0:00

Paper Ghosts is a production of I

0:02

Heart Radio. We're

0:04

hoping that a family member, a

0:06

friend, a neighbor, or someone

0:09

else will recognize

0:11

this person and come forward to investigators

0:13

with information that will lead to the identity.

0:16

For just a moment in two thousand thirteen,

0:18

there was a glint of hope that the remains

0:20

of one of the missing girls had been discovered.

0:23

A twenty three year old college student looking

0:25

to collect scrap metal for an art project

0:28

was walking through the woods near his home in Vernon

0:30

when he came across a female skull and

0:33

other human remains. At

0:35

first, there was a strong belief among Vernon

0:37

police that they could have belonged to

0:40

either Jani's Pocket, Lisa

0:42

White, or Debbie Spickler, and

0:44

for April White Filetti, Lisa White's

0:46

sister. This discovery was the first

0:48

time ever that felt as

0:50

though her sister was finally

0:52

coming home. In my heart, I

0:56

never thought it was anybody else but Lisa. It was

0:58

too close to how I

1:00

just had a gut feeling

1:02

that it was my sister, and

1:04

um alls I wanted was at

1:07

that point closure for myself, closure

1:09

for my mom. It was like a

1:12

knife in my heart when we found out. The

1:14

remains were found in a rugged area that

1:17

was once a town dump site. It

1:19

was an area not only close to where Lisa

1:21

White lived, but where she had frequently

1:23

hung out with friends. It became

1:26

a harrowing four days before the results

1:29

of whether any of the dental records provided

1:31

a match to one of the missing

1:33

girls took forever, or

1:35

at least I don't even remember how long. For

1:38

me, it felt like years getting

1:41

the answer, just waiting, and it was right before my

1:43

birthday, and I just kept saying to myself,

1:45

all I want for my birthday is this to

1:48

be found as Lisa. That's

1:50

all I wanted. Years

1:54

went by before police positively

1:56

I did the remains as that of a petit

1:59

forty old woman who had gone

2:01

missing years earlier. These

2:04

families, I cannot say

2:06

it enough, live with this daily.

2:09

A body found, a knock on the

2:11

door, a telephone call, they

2:14

get their hopes up, and it's

2:16

back to reality, no

2:18

answers. I get a call from

2:21

one of the Vernon p D detectives

2:24

and so I'm holding my breath and

2:26

they said, we've

2:29

got the conclusion that

2:31

this isn't your sister. These

2:33

remains are not your sister. And I immediately

2:36

just sat on the floor like somebody

2:38

just punched me in the gut. And

2:41

then the tears just came

2:44

in, came in, came previously

2:54

on paper Ghosts, it

2:57

opens up a candle worms. It takes us down a rabbit

2:59

hole. But even after

3:01

all that, I go back and I'm like, where

3:04

does that leave us? It leaves us with

3:06

the question still, where is Debbie

3:08

Spickler? What happened to her? A

3:12

lot of looked the same, So we started looking

3:14

at it is this more than one person?

3:16

Was this? Like you know somebody that was doing this in

3:18

the area, you know, abducting you children

3:21

at age or around that age. Somehow

3:24

I crawled through Christmas. Lisa's

3:27

presence lay there unopened. We

3:30

existed through March. I

3:32

was completely disillusioned by the local

3:34

clues. My name

3:36

is and William Phelps. This

3:39

is paper Ghosts. For

3:50

as long as I've investigated the disappearances

3:52

of the young girls, there has never been a shortage

3:54

of people coming forward and willing

3:56

to discuss the cases with me. In the

3:59

very beginning, they thought she'd wandered

4:01

off. That most of those details

4:03

I've heard countless times, and

4:06

it was a missing person it was a little girl

4:08

who wandered into the woods. But

4:10

then every once in a while I meet

4:12

a new source who leaves

4:14

me speechless. I think

4:16

I'm the only person alive

4:19

still that actually worked

4:21

on the case from the beginning. The

4:24

latter recently happened when a retired

4:26

police officer who worked the Janis Pocket

4:28

and Lisa White cases reached out to me with

4:30

information he thought I'd be interested in. We

4:33

met on a Sunday afternoon on the north

4:36

end of Crystal Lake. The

4:40

Wendel property and those water wells

4:42

were to our right. The gorgeous lake

4:45

sprawled out in front of us. After

4:47

some discussion, we decided it better not

4:50

to use his name, but I have verified

4:52

his credentials, which are impressive.

