The Runaway

Someone goes missing today, I mean you have number one electronic gets, so cell phones, there's just so much I mean, facial recognition, even though it's in its infancy, it's hard. So we find people pretty quickly today. You don't say usual for somebody missing more than a few days. He got really mad at a long time and he said, if you don't watch to check, it end up like your sister. My name is and William Phelps. This is

Paper Ghosts. As I make progress learning all I can about the LaRosa family, I cannot stop thinking about the other missing girls I've been searching for. I mentioned in an earlier episode how the neighboring towns of Ellington fernand In Town, Connecticut, were on high alert in nineteen seventy three when seven year old Jane's Pocket went missing after going in search of a dead butterfly near her home.

The community was vigilant because just five years earlier, not too far from where Janie disappeared, another young girl, thirteen year old Debbie Spickler, vanished. This was just up the road in the same town from where thirteen year old Lisa White went missing. The publican media have always grouped these cases together, so much so that the girl's faces were printed side by side on one missing person flyer that continues to be posted around town to this day.

Three young girls huddenly gone. Yet, as I have found through my investigation, that is where the similarities stopped. It is a fact that during the summer of nineteen, Debbie Spickler was visiting her uncle, aunt, and cousins in Vernon, just about a ninety minute drive north from where she

lived with her family in Mystic, Connecticut. The story that's always been told is that Debbie, wearing a white sleeveless shirt, green polka dot shorts, and white sneakers, was walking to a nearby parks swimming pool with her seventeen year old cousin on the day she disappeared. The cousin reportedly forgot her towel and went back to fetch it, leaving Debbie to go on to the park alone. That story, I've

learned is entirely false. Over a series of interviews I'd done with one Debbie Spickler RelA of last year, I revealed information I had recently uncovered about Debbie's disappearance that I believe the Spickler family had never known. I gave the relative a few names of people of interest and encouraged this person to inquire within the family. When I followed up, the relative said, my family doesn't want me talking to you anymore, and this person pulled out of

the podcast. The information I gave this person was not in the public domain. These were facts I uncovered with the help of law enforcement sources and my private investigator, Ken Roby. So what's going on? I mean, I I sent you some stuff, A lot of interesting stuff. You gave me that Ken knows his ship. He spent twenty three years with the NYPD, many of those as a detective, and has over three d sixty arrests and three thirty

felony convictions to his credit. Post nine eleven, Ken was assigned to the New York City Medical Examiner's office and tasked with the recording, processing, and identifying of victims. He's a court certified expert on missing persons and has been my p I and all around go to for missing person cases for many years. When the Spickler family relative abruptly stopped talking to me, I turned to Ken and new police documents I've obtained to help fill in the

many holes left in this case. Here is what actually happened. On July ninety eight, around three thirty in the afternoon, Debbie Spickler and her cousin walked from the cousin's apartment to a nearby apartment complex where a friend of theirs lived. This was about seven tenths of a mile heading west. When they arrived, the girls knocked on the door. Nobody was home, according to the cousin. They decided to split

up to look for their friend. The cousin later told police she headed to the nearby Igloo Restaurant, an old school drive in burger ice cream joint that was a popular hangout spot for Lisa White and Irene and Susan LaRosa. Meanwhile, Debbie walked across the street toward Henry Park, approximately one yards away. It was the last time anyone saw Debbie Spickler. There were not many leads for police to go off of,

except for a promising one. Debbie's cousin told law enforcement that on the day before Debbie disappeared, Debbie was at the Igloo hanging out with a sixteen year old local guy named Ed Holgerson Jr. And the guy's friend, who went by the nickname Buzzy. Police located Buzzy, but as it turns out, Ed Holgersson was also reported missing on the same day as Debbie Spickler. It's an interesting discovery.

