Speaker 1: My name is m Williams Phelps. This is Paper Ghosts,
Speaker 1: a Season one update. It's been more than a year
Speaker 1: since Season one of Paper Ghosts aired, and whether it
Speaker 1: be a text or tweet, or even just a drive
Speaker 1: around my own neighborhood, not a day goes by that
Speaker 1: I still don't think about the young girls and women
Speaker 1: who went missing in my hometown so many years ago.
Speaker 1: Like any cold case investigation, the work never stops. Season
Speaker 1: one may have come to an end, but the scores
Speaker 1: of tips and queries I've received an email, social media messages,
Speaker 1: and phone calls have only continued, not only to me,
Speaker 1: but also to the Vernon, Connecticut Police Department and talland County,
Speaker 1: Connecticut States Attorney's Office responsible for investigating the cases of
Speaker 1: Janice Pocket, Lisa White, Debbie Spickler, Susan LaRosa, and Irene LaRosa.
Speaker 1: I thought it was time for an update on what's
Speaker 1: happened since the last episode air, talk about where things
Speaker 1: currently stand, discussed the tips that have come in, and
Speaker 1: respond to some of the unanswered questions the reinvestigation raised.
Speaker 1: The first person I knew I wanted to speak with
Speaker 1: was the man who oversaw a lot of the investigative
Speaker 1: work in several of the cases, and whose voice can
Speaker 1: be heard throughout much of season one, Lieutenant Bill Meyer.
Speaker 1: After many years working with the Vernon Police, several of
Speaker 1: which were spent heading up the Major Crimes Unit. Bill
Speaker 1: has since retired from his life in law enforcement, but
Speaker 1: the man can't stay away from his work. He maintains
Speaker 1: a close relationship with his old department, a proximity that
Speaker 1: has provided him with information and updates on his former cases. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, since the podcast is aired, what's happened with
Speaker 1: the Vernon Police Department in these cases? Bill? The podcast
Speaker 1: has generated a lot of interest. Again, in the case,
Speaker 1: we've received dozens of tips, uh and and we're following
Speaker 1: up working jointly with the State Police in the States
Speaker 1: Attorney's Office? Has the podcast helped in regard to pushing
Speaker 1: the case forward? Moving the needle? The wide publicity across
Speaker 1: the country certainly helps because we don't know who has
Speaker 1: the information that we need and they could live anywhere.
Speaker 1: In reaching such a broad audience has been very helpful
Speaker 1: for investigators not working these cases. I'd like to say
Speaker 1: that a smoking gun tip came in and resolved one
Speaker 1: or more of the cases. But of course that is
Speaker 1: not how cold case investigation unfolds. The fact is this
Speaker 1: is a time consuming process, more than most people can understand.
Speaker 1: It's a hurry up and weight scenario that plagues so
Speaker 1: many of these cases, which I have run into time
Speaker 1: and again. I personally can only move things so far.
Speaker 1: Then it's up to law enforcement, and law enforcement has
Speaker 1: contemporary priorities and budget restrictions prohibiting them from dedicating any
Speaker 1: serious time or person power to these older cases. I
Speaker 1: asked Bill what he thought was going to happen next.
Speaker 1: He gave me the stock reply, we don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: these girls advantage without a trace, and we've been working
Speaker 1: since they disappeared to try and find them, and we're
Speaker 1: looking for answers. What else can the guys say? Really,
Speaker 1: what I can report is that the Conecticut State Police
Speaker 1: did make a big push to investigate the Crystal Lake
Speaker 1: areas I focused on in the podcast, after hearing about
Speaker 1: the canine search featured in the show. The state Police
Speaker 1: brought in their own dogs and conducted a search of
Speaker 1: their own. They marked several areas of interest. They made
Speaker 1: their presence known. They had the Wendells, the couple who
Speaker 1: owns the property where the searches took place, believing they
Speaker 1: were interested in results. Yet after the final podcast episode air,
Speaker 1: the State Police disappeared once again stopped returning calls. And
Speaker 1: I am not saying this to diss them in any way.
