Bonus: Andy Puglisi & The Failed Children of Massachusetts OI + Crime of the Truest Kind crossover (part two)

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
This is part two of a personal behind-the-scenes

(00:02):
conversation with me and AngelWood, host of Crime of the
Truest Kind.
and now true friend.
Angel had the idea for us tohave an informal
behind-the-scenes conversationabout what happened with Open
Investigation Season 1 and myresearch into Andy Puglisi's
disappearance and the otherunsolved cases of children in
Massachusetts.
Angel and I have become friendsand colleagues and work together

(00:24):
for families and loved ones ofmissing and murdered individuals
in Massachusetts.
Check it out and look for ussoon for Season 2.
Thanks for listening.
We want to make sure you knowabout our new YouTube channel,
Open Investigation Podcast.
We'll be hosting YouTube Live.
We'll also be sharing videos andarchival footage.
So make sure you check us out onYouTube, Open Investigation

(00:45):
Podcast.
See you soon.

SPEAKER_00 (00:49):
Well, hello.
My name is Angelle Wood, andthis is Crime of the Truest
Kind.
This is a true crime, localhistory, and storytelling
podcast.
My focus is advocacy.
supporting victims and familiesof violence and crime who've
suffered catastrophic loss.
I advocate for those people, allof those people.

(01:11):
I write about crimes, yes.
I set the scene, connect storythemes.
I talk about things thathappened here in Massachusetts,
in New England.
In this episode, we continue ourconversation about what we
learned after a boy went missingin the summer of 1976 in
Lawrence.
This episode is about murderedand missing children, about

(01:35):
child sexual abuse, CSA,attitudes about child
exploitation, systemic abuse,and we do talk about the role
the Catholic Church has playedin the serial abuse of children.
But it doesn't stop with theCatholic Church.
The systemic abuse inorganizations is on the
forefront of this particularsubject matter.

(01:58):
It is important for me to saythat If this is a subject matter
that might hurt you, impede yourown healing, or possibly offend
you, it may not be something youwish to listen to.
And this often goes unsaid thatthis podcast is not for
children.
Please listen with care.
Big thanks to newest patron,Holly Urule.

(02:22):
I do have merch that I willshare.
And also, I should tell you, I'mdoing a redesign for the look of
the show.
Thanks to all of our patrons,most especially to our superstar
EP, Lisa McColgan.
You also rule.
Thank you for those who came outto the Kodo show in Lowell,

(02:42):
Mass.
That turned into kind of afireside chat.
We have a way of doing that.
New show Thursday, February 20that Stoneham Public Library,
Stoneham, Massachusetts.
It is free.
There are no tickets.
I guess you just show up.

(03:03):
The second part of myconversation with Melanie
Perkins McLaughlin, who spentdecades researching the
disappearance of her childhoodfriend.
His name is Andy Puglisi.
He disappeared without a tracefrom a pool that had been filled
with children.
We return to the MerrimackValley, an area that was greatly

(03:23):
impacted by what was happeningto children, particularly in the
1970s.
And we talk about why thatperiod was so active, we'll call
it.
and what role Lawrence,Massachusetts had.
We returned to the stadiumprojects.
Summer 1976.
It's the bicentennial year.

(03:47):
We were celebrating thecountry's 200th anniversary.
Everything was eagles, libertybells, waving flags, and
commemorative coins.
They even sold bicentennialwallpaper.
It was both a time ofcelebration in America and for
tremendous marketingopportunities.

(04:10):
Ten-year-old Andy Puglisivanishes from the public pool.
Here's what we know about thatday and what came after.
But we also have much moreinformation about what came
before.
This is episode 78.

(04:31):
I continue my conversation withMelanie Perkins McLaughlin,
Andy's childhood friend wholived in the stadium projects
back in the summer of 1976.
Someone who decided the day Andydisappeared that she would one
day set out to discover whathappened to her friend.

(04:54):
And someone we owe a debt ofgratitude for the work that she
has done in researching Andy'scase, and making the documentary
Have You Seen Andy?
for uncovering the stories of somany other children like him and
from what we've learned inseason one of her podcast, Open
Investigation.
First, the city's origin story.

(05:19):
What is the history of the cityof Lawrence?
Do go back and listen to the twoprior episodes I did about Andy
Puglisi's case.
Start with those.
American merchants andphilanthropists, for whom
Groton's Lawrence Academy wasrenamed, Abbott and Amos
Lawrence.
They were instrumental in thedevelopment of the textile

(05:42):
industry here.
In 1845, the brothers foundedthe city of Lawrence as a
textile town, building a complexof mills producing cotton and
wool.
By the early 20th century, witha soaring population, close to
95,000, its highest ever.
The city was a world leader inthe production of textiles in

(06:03):
those massive mills.
They purchased the seven squaremiles of lands on either side of
the Merrimack River and calledon engineer Charles S.
Sturrow of the Sturrow family,for which Boston's Sturrow Drive
is named.
This Sturrow would design theindustrial city that would rival
all textile makers in the late19th century.

(06:25):
The city hadn't forgotten aboutthe Pemberton Mill collapse,
though.
An epic disaster.
On January 10, 1860, it crumbledunder the weight of poor design.
The weight of the workers andthe machinery, the floor
separated from the walls, andthe floors collapsing on top of
those workers.
Mostly women and children, likethe mill girls who came from

(06:48):
Maine and New Hampshire, andmany Irish immigrants who
escaped the potato famine.
a time known as the GreatHunger, where the Irish starved
to death.
Respect to my people, I got myDNA back, 48% Irish.
Hey, I'm working on it.

(07:09):
The rubble formed a pyramid 50feet high.
The Pemberton Mill disaster wasthe worst industrial accident in
Massachusetts history.
Rivaling the Triangle ShirtwaistFire, in Greenwich Village in
New York City some 50 yearslater.
In October of 1910, the Ayr Millopened.
Built to spin and dye yarn, thetreasured icon of Lawrence and

(07:33):
its contribution to theIndustrial Revolution, the Ayr
Mill Clock Tower is the largestmill clock in the world.
It stands as a legendarylandmark of the Merrimack
Valley, an absolute crown jewel,and I hope you think about its
history when you drive by now.
The air mill operated for thenext four decades, slowly

(07:55):
shrinking in production as millcompanies moved to the southern
states with cheaper labor.
By the early 20th century, andthat population swelling to
almost 95,000, the city ofLawrence was a world leader in
the production of textiles, in aworkforce that was run by those
hardworking people, work thatwas done in oppressive

(08:17):
conditions.
Didn't they learn from thePembertons?
Lawrence had the eighth highestdeath rate per 100 in the
country.
Lowell was the worst.
36 of every 100 mill workersdied by the time they were 25.
Many worked in extremely dampand humid space.
They were vulnerable totuberculosis, pneumonia.

(08:41):
Then, when their hours were cutand their pay was threatened,
the workers rose up for what isnow known as the Bread and Roses
Strike of 1912.
It was one of the mostsignificant labor movements in
U.S.
history.
It was a milestone for the city,for labor, and American
immigration.
On March 14th, the nine-weekstrike ended.

(09:04):
15,000 mill workers gathered inLawrence Common to agree to the
new terms.
The Bread and Roses strike wasnot just a victory for Lawrence
workers.
By the end of March, 275,000 NewEngland textile workers received
similar raises, and otherindustries also followed suit.

(09:26):
But its post-war history looksvery different.
The textile boom went bust inthe 1950s.
A once flourishing city was nowstruggling.
With a declining population thatwent from over 80,000 residents
in 1950...
to approximately 64,000residents by 1980.

(09:47):
Replacing the loss of those jobsproved very difficult.
Though Malden Mills, makers ofpolar fleece, run by the
Feuerstein family for decades,they remained in Lawrence, even
rebuilding, after a fire nearlydestroyed the entire mill in
December of 1995.
Aaron Feuerstein, who took overrunning the mill, for his family

(10:13):
was known as the mensch ofMalden Mills for caring for his
employees while they rebuilt.
Malden Mills would eventually besold in 2007, and the company
that bought it left Lawrence in2015.
And today, the city celebratestheir place in that history.
The Bread and Roses HeritageFestival happens every year on

(10:36):
Labor Day to recognize the laborhistory and the cultural
diversity of the city.
I really do love learning aboutall of this regional history.
I find it very interesting.
Maybe you do too.
Coming up, the second part of myconversation with Melanie

(10:56):
Perkins-McLaughlin.
She produced the film, Have YouSeen Andy?
The documentary about her searchfor information about her
missing friend, Andy Puglisi.
What that investigationuncovered is and what she
continues to uncover about Andyand children just like him who
went missing or were foundmurdered in Massachusetts in the

(11:19):
1970s.
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(11:40):
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By supporting the show, you helpsend me to AdvocacyCon.

(12:01):
That happens at the end of Marchin Indianapolis.
It is exactly what it soundslike.
A conference event.
about advocacy in the true crimespace.
You brought up a very importantpoint.
When Andy went missing, it wasway before we knew of little

(12:23):
Etan Pates and Adam Walsh, someof the names that were in the
news after.
And that really did change howwe deal with missing children.
Absolutely.
When Andy went missing...
We know that there are someother implications.
He was a kid in the projects.
Police didn't take it.
They took it far less seriously.

(12:44):
Look at what we learned.
They didn't even report it,right?
They didn't even file the reportfor this missing boy.

