The Murder of James Cassidy, Part 1 (Maine)

In April of 1976, an anonymous call to a Sheriff's Department in Maine alerted investigators to something almost impossible to imagine. A burning station wagon hidden off a remote road and looked like a body inside. What they found would open a case filled with contradictions. The victim was James Cassidy, a Massachusetts bank vice president, father of three church going family man and by all accounts someone living a quiet, ordinary life. But in the days before his death, Jim had vanished across state lines. Federal authorities were preparing to arrest him on embezzlement charges and whispers of missing money, valuable stamps, and possible organized crime connections began to surface. Nearly 50 years later, his death remains unsolved. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of James Cassidy, part one, on Dark Down East. In the early spring of 1976, the woods of eastern Maine were still quiet from winter. Snow had mostly melted, but the ground was soft, the trees bare, and the long stretches of road that cut through the forests between Bangor and the coast were often empty for miles at a time. According to reporting by the Bangor Daily News, on the morning of April 7, that quiet was broken by a phone ringing at the Penobscot County Sheriff's Department. At 9.01 a.m., an unidentified man on the other end of the line told the dispatcher that he was heading out to go fishing out behind Park Spawn when he came across a disturbing sight along the side of the road. There was a gutted out station wagon on fire, and it looked like there was a human body in the back of the vehicle, he said. The dispatcher tried to confirm what the caller had seen, where exactly it was located, and who he was, but before the conversation could go much further, the line went dead. The man hung up without identifying himself. Even with so little information and the anonymous nature, the call didn't feel like a prank. It was specific and concerning enough that the Sheriff's Department acted on it. Deputies began searching the area described in the call, focusing on Route 9 and Route 180 on either side of Park Spawned in and around Clifton, Maine. They extended their search as far as Otis, about 7 miles away, scanning the roadside for any sign of a vehicle fire, smoke, burned wreckage, anything that might match the caller's description. But after a full day of searching, they found nothing. Route 9, which is often called "the airline," was the only major road cutting through that stretch of rural eastern Maine, but the region was also laced with unnamed trails and tote roads. Narrow logging routes that cut deep into the woods and were easy to miss from the main road. Though their search was unsuccessful, the Sheriff's Department still believed there might be something out there to find, so they made a public appeal. Through the media, investigators asked the anonymous caller to contact them again and provide more specific directions so they could locate the car and the body he claimed was inside it. The request appeared in the Bangor Daily News on April 8th, and it was broadcast on local radio stations as well. Later that same day, the phone rang again at the Sheriff's Department. The anonymous man had called back. But this time, the caller gave investigators information they had been missing. According to reporting in the Ellsworth American, the man told the Penobscot County Sheriff's Department that the burned station wagon was located about 600 feet from a discontinued section of Route 9 near Debeck Pond, just over the Hancock County line. Because of the location, the investigation was turned over to the Hancock County Sheriff's Department. But the circumstances surrounding the discovery quickly drew in the Maine State Police as well. With those new details from the anonymous caller, investigators were finally able to find the scene. Hidden off the roadway was the wreckage of a 1971 Chrysler station wagon burned and gutted by fire. Inside the vehicle, investigators confirmed the grim scene that the caller had described. There was a human body in the car. According to reporting by Jeff Stroud in the Bangor Daily News, the remains were found in the front seat, not the back as the caller had said. The registration for the station wagon indicated the owner was 43-year-old James Arlington Cassidy III of Brookline, Massachusetts. At the scene, investigators began documenting what little evidence the fire had left behind. The vehicle itself offered a small but notable detail. The front right door was open when investigators arrived. There was a "gas can" nearby. Some reports described the container as empty, though police would not publicly confirm that detail. However, it made sense that the fire could have been started using an accelerant like gasoline. Robert J. England reports for the Boston Globe that the fire was so hot, it melted the windshield glass. It ran down the dashboard and thick drops. There was also recovered a metal arch at the scene, similar to an orthopedic device worn in a shoe to compensate for a difference in leg length. There was also a watch discovered along the road, back in the direction the vehicle would have been traveling. One source mentions that the victim's leg was missing from his body, likely dragged off by animals, but there was no telling how much other evidence could have been lost in the lag time between the first report and the discovery. This was "remote, secluded land." One thing investigators did not find at the scene was money. There was no paper currency or coins recovered from the car or the surrounding area. Main state police classified the case as a suspicious death, pending the results of an autopsy. According to David Bright for the Bangor Daily News, family members arrived in Bangor to ID the body based on the tentative identification from the car's registration, but it wasn't possible due to the condition of the remains. Dental records later confirmed that the victim was in fact the registered owner, James Cassidy, who went by Jim. The autopsy was performed by Dr. Rudolf Eierer. During the examination, X-rays were taken to determine whether Jim had suffered any injuries prior to the fire. The images showed no evidence of gunshot wounds or stab