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Curtis Pishon Pt. Two · The Path Went Chilly

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Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series about the
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disappearance of Curtis Pashan. Robin, do you want to catch everyone up on
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what we talked about in our previous episode. Curtis Pachan was forty years old
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and lived in New Hampshire. He had always dreamed about wanting to be a
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police officer, but during the early to mid nineteen nineties, he started to
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suffer from multiple sclerosis and then was forced to resign, and he became very
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depressed. For a while, he developed a drinking problem, but he eventually
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did get a job as a security guard in the town of Sebra at a
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plant called the Venture Corporation, which manufactured automobile parts. He was working the
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graveyard shift on July the fourth, two thousand, but sometime in the middle
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of the shift, his car mysteriously caught on fire. The fire department arrived,
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dowsed the flames, and everything seemed to be fine, but no one
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knows how it happened, and Curtis decided to continue, remaining to work the
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rest of his shift, but some time later he would just vanish without a
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trace. At first, police looked into the possibility that Curtis took his own
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life, that he could have gone somewhere and decided to kill himself because he
1:34
was feeling depressed, but of course that seemed very unlikely because of his ms
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making it very difficult for him to walk it anywhere, and it would not
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be till a few years later when the investigator started looking into a suspect named
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Robert April Third, who had actually been working at the plant that night and
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was on duty when Curtis was working, and had allegedly bragged about causing his
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disappearance. The rumors have circulated that April and an unnamed accomplice who also worked
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at the plant had been breaking into a bunch of vending machines and a change
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machine in order to conduct some sort of theft, and that Curtis caught them
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in the act and wound up being beaten to death, and they proceeded to
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smuggle his body out of the plant and dispose of them somewhere. It seems
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like a lot of people in the community think that April did it, but
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there's never been any hard evidence of foul play. So as it is right
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now, the case is still in a holding pattern and Curtis is still missing
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and no one has been arrested anyway. When I first became familiar with this
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case after seeing on Unsolved Mysteries many years ago, I thought it was a
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truly perplexing mystery. As you probably know, one of the more memorable cases
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the show ever featured was the nineteen eighty seven disappearance of Dale Curstetter, another
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case involving a security guard who went missing while working a graveyard shift at a
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factory. Like Curtis Bashan, Dale, Cursetetter may have been murdered because he
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interrupted the theft, but while it was fairly easy to formulate a number of
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theories about what happened in that case, Curtis's disappearance did not seem to make
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any sense. The most bizarre detail was undoubtedly Curtis's car catching on fire in
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the middle of his shift, only about two hours before he went missing,
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and while the two events were most likely connected, it was just very difficult
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to figure out how. The Unsolved Mystery segment has a lot more ambiguity about
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whether Curtis was the victim of foul play or if he might have wandered away
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from the scene voluntarily and ended his own life somewhere. However, as the
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years have gone by, the ambiguity has faded away, and it now seems
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like this is one of those cases where law enforcement has a pretty good idea
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about what happened and who was responsible, but they just lacked the evidence to
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make an arrest. Even so, there are still a lot of unanswered questions
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about how these events might have played out. Before he even went missing.
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It sounds like Curtis's life story was already a pretty tragic one, as working
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as a police officer was pretty much the only thing he ever wanted to do,
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but due to circumstances beyond his control, he was forced to end his
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career early. Multipler sclerosis is already such a horrible disease to live with,
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but it's got to be extra devastating when it prevents you from doing the one
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thing you love. And this is the main reason that people cannot initially dismiss
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the possibility of Curtis's disappearance being a suicide. It sounds like working as a
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security guard did give Curtis some purpose, but I'm sure he was still suffering.
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Apparently, after his shift ended every morning, it was pretty much his
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daily routine to go across the street to the Extra Mark to purchase a twelve
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pack of beer before he headed back to his hotel room to watch pornography,
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get drunk and pass out. So he obviously kept experiencing a lot of regret
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about how his life turned out. I think, of course, anybody can
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sit there and empathize with someone who's struggling with a diagnosis so difficult is MS.
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It's this very bizarre disease that is so unpredictable. You wake up one
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day and you're feeling okay. You wake up the next day and you're possibly
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almost experiencing paralysis across your body. You're in pain. For him, he
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couldn't even grip a gun. He couldn't do his job as a police officer,
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and that was his passion. And so to judge or to say,
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like, look at this guy. He's miserable and he doesn't even love his
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life. Look what he's doing, you also have to look at the fact
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that he is a functioning employee, that he is trying to get his life
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together, he has plans, and the fact that you talk about suicide,
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would it be possible, absolutely absolutely? You never know what someone's going through,
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but with someone in his condition, someone who is struggling physically, I
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just don't see how a man could get far enough away to complete suicide and
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not have his body located. Given where he was. He wasn't mobile.
