Latest / Crime Night / The Marshland Murders of Massachusetts

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The Marshland Murders of Massachusetts · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: Picture this. It's the night of November twenty eighth, nineteen
0:04
Speaker 1: eighty one.
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Speaker 2: Okay, setting the scene.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, you are standing on the chilly, bustling curb right
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Speaker 1: outside of Boston Logan Airport. The air smells like, you know,
0:14
Speaker 1: jet exhaust and freezing.
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Speaker 2: Rain, just that classic miserable Northeast winter.
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Speaker 1: Weather exactly, and the deafening roar of jet engines. It
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Speaker 1: just mixes with this endless glow of taxi headlights. Pulling
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Speaker 1: up to the terminal and standing there amidst all this
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Speaker 1: chaos is a twenty five year old Harvard architecture student
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Speaker 1: named Joan Webster.
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Speaker 2: Right, and she's got her purse carry on and she
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Speaker 2: is waiting by this heavy strike suitcase.
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Speaker 1: She had just flown back from a Thanksgiving trip right
0:42
Speaker 1: visiting her family in New Jersey.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, she's likely exhausted, feeling that sort of post holiday
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Speaker 2: slump that we all get. But she's anxious to get
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Speaker 2: back to her dorming Cambridge for a Sunday study group.
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Speaker 1: But she never makes it to Cambridge, No, she doesn't.
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Speaker 1: A cab driver waiting in line actually watches as this
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Speaker 1: mysterious man in his forties with curly hair a beard
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Speaker 1: and these round glasses.
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Speaker 2: He just intercepts her and it gets intense fast. When
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Speaker 2: the cab driver goes to like load Joan's heavy striped suitcase,
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Speaker 2: the man just snaps right.
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Speaker 1: He flashes the sudden intense anger, just screaming at the
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Speaker 1: driver about how he's handling the luggage, and.
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Speaker 2: Then he grabs the bag, leads Joan away from the
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Speaker 2: cab stand and the two of them just vanish into
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Speaker 2: a blue taxi.
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Speaker 1: Which is just chilling because that is the last time
1:25
Speaker 1: anyone ever saw Joan Webster alive.
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Speaker 2: It's the inciting incident for a mystery that would well,
1:31
Speaker 2: it would haunt no England for decades. I mean, it
1:34
Speaker 2: starts as a standard missing person's case but mutates into
1:37
Speaker 2: something far more insidious.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to this deep dive today. We have a really
1:42
Speaker 1: vital mission. We are pulling back the curtain on two notorious,
1:47
Speaker 1: chilling disappearances in Massachusetts.
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Speaker 2: Joan Webster and the lesser known but deeply deeply connected
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Speaker 2: case of Marie Iannudy.
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Speaker 1: Right. We are going to examine the evidence from our
1:56
Speaker 1: sources today just like criminal investigators.
1:58
Speaker 2: Because our goal is to uncover exactly what happens when
2:01
Speaker 2: the justice system gets tunnel vision exactly.
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Speaker 1: We're looking at what happens when investigators just stop following
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Speaker 1: the clues and instead they force the pieces of a
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Speaker 1: puzzle to fit a predetermined picture.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is fundamentally an exploration of confirmation bias, of
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Speaker 2: lost evidence, and really the ghosts of a compromised investigation.
2:24
Speaker 1: We are going to look at the mechanics of how
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Speaker 1: a rush to judgment can just shatter multiple families, leaving
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Speaker 1: this trail of institutional cover ups in questions that are
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Speaker 1: still echoing today.
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Speaker 2: It's a lot to unpack, it really is.
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Speaker 1: So let's start with Joan. Where does the dread actually
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Speaker 1: begin for her family? Because I imagine our parents weren't
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Speaker 1: instantly panicking the literal moment her flight landed.
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Speaker 2: No, of course not. The dread sort of builds over
2:48
Speaker 2: the next few days. It's the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and
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Speaker 2: Joan's mother, Terry, back in New Jersey, is just starting to.
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Speaker 1: Spiral because she hasn't heard from her.
