November 27, 2025 • 45 mins
On a snowy November morning in 1975, 25-year-old hunter Ludger Belanger stepped into the woods with his .30-30 and the hope of backstraps for dinner. But what started as a simple deer hunt quickly became one of Maine’s oldest—and most haunting—unsolved cases. At first, game wardens thought Ludger had lost his way. But the tracks in the snow told another story: a shot deer, a missing rifle, tire marks on a back road, and two strangers in a green Buick. Join host Jordan Sillars as this episode of Blood Trails follows a path that twists into drunken parties, threats, explosions, and suspects who always seemed one step ahead. Nearly fifty years later, Ludger’s wife, children, and grandchildren are still searching for the truth—and for the body of the man stolen from them.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
It was the first snow of the season when Lujia
Bilander disappeared into the woods of rural Maine. He'd gone
out hunting, just like he had one hundred times before,
but this time you didn't come home. His wife Linda
thought maybe he'd gotten lost in the storm. But what
game Wardens uncovered over the next few days would lead
them through a maze of violence, drugs, and deceit that
(00:22):
no one could have predicted. That's next on Blood Trails.
Twenty five year old Luja Bolanger was what you might
(00:42):
call a typical main whitetail hunter. He went out on
November twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five, armed with his thirty
thirty lever gun to track a deer through the snow
in hopes of bringing home enough meat to feed his family.
He wasn't chasing big antlers, and he didn't sit in
a tree stand all day hoping a buck would walk past.
He went out and found one, and even though we'll
never know how big it was, I like to think
(01:05):
it was a giant. Lujia, his wife Linda, and his
brother John had all gone out that morning to look
for deer, but the falling snow hid the previous night's activity,
and the trio didn't have much luck as the gray
dawn illuminated the winter landscape.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Here's Linda and then about nine o'clock we just said, well,
we're gonna go home, and I had to get ready
for work, and John was going home, but Luji wanted
to get off at the top of the hill and
walk down through the field in the woods to the
county road and then home. It was heavy snow that morning.
We'd head heavy snow all night.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Lujia had been dropped off about a mile from the
home he shared in Washington, Maine, with Linda and their
three young children. He only planned to hunt for about
an hour before returning home and driving Linda to her
waitressing gig, but he didn't show up, and after another
hour had passed, Linda's annoyance turned to concern.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Ere So I called next door and said, ludj home yet,
So they went looking on smobiles following his name.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
As nightfall approach and the search party still hadn't found
any sign of the missing hunter, they called the game ardens.
The state police wouldn't get involved until Ludra had been
missing for seventy two hours, but Since the incident involved
a hunter, the wardens were happy to help with the search.
You might assume that Lujia had just found a deer
track and lost track of time, but Linda wasn't buying it.
(02:30):
She knew right away that something terrible had happened.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I kind of got a little messed up emotionally, and
they sent me to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
In any movements, Linda's reaction to her husband's disappearance might
sound extreme, but keep in mind that Linda was only
twenty years old. She and Lujia already had three daughters
between the ages of three and a half years and
three months. The prospect of those girls losing their father
was unbearable, and one of Linda's most vivid memories from
those difficult days is of her middle daughter, Angel, happily
(03:01):
playing around the feet of the game wardens and neighbors
who were searching for her father.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I remember getting up the next morning, is what I remember,
and the house had game ardens and trackers and family
all through it. If they must have given me something
that I just was out of it. But Angel was
eating snow off from one of the game ardens boots.
That's the memory that I have in my mind.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
The friends and family who filled that house knew that
losing Lusia would be a blow not only to his
wife and kids, but to the larger Washington community.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, he was a down to earth guy. He would
have done anything for anybody, anything, He'd be there for.
He loved life, he loved his family. We were building
a house and were making memories and making plans for
the future, but that all got taken away.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Lujia Blanders disappeared, which remains one of Maine's oldest unsolved cases.
But this isn't your typical cold case, with scant clues,
no suspects, and more questions than answers. The game wardens
who investigated Lucra's case believed they knew what happened to him,
but the trail got wilder and more unexpected with every
twist and turn. It led them from Maine's big woods
(04:20):
to drug fueled parties, to threatening suspects, to a house explosion.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
To insurance fraud to murder.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
It's a story of great detective work, even more devious suspects,
and ultimately a family who never got to say goodbye
to the father and husband they loved well.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Had three children, together now nineteen grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
He wasn't here for the moments, the special times, the
daily times. He just he was robbed of them.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
I'm Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails, a Big
Woods Cold Case.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Part one, Deer tracks layer of the station.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
When Linda called to report her husband missing, the main
Warden Service sent out two officers to investigate, Lieutenant Warden
John Marsh and District Warden Dick Hennessy. Though they were
joined later by other wardens and Maine State Police officers,
Marsh and Hennessy were the two primary investigators of Luger's disappearance.
The problem from where we're standing in twenty twenty five
(05:28):
is that Hennessy passed away in twenty twelve and Marsh
followed him in twenty twenty three. Since this is still
an open investigation, the Maine State Police can't release any
case files, and they declined to sit down.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
With us for an interview.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
We wouldn't know much more about this case than I've
already told you if it wasn't for an author by
the name of Darren Worcester. Darren published a book in
twenty seventeen called Open Season True Stories of the Main
Warden Service, which is a great book that I highly recommend.
Darren spoke with twelve game wardens about the two cases
he covers in that book, one of which was Lugers.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
It happened to be that my father in law was
a game warden and he would always tell me stories,
and I got to thinking that this would be a
great way to write a book. And he would give
me some of his stories and we would slowly chip
away at it, and he would always encourage me, Hey,
I know a lot of people who were wardens and
they've got great stories too, Like, you shouldn't just have
(06:25):
stories from me, We should get others involved.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
One of those wardens was John Marsh, who gave Darren
an inside view into this investigation. This isn't information that
was ever made public, but since Marsh was already retired,
he apparently wasn't too concerned about explaining what happened. Now,
normally I'd be skeptical about reporting secondhand information, but Darren
did his homework. I sent his chapter to Detective Sergeant
(06:49):
Josh Haines, who is currently in charge of Lujra's case
with the Main State Police. Haines told me in an
email quote. This information in the book is very accurate
to the facts.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
I know of the case.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Names have been changed and some of the other minor
details are different, but the majority of the narrative and
content is factual. Darren was kind enough to sit down
with us and walk us through what he found, and
let me tell you, you have no idea what's coming
over the next hill. When Martha Hennessy arrived at the
Blanger home, they had some theories as to what might
(07:21):
be happening, and they weren't overly concerned. The area Looser
was hunting was basically his backyard. He knew it well,
and there were no real dangers in those woods, no mountains,
cliffs or rivers for him to get swept away in.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
When the wardens came in, they just didn't I don't
want to say they didn't take it seriously, but they
had done this a thousand times before. He was a
young man. He was twenty five. They figured he probably
just went out partying. The most plausible thing was that
he wasn't, you know, he didn't report home because he
was out doing something that he didn't want to tell
his wife about.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
To their credit, the wardens didn't let their personal opinions
keep them from doing their job. In fact, they spent
the entire night of November twenty fifth and into the
twenty sixth scouring the woods where Lujra had been hunting,
but they couldn't find it. By the next morning, they
began to be really concerned. If he was still in
those woods, he was almost certainly hypothermic and might not
(08:15):
last much longer. The first snowstorm of the year was
in full swing, and the wet, slushy precipitation had turned
light and fluffy as a cold front rolled through. The
warden service was stretched thin after the snowstorm and calling
a full on search party would take time, maybe more
time than Lujra had, so they kept at it, and
before long they caught a break. As they were pacing
(08:37):
the side of the road where Linda had left Lujra
to go hunting, a neighbor approached them.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
They caught a lucky break, you know. They found a
neighbor who when they knocked on his door the night
before and nobody had answered, but he had come out
and said, yeah, I saw where Luja went in I
was about to go hunting myself. I can. He's a
good kid, I can take you right where. I'm willing
to bet he was.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
He was hunting this neighbor, a guy named Clayton Crosby,
said that he hunted and trapped that section of the
forest all the time, and he knew a ridge along
a stream that was a good place to look for
deer tracks. If Lujira knew the woods as well as
he did, that would be a place to start. The
wardens accepted Clay's offer to accompany them, and when they
reached the spot Clay led them to.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
They searched through the fresh.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Powder for tracks Lujra had made in the slushy now
frozen snow underneath. It didn't take them long to find
Ludra's boot prints, and as they followed his trail a
spent thirty thirty cartridge, they found blood spatters in the
snow a short distance away, and as they continued to
follow Lujra's footprints, a dark pool of frozen blood and guts.
(09:41):
At that point it was easy to see what had happened.
