Jennifer Amell
Appearances
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Hi, I'm Jennifer Amell, host of Dark Valley. Thank you for joining me on this journey as we dig deeper into this case and into the stories of those most impacted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
He was late to get his crew started on a job over in Cambridgeport, about five miles west. He kissed Linda goodbye and started off. Steve's company was hired to tear out a chimney and pour a floor at this home in Cambridgeport. By 10.30 that morning... Steve asked his employee, Jim, to drive the truck to the dump and told him to stop by his home and Linda would cut him a check.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
So there is, like, closure to be had, like, forensically, if this is the real deal. That's right, Larry Alley is dead. Of complications related to heart problems at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. Since I can't talk to Allie himself, I decided to do as much open source and records research as possible. Here's the broad strokes of his life.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Lawrence Heeman Allie was born on September 12, 1946, on a tiny island called Beals off the coast of Maine. His father, Stillman Allie, was a clam diver in Bar Harbor. But when Larry was 10, his father passed away. His mother, Annie, remarried a guy called Alanson Ward Davis. Davis raised Larry and his brother Wynn as his own.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
In 1957, Davis moved the family to Derry, New Hampshire, where he started work at a lumber company. The Davis-Alley family were devout Pentecostal Baptists. Davis was also an army man, having served in the Korean War. And following in his stepfather's footsteps, Larry Alley decided to drop out of the 11th grade in 1963 and enlisted in the Army.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
His obituary says that he served in the 82nd Airborne in Vietnam and was discharged in 1968, having achieved the rank of sergeant. Yet here's the first strange thing about Alley's life. I FOIA'd the National Archive and got Alley's military record. Not a lot of information was provided, but of interest.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
This record reports that he only served from January 1965 to March 1966 in Evereaux, France, and was discharged at the rank of Specialist 4. This is a lower rank than Sargent, and he likely did not see combat in Vietnam. Rather, in 1966, France was busy kicking the U.S. off their air bases, and Ali's job likely would have been in this operational task.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
So it's possible that Allie lied to his family about his military record. Regardless, when Allie got out of the military, he married Beverly, who was from Keene, New Hampshire. They had two sons and two daughters. And in 1974, the Allies decided to move closer to Beverly's family and bought a house in Swansea.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Allie worked for the city of Keene for a year and then landed that paving job at Whitcomb in 1975. In 1988, Allie left Whitcomb to start his own paving company called L&B Paving. That stands for Larry and Beverly. He lived in that house in Swansea up until his death in 2008. The company Ali worked for, Frank W. Whitcomb Construction, was embroiled in some crazy drama during the 80s.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Basically, they were caught rigging bids in Vermont with another company called Pike Industries. These two companies had a monopoly over paving work in Vermont. Whitcomb would get all the southern Vermont jobs and Pike the north.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
The Lewiston Daily Sun reported that Pike and Whitcomb were involved in what the Justice Department in Washington said was the largest criminal antitrust investigation in U.S. history, end quote. This would become important later, so hang on to that nugget.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
But basically, Larry Alley would travel all over the Upper Valley, where Wickham had a monopoly on paving work, and essentially do bids on the off-season and manage paving crews in the spring and summer. The other strange and notable thing about Alley is that by the time of his death, he was almost $1 million in debt.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
He had numerous personal loans, loans out for his business, and a $100,000 federal lien. Allie's wife, Beverly, is now deceased as well. So I decided to reach out to Allie's children. I ended up interviewing both of his sons. I'm going to protect their identities here, so I'll refer to the sons as the eldest and the youngest. My first interview was with the eldest.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Steve vaguely recalls talking to Linda on the phone close to 11. She said the guy from Whitcomb Construction was there. And this wasn't the roofing company. According to Steve, Wickham had recently messed up the paving job on their driveway, and Steve wanted someone to come out and assess the work. The guy left a business card, and Linda must have tossed it on the kitchen counter.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
He lives in the Appalachians now and is a veteran. He's a software contractor for the Coast Guard and a reverend doctor. He works as a hospital chaplain on the side. I did not get his consent to be recorded, so I'll quickly recap our conversation. The eldest appeared on Zoom wearing a black t-shirt that read, Forgive. Behind him was a big wooden sign that said Swansea.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
He was surrounded by tall black bookcases filled with Christian texts. He also had quite the setup. He's a YouTube minister as well. I have to say, the whole conversation with the eldest gave me the willies. He was cheerful enough and gracious with his time, but there was just something off. And maybe that's just my own bias against online spiritual counselors.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Let's just say the eldest did not hold back. I don't think I got a word or a question in edgewise. We spoke for over an hour, but only talked about Linda Moore briefly. He told me yes, his dad was at the Moore house the day of the murder, about a bad paving job. He said his dad was, quote, old school. He had a tough childhood. His sister, quote, drank herself to death.
Dark Valley
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He himself used to have a drinking problem until he found Jesus. He said his father's house was haunted. He told me that after his father died, the family was shocked to learn how badly in debt Ali really was. He said his mother was oblivious and ended up losing her home. His brother had to declare bankruptcy because he went into business with his father.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
And then the eldest said he tried to help his dad get back in the black, but found out he was cashing out all of these insurance policies and stealing money from some other fund. He was, quote, robbing Peter to pay Paul. He was about to confront his dad about all of this. But then Allie had a heart attack, and the eldest had to make the awful decision not to resuscitate.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
And then just as he hit this somber note, the eldest went off on a tangent about how his daughter got into some trouble while she was a teenager with a quote, Arab. And he didn't approve because quote, Arabs tried to kill me in the war. And then he insinuated that he paid off the police in relation to this incident. But I'm unclear about that part. Everyone has their price, he said.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
The eldest suggested that I speak with his brother, the youngest. He said his brother's the spitting image of their father. He's even a paver. He kept saying that over and over again. They're like mirrors of each other. I guess his point was that the youngest knew their father better, was closer to him, and probably had more information.
Dark Valley
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But, he said, he'd be surprised if his brother agreed to talk. As we ended the interview, the Reverend Dr. Eldest insisted that he pray over me. And hey, look, I didn't have a problem with it.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
He said, quote, Lord, I ask of you, let Jennifer and her endeavors, her things that she has going on, things that just might be difficult for her, difficult for her task of finding more answers and getting what she needs. Lord, that you bless her and that she comes to know you in a great way. In Jesus' precious name, amen.
Dark Valley
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He paused and then he said, hey, let me tell you something from a guy that doesn't need money. I'll take a prayer over a million dollars any day. That's a fact. Amen, eldest son. Next, I reached out to the youngest. Much to his brother's surprise, he agreed to meet with me in person, so I headed back up to Swansea, New Hampshire.
Dark Valley
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In the meantime, Jim, with the dump truck, did as he was told and stopped by to see Linda for the check. She had recently started keeping the company books. Steve and his crew ate lunch, but by 1240, Jim wasn't back yet. Steve called Linda to check if she'd heard anything from Jim. As he was on the phone, Jim swung the dump truck onto the job site. By the third ring, Linda picked up.
Dark Valley
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The youngest bought the house next door to his childhood home, the one that's just around the corner from Gmarlo's store. The youngest's wife was heading out the side door. She said she couldn't stay.
Dark Valley
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But the youngest's son stood in the doorway and welcomed me in. He cut an imposing figure, over six feet, in his fifties. He wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with his paving company logo. He waved me through the side door and into the dim, wood-paneled living room. The house smelled like dogs and cigarette smoke. The Christmas tree was up, and his dog lay whining in a crate.
Dark Valley
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A buff-colored cat wove itself between my legs as I took a seat on a plush, lazy boy armchair. Above him on the wall was a picture of what I thought was the youngest and his wife. Alas.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
I'm not sure if you caught that, but the youngest said that he was at the same Cheshire Fair that Jane Borowski was at on the night of her attack. And his father wasn't with them. This was totally unprompted. But basically, he's saying his dad doesn't have an alibi for the night of Jane's attack. Then I asked him about Linda Moore.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Kind of annoyed. It rang about three times and she came to the phone, said Steve in a 1990 interview. Quote, well after about the second ring he drove into the yard. I don't know if I said Linda sweetheart or whatever I said, but I just had called to see if Jim had stopped by or you had heard from him. But he just drove in the yard so I don't need anything. She's kind of disgusted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
That's right. Larry Alley said the woman he spoke to was not Linda Moore, but instead this mysterious woman with red hair. The eldest brother also confirmed this story when I followed back up, that the woman Larry Alley spoke to at the door was not Linda Moore. But he went further and said that his father had speculated that Linda was already dead inside when he knocked on the door.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
I guess she had been lying out in the sun, so she had to run into the house to answer the phone. And when I didn't want anything, actually, it was the last word I ever heard from her. And it was like, yeah, or something like that. And that was all. End quote. 20 minutes later at 1 p.m., the phone at Steve's job site rang again.
Dark Valley
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I cannot understate how bizarre this is. I double-checked the case file, verbally with John Philpin and Michael Clare, and absolutely nothing indicates that a woman other than Linda Moore was at her home that day. In some light, Linda's hair could be reddish in color, but it was more brown. Honestly, I think this is a red herring.
Dark Valley
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I think Allie made up a weird little lie to explain why he was there at one o'clock at the time of death. Additionally, according to some witnesses who passed by, Linda would have been out in the yard sunbathing when Allie stopped by. So if Allie stopped by the house between 12.30 and 1, he would have likely encountered Linda outside and not knocked on the door.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
But I suppose it's possible that he caught Linda right after she answered the phone call from Steve at 12.40 p.m.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
But it's strange, and part of the reason I'm here talking to you and your brother is...
Dark Valley
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Quote, this is something I guess that's always bothered me, that we didn't get to the phone, said Steve. The kitchen was all plasticed off and the phone was, we had to go clear around the house to get into the phone. I guess that's something I'll always wonder. Was she trying to call for help around one o'clock? Because when the guy got to the phone, there was no answer. End quote.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Okay, a couple things to unpack here. First, his son says that Wickham offered to get him an attorney when the detectives came sniffing around. Now, why would someone's employer offer them a criminal defense attorney? Is that normal corporate behavior? Apparently, it's a common thing for companies to do if it'll affect the employee's job performance or damage the company's public image.
Dark Valley
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And remember, this happened on the heels of Whitcomb paying their fines in Vermont after that whole bid-rigging fiasco and indictment. And they were probably just getting their public image under control when, boom, one of their senior employees was at the home of a murder victim at the time of the victim's death. Yeah, not a great look.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
I also have nothing corroborating the fact that Allie actually took off after dropping by the Moore's house, as his son suggests. What I do have is Steve Moore saying he passed Allie on the road at 3 p.m. after claiming to have been there two hours previous. But the youngest brings up a good point here.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
If Allie wasn't the one who sold the job at the Moore's or did the driveway, how would Steve have known it was him? Well, Allie was driving a distinctive vehicle.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Okay. Yep, yellow. As we know, yellow paint chips were found on victim Barbara Agnew's vehicle. But I just don't know if that Wickham yellow would be the same as that daisy yellow color that they lifted from Agnew's front grill.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
And then Steve said this. This one detail is a little fuzzy to me at this point in time. I remember having a thought that it seemed like something was wrong. I believe I went to the phone and dialed this number, my home number, and it was busy. Then I sort of dropped the premonition that something was wrong and went back to work. I'm far from being superstitious.
Dark Valley
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I don't believe in the supernatural, but I'll always remember that I had an urge to get in my truck and come down here and see if Linda was all right But I suppressed it. End quote. By 2.50 p.m., Jim was ready to take the truck to the dump again. Steve again called Linda at home. He was going to ask her to cut another check for Jim. But the phone rang and rang again.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
This brings us to the golden question, which I put to the youngest son. I'm going to ask you, like, probably a difficult question, but did it ever cross your mind that your dad could be responsible for that murder?
Dark Valley
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I didn't get the sense that the youngest was trying to deceive me in any way. And I certainly didn't get the same weird vibes as I did his older brother. The youngest was warm and inviting and laughed quickly. I just didn't get the sense that he was trying to cover for his father or for the legacy of a man he loved. This is tricky stuff. Like, I'm not presenting him with any evidence, really.
Dark Valley
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I'm coming to him with questions. And this is the first time he's ever had to kind of encounter that terrible, terrible prospect. That his father could have been a murderer of women. I did get the sense that he was kind of dancing around this difficult proposition, as anyone would.
Dark Valley
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Anytime we ventured into that territory, and he'd start talking about their childhood, saying that his brother had kind of a tough upbringing and it was different from his... I mean, he'd get up, clear his throat, and go get a drink from the kitchen and insert these weird breaks in our conversation. I mean, he'd touch on things and kind of trail off.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
To learn more and to join, visit CrimeJunkiePodcast.com slash fan club. Your support means the world. Just two months ago, I received a digital copy of Linda Moore's case file. Not the whole thing, just bits and pieces. I spent literally an hour printing it all out. Apologies to the trees, but my brain works better that way.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
I mean, it's not even worth playing you the audio of this because you can barely hear him under his breath. But there's a couple times where this happened, where I got the sense that he and his brother had actually discussed if it was possible that their father murdered Linda Moore. But that's just kind of reading between the lines. That mostly concluded my directed questions to the youngest.
Dark Valley
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He shuffled out onto his covered porch where he keeps his overflowing desk full of paperwork. He lit up a smoke and gazed over my shoulder out the window to his childhood home. I remember what his brother said, that his father's house was haunted.
Dark Valley
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Eventually, Steve gave up and decided to follow Jim to his house where the bulky company checkbook was kept. Jim left first in the truck. Steve left a few minutes later at about 3 p.m. in his El Camino, quickly overtaking Jim in the slow-moving dump truck. On Route 121, just before he pulled into his own driveway, Steve waved to a guy in a Whitcomb truck.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Okay, what I'm about to lay out for you is entirely circumstantial, but I'm arguing that it begs deeper investigation by proper authorities. So here we go. I pulled Allie's vehicle history, and something curious came back. Nothing. No vehicles were ever registered to him personally. So then I pulled his paving company records. There was a long list of vehicles, mostly GMCs and Fords.
Dark Valley
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But there was also one Jeep Cherokee from 1997. As we know, this cannot be the Jeep in question for Jane Borowski's attack, as that one was from the late 70s or early 80s. Frustratingly, I couldn't pull makes and models from VIN numbers before 1990. Quirk of the system, I guess. But it does list the year of the vehicle. So on the list for Alley's company, there was a vehicle from 1974...
Dark Valley
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I don't know what kind, but it had a New Hampshire license plate with the numbers T626... You might remember from season one, but Jane Borowski was hypnotized in 1989, just a few months after her attack, by John Philpin. While under hypnosis, Jane recalled a few characters from her attacker's license plate.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
It's a super long shot. But that tag registered to Larry Alley's company, T626, could be the one Jane saw. It's even consistent with her attacker's vehicle being from the 70s. Alley's tag with these numbers, 626, was on a vehicle dated from 1974. The youngest remembers his father leaving his job at Wickham in 1988.
Dark Valley
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He said it was because Frank Wickham's son, Chip, took over the company and put his friends in some executive positions that they weren't necessarily qualified for. And a lot of the guys quit after that, including Larry Alley. Then he went into business for himself and incorporated L&B Paving in 1989. The timing of this is interesting.
Dark Valley
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This is, of course, when the quote-unquote Connecticut River Valley killings stopped. After Jane's attack in August of 1988, it's speculated that this perpetrator went up to Maine and killed Jessica Briggs in Portland in 1989, and then possibly Pamela Webb two months later and in nearby Bidford, Maine. As we know, Larry Alley has ties to Maine. He was from there.
Dark Valley
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He'd often go back and visit family. I did ask the youngest son if his dad ever did paving work in Maine. He said no. However, in the newspaper archives, I found an ad placed in the classifieds of a paper out of Bidford. For, guess what, LMB Paving, and this was in 1988.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
There was a radio outside, said Steve, and her sandals that she had been wearing, in like a pool lounge chair right next to the door that you walked in. I remember the first few steps into the house. And you know, this place seems deathly quiet. There's not a sound going, there's no washing machine, there's no dryer, nothing.
Dark Valley
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It's definitely possible this isn't Allie's company, but I haven't found another L&B paving company registered to anyone else in Maine. I read through papers around the Briggs murder for May 1989. The Evening Express reported that there was paving work being done on Commercial Street, just a five-minute walk from the murder site at Bath Iron Works.
Dark Valley
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I have no way to tell if Allie was involved with this paving work, so this remains pretty tentative. For what it's worth, I believe the youngest son when he says his father couldn't possibly be a murderer.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
But the facts are that Larry Alley was at Linda Moore's house at the time of her murder, lived half a mile from where Jane Borowski was attacked, and according to his son, didn't have an alibi for that evening, and that he also had ties to Maine. But what about the other victims? And it's true, I couldn't tie anything regarding the Courdemont or Freed cases to Larry Alley.
