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You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hello everyone and welcome back to Into the Dark with Peyton Moreland. Hi, it's me. I'm Peyton and if you are watching this on YouTube, can you please right now just give this video a quick thumbs up and turn on notifications. And if you are listening, hi, and you can give me a five-star review. That would mean so, so much to me.
Now, before we get into today's case, I'm going to do my 10 seconds real quick. And I'm going to try to keep it lighthearted. So Garrett and I went and saw Anyone But You in the movie theaters. That's the one with Sidney Sweeney and Glenn Powell.
And that's a whole different conversation. The drama between Sidney Sweeney and Glenn Powell rumor has a, he actually broke up with his girlfriend since the premiere of the movie. I'm pretty sure she's still engaged though, but they definitely had chemistry. Like I think that's safe to say.
It was good. Like, it was good for a rom-com. But I have to say, they just don't make romantic comedies like they did in the 2000s anymore. I mean, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, John Tucker Must Die. I mean, these are movies that are so good. And I don't know if they'll be able to top it. And I don't know why they can't make them like that anymore. I don't know where the difference is. But they just...
Don't make them like the 2000s comedies. That is what I want back. But Anyone But You was still good and I think just like worth the fun watch. That being said, let's get into today's episode. This episode includes discussions of murder, suicide, sexual assault, including the sexual assault of a minor and the mutilation of a corpse. So please listen with care.
Now, there's this trope that comes up in a lot of scary stories in horror movies. The idea that certain places are inherently evil or demonic.
And if you find yourself in one of those malevolent places, you might be moved to do something horrific, something you'd never do under normal circumstances. I mean, think of The Shining, how Jack Torrance went on a murderous spree after the Overlook Hotel drove him mad, or every haunted house movie where one of the residents acts strangely thanks to their home's ghostly influence.
Now, generally we understand that this is just a narrative device from fiction. You won't really turn into an evil murderer just because you set foot in the wrong place, right? Well, today's story could be evidence that there are parts of the world that are steeped in evil. And if you're unfortunate enough to live in one of these regions, you might find yourself pulled into a dark mystical world that you can't fully understand.
because i'm talking about a small city in massachusetts that might be a home for inexplicable malicious spiritual forces throughout this city's long history mysterious murders kept happening there were always open questions around the killer's motives and methods given that the city is said to be a hub of demonic supernatural activity you have to wonder were these killers
Ordinary people? Did they just coincidentally commit their crimes in this famously wicked region? Or did they succumb to some larger malevolent evil power?
So let's start this story on October 13th, 1979, when a woman's body was discovered under the bleachers at a high school in Fall River, Massachusetts. Now, Fall River sits about an hour south of Boston. It's right on the border with Rhode Island, nestled between two rivers.
And since the city had been founded over 150 years before, it had a rich history. Tourists probably saw it as a quaint historic gem. But as the newly discovered body showed, Fall River had a dark underbelly. Sex workers and drug dealers fought brutal battles for turf. And sure enough, the police identified the dead woman as a 17-year-old sex worker. Her name was Doreen Levesque.
And whoever killed her had been absolutely brutal. Doreen had been tied up with fishing wire, tortured and sexually assaulted. A post-mortem exam suggested she'd been beaten with rocks and the killer had rammed a baseball bat through her body. They stabbed her in the head before crushing her skull with a blunt object. The police also found evidence that a single perpetrator couldn't have done all of this. It seemed multiple people had worked together to kill her.
This suggested she wasn't murdered by a client. Instead, some group had killed her for unknown reasons. Now trying to solve this murder, a little digging revealed that Doreen worked for a pimp named Carl Drew, and Carl was in the midst of a territory dispute with another pimp. But beyond that, the detectives didn't have many leads as to who might have killed poor Doreen or why they were so brutal.
The trail might have gone cold there, except just a little over a month later, detectives found a second body. Like Doreen, her head was bashed in by a blunt object. And prior to her death, she'd been a sex worker. The victim, Barbara Raposa, had been reported missing on November 8th. Her father filed the initial report, but her boyfriend, Andy Maltis, approached the police too a few days later.