SPEAKER_01 (12:50):
No, not right away.
And also, you know, it wasn'tjust that.
Yeah, Andy was a poor kid fromthe projects, and we lived in a
very classist community at thetime.
You know, Lawrence was the 23rdpoorest city in the country and
probably still is.
I don't know what the rating isnow, but it's still a very, very
poor city.
And it's also a city very muchbuilt on class, which is so

(13:12):
ironic for so many poor peopleto live there and for it to be
so classist, but it was.
And I guess part of the reasonis that when you're just a
little bit higher than thelowest, then you feel like you
have a little bit of capital orsomething like that.
So for people that lived inLawrence that maybe owned a
single family home, wereconsidered much higher on the

(13:32):
sort of class scale than kidsthat lived in the projects,
right, that had single moms.
And again, this was the 70s, andthat was a big part of it.
And Andy's mother had had abiracial child, right?
She had had three Caucasianchildren, and then she had his
baby sister, Mandy, wasbiracial.
And again, this was 1976.
That was noticeable.

(13:53):
People noticed that a lot.

SPEAKER_00 (13:56):
Part of the investigation...
really did focus in on therelationship with her partner at
the time, who was anAfrican-American man.
And we know that as part of manyother aspects of the
investigation, which we can talkto a little bit about how they
handled the investigation andhow short of a time they
actually looked for this boy.
And,

SPEAKER_01 (14:15):
you know, there are still people up until recently,
you know, a few detectives thathave passed away, but there is
still people that were on theforce on the Lawrence police
force that were that areconvinced that it was that
individual, the boyfriend,right?
Or that it was, you know, familymember or that it was what have
you.
But I think there could be amillion theories out there, but
what I want to see is evidence,right?

(14:35):
What I want to see is, okay,well, what evidence do you have
that suggests that it was theboyfriend, okay?
And the boyfriend was in thehouse and he was not seen
outside.
He was not seen at the pool.
He had been, except for a10-minute window when Faith went
to the store, that he had beenunattended, if you will.
And in 10 minutes, therewouldn't have been enough time

(14:57):
to do anything at that point,and he was still with Faith
later.
So it just is not reasonable tosuspect that he had an alibi.
But there are things that arereasonable, right?
Like the police officer who was,you know, later found with a boy
in his cruiser, and he was, youknow, allegedly molesting this
boy and wearing women's clothesand, you know, had to leave the

(15:20):
police force quietly as a resultof that in the early to mid 80s.
And that was a boy from theproject.
or Wayne Chapman, who wasidentified by multiple people as
being at the pool that day, theday before, the year before, who
we know had an incredible recordof abusing over 100 boys.
Wayne Chapman also had a lot ofcamera equipment.

(15:43):
He had a lot of high-end,expensive camera equipment.
So Wayne Chapman was not justabducting boys.
He was producing photos, which Ithink he was very likely selling
because I don't know where elsehe would get the money for the
high-end camera equipmentbecause he was a janitor.
It was him.
There was a neighbor who we talkabout who allegedly we had

(16:03):
gotten anonymous tips that heknew Wayne Chapman, but also
there were several children inthe projects who had been
approached by this neighbor.
And so they had shared thatinformation.
So the neighbor was known to bea pedophile.
There was a lifeguard that wefound out way late in the game.
This was not until the podcastthat we found out that there was
a lifeguard or He says he wasn'ta lifeguard.

(16:24):
He says he worked for the youthservices system, but he assisted
at pools.
I don't know the exact details,but certainly we had someone
contact us that said thatchildren had been abused by him
in pool settings, in swimmingpool settings in Massachusetts,
in Lawrence at the time.
And so I found that tooincredible to be true.
I really couldn't believe itwhen they said that.
And I thought for sure it had tobe a different summer.

(16:46):
It had to be a different summer.
And then when they told me thatthe person was arrested and that
there was a court record, and Iwent back and found the court
record and the arrest record,and it was literally...
Weeks after Andy disappeared thesame summer, this guy was
arrested for sexually abusing afive-year-old and a two-year-old
in swimming pools in Lawrence,Massachusetts, and had never

(17:07):
ever been questioned as far aswe know.
His name had never been broughtup.
Nothing had ever happened.
come up about this guy at all.
And as it turns out, the guyknew the family, right?
The guy knew the Puglisi family.
So I did have the districtattorney, one of the district
attorneys say to me that thepodcast was really incredible
and they found it soinformative.
But the problem that they saidthey found with it was that now

(17:31):
that felt like there are so manysuspects, right?
Not just a few.
And I said, yes, exactly.
That's the point.
There were so many.
Because There were so manypedophiles in the area because
there was human traffickinghappening in this area because
it was a hotspot for this kindof activity.

SPEAKER_00 (17:51):
There's an incredible piece of film in the
documentary, and I know thatyou've used it subsequently, of
Faith Puglisi saying that lawenforcement told her that there
were at least five pedophiles inthe vicinity of the pool that
day that Andy went missing.

SPEAKER_01 (18:10):
The way she says it is there were five known child
molesters at the pool that day.
So back then, that's the otherpiece, is we didn't have this
lexicon, human trafficking.
We didn't have the wordpedophile, right?
We didn't say that.
They called human trafficking ofchildren child prostitution, as
though a child can prostitutethemselves.
They called pedophilia childmolestation or child molesting.

(18:33):
There weren't terms for it likethat, but she did say...
Law enforcement told her therewere five known child molesters
at the pool that day.
And that haunted me from the dayI heard it.
Like, who were these people?
And so I started to try to puttogether a list of who were the
five known child molesters thatat the pool that day.

(18:54):
And while I don't know whoexactly

SPEAKER_00 (18:56):
was asked,

SPEAKER_01 (18:57):
yes, it was a

SPEAKER_00 (18:58):
much longer list.
It

SPEAKER_01 (19:00):
was more than five.
I think we're up to like 13 nowat this point.
It's crazy.
But you know, again, within ahalf mile radius, put it that
way.
If they weren't at the pool thatday, they were within a quarter
mile, half mile radius from, youknow, a little league coach to a
bus driver, to a lifeguard, toa, you know, neighbor, to a cop,

(19:21):
to a priest, to a, I mean, itjust, went on and on.
It was crazy.
And it's like, is this typical?
Are there that many pedophilesconcentrated in one area?
I don't know, but therecertainly were at that time.

SPEAKER_00 (19:35):
There was no registry.

SPEAKER_01 (19:37):
There was no

SPEAKER_00 (19:38):
registry.
And a lot of these people didn'thave any kind of criminal record
at that time.

SPEAKER_01 (19:44):
Or if they did, in some cases, it could be covered
up.
Like a police officer or apriest, they wouldn't arrest
people like that for thisbehavior.
as we know all too well fromBoston Globe Spotlight, right?
Like they would just sort ofignore it, let them go on and
sort of hope it went away andnot talk about it.
But yes, that's very importantto note that there was not a sex
offender registry at the time,which, you know, how do you

(20:06):
think a sex offender registrycame about, Angel?

SPEAKER_00 (20:09):
It was after children went missing and it was
discovered there were peoplearound there.

SPEAKER_01 (20:13):
It was, yes.
I forget exactly the law.

SPEAKER_00 (20:15):
Isn't it Johnny Gosch?
Johnny Gosch.

SPEAKER_01 (20:18):
It wasn't Johnny, it might've been Jacob Wetterling.
Was it Jacob Wetterling?
I can't remember which of thecases it was, but the point is
it was a child who went missing,who was a high profile case,
whose parents and whose lovedones advocated for legislation
to change the system.
And that's how sex offenderregistry came about.

SPEAKER_00 (20:36):
That's how the Amber Alert is an Amber Alert.

SPEAKER_01 (20:38):
Exactly.
And that's why the Amber Alertis the Amber Alert because, you
know, these cases, and that'swhy we have the National Center
for Missing and ExploitedChildren.
And that's why we have childpornography laws.
I mean, literally, if you listento the podcast, the reason the
child pornography laws werecreated in 1978 is because there
was so much effing childpornography.
Right.
And then people are like, oh, Idon't know if this was really

(21:00):
true.
It's like, listen to the, youknow, or look at the transcripts
of the congressional hearings.
It was true.
It was true.
And that's why the law wascreated.
And that's how and why laws arecreated, you know.
And that's why we encouragefamilies and loved ones and
people who care about this causeto advocate.

SPEAKER_00 (21:16):
And it's been something that really the
general public still, still now,even after all of these years
and after all of thisinformation and after all this
evidence, quite frankly, thathas been presented, the general
public still doesn't want tothink about these kinds of
things.
Is it possible that people werestealing children off the street

(21:36):
and putting them into sextrafficking?
Yes.

SPEAKER_01 (21:40):
And not just into sex trafficking, into unwilling,
being unwilling participants ina child sex abuse image
industry.
And so, yes, abusing, beingabused, but also for
photographs.
And there was a lot of money tobe made.
There was a lot of money thatwas being made.
But I just wanted to fact checkthe sex offender registry was
actually part of the AmberAlert.

(22:01):
So in 1996, Bill Clinton,President Bill Clinton, signed
the Amber Hagerman ChildProtection Act law into law,
creating the Amber Alert systemand the National Sex Offender
Registry.
You can read more about AmberHageman, if you want, if you
Google her.

SPEAKER_00 (22:17):
Whose

SPEAKER_01 (22:18):
murder is still unsolved.
It's still unsolved.
And thank her and her family forall of the hard work they did to
create the Amber Alert.
It's probably saved thousands,if not hundreds of thousands of
lives and the sex offenderregistry.
So yeah, it's children and thelegacy of these children.
that change

SPEAKER_00 (22:37):
systems.
We simply as a society couldn'tfunction without things like
this.
And we still need so much more.
There's so much more legislationthat we need.
You summed up a couple of thosethings, but there's so much more
that still needs to be put inplace.

