Criminology - Joan Webster

Episode Date: October 24, 2021

25-year-old Joan Webster vanished in 1981 in Massachusetts and was later found murdered. She was headed back to Harvard following the Thanksgiving break but never made it to her dorm. She was last seen outside of the airport trying to catch a cab in the company of a mysterious bearded man. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the disappearance and murder of Joan Webster. There are many twists and bizarre clues in Joan's case. It received quite a bit of coverage but has never been solved. Over the years many theories have been proposed involving CIA connections, conspiracy theories, and even a connection to the Zodiac killer. Joan's sister-in-law Eve Carson joined us for this episode to help shed light on the case. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 180 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morford, what's going on with you, buddy? Not too much. Sort of getting ready for the fall weather, getting excited about Halloween. My wife just picked up a big bag of candy and that's one of my favorite times of the year.

So that's what I'm looking forward to. How about you? Yeah, I like Halloween. You know, here in Ohio. The weather's already changing. We've had some pretty cold days already. So it's the football weather, the fall weather, whatever you want to call it. Now, what happens in my house is my wife will buy a bunch of candy.

We'll eat it all up. It happens every year. Nobody can stay out of it. So she gets mad and then has to go buy more candy. She's got to find a good stash spot so she can hide it until Halloween night. She tries a different spot every year. And every year we find it. And we eat it. It's kind of a tradition. Well, that's one of the good things about Halloween.

Yeah. So we've had some great Patreon support. Let's give some shoutouts. We had Nicole Weite, Libel, Teresa Steen, Carol, Mandy Galloway, Holly Johnson, and Gretchen Fisher. So a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much. We can't thank you enough. That goes a long way to helping us get the show out. and anyone that is considering supporting criminology can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. Just a quick reminder, CrimeCon Vegas is approaching fast. It'll be here before you know it. CrimeCon is April 29th through May 1st, 2022.

Yeah, and we're excited to hear from a lot of our listeners, and they're telling us that they're planning on being there in person alongside us. And remember what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, or at least that's what they say, but the memories of the fun time you'll have there at CrimeCon, that'll go home with you. So it's really going to be a lot of fun. And why not save a little bit of money in the process? Go to CrimeCon.com and register for CrimeCon Vegas. Use our promo code criminology to save 10% off your standard badges.

But don't wait. Tickets are definitely going fast. All right, Morph. So now that we have all that out of the way, it's time to jump into this case. And in this episode, we are talking about a really strange one. with a lot of twists and bizarre clues that started out as a missing person's case, but eventually turned into a murder case. This is one that has puzzled investigators for decades.

And this is also a case that has it all. CIA connections, conspiracy theories, corruption, and even a possible connection to the Zodiac Killer, it all plays out, like something out of a crime fiction novel. But this all really happened. are talking about the murder of Joan Webster. The true details of what exactly happened to Joan are hard to keep straight, and a lot of misinformation and rumor about her case has been put out over the years. Luckily, we were joined by someone who has spent the last 40 years trying to gather and

organize the clues in Joan's case, and that person is Joan's sister-in-law, Eve Carson, and you'll hear from Eve throughout this episode. Joan Lucinda Webster was born to George and Eleanor Webster on August 19, 1915. in Dayton, Ohio, my hometown. She had two older siblings, a brother George Stephen Webster, who went by Steve and a sister named Ann. The family moved to New Jersey. In 1957, Joan went to Glenridge, New Jersey High School and graduated in 1974.

She went to Syracuse for her undergraduate years, and she got her degree in design. She was a dean's list student and earned a lot of awards. While at Syracuse, Joan lived in a sorority. After she graduated, she moved to New York City and she lived with two roommates on the Upper East Side. She worked for an architectural and design firm, Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill. In 1980, Joan began a three-year program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By all accounts, Joan was a dedicated student, and I think it's easy to see more from her credentials. she wasn't one to just sit back.

She was a go-getter. Eve Carson began dating Steve Webster in 1977, and eventually the two got married in January of 1980. So Eve got to know Joan very well. And she describes her as a total sweetheart, saying Joan was very bubbly and energetic. Eve has mentioned that she never met anyone, that knew Joan that didn't like her.

Eve went on to elaborate about her memory. of Joan for us. Joan was at the time she disappeared. She was a 25-year-old graduate student at Harvard Graduate School of Design. Just a beautiful person. She was very bubbly, very personable. I don't know that I ever met anyone that didn't just absolutely love her. She was very bright, very accomplished student with a lot of awards.

She loved the theater. She had lived in New York for a while a couple years before. before she went back to school and just was a person that was full of life, very kind to others, very sharing, very giving. And it just, it brings a lot of tears to my eyes, understanding the loss that we really had when Joan disappeared. We were close. We didn't live in close proximity to each other where we would see each other all the time, but we did spend summer vacations together, some holidays, you know, where we cross paths. And she was just a very engaging person who made you feel that you had always been a part of her life. The night that she disappeared,

I actually suffered a miscarriage that same night. So in some ways, I felt kind of a unique bond to her as this all unfolded. And it's something that's kept me very close. close to what really happened to her. The mystery of what happened to Joan Webster began on November 28, 1981. That's when Joan landed at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts. She was returning from Thanksgiving break in New Jersey and heading back to Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she lived in a dorm at Perkins Hall. Witnesses at the airport saw her talking with someone in the baggage area.

