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Toyota. Let's go places.
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Nearly four decades after a Connecticut flight attendant and mother disappeared without a trace, investigators don't seem any closer to solving the mystery. But ask anyone who knows anything about Regina Brown's life, and they'll tell you exactly what they believe happened and who they feel is responsible for her disappearance. If only they had the evidence to prove it. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Regina Brown on Dark Down East.
Regina Brown, born Regina Fontenot, grew up in rural Ames, Texas, on a sprawling stretch of farmland shared by many of her extended family members. Her family's Creole heritage was a big part of her upbringing, as was her faith. She went to Catholic high school through 12th grade, and then on to Texas Women's University to earn her degree in clothing design.
She worked a few jobs after graduation, staying close to home and to her close-knit family. But Regina knew she was ready for something beyond the confines of her small-town life. Those who knew her best described Regina as a free spirit, a try-anything-once kind of person, and she loved an adventure. What better place for a wanderlust soul than jet-setting across the map?
Regina trained to be a flight attendant and worked her very first route for American Airlines in February of 1977. The next four years of Regina's life were spent in the friendly skies keeping passengers safe and happy. She found a best friend in her fellow flight attendant, Hope Lambert, and they were as close as sisters. Regina told Hope everything. They spent holidays together, and Hope would name her future daughter after Regina.
There was someone else Regina met during her time as a flight attendant, too. Someone who would become another major part of Regina's life. Willis Brown Jr. was a pilot for American Airlines, and he and Regina had eyes for each other almost immediately. Here's Regina's daughter, Raina.
And from how my dad says it is that, you know, they were smitten by each other, like love at first sight. And he started buying her things, like expensive gifts and, you know, being very charming because he was handsome. And though he was 19 years older than her, he definitely didn't look like it. Theirs was a whirlwind romance. Willis had recently finalized a divorce with his first wife, but there was no time wasted between him and Regina.
Within a few months, Regina was pregnant with her first child, and then a few months after that, on June 24th, 1982, Willis and Regina were married. They settled into a ranch-style home at 18 Whippoorwill Hill Road in Newtown, Connecticut, about an hour outside of New York City. Their son was born on New Year's Eve of the same year. In a short span of time, Willis charmed everyone in Regina's life.
Her parents were thrilled she found a man who seemed so devoted, so intelligent and hardworking, and, well, he was financially impressive, too. Yes, he was almost 20 years older. Yes, he was divorced with four kids already. But he was everything Regina wanted. Her pregnancy so soon after they started dating was unexpected, but Willis kept saying he was thrilled to have a son after four daughters from his previous marriage.
But something changed between Willis and Regina not long after they said "I do." Regina would later testify that the "generous, affectionate" Willis changed seemingly overnight. Willis grew cold, and then he got angry. The baby was only a few months old when Willis asked for a divorce and moved out of the house in early 1983. He accused Regina of adultery and believed he was not the biological father of the baby boy.
Willis was convinced that the boy's father was his best friend who lived in Arizona. Willis saw the guy play with Regina's hair when they were all driving around together one day. It was proof enough for him. Edward Erickson writes for the Hartford Courant that Regina didn't believe in divorce. She denied Willis' accusations of infidelity and begged him not to file the paperwork, instead encouraging him to see a marriage counselor with her. Willis agreed.
They tried at least one session, but Willis fired the counselor soon after. Regina decided to keep going on her own, though, and Willis suspected that Regina was having an affair with the counselor. So he again threatened divorce in August of 1983 and told Regina that she needed to get out of the house and move back to Texas with her family. But Willis dropped the divorce conversation when Regina told him she was pregnant again.
Regina stayed in their Connecticut home without Willis. Her daughter Raina was born in February of 1984, but Willis also denied he was her father. He did not show up for the birth of me. He made her catch a taxi home from the hospital.
According to reporting by Tracy Breton for the Providence Journal, the same night Regina got home from the hospital, she called a domestic violence hotline to report that Willis had beaten her. Willis took the phone from her hand and told the volunteer that the baby wasn't his and that he'd just caught Regina in bed with his best friend. Then he hung up the phone. Whatever help Regina was calling for that night, she wasn't able to get it.