Dark Valley
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But remember his son said that Alley went to Wickham's office in Walpole? I've been there. This site has a large gravel pit and a plant that manufactures asphalt, a place where Alley would often be for his job. In 1985, victim Eva Morse went to her place of work at the Dunning Corporation in North Walpole, just under three miles from the Whitcomb office.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
She clocked into work early and left soon after, complaining of an illness. Eva was last seen hitchhiking north on Route 12. Well, from the Whitcomb office to where Eva was last seen can be driven in four minutes. It is very possible that had Allie left Whitcomb the morning of July 10th, 1985, he would have driven right past Eva on the shoulder of Route 12. And finally, we have Heidi Martin.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
This is also incredibly circumstantial, but once I was hip to Larry Allie and his business of paving, I remembered something Barry and Linda Martin said during our interview, and it was legitimately like a real-life Sherlock Holmes moment.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Elementary. There was a gravel pit less than a mile from Heidi's murder site in Heartland, Vermont. I followed up with the current owner of the company who leases those pits, and he said yes, those pits were sold to Pike Industries in 1984 or 85. As we know from that well-publicized scandal of bid rigging, Whitcomb and Pike were in bed together, so I dug further.
Dark Valley
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And according to a 1984 article in the Rutland Daily Herald, Whitcomb and Pike were doing regrading work on I-91 bridges from Brattleboro, Windsor, and Heartland in April and May of 1984. Heidi was killed on May 20, 1984.
Dark Valley
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So it's incredibly likely that Whitcomb, who ruled state paving jobs in southern Vermont, was paving the bridge on I-91, literally 200 feet from Heidi's murder site in the Martinsville woods. But what I can't pull together is if Allie was on that crew.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Moreover, we've established that Heidi was probably killed at noon, around lunchtime, say when paving crews are taking a break, and going to the only snack bar in town in Heartland Three Corners. If Allie was stopping for lunch, then he would have seen 16-year-old Heidi Martin jogging by, all by herself, down that lonesome Martinsville road. I did reach out to Whitcomb Construction.
Dark Valley
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Then I walked around the corner, and there she was, lying in the kitchen. She was lying on her stomach, and her head was propped up against the doorjamb. I rolled her over, and my God, her throat was slit. One arm right here was cut right to the bone. Linda Moore had been brutally stabbed in her kitchen. To be honest, I initially kind of glossed over the Moore case.
Dark Valley
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But as of this recording, I haven't heard back. Like I said to Jane Borowski, if this is the guy, then it's up to the Attorney General and police to subpoena records from Whitcomb if they still exist. But the most promising avenue here is forensic testing. From what the youngest son said, his elder brother still has his father's knife collection.
Dark Valley
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Could it be possible that the murder weapon is in that collection? And speaking of his sons, they could provide DNA samples to test against case evidence. I know for a fact that there's DNA in the Jessica Briggs case. And I'm this close to sure that there's DNA on the Heidi Martin, Barbara Agnew, and Linda Moore cases.
Dark Valley
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The last I heard from Mike McLaughlin, the detective on Jane's case, is that her evidence is currently being retested for any traces of perpetrator DNA. And since it's been 40 years since these crimes occurred, the only way we're going to know for sure if Larry Alley is the Connecticut River Valley Killer, or if he's innocent, is to test this evidence.
Dark Valley
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I can't help but thinking that if Vermont State Police nailed Allie down back in 1986, after Linda Moore's murder, things would be a lot different. So does Jane.
Dark Valley
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Under gray skies and in a muddy Vermont spring, Jane and I went to the Heartland Cemetery to pay our respects to Heidi Martin. The cemetery's old, established in 1763, and it's over three acres of graves. I thought we'd be there for hours trying to find Heidi's headstone. But literally five minutes later, Jane calls out.
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Jane just said that Heidi guided her right to her stone. I actually believe that because this graveyard is huge. And she walked right to it. Is that weird or what? Jane, that's amazing. Thank you, Heidi. I was walking and I was like, this is going to take us hours.
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I just didn't have that much information. Linda's husband, Steve, was and perhaps is to this day considered the prime suspect in her murder. But we know that Steve had no opportunity. He was with five other people at any given time that day before returning home, and indeed his employee Jim was with him when he discovered his wife's body.
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Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts, where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow, and a highway will be there. It will be called the way of holiness."
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It will be for those who walk on that way. The unclean will not journey on it. Wicked fools will not go on about it. No lion will be there, nor any ravenous beast. They will not be found there, but only the redeemed will walk there.
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These women are dead. There's no bringing them back. We can conjure them in our memory, tell their stories and lift them up out of history with cassette tapes and Polaroids and funny stories. But there's no changing what this man did. He killed them. People say things happen for a reason, but I think they just happen. And it's up to us to make meaning out of it. So help me make the meaning.
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Contact the New Hampshire and Vermont Attorneys General. Tell them to reopen these cases and allocate funding for them for additional investigation for forensic testing. Tell them to communicate with the survivors and the victims' families. The true enemy here is apathy. Do not let them forget. And for God's sake, remember these women were once alive. When do we want it?
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In 2023, Jane Borowski and Maura Murray's sister, Julie Murray, got together with other grieving families and started the New Hampshire Coalition of Families of the Missing and Murdered. Each year, they demonstrate for change and justice in front of the Attorney General's office in Concord, New Hampshire.
Dark Valley
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But I think I also overlooked the Moore case because every other victim had been killed outside of their homes. Victims of opportunity, out alone jogging or hitchhiking, or using a payphone late at night, or getting a soda from a vending machine. But what better case to concentrate on than one where the scenario is more tightly controlled?
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If you have a tip for any of these cases, please call the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit at 603-271-2663 or the Vermont State Police Major Crimes Unit at 802-244-8781. Dark Valley was produced, written, and edited by me, Jennifer Amell. Sound design, mixing, and original music by Wesley Slover of Sanctus Audio. Show art by Pamela Robinson. Original theme song by Jennifer Pegg.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Want more Dark Valley? Go ahead and subscribe to Crime Junkie Fan Club and get exclusive access to bonus content. The link's in the show notes. Dark Valley is an AudioChuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
We have a crime scene, several witnesses passing by on the road, a definitive timeline with phone records, people in and out of the Morehouse all afternoon. The first thing I like to do is develop a timeline for the victim's day. This is built in part on Steve's recollection, phone records, and witnesses.
Dark Valley
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11 a.m., Linda says the Whitcomb guy's there. He leaves his business card. 3 p.m., Steve's driving home, passes Whitcomb guy on the road near his house.
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Wait a minute. The Whitcomb guy is at or near the Moore house at 11 a.m. and at 3 p.m.? Why? Who is this guy? I called John Philpin, who I know consulted on the Moore case the day it happened. And then John called, guess who? Vermont State Police Detective Michael Clare. You might remember him from being lead detective on Heidi Martin's case. He was also lead on the Moore case.
Dark Valley
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Mike said the guy from Whitcomb was a man named Larry Alley. Mike said he found Alley's business card on the Moore's kitchen counter in the middle of the crime scene, spattered with blood. Mike and another detective went to visit Allie at his home, the evening of the murder. Allie apparently told Mike LeClair that the Moores had hired Whitcomb to pave their driveway.
Dark Valley
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Steve was unhappy with the job and called Whitcomb to have them send out some kind of foreman to assess the situation. Larry Allie was that guy, an experienced paver who had worked for Whitcomb for over a decade. In fact, Wickham sent Larry Alley all over Vermont and New Hampshire to do customer bids or manage paving crews. Alley said he stopped by the Moore house between 12 and 1 p.m.
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to talk with Steve. He said he knocked on the door and a woman answered. She said her husband wasn't home and then he handed her her business card. He said he did not go inside. Michael Clare noted that Alley seemed pretty straightforward, not nervous at all. The detectives left.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
I gathered all the papers together, brewed a pot of coffee, and commandeered my kitchen table. And then I began to read. April 15th, 1986. Westminster, Vermont. Steve Moore was out of bed by 7 a.m. A little later, his wife Linda was up and getting the kids ready to catch the school bus.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
With Ali's statement to the police, this man is now at the Moore house on three separate occasions the day of the murder. Linda herself mentions the guy from Wickham on the phone to Steve around 11 a.m. Then Ali himself says he's there between 12 and 1 p.m. And then Steve says he passes the guy from Wickham on the road near his house around 3 p.m. Yeah, that's suspicious as hell.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
I compared Ali's statement with the timeline I developed for Linda Moore. Steve spoke to Linda on the phone at 12.40 p.m. Remember, she was annoyed because she had to leave her lawn chair and answer the phone for no reason. It seems most likely that after hanging out with her husband, Linda went back outside to sunbathe.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
When Steve got home at 3 p.m., remember he said that the chair and the radio and Linda's sandals were all out in the yard? She was a really tidy person, and she would not have left these things out. It looked like she'd been interrupted. And then at 1 p.m., there was that mysterious missed phone call from the Morehouse to the job site in Cambridge Port where Steve was working.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
When Steve called back a moment later, there was a busy signal from the police investigation that pulled the phone records. We know that right after calling the job site at 1 p.m., Linda called a local lumber mill. She spoke with someone at the mill and asked if her husband Steve was there. Why would Linda be calling around to find Steve?
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Perhaps because Larry Alley was there and Linda wanted Steve to speak with him about the driveway. Then Steve remembered this in 1990. That, oh yeah, he did have an arrangement with the Whitcomb guy to come around 3 p.m. And if he wasn't there, he told the Whitcomb guy to ask his wife to call him at the job site.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
It is entirely possible that Linda made these phone calls exactly according to the plan. Allie was there, and she needed to reach Steve. Then Steve called Linda again around 2.50 p.m. There was no answer. Linda was lying dead in her kitchen. The medical examiner on Linda's case speculates that her time of death is probably closer to 1 p.m. than 3 p.m.,
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
So Larry Alley is putting himself at the scene of the crime at the time of death. Investigators were in high gear for the Moore case. There were several witnesses who spotted strangers near the house that day. There's a blue van, a gray or silver car in the driveway, a kid in a windbreaker in a nearby field, and of course, the man in the glasses and blue backpack walking past the Moore house.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
John Philpin says this man in the backpack was found. He was interrogated and ruled out for the Moore homicide. And in the ensuing weeks, it seems like the Vermont State Police polygraphed the entire male population of Westminster and Bellows Falls. And during this blitzkrieg of polygraphs, Mike LeClaire brought in Larry Alley. According to Mike, Alley abjectly failed his polygraph.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Though polygraphs are notoriously unreliable and not admissible in court, this made Mike's heckles go up. He wanted to bring Allie in again for a follow-up interview. But Mike says that it was at this point that he was transferred off the Moore case. taken completely out of major crimes, and given a promotion.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
The new lead investigators were hell-bent on pinning Linda's murder on her husband, Steve. They launched two inquests into Steve Moore over the next few years, made him take at least two polygraph examinations, which he passed, destroyed the man's reputation, and made a grieving family suffer endlessly for decades. "'How absurd,' said Steve in 1990." What a crock of shit.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Steve ran a successful construction business, and they lived in what Linda described as her dream home, a stately white farmhouse on a picturesque bend of Saxton's River. Steve was waiting for a few of his guys to come over and start some roofing work on the house. By 9 a.m., the roofing guys were there, and Steve let them finish up.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
If they just look at the simple fact, look at nothing else but the fact that I was with five other people in one spot and was not here at the time when my wife was killed, that ought to end the story. Now let's go out and find who did it. But that hasn't been these guys' attitude. So finally I got to the point and I told them to go fuck themselves. End quote. I don't blame them.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Mike LeClaire told me that Larry Alley was at the top of his list of suspects, and he tried to get the new investigators to do some more background on him, but they were more focused on Steve. I'm not sure how top of Mike's list Alley actually was, as he interviewed him the day of the murder, and I think got transferred in 89 or 90. That's at least three or four years after the murder.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
But as far as I know, all investigation into Larry Alley ended there. So I decided to follow up and do that background research. I always thought that if the right suspect came up in one case, then the pieces would slip easily into place for other cases. We saw this play out with my investigation into Barry Martin. The suspicion was rightly there, I believe, but none of the pieces really fit.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
This is what happened when I looked into Larry Alley. In 1974, the Alleys moved into a home in Swansea, New Hampshire. Does Swansea sound familiar? It should. I had to call Jane Borowski, the only survivor of the Connecticut River Valley Killer.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
If you're finding yourself drawn into the story and want the best listening experience, I invite you to join the Crime Junkie fan club for ad-free access to Dark Valley, plus early and ad-free episodes of Crime Junkie, the number one true crime podcast. along with additional exclusive content from across the AudioChuck network.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
I gave Jane the rundown on Alley's connection to the Linda Moore case. I found Guy, and he... Okay, Jane. He had a house one minute drive away from Gamarla's door.
Dark Valley
Chapter 18 | Down the Alley
Allie literally lived half a mile away from Gmarlo's Market, where Jane Borowski was attacked and stabbed 27 times in 1988.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Hi, I'm Jennifer Amell, host of Dark Valley. Thank you for joining me on this journey as we dig deeper into this case and into the stories of those most impacted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
So, yeah, I mean, the first time I spoke to April, she told me her theory. She thought you could have been involved in some way or knew more information. And so my promise to her was that I would dig in as much as I could, talk to you if you were, you know, willing to.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
I felt this weird tension in my whole body as I left the Martins. If they're liars, then they're some of the best liars I've ever met. The interview you just heard was edited for time and relevance, but I spent just under 40 minutes with them. Barry and Linda were welcoming and a bit odd, but mostly...
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
It just felt like they were people in pain, not acutely, but like they'd had this ache distending through their bones in their house. I felt that Barry's grief and his confusion about what had happened that day were genuine. A few minutes after I left, I called April.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
So what's up? Yeah, so as you know, I've been talking to your daughter, April. Yeah. So a little bit about what I'm doing. So I am an investigative journalist, and I've been looking into, like, the so-called Connecticut River Valley cases.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
I have tried to reach Sandy Perkins' ex-wife, in as many ways as I know how. As of this recording, she has not agreed to speak with me. I heard through the grapevine that she's reluctant to get involved. The closest I've come to corroborating that Sandy Perkins was with Barry Martin that day is a brief statement from Sandy's son.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
I didn't give him any context or information about why I was asking what he remembers about that day. But here's what Sandy's son had to say. As far as that day, he, meaning Sandy Perkins, was at the Martins and remembered Barry coming in and yelling, So for the son to say this without any context is important. It's at least one witness, albeit a child at the time, who supports Barry's alibi.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
There's a couple other things that Barry and Linda mentioned that I needed to run down. First, Barry and Linda said that Megan's mother, Barbie, was the one who found Heidi's body. Now, this is contrary to what the papers reported. They said it was a volunteer firefighter who first saw the body.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Now, this is the same Megan who you heard from in episode three, the one who talked about being stalked, harassed, and almost assaulted by Barry. So, naturally, I called Megan's mother, Barbie.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
So, yeah, I mean, today I'd love to talk about your daughter, Heidi.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
we know that Barry stalked Megan when she was a teenager. They have no reason to lie about this. We also know that Barry impregnated April's mom when she was only 17. I think at this point we have enough evidence to say that Barry preyed upon teenage girls. When April and I talked about this, she remembered what Jane Borowski said in season one.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
We were discussing an early suspect, Michael Nicolau, and kind of ruling him out. And Jane said this, He was a bad man. He just wasn't my bad man. Is that what we have here? A bad man, but not the bad man? It's possible. Both Megan and April agree that it's hard to hold both. Is there any evidence that actually points to Barry Martin having killed his daughter?
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Can he be linked to any of the Connecticut River Valley cases? Is Heidi's case even connected? Or is she really, as the state suggests, the victim of an isolated attack? I can say nothing with certainty, and nor should anyone until there's some kind of adjudication or forensic evidence.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
It's a bit like staring up into a vast northern night sky, squinting an eye and seeing that that group of stars right there looks like a lobster or a watering can or a shoe. We're all trying to make sense of the night. And to be completely honest, John has cautioned me away from considering Heidi a Connecticut River Valley victim at all. Her case is just too different.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
And here's why John thinks that. Heidi's stab pattern is different. All the other victims were stabbed over 20 times, with a focus on the neck and chest area. Heidi was stabbed only four times, two wounds of which are described by the medical examiner as, quote, superficial.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
They've been described as possible hesitation stabs, as if the assailant was hesitant to kill or had never stabbed a human being before. And this could point to a younger, inexperienced perpetrator. Or it could be that the killer had some kind of special relationship to Heidi. That all stands to reason. But here's where I get tripped up. Another teenage girl was killed just 10 days after Heidi.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Bernice Cordomache. And this gets into the murky stuff of psychodynamic speculation. But I asked John about this prospect. If Barry killed his daughter, John speculated, he would likely feel some sort of regret.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
It would make sense to try and repeat this pattern on another similar victim, trying in some bizarre way to correct his hesitance, his sentimentality, his weakness by doing it right this time. Channel all that rage away from his own family into some girl who deserves it. And if Barry is innocent, well then Heidi was still a stabbing victim linked by time and region.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
It's also possible that Heidi's killer was interrupted, say, by Delbert Tallman. That would also make sense that the next victim would be similar enough to Heidi. So he could do it right, pick a more secluded spot, and complete the ritual. So let's examine Barry's possible motive, means, and opportunity. We've already heard the possible motive.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
That Barry grew incensed when Heidi shirked her babysitting duties and went out on a run. That Barry chased her down and out of anger and not premeditation stabbed Heidi in the Martinsville woods. As we now know from Barry's interview... He didn't really know where Heidi would go jogging. We also have absolutely no corroboration that she was supposed to be babysitting.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
That's all rooted in speculation. As for means, Barry is known to keep a knife on his belt. He didn't have it when I was there. I likely would have jumped out of my skin if he did. But April describes this as a deer antler bowie knife that he's had for decades. I've seen a picture of Barry holding this knife next to a freshly killed deer.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Bowie knives are usually fixed blade and about 6 to 10 inches long. And though it is particularly difficult to match a blade with precision to wounds, the knife that stabbed Heidi was believed to be a 4-5 inch blade. Police said they were looking for a 4-inch buck knife. But that may be because Delbert Tallman was also known to carry such a knife.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Of note, this same buck knife is the assumed weapon used in the Barbara Agnew case, and possibly in the Jessica Briggs case in Maine. But beyond a weapon, Barry certainly has a lot of experience as a hunter. He knows how to stalk, kill, and field dress a deer. And fair warning, this is going to get a bit graphic. But remember April's story about Barry jumping on a deer's back and drowning it?
