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Killer in the Crypt · The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales

• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Grim.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Morning and welcome to the Grimm.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, kristen.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: On today's episode we'll be opening the gate and entering Pine Grove Cemetery, located in Terrell, massachusetts.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: So grab your favorite mug, cozy up and let's take a dig into history.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: This is the Grimm's 50th episode and, whether you've been here since the first haunting or just crossed the gate, thank you for joining me among the headstones and histories buried beneath them.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: But today we're leaving the well-trodden path behind.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: We're stepping into Pine Grove Cemetery, a quiet patch of Cape Cod earth with stories far louder than they seem.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: And that, dear listeners, is why you're really here.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I have a soft spot for cemeteries like Pine Grove.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: They're modest, overlooked, quiet places, tucked away from tourist brochures and weekend hikers.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: But don't let its size fool you.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: These grounds are steeped in murder, mystery and legend.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Locals might argue Pinegrove's name carries more weight than I give it credit for, but for most, I'd wager, you haven't heard of it until now.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Located in Tororo, massachusetts, a town we've brushed past before, on the Grimm, the seaside, cape Cod Sanctuary might seem like the furthest thing from Grimm Sun-soaked beaches, family vacations.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: But dig a little deeper and the shadows are waiting.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Established in 1799, pine Grove began as a burial ground besides Tororo's Methodist Church, which has long since vanished.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Today, it spans two acres enclosed by granite posts and iron rails that feel more symbolic than secure neither keeping visitors out or anything else in Surrounded by forests, in the distant home of the sea, a gravel path splits the cemetery from east to west, a reminder that you're no longer on the beaten path.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Burials began here in 1799 and continue to this day, and while the cemetery was only just added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013, don't be deceived by its late recognition.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: This place is layered in time, from weathered Puritan slate to polished modern granite.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: The gravestones here form an eclectic gallery of funeral art, each marker a quiet monument to lives lived, secrets kept and stories waiting to be unearthed.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Truro is a town steeped in seafaring history, but, as any coastal community knows, such a legacy comes with a price.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: In 1841, a fierce gale claimed seven vessels and 57 men, delivering a devastating blow to the heart of the town.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Truro would recover, as coastal towns do, but just a few years later the sea came to collect again.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: The story of the commerce is a strange and sorrowful one because, unlike other maritime tragedies, the ship did return to the harbor, but her crew did not.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: There were no dramatic disappearances over the horizon, no vessels.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Swallowed whole by a storm, the Comras drifted, sat silent, abandoned and bearing no answers.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Of her ten crew members, eight were born in Truro.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Seven now rest within the bounds of Pine Grove Cemetery.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: What happened in those final hours remains one of the Cape's most enduring mysteries.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: The ship came home.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Her men did not.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: The commerce was no stranger to the waters off of Truro.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Commanded by the well-regarded Solomon Hopkins Lombard, the vessel had long been a part of the town's coastal lifeblood, sharing both its prosperity and its perils.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: But a year before its final fateful voyage, the Comras found itself entangled in international suspicion.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: The ship was seized by Her Majesty's Revenue Cotter's sisters at Port Hood, cape Breton, under suspicion of violating a treaty between the United States and Great Britain.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: The crew was detained for three tense weeks.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: They remained in custody until it was determined that the commerce had entered the harbor in distress, having lost both a dory and a sail.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Only then did Halifax authorities release the vessel.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: The ship returned home from Arachat, weathered but intact.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Then came that quiet Sunday in September 1844, the kind of day where the Atlantic takes on a deeper hue and the golden rod along the cape glows like fire.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Captain Lobbard, 29 at the time, prepared his crew launching the longboat to come ashore.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Eight of the ten crew members aboard the commerce were sons of Truro.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: So when the ship was spotted floating in the bay that Sunday, townsfolk assumed the men had returned safely from sea.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: But by Monday morning unease crept in.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: None of the crew had appeared at Sunday service, a ritual they rarely missed after a voyage Concert.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Friends and family rode out to meet the vessel.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: What they found was chilling.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: The commerce was properly secured, sails flared and gears stowed, but the deck was empty.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: No signs of struggle, no cries for help.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: The crew had vanished.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: It was a ghost ship.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Over the next three weeks the sea gave up the dead, one by one.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: The bodies of all ten men washed ashore along a 30-mile stretch of coastline.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Each had drowned.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: But here's what haunts the town to this day.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: The waters on that day were calm, serene even.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: How could ten experienced fishermen, strong swimmers even, have drowned in a longboat so close to shore?
