October 12, 2023 • 23 mins
It’s been 30 years since Nancy Clark and her friends graduated from high school leaving behind a legacy of horror. It’s also been three decades of quiet in Mt. Pine. When they all return to say goodbye to Nancy’s mother, a fresh wave of violence starts again. Nancy and her friends start to question: are they the curse?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This series is inspired by true events. The stories you're
about to hear are fictional, and so are the characters
who are played by actors. In the late summer of
nineteen eighty seven, days after escape convict Stephen Hartford is
captured and sent back to prison, my friends and I
(00:23):
leave for our first year at college. We're so excited
to go and have a fresh start, but putting in
the past four years of tragedies behind us isn't easy.
Tatiana remembers that time pretty clearly.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
All of the murders that happened in Mount Pine from
our freshman year through our senior year changed us radically.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I mean really, or at least they changed me.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I mean, I moved to New York City for art school,
and my parents were not thrilled about it. They bought
me mace for my key chain, they signed me up
for self defense classes, and in their minds, New York
work was way more terrifying than Mount Pine. I wasn't
so sure about that.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah, I remember that first semester at college. I had
a night class and I actually wrote this in my journal. Here,
I'll read it. I wrote, I'm scared walking through the
quad on Wednesday nights, I'm constantly looking over my shoulder,
preparing myself to be attacked.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Maybe I should drop the class.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
I was studying fashion merchandising at school and enjoying my freedom,
maybe a little too much. I actually went wild, if
I'm being honest, I was drinking a lot and dating
a lot, if that's what you even call that. And now,
looking back, I think I was trying to drown my
sadness and my pain from all those years.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, we all had our ways of coping. I tried
to do the long distance thing with my high school
boyfriend Ethan, but that ends up fizzling out. I throw
myself into my classes, and the first few months we
were away, I'd call home and my parents would say
everything in Mount Pine seemed to have calmed down. Not
a single murder, suicide, or freak accident for thirty years.
(02:16):
It seemed as if the curse or whatever it was,
had been lifted or simply vanished. Thirty years of peace
and quiet. Mount Pine became the idyllic town it was
always meant to be, until it wasn't, and terror reigned
again like a hibernating bear. A thirty year hibernation the
(02:38):
Curse woke up and the murders started again. I'm Nancy Clark.
This is The Murder Years, Episode eight.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
The Curse.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
So back to college for a minute. My group of
friends continues on with our college studies. I focus on school.
I love my communication classes a lot.
Speaker 6 (03:08):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
I thought I.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Would go on to be an interviewer of some kind,
maybe on a show like Entertainment Tonight or maybe even
Sixty Minutes. But I eventually find my niche as a
magazine contributor and end up traveling around the country in
search of good stories. Tatiana studies art in New York
and after a few years moves back to Mount Pine.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I learned so much, and living in New York was
my real education. Eventually I graduated, but after a few
years of waiting tables and doing the struggling artist thing,
I moved out of the city. Yeah, I got married.
I started teaching art at our local community college.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Lauren goes to school in Dallas. Then after graduation, relocates
to Houston.
Speaker 7 (03:56):
Marketing, and then I ended up getting a job at
this high end hotel spot worked my way up to manager.
I like making people feel good. I guess I never
could have imagined ending up there, but I really love it.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Carla eventually graduates with a degree in sociology.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
The highlight of my college years was meeting the guy
who would become my husband. Shortly after graduation, we got married,
then started having kids. Then we moved back to Mount
Pine in twenty twenty four. Boys, yeah, oh, no joke.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
They were a lot of work.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Once they were all in school and I had my
days free, I went to work at a nonprofit, then
decided to go back to school and become a paralegal.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Melanie also ends up back in Mount Pine.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
I studied fashion merchandising, but you kind of have to
live in New York to make a real go of
that career, and so I moved back to Mount Pine
to be closer to my family.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
So we're all living our lives, and then in twenty twelve,
Mount Pine calls me back. My mom is diagnosed with
cancer and needs me to come home. We had already
lost my dad back in twenty ten. That was awful,
so of course I drop everything and come home to
take care of her.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
It was good to have you back in town.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
You'd been back for visits over the years, but when
you moved back. I remember how shocked you were at
how big Mount Pine and the surrounding areas had become.