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His car was burned, so he didn't have his own transportation, no record
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of him catching a cab or something like that halfway through his shift. So
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I'm more inclined to think that the burned car is a distraction, and that
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we know there were issues happening inside the factory and he was a hard rear
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end about rules, and so I think he walked in he said, not
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going to happen. You're all going to lose your job, and they said,
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we're actually not. You're going to lose your life over what we're doing
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right now, and that's more likely what happened. I've never heard a hard
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rear end. My daughter was standing next to me trying to give me a
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kiss, so you know, I didn't want to say hard ass. It's
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okay, that's a good one. But yeah. We talked about in our
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last episode how Curtis did have a drinking problem in the past while he was
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a police officer and did a stint and rehab, and he had also been
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fired from a previous security job for showing up drunk. And obviously, as
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we talked about, Curtis was still drinking heavily at this point. But it
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sounds like he took his job seriously enough that he never showed up to work
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intoxicated and seemed to take it seriously. So I do think that if he
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caught someone doing something illegal, such as an attempt at theft or something in
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the middle of a shift, he would go all out to stop it in
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spite of his limitations. I truly empathize with Curtis as somebody who has dealt
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with addiction in the past, and you know, every day, of course
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you have to, you know, be very cognizant of what your triggers are
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and be sure that you don't get triggered and do the work, because it
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doesn't just turn off. If you are somebody that is prone to that,
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you will always be. And I can only speak to my own experience at
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that time, but I know that when you are trying to escape something and
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it can be trauma, and for him it was likely his MS diagnosis.
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If you are using alcohol and pornography, to escape that you're escaping being depressed
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and you're escaping being anxious, but yet the substance, being alcohol, makes
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it worse, and continue using pornography to that ends also can make you feel
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worse, so you're ending up feeling more depressed. And it's this loop that
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just goes round and round and round, this vicious cycle where you're taking your
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drinking alcohol and you're watching pornography because you're depressed, but you're depressed because you're
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drinking alcohol and watching pornography. So it's just a really awful cycle that you
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can feel really trapped in without some kind of intervention. But I agree with
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everything that you said, Ash. I don't think that somebody who had his
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mobility issues without being able to have access to a vehicle or a cab,
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which we pretty much can say for certain he did not, And I just
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don't think that he would have been able to have reached a destination where he
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would have been able to end his own life and his body would have never
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been discovered. Given the many of Curtis's personal possessions were destroyed when his car
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caught fire, there was speculation that this was the breaking point which caused him
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to either become suicidal or suffer some sort of mental breakdown before he wandered off.
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If he jumped into a body of water or found an isolated spot to
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end his life, that could explain why his body was never found. Well,
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even though that theory might be plausible in some cases, like we just
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mentioned, it's hard to imagine a person with MS being able to make it
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that far, as the disease really makes it difficult to walk long distances.
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The only conceivable way for him to have left the area undetected is if he
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hitchhiked, but the distance from the guard shack to the main road still would
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have made it a challenge for someone with Curtis's condition. The fact that Curtis
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bought back a gun from his father only a day and a half before he
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went missing could be seen as a major red flag that he was contemplating suicide,
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But since the gun was ultimately found in Curtis's hotel room, I'm sure
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it doesn't have any relevance to his disappearance. So I definitely think that the
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only way Curtis left the Venture Corporation premises is if someone abducted him or he
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was killed on the premises. When the Unsolved Mystery segment originally aired in two
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thousand and one, there was a lot more uncertainty about what actually happened to
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Curtis, but it sounds like things change when Seabrook Police Lieutenant Mike Gallagher took
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over the investigation a few years later. During Curtis's tenure at the Venture Corporation,
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Gallagher was working as a patrolman and said that he sometimes stopped by the
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factory during his patrols to chat with Curtis in the guard shack and thought that
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he was a very nice guy. When Gallagher started handling the investigation, he
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received an anonymous tip advising him to look closer at the skeleton crew who was
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working at the factory during Curtis's final shift. Under normal circumstances, there would
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have been at least one hundred people working that shift, and it would have
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been very difficult for an employee to abduct or murder Curtis without anyone noticing.
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However, because this was the fourth of July holiday and there were only twelve
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other employees working there that night, it's not implausible that one or more of
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them could have gotten away with something like that. And it's not abnormal for
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them to know how many people are going to be on that shift. It's
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a holiday weekend. They know that nobody is in the building. There's twelve
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people versus the normal one hundred. That's an amazing time to plan a more
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advanced crime. You have people in that building that we know were causing issues.
