk away, get in their truck,
drive away.
Obviously, I was not there.
I do not know the circumstances.
I do not know if, you know, this person had reason to fear for his life.
Both of the witnesses, two people said to have seen this pickup truck with a girl in
the bed.
Like, I don't know.
I wasn't there.
But seeing that and driving off, you know, obviously this is before cell phones were
in every pocket.
So they had to drive off to find a cell phone to call, like, or not even a cell phone, just
a phone to call police.
Like, the thought of like leaving that's like it gives me anxiety.
I feel anxious thinking about that girl now.
And maybe that was Heidi.
Maybe maybe it wasn't.
Maybe it's some other girl that like we need those answers for.
And the same thing with this girl that was seen in the apartment tied to the chair.
Who is she?
Like, I so desperately want and need to know who these girls are and know if they're okay.
Do do their families have answers?
Are they missing and murdered as well?
Like, I don't know.
I don't know how you could witness another human in a circumstance like that and walk
away.
It was shocking for me to read that account of the witnesses in both circumstances.
So I I'm sure a lot of you felt that too, where it was just like, how did this happen?
How could Heidi have potentially been there alive and then slip through our fingers?
And unfortunately, she's found three weeks later.
Another question I had that, you know, I would want to just kind of clear up and just have
an understanding of is what timeline police are working on here because they believe that
she was likely murdered shortly after her abduction.
That is that is that days, you know, within that first week with that, is that shortly
after the abduction or is it hours?
Is that what we're talking about shortly after the abduction?
You know, investigators believe that her body had been out in that field for about two weeks.
So that leaves a week.
I wonder what investigators think about that week.
Was she being held somewhere?
You know, do they think she her body was moved here?
You know, she had been dead maybe for several days and then moved here.
It's that's that timeline is something that I would want to know about.
And you know, I would be interested to hear investigators theories about that and like
what the evidence shows, what does it support?
And then also just do we have DNA in this case?
You know, it's talked about in 1996.
They specifically mentioned DNA testing and I know like it was still kind of newer than,
you know, they sent hair and blood for comparison.
So to me, that would suggest that they have something to compare it to a hair that wasn't
Heidi's DNA blood that wasn't Heidi's.
So do we have DNA in this case?
That is something that I would really want to know.
By 2010, it seems like that DNA should have been ran, ran again.
So to me, it feels like if DNA existed in this case, then we would have been able to
rule out these two suspects by now or bring charges.
So I feel like nervous that DNA doesn't actually exist in this case.
But I'm also hopeful that maybe if it doesn't, that police can retest evidence in this case
to try the more sensitive DNA testing to bring a profile or you know, if they were waiting
for that and just haven't that they do that.
I really hope we're able to get a DNA profile for this case to bring closure because a lot
of people are pointing fingers like some people feel very strongly.
You know, the sheriff and Heidi's family, you know, the fact that her father brought
charges against somebody else murder charges like that.
I don't know how often that happens in the military.
You know, military law and justice is quite confusing.
So I apologize that I didn't, you know, do a deep dive into it on this one and explain
it a little bit more.
To be honest, I don't understand it fully.
But, you know, soldiers are able to bring charges against one another.
So Heidi's family and the sheriff feel very strongly that it was Duncan, the this other
person who was in the Air Force.
But if it wasn't, I feel like he deserves to have his name cleared.
And the family also deserves to know that as well.
They have believed for years that you know, this person did this to their daughter or
very strongly believe that this person could have done this to their daughter.
And if it wasn't him, like they deserve to be able to like let that go and focus their
energy on finding the right person.
And of course, having that DNA profile will just be sure, you know, when we do find the
right person that it is beyond a shadow of a doubt, it'll help bring those charges and
like get the justice ultimately that we're looking for for Heidi to get answers for Heidi
and her family.
And ultimately somebody should have to answer for what happened to Heidi because it's disgusting.
It's awful.
It's despicable.
And somebody needs to answer for that.
So I do hope that someday we're able to get answers from somebody on why they would do
this, why they think they have the right.
But again, if you know anything about the murder of Heidi Seeman in August of 1990,
please call the Texas Crime Stoppers at 1-800-252-8477.
Or you can submit a tip online through the Texas Rangers Cold Case tip portal and a link
to that will be in our show notes.
Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed us recently.
I know I was talking in our last episode how we were so close to 77 and I was like really
wanting that just because it was like a woo woo number, you know, like numerology, seeing
you know the repeated numbers.
I totally live for that stuff.
And you know, it's just me.
It makes me happy.
So I appreciate that, you know, we got there.
We got beyond it.
We got to 78.
So thank you so, so much to everyone who wrote a review or just like left us five stars,
either on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
I know we're all busy.
We all have a thousand things calling our attention.
So the fact that you take the time to, you know, share the podcast, advocate for the
podcast, like that's incredible.
Thank you so much.
And that directly helps these cases.
The more we can get these cases out there, the better.
Also on our Instagram, we will have pictures of Heidi so you can see it there.
Also thank you so much to everyone who shares, you know, the missing posters that we share
in our stories or, you know, about the cases we cover here or the cold cases.
We appreciate it so much just to get those faces out there.
The names get people talking about these people they deserve to still be talked about.
So thank you so much for doing all that.
And if you're not following us at cold and missing, please follow us there.
If we ever have to take a week off, I suspect I'll get another migraine at some point this
year that derails the podcast.
We'll always post an update there on Thursday so you can find it there at cold and missing.
Follow us if you're not.
And of course we have our website www.coldandmissing.com.
So if you're ever looking for older episodes or you want to leave us a review there or
perhaps you need transcripts because you or someone you love is hard of hearing, the
official transcripts are on our website.
Those are the ones that are edited with correct spellings and names and all of that.
Some of the podcast players have generated ones which are not always correct.
So the correct ones are on our website www.coldandmissing.com.
But that is all I have.
Thank you again so much for listening to cold and missing and for sticking with us even
when I have to take a week off for a migraine.
I appreciate it so much.
I'm your host Allie.
Have a good week and stay safe y'all.