Buried Secrets

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back to the show. I'm glad you're here. Grab

0:03 Speaker 1: something warm, get comfortable, and let's get into it, because

0:07 Speaker 1: tonight we have three stories that have been living in

0:09 Speaker 1: my head rent free for weeks now. Three cases, three

0:13 Speaker 1: sets of lives that were changed forever. And as always,

0:16 Speaker 1: we're not just going to tell you what happened. We're

0:19 Speaker 1: going to sit with it. We're going to ask the

0:21 Speaker 1: harder questions. Let's begin. Picture a Tuesday morning in Willowbrook, Illinois.

0:27 Speaker 1: It's a quiet suburb, the kind where people wave at

0:30 Speaker 1: each other from driveways, where kids ride bikes until the

0:33 Speaker 1: street lights come on, where nothing bad is supposed to happen,

0:37 Speaker 1: the kind of place that makes best places to raise

0:40 Speaker 1: a family lists, good schools, low crime, Saturday farmers' markets.

0:45 Speaker 1: On Cyprus Ridge Drive, there lived what the neighbors called

0:49 Speaker 1: the perfect couple. Dale Vesper was forty three years old.

0:53 Speaker 1: He was an insurance actuary, quiet, methodical, friendly enough at

0:57 Speaker 1: the neighborhood barbecue, but never the life of the party.

1:00 Speaker 1: He drove a silver Sedan, kept his lawn immaculate, and

1:04 Speaker 1: coached Little League on weekends, even though he and his

1:07 Speaker 1: wife didn't have kids. He coached because he said it

1:10 Speaker 1: was good for the community. Marlena Vesper was thirty nine.

1:14 Speaker 1: She was the one people actually remembered, warm, funny, the

1:19 Speaker 1: kind of woman who would show up at your door

1:21 Speaker 1: with soup if she heard you'd been sick. She worked

1:24 Speaker 1: as a dental hygienist on Oak Street and had a

1:26 Speaker 1: reputation for making even the most anxious patients feel at ease.

1:30 Speaker 1: She sang in the church choir. She had a best

1:33 Speaker 1: friend named Paula Oakes, who she'd known since the fourth grade.

1:36 Speaker 1: In September of two thousand and three, Marlena Vesper vanished.

1:41 Speaker 1: According to Dale, she simply left. He told police that

1:45 Speaker 1: the marriage had been strained for months, that Marlena had

1:48 Speaker 1: spoken vaguely about needing to find herself, that he'd come

1:51 Speaker 1: home one Thursday evening to find the house empty and

1:54 Speaker 1: a note on the kitchen counter. The note, in Marlena's handwriting, read,

1:59 Speaker 1: I'm so I can't do this anymore. Don't look for me.

2:03 Speaker 1: Police were initially inclined to believe him. There was no

2:07 Speaker 1: sign of a struggle, no history of reported domestic violence.

2:12 Speaker 1: Marlena was a grown adult who had every legal right

2:15 Speaker 1: to walk away from her life. If she chose to.

2:17 Speaker 1: Cases like this, missing adults who leave voluntarily are heartbreakingly

2:22 Speaker 1: common and often go nowhere fast, But Paula Oakes was

2:25 Speaker 1: not convinced. Paula told investigators that two days before Marlena disappeared,

2:31 Speaker 1: they had eaten lunch together and Marlena had been anything

2:35 Speaker 1: but emotionally distant. She was making plans. She was excited

2:39 Speaker 1: about a trip to Santa Fe she and Dale had

2:41 Speaker 1: booked for November. She was talking about repainting the living room.

2:46 Speaker 1: She had just signed up for a pottery class. You

2:48 Speaker 1: don't sign up for a pottery class on Monday and

2:51 Speaker 1: run away on Thursday. That's not how Marlena worked. Those

2:55 Speaker 1: were Paula's words to the detective who took her statement.

2:58 Speaker 1: That's not how any person works. Paula was right, but

3:02 Speaker 1: it would take eleven years before anyone could prove it.

3:06 Speaker 1: In the weeks following Marlena's disappearance, police did what they could.