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And if there's ever a time to pull off something bigger, it's the
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time that you know one tenth of the employees are present. I think when
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you go back to the gun issue, I believe Curtis had even told people
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he felt like there were problems at work. He was stressed out about people
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at work. And so to me, I interpret the fact that a former
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police officer is trying to, you know, be in recovering things like that
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he doesn't have a weapon, But when he starts to get concerned, he
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knows that, given his physical state with MS, he needs to have a
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physical weapon that allows him to defend himself in the event of being attacked at
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work or on his way home from work or something like that. So I
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think that lack of physical strength and not really knowing if on a given day
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he's going to be able to take care of his own body. A gun
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becomes a protective mechanism, and it was found in his hotel room. There's
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just no way that's a relevant fact that points to what his mental health was
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at the time. Of course, Curtis's family have claimed that prior to his
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disappearance, he told them he felt unsafe because there was a legal activity taking
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place at the factory and one of his coworkers had supposedly threatened him for giving
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him a parking ticket. Now we know that the primary person of interest,
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Robert April, third, worked there and that he was one of the twelve
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employees who was present on the night Curtis went missing. However, I'm not
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sure if April was the same coworker whom Curtis came us of threatening him,
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because it's been reported that this employee had an alibi, which might imply that
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he was not working at the factory that night. But interestingly enough, before
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Lieutenant Gallagher took over the investigation, he says that one of the people who
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had been most adamant about pushing forward the theory that Curtis went off somewhere and
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took his own life is the same person he now suspects of committing the crime.
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If true, it definitely sounds like this was an act of intentional misdirection
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given what we now know. There's some leads in this case which ultimately turned
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out to me nothing like the allegations of drug dealing in the factory parking lot,
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the sighting of the Hispanic individuals acting rowdy at the extramart across the street,
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and the allegations that Curtis had affairs with some police officers wives during his
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time on the force. The most significant clue seems to be the vandalism of
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the vending machines at the factory, and I always thought that detail was downplayed
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a bit during the original Unsolved Mystery segment. The car fire and this vandalism
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taking place on the same shift when Curtis went missing is just a few too
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many coincidences. While the primary theory seems to be that Curtis was killed while
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interrupting the theft of some vending machines, it's not entirely clear to me if
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anything was actually stolen that night. It's possible that if the actual theft was
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halted because they needed to dispose of Curtis's body, the perpetrator or perpetrators never
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actually got the chance to steal from the machines. Curtis had previously expressed his
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concern that because his skeleton crew was working that night, he would have no
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backup if any problems arose, with the only security being in a mobile man
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with multiple sclerosis. I wouldn't be surprised if the responsible party thought this would
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be the perfect opportunity for a theft, but things still went horribly wrong.
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That's exactly what I was thinking. I believe that there was somebody who said,
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this is the night if we're ever going to pull this off. No
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one's here to watch us. Do We have one security guard on staff,
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and we know that he has his own limitations, and so we're going to
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go for this goal of committing a crime. And if caught, they hurt
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him and had time to hide the body, to move the body. And
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when you look at the police investigation, they didn't inspect that factory as if
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there had been a murder that took place or that could have happened. They
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were wondering did he go off and kill himself? And so for me,
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you look back and you cringe at this fact that they had all the time
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in the world to get rid of evidence that something had happened there, and
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by the time the police circled back around to say there was probably foul play,
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it was just too late. Yeah, it is pretty frustrating to me
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that they found these broken vending machines and also the door to the union room
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that had the union meeting room that had been kicked in, and it didn't
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raise more red flags. I think I remember reading that at the time they
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weren't even sure if this damage took place on that particular night, or if
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the machines might have been kicked in on a previous occasion. But it's just
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so strange to me that they would find the signs of vandalism and still go
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with the idea that Curtis walked off and decided to end his own life.
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But then we hear that the prime suspect was in the police's ear pushing forward
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this theory. And unfortunately it sounds like if this was an act of misdirection,
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then the police fell for it. It's really too bad because it might
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have turned out completely differently if they would have if they would have actually investigated
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right from the jump, Because these guys if they were committing some kind of
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theft and they were interrupted by Curtis, then it would have just been a
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crime of opportunity. They would have grabbed something close by and beat him or
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whatever they chose to do if that was how it played out, And there
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may or may not have been a lot of evidence left behind. If it
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was a blunt force injury, there might not have been a lot of blood.
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If it was a sharp force injury or he hit his head or something
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like that, there could been a great deal of blood. So either way,
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they would have had ample time to clean this up because the police weren't
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approaching this like there could have been a murder. I feel like this was
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a real missed opportunity. They could have at least done had a couple patrol
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people walk through and see if there's any evidence of anything strange, because we
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knew about the theft, and because of the car fire, there's just way
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too many strange things going on here for them to just be like, oh,
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yeah, he probably walked off the man who's suffering with MS, who
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has limited mobility, who has no access to a car, who didn't call
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a cab for all we know, and like, what is the probability that
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he hitchhiked and was picked up by somebody, then taken somewhere and ended his
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life. It just doesn't really track, and it just feels like it was
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a little bit of lazy police work initially. Now, before we talk any
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more about this theory, I should mention that the Venture Corporation factory would close
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down less than four years after Curtis went missing, and it sounds like there
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was a lot of shadiness going on in this company. The main reason the
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factory wound up closing is because the Venture Corporation's owner, Larry Wingett, was
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involved in a scandal for he and his family siphoned more than three hundred and
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fourteen million from the company before it went into bankruptcy, and in two thousand
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and three, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration find the company fifty five
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thousand dollars for serious safety violations after a worker at the Seabrook factory was killed
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when a large mold slipped from a horizontal mold injection machine and crushed him.
