Dark Downeast

A young mother disappears just days before Christmas. More than a year later, another woman is murdered across state lines. The cases seem separate – different cities, different circumstances – but eventually they converge around the same teenage suspect. What follows is more complicated than a confession and a conviction. It’s a case shaped by questions of mental competency, juvenile justice, changing constitutional protections, and what happens when one act of violence forces investigators to reconsider others that never made sense.

Host Sean Kipe investigates the 2020 disappearance of 27-year-old Georgia mother Natalie Jones, who vanished after a July 4th lake party. Her car and remains were found 93 days later in a rural field, sparking questions of accident, suicide, or murder—especially since Natalie had begun publicly sharing allegations of past abuse. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

In August of 1972, 44-year-old Gloria Gough left her home in Gardiner, Maine after a late-night phone call and vanished. Two days later, more than a thousand miles away in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, 52-year-old Evelyn “Penny” Deans was shot to death inside her home. Then police looked in Penny’s driveway. Sitting there was Gloria’s car. Inside were blood-soaked towels, clothing, and a map pointing toward yet another state. What followed was a multistate investigation, a murder case built largely on circumstantial evidence, and a second murder case that never reached trial – not because investigators walked away, but because the family asked for something different from the justice system.

On a morning when the country’s attention was fixed on unimaginable tragedy, a Rhode Island family was learning that someone they loved was gone. In the hours before Nicole Parsons-Bucki died, there had been violence, a police response, and a relationship already under strain, but 25 years later, no one has been charged. That could be because the deeper you look at Nicole’s case, the less simple it becomes: We’re dealing with an uncertain timeline, evidence that disappeared, unanswered questions about who was actually with her, and the possibility that what has seemed obvious for years may not tell the whole story. If you have any information about the murder of Nicole Parsons-Bucki, please contact investigators with the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office at 401-468-2233 or email riagcoldcase@riag.ri.gov.

On an ordinary winter night in 1981, danger was moving through the Bangor, Maine area in three different directions at once. A barroom dispute was followed by a deadly blaze. A drug sting was underway at a nearby apartment complex. And a few miles away, a lakeside cabin would be reduced to smoldering rubble before sunrise. None of those events appeared connected as they unfolded. But the first fire would pull investigators away from the second, some of the names in the sting later surfaced in the cabin arson, and before anyone knew what – or rather, who – was lying in the ruins, the course of a homicide case had already irrevocably changed. If you have information about Michael Cochran’s death or the fire at the cabin, contact the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit - North at 207-973-3750 or toll-free at 1-800-432-7381. Anonymous tips can also be submitted by texting MESPTIP, followed by your information, to 847411.

In a small New England city, a teenager disappeared after a night in the woods, and almost immediately, the story of what happened fractured. The last people known to be with her gave conflicting accounts. Her family believed the investigation lost precious time. As the years passed, searches kept returning to the same narrow stretch of land, the same handful of names, and the same possibility that someone had been carrying the truth all along. After decades of searches, whispers and shifting loyalties, someone still knows where to find her. And it’s time to speak up. If you have information relating to the disappearance of Melanie Melanson, please contact Detective Mark Roffi at the Woburn Police Department at 781-933-1212, extension 4547. You can also email policeinfo@woburnpd.com. The Middlesex District Attorney’s Cold Case Unit can be reached at 781-897-6600. Melanie’s family has created a fully anonymous online tip portal at melaniemelanson.com.

There are cases that frustrate you because the evidence is thin. And then there are cases where the warning signs seem to be everywhere, but the system still can’t quite turn suspicion into action. A woman leaves home for a few quiet days away. Weeks later, police find her car in the woods and the man last seen with her is carrying her gun and giving away her personal belongings. Investigators see the pattern. Her family sees the danger. But seeing it and proving it are not the same thing. As the years pass, the same questions begin following the same man across state lines as he leaves more violence in his wake.

Some people disappear from a place you can picture right away: a house, a road, a parking lot, a stretch of woods. But in the case of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr., he seems to vanish somewhere between the parts of his life that made sense on paper. He had an office in New York, a home in Connecticut, a train he took like clockwork, and people waiting for him on both ends of the day. When he did not arrive where he was expected, the questions began almost immediately. Did he ever leave the city? Did he make it onto the train? Did he get off before anyone realized something had gone wrong? And if he did, who was waiting on the other side? If you have any information about the disappearance of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr., or if you knew Edward, Michael Doran, or anyone connected to them, please contact the Newtown Police Department at 203-426-5841. You can also call Newtown PD’s anonymous hotline for wanted and missing persons at 203-270-8888. Edward’s case number with Newtown Police is N-928-81.

Sometimes, on an island, the only witness is the water. In January of 1980, a brilliant Columbia doctor went to her home on Nantucket’s remote east end carrying the weight of a life’s work, a possible medical breakthrough, and a kind of urgency the people around her struggled to understand. By the next morning, she was gone. No ferry record. No plane tickets. No clear path away from the house. Just a trail of clues that seemed to point in every direction except the answer.

When someone has been missing for more than thirteen years, it can start to feel from the outside like the story has stopped moving. Like whatever answers existed back then are either gone now or buried too deep to reach. But for Ryan Blagojevic’s family, time has not softened the urgency. His sister Eve is still living inside the search for her brother, still turning over every possibility, still hoping that one piece of information could finally bring Ryan home. Ryan was last seen in Portland, Maine on March 31, 2013, after he was asked to leave a shelter. At the time, he was vulnerable. He was experiencing homelessness, struggling with substance use disorder, and moving through a world where people in crisis are too often overlooked. But Ryan was never invisible to the people who loved him. He was a son, a brother, a father, a craftsman, a musician, and a person whose life mattered long before he became the subject of a missing persons case. Ryan’s case is not as stagnant as it might appear on the surface. Saying Ryan’s name again, right now, matters more than ever.