Lujira had shot a buck and had gutted it there
in the woods, then, instead of dragging it back towards
his house, he had pulled it about a quarter mile
through the woods to an old road. It was a
shorter distance to drag the deer, and he figured he'd
walk back home, get the car, and pick up the
animal along the road. It was a good plan, but
(10:02):
it hadn't worked. Lujia was still nowhere to be found,
and neither was his deer. Rather than give them an
answer for Linda about what had happened to her husband,
but they found along that forest road raised even more
questions and gave them the first suspicions that Lujia was
in more trouble than they had ever imagined. Linda credits
the game wardens for always treating her with kindness and
(10:24):
keeping her in the loop on the latest developments in
the case. But those days were still incredibly hard.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
The sick field, being alone with my kids, not having
my husband around, I think, and somebody heard him when
I was twenty years old, very scary, very that wrote
it was got wrenching. I There weren't a day go
(10:55):
by that I didn't just sit and cry.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Part two Clues in the Snow. To the trained eye
of the game wardens, the snow along.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
The road told a clear story.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
The car had driven in at some point before the
cold front. The driver and passenger had gotten out to
take a leak, and from that the wardens knew both
were mail. The driver was a smoker and had left
two cigarette butts along the road, while the passenger appeared
to be walking with a cane. The pair had gotten
back into the car and driven about one hundred yards
down the road, which is when they met Lujer. They
(11:36):
had helped him load the deer into the trunk of
the car, and then Lujer got into the back seat.
There were no signs of a struggle anywhere along the road.
It took me only a few seconds to explain what
they found, but I want to highlight how difficult it
was to decipher the criss crossing footprints and tire tracks
along the road. Remember, all of these prints were covered
in a layer of powder, and they had to figure
(11:58):
out which prints belonged to which mail and construct a
timeline of who did what and when. Their findings told
them that Lujia hadn't spent the night in the woods.
Maybe Lujia had met some guys he knew, and the
trio had gone out to celebrate a successful hunt. A
discarded Budweiser can indicated that the car's occupants had been drinking,
but Linda had been insistent that her husband wasn't a drinker.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
No, that's not him. He wouldn't do that. No, he
wouldn't even think to do it. He'd come home and
celebrate with his brothers probably and his dad and the kids.
But he wouldn't take off and go somewhere. He didn't
have people like that. He wasn't a heavy conture anyway.
He might have a beer on the weekend if my
(12:41):
dad was around, but I don't think I ever saw
him intoxicated.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Ward and Marsh also noticed something that ignited his suspicions.
As they'd been tracking Luja through the woods, they noticed
that before he began dragging the deer, he walked a
little ways ahead, leaned his gun against a tree, and
came back to pull the deer with both hands free.
He repeated this pattern until he got to the road
where he'd left his thirty thirty. As he started to
walk out, but Marsh noticed that after Lujira had gotten
(13:11):
into the back seat of the car, the driver had
gotten out, walked around the car to the other side
of the road and retrieved Lugra's gun from where it
was leaning against a tree ward. Marsh was an avid hunter, angler,
and outdoorsman. If you're a hunter as well, you know
how weird it would be to let someone else get
your gun for you if you're capable of doing it yourself.
(13:33):
But what if, Marsh wondered, Luder wasn't capable of doing
it himself. That thought worried him more than any other.
But he knew that finding the car and its driver
was going to be a serious challenge. But that's when
they caught their second big break in the case, this
one also thanks to the neighbor hunter and trapper Clay Crosby.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
The receipt that was found was really a lucky break
on their part in that it was actually found by
the neighbor who had kind of shown him around and
shown him to where Luja was probably hunting, and they
had asked him to kind of stay out of the
way to make sure he wasn't trampling any evidence. So
as this person was stepping back to get out of
(14:15):
the way, he felt something crunch under his shoe and
looked down and it was the receipt to a local
garage and the receipt was found under four inches of powder,
but above like the thick, heavy wet snow that had
come down early and then froze. So that really meant,
you know, with the timeline of how everything went and
(14:35):
when the snow came in, that the receipt was really
at the same wayer of the snow as the tracks
were right, so it clearly was tied to the vehicle.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
The receipt was dated for the previous day, the day
Luja went missing. But this wasn't just any old receipt.
I don't know if they made receipts differently in nineteen
seventy five, but this thing was like an identity thief's
dream come true.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Because the receipt had the suspects residents on it, their
phone number, everything was right there. It was sort of
like a handwritten note of here's your suspect, here's where
you go and find them like that just never happens, right,
That in itself was a pretty lucky break.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
The snow along the road told them Luja was alive
when he got into the car and that he might
be in trouble, but it also showed them what to do.
Next Part three, Sully's Marsha Hennessy knew the names of
the guys they were looking for, but they wanted more
(15:33):
information before confronting them, so they went to the auto
garage listed on the receipt in the nearby town of Union.
The owner, a guy named Sully, was more than happy
to talk to them about the two men who had
visited his shop the day before.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
The guy at the garage was all bent sideways over
these guys coming in. He said that they were drunk,
intoxicated on whatever drugs too. They had a radiator issue
with the car, I think a crack and was leaking,
and he just wasn't equipped at that garage to handle that.
And he had told him that, and they yelled at him,
they swore at him, and he just kind of did
(16:08):
some quick fix to get him out of there, just
to get him going and get him away from him.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Selly thought he'd gotten rid of these two yahoos. But
then later that same day they came back to the
garage again after they had picked up Blue.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Jerk, and he said when they came back in, the
car was just white walled with steam. It was completely
filled with steam. These guys were sitting in the car.
They were even drunker, more intoxicated than when they had
been in that morning, and they just drove the car
right in on the left. They didn't they didn't get out,
they didn't park outside. They just drove it right into
(16:43):
the garage, right on the lift, and were yelling out
the window and demanding that he fixed it, that he
was a crook, that he had cheated them before, even
though he had told them, guys, there's nothing I can
do here. You know, I can't fix this.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Selley told the wardens that at this point he was
actually kind of nervous. These guys were clearly intoxicated, clearly angry,
and he also spied a shotgun in the front seat
of the car and a box of shells on the dashboard,
but he said he didn't see anyone in the back
seat even after all the steam from the radiator had cleared,
and he didn't try to open the trunk. He just
(17:15):
wanted them out of his shop as quickly as possible,
so once again he fixed them up the best he
could and probably breathed a sigh of relief as they
drove away. Josh Haynes with the Main State Police confirmed
to me that the car in question was a nineteen
sixty five Buick special. Haines told me that the two
men driving the car have been identified, but their real
(17:36):
names haven't been released. Since they've never been officially named
as suspects.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
We won't be saying their real.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Names in this episode for the same reason.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
As you'll hear.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
This story crosses the line from rumor and hearsay to
legitimate accusation. We have to be careful not to overstep
law enforcement, and Luja's family isn't interested in blasting out
their names publicly. Instead, we're just going to call them
Lenny and George. Lenny is the smoker, the driver of
the car, and George is the passenger and the one
(18:05):
who walks with a cane. At this point, Marsha Hennessy
knew a few things, and none of them spelled good
news for Lujer. These men were not in their right mind.
They were armed and had almost certainly picked up Luja
from the road in the woods, But Lujer wasn't in
the back seat when they arrived at the garage the
second time, and there were at least a few hours
(18:26):
between when they'd picked up the Hunter and when they
drove onto the lift at Sully's plenty of time to
do who knows what with Lucher Blanger Part four Lenny.
After confirming with Linda that Lujer didn't know either of
(18:47):
the men in the car, the wardens made their way
to Lennie's house in Camden, about half an hour from Washington.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
They arrived around.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
One in the afternoon, but based on the appearance of
the man who answered the door, it could have been
six in the morning or eleven at night. He was
wearing pajama pants and his disheveled hair made it seem
like he'd just woken up, but the beer can in
his hand suggested that maybe he'd just never gone to sleep,
and the bloodshot eyes peering out from bushy, dark eyebrows
told the wardens that he'd much rather be left alone.
(19:18):
He was also about six foot two, and the wardens
later learned a US Marine who had served in Vietnam.
He'd survived a grenade blast and, along with a silver
star and purple heart, had earned a metal plate in
his head for his trouble. He'd been arrested several times
for barroom boxing, along with two dui charges, and to
complete the picture, public urination point is This wasn't some
(19:42):
schlub they could push around. If he'd done what they
thought he'd done, they had to be careful.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
He was home alone, and he stonewalled them at first,
basically just said he hadn't been hunting that day, hadn't
been to Washington, didn't know where Washington was.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
But Warden Marsh wasn't someone to be true with either,
and he was in no mood to play games.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
The Woean's at that point, they had been they'd pulled
an all nighter, you know, they'd been up for probably
thirty six hours or something at that point. His patience
was wearing thin, and he just bottom lined it with
a guy that, look, we know your car was there.
We found this receipt. We know you were there, so
you better start telling us the truth. Because there's the
two ways to do this. It's going to be the
(20:24):
easy way of the hard way, and the way this
is going it sounds like it's going to be the
hard way.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
The way things turned out, the Warden should have gone
right to the hard way, but they didn't know what
was going to happen. So I'm sure they were relieved
when Lenny let them into the house and they sat
down with him at the kitchen table. After telling a
BS story about selling the buick the night before, Lenny
eventually admitted that yes he had visited Selly's garage, and
yes he'd been hunting near Washington, but he claimed never
(20:52):
to have met or seen Looger. He said they saw
his tracks in the snow, but that a second car
must have picked up the hunter before they got there.
The wardens didn't believe this story either, because there had
been only one set of tire tracks on that forest road,
but Lenny stuck to his story. So the wardens asked
to see his hunting clothes and gun. They figured that
(21:12):
if the suspects had done something to Looser, there would
likely be evidence on their clothes.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Or equipment, and he said it was down in the basement.
So what they ended up doing is the warden split up.
One of them asked to use the restroom, so he
stayed upstairs. Well, the other warden went downstairs with the suspect.
