Speaker 1: Paper Ghosts is a production of I Heart Radio. My
Speaker 1: search for information in the missing girls cases, along with
Speaker 1: the now confirmed murder of Susan LaRosa, is producing more
Speaker 1: results than it ever has in previous years. All of
Speaker 1: the cases have become like the five points of a star.
Speaker 1: No matter how I draw it, each point directs me
Speaker 1: right back to one of the others, And no matter
Speaker 1: how much I try to rule him out, each point
Speaker 1: draws a dotted line back to Bob LaRosa. The station
Speaker 1: wagon he drove that suddenly disappeared, the khaki shirt and
Speaker 1: pants uniform he always wore, his affinity for young girls,
Speaker 1: his abusive marriage. I need to shift my focus on him,
Speaker 1: to learn more about who he was in the life
Speaker 1: he lived. I can't say for certain he's directly involved
Speaker 1: in all the missing cases, but I get a sense
Speaker 1: there are far more nefarious secrets buried deep within his
Speaker 1: family that will help me find answers. Bob was one
Speaker 1: of ten children in the LaRosa household. His parents, Nunzio Senor,
Speaker 1: the father, and Memy the mother, were said to be
Speaker 1: unable to control or take care of such a large family.
Speaker 1: According to relatives, the couple lived in squalor and did
Speaker 1: not watch their children because of this. It was the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties when the States stepped in and separated
Speaker 1: all ten LaRosa kids, two of them staying locally with
Speaker 1: a foster family and eight of them sent to orphanages
Speaker 1: and foster care further away. At some point, Mammy LaRosa
Speaker 1: got the children back. The father, Nunzio Sr. Died in December.
Speaker 1: The LaRosa family inhabited an entire plot of land which
Speaker 1: held their main house and a camping trailer set up
Speaker 1: in the backyard. It was on Pine Street, just across
Speaker 1: the street from Crystal Lake, right on the border of
Speaker 1: the property belonging to the Wendells, the couple you heard
Speaker 1: back in episode one who are focused on digging up
Speaker 1: their water wells. In ninety two, all the LaRosa kids,
Speaker 1: mostly grown at this point, went their separate ways after
Speaker 1: the entire family moved out of their Crystal Lake home.
Speaker 1: The reason for their sudden departure I am almost certain
Speaker 1: at this point it has something to do with what
Speaker 1: happened the previous year. The Bob Larosa's sister previously on
Speaker 1: Paper Ghosts. She was like, I always thought it was
Speaker 1: an accident, and he just hit her. He hit her hard,
Speaker 1: and my mom just felt like totally just fell And
Speaker 1: I kept mommy, Mommy, wake up, Mommy, wake up, Mommy,
Speaker 1: wake up. And my mom wasn't wasn't moving, you know,
Speaker 1: like there was no twitching there was. My mom just
Speaker 1: didn't move. My dad was bad with me. My dad
Speaker 1: didn't stop touching because twelve, I know my dad Like
Speaker 1: young girls, what did you see when you went there
Speaker 1: the first time after she went missing? Describe what your
Speaker 1: blood on the floor, on the wall, on the door,
Speaker 1: down the stairs, big pool of it. She gave me
Speaker 1: a petty knife to clean it up. My name is
Speaker 1: and William Phelps. This is paper Ghosts, known to everyone
Speaker 1: as Rainy. Irene LaRosa was the eighth LaRosa child to
Speaker 1: be born. She had long brown hair feathered in wavy
Speaker 1: She was just over five ft tall pounds, seemingly happy
Speaker 1: and content. Ellington being a small town, it's no surprise
Speaker 1: to learn that and Prentice, one of Susan Lerosa's sisters,
Speaker 1: who you heard in the last episode, was best friends
Speaker 1: with Bob Lerosa's sister Irene. While growing up, Helena and
Speaker 1: I were best but we well, we loved the bus
Speaker 1: to schools and that was like a half our ride
Speaker 1: going to school and coming back, you know, we went.
Speaker 1: They had to travel quite away. And she loves singing
Speaker 1: and I love singing, and leaves to sing on the back.
Speaker 1: Just seventeen years old, Irene sang at the Crystal Lake
Speaker 1: Ballroom and around the Tritown area at local country and
Speaker 1: western bars. Everyone said she was very talented, smart as
Speaker 1: well with a little naivety, I would guess routed in rage.
