Every Town - New Hampshire’s Most Haunting Unsolved Mystery: The Tammy Belanger Case

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Today we’re going into a case that’s about as frustrating as they come. Because just about everyone knows who took Tammy, the problem is nobody can’t prove it. And when you hear details of this guy, you’re gonna feel a rage build up inside you. 👀 Watch This Episode On Youtube: https://youtu.be/d6ztmvXpyEg 👁 Check out our movie AN ANGRY BOY for FREE! ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvtlOlODQ8g&t=5238s⁠ ⁠https://tubitv.com/movies/100029672/an-angry-boy⁠ International & Other Ways To Watch: ⁠https://www.anangryboy.com/⁠ 💀 MERCH: ⁠https://scary-mysteries.teemill.com/⁠ 💀 Scary Mysteries SECRET VAULT: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries⁠   🎧 Our Other Podcast Scary Mysteries: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZooEZMoZ421WdsOVJhVkT⁠ 👁 X: ⁠https://x.com/ScaryMysteries1⁠ 👁Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg⁠ 👁 TikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald⁠ 👁Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial⁠ 👁 X: ⁠https://x.com/ScaryMysteries1⁠   🗣 Business Inquiries, questions and comments hit us up at ⁠[e-mail]⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you ready to dive into the unknown? Join me, Peyton Moreland, on Into the Dark, the true crime podcast from Ono Media with a hint of horror and mystery. Each week, I dive into a different case, breaking down the facts, and pondering the age-old question, why do people do what they do? Now, sometimes the answer isn't so clear, and that's why I'll also explore conspiracy theories, hauntings, and all things spooky. From the Green River Killer to the Mothman incident, we will unravel all of the questions that keep us up at night. So don't miss out.

Subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Into the dark, where true crime meets the eerie unknown. Every town has a dark side. It was a warm November day when 8-year-old Tammy Bellinger left her house to do the same short walk to school she'd done many times before. A few doors down, neighbor Betty Blanchett glanced out her kitchen window and spotted Tammy skipping across the street. It was 8 a.m. in a quiet New England town of just 13,000.

Eight-year-old Tammy Belanger never made it to her third grade classroom on Lincoln Street. Somewhere around 8 a.m. on November 13, 1984, in the one-mile walk from her home on River Street, she vanished. But without realizing it, Betty had just wished to be. witnessed the last moments anyone would ever see of Tammy ever again. Because someone else was out there that morning, watching, waiting, and hunting. By the time the school day ended, Exeter in New Hampshire, we'll be living in a nightmare that still haunts it 40 years later. Hey guys, it's Andrew. Welcome to another episode of Everytown where today. We're going into a case that's about as frustrating as they come. Because just about everyone knows who took Tammy,

The problem is nobody can prove it. And when you hear the details of this guy, you're going to feel a rage build up inside you. So, let's head over to Exeter now and explore the disappearance of Tammy Bellinger. Exeter, New Hampshire sits along the banks of the Squam Scott River, about an hour north of Boston. We found in 1638, it's one of New England's oldest towns with colonial homes, cobblestone sidewalks, and a town square that looks like it's them plucked from a Hallmark movie. It's home to Phillips Exeter Academy, one of the most prestigious prep schools in the entire country.

A close-knit community where the people wave when you walk on by and kids ride their bikes down quiet tree-lined streets. It doesn't just feel safe, it is safe. Which is why what happened in the fall of 84 here stings all that much harder. Born on February 24th of 1976, Tammy was raised here. She was the youngest of three children and grew up in a very normal, very typical suburban home. Her mom, Patricia, worked in administration at Exeter Hospital's emergency room while their father Nelson supervised production at the local waterworks in nearby Hampton.

And they lived on River Street in the neighborhood where everyone knew one another. Tammy was shy, quiet, and all-around good kid. In 1984, when she was eight years old, when she disappeared, Tammy stood for, four feet six inches tall, weighed about 70 pounds, and had long brown hair with those distinctive bangs carved straight across her forehead. Her left eye wandered slightly outward from an old injury, giving her a unique look that made her instantly recognizable to anyone who saw her. She was the kind of child who followed routines. Every morning, she'd be up early, eat breakfast, and leave for school right on time. No dilly-dallying, as her father would later tell reporters.

The Lincoln Street School was less than a mile from her house, a 20-minute walk, but she'd been making since first grade. Under the school policy here, kids who live within two miles didn't get bus service, they were expected to walk or get a ride from their parents. Another thing about her is that she really wasn't the type of kid who would talk to strangers. I mean, she barely talked to people she knew. Not in a negative way, just a shy eight-year-old, which is normal. And she was cautious, and everyone who knew her in insist,

she would never willingly go with someone, not even someone she recognized from the neighborhood. Which means that if somebody approached her, which we think is exactly what happened, it didn't play out like you might think it would or have seen in movies. A man in the car didn't chatter up and offer a ride, and it was little to know back and forth.

