The Disappearance of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr. (Connecticut)

Edward Sprenkle Dubs Jr. lived his life on a route. Home in Newtown, train to New York, office on Madison Avenue, then back again. Usually with enough predictability that the people around him knew when something was wrong. On June 9, 1981, Edward left work in Manhattan and headed for Grand Central. He was supposed to be going home, but somewhere between the office, the train, and the life waiting for him in Connecticut, Edward disappeared. The question is not just where he went. It's where the trail actually broke. Did Edward ever make it onto the train? Did he get off in Bethel like he was supposed to? And if he did, who saw him after that? I'm Kylie Lowe. And this is the case of Edward Sprenkle Dubs Jr. on Dark Down East. On a Wednesday morning in early June of 1981, 44-year-old Edward Sprenkle Dubs Jr. was expected in Manhattan. As a vice president at Hayes Williams, Inc., a public relations firm in New York City, the people who worked with him knew his habits. He kept his schedule. He made his deadlines. If he was running late, he called. So when the workday started without him, and then kept going without a word from him, the concern inside that office sharpened quickly. Like so many, Edward commuted into the city by train from his home on Taunton Hill Road in Newtown, Connecticut. There, he kept a collection of prized antiques, a side hustle and passion, outside of his professional life, and his days had a familiar route. From home to the train, train to New York, office on Madison Avenue, and then back again. It was a life built around timing, and on June 10th, 1981, the timing was all wrong. The Newtown, Connecticut, police department received a phone call from the city that morning. A Hayes Williams employee named Alice explained that Edward had not come into work, and to the people who knew him, that alone was enough to set off alarms. Alice told police she thought he might need help. The last time his employer saw Edward was the day before, Tuesday, June 9th. He was seen leaving his office at around 5.05 that evening by the owner of the firm. According to Ruth Lockwood's reporting for the Newstimes, Edward was in a good mood. He was looking forward to important meetings scheduled for the next day, and when he left the office, he said he was running late and he would literally have to run three or four blocks to Grand Central Station to catch his train. That train was scheduled to leave at 5.20 p.m. But by the next morning, his predictable routine had broken somewhere, and no one seemed to know exactly where. Edward's life crossed jurisdictional lines every single day. So even though Edward's last known whereabouts were in New York, he lived in Newtown, and if he had gotten on the train as planned, Connecticut could very well be in New York. So Newtown police got involved right away. Officers were sent to his home, where they found the house locked and secured. There were no cars in the driveway, and at first glance, nothing outside the house explained where Edward was or why he hadn't made it to work. Later that evening, Newtown detective Michael DeJoseph made contact with one of Edward's friends, Glenn Blake, who had a key to the house because he usually took care of Edward's property when he was away. Glenn walked through Edward's house with police, and everything looked mostly normal. But there was one detail Glenn could not make fit. Edward's beloved dogs, Greta and Mugs, had apparently been inside for a while. They'd gone to the bathroom on the floor, and it seemed like they hadn't been fed. Edward loved those dogs and his two cats, Ming and Baby. The idea that he would have left his animals shut inside long enough for accidents to happen without food, without making sure they were cared for, did not feel like Edward at all. That same day, Edward's employer called Newtown police again. For the second day in a row, Edward had not shown up for work, or called the office with an explanation. Newtown police moved forward, issuing an attempt to locate message, and beginning the work of trying to track Edward and his vehicle. According to the description circulated in the news release, Edward was a white man, 44 years old, 5 feet, 10 inches tall, about 150 pounds, with blue eyes and sandy blonde bushy hair. He was believed to have been wearing a beige or gray silk suit and a gold digital Timex watch. Later that afternoon, police got their first real lead. Edward's car had turned up, but Edward was not the person who had it. Alice, from Hayes Williams, called Newtown police again, She learned that Edward's blue 1978 Mercury Zephyr with Connecticut plates was in the possession of Edward's boyfriend, 22-year-old Michael Doran. Police learned that they were living together when Edward disappeared. The next day, June 12th, Milton Williams, the owner of Hayes Williams, called Detective Michael DeJoseph. Milton had spoken with Michael, and Michael had given him an account of Edward's last known day. According to Milton, Michael said he had driven Edward to the Bethel train station on the morning of June 9th. He said he talked to Edward on the phone around 4 o'clock that day, and was supposed to pick him up that night when the 715 train came in, but Edward never arrived. Milton passed along one more detail. A few weeks before Edward vanished, Edward had told him that he planned to end his relationship with Michael as soon as possible. Detective DeJoseph had, not yet spoken directly with Michael. But after