Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Curtis Pishon Pt. One

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Curtis Pishon Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:29
Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and I'm
0:34
Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. July fifth, two thousand,
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Seabrook, New Hampshire. Curtis Peshan, a forty year old former police
0:46
officer suffering from multiple sclerosis, is working the graveyard shift as a factory security
0:52
guard when his car suddenly catches fire. The fire department shows up to handle
0:57
the situation, but less than two hours after they leave, Curtis inexplicably vanishes
1:02
from the premises. Years later, a former factory worker allegedly brags about causing
1:07
Curtis's disappearance, and even though it is theorized that Curtis was killed after interrupting
1:12
a theft, there is no evidence to arrest anyone, and no trace of
1:17
Curtis is ever found. After that, the path went chilly. So today
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we're going to be covering a missing person's case which was featured in Unsolved Mysteries,
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the two thousand disappearance of Curtis Pieshan. This is this tragic story of
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a man who wanted nothing more than to become a police officer and was successfully
1:36
following his dream before his life was derailed by multiple sclerosis. Because of his
1:41
physical imitations, Curtis had to leave the police force and eventually got a job
1:46
as a security guard at a factory, But while he was in the midst
1:49
of working the graveyard shift one night, he vanished without a trace. The
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circumstances of Curtis's disappearance are very strange, as his car inexplicably caught fire in
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the middle of a shift a few hours before he went missing. Since Curtis's
2:04
multiple sclerosis caused him to struggle with depression, there was speculation that the car
2:08
fire may have been the breaking point which prompted him to go off somewhere and
2:12
take his own life. However, as the years have gone by, investigators
2:16
are now leaning towards the theory that Curtis was the victim of foul play and
2:21
that one or more of his coworkers from the factory were responsible. As it
2:24
stands right now, it sounds like this is one of those cases where law
2:29
enforcement just lacks that one key piece of evidence to make an arrest, so
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he just disappears. Right if he had completed suicide, don't you think eventually
2:38
his body would have been located. I mean this is back in two it's
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twenty three years. We've seen cases where it takes decades for someone's body to
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be located. But to me, he would have been discovered if he was
2:52
someone who had, because of his depression, gone off and ended his own
2:55
life. Oh yeah, Like he didn't have a car, and he multiple
3:00
sclerosis, so where was he going to go? Like he couldnot walk a
3:02
very long distance, So it's kind of ridiculous that this theory was even considered
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in the first place. And with multiple scrosis, yes, depression is something
3:12
that would be a natural consequence of being diagnosed with a disease that takes your
3:16
physical ability away from you. His dream was taken away from him, but
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he was still working. That's a big deal. He had a purpose,
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he was still providing for himself. I just, yeah, it seems kind
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of erroneous to think, Okay, he's going to be taking his own life
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because of his car caught on fire. Like, the guy's surviving and thriving
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despite a diagnosis, So I just I don't see it. Our story begins
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in two thousand and our central figure is forty year old Curtis Pashan, Curtis
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grew up alongside two brothers and a sister, and their father, Nicholas Pischon,
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worked as a military police investigator. Even though he originally hailed from New
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Hampshire, Nicholas's job at his family to move around a lot, so Curtis
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was originally born in Columbus, Georgia, and he would graduate from high school
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and attend university in Hawaii. However, ever, since childhood, the only
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thing Curtis really wanted to do was work in law enforcement, so he would
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quickly drop out of university and move to New Hampshire to pursue that career,
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as his father had recently retired and the rest of the Pashon family had moved
4:25
back there. Since he was still too young to join the police academy,
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he worked as an emergency dispatcher for two years before joining the army, where
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he served as a military police officer in Korea. Following his return to the
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US, Curtis finally achieved his dream when he was hired as a patrol officer
4:43
at the Concord Police Department in nineteen eighty four. He would enjoy a successful
4:47
career until nineteen ninety, when he was diagnosed with multiple tulerosis, a muscular
4:53
disorder which left him in frequent pain and made it difficult for him to walk.
