The Misery Machine - ACS Call Center Murders Part 1: Donna Paradis (Lewiston, ME)

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

This week, we go back to our roots in Lewiston, Maine, to discuss an extremely tragic case that occurred in the fall 2007 at Affiliated Computer Service - where Yergy and Drewby first met and worked for years. When Donna Paradis, a pregnant mother of two was offered an affordable used car from her coworker Richard Dwyer, the gesture seemed like a godsend. But this seemingly kind gesture soon turned into a nightmare that rocked the city of Lewiston, and Affiliated Computer Services to it's core.  A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine Buy Us A Coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/miserymachine Join Our Street Team! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HfRUPQhB6LOqVupZm92OdV5rLDQcIMpHudmUZwt0C24/edit?usp=sharing Levi's Adoption Fundraising Page: https://gofund.me/d658a3a7 Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: http://scaredmonkeys.net/index.php?topic=2328.10;wap2 http://scaredmonkeys.net/index.php?topic=2328.0 https://www.sunjournal.com/2007/11/18/donna-j-paradis/ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/22969944/donna-j-paradis https://caselaw.findlaw.com/me-supreme-judicial-court/1499381.html https://www.facebook.com/296513501617/posts/-estate-of-murdered-pregnant-woman-sues-employerthe-estate-of-donna-paradis-who-/122662697746640/

Hi, the Miseries Machine. I'm Yerke. And I'm Drewby. And we're in Lewiston right now doing a case that happened at a former place of work of ours over 10 years ago. And that's the Donna Parody case. Yes, we're in Lewiston right now. And I have to apologize because we are right by some sort of factory or some sort of construction. So it is a little bit noisy today. As well as the bugs in the field over there. I know. Behind us is some really well-known ATV trails that folks use here in Lewiston. And it unfortunately is the scene of our crime. time today, this is where Donna was unfortunately found. This is a very tragic case, rocked our community, rocked our place of work. Um, it's very, it's very hard to have something like that happen so close to home at your place of work, but... Nobody should ever have anything like that happen at their work. Not at all. And if you're listening on YouTube, if you could please hit like and subscribe, I think by the time this comes out, we are almost at 8,500

subscribers, so thank you everyone that's helped us so far. Without further ado, the case of Donna parody for Donna and her unborn child. Lewiston, sometimes combined with its neighbor across the Andruscoggan River as Lewiston Auburn, or simply L.A. is a strange place and is our home. It's nestled between the southern and central Maine regions. It's home to a wide demographic of folks from descendants of the Frankos that immigrated to the area a century ago to work in the textile mills, to East African refugees that have made a home here over the last two decades. It's also infamously known as the Dirty Lou, due to the sprawling urban decay that's plagued the area since the closure of the mills.

However, this has changed in recent years with many efforts to revitalize the city, and if you're in Lewiston and on Snapchat, it gives you a dirty Lou filter that you can use, specifically for Lewis said. One effort in particular was to breathe new life into the abandoned Bates Mill complex, which is one of the many brick textile mills that spans several city blocks along Canal in Lincoln streets. In doing so, many different businesses decided to take up residents in the sprawling space and is currently home to restaurants, medical offices, and financial offices, and apartments. There's many, many, many different businesses inside the mill.

But it's one former tenant that will become the focal point of this episode. A small call center took up residence on the second floor of Bates Mill number two from the mid-1990s to the mid-Ots when it moved to the Lewiston Mall and East Avenue, renovating the old Ames Department store into the state of the art workspace that it was. It's been known by many names over the years, telemark, live bridge. It was live bridge in the mill for the entirety of its time, correct? It started as telemark. It started as telemark, okay, but largely it was live. It was largely live bridge. And what I knew it as is affiliated computer services, also known as ACS, and then finally it ended its lifespan as being acquired by Xerox. It was a business process outsourcing company, which basically meant work contracted out from other companies that they didn't want to handle in house.

Over the years, the company hosted contracts for a variety of businesses with a primary focus on credit card applications in general customer service. So this is where the story of Yergy and Drewie would begin. So I started working for the company during the live bridge years back in 2004 as a 20-year-old that had just moved back to the area after wasting what was supposed to be my gap years in a punk house in Augusta, which is our state capital. Which I also almost took a job there in 2006, but turned it down, which probably was for the best. It was probably for the best. So I worked on a variety of campaigns until being promoted to supervisor in the summer of 2006. I led a campaign that handled credit card applications for a very well-known international bank. So Drewby started working for the company a year and a half later during the ACS years.