Around 10.30 p.m., she headed away from the luggage carousel and outside into the cold and windy night, stepping outside the eastern taxi terminal. She was last seen carrying a red purse, a tote bag, and a navy blue lark suitcase. The 25-year-old never made it to her dorm just eight miles west of the airport. On December 1st, a classmate of Jones, David Duncan, called her family to tell them that she hadn't come back to school, and he was worried about her. David has sometimes been described in news articles as Jones' boyfriend. which could explain why he had her parents' phone number in New Jersey and why he would be so

immediately concerned. But Eve told us that while Joan and David had gone out, they were not actually dating. Joan was casually dating a young man that lived in Detroit at the time. There were several young men that I knew that she had dated, very bright, very talented young men. And she kind of set that personal aspect of her life aside, not one. to get deeply involved with someone until after she had finished her degree. One young man that she was dating was actually a friend of mine. He had gone to a school undergrad and was a fraternity brother of my brothers.

And then went on to Harvard Graduate School, Harvard Business School. So they met out there, started to date, something that I found very exciting. I was thrilled. He actually was planning to visit her. at their home in New Jersey over the Thanksgiving break, which is not something most people were aware of. Joan was a dorm proctor, so her absence would have been noticed. In fact, she had a handwritten note on her door,

stating that she was normally in her room from 7 p.m. to midnight, if needed. So obviously, the news of Joan being missing was very disturbing for the Webster's, and Joan was officially reported missing on December 2nd. It was that very same day that Jones Wallet and Purse were found in a marsh in Saugus, Massachusetts, about 14 miles north of Logan Airport by a man named Anthony Belmonte. It's important to note that Saugus and Cambridge, where Perkins Hall is, are in different directions, so not in the direction that Jones should have been traveling to get back to Harvard. It was determined that about $100 in cash was missing from Jones' wallet, but her ID and credit cards hadn't been taken. So the search for Joan Webster officially began and it quickly became large. In all, police from Cambridge, Saugust, Boston, Beverly, Hamilton, Concord, Glenridge,

and the Harvard campus, FBI from Quantico, Boston, Newark, Concord, Bangor, as well as FBI headquarters. The Charles Street Jail Corrections, a private investigator named Bruce Latham, and Interpol were all involved at one point. This search was much more extensive than most missing persons searches, especially since it all started so soon after Joan went missing. Eve Carson believes she knows the reason why. The search for her sister-in-law got so big, so fast,

and that's because George Webster used his pull as a former CIA employee to make it happen. They, you know, got people engaged. I mean, the number of departments that got engaged in this case was staggering. I mean, it was an overwhelming number of offices and agencies that became involved in this case. That was a red flag to me. The Webster's immediately took a trip up to Boston where they coordinated and spoke with different police officers and whatnot who started conducting interviews. around the airport, airport personnel, just everybody they could think of. The passenger manifests off the various different planes that came in around the same time as Jones.

It does stand out to me, looking back now. There were a lot of things that the family did not tell me, and that's very concerning. They very much had their hands on this investigation. largest fingerprints are all over this investigation. I found some correspondence that he had with the FBI on how he was directing various different district attorney's offices and whatnot. And I found that he had some influence and impact in witnesses that were brought out later that tried to tie some pieces together in a theory on what happened to Joan. The initial, thing that came out was trying to suggest this was just a random act. She was in the wrong place

at the wrong time, and that really was not the case. One thing I learned when I started to dig into this case, aside from the fact that she actually had been seen at the airport, was the fact that the police kind of tagged a suspect very early on. And it was more than a year before they actually made that public. So they were kind of doing some things that weren't so kosher. At first, he thought that George Webster, using whatever pull he had to find his missing daughter, was perfectly understandable, something any dad would do. But looking back now, she's somewhat suspicious of it.

That was certainly my take at the time. you assume that family is telling you the truth. Obviously, you can kind of empathize and put yourself in that position. If it's your child, you're going to be doing whatever you can, you know, moving heaven and earth to find her or find out what happened. As I was actually able to recover documents that are relevant in Jones case, I found that that really was not the case at all. there were things that were being diverted, covered up, kind of kept secrets, and ultimately the theory that everybody landed on, the kind of the central group investigating Joan's disappearance, came out with a theory that is completely false.

Joan was a good student in a prestigious school, and her family was well known in New Jersey. She was not known to be someone who lived the high-risk lifestyle or got mixed up in any kind of shady activities, so police were stumped about what may have happened to her. Flight crew, passengers, airport staff, and cab drivers in the area were all questioned about Jones' disappearance. On December 3rd, the Boston branch of the FBI was called in. It didn't take long for investigators to retrace Jones' steps and verify that she had arrived at Logan Airport without incident after taking Eastern Flight 960 from Newark, New Jersey.

She was seen at the airport and she had talked to, you know, other passengers on her flight. That was confirmed. She waved to a couple of friends at the luggage carousel. She did indeed arrive at Logan. The story that came out following that was, though, that after she collected her luggage at the luggage carousel, she vanished without a trace. over the course of really researching her case, I learned that that was not true. She was seen.

Taxi driver Fenton Allen Moore recalled that on the night of November 28th, Joan tapped on his window and said Cambridge. He jumped out and started to load her suitcase into the trunk. But as he was about to slam the trunk lid, a bearded man showed up next to Joan. and she said casually to the cabby that the man was with her. The bearded man then spoke up saying, I don't think we want this cab.

And the man removed Joan's suitcase from the trunk. And the pair walked over to a blue car in the cab line. The cab driver described the bearded man as a middle-aged white male, under six feet tall, and about 160 pounds. This man had glasses, worn an overcoat, and his beard was,

thick. He also was carrying a suitcase, possibly indicating that he was traveling too. They did identify the cab driver. He gave quite a good description, very good description of Joan, but also gave a description of the man that she was seen with in the cab line. That was the piece that was never reported. That information was suppressed. As I look at the circumstances that were there, I think it's pretty clear that this was someone she knew. She traveled alone, so she arrived at Logan alone. She was seen talking to a man behind the counter in the luggage carousel area, and then went out to the cab line.

