Dark Downeast - The Murder of Darien Richardson Part 1 (Maine)

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

PORTLAND HOMICIDE, 2010: An unknown gunman fired several rounds into Darien Richardson's bedroom at her Portland, Maine apartment as she and her then-boyfriend lay sleeping. While Darien initially survived, complications from her gunshot woulds would ultimately claim her life just two short months later. Darien's case remains unsolved.In this two-part series, you’ll get to know Darien Richardson through the memories of her mother. You’ll hear about the happy, determined, kind, friend-to-all woman whose life was cut short, and the frustrating dead end details of her case that have left her family without answers for over a decade.The family and friends of Darien Richardson are offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the person or persons responsible for her death. Anyone with information regarding Darien Richardson’s murder is asked to contact the Detective Division of the Portland Police Department at [phone] or at www.portland-police.com. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/darienrichardsonFollow @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.

It can happen to anybody. So we've been working on this issue for 10 years, and I've never met anyone that said they knew it would happen to them. Everyone we know from the big mass shootings that are well publicized to people like us that were shot in a single incident, no one ever says, yeah, we knew it was going to happen. Everyone thinks it won't happen to them everywhere.

But it does. Gun violence can happen anywhere and everywhere. Judy Richardson knows too well that gun violence can happen to anyone. And she also knows what it can take from a family. Judy has been a voice for victims of violent crimes and an advocate for closing the loophole that put a firearm into the hands of her daughter's killer. In this two-part series, you'll get to know Darian Richardson through the memories of her mother. You'll hear about the happy, determined, kind, friend-to-all woman whose life was cut short, and the frustrating dead-end details of her case that have left her family without answers for over a decade.

I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is part one of Darian Richardson's story, told by her mother, Judy Richardson, on Dark Down East. She was our first, she was our first baby. She was, she was energetic. She was busy. She was always smiling. She was very kind. She was a really good kid. She was a really good, fun baby and little girl. She basically stayed that way. She was very social, like a little too social.

Sometimes I would worry about her, you know, she was really cute and like, hi to everybody. And those things you worry about as a mother. But, you know, she had a lot of friends and she just, she just constantly wanted to go do, you know, she was a bundle of energy. I sat with Judy Richardson at her kitchen table in South Portland, at the same home she and her husband Wayne have lived for over 30 years. It was Darian's childhood home, and the evidence of her presence there is still obvious. I think just about every shelf in the house had a picture of Darian and her sister Serena

or the whole family together. I could just tell that this was a home with lots of love between its four walls. Love and memories. Her and her sister, because they were only 16 months apart, so they would get into mischief a little bit one of the funny stories they were just a little I don't even know she couldn't she must have been

five and her sister was four and they were in the room playing and we had a playroom and she came down and like mom look what we did and she had put markers all over Serena's back and behind. That always embarrassed me. I'm like, what is this? What did you even think about that? And it's like, wow, they thought it was funny. Little things like that, cutting their hair, play scissors.

I think every little girl does that, right? Even in her childhood, Darian was determined to do her best at everything she tried. From dancing to athletics, academics, and friendships, Darian put her whole heart into it all. Got her into dance, which she fell in love with. So she did ballet from, I think, first grade right up through her, that she wanted to do on point, you know, so she stuck with it until she was in point shoes. She really liked that.

And then in middle school, she switched to athletics. You know, she became, and I wasn't an athletic mom. I wasn't a sports person, and she came home from school, I joined the field hockey team. And I'm like, I don't know sports person, and she came home from school, I joined the field hockey team. And I'm like, I don't know anything about field hockey. It's like, what do I do? Stand and ask the other moms, so what's this game? But yeah, that's how she was.

