The Satanic Panic

Fall River, Massachusettes, was a scary place for a while in 1979.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Listen to Hudson River Radio dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Don't make us come and find you.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
I'm Linda Zimmermann.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm Brian Harrowitz, and this.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Is Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson River Radio
dot Com. Welcome everyone to this. Well, I always say disturbing,
but this is a This is one of the most disturbing.
I actually kind of regret doing the notes because I
had an awful time doing it.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
All right, Well, I am now intrigued and ken, yes, yes,
I only know the title, so once again it's a
it's an ambush, so I don't know what's coming.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Yeah, this is the satanic panic murders. And you know,
some cases we do are just awful details, but there's
someone who's kind of trying to do the right thing. Yeah,
not in this case.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
We haven't come across too many good murders yet.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
No, not good murders, but the people involved sometimes, you know,
they're swept up in their innocent victims and this is
all just bad. So let me let me, you know,
dive in. And there was something in late seventies, early eighties,

(01:22):
you know that that people were worried that these were
satanic cults were everywhere. You know, a couple teenagers making
a pentagram and burning a candle. Oh, it's satanic cult.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
That rock and roll music, it'll rot your brain.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
It was the whole thing with the Black Sabbath, you know,
the Ozzie's band, Black Sabbath. Their whole thing was it
was a show. They said from the beginning, it was
a show. Ozzy Osbourne's real first name is John. It's
John John Osborne. He's a regular I mean, he's.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Not a normal guy, but he's a regular guy, you know.
But excuse me.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
The whole band, the whole satanic thing was for show
because they saw people lining up to see horror movies
and they're like, oh, all right, So things kind of
started to click. So one story goes that, you know,
Ozzie and the band were on tour and a group
of kids sat outside their hotel and the pentagram, relating

(02:22):
candles and singing, and Ozzie went outside, blew the candles
out and went back inside.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Yeah, it was a lot of media hype.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
And spinning records backwards.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Oh yeah, so it was that whole thing. But yeah,
satanic cults are all all fun until the body start
piling up, which they do in this case.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Wait a minute, we're not going to prove them right, are.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
You well again? Was it a real Satanic cult? Or
was it for show, for control, for fear factor? So
we're going to Fall River, Massachusetts, which we will be
coming back to Fall River in the not too distant

(03:14):
future for one of their most famous murder cases, Lizzie Borden,
of course. But this was October thirteenth, nineteen seventy nine,
five thirty in the morning. Two women joggers are on
the track at the Dimmon Regional Vocational Technical High School,

(03:35):
say that five times fast, and under the bleachers they
find which could only be described as the mutilated body
of a seventeen year old girl. She had been her
pants were off, violently sexually assaulted, cut with a knife,

(03:56):
beaten to death, Her skull was crushed, her hands were
her face was unrecognizable, her hands had been tied with
a fishing line. An authority said there was there were
ritualistic characteristics to the murders. Well of that's all the
public needed to hear. Ritualistic the Tannic cult because nearby

(04:23):
is a place. I don't know if you've ever heard
of Freetown State Park, which is in the Bridgewater Triangle,
which we may be covering on another show. The Bridgewater
Triangle is an area where you name the bizarre things,
cryptids and ghosts and UFOs and supposedly satanic cults. They

(04:45):
were finding pentagrams and animal bones and signs of animal sacrifice.
How anybody can sacrifice an animal is beyond me.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oh, but that is a lesson to learn.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
If someone's doing that, that's the giantist of red flags
that something worse is coming.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
So it's time to sit right.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, Torturing and murdering animals is the training wheels for
serial killers. Oh, I'll have to use that quote. There
we go. That was a good one.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
I made up a new word, giantist.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Giantist. Yes, we're we're breaking new ground here to a
little hyperbole. Yeah, yes, Well, anyway, who was this girl?
She was seventeen year old Doreen Leveku. She was a
runaway from a foster home. She had been in foster
homes for I think most of her life, which is

(05:45):
a tough row to hoe, and she had become a
prostitute to earn some money, and the area of Fall
River Bedford Street was basically the sex and drug era
and she had been seen there the night before and

(06:06):
then her body discovered well just a few weeks later again,
that was October thirteenth, November seventh. Another prostitute, a nineteen
year old Barbara Raposa. Now I saw her her age
listed as nineteen, as twenty, as twenty two. Most things

(06:29):
had her as nineteen, so we'll go with the majority there.
There's not a lot of information on her. She was
working downtown the night of this of November seventh, and
she disappeared, and you know, some people were probably saying, well,
maybe she just ran off, ran off with somebody, but

