Speaker 1: Paper Ghosts is a production of I Heart Radio. Previously
Speaker 1: on Paper Ghosts. I think it's weird that you know,
Speaker 1: pretty much a whole time he lived up to your
Speaker 1: girl for disappearing, and then he don't and it's shopped.
Speaker 1: You know. People always said, oh, you're a lucky ones.
Speaker 1: You phone your person. We did, and you know, in
Speaker 1: our heart of hearts, we also know who did it.
Speaker 1: Someone goes missing today, I mean you have number one
Speaker 1: electronic gets, so cell phones, there's just so much I mean,
Speaker 1: facial recognition, even though it's in its infancy, it's hard.
Speaker 1: So we find people pretty quickly today. You don't say
Speaker 1: usual for somebody missing more than a few days. He
Speaker 1: got really mad at a long time and he said,
Speaker 1: if you don't watch to check, it end up like
Speaker 1: your sister. My name is and William Phelps. This is
Speaker 1: Paper Ghosts. As I make progress learning all I can
Speaker 1: about the LaRosa family, I cannot stop thinking about the
Speaker 1: other missing girls I've been searching for. I mentioned in
Speaker 1: an earlier episode how the neighboring towns of Ellington fernand
Speaker 1: In Town, Connecticut, were on high alert in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: three when seven year old Jane's Pocket went missing after
Speaker 1: going in search of a dead butterfly near her home.
Speaker 1: The community was vigilant because just five years earlier, not
Speaker 1: too far from where Janie disappeared, another young girl, thirteen
Speaker 1: year old Debbie Spickler, vanished. This was just up the
Speaker 1: road in the same town from where thirteen year old
Speaker 1: Lisa White went missing. The publican media have always grouped
Speaker 1: these cases together, so much so that the girl's faces
Speaker 1: were printed side by side on one missing person flyer
Speaker 1: that continues to be posted around town to this day.
Speaker 1: Three young girls huddenly gone. Yet, as I have found
Speaker 1: through my investigation, that is where the similarities stopped. It
Speaker 1: is a fact that during the summer of nineteen, Debbie
Speaker 1: Spickler was visiting her uncle, aunt, and cousins in Vernon,
Speaker 1: just about a ninety minute drive north from where she
Speaker 1: lived with her family in Mystic, Connecticut. The story that's
Speaker 1: always been told is that Debbie, wearing a white sleeveless shirt,
Speaker 1: green polka dot shorts, and white sneakers, was walking to
Speaker 1: a nearby parks swimming pool with her seventeen year old
Speaker 1: cousin on the day she disappeared. The cousin reportedly forgot
Speaker 1: her towel and went back to fetch it, leaving Debbie
Speaker 1: to go on to the park alone. That story, I've
Speaker 1: learned is entirely false. Over a series of interviews I'd
Speaker 1: done with one Debbie Spickler RelA of last year, I
Speaker 1: revealed information I had recently uncovered about Debbie's disappearance that
Speaker 1: I believe the Spickler family had never known. I gave
Speaker 1: the relative a few names of people of interest and
Speaker 1: encouraged this person to inquire within the family. When I
Speaker 1: followed up, the relative said, my family doesn't want me
Speaker 1: talking to you anymore, and this person pulled out of
Speaker 1: the podcast. The information I gave this person was not
Speaker 1: in the public domain. These were facts I uncovered with
Speaker 1: the help of law enforcement sources and my private investigator,
Speaker 1: Ken Roby. So what's going on? I mean, I I
Speaker 1: sent you some stuff, A lot of interesting stuff. You
Speaker 1: gave me that Ken knows his ship. He spent twenty
Speaker 1: three years with the NYPD, many of those as a detective,
Speaker 1: and has over three d sixty arrests and three thirty
Speaker 1: felony convictions to his credit. Post nine eleven, Ken was
Speaker 1: assigned to the New York City Medical Examiner's office and
Speaker 1: tasked with the recording, processing, and identifying of victims. He's
Speaker 1: a court certified expert on missing persons and has been
Speaker 1: my p I and all around go to for missing
Speaker 1: person cases for many years. When the Spickler family relative
Speaker 1: abruptly stopped talking to me, I turned to Ken and
Speaker 1: new police documents I've obtained to help fill in the
Speaker 1: many holes left in this case. Here is what actually happened.