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The disease eventually press to the point that it would be impossible for Curtis
5:01
to fire his gun accurately, so he was forced to retire from the police
5:05
force in nineteen ninety four. According to Curtis's family, his personality completely changed
5:12
as he became very withdrawn and depressed about a situation. While he collected a
5:16
police pension, Curtis had trouble securing and holding down a steady job, and
5:20
he seemed unsure about what to do with his life. He wound up moving
5:25
into the Highland Inn, a residential hotel in the town of Hampton, and
5:30
rarely spent much time socializing. Curtis had passed issues with drinking, which caused
5:34
him to do a stint in rehab during his time with the police force,
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but his condition would only cause his problems with alcohol to worsen. At one
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point, he got a job as a security guard, but wound up getting
5:46
fired after showing up drunk for one of his shifts. Well, if you
5:50
think about the police culture in general, they're not all officers but there is
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a group of officers who handle stress with alcohol, right like any other human
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being who says like I can handle it with working out, I can handle
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it with alcohol, I can handle it with time with my family. So
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in that line of work, I don't think it would be highly crazy to
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see a problem with alcohol be intensified. They have programs where if you come
6:15
forward and say I need help, they help you, which sounds like what
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happened in this case with Curtis. He actually served time in a rehab and
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went to rehab while he was still an active police officer. Then you take
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away that dream of his and his body shutting down on him. I think
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it's natural to think that depression and darkness would come to somebody when that diagnosis
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first comes. It's scary, like how quickly am I going to lose my
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ability to walk to pick up a cup of coffee? Right, It's a
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very scary diagnosis. And so he struggles with alcoholism. But again you've already
6:51
told me he's working now when he goes and vanishes, and so he clearly
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has the ability to follow pard and pick himself back up. And his family
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seems to be, you know, involved as well, so I just I
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don't know. I feel so bad for him because of the diagnosis itself and
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the loss of his job. But I'm cheering for Curtis right now, and
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I don't I do not think suicide is on the path for him. I
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just think he struggles, and so I think it can make him more vulnerable
7:20
in certain situations. I feel so bad for Curtis. I really commend him
7:25
early on for seeking the help that he clearly needed at that point. But
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for somebody who's struggling with substance use disorder or alcohol use disorder, it can
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be really, really difficult, especially with a high stress job like being a
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police officer. You see it with lots of doctors as well. When you're
7:44
dealing with life and death and you're a drenal system is just firing on all
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cylinders all the time. It can lead to burnout and you can just feel
7:54
like the walls are closing in. And I think people will reach for something,
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and I think Ashley nailed it. Some people will reach for something which
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can be like a healthy addiction, whether it be you know, running marathons
8:05
or cycling or going to the gym something like that to channel it. But
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other people will reach for alcohol or drugs, or food, or gambling or
8:13
sex, and in Curtis's case, it was alcohol. And I think having
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the rug ripped out from under him, to have that very thing that he
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always dreamed of doing being a police officer taken away, that had to have
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been soul crushing. So I can totally appreciate, and I can empathize with
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the feeling of wanting to, you know, drink yourself into oblivion or take
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a substance so that you don't feel that pain of no longer being able to
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live your dream life. And it's just it's so so sad. But as
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Ashley said, it sounds like he was able to pick himself back up.
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So I don't think in this particular case, given what we know so far,
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that it's the most likely scenario that, oh, his car was set
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on fire. He'd had a problem with alcohol in the past, and maybe
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he was drinking. It obviously set him off, and therefore he went off
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and ended his own life. That just doesn't seem logical to me. Yeah.
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By the end of nineteen ninety eight, Curtis was able to pull his
9:09
act together well enough that he was hired by the reliable Security Guard Agency,
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and he was given a new job in Seabrook, a small town of approximately
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eight thousand people located right next to the New Hampshire, Massachusetts border. Curtis
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was assigned to work the graveyard shift at a factory for the Venture Corporation,
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which manufactured plastic parts for automobiles, and the position only entailed limited mobility and
9:33
did not require him to carry a gun. He would work from nine to
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thirty pm until five thirty am, and his scheduled shift for July fourth,
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two thousand seemed like it was going to be less busy than usual. Under
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normost circumstances, around one hundred employees would have been working inside the factory during
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the graveyard shift, but since a number of people were celebrating the fourth of
9:54
July holiday, this was considered to be a shutdown week, so a skeleton
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crew of a w twelve workers were there that night. They said that Curtis
10:03
appeared to be in good spirits when he arrived for a shift, and at
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around midnight on July the fifth, the factory security supervisor checked in with Curtis
10:11
at the guard shack where he was stationed and said that everything seemed normal.