(06:52):
she had a four year old son, Eric, and people
who knew her said she wouldn't have abandoned herself sun.
So I don't know if you're doing the math here,
four year old son, she's most likely nineteen, huh. Somebody
got her pregnant at age fifteen, so yeah, not it

(07:18):
was a few months past and on January twenty sixth,
nineteen eighty. So she disappeared on November seventh. Her body
was found. This is this is awful. A man was
walking a beagle and the beagle ran off into the

(07:39):
woods and started eating something, as dogs tend to do
with dead animals, only this animal had clothes on from
the waist up. It had clothes on, and it was
the body of Barbara Raposa. This was in the woods
on Jefferson Street behind what used to be the Ari

(08:03):
Smith factory. Her hands had been tied, her skull was
crushed with rocks or a concrete block, possibly something like
a cinder block, because bits of concrete were found driven
into her crushed skull. Again, her pants were off. They

(08:24):
said they couldn't determine that there had been any sexual assault.
And you may think, well, she'd almost three months outside,
but this is Massachusetts in the winter, and they said
her body had frozen and was pretty well preserved. So
sounds like very similar. Pants off two teenage prostitutes who

(08:51):
were working the Bedford Road Street area, hands tied, heads
crushed with rocks. But the are saying, well, there's nothing
to tie these two cases together. You know, no reason
to think it's similar. I'm like, what you know that's

(09:12):
I mean, how many murders do you have of prostitutes
with getting their skulls crushed with rocks in the span
of a few weeks. So it's like, Nope, nothing to
see here. Move along. So I think at this point,
with two victims brutally murdered, we are going to take
our first break. Hudson River Radio dot com.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Hudson Riverradio dot com.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
We are back, and I'm thinking we have a serial
killer or killers here. How about you?

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Well, right before the break, you said first two victims,
I believe, yes, implying that there's more. So I'm going
to say, yeah, it's a serial killer. I would say
at the time, looking forward, if your law enforcement you're like, man,
I hope there aren't any more.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
Right, But I mean the similarities for them to announce
no reason to think these are connected.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Well, you know what, it's human nature to look for
a pattern, to try to connect things that aren't necessarily connected.
So you do want to be cautious with that.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
You know, you don't want to lump them again.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
How many how many young prostitutes were having their skulls
crushed right at that point.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
But each of them deserves a full investigation and not
to be loved together. And you know, so you don't
want to presume that they are connected. They each write
deserve the full efforts.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
So the person who had yeah, let me try that again.
The person who had reported Barbara missing was her forty
two year old boyfriend. Again. She was nineteen, Andy Malte

(11:10):
m al tais Malta, Maltese. We'll call him Andy. He
had previous convictions for having sex with fifteen year olds. Okay,
ring a bell And I don't know if he came
out and said it, but he said he had been

(11:31):
living with Barbara for several years. And it's assumed that
he was the one who had gotten her pregnant at
age fifteen and was the father of her son Eric.
Now was he a nice guy? Oh no, he was
a pedophile. He was a violent rapist. He was just

(11:53):
a really bad, unbalanced person. And he apparently also, we
have another person coming in on this whole case mess.
He had allegedly had sex with a girl named Robin
Murphy at age eleven. Okay, Robin is another prostitute who

(12:19):
is part of this group. So one of the they
bring him in for questioning the day after Barbara's body
is discovered, and one of the first things he said
was I used to be with Satan, but now I'm
with God. And he used to be a Satanic worshiper,

(12:39):
but just recently he found Jesus.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Right as soon as he was walking through the doors
of the police.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Station, right suddenly he said that Barbara and Doreen, the
two murder victims so far, were also practicing Satanists. Okay,
so the satanic panic is growing. Two murdered victims, murder

(13:08):
victims of this satanic cult. So obviously police would like
to question as many people as possible. So Andy, who
they said, just rambled on and on. He talked and
talked and never really said anything. He used to come
down to the police station like every other day and

(13:29):
talk the detective's ears off, which they led him because
they were hoping he would slip, which we shall see
what happens. He suggests they speak to this Robin Murphy
who's now seventeen years old, and Karen Marsden who's twenty

(13:50):
years old. They bring them in. You figure, seventeen year
old girls going to be nervous. Police are bringing in
her in about a murder. She's in a prostitute ring,
she's in a satanic cult. Cold as Ice apparently keeps
her trap shut. Twenty year old Karen, who was a
single mother. No, she's highly nervous. She is talking and talking,