It was 2007. Yep, on the same campaign as an agent, although unfortunately he was never on my team. I was on every single supervisor. And there was a rotating cast of supervisors. And I was on every single one of their teams except for Yerge's. Yes. So ACS was known as a place that paid above minimum wage that would hire anyone, regardless of your background, provide you could pass a drug test.

And if they hadn't termed, you for cause prior. This seemingly positive gesture of goodwill would be their downfall, however, and I can really attest to this because a lot of people just said, I'm never doing customer service work, I'll never do a call center, but it was still really appealing because nine bucks an hour at that time for a place that would hire you off the street was a lot of money then. It was for a very impoverished place by Lewis and Auburn. And at the time, there was not that many jobs around here. I can't stress that enough. It's not like now. It was really hard to get a job at that period of time. Right. And it was really, really great because a lot of people sometimes would become roommates and you're all making that $9 an hour. So you kind of live behind the hog. Yeah. If you all live together, cheap rent, you actually had it made. For the best of

what you could get in Lewiston, that was pretty good. So prior to the move to the Lewiston Mall, ACS, and we're to call it ACS for the entirety of this episode, just for simplicity's sake. And that's just how we've always, even after it became Xerox, we still called it ACS. They never took the ACS sign down. They put a fake kind of tarp-like sign over the ACS logo. Yeah. So ACS hired a man in his 40s by the name of Richard Dwyer to work another campaign that handled inbound credit card applications for another well-known financial institution. We can't actually say what their names are. Yeah, I don't believe we can. We didn't sign an NDA, but... These are very, very big name banks that would outsource this way. Yes. So Dwyer had an adult criminal history dating back to his 18th birthday in 1981 when he was charged with unlawful sexual contact.

He served six months behind bars and returned several times to jail in ensuing years on charges that include burglary, thefts, disorderly conduct, and trespass. In 1987, he was convicted of robbery in a heist at the North Star Bank in New Auburn. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Please keep that in mind for some notes that I'm going to have for you at the end of the episode. He was paroled in 1994. In 1995, Dwyer was charged with raping a woman who was crossing the footbridge between Lewiston and Auburn. That's Samard Payne Parkway. Yes, it's actually a really beautiful bridge.

It's very unfortunate. Something like that happens. Yeah, that area is not as dangerous as it used to be. Yeah. He was ultimately acquitted of that charge. Despite his campaign requiring it, a background check was never completed on Dwyer upon hire. So they didn't know any of this. This was not uncommon where they just kind of skip the back.

ground check. There were people in there who I worked with who had prior drug charges. And one particular woman I worked with did a prison term for gun smuggling. So just some things to keep in mind. They would literally hire anybody as long as you could pass that initial drug test. There was a woman who was hired, I believe, on your later campaign, who had like bank robbery or bank fraud charges. Yes. Yes. They found out later about. And if this is who I'm thinking of, yeah, she basically worked for a bank prior and defrauded it. I'm starting to get into some territory where I probably shouldn't say much more than that. But let's just say that's not the kind of person you want to hire doing the work that we were doing.

No, not at all. So Dwyer was a short, bald man with a goatee in arms covered in tattoos. Despite his criminal past and his rough exterior, he was actually a well-liked employee who would help others whenever he could. Despite living in Canton, Maine, which, I mean, from ACS with trash, We have in the notes it's 30 minutes. It's probably 30 minutes without traffic, but I bet like some days it's like 40, 45 minutes. Google Maps called it 30 minutes. I guarantee it's closer to an hour. Yeah. Yeah, because I had a somebody on my first campaign team who was driving from Canton and said it took her an hour one way. So keep this in mind. This was a pretty far distance. And this is kind of what you had to do then. If you lived in a very rural area of Maine, you had to drive to Lewiston or Auburn. You had to drive to Port. You had to drive to Brunswick or something like that, basically drive quite a ways away just to make ends meet, even if your gas was eating up quite a bit of that. And furthermore, Dwyer would often continue south to pick up other agents that needed rides, sometimes to Lisbon Falls, which would add an additional 40 minutes to his commute.

