Speaker 1: Diversion audio.
Speaker 2: A note this episode contains mature content and descriptions of
Speaker 2: violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take
Speaker 2: care in listening. I want to tell you about a dream.
Speaker 2: It's a recurring dream that Penny Farmer had after the
Speaker 2: disappearance of her brother, one she wrote about in her
Speaker 2: book on the case Dead.
Speaker 1: In the Water.
Speaker 2: It starts at a family party. Everyone is so happy, Penny,
Speaker 2: her mother Audrey, her father Charles, her brother Nigel. They're
Speaker 2: so happy because Chris is home with them, home with
Speaker 2: all the people who love him, where he belongs. At
Speaker 2: the end of the party, Penny knocks on Chris's bedroom door, grinning,
Speaker 2: ready to gush about how glad she is to see him,
Speaker 2: but he's under the covers. She walks to his bed
Speaker 2: and sits down on the edge, and then she glances
Speaker 2: at the nightstand. Lying on the table is a rubber
Speaker 2: mask of her brother's face. She pulls aside the sheets.
Speaker 2: The man lying underneath is a stranger. Imagine having that
Speaker 2: dream over and over from the time you were a teenager.
Speaker 2: Penny has been literally haunted her whole life. She's haunted
Speaker 2: by hope, then despair, then false leads, and always this
Speaker 2: sense of what's missing, of something wrong for forty years
Speaker 2: until she took her brother's cold case into her own hands.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm
Speaker 2: Mary Kay McBriar. I'm a writer of true crime, which
Speaker 2: means I live inside the research wormhole. I'm constantly reading
Speaker 2: about crime, but I'm not necessarily interested in all the
Speaker 2: headline grabbing elements, the blood and the gore and all
Speaker 2: of that. I'm more interesting in the people behind these
Speaker 2: stories and what we can learn about society by looking
Speaker 2: at their experiences. If you want evidence of my obsession,
Speaker 2: you can read my book America's First Female serial Killer,
Speaker 2: Jane Toppin and the Making of a Monster. You can
Speaker 2: also meet me here every week when I dig into
Speaker 2: crimes where a woman is not just a victim. She
Speaker 2: might be as the detective, the lawyer, the witness, the coroner,
Speaker 2: the criminal, or a combination of those roles. As you
Speaker 2: probably already know, women can do anything. Today's episode is
Speaker 2: the story of Penny Farmer, who lost her brother at
Speaker 2: sea in the late nineteen seventies and never stopped looking
Speaker 2: for him, not for forty years. There's nothing more frustrating
Speaker 2: to me than watching a movie set before like two thousand,
Speaker 2: mainly before cell phones, when information just wasn't scharable easily,
Speaker 2: like in that scene of Zodiac when Mark Ruffalo has
Speaker 2: to drive to the next county because they can't fax
Speaker 2: documents to him. That always just makes me scream with
Speaker 2: my mouth closed. Or when one cell phone calls could
Speaker 2: cut all the suspense of a movie, solve the case
Speaker 2: and unravel the plot completely. I hate that, Not to mention,
Speaker 2: that's my reaction to just a movie. The inability to
Speaker 2: retroactively apply new elements to old crimes in real life
Speaker 2: is an insufferable injustice. So for a little while I
Speaker 2: dated a private investigator. He lied about a lot of stuff,
Speaker 2: as espionage workers are trained to do, but one thing
Speaker 2: he said that struck me as very true is how
Speaker 2: the early usage of Facebook basically did his job for him.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about Facebook before it was mostly a boom
Speaker 2: or healthscape full of political hot takes, back when everyone
Speaker 2: used it, usually with their real names, posting current pictures
Speaker 2: of themselves in recognizable places where people wanted to be
Speaker 2: found in hopes of connecting to people from their past.
Speaker 2: And if I had a dime for every time I
Speaker 2: snooped on a friend's blind date just by reverse searching
Speaker 2: the guy's phone number. Well, frankly, it astonishes me how
Speaker 2: any case got closed before the technologies we use so
Speaker 2: easily nowadays. It's one reason why so many of them
Speaker 2: ran cold. That and the fact that crimes get buried
Speaker 2: under new crimes, crimes that can be worked more easily
Speaker 2: with our new technology and new methods of gathering evidence.
Speaker 2: It stands to reason that happens pretty often. Penny Farmer
Speaker 2: didn't let that happen. Officials might have gotten pulled away
Speaker 2: to more recent issues, but Penny applied the technologies she
Speaker 2: had on hand as a regular citizen and brought justice
Speaker 2: to her beloved brother.
Speaker 1: Penny Farmer was.
Speaker 2: Zooming through the roads of the northern England city of
Speaker 2: Manchester in Chevrolet. The front seat was cramped and uncomfortable
Speaker 2: with three squeezed in, but Penny didn't care. She sat
Speaker 2: between her elder brother Chris and his friend in the
Speaker 2: driver's seat, Pink Floyd's wish you were here flying through
Speaker 2: the speakers, as she'd reminisced decades later in her book
Speaker 2: on her brother's case.
Speaker 1: Dead in the water. In that moment, she.
Speaker 2: Told herself, I've arrived. Chris was the kind of brother
Speaker 2: who gave his kid's sister lots of moments like that.
Speaker 2: He played music at the house that was like a
Speaker 2: live soundtrack of seventies cool Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Jimmy Hendrix,
Speaker 2: Jefferson Airplane. He gave her a motorcycle ride once, just once,
Speaker 2: because their mother, Audrey, was not thrilled. He dressed wild too,
Speaker 2: bell bottoms, crop tops, a patchwork leather jacket, and he
Speaker 2: had thick, stylish Penny admired him. She admired how he
Speaker 2: made life exciting. It was no surprise when he and
Speaker 2: his longtime girlfriend Peta announced that they were going to
Speaker 2: travel the world when they finished their studies. Both advanced degrees,
Speaker 2: his in medicine hers in law in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2: Chris Farmer was twenty five, Peter Frampton was twenty four.