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Speaker 2: Right, Joan missed that Sunday study group, then she missed
3:00
Speaker 2: classes on Monday, and that was entirely out of character
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Speaker 2: for her. She was a highly disciplined architecture student, right.
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Speaker 1: You don't just skip out on Harvard Grad School exactly.
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Speaker 2: So Terry has Joan's oldest sister, who also lives in
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Speaker 2: the Boston area, go check the dorm room.
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Speaker 1: Oh man, which has to be a terrifying walk to take,
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Speaker 1: just approaching that door, not knowing what's on the other side.
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Speaker 2: Totally. And the scene at the dorm only confirms the
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Speaker 2: mother's worst fears. They're these frantic notes from friends taped
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Speaker 2: to the door.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and inside, unopened mail is just piling up. There
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Speaker 2: is zero sign Joan has even been in the room
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Speaker 2: since before the holiday break.
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Speaker 1: So the family files a missing person's report immediately, I sent.
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Speaker 2: Immediately, Yeah. And then the very next morning, the first
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Speaker 2: massive clue drops.
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Speaker 1: And it's nowhere near Cambridge. A fisherman calls Joan's father's office.
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Speaker 1: He had been walking through this really bleak, freezing marshland
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Speaker 1: in Saugust, Massachusetts, just desolate area. Yeah, and sitting right
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Speaker 1: there on the muddy river bank is Jon's wallet. It's
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Speaker 1: got her id, her credit cards, no cash, and a
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Speaker 1: little card telling whoever finds it to contact her dad,
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Speaker 1: which is.
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Speaker 2: Such a specific, eerie thing to find. So the police
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Speaker 2: race out to the marsh, and not far from the wallet,
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Speaker 2: they find Jones's red leather pocketbook with her checkbooks still inside.
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Speaker 1: But the way they were found is strange.
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Speaker 2: Right, very from the positioning, it looks as though someone
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Speaker 2: might have just tossed these items out the window of
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Speaker 2: a moving car, like right from the highway overpass above
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Speaker 2: the river bank.
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Speaker 1: And the geography here is the first massive.
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Speaker 2: Red flag, huge red flag.
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Speaker 1: If you look at a map of the Boston area,
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Speaker 1: Saugus is about six miles north of Logan Airport, right,
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Speaker 1: but Cambridge, where Harvard is and where Joan was actually headed,
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Speaker 1: is west. The marsh is in the exact opposite direction
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Speaker 1: of her destination.
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Speaker 2: Which immediately signals to investigators that she was intercepted. I mean,
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Speaker 2: she didn't just take a wrong turn.
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Speaker 1: No, definitely not. And because Joanes's father was a well
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Speaker 1: connected former CIA employee, the authorities just bring out the
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Speaker 1: heavy artillery.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, helicopters scanning the coastline, police dogs in the brush,
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Speaker 2: scuba divers combing the freezing waters of the marsh. They
5:06
Speaker 2: went all out.
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Speaker 1: They also tracked down that original cab driver at the airport, right,
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Speaker 1: the one the mysterious man yelled at yes.
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Speaker 2: And the driver gives them a remarkably detailed description of
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Speaker 2: this guy in his forties with the round glasses.
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Speaker 1: And the police take this seriously enough to commission a
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Speaker 1: composite sketch. But and this is where I just lose
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Speaker 1: my mind. They never release it to the public.
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Speaker 2: No, they keep it totally under wraps.
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Speaker 1: They don't even show it to Jones, professors and classmates
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Speaker 1: when they interview them.
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Speaker 2: It really speaks to the utter dysfunction and frankly, the
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Speaker 2: cognitive dissonance of the early investigation.
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Speaker 1: It makes absolutely no sense.
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Speaker 2: Well, the police seem to be operating under this strange,
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Speaker 2: unfounded assumption that Joan, this highly responsible graduate student, had
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Speaker 2: just run off on her own to clear her head.
