S1, Ep. 1 | Hide and Seek

If you're a fan of the kinds of deeply reported true crime stories we bring you on Bearbrook, I think you'll love the Drilled Podcast. Reported and hosted by a team of investigative journalists, it digs into a different sort of crime, the climate crisis. Drilled has dug into a variety of climate crimes over the years from the suppression of climate science to the repression of climate protest in the many courtroom dramas along the way. Their latest season, Carbon Cowboys, is a collaboration with the intercept Brazil that follows an ethanol kingpin from Iowa to the Amazon and digs into the same crime in both places, land grabbing. Follow Drilled on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening now. Three decades ago, a young woman named Angie Dodge is found brutally murdered in Idaho Falls. Police put a man behind bars, but as the years pass, doubts emerge about whether the real killer was ever caught. That's when Angie's own mother embarked on a decades-long mission to uncover the truth. Listen to the snare, a new series from ABC Audio. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. You know those A/B's movies where a bunch of kids wander the neighborhood on bicycles and then stumble into a mystery? The story starts kind of like that. Growing up, there was probably a good two or three dozen kids that lived in the park and we just roamed the place like we own the place. That's Jesse Morgan. In the movie version of this story, he'd probably be the leader of the group, the scrappy one, the Corey Feldman. The way that trailer parks work, I mean there's a lot of people that come in and go out. I mean, I was one of the few kids that moved in when I was two and moved out when I was 18. In the summer of 1985, Jesse was 11 years old. It was the year the Nintendo came to North America. New Coke hit the shelves and Calvin and Hobb started running in newspapers. That year, Jesse and his friends came up with a game. It was basically hide and seek, except the seeker rode around on a four wheeler. All the kids would hide in the last one that got found would be able to ride the four wheeler, just do that over and over and we played all summer long. The trailer park where Jesse grew up, it's in a town so small that half of its main street is technically in another village. And right next to the trailer park, covering more than half of the entire town, is 15 square miles of tall red pines and swapy tangled forest. Bearbrook State Park. We were able to roam because we weren't in a city. My parents weren't worried so much about me because they just figured I was over there or over there. There was only so many places to go when we were kids. And one day, in the middle of this game, something strange happened. Jesse was riding the four wheeler, his friends, Scott and Keith were supposed to be hiding and then one of them gave himself away by yelling out. I believe it was Keith who said that he found a barrel, just out in the woods. You know there was a barrel out there. The barrel was a blue 55 gallon steel drum. It was covered up with a lid but whoever closed it hadn't gotten a tight seal. Something was squeezing through underneath the top. It was a plastic bag. Scott and Keith both got off the four wheeler and Keith was like trying to pull the top of the barrel off. And when he got the edge of the tarp off, we got hit with the smell of rotten milk. The kids weren't really sure what to make of this. So they did the only thing a group of 11 year old boys could think to do. They kicked it over. When we knocked the barrel over, the top came open a little more but we didn't see into it or anything. We saw something white was starting to drizzle out of the top of the barrel. And again, I'm thinking it's rotten milk. And then they left. They rode away on the four wheeler without ever looking inside the barrel. That was it. So that was we left. This is the moment where the story stops being like an 80s movie. Jesse and his friends walked away from the mystery. Had they looked inside the barrel, what they would have found were two bodies. Heavily decomposed, partially dismembered. This moment in the woods is the first in a case where every convention about how true crime stories usually unfold is upended. Where everything about how a murder investigation is supposed to work happens in reverse. Where each break in the case seems to raise more questions than it answers. It's the first clue that this story is not going to go the way you think it is. How does an entire family just go missing? This is the story of a serial killer. Police would come to know as the chameleon. I'm sure she thought. I have to believe that she thought. The story of victims, some of them well remembered, some of them nameless. What grandmother let this happen or what neighbor or what bus driver or you know, I mean, where were all of you, you know, I mean, I, where were you, you know. And it's the story of a frustrating investigation that after decades of failure led to a forensic breakthrough that has forever changed the science of solving murders. I mean, this is the biggest step forward for solving crime since the discovery of DNA itself. This is Bearbrook. I'm Jason Moore. I am not a crime reporter or I wasn't until I discovered this story. I first learned about the Bearbrook murders in late 2015 when I was assigned to cover a press conference about the case. I'd only been living in New Hampshire for about six months. I didn't know anything about the case. At the time, I was more concerned with covering the New Hampshire