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I'm Kristen Seavey, and this is Murder, She Told. It was a crisp fall day in Winthrop, Maine, 1986. The waters of Lake Moranakook were cold. Tiny waves gently lapped its shore. Red leaves, floating on its dark indigo surface, were silently consumed by its depths. 34-year-old Brian Kowalczyk drove down Route 133, the old country highway nearby.
He passed red, yellow, and orange trees, only a handful of stubborn leaves concealing their branchy skeletons. The falling foliage opened up views and afforded glimpses of the lake he loved. Brian had always lived near the water since his childhood in Claremont, New Hampshire. He'd still owned a sailboat back in New Hampshire in the small town of Kingston. His dream was to someday open a lakeside fishing camp. In warmer weather, he sailed Lake Moranakook,
Today, he drove a white delivery truck emblazoned with the red Snap-on Tools logo. Brian was a sales rep for the company, and he traveled all over the region selling tools to mechanics. Everything from Goodyear tire centers to car dealerships to small, family-run auto repair shops, mechanics were responsible for their own tools, and without them, their livelihood was at stake.
Although expensive, buying from a local Snap-on dealer had its advantages. The products were high quality. Snap-ons stood behind their tools. And if you needed a repair or replacement, your dealer could help you within days, or even hours. In rural Maine, where the nearest hardware store could be an hour away, that was very convenient.
After a long day of driving around Augusta and outlying rural communities selling tools, collecting payments, and chatting with mechanics, Brian was heading home. Just before Highway 41, he turned into the long driveway that led to their brand new house on a property they bought two years prior in 1984. His wife, Leanne, recognized the sound of the truck, the only vehicle she wanted to hear enter their secluded hideaway.
When she recalled it later, Leanne said, "It was a certain sound, and it always meant that he was home." Leaves and gravel crunched under his tires as he parked next to the brown, detached two-car garage where Leanne kept her Volkswagen Jetta. A little higher up, on the top of the hill, was their home: a geodesic dome. From the outside, it looked like a giant brown ball. Four walls with painted wood clabbered siding jutted out from the central dome.
The dome's roof was brown asphalt shingle. Unique trapezoid-shaped windows overlooked the steep driveway. Although it appeared round from a distance, the dome was actually made of triangles fitted together to form an unusually strong, wind-resistant structure. Energy-efficient geodesic dome homes were something of a fad in the 70s and 80s. Energy costs were high and environmentalism was on the rise.
Bryant slammed the truck's door shut. He was 5'11", 180 pounds, with tan skin and dark brown hair. He walked up the wooden steps to the front door. Bryant and Leanne had moved to Winthrop, Maine, the town that surrounded Lake Moranacook, when Snap-on assigned Bryant to the nearby Augusta region. Winthrop was a peaceful, small town.
Brian, who had lived in rural areas for most of his life, was, according to Leanne, notorious about not locking the door. Brian and Leanne's home was on the west side of the lake, and few were old enough to remember the murders Harry Kirby committed on the other side of the lake 57 years earlier, in 1929. I covered the Harry Kirby story in May of 2022. It was pretty common for residents to leave their doors unlocked.
There were three entrances to the home. The main entrance faced the driveway. The side entrance was on the right face, and a sliding glass door on the left side of the home opened onto a deck that afforded glimpses of the lake beyond the trees. You can see pictures of the home at MurderSheTold.com. His wife Leanne kept a clean house. She later said, Brian used to tease me about it. He used to call me a psycho cleaner. When people came into my home, they always took off their shoes.
Leanne had two cats. One of them, Sophie, slunk down the black spiral staircase in the middle of the open concept space. The metal treads only made the slightest sound as she crept along. Then she lay back down at the foot of the stairs. If anyone wanted to go up the stairs, they were gonna have to step over her.
The second floor area was covered in a soft, luminous teal-blue carpet and became Leanne's sewing room. This loft space was lined with wooden shelves where she kept her supplies. There were two other enclosed rooms on the second floor, a bedroom that Brian used as an office and a second bathroom. Because these rooms were at the top of the dome, they met the curve of the ceiling. One nearly had to duck to sit on the toilet.
Brian made his way into the primary bedroom suite on the first floor to change and wash up for dinner. He then returned to the open-concept living area, a sprawling expanse of tile floor covered with rugs and furniture. The space was illuminated by windows, glass doors, and skylights. Its white walls were accented with wood trim and adorned with large paintings. Leanne had placed a beautiful Turkish rug over the white-tiled floor.