10:15
However, at one forty two am, Curtis contacted the local fire department and
10:20
told them his car was on fire. While he attempted to use a fire
10:24
extinguisher to put it out, he realized that the flames were too strong,
10:28
but when the fire department arrived, they managed to douse them. Since the
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car was parked only eight feet away from the guard shack, the flames wound
10:35
up singing the walls, but Curtis claimed to have no idea how the fire
10:39
started. The department's deputy chief would later say that Curtis appeared to be unusually
10:45
stoic and calm about the whole situation, but in spite of the loss of
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his vehicle, he would continue working his shift after they left. Well,
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there are people like my husband, for example, when Krud hits the fan
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and I'm panicking, and he's like, well, it is what it is,
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ash like it's already done or it's ruined, so just let it be,
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you know, like there's nothing we can do about it, or than
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good as we have car insurance, you know, like our brand new truck.
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We drove it home and two weeks later got head on collision, right
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with an uninsured motorist and I'm freaking out and he just it is what it
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is. It's okay, it's material stuff. So it's possible Curtis had that
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same attitude, like, well, that sucks right, my car just went
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up in flames, and it is what it is. I need the money
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or this is my job, so I'm going to do this. It is
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very bizarre how close the car was to the guard check, but it also
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indicates that not only could Curtis have been responsible for starting the fire, but
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that anybody else on the lot and in that vicinity could have been responsible as
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well. Are there cameras at the time in this in this area, I
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don't think so. Like I haven't heard anything about cameras being found at the
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entire factory, because, as we're going to talk about, there are theories
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that Curtis could have been ordered somewhere on the premises before his body was smuggled
12:03
out of there. But if that's what happened, it was obviously done in
12:05
a place without cameras. But nope, they still to this day don't know
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how the fire started, if it was just a freak accident, or if
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it was deliberately set. Is it legal to be an uninsured motorist? Sash,
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No, but doesn't mean that everyone carries insurance. So these were I
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think illegal kiddos that live around the corner. And yeah, they were just
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driving. They were fourteen and fifteen, so that was super fun too.
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So they were underage, no license, no identification, and no insurance.
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Oh my god, what did the police do? Nothing? Nothing. It's
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a big problem around here. So there's not really a whole lot of recourse
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they have anyway, So you've got no legal recourse. Well, I guess
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you could sue them, but yeah for what though, the poor babies don't
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have it. Yeah, yeah, exactly, sue them for nothing and then
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it's just a financial trade on everybody involved. Yeah, but you can publicly
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shame them on this podcast. So that's how dumb kids. And like he
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said, it was material and everyone was safe, so that's really all that
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mattered. Easy for them to say because they're not out a brand new vehicle.
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Yeah. The security supervisor stopped by to check in on Curtis again at
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three twenty five am and notice the burned out vehicle, but he thought that
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Curtis seemed to be all right, but sometime within the next twenty minutes,
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Curtis would have vanish without a trace. At around three forty five, one
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of the factory workers noticed that Curtis was not at his station, even though
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his cigarettes, packed lunch glasses, and contact lunch solution were inside the guard
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shack and his car was still parked nearby. Curtis himself was nowhere to be
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found. By the time the security guard for the next shift arrived to relieve
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Curtis at five point thirty, he still had not turned up. When a
13:56
search of the factory failed to find him, the Seabrook Police apartartment were notified
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and Curtis was officially reported missing. The police would perform their own search of
14:05
the factory on the surrounding area, but they also had no success. The
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last entry in Curtis's log book was written at around two am, after the
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fire department arrived at the scene. Other than the security supervisor, the last
14:20
people who could confirm seeing Curtis were a group of workers who'd been taking a
14:24
break at around three point fifteen and said they saw Curtis walking around the facility,
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something he didn't do that often because of his MS. Sometime between three