Later blood tests on both Raina and Regina's son proved that Willis Brown Jr. was in fact their biological father. But it didn't matter. Willis continued to accuse Regina of cheating on him and started telling people she was using drugs. Things got bad. In April of 1984, Regina called the police after Willis tried to choke her.
He was arrested, but the charges were later dropped in favor of Willis seeking psychiatric help.
According to Willis' later testimony, the advice of the doctor was to leave the house any time he felt like an outburst was coming on. And Willis said that's exactly what he did moving forward. They stayed together. But Willis still wasn't living with Regina and he was away most of the time, either on long trips for the airline or staying on Block Island where he ran a moped and bicycle rental business during the high season. He also had an apartment in Queens, New York.
So for the next two years, Regina worked when she could and took care of the two babies, sometimes with the help of a live-in babysitter. Willis visited on occasion, and he gave Regina money here and there to help with the kids, but not much. The following summer, in August of 1985, Regina welcomed her third child, another daughter. Again, Willis denied paternity of the baby.
He believed the girl's father was actually a Major League Baseball player, who Regina met while working a flight. And Willis later testified that he filed a lawsuit against the man for financial support of the child. Regina was embarrassed and exhausted by the repeated accusations.
She insisted all of the children were Willis's and that she'd never been unfaithful to him and there was never any evidence that she used drugs. But Willis again filed for divorce on November 27th, 1985, listing in his complaint that Regina had committed adultery, "...with various persons at various places," and the three children she had between 1982 and 1985 weren't his kids.
As the divorce proceedings began, Willis decided he wanted everyone to know the kind of person Regina really was. In February of 1986, Willis wrote what would later be referred to as his book. The 21-page letter described Regina as a pathological liar and a manipulative woman with a criminal mind.
He warned anyone who met her not to be fooled by her pretty face and soft voice. When he was finished with this book, Willis mailed it to Regina's family, friends, and to her bosses at the airline.
Regina was humiliated. But more than that, she was scared. Willis was controlling and unpredictable. She confided in her best friend, Hope Lambert, and they held prayer circles at Regina's house asking for God's protection over her and the children.
Despite his repeated claims that the children weren't his, Willis occasionally visited them at the house and brought them things. On July 1st, 1986, Willis stopped by with new shoes for the two older kids and said he wanted to talk to Regina about something.
According to Regina's later testimony, Willis confronted her while she was standing in the bathroom. He was upset because he saw the babysitter, who regularly took care of the kids, kiss the children on their mouths. As Willis tells it in his testimony, he warned the babysitter not to do that, but she did it anyway, right in front of him. He wasn't happy about it. Regina didn't respond to him immediately and started to walk out of the bathroom into the hallway.
That's when she says Willis balled up his fists and raised his arm at her. Then he lunged for her neck and said, "Regina, this is it. You're dead." Regina testified that her vision clouded at that moment until everything went dark. When she regained consciousness, she was laying on the bathroom floor and she could hear the children crying. Willis was now walking towards her with a length of rope.
He stepped into the bathroom with Regina and closed the door. He sat down next to her, though, apparently more subdued. Regina asked Willis why he did it. What caused him to attack her like that? Willis responded that he must have been in shock, and then he started begging Regina not to call the police. He told her he'd lose everything if she called the police, but then said, I might as well hang myself and kill us all.
Regina insisted she wouldn't call the police, promised over and over that she wouldn't have him arrested, but she also begged Willis to get some help for himself. Eventually, he relented and promised to get help. When Regina felt safe enough to leave the bathroom, she went to the phone book to find the number of a psychiatrist, one who had observed Willis a few years earlier as part of the court order.
Before Willis left the house that night, Regina told him she was going to leave with the kids and go to Texas. He gave her money for the flights, and she left four days later. She and the children stayed in Texas for three weeks, and while she was away, Regina called to check on Willis and see if he'd made an appointment with the psychiatrist. Willis asked Regina, "For what?" It was clear he hadn't kept his promise.