She wanted to be involved in everything. Darian set big goals for herself herself and she went for them with impressive dedication. Going to college was one of her biggest goals. She wanted to go to Bowdoin because she was she was a swimmer. Swimming was her real her best sport like she swam from middle through high school and she they even she was on a team that broke the record still hold actually over there in the south portland rec center pool so i think that's why but she when they used to swim at bowden the meets she's like i want to go to this school so she that's not really probably something we can afford but she really made a goal of it she's like she wanted to go and I only found out later actually

when she did go that she had like been writing them and getting information and her everything in high school was about going being able to go to college like she's participating in sports she really focused on studying she had to have perfect attendance. You know, this was all her. It wasn't coming from us. And she had a job, and she volunteered because she felt those were all the things that would help her. And, you know, she was our first child, so we really didn't know about, like, colleges. And she only applied to that one college. And people were like, she only applied to one college? Well, what are you going to do if she doesn't get in? I'm like, I didn't, what are you supposed to, I didn't know you were

supposed to apply to like eight colleges. But she applied for early admissions and she was accepted. She loved it. She enjoyed Bowdoin a lot. She made a lot of lifelong friends there. Darian made friends easily and she always saw the best in people. She was like a magnet. People were drawn to her even and that was something from like little. You know she had this bright big smile and she had that always and she would just smile and she had this like people just would come to her and everyone if you everyone was her best friend if you talk to her. And everyone, everyone was her best friend. If you talk to her friends, everyone will say

that she was my best friend. She studied sociology and education at Bowdoin College. And Darian knew she wanted to be a teacher and work with kids. That dream came true

after she graduated in 2006 and landed a job at Wayne Fleet, a private school in Portland's West End. She worked there a full year, but budget cuts ultimately eliminated her position, and so Darian went to work in the Portland public school system, where Judy also worked. The experience was different though. At the time, it was a day treatment center and what Darian really wanted to do was teach elementary school students and she needed to go back to school herself for that certification. As she explored the programs at the University of New England, Darian was recruited to work for Aetna Insurance and it was a great in-between until she could get back to teaching.

She was recruited by some friends. They recruited her to Aetna, so she left the schools in 2008 and had been working most of 2009. Everything was going good. She had an apartment. She had a duplex on Radcliffe Street. It was huge. It was actually bigger than our house. It had three bedrooms upstairs and a huge living room, dining room. You know, it's just huge. And the landlord lives next door. And see, that was another thing. I really felt very safe. I'm like, wow, she's living with a million lords next door. And we knew her roommates, of course, and she was happy, and things were going well for her. That summer of 2009, Darian started dating a guy by the name of Corey Gerard. That summer, she had gone with a bunch of friends on a canoe or a raft down the Saco River,

which everyone does in Maine, right? And that's where, so friends, and then they met, mutual friends, that's where she met Corey. End of summer, beginning of fall of 2009, she met Corey, who told her he was a student at St. John's in New York City. And more than that, he told her he was in the ROTC program.

And so he was younger than her. We didn't really know them, but her friends knew him. Everyone said he was an okay guy. They started seeing each other, and even though, so he was always in New York at college but he was

coming he started coming home a lot and she was actually a little bit flattered by that I think you know like this guy's driving back see me on the weekend and I was saying don't you think it's weird that if he's in ROTC you can come home so much but you know she wasn't that kind of she didn't she wasn't she didn't dwell on things. It wasn't anything serious to her. It was like, he's got a plan, he's doing his thing. And she was happy with her friends and her roommates. It was Darian's nature to see the good in people, to take them on their word and give them grace, even when others may not be quick to do the same. She just only saw the good, and, you know, she would,

actually she'd say, well, you're just too critical. It's like, because I'm always thinking, well, what's this? Well, just, you know, she just took people for their face value. Darian was with Corey Gerard on the night of January 8th and the early morning hours of January 9th, 2010, when her life and the lives of the entire Richardson family changed forever. So Corey was supposedly home, and he was over at her house staying there because he was on school break, which we were at that point starting to question. And it was a work night. It was a Thursday night. So she had to go to work in the morning.

She went home, I guess, at like 9 or probably after dinner. And then they went to bed. Darian's apartment was on Rackliff Street in the Deering Highlands area in Portland, where stately homes built in the early 1900s have either evolved into multi-unit apartment buildings while still maintaining their historic charm, or have remained single-family dwellings

for Portland's upper-middle-class families. It's off the bustling Portland Peninsula, but still tightly packed and densely populated. By Portland's definition, Ratcliffe Street and the daring neighborhoods are a safe place to live. Though really, there are very few areas a Portland resident might deem as unsafe. Undesirable, maybe, but generally it's a quote-unquote safe, low-crime seaside city. When people picture vacation land, rarely does that mental image include gun violence and shootings. But that night in January 2010 proved that it can happen anywhere, even in the safest neighborhoods.

