When 13-year old Matthew Margolies didn’t come home for supper on the night of August 31, 1984, police in Greenwich, Connecticut launched a full scale search scouring the Pemberwick woods and waters of the Byram River for any sign of the young fisherman. Despite numerous suspects and abundant evidence over the last 40 years, police have failed to make an arrest in this senseless crime that tossed the otherwise idyllic New England town into a state of chaos. The 1984 homicide of Matthew Margolies...
Jan 04, 2024•41 min
MAINE, 1973: Just months into production of a new and exciting project, film director Jon Pownall was found dead at his Monument Square office in Portland, Maine. Why would anyone want to kill him? As the investigation into his murder began, a motive for his death emerged, but the question of who was behind it all is one that still hasn’t been answered with a conviction 50 years later. Lynda Pownall-Carlson was only 16-years old when her father was killed. She’s on Dark Downeast to share her fat...
Sep 25, 2023•59 min
A special update to this week’s episode, Murder on Goose Rocks Beach, covering the cases of David J. Nixon and Steven Ray Johnson. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/davidjnixon Dark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low. Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram , Facebook , and TikTok To suggest a case, email [email protected]...
Sep 23, 2023•3 min
MAINE, 1987: On the night of June 8, 1987, David Nixon had just hung up the phone with his father. He called back home to let his folks know that he was staying over at their family beach house in Kennebunkport, Maine for one more night. That phone call was the last contact David ever had with his family. Sometime after he put the phone back on the hook, David was killed just steps from the house on Goose Rocks Beach. The investigation into the murder of David J. Nixon would span the entire east...
Sep 18, 2023•38 min
CONNECTICUT, 2018: On the night of May 18, 2018, 36-year old James “Jimmy” Stone Jr. was loading up his belongings from the trailer where he once lived on the Golden Hill Paugussett Reservation in Colchester, Connecticut to take them to his new apartment. Somehow, the mundane task of packing and moving became a deadly one. Jimmy never made it off the reservation alive. The investigation into the murder of Jimmy Stone is ongoing, and though Connecticut State Police continue to work diligently on ...
Sep 11, 2023•34 min
MASSACHUSETTS, 1991: On July 20th, 1991, 17-year-old Patricia Moreno sat on the fire escape at her foster family’s apartment building. She often used the fire escape for solace – the apartment was crowded and hot and loud – but in the early morning hours of that scorching summer night, her place of respite became the scene of her murder. For over three decades, the mystery of Patricia's death persisted. The occupants of the apartment claimed to have heard gunshots but had no knowledge of the sho...
Aug 28, 2023•33 min
VERMONT, 2020: On April 15, 2020, 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, never to be seen again. But from day one of the investigation, law enforcement had reason to believe the initial narrative of Ralph’s disappearance wasn’t anchored in the whole truth. The early investigation indicated that someone, or multiple someones, had a hand...
Aug 21, 2023•49 min
NEW YORK CITY, 1990s: On May 28, 2001, after an eight year long investigation spanning three states, New York police officers finally closed in on their target: a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital. Advancements in fingerprinting technology had finally identified a suspect connected to garbage bags containing the remains of four men discarded on the side of the road in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. His name was Richard Westall Rogers Jr. AKA The Last Call Killer. In this follow-up episode t...
Aug 14, 2023•38 min
MAINE, 1973: In April of 1973, the vibrant college town of Orono, Maine was shattered by a shocking murder that sent tremors through the University of Maine community. The victim was Frederic Alan Spencer, a promising UMaine graduate student with a bright future ahead. When Frederic's roommate came forward and confessed to the killing, it seemed like an open and shut case. However, as the trial of Richard Westall Rogers Jr. unfolded, it was clear the case was far from simple. Despite his admissi...
Aug 07, 2023•27 min
PORTSMOUTH, 1981 & 1982: In just over a year span during the early 1980s in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the lives of two young women were ended by an assailant who broke into their apartments, violently attacked and beat them, and somehow managed to escape undetected, remaining anonymous for decades. Laura Kempton and Tammy Little’s murders have long been intertwined. As you’ll hear, the circumstances of their deaths and their lives are just too similar to ignore a possible connection, but now in...
Jul 31, 2023•44 min
MAINE, 2003: On the night of December 23, 2003, two friends dropping off Christmas gifts at the home of 40-year old Raymond “Butch” Weed were shocked to find that their friend, a well-known and beloved member of the Wilton, Maine community, was dead. Sometime between his regular visit to his favorite hangout in downtown Wilton and returning home just a quarter mile away on Main Street, an unknown assailant entered Butch’s home and stole his life. To this day, a suspect has never been apprehended...