And likely what happened was they jumped out, grabbed little Tammy, and threw in the car on under a minute. That Tuesday morning, November 13th, Tammy got dressed in her usual fall attire. An aqua shirt with black and white stripes, purple sweater, a tan jacket over that with blue sleeves. She had tan, corduroy pants, and suede shoes, and green and blue socks. She grabbed her red backpack, the one with her name and address, clearly written on it, and headed out the door around 8 o'clock.

And walked to school would have taken her down familiar streets, past house. she walked by every single day. But instead of the normal routine, somewhere between her front door and the school's front entrance, but Tammy simply vanished. Since this is 1984 we're talking about, she was not heard from for a few hours. Back then, schools didn't call home when students were absent. There were no automated systems or concerned secretaries checking on missing children. If a kid didn't show up, it was simply noted in the attendance book and then forgotten.

and then forgotten. So when Tammy failed to arrive at Lincoln Street school that morning, nobody thought to pick up the phone. And no one wondered where the quiet girl with the wandering eye might be. That school day continued on normally. While somewhere out there, the eight-year-old was utterly terrified. It wasn't until 3.30 that afternoon, when Tammy hadn't returned home from school that her mother finally called the school to check on her.

No, the school secretary told her, Tammy wasn't still there, and in fact, she had been marked absent the entire day. So seven and a half precious hours had passed, hours during which a trail could have been followed. Witnesses could have been fresh in their memories and evidence could have been preserved. Instead, the golden window for finding a missing child, those crucial first hours, have been slammed shut. Not a matter of time if you drove straight north, you could reach Canada. If you headed south, you could hit Philadelphia or even Baltimore. A huge impossible net, so to speak, to toss out and pull back in.

I mean, Tammy could be anywhere. Patricia's world collapsed in that moment. She immediately called the Exeter PD, and within an hour the search for Tammy was on. But they were already fighting against time and against the gathering darkness of a November evening, against the terrible reality that in cases like these, every minute matters. and they missed a lot of them. About 75 firefighters, police officers, and volunteers

mobilized as quickly as they could. A Coast Guard helicopter swept overhead while searchers combed through the woods on foot. They used boats to search along the banks of the river that runs through town and directly behind the Bellinger family home.

And they left no stone unturned, but who knows how many stones were actually out there. They knocked on doors, search backyards and buildings, looked for any sign of disturbed earth in the woods. In the end, they recovered nothing that belonged to Tammy. Not a piece of clothing, not her distinctive red backpack, not a single trace that she had even headed out that morning. As the days rolled over into weeks, the search expanded.

Police seized an entire street's worth of trash and painstakingly combed through it at the town's highway department. They opened manhole covers, searched down. dumpsters, drained rivers and ponds, and the FBI joined the investigation, bringing in additional resources and expertise. No sign of Tammy. Thanksgiving came with an empty seed at the Bellinger family table, and Christmas gifts sat wrapped and waiting for a little girl who might never come home to open them. And Tammy's ninth birthday that February passed in agonizing silence. But just when it seemed like the case might fade into the cold files of unsolved mysteries,

something happened that would change everything. In late December of 84, WCVB TV in Boston broke a story that quickly spread all the way across the country. The police had officially identified a suspect in Tammy's disappearance, a 41-year-old man named Victor Juanetti. An auto body repairman, Victor Wyanetti, was named as a suspect in... Victor, just so happened to... have been living in a motel in nearby Rye, New Hampshire at the time the girl vanished,

that's the very next town over. When Yeya had been arrested on a parole violation, the police chatted with him about Tammy and whatever he said obviously didn't sit right with them. But beyond that, well, this guy wasn't just any parolee. And Victor's pass was dark. And in 1979, while he was convicted of essaying his 13-year-old stepdaughter, something that had started when she was only eight. And he'd served just four years of a possible 15 before being let out in 83.

But it gets worse. Earlier that year, he'd been arrested down in Florida for prowling, caught peeping into homes where kids live. That broke his parole, sending him back to New Hampshire State Prison. So this guy was exactly the kind of person you wouldn't want in your town, and you certainly wouldn't want him talking to your eight-year-old daughter when she was walking alone to school. Does his past mean he did it? No, but you can see how he ended up in the middle of Tammy's case. On top of all this, Victor was also being investigated in connection with another missing child case. An eight-year-old girl named Marjorie Luna, who had vanished from Green Acres, Florida, only six months before Tammy disappeared. And the similarities between the two cases were impossible to ignore.

