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despite the numerous drivers passing by who likely witnessed the final moments of her life. More than 25 years later, investigators are still trying to determine what exactly happened to the teenage girl and who, if anyone, is responsible. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Ashley Terniak on Dark Down East.
It was just before 8 a.m. on Monday, November 9th, 1998, and Interstate 91 in Western Massachusetts was busy as usual, with commuters on their way to work. For one of the drivers on 91 that day, a trucker, he was already at work, behind the wheel of his semi-truck. From where he sat up high in the cab in the center lane, he had a unique view of the other vehicles and their occupants around him.
One passenger in particular caught the trucker's attention, a girl in a black tank top sitting in the front seat of a car in the left lane. The car disappeared from view seconds later, but the trucker saw it pop up again beside his truck in the right lane, still speeding down the pavement towards Connecticut. Except the girl in the black tank top was no longer in the car. The trucker must have checked his mirrors and tried to make sense of the vanishing act.
But when he figured out what just happened, he was stunned.
At that same moment, Massachusetts State Trooper Alan Joubert was parked facing the northbound lane in a turnaround, keeping an eye out for a report of a possible intoxicated driver. Behind him in the southbound lane, he heard screeching tires. And then when he turned his head to see what the commotion was all about, he saw several vehicles swerve and then something come flying out of a car and onto the pavement below.
The object landed in the breakdown lane just 30 feet from where his cruiser was parked. It was a person, a girl. The trooper ran to her. She was clinging to life as he checked her pulse. Several yards ahead, he looked up to see that a trucker had pulled over into the breakdown lane and was waving wildly and yelling that the car this girl had just apparently fallen out of went that way, pointing towards exit 49 into Enfield, Connecticut.
Trooper Joubert told Stephanie Berry of MassLive.com that jurisdiction would have prevented him from pursuing any vehicle across state lines unless it was for a felony, and he didn't even know what he was dealing with at that point. What he knew for sure is that the girl in front of him shouldn't be left alone. He was there as she took her final breath.
The trooper radioed for immediate help and covered the girl's body with a rain jacket and angled his car to shield her from the eyes of passing motorists, unaware of what just unfolded during their morning commute. The victim had long dark hair and was believed to be in her early to mid-teens. She was found wearing jeans and a black tank top, but she didn't have a coat or any shoes on.
She also had a green and black beeper and a Mickey Mouse watch on her wrist, but she didn't have any identification on her. The girl's body was removed from the scene and transported for an autopsy as police tried to figure out who she was. They checked with area schools to see if any students hadn't shown up that day. Agawam High School in Agawam, Massachusetts, checked their attendance records and provided police with a photo of a student who never checked in for classes.
The photo matched the victim. The girl on the side of Interstate 91 was later identified as 16-year-old Ashley Terniak. Massachusetts State Police Detective Ronald Gibbons was on his way to work at the state police barracks in Springfield, Massachusetts that morning when he heard the call come over the scanner. He pulled a U-turn and headed directly to the scene, making it there before the uniformed officers.
He would lead the investigation into Ashley Terniak's death, and her case is one that would stay with him throughout his career, and even after he left state police. Although Ron has since retired from state police, he jokes that he just couldn't stay away, so he is now a deputy with the Hamden County Sheriff's Department doing internal affairs investigations.
He's also an adjunct professor at Our Lady of the Elms College, as well as the emergency management director for the city of Westfield. Busy guy, but he's also very generous with his time and his knowledge. When a Dark Downies listener brought Ashley's case to my attention, I was frustrated to find that there's not a lot of coverage of her story throughout the years.
What is out there repeats the same initial details over and over. And as I've learned, some of those details aren't entirely accurate. Thankfully, Ron agreed to speak with me to clear things up and fill in the blanks and share new details about the case. But like I said, Ron is a busy guy, so when we were finally able to connect late one Friday night, it was over the phone.
The audio quality of our phone conversation isn't the best, so I'll use clips from the interview sparingly. As the lead detective, Ronald Gibbons was present at Ashley's autopsy. She had a cracked skull and bruising on her back and shoulder blades, leading Ron to believe she hit her head first when coming out of the car.
