Dark Downeast - The Murder of Crystal Perry (Maine)

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

BRIDGTON, MAINE: 12-year old Sarah Perry was asleep in bed when an attacker took her mother's life. It took over a decade for DNA evidence to bring Crystal Perry's killer to justice.Sarah Perry is now the author of “After the Eclipse”, a memoir that documents her early life in Bridgton, Maine with her mother, as well as the details and aftermath of her murder in 1994.From her own memories and through conversations with Crystal’s family, friends, and acquaintances, as well as evidence and case files, Sarah Perry got to know her mother’s life through a new lens and see clearly the issues working against the search for answers in Crystal Perry’s case.This is Crystal Perry's story told by her daughter, Sarah Perry.Donate to RAINNDonate to Women for Afghan WomenDonate to the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/crystalperryFollow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-caseDark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

I knew it would be emotionally difficult, but I just didn't have a choice. It was more emotionally, it had become more emotionally difficult to not do it. Sarah Perry quoted Anais Nin, and the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. The quote speaks to the repression that for years kept the story of Sarah's mother from reaching the page. Now, Sarah is the author of After the Eclipse,

a memoir that documents her early life in Bridgeton, Maine with her beautiful red-haired mother, Crystal Perry, as well as the details and aftermath of her murder in 1994. From her own memories and through conversations with her mother's family, friends, and acquaintances, as well as evidence and case files, Sarah Perry got to know her mother's life through a new lens and see clearly the issues working against the search for answers in Crystal Perry's case. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the story of Crystal Perry, told by her daughter, Sarah Perry, on of her childhood in Bridgeton, Maine,

the daughter of a single mother, Crystal Perry. They were close, like best friends. Sarah's book narrates much of that life together through the eyes of a daughter who adored her mother. We had such a good relationship when I was little. And she died kind of as I was starting to become a preteen and push her away a little and try to individuate. So a real risk of this book was having this perspective on her that was too rosy-eyed, too like perfect, perfect mom. Oh, she's so beautiful. She's so this, she's so that.

But, you know, the beautiful thing and several other things that I had held dear about her were, I have evidence now from other people, Like it's an indisputable fact. So something that I was looking for was, I guess, even an idea of was, is my idea of who she was accurate or, or was it so colored by me being a child, even though I was a precocious child and we were close and et cetera, et cetera. She was such a good mom and she was, compared to some other friends' parents, quite strict, actually. Very, or let's say regular with bedtimes and dinner times and rules and et cetera. Like I was a pretty easy kid, I think, because I was such a nerd. But I thought of her as being so upstanding in that way. And the house was always so clean

when she was such a budgeter and all these things. And I got to know that is all true, but I also got to know like some more of her fun side and that when she was in her group of friends like she was often the person telling a joke or getting people up to dance or she had this kind of light to her that she shared with all kinds of people like even people who were maybe co-workers but not necessarily friends like she was known to be nobody's perfect not not to everybody, I'm sure, but just really kind and respectful to people. And I think that's something that I always seek to emulate, kind of respecting people as they are and letting them be who they are. As an adult looking back on her childhood, Sarah has a new appreciation and respect for how her mother parented. I have things that I look back on and I think, and now I'm impressed, like from my perspective now.

Like I remember she had a coworker whose name was Dickie, who I, I guess I overheard a conversation or something about him dating men. And I must have been 10 or 11. So it's 92 or 93 in this small town. Mom didn't have the benefit of higher education, hadn't really lived anywhere else with the exception of a year or two. And I remember, I don't remember what my question was, but I was kind of confused by that. Like, what does that mean? Or like, I heard he was gay and I was like, what does that mean? And she was just very simple about it. She said, that means that he loves men like you would expect other people to love women and it's not a big deal. And now we think about that and I'm like, where did that come from? And like, I feel really fortunate that I was raised by somebody whose response was that before, definitely before the national conversation about queerness and gay rights, et cetera,

was as nearly as sophisticated as it would come to be. So that's a moment I think about a lot. Sarah didn't give her mother much need for discipline, but the rare occasion was met with a level and loving approach. One day in sixth grade, my friend and I got caught writing nasty notes about our teacher. We were just being brats. We were just like pushing against authority, writing stupid notes. And we got busted, which was very funny because she and I were like such goody two-shoes and get sent to the principal's office and felt like the end of the world to us because it was the first time for both of us. And they photocopied the note and they made us take it home. And our parents had to sign the photocopy