He later testified that he didn't think he needed to see a doctor. Three months later, in September of 1986, Willis threatened her again. Testimony shows that on September 3rd, for whatever reason, Willis was at the Connecticut house making phone calls. When Regina checked in with him before she planned to leave the house with the kids, Willis seemed annoyed out of nowhere, and his annoyance quickly escalated to anger.
They argued. Regina asked Willis what this was really about. She suspected he had a girlfriend at the time, and it was the girlfriend that was causing him problems. But Willis then waved a bag of white powder at Regina, saying that he found her cocaine stash and was going to turn it over to police.
He walked out the door and got into his car. But before he pulled away, he told Regina, "I want you out of this house. If you're not out when I get back, you're dead."
The next day, on September 4th, 1986, Regina filed an emergency request with Danbury Superior Court for temporary exclusive possession of their family home on Whippoorwill Hill Road in Newtown. The request was ultimately granted and Willis had to remove all of his personal belongings and was restricted from entering the house or having physical contact with Regina until further court order.
and that bag of white powder, it was later found to be baby cereal. Regina was no longer holding onto the hope that Willis would seek help and that their marriage could be salvaged. Through the fall of 1986 and into spring of 1987, divorce proceedings pushed forward.
Documents show that Regina requested Willis submit to a blood test to establish paternity of the children once and for all. Just as she knew they would, each paternity test proved that Willis Brown Jr. was in fact the father of Regina's son and two daughters. In March of 1987, even though there was a restraining order in place, Willis was at the house in Connecticut on a few separate occasions.
Edward Erickson reports that during one of those visits, Willis asked Regina to co-sign on a home equity loan so he could pull some money out for his moped business. But Regina refused to sign. Willis also later testified that he was at the house another time in March to drop off a check to Regina, presumably for child support. And he was there again on March 24th or 25th to look for some tax documents he kept at the house, he said.
But we don't know exactly what happened when Willis was at the house in late March of 1987. We don't know the specific interactions between Willis and Regina, or if there was any contact at all. But we know that the next time Regina talked to her best friend, Hope Lambert, the message she relayed over the phone was cryptic, and her tone was frightened.
It was clear to Hope that Regina was in fear for her life. Hope Lambert's account of her March 25th conversation with Regina Brown is described in the Hartford Courant. Regina spoke urgently. She said that it was late and very, very dark outside and she had a long way to go.
She told Hope that the two other kids were already in Texas and she was going to put her youngest daughter on a flight there with a babysitter the next day. Once all her kids were safely with or en route to family, Regina planned to make some payments on furniture she bought and then close her bank account before heading to Texas herself. As Hope remembers it, Regina's next words were this.
Willis is really trying to kill me this time. He means it, Hope. He means it. Regina went on to give Hope specific instructions. Regina's flight to Texas was on Thursday, March 27th, and she would call Hope on the 28th.
But if Hope didn't hear from her that day, Regina told her to wait two days and then call her parents in Texas. If Regina's parents hadn't heard from Regina at that point, she told Hope to wait two more days and then call back. If her parents still hadn't heard from Regina, she said, Willis will have done what he said he would.
The last reported sighting of Regina Brown was on March 26, 1987, when she dropped her youngest daughter and the babysitter off at LaGuardia Airport in New York, just like she told Hope she was planning to do. Tracy Breton reports for the Providence Journal that Regina called her mother in Texas to let her know the baby was on her way.
Regina's mom asked what she was going to do with the next few days. Regina responded that she was so tired and just wanted to rest. It's possible Regina made it back to her house in Connecticut that day. But where she went next is exactly what investigators have been trying to determine for more than three decades.
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Toyota, let's go places. On March 27th, 1987, police in Newtown, Connecticut received reports of a dog barking nonstop at 18 Weberwill Hill Road. Regina had decided to get the golden retriever named Sport not long before her plans to leave for Texas. The dog was for protection.
She was supposed to make arrangements with a neighbor to take care of the dog while she was gone, but apparently that didn't happen because the dog was just barking and barking, much to the dismay and concern of neighbors on the cul-de-sac. But a barking dog didn't seem like an urgent call to police.
