Lisa Bollaert

Do you know who murdered Lisa?
Lisa Bollaert was a kind-hearted and generous woman, a mother of two, a U.S. Army veteran, and a trained counselor with a master's degree. Her life, however, was marked by a difficult struggle with mental illness. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2001, the 37-year-old White female had been in and out of treatment facilities. Her ex-husband, Frank Willis, remembered her as a "very caring loving individual," while her husband, James Bollaert, recalled their once-close marriage before the illness took hold. He said, "Oh I loved her. We loved each other. I mean we were so close." In the spring of 2009, Lisa’s journey took a tragic turn when she left a mental health facility in her home state of New York and began hitchhiking west.

Her path eventually led her to Oklahoma. She arrived in the Tulsa area in late April 2009 with little money and no clear plan. On April 27, she checked into a Salvation Army shelter. A few days later, she moved to a women's shelter in the nearby community of Sand Springs. Despite her struggles, Lisa was trying to piece her life back together and had even spoken with military recruiters in Tulsa about re-enlisting. Surveillance footage from April 30 showed her outside the Tulsa FBI office with an unidentified man who had apparently given her a ride. Police later sought this man, described as a white male in his 40s or 50s, as a person of interest they wished to question.

The last confirmed sighting of Lisa alive was on May 5, 2009, when she was seen walking away from the women's shelter and later captured on a convenience store's surveillance camera. The next day, her journey came to a horrific end. On the morning of May 6, a homeowner in a quiet south Tulsa neighborhood at 7923 S. Elwood Avenue discovered a large garbage bag that had been dumped in their front yard. Inside was the body of Lisa Bollaert.

Investigators with the Tulsa Police Department were confronted with a scene of immense brutality. Lisa’s body had been severely beaten, and she had sustained numerous lacerations. Her arms, legs, and mouth were bound with duct tape. Police believed she was killed at a different location and her body was later discarded in the yard. The nature of the crime led investigators to state that she was killed in an act of "extreme rage," a detail that haunted detectives for years. "There are so many disturbing elements to this murder that you know it definitely sticks in the minds of all the detectives that were here at the time and have come in since," said Lt. Brandon Watkins of the Tulsa Police.

In the years following the murder, Lisa's family refused to let her memory fade or for her case to be forgotten. In 2014, five years after her death, her husband James Bollaert and her ex-husband Frank Willis traveled to Tulsa to pass out flyers and renew public interest in the case. They visited the places where Lisa was last seen and the location where her body was found. "She was great mother and her son... doesn't sleep at night, so if anybody knows anything just help him catch this guy," James Bollaert pleaded. Determined to find answers, he announced a $10,000 reward, money he had saved for five years, for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for his wife's murder.

Despite the family's efforts and the collection of DNA evidence from the tape and trash bags used to conceal Lisa's body, her case has grown cold. The man seen with her outside the FBI office was never identified, and no arrests have ever been made. As of December 2023, the murder of Lisa Bollaert remains unsolved. Her family continues to hope that someone will come forward with the information needed to bring her killer to justice. The Tulsa Police Department asks anyone with information to contact their Homicide Unit at 918-596-9135 or Tulsa Crime Stoppers at 918-596-COPS.