In addition to the electric heating system, there was a large antique-looking cast-iron stove in front of a low brick wall. The dome shape allowed for efficient heat circulation. It also meant that sound reflected in unusual ways off its slopes. The couple ran the snap-on business together. Brian filled Leanne in on the highlights of his day as she prepared dinner in the kitchen.
Energy-efficient fluorescent tubes overhead threw off tons of light, and the kitchen counter was illuminated with modern white pendant shades that floated like miniature UFOs, beaming down on whatever she was chopping. They sat down to have dinner together, reflecting on their recent anniversary, three years since they had said, I do, in October of 1983. At the time, Brian had been 31 and Leanne 23. They heard the sound of a car pulling into the long drive.
Leanne was filled with dread, another gawker. Since they'd moved there, people were drawn to the house, which some said resembled a lit pumpkin when the lights were on at night. It was natural that everyone wanted to know who they were and see their unusual home, and Brian was happy to talk about its unique features, but it was getting to be a bit much.
Brian's mother said they eventually stopped inviting curious strangers inside. After all, they'd moved here to enjoy the peace and quiet of a secluded nook. Despite the curiosity of strangers, the couple felt isolated. They were far from their family, and with the exception of a local restaurant owner, they had few friends in town. When they heard the car turn around in the driveway, they breathed a sigh of relief. They had too much to discuss.
Brian had just been promoted, which meant another move for the couple. Leanne later said, Every year we had something new in our lives. This trend began with a whirlwind romance that started at a Halloween party in 1982. Leanne was dressed as a sheep, and Brian a cowboy. He had no trouble corralling her. Leanne described it as kismet, saying, We knew right away that we were right for each other.
She found Brian intelligent, quiet, and laid back, with a unique sense of humor. Among the noise and excitement of the party, they flirted and exchanged phone numbers. Leanne lived in Connecticut, so at first they had a long-distance relationship. Then, Leanne said Brian, quote, kidnapped her to New Hampshire. After just a month of dating, they moved in together, and they married the following year.
Leanne described Brian as a hard worker. His father said that anything Brian tried, he was very good at, better than I was. As a teenager in rural New Hampshire, Brian played sports, hunted, and fished. He was the captain of his high school baseball team and went on to play hockey in college. From his first summer job, Brian was motivated to make money.
His father said, when he was a kid in high school, he could spend money like it was going out of style. He studied business communication in Massachusetts and settled there. In 1973, at 21, he married his first wife. And in 1974, they had a daughter. Soon after, they divorced. At the time, Brian worked as a collection officer for a loan company.
According to his mother, quote, one of his strongest qualities was collecting. He knew how to get money. Brian's favorite expression was, if their ass is grass, then I'm the lawnmower. After the divorce, he moved back to New Hampshire, where he worked as a mechanic and a car salesman. His mother said, quote, Brian used to say if he didn't own his own business by the time he was 30, he was a failure.
In 1977, at the age of 25, Brian purchased a Snap-on tool dealership with a loan co-signed by his father. He was so successful that he was quickly promoted to regional supervisor. Over the years, he held other jobs before returning to Snap-on as a traveling salesman. He once again climbed to the ranks, this time with Leanne's help. Leanne explained, "He never wanted to be a millionaire, but he wanted to live comfortably."
She described her husband as pretty quiet and laid back, but she also said, quote, he always remembered if someone ran out on a payment. He really knew how to put the thumbscrews down when it came to you pay up. When interviewed later by the Kennebec Journal, Leanne suggested that his intense drive was a possible weakness.
On that crisp fall evening in 1986, the couple was at the dinner table discussing Brian's recent promotion which required them to move to upstate New York. Leanne would take the lead and find a suitable home in the area. They wanted another house on another lake. In addition to work reasons, Brian's mother would later say that the couple had other reasons to move. They felt like they were too far from family in Winthrop, and some of their friends they'd made in the area had also moved away.
On Thursday, November 6th, they departed on their separate journeys during the first snowstorm of the year. Leanne drove to Lake George, New York. She spent that day and the next meeting with real estate agents, looking at houses, and shopping for fabric for a dress she wanted to make. Meanwhile, Brian completed his Thursday sales route. One client said Thursdays were Brian's busiest day.
After a long day of travel and meeting with clients, Brian returned home, greeted only by the indifference of the cats. The package had come in the mail from Leanne's father. He placed it on the kitchen counter, had dinner alone, changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt, and went upstairs. At 7.30 p.m., Brian picked up his office phone. It was Leanne calling from New York. She wanted him to open the package from her father.