Both girls were eight years old, and both had been walking alone near the same. their homes when they vanished. And Victor had been living in the area of bolt disappearances at the time they occurred. Now, to really understand what investigators were dealing with, we need to dig into Victor's background, and it's a journey into the mind of someone who spent decades praying on children. Born in Pennsylvania in 1943, Victor, and racked up at least 30 burglary convictions across New England by the time he was in his 30s. But burglary wasn't his only crime. And in July of 7,000, In 173, the eight-year-old daughter of a girlfriend was the first to tell police that this man was inappropriately touching her. As attorney managed to get the charges dropped by claiming the child couldn't distinguish fantasy from reality.

So, way to go on that, lawyer. Really nice, they got the wind under their belt, and who cares what the truth was. And then, as if following direct instructions from the book Lolita, Victor married that child's mother a few months later. And now he had constant access to the girl as her stepfather. And she can imagine what he did to her got much worse. At the time she was 11, the injuries she was sustaining were so severe she needed hospital care. This had gone on for years, and every once in a while the girl would show up to the police station and tears.

But she was always too scared and traumatized to say exactly what was really going on. And her mom claimed she never knew what was happening, even though Victor later admitted she had caught them together on multiple occasions. It wasn't until June of 79 when the girl was 13, but her mother finally saw something that was impossible to ignore, reported him to the police. But Victor's depravity didn't stop there. He had taken photos of the girl in compromising positions, a little keepsake for himself. Now he was trying to use those images to blackmail prosecutors and to dropping the case entirely by threatening to release them publicly. During the trial, he even sent love letters to the victim

and made obscene gestures at her from the defendant's table. When it came time for sentencing, this animal showed zero remorse. Instead, he asked the judge why he was being crucified for something he claimed wasn't even a crime. After serving just four years, he was paroled in July of 83 with the condition that he stay in New Hampshire. But within months, he broke that parole by moving to Florida, where his parents had retired in Lake Worth. On May 7th of 1984, Palm Beach County Sheriff's officers arrested a man for prowling after an off-duty police sergeant saw him looking into the windows of a home. The man claimed he was just looking for a lost cat and gave a fake New Hampshire address.

It was Victor. He posted a $250 bail and was released the next day. Less than three weeks later, and that's when 8-year-old Marjorie disappeared from her neighborhood in Green Acres, less than 15 miles from where Victor had been arrested. Marjorie had been a shy child, just like Tammy. Her parents had divorced when she was a baby and she lived with her mother Jenny and older sister. At that Memorial Day weekend, the family had taken a road trip and returned to her. home tired. And Jenny put on a movie, yellow submarine by the Beatles, and everyone settled in for

naps. Around 2.30 that afternoon, Marjorie became concerned about her mama cat and her kittens, boo-boo and skier. She took some bottles for recycling and walked the 400 feet from her house to Belk's corner store, a two-minute walk that she had made countless times before. A clerk at the store told investigators that the girl bought a bag of cat food and went outside. where other children were playing with fireworks they had purchased. Several witnesses then told police they saw a Hispanic man, described to be 5 foot 6 to 5 foot 8 with a medium build, talking with Marjorie outside the store.

The man had offered her money to go inside and buy fireworks. He was driving a faded blue car. Witnesses said it was a blue sedan with a broken taillight and Florida license plates. That same description with later surface in Tammy's case. case. But no one saw Marjorie leave with the man or anybody else. She simply vanished, just like Tammy Wood six months later. Back in Exeter, the police had pieced all this together, and from that theorized about what had happened to Tammy, and this is why Victor was named the prime suspect. They believe he had returned to New Hampshire after that arrest down south, and his parole officer

found him a job at Brad's auto body shop on Main Street next to there, literally just around the corner from where Tammy lived on River Street. And he was supposed to report to work at 7 a.m. every single morning. And guess what happened on November 13th? Well, Victor didn't show up for work. Around noon, four hours after Tammy was last seen crossing the street by that neighbor, he called in sick. His boss, Brad Bissell, thought he had probably been out late. He'd. the night before and was sleeping it off. So pretty perfect timing here. And Tammy was last seen at approximately 8 a.m. and Victor doesn't call in sick until noon. What exactly was he doing during those four critical hours? According to investigators, Victor's Blue 1975 Oldsmobile

with Florida license plates and a broken taillight was spotted in the area where Tammy disappeared. Now remember, this is the same description witnesses gave him. the car seen near where Marjorie vanished in Florida. Two days after Tammy disappeared, Victor's parole officer notified local police that the convicted offender was working in Exeter. The police before that had no idea. There was no central registry of offenders in 1984. No way for local departments to know that a predator was living and working in their community.

