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S1E5: A Big Woods Cold Case · Blood Trails

0:01
Speaker 1: It was the first snow of the season when Lujia
0:03
Speaker 1: Bilander disappeared into the woods of rural Maine. He'd gone
0:07
Speaker 1: out hunting, just like he had one hundred times before,
0:10
Speaker 1: but this time you didn't come home. His wife Linda
0:14
Speaker 1: thought maybe he'd gotten lost in the storm. But what
0:16
Speaker 1: game Wardens uncovered over the next few days would lead
0:19
Speaker 1: them through a maze of violence, drugs, and deceit that
0:22
Speaker 1: no one could have predicted. That's next on Blood Trails.
0:40
Speaker 1: Twenty five year old Luja Bolanger was what you might
0:42
Speaker 1: call a typical main whitetail hunter. He went out on
0:45
Speaker 1: November twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five, armed with his thirty
0:48
Speaker 1: thirty lever gun to track a deer through the snow
0:51
Speaker 1: in hopes of bringing home enough meat to feed his family.
0:54
Speaker 1: He wasn't chasing big antlers, and he didn't sit in
0:57
Speaker 1: a tree stand all day hoping a buck would walk past.
1:00
Speaker 1: He went out and found one, and even though we'll
1:02
Speaker 1: never know how big it was, I like to think
1:05
Speaker 1: it was a giant. Lujia, his wife Linda, and his
1:09
Speaker 1: brother John had all gone out that morning to look
1:11
Speaker 1: for deer, but the falling snow hid the previous night's activity,
1:15
Speaker 1: and the trio didn't have much luck as the gray
1:17
Speaker 1: dawn illuminated the winter landscape.
1:20
Speaker 2: Here's Linda and then about nine o'clock we just said, well,
1:25
Speaker 2: we're gonna go home, and I had to get ready
1:27
Speaker 2: for work, and John was going home, but Luji wanted
1:30
Speaker 2: to get off at the top of the hill and
1:32
Speaker 2: walk down through the field in the woods to the
1:35
Speaker 2: county road and then home. It was heavy snow that morning.
1:40
Speaker 2: We'd head heavy snow all night.
1:42
Speaker 1: Lujia had been dropped off about a mile from the
1:44
Speaker 1: home he shared in Washington, Maine, with Linda and their
1:46
Speaker 1: three young children. He only planned to hunt for about
1:49
Speaker 1: an hour before returning home and driving Linda to her
1:51
Speaker 1: waitressing gig, but he didn't show up, and after another
1:55
Speaker 1: hour had passed, Linda's annoyance turned to concern.
1:59
Speaker 2: Ere So I called next door and said, ludj home yet,
2:04
Speaker 2: So they went looking on smobiles following his name.
2:09
Speaker 1: As nightfall approach and the search party still hadn't found
2:12
Speaker 1: any sign of the missing hunter, they called the game ardens.
2:15
Speaker 1: The state police wouldn't get involved until Ludra had been
2:17
Speaker 1: missing for seventy two hours, but Since the incident involved
2:20
Speaker 1: a hunter, the wardens were happy to help with the search.
2:23
Speaker 1: You might assume that Lujia had just found a deer
2:26
Speaker 1: track and lost track of time, but Linda wasn't buying it.
2:30
Speaker 1: She knew right away that something terrible had happened.
2:34
Speaker 2: I kind of got a little messed up emotionally, and
2:38
Speaker 2: they sent me to the hospital.
2:39
Speaker 1: In any movements, Linda's reaction to her husband's disappearance might
2:43
Speaker 1: sound extreme, but keep in mind that Linda was only
2:45
Speaker 1: twenty years old. She and Lujia already had three daughters
2:48
Speaker 1: between the ages of three and a half years and
2:51
Speaker 1: three months. The prospect of those girls losing their father
2:55
Speaker 1: was unbearable, and one of Linda's most vivid memories from
2:57
Speaker 1: those difficult days is of her middle daughter, Angel, happily
3:01
Speaker 1: playing around the feet of the game wardens and neighbors
3:03
Speaker 1: who were searching for her father.
3:06
Speaker 2: I remember getting up the next morning, is what I remember,
3:09
Speaker 2: and the house had game ardens and trackers and family
3:15
Speaker 2: all through it. If they must have given me something
3:18
Speaker 2: that I just was out of it. But Angel was
3:22
Speaker 2: eating snow off from one of the game ardens boots.
3:25
Speaker 2: That's the memory that I have in my mind.
3:29
Speaker 1: The friends and family who filled that house knew that
3:31
Speaker 1: losing Lusia would be a blow not only to his
3:33
Speaker 1: wife and kids, but to the larger Washington community.
3:37
Speaker 2: No, he was a down to earth guy. He would
3:39
Speaker 2: have done anything for anybody, anything, He'd be there for.
3:44
Speaker 2: He loved life, he loved his family. We were building
3:48
Speaker 2: a house and were making memories and making plans for
3:53
Speaker 2: the future, but that all got taken away.
3:58
Speaker 1: Lujia Blanders disappeared, which remains one of Maine's oldest unsolved cases.
4:03
Speaker 1: But this isn't your typical cold case, with scant clues,
4:06
Speaker 1: no suspects, and more questions than answers. The game wardens
4:10
Speaker 1: who investigated Lucra's case believed they knew what happened to him,
4:14
Speaker 1: but the trail got wilder and more unexpected with every
4:17
Speaker 1: twist and turn. It led them from Maine's big woods
4:20
Speaker 1: to drug fueled parties, to threatening suspects, to a house explosion.
4:24
Speaker 3: To insurance fraud to murder.
4:27
Speaker 1: It's a story of great detective work, even more devious suspects,
4:31
Speaker 1: and ultimately a family who never got to say goodbye
4:35
Speaker 1: to the father and husband they loved well.
4:38
Speaker 2: Had three children, together now nineteen grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
4:44
Speaker 2: He wasn't here for the moments, the special times, the
4:47
Speaker 2: daily times. He just he was robbed of them.
4:51
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails, a Big
4:55
Speaker 1: Woods Cold Case.
5:01
Speaker 3: Part one, Deer tracks layer of the station.
5:07
Speaker 1: When Linda called to report her husband missing, the main
5:10
Speaker 1: Warden Service sent out two officers to investigate, Lieutenant Warden
5:13
Speaker 1: John Marsh and District Warden Dick Hennessy. Though they were
5:18
Speaker 1: joined later by other wardens and Maine State Police officers,
5:21
Speaker 1: Marsh and Hennessy were the two primary investigators of Luger's disappearance.
5:25
Speaker 1: The problem from where we're standing in twenty twenty five
5:28
Speaker 1: is that Hennessy passed away in twenty twelve and Marsh
5:32
Speaker 1: followed him in twenty twenty three. Since this is still
5:35
Speaker 1: an open investigation, the Maine State Police can't release any
5:38
Speaker 1: case files, and they declined to sit down.
5:40
Speaker 3: With us for an interview.
5:42
Speaker 1: We wouldn't know much more about this case than I've
5:44
Speaker 1: already told you if it wasn't for an author by
5:46
Speaker 1: the name of Darren Worcester. Darren published a book in
5:50
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen called Open Season True Stories of the Main
5:53
Speaker 1: Warden Service, which is a great book that I highly recommend.
5:57
Speaker 1: Darren spoke with twelve game wardens about the two cases
6:00
Speaker 1: he covers in that book, one of which was Lugers.
