'Are You Aware of the Ransom Calls?'

missing girls had been discovered. A twenty three year old college student looking to collect scrap metal for an art project was walking through the woods near his home in Vernon when he came across a female skull and other human remains. At first, there was a strong belief among Vernon police that they could have belonged to either Jani's Pocket, Lisa White, or Debbie Spickler, and for April White Filetti,

Lisa White's sister. This discovery was the first time ever that felt as though her sister was finally coming home. In my heart, I never thought it was anybody else but Lisa. It was too close to how I just had a gut feeling that it was my sister, and um alls I wanted was at that point closure for myself, closure for my mom. It was like a knife in my heart when we found out. The remains were found in a rugged area that was once a town dump site.

It was an area not only close to where Lisa White lived, but where she had frequently hung out with friends. It became a harrowing four days before the results of whether any of the dental records provided a match to one of the missing girls took forever, or at least I don't even remember how long. For me, it felt like years getting the answer, just waiting, and it was right before my birthday, and I just kept saying to myself, all I want for my birthday is this to be

found as Lisa. That's all I wanted. Years went by before police positively I did the remains as that of a petit forty old woman who had gone missing years earlier. These families, I cannot say it enough, live with this daily. A body found, a knock on the door, a telephone call, they get their hopes up, and it's back to reality, no answers. I get a call from one of the Vernon p D detectives and so I'm holding my breath and they said, we've got the conclusion that this isn't

your sister. These remains are not your sister. And I immediately just sat on the floor like somebody just punched me in the gut. And then the tears just came in, came in, came previously on paper Ghosts, it opens up a candle worms. It takes us down a rabbit hole. But even after all that, I go back and I'm like, where does that leave us? It leaves us with the question still, where is Debbie Spickler? What happened to her? A lot of looked the same, So we started looking

at it is this more than one person? Was this? Like you know somebody that was doing this in the area, you know, abducting you children at age or around that age. Somehow I crawled through Christmas. Lisa's presence lay there unopened. We existed through March. I was completely disillusioned by the local clues. My name is and William Phelps. This is

paper Ghosts. For as long as I've investigated the disappearances of the young girls, there has never been a shortage of people coming forward and willing to discuss the cases with me. In the very beginning, they thought she'd wandered off. That most of those details I've heard countless times, and it was a missing person it was a little girl who wandered into the woods. But then every once in a while I meet a new source who leaves me speechless.

I think I'm the only person alive still that actually worked on the case from the beginning. The latter recently happened when a retired police officer who worked the Janis Pocket and Lisa White cases reached out to me with information he thought I'd be interested in. We met on a Sunday afternoon on the north end of Crystal Lake. The Wendel property and those water wells were to our right.

The gorgeous lake sprawled out in front of us. After some discussion, we decided it better not to use his name, but I have verified his credentials, which are impressive. Not only did he retire at the highest rank in his department, but he's a lawyer as well. I was interested in what he had to say about Janis Pockets case. She was the youngest of the girls who disappeared, and that image of her riding her bike to go find the

dead butterfly continuously haunts me. Now I think we're two days into it when I get the call that it's going to be uh An abduction of some type. Are you aware of the ransom calls for her? A couple of them. I mean, I've heard all kinds of stuff. When Janice Pocket first disappeared, there were two calls came two different days, and one of them was to make the reward ten thousand dollars you might get your daughter back. That's probably verbatim what it was. I had heard it

so many times. The other one was make the reward twenty dollars and you'll see Janice again. So somebody had the presence of mine is at least to put a tape recorder on the pocket phone early on, so both of those calls were recorded. They gotta remember technology then wasn't what it is today. It took days for them to figure out where the phone calls came from. I asked him next if the blackmailer was possibly an opportunist

and just trying to capitalize on the pockets pain and vulnerability. Yeah, at the time you didn't know. But the phone calls came from the phone booth in the center of Colin at the Colin Green in front of where the old tolland jail used to be. This area he's talking about is one point eight miles from where Janice went missing, just a three minute drive. There was no way of knowing if there was gonna be a third call, So we did surveillance. I was part of that. On that