Speaker 1: On July ninety eight, around three thirty in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: Debbie Spickler and her cousin walked from the cousin's apartment
Speaker 1: to a nearby apartment complex where a friend of theirs lived.
Speaker 1: This was about seven tenths of a mile heading west.
Speaker 1: When they arrived, the girls knocked on the door. Nobody
Speaker 1: was home, according to the cousin. They decided to split
Speaker 1: up to look for their friend. The cousin later told
Speaker 1: police she headed to the nearby Igloo Restaurant, an old
Speaker 1: school drive in burger ice cream joint that was a
Speaker 1: popular hangout spot for Lisa White and Irene and Susan LaRosa. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Debbie walked across the street toward Henry Park, approximately one
Speaker 1: yards away. It was the last time anyone saw Debbie Spickler.
Speaker 1: There were not many leads for police to go off of,
Speaker 1: except for a promising one. Debbie's cousin told law enforcement
Speaker 1: that on the day before Debbie disappeared, Debbie was at
Speaker 1: the Igloo hanging out with a sixteen year old local
Speaker 1: guy named Ed Holgerson Jr. And the guy's friend, who
Speaker 1: went by the nickname Buzzy. Police located Buzzy, but as
Speaker 1: it turns out, Ed Holgersson was also reported missing on
Speaker 1: the same day as Debbie Spickler. It's an interesting discovery.
Speaker 1: A kid several years older than Debbie also dropped out
Speaker 1: of sight on the same day at the same time,
Speaker 1: and has police learned the same location. Henry park I
Speaker 1: asked Ken my p I what this could mean. It
Speaker 1: could say two different things, that he's he's involved in
Speaker 1: one of the missings, or be that he's a victim himself. Actually,
Speaker 1: it could say three things. It both took off together,
Speaker 1: so I guess we gotta take you further into that
Speaker 1: to see if there's a boyfriend girlfriend type of thing
Speaker 1: going on. There's something about Debbie Spickler's case that has
Speaker 1: always bothered me. Despite small town gossip in media reports
Speaker 1: grouping her name with the other young missing girls in
Speaker 1: the area, Debbie's case is always felt different. Throughout the years.
Speaker 1: I'd begun to find coincidences between the missing girls and
Speaker 1: the Susan LaRosa murder. But now there's this tangible lead
Speaker 1: moving Debbie's case away from those cases, and that anomaly
Speaker 1: is Ed Holgersson. In early August, shortly after Debbie went missing,
Speaker 1: one neighbor in Rockville told police about possibly seeing Ed
Speaker 1: drive by her house on a few occasions. She wasn't
Speaker 1: certain because she couldn't get a license plate number and
Speaker 1: the vehicle drove by too fast. What's interesting to me
Speaker 1: about this possible sighting is that the car had quote
Speaker 1: a young girl inside all right, So in the report
Speaker 1: it says Vernon p d went out to odd for
Speaker 1: the interview, but what seems to be Holgerson's mother and
Speaker 1: she says the lasting uh, I knew he was taken
Speaker 1: off the Cape Cod. I've learned that cops found ed
Speaker 1: in Boston three weeks after he and Debbie Spickler disappeared.
Speaker 1: This makes sense since Boston is just a short drive
Speaker 1: from Cape Cod. The police asked Ed a out Debbie Spickler,
Speaker 1: and after looking at her picture, Ed said, I saw
Speaker 1: this girl around Boston Common or the Boston Public Park,
Speaker 1: then this other piece of information. Cops asked ed why
Speaker 1: he took off, Ed said he was running from law
Speaker 1: enforcement because, and I quote, I got a girl pregnant
Speaker 1: and the police were after me. In September of the
Speaker 1: year that both he and Spickler went missing. So just
Speaker 1: just a few months later he's arrested by Vernon p
Speaker 1: d for blackmail. Yeah, there's just a couple of months after.
Speaker 1: Could he have blackmailed the parents of Debbie Spickler? Who?
Speaker 1: Who could he have been blackmailed? He's a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old kid. Maybe it could it be an opportunist type
Speaker 1: of crime. He knows now that Debbie's missing, and he
Speaker 1: takes an opportunity to try to make a few bucks
Speaker 1: off of it. That's that's the other thing I was thinking.
