Dark Downeast

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. If you have any information about this case, please contact the Maine State Police, Major Crimes Unit – North at (207) 973-3750, or use their toll-free line at 1-800-432-7381. You can also submit information anonymously by using the tip form. View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/jamescassidy-part1 Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low. Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok To suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Did you know you can listen to Dark Downeast ad-free? Join the Crime Junkie Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/fanclub/ to view the current membership options and policies. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/brendawarner-charleneranstrom Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low. Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok To suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. If you have information about Joan Wertkin’s case, please contact the Westport Police Department Cold Case Unit at (203) 520-3831. You can also email tips to [email protected]. View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/joanwertkin Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low. Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok To suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. If you have any information that could help bring answers in Lucia Kai Roberts’ case, please contact the Boston Police Department at (617) 343-4470 or submit a tip through the online form. View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/luciakairoberts Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low. Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok To suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/abrahamlevine-eleanorjohnson Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low. Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok To suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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?If you have information relating to the unsolved disappearance of April Grisanti, please contact the Norwalk Police Department Cold Case Unit at (203) 854-3028 or the anonymous tip line at (203) 854-3111. You can text CRIMES and NPD with your tip in the body of the text message or use the Norwalk Police Department tip submission form.View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/aprilgrisanti Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/josephwoodside Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/debrastone Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.”If you have information regarding the 1990 murder of John Evers Robinson in New Haven, Connecticut, please contact the Connecticut Cold Case Unit at 1 (866) 623-8058 or the New Haven Police Department at 1 (866) 888-8477.You can sign the petition to increase the reward for new leads in the 1990 unsolved murder of John Evers Robinson here.View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/stillmissing-johneversrobinson Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/markknapp Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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?If you have information relating to the unsolved case of Cam Lyman, please contact the Hopkinton Police Department at (401) 377-7750.View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/camlyman Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Go inside the investigation of the murder of Liberty German and Abigail Williams—two bright, beloved girls from Delphi, Indiana—on the first episode of the 13th Juror. Hosted by Brandi Churchwell, unpack the long, twisting search for answers, the arrest of Richard Allen, and how the prosecution built its case. Listen to 13th Juror now on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.If you have information about Amy’s case, contact the Tewksbury Police Department at (978) 851-7373 or via the anonymous tip line at (978) 851-0175. You can also contact the Massachusetts State Police assigned to the District Attorney’s Office at (781) 897-6600.View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/brandiamysullivan Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/elizabethsterlingseeley Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.If you recognize “Jerry” or have any information about the murder of Shirley McAvoy, please contact Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit - Central at (207) 624-7076 x9. You may also submit a tip using the Maine State Police tip form.View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/shirleymcavoy Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.