hearing Milton's account, the detective wrote that he felt Michael, may know more about the disappearance of the victim than he would lead Mr. Williams to believe. In another conversation with Milton and Edward's friend Glenn Blake a few days later, both men were deeply worried that Edward had met with foul play, and both were concerned that Michael could be involved. Glenn told the detective, Michael had given him what he described as some unbelievable tale about his movements on the night Edward disappeared. The story involved a kidnapping, a sexual assault, and a car parked near a cliff. Before Detective DeJoseph appears to have sat down with Michael directly to ask about that unbelievable tale, he checked the parts of the story that didn't depend on Michael's account. If Edward had left work intending to catch his usual train, had anyone seen him there? On June 16th, Detective DeJoseph boarded the 526 commuter train from Grand Central Station, which was the train Edward usually took. Glenn had told him Edward liked to spend time in the bar car, and the bartender's name was Rudy. Rudy was working that day, and he told the detective that he knew Edward well, but he couldn't say for certain when he had last seen him. Another passenger in the bar car offered something more specific, but still not specific enough. He said he thought he had seen Edward on the train either the previous Monday or Tuesday, and he remembered Edward being with a younger white man, maybe around 22 years old. He said both Edward and the younger man got off the train together at the Bethel stop. His recollection wasn't super solid, though. He really couldn't be certain of the date or even whether the sighting had actually been a week earlier or more. But if it was the previous week, that meant the passenger could have seen Edward on the train on June 9th, the day he disappeared. And if that was true, then Michael's version of events became much harder to square. Edward may have made it to Bethel after all. Almost as soon as Detective DeJoseph returned to the police station that evening, the phone rang. It was Michael Doran himself. Michael asked whether there were any updates, and then said he hadn't been able to get to the police station with photographs of Edward because his car, which was actually Edward's car, had gotten stuck on a median in Brewster, New York, near the intersection of Routes 121 and 6. But that explanation did not hold up. Detective DeJoseph learned from Glenn that Edward's car had actually been in an accident, and that Michael had fled the scene before police arrived. A call to New York State Police confirmed it. Edward's car was towed on June 14th, and the person operating it wasn't with the vehicle. The car was still at a garage in Brewster. Detective DeJoseph learned that there was a bar not far from the accident scene called Birds of a Feather. Edward used to hang out there. Glenn told the detective he planned to do some checking of his own to see whether anyone at the bar had seen Edward. Detective DeJoseph still didn't know whether Edward had returned to Connecticut on June 9th, but after riding the train and that first phone call with Michael, noted in his report that he would be directing the investigation as though Edward had made it back and was missing from Connecticut, not New York. So, if Edward stepped off that train in Bethel, Michael's story had to explain the next few hours, and it was about to get a lot more complicated. On June 18, 1981, Michael Doran agreed to give police a signed written statement about his movements on June 9 and June 10. The actual affidavit is not included in the case file documents I obtained from Newtown Police, but Detective DeJoseph summarized what Michael told him in a separate report. According to Michael, Edward got up around 5.30 on the morning of June 9, and Michael got up around an hour later. He said, Michael said he drove Edward to the Bethel Railroad Station, arriving around 7 a.m., and Edward got on the train. After that, Michael said he went to the Newtown Library to get a library card, then to Pauling, New York, where he applied for a job at a restaurant called Texas Taco, and then he eventually returned to Edward's house. Michael told police he spoke with Edward by phone that afternoon around 4 o'clock. According to Michael, Edward said he was taking the train home that would arrive at the Bethel Railroad Station, and he said he was going to the Bethel Railroad Station at 7.11 p.m. Michael said he left the house at about 6.45 to pick him up, but when the train came in, Edward didn't get off. Michael said he checked the next station in Danbury, too, thinking Edward might have missed his stop, but he didn't get off there either. He then returned to Bethel and waited for the next train. Still, no Edward. After that, according to Michael, he went to his friend Kathleen's house in Bethel and stayed there overnight because Edward's car, which he was using, got quote-unquote stuck and had to be towed the next day. The garage did confirm that the car had been towed. Michael said he spent most of June 10th at Kathleen's house. After picking up the car from the garage, he went back to Edward's house, then returned to the Bethel station again, thinking maybe Edward had been held up in New York and would be home a day late. But again, Edward wasn't there. It's not clear from the report how this next part came up, but Michael also told the detective that Edward had given him two signed personal checks to be used only in an emergency. On paper, Michael's statement