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Speaker 1: That investigative logic is just it's absurd. That is like
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Speaker 1: issuing an amber alert for a kidnap child, having the
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Speaker 1: license plate number of the kidnappers car and purposefully hiding
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Speaker 1: it from the public.
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Speaker 2: It is a perfect analogy.
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Speaker 1: If you have a suspect, or even just a person
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Speaker 1: of interest who was last seen getting into a car
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Speaker 1: with the victim, you plaster that sketch on every telephone
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Speaker 1: poll in the state.
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Speaker 2: You would think so, but they were actively working against
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Speaker 2: their own evidence. I mean, they were assuring the public
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Speaker 2: they had interviewed everyone on Jones's flight, only to be
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Speaker 2: publicly corrected by a passenger who hadn't been spoken to
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Speaker 2: at all.
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Speaker 1: They were just entirely disorganized completely.
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Speaker 2: And then two months pass it's January nineteen eighty two,
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Speaker 2: the police get a call from a Greyhound bus terminal
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Speaker 2: in downtown Boston.
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Speaker 1: Oh, this part is so bizarre, it really is.
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Speaker 2: An employee is clearing out unpaid temporary storage lockers, and
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Speaker 2: inside one of them Jon's heavy striped suitcase.
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Speaker 1: The timeline of this discovery is what makes it so baffling, though,
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Speaker 1: because terminal records show that specific locker was rented at
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Speaker 1: ten thirty in the morning on Sunday. Right wait, jones
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Speaker 1: flight landed at ten thirty pm on Saturday night, So
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Speaker 1: this suitcase was checked into a locker twelve hours after she.
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Speaker 2: Landed, precisely twelve hours later, and nothing inside was stolen.
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Speaker 2: All her clothes, her toiletries, everything was still there.
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Speaker 1: It is maddening. But before investigators can even begin to
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Speaker 1: figure out how her bag walked into a bus terminal
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Speaker 1: twelve hours later, the entire investigation gets hijacked.
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Speaker 2: It takes a wild turn.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, like, how does a skaled Ivy League missing person's
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Speaker 1: case suddenly get linked to a completely different forgotten murder?
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Speaker 2: Enter Assistant District Attorney Tim Burke in nineteen eighty two,
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Speaker 2: Burke is assigned to Jones case, and out of the blue,
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Speaker 2: he gets a call from a woman in a neighboring
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Speaker 2: county who is just begging for help with her sister's
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Speaker 2: unsolved murder from three years prior.
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Speaker 1: And her sister's name was Marie Ea Nudi. Exactly paint
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Speaker 1: a picture of Marie's world for us because from the sources,
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Speaker 1: it feels miles away from Harvard.
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Speaker 2: It's a completely different world. So we are traveling back
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Speaker 2: to August nineteen seventy nine in working class He's Boston
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Speaker 2: where at this chaotic, loud wedding reception. Okay, twenty year
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Speaker 2: old Marie Nudi is there with her boyfriend David, and
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Speaker 2: sometime during the night, David rips his pants, decides he
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Speaker 2: just wants.
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Speaker 1: To go home, as you do, I guess right, But.
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Speaker 2: Marie isn't ready to leave. She wants to hit the
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Speaker 2: after party. They get into this fierce screaming argument, and
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Speaker 2: David storms.
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Speaker 1: Off, leaving her there.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, refinds a ride to the after party with some
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Speaker 2: friends and eventually ends up at a lite night bar
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Speaker 2: near Logan Airport.
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Speaker 1: And this is where things get really dark. It's one
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Speaker 1: point twenty five am. She's leaving the bar. A local
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Speaker 1: fisherman named Lenny Paradiso offers her a ride home, but
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Speaker 1: she turns him down.
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Speaker 2: She tells him she is quote meeting someone and she
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Speaker 2: walks around.
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Speaker 1: The corner and two days later, Marie's body is found.
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Speaker 1: She had been strangled, and.
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Speaker 2: The location is the lynchpin here. She's found in the
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Speaker 2: exact same Saugust Marshland where Jones wallet and purse would
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Speaker 2: be discovered three years later.