Speaker 1: We used to talk about how um, as soon as
Speaker 1: she was ahead of me in school and she was
Speaker 1: going to as soon as graduation hit, she was going
Speaker 1: to go down to California and get a job and
Speaker 1: get everything all set up. So as soon as I graduated,
Speaker 1: I from joining us, and what what was her reason
Speaker 1: for doing this? To get away from all of the
Speaker 1: six Because we just couldn't spend it. The two of
Speaker 1: us used to go crazy with everything that was going on,
Speaker 1: and nothing ever seemed to get better, you know, you would,
Speaker 1: We just couldn't get out of what was happening because
Speaker 1: it was happening in our home. Um, she told me
Speaker 1: how she had been raped, and I told her all
Speaker 1: I had been, and so we kind of really connected.
Speaker 1: Let me stop you from minute she told you she
Speaker 1: was raped by whom by her brother, her brother um Nathan,
Speaker 1: Irene and Bob Lerossa's other brother, Nathan sometimes went by
Speaker 1: Nunzio or Jr. She was tired of it and I
Speaker 1: were tired of it, and she was going to graduate
Speaker 1: like that coming year when Irene suddenly stopped showing up
Speaker 1: and kept asking one of the Larossa brothers where she
Speaker 1: was after a week of not seeing her, and grew
Speaker 1: terribly concerned. I was told by her brother that she
Speaker 1: was gone, that she had run away, and in my mind,
Speaker 1: I just said, because I'll go like thirteen, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm going. Okay, Well, she had enough, she
Speaker 1: couldn't wait. She went down, and she's going to send
Speaker 1: for me. And I just kept waiting for her to
Speaker 1: send for me that it never happened, and began asking
Speaker 1: any one of the many laro U the siblings if
Speaker 1: they knew where Irene went or if they had heard
Speaker 1: anything from her. One of Irene's sisters would only say,
Speaker 1: I miss her, nothing more. It was as if she
Speaker 1: wanted to say something else but was afraid to, and
Speaker 1: then asked Irene's mother memory, and I tried talking to
Speaker 1: her about her, and she just said, that's she round,
Speaker 1: Why that's her? Nobody knows anything. So let's get this straight.
Speaker 1: A seventeen year old child runs away, is missing, or
Speaker 1: whatever the case may be, and her mother does nothing,
Speaker 1: files no police report, does not contact the newspapers, does
Speaker 1: not query around town, beg anyone and everyone she can
Speaker 1: for help. And the mom wasn't worried about going to
Speaker 1: look for her. No oblar Rosa, I've been told by
Speaker 1: some was the one who looked out for the others
Speaker 1: in the family. I have a difficult time believing this.
Speaker 1: Did Bob ever say anything about Rainey to you? No,
Speaker 1: she was never brought up. Ever. It's like she dropped
Speaker 1: off the face of the earth. And if you tried
Speaker 1: to say anything to them about her, they didn't like that.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing I know siblings of missing people. I
Speaker 1: have interviewed family members of the missing all over this country.
Speaker 1: I mean, look at Janice Pockets, Sister Lisa Whites, Susan Lerosis,
Speaker 1: all of whom you've heard in previous episodes. I have
Speaker 1: never ever met one sibling of a missing person who
Speaker 1: was not consumed with the idea of doing anything here
Speaker 1: she could define that person. There seemed to be things
Speaker 1: here within Irene's disappearance that are being kept hidden, buried,
Speaker 1: secrets beyond the incestuous behavior I need to uncover. So
Speaker 1: I dig deeper, start asking my law enforcement in LaRosa
Speaker 1: family contacts questions, and I learned that Irene l Rosa's
Speaker 1: disappearance was reported by a family member in two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: forty five years after she was last heard from her scene.
Speaker 1: Turns out Irene LaRosa is the missing girl the state
Speaker 1: police are searching for on the Window property across the
Speaker 1: street from Crystal Lake. Recently, at the Window's property, the
Speaker 1: police were acting on a tip that a body was
Speaker 1: buried in the area. I'm still trying to find out
Speaker 1: more about that tip, most importantly who left it. For now, however,
Speaker 1: I found the person who filed Irene's missing person report
Speaker 1: all these years later. Good Morning. Tina LaRosa is Irene
Speaker 1: Renie Larrosa's niece, and in two thousand sixteen, it was
Speaker 1: Tina who filed the missing person report on her aunt.