I mean, I think it would add much more than that. Lisbon Falls, like, I wish we had a map we could put up right now. The distance between Lisbon Falls and Canton, it's quite a commuter. Oh, for YouTube, I'll go ahead and just plot point everything like that. You'll make a slide. I'll absolutely do that. Many of those he helped were single mothers that didn't have anyone. And some were younger folks needing assistance with moving or finding apartments. It wasn't entirely uncommon for a lot of people at ACS who were working there, didn't have vehicles, couldn't afford vehicles,

refreshed out of high school, or just had fallen on hard times. Not uncommon at all. By the time ACS had transitioned to their new site at the Lewiston Mall, Dwyer had become entrusted with the unofficial role of floor support, which essentially meant that you were off the phones covering the floor for questions, and in some cases keeping an eye on call cues and delegating break times. Dwyer worked the third shift and often would be the only form of support staff on his campaign when there wasn't a manager there that late, which this really wasn't that uncommon for some of the later shifts. I worked the third shift at that point too, so if anything were to have happened during those hours,

I would have been there to handle any emergency. And his campaign set directly adjacent to mine. There were no walls up because we had similar lines of businesses. In his campaign and my campaign, basically it was kind of like this nebulous blob of just agents that were basically doing the same thing for a different company. Yeah, you didn't know. When I first got there, I thought they were all the same campaign. It was not segregated. There weren't really any distinct markers of who was who.

You just kind of learned, oh, this is a pod for this campaign and this is a pod for that campaign. There weren't dividers or anything like that, at least for those campaigns. there were for other campaigns. One of those people that Dwyer allegedly helped was a 38-year-old woman from Lewiston named Donna Parody. Donna was born on March 23, 1969, in Portland, Maine, and was the daughter of Nicholas and Martha Contos. She was a graduate of Pine Tree Academy

and later attended Central Maine Technical Center, which is now known as Central Maine Community College, and she earned her degree there as a computer technician. She was employed at ACS on the same campaign as Dwyer and worked for the local newspaper, The Sun Journal. She was a mother of two daughters, Jeanette and Sasha, whom she shared an apartment with on Pierce Street in Lewiston's downtown, and she was due with her third child, a baby boy, in the coming months. Donna was recently divorced from her husband Thomas after a 10-year marriage. In the spring of 2007, Donna met a man from Syria online and traveled to visit him. When she arrived home, she was newly married and expecting to her family surprise.

Donna was a pretty woman of Greek descent with dark brown hair and big brown eyes, with one of her most distinct features, being her perfectly even tattooed eyebrows. So she was on that trend before it was even a thing. She was also the sister of Jessie, who was a local man known around Lewiston Auburn for his friendly demeanor and his penchant for beautiful skirts. Yeah, we still see him around town every now in them. Unfortunately, a couple winters ago, someone hit him.

Yes, he was at Denny's. But he survived, right? He survived. He has a walker now, but he's doing okay. On the evening of October 22nd, 2007, a co-worker at the Sun Journal named Sandra Bruno brought Donna to the Central Maine Medical Center after she began complaining of a medical problem possibly related to her pregnancy.

She was described as nervous and agitated and Bruno has been quoted as saying, quote, she didn't even wait for me to take my foot off the break before she jumped out of the car, end quote. This would be the last time Donna was seen by her coworkers at the Sun Journal, after which she was seen in the hospital's maternity ward, and she was discharged and went to work at ACS the following day, October 23rd. So Donna didn't have a car and walked all around Lewiston Auburn despite being eight months pregnant. Richard Dwyer, who was her co-worker at ACS, was helping her find an affordable car. That afternoon when she showed up for her shift, Donna received a note from Dwyer stating that the car was in the parking lot and that she could drive at home.

She informed another co-worker of this and then held up a check and told her co-worker, I need to go cash this and I'm going to give him the money for the car. Donna left worked as scheduled at 3.24 p.m. at about 3.35 p.m. she entered the Northeast Bank, which is where she had her bank account. The bank was about a 12-minute walk from ACS down Lisbon Street. Donna purchased a $400 money order made out to herself and was given an original and the duplicate copy. After leaving the bank, she returned approximately two minutes later and cashed the money order, receiving $400 bills.