3:10 Speaker 1: They interviewed Dale multiple times. His story never changed, or

3:15 Speaker 1: at least never changed in ways that seemed suspicious on

3:18 Speaker 1: the surface. He was calm during the interviews, displaying what

3:21 Speaker 1: investigators later described in their reports as appropriate sadness, not robotic,

3:27 Speaker 1: not hysterical, Somewhere in the measured middle. They checked Marlena's

3:32 Speaker 1: bank accounts, no activity after September eleventh, two thousand and three.

3:37 Speaker 1: Her cell phone had not been used, Her car was

3:40 Speaker 1: still in the driveway. Her passport was in the bedroom drawer.

3:44 Speaker 1: That last detail never left Paula alone. You don't leave

3:48 Speaker 1: your passport behind if you're starting a new life somewhere,

3:51 Speaker 1: You just don't. But in two thousand and three, without

3:54 Speaker 1: a body, without a witness, without anything that directly contradicted

3:58 Speaker 1: Dale's account, the case went cold. Marlena was listed as

4:03 Speaker 1: a voluntary missing person. Life in Willowbrook moved on. Dale

4:07 Speaker 1: Vesper stayed in the house, He kept his job, He

4:10 Speaker 1: kept coaching little league. About two years after Marlena disappeared,

4:15 Speaker 1: he began dating a woman named Susan Hartley, a divorcee

4:19 Speaker 1: with two daughters who lived across town. By two thousand

4:22 Speaker 1: and seven, they were married. By all accounts, Dale was

4:25 Speaker 1: a devoted stepfather. He attended school plays, He helped with homework.

4:30 Speaker 1: He brought a casserole to the neighborhood block party and

4:34 Speaker 1: Paula watched. She watched, and she stewed, and she never

4:37 Speaker 1: stopped calling the detective assigned to Marlena's case every few months.

4:41 Speaker 1: She checked in every few months, she got the same answer,

4:45 Speaker 1: no new leads. Then in the summer of twenty fourteen,

4:49 Speaker 1: Susan Vesper called the police. She and Dale were going

4:52 Speaker 1: through a contentious divorce. While going through his files, she'd

4:56 Speaker 1: found things, photographs, documents that she didn't fully understand, but

5:02 Speaker 1: that made something cold settle in her chest. She told

5:05 Speaker 1: the investigating officer about a garden Patiodale had installed in

5:09 Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, right around the time they started

5:12 Speaker 1: getting serious. She'd thought nothing of it at the time,

5:15 Speaker 1: but now sorting through his papers, she found receipts, receipts

5:20 Speaker 1: for cement, large quantities of cement purchased in cash in

5:24 Speaker 1: late two thousand and three. In October of twenty fourteen,

5:28 Speaker 1: investigators arrived at four Cypress Ridge Drive with ground penetrating

5:32 Speaker 1: radar equipment and a warrant. Beneath the garden patio, they

5:36 Speaker 1: found the remains of Marlena Vesper. She had been there

5:40 Speaker 1: for eleven years. The arrest of Dale Vesper sent shockwaves

5:44 Speaker 1: through Willowbrook. People who had stood beside him at little

5:47 Speaker 1: league games, who had eaten dinner at his table, who

5:51 Speaker 1: had attended his second wedding, were stunned, And then they

5:54 Speaker 1: weren't because when you really looked back, when you paid attention,

5:57 Speaker 1: the signs had been there. Several former neighbors came forward

6:01 Speaker 1: in the weeks after his arrest. One woman recalled hearing

6:05 Speaker 1: aloud escalating argument at the Vesper house the night before

6:09 Speaker 1: Marlena was last seen. She'd thought nothing of it at

6:12 Speaker 1: the time, but she'd never forgotten the sound of it.

6:15 Speaker 1: It wasn't the kind of arguing that winds down, she

6:18 Speaker 1: told a local news outlet. It was the kind that

6:21 Speaker 1: gets louder. Forensic analysis determined that Marlena had died from

6:26 Speaker 1: blunt force trauma to the head. The supposed goodbye note

6:29 Speaker 1: on the kitchen counter was subjected to handwriting analysis. Experts

6:33 Speaker 1: found key inconsistencies, suggesting it had been coerced or forged.