She engaged the cab, her suitcases loaded, and then she turned and told the cabby that there was someone with her. That's when the man appeared. He also had a suitcase, so was likely traveling himself. As the cabby started to load his luggage, the man got argumentative and got into a discussion with the cabby that he didn't like how he was handling the bag. The cabby described it as being a very heavy suitcase, and the man turned to Joan and said, we don't want to take this cab. and Joan's luggage was removed, and the two, Joan and this man, moved to a vehicle, another vehicle that was in the cab line. The description given by the eyewitness, the town taxi cab driver, he could not identify livery markings on the second vehicle.

So whether it was a, you know, a random car or another cab or an independent driver, it's really hard to say. but it was a blue vehicle and not a typical cab that the man would identify. The taxi driver that Joan had engaged at Logan Airport gave the police a description of the man that was with Joan in the taxi line. And a composite was made. It was made from what's called an identica kit. It wasn't a hand-drawn sketch, but made from templates one laid over the other. That composite I never saw until I started researching Jones case. I was able to get it reconstructed in 2009.

It was only maybe a little over a year ago that I actually was able to get the police report of that description that helped kind of consolidate my impression of what that composite is. The man that was with Joan was identified as a middle-aged white male traveling. He had on wire glasses. They showed him with a beard, curly dark hair. They indicated that the hair was not as kinky as the composite reflected. That lead was never circulated other than within police departments. Webster's had a copy of that lead. of that composite on December 21st, 1981.

So shortly after Joan disappeared, they never shared that with, certainly with me, whether they shared it with other members of the family, I don't know. I doubt it. That lead remained locked in the files. If you're looking for a missing member of your family, as I said, you want to move heaven and earth, but nobody knew about the composite other than, you know, a couple of different police departments. and something very strange that I noticed in police files that I recovered was on the same day that the New Jersey Police Department was called with template numbers to create the composite for the Webster's.

There was another call that came in from the head of ITT security. He had called and said that they were possibly going to put together a composite. of a man based on a psychic's vision. And to me, that just struck me as very odd. Those two calls came in pretty much back to back. It was within the same hour. And it really kind of distorts your impression of, you know, what composite are you looking at?

What information are you looking at? One from a psychic is certainly not going to be as reliable as one from an eyewitness. And as far as the eyewitness lead, that was actually verified to an extent. The dispatcher heard the discussion, the exchange between the man, kind of squabbling about the handling of his suitcase, and the dispatcher got on the radio with that cab driver and asked if there was a problem. So, you know, obviously an eyewitness is going to be far more reliable than a psychic. As the Christmas holiday approached, Jones family waited for answers and hoped for the best.

But instead of good news, a series of troubling and disturbing phone calls came in regarding Jones' case. On December 9, 1981, the Webster's received a phone call that they later claimed was an extortion call. And nine days later, on December 18th, they received another call, this one claiming that Joan was alive. There were at least three different extortion incidents that I was aware. of, and none of those made the papers. This was a highly publicized case. It was all over the papers for years. But none of these instances were reported. They kind of kept these under the wraps. That first call in December, they weren't able to track the whole number when they taped the Webster's home line. However, they did get the exchange. And the exchange actually came

out of the same area where the ITT offices were where George worked. And the caller wanted, you know, 20,000. He wanted it in small bills. He warned them not to call the police and wanted to meet with George. They gave him instructions meeting him at an intersection in New York City. The extortion incident did not pan out. It was not a legitimate, the person really had no knowledge of junk. On January 18, 1982, the Webster's held a press conference, and ITT, the company that George Webster worked for,

offered a $10,000 reward from information about Jones' whereabouts. The next day on January 19th, Saugus Police Chief Donald Peters, received an anonymous call, telling him to look into a connection between Joan Webster's case and a woman named Marie Ionuzzi's case. And this caller implicated a man who was a suspect in Marie's case named Leonard Paradiso. As of January, the Webster's went to Boston and offered a reward for information leading to Jones' whereabouts. What I find odd there was that they didn't mention the lead. They didn't mention the composite. And shortly thereafter, almost immediately thereafter, there was a tip, a call that came in.

and the woman identified the suspect that they went after then for the next however many years. And the man absolutely was not the man in the cab line. He was much larger. On August 11, 1979, 20-year-old Marie Ianusie went to a wedding reception where she argued with her boyfriend David Doyle. David went home and Marie went to a party at the groom's family's home where she drank before she went to a bar in East Boston. Witnesses recall Leonard Paradisa,

being at the party and at the bar, talking with Marie sometime after 11 p.m. Before eventually leaving with her. Four other witnesses claimed to have seen Marie after she left the bar without Leonard. On August 12th, Marie's body was found in marshland in Saugas at the edge of a tidal river. This area was behind a lobster pound

that would buy fish from Leonard Paradiso. Marie was bruised. She had been raped and strangled with the scarf she was seen wearing at the wedding. A semen sample was recovered from her body. Leonard and his girlfriend, Candice Wyatt, claimed that Candice had offered Maria a ride from the party to the bar in East Boston,

but that she didn't accept their ride home. The area that Marie's body was found in is the same area, that Jones person, and wallet were found in. If we go back and look at the man described as being with Joan Webster at Logan Airport, the night she disappeared, the man was under six feet tall and about 160 pounds. But Leonard Paradiso was six foot two and over 200 pounds.

