September 23, 2020 • 39 mins
All of the missing cases have become like the five points of a star—no matter how you draw it, each point shoots a dotted line back to one person of interest: Bob LaRosa. However, there are far more nefarious secrets buried deep within his family that could lead to another suspect and new answers—starting with yet another missing young woman Bob knew very well.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Paper Ghosts is a production of I Heart Radio. My
search for information in the missing girls cases, along with
the now confirmed murder of Susan LaRosa, is producing more
results than it ever has in previous years. All of
(00:23):
the cases have become like the five points of a star.
No matter how I draw it, each point directs me
right back to one of the others, And no matter
how much I try to rule him out, each point
draws a dotted line back to Bob LaRosa. The station
wagon he drove that suddenly disappeared, the khaki shirt and
(00:45):
pants uniform he always wore, his affinity for young girls,
his abusive marriage. I need to shift my focus on him,
to learn more about who he was in the life
he lived. I can't say for certain he's directly involved
in all the missing cases, but I get a sense
(01:05):
there are far more nefarious secrets buried deep within his
family that will help me find answers. Bob was one
of ten children in the LaRosa household. His parents, Nunzio Senor,
the father, and Memy the mother, were said to be
(01:27):
unable to control or take care of such a large family.
According to relatives, the couple lived in squalor and did
not watch their children because of this. It was the
late nineteen sixties when the States stepped in and separated
all ten LaRosa kids, two of them staying locally with
a foster family and eight of them sent to orphanages
(01:50):
and foster care further away. At some point, Mammy LaRosa
got the children back. The father, Nunzio Sr. Died in December.
The LaRosa family inhabited an entire plot of land which
held their main house and a camping trailer set up
(02:11):
in the backyard. It was on Pine Street, just across
the street from Crystal Lake, right on the border of
the property belonging to the Wendells, the couple you heard
back in episode one who are focused on digging up
their water wells. In ninety two, all the LaRosa kids,
mostly grown at this point, went their separate ways after
(02:35):
the entire family moved out of their Crystal Lake home.
The reason for their sudden departure I am almost certain
at this point it has something to do with what
happened the previous year. The Bob Larosa's sister previously on
(02:57):
Paper Ghosts. She was like, I always thought it was
an accident, and he just hit her. He hit her hard,
and my mom just felt like totally just fell And
I kept mommy, Mommy, wake up, Mommy, wake up, Mommy,
wake up. And my mom wasn't wasn't moving, you know,
like there was no twitching there was. My mom just
didn't move. My dad was bad with me. My dad
(03:21):
didn't stop touching because twelve, I know my dad Like
young girls, what did you see when you went there
the first time after she went missing? Describe what your
blood on the floor, on the wall, on the door,
down the stairs, big pool of it. She gave me
a petty knife to clean it up. My name is
(03:43):
and William Phelps. This is paper Ghosts, known to everyone
as Rainy. Irene LaRosa was the eighth LaRosa child to
be born. She had long brown hair feathered in wavy
(04:04):
She was just over five ft tall pounds, seemingly happy
and content. Ellington being a small town, it's no surprise
to learn that and Prentice, one of Susan Lerosa's sisters,
who you heard in the last episode, was best friends
with Bob Lerosa's sister Irene. While growing up, Helena and
(04:25):
I were best but we well, we loved the bus
to schools and that was like a half our ride
going to school and coming back, you know, we went.
They had to travel quite away. And she loves singing
and I love singing, and leaves to sing on the back.
Just seventeen years old, Irene sang at the Crystal Lake
(04:47):
Ballroom and around the Tritown area at local country and
western bars. Everyone said she was very talented, smart as
well with a little naivety, I would guess routed in rage.
We used to talk about how um, as soon as
she was ahead of me in school and she was
(05:09):
going to as soon as graduation hit, she was going
to go down to California and get a job and
get everything all set up. So as soon as I graduated,
I from joining us, and what what was her reason
for doing this? To get away from all of the
six Because we just couldn't spend it. The two of
(05:31):
us used to go crazy with everything that was going on,
and nothing ever seemed to get better, you know, you would,
We just couldn't get out of what was happening because
it was happening in our home. Um, she told me
(05:52):
how she had been raped, and I told her all
I had been, and so we kind of really connected.
Let me stop you from minute she told you she
was raped by whom by her brother, her brother um Nathan,
Irene and Bob Lerossa's other brother, Nathan sometimes went by
Nunzio or Jr. She was tired of it and I
(06:15):
were tired of it, and she was going to graduate
like that coming year when Irene suddenly stopped showing up
and kept asking one of the Larossa brothers where she
was after a week of not seeing her, and grew
terribly concerned. I was told by her brother that she
(06:38):
was gone, that she had run away, and in my mind,
I just said, because I'll go like thirteen, you know,
and I'm I'm going. Okay, Well, she had enough, she
couldn't wait. She went down, and she's going to send
for me. And I just kept waiting for her to
send for me that it never happened, and began asking
(06:58):
any one of the many laro U the siblings if
they knew where Irene went or if they had heard
anything from her. One of Irene's sisters would only say,
I miss her, nothing more. It was as if she
wanted to say something else but was afraid to, and
then asked Irene's mother memory, and I tried talking to
(07:20):
her about her, and she just said, that's she round,
Why that's her? Nobody knows anything. So let's get this straight.
A seventeen year old child runs away, is missing, or
whatever the case may be, and her mother does nothing,
files no police report, does not contact the newspapers, does
(07:44):
not query around town, beg anyone and everyone she can
for help. And the mom wasn't worried about going to
look for her. No oblar Rosa, I've been told by
some was the one who looked out for the others
(08:05):
in the family. I have a difficult time believing this.
Did Bob ever say anything about Rainey to you? No,
she was never brought up. Ever. It's like she dropped
off the face of the earth. And if you tried
to say anything to them about her, they didn't like that.
(08:28):
Here's the thing I know siblings of missing people. I
have interviewed family members of the missing all over this country.
I mean, look at Janice Pockets, Sister Lisa Whites, Susan Lerosis,
all of whom you've heard in previous episodes. I have
never ever met one sibling of a missing person who
(08:48):
was not consumed with the idea of doing anything here
she could define that person. There seemed to be things
here within Irene's disappearance that are being kept hidden, buried,
secrets beyond the incestuous behavior I need to uncover. So
I dig deeper, start asking my law enforcement in LaRosa
(09:11):
family contacts questions, and I learned that Irene l Rosa's
disappearance was reported by a family member in two thousand sixteen,
forty five years after she was last heard from her scene.
Turns out Irene LaRosa is the missing girl the state
(09:31):
police are searching for on the Window property across the
street from Crystal Lake. Recently, at the Window's property, the
police were acting on a tip that a body was
buried in the area. I'm still trying to find out
more about that tip, most importantly who left it. For now, however,
(09:53):
I found the person who filed Irene's missing person report
all these years later. Good Morning. Tina LaRosa is Irene
Renie Larrosa's niece, and in two thousand sixteen, it was
Tina who filed the missing person report on her aunt.
