Popular Influencer Vanished After Psychic Medium Show | Stephanie Parze ASMR

[00:00:08]Hi guys, welcome back to True Crime Time ASMR.

[00:00:14]I'm Nicole.

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[00:00:44]I post two times a week on Monday and Thursday at 6:00 p.m. Eastern time.

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[00:01:13]Now, let's get right to tonight's case.

[00:01:17]Tonight we will be traveling to New Jersey.

[00:01:29]Shout out to all my friends in New Jersey.

[00:01:36]Tonight we're going to be covering the 2019 case of Stephanie Bars.

[00:01:47]So, let's get started with some background on Stephanie.

[00:01:54]She was born on February 19th, 1994 in Freehold, New Jersey.

[00:02:02]She grew up in a tight-knit household with her parents Edward and Charlene.

[00:02:09]She was the eldest of four sisters.

[00:02:14]Her parents, who were both only children, intentionally prioritized heavy family bonding.

[00:02:26]As a child, Stephanie was a bubbly, fun-loving girl who was known to start dance parties in the kitchen when her family got together.

[00:02:38]From a young age, she was always a fan of the New York Yankees.

[00:02:43]She spent her childhood summers enjoying outdoor activities with friends and family, including fishing, crabbing, rafting, and going to the beach.

[00:03:00]She had a very happy childhood with her family. They did so many fun things together, including vacations to Disney World. And Christmas was super important. They always decorated their house in such a beautiful way. It was just such a wonderful family to grow up in.

[00:03:30]Now, Stephanie attended Rehold Township High School where she was the catcher on the softball team.

[00:03:40]After high school, she followed her passion and innate talent for art. She was an amazing artist since way, way back in her early childhood.

[00:03:52]She graduated from the Dukret School of Art and the Robert France Beauty School.

[00:03:59]She became a licensed cosmetologist in 2013.

[00:04:05]Her ultimate dream was to launch a career in professional makeup and special effects artist for movies.

[00:04:15]That's what she wanted to do.

[00:04:19]In the meanwhile, till she got up to that goal, she worked as a makeup artist at LA Artistry in Jackson, New Jersey.

[00:04:32]She specialized in regular cosmetics, intricate nail designs, and complex three-dimensional body and special effects art.

[00:04:44]She also worked as a wax specialist at the European Wax Center.

[00:04:51]And if that wasn't enough, she also worked as a nanny. So, she was very, very busy.

[00:05:01]She used social media platforms, primarily Facebook and Instagram to serve as a digital portfolio for freelance makeup artist career. So on top of working for other people, she was also launching a freelance career.

[00:05:24]She created dedicated business pages to display her work in three-dimensional body painting, special effects, and wedding cosmetics.

[00:05:36]By 2019, at age 25, Stephanie's platforms had evolved from a local freelance portfolio into a rapidly growing beauty hub.

[00:05:56]Because of her creative special effects looks, she was widely recognized as a budding social media influencer and rising creator. People flocked to her platforms to see her amazing work and to enjoy her incredible personality as well.

[00:06:19]She had so many fans and the numbers were growing.

[00:06:26]Now even though she had huge career aspirations, she also wanted to get married and raise a family.

[00:06:36]It was of major importance to her and she felt pressure to find the one.

[00:06:44]So, she turned to dating apps to find that person.

[00:06:48]In June of 2019, she met John Oz Bilgen.

[00:06:55]Now, let me just tell you a little bit about him.

[00:07:00]John D. Ozilen was born in July of 1990 and he was raised in Freehold Township, New Jersey. So, same place as her.

[00:07:15]He was the oldest son born to his parents. He grew up alongside two younger siblings, S and Sammy.

[00:07:26]As an adult, he became a licensed stock broker. He worked in the financial services industry, holding registrations with multiple firms over his career.

[00:07:41]During his relationship with Stephanie, he was working for a firm in Staten Island, but he was living at his parents house in Freel, New Jersey. He had lived in Staten Island for some period of time, but at this point, he had moved back in with his parents.

