Criminology - Laureen Rahn

Episode Date: June 23, 2024

On April 26th, 1980, 14-year-old Laureen Ann Rahn of Manchester, NH, was an 8th grader on spring break. On that day, which was a Saturday, her mother Judith was leaving her home alone and would return later that night. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the disappearance of Laureen Rahn. Laureen had a female and a male friend over. They drank some alcohol and her female friend went to lie down in her bed. When she thought she heard her mom out in the hallway she hustled her male friend out the back. That was the last time anyone saw Laureen Rahn. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology   An Emash Digital production

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Come on and welcome to episode 313 of the Criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morph, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing great. How you doing?

I'm doing really well. We got a new puppy this week. And I was talking to Gibby about it and saying, for those who've had multiple kids, And especially if you had the kids like, let's say three or four years apart, there's this thing where you kind of forget how much is involved with, you know, like a small infant. And I think it's the same with dogs. You forget just all the work that has to be done when they're small puppies. Just when you get a chance to relax a little bit, you're giving yourself some extra work. But I get it.

Everybody loves their pets. Oh, my gosh. We got a new kitten recently, so I get where you're coming from. Yeah, I mean, she's a, she's a doll baby. She's a little Maltese. Her name is Ivy. And she's a, she's great. I mean, very loving.

The only thing I will say is she's very clingy, um, which is not a bad thing, but she does not like to be left alone at all. She wants to be with one of us 24, you know, seven. For you know, she's going to be down there with your recording podcast. She might be. all right let's go ahead and give our patreon shoutouts we had heather dory vitito and betty speth so a lot of great new support we really appreciate it yeah thanks to all of you that gave that generous support it means a lot to us and for anyone else that would like to help the show you can go to patreon dot com slash

criminology to sign up right it's time to jump right into this episode and this week we have a really mysterious missing person's case with an odd set of clues it's a case that's a case that has stumped investigators in New Hampshire since 1980 when the case unfolded. Now, many online sluice on Reddit and web sluice have tried their hand at solving the case with no luck. We're talking about the disappearance of 14-year-old Lorraine Ron. In April 1980, 14-year-old Lorraine Ann Ron of Manchester, New Hampshire, a city of about 90,000 people, was on spring break from Parkside Junior High School, where she was with, an eighth grader. Of course, most students love spring break. What made April 26 of that month,

Saturday, really special for Lorene, was that her mom, Judith, let her stay home alone for the day while she was out of town. Judith, who had divorced Lorene's father when she was just a baby, was dating a tennis player and had planned to attend one of his matches in northern New Hampshire that evening. Lorraine usually went along with them to see these matches, but since it was spring break and because Judith thought of Lorraine as a responsible young person, and since Judith would be back that night, it seemed okay to leave her home alone rather than drag her along. Besides, Lorraine planned to have her friend over, so it's not like she was going to be on her own. Judith left to attend the match and had no idea that she would never see her daughter again.

Lorraine spent that day just hanging out around her neighborhood. It was pretty uneventful. They did stuff that normal teens do, like go down to the corner store. At around 11 p.m., Lorraine and two of her friends, one girl and one boy went back to her apartment, which was still empty since her mom hadn't returned yet. At this point, the friends did something that a lot of teens do. They decided to party a bit and got into the bottle of wine in the six pack of beer that Lorraine had managed to obtain somehow. By this time, it had started to rain. Lorraine's

female friend went and laid down in Lorene's bed, likely to give Lorraine and her male friend, who she may have been romantically interested in, some space and alone time. At around 1230 in the morning, Lorraine and this male friend were on the couch together when they heard voices in the hallway, thinking it was Lorraine's mom, Judith and her boyfriend, arriving home from the tennis match Lorraine hurried to let the boy out the back door of the apartment. He heard her locked the door behind him and he felt relief that he hadn't been caught. And I don't know about you more, but I definitely was involved in, you know, some situations that were similar to this when I was younger.

Maybe drinking a little bit when I wasn't supposed to. Maybe having people over who I wasn't supposed to and trying to cover all that up. I mean, that's, let's face it, part of what a lot of teens do. You're trying to push the boundaries. You're trying to see what you can get away with. Yeah, I've been in many similar situations when I was growing up and everybody'd get together and then, you know, it was, hey, don't wreck the house. Let's, you know, just be cool, relax, don't go crazy.