A kid several years older than Debbie also dropped out of sight on the same day at the same time, and has police learned the same location. Henry park I asked Ken my p I what this could mean. It could say two different things, that he's he's involved in one of the missings, or be that he's a victim himself. Actually, it could say three things. It both took off together, so I guess we gotta take you further into that to see if there's a boyfriend girlfriend type of thing

going on. There's something about Debbie Spickler's case that has always bothered me. Despite small town gossip in media reports grouping her name with the other young missing girls in the area, Debbie's case is always felt different. Throughout the years. I'd begun to find coincidences between the missing girls and the Susan LaRosa murder. But now there's this tangible lead moving Debbie's case away from those cases, and that anomaly

is Ed Holgersson. In early August, shortly after Debbie went missing, one neighbor in Rockville told police about possibly seeing Ed drive by her house on a few occasions. She wasn't certain because she couldn't get a license plate number and

the vehicle drove by too fast. What's interesting to me about this possible sighting is that the car had quote a young girl inside all right, So in the report it says Vernon p d went out to odd for the interview, but what seems to be Holgerson's mother and she says the lasting uh, I knew he was taken off the Cape Cod. I've learned that cops found ed in Boston three weeks after he and Debbie Spickler disappeared. This makes sense since Boston is just a short drive

from Cape Cod. The police asked Ed a out Debbie Spickler, and after looking at her picture, Ed said, I saw this girl around Boston Common or the Boston Public Park, then this other piece of information. Cops asked ed why he took off, Ed said he was running from law enforcement because, and I quote, I got a girl pregnant and the police were after me. In September of the year that both he and Spickler went missing. So just just a few months later he's arrested by Vernon p

d for blackmail. Yeah, there's just a couple of months after. Could he have blackmailed the parents of Debbie Spickler? Who? Who could he have been blackmailed? He's a seventeen year old kid. Maybe it could it be an opportunist type of crime. He knows now that Debbie's missing, and he takes an opportunity to try to make a few bucks off of it. That's that's the other thing I was thinking.

Either he's legitimately blackmailing somebody, or he's he's an opportunist, which it seems like he is, and he's taking this opportunity to say, hey, I know I have this information, give me money. So did Debbie run away with that or was she taken by someone against her will. From what I've learned, I'm leaning towards the former. I know Debbie had met Ed during a trip to Vernon months earlier, and I get the feeling she was very familiar with

him by the time they reconnected that summer. In his search for information, Ken came across two federal documents from May, which at this point was nearly two years after Debbie and Ed went missing. The reports detailed the arrest of a guy who fits Ed Holgersson's description. Everyone's a lot harder to track back then. I mean, he's got to same initials and everything. It's just the records in the sixties, sixties, and you know, even early seventies weren't the same as

they are now. Most of the stuff was handwritten. Nothing's going from, you know, a computer across the country to another computer. According to one report, the man named Ed Holgerson was arrested in Laramie, Wyoming for driving a car that was stolen in Maine just months earlier. He was said to be with a quote woman and a child and produced a false driver's license, as well as stolen credit cards. So you track Ed Holgerson out to Laramie, Wyoming.

But how do we know it's our Ed Holgerson. I think because he's got the same initials and everything else. I think it could be Ed's dad. Wow, Yeah, because the documents say our Ed Holgerson is Ed Holgerson Jr.

Right exactly. Record show that this Ed Holgersson Ken has found was in his mid forties at the time of the arrest, which makes it likely he was Ed Junior's father, even more so because, in addition to his place in Maine, which one could argue is a several hour drive from either Boston or Cape Cod, this Ed also had an address in Hartford, Connecticut, which is where Ed Jr's mom lived. The woman who was in the car at the time of the arrest was said to be thirty six, so

we know it could not have been Debbie. So whose child was in the car? Did police take them to jail? And they dropped the woman and the infant off at the Salvation Army And the next thing you hear about this woman is a death notice for that somebody who by that name, but nothing connecting that infant to her, to him or to anyone else. So now Debbie's missing at that time arrest. Right, Is it plausible and maybe even likely because we remember the story about Hoganson saying