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point thirty and three forty five. A night shift foreman also recalled seeing two
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vehicles speeding out of the factory's driveway, but he didn't get a clear enough
14:43
look to provide a description, and it was unclear if this had any connection
14:48
to Curtis's disappearance. Now, I don't find it odd that Curtis was walking
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around the factory. I mean, especially if he's security and he's worried about
14:56
something. Also, who knows if that's the only place rust located, like
15:01
a little guard check. I wonder if there was a restroom attached to it,
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or if he would need to walk into the factory to go to the
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restroom. But when you talk about him going missing, Curtis isn't going to
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be getting very far. His car is burned out and in the parking lot,
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and Curtis has a disease that limits his mobility, and he's already struggling
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to the point where he can't grip his gun. You know, he's struggling
15:24
to walk. I mean, his coworkers say, we really didn't see him
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walking around very much, so you know, he didn't just up and leave
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on his own and take a hike, you know, going miles to try
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to get somewhere. What if those coworkers are lying. What if they're the
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ones that had something to do with his disappearance and they're just trying to be
15:39
like, oh, yeah, we saw him at this time, yep,
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and he was walking around, Because it does seem a little bit suspicious that
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he wasn't somebody that walked around very often, but yet he was seen doing
15:50
that just before he vanished. Yeah. It has never been specified if the
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who these coworkers were, who who gave this account of seeing him walking by,
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but it is possible it could have been an act of misdirection to mislead
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the authorities. Well. When Investigator spoke to Curtis's family, they learned that
16:07
he expressed his concern to them about possible illegal activity, such as drug deals
16:12
taking place in the factory's parking lot. On previous occasions. He told them
16:17
he feared for his personal safety at his job, and a coworker apparently once
16:21
threatened to kill Curtis over a parking ticket he had written. Curtis had also
16:26
claimed that he felt threatened by some Hispanic workers at the factory because he was
16:30
interested in a Latina woman who worked there. Interestingly enough, nearly four hours
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before Curtis went missing, a factory employee noticed two cars parked at the extramart
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across the street. The vehicles contained some Hispanic individuals and they appeared to be
16:45
acting rowdy. Since the skeleton crew was working at the factory that night,
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Curtis was concerned about the fact that he was not going to have any backup.
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Sure enough, it turned out that a pair of bending machines and a
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change machine located near the cafeteria where vandalized during Curtis's final shift, and a
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pad locked door to a union office which was normally used for storage, had
17:06
also been kicked in. Investigators weren able to determine who caused this damage or
17:11
I had had any relation to what happened to Curtis. Well, it's very
17:15
possible that he's up there while looking at something suspicious that's happening. He is
17:19
the security guard. He doesn't have any backup, so he notices these rowdy
17:23
individuals. He goes into the factory, maybe he sees the damage that's done,
17:27
and what if he ran into the people who were causing the vandalism or
17:32
who were up there causing havoc and confronts them and they get angry. It
17:37
sounds like Curtis is a rule follower and the people up there don't like it,
17:42
and so they kind of resent his position as the security officer. And
17:47
so I think there's a lot of scenarios that Curtis could have walked in on
17:49
something or intervened or done his job and made people so angry at him that
17:56
they wanted to eliminate his ability to say anything about their behavior. That definitely
18:02
would make a lot of sense to me. And theoretically, if a coworker
18:04
wanted to perform a theft that night, they're thinking themselves, well, it's
18:07
a small crew here, and the only guard on duty is someone with MSS
18:11
in limited mobility. This would be the perfect opportunity. And I'd imagine the
18:17
frustration if, in spite of this, Curtis has still made an attempt to
18:19
stop them. According to Curtis's father and Nicholas Poushon, on July third,
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the day before his final shift, Curtis purchased a nine millimeter gun from him
18:30
for two hundred dollars. The gun had originally belonged to Curtis, and he
18:34
had a legal permit to carry it, but due to financial difficulties, he
18:38
sold the weapon to his father years earlier. Given Curtis's history of depression,
18:44
it wasn't long before investigators started exploring the possibility that he bought the gun back
18:48
because he intended on taking his own life, and perhaps the mysterious car fire
18:53
was his breaking point. Well, there didn't seem to be any sign of
18:57
accelerant in or around curtis His vehicle, the insurance investigators concluded that arson had
19:03
likely taken place. Curtis had a habit of storing many of his favorite personal
19:07
possessions inside the vehicle, but most of them wound up being destroyed when the
19:11
fire took place. This led to speculation that the incident caused Curtis to suffer
19:17
some sort of mental breakdown, which prompted him to walk away from the factory
19:21
and shoot himself. However, this theory was discounted when Curtis's gun was located
19:26
inside his room at the Highland Inn, so he was definitely not carrying it
19:30
with him during his final shift. I think there's a lot of problems here.
