National Park After Dark - Unsolved: Shenandoah and Acadia National Park

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

Lace up those hiking boots and get ready to enter Shenandoah and Acadia National Park. In the first episode of National Park After Dark, listen along as Cassie and Danielle tell the tragic tales of Julianne Williams, Lollie Winans and Leslie Spellman – three women who came to explore these parks, but never left.As of June 20, 2024 Julie and Lollie's case has been officially solved. Link to the FBI announcement here.We love our National Parks and we know you do too but when you're out there, remember to enjoy the view but watch your back. Please take a moment to rate and subscribe from wherever you’re listening to NPAD! Become part of our Outsider family on Patreon to gain access to ad-free episode, bonus content and more. Follow our socials Instagram, Facebook , and Twitter. To share a Trail Tale, suggest a story, access merch and browse our book recommendations - head over to our website.  Sources for this episode:  Death in Acadia: And Other Misadventures in Maine's National Park. Fox Bangor. Savage Watch. Appalachian Trail Mysteries. NBC Washington. Blue Ridge Outdoors. Strange Outdoors.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nature. It provides something for everyone, whether it be peace, pleasure, exhilaration, or solitude. Deep down, beneath the layers of to-do lists, work commutes, and schedules, is the desire to explore it, to get lost in it, and to become part of it. That's the beauty of national parks. Relatively small corners of our planet shielded from modern-day development, little oasis where nature is left to be wild. Millions of people flood the gates of national parks every year to get a taste of that wild, to explore unfenced lands, and to catch fleeting glimpses of free-roaming wildlife who have never known cages. But the wild has its dangers. We all know that Mother Nature rules all. Accidents, exposure to the elements, animal encounters, and ill-prepared treks can all

lead to disaster. Out of the average of six people who perish in U.S. national parks each week, some of them have nothing to do with Mother Nature. Another danger, another danger, lurks in the thick of the forest, and it takes cover in darkness. A handful of people who set out to make memories in national parks have died by the hand of some who use wild places like a cloak, concealing their murderous intentions. People who walk the same trails as we do, who appear in the background of our family photos,

murderers and hikers' clothing, and some of those murders have never been solved. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Welcome everyone to National Park After Dark, a podcast for The Morbid Outdoor Enthusiast. I'm your host Danielle. And I'm your host, Cassie. And we're really excited that you are here today listening to our very first episode. So we just wanted to introduce ourselves before we go into the story.

Yeah. So a little get to know us, get to know what inspired the podcast, a little bit about us as individuals and friends. So a little bit about us. We have been friends for many years, and we are both New England natives. We're both from New Hampshire. And sadly, I just moved across the country to Washington, but Cassie's still in New England, hanging out in Vermont. Yeah, I just moved to Vermont. And what inspired this podcast to start was Danielle and I have spent a lot of time outside together. And we used to go hiking a lot in the White Mountains. And when we were there, we always, talked about these wild stories that we had heard out in our national parks and outdoors,

whether it was murder, ghost stories, lore, anything. We always were talking about it. And when Danielle moved across country, we wanted to keep that conversation going. So what this podcast is meant to be are the stories that we would be talking about anyway, but we wanted to share with everyone because we think they're so interesting. So just as a previous, of how this is going to be formatted. Parts of it are going to be more of a conversation style, but we're also doing storytelling style. Yeah, it's kind of hard.

Like when we were trying to fit our podcast into a category, we're discussing, is this true crime, is this dark history, is this storytelling? And like Cassie said, it's very hard to fit us into a box. So we're creating our own. For me, as far as what inspired my interest in this little corner of the world is a trip to Yellowstone in 2011 with my family. I went into a book shop or the gift shop and grabbed Death in Yellowstone by Lee H. Whittlesey. And I read that book

cover to cover during our trip. And for anyone who has not read the book, it is exactly what it says death in Yellowstone. It's all the morbid, sad, heartbreaking, interesting stories. And about ways people have died in the park. And national parks are meant to be for everyone and for everyone to enjoy, but death-related material sometimes isn't for everyone. So this podcast is for the people who find tragedy and tragic accidents and death and morbid material, both heartbreaking, but also interesting, and that there's always a lesson to be learned, especially when you're outside. And Cassie and I love to be outside. It's our favorite thing to do. do. I've been to quite a few national parks and I've traveled all over the country. I've been to most

of the states. I have been to a lot of different countries. We both love to travel. We both love the outdoors. And for this podcast, we wanted to focus our love on the darker side of our national parks. So we are going to be incorporating these morbid stories and also safety tips and conservation efforts and our love for our national parks. At the end of the day, these stories might be tragic, but it is all inspired by our deep-rooted love of our national parks. Yeah, and we are by no means professional podcasters. Like Cassie said, we are just two friends that want to keep a conversation going. We are actually both veterinary technicians full-time. That is what we do for a living, and this is what we do in our free time. That's enough about

us for now. You'll get to know us as the podcast goes on, but we want to just do a quick intro before we get into our first stories, which we are really excited to share with you today. We are going to two different national parks today, and the first one we are heading to is Shenandoah National Park. Okay, so before we get into my story today, I want to take you into Shenandoah National Park and tell you a little bit about it. So Shenandoah National Park is located in northern central Virginia, and it's only 75 miles from Washington, D.C. The park is a park encompasses 199,000 acres containing part of the Blue Ridge Mountain Range and it has peaks that rise over 4,000 feet. One of the most appealing part of the park to visitors is Skyline Drive. It's a