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: The commerce's longboat was later discovered on a beach in Brewster, one of its planks torn loose.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Had it taken on water, capsized or something else?
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Something darker driven the crew into panic and peril.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Newspapers across New England carried the story under solemn headlines.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Another melancholy loss of life of Toruro fishermen, the lost crew, the lake disaster at Toruro.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: What really happened that quiet September day remains a mystery.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: What really happened that quiet September day remains a mystery.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Only the sea and the men it claimed will ever truly know.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Sadly, time has not been kind to the many headstones.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: In Pine Grove, the marker for Captain Solomon H Lombard now lies shattered.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: His brother's stone, james H Lombard, rests in fragments, propped against the headstone of Reverend Benjamin Keith and his wife, deliverance Atwood.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: According to the old cemetery map, this spot is known as the parish lot, just off of Central Drive.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Reverend Keith, a circuit minister from Vermont, played a vital role in bringing Methodism to Truro, settling as pasture in 1831.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Nine years later his daughter, amanda, married James H Lombard.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Their names now rest side by side in broken stone and if the light hits James' headstone, just right, you can still make out the words drowned.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: In Cape Cod Bay.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Nearby, the headstones of Solomon P Rich and his son Charles, father and child lost together, stand in quiet testament to how the sea's reach extended beyond the shoreline, cutting deep into families and leaving generations marked by grief.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Years after the loss of commerce, pine Grove made headlines once again.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: But this time the tragedy didn't come from the sea.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: It came from something far more human, something far more horrifying.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Many cemeteries, unsettled visitors, instilling that eerie sense of being watched, of starring in the opening scene of a horror film.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: A chill in the air, a shadow that lingers too long, mostly with nothing more than goosebumps.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: But for four young women, pine Grove wasn't a setting for dread.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: It became the scene of their final moments.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: In the summer of 1969, patricia Walsh and Marianne Wasaki, both 23, from Rhode Island, checked into a Providence Town rooming house to escape their everyday routines.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Their landlady introduced them to another boarder, 24-year-old Anton or Tony Costa, clean-cut, well-mannered and eager to help.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: He even carried their bags inside.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly, just as they had arrived, patricia and Marianne vanished.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Their families raised alarm.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: The first clue surfaced when their car was spotted near a marijuana patch behind Pine Grove Cemetery.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Strangely, before the police could investigate, the car disappeared.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: But when officers began searching the wooded area behind the burial ground, they didn't just find evidence or clues, they found bodies.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Patricia and Marianne were there, buried beneath the soil.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: But they weren't alone.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Four and Susan Perry, just 17, from Providence Town, who had vanished only months after Sydney.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: At the time, their families had feared the girls had simply run off, swept up in the counterculture of the era.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: No one had expected to find the girls buried behind the quiet headstones of Pine Grove, but it was their missing car that ultimately cracked the case.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: The vehicle resurfaced in Burlington, vermont, stored away in a rental facility under a false name.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: The man who had paid for the storage was Anton Tony Costa.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: That connection gave the police exactly what they needed.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: He was arrested immediately.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Costa's arrest sent shockwaves across Cape Cod.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: In the days that followed, several local women stepped forward with chilling recollections.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Each had been invited, often alone, to Costa's marijuana patch behind Pine Grove Cemetery.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Most declined and in doing so unknowingly stepped away from a fate that had already claimed others.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: One of those women was the daughter of famed author Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: She too had been approached by Costa and narrowly escaped by saying no.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Her father later drew a grim comparison in his essay collection, while Peters, fama and Granfalunes placing Costa alongside Charles Manson in the pantheon of charismatic predators who masked evil with charm.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: It was a brush with death.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: She survived, but for others the invitation was a one-way trip into the shadows.