[00:08:04]So when John and Stephanie first began dating, she saw their relationship as a fairy tale. She was deeply infatuated with him.

[00:08:18]An ex-girlfriend of John's would later explain that he was a wine and dine kind of guy, meaning that he was known to act overly romantic, generous, and charming to sweep women off their feet and lower their guard before showing his, you know, true identity.

[00:08:44]Early on, Stephanie's father, Ed, got a bad feeling from John.

[00:08:51]He tried to warn Stephanie about what he saw.

[00:08:56]Ed would later describe John as a typical manipulator who used a cycle of intense affection followed by anger.

[00:09:09]Whenever Stephanie would try to pull away from the relationship, he would emotionally manipulate his way back into her life.

[00:09:21]John was incredibly skilled at pulling Stephanie back in due to the fact that she was a person who always looked for the best in everybody.

[00:09:36]Now, in August of 2019, Stephanie was hospitalized with a severe lifethreatening bout of pneumonia caused by vaping. And she was really, really sick and she was in the hospital for a while. She had severe lung damage and she had to quit all of the jobs that she had for the time being due to her illness.

[00:10:04]Now, John visited her every day at the hospital, and he used her helpless state to embed himself deeply into her life and secure his role as her primary companion.

[00:10:24]He played the part of a deeply devoted, loving partner to the outside world.

[00:10:31]like everyone who saw him at the hospital was like, "Wow, this is a great boyfriend. Look at how devoted he is."

[00:10:40]And he told Stephanie that he would take care of her when she got out.

[00:10:46]And right after discharge from the hospital, his behavior shifted from being very attentive into heavily controlling.

[00:11:01]He began to isolate her from her sisters and her parents.

[00:11:08]But Stephanie became aware of how toxic the relationship was becoming. They hadn't been together for that long. Don't forget they started dating in June and it was only August now.

[00:11:23]But as they got into September, things got substantially worse.

[00:11:32]She tried to end their relationship, but his response to that was to assault her. He backhanded her across the side of her head and he struck her thumb, causing a visible injury to it. The assault escalated to the point where Stephanie had to physically break away and run out of the house in her bare feet. She was so afraid for her safety and she's just running down the road in the night barefoot.

[00:12:12]afraid, out of her mind.

[00:12:16]Luckily though, she had her phone with her.

[00:12:20]And while she was running down the street, she called her father, Ed, and you know, she said where she was.

[00:12:29]She continued running, you know, and her father came and he found her on the road. Body picked her up and there was blood dripping down her face.

[00:12:44]He later explained that all he could see at that point was black.

[00:12:51]Like he blacked out basically in rage, something he hadn't experienced before, but just the sight of his daughter like that.

[00:13:01]and knowing that it was her boyfriend who had done it enraged him to the point of a blackout basically.

[00:13:11]And he wanted more than anything to take the matter into his own hands, but he didn't.

[00:13:22]And the family went down to the police station to report what had happened.

[00:13:30]Stephanie filed a simple assault domestic violence complaint against John and he was arrested on a charge of misdemeanor simple assault under the local judicial guidelines.

[00:13:49]That assault charge was not severe enough to hold him in jail indefinitely to wait for trial. So he was released on his own recgnissance almost immediately and his formal court appearance was delayed multiple times and it was ultimately scheduled for sometime in December.

[00:14:18]Now, at this point, he became a bit desperate, and the best thing he could think of to do to get out of it was to manipulate Stephanie back into a relationship and pressure her into dropping the charges against him. That was his plan.

[00:14:42]And we know that because an ex-girlfriend who spoke to him at that time later told investigators that John admitted that he hated Stephanie.

[00:14:57]He said he was only staying with her because it was convenient and so that she would drop the charges before the December court date. Now, she never did drop the charges, but he kept hoping she would. And so, you know, they were back in this kind of toxic on and off situation for a little while.

[00:15:19]Now, as it would turn out, John already had an extensive legal history.

[00:15:29]In 2010, when he was 19, he was arrested and charged with two counts of drug possession and one count of drug distribution for selling Aderall and Suboxone.

