The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts. All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages. Listener discretion is advised. I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski. And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases. Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I'm so sorry, I just need to have an apology right at the top here. There was no new episode last week, which I was not happy about. I was having technical difficulties with the new Apple updates. But then later in the week when I wanted to get the episode out, I truly was just having a really rough mental health week. My anxiety was through the roof and I was having like daily panic attacks.
If you're somebody who struggles with anxiety, maybe you can relate. And I'm just so sorry I couldn't get the episode out. I had a really difficult time concentrating. But, you know, I have a lot of good things in place. I have a very supportive family. I have a wonderful therapist. I do have medication that I take for it. So I was able to reach into my tool bag and take care of myself.
But unfortunately, that took up most of my mental space and just taking care of myself and taking care of my husband, who is also grieving his mother. So I just needed to take last week off. And I am so thankful that you're back, that you're here. I hope you can give me the grace and understanding that it just happens sometimes. But I intend to be here and to keep putting out new episodes every week, just as often as I can. So thank you for sticking around.
Thank you for downloading again, even though last week was an unexpected break. I appreciate you being here. I really do. So with that, I think we should just get into the case. So today we are covering a cold case. And just as a content warning at the top, this case does involve a young person. And there will be some brief mentions of sexual assault throughout the podcast. So please take care of yourself. But today we are talking about the cold case of Christine Cole.
And this takes place in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. In January of 1988. But first, a little bit about Christine. Christine is 10 years old in 1988. She was a third grader at Baldwin Elementary School. She lived with her mother, her mother's boyfriend, and three half siblings. Her three younger siblings were all under the age of four. So Christine was the oldest by a lot and also left to her own devices most days.
Christine was known to roam the neighborhood and her house wasn't too far from a strip of businesses. Even after the streetlights came on and more seedy characters started to take over the street, Christine would still walk around. The owner of the little general store, Marie Mayer, said, quote, Christine would always come in no matter how cold, no matter if it was pouring rain out at night. Sometimes we'd ask someone in the store to take a few extra minutes to walk her home.
End quote, her mother, Margaret, believed the neighborhood was safe and would often send Christine to the store to grab groceries or diapers. But she would, quote, always come home. So they never worried about it. And unfortunately, that leads us into the timeline of events. So on Wednesday, January 6th, 1988, at around 5 p.m., Margaret, Christine's mother, sends Christine out of the house with $10 in food stamps to go get clams from Red Seafood, which was near their house.
It was about five blocks from their home on West Avenue in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Christine gets to Red Seafood and gets the clams. But instead of heading home, she goes to a friend's house on Wilmarth Court. Her friend's house is only about a block from her home, so it is on her way home. She stays there until about 6.30 that evening. According to Captain Carl Benson with the Pawtucket Police, quote, she told her friend's mother that she was walking home.
But once Christine got out of the house, she walked in the opposite direction away from her home, according to her friend's mother. End quote. Christine ends up back into the business district near her home. So Christine ends up heading to the market and gets there around 7 o'clock in the evening. Once there, Christine buys 10 gumballs and a quart of milk. Nellie Siriva was working the register that evening and saw Christine come in.
It was a cold night and she noticed that Christine didn't have any gloves on. Nellie looked in the lost and found, but there was only one mitten in there. She said, quote, it's so sad. I wanted to help the little girl because I see the hand so cold. The mitten was all I had, so I put it on her. End quote. Nellie gives Christine the blue mitten to wear on her walk home. At this point, Christine is about 10 blocks from her home. This was the last positive sighting of Christine.
Captain Carl Benson says, quote, that was the last positive sighting of her. Although a manager of a star market on Barton Street reported two girls coming into a store and having to be escorted out at 10 because they were acting up. End quote. The manager of star market tentatively ID'd one of the girls as Christine, but he couldn't be positive that it was her. So truly the last sighting comes from that market where she gets the mitten.
Back at Christine's home, when she hadn't returned with the clams that she was tasked with getting, Margaret calls the police to report Christine missing at 8.44 p.m. that evening. It's unclear what, if any, action is taken that first evening in the search for Christine. But by the next day, Thursday, January 7th, police begin to look for Christine and they go door to door around the neighborhood and store to store along the businesses that she visited.