Speaker 2: The couple grew up across the street from one another,
Speaker 2: and they'd been sweethearts since childhood. Chris and Peta had
Speaker 2: already made many trips together through Europe and down to
Speaker 2: North Africa. This trip would be different because it would
Speaker 2: be long and it would take them all the way
Speaker 2: from Australia through the South Seas to South America. After
Speaker 2: Chris and Peter left for their big adventure in December
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy, Penny had to focus on the major life
Speaker 2: events rushing toward her as a high scholer A level exams,
Speaker 2: university applications. Every time Chris mailed the Farmer family one
Speaker 2: of his messages, she'd get excited. They came as voice
Speaker 2: recordings on cassettes and they painted these detailed, happy portraits
Speaker 2: of his travels with Peter.
Speaker 3: And then went on to Guadalajara, as I say, quite
Speaker 3: a nice towns.
Speaker 2: Not anything's heard of the.
Speaker 1: Marry archies, but you'reinerant Mexican musicians and that's their hometown.
Speaker 3: So every streetcorn you come to, you you've seen five
Speaker 3: or six of these characters.
Speaker 2: Playing their different size guitars and double basses, demanding a
Speaker 2: few pay those.
Speaker 1: For a song.
Speaker 2: That's a clip of the tapes from the BBC podcast Paradise,
Speaker 2: which did an investigative deep dive in to the case.
Speaker 2: I think it's so cool that Chris communicated this way.
Speaker 2: I mean, letters are great, I miss letters, but this
Speaker 2: is pretty and genius and the cassette recordings let his
Speaker 2: loved ones hear the sounds around him in the world too.
Speaker 2: That's Pink Floyd in the background of this recording. It's
Speaker 2: so evocative of the time. The tape really puts you
Speaker 2: right there with Chris. Penny also tuned in for reports
Speaker 2: from Peter's family. Peter regularly wrote long diary style letters
Speaker 2: to her mother, Sammy Frampton, who passed on the news
Speaker 2: to the Farmers. The trip sounded magical. Barbecues and shark
Speaker 2: catching on the shores of Australia, scuba diving and snorkeling
Speaker 2: in New Caledonia and Fiji, smoke plumes from Hawaii's volcanoes,
Speaker 2: Aztec ruins and Wohaka, and then Belize City. Here Chris
Speaker 2: and Peta met a man named Silas Dwayne Boston and
Speaker 2: his two young sons, then thirteen year old Vince and
Speaker 2: twelve year old Russell. Another tourist at a hotel bar
Speaker 2: introduced them. Dwayne, he went by his middle name, was gregarious,
Speaker 2: charming and a big drinker. But for Chris and Peta,
Speaker 2: his real appeal was that he owned a boat which
Speaker 2: he used to ferry tourists around the region. The Justin
Speaker 2: b was a simple vessel, wooden, no bathroom or other
Speaker 2: modern luxuries. Traveling on that thing would be a real adventure.
Speaker 2: After a few short trips around the coast of Belize
Speaker 2: and the nearby Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, Peta and Chris
Speaker 2: decide to join Dwayne on a longer sail down to
Speaker 2: Costa Rica. Despite the fact that they hadn't planned to
Speaker 2: travel that way, Peta said in a letter to her mother,
Speaker 2: we thought it was an opportunity not to be missed.
Speaker 2: More of Pete's letters trickled back to England after she
Speaker 2: and Chris boarded the boat. At first, they painted the
Speaker 2: same cheery picture as the previous letters. Quote, it's very
Speaker 2: peaceful and we catch fish for supper. There's plenty of
Speaker 2: snapper and grunt, not to mention catfish, which is tasty.
Speaker 2: It's a real kick being able to catch your own supper.
Speaker 2: The boat is not very comfortable, it's a bit cramped,
Speaker 2: but during the day it's super just lying on the
Speaker 2: hatches and soaking up the sun while the boat flies along.
Speaker 1: That letter arrived in.
Speaker 2: June nineteen seventy eight, dated June thirteenth, The Frampton and
Speaker 2: former families devoured it, and then they waited for more,
Speaker 2: and waited.
Speaker 1: And waited.
Speaker 2: They wondered if there was a postal strike, or maybe
Speaker 2: Chris and Peter were sick. They began to worry, maybe
Speaker 2: something was really wrong. They always updated their families, no
Speaker 2: matter how far their adventures took them. But then in
Speaker 2: August another letter. The letter was sweet relief for both families.
Speaker 2: At first, it read like a usual Peta update for
Speaker 2: the most part, although for the first time there was
Speaker 2: a hint of tensions brewing on the boat. Peter wrote,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't mind ending my sailing career now I find
Speaker 2: I have no patience at all with Twain's two sons.
Speaker 2: But what makes it worse is that Dwayne curses and
Speaker 2: puts them down continually. She signed off like this, enough
Speaker 2: of the future. I don't think there's any more news.
Speaker 2: Nothing much happens on a boat.
Speaker 1: Lots of love.
Speaker 2: Dwayne and the boats. Apparently fading charm isn't what started
Speaker 2: to worry. The family is back in England once again, though.
Speaker 2: It's the fact that the letter was dated June twenty eighth,
Speaker 2: with a PostScript marked June twenty ninth, and yet it
Speaker 2: hadn't arrived in England until August. When Peter wasn't able
Speaker 2: to post a letter right away, she always added to it,
Speaker 2: dating the editions along the way. What had the couple
Speaker 2: been doing throughout July. Then there was the fact that
Speaker 2: no more letters arrived, nor any tapes from Chris, much
Speaker 2: less phone calls. Neither family heard anything. The months following
Speaker 2: that final August letter from Peta were a nightmare for
Speaker 2: the Farmer and Frampton families. They got together and asked
Speaker 2: the Foreign Office to investigate. They talked to their local
Speaker 2: member of Parliament, asking him to look into it. Both
Speaker 2: sets of parents wrote letters to all the British consuls
Speaker 2: in Central and South America. Charles Farmer, Chris and Penny's
Speaker 2: father was a reporter with BBC Television, so he knew
Speaker 2: to turn to the news, taking every step possible to
Speaker 2: get word of the disappearance out there. He and his wife,
Speaker 2: Audrey did interviews with the BBC and ITV, A host
Speaker 2: of national as well as local newspapers. Radio and TV
Speaker 2: stations ran stories. The Farmers had a Spanish friend write
Speaker 2: a letter to hotels and tourist spots around Guatemala. The
Speaker 2: last place that Chris and Peter had written from. The
Speaker 2: families and the public speculated about what could have happened.