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Speaker 1: That is quite the coincidence. But if we pause and
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Speaker 1: look at how the justice system and the media treated
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Speaker 1: these two women, it is just a masterclass in classism
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Speaker 1: and resource allocation.
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Speaker 2: Oh, totally night and day.
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Speaker 1: Joan was wealthy, went to Harvard, had a CIA father,
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Speaker 1: She got helicopters and scuba divers. It was front page news.
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Speaker 2: Right the whole city stopped.
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Speaker 1: But Marie was a working class girl from East Boston.
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Speaker 1: Her murder was largely ignored by the big media outlets.
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Speaker 1: She didn't get helicopters. She was essentially forgotten until Adia
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Speaker 1: Burke realized her case could be a convenient stepping stone
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Speaker 1: to solve the high profile Harvard mystery.
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Speaker 2: That's exactly what it was. Yeah, from an investigative standpoint
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Speaker 2: Eightya Burke suddenly has two cases tied to one geographic location.
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Speaker 2: And in Marie's case, there were two main suspects.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's break him down.
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Speaker 2: First, there's David, the boyfriend she argued with at the wedding.
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Speaker 2: He was known to be incredibly abusive. I mean he
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Speaker 2: had actually strangled her just months prior to her murder.
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Speaker 1: Wait, he had already strangled her before, yes, and his
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Speaker 1: behavior after she died was completely unhinged. When Marie's family
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Speaker 1: went to his house to get a dress for her wake,
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Speaker 1: they saw what looked like blood on.
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Speaker 2: His stairs, which police later claimed was just paint but
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Speaker 2: still right.
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Speaker 1: But at the grand jury, her family testified David had
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Speaker 1: deep gouge marks and scratches all over his hands, which
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Speaker 1: he kept changing his story about.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, the classic changing alibi.
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Speaker 1: And then at Marie's wake, David literally threw a marijuana
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Speaker 1: joint into her.
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Speaker 2: Coffin just bizarre disrespectful behavior, and then he skipped her
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Speaker 2: funeral altogether. He actually flew to New Jersey under a
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Speaker 2: fake name and got arrested for stealing luggage at the
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Speaker 2: Newark Airport.
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Speaker 1: I mean, how is this guy not the prime suspect?
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Speaker 2: Because eighty eight Burke is focused entirely on the second suspect,
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Speaker 2: Lenny Parodiso.
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Speaker 1: The fisherman from the bar, right, the.
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Speaker 2: Guy who offered Marie a ride. Lenny sold fish to
10:45
Speaker 2: a lobster company right next to the marsh where her
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Speaker 2: body was dumped.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so he knows the area very well.
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Speaker 2: But most importantly to Burke, Lennie had a dark, extensive
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Speaker 2: criminal history of sexual violence, including abducting his sixteen year
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Speaker 2: old girl and attempting to rape a college student he
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Speaker 2: had offered a ride to.
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Speaker 1: So you can see why Burke looks at him, ady A.
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Speaker 1: Burke is desperate to close both of these high profile mysteries,
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Speaker 1: so he laser focuses entirely on Lenny.
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Speaker 2: He theorizes that Lenny killed Marie in seventy nine and
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Speaker 2: then three years later picked Joan up at the airport
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Speaker 2: in his cab and killed.
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Speaker 1: Her too, And to solidify this theory, the ADA gets
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Speaker 1: what looks like a silver bullet a jailhouse informant. An
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Speaker 1: inmate named Robert Bond, comes forward, claiming Lenny confessed everything
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Speaker 1: to him while they were sharing a cell.
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Speaker 2: But we have to talk about how these jailhouse informant
11:34
Speaker 2: situations actually work.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, please do, because from the outside it always sounds
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Speaker 1: so convenient that a prime suspect suddenly pours their heart
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Speaker 1: out to a total stranger in a cell.
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Speaker 2: It does sound convenient because it often is. In the
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Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, the system practically incentivized fabricated confessions. Prosecutors were
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Speaker 2: rewarded for securing convictions, not necessarily finding the absolute truth.
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Speaker 1: So it's basically a transaction.