So I think just based on that, it would seem that the man with Joan at the airport, if he was involved with her disappearance, was definitely not. Leonard Paradisa. The woman who called, she didn't identify herself at the time. She has later since been identified through court records. But the woman accused a man by the name of Leonard Paradiso of Jones disappearance and also accused him of murdering another woman, a 1979 murder that had not been resolved. And that's at the point where those two cases got fused together and really confused and made for a very chaotic and sensational case that got aired through the media all for years. I really had to research that case as well to understand why they thought those two cases

should be viewed and the same suspect was guilty of both and found that that case most definitely was a wrongful conviction. Leonard Paradiso, at the time Joan disappeared, was a parolee. He had been in prison for an assault conviction. I have not gone through those records. However, he was found in a very incriminating position and appeared to have tried to assault a young woman. Leonard Paradiso was not an angel.

He was out on parole at the time that Joan disappeared. He was out on parole at the time that the other woman, the entangled case, was murdered. He had been at the wedding of that other victim. So there was at least a connection that could be made where his path had crossed with the other victim. The only connection that the former prosecutor and police were trying to make was they claimed that Leonard Paradiso was sexual predator, and he went after women was long dark hair. Joan and the other victim both had dark hair. That's the only similarity.

Early 1982 started off with rumors circulating that Joan had been killed at a fraternity party. There were some leads that came in suggesting Joan had been killed at a fraternity party. And those areas, those events were checked out. Of course, most students hadn't even returned on Saturday, they returned Sunday from the Thanksgiving break. Those leads did not pan out. Four days later, on January 29th, Joan's suitcase was found in a Greyhound Bus Terminal locker in Boston.

E feels a Jones suitcase being found at the bus terminal is an important clue. I was always told, and it was reported locally in the Boston news, that the suitcase was found at the Park Square Greyhound bus station in Boston. And that was always what I believed. Then Tim Burke came out with his book when he wrote his book about this case, claiming it was found in New York City. And that was a question that I posed to the current custodian of Jones case. And I was able to obtain records in regards to that.

The suitcase was found in Boston. It had been put into a locker. The key was still missing. after 30 days those lockers are opened and contents removed and it's stored in a caged area for another 30 days in case someone claims it. After the end of that second 30-day period, someone noticed the tag and noticed that it was Jones. Nothing was missing from it. The unusual aspect of it is just how it was portrayed. It took a while before the suitcase was sent to the FBI for analysis. I have all of their reports and whatnot.

The former prosecutor, Tim Burke, claimed that his snitch told him about the contents of the suitcase and that there were a pair of gray shoes in the suitcase. That was not true. There was no footwear of any kind in the suitcase. The thing that is concerning is that, The gray shoes that he claimed were in police evidence were contained in Jones' carry-on tote bag, and the carry-on tote bag was never recovered. So, again, it shines a light on how was law enforcement involved in this to have something that had not been recovered,

all of a sudden ending up in police evidence. the district attorney's office who currently handles Jones case refuses to clarify if those shoes exist in police evidence or not. The Greyhound station was west of the airport, oh, I would say maybe about five miles west of the airport. And the suitcase they determined was placed in that locker prior to 9.30 a.m. the following morning. November 29th. Yeah, the fact that Jones's suitcase was in this locker is just really weird because of all of her other belongs that were found were sort of just thrown out the window and discarded in different areas. So for this one suitcase to have been locked away, it leads to the question, why was it locked away? Why wasn't it just thrown out a window someplace? And who put it there? Yeah, I think more if it's just one of the many mysteries. You could look at it as possibly she put the suitcase in the locker before she met up with her killer. If that's not the case, then it leads you down the path of, you know, did her killer lock it up in there?

And if so, what would have been the reason for that? In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally, brutally, murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water.

Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Mysterious tips in the Webster case continued to come in on April 4th, 1982. The Middlesex District Attorney received the letter, mailed from Cambridge, Massachusetts that claimed Joan was in a bag at the bottom of Walden Pond. On April 5th, the pond was searched, but no sign of Joan was found. Later that month, on April 21st,

the Webster's received two cards from someone claiming to have knowledge about Joan's disappearance. And more, if this is something that we've seen in a lot of cases that we've covered, And I think you always have to ask the question. When you're talking about these various communications, are these real? Did these come from the killer? Or are these people who are, you know, seeing the news about someone's disappearance

and playing, I guess, what they would consider a practical joke? And if that's the case, that is a very sick, practical joke to mess around, to play with the family of someone who has gone missing. That's just really hard for me to understand how someone could be so cruel if they didn't have anything to do with it, but they just are messing around. Because you can just think in your head what that would do to the victim's family. Yeah. And we've talked about this in cases.

before, and it's very cruel, and I think it just boggles our minds as to why people do this when they do that kind of thing and give these families hope like that. I think a third possibility is maybe someone really thinks they have legitimate information and they're sending it in to try and help. But it seems like more often than not, these are either people that are hoaxing something and don't have information or they're even worse, they might. from the person involved in the crime. On May 2nd, 1982,

Jones' parents went through with the difficult task of taking Jones' personal belongings from her dorm and late that same day, there was another anonymous call, claiming that Joan was still alive. On July 6, 1982, Leonard Paradiza was finally arrested for the murder of Maria Hianuzzi, and he stated to an officer at the scene,

I've been expecting this for three years. years. Despite no evidence to support the claim, Suffolk County District Attorney Timothy M. Burke believed and publicly stated that Leonard Paradiso had also killed Joan Webster. On October 13, 1982, months after Paradiso was arrested, George and Eleanor Webster updated and increased their reward offer to $25,000 for any valid information and $50,000 for information leading to the capture of whoever was responsible for Jones' disappearance. The very next day, they received another extortion call that claimed Joan was alive. On October 15th, Jones' father George reportedly met with the extortion caller in Concord, New Hampshire.