Speaker 1: The young couple might have been.
Speaker 2: Thrown in some distant jail cell or taken hostage by
Speaker 2: a faction in the ongoing Guatemala and Civil War, but
Speaker 2: the Farmers and the Framptons didn't think too much about
Speaker 2: the other options.
Speaker 1: They couldn't not yet.
Speaker 2: There was still hope leads here and there throughout September
Speaker 2: and the first half of October, but none of the
Speaker 2: leads seemed to go anywhere. Penny walked into silent rooms
Speaker 2: around the house to find her mother alone, wiping.
Speaker 1: Her way tears.
Speaker 2: Penny was still just eighteen, but she wasn't the carefree
Speaker 2: kid she was when Chris left nine months earlier, especially
Speaker 2: not since the British Foreign Office finally made some progress
Speaker 2: on the case in mid October. They tracked down silas
Speaker 2: Dwayne Boston, who left Belize with his sons soon after
Speaker 2: Chris and Peter's disappearance and made his way back to
Speaker 2: his home state of California. I don't know about you,
Speaker 2: but that is unacceptable. I mean, you're really going and
Speaker 2: just not say nothing to nobody. After two of your
Speaker 2: passengers go missing in front of your two little boys,
Speaker 2: you think the best idea is to pack up and
Speaker 2: leave the country.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Someone from the British Consulate called Dwayne and questioned him.
Speaker 2: Dwayne's answers were vague and unhelpful. He said he dropped
Speaker 2: off the couple in the port across the bay from Livingston,
Speaker 2: Guatemala Covenetris Puntas Peninsula. From there, he had no idea
Speaker 2: where they went.
Speaker 1: He might have.
Speaker 2: Seen them in Livingston around the ninth of July, but
Speaker 2: it could have been a different couple. I just can't
Speaker 2: buy that level of being totally out of it, not
Speaker 2: even for the seventies. At this point, the British Consulate
Speaker 2: was also convinced Dwayne was hiding something, or hiding a
Speaker 2: lot of things. He was so evasive, but they had
Speaker 2: no proof, so they interviewed him again in person. This time,
Speaker 2: he was calm and collected when he started talking, but
Speaker 2: when the questioning got into Chris and Peta, his demeanor
Speaker 2: completely changed.
Speaker 1: This is a.
Speaker 2: Quote from the report the Farmers got. On the interview,
Speaker 2: Dwayne Boston sat up straight in his chair, his eyes
Speaker 2: widened and his breathing became heavy, his chest notably rising
Speaker 2: and falling. Following this, he slumped back in his chair,
Speaker 2: placing his face into his right hand, and in a
Speaker 2: softly spoken voice, he said that he thought Chris and
Speaker 2: Peta would be back home by now. The Coate was
Speaker 2: more convinced than ever that there was foul play at
Speaker 2: work here and Dwayne was involved. They told the Farmers
Speaker 2: to take the case to the Greater Manchester Police. This
Speaker 2: was officially a criminal investigation, but still there was no proof.
Speaker 2: There was nothing to go on, not even bodies, just
Speaker 2: unshakable intuition and good sense. By now, Chris and Peter
Speaker 2: had been missing for six months. Penny watched her parents bury,
Speaker 2: their grief and anxiety and the investigation even as it
Speaker 2: stalled once again. Charles Farmer actually called Dwayne Boston himself
Speaker 2: and talked to him with the clearance of the Manchester Police.
Speaker 2: He got the same kind of evasive answers that Dwayne
Speaker 2: had already given the Consulate. Charles came away convinced that
Speaker 2: there was foul play too, and Dwayne was involved. So
Speaker 2: the Farmers decided to try one more. They hired a
Speaker 2: private detective to look into the case on the ground
Speaker 2: in Balize. On February first, nineteen seventy nine, Penny finished
Speaker 2: the school day. She walked to a telephone booth in
Speaker 2: Wilmslow Town Center and dialed home. She started telling her mother, Audrey,
Speaker 2: that she was going to be late for dinner. She
Speaker 2: wanted to go over to a friend's house, but, as
Speaker 2: she'd later recall in her book, her mother interrupted her, no,
Speaker 2: you need to come home now. Penny heard something in
Speaker 2: Audrey's voice, a faltering distress. She didn't ask questions she
Speaker 2: didn't need to. As she rushed through the two mile
Speaker 2: walk home alone along the darkening road, She felt completely shattered.
Speaker 2: She described the feeling in her book, The world felt
Speaker 2: like it was spinning on its axis.
Speaker 1: At breakneck speed and in free fall.
Speaker 2: That night, Charles Farmer told his family word had come
Speaker 2: in from the private investigator. Alfonso d'epinna I said before
Speaker 2: that you have to be pretty good at lying to
Speaker 2: be a private investigator, but that mostly applies to the
Speaker 2: common ones, the ones who investigate selling corporate secrets and
Speaker 2: other white collar crimes. D'penna is a good one, a
Speaker 2: real white hat. Depina spoke with a local Balisian priest.
