Under the Pines: Stories From New England & Beyond

Mercy Brown and the New England Vampire Panic tells the true story behind one of New England’s most haunting legends: the nineteen-year-old girl from Exeter, Rhode Island, remembered by history as America’s last “vampire.” But before she became folklore, Mercy Lena Brown was Lena. A daughter. A sister. A young woman in a farming family being slowly emptied by tuberculosis, then called consumption....

Linda Carman left Point Judith, Rhode Island, on what was supposed to be an overnight fishing trip with her only son, Nathan Carman. Eight days later, Nathan was found alive in a life raft more than 100 nautical miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Linda and the boat were never recovered. But this was never only a missing-at-sea case. Linda’s disappearance reached back into the unsolved 2013 murder o...

Ayla Bell Reynolds was twenty months old when she was reported missing from Waterville, Maine, eight days before Christmas in 2011. Her case became the largest criminal investigation in Maine State Police history. More than a decade later, no one has been criminally charged. This Under the Pines episode follows Ayla as a child first: a little girl who loved pink, music, dancing, Dora the Explorer,...

Five-month-old Marlon Devine Santos vanished from a Worcester foster home in 1998 and was not reported missing for two days. What began as a missing-child investigation became a suspected homicide case, a grand-jury review, and a lasting question about how a baby placed under state protection could disappear without a trace. This episode of Under the Pines follows Marlon’s short life, his parents’...

In 1982, 22-year-old Paul J. Costanza was found dead inside Room 54 at the Tudor Motor Inn on Route 9 in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. At first, his death was viewed through the shadow of addiction. But his mother, Lana McKinney, believed something was wrong from the beginning. This episode of Under the Pines follows the unresolved homicide of Paul Costanza, a young man whose life had become tangled...

Holly Jean Cote was 28 years old when she left Mr. D’s in Gardner, Massachusetts after work on March 4, 1984, and never came home. She was a waitress, a wife, a mother to a six-year-old girl, and a sister whose absence was felt almost immediately as something wrong. Her car was found unlocked behind the bar. Her family searched. Friends searched. Volunteers searched woods, marshes, junkyards, rive...

John Gordon. Amasa Sprague. Rhode Island’s last execution. This episode takes you back to Cranston and Providence in 1843, where wealthy industrialist Amasa Sprague was found murdered on a winter road and suspicion quickly settled on Irish immigrant John Gordon. What followed became one of the most controversial murder cases in Rhode Island history: a circumstantial prosecution, anti-Irish prejudi...

Sarah Maria Cornell, a Fall River mill worker, was found hanging in Tiverton, Rhode Island, in December 1832. Her note named Methodist minister Ephraim Avery, the postmortem raised deeper suspicion, and the case became one of New England’s most notorious 19th-century murder trials — a story of Fall River, Tiverton, religion, class, gender, and the brutal distance between suspicion and proof. This...

Josie Langmaid was 17 when she left for school in Pembroke, New Hampshire, on October 4, 1875, and never arrived. In this episode of Under the Pines, we follow the documented murder of Josie Langmaid, the investigation that led to Joseph LaPage, the trials that followed, the confession before the hanging, and the way this crime survived in New England memory through a monument and the ballad “The...

In this episode of Under the Pines, we investigate The Shoe Box Murder Mystery, an 1886 Wallingford, Connecticut unsolved murder and cold case in which a man’s torso was found packed inside a wooden shoe box, with arsenic later found in his stomach. It remains one of the strangest and most enduring unsolved true crime cases in Connecticut history. This is a story about murder, dismemberment, and e...

Alan Bono’s killing in Brookfield, Connecticut became the kind of case people don’t just follow—they project onto . On February 16, 1981, Bono was fatally stabbed, Arne Cheyenne Johnson was arrested the next day, and the courtroom that followed drew a hard line between belief and proof. Episode 23 stays inside the verified record first: the day’s events as described in contemporary reporting (incl...

In 1975, five-year-old Jason Foreman vanished from Peace Dale in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. What began as a missing-child search through woods, marsh, water, neighborhood streets, and public windows became one of Rhode Island’s most haunting child murder cases. This episode of Under the Pines revisits the murder of Jason Foreman, the later arrest of Michael Woodmansee, the 1983 guilty plea, th...

In 1999, Samuel Robidoux was just days from his first birthday when he died after being denied solid food for 51 days. What began as a “leading” inside a small Attleboro-area religious sect known as The Body became a slow, documented starvation death, followed by concealment, a remote burial in Baxter State Park, and a murder conviction that forced the law to name what happened. This episode follo...