Her death was determined to be the result of injuries she sustained from hitting the pavement after exiting a vehicle going highway speeds. As the investigation into her death began, the question was, how and why did Ashley come flying out of that car? Was it a fall, an accident of some kind, or was it an intentional act?
Detective Gibbons and other investigators began tracking down witnesses who saw what unfolded that morning. The trucker was reportedly the only person to pull over and give a statement after it happened. He described the girl in a black tank top and told police how one second she was in the car and then she wasn't. The trucker also said that it looked like she was smoking a cigarette and her legs were crossed, apparently relaxed.
Another witness, an older woman who called police after she got home that day, said she saw the same girl in a black tank top come out of the car. For years, media reports repeated one particular detail over and over, that Ashley exited the moving vehicle feet first through the window. However, Ronald Gibbons said that's not entirely accurate.
The report was actually that Ashley was leaning up and out of the window first, waving her arms. Because that's how the older woman describes, says the girl came out the window, put her arm up in the air, and next thing you know, the car was flying fast, and she came out of the car right down to the ground.
Based on those details, Ron believes Ashley had leaned out of the window and was possibly trying to get the attention of the trooper in the turnaround, the one who would ultimately run to her aid, when she was either pulled out of the car by force of the speed they were traveling or pushed out by someone inside the car. So if that theory is accurate, why would Ashley be trying to get the trooper's attention and
Who was driving the car? And related to all of it, why wasn't Ashley in school that Monday morning? That last piece could hold many of the answers the investigation was seeking. So investigators started talking to Ashley's friends and fellow classmates at Agawam High School. I found the witness accounts from students that have been made public throughout the years to be foggy at best.
Some students have said that while everyone else was funneling into the front doors of the building in time for the bell, Ashley was lingering outside, and it seemed to the other students like she was waiting for someone. At least one account said Ashley was seen at school in the parking lot as late as 7.40 that morning, 15 minutes after classes would have started.
Other witnesses said they saw Ashley inside the building at some point that morning, and she may have been standing in the tardy line. But she reportedly left the line to make a call at one of the payphones near the front entrance of the school. There was a school policy in place at the time for students with repeated tardiness. After six tardies in a given school year, the student would either be sent home or receive a three-hour detention after school.
If that was the case, it's possible Ashley was in the tardy line that morning because this would have been her seventh late arrival and she may have gone to use the payphones to call for a ride from someone. However, Ron told me there was a different reason why Ashley may have been waiting in a line and then possibly making a phone call that morning.
Just after the first bell, the principal caught Ashley and some other students smoking cigarettes in the bathroom when they should have been in class. He brought all the students to his office so they could call home and tell their parents why they were late to class that morning. Ashley didn't want to call home. She didn't want her mother to know she was late to class a seventh time.
So, according to interviews with other students who were standing in line with Ashley, she left the line before it was her turn to make a call and headed outside to the parking lot, possibly to the payphones.
According to reporting by Jordan Jagalinser and Kaylee Pugliese for Western Mass News, Agawam High School had cameras that faced the parking lots, and investigators were able to obtain some security footage from the school's cameras. But Ron said the footage didn't show anything helpful. Actually, to his knowledge, the cameras that would have been the most help weren't working that day. Because of course they weren't.
There's one other version of why Ashley wasn't in school that morning that's been reported over the years. Ashley's mother, Annette Turniak, believed Ashley could have been planning to cut class that day to hang out with a friend who was moving out of state soon. But that friend showed up for class. Even if that was the plan, before the friend ever arrived on school grounds, Ashley had already left with someone else.
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During the first few days of the investigation, Hamden County District Attorney at the time, William Bennett, said that investigators were looking at Ashley's death from many angles. Either Ashley was pushed out of the window and this was a homicide, or she went out of the car window for some other reason and it was a terrible, fatal accident.
The DA said they were also considering the possibility that Ashley was abducted and had jumped from the vehicle to escape. But until they had more information about her movements that morning and who was driving the car, none of the possibilities could be confirmed. Now, Interstate 91, where Ashley was found, is a busy highway that runs between Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.
Ashley's school in Agawam is about three miles from the I-91 on-ramp in Longmeadow, and the location where she came out of the car just before the Enfield, Connecticut exit was roughly eight miles total from the high school. So if there were no stops between when Ashley was picked up and when she came out of the car window, and they were driving at or around the speed limit for those roads, she was likely only in the car for about 10 or 15 minutes.