Speaker 2: The priest said he heard about two bodies found two
Speaker 2: hundred meters off the coast of the Guatemalan Peninsula Cabo Trees, Puntas,
Speaker 2: back in July. The description of the bodies matched those
Speaker 2: of the missing couple. The priests also told Dpenya that
Speaker 2: these two bodies were mutilated before they were tied to
Speaker 2: engine parts and drowned. The locals were so upset by
Speaker 2: the bodies that after an autopsy, they immediately buried them
Speaker 2: in the local Puerto Barrio cemetery. As harrowing as that is,
Speaker 2: I have to give everyone involved credit. They got an autopsy,
Speaker 2: they followed the protocol, and that's pretty incredible. The former
Speaker 2: family knocked back a bottle of sherry, the only alcohol
Speaker 2: they had in the house. Finally they knew Pete and
Speaker 2: Chris were dead. They just didn't know how or why
Speaker 2: the bodies were exhumed. I understand that exhumation needs to
Speaker 2: happen sometimes in the name of justice, but even just
Speaker 2: hearing about it makes my stomach hurt. There's a certain
Speaker 2: kind of piece that comes when someone's body is laid
Speaker 2: to rest and exhummation. It feels to me like It
Speaker 2: not only undoes that piece, but it tangles up the
Speaker 2: grieving process too. But it was necessary here. It meant
Speaker 2: that the families got some more much needed information about
Speaker 2: Chris and Peta. First, a dental examination confirmed what they were.
Speaker 2: All but certain of the bodies belonged to Chris and Peta.
Speaker 2: It confirmed other gruesome details too. They had both been
Speaker 2: bound by the hands, legs, and ankles. Chris showed marks
Speaker 2: of torture. Peta had a plastic bag over her head.
Speaker 2: Both were tied to engine parts. Both had died by drowning.
Speaker 2: That meant they'd been alive when they were thrown into
Speaker 2: the waters off Guatemala's coast. The farmers also learned that
Speaker 2: Silas Dwayne Boston was a criminal with a long record
Speaker 2: with charges ranging from theft to rape. He was even
Speaker 2: a suspect in the disappearance of one of his wives,
Speaker 2: Mary Lou Boston, the mother of his two young sons,
Speaker 2: who had been on the boat. Mary Lou's body was
Speaker 2: never found, but the police suspected foul play. And that's it.
Speaker 2: That is all the families knew for decades. Imagine if
Speaker 2: we ended the episode here, how unsatisfied would you be?
Speaker 2: If I was you, I would be pissed, but I'd
Speaker 2: be even more upset obviously if it was happening to
Speaker 2: me in real life, if I was related to the
Speaker 2: people who died. I'm oversimplifying the emotions, but I think
Speaker 2: the main one I would display is rage. Because even
Speaker 2: with the bodies in hand and the knowledge of his
Speaker 2: past crimes, authorities were unable to find any concrete evidence
Speaker 2: that Silas Duayne Boston was the killer. The motor parts
Speaker 2: Chris and Peta had been tied to were recovered from
Speaker 2: the sea, but they were lost in the shuffle before
Speaker 2: Dpinya found the bodies. They couldn't provide any leits. This
Speaker 2: seems like another place where some contemporary technology could have
Speaker 2: been really useful. Unfortunately, Guatemalan officials and police were also
Speaker 2: pretty unhelpful. They had no diplomatic relations with Britain at
Speaker 2: the time, thinks in part to a pretty brutal civil
Speaker 2: war and general instability in Guatemala. But for the farmers,
Speaker 2: basically what this all amounted to was progress in the
Speaker 2: case just stopped, despite the fact that they felt they
Speaker 2: knew who committed this crime. To the farmers, the Greater
Speaker 2: Manchester Police and the British Foreign Office. The truth already
Speaker 2: seemed clear. Dwayne had killed the young couple for money
Speaker 2: for something else they didn't know. He claimed they paid
Speaker 2: him five hundred dollars for their passage and absurd some
Speaker 2: for that service, the time period and the region. Maybe
Speaker 2: he had stolen that money and claimed they paid it
Speaker 2: to cover his tracks. Some people don't need a motive
Speaker 2: at all. But whatever the reason he did it, he
Speaker 2: was the killer, and now he was living in California
Speaker 2: without a single consequence for his barbaric crime. Audrey Farmer
Speaker 2: paused while making dinner one night, turned to Penny and said,
Speaker 2: I don't feel that I will ever be able to
Speaker 2: feel true happiness again. In the years that followed, the
Speaker 2: Farmers never gave up on hounding authorities for updates and
Speaker 2: giving suggestions for potential lines of inquiry. The police and
Speaker 2: the US were the main source of news. They did
Speaker 2: their best to keep track of Dwayne, but he was
Speaker 2: good at evading the sites of the law. When they
Speaker 2: had him in custody for an unrelated crime, they tried
Speaker 2: to question him on what happened in Belize. His story changed,
Speaker 2: including important details like where exactly he dropped off Chris
Speaker 2: and Peter, whether he left them on a beach or
Speaker 2: on a quote unquote Native vote. But Dwayne wouldn't confess,
Speaker 2: and when the other charges came to nothing, the police
Speaker 2: released him from custody. One of the main points the
Speaker 2: Farmers kept making to law enforcement wasn't about Duayne at all.
Speaker 2: They wanted to know about his sons. Those boys who
Speaker 2: had been on the boat when Chris and Peter were killed.
Speaker 2: Investigators had to talk to them. They might have seen something.
Speaker 2: They had to have some kind of information. American investigators
Speaker 2: gave a frustrating response. They couldn't track down the boys.
Speaker 2: The Boston family seemed to be constantly moving them around.
Speaker 2: They were never able to bring the kids in for questioning.
Speaker 2: The Farmers were told by the Greater Manchester Police, their
Speaker 2: main point of contact, that the case would never be closed.
Speaker 2: The updates petered out. Penny went to university and graduated.
Speaker 2: She became a journalist like her father, and then switched
Speaker 2: from news into fashion and beauty reporting. She lived in London, married,
Speaker 2: then moved again to Oxfordshire, where she raised a family.
Speaker 2: She never stopped wondering, never felt that lightness of knowing.
Speaker 2: On October second, twenty fifteen, Penny was walking the dog
Speaker 2: with her mother. There was an autumnal glow to the scene,
Speaker 2: that kind of warm, soft light that's beautiful but a
Speaker 2: little melancholy. Audrey wondered wistfully what Chris would look like now.
Speaker 2: He'd be sixty two, hard to imagine, he'd always be
Speaker 2: young in their eyes. As Penny heard her mother speak,
Speaker 2: standing in that mellow autumn light, almost forty years after
Speaker 2: her brother's death, she had a realization. So much had
Speaker 2: changed since the days when Chris and Peter went missing.