6:04
Speaker 4: It happened to be that my father in law was
6:06
Speaker 4: a game warden and he would always tell me stories,
6:08
Speaker 4: and I got to thinking that this would be a
6:10
Speaker 4: great way to write a book. And he would give
6:14
Speaker 4: me some of his stories and we would slowly chip
6:17
Speaker 4: away at it, and he would always encourage me, Hey,
6:20
Speaker 4: I know a lot of people who were wardens and
6:22
Speaker 4: they've got great stories too, Like, you shouldn't just have
6:25
Speaker 4: stories from me, We should get others involved.
6:29
Speaker 1: One of those wardens was John Marsh, who gave Darren
6:31
Speaker 1: an inside view into this investigation. This isn't information that
6:35
Speaker 1: was ever made public, but since Marsh was already retired,
6:38
Speaker 1: he apparently wasn't too concerned about explaining what happened. Now,
6:42
Speaker 1: normally I'd be skeptical about reporting secondhand information, but Darren
6:46
Speaker 1: did his homework. I sent his chapter to Detective Sergeant
6:49
Speaker 1: Josh Haines, who is currently in charge of Lujra's case
6:52
Speaker 1: with the Main State Police. Haines told me in an
6:55
Speaker 1: email quote. This information in the book is very accurate
6:59
Speaker 1: to the facts.
6:59
Speaker 3: I know of the case.
7:01
Speaker 1: Names have been changed and some of the other minor
7:03
Speaker 1: details are different, but the majority of the narrative and
7:06
Speaker 1: content is factual. Darren was kind enough to sit down
7:10
Speaker 1: with us and walk us through what he found, and
7:12
Speaker 1: let me tell you, you have no idea what's coming
7:15
Speaker 1: over the next hill. When Martha Hennessy arrived at the
7:19
Speaker 1: Blanger home, they had some theories as to what might
7:21
Speaker 1: be happening, and they weren't overly concerned. The area Looser
7:25
Speaker 1: was hunting was basically his backyard. He knew it well,
7:28
Speaker 1: and there were no real dangers in those woods, no mountains,
7:31
Speaker 1: cliffs or rivers for him to get swept away in.
7:35
Speaker 4: When the wardens came in, they just didn't I don't
7:38
Speaker 4: want to say they didn't take it seriously, but they
7:40
Speaker 4: had done this a thousand times before. He was a
7:43
Speaker 4: young man. He was twenty five. They figured he probably
7:46
Speaker 4: just went out partying. The most plausible thing was that
7:49
Speaker 4: he wasn't, you know, he didn't report home because he
7:52
Speaker 4: was out doing something that he didn't want to tell
7:54
Speaker 4: his wife about.
7:55
Speaker 1: To their credit, the wardens didn't let their personal opinions
7:58
Speaker 1: keep them from doing their job. In fact, they spent
8:01
Speaker 1: the entire night of November twenty fifth and into the
8:03
Speaker 1: twenty sixth scouring the woods where Lujra had been hunting,
8:06
Speaker 1: but they couldn't find it. By the next morning, they
8:10
Speaker 1: began to be really concerned. If he was still in
8:12
Speaker 1: those woods, he was almost certainly hypothermic and might not
8:15
Speaker 1: last much longer. The first snowstorm of the year was
8:18
Speaker 1: in full swing, and the wet, slushy precipitation had turned
8:22
Speaker 1: light and fluffy as a cold front rolled through. The
8:25
Speaker 1: warden service was stretched thin after the snowstorm and calling
8:29
Speaker 1: a full on search party would take time, maybe more
8:32
Speaker 1: time than Lujra had, so they kept at it, and
8:35
Speaker 1: before long they caught a break. As they were pacing
8:37
Speaker 1: the side of the road where Linda had left Lujra
8:39
Speaker 1: to go hunting, a neighbor approached them.
8:42
Speaker 4: They caught a lucky break, you know. They found a
8:44
Speaker 4: neighbor who when they knocked on his door the night
8:47
Speaker 4: before and nobody had answered, but he had come out
8:50
Speaker 4: and said, yeah, I saw where Luja went in I
8:52
Speaker 4: was about to go hunting myself. I can. He's a
8:54
Speaker 4: good kid, I can take you right where. I'm willing
8:57
Speaker 4: to bet he was.
8:58
Speaker 1: He was hunting this neighbor, a guy named Clayton Crosby,
9:01
Speaker 1: said that he hunted and trapped that section of the
9:03
Speaker 1: forest all the time, and he knew a ridge along
9:06
Speaker 1: a stream that was a good place to look for
9:08
Speaker 1: deer tracks. If Lujira knew the woods as well as
9:10
Speaker 1: he did, that would be a place to start. The
9:13
Speaker 1: wardens accepted Clay's offer to accompany them, and when they
9:16
Speaker 1: reached the spot Clay led them to.
9:18
Speaker 3: They searched through the fresh.
9:19
Speaker 1: Powder for tracks Lujra had made in the slushy now
9:22
Speaker 1: frozen snow underneath. It didn't take them long to find
9:26
Speaker 1: Ludra's boot prints, and as they followed his trail a
9:29
Speaker 1: spent thirty thirty cartridge, they found blood spatters in the
9:33
Speaker 1: snow a short distance away, and as they continued to
9:35
Speaker 1: follow Lujra's footprints, a dark pool of frozen blood and guts.
9:41
Speaker 1: At that point it was easy to see what had happened.
9:44
Speaker 1: Lujira had shot a buck and had gutted it there
9:46
Speaker 1: in the woods, then, instead of dragging it back towards
9:49
Speaker 1: his house, he had pulled it about a quarter mile
9:51
Speaker 1: through the woods to an old road. It was a
9:53
Speaker 1: shorter distance to drag the deer, and he figured he'd
9:56
Speaker 1: walk back home, get the car, and pick up the
9:58
Speaker 1: animal along the road. It was a good plan, but
10:02
Speaker 1: it hadn't worked. Lujia was still nowhere to be found,
10:05
Speaker 1: and neither was his deer. Rather than give them an
10:08
Speaker 1: answer for Linda about what had happened to her husband,
10:11
Speaker 1: but they found along that forest road raised even more
10:14
Speaker 1: questions and gave them the first suspicions that Lujia was
10:17
Speaker 1: in more trouble than they had ever imagined. Linda credits
10:21
Speaker 1: the game wardens for always treating her with kindness and
10:24
Speaker 1: keeping her in the loop on the latest developments in
10:26
Speaker 1: the case. But those days were still incredibly hard.
10:31
Speaker 2: The sick field, being alone with my kids, not having
10:36
Speaker 2: my husband around, I think, and somebody heard him when
10:40
Speaker 2: I was twenty years old, very scary, very that wrote
10:49
Speaker 2: it was got wrenching. I There weren't a day go
10:55
Speaker 2: by that I didn't just sit and cry.
11:04
Speaker 1: Part two Clues in the Snow. To the trained eye
11:10
Speaker 1: of the game wardens, the snow along.
11:11
Speaker 3: The road told a clear story.