He wanted to know if they'd found her yet or if they had any leads. At the time, in mid-November, the detectives didn't have anything to share, but he kept following up, repeatedly asking if they'd had any breaks in the case. Some reports suggest that in one of their conversations, Andy suggested he was afraid she'd been hurt by some kind of satanic cult.
The police didn't take that last detail too seriously, even when Andy, Barbara's boyfriend, added that Doreen, the first victim, was also part of the same cult. That wasn't all they had in common, though. When Barbara's corpse was discovered on January 26th, 1980, her injuries were strikingly similar to Doreen's.
She too was bound with fishing wire. Before her murder, she'd been tortured and sexually assaulted. And she'd died when someone had smashed her head in with a rock. The killer left her in a remote wooded area outside of Fall River.
Given the similarities in their causes of death and the states of the bodies, the killings had to be related. And when a third victim was discovered the following spring, it seemingly confirmed the authorities' suspicions. There was apparently a serial killer operating in Fall River. Now, this third victim, 20-year-old Karen Martston, said,
had already been linked to the homicides even before she turned up dead. When Andy spoke to the police about Barbara's disappearance, he suggested they talk to a few people of interest, including Karen. He said she was also a part of that alleged satanic cult. During her interrogation, she admitted she was there when Doreen was killed. She knew who did it. She was afraid to name the culprit because he might kill her too.
After a little prodding, she said the murderer was Satan. Not the actual devil, but a pimp who went by that nickname. Karen refused to tell the detective Satan's real name, but eventually the police figured it out anyway. It was Carl Drew, the same pimp Doreen worked for before her homicide.
Karen told the police before she died that she and Satan had killed Doreen as a part of some occult ritual. Now she was worried about her personal safety, but also about the state of her soul. So she begged the police to drop her off at a nearby church. She needed spiritual guidance from the clergy. The investigators actually honored her request, but after they pulled away from the front doors of St. Mary's,
They never saw Karen alive again. Less than 24 hours after the police dropped Karen off, a loved one reported her missing. When the authorities finally found her two months later, it was too late. Karen had been murdered. But it's hard to say if she was killed the same way as Doreen and Barbara. The police never found her body, just parts of it.
Investigators recovered pieces of her skull in a forest near Fall River, but the majority of her remains were never recovered. This was just a few months after she told them about the ritual murders she committed with Satan. Now, as wild as our whole story about occultism and human sacrifice sounds, the police believed her. To understand why, we need to look at the cultural context at the time of these murders.
In the 1980s and 90s, the so-called Satanic Panic swept through the United States. Countless people, from concerned parents to government officials, believed that Satan-worshiping cultists were abusing and killing children as part of their evil rituals.
now there were a lot of political and societal factors that helped spark these fears i don't have time to get into all of that here but suffice it to say many people believed that satanic cults were everywhere operating right under ordinary people's noses and numerous people came forward claiming their neighbors friends parents or other caretakers had assaulted or tortured them or their children all in satan's name
In light of these accusations, it seemed like any school or babysitter or daycare center could be a secret front trying to trick parents. Then behind closed doors, they'd commit unspeakable crimes against children. And another violent torturous cult had apparently made its way to Fall River, Massachusetts. Three women had paid with their lives, at least if you take all of these accounts at face value.
It's worth mentioning many, many of the claims of ritual satanic abuse were later proven false.
definitively. Some of the allegations came from impressionable young people who'd been coaxed to make false accusations. And some of those alleged victims lied on purpose. They wanted to cash in on the hot new trend of satanic panic. They landed book deals and became famous, and all they needed to do was falsely accuse an innocent friend or acquaintance. Today, the satanic panic is largely known as a horrible miscarriage of justice.
But so far as Carl Drew and the Fall River homicides were concerned, the satanic sacrifices seemed to kind of be the real deal. This wasn't just another case of someone finger pointing in a memoir or on a press tour. Three women were really dead, real victims of brutal murder.