gave investigators a timeline. It gave them train stations, times, a phone call, a friend's house, a towed car, and an explanation for why he had access to Edward's checks. But it also left them with the same problem they already had. Competing witness statements. If Michael was telling the truth, Edward vanished before he ever reached the Bethel station. But if the bar car passenger was remembering the right day, Edward may have stepped off that train that night after all, with a younger man beside him. Either way, police still had no confirmed sighting of Edward after he left work on June 9th, and no physical sign of where he had gone. On June 23rd, Detective DeJoseph got a set of keys to Edward's car from Michael Doran and went to the garage in Brewster, New York where it had been towed after an accident of some kind. The left front side of the car had been heavily damaged, and the left front wheel was missing. Whatever happened in Brewster was not just a minor inconvenience or a car getting stuck. The car had been in a collision and Michael had not been there when police arrived to deal with it. The trunk held assorted items, including a vest, a jacket, bottles of soda, and a bag of cat litter. But Detective DeJoseph noted that he did not find any papers there. The cab was littered with Parliament cigarette butts, trash, and debris. The only paper he noted was a $45 towing bill from the first time the car had been towed back in Connecticut. That bill had been paid. From the reports I have, nothing stood out about Edward's car or pointed to any answers in his disappearance. A few days later, on June 29th, Glenn Blake met with Detective DeJoseph and called Michael while the detective was there. The call was recorded, but I don't have access to that recording. From the report referencing the call, Michael denied knowing anything about Edward's disappearance, where Edward might be, or what might have happened to him. That same day, Glenn gave the detective another reason to worry. He believed several valuable items were missing from Edward's house, including antiques that had been there before Edward's disappearance. He also believed that the car had been towed back in the same year Edward vanished. Among them was a set of Chinese pottery Glenn said was worth more than $8,000. That opened another thread. Outside of his work in PR and freelance writing, Edward was an antiques collector, a well-known one at that. He collected precious and valuable items, exhibited them in Fairfield County, and was familiar to local dealers. In other words, the missing property wasn't incidental clutter. If Glenn was right, then someone may have known exactly what in Edward's house was worth taking. But there was little the detective could do with that information. There was no formal inventory of Edward's belongings. By July 1st, less than a month after Edward vanished, Detective DeJoseph received a call from the attorney representing Edward's estate, notifying him there would be a probate hearing on July 14th. Glenn Blake was later named trustee of Edward's property by the PR. He was then called by the PR. He was Edwards' will, when and if it became time to address his final wishes, left everything to his mother, including his home, car, van, antique collection, a savings account with $600, bills, a safety deposit box, and his four pets. It seems quick to start any sort of probate process less than a month after someone goes missing, but from what I could glean from the case file, this was the family's way of cataloging all of Edward's antiques and valuables, should anything else go missing. But while the family and court were trying to account for Edward's belongings, Detective DeJoseph found something inside the house that pointed in a different direction. He collected several pieces of paper that appeared to show samples of Edward's signature, as if someone had been practicing how to sign his name. On July 2nd, Detective DeJoseph spoke with Michael again to address what the detective described as several inconsistencies between Michael's earlier written and oral statements. One of those inconsistencies involved Edward's checks. Michael had told police that Edward gave him two signed personal checks to be used in an emergency, but Detective DeJoseph had learned that the garage where Edward's car was towed on June 10th had received four checks from Michael since Edward disappeared. According to the report, one of those four checks was, foraged. It was made out to cash for $20 and used at the garage on June 10th, the day after Edward was last seen. Detective DeJoseph noted that Michael became nervous when talking about the checks. Michael repeated that Edward had only given him two checks, but when the detective showed him copies of four, Michael admitted that he had forged the $20 check made out to cash. Michael claimed, though, that Edward had given him permission to sign his name in an emergency. During that same statement, Detective DeJoseph also asked Michael about the story Glenn had described earlier. The one about a kidnapping, a sexual assault, and a car near a cliff. Michael acknowledged that he had told Glenn that story, but said it wasn't true. According to Michael, he made it up because Glenn was badgering him about Edward's whereabouts, and he was willing to say almost anything to get Glenn to stop asking questions. Other than that, Michael said everything he had previously told police was true. He said he still didn't know anything about Edward's disappearance, and he was willing to take a polygraph if