In hindsight, that kind of turned out to be probably
something they regretted to not both being there, so the
(21:38):
other warden goes downstairs. This would have been Warden Hennessy
and the guy shows him around and shows him the
hunting gear that he was wearing. It had all been
cleaned already, shows him his rifle already cleaned. They see
there's a room down there with a padlock on it
that's locked up, and the warden to see inside there,
(22:00):
and suspect At tells him, I can't get in there myself.
I don't have the key to it, or the combination,
whichever one it was. You know, the guy bought the
house from gave it to me. I lost it, like,
I don't even know what's in there myself, he tells them, which,
in and of itself, that's pretty sketchy and hard to believe,
especially from a guy who had just lied to them
(22:20):
for a few minutes before that.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Meanwhile, upstairs, ward Marsh was poking around. He noticed a
box of federal shotgun shells on the table, which matched
what Selly had said he saw on the dashboard of
the buick. When he peeked inside, he saw that one
of the shells was missing. He also noticed a knife
on the table that had already been cleaned, which made
him start to wonder, So he walked over to the
(22:44):
fridge and opened the door to the freezer.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Anyone who hunts will know what I mean when I
say there were a bunch of packages of meat wrapped
in white freezer paper. He went and tested one of
the packages with his hands and it was still soft,
so you know they hadn't been in the freezer for long.
It wasn't frozen through clearly.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
According to Sully, Lenny had made a point to complain
about how there weren't any deer left in Maine and
that they hadn't had any luck.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
The previous morning.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
He'd also told the wardens that even though he'd been
hunting in the Washington area, he hadn't killed anything. The
still warm packages of deer meat and his freezer proved
he'd been lying about the deer, and Marsh wondered if
that meat had come from the one that Ludra had killed.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
The suspect and Warden Hennessy came back up and basically
he could tell for Warden Nnscy's demeanor and the things
that he was saying is let's get out of here,
like we got to go talk, so you know, they.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Got out of there.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
The pair exchanged information once they were back in their cruiser,
which is when Warden Marsh pulled one of those packages
of deer meat from his pocket.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Warden Hennessy was a bit freaked out over that because
obviously it would never be admissible in court, and ward
and Marsh didn't care, you know. At that point he
basically said, book, this guy's dirty. We're gonna get a
lot on him. But if this package of meat helps
us identify that these are the guys and helps us
find Lujah Blanger or his remains.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Like, I don't care.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Like we need to get this in the lab.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
We need to figure this out.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
What Marsha and Hennessey discovered inside that house was only
the beginning. The deeper they dug, the more perilous the
trail became. Evidence destroyed, witnesses, intimidated, home burned to the ground,
and a shocking confession that would take years to surface.
That's after the Break on Blood Trails, Part five the party.
(24:53):
The evidence the wardens had collected thus far was either
circumstantial or, in the case of the deer meat, in missible.
They knew they needed more, so they took the case
to the main state police and applied for search warrants
for the homes of Lenny and George. The State police
sent them officers to assist, and the local judge granted
them the warrants they requested, but that process took time.
(25:17):
Luja went missing the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm sure
there were people in government offices taking long weekends. The
wardens and state police continued to investigate. They drove the
various routes the suspects may have taken to see if
they could decipher where they had gone between picking up
Lujer and Sully's garage, but they didn't find anything, and
they weren't able to execute the search warrants on the
(25:39):
suspects homes until the next Friday, a week after Lujer
went missing. Destroying evidence of a murder or kidnapping is
tough for even the smartest criminals, and investigators figured they'd
be able to pull trace amounts of blood from hunting
clothes or hares from hack saws, But when Marsha and
Hennessy pulled up to Lenny's home along with two State
(26:00):
police officers, they realized they should have tried to search
the home sooner. When they showed up, they were cars
all up and down the road. The guy was having
a rip roaring party. The place was packed with people
all throughout the house, and you know they're looking at
it like, is this guy serious.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
He's the lead suspect and potentially a murder case, and
he's having this huge party, And you know, whether it
was intentional or not, in some ways, potentially was a
smart thing for him to have done, because it showed that,
you know, he wasn't worried, he didn't think, you know,
he was in trouble. But also if there was evidence,
(26:41):
you know, blood splatter on the floor, things like that,
he had forty fifty people tracking dirt all through the
house and covering it.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Up to make matters worse.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
All the potential evidence the wardens had seen on their
previous visit was gone. The hunting clothes, the deer meat,
the knife, the gun, the gear, all of it nowhere.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
To be seen.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
They hadn't seen the buick in the driveway on their
previous visit, but it could have been somewhere else on
the property, or they could have found information in the
house that led them to it, but the car had
also been disappeared without a trace. To add insult to injury,
Lenny had taped a newspaper article on Luger's disappearance to
the door of the upstairs freezer.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
He was mocking them, and he was being quite obstinate,
and basically when they were confronting him, they asked him
where all the hunting clothes were. He said he didn't
know what they were talking about. There were no hunting
clothes there. He had never had any, because he knew
that Ward and Marsh never came downstairs and never saw it,
(27:44):
so it was just his word against Warden Hennessy.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
There was no smoking gun, either literal or figurative. But
no criminal is perfect, and Lenny was no different. They
noticed that the padlock on the door in the basement,
the one that Lenny had he'd never opened, had been
turned around.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
So clearly suspect A was going in and out of
the room and he had carelessly switched the direction of
the lock.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
They cut the lock off the door, hopeful that Lenny
had failed to clean up all traces of his crime.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
They were right, but not as right as they had hoped.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
The only thing they found in there is on a
bench that you could see markings in the dust where
looked like a gun had been laid there, and potentially
a thirty thirty because it wasn't too long, and that
was the gun that Lujiah Blanger had been hunting with,
And they found a broken piece of a V notch
site that they got it tested and it was consistent
(28:43):
with the type of sight that was used on A
thirty thirty at that time.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
They noticed the light bulb had been changed recently, but
other than that, it didn't seem like Lenny used the
room very often. They didn't find any evidence that anyone
had been locked in the room or a body had.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Been kept there.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
They came up empty at George's house as well, which
a different team had searched at the same time. Both
men stuck to their story, and without any additional evidence,
the wardens were forced to drive away empty handed.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Part six. The buick.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
To any investigator, the primary crime scene is of utmost importance,
But in this case, that crime scene was mobile, and
the fact that the suspects tried to hide the buick
was reason enough to assume it held key evidence. That's
why I'm sure Warden Marsh was excited to hear that
just a few days after they had searched the suspects homes,
the Forest Green car was spotted on a residential Road
(29:43):
in the town of Northport, about twenty minutes from Lenny's home,
and the VIN number was registered to the same man.
Ward and Marsh rushed out to the scene to inspect
the car himself. What he saw made his stomach drop.
The car's headliner, floor mats, and rear seat had all
been removed, The trunk had been cleaned with heavy duty cleaner,
(30:04):
and Marsh could still smell the pungent sterile aroma. The trunk, matt,
spare tire, and carjack had also been removed from the
wheel well. But when Marsh looked up as he inspected
the trunk, he noticed something on the lid, a deer hair.
It wasn't the evidence they were hoping for, but again
Lenny had claimed he never brought home a deer. That
(30:25):
hare was enough to impound the car, so the state
police forensic team could get a closer look.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
When they did find the car and they impounded it,
one of the things that they also found was a
bullet hidden way down in the wheel well or where
the spare tire well excuse me would be, and it
had a beard hair attached to it. And Lujah Bolanger
at that time had a semi goo tea. I guess
(30:51):
you could call it.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
It was more chin than let.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
The bullet was actually a buckshot pellet of the same
kind that would have been loaded in the twelve gage
shells marsh saw on Lenny's table. How it came in
contact with a beard hair, and how that beard hair
and pellet came to be in the trunk of Lenny's
car is perhaps the most disturbing piece of evidence the
wardens had uncovered thus far. Unfortunately, it was still inconclusive.
(31:17):
Forensic DNA testing wasn't an option in nineteen seventy five,
and when they sent the beard hair to the FBI
lab in Washington, d C. Investigators weren't able to use
its color or dimensions to match it with Luger or
either of the suspects. It was close, but it still
wasn't quite enough to make an arrest.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Part seven.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
George Lenny gets a lot of the attention in this story,
and he still has one more act to play. But
George is also important. In fact, he's the reason we
know much of anything about what happened to Luger on
that road. He also may have been the one to
pull the trigger. George was a Vietnam veteran who had
(32:03):
been wounded in battle, which is likely the reason he
walked with a cane. The pairs shared experience of war
apparently brought them together because they didn't have much else
in common besides the love of alcohol. While Lenny was
large and imposing, George was short and slender. Lenny was married,
but George lived alone, and while Lennie is never known
(32:24):
to have told anyone about what happened that day, George
just couldn't keep the story to himself. A few months
after Lujire's disappearance, a man came to the police with
what he said was important information. He had been partying
with George, and in a drunken stupor, George had told
him the entire story. According to this informant, Lenny and
(32:46):
George had seen Luger on the road with his deer.
Not having had any luck themselves, they decided to steal
Lougers so they pretended to want to help, got the
deer in the trunk and invited him into the back seat.