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Let's start with the day and what you do remember from that day.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Well, I did some light reading in the classic book on mountain folk living, Foxfire. And here's what the chapter on hunting deer says. Quote, Usually, according to most of our contacts... When a dog got after a grown deer, it would head straight for water. If the deer didn't run over you, the hunter wouldn't get a shot unless he followed this procedure from Man Norton's.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
You'd just as well, if you know where he'll hit the river at, to put a man down there, for that's where he'll go when the dogs are after him. One fellow we had would hear the hounds on a deer and run to the river where he thought the deer would come out. And when he did, he'd jump on him and drown him. When that deer hit the water, he hit with it and took it by the throat.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Okay, so that's an insane way to hunt, but whether or not Barry actually hunted like this remains up for debate. But it's an old, known way of hunting deer, so perhaps that's also not as nefarious as it once sounded. However, part of the accepted profile for the Connecticut River Valley Killer is that he is probably an experienced hunter.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Many, if not all of these women, had their throats sliced open. That leaves opportunity. And this is where the case against Barry kind of falls apart. He has an alibi. He says he was with Sandy Perkins all afternoon, fixing a tractor. And this is supported by Sandy's son, Barry's son Aaron, and Linda Martin, his wife. It's not the most airtight alibi, but I'll tell you why I think it holds up.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
After all this time, and after so many rumors and stories, and after the trial in particular, and how many versions of events were told at court, I find it kind of remarkable that four people are all saying the same thing, despite the fact that three of those people are related. It really comes down to Sandy's son saying that Barry was with his father.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
I think it's vitally important for myself or the police to get a statement from Sandy's ex-wife. There's a few more facts we can hold up to bury. In Jane Borowski's account of her attack in 1988, she said that her assailant was driving an older model Jeep Wagoneer with light brown or tan paint and wood paneling on the side.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
She said it could have also been a Cherokee model, but maintains that it was a Jeep. When I brought this up to April... I asked her if her dad drove any kind of vehicle like this, and she said she remembers her dad driving a wood-paneled station wagon in the 80s. But when I pulled Barry's vehicle history, no vehicles matching this description came up, or even close to what Jane Borowski described.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
He mostly owned sedans and pickup trucks. And then we have Barbara Agnew, who was abducted from the White River Junction exit on I-91 at a rest area, and then her body was dumped in Heartland, just under three miles from where Heidi was found. I did get my hands on an FBI VICAP report on the Agnew case.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
And a VICAP report is something that goes nationwide for law enforcement agencies to see if there's any kind of pattern between states. Here's what the VICAP report on Agnew's case says. FBI lab analysis of chips revealed to be daisy yellow, a primary color used in older AMC vehicles, 1973 to 1978.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
It is also believed that a fender used a four-wheel drive vehicle in order to reach the body discovery site due to the heavy snowstorm that dropped approximately 18 inches on January 10, 1987. End quote. I've spent a lot of time thinking about these paint chips. According to my research, AMC manufactured Jeeps from 1970 until Chrysler bought them out in 1987.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
So if the paint chips on Agnew's car are from an AMC, it possibly links the Jeep that Jane Borowski described to the Agnew abduction. Jane originally said that the color of her attacker's vehicle was light brown or tan, but John Philpin rightly pointed out that Jane was looking at this at night under sodium vapor lights from the parking lot stanchions.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
It is very possible that the color of the Jeep that Jane saw was actually this AMC Daisy yellow, a specifically warm yellow that might look brown or tan in sodium vapor lighting. After I independently conducted this research, John Philpin sent me his personal case file on Agnew. Among the hundreds of pages of notes was a page dated 1987, a year before Jane's attack in 88.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Here's what the note said, quote, Primer Yellow, Primer Yellow, Original 73 AMC, Jeep CJ, Truck, Wagoneer, Commando. This is kind of cryptic, so I followed up with John about this and see if he remembered what that note was about. And he said he did remember. He recalled that that meant there were two layers of paint in the chips lifted from Agnew's car.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
And this likely means that the vehicle had been painted twice with the same daisy yellow color. And why would you paint your car the same color twice, you may ask. Well, perhaps you've been in an accident, and this paint job is to cover repaired bodywork. So I made kind of a chart, and ticking all the boxes off about what descriptions we have and what facts we have, it seems most likely...
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
that the Connecticut River Valley Killer was driving an AMC-manufactured 1973 Custom Special Jeep Wagoneer four-wheel drive, painted daisy yellow with wood grain siding, that possibly had been involved in an accident. It might not seem like it, but this is huge. As far as I know, up until now, there's been no physical evidence tying any of these cases together.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
I've passed this information along to the New Hampshire State Police and Vermont State Police. And if you really want to nerd out about this vehicle thing, I have all my work in a PDF, and that's accessible on my Patreon. The link is in the show notes. Okay, so back to Barry and his possible connection to Barbara Agnew's case.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
As far as his vehicle history shows, Barry Martin did not drive a vehicle that was painted daisy yellow, and he certainly didn't drive a Jeep. But what about the theory that it was a yellow snowplow that left those paint chips on Agnew's car? It makes sense, after all, because Agnew had pulled off into the rest area during a pretty brutal snowstorm.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Before Heidi's death, Barry worked for Vermont Log, a cabin building company just down the road from his house. But after that, he worked for the state of Vermont plowing the roads between White River Junction and Hartford. And you might recall that there was a ton of speculation that Agnew's killer may have operated a snowplow.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
It came up when Paul Oakes was considered a suspect, because he drove a tow truck, or wrecker. But as Steve McCullough recalled, Oakes' wrecker was painted green. And it's a little silly how much work it took to hunt down this information, but according to the Vermont Agency of Transportation, state-issued snowplows in the 1980s were painted orange, sometimes with black trim.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
They didn't have any information in the archives about specific snowplow routes or personnel assigned to these routes back in the 80s. So there's no physical evidence to support that Agnew's car was hit by a snowplow, despite it making sense that her vehicle was abandoned in a snowstorm.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
And following that logic, there's no other physical evidence available to me that makes Barry a good suspect in the Agnew or Borowski cases. Likewise, beyond living in the area, there's absolutely no link I can find between Barry Martin and the Critchley, Quirmash, Freed, Morse, Moore, or indeed Jessica Briggs case.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Short of forensic evidence saying otherwise, I don't think Barry Martin is a good suspect for the Connecticut River Valley Killer. What about Heidi? I really don't know what to think. Everyone I interviewed said they suspected something was going on at home, but no one knew what it was exactly. Many said they got the creeps from Barry and shared stories.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
But like I said, and then... Did he look like he was exercising or he was like running away?
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
To learn more and to join, visit CrimeJunkiePodcast.com slash fan club. Your support means the world. I left Heartland Elementary School and traveled down Route 5. Within a minute, I'm pulling into the driveway of the Martin home. It's the same log cabin that Heidi Martin left to go jogging on that fateful day. I get out of the car, trying to still my nerves, and walk up to the back door.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Like there was one where Barry was shooting his gun in the backyard and he saw this woman riding a horse along the ridge. He took a shot and spooked the horse. The horse threw the woman and she was injured, but thankfully not seriously. But who does that? Megan was right. He has a real mean streak in him. But what do all these feelings and stories and facts amount to?
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
There's no smoking gun, or bloody knife for that matter. I will say that my gut feeling after years of looking into him is that Barry's a bad guy. But he didn't murder his daughter, or anyone else for that matter. I stand to be corrected.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Just as I was tying up my investigation into Heidi's case, and kind of lamenting that I was no closer to finding a good suspect than I was when I first started, something miraculous happened. I'm going to tell you exactly how it happened. It's going to feel terribly disjointed. But this is real life, and not a mystery novel.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
I can't tell you how, but I gained access to the case file for Linda Moore. Linda Moore, as you might remember, is kind of an outlier. She was murdered in her home near Westminster, Vermont. I had always been on the fence about Linda's case and its connection to the others. What I discovered in her file is nothing short of astounding.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
On April 15th, 1986, there was a man who put himself at Linda Moore's house at the time of her death. I'm no longer on the fence. Linda's case is connected. And I think I might have found the Connecticut River Valley killer. Next week on Dark Valley, the best suspect yet.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
If you have a tip for any of these cases, please call the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit at 603-271-2663 or the Vermont State Police Major Crimes Unit at 802-244-8781. Dark Valley was produced, written, and edited by me, Jennifer Amell. Sound design, mixing, and original music by Wesley Slover of Sanctus Audio. Show art by Pamela Robinson. Original theme song by Jennifer Pegg.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Want more Dark Valley? Go ahead and subscribe to Crime Junkie Fan Club and get exclusive access to bonus content. The link's in the show notes. Dark Valley is an Audiochuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
So, yeah, maybe afternoon. And then where were you working that day?
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
Relax. I heard some people talk about that you all were nervous about her jogging alone.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
I heard from McCullough's that there was maybe some drug activity like down near the bridge.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
I'm here to ask Barry what his alibi is for May 20th, 1984. From AudioChuck, this is Dark Valley, an investigation into the Connecticut River Valley Killer. I'm Jennifer Amell. This is Episode 17.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
OK, so did you guys attend the trial? I believe they weren't allowed.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
If you're finding yourself drawn into the story and want the best listening experience, I invite you to join the Crime Junkie fan club for ad-free access to Dark Valley, plus early and ad-free episodes of Crime Junkie, the number one true crime podcast. along with additional exclusive content from across the AudioChuck network.
Dark Valley
Chapter 17 | A Father's Tale
The last question I have for you, which is going to be a very difficult one to hear, but April told me that she suspected you.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Hi, I'm Jennifer Amell, host of Dark Valley. Thank you for joining me on this journey as we dig deeper into this case and into the stories of those most impacted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Nine months passed, and detectives had nothing to tie Sanborn to the murder, save for one vague story from an unreliable street kid. That all changed when a man named Jerry Rossi, who was imprisoned in Volusia, Florida, came forward. Rossi was a pedophile. He was facing charges for sex acts with minors. He said he knew Tony Sanborn well. They even lived together.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
And he fancied himself a kind of father figure. Yikes. Rossi said that Sanborn had confessed to him three times that he murdered Jessica Briggs. And his story went like this. Sanborn went to DeMillo's the night of the murder to find Jessica and met her as she left work. He tried to get Jessica to go with him to Virginia Beach. Rossi said Jessica wouldn't go and wouldn't, quote, hustle for him.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Sanborn demanded her tip money from that night's work, but she refused. So Sanborn got angry and killed her There are a lot of problems with this story, chiefly that Jessica was not found in her work clothes, but had gone home to change. But we'll get into all that in a bit. But because of Rossi's testimony, Tony Sanborn is arrested for the murder of Jessica Briggs on April 17th, 1990.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
And it's after Sanborn's arrest, with his picture plastered all over the local papers, that the final nail is hammered in. A 13-year-old girl named Hope Katie came forward to the police, claiming she witnessed the murder. Hope Katie's story is tragic. She was just a little girl, and she had run away from home, and she was in and out of shelters, living on the streets sometimes.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
She said that on the night of the murder, she was sitting on the dock about three piers away from Bath Iron Works. She recognized Jessica Briggs with three others walking down the pier. She said an argument broke out and that she recognized the voices of Anthony Sanborn and a teenage girl named Michelle.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Hope said Michelle struck Jessica in the head, and then Sanborn pulled a knife and stabbed her in the belly. Then he kicked Jessica off the dock into the water. Tony Sanborn was held without bail for two years, until finally on October 19, 1992, his trial began. I had the opportunity to read through all 1,826 pages of the trial transcripts, courtesy of Amy Fairfield.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Amy didn't represent Sanborn at this trial, however. There were two other defense attorneys. Over the course of nine days, the state presented all three of these witnesses, Glenn B., Jerry Rossi, and Hope Cady, among others. They didn't introduce any forensic evidence tying Sanborn to the crime scene at all.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Sanborn's defense focused on dismantling these damning witness testimonies and introducing reasonable doubt. Among the suspects that the defense brought up, they noted that there was a Navy ship at port the evening of the murder.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
They belonged to a woman in a black dress, and there, stuck into the seabed, to the right of the woman's head, was a large knife. When they hauled the female body up to the surface, they discovered that her throat had been savagely slashed, and she had been partially eviscerated. This was 16-year-old Jessica Briggs.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
It was a barracks ship where sailors would keep quarters, and these sailors had full access to the pier where the murder took place and would come and go as they pleased at all hours of the night. They also threw shade on Jessica's boyfriend, George, and another friend, Freddie. But these young men were alibied by several other kids.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Then there was a kid called Scott K. Apparently he'd been in love with Jessica, and when questioned by the police, admitted to hiding a framed newspaper clipping of her murder under his mattress. While this is undeniably strange, Scott said this cliffing was all he had to remember her. Scott did resemble the boy on the bike. He was short, had shaggy blonde hair, and owned a 10-speed bike.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Scott, however, was also alibied by a friend. But what about Tony Sanborn's alibi? It admittedly wasn't a strong one. His father said that Tony was home by 11 or 1130 that night. So I imagine that was looked on pretty suspiciously by the jury. The jury deliberated for 10 hours. They found now 18-year-old Tony Sanborn guilty of murder and sentenced him to 70 years in prison.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
This is like a parallel universe of the Delbert Tallman trial for the murder of Heidi Martin. In both cases, the state had no real evidence beyond witness testimony that tied the defendants to the crime scenes. Both men lived on the rough edges of life, drifting from one place to another with the wind. But the jury in Sanborn's case was convinced by the state.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
It makes me wonder how close Tallman was to a conviction. For 27 grueling years, Tony Sanborn maintained his innocence from prison. I have the benefit of hindsight, and I'm saying with confidence that the state of Maine got it wrong. I believe Anthony Sanborn is innocent, and I'll tell you why. Nearly all of the key witnesses who testified against Sanborn in 1992 have since recanted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
I cannot stress this enough. Glenn B., who said he saw Sanborn on the night of the murder, angry, armed with a knife, stalking off to go find Jessica, admitted to lying under oath. He claimed that the Portland police and the attorney general threatened to arrest him if he didn't testify. And then there's Hope Cady, the state's star witness.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
First of all, she had never even spoken to Toni Sanborn or to the other girl she accused, Michelle. So the fact that she said she recognized their voices is a lie. Hope Cady also had terrible vision, 20 over 200 when tested in 1990. But this wasn't told to Sanborn's defense until November of 2016. Hope Cady could never have seen the murder taking place, three peers away in dim light.
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Chapter 16 | On the Docks
And finally, no less than six witnesses, when interviewed back in 1990, said they saw Hope Cady elsewhere that night and that she couldn't have been on the pier and seen the murder happen. And after all this, Hope Cady said she lied about witnessing the murder because she was, quote, scared the cops would arrest her.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
And that leaves Jerry Rossi's testimony that Sanborn confessed to him three times. Rossi never recanted. But there's some important context to when Rossi became a prison informant. In his first interview, police audiotaped Rossi. And in this tape, Rossi says Sanborn never confessed to him. In his second interview, only a day later, police didn't record this.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
And this is apparently when Rossi tells them that Sanborn did confess. Not once, not twice, but three times. And then it came out that a detective allegedly threatened Rossi with additional rape charges. A young woman named Bam BG said she was pressured for a brief time by Portland police to pursue rape charges against Rossi. These charges against Rossi never materialized.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
So the allegation here is that Portland police threatened to charge Rossi with several rapes unless he testified against Sanborn. The fact that all the charges against Rossi were dropped is evidence of this.
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Chapter 16 | On the Docks
FBI profiler Greg McCrary wrote in his 2017 report that quote, "...well-trained detectives know that using threats or promises to gain information during an interview violates basic police practices." Okay, and then get this. Remember those files found in the attic of the lead investigator, Detective Daniels? Those files were found and made available to Sanborn's team in May of 2017.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
From Audiocheck, this is Dark Valley, an investigation into the Connecticut River Valley Killer. I'm Jennifer Amell. This is Episode 16. Dark Valley Jessica Briggs' case deserves its own multi-episode podcast. It's an epic story of 80s street kids, drug dealers, and homelessness. And the conviction of another teenager for this heinous murder. It was that convicted teenager, Anthony Sanborn.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
In Daniels' notes, it was discovered that Hope Cady was actually interviewed three days after the murder in 1989. Hope's first statement is that she was at home and didn't know anything. Then she said she saw Jessica Briggs in the park. Then she said she saw her on Commercial Street, quote, talking to a man in a pickup truck.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
And then a year later, after Tony was arrested and she knew who he was from the papers, she completely pivoted and said she witnessed the whole murder. Any reasonable detective would recognize an unreliable witness. So then FBI profiler Greg McCrary reviewed the facts of Jessica Briggs' murder and analyzed the state's case against Sanborn. He filed a report with the courts on September 9, 2017.