19:34
First of all, remember Curtis said he was kind of afraid or kind
19:38
of worried about people's behavior towards him. So the fact that he asked for
19:42
his gun back or wanted to buy his gun back from his dad, I
19:45
think for safety purposes would make sense. He also is living with MS,
19:51
and he's living alone in a motel, so it may not be the safest
19:55
of areas. And when you think about someone with MS, there can be
19:59
days where you can't get out of bed, and there's days where your symptoms
20:03
aren't that severe. And so if he is struggling with days where paralysis and
20:08
inability to move quickly is really affecting him, and he's living in a kind
20:12
of risky hotel, I think he would want a weapon to say I may
20:17
not be able to fight them off like I have been trained to do,
20:18
but I could shoot somebody who came in here. So I think it makes
20:22
a lot of sense when you're talking about him trying to get protection for himself
20:26
either at home or at work. Again, he didn't have his gun that
20:30
night, and how far was Curtis going to walk off and shoot himself where
20:34
his body wouldn't be discovered. It just it doesn't make sense to think anything
20:40
about the gun possession. I don't think yeah, and that's what we're going
20:44
to talk about right now. Another issue with this suicide theory, so,
20:48
in spite of his struggles with MS, Curtis did not give off any signs
20:51
of being depressed or suicidal at the time he disappeared, as he had been
20:55
making plans to purchase a new car that week and was looking forward to a
20:57
family vacation that month. But no matter what Curtis's mental state might have been,
21:03
the biggest problem with the theory that he wandered away from the factory is
21:07
that his condition would have prevented him from walking very far. Even if he
21:11
had planned on hitchhiking out of the area, it still would have required him
21:15
to make a long walk from the guard shack to the nearest road. There
21:18
was no record of any deliveries made to the factory during Curtis's shift, or
21:22
any company trucks leaving the facility that he could have hitched a ride on.
21:26
No taxis were summoned to pick up anyone there that night, and since phone
21:30
records from Curtis's hotel room showed that the only calls he made prior to his
21:34
disappearance were to his mother, it seemed unlikely that he called anyone to arrange
21:38
a ride. Since Curtis was a smoker and his cigarettes were left behind in
21:42
the guard shack, his family believed that was strong enough evidence to show that
21:48
he did not leave of his own volition. Investigators did look into the coworker
21:52
from the factory whom Curtis claimed had threatened him, but it turned out he
21:56
had an alibi that night, and he denied that these threats took place.
22:00
Police also explored the possibility that Curtis's disappearance might have been related to his previous
22:06
career as a police officer. During his time with the Concord Police Department,
22:11
he mostly worked as a street officer who was not involved in violent crime investigations,
22:15
but he had also supposedly conducted affairs with the wives of at least two
22:19
of his fellow officers. But in the end, no evidence was found to
22:23
suggest this that any relevance to what happened to him. There would be no
22:27
further activity on Curtis's bank accounts and social Security number, and his disappearance would
22:33
prove so baffling that it was featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries in October
22:37
of two thousand and one. Didn't you also say, in addition to the
22:41
cigarettes, there were things like his glasses and other possessions that were left in
22:45
the guard check that he would use on a daily basis. Oh yeah,
22:48
like his lunch was there, his glasses was there, and also his contact
22:52
lens solution. Yeah, okay, So for me, it's literally much more
22:57
logical to think not even that he got picked up by somebody, but that
23:02
he was patrolling the area because he saw something suspicious or heard something suspicious.
23:07
He needed to go to the restroom, so he left his position in the
23:11
guard check, and he goes into the factory, encounters something or someone.