We had new housing developments, new shopping centers, tons of
new restaurants.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
I mean we even got a sushi please.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
Oh wow. The population exploded, like tripled. And while I
missed the small town feel of the Mount Pine that
we all grew up in, it was kind of exciting
to see all the growth. I mean, new movie theaters,
new boutiques, the Bowling Alley was remodeled.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So Melanie, Carla and I are busy, but we see
each other when we can, and before you know it,
ten years has passed. It's twenty twenty two and my
mom finally succumbs to cancer. All of the girls come
back for her funeral, and it means so much to me.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
It was just so sad. I loved your mom.
Speaker 7 (06:21):
No one can prepare you for how much it hurts
to lose a parent. We were all happy to have
each other no matter what.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
So I plan on leaving right after the funeral, but strangely,
something tells me not to go just yet. It's the
first time the five of us have been together since
we left Mount Pine for College. And the next day.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
The woman's body has been found in the woods behind
Mount Pine Community College.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
And a week after that.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
A gruesome discovery in a north Side home.
Speaker 8 (07:00):
And ten days after that, I'm at the scene of
yet another murder.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
It's deja vu all over again. The five of us
are devastated by the news. More murder, multiple murders. This
hasn't happened in thirty years. We had a murder reprieve
(07:27):
for thirty years. I mean, is it us? Is it
the fact that the five of us are together? Is
that what sets the curse in motion? We all meet
at Millie's Diner to talk.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
We were sitting in Millie's, a cute little outdoor cafe
on Main Street, and the talk was all about the news.
Speaker 7 (07:47):
All of a sudden, a lot of sirens went by.
What was with all the sirens? What was happening?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I take up my phone and google Mount Pine a
headline two young children murdered by their deranged mother.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
I called my dad. He was a paramedic, he would
know what was going on.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
The sirens drown out Carla's voice on the phone. When
we all sit there in silence, watching the fear grow
on her face as she listens to her father. Eventually,
Carla hangs up the phone.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
What my dad told me was horrible, so so horrible.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
His unit was called that morning. The scene was gruesome.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
He said that a single mother killed her two young children.
Speaker 8 (08:38):
A single mother killed her two young children, and she
confessed it seems late the night before, while the children
were still asleep, the mother carried them to the garage,
put them in their car seats in the car, buckled
them in. Then she turned on the ignition, locked the doors,
(08:58):
and went into the house. Two hours later, she called
nine to one one. The children were three and four
years old. When I got there, the two boys were
already dead of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Carla's dad says the woman admitted to suffering from depression
after having her second child, and she just couldn't take
it anymore. And she did it because she believed her
kids would be better off dead than being raised by her.
I mean, I just don't have any words.
Speaker 7 (09:32):
I couldn't believe it. Two dead kids and their mom
is the one who killed them.
Speaker 5 (09:38):
I mean, today we know so much more about postpartum depression,
but back then not so much. I just remember wanting
to get the hell out of Mount Vine.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
It's been almost two months since my mom's funeral. My
plan was to leave Mount Pine and go back to work,
but now everything's changed in six weeks. There's a new
wave of evil and I want answers.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I need to know.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Can anything from the past help make sense or stop
what's happening today?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
I am determined to find out. I'm staying.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I couldn't believe what was happening to us again. It
took me back to high school. I felt it viscerally
and I.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Didn't like it. It was unsettling.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
And now that I had kids, my mama barons thinks
for coming out. I had to protect them at all costs.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
One case that absolutely blows my mind is one just
four blocks away from me. A forty something year old
guy strangles to death his long term girlfriend, shoots her
two dogs, then drives them one hundred miles away and
buries them all in a shallow.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
That story was so insane. I mean, that guy was
a monster. I think a hunter stumbled onto their shallow
grave a few weeks later, so I mean, they found
the bodies, but they couldn't find the killer.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
My friends and I are glued to our TVs, wondering
where the guy is and if cops are going to
catch him anytime soon.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
I was so relieved when they caught him. It was
actually crazy. One night, a driver saw him standing on
the edge of a bridge about to jump off. He
was about to commit suicide, but instead he was persuaded
to come down and cops arrested him without any problems.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Then two months later there are all these random attacks
on joggers around town. Three women are beaten and sexually assaulted.