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Long story short, this did sound like a bit of a dysfunctional workplace,
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so employees breaking into vending machines in the middle of a shift. Doesn't sound
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like a stretch. No, I agree. I think when you look at
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this dysfunction that we know was happening, and you have issues with safety protocols,
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you have violations and safety areas. We already know there were mainstream issues
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really with the system. But then you look at the behavior and this idea
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that employees were known to be doing damage to the property, It was known
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that internal criminal behavior was going on, and you have a disabled man on
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a shift responsible for taking care of I mean, I think the system failed
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him. The company had its own shortcomings, it was easy for the employees
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to exploit that. And it's kind of mind blowing that this company are sipeing
19:33
off three hundred and fourteen million dollars like that involves a lot of work for
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a prolonged period of time without anyone noticing anything. So it's probably a good
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thing that this company is no longer around. And like, how much would
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that be in today's money? Would that be like double do you think?
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I don't know if it'd be that much because this is two thousand, but
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yeah, maybe round five hundred million or so. Like I didn't even know
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the company was worth that much. But here they are like sipeening off hundreds
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of millions of day. But how do we explain the strange fire which engulfed
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Curtis's car? I have to admit that part of the story still baffles me.
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The theory presented by Lieutenant Gallagher is that the fire was started by the
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perpetrators as a diversion while they orchestrated their theft. After all, it's believed
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that they used a forkliff to break into the vending machines, which would have
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created a lot of noise, so perhaps they felt the fire would keep Curtis
20:25
occupied. However, the problem is that Curtis's car was parked only about eight
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feet away from the guard shack he occupied, So how did he not notice
20:33
this? I mean, I guess he could have been somewhere else at the
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time, But like we mentioned numerous times, Curtis's MS made it very difficult
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for him to walk. In fact, while it was standard practice for the
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security guards to do the rounds and walk the perimeter at the start of their
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shifts, the guard whom Curtis relieved on this particular night, offered to do
20:52
it because he knew that sort of thing was difficult for him. Did someone
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manage to set fire to Curtis's car while he was eight feet away without him
21:00
noticing? I guess as possible. But even though the insurance investigators believed that
21:06
arson had taken place, I'm not sure if they were able to determine how
21:10
exactly the fire was started. A lot has been made of the fact that
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Curtis seemed unusually calm when the fire department was putting out the flames, but
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this could be explained away by the fact that he was looking into purchasing a
21:22
new vehicle sometime in the near future. In fact, once we learned that
21:26
piece of information, we wondered if perhaps Curtis might have started the fire himself
21:30
for insurance reasons, since he would not need that car for much longer.
21:34
But since many of Curtis's favorite possessions were inside the vehicle and wound up being
21:40
destroyed, that makes it less likely he was responsible, and it's just too
21:44
much of a coincidence that he would go missing shortly thereafter. All that being
21:48
said, setting fire to a car as a diversion in order to orchestrate a
21:52
theft seems like an incredibly stupid plan, since Curtis wound up calling the fire
21:57
department, and I don't think he'd to be breaking into vending machines with all
22:02
those extra people on site. No, I think that's very true. It's
22:07
very bizarre that it's only eight feet from the guard shack. But think about
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his condition, right MS has that kind of paralysis, feeling, the stinging
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in your legs, all of that pain that goes through your body. Is
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it possible that Curtis also didn't just sit in the guard shack. It's a
22:22
slow night, there's a lot of quiet time there because there's only twelve people
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working. Is it possible that he was up and about that he went to
22:32
go to the restroom, that he went to go on a stroll to try
22:34
to stretch his legs and get his muscles warmed up. I feel like it's
22:38
very possible he just wasn't sitting right there when it got set and maybe that
22:42
would lure him back out to be attentive to his car. He does call
22:48
all of the people to the scene, so the focus is out in the
22:52
parking lot, and then even though there's a lot of people on site,
22:56
I think it still gives people a cloak to be able to perform things inside
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that building and not have individuals coming towards the building. They're all going out
23:04
towards the parking lot, Robin. Do we know if Curtis liked to read
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books or magazines or like girly megs while he was in the guard shack,
23:15
Because if that were true, then I could see a scenario where somebody would
23:19
be able to creep up behind his vehicle, ducking down and maybe put some
23:26
accelerant or light a match, something like that, and then he might not
23:30
even see even though it could be directly behind him. If he was known
23:33
to do that, then somebody could plan like, hey, this is the
23:37
time where Curtis is typically reading a magazine to pass the time. Yeah,
23:41
we don't really have that information about what he would do to pass the time.