Victoria Cushman was just 29 years old when she was found murdered inside her Warwick, Rhode Island apartment, just steps from the sporting goods store where she worked. For years, her family waited for answers and eventually, the case seemed to have them: a suspect known to the case from day one, who investigators said had motive to end Vickie’s life. The evidence was circumstantial, but it was compelling. A secret relationship. Conflicting statements. A timeline that seemed to close in around one man. To a jury, the pieces fit. But fitting isn’t the same as true. Years later, the story everyone thought they trusted cracked wide open.

In the summer of 2018, Trish Haynes disappeared from New Hampshire. Or at least, that’s what the public knew. Investigators searched a rural property, then quietly recovered something from a nearby pond, but for months, they said almost nothing about what they had found or how it related to the missing persons case. Behind the scenes, Trish’s family was living with a very different reality. They had spent months trying to reach her, hearing shifting explanations about where she was and why she couldn’t come to the phone. Then they learned a truth they were told not to share. Years later, the questions around Trish’s case still keep circling the same small group of people and places, and the same frustration from a family that believes this case is not without answers… It is without accountability.

In 2016, the disappearance of Valerie Tieman became one of the most talked-about cases in Maine in the last decade. At first, there was room for hope, and maybe even a version of the story where Valerie had simply walked away from a life that had become too painful. Her husband, Luc Tieman, was a wounded military veteran, a man whose service and struggles shaped how people first understood him. But as investigators followed the trail from a parking lot to a wooded property in central Maine, the story Luc told evolved. Each new version raised a darker question: what happened to Valerie, and why were the people who loved her the last to know she was gone?

On a Friday afternoon in July of 1991, Martha Brailsford told friends she was going sailing. In coastal Massachusetts at what is often the peak of summer heat and humidity, that wasn’t unusual. Martha knew the water, and in Salem Willows, boats were part of the everyday landscape. There was no reason to think a simple afternoon sail would become anything else. But when Martha didn’t come home that night, the search for her would expose a man whose stories kept changing, a familiar coastline that suddenly felt unknowable, and a truth hidden somewhere beyond the shoreline.

Estella Brantley’s murder should have been urgent from the beginning. She was found in one of Bridgeport’s most visible public places, around witnesses who may have heard her final moments, with evidence that would one day matter more than anyone could have known when it was first collected. But for years, Estella’s case stayed unresolved, folded into a larger city-wide pattern of deadly attacks on women and families left wondering whether anyone was really fighting for them. Then, decades later, science brought the case back to life. But Estella’s family was still left asking whether DNA told the whole story.

Sometimes, a case can have evidence, a suspect, and a theory investigators believe explains what happened yet a family is still left without the ending they waited decades to hear. Grief and justice don’t always move at the same pace. Grief looks for truth, meaning, and someone to answer for what was taken. The justice system looks for proof, and proof has to survive questions, strategy, doubt, and twelve separate minds in a jury room. This is a case about a woman killed inside the place where she should have been safest, a family fractured by loss and suspicion, and what happens when an answer feels clear to the people who loved her, but the verdict says something else.

On a summer weekend in 1982, Barre, Vermont was crowded with music, traffic, and thousands of people moving through town for an annual festival. Somewhere in that noise, an 18-year-old woman disappeared. In the days that followed, investigators tried to make sense of what little they had: fragments of sightings, possible suspects, conflicting leads, and tests that seemed to narrow the field. But the case did not move cleanly from suspicion to arrest. Decades later, the same investigation that was first shaped by uncertainty was reopened by science. And this time, the evidence pointed back to someone investigators had once left behind.

For nearly 40 years, Kathleen Flynn’s murder has haunted Norwalk, Connecticut. She was 11 years old, newly in middle school, walking home on a familiar path when she was attacked and killed. Her case became one of the state’s most well-known cold cases, the kind people never stopped talking about, and the kind investigators kept returning to as forensic science moved forward. In 2019, after decades of waiting, police finally made an arrest. And in 2026, it looked like Kathy’s family might finally see the case reach a verdict. But then, just days into trial, a single email threatened to undo that long-awaited progress. Now, the question is no longer just what happened to Kathy, but what happens next.

One spring evening in 1987, a college student got into a green car in Plymouth, New Hampshire and vanished. His friends believed he was coming back. His family knew he would have called if he’d left on his own. But he was gone, and the man believed to be with him on the night he disappeared had a long history of run-ins with the law. What started as a missing persons investigation soon stretched across state lines, into jail breaks, forged identities, strange searches in the Vermont woods, and disturbing yet inconclusive physical evidence. Police identified one suspect at the time. The missing man’s family believes they know what happened. But nearly four decades later, no one has ever been charged.

In February 2008, six women were held hostage in a women’s clothing store in Tinley Park, Illinois.. Rhoda McFarland, Carrie Hudek Chiuso, Connie Woolfolk, Sarah Szafranski, and Jennifer Bishop were executed and the killer escaped leaving only one survivor. In Season 8 of CounterClock, host and investigative journalist Delia D’Ambra covers the Lane Bryant Murders and goes further into the case than any journalist has before. Through firsthand accounts and thousands of documents, Delia reconstructs what happened inside the store, why it may have happened, and who may have been responsible. For nearly twenty years, their families have lived without answers. This season, the search continues.

For more than 30 years, Pam Williams believed she knew how her brother died. She was told it was a medical event. The kind of tragedy no one could have stopped. She carried that explanation with her as she tried to rebuild her life around it. But sometimes the truth doesn’t disappear. It just waits. In 2016, a stranger showed up with questions about what really happened inside a school in rural Maine. A place that promised help, structure, and change for struggling teenagers. What followed would force Pam to confront a different version of her brother’s final days – one built on conflicting memories, unanswered questions, and the possibility that what she’d been told all those years ago wasn’t the full story.

Some cases appear straightforward at first glance. A late-night crash on a quiet road, a damaged car, and a victim who doesn’t survive. It is the kind of situation people think they understand, and the kind that often gets explained quickly and filed away just as fast. But sometimes, there are details that do not quite fit. They can be easy to overlook in the moment. A position that does not make sense. Damage that does not match the outcome. A version of events that works on paper but feels incomplete when examined more closely. In 1977, that is exactly what happened in Middletown, Rhode Island. For years, what followed was accepted as a tragic accident. Until it wasn’t.