Speaker 2: Now there was Facebook and everyone was on it. Everyone
Speaker 2: was using their real names, real information about where they
Speaker 2: were and what they did, maybe even Silas Dwayne Boston,
Speaker 2: or better yet, his two sons. Penny's intuition was spot
Speaker 2: on at home that October day, it didn't take much
Speaker 2: digging to find Vince Boston of California. He'd written publicly
Speaker 2: on his profile about losing his mother to gun violence
Speaker 2: when she was just twenty three years old, as part
Speaker 2: of a post advocating for stricter gun laws in the US.
Speaker 2: This was him, and if he was talking publicly about
Speaker 2: his mother's death to gunfire, maybe he wasn't on good
Speaker 2: terms with his father. Maybe he'd talk. Penny's hope grew
Speaker 2: as she continued trawling through. Here was Russell Boston, and
Speaker 2: here was Silas Dwayne Boston himself. She stared at the haggard,
Speaker 2: grizzled photo at the forefront of his profile. This was
Speaker 2: the man who had killed her brother. She had never
Speaker 2: seen his face before, staring it down even through the screen,
Speaker 2: she felt discussed, but she also felt hope. It wasn't
Speaker 2: only that Vince seemed convinced his mother died due to
Speaker 2: foul play, nor that he wasn't afraid to talk about
Speaker 2: it publicly.
Speaker 1: There was also the fact.
Speaker 2: That Vince wasn't quote unquote friends with his father or
Speaker 2: brother on the site. She didn't know what it meant yet,
Speaker 2: but she hoped it might help. Before she had time
Speaker 2: to doubt her instincts, she logged into the anonymous Facebook
Speaker 2: account she'd made to keep an eye on her own
Speaker 2: teenage kids. Then she sent each of the boys men
Speaker 2: now a message, quote, please can you tell me if
Speaker 2: you were off the coast of Central America and a
Speaker 2: boat with your brother and father in nineteen seventy eight?
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Please reply? Then I will tell you why I am
Speaker 2: writing to you. Why won't you reply? Because you already
Speaker 2: know why I'm writing to you? Do you know or
Speaker 2: remember the truth? I will not leave this matter alone.
Speaker 2: Penny didn't get a reply to those messages. She also
Speaker 2: didn't give up. On Monday morning, Penny called the Greater
Speaker 2: Manchester Police to inform them of her discovery.
Speaker 1: She knew they'd been.
Speaker 2: Looking into cold cases lately. Now, she said, they had
Speaker 2: the information they needed to look into hers, and they agreed.
Speaker 2: Penny's discovery was more than enough to reopen the case.
Speaker 2: But the problem was, despite the technological revolution that had
Speaker 2: occurred since the original investigation, international cases like this one
Speaker 2: were still mired in complicated bureaucracy of jurisdiction and cooperating
Speaker 2: between different agencies. To get back in touch with the
Speaker 2: Sacramento Police, the California Department, last involved with the case,
Speaker 2: the Greater Manchester Police or GMP, had to go through
Speaker 2: Interpol in Washington, DC. And I should mention Interpol is
Speaker 2: not really the international spy organization that espionage films would
Speaker 2: have you imagine. It's basically investigators assigned by different countries
Speaker 2: to work on international cases and coordinate between agencies. In
Speaker 2: other words, they are slow. For months, Penny heard nothing.
Speaker 2: Life went on as it had for the past four decades.
Speaker 2: But something was different. Now She knew the case could move.
Speaker 2: There was an urgency now too. Dwayne was old if
Speaker 2: the justice system was going to bring him down, it
Speaker 2: needed to move. On February twenty ninth, twenty sixteen, the
Speaker 2: GMP officer looking into the case, Mikaela Clinch, spoke directly
Speaker 2: to Detective Amy Crosby of the Missing Person Unit at
Speaker 2: the Sacramento Police Department and learned something shocking. At almost
Speaker 2: the exact time that Penny had her revelation about the
Speaker 2: power of Facebook to crack this case. Amy was looking
Speaker 2: into the disappearance of Mary Lou Boston, Dwayne's wife in
Speaker 2: Vincent Russell's mother. The case was stalled, but on October thirteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, just eleven days after Penny sent her message
Speaker 2: to Vince, he gave Amy a statement about his mother's case.
Speaker 2: He said, it's an open family secret that my father
Speaker 2: killed my mother in nineteen sixty eight, although no one
Speaker 2: knows where he had buried her. But then Vince told
Speaker 2: Amy Moore. He told her I witnessed my father murder
Speaker 2: a young couple in broad daylight in Guatemala. He witnessed
Speaker 2: Dwayne murder Chris and Peter, and he wanted to talk.
Speaker 2: The good news kept coming. When Amy reached the other brother, Russell,
Speaker 2: on January nineteenth, he wanted to talk to and considering
Speaker 2: the brothers were estranged, that explained the lack of Facebook friendship.
Speaker 2: That made his corroboration of the events all the more powerful.
Speaker 2: They couldn't have colluded to concoct some story for the
Speaker 2: police because Russell did corroborate Vince's story. It was March
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen Penny, her mother Audrey, and her brother Nigel
Speaker 2: gathered in the offices of the GMP. As Penny recounted
Speaker 2: in her book, the officer said, you have waited long
Speaker 2: enough to know what happened. How much would you like
Speaker 2: to know? Penny and Nigel looked at their mother, Audrey
Speaker 2: was now ninety, and she said, I would like to
Speaker 2: know everything. I don't want to be spared any details.
Speaker 2: The Boston Boys story started in Sacramento in the autumn
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy seven, when Dwayne was facing rape charges.
Speaker 2: To escape the law, he fled down to Belize with
Speaker 2: his two sons. Maybe he brought them to lend himself
Speaker 2: an air of respectability. Who wouldn't trust a guy with
Speaker 2: two kids? But in Belize he didn't hop on the
Speaker 2: straight and narrow. He started drinking the cheap local rum,
Speaker 2: lots of it, and getting both physically and verbally violent
Speaker 2: when he did it. First toward the boys, Dwayne picked
Speaker 2: Chris and Peter up as customers part of his tourist business,
Speaker 2: and inevitably the couple witnessed Dwayne's abuse of his sons.