Speaker 1: This is a fact. It's what happened. The Window family,
Speaker 1: who were also featured in season one, were extremely disappointed.
Speaker 1: They wanted to see some sort of action based on
Speaker 1: where the State Police canines and my canines hit. The
Speaker 1: State Police even told them they were going to bring
Speaker 1: in ground penetrating radar to take a closer look underground. Sadly,
Speaker 1: they did nothing, So once again I decided to do
Speaker 1: the work myself. It's Peter hy right, let's see you.
Speaker 1: Ground penetrating radar, or GPR, as it's more commonly called.
Speaker 1: It's a nondestructive way to search underground and detect buried
Speaker 1: or hidden remains. It is a fairly precise scientific way
Speaker 1: of searching underground without digging holes and spending days, even
Speaker 1: weeks sifting through dirt and rocks like an archaeologist hoping
Speaker 1: to find fragments of a body. The idea is to
Speaker 1: detect what are called subsurface caves in the underground landscape
Speaker 1: using radiograms to penetrate the earth. As crime scene expert
Speaker 1: Peter Valentin explained to me, cold case investigation or reinvestigating
Speaker 1: cases that seem to have run their course, is tedious work.
Speaker 1: But there are tasks that can be done with these
Speaker 1: cold cases. And you know this better than anybody. If
Speaker 1: you assume that what the initial investigators did was correct,
Speaker 1: you're gonna wind up at the same dead end they
Speaker 1: did right, And so you have to go back and
Speaker 1: reread everything and see what's wrong with it, or to
Speaker 1: you know, reinterview those people and listen for what never
Speaker 1: made it into the reports the first six times they
Speaker 1: were written, and also to reinterview people. Peter is an
Speaker 1: old friend. He's had a distinguished career with the Connecticut
Speaker 1: State Police and retired in two thousand eleven as a
Speaker 1: detective from the Major Crime Squad. His work encompassed homicide,
Speaker 1: suspicious death, and major crime scene investigations. He was a
Speaker 1: member of Connecticut's elite Urban Search and Rescue team, which
Speaker 1: means he'd had extensive training in detecting criminal activity at
Speaker 1: a major disaster, and has functioned as a rescue specialist
Speaker 1: focused on saving injured and trapped to victims. Peter now
Speaker 1: teaches at the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice
Speaker 1: and Forensic Sciences at the University of New Haven. After
Speaker 1: listening to season one, it was Peter's colleague Dr Claire Glenn,
Speaker 1: who I have also known for many years, who offered
Speaker 1: up the institute's ground penetrating radar as a way for
Speaker 1: us to search the Wendell property. So one day were
Speaker 1: the summer, we all met up at the Wendell property.
Speaker 1: So this stuff looks pretty basic. Uh, the equipment, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's old school, but it's definitely you know what it is.
Speaker 1: It's just there's a limit to what you can do.
Speaker 1: When you're looking into the ground. It's kind of difficult,
Speaker 1: and reading it must be difficult. Yeah, that's actually so.
Speaker 1: I was actually practicing yesterday in my neighborhood and just
Speaker 1: looking at things making sure that I'm reading that the
Speaker 1: right way. Does it work like a like say, a
Speaker 1: fish finder, same same idea cruder than that? Really? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: wait till you see the the energies, You'll see it's
Speaker 1: just what the hell is that good? I don't know.
Speaker 1: And then you take it back to the lab and
Speaker 1: you look at it. So, yeah, what I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: is I'm gonna take pictures of it. We're gonna market
Speaker 1: if if it's something really good, we can market if
Speaker 1: we need to. But I think since it's so localized,
Speaker 1: what you have there is good enough. Based on where
Speaker 1: the canines I arranged to come up in showed the
Speaker 1: most interest. There are two main areas were focused on.