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Chapter 16 | On the Docks
In his conclusion, McCrary wrote the following. In this case, the Portland police failed to conduct a reasonably thorough, objective, unbiased investigation into the homicide of Ms. Jessica Briggs.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
The fact that many witnesses, including Glenn B., Gloria S., Michelle L., Scott K., Michael L., Lori S., Dawn S., and Hope Cady have recanted what they said, or may have said, during this investigation and or at trial in this matter raises serious questions about the propriety of the investigation.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Other individuals have alleged that detectives used threats and intimidations to elicit information and or testimony from them. End quote. In 2016, defense attorneys Amy Fairfield and Timothy Zarrillo came up with a new plan.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Their client, Tony Sanborn, had lost appeal after appeal, but they knew that in 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned mandatory life without parole sentences for people under 18. So, their strategy was to withdraw Sanborn's post-conviction hearing and argue that his 70-year sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment because he was convicted as a juvenile.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
And the three superseding amended petitions as well... Tony, Amy, and Timothy Zarrillo are all standing behind the defense table. Tony sobbed as he got the news, and Amy conspicuously wiped beneath her eyes, trying to remain stoic in front of the judge.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Tony Sanborn walked out of prison after serving 27 years. He's now married and reportedly living a happy life on the outside. However, Sanborn's conviction still stands. Though he was able to gain his freedom and maintain his innocence, his conviction weighs on him every day. Same with Amy. As long as Sanborn is guilty in the eyes of the state of Maine, Jessica Briggs' case remains closed.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
So if Sanborn didn't do it, who killed Jessica Briggs? We've been over April's theory that her father, Barry, may have been involved. But I can't find any evidence to support that at all. The looming question remains. The question that brought Amy and I together in the first place. Is Jessica Briggs a victim of the Connecticut River Valley Killer?
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
As I mentioned at the top, John Philpin and Greg McCrary have both gone on record saying that Briggs indeed looks like a Valley Killer victim.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
I don't think John and McCrary ever actually testified, because Sanborn withdrew his post-conviction hearing in order to get out of prison. But that didn't stop McCrary from filing two separate reports in the Maine courts. Quote, Then, McCrary invoked the case of Barbara Agnew. who was abducted from a rest area off I-91 in January of 1987 and then murdered in Heartland, Vermont.
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Chapter 16 | On the Docks
who eventually came to be represented by attorney Amy Fairfield, a woman I've come to know well. We were introduced by Dr. John Philpin because of our mutual interest in the Connecticut River Valley Killer cases. So why are we talking about Jessica Briggs?
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Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Agnew, wrote McCrary, quote, sustained a strikingly similar pattern of injuries to that of Ms. Briggs. While it would be premature to link this case without further in-depth analysis, these are the type of crimes that, in the interest of justice, should be cross-referenced and analyzed to determine whether or not they could be linked, end quote.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
I've seen a video of Jessica Briggs when she was pulled from the water, and photos of her autopsy. I also have the autopsy report, completed by Dr. Ronald Roy, the deputy chief medical examiner. This is the first time I've actually had access to such materials in any of these cases. It was shocking. Horrifying, in fact. And I'm so sorry, but this is necessarily going to get a bit graphic.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
If that's not your thing, you can skip ahead. When Jessica was pulled from the water, she was clothed in her black dress and jean jacket, but both garments had ridden up and bunched around her neck. Her stockings were loosely looped around her neck, not knotted or tied. Her underwear is pulled up tight into her groin.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
In order to get her out of the water, Jessica was loaded onto a kind of sled on ropes, face down. Her body was rigid. In one of the autopsy photos, Jessica's lying on a metal table, her brown eyes staring up at the camera blankly. Her mouth is agape, as if she'd just taken her last breath.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
The front of her dress has buttons going all down the front, but several button loops are broken, though it's unclear if they were cut or merely pulled off. Her underwear is multicolored and torn at the front on both sides. In her jean jacket, a pair of sunglasses is found, but not the butcher knife that Jessica had taken from home and stored in her inside jacket pocket.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
There were two knives actually recovered from the seabed where Jessica's body was found. Though neither of these two knives were officially linked as the murder weapon, one of them was a long six-inch blade, and the medical examiner on the stand said that it possibly had made the wound to her neck and to her abdomen.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Well, John Philpin, Amy Fairfield, and a guy named Greg McCrary, an FBI profiler with 25 years experience under his belt, all independently believe that Briggs' case matches the MO of the Connecticut River Valley Killer.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
He also said it was possible that a smaller knife was used in some of the other wounds. So I'm thinking whoever attacked Jessica, say the Connecticut River Valley Killer, had a knife on them. And the Connecticut River Valley Killer is known to use a rather small knife, around four or five inches long.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
So it's very possible to imagine that the killer had the knife on him, but also discovered that Jessica had a butcher knife on her and used it against her. It really makes me wonder if Jessica had any opportunity to cut her killer. Could his DNA have been on that dock? At this point, we don't know. But back to the autopsy.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Blood is congealed all over her face, especially around a nasty wound to her left eye and brow. Her throat is the site of the worst carnage. Her throat is sliced almost ear to ear, measuring six inches. The medical examiner found that her throat had been stabbed once and sustained six superficial incisions. The other most notable wound is to her abdomen.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
The ME notes that this is a stab wound incision, measuring six inches across and gapes approximately five inches. Loops of her small intestines protrude through this wound. There are defensive wounds on her hands and a laceration on her right cheek. There's also a post-mortem one-inch cut on her earlobe, which might be why her earring was found on the dock.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
All in all, Jessica sustained five stab wounds and nine incisions. The medical examiner determined that there was no evidence of forcible rape. However, when Jessica's underwear was tested, they found evidence of semen on the outside of her underwear. This was compared against DNA profiles for Tony Sanborn and Jessica's boyfriend George. Both men were not a match.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Of note, a small curly hair was found between the fingers of Jessica's left hand. Another hair was found trapped between her breasts and bra. Now let's look at Barbara Agnew. I haven't seen any photos of Agnew, but I do have her autopsy report. And if you overlay Jessica Briggs' autopsy diagram over Barbara Agnew's, they would superimpose. Their wounds are an exact match.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Barbara's neck sustained multiple incisions and stabs. There were complex intersecting incisions and stabs to her upper abdomen. That means she was partially eviscerated, just like Jessica. This is chilling stuff. Barbara Agnew and Linda Moore are the only victims attributed to the Valley Killer, whose bodies were preserved enough when discovered to really understand what kind of wounds were made.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
We'll discuss why her murder fits the pattern more generally, but it was April, Heidi Martin's sister, who saw the composite sketch in the Jessica Briggs case and said it was the spitting image of her father.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
The rest of the victims were found skeletal, but neck marks on bones tell us that Betsy Critchley, Bernice Cordomash, and Eva Morse all had their necks stabbed and cut. Likewise, Jane Borowski sustained the worst knife wounds to her neck. She still has the scars to prove it. Did the Connecticut River Valley Killer attack Jane and then get spooked when she survived?
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
We know that he didn't strike again in the Upper Valley after 1988. But could he have moved his operation to Maine? There are at least six murders in Maine that Amy Fairfield and John Philpin have loosely linked to the Connecticut River Valley Killer.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
These are the homicides of Roseanne Consolvi in 1979, Alice Hawks in 87, Pamela Webb in 89, Shirley McEvoy in 1990, Angela Thomas just a month later, and Susan Hanna in 1992. If some or all of these cases are connected, then we're looking at a body count of at least 14 victims and a hunting ground that expands out of the Upper Valley and into southern Maine.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
What I can say is that we're looking for a suspect who might live in the Upper Valley, but has ties to Maine. It's mid-December, just before Christmas. I'm up in Vermont to do some of my last interviews. And I'm eating breakfast in a lovely little diner in Heartland. And I get a phone call from April. She tells me that Barry and Linda, Heidi's parents, want to meet with me.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
So I gulp the rest of my coffee down and pay my bill, and I should have probably gone right to the Martin house. But to tell you the truth, I was nervous. For some reason, I ended up at Heartland Elementary School to collect myself, and I shot a quick video on my phone. Here I am at Heartland Elementary School. It's behind me.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
And it's December in Vermont, and I'm just a minute away from interviewing Barry Martin and his wife, Linda. I don't think I've ever been this nervous before an interview. I'm going to find out once and for all what Barry was doing that day and if it matches up with any other alibi story. I'm going to ask him some tough questions. He might tell me to get the fuck out of his house.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
He might be incredibly nice. I have no idea what to expect. It's a little scary. Okay, here we go. Next week on Dark Valley, my interview with Barry Martin. If you have a tip for any of these cases, please call the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit at 603-271-2663 or the Vermont State Police Major Crimes Unit at 802-244-8781.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Dark Valley was produced, written, and edited by me, Jennifer Amell. Sound design, mixing, and original music by Wesley Slover of Sanctus Audio. Show art by Pamela Robinson. Original theme song by Jennifer Pegg. Want more Dark Valley? Go ahead and subscribe to Crime Junkie Fan Club and get exclusive access to bonus content. The link's in the show notes. Dark Valley is an Audiochuck production.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Composite sketches are tricky. I'm reminded of the sketch done from Jane Borowski's Memory of Her Attack in 1988. Today, Jane would tell you not to put a lot of stock in it. A composite sketch is usually done by essentially flipping through a book of facial features. But Jane was intubated, and she would blink once for yes and twice for no.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
To learn more and to join, visit CrimeJunkiePodcast.com slash fan club. Your support means the world. early on the morning of May 24th, 1989. A man named Lenny got to his job at Bath Ironworks, out on a Portland wharf. He had to pee, and someone was in the warehouse's one bathroom. So he pushed open the back door that opened onto the pier. He stepped behind a dumpster for some privacy and stopped.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Likewise, there's a lot of context for the sketch done in the Briggs case. So this murder occurred in 1989. Anthony Sanborn was put on trial in 1992. But it wasn't until 2017 that the investigating officer in the Briggs case, Jeff Daniels, found an unlawfully stored box of notes in his home attic. In this box was the composite sketch in question.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
It was never released publicly, and Sanborn's defense team back in 92 never even saw it. Amy Fairfield told 13WGME that it, quote, does not match what Tony Sanborn looked like in May 1989. So this sketch is the product of no less than 10 witnesses who saw Jessica Briggs walking with an unknown man. Jessica was 16 and lived a rather troubled life.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
She had recently run away from the youth home in Portland and was staying with her friend Gloria. She roamed the city streets at night with gaggles of other lost kids, herding from one party to the next, down to the pier, to Peppermint Park, and back again. Some say she would offer sex for money here and there, but she wasn't doing it a lot.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
But that May, Jessica decided to get her life straightened out. She got a job as a busser at DeMillo's, a restaurant out on the Long Wharf. She had dated Anthony Sanborn for a brief time that spring, but they broke up in April. Amicably, everyone says. The night of May 23, 1989, Jessica finished her shift at DeMillo's by 10.12 p.m.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
and started off walking home to Gloria's apartment on Sherman Street. And this was a little over a mile away. Along her route, she ran into a few friends on Congress Street, a Sean D., Michelle F., and Brian B. Brian snapped a photo of Michelle and Jessica. It would be the last photo anyone ever took of Jessica alive. She arrived at the Sherman Street apartment by about 10.35 p.m.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
She cooked and ate a meal of macaroni and cheese. Then she changed from her work clothes into a black, sleeveless dress, stockings, and black heels. She put one earring in her ear and a red comb in her hair. Over this, she put on a denim jacket and rolled up the sleeves. Jessica went out the door but quickly ran back inside to get something. A butcher knife from the kitchen.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Her friend Gloria says she nicknamed it Butchie and said it was for protection. Jessica told Gloria that she was going to her new boyfriend George's house, who lived down on India Street near the waterfront. She left for George's around midnight, but she never made it there.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Around 12.15 a.m., the Bath Ironworks shift let out, and 18 workers filed out of the factory and began boarding a company bus, which was parked facing Commercial Street. Two ironworkers who were leaving in a pickup truck saw a girl matching Jessica's description. She was pushing a bike, and a man was walking close to her right side.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
These two in the pickup truck described this man as around 5'11", 170 pounds, with quote, long arms and blonde hair that hung over his ears, wavy and thrown back. They passed the parking garages and headed down toward the pier. The company bus driver also saw Jessica and this mystery man. He said the man was walking about six feet ahead of Jessica as she pushed the bike.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
He described the man as 6'2", 170 pounds, and 22 to 28 years old. He had sandy brown hair that blended with his beard and mustache. He was wearing a multicolored shirt and jeans. He said the bike was a stingray style with a banana seat. The bus driver said his cheeks looked reddened and he had a cocky smile. It seemed like he'd been drinking.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
And then seven more men on the bus saw Jessica pass under a street lamp with this man. Their descriptions are relatively consistent, citing a young man, teens to late 20s, no facial hair, 5'5 to 6'2, with a slim to medium build. He had dirty blonde hair, dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and jean jacket. At 12.20, the young man took the bike from Jessica and straddled it.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Jessica hiked up her skirt and climbed on the seat behind him. Some of the men on the bus called out to Jessica and she laughed. The pair cycled off together down the pier. Between 12.30 and 12.45 a.m., three men were out on a late-night cruise in the harbor. According to them, they were passing by the Bath Iron Works dry docks to see what kind of vessels they had.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
And as they passed by these docks, they saw a woman at the end of the pier, about 50 yards away. She was backlit by the security light, so they couldn't make out her features. The woman waved and yelled, Hi! And then two of the boaters noticed a man standing behind her. He didn't wave or call out. The boaters estimated the woman's height to be around 5'6", and the man at 6'3".
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Beyond that, they couldn't give any more details. It is under this pier that Jessica's body is discovered in the sea the next day. The medical examiner estimates that Jessica's time of death was between 3.15 and 5.15 a.m., but noted that it's challenging because she was found in the cold water.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
There was minimally digested macaroni found in her stomach contents during an autopsy, which suggested that it was eaten two to four hours before death. So that would put Jessica's time of death around 3.30 a.m., So if she's last seen at 1245, where her body was later found, and died at 330, what was Jessica Briggs doing for two hours and 45 minutes? And with whom? Who is that boy on the bike?
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
To this day, the boy on the bike has never been properly identified. It's possible he's a witness and not the killer. Three hours had passed after Jessica was last seen with him. And as we know, Jessica came into contact with a lot of people that evening. There are understandable discrepancies between the 10 eyewitnesses.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
There, on the weather-beaten dock, was a large pool of blood. A few feet away was a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, smeared with blood, a single earring, and a pair of black high heels. It felt weird, said Lenny. It felt off. So he went and notified the security guard on duty, who then called the Portland Police Department.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
What's interesting is that only the bus driver said the man had facial hair that's later reflected in the composite sketch. Everyone else said the man was clean-shaven. So was the witness that provided the sketch details only the bus driver? April, Heidi's sister, gave me a picture of her dad with shaggy hair, beard, and a mustache, dated 1985.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
I've got to say, it's pretty uncanny how similar the photo of Barry is to the sketch. I've seen about a dozen photos of him from the 70s to the 90s. His appearance changes a lot. Sometimes he's clean-shaven, sometimes he has a mustache, a full beard, a buzz cut, longer hair. However, the photo of Barry that matches the sketch is from 1985. And it seems that from 85 to 88, Barry's hairline receded.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
So if the witnesses in the Briggs case saw Barry in 1989, they likely wouldn't describe him as having a full, wavy head of hair. More importantly, all the witnesses agree that the boy on the bike was on the younger side, teen to late 20s. If this is true, then the age range and physical description don't match Barry Martin. In 1989, he would have been in his early 40s.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Abel said Barry took the kids to go see Disney on ice in Portland, Maine.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
So I scoured the newspaper archives and confirmed that Disney on Ice was playing in Portland at the Civic Center, which is only a 15-minute walk to the murder site at Bath Ironworks. However, Disney on Ice was only in town from September 12th to the 17th in 1989. That's four months after the murder.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
April also said that Barry would go on hunting trips off the coast of Maine, but she didn't remember exactly when or where. Aside from the similarity between Barry and the composite sketch of the boy on the bike, Barry has absolutely no connection to the murder of Jessica Briggs. But is Briggs a Connecticut River Valley killer victim?
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
The state alleges that this boy on the bike is none other than Jessica's ex-boyfriend, Anthony Sanborn. Now, I must disclose that my main point of contact is Amy Fairfield, Sanborn's defense attorney. Amy's obviously biased in favor of her client. She's maintained that Sanborn is innocent.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
I feel it's important to mention this because of all the recent criticism of another journalist's seminal podcast, Serial. When Sarah Koenig decided to cover Adnan Syed's conviction for the murder of Haemin Lee... The person from whom all of her information stemmed from was Adnan's defense attorney, Rabia Chaudhry.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
It is Rabia, after all, that induced Koenig to make cereal and posited questions as to Adnan Syed's guilt. That's a defense attorney's job, after all. And Rabia is good at it. So I'm conscious of this as I look into Anthony Sanborn's case. That said...
