In December 2013, 29-year-old Carrie Olson went missing in a case that baffled investigators.
According to her boyfriend and her parents, they could not get in contact with Olson after December 28, 2013. She had disappeared entirely, and the last place she was seen was on the 38th Street 711 security camera in Illinois at around 4 PM.
The security camera footage was the last time anyone would see her alive before her mysterious disappearance.
Olson’s family filed a missing person’s report two days after she was last seen after she had not appeared for work at her father’s store. It was like she was plucked off the earth’s surface.
Two months after the February 2014 issue of Dateline’s Missing in America, Olson would resurface, or more specifically, her body, in a remote, tree-covered area in Hastings, Minnesota.
Although the investigators had few clues that could lead them to a perpetrator, by July 2014, they narrowed down the suspect to Timothy J. McVay, Olson’s ex-boyfriend, after noticing his strange behavior and autopsy reports that connected him to the crime.
What Happened To Carrie Olson?
The authorities found Timothy J. McVay guilty of first-degree murder and concealment of a homicidal death.
Two days after Olson’s body was found in the woods, McVay called the Dakota County Sheriff’s Department, claiming to know the identity of the then unidentified body of Olson on April 5, 2014.
According to a voicemail by McVay, which was also played in court, he stated that the description from the press release matched that of a girl missing from the Quad-Cities.
The authorities first grew suspicious of McVay due to his strange behavior. Their suspicion led to them looking at McVay more closely as a suspect, and this proved correct when they found certain forensic results that linked him directly to the crime.
According to the forensic reports, fibers matching McVay’s Rock Island home were found in Olson’s hair. Upon further inspection, a Berber carpeting sample taken from McVay’s house confirmed this theory.
Incidentally, McVay had made two unsuccessful attempts at using Olson’s debit card, and that too during the murder trial. The first attempt was at a 711 on 38th Street to pay for gas, and the security footage showed McVay using Olson’s car.
Why Did Tim McVay Murder Carrie Olson?
The prominent theory is that Tim McVay murdered Carrie Olson because he had borrowed money from her.
During the trial, prosecutors produced many text messages between McVay and Olson from September to the day of her disappearance. The text messages showed that McVay was unemployed and had failed to return the money he borrowed from his ex-girlfriend.
According to Olson’s then-live-in-boyfriend, Justin Mueller, Olson had left the house very upset. McVay had told the police that while his ex-girlfriend had come over and stayed with him that night, he’d dropped her home the next morning in her car that he had borrowed.
To curtail his suspicion, McVay had texted Olson on January 5, 2014, stating that he hoped she was hiding out and working through all the things she had been pissed about.
Investigators believe that McVay murdered Olson between December 28th and 29th in 2013 at his Rock Island home and then drove to Minnesota to dump her body. Following this, McVay flew to Las Vegas to celebrate New Year’s with his friend.
Olson and McVay had been in a reasonably serious relationship, and Olson had wanted to marry and have kids with McVay. However, McVay, a decade older than Olson, already had two children from a previous marriage.
He told Olson that while he was okay with marriage, he did not want kids. This disagreement put a strain on their relationship and eventually ended it.
Where Is Tim McVay Now In 2022?
Tim McVay is currently in Menard Correctional Center outside St. Louis.
McVay went on trial in 2015 and was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of Carrie Olson. Although there wasn’t any direct evidence against him, the circumstantial evidence was enough to reach a reasonable conclusion that he had carried out her murder.
Although McVay appealed, nothing came of it, and along with his 40 years, McVay was also sentenced to 5 more years for concealing her body.