Speaker 1: Checking out near that a frame well and the flower
Speaker 1: memorial I mentioned in season one. Starting at the well,
Speaker 1: there's a large piece of rock directly behind it where
Speaker 1: the dogs hit it juts out into a ledge. Think
Speaker 1: of Volkswagen sized boulder that we're thinking is actually the
Speaker 1: tip of a larger boulder buried under ground. I watch
Speaker 1: as Peter begins tracing a pattern with the GPR equipment
Speaker 1: north to south, east to west, working towards the place
Speaker 1: marker where the dogs hit on. I mean, so you're
Speaker 1: just running that over the ground like you're cutting the lawn,
Speaker 1: but very very very slowly. And as you can see
Speaker 1: with each pass, you see how yeah there's a change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it gives you the depth approximate FET so you're
Speaker 1: closer to year should see the ledge, right, they're looking
Speaker 1: at that right there. See that's constant from two to five,
Speaker 1: from half to five. How deep is a resolution? But uh,
Speaker 1: where we are right now, probably twelve feet. Most bodies
Speaker 1: are not buried more than eighteen inches underground a killer
Speaker 1: and in these cases we're talking about a hasty type
Speaker 1: of burial. If there are bodies near Crystal Lake, is
Speaker 1: not going to dig a two, three or six ft
Speaker 1: grave to bury a body. That only happens in the movies. Therefore,
Speaker 1: GPR can be a highly effective tool to search a
Speaker 1: wide area underground and determine the best spots Fenny to
Speaker 1: perform an excavation. The average body is no more than
Speaker 1: eighteen inches. No one's taking six f I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: if I didn't even make a bad joke about Connecticut,
Speaker 1: you don't even go that far because you're just constantly
Speaker 1: hitting fieldstone. So what ends up happening is it's six
Speaker 1: inches below the ground and you just have field stone
Speaker 1: all over the top of them. Peter outlines the reality
Speaker 1: of all this that we are basically looking for a
Speaker 1: needle in a haystack out here, And as we discussed
Speaker 1: it further, Peter mentions that if the a frame well,
Speaker 1: which is where the original tip from the witness was centered,
Speaker 1: is now cemented all the way down. The most likely
Speaker 1: scenario is that a body could have been buried under
Speaker 1: that cement, if it was placed there at all, or
Speaker 1: has just washed away. Just as we're ready to move on,
Speaker 1: Peter's attention is drawn to an image on the screen.
Speaker 1: All I'm seeing something at about two ft You see
Speaker 1: that right there here, right, So that's that's the depth
Speaker 1: we're interested in. Let's get back to it there, you're
Speaker 1: right right there. Okay, that looks like a cylindrical object
Speaker 1: that I'm right over the top of. It's most likely
Speaker 1: a route. And as these cases have gone for me
Speaker 1: over the past fifteen years. Now, just as a mild
Speaker 1: pang of excitement builds, it is quickly quashed by reality.
Speaker 1: Peter is content and telling me that he has thoroughly
Speaker 1: radar the area A few times I might add and that, well,
Speaker 1: I'll let him explain. Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable here that
Speaker 1: there's nothing in this area to be concerned about. So
Speaker 1: he's had We have water, table, we have ledge, we
Speaker 1: have roots, but we have no bodies. Good body parts,
Speaker 1: if they are, they're scattered. You said that you would
Speaker 1: you would see something localized with a shape to it,
Speaker 1: and that's not here. There's nothing in this area. So
Speaker 1: that's an answer. Not finding anything is indeed an answer,
Speaker 1: not the one we want, but it's an answer. Nonetheless.
Speaker 1: If you recall from the final episode of season one,
Speaker 1: the Connecticut State Police decided to bring out their own
Speaker 1: search dogs to give the appearance of working on the
Speaker 1: case and not to be outdone by some investigative journalist dude,
Speaker 1: as if this is some sort of competition. And look,
Speaker 1: I get it, the state police have to be political
Speaker 1: and at least make it seem like they are working
Speaker 1: on the cases. But in my world, it's frustrating as
Speaker 1: all hell, just like how my emails informing the current
Speaker 1: lead detective of what Peter and I were doing out
Speaker 1: here have been completely ignored. I mean, look, I'm in
Speaker 1: this for the same outcome because, honestly, save her a
Speaker 1: complete omission, there cannot be any arrest made in any
Speaker 1: of these cases. There is zero evidence. The conclusion, if possible,
Speaker 1: is finding one of the girls and bringing her home.
