On a grey morning in late March 2011, a 38-year-old Ohio man named Eric Lee Franks was last seen paying a week’s rent at the Miller Motel in Bridgeport Township, just outside Saginaw, Michigan. He had come there with an extraordinary purpose: to meet the teenage daughter he never knew he had. Within days, he was gone — and for more than fourteen years, no one has been charged, no body has been found, and the case that police believe is a homicide has remained frozen in time.
What followed Eric’s disappearance was not silence. It was something stranger and more disturbing: a phone used by someone else to create a false trail, a car hidden for nine years in the garage of a dying man, a bloodstain confirmed by DNA on a driver’s seat, and a key suspect who took whatever she knew to her grave. The Eric Franks case is a puzzle with almost all its pieces in plain sight — yet no one has been able to assemble them into an arrest.
A Second Chance, 800 Miles Away
Eric Franks grew up in the South, the son of a minister, raised mostly in Tennessee. By most accounts he was quiet, reserved — the kind of person who took time to warm up but was fiercely loyal once he did. His sister Beth, four years his junior, was among his closest confidants, and her husband Chad Baus became a brother figure over the years. Eric had never been the type to vanish without a word. “He never in his life had been out of touch with his family,” Chad would later tell NBC’s Dateline. That fact alone, Chad said, is why the family has never believed Eric walked away voluntarily.
In 2010, Eric received extraordinary news: he had a teenage daughter, Emily, born of a relationship with a woman named Kendra Firmingham — the spelling in court records varies — who lived in the Saginaw area. The two had been involved years earlier, and Kendra had never told him about the pregnancy. Now the girl was nearly grown, and Eric was determined to be present in her life.
He packed up and moved to Michigan, checking into the Miller Motel in Bridgeport Township sometime in late 2010. By the motel owner’s account, he stayed for roughly five months. He had no steady employment and very little money. But he was building something — a relationship with Emily, and perhaps with Kendra too. According to investigators, Eric had been spending time with his daughter: trips to roller skating rinks, bowling alleys, the mall. Small, ordinary moments he had missed for over a decade.
“We have zero reason to think that Eric is still living. He never in his life had been out of touch with his family.”
— Chad Baus, Eric’s brother-in-law
What Eric may not have understood fully was the world he had stepped into. Kendra Firmingham was by several accounts a complicated figure — a woman with a network of loyalties and secrets that outsiders found difficult to penetrate. She had a husband, John, who lived separately and would later become a person of interest. She worked as a caregiver for an elderly, incapacitated Saginaw man named Gerald Rutledge. And she had strong opinions about the degree to which Eric Franks would be welcomed back into Emily’s life.
March 21, 2011: The Last Day
The morning of March 21, 2011 is the fault line on which this entire case turns. Two accounts of that day exist, and they contradict each other in ways investigators have never been able to fully reconcile.
Kendra Firmingham told police that Eric had decided to drive to California. She said she helped him pack up his belongings at the Miller Motel, walked him out, and watched him turn left onto Dixie Highway heading north — toward a new life on the West Coast. “I took a right on Dixie to go back to work, and he took a left,” she told investigators in a recorded 2012 interview. “Both of our cars left at the exact same time.”
The motel owner told a different story. He said he never saw Eric on March 21. What he saw was Kendra — alone — carrying Eric’s belongings out of the room. Eric was not there.
Key Facts at a Glance
Eric Lee Franks, 38, last reliably seen on March 14, 2011 when he paid the motel owner for a week’s rent
Kendra Firmingham claimed to have seen him leave on March 21 — no independent witness corroborates this
Eric’s phone made multiple calls in the weeks after his disappearance to auto repair shops, salvage yards, a surgeon, and a dentist — the dentist had treated Kendra but had no record of Eric as a patient
Eric’s 2001 bronze Chevrolet Malibu was found in 2020 in the garage of Gerald Rutledge, Kendra’s elderly client — containing a DNA-confirmed bloodstain on the driver’s seat
Kendra Firmingham died of cancer in Florida in 2016
No body has ever been recovered. No charges have ever been filed.
In a September 2012 recorded interrogation at the Buena Vista Township Police Department — audio clips of which were later obtained by ABC12 News — Detective Sean Waterman pressed Kendra directly. “His car has not been seen anywhere in the lower United States, his name has not come up anywhere in the lower United States, okay,” Waterman told her. “You are the last person to see him.” Waterman noted the implausibility of her account: “Here is a man who has no money, no job, not a pot to — in, and he’s going to drive across the entire United States.” Kendra’s response was consistent: “All I know is that is what he said.”
Despite his evident skepticism, Waterman could not break her story. And without a body, without physical evidence at that point, and without a cooperating witness, the investigation stalled.
The Phone That Wasn’t Eric
In the weeks following March 21, Eric’s cell phone remained active. Calls were made to auto repair shops, salvage yards, a surgeon’s office, and a car dealership. The final notable call went to a dentist’s office. It was a curious roster of contacts for a man supposedly driving to California. But the dentist call raised the sharpest alarm: the practice had no record of Eric as a patient. They had, however, treated Kendra Firmingham.