4:55

Not only did he retire at the highest rank

4:57

in his department, but he's a lawyer as

4:59

well. I was interested

5:01

in what he had to say about Janis Pockets case.

5:04

She was the youngest of the girls who disappeared,

5:06

and that image of her riding her bike to go

5:09

find the dead butterfly continuously

5:11

haunts me. Now

5:15

I think we're two days into it when I get

5:17

the call that it's going to

5:19

be uh An abduction of

5:22

some type. Are you aware

5:24

of the ransom calls for her?

5:27

A couple of them. I mean, I've heard all

5:30

kinds of stuff. When Janice

5:32

Pocket first

5:34

disappeared, there were two calls

5:37

came two different days, and

5:39

one of them was to make the reward

5:42

ten thousand dollars you might get

5:44

your daughter back. That's probably

5:47

verbatim what it was. I had heard it

5:49

so many times. The other one

5:51

was make the reward twenty dollars

5:54

and you'll see Janice again. So somebody

5:57

had the presence of mine is at least

5:59

to put a tape recorder on the pocket

6:01

phone early on, so both of those calls

6:04

were recorded. They gotta remember

6:06

technology then

6:08

wasn't what it is today.

6:11

It took days for them

6:13

to figure out where the phone calls came

6:15

from. I asked him next if

6:17

the blackmailer was possibly an opportunist

6:20

and just trying to capitalize on the pockets

6:23

pain and vulnerability.

6:26

Yeah, at the time you didn't know. But

6:28

the phone calls came from

6:31

the phone booth in the center of

6:33

Colin at the Colin Green in

6:36

front of where the old tolland jail used to be.

6:38

This area he's talking about is one point

6:41

eight miles from where Janice went missing, just

6:43

a three minute drive. There

6:46

was no way of knowing if

6:48

there was gonna be a third call, So

6:51

we did surveillance. I

6:53

was part of that. On that phone booth. It

6:56

would take days to trace the call,

6:59

or at least many hours. So

7:01

what and the idea was, well,

7:03

we'll watch the booth, get the redge

7:05

number of the call in f at to fourteen,

7:08

we see somebody going and make a call, will

7:11

make the the notation. But

7:13

it didn't quite work that way because

7:15

you couldn't always see the redge of the vehicle

7:17

and all that. But the interesting thing is

7:20

the guy who made the call had

7:22

had a gravelly old,

7:25

distinct voice. Those

7:27

ransom calls never went anywhere. The

7:31

old sounding guy was never found.

7:34

My gut tells me this was someone trying

7:36

to capitalize on the pain of a missing

7:38

child's family, nothing more.

7:42

Then my source tells me a story

7:44

about what happened about a month after

7:47

Janice disappeared, and well, it

7:49

makes me think he had a very

7:52

good person of interest in Janice's

7:54

case. It wasn't Bob

7:56

Larossa.

8:09

In the hours after law enforcement decided

8:11

Jane's pocket had been abducted. My

8:13

new source tells me a suspect

8:15

quickly emerged once police

8:17

began knocking on doors doing

8:20

the neighborhood canvas. An

8:23

incident comes up from several different

8:25

people, women about a soda

8:27

delivery man who

8:30

is offensive, invites himself

8:33

into the house, um

8:35

does things that would be very awkward

8:38

in onenore. His name was. He

8:42

was fired because of this incident

8:44

and not because of pocket because

8:46

these women or a woman complained

8:48

and apparently they had other complaints. Then

8:52

my source reveals this served

8:56

twenty years in prison for raping

8:58

an eight year old girl in kind of a game.