Speaker 2: They stepped in. One time. After screaming at Dwayne to
Speaker 2: stop and getting no response, Chris pulled Dwayne off twelve
Speaker 2: year old Russell. Dwayne then toppled off the deck into
Speaker 2: the sea. Vince remembered Pete and Chris laughing at the
Speaker 2: side of the splash, and Chris told Dwayne to behave
Speaker 2: as he hauled him back on board.
Speaker 1: Dwayne was humiliated.
Speaker 2: That night, Dwayne muttered to Vince, I'm going to kill them.
Speaker 2: Most of the time you'd assume that was an angry exaggeration,
Speaker 2: but as I mentioned, it was an open secret in
Speaker 2: the family that Dwayne killed Vince and Russell's mother. Vince
Speaker 2: knew his father was serious. He hoped he wasn't, but
Speaker 2: he knew he was. It didn't happen right away. Dwayne
Speaker 2: was a seasoned criminal. He waited until the following night,
Speaker 2: when Peter was below deck. He asked Chris to pull
Speaker 2: up the boat's anchor, and then he came at the
Speaker 2: young man from behind. He blood in Chris over the
Speaker 2: head with the club he used to stun and kill Fish,
Speaker 2: slamming it into Chris again and again until the club broke. Next,
Speaker 2: he attempted to stab him in the chest with a knife,
Speaker 2: until that also broke. When Peter heard, she came up
Speaker 2: to the deck and yelled for Dwayne to stop. Dwayne
Speaker 2: screamed back, get back down in the fucking gallery now,
Speaker 2: or I will shoot you with the spear gun. Chris
Speaker 2: yelled too, what's your game? What's your game? And I
Speaker 2: give up? I give up again and again. Finally, Dwayne,
Speaker 2: panting stopped. Chris was badly injured, likely with multiple broken
Speaker 2: bones in addition to a fractured skull. Dwayne, however, was
Speaker 2: the one complaining about the agonizing.
Speaker 1: Pain in his back.
Speaker 2: In an extraordinary act, Chris actually got out his medical
Speaker 2: bag and gave Dwayne a muscle relaxant. Maybe he was
Speaker 2: trying to de escalate the situation. He asked Dwayne why
Speaker 2: he'd done it, and he said it was because Chris
Speaker 2: had tried to haggle with him about the price of
Speaker 2: the journey. He wanted his money. Chris soothed him, agreeing
Speaker 2: immediately he'd pay whatever Dwayne wanted, and all of that
Speaker 2: did seem to de escalate things for a while. After
Speaker 2: taking the muscle relaxant, Dwayne fell asleep. The boys remember
Speaker 2: Pete and Chris whispering together through the night. They didn't
Speaker 2: try to escape the boat. Probably Chris was unable to
Speaker 2: considering his injuries. But maybe they thought that when Dwayne
Speaker 2: woke up sober, he'd be calmer, less violent, that he'd
Speaker 2: take their money and let them go.
Speaker 1: In the morning.
Speaker 2: That guest seemed correct. Dwayne said he would drop his
Speaker 2: passengers off on the Cabo de Trece Peninsula near Livingstone
Speaker 2: in Guatemala if they paid him five hundred dollars each,
Speaker 2: an inordinance um based basically all their money. But they agreed.
Speaker 2: Then Dwayne stated his condition matter of factly, giving no
Speaker 2: choice to stop them from reporting him to the police.
Speaker 2: Before he could get out of the area, he would
Speaker 2: have to tie their hands and strip them naked before
Speaker 2: releasing them. They did not resist. That's when the nightmare
Speaker 2: grew darker. I want to give you all the heads
Speaker 2: up that what follows is really violent and disturbing, so
Speaker 2: feel free to skip forward about a minute if you
Speaker 2: don't want to hear the details. Over the next thirty
Speaker 2: six hours, Dwayne manipulated Chris and Peta through sadistic mind
Speaker 2: games and physical violence, promising them he'd let them go,
Speaker 2: but humiliating and degrading them in the meantime, he likely
Speaker 2: raped Peta. The following day, he dressed his actives and
Speaker 2: wrapped them in rope. Even now he was promising he'd
Speaker 2: drop them off on shore. He just needed to put
Speaker 2: plastic bags over their heads so they couldn't see where
Speaker 2: he was sailing. Once the bags were on their heads,
Speaker 2: he tied their ropes to heavy engine parts. Then he
Speaker 2: pushed them overboard. They were fully conscious as they went over,
Speaker 2: though with those engine parts and their injuries, they didn't
Speaker 2: stand a chance. Russell remembered seeing an air bubble come
Speaker 2: up through the sea, and then the sea was calm. Later,
Speaker 2: Penny would travel to California and talk to Russell in person,
Speaker 2: hearing many of these details from him personally. He would
Speaker 2: add that Dwayne had found an unposted letter among Peters
Speaker 2: things and posted it himself to create confusion about when
Speaker 2: the couple died. That letter the Framptons received in August
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy nine, which temporarily staved off the family's fears.
Speaker 2: Both boys would also reveal that over the years, once
Speaker 2: they reached adulthood, they both tried to go to the
Speaker 2: authorities in both the UK and the US about their
Speaker 2: father's crime, but their attempts had never reached anyone with
Speaker 2: knowledge of the case, falling victim to the same issues
Speaker 2: of jurisdiction and poor international interagency communication that had obstructed
Speaker 2: the case from the start. But back in that conference
Speaker 2: room in Manchester at the police station, the Farmers had
Speaker 2: heard enough. For the time being, this sounded like a
Speaker 2: horror movie. It was almost unbelievable, but both Vince and
Speaker 2: Russell had witnessed it. Their stories matched up. All these
Speaker 2: years later, the Farmer's conviction that the boys held the
Speaker 2: key was confirmed. Finally they knew the truth. They were
Speaker 2: shell shocked, speechless and horrified, but they knew all they
Speaker 2: needed now was justice. With two willing witnesses, prosecutors would
Speaker 2: have a decent case against Joyne. But the problem once
Speaker 2: again was who could prosecute that is, jurisdiction. Various countries
Speaker 2: and justice departments went back and forth, the Brits, the Americans,
Speaker 2: and Belize, the last port where the victims were seen alive,
Speaker 2: although not the country where the crime took place, which
Speaker 2: would be Guatemala. Finally, they determined this American prosecutors could
Speaker 2: claim jurisdiction if the murders happened in open water and
Speaker 2: most importantly were committed by an American on a boat
Speaker 2: owned by an American, with registration or proof that the
Speaker 2: American was indeed the owner of the vessel at the time.
