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New England Serial Killer Theory: State Police Probe Case Connections · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So between March 6th and April 22nd, within just this
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: 200 mile radius across Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, seven
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: different bodies and unidentified remains were discovered.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Right. It's a staggering cluster of cases for that short
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: of a timeline.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: It really is. And today we are taking a deep
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: dive into the exact case files, the broadcast transcripts and
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the law enforcement statements you actually asked us to look
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: into regarding this whole New England situation.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Because, I mean, the Internet is basically screaming that a
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: serial killer is on the loose.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely screaming. And for the first time, the head
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: of the Massachusetts State Police actually publicly addressed that speculation,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: which is wild.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: It is. It's highly unusual.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So we are looking at the raw data today
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: to try and answer this one, I mean, incredibly complex question.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: How do the FBI and state police mathematically prove the
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: difference between You know, an unbelievable string of tragic coincidences
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and a highly evolved coordinated predator. Right.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Which is honestly the ultimate diagnostic challenge in criminal justice.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: When you presented this stack of sources to me, specifically
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: those Law and Crime Network transcripts featuring the retired FBI
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: agent Bobby Ciccone, I knew the objective here wasn't to,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: you know, feed into that digital paranoia.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: No, definitely not. We want to avoid that. Exactly.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The mission of this deep dive is to dissect
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: the actual machinery of a multistate investigation. We really need
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: to look at how analysts filter out the noise of
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: social media.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Which there is a ton of right now. Right.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: And how they run geographical profiling and apply this really
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: rigorous process of elimination to figure out, you know, if
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: there actually is a single entity operating in the shadows.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Well, the catalyst for our deep dive today isn't even
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: just the discoveries themselves, but how law enforcement chose to
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: handle the resulting panic.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the public relations side of it.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Exactly. We saw Massachusetts State Police Colonel Jeffrey Noble step
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: up to a podium and essentially acknowledge the rumors, which,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, that almost never happens.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: It really doesn't.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: He stated that while there's no immediate evidence of a
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: serial killer, detectives are, quote, tracking the cases and actively
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: monitoring for similarities.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Which goes completely against the standard police playbook, right?
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, usually it's just no comment or this is an
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: isolated incident. But he leaned into it.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: And that tells us a lot about the pressure they
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: are under right now. I mean, the Massachusetts State Police
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: serves as the primary statewide law enforcement agency there. They're
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: equipped with these massive investigative and tactical fusion units. So
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: when the head of that agency makes a statement validating
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: a public theory, even just partially, it is a highly
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: calculated risk.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Why take that risk, though? Like, why not just stay quiet?
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Well, Bobby Chacon's analysis from an FBI perspective points out
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: that law enforcement simply cannot afford to shut the door
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: completely on these theories. Because, honestly, the burden of proof
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: for a negative is incredibly high.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see. Yeah.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: If they definitively state there is no serial killer and
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: then a forensic link is discovered a week later.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Their credibility is totally shot.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Permanently destroyed. So they have to walk this incredibly fine line.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: It almost seems like they're treating the public's panic as
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: like a diagnostic tool in itself. It's kind of like
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: a check engine light coming on in a car.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: I like that analogy.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like the state police are essentially saying, you know,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: we see the light on the dashboard. We are running
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the internal diagnostics, but please do not assume the engine
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: is blowing up just yet. Right.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: They have to acknowledge the light just to keep the
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: passengers from panicking and like jumping out of a moving vehicle.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: And that analogy holds up perfectly when you actually look
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: at the timelines. Because by mid-March, the internet had already
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: caught fire.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was everywhere. Right.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: District Attorney Anthony Galluni in Hampton County and the Connecticut
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: State Police, they were also forced to issue statements just
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: trying to calm the waters.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Just doing damage control, basically. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So Colonel Noble's statement was really an attempt to regain
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: control of a narrative that was just spinning way out
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: of control.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: By validating the public's concern, right? Exactly. Saying, hey, we're
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: looking at the similarities. Exactly.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It buys their detectives the quiet time they desperately
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: need to actually process the physical evidence, you know, without
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: a digital mob demanding daily updates.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Well, if that public statement buys them time to run
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: the diagnostics, we should probably look at the raw data
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: they are actually processing because the sheer volume of tragedy
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: compressed into just a few weeks is what's really driving
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: this panic for people.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Right. It's a lot of data points very quickly.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: It is. But instead of just looking at these as
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: pins on a map, the sources say we need to
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: look at the severe forensic hurdles each specific environment presents.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Which are significant.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So let's start with March 6th. The body of
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: 35-year-old Paige Fannin is found in the Norwalk River in Connecticut. Right.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: And the sources highlight that the river was flowing rapidly
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: due to really heavy rain overnight. I mean, the local
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: police scuba team actually had to be deployed.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Which is a nightmare scenario for investigators. Water recoveries are...