The masked man attacks women early in the morning and
late in the evening.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I had to stop running.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
It was just to scary to be out there, and
it was upsetting because police couldn't catch this guy, even
with the descriptions the women were giving. I couldn't take
it anymore. Who is this guy living amongst us? Is
it the guy checking me out at the grocery store,
or the guy fixing my car, or is it my
(12:19):
next door neighbor. Nobody knew who it was or how
he kept getting away with it.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
We weren't safe anywhere.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Then he actually killed someone. He killed a young woman.
She was a kindergarten teacher. She had only moved him
out Pine about five months before he raped her, and
they finally got his DNA and it matched. He was
a married ex cop from Northgate, an ex cop.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And as if all this isn't enough, stuff keeps happening.
A woman poisons her husband, a sixteen year old girl
dies in a motorcycle accident, a firefighter accidentally runs over
and kills his young son, and the mayor's brother commits suicide.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
I was ready to close my business and move far,
far away.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, I'm almost ready to leave with Melanie. But again,
why why do we have so many tragedies in Mount Pine?
Why us can we chuck all of this up to
the influx of people like maybe they're they're the ones
who have brought these problems to our town. No, because
(13:39):
we had the same problems back when Mount Pine had
a population of just twelve thousand people. I ask some
of the detectives who talked with me about the cases
from the eighties, what's their take on this new wave
of crimes.
Speaker 6 (13:53):
Yeah, it was unbelievable. It was happening again, and they
were all so violent. You know. I was starting to
come around to agreeing with people that maybe Mount Pine
was cursed. I didn't believe mount Pine was cursed, I
(14:17):
mean cursed. How do you even prove.
Speaker 9 (14:20):
That bad things can and do happen all the time
in places like Mount Pine. I mean, it's often related
to poverty and drugs, but Mount Pine didn't really have
too big of a problem with either, So I don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
After this new string of crimes, I'm more convinced than
ever that we're cursed. We grew up hearing the story
that Mount Pine was supposedly built on sacred Native American land,
especially at where mister Billingsley lived in that new subdivision.
Remember he was our history teacher who was murdered by
his girlfriend's ex. If the stories are true, then he
(15:01):
lived right in the middle of that stolen sacred land.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
But are they true?
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Maybe it all links back to that, to some horrible
thing the towns founders did on the land, some horrible
thing we're still paying for today. Since I'm the person
who needs to know everything, I talked Tatiana into going
with me to the Mount Pine Library to help me
learn more about this.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
The libraryan told us where the Native American history and
culture books would be, and we just dug in.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
We PLoP ourselves down and start reading, and we learn
a lot like legend has it when a building is
built on an ancient Indian burial ground, the building and
its inhabitants get terrorized by vengeful spirits. Oh, and there's
this one tale I read about from Vermont. Some of
the details and dates vary. Some say it's from the
(15:53):
mid seventeen hundreds, others the late eighteen hundreds. In any case,
suppose the Brunswick Springs in Vermont are considered sacred and
have healing powers, And at one point the Abenaki tribe
took an injured soldier to the spring and the water
healed him. The soldier later returned because he wanted to
(16:16):
bottle the water and sell it, and he ended up
killing a Native American man and his child who tried
to stop him. Someone in the tribe then placed a
curse on the springs, and buildings in town gave way
to inexplicable forces of nature, like fires in sinkholes.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Here's another story we found. It happened in Charles Island
in Connecticut. Legend has that the land there is sacred
and anyone who tried to build on it would be cursed.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
We can't find anything official that says Mount Pine was
built on sacred Native American land or that it's cursed.
I wonder if the Mount Pine Historical Society has any
information that could be useful. I probably should have gone
there first. I wonder, am I about to learn that
all the bad stuff in Mount Pine was in his
payback for?
Speaker 6 (17:05):
What?