9:01

So this pedophile served his twenty

9:03

years for raping an eight year old girl,

9:06

then goes to work delivering soda in Janice

9:08

Pockets neighborhood and he's cruising

9:10

around in a truck. I

9:12

recall several people telling me over

9:15

the years they had seen a truck in the

9:17

neighborhood near the time Janie disappeared,

9:20

but nothing had ever come of it. Now,

9:23

after learning this, I wonder was

9:25

the alleged sighting of Babla

9:27

Rosa and his parked station wagon

9:30

in the middle of the road an unlikely

9:32

occurrence, or is this new

9:34

suspect just one of many creeps

9:37

I'm learning about that often hung out in

9:39

the area. We got a search

9:41

warrant for his house. He lived with a woman

9:43

right where the seven eleven is. That

9:45

address my source mentions it's

9:48

down the street, a half mile from where

9:50

Lisa White went missing. I mean, look

9:53

the coincidences developing here, the

9:55

locations, the criminal record,

9:58

they're hard to ignore. This

10:00

new suspect never admitted to Janice

10:03

pocket subduction, and I've

10:05

learned he was never ruled out as a person

10:07

of interest. Just

10:09

when it felt like my search for answers

10:11

was finally producing the strongest lead

10:14

yet, I'm hit with this new information

10:16

changing everything. You'd think

10:18

it would get easy every time an investigation

10:21

gets thrown off course, but it's just another

10:23

example of how these cold

10:25

cases always seemed to take one

10:27

step back from

10:30

bringing these families answers.

10:36

Let me ask you this, if another little

10:38

girl on a bicycle disappeared

10:43

thirty days after the pocket

10:46

case, within five

10:48

miles of the pocket house, would

10:50

you think if you could solve one, you'd probably

10:53

solve them both. Absolutely, so that

10:55

happened. You don't know that, I do you? Now?

10:58

That was information I had not heard.

11:00

That's interesting that another little girl. Was it in

11:02

Talent or was it in Vernon? Right

11:05

over here, he points straight ahead

11:07

to the south side of Crystal Lake by

11:09

the public Beach, an area where

11:12

the witness grew up. There

11:14

are three narrow roads across from

11:16

the public beach which track upwards

11:19

into a wooded area. Back in the day,

11:21

these roads would have been dirt with dense

11:24

force on both sides. An

11:26

eleven year old girl is riding her

11:28

bicycle. She sees a car

11:30

pass her. Carc turns around,

11:33

comes back, sees it pass her

11:35

again, doesn't give it any thought.

11:37

She goes a bit further. All of a sudden,

11:40

a guy jumps out of the woods

11:42

and drags her off the bicycle and is

11:45

trying to take her into the woods.

11:47

And then this happened. This

11:50

is a one in a gazillion. A

11:52

state trooper, a big red aticket

11:54

from Chickabee, is coming down

11:56

the road. He sees it happened. He

11:59

jumps out and you

12:01

know, gets into a fight with the guy.

12:04

He tells me the guy's name, a name incidentally,

12:07

I have never heard. And it's not the

12:09

soda delivery guy either. This

12:11

is yet another scumbag trolling

12:13

the streets looking for a young girl.

12:16

I mean two of these cases in this small

12:18

area within a month. I

12:20

think about this today in wonder where

12:23

the hell did I live growing up. What's

12:25

more, the guy was a school

12:28

teacher. He was supposed to be

12:30

in an orientation meeting for

12:32

new teachers. He was supposed

12:34

to be there, he wasn't

12:37

there. Instead of being there, he

12:39

was out here trying to pull a girl off a bicycle.

12:42

And then a month before, could you

12:44

play him in toll in their pocket? The

12:47

day that this happened, you

12:50

know, I was there. I was in the barracks when they brought him in

12:54

and he was kind of lumped up, and they took

12:56

a mug shot of him,

12:58

and then you saw

13:00

him after. You'd

13:03

never know what was the same person. It's just

13:05

it's just I He's one of those people where

13:08

when he was cleaned up and had glasses

13:10

on and everything, he had a very different look to

13:13

him. He looked more like a school teacher.