Speaker 1: As luck would have it, I was connected to Tina
Speaker 1: through Mary angle Breck, the sister of Jane's Pocket who
Speaker 1: you heard in episode one. The two initially met online
Speaker 1: and sparked up a friendship after bonding through similar tragedies.
Speaker 1: Since filing the report, Tina has been obsessed with pushing
Speaker 1: police to look at Irene l Rosa's case, but up
Speaker 1: until now she's not heard much from them. Tina is
Speaker 1: a former hospice worker in her late forties living in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: She has a presence about her, a determination. She's been
Speaker 1: on a crusade, very vocal and critical of state police's
Speaker 1: handling of her aunt's case, all of which she airs
Speaker 1: on Facebook. I have to be careful with Tina, and
Speaker 1: I've discussed my concerns with her because she is to
Speaker 1: publish certain sensitive information on social media. Part of it
Speaker 1: is the pain of loss, part of it the idea
Speaker 1: of not knowing. I get it. Not everyone appreciates Tina's
Speaker 1: way of doing things, but I'm interested in information, not optics.
Speaker 1: Tina and I met on a human July day across
Speaker 1: the street from Crystal Lake, in the area where the
Speaker 1: LaRosa family lived. Pine Tree. This is the only thing
Speaker 1: that still exists from their house is that big pine
Speaker 1: tree right there. The house she's talking about, is the
Speaker 1: former LaRosa property is still there from like the bricks
Speaker 1: from where the foundation sat, from the old house right
Speaker 1: here and all these bushes over here is where Nathan's
Speaker 1: camper would have sat, and it would have sat against
Speaker 1: the road, so the door would have been facing towards
Speaker 1: the wood. I have not been able to find any
Speaker 1: law enforcement paper trail connected to Irene Larosa's disappearance. I've
Speaker 1: asked all my sources. Nobody seems to know much about
Speaker 1: the case. When you told the police about this because
Speaker 1: you filed a miscent person was born, And what did
Speaker 1: they tell you when you filed with They didn't tell
Speaker 1: me much. They weren't very helpful, Um were they interested?
Speaker 1: In fourteen years after Irene Laros had disappeared, the Hartford
Speaker 1: Current wrote about it. That article reported that Irene left
Speaker 1: home when she was fifteen, returning for short periods of
Speaker 1: time and then leaving again, and that she was seeing
Speaker 1: a man named Bob who was a teacher and lived
Speaker 1: in a nearby town. He was nine years her senior.
Speaker 1: And then this friends told one of her sisters that
Speaker 1: Irene had a son. Her sister, however, was unable to
Speaker 1: confirm it. A source who married into the LaRosa A
Speaker 1: family has told me. After Irene went missing, there was
Speaker 1: talk that she was living ninety minutes south in Fairfield County,
Speaker 1: Connecticut and had a son. I have trouble believing this.
Speaker 1: I had my private investigator look into it. He found nothing.
Speaker 1: Law enforcement could not verify the information. So you have
Speaker 1: the and I'm going to say this kind of rudely,
Speaker 1: the more intelligent ones saying oh, she's missing, and then
Speaker 1: you have kind of grow the ones over here that
Speaker 1: are saying she's been We've seen her, We've heard from her.
Speaker 1: Irene could still be alive. She was a child, just
Speaker 1: seventeen and nineteen seventy one. If all I've heard about
Speaker 1: her being abused by her brother Nathan is true, there
Speaker 1: was just cause and very good reason for her to
Speaker 1: leave on her own. The article that I had the
Speaker 1: other day was about my aunt Vickie on how she
Speaker 1: disappeared at the age of seventeen and my memy certain
Speaker 1: us took the search dogs out after her went to court.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. She was seventeen years old
Speaker 1: and my memo went Helen furious on her. It was
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six, and one of Irene's older sisters, Vicky,
Speaker 1: also went missing. Their mother Memo sent out the troops
Speaker 1: when Vicky vanished, reaching out to reporters and not stopping
Speaker 1: until Vicky was found not long after. Apparently she tried
Speaker 1: to skip town because of some trouble she'd gotten into.
Speaker 1: But when Ny a couple of years later, goes nothing,
Speaker 1: According to Tina, there were no reporters, no search parties,
Speaker 1: no one concerned about Irene's disappearance. It was as if
Speaker 1: Irene never existed in the first place. Irene l Rosa's brother,
Speaker 1: Ruddy Larossa, was there in the thick of it all
Speaker 1: when Irene went missing in nineteen seventy one. Rudy is direct,
Speaker 1: sharp wooded, and strikes me as a guy who does
Speaker 1: not like to speculate or bullshit. It either is or
Speaker 1: it isn't. I immediately relate to Rudy in this regard.
