Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Every year, millions of people head into the wilderness searching for peace, beauty, and adventure. But hidden in those same scenic landscapes are stories of violence, survival, and lives cut short. I'm Delia D'Ambra, and on my podcast, Park Predators, I uncover the true crimes that happened in the most amazing places on Earth. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And this story is about what can happen when a case feels solved, even when it may not be. In Massachusetts, two women from very different worlds disappeared within a few years of each other. One was last seen leaving a bar. The other vanished after stepping out of Logan Airport.
Police would eventually say that these two cases were connected and that they had found the man responsible. But after spending more than a year reporting on this case, interviewing witnesses, tracking down survivors, and reviewing thousands of pages of records, we found a story that doesn't sit quite right. And our question is, Was the wrong man blamed for these crimes?
And if so, then is the person or people who actually committed these murders still walking free? These are the stories of Joan Webster and Marie Iannuzzi. December 1st, 1981 is a Tuesday. The Tuesday after Thanksgiving break. And the day that Terry Webster really starts feeling anxious about not hearing from her youngest daughter, Joan.
Their whole family had been together for the holiday weekend at their home in New Jersey. But instead of driving back to college in Massachusetts with her older sister, as planned, on Sunday, 25-year-old Joan left on Saturday night because she wanted to make it to a study group. So her dad booked her a flight to Boston Logan Airport.
And she's at Harvard, I assume?
Yeah.
Yeah, so she is in grad school there for architecture. And girl works hard, hence ending her break early just to go home and study, which is probably part of the reason Terry didn't stress out at first when she didn't hear from her daughter on Sunday. Like, you know, that's study group day. She's busy, yeah. Whatever, yeah. Didn't hear from her on Monday. Maybe she's just getting settled.
But still not hearing a word from her by Tuesday morning, now she knows something is up. And almost at the same time Terry's starting to spiral, the phone rings. It's one of Joan's friends from Harvard, and right away Terry knows something is wrong because the friend tells her that Joan missed that Sunday study group and she didn't show up to class on Monday either.
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Chapter 2: What happened to Joan Webster after she left Logan Airport?
And inside, there is unopened mail and no sign that Joan's even been in the room since before break. Now, Terry is the one to file a missing persons report that same day. And by the next morning, Joan's family has their first clue. Because a call comes into Jones' dad's office from a fisherman.
Apparently he was walking near the marshes in Saugus, Massachusetts, which is like six miles north of Logan Airport. And the guy says he found Jones' wallet on the riverbank. And inside was a driver's license, credit cards, no cash though. But there was this like card instructing whoever finds the wallet to call Jones' dad's office. So they call him. He calls the police.
And when they hear about this, they're worried right away because this marsh area where her stuff was found, it is a known dumping ground, like for trash, for stolen stuff, and for bodies. So they go out to meet this fisherman and they search the area. And not too far from where he had found the wallet, they find Joan's red leather pocketbook with her checkbook inside.
And this is a bad situation. Because of the location, because of how the items were scattered, police wonder if someone could have thrown Joan's things out the window of a moving car as they passed on this highway. It runs right over this area.
And if that's what happened, finding Joan and whoever took her might be even harder than anyone thought because they're now four days out from anyone last seeing her. And who knows where she could be now?
I mean, at least they know that she made it onto her flight and to the Boston area.
Oh, for her stuff to be there. Yeah, exactly. And they focus a lot of their attention and early searches around the airport specifically and that marsh area. And they really do pull out all the stops. We're talking officers, dogs, helicopters, even scuba divers to comb the river by the marsh. But there is no sign of Joan or anything else.
And is the marsh area like on the way to campus from the airport? Is it like on that route?
No, that's the thing. So this is like in the complete opposite direction, which is what I think makes people even more certain that if someone intercepted Joan, it was more likely at the airport than anywhere else. Because they also start finding witnesses who say that they saw her there. Passengers on the flight confirm that Joan definitely made it onto the plane.
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Chapter 3: How did Joan's family react to her disappearance?
This is the last possible sighting of Joan. If that was her, why hasn't that man come forward? For that matter, why hasn't the cab driver who took them come forward?
Wait, they never found the other cab driver, like the one that was like in a blue car?
Nope. The guy who saw them get into the car. The original cab driver. Yeah, he couldn't tell which company that cab was with or who was driving it, just that the cab was like blue in color.
Did Jones say anything about meeting anyone with him?