6:38 Speaker 1: Cell tower data placed Dale's phone at or near the

6:41 Speaker 1: house all through the night in question. Financial records showed

6:44 Speaker 1: the cement purchase, four hundred pounds of it paid for

6:48 Speaker 1: in cash, had been made just two days after Marlena's

6:51 Speaker 1: supposed disappearance. A hardware store employee came forward to say

6:55 Speaker 1: he remembered Dale being in that day and that he'd

6:57 Speaker 1: struck him as oddly cheerful for someone who's wife life

7:00 Speaker 1: had just walked out. And then there was Paula Oakes

7:03 Speaker 1: on the witness stand. She testified for nearly four hours

7:06 Speaker 1: across two days. She was precise, composed and devastating. She

7:12 Speaker 1: walked the jury through every conversation she'd had with Marlena

7:15 Speaker 1: in the weeks leading up to her death. She talked

7:18 Speaker 1: about the Santa Fe trip, the pottery class, the meme

7:22 Speaker 1: Marlena had texted her about bad coffee on the morning

7:25 Speaker 1: of September tenth, the morning before she died. The jury

7:29 Speaker 1: deliberated for nine hours. Dale Vesper was convicted of first

7:33 Speaker 1: degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the

7:36 Speaker 1: possibility of parole. After the verdict, Paula stood on the

7:39 Speaker 1: courthouse steps and said something I keep coming back to.

7:43 Speaker 1: She said, Marlena didn't get to be forty, she didn't

7:46 Speaker 1: get to go to Santa Fe, she didn't get to

7:49 Speaker 1: take her pottery class. The least I could do was

7:52 Speaker 1: make sure she got justice, even if it took eleven years.

7:56 Speaker 1: The Vesper case raises questions that are genuinely uncomfortable. How

8:00 Speaker 1: does a woman disappear and stay missing for over a decade?

8:04 Speaker 1: How does her killer attend her funeral there was a memorial,

8:07 Speaker 1: because of course there was, and then go on to

8:09 Speaker 1: build a new family and coach children's baseball for eleven

8:12 Speaker 1: more years. Part of the answer lives in the way

8:15 Speaker 1: our systems treat missing adult women in two thousand and three,

8:19 Speaker 1: without direct evidence of foul play, there was very little

8:22 Speaker 1: investigators could legally do. Marlena Vesper on paper, looked like

8:27 Speaker 1: she'd chosen to leave, and in a world where women

8:29 Speaker 1: are sometimes expected to quietly disappear from their own lives

8:33 Speaker 1: through divorce, through estrangement, through simply walking away from things

8:37 Speaker 1: that have stopped serving them, her disappearance didn't trip the

8:40 Speaker 1: wires it should have. The case became one of several

8:43 Speaker 1: high profile cold cases in the twenty tens that pushed

8:46 Speaker 1: legislators in Illinois to revise their protocols around missing persons investigations,

8:51 Speaker 1: specifically in situations with behavioral inconsistencies, leaving a passport behind,

8:56 Speaker 1: having just signed up for a class, making vacation plans.

9:00 Speaker 1: Paula Oakes became an advocate. She speaks at conferences. Now

9:04 Speaker 1: her message is the same every time. When a woman

9:07 Speaker 1: says her friend wouldn't leave, believe her. Now we're going

9:11 Speaker 1: somewhere completely different. We're leaving the quiet streets of the

9:15 Speaker 1: American Midwest and traveling to the south of France, to

9:18 Speaker 1: the wine country, to a world of grand estates and

9:22 Speaker 1: crystal glasses, and old money and older secrets. The Fonteine

9:26 Speaker 1: family had been among the wealthiest in the Bordeaux region

9:29 Speaker 1: for generations, wine estates, real estate, a banking concern that

9:33 Speaker 1: dated back to the eighteen hundreds. Cecil Fontaine grew up

9:37 Speaker 1: in a chateau outside the city, educated by private tutors,

9:41 Speaker 1: presented to society at seventeen, and married at twenty four

9:45 Speaker 1: to Henri Broussard, the eldest son of a rival wine dynasty.

9:49 Speaker 1: It was, by every account a merger as much as

9:52 Speaker 1: a marriage. The families needed each other. Henri brought land,

9:57 Speaker 1: Cecil brought the fonte name and the connection that came

10:00 Speaker 1: with it. What neither of them brought, apparently, was much

10:04 Speaker 1: in the way of genuine affection. By the time Henri

10:07 Speaker 1: Broussard was found dead, in his study on the morning

10:09 Speaker 1: of April third, twenty eleven, slumped in his leather chair,

10:13 Speaker 1: a half finished glass of Bordeaux on the desk beside him.