Speaker 1: Either he's legitimately blackmailing somebody, or he's he's an opportunist,
Speaker 1: which it seems like he is, and he's taking this
Speaker 1: opportunity to say, hey, I know I have this information,
Speaker 1: give me money. So did Debbie run away with that
Speaker 1: or was she taken by someone against her will. From
Speaker 1: what I've learned, I'm leaning towards the former. I know
Speaker 1: Debbie had met Ed during a trip to Vernon months earlier,
Speaker 1: and I get the feeling she was very familiar with
Speaker 1: him by the time they reconnected that summer. In his
Speaker 1: search for information, Ken came across two federal documents from May,
Speaker 1: which at this point was nearly two years after Debbie
Speaker 1: and Ed went missing. The reports detailed the arrest of
Speaker 1: a guy who fits Ed Holgersson's description. Everyone's a lot
Speaker 1: harder to track back then. I mean, he's got to
Speaker 1: same initials and everything. It's just the records in the sixties, sixties,
Speaker 1: and you know, even early seventies weren't the same as
Speaker 1: they are now. Most of the stuff was handwritten. Nothing's
Speaker 1: going from, you know, a computer across the country to
Speaker 1: another computer. According to one report, the man named Ed
Speaker 1: Holgerson was arrested in Laramie, Wyoming for driving a car
Speaker 1: that was stolen in Maine just months earlier. He was
Speaker 1: said to be with a quote woman and a child
Speaker 1: and produced a false driver's license, as well as stolen
Speaker 1: credit cards. So you track Ed Holgerson out to Laramie, Wyoming.
Speaker 1: But how do we know it's our Ed Holgerson. I
Speaker 1: think because he's got the same initials and everything else.
Speaker 1: I think it could be Ed's dad. Wow, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the documents say our Ed Holgerson is Ed Holgerson Jr.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. Record show that this Ed Holgersson Ken has
Speaker 1: found was in his mid forties at the time of
Speaker 1: the arrest, which makes it likely he was Ed Junior's father,
Speaker 1: even more so because, in addition to his place in Maine,
Speaker 1: which one could argue is a several hour drive from
Speaker 1: either Boston or Cape Cod, this Ed also had an
Speaker 1: address in Hartford, Connecticut, which is where Ed Jr's mom lived.
Speaker 1: The woman who was in the car at the time
Speaker 1: of the arrest was said to be thirty six, so
Speaker 1: we know it could not have been Debbie. So whose
Speaker 1: child was in the car? Did police take them to jail?
Speaker 1: And they dropped the woman and the infant off at
Speaker 1: the Salvation Army And the next thing you hear about
Speaker 1: this woman is a death notice for that somebody who
Speaker 1: by that name, but nothing connecting that infant to her,
Speaker 1: to him or to anyone else. So now Debbie's missing
Speaker 1: at that time arrest. Right, Is it plausible and maybe
Speaker 1: even likely because we remember the story about Hoganson saying
Speaker 1: that he left because he got a girl pregnant. Is
Speaker 1: it plausible that his dad now shoots out there, takes
Speaker 1: this baby with either his girlfriend or his wife, and
Speaker 1: now they had a cross country back to where he
Speaker 1: was trying to stay in Arizona. Right, it's like the
Speaker 1: baby disappears, Like the baby went into um could have
Speaker 1: went into the system, into foster care or fin that
Speaker 1: That's exactly what I was thinking, right, And that baby
Speaker 1: could not even know who she or he is. Debbie's cousin,
Speaker 1: who was with Debbie the day she went missing is
Speaker 1: not wanted to speak with anyone, including me, about what happened.
Speaker 1: Though when the Vernon Police Department reinterviewed her in two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, she had some rather interesting and from nation
Speaker 1: to share. She described Debbie as having a chipped front
Speaker 1: tooth and being quote very physically developed for a thirteen
Speaker 1: year old girl. The cousins stuck to the story she
Speaker 1: told in nineteen sixty eight, adding no new information. However,
Speaker 1: she did claim that Debbie revealed to her that she
Speaker 1: quote felt as if she was a burden to her
Speaker 1: family end quote. The fact no one in the Spickler
Speaker 1: family has really ever spoken publicly about Debbie's case has
Speaker 1: always stood out to me, and I can't help thinking
Speaker 1: that the one photo of Debbie that was given to
Speaker 1: the police looked more like a fifth or sixth grade
Speaker 1: school photo then something reflecting her age when she disappeared thirteen.