(14:16):
and finally she blurts out, Carl Drew killed Doreen Levek. Okay,
the first murder victim. Okay, police are like, great, who
the hell's Carl Drew? Well? Little background on Carl. He
grew up with a highly abusive and violent alcoholic father,

(14:42):
which we know is a good way to train a
future serial killer. To give you an idea, I'm all
the physical abuse. One thing apparently that he lived in
I think it was a New Hampshire or Vermont. There
was a well on the property and there was a
bunch of dead rats in it. So his father tied

(15:04):
a rope around Carl's ankles and lowered him headfirst into
the well and told him to grab as many rats
as possible so that he could pull him back up,
and that's how they would empty the well. Yeah that's wow,
Oh my god. I don't know how old the poor

(15:27):
kid was, but by age fourteen he had enough of
the abuse and ran away from home. Yeah. Yeah, it's
just nobody's good and that nobody comes out well in
this case. I'm telling you, I felt like I was
walking through mud trying to get the story straight.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Look here about a well and your your mind goes
to the seventeen hundreds and it's not.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Well. People still use well water. But maybe it was
just a way to torture his son. And how long
had those rats been dead in the water? Probably a
little gunky, yeah, probably a little gooey. You could use
a bucket or a net or no, just tie your
young son by the ankles and lower him down there.

(16:21):
So yeah, so Carl was carrying on the violence. He
again he was a pimp, that the two murdered women
were part of his group. And so Karen Marsden also says,

(16:42):
if I am murdered, Carl did it? Okay, that's an
interesting thing to tell. Police. They offer to put her
into witness protection if she tells the whole story, and
she kind of panics and backtracks. No, no, no, no,
a little late though, because she's already let the cap

(17:06):
out of the bag. But let's get back to Andy,
who is rambling on and on and on. One day
he comes in and says, you know, I have to
tell you guys, I'm psychic, and he's he's telling police
that he had a vision of Barbara Raposa's murder. So okay,

(17:30):
let's get the recorders, let's get the stenographers. Let's hear
about your great vision. Andy. Oh, maybe you can help
us with the case. He says, I see the assailant
holding a rock, leaning over and he was hitting her more,
coming down hard on her face. I seen her feet

(17:53):
come up and he was, you know, like he was
really mad at her, coming down with a rock on
her face, and she was calling out for help. So, wow,
that's amazing. Andy, you've seen the actual murder. Could you
take us to you think you could find with your

(18:14):
psychic abilities where her body was found? Well, amazingly, yes
he can. He takes them right to the crime scene,
points out exactly where the position had been, the position,
the orientation, The head was here, the feet were here.

(18:34):
It's just remarkable that he knows details that only someone
who was at the murder could have.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, that's impressive.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
Yeah. He also says the rock was square on the sides.
He even saw that, which they, as I said, they
thought it was a concrete block possibly or a cinder block.
So he was Andy was very put off and surprised
when they arrested him for first degree murder.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
I should have seen that psychic.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yes, had he been psychic? I know. So then remember
seventeen year old Doreen. I know this is getting Robin Murphy,
this is getting convoluted. But bear with me. She now
comes out and says, you know what, I was present
for the murder of both Doren and Barbara. But I

(19:32):
want immunity because I didn't do it, but I was there.
So if you grant me immunity, I'll tell you everything.
So they do. They think, all right, the seventeen year
old girl will put her in witness protection out in Dallas, Texas.
She's gonna tell us everything. We're gonna nab Andy for

(19:55):
the murder of Barbara, and maybe Carl drew the murder
of Doren. So she said that she was there that
Andy had said she was going he was going to
kill Barbara because Barbara had been seeing another man. Well,
what did she do for a living? I mean, you

(20:17):
know you're dating a prostitute, but I guess there was
one she was fond of. Perhaps, So she said that she,
Barbara and Andy were in a car. Andy and Barbara
got into a fight. They stopped behind that old factory.

(20:40):
Barbara and Andy got out, she claims. Robin claims that
he violently raped her then killed her with a rock. Well,
I don't know if you recall, they could even though
the body was frozen, they couldn't find any signs of
a sexual assault. So was she lying about that? Turns

(21:03):
out Robin lies about a lot of things. But still
it was enough to arrest him and keep him in
because you have his psychic confession, as it were, and
now you have Robin corroborating for the most part that story.