Investigators seemed to be most interested in a narrow window of time between 7.30 and 8 a.m. They appealed to the public in search of anyone who witnessed the incident on the interstate or who saw Ashley alive in that period of time on November 9th to report it to state police. Someone had to have seen what happened and who Ashley was with, or at the very least, remember what kind of car she came out of.
The few people they initially spoke to couldn't seem to recall the make and model of the suspect vehicle. At first, there were conflicting reports that the car was either dark blue or maybe tan. Two very different colors. While the search for the vehicle and the driver was ongoing, later that day, a man called Enfield police to report something suspicious on a vacant lot he owned in Enfield.
He discovered a backpack and its contents scattered across the partially wooded lot at the end of Woodlawn Avenue, which was a dead-end street. But the man actually had no idea what had played out on the interstate earlier that day. According to Ron Gibbons, Enfield police weren't up to speed on the incident either. So Enfield police collected the backpack and determined that it belonged to someone named Ashley Turniak.
They tried calling Ashley at home to let her know they'd found her backpack, but her mother Annette picked up. Annette was already worried because Ashley wasn't at the apartment when she got home from work. Annette told Enfield PD she'd be over to pick up Ashley's stuff. But the next time Annette spoke to a member of law enforcement, it was Massachusetts State Police delivering the news no mother should ever have to hear.
Ashley's family, friends, and the entire Agawam High School community was in shock. Ashley was a popular student and was even nominated for Who's Who among high school students. She loved to dance and practice karate and do gymnastics. She dreamed of becoming a nurse, especially after working as a dietary aide at the Heritage Hall Nursing Home that summer.
Ashley had started to think about college, and Annette was looking forward to touring campuses with her daughter the following year. But Ashley's sudden death put an unexpected end to those dreams and future plans. And everyone was grasping for answers in this unexplainable tragedy. Jack Farrell reports for the Union News that Ashley's memorial service was held just across the street from her high school that same week.
Students and teachers were permitted to leave school early to attend, and the funeral home was packed with hundreds of people wearing purple ribbons in Ashley's honor. Teachers and fellow classmates shared their memories of her, remembering Ashley as, quote, a really good person, end quote, an extremely likable girl who could make friends with anyone.
But almost as loud as their memories of Ashley was their sheer disbelief that this could happen seemingly without at least one eyewitness who could give a clear description of the car and the other person inside it. A week into the investigation, police hadn't identified the driver or made any arrests in Ashley's suspicious death. But the case was progressing.
Through some old-fashioned police work, and the few witnesses they'd been able to drum up so far, investigators now had a more specific description of the car they believed was involved in her death. They were searching for a tan or light brown mid-sized car, possibly a late 1980s model Ford Tempo, or a vehicle similar in appearance.
So with that, investigators across two states planned an unusual step to drum up new information in Ashley Turniak's case. Vanessa Hua reports for the Hartford Courant that a week after Ashley's death, state police from both Massachusetts and Connecticut, alongside the local Enfield Police Department, were handing out flyers to passing motorists along the route Ashley was presumed to travel on the morning of November 9th.
They aimed to reach anyone on their same morning commute who may have seen the vehicle Ashley was in and who was driving it. The rush hour traffic slowed down as Detective Gibbons and other law enforcement officials funneled cars into one lane at the exit 49 on and off ramps in order to distribute the flyers with a description of the suspect vehicle.
The flyers also noted that the car was likely driving at a high rate of speed or erratically as it traveled south on I-91 and onto Route 5 and then Woodlawn Avenue in Enfield. At least a thousand flyers were distributed that morning, and though investigators received several calls, they had nothing new to report from the canvassing efforts almost two weeks later. But they were working other leads behind the scenes, and it led them to a possible suspect.
Police had a few questions for an older guy Ashley started hanging around in the weeks before her death. Have a question or need how-to advice? Just ask Meta AI.
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Toyota, let's go places. Ashley was reportedly talking to a few different people at the time of her death, though there seems to be some disagreement over whether these people were considered boyfriends or just people Ashley was interested in.