of the note to prove that they had seen this thing and seen what Bratz we had been. And I gave it to my mother and I was just like trembling and crying as disappointing her was the worst thing ever. And she took a look at it and she just like took a deep breath and she could see like I had already tortured myself so much about it. She just said, don't get caught next time. That felt really instructive. Like, okay, you've already learned your lesson. And I think that was an important peek into her personality and something that I think about when I find myself getting too rigid about rules and expectations and how things should be. Sarah Perry is a published author, an award-winning writer, an educator in creative writing. She holds her MFA in nonfiction from Columbia.

The list continues. She is, without challenge, a writer. Even as a kid, she wrote and was recognized for her skill. However, losing her mother and the circumstances of that loss changed her relationship with writing. Imagination became a really dangerous place. or being in a risky psychological space because any sort of space of creativity is destabilizing, even if beautifully so. I became really invested in like

being super successful in school and checking off all the boxes and getting the straight A's and doing like kind of marching forward in a way that would build as much stability for myself as possible. So taking creative risks really didn't fit into that for a long time. The dream of being a writer and feeling legitimized in that title came when Sarah pursued grad school at Columbia University. That's also when she could no longer repress

the story that called to her. It was time to write about her mother. So, but I had this background, like passion in my head, this dream of being a writer. So sometimes I would, like in my mid-twenties, I would sit down and feel compelled to spit something out on the page. And it was always about mom. I could never like get any traction on the page. And it was always about mom, I could never like get any traction on anything else, like all the best stuff was always writing about my childhood or, or having that energy of thinking back on something and wanting to figure it out.

That was the work that was most urgent and, and really even had the best, best sentences and was the most cinematic, etc, as opposed to fiction, which I just didn't call to me as much. So I had this burning urge to write this book and it just wasn't happening. I felt like the project of creative writing was so strongly associated with mom being killed because I had felt such hope about the future. And I was like, you know, I was 12, but I was trying to write a novel at the time and then just got completely cut off. So I think I would sit down at my desk and I would actually have like a trauma reaction. Like I physically couldn't handle doing it. But especially after the trial happened,

I just had this story really calling to me. So as I said, I put myself in grad school jail to do it. I thought, well, I'll go to grad school and then I'll have structure and support and I will have to do it because I will have teachers telling me to. So I started in earnest when I went to Columbia when I was 28, so that was 2010. 2010, three years after the conviction that put Crystal Perry's killer in prison for life, and 16 years since the night her mother was murdered. In the early morning hours of May 11, 1994, a man entered the home of Crystal and Sarah Perry, either under the guise of needing help or some other story. Twelve-year-old Sarah was asleep in bed when the man, later identified as Michael Hutchinson, killed her mother.

Sarah walked through the details of that night in After the Eclipse, but including that scene in the book wasn't a given. It was really a struggle for me as I was working on this book. I had a lot of breakdowns about the ethics of even doing it. Because I benefit from this increased visibility of true crime stories. And the timing of my book, too, was like, that was a really big groundswell of like, more nuanced true crime stories. Unbeknownst to me, like, that wasn't planned, but that's how it hit. And I just really struggled with this, like, I'm going to professionally and personally and sort of financially benefit from putting a true crime story out there. Like, how do I deal with that?

And everybody around me would assure me, like, but you're you. Like, you get to do it. So I thought, like, if I'm going to do it, how can I do it responsibly? So I thought, what are wrong with the stories that I think are icky and unethical? And one of the number one things is sensationalism. Are you making the violence sexy? Are you appealing to people's baser instincts in how you represent things? So for a long time, I thought I might not even include the night of the murder at all in the book.

I think ultimately it was important to me to represent really what had happened. So we knew exactly what we were talking about and exactly what this person had done. And what me, your narrator in the book, had really been through. But I tried to do it with as cool, dispassionate language as I could. So I was always trying to find a craft response to any problem of stereotypical true crime. In many of the cases I cover, for the families I've worked with, they have not had the opportunity, the access to the platform, or the skills to write or otherwise share the story of their loved one in its entirety in the way they want it to be shared.