But when Lenny told they were keeping the deer as
a shipping and handling fee, Lujer pushed back. He said
he needed the deer to feed his family and asked
(33:07):
to be let out of the car. That's when George
turned around and his seat lowered the shotgun at Luger
and pulled the trigger. We can assume that the pair
spent the next hours and days hiding the body and
cleaning the car, but the informant says he was too
afraid to.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Ask where they buried Loujer's remains.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Linda has a similar, though slightly different theory about what happened.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I believe that when he got into the car, they
got the deer in the trunk, He got in the
back seat of the car, and they got to the
end of that road. They turned left instead of right
to bring him home, and I think that's where he
might have made a stink when he sat it, getting
(33:53):
anxious that they were one wrong way, and then he
realized they weren't taking him home. Ah, I don't know,
but that's where I think they shout him in the
back seat was there?
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Why George would admit to doing such a thing over
something as trivial as a deer has baffled investigators, not
to mention Ludra's family. The pair of men were obviously
intoxicated and not in their right minds. But there's a
giant gap between being drunk or high and murdering a
stranger over some venison. The details of Lugra's case were
(34:27):
well known at the time, so it's possible the informant
was fabricating a story for some ulterior motive. Maybe the
gun went off by accident, there was a fight in
the car, or a third party was involved. Whatever actually happened,
Marti and his colleagues knew the informant's testimony would never
hold up in court. They needed more details from a
(34:47):
more reliable witness than one of George's drinking buddies. Ideally,
they wanted him to confess in a less alcohol soaked setting,
and a short time later they got their chance. George
had been in car for stealing in an effort to
fund his drug habit.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Law enforcement told George's.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Cellmate that they'd let him go early if he could
get George to tell him what happened, but the alleged
murderer stuck to his original story.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
He didn't know anything.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
About Lujire's disappearance, and that original informant died of a
drug overdose A short time later, with George refusing to speak,
investigators remained hopeful that Lenny would one day crack. They
sent undercover agents to the VFW where Lenny hung out,
and while these agents were successful in befriending him, they
never got him to talk.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
About the case.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Lenny was obviously smart. He hid or destroyed all the
evidence that could have sent him to jail, and maintained
his innocence even while dealing with severe drug and alcohol addictions.
But you know that old saying about being too smart
for your own good, Lenny may have been too smart
for his own good. In July of nineteen seventy six,
(35:56):
about seven months after Luja went missing, Warden Marsh got
a call Lenny had blown up his own house in
what was probably an attempt at insurance fraud and, according
to Darren, possibly an attempt to kill his wife. Lenny
had filled a bunch of washtubs with gasoline in his
house and lit a candlewick as a fuse. He'd purchased
(36:18):
a plane ticket to Orlando, and his plan was to
be out of the state when his house went up
in flames, so the insurance company couldn't accuse him of
starting the blaze. Himself, but there was a flaw in
his plan.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
It is believed that his refrigerator, with all the fumes
in the air, triggered the explosion prematurely before.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
He got out of the house.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
He did have an air ticket that day to take
him to Orlando, Florida, so he was trying to make
it look like he wasn't at home at the time
of the explosion. But the explosion went off when he
was in the house. It blasted him clear through the
picture window and outside into the yard.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Lenny suffered severe burns and was taken to a military
terry hospital in San Antonio. Doctors didn't expect him to
last long, so the main state police rushed down to Texas.
They wanted to see if Lenny would confess on his
deathbed and maybe tell them what he'd done with Luja,
but they were too late. Lenny died before they could
get there, taking what he knew about the young Hunter's
(37:19):
disappearance to his grave. George, however, is still alive. Tracy,
Lujia and Linda's youngest daughter, told me he's not in
good health, but he's remained in the area since nineteen
seventy five.
Speaker 5 (37:32):
He went on he had children and he continued with
his life.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Tracy and Linda believe there are people who might know
where Lujira's body was buried, but they're afraid to come forward.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
Because there's definitely people all did that.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
No, but as scared of the family too, their sons,
even though kids a cry of interest. People are scared
of him, as scared of them.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
Intimidation, I suppose, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
I mean they're very threatening. They would come on to
our page and be very nasty, you know, threatening. So
we had to block a few of them. And I
can't blame him for sticking out for the dad. But
they don't know.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Part eight. The search continues.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
It's tempting to think of this case as solved, or
that justice, at least in the case of suspect A
was somehow served, But the family is far from feeling closure.
They never got the chance to face in court the
person who killed their husband and father, and they've never
been able to put him to rest in the way
he deserves.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Above all, we just want to lay him to rest
our way, not throw him like a bag of trash somewhere.
We want to lay him to rest with what love
and dignity you know because that's what he deserved. He
didn't deserve what he got. Does.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
You might expect Linda and her children to want an
explanation for why their husband and father was murdered, but
Linda and Tracy say answering that question isn't important to
them at this point. They don't buy the excuse that
the suspects were drunk or high or suffering from PTSD,
and given suspect A's attempt to kill his wife, they
don't believe it was an accident.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
You're not going to get a why that you go, oh,
that makes sense, because you'd have to be psychotic to
agree with that. So a why is never going to
be good. It's never going to be okay, it's never
going to be right. That's never going to ring closure
or feel like an answer.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
They also aren't motivated by a desire to see suspect
be behind bars.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
The only remaining suspect is not well and probably not
long for this world, and so as far as like
getting justice, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
All they really want is to find Luja's remains, not
only for themselves, but for the grandchildren and great grandchildren
who never got the chance to know him.
Speaker 5 (39:55):
The family goes on, and I don't want it to
always be like, oh, this story that's in the FAMI
and never been solved. They'd never been a saying. So
they still hear about, you know, what went on, and
they know that that's their grandfather, and the little ones
eventually will know that that's their great grandfather. And so
I just feel like it's just an important to have
(40:15):
an end.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
The mission to find Luga's remains has been top of
mind for every investigator assigned to this case. That's just
as true today as it was back in the seventies.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
In the years that followed, they did anything and everything.
The next spring, they had a huge search at the
scale that the Warden Service had never done before. They
literally brought in all wardens. My father in law recalls
being a part of this too, and it wasn't in
his district. They brought him volunteers. They filled up a
couple of hotels, you know. They had aircraft flying around
(40:48):
looking for crow circles things like that that would suggest
that animals are gravitating towards remains in certain areas. They
drained one farmer's pond because there was a tip that
the body was in there. And this is an area
down eastern Main where there's a lot of quarries, So
they send divers into a whole bunch of quarries and
different bodies of water. Suspect A himself lived don a pond.
(41:11):
They dragged the pond. They you know, sent divers in
the pond. They looked everywhere, and unfortunately all that came
up empty handed.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Warden's Martia and Hennessy won't be able to see it,
but bringing this case to a close would mean more
to them than most other investigators.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
One thing that really struck me, you know, with Jarn
and with a lot of these Wardens in particular, is
that they all seem to have experiences and stories that
sort of haunts them and they can't put away with.
This was the case that for jar And I could
tell he really had some misgimmings about and really just
had that personal drive. I know he stayed in contact
(41:51):
with a family for years after the case was over
because he just he really personally just wanted to help
bring closure for them. So he would really motivated.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Ward and Marsh would no doubt be pleased to learn
that Lujia's case might be closer than ever to being solved.
Linda worked with a group called the Main Cold Case
Alliance to lobby the state legislature to provide funding to
solve cold cases. Many states have a dedicated cold case division,
but until twenty fifteen, Maine didn't.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
It was a group of us. We were at State
House and we were pushing it. It was a law we
just wanted. We wanted a cold case unit. It was
really great to watch all those lights light up green.
Nobody was against it, you know, all the Senate, it
all lit up in our favor, and it was really
a great feeling to get it approved.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Linda is hoping that fifty years after her husband's disappearance
and ten years after she helped fund a cold case unit,
someone will have the courage to come forward and give
the Belanger family the closure they've been searching for.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Fifty years is a long time. It's been a never
ending nightmare. Some days are okay, some days aren't. But
to find his remains, no matter what it is, and
we want to land the rest the right way.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
There is still hope for that to happen. The state
police have continued to search as additional tips have come
in In fact, according to a June email from Detective
Josh Haynes, ground and water searches have been conducted in
recent weeks and additional searches have been planned. They're especially
interested in the back seat from the buick. There's a
reason the suspects got rid of it, but it may
(43:28):
still be around somewhere, sitting in an old barn or
garage collecting dust. Modern forensic techniques can do things detectives
in the nineteen seventies could only dream of, and that
seat may hold the clues to finally solving this case.
If you know or know someone who might know anything
(43:49):
about a seat from a nineteen sixty five Uwick Special,
get in touch with the main State Police at two
oh seven six' two four seven zero seven six and
ask for The Major Crimes Unit Unsolved. Division Detective haynes
would ask the same of anyone who might know anything
About lujer's, disappearance no matter how. Minor, again that number
(44:10):
is two oh seven six two four seven zero seven to.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
SIX i can't explain the. Feeling it's something that we've
always wanted and never, got and something that we've always
wanted to do for, him and he got dealt a
raw deal and uh just want to bring him.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Home thanks for listening to this episode Of Blood. Trails
if you'd like.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
To see images from this, case head over to the
meeater dot com slash Blood trails and click on.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
The case file for this.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
EPISODE a big thanks To Darren, Wooster, linda And tracy
for their time and willingness to speak with. ME i
also Appreciate Detective Josh haynes for verifying the details Of luser's.