105 mile long road that runs through the park with 75 scenic overlooks. Shandawa also has 511 miles of hiking trails, including parts of the Appalachian Trail. So today when we go into Shandah National Park, I'm going to be telling a story of Julianne Williams and Lolly Winnens, and I'm going to be talking about their unsolved murders. So Julianne Williams, also known as Julie, was a beautiful 24-year-old woman from St. Cloud, Minnesota. Growing up, she was a star athlete who won the Minnesota State Double Championship in tennis in high school. Julie went off to college to become a geologist, and in college, she spent a lot of time in Europe where she studied the extinction of dinosaurs. When she graduated, she graduated with honors. She had become fluent in Spanish and she had spent a

lot of time working with migrants and people dealing with abuse. She did a lot. She was described as an overachiever and she was always exceeding and thriving and everything she did. She was very productive in her school work and she was a very smart person. She just, comes across as gifted. That's the word that comes to mind. Yeah, gifted and dedicated. So Lolly Winnens, she was also beautiful young. She was 26 years old and she was from Michigan. And she came from a very well-off, wealthy family, but she was described growing up as rejecting her privilege. She was more of a rebellious, good time girl who loved the band fish. She smoked cigarettes and loved microbreweries. So she was described as fun and adventurous.

And after she left high school, she went off to college in Vermont and she eventually ended up dropping out. Then a few years later, in 1994, she enrolled in Unity College in Maine and began studying to become a wilderness guide. Do you sound like women I want to be friends with? That was my first thought. When I was reading their story, they just seemed like women I would have loved to be friends with and they had love for the outdoors also. Their interests are just so aligned with ours. Yeah. And there are our age group right now, too, so a little bit younger, but they just seem like

people I would have wanted to know. Julian Lolley met in 1994 at a nonprofit event in Michigan, and this nonprofit event was meant to promote adventure and travel specifically for women. It was there that they met and they bonded over their love for the outdoors. Very soon they had really bonded and connected and they started dating. In 1996, Julie was offered a job at a bookstore in Burlington, Vermont, and she accepted it. She was planning to move to Richmond, Vermont, which is a town that's 15 minutes outside of Burlington, and she was planning to start this job on June 1, 1996.

To celebrate this new move and this new job, Julie and Lolly planned a trip to Shenandoah National Park. The two women and their golden retriever, Taj, set out on the road and entered Shenandoah National Park on May 19, 1996. Now, what exactly happens next on their trip is unknown, with the only accounts of their trip being some photos from a camera they brought with them in one eyewitness account from a ranger who saw them. On their first day, it looks to be that the girls set out onto White Oak Canyon Trail and camped for a few nights somewhere off of the trail. Then, a few days later, they packed up due to rain and were seen by a ranger walking along Skyline Drive. The ranger pulled over and offered the girls a ride since it was raining. They accepted, and he took them to the ranger station where they renewed their camping permits and continued their trip. From their photos, it looks that the next day they hiked up Hawksbill Mountain, the highest mountain in Shenandoah, which is at 4,050 feet.

That night they set up camp on Bridle Trail, an area between Big Meadows and Skyland Lodge. They found a beautiful spot along a stream and camped out there for the night. Shannon Doa has guidelines to where overnight campers must be 15 to 20 feet off of the trail, and Julie and Lolly followed these rules, which made them a lot less visible to other hikers. So the last photos taken on their camera was at this camp spot, and on June 1st, 1996, this was where Julie and Lolly's lifeless bodies were found. We have some really, really exciting news. Big news, huge news.

Do you want to tell them, let the people know? We are doing a digital live event on December 9th at 730 with Moment House. So we are going to have our very own moment with them. Tickets are going on sale today. You can get them. We put a little link in our bio. But we're so excited because we have a very special episode planned that you will all get to watch live. And Danielle and I will be together for it.

The first time in National Park After Dark recording history that Cassie and I will be in the same room recording an episode. So not only is that going to be happening, we're going to be in Southern California. We will be fresh off a visit from Joshua Tree National Park. And those are the stories that we are going to be covering for the live. event. So not only are we going to be together, it's going to be happening live. And Moment House has a very interactive platform. So not only can you choose to do meet and greets with Cassie and I, but you can also do chat functions with other attendees. So you guys can all hang out, talk to one another, get to know one another. It's going to be a really special event and one that Cassie and I have been really, really

looking forward to. And we've been trying to keep our mouth shut for a little while about. it, but cats out of the bag. You can find the link to the tickets in our episode description on all of our socials. And it is momenthouse.com slash NPAD. So after Julie and Lolly were not heard from for a few days, Julie's father actually got nervous and he was worried and Julie had been smart. She had told him where she was going, what her plans were, and when she should be able to be in contact with other people. So she was supposed to start this job on June 1st and Julie's father still hadn't heard from her on May 31st. So it was on May 31st that he contacted the National Park Service and reported her missing. The park rangers immediately started looking for the two women and soon

after they started their search, they found their car just north of the popular Skyland Lodge. They started searching the trails around the area, and soon that they found their dog, Taj, wandering around the trails alone. Oh, no. That's ever a good sign. I feel like that's such a bad sign. If your dog is not with you and on the trail somewhere alone wandering around, something's wrong. And then on the following day, June 1st, police found the women's bodies. And I just want to say a little bit of a warning here before we go into this part.

The description of them finding the bodies is a little bit graphic. So if this is something that you don't want to hear, just keep that in mind. You might want to fast forward a little bit. So when the National Park Rangers came across the scene where Julie and Lolly were, it was a very horrific scene and it was really tragic. So when they found them, both of them had their hands bound with duct tape and they were both gait. When they were both found, they had died from having their throats cut.

