Dark Downeast

In the fall of 2010, Roberta “Bobbie” Miller was starting over. She had a new home in Gilford, New Hampshire, she was back in school, and she was making plans for the life ahead of her. Then, on Halloween weekend, Bobbie and her dog, Sport, were shot and killed inside that home.

There were circumstances that seemed to point suspicion in one direction. But as the years passed, some members of Bobbie’s own family began looking somewhere else entirely.

No one has ever been charged with Bobbie’s murder. When Dark Downeast first covered this story in 2024, Bobbie’s brother Ken made it clear how deeply frustrated the family had become by the lack of attention and resources devoted to her case. But now, nearly 16 years later, New Hampshire’s expanded Cold Case Unit has an investigator specifically assigned to it, and Bobbie’s family is offering a new $56,000 reward for information that finally leads them to the truth.

If you have information about the 2010 unsolved homicide of Roberta “Bobbie” Miller, please contact the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at (603) 271-2663 or email coldcaseunit@dos.nh.gov. You can also leave a tip via the link in the show description. There is a $56,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of Bobbie Miller’s killer.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/bobbie-miller

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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Judy Belfrey. Kathy Williams. Holly Davidson. Melodie Stankiewicz. Four young women whose lives crossed the same few blocks of Boston in the 1970s, and whose deaths left investigators with a pattern they could see but never fully explain.

The cases unfolded in different places and under different circumstances, but there was enough overlap to consider a connection. Again and again, investigators were drawn back to Boston’s Combat Zone. The question then – and now – is what that shared geography means. Was one killer returning to the same hunting ground, or were multiple dangerous men taking advantage of a neighborhood where it was easy to disappear?

If you have information about Judy Belfrey’s murder, contact the Boston Police Homicide Unit at 617-343-4470.

For information about Kathy Williams or Holly Davidson, contact the Massachusetts State Police Unresolved Case Unit at 1-855-MA-SOLVE, or 1-855-627-6583.

If you have information about Melodie Stankiewicz, contact the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at 603-271-2663.

Mentioned in this Episode: Crime Junkie – MURDERED: Joan Webster & Marie Iannuzzi

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/bostons-combat-zone

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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If there is any case where you wish you could turn back the clock and change just one small decision, it might be the disappearance of Bianca Lebron. There were several moments that morning in November 2001 when a question, a phone call, or one person stopping her before she walked away might have changed everything that came next.

Now, as the 25 year mark approaches, Bianca’s case needs attention more than ever. I want everyone to see her face, to study the composite sketch of the man believed to drive her away from school that day, and do everything we can to bring this child home to her family and find the person who took her away.

If you have any information about Bianca Lebron’s disappearance, please contact Bridgeport Police at 203-576-7671. You can also submit a tip to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/bianca-lebron-connecticut

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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Why talk about a case that was solved years ago? Because the answer to who did it isn’t the only thing that matters.

One night in October 2006, a college student needed to borrow a phone. She happened to ask a stranger with violent intentions. What makes that even harder to sit with is what investigators learned about this man afterward. There were red flags everywhere, allegations that reached back years, but none of it stopped him from being there that night.

This young woman’s story did not end with what happened to her. The work she cared about continues through the people who love her. Twenty years later, her legacy is still very much alive.

To support Michelle’s Earth Foundation and the environmental work carried forward in her name, visit http://michellesearth.org to donate.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/michellegardnerquinn

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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On a Saturday morning in 1990, the body of a teenager was found on a dead-end street in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The scene raised immediate concerns, but the autopsy did not answer the question everyone needed answered most: how did Kasha Blount die?

Police waited on the medical examiner. The medical examiner waited on police. Kasha’s mother pushed for answers and a reporter started asking questions. Finally, the investigation turned toward Kasha’s final plans, the boyfriend she expected to meet, and the belongings missing when she was found. The case would reach a jury, but the question at the center of it all never went away.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/kashablount

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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A young mother disappears just days before Christmas. More than a year later, another woman is murdered across state lines. The cases seem separate – different cities, different circumstances – but eventually they converge around the same teenage suspect.

What follows is more complicated than a confession and a conviction. It’s a case shaped by questions of mental competency, juvenile justice, changing constitutional protections, and what happens when one act of violence forces investigators to reconsider others that never made sense.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/nancyannfrenier

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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Host Sean Kipe investigates the 2020 disappearance of 27-year-old Georgia mother Natalie Jones, who vanished after a July 4th lake party. Her car and remains were found 93 days later in a rural field, sparking questions of accident, suicide, or murder—especially since Natalie had begun publicly sharing allegations of past abuse.

Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

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In August of 1972, 44-year-old Gloria Gough left her home in Gardiner, Maine after a late-night phone call and vanished. Two days later, more than a thousand miles away in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, 52-year-old Evelyn “Penny” Deans was shot to death inside her home.

Then police looked in Penny’s driveway. Sitting there was Gloria’s car. Inside were blood-soaked towels, clothing, and a map pointing toward yet another state.

What followed was a multistate investigation, a murder case built largely on circumstantial evidence, and a second murder case that never reached trial – not because investigators walked away, but because the family asked for something different from the justice system.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/goughanddeans

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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On a morning when the country’s attention was fixed on unimaginable tragedy, a Rhode Island family was learning that someone they loved was gone.

In the hours before Nicole Parsons-Bucki died, there had been violence, a police response, and a relationship already under strain, but 25 years later, no one has been charged. That could be because the deeper you look at Nicole’s case, the less simple it becomes: We’re dealing with an uncertain timeline, evidence that disappeared, unanswered questions about who was actually with her, and the possibility that what has seemed obvious for years may not tell the whole story.

If you have any information about the murder of Nicole Parsons-Bucki, please contact investigators with the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office at 401-468-2233 or email riagcoldcase@riag.ri.gov

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/nicoleparsonsbucki

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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On an ordinary winter night in 1981, danger was moving through the Bangor, Maine area in three different directions at once. A barroom dispute was followed by a deadly blaze. A drug sting was underway at a nearby apartment complex. And a few miles away, a lakeside cabin would be reduced to smoldering rubble before sunrise.

None of those events appeared connected as they unfolded. But the first fire would pull investigators away from the second, some of the names in the sting later surfaced in the cabin arson, and before anyone knew what – or rather, who – was lying in the ruins, the course of a homicide case had already irrevocably changed.

If you have information about Michael Cochran’s death or the fire at the cabin, contact the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit - North at 207-973-3750 or toll-free at 1-800-432-7381. Anonymous tips can also be submitted by texting MESPTIP, followed by your information, to 847411.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/michaelcochran

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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In a small New England city, a teenager disappeared after a night in the woods, and almost immediately, the story of what happened fractured.The last people known to be with her gave conflicting accounts. Her family believed the investigation lost precious time. As the years passed, searches kept returning to the same narrow stretch of land, the same handful of names, and the same possibility that someone had been carrying the truth all along.

After decades of searches, whispers and shifting loyalties, someone still knows where to find her. And it’s time to speak up.

If you have information relating to the disappearance of Melanie Melanson, please contact Detective Mark Roffi at the Woburn Police Department at 781-933-1212, extension 4547. You can also email policeinfo@woburnpd.com. The Middlesex District Attorney’s Cold Case Unit can be reached at 781-897-6600.

Melanie’s family has created a fully anonymous online tip portal at melaniemelanson.com.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/melaniemelanson

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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There are cases that frustrate you because the evidence is thin. And then there are cases where the warning signs seem to be everywhere, but the system still can’t quite turn suspicion into action.

A woman leaves home for a few quiet days away. Weeks later, police find her car in the woods and the man last seen with her is carrying her gun and giving away her personal belongings. Investigators see the pattern. Her family sees the danger. But seeing it and proving it are not the same thing.

As the years pass, the same questions begin following the same man across state lines as he leaves more violence in his wake.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/judithwhitney

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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Some people disappear from a place you can picture right away: a house, a road, a parking lot, a stretch of woods. But in the case of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr., he seems to vanish somewhere between the parts of his life that made sense on paper.

He had an office in New York, a home in Connecticut, a train he took like clockwork, and people waiting for him on both ends of the day. When he did not arrive where he was expected, the questions began almost immediately. Did he ever leave the city? Did he make it onto the train? Did he get off before anyone realized something had gone wrong? And if he did, who was waiting on the other side?

If you have any information about the disappearance of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr., or if you knew Edward, Michael Doran, or anyone connected to them, please contact the Newtown Police Department at 203-426-5841. You can also call Newtown PD’s anonymous hotline for wanted and missing persons at 203-270-8888. Edward’s case number with Newtown Police is N-928-81.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/edwardsprenkledubbsjr

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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Sometimes, on an island, the only witness is the water.

In January of 1980, a brilliant Columbia doctor went to her home on Nantucket’s remote east end carrying the weight of a life’s work, a possible medical breakthrough, and a kind of urgency the people around her struggled to understand. By the next morning, she was gone. No ferry record. No plane tickets. No clear path away from the house. Just a trail of clues that seemed to point in every direction except the answer.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/margaretkilcoyne

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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When someone has been missing for more than thirteen years, it can start to feel from the outside like the story has stopped moving. Like whatever answers existed back then are either gone now or buried too deep to reach. But for Ryan Blagojevic’s family, time has not softened the urgency. His sister Eve is still living inside the search for her brother, still turning over every possibility, still hoping that one piece of information could finally bring Ryan home.