Speaker 1 (17:07):
For what the white man has done to the Native
Americans in the area. That would make perfect sense to me.
Speaker 10 (17:19):
I wanted to help in any way I could. There
were so many tragedies in town. I wanted to know
why they happened too.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Doris Winslow and I went to school together. Well, she
was two years older than I was today. She basically
is the Mount Pine Historical Society, which is run out
of the old Victorian house in the center of town. Thankfully,
she agrees to talk with me.
Speaker 10 (17:43):
So, knowing you were coming, I pulled what information I
could find, and there wasn't a lot, but this was
interesting to me. So there were these mound builders. They
were ancient Native Americans who built large mounds out of
the earth, and it's been said they lived and built
(18:04):
the mounds from the Great Lakes down to the Gulf
of Mexico and the Mississippi River all the way to
the Appalachian Mountains, and reportedly the earliest ones stayed back
to around it was three thousand BC, and many people
believe the mounds were used for a variety of reasons,
(18:27):
burials and ceremonies, religious ceremonies, and some were also used
for centers where government work was conducted. So anyway, there
were a lot of stories associated with these mounds. But
basically once the Europeans showed up, diseases and war followed,
(18:51):
and some believed that there was a fear of the
mounds and ghosts roamed them. And it seems like there
may have been some mounds in Mount Pine. So does
that mean there's any connection to all that's happened in
Mount Pine. I have absolutely no idea, but I do
(19:18):
find it interesting.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
I do too. Detective Peters is right, there's no way
to prove a curse.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
I wish there was. God.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Maybe we're the curse, us girls whenever we're together, or
maybe I'm the curse. It's like all the murders happen
when I was in high school, they stop when I
left for college. Then I return to town and so
do they, or maybe it's just a bunch of messed
up people doing truly messed up things. The sad fact
(19:55):
is that we may never know why these murders happened,
back then, why they're happening, and today all we want
is for to stop.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
But I don't care that you aren't able to solve
this mystery, this mystery that is Mount Pine.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I'm so glad you did this.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Even though it brought back a lot of painful memories,
it helped me to process and deal with it all.
I pushed a lot of my feelings down and this
helped give me closure.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Yeah, it helped me too.
Speaker 7 (20:31):
I think it helped all of us, and I hope
we were able to honor the memories of the victims.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
Yeah, our friends, classmates, our teacher, and our fellow Mount pineers.
So here's de Lisa Anderson, Don Cartwright, Daniel Walters, Charlotte Murphy,
Victoria Brown.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Mister Billingsley, Buster Charles, the brave women who were able
to outsmart that escaped convict, and the most recent victims
of Mount Pine.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
All we can do really is hope to put the
murder years past and present behind us. Mount Pine deserves
some peace. We all deserve some peace, but I'm not
sure we'll ever have it.
Speaker 8 (21:25):
I heard what you're doing, talking to people, digging up
all these old crimes. All I gotta say is you
better be careful because you might be next.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
The Murder Years is a production of a y R
Media and iHeartMedia. Executive producer Elisa Rosen for AYR Media
co executive producer Paulina Williams. Written by Leah Rothman, directed
by Michael Selditch. Original concept developed in partnership with Anne,
Margaret Johns and Greg Spring. Casting by Eisenberg Beans Casting
(22:21):
Senior Associate producer Eric Newman, Associate producer Jill Pushesnik. Editing
and sound design by Tristan Bankston. Mastering by Cameron Taggie,
Audio engineering by Matt Jacobson. Studio engineering by Jay Brannan.
Legal counsel for AYR Media. Jeanni Douglas, Executive producer for iHeartMedia,
(22:44):
Maya Howard. Performances for this episode by Gabrielle Carteris as
Nancy Clark, Kelly Deadman as Tatiana, or La Cassidy as Melanie,
Maricilda Garcia as Carla, April Adams as Hilda Dathan B.
Williams as Detective Peters H. Richard Greene as Detective Wallace,
(23:08):
Jesse Hendricks as Lauren Collins, John Ralston Craig as Reporter
Number one, John Ralston Craig as voicemail Caller Number one,
Lisil Copp as Doris Winslow, Tu d Rouch as Detective Thompson.