13:15

The day that brought him in, he looked

13:17

like somebody who tried to pull a little girl off a

13:19

bicycle. I can't tell

13:21

you how many times I have interviewed survivors

13:24

of serial killer attacks, who described

13:26

how the man who attacked them looked one

13:28

way right before the attack, and like

13:30

a different person altogether just

13:33

after. It's like that mask of

13:35

sanity these guys were comes

13:38

off. My source went

13:40

on to explain how after some digging,

13:42

they found out that this teacher was

13:45

also a driving instructor in the

13:47

next town over, so they

13:49

began talking to his former driver's

13:51

ed students, and there

13:53

it was. We

13:56

found two girls and

13:59

we said where did he take you? And

14:01

they said we went all over, mostly

14:05

rural places or wooded places

14:08

because he raised hunting dogs

14:10

and he would take us for he went hunting.

14:13

So he said, okay, well you know, can

14:15

you take us? And

14:17

long story short, they led us to tolland

14:24

the police obviously wanted to question

14:26

the teacher about Janis pocket. They

14:29

had several victims identify him

14:31

for indecent exposure acts around the

14:33

Tritown region, so they alternated

14:36

filing arrest warrants. As

14:38

soon as he was released on one, they'd slap

14:40

another one on him and drag him back in.

14:43

I then asked the obvious next question,

14:46

what did he say about Jane's pocket? This

14:49

is so important that people don't understand

14:52

it. He never denied

14:55

taking Janice pocket. He

14:57

never denied, never denied it. He

15:00

had talked to us until

15:02

we got to that, and then

15:04

he just sit there. He lawyered

15:07

up. He got an attorney who eventually

15:09

got a restraining order that we couldn't go

15:11

within a hundred yards of him because

15:14

we were doing that. I mean, we were harassing him. It

15:16

was you know what. There was one victim

15:18

who was a young girl. He pulled up,

15:20

exposed himself to her, and

15:23

you know, she looked at the photos and I think

15:25

that my aim with him mind, and so

15:27

we decided we'd do a lineup, and

15:30

so we got four troopers

15:32

and playing clothes. So

15:34

we bring her in. If we had

15:37

a videotape of the five

15:39

people, it would have been priceless. We

15:41

brought him in and his knees buckled.

15:44

He recognized her, She

15:47

recognized him. Well, it was you know, she

15:49

identified him, and that was one more arrest

15:51

ate. Next thing they

15:53

did was get a search warrant for the house

15:56

the teacher lived in with his parents, and

15:58

up in the floor jor the rafters,

16:01

up in the basement, we found the gun.

16:03

It was a plastic gun. It looked very

16:05

real, and the father said he

16:08

puts them there. And the mother,

16:11

I think had some type of mental issues.

16:13

She was sitting on the kitchen floor with

16:15

wet towels on her head when we executed

16:18

the searchboard. For

16:20

me, the plastic gun is significant.

16:23

I'm thinking intimidation and control.

16:27

You put a plastic gun in front of a kid, they

16:29

don't know it's plastic. The prosecutor

16:32

ultimately dropped the ball and cut a deal with

16:34

this guy for no prison time, giving

16:37

him instead accelerated

16:39

rehabilitation under the condition

16:41

he surrenders teaching license. The

16:44

thing that strikes me about

16:47

this was an only child, his

16:49

parents were older. Now

16:51

what's significant about that is about

16:53

five maybe ten years later,

16:57

father is arrested for sexually

16:59

assaulting a nephew. The

17:01

house this guy lived in with his parents was

17:03

about twenty minutes from where Janice Pocket

17:05

was abducted. But here's the thing. Has

17:09

never left that house

17:13

really that botherished me. He

17:15

also never denied abducting

17:17

and killing Janice. Never

17:20

that that's the thing that bothers me the most.

17:22

You'd expect him to say, fuck you, are

17:24

you crazy? You know, stuff like that.

17:27

Never ever denied it, and

17:29

he hasn't left the house, and he doesn't, you

17:32

know, And it was most people move

17:34

on, you know, like so your parents

17:36

house by a bigger house. It's

17:38

a small little house. And

17:40

it just strikes me, why

17:42

why didn't you know? Why didn't he leave

17:45

there? You know? And and if his father

17:47

was the evil bastard we think he is, wouldn't

17:50

that be a house full of bad memories? I'd say,

17:52

I want to dig up the art. I mean, really, that

17:54

That's why I would. I would do it.