Speaker 1: So for me, all the state police nonsense is just noise.
Speaker 1: We could work together, but ego in power and control
Speaker 1: get in the way of that. Back to Crystal Lake,
Speaker 1: Peter and I, along with Dr. Claire Glenn and property
Speaker 1: owner Ken Wendell, move over to where the Connecticut State
Speaker 1: Police canines hit an area of flat land. I'd say
Speaker 1: about fifty feet from the area my dog's hit on,
Speaker 1: so it's not too far. And as Peter gets going,
Speaker 1: running is contraption over the forest bed. As he is
Speaker 1: buffing a wax floor, things get somewhat exciting as he
Speaker 1: begins to see something very interesting. So this next area
Speaker 1: here is where the State Police dogs hit and it's
Speaker 1: marked and I don't know, there's definitely something that what's
Speaker 1: under here again, we don't know. That's where the doors alerted.
Speaker 1: You see all that. So there's there's, there's, there's all
Speaker 1: kinds of activity there. It's like an opening down there somewhere.
Speaker 1: And this is different too, This isn't that's an anomaly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Peter is definitely seeing something he has not seen all day,
Speaker 1: and it interests him greatly. I've not seen this type
Speaker 1: of concerned or concentrated focus on his face. But do
Speaker 1: you see how they're the one that wasn't a great
Speaker 1: feet is gone? Yeah, right, there's something here. Now it's
Speaker 1: not so well, bring this back over here. There it is.
Speaker 1: What Peter means is that he runs the GPR over
Speaker 1: the area. An object underground, long and cylindrical, becomes clear
Speaker 1: and then disappears as he runs the machine over it
Speaker 1: a different way. Boom, there it is again, about a
Speaker 1: foot long. We don't say it, but looking at it,
Speaker 1: one could draw the conclusion this is a femur bump.
Speaker 1: It has that same shape our ground and said, right
Speaker 1: over there's bodies and car. After talking about it, we
Speaker 1: decided to dig. There's a nervous energy among us. None
Speaker 1: of us expect to find anything, but you just never know.
Speaker 1: And it's all. It wasn't just roots. Ken Wendell continues digging,
Speaker 1: and as he meanders the shovel over thick and long roots,
Speaker 1: he comes across a rather long, skinny rock and Peter
Speaker 1: makes an observation, I mean that's what I was seeing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, good, you can actually hear Ken hit a
Speaker 1: rock here, That's what I was seeing. Keep working towards this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I don't think you need to go much
Speaker 1: further than that. And so what has been a common
Speaker 1: theme for the past twelve years as I investigated these
Speaker 1: cases continues. What it first seemed promising like maybe a
Speaker 1: break leading somewhere turns into another stone blocking a path.
Speaker 1: We searched several more areas, including the so called bunker
Speaker 1: area near where the Irene LaRosa Flower Memorial is located,
Speaker 1: an area the search dogs were not interested in, and
Speaker 1: we found absolutely nothing. I am disappointed, yet in some
Speaker 1: respects I am happy to report that, after all we
Speaker 1: did on the Wendell property and across the street closer
Speaker 1: to the LaRosa property, I do not believe any of
Speaker 1: the girls are in this area, and if they were
Speaker 1: at one time, fifty years has taken that prospect away.
Speaker 1: I thought i'd end this update with the conversational Q
Speaker 1: and A, facilitated by my executive producer, Christina Everett, who
Speaker 1: is the wizard behind the curtain really with all things
Speaker 1: paper Ghosts and my new weekly true crime podcast, Crossing
Speaker 1: the Line with Them William Phelps. Christina was instrumental in
Speaker 1: keeping me in check and keeping me on track during
Speaker 1: season one and played the same role in season two,
Speaker 1: which you might have heard her on Thanks. So I'm
Speaker 1: excited to be here and to be able to talk
Speaker 1: to you about you know, what happened behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of Paper Ghosts. And We've gotten a lot of feedback
Speaker 1: and emails, and I'd love to talk to you know
Speaker 1: specifically about you know, what's the general consensus of the
Speaker 1: tips that you receive. Well, the tips I feel are legit.