(21:24):
So then we get deeper into the satanic panic part
because remember Karen Marsden who said Carl Drew did it.
She and another woman turned out to be another prostitute,
Carol Fletcher, bring police to that Freetown State Park to
see where their satanic cult practiced all of their black arts,

(21:50):
led by Carl Drew and Robin Murphy. Both women said
the two of them were leading it. Robin wasn't just
an innocent little bystander.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Okay, she played the game, all right, She.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
Played the game. So Robin gets her immunity and tells
all about the death of both of them. She says
that the Doren murder under the found under the bleachers.
She said that Doreen had been an offering to Satan

(22:32):
by Carl Drew. That Carl Doreen, Robin, Karen Marsden, and
some other guy who apparently probably wasn't there, so I
won't mention his name. The two women waited in the car,
which is hard to believe, while the two men brought

(22:53):
U brought Doreen under the bleachers and killed her. According
to Robin, they didn't a sound. They didn't know she
had been murdered. When you hear the details of rob
she must have been screaming bloody murder literally, you know, beating, stabbed, raped,

(23:16):
all of this, and they she Robin claimed, we didn't
hear anything. We didn't see anything. Okay, So police, Okay,
Now Robin is saying Karen was there. We want to
talk to Karen again. Well, guess what. Karen goes missing
February ninth, nineteen eighty. She is nowhere to be found.

(23:43):
Then in April, a man finds part of her skull
on his property. He calls police. Police search the whole area.
They never find any more of her body, but they
find three murdered cats, bones of sheep, human hair, bits

(24:05):
of clothing, and jewelry and of course a pentagram and
all this. So that was their place in Freetown State
Park to kill animals and do whatever it is they did.
So all right, so Carl probably is looking good for

(24:26):
the murder of Doreen. We've got Andy arrested. But now
Karen Marsden goes missing, and not one but two women
tell police Robin admitted to them that she murdered Karen Marsden. Okay, again,
not the innocent bystander that now she is the only

(24:48):
one who places who is placed with all three murders. Okay,
So a different picture of this naive little seventeen year
old is definitely forming. So if you recall, Robin has
immunity for Doreen and Barbara's murder. If you're gonna get immunity,

(25:12):
you probably don't want to commit another murder. She does
not have immunity for Karen's.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
If she thought she did. That's kind of the first
thing that popped into my head. Is she thinking I'm
immune from everything?

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Now?

Speaker 3 (25:26):
Possibly? Possibly so they are. Police arrest Karen and Carl Drew.
But before I tell you the horrific details of Karen's death,
I think we need a break. We need a deep breath,
and you need to be forewarned. We'll be right back.

(25:49):
This is Hudson Riverradio dot com.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
We are back. I don't know if you are prepared,
but uh, bring it, bring it okay. So according to Robin,
who has had all these great descriptions of the first
two murders, she said that, of course the motive for
k killing Karen was that Karen was squealing to the

(26:24):
police and they couldn't have that, so they drove her
out to the woods. Robin, Carl Drew, and another man
named Carl Davis. Robin pulls Karen out of the car
by her hair. They start stoning her with rocks. You

(26:47):
know those old Biblical scenes of throwing rocks at someone. Yes,
so they start stoning her. Robin slashes her throat, she says,
because Carl made her do it. Then they cut off
some of her fingers to cause her pain and get
the rings off her finger. Drew breaks her neck, Robin

(27:13):
pulls out all of the hair. They cut the head
off the body and start kicking it around like a kickball.
In my life, I and it doesn't end. I don't know,

(27:34):
you know what to say.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
So but then we still have the headless corpse. So
apparently Carl Drew has sex with the headless corpse and
then orders Robin to perform, let us just say, a
sex act on the headless corpse, and that is the
demise of Karen Marsden.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Speechless.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yes, wow, yeah, wow.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
Yeah. That's why I said, I I kind of regret
doing this case because it's so awful in so many ways.
So let us let us take a deep breath another
one and go to the trials. All right. Based on
Robin Murphy's testimony, who we know is a compulsive liar

(28:27):
and also a violent murderer, Andy Malta is convicted of
first degree murder of Barbara Raposa. He's sentenced to life
in prison where he dies of cancer. Oh boohoo. Carl
Davis there was apparently who was supposedly Robin said was

(28:51):
in with the rob with the third murder. Apparently the
evidence was very shaky. They said the trial fed a part.
He was freed, but was he a gentle innocent man?
Oh no, just the next year. So you beat a
murder rap, you might want to, you know, not try