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And she wasn't the only alleged witness to these deadly mystical ceremonies. Karen's girlfriend was a 17-year-old girl named Robin Murphy. Robin also worked as a pimp, sometimes alongside Carl. And after the third murder of her girlfriend, Robin told the Fall River police that she was the one who'd killed Karen. And she did it at Carl's bidding. She said Carl was the head of a Satan-worshipping cult in the area.
The group was a tool he used to keep sex workers in line. If any of them tried to leave him or go to the police, he'd threaten them with mystical consequences. And many women, including Robin, were so terrified that they'd do anything he asked. According to Robin, Doreen was originally part of the cult, our first victim.
But one day Doreen let on that she wanted to quit doing sex work. Carl couldn't have that, so he sacrificed Doreen to the devil as punishment.
Robin knew because she was also there for the murder. She said Karen participated in the ceremony too. And later, she decided she wanted to leave the Wicked Cult after talking to police. Of course, that wasn't allowed so far as Carl was concerned. He thought Karen knew too much for him to let her go free. So he told Robin to help him kill her.
Robin claimed that she drove her girlfriend into the woods, and when Karen realized what was happening and tried to fight back, she grabbed Karen's hair and dragged her out of the car. Robin and Carl then beat her with rocks until Carl ordered Robin to slit Karen's throat, and Robin complied. After this, they did more to the body that I'm not going to get into, but yet again, Robin said the whole gruesome ordeal was tied to the satanic rituals Carl had performed.
She said that while he mutilated Karen's body, Carl talked in a strange language that she didn't understand. Then he carved symbols into her chest. And unlike other people with their false allegations of satanic abuse, Rob
Robin didn't seem to have a good reason to lie. Her accusations wouldn't sell books or make her famous. In fact, they got Robin in trouble because she admitted to helping kill Karen. Robin was charged with second-degree murder. Even though she accepted a plea bargain in exchange for testifying against her collaborators, she was still sentenced to life in prison.
Now, Robin was the star witness in Carl Drew's trial, but she wasn't the only one. Other sex workers took the stand to talk about how they too had been in the cult. They told jurors gruesome stories about the satanic rituals they witnessed or even participated in. And it was all so shocking. When Carl testified, he insisted he had nothing to do with the homicides. He also said he wasn't part of a cult and he didn't worship Satan. His
His protests just weren't as compelling as the stories about bloody occult ceremonies, though. The jurors found Drew guilty of Karen's murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison. And as for the second victim, Barbara Raposa, Robbins said she'd witnessed that murder, too, except she said Barbara's boyfriend, Andy, was guilty.
According to Robin, one evening she got high with Andy and they drove to a restaurant to pick Barbara up. As the evening went on, a fight broke out between Barbara and Robin. Then Andy drove Barbara into the woods, had sex with her, and then killed her.
He hit her with a rock until he caved in her skull. But when it was Andy's turn to tell his side of the story, he pointed the finger back at Carl. He said he saw Carl beat Barbara to death, except he witnessed this during a prophetic dream. Carl said angels had granted him the vision. I don't know what's in the water in this town, but they really should check it.
Later, he described to police exactly how Barbara was killed and walked them through the crime scene where the homicide took place. His descriptions were eerily accurate, but this time around, investigators didn't buy into the supernatural explanation. They concluded that Andy was probably the real killer, that he'd murdered Barbara in a fit of jealousy. Then he told this wild story about an angelic prophecy and this occult to try to cover his tracks.
Thanks in part to Robin's testimony, he was found guilty of Barbara's murder. And sadly, no one was ever convicted in the first homicide, that of Doreen. Still, if you believe Robin's account, justice was served. Doreen's killer, Carl Drew, was never going to go free again.
But Drew's conviction left a bunch of unanswered questions. And the answers people came up with were wild, to say the least. See, some supernatural enthusiasts thought it was no mistake that these gruesome murders happened in Fall River, Massachusetts.