Speaker 2: What they really needed then was proof that Dwayne owned
Speaker 2: his boat. It seemed like it would be impossible to find,
Speaker 2: but Russell Boston had ended up with a lot of
Speaker 2: his father's possessions because his father would dump them with
Speaker 2: him as he fled back and forth over the border
Speaker 2: with Mexico avoiding the law. Among those possessions he found
Speaker 2: photos of the trip to police, which showed Chris and
Speaker 2: linked him to Dwayne and his boat. He had Chris's
Speaker 2: old records as in music records, which further linked Jain
Speaker 2: to the crime. And on September sixteenth, twenty sixteen, wedged
Speaker 2: among a pile of junk in his father's old briefcase,
Speaker 2: he found a small creased document the title of the
Speaker 2: Justin B. Dayne's Boat. The case was getting tighter, the
Speaker 2: evidence was growing. All that was missing from the files
Speaker 2: were the dental exams matching the bodies found in Guatemala
Speaker 2: with Chris and Petis in all records. No one could
Speaker 2: find the file anywhere, not in the US, not in
Speaker 2: the UK, not with Inner Pol. The prosecution needed to
Speaker 2: find the bodies, exhumed them again, and redo the examination. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: even that was easier than done. The Porto Barrio cemetery,
Speaker 2: where Chris and Peter were buried back in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: was overflowing with graves. They were often unmarked, and there
Speaker 2: was no clear map or clear organization. By the twenty tens,
Speaker 2: the FBI searched for Chris and Peter's crosses, but did
Speaker 2: not find them, and the search was called off in
Speaker 2: early November of twenty sixteen. It was a blow to
Speaker 2: the case. Without bodies the ultimate proof of Chris and
Speaker 2: Peter's death, there was less proof of murder too. Still,
Speaker 2: prosecutors pushed on they'd pursue the case anyway. The next
Speaker 2: step was apprehending their suspect. For once, the California authorities
Speaker 2: knew exactly where to make that arrest. Seventy four year
Speaker 2: old Dwayne wasn't somewhere on the road toward Mexico. Not
Speaker 2: these days. He was in poor health and stuck in
Speaker 2: a nursing home in Eureka, California. On December one, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: he was charged with the murders of Chris Farmer and
Speaker 2: Peter Frampton and taken into custody. On December eighth, Dwayne
Speaker 2: was indicted. The trial date was set for the autumn
Speaker 2: of twenty seventeen, expedited by a few factors, one the
Speaker 2: Farmer family's decision not to seek the death penalty and
Speaker 2: the judge's knowledge that many participants in the case were elderly,
Speaker 2: including the defendant, Audrey Farmer, and many of the witnesses
Speaker 2: he called to speak about Dwayne. His parents and one
Speaker 2: of her siblings had already passed. The Farmers prepared to
Speaker 2: travel to California to give depositions on May sixth, including Audrey,
Speaker 2: now ninety one years old. But Dwayne's health had been
Speaker 2: deteriorating rapidly since his arrest. Around his seventy sixth birthday.
Speaker 2: On March twentieth, twenty seventeen, things took a turn for
Speaker 2: the worse. Then on April fifth, he began to refuse
Speaker 2: medication and treatment. No kidney dialysis, no feeding tube. Two
Speaker 2: weeks before the farmer's deposition trip to California, and five
Speaker 2: months before the provisional trial date, on April twenty fourth,
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, Dwayne died. It was over for the law
Speaker 2: at least there's no trial, there's no defendant. But for Penny,
Speaker 2: this life shattering case would never really end, not now
Speaker 2: when justice could never be served. In twenty eighteen, she
Speaker 2: traveled to Guatemala with BBC reporters making a podcast about
Speaker 2: her brother's case, and she succeeded where the FBI had failed.
Speaker 2: Penny located Chris and Peter's graves in the Puerta Barrio cemetery,
Speaker 2: just like she had located the entire Boston family on Facebook.
Speaker 2: She made the trip to California to talk to Russell
Speaker 2: in person too. She spoke with the prosecutors who had
Speaker 2: fought beside her for justice, and Detective Amy Crosby of
Speaker 2: the Missing Persons Unit at the Sacramento Police Department, thanking
Speaker 2: them for their dedication, and then she used her training
Speaker 2: as a journalist to write her book on the case,
Speaker 2: the one I've mentioned a few times, Dead in the Water.
Speaker 2: Penny Farmer is an extraordinary woman. We'll be back after
Speaker 2: the break with an interview with Penny Farmer herself.
Speaker 1: Stay with us well, Hi, Penny.
Speaker 2: I wanted to say, first of all, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for agreeing to talk with us. Our listeners have
Speaker 2: heard the story that you wrote about in your book,
Speaker 2: so they're somewhat apprized of this situation. It's a pretty
Speaker 2: personal account, so I wanted to ask you first what
Speaker 2: made you decide to actually write the story.
