Dark Downeast - The Disappearance of Marble Arvidson (Vermont)

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

When a teenager disappeared from Brattleboro, Vermont, hours before the wind, rain, and damaging floods of a major natural disaster devastated the state, it took days before he was finally reported mi...ssing and initial search efforts were hindered by ongoing storm recovery. Now as the case approaches another anniversary in 2024, loved ones are still waiting for the information that could lead them to answers. If you have information relating to the disappearance of Marble Arvidson, please contact Brattleboro Police at (802) 257-7950. View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/marblearvidsonDark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case

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Starting point is 00:00:00 When a teenager disappeared from Brattleboro, Vermont, hours before the wind, rain, and damaging floods of a major natural disaster devastated the state, it took days before he was finally reported missing, and initial search efforts were hindered by ongoing storm recovery. Now as the case approaches another anniversary in 2024, loved ones are still waiting for the information that could lead them to answers. It's like, poof, he was there, he left a note, I'll be back, and then just walked out the door. We have no idea with who and have no idea where he went. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Marble Arvidson on Dark Down East. It was just before two o'clock in the afternoon on August 27th, 2011, when there was a knock at the door of 503 Marlboro Road in Brattleboro, Vermont.
Starting point is 00:01:06 17-year-old Marble Ace Arvidson greeted his visitor, and they chatted for a bit before Marble tacked a note up on his bedroom door with a brief message. He'd be back in 30 minutes. Going to frolic with some friendly gremlins, it said. That's how Marble spoke. Whimsical, playful, creative. Josh Stiltz writes for the Brattleboro Reformer that Marble had plans to meet up with his girlfriend back at the house around four o'clock, so at the very least he was expected home by then. But at 4pm when his girlfriend arrived, Marble wasn't there. It was odd, but not altogether concerning. Maybe Marble got caught up in whatever he was doing, but he'd be back. It wasn't unusual for a 17-year-old boy to lose track
Starting point is 00:01:53 of time. It grew dark in West Brattleboro as the evening wore on, and then it began to rain. Hurricane Irene became Tropical Storm Irene by the time it worked its way up the eastern seaboard and arrived in Vermont that Saturday night. Meteorologists had warned of the impending storm for days, and when the skies finally opened up, nearly seven inches of rain drenched the landscape. When it was all over, at least six people in Vermont lost their lives to the treacherous weather. Bridges were washed out, power and phone lines were down throughout the state, and entire towns were cut off from main roads. The next morning, while citizens and emergency crews assessed the damage the storm left in its wake,
Starting point is 00:02:45 Marble's housemates realized that he never returned home the night before. Marble's aunt, Trish Kittredge, has become the voice for Marble and his family from the earliest days of his case. But she'd been an advocate for Marble long before his disappearance, too. She and Marble share a birthday. Birthday buddies, they called themselves. Marble was always front and center at every family gathering and every picnic and every, you know, trip to the pond. And he was always quite a character. He talked with different accents and he always wore different hats and kind of was the life of the party to an extent. He was always an energetic, lively kid who had a wicked sense of humor. As he was growing up, though, he started to have a little bit more difficulties interacting, especially with his mom, who at the time had
Starting point is 00:03:34 struggled with alcohol and drugs. And that relationship became difficult. And my grandparents most specifically stepped in and spent the bulk of his young childhood raising him, interacting with his mom. Trish's sister, Marble's biological mother, Sigrid, has been very open about the challenges she faced that impacted her ability to parent Marble, including her own substance use disorder. Trish said family was always there to help Sigrid with Marble and do what was best for both of them. There was certainly a lot of change throughout Marble's young life. When he was, I think, five or six was when my grandparents and I took Sigrid to court and we were able to have my grandparents take custody of him, and that's when my sister, Sigrid, his mother, realized that she needed to make some dramatic changes in her life, and that's when she stopped drinking. Marble lived primarily with his great-grandparents,
Starting point is 00:04:40 but when Sigrid and Marble were both ready, he eventually returned to live with his mom. There were new challenges as he got older, though, and Sigrid sought services that could help Marble with his social and emotional needs. During those numbers of years, and so I'm talking the end of elementary school and the beginning of middle school, there was opportunities where like mentors were partnered with Sigrid and Marble to give Marble an out, a mentor, a male role model, somebody to help process difficult situations. And over a couple of years, Marble and his mentor became very close. The mentorship was great for Marble. However, persistent issues made Sig Secret realize her son needed an alternative
Starting point is 00:05:26 living situation. His struggles with his mom became more difficult and Marble's size became larger. And there was a group, in my opinion, a group decision that it would be better for everybody if Marble transitioned from living with his mom to living with who was then his mentor, who was an older gentleman, and his wife, and they became his foster parents. And Marble lived with them and continued to go to school, still always had an amazing relationship with my grandparents, who remained a steadfast part of Marble's life.
