Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: The Vernon-Tolland Three

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, multiple young women and girls go missing in the Vernon-Tolland area of Connecticut. For years, investigators have wondered if these seemingly unrelated cases might share too strong a connection to be ignored. Three, in particular —Janice Pockett, Lisa White, and Debbie Spickler—bear striking similarities to each other, and have become known as the Vernon-Tolland Three. If you have any information about any of the following cases, you can call the Tolland County Cold Case Squad at 860-870-3228. Or you can contact the Vernon police at 860-872-9126.Janice Pockett – Tolland, CT.Kathleen Terry – Sturbridge, MA.Lisa White – Vernon, CT.Susan LaRosa – Vernon, CT.Patricia Luce – Vernon, CT.Debbie Spickler – Vernon, CT.You can also contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s  24-hour hotline at 800 843-5678 for any information regarding the disappearances of Janice Pockett, Lisa White and/or Debbie Spickler. Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/ to view the current membership options and policies.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-vernon-tolland-three/

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. And I actually have multiple stories for you today, all of which involve the disappearances of young girls and women in the Vernon, Talland area of Connecticut in the late 60s and early 70s. And although the cases might seem unrelated at first, a few key similarities make it difficult to ignore the possibility that these disappearances are all the work of the same person or persons.

Despite a long list of victims, three are often grouped together. But whether they're connected by circumstance or something more sinister is anyone's guess. And this all starts with the story of Janice Pocket, Lisa White, and Debbie Spickler, all known as the Vernon, Talland 3. Katherine Pocket is having a typical low key July summer day. She and her two daughters have just gotten back to their home in Talland, Connecticut after picking up some groceries. And in typical sibling fashion, as Katherine is unloading the groceries,

this huge fight breaks out between six-year-old Mary and seven-year-old Janice. They start bickering, which turns into this full-blown screaming match over a toothbrush. As a big sister and a mom, this feels so real. Yes. I've fought with my sister over less. And basically, Katherine had let them each choose their own toothbrush while they were out getting groceries, and apparently they'd gotten them mixed up

because now they're screaming at each other over whose is whose. Anyway, eventually the whole toothbrush debacle resolves. And again, in typical sibling fashion, the girls move on like nothing ever happened. And that's when Janice asks her mom if she can go out on her own and get this, like, butterfly that she had found a few days ago. According to a podcast titled Paper Ghosts by investigative journalist M. William Phelps, who did a ton of reporting on this case, they'd apparently come across this, like, dead butterfly the other day, and it was in pristine condition,

and I guess Janice had wanted it. But she couldn't take it home when they found it, and she, like, hid it behind this little rock on the side of the road so she could come back for it later. Well, now it's later, and she's all about going to get it. Now, normally, Katherine would go with her. It's about a third of a mile away, and you have to cross a road at this intersection. Like, it's not just a trip that Katherine wants her seven-year-old daughter to take alone. And on any other day, she probably would have told Janice to wait, and they'd go together.

But look, she's busy, she's putting the groceries away, she's probably still recovering from that toothbrush meltdown. Right. And they live in a really safe, rural area, so she's, like, sure. Go get the butterfly, but you've got to come right back, and you've got to be quick. And I feel like I can see this scenario so clearly from our childhood. This would have been liberating to us. At seven? Like, are you kidding me? Like, this is what I was dreaming for. In my mind, at seven, I was already a grown adult who should have been, like, doing everything on her own.

So totally. I feel like when you're little, I mean, any extra bit of freedom or chance to feel like a grown-up is invigorating. Kind of like you just finally leveled up. Oh, that first walk alone anywhere. Like, I know what she was feeling. So here's the deal. Katherine gives her an envelope to put the butterfly in, and then Janice grabs her bike and goes out on her little adventure to get it. So she's even got her bike.

It's not even like she's walking the third of a mile. It should be pretty quick. So Katherine finishes up putting away the groceries, and she waits for Janice to return. But it's like 15 minutes and then 20. And by the 30-minute mark, she starts to get worried. Because again, on her bike, this shouldn't be taking her very long. So with a pit in her stomach, she grabs Mary and decides to walk over to where Janice hid the butterfly. And honestly, I'm sure she's expecting to find her daughter, like, maybe she's distracted, got, like, distracted by something else.

Maybe she's just taking her sweet time now she's got this freedom. Maybe she's just playing with the butterfly. Who knows? But the whole way there, they never come across Janice. Instead, Katherine and Mary just find Janice's bike lying on the side of the road. Now, again, her first thought isn't necessarily that something sinister happened. She's like, okay, you know, something caught her attention. Maybe she dropped her bike and wandered in to the woods nearby.