And the one thing that jumps out to me is it seems like they started drinking later, which is kind of odd. do you think they would have drank earlier so they could have the place cleaned up, sobered up and stuff so that when mom came home, they'd be, you know, relax and everything would be normal. Here it seems like they waited late to start drinking,

which I thought was a little, a little strange. Yeah, do you think it's a good point. It's almost like maybe it cropped up late or they obtained the alcohol late. I'm not sure why that would have been. But if they knew that Judith was coming home. It does seem like a very strange time to start drinking.

45 minutes after this male friend left at around 1.15 a.m., Judith and her boyfriend arrived home. As they entered the building and headed up the stairs, they couldn't help but notice how dark it was in the hallways. At first, they thought maybe it was an issue with the building's electricity, or someone had blown a fuse. It was odd, but not immediately worrisome. But a closer look revealed that all the light bulbs had been unscrewed enough, so that they wouldn't light up. The front door to their apartment, apartment number six, was unlocked. This was also odd, because Lorene and Judith, the only two who lived there, routinely kept the door locked out of habit. The combination of coming home to a completely dark hallway

and the unlocked door did worry Judith. But when she looked into Lorraine's room, she saw what she thought was the outline of her daughter under the blankets in bed, safe and asleep. While Judith was relieved to find Lorraine asleep, her boyfriend, had found the apartment's back door open. And by open, it was not just unlocked, but wide open. He informed Judith, who then decided to wake Lorene up to check on her and also basically lecture her about leaving one door unlocked and the other wide open. This is not what she imagined she would come home to when she agreed to let Lorraine stay behind. Obviously, locked doors and safety were part of that deal. To Judith's shock, it wasn't Lorraine that was woken up,

though. It was her female friend who had gone to bed while Lorraine and her other male friend were still on the couch. Understandably, Judith was immediately freaked out and wanted to know what was going on. The girl told Judith that Lorraine was asleep on the couch in the living room. She had taken her blanket and pillow earlier in the night, but Lorraine wasn't there. A second look around confirmed that Lorene was nowhere to be found in the apartment. The teen girl, who was still intoxicated, had no other information that she could give Judith. Panicked, Judith started calling around to see if anyone knew where Lorraine was, but no one had seen her. She then began searching the neighborhood in the rain.

By 3.45 a.m., Judith had reported Lorene's disappearance to an officer from the Manchester Police Department, who she flagged down while he was patrolling the neighborhood. And for me, you know, there is a point in time in many of these cases that, that we talk about where the panic sets in for someone, normally a family member, and we're seeing it here. And every time it happens, I can't help but put myself in the position of this person and you feel for them so much because you can just get a sense of what it might be like to have this panic-stricken feeling.

Like, where is your child? It's got to be very helpless feeling too. And, you know, this reminds me a little bit of what we were talking about earlier. Partying when you're a teenager, it reminds me a little bit of maybe making a dummy in the bed out of blankets to make it look like you're sleeping there. You know, maybe your parents discover that you're gone and you get in trouble for sneaking out and you made this fake dummy in bed. Well, here, there's someone in bed, but it's not her daughter. So she had to be really freaked out by that. Yeah, well, once Ferris Bueller came out.

I mean, who didn't try to set up some type of dummy to fool their parents? I mean, that's just a given. Once police were called in, they questioned Lorraine's two friends who had been with her in her apartment that night. Apparently, Lorraine's male friend was never considered a suspect in her disappearance. And unfortunately, her female friend claimed to have no real memory of the night due to the effect of their drinking. Lorraine was initially treated as a runaway. And we talk about this a lot, how in many cases in the 1980s, this was the cultural attitude toward missing teens and children at the time that they were just kind of off having fun or being rebellious or whatever.

But they would be back soon. One of the articles about her disappearance in the New Hampshire Union leader actually mentions that on average one girl quote, takes off from Manchester each day only to return within 24 hours for reasons that include, again in quotes, just a slap in the face, as if a slap in the face isn't enough to make someone leave if they were hurt, upset, or angry. The police looking at Judith, a single mother, and Lorraine, a child from a broken home. It was just assumed that they were unhappy and Lorraine had run off because of it. Judith admitted that she and Lorraine had argued that morning, but it wasn't a big bus stop or anything unusual.

She said they were very close, although one of Lorraine's aunts remembered her threatening to run away more than once. None of her friends spoke up with a reason that she might want to leave, and her boyfriend, who had been grounded for a month, didn't even know she was gone until days had passed. As police looked closer into Lorene's life, they found evidence that she may not have been as clean cut as her mom Judith thought she was. We know she drank.

