Heidi Planck was a 39 y/o mother of one when she was last seen in Los Angeles on October 17, 2021. There are many facets of Heidi’s life so we will attempt to tell her story chronologically to help it make sense.
I first heard of Heidi being missing from a social media post by Heather Altman (Josh Altman’s wife – from the show Million Dollar Listing LA). Heidi seemed to be associated with some very high flying, affluent people.
As some background into Heidi’s life, she was divorced from a man named Jim Wayne. Jim is a prominent hair stylist in Beverly Hills. They have a son together, Bond Mason Wayne who was 11 years old at the time that Heidi vanished. They had been divorced for around 9 years and seemed to have an amicable relationship.
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You can view Heidi’s Facebook here.
Heidi’s current partner in October 2021 was Na’eem Salaam. Na’eem is the vice president of operations for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Facebook’s philanthropic organization. He and Heidi had been dating for three years.
As for what Heidi did for work, you can view her LinkedIn here. She worked for real estate company Coldwell Banker for ten years from 2005-2015. She then moved to Douglas Eliman and worked as an Executive Assistant for just under a year. I believe Josh Altman works for Douglas Eliman so maybe this is how Heidi knows Heather?
Her work history becomes slightly more vague after this period. From 2017 to when she disappeared, she worked as a ‘Controller’ for Camden Capital Partners. Some articles that have emerged since Heidi vanished state that she worked there as the financial controller, overseeing all employees involved in the accounting process at Camden Capital Partners.
Heidi’s workplace may end up being relevant to her disappearance and that is why we have gone into so much detail.
Heidi was renting a $1.7 million dollar home in Mid City in LA and she was driving a Silver Range Rover. She also had a labradoodle named Seven.
Before we move on to the circumstances of her disappearance, I believe it’s important to go to 2015 where Jim applied for joint custody of their son Bond.
Jim said in the documents that he feared Bond was at ‘immediate risk of harm’.
Heidi checked herself into a psychiatric facility in October 2015, but on the second day there she called him asking ‘can you please take me home.
‘I am in a scary place,’ she added, ‘and they are molesting me.’
When he asked her why she felt that way, she replied: ‘Every time I sit down to pee, I have to poop.’
Heidi also asked employees in the facility why she had a c-section scar, because she denied ever having a child.
There was also another weird experience in 2015 when Heidi called Jim and asked him to pick up Heidi and the child. ‘When I got back…she was standing outside with our son, holding a full plate of bacon. The entire drive back home she was offering bacon to me repeatedly and seemed slightly intoxicated,’ Jim said.
When they all got back to Jim’s house, Heidi went with Bond into his bedroom. She essentially trashed it. There are photos online.
Jim said in the court documents:
‘He was very excited and looked a little guilty and said ‘dad, you have to come see my room…my mom made a mess.’ ‘
Jim said the room was ‘in complete chaos.’
‘I looked out the window and could see what looked like her legs going over a fence.’
Neighbors called cops who found Heidi in a nearby backyard ‘partially clothed, shutting an electrical circuit breaker on and off.’
In other documents from 2016, Jim said Heidi ‘has a history of acting out in volatile ways.’
Bond liked to play with Nerf guns. Heidi once fired the toy straight into the child’s face when he didn’t have the protective mask on. When Bond said that Heidi had hit him in the eye, she almost gloated and said ‘Shoulda had your mask on!.’
Jim also mentioned one time that he took Bond to a Fat Burger restaurant. ‘He told me that we couldn’t be there because the last time he was there with his mom, they were kicked out’ after she had torn pictures off the wall and thrown them on the floor.
Jim also recalled a time that Heidi built a Lego project with Bond and then threw it against a wall when they had finished.
Jim has also spoken about some inappropriate behavior displayed by Heidi. Heidi and Bond were playing with Nerf balls and she pulled her shirt down so he could throw them down her cleavage.
‘I find this very inappropriate,’ Jim wrote in court documents.
