Dark Downeast - The Murders of Janet Brochu & Geraldine Finn (Maine)

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

MAINE COLD CASE, 1987: After she was refused service at a bar in Waterville, Maine on December 23, 1987, 20-year old Janet Brochu accepted a ride home from a guy she'd met at the bowling alley earlier that night. But Janet never made it home.When you hear the details of Janet Brochu’s case, and how it intertwines with the murder of Geraldine Finn, another young Maine woman around the same time and place, you’ll be demanding to know how it’s possible Janet Brochu’s case is still without answers. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/janetbrochuFollow @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.

Last fall, as dark down east went from an idea to a working concept yet to be revealed to the world, I came across an article in the Bangor Daily News written less than a month after I was born, on February 10th, 1990. The headline snagged my attention right away. Unsolved deaths piling up in Maine. Sharon Mack began her article with the case of Janet Baxter. At the time the article was published, Janet Baxter's case was still unsolved and wouldn't be solved for another nine years. The Baxter homicide was one of more than a dozen mysterious unsolved deaths,

missing women, and murders coming out of the 80s and into the 90s. Among those cases is another Janet, Janet Brochu. The few details shared in this article by Sharon Mack were enough to get me digging deeper. The reporter said of the case, Brochu has not been determined to be the victim of an unsolved murder, although her death has not been solved. No cause of death has ever been released, and details regarding the woman's death are sketchy." These sketchy details are what I

wanted to know and understand. And when you hear the details of Janet Brochu's case, and how it intertwines with the murder of another young Maine woman around the same time and place, you'll be demanding to know how Janet Brochu's disappearance and murder is still sitting on the Maine State Police unsolved homicide list nearly 34 years later. This is A Killer Connection, the Janet Brochu cold case. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. It was Christmas Eve Eve, December 23rd, 1987, and 20-year-old Janet Brochu was out on the town of Waterville with some friends. Christmas Eve Eve used to be a big night out in my hometown, and I grew up just 20 minutes away from where Janet was from. Everyone was back from school for a mid-semester break, and so going out to the bars was like a mini high school reunion, which actually sounds like quite the nightmare now, but hey, back in

college, it was a fun night. Maybe it was the same for Janet, who worked at Maine General Medical Center as a dietary assistant. Everyone was in the celebrating mood with Christmas just a few days away. The next day was probably a day off, so why not go out for a couple of drinks? Janet was the adoptive daughter of Geraldine and Albert Brochu, and she lived at home with them in Winslow. She was a happy person. That's what everyone had to say about Janet. A source told me that she also grew up in Winslow and she rode the bus to school with Janet. She remembers Janet as a happy, fun-loving person who made fast friends. The only photo I've ever seen of Janet is black and white and it looks like a posed yearbook photo. She has short feathered hair, a style that I'm sure my mother,

who was around the same age as Janet, rocked in the 80s. And she's smiling a big, bright smile. On Christmas Eve Eve 1987, Janet's night started at the area bowling alley with friends. It was there she reportedly met two men in the neighboring lane. They must have hit it off because after they bowled to their final frames, Janet's group and the two men made plans to meet up at T. Woody's Restaurant and Bar in the Waterville Concourse. T. Woody's was located on the lower riverside level of the concourse, right on the Kennebec River. When Janet got inside, she was refused service at T. Willie's bar. Maine's drinking age was raised from 20 to 21 just two years earlier, so 20-year-old Janet was asked to leave.

That's when one of the men she met earlier in the night offered to give her a ride home. According to reports, the two walked out of the bar together, but Janet forgot her purse, so he walked back in an unknown amount of time later to grab it for her. He told Janet's friends he was going to get her home. In the parking lot, though, Janet was starting to feel a little too tipsy. Now, this could just be pure speculation because I couldn't find actual reports of what she was drinking or what she was doing, but I looked up popular alcoholic beverages in the 80s and strong sugary drinks like Long Island iced teas and Bartles and James wine coolers were at the top of the list. I have a feeling one too many of those mixed with bowling alley food is enough to make anyone feel awful. And I should note too

that Janet was a severe diabetic in need of regular insulin. So when this bowling alley guy found her outside, she was either throwing up or about to, and he did not want that all over his car. So he refused to give her that ride. But what happened after that refusal, where Janet went next, how she got there, who she was with, it's a big empty gap of time in the case of Janet Brochu. All we know for sure is that her friends, the ones she started the evening with but left without, reportedly stayed at T. Woody's for another 45 minutes before heading home. But Janet never made it home that night. The next day, Christmas Eve 1987, Janet's parents reported their daughter missing.