She also had begun smoking marijuana. According to a 1990 New Hampshire leader article, Lorraine's aunt, Diane Pinell, described Lorraine as an angel who hung around with the wrong people for a while. And we're not passing judgment on Lorraine for any of this stuff. We're victim blaming. It was the 80s, and as we mentioned, we know firsthand this kind of stuff was par for the course for teens in the 1980s. But this meant that police would have to look in different circles to try and figure out what happened to Lorraine. Apparently, some of Lorraine's friends had reported that she at some point had discussed running away,

which further solidified the early police theory that she had. Judith, however, didn't believe that her daughter ran away. Lorraine's purse, which went everywhere with her, was still in the apartment, a pair of new shoes she had begged for as a birthday gift earlier that month, were also left behind. Nothing was missing other than Lorraine. what she had been wearing that night. If Lorraine ran away, she left everything behind.

But even if Lorraine had decided to take off without any of her belongings, why would she do it in the middle of the night with a friend over? Some may argue that having a friend sleeping in your bed is kind of brilliant if you want to delay the discovery that you're gone. But if Lorraine was running away and buying herself time, why would she do it just an hour or two before her mom came home and not much earlier in the day when she'd have a big head start. Eventually, police too would come to believe that Lorene had not run away. And I kind of have this thought from a lot of these cases, especially, you know, back in the

70s, 80s, where police very quickly jumped on a theory that, well, this person just took off. But when you look at the facts and most notably what was left behind, you know, here we're talking about a purse. And he was even said that it went everywhere with Lorraine. Okay, if you're going to take off, why would you leave your purse behind? Why would you leave everything behind? And to me, that it's just never a good sign. I think that especially back in the 80s, the runaway theory was just a quick catch-all for a lot of

investigators. You know, we know it did happen, but at the same time, a lot of cases proved not to be, you know, someone had run away in that early time when they're assuming they were runaway is crucial time if something really happened to them. So, you know, I think a lot of cases, maybe even in this case, that could have hurt the investigation. And also, I just want to touch on the fact there was this other side of Lorraine that her mom didn't know about. I think that made more things, for the police that they were going to have to do and check out and question additional people for these different circles that Loreen maybe moved in. Well, let's face it, as well as you think you know your kids,

there's a chance you don't know everything. It's really hard to know everything because, you know, if there's something that they want to keep from you, especially something that they think you would disapprove of, well, there are ways to do it. There had been no sign of Lorene for months when Judith got a glimmer of hope that her daughter was still out there somewhere. Looking back through her phone bill for October 1980, Judith noticed that there were three calls she hadn't made on the first of the month. She couldn't have made them. Someone had charged three calls all within a few minutes of each other to Judith's phone number from Santa Monica, California.

Not only had Judith not been anywhere in California that October, she didn't know anyone who had been, and she didn't know anyone who lived there either. Because the calls were billed to her number, Judith immediately believed that it was Lorraine who had made these calls, so she contacted the Santa Monica Police Department. With their assistance, she learned which numbers had been called on October 1st. The first two calls had both been made from the payphone at a motel in Santa Monica, and were both calls to other motels, one in Santa Ana and one in Westminster. The third call wasn't to a motel. It was to a teen hotline. This has been described as a number young people call to receive advice about relationships and sex. It was supposedly run by a plastic surgeon, authorities interviewed, but no connection was found to

Learine. And I think more if we have to take a minute here because some listeners may be confused about how someone in Santa Monica, California could charge calls made in that state to other phone numbers in that state all the way back to Judas Phone Bill in New Hampshire. Well, here's a quick explanation. Back then, you could dial for the operator and ask to charge a call to your account if you were away from home instead of trying to make someone accept a collect call. It's unclear whether a pin would have been needed or if the operator did anything to double check that the account belonged to the person making the call. If a pin was used, Lorraine could have let a friend use it in the past.

they could have memorized it or could have written it down. It's also unclear if you could guess these kinds of things, dialing numbers until you got one that worked for your call. Whatever the case, Judith believes that these California calls and the charges to her phone bill were by her daughter, Lauren. Yeah, seeing this charge it to your bill from another location that sort of reminds me of the weird things you could do back in the 1980s. I remember calling people and their phones would be busy and you would do emergency breakthroughs,

call the operator and say, okay, I want to, I'm tired of waiting for this person to get off the phone. Can you do an emergency breakthrough and used to be able to do stuff like that even? So I think a lot of things have changed since the night, since 1980 when this case happened. Yeah, a lot of things have changed. I remember when we got our first cordless phone. That was like a huge thing in the house. the strange thing is it started picking up or pretty much from the beginning was picking up other people's phone calls in the neighborhood sometimes i would just sit and listen for like a

half hour you talk about like a complete lack of privacy that it was pretty scary back then yeah and it reminds me too of when caller id first came on it it was such a big thing that hey i can actually see who's calling so people that were getting crank calls would be able to say, hey, I know who's doing this now. I was, you know, seeing the evolution of phone stuff in the 80s was crazy. Yeah, we take some of that for granted. Nowadays, you pretty much know who's calling or at least whether you know that person or not. And you make the decision of whether you want to pick the phone up.