SPEAKER_01 (22:52):
I mean, just the statute of limitations, you
know, the fact that there's astatute of limitations on child
rape, you know, that should notbe the case.
And that a lot of folks, youknow, don't even start to deal
with their trauma till they'rein their 50s, which is
incredible.
the statute of limitations haslikely passed at that point.
And now in Massachusetts, it's53.
It was changed in 2015, butwe're trying to eliminate the

(23:14):
statute of limitationsaltogether because there
shouldn't be a limit onindividual trauma.
And especially if there'scorroborating evidence, if
people, you know, if there'sother people come forward that
have been abused by the sameperson, there's lots of ways to
determine whether the story's orhow the stories are accurate.
So there's that.
There's a lot of trouble inschools, a lot of child abuse in

(23:38):
schools, and there's noregulation in schools.
Schools do the same things thatthe Catholic Church was able to
do.
They let people go quietly.
If there's an allegation, theygenerally can just offer them to
leave their position, and theperson can go down the street
and get a job at another schooland not necessarily have
anything in their record.
especially if there wasn't acriminal conviction.

(24:00):
So there's lots and lots of workto be done.
And also even with the materialthat had been created, there's
people who are activelyadvocating against the sex
offender registry, right?
So there's the defense councilfor a lot of registered sex
offenders who try to claimdouble jeopardy or that this is,
you know, unfairly labelingpeople or any number of things.

(24:21):
So, and they stay active.
They

SPEAKER_00 (24:24):
stay.
Yeah.
How does that go over

SPEAKER_01 (24:26):
in the court of law?
Well, it's interesting becauseMassachusetts is generally
pretty lenient on defenseattorneys.
So I would hate to see the daythat that would ever happen.
And I would hope that therewould be people out there who
would advocate against a sexoffender registry being taken
away.
I would certainly think thatthere would be, but the people
who are on the other side ofthat argument don't rest.

(24:49):
They continue to advocate.
So that's why it's so importantto have families and loved ones
and people who care about thesestories advocating.
So if you're listening andyou're interested in advocacy in
Massachusetts to prevent childsex abuse and to help support
families of missing and murderedloved ones, please, please reach
out to us and let us knowbecause we're working on getting

(25:10):
that rolling and really offeringsome resources for that.

SPEAKER_00 (25:14):
Having the experience of meeting family
members, speaking to familymembers who have a missing loved
one, who have a murdered lovedone, an unsolved case, hearing
the stories about how thishappened to them, and they had
absolutely no idea what to do,where to go, who to talk to.
They go to law enforcement.
Law enforcement has said, oh,they're not missing.

(25:34):
They're not missing, which isnot that different from Andy's
case.
Let's face it.
He was a child, but, and you cantell me exactly how this
happened for you when you wereresearching it, but he went
missing.
His mother could not find him.
His mother went around asking,have you seen Andy?
Have you seen Andy?
No one saw him.

(25:55):
And then she tried to reporthim, which eventually they
showed up.
They didn't file it.
And for only six days, theylooked for a missing child.
And there are all kinds ofexcuses and theories that came
into play.
One of which became, afterspeaking with you about this, I
learned that they started, they,law enforcement started to say,

(26:18):
well, he's really not missing.

SPEAKER_01 (26:19):
Yeah.
You know, there was faith talksabout having been approached by
law enforcement a couple of daysinto the search.
They wanted to call the searchoff.
Police chief was chief Hart atthe time.
And I believe he was the personwho had approached the Puglisi
family and they approached withthe idea that they would call
the search off.

(26:40):
not because they didn't think hewas missing, but because whoever
was holding him might have beenintimidated by all of this
search activity and that thiswould help them get their
defenses down.
Let the person who might beholding Andy sort of put their
defenses down and be less likelyto be so sensitive to the issue
and what have you.

(27:00):
So Faith agreed to letting thesearch be called off.
She says she would have nevercalled the search off had it not
been for that.
And Six days is not a long timeto look for a 10-year-old
missing boy.
At the same time, in some ways,it felt like forever.
It was a slow start.
Then once it started, it feltlike the entire world was

(27:21):
descending on us.
There were helicopterseverywhere, National Guards
everywhere.
They had set up, of all things,a CB trucker station, which was
the- Which was the searchheadquarters, which we find out
later, as you hear in thepodcast, that amateur radio and
CB radio was a really one of theways that pedophiles
communicated with each otherback in the day because they

(27:42):
didn't have the internet.
So

SPEAKER_00 (27:43):
they would use that.
It was the pedo Twitter of theday.

SPEAKER_01 (27:45):
It was actually, to be honest, it was a major way
that they communicated.
Who knew that and truck driving.
And so, you know, the truckdriving could transport children
across state lines.
Right.
So, and a lot of the truckdrivers were the ones who were
running the CB radios, right?
Like if you remember that was,what was the, what was the, um,
think about this in theseventies and eighties, 10, four

(28:07):
big trucker.
I forget.
Yeah.
Something I forget, buteverybody had like a handle just
like, you know, you had a handlelike you do on Twitter.
I mean, you had everybody, youknow, people had a handle and
you know, right before Andy wentmissing, he got a really nice CB
radio for his birthday and itwasn't an amateur.
I mean, it wasn't a kid's, itwasn't like a little plastic

(28:29):
Fisher parties toy thing.
It was a heavy duty.
I remember putting this,

SPEAKER_00 (28:33):
the real thing.

SPEAKER_01 (28:34):
It was the real deal.
I remember putting the walkietalkie in my hand and being
like, this is the real deal.
It was like a heavy one.
It was like a police radio, youknow, it felt really real.
And I just, you know, one of thevery few memories I have of me
and Andy is playing with thatand It was just such a funny
scene because we just walked outof each other's sight.
We weren't, you know, weliterally went around the corner

(28:55):
so we couldn't see each other,but we would use the radio to
communicate.
And you could hear our voices inthe air, nevermind over the
radio.
So like, it wasn't even, it waskind of funny.
It was a child's way of, youknow, out of sight, out of mind.
So you don't, you think thatlike, you can't see each other.
So the CB radios were, you know,sort of effective, but it was
kind of this cute scene where wejust were like probably, you

(29:16):
know, 10 or 20 feet away fromeach other, but blocked from
each other's sight while we wereusing this very nice CB radio
set that he had gotten justbefore he disappeared.
Do

SPEAKER_00 (29:26):
you remember who gave that to him?

SPEAKER_01 (29:27):
You know what?
It just occurred to me.
As you were saying that, I wasjust like, who gave that CB
radio set to Andy?

SPEAKER_00 (29:34):
I mean, it raises my red flags.
Is this something that may havecontributed to his
disappearance.

SPEAKER_01 (29:40):
Well, it's interesting that you say that
because, you know, Wayne Chapmantalks about having taken the boy
from the pool with a muchyounger child and the boy
talking about CB radios.
So that was another sort ofpiece of information that was
interesting with Chapman.
But, you know, it's so funny.
These are the things thathappen, Angel, in the course of
this decades of stories that youget so caught up in the and the

(30:02):
facts and all of the informationor whatever.
And then just as I was tellingyou that story, I literally was
thinking in my brain, gee, youknow, I never asked who gave him
the CB radio.
Right.
And not that that, I mean, itcould be completely
inconsequential.

SPEAKER_00 (30:15):
You're not going to crack the case.
No, no.
It's an important thing to maybetry to find out.
It's an interesting question.

SPEAKER_01 (30:20):
Right.
It's an interesting question.
And again, it wasn't as relevantfor a long time because I didn't
know until probably the lastcouple of years that CB radio
was the way that, you know,pedophiles communicated
information.
I didn't know anything about thetrafficking and use of amateur
radio and CB radio really untilI was reading in Burgess's work
and also, you know, interviewingher for the podcast where she

(30:42):
confirmed and talked about thatthat was a way that they
communicated, but also, youknow, that truck drivers would
transport the children.
That was a big way oftransporting children.
And again, her research comesfrom the seventies and eighties.
She was out of Bostonuniversity, a forensic nurse.
And again, Yeah, yeah.

(31:21):
Share a presentation with lawenforcement.
Just put it on the desk.
And I say, when people try totell me that, no, this wasn't
real.
I mean, just having thistangible book.
And say, really?
Because here's a book writtenabout it.
You know, here's a book from,you know, an esteemed professor
at Boston University that tellsthe whole, you know, a lot of
the history, not the entirehistory, but a lot of the
history of the trafficking ofthese children.

(31:42):
And again, they didn't call ittrafficking.
They called it childprostitution.
So even the ring that was brokenup in Revere in 1977, they call
these kids child prostitutes.
And once again, the victims ofcrime get essentially

SPEAKER_00 (31:55):
blamed for For their

SPEAKER_01 (31:57):
own abuse.
100%.
Especially if they're poor kidswithout a lot of social capital
whose parents can't defend themwhile they're being blamed.
So these kids were being enticedwith pizza and beer and maybe
some small change and money tocome to this apartment.
And yeah, guys would ask them,they would have to perform sex
acts or be raped, essentially.
by adult men and maybe have somepictures taken and everything,

(32:20):
but hey, they got some pizza outof it, right?
So that must mean that theywanted to do this.
This is so vile and so wrong.
But the interesting thing isI've talked to adult survivors
of these crimes who,particularly men, who I'm sure
very much still struggle withthe experience.

(32:41):
And I will have men who say tome, I knew what I was doing at
the time.
And I will say, you were 13 oryou were 15.
And they'll say, yeah, but Iknew what I was doing at the
time.
And you were under the age ofconsent.
You might think that youconsented, but you legally were
unable to consent.