23:45
They did mention a couple of items that were left behind in the guard
23:48
shack. They said there were cigarettes and a lunch pale, but they never
23:51
said anything about any books or magazines. But we also don't know the line
23:56
of sight that Curtis had, Like, even though they said the car was
23:59
only eight feet from the guard shack, we don't know if he would have
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been able to see it from his position. For all we know, it
24:04
could have been behind something, so it would have been easier for someone to
24:07
set fire to the vehicle without him noticing. But if it was eight feet
24:12
south, you really can't see. It's completely not in your field of vision,
24:17
not even in your peripheral So I think where it would be located as
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far as direction, is extremely important. It's just too bad we don't have
24:26
that information. The timeline prior to Curtis's actual disappearance is a bit jumbled,
24:33
as we have some workers who claimed they saw Curtis walking around the facility at
24:37
three point fifteen am, which could imply that he was able to walk in
24:41
on the people at the vending machines. Well, the security supervisor said he
24:45
checked in on Curtis in the booth at around three twenty, so I wonder
24:49
if someone is mistaken about the exact time. Curtis was first noticed to be
24:55
missing from the guard shack at three forty five, and shortly before that is
24:59
when the foreman thought he saw two vehicles speeding out of the factory's parking lot.
25:03
So if the police's theory about Curtis being killed while interrupting a theft is
25:07
correct, then you could infer that the drivers of those vehicles were transporting his
25:12
body off the premises. But if this scenario is correct, then the big
25:17
question is can Robert April's whereabouts be accounted for during this time period? If
25:22
April or anyone else suddenly disappeared from the factory during the middle of the shift,
25:27
you'd think that his coworkers would have noticed. During numerous interviews about the
25:33
case, Lieutenant Gallagher has made reference to a code of silence and once stated,
25:37
quote, trust me, the mafia's code of silence has nothing on the
25:41
one you'll find in Seabrook end quote. The implication seems to be that many
25:47
people from the area know exactly what happened to Curtis, but none of them
25:51
are willing to come forward and go on the record. Why would two vehicles
25:56
be speeding out of the perku lot when you're leaving a parking lot, not
26:00
speeding anywhere. You're creeping along, getting to the front of the parking lot,
26:03
putting your blinker on, figuring out which direction you're going. So the
26:06
fact that they were speeding out does make them very suspicious vehicles. I'm assuming
26:11
they could identify those those vehicles. I mean, these are people who should
26:15
have been at the factory and we're leaving, right. That's the thing it's
26:19
very weird is we have no specifics here about which vehicles they were. I
26:23
mean, there were only a dozen people working, so it's not like there
26:26
have been a lot of vehicles parked there to begin with. And like I
26:32
said, it's kind of odd. Did no one remember if Robert April or
26:36
another coworker just suddenly disappeared from the plant's premises during this time period. So
26:41
yeah, I do have to think it's connected that like one of these vehicles
26:45
could have been contained Curtis's body, and that maybe the second vehicle was driving
26:49
with an accomplice who had to go with his partner to help dispose of Curtis's
26:53
body. But it just seems weird that they could just like drive out and
26:57
then come back and no one notices, which is why there has been speculation
27:02
that maybe some other workers there know exactly what happened, but of just our
27:06
maintaining the code of silence and will not say anything. We already talked about
27:11
Robert April allegedly bragging about Curtis's death while threatening David Horwitz, who would later
27:15
recant his story on the witness stand. Well, guess what. This is
27:19
not the only criminal trial against April which fell apart after a crucial witness backed
27:25
out. In July twenty eleven, April was arrested and charged with one count
27:30
of burglary and two counts of criminal threatening after he allegedly broke into a home
27:36
and threatened to people with a knife, but the charges against him would eventually
27:40
be dismissed when the homeowner ignored a subpoena and failed to show up in court
27:44
to testify against April as the key witness for the prosecution. And in August
27:48
of twenty thirteen, April wound up having a run in with the law for
27:53
entirely different reasons after his nineteen year old son, Robert April fourth, was
27:59
arrested for stabbing his father in the temple. The injuries turned out to be
28:03
non life threatening, and I've been unable to find out how this particular case
28:07
ultimately turned out, But it seems like trouble just happens to follow around Robert
28:11
April the third everywhere he goes. Over the years. It sounds like both
28:17
law enforcement and the Pieshan family have repeatedly heard stories from many different sources about
28:22
what April allegedly did to Curtis, but these sources are either anonymous or are
28:27
just passing along third hand information. No one has been able to provide hard
28:33
solid evidence to implicate anyone, and unfortunately, you cannot get a search warrant
28:37
or make an arrest based on unsubstantiated hearsay, no matter how many times the
28:42
exact same story is spread around. But when you consider the fact that no
28:48
less than two unrelated criminal cases against Robert April have fallen apart because key witnesses
28:53
have flaked out, this gives off the impression that he knows how to frighten
28:59
or intimidate people, and this might explain why no one has been willing to
29:02
come forward and go on the record about Curtis's disappearance. Now, even if
29:07
April is the guilty party, it sounds like he did not act alone.
29:11
While Lieutenant Gallagher considers April to be the primary person of interest, he thinks
29:17
that at least one other factory worker was involved. This unnamed accomplice might not
29:22
have been physically involved in Curtis's murder, but at the very least likely participated
29:26
in the theft and the cover up. Well, we know that April's able
29:30
to intimidate because he threatens all the time with physical violence. And when the
29:37
officer actually says, if you only knew how tight lipped this community was,
29:41
all the code of silence it exists here. It beats out the mafia.