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Speaker 2: Exactly knew that if they could hand a prosecutor a
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Speaker 2: confession on a silver platter, they'd get their own sentences
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Speaker 2: drastically reduced. And the informant, Robert Bond, tells a highly specific,
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Speaker 2: very grim story.
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Speaker 1: He claims Lenny picked Joan up at Logan in an
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Speaker 1: unlicensed cab. Lenny then drove her to a peer where
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Speaker 1: he kept his boat, which was named the Malafa, which
12:18
Speaker 1: translates to evil woman in Italian.
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Speaker 2: And according to Bond, Lennie offered joona drink on the boat.
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Speaker 2: When she rejected his advances, Lenny struck her on the
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Speaker 2: right side of the head with a whiskey bottle, sexually
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Speaker 2: assaulted her, took the boat out to see and dumped
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Speaker 2: her body in the ocean.
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Speaker 1: God, that's horrific, it.
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Speaker 2: Is, and Bond claimed Lenny said there was so much
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Speaker 2: blood on the deck that a few days later he
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Speaker 2: took the malafa out and intentionally sank it to destroy
12:43
Speaker 2: the evidence.
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Speaker 1: And based heavily on this really detailed informant testimony, Lenny
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Speaker 1: is put on trial and convicted of Marie's murder in nineteen.
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Speaker 2: Eighty four, right just Maurice.
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Speaker 1: But because the ADA tied the two narratives together so publicly,
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Speaker 1: the public essentially considers Joan's case too. Lenny goes to
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Speaker 1: prison for life. But if you're listening to this and
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Speaker 1: screaming at your dashboard about how convenient this all sounds,
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Speaker 1: you are not alone.
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Speaker 2: No, you're really not. The informant's story was fundamentally flawed,
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Speaker 2: but the prosecution just pushed it through anyway.
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Speaker 1: This is like It's like a desperate college student buying
13:17
Speaker 1: a term paper online. You glance at it, the formatting
13:20
Speaker 1: looks perfect, it answers the prompt. The font is right,
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Speaker 1: but the second you actually look closely, you realize all
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Speaker 1: the citations are completely fake.
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Speaker 2: That is a great way to put it.
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Speaker 1: There was a massive glaring hole in this confession. Court
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Speaker 1: and bankruptcy records from a federal judge prove that Lenny's boat,
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Speaker 1: the Malafa, had already sunk due to a broken rudder
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Speaker 1: in August.
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Speaker 2: Of nineteen eighty one, and Joan Webster went missing in
13:44
Speaker 2: November of nineteen eighty one.
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Speaker 1: Lenny did not even have a boat when Joan disappeared.
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Speaker 2: He didn't. This is the danger of tunnel vision. It's
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Speaker 2: cognitive bias in action.
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Speaker 1: It's terrifying.
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Speaker 2: It is when investigators build an entire theory around one suspect.
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Speaker 2: Any contradictory evidence is viewed as an annoyance to be
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Speaker 2: swatted away rather than a clue to be investigators.
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Speaker 1: I just ignore it.
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Speaker 2: The authorities even raised the sunken boat from the harbor,
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Speaker 2: found absolutely zero physical evidence of a crime, but they
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Speaker 2: still pushed forward with the narrative because they needed.
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Speaker 1: To win, which brings us to the moment that completely
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Speaker 1: shatters the official story. Fast forward to April nineteen ninety.
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Speaker 1: We are in Hamilton, Massachusetts. It's a quiet, rural, heavily
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Speaker 1: wooded area. A woman is walking her dog along a
14:31
Speaker 1: drainage ditch when she spots what looks like a deflated volleyball.
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Speaker 2: So and it's not a volleyball. No, it is a
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Speaker 2: human skull, and dental records confirm it is Joan Webster.
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Speaker 2: And the location of her remains destroys the entire foundation
14:46
Speaker 2: of the prosecution's.
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Speaker 1: Case because she wasn't dumped in the deep ocean off
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Speaker 1: a boat. She was buried in a shallow grave hidden
14:52
Speaker 1: under multiple layers of logs, a full hour northeast of
14:55
Speaker 1: the airport.