Samuel Nieves , 35, was found murdered inside his apartment at 10 Albee Street in Fitchburg, Massachusetts on April 6, 2009 —an unsolved homicide still listed publicly and still seeking information. The Worcester County DA’s public summary includes one stark reported detail: two men dressed in black reportedly entered the apartment and murdered Nieves; his death was ruled a homicide. This episode...

Robin Kurciviez was 24 when she was found stabbed to death inside her Fitchburg apartment at 195 Mechanic Street on June 1, 1984. This episode of Under the Pines revisits the unresolved murder of Robin K. Kurciviez, an honor student from Hingham, Massachusetts, a four-year scholarship winner to the University of Pennsylvania, a daughter, a sister, and an assistant manager at Klozline, a used-cloth...

Nancy Williams was 19 when she was killed during a late-January 1981 shift at Cumberland Farms in Winchendon, Massachusetts. More than four decades later, her unsolved homicide still carries through her family, her friends, the officers who worked the case, and a town that never got the answer it deserved. This revisited Under the Pines episode rebuilds Nancy’s story from the ground up. Before she...

Molly Anne Bish was sixteen years old when she disappeared from Comins Pond in Warren, Massachusetts, on June 27, 2000. She had arrived for a summer lifeguard shift. Minutes later, her chair, radio, first-aid kit, water bottle, lunch, and shoes were left behind. This revisited Under the Pines episode rebuilds Molly’s story with updated reporting, original 2000–2003 newspaper coverage, official sta...

Thirteen-year-old Deborah “Debbie” Quimby disappeared from Townsend, Massachusetts, on May 3, 1977, after leaving home on a brown ten-speed bicycle with a note saying she was going to her grandfather’s camp near Vinton Pond and would call later. The call never came. Her bicycle was never recovered. Nearly fifty years later, her disappearance remains one of Massachusetts’ most haunting unsolved mis...

In September 1980, 19-year-old Kristine Forget of Pepperell, Massachusetts was found beaten to death in the woods of nearby Dunstable. Her murder remains unsolved. This Under the Pines revisit stays with the documented record, the family context, and the long silence that settled around a case that never received a public answer. This episode includes discussion of homicide, violent assault, and a...

Sabrina Hatheway vanished in Worcester, Massachusetts, in December 2014 after saying she would be right back. She was last linked to a home on Dixfield Road that later burned in an arson fire on New Year’s Day 2015. This episode follows the verified record around Sabrina Hatheway’s disappearance, Kevin Crozier, the Dixfield Road fire, and the questions that still remain. We stay close to what can...

Clara Provost murder, Fitchburg cold case, Ronald Dame, and the 1974 DNA evidence that finally gave a young mother’s family an answer after nearly four decades. This revisited Under the Pines episode rebuilds Clara Jean Burnham Provost’s story with deeper research, stronger sourcing, and a clearer line between the verified court record, early local reporting, family memory, and public discussion....

The Main South Woodsman case remains one of Worcester, Massachusetts’ most haunting unsolved true crime stories: a possible serial murder pattern tied to Main South, addiction, sex work, wooded recovery sites, and women too often pushed to the edge of public memory. In this fully revisited and rebuilt Under the Pines episode, we return to the cases of Carmen Rudy, Betzaida Montalvo, also known as...

This revisited episode of Under the Pines returns to one of Massachusetts’ most disturbing true crime cases: Daniel LaPlante, the Bowen family nightmare in Pepperell, and the 1987 Gustafson family murders in Townsend. Before the name “The Boy in the Walls” became internet folklore, there were real people inside real homes. Frank Bowen, his family, and Kathleen Knapp survived a terrifying home inva...

In this revisited episode of Under the Pines, we return to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and the unsolved 1973 murders of Jo-Anne Muldoon and Debra Johnson. On September 30, 1973, the two young women were found dead inside Apartment 14 at 58 Intervale Road. Jo-Anne’s three-month-old son was found alive in the dark apartment, crying for help. More than fifty years later, this Worcester County cold case...

In 2013, five-year-old Jeremiah Oliver disappeared from Fitchburg, Massachusetts while his family was already known to child welfare authorities. Months later, his remains were found in a suitcase off I-190 in Sterling. This revisited episode follows Jeremiah’s disappearance, the state oversight failures that helped let him fall out of sight, the abuse-related court cases that came first, and the...