Cold Case Files - The Accidental Killer

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

After his first wife dies in an apparent accident in Wolfe Creek Montana, Dennis Larson collects the insurance and moves to Maine in search of another wife. When she too dies in an alleged accident shortly after another insurance policy was taken out, the veil is lifted and investigators see events in a new light. Apartments.com: To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place. Progressive: Progressive.com  

From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. June 10th, 1975, in Wolf Creek, Montana. One hour south of Great Falls, the original route of Lewis and Clark runs along the Missouri River. And through the Little Belt Mountains, splinter runs along the Missouri River. And through the Little Belt Mountains, splintered off the Missouri is a small tributary known to the locals as Prickly Pear Creek. On a summer day, a young couple, Leslie and Dennis Larson, walk along the creek bank, looking to pick some mushrooms. An hour later, the mushrooms remain unpicked, and Leslie Larson has gone missing. Later that day, Dan LaFromboise is an off-duty Montana patrolman. He's waiting on his

vehicle to be serviced at a local gas station, when a car comes speeding down the road and screeches to a stop. A man gets out. He ran across the street, and he ran up to me, and he hollered, he says, my wife just fell in the creek and she drowned. The man says his name is Dennis Larson. He asks Loughran boys to follow him back to Prickly Pear Creek. On the way, Larson tells the lawman that his wife Leslie slipped and fell into the water.

Spring rains had swollen the creek, making it deep and wide with a dangerous current that dragged Leslie under. Loughran Boys listens to Larson's story but doesn't believe a word of it. He said that he jumped into the creek to try to save his wife and try to find her. And he says, I jumped in at that first log down.

And he says, I just bugged out, washed jam. And he says, I just bugged out, washed into that. He says, I crawled out. And I says, pretty deep, huh? And he says, oh yeah, way up like this. Well, he wasn't wet. And I thought, what's going on here? That doesn't sound right. LaFronte Boyce calls for backup, then begins to search the area. He follows the current downstream, figuring Leslie's body would get caught up in one of several log j to search the area. He follows the current downstream, figuring Leslie's body would get caught up in one of several log jams on the creek. The trooper, however, finds no sign of a body. Within the hour, sheriff's deputies arrive and take over the investigation. LaFront Boys briefs them on what he has found, leaving them with a final suspicious fact.

And I said, because where he showed me she fell in the creek, I said there was one set of tracks going down there, and those were his. There was no woman's track in there at all. And I said she had never been there, unless he carried her. While a search team continues to hunt for Leslie, her father, Bill Reynolds, is notified of the tragedy. Mr. Reynolds then places the worst kind of phone call to his wife, Leslie's mother, Lois. I could tell something was drastically wrong because he was in tears and he wanted me to come right home.

And I said, well, what's going on? He said, well, Leslie died, she drowned, and you've got to come home because I have to have you here. By the time Lois returns to Great Falls the following day, county authorities have already closed the case, determining the drowning to be an accident. The finding does not sit well with LaFramboise. I didn't think it was right, but there wasn't anything I could do with it. I mean, it was out of my jurisdiction. Unofficially, and on his own time, Dan LaFromboise teams up with the victim's parents to search the creek until they find a body.

I went back down that creek, I don't know how many times, twice within the next week and a half, ten days, and I walked it, going down, come back, I'd go down again, I come back. I never could find sign of her. A month after Leslie's disappearance, floodwaters have receded and the creek is back to running calm and clear.

Still, the hunt for Leslie continues. We examined every spot on that creek from Wolf Creek down and past where it goes into the river. My husband and his friend took a boat, examined every shoreline, every small island in that area, cleared down, including in the Missouri River. Days of searching turns up nothing. Then LaFranbois switches tactics

and begins to watch the aerial wildlife, hoping a Montana black bear might lead him to Leslie Larson's remains. I said, if there's a body or anything down in that river bottom or in that creek bottom, I said, the bears are going to find her. They'll point her out. They'll dig her out. If she's in a gravel bar or something like that, they'll dig her up. So I started watching the bears. They never dug up anything.

And there's bears all over that place. The longer he searches, the more convinced La Fromboise becomes that Leslie Larson never fell into Prickly Pear Creek, and that Dennis Larson's story is just a cover for murder. I thought all the time there was something wrong with it, that it wasn't right, that he wasn't telling the truth, or he wasn't telling the whole story. And he was hiding something. We went back to that creek every weekend without fail, four years.