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Speaker 2: The discovery completely invalidates the jailhouse confession. It helped put
15:00
Speaker 2: Lenny Paradiso away.
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Speaker 1: It tears it all down.
15:02
Speaker 2: But there's one eerie detail we have to mention here.
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Speaker 2: The skull did have a large fracture on the right side,
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Speaker 2: which actually matched the informant's claim about the whiskey bottle.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. But everything else, the boat, the ocean, the timeline
15:14
Speaker 2: was a total fabrication.
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Speaker 1: Let's talk about the physical evidence that was ignored because
15:18
Speaker 1: everyone was so fixated on Lenny. Think about the fingerprints
15:22
Speaker 1: on Jones's suitcase at the Greyhound bus.
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Speaker 2: Terminal, Right, the ones they found early on.
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Speaker 1: When they tested those prints against Lenny, they were not
15:28
Speaker 1: a match. So what did they do? They just shrugged
15:29
Speaker 1: and moved.
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Speaker 2: On, which is infuriating.
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Speaker 1: And hairs were found at the shallow grave in Hamilton.
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Speaker 1: They tested them against LENNI not a match. They ignored it.
15:38
Speaker 2: The tunnel vision was so severe it led to the
15:41
Speaker 2: heartbreaking destruction of evidence too. After Jones's remains were found
15:45
Speaker 2: in the woods, her grieving family quickly cremated.
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Speaker 1: Her, which is understandable for a grieving family.
15:51
Speaker 2: But but Jones's case was still an open homicide investigation.
15:55
Speaker 2: By Massachusetts law, it is strictly illegal to cremate a
15:58
Speaker 2: body in an open case. Wait really, yes, Yet the
16:02
Speaker 2: authorities were so locked into the idea that Lenny did it,
16:04
Speaker 2: and since Lenny was already in prison, nobody stepped in
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Speaker 2: to enforce the law. The cremation destroyed any future forensic opportunities. Wow.
16:14
Speaker 1: So if Lenny Paradiso's boat was already at the bottom
16:16
Speaker 1: of the ocean, and his fingerprints worn on the luggage,
16:19
Speaker 1: and his hair wasn't at the grave. Who actually killed
16:23
Speaker 1: Joan Webster, who had the geographic proximity to bury a
16:26
Speaker 1: body in that specific remote woodland.
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Speaker 2: Well, it leaves us down a rabbit hole of alternative
16:32
Speaker 2: theories and what investigators call ghost profiles.
16:36
Speaker 1: Let's introduce doctor Jonah Jurgen. The area in Hamilton where
16:39
Speaker 1: Joan was buried was very close to property owned by Harvard,
16:43
Speaker 1: and living right near that remote burial site was doctor Jurgen,
16:46
Speaker 1: a social sciences professor.
16:48
Speaker 2: This is where the story enters a very dark institutional
16:51
Speaker 2: shadow because when investigative reporters recently tried to look into
16:55
Speaker 2: doctor Jurgen, they discovered he has essentially been erased.
16:59
Speaker 1: Now, what does a go profile practically mean, Because it's
17:02
Speaker 1: not just someone deleting their Facebook page.
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Speaker 2: Right far from it. It means property records, university faculty logs,
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Speaker 2: historical archives, and public databases have been systematically scrubbed.
17:12
Speaker 1: That takes effort, a lot of effort.
17:14
Speaker 2: Aside from a rare book floating around on eBay and
17:16
Speaker 2: a couple of brief clippings from the nineteen seventies. He
17:19
Speaker 2: does not exist on paper. He resigned from a previous
17:22
Speaker 2: post without explanation, worked in an administration at Harvard during
17:26
Speaker 2: the time Joan was a student there, and then entirely
17:29
Speaker 2: vanishes from the public record, which is wild. Erasing someone
17:32
Speaker 2: to that degree requires real institutional power.
