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What Happened to Heidi Allen and the Thibodeau Brothers?

What happened to Heidi Allen and the Thibodeau brothers? Her 1994 disappearance led to two trials, opposite verdicts, and a dispute over who took her.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · November 2, 2020

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At 7:42 on Easter morning in 1994, Richard Thibodeau bought cigarettes at a small New York store. By 7:55, the clerk was gone. She was 18-year-old Heidi Allen, and she has never been found.

What happened to Heidi Allen and the Thibodeau brothers? Prosecutors said Richard and his brother Gary kidnapped her. Separate juries reached opposite verdicts in 1995: Richard was acquitted, while Gary was convicted of first-degree kidnapping. Gary maintained his innocence and died in prison in 2018. No one has established where Allen was taken or what happened to her after she vanished.

What happened to Heidi Allen on April 3, 1994?

Allen was working alone at the D&W Convenience Store in New Haven, in Oswego County. She had opened at about 5:45 that morning. A customer who came in after Richard’s purchase found the store empty and alerted a police officer. The officer called dispatch at 7:55.

That left a short window. Richard’s cigarette purchase was recorded at 7:42. The New York Court of Appeals later described testimony from a driver who said he saw two men struggling with a woman near a van outside the store. Another customer said he had seen Richard’s van there and thought someone else was inside it.

Those accounts mattered because no one had found Allen. There was no chance to ask her what had happened outside, or whether the woman the driver saw was her. Witnesses described a van; the state argued it was Richard’s. The defense challenged how firmly those sightings tied either brother to a kidnapping.

The absence inside the store was plain enough. Allen had been there, and then she was gone. Investigators still needed to work out who had taken her during those few minutes.

Why was Gary Thibodeau convicted while Richard was acquitted?

The brothers faced separate trials and separate juries. Gary’s trial came first. Prosecutors used witness accounts of the van and testimony from two men who had been jailed with him in Massachusetts after Allen disappeared.

The two inmates said Gary had spoken about Allen’s fate and the brothers’ movements that morning. In one account, he said they had taken her toward woods near his home, then returned her to the store. They also testified about remarks concerning a shovel and a body that would never be found. Gary denied involvement.

The inmates’ testimony helped distinguish his trial from Richard’s. WRVO Public Media, in its reporting on the trials, noted that Richard’s jury did not hear jailhouse testimony against him in the same way. One jury found enough to convict Gary. The other found Richard not guilty.

That split can look baffling from a distance. A jury, though, decides the charge against the person in front of it using the evidence admitted at that trial. Richard’s acquittal did not cancel Gary’s conviction. Gary’s conviction did not turn Richard into a convicted kidnapper.

Neither man was convicted of killing Allen. Gary’s sentence was 25 years to life for kidnapping. He spent more than two decades in prison, still disputing the verdict.

What did investigators find in Richard Thibodeau’s van?

In Peebles for the People, host Alex Peebles gives the van room to speak. Richard Thibodeau tells him he was willing to let investigators search it: “You could take my van. You could go through it. You could do whatever you want.”

In an exchange played in the episode, television reporter Matt Mulcahy asks prosecutor Greg Oakes why investigators found no sign that Allen had been in the van. Oakes offers an explanation. He says the lack of fingerprints, DNA and hair seemed unusual for a used vehicle and suggested to him that someone had cleaned it.

That is Oakes’s reading of the evidence, not proof that the van was cleaned. There is another detail worth keeping straight. WRVO later corrected its own report that investigators found no material at all. The FBI found hairs and fibers in the van, WRVO said, though the hairs were determined not to be Allen’s and no DNA from her was found there.

“You could take my van. You could go through it. You could do whatever you want.”
— Richard Thibodeau, on Peebles for the People

The distinction is small enough to get lost in a heated interview. It matters. “No trace of Allen” and “nothing in the van” are different claims. Neither finding, on its own, tells us whether Allen was ever inside.

Oakes is careful about Richard’s verdict when Mulcahy asks what he thinks happened that Easter morning. Richard, Oakes says, “has been acquitted of the charge, and as a matter of law, he’s presumed innocent.” Oakes then says he still believes the basic facts presented at Gary’s trial.

Peebles calls that a double standard. Richard hears something more personal in Oakes’s words. After meeting Peebles, he records an angry message for the prosecutor. It is easy to understand why an acquitted man would bristle at a public suggestion of involvement, even while the prosecutor stands by Gary’s conviction.

Who were the other men named in the Heidi Allen case?

Years after the trials, Gary’s defense raised claims involving James Steen, Roger Breckenridge and Michael Bohrer. People told investigators that the men had made remarks suggesting knowledge of Allen’s disappearance. The men denied taking her or making the alleged admissions when they testified at a later hearing.

The names reach the episode through Peebles’s reporting. He says he had tried to track down all three. He also describes court papers from a June 2020 incident in Rome, New York, in which Breckenridge’s former girlfriend accused him of grabbing her and keeping her from leaving. Peebles says Breckenridge was charged with several offenses, including unlawful imprisonment. He was still waiting for the court record showing how that case ended.

A charge is no finding of guilt. Nor would a finding in that case establish what happened to Allen in 1994. The same care applies to the other men’s histories. Steen was convicted of killing his wife and cousin in 2010 and received a life sentence. The Court of Appeals also discussed Bohrer’s convictions for other crimes. Those records make the later allegations worth examining; they do not prove any of the three kidnapped Allen.

The court’s record shows how hard it was to test the claims. One witness waited until 2014 to report a sighting he said he made outside the store in 1994. He later identified Steen from a newspaper photo, though his earlier description put the man’s age far above Steen’s age at the time. The hearing court did not find that identification credible.

Did the new evidence overturn Gary Thibodeau’s conviction?

No. Gary asked a court to set aside his conviction in 2014. His lawyers argued that the statements attributed to the three men gave him grounds for a new trial. They also disputed whether prosecutors had properly shared information that Allen had worked as a confidential police informant.

The claim about her police work became a sharp exchange in Peebles’s episode. Alex Peebles asks an unidentified guest about police reports describing Allen as an informant. The guest says he does not believe she ever held that role. The court record, meanwhile, treats her informant status as part of the case and addresses a narrower question: whether information about it had been withheld from Gary’s defense. The courts found Gary had not shown that it was suppressed.

On June 14, 2018, New York’s highest court upheld the denial of a new trial by a 4–3 vote. The majority said the alleged statements by the other men lacked enough independent support to be admitted as evidence that could change the verdict. It also found flaws in testimony offered to back them up.

The three dissenting judges saw the case differently. Judge Jenny Rivera wrote that Gary should have had the chance to present the new evidence to a jury. That disagreement was substantial. It did not erase the conviction.

Gary died that August. His legal fight ended without a new trial, and the claims about the other men remained claims. Peebles’s episode catches Richard still arguing with Oakes about what the verdicts mean. Outside that argument is the question Allen’s family has lived with since Easter morning: where she went after 7:42.

Is Heidi Allen still missing?

Yes. In a notice marking 30 years since her disappearance, the Oswego County Sheriff’s Office said the investigation was continuing. Allen was last seen working at the New Haven store on April 3, 1994. Her remains have not been found.

The notice gave a description that has little to do with either trial: long, curly light-brown or blond hair, white sneakers, and a gray sweatshirt with a plaid “SU” logo. It also gave the sheriff’s office number for anyone with information. The sweatshirt is a clearer trace of Allen herself than any argument about a van.

The full episode of Peebles for the People is on Underdog Podcasts, with the rest of the network's shows.