The road cuts through this big wooded area. So Katherine starts calling out her daughter's name, scanning the tree line for her. But she doesn't get any kind of response. The next thing she does is take Mary back home and her husband, Ronald, is there. He has just gotten back from work. So she gives him the lowdown and he decides to take a look in the area for himself. But when he goes out, he can't find Janice either. And at this point, they don't need any more convincing that something isn't right.

They decide to call the police and the search for Janice begins that very night. And they still think she just wandered off at this point, right? Or did they call the police because they thought someone took her? No, I don't think they said anything about somebody taking her. In fact, a spokesperson for the state police publicly stated that foul play was not suspected at the time. And there is a few reasons for that. I mean, the biggest being that this is 1973 when all of this is taking place. And most people just didn't jump to abduction right away.

Plus, with those big patch of woods right there, her getting lost seems like the most logical conclusion, like Occam's razor here. George Gambassi reported for the Hartford Current that police and firefighters all come out and scour the entire area near Janice's home. And within that first 24 hours or so, there are more than 800 volunteers that join the search as well. You got people on foot, motorcycles, in their cars. There are even people looking for her on horseback. They also have members from the Navy and the Marines join in.

There are scuba divers checking local ponds, even a helicopter. Although apparently visibility isn't super good during these initial days, so it doesn't seem like that's even much help. So you have all of these people, and yet no one finds even a trace of Janice apart from her bicycle. And the bike is in good shape. It's not broken or scuffed up. There's no blood on it. So as far as investigators are concerned, it points to the theory that she got off of her bike

and probably walked off into the woods and just got lost. Okay, but with that many people searching, you'd think that they'd find something if she just wandered off. Did they check to see if the butterfly was still at the rock where she hid it? They did. The butterfly isn't there, but I don't know that that actually tells them much, right? Like, either she made it there and got it before she vanished, or it could just mean that it already disappeared, someone else took it,

something happened to it. I don't really know. Yeah, I mean, doesn't even prove that she was there at all. Right. After a few days of continued searching with no sign of Janice, police start shifting their thinking away from the lost in the woods theory, because you're right, with that amount of people outlooking, they should have found something. I mean, realistically, they should have found her by now.

A seven-year-old isn't going to travel miles and miles into the woods. So they start interviewing people in the neighborhood to see if anybody might have seen anything. Maybe a car they didn't recognize or somebody who looks suspicious. But at least at this point, no one reports seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary. And slowly but surely, the search for Janice starts to dwindle. The day she went to look for that butterfly was July 26th,

and then suddenly it's September. And for her family, every single day is torture, waiting to hear anything about their little girl. And mom guilt is already just like a daily feeling. True. In a situation like this, I can't imagine all of the what-ifs running through Catherine's mind right now. Yeah, I mean, especially when there's just like weeks and weeks of no updates.

I would just be like internalizing all of that. It would be eating me alive. But when October rolls around, there is finally something. Police release a composite sketch of a man that they now say was seen in the area around the time Janice disappeared. According to a report in the Hartford Current, a witness says he was driving a, quote, late model car with a dark brown top and a medium brown bottom, end quote.

I actually had to look up what late model car even means, because to me that sounds old, but it's actually the opposite. It means that it's actually a newer looking car. So something from the early 70s then probably. Now the newspaper that the photo appeared in is pretty old at this point, obviously. So it's a bit hard to even like make out this sketch or get like really good details, but here,

but take a look and for the people who can't see the photo in the app, give this guy like your description basically. Ashley, what the f***? What in the Joker face is that? Right, right. Okay, usually these photos or sketches are vague or blurry or just kind of nondescript, but this picture is... Scary.

Horrific. Yeah. I mean, the missing eyebrows and... I didn't even like hone in on the missing eyebrows. I was so thrown off by like the gaping mouth or what looks like a gaping mouth. Yeah, is his mouth open? No, that must be like a printing thing or like a shading thing

because it does look like this horror movie where he's about to like swallow a child hole, but if you zoom in, you can see that his mouth isn't actually that big. Oh, I just zoomed. That does not help. It's just scarier to me, I'm going to be honest. Yeah. How old is this guy supposed to be?

30 years? Ageless because he's a ghost? I can't tell. Yeah, his age is a little hard to pin down. To me, this guy would stand out like a sore thumb, but they release this to the public and nothing really comes of it. Okay. But this is also months after Janice's disappearance.

Have the police just been sitting on this picture or did a new witness come forward? So that's the other thing I don't know. Like, I kind of lean more toward a new witness just because I can't imagine why they would keep something like this back for so long. But at the same time, we've seen that before, right? Where we're like, they don't release this for so... I don't know.