23:17
Remember it is a skeleton crew that night. There's no backup, there's not
23:19
a whole lot of staff there, and so it would have been a good
23:23
night for anyone who works there to say, hey, guys, I want
23:26
you to show up tonight and rob the place with me, or help me
23:29
do this, or you know, we can take the guard down because he's
23:32
sick, you know, and he got in trouble doing his job. That
23:37
seems much more logical to me, or that he was targeted by somebody versus
23:42
him somehow wandering off. It is kind of weird to watch the Unsolved Mystery
23:47
segment because it was filmed only about a year after he went missing, before
23:51
anyone became a suspect in this case, so there's a lot more ambiguity at
23:55
that time about whether his disappearance could have been voluntary or is suicide. But
24:00
I do think that police did not do a thorough enough job during the early
24:03
stages of the investigation and focused way too much on that angle when the answer
24:07
to this case might have been right under their noses all along. I just
24:11
think if he was going to end his own life, wouldn't he go back
24:15
to the inn which she resided and go and get his gun and then go
24:22
off somewhere to some desolate area, Like we're to believe that he had this
24:26
mental break, and yet somehow some of the wherewithal to what hitchhike. We
24:32
know that he couldn't walk, we know that he didn't have a vehicle,
24:34
So it just seems so unlikely and seemed so much more likely the scenario that
24:40
Ashley just said that these guys, the skeleton crew, where there was only
24:42
twelve of them, had set up this idea to rob the place, and
24:47
somehow Curtis got in the way, and he paid for it with his life.
24:52
In two thousand and eight, Curtis's family had him declared legally deceased,
24:56
but a major development would take place in October of that year when a forty
25:00
year old man named Robert April the third was arrested. April had allegedly grabbed
25:06
a seventeen year old kid named David Horvitz and threatened to kill his family because
25:11
Horwitz's brother owed him thirty dollars. According to Horowitz, April stated, quote,
25:15
when I see your brother, boy, I'm going to slice his throat
25:18
and nobody will find his body, just like the missing person from Sebrook.
25:22
Yeah, that's right. I killed him, and your brother is next,
25:26
and nobody will find an ounce of blood. I buried him in my yard
25:30
and your brother's next. End quote. Well, April just happened to be
25:33
a former employee with the Venture Corporation and was one of the skeleton crew working
25:38
the graveyard shift at the factory on the night Curtis disappeared, so it seemed
25:44
very likely that Curtis was the missing person April was referring to during his threats.
25:48
Months later, April would go on trial and Hambiton District Court for the
25:52
charges of criminal threatening and simple assault, but the judge found him not guilty
25:57
after David Horwitz were can did his original story on the witness stand, but
26:02
it would turn out that Horwitz was far from the only person who had supposedly
26:07
heard April Bragg about his involvement in Curtis's disappearance. Around this time period,
26:11
the Pashon family would launch their Fine Kirt campaign, putting together a website about
26:18
his case at finecurt dot com and offering an anonymous telephone tip line. Well.
26:22
At one point, they received a call from an anonymous person who claimed
26:26
they were told by two people that the alleged perpetrator had confessed about Curtis's murder
26:32
to them. Curtis had supposedly caught this person stealing at the factory, so
26:37
they responded by beating him to death. Curtis's body was then hidden inside the
26:41
union office before the perpetrator could smuggle it out of the factory, and the
26:45
body was later dismembered before it was buried in the perpetrator's yard. Yep,
26:52
I'll buy that. I mean, it seems very plausible that you have somebody,
26:56
especially when you look at the idea that this man who is making threats
27:00
to people and is saying he killed somebody, is actually working the shift with
27:04
Curtis. We know that the factory was very low on staff members that night,
27:10
there was no backup security, and Curtis was already a hated individual by
27:15
some of the people who worked there because of his own behavior and because of
27:18
the way that he executed his position that people didn't like being caught and punished
27:22
for what they did wrong. And so if there was a crime going on
27:27
at the factory that night and Curtis caught them, I could easily see somebody
27:33
saying, my job, this money, whatever we're gaining from this crime is
27:37
more important than this man's life. I could easily see that being a plausible
27:41
explanation. And it's very frustrating to think that April was there all along,
27:48
and during the first few years of the investigation, they're focusing on the idea
27:52
that Curtis walked away somewhere and took his own life. And it would only
27:56
be like years after the fact when people started coming forward and say saying,
28:00
hey, you should look at the other employees who were working the graveyard ship
28:03
that night. So it just seems so frustrating that we have this guy who
28:07
was there and nobody starts looking at him until two thousand and eight, which
28:11
is eight years after Curtis originally went missing. In twenty ten, the authority
28:17
spent two days excavating a cement slab behind a residence in Seabrook. The property
28:22
had once belonged to Robert April's brother, who died five years earlier, but
28:26
even though the new owners gave permission for a search, it failed to turn
28:29
up anything around this time period. The investigation was headed by Seabrook Police Lieutenant
28:34
Mike Gallagher, who publicly expressed his belief that the fir in Curtis's car was
28:38
started by two factory workers in order to create a diversion while they attempted to
28:44
use forkliffs to break into the two damaged vending machines and the change machine in
28:48
order to steal money from them, but at some point Curtis caught them in
28:52
the act and was killed for it. While Gallagher believed that Curtis's death was
28:56
likely an accident and the responsible part, he did not intend to kill him,
29:00
he also stated quote I think the community knows what happened. Everyone knows
29:06
that we know the people who did it know that we know they did it.