It started like so many Saturday nights at Mountain Park – music, crowded dance floors, and teenagers trying to stretch the night a little longer before heading home. But sometime before midnight on October 5th, 1968, a teenager stepped out of that crowd and into the dark, beginning a walk she would never finish. In the days after she disappeared, there were delays, missed opportunities, and details that didn’t always line up. Some witnesses came forward, while others stayed quiet, and critical information surfaced only long after it might have made a difference. This case has been stagnant for far too long…And it’s time that changes.

Regina Brown disappeared under troubling circumstances in April of 1987. She was a former flight attendant, a devoted mother of three young children, and a woman whose life had become increasingly defined by fear, control, and violence inside her marriage. Almost four decades later, Regina has never been found. Her story begins in a close-knit Texas community and follows a whirlwind romance that led her far from home. But behind the scenes, that relationship began to unravel – marked by accusations, intimidation, and escalating threats. In the days before she vanished, Regina confided to someone close to her that she feared for her life. Then she was gone. When this episode was first released in 2024, Regina’s husband at the time of her disappearance was still alive but Willis Brown Jr. has since died. If anyone has been keeping his secrets, let this be your sign to come forward.

On a Saturday night in late June of 1986, a 20-year-old college student went out with friends in a familiar place, celebrating her softball team’s big win. But in a narrow window of opportunity just after she was dropped off in the shadows outside her apartment building, the young woman faced an evil that managed to stay hidden in those same shadows for decades. Investigators searched for connections…People who knew her, places she had been, anything that might explain her senseless death. But nothing fit. Leads faded. The case stalled. And over time, it slipped into that uncertain space between open and unsolved. For decades, the answer remained just out of reach until advances in science, and a single piece of preserved evidence, began to tell a different story.

In the fall of 1976, a woman vanished from her home in rural Vermont sometime between a cup of morning coffee and the end of an ordinary workday. What followed was years of suspicion, rumor, and silence until a witness with questionable credibility stepped forward. Laurie Gonyo’s case has an ending but not the kind of clean resolution people imagine when they hear the word solved. This is a story about what happens when justice feels incomplete, when a sentence seems too small for the violence at the center of it, and when the killer in one case leaves a trail of suspicion wherever he goes.

Fifty years after James Cassidy’s death, there is still no simple explanation for his brutal murder. The evidence left behind in the Maine woods raised questions investigators have never fully answered. And the deeper the investigation went, the more complicated the picture became. A respected bank executive had vanished, federal authorities were preparing to arrest him, and a burned car was found far from home on a deserted logging road. But the paper trail and the witness accounts pointed in several directions at once – toward financial crimes, toward organized crime figures operating in New England, and toward the surprisingly valuable world of rare stamps. Somewhere among those threads may lie the explanation for what really happened all those years ago in April of 1976.

In April of 1976, an anonymous call to a sheriff’s department in Maine alerted investigators to something almost impossible to imagine: a burning station wagon hidden off a remote road, and what looked like a body inside. What they found would open a case filled with contradictions. The victim was James Cassidy, a Massachusetts bank vice president, father of three, churchgoing family man, and by all accounts someone living a quiet, ordinary life. But in the days before his death, Jim had vanished across state lines, federal authorities were preparing to arrest him on embezzlement charges, and whispers of missing money, valuable stamps, and possible organized crime connections began to surface. Nearly fifty years later, his death remains unsolved.

On a fall morning in 1988, police in Nashua, New Hampshire walked into an apartment and found two women murdered in their bed. What followed seemed, at first, like a case that would never truly reach an ending. There were suspects, confessions, trials, and years of legal battles but no final resolution. For decades, the killings of Charlene Ranstrom and Brenda Warner lingered in the background, a file sitting quietly among other unsolved cases. But some investigations refuse to stay buried. Years later, new detectives took another look. With fresh eyes, new witnesses, and forensic technology that hadn’t existed when the crime was first investigated, the story began to change.

On a rainy night in late May 1989, a fire was spotted in a Westport, Connecticut parking lot. Within minutes, first responders realized the impossible: a body was burning in the open. Not long after and just a few miles away, a husband called police to report his wife missing. Her name was Joan Wertkin. From the outside, she was living an enviable life in one of Connecticut’s most idyllic towns. But as investigators traced her final hours, the case turned into something far more complicated – a tight timeline, a fraying relationship, a car left where it shouldn’t have been, and questions that still echo for her family.

On an August evening in 1982, children playing in Boston’s Franklin Park stumbled onto a scene that would quietly become one of the city’s most troubling unsolved cases. The victim was a 16-year-old girl who had already endured instability, displacement, and independence far beyond her years. Her murder received little attention at the time, but within months, rumors began to swirl: allegations of sexual assault inside a private police club, whispers of a cover-up, and a detective who refused to back down.

On a quiet Saturday night in 1931, a 19-year-old cattle dealer sat at his desk to write a check that he never got the chance to finish signing. Investigators were left with more questions than answers – a missing revolver, a name on a check no one could trace, and a household already tangled in rumor and tension. What followed was a shifting investigation, a contested admission, and a trial that forced a small New England city to confront issues of race, reputation, and reasonable doubt.

Before she vanished, April Grisanti was a young woman trying to find her footing. Then, over the course of one winter night in 1985, she disappeared in plain sight. Witnesses saw her struggle. Police heard her voice asking for help. And yet, April was never seen again. What followed has never felt like justice. No murder charge. No body. No answers. This is a story about incomplete justice, and about a family left carrying questions the investigation has never fully resolved. Over four decades later, the question still hangs in the air. Where is she?