[00:15:44]He eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, 7th degree misdemeanor charge of possession.

[00:15:56]So that was from long in his past back in 2010. But in June of 2019 during the same time when he was already beginning to date Stephanie, he was arrested and charged with simple assault.

[00:16:16]This was a different ex-girlfriend.

[00:16:18]Okay.

[00:16:20]She reported that he grabbed her face, pulled her hair, and dragged her by her hair outside of his home.

[00:16:30]But she requested that the charge be dismissed in court because she feared him. She feared what he would do to her.

[00:16:42]And she later revealed that he had assaulted her on multiple occasions. So nothing came of that charge.

[00:16:50]In addition, a woman living in New York who had also been involved with John in the past had an active restraining order against him.

[00:17:03]She alleged that during arguments he had choked her to the point of unconsciousness multiple times.

[00:17:11]She noted that the charges related to this crime were dropped because she had missed her court appearances for this case which were in New Jersey. She was saying it was difficult for her to get to New Jersey for the court dates but she still had the restraining order.

[00:17:34]So just a few weeks after filing her domestic violence complaint against John, Stephanie began experiencing some unsettling events in her home that deeply terrified her.

[00:17:54]She called her mother in a panic, stating that she thought her home was maybe haunted or possessed.

[00:18:04]She had discovered a creepy slender handprint smudged onto her bathroom mirror. Now, by the way, she was living in the home of her deceased grandmother at this point. She had moved out of her parents' home and she moved, I think it's like 7 miles away. She was living in her grandmother's house alone. So anyway, she saw this creepy like dragged down handprint like you'd see in a horror movie on the bathroom mirror. Like it wasn't just like, you know, a misunderstanding like she had accidentally left it there that morning. No, it was clearly like meant to be creepy.

[00:18:48]And then a few days later, she came home to find her parakeet was dead.

[00:18:56]on the bottom of his cage and he was in fine health when she had seen him earlier, but all of a sudden he was dead.

[00:19:05]At that point, she no longer believed it was paranormal. She thought, you know, somebody is breaking into my home.

[00:19:14]She was so afraid. She asked her sister if she could borrow a baby monitor to put around, you know, so she could watch the house or see who might be coming in.

[00:19:24]like she really wasn't sure what was going on, but she never wound up getting the baby monitor and going through with it.

[00:19:34]But it is believed that I'm sure you already figured it out. It is believed that John is the one who did these things. He was attempting to terrorize her to break her spirit and make her feel unsafe in her home.

[00:19:51]Now, he wound up getting fired from his job as a stock broker on October 29th.

[00:20:02]And we don't know exactly why, but probably due to all these legal issues.

[00:20:08]I mean, who wants to hire a stock broker who has a legal background like this? I mean, would you want that as your stock broker?

[00:20:18]I wouldn't.

[00:20:21]So anyway, you can imagine he was in a pretty bad mood due to having been fired.

[00:20:30]I'm not sure if he ever told Stephanie that he was fired, but you know, you can imagine he was uh you know, not happy.

[00:20:38]Now, the next night on October 30th, Stephanie's mother, Charlene, got tickets for herself and her four daughters to go see a psychic medium show at the Stress Factory Comedy Club in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was going to be like a fun girls night out.

[00:21:03]And it was. They literally said it was high energy and exciting. Stephanie appeared to be in a good mood and she enjoyed spending quality time with her sisters and her mother. Like it was everyone had a really amazing time together.

[00:21:22]One of her sisters wound up getting a reading and the psychic told her that she was going to experience heartbreak, which is kind of vague and they can't say that to anyone, let's be real. But she later felt that it was a very ominous prediction.

[00:21:42]So when it was over, the family drove back to the parents house in one car and it was around 10:30 when Stephanie kissed her mother good night and she left to drive the seven miles back to her place.

[00:22:02]while she was driving or maybe at a red light. I don't wouldn't say it was while she was driving, but she sent a Snapchat photo of herself to her family showing that she was on her way home.

[00:22:16]And her parents did hope to hear from her when she actually got home, but they didn't.

