Blood, Lies & Ferry Rides

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show tonight. We have three stories,

0:03 Speaker 1: three cases, three communities torn apart, and in every one

0:06 Speaker 1: of them a person who refused to look away when

0:08 Speaker 1: everyone else had moved on. Let's get into it. There

0:12 Speaker 1: is a town in rural Montana called Millhaven, population just

0:16 Speaker 1: under four thousand. It sits between two mountain ranges, the

0:20 Speaker 1: kind of place where the winters are brutal and the

0:22 Speaker 1: summers are so beautiful they make you forget the winters entirely.

0:26 Speaker 1: Everybody knows everybody, and the family everybody knew best was

0:30 Speaker 1: the Hargroves. Rex Hargrove had built a small empire in

0:33 Speaker 1: Milhaven over forty years, a lumber business, a construction company,

0:38 Speaker 1: a controlling interest in the only grocery store in town.

0:42 Speaker 1: He was seventy one years old, thick handed and loud voiced,

0:47 Speaker 1: the kind of man who filled up a room before

0:49 Speaker 1: he even opened his mouth. People either loved Rex or

0:52 Speaker 1: feared him, and most managed to do both at the

0:55 Speaker 1: same time. He had been married to his wife Eleanor

0:58 Speaker 1: for forty four years. Three children, Brandon, the eldest, who

1:03 Speaker 1: ran the lumber operation, Cassie, the middle child, who had

1:07 Speaker 1: moved to Seattle and rarely came home, and Joel, the youngest,

1:11 Speaker 1: who at thirty four, still lived in his parents' house

1:14 Speaker 1: and worked as a handyman on the family properties. On

1:17 Speaker 1: the morning of November nineteenth, twenty sixteen, Rex Hargrove was

1:21 Speaker 1: found dead at the bottom of the staircase in his home.

1:24 Speaker 1: He had fallen, or appeared to have fallen, from the

1:27 Speaker 1: top of the stairs to the hardwood floor below. The

1:30 Speaker 1: fall had broken his neck. Eleanor was the one who

1:33 Speaker 1: found him. She told police she had woken at around

1:36 Speaker 1: six in the morning, noticed Rex wasn't in bed and

1:40 Speaker 1: gone downstairs. She thought at first he had simply tripped

1:43 Speaker 1: in the dark. Rex sometimes got up in the early

1:46 Speaker 1: hours to sit in the kitchen. Joel, who slept in

1:49 Speaker 1: a converted room at the back of the house, had

1:52 Speaker 1: come running when she screamed. The initial assessment was accidental death.

1:57 Speaker 1: Rex was seventy one with a history of high blood pressure.

2:01 Speaker 1: A fall down the stairs in the middle of the

2:03 Speaker 1: night was tragically not an unusual way for a man

2:06 Speaker 1: his age to die. The funeral was three days later.

2:10 Speaker 1: The entire town came, but something had been bothering. Deputy

2:14 Speaker 1: Sheriff Andrea Kowalski since the morning she'd stood in that house,

2:17 Speaker 1: and she could not shake it. Andrea had been with

2:20 Speaker 1: the Millhaven Sheriff's Department for eleven years. She was methodical

2:25 Speaker 1: and quiet in the way that people are quiet when

2:27 Speaker 1: they are constantly paying attention. And what was bothering her,

2:30 Speaker 1: she eventually figured out, was the position of Rex's body.

2:34 Speaker 1: When people fall downstairs, the physics of it produce a

2:38 Speaker 1: particular kind of disorder. Limbs go in unexpected directions, the

2:42 Speaker 1: body rarely looks composed. But Rex Hargrove, at the bottom

2:46 Speaker 1: of his staircase had been lying with his arms at

2:49 Speaker 1: his sides and his legs relatively straight. He looked, Andrea thought,

2:53 Speaker 1: more like a person who had been placed than a

2:55 Speaker 1: person who had fallen. She brought this to Sheriff Dan

2:58 Speaker 1: mooney Moon. He was two years from retirement and was

3:02 Speaker 1: not inclined to open a complicated investigation in a town

3:05 Speaker 1: where the deceased was the most powerful man in the county.