In November of 1979, a man was found beaten to death along a quiet trail in a New Hampshire college town. Within a day, police had a suspect, but the case was hardly open and shut. The college student convicted of the murder – and the family who stood by him – were prepared to spend a lifetime fighting to prove his innocence. They believed the investigation narrowed too quickly, that key questions went unanswered, and that the truth had yet to fully surface. But before the courts could decide what came next, the Atlantic Ocean wrote the final chapter of this story.

For more than forty years, Debra Stone’s murder lingered in the uneasy space between knowing and proving. An informant came forward early on with a story that, in hindsight, mapped almost every detail of what happened to her, yet the case drifted through the decades, weighed down by doubt, fear, and a single failed polygraph that stalled momentum. When investigators finally reopened the file in the 21st century, it wasn’t modern DNA science that brought clarity. The evidence had already been there. What the case needed was the will to look again and confront the truth that should have been acted on long ago.

In December of 2024, I shared an episode about a 24-year-old musician whose life was cut short in New Haven, Connecticut in 1990. More than three decades later, the murder of John Evers Robinson remains unsolved and the questions surrounding what happened to him have only grown more complicated with time. I’m bringing this story back because it needs your attention and action in a new way. Here’s John’s sister, Jocelyn Jackson. “It’s been 35 years since a family member picked me up from high school and told me as we drove to the airport that my brother John was dead. I immediately went silent and started crying. When we got to the airport, it was to hug my mom through tears before she got on a plane to fly to New Haven. All I could think was that my big brother wasn’t in the world anymore. That moment left an indelible mark on my perception of the world. That moment was the beginning of my instinct to never stop seeking for justice, to never let the people who did this think they got away with murder. Those feelings I felt on that day with my family are the eternal repository of energy that I pull from each year as I continue to invite accountability for my brother's brutal unsolved murder. Unfortunately, a lot of families know this feeling. The feeling of decades passing, sometimes even knowing who’s responsible, but never enough evidence to get resolution. Every year I actively continue the momentum of his case by sharing his story in a new way. This year it’s by starting a petition on change.org to increase the reward money for new leads from witnesses. We know a lot of time has passed, but over the last few years as we’ve talked to John’s friends and visited New Haven, we have experienced how fresh people’s memories are still of John, and of the time that he went missing, and then was found dead. We believe that there are people out there who know more and can share more than they ever have before. Please come forward and share what you know. The smallest detail combined with other new leads can be what either links all the other information together or alternatively, finally destabilizes the code of silence amongst the co-conspirators that’s been kept for all these years. Thank you for taking the time to sign this petition. Thank you for helping us keep the momentum strong. It’s heartbreaking to think how much more harm has been caused in these last 35 years by the same people who killed my brother. We believe my brother knew his killers. We finally want to know them, too.”

When Mark Knapp’s routine commute home from work one February night in 1984 ended with his car abandoned and his body at the bottom of an old marble quarry, the shock rippled far beyond one family. What followed was not a straight line from crime to justice. Suspects were quickly identified and charged in connection with Mark’s death, but shifting narratives and fragile witnesses fractured the entire foundation of the case just as the truth came into view.

Cam Lyman vanished in the summer of 1987, leaving behind a forty-acre estate, dozens of prizewinning dogs, and a silence that would stretch on for more than a decade. Friends and family disagreed on whether Cam had walked away or been taken or worse. Meanwhile, millions of dollars in trusts and assets seemed to evaporate. When Cam was finally found, hidden beneath the very ground no one had searched, the mystery didn’t end. It compounded. While police spoke in hints about suspects, the only charge ever filed had nothing to do with murder. In this case, every lead seems to circle back to the same question: if you follow the money, will it reveal what happened to Cam, or just uncover another carefully buried secret?

17-year-old Brandi “Amy” Sullivan was used to coming and going. She was restless, independent, and always in motion. So when she didn’t come home in the summer of 1996, her family tried not to panic. But this time was different. Weeks later, Amy was found dead in the woods behind a warehouse in suburban Massachusetts. What followed was an investigation plagued by missing time, withheld details, and a crucial lie that shifted the timeline of her final days. There were people who saw Amy after she was reported missing. People who didn’t come forward. Why? Nearly three decades later, no one has been held accountable for Amy’s murder. It’s time for that to change.

Every now and then I uncover a case buried deep in the archives with circumstances that prove truth is stranger than fiction. This story is one of them. When a prominent Bridgeport, Connecticut woman failed to show up for lunch with a friend, it led to a devastating discovery in her overflowing home that had become a sort of treasure trove of local history. The investigation stalled until months later when some of the woman’s treasures started showing up around town. With a suspect identified, the case was nearly closed until the accused killer quite literally slipped through investigators’ hands in one of the most bizarre escapes I’ve ever encountered.

In late summer of 1990, a mother in central Maine seemed to slip quietly out of her own life. Shirley McAvoy had been navigating a painful separation, leaning on friends and trying to rebuild a sense of normalcy. Then, shortly before a scheduled court date related to her pending divorce, she simply disappeared. Days turned into weeks, and small, unsettling details began to surface—things that didn’t fit with the idea of someone who’d chosen to leave. What started as a missing persons case slowly transformed into something far more disturbing, stretching well beyond the quiet town where Shirley was last seen. More than 35 years later, investigators are still trying to identify a mystery man believed to know exactly what happened to Shirley. This is a story about a young woman whose life was brutally taken and the decades that followed as investigators, family members, and forensic experts worked to overcome outdated science and finally confirm what so many had suspected all along.

More than a century ago during the winter of 1923, a quiet Christmas in East Hartford, Connecticut took a devastating turn that would echo far beyond that holiday. Mrs. Mary Monsell never arrived for the dinner she’d been warmly invited to, and within hours, her home became the center of a crime that would send police searching for a suspect who vanished into the world and never returned. Mary’s name rarely appears in headlines now. Her story has nearly slipped beneath the weight of time. But history leaves clues if you’re willing to look, and some stories are worth digging up again.

Some cases linger for years not because the truth is hidden, but because the tools needed to prove it aren’t yet strong enough. Evidence waits on shelves, memories shift, and flawed forensic science can steer an investigation away from the person who seemed suspect from the start. This is one of those cases.