Even when local news coverage gives their loved one's case some airtime, it's 90 seconds, maybe two minutes if they're lucky. Very rarely is there any heart or humanity below the headline. That's why I created Dark Down East, to lend a platform so their voices and their stories are heard, their loved ones remembered. I think that's also part of why I was anxious and nervous when speaking to Sarah. Because she doesn't need me. She's already chosen her words and the manner of narrating her memories of that event,

of who her mother was and is to her. She walked through the years of repating her memories of that event, of who her mother was and is to her, she walked through the years of repressing her story and navigating her anger and the personal and ethical battles before finally getting it on paper in such a meaningful and poignant way. Because she's already told her story in her book, not to mention police interviews and court testimony, as well as other reasons such as there being no necessity to relive that trauma for a podcast sarah will not be describing the night of her mother's death in any great detail here please read after the eclipse so mom was attacked by someone in the night and i was in the house and I heard it, but I didn't see the person.

You know, the investigation began with me and interviewing me and I never had that information for the police. Although there were theories that I had it and that I had repressed memory and hadn't remembered, which is interesting historically because it was the mid-90s and it was really the idea of repressed memory. Recovering repressed memory was very hot then culturally. I always want to dig into more how much that might have been an influence, but at some point it was determined I did not have the answers. But, you know, I have to hand it to the Maine State Police for keeping the the case open and active. Somebody was always actively working on it.

A piece of the investigation that I found to be among the most shocking was that for a time, Sarah was investigated as a suspect to some extent. The rationale behind it being that she was jealous of her mother or some other wild possibility considered by detectives trying to make sense of the scene and the circumstances. But what wasn't that shocking, and unfortunately so, was the other angle which really exposed several core issues that commonly punctuate homicide investigations, especially when the victim is a woman. Victim-blaming. Because of Crystal Perry's dating and relationship history, there was an assumption that whoever did this must have known her and at one point even loved her. Investigators interviewed her fiancé at the time,

Dennis Lorraine, as well as other men who knew or knew of Crystal. You've likely heard the saying, the husband did it, and that's the meme version of an investigative tactic that looks at those closest to the victim first. People will still ask me that question socially, you know know if they become aware of the fact that my mother was killed by a man especially after a sexual assault oh was it her boyfriend oh was someone once said to me oh it must have been your father oh it must have been your father this is a person who did not know me at all. Didn't know if my parents were married or not. Like people are so desperate. The thing that gets me is that people are so desperate for story that

makes sense to them. And additionally, the story that makes sense to them is a man who was supposed to love her is the one who killed her. Like, that's a problem. Like, that's the thing that's going to make you feel better about this. But it's understandable because people want to assure themselves it won't happen to them. And they look at their own relationships and they think, and they look at all the relationships of all the people in their lives and they think, okay, everybody's safe here

because nobody we know is going to do that. Well, everybody who does that because nobody we know is going to do that. Well, everybody who does that is somebody, somebody new, right? As part of her research for After the Eclipse, Sarah gained access to the case files and boxes of evidence and even field notes of the original detectives and other authorities on the case.

It was apparent that had the case been handled differently, maybe Sarah's wait for answers wouldn't have been so long. Hindsight is 20-20, but it's also easy to see things that could have been done better, like ways that this case conceivably could have been solved a lot earlier. A lot earlier. Maybe even the same week. If the statement of Crystal's best friend Linda was considered worthy of follow-up by the detective at the time, Dick Pickett. At some point, very soon, days after the murder, Linda, mom's best friend, had reason to feel creepy and suspicious of a pickup truck that

was parked across the street from her. And she was dismissed as a hysterical woman. It wasn't followed up. And as far as I can determine, that was the killer's truck. Now, why, what set her antenna off? Who knows? But like, why not check it out? Like he consulted a psychic. He spent his time doing that. Like, why not walk yourself across the street and ask some questions? Because the killer had injured his hand.

And that was something that they had looked for it because his blood was found at the scene too. So they were looking for, they were looking at anybody with an injured hand during that time. And if they had only laid eyes on him, he would have been such a suspect. And all it took was like not writing off an emotional woman. I learned a lot from Sarah through our conversation and through reading her book. I really appreciate the ways she challenged me to continue digging deeper into what's really operating behind many cases and to understand the bigger why and the systemic issues that inform and motivate killers. The same ones that have the potential to make some investigators blind to answers.