phone booth. It would take days to trace the call, or at least many hours. So what and the idea was, well, we'll watch the booth, get the redge number of the call in f at to fourteen, we see somebody going and make a call, will make the the notation. But it didn't quite work that way because you couldn't always see the redge of the vehicle and all that. But the interesting thing is the guy who made the call had had a gravelly old, distinct voice. Those ransom calls

never went anywhere. The old sounding guy was never found. My gut tells me this was someone trying to capitalize on the pain of a missing child's family, nothing more. Then my source tells me a story about what happened about a month after Janice disappeared, and well, it makes me think he had a very good person of interest in Janice's case. It wasn't Bob Larossa. In the hours

after law enforcement decided Jane's pocket had been abducted. My new source tells me a suspect quickly emerged once police began knocking on doors doing the neighborhood canvas. An incident comes up from several different people, women about a soda delivery man who is offensive, invites himself into the house, um does things that would be very awkward in onenore. His name was. He was fired because of this incident and not because of pocket because these women or a

woman complained and apparently they had other complaints. Then my source reveals this served twenty years in prison for raping an eight year old girl in kind of a game. So this pedophile served his twenty years for raping an eight year old girl, then goes to work delivering soda in Janice Pockets neighborhood and he's cruising around in a truck. I recall several people telling me over the years they had seen a truck in the neighborhood near the time

Janie disappeared, but nothing had ever come of it. Now, after learning this, I wonder was the alleged sighting of Babla Rosa and his parked station wagon in the middle of the road an unlikely occurrence, or is this new suspect just one of many creeps I'm learning about that often hung out in the area. We got a search warrant for his house. He lived with a woman right where the seven eleven is. That address my source mentions it's down the street, a half mile from where Lisa

White went missing. I mean, look the coincidences developing here, the locations, the criminal record, they're hard to ignore. This new suspect never admitted to Janice pocket subduction, and I've learned he was never ruled out as a person of interest. Just when it felt like my search for answers was finally producing the strongest lead yet, I'm hit with this

new information changing everything. You'd think it would get easy every time an investigation gets thrown off course, but it's just another example of how these cold cases always seemed to take one step back from bringing these families answers. Let me ask you this, if another little girl on a bicycle disappeared thirty days after the pocket case, within five miles of the pocket house, would you think if you could solve one, you'd probably solve them both. Absolutely,

so that happened. You don't know that, I do you? Now? That was information I had not heard. That's interesting that another little girl. Was it in Talent or was it in Vernon? Right over here, he points straight ahead to the south side of Crystal Lake by the public Beach, an area where the witness grew up. There are three narrow roads across from the public beach which track upwards into a wooded area. Back in the day, these roads would have been dirt with dense force on both sides.

An eleven year old girl is riding her bicycle. She sees a car pass her. Carc turns around, comes back, sees it pass her again, doesn't give it any thought. She goes a bit further. All of a sudden, a guy jumps out of the woods and drags her off the bicycle and is trying to take her into the woods. And then this happened. This is a one in a gazillion. A state trooper, a big red aticket from Chickabee, is

coming down the road. He sees it happened. He jumps out and you know, gets into a fight with the guy. He tells me the guy's name, a name incidentally, I have never heard. And it's not the soda delivery guy either. This is yet another scumbag trolling the streets looking for a young girl. I mean two of these cases in this small area within a month. I think about this today in wonder where the hell did I live growing up.

What's more, the guy was a school teacher. He was supposed to be in an orientation meeting for new teachers. He was supposed to be there, he wasn't there. Instead of being there, he was out here trying to pull a girl off a bicycle. And then a month before, could you play him in toll in their pocket? The day that this happened, you know, I was there. I was in the barracks when they brought him in and he was kind of lumped up, and they took a mug shot of him, and then you saw him after.