Janet was the subject of an extensive search and investigation. According to reporting by the Biddeford Journal Tribune, the Brochu disappearance gained national attention as investigators followed leads connected to insulin purchases because, remember, Janet was a diabetic, and they also followed up with a woman who appeared in Biddeford, apparently with severe amnesia, but nothing led to Janet. The publicly available information about the initial search for Janet Brochu is limited. I don't know the extent of the search, if investigators had any working theories, if there were any persons of interest from the start. All I know for sure is that Janet was

having a few drinks with friends, she left without them, and would never be seen alive again. At 6.30 in the morning on March 18, 1988, two and a half months after Janet left that bar, a Pittsfield man named Christopher Anthony was out checking his hydropower station at the Waverly Avenue Dam. There, floating in the water, was the nude and decomposing body of a young woman. It was Janet Brochu. The initial autopsy did not reveal a cause of death, but Lieutenant Charles Love of the Criminal Investigation Division of

the Maine State Police told the Bangor Daily News that it's assumed she had been in the water since she was reported missing. Divers took to the waters of the Sebastakook in the weeks after her body was found, looking for any of her belongings or clues that would explain what happened to her on the night she went missing. But if they found anything, it's not public information. Waverly Avenue in Pittsfield is about a 30-minute drive from the Waterville Concourse area, following the river on Route 100. You'll cut through the towns of Fairfield, Benton, Clinton, and Burnham along the way. The Kennebec and Sebastakook intersect about a mile down the road from T. Woody's, where Janet was last seen alive. Janet and her parents lived in Winslow on Cushman Road at the

time of her disappearance, about a mile and a half away from where T. Woody's once was. So, after her ride home fell through, did she decide to walk? Certainly it would be an easy 20-minute walk under favorable conditions, but maybe she overestimated herself. It was dark and cold, and December can be particularly unforgiving in Maine, and she wasn't feeling great. She would have had to cross a bridge over the Kennebec and into Winslow on foot. Maybe her death was the result of a terrible accident, a slip on an icy Maine night and a fall into the river. But then again, the rivers flow the opposite direction from where Janet was found. If she did fall off a bridge and into the river on an icy walk home, she would have been found further south, near Augusta maybe, not north.

Her body couldn't have floated upstream. So how did Janet's body come to be in that river, near the Waverly Avenue Dam? If she was in the water for over two months, where and when did she enter the water? Or better, where did her killer toss her into the Sebastakook River, thinking the frigid flowing current would hide what they did. As investigators asked these same questions, the how, who, and why of Janet Brochu's disappearance and death, a predator was lurking in the central Maine area. This is where Janet Brochu's story intersects with that of another Maine woman, Geraldine Finn. On Sunday, August 14th, 1988, a man named Michael Keyes was out surveying his property along Route 201,

just outside of Skowhegan. As he crossed through his fields and ventured into the wooded area, Michael Keyes discovered the body of a woman. He turned on his heels to get back to his house to report what he found to the sheriff's office. State police assisted in the initial crime scene investigation. Recent heavy rainfall in the area made it challenging to collect and survey evidence. When asked if it was a homicide investigation, state police spokesman Steve McCausland told the Bangor Daily News, quote, We are treating this as simply a discovered body right now, end quote. Investigators were tight-lipped about the circumstances and cause of death, at least at first. Only 48 hours later,

everything was revealed. The body was that of 23-year-old Geraldine Ann Finn, a certified nurse assistant at the Woodlawn Nursing Home in Skowhegan. She died by strangulation, and her killer dumped her body in the woods, right near the Breezy Acres Motel, just three miles away from her home. She was last seen alive on the evening of Tuesday, August 9th, 1988. She and two co-workers were out at Pete and Larry's, a bar located at the time on Upper Main Street in Waterville, just about three miles from the Waterville Concourse. They were having a few drinks and decompressing from the day when, around 8.15pm., a stranger caught Geraldine's eye. He was circling the bar in his truck and stopped just within her line of sight, waving eagerly through the window and beckoning Geraldine and her two friends to come on out.