11:14
Speaker 1: The car had driven in at some point before the
11:16
Speaker 1: cold front. The driver and passenger had gotten out to
11:19
Speaker 1: take a leak, and from that the wardens knew both
11:22
Speaker 1: were mail. The driver was a smoker and had left
11:25
Speaker 1: two cigarette butts along the road, while the passenger appeared
11:28
Speaker 1: to be walking with a cane. The pair had gotten
11:32
Speaker 1: back into the car and driven about one hundred yards
11:34
Speaker 1: down the road, which is when they met Lujer. They
11:36
Speaker 1: had helped him load the deer into the trunk of
11:38
Speaker 1: the car, and then Lujer got into the back seat.
11:41
Speaker 1: There were no signs of a struggle anywhere along the road.
11:45
Speaker 1: It took me only a few seconds to explain what
11:47
Speaker 1: they found, but I want to highlight how difficult it
11:50
Speaker 1: was to decipher the criss crossing footprints and tire tracks
11:53
Speaker 1: along the road. Remember, all of these prints were covered
11:56
Speaker 1: in a layer of powder, and they had to figure
11:58
Speaker 1: out which prints belonged to which mail and construct a
12:01
Speaker 1: timeline of who did what and when. Their findings told
12:04
Speaker 1: them that Lujia hadn't spent the night in the woods.
12:07
Speaker 1: Maybe Lujia had met some guys he knew, and the
12:09
Speaker 1: trio had gone out to celebrate a successful hunt. A
12:12
Speaker 1: discarded Budweiser can indicated that the car's occupants had been drinking,
12:16
Speaker 1: but Linda had been insistent that her husband wasn't a drinker.
12:20
Speaker 2: No, that's not him. He wouldn't do that. No, he
12:24
Speaker 2: wouldn't even think to do it. He'd come home and
12:26
Speaker 2: celebrate with his brothers probably and his dad and the kids.
12:31
Speaker 2: But he wouldn't take off and go somewhere. He didn't
12:34
Speaker 2: have people like that. He wasn't a heavy conture anyway.
12:39
Speaker 2: He might have a beer on the weekend if my
12:41
Speaker 2: dad was around, but I don't think I ever saw
12:45
Speaker 2: him intoxicated.
12:47
Speaker 1: Ward and Marsh also noticed something that ignited his suspicions.
12:52
Speaker 1: As they'd been tracking Luja through the woods, they noticed
12:54
Speaker 1: that before he began dragging the deer, he walked a
12:57
Speaker 1: little ways ahead, leaned his gun against a tree, and
12:59
Speaker 1: came back to pull the deer with both hands free.
13:02
Speaker 1: He repeated this pattern until he got to the road
13:05
Speaker 1: where he'd left his thirty thirty. As he started to
13:07
Speaker 1: walk out, but Marsh noticed that after Lujira had gotten
13:11
Speaker 1: into the back seat of the car, the driver had
13:13
Speaker 1: gotten out, walked around the car to the other side
13:16
Speaker 1: of the road and retrieved Lugra's gun from where it
13:19
Speaker 1: was leaning against a tree ward. Marsh was an avid hunter, angler,
13:23
Speaker 1: and outdoorsman. If you're a hunter as well, you know
13:27
Speaker 1: how weird it would be to let someone else get
13:29
Speaker 1: your gun for you if you're capable of doing it yourself.
13:33
Speaker 1: But what if, Marsh wondered, Luder wasn't capable of doing
13:37
Speaker 1: it himself. That thought worried him more than any other.
13:40
Speaker 1: But he knew that finding the car and its driver
13:43
Speaker 1: was going to be a serious challenge. But that's when
13:47
Speaker 1: they caught their second big break in the case, this
13:50
Speaker 1: one also thanks to the neighbor hunter and trapper Clay Crosby.
13:54
Speaker 4: The receipt that was found was really a lucky break
13:58
Speaker 4: on their part in that it was actually found by
14:02
Speaker 4: the neighbor who had kind of shown him around and
14:05
Speaker 4: shown him to where Luja was probably hunting, and they
14:07
Speaker 4: had asked him to kind of stay out of the
14:09
Speaker 4: way to make sure he wasn't trampling any evidence. So
14:13
Speaker 4: as this person was stepping back to get out of
14:15
Speaker 4: the way, he felt something crunch under his shoe and
14:18
Speaker 4: looked down and it was the receipt to a local
14:21
Speaker 4: garage and the receipt was found under four inches of powder,
14:26
Speaker 4: but above like the thick, heavy wet snow that had
14:30
Speaker 4: come down early and then froze. So that really meant,
14:33
Speaker 4: you know, with the timeline of how everything went and
14:35
Speaker 4: when the snow came in, that the receipt was really
14:38
Speaker 4: at the same wayer of the snow as the tracks
14:40
Speaker 4: were right, so it clearly was tied to the vehicle.
14:45
Speaker 1: The receipt was dated for the previous day, the day
14:47
Speaker 1: Luja went missing. But this wasn't just any old receipt.
14:51
Speaker 1: I don't know if they made receipts differently in nineteen
14:53
Speaker 1: seventy five, but this thing was like an identity thief's
14:56
Speaker 1: dream come true.
14:58
Speaker 4: Because the receipt had the suspects residents on it, their
15:01
Speaker 4: phone number, everything was right there. It was sort of
15:04
Speaker 4: like a handwritten note of here's your suspect, here's where
15:07
Speaker 4: you go and find them like that just never happens, right,
15:10
Speaker 4: That in itself was a pretty lucky break.
15:12
Speaker 1: The snow along the road told them Luja was alive
15:15
Speaker 1: when he got into the car and that he might
15:17
Speaker 1: be in trouble, but it also showed them what to do.
15:20
Speaker 1: Next Part three, Sully's Marsha Hennessy knew the names of
15:31
Speaker 1: the guys they were looking for, but they wanted more
15:33
Speaker 1: information before confronting them, so they went to the auto
15:37
Speaker 1: garage listed on the receipt in the nearby town of Union.
15:40
Speaker 1: The owner, a guy named Sully, was more than happy
15:43
Speaker 1: to talk to them about the two men who had
15:45
Speaker 1: visited his shop the day before.
15:47
Speaker 4: The guy at the garage was all bent sideways over
15:50
Speaker 4: these guys coming in. He said that they were drunk,
15:54
Speaker 4: intoxicated on whatever drugs too. They had a radiator issue
15:58
Speaker 4: with the car, I think a crack and was leaking,
16:01
Speaker 4: and he just wasn't equipped at that garage to handle that.
16:04
Speaker 4: And he had told him that, and they yelled at him,
16:06
Speaker 4: they swore at him, and he just kind of did
16:08
Speaker 4: some quick fix to get him out of there, just
16:11
Speaker 4: to get him going and get him away from him.
16:13
Speaker 1: Selly thought he'd gotten rid of these two yahoos. But
16:16
Speaker 1: then later that same day they came back to the
16:18
Speaker 1: garage again after they had picked up Blue.
16:21
Speaker 4: Jerk, and he said when they came back in, the
16:24
Speaker 4: car was just white walled with steam. It was completely
16:27
Speaker 4: filled with steam. These guys were sitting in the car.
16:30
Speaker 4: They were even drunker, more intoxicated than when they had
16:33
Speaker 4: been in that morning, and they just drove the car
16:37
Speaker 4: right in on the left. They didn't they didn't get out,
16:40
Speaker 4: they didn't park outside. They just drove it right into
16:43
Speaker 4: the garage, right on the lift, and were yelling out
16:45
Speaker 4: the window and demanding that he fixed it, that he
16:48
Speaker 4: was a crook, that he had cheated them before, even
16:50
Speaker 4: though he had told them, guys, there's nothing I can
16:52
Speaker 4: do here. You know, I can't fix this.