The call that came about John still being alive was an extortion call. The FBI from Newark was called in, and a group with George Webster flew to New Hampshire, where the call came from, and met with a man. At that point, he had been identified. He was a known felon. And he traveled with George Webster and an FBI agent who was posing as George's cousin to Boston, gave a bogus address and ended up, you know, being questioned then at the local FBI office. No charges were ever pressed. I mean, that bothered me as well. It's like here you've got somebody. they taking you on a wild goose chase. George was wired. The car was wired. When you talk about an emotional roller coaster, this was an emotional roller coaster. Through all of that, I never saw the Webster's emotional at all, ever. Very stoic. Never saw them cry.

The extortionist's name was never publicly released. And as you've heard Eve say, no charges were ever filed against him. That call on October 15th wouldn't be the... the last one because 10 days later on October 25th, there was yet another call that claimed Joan was alive and being held in May. In early January 1983, an inmate named Robert Bond claimed that Leonard Paradiso had admitted to killing Joan. Robert Bond claimed that Leonard told him that he had hit Joan in the head with a whiskey bottle before sexually assaulting her and dumping her body in the Boston Harbor off his boat. On July 15th, 1983, Marie Iyanoosie's boyfriend,

David Doyle, was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. And this is an entirely different side story from Jones murder, but many people believe that David was actually responsible for Marie's murder since they fought the night she was killed. They point to evidence in the case file that seems to indicate he could have been responsible for Marie's death. In fact, during the 1982 grand jury trial, Marie's friend Christine Delisi, and her step-sister Gene Day, both testified implicating David Doyle. Jean claimed to remember seeing Marie's belongings packed up in her apartment on the morning her body was found.

It looked as if Marie's belongings were packed up to be taken away, as if she wasn't coming back. She also noticed scratches on David's hands at a somber family gathering before they headed to the morgue to ID Marie's body. It's unlikely that Marie had time to pack her things that night between leaving the bar late and being murdered. So one possibility is that David took it upon himself to pack up these items. If so, how did he know she wouldn't be coming back? The judge in the case wouldn't allow a police report to be entered into evidence, which indicated that David Doyle's friend, David Delahria, claim that Doyle had admitted to killing Marie. A July 16, 1981 interview with Deliria also mentions blood on the steps leading to Marie and

David's apartment, scratches on David Doyle, and also quick flight out of town that Doyle took to New Jersey. Interestingly, Gene Day changed some of her testimony after she was privately talked to by Timothy Burke and state trooper Andrew Palumbo. On August 11, 1983, Candice Wayand pleaded not guilty to a charge of accessory to murder Marie Iianuzzi's death. Despite some possibilities that Leonard Paradiso was not Marie's killer, he went to trial and on July 21, 1984, was found guilty of the second-degree murder of Marie Ianusi. He was sentenced to life in prison. He was later sentenced to additional time in prison for an attempted rape. In that case on September 28, 1973, he had offered a woman a ride from Boston to Andover, but instead took her to a secluded dirt road where he beat her, choked her, and threatened to kill her,

and attempted to sexually assault her. Officers who responded quickly to the scene saw Leonard zipping up his pants and the young woman bleeding from the mouth and begging them to keep Leonard away from her. Paradiso was literally caught in the act. His victim suffered multiple injuries to her head, neck, and chest, and there was blood and seminal fluid on her clothing. Her blood was also on Leonard's clothes. In September 1983, in an effort to find Joan Webster, and due to the tips they received,

investigators actually retrieved the sunken boat belonged to Leonard Paradiso, called the Malaphomina, which is Italian for evil woman. They searched the sunken boat for Joan's body or any sign of her and came up empty. Police questioned Paradiso in connection to Jones' disappearance, but he took and passed a polygraph test and denied being involved in her murder. Timothy Burke was still convinced that Paradiso had killed Joan Webster. On December 18, 1984, Burke actually petitioned a judge for the surgical removal of a splinter

in Paradiso's finger, and on February 13, 1985, an X-ray was ordered. ordered on his left index finger. Two days later, the police had to force Leonard to sit for an x-ray of his finger. It turns out, Robert Bond had claimed that Leonard hurt his hand during Jones' murder, and Timothy Burke wanted the evidence. Leonard claimed that the microscopic slivers found in his hand were from sparks from a grind wheel. He got while polishing an ammo shell. This injury caused him to go to the emergency room, just three days after Joan disappeared. the Massachusetts State Police did find the ammo shell priorities that it told them about

and also determined that slivers found in his hand were not consistent with any suspected crime scene or any scenarios regarding Joan Webster's case. On April 18, 1990, a skull was found on Chabaco Road in Hamilton, Massachusetts, further north than Saugas, almost 30 miles north of Logan Airport,

where Joan was last seen. It was, quickly determined that the skull belonged to Joan Webster. Eve described for us how that unfolded. It was in April of 1990, a very remote, heavily wooded area. There are very few houses back in there even today. A woman vet, her home sat up kind of high on a hill on a bluff above a lake. and she had gone out to walk with her dog on the lower part of her property.

In that area, very often there are parts of that wooded area that get flooded with water, and certainly that had been the case after the spring thaw. Joan's skull had raised to the surface, probably from animal activity and the water in the area. her skull had gotten lodged in a drainage ditch on the woman's property. She herself was a veterinarian, so she could recognize when she got close enough, the zigzag suture-like marks on a human skull and realized what she had found right away. So police then got brought back into that area. This is a really hard area to find.