17:57

You see, I don't believe either White or pocket

18:00

where somebody, you know, nobody

18:02

would have stumbled. It's somebody who's

18:05

from around here who stalked them.

18:15

The new information I've received from my source

18:17

has certainly given my investigation a shot

18:19

of adrenaline. It's also not

18:21

surprising, for as long as

18:24

I have been investigating these disappearances,

18:26

the number of leads and suspects ebbs

18:29

and flows. I go north

18:31

for a time, then a new bit of information

18:33

sends me south. As

18:36

much as you'd think men would want their names

18:38

as far away from any possible connection,

18:41

there were also those who tried to insert themselves,

18:44

mostly for selfish purposes and

18:47

sociopathic motivations. The

18:49

most notable of them Charles

18:51

Pierce. In

18:53

nineteen eight, Pierce began admitting murdering

18:56

over a dozen young girls. Fifty

18:59

eight years old, a former carnival

19:01

worker from Haverville, Massachusetts. Pierce

19:04

killed a thirteen year old Boxford,

19:06

Massachusetts girl in nineteen

19:08

sixty nine, a Chicago,

19:10

Illinois boy in nineteen seventy three,

19:13

and then he told Illinois investigators

19:15

he had abducted and murdered fifteen

19:17

to twenty two children between nineteen

19:20

fifty four in nineteen seventy

19:22

eight. Have a Reville in Boxford,

19:25

or about a ninety minute drive from Tolland.

19:29

In late nineteen eighty, Pierce told Connecticut

19:31

State police he knew where Janis pocket

19:33

was buried. The police looked

19:36

into his claims and even brought his mug shot

19:38

to Nancy McDonald, the neighbor who

19:40

saw a man and his station wagon

19:42

blocking the dirt road around the time Janice

19:45

disappeared. Mary angele

19:47

Breck, who you heard in episode one,

19:50

has had a suspicion and really wanted

19:52

to believe that Pierce was responsible for her

19:54

sister's disappearance. Look

19:57

Pierce seemed to fit and

20:00

well. He admitted his involvement.

20:03

So I met up with Mary at a coffee shop

20:05

one sunny afternoon in late August to

20:07

clear up several unanswered questions.

20:12

The guy that they brought to um

20:15

the neighbor was Charles Pierce. It

20:17

was okay, it was Charles Pierce. And

20:20

She's like, Nope, that wasn't him. Not him,

20:22

Because Charles Pierce, remember, says I killed

20:24

Janice. I know where she's buried. He also

20:26

starts saying I killed this one, I killed that one. He

20:29

wanted some days out in the field. That's

20:31

the detective's side. Yeah, yeah,

20:33

and he would he could give all these

20:35

details, but then no detail

20:37

about where she was actually buried because he changed his mind

20:40

so many times. What Mary says

20:42

next tightens a few loose ends up from

20:44

me. Remember the crime scene I walked

20:46

out to with Lieutenant Bill Meyer and Terry

20:48

Shanks where Terry's sister, Susan

20:50

Lross's remains were recovered. It

20:53

was a wooded area, old logging trail

20:55

by a reservoir that was once dragged

20:57

for Janice's body not too long after

21:00

she went missing. Charles Pierce

21:02

had led police there claiming

21:04

he put Janice is and Debbie Spickler's

21:06

bodies in that reservoir. There

21:10

was a place off a reservoir road

21:12

he brought them to to dig at one point.