[00:22:25]And they tried to call or text her to see if she made it. and they didn't hear back, but they felt that she probably had a ringer off, you know, from having been at the the show earlier that night.

[00:22:38]She maybe turned it off and didn't put it back on. So, they didn't freak out or anything. They went to bed.

[00:22:47]But the next morning, they still couldn't get a hold of her.

[00:22:52]So, they decided to drive over to her place.

[00:22:56]And when they got there, they saw her car was parked outside the house.

[00:23:03]So they thought, "Oh, that's a good sign. All right, she's home. She must have overslept or something."

[00:23:10]But then they found that the front door was not locked.

[00:23:15]Her shoes and her coat were there, but she wasn't.

[00:23:20]They found her phone by like texting it or pinging it and it was like buried in the sofa for some reason. So, she was not there, but her car was there, her phone, her shoes, her jacket.

[00:23:37]And it was it was actually October 31st at this time. So, it was Halloween now.

[00:23:42]It's cold weather. Where was she going without her jacket and shoes and, you know, her phone?

[00:23:50]and car. It didn't add up. And her dog was locked in the bathroom. Like, she wouldn't have left her dog locked in the bathroom.

[00:24:03]So, they got very nervous, but you know, they didn't go completely nuts right away. They decided, you know, let's call around to all her friends. You know, let's see if anyone knows anything.

[00:24:17]But by the end of the day, after coming up with nothing, her mother called the police to make a report. I should also mention that she hadn't shown up at her nanny job. Like, they noticed that first thing when they got to her place that morning, they looked at her phone and there was a message. like they couldn't get into her phone, but the message was right on the home screen that you know the nanny person was looking for her like where are you? That was not normal for her to not show up at her nanny job.

[00:24:53]So anyway, as I was saying, her mother called the police to report her missing.

[00:25:00]It was 8:30 p.m. at that time and they immediately launched a highly aggressive missing person's investigation.

[00:25:10]Within the first 12 hours, they tracked down John Ozilen. And of course, he denied having anything to do with her disappearance.

[00:25:24]But the police immediately noticed a distinct scratch mark around his neck.

[00:25:31]Now, he said that he had been with her.

[00:25:35]He had stayed over at her place the night before and the next morning.

[00:25:41]She was running late for work and he left the place while she was still there. That's what he said. Okay.

[00:25:50]But he doesn't know what happened to her after that.

[00:25:55]So anyway, during the initial interview, police reviewed John's phone and they uncovered that he had bombarded Stephanie with 10 furious profanity laced text messages and Facebook communications within a 9inut span on the night that she vanished. In those texts, he had aggressively blamed her for the end of their relationship.

[00:26:27]And he included aggressive character attacks and slurs in these messages. And Stephanie had not responded to a single one of them, which was a major trigger for him. Like, if you don't answer his texts, he is not happy. Okay.

[00:26:49]So he was not arrested that day, but the police confiscated his phone and his vehicle to check for evidence.

[00:27:01]Immediately after his interaction with the police, he frantically contacted an ex-girlfriend and he warned her that, quote, "The cops were going to be contacting her."

[00:27:16]and he instructed her not to say anything bad about him.

[00:27:23]But she was no fool. So she right away called the police and she told them what he had said and she said if Stephanie was missing then John had probably killed her.

[00:27:38]So anyway, the police from both New York and New Jersey launched massive ground and air searches in Staten Island.

[00:27:49]They focused heavily on a wooded tract near Long Bond Park and the Richmond Valley area because John's phone had pinged with unusual activity there on the night when Stephanie disappeared.

[00:28:05]A few days later, dozens of law enforcement officers returned to the Staten Island marshlands with NYPD K9 units and helicopters to comb through the dense brush.

[00:28:20]They didn't find anything, though.

[00:28:23]And at the same time, police executed more than 50 search warrants across 10 locations, including multiple searches of John's home, which was his parents' home, which is where he lived.

[00:28:40]Stephanie's father, Ed, actively organized and led massive volunteer search parties to ensure that no stone was left unturned closer to home. Now, he got a lot of these volunteers through her social media. Like, he wrote on her social media platform what was going on.