that he left because he got a girl pregnant. Is it plausible that his dad now shoots out there, takes this baby with either his girlfriend or his wife, and now they had a cross country back to where he was trying to stay in Arizona. Right, it's like the baby disappears, Like the baby went into um could have went into the system, into foster care or fin that That's exactly what I was thinking, right, And that baby

could not even know who she or he is. Debbie's cousin, who was with Debbie the day she went missing is not wanted to speak with anyone, including me, about what happened. Though when the Vernon Police Department reinterviewed her in two thousand ten, she had some rather interesting and from nation to share. She described Debbie as having a chipped front tooth and being quote very physically developed for a thirteen year old girl. The cousins stuck to the story she

told in nineteen sixty eight, adding no new information. However, she did claim that Debbie revealed to her that she quote felt as if she was a burden to her family end quote. The fact no one in the Spickler family has really ever spoken publicly about Debbie's case has always stood out to me, and I can't help thinking that the one photo of Debbie that was given to the police looked more like a fifth or sixth grade school photo then something reflecting her age when she disappeared thirteen.

Taking into account what Ken has helped me uncover, I have to wonder about that narrative of the cousin and Debbie and the forgotten towel. How did that story get out into the public domain. It opens up a can of 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? Right? It leaves us with the question still, where is Debbie Spickler? What happened to her? Is she alive? And I'm leaning towards it's possible that

she could be alive somewhere. Despite the decades Debbie Spickler's case has been grouped with the other missing girl cases, I feel confident in saying there is no connection I can find linking her case to the others in any way. For now, I'm shifting my focus back on the other young girls. I'd recently come into possession of a case

summary detailing Lisa White's disappearance. Lisa is the thirteen year old girl who went missing in ninety four while presumably hitch making home from a friend, Maria Scrosshouse, just a block from where Bob and Susan LaRosa lived in Vernon Rockville. Former Vernon Police Department detective Don Skews was the cop who took over Lesa's case and moved the needle. I think farther than anyone, mainly because Don came at Lesa's case from outside the box. Everybody back then it seemed

to take it as more of a runaway. They didn't seem to take it seriously right away. Eventually, Don was twenty five when his career began with the Vernon p D, fourteen years after Lisa White went missing. Like most sizeable police departments, a detective at the Vernon p D would work active cases, but would also be assigned a cold case to work on when time permits. A short time after joining the detective's unit, Don picked up Lisa's case.

It was what's called negative reporting. So if they did if there was a tip and there was a follow up. If it didn't produce any information, they didn't document at Jesus, or they would do so little you really wouldn't know what was done. So in the beginning it was hard because it was hard telling who they actually talked to

and who they did. So we did went out. If you recall, Lisa White was hurrying to get home on the evening she disappeared because she was grounded from the night before when she and her best friend went joy riding with several older guys near the Massachusetts border. At first it was reported there were two older boys, but it was actually four older boys. It was Halloween and they were all taken into police custody after getting caught

tossing pumpkins out of the car window. As you begin to look into it over the years, does anything begin to seem weird to you about it? Well, we started when we started looking at 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. Um, you know, we had Jana's pocket was missing at the time to respect.

So those were all kind of the same times, you know, around the same area the same time Paul vern So we just kind of started looking at trying to connect him. So we started working. I started working with the state police UM, trying to compare notes with them and see if there was anything they had we missed or anything I had that they missed. No, there was a few names they had, but they had already they already looked

at them. UM. A couple of the names I think came up again we re interviewed UM and then some of the names that came up were suspects were now deceased. After forty something years, you can imagine the number of tips the Vernon p D has received about Lisa's case. I've chased many of them myself, most of which aren't worth discussing, but a few have always stuck with me. For instance, just days after Lisa went missing, police spoke with a neighbor. Two of the older boys lived next