Speaker 1: In recent years, when his daughter Tina began her own
Speaker 1: investigation into her aunt's disappearance, Rudy stepped up and, however
Speaker 1: begrudgingly decided to answer Tina's tough questions about the Larrossa
Speaker 1: family history, the good, the bad, and very ugly Rudy.
Speaker 1: Thank you Rudy for coming nice to meet man. After
Speaker 1: several requests, Rudy finally agreed to meet with me over
Speaker 1: the summer. As I take on a map of Crystal Lake,
Speaker 1: I notice he looks an awful lot like his brother's
Speaker 1: Bob and Nathan, just a bit older and greyer, with
Speaker 1: less hair. He has that pudgy, familiar LaRosa face. I says,
Speaker 1: this is about where our house was. The well was
Speaker 1: over here because we used to build a fort. We
Speaker 1: burnt it down a couple of three times or so.
Speaker 1: There are kids. We put a fire in here, too
Speaker 1: close to the wall. I've heard from a few sources
Speaker 1: there was a fort, or in one case, a bunker.
Speaker 1: Brothers Bob and Nathan LaRosa built something underground and hidden,
Speaker 1: very private, very isolated, accessible by only those who knew
Speaker 1: it was there. Now, working in true crime, when we
Speaker 1: hear the word bunker, as you might be thinking right now,
Speaker 1: we assumed dark evil activity, usually involving sick, sadistic sexual
Speaker 1: crimes committed against women. So I listened as Rudy explains
Speaker 1: exactly where the bunker was and begin to understand a
Speaker 1: few things I have been vague on up to this
Speaker 1: point just to submit is there and there's a cutout
Speaker 1: in the cement where they're because used to open the
Speaker 1: door and step in or whatever, because we used to
Speaker 1: go in that way and crawl to the to the
Speaker 1: back corner hatch on the floor that we built, and
Speaker 1: that's how we got into the fort, the only way in,
Speaker 1: the only way out. Rudy was closest to Bob and Irene.
Speaker 1: And Irene, he tells me, was their mother, Memy's slave child.
Speaker 1: My mother had her thumb on her she couldn't move,
Speaker 1: and my mother's do this, do that? Do this? Do that?
Speaker 1: As we chat about Memo and Irene, I begin to
Speaker 1: understand something important in Irene's case. The Rosa home sat
Speaker 1: on a rise, a big bay window in the small
Speaker 1: dining area overlooking Crystal Lake. In front of that window
Speaker 1: was a table and chair where an unkempt and severely
Speaker 1: obese Memy would sit and direct the household. According to Rudy,
Speaker 1: mem A squawked and screamed at the children and rarely
Speaker 1: left that chair. She seemed to have an infinity to
Speaker 1: Nathan in his needs. Think of the Cinderella story minus
Speaker 1: the step sisters, but with all the wickedness attached memory
Speaker 1: had chosen Irene as her Cinderella for some reason. I
Speaker 1: get the impression Mammy despised her, even hated her. So
Speaker 1: in seventy one, I mean, does Renie go walk out
Speaker 1: the door and not come back or what happens? She
Speaker 1: always said when she turned eighteen she was going to leave.
Speaker 1: When she said that was it's kind of like I'm
Speaker 1: chasing my dreamer. I'm getting the funk out of here.
Speaker 1: Um probably getting the funk out of here. We all
Speaker 1: did well, we all got all enough to get out.
Speaker 1: My mother signed me in the military to get me
Speaker 1: into the Marine Corps. She used my files social security number.
Speaker 1: I'm my D two fourteen. His number is here crossed
Speaker 1: off physically in mind put on top of it. So
Speaker 1: your mom was she was, They didn't fatten, used whatever
Speaker 1: she could from people. That's the way she was. Did
Speaker 1: I recall mean top fifteen year old kid? Yeah? What
Speaker 1: about TORNI Yeah, she had her do it everything she was,
Speaker 1: you know, let her back and called basically, what did
Speaker 1: you what did you think at the time about ny
Speaker 1: where she just took off. She did what she said
Speaker 1: she was going to do. Eighteen she's screw you think
Speaker 1: she's still alive. I'm open. I had no one here.