Starting point is 00:06:03 As reported by Megan James for Seven Days, Marble and his foster father bonded over pizza and long drives in the car listening to Bob Marley. The foster father described Marble as an introvert who preferred to listen to music, watch movies, and read rather than playing sports. He also saw a side of Marble that was impulsive, with bad judgment, a kid who was easily manipulated.
Starting point is 00:06:28 Marble started to experience, and so this is junior high, beginning early high school, started to have some mental and emotional challenges. He was hospitalized. He had some things that they were trying to sort out that made it difficult in many ways for him to interact. He had, at that point, very little interaction with his mom, limited interaction with his younger brother. And then, I think about two years into his relationship to living with his first set of foster parents, it became too difficult for them, for him to live with them. Outside of the challenges with his mental and emotional health,
Starting point is 00:07:08 Marble had more or less outgrown the foster home. They were homesteaders that lived in a rural area. They didn't have TV or computers that Marble could access, which would have been tough for a teenager, and plus, he wanted to be closer to his friends. Marble's foster mother at the time worked with Families First, a social services organization providing community and home supports for youth and adults living with disabilities. So Marble became a client of Families First, and his case
Starting point is 00:07:38 manager helped find an independent living situation with another mentor-slash-foster parent. Marble moved into a home with his mentor at the corner of Route 9 and Sunset Lake Road in West Brattleboro that they shared with another teenager and their adult mentor. Unlike Marble's first mentor, this one was much closer in age to Marble. He had two young adults, I think in their mid-20s, literally become his foster parents, which I think is shocking to me that two 20-somethings would become foster parents to a 16, then 17-year-old troubled youth living independently in an independent home. But on some levels, that seemed to be working really well. He was still going to school. The school felt it was promising that they thought he would graduate from high school that next year and had even discussed the idea of maybe community college or
Starting point is 00:08:38 other things. So on some levels, things looked promising. In August of 2011, Marble was preparing to begin his senior year at Brattleboro Union High School. He had some close friends he enjoyed spending time with. He had a girlfriend. Marble seemed happy. He was also doing things that Trish would categorize as typical or at least unsurprising, teenage behavior. I think it's difficult as a teenager in any circumstance to kind of navigate figuring out who you are and where do you fit in the world. That, you know, you experiment with things, and that included drugs, and it included sexuality, and it included pushing boundaries. And so I think Marble did all of those things.
Starting point is 00:09:25 These were the circumstances of his life when Marble seemingly vanished without a trace in the midst of a devastating natural disaster. The next morning, Sunday, August 28th, when there was no sign of Marble despite the note saying he'd be back in 30 minutes, Marble's mentor considered the possibility that he was stranded somewhere due to the storm, possibly in Dover, a town about 40 minutes away where a few of his friends lived. The mentor and housemates remained hopeful that as soon as the roads were safe to pass and phone lines were back, and the aftermath of the storm died down, Marble would turn up, or at the very least, call to say he was alright. Calls around to friends in the area made that theory less and less likely, though.