Jul 10, 2023•37 min
On March 14, 1968, kids playing in the oil fields of Huntington Beach, California discovered the brutally beaten body of a young woman. Investigators scoured the scene for clues, finding shoe imprints, marks from tires, and a cigarette butt, but it had rained the night before and so any other evidence left behind had likely washed away. Police labeled the woman a Jane Doe and set out to investigate her identity and her death, but the woman found there would not have her name returned to her for ...
Jul 03, 2023•35 min
MAINE, 1976: Anne Payson Holt, better known as Nancy, was almost 80-years old, but not quite yet. Her milestone birthday and the fancy gala planned in her honor was still a few days away in early October of 1976, but Nancy never saw a day past 79. On October 5, 1976, the safety of her secluded Falmouth Foreside estate was violated by intruders seeking electronics. Before they fled the dirt drive of Thornhurst Road though, they stole more than a television. They stole Nancy’s life. Nancy’s grandd...
Jun 26, 2023•40 min
BOSTON, 2014: On February 4, 2014, 13-year old Kristopher Bryan Lewis got off the school bus at his usual stop on the corner of West Selden and Morton Street in Boston, Massachusetts. He should've been home just a few minutes later around 5:30 p.m. but Kristopher never returned. Kristopher's mother Nina Cancel-Rodgers reported him missing that night. At first, police dismissed Nina’s concerns. The media turned her away. She and her family took matters into their own hands, making noise and bring...
Jun 19, 2023•29 min
NEW HAMPSHIRE, 2001: It was late fall of 2001 and Louise Chaput was looking forward to her weekend plans of hiking the White Mountains with friends. But when those plans fell through, Louise, who was eager to return to the majestic White Mountains that she’d hiked before, decided to do the trip on her own. She arrived at the Pinkham Notch Visitors Center in New Hampshire on the afternoon of Thursday, November 15, 2001. Before checking into her camp lodgings for the night, she set out on a short ...
Jun 12, 2023•25 min
ATLANTIC OCEAN, 1896: The chilled, windy air of the Atlantic Ocean surrounded the ship past midnight on July 14, 1896. Nine days into its voyage between Boston, Massachusetts and Rosario, Argentina, a single shriek rang out through the back cabin where the officers of the ship resided - the after house. A guest aboard the ship later found the bodies of Captain Charles Nash, his wife, Laura, and the second mate, August Blomberg. The next week on the Herbert Fuller was tense and full of suspicion....
Jun 05, 2023•28 min
MAINE, 1971: The quiet of a dark late spring evening in Bangor, Maine was interrupted by frightened screams inside an Otis Street Apartment building. Though several residents would later report hearing the sounds of a woman in distress, no one called for help, no one picked up the phone to dial the police, and no one checked in on their downstairs neighbor, 84-year old Charlotte Dunn, until the next morning when help would be a lost cause. Police had a prime suspect for Charlotte Dunn’s murder f...
May 29, 2023•44 min
Sylvia Baker, 28, went downstairs on July 17th, 1982 to take out the trash. Sylvia never returned to her apartment, where her two young kids were watching TV. When she was found the next day, nude and bound with pieces of her own clothing, her family remained in a state of shock as police worked to track down her killers. Over 40 years later, no one’s been held accountable for Sylvia’s murder, but a DNA match and other clues have investigators closer than ever to the truth. If you have informati...
May 22, 2023•34 min
On February 6, 1997, 18-year old Bryan Nisenfeld sat in his afternoon literature class at Roger Williams University in Providence, Rhode Island. Bryan was acting differently during class that day, almost despondent. Where he went after class, what the final moments of his life entailed, is still a mystery. He was simply never seen or heard from again. He never returned to the campus or even to his dorm room. His bank account showed no activity. He didn’t call home. Roger Williams University did ...
May 15, 2023•28 min
RHODE ISLAND, 2003: On Christmas morning in 2003, a security guard on the Johnson & Wales Harborside campus in Providence, Rhode Island discovered the body of a young man leaning up against a chain link fence. Fingerprints would later identify the man as 22-year old Roy Weber. Roy was part of a population of men who engaged in street-based sex work in Providence, many of them exchanging sexual acts for money to support their substance use. Almost 20 years later, Roy’s homicide is still unsolved....
May 08, 2023•36 min
NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1982: On December 10, 1982, a car sat in a ditch engulfed in a furious blaze. Janet Dow and her son, Stephen Dow, were inside that vehicle that appeared to have skidded off the road just 500 feet from their own home. They were deceased, but the cause of their deaths – whether from the seemingly gentle car crash, the wild flames, or something else – was not clear. What was clear to the first witnesses on the scene was that there must be more to what they were seeing. Over the next ...