Speaker 1: I have to remind myself as I get into this
Speaker 1: with Rudy that all of the Luosa kids were at
Speaker 1: one time sent away into foster care and orphanages. We
Speaker 1: used lived in the same orphanage until I was like
Speaker 1: eleven years old or just before. And how come because
Speaker 1: your parents could home? You don't know. To my knowledge,
Speaker 1: when I got out of the hospital, I went to
Speaker 1: my first foster home straight out of the host's what
Speaker 1: I'm told. I didn't know that back down and stuff.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of day memories and stuff. But
Speaker 1: I went from foster home foster home, I think it
Speaker 1: was three different ones until I ended up in new orphanage.
Speaker 1: And I only remember the united stairs with my two
Speaker 1: sisters and we were all right. I'm told that they
Speaker 1: were not put into foster care or orphanages, that the
Speaker 1: state actually took them out of the home because Memy
Speaker 1: could not care for them. How did you end up
Speaker 1: back at home? I don't know. Wow, I don't know
Speaker 1: there was child abuse going on in the orphan use
Speaker 1: that I know him. I know for a fact it
Speaker 1: was Bob in the same word, Bob wouldn't ended up
Speaker 1: in Deep River with you. Uh. Deep River is a
Speaker 1: solid hours drive south of the Ellington area. Bob and
Speaker 1: Nathan being in the same orphanage, though, it means something
Speaker 1: to me. When I look at the situation from a
Speaker 1: psychological perspective, there is no doubt they two were abused.
Speaker 1: Rudy stopped just short of confirming the unthinkable by not
Speaker 1: wanting to get into it. I've heard this from many
Speaker 1: different reputable sources, and the orphanage they were sent was
Speaker 1: known to be an extremely abusive institution. This is the sixties,
Speaker 1: mind you. Just recently another story came to light about
Speaker 1: Bob the Rossa owning an ambulance. It was one of
Speaker 1: those creepy types, more like a bloated station wagon, exactly
Speaker 1: like the Ghostbusters echo one from the film, with the pointy,
Speaker 1: finlike back fenders. The story alleged that Bob and Nathan,
Speaker 1: in those days before Bob married Susan, supposedly sound proof
Speaker 1: the inside back end of the vehicle so they could
Speaker 1: allegedly pick up girls and violate them without being heard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: insulated van or whatever that. Everybody says that my brother
Speaker 1: Bob had him stuff was an all fifty Pontiac ambulance.
Speaker 1: We toured that place down. The only interior that was
Speaker 1: done was what was done as it was for an ambulance.
Speaker 1: He did nothing to the thing. He drove over to
Speaker 1: the dirt. Did he drive around town in it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Before our interview, I've been hearing about some seriously dark
Speaker 1: behaviors among Bob, Nathan, and Irene. If anyone could confirm this,
Speaker 1: it would be Rudy. What do you think there was
Speaker 1: anything weird between Riney and Nathan, Ireny and Bob, Reeny
Speaker 1: and Nathan. There might have been. Yeah, I wouldn't include
Speaker 1: Bob it off because he was off with his buddies
Speaker 1: and whatever. Rudy could not recall with any certainty what
Speaker 1: Bob was doing at the time, mainly because they rarely
Speaker 1: saw each other. Rudy had once pummeled Bob over a
Speaker 1: dispute they were teens. Bob, however, realized Rudy was tougher
Speaker 1: and was not going to take any ship, so he
Speaker 1: stayed away after that. Nathan, on the other hand, didn't.
Speaker 1: Rudy tells me about a time when he was with
Speaker 1: his wife and Nathan one day, but I remember I
Speaker 1: got out for something when you stopped at a car wash,
Speaker 1: because his car was filthy from sitting under the tree,
Speaker 1: hadn't add it that long, And I don't remember. There
Speaker 1: was some conversation that he was talking to my wife,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure he was putting a move because she
Speaker 1: said that he made a pass like that he wanted
Speaker 1: to run me over or something like that. He would
Speaker 1: do that for her if you wanted, and stuff. So
Speaker 1: he was the little nuts in the head. It was.