Ashley's friends told police that she was talking to a boy who was in the Department of Youth Services Juvenile Detention Center at the time. But Annette said that Ashley had recently been hanging out with a new older guy, 19-year-old Alexi Melanato. Ashley's friends said Alexi definitely wasn't Ashley's boyfriend. And Ashley had told her mother that she and Alexi were just friends. But Annette had a sense it was more than that.
Jack Farrell reports that when investigators questioned Alexi Maldonado, he told them Ashley was interested in him and they were seeing each other, and he's referred to as Ashley's boyfriend by law enforcement in much of the source material I've been able to access for this case. At the time of Ashley's death, Alexi Maldonado had convictions for petty crimes, a suspended license, and a history of stealing cars.
Investigators learned through interviews with friends and acquaintances that Ashley knew about Alexi's criminal history, and she reportedly told friends that she didn't want to be in a stolen car with him. So that raises the theory for Ron. Maybe Ashley was trying to get out of a stolen car that morning when she fell to her death on the interstate. Alexi was ultimately interviewed twice as part of the investigation.
His story was that he was asleep all morning, never left the house, and you can ask my mother because I was asleep. So Detective Gibbons sent an officer to pick up Alexi's mother for an interview, and when they asked where her son was on the morning of November 9th, she responded with a question. What did he say?
Of course, police didn't tell her what Alexi said, but she eventually told them she didn't know what he was doing that morning because he had his own room and he was probably in there while she was watching Jerry Springer. When investigators approached Alexi for a third interview and a polygraph test, he initially said he would do it, but then he got a lawyer who advised him not to take the polygraph. He stopped talking after that.
A little less than two months after Ashley's death, on December 27th, 1998, Alexi Maldonado was arrested and charged with third-degree assault and first-degree unlawful restraint in Newington, Connecticut. The incident is unrelated to Ashley's case, but I can't find much else about it or specifics of Alexi's future run-ins with the law.
Alexi Maldonado's most recent case in Massachusetts was back in 2006. The first few weeks of the investigation also led police to a vehicle owned by Alexi's best friend, Jennifer. The car reportedly matched the description of the one they were looking for, and so it was dusted for prints. However, it was not determined to be connected to Ashley's case.
Given Alexi's history of stealing cars though, Ron says police also did an offline search for vehicles reported stolen that matched the description of the car Ashley was in that morning, but they didn't get any hits there either. There was one thing Ashley's friends were sure of. Ashley would not have gotten into a car with a stranger.
They believed she knew whoever was driving that day. Or she thought she knew who this person was and what their intentions were. And so it raises the question, why not stop? If Ashley was a friend or a girlfriend of the driver, and her fall from the car window was an accident somehow, why not stop and help or run to her rescue rather than speeding away from the scene and dumping her belongings in a random yard somewhere?
In the absence of answers to that question and about a million others, rumors about Ashley's death swirled around town. Jack Farrell reports that one such rumor suggested Ashley's death was gang-related, and she was quote-unquote marked by having her hair cut off. However, state police denied there was any evidence of gang connection. Her hair was not cut off and was still in a ponytail when she was found.
As leads from the canvassing effort dried up, and as the phone stopped ringing with new information for Detective Gibbons and his team to follow, progress on Ashley's case came to a screeching halt. In the months after Ashley's death, Annette Terniak did what she could to heal and grieve her daughter. She attended grief support groups and was grateful for the community she found there.
She and her partner Suzanne moved to a different apartment within the same complex where Ashley had grown up. But the new one was closer to an apple tree that was planted in Ashley's memory. That tree was the site of special gatherings in Ashley's honor for years. On what should have been her 17th birthday, the first one after she died, Annette spoke to a crowd of nearly 100 people around the apple tree.
Together with family, friends, teachers, and neighbors, she reflected on the loss of her only child. It was a loss she later described as feeling like her arm had been severed. But Annette was also still filled with motherly pride for her daughter. Ashley was good at science and excelled in English. They had their arguments over boys and school and long phone calls, but they were the little moments she'd give anything to have back.
Through it all, the challenges of raising a teenage daughter and the good times too, Annette said Ashley was her angel. As the one-year anniversary of her death approached in 1999, Ashley should have been starting her senior year at Agawam High School. Instead, she was memorialized with a full-color page of photos in the yearbook. I'll share a photo of the yearbook page at darkdowneast.com.