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Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. These Santa Monica calls weren't the only strange calls connected to the case. Around Christmastime, 1980, about eight months after Lorraine disappeared, Judith received a call. It was around 3.45 a.m., same time of the morning that Lorraine was reported missing. No one spoke on the other line. After a few seconds, the call disconnected. This would happen every year during the holiday season, increasing in frequency as Christmas got closer, until Judith finally changed her phone number.

While some people understood why Judith would change her number, after all these tormenting calls, others found it suspicious that Judith ever let go of the phone number Lorraine would know in order to get in touch with her, especially in the days before the internet. Back then, you couldn't easily look up someone if you lost track of them. Judith not only changed her phone number, she moved the floor and remarried, taking her new husband's name. If Lorraine was out there someplace and had wanted to find her mom, it wouldn't be easy for her. And I understand why some people would question this.

I do think it varies by person. You know, we've covered cases where people have made the decision that they would never change their phone number. They never moved just for the very reason that they wanted that lifeline to stay open in the hopes that their missing loved one would return. But, you know, on the other hand, if you're getting these calls depending on the frequency, and it sounds like they were very frequent, especially around the holidays, that would cause you a lot of anguish. And at some point, you might have to make the decision

that you just can't handle that anymore. And in Judas' defense, at some point, the calls to her old phone number were somehow forwarded to Judas' sister's phone. This seems to indicate that she tried to keep the number for as long as she could in case Lorraine called.

As far as these mysterious 3.45 a.m. calls. The technology back then to ID the phone number of an incoming call wasn't really there, short of putting a trace on Judah's phone, which it doesn't seem was ever done. Caller ID wouldn't be available until much later. While these calls could have been Lorraine calling home, perhaps just wanting to hear her mother's voice again, the fact that the calls came around 345, which was the time Lorraine was officially reported missing, make it seem more likely to be a sick prank. If any of the calls were really from Lorraine,

why not call on her mom's birthday or Christmas to let Judith know she was okay? One of Judith's sisters, Janet Roy, recalled receiving a phone call from a young woman sometime after Lorraine's disappearance. The girl asked to speak to her son, Michael, but she called him Mike, which is something only Lorene was known to do.

This gave the family hope that she was still alive, because to them it made sense that she would try to contact Mike because he was her favorite cousin. But then again, Mike is such a common name. It wouldn't be out of the question to receive a wrong number call and have the caller asked for Mike. So maybe this was just a random coincidence. But citing in 1981 finally provided some hope and a potential lead in the case. A friend of Lorene's aunt Joe Beth believed he had seen Lorene at a bus terminal in Boston, 50 miles away from Manchester.

Unfortunately, there was no way to confirm that this siding actually was of Lorraine and it wouldn't be the last reported sighting. In 1985, the male friend that had been at Lorines the night she vanished took his own life. Many people find this suspicious while others are sympathetic, understanding that he may have carried a lot of guilt

related to her disappearance. Following her disappearance, he went on to live five years. possibly asking himself many questions. What if it wasn't Lorraine? He heard locking the door behind him. Did he hear the person who was there to harm her and then just leave? Could he have saved her if he had stayed just minutes later?

But one thing some people wonder is, did he live five years with the knowledge of what happened that night? And finally, couldn't take it anymore. If that's the case, he took whatever he knew to the grave. One thing we want to clarify is that some sources say the boy that was with Lorraine that night was 15, which would likely make him a friend from school. It's not too alarming. But some sources say that he was 18, and even other reports say he was 21. These are pretty big differences, and to many a 15-year-old cheering some beers with a 14-year-old friend is one thing, but a 21-year-old man drinking with a young girl something else. At the time, the legal drinking age was 18. The discrepancy in the age of this person may come

from an inkling that he bought the alcohol for Lorene and her friend that night, since the legal drinking age has since changed to 21. But that's just a guess. It's possible, since none of the sources mention a name, that there's more than one boy being talked about in these reports, which has muddied the waters. The same year, Lorraine's friend took his own life. Carol Jensen of the organization Wings for Children began to investigate Lorene's disappearance. She called the hotline that was dialed by whoever billed those three calls to Judas number. In October 1980, Carol was able to speak to the same doctor who was interviewed by authorities, and all information we have about this hotline comes from her.