Speaker 1: He was. He creepy. I was creepy. My mother sicked
Speaker 1: the mommy one time because I wouldn't do if she wanted,
Speaker 1: and I'd beat him up. And then if she sicked
Speaker 1: my brother Bob on me one time and I'd beat
Speaker 1: him up. But I was in thirteen fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: If my sister was to have gotten hurt, which I
Speaker 1: don't know, one way or another, I hopefully it didn't
Speaker 1: happen that way. But if anybody was to have done something,
Speaker 1: I hadn't blamed Junior before, I hadn't blame would by JR.
Speaker 1: Rudy is referring to Nathan. In a quarter of a mile,
Speaker 1: the destination is on your right. The answers in Irene
Speaker 1: Rene Larrosa's disappearance, and perhaps some of the other cases
Speaker 1: I'm looking into seem tied in some way to the
Speaker 1: LaRosa family history. I'm back paining a visit to Tina Larrossa,
Speaker 1: the niece of Irene Larrosa, who filed the missing person's report.
Speaker 1: I inside her raised ranch style home. Tina's dining room
Speaker 1: table has become her office. Papers and notes about all
Speaker 1: the cases spread about my explice you got here out here. Tina,
Speaker 1: like some of the relatives of the missing girls, has
Speaker 1: turned herself into an armchair investigator. As we chat, a
Speaker 1: name so familiar to me comes up, Lisa White. There's
Speaker 1: a quite a few people that kind of connect her,
Speaker 1: saying that he was kind of obsessed with Lisa White.
Speaker 1: Nathan was they lived on before they moved to Pine
Speaker 1: Street in Ellenton. They lived on Reagan Road over in
Speaker 1: vernon Um, and so did Lisa White. She lit a
Speaker 1: couple of houses down from them. Lisa White is the
Speaker 1: thirteen year old girl who went missing as she presumably
Speaker 1: hitchhiked home after visiting a friend's house in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: She lived on Reagan Road. True, but The fact that
Speaker 1: Nathan LaRosa also lived on Reagan Road at the time
Speaker 1: is a connection too important to ignore. Nathan was always
Speaker 1: known to be kind of at the back of the house,
Speaker 1: kind of staring at the kids playing, Lisa being one
Speaker 1: of them. Um My aunt Debbie gives a report of
Speaker 1: Lisa come into the house when her dog got hit
Speaker 1: by a car. Her dog got hit, Lisa came to
Speaker 1: the house said, you know, here's your dog. Tina claims
Speaker 1: Nathan had a thing for Lisa and it kicked into
Speaker 1: high gear after Lisa brought the dog over to the house. Well,
Speaker 1: since then Nathan was like obsessed with her, would always
Speaker 1: watch her. Nathan grew into an obese man. He rarely
Speaker 1: showered or cleaned himself. A convicted pedophile, Nathan did hard
Speaker 1: time from nineteen seventy six to nineteen seventy nine for
Speaker 1: child rape. In nineteen eighty, Nathan moved to Florida to
Speaker 1: live with his parents. He came back to the Tri
Speaker 1: Town area in nine and moved in with his brother,
Speaker 1: Bob lar Rosa, and died three years later while living
Speaker 1: in an elderly home. When I first met Tina, I
Speaker 1: knew she'd have a lot of information regarding unanswered questions
Speaker 1: within the LaRosa family tragedies. I just didn't realize how
Speaker 1: much she knew. For years, Tina's talked to family members,
Speaker 1: reached out to acquaintances, went online, and started a ship
Speaker 1: storm of social media about her aunt Irene's disappearance. After
Speaker 1: sharing her plans to file a missing person report in
Speaker 1: a Facebook post in two thousand seventeen, the year before
Speaker 1: Bob died, she got a message from Bob Larrossa's Facebook account, Well,
Speaker 1: I can start by this one. This is um August eleven,
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen. I was one of the people that
Speaker 1: filed official police report. Those comments saying none were filed
Speaker 1: were votefully incorrect. Listening to you read those texts, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say Bob was stupid. He uses words in there
Speaker 1: that I was Bob's pitcher. You can see Bob's pitcher
Speaker 1: in here. I was thinking the same thing. You know
Speaker 1: why because row little dyslexic Doloro says, so Bob or
Speaker 1: his Tina suspects someone else who was writing the message
Speaker 1: for Bob was still trying to deflect attention away from
Speaker 1: Irene's disappearance. Decades after she allegedly vanished. I have to
Speaker 1: wonder why. What's more, I've searched Helen high Water. Bob
Speaker 1: LaRosa never filed a missing person report on his sister.