(29:15):
to kill someone else. The next just the next year,
he stabs a pregnant woman in the head. She survives,
but he got He got seven years for that. That's it.
I should think fifteen twenty maybe stabbing a pregnant woman

(29:36):
in the head, you might want to, you know, just saying,
all right, Carl Drew life with no parole for the
first degree murder of Karen Marsden. But there's a lot
of people who say, oh no, he's innocent. Justice for

(29:56):
Carl Drew, and they say it was all well, it
was probably a lot of Robin, But I think there
was ample evidence that Carl was involved in a lot
of a lot of things. Then we come to the
trial of poor young Robin, who they dressed to look like,

(30:18):
you know, an all American girl at her trial, and
she was being controlled by the evil Satanic cult leader
Carl Drew. And she managed to plead guilty to second
degree murder of Karen Marsden, where she got life, but

(30:38):
with the possibility of parole. We're pleading guilty before I
get go a little further where where heads are going
to pop off in anger. No one ever went to
trial for the murder of Doreen Levek. So was it

(30:59):
all of all of one or more or all of
the above. We don't know. So no one ever went
to trial for that. So poor Robin, who had been
so controlled. She served twenty four years, and then in
two thousand and four she was parolled. She got parole

(31:25):
because what a great person in prison she was.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
I'm sure her young age when she went in was
probably taken into consideration.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
I would take into consideration the probable triple homicide with torture.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
But oh, I would agree with you there.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Yeah. Seven years later, however, she was back in prison
for her role violations, such as she was dating, she
was living with a woman who was a felon. I
guess that's a no no. She was present at drug deal,
which is a big no no, and who knows other things.

(32:05):
So she continued to try for parole again, and then
in May of twenty twenty four she got her second parole.
And this is you know how I love reading parole
boards ridiculous statements. She acknowledged that due to her dishonesty,

(32:28):
many people have been harmed. She is willing to try
to rectify the harm she has caused. She has created
a re entry plan, she has community support, and she
has demonstrated a level of rehabilitation that would make her

(32:51):
release compatible with the welfare of society, and the board
unanimously voted for that parole due to her dishonesty. How
about her violent homicidal tendency. Yes, people have been harmed.

(33:11):
How about three women were brutally murdered. Do you love
the way they were these?

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, let's skirt the major issue. Let's soften language.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
A little bit.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
It's like she told a lie and someone stubbed their toe.
I mean, it's maddening. It's maddening. Souh. Yeah, she repeatedly lied,
changed her story. She's the only one present at all
three murders by her own admission. But I think who

(33:46):
said it best was Patricia Desorto, who was a friend
of Barbara Raposa, the second victim. She said, Robin is
a narcissistic, psychopathic so's apathic liar. She is not a
victim of violence. She was the ringleader of all three murders.

(34:08):
She was not a victim of violence. She loved it,
and I think that is the case. But Robin Murphy
is a free woman today.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Any idea where she is.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
I'm afraid to look. I don't I don't know. There
was an enormous amount of publicity when she was granted parole.
It was all over. Who knows. Hopefully she is quite
living a quiet life somewhere. I think she's sixty one now,

(34:45):
having spent half of her life in prison. But yeah,
I think this is someone who was able to calm
the parole board.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah, sounds like it.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah, And I think that's it. She loved everybody who
knew or said she was. She loved the violence. So
was Carl Drew you know part of it? I think
I think so. But I do believe Robin was the ringleader.

(35:23):
So there we have it.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Huh, all right, Yeah, this goes near the top of
the list of all the ones you've surprised us with.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah, it does. Like I said, I just felt awful
working on the notes. It's like, oh, why did I
Why did I choose this case? But I think it's
important for people to know these people are out there.
Don't let them fool you. Ah, But she's free. Carl

(35:57):
is still in prison, but they're people are trying to
get him out. And three women are dead that we.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Know of true true who knows what else has may
not have been found right from this group?

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yeah? Wow, right, all right.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Would you like to take us out?

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Sure? I think that's enough for one day. Yeah, agreed. Well, yeah,
good job.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
As always, everybody is sufficiently disturbed on that one. So
thank you all for joining us here on Murder in
the Hudson Valley. Don't forget to check out.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
All of Linda's books.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
We always forget, We always forget to plug Linda's books. Yeah, yeah,
so Linda has written about things other than murder too,
if you're not into just the murder kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
And with that, we will see you next time on
Murder in the Hudson Valley.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
If you are not a victim of murdering in the
Hudson Valley

Speaker 3 (36:53):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.