it would help him get out from under what he called the cloud of suspicion. Michael moved out of Edward's house the next day. After he left, Glenn went through the house again and told Detective DeJoseph that additional valuables were missing. On top of the Chinese pottery he had already mentioned, Glenn said furniture, and other antiques were gone too. Glenn also found something else on the house. In a second-floor bedroom, under the bed, he found a gray, pinstripe, three-piece Pierre Cardin suit. According to Glenn, it was the kind of suit Edward had been wearing the day he disappeared, and he thought it could even be the exact suit. Detective DeJoseph collected the suit as potential evidence, but he was skeptical. In his assessment, it was unlikely to be the same suit Edward wore when he vanished because this one was wool, more of a winter suit, and Edward disappeared in June. Knowing Edward, who was fashion-forward and particular about his clothing, Detective DeJoseph didn't think he would mix seasons that way. When the detective checked with the owner of Hayes Williams, he learned that Edward had been wearing the same color gray suit, but not a wool one, so the suit appears to be a dead end. By the first week of July, The investigation had a lot of movement, very little clarity. Just as investigators were trying to make sense of it all, something arrived at Edward's front door. It was a package from New York City, mailed by a stranger who said he found it on the ground in the very place Edward was supposedly rushing to reach the last time anyone confirmed seeing him alive. When the package arrived on July 7th, Glenn opened it to find a maroon leather bag with papers that appeared to belong to Michael Doran, along with a record book containing personal entries. A detective contacted the guy who mailed it and learned he found the items on the ground in Grand Central Station near the IRT Lexington lines on July 6th. He found an address inside the record book and put everything in the package. He then found the package on the ground in Grand Central that same day. At first glance, the package seemed like it could be a major break. If these items were found at Grand Central Station, did that mean Edward made it there on June 9th? Had something belonging to him been dropped, lost, or even planted in the same station he was supposedly rushing toward the last time anyone confirmed seeing him alive? But once investigators looked closer, the lead appears to have lost some of its weight. The address in the package was for Michael Doran, care of Edward Dubbs, at the Taunton Hill Roadhouse in Newtown. So the items were probably Michael's, not Edward's. But why were they in New York City? Investigators spoke to a friend of Michael's named Leo, whose sister was Kathleen, the friend Michael said he stayed with, on the night Edward supposedly failed to get off the train. Leo told the detective that he had picked Michael up from Edward's house on July 3rd, around 11 a.m., when Michael moved out. He brought Michael back to his house in Bethel, where he had dinner around 6 p.m., and later Leo's mother drove him to the Brewster train station. Michael told them he was going to New York City and didn't know when he'd be back. So Michael just up and left for New York City within days of his second interview with police, when detectives pressed him on the inconsistencies in his statements and the forged check. The assumption was that Michael dropped the items found at Grand Central when he got off the train. According to Leo, Michael didn't say much about Edward while they were together, beyond showing general worry and concern. Detectives also interviewed Leo's mother, who also said that Michael didn't say anything notable about Edward's disappearance while he was at their home. So what first looked like a possible clue, pointing back to Edward's last known route, may have been something much less revealing. An apparent red hair, tied to Michael's own movements after Edward was already gone. Late on July 31st, there was another strange report from Edward's house on Taunton Hill Road. Around 11 p.m. that night, two unknown vehicles were parked outside, and one of them had New York plates. An officer was dispatched, and he saw the two vehicles as he drove past, but by the time he turned around, both cars were gone. He wasn't able to get the license plate numbers either. A detective accompanied Glenn Blake for a check at the house the next day. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed. By August 16th, Michael's parents and sister told police that they had not heard from him since July 6th, and believed he was still somewhere in New York City. But that did not mean Michael had been completely unreachable. A reporter named Ruth Lockwood apparently spoke with him for a story that ran in the Times on July 15th. In that article, Michael said Edward seemed fine before he disappeared, like his usual self, and that he didn't believe Edward would have disappeared on purpose. In the midst of it all, Edward's mother, Louise, had gone to his house to inventory his belongings and begin packing them up. His life was being boxed, counted, moved, and legally managed, while the central question still had not changed. Where was Edward? For a while, there were still traces to follow. The case file shows that months after Edward was last seen, police learned that someone tried to use his Hayes Williams Company credit card to place a phone call in July of 1981. Investigators also looked into a one-way plane ticket from New York