Lolly was found inside the tent, while Julie was found closer to the river down an embankment. She was found with her sleeping bag and her sleeping pad with her. Unlike Julie, her hands and legs were bound with duct tape. They also found that the duct tape that was used to bound Lolly's hands was also the duct tape that was previously used to cover Julie's mouth. Both of them were found partially undressed, although it was not believed that either of them were sexually assaulted. Oh, this makes my stomach hurt. It's so sad. It's so sad.

And I can't imagine just coming across that scene, especially Shannon Doa, is such a quiet, quaint area with not a lot of crime. And to come across the scene in such a beautiful remote area must have been not only horrific, but really surprising. They must have been very taken aback by it because this stuff. doesn't happen in Shenandoah National Park. So after their bodies were found, the park service actually waited 36 hours before announcing their murders. Even though this was the weekend after Memorial Day weekend and the park was full of visitors who could have been at risk of being hurt themselves or one of these visitors could have actually committed the crime. Originally,

the park announced that the murder was an isolated incident, but they didn't provide any other information to the public. Shortly after, when the FBI became involved, they announced that their murders appeared to be random and offered a $25,000 reward to lead to the murderer's arrest. It had been the weekend after Memorial Day and the park had been filled with tons of people. So this brought in over 15,000 leads. However, by the time they had released this information, it had been almost three days. And none of these 15,000 leads brought any real suspects. How discouraging. Like to have a plethora of potential information and to have it just kind of go nowhere, which I think is the case in a lot of different circumstances and different crimes, things like that. But, and also the fact that you said

they believe the crime was random, I think that's super terrifying. That's scary. Yeah, random crimes. are the most frightening to me because there is, the pattern is no pattern and they're super difficult to predict. It's not like this killer has a profile that he, of victims that he usually goes after or she, he or she. I don't know. It's just, it's really unsettling. Yeah. And it just makes you think more of this could, I could be next. It creates a huge fear and it did create a huge fear inside the park. And even with all these leads and people trying to be helpful, there was just so many people, no real witnesses to anything that had happened. And the case remained unsolved and it kind of went cold for a little while. So it wasn't until

a year later that they came up with a possible suspect. So on July 9th, 1997, there was an attempted abduction in the park. Yvonne Malbasha, who was a tourist from Canada, was cycling with a friend south on Skyline Drive, not too far away from where Julie and Lolly's murders had happened. When she was bicycling on the road, she became separated from her friend, and out of nowhere she was forced off of the road, and this was by mile post 57.5, and it was by a man who was driving a truck. The man jumped out of the truck. He was extremely angry and he actually threw a soda can at her and started yelling sexual profanities. Notably, he yelled to her, show me your titties, and tried to grab at her chest. Yvonne used her bike to block herself and threw her water bottle at the man. She was able to fight him off and

when he ran back into his truck, he continued to try and run her over. She took cover behind a tree and the man eventually gave up and drove away. Luckily for Avon, a ranger drove by almost immediately after that, and she was able to give his description and a description of the truck. How barbaric, that whole situation, from what he was yelling,

the groping and, like, erratically grabbing, and then trying to run her over. Like, what is going on? I just can't imagine how terrified she was. And I have driven on Skyline Drive and I've been in the park before. And it's a really windy road with the woods really close to the road. There's really not a lot of space there. So when I'm picturing it, this man is trying to run her off the road.

He must have been like, she must have been really close up against these trees. And it's windy. There's nowhere to go. Like you can't run anywhere. There's brush everywhere. There's trees everywhere. She must have been absolutely. terrified. So she gave this description of the truck to the ranger. And one of the suspicious things

about this vehicle was that the truck actually had no license plates on it. So he was quickly found because shortly after that, he tried to leave the park. And they were able to identify him as Daryl David Rice. And when they searched his vehicle, they found that he had license plates inside his truck, so he had purposely taken them off, and he had hand and leg restraints inside. Yeah, so not paying himself in the best flights there. No. Red flags everywhere. What he had planned for her, I don't know, but clearly, based on what is in his truck,

it's really terrifying. And premeditated, he took the license plates off. Yeah, he went in there planning in. It sounds like it was an opportunistic thing. He saw her and went after her. So Darrell David Rice, who I'm just going to refer to as Rice, because three names is a little long, and I talk about him quite a bit. Rice was 29 years old, and he was from Maryland. He was single and he did not have any children. He did not have a criminal record, but he had recently been fired from his previous job for being hostile at work and yelling sexual profanities at his coworkers.

He also punched a hole in the bathroom wall. He stole his co-workers' lunches, and he would purposely spill coffee on them, And even one instance, he threw a picture of a woman coworker in the trash. If you think you have a bad coworker, think about this guy. I can't even imagine having a coworker like this. Like, this is scary. This is hostile. So in 1998, he went to court and he pleaded guilty to the attempted abduction of Yvonne and was sentenced to 135 months in prison.

So after his arrest, there were interviews. that made investigators concerned that he might have been involved in Julian Lolley's murders. So that's how this event ties in. Not only was it around the same area, but there were some conversations that made them really concerned. So they found video evidence of Rice entering the park on May 25th and again on May 26th of 1996. So that is when Julian Lolley were inside of the park.

And then he returned again to the park with a few. friends on June 1st, and that was when their bodies were found. The suspicious thing about this was he denied being in the park on the 25th and the 26th, but he admitted being there on June 1st. So this made him even more suspicious because he was lying about the dates that he was there. He also stated in several interviews that he enjoyed assaulting women because they were more vulnerable than him, and he also stated that women who were gay deserve to die because they were gay. Wow.