It's unknown why she did that. Yeah, this seems like a very strange process. So shortly after, another co-worker saw Donna on foot on Lizzie Street near Burger King. So this is back going the other direction, and which is near the Promenade Mall, and she was getting ready to cross the street towards the Lewiston Mall, which is where ACS is. We should get some pictures up of this because it's a little confusing. So Donna did not report for her 4 p.m. shift at the Sun Journal. The co-worker whom she initially told about the vehicle purchase, asked Dwyer if Donna ever retrieved the car out of the parking

lot on that day that she disappeared, and he said that she did not. The same day, Dwyer left work early for what he listed as a doctor-related reason, departing at 2.42 p.m. When he was asked by police why he left work early in October 23rd, Dwyer stayed that he wasn't feeling well and that he'd driven for a while and then went to his home in Canton. Several weeks went by and Donna was still missing. She had not shown up for any of her shifts at ACS or the Sun Journal, hadn't contacted her husband, her ex-husband, or her two young daughters, and there was no activity in her bank accounts. Early on in her disappearance, some co-workers or speculated that maybe she had returned to Syria to see her new husband. But her ex-husband Thomas had been quoted as saying that it was just unlike Donna to disappear like

that. Interesting enough, one of our friends of the podcast actually worked with us at ACS. They haven't really given me permission to give their name or anything, but they worked in command center, which is where they managed cues and managed the traffic. They often took call-ins, call-outs, and they would take forms for people who were doing early releases like this, and they actually took the early release for Dwyer that day. So after an extensive search, the body of Donna Parody, along with her unborn son, were discovered nearly fully buried in a secluded area behind the flagship cinemas in the promenade mall on Lisbon Street, nearly three

weeks after she had disappeared. We'll take some pictures that area. We did an intro video back there a few weeks ago. She was naked with a cloth licature tied around her left and right arm, a cloth lickature in her bra was wrapped around her neck. At an autopsy performed the following day, the chief medical examiner observed that part of Donna's trachea was fractured, which is typical in strangulation cases. It was determined that the cause of death was asphyxia due to ligature strangulation with the date of death undetermined. There were also signs of sexual assault. Meanwhile, at ACS, all supervisory and support staff were taken into a large conference room and informant of the tragic news.

What was more shocking was the news shared with them that the potential suspect was someone that worked at the call center, Richard Dwyer. After news of Donna and her unborn baby's tragic murder spread around the call center, concerns were raised as to how a convicted felon with a violent criminal history was able to obtain employment and what ACS planned to do to ensure the safety of its employees moving forward. In response, ACS worked with the Lewiston Police Department to hold safety meetings with staff, to discuss self-defense, and security guards were stationed at reception. In addition, criminal background checks that should have been taking place all along were now a mandatory part of the

hiring process, and all employees that hadn't been screened prior were retroactively checked. A civil suit filed on behalf of the family was later settled out of court, and allegedly, maybe they were performing these background checks, but in my opinion, they didn't seem to care about the results of said background checks later on. And like the very interesting thing is, I don't know that they really did this for everybody. I believe they did this at agent level. I was never background checked. Yeah.

Well, I should say that I worked here during the summer of 2007 and I quit to go back to school. I quit in August. So this happened right after I left. I was not here for this part, though I heard all about it. And when I got back, I did see the security guards, but those didn't last very long until we had another murder happen here at the call center. and we'll get to that in a future episode. Dwyer was incarcerated at the Andruscoggin County Jail

on the date that Donned's body was discovered after being arrested for a September knife point robbery at the Big Apple store in Lewiston. According to police, Dwyer appeared nervous when questioned about the robbery. He told investigators that he had smoked a few joints on the day of the stick-up and was stressed about his relationship with a girlfriend.

Do you know the exact location of this Big Apple? Yes, I believe it's either... So there's two Big Apples in Lewiston. I don't know which one exactly. It was either the one on Main Street. I believe that's a big apple. It's kind of across the street from the plasma center. Yeah.

There's also a big apple that's on Lisbon Street on 196 towards Lisbon. It's no longer in existence. There was a big apple by the bowling alley in Lewiston, and that got demolished after it was robbed, and the girl who was working there was stabbed to death. I believe that was in the 90s. Yeah. There's not a lot of good stuff that. goes on at any of the big apples in Lewiston-Auburn, even the one that's kind of New