During their search, police do find the mitten that Christine was given by Nellie just outside of the store in front of the garage. From Saturday, January 9th, 1988, so Christine has been missing for three days at this point, the community had come together and donated $12,000 for information leading to Christine's safe return. Police continue to go door to door to canvas the area. Captain Carl Benson says, quote, A major concern is how she'll do in this weather.
Wednesday night it was a very cold night here and today we're getting snow. Wherever she is, we hope she was able to get inside somewhere, end quote. So if it's not obvious from that quote, police are not overly concerned at this point. They believe that Christine is a runaway. She had run away in the past, but it had been nearly three years since the last time she had done that. And she was always found very quickly near her home.
Police had hopes that since the news was covering Christine's disappearance, that some tips and leads would develop, but nobody had really called in and they still didn't have a clue as to what happened to Christine. On Sunday, January 10th, Christine has been missing for four days.
Lieutenant Norman Maru of the Pawtucket Police says, quote, Nothing turned up overnight and we went out trying to get interviews with people near where she was last seen alive to see if and when they might have seen her, end quote. Police are focusing heavily on the area where Christine was last positively ID'd, where she got that blue mitten.
Police spent the weekend looking for Christine through cellars, vacant buildings, and empty railroad cars, truly thinking that she had run away and was just hiding out. With no sign of Christine over that weekend, by Monday, January 11th, so just five days she's been missing, police do believe that Christine is dead at this point. Again, Lieutenant Norman Maru says, quote, We believe she crawled into an abandoned car, shed, garage, or dumpster Wednesday night.
Fell asleep and died before morning. We don't suspect foul play. We don't think she could have survived the night, end quote. So during that time of year in 1988, it's very cold in Rhode Island and the temperatures dipped below zero degrees Fahrenheit the night that Christine disappeared. Christine's family, however, are not buying this runaway she's died from exposure. They believe that she has been abducted and that she could still be alive.
Margaret pleads with the kidnappers through the local media saying, quote, Whoever has my daughter, please just let her go. I just hope she's not being hurt, end quote. Even though the police do believe that Christine has died from exposure at this point, they continue to search for the missing 10 year old. By January 14th, so Christine has been missing for over a week and police have come out publicly and say that, you know, they believe that she ran away and died from exposure.
However, the FBI is now involved in Christine's case. Why exactly they got involved is not clear in the reports that I found. But both the police and the FBI asked the girl who was in the supermarket at 10 p.m. to please come forward. So if you remember, this was kind of the tentative idea of Christine and she was with another girl. So police FBI are asking this girl to come forward and they hope that she might be able to shed some light on what happened to Christine.
About a week passes and on January 21st, the weather had warmed up a little bit enough to make the snow melt. It was still very cold in January in Rhode Island. But with the melting snow, police were able to coordinate a large volunteer search. But still from the search, there's no sign of Christine. And police basically say that at this point, it's a wait and see game just three weeks after she disappeared. On Sunday, February 28th, 1988. So it's been 53 days since Christine disappeared.
At around 8 a.m., a man was walking on the Cumnacut beach when he found the fully clothed body of a young girl. According to the man, the body was on the riverbanks. She was found near a little cove near a boat ramp. The body is fully clothed, but her shoes and underwear are missing and there is blood on her pants. The blood is on the inside of her pants. And police noticed that her pants had been put back on her, but kind of in a weird way. Like it's described as a half hazardous way.
So there's something askew about how her pants are on her. The blood on her pants, ultimately, is not a match for Christine. Police are not able to ID the girl right away. But her clothing is a match for what Christine was last seen wearing, so police call Margaret to try and confirm the clothing is Christine's. When Margaret leaves the police station, she's reported as in tears and she does confirm that those clothes are Christine's.
She says, quote, I don't know what happened or who did this, but I hope they find the person who did this to my daughter. I think somebody else was involved in her death because my daughter being in the water, someone had to get her that way. They must have picked her up, did whatever they did and threw her in the water. End quote.