Starting point is 00:10:23 No one had seen Marble, not since he left his house on Saturday afternoon before the storm. Finally, by Monday, August 29th, two days and a natural disaster later, Marble was officially reported missing. A bee on the lookout was issued the same day, including Marble's description. 17-year-old male, 6'2", athletic and lanky with blonde shoulder-length hair and blue eyes. One of Marble's housemates told a Brattleboro detective that when Marble left the house, he was wearing black pants, a black long-sleeved t-shirt, and black shoes with a black hat, which has been described as both a fedora and a bowler hat, Marble's signature accessory. Marble's family didn't know he was missing until August 30th, a full three days after he was last
Starting point is 00:11:13 seen leaving his foster home. Trish was deployed with the Massachusetts Army National Guard at the time as part of Hurricane Irene relief efforts. Within 24 hours, she was in Brattleboro and stepped in as the point person for Marble's family. Trish knows that police took action to locate Marble when he was first reported missing, but resources were limited with the ongoing recovery efforts following the storm. The two agencies responsible for Marble at the time, the Department for Children and Families, DCF,
Starting point is 00:11:45 and Families First, were also out searching for him, and Trish and other family members helped expand that effort. They distributed flyers and canvassed door-to-door and did interviews with local media, asking for anyone with information or possible sightings of Marble to call police with tips. But days later, the phone just wasn't ringing with any legitimate leads or sightings of Marble to call police with tips. But days later, the phone just wasn't ringing with any legitimate leads or sightings to follow. At that point, Trish leaned on all of her military experience to establish a coordinated search effort for her nephew. She set up a mobile command center in the parking lot of Chelsea Royal Diner, one of Marble's favorite hangouts right next door to where he was last seen. As soon as it was safe to do so, an extensive foot search began with scouring the wooded areas
Starting point is 00:12:31 immediately surrounding Marble's home and the hiking trails nearby and working out from there. We had 10s and 20s and 30s and on some days on weekends, 75 or 100 people who were volunteering to come search for him, and we set up search zones and we set up search parties and we communicated with Lee Manning from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And I think there were three different canine units that came down and helped with search regions and areas. The destruction from Irene made the effort difficult. Some roads were still washed out and towns were disconnected as they waited for bridge repairs and routes to be made safe again.
Starting point is 00:13:11 But volunteers were out there amidst it all. Trish handed out whistles and walkie-talkies so volunteers could communicate as they traversed the tricky terrain and wooded areas. They checked in culverts, looked behind every fallen tree, and scoped out abandoned buildings. And during that time, lots of reported sightings, lots of, you know, there's a boot over here, and there's a bad smell over here,
Starting point is 00:13:36 and there's a white towel up on the side of a mountain, and chasing all of those things down. But nothing panned out into actual tangible, yes, this was something that was Marble's, or yes, this was evidence that Marble was here. While searches continued, police probed the circumstances surrounding Marble's disappearance. They checked Marble's computer and phone records to see who he was talking to and how he spent his hours and days leading up to see who he was talking to and how he spent his hours and days leading up to the afternoon he was last seen. And they were trying to figure out who the heck came
Starting point is 00:14:11 to the door on the day he disappeared. One of Marble's housemates got a glimpse of the visitor that day. He told police that it was a man a little shorter than Marble, possibly around the same age, wearing a black baseball hat. Marble's conversation with the man was reportedly friendly and innocuous. Beyond that though, the housemate couldn't give much more of a description and he didn't know the guy. It wasn't much for detectives to go on. Marble's family, including Trish and his mother Sigrid, continued to appear at press conferences with investigators and appealed to the public through the media, urging whoever spoke to Marble at the house that afternoon to come forward.
Starting point is 00:14:53 Meanwhile, police analyzed Marble's cell phone and laptop, but there was reportedly no activity or information helpful to the investigation. Trish says police could see that someone did turn Marble's laptop on after he disappeared. However, as far as she knows, that activity wasn't deemed suspicious in any way. A few weeks into the search, Marble's family announced a reward and set up a website and Facebook page to share updates. Some tips came in through social media, with reported sightings as far away as Berlin, Germany, and within the United States all around New England, New York, and Georgia,
Starting point is 00:15:31 but none were confirmed to be Marble. With these sightings, Marble's family was up against rumors that he ran away. People told Marble's family to stop looking for him because he probably disappeared on his own accord and didn't want to be found. Trish believes these were based on the biased views of Marble as a teen in foster care and the strained relationship with his biological mother. Sigrid was moving back to town, and those who knew their dynamic thought this was enough to cause Marble to take off. The limited information police had uncovered didn't point to Marble being a runaway, though. There was no activity on his cell phone or online accounts.