door to. The neighbor said quote heard a girl screaming and pounding on the walls inside the apartment an our before cops arrived looking for Lisa, thinking she had run away. When police interviewed the males. Both denied knowing where Lisa was or what happened to her. Another witness statement I read involved the trucker and his son traveling through Rockville on the night Lisa went missing, around the same time

she was presumably thumbing a ride home. The father and son claimed to have picked up a girl and described the Lisa to a t near the seven eleven, up the street from Lisa's friend's house. They said they gave the girl a ride to the Vernon, Manchester, Connecticut town line, which was called Vernon Circle at the time, and claimed to have dropped her off there before they continued onto

the interstate. I have never heard of law enforcement ever following up on this, but I have learned, according to these new documents, that Lisa's mother gave police the name of an older kid Lisa was apparently dating from Manchester, Connecticut. Was what she just happened to get a ride with somebody she trusted and felt was safe at the time, and obviously it wasn't at the time. There was that

had happened. I don't think we don't know what there was a you know, it didn't seem to be any struggle. Didn't seem like there was anybody that felt there was you know that there was something more violent had happened. At one point, there was a tip that Lisa was living at Snipsick Lake, about a mile away from where Lisa went missing. It's interesting because I read about a tip with regards to a woman who said she recalled hearing a young girl running down the street yelling he's

going to kill me. This was the middle of November, nine weeks after Lisa went missing. When that woman looked out her window after hearing a female screaming, she said she saw a van following a girl who looked strikingly similar to Lisa White. One unmistakable fact in the police documents was that a friend of Lisa's reported seeing her leaving Maria scross house, walking east and up to a center of town, which is the opposite direction Maria thought

Lisa had gone. That friend also said Lisa was very upset and crying about what had happened the previous night. So I asked Don what he and his colleagues, fresh eyes and minds on the case all those years later, concluded happened to Lisa. In my theory, I think she got into a car with somebody she thought she knew well or knew him from the from the town, and I thought he was safe or she was safe. I can't say it's he. We don't know you know which

one it would be. This is why for me it's so vital to talk to law enforcement who been on the job for years. We tend to assume in female abduction cases that a male is behind the abduction, but males will sometimes use females as bait to lure an abduct young women. Don scenario would fit into that dynamic.

All those girls hitchhiked back then. Everybody it was safe back then to do that sort of thing, at least they thought it was the fact that the ablar Rossa lived down the street from literally where she went missing mean anything to you, guys. I think we considered it, but we didn't look too much into that. I think that one we kind of almost, in my opinion, might have been separated a little bit, just because we kind of knew what he did. That one was about. By

that one, Don means Susan Larosa's murder. Not only did the Vernon p D always view Bob LaRosa as the number one and only suspect for his wife's murder. They considered him for the other cases as well. Let me ask you a question that's come up for me in this. Do you remember ever hearing the name Irene LaRosa as someone who was missing. No, that doesn't doesn't sound familiar to me. I explained what I knew about Irene's case.

So I mean, as a cop in Vernon working with the state police, that case would have been folded in there, I would assume, especially with the timeline is to be in the last name right, Irene is Bob's sister, So you guys would have definitely been interested in Bob Moore for having a sister and a wife who witness Absolutely something else to think about. Why did Bob Lorossa never mentioned to police after Susan went missing that he had

a sister who had vanished four years before. I would think any husband in the same position would consider that an important piece of information and essential to perhaps finding his wife first again, first time, everything or anything about that. And we worked, I mean I worked in the Lori's case for the other detectives, and I don't I think we would have tied that in if we had heard it, I refocused on on Lisa White and what else he

could tell me about recent developments in our case. I knew there had been searches for her within the past two decades. Was it Lisa's case? Where there were a couple of dogs searches? Yes? And where were they? We did? Um? We did one up in Henry Park just before Henry Park is where Debbie Spickler went missing in nine. That searched for Lisa with cadaver dogs took place shortly before Don retired in two thousand twelve, So we did a

dog We did a dog search up there. We had a couple of minor hits, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. We pretty much anything. We took any tip and took it seriously. It didn't matter who it came from, because we just wanted to resolve the case. Do you know if anybody ever searched over by where the Rosa girl was found for Lisa or Janice or any other girls. Did they ever to bring dogs over there? Not that