What a piece of work, huh? Yeah. So you can see already why they think that he might have had something to do with Julian Lolley's murders. So with the circumstantial evidence, they ended up indicting Rice on their murders on April 10th, 2001. He was also charged with a hate crime because it was believed he murdered Julian Lolley because they were gay. This meant that it was possible for him to receive the death penalty. Now, while he was incarcerated, an undercover agent taped some conversations with Rice. And during these conversations,

Rice stated that he had only had two sexual relationships with women, even though he was 31 at this time now, because he's been in prison for a little bit. And he told him that he wasn't adequate sexually, and he was not able to find a girlfriend. So he told him that he substituted his relationships for pornography. A fellow inmate claimed that he was very into pornography and that all of his magazines that he had were of women who were bound and gagged. Another thing. Another thing.

To each their own with sexual preferences and, you know, whatnot. But when you're in jail for attempting, to abduct someone and from what was in his car bound and gag her and do horrific things to her. He's clearly a really bad man just based on all of this coming together. He had really bad intentions for Yvonne. He has all these scary things that he's talking about. And they were able to indict him on all of these. However, there was lack of forensic evidence. and in October 2003, there was a hair in the duct tape at the scene that was tested for DNA. This DNA test showed that there was a very good chance that it did not belong to Rice.

So with this new DNA evidence and with all of the other evidence that they had being circumstantial, the whole case fell apart at this point. So in February 2004, the case ended up being dismissed without prejudice. meaning that he could still be charged again later if they were able to find more evidence. Also, on top of this whole indictment and being suspected of their murder, he was also suspected in another murder, not too far away. So he was a suspect in a murder of a woman named Alicia Schill Walter Reynolds, but he was never charged for that case either. On March 2, 1996, Alicia was driving from Baltimore to Charlottesville to go shopping with her mother, but she never showed up. Soon after, her car was found and her body was discovered about 15 miles away.

Police later discovered that she had been seen talking to a man along the side of the road. And at least 20 women came forward telling police that a strange man that day had been trying to get them to pull over by honking his horn, he was flashing his lights, and he was yelling at them saying his car was broken down. So one week before Alicia's disappearance, a woman in the same area came across a man who approached her and told her that her car seemed like it was having problems. I'm guessing she had it on and he was like, there's a weird sound coming from that. That's dangerous. You shouldn't drive on that. And he offered her ride. And this woman actually accepted the ride from the man. And when she got in the car, he started attacking her. and she somehow managed to escape his truck and get to safety. So Rice was considered a suspect in all of this because his father lived on the same road where this was happening, and he drove the same pickup truck that was in the descriptions from the women. The woman who was able to escape also positively IDed him as her attacker.

I was just going to ask that if she identified him, if she knew it was him or not. Yeah, so she did identify him and he did end up serving time for attacking her, but there was never any evidence that linked him to the actual murder of Alicia Shill, Walter Reynolds. Even though it was likely the same type of situation. Yeah. So he served, I forget what amount of time he served for that incident, but he did serve time for that. And the last sighting of Daryl David Rice was reported in 2014 living in Durango, Colorado. And this was reported because residents in that area recognized him and reported it to police being concerned. But because he was never, because he served his time for the things he was convicted of and he was never convicted of murder, he was allowed to be there.

He lived there. There was no reason for them not to be there. So they didn't have any reason to arrest him for just being in the area because people were concerned. Well, yeah, I mean, on one side, you have to live somewhere. Where are you going to live? But at the same time, I would be one of those concerned citizens. It's like, this isn't just someone that got charges dismissed or quite it. Like, he's a real public safety concern.

Yeah, he's a scary person. He's definitely has a lot of stuff going on here. And I think even with the DNA evidence showing someone else, like maybe there's something there that we just don't have the evidence that maybe he could have done it. I'm still not convinced totally that he's innocent, but there's not, obviously there hasn't been enough evidence to convict him either. And there was actually another person that was a suspect in Julian Lolley's killings. And this was the serial killer.

Richard Evidence. And he was a known serial killer who is known to have killed three women. So he was known to have killed three women, but then he committed suicide after. So on September 9th, 1996, he abducted and murdered a 16-year-old girl not far from Shenandoah National Park. So this is the same year that Julian Lolly were murdered. And then on May 1st, 1997, he was a 16-year-old girl, he He abducted two sisters who he sexually assaulted and strangled them, and then he dumped their bodies in the South Anna River in Virginia. So he's in this area. So then on June 24th, he abducted a 15-year-old in Columbia, South Carolina, who he sexually assaulted and he tied her to his bed. And that night when he was asleep, she managed to escape and went to police.

Police were then able to track him down, and before they were able to apprehend him, he killed. himself. And although he had killed himself, he had admitted to these previous crimes that I just described to you, to his sister before that. And then when they did a DNA analysis to see if the hair matched Richard evidence, it did not rule him as a match, but they couldn't rule him out with it either. It didn't say yes, this is a match, but it also didn't say no either. So this makes him another suspect, but unfortunately there has never been any further evidence to know if he did commit the murders or not of Julian Lolly. There's so much that we just don't know that really either of these people, it's possible that they could have had an involvement.

So the murders of Julian Lolley have never been solved and it's actually still an open investigation with the FBI. They have recently released a press release with posters saying that the case remains an open and active investigation and that they hope that by continuing to cover it to cover the girls' murders, that one day they'll generate that one piece of crucial information that may bring justice and peace to their families. So they are still actively trying. If you know something, you can contact the FBI and tell them they are still trying to solve this case.