Disappearance if you have a tip about this case or
another case you think we should, cover send us an
email at blood trails at the meeteater dot org dot.
Com that's b l O O D T r A
(45:02):
I L s at the meeater dot. Com see you next.
Time stay safe out.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
There
It was the first snow of the season when Lujia
Bilander disappeared into the woods of rural Maine. He'd gone
out hunting, just like he had one hundred times before,
but this time you didn't come home. His wife Linda
thought maybe he'd gotten lost in the storm. But what
game Wardens uncovered over the next few days would lead
them through a maze of violence, drugs, and deceit that
(00:22):
no one could have predicted. That's next on Blood Trails.
Twenty five year old Luja Bolanger was what you might
(00:42):
call a typical main whitetail hunter. He went out on
November twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five, armed with his thirty
thirty lever gun to track a deer through the snow
in hopes of bringing home enough meat to feed his family.
He wasn't chasing big antlers, and he didn't sit in
a tree stand all day hoping a buck would walk past.
He went out and found one, and even though we'll
never know how big it was, I like to think
(01:05):
it was a giant. Lujia, his wife Linda, and his
brother John had all gone out that morning to look
for deer, but the falling snow hid the previous night's activity,
and the trio didn't have much luck as the gray
dawn illuminated the winter landscape.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Here's Linda and then about nine o'clock we just said, well,
we're gonna go home, and I had to get ready
for work, and John was going home, but Luji wanted
to get off at the top of the hill and
walk down through the field in the woods to the
county road and then home. It was heavy snow that morning.
We'd head heavy snow all night.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Lujia had been dropped off about a mile from the
home he shared in Washington, Maine, with Linda and their
three young children. He only planned to hunt for about
an hour before returning home and driving Linda to her
waitressing gig, but he didn't show up, and after another
hour had passed, Linda's annoyance turned to concern.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Ere So I called next door and said, ludj home yet,
So they went looking on smobiles following his name.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
As nightfall approach and the search party still hadn't found
any sign of the missing hunter, they called the game ardens.
The state police wouldn't get involved until Ludra had been
missing for seventy two hours, but Since the incident involved
a hunter, the wardens were happy to help with the search.
You might assume that Lujia had just found a deer
track and lost track of time, but Linda wasn't buying it.
(02:30):
She knew right away that something terrible had happened.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I kind of got a little messed up emotionally, and
they sent me to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
In any movements, Linda's reaction to her husband's disappearance might
sound extreme, but keep in mind that Linda was only
twenty years old. She and Lujia already had three daughters
between the ages of three and a half years and
three months. The prospect of those girls losing their father
was unbearable, and one of Linda's most vivid memories from
those difficult days is of her middle daughter, Angel, happily
(03:01):
playing around the feet of the game wardens and neighbors
who were searching for her father.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I remember getting up the next morning, is what I remember,
and the house had game ardens and trackers and family
all through it. If they must have given me something
that I just was out of it. But Angel was
eating snow off from one of the game ardens boots.
That's the memory that I have in my mind.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
The friends and family who filled that house knew that
losing Lusia would be a blow not only to his
wife and kids, but to the larger Washington community.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, he was a down to earth guy. He would
have done anything for anybody, anything, He'd be there for.
He loved life, he loved his family. We were building
a house and were making memories and making plans for
the future, but that all got taken away.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Lujia Blanders disappeared, which remains one of Maine's oldest unsolved cases.
But this isn't your typical cold case, with scant clues,
no suspects, and more questions than answers. The game wardens
who investigated Lucra's case believed they knew what happened to him,
but the trail got wilder and more unexpected with every
twist and turn. It led them from Maine's big woods
(04:20):
to drug fueled parties, to threatening suspects, to a house explosion.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
To insurance fraud to murder.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
It's a story of great detective work, even more devious suspects,
and ultimately a family who never got to say goodbye
to the father and husband they loved well.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Had three children, together now nineteen grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
He wasn't here for the moments, the special times, the
daily times. He just he was robbed of them.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
I'm Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails, a Big
Woods Cold Case.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Part one, Deer tracks layer of the station.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
When Linda called to report her husband missing, the main
Warden Service sent out two officers to investigate, Lieutenant Warden
John Marsh and District Warden Dick Hennessy. Though they were
joined later by other wardens and Maine State Police officers,
Marsh and Hennessy were the two primary investigators of Luger's disappearance.
The problem from where we're standing in twenty twenty five
(05:28):
is that Hennessy passed away in twenty twelve and Marsh
followed him in twenty twenty three. Since this is still
an open investigation, the Maine State Police can't release any
case files, and they declined to sit down.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
With us for an interview.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
We wouldn't know much more about this case than I've
already told you if it wasn't for an author by
the name of Darren Worcester. Darren published a book in
twenty seventeen called Open Season True Stories of the Main
Warden Service, which is a great book that I highly recommend.
Darren spoke with twelve game wardens about the two cases
he covers in that book, one of which was Lugers.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
It happened to be that my father in law was
a game warden and he would always tell me stories,
and I got to thinking that this would be a
great way to write a book. And he would give
me some of his stories and we would slowly chip
away at it, and he would always encourage me, Hey,
I know a lot of people who were wardens and
they've got great stories too, Like, you shouldn't just have
(06:25):
stories from me, We should get others involved.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
One of those wardens was John Marsh, who gave Darren
an inside view into this investigation. This isn't information that
was ever made public, but since Marsh was already retired,
he apparently wasn't too concerned about explaining what happened. Now,
normally I'd be skeptical about reporting secondhand information, but Darren
did his homework. I sent his chapter to Detective Sergeant
(06:49):
Josh Haines, who is currently in charge of Lujra's case
with the Main State Police. Haines told me in an
email quote. This information in the book is very accurate
to the facts.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
I know of the case.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Names have been changed and some of the other minor
details are different, but the majority of the narrative and
content is factual. Darren was kind enough to sit down
with us and walk us through what he found, and
let me tell you, you have no idea what's coming
over the next hill. When Martha Hennessy arrived at the
Blanger home, they had some theories as to what might
(07:21):
be happening, and they weren't overly concerned. The area Looser
was hunting was basically his backyard. He knew it well,
and there were no real dangers in those woods, no mountains,
cliffs or rivers for him to get swept away in.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
When the wardens came in, they just didn't I don't
want to say they didn't take it seriously, but they
had done this a thousand times before. He was a
young man. He was twenty five. They figured he probably
just went out partying. The most plausible thing was that
he wasn't, you know, he didn't report home because he
was out doing something that he didn't want to tell
his wife about.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
To their credit, the wardens didn't let their personal opinions
keep them from doing their job. In fact, they spent
the entire night of November twenty fifth and into the
twenty sixth scouring the woods where Lujra had been hunting,
but they couldn't find it. By the next morning, they
began to be really concerned. If he was still in
those woods, he was almost certainly hypothermic and might not
(08:15):
last much longer. The first snowstorm of the year was
in full swing, and the wet, slushy precipitation had turned
light and fluffy as a cold front rolled through. The
warden service was stretched thin after the snowstorm and calling
a full on search party would take time, maybe more
time than Lujra had, so they kept at it, and
before long they caught a break. As they were pacing
(08:37):
the side of the road where Linda had left Lujra
to go hunting, a neighbor approached them.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
They caught a lucky break, you know. They found a
neighbor who when they knocked on his door the night
before and nobody had answered, but he had come out
and said, yeah, I saw where Luja went in I
was about to go hunting myself. I can. He's a
good kid, I can take you right where. I'm willing
to bet he was.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
He was hunting this neighbor, a guy named Clayton Crosby,
said that he hunted and trapped that section of the
forest all the time, and he knew a ridge along
a stream that was a good place to look for
deer tracks. If Lujira knew the woods as well as
he did, that would be a place to start. The
wardens accepted Clay's offer to accompany them, and when they
reached the spot Clay led them to.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
They searched through the fresh.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Powder for tracks Lujra had made in the slushy now
frozen snow underneath. It didn't take them long to find
Ludra's boot prints, and as they followed his trail a
spent thirty thirty cartridge, they found blood spatters in the
snow a short distance away, and as they continued to
follow Lujra's footprints, a dark pool of frozen blood and guts.
(09:41):
At that point it was easy to see what had happened.
Lujira had shot a buck and had gutted it there
in the woods, then, instead of dragging it back towards
his house, he had pulled it about a quarter mile
through the woods to an old road. It was a
shorter distance to drag the deer, and he figured he'd
walk back home, get the car, and pick up the
animal along the road. It was a good plan, but
(10:02):
it hadn't worked. Lujia was still nowhere to be found,
and neither was his deer. Rather than give them an
answer for Linda about what had happened to her husband,
but they found along that forest road raised even more
questions and gave them the first suspicions that Lujia was
in more trouble than they had ever imagined. Linda credits
the game wardens for always treating her with kindness and
(10:24):
keeping her in the loop on the latest developments in
the case. But those days were still incredibly hard.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
The sick field, being alone with my kids, not having
my husband around, I think, and somebody heard him when
I was twenty years old, very scary, very that wrote
it was got wrenching. I There weren't a day go
(10:55):
by that I didn't just sit and cry.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Part two Clues in the Snow. To the trained eye
of the game wardens, the snow along.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
The road told a clear story.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
The car had driven in at some point before the
cold front. The driver and passenger had gotten out to
take a leak, and from that the wardens knew both
were mail. The driver was a smoker and had left
two cigarette butts along the road, while the passenger appeared
to be walking with a cane. The pair had gotten
back into the car and driven about one hundred yards
down the road, which is when they met Lujer. They
(11:36):
had helped him load the deer into the trunk of
the car, and then Lujer got into the back seat.