I don't know why you wouldn't in this scenario. So I hope that it was a new witness, but I actually have nothing to back that up. Now, more time passes painfully slowly, but the citizens of Tallinn are not going to let this one slide. It is not every day that a seven-year-old girl goes missing, and now that abduction is a very real possibility, they want it solved ASAP.

Now, since the local police have had months to work on this with no results, at this point, everyone's kind of demanding that the FBI be brought in. The mayor even puts together petitions, and eventually it seems to work. About six months after Janice vanishes, the Justice Department directs the FBI to investigate. At first, they seem to go through the same steps that police did. For months, they talk to people and they search the area,

which actually is a little easier this time around, because even though it's April, the trees are still bare from the winter, so those wooded areas are actually easier to look through. But again, just like the police, they come up empty-handed. So, more time passes, and the only other big update comes in May, when investigators are able to track down the man from the composite sketch. They actually find this guy and interview him. But it turns out, apparently, he had some kind of legitimate reason

for being in the area at the time Janice went missing, and I don't know what that was or who he was, because they never release any details. They basically just say that they crossed him off their list. So, we're back to square one. Yeah, which is pretty much where they've been the whole time. By the time the one-year anniversary of Janice's disappearance approaches, there is still no sign of her,

and there are no new leads to even point them in the right direction. That is, until July, when almost exactly one year from Janice's disappearance, another bicycle is found, and another little girl goes missing. It must have felt like deja vu. Another July day, another young girl who'd gone for a bike ride and then didn't return, her bike found abandoned. It was happening only 25 miles away from Tallinn, Connecticut, in the town of Sturbridge, Massachusetts.

Kathleen Terry was 12, so older than Janice, it was no less terrifying. The biggest difference in Kathleen's case is that her parents didn't have to wait as long for answers about what happened to their daughter, because less than 24 hours after she went missing, her body was found about a mile from the Connecticut border. No one is ignoring the possible connections,

and after a short time of looking at the cases side by side, they think they're on to something, because around this time, George Gambassi reports for the Hartford Current that police have at least two suspects that are already in custody on unrelated charges. Now, they're never named in any of the source material, and from what I can find, they seem to have been arrested on quote, unquote,

morals charges, which is pretty much a catch-all term for crimes involving consenting adults, such as bigamy or sex work. So this is huge after months of nothing, and the Tallinn community and the Pocket Family feel like they can finally breathe, but their hopes are quickly dashed. After police talk to both of these men,

they basically determine that neither one was involved in Janice's abduction or Kathleen's murder, and frustratingly, that's really as far as things seem to go with the investigation at that point. But wait, how did they get to these two guys? Was it something to do with Kathleen's case? What was the connection here? I have no idea.

I mean, they're literally just mentioned, like, in one or two articles, and then the police are like, J.K., they're cleared. No context for how they got to them, no clue how they ruled them out. Ultimately, no one can find a concrete connection between Janice and Kathleen,

other than the fact that they were riding their bikes when they both vanished. And at some point, it feels like the towel kind of gets thrown in on both of them, because investigators say they're mostly of the opinion that unless someone comes forward and confesses, the cases will be really difficult to solve. Cool, cool, cool.

So let's just give whoever did these things all of the permission in the world to do it again. And that honestly must have been what the perpetrator was thinking, because it isn't long before yet another girl goes missing, roughly three months after they find Kathleen's body, and just 10 minutes away from where Janice disappeared. Now, for me to tell you this story,

we're gonna head over to Vernon, Connecticut. It's Halloween night, and a woman named Judy White has just received a phone call that has her in a bad mood, to put it lightly. The local police have called and asked her to come pick up her 13-year-old daughter, Lisa White, from the station, because according to an episode of the Paper Ghost podcast, Lisa had apparently been out that night with some friends.

They were, like, joyriding around town, throwing pumpkins out of the window of their car. Judy is a working mom. She has got multiple jobs. She is raising her kids. The last thing she wants to hear is that her daughter is in trouble with the police. So she is not happy. And it probably doesn't help that the group

that Lisa had been hanging out with is a little sketchy. Sketchy? She's 13. How sketchy could they be? Well, here's the thing. There is another girl, Lisa's age, in the group, but other than that, apparently these two are, like, hanging out with guys who are, like, up to seven years older than them. They're 20?

Mm, yeah. Nope? Yeah. So she takes Lisa home and immediately grounds her. No going out, no friends, all the things done. And she's not budging no matter how much Lisa tells her that she is ruining her life and being the worst mom ever or whatever.