29:45
Clearly, there's a verbal, physical kind of threat that exists. And I
29:52
wonder if the dynamic with law enforcement is such that people aren't willing to get
29:56
involved in any crime, whether there's threats or not. There are certain communities
30:00
that when you have law enforcement asking questions, everyone's tight lipped because they don't
30:07
have a trust for them, and so there's that factor that could go into
30:11
it. You also know that April has a history of being physically intimidating,
30:15
of threatening, of attacking. This is a very known pattern. And so
30:19
if you threaten my family, there's an easy way to get me to stop
30:22
talking. You're dangerous. You came in with a knife, and now you've
30:27
threatened me. Yeah, I'm going to keep my mouth quiet. So I
30:30
could see that being a very real possibility. And the fact that he came
30:36
onto the radar in the first place, because he bragged to David Horowitz saying
30:40
that if you say anything, then the same thing that happened to Curtis Bashan
30:44
is going to happen to you. And he essentially bragged that he buried Curtis's
30:48
body in his own backyard, though they never found any evidence that to be
30:51
for that to be true. But it just shows how brazen it is that
30:53
he probably knows that I've gotten away with this for so many years, and
30:57
even if I openly brag about it, going to continue to get away with
31:00
it. And he also definitely sounds like a guy a great character that his
31:03
own son is attempting to stab him. If April is responsible, he didn't
31:10
get away with this because he's a super criminal who's highly intelligent, because he
31:15
clearly goes around blabbing about it. He got away with it because he's imposing
31:18
and intimidating, and even the whole vending Machine theft plan, like theoretically,
31:23
if nothing had happened to Curtis and they got away with the theft, how
31:27
long did they expect to get away with it? Because if you do a
31:30
theft like that on a shift when there are only twelve people present. There
31:33
are only a certain amount of suspects that you can interrogate and figure out who
31:37
did it. So I've been curious to see if he managed to get away
31:41
with it, if the theft had gone off without a hitch. You're right,
31:45
it's like a real who done it? When there was like a total
31:48
of thirteen people there, one of them you end up eliminating. So it's
31:52
like, Okay, well they're going to question all of you and someone might
31:55
crack. I mean maybe not if they're going to cover up a murder.
31:59
Maybe there was this real Seabrook code of silence. But it seems like a
32:02
pretty stupid crime. It feels like the game of Clue, Like you're watching
32:07
the movie Clue, which one of you was? It way too small of
32:10
a group, right, one's gone and all of you are a suspects.
32:15
It's funny talking about it now, but it's maddening when you go back and
32:22
you're like, oh my gosh, we just had a different lens on when
32:23
we looked at this case. Would it have turned out differently? Very very
32:29
little of me believes that Curtis took his own life, So it leaves people
32:32
that had a reason to be angry with him, and that's the people that
32:36
were working there and were being held accountable for misdeeds. And on a side
32:40
note, how much money would a vending machine and a change machine have.
32:44
It sounds like it's hardly worth your while to try to steal from there,
32:47
like cost benefit analysis, What is the type of trouble that you could get
32:52
into for breaking into a vending machine? You could lose your job, you
32:55
could have criminal charges. And what are you splitting the what you get from
33:00
this between twelve people or at least between a few people. It seems like
33:05
it's a conspiracy of at least a few and maybe you'd have to pay hush
33:08
twenty So what do you making a couple hundred bucks each? If that,
33:12
I'd say it's McDonald's And that's about it, which is about what forty bucks
33:15
know. During the earliest media coverage of this case, it was reported that
33:22
all the factory workers who were working the graveyard shift that night were accounted for,
33:27
but the statement is a bit vague. One of the anonymous tipsters who
33:30
called the Pishon Family's tip line said that the perpetrators hid his body inside a
33:36
union office ordinarily used for storage, which might explain why its door was found
33:40
kicked in. But when exactly did they remove his body? Once the morning
33:45
shift arrived, I'm sure there would have been a lot more people at the
33:49
factory, making it difficult to smuggle Curtis off the premises undetected. Well,
33:54
Curtis was discovered to be missing from the guard shack at three forty five,
33:59
it sounds like the police were not actually notified until his relief showed up at
34:02
five point thirty. Theoretically, if the two cars seen speeding out of the
34:07
parking lot belonged to April and his accomplice, then they may have used this
34:12
opportunity to dispose of Curtis's body and then made it back to the factory before
34:16
the police arrived, and they could have claimed that they were working the entire
34:21
time. If this is what happened, then you have to wonder how many
34:24
of their coworkers noticed their absence. Did any of them have an inkling that
34:30
they might have killed someone even if they had no direct involvement. It's possible
34:35
that at least some of the coworkers who were there that night might know more
34:38