3:08 Speaker 1: He told Andrea she was reading too much into it.

3:11 Speaker 1: She did not let it go. Andrea quietly requested that

3:15 Speaker 1: the county medical examiner take a more thorough look before

3:18 Speaker 1: signing off on the accidental death ruling, and what the

3:21 Speaker 1: examiner found changed everything. Rex had a small but distinct

3:25 Speaker 1: contusion on the back of his head, consistent not with

3:28 Speaker 1: a fall down a staircase, but with a blow from behind.

3:32 Speaker 1: The injury was subtle enough to be missed in a

3:34 Speaker 1: cursory examination, but under closer scrutiny, the bruising pattern was

3:39 Speaker 1: inconsistent with the kind of impact of fall produces. Then

3:43 Speaker 1: toxicology came back elevated levels of a sedative in Rex's blood,

3:48 Speaker 1: not lethal, but enough to make him groggy and unsteady.

3:52 Speaker 1: Rex Hargrove had not fallen. He had been drugged, struck

3:56 Speaker 1: from behind, and placed at the bottom of the staircase.

4:00 Speaker 1: The Montana Division of Criminal Investigation took over. They began

4:04 Speaker 1: looking at the Hargrove family finances and found a picture

4:07 Speaker 1: obscured behind layers of corporate structures and trust accounts. Rex's

4:11 Speaker 1: empire was quietly catastrophic. The lumber business struggling, the construction

4:17 Speaker 1: company hemorrhaging money on over budget contracts, properties leveraged as

4:21 Speaker 1: collateral payments falling behind. The family home was three payments

4:26 Speaker 1: away from foreclosure. Nobody outside the family knew, but his

4:30 Speaker 1: sons did. Phone records showed a series of calls in

4:33 Speaker 1: the three weeks before Rex's death between Brandon and Joel,

4:37 Speaker 1: long calls at unusual hours. When investigators brought Brandon in

4:41 Speaker 1: for questioning, he was composed but evasive. When they brought

4:45 Speaker 1: Joel in separately, he was visibly nervous, fidgeting, asking several

4:50 Speaker 1: times whether he needed a lawyer. He did need a lawyer,

4:54 Speaker 1: but the answer came too late. In the course of

4:56 Speaker 1: his second interview. After three hours of mounting press, Joel broke.

5:01 Speaker 1: He told investigators everything Brandon had laid it out two

5:05 Speaker 1: months before their father's death. The family was going to

5:09 Speaker 1: lose everything, the house, the businesses, the properties. Rex was

5:13 Speaker 1: too proud to fix it. But if Rex died, life

5:16 Speaker 1: insurance worth two million dollars and a business policy worth

5:20 Speaker 1: another three would cover the debts and save what remained.

5:23 Speaker 1: Joel had refused at first, he had walked out, but

5:27 Speaker 1: Brandon kept coming back, and eventually Joel, who had never

5:31 Speaker 1: been able to say no to his older brother, agreed.

5:34 Speaker 1: Joel crushed the sedatives into his father's evening tea. Brandon

5:38 Speaker 1: did the rest. Brandon Hargrove confronted with his brother's confession,

5:44 Speaker 1: denied everything. He hired the most expensive defense attorney in

5:48 Speaker 1: Montana and prepared to fight. The trial lasted six weeks.