(33:01):
And psychologically, you wereunable to consent.

SPEAKER_00 (33:04):
And we know that along the lines of their
interaction with law enforcementand other entities that they
were told that.
Yes.
You agreed to it.
So there, actually, a lot ofthese children now, adults, are
programmed to believe that.
Well, you were there and youkept going.
The same thing we see in sexabuse cases or sexual assault.

(33:24):
Well, you went back.

SPEAKER_01 (33:26):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just wrong.
And so, again, thank you forsaying that because if there are
survivors out there that arelistening that experience this
sort of trauma, we want to letyou know that you're not alone.
It was not your fault.
We believe you.
And the age of consent was 16.
And actually not even at thetime, I don't think, yeah, they
did have the age of consent at16 and NAMBLA was trying to

(33:48):
lower it to 13 and the law wouldnot allow it because 13 year
olds cannot consent.
14 year olds cannot consent.
15 year olds cannot consent.
And even, I mean, I think backto my, I was thinking about this
the other day because I wasthinking about myself as a 15
year old and boy, did I think Iknew everything, right?
I mean, like I literally thoughtI knew everything.
I was what, maybe a freshman inhigh school, a sophomore in high

(34:09):
school.
And I thought like, I knew itall.
I knew what it meant.
I knew what all this stuff, sexand physical intimacy, whatever
meant.
I wasn't active at that point,but I thought I knew it all.
And it was like, I had no idea.
I had no idea.
And even at 18, I rememberthinking, what else is there to
know?
I literally was like, I thinkI'm good.

(34:33):
I

SPEAKER_00 (34:34):
pretty much- Were you the, what do you want to
know?
I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_01 (34:37):
Totally.

SPEAKER_00 (34:37):
There was always that person around that was
like,

SPEAKER_01 (34:40):
That

SPEAKER_00 (34:40):
was me.
You were young and having thesex talk, somebody that
professed to know everything.
They clearly didn't, but.

SPEAKER_01 (34:47):
Well, I mean, I didn't necessarily in that realm
because I hadn't been activeearlier in life, but, you know,
16, 17, 18, but I did seek outfriends that did, that's for
sure.
And when I got the skinny, thenI would let other people know,
that's for sure.
But I did, I always, and I saythis now, and it's one of my,
you know, one of my, I say itwith all the humility that I,

(35:07):
for a very long time,unfortunately thought, Everyone
was entitled to my opinion.
Yeah.
So that took years of work to beable to understand that.
You know what?
I don't know everything andeveryone's not entitled to my
opinion.
But that's why facts are soimportant, right?
That's why having hard facts anddata is important.

(35:29):
And so when we're tellingstories like this, to be able to
say, well, here's the data.
And like, you know, in the filmand have you seen Andy?
I never say in that film what Ithink happened.
I never say for people, this iswhat I think happened.
I do in the podcast because somuch time has passed at this
point.
And I feel like I have decadesand decades of research to say,

(35:49):
oh, I know Andy was used forhuman trafficking.
I believe he was taken for that.
I believe he was likely beingscouted before he was taken.
And that's what the CB radio redflag comes up for me.
And the Polaroid.
Remember the Polaroid that hegave to his mother, you know, a
couple of weeks before hedisappeared when she said, where
did you get this?
I mean, Polaroid film wasexpensive back then, you know,

(36:10):
it was fairly new technology andit was expensive.
And, you know, she asked Andywhere he got this picture.
He had given her a Polaroid andhe said, you know, oh, some man
had asked him to take hispicture, you know, and she said,
don't ever let anyone take yourpicture.
And We've come to find outthrough the podcast that there
were actually individuals in theprojects taking Polaroid

(36:31):
pictures of children and sellingthem for child sex abuse
material.

SPEAKER_00 (36:36):
And subsequently that put him, it may have
happened prior to that, it mayhave happened after that, but
that put him unfortunately on aradar.
Yep.

SPEAKER_01 (36:46):
And I believe that people, and it's not just my
belief, but it's scientificevidence that pedophiles have a
type or a certain type sellsbetter.
And there's all thismisinformation out there that
they would say Wayne Chapman'stype was blonde-haired,
blue-eyed children.
And it's so interesting becauseif you look at his victims, none

(37:06):
of them were blonde-haired andblue-eyed.
None of them were.
They were dark-haired anddark-eyed.
And in some of the cases of someof the children, they look so
similar.
Some of the cases of thechildren that went missing, like
I see resemblance with MichaelO'Gorman and Andy Puglisi.
Michael O'Gorman disappeared inthe 70s and His body was
subsequently found.
Or even Lee Savoy, I seesimilarities in their coloring,

(37:30):
in their brown eyes, their wavyhair, you know, just sort of
things like that.
Lee

SPEAKER_00 (37:35):
Savoy is another child that has been blamed for
their own disappearance.
Not by me.
No.
Certainly not by me.
Not

SPEAKER_01 (37:43):
by you.
Lee Savoy was a little boy whowent missing from Revere,
Massachusetts, where there werecertainly...
Five known pedophiles within aquarter mile radius of, you
know, when Lee went missing.
We know that for sure.
And, you know, he was also only10 years old.
He was very independent and hewas shining shoes that day

(38:04):
outside of Suffolk Downs.

SPEAKER_00 (38:05):
It was a very different time.
We were all feral children.

SPEAKER_01 (38:08):
It's true.
We would be gone all day long.
Could be gone all day long andpeople wouldn't even ask where
you were.
You know, you came home atdinner and that was pretty much
it.
And we had no phones, you know,we didn't tell people we're
going, we had bikes where youcould go miles away from where
you actually were.
So yeah, it's true.
We were just all out on our own,which again leads me to believe,

(38:28):
I know the data says that theseventies is the highest number
of missing children of anydecade.
because there was not a lot oflaws in place, but I also think
it was because it was the onsetof a booming industry.

SPEAKER_00 (38:44):
They started to realize how lucrative that this
sort of thing could be, so muchso that they wanted to basically
make it an organization.
Yeah, they had to monetize it.
Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 (38:57):
they had to monetize

SPEAKER_00 (38:58):
it.
So you did all of the decadesand decades of research that...
You created the documentary,Have You Seen Andy?
Several years passed, and youreleased Open Investigation,
eight episodes that came out injust this past fall.

SPEAKER_01 (39:18):
It's technically nine, by the way, because we
have an episode zero.
It's actually nine episodes.

SPEAKER_00 (39:24):
That's right.
I forget the zero thing always.
I know.
I know.
It was a weird little pilotthing.
Nine episodes.
So that was one plan.
And as we know, the researchnever ends.
And that leads you to what willbe season two, which is coming
very soon.
Let's talk a little bit aboutwhere you're going next.

SPEAKER_01 (39:48):
Yeah.
So, first of all, it was thefirst podcast I have done, which
I cannot thank you enough, AngelWood of Crime of the Truest
Kind, for really just...
putting my feet to the fire andmaking me do it.
You know, we met, I didn'trealize it was Andy's birthday
the day that we met.

(40:08):
You said we met for coffee in acoffee shop a year or so before
the podcast actually came out.
I had been working on thepodcast on and off for years.
I

SPEAKER_00 (40:17):
had been looking for it for once I learned about the
documentary and went to thewebsite.
And I saw you talking about howwe're working on a podcast.
And this was I don't know howmany years.

SPEAKER_01 (40:29):
2017 is when we started working on the podcast,
started the idea.
And again, if you listen to thepodcast, something happened that
made me decide, okay, I need togo back in.
And podcast was a fairly newgenre at that point.
And it was less expensive thancreating a full-scale
documentary.
So I decided I would try thisroute.
But I had no real experiencewith it.

(40:51):
And so what I did was I listenedto a lot of podcasts.
And I listened to...
Podcasts that I liked andpodcasts that I didn't like.
And I really thought about whatmade me like what I liked and
what made me not like what Ididn't like.
I'm very much a storyteller,obviously, as a documentary
filmmaker.
So I wanted real stories fromreal people.
I know how much music mattersand how evocative being able to

(41:15):
tell a story with music matters.
So I was so grateful that we gotDrew O'Doherty to score the
podcast and got editing help.
from Mike, Joshua, and again,recommendations from you, Angel,
and just really, you know, Ikept saying, I was so stuck on
the RSS feed.
I'm like, what's the RSS feedand like the technical piece of
it.
And it was just like, you knowwhat, just, you know, do it.

(41:37):
And, you know, you helped mewith some of the technical and
now just, it's one of thosethings where you don't know what
you don't know.
And then once it's done, you'relike, oh, that wasn't so bad.
I can do it again.
And, um, Although there wereparts of it that were pretty
bad.
I mean, staying up till midnighton some nights, getting the show
out the next morning becausesomething had gone awry or just

(41:57):
because it was the nature ofdoing what we were doing.
And I also really have to throwmyself into this story in a way
that Andy's family, Andy'smother and father and brothers
and sisters have had to livewith their brother and missing
at the table, you know, missingat life events for their entire

(42:20):
lives.
You know, every day they aredealing with his disappearance
and they are victims andsurvivors in this case.

SPEAKER_00 (42:30):
Our friend Julie Murray calls it ambiguous loss.