It's a very narrow gravel road, very rutted. You get hikers that go back in there. motorcycle people go back in there. There was some known criminal activity in that area, suicides and things like that. So this was an area very well known to the police, but very remote. Someone had to know that area to take her back in there. They started a, the police started to search, grid search, had a lot of volunteers, kind of broke the area up into sections and found nothing for a while that,

tied to Jones case whatsoever. About a week later, there were three police officers out in the area. They were just about ready to give up the search when an officer reached down into a decayed log and pulled out one of Jones' vertebrae. At that point, they had found the whole grave. She had been buried in kind of a shallow basin, natural basin, covered with dirt, leaves, debris, and then a layer of cut logs. The power company went back in the area routinely to, you know,

thin out the timber and whatnot and they just leave the logs there. So logs were stacked. The noticeable thing when I spoke to one of the officers involved in that recovery was that someone at some point later in time went back and put a second layer of logs over that spot. they could tell by the degree of decomposition of the lower level lower layer of logs. She'd been out there for a long time. She was found in really a horrible condition. When they got the full grave uncovered, she had been stripped of all clothing, and none of her clothing was found in that area.

She had still had a neck chain and a gold ring on the skeleton, but more generic jewelry, not something unique. and identifiable. She had unique and identifiable jewelry with her. She had a gold charm bracelet that was never recovered. Joan also wore a gold signet ring with her initials. That was removed. That was not on the skeleton. She had a two inch by four inch hole in the right side of her skull.

So she had taken a tremendous blow to the head. And that was the cause of death. She was thrown out in a black plastic trash bag. The trash bag over, as I said, animal activity and moisture or flooding in that area over time, that trash bag broke open and the skull surfaced. Actually, there was a gun in aluminum foil found in the vicinity, not right by her body, but that was determined had no connection to her death. You know, the blow to the head, I don't know that they ever determined what it was.

the lead investigator at the time of the recovery told me that it was probably something more like a bat or a limb, maybe a tire iron, something that was handy and convenient, but not traceable. On July 13, 1990, Joan Webster was cremated in Salem, Massachusetts, and her ashes were buried at Bloomfield Cemetery in Essex County, New Jersey. Once pathology was done with the tests that they were going to do after Joan was recovered, then they had her interred in New Jersey. They kept it closed. It was the only two other people there, Joan's parents, and I was there with Jones' brother, and then the choir director from the church who said a few words. No one else was, it wasn't open to anyone else.

and her sister didn't even go. It was really bizarre. Contrary to Massachusetts state law, and it was the law at the time, you're not supposed to cremate a body unless there's no more legal or judicial, you know, inquiries into it. This was an unresolved homicide. It was determined to hominside. And yet George Webster had her remains cremated. Timothy Burke had always theorized that Leonard Paradiso killed Joan Webster and dumped her from his boat near Pier 7. More than 30 miles from her Jones' remains were found.

Despite her body being found on dry land and not in the Boston Harbor, Burke continued to stand by Robert Bond's statement that Joan was killed by Leonard Paradiso on his boat, the Malaphimina. In February 2008, Timothy Burke released his book, The Paradiso Files, Boston's Unknown Serial Killer, Burke claimed to have evidence linking Paradiso to the slaying of Joan Webster and six other women during the 1970s and 1980s. In this book, the now former assistant district attorney Timothy Burke claims that Joan was killed on the Malafamina and then transported to Hamilton to be buried instead of dumped in the harbor as he had originally maintained. Burke also incorrectly wrote that Jones' lark suitcase was found in New York instead of Boston and falsely alleged that an enforcement. had accurately described the contents inside of the suitcase. On February 27, 2008, just nine days after Burke's book was published, Leonard Paradiso,

died at the age of 65 from testicular cancer at a hospital in Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts. It was revealed that Boston authorities planned to reopen the investigation into the deaths of Melody Stankowitz, Holly Davidson, and Kathy Williams, due to Burke's so-called revelations, because there were too many similarities to ignore. The theory that Leonard Paradiso had killed Joan Webster was not the only theory, though. Lots of people had theories about what happened to her. And one of the more strange ones was that she was a victim of the Zodiac killer. A man from California named Garth Penn was responsible for this theory.

There's even a book with this theory, self-published in 1987, called Time 17. One of the correspondents received by the Websters during the flurry of anonymous mailings that were sent to them included a postcard signed from a Mr. Santa Claus USA with a type message, please, where can I write you, and the written initials, SC. It also included a news article about the reward for information in Jones' disappearance, glued to the front of the envelope. The envelope was pre-printed with the sender's address as the Better Life Journal in Austin, Texas. Gareth Penn believed that this car was crawling with Zodiac clues.

It seems his theory is that the Zodiac traveled from the Bay Area in Northern California into Texas where he picked up an envelope. Then traveled to Georgia where some believe he was responsible for some of the Atlanta child murders. He then would have traveled to New York where he got the actual Santa Claus car. and then combined it with the envelope from Texas. It's important to note that Gareth Penn, also publicly accused University of California, Berkeley, public policy professor Michael O'Hare of being the Zodiac killer. His proof linking Jones' murder to the Zodiac murders was that a geometric design showed similarities. Penn went on to accuse O'Hare of murdering Joan, and in 1981, the FBI,

investigated Penn for possible extortion due to the things that he was sending to Michael O'Hare. Interestingly, Penn labeled himself a one-time suspect in the Zodiac killings. In the end, Penn's theory of how Zodiac was connected to Jones case was in a word wacky. And there just really was simply nothing to it. His claim of Zodiac being involved in Jones case was widely dismissed. by both police and Zodiac experts. And more of I think this is something that you know as well as probably anyone with the amount that you have spent working on the Zodiac case over the years. I mean, how many times have we seen people try to tie Zodiac,

not just to the murders that, you know, he's thought to have committed, but to very high profile cases all across the country. I mean, Penn has him in Georgia committing the Atlanta child murders. Yeah, I don't know what it is that makes people connect Zodiac to so many things across the country. But a little bit of background on Gareth Penn, he's a really smart guy. He's a Mensa member. And he's pretty eccentric, from what I understand.