May 01, 2023•27 min
MASSACHUSETTS, 1982: For over 40 years, the family of 19-year old Brenda LaCombe has wondered what happened to the single mother of a little baby boy after she walked out of her grandmother’s apartment in Lowell, Massachusetts after midnight on May 16, 1982. Lacey Kearns has taken the lead in the fight for answers in her aunt Brenda’s case. Though she never got to meet Brenda, Lacey wants to help her family finally learn the truth after all these years. If you have information regarding the unso...
Apr 24, 2023•39 min
NEW HAMPSHIRE, 2001: On December 27, 2001, a friend arrived at 50-year old George Jodoin’s farmhouse in Auburn, New Hampshire, expecting to get a tutorial on caring for his animals ahead of George’s trip to Thailand. Instead, he found George dead in his bedroom. In the early days of the investigation, the list of suspects could never be narrowed down to just one person. Investigators were frustrated, and the residents of Auburn, a small town just east of Manchester, feared there could be a kille...
Apr 17, 2023•26 min
MASSACHUSETTS, 1969: It was the morning of January 7, 1969 and 23-year old Harvard University graduate student Jane Britton should have been in class to take her exam. A dedicated and standout student of anthropology, Jane wouldn’t have missed a test unnecessarily. Jane was later discovered by her boyfriend and neighbors dead in her bed, the victim of a violent attack. Details of the investigation leaked to the media spiraled into sensational headlines of rumored ancient burial rituals with susp...
Apr 10, 2023•32 min
In March of 1976, a young woman was discovered, with no obvious trauma, in the Harpeth River in Nashville; she carried on her a picture of a little boy, and a trail that led to witnesses who said she’d hitchhiked with a mysterious friend, all the way from Minnesota—but that trail led nowhere. Without the possibility of DNA testing, the best shot of identifying “Sherry” Jane Doe is using her extremely accurate forensic art, and the details she shared of her life—and, perhaps, a daughter that ties...
Apr 04, 2023•18 min
MASSACHUSETTS, 1979: It was August 20, 1979 and 35-year old Margaret Pizio was clocking into her overnight shift at the Susse Chalet Motor Inn in Seekonk, Massachusetts. Margaret should have returned home the next morning, but as it got later and later with no sign of her, the growing unease in the house was palpable. And then the phone rang. A reporter wanted to speak with someone about Margaret Pizio's murder. Beth Pizio was just a few days shy of her 9th birthday when her mother was killed. O...
Apr 03, 2023•30 min
MASSACHUSETTS, 2022: On November 26, 2022, 41-year old Reina Morales Rojas got into a car in East Boston, MA and some time later was dropped off in nearby Somerville. That’s the last time anyone had seen or heard from the mother of two. Though she was reported missing soon after, the public didn’t hear anything about Reina’s disappearance for almost two months, and if advocates like Lucy Pineda of Latinos Unidos en Massachusetts hadn’t stepped in to help bring attention to her case, Reina’s fami...
Mar 27, 2023•24 min
NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1973: On July 11, 1973, 15-year old Diane Compagna swung her beach bag over her shoulder and headed out the door of her house in Merrimack, New Hampshire. She was off to a nearby lake to swim with her friend, 15-year old Anne Psaradelis. At least, that was the story they told their parents. Neither girl was expected home that night, but their parents weren’t suspicious as the girls left for the day. It wasn’t until the next afternoon when the pair didn’t return to either home that...
Mar 20, 2023•30 min
MAINE, 1999: On the night of April 20, 1999, 41-year old Bessie Selek was walking along Route 202 near the Waterboro-Lyman, Maine town line when she was hit and killed by a passing vehicle. The driver fled the scene, leaving Bessie there to die on the side of the road not far from her own home. Detectives zeroed in on her boyfriend, Raymond Wood. They’d had a tumultuous relationship. A long history of domestic violence and abuse. Maine State Police were certain that Raymond was their guy. During...
Mar 13, 2023•33 min
VERMONT, 1971: Rita Curran and her family waited over 50 years for closure in her unsolved homicide, but with a renewed investigation beginning in 2019, detectives turned to advanced DNA analysis to find the answers that had been waiting in evidence storage for half a century. In part 2, you’ll hear what DNA analysis and genealogical research revealed, but it was only the beginning of finally closing Rita Curran’s cold case, once and for all. Donate & Share: Give Back for Rita View source materi...
Mar 06, 2023•27 min