Now, the next day, Judy heads out to work at around 4 p.m. as usual, fully expecting Lisa to be home when she gets back. But later that night, when she returns, Lisa is nowhere to be seen. Now, I don't 100% know what her reaction to this discovery is, but I can imagine that she would be pissed. I mean, coming home after working late to find

that your very grounded 13-year-old daughter is very much not home. Oh, I'd be through the roof. Right. But here's the thing. As the night goes on, if she was mad, that mad starts to turn into worry. Minute by minute starts ticking by

and there's something about this whole situation that feels wrong to Judy. Sure, maybe Lisa snuck out to go hang out with friends. I mean, she's a headstrong, independent kid, but the later it gets, the more panicked Judy becomes. And around 2 a.m., she starts thinking to herself, okay, enough is enough. Even if she had snuck out, she would be home by now.

So that's when she calls the police to report Lisa missing. Now, and surprisingly, police assume this is a runaway case, especially because Lisa's actually runaway before, although I can't find any details as to why or when or for how long, but even though she's a runaway, they say they're still going to look for her, which is kind of unheard of today. But apparently in Vernon, a missing teen is a missing teen

regardless of how they went missing. Hi, this is 2023 calling. Can we maybe learn something from the same person's investigation from the 70s? Yeah, this is actually an important thing. If they're missing, doesn't matter why, let's go take a look. Yeah. So when they go out looking for Lisa,

they start by talking to her friends, specifically her friend, Maria. She was the one who was Lisa's age and the one that was with that whole group on Halloween night. Now, Maria says, yeah, I saw Lisa on the night she disappeared. Lisa, I guess, had decided to sneak out and come by for a visit when her mom was at work and the two hung out for a few hours. Lisa even left a note for Maria's parents apologizing

for the trouble that they had gotten into on Halloween. But eventually, Lisa said that she needed to head out to make it home before her mom got back from work. So around 7.30, she and Maria said goodbye and they promised to see each other at school. And then Lisa left on foot. Okay. So actually TBD, this is something that I really wanted to know,

but I could not find anything. I think what I found is that she walked there. So maybe she walked back. Maybe she tried hitchhiking, which I guess the two girls would sometimes do together to get around since they couldn't drive. But the one thing I did find is in an interview for the Paper Goes podcast,

Maria says that they had this rule that they would never hitchhike alone. Okay, but what time was her mom supposed to be home? I could see her maybe breaking that rule if she was down to the wire and didn't want to get caught having been sneaking out, right? Yeah, that was the other thing I couldn't find. I don't know exactly what time she was supposed to be back,

so I don't know if that's worth breaking. But when they asked Maria, like, I know you have this rule, but would she ever? Maria said, listen, it's possible that she would hitchhike alone. But regardless, they know she's headed home, so the runaway theory does net up. Here's a thing not necessarily, especially when Judy finds a two-page letter from Lisa

in which she apologizes for the trouble she's been getting in. And I guess in this letter, she talks a lot about wanting to live with Maria's family, and even though she doesn't write, like, verbatim, I'm running away. I would essentially look at this letter as some kind of goodbye note. So I never wrote a runaway note,

but I definitely wrote, like, you know, little idealistic things in journals when I was a kid or wrote stories to that effect, and I could totally see that if something had happened to me, those little musings, they could totally be constructed into some kind of reason for me to have wanted to run away. Oh, my God, yeah. Like, if anyone found, like, my journal that I was keeping,

we've talked about this journal before, and I think that I was, like, gone forever and, like, yeah. Right. No way. But here's the thing. I've traveled with a 13-year-old. They are not wise packers. So what about her stuff? What's missing from her room? Nothing. Oh.

Everything is there. You would think she would take something if she were planning on running away. Like, so here's the difference. My sister, she was the very dramatic one when we were younger, and, like, I'm pretty sure she, quote-unquote, ran away at least two or three times. She didn't make it, but down the street.

And every time, there was, like, this very dramatic note that was very clear she was running away and why. And she would always pack a suitcase with, like, her essentials, which actually wouldn't last her very long. But in Lisa's room, nothing is gone. But that doesn't deter police. They are convinced that she ran away. That is what happened.

They even have Maria take a polygraph because they think that she knows where Lisa went. But she passes and insists she has no idea where Lisa could be. But Maria isn't their only lead. I guess in that letter to her mom, Lisa also mentions being in love with this boy named Greg. And I say, boy, Greg was actually part of that Halloween group that got busted, so I assume he's, like, much older.