Even Larson himself went with us a few times, but he was not helping in the search. He was just strolling along. Over time, Lois Reynolds comes to share the lawman's suspicions that Leslie was killed by her husband, Dennis. She discovers tracks of mining land owned by Larson's family and wonders if perhaps she might find her daughter's body there. I had known that Larson had two mines in the Little Belt. That didn't prove to be of any value. And then somebody reminded us of a mine out of Wolf Creek,

and it was not in operation anymore. And they came with a big semi with a whole bunch of radar and all kinds of equipment, and they dug out that mine as far as they could go. Despite hundreds of search days and dozens of digs, neither police nor family can turn up a trace of Leslie Larson, and the disappearance goes cold. Meanwhile, Dennis Larson collects on his wife's insurance policy, one with a double indemnity clause, meaning that since Leslie died of an apparent accident, Dennis Larson gets

double the money. The bereaved husband then moves cross-country to the state of Maine, where he finds himself another bride, another insurance policy, and yet another accident, this time at the bottom of an 80-foot cliff. Apartments.com believes a dishwasher does more than just clean plates. It turns your whole place into a time machine by turning the time you would have spent washing dishes into extra time for you. That could mean more time to read, more time to knit, or more time to contemplate the vastness of time itself. With Apartments.com, finding somewhere to live

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and a young couple sets out to hike along the banks of Prickly Pear Creek, Montana, a summer afternoon in the wilderness of Montana, and a young couple sets out to hike along the banks of Prickly Pear Creek. A little more than an hour later, tragedy unfolds. 25-year-old Dennis Larson tells police his wife Leslie slipped and fell into the creek's swollen waters and drowned. The death is ruled an accident, and Larson collects on his wife's insurance policy. Thirteen years later, Larson has moved out of Montana and turns up in the state of Maine, where he begins the search for a new wife. August 1987, in Dexter, Maine. Kathy Frost is a 26-year-old single woman.

One day in August, she spots a personal ad from a man describing himself as an outdoorsman and seeking a lasting relationship. That man's name is Dennis Larson. Kathy and Dennis begin a courtship. Within three weeks, Dennis proposes. Kathy mulls her decision over with her mother, Audrey Pomeroy. She was lonely. She wanted somebody to love and to be with, do things with. So she said that she found a man and that she was gonna marry him. Wanted to get married in February 14th, Valentine's Day. Dennis Larson does not want to wait

for Valentine's Day. Less than a month after they first met, Dennis and Kathy are married. The next day, Dennis Larson takes out an insurance policy on Kathy Larson's life. It includes a double indemnity clause that will pay nearly $400,000 if Kathy dies in an accident. Three weeks later, the couple takes a trip to the high cliffs of Acadia National Park. October 11, 1987. Acadia sits on Mount Desert Island off the coast of central Maine, a haven for campers, hikers, and day trippers. The park sees nearly 3 million visitors each year. By 6 p.m., most of the crowds have left for the day.

That is when Dennis and Kathy Larson arrive and make their way to Otter Cliffs, a rugged area with a clear view of the open ocean and a sheer 80-foot drop to the water below. At 7 o'clock, a call comes comes into the National Park Service ranger station. Ranger Boyd McFarland is in the area and takes the call. We received a call on the park radio of a report of a woman fallen off the cliffs. They called up our communications office who notified me. A man named Dennis Larson has reported that his wife fell from otter cliffs. The ranger sets off to meet Larson at the scene. I met him up at the road and then we came down here and he showed me where she had fallen and where she had landed. McFarland walks carefully

to the edge and looks over the drop. Kathy Larson is sprawled below. Dennis claims they were hiking together, looking for otters, when he heard a scream. Larson turned around and Kathy was gone. National Park Search and Rescue arrive on the scene, hoping to resuscitate, but Kathy is dead. Initially, park rangers have no reason to believe the death is anything other than an accident. A phone call to Kathy Frost's mother begins to change their minds. Deep down in my heart, something was wrong. Something happened that wasn't natural. Because she hated heights.