Apparently, the doctor was a plastic surgeon whose wife would let young runaway girls visit their home. But for what? We don't know. It does seem a little sketchy. He also admitted one of them, may have been from New Hampshire. It feels like he was, at best, temporarily housing runaways, who would be vulnerable elsewhere or at worst participating in some type of human trafficking.

The man pointed Carol to a colleague of his wives, claiming they worked in fashion. The woman Annie Sprinkle now lived in New York. It turns out that Annie Sprinkle didn't exactly work in fashion. She was, at the time, a well-known actress in pornographic. films and a former sex worker. The year after Lorraine's disappearance, Annie had starred in the second highest-grossing explicit film called Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle. Annie Sprinkle had lived in New York for many years by this point, but she had grown up in Los Angeles, so likely new people there. But what was her connection, if any, to the so-called doctor in this hotline? It's not clear.

Carol Jensen, along with an associate, Charles Pickett, who was a caseworker for the National Center for missing and exploited children, mailed Annie Sprinkle a letter in New York to see if she could help it all. But by that point, Annie had moved to Europe and they never heard back from her. Every piece of information in this case brought more questions. And we don't have a lot of information on this Annie Sprinkle possible connection. But obviously it's a little strange that this doctor gives her name. But I really want to go back to the doctor because although we don't have a ton of information about him either, it does seem to me like what this guy was doing was possibly at the very least a little strange.

Now I get it, you know, maybe he was making a ton of money off this hotline. There were a lot of numbers you could call back then more for where you could make a ton of money, like 900 numbers and different things like that. But then there's this thing about his wife, allegedly allowing young girls runaways to stay at their home. I don't know. It just all sounds a little bit suspect to me.

And maybe this was a well-meaning couple that legitimately was concerned about young girls. Maybe they had a young girl in their life that had run away and they wanted to someone that could care for these girls. But I hope that they were checked out because it does seem to. kind of strange situation. And we don't, you know, it's frustrating because we don't really have a lot of information to know how closely they were checked out by police and to rule them out of any wrongdoing. Yet another mysterious phone call possibly linked to the case was made in 1986, six years after Lorraine vanished.

A young woman called the home of Roger Morais. Roger had dated Lorraine briefly in middle school. This young woman who called ended up talking to Roger's mother because Roger wasn't home. Mrs. Morace didn't fully catch the girl's name, but it was either Lori or Lorraine, and she claimed to be Roger's former girlfriend. When Roger was told about the call he missed, he believed it was Lorraine. Like Judith, he believed she was still alive somewhere. That same year, 1986, a private investigator hired by Judith looked more,

closely at the motels called from the payphone in Santa Monica. It was suspected that a man known as Dr. Z, who was believed to be creating child pornography material, had used these motels to traffic the young girls and had filmed there. The doctor in Dr. Z made a lot of people think of the plastic surgeon that was running the hotline for girls. Whether these two men were one and the same, and whether or not the hotline for teens, was actually a way to ID and target vulnerable young girls to traffic, we don't know. Authorities were never able to establish any connection, but it's one of those things that to many people feels like it can't be a coincidence. Two years later in 1988, a man working in Anchorage, Alaska, thought he saw Lorene doing

sex work. She would have been 22 years old at that point. Not much is known about this alleged citing, but it's clearly unverified. In fact, no citing of Lorene has ever been counted as verified. after that setting, Lorene's case seemed to cool off and was forgotten by many. It wasn't until the internet came along and in particular sites like Reddit and web slews came online that Lorene's case was invigorated

by countless online slews. They sifted through facts and confirmed details and explored various theories. One of the most popular theories is that someone targeted Lorraine knew her mom would be away that night and spring into action. The theory has to do with the unscrewed light bulbs. If we knew why the light bulbs had been unscrewed and who did it,

it might be a good starting point. It's a very creepy thing to hear. It must have been very odd for Judith to come home to, but is it an actual clue in the case or a red herring? Did someone not want to be seen? Or was it some kids just messing around? We tried to find pictures of the hallways because this seems like it would be such an important piece of the case. While realtor photos show the front of the building and the insides of each unit, we couldn't find any photos of the hallway or any complete views of the back stairwells and porches.