SPEAKER_01 (42:33):
Amen.
It's such ambiguous loss.
And I love when Julie says thatbecause she articulates it so
well.
And sometimes just giving wordsto something matters, right?
Like, Human trafficking andnaming it really matters so that
ambiguous loss is real.
And I think for a long time, Ididn't identify myself as a
victim of Andy's disappearancebecause I was so focused on the

(42:57):
truth telling and getting thestory out and amplifying the
voices so that more people knewabout this injustice that had
happened to this little boy andall these other children across
the country that I had reallyforgotten about that
nine-year-old girl that wasthere that day.
And I don't think I reallyhonored that experience for her

(43:23):
or for me in a way that neededto be honored.
And I have been sober for 20years and I actively attend a
12-step program and I learned alot about myself through that
program.
And I also about eight, yearsago, maybe, you know, or so

(43:45):
probably coinciding around thetime that I started the podcast
or, you know, a few years maybebefore I started actively doing
trauma therapy.
And so I had had a therapist onand off throughout my life.
I had, you know, a very complexchildhood and a lot of trauma as
a child, but, um, I never had aname for it.

(44:06):
I did not call it trauma.
In fact, when my traumatherapist, who was just a
therapist but had got adoctorate in trauma, and I
didn't know that when I got thistherapist, the universe collided
and I ended up with thisfantastic therapist who had a
doctorate in trauma unbeknownstto me.
But I remember the first timeshe called what I had

(44:29):
experienced as a child traumatrauma.
I was like, oh, I think you'rebeing a little traumatic, aren't
you?
Like, really?
Trauma?
I mean, I had a tough childhood,but come on.
And I didn't name it.
And I had dismissed that.
And not just Andy's abduction, alot of things happened.
I went into foster care, a lotof other things.
I lived in a home where therewas a lot of abuse and neglect.

(44:51):
But I didn't name it because Ididn't know that it had a name
and the name is trauma and it'scomplex childhood trauma, CPTSD,
complex post-traumatic stressdisorder from complex childhood
trauma, which means sustainedtrauma over a long period of
time, specificallydevelopmentally when you're

(45:12):
developing as a child.
So I didn't know any of that.
And I learned it all.
And by no means all becauseright, I'll go back to that.
I don't know it all at thispoint, the older I get, the more
I realize the less I know.
But I learned about traumathrough this trauma therapist.
And I read this fantastic bookin the sense that it named it

(45:35):
and it showed brain scans ofpeople who had been traumatized
as children and what theirbrains look like today and how,
you know, we have a higher levelof cortisol in our bloodstream
and how we don't processinformation the same way
because, you know, when we'retriggered by that cortisol, our
hippocampus stops, you know, Idon't know the exact words in
terms of the brain, so don'thold me literally here, but

(45:57):
basically, you know, I could betriggered in a situation and I
might not be able to functionwhere I, you know, might be
trying to call a phone number orpay a bill or something like
that.
And I'm triggered and I can'tremember that basic stuff.
And I get frustrated and I'll belike, why can I not remember
this number right now?
Or why cannot I not, you know,whatever stir, you know, get
open this can of soup orsomething very basic right now.

(46:19):
And it's like, because I'mtriggered at a higher level and
I'm on a fight, I'm in a fightflight or flee or fawn or
whatever mode where my body isjust trying to survive and
doesn't know that it's not indanger anymore because I had,
you know, lived this way.
for so long as a child.
I also didn't know that when Iwould share these stories of
childhood trauma, when I wouldtell somebody about Andy's
story, in fact, when I wastelling you about Andy's story

(46:41):
and the history of myrelationship with Andy and
friendship with Andy in ourchildhood, Yeah.

(47:16):
That data and that informationwas tremendously important.
And I wanted to share thatinformation with survivors as
well, because survivors aretrauma survivors and
understanding one's trauma helpsus to learn a, that we're not
alone and, and be that what'shappening to us physiologically
is not our fault.
Like it's not, you know, youcan't remember something because

(47:38):
something's wrong with yourmemory.
You can't remember somethingright now because You're
triggered, right?
You're in a trauma mode.
And so what do you do whenyou're in that trauma mode?
Well, you ground yourself,right?
You do things where you mightlike you know, feel your feet on
the ground or chew some ice or,you know, just make yourself
sort of be present in themoment, which is why mindfulness
is so important, right?
So I learned all about traumathrough, you know, trauma

(48:00):
therapy, years of traumatherapy, and this book, The Body
Keeps the Score.
And then also Judy Herman'sbook, who's featured in our
podcast, Open Investigation,Judy Herman wrote a book called
Truth and Repair.
And Judy is considered themother of trauma research, which
essentially happened in the 90s,where, you know, they really
identified that trauma is notJust for war veterans that it

(48:21):
exists in, you know, witheverybody and, uh, what that
looks like again in brainslices, right?
Brain scans, how to affect usphysiologically, all of those
things.
And so she wrote a book, um,recently in her eighties,
actually, um, called Truth andRepair.
And I remember reading chapterfive of that book and I was so
blown away because it was likereading about my life and the

(48:44):
reason, again, trauma survivorsmight be overachievers or just
all of these other things that Ididn't know, but also the way in
which truth telling and advocacyhelps repair trauma.
And I was like, oh my God, likemy whole life I've been doing
this truth telling and advocacyand not knowing that That was me
healing myself and not realizingthat that's what I was doing.

(49:04):
And so kudos to thatnine-year-old little girl who
knew a hell of a lot more thanthe adult Melanie, I think, when
I was standing outside that treethat day, knew that what
happened to Andy was such aninjustice and that when I grew
up, I was going to try to findhim.
And that little girl wentthrough a lot and continues to

(49:27):
go through a lot by telling thistruth and telling these stories.
But now I know that it's, youknow, helps with the healing.
It helps with empowerment.
Empowering other families isincredibly meaningful to me and
empowering other victims isincredibly meaningful to me.
And, you know, one of the, youknow, the podcast got downloaded
80,000 times.
I mean, for your first podcast,I thought that was amazing.

(49:48):
pretty fucking amazing.
I was like, really?
I was so happy.
And part of the reason that Iwas, you know, that that
happened too, was because, youknow, another podcast or another
woman featured the story.
You know, she had done a storyon Andy years ago, and then she
featured the podcast rightbefore it came out.
And it was women helping women,which I love in this business
and this industry.
And it's so important, like you,Angel, helping me and, you know,

(50:10):
doing this story as well.
And, you know, it's someaningful.
And it's funny, because when Ilistened to your podcast about
Andy's story the first time, andyou're like, oh, I reached out
to Melanie, but I didn't hearback, oh, that happens or
whatever.
And I was like, oh my God, I wasso mortified because first of
all, your podcast on Andy was sogood and it was so many people
get the facts wrong and youdidn't.

(50:30):
And I really appreciated that,which is why I reached out to
you because I was like, wow,thank you for telling the story.

SPEAKER_00 (50:36):
And there are things that I left out because I
couldn't quite Talking to you, Iknow that that was another piece
of it that I could very wellhave included, but I didn't
quite.
There are things about theGeorgetown case that I removed
because it didn't quite all lineup for me.

SPEAKER_01 (50:56):
Yeah.
Yeah, a lot of people don't evenknow the association because it
was never mentioned, you know,when it came out in the news
about, you know, the Georgetownwitness and victim X or
whatever, that it was noindication that the way that,
you know, he had come to policewas, you know, sort of shortly
after watching the, you know,documentary.

SPEAKER_00 (51:14):
And I'm not being secretive about that.
You talk about that.
I do in the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 (51:18):
I do.
I do.
And so, but to that end is, Iguess what I was saying is that,
you know, women helping women,but you know, the downloads are
so important to let people knowthat it does matter and people
are listening.
So thank you, you know, to folksout there who downloaded the
show, who are following theshow, who are subscribed to the,
look at season two, listen toseason two.

(51:39):
We so appreciate you doing itand we know it's a hard listen,
but it's an important listen.
And so there's been, you know,hundreds of reviews as well.
And the podcast has gottenhundreds of five star reviews.
And when I was making thepodcast and I was, really in the
middle of the trauma, right?
To do this, you have to,especially if you're a victim,

(52:02):
right?
It's one thing if you're aperson telling the story from
the outside and you didn'treally live it.
I can tell the other children'sstories, other than Andy, with a
little bit Of a distance, of aperspective, right?
Because I wasn't involved inthat particular story the way
that I had been with Andy's.
But with Andy's, I am a victimof his disappearance and it has

(52:24):
affected me for my life and itwill affect me for my life.
And I know that now and that'sokay.
It's okay in the sense that Ican acknowledge that and I don't
need somebody else to tell methat.
I know why I do what I do andwhy it's important to me.
And why I'll continue to do whatI do.

(52:45):
And so season two, you know,part of what I found with Andy's
story is that there's a wholeother character in the story,
right?

(53:13):
It's very hard to understandLawrence and the community and
the culture not havingexperienced it.
However, there are Lawrence,Massachusetts city-like places
all over the country.
It's an urban mill city, extremepoverty, lots of immigrants,
lots of corruption.
For

SPEAKER_00 (53:33):
a period of time, it was really up and coming for all
of the textile production thatwas coming out of Florence.
And things shifted as they didwhen we hit the Great
Depression, etc.,

SPEAKER_01 (53:45):
Yeah, when the mills closed, it turned things around
a lot for it.
And I didn't know why there wasso much Irish in Lawrence.
And I was surprised to find outthat when they couldn't find
work here, they would walk the30 miles to the textile mills.
And there's a lot of greatLawrence History Center's great
and the Bread and Roses.
I mean, there's a lot offantastic history in Lawrence.
So I don't want anybody outthere to be like Lawrence

(54:06):
bashing.
I do have a sign literally in myoffice that says you can take
the girl out of Lawrence, butyou can't take the Lawrence out
of the girl.
And it's true.
You know, we can talk about ourcity, but anybody else talk
about our city and, you know,we'll, we'll, those are fighting
words, you know?