So police interview him as well, thinking that he might know where Lisa is, but he claims that he has no idea either. And you'd think if she was in love with this guy, he'd at least know where she was if she was planning on running away. When you are 13 and running away from your parents, your 13-year-old boyfriend or whatever your love of your life

is going to know all of it. You're not running away from who you think you're going to marry at 13. I would say, or you're running away to him. So the options are pretty short. Right, but it feels like police still aren't seeing it. And that's why all of this is so frustrating for Judy. She's constantly going to investigators,

asking for updates, pushing for action. But eventually, like so many other girls her age, her case just fades into the background. She's never considered anything other than a runaway. And despite Judy's begging the police to find her daughter, she is actually just kind of ignored. And just like that, every good thing they did in this investigation

is forgotten and undermined. Well, here's the thing, it doesn't actually stop there. Because more girls start going missing in the Vernon, Tallinn area. And the more people, specifically young women and girls, who disappear, the angrier the public gets. And the more that they start to wonder if this could be a pattern.

Over the next several years, the list of missing girls and young women almost triples. Now, bear with me, because you're about to hear a lot of new names. And for the first of those is 20-year-old Susan LaRosa, who goes missing in late June of 1975. Now, her husband Bob is actually suspected of her murder, but ultimately it seems like he's cleared.

Then an unnamed seven-year-old girl is abducted in December of that same year. She manages to escape. And according to Mark McGrath's reporting in the Hartford Current, she describes the man who took her as white in his late 20s and tall with short brown hair and a mustache.

She also says that he was driving a yellow Ford Pinto, but despite having a clear description of him and his car, the police aren't able to track this guy down. After that, things are kind of quiet for a few years, until Susan's remains are discovered in May of 1978. She's found in a wooded area by two highway workers, and an autopsy reveals that her cause of death was a blow to the head.

But the discovery of her remains doesn't lead to a break in her case. And just two months later, so this is now July, another young woman vanishes. Her name is Patricia Luce. She's 18, and based on more reporting from the Hartford Current, she was last seen by her brother when he dropped her off outside of a 7-Eleven.

Let me make sure I'm keeping track of things. I know, that's a lot. Patricia is the fifth person to go missing since 1973. Janice, Lisa, and Patricia are still missing, but Kathleen and Susan's bodies were eventually found. Yes. Okay. I'm glad you're keeping track,

because I'm not even done. Because when people start digging, they realize there's actually another girl who should have been on that list, somebody who actually went missing even before Janice. And her name is Debbie Spickler. She went missing back in July of 1968, and when they're kind of putting all this together,

she still had not been found. So try and stay with me for just a second, because we got to take a little detour really quick so I can fill you in on Debbie's story. Now, full disclosure, there's not a lot out there on her disappearance, but here is what the Paper Ghost podcast mentions. Debbie was visiting her aunt, uncle, and a cousin in Vernon.

And on the afternoon of July 24th, 13-year-old Debbie and her cousin Linda decided to go meet up with one of Linda's friends at their apartment. Well, when they arrived, the friend wasn't there, but that's okay, because there were only like two other places that she could be.

Either this restaurant called the Igloo, or this park called Henry Park. And both weren't too far from the apartment building, so in order to cover more ground, Debbie and Linda decided to split up. Linda heads toward the restaurant, and Debbie starts walking toward the park. And that is the last time anyone ever saw Debbie.

At first, there was at least a glimmer of hope that she would be found because this 16-year-old boy named Ed Holgerson, Jr. was reported missing that same day from the same park that Debbie was going to. I'm sorry, there's no way that's a coincidence, right? I mean, it would have to be a pretty huge coincidence, especially when you consider that Debbie and Ed

were actually hanging out together at the Igloo restaurant the day before they both went missing. So, although no one is 100% sure that they're together, it seems like a possibility, right? Maybe they ran off together, maybe they're fine. But three weeks later, police managed to track Ed down in Boston, and Debbie wasn't with him.

When they showed him a picture of her and asked if he knew anything, he said that he saw her in the Boston Common, although he says they hadn't run away together, like he just so happened to see her there. Okay, Ed, so you guys went missing from the same park on the same day, you saw her in your new city, and you didn't go off together. What are the odds, right?

Yeah, if he's not running away because he's with Debbie or had something to do with her going missing, then why is he there? Why did he run away in the first place? Well, he told investigators that he had gotten a girl pregnant and basically skipped town to avoid the cops. The cops? Yeah, I don't know what that means.

I don't think the cops come after, I don't know, whatever. Again, all the stuff surrounding Debbie's disappearance is pretty hazy and there isn't much else out there about her. Like I said, most of the details I have come from the Paper Ghost podcast, but the real takeaway here is that essentially the police cleared Ed and Debbie just remained missing.

