Dark Downeast - The Suspicious Deaths of Janet & Stephen Dow (New Hampshire)

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1982: On December 10, 1982, a car sat in a ditch engulfed in a furious blaze. Janet Dow and her son, Stephen Dow, were inside that vehicle that appeared to have skidded off the road just 500 feet from their own home. They were deceased, but the cause of their deaths – whether from the seemingly gentle car crash, the wild flames, or something else – was not clear. What was clear to the first witnesses on the scene was that there must be more to what they were seeing.Over the next forty years and across multiple investigations, the truth of the suspicious deaths of Janet and Stephen Dow was hotly debated. Was it truly an accident or was the fire hiding evidence of a double homicide?If you have information regarding this case, contact the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at [phone], [e-mail], or leave a tip.Shop Sarah Madeira Day with code: DOWNEAST for 20% off your order of unstretched and paper prints View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/janetstephendow Dark 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

Crackling fire engulfed the 1982 Saab 900, melting the car's plastic pieces and scorching its metal shell. The flames fed off the fuel that the car provided, roaring and warming up the cold early hours of the morning. It was December 10, 1982, and the town of Thornton, New Hampshire was cold and quiet, the hissing of the fire the only sound breaking the small-town winter silence. The car had tumbled off of Route 175 into a shallow ditch, but the crash did not awaken Roland Gooch or John Sperling, both of whom lived nearby. It was the sound of the fire and smell of the burning that drew their attention. When Roland and John arrived at the scene, the car was fully ablaze, though the physical damage from the crash was minimal.

Roland described it as an inferno, and the two men struggled to see if anyone was in the car. The flames obscured the passengers inside. Janet Dow and her son, Stephen Dow, were inside that burning car just 500 feet away from their own home. They were deceased, but the cause of their deaths, whether from the seemingly gentle car crash, the wild flames, or something else, was not clear. What was clear to both John and Roland was that there must be more to what they'd witnessed. Over the next 40 years and across multiple investigations, whether the truth of the suspicious deaths of Janet and Stephen Dow was ever uncovered is still uncertain to some, and a closed case to others. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of the mysterious deaths of Janet and Stephen Dow

on Dark Down East. Before the settling of its expansive forest and many rivers by European immigrants, the area now known as New Hampshire was inhabited by Abenaki tribes. In 1763, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Matthew Thornton, founded the town of Thornton, New Hampshire. Thornton is nestled in the hills of Grafton County. Today, the town is home to nearly 3,000 people, but in the early 1980s, just under a thousand called it home. New Hampshire Public Radio calls the town a kind of in-between place, a primarily residential and sleepy area with a close community and little controversy.

Residents of the area enjoy the quiet and live some distance from any of New Hampshire's largest cities. On any given day, they can look out to or visit the landmark of the White Mountain National Forest. Throughout the history of the town, there have been very few significant events. For the majority of the 250 years since its founding, peace has prevailed. But in the years following December of 1982, Thornton made headlines. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Thornton was home to around a thousand individuals. Three of those formed the Dow family, living on Route 175 just along the river. They were 38-year-old Richard Dow, 40-year-old Janet Dow, and 18-year-old Stephen Dow. Over the last 40 years, Janet Dow, formerly Janet Cook Medeiros, has lost a significant amount of her identity to time and memory. Most publications

note that Janet worked for the government as a postal carrier, a job that must have made her a staple in the small town. In Janet's early 20s, she was married for the first time to Manuel Wally Medeiros. Janet and Wally had a son together in 1964 and named him Stephen. By 1973, when Stephen was nine years old, the pair had divorced. Within a few years, Janet married again, this time to a man named Richard Eugene Dow, known to his friends as Dick. Most people who knew the couple indicate that Janet's marriage to Richard seemed to be a happy one until the end. Janet's son, Stephen, was a normal 18-year-old boy in many ways.

In 1982, he was a senior in high school. He was well known for his love of sports, but more than that, for his passion around cars. Stephen especially cherished his own car and often spent his free time working on it. He was also very close to his girlfriend, Kelly Sutherland. In the years since his death, Kelly has spoken kindly about Stephen. She described him to the Concord Monitor in 1993 as, quote, a compassionate, intensely interested person, end quote. In the same interview, she also shared that he did not get along with his adoptive father, Richard Dow. In his relationship with Kelly and his relationship with his mother and biological father, however, Stephen was loving and remained on good terms. Since the deaths of Janet and Stephen in 1982, the relationships

between Richard, his wife, and his adopted son have been the source of a great deal of speculation. Most friends and neighbors of the couple had shared that the family seemed happy, but some reports shared that Janet and Richard married just a year after her divorce from Wally, which may have contributed to a strained relationship between Richard and Stephen. It is difficult to know the true status of the household in December of 1982. Over the last 40 years, Richard has been the primary source of information about his family and the deaths of his wife and son, and after the initial investigation, Richard Dow consistently declined to comment on the events.