than they're letting on, But they're either too afraid to say anything or following
34:43
the aforementioned code of silence. As of right now, it seems like this
34:47
has become one of those missing person's cases which has pretty much been solved in
34:52
the minds of law enforcement and the victim's family, but they just lacked the
34:57
body or enough definitive evidence to arrest anyone and for the crime. The disappearance
35:01
seemed truly baffling and perplexing at the time but originally happened. But the more
35:07
you put the pieces of the puzzle together, the more likely it seems that
35:10
this case has a pretty simple solution involving foul play. Even though the phrase
35:16
quote they stumbled upon something they weren't supposed to has always become a cliched in
35:22
true crime circles during the analysis of cold cases, I do think that it
35:27
applies to this case. I do too. I think that he was in
35:30
a position of vulnerability and a company that had its own issues going on,
35:35
and that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, even though
35:38
he was just doing his job. This is one of those cases where the
35:44
only benefit is the passage of time. How scary is April the older,
35:49
the older and older he gets right once he becomes an elderly man, if
35:52
he were to pass away like he's no longer a threat. I wonder if
35:57
the passage of time at this point point becomes a pro in this case and
36:01
allows law enforcement to go back and re examine relationships and ask questions and pray
36:07
that somebody has a conscience that wants to get things off their chest. Yeah,
36:13
I think there is a chance that something like this could happen, because
36:15
I remember Lieutenant Gallagher even made a statement that his prime suspect pretty much never
36:21
leaves his trailer and that it almost has his own self imposed prison sentence because
36:25
he can't go out anywhere and he kind of has to hide because of all
36:30
the suspicion underneath them. But there will become a point maybe where he might
36:34
die of old age or something like that, or even get arrested for another
36:37
crime. And who knows, maybe someone with inside knowledge about what happened will
36:40
finally feel comfortable coming forward and providing the necessary information, which, even if
36:46
it does not lead to an arrest, could possibly lead to the recovery of
36:50
Curtis's remains. So prior to his disappearance, Curtis expressed his fear that he
36:54
did not have any backup on this particular shift in case something went wrong,
37:00
and sadly, it sounds like his fears were not unfounded. Even though investigators
37:05
do not believe the perpetrators intended to kill Curtis, it sounds like they still
37:08
made the conscious choice to violently attack a person who was suffering from multiple sclerosis
37:14
and could not defend himself, and this is truly despicable. If the theory
37:19
presented by the police is true, and they are correct about the identity of
37:22
the primary person of interest, then this definitely seems like one of the more
37:25
solvable cases we've ever covered. Twenty four years is way too long for Curtis's
37:31
family to have gone without recovering his remains, so all they might need is
37:36
for the right person to come forward. So if you happen to have any
37:39
information about the unsolved disappearance of Curtis Pashan, please contact the New Hampshire Cold
37:45
Case Unit at six to zero three two seven one two six sixty three at
37:50
six h three two seven to one two six sixty three Jules Ashley any final
37:55
thoughts on this case. One of the really tragic things about this case,
38:00
in particular is Curtis's life and the way that it got examined when he passed
38:06
away. By going into this scene and assuming that it must have been a
38:09
suicide and that because of his struggles, that that was the most logical answer,
38:15
is really heavy on the family and the people that loved Curtis. Curtis
38:22
was also a man who gave most of his life to serving his community.
38:27
It's someone who loved his job so much as a police officer. He voluntarily
38:31
said, I have a problem with alcohol. I need your help to get
38:36
healthy so I can keep this job. And the job likely contributed to that
38:40
addiction with alcohol, right the stress and trauma there. But he loved it
38:45
and it got taken away when he got diagnosed with MS and his body started
38:49
to fail him. But his family was faced with this idea that everyone assumed
38:53
their son took his own life, and that's very difficult to wrap your head
38:59
around. There's questions for them, well did he take his own life?
39:02
It doesn't make any sense. There's judgment from the community. There's judgment from
39:07
people when they balance how much you should be grieving when someone quote chose to
39:10
take their life. It's so devastating when a family experiences a suicide or there's
39:17
a suspected suicide, because they're not given the same compassion and they're not given
39:23
the same permission to grieve the loss itself. Add a cold case onto it
39:29
where there's pretty much a definite that Curtis eventually is declared to have been murdered.
39:36
But what we've heard so far is reasons why he would have taken his
39:39
own life. Pornography, alcohol, addiction, right, all of these habits
39:45
that paint Curtis in this light of kind of less sympathetic right to mourn is
39:52
tragic. This is someone who was really fighting a demon a diagnosis, and
40:01
yet was still showing up. He was still in connection with his family.