On a winter night in early February of 1992, John E. Volungis Jr. was standing on the edge of a brand-new life. After years of working toward a career in law enforcement, John was about to take off for his next step in that pursuit. It was supposed to be a fresh start after navigating a complicated past and an equally complicated marriage. But before he could take that next step, something happened inside the Worcester duplex he shared with his wife. Something no one has ever fully explained.

It was early January in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, when a discovery in a quiet stretch of woods changed a family forever. A young woman had crossed paths with a violent killer close to home. The investigation led to a swift arrest and a conviction that should’ve brought some measure of justice and safety, but what came next defied reason. The man convicted of her murder was given chance after chance to walk free – opportunities that no one could ever justify to the people who loved her. Each time he reentered the world, he proved exactly who he was.

November 26th marks three years since Reina Carolina Morales Rojas disappeared after getting into a car in East Boston, Massachusetts. She was later dropped off in nearby Somerville and that was the last time anyone saw or heard from her. Despite being reported missing soon after, information about her disappearance didn’t reach the public for nearly two months. It was only after community advocates spoke out that her story began to get the attention it deserved. Today, Reina Carolina Morales Rojas is still missing. There have been no new developments in her case, and her family – who once spoke to her every day – continue to wait and hope for answers. As we mark the anniversary of her disappearance, we’re re-releasing this episode to renew attention on her story, to keep her name in the public eye, and to remind listeners that she is still out there somewhere.

One ordinary day during August of 1983, in a quiet patch of parkland just off the road in Penacook, New Hampshire, a teenager found something that didn’t belong. What followed rippled through the small community for years. Interviews, rumors, and timelines never quite fit together. Voices clashed over what was seen, what was said, and what couldn’t be proved at all. This is a story about how quickly attention can settle on one person, and how hard it can be to find the truth once it does.

In the spring of 2017, the phone calls came almost every day. Tina Stadig always stayed in touch with her twin sister, no matter where life had taken her. The last time they spoke, Tina talked about what was next in her life. She mentioned finding a new place to land, possibly with her sister, like old times. They never made a plan. And then, one day, the calls stopped. Days passed. Then weeks. And the silence that followed was louder than any conversation they’d ever had. It would take months before anyone realized just how long Tina had been gone… and by then, the search for answers had already become something much more complicated.

In late July 2004, 20-year-old Christina Lunceford walked into her parents’ home beaming with excitement. She had just signed the lease on a new apartment with her boyfriend and was ready to begin a new chapter of her life. But only days later, Chrissy disappeared from that apartment, and the stories her family heard still don’t make sense to them more than 20 years later. Chrissy’s name and face may have faded from public view over the last two decades, but never from her mother’s heart. Using nearly 250 pages of case file documents, we’re going to retrace Chrissy’s final days, the investigation that followed her disappearance in one state and discovery in another, and the questions that still hang in the air…Questions about what really happened to Chrissy, and who may hold the answers.

The murder of Eugenio DeLeon Vega marked the beginning of a three-decade legal odyssey that exposed flaws in Connecticut’s criminal justice system and raised enduring questions about who really killed the popular grocer. Police initially suspected robbery as the motive and two suspects were arrested, charged, and convicted based on the state’s highly circumstantial case against them despite the glaring inconsistencies at the scene and witnesses who couldn’t stick to their story. This case still has not seen a true ending and it continues to develop as we speak.

On a winter night in 1981, a teenager stepped out of his Essex Junction home and never returned. His disappearance unsettled the quiet Vermont town, leaving his family searching for answers that never came. Years later, a hunter in the woods made a discovery that would finally explain what happened to the missing teen, but not why. Whispers of a stolen check, shifting stories, and a courtroom battle followed, yet the truth is still tangled even to this day. This is the story of a teenager whose life ended far too soon, a family’s years-long fight for justice, and a case that still raises questions about trust, betrayal, and the limits of the system meant to deliver answers.

It should have been a routine school night in Somerville, Massachusetts for 17-year-old Deanna Cremin. Homework, TV, and a walk home with her boyfriend before curfew. But by morning, Deanna was gone. Her body was discovered just a few hundred feet from where she was last seen. The community was stunned: who could do this, and why? For three decades, Deanna’s friends and family have waited for answers, holding onto hope as forensic science evolves. DNA and forensic genetic genealogy is now at the center of the conversation. Could the key to solving this case be hidden in a decades-old sample, waiting for the right technology or the right name to match?

After spending an early Friday evening hunting in the woods behind his home in Vermont, Wilfred “Butch” King III left his home on two crutches, driving off into the fall night never to be seen alive again.  Despite years of investigation, what happened on the night of October 24, 1980 remains a mystery. There are many people, from investigators to family, who say they have strong theories about who is behind Butch’s disappearance, yet decades later, police have never even been close to proving those theories right.

When two women known to spend time in Manchester, New Hampshire’s inner city both dropped out of contact with their families in the late 1990s, it wasn’t entirely out of character from the lives they once led. But for Mindy West’s father, who had watched her working to get her life back on track, he just knew that something was wrong. Rosalie Miller’s brother, too, worried as weeks passed without contact from his sister, despite her history of disappearing. The violent predator on the streets of Manchester and surrounding communities at the time of their murders has never been caught for what they did to Rosalie and Mindy. It’s possible there’s even more than one violent predator still at large, because there’s still no conclusive connection between their cases. Yet the similarities cannot be ignored.

Stefanie Damron’s parents say that their 13-year-old daughter walked out the door and into the woods one September afternoon in 2024, and she hasn’t been seen or heard from since. They have their own suspicions about what happened to her, but so far, a multi-agency effort hasn’t been able to prove what happened to Stefanie more than a year later. Active missing persons cases are some of the most challenging cases to cover. At the same time, active missing persons cases, especially when a child is missing under suspicious or concerning circumstances, are the cases that need the most urgent attention. Uncovering information while leads are still warm is critical. That’s why I’m releasing two episodes today. These two missing persons cases out of Maine need a signal boost in a big way. So please, listen, share, and get their names and faces out there. Investigators need more information to bring them home.