I'm aware of. UM. I don't know if they look for other girls over there or not when that happened. I'm actually in the process of setting up my own canine search for this area. I've asked the state police about doing it, as have the Wendells and victims families, and have never gotten a response. To me, it seems like the obvious next step in location to conduct a

cadaver search. I never like to question what law enforcement has done in the case, because I'm not in their shoes, but this just is like the right thing to do. Don has this indelible sense of connection to Lisa White's case. It still bothers the guy to this day that he was unable to do more. I see it on his face, and as we talked further, Don's demeanor changed. I could tell talking about all of this struck at the core of his compassion for all of these victims and their families.

I mean, we always just wish that one piece of solid piece of information that gave us what we needed, um not only for for for Lisa, but for all the girls, that we could have resolved at all and just you know, put this to rest for everybody. But nobody that just it was one of It just seems like there's no witnesses. So whoever whoever did this, either it was really good at what they did or they knew, They at least knew in my case, they knew Lisa

because small I understand she was pretty spicy. Um, I don't think she would have just cooperated if and getting into car she didn't want to get into, so, you know, leads me to believe she probably knew the person. According to police documents, in one Lisa's mother, Judy Kelly, filed a claim for life insurance. Judy was desperately seeking any

type of closure. A year later, the Connecticut State Police released its conclusions in the Lisa White case, noting, based on the information is the state's opinion that this victim is not alive and her death occurred a short time after she disappeared, after she accepted a ride with an unknown person and may have met violence as she walked towards the center of Rockville. It's really destroyed my life because there's not a data goes by. Even though that

I don't think about it. That was one of only a few recordings we have left Judy Kelly talking about the pain of not knowing. I'm sure someone took her room and killed her right then. I just would like to know where she is. Judy was an inspiration to so many children throughout the years in the Tri Town area, not only because of her determination to find her missing child, but the fact that so many children went through her

dance studio and got to know her personally. I'd stop by to talk with her other daughter, April, one early fall afternoon. I didn't expect her to do what I was about to ask, because I know the pain in anguish April has been through. And yet within all that pain and suffering, I found April, a single mother who still operates her mom's dance studio and her family's honor,

to be one of the strongest people I know. No matter what is thrown at her, a leaky roof inside the studio, a downturn in student enrollment, a freaking bomb scare at a recital, she figures out a way to survive. So I put my request out there. You know, I figured Judy could have a voice through you, because these are her writings from her from her diaries. So if you want to read some of that, go ahead. Then my mother says, if I only get a second chance,

I'll let her see how much I love her. Another thing people constantly say to me is, don't worry she'll come back. Maybe they think that it will make you feel better, but it doesn't. Everybody needs time to grieve so they can go on. But we don't know what happened to Lisa. We're not allowed to do it. Somehow we crawled through Christmas. Lisa's presence lay there unopened. We existed through March. I was completely disillusioned by the local police.

Every day is like being lost and Nimbo, I pray every day that we find Lisa so we can go on. In March two thousand thirteen, in Vernon off Reagan Road, where Lisa White lived, in the specific location where Lisa and her friends used to have keg parties, bomb fires, and hang out, an art student was trudging through those woods looking for scrap metal to turn into a sculpture, and he stumbled upon human remains. It was the skull

of a young female. In the next episode of paper Ghosts, I just had a gut feeling that it was my sister, and um alls I wanted was at that point closure for myself isure from my mom. It was like a knife in my heart when we found out 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,

like not a thing. 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 that happened. You don't know that, I do you. Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced by me and William Phelps, with help from producer Christine Everett and sound editing by Pete Cardy from back Room Audio. A special thanks 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 for My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M