In this finale, Jennifer unveils her final investigative efforts into the best suspect ever for the Connecticut River Valley killings. Special thank you to the following Dark Valley listeners for their dedicated support of the show: M Charles, Tara F, Debie Burton, Sandi C. W., Parker D. and Brian Denman. Join the Crime Junkie Fan Club to enjoy Dark Valley ad-free PLUS gain access to exclusive case files. More details HERE. CASE TIPS OR INFORMATION: New Hampshire State Police- Cold Case Unit at: 603-271-2663 Vermont State Police- Major Crimes Unit: 802-244-8781
Chapter 1: Who is Jennifer Amell and what is Dark Valley?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 2: What are the details of Linda Moore's case?
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.,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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