So the next day, Monday, February 29th, police at this point are still waiting for autopsy results to determine if a crime had even taken place and if they should treat the case as a homicide. Police do mentioned that through the course of their investigation, they have polygraphed several people, including Margaret, Christine's mother in this case, and all have passed. On March 1st, just two days after the body was found, the autopsy is complete.
The medical examiner rules that Christine died by asphyxiation, but the body was in the water too long to determine if that happened in the water or before she was put in the water. Now I found two different reports here and I have to believe that she was in the water for a long time.
But there was a newspaper report saying that police believe that she had been in the water for two hours, which after 53 days of being missing, only being in the water for two hours is highly, highly suspicious, right? But I think the newspaper might have been alluding to the fact that after her body was found, it was about two hours before she was removed from the beach.
So I think that might be the two hours she's referring to there, but police are never able to determine how long Christine is in the water for. But they do mention that because she had been in the water for however long she was, that they were unable to determine a lot about her death because of that. So that's why I tend to lean towards that she was in the water for a long time. Either way, the medical examiner doesn't immediately rule this as a homicide. She rules it as a suspicious death.
Police tell media that they are determined to figure out how Christine got in the water because that would solve everything, right? But it will take months before police start to call her case a homicide. And it's never really clear what that shift is.
I think it's, you know, some of this evidence that I've already mentioned about how she was found that shifts them, but I still think that there is more that we don't know that shifts them to believe firmly that it is a homicide and not a case of Christine running away and accidentally drowning and ending up in this river. The first suspect in this case comes to police attention in May of 1988, so that's about five months since Christine had vanished. But the way he gets on police radar is odd.
The man, Richard Graves, in May of 1988, he was out on bail awaiting trial for sexual assault against a child. While out on bail, another child came forward saying that the same thing had happened to them so additional charges were filed against Graves. When police go to take him into custody and charge him with these additional charges, he's staying in a motel. And in the motel room, they found several newspaper clippings related to Christine's disappearance.
They also found a slip of paper with the telephone number of St. Anne's Cemetery, and this is where Christine is laid to rest at. On the piece of paper, he had the words, quote, place flowers, regular or otherwise, end quote. So that's why he gets on police radar, according to Christine, and also in his room, he has stuffed animals, games, greeting cards for children, books about children. So just really a nightmare of a motel room.
Police never publicly rule him out, but he's never really mentioned again in regards to Christine's case. So I don't know if they were able to rule him out completely as a suspect or if he kind of remains in the pool of people of interest. Over the years, Christine's case will be brought up in other cold cases from Rhode Island.
And also, as we've seen before, and as I've mentioned before, in other cases, the Pawtucket police do create a cold case deck of cards to put into the Rhode Island correctional facilities to try to, you know, generate a jailhouse informant and to keep these cases alive. So behind the scenes, the cold case unit in Pawtucket is working on this case, but we don't really hear anything about the case again until 2019. So that's 31 years after Christine was murdered.
Police announced that they've made an arrest in Christine's case. This comes as a surprise to everyone. And unfortunately, this also comes as a surprise to the state's attorney's office. Usually in murder cases, you know, this prosecutor and the police work pretty closely together to make sure that they have a solid case before charges are officially brought against a suspect.
You know, from the state's perspective, they want to make sure they have a really rock solid case because if the suspect decides to go to trial, which is everyone's right in America to have a trial, then they have to make sure that they have a very strong case beyond a reasonable doubt to put this person in jail for murder because you only get one shot at it. You can't bring charges again later. If you find more evidence later or technology advances, you get the one shot.
So you have to make it count. So the state prosecutor's office is really floored that these charges have come out and they get the case that police have been working on and start to review it. And to them, it's not a slam dunk. So this is the evidence that has come up for this case since then. So they have a suspect and I'm not going to name his name here and I'll get into that a little bit more as to why in a minute, but we'll just call him the suspect.
So the suspect in 1988 lived above the market that Christine was last positively ID'd at, the one where she got the blue mitten. He lived above the market in an apartment. The blood that was found on the inside of Christine's jeans, police were able to get DNA tested and they were able to find a match, but it's not a positive match. It's a partial match. So it doesn't exactly pinpoint to the suspect.