(10:14):
As luck would have it, I was connected to Tina
through Mary angle Breck, the sister of Jane's Pocket who
you heard in episode one. The two initially met online
and sparked up a friendship after bonding through similar tragedies.
Since filing the report, Tina has been obsessed with pushing
police to look at Irene l Rosa's case, but up
(10:35):
until now she's not heard much from them. Tina is
a former hospice worker in her late forties living in Massachusetts.
She has a presence about her, a determination. She's been
on a crusade, very vocal and critical of state police's
handling of her aunt's case, all of which she airs
on Facebook. I have to be careful with Tina, and
(10:57):
I've discussed my concerns with her because she is to
publish certain sensitive information on social media. Part of it
is the pain of loss, part of it the idea
of not knowing. I get it. Not everyone appreciates Tina's
way of doing things, but I'm interested in information, not optics.
(11:20):
Tina and I met on a human July day across
the street from Crystal Lake, in the area where the
LaRosa family lived. Pine Tree. This is the only thing
that still exists from their house is that big pine
tree right there. The house she's talking about, is the
former LaRosa property is still there from like the bricks
from where the foundation sat, from the old house right
(11:42):
here and all these bushes over here is where Nathan's
camper would have sat, and it would have sat against
the road, so the door would have been facing towards
the wood. I have not been able to find any
law enforcement paper trail connected to Irene Larosa's disappearance. I've
asked all my sources. Nobody seems to know much about
(12:03):
the case. When you told the police about this because
you filed a miscent person was born, And what did
they tell you when you filed with They didn't tell
me much. They weren't very helpful, Um were they interested?
(12:23):
In fourteen years after Irene Laros had disappeared, the Hartford
Current wrote about it. That article reported that Irene left
home when she was fifteen, returning for short periods of
time and then leaving again, and that she was seeing
a man named Bob who was a teacher and lived
in a nearby town. He was nine years her senior.
(12:47):
And then this friends told one of her sisters that
Irene had a son. Her sister, however, was unable to
confirm it. A source who married into the LaRosa A
family has told me. After Irene went missing, there was
talk that she was living ninety minutes south in Fairfield County,
(13:07):
Connecticut and had a son. I have trouble believing this.
I had my private investigator look into it. He found nothing.
Law enforcement could not verify the information. So you have
the and I'm going to say this kind of rudely,
the more intelligent ones saying oh, she's missing, and then
(13:28):
you have kind of grow the ones over here that
are saying she's been We've seen her, We've heard from her.
Irene could still be alive. She was a child, just
seventeen and nineteen seventy one. If all I've heard about
her being abused by her brother Nathan is true, there
was just cause and very good reason for her to
(13:51):
leave on her own. The article that I had the
other day was about my aunt Vickie on how she
disappeared at the age of seventeen and my memy certain
us took the search dogs out after her went to court.
You know what I mean. She was seventeen years old
and my memo went Helen furious on her. It was
in nineteen sixty six, and one of Irene's older sisters, Vicky,
(14:14):
also went missing. Their mother Memo sent out the troops
when Vicky vanished, reaching out to reporters and not stopping
until Vicky was found not long after. Apparently she tried
to skip town because of some trouble she'd gotten into.
But when Ny a couple of years later, goes nothing,
(14:34):
According to Tina, there were no reporters, no search parties,
no one concerned about Irene's disappearance. It was as if
Irene never existed in the first place. Irene l Rosa's brother,
(15:01):
Ruddy Larossa, was there in the thick of it all
when Irene went missing in nineteen seventy one. Rudy is direct,
sharp wooded, and strikes me as a guy who does
not like to speculate or bullshit. It either is or
it isn't. I immediately relate to Rudy in this regard.
In recent years, when his daughter Tina began her own
(15:23):
investigation into her aunt's disappearance, Rudy stepped up and, however
begrudgingly decided to answer Tina's tough questions about the Larrossa
family history, the good, the bad, and very ugly Rudy.
Thank you Rudy for coming nice to meet man. After
(15:49):
several requests, Rudy finally agreed to meet with me over
the summer. As I take on a map of Crystal Lake,
I notice he looks an awful lot like his brother's
Bob and Nathan, just a bit older and greyer, with
less hair. He has that pudgy, familiar LaRosa face. I says,
this is about where our house was. The well was
(16:10):
over here because we used to build a fort. We
burnt it down a couple of three times or so.
There are kids. We put a fire in here, too
close to the wall. I've heard from a few sources
there was a fort, or in one case, a bunker.
Brothers Bob and Nathan LaRosa built something underground and hidden,
very private, very isolated, accessible by only those who knew
(16:34):
it was there. Now, working in true crime, when we
hear the word bunker, as you might be thinking right now,
we assumed dark evil activity, usually involving sick, sadistic sexual
crimes committed against women. So I listened as Rudy explains
exactly where the bunker was and begin to understand a
(16:54):
few things I have been vague on up to this
point just to submit is there and there's a cutout
in the cement where they're because used to open the
door and step in or whatever, because we used to
go in that way and crawl to the to the
back corner hatch on the floor that we built, and
that's how we got into the fort, the only way in,
(17:16):
the only way out. Rudy was closest to Bob and Irene.
And Irene, he tells me, was their mother, Memy's slave child.
My mother had her thumb on her she couldn't move,
and my mother's do this, do that? Do this? Do that?
As we chat about Memo and Irene, I begin to
(17:37):
understand something important in Irene's case. The Rosa home sat
on a rise, a big bay window in the small
dining area overlooking Crystal Lake. In front of that window
was a table and chair where an unkempt and severely
obese Memy would sit and direct the household. According to Rudy,
(17:58):
mem A squawked and screamed at the children and rarely
left that chair. She seemed to have an infinity to
Nathan in his needs. Think of the Cinderella story minus
the step sisters, but with all the wickedness attached memory
had chosen Irene as her Cinderella for some reason. I
get the impression Mammy despised her, even hated her. So
(18:29):
in seventy one, I mean, does Renie go walk out
the door and not come back or what happens? She
always said when she turned eighteen she was going to leave.
When she said that was it's kind of like I'm
chasing my dreamer. I'm getting the funk out of here.
Um probably getting the funk out of here. We all
did well, we all got all enough to get out.
(18:50):
My mother signed me in the military to get me
into the Marine Corps. She used my files social security number.
I'm my D two fourteen. His number is here crossed
off physically in mind put on top of it. So
your mom was she was, They didn't fatten, used whatever
she could from people. That's the way she was. Did
(19:11):
I recall mean top fifteen year old kid? Yeah? What
about TORNI Yeah, she had her do it everything she was,
you know, let her back and called basically, what did
you what did you think at the time about ny
(19:32):
where she just took off. She did what she said
she was going to do. Eighteen she's screw you think
she's still alive. I'm open. I had no one here.