Auburn adjacent is sketchy. You might be wondering how the police zeroed in on Dwyer so quickly after the discovery of Donna Parody and her unborn son, especially knowing Maine's track record for solving unsolved murders. Well, it turns out that Dwyer wasn't trying too terribly hard not to get caught. Using the barcode from a shovel found near the crime scene, police determined that an identical shovel and a flashlight had been purchased at the Auburn Walmart at 7 p.m. on the day Donna disappeared. It was the only such shovel sold at the store that day, and the only time between January 1st and November 12, 2007, that the combination of that particular shovel and flashlight had been sold at that store. A store videotape showed Richard Dwyer sipping a Dunkin' Donuts

coffee cul-a. They have a Dunkin' Donuts in that Walmart. Buying a shovel and a flashlight on October 23, 2007. He paid $100 cash. Remember, Donna had gotten some $100 bills from the bank for the $22 purchase, receiving $78 in change. Using the barcode from a pickax also found at the site, police were able to establish that an identical pickax had been sold at the Lowe's in Auburn on October 23rd at 8.20 p.m., which if you're not from the area, is directly next door to the Walmart. Like, you can walk there. A videotape from the store showed Dwyer purchasing the pickax. In the store videos, Dwyer can be seen wearing a red shirt. This was all over the news. He was also seen wearing a red shirt in a work video recorded earlier that same day. In executing a search warrant at Dwyer's brother's house where Dwyer was staying, police seized a similar-looking red shirt from Dwyer's bedroom. A forensic chemist with the state crime laboratory analyzed fibers taken from the shirt and testified that these fibers were similar to the ones taken from the ligatures that were on Donna's left and right wrists. as well as the maternity pants found near the burial site and the barcode sticker on the pickax handle.

After analyzing a flashlight that Dwyer had left with his girlfriend, which was the same brand and the same size as the flashlight purchased on October 23rd, a forensic scientist from this same crime lab testified that a fingerprint on the flashlight belonged to Dwyer. The crime lab's DNA analyst testified that the DNA found on the flashlight matched the victim's DNA, Donna, in that the estimated probability of randomly selecting another match from the population was 1 in 32.9 billion. DNA consistent with Dwyer was also found on the flashlight. The analyst testified that 1 in 89 individuals would also have DNA consistent with the DNA found on the flashlight. On the shovel found near where Donna was buried and like if we weren't clear, he left the shovel there.

He left the shovel at the burial site. The analyst found DNA consistent with Donnas, and the probability of a random match was 1 in 4.71 million. DNA on a soda bottle also found at the scene matched Donna conclusively. The analyst also testified that DNA mixtures consistent with both Donna and Dwyer were found on a genital swab containing sperm taken from Donna, as well as a ligature taken from Donna's right wrist, and a piece of cloth that was found near where Donna was buried, as well as an ID holder and lanyard found in the trunk of Dwyer's car. Dwyer's case proceeded to trial on December 12th and 15th through the 18th of 2008. The jury returned verdicts of guilty after deliberating for less than two hours.

At sentencing, the court entered judgment and sentenced Dwyer to life imprisonment on the murder count in the concurrent terms of 30 years on gross sexual assault and robbery counts. He's currently serving his time at the Maine State Prison in Warren, Maine, where he's involved in the K-9 Corrections program. So meanwhile, and I was working this night at ACS, staff watched as the verdicts were read on the evening news playing in the break room. The entire site roared in waves of stand-up applause, leaving customers on the phone wondering what the fuss was about.

Justice for Donna and her unborn son were served, but sadly, this would not be the last time tragedy would strike the call center. This may not be next week's. This one's a lot more new. wants. There's a lot more information. It's not as cut and dry. And we're, at least I am very much involved in it. Very much personally involved with a case. I mean, I wouldn't say I was involved, but I was definitely there through all of it. So someone important regarding this case reached out to you with some pretty interesting information. Yeah, so some folks might not know,

but I've covered this case prior with a podcast that no longer records. And shortly after that happened, someone who was close to Richard Dwyer reached out to me in particular to let me know that he had picked that area to Barry Donna because he had grown up or at least spent some time in that area and knew the trails very well. So that area behind the promenade mall are very well-known ATV trails. So I don't know if he managed to drive a car back there, if he had some sort of ATV, but he knew the area very well. This person also let me know, and that's why I was saying to kind of keep note in your head about the federal charges he had done. They had let me know that when he was in federal prison, he pissed the wrong people off.

And he really didn't want to get sent back there. So it's theorized that committing this murder of Donna and her unborn child was so that he'd be sentenced to life in main state prison. So he wouldn't end up going back to federal. And also that he, just because he had been in and out of jail in prison since he was 18, just preferred life institutionalized, kind of like that of Albert Flick. Yeah, I was going to mention Albert Flick. And this is not to garner sympathy, but it just seems like people who spend a lot of time most of their life in prison, they just end up missing prison to an extent when it's all you really know. Some people have a hard time functioning as adults outside of prison. And it appears Dwyer was one of those people.