No, I know a guy that she was seeing planned to visit her over Thanksgiving break and they ended up canceling. But like her parents knew about that guy like that didn't seem like a big deal. Also, that guy was closer to her age wouldn't be mistaken for 40 something like this other guy.
And I assume no one else they know fits this 40 something year old guy's description. Yeah.
Well, I don't know for sure because the strangest thing happens. So police take this account from the cab driver seriously enough to make a composite sketch of the man described. But as far as we can tell, that sketch was never publicly released. We actually spoke to one of Joan's professors and even other students who were at Harvard at the time with Joan.
None of them knew that this sketch even existed all these years later. What? Yeah, and it's not really clear why. But Joan's professor told us that early on, it felt to him like police just assumed that Joan left and that she was going to come back on her own eventually. Which, like, I don't even know where that assumption comes from. Because to me...
All of the signs right from the jump are pointing to some kind of foul play. Like, it's not like they were hearing things from, like, the family that would make them think she walked away. Everyone who actually knew Joan didn't believe that for a second. They know that she's a good student. She was a resident advisor. She's super responsible.
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Chapter 4: What evidence was found in the search for Joan?
And then you're, like, again, tossing the wallet and purse.
Yeah.
Right. And this is like the weird thing, too, is like it doesn't seem like anything was taken from the checked luggage. Like all of her clothes are still in it.
So someone else had to have checked it in at the bus terminal.
You would think. But why? Why run the risk of being spotted? Just like dump it somewhere. Burn it. Like, I mean, like, yeah, this clue is so confounding to me because like. Did they want to keep this for some reason, but then they couldn't come back for it because there was too much publicity around Jones' case by then?
Or was this some kind of like sick game they were playing, hoping that someone would find it half a century later and reporters and podcasters would be speculating about what it means? I think what really gets me is that Joan wasn't reported missing for a few days, right?
It was like Tuesday and this was checked on Sunday morning. They could have gotten it by like Monday morning.
That's what I'm saying. So someone, Joan or someone else, they would have had time to anonymously come back, get the stuff. Even if they had to go ask staff for it, nobody knows Joan is missing in that first 24 hours, like before the locker turns to red. But no one comes back for it. So if you're trying to get rid of the luggage, again, why not just dump it with the wallet and purse?
Why not just dump it anywhere else?
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Chapter 5: Who were the suspects in Joan's case?
It wasn't totally clear. But this woman confirmed that she saw Marie walk out of the bar, same as Lenny, but then she never came back. That was the last they saw of her. So her family reported her missing quickly, but it was already too late because a day later, on August 13th, that's when her body was discovered in the marshy area behind this lobster company.
Now, when she's found, she's fully clothed with all of her jewelry on. The only thing missing were her shoes and stockings, which were never found. But everything else was in place, even her bodysuit that she was wearing. Now, an autopsy determined that she died from ligature strangulation probably about 12 hours before her body was found.
And there were signs of a struggle, bruises and scrapes like on her face and her arms, her legs. And the medical examiner said there were no clear signs of sexual assault, but it was obvious that there had been some kind of sexual activity between the night that she went missing and when she was killed because the Emmy found sperm after doing a vaginal smear.
So after she's found, like in the first, like, you know, early days of this case, there were basically two suspects. And that was Marie's boyfriend, David, and Lenny. But investigators had quickly zeroed in on Lenny, right? I mean, he is the last person seen with Marie. He would have known the marsh area because turns out he's a fisherman by trade.
Actually sold fish to the very lobster company near where she's found. Oh, okay. And Lenny had a pretty long rap sheet, including the abduction of a 16-year-old girl and attempted rape of a college student that he offered to drive home. Now, he served prison time for that second crime.
And Burke told us that to him, past behavior, especially sexual violence against women, is one of the best indicators of future behavior. He thinks Lenny got bolder in his crimes as the years went on and that his psychology lined up with the type of murder or murderer in Marie's case, a murder that was sexually motivated.
Now, when police originally interviewed Lenny and Candy, their stories stood out to them. I mean, they both had the same story that when Lenny and Marie walked out together, Candy was waiting in the car. Lenny offered Marie a ride home, but she said, no, she's meeting someone and she walks off around the corner. But police noted that like Lenny and Candy's stories matched up almost too perfectly.
Like the case file says word for word.
I mean, I get what they're like wink, wink, nudge, nudging at here. But if their stories didn't match, I think that would look bad too, right? Totally.
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