I have to remind myself as I get into this
with Rudy that all of the Luosa kids were at
one time sent away into foster care and orphanages. We
(19:54):
used lived in the same orphanage until I was like
eleven years old or just before. And how come because
your parents could home? You don't know. To my knowledge,
when I got out of the hospital, I went to
my first foster home straight out of the host's what
I'm told. I didn't know that back down and stuff.
I got a lot of day memories and stuff. But
(20:16):
I went from foster home foster home, I think it
was three different ones until I ended up in new orphanage.
And I only remember the united stairs with my two
sisters and we were all right. I'm told that they
were not put into foster care or orphanages, that the
state actually took them out of the home because Memy
(20:36):
could not care for them. How did you end up
back at home? I don't know. Wow, I don't know
there was child abuse going on in the orphan use
that I know him. I know for a fact it
was Bob in the same word, Bob wouldn't ended up
in Deep River with you. Uh. Deep River is a
(20:57):
solid hours drive south of the Ellington area. Bob and
Nathan being in the same orphanage, though, it means something
to me. When I look at the situation from a
psychological perspective, there is no doubt they two were abused.
Rudy stopped just short of confirming the unthinkable by not
(21:17):
wanting to get into it. I've heard this from many
different reputable sources, and the orphanage they were sent was
known to be an extremely abusive institution. This is the sixties,
mind you. Just recently another story came to light about
Bob the Rossa owning an ambulance. It was one of
(21:37):
those creepy types, more like a bloated station wagon, exactly
like the Ghostbusters echo one from the film, with the pointy,
finlike back fenders. The story alleged that Bob and Nathan,
in those days before Bob married Susan, supposedly sound proof
the inside back end of the vehicle so they could
(21:59):
allegedly pick up girls and violate them without being heard. Yeah,
insulated van or whatever that. Everybody says that my brother
Bob had him stuff was an all fifty Pontiac ambulance.
We toured that place down. The only interior that was
done was what was done as it was for an ambulance.
(22:19):
He did nothing to the thing. He drove over to
the dirt. Did he drive around town in it? Yeah?
Before our interview, I've been hearing about some seriously dark
behaviors among Bob, Nathan, and Irene. If anyone could confirm this,
it would be Rudy. What do you think there was
(22:39):
anything weird between Riney and Nathan, Ireny and Bob, Reeny
and Nathan. There might have been. Yeah, I wouldn't include
Bob it off because he was off with his buddies
and whatever. Rudy could not recall with any certainty what
Bob was doing at the time, mainly because they rarely
saw each other. Rudy had once pummeled Bob over a
(23:01):
dispute they were teens. Bob, however, realized Rudy was tougher
and was not going to take any ship, so he
stayed away after that. Nathan, on the other hand, didn't.
Rudy tells me about a time when he was with
his wife and Nathan one day, but I remember I
got out for something when you stopped at a car wash,
(23:23):
because his car was filthy from sitting under the tree,
hadn't add it that long, And I don't remember. There
was some conversation that he was talking to my wife,
and I'm sure he was putting a move because she
said that he made a pass like that he wanted
to run me over or something like that. He would
do that for her if you wanted, and stuff. So
he was the little nuts in the head. It was.
(23:45):
He was. He creepy. I was creepy. My mother sicked
the mommy one time because I wouldn't do if she wanted,
and I'd beat him up. And then if she sicked
my brother Bob on me one time and I'd beat
him up. But I was in thirteen fourteen years old.
If my sister was to have gotten hurt, which I
don't know, one way or another, I hopefully it didn't
(24:07):
happen that way. But if anybody was to have done something,
I hadn't blamed Junior before, I hadn't blame would by JR.
Rudy is referring to Nathan. In a quarter of a mile,
(24:36):
the destination is on your right. The answers in Irene
Rene Larrosa's disappearance, and perhaps some of the other cases
I'm looking into seem tied in some way to the
LaRosa family history. I'm back paining a visit to Tina Larrossa,
the niece of Irene Larrosa, who filed the missing person's report.
(25:00):
I inside her raised ranch style home. Tina's dining room
table has become her office. Papers and notes about all
the cases spread about my explice you got here out here. Tina,
like some of the relatives of the missing girls, has
turned herself into an armchair investigator. As we chat, a
(25:23):
name so familiar to me comes up, Lisa White. There's
a quite a few people that kind of connect her,
saying that he was kind of obsessed with Lisa White.
Nathan was they lived on before they moved to Pine
Street in Ellenton. They lived on Reagan Road over in
(25:46):
vernon Um, and so did Lisa White. She lit a
couple of houses down from them. Lisa White is the
thirteen year old girl who went missing as she presumably
hitchhiked home after visiting a friend's house in nineteen seventy four.
She lived on Reagan Road. True, but The fact that
Nathan LaRosa also lived on Reagan Road at the time
(26:09):
is a connection too important to ignore. Nathan was always
known to be kind of at the back of the house,
kind of staring at the kids playing, Lisa being one
of them. Um My aunt Debbie gives a report of
Lisa come into the house when her dog got hit
by a car. Her dog got hit, Lisa came to
the house said, you know, here's your dog. Tina claims
(26:31):
Nathan had a thing for Lisa and it kicked into
high gear after Lisa brought the dog over to the house. Well,
since then Nathan was like obsessed with her, would always
watch her. Nathan grew into an obese man. He rarely
showered or cleaned himself. A convicted pedophile, Nathan did hard
(26:55):
time from nineteen seventy six to nineteen seventy nine for
child rape. In nineteen eighty, Nathan moved to Florida to
live with his parents. He came back to the Tri
Town area in nine and moved in with his brother,
Bob lar Rosa, and died three years later while living
(27:15):
in an elderly home. When I first met Tina, I
knew she'd have a lot of information regarding unanswered questions
within the LaRosa family tragedies. I just didn't realize how
much she knew. For years, Tina's talked to family members,
reached out to acquaintances, went online, and started a ship
(27:37):
storm of social media about her aunt Irene's disappearance. After
sharing her plans to file a missing person report in
a Facebook post in two thousand seventeen, the year before
Bob died, she got a message from Bob Larrossa's Facebook account, Well,
I can start by this one. This is um August eleven,
(28:00):
two thousand fifteen. I was one of the people that
filed official police report. Those comments saying none were filed
were votefully incorrect. Listening to you read those texts, I
wouldn't say Bob was stupid. He uses words in there
that I was Bob's pitcher. You can see Bob's pitcher
(28:23):
in here. I was thinking the same thing. You know
why because row little dyslexic Doloro says, so Bob or
his Tina suspects someone else who was writing the message
for Bob was still trying to deflect attention away from
Irene's disappearance. Decades after she allegedly vanished. I have to
(28:46):
wonder why. What's more, I've searched Helen high Water. Bob
LaRosa never filed a missing person report on his sister.