The gift was sort of a joke. Brian's favorite baseball team, the New York Mets, had just won the World Series, beating the Red Sox. Leanne's father, an avid Red Sox fan, had mailed two Red Sox t-shirts and a card proclaiming their victory in which he offered condolences for Brian's team's loss. The joke was the denial of the reality. They laughed and talked some more and then said goodbye before their phones clicked back on the hook.
Then, as he did every Thursday night, Brian went back upstairs to do paperwork in his office. Sometime that evening, Sophie heard something downstairs. She raised her head and perked her ears. She looked around and then quietly crept towards the stairs. An intruder had entered the house. This unknown person had very likely walked through an unlocked door.
In his office, surrounded by sales and management awards, Brian was completely absorbed in his work. But something nagged at the corner of his mind. The unwelcome sound of footsteps intruded on his thoughts. Realizing he wasn't alone in the house, Brian got up and left the room to investigate. His office door opened to the loft area at the top of the stairs.
Brian might have looked down at the intruder and saw that they had a gun, or he might have heard a shot before he saw the gun. Did he recognize his attacker, or was he shocked to see a stranger in his home? Either way, he had to think fast. He was trapped. We don't know exactly how the confrontation ensued, but what we do know is that there were at least eight shots fired by the intruder with a small-caliber firearm.
Bullets ricocheted off the slanted ceiling and grazed the natural wood trim on the windows and fell to the ground. Others lodged in the home. One of the bullets hit Brian. It was non-fatal, but he fell down wounded. There was a struggle between Brian and the intruder at the top of the stairs, and Sophie joined in. The cat was kicked hard between the legs, and though she survived, she struggled to walk in the days following.
The intruder not only had a gun, but a knife too, and began stabbing Brian repeatedly in a frenzied attack. Finally satisfied that Brian was dead, the intruder descended the stairs. Brian may have still been alive at that point, but he soon died of blood loss from his wounds. Dark red inched across the teal carpet. The intruder walked out into the cold night air. Their dark form was soon hidden by trees.
Behind them, they left the bright rectangle of the open door. Leanne was over 300 miles away. The nearest neighbors were through dense trees and wild forest. The house on the hill was silent.
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In the early hours of Friday, November 7th, everything was completely still. There was no sign of the attacker or anyone else. Wayne Smith of Smith's Mobile Station in Winthrop wiped his brow, wrench in hand, and looked out the garage door at the road. He'd assumed Brian would have shown up by now, and still expected the familiar truck to wind its way around the road that curved into the service station.
Wayne thought Brian was quiet and pleasant, and seemed well-educated. He'd gotten to know the salesman a bit in the time that he'd been coming to the shop. When interviewed after the murder, Wayne said, Brian didn't hang around the bars and go looking for trouble. He didn't seem the type. Other mechanics on his route had similar claims, saying Brian was a nice guy. Employees at the Goodyear in Augusta said that he always rolled in around the same time each week.
Winn Shepard of Shep's Garage saw Brian every Friday around 2 p.m., but at the end of the day, he still hadn't seen the normally punctual salesman. While local mechanics, going about their normal day, wondered when the snap-on truck would turn into their yard, it remained parked in the driveway of the Dome House on Route 133.
Darkness fell once more. It had been nearly 24 hours since Brian's murder, and again, the house was, quote, lit up like a pumpkin visible to the outside world. If you had walked up the hill and stood outside that Friday night, you would have seen the beautiful, tidy interior through the windows. The cats were startled by the shrill ring of the telephone. It sat there, ringing and ringing. Silence. And then it started back up again.
But no one was there except Brian, and he wasn't moving. But the calls kept coming. It was 8.30 p.m., 24 hours since she'd last spoken to Brian, and Leanne was trying to reach him. She'd found several good candidates for their next home, but the market was hot, and they needed to put in their bid as soon as possible. She wanted him to take a flight down that weekend.
When he didn't pick up, she thought that he might have taken a nap. So she called again later, but no answer. And then again. Still no answer. She called every 30 minutes. And now she was worried. She called their one friend from town, Eric, to see if Brian had stopped into his seafood restaurant, The Sea Galley. But Eric wasn't answering his phone either. Brian was normally home by now, and he knew that Leanne would be calling.