Starting point is 00:16:13 There were no new transactions on his bank card. And he didn't take anything with him when he left. No extra clothes, not a jacket despite the impending weather, nothing. And so the search effort continued in hopes of drumming up any still-concealed clue or detail that would point Marble's family in his direction. On September 27th, the family held a candlelight vigil to mark one month since Marble Ace Arvidson was last seen. Supporters gathered together and sang an acapella rendition of Blackbird by the Beatles. By then, the search for Marble was beginning to scale back.
Starting point is 00:16:52 And so things started to, like, we got to a point where we didn't know where else to look. So the actual, you get to that point where you go, I don't know what else to do. And it feels like giving up, even though we're not. As the days and weeks turned into months, all they could do was keep Marble's name and face out there and wait. Trish has heard all the theories surrounding Marble's disappearance. When you don't know what happened, you have to take everything into consideration, which just makes it astronomically huge. You know, maybe he went out with friends and maybe he slipped and fell and hit his head. And then maybe they left and got scared and didn't want to call anybody.
Starting point is 00:17:43 And then the next morning, the floods come in and he's washed away. Maybe somebody took him and did something and got rid of him. Maybe he was walking down the road and was picked up by a hitchhiker and was abducted. Maybe he had a mental schizophrenic break and just walked away not knowing who he was or where he was going or what was going on. I mean, it's all on the table. Regarding Marble's mental health and a possible psychiatric event prior to his disappearance, they've looked into that. Although they're limited in what they can access with Marble being in foster care at the time and medical
Starting point is 00:18:21 privacy restrictions, Trish feels that they're able to cross that theory off the list. She feels it's more than likely he would have been identified in a hospital by now if that's what happened. There's another theory that Marble was injured in an accident while out with friends, as Trish described, and hypothetically, his friends panicked and left him in the woods. Or he was alone when he got injured, leaving him incapacitated or worse. Since the extensive searches didn't turn up any evidence of marble in the wooded areas they surveyed, it also remains a possibility that he was washed away when floodwaters rose. We have searched the best we could along all of the riverbanks and all of the washed debris areas, but holy moly, there was debris that ended up in almost the Hudson.
Starting point is 00:19:13 It was mind-blowing how much water moved debris how far, and there are places that we'll never be able to extensively search. The other theories carry a suggestion of foul play in Marble's disappearance. Knowing that Marble spoke to someone before walking out the door that afternoon and the interaction was friendly, according to the housemate, if that person didn't have anything to do with Marble going missing, why hasn't he come forward? If he was a friend of Marble's, he'd have to know Marble disappeared, right? So then why hasn't he contacted the police to identify himself? Is it because that person was involved somehow? I know that the investigation has not definitively identified the person who visited Marble at his house that afternoon. But I was willing to bet
Starting point is 00:20:05 that police had their theories, or at least people they checked out. I spent about six months going back and forth with Brattleboro Police and Detective Gregory Eaton over a FOIA request for records in Marble's case. My repeated attempts were denied. However, Detective Eaton was sympathetic to my cause, and he wants Marble's case to remain in the public eye too, for what it's worth. Then, out of the blue in July, after I'd already written and recorded an entire episode about Marble, and it was just a few weeks away from release, I got an email from Detective Eaton saying that my records request could now be fulfilled.