10:17 Speaker 1: The couple had been married for thirty one years. They

10:19 Speaker 1: had produced two children, maintained separate wings of the chateau,

10:23 Speaker 1: and had not, according to household staff, spoken more than

10:27 Speaker 1: the bare minimum necessary for at least a decade. Henri

10:30 Speaker 1: was sixty three. His death was initially attributed to a

10:34 Speaker 1: heart attack. He had a documented history of cardiac problems.

10:38 Speaker 1: The family physician signed the death certificate without much hesitation.

10:43 Speaker 1: Cecil inherited everything. She was fifty five years old, she

10:47 Speaker 1: was free, and she was extraordinarily wealthy. She threw a

10:51 Speaker 1: party framed as a celebration of Henry's life, six weeks

10:55 Speaker 1: after his death. The French press described it as notably festive.

11:00 Speaker 1: For a memorial event, she redecorated the chateau. She vacationed

11:04 Speaker 1: in Monaco, and then in June of twenty eleven, an

11:09 Speaker 1: anonymous letter arrived at the public Prosecutor's office in Bordeaux.

11:13 Speaker 1: The letter was typritten and signed, and it contained a

11:16 Speaker 1: single explosive allegation that Henri Broussard had not died of

11:20 Speaker 1: heart failure, but had been slowly poisoned by his wife.

11:24 Speaker 1: Whoever wrote it new things. They knew Cecil had purchased

11:28 Speaker 1: a book on rare botanical toxins in the months before

11:31 Speaker 1: Henry's death. They knew about a gardening supply account in

11:34 Speaker 1: her name that had been used to order potassium based compounds.

11:38 Speaker 1: And they claimed that Cecil had been having an affair

11:40 Speaker 1: with a younger man in Paris, and that she had

11:43 Speaker 1: recently discussed with this man the prospect of Henri being,

11:46 Speaker 1: in her words, out of the picture. The prosecutor sat

11:49 Speaker 1: on the letter for three weeks, then he ordered an exhumation.

11:54 Speaker 1: What the forensic toxicology team found in Henri Broussard's tissues

11:58 Speaker 1: was damning. Henri had not died of a heart attack.

12:01 Speaker 1: He had died of arsenic poisoning, administered over a period

12:05 Speaker 1: of several months in small, deliberate doses. His organs told

12:09 Speaker 1: a story his heart never could. Cecil Fontaine Broussard was

12:13 Speaker 1: arrested on a Tuesday morning in August of twenty eleven.

12:17 Speaker 1: She was on the terrace eating breakfast when the police arrived.

12:21 Speaker 1: She showed no particular surprise. She asked only that she

12:25 Speaker 1: be permitted to finish her coffee before being taken to

12:27 Speaker 1: the car. France, which has a deeply complicated relationship with

12:31 Speaker 1: its aristocracy, was absolutely rivetted. The trial opened in Lyon

12:36 Speaker 1: in March of twenty thirteen and ran for nearly three months.

12:40 Speaker 1: It became almost immediately something more than a criminal proceeding.

12:44 Speaker 1: It became theater a referendum on class on marriage, on

12:48 Speaker 1: what happens to women who are trapped in loveless arrangements

12:51 Speaker 1: by family obligation and social expectation and simply have no

12:55 Speaker 1: acceptable way out. Cecil's defense attorneys were among the most

12:59 Speaker 1: celebrated in the co and their strategy was audacious. They

13:03 Speaker 1: did not deny that Henri had been poisoned, the evidence

13:07 Speaker 1: was too overwhelming. Instead, they argued that Cecil had poisoned

13:11 Speaker 1: Henri out of desperation, a sustained act of survival against

13:15 Speaker 1: a man who had subjected her to decades of psychological

13:18 Speaker 1: and physical abuse that when entirely undocumented, because that was

13:22 Speaker 1: simply what you did in their world. You endured, You

13:26 Speaker 1: maintained appearances. You did not call the police on your

13:29 Speaker 1: husband when your families had been intertwined for three generations.

