Accused: The Mysterious Death of David Bocks

In the early 1980s, David Bocks was a 39-year-old divorced father of three known at his job as a hard worker.

He was also known as incredibly quiet but morally principled, the type of worker who complained about colleagues sleeping on the job.

He worked as a pipefitter at a mysterious plant about 30 miles from his home. The site was called the Fernald Feed Materials Plant, and its function was to process uranium for the U.S. government. A lot of people thought it made dog food.

David lived about 15 miles northeast of Cincinnati in a suburb called Loveland.

Because it was a trek to work, David regularly met a coworker partway at a White Castle and the two would finish the drive together.

It was business as usual the night of June 18, 1984, when the men worked third shift.

But this night, something strange happened.

When the shift ended, David didn’t clock out and failed to rejoin his coworker for the drive back to his car. No one reported having seen David for several hours.

His carpool buddy waited until he couldn’t anymore. He left a note.

The next day

He expected David would be annoyed at having been ditched at the plant, but David didn’t return calls and didn’t meet him at the White Castle. But David’s car was still there, parked where he’d left it the night before.

It was as though David Bocks just vanished.

He went to work and disappeared.

This didn’t make sense. The family man was a reliable guy.

David’s coworkers searched the plant and made a grisly discovery: Bits of bone were discovered inside of a 1350-degree-Fahrenheit vat used to shape uranium. It seemed David had somehow ended up inside the vat, though no one could explain how he got there.

In the decades since, three main theories have circulated about David’s fate.

After more than three decades, and no paper trail or word from David, there’s no evidence supporting this theory.

This theory posits that David sneaked animal remains onto the plant property via his lunch box, then tossed the remains into the vat so that people would mistake the animal bones for human and write him off as dead so he could start anew somewhere else.

Besides, after cooling and chiseling the now-solid salt in the vat, David’s keys, parts of his boots and glasses were found. All those had higher melt points than the temp the vat was set at.

David was blind as a bat without his glasses. Hmmmm.

This theory is the one put forth by investigators, including Hamilton County Sheriff’s Detective Pete Alderucci. They stand by it still.

Alderucci

To accomplish this means David would have to have maneuvered himself into a 9-inch-by-22-1/4-inch opening, then lowered his body into the lava-like solution inside the vat.

Scientists and doctors emphatically discard this idea. A body would, well, succumb long before the maneuvering could be done. Boiling to death is neither comfortable nor pretty. You lose consciousness. You never finish the job.

David’s family believes this theory. They think David was killed by someone else because he intended to become a whistleblower on lax safety practices at the plant — information that became public within months of David’s disappearance.

Could David have threatened to go public with the very information that eventually led to the plant’s shuttering? Or could the timing of the headlines just be coincidence?

Some coworkers say drugs were sold on the property. David hated drugs. Might he have witnessed a deal and been killed to keep quiet?

Here’s why some say it was murder: A strange piece of looped wire was recovered from the vat with David.

Authorities decided quickly, without physical evidence, that David’s death could only have been self-inflicted. They never investigated the possibility of homicide.

Did someone get away with murder?

There was plenty of time to do this. No one else was set to be in that building until 8 a.m. the next morning.

More than 35 years later, the Fernald plant is gone.

As the decades pass, many of the plant’s secrets have slowly been exposed. But one remains: What happened to David Bocks?

The buildings have been replaced by manmade ponds on a nature preserve that’s home to deer and ducks.

After 36 years, the police have decided to take another look at the case.