Heidi Planck was last seen Oct. 17, 2021, when, according to her ex-husband Wayne, she left in the middle of their son’s football game after looking “a little antsy.”
“I just remember her saying, ‘I’ve got to leave,’” he said at the time.
When she failed to pick Bond her 10 year old son up from school three days later as planned, Wayne reported her missing to police. He suggested that police try to locate her through the GPS on her Silver SUV Range Rover, but strangely, investigators discovered that the GPS on the vehicle wasn’t turned on and the location features on her Apple Watch, laptop, and iPhone had also been disabled.
“I’m sorry. This is a little weird to me,” Wayne said in the podcast. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all.” According to ABC News.
As Wayne considered where his ex-wife of nine years could be, he had another idea and thought that maybe she would be able to be traced through her dog’s chip.
Asked to describe Heidi, Jim said: “She’s a great worker and a great mom.
“We have totally different parenting styles, I’m a very strict dad. This is not my first rodeo, I’ve got two older kids.
“Our son is Heidi’s only child and she is a bit more relaxed in her parenting style.
“We were married for a couple of years but had been with each other for four years. We divorced nine years ago.”
Police would later find that Planck at one point made her way to a luxury apartment in downtown L.A., where she did not live, on South Hope Street. Heidi’s car remains missing, according to local reports, after her laptop and phone were found at her home during a wellness check on October 20.
Planck was captured in surveillance footage video at 6:22 that evening walking down an alleyway right next to the apartment building in Downtown Los Angeles.
Planck’s dog was found inside the apartment building. Police said forensic evidence found inside the building “led detectives to believe an incident occurred resulting in Planck’s death.”
Planck, who vanished in October after attending her son’s football game in Downey, was seen on surveillance video at a building in downtown Los Angeles, but soon after, her dog was found unattended.
While many questions remain, some theories have centered on her work as a financial controller for Jason Sugarman.
Sugarman’s father-in-law, Peter Guber, is the CEO of Mandalay Entertainment and owner of the Golden State Warriors NBA team.
Sugarman himself is said to be a minority owner of Los Angeles Football Club.
In September last year his reported busniess partner, Jason Galanis, was “sentenced to 189 months in prison for his participation in multiple fraudulent schemes”, according to legal records.
Asked about Sugarman, a managing partner at Heidi’s firm Camden Capital, Heidi’s ex-husband Jim Wayne, 63, told The Sun she had never spoken to him about the legal issues her colleague is facing.
Jim said: “Heidi would have been working with him daily, for sure.”
He added: “I know for a fact that the police are looking into that. That’s absolutely one of their lines of enquiry.”
There is no evidence to suggest that Sugarman was involved in Planck’s disappearance, and police have not named him as a suspect or person of interest in her disappearance.
Sugarman, managing partner of Camden Capital Partners, allegedly defrauded a Native American tribe out of about $43 million in pension funds, and he faces charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
im told The Sun: “When this all started and the news started calling me, a federal prosecutor for the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) actually called me on my cell phone.
“I have no idea how they got my cell phone number, I have no idea how they even got my name, but they did.
“They wanted to know more about Jason Sugarman and I was like ‘I don’t work for him’.
“Don’t forget, Heidi’s my ex-wife. She’s not talking to me about this stuff.”
On October 29, FBI agents raided Heidi’s home, allegedly leaving with files; they had been expecting to find a crime scene there, according to local reports.
After her disappearance, police served a search warrant at her home, reportedly in connection with the fraud investigation. The 38-year-old’s home was searched by the FBI but details of what was found were not released. Planck’s ex-husband has also said he believes there could be a connection between her disappearance and the fraud investigation.
According to NBC News, Heidi Planck, 38, was last seen on October 17, 2021, in the 7800 block of Gardendale Street in Downey, Los Angeles County, according to a statement released by the Los Angeles Police Department. Security footage released by the LAPD shows Heidi leaving her home with her dog prior to arriving at her son’s game.
Ex-husband Jim told The Sun Heidi had an argument with the man she had been dating in the week before her disappearance – but insisted her new beau is a “great guy.”
He said: “They had been in an argument the week before so he didn’t know anything about her disappearance.
“He thought she was just ghosting him. He had no idea.
“He said that they got into an argument because he lives in San Francisco and she wanted him to come down but he couldn’t because he had to work.”
But Jim insists Heidi’s new man is a “great guy”, adding: “I don’t have any worries about him, he’s a great guy.”
He added: “I’m no detective for sure, but he seems like a really great guy.
“As I said, I’m not a detective, but I can pretty much assure you that that’s not it.”