So for all we know, it was one light bulb within easy reach on each floor, but without knowing for sure, your mind can paint a very sinister picture. of someone creeping along a hallway, silently unscrewing bulb after bulb as they got closer to the Ron's apartment. Some people have asked the question, is it possible that it was Lorraine and her friends who unscrewed the late bulbs? It would probably cause Judith and her boyfriend to be even more clumsy and noisier than usual coming home, maybe even saying something out loud about the lights, potentially giving Lorene and her friends a bit more warning that they were coming, so they could high their alcohol. After all, Lorraine's male friend didn't leave until they thought they heard Judith in the hallway. Could this have been their plan all along? If the light bulbs being

unscrewed was part of a plan to attack someone, it wouldn't be the first time. Around 2 a.m. on October 12th, 1944, 20-year-old Georgette, Elise Bowerdorf returned home to her West Hollywood apartment, had a snack of string beans and melon, and was then strangled to death in her own home. There was no indication of a struggle in the apartment, but injuries to her body suggested she had fought back fiercely against her attacker before being sexually assaulted and killed. She was found partially unclothed in a bathtub full of water. The light bulb outside of her apartment had been unscrewed. This fixture was nearly eight feet hot. So unless the attacker was incredibly tall, they would have needed to stand on something to deliberately. To deliberately

unscrew the bulb, investigators believe that if her attacker wasn't already waiting for her inside the home when she returned, either knocked on her door or lured her to the door somehow. With it dark at the door, she would have been more vulnerable. It's important to note that although fingerprints were found on this bulb, Georgette's murder is still unsolved today. And I think that begs the question, were the bulbs checked in Lorene's case? And unfortunately, we don't know the answer to that question. Now, my thought is there would be fingerprints on most light bulb. There's somebody who probably had to screw that light bulb in, maybe a maintenance worker.

But obviously, if you had an unknown set of prints that didn't belong to anyone who lived there, didn't belong to anyone who worked there, well, maybe that could lead you in a direction. But also more of, you know, Is it possible that we're just making way too much out of these light bulbs? I mean, to me, when I hear about something like this, I automatically think there's something sinister going on. Because obviously somebody would have to intentionally unscrew these light bulbs. It's not like they just all came loose by themselves.

But the reason for that act could vary. I guess in my mind, it's just hard to think. that it doesn't have something to do or that there's no connection with the disappearance of Lorraine Ron. Yeah, it definitely seems sinister. I mean, is there a chance that it's like kids messing around? Sure, but it does seem like it could have been done to provide someone up to no good with more darkness.

There's been a lot of cases where lights have been tampered with, you know, there's a predator who's like the East Area rapist in the UK. and all of his victims, he would unscrew their light bulbs. You know, there's the Springfield 3, their light was damaged, you know, to possibly make it darker. So I think that gives good cover. And one thing that comes to mind the whole time we're talking about this was in The Godfather 2, there's a very distinct scene where Robert De Niro's character unscrews a light bulb so that the guy he's about to attack can't see him in the shadow. So there's definitely good reason for someone up to no good to, to,

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slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Let's look back through the timeline of the events at night. At 12.30 a.m. Lorraine rushed her male friend out the back door after they heard talking and movement out in the hallway. At 1.15 a.m., Judith came home and found her daughter gone. That's a 45-minute window to strike and get away if someone did indeed abduct Lorraine. Did they get really lucky, or did they know what time Lorraine's mom would be home? Also, we're left to wonder if Lorraine was abducted, was it right away by the person or persons they heard in the hallway? If not, and that commotion was an apartment resident nearby going into their apartment, then the timeline is even tighter. There's reason to think whatever happened to

Loreen happened later. The male friend said that he left after he heard the people in the hall, but Lorene's female friend who was sleeping in her bed said that Lorene came in at some point after that and got a blanket and pillow and took it out to the couch. The blanket and pillow were found on the couch, undisturbed. The neighbor in the other upstairs apartment reported hearing someone in the hallways that night, they apparently heard footsteps or voices heading past their apartment to the runs and then didn't hear anything else after that. This somewhat confirms the account that Lorene's male friend, gave someone was in the hallway. Unfortunately, he left, thinking it was Judith and her boyfriend. It's possible that after Lorene locked the back door, she went to the front door to open it,

thinking it was her mother. On the other side of the door was someone or multiple people who either wanted to harm her or who she interrupted and accidentally gave a perfect opportunity to harm her. this scenario of her immediately going to see who was in the hallway. Seems at odds with her going in sometime after the hallway noise to get her pillow and blanket. Whatever happened to Lorraine is anyone's guess, she either was taken from the apartment against her will, or she walked out willingly. If she was abducted,

why didn't her friend sleeping in the bed nearby hear her scream? Why didn't the neighbors? If Lorraine left the apartment willingly, why did she? And was she with someone? and where would she be going at that hour? These are all nagging questions, which still don't have answers almost 45 years later.