Speaker 1: That is a fact. Tina has always been aware of
Speaker 1: her family's dark horses and hidden secrets, but things took
Speaker 1: a serious turn in recent years when she started connecting
Speaker 1: them to her aunt Irene's disappearance. There she was stealthily
Speaker 1: connecting the dots and ultimately zeroing in on a family
Speaker 1: friend who, after almost fifty years, has decided to inject
Speaker 1: himself into these cases and start talking. Tina brings up
Speaker 1: a difficult story she learned from someone close to this person,
Speaker 1: one that also involves her uncle, Bob LaRosa. She says
Speaker 1: to me, well, Bobby was a dangerous man that when
Speaker 1: they were younger, they for just ha has They found
Speaker 1: a girl and picked her up. She was walking down
Speaker 1: the side of the road. They stuck a light bulb
Speaker 1: up her rear end and propped her on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: Tina called the state police and told them about this incident.
Speaker 1: She also spoke to several family members who verified the story.
Speaker 1: A newspaper report backs up certain details, including the abduction
Speaker 1: and the girl being left on the side of the road.
Speaker 1: She was brutally wounded and ultimately died from her injuries,
Speaker 1: turning the assault into a murder case. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to mention the other man's name yet because I'm in
Speaker 1: the process of reaching out to him. He deserves that privacy.
Speaker 1: For now, I'll be referring to him as the witness.
Speaker 1: Bob LaRosa and the witness were best friends. They've known
Speaker 1: each other since grade school. At one time, they were
Speaker 1: even brothers in law. Tina tells me she decided to
Speaker 1: make contact with the witness in two thousand, eighteen years
Speaker 1: after following the missing person report and becoming frustrated nothing
Speaker 1: was being done. So I decided to call them and
Speaker 1: played a little d Denzel in distress and you know
Speaker 1: my aunt and I miss her, and you know, I
Speaker 1: can't believe that nobody cares. And oh I love Gerane
Speaker 1: RENI was wonderful. I dated her for a time, Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, her and Nathan had this weird thing, and
Speaker 1: I think Nathan was hurt in her and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: But so we had gotten talking and I was asking
Speaker 1: about Nathan and Bob hurting her um and if they did,
Speaker 1: where would they put her? Hypothetically, Tina's spoken to the
Speaker 1: witness on four different occasions. Those first few calls, they
Speaker 1: talked a lot about Irene LaRosa, who she was in
Speaker 1: the relationship between them. Then there came a point as
Speaker 1: she was talking to the witness when Tina realized he
Speaker 1: had vital information. There was enough said to lead her
Speaker 1: to believe he wasn't just an innocent bystander. To some
Speaker 1: of this, Tina says, the witness believes Nathan killed his
Speaker 1: own sister, Irene LaRosa. Keep this in mind, though Nathan
Speaker 1: went to prison for sexually abusing boys, still that does
Speaker 1: not make it impossible for him to develop an affinity
Speaker 1: for females, especially when talking about that ugly word incest.
Speaker 1: Psychologically speaking, there is more at play with that scenario. Control, power, rage, jealousy,
Speaker 1: gender would not matter. According to Tina, the witness began
Speaker 1: talking about the water wells across the street from Crystal Lake.
Speaker 1: He mentioned buried bodies. When she heard that, Tina called
Speaker 1: the state police and asked them to get involved. This
Speaker 1: explains why her last call with the witness was controlled,
Speaker 1: meaning law enforcement sat by Tina's side and recorded it.
Speaker 1: It was this call that tip cops off in two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen to begin that latest dig at the water
Speaker 1: wells on the Wendell's property. So that was enough for me.
Speaker 1: Since somebody you something, get over here. I want him
Speaker 1: to tell you, guys what he told me, what happened.
Speaker 1: I told you where what? Where they would have been?
Speaker 1: The girls would have been if hypothetically, if Nathan hurt
Speaker 1: them and put them somewhere, where would they be? And
Speaker 1: he said, well, our four it was right here. That's
Speaker 1: girls plural. According to the witness, Irene LaRosa and several
Speaker 1: of the other missing girls are buried in an area
Speaker 1: across from Crystal Lake, somewhere on or nearby the old
Speaker 1: LaRosa property. Hello, Molarossa walks in as Tina and I
Speaker 1: are talking. Remember mom, he's Bob and Susan Larrossa's youngest son.