presidential primary. The week before I was being crushed by a throng of other reporters while trying to follow Hillary Clinton down a hallway. Aside from the primary, New Hampshire is pretty quiet. There isn't the same urgency to news that there is in some other places. It's the sort of state where a rogue bear can and has dominated a news cycle. So when I learned that in 1985, bodies were discovered only 20 minutes or so from the NHPR newsroom and that police still hadn't identified them 30 years later. It stuck with me. How is that possible with all of the DNA testing and modern forensic techniques? How could they not even know who the victims are? After that news conference, I filed a short story for the newsroom and went back to my usual beat. But I never forgot about the bear broke case. It became a kind of side project, something to look into when I wasn't sitting at a town hall meeting or covering the state legislature. And one of the first things I wanted to learn more about was the town where the bodies were found. The town where Jesse Morgan, who found the barrel as a kid, grew up. A town with a population just shy of 4,300. You got it? All right. All right. Allens town New Hampshire. We were only going to be there a few years. And then he started the business and life went on and before you know it. Jesse's parents, Anne and Kevin Morgan, moved to Allens town in the 1970s into a trailer park called Bearbrook Gardens. The Morgan's have been married a long time, but not exactly finishing each other's sentences, but they do have a way of talking at the same time. I mean, the only secrets would be behind the walls of the homes. But you know, to socialize and we used to have neighborhood parties. You heard things. The neighborhood was always invited. And I would say we partied a little more than I would like my kids. We heard things that would go around the park. In Bearbrook Gardens, the Morgan's were the center of gravity for the community. They threw the big barbecues, had all the neighborhood kids over for sleepovers. We were all just friends. And we helped each other, I can remember helping people cut wood. And Eddie, I mean, you would go up to the top. On a hard return until it went to Stemble all up, there was nothing in the winter. And you know, none of the cars in the neighborhood would start. Except for maybe one car we'd go and remember going over to our friend's house. And that one guy would start all like us, we could have worked. You know, we were all just young families. We didn't have money, you know? The morgons don't live in Allen's town anymore, but they remember it finally. I think in their minds they picture it like a postcard of country living. But that's not exactly how everyone remembers it. So I was saying your name, Robert. My pleasure. My pleasure. Yeah, it would be pronounced different. What is it, French? Ron Mont Pleasure was a police officer in Allen's town for 23 years. It was, it was, it was on a Saturday afternoon, warm Saturday afternoon. Now people would start drinking about 10 o'clock in the morning. Ron wears a beanie. He's got a big laugh and he covers with one hand. After retiring in 2002, he opened a cleaning supply shop, about 20 minutes from Allen's town. We spoke standing behind the counter of that shop, surrounded by vacuum cleaner parks and bottles of cleaning spray. Ron Pleasure enjoys talking about his days on the force. He liked being a cop. I think every kid in the neighborhood either wanted to be a police officer or a firefighter. And he liked Allen's town, even if it wasn't a model community. You talk about noise complaints. The country music was blaring. I think I don't like country music. I do like country music. But as the alcohol flew, the music got louder and louder and the calls started to come in. The cars did come in. Mont Pleasure answered many of them on his own. Back then, there was usually only one officer on patrol in Allen's town at any given time. One cop for 20 square miles. It's a lot of area. Of patrol and there's only one patrolman. And it's real real hard to find, you know, to cover everything. So it's particularly true when it came to the State Park. Bear Brook State Park. The covers are than half of Allen's town. The trailer park where Ann, Kevin and Jesse Morgan lived, hugs the northern edge of the State Park. If you walked out the Morgan's back door in a straight line, it would be more than five miles before you saw another house. It's hard to capture just how dense and tangled the park is. There are some areas of Bear Brook that are easy to get to, well, five fishing pond and archery station, a spider web of mountain biking trails. But most of the 15 square miles is thick and marshy. Aside from a couple of ueless hills, much of the park is flat. So you never have a good idea of where you are or where you've been. And it's wild, even for New Hampshire. Officer Mont Pleaser says his old police chief used to take him out into the park just for the fun of him. He used to take me to catch rattlesnakes, Timberth rattlesnakes. And I never believed that there were rattlesnakes in New Hampshire and Shernafi goes, come on, we're going to go catch some rattlesnakes. We are. And Sherna's hack, we come back with a couple of Timber rattles. What he's trying to say is, this place is big. It's huge. It's not someplace that you just drive cars into. Officer Ron Mont Pleaser had been on the force in Allen's town for about five years, dealing mostly with drunk drivers, domestic disputes and noise complaints. Small town cop stuff. Until 1985. I was on duty. I was the officer that received the call. I'll see you with a first one. I was the first one on the scene. The call was from a hunter. Mont Pleaser drove out to meet him at the edge of the woods. And I met him and he said, I think you need to go up on the hill and take a look in the barrel. He said, I think there's a body up there. Mont Pleaser remembers that the hunter looked pale. He told him to stay behind with the squad car while he headed out into the woods alone. I know in the area I knew that a lot of people would dispose of their pets back there. Thinking nothing of his eye, it's probably an animal. It was hunting season. Somebody maybe had gotten a deer and brought the cockous out there. He struck out through the woods. First along the path, then eventually bushwhacking a bit through the scrub. The barrel was on the ground and it was a bag. When I opened the bag, the face was looking right at me. It was November 1985. A few months after Jesse Morgan and his friends had kicked over the barrel. Now officer Mont Pleaser was looking at that same barrel. But unlike the kids, he knew what was really inside. 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He began staking out the perimeter of a crime scene, but aside from the barrel, there wasn't much else to see. Trees. How exactly do you stake out a perimeter and forest this big? How far do you stretch the police take? My pleasure radioed for backup. He was the only patrolman on duty, so Alunstown officers must have been called in from their homes. And even then, cops turned to local residents for help. I think I was still in bed. And we hear a knock on the door. I get up and it was the police. He said, "Cat." - Kevin, we need to deputize you to keep the press out. And it's only that they found bodies up at the pit. - As Kevin Morgan put on his boots to go help the police, his wife Ann was suddenly reminded of something their son Jesse had told her a few months earlier, about a game of hide and seek and a barrel that they found in the woods. - It just came to me, you know, the smell, the, you know, it came out like milk, he said. How long was the barrel lining there? How many times had people walked right by, never realizing what was out there? - I just, I just know that that was the one. - The barrel contained two bodies. One was a woman, the other a young girl. Investigators haven't released photos of the remains, so I haven't seen them. The details they have released though are grim. The remains were almost entirely skeletal. They were nude, they were dismembered, apparently to fit inside the barrel. And they were wrapped in plastic, tied together with electrical wire. Their skulls revealed that they were both killed by blows to the head with a blunt instrument. Based on the level of decomposition, investigators guessed the bodies had been in the barrel from anywhere from several months to a few years. Investigators often say that in a missing person's case, the first of 48 hours are the most important. That's because if you don't find the person by then, your odds of ever finding them are really small. In a murder case, the first priority is to identify the victims. Most victims know their killers, but to know who the victim knew, you have to know who the victim is. And just like in a missing person's case, if investigators don't get this part figured out, their odds of success are really small. New Hampshire state police took the lead in the Barbra investigation, and they immediately began by trying to ID the victims. Their working theory was that, given the ages, the victims were likely a mother and daughter. So they started searching for missing persons reports that matched. Meanwhile, the Allentz town PD started canvassing the town. Mont Pleasur says that's usually how crimes in Allentz town were solved. With all those neighborhood barbecues, not to mention all the drinking, gossip had a way of getting around. And he had his ways of getting it out of people. - We used to call it, "Let's go fishing." You know, you'd make a motor vehicle stop and you knew somebody that may have known some information about a crime. My line was, you know, any good fishing spots. And then you knew what I was talking about, when we weren't actually going fishing, but you know, that meant the difference between, I mean, either receiving a warning or receiving a summons or just helping me out. And it was always somebody that knew a good fishing spot, always. - Whether it was a murder or a petty theft, this is how police work went in Allentz town to 1985. No high tech for Rensix team, no criminals like colleges coming up with a suspect profile. Just a few patrol officers like Mont Pleasur, rattling the bushes, hoping something would fall out. Only nothing did. - And that was the first thing that threw me off is like, "It's a strange, 'cause everybody knew everything over the act." (upbeat music) Meanwhile, the state police were having their own issues. They couldn't find any reports of a missing mother and daughter, not a New Hampshire, not a neighboring states, not anywhere. Whoever these people were, it seemed that no one was looking for them. As the months started to roll by, police tried lots of ways to get any sort of foothold in the case. They checked the records of every elementary school in the state for some trace of the child victim. They examined five years of campground records at Bearbrook State Park. They sent out nationwide bulletins to law enforcement agencies with descriptions of the victims. They looked for matches to the adult victim in FBI databases of dental records. None of it worked. One corporal in the New Hampshire State Police called it the most frustrating case of his life. In 1986, several months after the barrel was discovered, composite sketches of the victims were made. The artists didn't have a lot to go on, just their hair and bone structure. So there was a lot of room for interpretation. But however inaccurate they may be, the sketches do manage to give the victims some measure of identity. Since no one knew what they looked like in life, seeing the drawings was kind of like seeing them for the first time. The adult victim looks tired. Her face is long, her cheeks a little gond, a shadow falls across her face. Detectives estimate she was in her mid to late 20s when she died. She was between five foot two and five foot eight had weighty light brown hair. The girl is drawn in profile. She has a small up-turn nose. She wears a ponytail of dirty blonde hair with bangs swept across her forehead. Detectives think she was somewhere around nine or 10 years old when she was murdered. When these sketches were released, call started to come in. Investigators thought they might have something, but none of the tips panned out. Back in Allenstown, all anybody could do was speculate. Theories about the victims and who killed them were all over the place, ranging from organized crime to runaways and carnival workers. It seemed like everyone had a guess. I can't see them not being local. It could have been someone that lived up the street from me. I always had it in my mind that it was a truck that lived a double life. I don't feel that they took them from the park although they could have, because it abutted that area. Pure speculation. I'm playing the Ouija boy, but it's my gut feeling. You're going to find it, I would say, within a 250-mile radius of New Hampshire, I would say self-wrest. It's like irresistible from people to just start speculating. You just want to let them know. You want to know. As the months turned to years, investigators started to run out of ideas. To some, it seemed their best hope was to simply wait for the killer or someone who knew them to come forward on their own. In 1987, less than two years after the barrel was found, state police decided to release the victim's bodies so they could be buried. Officer Ron Mont Pleasers' chief, the one who'd shown him the rattlesnakes in the state park, organized the funeral. He told the local reporter at the time, quote, "Just because we don't know their names doesn't mean they don't deserve the same respect we do." Peritioners of St. John the Baptist Church in Allenstown pulled their money and paid for a grave site at the church cemetery. A Catholic priest and a Methodist minister led a burial ceremony where the bodies were laid to rest in a single steel casket. Just a handful of town officials and reporters were there to see it. And every time I used to patrol and go by that tombstone, you know, the wheels kept on turning. Just was I don't want patrol that night when these bodies would dump, and all the officers would think about that. When did this happen? How did I miss this? You know, I mean, you sat second to guess in yourself. Baring the bodies seemed like the right thing to do, especially given that two years in, the case was going nowhere. But it also must have seemed like law enforcement had given up hope. I was disappointed. All of a sudden, now the next thing I know, the town's getting together to put a headstone on these bodies. And what the hell? These-- where-- who are these people? For years, Jesse Morgan's parents kept the sketches of the victims pinned to their fridge. Like a lot of people in town, they'd always thought of their town as a good place. Now they struggled to reconcile that idea with what happened. It was a whole different world for us. You know, it was like two worlds. Like, you know, there was this evil world going on that we had no idea about. And there was this good wholesome world that was going on with the rest of the families and the children. For Jesse Morgan, who as a kid stumbled across the bodies without really knowing it, the episode changed the woods of his childhood forever. I do remember going out myself like on rainy days or whatever and walking around like out there, out in the-- where we never went to see if I could find something. You know, like, is there more? Turns out there was. In the year 2000, John Cody was a detective in the state police's major crime unit. The unit handles most of the homicides in New Hampshire and Cody had worked a long time to make it there. By that time, 15 years had passed since the barrel in Alentown was discovered. And that mystery was just one on a long list of the state's unsolved cases. And the way those cases were handled back then was pretty informal. Basically, what used to happen is when you got assigned to the major crime unit, you would get assigned one or two or sometimes three cold cases. And when I picked up the Alentown case, I didn't know anything about this case. Cody was expected to work on the case, basically in his free time, whenever he wasn't working an active case. But Cody says that details of the bearbrook murders just kept nodding at him. It's just it's the type of case where you start reading it, you know, it's sort of like getting into an engrossing book. You start to read the first chapter and you just want to go on to the second, which makes you to go on to the third, et cetera. Cody decided to get a look at the evidence in person. He went to the evidence storage area where he saw the blue barrel, the plastic, the electrical wire, clues that had been sitting idle for 15 years. I'm a very visual person. So I decided one day it was actually a Friday and I said, I'm going to go out, I'm going to go see where this area is, try to try to get an idea of what it is, what I'm looking at through words. Cody drove out to Allen's town and walked into the woods. He brought the case file with him as a sort of map. First, he tried to find the area where Jesse Morgan and his friends had first found the barrel as kids. He pictured the kids on the four wheeler, the barrel in the brush. I was walking through that. I had been out there for quite a while. And then I kind of just widened my area a little bit, you almost like throwing a rock into a pond. You had those concentric rings that come out. Cody ventured further and further from the spot where the barrel was found. His eyes scanning the forest floor for anything they didn't belong. It was getting late in the afternoon. The sun was sinking behind the hills. The canopy of trees overhead in Barbrook State Park made it even darker. Cody was thinking about how he might need to go back out to his car for his flashlight. And that's when I came across the barrel. A barrel was on its side next to a small boulder in some brush. Cody recognized it right away. He'd been looking at a barrel just like it, in evidence storage a few days before. Dark Blue 55 gallons. Cody decided now it was a good time to get the flashlight after all. He made his way back out to the edge of the woods, his mind racing the whole time. You know, I think I was trying to talk myself out of it the whole way that the car going this is definitely not what I think it is. When Cody returned with his flashlight, he shined it inside the barrel. And all I could see was some kind of plastic. And I tore the plastic away and there was something white that was shining towards me, you know, kind of sticks out with the dark background. When I looked at it, I said, "This does not look good." It was a stunning discovery, one that raised a whole new set of questions. Some of them uncomfortable for police. John Cody was standing just 300 feet from where the first barrel was found a full 15 years before. Inside the second barrel were two more bodies. Coming up on Bearbrook. When you hear the phrase "A Stun's Throw Away," this is what they're talking about. Why wasn't that barrel found? I don't know, to me that's free. So I want to thank everyone again for coming today. We have some new testing results that we want to share with basically the world. I opened the door and saw his face. I had a chill run down my back that I've never in my life ever had before. Sometimes it's that dumb luck that you just come across something and it just opens a door for you. Once you open the door, it's like, "Oh, you know what I mean? The lights come on and you can see everything that the jigsaw puzzles come together." This episode was first released in 2018. In the years since then, I learned of an error that I need to correct. The remains found in the first barrel were not almost entirely skeletal as I reported. The remains were decomposing, but there were still large amounts of soft tissue. Thanks to Kim Fallon, former chief forensic investigator at the New Hampshire Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for bringing this to my attention. Bearbrook is reported and produced by me Jason Moon. Taylor Quimby is senior producer. Having helped from Corey Prinsel, Todd Bookman, Lauren Schulton, Sam Evans Brown, Breed a Green, and Annie Ropeek. The executive producer is Eric Ejaneck. Dan Barich is NHPR's news director. Director of content is Maureen McMurray. NHPR's digital director is Rebecca LeVoy. Photography and video by Ali Gutierrez, graphics and interactives by Sarah Plort. Original music for this show was composed by me Jason Moon and Taylor Quimby. Additional music in this episode from Blue Dot Sessions and Simple Minds. To see a timeline of the Bearbrook investigation from 1985 until 2015, go to our website, bearbrookpodcast.org. Bearbrook is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. There are a bunch of ways to prevent crime that no one is talking about. Like how wind direction can make your community more violent or peaceful, and how GLP1 meds could reduce felonies. This is Fighting Crime, where we ask the big questions. What if we've been having the wrong conversations about crime? Two policies, ban the box and clean slate. Don't seem to be helping even though they sounded like they should or they would. I'm your host, Christina Quinn. I'm going across the country from prisons to universities, police chiefs to inmates, to look at the evidence and question everything we think we know about how to make America safer. Economists think a lot about helping respond to incentives. If we want to reduce crime and change behavior, we need to increase the costs or reduce the benefit. Join us as we figure out new ways to fight crime and be prepared to think differently. Fighting Crime. Listen or watch on Apple podcasts, YouTube and Spotify. Lee, C camp here. If you've been enjoying this show, I think you might enjoy my podcast, No Small Endeavour. Produced by great feelings studios and PR X. No Small Endeavour explores what it means to live a good life. We sit down with courageous, impassioned people like actor Martin Sheen or civil rights hero James Lawson to ask what it means to live a life worth living. Follow No Small Endeavour wherever you get your podcasts. Living a good life is no small Endeavour and we would love to help.