16:55
Speaker 1: Selley told the wardens that at this point he was
16:57
Speaker 1: actually kind of nervous. These guys were clearly intoxicated, clearly angry,
17:02
Speaker 1: and he also spied a shotgun in the front seat
17:04
Speaker 1: of the car and a box of shells on the dashboard,
17:07
Speaker 1: but he said he didn't see anyone in the back
17:09
Speaker 1: seat even after all the steam from the radiator had cleared,
17:12
Speaker 1: and he didn't try to open the trunk. He just
17:15
Speaker 1: wanted them out of his shop as quickly as possible,
17:18
Speaker 1: so once again he fixed them up the best he
17:20
Speaker 1: could and probably breathed a sigh of relief as they
17:23
Speaker 1: drove away. Josh Haynes with the Main State Police confirmed
17:27
Speaker 1: to me that the car in question was a nineteen
17:29
Speaker 1: sixty five Buick special. Haines told me that the two
17:33
Speaker 1: men driving the car have been identified, but their real
17:36
Speaker 1: names haven't been released. Since they've never been officially named
17:39
Speaker 1: as suspects.
17:41
Speaker 3: We won't be saying their real.
17:42
Speaker 1: Names in this episode for the same reason.
17:44
Speaker 3: As you'll hear.
17:45
Speaker 1: This story crosses the line from rumor and hearsay to
17:48
Speaker 1: legitimate accusation. We have to be careful not to overstep
17:52
Speaker 1: law enforcement, and Luja's family isn't interested in blasting out
17:55
Speaker 1: their names publicly. Instead, we're just going to call them
17:59
Speaker 1: Lenny and George. Lenny is the smoker, the driver of
18:03
Speaker 1: the car, and George is the passenger and the one
18:05
Speaker 1: who walks with a cane. At this point, Marsha Hennessy
18:09
Speaker 1: knew a few things, and none of them spelled good
18:12
Speaker 1: news for Lujer. These men were not in their right mind.
18:15
Speaker 1: They were armed and had almost certainly picked up Luja
18:18
Speaker 1: from the road in the woods, But Lujer wasn't in
18:21
Speaker 1: the back seat when they arrived at the garage the
18:23
Speaker 1: second time, and there were at least a few hours
18:26
Speaker 1: between when they'd picked up the Hunter and when they
18:28
Speaker 1: drove onto the lift at Sully's plenty of time to
18:32
Speaker 1: do who knows what with Lucher Blanger Part four Lenny.
18:44
Speaker 1: After confirming with Linda that Lujer didn't know either of
18:47
Speaker 1: the men in the car, the wardens made their way
18:49
Speaker 1: to Lennie's house in Camden, about half an hour from Washington.
18:53
Speaker 3: They arrived around.
18:54
Speaker 1: One in the afternoon, but based on the appearance of
18:56
Speaker 1: the man who answered the door, it could have been
18:59
Speaker 1: six in the morning or eleven at night. He was
19:01
Speaker 1: wearing pajama pants and his disheveled hair made it seem
19:04
Speaker 1: like he'd just woken up, but the beer can in
19:07
Speaker 1: his hand suggested that maybe he'd just never gone to sleep,
19:10
Speaker 1: and the bloodshot eyes peering out from bushy, dark eyebrows
19:14
Speaker 1: told the wardens that he'd much rather be left alone.
19:18
Speaker 1: He was also about six foot two, and the wardens
19:21
Speaker 1: later learned a US Marine who had served in Vietnam.
19:24
Speaker 1: He'd survived a grenade blast and, along with a silver
19:27
Speaker 1: star and purple heart, had earned a metal plate in
19:30
Speaker 1: his head for his trouble. He'd been arrested several times
19:33
Speaker 1: for barroom boxing, along with two dui charges, and to
19:37
Speaker 1: complete the picture, public urination point is This wasn't some
19:42
Speaker 1: schlub they could push around. If he'd done what they
19:45
Speaker 1: thought he'd done, they had to be careful.
19:48
Speaker 4: He was home alone, and he stonewalled them at first,
19:52
Speaker 4: basically just said he hadn't been hunting that day, hadn't
19:55
Speaker 4: been to Washington, didn't know where Washington was.
19:58
Speaker 1: But Warden Marsh wasn't someone to be true with either,
20:01
Speaker 1: and he was in no mood to play games.
20:03
Speaker 4: The Woean's at that point, they had been they'd pulled
20:06
Speaker 4: an all nighter, you know, they'd been up for probably
20:09
Speaker 4: thirty six hours or something at that point. His patience
20:12
Speaker 4: was wearing thin, and he just bottom lined it with
20:14
Speaker 4: a guy that, look, we know your car was there.
20:17
Speaker 4: We found this receipt. We know you were there, so
20:20
Speaker 4: you better start telling us the truth. Because there's the
20:23
Speaker 4: two ways to do this. It's going to be the
20:24
Speaker 4: easy way of the hard way, and the way this
20:27
Speaker 4: is going it sounds like it's going to be the
20:29
Speaker 4: hard way.
20:29
Speaker 1: The way things turned out, the Warden should have gone
20:31
Speaker 1: right to the hard way, but they didn't know what
20:33
Speaker 1: was going to happen. So I'm sure they were relieved
20:36
Speaker 1: when Lenny let them into the house and they sat
20:38
Speaker 1: down with him at the kitchen table. After telling a
20:42
Speaker 1: BS story about selling the buick the night before, Lenny
20:45
Speaker 1: eventually admitted that yes he had visited Selly's garage, and
20:49
Speaker 1: yes he'd been hunting near Washington, but he claimed never
20:52
Speaker 1: to have met or seen Looger. He said they saw
20:55
Speaker 1: his tracks in the snow, but that a second car
20:58
Speaker 1: must have picked up the hunter before they got there.
21:01
Speaker 1: The wardens didn't believe this story either, because there had
21:03
Speaker 1: been only one set of tire tracks on that forest road,
21:07
Speaker 1: but Lenny stuck to his story. So the wardens asked
21:09
Speaker 1: to see his hunting clothes and gun. They figured that
21:12
Speaker 1: if the suspects had done something to Looser, there would
21:15
Speaker 1: likely be evidence on their clothes.
21:17
Speaker 4: Or equipment, and he said it was down in the basement.
21:20
Speaker 4: So what they ended up doing is the warden split up.
21:24
Speaker 4: One of them asked to use the restroom, so he
21:26
Speaker 4: stayed upstairs. Well, the other warden went downstairs with the suspect.
21:31
Speaker 4: In hindsight, that kind of turned out to be probably
21:34
Speaker 4: something they regretted to not both being there, so the
21:38
Speaker 4: other warden goes downstairs. This would have been Warden Hennessy
21:42
Speaker 4: and the guy shows him around and shows him the
21:45
Speaker 4: hunting gear that he was wearing. It had all been
21:48
Speaker 4: cleaned already, shows him his rifle already cleaned. They see
21:53
Speaker 4: there's a room down there with a padlock on it
21:56
Speaker 4: that's locked up, and the warden to see inside there,
22:00
Speaker 4: and suspect At tells him, I can't get in there myself.