They didn't send an officer out to do a wellness check and instead told the caller to get in touch with animal control. It wasn't until a week later, on April 2nd, that anyone went to go check on Regina's house and the dog.
Hope Lambert had heeded the instructions Regina gave her. And after a few days without a call from Regina, Hope called Regina's family in Texas. When Hope learned Regina still hadn't arrived, Regina's family got in touch with a neighbor back in Connecticut to go check on Regina's house. The neighbor, Linda Van Horn, was able to get into Regina's house. Maybe she had a spare key or maybe the door was unlocked, I'm not sure how.
But inside, she found the dog, alive and well, with a full water bowl, but not surprisingly, surrounded by signs that it hadn't been let out to use the bathroom in quite some time. Regina's bed was unmade, and there was a dried-out washcloth in a bathroom sink. Linda saw Regina's makeup case in a different bathroom, and she noticed that the back sliding door was unlocked.
But Regina herself wasn't there. Meanwhile, Regina hadn't shown up for work. She missed at least two flight assignments and didn't show up for scheduled plans with friends. The day after Linda walked through the house on April 3rd, Regina's parents called Linda back and asked her to report Regina missing to local police. This time, police actually responded to 18 Whippoorwill Hill Road.
According to Edward Erickson's reporting for the Hartford Courant, police didn't find anything concerning inside Regina's house. No indication that anything terrible had happened there. So they started calling Regina's friends and family to see if anyone had heard from her. But before they could dial the number of Regina's husband, he called them first. Reports say that about a half an hour after the missing persons report was filed, Willis called to talk to police about Regina's disappearance.
He'd actually heard about the missing persons report from his and Regina's employer, American Airlines. I don't know the full substance of the conversation Willis had with police that day, but documents show that when police asked if he had any idea where Regina might be, he said to look for her in, quote, drug-infested areas of New York City. Look to Colombian drug czars. Any place you find drugs, you'll find Regina, end quote.
About three days later, on April 6th, investigators found Regina's bronze Honda Accord hatchback parked on the street outside of an apartment building at 242 West 104th Street in New York City's Upper West Side. It was the car she was driving when she dropped her daughter and the babysitter off at the airport on the last day anyone saw her. According to Tracy Breton's reporting, there was a bunch of parking tickets on the windshield.
Two child car seats buckled into the back, and it was unlocked with the keys in the ignition. But the car was undisturbed. Police transported Regina's car back to the state crime lab in Connecticut for processing. Meanwhile, the babysitter who had traveled to Texas flew back to Connecticut and returned to Regina's house on April 8th.
She would later tell police that she found some food and a half gallon of milk in the refrigerator, and she remembered that Regina bought the items on the way to the airport on March 26th. However, Newtown Police Chief Michael DeJoseph said that the milk had gone bad, like worse than you'd expect from a week-and-a-half-old jug of milk. He speculated that the milk was possibly left out before it was put in the fridge.
The babysitter also reported that there was an unopened bag of dog food in the house, with a sticker on it showing it was purchased at a store called Grand Union. The dog food struck her as unusual, though. It wasn't the brand they usually bought, and Regina didn't shop at Grand Union. But someone else did.
Police interviewed Willis multiple times over the course of the early investigation. Willis told them that he was the one who bought the bag of dog food, and he dropped it off at the house either on March 23rd or 24th, so when Regina was still around, or possibly the following week after she disappeared, but before she was reported missing.
The source material is conflicting here, and I can't tell if it's Willis' account of the dog food drop-off that changed, or if things were just confused in different news reports over the years. But in other conversations, investigators learned for sure that Willis was in Newtown on the very day Regina was last seen.
He had a dentist appointment at 2 o'clock on the afternoon of March 26th, but then he said he went back to his apartment in Queens and listened to some music. Other than that, though, he couldn't account for his evening or the next day, March 27th. He just simply couldn't remember what he did or if he left his apartment. Meanwhile, the tests on Regina's car came back lacking any forensic significance.