Investigators came to believe that Eric was not making those calls. Someone else was using his phone — building a false narrative of a man still alive, still mobile, still going about his business. The calls were designed, in the investigators’ reading, to muddy the timeline and suggest Eric had made it out of Saginaw under his own power.
The calls eventually stopped. Eric’s family — who had received no direct contact from him — began to grow alarmed. The emails that arrived periodically in the months after his disappearance, purportedly from Eric, struck his family as off. The phrasing was wrong. The details didn’t add up. By November 2011, eight months after he vanished, they reported him missing to police.
Nine Years in a Garage
For nearly a decade, one of the most significant pieces of evidence in the case sat hidden in plain sight in a residential garage in Saginaw.
Eric’s 2001 bronze Chevrolet Malibu — registered to his mother, who had lent it to him — had vanished along with its driver. Police searched for it. The Charley Project, which maintains a national missing persons database, listed the vehicle’s Ohio plates alongside Eric’s description. It was nowhere. Or so it seemed.
In April 2020, Gerald Rutledge — the elderly, incapacitated Saginaw man for whom Kendra had worked as a caregiver — died. When his estate was settled, someone opened the garage. Inside sat a bronze Chevrolet Malibu. It was sold at an estate auction before investigators could be alerted, but was subsequently recovered by authorities.
DNA testing confirmed what had long been suspected. There was a bloodstain on the driver’s seat. It matched Eric Franks.
“His car has not been seen anywhere in the lower United States, his name has not come up anywhere in the lower United States. You are the last person to see him.”
— Det. Sean Waterman, 2012 recorded interrogation of Kendra Firmingham
The discovery was electrifying — and ultimately incomplete. The bloodstain was described as small. There was no definitive forensic evidence that could establish exactly what had happened inside that car, or when. And the one person who had almost certainly arranged for the vehicle to be stored there — Kendra Firmingham — had been dead for four years.
Kendra’s Husband: A Person of Interest
With Kendra gone, investigators turned their attention to the other figures in her orbit. Her husband, John — who lived separately from her, and was later based in Florida — became a focal point.
According to information surfaced by podcast investigators and later corroborated by law enforcement sources, John made a series of deeply troubling remarks in the years following Eric’s disappearance. In one account relayed by Kendra’s former sister-in-law Cassie, John instructed his daughter Emily not to sell Kendra’s guns — in case a body turned up with a bullet wound that might be matched to one of them. The implication was unmistakable.
In another account, John was reported to have raised the possibility, in an oblique way, that Kendra might have killed Eric in self-defense — a framing that, even if exculpatory in intent, confirmed his apparent belief that Eric was dead and that Kendra was involved.
Note on sourcing: The statements attributed to John were reported by podcast investigators, including The Vanished Podcast, drawing on interviews with people connected to the case. John has been interviewed by both local and Florida law enforcement. He categorically denied any involvement in Eric’s disappearance or death.
Investigators from the Michigan State Police and, separately, from Florida, conducted interviews with John. He denied involvement. No charges were filed. The investigation once again reached a dead end — not for lack of suspicion, but for lack of evidence sufficient to support prosecution.
The Daughter’s Silence
Among the most painful threads in this case is the role of Emily — Eric’s daughter, the reason he came to Saginaw in the first place. Emily was a minor when her father disappeared, and she was interviewed by police at the time. By law enforcement’s account, she had “not much to say.” Her uncle Chad was more precise: she had been at home with her parents when questioned, and claimed to know nothing. She did acknowledge having spent time with Eric — the roller skating, the bowling, the mall trips.
As an adult, Emily has not spoken publicly about her father’s case. Dateline reached out to her and received no response. Whatever she knows — or believes — about what happened to the man who came to Michigan specifically to be her father remains her own.
The Timeline
Late 2010
Eric Franks checks into the Miller Motel in Bridgeport Township, Saginaw County. He has recently learned he has a teenage daughter with former girlfriend Kendra Firmingham.
March 14, 2011
The motel owner reports seeing Eric for the last confirmed time — paying for an additional week’s rent.
March 21, 2011
Kendra claims Eric departed for California; motel owner says he only saw Kendra removing Eric’s belongings, alone. This is the official “last known date” in most records.
Spring–Summer 2011
Eric’s phone is used to place calls to auto shops, salvage yards, a surgeon, and a dentist who treated Kendra but not Eric. Investigators believe someone other than Eric was using the phone.
November 2011
Eric’s family, alarmed by suspicious emails and his prolonged silence, officially report him missing to police.
September 2012
Detective Sean Waterman interrogates Kendra Firmingham at the Buena Vista Township Police Department. She maintains her account. No charges are filed.
2016
Kendra Firmingham dies of cancer in Florida, taking any undisclosed knowledge of Eric’s fate with her.