Speaker 1: Taking into account what Ken has helped me uncover, I
Speaker 1: have to wonder about that narrative of the cousin and
Speaker 1: Debbie and the forgotten towel. How did that story get
Speaker 1: out into the public domain. It opens up a can
Speaker 1: of worms. It takes us down a rabbit hole. But
Speaker 1: even after all that, I go back and I'm like,
Speaker 1: where does that leave us? Right? It leaves us with
Speaker 1: the question still, where is Debbie Spickler? What happened to her?
Speaker 1: Is she alive? And I'm leaning towards it's possible that
Speaker 1: she could be alive somewhere. Despite the decades Debbie Spickler's
Speaker 1: case has been grouped with the other missing girl cases,
Speaker 1: I feel confident in saying there is no connection I
Speaker 1: can find linking her case to the others in any way.
Speaker 1: For now, I'm shifting my focus back on the other
Speaker 1: young girls. I'd recently come into possession of a case
Speaker 1: summary detailing Lisa White's disappearance. Lisa is the thirteen year
Speaker 1: old girl who went missing in ninety four while presumably
Speaker 1: hitch making home from a friend, Maria Scrosshouse, just a
Speaker 1: block from where Bob and Susan LaRosa lived in Vernon Rockville.
Speaker 1: Former Vernon Police Department detective Don Skews was the cop
Speaker 1: who took over Lesa's case and moved the needle. I
Speaker 1: think farther than anyone, mainly because Don came at Lesa's
Speaker 1: case from outside the box. Everybody back then it seemed
Speaker 1: to take it as more of a runaway. They didn't
Speaker 1: seem to take it seriously right away. Eventually, Don was
Speaker 1: twenty five when his career began with the Vernon p D,
Speaker 1: fourteen years after Lisa White went missing. Like most sizeable
Speaker 1: police departments, a detective at the Vernon p D would
Speaker 1: work active cases, but would also be assigned a cold
Speaker 1: case to work on when time permits. A short time
Speaker 1: after joining the detective's unit, Don picked up Lisa's case.
Speaker 1: It was what's called negative reporting. So if they did
Speaker 1: if there was a tip and there was a follow up.
Speaker 1: If it didn't produce any information, they didn't document at Jesus,
Speaker 1: or they would do so little you really wouldn't know
Speaker 1: what was done. So in the beginning it was hard
Speaker 1: because it was hard telling who they actually talked to
Speaker 1: and who they did. So we did went out. If
Speaker 1: you recall, Lisa White was hurrying to get home on
Speaker 1: the evening she disappeared because she was grounded from the
Speaker 1: night before when she and her best friend went joy
Speaker 1: riding with several older guys near the Massachusetts border. At
Speaker 1: first it was reported there were two older boys, but
Speaker 1: it was actually four older boys. It was Halloween and
Speaker 1: they were all taken into police custody after getting caught
Speaker 1: tossing pumpkins out of the car window. As you begin
Speaker 1: to look into it over the years, does anything begin
Speaker 1: to seem weird to you about it? Well, we started
Speaker 1: when we started looking at a lot of looked the same.
Speaker 1: So we started looking at it, is this more than
Speaker 1: one person? Was this like you know somebody that was
Speaker 1: doing this in the area, you know, abducting you children
Speaker 1: at age or around that age. Um, you know, we
Speaker 1: had Jana's pocket was missing at the time to respect.
Speaker 1: So those were all kind of the same times, you know,
Speaker 1: around the same area the same time Paul vern So
Speaker 1: we just kind of started looking at trying to connect him.
Speaker 1: So we started working. I started working with the state
Speaker 1: police UM, trying to compare notes with them and see
Speaker 1: if there was anything they had we missed or anything
Speaker 1: I had that they missed. No, there was a few
Speaker 1: names they had, but they had already they already looked
Speaker 1: at them. UM. A couple of the names I think
Speaker 1: came up again we re interviewed UM and then some
Speaker 1: of the names that came up were suspects were now deceased.