That is a fact. Tina has always been aware of
her family's dark horses and hidden secrets, but things took
(29:06):
a serious turn in recent years when she started connecting
them to her aunt Irene's disappearance. There she was stealthily
connecting the dots and ultimately zeroing in on a family
friend who, after almost fifty years, has decided to inject
himself into these cases and start talking. Tina brings up
(29:30):
a difficult story she learned from someone close to this person,
one that also involves her uncle, Bob LaRosa. She says
to me, well, Bobby was a dangerous man that when
they were younger, they for just ha has They found
a girl and picked her up. She was walking down
the side of the road. They stuck a light bulb
(29:51):
up her rear end and propped her on the sidewalk.
Tina called the state police and told them about this incident.
She also spoke to several family members who verified the story.
A newspaper report backs up certain details, including the abduction
and the girl being left on the side of the road.
She was brutally wounded and ultimately died from her injuries,
(30:15):
turning the assault into a murder case. I'm not going
to mention the other man's name yet because I'm in
the process of reaching out to him. He deserves that privacy.
For now, I'll be referring to him as the witness.
Bob LaRosa and the witness were best friends. They've known
(30:37):
each other since grade school. At one time, they were
even brothers in law. Tina tells me she decided to
make contact with the witness in two thousand, eighteen years
after following the missing person report and becoming frustrated nothing
was being done. So I decided to call them and
played a little d Denzel in distress and you know
(31:00):
my aunt and I miss her, and you know, I
can't believe that nobody cares. And oh I love Gerane
RENI was wonderful. I dated her for a time, Okay, Um,
you know, her and Nathan had this weird thing, and
I think Nathan was hurt in her and I was like, okay,
(31:21):
But so we had gotten talking and I was asking
about Nathan and Bob hurting her um and if they did,
where would they put her? Hypothetically, Tina's spoken to the
witness on four different occasions. Those first few calls, they
talked a lot about Irene LaRosa, who she was in
(31:42):
the relationship between them. Then there came a point as
she was talking to the witness when Tina realized he
had vital information. There was enough said to lead her
to believe he wasn't just an innocent bystander. To some
of this, Tina says, the witness believes Nathan killed his
own sister, Irene LaRosa. Keep this in mind, though Nathan
(32:04):
went to prison for sexually abusing boys, still that does
not make it impossible for him to develop an affinity
for females, especially when talking about that ugly word incest.
Psychologically speaking, there is more at play with that scenario. Control, power, rage, jealousy,
(32:24):
gender would not matter. According to Tina, the witness began
talking about the water wells across the street from Crystal Lake.
He mentioned buried bodies. When she heard that, Tina called
the state police and asked them to get involved. This
explains why her last call with the witness was controlled,
(32:44):
meaning law enforcement sat by Tina's side and recorded it.
It was this call that tip cops off in two
thousand nineteen to begin that latest dig at the water
wells on the Wendell's property. So that was enough for me.
Since somebody you something, get over here. I want him
to tell you, guys what he told me, what happened.
(33:05):
I told you where what? Where they would have been?
The girls would have been if hypothetically, if Nathan hurt
them and put them somewhere, where would they be? And
he said, well, our four it was right here. That's
girls plural. According to the witness, Irene LaRosa and several
(33:27):
of the other missing girls are buried in an area
across from Crystal Lake, somewhere on or nearby the old
LaRosa property. Hello, Molarossa walks in as Tina and I
(33:48):
are talking. Remember mom, he's Bob and Susan Larrossa's youngest son.
He and Tina are cousins. As he takes a seat
across the dining table from me, Tina says something about
a well on the Wendell's property. I just explained to
him about the first time we talked. But then when
I put him on recording with the cops. He then said, no,
(34:12):
it's the a framed well up here the witness had
mentioned and a frame green colored roof during his last
call with Tina. On the window property, there are over
a dozen water wells scattered about forty six acres. One
of them is a fifteen foot deep eight by eight
(34:32):
foot well I think Jack and Jill type, with an
a framed green colored roof covering it. This is across
the road from where the state police once dug So
claimed that the girls were put in the a framed well. Yes,
he explained how to take a bar, open up the
(34:53):
well and then slide it back, and we have that
on recording. When Ken Wendell was tipped off by the
cop many years ago, he actually sent an underwater camera
down that a frame well. He searched the entire thing
and found nothing. What worries me, after spending twenty years
in the true crime game, is that if a person
of interest is talking about wells a crime scene bodies
(35:17):
being buried, as the witness has apparently been doing, my
instinct and experience tell me these clues are a diversion
that there are no bodies and wells the bodies are
somewhere else and the witnesses throwing off the scent. Yet,
why the hell would he involve himself all these years
later to begin with, Well back to the well, where
(35:40):
were We've been to that property and we did a
memorial there are true, As it turns out, moment Tina
are responsible for that mystery flower memorial that Ken Wendel
mentioned seeing during one of my last visits to the property.
It's the same spot where they believe they're aunt Irene
(36:00):
LaRosa and some of the other girls could be buried,
according to what the witness has been saying. So I
find it, you know what I mean, very hard to
believe they had never done anything to her, and yet
one couldn't have known where she was, why the other
one didn't. All this information from Tina and Mo leads
(36:21):
me directly into the center of that five point star.
Getting to this point in my investigation isn't as easy
as it sounds. It has been a long and emotionally
exhausting eleven year journey. I've run into dozens of false
leads and dead ends. All the suspects frequently named online
(36:43):
and the ones I've developed on my own have been
eliminated for a variety of reasons. Many of them police
have checked out, questioned, and let go of. It wasn't
until the witness began talking to Tina. On top of all,
I've learned over the last year that the pieces of
this disturbing puzzle I've been collecting finally seemed to fit.
(37:07):
I'm not a confident Bob and Nathan LaRosa are connected
to all the cases, but there's enough for me to
continue looking into that possibility. The witness is the only
one of the three men I am now focused on
who is still alive. I want to reach out to him,
but it has to be under my terms. In the
(37:43):
next episode of paper Ghosts, let me just tell you
does does a tarp behind him? It's a plastic tarp
and they thought that was interesting that yeah, oh yeah.
They held it up and they were they old. Sale
came over and had to look at it. And I've
seen a lot of brown stades on. We're worning if
it was blood or something on the airhood. She went
home to take a shower. Why I was getting her
(38:05):
stuff ready, and he come out completely naked and said,
you want to have a good time, come on in
the bedroom and how old were you at the time.
He got really mad at the long time and he said,
if you don't watch it, you're gonna end up like
your sister Jesus. Marian chose to see it helps us
out of grave for many Oh you know what I
(38:29):
think it is. Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced
by me and William Phelps, with help from producer Christina
Everett and sound editing by Pete Cardi from back Room Audio.