22:03
Speaker 4: I don't have the key to it, or the combination,
22:05
Speaker 4: whichever one it was. You know, the guy bought the
22:08
Speaker 4: house from gave it to me. I lost it, like,
22:10
Speaker 4: I don't even know what's in there myself, he tells them, which,
22:15
Speaker 4: in and of itself, that's pretty sketchy and hard to believe,
22:19
Speaker 4: especially from a guy who had just lied to them
22:20
Speaker 4: for a few minutes before that.
22:23
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, upstairs, ward Marsh was poking around. He noticed a
22:27
Speaker 1: box of federal shotgun shells on the table, which matched
22:30
Speaker 1: what Selly had said he saw on the dashboard of
22:32
Speaker 1: the buick. When he peeked inside, he saw that one
22:35
Speaker 1: of the shells was missing. He also noticed a knife
22:39
Speaker 1: on the table that had already been cleaned, which made
22:42
Speaker 1: him start to wonder, So he walked over to the
22:44
Speaker 1: fridge and opened the door to the freezer.
22:47
Speaker 4: Anyone who hunts will know what I mean when I
22:51
Speaker 4: say there were a bunch of packages of meat wrapped
22:54
Speaker 4: in white freezer paper. He went and tested one of
22:58
Speaker 4: the packages with his hands and it was still soft,
23:01
Speaker 4: so you know they hadn't been in the freezer for long.
23:04
Speaker 4: It wasn't frozen through clearly.
23:06
Speaker 1: According to Sully, Lenny had made a point to complain
23:09
Speaker 1: about how there weren't any deer left in Maine and
23:11
Speaker 1: that they hadn't had any luck.
23:13
Speaker 3: The previous morning.
23:14
Speaker 1: He'd also told the wardens that even though he'd been
23:16
Speaker 1: hunting in the Washington area, he hadn't killed anything. The
23:19
Speaker 1: still warm packages of deer meat and his freezer proved
23:23
Speaker 1: he'd been lying about the deer, and Marsh wondered if
23:26
Speaker 1: that meat had come from the one that Ludra had killed.
23:29
Speaker 4: The suspect and Warden Hennessy came back up and basically
23:34
Speaker 4: he could tell for Warden Nnscy's demeanor and the things
23:37
Speaker 4: that he was saying is let's get out of here,
23:39
Speaker 4: like we got to go talk, so you know, they.
23:41
Speaker 3: Got out of there.
23:43
Speaker 1: The pair exchanged information once they were back in their cruiser,
23:45
Speaker 1: which is when Warden Marsh pulled one of those packages
23:48
Speaker 1: of deer meat from his pocket.
23:50
Speaker 4: Warden Hennessy was a bit freaked out over that because
23:53
Speaker 4: obviously it would never be admissible in court, and ward
23:56
Speaker 4: and Marsh didn't care, you know. At that point he
23:59
Speaker 4: basically said, book, this guy's dirty. We're gonna get a
24:03
Speaker 4: lot on him. But if this package of meat helps
24:06
Speaker 4: us identify that these are the guys and helps us
24:09
Speaker 4: find Lujah Blanger or his remains.
24:11
Speaker 3: Like, I don't care.
24:13
Speaker 4: Like we need to get this in the lab.
24:15
Speaker 3: We need to figure this out.
24:22
Speaker 1: What Marsha and Hennessey discovered inside that house was only
24:25
Speaker 1: the beginning. The deeper they dug, the more perilous the
24:28
Speaker 1: trail became. Evidence destroyed, witnesses, intimidated, home burned to the ground,
24:34
Speaker 1: and a shocking confession that would take years to surface.
24:38
Speaker 1: That's after the Break on Blood Trails, Part five the party.
24:53
Speaker 1: The evidence the wardens had collected thus far was either
24:56
Speaker 1: circumstantial or, in the case of the deer meat, in missible.
25:01
Speaker 1: They knew they needed more, so they took the case
25:03
Speaker 1: to the main state police and applied for search warrants
25:06
Speaker 1: for the homes of Lenny and George. The State police
25:09
Speaker 1: sent them officers to assist, and the local judge granted
25:12
Speaker 1: them the warrants they requested, but that process took time.
25:17
Speaker 1: Luja went missing the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm sure
25:20
Speaker 1: there were people in government offices taking long weekends. The
25:24
Speaker 1: wardens and state police continued to investigate. They drove the
25:27
Speaker 1: various routes the suspects may have taken to see if
25:30
Speaker 1: they could decipher where they had gone between picking up
25:32
Speaker 1: Lujer and Sully's garage, but they didn't find anything, and
25:36
Speaker 1: they weren't able to execute the search warrants on the
25:39
Speaker 1: suspects homes until the next Friday, a week after Lujer
25:43
Speaker 1: went missing. Destroying evidence of a murder or kidnapping is
25:48
Speaker 1: tough for even the smartest criminals, and investigators figured they'd
25:51
Speaker 1: be able to pull trace amounts of blood from hunting
25:54
Speaker 1: clothes or hares from hack saws, But when Marsha and
25:58
Speaker 1: Hennessy pulled up to Lenny's home along with two State
26:00
Speaker 1: police officers, they realized they should have tried to search
26:04
Speaker 1: the home sooner. When they showed up, they were cars
26:08
Speaker 1: all up and down the road. The guy was having
26:11
Speaker 1: a rip roaring party. The place was packed with people
26:15
Speaker 1: all throughout the house, and you know they're looking at
26:18
Speaker 1: it like, is this guy serious.
26:20
Speaker 4: He's the lead suspect and potentially a murder case, and
26:25
Speaker 4: he's having this huge party, And you know, whether it
26:28
Speaker 4: was intentional or not, in some ways, potentially was a
26:33
Speaker 4: smart thing for him to have done, because it showed that,
26:36
Speaker 4: you know, he wasn't worried, he didn't think, you know,
26:39
Speaker 4: he was in trouble. But also if there was evidence,
26:41
Speaker 4: you know, blood splatter on the floor, things like that,
26:44
Speaker 4: he had forty fifty people tracking dirt all through the
26:47
Speaker 4: house and covering it.
26:48
Speaker 3: Up to make matters worse.
26:49
Speaker 1: All the potential evidence the wardens had seen on their
26:52
Speaker 1: previous visit was gone. The hunting clothes, the deer meat,
26:56
Speaker 1: the knife, the gun, the gear, all of it nowhere.
27:00
Speaker 3: To be seen.
27:01
Speaker 1: They hadn't seen the buick in the driveway on their
27:03
Speaker 1: previous visit, but it could have been somewhere else on
27:06
Speaker 1: the property, or they could have found information in the
27:08
Speaker 1: house that led them to it, but the car had
27:11
Speaker 1: also been disappeared without a trace. To add insult to injury,
27:17
Speaker 1: Lenny had taped a newspaper article on Luger's disappearance to
27:21
Speaker 1: the door of the upstairs freezer.
27:24
Speaker 4: He was mocking them, and he was being quite obstinate,
27:28
Speaker 4: and basically when they were confronting him, they asked him
27:32
Speaker 4: where all the hunting clothes were. He said he didn't
27:35
Speaker 4: know what they were talking about. There were no hunting
27:37
Speaker 4: clothes there. He had never had any, because he knew
27:41
Speaker 4: that Ward and Marsh never came downstairs and never saw it,
27:44
Speaker 4: so it was just his word against Warden Hennessy.
27:49
Speaker 1: There was no smoking gun, either literal or figurative. But
27:52
Speaker 1: no criminal is perfect, and Lenny was no different. They
27:56
Speaker 1: noticed that the padlock on the door in the basement,
27:58
Speaker 1: the one that Lenny had he'd never opened, had been
28:02
Speaker 1: turned around.