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
If you're finding yourself drawn into the story and want the best listening experience, I invite you to join the Crime Junkie fan club for ad-free access to Dark Valley, plus early and ad-free episodes of Crime Junkie, the number one true crime podcast. along with additional exclusive content from across the AudioChuck network.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Amy made available to me any documents I requested, among them trial transcripts, crime scene video footage, autopsy photos, and an independent FBI review of the case. I tried my best to look at this case holistically. So here's what I found. Anthony Sanborn, or Tony as he's known, became a person of interest to the Portland police in June of 1989 because of statements made by three people.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
The first is Glenn B., a teenager at the time and a friend of Sanborn's. Glenn said he saw Sanborn and Jessica Briggs going for a friendly walk on Sunday, May 21st. Then Glenn says he ran into Sanborn on May 23rd, the night of the murder. Sanborn asked him if he'd seen Jessica. He seemed mad at her, Glenn noted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
He said Sanborn told him he was going to go looking for Jessica at her new boyfriend's house. Then, according to Glenn, Sanborn pulled a knife from his pocket. A few days later on Thursday, Glenn ran into Sanborn again. Sanborn said he hadn't seen Jessica, but then he quickly changed his story. Sanborn said he actually did find Jessica that night at her boyfriend's house.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
Officer Alan McIntyre arrived on scene and quickly identified bloody drag marks that led to the edge of the dock. He called in a dive team, and by about noon, a diver sunk below the jetty. and just 30 feet down, saw a pair of stark white legs against the murky blackness of the seabed.
Dark Valley
Chapter 16 | On the Docks
He said they took a walk, had sex, and then argued for half an hour after. On July 7th, 1989, Portland police brought in Anthony Sanborn for questioning about a, quote, unrelated matter. But they quickly pivoted to Jessica Briggs. Sanborn denied having seen Jessica at all between May 21st and 29th, when he was in Portland, and he flat out denied murdering her.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Hi, I'm Jennifer Amell, host of Dark Valley. Thank you for joining me on this journey as we dig deeper into this case and into the stories of those most impacted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Her teacher took extra care to bolster Heidi's self-confidence, to encourage her in her studies and in her running. Perhaps because she knew Heidi's home life wasn't great. But Heidi never said anything explicit about her father. There are hints, like this one from a date book in 1982. Today, while at Nancy's, I said, I figured out my problem. Now I just have to use my antidote.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
What problem, she asked. This one? She patted Corey's head. No, I said. Oh, that one, she said. Boy, was I surprised when she pointed toward my house. What problem was going on in her house? I guess it could mean anything. When she does mention her father, it's because he forgot to pick her up or they were arguing about something stupid. Heidi mentions her mother a lot more.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
They seemed to have a strange relationship as well. But they certainly interacted more. Whenever she writes of Linda, it's to say that she's mad at a grade she got, or that she didn't feed the rabbits or do some kind of chore. And one final note. Those pages that April said were torn out the days before her murder... I know what she's referring to. There's another composition book.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
It's dated 1983 to 1984. There's nothing written in it, but there are five to maybe eight pages that are torn out. In the box that contained all of Heidi's papers, I did find one that seemed to fit back into that journal. And it was pretty innocuous. It was some anecdote about being at work, about laughing at some guy who was eating a hamburger really grossly.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
It seems like Heidi may have recopied the same story in the other journal. So it's very possible that Heidi herself ripped those pages out. For what reason, I don't know. But it certainly doesn't seem as nefarious. I'm not sure what else we can glean that's of investigative use, but I will say that it was such a privilege to get to know Heidi a little better.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
She was funny and smart and eager to live her life. She thought she might want to be a lawyer or a disc jockey. She was writing a novel. She liked her job at Wendy's, and she didn't mind scraping the cheese off plates. She wanted to go to college and study English, just like her favorite teacher, Mrs. Korber.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
At the bottom of the box that held all of Heidi's stuff, there were a few loose notes torn from a Howard Johnson's pad. And they're dated up to May 19th, the day before her murder. I'll read you what's written on them, although it might be hard to follow. May 13th, horoscope. Last Friday. Will you be okay this weekend? May 16th, meet with Hanover. May 18th, car, meeting you at track.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
This weekend might turn out okay after all. May 19th, I bet now you really think I'm a person of my word. Ha ha. Then there's a series of notes with directions and a phone number, written over and over again, as if she was trying to memorize it. Then, the name of her teacher. I looked up this address and phone number. It did indeed belong to her teacher, Mrs. Korber, and her husband.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
They apparently owned a 1980 Ford Fiesta, and Heidi was interested in buying it. Remember when her father, Barry, took the stand at Delbert Tallman's trial and said he and Heidi were out car shopping the morning of her murder? Well, it seems that they, or just Heidi, went to this teacher's house to look at her car. It's unclear if Heidi went to Mrs. Korber's house on May 20th or the day before.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
But in any situation where something bad happens to a kid... You look at the adults in their life. There is something obsessive about Heidi's admiration for her teacher. She wrote about her constantly, addressing her very thoughts to her, posing questions about her teacher's life, ruminating on even the tiniest note her teacher wrote. Maybe she had a crush.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Or maybe Mrs. Korber was the only older person who encouraged her and told her kind things. Mrs. Korber is the teacher who was, at one brief time, a suspect. And I understand why. She had contact with Heidi right up until she was murdered. And they would go jogging together. But I never read anything that this teacher wrote that was untoward or suggestive or inappropriate.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
I asked one of Heidi's friends, too, if she ever got any suspicious feelings about this teacher, and she said no. This teacher also helped out with track and field, so it's understandable why Heidi would have been jogging with her. But I imagine the only person who might be able to give us context is Mrs. Korber herself. I did reach out to her, but as of this recording, I haven't heard back.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
It certainly seems that something bad was happening at home, though it's vague and doesn't take shape in Heidi's diaries. There's one other person I can ask. Heidi's best friend.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
I don't know what we can say about that. If you did have to describe her home life, what would you describe it as?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Well, Jason, Heidi's youngest brother, was digging through some old boxes in his parents' house a few years ago.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
So Heidi wouldn't confide in you about anything that was happening at home?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Can you, I know it's hard, Megan, but can you take me back to the day when you found out about her death?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
You and I have spoken previously, and then, you know, I'm in contact with Heidi's sister, April. And she's told me about, you know, her suspicions that it was someone close to Heidi who had something to do with her murder. And it turns out you have some experiences with this individual as well.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
And just to be clear, we're not talking about Delbert Tallman, who was accused of her murder. We're not. Someone else. Absolutely not. We didn't want to name him on tape at the time, but Megan is, in fact, referring to Heidi's father, Barry Martin. What follows is the first time Megan has ever gone public with her story.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
There are accusations of stalking and sexually inappropriate behavior, and Megan's actually gone to the police with this information. And unfortunately, the statute of limitations is up on these incidents, and no police action can be taken. These events took place throughout the fall and winter of 1985.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
OK, so hang on just so I have it straight in my head and it's on recording. So the diary in question, like near her at the time of her death, was confiscated by police. And then they... All of her diaries were taken. But especially that important one. And then it was released back to Barry and Linda.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
How many times do you think? Eight. Jeez. And nothing happened other than the person coming to your window? A couple times there were tapping.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Yeah, and this is in the wake of your best friend's murder, too. So even if it wasn't, you know, something nefarious, which it could have been and probably was, that's the state of mind you were in, right?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
The reason Megan had to contact the Martins again was because her high school wanted to do a memorial page in the yearbook for Heidi. She was asked to get the family's permission. So one night while babysitting, she called the Martin house, hoping that Linda would answer.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
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Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
You might be wondering why no one did anything about Barry's strange and predatory behavior. What Megan and April and many others have all explained is that Barry was seen as a victim. His daughter had been murdered. And grief is myriad. It affects people in so many different ways.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Megan reasoned that Barry was maybe following her and standing outside of her bedroom window because he was, in a weird way, trying to protect her. And if people secretly suspected that he was up to no good, that he harmed Heidi or other women, no one wanted to accuse a grieving father. Over the years, have you had any suspicions that this person did the same thing or even worse to others?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
I don't doubt April when she says that Bill Boss told her that Heidi wrote of abuse from her father. Bill Boss has unfortunately passed away, so we can't ask him directly. But we have to corroborate this information in some way if we're going to say it's true or false. So I went back to the records and checked the original docket summary in the trial.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Well, I'm just going to connect the dots here. Do you think that this person is capable of murder?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
I mean, are you, are you speaking generally or are you speaking maybe about those cases over the river in New Hampshire?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Right. Like if it was, as the state has alleged in the past, some strange man like Dilbert Tallman who was approaching Heidi, do you think she would have entertained the conversation with him? No, no, no, no.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Heidi's diary was the subject of many pretrial motions filed by Delbert Tallman's defense team. Eventually, the judge ruled that the state needed to hand over the victim's diary to the defense. Defense attorney Jim Dumont argued that the diary contained reference to Heidi's, quote, suicidal idealities, end quote.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
So April had told me her theory that she was supposed to be babysitting that day. Do you know that for a fact? Because we've gone back and forth on this. It's like, was she supposed to be babysitting?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
I think it's safe to assume that things were not okay at home. Heidi was suffering some kind of abuse, the extent of which and what kind are impossible to determine. So far, only April has agreed to speak with me on the record. But she wasn't in the house all the time, and she was also pretty young when Heidi died. Jason, the youngest, grew into a sweet, shy man and met him once.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Aaron, on the other hand, hasn't returned any of my messages. He's still very close to his parents, especially his father. And of course, I need to get Barry and Linda on record. But they've barely spoken to their own children about Heidi's death. April says it's almost like she never existed. Barry and Linda have never actually given a statement to the media.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
But the medical examiner, Eleanor McQuillan, was quick to say that she did not believe that this was a suicide. And honestly, what teenage girl isn't suicidal in her own private diary? Dumont also claimed that Heidi had, quote, certain individuals in her life that she wasn't getting along with.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Over the years, they've rejected every reporter who ever showed up at their door. So great is their need for privacy that Barry built a huge wooden fence around the circumference of his property. But this brings up a pretty important consideration in the making and consuming of true crime. How much do we deserve of someone else's tragedy? Isn't it their right to not share?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
I would argue that it's always the family's decision, and our macabre thirst for all the sordid details have played out in one salacious documentary and podcast and book after another. But what if the family has information that might be pertinent to solving a murder? Or seven murders? What if they're a suspect?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
April's theory that Barry killed Heidi, and might be a good suspect for the Connecticut River Valley Killer, is supported only by circumstantial evidence and memory and feeling. Megan's story is particularly damning. Though at this point it's next to impossible to corroborate Megan's story, I find her to be a trustworthy and courageous person who, again, is risking a lot by coming forward.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
All of this is important and powerful, but it's not evidence of murder. From here, we have to weigh all of this against the facts. What is Barry's alibi? Does he even have one? And if he does, can it be corroborated? Can we look to other cases and tie Barry to those somehow? I asked Megan one final question. Is she familiar with the Jessica Briggs case in Maine? She said she is.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Then I asked her if she'd seen the composite sketch of the man last seen with Jessica. You've seen the police sketch of the assailant, right? I have.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Next week on Dark Valley, we dive headlong into Jessica Briggs' case, a teenager who was savagely stabbed to death on the docks of Portland, Maine. If you have a tip for any of these cases, please call the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit at 603-271-2663 or the Vermont State Police Major Crimes Unit at 802-244-8781. Dark Valley was produced, written, and edited by me, Jennifer Amell.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Sound design, mixing, and original music by Wesley Slover of Sanctus Audio. Show art by Pamela Robinson. Original theme song by Jennifer Pegg. Want more Dark Valley? Go ahead and subscribe to Crime Junkie Fan Club and get exclusive access to bonus content. The link's in the show notes. Dark Valley is an AudioChuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Woof!
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
In an entry dated May 20th, the day of her murder, Heidi wrote about going to see a female teacher from her high school that morning. Apparently there was also another passage about Heidi's relationship to this teacher. And this teacher, said Robert Kiner of the defense, was, for a brief moment, considered a suspect by VSP.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
And I'm not sure if she was cleared for good reason by the police, or if it's because they apprehended Tallman. However, there was never information released publicly that there were abuse allegations in Heidi's diary.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
The state was trying to withhold the diary from the defense because, they argued, it didn't contain any pertinent information about Delbert Tallman, and they wanted to protect the family's privacy. Eventually, the judge ruled that the diary was inadmissible, and so its contents were never discussed. There's one other strange thing.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
So there are several articles from 1984 that allege that Heidi's diary was actually found near her body at the crime scene. If this is true, then it fundamentally changes what we know of Heidi's last moments. Why would she be jogging with her diary? This is a question that plagued April and honestly rattled around my head for a long time.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
But April put this question to Vermont State Police directly, and they flat out denied that the diary was ever at the crime scene. But I followed up with Michael Clare, the original detective on Heidi's case, and he also denied that the diary was at the crime scene. I think we can comfortably dismiss this rumor out of hand. What remains is this question.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
What content caused Prosecutor Bill Boss to tell April that there were allegations of abuse against her father, Barry? Last week, the Vermont State Police agreed to release Heidi's diaries from evidence. April went to collect them and then met me for lunch and brought them in a big plastic tub. As I go through her papers, it's unreal reading her handwriting.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
And seeing the things that she thought were important enough to write down. The things she chose to paste on the pages like a scrapbook. Mostly clippings from Rolling Stone. She was music obsessed. Pictures of Boy George and Rob Lowe in a bra and panties. Stevie Nicks, the B-52s, and many, many pictures of Rick Springfield.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
But the diary for 1984, for those months leading up to her death, is a black and white composition notebook. It's marked ENB Journal, English. And she wrote her name below. This diary was actually a class assignment from Heidi's English teacher, Mrs. Korber.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
She addressed every entry to her teacher. Over the year, Heidi started to write every other day. And it went way beyond a school assignment. She started revealing her crushes and favorite songs, her insecurities and worries and fears. The following recreated excerpts are directly from Heidi's writing.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
Her teacher, Mrs. Korber, would answer in red pen in the margins, in her neat cursive hand. The diary is a kind of dialogue between Heidi and the only adult she trusted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
One of the last and most chilling entries is dated May 7th and 8th, 1984, just 12 days before her murder. But it's a little strange because this letter is written on loose-leaf paper, not the notebook itself. At the top left corner is written, quote, J.C. Received 5-21-84-0630. That's literally two hours before Heidi's body was found. And J.C.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
probably denotes Trooper Jeff Cable, who was investigating her disappearance. The police must have grabbed whatever they could from Heidi's bedroom. Here is that letter.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
So Boss said to you directly that that's what was in Heidi's diary? Yes. From Audiochuck, this is Dark Valley, an investigation into the Connecticut River Valley Killer. I'm Jennifer Amell. This is Episode 15. So where is Heidi's diary? Remember I called Windsor County and tried to get all the trial documents, and they said that any evidence would have been returned to the victim's family?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
The letter is unsigned. But stapled to these papers is another crumpled sheet of loose leaf, which looked like it had been folded into fours and perhaps stuck in Heidi's pocket. Her notes are messy and slanted and upside down, as if she's constantly unfolding this paper and jotting down her thoughts as they occur. And I imagine these notes are what became the letter you just heard.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
If you're finding yourself drawn into the story and want the best listening experience, I invite you to join the Crime Junkie fan club for ad-free access to Dark Valley, plus early and ad-free episodes of Crime Junkie, the number one true crime podcast. along with additional exclusive content from across the AudioChuck network.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
She goes on to write a few more. Everything I like dies. Afraid for you. Parent. Wreck. Only you. Drowning. Stream. I hope you don't mind me bothering you with this. I'm sorry I'm bothering you with this, but I feel a lot better now that I've just told someone. I don't even understand myself anymore. Have I lost all perspective? I hardly know you, but I'm telling you all. It was so scary.
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
I don't know what to do. Won't mention parents. The fact that Heidi wrote that she was sitting under that covered bridge on Martinsville Road and thinking about drowning herself in the river is, gosh, it's heartbreaking and prescient. Twelve days later, Heidi would be lying dead in that same river, not too far from the bridge. Did she have a premonition of her own death?