the book we mentioned time 17 sells for hundreds of dollars if you can find a copy of it so there's sort of a cult following people trying to get their hands on this book but i you know from everything i know about him and his theory it's it's just uh it's baseless well and so obviously that tells you right there the book's no longer in print you can't get it that drives the price up i understand it right people develop theories It's kind of, you know, what makes some of the unsolved cases and some of the very big unsolved cases so mysterious, right? People, they really latch onto these cases and, you know, sometimes latch on to theories that they develop and just can't let go up. But for me, not being the, I'll say the Zodiac expert that you are, it just astounds me.

How many people have put the Zodiac killer all over the country, committing some of the more infamous crimes in American history? If the Zodiac Killer and Leonard Paradiso didn't kill Joan Webster, then who did? We asked Eve if anyone else was looked at in Joan's case. I know that after her remains were found, the husband of a woman whose property they found who remains on. He was looked at for a period of time. From what I understand, the pressure was so great that she had a nervous breakdown. She lost her practice. He was cleared. Really, there were no other suspects that they went after with any intensity. The Webster's lived the rest of their lives,

never seeing resolution in Jones case. Eleanor Webster died in June 2010 and George Webster in March 2018. Eve made it her mission to find out what happened to Joan. She's had to navigate through a lot of rumors and crazy theories. Those theories can be very hurtful, just for anyone who's listening. I've had people contact me in regards to Zodiac theories and this and that, and they come up with some very wild and sensational things. They get angry with me or hostile if I don't agree with their suppositions. I'm very fact-based. I want facts. because I don't want someone picking letters out of some cryptogram and telling me this is what that means, or the back end of an arrow shooting in this direction means he did it and was pointing to the burial site.

That's baloney. I look at actual facts. And that's what I've gone to the trouble of doing, which no one really had before, is to really take a look at what happened in this case. And what I did, which is so different from what anyone else did, was I looked at the investigation. You know, why are these people believing this? Why are they accusing this when you've got all of these facts coming in that really debunked the notion? I mean, are you just stuck on this that you're going to, quote, make this true whether it's real or not? And it can be very hurtful.

According to Eve Carson, Joan's parents were employed by the CIA. Eve published the book, Mommy's a Mole, Unraveling the Joan Webster murder and other secrets in a CIA family. As we mentioned, Eve was married to Steve Webster in January 1980, and they later divorced in 2004 after nearly 25 years of marriage. But during Eve's time with the Webster family, she got to experience this case from the inside. Eve believes that Leonard Paradiso was actually framed for Jones murder. She's also pulled no punches, more if about the Webster family, being complicit in a cover up with the police. Eve continues to strongly suspect that there was more than meets the eye

in Jones case, and that some of that, as we mentioned, may have involved Jones' own father, George Webster, as hard as that may be to believe. Eve told us a little bit about her suspicions of the Webster family and the fallout she's faced after confronting the family about her suspicions. There were two things that really triggered my diving into Jones case. One was certainly the the announcement of Tim Burke's book. He announced it back in 2006. It was published

in 2008. And that book is blatantly false. There's just so many erroneous statements in there and he really manipulated things. It is a false book. That book was

supported by George and Eleanor Webster. That concerned me. And I raised questions about it, even with what I knew at the time, I knew that that was not a theory they should be promoting and supporting out there. Nothing had been tried. But also during the course of my marriage to Jones' brother, I came across a letter that had some pretty serious allegations of criminal behavior in the Webster family. I don't know if that they are true or not. I know I sought help with it. It can be verified that I found this letter and other

corroborating information. What I see as I go through these records and understand what the Webster's knew, but they continue to blame or project a crime onto a scapegoat, that's wrong. That's frightening. They are influencing a lot of people and people want to sympathize and empathize with them, you know, putting their own feelings and how they would react and projecting that on to the Websters. The Websters were, as I said, a stoic will be the word that I used, but they never cried. They were always, matter of fact, there were things that they shared that were not true. There were things that they didn't share that should have been known for anyone to be able to cope with circumstances like this. The Websters are the ones with the secrets here. Otherwise, they would be looking for who really murdered their daughter.

that's what's concerning to me. And it still impacts some lives today. Very hostile responses. There were some anonymous letters that I received. I had some very malicious harassment that I was able to trace back to Joan's sister Anne. George Webster sent me an email on Christmas night, laced with profanity, very hostile, and wishing. me to die. That's not how you respond to anyone who cared enough and loved a family member and

wants to know truthful answers. This harsh response from George Webster leads to the question. Was George Webster simply angry with Eve over her suspicions of him? Or did she touch a nerve? Because there was some truth to it. Another possibility is that he was just tired and bitter that his daughter's murder was unsolved. Eve is now working on a forthcoming book about Jones case called simple, safe, and secret. I started writing things down quite some time back. I was advised by an abuse advocate to just really log everything and just kind of try to make sense of just different things I had experienced.