Special thanks to Abu Safar and Will Pearson from My
Heart Radio. The series theme number four four two is
(38:51):
written and performed by Tom Mooney and Thomas Phelps. For
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Paper Ghosts is a production of I Heart Radio. My
search for information in the missing girls cases, along with
the now confirmed murder of Susan LaRosa, is producing more
results than it ever has in previous years. All of
(00:23):
the cases have become like the five points of a star.
No matter how I draw it, each point directs me
right back to one of the others, And no matter
how much I try to rule him out, each point
draws a dotted line back to Bob LaRosa. The station
wagon he drove that suddenly disappeared, the khaki shirt and
(00:45):
pants uniform he always wore, his affinity for young girls,
his abusive marriage. I need to shift my focus on him,
to learn more about who he was in the life
he lived. I can't say for certain he's directly involved
in all the missing cases, but I get a sense
(01:05):
there are far more nefarious secrets buried deep within his
family that will help me find answers. Bob was one
of ten children in the LaRosa household. His parents, Nunzio Senor,
the father, and Memy the mother, were said to be
(01:27):
unable to control or take care of such a large family.
According to relatives, the couple lived in squalor and did
not watch their children because of this. It was the
late nineteen sixties when the States stepped in and separated
all ten LaRosa kids, two of them staying locally with
a foster family and eight of them sent to orphanages
(01:50):
and foster care further away. At some point, Mammy LaRosa
got the children back. The father, Nunzio Sr. Died in December.
The LaRosa family inhabited an entire plot of land which
held their main house and a camping trailer set up
(02:11):
in the backyard. It was on Pine Street, just across
the street from Crystal Lake, right on the border of
the property belonging to the Wendells, the couple you heard
back in episode one who are focused on digging up
their water wells. In ninety two, all the LaRosa kids,
mostly grown at this point, went their separate ways after
(02:35):
the entire family moved out of their Crystal Lake home.
The reason for their sudden departure I am almost certain
at this point it has something to do with what
happened the previous year. The Bob Larosa's sister previously on
(02:57):
Paper Ghosts. She was like, I always thought it was
an accident, and he just hit her. He hit her hard,
and my mom just felt like totally just fell And
I kept mommy, Mommy, wake up, Mommy, wake up, Mommy,
wake up. And my mom wasn't wasn't moving, you know,
like there was no twitching there was. My mom just
didn't move. My dad was bad with me. My dad
(03:21):
didn't stop touching because twelve, I know my dad Like
young girls, what did you see when you went there
the first time after she went missing? Describe what your
blood on the floor, on the wall, on the door,
down the stairs, big pool of it. She gave me
a petty knife to clean it up. My name is
(03:43):
and William Phelps. This is paper Ghosts, known to everyone
as Rainy. Irene LaRosa was the eighth LaRosa child to
be born. She had long brown hair feathered in wavy
(04:04):
She was just over five ft tall pounds, seemingly happy
and content. Ellington being a small town, it's no surprise
to learn that and Prentice, one of Susan Lerosa's sisters,
who you heard in the last episode, was best friends
with Bob Lerosa's sister Irene. While growing up, Helena and
(04:25):
I were best but we well, we loved the bus
to schools and that was like a half our ride
going to school and coming back, you know, we went.
They had to travel quite away. And she loves singing
and I love singing, and leaves to sing on the back.
Just seventeen years old, Irene sang at the Crystal Lake
(04:47):
Ballroom and around the Tritown area at local country and
western bars. Everyone said she was very talented, smart as
well with a little naivety, I would guess routed in rage.
We used to talk about how um, as soon as
she was ahead of me in school and she was
(05:09):
going to as soon as graduation hit, she was going
to go down to California and get a job and
get everything all set up. So as soon as I graduated,
I from joining us, and what what was her reason
for doing this? To get away from all of the
six Because we just couldn't spend it. The two of
(05:31):
us used to go crazy with everything that was going on,
and nothing ever seemed to get better, you know, you would,
We just couldn't get out of what was happening because
it was happening in our home. Um, she told me
(05:52):
how she had been raped, and I told her all
I had been, and so we kind of really connected.
Let me stop you from minute she told you she
was raped by whom by her brother, her brother um Nathan,
Irene and Bob Lerossa's other brother, Nathan sometimes went by
Nunzio or Jr. She was tired of it and I
(06:15):
were tired of it, and she was going to graduate
like that coming year when Irene suddenly stopped showing up
and kept asking one of the Larossa brothers where she
was after a week of not seeing her, and grew
terribly concerned. I was told by her brother that she
(06:38):
was gone, that she had run away, and in my mind,
I just said, because I'll go like thirteen, you know,
and I'm I'm going. Okay, Well, she had enough, she
couldn't wait. She went down, and she's going to send
for me. And I just kept waiting for her to
send for me that it never happened, and began asking
(06:58):
any one of the many laro U the siblings if
they knew where Irene went or if they had heard
anything from her. One of Irene's sisters would only say,
I miss her, nothing more. It was as if she
wanted to say something else but was afraid to, and
then asked Irene's mother memory, and I tried talking to
(07:20):
her about her, and she just said, that's she round,
Why that's her? Nobody knows anything. So let's get this straight.
A seventeen year old child runs away, is missing, or
whatever the case may be, and her mother does nothing,
files no police report, does not contact the newspapers, does
(07:44):
not query around town, beg anyone and everyone she can
for help. And the mom wasn't worried about going to
look for her. No oblar Rosa, I've been told by
some was the one who looked out for the others
(08:05):
in the family. I have a difficult time believing this.
Did Bob ever say anything about Rainey to you? No,
she was never brought up. Ever. It's like she dropped
off the face of the earth. And if you tried
to say anything to them about her, they didn't like that.
(08:28):
Here's the thing I know siblings of missing people. I
have interviewed family members of the missing all over this country.
I mean, look at Janice Pockets, Sister Lisa Whites, Susan Lerosis,
all of whom you've heard in previous episodes. I have
never ever met one sibling of a missing person who
(08:48):
was not consumed with the idea of doing anything here
she could define that person. There seemed to be things
here within Irene's disappearance that are being kept hidden, buried,
secrets beyond the incestuous behavior I need to uncover. So
I dig deeper, start asking my law enforcement in LaRosa
(09:11):
family contacts questions, and I learned that Irene l Rosa's
disappearance was reported by a family member in two thousand sixteen,
forty five years after she was last heard from her scene.
Turns out Irene LaRosa is the missing girl the state
(09:31):
police are searching for on the Window property across the
street from Crystal Lake. Recently, at the Window's property, the
police were acting on a tip that a body was
buried in the area. I'm still trying to find out
more about that tip, most importantly who left it. For now, however,
(09:53):
I found the person who filed Irene's missing person report
all these years later. Good Morning. Tina LaRosa is Irene
Renie Larrosa's niece, and in two thousand sixteen, it was
Tina who filed the missing person report on her aunt.