40:06
He was telling them he felt fearful and that he needed help. I just
40:09
see so much bravery and strength than Curtis, and so many beautiful qualities that
40:15
don't seem to be discussed. It was an assumption that he hurt himself,
40:19
and there was a push to understand why, and I think that was such
40:22
a disservice, even just emotionally for the family, much less what I created
40:27
in this case. So my prayer is that Curtis's family continues to tell who
40:32
he truly was, how much they truly lost that day that he went quote
40:38
missing, and obviously we now suspect that he was murdered and that hopefully there's
40:45
some resolution here so that Curtis's stories were rewritten to be a murder victim and
40:49
nothing more than that. I truly feel for his family. You summed it
40:53
up perfectly, ash The theory was put forward in the beginning. I mean,
40:58
it took many, many years to get to where they are are now,
41:00
where it's widely believed that foul play was involved. But to have that
41:05
guilt and that shame piled on, especially in two thousand, our understanding of
41:08
mental health and suicide is not what it is today, and I think that
41:15
a family would still feel the weighty implications that their loved one decided to walk
41:20
away from their life, decided to end their own life, even though he
41:23
was grappling with MS and Ashley mentioned those extra things that are added along the
41:30
alcohol abuse and the compulse of watching a pornography. I'm not going to say
41:35
addiction because I don't truly know. Those to me make him almost more sympathetic.
41:40
It just says to me that he's looking for some kind of connection,
41:44
but he's not able to really reach out for that, and so instead reaching
41:49
for alcohol and reaching for pornography becomes easier, and it just becomes really isolating.
41:54
Even though you're interacting with all of these different people, it can be
41:59
easy for a lot of enforcement to go okay. Well, because of these
42:01
reasons, it looks like it's suicide, even though when you look a little
42:06
bit closer, how would he have left the facility? There's really no other
42:10
way besides hitchhiking, and nobody has come forward. The body has never been
42:15
discovered. I just don't think that there is any real possibility. The probability
42:20
is extremely low that Curtis ended his own life. I think foul play and
42:25
April and whomever else was on shift are allegedly the most likely suspects in my
42:32
opinion, because who else would it be. It's just like when we're looking
42:37
at the vending machine theft, who else would it be? And I just
42:40
wonder what the real question is is how many people were really and truly involved
42:45
and how many others are just staying silent out of fear of retribution from April
42:51
or one or any number of the other people who could have been involved.
42:55
It's just really too bad that after all of these years then nobody has come
43:00
forward, because it seems very clear, and I think most people listening will
43:05
likely agree, as does the family in law enforcement, that we kind of
43:09
know what happened here. You know, it's been twenty four years. Does
43:14
nobody feel guilt, does nobody feel like their opinion has changed, or maybe
43:19
their sense of fear isn't there anymore. I'm just baffled by the fact that
43:22
this hasn't been solved. Later, Oh yeah, Like I mentioned earlier that
43:28
this is probably one of the more solvable cases that we've ever covered on this
43:31
podcast. I do acknowledge that when I first became familiar with it on Unsolved
43:37
Mysteries in the early two thousands, I was more baffled by it because they
43:42
didn't present any suspects. They just said that Kurtis disappeared in a shift his
43:45
car caught on fire. They presented the theory of him walking somewhere and dying
43:50
by suicide, but it didn't seem believable. But Robert April's name just did
43:54
not come up in this investigation at all. Till around I think like two
43:58
thousand and eight. And then when you look up the circumstances and you find
44:01
out that he was working there that night, and he had a history of
44:05
bragging about killing Curtis, and that he has a history of criminal activity,
44:09
the solution does seem obvious here, but because so much time has passed,
44:14
we just don't have any evidence to make an arrest, and that's why this
44:16
has been unsolved for twenty four years. And it's definitely one of the more
44:22
heartbreaking cases we've ever covered, because Curtis already had a tragic backstory before this
44:27
even happened because of his multiple sclerosis, but he was still trying to live
44:31
his life as best as he could, and it was probably it's likely he
44:36
was killed because he was doing his due diligence. That he took his job
44:38
as a security guard seriously enough that he tried to intervene and stop a theft
44:45
and then wound up being murdered. And it just makes the act all the
44:47
more despicable because he was such a vulnerable victim and probably could not put up
44:52
much of a fight to defend himself. I just wanted to give a shout
44:57
out that this case has also been featured on our friend and Kristen Sevie's podcast
45:00
Murder She Told, which covers a lot of unsolved cold cases from the Northeast
45:06
United States, and she interviewed a number of members of Curtis's family, including
45:10
his brothers and his father, and says they are the nicest people and that
45:15
they deserve justice, they deserve answers, and that even if nobody ever goes
45:20
to prison for this crime, that at the very least they deserve to recover
45:23
Curtis's remains and give them a proper burial. And like we mentioned, this
45:28
case has been hampered by the code of silence. That there are probably other
45:31
people out there who know the whole truth but have kept their mouth shut after
45:35
all this time, and hopefully, just maybe one of these days, someone
45:38
will finally come forward that key piece of information and this case will get a
45:43
long overdue resolution. Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
45:47
about the Trail like Cold Patreon. Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been
45:52
around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like early
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46:10
about cases which are not featured on The Trail Went Cold's original feed, so
46:15
they're exclusive to Patreon and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
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ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track
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46:34
it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia
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and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
46:43
first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode featuring this case.
46:46
So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more
46:51
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46:54
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