There's nothing reported about the presence of fingerprints or hair or DNA, but source material is clear that there was no blood or otherwise concerning evidence inside the Honda. It seems like the investigation just kind of hovered in place after those first few days.
There was a call from the Queens County Medical Examiner in New York about the body of a woman discovered on Cross Island Expressway in Queens. That was the same borough where Willis had an apartment and where Regina's car was found. But dental records and x-rays proved it wasn't Regina Brown.
Nearly a month passed since Regina was reported missing, and during that entire stretch of time, the babysitter was still living in Regina's house. It wasn't treated as a crime scene because, at that point, police weren't convinced that a crime had been committed. Reports say that the babysitter had tidied up the house and even picked up where Regina left off on some home improvement projects, like putting a fresh coat of paint on the walls.
But on May 7th, police finally conducted a formal search of the Newtown house and processed it for evidence. They found Regina's coat that she wore to the airport on the last day she was seen, as well as her purse with a $1,000 check inside and her American Airlines ID card. But that was about it. Chief DeJoseph later said they didn't feel like anything else they found in the house held any significance.
He also made a comment to the Hartford Courant that the babysitter painting the walls didn't matter because forensic testing would find evidence, like blood for example, no matter how many coats were painted on top.
Regina never returned to that house over the next month, and she didn't show up to join her children in Texas either. The kids were still too young to realize the gravity of what was going on almost 2,000 miles away in Connecticut, but they were safe under the care of Regina's parents. Despite his repeated denials that he was the father of the children, Willis seemed to want to continue occasional visits with the children in Regina's absence.
And then in June of 1987, he decided he wanted the kids back for good. Just a few months after Regina was reported missing, Willis was in Texas for a visit one hot June afternoon when he and Regina's brother, the kid's uncle, decided to take them for a swim at the local pool. The kids thought it was just a fun family outing, but Willis later referred to the trip as a quote-unquote mission.
We all went to the Liberty Pool and we liked to swim. My uncle went to the bathroom. So me, I'm the nosy one out of the three. So, of course, I trotted out of the pool and I go around the corner and my dad and my uncle are fist fighting. I mean, I remember my uncle having a bloody nose and I think my dad locks him in the bathroom and then puts me because I remember he puts me on this hot burgundy car. It was burning my skin. It was so hot.
According to court testimony, Willis and the uncle struggled over the kids, and Willis was able to wrench the other two out of the uncle's arms and get them into the backseat of his Cadillac along with Raina. He sped out of town and then changed cars somewhere en route back to New York. According to John Pirro's reporting for the News Times, Willis hired a new live-in babysitter who took care of the kids for him over the next few weeks.
Raina's grandparents were terrified for the safety of the children, and they boarded the first flight to New York to get the kids back. After a petition for temporary custody of the kids, and several weeks of hearings and psychological evaluations and testimony by doctors and others on behalf of the children, Raina and her siblings were finally returned to Texas in July.
About a month after it all went down, Willis changed his tune and stopped his repeated denials of paternity, and he fought for custody of the kids. Even in Regina's absence, their divorce proceedings continued.
After 23 days of testimony as part of the divorce and custody hearings, which included discussion of the abuse Regina experienced during their marriage, Willis' constant accusations of adultery, and Regina's substance use, all of which were unsubstantiated, and the assessment of the environment the children would be in should they return to their father's care, the judge decided in April of 1988 that Raina and her siblings would stay in Texas.
and declared Regina and Willis officially divorced. Judge Howard J. Horrigan wrote in his decision, quote, He has physically and mentally abused her and reduced her existence to a living nightmare. Her life since her marriage to the plaintiff Willis Brown Jr. might be said to be one of figurative bondage. End quote.
By the time the divorce was granted, it had been over a year since Regina Brown disappeared. There's only one significant update I could find about her case during the span of time the divorce proceedings were moving forward. Reports say that in November of 1987, investigators brought cadaver dogs to search a 40 to 50 acre area around her Newtown neighborhood, but they didn't find anything.