And as I got deeper and deeper into, you know, the records surrounding Jones case, I could see really very early on the seriousness of the discrepancies that were there versus what I was told. I'm now at a point where I have accumulated enough information to really get a clear picture and put it into writing in a way that people can actually comprehend what happened in this case. Because it was so sensational, kind of a highly charged case, it was actually fairly difficult. I mean, usually about the time I get to the point where I say, you know, her parents had been in the CIA, people were rolling their eyes. I understand that, and I understand trying to articulate something so

complex, it's not easy until you have the facts. And I put the facts in order, kind of describing it, going through the other case that this was tied to, and all of the fallacies that were put out there. I don't come to an absolute conclusion in the book. Sometimes that's hard to do, but certainly I can show where the evidence points. It's an important story because cases like this really do need a spotlight. I mean, there was a lot of interest in people trying to resolve crimes, but when you've got something that's actually being obstructed, and this case is actually being obstructed,

where a victim is being denied justice because people want to cover up malfeasance or whatnot, I'm a very strong supporter of law enforcement and our legal entities. However, I'm not foolish enough to realize that there are bad actors sometimes that have ulterior motives or other agendas. That is definitely what shows up here. So, you know, more of the one thing that really jumps out of me is Eve, you know, casting these suspicions. It can't make for a good family dynamic.

And I think you touched on it. There's really two possibilities here. As it relates to Jones' father, George, either he was upset because, you know, he had some involvement, some of what Eve was saying was true, or he was upset because he didn't. And he just wanted his daughter's murder to be solved. You know, again, when you're talking about these types of cases, there's always going to be some speculation involved. Some of it later may turn out to be true. A lot of it could later turn out to be false. But to me, it's what makes some of these cases so interesting is that you can dissect it, you can talk about it, what's more likely, what seems to have no basis in fact whatsoever.

I do think in some large part, this is what draws so many people to some of these very interesting, mysterious, bizarre, unsolved cases. But whatever the case may be, wherever the truth lies, the fact is that an intelligent young woman with a bright future died a violent death under very mysterious circumstances and her case filled with numerous theories, accusations, anonymous calls and letters and evidence pointing in different directions remains unsolved. And I think Morp barring something, earth shattering, some major revelation, it's hard to imagine that there will be any solid answers as to who killed Joan Webster and why. And isn't that always the case in these types of episodes, you know, when you're talking about, a case that has been unsolved for so many years. I think it always comes back to that until that big revelation comes along.

You're not going to have the solid answers. What you're going to have is continued speculation, innuendo, and just a ton of mystery. Yeah, and I think what compounds that is the fact you have all of these different hoaxers, and letter writers, callers, you have the CIA angle, and it just adds to the confusion of a case like this. You're looking in so many different directions that you don't know where the truth lies. And does it come down to something as simple as Joan just accepted a ride with the wrong person, was in the wrong place at the wrong time,

and wound up a victim of some one-off killer that we, We just, we don't know about it and she hasn't been connected to. Well, yeah, I think that's one of the big questions. You know, when you talk about, you know, asking why, why was Joan killed? The motive is normally something that's very important in trying to solve these types of murders. If there was family involved, if there were close friends, acquaintances involved, okay, you can get to motive. Now, can you get to motive?

if this was a stranger murder. Yeah, but the motive is going to be a lot different. And there's most likely not going to be any type of connection between Joan and her killer. And a lot of times, I think from my point of view, that's what makes some of these cases very hard to solve. If this was a complete stranger, let's say who saw Joe, Joan targeted her and there absolutely is no connection. Those are very tough to solve. Yeah, I think one person that may have some answers or might be able to at least shed some

light on what happened is the mysterious bearded man seen with Joan outside of the airport where she was catching a taxi. She told the taxi driver that the man was with her. So identifying him could lead to some answers. But unfortunately, he's never been identified by police. And I think they wanted to talk to him. And if you look on the internet, you can find a sketch of this guy. He's very distinct looking.

But yet, no one was able to figure out who he was. And unfortunately, we know, right? The chances of that happening, they lessen as the years go by. As far as we know, there's no DNA belonging to this guy just sitting around on a shelf waiting to be tested that's going to, you know, later provide some big reveal like we've seen in a number of other cases. So, you know, again, this one is just sad, obviously that this very bright, very caring, very loved woman lost her life. It's tough. We'd like to thank Eve Carson for joining us in this episode. Be sure to check out her book, Mommy's a Mole,

enravelling the Joan Webster Murder and other secrets in the CIA family. And as we mentioned, she also has a new book coming out called Simple, Safe, and Secret. You can also check out Eve's website, Joanwebstermurder.orgia site.com, and a new website is on the way called Justice for Joanwebster.com. By the way, the conversation with Eve Carson went about 90 minutes in length. So obviously there's no way to fit all of that into this episode. But we are going to put that conversation in its entirety up on Patreon.

So if you're a Patreon supporter, you can listen to that full interview and get even more details and opinions from Eve. If you're not a Patreon member, now's a great time to sign up. Thanks, because it's sunny Landon for writing and research. search assistance in this episode. As always, if you love the show but haven't done so yet, go out, give us a five-star rating. Keep telling your friends about the criminology podcast. That word of mouth is invaluable.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcasts, Discussion, and Fans. So more, if that is it, for our episode on the murder of Joan Webster. You know, for me, it was nice to get back to being able to talk with individuals connected to some of these cases that we profile.

It's been hard over the last year and a half, almost going on two years now, to get all this lined up. Yeah, but hopefully as things get back to normal, we can talk to some of these people that are experts on the case are connected to the cases. And I think listeners like hearing from them. So we can do a little bit more of that in the future. Yeah, I agree. I agree. It's something that we've done quite a bit of in the past, but like with everything, right? The past year and a half or however long it's been, it's changed pretty much everything that we do in some way, whether it's a big or little. We've just had so many changes.

But that's it for this episode of criminology. We'll be back next Saturday night with everyone with a brand new episode. So until then for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.