‘When she saw me looking at her doing this, she immediately held up a cardboard paper in front of her.’ When the boy asked her to put it down ‘her response was so incoherent and irrelevant to their discussion that I noticed how odd (she) was being.’
Heidi would often seem incoherent when interacting with Bond. Bond told her once that he wanted to stop playing Legos and have a Nerf war, she replied ‘I had spaghetti next week.’
Bond also asked Heidi once to bring a Nerf gun the next time she saw him. She replied with ‘You want me to bring over a baby?’
Jim also alleged in court docs that Heidi was addicted to Adderall. He claimed she would go to three different doctors so she could get three separate prescriptions, making sure she always paid for two of them in cash so her abuse wouldn’t be discovered.’
So, back to October 17.
Heidi left her home in Mid City, and put Seven in her Range Rover. She drove to Downey (around 17 miles/30 mins away) to watch her son Bond play football. She had been planning to meet Jim there to watch the game together. There is CCTV footage of Heidi that has been made public of her leaving her home and getting into her car. She is walking with the dog and looks like she is carrying a coffee.
A few days before, the estranged couple had planned an 11th birthday for Bond, and Heidi had sent Jim flowers. It was to thank him “for all you do for Bond . . . He adores you and you’re a very special person to him.”
Once she got to the game though, witnesses said that Heidi seemed ‘off’ and distracted. She was acting fidgety and left abruptly at half time, with no warning.
Bond and Jim tried to contact Heidi for the next few days.
“Can you please call me back? I called you two days in a row and you haven’t picked up,” Bond wrote in a text on October 18 at 7:31 p.m.
Then, after school on October 19, he tried again. “Please call or just text me because I want to make sure your ok and I’m worried about you.” Later that same day: “Please call mom. I miss you and I’m worried about you.”
On October 20, Heidi was due to pick Bond up from school and she failed to do so. What had been slight concern then turned into panic. Jim went to a West LA Police Station to file a missing person report for Heidi.
“There was no way—no way—Heidi wouldn’t show up for Bond,” Jim has said. “I knew something was really wrong. People don’t just disappear.”
One of Heidi’s friends went to her home and reported that there was no sign of Heidi’s Range Rover, or her dog. Her work cell phone was in the house, along with a laptop, but nothing seemed out of place.
Jim got in touch with Heidi’s bf Na’eem. He said that he had not seen Heidi for awhile because he’d been busy with work but noted that she’d sent him an alarming text telling him that “she was afraid” and asking him to come down to L.A. on the weekend she’d vanished. He had been unable to go because of work and had not heard from her since.
Jim tried to think of what other tools he could use to try to find Heidi . He tried to use the location tracking on the Range Rover but it had been turned off. He also tried to use the location finder on her earbuds and Apple watch had also been shut off. “It was really odd,” Jim said. “That had to be done deliberately, systematically.”
Jim knew that Seven the dog had been microchipped so he headed to the vet to see if anyone had reported finding a lost animal.
While he was on the way there, Heidi’s work phone received a text (I am assuming Jim took it from her home in an effort to track her down). The text was from an occupant of the Hope + Flower building in downtown L.A. Seven had been found several days earlier, on October 17 (the day Heidi was last seen), just hours after the football game, wandering around the 28th floor.
This website for the Hope + Flower complex says :
Welcome to Hope + Flower, two beautifully modern towers located in the heart of LA’s coveted Entertainment District. Offering exquisite rental apartments, steps from the city’s best restaurants, nightlife, shopping, and entertainment. Featuring open-concept living, large private balconies, integrated appliances, and unrivaled amenities, Hope + Flower puts you at the center of it all in downtown Los Angeles.
I had a look at current availability in the complex and the rents range from around $7k to $46k. Swanky.
Jim has said that Heidi had no known ties to the complex. The building’s management was reluctant to hand over CCTV from the many cameras in the complex, but finally did so when they were served with a warrant.
They handed over a video that showed Heidi walking Seven in an alley behind the structure. This image of Heidi is now the last known of her alive.