5:52 Speaker 1: People in Milhaven took sides. Families who had been friends

5:56 Speaker 1: for thirty years stopped speaking. Eleanor Hargrove sat in the

6:00 Speaker 1: front row every day, watching her two sons side by

6:03 Speaker 1: side at the defendant's table, showing nothing. She had lost

6:07 Speaker 1: her husband and was watching her sons be tried for

6:10 Speaker 1: his murder. There was no correct emotion for that. The

6:13 Speaker 1: jury deliberated for eight days. Both brothers were convicted. Joel

6:18 Speaker 1: received twenty five years, Brandon received life. Cassie Hargrove said afterward,

6:24 Speaker 1: I left Milhaven because I always knew something was wrong

6:27 Speaker 1: in that house. I thought the worst thing that could

6:30 Speaker 1: happen was that we would all grow old barely speaking

6:33 Speaker 1: to each other. I was wrong about what the worst

6:35 Speaker 1: thing was. Andrea Kowalski was promoted to chief deputy. People say,

6:40 Speaker 1: she has a way of making you feel like she

6:43 Speaker 1: is seeing things you didn't know were visible. That is

6:45 Speaker 1: exactly the right quality for the job. Let's go to Florida. Now,

6:50 Speaker 1: to a mid sized coastal city on the Gulf Coast

6:52 Speaker 1: called Pelican Bay, the kind of place that exists in

6:55 Speaker 1: two versions of itself depending on the season. In winter,

6:59 Speaker 1: the snowbirds arrived and the restaurants are full. In summer,

7:02 Speaker 1: the heat becomes something you negotiate, and the city belongs

7:06 Speaker 1: to the people who actually live there year round. Natasha

7:09 Speaker 1: Reyes was one of those people. She was thirty one,

7:13 Speaker 1: a high school Spanish teacher who spent her summer's tutoring,

7:16 Speaker 1: running and working on a novel she'd been writing since

7:19 Speaker 1: graduate school. She lived three blocks from the beach, had

7:23 Speaker 1: a cat named Horatio, and met a group of college

7:26 Speaker 1: friends every Thursday at a wine bar on the waterfront.

7:29 Speaker 1: She was the one who arrived first, stayed latest, and

7:32 Speaker 1: made reservations even when the others said it wasn't necessary,

7:35 Speaker 1: because she always knew it was. On July eighth, twenty nineteen,

7:40 Speaker 1: Natasha did not show up to Thursday wine night. By

7:43 Speaker 1: nine pm, her friend Camille drove to the apartment. The

7:47 Speaker 1: door was unlocked, furniture was overturned, a glass lay broken

7:52 Speaker 1: on the kitchen floor. Natasha's phone was on the couch,

7:55 Speaker 1: still lit up with unanswered texts. Horatio was hiding under

7:59 Speaker 1: the bed and would not come out. Natasha was gone.

8:03 Speaker 1: By the following morning, the missing person's investigation had become

8:07 Speaker 1: a homicide investigation. A maintenance worker at a public park

8:11 Speaker 1: two miles away had found her body in a drainage

8:14 Speaker 1: area near the perimeter. She had been strangled. Police developed

8:18 Speaker 1: a suspect quickly. Carter Doyle, thirty six, lived in Natasha's

8:23 Speaker 1: apartment building, one floor below her, in the unit directly

8:27 Speaker 1: beneath hers. He had a prior assault conviction from twenty thirteen.

8:32 Speaker 1: Neighbors described him as quiet, occasionally strange, prone to staring

8:36 Speaker 1: a beat too long in the elevator. Several reported that

8:40 Speaker 1: he had asked them more than once whether Natasha lived alone.

8:44 Speaker 1: Security camera footage showed him watching the parking lot on

8:48 Speaker 1: multiple evenings, apparently waiting for something. Investigators brought Carter in.

8:54 Speaker 1: He was cooperative, perhaps too cooperative, too ready with answers,

8:58 Speaker 1: as if he had rehearsed them. He said he'd been

9:01 Speaker 1: home all of July eighth. He said he'd heard nothing,

9:05 Speaker 1: and he had an alibi for the evening, a video

9:08 Speaker 1: call with his mother in Ohio from seven pm to

9:10 Speaker 1: nine thirty. His mother confirmed it, The call logs verified it.