And unfortunately, Morph, you know, this is something that we see all too often in these unsolved cases. You know, you have some facts. I'll call them facts. A lot of times it's just what people said happened.

Some of it can be verified, but I think a lot of times, much of it can't be. And then what you're left with, is a bunch of nagging questions. You know, who are these people in the hallway? Did they have something to do with Lorraine's disappearance? Did she just leave on her own?

And the leaving on her own is tough for me. It is in many cases. We know it happens. I just don't think that it's the correct answer, the majority of the time. Why wouldn't she take her purse? Why would she want to leave in the first place? and where did she go? What did she do? I mean, you know, those are just some of the questions

that pop up in this case. I think what's been hard for police is they don't have any strong direction to head in because there's no evidence one way or the other of her leaving willingly and taking off or someone abducting her. There's no forced entry. There's no blood. There's no sign of a struggle in the apartment. So it does seem, seem on one hand that she could have just walked out the front door. But again, that just leads to more questions. Why would she do that? And where did you go?

And we talked about the timeline of events that night for Lorraine and her friends, the drinking and all that. It does kind of make you wonder if the timeline that night, the timeline provided by Lorraine's two friends is accurate. And did things unfold exactly the way they said they did? Is it possible? that something happened to Lorraine, like an overdose of some kind, alcohol poisoning, maybe even an injury of some sort, and in a panic, it was covered up.

Could there have been more friends in the apartment that night? Lorraine can't tell us unless she were to somehow come forward, you know, all these years later, her male friend definitely can't provide any more information. He's dead. that leaves one person who we know was there and she claims to have been sleeping during that crucial time frame. Now, we don't know that anything other than what they said happened happened. We're not accusing anyone.

It's just a point of reference that has been discussed online. And I go back to the whole when teens get together and there's a party and something happens, whether it's something's broken or somebody's hurt. whatever it is, there can be pressure to lie and make a new story. And I'm not saying that's what happened here. But if something like that did happen, then it just really throws everything we think we know out the window. You know, could there have been other people there that night besides those three?

Or is there somebody else we don't know about? These are all things that sort of are unknowns in the case that could send the case in a new direction. Some people have considered the possibility that Lorene's case may be connected to another girl's case. In March 1980, a month before Lorene went missing, 15-year-old Rachel Garden disappeared from New Hampshire, about 30 miles from Manchester. She was last seen walking near Rose Corner Market between 9 and 9.30 p.m. After buying a pack of gum and a pack of cigarettes. According to her parents, she was supposed to sleep over at a friend's house that night,

so she wasn't reported missing until the next morning. Some, but not all sources claim that Rachel's friend had no knowledge of a planned sleepover and hadn't even been home that night. And we talked about, you know, what happens when teens get together. But here we have a situation that I know for a fact I participated in many times. I'm sure you did two more. And it's the old I'm sleeping at a friend's house. Maybe that friend is telling their parents they're sleeping at my house. but we're out doing something somewhere else completely.

Yeah, that could definitely be what's going on here. And perhaps this was a one way story where this friend didn't even know that Rachel had said this to her parents so she couldn't cover for her. But I think this really muddies the water for investigators in Rachel's case because here's what she's supposed to be doing. But then the person she's supposed to be doing that with has no idea. So where do police start in this situation? And we have to talk about a 15-year-old walking into a store and buying a pack of cigarettes. I mean, 1980 was a very different time. At first glance, it appears that Lorene and Rachel's disappearances could be related.

Like Rachel, Lorraine had visited a corner store earlier before she vanished. And in both cases, there were sleepovers involved. The two also seemed to have similar personality. They were described as sweet and responsible, but rebellious, experimenting with pot and alcohol and falling in with the wrong crowd. Rachel was seen that night talking to three males in a car. One of them eventually confessed to her murder, according to her Charlie Project page, but her body was never found and no charges were ever filed.

And that seems so strange to hear that, right? Someone confesses to a murder, but no charge. are ever filed against them, but when you really break it down, most of the time, and I think as it should be, a confession alone is not enough. You know, you need corroborating evidence to charge someone and take them to trial for murder. Yeah, and just to point out, Charlie Project is a wonderful website, a great database, and I suggest anybody, you know, if they're ever looking at missing person's cases, to use that site. but it's not always complete or up to date.