When it became clear that Heidi was unlikely to be found quickly, Jim filed for sole custody of Bond. I believe he did this because he needed to put Bond in therapy, and could usually only do this with Heidi’s approval (in their previous joint custody agreement).
Jim said that the child needed therapy ‘because he is completely distraught at his mother’s disappearance.’
‘We are at the point where we have to expect the worse and accordingly I am requesting full legal and full physical custody so that I can legally enroll (the boy) into therapy immediately,’ he added.
‘This is an emergency. If we hear from authorities that Heidi has been kidnapped or has died, I fear that (the boy) will be extremely distressed and inconsolable beyond his current mental state.
‘I really want to put (him) into therapy right away to help him cope with whatever news may come our way.’
Full custody was granted.
Heidi’s boss at Camden Capital Partners is a man named Jason Sugarman.
There is a whole other side story about Jason Sugarman that I think may end up being important to Heidi’s story.
At the time Heidi disappeared, Jason is/was being investigated for a $43 million fraud scheme.
Jim apparently received a call on October 21 from a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigator.
‘They were interested in Sugarman and his company. They wanted to know what I know about them, and just generally asked me what I thought about Sugarman,’ Jim said.
Jason was charged by the SEC in 2019 with hatching a fraudulent scheme that swindled $43million out of pension funds and left a Native American tribe $60million in debt.
In 2020, his business partner, Jason Galanis (another Jason), was sentenced to 189 months in prison for his participation in multiple fraudulent schemes including the tribal bond scheme.
Jim said that Jason Sugarman called him shortly after Heidi disappeared. Jim said that he ‘didn’t appear to be too concerned that she had gone missing.’
‘While I was on the phone with his assistant, I heard Sugarman in the background barking at his assistant to tell me, “make sure he knows I want my laptop”,’ Jim said.
‘There was no concern at all from my ex-wife’s employer. It’s a multimillion-dollar company, they didn’t offer to hire a private investigator or put up a reward.
‘The only thing they really seemed concerned about was Heidi’s computer,’ he added.
Jim never gave Jason back the computer – he turned it over to police.
Jim spoke to Jason’s assistant a few days later and during that phone call, the assistant accused Heidi of syphoning money from Camden Capital. Jim said he did not believe that. The assistant allegedly claimed they had ‘proof’ and sent him several of Heidi’s personal bank statements.
Jim sent those documents to the police and has said he never looked at them in detail.
He said officers later told him that Heidi ‘didn’t have a lot of money in her accounts.’
Many people questioned how Heidi was working as the financial controller for Camden Capital when she did not have a college degree or an accounting license. Since her disappearance, Jim has learned that she was making around $125k per year, PLUS bonuses of up to $1.5k per month.
Heidi started out at Camden Capital as Jason’s Executive Assistant and worked her way up the ranks to Financial Controller.
‘Heidi knows all of Jason’s and the company’s secrets. She knows where the bones are buried,’ Jim said.
Heidi’s Range Rover was a top of the line $90 k model. Her home in LA was described by LA Mag as a 2,000-square-foot home with 28-foot-high ceilings, a floating staircase with glass railings, and walls filled with expensive modern art.
Jim did not pay Heidi any alimony or child support, so that could not account anything in her lifestyle. He paid her a lump sum in 2012 following their split, and had paid nothing since then.
When LA Mag asked Jim about Heidi’s finances, he said “You’re going to have to ask Heidi. All I know is that she always had piles of cash and took a lot of vacations. She told me that her boss floats her money when they close a deal.”
Interestingly, when you search for info on Camden Capital Partners, the address for the company is the address of Heidi’s home in Mid City. Public records show Heidi as being the only employee currently of the company.
Interestingly, after Jim and Jason had spoken through the assistant, Jason went to Heidi’s house and rang the doorbell. When nobody answered, he left muffins on the doorstep.
Seems like a weird thing to do for an employee who you know to be missing?