(10:14):
As luck would have it, I was connected to Tina
through Mary angle Breck, the sister of Jane's Pocket who
you heard in episode one. The two initially met online
and sparked up a friendship after bonding through similar tragedies.
Since filing the report, Tina has been obsessed with pushing
police to look at Irene l Rosa's case, but up
(10:35):
until now she's not heard much from them. Tina is
a former hospice worker in her late forties living in Massachusetts.
She has a presence about her, a determination. She's been
on a crusade, very vocal and critical of state police's
handling of her aunt's case, all of which she airs
on Facebook. I have to be careful with Tina, and
(10:57):
I've discussed my concerns with her because she is to
publish certain sensitive information on social media. Part of it
is the pain of loss, part of it the idea
of not knowing. I get it. Not everyone appreciates Tina's
way of doing things, but I'm interested in information, not optics.
(11:20):
Tina and I met on a human July day across
the street from Crystal Lake, in the area where the
LaRosa family lived. Pine Tree. This is the only thing
that still exists from their house is that big pine
tree right there. The house she's talking about, is the
former LaRosa property is still there from like the bricks
from where the foundation sat, from the old house right
(11:42):
here and all these bushes over here is where Nathan's
camper would have sat, and it would have sat against
the road, so the door would have been facing towards
the wood. I have not been able to find any
law enforcement paper trail connected to Irene Larosa's disappearance. I've
asked all my sources. Nobody seems to know much about
(12:03):
the case. When you told the police about this because
you filed a miscent person was born, And what did
they tell you when you filed with They didn't tell
me much. They weren't very helpful, Um were they interested?
(12:23):
In fourteen years after Irene Laros had disappeared, the Hartford
Current wrote about it. That article reported that Irene left
home when she was fifteen, returning for short periods of
time and then leaving again, and that she was seeing
a man named Bob who was a teacher and lived
in a nearby town. He was nine years her senior.
(12:47):
And then this friends told one of her sisters that
Irene had a son. Her sister, however, was unable to
confirm it. A source who married into the LaRosa A
family has told me. After Irene went missing, there was
talk that she was living ninety minutes south in Fairfield County,
(13:07):
Connecticut and had a son. I have trouble believing this.
I had my private investigator look into it. He found nothing.
Law enforcement could not verify the information. So you have
the and I'm going to say this kind of rudely,
the more intelligent ones saying oh, she's missing, and then
(13:28):
you have kind of grow the ones over here that
are saying she's been We've seen her, We've heard from her.
Irene could still be alive. She was a child, just
seventeen and nineteen seventy one. If all I've heard about
her being abused by her brother Nathan is true, there
was just cause and very good reason for her to
(13:51):
leave on her own. The article that I had the
other day was about my aunt Vickie on how she
disappeared at the age of seventeen and my memy certain
us took the search dogs out after her went to court.
You know what I mean. She was seventeen years old
and my memo went Helen furious on her. It was
in nineteen sixty six, and one of Irene's older sisters, Vicky,
(14:14):
also went missing. Their mother Memo sent out the troops
when Vicky vanished, reaching out to reporters and not stopping
until Vicky was found not long after. Apparently she tried
to skip town because of some trouble she'd gotten into.
But when Ny a couple of years later, goes nothing,
(14:34):
According to Tina, there were no reporters, no search parties,
no one concerned about Irene's disappearance. It was as if
Irene never existed in the first place. Irene l Rosa's brother,
(15:01):
Ruddy Larossa, was there in the thick of it all
when Irene went missing in nineteen seventy one. Rudy is direct,
sharp wooded, and strikes me as a guy who does
not like to speculate or bullshit. It either is or
it isn't. I immediately relate to Rudy in this regard.
In recent years, when his daughter Tina began her own
(15:23):
investigation into her aunt's disappearance, Rudy stepped up and, however
begrudgingly decided to answer Tina's tough questions about the Larrossa
family history, the good, the bad, and very ugly Rudy.
Thank you Rudy for coming nice to meet man. After
(15:49):
several requests, Rudy finally agreed to meet with me over
the summer. As I take on a map of Crystal Lake,
I notice he looks an awful lot like his brother's
Bob and Nathan, just a bit older and greyer, with
less hair. He has that pudgy, familiar LaRosa face. I says,
this is about where our house was. The well was
(16:10):
over here because we used to build a fort. We
burnt it down a couple of three times or so.
There are kids. We put a fire in here, too
close to the wall. I've heard from a few sources
there was a fort, or in one case, a bunker.
Brothers Bob and Nathan LaRosa built something underground and hidden,
very private, very isolated, accessible by only those who knew
(16:34):
it was there. Now, working in true crime, when we
hear the word bunker, as you might be thinking right now,
we assumed dark evil activity, usually involving sick, sadistic sexual
crimes committed against women. So I listened as Rudy explains
exactly where the bunker was and begin to understand a
(16:54):
few things I have been vague on up to this
point just to submit is there and there's a cutout
in the cement where they're because used to open the
door and step in or whatever, because we used to
go in that way and crawl to the to the
back corner hatch on the floor that we built, and
that's how we got into the fort, the only way in,
(17:16):
the only way out. Rudy was closest to Bob and Irene.
And Irene, he tells me, was their mother, Memy's slave child.
My mother had her thumb on her she couldn't move,
and my mother's do this, do that? Do this? Do that?
As we chat about Memo and Irene, I begin to
(17:37):
understand something important in Irene's case. The Rosa home sat
on a rise, a big bay window in the small
dining area overlooking Crystal Lake. In front of that window
was a table and chair where an unkempt and severely
obese Memy would sit and direct the household. According to Rudy,
(17:58):
mem A squawked and screamed at the children and rarely
left that chair. She seemed to have an infinity to
Nathan in his needs. Think of the Cinderella story minus
the step sisters, but with all the wickedness attached memory
had chosen Irene as her Cinderella for some reason. I
get the impression Mammy despised her, even hated her. So
(18:29):
in seventy one, I mean, does Renie go walk out
the door and not come back or what happens? She
always said when she turned eighteen she was going to leave.
When she said that was it's kind of like I'm
chasing my dreamer. I'm getting the funk out of here.
Um probably getting the funk out of here. We all
did well, we all got all enough to get out.
(18:50):
My mother signed me in the military to get me
into the Marine Corps. She used my files social security number.
I'm my D two fourteen. His number is here crossed
off physically in mind put on top of it. So
your mom was she was, They didn't fatten, used whatever
she could from people. That's the way she was. Did
(19:11):
I recall mean top fifteen year old kid? Yeah? What
about TORNI Yeah, she had her do it everything she was,
you know, let her back and called basically, what did
you what did you think at the time about ny
(19:32):
where she just took off. She did what she said
she was going to do. Eighteen she's screw you think
she's still alive. I'm open. I had no one here.