It doesn't always have full information. So the part where it says someone confessed to it, it could have been a false confession where there was nothing to it. All the details aren't always there, so we don't have more information than that. Another area case that some people have tried to link to Lorene's is that of 25-year-old Denise DeNall, who disappeared after 1.30 a.m. on June 8, 1980.

She was on her way from a private club in Manchester to a party, but she never made it there. Denise lived just two blocks from Lorene, and only a few doors down from Terry Rasmussen, the prime suspect in the Bear Brook murders. Denise and Rasmussen, who was using the alias Bob Evans at the time, lived on the same street as Denise Bowden, who also disappeared. Bowden was last seen with her boyfriend, Bob Evans, on November 26, 1981. While prowling and grabbing victims from their apartments is in his known M.O. It's possible Rasmussen and Loreen crossed past it sometime. He seemed good at winning

over single women with children. It's unknown how long Judith had been dating her then boyfriend. Maybe Rasmussen had been interested in her at some point. Despite their proximity and location and time frame, there's no known connection between the disappearances of Denise Denault, Denise Bowden, and Lorraine Ron. Whatever happened to Lorene Ron will remain a mystery, at least for now, but police haven't given up on the case. If you have any information about the disappearance of Loreen Ron, you can submit a tip to the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit. The URL is a little clunky, but it's business.nh.gov slash coldcase tips slash tip.

You can also submit a tip to Detective Lucas Hobbs at the Manchester Police Department, who was the lead detective. on some of these cases in 2003 by calling 603-792-55190-19 or emailing L-H-H-N-H-Gup. So as we wrap up

this case more, obviously it's very mysterious. You know, a lot of these unsolved cases are. And I think in large part, you know, some of that mystery comes from the fact that we know tidbits of information. But even when it comes to the tidbits, we're not 100% sure that all that information

is correct. You know, you're getting some of this information from different people. You know, do they have a vested interest in maybe skewing that information a little bit? maybe to make themselves look a little better or, you know, something like that. You know, one of the big things for me in this case is this male friend that Lorraine was with that night ends up taking his own life five years later. Did that have something to do with everything that went down that night or was it something else?

You know, that part we don't know. But you could make the case and many have online. that maybe this person was carrying around a lot of guilt that was eating them up inside because they had something to do with the disappearance of Lori. And he's the one that really controlled the timeline or the events leading up to her going missing because the other friend, the girl, was passed out in bed. So it's really him saying what happened, saying that there was a noise out in the hallway. saying that she pushed him out and locked the door.

So we have to take him at his word. And since we don't know who he is, we don't know his character. We don't know anything about him, really. But he's the one that really sent this investigation in one specific direction. And that was only after they finally realized that they didn't think she was a runaway. It's then that they sort of went back to what he had to say. And I think those types of scenarios are always tough.

where you essentially have really one person giving you the bulk of the pertinent information. Well, are they being truthful? Do they have a reason to lie? Obviously, if you're involved in something bad happening to Lorraine, then you have a vested interest in skewing the facts. There's no doubt about that. Now, I'm not saying that's what happened, but it's definitely, something that's that's floated out there yeah this whole case is just littered with strange clues to the the unscrewed light bulbs the mysterious charging of the calls to judas phone bill from california you know are these clues that are directly connected to the disappearance or they just read herrings and they don't have anything to do with what actually happened

to Lorraine. Yeah, this doctor and the hotline and all that. And then you have these kind of anniversary type calls around the holidays. You know, was that Lorraine wanting to hear her mom's voice? Was it someone who just knew that she had disappeared and they wanted to torment Judith? Or was it somebody involved in the case who really knew what happened and actually did something to Lorraine, just wanting to get some type of sick thrill out of messing with her mom. I think we're just going to have to sit tight and wait for answers and see if any ever come and so we can find it exactly what happened. One good thing is that Lorene's information is in Namis. So she's on file. There's sort of remains of her found that are connected to her. Maybe she'll be

able to be identified and that can provide more answers hopefully. Well, at the end of the day, there's just no doubt. It's a very perplexing case. That's it for our episode on Lorene Ron. If you love the show, haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review. Also, tell your friends about the criminology podcast. That word of mouth really helps us out.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on X with a handle at Criminology pod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to facebook.com slash criminology podcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast, discussion in fans. So that's it for another episode of criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.