to Los Angeles that had been charged to a company card, and there was reason to speculate that the ticket was connected to Edward in some way. For a moment, that could have changed every thing. A mysterious one-way ticket to the other side of the country raised the possibility that Edward was alive, that he had left voluntarily, or that someone wanted to make it look that way. But the lead quickly became less clear. The ticket was later reported to have been charged to the company card of another Hayes Williams employee, a woman who said she never received it. Still, someone used that ticket to board a flight in September 1981, the company couldn't trace where the ticket had gone, and the airline had no record identifying the passenger. According to the Newstimes, Detective DeJoseph still considered the possibility that the person on that flight could have been Edward. But if Edward had gone to Los Angeles, no confirmed sighting ever followed. By December of 1981, six months after Edward vanished, a Newtown probate judge ordered his estate to be liquidated. No one could say with certainty whether he was dead or alive, but his house, his car, his antiques, his accounts, and the belongings he left behind still had to be dealt with. In January of 1982, Lisa W. Sullivan reported for the Newstimes that the search had turned up no new clues. By then, New York City missing person squad detective Mary Kelly had weighed in, and she did not believe Edward had disappeared in New York City. Disappearance had to have occurred from the time he got on that train, end quote. Detective Kelly also said that if Edward had met with foul play, she believed his body would have been found by then. But that did not solve the contradiction at the center of the case. If Edward never made it back, then where did he go after leaving work? If he did make it back, what happened after the train? Glenn Blake believed, Edward had been lured by someone after getting off at Bethel. He wondered whether money was involved. In addition to his valuable antiques, according to Glenn, Edward was due a $4,000 refund from the IRS and he thought maybe the wrong person had found out about it. By May of 1982, Edward's house had been sold. After that, the case quieted for years. In March of 1991, almost a decade after Edward disappeared, the case was closed. The case was closed for years. After Edward disappeared, Newtown Police received a call from New York State Park Police in the Palisades region. Skeletal remains of a white male were found in a wooded area near Bear Mountain State Park, and investigators thought there was a chance they could be Edward. Newtown Police forwarded Edward's dental records for comparison, but the remains were not a match. In 2003, another possible match surfaced, this time involving skeletal remains found in Oregon. Edward's dental records were sent for comparison, but there does not appear to have been a match. Then, in 2009, a new detective was assigned to Edward's case. He ran an accurant check, looking for any sign that Edward had resurfaced somewhere under his own name, but no hits. The next year, the detective ran an accurant check on Michael Doran. The report showed Michael's last known address in Hyannis, Massachusetts, at a boarding home known to be rented by the hour. Local police in Barnstable last had contact with him in 1994 when he was arrested for loitering. A later check of police records showed Michael had also been picked up on a warrant for operating under the influence on February 4, 1994. In 2010, police also went back to Glenn Blake. Glenn was still living in Newtown, and he told investigators he remembered everything about Edward's case. He said, He said that from the beginning, he believed that if something happened to Edward, Michael probably had something to do with it. He also claimed that after Edward disappeared, Michael may have been selling or stealing valuables from the house. The accusation that Michael was involved in Edward's disappearance and the insinuation that he may have been responsible for the apparent theft at Edward's home have never been proven, as far as I can tell. When detectives tracked Michael Doran himself down a few months later, he was living in Fall River, Massachusetts. Nearly three decades had passed, but Michael's account had not changed in its broadest strokes. He said he had not seen or heard from Edward in more than 25 years. He told the detectives, During that conversation, with decades separating him from the day Edward disappeared, Michael shared that he and Edward had been in a romantic relationship for about nine months and that he had been in love with him, but he acknowledged that the relationship had become strained near the end. When he talked about June 9th, 1981, his basic story remained the same. Edward told him he was taking the train home, Michael went to meet him, and Edward never got off. Then Michael added a detail that, according to the records I received, had not been fully explored until that 2010 interview. Michael said that about two weeks after Edward disappeared, he took Edward's photo to Birds of a Feather, the bar he and Edward used to frequent. Michael admitted that visit was connected to the accident that damaged Edward's car. He said he had been drinking heavily and crashed it. But the most significant part of that account was what Michael said. Michael said the bartender told him. According to Michael, when he asked if anyone had seen Edward, the bartender said, quote, honey, he didn't get on the train. He hooked up with the