SPEAKER_00 (54:21):
Well, we're mass holes.
So we'll,

SPEAKER_01 (54:24):
you know,

SPEAKER_00 (54:24):
I, I, I wear it as a badge of honor.
I wear my mass wholeness as abadge of honor.
Exactly.
It's like, we're kind of in onthe joke and sorry people from
elsewhere.
It's like, we'll let you in onit eventually.
Maybe.
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (54:37):
Right, right.
And I'm proud to be fromLawrence.
You know, I, you know, thesystems weren't good to me as a
kid.
And it was, I tell people it waspart, you know, I hope if you've
seen the films, you'll know, butI say it was part Stand By Me,
part Lord of the Flies, right?
So Stand By Me is a story ofthese kids that sort of stick
together through this trauma.
And Lord of the Flies are thesekids who kill each other through

(54:59):
this trauma.
And so it was those extremes,literally.
It was a tough place, and it wasa tough place for kids from the
projects, and it was a toughplace for kids that didn't have
an adult who could stand up forthem.
There were a lot of us.
There were a lot of us.
And I 100% believe that thereare hundreds of victims that

(55:21):
experienced child sextrafficking in Lawrence in the
1970s, in the Merrimack Valleyin the 1970s.
And the Merrimack Valleyincludes Haverhill, Lawrence,
Lowell, Methuen, I think, but itwasn't technically on the
Wikipedia, which I was like,what?
How could that be?
But of course, Methuen.

(55:41):
Methuen is almost Lawrence,really.
And some of the Southern NewHampshire cities as well, they
say is Merrimack Valley.
But essentially, I felt likeAndy and kids like Andy were
targeted.
We were targeted.
by people who were of highermeans, who had more than we did

(56:02):
and exploited us for theirbenefit because they knew they
could, because they knew theyhad power and we as children and
more so as marginalizedunderrepresented children did
not have power.
And I want to reclaim some ofthat power.

(56:24):
And I am hoping that in seasontwo, we will be able to share
and uncover the stories ofchildren who survived some of
this trafficking and some ofthis abuse.
And so the way in which I chooseto do that for season two is I
am focusing on the 15 plusCatholic priests who were in the

(56:49):
Merrimack Valley area.
at the time in the 1970s whowere credibly accused of abusing
children.
So I wanted to show systemicabuse.
And I think that I showed thatin season one in Open
Investigation.
But this is sort of just adeeper dive into some of the
systemic abuse of children inthe Merrimack Valley through the

(57:10):
clergy abuse stories and whatwas happening.
And it's interesting because Ithink I've talked to some people
about this, and they think thatthey know this story, and they
don't know this story.
They know what they've read innewspapers, perhaps, and they
know what they've seen on theAcademy Award-winning Spotlight
film and in the PulitzerPrize-winning Boston Globe

(57:31):
Spotlight series.

SPEAKER_00 (57:32):
I do have to take a moment to say this, though.
Kristen Lombardi in the BostonPhoenix reported on that.

SPEAKER_01 (57:37):
Amen.
Amen.
Kristen Lombardi and the BostonPhoenix uncovered that story.
And how many people know KristenLombardi's name, right?

SPEAKER_00 (57:46):
I've tried to reach out to Kristen Lombardi.
Me too.
I understand why she probablywouldn't want to talk about it
with me.

SPEAKER_01 (57:52):
I've tried to reach out to her as well.
And so Kristen, if you're outthere and you're listening, we'd
love to elevate you and tellyour story because we think
you're amazing and having gottenthe story out there and really
making a difference inthousands, if not hundreds of
thousands of children's lives.
So thank you for that.
Because

SPEAKER_00 (58:10):
the Boston Globe had so many more resources, they
were able to attack it in adifferent way.

SPEAKER_01 (58:15):
That's right.
That's right.
That's a huge part of why ittakes so long sometimes to make
podcasts or to do the thingsthat...
It's been decades of me doingthis work because I'm not an
organization or an entity thathas a lot of resources, but I
keep on doing it because it'simportant.
Getting back to the way thatpeople think that they know this
story, I think that they knowthat there was clergy abuse and

(58:39):
know that...
I don't know that theyunderstand the systemic nature
of it.
I also don't know that theyunderstand what actually
happened to children.
And when I think, you know,people like maybe listening and
thinking, well, why do I want tohear that?
Which people have said aboutopen investigation as well.
Like, well, why would I want tohear, you know, these stories?
And I think that if you read thereviews, you'll see why you want
to hear the stories.

SPEAKER_00 (58:59):
You have to listen because it's real life.
I mean, people watch the keepersand that was really, really
uncomfortable.
Yeah.
In addition to so many otherthings, for those people who
aren't aware of the Keepers,it's a case of a murdered nun in
Baltimore in the 60s.
Late 60s.

(59:20):
Yeah, Baltimore, Maryland, late60s.
Catholic school, Keough school.
Because children were beingabused in the school, and it's
believed she knew something, andpeople wanted to keep her quiet.

SPEAKER_01 (59:31):
Well, and they demonstrate how, you know, there
were certainly priests involvedin the abuse of the children at
this Catholic school.
But, you know, the Keepers was ahuge inspiration to me for the
podcast.
And, you know, it was, and I saythis in the podcast, the Keepers
and, you know, who took JohnnyGosch and Jacob Wetterling and
all of it.
It's like, you know, they haveall been in Bear Brook and

(59:51):
they've all been inspiration tome to tell stories.
the truth about, you know, whathappened and as much of the
truth as I can find in terms ofpeople willing to tell the
stories and, you know, comeforward.
If there are people listeningthat have experienced abuse in
the Merrimack Valley, I do wantto hear from you.
I do think it's important.
And even if you're not ready toshare your story on the record,

(01:00:14):
it's important just tounderstand the scope and scale
of what was going on at thetime.
And also to understand, any ofthe organized nature of it.
So, um, I appreciate anybodywilling to reach out open
investigation pod at gmail.com.
I'm sure, you know, Angel willput this in the notes and stuff
as well, but, So what I reallywant to focus on is the
survivors, but I'm going to beprofiling the priest.

(01:00:36):
And so I want to characterizethese priests because too often
I think people see them as, oh,it was one priest.
It was just this bad, one badapple priest, you know, and what
have you.
And it's like, I actually wantto get into who were these
priests?
What were they doing?
What were they about?
And why did they do, you know,what they did?
And not that there's any excusefor any of the things that they

(01:00:58):
did, but there's generationaltrauma as well.
And there's a lot of I know withRonald Paquin, he talked about
having been abused by a priestwhen he was a child.
And so how was that perpetrated?
And also sort of looking at thegrooming process and the hidden
nature of this story and theways that boys in particular,
because Lawrence is such astrong city in terms of

(01:01:23):
resilience and being tough,right?
We always consider ourselvestough as kids.
And so boys in particular had tobe tougher than girls.
And so that toughness made themmuch more unlikely to tell what
was happening to them sexuallyas kids.
And I think that there ishundreds, if not thousands of
survivors out there who haven'theard this story, who haven't

(01:01:46):
told their stories because theythink that they're the only one.
And I don't want them to thinkthat they're the only one
anymore.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01:52):
And the shame of it.
Right.
The shame of it needs to beplaced on the people who did
this.

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:57):
That's right.
That's right.
And I love that.
You know, I love the way thatGiselle...
Giselle Pellicot, who is thehero in France who came forward
and wanted to publicize herstory because she said the
responsibility needs to beplaced on the abusers, not the
victim.
And she was so brave and really,I think, should have been the

(01:02:18):
time person of the year.
And I just admire the woman somuch.
And if, you know, GisellePellicot, who has been through
so much, was willing to comeforward and go public nationally
and internationally.
What a brave soul.
And the people that were on mypodcast, Open Investigation,
were incredibly brave souls forsharing what they did.
And I think if you talk to anyof them today, they would say

(01:02:40):
that it helped them.
And it continues to help them.
In fact, they're active inadvocacy and legislative
advocacy.
I think that we also try to bevery trauma informed when we're
doing interviews.
I'm not trying to, you know, Ido pre interviews before I do
any interviews, but I also makesure that, you know, there's
support systems in place for theperson that, you know, they have

(01:03:03):
other people that they can talkto that we stop if they want to
stop that we don't.
use information that if theydon't want it to be used, that
they have power over theirstory, that they have agency
over their story.
But most importantly, I want tomake sure that people in the
Merrimack Valley, that survivorsin the Merrimack Valley, and I
know you're out there, know thatwe believe you, that you're not

(01:03:23):
alone, that it's not your fault,and that you can make a
difference.
If you're not ready to shareyour story, that's okay too.
You don't have to.
When you're ready, there arepeople who are ready to listen,
and there are people who areready to help you.
If you are ready and you want toshare, we're here.
If you're not sure if you'reready and you want to share,
we're here.
But really, it's about namingtrauma and calling it out and

(01:03:47):
telling truth and speaking truthto power and hoping that by
speaking that truth, it changes

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:52):
systems.
Most definitely, because youhave people that have been
living with these secrets, thesepeople who have been keeping
these secrets for years andyears and years, and they shove
them down and shove them down.
And as you said it, the bodydoes tell the score, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:07):
Oh, it's going

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:07):
to come

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:07):
out

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:08):
one way or the other, yeah.
We have folks that haveaddiction issues and just
traumatic responses to things intheir own lives who haven't been
able to deal with these thingsfor all of these reasons and
more who once they have anopportunity to try to just even
talk about that, there's arelief that comes.