There have been multiple stories about the days and weeks leading up to the deaths of Janet and Stephen Dow, and it is unclear which details are entirely true. On December 11, 1982, the Valley News in Lebanon, New Hampshire ran a report that several individuals had been killed in car accidents during the same time period. December in New Hampshire meant a frigid cold snap, leading to frozen roads and slippery dustings of snow over slick ice. Because of these conditions, the idea of two deaths

resulting from a car crash was tragic, but not outside the realm of possibility. When Roland Gooch and John Sperling found the brand new Saab 900 burning in a ditch off the highway, it made sense that the car had gone off the road and had caught on fire. The 6am snapping and popping sounds building into an explosion had woken both the men and had caught on fire. The 6 a.m. snapping and popping sounds building into an explosion had woken both the men and had caught their attention before dawn. These sounds, paired with the smell of smoke and the unmistakable scent of a car on fire, brought both Roland and John rushing out of their houses to investigate. John worked as a firefighter in the community and was familiar with both fire and car accidents.

In 2001, he told 48 Hours, As I approached the flames, I could actually see that I had a car in the ditch. I could see that I had a victim in the driver's seat and also that this victim was beyond anything that I could do for them. Two people were in the car. Their bodies burned beyond recognition by the time anyone was able to see them. Though the neighbors were unable to save the mother and son, they did take note of the scene. With his knowledge and background as a firefighter, John noted that the road showed no signs of skid marks that would have resulted from Janet losing

control of the car and attempting to correct. He also noticed that the damage to the front end of the car was not severe, though the crash had apparently been powerful enough to set the vehicle alight. WMUR reported that John said at the time, quote, the explosion struck me as quite loud for gasoline and possibly more of a shop nature, but it bothered me when I arrived at the scene and found the passenger compartment fully involved and not so much the exterior of the vehicle, end quote. Roland Gooch and John Sperling stood outside in the cold winter air, helplessly watching everything turn to ash. When the local police arrived at the scene, they did not see the suspicious details

that Roland and John noticed. They saw something different. The majority of the initial investigation was based on the word of Janet's husband, Richard Dow. Richard had spent 10 years as a New Hampshire state trooper and later became the police chief of his town. He had worked with several of the officers who were called to the scene of Janet and Stephen's deaths.

Relying on details from Richard Dow, those same officers ultimately completed the investigation. They found that the accident was a tragedy, caused by a series of unfortunate events in those early morning hours. According to Richard, Janet and Stephen left home early that morning following an argument about Stephen's car and his school attendance. The carburetor on Stephen's car was broken, and since he was passionate about working on cars, he wanted to stay home to fix it himself. Richard told the police that Janet did not want to allow Stephen to stay home. Instead, according to Richard, she suggested that they bring the carburetor to a local garage on their

way to school. They would leave it there while Stephen was in class and could pick it up on the way home. Then Stephen could do the full replacement on the car himself. Richard's story is that the pair put the carburetor inside of a bucket of gasoline and stored it in the backseat of the Saab. Richard also told investigators that due to the cold weather and slick road conditions, Janet and Stephen had added cement blocks to the backseat of the car. Stephen believed that these blocks would help to weigh the car down and provide better traction on the icy roads. With the combination of gasoline and cement blocks sitting in the backseat of the car on an icy road, New Hampshire police concluded that bad luck came together and ultimately caused the deaths of the mother and son.

They believed that Janet and Stephen had continued to argue as they pulled away from their home and had made it just 500 feet. There, they concluded that the argument had led Janet to lose control of the car on black ice. The car careened off the road and into a ditch at the side of the car sliding down the embankment had moved the cement blocks, which had failed to improve the car's traction and had instead flown from the back seat and knocked the pair unconscious. And then they concluded that the bucket of gasoline containing the carburetor had ignited upon impact, causing the car to explode. The unconscious mother and son in the front seat of the wrecked car with the flames roaring was the scene that had been discovered by their neighbors.

To the New Hampshire State Police, this theory made sense. It followed the narrative shared by Richard Dow and put together every piece of the puzzle to form what they'd confidently call a tragic accident. With the conclusion that this was an accident and no one was responsible, everything else moved quickly. The state coroners did not conduct an autopsy on the bodies of either Janet or Stephen Dow. Within three days of the accident that had supposedly caused their deaths, both bodies were cremated. The badly burned Saab, which may otherwise have been kept as evidence,

was released back to Richard. Shortly thereafter, the Saab was destroyed. For 11 years, this small-town tragedy essentially disappeared from view. Beyond the mention of the deaths of Janet and Stephen Dow alongside the names of four other individuals in the Valley News that weekend, very few people paid attention to the event. Any record of obituaries for the pair are challenging to locate, and they are not mentioned again in local papers until 11 years later. In 1996, the names of Janet and Stephen Dow began to show up once again in the New Hampshire news cycle because of a woman named Karen Safian. Karen started dating Richard Dow just three years after the deaths of Janet and Stephen. Karen and Richard dated for eight years, until 1993.