1.30 in the morning, she felt like someone was there. Like, she could sense the bedroom. Her bed was by the, close to the door. And she felt someone there, and she kind of sat up, and she saw a figure, and then she saw, like, she saw two figures. And she saw someone, like, she saw like she saw two figures and she saw someone like she said they were feeling the wall for like a light switch and there wasn't one because it was an old house that you're going to have to go in and pull the string so the light didn't come on and what she had said to me was she thought she felt like they were leaving she thought once she goes they kind of backed out and I sat up like this and then she said it felt like

one of the guys pushed the other guy in and then she put her hand up like that she heard just like this noise and she said this light and she's like no they shot me you know and her hammer like that and it blew off her thumb and then so she rolled off the bed and then another bullet hit her on the right leg, entering by her knee, and it traveled up and lodged in her hip. Corey was rolled off the bed too, and apparently, but he didn't get shot. So they just opened fire, and no one really saw him.

The two other roommates, of course, woke up when they heard the running, but no one saw anything. The police came. The ambulance came, the ambulance came. She was taken to Maine Med and was immediately put in surgery. And they were trying to repair that. She had like a hole in her whole thumb. So the doctor was, he said it was like shredded spaghetti, he told her. And she had this big apparatus, so they were going to probably have to graft.

That was a goal, future goal, was probably to graft that piece back in there through some other bone. But in the meantime, the poor thing had this big metal apparatus going through her. That was just one of the injuries. The other injury was in her hip, and they were leaving it,

but she kept bleeding out. So she was in ICU for, I think, three days. And then they moved her to upstairs, and she bled out even more. She ended up, they had to give her lots of blood. And then they, I guess that was a bad decision, they said. They put her up there, and then they just, they left her. The nurse left her, and her sister was with her, because we were in the hospital all the time. And she said she had to go to the bathroom. I'm like, but she hadn't gotten up yet.

You know, she had been down in ICU. And her sister took her to the bathroom, and she just collapsed and bled out. I thought we were going to lose them. We huddled in as a family, I guess. I just stopped working. They just said, take your time. People I worked with knew Darian, she worked there, so everyone was just distraught about what happened. But every night we'd have supper together there,

and we'd watch comedies, we'd watch in the office. You know, just trying to make her safe. Our goal was we just wanted to get her healthy. We didn't want to, you know, of course you have to deal with the investigation, and the police were up there. But she was physically in a lot of pain in her hand and in her leg, and she also was traumatized. I stayed with her every night.

She was traumatized if the dark, she was traumatized if the door was open or if it closed or if a loud noise. She was afraid that she was going to bleed out. And she would literally say, Mom, will you keep watching my leg all night? So I would stay up all night looking just to appease her because I just wanted to make her feel safe. So, yeah. Darian's recovery was physically and emotionally painful. So then they moved her to what was, they call a critical care unit, where you get more, someone's right outside your room watching.

And she was there for three weeks. Then they put her on bed rest so she couldn't get up anymore, and that was the problem. So she had this whole, the doctors couldn't figure out why she kept bleeding out. They said there's so many arteries in your legs. They can't even see them on like she had MRIs and CAT scans and they weren't sure. And the doctors were disagreeing upon like if we go in and just do surgery, that could be a big risk and she could die. Or if we, you know, we just wait and see. It was just, it was crazy.

So what they did was they packed the wound and just waited until it healed. And so then she stopped bleeding out. And then she had to have physical therapy and walk again. But that didn't really solve the problem. We found out later. Meanwhile, investigators tried to make sense of the home invasion and shooting. Who could be responsible and why? Early on, it appeared Darian wasn't the intended target.

And so police took a closer look at her boyfriend, Corey. The investigation compounded Darian's trauma. But just as she did with everything else in her life, Darian gave it her best effort. Corey wasn't around because his parents had him go to his sister's, which was in Boston. And so he wasn't really helping or cooperating with the investigation. But we were just, we weren't as worried about the investigation at the time because we just thought we'll deal with that when she's healthier. And then she can, you know, if we don't, you know,

we didn't want her to have any more hurt and trauma. And it was hard for her to have the police come in. And they're not always nice. But she was doing what she could. She was also bedridden. So she found things on a computer that Corey had put. She turned things over to the police. We had someone of Corey's friends popped up once to visit

and then was asking questions, and she called the police and said, you know, you should go talk to this guy. But then I think they didn't investigate it as a serious thing at the time. It was just like, oh, okay, yeah, this shooting, everyone's all right, they thought. It wasn't a priority, I guess. And it didn't seem to be. Doctors decided to leave the bullet in her hip. There would be more surgeries, more physical therapy,

more steps to her recovery, but as soon as she could walk, Darian was cleared to go home. I was very concerned about that bullet being in her. But they said, oh, she'll be fine. She was young, she was healthy, just walking, physical therapy. But this was February, so she got out at the end of January. It was the very end of January. So she came home.