Especially when I was writing the book, it was really important to me to include instances of everyday misogyny that the interviews that the police, for example, the interviews that the police conducted with other men in town provided plenty of material about. And that our everyday dismissal of women's perspectives and control over their own bodies informs the motivations of someone who's going to decide that they are sexually entitled to someone and that when she says no they can end her life like these are not unrelated issues like a police officer completely disregarding the the testimony of mom's best friend because he thinks that's that's a hysterical woman is is

not an unrelated issue these things exist on a spectrum, of course, but like, just that we have an epidemic of people thinking that they can lay hands on somebody else and take away their life or take away their autonomy. 13 years after Crystal Perry was killed, DNA disproved the theory that it was someone she dated or with whom she had a known ongoing romantic history. The husband did it theory did not fit. As far as the investigation revealed, her murder was random. Michael Hutchinson picked Crystal Perry for motivations we can only assume and took her life. Everybody wants to say the killer is this terrible monster. He's an aberration. It's very tempting.

It's very tempting to just think this person is a monster. Of course, like I have to psychologically deal with the fact that this is a living, breathing person on the earth still. Like this is a person who went on and had a life. This person lived, you know, several houses down from mom's best friend for years. She met him. She met him at parties. Like, I have friends who met him growing up who stayed in Bridgeton. Like, this is a person who worked and went to the grocery store and existed. This is not just some comic book character of evil. And like, what environmental factors made this person? Like, what taught this person that he could do this?

Then State Police Lieutenant Walter Gribb had Crystal Perry's case in 2006 when the suspect was identified through DNA evidence. He reviewed everything that had been done before, re-DNA tested a dozen or two people in town, really dug in. But what I discovered was that, well, my experience of it being solved was I was in my mid twenties and I was working a desk job down South. And I had, at that point I had had to put my desire for this person to be identified aside. Like I couldn't, like my healing could not be contingent on this answer. But so I had kind of given up. And then one day in the middle of my work day, I got a phone call from Walt Gribbs, who had become the, at some point had been the lead investigator on the case telling me that they had identified the killer. And what had happened was he had been the lead investigator on the case telling me that they had identified the killer. And what had happened was he had been involved in a violent altercation in Bridgeton in the early 2000s having to do with a drug deal is the short version.

So he had had to give up a DNA sample to CODIS. CODIS stands for Combined DNA Index System, and it refers to both a DNA database of collected samples from victims and from perpetrators, and the software in which those samples are documented and checked at participating federal, state, and local forensic laboratories. DNA evidence in Crystal Perry's case was in CODIS, but it would take several years for a match. The suspect hadn't been arrested yet, and his sample wasn't in the system. In Maine, current law requires that a DNA sample be collected from a defendant if they are convicted of a felony including murder, sexual assault, solicitation of a child, and other offenses, with some restrictions based on the date of the offense. That statute was revised to remove

certain offenses previously requiring DNA samples upon conviction, including manslaughter, aggravated assault, kidnapping, criminal restraint, burglary, arson, criminal mischief, and others. It was the earlier statute that required Michael Hutchinson to give a DNA sample when he was arrested in 2003 on unrelated charges, kidnapping, and criminal threatening with a firearm. Sarah noted that at the time, Maine had a CODIS backlog of about two years. So a couple of years passed before he came up as a match in our case. At that point, he was actually back in jail because he had broken parole. So when he was identified, Walt could go to a prison and interview him.

And a year later, we had the trial and he was convicted. So it was, you know, and I've asked Walt this before. I said, you know, after all of your like sleuthing and your real dedication to this case and all you had done really strategically for it to be kind of a random match that solved it, like, was that at all personally disappointing? And he's just such an upstanding person, so dedicated to his job. He was like, no, I was just glad, just glad that it happened. So it's not a case of a heroic cop. Although you can probably hear my fondness for Walt. I could sense her fondness for Walt, both in her conversation and in After the Eclipse.