28:04
Speaker 4: So clearly suspect A was going in and out of
28:06
Speaker 4: the room and he had carelessly switched the direction of
28:09
Speaker 4: the lock.
28:10
Speaker 1: They cut the lock off the door, hopeful that Lenny
28:12
Speaker 1: had failed to clean up all traces of his crime.
28:15
Speaker 3: They were right, but not as right as they had hoped.
28:19
Speaker 4: The only thing they found in there is on a
28:22
Speaker 4: bench that you could see markings in the dust where
28:27
Speaker 4: looked like a gun had been laid there, and potentially
28:30
Speaker 4: a thirty thirty because it wasn't too long, and that
28:32
Speaker 4: was the gun that Lujiah Blanger had been hunting with,
28:36
Speaker 4: And they found a broken piece of a V notch
28:39
Speaker 4: site that they got it tested and it was consistent
28:43
Speaker 4: with the type of sight that was used on A
28:47
Speaker 4: thirty thirty at that time.
28:48
Speaker 1: They noticed the light bulb had been changed recently, but
28:51
Speaker 1: other than that, it didn't seem like Lenny used the
28:53
Speaker 1: room very often. They didn't find any evidence that anyone
28:56
Speaker 1: had been locked in the room or a body had.
28:59
Speaker 3: Been kept there.
29:00
Speaker 1: They came up empty at George's house as well, which
29:03
Speaker 1: a different team had searched at the same time. Both
29:06
Speaker 1: men stuck to their story, and without any additional evidence,
29:10
Speaker 1: the wardens were forced to drive away empty handed.
29:18
Speaker 3: Part six. The buick.
29:21
Speaker 1: To any investigator, the primary crime scene is of utmost importance,
29:26
Speaker 1: But in this case, that crime scene was mobile, and
29:28
Speaker 1: the fact that the suspects tried to hide the buick
29:31
Speaker 1: was reason enough to assume it held key evidence. That's
29:34
Speaker 1: why I'm sure Warden Marsh was excited to hear that
29:37
Speaker 1: just a few days after they had searched the suspects homes,
29:40
Speaker 1: the Forest Green car was spotted on a residential Road
29:43
Speaker 1: in the town of Northport, about twenty minutes from Lenny's home,
29:47
Speaker 1: and the VIN number was registered to the same man.
29:51
Speaker 1: Ward and Marsh rushed out to the scene to inspect
29:53
Speaker 1: the car himself. What he saw made his stomach drop.
29:57
Speaker 1: The car's headliner, floor mats, and rear seat had all
30:01
Speaker 1: been removed, The trunk had been cleaned with heavy duty cleaner,
30:04
Speaker 1: and Marsh could still smell the pungent sterile aroma. The trunk, matt,
30:09
Speaker 1: spare tire, and carjack had also been removed from the
30:12
Speaker 1: wheel well. But when Marsh looked up as he inspected
30:15
Speaker 1: the trunk, he noticed something on the lid, a deer hair.
30:19
Speaker 1: It wasn't the evidence they were hoping for, but again
30:22
Speaker 1: Lenny had claimed he never brought home a deer. That
30:25
Speaker 1: hare was enough to impound the car, so the state
30:27
Speaker 1: police forensic team could get a closer look.
30:30
Speaker 4: When they did find the car and they impounded it,
30:34
Speaker 4: one of the things that they also found was a
30:37
Speaker 4: bullet hidden way down in the wheel well or where
30:41
Speaker 4: the spare tire well excuse me would be, and it
30:44
Speaker 4: had a beard hair attached to it. And Lujah Bolanger
30:48
Speaker 4: at that time had a semi goo tea. I guess
30:51
Speaker 4: you could call it.
30:52
Speaker 3: It was more chin than let.
30:54
Speaker 1: The bullet was actually a buckshot pellet of the same
30:57
Speaker 1: kind that would have been loaded in the twelve gage
30:59
Speaker 1: shells marsh saw on Lenny's table. How it came in
31:03
Speaker 1: contact with a beard hair, and how that beard hair
31:06
Speaker 1: and pellet came to be in the trunk of Lenny's
31:08
Speaker 1: car is perhaps the most disturbing piece of evidence the
31:12
Speaker 1: wardens had uncovered thus far. Unfortunately, it was still inconclusive.
31:17
Speaker 1: Forensic DNA testing wasn't an option in nineteen seventy five,
31:21
Speaker 1: and when they sent the beard hair to the FBI
31:23
Speaker 1: lab in Washington, d C. Investigators weren't able to use
31:26
Speaker 1: its color or dimensions to match it with Luger or
31:30
Speaker 1: either of the suspects. It was close, but it still
31:34
Speaker 1: wasn't quite enough to make an arrest.
31:40
Speaker 3: Part seven.
31:42
Speaker 1: George Lenny gets a lot of the attention in this story,
31:47
Speaker 1: and he still has one more act to play. But
31:50
Speaker 1: George is also important. In fact, he's the reason we
31:53
Speaker 1: know much of anything about what happened to Luger on
31:55
Speaker 1: that road. He also may have been the one to
31:59
Speaker 1: pull the trigger. George was a Vietnam veteran who had
32:03
Speaker 1: been wounded in battle, which is likely the reason he
32:05
Speaker 1: walked with a cane. The pairs shared experience of war
32:09
Speaker 1: apparently brought them together because they didn't have much else
32:12
Speaker 1: in common besides the love of alcohol. While Lenny was
32:16
Speaker 1: large and imposing, George was short and slender. Lenny was married,
32:20
Speaker 1: but George lived alone, and while Lennie is never known
32:24
Speaker 1: to have told anyone about what happened that day, George
32:27
Speaker 1: just couldn't keep the story to himself. A few months
32:32
Speaker 1: after Lujire's disappearance, a man came to the police with
32:35
Speaker 1: what he said was important information. He had been partying
32:39
Speaker 1: with George, and in a drunken stupor, George had told
32:42
Speaker 1: him the entire story. According to this informant, Lenny and
32:46
Speaker 1: George had seen Luger on the road with his deer.
32:49
Speaker 1: Not having had any luck themselves, they decided to steal
32:52
Speaker 1: Lougers so they pretended to want to help, got the
32:55
Speaker 1: deer in the trunk and invited him into the back seat.
32:59
Speaker 1: But when Lenny told they were keeping the deer as
33:01
Speaker 1: a shipping and handling fee, Lujer pushed back. He said
33:05
Speaker 1: he needed the deer to feed his family and asked
33:07
Speaker 1: to be let out of the car. That's when George
33:10
Speaker 1: turned around and his seat lowered the shotgun at Luger
33:14
Speaker 1: and pulled the trigger. We can assume that the pair
33:18
Speaker 1: spent the next hours and days hiding the body and
33:20
Speaker 1: cleaning the car, but the informant says he was too
33:23
Speaker 1: afraid to.
33:24
Speaker 3: Ask where they buried Loujer's remains.
33:28
Speaker 1: Linda has a similar, though slightly different theory about what happened.