Starting point is 00:20:47 So with much of the case file in hand now, I went back through everything I learned from Trish and secondary sources to confirm the details included in this episode. And while I was reading through the timeline and narratives and supplemental reports, what I found is that police were looking into someone who was rumored to be the person Marble left with on the night he disappeared. According to a November 2011 article by Megan James and Seven Days, there was a rumor that the person who knocked on the door that afternoon was Marble's girlfriend's ex-boyfriend. All three were in the same friend group, and they apparently hung out in a group together on at least one occasion that summer. The article doesn't give the ex-boyfriend's name, but it states that this
Starting point is 00:21:45 person denied being the one who visited Marble the day he disappeared. So who is this guy? Before I even had access to the case file, I started digging around the internet and spent some time scanning some stuff on social media about Marble's case, including a few posts on the Vermont State Police Facebook page. Now let me preface this and say I know Facebook shouldn't be considered a source of truth, but I've found over the years that people aren't shy about posting theories and rumors and tips they believe are relevant to the case. Side note, if you have a tip for this case or any other case, please report it to police and don't assume that Facebook comment threads are monitored in any meaningful way by investigators. Now, over the years, Vermont State Police have posted the same summary of Marble's case on the anniversary of his disappearance.
Starting point is 00:22:40 And the annual posts get dozens of comments and shares, primarily ones of support or surprise that he still hasn't been found. But among those, in 2018, a Facebook user responded with this comment, quote, End quote. I don't know what reports this person is referencing, but I haven't seen the name Kai Freeman in any of the reporting I've come across for this case, but I made note of it and kept scrolling. On the 2022 anniversary Facebook post by Vermont State Police, a different Facebook user left a one-word comment. It just said, Kai. There was that name again. I messaged both of these people to ask a few
Starting point is 00:23:35 questions about their comments and later heard back from one of them, but they couldn't remember where they'd read Kai's name in connection to Marble's case, so not super helpful for my purposes, but fast forward a few months and their lack of memory didn't matter, because Kai Freeman's name is among the case file documents from Brattleboro PD. According to the case file, on August 30th, 2011, detectives learned during a meeting that Kai Freeman and his mother may have seen Marble on the day he disappeared. Investigators also spoke with Marble's girlfriend that same day, who stated that Marble and Kai were sort of friends and they sometimes hung out together and went on hikes. She also told them something I haven't seen reported anywhere else. She got a
Starting point is 00:24:26 voicemail from Marble around 2 p.m. on August 27th. It said something to the effect of, if you're there, pick up the phone, if not, okay, bye. She said she deleted the message, assuming she'd be seeing Marble as planned in a few hours. When officers went to speak with Kai also on August 30th, he told police that the last time he saw Marble was at Marble's girlfriend's house either Monday or Tuesday of the previous week. He said he gave Marble a ride home after they watched a movie. The following day, detectives spoke with Kai again. They wanted to know where he was on
Starting point is 00:25:06 the day Marble went missing around 2 p.m., the time of that since-deleted voicemail from Marble to his girlfriend. Kai said that he was registering for classes at Greenfield Community College from around 1.30 to 3 p.m., and then he went to Marble's girlfriend's house, who, you'll remember, was also reportedly Kai's ex-girlfriend. Marble's girlfriend later confirmed that Kai came over to her house on that Saturday, August 27th, after he registered for classes,
Starting point is 00:25:38 and Marble's girlfriend's mother was able to provide police with a copy of the registration paperwork because she says she helped pay for one of the courses. On September 1st, Brattleboro PD detectives paid a visit to Greenfield Community College and spoke with the counselor who helped Kai register for classes. According to the counselor's records, which he checked while detectives were present, he helped Kai with registration at 1.02 p.m. on August 27th, and the process took about 15 to 20 minutes.