After they broke up, Karen went to the police with details of their relationship and its ultimate demise. She told them that Richard had alluded to the deaths of his former wife and adopted son over the years, dropping details here and there. These mentions had made Karen feel uncomfortable, and that feeling was only amplified by his poor treatment of her. Throughout the relationship, Karen often felt on edge and that she may be in danger. Karen told the police that after a few years together, the information became more than vague statements. With her curiosity and suspicion piqued, one day in 1993, she asked Richard about the deaths of his late wife and adopted son. She specifically asked about the results of the autopsies. According to Karen, her direct inquiry caused Richard to break down. He allegedly told her that on December

10th, 1982, he had heard some commotion upstairs at the house. Stephen and Janet had been arguing frequently at that time. Concerned, Richard went upstairs to intervene. When he arrived, he said he found Stephen had shot and killed his mother in a rage. Angry and in disbelief, Richard said he killed Stephen with an axe. In no uncertain terms, according to Karen, Richard allegedly said he had murdered Stephen as revenge for killing Janet. He told her that he had staged the car crash just feet from their home in order to protect

the dignity of Janet and of the family. Karen was certain that this was at least partially true. However, she did not believe that Richard had only murdered Stephen. She was sure that he had killed both his wife and son. Upset and concerned for her own life, Karen ended the relationship with Richard after eight years of dating. She went to the police with everything Richard told her about the alleged events of December 10th, 1982. While Karen didn't know Richard's motive for killing Janet and Stephen, she suggested that he may have sought life insurance money or wished to just leave the marriage. The story was compelling

enough for New Hampshire State Police to reopen the investigation. According to the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit's listing for the cases of Stephen and Janet Dow, the investigation in 1993 indicated that the mother and son may have been victims of foul play, changing the official opinion of police that this was just some tragic accident involving gasoline and cement blocks and icy roadways. Despite these new findings, there was apparently little forward momentum. For three years, Karen remained unhappy with the perceived stagnation of the investigation. By 1996, Karen went public. There was mixed reception to Karen's allegations against Richard Dow. While some members of the public believed her, others, especially members of the police force who had been responsible for

the initial investigation, called her a, quote, kook and a troublemaker. According to a 1996 report by the Associated Press, Karen believed that officials within the police were purposefully stalling the investigation to, quote, protect the image of the state police, the state safety commissioner, and the original investigators at Troop F, two of whom rose to top state police jobs, end quote. She strongly believed that the initial investigation had consisted of, quote, shoddy police work and a cover-up, as well as

attempts to sidetrack the second investigation, end quote. Despite these allegations, the New Hampshire State Police continued to deny claims of any wrongdoing. While authorities did admit that they had made mistakes back in 1982, they denied a cover-up or conspiracy of any kind. Nevertheless, it took Karen's public claims to move forward with the second investigation of the deaths of Janet and Stephen Dow. Finally, the state of New Hampshire hired accident specialist Thomas Bohan of Medical and Technical Consultants of Portland, Maine, and his team began to run reenactments of the 1982 car crash. Years later, in 2001, Bohan shared illuminating details of his investigation with CBS News. In order to investigate whether or not the car crash could have occurred as the initial reports described, which was a slow-speed crash into a ditch, causing cement blocks to injure Janet and

Stephen, and setting a carburetor in a bucket full of gasoline on fire, Bohan and his team found a 1982 Saab similar to the vehicle in question and pushed it into a ditch at the speed that had been calculated based on the physical damage to the original car. In this reenactment, nothing happened. The gasoline in the back seat did not ignite despite numerous attempts. According to Bohan, the only time ignition occurred was when the investigation team set the fire from the outside of the car and allowed fresh air to fan the flames. CBS asked Thomas Bohan in the interview, quote, what are the odds of such a low-speed accident knocking the Dow's unconscious, end quote. Bohan responded, Despite the compelling evidence that the deaths of Janet and Stephen were likely not caused by an accidental car crash, that the fire likely had been set, and the confession

of the police that pieces of the investigation had been missed, the case was still frozen in place. Police argued that, although the results of the reenactments were suspicious, there was not enough evidence to indict and convict the man who had become a primary suspect in the investigation. Still, those passionate about the wrongdoing in this case were not easily swayed. In January of 1998, the Concord Monitor published that family members and legislators continued to petition the state of New Hampshire to revisit the case. On January 28th of that year, the group wanted a committee to study the deaths of the Dows and the subsequent police investigations. This was before the state of New Hampshire had a cold case unit dedicated to unsolved homicides and missing persons cases. Among the legislators pushing this investigation forward were Senator Burton Cohen and a representative from Hampton, Rennie Cushing.