In fact, it pointed to somebody else altogether, but the person that it was pointing to wasn't alive in 1988. So because of the type of DNA profile they were able to develop, they looked at that person's father. But the DNA doesn't eliminate anybody in the family. So it could be a father, a grandfather, an uncle, cousins. Basically any guy in the family is a suspect in this because of the partial DNA match. It's not enough to rule anybody is exclusively the DNA.
But because this man lived above the market and this kind of partial DNA match, the police arrested him for Christine Cole's murder. Ultimately about 10 months after the arrest, the state drops the charges against him. So they decide the case is not strong enough, so they drop it, but they do it in a way so that way in the future, if they get more evidence against this person, they can bring the charges again.
But the suspect is now suing the Pawtucket police and just this past week, it has been cleared to go to trial. So that's personally why I am not naming him here just because he is going to trial to clear his name in this case. So if you Google Christine Cole, you'll see a lot of news coverage about this specifically.
And it's actually why I wanted to cover her case because so much of the coverage that I could find, especially just typing her name into Google, it's all about this false arrest lawsuit that's coming before the Pawtucket police. And it really seems like Christine is getting lost in this case, and it's really focusing kind of on this blunder that the police made and kind of this premature arrest. Or at least that's how it's being portrayed and how he's bringing it to court.
But Christine is really getting lost in this case, so I just wanted to take this episode to focus on her and her case and what we know and what we don't know. But as of today, the case is still unsolved. So with that, if you know anything about the disappearance of Christine Cole in January of 1988, or her murder, please call the Pawtucket police at 1-877-747-6583.
And the sources, and the sources for the timeline today come from The Boston Globe, The Day, The Daily Item, Evening Express, Transcript Telegram, Sun Journal, The Berkshire Eagle, Providence Journal, WPRI. So that is the case of Christine Cole.
And like I just mentioned, this case felt important to me to cover because there's so much around this false arrest, which I don't, you know, if it is a false arrest and this person, this man is innocent, like I don't blame him for wanting to clear his name, bring this lawsuit against the police because from everything I read, when he was first charged with this, you know, he lost his housing, he lost his job, he ended up becoming homeless.
So I am all for closing cold cases and getting justice for these families. But I deeply believe that we have to do it correctly and we have to get the right people because when there's a, you know, a false arrest or, you know, someone who is innocent is put into jail, like, it really becomes their story because it's, it is a tragedy. You know, it is so scary to think about being pointed at and accused of murder when you're completely innocent.
Like, that is a very scary thought, especially in America where we have more people incarcerated than any other first world country. So you know, there are people in prison right now that are innocent of the crimes that they have against them. That is the reality because the justice system is not perfect.
I start to feel really sad about these cases that are underneath them because while, you know, that is its own tragedy, like Christine Cole is also a tragedy and her case still deserves the coverage and she still deserves to have people working on her case. Like, I really hope that people don't back off of her case. But that was, these were just kind of some of the first knee jerk reactions I had as I was like learning everything.
And then, you know, when I really dug into the case, I just felt so overwhelmingly sad for Christine. Like, it talked a lot about how she seemed to be scared to go home or didn't want to go home and was kind of always out going into the markets and, you know, people in the neighborhood were looking out for her. Definitely, it sounds like. But I feel sad that she wasn't getting that same care at home, it sounds like. And that her case just like wasn't heavily investigated at the time.
It just feels like society really failed Christine Cole on a lot of different levels. They let her slip through the cracks. And I feel sad for her. I feel sad for her memory. There are obviously a lot of questions I have about the case and I kind of alluded to some of them while I was doing the timeline. But a big one is just how and when did Christine get into the water because that's a big hole in the timeline.
Was she placed shortly after she vanished or, you know, is that one report where police say, you know, she had been in the water for two hours? Like is that is that true? Was she only in the water for two hours? So where was she for those 50 plus days beforehand? There's just a lot of things that I would love to clear up in that that I never really found answers for even in the more recent news coverage of her case.