Ryan was last seen in Portland, Maine on March 31, 2013, after he was asked to leave a shelter. At the time, he was vulnerable. He was experiencing homelessness, struggling with substance use disorder, and moving through a world where people in crisis are too often overlooked. But Ryan was never invisible to the people who loved him. He was a son, a brother, a father, a craftsman, a musician, and a person whose life mattered long before he became the subject of a missing persons case.

Ryan’s case is not as stagnant as it might appear on the surface. Saying Ryan’s name again, right now, matters more than ever.

If you have information about the disappearance of Ryan Blagojevic, please call the Portland, Maine Police Department at (207) 874-8575. To provide information anonymously, you can call (207) 874-8584 and leave a message on the department’s crime tip line. You may also text the keyword “PPDME” and your message to 847411 (TIP411).

If you would like to learn more about Milestone Recovery and support the organization through a donation, visit milestone-recovery.org. To find resources to support those experiencing homelessness in your community, visit endhomelessness.org.

View source material and photos for this episode at:https://darkdowneast.com/ryanblagojevic/

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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Victoria Cushman was just 29 years old when she was found murdered inside her Warwick, Rhode Island apartment, just steps from the sporting goods store where she worked. For years, her family waited for answers and eventually, the case seemed to have them: a suspect known to the case from day one, who investigators said had motive to end Vickie’s life.

The evidence was circumstantial, but it was compelling. A secret relationship. Conflicting statements. A timeline that seemed to close in around one man. To a jury, the pieces fit. But fitting isn’t the same as true.

Years later, the story everyone thought they trusted cracked wide open.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/victoriacushman

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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In the summer of 2018, Trish Haynes disappeared from New Hampshire. Or at least, that’s what the public knew. Investigators searched a rural property, then quietly recovered something from a nearby pond, but for months, they said almost nothing about what they had found or how it related to the missing persons case.

Behind the scenes, Trish’s family was living with a very different reality. They had spent months trying to reach her, hearing shifting explanations about where she was and why she couldn’t come to the phone. Then they learned a truth they were told not to share.

Years later, the questions around Trish’s case still keep circling the same small group of people and places, and the same frustration from a family that believes this case is not without answers… It is without accountability.

If you know anything about what happened to Trish Haynes, or if you have information about the people or places connected to her final months, please contact New Hampshire State Police at (603) 223-4381.

Follow the family’s advocacy and updates by joining the Justice for Trish Haynes Private Official Facebook Group.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/trishhaynes

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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In 2016, the disappearance of Valerie Tieman became one of the most talked-about cases in Maine in the last decade. At first, there was room for hope, and maybe even a version of the story where Valerie had simply walked away from a life that had become too painful.

Her husband, Luc Tieman, was a wounded military veteran, a man whose service and struggles shaped how people first understood him. But as investigators followed the trail from a parking lot to a wooded property in central Maine, the story Luc told evolved. Each new version raised a darker question: what happened to Valerie, and why were the people who loved her the last to know she was gone?

If you or someone you love is experiencing domestic violence, support is available. Visit the http://hotline.org or contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline 24/7 at 1-800-799-SAFE. You can also text START to 88788, to speak with someone who can help you make a safe plan.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/valerietieman

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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On a Friday afternoon in July of 1991, Martha Brailsford told friends she was going sailing.

In coastal Massachusetts at what is often the peak of summer heat and humidity, that wasn’t unusual. Martha knew the water, and in Salem Willows, boats were part of the everyday landscape. There was no reason to think a simple afternoon sail would become anything else.

But when Martha didn’t come home that night, the search for her would expose a man whose stories kept changing, a familiar coastline that suddenly felt unknowable, and a truth hidden somewhere beyond the shoreline.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/marthabrailsford

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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Estella Brantley’s murder should have been urgent from the beginning.

She was found in one of Bridgeport’s most visible public places, around witnesses who may have heard her final moments, with evidence that would one day matter more than anyone could have known when it was first collected. But for years, Estella’s case stayed unresolved, folded into a larger city-wide pattern of deadly attacks on women and families left wondering whether anyone was really fighting for them.

Then, decades later, science brought the case back to life. But Estella’s family was still left asking whether DNA told the whole story.

View source material and photos for this episode at: https://darkdowneast.com/estellabrantley

Dark Downeast is an Audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

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