There were no signs of a struggle anywhere along the road.
It took me only a few seconds to explain what
they found, but I want to highlight how difficult it
was to decipher the criss crossing footprints and tire tracks
along the road. Remember, all of these prints were covered
in a layer of powder, and they had to figure
(11:58):
out which prints belonged to which mail and construct a
timeline of who did what and when. Their findings told
them that Lujia hadn't spent the night in the woods.
Maybe Lujia had met some guys he knew, and the
trio had gone out to celebrate a successful hunt. A
discarded Budweiser can indicated that the car's occupants had been drinking,
but Linda had been insistent that her husband wasn't a drinker.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
No, that's not him. He wouldn't do that. No, he
wouldn't even think to do it. He'd come home and
celebrate with his brothers probably and his dad and the kids.
But he wouldn't take off and go somewhere. He didn't
have people like that. He wasn't a heavy conture anyway.
He might have a beer on the weekend if my
(12:41):
dad was around, but I don't think I ever saw
him intoxicated.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Ward and Marsh also noticed something that ignited his suspicions.
As they'd been tracking Luja through the woods, they noticed
that before he began dragging the deer, he walked a
little ways ahead, leaned his gun against a tree, and
came back to pull the deer with both hands free.
He repeated this pattern until he got to the road
where he'd left his thirty thirty. As he started to
walk out, but Marsh noticed that after Lujira had gotten
(13:11):
into the back seat of the car, the driver had
gotten out, walked around the car to the other side
of the road and retrieved Lugra's gun from where it
was leaning against a tree ward. Marsh was an avid hunter, angler,
and outdoorsman. If you're a hunter as well, you know
how weird it would be to let someone else get
your gun for you if you're capable of doing it yourself.
(13:33):
But what if, Marsh wondered, Luder wasn't capable of doing
it himself. That thought worried him more than any other.
But he knew that finding the car and its driver
was going to be a serious challenge. But that's when
they caught their second big break in the case, this
one also thanks to the neighbor hunter and trapper Clay Crosby.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
The receipt that was found was really a lucky break
on their part in that it was actually found by
the neighbor who had kind of shown him around and
shown him to where Luja was probably hunting, and they
had asked him to kind of stay out of the
way to make sure he wasn't trampling any evidence. So
as this person was stepping back to get out of
(14:15):
the way, he felt something crunch under his shoe and
looked down and it was the receipt to a local
garage and the receipt was found under four inches of powder,
but above like the thick, heavy wet snow that had
come down early and then froze. So that really meant,
you know, with the timeline of how everything went and
(14:35):
when the snow came in, that the receipt was really
at the same wayer of the snow as the tracks
were right, so it clearly was tied to the vehicle.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
The receipt was dated for the previous day, the day
Luja went missing. But this wasn't just any old receipt.
I don't know if they made receipts differently in nineteen
seventy five, but this thing was like an identity thief's
dream come true.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Because the receipt had the suspects residents on it, their
phone number, everything was right there. It was sort of
like a handwritten note of here's your suspect, here's where
you go and find them like that just never happens, right,
That in itself was a pretty lucky break.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
The snow along the road told them Luja was alive
when he got into the car and that he might
be in trouble, but it also showed them what to do.
Next Part three, Sully's Marsha Hennessy knew the names of
the guys they were looking for, but they wanted more
(15:33):
information before confronting them, so they went to the auto
garage listed on the receipt in the nearby town of Union.
The owner, a guy named Sully, was more than happy
to talk to them about the two men who had
visited his shop the day before.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
The guy at the garage was all bent sideways over
these guys coming in. He said that they were drunk,
intoxicated on whatever drugs too. They had a radiator issue
with the car, I think a crack and was leaking,
and he just wasn't equipped at that garage to handle that.
And he had told him that, and they yelled at him,
they swore at him, and he just kind of did
(16:08):
some quick fix to get him out of there, just
to get him going and get him away from him.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Selly thought he'd gotten rid of these two yahoos. But
then later that same day they came back to the
garage again after they had picked up Blue.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
Jerk, and he said when they came back in, the
car was just white walled with steam. It was completely
filled with steam. These guys were sitting in the car.
They were even drunker, more intoxicated than when they had
been in that morning, and they just drove the car
right in on the left. They didn't they didn't get out,
they didn't park outside. They just drove it right into
(16:43):
the garage, right on the lift, and were yelling out
the window and demanding that he fixed it, that he
was a crook, that he had cheated them before, even
though he had told them, guys, there's nothing I can
do here. You know, I can't fix this.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Selley told the wardens that at this point he was
actually kind of nervous. These guys were clearly intoxicated, clearly angry,
and he also spied a shotgun in the front seat
of the car and a box of shells on the dashboard,
but he said he didn't see anyone in the back
seat even after all the steam from the radiator had cleared,
and he didn't try to open the trunk. He just
(17:15):
wanted them out of his shop as quickly as possible,
so once again he fixed them up the best he
could and probably breathed a sigh of relief as they
drove away. Josh Haynes with the Main State Police confirmed
to me that the car in question was a nineteen
sixty five Buick special. Haines told me that the two
men driving the car have been identified, but their real
(17:36):
names haven't been released. Since they've never been officially named
as suspects.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
We won't be saying their real.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Names in this episode for the same reason.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
As you'll hear.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
This story crosses the line from rumor and hearsay to
legitimate accusation. We have to be careful not to overstep
law enforcement, and Luja's family isn't interested in blasting out
their names publicly. Instead, we're just going to call them
Lenny and George. Lenny is the smoker, the driver of
the car, and George is the passenger and the one
(18:05):
who walks with a cane. At this point, Marsha Hennessy
knew a few things, and none of them spelled good
news for Lujer. These men were not in their right mind.
They were armed and had almost certainly picked up Luja
from the road in the woods, But Lujer wasn't in
the back seat when they arrived at the garage the
second time, and there were at least a few hours
(18:26):
between when they'd picked up the Hunter and when they
drove onto the lift at Sully's plenty of time to
do who knows what with Lucher Blanger Part four Lenny.
After confirming with Linda that Lujer didn't know either of
(18:47):
the men in the car, the wardens made their way
to Lennie's house in Camden, about half an hour from Washington.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
They arrived around.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
One in the afternoon, but based on the appearance of
the man who answered the door, it could have been
six in the morning or eleven at night. He was
wearing pajama pants and his disheveled hair made it seem
like he'd just woken up, but the beer can in
his hand suggested that maybe he'd just never gone to sleep,
and the bloodshot eyes peering out from bushy, dark eyebrows
told the wardens that he'd much rather be left alone.
(19:18):
He was also about six foot two, and the wardens
later learned a US Marine who had served in Vietnam.
He'd survived a grenade blast and, along with a silver
star and purple heart, had earned a metal plate in
his head for his trouble. He'd been arrested several times
for barroom boxing, along with two dui charges, and to
complete the picture, public urination point is This wasn't some
(19:42):
schlub they could push around. If he'd done what they
thought he'd done, they had to be careful.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
He was home alone, and he stonewalled them at first,
basically just said he hadn't been hunting that day, hadn't
been to Washington, didn't know where Washington was.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
But Warden Marsh wasn't someone to be true with either,
and he was in no mood to play games.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
The Woean's at that point, they had been they'd pulled
an all nighter, you know, they'd been up for probably
thirty six hours or something at that point. His patience
was wearing thin, and he just bottom lined it with
a guy that, look, we know your car was there.
We found this receipt. We know you were there, so
you better start telling us the truth. Because there's the
two ways to do this. It's going to be the
(20:24):
easy way of the hard way, and the way this
is going it sounds like it's going to be the
hard way.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
The way things turned out, the Warden should have gone
right to the hard way, but they didn't know what
was going to happen. So I'm sure they were relieved
when Lenny let them into the house and they sat
down with him at the kitchen table. After telling a
BS story about selling the buick the night before, Lenny
eventually admitted that yes he had visited Selly's garage, and
yes he'd been hunting near Washington, but he claimed never
(20:52):
to have met or seen Looger. He said they saw
his tracks in the snow, but that a second car
must have picked up the hunter before they got there.
The wardens didn't believe this story either, because there had
been only one set of tire tracks on that forest road,
but Lenny stuck to his story. So the wardens asked
to see his hunting clothes and gun. They figured that
(21:12):
if the suspects had done something to Looser, there would
likely be evidence on their clothes.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Or equipment, and he said it was down in the basement.
So what they ended up doing is the warden split up.
One of them asked to use the restroom, so he
stayed upstairs. Well, the other warden went downstairs with the suspect.
In hindsight, that kind of turned out to be probably
something they regretted to not both being there, so the
(21:38):
other warden goes downstairs. This would have been Warden Hennessy
and the guy shows him around and shows him the
hunting gear that he was wearing. It had all been
cleaned already, shows him his rifle already cleaned. They see
there's a room down there with a padlock on it
that's locked up, and the warden to see inside there,
(22:00):
and suspect At tells him, I can't get in there myself.