Something wasn't right. It was 11 p.m. Leanne was desperate, so she called the police to check on Brian, at a minimum, to see if his van was parked in the driveway. She feared that he might have gotten into an accident. When Winthrop PD drove up the long, dark driveway to the dome, Brian's snap-on truck was parked there.
And according to the Kennebec Journal, part-time officer Adrian Turcotte found the doors open and the lights on, but no one answered when he yelled to see if anyone was home. He returned to the car and contacted Leanne again, asking permission to enter the home. Panicked, Leanne yelled at the officer to stop wasting time. She demanded they find out what was going on.
Turcock called his supervisor, Winthrop PD Sergeant Kenneth Grimes, who arrived within minutes. He walked up the wooden stairs and entered the home. Kenneth yelled, announcing his presence. There was no answer. He walked around the home, checking each room. Other than the open door, nothing seemed out of place except the sound of his boots.
There was no one downstairs, so he began to climb the narrow black metal spiral staircase in the middle of the room. The fall of each boot reverberated through its frame. As he neared the top of the staircase, his heart sank. He could see dark splatter marks on the wall. As he reached the loft, his fears were confirmed. At 11:30 p.m., Ken found Brian's lifeless body lying in a pool of blood.
Years later, Ken would say, "I remember the details of that evening vividly. It's one of those things that gets imprinted." He went back outside and called the station. Leanne, too, called the station shortly thereafter. She later told a reporter, "They said they found a body in the house. To me, who else could it be? But they wouldn't say specifically that it was Brian." Leanne called her father in Norwalk, Connecticut, and then he called the Winthrop police.
They confirmed that the body they found in the home belonged to his son-in-law, Brian Kowalczyk. Leanne warned the hotel where she'd been staying that there would be a lot of incoming calls for her because her husband had just been killed. A staff member visited her room to offer any help he could, and Leanne asked for a glass of beer. She packed her bags in a hurry to get back to Maine.
In the morning, she called Brian's parents. Years later, she reflected, There is nothing worse in the world than having to tell someone's parents their boy is gone. And I just didn't know what to say. All I kept saying was, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. She then picked up her parents at the airport in Albany and Brian's cousin in Vermont and drove them all back to Maine. Winthrop PD alerted the Maine State Police and they worked together to investigate the scene.
Brian lay where he'd been shot, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. A bullet hole in the wall a few inches above his slumped form was surrounded by blood spatter and tissue. There were obvious signs of a violent struggle. The police said that whoever stabbed him, stabbed him until they were exhausted. Walls and doors were dented by bullets, and eight spent shell casings were found near the body, the farthest 30 feet away.
One bullet was found in the loft near the body. They cut out a 2-foot by 3-foot section of the blood-soaked carpet, including the foam padding underlayment, and took it for evidence. Along with a piece of the ceiling from the adjacent room, a part of the balcony wall, a wall-mounted plaque, and a single hair from a piece of art hung in the loft. According to the Kennebec Journal, fingerprints were found at the scene.
Sophie's injuries were also noted. It appeared she'd been kicked between the legs and she limped pitifully. There was no sign of forced entry. Robbery did not seem to be the motive. Brian was still wearing his Rolex and there was between $500 and $1,600 in cash and checks that were either in his work pants or on the bedroom table.
However, Brian's wallet was missing, but his credit cards weren't used after his death, and Leanne said that Brian didn't carry cash in his wallet. So why take the wallet and nothing else? What was the killer looking for? A small amount of snow clung to the grassy clearing surrounding the house, and the police photographed footprints leading away from it. There were no tire tracks.
The driveway, shielded by the trees, had no accumulated snow so early in the season, and it's unclear if the lack of tracks was an indication to investigators that the killer had come and gone on foot. Police interviewed the Kowalczyk's elderly neighbors across the road, the Brownlees. Their house was 600 feet away from the dome. Police asked Mrs. Brownlee if she had heard any gunshots. She had not.
But she did hear what she thought was a car door slam shut on Thursday night, just before midnight. It was an unusual sound to hear so late, so she looked out the window, but she didn't see anything. She wouldn't have had a clear view to the Kowalczyk home. She knew it was before midnight because she said, quote, My husband looks at wrestling at 12.
The medical examiner estimated the time of death to be very early on Friday morning, just after midnight, an awfully late time of night for Brian to be still working in his office upstairs. The lights had still been burning when police arrived Friday night, suggesting that they had remained on for 24 hours since the evening prior.