That fondness seems mutual. A 2019 Sun Journal article by Andrew Rice covered an event where Sarah and Walt spoke together about Crystal Perry's case. Walt told Sarah he was struck by her strength, what she accomplished in her adult life. Walt told her, You're my hero. Michael Hutchinson's trial began in spring of 2007. The prosecution's case was supported by the DNA typing and match of the evidence at the scene and the sample given by Hutchinson,

as well as largely circumstantial evidence. The defense, whose role in every criminal trial is to raise reasonable doubt, offered the theory that it was another man who committed the murder, that Hutchinson's biological evidence only proved he was there that night, but not that he killed anybody. The defense attorney tried to introduce letters that mom had written to a lover, imply that the sexual assault that happened the night mom died was consensual because it resembled some kind of sex she had fantasized about on paper, which was completely inappropriate, immediately struck down by the judge. You know, but this was introduced kind of on the sly after that evidence had already been excluded from the proceedings. And once it's out of your mouth,

the jury can't unhear what you said. And it was a transparent manipulation of sex negativity and slut shaming and victim blaming. And I wasn't, I was appalled, but not surprised that that happened. Sarah testified at the trial, detailing her memory of that night once again.

The defense tried to shake her on cross-examination ever so slightly as to not lose the jury's favor, but Sarah was solid. The jury deliberated for two hours before returning with a guilty verdict. On August 2, 2007, Michael Hutchinson was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. After the Eclipse is about Crystal Perry. It's about Sarah and her experiences before and after her mother was stolen from her. But it's also about the other individuals impacted by the loss of their sister, friend, partner, and co-worker. People who otherwise didn't have the opportunity to speak to what they had walked through. But I was really anxious about going to Maine and doing the research because being in Maine is still complicated for me.

And I was doing a lot of cold calling and I was transporting people back to, for a lot of them, what had been the the scariest worst period of their lives and I knew that's what I was going to be doing and I didn't I didn't have experience interviewing I didn't have experience going into the field and doing things like that so it was all kind of intuitive I had great support and in professors and peers but I would just rent a car from the city and drive up to Maine and just have my list and say, okay, here's 10 things you could do. You have to do five of these before you go home. I had the advantage of being a person that people didn't want to say no to, too. And that kind of cut both ways because one motivation for writing the book, especially as I got more involved in it, was to represent stories of people who weren't me and represent, at least have it be

really informed by the perspective of other people who had been deeply affected by this. I mean, very obviously, my aunts, my mother's sisters, her best friend, Linda, and just people in town too, mom's co-workers, her people she had dated, people she was dating at the time. You know, I had been anointed as the prime griever and had had my moment in court to speak on the record about how this had affected me, but a lot of people hadn't been given that kind of voice. And so it was really gratifying for me to be able to interview people and at least give them that container to talk about how this had affected them and to share stories that maybe nobody had ever asked them before because they weren't the kind of person that even a reporter would have approached at the time. One of those individuals was Dennis Lorraine. He was Crystal Perry's fiancé at the time of her death. Because of his proximity to Crystal, he was a suspect in her murder.

You know, I haven't been in touch with Dennis in a few years, but his life was hugely altered, we can at least say, by this. The cops, not to mention townspeople, had their eye on him for a really long time. And he was interrogated and tracked and all of these things in the wake of his fiance being killed. And that's, and, and he was a problematic partner, let's say. He had explosions of anger during fights and things. So he doesn't get really any empathy from people. And I think it's, he's just like another tragedy in this story, what happened to him. And he was so young, the older and older I get, the more I realized how young these people were. He was 19. Mom was 30. He was just a baby.

Like, it's a miracle that he, he could go on to, I shouldn't say that. I hate it when people say that about me. It's a miracle that he'd go on to have a good life, you know? But I just think like there's just so much damage around a violent event like this that cannot be undone. What is your view of true crime entertainment? I think particularly for people who are true crime addicts, as people will often confess. You know, I don't really have a problem with attracting people who are into traditional true crime. I would like for people to come out on the other side of imbibing this story with a more critical lens on why they're so interested in these stories. And to remember that when they are enjoying this entertainment, there are real people behind that. Real people who weren't disposable,

who no matter what the situation was, you know, even in cases where the assailant is someone's husband or somebody's boyfriend who was always abusive and shouldn't she have known better, etc. Whatever stupid story we tell, that nobody can do anything that makes them deserve getting killed or getting physically harmed. These stories frequently lack a real representation of the person who was lost and their family of of who this victim really was we need really need to interrogate why we're so attracted to these stories and so attracted to stories that follow this very cathartic shape of this beautiful woman is killed. We're going to go find the killer. And some heroic cop often finds the killer and then the killer's in jail. And then huzzah, we can all celebrate how safe