He was hollering over to them with his windows rolled down as they approached, inviting them to join him for a swim. It seemed kind of weird and unsafe to me to approach a stranger waving you over to his car if you didn't have some level of familiarity with him. Maybe he just looked super friendly from far away, or maybe they had a certain security in their numbers. Maybe they were like, okay, let's go figure out what this guy wants so he leaves us alone. Whatever the reasoning was, when they walked up to his blue Chevy Blazer, they found him completely nude.

Just sitting in his blazer, naked. He asked them if they wanted to go skinny dipping. The group of friends quickly turned down his invite. The man took off and Geraldine and her friends retreated back inside the bar. But later on in the evening, that same guy showed up to the bar, this time fully clothed, and somehow found his way into Geraldine's group. As the night rolled on, Geraldine may have gotten more comfortable with this man. Because the last time Geraldine's co-worker saw her that night, she was sitting in the passenger seat of his Chevy Blazer.

Geraldine told them he was going to give her a ride home, back to her house on St. James Street in Skowhegan, a 30-minute ride from Pete and Larry's in Waterville. But Geraldine did not make it home that night. When Geraldine was reported missing the next day, her co-workers told police that she left with a man driving a blue Chevy Blazer, with a dark mustache and dark eyes and a diamond-shaped tattoo on his shoulder. That man was 29-year-old Gerald Goodale. Gerald Goodale was a factory and construction worker,

picking up various jobs, building homes, and working on apartment renovations in the greater Waterville area. A family friend of Gerald told the Bangor Daily News, quote, he was very helpful. If I needed anything done, I'd ask him and he'd be right there to help, end quote. Gerald's parents were also quick to come to his defense in the press. His father, James Goodell, telling the Bangor Daily News, quote, nothing adds up. It's not in his character. It's a different person. They even said he had an alibi for that night. That he was at home waiting for a phone call until about 9.15 and then he left to go mud running, they said. Last fall when I started digging into the Janet Brochu case,

I connected with a woman who knew more about this alibi, the phone call that Gerald was apparently waiting for the night Geraldine went missing. The phone call would have been from this source's mother. She asked that I not use her name in this story. She went on to tell me, quote, after Goodale was thought to be the one who committed the crime against Finn, but before any court dates, before he confessed? My mother loaded us up, me and my sister, and we took a road trip to Florida in Goodale's murder vehicle as one last family trip before he was due in court. Knowing this, she willingly took us on a trip with him. My father had no way to stop her. He was physically ill over us going and truly thought he would never see us again. End quote. Gerald had been under police surveillance in the days following the discovery of Geraldine's body. And on Monday,

August 15th, 1988, Gerald Goodale was arrested without incident for the strangulation murder of Geraldine Ann Finn. If you're listening closely, you likely have picked up on some major similarities between the disappearance and death of Janet Brochu in 1987 and the murder of Geraldine Ann Finn just a few months later in 1988. To me, these similarities are glaring, and reporters at the time were seeing them too. When asked about it, Deputy Attorney General Fernand Larochelle told the Bangor Daily News, quote, there are some similarities in the broadest sense of the term, end quote. Broadest sense? First, Geraldine Ann Finn was working as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home. Janet Brochure was a dietary assistant at Maine General. Both victims worked

in the medical field, which might be a coincidence, but it's also worth mentioning because perhaps our killer had a type or a victim profile that he preyed on. Second, Geraldine Ann Finn was last seen in the parking lot of a Waterville bar called Pete and Larry's. Janet Brochu was last seen in the parking lot of a Waterville bar called T. Woody's Restaurant and Bar. Only three miles separated those two bars at the time. Third, Geraldine Ann Finn's body was found in a wooded area just off 201 on land that abutted the Kennebec River. Janet Brochu was found in the Sebastakook River, 30 minutes away in Pittsfield, in a similar landscape as Geraldine. And then there's this.

Gerald Goodale's mother Juanita told the Bangor Daily News in an August 22, 1988 article that Gerald admitted he saw Janet Brochu on the night she disappeared in the parking lot of T. Woody's Bar. This detail is particularly stunning to me. And yet, it didn't lead to Gerald Goodale being named as a person of interest or a suspect in Janet Brochu's death. Deputy Attorney General Fernand La Rochelle told the Bangor Daily News, quote, We're keeping an open mind on both matters.