Brian had been shot once and stabbed numerous times in the head, abdomen, and chest. He died from blood loss from the combined injuries. When Leanne returned, she found her house taken over by the police. She was upset to find a state trooper wiping his feet on her expensive rug. She made him take off his shoes, just like everyone else who entered her home. She said, I know all of this sounds stupid, but it was my house and it had been violated.
She immediately asked about her cats. She said, quote, The police thought it was odd that here her husband was murdered and she's concerned more about the cats, but that's not the case. The way I look at it, it's bad enough that Brian's gone, but if my cats are gone too, I've lost everything. There's nobody left. My whole family is gone. Sergeant Kenneth Grimes was over his head and he knew it.
This was different from his usual work in a small town with petty crimes. Even the state police called the FBI for a profile of the killer and brought in crime scene experts from Connecticut. Kenneth said that the Maine State Police were, quote, "...really fantastic about taking me under their wing and teaching me. They never got tired of my questions. Every move they made, they explained it to me so I could help educate myself."
Of the hundreds of people questioned, Kenneth himself interviewed about 70. Brian's neighbors, all of the customers on his route, and people in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York. He drove all over New England, picking up every detail he could. It was the first murder in town in decades, and Kenneth said, I hope Winthrop never has another. But if there were, he wanted his officers to be prepared.
Because it was the 80s, police had to address rumors about satanic cult involvement, but there was no indication of it. There were also rumors that Brian or Leanne were having an affair. Soap opera plots circulated, and police pursued every lead they could. Brian's customers, who wondered why he didn't show up on Friday, were questioned.
Neighbors confirmed that Brian's snap-on truck was visible in the driveway during the day on Friday, reinforcing the time of death as Thursday night. Tips were sought from anyone who had driven past the property on Thursday night or Friday. And a week later, on November 13th, a roadblock was set up between 7 p.m. Thursday to 6 p.m. Friday. This way, police could question people who routinely traveled that road.
Stephen Lamb reported for the Morning Sentinel that few details on the investigation had been released, leaving many townspeople worried for their safety. It was later reported that the state of Maine had 21 homicides in 1986, and this was the only one that was unsolved. The townspeople of Winthrop initially feared a killer was on the loose, but as time went on, those fears were forgotten, and people went on with their lives.
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The memorial service for Brian was held in Winthrop at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church. Brian's family came up from New Hampshire, and Leanne's parents drove up from Connecticut. His body was cremated, and it appears that he was taken back to his hometown of Claremont, New Hampshire, though his death certificate indicates otherwise. His obituary directed memorial donations to two charity organizations, Parents of Murdered Children and Guidance in Grievance.
Although some viewed Leanne with suspicion, she had little to gain from Brian's death. The couple's savings and Brian's life insurance payout were small. Since Brian was the breadwinner, Leanne became poorer, not richer, and she had to sell the house. But she continued to live there, though, at least part of the time, until May of 1987, just six months after the murder. Stephen Lamb interviewed her there for the Kennebec Journal the day before she moved.
He found that she radiated nervous energy. Leanne admitted she smoked too many cigarettes and drank too much coke. Throughout the interview, she alternately expressed fear, anger, and confusion. "Without Brian," she said, "I feel as if I'm out of control, that my ballast for stability is gone." With Brian, she went rock climbing and scuba diving. Without him, she was lost.
When asked why she stayed in the house, she replied, This is my house. Brian and I built this from the ground up. I love this house. It's the old west philosophy. You are not going to run me off my land. She said that she was mad as hell when she cleaned up the murder scene and described feeling afraid that the killer was someone she passed by in town or even someone she knew.
She told a reporter how much she loved her late husband and expressed frustration at the rumors circulating around town about her having an affair with their friend Eric. Her grief seemed to include a desire for revenge. She spoke of an eye for an eye and said that, quote, the killer's prized possession should be taken away too, even if it's his three-year-old daughter. Go for it.
Once the house sold, Leanne moved to Norwalk, Connecticut to be near her parents, and she worked in New York City.
Though police looked carefully at Leanne, they ruled her out as the killer because she had an alibi. Initially, Leanne said, I had the fear that at any moment they were going to knock on my door and go, Leanne Kowalczyk, we have a warrant for your arrest. The only thing I think that helped was that the crime scene was so violent that I wasn't big enough to do it. He had to have an adversary or adversaries that were equal to him.
The fact that Leanne was gone at the time of the murder begs the question, was Brian the only intended target? Did the killer choose to strike at this moment, knowing Leanne would be out of town? Or was it just a coincidence? Did Leanne's absence save her life? Meanwhile, Brian's parents speculated that robbery could be the motive, although Leanne said that nothing was missing from the house and that the crime was too violent for just a robbery and then a surprise.