We're here, we're trying to walk around the neighborhood in February and it's just freezing poor girl but she was doing the right thing she was doing all the right things she was she went and got she was going to therapy behavior health and she was seeing a psychiatrist for meds for, like, anxiety. But it was tough. You know, one night she was crying in her room, and I could hear her. I could hear her, so I went and got in bed with her. And, you know, I'm like, she probably did a lot of that, she just, and that's what she was saying, she goes, I just don't, I don't know people are gonna think of me, like, nobody's gonna think

of you, and she goes, I didn't know, like, she didn't know this part of Corey, and she was like, why was I so foolish that I, you know, I'm like, you're not the first woman to be fooled by a man by any means, you know, and it happens all the time, you know, a lot. So yeah, people don't, you don't see what people don't want you to see. And she's not that kind of person. So she, you know, I guess didn't think someone would be that way to her, you know. And so that always got me. It was a hard, hard thing. She was embarrassed. She was worried about work.

You know, here she was. Actually, right when she was in the ICU, the first moment I saw her, she goes, you've got to about work. You know, here she was. Actually, right in the, when she was in the ICU, the first moment I saw her, she goes, you got to call work. Tell them I'm not coming in. I'm like, I will, but let's not even worry about it. But people by that time had seen it on the news. It was already on the news. Even in the most challenging moments,

Darian's light shone through. I wasn't all of her about that. I think she was, because she did stay positive and she's just like, I remember one night, I think she was home. We were talking about,

about Corey. And I said, because she had, you know, and there's some things she didn't know about him and she didn't know, like he would throw off some money and he did other things and I said we were talking and I said I noticed that she I'm like why aren't you angry about this like I was angry and she's like and

she just looked at me and she goes I don't want to live my life that way and I'm like, well, you're right. But, you know, I just, I couldn't, I couldn't see it. I was, I had so much anger that I just didn't understand why she was angry. But what, you know, but she's right. What are you going to do? Right? You just have to, she just moved forward. board. As Darian Richardson progressed in her recovery, the investigation into the home invasion and shooting stalled. Detectives considered the scene at the Ratcliffe Street apartment. No signs of forced entry. Her roommates were never bothered or shot, and nothing was stolen. However, Detective Marianne

Bailey of the Portland Police told the Press Herald in 2011 that they did uncover physical evidence of the crime inside the apartment, but she did not get into specifics. Doing so could have hampered the case. So although he wasn't cooperating, investigators were learning more and more about Darian's boyfriend Cory Gerard. He was involved with illegal trafficking of OxyContin, a prescription narcotic pain reliever. With that, they determined that the shooting was likely drug-related. But Portland police were clear, Darian herself was not involved. But that seemed to be the extent of the information that the investigation revealed, at least at first. Judy felt as if the

case wasn't investigated as seriously as it should have been at the time. It was a home invasion and shooting, but everyone survived. On the last weekend of February 2010, almost two months after that night on Ratcliffe Street, that would no longer be the truth. By the end of February 2010, Darian was feeling well enough to travel, and doctors gave her the thumbs-up to fly. She said that she wanted to get over a little getaway.

It was supposed to be just like a long weekend. And they were going to fly out of Boston, and I took them to the bus. And we all thought it was going to be a good idea because it was freezing here. She had had this traumatic experience. She'd been in the hospital for a month. And so we just thought it would be a good thing for her to be out in the sun and maybe go down, lay in a pool, go to the beach. And they did do that, just have warmth, sunshine.