Speaker 1: After forty something years, you can imagine the number of
Speaker 1: tips the Vernon p D has received about Lisa's case.
Speaker 1: I've chased many of them myself, most of which aren't
Speaker 1: worth discussing, but a few have always stuck with me.
Speaker 1: For instance, just days after Lisa went missing, police spoke
Speaker 1: with a neighbor. Two of the older boys lived next
Speaker 1: door to. The neighbor said quote heard a girl screaming
Speaker 1: and pounding on the walls inside the apartment an our
Speaker 1: before cops arrived looking for Lisa, thinking she had run away.
Speaker 1: When police interviewed the males. Both denied knowing where Lisa
Speaker 1: was or what happened to her. Another witness statement I
Speaker 1: read involved the trucker and his son traveling through Rockville
Speaker 1: on the night Lisa went missing, around the same time
Speaker 1: she was presumably thumbing a ride home. The father and
Speaker 1: son claimed to have picked up a girl and described
Speaker 1: the Lisa to a t near the seven eleven, up
Speaker 1: the street from Lisa's friend's house. They said they gave
Speaker 1: the girl a ride to the Vernon, Manchester, Connecticut town line,
Speaker 1: which was called Vernon Circle at the time, and claimed
Speaker 1: to have dropped her off there before they continued onto
Speaker 1: the interstate. I have never heard of law enforcement ever
Speaker 1: following up on this, but I have learned, according to
Speaker 1: these new documents, that Lisa's mother gave police the name
Speaker 1: of an older kid Lisa was apparently dating from Manchester, Connecticut.
Speaker 1: Was what she just happened to get a ride with
Speaker 1: somebody she trusted and felt was safe at the time,
Speaker 1: and obviously it wasn't at the time. There was that
Speaker 1: had happened. I don't think we don't know what there
Speaker 1: was a you know, it didn't seem to be any struggle.
Speaker 1: Didn't seem like there was anybody that felt there was
Speaker 1: you know that there was something more violent had happened.
Speaker 1: At one point, there was a tip that Lisa was
Speaker 1: living at Snipsick Lake, about a mile away from where
Speaker 1: Lisa went missing. It's interesting because I read about a
Speaker 1: tip with regards to a woman who said she recalled
Speaker 1: hearing a young girl running down the street yelling he's
Speaker 1: going to kill me. This was the middle of November,
Speaker 1: nine weeks after Lisa went missing. When that woman looked
Speaker 1: out her window after hearing a female screaming, she said
Speaker 1: she saw a van following a girl who looked strikingly
Speaker 1: similar to Lisa White. One unmistakable fact in the police
Speaker 1: documents was that a friend of Lisa's reported seeing her
Speaker 1: leaving Maria scross house, walking east and up to a
Speaker 1: center of town, which is the opposite direction Maria thought
Speaker 1: Lisa had gone. That friend also said Lisa was very
Speaker 1: upset and crying about what had happened the previous night.
Speaker 1: So I asked Don what he and his colleagues, fresh
Speaker 1: eyes and minds on the case all those years later,
Speaker 1: concluded happened to Lisa. In my theory, I think she
Speaker 1: got into a car with somebody she thought she knew
Speaker 1: well or knew him from the from the town, and
Speaker 1: I thought he was safe or she was safe. I
Speaker 1: can't say it's he. We don't know you know which
Speaker 1: one it would be. This is why for me it's
Speaker 1: so vital to talk to law enforcement who been on
Speaker 1: the job for years. We tend to assume in female
Speaker 1: abduction cases that a male is behind the abduction, but
Speaker 1: males will sometimes use females as bait to lure an
Speaker 1: abduct young women. Don scenario would fit into that dynamic.
Speaker 1: All those girls hitchhiked back then. Everybody it was safe
Speaker 1: back then to do that sort of thing, at least
Speaker 1: they thought it was the fact that the ablar Rossa
Speaker 1: lived down the street from literally where she went missing
Speaker 1: mean anything to you, guys. I think we considered it,
Speaker 1: but we didn't look too much into that. I think
Speaker 1: that one we kind of almost, in my opinion, might
Speaker 1: have been separated a little bit, just because we kind
Speaker 1: of knew what he did. That one was about. By
Speaker 1: that one, Don means Susan Larosa's murder. Not only did
Speaker 1: the Vernon p D always view Bob LaRosa as the
Speaker 1: number one and only suspect for his wife's murder. They
Speaker 1: considered him for the other cases as well. Let me
Speaker 1: ask you a question that's come up for me in this.