SPEAKER_01 (01:04:29):
Right.
And I love what Billy Giblinsays, you know, in our, in our
final episode, when we'retalking about advocacy as well,
though, and he talks about howit's so important to have a
support system in place beforeyou start to tell your story,
because if you don't, it can beeven more detrimental, right?
Because all of these things can,especially if you don't have
substance, like there's a Yeah.

(01:05:10):
affect change by telling yourstory and learning that you're
not alone and understanding thatthere are support groups like,
you know, snap, which is a localsupport group.
There's survivors network ofthose abused by priests.
And we'll talk to some of thesnap folks.
Like I'm not just going to throwall this stuff out there at
people.
There'll be resources for, um,dealing with trauma.
There'll be supports aroundthat.

(01:05:31):
And there'll be someunderstanding of what happens in
these situations with trauma,but there'll also be, you know,
what can be done today becausethere's still a lot that
happened that People weren'theld accountable for, you know,
like in Louisiana, they'retrying, there's a lot, you know,
there was a, Louisiana was oneof the oldest, um, archdiocese
in the country, um, long historyof abuse, not unlike Boston, um,

(01:05:54):
a lot of clergy abuse across thecountry.
This is not unique toMassachusetts, right?
This is not unique to the UnitedStates.
This is around the world andsort of what still needs to be
changed.
Like, you know, again, thestatute of limitations, right.
And opening a window, even ifthey don't eliminate the
statute, you can open a windowwhere people, they did that in
New York where people could comeforward for a year and be able
to make a claim.

(01:06:15):
And unfortunately what a lot of,um, organizations are doing now
is they're claiming bankruptcyto avoid responsibility.
And for a criminal case, I thinkit's only– or for some of the
cases for the nonprofit itself,it's only$20,000 that you can
get.
There's a– a lot that they'retrying to eliminate around a

(01:06:37):
nonprofit law.
And so, you know, there's just awhole bunch of things that need
to be changed with this very,very broken system and they can
be changed.
But the way that we change themis through storytelling and
truth telling of real peoplewith real experience who can and
want to change systems for thenext generation of children,
because it has to stopsomewhere.

SPEAKER_00 (01:06:59):
Yes.
And I would love to say thatthese are problems that are
going away, but They're reallynot because we see it in school
systems.
It's not just the CatholicChurch.
I mean, we know we see it inreligious organizations.
We sure as hell see it in cults.

SPEAKER_01 (01:07:14):
schools, Boy Scouts, anywhere there are children, you
know, so that's why there'schild abuse prevention at a
larger level that needs to beaddressed.
And yeah, I mean, I'll never bewanting for work, you know,
working in this field.
I know that I'm not going tocure, you know, child sex abuse,
but I think I can help somepeople along the way.
And I know that I'm, you know,certainly helping myself with

(01:07:35):
being able to share thesestories and affect change.
And, you know, in the reviews,one of the reviews that, you
know, stays with me often isthis one where a person wrote in
and said, I knew what hadhappened to me as a child.
I didn't have a name for it.
I didn't know what it wascalled.
And now I know it was CSA, theacronym for child sex abuse.

(01:08:00):
And I'm going to begin to dosomething about it.
And I thought, yeah, that's it.
Name it, call it out, name it,tell it what it is, and then do
something about it.
And that's really why I'm doingthis.
For the season two, it's aboutMerrimack Valley.
It's about the kids.
It's about, as kids, we weretold we were to be seen and not

(01:08:20):
heard.
And I'm not having that anymore.
We're going to be heard.
You're supposed to put up withit.
You were just supposed to justlet it happen and just go about
your day.
Right.
and forget about it you're grownup now it doesn't matter you
know but really then how come Ihave a hard time getting up for
work or how come I can't stopdrinking or how come I can't
stop doing drugs or how come Ican't have an intimate

(01:08:42):
relationship or how come I can'tI'm filled with anxiety right
I'm filled with anxiety how comeI sweat every time I walk by a
church you know what I mean likeit's all of those things it's
like okay

SPEAKER_00 (01:08:51):
I drive by there's this one particular church that
I've driven by a number of timesand it's boarded up and I've
seen conversations in town aboutthis one particular church
that's boarded up and You seethe same conversations.
You see the, oh, what a shame.
And then you see people bring upthe comment, you know, lots of
these comments.
Well, if they weren't expletive,expletive, you know, CSA with

(01:09:13):
children, then this wouldn'thave happened.
And then you see the people say,oh, you shouldn't be so
disrespectful to the Catholicchurch.
I drive by that church and Isay, and I stand by this, if you
weren't doing these thingswrong, If you weren't abusing
children and sweeping it underthe rug and reassigning and

(01:09:34):
sending these priests to thissecret camp or putting them on
the island for a little while toget fixed, quote unquote fixed,
which they never got fixed, youwouldn't be bankrupt and losing
churches.
People wouldn't be running fromchurches.
I mean, they're losing members.
Membership is dwindling.

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:56):
But I mean, at the same time, it's still a
multi-billion dollarorganization.
And again, I'm not out for theCatholic Church, believe me.
That's not what I'm interestedin.
I'm really interested inexposing the way that
underrepresented, marginalizedchildren are abused by systems,
that systems allow the abuse tohappen because they think that
these children don't have power.

(01:10:17):
But I think...
you know, children grow up andthey become the adults and we're
the adults now.
And it's time to take back thatpower and claim, you know, our
stories and, and tell ourstories to help prevent this
from happening to futuregenerations.
It's like, if people reallydon't want this to happen
anymore, we know that it's onein four girls and one in eight,

(01:10:39):
they say boys, although I thinkit's higher boys tend to report
less, a whole bunch of otherthings.
But, you know, if you lookaround a room and you're in a
room and you're with more thanfive women, one of them has been
sexually abused as a child.
I mean, it is such an epidemicin our society that nobody talks
about.
And I get it.
Who wants to talk about it?

(01:10:59):
I don't want to talk about it.
But guess what?
If you don't talk about it, youdon't get better.

SPEAKER_00 (01:11:03):
Right.
And what angers me a lot aboutthis is these priests knew that
they would get away with it.
Because they were allowed to,the archdiocese of Worcester, of
Boston, et cetera, across thecountry, across the world, they
have shown us that they're goingto let them get away with it

(01:11:25):
because they have.

SPEAKER_01 (01:11:26):
Well, one of the things that really interests me
about the story as well is that,you know, in Massachusetts, you
know, unlike other places likePhiladelphia, we have not had a
grand jury report on all of thediocese in Massachusetts.
So we had Boston in 2003 by theAttorney General Tom Riley when
the Boston Globe story came out.

(01:11:48):
You know, they reported on theBoston Archdiocese.
But again, that was 20 plusyears ago.
We've learned a lot more aboutthe Boston Archdiocese since
then.
In addition, the other diocese,Fall River, Worcester, and
Springfield, have not had agrand jury report done on them
and no investigation into whatwas going on.
They're not responsible forreporting all of the credibly

(01:12:09):
accused priests or all of thechildren who came forward with
allegations of abuse.
So there's so much more that isnot...
Mitch Garabedian, who was, youknow, played by Stanley Tucci in
the movie Spotlight, theattorney who represent a lot of
these victims.
You know, I asked him once and Ihave a soundbite from him where
I say, do you think that thewhole story has been told?

(01:12:30):
And he said, we're not even atthe first layer of the onion.
Like this is so much more to thestory.
And again, like you said, it's alot of organizations.
So for me, it's also like, youknow, DSS at the time,
Department of Social Services,and DCF, you know, today.
You know, how many of thesefoster kids were part of this

SPEAKER_00 (01:12:47):
abuse?
You touched on that, but it's...
That's a

SPEAKER_01 (01:12:50):
whole other season.

(01:13:20):
We can't, you know, there'ssecrecy.
No, these records can't beshared because of, you know,
these are juvenile personalrecords.
It's like, well, you know, howmuch abuse has not been shared
as a result of that?
I mean, there's a lot.
There's a lot, not just inMassachusetts, it's around the
country as well.
And so that's just one part ofthe story.
But, you know, it's thesesystems of abuse and, you know,
yeah, law enforcement that were,you know, you look at the Sandra

(01:13:41):
Birchmore case, you know, Imean, there are people and it's
so heartbreaking.
It's so often I look at thatwoman really, you know, when she
was 23 and she still looks likea little girl to me.
And I just identify with her somuch.
I was that freckle face, littlelight skinned, you know, girl
that looked way younger than Iwas even, you know, when I was a

(01:14:04):
teenager and, uh, and that soeasily could have been me.

SPEAKER_00 (01:14:08):
You know, she was so energetic and interested in the
program that she was involved inand Stone and, As her abuse
continued and continued andcontinued, because we need to
remember, she was a child whowas groomed by an adult police

(01:14:28):
officer.
Yes, when they call it a sexualrelationship.
They were not dating.
By the time she was 23, when shedied, and let's call it what it
is, she was murdered, and theytried to cover it up.
There was an arresteddevelopment that happened with a
woman.
100%.
Because she didn't have anopportunity to have, quote

(01:14:48):
unquote, regular adolescencebecause of the abuses.

SPEAKER_01 (01:14:52):
No.
And she had been groomed for solong and she had lost all these
people that loved her and shejust wanted to be part of.
And I mean, a million differentthings, but Laura Cromaldi of
the Boston Globe did anexcellent job, I think, covering
this case and I hope continuesto cover this case.
And one of the things that shewrote in her series that was in
the Boston Globe magazine thatjust, tore my heart out and it

(01:15:13):
really hit home for me was thatSandra Birchmore was so excited
to be the mother that she didn'thave.
And I identified with that somuch because when I became a
mother, that was all I wanted.
It was all I ever wanted was tobe the mother I didn't have.
And I had the opportunity to dothat.
Thank God I had the opportunityto do that.