Yes, and he really managed to put on some masks. Now, I know I did state that he was very well liked and did a lot of nice things for people. Other people have told me that he came off as an ass and they didn't really like him. So it really was basically how you dealt with him. It depends on who you talk to. Right. It's really hard because a lot of people at ACS, particularly the women at ACS, started feeling extremely unsafe. Yes. Extremely. And even the self-defense classes that they were teaching, it wasn't even a self-defense class. It was a joke. The police came in and talked to people who were scared. And I had to go in as a supervisor to watch this. Basically, stating that if someone was coming at us, there was going to be nothing that we could do about it to defend ourselves.

If we had a gun or a knife, it was going to be taken away from us and used on us. So we better have some pepper spray or scream or do something because if we were attacked, we were going to die. And I know for me, it was the first time a murder was that close to home where it directly affected me. Like, who deals with homicide in the workplace? That's incredibly rare. Yeah, it is very rare. I know I had a claw hammer and a kitchen knife under the floor mats in my car for the longest time after this. People were carrying on the call floor.

They weren't, you know, obviously allowed to, but people were still doing it. People were buddy system walking each other to their car. And this was in like a very visible parking lot. And people were still feeling unsafe. Even during that time, even though it was an area that's well lit and there's decent traffic, I've heard of people getting harassed in the parking lots. I remember one time I was screamed at and something. somebody from a car said they were going to kill me.

It was really weird. One thing that was very chilling for me is back then when I worked at the call center, I was an extremely heavy smoker. I don't smoke anymore, but back then I smoked quite a bit. And there were many times at midnight, it would be me and Richard Dwyer alone smoking cigarettes in the back of the building. And this, like we stayed before, was an old mall. It was a strip mall, basically.

There was a section in there where you could walk inside. But for all intents of purposes, this was a strip mall. So me and this person who had raped and killed. somebody, we're out at midnight by ourselves behind the building smoking. Yeah, behind the building there is no visibility. None. There weren't cameras back there. No. It was some dumpsters in tree line. I remember one time some dude who had a warrant out for his arrest was back there with like a giant snake of some sort around him. People would just show up there to deal drugs. It was kind of rough back there. And during the day, you know, everybody's there. It's fine.

At night. It's a little bit sketchy to be back there. People who had been fired would just show up there to hang out. Yeah. And there was nothing we really could do because they weren't coming inside. Exactly. So what was your interaction like with Richard Dwyer? We haven't really talked about that. I haven't really talked about mine. So like I said, I worked on the one campaign, which was intertwined with the seating of his campaign. I'd never really talked to him much. I knew he was a new supervisor there. I didn't really talk to many people outside of my team and my friends. And, you know, I'd see him out in smoke breaks. That was my only real interaction. The only reason that I knew that he'd pick up people in Lisbon was because one of my agents was the young woman that was being picked up. Did you know if she ever told you anything creepy that he did or weird? He kept sending her letters from prison. Like love letters for a period of time. But he's doing life with no appeal and no possibility of parole. So he will thankfully be there for the rest of his life. I did put out kind of a call to action to folks that worked at ACS during that time period to reach out to me. Nobody reached out to me about this case. So we're going off of what I know,

what are facts in the news and what I observed personally. And I'll probably mention this again for the next case, but a funny thing about ACS, everybody, and I mean everybody, wanted to talk about these murders. But when it came to speaking on record, they won't do it. Nobody wants to talk about it anymore. It's all in their mouths until it comes time to actually do something useful with it.

And that's Lewiston for you. It really is. I mean, one of the main reasons that we can't promise that the other episode regarding the other ACS murder is going to come in succession is because nobody's talking about that one either. Yeah. And I've put out some feelers. I know people have seen. So. A lot of people have seen.

A lot of people have seen. A few have said, hey, I'll get back to you. But I haven't gotten anything of substance yet. And I really, really think we need some other folks to talk. I think some people are afraid of this case getting reed out, this next one, this next case getting reopened and them getting into. died on some charges. I'm saying. But I will say that having worked at ACS during that period of time of the second murder, oh my God, was everyone talking about it for at least two years after the fact. And now no one wants to talk about it. It hasn't been that long. It's been, it's coming up on 20,

10 years, ish. It's coming up on 11 years in July. And I mean, at this point, it's like, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of saying? Especially the people that I know had nothing to do with but knew some people would have some very interesting things to say. Lewiston cases like these, they just fall by the wayside. Even in people who cover main true crime cases, Lewiston is like a, go ahead. You go ahead. Well, Lewiston's looked at this area where these things happen. Right.