[00:28:59]And people came out to help.

[00:29:02]More than 200 volunteers, some traveling from as far as Florida and Baltimore, came to help. They all put on white t-shirts with Stephanie's face on them, and they formed tightly spaced human grids to canvas the rugged woods and softball fields surrounding Michael J.

[00:29:27]Teague Park and Georgia Road in Freehold.

[00:29:32]But no sign of Stephanie was found during any of the searches.

[00:29:40]her father was both happy and upset by not finding anything. You know, each time they thought they might have found something, they would be horrified. They would then they would realize it wasn't her and then they would be relieved. But yet they were getting no information, no closure, no nothing.

[00:30:01]So anyway, on November 8th, 2018, John was arrested, but not for anything to do with Stephanie. Instead, it was due to the fact that when they seized his phone, they found 10 images of child pornography on it.

[00:30:28]He was charged with one count of thirdderee endangering the welfare of a child.

[00:30:36]During his detention hearings, prosecutors officially named him as a person of interest in Stephanie's disappearance, and they argued fiercely to keep him in jail.

[00:30:52]But despite the prosecution's warnings and a history of domestic abuse allegations from multiple women, the judge ruled that a single child pornography charge was not legally sufficient to detain him indefinitely before trial.

[00:31:14]So the next day on November 19th, he was released on monitored supervision. He was ordered to live with his parents, banned from using the internet, and forced to hand over his passport. I'm going to stop here and give a trigger warning for suicide. And if you are sensitive to that, then I will leave a timestamp as to when you should skip ahead to.

[00:31:45]All right. So 3 days after being released from jail on November 22nd, 29year-old John Oz Bilgen was found dead by suicide hanging in the garage of his parents' home.

[00:32:07]He left two handwritten notes. One was to his family and it said, "Dear mom, dad, S, Sammy, sorry about all this craziness. I've been miserable for so long now. I had enough.

[00:32:26]Thanks for everything. I can't do life in prison." Most of the stuff you will hear is true except the child born. I would never do that.

[00:32:38]use the pics with me and blank for the funeral. That was the only time in my life where I was truly happy.

[00:32:47]I want blank to help plan everything with you. Tell her I'm sorry and I love her. She was so good to me. We had an amazing life. I effed it up.

[00:33:00]She only did good for me. I dug myself in a deep hole. This is the only choice.

[00:33:06]I love you guys.

[00:33:09]He left a second note for his exgirlfriend and it said, "Dear blank and Bentley, I don't know who Bentley is. Maybe it's the woman's dog or her child.

[00:33:24]I love you so much, little lady. I miss you so much. I don't know what I was thinking when I blanked our relationship up. You were the best thing that happened to me. I tried to move on many times. I will never feel for another lady the way I feel for you.

[00:33:46]Recently, I tried to reach out to you.

[00:33:48]You got a restraining order. Why?

[00:33:53]At that moment, I felt like my entire world ended. I really needed you in a huge way. Look at the mess I created.

[00:34:03]Lol.

[00:34:05]Don't believe everything in the news. I hope you're doing well. I hope you have an amazing life. You deserve it. Not a day goes by where I don't think about you and Ben. The girl in the news with me was such a piece of blank. She hurt me over and over when I was already at my lowest. She was a horrible person.

[00:34:31]Please help my parents with my funeral.

[00:34:34]You're the only person I have ever loved.

[00:34:37]Sorry for everything. I wish I could go back in time and correct my mistakes, but I can't. So, while the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office viewed this note as a full confession, John's parents strongly rejected the prosecutor's interpretation of the note and fiercely maintained that their son was innocent of Stephanie Bars's disappearance and murder.

[00:35:09]through their defense attorney. They publicly argued that the note contained no outright admission of guilt regarding bars.

[00:35:21]They insisted that the phrase quote everything you hear in the news is true and quote was highly ambiguous and was not a confession to homicide.

[00:35:34]They believed that the lying simply meant that he made a mess of his life, not that he had killed anyone.