They couldn't find her in Boston, they couldn't find her back at home, nowhere. So again, when the public learns about her, she is added to this growing list of missing or murdered young women and girls. But no arrests are made. Even after Patricia Luce's remains are discovered

in March of 1979. She is found in a wooded area about 15 miles from her home and her cause of death is thought to be from a head injury since her skull had several hairline fractures. That was Susan's cause of death, right? It was and it seems like this discovery is enough to at least make investigators think that they might all be connected.

What? I thought that's what they were thinking this whole time. The public was thinking this, but investigators didn't have anything concrete other than just kind of the timing and like this small like local region where all this is happening. But now that Susan and Patricia's causes of death are basically the same,

that is actually the thing that really grabs their attention. So the Connecticut State Police form this task force will look into five of the six disappearances and murders. Five out of six? Who gets left out of this investigation? Well, it's Kathleen. I guess since she isn't from the Vernon or the Tallinn area, she is not thought to be connected to the others,

even though she was the first case that they actually compared to Genesis. Right. But again, I guess they rule her out because of the location and now the task force doesn't investigate her murder. The only ones that they're looking at are Debbie. Again, she is the 13 year old who went to look for her cousin's friend in the park in 68,

then was never seen again. Then you have Janice where we started our story. She is seven, rode her bike to get the butterfly and went missing in 73. Then you've got Lisa. She was the 13 year old that was grounded in 74, but went to see her friend while her mom was at work and then went missing on her way home.

Susan, who's 20 and went missing in 75, they thought her husband did it for a minute, but then her body was found in 78. And Patricia, who is 18 and gets dropped off at a 7-Eleven by her brother in 78 and then her body is found. Now, the formation of this task force is a big relief to everyone in Vernon and Tallinn, especially the families of the five girls.

But the task force doesn't dig up anything new. I mean, they even try bringing in a psychic who directs them to a reservoir in Vernon, saying that Janice's body is in the water, but surprise, surprise, the tip from a psychic doesn't turn up anything. And eventually the task force is just disbanded. The search for Debbie, Janice, and Lisa,

as well as the hunt for Susan and Patricia's killer or killers, fades into the background for investigators. And then years start to go by without any updates. The only notable thing worth mentioning is that an inmate in a Massachusetts prison named Charles Pierce confesses to murdering both Janice and Debbie. And at first, this seems like it could be a legit confession

because this guy has been charged with the murder of a 13-year-old girl in Massachusetts. They knew he'd traveled around with a carnival, so it made sense why he hadn't been caught yet. Reporting by Manira Wilson for the Hartford Current says that this guy said he has, quote, unquote, intimate knowledge of what happened to Janice. But his confession turns out to be false.

I guess he directed police to search this area where he claims he hit her body, but when that search comes up empty, police are pretty sure he just, like, made the whole thing up. Now, in 2014, another task force is established to take a fresh look at the cases, specifically Debbie, Janice, and Lisa's disappearances. This seems to be around the time

that they're dubbed the Vernon Tallinn Three. And the goal is to permanently establish if they are or are not connected. The renewed press result in an influx of tips and interviews and even a few searches are conducted around the Vernon Tallinn area. But again, absolutely nothing comes of it. The three girls remain missing.

Kathleen, Susan, and Patricia's murders stay unsolved. And even though their families and the Vernon Tallinn community at large haven't forgotten them, it seems like their cases won't get the closure that they deserve. That is until a new suspect comes to light, one that's not entirely unfamiliar to police,

and this person could tie almost all the cases together. So the investigative reporter I mentioned before, M. William Phelps, grew up in Hartford County, Connecticut. And he'd been aware of the disappearances and murders pretty much his whole life. I mean, it's hard to live there and not at least be familiar with the names of the missing girls. And so when he decides to investigate them for himself,

he looks for any potential links between all of the victims. And he comes up with something pretty solid. You see, it all starts with Susan LaRosa, the 20-year-old woman who went missing in 75 and whose remains were discovered in 78. Again, I mentioned that her husband, whose name is Bob, was considered a suspect in her murder. And at the time, he honestly looked like a good suspect.

They had this super toxic, super abusive relationship, and they were reportedly both abusive towards their kids. So this was not a good household to be in. And as Phelps talks to Susan's friends and relatives, he learns even more reasons why Bob should have been looked into more seriously. For instance, after Susan disappeared, her 14-year-old sister, Bernadette,

moved into their apartment to help take care of the kids. And she says that when she arrived, she was met with a horrific scene. There was blood everywhere, on the walls, on the stairs, on the floor near one of the kids' rooms. Oh, my God. And Bernadette tells Phelps that she asked Bob where all the blood came from,

and he said that it was his sons from being slapped in the face by Susan. But the thing is, the son didn't have any visible injuries, at least none that would result in that much blood. So she suspected that it wasn't the son's blood that was all over their home. She had a suspicion that it was Susan's. But how the heck did police miss all of this?