They never really pinpoint, but it did seem to allude that it was a longer time she was in the water. I also am just so curious why they were so wishy washy on declaring her case as a murder or a homicide investigation as opposed to a suspicious death. It really seems like it takes a while for them to officially rule her as a homicide or classify her as a homicide. And I want to know what shifted. What was it for police?
Was it maybe them doing some, you know, more I don't want to say primal is not exactly the right word, but like more infantile DNA testing? You know, I believe the technology was around where they could test the blood type of samples found. So maybe it wasn't a match for Christine. So they knew it had to have been somebody else. Again, her being found without her shoes and missing other parts, you know, her underwear was missing, her pants were haphazardly put on.
So like to me, that would all scream that this is foul play. Foul play was absolutely involved in the disappearance of a 10 year old. And this is another question that I had, which is so irrelevant, but I just like I was so curious as to like, did they ever find those clams that she had? Because we know she had clams, 10 gumballs and a quart of milk. So was any trace of those items found?
I just think like those are things that like, I feel like would scatter kind of easily if they were dropped, you know, like the milk could open and spill gumballs roll and scatter like clams. I guess maybe those don't roll and scatter, but like, you know, you would notice clams on the sidewalk. So like, I always, I wonder was what happened to all those groceries? Like was there any answer to that? All that was found of her was that mitten that she was given just a few minutes beforehand.
It was found outside the store near their garage. That's all we know. As far as evidence found in this case. But I just, I really hope that there is still an interest in the police and in the state in closing this case with this lawsuit coming, you know, like, I imagine like the police are like kind of embarrassed or, you know, they might not be as ready to bring forth charges in the future on this case specifically, you know, it's just kind of like a black eye on the cold case department.
I really hope that's not the case. I hope that like, whoever is the next person to pick up Christine's case is able to just like look at it without prejudice, without like any tainted thoughts and just able to like look at the evidence, look at the timeline, what does it tell us and hopefully bring some answers for Christine. She just deserves it.
And I've said this before, I'll say it again now, but you know, I really believe as a society, not even just America, I think like as a society, any society in this world, we owe our children answers. If a child does not make it to adulthood, we should have those answers. Why? Were they sick? Did they not have enough food? Did they not have enough warmth? Like we as a society should always have to answer that I think because these are our most vulnerable.
We should be taking care of them no matter what. Yeah, a part of me just like wants to take care of Christine, I want to take care of her story and I wanted to say it here because you know, there is a lot of news surrounding her case, which is a good thing, but unfortunately, a lot of it doesn't really mention her or it just mentions her in passing, which is unfortunate. So I just wanted to put Christine's case out there again.
If you know anything about what happened to her or her murder, please call the Pawtucket police at 1-877-747-6583.
And we will be posting pictures of Christine on our Instagram and please if you're not following us there, I noticed we got a lot of followers this week, even though I wasn't, you know, active, I was kind of in my mental health this past week, but thank you so much if you're following us there, I will always post if an episode is not going to come out on Mondays as normally scheduled. If I'm not mentioning it here, I will always mention it on our Instagram. I want to try to keep you informed.
It's an honor to be a part of your week, so I take it really seriously and if you expect me to be a part of your Mondays or whatever day you listen to this podcast, then I want to be there for you and I want to give you new content when you expect it. So thank you again for sticking with me. You can always head over to our website. We have transcripts up there as well.
If you or somebody you love is hard of hearing, transcripts are there so you can follow along with the podcast or read it if that is more comfortable for you.
If you could take a minute and rate and review us, especially if you're on Apple podcasts, it helps others find us and then it just helps get these stories out there more and more people listening, more people who know these stories, more people just like trying to be part of the solution, which I'm so proud of this little community that we're creating and that's passionate about these cases the way that I am. So thank you for being a part of it.
If you could take a minute to rate, review or tell somebody that you know would be interested in this to give us a listen, it would mean the world to me and I would appreciate it so much. But that's all I have. Thank you so much for listening to Cold and Missing. I'm Allie McLaughlin-Sylkowski. Have a good week and stay safe, y'all.