Dark Valley
Chapter 15 | Megan's Story
This is what defense attorney Dumont meant when he said suicidal idealities. Something was going on. I just don't know what Heidi did that she feels so guilty about. What happened? But what about the allegations of abuse against her father? It's possible that because Heidi felt so close to this Mrs. Korber, she disclosed what was going on at home.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Hi, I'm Jennifer Amell, host of Dark Valley. Thank you for joining me on this journey as we dig deeper into this case and into the stories of those most impacted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
According to the American Psychiatric Association, "...a full-scale IQ score of around 70 to 75 indicates a significant limitation in intellectual functioning." So if Tallman scored in the low 60s, he was functioning below even this modern standard. Though they were just doing their job, the LeClaire brothers placed a vulnerable person in a stressful situation.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
He was seated with his back to the wall in a 5x10 room with no windows. The brothers sat between him and the door and did a kind of like good cop, bad cop routine. According to Trooper Shortsleeve, either Mike or Ted held Tallman's hand during the investigation and said, quote, It's a warm hand, and you can trust me. And if the hand turns cold, you can always leave.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Psychologist David Edgar weighed in on this to the Rutland Herald, quote, Having an articulate person sit one foot from your face and say, I don't believe you, is incredibly intimidating. Tallman suffered from emotional deprivation in that he lacked love and reinforcement.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Did you see him do anything to Heidi? From AudioChuck, this is Dark Valley, an investigation into the Connecticut River Valley Killer. I'm Jennifer Amell. This is Episode 14. How is it that the state thought Delbert Tallman killed Heidi Martin? Is it possible that Tallman was actually a witness to the murder? And can we even trust Tallman's version of events? This is the story of a town on trial.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
To compensate, Tallman attempted to go out of his way to please people and to often pretend that he was smarter than he actually was. The defense called the LeClaire brothers coercive.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Judge Paul Hudson presided. In a pretrial hearing, Tallman pleaded innocent to second-degree murder. Bail was set at $100,000, money Tallman and his family probably never even dreamed of, let alone had access to. Judge Hudson also decided to seal all affidavits from the public. Jury selection began on April 29, 1985, nearly one year after Heidi Martin's murder.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Robert Kiner and his law partner James Dumont acted as defense, and Bill Boss was the state's prosecutor. The Rutland Daily Herald reported that many potential jurors knew Delbert Tallman, knew the witnesses, or were even relatives of the victim. Many also believed that Tallman was innocent. One woman said Delbert followed her son around, who was in a band he liked.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Her son said Tallman was constantly picked on, and he never fought back. This woman also had a daughter who was, quote, mildly retarded, and Tallman once asked her to a dance. Her daughter said Tallman was a, quote, gentleman, but she refused to go with him because he had allegedly waved a knife around, saying, quote, what I could do with this knife you don't know.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And yet another potential juror said she believed Tallman was framed by one of the witnesses. Opening arguments were heard on May 1st, 1985. Prosecutor Bill Boss said that Tallman had already confessed, and he would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Tallman told the truth about murdering Heidi Martin. The defense, on the other hand, opened with a pretty punk strategy.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
They would argue that Delbert Tallman was a witness to the murder, and he confessed only because he's intellectually challenged and, quote, feared the real killer. That's right. The defense's strategy was to point the finger at someone else. Someone they called Mr. X. April, Heidi's sister, told me that her father, Barry, and stepmother, Linda, had not attended the trial.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I asked Robert Kiner about this, and he said he had no memory of the victim's parents attending the trial. This struck me as kind of odd. Why wouldn't you want to hear evidence against the person who the state says killed your daughter? Yet the Burlington Free Press reports that the first people to take the stand at trial were Barry and Linda Martin.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Here's what the article dated May 3rd, 1985 said. Quote, Barry Martin testified that his daughter was, quote, on cloud nine when she went out jogging after lunch on that fateful Sunday afternoon. They had just shopped for Heidi's first car that morning, and she was determined to get the money to buy it, he said.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
He broke down on the stand as he described his daughter as a child with a quote, He recalled how she got involved in track and cross-country skiing. Linda Martin told the jurors that she had just ridden home from work in a White River Junction early that afternoon, on a bicycle Heidi had dropped off at work.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
As the afternoon progressed, she started to worry when her daughter had not come home from jogging. The mother said she started calling neighbors around 3 p.m. By 4.30 p.m., she called the police. Barry said the search late that afternoon and into the evening turned up nothing. He said he couldn't sleep that night and intermittently searched during the early morning hours.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
The next morning, the father said, he waded downstream in waist-high water, searching for his daughter. Less than an hour later, the search party found Heidi Martin's body lying in the streams. Okay, so first of all, that's kind of a strange thing to say about wading into the water and then your daughter's body being found in the water.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
But the other important thing is that Barry said he and Heidi went car shopping on a Sunday before 11 a.m. Yet still, and I know this wasn't the place for it when he took the stand, he didn't give any alibi statement. Linda did. She said she was at work. But Barry and Linda didn't attend any more of the trial beyond their statements on the stand.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
So after the Martins left, the LeClaire brothers took the stand and were questioned about Tallman's confession. Mike LeClaire told the jurors that he arrested Tallman because, quote, he'd given me a confession that could have only come from the horse's mouth. Now here's where we get Tallman's first story.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
According to Mike LeClaire, quote, Tallman said he was scared at the time because he was under the covered bridge on Martinsville Road when he saw a man and a girl fighting. He then went on to give an exact description of Martin, the clothes she was wearing, and the class ring on her finger.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
The man Tallman said was someone he knew, someone he was really afraid of, quote, because he could really hurt people. That someone in question is the elusive Mr. X. But LeClaire said he didn't believe him about the other man. He believed that Tallman did it. And Tallman replied, quote, yeah, but she made me mad.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
LeClaire also said that Tallman accurately told him that Heidi had been stabbed four times. And then Tallman said that Heidi, quote, tried to take the knife away from me, but I stuck her in the belly. Then Tallman said he threw the knife downstream from the body. The knife, as we know, was never recovered. The brothers described Tallman's mood shifts.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
They said he'd go from, like, macho to crying when he was told that Heidi was dead. The thing is, Tallman's confession was never taped. No notes were written. The report about this confession happened days after. On cross-examination, the defense accused Michael Clare of fudging his report to match the facts.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
The defense actually got Mike to admit he made a mistake on the search warrant for Tallman's residence. So the search warrant was granted because of statements Tallman made before the interrogation. But LeClair admitted that the damning statements were made after the interrogation.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
If the confession were to be suppressed for any reason, any evidence found at Tallman's residence would be inadmissible. To avoid this potential problem, Mike LeClair knowingly falsified a police report. Mike blamed a quote, typo. So now the state had the opportunity to call their witnesses to the stand.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Windsor police officer Robert Mattson gave testimony that he saw Tallman on two occasions in Heartland on the day of the murder. 20-year-old man named Richard Sykes then testified that he picked up Tallman on Route 5 near Heartland at an old snack bar that was closed. He wasn't very sure about the time, but estimated that it was between 3 and 3.15 p.m.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Another state's witness, Timothy Dow, remembered seeing Tallman hitching on Route 5 between 3.10 and 3.15 p.m. He was certain of the time because he had just left his cousin's house at 3 p.m. to attend a carnival. Then, Richard Sweet took the stand.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
He actually worked with Heidi's father, Barry, and he testified that he picked up Tallman near their place of work, which was Vermont Log, a cabin supply company. And this was just about two miles down the road from where Heidi's body was found. So this witness said that Tallman said some strange things in the car.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Quote, his girlfriend was just killed in an automobile accident and her mother was bad off. End quote. Tallman said he was on his way to South Royalton. He dropped Tallman off in North Harland. And then yet another state's witness, a guy by the name of David Valley, said he had dropped off his girlfriend shortly after 4 p.m. His car started making noises and he was on his way to his father's shop.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Driving north on Route 5, he picked up Tallman near the North Heartland Dam. Tallman again said something about his own girlfriend, that she was, quote, injured or something was wrong, end quote. It was reported earlier in pretrial that the state would call a man named Paul Oakes to testify. Oakes said he also picked up Tolman on Route 14 in West Hartford the afternoon of May 20th.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Oakes told police that Tolman said something about, quote, end quote. However... Oakes only came forward with this story when police sought him out weeks after Heidi's murder. The defense's investigator, Chris Frappier, said he got a different story from Oakes. He told Frappier that Tallman had spoken about, quote, two separate girls who died, and one of those girls was cut in the chest.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Of note, this statement was made right after the disappearance of a girl just over the river in Claremont, Bernice Cordemache. And if the name Paul Oaks sounds familiar, you're probably feeling the same gut reaction I did when I ran across his name. You see, Paul Oaks was a convicted rapist and a suspect in the Barbara Agnew case.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
He drove a tow truck and was known to be out in the snowstorm helping stranded vehicles the night of Agnew's murder. He was eventually cleared through work logs, but that happened way later, in 1987. Naturally, the defense wanted to impeach Oak's testimony because his record included admission to the Vermont State Hospital as a, quote, sexual psychopath.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
He had two rape charges and a, quote, white slave trade charge. Much later, I think in the early 2000s, Paul was again accused of holding his own daughter hostage and sexually assaulting her. Due at court very shortly for these new charges, Paul Oakes went into his garage and committed suicide by shooting himself twice in the chest.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Rumors flew wildly around town that Oakes was actually guilty of killing Heidi. Steve McCullough, Heidi's neighbor, recalls something odd. He said he was hanging out with Barry Martin and a few neighbors one afternoon when Paul Oakes drove by. Just out of the blue, he said it?
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Did you ask him any follow-up questions? Like, why he thinks Paul did it?
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I love court procedurals. It's storytelling with the highest stakes. And presumably at the end, it arrives at truth with a capital T. Yet I would argue that the trial of Delbert Tallman superimposed fictions until truth was unrecognizable. Like many trials, this was competitive storytelling. Whoever told the most compelling story would win.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
As far as I can tell, Oakes lived in Hartford, as opposed to Hartland, and actually did give Tallman a ride that day. He says he picked up Tallman on Route 14 in West Hartford, which would have been near his home and definitely on the way to South Royalton, where Tallman eventually ended up. So Oakes is not necessarily placing himself near the crime scene.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
That said, Paul Oakes is not the Mr. X referred to at trial. He's not the man the defense is pointing their finger at. Around 4.30 or 5 p.m. the day of the murder, Tallman arrives in South Royalton. He had gone there to spend the night at his friend's trailer, and his friend was a pretty strange dude called Albert Sargent.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
The defense then reveals that Albert Sargent is Mr. X. So the defense is alleging that Albert Sargent is the real killer of Heidi Martin. This must have been a bombshell moment. Here's Robert Kiner.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Okay, buckle up. It's about to get confusing and strange, but stick with me. Albert Sargent's alibi is that he was at home that Sunday having a barbecue. He also said his car wasn't working. Later, Sargent said that he wasn't home when Dilbert Tallman turned up the evening of the murder. Tallman actually confirms this, saying Sargent and his car weren't there when he arrived.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Tallman's trial pitted the quote-unquote respectable people of Heartland against its poor, addicted, and underserved. It highlighted issues like culpability, capacity, memory, and civil responsibility. In the end, I think the jury did right by Delbert Tallman. So why, you ask, do I spend a whole episode on a trial that I think is a farce?
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
However, Sargent's roommate, William DeNico, was at home, so DeNico and another friend, Deborah Franklin, testified that they were at Sargent's trailer and confirmed that Sargent was home when Tallman arrived, and they saw the pair of them talking. Afterward, Sargent announced to the group that Tallman was wanted for murder.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
So, two witnesses are putting Sargent at home by around 5.30 or 6 p.m., when Tallman arrives. Delbert Tallman is then called to the stand in his own defense, a risky move considering his suggestibility. Yet Kiner says this was exactly what they wanted to demonstrate, that Tallman would change his story to agree with whoever was asking.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Tallman went on to give several confused versions of events of May 20th. Number one, he was sitting under the covered bridge when he heard yelling and screaming. Tallman then followed the noise into the woods off of Martinsville Road and hid behind a tree where he claimed to have witnessed Heidi's murder.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Two, then he said he heard yelling on top of the bridge and then two people running over the bridge. In both of these versions, Tallman runs into the woods and witnesses none other than his friend, Albert Sargent, pull a knife and stab Heidi Martin. Tallman said he was 10 to 15 feet away from the murder and looked directly at Sargent's face.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Number three, uncrossed by the prosecution, Tallman tells yet another story. He says he was under the bridge when he heard, quote, sneakers and cowboy boots running over the covered bridge. He said Albert always wore cowboy boots, and he got back up on the road in time to see a man with a plaid shirt, dungarees, and cowboy boots run out of sight.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Tallman said he knew it was Sargent even though he didn't see his face. Then Tallman ran into the woods and stood behind, quote, a large white birch tree. He said Sargent covered Heidi's mouth so she wouldn't scream anymore. Then he said he took off on a shortcut through the woods to the cemetery.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And this, of course, is where witness Robert Matheson said he saw Tallman stumbling out of the woods, covered in mud. Number four, he was sitting under the bridge, quote, thinking and drinking a beer when he heard screams about a half mile up the creek, quote, I said, hell, I might as well see where it's coming from. I had a funny feeling Albert was down there doing something dumb.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I know what he's like when he's drinking, end quote. Bill Boss interrupted Tallman. "'Were you gonna go down there just to say hi?' Tallman said, "'Uh-uh,' and shook his head. "'Quote, "'I don't talk to Elvert when he's drinking. "'When he's drunk, he does things that are stupid.'" As Delbert made his way down the steep ravine, he saw Sergeant and Heidi face to face.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Tallman said Sergeant's face was pointed up toward him. Sergeant raised the knife high above his head as Martin stood next to him. He saw the knife in Martin's class ring glint in the sun. Quote, I said, oh boy, I better get out of here. Oh, I'm leaving. I didn't have the guts to hang around. I saw Elbert stabbing her and I took off in high gear. Sunlight glinting? That's just plain old Hollywood.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
The only consistent part of Tallman's many stories is that he started out under the covered bridge. April, Heidi's sister, and I put this to the test.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Well, the central question here is, who killed Heidi Martin? It's often been said that when a case goes cold, any reinvestigation starts by reviewing the work and speaking to those investigators who came first. In my opinion, this is an inherently biased practice. Cases go cold for a reason.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And I'll just see if I can hear it or pick it up. So I'm standing below the covered bridge where Tallman likely was. And April is going to walk across the bridge and give a little yell. I'm trying to determine what can be heard and if part of Tallman's story actually checks out. It's not an entirely scientific experiment. It's December and the foliage is sparse.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Tallman would have been here in spring. You can hear the river surging and the roar of traffic from I-91. Oh, I definitely hear something. I could faintly hear April's footsteps and yell, but I was listening for it. If anything, the creek water would be even louder in spring.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
If it weren't already apparent, I'd say all parts of Tallman's story are slivers of the truth woven between wholesale fabrications. We know that Tallman's intellectual disability makes him want to please those who ask questions of him. Depending on the questioner, police, prosecutor, defense, me, Tallman will tell you what you want to hear. On May 8th, 1985, Mr. X himself took the stand.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Twice Tallman's age, Albert Sargent is thin and tall, wearing aviator-style eyeglasses, the accessory of choice for serial killers, apparently. And this is where it gets really wackadoo. On the stand, Sargent claims to have had a vision of Heidi's murder seven days after Tallman was arrested. In his vision, Sargent can see through Tallman's eyes by, quote, concentrating into his mind.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
The following is a recreation from trial dialogue printed in the Rutland Daily Herald. Dumont.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
This is actually weirdly accurate. Heidi was found in the water. The tree near Heidi's body was a hemlock, about a foot and a half in diameter, which curved up off the bank. At some point, Heidi was probably undressed, since her bra was found downstream.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
It's very possible that Sargent could have read all these details in the paper, and he certainly had enough time to walk down into the Bartonsville woods and see for himself. Then Sargent said this. He claimed he was born a Turkish king in 1617 and that a king always carried a sword but never attacked anyone. The papers had a field day.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And in this one, I argue that old assumptions have poisoned any chance of finding out who actually killed Heidi Martin. The first investigators on this case were Vermont State Police Detective Corporal Mike LeClaire and his brother, Ted LeClaire. Mike says his brother was lead on Heidi's case, though Ted has since passed away.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Sargent had a black belt in some kind of martial arts, and he said he carried knives around in his backpack to and from the dojo. And when questioned about his stint at the state hospital, Sargent said he had admitted himself for, quote, "...pains in his legs." The defense then produced a record of Sargent's psychiatric history. He was hospitalized for 11 months.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
His rap sheet is long and tortured. Sargent molested a six-year-old girl and threatened to kill her babysitter, though charges were dropped in 1980. He also attempted to strangle his sister-in-law, Nancy, after a night of drinking. Then he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl after locking her in his trailer, only six months before Heidi's murder. Sargent, of course, denied all of this.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
He also denied that he told a 14-year-old boy in South Royalton that he could show the boy how to kill with his martial arts knives. And then another 13-year-old girl accused Sargent of raping her for two hours in 1983. And Albert Sargent was actually one of Dr. John Philpin's patients at the state hospital.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
John confirmed that Sargent was a weird guy, kind of scary, and he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Sargent made a pretty convincing boogeyman. I imagine it really affected the jury, even though the defense couldn't put Sargent at the scene of the crime. To be fair, their only job was to tell a better story than the state. They had no burden of proof.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Now it was time for the defense to call its witnesses. Earlier, the defense had bragged to the papers that they had 10 witnesses who would alibi Tallman for May 20th. They listed two people from Windsor, one from Lebanon, one from Muscatany, four from Heartland, and two others who all say Tallman was elsewhere during the commission of the murder.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I won't go through all of them, but a Larry Gold Jr. said Tallman was with him until 2.15pm. Another man named Harold Lamica of Windsor said that Tallman was with him helping to build a chicken coop about the same time that Martin was murdered.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And finally, for what it's worth, Tallman's own mother, Joan, said that she and her husband had seen their son around noon on Sunday at PNC Market in Windsor. All told, between witnesses for the defense and the prosecution, Delvert-Tallman was in six places at once between 2 and 3 p.m. on May 20, 1984. There's no way to tell what's true.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
What Joan Tallman said is probably the most interesting to me. It didn't do anything for Tallman's defense, as he needed an alibi for 2 to 3 p.m., and not noon. And yes, it's his mom, so I'm taking it with a grain of salt. But I think the state's timeline is all wrong. I think it makes way more sense that Heidi was killed between 12.30 and 1.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
When I spoke to Mike LeClaire about the Martin case, he unequivocally said that he still believes Delbert Tallman is guilty. Consequently, there are still generations of Vermont detectives who think that Tallman did it. Am I missing something? And whether I like to admit it or not, I am an inheritor of that apple pie, mid-century, inherent trust in law enforcement.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
So if Joan's right, then Delbert was miles away in Windsor at noon at the time of the murder. Additionally, something Steve McCullough said just doesn't add up. Steve, who was Heidi's neighbor, said he was out gardening and saw Heidi jog by around 11.15 a.m.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Then, he said 45 minutes later, at around noon, he saw a young man, matching Delbert's description, walking down Route 5, away from the Martinsville woods. Every other witness placing Delbert near the scene says that he was walking further south on Route 5 between 2 and 3 p.m., in the wrong direction. And then there's one other possible witness.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Remember Shelly, Heidi's friend and across-the-street neighbor? She also said that she saw a man which she described as Delbert Tallman. She said he walked past her house before 4 p.m., Shelley said the man was wearing, quote, white overalls and a shirt tied around his waist. He had black hair and was looking over his shoulder.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
This clothing description doesn't match what the other witnesses described Hallman was wearing, which were jeans and a flannel. So are all these people mistaken? I mean, it's possible Steve's mistaken on the time. He was out gardening for a while, and he also had been out searching for Heidi between three and four.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
He says he came back to his house to pick up another friend to continue the search a little after four. So maybe that's when he sees who he thinks is Delbert Tallman? I just don't know. But what all this doesn't do is prove Delbert Tallman killed Heidi Martin. A day before the trial ended, the state pulled a fast one.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
They introduced forensic evidence that they said proves Delbert Tallman was within six feet of Heidi's body. Prosecutor Bill Baugh said he was going to put a special agent from the FBI on the stand. Kiner and Dumont lost what was left of their patients.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
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Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Special Agent Rawalt testified that he conducted a, quote, highly technical test and concluded that soil on Delbert's boot was identical to mud found on Martin's clothes. Both soils, said Agent Rawalt, deposited on the victim and defendant occurred at the same time because water would continually change that soil, end quote.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
As the FBI agent spoke, Delbert Tallman scribbled out the word love on a sheet of paper and held it up to a female friend who was seated in the back of the court.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I want to trust that when the police arrest someone, it's for good reason. So naturally, I want to know if there's actually a good reason for law enforcement to believe that Delbert Tallman is guilty, despite what came out at trial. And if there's no reasonable justification for this belief, then we have a bigger problem.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
That's Dr. Fred Magdoff, now a professor emeritus of plant and soil sciences at the University of Vermont.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Additionally, this FBI agent, which I'm not sure of his background.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Sure. I think the, so this agent was also alleging that because these two samples were a match, it placed the defendant within six feet of the body. Can you speak on that?