wrong crowd and is in the Hudson, end quote. He's in the Hudson. That statement is hard to know what to do with. It came from Michael, decades later, and it's not clear from the records I have whether police were ever able to identify or interview that bartender. Birds of a Feather had long since shut down at that point. It could have been a real lead. It could have been a rumor. It could have been barroom shorthand for danger, drugs, hustlers, criminals, someone Edward had met socially or someone the bartender simply didn't trust. It also could have been a way for Michael to point attention away from himself. But the phrase wrong crowd does open the case beyond one relationship. Let's take the phrase wrong crowd and for discussion purposes, assume it means criminal activity. I managed to track down a former patron of Birds of a Feather. He hung out there in the early 80s and was able to paint a picture of the scene at the bar. He told me you'd never expect a bar to be in that location, let alone a gay bar. It was busy and loud and fun in one of the more secluded parts of Washington County among estates on a lot of land. He said that the bar attracted a crowd from all over the place, mostly men, 20-somethings up to people in their 40s and 50s. They came from Westchester County in New York, Hudson Valley, and Connecticut to enjoy the music and dancing. He didn't remember encountering, in his words, much of a low-class hustler-type presence at the bar. Given the era, cocaine use was a kind of open secret, but he didn't see much or really any of that at Birds. So, at least according to this one source who spent some time at Birds of a Feather during the same era as Edward and Michael, the wrong crowd? Didn't seem to be hanging out at that bar. If the bartender really did say that to Michael, maybe the wrong crowd had to do with another area of Edward's life. Edward owned valuable antiques and was known to area dealers. He often exhibited his wares around Fairfield County. After Edward vanished, Glenn believed some of his high-value pieces were missing. My mind goes to a possible antiques theft ring. Or maybe a fencing operation. I don't have evidence of that, but this kind of criminal enterprise in Connecticut, specifically, is not invented out of thin air. Connecticut in the early 1980s had a documented problem with thefts targeting valuable antiques and art. One of the clearest examples comes out of Greenwich, where wealthy homes were being hit around the same time Edward disappeared. A 2025 story by Jack Rodolico for the Atavist Magazine, digs into the so-called Blue Book burglaries. Greenwich houses were described as essentially private museums filled with valuable objects that could be stolen and moved quietly. Between 1980 and 1982, more than 80 homes in Greenwich were reportedly stripped of valuables, not including burglaries in nearby communities. The thieves were not just grabbing whatever they could carry. They appeared to recognize quality, targeting silver, jewelry, antiques, rugs, Tiffany lamps, paintings, and other pieces with resale value. And the fencing side of that world was real, too. For example, in 1984, a Providence, Rhode Island antiques dealer named Anthony Ursulo pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy and receiving and transporting stolen goods. The conspiracy involved at least 61 actual or attempted burglaries of homes, and at least 60 of them were found to have been stolen. Throughout the Northeast, the court described Ursulo's role as that of a fence, buying stolen goods from burglars while knowing they were stolen. So when I say my mind goes to an antiques theft ring or a fencing operation, I'm not saying there is evidence Edward was killed by one or because of one. But in the same region, in the same general era, high-value objects were being stolen out of homes and pushed into channels laced with criminal elements that could become very hard to trace. Could Edward have been targeted or exploited by that world? Maybe. But I'll admit the theory has its own problems. Why would the timing center on a Tuesday night commute? And why do so many of the immediate questions still point back to Michael? Michael was living with Edward when he disappeared. He had Edward's car. He had Edward's house. He admitted forging at least one of Edward's checks after Edward was gone. And according to Edward's employer, Edward had said only weeks earlier that he planned to end the relationship as soon as possible. For me, there are specific parts of Michael's story that are hard to sit with. If Edward didn't get off the train that night, why didn't Michael just return to and stay at the house, especially knowing Edward's animals were there and needed care? Why go to a friend's house instead? He claimed the car got stuck and he had to get it towed. But there's nothing in the case file that explains the timing of it all or why a friend's house was his only option. Then there was the story Michael told Glenn Blake, the one about being kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and maybe left near a cliff. Michael later told police that the story wasn't true. He said he made it up because, Glenn was badgering him about Edward's disappearance and he was willing to say almost anything to get Glenn to stop asking questions. But why was his first instinct to make up a horrific scenario as a way to shut down questions from your missing boyfriend's friend? It's a wild choice if you ask me. And still, none of that resolves the central problem, the train. If Edward never got on it, then