Dark Downeast

Police first thought Susan Taraskiewicz’s murder to be a random act of violence, but soon the investigation revealed a much deeper conspiracy. Was Susan a target? It’s been nearly 30 years since Susan’s murder and nobody has been held responsible, but investigators believe somebody out there knows what happened. If you have any information about the 1992 murder of Susan Taraskiewicz, please contac...

As beautiful as they are, lighthouses have a dark side, too. The legend and lore surrounding the light stations of New England date back hundreds of years. Hauntings. Ghost sightings. Paranormal experiences. When you stand in the presence of a lighthouse, whether you believe in the supernatural or not, it’s hard not to feel like you’re in the presence of something or someone . Lighthouse historian...

FAYETTE, 1983: When Ted Flagg returned home from work on a cold day in January 1983, he was not warmly greeted by his wife as usual. Instead, he found 23-year old Judith Flagg dead. Evidence was scattered across the house. There were boot prints in the freshly fallen snow. Suspicions were cast and stories perpetuated throughout the small town of Fayette, Maine, but it would take over two decades t...

In February of 2001, the calm in small town Chesterfield, New Hampshire was disrupted by an investigation carried out by New Hampshire State Police. Mother and daughter Tina and Bethany Sinclair were nowhere to be found. Though the two missing Sinclairs were the focus of the small community that year, over time, updates became fewer and farther between. Eventually, the cold weather made searches o...

SOUTH PORTLAND, 1994: 22-year old Tammy Dickson was preparing for a new start in life. She was a recently divorced young mother and was looking ahead to a new beginning. But Tammy would never get to fully realize the dreams she had for herself. A trial ended in a conviction for a man named Foster Bates, but he has long maintained his innocence and continues to file for appeals in hopes of a new tr...

Robert "Bobby" Desmond's case is the oldest on the Maine State Police Unsolved Missing Persons case list but his story has never been told. Detective Steve Borst of the Kennebunk Police Department is reigniting the decades-old investigation for an 11-year old boy gone missing in 1964 and nearly forgotten. Through interviews with surviving family members, limited archival news sources, and other in...

You’ve heard Leslie Spellman’s story on Dark Downeast before. I was initially compelled to tell Leslie Spellman’s story because I couldn’t believe a homicide on the perimeter of Maine’s most well-known national park could go unsolved for over four decades and I couldn’t believe I’d never heard her story before. That was reason enough to shed new light on it the first time, and it’s even more of a...

Ashley Flowers is the creator and host of the Crime Junkie podcast and founder and CEO of audiochuck, the podcast network behind even more chart-topping shows like The Deck, Counterclock, Strangeland, and more. In this conversation, Ashley shares the origin story of Crime Junkie and what goes into creating ethical true crime content. She also gets personal about her experiences with pregnancy and...

Would you know how to spot a scam in your life before it was too late? For years, Johnathan Walton didn’t know that the woman he called his best friend was actually a career con artist, suspected of numerous scams and fraudulent activity across the country and internationally. Once he uncovered the truth, though, Johnathan made it his mission to stop her. If you haven’t heard Part 1 of his story o...

When Johnathan Walton hosted a wine and cheese night in his Los Angeles apartment in 2013, he couldn’t have known that the event would invite a shark into his inner circle. Flyers he hung up around the building gave off the scent of a helper, a do-gooder, a warrior against injustice. It was like blood in the water. Johnathan Walton’s story unfolds thousands of miles away from New England, but the...

He committed his first murder at 15-years old, ending the life of an innocent shopkeeper as he and his buddies made their way around Lawrence, Massachusetts holding up convenience stories “for the thrill of it”. His lawyer would later plead for mercy on the accused teenage killer, but that mercy would have unintended consequences not so far in the future. George Nassar is a two-time convicted kill...

Jessica Zernicke Holmes left work on the night of September 24, 2015 to find her phone flooded with missed calls and messages. When she was finally able to call her family member back, they delivered shocking news about her father. 58-year old Kenneth Zernicke was found dead inside his burning home in Caribou, Maine. Two days later, his death was ruled a homicide. Jess reached out to me because af...

