What happened to Bonnie Lee and Jeremy Dages? Family pleads for answers 3 decades later

LITHIA, Fla. - For Bonnie Lee Dages, 1993 was supposed to be the beginning of her adult life. She had just earned her GED, gave birth to a baby boy, bought a minivan, and moved out of her parent’s home. But about six weeks after she turned 18, she and her four-month-old son vanished without a trace. 

For 31 years, her family has been searching for the pair, pleading for answers, even after the case turned cold, and the mother and son were declared dead. 

"Somebody knows what happened," Jennifer Bradley, Bonnie’s sister, said. 

Who was Bonnie Lee Dages?

Born in March 1975, Bonnie Lee Dages was the oldest of five children. 

"She liked to play, and she liked to boss them around as they all got older," her mother Linda Hershberger recalled. 

Bradley described her sister as gifted. She said she was passionate about music and photography, but her first love was horses. 

"Just about the time she could walk she was on a horse," Hersberger shared. "We were leading her around. She continued to love horses and riding the rest of her life."

When she was 17, Bonnie earned her GED, just weeks before she gave birth to a baby boy, Jeremy. 

Her brother, Joseph Dages, smiles when he thinks about how the siblings would jockey for a position to play with the new baby.

READ: Cracking unsolved cases: Hernando County launches rapid DNA technology

But it was crowded in the house and Bonnie, who was seeking independence, moved in with neighbors and took a job as their nanny.

Hersberger recalled that the woman in the home had broken her arm and had a son the same age as Jeremy. Bonnie would watch the woman’s infant, a toddler, and Jeremy during the day, but when the woman’s husband came home, she was free to do whatever she wanted as long as she was home by 8 or 9 a.m. when he had to go to work. 

Vanished without a Trace

On the evening of April 28, 1993, Bonnie and her son left the family she was living with to go to the Kash N’ Karry grocery store on Lithia-Pinecrest Road, which is now a Walmart Neighborhood Market, but never came back. 

When the pair didn’t return by the next morning, the family she was living with went to Bonnie’s parents’ home and spoke with her father to see if he had seen them, but he hadn’t. He called his wife at work and asked if she had seen them and when she said no, the neighbors went back home and didn’t seem too upset. 

READ: What happened to Sabrina Aisenberg? Baby’s disappearance still a mystery after 25 years

That afternoon, however, Hersberger remembers they returned to the Dages’ home appearing more agitated and concerned. Hersberger recalls them telling her that Bonnie had been regularly seeing an older man, who was in his 40s, and that was who she was going to meet at the grocery store the night before. They said she often met this man at night but was always home in the morning. Now, it was after noon, and they were concerned. 

Hersberger called the sheriff’s office and a deputy came out and did interviews. 

Another deputy was called out the next day and after interviewing the Dages family and the last people to see Bonnie and Jeremy, the investigator drove by the Kash N’ Karry and found Bonnie’s van in the parking lot. 

"Her van was there. It was locked and Jeremy’s diaper bag and her wallet were in it," Hersberger said. "It was scary. I’d say we were all pretty much terrified from then on."

Dan Bendig, a special investigator with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office’s cold case unit, said her van was parked about nine miles from her house and it was legally parked. 

READ: Wauchula woman charged with attempted first-degree murder after date with man she met online ends in gunfire

He added that when detectives opened the van, they also found a baby carrier in the trunk. 

"I think any mother or father with babies, the car seat goes from the locked position in the car in that carrier and you either take the baby out of the carrier and bring the baby in or you take the carrier in the house," Bendig stated. "The carrier was found in the trunk of the vehicle and that’s very odd. When I first opened the case, that was the first big thing that told me something was strange about her disappearance, because no mom, no dad is putting a baby car seat, especially with a 4-month-old, in the trunk area of a minivan." 

Inheritance

Despite being a young, single mother, Bonnie did have money in the bank. 