Speaker 1: The problem is time someone will tell me that forty
Speaker 1: five years ago a man with a similar description to
Speaker 1: those in the podcast pulled over a similar vehicle and
Speaker 1: tried to abduct me. The other popular tip sadly my
Speaker 1: father lived in the area and molested me and other
Speaker 1: kids in the neighborhood. I mean, this is horrible. I
Speaker 1: I feel for these people, but there's really not much
Speaker 1: I can do with that information. All of these men
Speaker 1: are dead, and with a fifty year old potential abduction tip,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to go on along those lines. Didn't you
Speaker 1: get a solid tip though about Bob Larrossa. Boy? Did
Speaker 1: I ever? A former cop? He's working in the Rockville
Speaker 1: near the LaRosa home. On the evening Susan LaRosa went missing.
Speaker 1: He contacts me and I quote from seventy n I
Speaker 1: was a Vernon police officer. I knew Bob lar Rosa
Speaker 1: on the day that Bob's wife, Susan went missing. I
Speaker 1: was assigned the police department's portable number one beat, which
Speaker 1: was foot patrol in the Rockville section of town. It
Speaker 1: was some time after five pm that day. This source
Speaker 1: goes on to explain to me it wasn't even dark
Speaker 1: out yet. He says he's walking near the old water
Speaker 1: Fountain in the rock Fill section, which is a five
Speaker 1: minute walk from the Larrosso apartment. Bob LaRosa approaches him.
Speaker 1: Bob appeared very upset, acting nervous, quote almost in panic mode.
Speaker 1: Bob said he wanted to report his wife missing, further
Speaker 1: stating she had gone to the store earlier and hasn't
Speaker 1: returned home yet. My source says I then told Bobby
Speaker 1: he'd have to wait twenty four hours before he could
Speaker 1: make an official missing person report. I can't recall his response,
Speaker 1: but it always bothered me the way he acted that day,
Speaker 1: more nervous that maybe he knew where Susan was. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about this, and it's like, so Susan goes
Speaker 1: out to the store, she doesn't come back for an
Speaker 1: hour or so, and Bob's already wanting to report her missing.
Speaker 1: That's strange to me. Yeah, well, what about our other
Speaker 1: man in question, the witness. Did you get any other
Speaker 1: additional information or tips about him? I did get some
Speaker 1: bonus information, if you will, about the witness. Someone close
Speaker 1: to the witness told me about a day when the
Speaker 1: witness he just up and left town without telling anyone.
Speaker 1: Here's what my source said. Quote Suddenly, without warning or
Speaker 1: any sort of announcement, he was gone. No one in
Speaker 1: the family knew where he went or why he left.
Speaker 1: The sudden exit from town baffled everyone who knew them
Speaker 1: end quote. So the witness's disappearance was a mystery to
Speaker 1: those he was closest to. And it's right after the
Speaker 1: witness's departure from town that my source here quote began
Speaker 1: hearing family members make comments about Susan and Bob the Rosa,
Speaker 1: and he recalls one of the family members saying something
Speaker 1: about the witness quote probably had something to do with
Speaker 1: that LaRosa woman. I mean. And it's things like this
Speaker 1: that I wish we were able to include in the show,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it was a matter of timing or you know,
Speaker 1: not being able to firm up enough sources to include it.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad we can address that now. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: This source also told me that Bob LaRosa and the
Speaker 1: witness were quote tied to the hip. He remembers hearing
Speaker 1: from family that the two of them were the last
Speaker 1: to see some girl at a party in Rockville one night,
Speaker 1: and then she was missing. That's remarkable. And to clarify,
Speaker 1: you're not just saying this like based off of one
Speaker 1: single email. I mean, you really research every single tip
Speaker 1: that you get, and the things that you share are
Speaker 1: not just gossip. So are there any other tips that
Speaker 1: you received that we haven't touched on? You know? I
Speaker 1: I received other tips I think embrace a bit of
Speaker 1: validity within the scope of the cases too, but these
Speaker 1: tips require a lot more vetting and further investigation. I
Speaker 1: did also receive, you know, several psychic tips, which I
Speaker 1: do not sorry, place any relevance in the One thing
Speaker 1: I do want to say, and this is important to
Speaker 1: me here at this stage of the investigation, I'm just
Speaker 1: so sorry to all of those who have written in
Speaker 1: and were abused by a man in your life physically, sexually,
Speaker 1: or emotionally. I'm just so sorry this happened to you.