Speaker 1: He and Tina are cousins. As he takes a seat
Speaker 1: across the dining table from me, Tina says something about
Speaker 1: a well on the Wendell's property. I just explained to
Speaker 1: him about the first time we talked. But then when
Speaker 1: I put him on recording with the cops. He then said, no,
Speaker 1: it's the a framed well up here the witness had
Speaker 1: mentioned and a frame green colored roof during his last
Speaker 1: call with Tina. On the window property, there are over
Speaker 1: a dozen water wells scattered about forty six acres. One
Speaker 1: of them is a fifteen foot deep eight by eight
Speaker 1: foot well I think Jack and Jill type, with an
Speaker 1: a framed green colored roof covering it. This is across
Speaker 1: the road from where the state police once dug So
Speaker 1: claimed that the girls were put in the a framed well. Yes,
Speaker 1: he explained how to take a bar, open up the
Speaker 1: well and then slide it back, and we have that
Speaker 1: on recording. When Ken Wendell was tipped off by the
Speaker 1: cop many years ago, he actually sent an underwater camera
Speaker 1: down that a frame well. He searched the entire thing
Speaker 1: and found nothing. What worries me, after spending twenty years
Speaker 1: in the true crime game, is that if a person
Speaker 1: of interest is talking about wells a crime scene bodies
Speaker 1: being buried, as the witness has apparently been doing, my
Speaker 1: instinct and experience tell me these clues are a diversion
Speaker 1: that there are no bodies and wells the bodies are
Speaker 1: somewhere else and the witnesses throwing off the scent. Yet,
Speaker 1: why the hell would he involve himself all these years
Speaker 1: later to begin with, Well back to the well, where
Speaker 1: were We've been to that property and we did a
Speaker 1: memorial there are true, As it turns out, moment Tina
Speaker 1: are responsible for that mystery flower memorial that Ken Wendel
Speaker 1: mentioned seeing during one of my last visits to the property.
Speaker 1: It's the same spot where they believe they're aunt Irene
Speaker 1: LaRosa and some of the other girls could be buried,
Speaker 1: according to what the witness has been saying. So I
Speaker 1: find it, you know what I mean, very hard to
Speaker 1: believe they had never done anything to her, and yet
Speaker 1: one couldn't have known where she was, why the other
Speaker 1: one didn't. All this information from Tina and Mo leads
Speaker 1: me directly into the center of that five point star.
Speaker 1: Getting to this point in my investigation isn't as easy
Speaker 1: as it sounds. It has been a long and emotionally
Speaker 1: exhausting eleven year journey. I've run into dozens of false
Speaker 1: leads and dead ends. All the suspects frequently named online
Speaker 1: and the ones I've developed on my own have been
Speaker 1: eliminated for a variety of reasons. Many of them police
Speaker 1: have checked out, questioned, and let go of. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until the witness began talking to Tina. On top of all,
Speaker 1: I've learned over the last year that the pieces of
Speaker 1: this disturbing puzzle I've been collecting finally seemed to fit.
Speaker 1: I'm not a confident Bob and Nathan LaRosa are connected
Speaker 1: to all the cases, but there's enough for me to
Speaker 1: continue looking into that possibility. The witness is the only
Speaker 1: one of the three men I am now focused on
Speaker 1: who is still alive. I want to reach out to him,
Speaker 1: but it has to be under my terms. In the
Speaker 1: next episode of paper Ghosts, let me just tell you
Speaker 1: does does a tarp behind him? It's a plastic tarp
Speaker 1: and they thought that was interesting that yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: They held it up and they were they old. Sale
Speaker 1: came over and had to look at it. And I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of brown stades on. We're worning if
Speaker 1: it was blood or something on the airhood. She went
Speaker 1: home to take a shower. Why I was getting her
Speaker 1: stuff ready, and he come out completely naked and said,
Speaker 1: you want to have a good time, come on in
Speaker 1: the bedroom and how old were you at the time.
Speaker 1: He got really mad at the long time and he said,
Speaker 1: if you don't watch it, you're gonna end up like
Speaker 1: your sister Jesus. Marian chose to see it helps us
Speaker 1: out of grave for many Oh you know what I
Speaker 1: think it is. Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced
Speaker 1: by me and William Phelps, with help from producer Christina
Speaker 1: Everett and sound editing by Pete Cardi from back Room Audio.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Abu Safar and Will Pearson from My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. The series theme number four four two is
Speaker 1: written and performed by Tom Mooney and Thomas Phelps. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: H