Starting point is 00:26:13 The counselor told detectives that he didn't remember anything else, but they asked if he saw Kai walk around campus after he registered. The counselor said he didn't, but it wouldn't have been unusual for a student to take a self-guided tour to familiarize themselves with campus before classes started. A timeline of the investigation in the case file indicates detectives checked with the head of security at the college to see if there were any surveillance cameras, but no dice. They asked how long it would take someone to walk around the entire campus, and the head of security said depending on where someone went, it could take
Starting point is 00:26:50 anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour. So the time frame of registering for classes that Kai gave to police, 1.30 p.m. to 3 p.m., varies from the counselor's records that showed Kai registered at 1.02 p.m. and it took around 15 to 20 minutes, meaning he was likely done by approximately 1.22 p.m. Greenfield Community College in Greenfield, Massachusetts, is just under 27 miles from the house where Marble was living in Brattleboro, Vermont. Google Maps estimates the drive to take anywhere from 33 to 41 minutes, depending on the route and traffic. Is it possible that Kai was the person who knocked on the door of Marble's house just before 2pm on August 27th? Yes, it's possible. If the counselor's recollection is correct that the process took about 15 to 20 minutes
Starting point is 00:27:48 and Kai did not stick around to explore the campus afterwards driving straight to Brattleboro, the math works out. From the documents I have available to me outlining the initial investigation in 2011 and updates through 2015, I see Kai's name come up in one other instance. On November 25th, 2013, the detective on Marble's case received information from another Brattleboro PD detective regarding a separate investigation into Kai Freeman for numerous sexual assault charges involving children. In May of 2013, a 23-year-old Kai A. Freeman was charged with two counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault
Starting point is 00:28:45 and felonious sexual assault involving a child between September and October 2012 in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. Mike Fair reports for the Brattleboro Reformer that additional charges were filed against Kai in Vermont a few months later when a different juvenile victim told investigators that he forced her to perform a sex act in exchange for weed. By the time he went to trial in Vermont, Kai faced 11 felony charges including lewd and lascivious act with a child,
Starting point is 00:29:06 sexual exploitation and luring of a child, sexual assault on a child, and contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile. Kai's defense attorney Kyle Hatt stated during the trial that the evidence would show, quote, Kai Freeman was a well-known marijuana dealer and that he provided marijuana to his accusers, but he did not engage in sexual conduct with those accusers, end quote. Chris Mays reports for the Brattleboro Reformer that Kai was found guilty on 10 of the 11 charges and found not guilty on one count of sexual assault. He was sentenced to 10 years to life for those convictions.
Starting point is 00:29:48 The following year, in 2016, Kai was also sentenced to two to four years for an additional conviction out of New Hampshire, which he would serve concurrently to the existing 10 to life sentence. Kai Freeman's M.O. was soliciting sex acts from children in exchange for weed. Even his defense attorney allowed on record at trial that Kai at least sold pot. The theory is, if Kai Freeman was the person who met Marble at the door that afternoon, as the rumors suggest, and Marble tried to obtain weed from Kai,
Starting point is 00:30:23 did Kai attempt the same scheme and sexual assault? Did it turn violent and that's why Marble is nowhere to be found? I don't know. If those questions were answered, this case would be closed already. According to Vermont inmate records, Kai Freeman's earliest release date would have been September 22, 2023. However, he is still detained at the Southern State Correctional Facility. To be clear, investigators have not publicly identified Kai
Starting point is 00:30:52 Freeman as a suspect in Marble's disappearance. Among the other things that came from those dozens of Facebook comments was the theory that serial killer Israel Keyes did something to Marble. According to reporting by Yareth Rosen for Reuters, after Israel Keyes was arrested on murder charges out of Alaska in 2012, he confessed to the killing of Bill and Lorraine Currier in Essex, Vermont in June of 2011, just two months before Marble went missing. The theory of Israel Key's involvement is made stronger by Israel's own statements that he traveled around the United States working as a contractor in places hard hit by hurricanes. Marble disappeared from Brattleboro amidst a hurricane-turned-tropical storm. I asked Trish about the serial killer theory.
Starting point is 00:31:47 She hasn't discounted anything. It circles back, for me, to the idea that I think everything's on the table. I think everything should be investigated until we're sure that it's not true. One of the more persistent theories in Marble Arvidsson's disappearance is that he ran away, or that he harmed himself. Some of the blame has been unfairly placed on Marble's biological mother, Sigrid. I think the focus was that he was anxious about having his mom be anywhere around and that that somehow would have driven him away.
Starting point is 00:32:26 It's frustrating that instead of embracing and saying, we're all in this together and we want to find him, that there was a push to say, you know, you're his mother and you're part of the problem. He wouldn't have been in this situation if you had done more, done better, not been bad. And that, you know, if you hadn't moved into town, this wouldn't have happened.