April 2020
Gerald Rutledge dies. Eric’s bronze Chevrolet Malibu is discovered in Rutledge’s garage and later recovered by investigators. A bloodstain on the driver’s seat is DNA-confirmed as Eric’s.
2021–2022
The Vanished Podcast covers the case across multiple episodes, surfacing new information and bringing national attention.
2024
Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program takes on the Eric Franks case, digitizing the file and conducting fresh investigative work. The Vanished Podcast returns with a major update episode.
2025–Present
Michigan State Police Cold Case Investigation Team continues to actively review the case. The investigation remains open. No body has been found. No charges have been filed.
Fresh Eyes: The WMU Cold Case Program
In 2024, a new set of investigators entered the picture — and they were not professional detectives. They were criminal justice students at Western Michigan University, part of a program that had already helped crack two cold cases in the state.
Under the direction of Professor Ashlyn Kuersten, the WMU team took on the Eric Franks case as their primary project. Their first task was formidable in its own right: digitizing a case file that had grown to tens of thousands of pages over more than a decade of investigation. The students also made a site visit to the Saginaw home of Gerald Rutledge, where Eric’s car had been found years earlier.
Senior Alexis Coha, studying forensic psychology, put the stakes plainly: “We are here to help make the detectives’ lives easier and to help the victims, the victim’s families get the closure they need.” Chad Baus expressed cautious optimism about the involvement of fresh eyes — young investigators unburdened by the case’s history and immune to the cognitive entrenchments that can afflict detectives who have worked a case for years.
The WMU program had previously helped resolve a cold case murder on Michigan’s west side, lending the collaboration real credibility. Whether a new review of the evidence can produce something actionable — a witness who has not yet spoken, a forensic thread not yet pulled, a document buried in those tens of thousands of pages — remains to be seen.
The Shape of the Evidence
What investigators believe happened to Eric Franks has never been stated publicly in formal terms. But the contours of their theory are legible in the record. A man with no money and no realistic plan to drive across the country disappeared from a motel where his last confirmed contact was paying rent — not packing for a cross-country trip. His belongings were removed by someone else. His phone was used by someone else to build a false trail. His car was hidden in the garage of a property tied to the one person who claimed to be the last to see him alive.
And that person is now dead.
The question of whether Kendra Firmingham acted alone — or whether her husband, her brother, or others in her network were involved in whatever happened — is one investigators have been unable to definitively answer. Cassie, Kendra’s former sister-in-law, alleged to podcast investigators that the family operated in a grey zone of scams and petty criminal enterprises. One theory holds that Eric, who had reportedly told Kendra he was due to receive an inheritance, may have been killed when it became clear the inheritance was fiction — or alternatively, when he became a threat to expose activities he had witnessed.
None of this has been proven. None of it has been charged. It remains the architecture of a theory, not the foundation of a prosecution.
What It Would Take to Close This Case
Michigan State Police Detective Arndt has been candid about the threshold for resolution. There are, in his estimation, three pathways: find Eric’s remains, find new physical evidence, or have someone come forward with information. “It will always be open,” he told Dateline. “It’s just a cold case.”
The Michigan State Police’s Cold Case Investigation Team — newly formed as of Arndt’s statement — was expected to review the case as part of its mandate. The WMU program is adding analytical resources. And the passage of time, counterintuitively, sometimes works in investigators’ favor: relationships fracture, loyalties shift, and people who once protected a secret find themselves no longer willing to carry it.
Eric Lee Franks would be 53 years old today. His mother Jo Ann continues to run the Facebook page “Find Eric Lee Franks,” keeping his name visible and his story in circulation. His sister Beth, his brother-in-law Chad, and the extended family that still misses him have never stopped pushing for answers. They have made clear that they do not believe Eric is alive. They believe he was killed, that someone in Saginaw knows what happened, and that person — or persons — has not yet found the weight of that knowledge unbearable enough to speak.
“It will always be open. It’s just a cold case.”
— Michigan State Police Detective Arndt
Somewhere in Saginaw County — or beneath it — the answer likely exists. The search continues.
If You Have Information
Michigan State Police — Post Command: (989) 495-5555
Reference: Eric Lee Franks, DOB approx. 1972, missing since March 2011
Physical description: White male, 6’1”, 175 lbs., brown eyes, black hair; left toe partially amputated; wears full dentures; ears pierced
Vehicle: 2001 bronze Chevrolet Malibu, Ohio plate EMH4902 (vehicle has since been recovered)
This investigative piece was compiled from public records, court documents, reporting by NBC Dateline, ABC12/WJRT, The Vanished Podcast, The Charley Project, and interviews conducted by TheColdCases.com. All individuals referenced retain the presumption of innocence. No charges have been filed in connection with the disappearance of Eric Lee Franks.
Have a tip? Contact TheColdCases.com or call Michigan State Police directly at (989) 495-5555. Anonymous tips are accepted