I have to remind myself as I get into this
with Rudy that all of the Luosa kids were at
one time sent away into foster care and orphanages. We
(19:54):
used lived in the same orphanage until I was like
eleven years old or just before. And how come because
your parents could home? You don't know. To my knowledge,
when I got out of the hospital, I went to
my first foster home straight out of the host's what
I'm told. I didn't know that back down and stuff.
I got a lot of day memories and stuff. But
(20:16):
I went from foster home foster home, I think it
was three different ones until I ended up in new orphanage.
And I only remember the united stairs with my two
sisters and we were all right. I'm told that they
were not put into foster care or orphanages, that the
state actually took them out of the home because Memy
(20:36):
could not care for them. How did you end up
back at home? I don't know. Wow, I don't know
there was child abuse going on in the orphan use
that I know him. I know for a fact it
was Bob in the same word, Bob wouldn't ended up
in Deep River with you. Uh. Deep River is a
(20:57):
solid hours drive south of the Ellington area. Bob and
Nathan being in the same orphanage, though, it means something
to me. When I look at the situation from a
psychological perspective, there is no doubt they two were abused.
Rudy stopped just short of confirming the unthinkable by not
(21:17):
wanting to get into it. I've heard this from many
different reputable sources, and the orphanage they were sent was
known to be an extremely abusive institution. This is the sixties,
mind you. Just recently another story came to light about
Bob the Rossa owning an ambulance. It was one of
(21:37):
those creepy types, more like a bloated station wagon, exactly
like the Ghostbusters echo one from the film, with the pointy,
finlike back fenders. The story alleged that Bob and Nathan,
in those days before Bob married Susan, supposedly sound proof
the inside back end of the vehicle so they could
(21:59):
allegedly pick up girls and violate them without being heard. Yeah,
insulated van or whatever that. Everybody says that my brother
Bob had him stuff was an all fifty Pontiac ambulance.
We toured that place down. The only interior that was
done was what was done as it was for an ambulance.
(22:19):
He did nothing to the thing. He drove over to
the dirt. Did he drive around town in it? Yeah?
Before our interview, I've been hearing about some seriously dark
behaviors among Bob, Nathan, and Irene. If anyone could confirm this,
it would be Rudy. What do you think there was
(22:39):
anything weird between Riney and Nathan, Ireny and Bob, Reeny
and Nathan. There might have been. Yeah, I wouldn't include
Bob it off because he was off with his buddies
and whatever. Rudy could not recall with any certainty what
Bob was doing at the time, mainly because they rarely
saw each other. Rudy had once pummeled Bob over a
(23:01):
dispute they were teens. Bob, however, realized Rudy was tougher
and was not going to take any ship, so he
stayed away after that. Nathan, on the other hand, didn't.
Rudy tells me about a time when he was with
his wife and Nathan one day, but I remember I
got out for something when you stopped at a car wash,
(23:23):
because his car was filthy from sitting under the tree,
hadn't add it that long, And I don't remember. There
was some conversation that he was talking to my wife,
and I'm sure he was putting a move because she
said that he made a pass like that he wanted
to run me over or something like that. He would
do that for her if you wanted, and stuff. So
he was the little nuts in the head. It was.
(23:45):
He was. He creepy. I was creepy. My mother sicked
the mommy one time because I wouldn't do if she wanted,
and I'd beat him up. And then if she sicked
my brother Bob on me one time and I'd beat
him up. But I was in thirteen fourteen years old.
If my sister was to have gotten hurt, which I
don't know, one way or another, I hopefully it didn't
(24:07):
happen that way. But if anybody was to have done something,
I hadn't blamed Junior before, I hadn't blame would by JR.
Rudy is referring to Nathan. In a quarter of a mile,
(24:36):
the destination is on your right. The answers in Irene
Rene Larrosa's disappearance, and perhaps some of the other cases
I'm looking into seem tied in some way to the
LaRosa family history. I'm back paining a visit to Tina Larrossa,
the niece of Irene Larrosa, who filed the missing person's report.
(25:00):
I inside her raised ranch style home. Tina's dining room
table has become her office. Papers and notes about all
the cases spread about my explice you got here out here. Tina,
like some of the relatives of the missing girls, has
turned herself into an armchair investigator. As we chat, a
(25:23):
name so familiar to me comes up, Lisa White. There's
a quite a few people that kind of connect her,
saying that he was kind of obsessed with Lisa White.
Nathan was they lived on before they moved to Pine
Street in Ellenton. They lived on Reagan Road over in
(25:46):
vernon Um, and so did Lisa White. She lit a
couple of houses down from them. Lisa White is the
thirteen year old girl who went missing as she presumably
hitchhiked home after visiting a friend's house in nineteen seventy four.
She lived on Reagan Road. True, but The fact that
Nathan LaRosa also lived on Reagan Road at the time
(26:09):
is a connection too important to ignore. Nathan was always
known to be kind of at the back of the house,
kind of staring at the kids playing, Lisa being one
of them. Um My aunt Debbie gives a report of
Lisa come into the house when her dog got hit
by a car. Her dog got hit, Lisa came to
the house said, you know, here's your dog. Tina claims
(26:31):
Nathan had a thing for Lisa and it kicked into
high gear after Lisa brought the dog over to the house. Well,
since then Nathan was like obsessed with her, would always
watch her. Nathan grew into an obese man. He rarely
showered or cleaned himself. A convicted pedophile, Nathan did hard
(26:55):
time from nineteen seventy six to nineteen seventy nine for
child rape. In nineteen eighty, Nathan moved to Florida to
live with his parents. He came back to the Tri
Town area in nine and moved in with his brother,
Bob lar Rosa, and died three years later while living
(27:15):
in an elderly home. When I first met Tina, I
knew she'd have a lot of information regarding unanswered questions
within the LaRosa family tragedies. I just didn't realize how
much she knew. For years, Tina's talked to family members,
reached out to acquaintances, went online, and started a ship
(27:37):
storm of social media about her aunt Irene's disappearance. After
sharing her plans to file a missing person report in
a Facebook post in two thousand seventeen, the year before
Bob died, she got a message from Bob Larrossa's Facebook account, Well,
I can start by this one. This is um August eleven,
(28:00):
two thousand fifteen. I was one of the people that
filed official police report. Those comments saying none were filed
were votefully incorrect. Listening to you read those texts, I
wouldn't say Bob was stupid. He uses words in there
that I was Bob's pitcher. You can see Bob's pitcher
(28:23):
in here. I was thinking the same thing. You know
why because row little dyslexic Doloro says, so Bob or
his Tina suspects someone else who was writing the message
for Bob was still trying to deflect attention away from
Irene's disappearance. Decades after she allegedly vanished. I have to
(28:46):
wonder why. What's more, I've searched Helen high Water. Bob
LaRosa never filed a missing person report on his sister.
