Dark Downeast

Face Plant: The Woman With 1,000 Boyfriends — What's it like to have your image used as the bait in thousands of online romance scams? This is what happened to Janessa Brazil—a cam girl whose image has been hijacked and used to con hundreds, maybe thousands, of lonely people out of hard-earned cash. This is a story of love, lies, and the faces behind a billion-dollar underground industry.

Chameleon is a production of Campside Media ...

For more than forty years, Debra Stone’s murder lingered in the uneasy space between knowing and proving. 

An informant came forward early on with a story that, in hindsight, mapped almost every detail of what happened to her, yet the case drifted through the decades. Weighed down by doubt, fear, and a single failed polygraph that stalled momentum. 

When investigators finally reopened the file in the 21st century, it wasn’t modern DN...

In December of 2024, I shared an episode about a 24-year-old musician whose life was cut short in New Haven, Connecticut in 1990. More than three decades later, the murder of John Evers Robinson remains unsolved and the questions surrounding what happened to him have only grown more complicated with time.

I’m bringing this story back because it needs your attention and action in a new way. Here’s John’s sister, Jocelyn Jackson.

“It’s...

When Mark Knapp’s routine commute home from work one February night in 1984 ended with his car abandoned and his body at the bottom of an old marble quarry, the shock rippled far beyond one family.

What followed was not a straight line from crime to justice. Suspects were quickly identified and charged in connection with Mark’s death, but shifting narratives and fragile witnesses fractured the entire foundation of the case just as t...

Cam Lyman vanished in the summer of 1987, leaving behind a forty-acre estate, dozens of prizewinning dogs, and a silence that would stretch on for more than a decade. 

Friends and family disagreed on whether Cam had walked away or been taken or worse. Meanwhile, millions of dollars in trusts and assets seemed to evaporate. When Cam was finally found, hidden beneath the very ground no one had searched, the mystery didn’t end. It comp...

Go inside the investigation of the murder of Liberty German and Abigail Williams—two bright, beloved girls from Delphi, Indiana—on the first episode of the 13th Juror. Hosted by Brandi Churchwell, unpack the long, twisting search for answers, the arrest of Richard Allen, and how the prosecution built its case. 

Listen to 13th Juror now on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz compan...

17-year-old Brandi “Amy” Sullivan was used to coming and going. She was restless, independent, and always in motion. So when she didn’t come home in the summer of 1996, her family tried not to panic. But this time was different.

Weeks later, Amy was found dead in the woods behind a warehouse in suburban Massachusetts. What followed was an investigation plagued by missing time, withheld details, and a crucial lie that shifted the tim...

Every now and then I uncover a case buried deep in the archives with circumstances that prove truth is stranger than fiction. This story is one of them.

When a prominent Bridgeport, Connecticut woman failed to show up for lunch with a friend, it led to a devastating discovery in her overflowing home that had become a sort of treasure trove of local history. The investigation stalled until months later when some of the woman’s treasu...

In late summer of 1990, a mother in central Maine seemed to slip quietly out of her own life. Shirley McAvoy had been navigating a painful separation, leaning on friends and trying to rebuild a sense of normalcy. Then, shortly before a scheduled court date related to her pending divorce, she simply disappeared.

Days turned into weeks, and small, unsettling details began to surface—things that didn’t fit with the idea of someone who’...

More than a century ago during the winter of 1923, a quiet Christmas in East Hartford, Connecticut took a devastating turn that would echo far beyond that holiday. Mrs. Mary Monsell never arrived for the dinner she’d been warmly invited to, and within hours, her home became the center of a crime that would send police searching for a suspect who vanished into the world and never returned. 

Mary’s name rarely appears in headlines now...

Some cases linger for years not because the truth is hidden, but because the tools needed to prove it aren’t yet strong enough. Evidence waits on shelves, memories shift, and flawed forensic science can steer an investigation away from the person who seemed suspect from the start. This is one of those cases. 

This is a story about a young woman whose life was brutally taken and the decades that followed as investigators, family memb...

On a winter night in early February of 1992, John E. Volungis Jr. was standing on the edge of a brand-new life. After years of working toward a career in law enforcement, John was about to take off for his next step in that pursuit.

It was supposed to be a fresh start after navigating a complicated past and an equally complicated marriage. But before he could take that next step, something happened inside the Worcester duplex he sha...

It was early January in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, when a discovery in a quiet stretch of woods changed a family forever. A young woman had crossed paths with a violent killer close to home. The investigation led to a swift arrest and a conviction that should’ve brought some measure of justice and safety, but what came next defied reason. 

The man convicted of her murder was given chance after chance to walk free – opportunities...

November 26 marks three years since Reina Carolina Morales Rojas disappeared after getting into a car in East Boston, Massachusetts. She was later dropped off in nearby Somerville and that was the last time anyone saw or heard from her.

Despite being reported missing soon after, information about her disappearance didn’t reach the public for nearly two months. It was only after community advocates spoke out that her story began to g...

One ordinary day during August of 1983, in a quiet patch of parkland just off the road in Penacook, New Hampshire, a teenager found something that didn’t belong. What followed rippled through the small community for years.

Interviews, rumors, and timelines never quite fit together. Voices clashed over what was seen, what was said, and what couldn’t be proved at all. This is a story about how quickly attention can settle on one perso...

In the spring of 2017, the phone calls came almost every day. Tina Stadig always stayed in touch with her twin sister, no matter where life had taken her. The last time they spoke, Tina talked about what was next in her life. She mentioned finding a new place to land, possibly with her sister, like old times.

They never made a plan. And then, one day, the calls stopped. Days passed. Then weeks. And the silence that followed was loud...

In late July 2004, 20-year-old Christina Lunceford walked into her parents’ home beaming with excitement. She had just signed the lease on a new apartment with her boyfriend and was ready to begin a new chapter of her life. But only days later, Chrissy disappeared from that apartment, and the stories her family heard still don’t make sense to them more than 20 years later.

Chrissy’s name and face may have faded from public view over...

The murder of Eugenio DeLeon Vega marked the beginning of a three-decade legal odyssey that exposed flaws in Connecticut’s criminal justice system and raised enduring questions about who really killed the popular grocer. 

Police initially suspected robbery as the motive and two suspects were arrested, charged, and convicted based on the state’s highly circumstantial case against them despite the glaring inconsistencies at the scene ...

On a winter night in 1981, a teenager stepped out of his Essex Junction home and never returned. His disappearance unsettled the quiet Vermont town, leaving his family searching for answers that never came.

Years later, a hunter in the woods made a discovery that would finally explain what happened to the missing teen, but not why. Whispers of a stolen check, shifting stories, and a courtroom battle followed, yet the truth is still ...