17:36
Speaker 1: And when you pair that delibered erasure with the fact
17:39
Speaker 1: that Joan's father was a confirmed member of the CIA,
17:43
Speaker 1: it completely reframes the case. It is well documented that
17:46
Speaker 1: during the Cold War and into the nineteen eighties, the
17:49
Speaker 1: CIA heavily recruited from academic departments and research programs at
17:53
Speaker 1: elite universities like Harvard.
17:55
Speaker 2: We can actually ground these suspicions and hard, undeniable facts
17:58
Speaker 2: about the justice system at the time. How so well,
18:01
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties and Massachusetts was a notoriously corrupt era
18:04
Speaker 2: for jurisprudence. Appellate in supreme courts eventually overturned at least
18:07
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty convictions from that specific era due
18:10
Speaker 2: to systemic prosecutorial misconduct.
18:12
Speaker 1: One hundred and twenty. How does the system become that broken?
18:15
Speaker 2: It becomes basically a factory of coercion. We're talking widespread
18:20
Speaker 2: witness intimidation, misrepresenting forensic evidence to juries, and prosecutors purposefully
18:27
Speaker 2: withholding vital information that would help the defense just to
18:30
Speaker 2: get the win exactly in Lenny's case. Other inmates eventually
18:33
Speaker 2: came forward and signed sworn affidavits. They testified that the informant,
18:38
Speaker 2: Robert Bond, was literally walking around the cell block with
18:42
Speaker 2: Lenny's legal papers, copying facts onto a yellow legal pad
18:45
Speaker 2: so he could craft a highly detailed fake confession to
18:48
Speaker 2: sell to the DA.
18:50
Speaker 1: That is just despicable. Lenny Parody died in a prison
18:53
Speaker 1: hospital in two thousand and eight, right, and he maintained
18:56
Speaker 1: his innocence in both of these murders to his dying day.
18:59
Speaker 2: He did when investigators lock onto a narrative, the collateral
19:02
Speaker 2: damage is just immense. Marie A. Nudi's family walked away
19:05
Speaker 2: feeling completely used.
19:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can really imagine.
19:08
Speaker 2: They realized their daughter's tragic death wasn't treated as a
19:10
Speaker 2: priority by the system. He was treated as a convenient
19:13
Speaker 2: tool for the DA to build a high profile case
19:15
Speaker 2: for the wealthy Harvard student.
19:17
Speaker 1: And Joan Webster's family never got real answers By fixating
19:21
Speaker 1: on a phantom boat ride. The system let the real
19:24
Speaker 1: killer or killers just walk away. It's a tragedy of
19:28
Speaker 1: systemic failure.
19:29
Speaker 2: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about
19:31
Speaker 2: one specific lingering detail.
19:34
Speaker 1: Okay, what is it?
19:35
Speaker 2: Think about that Greyhound bus locker in downtown Boston. Joan's
19:39
Speaker 2: massive striped suitcase was checked in at ten thirty am
19:43
Speaker 2: on Sunday morning. That is twelve full hours after her
19:47
Speaker 2: plane landed at Logan Airport.
19:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, that timeline changes everything.
19:51
Speaker 2: It does. If she was murdered on Saturday night, that
19:54
Speaker 2: means the killer woke up the next morning, took her
19:56
Speaker 2: heavy suitcase and walked right through a bustling, crowded downtown
19:59
Speaker 2: Boston bus terminal in broad daylight to hide it.
20:02
Speaker 1: That is so brazen, right, Why would a killer take
20:04
Speaker 1: that massive risk?
20:05
Speaker 2: Was it a sick, calculated game of misdirection to make
20:08
Speaker 2: it look like she ran away? Or does it mean
20:10
Speaker 2: something far more terrifying? Oh God, does it mean John
20:13
Speaker 2: Webster was actually still alive for hours and hours after
20:16
Speaker 2: she stepped out into the cold air of that airport.
20:18
Speaker 1: That is a chilling thought to leave on. Thank you
20:21
Speaker 1: for joining us on this deep dive. Stay curious, trust
20:24
Speaker 1: your instincts, and always question the official story