21:14

I think that was ever really widely

21:16

known, but one of the former detectives

21:19

told me that. But it definitely

21:21

was a few spots on by Rose Road and old

21:23

cat Hole there where big dug. I remember

21:30

Rhodes Road is where Janice placed the

21:32

butterfly cat hole intersects

21:34

with it about halfway down. All

21:37

this searching and talked by convicted serial

21:39

killers and convicts, it

21:41

lead nowhere. And yet, as

21:44

I've learned, just when you think you've

21:46

chased every rabbit down every hole, there's

21:49

always another one to follow. Based

21:52

off that tip police received from Tina

21:54

LaRosa via her conversations

21:57

with the witness about buried bodies

21:59

and water wells, the Connecticut

22:01

State Police, along with the detective from

22:03

the Vernon p D, followed up

22:05

and spent three days poking him asking

22:08

him questions. Afterwards,

22:11

he left Tina voicemail, I've

22:13

listened to it, and let me just say

22:15

this, the witness was

22:18

more than pissed. Mary

22:21

in turn, had heard from the state police

22:23

about the visit herself and wanted to share

22:25

what she knew. They were up

22:27

there for three days. They

22:31

questioned him all afternoon, took a break,

22:33

went back, and the evening again the next day,

22:35

and then the third day before they left, Vernon

22:38

police went up with them. They

22:42

questioned him like repeatedly,

22:44

and they about stuff, and he

22:47

said, I don't remember. I never

22:49

said that. Then they would say,

22:52

but it's right here in this report that you said

22:54

that. They'd show him and say, I don't remember,

22:57

and they're like, they don't know if he was dying

23:00

or really can't remember. They

23:02

said it was hard to tell either. He might just be a

23:04

really good liar. Like

23:06

the other relatives of the missing girls, Mary

23:09

understands, these cases take one

23:11

step forward, two steps back.

23:14

At this point, it was impossible really

23:17

for any of us to become disillusioned

23:19

or surprised by what we heard. They

23:22

asked him the same questions

23:24

in so many different ways, to see if you mess up, you

23:26

know, and stuff. But he really stuck too.

23:28

They couldn't get anything at it him,

23:30

like, not a thing, not

23:33

any information, and they have like,

23:35

it doesn't sound like they have any intention

23:37

of going back there unless he

23:41

makes contact so

23:45

close yet so absolutely

23:47

far. The witnesses seemingly

23:49

brought everyone to the brink of discovery,

23:52

but has pulled back for some reason. In

23:55

a second voicemail, I heard the

23:57

witness had asked Tina for an envelope

23:59

and postage so he could mail

24:02

her a hand drawn map of the wells

24:04

in the exact location he was

24:06

pointing to. Unfortunately,

24:09

Tina, scared of giving the witness

24:11

her address, never sent that envelope.

24:14

They weren't trying to think make

24:16

him seem like he was definitely guilty. You just don't

24:18

know if he knew anything, But he

24:20

denied knowledge about even Susan

24:23

Lerossa dying, and he knew nothing about

24:25

that. He had

24:27

no knowledge about how what happened

24:30

to her. Obviously

24:33

that isn't true, as the witness

24:35

and Bob were best friends and often

24:37

hung out around the time Susan LaRosa

24:40

disappeared. Despite all

24:42

of that, however, it's time for me

24:44

to reach out to the witness. At

24:47

this point, I'm not really sure he

24:49

has involved other than knowing Bob and Nathan

24:51

LaRosa and possibly hearing details

24:53

about the cases from them,

24:56

but he's definitely an important piece of

24:58

the puzzle. Law enforcement is

25:00

putting a lot of credibility into He's

25:03

the only one of the men I've been looking

25:06

at who is still alive, and

25:08

wow, this might be my only

25:10

shot. Oh.

25:23

In the next episode of Paper Ghosts,

25:27

I'm the youngest person involved in it. And

25:30

if I don't step up and try to help figure

25:32

it out and I die, that's it.

25:34

It goes away, because nobody

25:36

below me is gonna care. Look

25:40

for the last time, I didn't

25:42

kill anybody. I didn't

25:44

hurt nobody. I didn't kidnap anybody.

25:47

Paper Ghosts is written and executive

25:50

produced by me and William Phelps,

25:53

with help from producer Christina Everett

25:55

and sound editing by Pete Cardy from

25:57

back Room Audio. A special

25:59

thing to Abu Safar and Will

26:01

Pearson from My Heart Radio. The

26:04

series theme number four four two

26:06

is written and performed by Tom Mooney

26:09

and Thomas Phelps. For

26:12

more podcasts from My Heart Radio,

26:14

visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple

26:16

Podcasts, or wherever you listen

26:19

to your favorite shows.