(01:15:33):
And I know how that felt for herand how much she wanted that.
And that just broke my heart.
And, you know, and so SandraBirchmore is one of, you know, a
thousand stories, if not more.
And, and she's not here to speakfor herself anymore.
And people have to speak for herand for children like her and to

(01:15:54):
reveal these systemic abuses.
And I think that, you know, it'stoo easy for people to be like,
oh, that was one bad cop.
No, it was three bad cops andmaybe more.
And why is that not being lookedat?

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:06):
And she can't be the only student of that program at
Stoughton Police Department thatthis was happening.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:14):
Amen.
And I think, and Kirk Minahandid a great, you know, piece on
one of his episodes on theSandra Birchmore podcast where
he talked about the policeexplorer program around the
country and how kids from thatprogram have been abused
regularly.
And because it is another systemof abuse where they have access
to kids that is unquestioned,

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:33):
right?
It's another organization thatis so completely supported by
the public.
That's right.
It's hugely funded.
Right.
Law enforcement is hugely fundedin every town, every county,
everywhere across the U.S.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:48):
But not only that, like, imagine that you are a
child, teenager, whatever, youngadult, being abused.
by somebody in authority, ateacher, a Catholic priest, a
Boy Scout leader, a cop, any ofthose things.
And you come from adysfunctional family background.

(01:17:12):
You're already experiencingpotentially neglect, abuse,
poverty, any number of thingsthat are social determinants of
health that sort of changeoutcomes for people.
And that person in authoritysays to you, who's going to
believe you?

SPEAKER_00 (01:17:28):
That's right.

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:29):
And it's, you know, in your heart of hearts that
that is so true.
Who is going to believe me?
Who do I have to go to thatwould actually believe me?
And most victims that I knowthat I've spoken with told
people and they didn't believethem, or they told them to be
quiet because it was, you know,they didn't want, you know, the
attention or they didn't wantany number of things, but it's
like, you know, it's justterrible.

SPEAKER_00 (01:17:51):
And that's really what happened to her right down
to the very ends when thatofficer allegedly came in,
murdered her, tried to make itlook like she took her own life,
and thought the same very thing.
Who's going to believe that Idid this?

(01:18:11):
I'm going to set her up to looklike a crazy bitch, quote
unquote crazy bitch, because Ihad a long conversation with
folks that are part of theSandra Bunchmore movement.
Those are the things that wesaid, that these men They wave
their hands.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:24):
Well, not only that, because they had other systems
supporting them.
So you have the medicalexaminer's office supporting
you.
You have the district attorney'soffice supporting you.
You have all these other peoplethat aren't even questioning
your

SPEAKER_00 (01:18:35):
word.
And her family were saying, youhave to look at this again.
It was the family that did this.

SPEAKER_01 (01:18:40):
It was the family that advocated.
And this is, again, anothergreat example of advocacy.
And the family did advocate forSandra and for justice for
Sandra and to get an expert thatthey had to hire themselves to
bring in to get people to takeanother look at this and to get
publicity.
And so that's some of the thingsthat we talk about when we're
talking about advocacy trainingwith MPAC.

(01:19:01):
It's like we can talk about waysto get publicity and ways to
appeal to your legislators andshare your story and get experts
if needed.
And so many things that are anapproach that people can do for
these cases and for people whodon't have voices.
So we're here and we're happy tohelp.
And all this information

SPEAKER_00 (01:19:20):
that we've talked about will be available.
And when you're ready to rollout the next episode, we'll
definitely be able to spreadthat information and let people
know that it's coming.

SPEAKER_01 (01:19:34):
Thank you.
And also, Angel, what we'regoing to do is we want to go out
and do some events that we cantalk with people.

SPEAKER_00 (01:19:40):
Well, it's great that you bring that up because I
was going to say, we really wantto have an in-person event to
talk about this and what happensin Lawrence and what happens,
you know, and what we know aboutthe Merrimack Valley.
We want to have an in-personthing.
And I really, I really wantfolks from Lawrence to come and
be part of this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 (01:20:01):
From the Merrimack Valley for sure.
And, you know, there are otherpeople from Essex County and the
Merrimack Valley that are partof that 27 unsolved cases that
I've talked about a number ofother people.
And so there are a number ofcases that we can talk about as
well.
You know, um, regarding some ofthe unsolved situations and ones
that I think potentially couldbe related to Andy's and why.

(01:20:23):
So we'd love to have anin-person event.
And that's something that We arein the works on planning.
So definitely follow us on oursocials and also on our websites
or what have you.
And, you know, so you can bekept up to date in the
information so that we can seeyou at these events because we
want to see you and we want tomove the issues forward.

(01:20:43):
And,

SPEAKER_00 (01:20:43):
you know, 2025 is going to be a, be a big year for
a couple of things.
It's going to be a big yearbecause open investigation
season two is coming out.
That's going to have massiveimpacts on the region for sure.
And we're working on, you'vetalked about MPAC a number of
times, which I continue to talkabout too.
It's Massachusetts Missing andMurdered Persons Advocacy

(01:21:05):
Coalition.
It's Melanie, it's me, it's Dr.
Anne-Marie Myers.
We have had great folks involvedlike Shana from Light the Way,
which is a great advocacymissing persons organization.
We have had input, consultation,maybe from Julie Murray, sister
of Maura Murray, who's beenmissing for almost 21 years.

(01:21:28):
So we have people that reallyknow about these things.

SPEAKER_01 (01:21:31):
Right.
And we host an annual event andwe'll be hosting more.
And, you know, we'd love forpeople to find out more because
again, it's about empoweringfamilies to be able to make the
systemic change and being ableto feature your stories to be
able to make the change.
You know, there's lots of folksout there whose cases have not
been heard.
And we think are reallyimportant in terms of being able
to bring them forward and, and,and we care.

(01:21:53):
And in the open investigationpiece, it's like, you know, for
season two and, you know, I'msure there'll be seasons after
that and we'll see what thoseare as we're moving forward.
But, you know, we'd love tointroduce you guys as well to
Dr.
Anne-Marie Myers.
If you don't know Dr.
Anne-Marie Myers, you can Googleher, but she is phenomenal.
She's a forensic anthropologistwith the medical examiner's
office for the quite some time,is now a professor at Anna Maria

(01:22:16):
College, but had beeninstrumental in recovering a
number of missing children,including Molly Bish and Sarah
Pryor, Holly Peranian.
She worked on the Lady of theDunes case in the early years.
She was the expert witness whorecovered, physically dug out of
the ground, the bodies of theinfamous crime boss, Whitey

(01:22:38):
Bulger.
She recovered Whitey Bulger'svictims and was delivered
fascinating expert testimony inhis trial when he was found
guilty.
And I've known Dr.
Myers.
If you watch the documentary, wemet, you'll see the first day we
met is on this dig.
Dr.
Myers and I have known eachother since 1999 and became
friends while searching for aclandestine grave, what we were

(01:23:01):
told was a clandestine grave orbelieved was a clandestine grave
where Andy might've been buried.
And we became friends, you know,through that experience and have
had many, many experiences sincethen.
And Dr.
Meyer's commitment to missingpersons and to the cause has
been just incredible.
And so much of the work she doesis just above and beyond what

(01:23:25):
I've seen before.
you know, so many people do, andshe is just amazing.
And I think that at some pointwe'll have her as a guest as
well.
And Angela, it would be great tohave you be part of that.
And, you know, we can all talktogether and maybe just have a
conversation that even if it's alive, maybe we'll do a YouTube
live.
That's the other thing is we'restarting a YouTube channel.
So when Angela and I get offthe, off the recording here,

(01:23:46):
we're going to be, um, updatingmy YouTube to, um, have a
YouTube channel going.
So I'll definitely be hostingguests on the YouTube channel
and we'll be talking more aboutthese stories.
And again, what makes it uniquein terms of the podcast and the
YouTube and all of those thingsis that I'm an experienced
investigative journalist,documentary filmmaker with lived

(01:24:09):
experience as well, that istelling these stories in a
fact-based way, in a documentarystyle to show people the truth
and to elevate the voices of theunderrepresented kids and
survivors.

SPEAKER_00 (01:24:29):
Thank you, Melanie Perkins-McLaughlin.
Her podcast, Open Investigation,nine-part series available now
everywhere you listen.
Open Investigation Season 2 iscoming.
Massachusetts Missing andMurdered Persons Advocacy
Coalition, MPAC, onlinemassmissingandmurder.org.
You can follow it online.

(01:24:50):
We are ramping up events comingsoon and going to AdvocacyCon.
That happens the end of March inIndianapolis.
And True Crime Podcast Festival,which happens in July in
Danvers, is coming toMassachusetts this year.
That's cool.
Thank you for listening.
Please support Crime of theTruest Kind.
Follow at Crime of the TruestKind everywhere.

(01:25:13):
Everything about the show,Crimeofthetruestkind.com.
I continue every other weekreleasing on Fridays because
that is what my work schedule isgoing to allow.
And please do send me your showideas.
All of you are really great atdoing that.
CrimeOfTheTruestKind atgmail.com.
Melanie's show,OpenInvestigationPodcast.com.

(01:25:37):
HaveYouSeenAndy.com.
If you have not watched thedocumentary Have You Seen Andy?
about missing 10-year-old boyAndy Puglisi who disappeared
from Lawrence, Massachusetts,please watch it.
All right, I gotta go now.
Lock your goddamn doors.

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