In early 2023, pleas for help reached the small Aroostook County town of Washburn, Maine from across the world in Indonesia. Family members and friends of Attiin Rachmawati Shaw hadn’t heard from her in over a year and the stories they were told about her suspicious disappearance didn’t make any sense. If you look at your feed right now, you’ll see two episodes released on the same day. Both of the Maine missing persons cases I’m covering are in need of some major attention because the investigations are active and ongoing. Getting these names and photos circulating in the public could bring in the leads that investigators need to make progress.

Lena Bruce had a bright future ahead of her. She’d just graduated from a top university and landed a great job, and she was settling into a new apartment in the heart of Boston’s South End neighborhood, already living the life she’d worked for since she was a child. But one night in the summer of 1992, an assailant altered the course of Lena’s dreams and stole that bright future from her. That assailant thought he’d gotten away with it… But there’s no hiding from DNA evidence. It took more than two decades, but justice finally landed, and now there’s one less case left unsolved in New England.

When we first covered the case of Charline Rosemond on Dark Downeast back in January of 2025, her murder was still unsolved. But a few months after the release of the episode, that finally changed. A suspect has since been indicted. So, we’re rereleasing the original episode covering Charline’s case with a new ending and an interview with Charline’s sister Rose, who has been Charline’s fiercest advocate since day one. Rose has heard rumors about the suspect and his friend’s alleged involvement in Charline’s murder for years. She knows the suspect. They all grew up together. They were friends. At least, Charline thought so when she planned to meet up with them on the night her life was stolen. Now, one of those so-called friends is facing charges for her death.

From the moment investigators stepped foot into the home of Leslie and Charlie Buck in the spring of 2002 following a 9-1-1 call, there was something off about the circumstances of Leslie’s untimely death. Leslie had just survived a violent kidnapping two days earlier, and autopsy findings left the manner of her death anything but clear-cut. This episode is a continuation of Leslie’s story. Be sure to listen to The Kidnapping of Leslie Buck (Connecticut) first so you’re caught up on everything that’s happened so far. I’m going to take you through the suspicious death case and all of the evidence that amounted to probable cause for an arrest… As well as the bombshell report and supporting expert testimony that attributed Leslie’s death to something that had nothing to do with the prime suspect.

In the spring of 2002, several urgent 9-1-1 calls came into the Stonington, Connecticut, police department from the same caller just two days apart. First, there was a report of a violent kidnapping, and then, the untimely death of the very same victim. When investigators arrived at the scene of Leslie Buck’s suspicious death fresh off the arrest of the person who kidnapped her, the circumstances didn’t quite add up. In the days ahead, questions about what happened to Leslie would grow more complex and far more unsettling. What began as a shocking crime would soon spiral into a mystery with far more questions than answers.

When Michael Madore vanished almost 30 years ago, the first theories of his disappearance were pulled from letters found at his house: he was supposedly leaving behind his home and belongings and dogs to start a new life in Alaska. That’s the story police in Milo, Maine, first heard when Mike was reported missing. But now, without any sign of life for nearly three decades and no indication that Mike made it to the Last Frontier for a fresh start, his sister and brother-in-law want answers. They want the truth. More than anything, they want to bring Mike home where he can finally rest.

She was out on her usual Sunday night walk when an unknown killer pulled up and shot her, leaving her mortally wounded in the street of what locals considered a safe neighborhood. Why someone would target Denise Robert and take her life still doesn’t make any sense to her family and those who knew her best, even 10 years later. This case is not short on theories. Police have fielded questions about everything from a possible gang initiation to serial killers, but we still don’t know what really happened.

When Christine Grega and her husband, John Grega, set off for a family vacation to Vermont with their young son, it was a trip meant to mend their relationship. Instead, the weekend ended in devastation when Christine was found in their borrowed ski condo, the victim of a violent attack. After two decades filled with investigations, prosecutions, an exoneration, and lawsuits, it still isn’t clear what really happened on the night of September 12, 1994.

Almost 38 years later, the truth about what happened to Kara Laczynski and who is responsible for her death still has yet to be revealed. Two suspects were arrested and charged in the case, but after three trials with three separate juries and weeks upon weeks of testimony, no one has ever been convicted. Here’s what investigators thought—and tried to convince the jury—really happened, based on highly disputed evidence that stirred controversy even before it hit a courtroom. But with the case unsolved, what could be done today with contemporary forensics to figure out once and for all what happened on that October night in 1987?

Starlette Vining disappeared in 1998 and has never been found, yet 15 years after she was last seen in the small town of Presque Isle, Maine, a suspect was convicted of her murder. This is a wide-open look at how a cold missing persons case was successfully investigated and solved despite the fact that the victim’s remains were never recovered prior to trial, or ever. It’s a story about what it takes—and that it is fully possible—to bring a suspicious disappearance investigation to a close and get a violent, diabolical killer out of our communities, even when the only proof a murder occurred is the testimony of questionable witnesses, second-hand stories, and inconclusive physical evidence.

For almost three years, the case of Katharina Reitz Brow languished without information or evidence that could bring a true ending to the search for answers. And then when someone was finally arrested, charged, and convicted of her murder, a hard-fought battle by the suspect’s own sister unearthed evidence in a dusty courthouse basement that changed everything about the case nearly two decades later. Now, just this year, 2025, investigative genetic genealogy has identified the person that investigators believe is actually culpable for Katharina’s death.

For years, the murders of Rhonda Travers and Kathy Perry sat stagnant without any promise of justice, but when an informant surfaced with a story about a suspect who had never before been investigated, it changed everything. “There's always names that come up in every case,” Sgt. Pierce explained. “You know, look at this one, look at that one, whatever. There's always something, though, that just doesn't fit, you know? And these people get ruled out for whatever reason. They had alibis; they had this or what have you. In these two cases, once his name surfaced, everything fit, everything.” This is Part Two of a two-part series.