9:15 Speaker 1: The medical examiner placed Natasha's time of death between seven

9:19 Speaker 1: pm and ten pm. Carter's verified alibi covered the heart

9:23 Speaker 1: of that window. The investigation stalled. Meanwhile, Natasha's mother, Gloria,

9:29 Speaker 1: had driven up from Miami and had not left Pelican Bay.

9:32 Speaker 1: She was sixty two years old, and she called the

9:35 Speaker 1: lead detective every single day. She asked specific questions, she

9:39 Speaker 1: took notes. She retained an attorney simply to have someone

9:43 Speaker 1: who could navigate the system on her behalf. And it

9:46 Speaker 1: was Gloria who broke the case open. Six weeks into

9:49 Speaker 1: the investigation, she called the detective and asked a question

9:53 Speaker 1: nobody had thought to ask. Had anyone checked whether Carter

9:57 Speaker 1: Doyle had ever been inside Natasha's apartment. The detective said

10:00 Speaker 1: Carter had denied it, and there was no evidence to

10:03 Speaker 1: the contrary. Gloria said, what about the cat? She explained

10:08 Speaker 1: about a month before her death, Natasha had come home

10:11 Speaker 1: to find Horatio agitated and hiding a bedroom window she

10:15 Speaker 1: was certain she had locked that morning was unlocked. She

10:18 Speaker 1: relocked it and put it out of her mind. Gloria

10:22 Speaker 1: had not. Investigators returned to Natasha's apartment and pulled latent

10:26 Speaker 1: fingerprints from the back bedroom window prince that had not

10:29 Speaker 1: been a focus of the initial evidence collection because there

10:32 Speaker 1: had been no reason to examine that window specifically. The

10:35 Speaker 1: prince matched Carter Doyle. Carter had been inside Natasha's apartment

10:39 Speaker 1: before the night of her murder. He had entered through

10:43 Speaker 1: the back bedroom window while she was out. This was

10:46 Speaker 1: criminal burglary, and it dismantled his claim to have no

10:49 Speaker 1: particular interest in her. Combined with fiber evidence linking material

10:53 Speaker 1: from Natasha's clothing to the carpet in Carter's unit, and

10:56 Speaker 1: the testimony of a forensic pathologist who placed the earliest

10:59 Speaker 1: part possible time of death at six forty five pm

11:02 Speaker 1: before Carter's call to his mother began, there was enough

11:05 Speaker 1: for a grand jury. Carter was indicted for first degree murder.

11:10 Speaker 1: He was convicted after a three week trial and sentenced

11:13 Speaker 1: to life without parole. After the sentencing, Gloria Rayes sat

11:17 Speaker 1: in the hallway outside the court room for a long time.

11:20 Speaker 1: A journalist asked how she was feeling. She said, I

11:24 Speaker 1: feel like I can go home now. Then she was quiet,

11:27 Speaker 1: and she said, but Natasha can't go home, and I'm

11:30 Speaker 1: going to have to figure out how to live with

11:32 Speaker 1: that for the rest of my life. Gloria went back

11:35 Speaker 1: to Miami. She started the Natasha Reyes Foundation, which provides

11:40 Speaker 1: scholarships to first generation students who want to become teachers.

11:43 Speaker 1: Every year she attends the ceremony and says her daughter's

11:46 Speaker 1: name out loud in a room full of people going

11:49 Speaker 1: out to do the thing Natasha loved. That is not justice.

11:53 Speaker 1: Justice would be Natasha still being here, But it is something.

11:57 Speaker 1: Our final story Tonight comes from a small island off

12:00 Speaker 1: the coast of Maine called Harrow Island, about six hundred

12:03 Speaker 1: permanent residents, accessible only by ferry, the kind of place

12:07 Speaker 1: where the same families have fished the same waters for

12:10 Speaker 1: four generations, and where outsiders are noticed and long remembered.