Today, Julie and Lolly would be 45 and 47 years old. And while time has passed, they're still remembered by their families, their loved ones, the FBI is still investigating it. And there are still people who are working in Shenandoan National Park who were working there in those years when they were murdered and remember them and want this solved as well. So even though this did happen a long time ago, it's still. a case that's very much alive. So if you know anything, please contact the FBI Richmond Division. You can call them at 804-261-1044. Wow. What a story to kick this podcast off with. That was intense. And, you know, frustrating every unsolved case, no matter what it is, is frustrating. But especially because, you know, they kind of mirror us. And like you said, it could have been anyone. It could have been you.

It could have been me. Like, this stuff is not just isolated to other people. This one hit close to home because it really felt like this could have been me. I did the exact same thing these girls did in the park. And it wasn't me, but it really feels like it could have been. Well, thank you for sharing their stories. Thank you for listening. And I know we're doing two stories for this episode, so we'll just head right into yours, and we're going to... So for my story today, we are going to head to New England and go to Acadia National Park. I'll start with a small introduction of the park for anyone who is not familiar with Acadia. So Acadia National Park is the first national park to be created east of the Mississippi River and is the only national park in the northeast.

Most of the national park is located off the coast of Maine on Mount Desert Island. And if you ever hear locals talking about it, they actually pronounce it Mount Desert Island. And this park is the fifth smallest among all of the national parks, but it is among the top 10 most visited. So it's small but mighty. Acadia has 26 mountains, including Mount Cadillac, which is the tallest mountain on the U.S. Atlantic coast. And 76 people have died in Acadia National Park since it was officially labeled as one in 1929. Causes of death have included falls, drownings, suicides, motor accidents, plane crashes, and murder. And that brings us to our story.

So we are going to Acadia on Sunday, June 19, 1977. In Northeast Harbor, Maine, Gordon and Anne Wheatman, a couple from Canada, were on a camping vacation with their two children. They decided to take a walk through the Astakou Azaleant Gardens, located right outside Acadia National Park. And if you've ever been there or you look at it on a map, it's not within the park boundaries, but it's literally bordering the park. And it's a pretty popular place to go, especially with tourists, because it's a beautiful little landscaped park that has, it's about two acres in size, and it's a preserve that you can walk through to see all the flowers and plants that are in bloom throughout the seasons. And it kind of looks like a combination of a Japanese stroll garden integrated with a lot of Maine's native species of plants and flowers.

That sounds beautiful. I've been to Acadia National Park, but I've never been to this garden that you're talking about. Yeah, me either. And after looking up pictures of it and things, it looks like a really cool place to have like a picnic or lunch before you go out on a hike. Yeah, I'll keep this noted in my mind for next time I head up to Acadia. So the wheat bins pulled into the parking lot of the gardens around 9.30 in the morning, and they started walking up the path into the garden when they noticed a body in the middle of the path.

It was motionless, had a blood spattered face, and at first glance, the couple thought that it was a man. The family turned right around, drove back into town, which was about a mile or so, to look for a pay phone to call for police. Because we have to remember, we're in the 70s. We don't have a cell phone. They don't have a cell phone to just pick up and call 911 right away. When a phone booth was located and the police were alerted, Ernest Coombs was the first one to answer the phone. Coombs wasn't expecting much on a sleepy Sunday morning.

The town of Northeast Harbor is a small one. It has less than 500-year-round residence. So when he heard a frantic voice calling about a body in the gardens, he was a little taken aback. The town rarely sees lethal crime. So this became a really hot topic, immediately, and the Northeast Harbor Police were all over it. Police from other departments on the island were contacted and notified, and this was huge news.

Sergeant Tyrone Smith and Officer Matthew Stewart were the first ones to arrive on the scene, followed by the entire Northern Division of the State Police. Ten reserve members, all Mount Desert Police Department, and the county corner, as well as the state's chief medical examiner. So this was a big deal. The crime scene was sealed off immediately, and evidence was collected. One big and most basic fact that was cleared up almost immediately was that the body belonged to a woman and not a man, which is what the wheat meant originally reported. That's horrifying that I'm just imagining that this was such a horrific scene that you

couldn't tell and how upsetting that had to have been for the family that found her. Yeah, the adult and they had two kids with them. Yeah. And they're on vacation. Like the last time that you think you're going to stumble across a scene like that. So after ours investigation, Corporal Edward Mandel, a detective for the Maine State Police, determined that the woman had died from multiple blows to the head with a blunt instrument. This was confirmed later by Dr. Henry Ryan, the chief medical examiner,

as the autopsy revealed brain lacerations and skull fractures. The first strike appeared to have been on her forehead along her hair line, which broke her jaw and left her unconscious. The subsequent blows came after she was unconscious, and it is believed that the killer must have been right-handed as the blows to her head came from the right side. Her autopsy also revealed no alcohol or drug use or evidence of sexual assault. Her autopsy also showed that it appeared that she attempted to defend herself with her arms

because she had some defensive wounds on them, and that also she was likely killed where her body was found rather than her body being dumped there, indicating that the murder happened in the gardens and must have occurred in the early morning between 6 and 6.30 a.m. So like I said, the news of this spread very quickly. It's a small community that not much happens in. So everyone knew within the day. And hundreds of people were interviewed. throughout this process. The police are trying to find out who this woman is and if anyone