33:33
Speaker 2: I believe that when he got into the car, they
33:36
Speaker 2: got the deer in the trunk, He got in the
33:38
Speaker 2: back seat of the car, and they got to the
33:41
Speaker 2: end of that road. They turned left instead of right
33:45
Speaker 2: to bring him home, and I think that's where he
33:49
Speaker 2: might have made a stink when he sat it, getting
33:53
Speaker 2: anxious that they were one wrong way, and then he
33:56
Speaker 2: realized they weren't taking him home. Ah, I don't know,
34:00
Speaker 2: but that's where I think they shout him in the
34:03
Speaker 2: back seat was there?
34:06
Speaker 1: Why George would admit to doing such a thing over
34:09
Speaker 1: something as trivial as a deer has baffled investigators, not
34:12
Speaker 1: to mention Ludra's family. The pair of men were obviously
34:16
Speaker 1: intoxicated and not in their right minds. But there's a
34:19
Speaker 1: giant gap between being drunk or high and murdering a
34:23
Speaker 1: stranger over some venison. The details of Lugra's case were
34:27
Speaker 1: well known at the time, so it's possible the informant
34:30
Speaker 1: was fabricating a story for some ulterior motive. Maybe the
34:34
Speaker 1: gun went off by accident, there was a fight in
34:36
Speaker 1: the car, or a third party was involved. Whatever actually happened,
34:41
Speaker 1: Marti and his colleagues knew the informant's testimony would never
34:44
Speaker 1: hold up in court. They needed more details from a
34:47
Speaker 1: more reliable witness than one of George's drinking buddies. Ideally,
34:51
Speaker 1: they wanted him to confess in a less alcohol soaked setting,
34:55
Speaker 1: and a short time later they got their chance. George
34:59
Speaker 1: had been in car for stealing in an effort to
35:01
Speaker 1: fund his drug habit.
35:03
Speaker 3: Law enforcement told George's.
35:04
Speaker 1: Cellmate that they'd let him go early if he could
35:06
Speaker 1: get George to tell him what happened, but the alleged
35:10
Speaker 1: murderer stuck to his original story.
35:12
Speaker 3: He didn't know anything.
35:13
Speaker 1: About Lujire's disappearance, and that original informant died of a
35:17
Speaker 1: drug overdose A short time later, with George refusing to speak,
35:21
Speaker 1: investigators remained hopeful that Lenny would one day crack. They
35:25
Speaker 1: sent undercover agents to the VFW where Lenny hung out,
35:28
Speaker 1: and while these agents were successful in befriending him, they
35:32
Speaker 1: never got him to talk.
35:33
Speaker 3: About the case.
35:35
Speaker 1: Lenny was obviously smart. He hid or destroyed all the
35:38
Speaker 1: evidence that could have sent him to jail, and maintained
35:41
Speaker 1: his innocence even while dealing with severe drug and alcohol addictions.
35:46
Speaker 1: But you know that old saying about being too smart
35:49
Speaker 1: for your own good, Lenny may have been too smart
35:52
Speaker 1: for his own good. In July of nineteen seventy six,
35:56
Speaker 1: about seven months after Luja went missing, Warden Marsh got
35:59
Speaker 1: a call Lenny had blown up his own house in
36:05
Speaker 1: what was probably an attempt at insurance fraud and, according
36:08
Speaker 1: to Darren, possibly an attempt to kill his wife. Lenny
36:11
Speaker 1: had filled a bunch of washtubs with gasoline in his
36:14
Speaker 1: house and lit a candlewick as a fuse. He'd purchased
36:18
Speaker 1: a plane ticket to Orlando, and his plan was to
36:20
Speaker 1: be out of the state when his house went up
36:22
Speaker 1: in flames, so the insurance company couldn't accuse him of
36:25
Speaker 1: starting the blaze. Himself, but there was a flaw in
36:30
Speaker 1: his plan.
36:31
Speaker 4: It is believed that his refrigerator, with all the fumes
36:34
Speaker 4: in the air, triggered the explosion prematurely before.
36:37
Speaker 3: He got out of the house.
36:39
Speaker 4: He did have an air ticket that day to take
36:42
Speaker 4: him to Orlando, Florida, so he was trying to make
36:46
Speaker 4: it look like he wasn't at home at the time
36:48
Speaker 4: of the explosion. But the explosion went off when he
36:50
Speaker 4: was in the house. It blasted him clear through the
36:53
Speaker 4: picture window and outside into the yard.
36:57
Speaker 1: Lenny suffered severe burns and was taken to a military
37:00
Speaker 1: terry hospital in San Antonio. Doctors didn't expect him to
37:03
Speaker 1: last long, so the main state police rushed down to Texas.
37:07
Speaker 1: They wanted to see if Lenny would confess on his
37:09
Speaker 1: deathbed and maybe tell them what he'd done with Luja,
37:13
Speaker 1: but they were too late. Lenny died before they could
37:16
Speaker 1: get there, taking what he knew about the young Hunter's
37:19
Speaker 1: disappearance to his grave. George, however, is still alive. Tracy,
37:25
Speaker 1: Lujia and Linda's youngest daughter, told me he's not in
37:28
Speaker 1: good health, but he's remained in the area since nineteen
37:31
Speaker 1: seventy five.
37:32
Speaker 5: He went on he had children and he continued with
37:35
Speaker 5: his life.
37:37
Speaker 1: Tracy and Linda believe there are people who might know
37:39
Speaker 1: where Lujira's body was buried, but they're afraid to come forward.
37:43
Speaker 5: Because there's definitely people all did that.
37:45
Speaker 2: No, but as scared of the family too, their sons,
37:50
Speaker 2: even though kids a cry of interest. People are scared
37:54
Speaker 2: of him, as scared of them.
37:57
Speaker 5: Intimidation, I suppose, yeah.
37:59
Speaker 2: I mean they're very threatening. They would come on to
38:02
Speaker 2: our page and be very nasty, you know, threatening. So
38:08
Speaker 2: we had to block a few of them. And I
38:10
Speaker 2: can't blame him for sticking out for the dad. But
38:16
Speaker 2: they don't know.
38:22
Speaker 3: Part eight. The search continues.
38:26
Speaker 1: It's tempting to think of this case as solved, or
38:28
Speaker 1: that justice, at least in the case of suspect A
38:32
Speaker 1: was somehow served, But the family is far from feeling closure.
38:36
Speaker 1: They never got the chance to face in court the
38:38
Speaker 1: person who killed their husband and father, and they've never
38:41
Speaker 1: been able to put him to rest in the way
38:43
Speaker 1: he deserves.
38:44
Speaker 2: Above all, we just want to lay him to rest
38:47
Speaker 2: our way, not throw him like a bag of trash somewhere.
38:51
Speaker 2: We want to lay him to rest with what love
38:54
Speaker 2: and dignity you know because that's what he deserved. He
38:57
Speaker 2: didn't deserve what he got. Does.
39:01
Speaker 1: You might expect Linda and her children to want an
39:03
Speaker 1: explanation for why their husband and father was murdered, but
39:07
Speaker 1: Linda and Tracy say answering that question isn't important to
39:10
Speaker 1: them at this point. They don't buy the excuse that
39:13
Speaker 1: the suspects were drunk or high or suffering from PTSD,
39:16
Speaker 1: and given suspect A's attempt to kill his wife, they
39:19
Speaker 1: don't believe it was an accident.
39:21
Speaker 5: You're not going to get a why that you go, oh,
39:23
Speaker 5: that makes sense, because you'd have to be psychotic to
39:26
Speaker 5: agree with that. So a why is never going to
39:28
Speaker 5: be good. It's never going to be okay, it's never
39:30
Speaker 5: going to be right. That's never going to ring closure
39:32
Speaker 5: or feel like an answer.