Speaker 1: Do you remember ever hearing the name Irene LaRosa as
Speaker 1: someone who was missing. No, that doesn't doesn't sound familiar
Speaker 1: to me. I explained what I knew about Irene's case.
Speaker 1: So I mean, as a cop in Vernon working with
Speaker 1: the state police, that case would have been folded in there,
Speaker 1: I would assume, especially with the timeline is to be
Speaker 1: in the last name right, Irene is Bob's sister, So
Speaker 1: you guys would have definitely been interested in Bob Moore
Speaker 1: for having a sister and a wife who witness Absolutely
Speaker 1: something else to think about. Why did Bob Lorossa never
Speaker 1: mentioned to police after Susan went missing that he had
Speaker 1: a sister who had vanished four years before. I would
Speaker 1: think any husband in the same position would consider that
Speaker 1: an important piece of information and essential to perhaps finding
Speaker 1: his wife first again, first time, everything or anything about that.
Speaker 1: And we worked, I mean I worked in the Lori's
Speaker 1: case for the other detectives, and I don't I think
Speaker 1: we would have tied that in if we had heard it,
Speaker 1: I refocused on on Lisa White and what else he
Speaker 1: could tell me about recent developments in our case. I
Speaker 1: knew there had been searches for her within the past
Speaker 1: two decades. Was it Lisa's case? Where there were a
Speaker 1: couple of dogs searches? Yes? And where were they? We did? Um?
Speaker 1: We did one up in Henry Park just before Henry
Speaker 1: Park is where Debbie Spickler went missing in nine. That
Speaker 1: searched for Lisa with cadaver dogs took place shortly before
Speaker 1: Don retired in two thousand twelve, So we did a
Speaker 1: dog We did a dog search up there. We had
Speaker 1: a couple of minor hits, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Speaker 1: We pretty much anything. We took any tip and took
Speaker 1: it seriously. It didn't matter who it came from, because
Speaker 1: we just wanted to resolve the case. Do you know
Speaker 1: if anybody ever searched over by where the Rosa girl
Speaker 1: was found for Lisa or Janice or any other girls.
Speaker 1: Did they ever to bring dogs over there? Not that
Speaker 1: I'm aware of. UM. I don't know if they look
Speaker 1: for other girls over there or not when that happened.
Speaker 1: I'm actually in the process of setting up my own
Speaker 1: canine search for this area. I've asked the state police
Speaker 1: about doing it, as have the Wendells and victims families,
Speaker 1: and have never gotten a response. To me, it seems
Speaker 1: like the obvious next step in location to conduct a
Speaker 1: cadaver search. I never like to question what law enforcement
Speaker 1: has done in the case, because I'm not in their shoes,
Speaker 1: but this just is like the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: Don has this indelible sense of connection to Lisa White's case.
Speaker 1: It still bothers the guy to this day that he
Speaker 1: was unable to do more. I see it on his face,
Speaker 1: and as we talked further, Don's demeanor changed. I could
Speaker 1: tell talking about all of this struck at the core
Speaker 1: of his compassion for all of these victims and their families.
