The Disappearance of Vonnie

My problem is the inability to discern the real characters and the real sentence for the crime committed. The movie clearly showed Ron RicKman as the killer but I had to search to find his true sentence....he died in prison YAY!! For the crime.

A man and his wife are not getting along because of the wife's jealousy and drinking problems. When the wife disappears, her sister begins a vigorous search involving the local police, state government, and a television crime show. What she finds out stuns the entire community. Good drama with lots of fine performances; based on a true story.

This is obviously a low-budget film but one would presumably watch for the content of this case. They portray only actual facts here without embellishing, the way it might be done today. There are few reviews but it's interesting to see how some call the wife things like 'nagging' or 'jealous' instead of acknowledging that the husband was a narcissist who was constantly gaslighting her -- terms we now find frequently but which were not used back then -- and we now are much more aware of how such victims might exhibit frustration and have difficulty making sense of the things their partner is doing or saying. A couple of reviews seem to think there was no 'evidence', but we now understand that things like the purse and items in the loft; the lack of use of social security or bank cards; the lack of eye-witness sightings; and the odd behavior such as insisting the daughter stay home for the shopping trip and immediately telling her that her mother won't be back are all evidence. Add to that his prior crime and his predatory behavior, and it's easy to see why he was convicted. In today's court system the first set of evidence would be enough to convict without a body - it's happened many times since then. It's sad to realize, however, that most of abusers who are convicted is only after they end up killing the women; most other cases where the woman tries to expose the abuser are shamed and disbelieved like AH, having everyone turned against them and perceiving their psychological anguish as some form of co-abuse or even the instigator. Such a sad situation. Most victims don't see it coming.

I saw this one of Lifetime, and of course it is Based on a True Story, since what else would life time show. This one is Based on the True Story of the disappearance of Yvonne "Vonnie" Nelson Rickman(or maybe it is Pickman, as it says here), who went away without coming back, uncharacteristically leaving her cigarette case behind...

She also leaves behind her estranged husband Ron, daughter Amy, and caring and concerned sister Corrinne, who suspects Ron had something to do with The Disappearance of Vonnie.

I think that has something to do with the fact that Ron is Very Close to Amy's babysitter Janine, since she's always on and her and Ron act very...odd together. Yuck. Plus Ron doesn't like Corrinne, and even forbids her to see Amy. Corrinne finds this out when she stops by Amy's house and finds Amy with an ugly haircut that makes her look like a boy that Janine gave her because Ron was "tired of combing it out every morning." Considering that Amy is about nine, can't she do that herself? Anyway, for some reason THAT is really what motivates Corrinne to pursue that search for Vonnie, or at least of any evidence that would relate to her disappearance. That what leads to the discovery of her purse, which after nosily digging through it, Corrinne finds her cigarette case, and just somehow KNOWS that something terrible happened to Vonnie because she did not have it with her. Because she didn't have her cigarette case??? Please. I mean, I can see how that relates to the suspiciousness behind her departure, but that just makes Vonnie sound so... shallow. I'm sure the real one wouldn't have wanted to be known for that.

Of course that all leads to the arrest of Ron and the Big Court Case that happens in every movie Based on a True Story, all with the big question of "can somebody be convicted of murder without the evidence of a body?" I...can't say, except to say that this is no more or less predictable than any other TV movie, and I was still getting over the stupidity of the whole trial and such basically happening because Amy got a bad haircut.

What a "classic."

Ron Rickman almost became my stepfather. My whole family declined anything to do with the movie, we had been through enough. So many things the movie didn't tell you, couldn't tell you.