Eudonna Daniels as Reporter Number two. Additional voices by Alex Salem.
This series is inspired by true events. The stories you're
about to hear are fictional, and so are the characters
who are played by actors. In the late summer of
nineteen eighty seven, days after escape convict Stephen Hartford is
captured and sent back to prison, my friends and I
(00:23):
leave for our first year at college. We're so excited
to go and have a fresh start, but putting in
the past four years of tragedies behind us isn't easy.
Tatiana remembers that time pretty clearly.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
All of the murders that happened in Mount Pine from
our freshman year through our senior year changed us radically.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I mean really, or at least they changed me.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I mean, I moved to New York City for art school,
and my parents were not thrilled about it. They bought
me mace for my key chain, they signed me up
for self defense classes, and in their minds, New York
work was way more terrifying than Mount Pine. I wasn't
so sure about that.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah, I remember that first semester at college. I had
a night class and I actually wrote this in my journal. Here,
I'll read it. I wrote, I'm scared walking through the
quad on Wednesday nights, I'm constantly looking over my shoulder,
preparing myself to be attacked.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Maybe I should drop the class.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
I was studying fashion merchandising at school and enjoying my freedom,
maybe a little too much. I actually went wild, if
I'm being honest, I was drinking a lot and dating
a lot, if that's what you even call that. And now,
looking back, I think I was trying to drown my
sadness and my pain from all those years.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, we all had our ways of coping. I tried
to do the long distance thing with my high school
boyfriend Ethan, but that ends up fizzling out. I throw
myself into my classes, and the first few months we
were away, I'd call home and my parents would say
everything in Mount Pine seemed to have calmed down. Not
a single murder, suicide, or freak accident for thirty years.
(02:16):
It seemed as if the curse or whatever it was,
had been lifted or simply vanished. Thirty years of peace
and quiet. Mount Pine became the idyllic town it was
always meant to be, until it wasn't, and terror reigned
again like a hibernating bear. A thirty year hibernation the
(02:38):
Curse woke up and the murders started again. I'm Nancy Clark.
This is The Murder Years, Episode eight.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
The Curse.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
So back to college for a minute. My group of
friends continues on with our college studies. I focus on school.
I love my communication classes a lot.
Speaker 6 (03:08):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
I thought I.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Would go on to be an interviewer of some kind,
maybe on a show like Entertainment Tonight or maybe even
Sixty Minutes. But I eventually find my niche as a
magazine contributor and end up traveling around the country in
search of good stories. Tatiana studies art in New York
and after a few years moves back to Mount Pine.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I learned so much, and living in New York was
my real education. Eventually I graduated, but after a few
years of waiting tables and doing the struggling artist thing,
I moved out of the city. Yeah, I got married.
I started teaching art at our local community college.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Lauren goes to school in Dallas. Then after graduation, relocates
to Houston.
Speaker 7 (03:56):
Marketing, and then I ended up getting a job at
this high end hotel spot worked my way up to manager.
I like making people feel good. I guess I never
could have imagined ending up there, but I really love it.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Carla eventually graduates with a degree in sociology.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
The highlight of my college years was meeting the guy
who would become my husband. Shortly after graduation, we got married,
then started having kids. Then we moved back to Mount
Pine in twenty twenty four. Boys, yeah, oh, no joke.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
They were a lot of work.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Once they were all in school and I had my
days free, I went to work at a nonprofit, then
decided to go back to school and become a paralegal.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Melanie also ends up back in Mount Pine.
Speaker 5 (04:44):
I studied fashion merchandising, but you kind of have to
live in New York to make a real go of
that career, and so I moved back to Mount Pine
to be closer to my family.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
So we're all living our lives, and then in twenty twelve,
Mount Pine calls me back. My mom is diagnosed with
cancer and needs me to come home. We had already
lost my dad back in twenty ten. That was awful,
so of course I drop everything and come home to
take care of her.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
It was good to have you back in town.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
You'd been back for visits over the years, but when
you moved back. I remember how shocked you were at
how big Mount Pine and the surrounding areas had become.