That is a fact. Tina has always been aware of
her family's dark horses and hidden secrets, but things took
(29:06):
a serious turn in recent years when she started connecting
them to her aunt Irene's disappearance. There she was stealthily
connecting the dots and ultimately zeroing in on a family
friend who, after almost fifty years, has decided to inject
himself into these cases and start talking. Tina brings up
(29:30):
a difficult story she learned from someone close to this person,
one that also involves her uncle, Bob LaRosa. She says
to me, well, Bobby was a dangerous man that when
they were younger, they for just ha has They found
a girl and picked her up. She was walking down
the side of the road. They stuck a light bulb
(29:51):
up her rear end and propped her on the sidewalk.
Tina called the state police and told them about this incident.
She also spoke to several family members who verified the story.
A newspaper report backs up certain details, including the abduction
and the girl being left on the side of the road.
She was brutally wounded and ultimately died from her injuries,
(30:15):
turning the assault into a murder case. I'm not going
to mention the other man's name yet because I'm in
the process of reaching out to him. He deserves that privacy.
For now, I'll be referring to him as the witness.
Bob LaRosa and the witness were best friends. They've known
(30:37):
each other since grade school. At one time, they were
even brothers in law. Tina tells me she decided to
make contact with the witness in two thousand, eighteen years
after following the missing person report and becoming frustrated nothing
was being done. So I decided to call them and
played a little d Denzel in distress and you know
(31:00):
my aunt and I miss her, and you know, I
can't believe that nobody cares. And oh I love Gerane
RENI was wonderful. I dated her for a time, Okay, Um,
you know, her and Nathan had this weird thing, and
I think Nathan was hurt in her and I was like, okay,
(31:21):
But so we had gotten talking and I was asking
about Nathan and Bob hurting her um and if they did,
where would they put her? Hypothetically, Tina's spoken to the
witness on four different occasions. Those first few calls, they
talked a lot about Irene LaRosa, who she was in
(31:42):
the relationship between them. Then there came a point as
she was talking to the witness when Tina realized he
had vital information. There was enough said to lead her
to believe he wasn't just an innocent bystander. To some
of this, Tina says, the witness believes Nathan killed his
own sister, Irene LaRosa. Keep this in mind, though Nathan
(32:04):
went to prison for sexually abusing boys, still that does
not make it impossible for him to develop an affinity
for females, especially when talking about that ugly word incest.
Psychologically speaking, there is more at play with that scenario. Control, power, rage, jealousy,
(32:24):
gender would not matter. According to Tina, the witness began
talking about the water wells across the street from Crystal Lake.
He mentioned buried bodies. When she heard that, Tina called
the state police and asked them to get involved. This
explains why her last call with the witness was controlled,
(32:44):
meaning law enforcement sat by Tina's side and recorded it.
It was this call that tip cops off in two
thousand nineteen to begin that latest dig at the water
wells on the Wendell's property. So that was enough for me.
Since somebody you something, get over here. I want him
to tell you, guys what he told me, what happened.
(33:05):
I told you where what? Where they would have been?
The girls would have been if hypothetically, if Nathan hurt
them and put them somewhere, where would they be? And
he said, well, our four it was right here. That's
girls plural. According to the witness, Irene LaRosa and several
(33:27):
of the other missing girls are buried in an area
across from Crystal Lake, somewhere on or nearby the old
LaRosa property. Hello, Molarossa walks in as Tina and I
(33:48):
are talking. Remember mom, he's Bob and Susan Larrossa's youngest son.
He and Tina are cousins. As he takes a seat
across the dining table from me, Tina says something about
a well on the Wendell's property. I just explained to
him about the first time we talked. But then when
I put him on recording with the cops. He then said, no,
(34:12):
it's the a framed well up here the witness had
mentioned and a frame green colored roof during his last
call with Tina. On the window property, there are over
a dozen water wells scattered about forty six acres. One
of them is a fifteen foot deep eight by eight
(34:32):
foot well I think Jack and Jill type, with an
a framed green colored roof covering it. This is across
the road from where the state police once dug So
claimed that the girls were put in the a framed well. Yes,
he explained how to take a bar, open up the
(34:53):
well and then slide it back, and we have that
on recording. When Ken Wendell was tipped off by the
cop many years ago, he actually sent an underwater camera
down that a frame well. He searched the entire thing
and found nothing. What worries me, after spending twenty years
in the true crime game, is that if a person
of interest is talking about wells a crime scene bodies
(35:17):
being buried, as the witness has apparently been doing, my
instinct and experience tell me these clues are a diversion
that there are no bodies and wells the bodies are
somewhere else and the witnesses throwing off the scent. Yet,
why the hell would he involve himself all these years
later to begin with, Well back to the well, where
(35:40):
were We've been to that property and we did a
memorial there are true, As it turns out, moment Tina
are responsible for that mystery flower memorial that Ken Wendel
mentioned seeing during one of my last visits to the property.
It's the same spot where they believe they're aunt Irene
(36:00):
LaRosa and some of the other girls could be buried,
according to what the witness has been saying. So I
find it, you know what I mean, very hard to
believe they had never done anything to her, and yet
one couldn't have known where she was, why the other
one didn't. All this information from Tina and Mo leads
(36:21):
me directly into the center of that five point star.
Getting to this point in my investigation isn't as easy
as it sounds. It has been a long and emotionally
exhausting eleven year journey. I've run into dozens of false
leads and dead ends. All the suspects frequently named online
(36:43):
and the ones I've developed on my own have been
eliminated for a variety of reasons. Many of them police
have checked out, questioned, and let go of. It wasn't
until the witness began talking to Tina. On top of all,
I've learned over the last year that the pieces of
this disturbing puzzle I've been collecting finally seemed to fit.
(37:07):
I'm not a confident Bob and Nathan LaRosa are connected
to all the cases, but there's enough for me to
continue looking into that possibility. The witness is the only
one of the three men I am now focused on
who is still alive. I want to reach out to him,
but it has to be under my terms. In the
(37:43):
next episode of paper Ghosts, let me just tell you
does does a tarp behind him? It's a plastic tarp
and they thought that was interesting that yeah, oh yeah.
They held it up and they were they old. Sale
came over and had to look at it. And I've
seen a lot of brown stades on. We're worning if
it was blood or something on the airhood. She went
home to take a shower. Why I was getting her
(38:05):
stuff ready, and he come out completely naked and said,
you want to have a good time, come on in
the bedroom and how old were you at the time.
He got really mad at the long time and he said,
if you don't watch it, you're gonna end up like
your sister Jesus. Marian chose to see it helps us
out of grave for many Oh you know what I
(38:29):
think it is. Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced
by me and William Phelps, with help from producer Christina
Everett and sound editing by Pete Cardi from back Room Audio.
Special thanks to Abu Safar and Will Pearson from My
Heart Radio. The series theme number four four two is
(38:51):
written and performed by Tom Mooney and Thomas Phelps. For
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
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