[00:35:44]In an official statement, his parents declared that the intense, relentless pressure from law enforcement is what drove their son to suicide. They stated, quote, "We believe he is innocent, but all the pressure from the false child pornography charges and the constant searches and relentlessness caused him to take his own life." End quote. His father openly attacked law enforcement in media statements, pointing directly at investigators and stating, quote, "You guys are the murderers." End quote.

[00:36:30]He claimed that prosecutors had lied through their teeth to frame his son.

[00:36:37]And he went on to explain away the 10 expletive laden texts that John sent to Stephanie the night she disappeared as standard domestic arguments rather than evidence of a crime.

[00:36:55]The Obilgian family released a brief statement through their lawyer expressing condolences to Stephanie's parents, stating that they hoped that the parses could find peace through the nightmare.

[00:37:13]on January 26th of 2020 after Stephanie had been missing for 87 days. Her remains were found in a heavily wooded area off Route 9 South, just south of Old Mill Road in Oldbridge, New Jersey. Her remains were accidentally discovered by two teenage boys who were walking along the shoulder of Route 9.

[00:37:44]She was found in a patch of woods roughly 20 minutes away from her home.

[00:37:51]Volunteer search teams and law enforcement had previously combed through that area, but her body was hidden deep enough within the brush to have been missed during earlier sweeps.

[00:38:09]The results of her autopsy were never made public.

[00:38:14]It has been surmised though that on the night of October 30th, 2019, John Obilgen, furious that Stephanie had not answered his texts, was either waiting for her or arrived shortly at her home after she got there.

[00:38:37]It is believed that he violently ambushed her, possibly choking her to death, then transporting her body in his car.

[00:38:48]He pulled over onto the shoulder of the busy highway.

[00:38:52]In the middle of the night, hastily lifted her body out, and dropped her directly over the guard rail into the thicket.

[00:39:05]Immediately following the positive identification, the prosecutor's office held a press conference, law enforcement announced that John Obilgen acted entirely alone in her murder.

[00:39:23]And because he had died, criminal charges could not be filed. But the homicide investigation was officially closed.

[00:39:34]after the murder of their daughter Ed and Sherry Bars created the Stephanie Nicole Bars Foundation in 2020.

[00:39:46]This foundation aims to bridge critical gaps in services by providing education, intervention, and support for families and individuals dealing with domestic violence essay and missing loved ones.

[00:40:09]And that is the case.

[00:40:13]What are your thoughts?

[00:40:15]I will share some of mine.

[00:40:20]First of all, rest in peace to Stephanie Bars.

[00:40:27]She was only 25 years old and she had such a promising future ahead of her.

[00:40:36]There were so many people in her life who loved her and my heart goes out to each and every one of them for this terrible tragic loss.

[00:40:52]What can be said about John?

[00:40:57]Unlike his parents, I do believe that his note was a confession of sorts, but not a very good confession because even after her death, he was still bad mouthing her.

[00:41:19]I think that it is very tragic that his prior domestic violence charges never stuck.

[00:41:27]One woman dropped the charges because she feared for her safety and the other one had missed the court dates.

[00:41:38]I'm not going to blame them. I'm not going to judge them. I don't think that that's fair to do since I have never walked in their shoes.

[00:41:49]Plus, I do understand. I mean, look at what did happen.

[00:41:54]Stephanie was the only one who was truly pursuing the charges. She wasn't dropping the charges.

[00:42:03]And look how that ended up for her.

[00:42:07]She got killed because of it.

[00:42:13]Maybe if she had agreed to drop the charges, he would have left her alone and moved on to another woman.

[00:42:22]But would that have been a good thing either?

[00:42:25]In some ways, I guess you could say that Stephanie was a hero. She gave her life and now no other woman will ever be harmed by John again.

[00:42:40]So, I will leave it there.

[00:42:43]Thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:42:49]I hope you found it to be thoughtprovoking.

[00:42:55]I look forward to seeing you in the next video and I hope you have a wonderful day or night wherever you are.

[00:43:12]Bye-bye.

[00:44:15]Heat.

[00:44:29]Heat.