Meanwhile, Willis denied he had anything to do with Regina's disappearance, but he refused to take a polygraph test, and in June of 1988, he said he didn't want to be interviewed by police again. Sometime after the divorce was finalized, he moved down to Texas, ostensibly to be closer to his children. Regina Brown was still just considered a missing person, but the police had no idea where to look for her.
That is, until an ominous discovery gave investigators a literal map to follow.
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Toyota, let's go places. In March of 1988, Willis' stepmother, Margaret Brown, was found with two gunshot wounds to the chest, and her death was ruled a suicide. Tracy Breton reports for the Providence Journal that when Margaret's son, Randy, was going through all of his mother's stuff after she died, he came across a 4x4 inch piece of paper with what looked like a hand-drawn map on it.
According to affidavits filed by Newtown Police Detective Harry Noroyan, the words Block Island Trailer were written at the top, and at the bottom was a rectangle labeled Trailer. At the bottom was a line and the word Ocean scrawled beside it. And then there was another line that seemed to connect the rectangle labeled Trailer to another rectangle labeled with the words Regina O God Trailer.
Randy was well aware that his mother's husband's son, Willis Brown Jr., had an ex-wife who disappeared the previous year, and he had a feeling that the map, if that's what it was, could hold some significance. He turned it over to Newtown Police and told Detective Naroyan that he thought it might lead to, quote, a grave where Regina Brown is buried, end quote. The supposed map wasn't very specific, though.
It's not like it had street names or an address, just Block Island trailer written at the top. Block Island seemed somewhat relevant because it was where Willis used to run his moped rental business, but it wasn't until four months later that police knew what to make of the vague location. On July 11th, 1988, a woman called Newtown police with a tip.
She explained that her parents had recently sent her a newspaper article about Regina's disappearance, and she realized that Regina's estranged husband was Willis Brown Jr. She wanted to report to investigators that she had rented Willis a trailer on Block Island during the late spring and summers of 1987 and 1988.
According to the woman's statement, Willis persuaded her to rent him the trailer, even though she didn't plan to start renting it until Memorial Day weekend. He told the woman that he urgently needed a place to live on Block Island for the summer season because he ran the moped rental business there. The rental agreement began on April 1st, 1987. That would have been six days after Regina was last seen, but before she was reported missing.
Willis rented the same trailer again the following summer. His father and stepmother lived there with him for at least the first year. It was something after a year of nothing.
It would take some time to receive a search warrant, but an affidavit states that Newtown detectives believed they might find Regina Brown's body, blood, or possible weapons and fingerprints somewhere on the adjacent property. The search warrant included the land only, not the trailer itself. A little over a year after police received the tip about the Block Island trailer, they arrived at the property with a German Shepherd dog trained in locating human remains.
It was a large 37-acre tract of land, but investigators were particularly focused on a few spots about 500 to 600 yards away from the trailer. The first spot was in an open field that had a deep indentation and an old cement foundation in it. The second location was about 100 yards away from that, with another foundation poured into the earth. The third search area was nearby the first two, and included an old cistern.
On September 28, 1989, the K-9 and human search crew scoured the Block Island property off Beacon Hill Road. The search was challenging in places because of the thick bramble covering much of the land. But not long after the search began, the dog began sniffing with intensity around one spot in particular.
Investigators started digging, but whatever first piqued the dog's interest faded, and the dog moved on with its search elsewhere, until the news helicopters and planes circling overhead startled the dog. The search continued without the pup for a while. The search of the Block Island property spanned a few days, but it did not result in the discovery of Regina Brown's remains.
Investigators called off the search on October 2nd, saying they wouldn't return to the property or any other locations on Block Island until or unless they had new information to direct their efforts. While the search was going on, the hand-drawn map found among Willis' stepmother's things was sent off to the FBI for analysis. However, there were too few words on the paper to make any sort of conclusive determination about who wrote them.