In a nine-month span between 1986 and 1987, two women were found brutally slain in the same Rhode Island city. Investigators believed that the first was abducted from the side of the road on her way home from work in the middle of the night, while the second appeared to get into an unknown vehicle voluntarily. Both were found a few miles away from the locations they were last seen alive, cruelly discarded in industrial areas. Decades later, thanks to creative contemporary investigative strategies led by a bullish cold case detective, the cases were reenergized, producing new leads, new evidence, and a new suspect who had been right under the noses of law enforcement all along.

Walter Page was a longtime member of the Freemasons in Manchester, New Hampshire. As treasurer of his local lodge, Walter had overseen the philanthropic efforts of their chapter for years, and he had also helped sort out the mess following more than one major financial theft. In the days before his death, Walter was on the verge of exposing yet another. Investigators have been exceptionally vocal about their views of what happened on that snowy night in December of 1995 and have even named a primary suspect in the case. But as the 30-year anniversary approaches, she has not been arrested. No one has, and Walter’s family is still waiting for the day that their father and grandfather gets the justice he deserves. If you have any information relating to the unsolved homicide of Walter Page, please submit a tip to the New Hampshire Department of Justice Cold Case Unit using the tip form. You can also call the Cold Case Unit directly at (603) 271-2663.

On this date two years ago, I released an episode about the disappearance of Kristopher Bryan Lewis. Kris was just 13 years old when he seemingly vanished after school one day. In February of 2025, marking the 11-year anniversary of his disappearance, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created a new age progression photo and missing poster depicting what he might look like now at 24 years old. If you have any information about the disappearance of Kristopher Bryan Lewis, please contact the Boston Police Department at 617-343-4687.

Kenneth Jerome got up that summer morning in 2005 and said goodbye to his girlfriend and children, just like he did every day. He set about his usual chores on the farm, just like he always did, and he expected to feed the cows, like he had for years. But July 7th was not like every other day. Kenny’s routine was pierced by a single gunshot wound that stole him from the family, friends, and community who loved him fiercely. Now 20 years later, no one has been charged with his murder. In this small Vermont town, suspicion has run rampant for years, but suspicion alone has yet to rise to the level of an arrest. If you have information about the unsolved homicide of Kenny Jerome, please contact Captain J.P. Schmidt at the Vermont State Police Major Crime Unit at (802) 244-8727. Tips may also be submitted anonymously by texting the keyword VTIPS to 274637 or via the form.

It was a Saturday night, and she’d just clocked out of work to join a group of friends down the street for drinks at a favorite local watering hole. Later, when Holly Jean Cote left that bar in the early hours of March 4, 1984, she was expected to meet at a friend’s house for a nightcap, but Holly never made it. Since the earliest days of her disappearance, investigators have had a leading theory about what happened when she left the bar and who was involved, but proving it beyond a reasonable doubt is a different story. The suspect might not be going anywhere anytime soon, but for those who know and love Holly, they want the person responsible for her death to be held accountable.

When Pamela Webb left her home in Winthrop, Maine, on the first Saturday of July in 1989, her dog and Bible beside her, she could not have anticipated that her road trip would be interrupted by a still unknown predator. There was no shortage of potential connections to explore following her presumed abduction and murder, but so far, the perceived similarities have not developed into any publicly named suspects or arrests. What happened to Pamela Webb, and what are investigators doing to answer that question today, more than 35 years later? If you have any information that could help close this case, please share it with Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit South at (207) 624-7076 extension 9. You can also leave a tip via the tip form. New Hampshire State Police are also investigating Pamela’s murder. Submit a tip using the Cold Case Unit tip form.

From the very beginning of the investigation into the disappearance of Iris Brown, everyone suspected the same person had something to do with it. She left home with the suspect on the night she was last seen alive, the suspect’s behavior in the days following her disappearance raised countless red flags, and forensic evidence pointed to something bad happening inside the suspect’s car, but proving beyond a reasonable doubt exactly what happened wasn’t going to come quick and easy to the investigators tasked with finding answers. When this suspect was finally apprehended and charged, it was with the crime prosecutors could prove… Not the crime everyone knew deep down he’d actually committed. Decades later, a determined detective reopened the case with one mission: to give surviving family members a version of closure, even if it meant the killer would never face the consequences.

The mother and son had just gotten home from a trip to the store and had no sooner brought their bags into their Bridgeport, Connecticut home when they heard the doorbell ring. As Karen Clarke turned the doorknob to see who was on the other side, she and her son, B.J. Brown Jr., were ambushed and gunned down in their own home. This case has eyewitnesses, it has clear and critical evidence, it has a strong motive, and I’m here to tell you that it has an ending… But I wouldn’t say it has justice in its entirety. The rug was pulled out from under the feet of Karen and B.J.’s family earlier this year when they learned one of the perpetrators would see the outside of prison walls long before they ever thought possible.

Jane Boroski was seven months pregnant when she was stabbed 27 times by an unknown man. Miraculously, she survived. But Jane later finds out she is the only survivor of a serial killer who prowled the Connecticut River Valley in the 1980s and killed at least 8 women before her. Now, she's here to speak for the dead.

Just before midnight on May 10, 1986, 17-year-old Kimberly Moreau walked out the door of her home in Jay, Maine, never to be seen again.

She moved from Florida to New Hampshire on the promise of a job and a place to live, but just a few months later, Eddy Segall disappeared without a trace. When the vehicle Eddy was driving on the day she was last seen alive turned up abandoned in the woods of a neighboring town, investigators missed opportunities to uncover potentially critical evidence… Evidence that still eludes the case to this day. What happened on that New England summer day in 1977? Someone, or maybe multiple someones, holds the answer to that question

Since the moment her death was discovered in April of 1993, the family of Valarie Fiorenza has doubted that she got a fair and thorough investigation. Her boyfriend was a cop, their relationship was tumultuous, and Valarie had even made claims of abuse in court, but when her body was found in that boyfriend’s basement, investigators decided that the circumstances could only point to one conclusion, and it wasn’t murder. So, what really happened here? Despite the official ruling, that question still lingers.