13:33 Speaker 1: The prosecution countered that there was no paper trail of abuse,

13:37 Speaker 1: no medical records, no police reports, no witnesses on record,

13:41 Speaker 1: and they pointed to the love affair in Paris. A

13:44 Speaker 1: thirty one year old art dealer named Theo marcellin visibly

13:48 Speaker 1: uncomfortable on the witness stand, testified that Cecil had told him,

13:52 Speaker 1: the only solution to my situation is for Henri to

13:55 Speaker 1: no longer exist. Defense counsel had a field day. They

13:59 Speaker 1: argued that that no longer exist was not a murder confession.

14:03 Speaker 1: It could easily be read as a desire for divorce,

14:06 Speaker 1: for separation, for Henri to simply be gone from her

14:09 Speaker 1: life in the ordinary way that people sometimes wish for.

14:12 Speaker 1: They questioned Theo's motivations. Was he a scorned lover? Had

14:17 Speaker 1: the prosecution offered him anything in exchange for his cooperation.

14:21 Speaker 1: The key witness for the defense was a household maid

14:24 Speaker 1: named Agnes Claremont, who had worked for the Broussards for

14:27 Speaker 1: twenty two years. Agnes testified that she had, on numerous

14:31 Speaker 1: occasions witnessed on restrike Cecil that she had cleaned up

14:36 Speaker 1: after incidents she had been trained by fear and loyalty

14:40 Speaker 1: to pretend had not happened. That there was a room

14:42 Speaker 1: on the second floor of the chateau where Cecil was

14:45 Speaker 1: sometimes locked inside for days at a time. Agnes cried

14:49 Speaker 1: on the stand. The court room cried with her. For

14:52 Speaker 1: three months. France watched newspapers, ran competing analyzes. There were

14:57 Speaker 1: dinner table debates. There were pro test groups, some calling

15:01 Speaker 1: for acquittal, framing Cecil as a victim of a system

15:04 Speaker 1: that had brutalized her, Others calling for the maximum sentence,

15:09 Speaker 1: arguing that wealth and beauty should not be allowed to

15:11 Speaker 1: purchase sympathy or soften guilt. The jury deliberated for four days.

15:16 Speaker 1: Cecil Fontaine Broussard was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced

15:21 Speaker 1: to twenty years in prison. She served the sentence in

15:24 Speaker 1: its entirety. As for who wrote the anonymous letter, it

15:28 Speaker 1: was never officially determined. Many people believed it was Agnes

15:32 Speaker 1: Claremont herself, who had perhaps reached the limit of what

15:35 Speaker 1: she could remain silent about and found a way to

15:37 Speaker 1: act without walking into a police station. Agnes denied it

15:41 Speaker 1: every time she was asked, But she denied it journalists

15:44 Speaker 1: noted with a very particular kind of smile. The Fontaine

15:48 Speaker 1: Broussard case is maddening because it doesn't give you a

15:51 Speaker 1: clean moral conclusion. Was Cecil a victim almost certainly, at

15:55 Speaker 1: least in part. Was she a murderer? Yes, beyond any

15:59 Speaker 1: reason doubt. Can someone be both? That is the uncomfortable

16:04 Speaker 1: territory this case occupies and refuses to leave. The French

16:08 Speaker 1: legal system does allow for diminished responsibility in documented abuse cases.

16:13 Speaker 1: The problem is that word documented. When abuse happens in elite,

16:18 Speaker 1: insular worlds, where documentation is actively avoided, where the maid

16:21 Speaker 1: learns not to call the police, where the family physician

16:24 Speaker 1: learns not to ask follow up questions, where everyone around

16:27 Speaker 1: you has a financial or social interest in maintaining appearances,

16:31 Speaker 1: documentation becomes nearly impossible. What the case did do was

16:34 Speaker 1: spark a national conversation in France about domestic violence among

16:38 Speaker 1: the wealthy. It led to the creation of a confidential

16:42 Speaker 1: reporting program specifically designed for situations where victims fear that

16:46 Speaker 1: coming forward would damage family or business relationships, situations where

16:50 Speaker 1: the traditional safety nets are themselves part of the trap,

16:53 Speaker 1: and it produced one of the most memorable lines. Ever

16:56 Speaker 1: uttered at a criminal sentencing. When the judge asks if

17:00 Speaker 1: she had anything to say, she stood up, adjusted her jacket,

17:05 Speaker 1: looked at the jury, and said, what took you so long?