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Notoriously difficult from a forensic standpoint.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Why is that exactly?
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: The water washing things away?
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, mainly.
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  Speaker 2: When a body is submerged, especially in a rapidly flowing
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: river after heavy rainfall, the environment acts as like an
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: abrasive scrub brush.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Yeah.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Trace evidence. So we're talking hair, fibers, DNA from a
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: potential perpetrator. All of that is washed away almost immediately.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: That's devastating for the case. It is.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: And the heavy rain also compromises the banks of the river.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: So that means footprints, tire tracks, or signs of a
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: struggle on the muddy shore, they're likely degraded or completely
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: obliterated by the time the scuba team even arrives.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: That's just so sad. The sources also mentioned that her
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: family set up a GoFundMe and noted that she left
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: behind parents, two sisters, and a brother. It really grounds
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: all this raw data in a devastating human reality.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: It does. These are just statistics. Right.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: But from an investigative timeline, that Norwalk River recovery is
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: only half of the equation for March 6th.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Right. Because of what happened in Massachusetts.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Exactly. On that exact same day, 180 miles away in Plymouth, Massachusetts,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: a hunter in a wooded area near Route 3 discovers
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: human remains hidden under leaves. Right. The police report specified
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: that they found a human skull missing the nasal and
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: jaw portions, which they described as, quote, green in color
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: and appearing weathered.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: And the contrast in those two environments, the river versus
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: the woods, that is exactly what fusion centers have to
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: grapple with.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Because they're so different.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Completely different. In Plymouth, we aren't dealing with a rapid
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: water event. We are dealing with advanced taphonomy.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Taphonomy. What is that exactly?
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: It's the study of how organisms decay over time.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, got it.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: The fact that the skull was weathered and missing delicate
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: facial bones like the nasal cavity and the jaw, That
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: suggested it had been exposed to the elements and, you know,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: native wildlife for a significant period of time.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't a recent death.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And that green coloration the report mentioned, that is
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: a vital forensic clue.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: The green color.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that indicates botanical staining, usually from algae or moss growth.
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  Speaker 2: Which basically implies the skull sat in a moist woodland
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: environment through at least one, if not multiple, wet seasons.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Wow. Okay. Okay. So that immediately disqualifies it from being
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: part of a recent spree. Right. The sources mention this
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: specific discovery sparked intense interest from the families of two
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: local missing women, though. Sandra Crispo, who vanished five years prior,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: and Brittany McCormick, who disappeared in July of 2021. Which
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: makes sense.
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  Speaker 2: Families are desperate for answers.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Of course. Of course. And even though there was no
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: initial indication the skull belonged to either woman, you can
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: really see how the public aggregates this data. You've got
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: two discoveries, one single day, completely different forensic timelines, but
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  Speaker 1: the Internet just compresses them into a single narrative.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: And that compression is where the noise drowns out the signal.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, the human brain is evolutionarily wired to find patterns, right?
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: It's how we avoid danger.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: We want things to make sense.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. We see a cluster of tragic events in
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: a broad geographic area, and we naturally attempt to draw
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  Speaker 2: a line connecting them all. But investigators, they have to
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: apply rigorous geographical profiling.
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  Speaker 1: Meaning what in this context?
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  Speaker 2: They have to ask, is a single perpetrator actually traversing
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: a 200-mile radius, or are these simply crimes of convenience locations?
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: You know, I want to challenge the premise of the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: serial killer theory entirely, just based on the demographic realities
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: mentioned in the files. Go ahead. The sources highlight the staggering,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: ongoing epidemic of missing women in the United States. Given
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: how high the baseline rate of these tragedies is, doesn't
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: mathematical probability dictate that clusters like this will form purely
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: by chance?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: It's a dark thought, but yes. Right.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, if a heavily wooded area off a highway
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: in Plymouth or a a dead-end road near tracks in Killingly, Connecticut,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: where remains were found on April 9th, by the way,
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  Speaker 1: if those are geographically isolated, don't they just become independent
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: dumping grounds for entirely unrelated crimes?
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: The statistics absolutely support your challenge there. I mean, isolated
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: spots with natural barriers, dense woods, rapid rivers, remote train tracks,
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  Speaker 2: those are universally advantageous for anyone attempting to conceal a crime.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Just because they're hidden.