Well, they never came over to the house in the days after Susan went missing. What? I know. And Bernadette tells Phelps that she didn't tell a soul of what she saw for years, whether it was out of fear or because she just genuinely didn't know what to do,

since, I mean, again, remember, this girl's 14 at the time. Yeah, she was just a kid. Yeah, but she did eventually go to the police with that information, and they finally got into that apartment and did a proper search. But by the time they were doing this search, like, we're not talking weeks or months.

It had been decades, so nothing really came of it. Now, Bernadette wasn't the only one to witness something in that apartment. Bob ended up splitting up his kids and sent them to live with other relatives, and his three-year-old daughter, Stacy, told her godparents that she actually saw her dad hit her mom in the head

with a large metal pipe after which she fell to the floor motionless. Which lines up with her cause of death. Maybe, because when her godparents called police, Stacy told them that I guess she saw her mom get hit in the back of the head. But when Susan's remains were found, they determined that she was killed

with a blow to the front of the head. But to be fair, like, they're hearing this from a three-year-old at the time. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if they just got a little something mixed up. I mean, we all know eyewitness testimony usually isn't super accurate, and when you're talking about a toddler

witnessing something and something super traumatic, who knows. But what I think is important here is that she's saying she saw her mom get hit in the head front back. Who cares to me? But even though Bob was questioned and failed a few polygraphs,

he was just never arrested. Wow. Susan's relatives tell Phelps that they always believed Bob was responsible for Susan's murder, and that he somehow managed to get away with it. Now, Bob passed away in 2018, and it seems like with his death,

the best possible lead into Susan's case vanished. So, obviously, there are some red flags when it comes to Bob. But as Phelps continues to talk to members of Susan's family, he uncovered something even more disturbing. Apparently, Bob had this history

of sexual abuse toward young girls. Bernadette even tells him about a time when she was living with him. It was in the middle of summer, and so it was super hot in the apartment, and they had some fans to try and keep cool, but there was an incident where Bob took all of the fans in the home

and put every single one into his room, and he basically told Bernadette, like, if you want to use a fan, you're going to have to come sleep in here with me. Uh, nope. Uh-huh, and it gets worse because Stacey, little Stacey, says that she didn't end up staying with her godparents.

She ended up moving back in with Bob when she was a kid, and she alleges that he not only molested her until she was 12, but he also allowed others to do the same. Other relatives of Bob's tell Phelps the same thing. Many of them say that he had been known to make sexual advances towards people as young as 12,

but he's not the only La Rosa accused of this kind of behavior. I guess his brother, Nathan, was actually convicted of sexually assaulting a child and served a prison term from 1976 to 1979. That's it? Yeah. I was going to say three years, but, like, I don't know the months,

probably less than three years. Right. So as Phelps is down this rabbit hole of looking into Bob and Nathan, he keeps hearing these stories, stories about these brothers outfitting this old ambulance. And I guess inside it has, like, insulation,

so they could drive it all around together and pick up young girls and assault them, and nobody would hear. So Phelps starts thinking about Debbie Janice and Lisa, and that alarm bell in his head only gets louder when a member of the La Rosa family says that Nathan actually knew Lisa White, that 13-year-old girl who police initially thought ran away.

This relative says Nathan was actually obsessed with her. And at one point, he even lived a few doors down from her and would often watch her and the other kids playing from his backyard. Oh, my God. So now Phelps knows there's a connection to at least one of the missing girls, and he's wondering, could there be more?

And sure enough, he uncovers a link between the La Rosa brothers and Janice as well. You see, he interviews a woman named Nancy, who lived in Tallinn near the Pocket family and she says that on the afternoon Janice went missing, she was heading to the store and witnessed something strange. She says that she had planned to take this back road, like shortcut to the store,

which happened to be the very same dirt road that Janice had ridden down on her bike to retrieve her hidden butterfly. But this lady says that when she got to the road, it was blocked by a station wagon, and she could see a man walking near the car as if he was looking for something. Now, this would have been around 3.30 p.m.,

which is right around the time that Janice disappeared. Now, at the time, she said she didn't really think much about it, apart from just being annoyed that she couldn't take the back road to the store. And by the time she headed back, the station wagon was gone. She could use the road, whatever. But not long after, she heard about Janice's disappearance

and she couldn't help but wonder if that man she saw could have been involved. Did she tell police about what she saw? So here's the thing, it's never explicitly stated in the source material. I think it's safe to assume she did. Like, she didn't have any reason not to. Again, we've also heard of lots of people