The town was near a region called the Bridgewater Triangle. That refers to the, you guessed it, triangular region that lies between three Massachusetts towns. Those are Rehoboth, Abington, and Freetown.
It's okay if you're not super familiar with Massachusetts geography. All you need to know is that it is a pretty small slice of the state's southwestern corner. It runs right up against the Rhode Island border and each edge of the triangle is between 15 and 25 miles long. So we're talking really small.
Fall River itself isn't actually in the triangle, but it is right on the outskirts, close enough that it might be influenced by the region's mysterious energies. Particularly given that some people think the triangle is much larger than the official borders suggests.
Like the more famous Bermuda Triangle, the Bridgewater Triangle is known for the eerie things that happen within its borders. There's a lot of undeveloped woodland and within those forests there's a cave that often glows with a strange inexplicable light.
and a sawmill where, according to legend, one proprietor made a deal with the devil to help him operate the facility. The whole idea of the Bridgewater Triangle comes from a book by Loren Coleman called Mysterious America.
Lauren wrote that this region is a hotbed for UFO sightings and eerie disappearances. Visitors have spotted Bigfoot and other mythical beasts in these woodlands. And Lauren described one strange event called Yellow Day. It was centuries ago. The skies above the Bridgewater Triangle turned yellow. There was no clear cause for the strange coloration, and no one ever figured out what that light was.
Just one more entry in a long list of strange events in the area. So maybe it was the triangle's reputation that attracted Karl Drew. If he wanted to establish a cult in a mystically active region, Fall River would have been a natural choice.
Apparently, there were already some rumors that the town was the ideal spot for satanic rituals and sacrifices. There were campgrounds in the woods outside of town, and these sites had stone fireplaces. And the local rumor went that these weren't ordinary fire pits. They would also double as altars for human sacrifice. Plus, police once found a wooden cross with straps attached to it in the woods outside of Freetown.
They figured maybe someone was tied to the cross, maybe for some kind of ritual or something. Of course, this was just speculation, which didn't come to light until after Carl's arrest.
So we can debate how true these stories about satanic altars and torture crosses are. But frankly, it didn't matter if the Bridgewater Triangle's magical energies were real, or if anyone ever performed occult rituals in the woods. If Carl believed these accounts, that might be enough to spur him to try and make a deal with the devil. And all of this because even before Doreen, Barbara, and Karen were killed in this weird cult satanic killings,
mysterious violent crimes often happened in this town, the most famous of which might be the killing of Andrew and Abby Borden. That's right, the parents of Lizzie Borden. She became infamous after she was accused of hacking her father and mother to death with an axe on August 4th, 1892. Again, I don't know what's in the water here.
Now, contrary to popular belief, Lizzie was never convicted of her parents' murder. She was charged, but the courts found her not guilty. And who knows, maybe she really wasn't. Perhaps something more demonic was at play. Particularly because 60 years before the Borden's double homicide, on December 21st, 1832, a woman named Sarah Cornell was found hanged outside of town. At first, investigators thought she died of suicide.
But when they searched her personal effects, they found a note that said, if I should be missing, inquire of the Reverend Mr. Avery of Bristol. He will know where I am.
The letter was dated on December 20th, one day before she was found dead. Even more alarming was Sarah was pregnant and her loved ones all suggested that she'd been having an affair with Reverend Avery, the same local minister she named in her note. He worked in a parish just across the river in Bristol, Rhode Island.
And if that wasn't alarming enough, investigators also found several letters that Sarah had exchanged with the Reverend. He gave her advice on how to perform an abortion by consuming a toxic oil. And the dosage he recommended would have killed her if she'd followed his instructions. Okay, you guys, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that doesn't work. You still aren't sleeping. You still hurt and you're still stressed out.
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When she failed to drink the poison, he must have just taken matters into his own hands and pinged her.
But during his trial, the pastor maintained his innocence. He even convinced a whole bunch of Sarah's friends to testify for the defense. Five separate women said they'd heard Sarah make comments about taking her own life and framing the Reverend for her murder. So in light of all of this, the public was pretty split on the question of Avery's guilt. Some thought Sarah had killed herself out of spite. Others thought Avery's story was too wild. He had to be guilty of murder.