That's exactly what I was going to say. Like, of course it would happen in Lewiston. There's almost like people think stuff like, okay, well, you know, you live in Lewiston, and you kind of deserved it. You knew what you were getting into living in Lewiston. You know what I mean? Or there was almost this care of like, well, they're from Lewiston. They don't really count.

They don't really matter. Whenever we have a case like this happen, I hope that's changing now. But it seems like whenever we have a case like this happen in Lewiston, yeah, it definitely rocks the community here. But it's quickly whisked away. And people just sum it up to, oh, what do you expect? It's Lewiston. It's the dirty Lou.

And if you were to go farther north in Maine, people look at Lewiston in this place where people get stabbed every day. It's really ridiculous. And at least with these two murders, I don't like how in some cases the media painted the victims. So, you know, there wasn't a whole lot of uproar for Donnie. Even though she was pregnant with a child, she was eight months along. That was like a whole baby at that point. I don't know if it's because she had a husband overseas, if she lived in a more poorer area of Lewiston.

Your street kind of is, especially at that time. Or whether, you know, there were questions about. her family, there's a lot of controversy regarding her brother. A lot of weird urban legends out there. So I don't know what the case may be. I don't like in some cases with the next case we're going to cover about

ACS shortly, how the media painted that victim. So that's why I really want people to get in touch with me. So we have some more information about her to paint her in a better light than the media did. Yeah, exactly. And it's funny, it was almost acceptable. People found it acceptable for the media

to paint her in that light. Yeah, it'd be nice to take these cases in Lewison that were whist away and just victim blamed and to actually humanize the victims. We want to know more about who these people are. Unfortunately, in covering this, because Yergy's covered one of these cases, covered both cases in the past, but one of them in covering it. And this is something I've noticed when we've covered these really local, not very well-known cases. People are assuming that we're trying to exploit and get views off these small cases. If we were doing this for views, we would be covering somebody like Ed Gein right now. We would be covering somebody that has a lot of searches.

So when we cover a small case, that's not to get views. That's to try to do justice and humanize people who just kind of fell by the wayside in the media's perspective. This idea that we're doing this to boost ourselves makes absolutely no sense. It really doesn't. So please, if you're listening and you know it, anything about this case and the reason why we don't even need to say the name because if you're from around here, you know who the two ACS murders were. If you know anything about this person, just you knew her as a friend, you want to tell us who she was as a person a bit better because

I didn't know her personally. Please reach out to us. Please, for the love of God, reach out to us, Misery Machine Podcast at gmail.com. Send either of us a message on Facebook. I don't care. And honestly, if we left anything out of note about this case, or about Donna in general, about Donna in general, about Richard, anything like that? Drop a comment in the comment section. Yes, please. When we do main cases, there's an extra level of importance there for us because we know firsthand just how unimportant main cases are to most people, even in Maine.

I don't just mean to like national true crime, but in Maine how unimportant murder cases are to most people. You wouldn't think so in such a small state, small communities, but these need more attention. These need more well-done coverage and better remembrance of victims. So please help us. Help us do this because we can't do it alone. We cannot. So if you're listening on YouTube and you appreciate this case, please hit like and subscribe. This is the best way to support our channel.

It doesn't cost you anything and ensures our growth. We also have a very lovely group of people that have gone an extra step to support us on Patreon. So let's thank those people now. Yes. So thank you, Eddie, Rowan, Marky, Holly, Ashley Voo, Anna, Lauren, Serena, Chloe, Mark Tara Sophie, Karen, Neal and Karen, Dave and Karina, Domyn, Liss, Dakota, and Kitty, Jen Mo Jenny, Nora Robin, Tom, Dillon, Kaylee, Alex, Jacob Victoria, Bailey, Bailey, Stephen Kacey, CASE, Welcome, Karene. Welcome, Karene. And Levi, our highest tier, Patreon, supporter. There's his lovely picture right now. And if you two would like to support us on Patreon, you get to access to all of our secret episodes you get access to our secret discord and snapchat groups and you may even get a postcard patreon.com slash the misery machine the haunted postcard it's a harunted postcard and you get a sticker one of our great little stickers but until next week we love you we love you

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