Speaker 1: I mean, we always just wish that one piece of
Speaker 1: solid piece of information that gave us what we needed,
Speaker 1: um not only for for for Lisa, but for all
Speaker 1: the girls, that we could have resolved at all and
Speaker 1: just you know, put this to rest for everybody. But
Speaker 1: nobody that just it was one of It just seems
Speaker 1: like there's no witnesses. So whoever whoever did this, either
Speaker 1: it was really good at what they did or they knew,
Speaker 1: They at least knew in my case, they knew Lisa
Speaker 1: because small I understand she was pretty spicy. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't think she would have just cooperated if and getting
Speaker 1: into car she didn't want to get into, so, you know,
Speaker 1: leads me to believe she probably knew the person. According
Speaker 1: to police documents, in one Lisa's mother, Judy Kelly, filed
Speaker 1: a claim for life insurance. Judy was desperately seeking any
Speaker 1: type of closure. A year later, the Connecticut State Police
Speaker 1: released its conclusions in the Lisa White case, noting, based
Speaker 1: on the information is the state's opinion that this victim
Speaker 1: is not alive and her death occurred a short time
Speaker 1: after she disappeared, after she accepted a ride with an
Speaker 1: unknown person and may have met violence as she walked
Speaker 1: towards the center of Rockville. It's really destroyed my life
Speaker 1: because there's not a data goes by. Even though that
Speaker 1: I don't think about it. That was one of only
Speaker 1: a few recordings we have left Judy Kelly talking about
Speaker 1: the pain of not knowing. I'm sure someone took her
Speaker 1: room and killed her right then. I just would like
Speaker 1: to know where she is. Judy was an inspiration to
Speaker 1: so many children throughout the years in the Tri Town area,
Speaker 1: not only because of her determination to find her missing child,
Speaker 1: but the fact that so many children went through her
Speaker 1: dance studio and got to know her personally. I'd stop
Speaker 1: by to talk with her other daughter, April, one early
Speaker 1: fall afternoon. I didn't expect her to do what I
Speaker 1: was about to ask, because I know the pain in
Speaker 1: anguish April has been through. And yet within all that
Speaker 1: pain and suffering, I found April, a single mother who
Speaker 1: still operates her mom's dance studio and her family's honor,
Speaker 1: to be one of the strongest people I know. No
Speaker 1: matter what is thrown at her, a leaky roof inside
Speaker 1: the studio, a downturn in student enrollment, a freaking bomb
Speaker 1: scare at a recital, she figures out a way to survive.
Speaker 1: So I put my request out there. You know, I
Speaker 1: figured Judy could have a voice through you, because these
Speaker 1: are her writings from her from her diaries. So if
Speaker 1: you want to read some of that, go ahead. Then
Speaker 1: my mother says, if I only get a second chance,
Speaker 1: I'll let her see how much I love her. Another
Speaker 1: thing people constantly say to me is, don't worry she'll
Speaker 1: come back. Maybe they think that it will make you
Speaker 1: feel better, but it doesn't. Everybody needs time to grieve
Speaker 1: so they can go on. But we don't know what
Speaker 1: happened to Lisa. We're not allowed to do it. Somehow
Speaker 1: we crawled through Christmas. Lisa's presence lay there unopened. We
Speaker 1: existed through March. I was completely disillusioned by the local police.
Speaker 1: Every day is like being lost and Nimbo, I pray
Speaker 1: every day that we find Lisa so we can go on.
Speaker 1: In March two thousand thirteen, in Vernon off Reagan Road,
Speaker 1: where Lisa White lived, in the specific location where Lisa
Speaker 1: and her friends used to have keg parties, bomb fires,
Speaker 1: and hang out, an art student was trudging through those
Speaker 1: woods looking for scrap metal to turn into a sculpture,
Speaker 1: and he stumbled upon human remains. It was the skull
Speaker 1: of a young female. In the next episode of paper Ghosts,
Speaker 1: I just had a gut feeling that it was my sister,
Speaker 1: and um alls I wanted was at that point closure
Speaker 1: for myself isure from my mom. It was like a
Speaker 1: knife in my heart when we found out they asked
Speaker 1: him the same questions in so many different ways to
Speaker 1: see if you mess up, you know, and stuff. But
Speaker 1: he really stuck too. They couldn't get anything at it,
Speaker 1: like not a thing. If another little girl on a
Speaker 1: bicycle disappeared thirty days after the pocket case, within five
Speaker 1: miles of the Pocket house, would you think if you
Speaker 1: could solve one, you'd probably solve them both. Absolutely that happened.
Speaker 1: You don't know that, I do you. Paper Ghosts is
Speaker 1: written and executive produced by me and William Phelps, with
Speaker 1: help from producer Christine Everett and sound editing by Pete
Speaker 1: Cardy from back Room Audio. A special thanks to Abu
Speaker 1: Safar and Will Pearson from My Heart Radio. The series
Speaker 1: theme number four four two is written and performed by
Speaker 1: Tom Mooney and Thomas Phelps. For more podcasts for My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M