Strung up in the corner of a roadside amusement park fun house was the figure of a man coated so many times with phosphorus paint that it glowed in the dimly lit space. It was alarmingly lifelike, and yet in the several years the figure was on display, no one dared question if it was anything more than a mannequin. Elmer Mccurdy: The Life And Afterlife Of An American Outlaw by Mark Svenvold     Vi...

ACTIVE CASE, PART 3: In October of 2016, about a month after he was plucked from a life raft after a week at sea, Nathan Carman walked into the private memorial service he’d organized to honor his mother, Linda Carman. Notably missing from the private service were Linda Carman’s three sisters. It was publicly obvious that something wasn’t right. The relationship between Nathan Carman and his aunts...

ACTIVE CASE, PART 2: Nathan Carman was 23-years old when his boat the Chicken Pox sank during a fishing trip off the coast of Rhode Island, presumably claiming the life of his mother, Linda Carman, who was also aboard the vessel before it went down. Nathan was rescued a week later – a miraculous recovery by a freight ship that just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The story onl...

ACTIVE CASE, PART 1: When the daughter of wealthy real estate developer John Chakalos walked into her father’s Connecticut home one morning in December 2013, it set into motion a long-term investigation of not one, but two suspicious deaths in the same family within a three year span. Investigators had a prime suspect for the murder of John Chakalos from the beginning, but it wasn’t until another...

AUGUSTA, ME 1976: The murder of 70-year old Augusta resident Blanche Kimball remained a cold case for decades until a new tip, advancements in DNA technology, and a clever idea brought all the loose ends together.   View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/blanchekimball Follow @darkdowneast on  Instagram ,  Facebook , and  TikTok To suggest a case visit darkdowneast.co...

Missing Kim , a Dark Downeast mini-documentary is out now at missingkim.com . If you have information that could help in the investigation, please contact Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit South at (207) 624-7076 or leave an anonymous tip .   View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/missingkim Follow @darkdowneast on  Instagram ,  Facebook , and  TikTok To suggest a...

The fire horn rang out in Ossipee, New Hampshire around 10 p.m. on September 28, 1916. The blaze at Frederick and Florence Small's cottage on the lake burned fast, even, and hot. The fire department could do nothing to save the structure or anyone who might remain inside. Frederick was out of town, seen leaving on a train towards Boston that afternoon, but Florence was unaccounted for. It was a su...

When Albert Flick was released from his first prison sentence for killing his wife, he restarted his pattern of threatening and victimizing women. But he’d age out of it, wouldn’t he? Statistics said so. His drooping, wrinkled face and frail body did not look like that of a brazen killer. He’d be in his mid-70s by the time he was free again, surely the threat he posed to society would fade. Sadly,...

NEWPORT, MAINE 1975: Ellen Choate was ready to start her new job. So ready, that she hopped a train from Philadelphia to Boston just hours after she graduated to get a jump start on her journey to Maine. It was midnight when Ellen took her seat on that train heading north, hoping that once in Massachusetts, she’d find a ride to Bangor, where her house, car, and new role as a Montessori teacher was...

It was just before 4 a.m. on June 20, 1975 in Newport, Maine. The sky was just warming with hints of dawn and the air was quiet save for the buzz of the ice cooler and Coca Cola vending machine sitting in the dim glow of the gas station lights. The fishermen waiting in their car for gasoline noticed a light on inside McNally’s Texaco, but no one came to greet them outside at the pump. Anxious to g...

It was described as one of Vermont’s most frustrating cold cases. A dedicated mother and beloved school teacher disappeared in November of 1979, with nothing but a smashed up vehicle and a strange hand-written note left behind. When her ex-boyfriend disappeared a month later, too, authorities had two people to track down – one they presumed to be dead, and the other they suspected of causing her d...

VERMONT, 1979: When the vehicle of Judith Leo-Coneys turned up at a junkyard in Roxbury, Vermont, it was the first big clue in the disappearance of the beloved school teacher and young mother. The case would spiral into an investigation spanning a decade and stretching across the United States, but before investigators would uncover any answers for Judy, they’d have to find a second missing person...

Semper Memento. Always Remember. Those words guide the work of the Maine State Police Unsolved Homicide Unit. In this special release episode, I peel back the curtain on the Unsolved Homicide Unit and reveal what goes into re-examining and investigating long standing homicide cases in the state of Maine and how a team of experts collaborates in pursuit of one common goal – to find answers. Each of...