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And if they still think that Heidi's murder was this one-off committed by an intellectually challenged vagabond, they can't even entertain the possibility that Heidi's murder might be connected to the so-called Connecticut River Valley Killer. if the state has tied their own hands behind their back, then it's up to us to essentially reopen this case and strip it down to its facts.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Just to be clear, is it possible to say that based on a soil sample that a person is X amount of feet away from a body?
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
So Dr. Magduff completely discredited the only forensic evidence tying Tallman to the crime scene. Later, it came out that the FBI labs had tested the two hairs that were found on Heidi's body. They tested them against samples from Delbert Tallman and Albert Sargent. Both suspects were not a match. That, in my opinion, should have ended the speculation about Tallman and Sargent right there.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
The jury was out. After only two and a half hours of deliberation, the jury filtered back into the courtroom with a verdict. The jury found the defendant, Delbert Tallman, not guilty on the charge of second-degree murder. Tallman's mother, Joan, erupted in tears and flung her arms around her son.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And Delbert Tallman actually walked over to Prosecutor Bill Boss and shook his hand vigorously, saying, quote, I'm finally free as a bird. The best man won. Heidi's aunt, who had attended the entire trial, sat trembling and looked shocked. Another relative of Heidi's wept openly. After the trial, the community reacted in different ways.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Many believed that Tallman was innocent and that Sargent was guilty. A petition circulated to have Sargent kicked out of town. Sargent's mother posted a for-sale sign on her small home in Windsor. A local hairdresser at the Windsor barbershop said, Delbert never gave us any problem. He's always nice to us girls. But I do think he witnessed it. I really do.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
By May 17th, Delbert Tallman had left town without a word. His mother, Joan, said she was afraid for her son's life. Quote, Indeed, Ellen Freed, Eva Morse, Linda Moore, Barbara Agnew, and Jane Borowski were next. I found an arrest record for Delbert Tallman.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
He had failed to register as a sex offender in the state of Florida, and the address he gave matched the address for Albert Sargent, who had also moved to Florida. So if Tallman really thought his friend Albert Sargent killed Heidi Martin and then framed him for it, why did he seek refuge at Sargent's house the night of the murder?
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And why did he follow Sargent to Florida and live with him for years? Albert Sargent died on December 30, 2002, in Hollywood, Florida.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Only then can we consider other suspects. The first question I need to answer is this. Is it possible that Delbert Tallman killed Heidi Martin? If not, then we move on to a reasonable short list of suspects. We can begin to entertain April's suspicion that her father, Barry, is the killer. At the end of our first conversation, Detective Michael Clare made a wager with me.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Can we trust the fact that Delbert said he witnessed Heidi's murder and saw the face of her killer? His description pretty well matches Elbert Sargent. Is he superimposing his memory of trial in what his defense team coached him to say? Or was Tallman describing a different man lost in the fictions of court? Here's April.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Yes. Next time on Dark Valley, the diary of a murdered girl and her best friend who claims she was stalked by Heidi's father. If you have a tip for any of these cases, please call the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit at 603-271-2663 or the Vermont State Police Major Crimes Unit at 802-244-8781. Dark Valley was produced, written, and edited by me, Jennifer Amell.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Sound design, mixing, and original music by Wesley Slover of Sanctus Audio. Show art by Pamela Robinson. Original theme song by Jennifer Pegg. Want more Dark Valley? Go ahead and subscribe to Crime Junkie Fan Club and get exclusive access to bonus content. The link's in the show notes. Dark Valley is an AudioChuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
If you can find some evidence, he said, that proves Delbert Tallman didn't do it, I'll take you out to dinner. I hope you're saving up that pension, Mike. I have expensive taste. As we learned last episode, Delbert Tallman was arrested on May 21st, 1984, the day after Heidi was murdered. Heidi's body had been found that morning.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
That essentially left the police with 12 hours to conduct the entirety of their investigation. As you can imagine, a lot was missed. I started by requesting trial transcripts and court documents from Windsor County. That was a dead end. The county clerk told me that all the files, which were paper, had been destroyed, and any evidence returned to the family of the victim or the defense.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
So, big shout out to local news in the Upper Valley. Most of my reporting comes from the painstaking coverage done by the Valley News, Burlington Free Press, and the Rutland Daily Herald. Additional information is from my own interviews with major players. First, what gave the LeClaire brothers probable cause to arrest Delbert Tallman?
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
It seems like it was the eyewitness statement of a guy called Robert Mattson, an off-duty special police officer with the town of Windsor. Tallman was from a poor family in Windsor, and Mattson knew him as a petty criminal and general ne'er-do-well. Mattson knew that Tallman would hitch rides around the Upper Valley, that he hung out with drug addicts and prostitutes.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
What did his face look like? This is Delbert Tallman, a man put on trial for the murder of Heidi Martin. He called me out of the blue one day, and he says he saw the face of Heidi's killer.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
He had spent the previous winter in an unheated store and later slept in a junked-out car. He was raised by his mother, Joan, and stepfather, William, in the subsidized homes of Jarvis Street. Jarvis Street actually had quite a reputation. Steve McCullough, Heidi's neighbor, actually worked at the factory in Windsor that subsidized those tenement homes on Jarvis Street.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
No, they all live down here. And then what was the street known for? Was it like drugs or?
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Windsor is just five miles south of Heartland. That spring, a local Heartland man named David Files took pity on Tallman and allowed him to sleep in their garage on Martinsville Road. He even hooked him up with odd jobs, too. So that off-duty Windsor cop, Robert Mattson, also lived in Heartland. Mattson saw Tallman two times on May 20, 1984, the day of Heidi's murder.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Mattson first saw Tallman walking up Route 5 near the Heartland Town Center at 2 p.m. There was no mud on him. Then, shortly after 3 p.m., Mattson saw Tallman emerging from the Martinsville woods near the cemetery. Tallman slipped down the embankment of Route 5, and Mattson slowed down his car. He was certain about it being just after 3 p.m. because he had a watch that beeped on the hour.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Mattson said Tallman, quote, appeared very nervous, shaken, and fidgety. Matson said, quote, his eyes got real big, like I didn't expect to see you. He described Tallman's dungarees, or jeans, as appearing brown, but as he got closer, realized that they were muddy. There were big mud splotches on his knees, which kind of suggested that maybe he was kneeling in the mud.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Mattson also described a streak of mud on Tallman's face that extended down the left side of his cheek to his chin. There was never any mention of seeing any blood on Tallman. He watched Tallman walk north on Route 5 toward Heidi's neighborhood at a, quote, fast gate. The next day, Robert Madsen heard the fire alarm ring and knew that a search party was being organized.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Later that morning, he switched on the radio and heard that a young girl had been killed in the Martinsville woods. He immediately remembered seeing Tallman and called Vermont State Police Detective Robert Haynes to tell him what he saw. So, with the word of a sworn police officer placing Tallman near the scene of the crime, the state pounced.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
They sent Bethel State Trooper Dane Shortsleeve to pick up Delvert Tallman. Shortsleeve found Tallman ducking behind a parked truck in South Royalton, a town about 30 miles north of Heartland. He didn't put up a fight. And it's while Tallman is in custody awaiting trial that the state starts to build their case. In my opinion, the prosecution makes the oldest mistake in the book.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
They start with a preferred narrative and bend the facts to fit it. The state, and pay attention because this is important, is alleging that Delbert Tallman killed Heidi Martin. Eyewitnesses placed Tallman near the crime scene between 2 and 3 p.m. So the victim, the state argued, must have died between 2 and 2.15 p.m.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
As we know from three separate witnesses, Heidi started jogging between 11 and 11.30 a.m. She would have been accosted on Martinsville Road no later than noon. So the state is saying that for two whole hours, Heidi was either running from or hiding from her killer. It's possible, but improbable. In fact, at trial, this gap in the timeline was never actually addressed. But I digress.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
So the state police took Tallman into custody for a few reasons. Number one, he was placed near the crime scene by a witness. Two, he had a prior conviction for lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor when he was 16.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I'm not sure why his juvenile record wasn't sealed, as Tallman was also a minor, but the troopers thought that they were investigating a sex crime on that first day, so this criminal history seemed relevant at the time. This was before the medical examiner could actually make the determination during an autopsy that there was no evidence of sexual assault.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Number three, Tallman was known to carry a knife. And number four, Trooper Jeff Cable even told the Burlington Free Press that he heard rumors that Tallman had been seen in, quote, a bizarre sex act with a dog in public. Yeah, it gets worse. And weirder. Once in custody, Tallman was quickly interrogated by Mike and Ted LeClaire.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And after only an hour, Delbert Tallman confessed to murdering Heidi Martin. There's some very important context to this confession. Tallman's attorney at trial was Robert Kiner, and I put the question to him directly. What were the circumstances of this confession, and do you think it holds up to scrutiny?
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
If you're finding yourself drawn into the story and want the best listening experience, I invite you to join the Crime Junkie fan club for ad-free access to Dark Valley, plus early and ad-free episodes of Crime Junkie, the number one true crime podcast. along with additional exclusive content from across the AudioChuck network.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And was this, I guess, interrogation between these officers and Tallman recorded in any way?
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Hi, I'm Jennifer Amell, host of Dark Valley. Thank you for joining me on this journey as we dig deeper into this case and into the stories of those most impacted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Heidi left her home to go jogging on the morning of May 20th, 1984, where she lived with her father Barry, mother Linda, and brothers Aaron and Jason. While out on her regular jogging route, Heidi encountered her killer somewhere on Martinsville Road, and her body was found off of this road in the woods, just over a mile from her own house.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
But here's the second version of the story that April told me. That morning, Heidi was supposed to be babysitting her littlest brother, Jason, while her mother went to work and her dad was busy working on something in the garage. Her other brother, Aaron, older than Jason but still younger than Heidi, he had had a friend over and they were busy playing. April wasn't there that day.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Heidi wanted to go on her run and asked Aaron to watch Jason. Like any normal siblings, they got into an argument. Erin didn't want to watch Jason. He had a friend over. He was busy. But that made Heidi pretty angry. Angry that her routine was being interrupted, Heidi decided to go running anyway.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
A little while later, Heidi's father, Barry, walked into the house and asked Erin where Heidi was and why she wasn't watching Jason. And Erin tattled on her. Known to have a hair-trigger temper and knowing that his daughter had disobeyed his direct orders to watch her little brothers, Barry stormed out of the house, got in his truck, and peeled out of the driveway up Route 5 to go find Heidi.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
It's unclear where the story came from. Pieces of it are recollections from April's brothers. Some of it's probably April's own speculation.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
So not only do we need to substantiate this story, which relies on people's very faulty memories, but we also need some context about what this family was like and what Barry's personality was like in particular. April tells me some behavioral connections, a lot of which matches up with the Connecticut River Valley profile that John Philpin created back in the 80s.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
And keep in mind this was recorded before we actually decided to name Barry, so mind the vague pronouns.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
From Audiochuck, this is Dark Valley, an investigation into the Connecticut River Valley Killer. I'm Jennifer Amell, and this is Episode 13. It's a chilly spring morning in Bethel, Vermont. I'm sitting in April Stone's car, heat on full blast, and we're staring up at the bleak facade of the Vermont State Police barrack.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
It feels like I've interviewed half the town of Heartland. Neighbors, friends, family members, people who loved Heidi, who searched for her when she went missing, who mourned for her loss.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
The minister who presided over Heidi's funeral called her a good, quiet girl. She was so much more than that.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
She also was quite devious. By all accounts, Heidi was a sweet-tempered teenager who loved rabbits and Rick Springfield.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
She taped made-up radio programs in her bedroom and strummed on her guitar.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
To find out what really happened to Heidi Martin that day, we have to start at the beginning and actually do the investigation that police failed to do 40 years ago. What follows is, as far as I know, the only timeline developed for the day that Heidi was murdered.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
It's collated from dozens of interviews I conducted over the last two years, hundreds of primary source articles, and multiple visits to the town of Heartland. And sometimes, just walking silently through the Martinsville woods. On Sunday, May 20, 1984, the Martin family leisurely woke up to an abnormally nice Vermont spring day.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Heidi's mother Linda decided to bike to work in White River Junction for her shift at Howard Johnson's. After breakfast, Heidi's oldest brother Aaron had a friend over to play, and Heidi was charged with watching her youngest brother Jason while her dad Barry tinkered around the yard. April was about five years old at this time, and she didn't live with Barry and Linda.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
April was the product of an affair Barry had. April had a different mom, and she lived with her in a different town, although she'd usually spend weekends over at the Martin house. So Heidi was a sophomore in high school and had joined the track team that season and wanted to stay in shape. She was new to track and field, but her friends and family say that she was always a very fast runner.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Although other people have suggested that Heidi had a regular jogging route and schedule, this isn't entirely true. She ran sporadically and always with a friend or her brother Aaron. Barry and Linda were strict about her not jogging alone. Around 10 or 10.30 that morning, Heidi changed into a pair of gray sweatpants, a blue t-shirt, and running shoes.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
On her finger, she wore a Hartford High School class ring. And determined to go jogging that day, she marched into the den and asked Aaron if he would go running with her. But Aaron said he was busy. He wouldn't go running with her. And Heidi, like any older sister, was kind of annoyed. They argued. And Aaron said the last words to his sister he would ever speak.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Words he would come to regret for the rest of his life. Why don't you go die? Heidi stormed into the kitchen and yanked the phone off the hook. She dialed her friend's number, Shelley, who lived across the street. Recently, I was in Heartland with some of Heidi's neighbors when we saw Shelley in her driveway. Shelley was kind enough to speak to me for a second.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
In just a few moments, April will meet with the cold case unit about her sister, Heidi Martin. Heidi was murdered when she was only 16, back in 1984. And April is here to urge the police to look into her father, Barry Martin. There's a lot at stake for her. Deep breaths, April.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
From Shelly's driveway, you can see the Martin household. It's a small log cabin type home with a garage to its left and a long privacy fence around its front and back. Just as we were getting back in the car, the Martin's garage door opened and a car pulled out. Linda was behind the driver's wheel and she furtively glanced at us. She looked thin and frail, bundled up in layers against the cold.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Determined to go running despite not being allowed to go alone, Heidi made a fateful decision to go anyway. She left her home and started running south along Route 5. A couple houses down was where Steve and Nancy McCullough lived. Heidi would often babysit their son, Corey, and their daughter, Renee. That day, Steve said he was out gardening in the front yard.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
He was watching his daughter, who was only two years old at the time, and playing on a rocking horse out in the driveway. I'm standing with Steve at the edge of his driveway where, 40 years ago, he saw Heidi jog by around 11.15 a.m.,
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Further down Route 5, Heidi passed the Marsden house, where a young Toby Marsden was out playing in the yard. She also saw Heidi jog by, she said between 11 or noon, which jives with what Steve said. The last known sighting of Heidi was from a homeowner on the unpaved, winding Martinsville Road.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
This homeowner saw Heidi, quote, shortly before noon, jogging toward the Martins Mill Covered Bridge, south of Heartland Elementary School. There are two routes that Heidi might have taken that day. A short one and a long one. If she took the short one, she would leave her house on Route 5, traveling south, and cross the intersection with Martinsville Road.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
She'd eventually hit the elementary school, and then further down, the covered bridge. This route would only be 1.2 miles long. And if you take the average mile time of a high school girl, this would have taken Heidi at most 10 minutes to jog. The longer route would have taken Heidi south up Route 5 into the town of Heartland.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
At the only stop late in town, near the cemetery, she would have turned left on Route 12, and then another left at the other end of Martinsville Road. This would have taken her around the back end of the covered bridge and elementary school. At the time, there was a cluster of houses at this end of Martinsville Road, but not near the school.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
So it's likely that the homeowner who saw Heidi lived near the end of this road. This whole route was just over two miles long and would have taken Heidi at most 20 to 25 minutes. We have three witnesses that agree Heidi started jogging around 11 or 11.15. If we stretch this timeline to 11.30, we have Heidi near the covered bridge by noon at the absolute latest.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Whatever happened to Heidi after that was near this bridge around noon. And we'll get into the nitty gritty of this timeline a little later, but the state puts Heidi's time of death around 2 p.m. But if that's true, what was Heidi doing between noon and 2 p.m. ?