A grandparent had left her $50,000 that she could cash out when she turned 18.  

"In Lithia back in the 90s, that was like $5 million, and anyone she hung out with thought it was like $5 million, and it’s not a problem," Bendig explained. "But, as an 18-year-old kid, she was probably very excited, and she told everyone, and we believe money was an angle in her disappearance." 

Hersberger said Bonnie went to the bank shortly after her 18th birthday and took out $15,000.  

"The women told police Bonnie was going to Kash N’ Karry to meet her boyfriend to give him $15,000. They were going into a business deal together, so she was going to do this with money she just inherited when she turned 18, which was in March, and then now, we’re in April, so she had only had the money for a month," Hersberger explained. "Other people tried to borrow some of the money from her, and she decided not to do that, but because this was her boyfriend, she was going to go into business with him, which we don’t think was a real business, but she’s 18 so she doesn’t know much of anything."  

Some of that cash was found in her wallet in the van, but the majority of $15,000 in cash, which was not traceable, and the keys to her minivan were gone.   

"That changed the whole way they looked at this situation, now, because they were pretty sure she had got this money, she’s got this boyfriend and he’s telling her, ‘Hey, we’re going to run away together,’ but this changed the whole scenario," Hersberger stated. 

READ: ‘Bone Valley’s’ Leo Schofield released from a Florida prison

Hersberger said the rest of Bonnie’s inherited money was still in her bank account. She added that investigators watched the bank to see if she or someone went to try to get the money, but nobody did. 

The Waiting Game

Bonnie’s family recalled the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office searching for the missing mother and son on foot, on horseback, and via helicopter. A while later, her brother remembered cadaver dogs searching the property where she had been living at the time of the disappearance. Yet, the family says they were never told of anything significant turning up. 

"There was nothing we could do. We had to just sit and wait and every day you sit and wait for the phone to ring," Hersberger said. 

Joseph Dages remembers someone always being home by the phone, but he recalls the family doing a lot of news interviews in hopes of finding her. They even went on the Montel Williams Show and met with a psychic who gave them several different ideas of places where the pair might be located, but nothing was ever found. 

"We did a bunch of searches all over the place," Joseph Dages said. "We also got a private investigator to reinterview everyone they possibly could." 

"You listen to the news," Hersberger added. "You’re waiting for any kind of information. They found some bodies in some national park not too far from here. It was a woman and a baby. I was just hooked to the TV all day because I was sure it was them and it wasn’t."

Suspects

Hersberger says a lot of interviews have been done over the past 31 years and most of the information the family has today is the information they had three decades ago. 

While Bonnie’s family knows the identity of the older man she was seeing, they said they’d prefer not to mention his name as he has never been publicly named as a suspect or person of interest. 
They also say the person believed to be Jeremy’s father wasn’t really talked about as far as the investigation. 

READ: Sheriff Grady Judd sheds light on deadly gunfight with ‘sovereign citizen’ that injured 2 Polk County deputies

"Truthfully, anybody she knew is a suspect because there’s no super, super strong…there’s several people that they feel, one person who lied a lot about things, which makes you feel they are guilty because they lied, but other people that maybe were more situational and things, but they’re still investigating," Hersberger said. 

Bendig said while no suspects have been named over the years, investigators did look into a lot of people. 

"Bonnie had left a couple of journals, and they went through the journals and anybody that she talked about, anybody through going to the schools or whatever, anybody they could find that she knew, they went and interviewed all these people and kept records of all the interviews, but we never got to read them," Hersberger shared. 

She went on to say that HCSO still has Bonnie’s things because the case, while considered cold, is still being investigated. 

Cold Case

On Bendig’s desk, sits a photo of Bonnie and Jeremy, along with their case file. He picked up the case in 2022. 

READ: New statewide cold case unit to help local law enforcement tackle unsolved homicides

He stressed that since the day investigators found her van, there has been no trace of Bonnie or Jeremy and he does believe foul play was involved. 