You'd never know what was the same person. It's just it's just I He's one of those people where when he was cleaned up and had glasses on and everything, he had a very different look to him. He looked more like a school teacher. The day that brought him in, he looked like somebody who tried to pull a little

girl off a bicycle. I can't tell you how many times I have interviewed survivors of serial killer attacks, who described how the man who attacked them looked one way right before the attack, and like a different person altogether just after. It's like that mask of sanity these guys were comes off. My source went on to explain how after some digging, they found out that this teacher was also a driving instructor in the next town over, so they began talking to his former driver's ed students, and

there it was. We found two girls and we said where did he take you? And they said we went all over, mostly rural places or wooded places because he raised hunting dogs and he would take us for he went hunting. So he said, okay, well you know, can you take us? And long story short, they led us to tolland the police obviously wanted to question the teacher about Janis pocket. They had several victims identify him for indecent exposure acts around the Tritown region, so they alternated

filing arrest warrants. As soon as he was released on one, they'd slap another one on him and drag him back in. I then asked the obvious next question, what did he say about Jane's pocket? This is so important that people don't understand it. He never denied taking Janice pocket. He never denied, never denied it. He had talked to us until we got to that, and then he just sit there. He lawyered up. He got an attorney who eventually got a restraining order that we couldn't go within a hundred

yards of him because we were doing that. I mean, we were harassing him. It was you know what. There was one victim who was a young girl. He pulled up, exposed himself to her, and you know, she looked at the photos and I think that my aim with him mind, and so we decided we'd do a lineup, and so we got four troopers and playing clothes. So we bring her in. If we had a videotape of the five people, it would have been priceless. We brought him in and

his knees buckled. He recognized her, She recognized him. Well, it was you know, she identified him, and that was one more arrest ate. Next thing they did was get a search warrant for the house the teacher lived in with his parents, and up in the floor jor the rafters, up in the basement, we found the gun. It was a plastic gun. It looked very real, and the father said he puts them there. And the mother, I think

had some type of mental issues. She was sitting on the kitchen floor with wet towels on her head when we executed the searchboard. For me, the plastic gun is significant. I'm thinking intimidation and control. You put a plastic gun in front of a kid, they don't know it's plastic. The prosecutor ultimately dropped the ball and cut a deal with this guy for no prison time, giving him instead

accelerated rehabilitation under the condition he surrenders teaching license. The thing that strikes me about this was an only child, his parents were older. Now what's significant about that is about five maybe ten years later, father is arrested for sexually assaulting a nephew. The house this guy lived in with his parents was about twenty minutes from where Janice Pocket was abducted. But here's the thing. Has never left that house really that botherished me. He also never denied

abducting and killing Janice. Never that that's the thing that bothers me the most. You'd expect him to say, fuck you, are you crazy? You know, stuff like that. Never ever denied it, and he hasn't left the house, and he doesn't, you know, And it was most people move on, you know, like so your parents house by a bigger house. It's a small little house. And it just strikes me, why why didn't you know? Why didn't he leave there? You know?

And and if his father was the evil bastard we think he is, wouldn't that be a house full of bad memories? I'd say, I want to dig up the art. I mean, really, that That's why I would. I would do it. You see, I don't believe either White or pocket where somebody, you know, nobody would have stumbled. It's somebody who's from around here who stalked them. The new information I've received from my source has certainly given my

investigation a shot of adrenaline. It's also not surprising, for as long as I have been investigating these disappearances, the number of leads and suspects ebbs and flows. I go north for a time, then a new bit of information sends me south. As much as you'd think men would want their names as far away from any possible connection, there were also those who tried to insert themselves, mostly for selfish purposes and sociopathic motivations. The most notable of

them Charles Pierce. In nineteen eight, Pierce began admitting murdering over a dozen young girls. Fifty eight years old, a former carnival worker from Haverville, Massachusetts. Pierce killed a thirteen year old Boxford, Massachusetts girl in nineteen sixty nine, a Chicago, Illinois boy in nineteen seventy three, and then he told Illinois investigators he had abducted and murdered fifteen to twenty two children between nineteen fifty four in nineteen seventy eight.