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  Speaker 2: Right. Three different perpetrators... who do not know each other,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: might utilize similar geographic features simply because the topography of
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: New England dictates it.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Because that's what's available.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And this is why proving these cases are not
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: connected is often way more labor-intensive than finding a link.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Well, let's trace how they actually proved that negative. Because
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: the cluster just keeps growing through March.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: It does. It accelerates.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: We have 58-year-old Suzanne Worms, who was found in a
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: suitcase in Groton, Connecticut, on March 19th. Right. And then
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: the very next day, March 20th, The remains of 59-year-old
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Denise Leary are found. in advanced decay in a wooded
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: area in New Haven, Connecticut. Right.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Two discoveries back to back.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The sources note that Denise suffered from paranoid schizophrenia
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: and had actually been missing since September. And police stated
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: the investigation did not point to a homicide.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Which the Denise Leary case is actually a prime example.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: of the necessary friction between local detectives and public perception.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Well, when human remains are found in a state of
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: advanced decay in a wooded area, determining the exact cause
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: of death is incredibly complex.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Because there's less evidence. Right.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Because the soft tissue is gone. And soft tissue normally
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: shows signs of trauma, toxicology or asphyxiation. Oh, I see. However,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: her history of severe mental illness and the fact that
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: she went missing in the fall That introduces the high
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: probability of death by exposure or some sort of medical emergency.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: But the Internet algorithm doesn't care about the nuance of
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: a tragic death by exposure versus a homicide, does it?
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: It just tags another pin on the map. And then,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: six days later, March 26th, Michelle Romano is found dead
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: under suspicious circumstances in Foster, Rhode Island, which led police
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: to search her last known address in Warwick. Right.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Jumping to another state.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then we also have the brush fire discovery
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: in Framingham on April 10th. And Megan Meredith found near
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: a Springfield bike path on April 22nd.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: It's a massive amount of data. It is.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: So how do analysts take this chaotic, overlapping map and
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: actually distill it down to actionable intelligence?
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Well, they rely on a highly structured process of elimination,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: mostly through fusion centers. Bobby Chacon clarified that unlike the
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Long Island serial killer investigation.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Which had that massive, highly publicized task force.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Unlike that... New England doesn't currently have an official
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: war room set up for this specific cluster. Oh, really?
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Instead, they use a decentralized network of criminal analysts working
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: across state lines. Chacon compared the methodology to the FBI's VICAP.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: VICAP. That's the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, right?
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: That's the one.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: So my understanding of VICAP is that it's essentially a
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: massive national database for violent crime. But, you know, it's
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: only as good as the data being inputted.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Garbage in, garbage out.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Right. So I imagine a fusion center isn't just running
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: like a simple keyword search. Are they taking every granular detail,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: the botanical staining on the Plymouth skull, the rapid water
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: conditions in Norwalk, the fact that Suzanne Worms was concealed
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: in a suitcase and feeding it into an algorithm to
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: find statistical overlaps?
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: That is exactly the mechanism. VICAP and these regional fusion centers,
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: they rely on hundreds of specific variables regarding victimology, offender behavior,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: and the forensic environment.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Hundreds of variables. Yeah.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: They are searching for a match ranging anywhere from 5%
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: to 95%. But to make that algorithm function effectively, they
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: have to remove the noise.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Right. Clear out the irrelevant stuff.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: They have to clear the board of any case that
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: has a verified, isolated solution.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Which brings us back to the March 19th discovery of
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Suzanne Worms in Groton, because this case serves as the
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: perfect illustration of, like, clearing the board.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: On April 25th, police arrested a 68-year-old man named Donald Kofel,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: who was someone Suzanne had previously lived with. And he
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: explicitly confessed to hitting her in the head with a
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: baseball bat. The sources even note he later died in jail.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: The resolution of that Groton case is critical for understanding
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: the discipline required at the local level. I mean, the
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: detectives assigned to Suzanne Worms, they had to put blinders on.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: They had to ignore the internet noise.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If they allowed themselves to be distracted by the
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: media frenzy connecting their case to, say, the bike path
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: in Springfield or the river in Norwalk, they might have
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: completely missed the domestic violence reality sitting right in front
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: of them.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Right. It's, you know, it's basically this massive, morbid sorting
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: algorithm or like a morbid game of guess who.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: That's a good way to look at it.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Every time a local department solves a case, like arresting
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Cofell or determining a tragic accidental death by exposure for
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Denise Leary, they pull that data set out of the
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: fusion center pool.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: They flip down that tile on the board.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Exactly. They systematically strip away the cases with logical, independent explanations.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: I guess the terrifying part is just waiting to see
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: what data points are left standing at the end of
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: that elimination process.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: And if the remaining data points do indicate a coordinated predator,
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: we have to look at the statistical reality of serial
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: offenders operating today.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Which is pretty grim, according to the sources.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Very grim. Giacconi provided estimates that, frankly, fundamentally alter how
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: we view unsolved homicides. Profiling experts estimate that, on the
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: low end, there are between 30 to 50 active serial
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: killers operating in the United States right now.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: 30 to 50 on the low end. And the high
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: end estimate from the sources puts it between 200 and
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: 250 active serial killers.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Let that sink in.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: When you hear a number like 250, it begs the
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: question of how they are evading modern forensics.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: It's the multimillion-dollar question.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, with cell phone tracking, ubiquitous surveillance cameras, and
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: rapid DNA testing, how does a perpetrator operate across multiple
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: state lines without triggering an immediate match in a system
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: like VICAP?