Speaker 1: I hear you. I am listening, and your voice is
Speaker 1: counted with me. It takes a lot to raise your
Speaker 1: hand and speak about this stuff, and I'm glad you
Speaker 1: did so. Shifting gears. Let's talk about the Connecticut State Police,
Speaker 1: you know, going back to our last episode and the
Speaker 1: work that you did with the search dogs and the
Speaker 1: local authorities did and didn't do. How has that gone
Speaker 1: with you? Have you heard anything from them. I've not
Speaker 1: heard a word from the State Police. They seem to
Speaker 1: think I don't know that we are in some sort
Speaker 1: of competition, or that I harbor resentments against them, or
Speaker 1: I'm holding back information, none of which is true. I
Speaker 1: emailed the lead detective in this case after Peter Valentine
Speaker 1: and Dr. Claire Glenn and Ken Wendell and myself went
Speaker 1: up in the woods to do the ground penetrating radar,
Speaker 1: and I shared with the detective Peter's findings and his thoughts,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Now this lead detective and Peter know each
Speaker 1: other very well, in fact that they work together. I
Speaker 1: never got a response, So that says a lot to me.
Speaker 1: My job has always been to report what I feel
Speaker 1: is worthy of reporting. I don't get in the State
Speaker 1: Police's way. I don't hold information from them and some
Speaker 1: people that you really don't hold information from our those
Speaker 1: closest to the victims, specifically the sisters we got married,
Speaker 1: Janna's Pocket sister, April Lisa White sister, and Terry Shanks
Speaker 1: Susan Leros's sister. You know, they were all huge parts
Speaker 1: of season one. All of their stories greatly affected listeners
Speaker 1: and myself included. You know, so have you talked to
Speaker 1: them recently? What can you tell listeners about them? And
Speaker 1: and really how has the podcast and the investigation affected
Speaker 1: each of them. Today I went back and forth a
Speaker 1: little bit with them about coming on this update episode,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think they made the right decision
Speaker 1: and just you know, letting it be. I mean, they
Speaker 1: don't have to keep revisiting this stuff. It's it's with
Speaker 1: them all day every day. To talk about it even
Speaker 1: more now, I think would just be uh overwhelming. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks for walking me through all of this. I know
Speaker 1: these are some burning questions that a lot of listeners had,
Speaker 1: so I'm glad we could take the time to address them.
Speaker 1: With all of that said, I want listeners to know
Speaker 1: that every email, phone, call, social media message regarding these cases,
Speaker 1: even if you do not hear back from me is read, considered,
Speaker 1: thoroughly vetted and checked out, and those tips or suggestions
Speaker 1: deemed potentially helpful to any of the cases are handed
Speaker 1: off to the right people in law enforcement. So please
Speaker 1: keep sending them in. No matter how insignificant you might think,
Speaker 1: the information you have is Every tip, no matter where
Speaker 1: it leads, is one step closer to a resolution to
Speaker 1: the families. I will continue to update the cases on
Speaker 1: an as needed basis, and please subscribe to Crossing the
Speaker 1: Line with m William Phelps. It's my new weekly podcast
Speaker 1: with I Heart Radio. Finally, I want to thank every listener.
Speaker 1: I am entirely humbled by your support of this podcast
Speaker 1: as well as my other weekly show, Crossing the Line.
Speaker 1: I have much more coming, so stay tuned. Paper Ghosts
Speaker 1: is written and executive produced by me Am William Phelps
Speaker 1: and I Heart executive producer Christina Everett. Audio editing and
Speaker 1: mixing by a booze Afar thanks to Will Pearson at
Speaker 1: I Heeart Radio. The series theme number four four two
Speaker 1: is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Mooney.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows,