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For those of you unfamiliar with Bear Brook, this show is a testament to the remarkable and rigorous journalism done by my colleagues here at NHPR. In season three, a private matter. Award winning journalist Jason Moon investigates another New Hampshire mystery. A Christmas tree farmer with dementia disappears, and his wife never reports him missing. What happened? And why was his disappearance never reported? Before we play the episode, be sure to follow Bear Brook on your favorite podcast app. And now, here is the season three premiere. Looking back, the whole thing could have been a hallmark Christmas movie. Or at least, it would have started out like one. It all takes place in the little town of Epsom New Hampshire, population 5,000. And in this little town, on the side of a little mountain, there's a Christmas tree farm. Everyone I knew if you were local in Epsom, you knew of the tree farm. This is Katie Bartochie. In the hallmark movie, she'd play one of the supporting characters, the voice of the town. We always got our Christmas tree there. My family always got their Christmas tree there. My sister's always got their Christmas tree there. Katie grew up on a road that leads to the Christmas tree farm. Every year, she watched cars drive by with freshly cut trees strapped on top. So I'd be like, oh, somebody else got a tree. Somebody else got a tree. And it was like, like people would be killing up and down the road with trees. To get to the tree farm, you take a dirt road through the woods and up the side of the mountain. High enough to make your ears pop. You get to the top of it. And it's just like the weather was always so crazy. I remember every time we went up there, you either like, if it was 50 degrees down where I lived, it was like 20 degrees up there. When you reach the end of the road, the farm is on either side of you. Fields of grass with neat rows of Christmas trees of different heights. And then there's everything you'd expect from a classic New England farm, a stone wall, a barn, and a farmhouse that's older than the constitution. And it's in that farmhouse that the hallmark movies main characters live. Patricia and John Hickey, Patty and Jay. If the tree farm was an institution in Epsom, so were Patty and Jay. Patty was the town's elected welfare officer for more than 30 years. Jay was even more civically involved. Over the course of his life, it seemed like he'd held just about every single post in town government. From the rescue squad to the select board, add to that assistant coach of the local baseball team, which was sponsored by the Christmas tree farm. In the fall, Patty and Jay would hire local kids to help out for the Christmas season. Here's Owen Thomas and Colby Cowlon. I mean, honestly, it wasn't too much. We were just, they had like a little car and they'd just keep that all day, keep us heated and you know, my buddies would just kind of sit there and play games and stuff until a car came up. Sometimes Jay would come out and talk to them. He knew, it seemed like he knew a lot about the trees. He would go and start talking about his blue spruces and he would really get into the work that he was putting in in the summertime to make it all happen and I'll tell you, he's very, very passionate about Christmas trees. The farm was Jay's baby. He don't it since the early 1970s. Patty moved in about a decade later and together they had a blended family of five kids. Jay had a big fluffy mustache that swept down and out on either side of his mouth like two wings taking flight on his face. Patty wore glasses and had long straight hair. She's always got a smile. Always, always, always had a smile on her face. There she'd talk to the wall if you let her. Patty was, he'd put it on Mrs. Claus if you will. Mrs. Claus and the Christmas tree farmer. The movie practically writes itself. Jay and Patty grow old together on McCoy Mountain, surrounded by their blue spruces Christmas trees. They reach their mid-70s. It's just the two of them now. Their kids have long since grown up and moved away. And then things go off script. Jay starts having memory issues. He stops driving. In 2020, he retires from his latest post as the town's zoning compliance officer. Meadow Weissaki worked with Jay in town government at the time. When we noticed the decline, he started withdrawing. I mean, I think that was probably the first thing that I saw was that when you were around him, he was very hesitant to say things to people, like he wasn't quite sure if he was following what was being discussed or that what he was going to say was going to be appropriate. So I think she just kind of shut down. Jay is diagnosed with dementia. Patty becomes his caretaker, which she now has to juggle alongside her role as the town welfare officer. The job involves helping out residents who fall on hard times with loans or other assistance programs. If you suddenly can't afford to pay your heating bill and the debt of winter, Patty was the person to call. She would put her office hours around times that she could bring him in with her so that she could keep track of him and stuff. And I know when we were doing our move from the former office's location to the current office location that he had attended with her help with pack or when she was packing her office. But she had to leave because he kind of wandered off because she couldn't keep track of him really closely and he was out in front of the building kind of wandering around. Most people with dementia will wander at least once. Many will do so repeatedly. Scientists don't know exactly why it happens. But inside the brain of a dementia patient, the nerve cells are dying, taking memories, motor skills, even parts of personality with them. One day a neighbor finds Jay walking around in the snow without shoes. Another time a landscaping worker finds him standing at an intersection more than a mile from the farm, wearing pajamas and slippers. Jay tells the landscaper he needs to get to a meeting at the town offices. Some people start to wonder if Patty is taking on too much, being the town's welfare officer and a caretaker for someone with dementia. It's a lot. And then in March 2024, Jay makes the evening news. He's disappeared. Right now, Epson police are searching for a 76 year old man with dementia. Police think he wandered away from his residence, but the timing in this story. My mom gave Pat a call just to say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. We're going to look for him, like, let us know if there's anything we can do. On the main Facebook group in town, there's an outpouring of concern. People offer prayers. They offer to help in a search. But some people also have questions. Something is off about the timeline of the whole situation. The news report says the last time Jay was seen was in October 2023. So why are the police just now getting involved in March 2024? Five months later. And then there was the way Patty was acting. The news of Jay's disappearance broke on a Friday. The next day, Saturday, just so happened to be the annual Meet the Candidate's Forum at the Epson Public Library. Patty was running for re-election as public welfare officer, so she was slated to give a speech. But not everyone expected she actually would, given that police were actively searching for her missing husband. Katie Bartochis says her mom was at the meeting. She called Katie as soon as it ended. She said you're not going to believe that. Pat was actually there. And I said no way. Did she say anything about Jay? No, nothing. She said that she's re-running for welfare coronary and she's going to play it by ear whether she continues on or not, like year after year. But she did a speech and she was put together and she was, nothing was, nothing seemed out of place besides the fact that she didn't mention anything about Jay. Another person who was at the meeting told me the same thing. It wasn't that Patty was acting strange. It was that she was acting strangely normal. Around the same time, a woman named Kathy O'Mara sees the news that Jay is missing. Kathy was the Hickey family's longtime babysitter. She was close with them. She decides to go check on Patty. There's a bad feeling about this. How could five months have passed before Jay was reported missing? When Kathy arrives, police are there searching the Christmas tree farm with cadaver dogs. And I just stood outside and talked to her and I really just wanted to look her in the face and say, Pat, what happened? What's going on? Because just knowing someone for that long, you just, I knew something wasn't right. But what did she say to you? It was very evasive. She's just like, yeah, you know, but that's very calm. Like she's always been like that kind of like, yeah, I know, Jay's missing. But Kathy says even for Patty, calm as she may be, it was an odd moment to be so relaxed. If you think about it, you're standing there talking to someone I hadn't seen her in person for a while, and then like people are walking all around your property with dogs and police and she's just very like, yeah, matter of fact, yeah, she's missing. I'm like, well, where is he, Pat? Where is he, Pat? The police have the same question. The older I get, the more I am looking for truly lovable closet staples that I know I will reach for just as often next year as I do right now. I want a closet that doesn't need constant updates or replacements, just high quality clothes that last, especially the kind with tags that say 100%. 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Police are on the way. Using smart AI cameras, live US-based agents help deter intruders in under 30 seconds. Don't just record a break in, stop it from ever happening. 30 seconds response time requires monitoring plan with outdoor protection starting at 4,999 a month. Visit simplysafe.com/licenses for alarm-license information. I first learned Jay Hickey was missing a couple years ago in May 2024. About three months after the news broke about his disappearance, someone reached out to me with a tip. A lot of strangeness is starting to emerge, they wrote. Though I gotta be honest, to me, the whole thing seemed sad, but not all that unusual. An older man with dementia wanders off in the woods of New Hampshire. New Hampshire has one of the oldest populations in the country. Dementia rates are on the rise, and there are a lot of woods around here to get lost in. And as far as the missing man's elderly wife, Patty, she could be in decline too, tragic, but again not unexpected. But then I made a few calls, which led to a few more. And the deeper I got, the more I realized the tipster was right. A lot of strangeness did emerge. It started when I got my hands on a recording of Patty's police interrogation. This is Chris Elfick with the New Hampshire State Police. It is Wednesday, February 28th, 2024 at 118 pm. I'm at the Epson Police Department with Lieutenant James Kier, and Patricia but Patty. Yes, okay. Hickey, right? Yes. And how do you study the last name? H-I. At the Epson Police Department, population six officers, Patty sits down with Lieutenant James Kier, and a state police detective named Chris Elfick. It's two days before police announced Jay's disappearance to the public. It's okay if I record our conversation, right? Yes. And you're here on your own accord. You drove yourself here? Yes. We're in the conference room. If at any time you're like, "I want to leave." Free to do so. Okay. Just, uh, I don't know the way out of here. So, flew away. I've got a good luck with that. Remember, Patty worked in Epson Town Government for three decades. She's been to the police station before. And maybe because of that, she doesn't sound all that nervous. She even cracks a joke with the cops. Just a few minutes into their chat, Patty mentions she didn't eat lunch, and Lieutenant Kier offers her some almonds. Thank you, Almonds. Yeah. I forgot some almonds. And some water? They're not sealed. No, that's okay. Okay. Um, because I don't think you're trying to poison me so I won't say it. No, no, no. But, uh, I'm. A poison joke. With the cops questioning her about her missing husband. Maybe it seemed like the perfect icebreaker in Patty. had his head. After some more chitchat, Detective Elfick of the New Hampshire State Police gets down to it. Sure. So when's the last time you saw Jay? I see him every day up here. Okay, let me think. I have to work backwards here. See him coming. This is February. I thought he was at his brother's all winter. So it was definitely in October of 23. Patty explains that by the previous October in 2023, Jay was feeling humiliated by his dementia. He didn't want all the Christmas tree customers to see him that way. He wanted to get away. So he said he wanted to go down to visit his brothers. So I'm like, "Okay, so do you want me to call them and make arrangements for transportation?" He said, "No, I'll do that when I'm here." I said, "Are you sure? Because I can call them and talk to them while you're here." Sure. And he said, "No, I'll take care of it. Don't worry about it." So I said, "Okay." And I wasn't possible if he had the decision about something. I wasn't the type of person to think that I should be the one in charge. Right. So at what point did he leave or did you come home and he wasn't there one day? I came home and he was not there and I figured that he went with his brother. They came and picked him up. Patty says she figured Jay was just at his brother's house out of state. Only by this point, Patty knows the police have figured out Jay is not with his brothers. So if he's not with his brothers, which he's not with his brothers, where do you think he is? Good question. I don't have a clue. And actually, even though I was like, you know, the dogs, and I'm like, I don't want them to find him dead. I want him alive somewhere, but I don't know. If he was to arrange a car service or whatever, how would he pay for it? Do you guys have credit cards or how would he give me his credit card? Oh, I don't know. Years ago, I said, I don't want this. But he had a stash of cash somewhere. Does he have a phone? This is his phone. He didn't take it. Patty is saying she came home one day to find her husband of 40 odd years gone. The one with dementia who's been wandering can't drive and who left his phone behind. And assumes he just left to visit his brother out of state. Which is why Patty is not even the one who called to report Jay missing. So you haven't talked to him since October. No, haven't seen him ever heard from him in October. Have you been concerned about where he is at all? Well, not until lately, because I thought he was with his brothers. But would it be unlike him to not talk to you for all this time? Considering the amount of time that he sleeps and he's not like with the probe, you know, not here and now. I just figured he was spending those few minutes with his brothers. Have you ever called the brothers to check on him at all? Just when we were trying to when the police came to look for him? Okay. But I didn't because I. He taught me a long time ago not to be pushy about stuff. He's an adult, he makes his decisions, some decisions we make together. And yeah, I could have called him, but most of the time he's sleeping. So I quit bothering, you know? Have you ever thought, what was your plan, did you ever plan as in like it gets to a certain month and he's not here and I haven't heard or seen from him? Like maybe I should start reporting this? Well, no, because I thought he was with his brothers. Right, but if you haven't seen him or heard from him, when you guys haven't had these big periods of separation since 1980, you haven't thought like, okay, if it comes to next October and it's been a whole year that I haven't seen or heard from him, like maybe I should start figuring out what to do. Well, you guys are doing that now. But that's not because you called us. But what point would you have called me and said, hey, my husband is. Oh, I see. Well, that's a good question because he. a couple of reasons. Because he told me not to talk about it, which obviously now legally I have to. And what's the other thing? Oh, time flies. Like. I don't know exactly what the police officers were thinking in this moment, but I'll tell you what I thought. What the hell is going on? Usually, when someone's spouse is missing and their story about it doesn't make sense, I might assume the worst. But in this case, the story was so bizarre, I didn't know what to think. What was going on in Patty's mind? Could she really believe what she's saying? Did Jay wander off and Patty just didn't report it? Would that be a crime? And where is Jay? Was there any chance he was still alive? Or is his body somewhere up on the Christmas tree farm? I was beginning to fall down a rabbit hole. And at the bottom of it were a bunch of people who'd already been down there for months. The whole thing is like just a bizarre mystery. It's like all these questions that the town has, the community has are just like unanswered. And just like the original tipster warned me, the search for answers would only get stranger. You haven't been at any legal trouble, right Pat? Never. You've never had the legal system, right? I was on a jury one time. Good feel. Honey, let's take a walk up into the woods. Let's see what we can find. We can get hit over the head with a shovel and buried. My initial thought was she killed him because that was what I always thought would happen. No way, no way. They have no idea how much we love each other. Let me just ask him if he broke a bone or. Okay, now my spirit guys are telling me he had a concussion. She was after me because she didn't like the toilet paper I had ordered for the office. Well, what kind of toilet paper did you order? As a search planner, I know I will probably get more resources for I'm missing two-year-old search than I'm missing 72-year-old search. I kind of revered back to like that bear brook saying like, what if we were to just come across something? You know, and I wrote down and she said, you know, I found him. From New Hampshire Public Radio and Bearbrook, I'm Jason Loon and this is a private matter. That was the season three premiere of Bearbrook. If you want to hear more of this gripping investigation, follow Bearbrook on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Looking for a horror podcast that is in murder to get through, then check out another f-ing horror podcast. Our show where paranormal and true crime stories collide with unfiltered commentary. I'm Monique Stanchas and I may be trading. Each week Monique and I share one paranormal story and one true crime case. From unexplained phenomena to true tales of murder and mayhem. We find the stories you haven't heard before and research them obsessively to bring them to life. Follow or watch another f-ing horror podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Hank joined BJ's wholesale club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. 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