And I know she wouldn't have been up there on that mountain. She wouldn't have done it if she wasn't made to do it. Audrey Pomeroy shares her suspicions with the park rangers. First, there is her daughter's fear of the cliffs. Second, there is the insurance policy on Kathy's life. Third, Audrey had heard rumors about Dennis' first wife, who disappeared. The Maine State Police are called in to investigate. Detective Jeff Harmon takes the case. He calls Audrey Pomeroy to find out more about her daughter

and her relationship with Dennis Larson. She had been an individual, hadn't had a lot of relationships with men at the past. All of a sudden had met Dennis Larson, was going to get married. There had been some discussion about life insurance. She just had a bad feeling about this and felt that something had gone wrong down at the back and that she was absolutely convinced this wasn't an accident. Harmon believes Audrey's suspicions might be worth checking out. He calls up a local cop in Montana, Cascade County Detective Ken Anderson, and asks him to run a check on Larson

and any reports about his first wife's supposed accident. I started doing research on Dennis and pulled up his name and found that he had lost his wife in an accidental drowning back in 1975. So working with the local officials, we were able to obtain the reports of the initial accidental death. In that particular case, he had purchased insurance. All of this kind of fit together in a pattern of someone who had been involved in a death case, an accidental death case before, had collected insurance money on it, was motivated to try to obtain a large sum of money so he could maintain his lifestyle. To the eye of seasoned detectives, the pattern is

clear. Harmon and Anderson both believe Dennis Larson killed his wife in Montana, figured he got away with it, then killed again in Maine, each time collecting on a double indemnity insurance policy. The detectives decide it's time to turn the screws on Dennis Larson and bring him in for questioning. You explain to me how she went over the edge of that cliff. There's no way anybody that didn't see it can explain it. Cold Case Files is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Let's face it, sometimes multitasking can be overwhelming. Like when your favorite podcast is playing, and the person next to you is talking, and your car fan is blasting.

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in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy. In October of 1987, Maine State Police Detective Jeff Harmon is working the case of Kathy Larson, a woman who fell to her death at Acadia National Park. Harmon believes that Kathy's husband, Dennis Larson, pushed her from an 80-foot cliff. His motive? Insurance money. Harmon learns that Dennis Larson had another wife, 13 years earlier in Montana. Leslie Larson also died of a supposed accidental drowning, and Dennis Larson again collected insurance money. During his investigation, Jeff Harmon has leaned a bit on his suspect.

Enough so that Dennis Larson decides to leave the state and head back west. Dennis had told me that he was going to go back to Montana. Psychologically, I think he was becoming very stressed over this. You could see a gradual degradation in his personality. And I think that he wanted to get some distance between the investigation and himself. Two months after Larson returns to Montana, Harmon follows him there and asks his suspect

to sit down for an interview. In room 411 of the Sheraton Great Falls, Jeff Harmon sits across from Dennis Larson, murder suspect. What Larson doesn't know is that Harmon is wearing a body wire. In the next room, Montana detective Ken Anderson is recording their conversation. The only thing I'm interested in is what the facts are, is what happened, you know, the truth about exactly what happened. Harmon lays out for Dennis Larson his suspicions about the case and presents a key piece of evidence in the form of a medical examiner's report.

It identifies bruises on Kathy Larson's arms that are not consistent with her other injuries from the fall. Bruises that are consistent with someone grabbing her forcefully, dragging her to the edge of a cliff, and throwing her over. Yeah, there's marks there. Kathy didn't put those marks on herself. And there's nobody else, there's nobody else there but you and her. And we discussed before. Okay, look, I know that those marks are there because I can see them. That's right. So all I can do is theorize as to what happened because...

The marks are there, Dennis. Yeah. Okay, she's ready to fall, right? Why couldn't she go like that? They're not caused by her. How do you know? Dennis. They're not caused by her. How do you know? Dennis, they are not caused by her. Dennis Larson is evasive, but can come up with no satisfactory explanation for the marks on his dead wife's arms. Harmon continues to push, and Larson finally

breaks, sort of. There was a dramatic change in the story from started out being purely an accident to there being an argument to there being an argument with a physical confrontation. I guess we went down by the cliff, and she says, I don't love you anyway, and gave me a push. And it pissed me off enough to where I gave her a push. And we weren't all that close to the cliff, but I pushed her hard enough to where I gave her a push. And we weren't all that close to the cliff,

but I pushed her hard enough to where she stumbled backwards and went off and scraped her belly and fell over the cliff. Larson crafts his story to cover the bruises on Kathy's arms, but does not go so far as to confess to premeditated murder. Still, Jeff Harmon believes that Larson's statements will be the crux of his circumstantial case. The suspect is arrested on charges of insurance fraud and remanded to the county jail while Harmon works on getting him extradited to Maine. Before he leaves, Dennis

Larson agrees to an interview with a local news reporter. In this interview, he makes his case for innocence. I wanted to see a wild otter that I'd never seen before, so we went to Otter Cliffs. And the details of the death, I feel, should be brought out in court and shouldn't be brought out at this time, but there was no murder involved. The following year, Larson tells the same story to a Maine judge. After eight days of testimony, he is found guilty of first-degree murder. The victim's mother, Audrey Pomeroy, has believed from the day she heard about her daughter's death that Larson was a killer. She is present for his sentencing. I wanted to get life.