I don't have the key to it, or the combination,
whichever one it was. You know, the guy bought the
house from gave it to me. I lost it, like,
I don't even know what's in there myself, he tells them, which,
in and of itself, that's pretty sketchy and hard to believe,
especially from a guy who had just lied to them
(22:20):
for a few minutes before that.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Meanwhile, upstairs, ward Marsh was poking around. He noticed a
box of federal shotgun shells on the table, which matched
what Selly had said he saw on the dashboard of
the buick. When he peeked inside, he saw that one
of the shells was missing. He also noticed a knife
on the table that had already been cleaned, which made
him start to wonder, So he walked over to the
(22:44):
fridge and opened the door to the freezer.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Anyone who hunts will know what I mean when I
say there were a bunch of packages of meat wrapped
in white freezer paper. He went and tested one of
the packages with his hands and it was still soft,
so you know they hadn't been in the freezer for long.
It wasn't frozen through clearly.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
According to Sully, Lenny had made a point to complain
about how there weren't any deer left in Maine and
that they hadn't had any luck.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
The previous morning.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
He'd also told the wardens that even though he'd been
hunting in the Washington area, he hadn't killed anything. The
still warm packages of deer meat and his freezer proved
he'd been lying about the deer, and Marsh wondered if
that meat had come from the one that Ludra had killed.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
The suspect and Warden Hennessy came back up and basically
he could tell for Warden Nnscy's demeanor and the things
that he was saying is let's get out of here,
like we got to go talk, so you know, they.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Got out of there.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
The pair exchanged information once they were back in their cruiser,
which is when Warden Marsh pulled one of those packages
of deer meat from his pocket.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Warden Hennessy was a bit freaked out over that because
obviously it would never be admissible in court, and ward
and Marsh didn't care, you know. At that point he
basically said, book, this guy's dirty. We're gonna get a
lot on him. But if this package of meat helps
us identify that these are the guys and helps us
find Lujah Blanger or his remains.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Like, I don't care.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Like we need to get this in the lab.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
We need to figure this out.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
What Marsha and Hennessey discovered inside that house was only
the beginning. The deeper they dug, the more perilous the
trail became. Evidence destroyed, witnesses, intimidated, home burned to the ground,
and a shocking confession that would take years to surface.
That's after the Break on Blood Trails, Part five the party.
(24:53):
The evidence the wardens had collected thus far was either
circumstantial or, in the case of the deer meat, in missible.
They knew they needed more, so they took the case
to the main state police and applied for search warrants
for the homes of Lenny and George. The State police
sent them officers to assist, and the local judge granted
them the warrants they requested, but that process took time.
(25:17):
Luja went missing the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm sure
there were people in government offices taking long weekends. The
wardens and state police continued to investigate. They drove the
various routes the suspects may have taken to see if
they could decipher where they had gone between picking up
Lujer and Sully's garage, but they didn't find anything, and
they weren't able to execute the search warrants on the
(25:39):
suspects homes until the next Friday, a week after Lujer
went missing. Destroying evidence of a murder or kidnapping is
tough for even the smartest criminals, and investigators figured they'd
be able to pull trace amounts of blood from hunting
clothes or hares from hack saws, But when Marsha and
Hennessy pulled up to Lenny's home along with two State
(26:00):
police officers, they realized they should have tried to search
the home sooner. When they showed up, they were cars
all up and down the road. The guy was having
a rip roaring party. The place was packed with people
all throughout the house, and you know they're looking at
it like, is this guy serious.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
He's the lead suspect and potentially a murder case, and
he's having this huge party, And you know, whether it
was intentional or not, in some ways, potentially was a
smart thing for him to have done, because it showed that,
you know, he wasn't worried, he didn't think, you know,
he was in trouble. But also if there was evidence,
(26:41):
you know, blood splatter on the floor, things like that,
he had forty fifty people tracking dirt all through the
house and covering it.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Up to make matters worse.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
All the potential evidence the wardens had seen on their
previous visit was gone. The hunting clothes, the deer meat,
the knife, the gun, the gear, all of it nowhere.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
To be seen.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
They hadn't seen the buick in the driveway on their
previous visit, but it could have been somewhere else on
the property, or they could have found information in the
house that led them to it, but the car had
also been disappeared without a trace. To add insult to injury,
Lenny had taped a newspaper article on Luger's disappearance to
the door of the upstairs freezer.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
He was mocking them, and he was being quite obstinate,
and basically when they were confronting him, they asked him
where all the hunting clothes were. He said he didn't
know what they were talking about. There were no hunting
clothes there. He had never had any, because he knew
that Ward and Marsh never came downstairs and never saw it,
(27:44):
so it was just his word against Warden Hennessy.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
There was no smoking gun, either literal or figurative. But
no criminal is perfect, and Lenny was no different. They
noticed that the padlock on the door in the basement,
the one that Lenny had he'd never opened, had been
turned around.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
So clearly suspect A was going in and out of
the room and he had carelessly switched the direction of
the lock.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
They cut the lock off the door, hopeful that Lenny
had failed to clean up all traces of his crime.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
They were right, but not as right as they had hoped.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
The only thing they found in there is on a
bench that you could see markings in the dust where
looked like a gun had been laid there, and potentially
a thirty thirty because it wasn't too long, and that
was the gun that Lujiah Blanger had been hunting with,
And they found a broken piece of a V notch
site that they got it tested and it was consistent
(28:43):
with the type of sight that was used on A
thirty thirty at that time.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
They noticed the light bulb had been changed recently, but
other than that, it didn't seem like Lenny used the
room very often. They didn't find any evidence that anyone
had been locked in the room or a body had.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
Been kept there.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
They came up empty at George's house as well, which
a different team had searched at the same time. Both
men stuck to their story, and without any additional evidence,
the wardens were forced to drive away empty handed.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Part six. The buick.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
To any investigator, the primary crime scene is of utmost importance,
But in this case, that crime scene was mobile, and
the fact that the suspects tried to hide the buick
was reason enough to assume it held key evidence. That's
why I'm sure Warden Marsh was excited to hear that
just a few days after they had searched the suspects homes,
the Forest Green car was spotted on a residential Road
(29:43):
in the town of Northport, about twenty minutes from Lenny's home,
and the VIN number was registered to the same man.
Ward and Marsh rushed out to the scene to inspect
the car himself. What he saw made his stomach drop.
The car's headliner, floor mats, and rear seat had all
been removed, The trunk had been cleaned with heavy duty cleaner,
(30:04):
and Marsh could still smell the pungent sterile aroma. The trunk, matt,
spare tire, and carjack had also been removed from the
wheel well. But when Marsh looked up as he inspected
the trunk, he noticed something on the lid, a deer hair.
It wasn't the evidence they were hoping for, but again
Lenny had claimed he never brought home a deer. That
(30:25):
hare was enough to impound the car, so the state
police forensic team could get a closer look.
Speaker 4 (30:30):
When they did find the car and they impounded it,
one of the things that they also found was a
bullet hidden way down in the wheel well or where
the spare tire well excuse me would be, and it
had a beard hair attached to it. And Lujah Bolanger
at that time had a semi goo tea. I guess
(30:51):
you could call it.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
It was more chin than let.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
The bullet was actually a buckshot pellet of the same
kind that would have been loaded in the twelve gage
shells marsh saw on Lenny's table. How it came in
contact with a beard hair, and how that beard hair
and pellet came to be in the trunk of Lenny's
car is perhaps the most disturbing piece of evidence the
wardens had uncovered thus far. Unfortunately, it was still inconclusive.
(31:17):
Forensic DNA testing wasn't an option in nineteen seventy five,
and when they sent the beard hair to the FBI
lab in Washington, d C. Investigators weren't able to use
its color or dimensions to match it with Luger or
either of the suspects. It was close, but it still
wasn't quite enough to make an arrest.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Part seven.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
George Lenny gets a lot of the attention in this story,
and he still has one more act to play. But
George is also important. In fact, he's the reason we
know much of anything about what happened to Luger on
that road. He also may have been the one to
pull the trigger. George was a Vietnam veteran who had
(32:03):
been wounded in battle, which is likely the reason he
walked with a cane. The pairs shared experience of war
apparently brought them together because they didn't have much else
in common besides the love of alcohol. While Lenny was
large and imposing, George was short and slender. Lenny was married,
but George lived alone, and while Lennie is never known
(32:24):
to have told anyone about what happened that day, George
just couldn't keep the story to himself. A few months
after Lujire's disappearance, a man came to the police with
what he said was important information. He had been partying
with George, and in a drunken stupor, George had told
him the entire story. According to this informant, Lenny and
(32:46):
George had seen Luger on the road with his deer.
Not having had any luck themselves, they decided to steal
Lougers so they pretended to want to help, got the
deer in the trunk and invited him into the back seat.
But when Lenny told they were keeping the deer as
a shipping and handling fee, Lujer pushed back. He said
he needed the deer to feed his family and asked
(33:07):
to be let out of the car. That's when George
turned around and his seat lowered the shotgun at Luger
and pulled the trigger. We can assume that the pair
spent the next hours and days hiding the body and
cleaning the car, but the informant says he was too
afraid to.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Ask where they buried Loujer's remains.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Linda has a similar, though slightly different theory about what happened.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
I believe that when he got into the car, they
got the deer in the trunk, He got in the
back seat of the car, and they got to the
end of that road. They turned left instead of right
to bring him home, and I think that's where he
might have made a stink when he sat it, getting
(33:53):
anxious that they were one wrong way, and then he
realized they weren't taking him home. Ah, I don't know,
but that's where I think they shout him in the
back seat was there?