We had new housing developments, new shopping centers, tons of
new restaurants.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
I mean we even got a sushi please.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
Oh wow. The population exploded, like tripled. And while I
missed the small town feel of the Mount Pine that
we all grew up in, it was kind of exciting
to see all the growth. I mean, new movie theaters,
new boutiques, the Bowling Alley was remodeled.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So Melanie, Carla and I are busy, but we see
each other when we can, and before you know it,
ten years has passed. It's twenty twenty two and my
mom finally succumbs to cancer. All of the girls come
back for her funeral, and it means so much to me.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
It was just so sad. I loved your mom.
Speaker 7 (06:21):
No one can prepare you for how much it hurts
to lose a parent. We were all happy to have
each other no matter what.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
So I plan on leaving right after the funeral, but strangely,
something tells me not to go just yet. It's the
first time the five of us have been together since
we left Mount Pine for College. And the next day.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
The woman's body has been found in the woods behind
Mount Pine Community College.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
And a week after that.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
A gruesome discovery in a north Side home.
Speaker 8 (07:00):
And ten days after that, I'm at the scene of
yet another murder.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
It's deja vu all over again. The five of us
are devastated by the news. More murder, multiple murders. This
hasn't happened in thirty years. We had a murder reprieve
(07:27):
for thirty years. I mean, is it us? Is it
the fact that the five of us are together? Is
that what sets the curse in motion? We all meet
at Millie's Diner to talk.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
We were sitting in Millie's, a cute little outdoor cafe
on Main Street, and the talk was all about the news.
Speaker 7 (07:47):
All of a sudden, a lot of sirens went by.
What was with all the sirens? What was happening?
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I take up my phone and google Mount Pine a
headline two young children murdered by their deranged mother.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
I called my dad. He was a paramedic, he would
know what was going on.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
The sirens drown out Carla's voice on the phone. When
we all sit there in silence, watching the fear grow
on her face as she listens to her father. Eventually,
Carla hangs up the phone.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
What my dad told me was horrible, so so horrible.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
His unit was called that morning. The scene was gruesome.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
He said that a single mother killed her two young children.
Speaker 8 (08:38):
A single mother killed her two young children, and she
confessed it seems late the night before, while the children
were still asleep, the mother carried them to the garage,
put them in their car seats in the car, buckled
them in. Then she turned on the ignition, locked the doors,
(08:58):
and went into the house. Two hours later, she called
nine to one one. The children were three and four
years old. When I got there, the two boys were
already dead of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Carla's dad says the woman admitted to suffering from depression
after having her second child, and she just couldn't take
it anymore. And she did it because she believed her
kids would be better off dead than being raised by her.
I mean, I just don't have any words.
Speaker 7 (09:32):
I couldn't believe it. Two dead kids and their mom
is the one who killed them.
Speaker 5 (09:38):
I mean, today we know so much more about postpartum depression,
but back then not so much. I just remember wanting
to get the hell out of Mount Vine.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
It's been almost two months since my mom's funeral. My
plan was to leave Mount Pine and go back to work,
but now everything's changed in six weeks. There's a new
wave of evil and I want answers.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I need to know.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Can anything from the past help make sense or stop
what's happening today?
Speaker 3 (10:11):
I am determined to find out. I'm staying.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
I couldn't believe what was happening to us again. It
took me back to high school. I felt it viscerally
and I.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Didn't like it. It was unsettling.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
And now that I had kids, my mama barons thinks
for coming out. I had to protect them at all costs.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
One case that absolutely blows my mind is one just
four blocks away from me. A forty something year old
guy strangles to death his long term girlfriend, shoots her
two dogs, then drives them one hundred miles away and
buries them all in a shallow.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
That story was so insane. I mean, that guy was
a monster. I think a hunter stumbled onto their shallow
grave a few weeks later, so I mean, they found
the bodies, but they couldn't find the killer.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
My friends and I are glued to our TVs, wondering
where the guy is and if cops are going to
catch him anytime soon.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
I was so relieved when they caught him. It was
actually crazy. One night, a driver saw him standing on
the edge of a bridge about to jump off. He
was about to commit suicide, but instead he was persuaded
to come down and cops arrested him without any problems.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Then two months later there are all these random attacks
on joggers around town. Three women are beaten and sexually assaulted.