Michael's account could be true in its broadest outline. But if the passenger in the bar car really did see Edward with a younger man getting off at Bethel on June 9th, then the case shifts. In that version, Edward may have made it back to Connecticut after all. And whatever happened next happened after the commute everyone had been trying to reconstruct. That is where the case stays stuck. The passenger could not be aware of what happened to Edward. Glenn remained convinced Michael was involved, police kept looking, but the evidence never closed the distance between those possibilities. When he spoke to detectives in 2010, Michael signed a written statement and gave cheek swabs to be retained in evidence. I don't see any documentation of a polygraph examination in the files I received. Back in July 1982, the Newstimes reported that Michael Doran was not considered a suspect. Though years later, former Detective DeJoseph told reporter Kendra Baker, that may have been an investigative strategy, a way to avoid putting too much pressure on him. Michael was never charged in connection with Edward's disappearance. He died in 2024. Another possibility nagging in my brain is that maybe Edward didn't make it back to Connecticut, or even on the train that night, despite the assumptions the investigation made from the very first days of the case. Maybe Edward crossed paths with someone in New York, and that encounter led to harm. According to reporting by Matt Miller for Esquire, just a few years before Edward vanished, the so-called bag murders involved the dismembered remains of unidentified men found in bags in the Hudson River. Police reportedly believed those victims were gay men. The cases were never solved. After Edward disappeared, another predator, later known as the "Last Call Killer," would target gay men he met at bars in and around New York. I've covered that case on Dark Down East, and I'll share it in the show notes for you. Now, that does not mean Edward's case belongs in that pattern, but it shows what was coming and what history has since made harder to ignore. Gay men could vanish from their lives, and police, co-workers, and even close friends did not always understand or know how to investigate. But the theory of a random encounter comes with its own problem. Edward's office was only three or four blocks from Grand Central. According to his employer, Edward left the office around 5.05 and said he had to literally run to Grand Central for a train scheduled to leave at 5.20. That is a very small window for something to unfold so completely that no one ever heard from him again. It doesn't leave much room for a random encounter, a long detour. Or. Or a casual stop somewhere else. If Edward meant what he said, then he was not drifting into the city that evening. He was trying to get home. And that pulls me back to Connecticut. If Edward made the train, then the most important question is what happened after he got off. Did the bar car passenger really see him at Bethel with a younger man? If this younger man existed, did it upset Michael? Or maybe the younger man didn't exist. Was someone else waiting for Edward at the station before Michael ever arrived? Did he leave the station with someone other than Michael? The case file never answers those questions, but the timeline makes them hard to ignore. Edward's last known words at work pointed toward Grand Central, and his whole routine pointed toward home. The theories around Edward's disappearance remain frustratingly open, but none of them, on its own, leads all the way to Edward. After Edward disappeared, his mother, Louise, was left in the terrible space between absence and certainty. According to the news times, she kept Edward's personal belongings and clothing, holding onto the possibility that her son might still come home. She also took in one of Edward's dogs, Muggsy. His other dog and two cats were adopted by other families. His friend, Glenn, was also adopted by his mother. Glenn Blake had described Edward as someone who was always taking in stray animals and people. The fact that Edward's animals were not simply left behind, that they were folded into other homes and cared for after he was gone, feels like something that would have mattered deeply to him. Edward made his life in words, first as a journalist, then as a writer and public relations executive. His employer, Milton Williams, president of the PR firm, called Edward an extremely creative, innovative, and prolific writer. His friend, Glenn, had also once called Edward gullible beyond belief, very generous, brilliant, and talented. In that vein, Edward's mother found another way to keep his name in the world. She established the Edward S. Dubbs Jr. Scholarship for students of journalism at his alma mater, Penn State University. The scholarship appears to still be awarded as recently as 2016. Edward and his dental records were entered into NamUs in April of 2010. Case number MP3285. If Edward is ever found, there is a record waiting to help identify him. If you have any information about the disappearance of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr., or if you knew Edward, Michael Doran, or anyone connected to them, please contact the Newtown Police Department at 203-426-5841. You can also call Newtown PD's anonymous hotline for Wanted and Missing Persons at 203-270-8888. Edward's case number with Newtown Police is N-928-81. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. I think Chuck would approve. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.