39:35
Speaker 1: They also aren't motivated by a desire to see suspect
39:38
Speaker 1: be behind bars.
39:39
Speaker 5: The only remaining suspect is not well and probably not
39:42
Speaker 5: long for this world, and so as far as like
39:44
Speaker 5: getting justice, that's not going to happen.
39:46
Speaker 1: All they really want is to find Luja's remains, not
39:49
Speaker 1: only for themselves, but for the grandchildren and great grandchildren
39:53
Speaker 1: who never got the chance to know him.
39:55
Speaker 5: The family goes on, and I don't want it to
39:57
Speaker 5: always be like, oh, this story that's in the FAMI
40:00
Speaker 5: and never been solved. They'd never been a saying. So
40:04
Speaker 5: they still hear about, you know, what went on, and
40:07
Speaker 5: they know that that's their grandfather, and the little ones
40:10
Speaker 5: eventually will know that that's their great grandfather. And so
40:13
Speaker 5: I just feel like it's just an important to have
40:15
Speaker 5: an end.
40:17
Speaker 1: The mission to find Luga's remains has been top of
40:19
Speaker 1: mind for every investigator assigned to this case. That's just
40:22
Speaker 1: as true today as it was back in the seventies.
40:26
Speaker 4: In the years that followed, they did anything and everything.
40:29
Speaker 4: The next spring, they had a huge search at the
40:32
Speaker 4: scale that the Warden Service had never done before. They
40:35
Speaker 4: literally brought in all wardens. My father in law recalls
40:39
Speaker 4: being a part of this too, and it wasn't in
40:41
Speaker 4: his district. They brought him volunteers. They filled up a
40:44
Speaker 4: couple of hotels, you know. They had aircraft flying around
40:48
Speaker 4: looking for crow circles things like that that would suggest
40:51
Speaker 4: that animals are gravitating towards remains in certain areas. They
40:55
Speaker 4: drained one farmer's pond because there was a tip that
40:59
Speaker 4: the body was in there. And this is an area
41:01
Speaker 4: down eastern Main where there's a lot of quarries, So
41:04
Speaker 4: they send divers into a whole bunch of quarries and
41:07
Speaker 4: different bodies of water. Suspect A himself lived don a pond.
41:11
Speaker 4: They dragged the pond. They you know, sent divers in
41:14
Speaker 4: the pond. They looked everywhere, and unfortunately all that came
41:19
Speaker 4: up empty handed.
41:21
Speaker 1: Warden's Martia and Hennessy won't be able to see it,
41:23
Speaker 1: but bringing this case to a close would mean more
41:26
Speaker 1: to them than most other investigators.
41:29
Speaker 4: One thing that really struck me, you know, with Jarn
41:32
Speaker 4: and with a lot of these Wardens in particular, is
41:35
Speaker 4: that they all seem to have experiences and stories that
41:38
Speaker 4: sort of haunts them and they can't put away with.
41:42
Speaker 4: This was the case that for jar And I could
41:44
Speaker 4: tell he really had some misgimmings about and really just
41:48
Speaker 4: had that personal drive. I know he stayed in contact
41:51
Speaker 4: with a family for years after the case was over
41:54
Speaker 4: because he just he really personally just wanted to help
41:57
Speaker 4: bring closure for them. So he would really motivated.
42:01
Speaker 1: Ward and Marsh would no doubt be pleased to learn
42:03
Speaker 1: that Lujia's case might be closer than ever to being solved.
42:07
Speaker 1: Linda worked with a group called the Main Cold Case
42:09
Speaker 1: Alliance to lobby the state legislature to provide funding to
42:13
Speaker 1: solve cold cases. Many states have a dedicated cold case division,
42:17
Speaker 1: but until twenty fifteen, Maine didn't.
42:20
Speaker 2: It was a group of us. We were at State
42:23
Speaker 2: House and we were pushing it. It was a law we
42:25
Speaker 2: just wanted. We wanted a cold case unit. It was
42:28
Speaker 2: really great to watch all those lights light up green.
42:32
Speaker 2: Nobody was against it, you know, all the Senate, it
42:35
Speaker 2: all lit up in our favor, and it was really
42:38
Speaker 2: a great feeling to get it approved.
42:41
Speaker 1: Linda is hoping that fifty years after her husband's disappearance
42:44
Speaker 1: and ten years after she helped fund a cold case unit,
42:47
Speaker 1: someone will have the courage to come forward and give
42:50
Speaker 1: the Belanger family the closure they've been searching for.
42:54
Speaker 2: Fifty years is a long time. It's been a never
42:56
Speaker 2: ending nightmare. Some days are okay, some days aren't. But
43:00
Speaker 2: to find his remains, no matter what it is, and
43:04
Speaker 2: we want to land the rest the right way.
43:07
Speaker 1: There is still hope for that to happen. The state
43:09
Speaker 1: police have continued to search as additional tips have come
43:12
Speaker 1: in In fact, according to a June email from Detective
43:15
Speaker 1: Josh Haynes, ground and water searches have been conducted in
43:18
Speaker 1: recent weeks and additional searches have been planned. They're especially
43:23
Speaker 1: interested in the back seat from the buick. There's a
43:26
Speaker 1: reason the suspects got rid of it, but it may
43:28
Speaker 1: still be around somewhere, sitting in an old barn or
43:31
Speaker 1: garage collecting dust. Modern forensic techniques can do things detectives
43:36
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies could only dream of, and that
43:39
Speaker 1: seat may hold the clues to finally solving this case.
43:45
Speaker 1: If you know or know someone who might know anything
43:49
Speaker 1: about a seat from a nineteen sixty five Uwick Special,
43:52
Speaker 1: get in touch with the main State Police at two
43:55
Speaker 1: oh seven six' two four seven zero seven six and
43:59
Speaker 1: ask for The Major Crimes Unit Unsolved. Division Detective haynes
44:03
Speaker 1: would ask the same of anyone who might know anything
44:06
Speaker 1: About lujer's, disappearance no matter how. Minor, again that number
44:10
Speaker 1: is two oh seven six two four seven zero seven to.
44:15
Speaker 2: SIX i can't explain the. Feeling it's something that we've
44:19
Speaker 2: always wanted and never, got and something that we've always
44:23
Speaker 2: wanted to do for, him and he got dealt a
44:25
Speaker 2: raw deal and uh just want to bring him.
44:28
Speaker 3: Home thanks for listening to this episode Of Blood. Trails
44:35
Speaker 3: if you'd like.
44:35
Speaker 1: To see images from this, case head over to the
44:37
Speaker 1: meeater dot com slash Blood trails and click on.
44:40
Speaker 3: The case file for this.
44:41
Speaker 1: EPISODE a big thanks To Darren, Wooster, linda And tracy
44:45
Speaker 1: for their time and willingness to speak with. ME i
44:47
Speaker 1: also Appreciate Detective Josh haynes for verifying the details Of luser's.
44:51
Speaker 1: Disappearance if you have a tip about this case or
44:54
Speaker 1: another case you think we should, cover send us an
44:57
Speaker 1: email at blood trails at the meeteater dot org dot.
45:00
Speaker 1: Com that's b l O O D T r A
45:02
Speaker 1: I L s at the meeater dot. Com see you next.
45:07
Speaker 1: Time stay safe out.
45:08
Speaker 5: There