What started with a call to police for a domestic disturbance ended with a four-day manhunt in search of a suspected killer. When that suspect, the victim’s husband, was finally apprehended, it seemed on the surface like an open-and-shut case. All signs pointed to a domestic violence homicide triggered by the dissolution of an already tumultuous and violent marriage. But then the case went to trial and the accused killer told his side of the story for the first time… And the prosecution took major issue with all of it.

When a wealthy socialite was found face down and unresponsive on her bathroom floor, she soon slipped into her second coma in a year. This time, she would never wake up. Suspicion surrounded the cause of the woman’s condition from the very beginning, and that suspicion eventually led to an arrest. Two trials and endless speculation from the public and media later, the question still stands: did someone attempt to end Sunny’s life in order to inherit her fortune, or was the suspect framed?

For more than two years, the family of Brittany Tee along with the Brookfield, Massachusetts, community and multiple law enforcement agencies have been searching for answers to her unexplained disappearance. It’s as if she simply vanished that January night, leaving no semblance of a trail to follow. Looking back now, Brittany’s sister Bethany feels something was going on in the days before Brittany went missing, but what?

She was ready to reinvent her life and just one flight stood between her and a new beginning… But when that plane took off, the 19-year-old expectant mother wasn’t on board. Three months later, her family learned the devastating truth. A suspect confessed to the killing soon after, but his defense raised eyebrows.

It wasn’t unusual for months or even years to pass without contact between Marilyn Lehan and her family, but when her brother decided to make a spontaneous visit to Marilyn’s home in Maine one summer, it set off alarm bells. The stories about her last known whereabouts don’t make sense to her family, and at this point, no one knows for sure the last time she was seen alive.

When 38-year-old Ralph “Rizz” Jean-Marie was reported missing from a motel where he was living in Barre, Vermont, the story was that he up and left after an argument, leaving behind his personal belongings and everything you’d think someone might take if they were going to start a new life for themselves somewhere, or even just taking off to get some space for a few days.

When a 17-year-old girl left work one night in March of 2004, it began what would become one of the most well-known missing persons cases in New England. Her father and a duo of private investigators have dedicated years in their own pursuit of answers. More than anything, they just want to find her.

When a new manager was gunned down at work during a narrow window of time when most of the staff should have been on lunch break, investigators honed in on two possible suspects among the victim’s employees. To this day, the convicted killer and his supporters are convinced police picked the wrong one, but a key piece of evidence led the jury to a different conclusion.

The last time Katrina McVeigh’s loved ones heard from her, she was making plans to attend a family wedding. But when the big day rolled around, Katrina was a no-show. Now more than three decades later, Katrina’s disappearance remains unsolved, and the theories about what really happened still linger.

Ian Vance was just a kid when he lost his mother, Valerie Carr. Her death was ruled an accident, but now as an adult, he questions everything. Details unearthed from decades of court records reveal the circumstances of Valerie’s life leading up to her death…Circumstances he feels should’ve been scrutinized more closely before closing his mother’s case.

Ashley Erin Ouellette was just 15 years old when her body was found placed in the middle of Pine Point Road in Scarborough, Maine, just before dawn on February 10, 1999. The investigation led police to the place Ashley was last known to be alive, but it has not been able to move past that location in more than 25 years. Ashley Ouellette's sister, Lindsey Ouellette, and her mother, Lise Ouellette, are on Dark Downeast to share her story.

Carol Caswell, Lisa Snyder, and Sheila Holmes were forever connected when their names surfaced during the interrogation of a suspect who would later be charged and convicted in one of their murders. That same individual remains the primary suspect in at least one of the two other cases, but it’s been decades since their violent, senseless deaths, and charges have yet to be filed against anyone. When will their families finally get the answers and justice they’ve been waiting for?

It was one of the most confounding unsolved crimes that the town of West Springfield, Massachusetts, had ever seen. Two young people, shot and killed in their car without any conceivable motive. This seemingly random double murder remained unsolved for over 40 years…Until police received a new tip that finally unraveled the entire mystery and led them to the door of a suspected killer.

When a 12-year-old girl disappeared from her home on a summer night in 1988, police took her father’s word that she’d run away just as she had more than once before. But more than 30 years later, there’s still no sign of the missing girl and her father’s story just isn’t adding up.

A 19-year old South Royalton, Vermont resident was missing under suspicious circumstances for over four months before his remains were found in an old barn miles from home. Investigators have named a strong suspect for his murder, but as the seven year anniversary approaches, this case is still unsolved.

Charline Rosemond left home in Everett, Massachusetts one day in April of 2009 excited to buy a new car, but the evening took a deadly turn. Now for more than fifteen years, her family has waited for justice and answers in the still unsolved homicide.

He was an 80-year-old fruit farmer who had resurrected a local apple orchard for the enjoyment of his entire community, but in the late fall of 1999, the farmstead became the unexpected epicenter of a terrible tragedy that remains unsolved today.

Nearly 35 years have passed since John Evers Robinson was found dead in his New Haven, Connecticut music studio. The original investigation generated several leads and theories of the killing, but the case remains unsolved. Now, John’s sister is doing everything she can to get her brother’s story out there. Someone knows something. It’s time to speak up.

On October 7, 1966, the wealthy heiress Doris Duke hit and killed her friend Eduardo Tirella while behind the wheel of a rented car. Whether his death was an accident or an intentional act of murder, is still up for debate nearly 60 years later.

It wasn’t unusual for Celeste Doghmi to go long stretches of time without talking to her friends and family. She’d lost touch with her mother and many of her close friends, but as far as they could tell by posts on social media, her life was busy with a new baby and starting college classes. But when Celeste’s mother in Germany received a phone call in the spring of 2023, she learned that Celeste hadn’t simply lost touch – she was missing. She’d been missing for two years.