When detectives contacted Brad at the auto body shop, they asked him how Victor was. as an employee, and had he done anything odd or acted strange. Well, Brad went on to tell them that on the day after Tammy disappeared, Victor seemed to be off in a world of his own. During lunch, for instance, he just stood by himself, rubbing his key against the hood of his car. Psycho. Six days after Tammy vanished, FBI agents brought Victor in for questioning. Right after that, he immediately tried to cover his tracks. He told the manager of the motel he was staying at that if anyone came asking, to tell them she saw his Blue Oldsmobile parked there all morning on November 13th. Police tore through his motel room, his car, the

surrounding grounds, even the dumpster, hunting for any sign of Tammy, scrap of clothing, her red backpack, anything that could tie Victor to her disappearance. Even with all this stuff, the suspicious behavior and timing, and the strong connection to two missing girls, The prosecutors didn't have enough hard evidence to charge Victor with either disappearance. The story might have ended there, with him serving his time for the parole violation, while two families wondered what happened to their daughters. But in January of 1991, after serving six years, Victor was released, and he immediately returned to Florida. And you're not going to believe what happened next.

Detectives in Florida working with investigators from New Hampshire put our boy, Victor under intense surveillance. They knew about the two missing girls and believed he was involved. They were determined to catch him in the act and figured it was only a matter of time before he slipped up. So, the surveillance operation was pretty huge. 40 officers using high-tech equipment, unmarked vans and tracking devices, videotaped Victor's movement, hoping he would provide them with more information about his crimes and methods.

and what they discovered was even more horrifying than they had ever imagined. A Victor was leaving his parents' house in Lakeworth before 5 a.m. every single day to drive to Woodhaven Plaza Park. From there, he would walk to a housing complex and position himself outside the bedroom window of three young sisters, a nine-year-old and ten-year-old twins. For weeks, investigators videotaped him returning to that suburban duplex. 14 times in less than three weeks. He would pleasure himself while looking through three-inch gaps in the window blinds. He would press his face against the glass so hard that his breath would fog the window. And it didn't stop there.

Police followed him to other locations where he would watch children at playgrounds, bus stops, many golf courses, and community swimming pools. He would slide down low in his car and just watch, always looking for opportunities. to see young girls. The tracking device on his car led officers to a Memorial Day episode in North Florida, where Victor was following children through neighborhoods. Detectives believed he was looking for an opportunity to snatch a vulnerable child, one walking alone, just like Tammy and Marjorie had been. On June 4th, after weeks of keeping an eye on him, the net finally closed around.

He was arrested walking back to his car at Woodhaven Plaza after another morning. warning of voyeurism, completely unaware that 40 officers have been watching his every move for months. When police searched his belongings, they found what prosecutors would later call a collection of trophies. There were girls' underwear, class photos stolen from homes, children's underwear advertisements carefully cut out from store flyers, and scrapbooks filled with images of young girls, including celebrities like Saleel Moonfry, who played Punky Brewster and Brooke Shields. The state's attorney's office filed seven counts of burglary and possession of burglary tools.

Because of his extensive criminal history, prosecutors tried him as a habitual offender, which meant he could face 30 years for each burglary charge. Throughout that trial, two mothers sat in the courtroom, desperate for answers that might never come. With 23 prior convictions, Victor was finally declared a danger to society. The judge gave him the maximum sentence allowed under the habitual offender law 75 years. A local auto body repairman, Victor Juanetti, was long a suspect, but there was not enough physical evidence to charge him. After his death in late 2013, while serving time in Florida for other convictions, there was hope that someone might talk. It was a good thing he was back

behind bars and wouldn't get out. But back in New Hampshire, the Bellinger family was struggling to pick up the pieces. The weight of Tammy's disappearance had literally torn them apart. Patricia and Nelson eventually divorced, and the family once whole was now shattered by grief in the unsolved mystery. As the years past, Tammy's case remained officially open, but active investigation had essentially stopped. The new leads were few and far between, the physical evidence was limited. Without a body, without witnesses, to an actual abduction, and prosecutors knew they could never build a case strong enough to bring charges. And through it all, investigators continue to believe that Victor was responsible for both Tammies and Marjorie's disappearances,

and their parents probably do too. But believing something and proving it in court are two very different things. There's someone out there that might hear us or see us talking about it that has a change of heart. I'd welcome a phone call and we'd follow up as, as fast and as hard as we can. This man finally died in 2012, taking all his secrets with him. Leaving everyone with the same question that's haunted us for 40 years. Where are Tammy and Marjorie?

So that's going to do it for this week's episode of Everytown. Hope you all enjoyed it. If you do like these types of stories, we've got a whole bunch of other ones, so go check them out. Remember to come back next week for another episode of Everytown, filled with scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because you never know. Maybe your town will be next.