There were three pictures of Ashley, one as a teenager and another that looks like she was just a toddler and one when she was probably elementary school age. There's a poem too, though no author is cited. The first lines read, quote, ease your grief. She is not gone for in your heart. She lingers on and quote. Throughout the last two and a half decades, new tips occasionally came in about Ashley's case.
Around the three-year anniversary, State Police Lieutenant Barry O'Brien said they were still following up on new information that they'd received, and the case wasn't closed. But it wasn't solved, either. Detective Gibbons stayed on Ashley's case for the initial few weeks of the investigation, but even after he was assigned to other cases and years later moved into a new unit within State Police, he never forgot about Ashley.
And it never left my desk, to be honest with you. Even when I left, I left the unit to go to the casino unit. This, I can honestly say that this photo is still on my desk. He stayed in touch with Annette the best he could and let her know he still wanted to see the case solved. When Ron retired, Ashley's case stayed on his mind. This was one of those ones that there's always something in your career that you always wonder about.
So what is this case missing? When you lay it all out on the table, it feels like answers are just below the surface. Before I spoke to Ron Gibbons about the case, I tried to figure out what, if any, testing was done on Ashley's backpack and belongings found on that vacant lot in Enfield. The driver had to touch those things when they threw them out of the car, right? Well, Ron pointed something out about how those things were thrown that wasn't clear to me before.
Because the backpack wasn't just tossed out of the car on the side street. It's as if the person went through all our items and threw everything out of the backpack so they had the touch. When a person tossed it, they must have been sweating. They must have been profusely sweating trying to get out of there. It was more of a chance of DNA, especially on the backpack.
When Massachusetts State Police formed a cold case unit, Ron Gibbons hoped Ashley's case would be on the list for review. He thought they might be able to extract a DNA profile from the backpack and its contents. How about the new touch DNA that we can get to DNA? Because the DNA doesn't disappear and the evidence has been in the evidence room ever since.
To his knowledge, though, the evidence hasn't been processed or analyzed for DNA or other potential forensic evidence. Other cases have been prioritized. And there's still a discussion to be had about the crime committed that caused Ashley's death. Ron walked me through a number of possible charges. There's homicide. There's death occurring in commission of another crime, like stealing a car, for example, which could be manslaughter.
It could have been erratic driving which made Ashley fall out of the window and the driver left the scene of a personal injury accident and a number of other possibilities. The statute of limitations for each of these varies, but of course, there's no statute of limitations for homicide. As of right now, Ashley's case is listed as an unsolved homicide by the Hampton County District Attorney's Office. As for Alexi Maldonado,
Definitely considered a suspect. About a year and a half after Ashley's death, Annette Terniak told Jack Farrell of the Union News that she was trying something new as part of her healing process. She also hoped her new approach would encourage those with information about her daughter's death to come forward. She wrote an open letter to the driver, whoever it may be, though she wasn't sure if the individual would ever hear it.
I want to share Annette's words here on the chance this does reach someone out there with information they've been keeping for more than 25 years. Annette writes, quote, As the mother of Ashley Terniak, I'd like to say that I am not the judge or the jury. I will leave that up to the people in charge. I am a mother that mourns her sweet, beautiful daughter. And that is all.
Since her death, opinions and rumors are numerous. Was she pushed? Did she fall? Was she afraid of something and jumped? Only you have the answers. God, in his mercy, has already forgiven you. But will you be able to forgive yourself? As for revenge, I leave that to the vengeful. Inevitably, there will be justice. We all pay for the wrongs we do and the mistakes we make.
And someday, we end up taking responsibility. Therefore, I will continue my healing prayers for you and your soul. I believe in the end, we are not much different. We are all one. I could not hate you. That hate would reflect back to me. I feel only compassion and sadness for the position in which you put yourself. In some ways, it must be like a ball and chain that keeps you all locked up inside.
I am glad I am not you. If I were, I would tell all. Sincerely, Annette Terniak, Ashley's mom, end quote. If you have information that could help investigators continue their work on Ashley's case, please call the Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit at 413-505-5993.
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.
Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Have a question or need how-to advice? Just ask Meta AI.
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