On October 29, FBI agents raided Heidi’s home in Mid City.
This info is from CBS LA:
Federal agents and robbery homicide detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department went into Planck’s home with guns drawn on Friday evening, as the hunt for the missing woman continues. Sources believe that officers were under the impression that they might have been walking into a crime scene.
Reports state that the investigators are looking in every possible outlet of the home to find evidence. Photographers are on scene as well as nearly a dozen other agents, who are scouring every room, the garbage and planters around the home.
An evidence van was on scene as recently as 11:00PM, with reports that some files had been taken into custody.
What was recovered from Heidi’s home during the raid has not yet been made public.
After the raid, things went a bit quiet in Heidi’s case. Her friends held a vigil at the Hope + Flower complex for her on the three-week anniversary of her disappearance. They handed out flyers in Downtown LA, hoping to raise awareness of her case.
“Heidi is missing,” said her friend Danielle Nadolny. “She’s well-loved (and) severely missed. She has a son that misses her. She has friends and family that miss her and just want her home safe.”
At the end of November 2021, police announced that they would begin searching a landfill in Chiquita Canyon in the city of Castaic. The purpose of the search would be ‘to excavate a specific area of the landfill, manually search it for human remains, and collect any related evidence,’ according to the LAPD.
It is believed that this specific site was searched as that is where the waste disposal company working at the Hope + Flower building dumps its trash.
The LAPD announced around this time that they had found unspecified forensic evidence in the Hope + Flower complex, leading them to believe that there was an ‘incident’ resulting in Heidi’s death. They have never elaborated on what was found.
There have been some tabloid news articles about what possibly happened to Heidi. LAPD has never confirmed or spoken about this info, so we aren’t sure how true it is. It is the second search result though for me when you search ‘Heidi Planck’.
Some true crime investigators apparently went to the Hope + Flower building to conduct their own investigation.
A woman who lives in the building approached them and said that she saw Heidi die after taking Adderall that was laced with fentanyl at a party on the 40th floor of the complex.
The woman said that Heidi knew a dogsitter (must have been in the building I guess) and she took Seven there before heading to the party on the 40th floor.
“So she was up at this really big party and they were gambling with cryptocurrency, there were a lot of drugs and strippers and they had brought a stripper pole up there and they had a DJ.’
Heidi apparently knew someone who lived in the building and she purchased the Adderall from him. Some comments say they were dating or had dated in the past. This person is not Na’eem who we mentioned earlier.
The following is information from the alleged occupant of the building.
“She did not do any other drugs but they told me the Adderall was laced with fentanyl.
“I was told that she OD’d in the middle of the dance floor, fell down and broke a glass that she had in her hand.
“A group of people tried to revive her but they couldn’t and they got scared because there was a lot of illegal stuff going on in that apartment that night.
“So a bunch of them took her out and put her in the garbage chute and pushed her down.
“The girl who was telling me this was there, saw it happen and she heard Heidi fall down the chute but didn’t hear her stop [at the bottom].
“She said she went to check the chutes down to the 28th floor and when she opened the door to the trash chute on the 28th floor she saw Heidi was stuck there.
“The woman told me this in front of three other people who work in the building and they were like ‘Yeah, that’s what happened’.
“She also shared videos and a pic which I was told show the party in the aftermath of Heidi losing consciousness.”
Jim spoke about all this info and said: “I don’t know anything about it, I really don’t. I spoke to the detective this morning and they said they were bringing in some different equipment in the landfill and that was it.”
It’s important to note that the info given by the occupant has never been confirmed as being true. We wanted to include it as there has been much discussion online about it.
The police have searched the landfill for Heidi multiple times since they first announced their intention to search. One of the most recent articles in relation to this case is from January 7, 2022 and it talks about the intention to resume searching the landfill.
Due to the rain the landfill operation had to be temporarily stopped in December, Jonathan Tippet, commanding officer of the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division, told
“We will resume next week. An update will occur if we have a significant find or information associated to the investigation,” Tippet said.