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Well, they evade capture by studying the very systems designed
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: to catch them. Really?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: They're that aware?
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Chacon brought up his firsthand experience working
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: the case of Israel Keyes, which is arguably the masterclass
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: in modern predator evolution.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Oh man, the Keyes case is terrifying. It is.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Keyes operated completely undetected for an estimated 14 to 15 years.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: How?
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: He didn't just avoid patterns. He intentionally weaponized randomness to
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: break the algorithms that law enforcement relies on.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, because traditional profiling relies heavily on the concept of
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: a comfort zone, right?
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: A killer usually hunts in a geographic area they know well,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: targeting a specific demographic that fulfills like a psychological need.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: And by keeping the victimology consistent, they inadvertently create the
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: cluster that VICAP is actually designed to flag.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Right. And Keyes understood that flaw in the system perfectly.
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: During his interrogations, he actually explained his methodology to the FBI.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: He bragged about it, basically.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: Basically, yeah. He would fly to a random city, rent
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: a car. drive hundreds of miles across state lines, and
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: dig up kill kits, these caches of weapons and supplies
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: he had buried years in advance.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: That level of premeditation is just chilling.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: It is. He killed a 19-year-old girl in Alaska, which
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: ultimately led to his capture. But investigators later unraveled that
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: a year prior, he had murdered an elderly couple in Vermont.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: From a 19-year-old in Alaska to an elderly couple in Vermont.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're an analyst sitting in a fusion center,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: there is zero data overlap there. None. The geography, the victimology,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the time of year, it is a zero percent match.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: It essentially renders standard database querying completely useless.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: It does. It forces law enforcement to acknowledge that predators
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: are evolving right alongside forensic science.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: They're paying attention.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: They absolutely are. They consume true crime media. They watch
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: press conferences. They read the public statements issued by officials
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: like Colonel Noble.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Which has to create a highly volatile psychological dynamic.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Let's explore that dynamic, actually. If we have a highly
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: evolved killer operating in New England right now, and they
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: watch the Massachusetts State Police announce that they're, quote, actively
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: tracking these cases for similarities, what is the psychological fallout
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: of that?
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: It's a great question.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Like, does a statement like that force a predator into
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: a state of dormancy out of self-preservation, or does it
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: trigger an escalation? If they know the police are looking
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: for a pattern, do they strike again just to taunt
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the authorities?
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Chacon emphasized that it is entirely dependent on the offender's
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: specific pathology.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: So it varies case by case? Yeah.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: For a highly disciplined offender focused purely on longevity, someone
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: in the vein of the Golden State Killer who evaded
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: capture for decades by adapting his methods and eventually just stopping,
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: increased public scrutiny is a major deterrent.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: They see the heat turning up and they go to ground.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They hide. But for an offender driven by narcissism,
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And the thrill of the cat and mouse game. Public
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: announcements are an invitation.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Right. The Unabomber fits that second profile perfectly, I think.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: The bombing campaign was almost secondary to the manifesto and
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the letters he sent to the media. The chaos and
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: the public fear were the actual goal.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: It fed his ego.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But when we talk about a killer, quote unquote,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: watching the news today, the paradigm has completely shifted, hasn't it?