The masked man attacks women early in the morning and
late in the evening.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I had to stop running.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
It was just to scary to be out there, and
it was upsetting because police couldn't catch this guy, even
with the descriptions the women were giving. I couldn't take
it anymore. Who is this guy living amongst us? Is
it the guy checking me out at the grocery store,
or the guy fixing my car, or is it my
(12:19):
next door neighbor. Nobody knew who it was or how
he kept getting away with it.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
We weren't safe anywhere.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
Then he actually killed someone. He killed a young woman.
She was a kindergarten teacher. She had only moved him
out Pine about five months before he raped her, and
they finally got his DNA and it matched. He was
a married ex cop from Northgate, an ex cop.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
And as if all this isn't enough, stuff keeps happening.
A woman poisons her husband, a sixteen year old girl
dies in a motorcycle accident, a firefighter accidentally runs over
and kills his young son, and the mayor's brother commits suicide.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
I was ready to close my business and move far,
far away.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, I'm almost ready to leave with Melanie. But again,
why why do we have so many tragedies in Mount Pine?
Why us can we chuck all of this up to
the influx of people like maybe they're they're the ones
who have brought these problems to our town. No, because
(13:39):
we had the same problems back when Mount Pine had
a population of just twelve thousand people. I ask some
of the detectives who talked with me about the cases
from the eighties, what's their take on this new wave
of crimes.
Speaker 6 (13:53):
Yeah, it was unbelievable. It was happening again, and they
were all so violent. You know. I was starting to
come around to agreeing with people that maybe Mount Pine
was cursed. I didn't believe mount Pine was cursed, I
(14:17):
mean cursed. How do you even prove.
Speaker 9 (14:20):
That bad things can and do happen all the time
in places like Mount Pine. I mean, it's often related
to poverty and drugs, but Mount Pine didn't really have
too big of a problem with either, So I don't know.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
After this new string of crimes, I'm more convinced than
ever that we're cursed. We grew up hearing the story
that Mount Pine was supposedly built on sacred Native American land,
especially at where mister Billingsley lived in that new subdivision.
Remember he was our history teacher who was murdered by
his girlfriend's ex. If the stories are true, then he
(15:01):
lived right in the middle of that stolen sacred land.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
But are they true?
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Maybe it all links back to that, to some horrible
thing the towns founders did on the land, some horrible
thing we're still paying for today. Since I'm the person
who needs to know everything, I talked Tatiana into going
with me to the Mount Pine Library to help me
learn more about this.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
The libraryan told us where the Native American history and
culture books would be, and we just dug in.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
We PLoP ourselves down and start reading, and we learn
a lot like legend has it when a building is
built on an ancient Indian burial ground, the building and
its inhabitants get terrorized by vengeful spirits. Oh, and there's
this one tale I read about from Vermont. Some of
the details and dates vary. Some say it's from the
(15:53):
mid seventeen hundreds, others the late eighteen hundreds. In any case,
suppose the Brunswick Springs in Vermont are considered sacred and
have healing powers, And at one point the Abenaki tribe
took an injured soldier to the spring and the water
healed him. The soldier later returned because he wanted to
(16:16):
bottle the water and sell it, and he ended up
killing a Native American man and his child who tried
to stop him. Someone in the tribe then placed a
curse on the springs, and buildings in town gave way
to inexplicable forces of nature, like fires in sinkholes.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Here's another story we found. It happened in Charles Island
in Connecticut. Legend has that the land there is sacred
and anyone who tried to build on it would be cursed.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
We can't find anything official that says Mount Pine was
built on sacred Native American land or that it's cursed.
I wonder if the Mount Pine Historical Society has any
information that could be useful. I probably should have gone
there first. I wonder, am I about to learn that
all the bad stuff in Mount Pine was in his
payback for?
Speaker 6 (17:05):
What?
Speaker 1 (17:07):
For what the white man has done to the Native
Americans in the area. That would make perfect sense to me.