Have a Reville in Boxford, or about a ninety minute drive from Tolland. In late nineteen eighty, Pierce told Connecticut State police he knew where Janis pocket was buried. The police looked into his claims and even brought his mug shot to Nancy McDonald, the neighbor who saw a man and his station wagon blocking the dirt road around the time Janice disappeared. Mary angele Breck, who you heard in episode one, has had a suspicion and really wanted to

believe that Pierce was responsible for her sister's disappearance. Look Pierce seemed to fit and well. He admitted his involvement. So I met up with Mary at a coffee shop one sunny afternoon in late August to clear up several unanswered questions. The guy that they brought to um the neighbor was Charles Pierce. It was okay, it was Charles Pierce. And She's like, Nope, that wasn't him. Not him, Because Charles Pierce, remember, says I killed Janice. I know where

she's buried. He also starts saying I killed this one, I killed that one. He wanted some days out in the field. That's the detective's side. Yeah, yeah, and he would he could give all these details, but then no detail about where she was actually buried because he changed his mind so many times. What Mary says next tightens a few loose ends up from me. Remember the crime scene I walked out to with Lieutenant Bill Meyer and Terry Shanks where Terry's sister, Susan Lross's remains were recovered.

It was a wooded area, old logging trail by a reservoir that was once dragged for Janice's body not too long after she went missing. Charles Pierce had led police there claiming he put Janice is and Debbie Spickler's bodies in that reservoir. There was a place off a reservoir road he brought them to to dig at one point. I think that was ever really widely known, but one of the former detectives told me that. But it definitely was a few spots on by Rose Road and old

cat Hole there where big dug. I remember Rhodes Road is where Janice placed the butterfly cat hole intersects with it about halfway down. All this searching and talked by convicted serial killers and convicts, it lead nowhere. And yet, as I've learned, just when you think you've chased every rabbit down every hole, there's always another one to follow.

Based off that tip police received from Tina LaRosa via her conversations with the witness about buried bodies and water wells, the Connecticut State Police, along with the detective from the Vernon p D, followed up and spent three days poking him asking him questions. Afterwards, he left Tina voicemail, I've listened to it, and let me just say this, the witness was more than pissed. Mary in turn, had heard from the state police about the visit herself and wanted

to share what she knew. They were up there for three days. They questioned him all afternoon, took a break, went back, and the evening again the next day, and then the third day before they left, Vernon police went up with them. They questioned him like repeatedly, and they about stuff, and he said, I don't remember. I never said that. Then they would say, but it's right here in this report that you said that. They'd show him and say, I don't remember, and they're like, they don't

know if he was dying or really can't remember. They said it was hard to tell either. He might just be a really good liar. Like the other relatives of the missing girls, Mary understands, these cases take one step forward, two steps back. At this point, it was impossible really for any of us to become disillusioned or surprised by what we heard. They asked him the same questions in so many different ways, to see if you mess up,

you know, and stuff. But he really stuck too. They couldn't get anything at it him, like, not a thing, not any information, and they have like, it doesn't sound like they have any intention of going back there unless he makes contact so close yet so absolutely far. The witnesses seemingly brought everyone to the brink of discovery, but

has pulled back for some reason. In a second voicemail, I heard the witness had asked Tina for an envelope and postage so he could mail her a hand drawn map of the wells in the exact location he was pointing to. Unfortunately, Tina, scared of giving the witness her address, never sent that envelope. They weren't trying to think make

him seem like he was definitely guilty. You just don't know if he knew anything, But he denied knowledge about even Susan Lerossa dying, and he knew nothing about that. He had no knowledge about how what happened to her. Obviously that isn't true, as the witness and Bob were best friends and often hung out around the time Susan LaRosa disappeared. Despite all of that, however, it's time for

me to reach out to the witness. At this point, I'm not really sure he has involved other than knowing Bob and Nathan LaRosa and possibly hearing details about the cases from them, but he's definitely an important piece of the puzzle. Law enforcement is putting a lot of credibility into He's the only one of the men I've been looking at who is still alive, and wow, this might be my only shot. Oh. In the next episode of

Paper Ghosts, I'm the youngest person involved in it. And if I don't step up and try to help figure it out and I die, that's it. It goes away, because nobody below me is gonna care. Look for the last time, I didn't kill anybody. I didn't hurt nobody. I didn't kidnap anybody. Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced by me and William Phelps, with help from producer Christina Everett and sound editing by Pete Cardy from back Room Audio. A special thing to Abu Safar and Will

Pearson from My Heart Radio. The series theme number four four two is written and performed by Tom Mooney and Thomas Phelps. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.