There is no evidence to suggest that Heidi’s partner was involved in her disappearance, and police have not named him as a suspect or person of interest in her disappearance.
Jim explained that he is acting as the “lead contact” for the police and Heidi’s friends through the ordeal.
Friends of Heidi Planck have been for the last two years constantly canvassing the area of the downtown Los Angeles building where she was last seen, and setting up a small memorial in hopes that a new clue will emerge. Friends, family plead for help in locating Los Angeles mother Heidi Planck who vanished after leaving son’s football game. Her ex-husband, Jim Wayne, who has 50/50 custody of their son, told Dateline that she left their son’s football game at halftime and appeared to be a little “edgy” and “antsy.”
“She was a little bit antsy, yes. I don’t know why,” Jim said. “All I know is that was the last time I saw her or talked to her.”
Over the next few days, there were no texts or calls from Heidi to her son, which Jim said was extremely unusual. But Jim assured his son that his mother would be there to pick him up at school on October 20, which was her next scheduled day to have him.
So when Heidi didn’t show up to pick up their son from school on October 20, Jim told Dateline he knew something was wrong. “She’s a devoted mother who would never, ever leave her son,” Jim said. “We have a 10-year-old boy at home that’s looking for his mom and we just need to find her.”
Jim told Dateline that on October 20 he filed a missing persons report with the LAPD and detectives performed a wellness check at her home.
“The home was in pristine condition,” he said. “But her phone and laptops were left behind.”
Jim said one of the texts received on Heidi’s phone was from a woman who had found Heidi’s dog, who was chipped, and tried to contact Heidi.
Jim said this is how he discovered that Heidi’s dog was found about three hours after she was last seen, on the 28th story of an apartment building in Downtown Los Angeles. Jim told Dateline that the security to get access to each door and floor in that building is extensive and that he doesn’t know how the dog got into the building and up to the 28th floor. He added that he also doesn’t know why Heidi would be in the building.
Friends and family are worried that foul play is involved, especially with the unusual circumstances surrounding Heidi’s disappearance.
Heidi Planck vanished on Oct. 17, 2021 after being last seen on surveillance cameras walking her dog in an alley near the Hope + Flower apartment building. (FOX) Authorities obtained video footage in November showing Planck at a high-rise residential apartment building in downtown Los Angeles on Oct. 17. Her dog was later discovered on the 28th floor of the building.
“It’s very mysterious the way she disappeared in this building – being that it’s so secure, there’s so many levels of security and cameras,” said Danielle Nadolny, a friend of Planck’s.
Evidence found in the building led investigators to believe something happened that resulted in her death, police said. Planck had no connection to the building, her ex-husband, Jim Wayne, previously told Fox News.
Detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department, along with other agencies, served a search warrant in late November for a specific area of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill in Castaic, 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Due to the rain, however, the landfill operation had to be temporarily stopped in December, Jonathan Tippet, commanding officer of the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division, told Fox News Digital. Searches however did resume the following week.
LAPD investigators say forensic evidence found in the apartment building leads them to believe an incident happened there. They were led to search for her body in the Chiquita Canyon Landfill in Castaic about a month after she disappeared, but were unsuccessful in locating anything.
But what happened to Planck inside the building — and why surveillance video of the building showed her going into the building but not out — is unknown.
For a second year in a row, family and friends of Planck’s have gotten the missing mom’s face up on several LA billboards for the month of October.
They have also set up a #FindHeidiPlanck website to provide information about the case and ask the public to submit tips.
“LAPD is confident there are four or five people that know exactly what happened to her and we’re just begging them to come forward,” said one of Planck’s friends who didn’t want her name used.
“We know that people may be scared to come forward. You can submit your tips anonymously through our site. I don’t know what else to do except beg and plead and do this every year until we have answers.”
According to the LA Times, in an effort to encourage possible witnesses to come forward, as well as to try to keep Planck’s case in the public eye, her friends have posted her picture on billboards across Los Angeles.
“Maybe they’ll trigger somebody’s guilty conscience,” said Danielle Nadolny, a friend of Planck’s. “Maybe she’s dead, but where is the body? Or who had the ability to hide her body so well that the most elite detectives in Los Angeles can’t find her?”
“At the end of the day, when a mother gets thrown out like trash and discarded like that, it pisses a lot of people off,” said a friend of Planck’s who helped arrange for the advertisements but asked not to be identified to protect her privacy.
Heidi is white, 5-feet-3 inches tall, and weighs about 120 pounds, with blond hair and blue eyes.
If you have seen or have any information regarding the whereabouts of Planck, Heidi please contact the Los Angeles Police Department’s Missing Persons Unit at 213-996-1800.
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