We'll go wherever the information leads us. End quote. At his bail hearing on September 3rd, 1988, several of the witnesses testified that Gerald Goodale was questioned by police in the Janet Brochu murder investigation earlier that year. It was one of many circumstances presented by the state to show Gerald Goodale was a danger to the community and should be denied bail. Ultimately, Gerald Goodale was ordered held without bail as he awaited trial for the murder of Geraldine Finn. From the beginning of his trial in May of 1989, the evidence was stacked against him. The eyewitness description of Gerald and his truck, to the bizarre circumstances of his nude parking lot encounter

with the victim, to the evidence found at the scene near her body, there was no denying his connection to her death. Gerald confessed to killing Geraldine Finn. His defense didn't call a single witness, but instead asked for the charge to be reduced to manslaughter. It was an accident, his defense claimed. He got mad, lost his temper. She tried to run and he subdued her by wrapping his arm around her neck. Then he dragged her body 150 feet into the woods. The prosecution presented witnesses that negated this story. It wasn't an accident. They argued that instead, Gerald stalked and pursued Geraldine. And to Justice Donald Alexander, that level of premeditation made him a very dangerous person. The judge found Gerald Goodale guilty.

As he awaited sentencing, it seemed that maybe Gerald wanted to tip his hand and share with police some information that they were seeking in an entirely different case. Maybe Gerald believed that he could make a deal, get off with a lighter sentence, maybe live to see another day of freedom outside of the main state prison walls. Fernand La Rochelle told the Bangor Daily News that Goodale dangled this information about another major case in front of investigators, but he wasn't fully cooperating. You see, Goodale told the investigative team that he knew who killed Janet Brochu, but he wouldn't say who did it. Again, Goodale was not named a suspect or even a person of interest in the case. At his sentencing for the murder of Geraldine Finn,

Gerald Goodale was handed a 75-year sentence with at least 30 years before good time could be earned towards release. Today, Gerald Goodale sits in Maine State Prison, MDOC number 187. His earliest release date is December 14, 2033. The source I mentioned earlier, whose mother brought her along for a spontaneous pre-arrest trip to Florida with Gerald Goodale, shared this creepy detail with me. Quote, Looking back, it's all so freaking insane to me. while in prison. Jewelry boxes, wall hangings, wood-framed mirrors. Looking back, it's all so freaking insane to me. End quote. The very last mention of Janet's case in the press was December 23, 2019, the 32-year anniversary of her disappearance. The article by Knocknoy Ricker is scant for meaty details of the case. It makes no mention of Gerald Goodale or the glaring similarities

between Janet's death and that of Geraldine Ann Finn. To this day, Janet's cause of death has never been publicly revealed. Many of the circumstances of her death are still confidential as part of the unsolved homicide investigation, and no suspects have ever been formally or at least publicly named. In an email with my source, she had a major piece of information for me. It was a tip that gave me hope, as well as motivation to share Janet's story here on Dark Down East. Last fall, in September 2020, investigators started reviewing the Janet Brochu case again to examine any connection between Geraldine Ann Finn and Gerald Goodale. My source wrote, quote, I personally do not know a whole lot about Brochu at this point. This was a shocking new development to us. Growing up, we were only ever aware of the

Finn case. However, my mother was contacted by detectives to go through every detail of the Finn case once again. They have been re-questioning all previous connections to the Finn case, so I feel it is only a matter of time before they connect the two cases as you predicted." Out of all the cold cases I've looked into, both what I've released on the podcast so far and what's still in the research process awaiting the day when I can share those stories with you, Janet Brochu's case seems so solvable. As far as I can tell, Janet's mother Geraldine, she passed away in 2015. And based on Geraldine's obituary, Janet was her only child.

I haven't found an obituary for her father Albert, but he would be in his 90s if he's still alive today. Janet has no siblings to pursue answers in her case. And with her mother past and her father in his 90s if he's still alive, who is advocating for Janet? I'll be here keeping pressure on investigators, making her story known, and sharing this episode far and wide. It might be the only way that Janet will ever get justice. The Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Jeffrey Love, was not reachable for comment at the time of this episode's release.

Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. All sources for this case and others are listed in the show notes at darkdowneast.com so you can dig into the research and learn more. Subscribing and reviewing Dark Down East is free and it's such a huge support to the show. It's also the best way to ensure that you never miss an episode of Maine and New England true crime stories. If you have a story or a case that I should cover, I'd way to ensure that you never miss an episode of Maine and New England true crime stories. If you have a story or a case that I should cover, I'd love to hear from you at hello at darkdowneast.com. You can follow along with the show at darkdowneast.com and on Instagram and Facebook at darkdowneast. Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do.

I'm so 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 am not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe and this is Dark Down East.