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: They aren't waiting for the 6 o'clock broadcast. The true
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: crime community has effectively crowdsourced the investigation, and the killer
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: has a front row seat on their smartphone.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. We were transitioning from physical crime scenes to digital
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: crime scenes.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Digital crime scenes. Yeah.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Chacon described himself as a dinosaur from the pre-computer era
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: of the FBI.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: In those days, a fundamental investigative tactic was scanning the
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: physical crowd that gathered behind the yellow police tape.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Looking for the suspect in the crowd.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Statistically... Perpetrators of certain crimes, arsonists, for example, they
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: frequently return to the scene to admire their work and
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: gauge the police response.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: But the yellow tape has moved online now.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Precisely.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: A killer doesn't need to risk standing on a sidewalk
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: to watch the police work. They can literally just log
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: into a Reddit thread or a local Facebook group dedicated
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: to the missing person.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: And they do.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: They can watch the community panic in real time. I mean,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: they might even be participating in the discussion, upvoting theories
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: that point the police in the wrong direction or subtly
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: bragging about the crime under an anonymous handle.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: The FBI recognized this behavioral shift years ago, and they
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: actually built an infrastructure to combat it. Chacon introduced the
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: concept of SOMEX. SOMEX? Yeah, Social Media Exploitation Teams.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, interesting.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: These are specialized units now present in almost every single
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: FBI field office. They consist of federal agents, state police,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: and specialized intelligence analysts.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: And what's their goal?
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Their entire mandate is to police the digital crowd. Wow.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to picture the mechanics of a SoMix operation, though.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: It can't just be scrolling through Facebook comments, right?
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: No, it's way more advanced than that.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Are they utilizing linguistic forensics? Like, analyzing the syntax of
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: a post to see if it matches the known communication
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: style of a suspect? Or... Are they actively hunting for
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: users who accidentally reveal non-public knowledge about the crime scene?
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: You mean like holdback evidence?
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like mentioning the specific color of the Plymouth skull
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: before the police report was officially released.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: They are doing all of that. They are employing highly
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: sophisticated data mining. They track the entire digital footprint of rumors.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: That's fascinating.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: It is. If a specific unreleased detail about, say, the
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Killingly remains surfaces in a chat room... SOMEX analysts trace
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: the IP addresses, they strip away the VPNs if they can,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: and they build a full profile of the user originating
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: that data.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: They're actively hunting the perpetrator hiding behind the electronic police line.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Well, let me push back on the efficacy of this
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: just for a second, because District Attorney Galluni explicitly warned
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: that unverified claims were actively compromising these investigations.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: He did say that, yes.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: This feels like an unwinnable battle of signal-to-noise ratio. Does
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: a massive true crime community crowdsourcing data actually generate actionable intelligence?
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Or does it just create like a mountain of misinformation
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: that SOMX teams have to painstakingly analyze, draining resources from
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the actual physical evidence?
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: The reality is that it does both. And that duality
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: is just the modern burden of the investigator.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: A double-edged sword?
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The Internet absolutely hinders investigations by generating false leads.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: When thousands of people decide the bike path discovery in
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Springfield is definitively linked to the river recovery in Norwalk,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: SOMX teams have to spend vital man hours disproving a
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: theory fabricated by an algorithm.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Which is a huge waste of time.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: It is. It forces police leadership to spend political capital
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: managing rumors instead of working the case.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: But I guess the counterweight is that the crowd sometimes
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: sees a pattern the algorithm misses, right?
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: That's the hope.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: Like a local resident on a community page might recognize
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: a vehicle in the background of a victim's final social
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: media post that a state detective operating 100 miles away
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: would never flag.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: That happens more often than you'd think.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: And furthermore, if the offender possesses that narcissistic trait we
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: discussed earlier, their arrogance in interacting with these digital groups
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: might be the exact flaw SOMEX exploits to catch them.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: So the digital landscape is both the haystack of misinformation
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and the trap that catches the needle.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Which puts... brings us right back to the core tension
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: you established at the beginning of this deep dive.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: We are looking at a map spanning from the woods
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: of Rhode Island to the rivers of Connecticut. And whether
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: the tragedies of Paige Fannin, Suzanne Worms, Michelle Romano, Megan Meredith,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: and the unidentified individuals are the work of a phantom
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: predator utilizing the dense New England geography.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Or a heartbreaking statistical inevitability of isolated crimes.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Either way, the investigative mandate does not change.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: It all comes down to the math. It requires fusion
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: centers running the variables. It requires local detectives keeping their
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: blinders on to solve the cases right in front of them.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Blocking out the noise.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Right. And it requires the public to understand that until
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: law enforcement finishes systematically clearing the big board of unrelated tragedies,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the true picture remains hidden. We have the data you
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: requested and the mechanisms behind how the FBI and state
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: police are processing it.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: And as we monitor how these cases unfold... There is
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: a final reality we all really must confront.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: As consumers of this information, you are not a passive
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: observer outside the police tape. You are an active participant
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: in the digital ecosystem.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: That's a sobering thought.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: It is. So the next time you find yourself scrolling
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: through a speculative true crime thread, consider the psychology of
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: the digital crowd. Are you simply analyzing the facts? Or
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: are you inadvertently helping construct a theater for the very
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: predator the authorities are trying to catch?