The jurors ultimately acquitted him, but his reputation was destroyed. He ended up having to leave the state to get away from all of the rumors and suspicion.
Now, nobody knows if Reverend Avery really killed Sarah or if she took her own life or if something else had happened. But it's kind of eerie that this pattern just keeps repeating itself in Fall River. First, you'd have a mysterious death, then a highly publicized trial, followed by a controversial verdict. Happened with Sarah, then the Borden family, then even with Doreen, Barbara, and Karen. But let's look at this with some skepticism.
So far as the Bridgewater Triangle's mystical history goes, it doesn't go back very far. Like I said, before the whole idea that this region of Massachusetts had some kind of magical energy came from a book, Mysterious America by Lauren Coleman, which was published in 1983. That's three to four years after the murders of Doreen, Barbara, and Karen.
There isn't very much documented evidence that anyone saw Fall River or the surrounding area as particularly magical prior to Mysterious America's release. Now, the book suggests that legends about the Bridgewater Triangle go back centuries. Lauren writes that the indigenous people saw the land as particularly powerful and also as the source of malevolent energies.
But those references are vague and brief, and Lorne didn't provide many other examples of supernatural events in the triangle. It's possible that he looked at these six murders, which took place over the course of 150 long years, and imposed a tidy narrative after the fact. The stories about dark magic in the Bridgewater Triangle may have been a way to retroactively make a handful of senseless homicides make sense, to make them part of something bigger, something scarier.
Particularly because the accounts about Carl Drew and his satanic cult really started to fall apart after his trial. And let me explain. Carl was convicted largely on the strength of Robin Murphy's testimony, right? She told the jury all sorts of wild stories about this alleged satanic ritual, the horrific murders they committed. Then in 1985, five years after her conviction, she revealed that she'd lied about everything.
Now, Robin said, there were no occult rituals or human sacrifices. She didn't even know if Carl was responsible for the three homicides. Previously, she claimed she'd witnessed or participated in them, and now she said she didn't know a thing about any of the murders.
Robin explained that in 1980, she was angry at Carl and Andy and she wanted them to get sent to prison, especially because Andy had sexually assaulted her when she was a child. Robin wanted him to pay and she needed Carl out of the way because she feared he'd retaliate against her if she spoke up. So she made up a story inspired by all the satanic panic accounts that had been flooding the news. It was guaranteed to get them locked away. And sure, that meant she also had to go to prison for a murder she didn't commit.
But Robin later explained that in 1980, she was in a dark place in her life and she wasn't thinking about the future or about the consequences she'd have to deal with. She just wanted to destroy Carl and the others, even if she ended up destroying herself in the process.
And I need to add that her conviction hasn't been overturned and neither has Carl's. And I do need to add that it's not like Robin was the only witness that came forward about this satanic cult. Multiple people talked to police about this. As of this recording, Carl Drew is still in prison, as is Robin, and the third culprit, Andy, has passed away behind bars.
Now, I don't know if one or all of them did it or what could have motivated them if they did. I will say officially all of the original convictions still stand. That means that in the eyes of the law, Barbara and Karen were killed by different men and for different reasons. And Doreen's murderer hasn't been brought to justice. But it seems strange to say these very similar homicide, which occurred in quick succession, were all unrelated.
So if you don't accept that the murders were satanic or occult in some way, that suggests something else linked these three crimes. That may mean the women all fell victim to the same serial killer, or they got mixed up in something else, something we still don't know about yet.
So I'll end on this thought. I hope justice is served, whatever that may mean in this case. In the meanwhile, it's important not to let a narrative that sounds good outweigh the truth. Evil, cursed lands with demonic energies, they make for good horror movies. But we shouldn't let wild speculation stand in the way of good evidence-based police work. Sometimes true justice means embracing the messiness and the lack of narrative tidiness.
That's part of real life. And that is the history of Fall River and the supposed Bridgewater Triangle.