who thought it wasn't important or discount what they saw or whatever, so maybe not. I sometimes wonder if, like, maybe she's the witness where they got the picture from. I don't know. Anyways, at this point, Phelps has a strong hunch that the man Nancy saw that day

was one of the La Rosa brothers. I mean, aside from the creepy old ambulance, Bob actually owned a station wagon. So Phelps goes, like, full investigator mode and puts together this lineup. He's got a few different photos of various men along with a few different car models. And he asks Nancy if the man or the car that she saw that day

is in any of those photos. And wouldn't you know it, Nancy chooses the ones of Bob La Rosa and his station wagon. And what about Debbie? Any connection there? So, no, that is actually one of the loose ends with this theory. Like, nothing I have come across can connect Bob or Nathan to her disappearance.

And Phelps actually doesn't believe that she is connected to Lisa and Janice at all. And what do police do with this new information? Nothing that I've seen. I mean, that doesn't mean nothing's happening behind the scenes, but as far as I can tell, Phelps's reporting is the last big breakthrough. Now, obviously, this is just one theory,

and it is by no means confirmed. Because one of the things that stands out to me is I also couldn't find any connections between the La Rosa brothers and Kathleen or Patricia's case either. So where are those cases now? Well, Patricia's murder is still unsolved. The only thing I can find on Kathleen

is from this, like, web sleuthish sort of website that claims an arrest was made in July of 1980. It says that a 21-year-old man named William Leipfried was charged with her murder, but I can't find if he was ever actually convicted. If this was just a rumor, if he was arrested, let go. I have no idea. Now, as for Susan and the girls known

as the Vernon, Tallinn Three, their cases remain unsolved as well. But regardless of whether they're really connected or the similarities between them are all just coincidence, every one of them still has a family who wants to know what happened. In an article for the Journal Enquirer by Olivia Regan, Janice's sister says that every time she sees a butterfly,

she still thinks of Janice, even all these years later. Despite being so young when everything happened, she says that not knowing where her sister is makes it hard to grieve and to find closure. Her parents died without knowing what happened to their oldest child. Each of the girls' families still misses them, and they deserve to know what happened to their loved ones.

And the thing is, someone out there does know what happened. So if you have any information about any of the cases that we talked about today, you can call the Tallinn County Cold Case Squad at 860-870-3228. Or you can contact the Vernon Police at 860-872 9126. You can find all the source material

for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. But stick around if you want to hear about the good stuff that's happening in the crimejunkie community. Alright crime junkies, it's time to talk about the good today.

If you happened to miss it last month, we've introduced a new segment that we are calling the good. And at the end of the last episode of every month, we're going to be sharing some of the inspiring messages we get from you all every day. Because while talking about these cases every week is obviously so important, it can also be really hard and heavy.

And the good is just a little reminder of the impact our crimejunkie community can have and why we're all in this together. So this message actually came after we released the episode of the deck on crimejunkie, the case of Awajiki Haseola. Yeah, so Awajiki was the aid of diamonds from Oklahoma. And we started a letter writing campaign

that we talked about at the end of the episode because this is what's so wild. Like the lead detective in the case is positive that she was murdered. And he actually knows who did it, but he is stuck because of a freaking technicality. Which is the fact that that Emmy had listed her cause of death as undetermined.

Our listeners on the deck were epic and literally sent so many messages to the Oklahoma Attorney General's office, asking them to do a formal independent review of the methodology used during Awajiki's autopsy. And then within a week of her episode airing on the deck, the AG's office reached out to the lead detective to learn more about the case.

And guys, this is literally why we do what we do, to make real change. And of course our crimejunkies then decided to do their part as we shared her story on this feed. And we got a message from a woman and her friend who actually made t-shirts with the case information and to provoke people to send more letters. But this is the great part.

So we actually got a follow-up message saying, quote, so this just happened. We heard Moses brings plenty, was gonna be at a casino 40 minutes from our hometown. We decided we'd wear our shirts to the meet and greet. We were standing in line waiting to get our picture taken and he said, ladies, I love your shirts. While we're taking our pictures with him,

he asked us about the case and wanted more information. This man is on Yellowstone and works with Kevin Costner. And he's asking us about Awajiki. So of course we gave him all of the information we had, including the detective's name and Norman Police Department's phone number. We also gave him the address of the coroner's office and the coroner's name.

We are beyond stoked. So am I. And then they sent a picture of him with him. So these cases are getting to you guys and you're taking them to other people and Awajiki's name is getting out there. Her story is getting out there. Not only are you guys, again, our fan base,

but now if we can reach this new fan base, that's so freaking cool. So good on you guys. Crime Junkie is an audio check production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?