Detectives reportedly spoke to Willis' father, who said that he didn't draw the map, but it also upset him to know it existed. He told detectives that his wife had quote-unquote mental problems before she died. Though the search was unsuccessful in locating Regina Brown, the renewed attention on her case was a good sign for her loved ones. Finally, police were saying what they'd come to suspect from the very first days of her disappearance —
Newtown Police Chief Michael DeJoseph said to the Providence Journal that Regina Brown was, quote, the victim of foul play. And her now ex-husband, Willis Brown Jr., was the, quote, only suspect in her disappearance. Chief DeJoseph continued, I think Mr. Brown knows more about the disappearance of his wife than he's letting on, end quote.
Raina was just a toddler when Regina disappeared, so she has few first-hand memories of those first years without her mother. The kids just sort of adapted to life in Texas with their grandparents and uncle who also helped raise them. But Raina knows that she kept hoping for her mom to come back.
When my mother flew us all out to put us all on the plane, you know, we didn't know anything. We were young. I used to sit by my grandmother's window every day and I used to look out the window and I used to say, hey, grandmother, when is mother coming to get me? When is my mama coming to get me? And she would just cry. And they didn't even tell us that she was missing. They waited a while. It wasn't until many years later that Raina found out why her mother never came back to get her.
In November of 1990, WCVB-TV Channel 5 in Boston aired a segment on their Chronicle News magazine program called The Other Pilot's Wife, written by Mary Richardson. It was all about the disappearance of Regina Brown. However, the title came from the comparison between Regina's disappearance and that of Hella Crafts, which became known as the Woodchipper murder.
Hella was also a flight attendant from Newtown, Connecticut, and she was also married to a pilot. She disappeared just months before Regina, and her husband was arrested for her murder. It's believed he used a wood chipper to dispose of her remains. The case received a ton of media attention and was the talk of the town, much more so than Regina's disappearance.
the media and the police were so invested in that case that they weren't going to pay attention to an African-American case.
The segment recounts Willis and Regina's violent marriage and tumultuous divorce, as well as the efforts of the investigation that had so far failed to determine where Regina might be. It was a step-by-step analysis of everything known to the case up until that point three years later. It generated an image of Willis as the likely suspect for his ex-wife's disappearance, and given the comparison made to Hellicraft's case, there
there was a suggestion that Regina met a violent end. Because of this characterization, Willis later filed suit against Hearst Corporation for defamation and invasion of privacy, but he lost the case. Several years after it originally aired, that segment would be the material that educated a young Raina on the truths about her mother and the suspicion surrounding her father.
I think I was like 10 or 11 when I saw the video. But my uncle told us, do not say, don't tell your father. And I'll never forget. And that video basically showed me, walked me through the steps, like how Willis was extremely abusive and how she got on the phone with Hope and said, hey, if you don't hear from me in three days, Willis is going to do what he said he was going to do. And then she just all of a sudden came up missing.
It was eye-opening, to say the least, but it was also terrifying for Raina, because by then, Willis was back in the picture. He lived in Texas and had liberal visitation rights. And though the circumstances are a little unclear to me and I don't have documentation surrounding the change in the custody arrangement, Raina tells me Willis started to regain custody of the kids too, starting with her older brother and then herself and her younger sister.
Raina has complex feelings about her father and his reemergence into her childhood. We never had to want for anything, but when it comes to being nurtured by a parent, that bond, that relationship that you have with a parent, that protection that you feel from a parent, he was just absent. He was absent and, according to Raina, unpredictable and allegedly violent, too.
But I realized, I'm like, man, when we were kids, we didn't know who he was going to be. He was either going to be a really fun dad or he was going to be angry where everybody had to stay out of his way. Raina described numerous incidents of physical and verbal abuse by Willis when she was a child, teenager, and all the way through adulthood.
When she tried to report it to school counselors and even to police, she wasn't taken seriously. Willis frequently gaslighted her. One morning, after what she remembers as the first incident of alleged abuse by Willis, Raina decided to confront him. And the next day, I just went in his room and I just asked him, I said, you know, why did you do that to me yesterday? And he said, do what? He said, I didn't do anything to you. Maybe that was a ghost. You dreamt that.