17:08 Speaker 1: Nobody was entirely sure whether she meant the jury had

17:11 Speaker 1: taken too long to convict her, or whether she meant

17:14 Speaker 1: the world had taken too long to understand what she'd endured.

17:17 Speaker 1: Maybe she meant both. Our final story, Tonight, takes us

17:21 Speaker 1: to Klamath Falls, Oregon, October of nineteen eighty nine, a

17:26 Speaker 1: small city in the high desert of southern Oregon, the

17:29 Speaker 1: kind of place where everyone knows everyone, which made what

17:32 Speaker 1: happened there all the more devastating. Diane Callaway was twenty

17:36 Speaker 1: two years old. She worked at a hardware store and

17:39 Speaker 1: played guitar in a local country band on Friday nights.

17:42 Speaker 1: Her sister, Renata described her as the person who noticed

17:46 Speaker 1: when you were sad before you noticed yourself. On the

17:49 Speaker 1: night of October fourteenth, nineteen eighty nine, Diane left work

17:53 Speaker 1: at around nine pm and began walking the six blocks

17:56 Speaker 1: to her apartment. She never arrived. Her body was found

18:00 Speaker 1: the following morning in an alley two blocks from her

18:03 Speaker 1: usual route. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. The

18:07 Speaker 1: investigation was immediate and thorough by the standards of its time.

18:11 Speaker 1: Investigators interviewed dozens of people, collected evidence from the scene,

18:16 Speaker 1: and developed several persons of interest. But in nineteen eighty nine,

18:21 Speaker 1: forensic technology was an entirely different world. They had partial fingerprints,

18:26 Speaker 1: They had biological material from the scene without a suspect

18:30 Speaker 1: to compare it against. That evidence went into storage. The

18:34 Speaker 1: years passed, the case went cold. Diane's file sat in

18:38 Speaker 1: a cabinet, and Ranada sat with her grief. Ranata Callaway

18:42 Speaker 1: never stopped for thirty years, three full decades. She called

18:46 Speaker 1: the Klamath Falls Police Department on a regular basis. She

18:50 Speaker 1: attended every public forum on cold cases she could find.

18:54 Speaker 1: She wrote letters to the state Attorney General's office. She

18:58 Speaker 1: connected with advocacy organizations for families of unsolved homicide victims.

19:03 Speaker 1: She was not paralyzed by her grief. She channeled it.

19:07 Speaker 1: She made it move. In twenty seventeen, Rnada read a

19:11 Speaker 1: news article about investigative genetic genealogy, a new technique that

19:15 Speaker 1: had been used to identify the Golden State Killer. One

19:18 Speaker 1: of the most prolific and elusive serial killers in California history.

19:22 Speaker 1: The method worked like this. Investigators take DNA collected from

19:25 Speaker 1: a crime scene and upload it to public genealogy databases,

19:29 Speaker 1: the kind people used to trace their family trees. If

19:32 Speaker 1: the DNA matches any of the profiles already in those databases,

19:35 Speaker 1: even distantly, investigators can begin building out a family tree

19:38 Speaker 1: from that match, then narrow it down using public records,

19:41 Speaker 1: birth certificates, marriage licenses, voter registration data, obituaries until they

19:46 Speaker 1: arrive at a small pool of suspects who fit the

19:48 Speaker 1: geographic and age profile. Renata called her contact at the

19:51 Speaker 1: Klamath Falls Police Department the same day she read the article.

19:55 Speaker 1: His name was Detective Marcus Webb, relatively new to the

19:58 Speaker 1: cold case unit, and he had, as Renata later described,

20:02 Speaker 1: the rare quality in law enforcement, of actually listening. Together,

20:06 Speaker 1: they began pushing to have the Diane Callaway evidence submitted

20:09 Speaker 1: for genealogical analysis. It took two years of navigating budget

20:13 Speaker 1: approvals and bureaucratic channels, and coordination with a private genealogy

20:17 Speaker 1: lab in Virginia to confirm the DNA sample was still

20:20 Speaker 1: viable after three decades in storage, but in twenty nineteen,

20:24 Speaker 1: the sample was submitted for months later, they had a match.

20:28 Speaker 1: The match was to a family in northern California.