knows her. Despite all these interviews, no one on the island could identify her. So an artist sketch was placed all around the island, trying to jog anyone's memories of seeing her somewhere, trying to pin her timeline down so they could figure out who she was. Her description was as follows. Five feet tall, 110 to 120 pounds, with light brown hair, gray eyes, dark complexion with two braids that fell to her shoulder blades. And at the time of her murder, she was wearing a couple distinctive items of clothing and jewelry. She was wearing a maroon nylonset vest, a brown turtleneck and a sweater. She was also wearing a wooden serpent bracelet on her left hand, a silver band bracelet on her right hand, and an oval tiger's eye stone ring on her

left ring finger. The police received hundreds of calls with information, and also from inquisitive parents who had missing daughters, which is just so sad. That's horrible. So a lot of people were calling because they had missing kids themselves and were thinking it could be her. Right. Oh, that's really upsetting. Just like the desperation of, of maybe it's my loved one that I haven't heard from or seen. And just that they're getting that many calls, that there's that many people who are missing family members and daughters and whoever they are to them is really heartbreaking.

Yeah. So despite all these calls, all these potential leads, there wasn't really anything useful for three days until June 21st. someone stepped forward saying that the day the body was found, they had seen someone push a scruffy dog wearing a red bandana around its neck out of a car at 6.15 in the morning, about a quarter mile from where the gardens were. And then they sped off. So at the time, it didn't seem related, but the morning the body was discovered, reserved policeman Scott Merchant found a dazed and injured dog with a red bandana along the side of the road a half mile from where the body was later located. He took it to the kennel where it received treatment for a small shoulder injury, but otherwise he was okay. Oh, so this is all happening in the same area, same time frame. They're thinking the dog might belong to her.

Yes. So that's kind of an odd occurrence that they have kind of on the back burner. And it starts to get tied in with another tip that comes in. And this time, it came in from a gas attendant. and he ended up being missing puzzle piece that kind of linked these two things together. So he said the night before the body was found, which is now June 18th, around 10 o'clock at night, he sold $3 worth of gas to a man in a dark-colored older car with rust on it. He remembered seeing a dog with a red bandana sitting in the car along with a woman in the front seat.

He said he remembered it so clearly because he had never seen a dog wearing a bandana before. which is kind of odd for us now because it's kind of all the rage. I mean, my dogs wear National Park Bandanas, National Park Map Bandanas. And obviously at work, we see people come in with, like, holiday-themed bandanas for their dogs all the time. Yeah, bandanas are very common now, but clear, maybe it just wasn't back then. I don't know I wasn't alive, but. Yeah. So, that is funny to hear.

Yeah, I mean, whether it be the dogs didn't have any sort of identification on or if it was just a simple caller. Either way, this red bandana really stuck out to this gentleman. And it's a good thing that it did because it ended up being really useful. So the police wanted to kind of test this guy's knowledge. And how they did it is they brought him to the shelter where the dog was being held to see if he could recognize the dog out of all the other dogs in the kennel. So they did like a little docky lineup?

Yes, exactly. And he did. He identified him right away correctly. And so everyone's getting excited. We're getting some leads here. But another week passes and nothing. No more information. They've kind of hit a wall. But investigators determined that the vest that the woman was wearing was purchased from an Eastern Mountain Sports in Winthrop Square in Boston on June 9th, concluding that she had spent some time in Boston, whether it was she lived there, she had passed by there very recently, or knew people there that she was visiting and she just happened to go shopping there. Either way, they knew she was in Boston and very recently.

So they ran her story in the Boston Globe, and that story came out on Sunday, June 26th. That very same day, Sunday, June 26th, in Hingham, Massachusetts, Mrs. Betty Spellman picked up the paper and read that story. She saw the police sketch and immediately knew that it was her daughter, Leslie. We have some really, really exciting news. Big news. Huge news.

Do you want to tell them? Let the people know. We are doing a digital live event on December 9th at 730 with Moment House. So we are going to have our very own moment with them. Tickets are going on sale today. You can get them. We put a little link in our bio. But we're so excited.

because we have a very special episode planned that you will all get to watch live, and Danielle and I will be together for it. The first time in National Park After Dark recording history that Cassie and I will be in the same room recording an episode. So not only is that going to be happening, we're going to be in Southern California. We will be fresh off a visit from Joshua Tree National Park, and those are the stories that we are going to be covering for the live event. So not only are we going to be together, it's going to be happening live. And Moment House has a very interactive platform.

So not only can you choose to do meet and greets with Cassie and I, but you can also do chat functions with other attendees. So you guys can all hang out, talk to one another, get to know one another. It's going to be a really special event and one that Cassie and I have been really, really looking forward to. And we've been trying to keep our mouth shut for a little while about it. But cats out of the bag, you can find the link to the tickets in our episode description on all of our socials. And it is momenthouse.com slash NPAD. A few weeks earlier, Leslie, who was 26 at the time, and her sister Amy, who was 24, had been camping in Vermont. They had their three family dogs with them

and had been backpacking on the long trail near Bennington, Vermont. On the morning of June 18th, they split up in the town of Barry. Amy was going to head to New York. We live in a world of upgrades. Upgrade your phone. Upgrade your cable package. Upgrade your upgrade. At Vermont Federal Credit Union, we think you should be rewarded for upgrading. That's why we created reward checking. Put money back in your pocket with a checking account where your rewards really add up. Not only does it pay you back, it's totally free. Reward checking. Vermont Banking keeps getting better at Vermont Federal Credit Union. Check us out at Vermont Federal. While Leslie was branching off and was headed to Maine, Amy took two of the dogs, two of the huskies, and Leslie took Taylor, her mixed breed dog who wore a red bandana instead of a collar.