29:10
He's a local. I think he stays in his trailer, maybe on
29:12
a self imposed prison term, so maybe there's a little justice there end quote.
29:18
While Robert April is the primary person of interest, Gallagher confirmed that there
29:22
was at least one other person of interest who was also working the same graveyard
29:26
shift at the factory that night, but their name has never been released publicly.
29:30
However, Gallagher said the main reason an arrest has never been made is
29:34
because the only evidence against the alleged perpetrator are quote unquote third person accounts,
29:41
and since most of the tips law enforcement and the Pischon family received have been
29:45
anonymous, they cannot be used as evidence or probable cause to secure the necessary
29:49
warrants for a search or an arrest. Even though Curtis's body has never been
29:55
found, his family has still set up a memorial stone forum at the New
29:59
Hampshire St. Veteran Cemetery in Boscowen. The Pichons have also offered a ten
30:03
thousand dollars reward for information which leads to the recovery of Curtis's body and the
30:08
arrest and conviction of the responsible party, but after nearly twenty four years,
30:14
he continues to remain a missing person. So I guess you could say the
30:18
path went Chili and this pans out so perfectly with what evidence was found.
30:25
There was evidence that there had been venning machines that were destroyed. There was
30:29
other damage to the property, and they knew that that had occurred that evening.
30:33
I believe the fire being set to distract Curtis. What a genius idea.
30:37
He needs to sit there and wait for fire the fire department to come.
30:41
He's got to assess the damage to his own vehicle, and then he
30:44
gets back on his post. Was he distracted in that moment and then goes
30:48
in back into the factory again to go to the restroom or maybe because he
30:53
hears something or feels something might be wrong inside the factory and he runs into
30:59
these in a us committing a crime. My only concern is that if they
31:03
truly beat him to the point where they either accidentally or intentionally killed him,
31:08
and then they're storing his body in the union room, right, wouldn't there
31:14
be physical evidence everywhere? Wouldn't there be blood to the extent that they had
31:18
beat him to death. I'm guessing maybe that they had the opportunity if there
31:22
was blood, to clean him up, because you remember that quote that April
31:26
said when he was threatening David Horbitz, saying that I killed him and your
31:30
brother's next, and nobody will find an ounce of blood. So that couldn't
31:34
lie that he did such a thorough cleanup job. Because there was a skeleton
31:38
crew there, he might have had some privacy that they never did find anything.
31:42
But it's also possible that it was missed during the original search because at
31:47
that point they weren't looking at the possibility of a homicide. They were just
31:49
looking at a missing person. If April is indeed the perpetrator, he's a
31:55
huge idiot who threatens somebody's life by talking about a past crime that they did
32:00
and then telling them where they buried the body, especially when it's in their
32:06
own backyard. I do have a feeling that he wasn't actually buried in his
32:09
own backyard, because they never actually said that. I like him. They
32:15
did do a search behind the property belonging to Robert April's brother, but it's
32:19
not clear to me if they've ever searched any property belonging to April himself,
32:23
but that maybe because they just don't have a search warrant. But who knows.
32:28
Maybe he was just like being braggadocious and it's not actually true, and
32:31
he disposed of Curtis at another location. What was the guy's name in the
32:36
Christian smart case who literally did that exact same thing, Paul Flores. And
32:40
that's a creepy one because I remember that new people moved on to the property
32:45
after Paul moved out, and they thought they heard a beeping every morning at
32:49
like three thirty am. And they've suspected that that was the that was Christian's
32:52
watch, because she always had a watch that had an alarm go off at
32:55
that particular time. But there has been speculation that they did the body because
33:00
she's still never been found. So I think this would be a good time
33:04
to bring an end to part one. But join us next week as we
33:07
present part two of our series about the disappearance of Curtis Bishan Robin, do
33:12
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Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three years now, and
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You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin. So until next time,
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be sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm
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clothing. Music Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy