On a Saturday night in late June of 1986, a 20-year-old college student went out with friends in a familiar place, celebrating her softball team’s big win. But in a narrow window of opportunity just after she was dropped off in the shadows outside her apartment building, the young woman faced an evil that managed to stay hidden in those same shadows for decades.

Investigators searched for connections… People who knew her, places she had been, anything that might explain her senseless death. But nothing fit. Leads faded. The case stalled. And over time, it slipped into that uncertain space between open and unsolved.

For decades, the answer remained just out of reach until advances in science, and a single piece of preserved evidence, began to tell a different story.

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/clairegravel

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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In the fall of 1976, a woman vanished from her home in rural Vermont sometime between a cup of morning coffee and the end of an ordinary workday. What followed was years of suspicion, rumor, and silence until a witness with questionable credibility stepped forward.

Laurie Gonyo’s case has an ending but not the kind of clean resolution people imagine when they hear the word solved. This is a story about what happens when justice feels incomplete, when a sentence seems too small for the violence at the center of it, and when the killer in one case leaves a trail of suspicion wherever he goes.

• This episode discusses other unsolved cases with a shared suspect. If you have any information about the murder of Denise Dansby or Connie Sedam, please email the Volusia County Cold Case unit at [email protected]. To submit an anonymous tip, call Crime Stoppers at 888-277-TIPS.

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/lauriegonyo

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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Fifty years after James Cassidy’s death, there is still no simple explanation for his brutal murder. The evidence left behind in the Maine woods raised questions investigators have never fully answered. And the deeper the investigation went, the more complicated the picture became.

A respected bank executive had vanished, federal authorities were preparing to arrest him, and a burned car was found far from home on a deserted logging road. But the paper trail and the witness accounts pointed in several directions at once – toward financial crimes, toward organized crime figures operating in New England, and toward the surprisingly valuable world of rare stamps.

Somewhere among those threads may lie the explanation for what really happened all those years ago in April of 1976.

• If you have any information about this case, please contact the Maine State Police, Major Crimes Unit – North at (207) 973-3750, or use their toll-free line at 1-800-432-7381. You can also submit information anonymously by using the tip form.

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/jamescassidy-part2

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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In April of 1976, an anonymous call to a sheriff’s department in Maine alerted investigators to something almost impossible to imagine: a burning station wagon hidden off a remote road, and what looked like a body inside. What they found would open a case filled with contradictions.

The victim was James Cassidy, a Massachusetts bank vice president, father of three, churchgoing family man, and by all accounts someone living a quiet, ordinary life. But in the days before his death, Jim had vanished across state lines, federal authorities were preparing to arrest him on embezzlement charges, and whispers of missing money, valuable stamps, and possible organized crime connections began to surface.

Nearly fifty years later, his death remains unsolved.

• If you have any information about this case, please contact the Maine State Police, Major Crimes Unit – North at (207) 973-3750, or use their toll-free line at 1-800-432-7381. You can also submit information anonymously by using the tip form.

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/jamescassidy-part1

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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On a fall morning in 1988, police in Nashua, New Hampshire walked into an apartment and found two women murdered in their bed. What followed seemed, at first, like a case that would never truly reach an ending. 

There were suspects, confessions, trials, and years of legal battles but no final resolution. For decades, the killings of Charlene Ranstrom and Brenda Warner lingered in the background, a file sitting quietly among other unsolved cases. But some investigations refuse to stay buried.

Years later, new detectives took another look. With fresh eyes, new witnesses, and forensic technology that hadn’t existed when the crime was first investigated, the story began to change.

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/brendawarner-charleneranstrom

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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On a rainy night in late May 1989, a fire was spotted in a Westport, Connecticut parking lot. Within minutes, first responders realized the impossible: a body was burning in the open. Not long after and just a few miles away, a husband called police to report his wife missing.

Her name was Joan Wertkin. From the outside, she was living an enviable life in one of Connecticut’s most idyllic towns. But as investigators traced her final hours, the case turned into something far more complicated – a tight timeline, a fraying relationship, a car left where it shouldn’t have been, and questions that still echo for her family.

• If you have information about Joan Wertkin’s case, please contact the Westport Police Department Cold Case Unit at (203) 520-3831. You can also email tips to [email protected].

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/joanwertkin

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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On an August evening in 1982, children playing in Boston’s Franklin Park stumbled onto a scene that would quietly become one of the city’s most troubling unsolved cases. 

The victim was a 16-year-old girl who had already endured instability, displacement, and independence far beyond her years. Her murder received little attention at the time, but within months, rumors began to swirl: allegations of sexual assault inside a private police club, whispers of a cover-up, and a detective who refused to back down.

• If you have any information that could help bring answers in Lucia Kai Roberts’ case, please contact the Boston Police Department at (617) 343-4470 or submit a tip through the online form.

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/luciakairoberts

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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On a quiet Saturday night in 1931, a 19-year-old cattle dealer sat at his desk to write a check that he never got the chance to finish signing. 

Investigators were left with more questions than answers – a missing revolver, a name on a check no one could trace, and a household already tangled in rumor and tension. What followed was a shifting investigation, a contested admission, and a trial that forced a small New England city to confront issues of race, reputation, and reasonable doubt.

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/abrahamlevine-eleanorjohnson

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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Before she vanished, April Grisanti was a young woman trying to find her footing. Then, over the course of one winter night in 1985, she disappeared in plain sight. Witnesses saw her struggle. Police heard her voice asking for help. And yet, April was never seen again.

What followed has never felt like justice. No murder charge. No body. No answers. This is a story about incomplete justice, and about a family left carrying questions the investigation has never fully resolved. Over four decades later, the question still hangs in the air. Where is she?

• If you have information relating to the unsolved disappearance of April Grisanti, please contact the Norwalk Police Department Cold Case Unit at (203) 854-3028 or the anonymous tip line at (203) 854-3111. You can text CRIMES and NPD with your tip in the body of the text message or use the Norwalk Police Department tip submission form.

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/aprilgrisanti

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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In November of 1979, a man was found beaten to death along a quiet trail in a New Hampshire college town. Within a day, police had a suspect, but the case was hardly open and shut.

The college student convicted of the murder – and the family who stood by him – were prepared to spend a lifetime fighting to prove his innocence. They believed the investigation narrowed too quickly, that key questions went unanswered, and that the truth had yet to fully surface. But before the courts could decide what came next, the Atlantic Ocean wrote the final chapter of this story.

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/josephwoodside

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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For more than forty years, Debra Stone’s murder lingered in the uneasy space between knowing and proving. 

An informant came forward early on with a story that, in hindsight, mapped almost every detail of what happened to her, yet the case drifted through the decades. Weighed down by doubt, fear, and a single failed polygraph that stalled momentum. 

When investigators finally reopened the file in the 21st century, it wasn’t modern DNA science that brought clarity. The evidence had already been there. What the case needed was the will to look again and confront the truth that should have been acted on long ago.

View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/debrastone

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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