12:14 Speaker 1: In the summer of two thousand and eight, an outsider arrived.

12:18 Speaker 1: He told people his name was David Marsh. He was

12:21 Speaker 1: forty four, bearded, soft spoken, with the kind of easy

12:24 Speaker 1: manner that makes people feel comfortable. Immediately, he said he

12:28 Speaker 1: was a writer working on a book about New England

12:31 Speaker 1: coastal communities. He rented a cottage from a family named Pelletier,

12:35 Speaker 1: paid three months in advance in cash and settled in

12:39 Speaker 1: the island. Warmed to him slowly. He went to the

12:42 Speaker 1: pub on Friday nights. He helped his elderly neighbor carry

12:46 Speaker 1: groceries up from the ferry dock every week. He remembered

12:49 Speaker 1: everyone's name. By the end of his second month, he

12:52 Speaker 1: was having dinner at people's houses and was in a

12:55 Speaker 1: relationship with Sylvie Pellettier, the thirty eight year old daughter

12:58 Speaker 1: of his landlord devorce with a twelve year old son

13:01 Speaker 1: named Marcus. Sylvie was the island's only nurse practitioner, essential

13:06 Speaker 1: to the community and lonely in the way people can

13:09 Speaker 1: be lonely in a place where everyone knows them and

13:11 Speaker 1: nothing is new. David was new. David listened when she talked.

13:16 Speaker 1: What David Marsh did not tell anyone was his real name.

13:20 Speaker 1: His name was Robert Allan Pruett. He had walked away

13:23 Speaker 1: from a half way house in Hartford, Connecticut, three years earlier,

13:27 Speaker 1: where he was finishing a twelve year sentence for aggravated

13:30 Speaker 1: assault and identity fraud. He had spent decades moving between

13:34 Speaker 1: states under different names, targeting isolated women. In two states,

13:39 Speaker 1: he had been reported for theft in one, a restraining

13:43 Speaker 1: order had been filed. He had been living under assumed

13:46 Speaker 1: identities for three years by the time he reached Harrow Island.

13:50 Speaker 1: The way he was found was almost mundane compared to

13:53 Speaker 1: the elaborate deception that preceded it. Sylvie's son, Marcus, was

13:57 Speaker 1: twelve years old, and he did not like David. He

14:00 Speaker 1: couldn't explain exactly why. It was the way David's stories

14:03 Speaker 1: didn't quite hold together, details that shifted slightly between tellings.

14:08 Speaker 1: Places he'd supposedly lived that he couldn't describe with the

14:11 Speaker 1: specificity of someone who'd actually been there. Marcus did what

14:15 Speaker 1: twelve year olds do. He googled. He didn't find Robert

14:18 Speaker 1: Allan Pruett immediately, but he found that David Marsh writer

14:22 Speaker 1: had no Internet presence at all, no publications, no author biography,

14:28 Speaker 1: no mentions anywhere of a writer by that name working

14:31 Speaker 1: on a book about New England coastal communities. He brought

14:34 Speaker 1: this to his mother. Sylvie told him he was being

14:37 Speaker 1: silly that some people simply weren't online. Marcus did not

14:42 Speaker 1: drop it. He started paying attention. He noticed that David

14:46 Speaker 1: never received mail. He noticed that when news about law

14:49 Speaker 1: enforcement came on the pub television. David had a habit

14:53 Speaker 1: of looking at the floor, and three months into David's

14:56 Speaker 1: time on the island, while going through the pockets of

14:58 Speaker 1: a jacket David had left by the door, Marcus found

15:01 Speaker 1: a piece of paper with a name that was not

15:03 Speaker 1: David Marsh, a number that looked like a case number,

15:06 Speaker 1: and a date that corresponded to the period David had

15:08 Speaker 1: supposedly been living in Boston. Marcus copied the name and number.