Speaker 10 (17:19):
I wanted to help in any way I could. There
were so many tragedies in town. I wanted to know
why they happened too.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Doris Winslow and I went to school together. Well, she
was two years older than I was today. She basically
is the Mount Pine Historical Society, which is run out
of the old Victorian house in the center of town. Thankfully,
she agrees to talk with me.
Speaker 10 (17:43):
So, knowing you were coming, I pulled what information I
could find, and there wasn't a lot, but this was
interesting to me. So there were these mound builders. They
were ancient Native Americans who built large mounds out of
the earth, and it's been said they lived and built
(18:04):
the mounds from the Great Lakes down to the Gulf
of Mexico and the Mississippi River all the way to
the Appalachian Mountains, and reportedly the earliest ones stayed back
to around it was three thousand BC, and many people
believe the mounds were used for a variety of reasons,
(18:27):
burials and ceremonies, religious ceremonies, and some were also used
for centers where government work was conducted. So anyway, there
were a lot of stories associated with these mounds. But
basically once the Europeans showed up, diseases and war followed,
(18:51):
and some believed that there was a fear of the
mounds and ghosts roamed them. And it seems like there
may have been some mounds in Mount Pine. So does
that mean there's any connection to all that's happened in
Mount Pine. I have absolutely no idea, but I do
(19:18):
find it interesting.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
I do too. Detective Peters is right, there's no way
to prove a curse.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
I wish there was. God.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Maybe we're the curse, us girls whenever we're together, or
maybe I'm the curse. It's like all the murders happen
when I was in high school, they stop when I
left for college. Then I return to town and so
do they, or maybe it's just a bunch of messed
up people doing truly messed up things. The sad fact
(19:55):
is that we may never know why these murders happened,
back then, why they're happening, and today all we want
is for to stop.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
But I don't care that you aren't able to solve
this mystery, this mystery that is Mount Pine.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I'm so glad you did this.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Even though it brought back a lot of painful memories,
it helped me to process and deal with it all.
I pushed a lot of my feelings down and this
helped give me closure.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Yeah, it helped me too.
Speaker 7 (20:31):
I think it helped all of us, and I hope
we were able to honor the memories of the victims.
Speaker 5 (20:38):
Yeah, our friends, classmates, our teacher, and our fellow Mount pineers.
So here's de Lisa Anderson, Don Cartwright, Daniel Walters, Charlotte Murphy,
Victoria Brown.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Mister Billingsley, Buster Charles, the brave women who were able
to outsmart that escaped convict, and the most recent victims
of Mount Pine.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
All we can do really is hope to put the
murder years past and present behind us. Mount Pine deserves
some peace. We all deserve some peace, but I'm not
sure we'll ever have it.
Speaker 8 (21:25):
I heard what you're doing, talking to people, digging up
all these old crimes. All I gotta say is you
better be careful because you might be next.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
The Murder Years is a production of a y R
Media and iHeartMedia. Executive producer Elisa Rosen for AYR Media
co executive producer Paulina Williams. Written by Leah Rothman, directed
by Michael Selditch. Original concept developed in partnership with Anne,
Margaret Johns and Greg Spring. Casting by Eisenberg Beans Casting
(22:21):
Senior Associate producer Eric Newman, Associate producer Jill Pushesnik. Editing
and sound design by Tristan Bankston. Mastering by Cameron Taggie,
Audio engineering by Matt Jacobson. Studio engineering by Jay Brannan.
Legal counsel for AYR Media. Jeanni Douglas, Executive producer for iHeartMedia,
(22:44):
Maya Howard. Performances for this episode by Gabrielle Carteris as
Nancy Clark, Kelly Deadman as Tatiana, or La Cassidy as Melanie,
Maricilda Garcia as Carla, April Adams as Hilda Dathan B.
Williams as Detective Peters H. Richard Greene as Detective Wallace,
(23:08):
Jesse Hendricks as Lauren Collins, John Ralston Craig as Reporter
Number one, John Ralston Craig as voicemail Caller Number one,
Lisil Copp as Doris Winslow, Tu d Rouch as Detective Thompson.
Eudonna Daniels as Reporter Number two. Additional voices by Alex Salem.
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