we are and we can experience this vicarious feeling of danger and then be assured that we're safe. You know, it also opens up questions about the criminal justice system and how problematic that is, too. This criminal justice system is not going to save us from misogyny and violence. It's not disincentivizing people from attacking women and trans people and people of color. Like, that's not what's happening. And the stories that we focus on, too, don't even statistically represent the biggest victims of violent death in America are young Black men. Sarah asked me why I'm drawn to these stories, why I tell them, and I gave her a very long three-part answer, and I was admittedly self-conscious as I rambled on. The short version is that telling these stories feels like the greatest, most meaningful alignment of my skills and what's needed.

Then there's the fact that I'm an empath, and I want to understand loss and grieving to better empathize. But above all, I'm drawn to these stories because if I can honor one more person, help one more family, to let them know that they're heard, and make them feel heard, then that's a worthy use of my skills that I've earned from a career filled with many forms of storytelling, all of which have yet to feel as important as this one. In writing after the eclipse, Sarah set out to know who her mother was, beyond the rosy frames of a young daughter.

A funny thing that kept happening, especially with mom's friends, is I was also really motivated by getting to know mom, not just as her daughter and not just as a kid. You know, we were so close when I was growing up, like we might have been the mother and daughter now who were good friends because, you know, we were only 17 years apart. I have friends 17 years older and younger than me right now, you know, and we didn't get to have that. So I kind of got to borrow that from her friends. I got to know her as an adult from, from other people in her life, but people would regularly kind of, they would, they would start leaning into a story and then they would stop and they would apologize. And they'd say, I'm sorry, this is so hard for me because I just think of

you as that little 12 year old girl. And I feel like I shouldn't tell you about this party. They're like, don't worry. It's fine. It's appropriate. I have also been to parties. Like it's okay to tell me these things, but they would have to like do this work to assure themselves because they were just suddenly having to age me 20 or so years. Do you know your parents, who they were before you or who they are when you're not around? I'm not sure I've ever had or taken the opportunity to ask questions of my mom's friends and family to really know her like that. I reflected on this while reading the book and I even told Sarah that I felt motivated to get to

know my mother in this way while I still have her here. Maybe this will motivate and inspire you to do the same too. Sarah, what is your mother's legacy to you? What do you hope we all learn from the way that she lived? You know, there's a theory that the killer came to our door with some made-up story about his truck having broken down or something. Somebody tangentially involved in the case told me, maybe that's what happened. It was raining. He came to the door. He said, I need to use your phone. Mom, who was one of the few people we knew who was always really diligent in locking her doors at night in small town Maine in the 90s opened her door to this person in need. And like there's a part of me like when I live in the in the hypothesis that that's what happened because we can't ever know exactly what happened there,

it could be very tempting to be mad like why did you do that? But I think that's how I want to live. Like, I want to be the person who's going to open my door to someone in need, even if there's this small sliver of a chance that I'm going to be harmed. Like, we can't just keep our doors closed need. Crystal Perry's case is solved, but there is still action to take after hearing her story. I asked Sarah for the causes that are important to her that we can support right now. Consider making a donation to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network. They run the National Sexual Assault Hotline. Also, please consider supporting and donating to Women for Afghan Women, a grassroots civil society organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the rights of disenfranchised Afghan women and girls in Afghanistan and New York. I will be making a donation to the main coalition

to end domestic violence. All of these organizations are linked in the show notes at darkdowneast.com. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. Source material for this case and others is listed at darkdowneast.com. Pick up a copy of After the Eclipse by Sarah Perry at your local bookstore or by shopping on bookshop.org. Every purchase supports local booksellers.

Thank you, Sarah, for sharing your stories and memories with me. I've learned a lot. I still have more to learn. Follow Dark Down East on Apple Podcasts and be sure to turn on automatic downloads in the top right corner of the app. And if you listen on Spotify or any other app, same thing, just hitting follow is the easiest way to support this show

and the cases I cover. For photos and more information on this case and others, visit darkdowneast.com and follow along on Facebook and Instagram at Dark Down East. Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do. I'm honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and murder cases, 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.