So it's definitely her then. Yeah. So, I mean, the mom knew right away, which is just, I mean, to hear about a loved one passing away, no matter how the news is. is broken to you is heartbreaking. Speaking from personal experience, it's not easy, but I can't imagine hearing from a third party source, a national source. It doesn't make it any easier hearing it from someone personal or not, but I just can't imagine picking up the newspaper or hearing on the news about a loved one passing away before you had knowledge of it. And no one told you first. Well, Anne, you think they're alive and well.

Like, you have no idea. Yeah, like it's not even a thought to you that something's wrong. So, Amy, who is Leslie's sister, had hitched hike across the country many times before. She actually hitchhiked around selling jewelry. But Leslie had never hitchhiked before. Leslie was described as a highly motivated and hardworking individual. She worked at a store called R.H. Stearns, which was a department store in Boston. back in the day. And she worked there for a number of years trying to support herself financially

and just for some extra money to buy camping equipment, which sounds a little bit familiar. I can relate to that for sure. So now that the Spellman family have a pretty good idea that the Jane Doe in Maine is Leslie, Amy drove to Mount Desert Island to help identify her sister's body. and to pick up Taylor and bring him home. And now that they had a positive ID and new information, the detectives ramped up their investigation. They released an itemized list of everything that Leslie had in her possession at the time

when she left Vermont. And that included a long list of clothes, camping gear, different pieces of jewelry, and even a personal journal. Amy told police that she did not use campgrounds, and she would rather just find a spot in the woods and set up camp, which is also rings very true. Yeah, I would do the same thing. I have done the same thing many times. I just did the same thing last weekend. National Forest, pick a spot by the river or wherever and set up camp.

Yeah. So with this information, police thought that maybe her campsite was still set up somewhere in the area, or that maybe her belongings were thrown along the roadside somewhere if someone had preemptively done this, knew where she was camping, and took all of her stuff and tried to get rid of it. But again, another wall. This is now a month later, we're into July, and there is no new leads on the case. And here we go. We're going to enter a different character.

Lauren J. Aquin. He is a 27-year-old man from Waterbury, Connecticut. On July 17, 17, 1977, Cheryl Boudon, age 29, her seven children and her niece, which were all ranging in ages from age 4 to age 12, were bludgeoned to death in their Connecticut home in the biggest mass murder to date in the state. Do you know what holds the title today? Yeah, it has to be the Sandy Hook shooting at the elementary school. I remember that. Like it was yesterday. It was one of the worst things that's happened in our area.

Yeah. I remember where it was when I saw that on TV. It's just, it's hard to imagine someone. I was in the library at my school. I was in college and there was a girl who actually grew up in that town and went to the elementary school that I was in the library with when it happened when we found out. It's too close to home, you know? Yeah. And it's sad because.

And every single one of these stories is always too close to home for someone, you know? Yeah. But going back to Cheryl and the children, all the victims died from head injuries and the house was burned down after they were killed. Cheryl was actually Aquin's foster brother's wife, so they had a little bit of a connection. And Aquin was arrested and being held at a mental hospital. Meanwhile, FBI investigators started linking similarities between this Connecticut case, and the case of Leslie Spellman. So let's run down some of the links that they started putting together.

First, dog hairs found in Aquin's car were compatible with Taylor's hair. And at the time, so this is the 70s, use of DNA as evidence didn't come around until the late 80s. But lab technicians at the time could still confirm it was the same color, texture, and chemical composition as Taylor's. Second, Leslie's murderer used the same type of blunt instrument as the murder weapon in the Connecticut case. So a tire iron was used as the murder weapon in both Leslie's case and in this Connecticut case. Also, the placement and method of blows to the head of the victims matched her case as well. Ackwin's physical appearance as well as the appearance of his car matched the description given by that gas attendant. and remember how someone pushed Taylor out of a moving car?

Well, the killer in the Connecticut case let the dog out into the yard unharmed. Meanwhile, he killed seven children and an adult woman. So in both of these cases, whoever did it, had some type of sympathy towards dogs. Yeah, some sort of soft spot for dogs. that is kind of an interesting link. And lastly, which for me is kind of like the biggest red flag of all, is Aquin had roots to this area, to Mount Desert area. He was born in New Brunswick, which is in Canada, but is actually very close by,

and knew his way around the island very well. He left his job at a roofing company in Connecticut on Friday, June 17th, and was not seen by anyone until he returned to work on Monday, June 20th. And let's remember, Leslie's murder took place on the morning of the 19th smack dab in the middle of that time frame that he couldn't be accounted for by anyone that knew him. Okay, so he's sounding more and more suspicious than this. Yeah, and for anyone that's not familiar with New England, I know we're saying that he was in Connecticut. How could he be in Maine in a day and whatever? New England is very small relative to the rest of the country.