Starting point is 00:32:49 Does she have some part in Marble's struggles? Absolutely. Was she responsible for his disappearance? Absolutely not. The stigma surrounding the circumstances of Marble's life and relationship with his mother ignores the fact that in many situations, Sigrid was the one reaching out for support and services to help her son.
Starting point is 00:33:11 She wanted what was best for Marble, even if she couldn't be the one to provide it. To Trish, regardless of the documented challenges between Sigrid and Marble, he had a number of reasons not to disappear on his own. I don't think Marble was looking to escape. I don't think Marble was looking to check out. I don't think that he would have deliberately hurt himself
Starting point is 00:33:42 in a suicidal kind of way. Although his mother had moved back into town, I don't think he was looking to run away and get away from that. I think he had strong ties to the community. I think he had a strong emotional connection to my grandparents and friends and family that he was interacting with on a regular basis. Girlfriends, boyfriends, school friends, people that he hung out with downtown
Starting point is 00:34:08 and maybe played chess with. So I think the big piece that I would want people to consider is that I don't think this was just a troubled teen who decided to run away. Marble is listed, among other missing persons cases, on the Vermont State Police website, but it is the Brattleboro Police Department continuing the investigation at this point, with some assistance from the Vermont Intelligence Center, a unit that collaborates with a number of agencies to examine all aspects of criminal activity in the state of Vermont. When I spoke with Detective Eaton of Brattleboro PD
Starting point is 00:34:46 over the course of this year, he told me that they were planning to do some searches related to Marble's case in warmer weather. As of this episode's recording, there are no updates to share resulting from those search efforts. Trish and family and volunteers have returned to the woods and
Starting point is 00:35:05 wilderness of Vermont over the years themselves. The search area is so vast, there's always someplace else to check or recheck for anything that may have slipped by the first few go-arounds. They've also worked with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to generate an age-progressed photo. Trish says they also have a DNA swab from Sigrid and herself on file with CODIS in the event unidentified remains are discovered. Despite all their efforts to find Marble, they are still waiting for someone to come forward with a big missing piece of information. I know there is somebody out there who knows who came to the door. Like, who was it who came to the door and Marble let in and they spoke?
Starting point is 00:35:52 Did he leave with them? You know, did he say where he was going? Like, we've never identified who that person was, which just seems odd to me. While they wait for an answer to those questions and countless others, Marble's family will continue looking for him. Their primary focus is finding Marble. I always want there to be the message of, Marble, if you're out there and you can hear us, we're still looking for you. And if you're out there, we want to find you. You know, if you're out there and you have the ability, let us know where you are. You know, reach out. And if he's not, You know, if you're out there and you have the ability, let us know where you are, you know, reach out. And if he's not, you know, I'd like to know what happened. I'd like
Starting point is 00:36:30 his mom and family to have some closure. Secondary to all of that would be if there was something nefarious, if somebody did something wrong and they could be, you know, held accountable for it, that'd be great. But that's not my priority. The bottom line is we're back at the fact that my nephew disappeared on August 27, 2011, and we have no idea where he is. Marble would be turning 30 years old this year. I'll share an age-progressed photo created by
Starting point is 00:37:01 the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at darkdowneast.com. If Marble had never disappeared, if he was preparing to celebrate a new decade alongside his birthday buddy Aunt Trish, she thinks he'd be living a beautiful life, fueled by connection and conversation. Marble could talk to anybody. Whether that was going to Mocha Joe's and having a cup of coffee and talking to whoever sat down, or whether that was at the park with these philosophical conversations of deep thought.
Starting point is 00:37:36 You know, I think he wanted people to engage, and I think he wanted people to be thoughtful. And so I would envision him maybe working at a coffee shop, maybe, you know, offering people some fun or goofy words of wisdom for the day. Yeah, making people's lives a little bit brighter in some way. If you have information relating to the disappearance of Marble Arvidson, please contact Brattleboro Police at 802-257-7950. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast.
Starting point is 00:38:38 This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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