Cushing was the principal sponsor and introduced the bill, a topic he would care about for the entirety of his career. Meanwhile, Cohen stated publicly, quote, I think there's something we can all agree on. No one should get away with murder, end quote. However, a third investigation and proposals for investigations, would not come to pass. Despite the public and political interest in the case, police insisted that there was nothing more that could be done at the time. While they stated that investigators suspected that the deaths of Janet and Stephen were not accidental,

they also maintained that they did not have enough evidence to prosecute anyone. Ultimately, they added, anything that was missed during the initial investigation was not for lack of good intention and compassion. From the perspective of the police department, one of their own had just experienced a significant loss. They did not want to cause any more pain than necessary. With that, 16 years and multiple investigations after the deaths, the cases of Janet and Stephen Dow screeched to a halt once again. The suspicious deaths of Janet and Stephen Dow and the drawn-out investigation has had lasting impact on family members, community members, and the state of New Hampshire. Wally Medeiros, Janet's first husband and Stephen's biological father, would not forget the deaths of his family. According to a 1998 edition of the Concord Monitor, amidst pressure on the state of New Hampshire to reopen the investigation,

Wally spoke up. He's quoted in the monitor saying, A murderer is walking around. Please right these wrongs. Their lives should count for something. Wally passed away at 77 years old, after nearly 30 years with no real resolution for the deaths of his former wife and son. Though he remarried and lived a full life of his own, he never forgot the tragedy.

In the pre-deceased section of his 2010 obituary, Stephen's name is included. These deaths also left a significant impact on Stephen's girlfriend at the time of his death, Kelly Sutherland. In 1998, she told the Concord Monitor that the story about the car accident and the fire felt odd to her, but she never considered murder a possibility until Karen Safian contacted her. The theory made sense, and the second investigation and the car crash reenactments were convincing. She told the Concord Monitor, quote, If there was no accident, how did Stephen and Janet die and who was responsible? Janet and Stephen have had no justice, end quote. Meanwhile, the Dow deaths continued to play a role in the work of State Representative Renny Cushing.

Cushing had been impacted by both the deaths of Janet and Stephen in 1982 and by the murder of his own father in 1988. He told the Concord Monitor in 2009, quote, you never lose your longing for justice. I don't believe people should be allowed to get away with murder, end quote. In 2009, Cushing introduced a new bill to the New Hampshire Senate and then to the governor with the aim of holding individuals accountable indefinitely for lying about murders. The bill successfully removed the statute of limitations for crimes related to murders, including falsifying evidence, threatening witnesses, and lying. Richard Dow, meanwhile, eventually moved to Buxton, Maine, but the deaths of Janet and Stephen followed him. Years later, Representative Rennie Cushing sued Richard for defrauding the state by

claiming Janet's pension as a postal service worker after her death. The suit was ultimately unsuccessful, but Richard and his family spent the remainder of his life refusing to comment on the allegations and fielding inquiries from reporters and the public alike. Though many of the individuals involved are now deceased, the deaths of Janet and Stephen Dow have not been forgotten. As recently as last year, WMUR, the local television station in Manchester, New Hampshire, published a piece remembering the 40-year anniversary of their deaths. Many pieces published about the case in recent years imply that investigators have had their suspicions. Though many individuals over the last 40 years have claimed that they know what really happened to Janet and Steven on that December morning, there have been no arrests

and no new conclusions in a case that police first decided was a tragic accident. The names of Janet Dow and Steven Dow remain on the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit list of unsolved cases. If you have information regarding this case, contact the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at 603-271-2663 or email coldcaseunit at dos.nh.gov or leave a tip via the form linked in the description of this episode. According to WMUR, the Attorney General's Office states that the chief suspect in the deaths of Janet and Stephen Dow was Janet's husband, former state trooper Richard Dow. But with Richard's death in 2012, the truth may stay hidden forever, unless someone speaks up. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East.

This episode was researched and written by Natalie Jones, with additional writing, research, and editing by me, Kylie Lowe. Sources cited and referenced for this episode are listed at darkdowneast.com. Please follow Dark Down East on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now. The best way to support this show is to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode or any episode with your friends. If you have a personal connection to a case I should cover, please contact me at hello at darkdowneast.com. 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 homicide cases. I'm not about to let those names and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and homicide 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.