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: What followed was an unraveling of a truly horrific story.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Listener, is a word of caution If you're squeamish or sensitive to graphic content, you may want to skip ahead.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: The next few minutes delve into details that are unsettling and not for the faint of heart.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: The murders weren't just tragic, they were grotesque.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Victims were dismembered, their remains scattered and buried in pieces.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: The crime scenes were so disturbing.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Investigators initially believed Costa had engaged in cannibalism, though that theory was later recanted.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: As the investigation widened, more disturbing threads began to unravel.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Tony Costa had driven to Pennsylvania with two young women who were never seen again.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: A woman he once lived with in San Francisco vanished without a trace.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Another former girlfriend was found around in her bathtub.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Beneath the clean-cut appearance and polite demeanor, costa had been something far more darker a predator cloaked in charm.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: In 1969, evelyn Lawson wrote a chilling reflection in the Providence Town Register.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: As the DAs, or district attorneys, talked, I felt my skin prickle in dread and disgust.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: The place where the bodies had been found near an old cemetery not far back from a dirt crossroad, the typical traditional site for the witch's sabbath.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just the brutality of the murders that disturbed the community.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: It was the setting the bodies buried near Pine Grove.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: The isolation of folklore.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Rumors spread quickly.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Costa had shown interest in the occult.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: After his arrest, books on ritual magic and dirt practices were found among his possessions at Walpole State Prison.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Whether this was a true obsession or twisted curiosity, it added a sinister layer to an already horrifying legacy, and with that, whispers of satanic activity in the woods behind Pine Grove began to grow.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Whether born from fact or fear, these stories still linger like smoke, refusing to fade.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Costa was ultimately suspected of murdering eight women, but he was only convicted of killing Patricia Walsh and Marianne Wysocki.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Two women were rumored to have been found eventually, decades later, but facts are vague about their reappearances, if they did indeed happen.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: He received a life sentence for his trial, fitting for the horrors he had committed in the Cape.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: In 1974, at just 30 years old, tony Costa took his own life inside his cell at Walpole State Prison, hunting the terror he had caused so many families.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: The legend of the murders made the receiving crypt within Pine Grove infamous.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: As it's told, costa used the building to dismember the bodies of the girls, so he was undisturbed.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Whether this was true or not, the legend gives visitors pause at the crypt and wondering if it was the scene of the girls' last moments.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: In 2007, the New England Society of Paranormal Investigators conducted research at Pine Grove Cemetery, armed with a K2 meter.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: They reported responses to several questions, captured not in whispers but through the disembodied replies of electronic voice phenomenon, or EVP.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Their equipment didn't behave normally either.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: A sudden or unexplained power drain affected both their camera, batteries and microphone, coinciding with a sharp drop in temperature and what they described as a cold spot drifting silently through the area.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: It was as if something unseen had passed through, brief, chilling and impossible to ignore, leaving many to say.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: The grounds of Pine Grove are indeed haunted, possibly by the girls whose lives ended tragically so long ago.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Pine Grove may appear to be quiet, just another small cemetery tucked along the cape, but beneath its windswept grass and leaning stones lies a legacy of sorrow, shipwreck, sickness and souls taken far too soon.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: From the mystery of the commerce to the horrors of Tony Costa, this ground has known tragedy in many forms.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: The woods beyond leave a lasting impression, void of sound, heavy and stillness.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: There's something unsettling about the roughed, makeshift roads and the crossroads just past the headstones, where the real horrors once unfolded.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: And whether it's the weight of history or something far older that refuses to rest.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Something lingers in Pine Grove Cemetery.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: The grave grind for Pine Grove Cemetery was an iced mocha from snowy owl coffee roasters.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: For more honorary grinds in the area, please visit the-grimcom.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: For now we're closing the gate on Pine Grove Cemetery.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed our dig into history.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: If you did subscribe today to join us next time when we open the gate on the Grimm.