"They disappeared off the face of the Earth," Bendig stated. 

Bendig says the benefit of it being a ‘cold case’ is that he has time to work on it and noted that he is in regular contact with Bonnie’s family, especially her brother. He hopes the day comes when he can call the family with some answers. 

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results and that’s what cold case investigators do because you get a lot of doors closed in your face and you keep doing it because that’s what we work for," Bendig said. "We don’t do it for the money, we don’t get a big check, it’s not about the money, it’s about the families."

READ: Cold case killer begs victim’s daughter for forgiveness 4 decades after wrong man convicted of crime

Over the last 31 years, several people have called in tips to the sheriff’s office, but nothing has ever panned out. However, a tip left 15 years ago seemed to have credible information and the Dages family is pleading for the tipster to call back with more details. 

"If you’re scared or worried about getting in trouble, you’re not going to," Joseph Dages explained. 

"Our family needs the help from you and needs you to call, and please work with detectives. We’re not going to crucify you for being afraid to say something at the time. We’d really like to be able to have a place to mourn our sister and our nephew. Please call back in."

READ: Jennifer Odom’s killer caught 30 years after she was kidnapped, murdered walking home from school bus: HCSO

Bendig said the caller has left several tips over the past 15 years and investigators are urging that person to call back. 

Like Joseph Dages, Bendig stressed that the tipster is not in trouble and urges them to call back. 

"Any information is good information. Silence hurts us," Bendig said. 

Legacy

The Dages family continues to try to keep Bonnie and Jeremy’s disappearance at the top of the public’s mind. They continue to stay in contact with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, participate in podcasts, and take part in various missing persons events such as Missing Children’s Awareness Day in Tallahassee. 

"You’re striving to get the information out there," Hersberger said. "You’re striving to reach those people we were talking about earlier, that somebody might know something, maybe, it’s been 31 years this month, so maybe it’s in the back burner of their thoughts, but maybe if they see this or hear this podcast, or see this newscast, maybe they’ll remember, ‘Oh yeah, I was there that night, or, even if it was gossip."

"Thirty-one years later, it is never on the back burner of our thoughts," Joseph Dages added.

In the beginning, Hershberger said her husband was the main point of contact for the family, but over the years, she began to assume that role and as she gets older, her children, Bonnie’s siblings, are taking over the responsibility. 

READ: New Florida law will link suspects who avoided justice for decades to their crimes

"It’s not easy," she said. "It tears you up having to do these things. Having to talk about it. Having to remember and try to keep all the details straight, but unfortunately, they are stepping up and they are doing more and more for us and for Bonnie and probably a lot better than we ever did. It a lot more aware generation than we ever were about what’s going on out in the world."

Who They’d Be Today

Bonnie’s family says it’s hard to imagine what she and Jeremy would be like today.

The mother and son were declared dead about seven years after they disappeared. 

"They did age progression pictures, and it was shocking to see Bonnie as what they thought a 50-year-old would look like. No, no, she’s 18. All of her life she’ll be 18. I can’t imagine her any other way," Hersberger said. 

While the family said Bonnie’s age-progression photo was less than flattering, they thought Jeremy looked a lot like his cousin in his age-progression picture. 

Hersberger now has 16 blood-related and bonus grandchildren and while there is lots of love, there are two big holes in her heart. 

"I am a Christian and ultimately, I’ll do all that I can, these news broadcasts and things, but ultimately, until God puts everybody at the right place and has it like he wants it, it’s not going to work out," Hersberger shared. "There’s a reason that we don’t understand, but I desperately want to know, but I may not know. I may just have to wait for God’s timing on it."

Anyone with information on the disappearance of Bonnie Lee and Jeremy Dages is asked to contact HCSO at 813-427-8200 or Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay to remain anonymous. 

SIGN UP: Click here to sign up for the FOX 13 daily newsletter