Knowing what she knows now about her mother's life and marriage to her father, the violence that Regina testified to in her own words under oath before a judge, Raina feels like she took her mother's place in the cycle of abuse. And I lived, like, I lived in the same nightmare Regina lived in. I just lived in it a lot longer than her. After decades of turbulence with her father, Raina no longer has a relationship with him.
Regina Brown's case went cold. Newtown police didn't have any new leads to follow after the search of the Block Island property, and then time just kept ticking away without any updates.
In 1995, Regina was declared legally dead, about eight years after she was last seen alive. It wasn't until almost a decade and a half after that that Regina's case finally got a fresh look.
Newtown Police Detective Jason Frank reopened the investigation in 2009 and set to work reanalyzing the case file. He was able to contact many of the people originally questioned about her disappearance, and even connected with people who had never spoken to police before. Detective Frank made a major discovery, too, something that had eluded original investigators.
According to John Pirro's reporting, Willis had a private plane at the time of Regina's disappearance. He regularly used it to fly to and from Block Island from the mainland. It seems like the original investigators back in the late 80s knew about the plane, but never located it. Reina told me there's a theory about what happened to her mother involving the plane.
that Willis killed Regina and flew her body out over the ocean somewhere and dumped her. But there's no evidence to support this theory. Even though the new detective was able to locate the Cessna aircraft, I don't know if it was analyzed for forensic evidence. And there were no recoverable records of any flight plans for the plane and its pilot.
Since Willis tended to use a small airport, and this was a very different, more relaxed time for aviation, there was no tracking if, when, or where he flew the plane around the time Regina disappeared. There have been subsequent searches for Regina Brown in recent years. In 2016, investigators obtained a search warrant for property surrounding Regina's former Newtown home.
In the affidavit obtained by Andrew Gorosko for the Newtown Bee, Detective Jason Frank and Lieutenant Richard Robertson wrote that they were seeking evidence in what they were now classifying as a murder investigation. In May of that year, police searched the land with cadaver dogs, and the dogs showed a change in behavior near a one-and-a-half acre section of the property about 200 feet from the Browns' old backyard.
The detectives sought additional court approval to remove overgrown vegetation and dig up the area, stating in the court documents, quote, Regina Brown has not been located or heard from in over 29 years. Knowing that Willis Brown had been physically violent with Regina during the course of their relationship, police believe that there are human remains buried in the area where all four canines are alerting, end quote.
Whatever investigators found after digging up the land behind Regina's old house, it was never publicly released. Apparently, it wasn't anything that cracked the case wide open or closed it for good, because that was the last major development I've found in Regina's case in the last decade.
The original investigators did what they considered to be the right thing at the time Regina Brown was reported missing. But hindsight is 20-20, isn't it? Not treating Regina's house like a crime scene, letting the babysitter return and live in the house, not immediately locating Willis' plane or attempting to find any flight plans, not treating the case like a homicide investigation sooner, especially given all the evidence of violence in the Browns' marriage.
Every one of those choices had its consequences.
To this day, no one has ever been charged with any crimes as it relates to her disappearance. Though past investigators used the term suspect to refer to Willis, contemporary detectives on the case have labeled him only a person of interest. He has repeatedly denied having anything to do with Regina's unsolved disappearance and has suggested his own theories about what happened to her. He once said that maybe she ran off to start a new life on an island in the Pacific.
But no one who knows Regina will ever accept that as a possibility. She loved her kids too much. Raina told me that her father, Willis Brown Jr., is almost 90 years old today. He is experiencing cognitive decline due to dementia and lives in a senior living facility in Sugar Land, Texas. He has maintained his innocence since day one, but Raina maintains her suspicions.
I'm Regina's daughter, and he took her away from me. Reina has heard stories about her mother throughout the years. There's so much she wishes she could have experienced with her, like their shared love of dancing. Regina loved zydeco, a style of music and dance that was part of her Creole culture.
If you have any information relating to the 1987 disappearance of Regina Brown,
please contact the Newtown Police Department at 203-270-4237 or call the anonymous tip line at 203-270-8888. Next week is an off week for Dark Down East, but I'll be back the following Thursday with a new episode.
Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.
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