And we thought it would be good for her mental health, too. You know, and just to feel sort of normal and being, you know, so it wasn't that big of a deal, we thought. But I know the press made a lot about that, like flying, but the doctor said it would be fine. It wasn't a long flight. It was from Boston to Miami. It was just a couple hours. And I talked to her a lot. So I thought, well, it's not going to be that bad. It'll be fine. And they were going to come

back. Sean was going to come back with her. And then, you know, you got the call that she collapsed there, so we got a call from the hospital, so they took, they took her to the hospital, and they wouldn't tell Chandra anything, because she's not family, and the guy kept calling us, and it was, again, it was like a Saturday night, but it was in the morning, like it was one in the morning or something like that. Phone's ringing. And I answered the phone, and he just kept saying, your daughter's in the hospital, you have to get here. And he wouldn't give us information on the phone.

And so I got Wayne up, and I got Serena up, and we have to leave. And so I'm packing a bag, and Wayne's calling the airlines to get us a flight there and you know we're like we just you know and I just we kept telling ourselves we get there and she's just gonna you know have to be in the hospital again and and everything and the doctor kept calling back and but he wouldn't give me information and I'm like do you know I'm in Maine and he's like and then so we had flights out and then we look out the window getting ready to go

and there's cops coming to the door and we knew the cop so they had told I guess when people die they send it to the town that they live in and they send a fax or whatever to them and they came over to tell us in person. It's awful. I just, I just collapsed.

And, you know, I kicked myself. I should have gone down there to help Shonda come back, but I just couldn't. I just went to bed. I just was done. Awful. It was a physical pain. Judy spoke with the medical examiner in Miami, Florida.

They spent hours on the phone together. She knew exactly what it was. Judy spoke with the medical examiner in Miami, Florida. They spent hours on the phone together. She knew exactly what it was. It was how they healed the outside, but she was still internally bleeding. I said, well, was it because she flew? It would have happened anywhere, which was shocking too. She was with so many arteries, and she was like, I could see where even though they stopped outside, it was just like just circling.

And it caused a pulmonary embolism. And it was very, very sudden. She probably didn't feel anything and all that. You know, she was fine one moment and next not and that's what I mean I could like she was strong just said that yeah she was fine and then it was just like quick you're reeling it was like and it was it was like a roller coaster you know we went through all this with her and we thought we thought we thought we were going to make her better we were going to love her better you know darian is absolutely everywhere you look in the richardson home

judy handed me a framed poem that darian wrote her as a gift one year her neat and curly cursive handwriting described all of her favorite things about her mother, and the words were surrounded by a collage of mother-daughter photos that she'd cut and pasted together. Judy smiled down at it as if it were the first time she had ever read the words. I try to be more like her now, like living in the moment. I was never like that living in the moment person like she is, or appreciating all the, I mean I as much as she was you know like she just really was happy all the time even when what happened to her she tried she really put on a brave face and it was remarkable to me and and just her, she really cared about society.

You know, sociology major. And people, and her friends. And she loved life. And she didn't want to miss a moment of it. With her sudden, unexpected passing, Darian Richardson's case was no longer just a home invasion and shooting.

It was a homicide investigation. In the next episode of Dark Down East, with renewed focus on the shooting that ultimately ended Darian Richardson's life, investigators learned new details that felt like a step towards answers. We were unaware of it, but there was another shooting. There was a shooting when Darian was still alive on February 10th. We got called in to the police, and they wanted to tell us that they found out that it was connected. But the case screeched to a halt when a loophole to firearm sales created a frustrating dead end for investigators. He had said he had sold it soon after he bought it.

And he didn't remember who he sold it to. He didn't do a check. He didn't even remember what day he sold it soon after he bought it. And he didn't remember who he sold it to. He didn't do a check. He didn't, he didn't even remember what day he sold it on. So they were basically telling us that in this big room with the chief and everyone else that you don't know, there's nowhere else to go with that. Judy shares what she and her husband, Wayne, have learned about gun violence across the state of Maine and our country, and the work they are doing to prevent further gun violence tragedies and save other families the pain they continue to walk through to this day. The family and friends of Darian Richardson are offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and indictment of the person or persons responsible for her death.

Anyone with information regarding Darian Richardson's murder is asked to contact the Detective Division of the Portland Police Department at 207-874-8479 or at portland-police.com. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. Source material for this episode is listed at darkdowneast.com. Thank you, Judy, for sharing your memories and stories of Darian with me. Follow Dark Down East on Apple Podcasts, and be sure to turn on automatic downloads in the top right corner of the app. If you listen on Spotify or another app, same thing, 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.