His mother said, I at many times thought it was customer-related. They don't know if he inadvertently crossed someone. They believed that drugs were not involved in their son's death, since Brian didn't use them and rarely drank. His father felt Brian couldn't have done anything wrong and seemed to blame it on the general climate, saying, They have so much criminal activity going in Maine, it's become unreal. Locals were of a different mind.
Kenneth Grimes said it was his first homicide in 15 years on the job, and the Maine State Police detective on the case said, Living in Maine, living in a relatively small community, you just don't think of that happening. Brian's sister, 13 years after the murder in 2000, published a letter in the Kennebec Journal asking the public for tips, and she included a personal email. She wrote,
Somewhere out there, someone thinks that they've gotten away with murder, and so far he has. This is a plea to whomever might know something and doesn't feel comfortable talking to the police. Brian's father died in 1998. His sister, Nancy Jean, said, The death certificate said heart attack, but I think he died of a broken heart because he and my brother were very close.
Seven years after the murder, the Kennebec Journal sent reporter Ann Stifler to Connecticut to interview Leanne. She found the widow smoking Salem Ultralights and listening to New Age music in her condo. Her cat Sophie, the only living witness to the crime, was still with her. During the interview, Leanne spoke to the cat, saying, Please just tell me what happened. For one minute, speak. Tell Mommy who it was or why it happened.
Leann had previously denied that Brian was involved with drugs or any other illegal activity, but seven years later, she said, there's every possible chance. If you sit back and think about it, why else was he killed? She also echoed his mother's earlier suggestions that his murder could have been customer-related. The previous year, when police asked if drugs could be involved in her husband's death, she said, I looked at him and I said yes. She didn't say what changed her mind.
Leanne also said that she contacted Unsolved Mysteries in hopes they would produce an episode on the case, but nothing came of it. At the time, state police detective Tim Doyle said, I would characterize this case today as really being no closer to being solved than it was in November of 1986. Other than fingerprints, it's been hinted at that there is physical evidence in the case that could someday lead to answers. What that evidence consists of is undisclosed.
LeAnn eventually remarried, became an art teacher, and moved to North Carolina. She died of a heart attack in 2010 at age 50. Brian's sister, Nancy Jean, passed in 2018, and Brian's daughter never knew why her father was murdered or who killed him.
Kenneth Grimes, the officer who discovered Brian's body, retired from the force and became an investigator for the Maine Fire Marshals. He drove by the gravel road that led to the empty dome house every day on his way to work, driving Brian's old route between Winthrop and Augusta, past the lake Brian and Leanne sailed on, past, perhaps, the home of a murderer.
Whose footsteps have been left in the snow? Who hated Brian so much that they brutally killed him in his own home? In the farmhouses, trailers, and cottages that lined routes 133 and 41, people talked. Some thought they knew what happened. Others only wondered. Brian and Leanne were outsiders, or people from away, and the townspeople never really knew them.
Perhaps it seemed as though the intruder had followed the Koalchiks to Winthrop and left after the murder. After all, nothing like it had happened since. In real estate photos from last year, the house lies empty, its white and brown interior frozen in 1986. The bullet holes have been covered and the blood-stained teal carpet replaced with a dull beige. The large open central room, now vacant and white, is cold and still.
Leanne's Turkish rug is gone, leaving a bare expanse of tile. The beams creak. The spiral steel staircase emits an occasional groan as it expands and contracts. In January of 2024, a contract on the house closed. The new owners may now be moved in. Did they learn of the property's grisly past?
Further up the drive, you will see the house on a hill, with its round, moss-covered roof and overgrown yard. It sits alone, separated from its neighbors by thick trees that once hid a murderer's dark form. If someone comes forward with new information, the mystery might be solved. But until then, the house keeps its secrets.
If you have any information about the murder of Brian Kowalczyk from November of 1986, please call the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit Central at 207-624-7143. A detailed list of sources and photos can be found at MurderSheTold.com. If you're new here and you're loving Murder She Told, I want to encourage you to hit that follow button so you don't miss an episode. You can find Murder She Told on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for more.
Thank you to Anne Young for her writing, Byron Willis for additional writing and research support, and Samantha Coulthard, Sam Wood, and Amanda Connolly for additional research. If you have a case suggestion, you can email me at hello at murdershetold.com. I'm Kristen Seavey. Thank you for listening.