I was kind of disappointed the judge gave him 50 years, but it's better than 20. Larson is locked up at Maine's Thomaston State Prison, and the case of Kathy Frost is brought to a close. But 2,500 miles west, in Montana, there is another family waiting for an answer. Fifteen years ago, Lois Reynolds' daughter Leslie apparently drowned after slipping into Montana's prickly pear creek. With Leslie that day was her husband, Dennis Larson, the same man now serving time in a Maine prison for murdering another wife and collecting her life insurance money. By a not-so-happy coincidence, Leslie

Larson also had an insurance policy, one that Dennis Larson duly collected after the alleged drowning, even though Leslie's body was never found. After Larson's conviction in Maine, Lois Reynolds has no doubts. Her daughter was murdered, and her killer was also her husband. I was leaning that way anyway, but that proved it to me that he was capable of that. Larson's murder conviction provides fresh hope for Reynolds. She puts a call in to the Montana Police Department of Justice and investigator Joe Uribe. Lois was very well versed on the entire case. She had followed it from beginning to the time when I met her and in fact did most of the investigative work at that time. And she believed that Leslie was murdered by her husband Dennis.

After reviewing the case file on Leslie's apparent drowning, as well as the main homicide, Yerby has no doubt that Dennis Larson killed Leslie Larson. The investigator attempts to build a case against his suspect and continues the search for Leslie's remains. Ten years later, there is still no body, and Yerby doubts he will ever make a case for murder, unless he can get Dennis Larson talking. When he told me he was going to go back to Maine, I said, what for? I want to talk to him. And he said, I'm going to get him to confess, because I think he's guilty. And I said, well, good luck, Joe. In the fall of 2000, Joe Yerby flies to Thomaston State Prison in Maine and sits down with Larson.

He decides to play on the convict's conscience and uses Lois Reynolds as his trump card. I told him that Leslie's mother, Lois Reynolds, had spent all of these years looking for her daughter, but she wasn't getting any younger, and she didn't want to die without knowing where her daughter was to put her to rest. He told me at that time that she's in the crick right where I said she was, and someday she'll surface. Yerby's gambit fails, and he leaves the room no wiser than when he entered. Three hours later, however, the detective gets a call. Dennis Larson wants to talk. Before making a statement, Larson tries to broker a sentence that would someday get him

out of prison. I asked that my punishment for my crime in Montana be set at a cap of 30 years to be run consecutively, that would mean I would return to Montana, spend another 10 years of my life in prison, and be over 80 years old when I get out. But at least I would have that light. Detectives provide Larson with no assurances of a deal. Undeterred, the convicted murderer continues,

giving specific details of Leslie Larson's last moments on Earth. I found a spot along the creek that there was a large tree that had fallen down into the creek and the water was riding up pretty bad. And I pushed her in at that point. And she got tangled up in the limbs and couldn't come up for air because the stream was rushing by too quick. And she drowned right there.

Justice. It's finally justice for Lois. The most important thing was Leslie's mother. She wanted justice out of this case. This man had never been addressed. This issue had never been addressed. And finally, he had come forth and taken responsibility for Leslie's death. Justice, however, sometimes has its own way of balancing the scales.

Just three months after confessing to Leslie's murder, Dennis Larson's body is found at the bottom of the Thomaston Prison rock quarry, a clothespin on his nose and his mouth wrapped with tape. Scrawled across the tape is the word Geronimo. The official cause of death is listed as suicide. To this day, Leslie Larson's body has never been found. Her empty grave a poignant question mark to the final mystery for Lois Reynolds. Where is her daughter's body and will it ever be laid to rest?

We spent every waking moment up here, I think, on weekends, you know, trying to find that spot because we were sure she was there somewhere. And now of course I have no idea. I don't think she went to the river. I never will. Everybody else seems to think that way, but I don't. Cold Case Files is hosted by Marissa Pinson, produced by Jeff DeRay, and distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series

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