Speaker 3: Despite being journalistically trained. Quite honestly, hadn't even occurred to
Speaker 3: me at the initial outset of the investigation. It was
Speaker 3: really only when my mother and I were constantly going
Speaker 3: back and forth to Greater Manchester Police, you know, when
Speaker 3: they were reopening the case after thirty eight years and
Speaker 3: it was a conversation that I had with Mikayla Clinch,
Speaker 3: detective from Mikayla Clinch, and she said to me, you know,
Speaker 3: I assume you're going to write this up, you know,
Speaker 3: And I just thought, well, yeah, actually, well why not,
Speaker 3: you know, because as I say, I did train as
Speaker 3: a journalist. But then, of course we got the terrible news,
Speaker 3: you know, that Boston had committed suicide, and he did
Speaker 3: commit suicide. There was no other way of dressing it up.
Speaker 3: Then Russell reached out via Sacramento PD and said that
Speaker 3: he wanted very much to be to Mom and I.
Speaker 3: So it was at that point, you know, that we
Speaker 3: got in touch and we had a very long skype
Speaker 3: call with Russell, and obviously then it's sort of snowballed,
Speaker 3: and so you know, I started really keeping more than
Speaker 3: just notes, that started really writing the book at that point. Wow.
Speaker 2: Actually, one of my questions was what was it like
Speaker 2: to talk to those sons when we had.
Speaker 3: A skype call? It It was it was obviously the
Speaker 3: most bizarre situation. And you know, all credit to my mother,
Speaker 3: who at that stage was ninety one she's now ninety eight.
Speaker 3: She was I mean, she's a very strong woman anyway.
Speaker 3: But you know that there was my mother and I,
Speaker 3: you know, one side of the camera and you know
Speaker 3: when the camera went on because we hadn't aside from
Speaker 3: his Facebook profile, we hadn't seen Russell Boston at all.
Speaker 3: So it was a very weird experience. But it was
Speaker 3: very pathetic, I think is probably the word. You know,
Speaker 3: we both well. It was really more Russell telling us
Speaker 3: exactly what happened on the boat, some of which has
Speaker 3: gone in the book and some I've you know, held
Speaker 3: back on for decency, Etceterually. You know, I think I
Speaker 3: think I've written it enough to suggest probably you know,
Speaker 3: what went on and the horror of it all without
Speaker 3: going into too much graphic detail.
Speaker 2: It seems like a big component of the journey that
Speaker 2: was writing the book and talking about the case was
Speaker 2: get kind of giving yourself closure.
Speaker 1: Did it help with that?
Speaker 3: I suppose so in many ways. And you know, I've
Speaker 3: I feel I've become a lot closer to my brother,
Speaker 3: and I've learned a lot more about him, and you
Speaker 3: know a lot of his friends have come forward, which
Speaker 3: has been fantastic really, and especially for my mum, it's
Speaker 3: been a bit of it's just a funny word to use,
Speaker 3: but you know it's been a bit of a gift
Speaker 3: in her old age to sort of reconnect with him,
Speaker 3: albeit in death. So I think, you know, in that sense, yes,
Speaker 3: I think closure is a bit of an overused cliche,
Speaker 3: to be honest, because I don't think you ever really
Speaker 3: get over it.
Speaker 1: You just sort of stir over the cracks really.
Speaker 3: But you know, I'm able to talk quite freely without
Speaker 3: getting upset about it now because you know, time does
Speaker 3: move on, and you have you can't keep looking back,
Speaker 3: and you know, I mean it was ghastly and you
Speaker 3: know we've not had it easy even latterly, you know.
Speaker 1: To get to the truth.
Speaker 3: But but we got there in the end and we
Speaker 3: now know you know what's happened, and indeed Vince and
Speaker 3: Russell as well, you know our family and the family
Speaker 3: that we're both in the same boat, you know, I
Speaker 3: mean that that's the extraordinary nature of this story, that
Speaker 3: two families on either side of the Atlantic. It's like
Speaker 3: parallel lives really. But you know, we're all victims of Boston,
Speaker 3: if you like, they've been through hell and back and
Speaker 3: you know what absolutely ghastly experience they have suffered, you know,
Speaker 3: but both to witness their murders and to lose them
Speaker 3: on So you know, I'm very grateful to them for
Speaker 3: being so open. And they didn't turn out the people
Speaker 3: that possibly their father would have liked them to be,
Speaker 3: you know, they did they didn't follow history and go
Speaker 3: the same way as him. You know that they're good,
Speaker 3: decent people.
Speaker 2: Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that
Speaker 2: we didn't ask about, or like, is there a final
Speaker 2: word that you can get in there that you want
Speaker 2: to make sure that we hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I just hope that no other families
Speaker 3: have to go through what we've gone through. But I
Speaker 3: you know, one would hope with modern day communications and
Speaker 3: you know, I hope hopefully better reporting and better systems
Speaker 3: in place that people wouldn't have.
Speaker 1: To go through all that, you know, they.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't have to wait forty plus years to find out
Speaker 3: what had happened to their loved ones.
Speaker 2: For more information about this case and others we cover
Speaker 2: on the show, visit Diversionaudio dot com. Sign up for
Speaker 2: Diversion's newsletter and be among the first to hear about
Speaker 2: special behind the scenes features with the hosts and actors
Speaker 2: from Diversion's podcasts, more shows you'll love from Diversion and
Speaker 2: our partners, and other exclusive tidbits you can't get anywhere else.
Speaker 2: I'd also like to shout out a few key sources
Speaker 2: that made it possible for me to tell this week's story.
Speaker 2: First off, Penny Farmer's wonderful book Dead in the Water,
Speaker 2: My forty year search for My Brother's Killer. Also the
Speaker 2: excellent BBC podcast Paradise, which gives a ton of fascinating
Speaker 2: detail on the case. And finally, I want to shout
Speaker 2: out local news in the UK and especially around Manchester,
Speaker 2: where the story has been covered substantially. The greatest true
Speaker 2: crime stories ever told. Is a production of Diversion Audio.
Speaker 2: Your host is me Mary Kay mcbraer. This episode was
Speaker 2: written by our editorial director Nora Battel. Our show was
Speaker 2: produced and directed by Mark Francis. Our development team is
Speaker 2: Emma Dumouth and Jacob Bronstein. Theme music by Tyler Cash.
Speaker 2: Executive producers Jacob Bronstein, Mark Francis and Scott Waxman.
Speaker 1: Diversion Audio