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Why George would admit to doing such a thing over
something as trivial as a deer has baffled investigators, not
to mention Ludra's family. The pair of men were obviously
intoxicated and not in their right minds. But there's a
giant gap between being drunk or high and murdering a
stranger over some venison. The details of Lugra's case were
(34:27):
well known at the time, so it's possible the informant
was fabricating a story for some ulterior motive. Maybe the
gun went off by accident, there was a fight in
the car, or a third party was involved. Whatever actually happened,
Marti and his colleagues knew the informant's testimony would never
hold up in court. They needed more details from a
(34:47):
more reliable witness than one of George's drinking buddies. Ideally,
they wanted him to confess in a less alcohol soaked setting,
and a short time later they got their chance. George
had been in car for stealing in an effort to
fund his drug habit.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Law enforcement told George's.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Cellmate that they'd let him go early if he could
get George to tell him what happened, but the alleged
murderer stuck to his original story.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
He didn't know anything.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
About Lujire's disappearance, and that original informant died of a
drug overdose A short time later, with George refusing to speak,
investigators remained hopeful that Lenny would one day crack. They
sent undercover agents to the VFW where Lenny hung out,
and while these agents were successful in befriending him, they
never got him to talk.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
About the case.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Lenny was obviously smart. He hid or destroyed all the
evidence that could have sent him to jail, and maintained
his innocence even while dealing with severe drug and alcohol addictions.
But you know that old saying about being too smart
for your own good, Lenny may have been too smart
for his own good. In July of nineteen seventy six,
(35:56):
about seven months after Luja went missing, Warden Marsh got
a call Lenny had blown up his own house in
what was probably an attempt at insurance fraud and, according
to Darren, possibly an attempt to kill his wife. Lenny
had filled a bunch of washtubs with gasoline in his
house and lit a candlewick as a fuse. He'd purchased
(36:18):
a plane ticket to Orlando, and his plan was to
be out of the state when his house went up
in flames, so the insurance company couldn't accuse him of
starting the blaze. Himself, but there was a flaw in
his plan.
Speaker 4 (36:31):
It is believed that his refrigerator, with all the fumes
in the air, triggered the explosion prematurely before.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
He got out of the house.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
He did have an air ticket that day to take
him to Orlando, Florida, so he was trying to make
it look like he wasn't at home at the time
of the explosion. But the explosion went off when he
was in the house. It blasted him clear through the
picture window and outside into the yard.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
Lenny suffered severe burns and was taken to a military
terry hospital in San Antonio. Doctors didn't expect him to
last long, so the main state police rushed down to Texas.
They wanted to see if Lenny would confess on his
deathbed and maybe tell them what he'd done with Luja,
but they were too late. Lenny died before they could
get there, taking what he knew about the young Hunter's
(37:19):
disappearance to his grave. George, however, is still alive. Tracy,
Lujia and Linda's youngest daughter, told me he's not in
good health, but he's remained in the area since nineteen
seventy five.
Speaker 5 (37:32):
He went on he had children and he continued with
his life.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Tracy and Linda believe there are people who might know
where Lujira's body was buried, but they're afraid to come forward.
Speaker 5 (37:43):
Because there's definitely people all did that.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
No, but as scared of the family too, their sons,
even though kids a cry of interest. People are scared
of him, as scared of them.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
Intimidation, I suppose, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
I mean they're very threatening. They would come on to
our page and be very nasty, you know, threatening. So
we had to block a few of them. And I
can't blame him for sticking out for the dad. But
they don't know.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
Part eight. The search continues.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
It's tempting to think of this case as solved, or
that justice, at least in the case of suspect A
was somehow served, But the family is far from feeling closure.
They never got the chance to face in court the
person who killed their husband and father, and they've never
been able to put him to rest in the way
he deserves.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Above all, we just want to lay him to rest
our way, not throw him like a bag of trash somewhere.
We want to lay him to rest with what love
and dignity you know because that's what he deserved. He
didn't deserve what he got. Does.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
You might expect Linda and her children to want an
explanation for why their husband and father was murdered, but
Linda and Tracy say answering that question isn't important to
them at this point. They don't buy the excuse that
the suspects were drunk or high or suffering from PTSD,
and given suspect A's attempt to kill his wife, they
don't believe it was an accident.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
You're not going to get a why that you go, oh,
that makes sense, because you'd have to be psychotic to
agree with that. So a why is never going to
be good. It's never going to be okay, it's never
going to be right. That's never going to ring closure
or feel like an answer.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
They also aren't motivated by a desire to see suspect
be behind bars.
Speaker 5 (39:39):
The only remaining suspect is not well and probably not
long for this world, and so as far as like
getting justice, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
All they really want is to find Luja's remains, not
only for themselves, but for the grandchildren and great grandchildren
who never got the chance to know him.
Speaker 5 (39:55):
The family goes on, and I don't want it to
always be like, oh, this story that's in the FAMI
and never been solved. They'd never been a saying. So
they still hear about, you know, what went on, and
they know that that's their grandfather, and the little ones
eventually will know that that's their great grandfather. And so
I just feel like it's just an important to have
(40:15):
an end.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
The mission to find Luga's remains has been top of
mind for every investigator assigned to this case. That's just
as true today as it was back in the seventies.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
In the years that followed, they did anything and everything.
The next spring, they had a huge search at the
scale that the Warden Service had never done before. They
literally brought in all wardens. My father in law recalls
being a part of this too, and it wasn't in
his district. They brought him volunteers. They filled up a
couple of hotels, you know. They had aircraft flying around
(40:48):
looking for crow circles things like that that would suggest
that animals are gravitating towards remains in certain areas. They
drained one farmer's pond because there was a tip that
the body was in there. And this is an area
down eastern Main where there's a lot of quarries, So
they send divers into a whole bunch of quarries and
different bodies of water. Suspect A himself lived don a pond.
(41:11):
They dragged the pond. They you know, sent divers in
the pond. They looked everywhere, and unfortunately all that came
up empty handed.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Warden's Martia and Hennessy won't be able to see it,
but bringing this case to a close would mean more
to them than most other investigators.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
One thing that really struck me, you know, with Jarn
and with a lot of these Wardens in particular, is
that they all seem to have experiences and stories that
sort of haunts them and they can't put away with.
This was the case that for jar And I could
tell he really had some misgimmings about and really just
had that personal drive. I know he stayed in contact
(41:51):
with a family for years after the case was over
because he just he really personally just wanted to help
bring closure for them. So he would really motivated.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Ward and Marsh would no doubt be pleased to learn
that Lujia's case might be closer than ever to being solved.
Linda worked with a group called the Main Cold Case
Alliance to lobby the state legislature to provide funding to
solve cold cases. Many states have a dedicated cold case division,
but until twenty fifteen, Maine didn't.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
It was a group of us. We were at State
House and we were pushing it. It was a law we
just wanted. We wanted a cold case unit. It was
really great to watch all those lights light up green.
Nobody was against it, you know, all the Senate, it
all lit up in our favor, and it was really
a great feeling to get it approved.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Linda is hoping that fifty years after her husband's disappearance
and ten years after she helped fund a cold case unit,
someone will have the courage to come forward and give
the Belanger family the closure they've been searching for.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Fifty years is a long time. It's been a never
ending nightmare. Some days are okay, some days aren't. But
to find his remains, no matter what it is, and
we want to land the rest the right way.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
There is still hope for that to happen. The state
police have continued to search as additional tips have come
in In fact, according to a June email from Detective
Josh Haynes, ground and water searches have been conducted in
recent weeks and additional searches have been planned. They're especially
interested in the back seat from the buick. There's a
reason the suspects got rid of it, but it may
(43:28):
still be around somewhere, sitting in an old barn or
garage collecting dust. Modern forensic techniques can do things detectives
in the nineteen seventies could only dream of, and that
seat may hold the clues to finally solving this case.
If you know or know someone who might know anything
(43:49):
about a seat from a nineteen sixty five Uwick Special,
get in touch with the main State Police at two
oh seven six' two four seven zero seven six and
ask for The Major Crimes Unit Unsolved. Division Detective haynes
would ask the same of anyone who might know anything
About lujer's, disappearance no matter how. Minor, again that number
(44:10):
is two oh seven six two four seven zero seven to.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
SIX i can't explain the. Feeling it's something that we've
always wanted and never, got and something that we've always
wanted to do for, him and he got dealt a
raw deal and uh just want to bring him.
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Home thanks for listening to this episode Of Blood. Trails
if you'd like.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
To see images from this, case head over to the
meeater dot com slash Blood trails and click on.
Speaker 3 (44:40):
The case file for this.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
EPISODE a big thanks To Darren, Wooster, linda And tracy
for their time and willingness to speak with. ME i
also Appreciate Detective Josh haynes for verifying the details Of luser's.
Disappearance if you have a tip about this case or
another case you think we should, cover send us an
email at blood trails at the meeteater dot org dot.
Com that's b l O O D T r A
(45:02):
I L s at the meeater dot. Com see you next.
Time stay safe out.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
There
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