15:13 Speaker 1: He went to the island library. He typed the name

15:16 Speaker 1: into a computer. Robert Alan Pruitt's arrest record appeared on

15:20 Speaker 1: a Connecticut Department of Corrections database. Marcus, who was twelve

15:25 Speaker 1: years old on an island with no police force beyond

15:27 Speaker 1: a part time constable, did something that required real courage.

15:31 Speaker 1: He printed the page, walked to the ferry dock, took

15:34 Speaker 1: the ferry to the mainland, got on a bus, and

15:37 Speaker 1: walked into a police station. He put the print out

15:40 Speaker 1: on the front desk and said, I think this man

15:43 Speaker 1: is living on my island under a different name. It

15:46 Speaker 1: took three days and a follow up call from Sylvie,

15:49 Speaker 1: who had confronted David and been frightened by his response

15:52 Speaker 1: before the main State police took the ferry to Harrow Island.

15:55 Speaker 1: By the time they arrived, David had packed a bag.

16:00 Speaker 1: He was at the ferry dock when they came, which

16:02 Speaker 1: was unfortunate for him because there was nowhere to go.

16:06 Speaker 1: Robert Allan Pruitt was arrested on Harrow Island on a

16:09 Speaker 1: Tuesday morning in November of two thousand and eight. He

16:12 Speaker 1: was extradited to Connecticut and subsequently investigated across multiple states.

16:17 Speaker 1: He pleaded guilty to charges in three states and was

16:20 Speaker 1: sentenced to eighteen years. Sylvie said afterward, the most disorienting

16:24 Speaker 1: thing was not that he lied about his name or

16:26 Speaker 1: his past. It was that I couldn't determine looking back

16:30 Speaker 1: which parts of him had been real. He was kind

16:32 Speaker 1: to Marcus, even though Marcus didn't trust him. He helped

16:36 Speaker 1: Old Clarence with groceries every week. And none of that

16:39 Speaker 1: was real, or maybe all of it was, and I

16:42 Speaker 1: don't know which possibility is worse. Marcus, when asked what

16:45 Speaker 1: made him keep pushing when the adult said he was

16:47 Speaker 1: imagining things, said simply he lied about his stories. When

16:52 Speaker 1: you're a good liar yourself, you can tell the details

16:55 Speaker 1: always changed, just a little. He didn't think I noticed,

16:58 Speaker 1: but I noticed. Marcus Pelletier studied criminal justice at the

17:02 Speaker 1: University of Maine and is now, as of last available, reporting,

17:07 Speaker 1: a detective with the main State Police. Three stories tonight,

17:11 Speaker 1: A family that destroyed itself for money it barely had,

17:14 Speaker 1: a man who crept through a window and then smiled

17:17 Speaker 1: at his victim in the elevator every day. And a

17:20 Speaker 1: con man undone not by forensic technology or a federal

17:23 Speaker 1: task force, but by a twelve year old boy who

17:26 Speaker 1: noticed that the details kept changing. The thread running through

17:30 Speaker 1: all three someone paid attention. Andrea Kowalski looked at a

17:34 Speaker 1: body and thought, something is not right. Gloria Reyes asked

17:38 Speaker 1: the one question nobody else had considered. Marcus Pelletier wrote

17:42 Speaker 1: a name on a piece of paper and got on

17:44 Speaker 1: a bus. Attention is not a small thing. It may

17:48 Speaker 1: be the most powerful investigative tool that exists. Every database,

17:52 Speaker 1: every forensic method, every piece of technology requires a human

17:57 Speaker 1: being to aim it, and the person who aims it

17:59 Speaker 1: correct is always someone who was still paying attention when

18:02 Speaker 1: everyone else had moved on. If you are on spreaker,

18:05 Speaker 1: a rating and a review, go a long way. I

18:08 Speaker 1: will be back next week. Until then, stay curious, stay safe,

18:12 Speaker 1: and pay attention.