You can travel New England if you're just going by car pretty much in a day. And if he's on a mission, he can get to and from Connecticut very easily within that weekend timeframe. I would say from Connecticut to Acadia would be probably an eight-hour drive, would be my guess. Yeah, that sounds about right. So despite all of these red flag, flags and potential links between Aquin and Leslie's case, he was never charged with her murder. But he was charged for the murders of Cheryl and the children in Connecticut, and he was found guilty

of those crimes in 1979 and was sentenced to life in prison. So Leslie's case became an unsolved mystery for years, but resurfaced in the year 2000 when a serial killer named James Rodney Hicks confessed to murdering three women in Maine. And police maybe thought that he had something to do with Leslie's case since the profile, his profile matched Leslie's murder. But sadly, James Rodney Hicks was not identified as Leslie's killer. He also was so open about confessing his other murders. And he even took police to the sites where he had buried the remains of his victims.

but never said anything about Leslie. So they dismissed him as a suspect. Yeah, at that point, it doesn't seem like he had any reason to lie about if he did do it. Yeah, or conceal information about her for whatever reason. Yeah. So as of today, in 2021, Leslie Spellman's case has never been closed. It is unsolved, but it is still open and ongoing. And it remains a case that is being investigated to this.

day. Maine established an unsolved homicide unit, which works on solving cold cases, including murders, but they also go into suspicious deaths and missing person cases as well. To date, no arrests have ever been made in Leslie's case. However, articles as recent as 2019 state that advances in DNA technology have fueled ongoing investigation into her case. So that seems pretty vague, and that can be frustrating, but it's also kind of hopeful because maybe they have something that they can't disclose information about specifically because they don't want to give anything away. So hopefully that means that they have some good pieces of information to go off of. You know what that makes me think of that it might be? And I don't know. I'm totally

speculating on this. So they have the technology to do familial DNA searches. So basically what they do is they take DNA and they can match it to family members and narrow down who this person was related to. So that's what it makes me think of because it hasn't been approved in every state to use that. So that is kind of my idea when you say that they're starting to come up with new DNA possibilities. That's where my mind first goes to. That's such a good point. Hello, Golden State Killer. That's how they pinned him down.

So yeah, that's a really good point. I actually didn't think about that when I read that, but good point. And hopefully that's the case. Amy's sister has been an advocate for Leslie all of these years. She doesn't want Leslie's case to be forgotten. Amy has stated, quote, it's never over. It never goes away. I would like to know who did this and where they are now.

I don't believe that someone who does something like this does it only once. Maybe they have spent their lives in prison. She remembers Leslie's love of yoga, travel, painting, playing the guitar, and the mandolin. She also remembers her having to use a little step ladder to reach under the hood of her Jeep that she drove. Because remember, she's tiny. Yeah, her description was so small, so I can definitely picture that. She says she was so precious to kill someone like that who was so defenseless. I can't understand.

No matter what kind of monster did this, they must think about it. It must follow them. And the Maine State Police urges anyone with information that may be related to the murder of Leslie to contact the Maine State Police at 1-800-432-7381.

And I do want to say that all of the information that I got for this story came from Death in Acadia by Randy Mindor. and she actually writes a lot of cool books, death in National Park books. I have another one that she wrote about death in Zion, which maybe we'll do an episode on Zion someday. But she has a lot of cool stories in this book. But Leslie's case was just one of the chapters in it. And because it was unsolved and Leslie's spirit kind of resonated with me, especially as a First story. A, it happened so close to home. I mean, the Long Trail, Bennington, that's where you are

right now. Lassing and Barry. My family is from Barry. We love Acadia. And she was our age and doing things that we love. And I just thought that it just needed to have some attention drawn to it. She just feels like a person. She feels like she would be one of our friends or us. Like this could happen to us and I think it resonates a little bit differently because of that. But I also think it's really important to cover cases like this because you never know who's listening and who has information. Even after all these years, someone knows something somewhere. So if you do happen to know something or you are suspicious of something, reach out to the hotline that Danielle talked about earlier because anything can be helpful now. It is unsolved. Her family is still wanting to,

answers. They want closure. Yeah, that number one more time is 1-800-4-332-7381. So that is it for our very first episode of National Park After Dark. Thank you for sticking by us this whole episode. We know it was a tough one. I think the big takeaway here is that both of these cases are unsolved and as tough as they are to talk about, they need to be talked about because they are unsolved and there are families who want to know what happened to their loved ones. So thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening to their stories. Please spread the word of their stories, help all of these women get the justice that they deserve. And that just about wraps up our first episode, but we do have a couple of places that you can find us in between now and our second episode that will be airing next Monday.

We have an Instagram, National Park After Dark, a Facebook page, National Park After Dark. A Facebook page, National Park After Dark, and a website, NPADPodcast.com. And we also have a Patreon account that you can subscribe to if you like. It's to help us produce this podcast more and grow and continue with this podcast. You can go on to our Patreon, sign up. We have two different tiers that are available. If you go onto our website, M-PADD Podcast.com, there's a link for our Patreon there. Or you can go on to our Instagram and there is a link to our website.

our Patreon there. So go into our Instagram National Park After Dark and click the link there. And lastly, we do have an email set up. We'd love to hear from you, hear personal stories from your experiences in national parks, national forests, state parts, etc. Your time spent outdoors, if you have anything creepy or weird that's ever happened to you. Our email is NPAD podcast at gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you, hear feedback, or just to say hi. Yeah. And, Like we said at the beginning of this podcast, we are brand new at this. This is independently run by us, produced, edited, recorded, written by us. So if you have any feedback or you have suggestions for us, we'd love to hear it. We are brand new at this. We would love to hear from you.

So just send us an email. We'll talk. We want to hear it all. And last but not least, rate review and subscribe to National Park After Dark on whatever platform you are listening on. Thank you for tuning in. And we will see. see you next Monday and in the meantime, enjoy the view, but watch your back. Bye everyone. Bye. Slane TV, built to save you money and bring you the channels you love, including ESPN, AMC, HGTV, and more. Watch your favorite comedies, dramas, suspense thrillers, news, sports, and more for just $35 a month. And your first month is only $10. Sign up now and start streaming right away on your TV, phone, and tablet. control of your TV solution with Sling. It makes TV flat out better. Go to sling.com to sign up now

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