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Steve McCullough, who was still out in the yard gardening, saw another person walking down Route 5 from the direction of the elementary school. And this was about 40 or 45 minutes after Heidi jogged by.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Next to April in the passenger seat is Jane Borowski, the only survivor of the Connecticut River Valley Killer.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
And then about 1 or 1.30, Steve's wife, Nancy, returns with their son, Corey, from their shopping trip in Claremont. And then at 3 p.m., Nancy hears the phone ring in her kitchen. It's Linda Martin, Heidi's mother.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Steve jumped in the truck immediately and picked up another neighbor, Lee Hood, to help him search. Steve and his wife Nancy actually drove me around where they searched that day.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
According to Vermont State Police Corporal John Palmer, Heidi's parents, Barry and Linda, reported her missing at 4.30 p.m. on May 20, 1984. Nancy remembers seeing the dogs soon after this.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Steve and his friend Lee Hood got back to Steve's house around 5 p.m. Lee Hood departs. Steve meets up with Heidi's father, Barry, and Barry's brother, along with another neighbor, Joe Duby, split off into two cars to continue the search. Later that day, just around sundown, Steve and Joe park on Martinsville Road. Behind them pull up Barry and Barry's brother.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
They decide they're going to go into the Martinsville woods. Now this is treacherous terrain. It's a deep gully and heavily wooded. Some parts of it are swamp. Darkness fell and they were caught in torrents of rain.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Steve said it was Vermont State Police Detective Michael Clare and State Trooper Jeff Cable who picked them up in their car and rescued them from the rain. He doesn't quite remember what was discussed in the car, but this is the only time that police ever spoke to Heidi's father, uncle, or neighbors. It's pretty much the end of their investigations.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
The Heartland fire alarm rang out at dawn on May 21, 1984. Search parties gathered at the firehouse and split off into groups to search the woods behind the elementary school. But by 8.30 a.m., a volunteer firefighter named Andrea Ambrose scrambled down a steep embankment and saw something starkly white against the foliage of the creek bed.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
There, splayed across the narrow creek, was Heidi Martin. A doctor named Beach Conger was close behind in the search party and quickly determined that there was nothing to be done. Heidi was dead. Heidi's feet were on the bank of the creek, and her body lay on its side in the water. Her face was submerged, and her gray sweatpants were muddy up to the knee.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Her class ring, earrings, and gold chain necklace were accounted for. But there was something odd about how her blue t-shirt was hiked up, and then about 15 feet downstream was Heidi's bra. Dr. Beach Congar later told the Burlington Free Press that Heidi had been found far from any established trail. Quote, let's just say that wasn't an area where anyone would go jogging.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
April and I are back in the Martinsville woods. We're trying to find where Heidi was killed and where her body was left. There's a few inches of snowfall, ice, and we quickly get pretty lost.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
The only real thing we have to go off of is that she was found perpendicular across the creek.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Oh, no, not your good pants. Not my good pants. For the record, my pants are covered in paint.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Yeah, I mean, the injuries on her body make sense with, like, either being dragged or falling down or something. You okay? It's creepy.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
There was another doctor on scene who was Heidi's other neighbor, a Dr. Carl Sandy Perkins. He lived behind the Martins and was good friends with her father, Barry. It was Sandy who called the medical examiner that day, Eleanor McQuillan. When McQuillan arrived, Vermont State Police detectives were already on scene. After McQuillan examines the body in situ, she has detectives load her into a bag.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
But because the gully was so steep, The easiest way to get Heidi's body out of there was up the gentler slope right behind the elementary school. Jason, Heidi's little brother, was actually in class that day. His teacher lowered the blinds as they pulled his sister out of the woods. Heidi's body was then transported up to Burlington for the autopsy.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
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Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
The following is from a case write-up that attorney Amy Fairfield has shared. "'Eleanor McQuillan, Vermont's deputy state medical examiner, found that Heidi had died from internal bleeding and shock, caused by two deep and closely spaced stab wounds to her right side.'"
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
The most serious wound had punctured her aorta and broken a rib, causing massive blood loss, which then flowed into her chest cavity. Both wounds were about five inches deep and an inch wide. McQuillan found scrapes and bruises on Heidi's lower lip and pebbles and silt in her airway, but not much water.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
suggesting the killer held her head against the bottom of the stream as he stabbed her to death. Heidi had two additional, much shallower stab wounds on her abdomen and right flank. Since these wounds did not correspond to holes in Heidi's shirt, as did the more serious wounds, McQuillan opined that they were inflicted while Heidi was standing, with her shirt pulled up or off.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
McQuillan found no evidence of sexual assault. Several other injuries suggested a struggle before Heidi's death. Two parallel bruises on her lower right arm came from a quote, good-sized squeeze of the tissue, McQuillan later testified, possibly from two fingers, a rope, or a bra. Another bruise on her upper right arm came from a quote, tight grab.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Martin was also struck in the chest with a blunt object, causing bruising over her third rib. Scratches and bruises on her side suggested her body had been dragged. Finally, two hairs were found on her body, one on her stomach, the other on her foot. End quote. These two hairs have never been identified. Later that same day, on May 21, 1984, state police officers canvassed Heidi's neighborhood.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
A list of local offenders was drawn up pretty quickly. Yet it was Jeff Cable, the state trooper who had rescued Steve, Joe, Barry, and his brother from the rain that night, who put forward the name of a local vagabond. Delbert Tallman. Delbert was a short, thin young man of 21 with curly brown hair and usually dressed in dirty jeans and flannels.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
He had a slow, easy manner of speaking and his family lived in nearby Windsor. Delbert had a few scrapes of the law, too. When he was 16, Delbert was charged with lewd conduct with a child, as well as petty theft, trespassing, and criminal mischief.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
And then, a part-time Windsor police officer named Robert Mattson told Vermont State Police detectives that he himself had seen Delbert Tallman between 2 and 3 p.m. on that Sunday, quote, coming out of the woods near Martinsville Road. That was enough for Michael Clare, who was a detective with Vermont State Police alongside of his brother, Ted.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
That same night, around 9 p.m., and this is still May 21st, the day Heidi's body was found, the brothers arrested Delbert Tallman in South Royalton for the murder of Heidi Martin. He was brought into custody at the Bethel State Police barracks. I've reached out to Delbert's defense attorney, Robert Kiner, and you'll get to hear from him in next week's episode.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
But Kiner doesn't know where his client is. He told me Delbert was in Florida for several years, and then he said he heard that Delbert was possibly living in some kind of halfway house back in Vermont. Nobody's talked to him in years. April has carried around this secret suspicion her whole life. It's unthinkable. Could a father really kill his daughter and get away with it?
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
I have loose alibis for nearly everyone around Heidi. Her neighbors, her friends, her brothers, her mother, but not her father. Where was Barry Martin that afternoon? So my job is not to take April at her word. It's to report a factual story. April has brought up serious questions that need to be answered.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
And while it's usually the police's job to gather evidence, they thought they got their guy back in 84. Because they arrested Delbert Tallman so quickly... they didn't really do an investigation. In fact, police never interviewed Barry, and he never gave an account of his whereabouts that day. Who killed Heidi Martin? And is her case actually connected to the Connecticut River Valley killer?
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Let's find out. I'm at home one day when my phone rings. It's a number I don't recognize. The voice on the other end is male, and it's kind of garbled. And then he says this. It's Delbert Tallman. I'm calling from the woods. I scramble to get my recorder. What did you see that day? You don't think about it anymore?
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Next time on Dark Valley, a town on trial, and Delbert Tallman finally speaks. If you have a tip for any of these cases, please call the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit at 603-271-2663 or the Vermont State Police Major Crimes Unit at 802-244-8781. Dark Valley was produced, written, and edited by me, Jennifer Amell.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Sound design, mixing, and original music by Wesley Slover of Sanctus Audio. Show art by Pamela Robinson. Original theme song by Jennifer Pegg. Want more Dark Valley? Go ahead and subscribe to Crime Junkie Fan Club and get exclusive access to bonus content. The link's in the show notes. Dark Valley is an AudioChuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No! Mwah!
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
April dabs her eyes with a Dunkin' Donuts napkin. Jane and I fall into step behind her as she enters the police station. Five men in ill-fitting suits greet us in the lobby. This is pretty much the entire Vermont State Police cold case unit. They take turns introducing themselves and hold open another door marked Authorized Personnel Only.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
April gives Jane and I a fleeting look over her shoulder and disappears into the back rooms. We think that Heidi might be a victim of the Connecticut River Valley Killer. And look, it's not a catchy name. It's no BTK or Night Stalker.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
It's a misnomer, though, because the Connecticut River Valley is an arbitrary border law enforcement drew around the crimes of this person, as if this man knew boundaries. And in New England from 1960 until now, he's a question raised in every case concerning a missing or murdered woman.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
His murders may have spanned decades and regions and demographics, and it's hard to encapsulate the story when it has no definite ending or beginning. He'll start to justify a time traveler. Sometimes I think he's like this immortal reaper, cutting down women through time and space. But when I get too esoteric about it, I remind myself of the fact.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Seven bodies, scattered in the wilds of New England. We've discussed a lot of cases up to this point, and I know it can be hard to keep it all straight. So let's do a quick case recap. Betsy Critchley was killed on July 25, 1981, in Unity, New Hampshire. Heidi Martin was stabbed to death on May 20, 1984, in Heartland, Vermont.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Just 10 days after Heidi, Bernice Cordomache was stabbed in the neck on May 30, 1984, and left in the Kellyville woods. Ellen Freed was stabbed on July 20, 1984, and her body was left just over a mile from where Bernice's remains were found, again in the Kellyville woods. Eva Morse disappeared while hitchhiking on Route 12, heading toward Claremont, New Hampshire.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
She had been stabbed so savagely that she was found partially decapitated, just 500 feet from where Betsy Critchley's remains were found in Unity, New Hampshire. Linda Moore, the outlier in these court cases, was stabbed 29 times in her family home in Westminster, Vermont on April 15, 1986.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
On January 10, 1987, Barbara Agnew was attacked at a rest area off of I-91 North near White River Junction, Vermont. She was found stabbed to death in Heartland, Vermont, just under three miles away from where Heidi Martin was killed. And that brings us to Jane Borowski. Seven months pregnant, Jane was attacked at Gamarlo's Market in Swansea, New Hampshire on August 6th, 1988.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Miraculously, Jane and her baby survived. I think often of being with Jane in the Claremont Library when we were first doing research on these victims. And I'm sure you remember, but the librarian comes over to check on us, and this is what Jane says.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Pretty much. Not doing it to solve it. And it's true. I didn't set out to solve this. But in the course of researching these cases and getting to know the community of the Upper Valley, I think I may have generated the best lead on a suspect. Ever. And believe me, it's not who you think it is.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Before we really dive into Heidi's case, I'd be remiss if I didn't discuss one major police update in these cases. Let's talk about a man I called Jim. Early on in this investigation, in the mid-80s, rumors surrounded a man who lived in a dilapidated old house at the edge of Kellyville, just outside Claremont, New Hampshire. Like a Lemony Snicket story, Jim's yard is unkempt and overgrown.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
The brick of the house eroded and chipped, strange wooden signs nailed to the fence saying women welcome or owner armed. There were so many rumors that locals refer to the Connecticut River Valley killer as the quote, Kellyville killer, alluding to Jim and his creepy house. The story kind of writes itself. But since it's now a matter of public record, Jim's real name is Jeffrey Champagne.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
On May 21st, 2024, that means this past May, the New Hampshire Attorney General executed the first search warrant ever in the history of this investigation on Jeffrey Champagne's house.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
So in order for police to search a property, they need what's called probable cause. Probable cause is a legal benchmark that law enforcement must meet that reasonably justifies suspicion of a crime and or a perpetrator.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
And for cases over 40 years old, I would venture to guess that there has been mounting circumstantial evidence leading to probable cause that eventually convinced a judge to sign off on a warrant. We just don't know what that reasoning entailed. The court affidavit has been sealed from the public.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Even though search warrant affidavits are generally a matter of public record, for eight months, there have not been any statements released by New Hampshire authorities about what they found in Jeffrey Champagne's house, if anything. They also won't release what case they're investigating in connection with Champagne.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
I do know that just before the search, authorities notified Jane Borowski, Maura Murray's family, and the family of Ellen Freed. It seems most likely that authorities are attempting to link Ellen Freed's case to Jeffrey Champagne, since her body was found in relative proximity to his house.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
It's also possible they're trying to tie Bernice Kortomasha's case as well, since her body was also found in Kellyville. And I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I've made the executive decision here not to cover Champagne in depth. Too much is unknown, save for some rumors that have been circulating around town for decades.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Stories of Jeff going to a diner and ordering food for an invisible person, doing target practice in his backyard. Jeff suffered from pretty severe paranoid schizophrenia. If you want my full thoughts on Champagne, you can find a bonus episode I made in the Crime Junkie Fan Club app.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
And look, I hope against hope that the AG got the physical evidence it needs to either bring charges or, once and for all, rule out Jeffrey Champagne. This man has been dogged by suspicion for decades. And I have no idea if Champagne is guilty of Ellen or Bernice's murders. Obviously, Jeff Champagne is not the man April suspects. My own work is a kind of parallel investigation.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Over the last year, I've assembled a kind of, like, civilian task force, which includes Dr. John Philpin, psychologist and original profiler on these cases. I'm also working alongside Amy Fairfield. a defense attorney in Maine who represented a wrongfully convicted man for the murder of a teenager in 1989.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
John Philpin actually put us in touch because of our mutual interest in the Heidi Martin case and how it might connect to Jessica Briggs' case in Maine. And together with April, John and Amy have generously taken more of my phone calls than my own wife, and I owe a great debt to their tireless passion and expertise. John?
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
You know, aside from... I've also consulted with formerly detective on most of these Vermont cases, retired Detective Lieutenant Michael Clare.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
If you're finding yourself drawn into the story and want the best listening experience, I invite you to join the Crime Junkie fan club for ad-free access to Dark Valley, plus early and ad-free episodes of Crime Junkie, the number one true crime podcast. along with additional exclusive content from across the AudioChuck network.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Somehow Mike's always out hunting and I never actually recorded our conversations, but Mike will often weigh in through John Philpin. They've actually been friends for years. But my starting point is with Heidi Martin. April, Heidi's sister, came to me with a secret. She's definitely not the first to think her father could be a serial killer.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
She's not even the first one to come to me with their suspicions about a family member. April's story just stuck out to me. And maybe it's because she wasn't all over the internet spreading rumors. Maybe it's because she evaded talking to me for months on end. But let's be frank, April didn't come to me with concrete facts.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
Okay, I'm going to ask you point blank, April. Who do you believe killed your sister Heidi Martin first?
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
And that said, it's not April's job to prove her theory or even back it up with evidence. She'll tell me strange stories of her father's behaviors, his mood swings, his propensity to brag about hunting, quote, does, for scaring the neighborhood kids. But ultimately, it's the police's job to find evidence. We know that Heidi was killed while out jogging near her home in Heartland, Vermont.
Dark Valley
Chapter 13 | A Good, Quiet Girl
And the reason why April's theory about her father piqued my interest is not only because she has nothing to gain and is in fact putting herself at great risk, but because of a story she told me. A different version of what happened the morning Heidi was killed. The first version I heard was this.