wounds. There were signs of bruising, however. Dr. Eierer also noted traces of brittle, dried blood, which left room for multiple interpretations. According to the pathologists, the blood could have been caused by a blow from a blunt instrument, but similar findings could also result from the intense heat of a fire. What was not in doubt was the severity of the burns. Jim had suffered burns over 95% of his body and his remains were heavily charred. More evidence of an extremely hot fire. An early media report out of Boston stated that Jim's cause of death was strangulation, but main assistant attorney General Richard Cohen quickly refuted that claim. The official cause of death was determined to be burning. Evidence from the autopsy suggested that Jim may have still been alive when the fire began. Because of the damage to the body and the circumstances surrounding the fire, the pathologist struggled to determine an exact date or time of death. With unanswered questions at the end of the autopsy, Jim's death was officially classified as "unattended". It was not conclusively labeled "a homicide" or a suicide at the time. The investigators had ruled out an accident. Today, main state police list Jim's case has an unsolved homicide, so somewhere along the line his manner of death was officially determined to be murdered. How had Jim ended up on a remote logging road in Maine? And what had happened in the days leading up to his death? Because by the time Jim Cassidy's car was discovered in the woods near DeBeck Pond, he had already been missing for several days. The Cassidy family had been on edge ever since Jim left for work on Monday, April 5th. Jim's son Ken Cassidy will always remember that morning at their home on Winslow Road in Brookline, Massachusetts. So, my father had come downstairs, looked around the corner, seen that I'm still sitting in the living room. And he said, "Good morning." And I said, "Good morning as well." And I said, "I'm just waiting for the time to go by to walk down those school buses. All right. Have a good day." That was the last time I saw my father. Jim never returned home that night. Within 24 hours of Ken's last goodbye, his mother reported his father missing. And then one day later that week, he returned home from school to news that altered the course of his life. I just wasn't acting myself, but just felt like there was something wrong. So when I took the school bus, got home, my aunt Jerry, police officers were there, other people were there. I can't remember, but she sat me down in the living room and told me my father fast. And then, got on his bike, rode back to school, and found a teacher who had given him a hard time about his mood and behavior in class that day. He cursed at the teacher, called him a name. And then he asked me what happened. I said, "My father's dead." So, he backed up my bike, put it in his station where he brought me back home and stuff. Even decades later, that moment is still vivid for Ken. The loss of his father didn't begin as a headline or a police report. It began as confusion and worry and unimaginable grief inside a family home. While Jim Cassidy's loved ones were trying to process the news, investigators were working to reconstruct the last known movements of the man they now knew had died in the main woods. According to media reports at the time Jim's wife Alice Cassidy contacted police to report him missing at 12.05 a.m. on April 5. Alice told investigators that Jim had left for work at around 8.05 a.m. on the day he was last seen and he never returned home that day. Unfortunately, Brookline police no longer have records related to the missing person's report and my records request submitted to the agency currently investigating this case were denied, leaving gaps in the publicly reported timeline. There are conflicting accounts about Jim's plans that morning. Reporting at the time indicated Jim had a dentist appointment sometime on April 5, but he did not show up for that appointment. However, family members believe he did attend to the appointment. Either way, bank officials reportedly did not find it unusual that Jim left work and didn't return. According to contemporaneous reporting, the next time Jim was for sure seen was by a friend at the Portland International Jetport in Portland, Maine, the same day, a little over 100 miles away from Brookline. Jim was reportedly next spotted in Bangor, another 130 or so miles north of Portland, also on April 5. The friend who saw Jim at the airport said that he appeared depressed and mentioned that the bank where he had worked for nearly two decades was in the process of being sold. There was concern that bank executives might not be retained after the acquisition, which would have impacted Jim's job. He was a vice president at the institution. According to reporting at the time by Gary Kayakachoyan for the Boston Globe, the friend encouraged Jim to "go home" and "settle his problems," end quote. The friend is not identified by name in any reporting or source material I've been able to locate during my investigation. However, Ken remembers who this friend was. The last man to see my father alive was John Het. I remember that particular name. Ken has specific memories of Mr. and Mrs. Het. I remember his wife that they would come over and have dinner and stuff like that. I mean, there's a big tall man, bald man for sure. You almost look like Uncle Festa from the monsters. That would be Uncle Festa from the Adams family. Not the most flattering comparison, but surely paints a picture. As the investigation continued other possible sighting surface, later reporting suggested that Jim may have been seen with two unidentified men at a gas station in Brewer, Maine, sometime before his body was discovered. Brewer, neighbors Bangor across the Panopscot River. During the initial investigation, Maine State Police circulated composite sketches of two individuals specifically to car rental companies in the Bangor area. The sketches were not made public, and investigators did not explain the reason for them at the time other than to say the individuals might have rented a car between April 5th and April 8th. Despite all of these sightings, investigators didn't know for sure why Jim had been in Maine. One theory centered on family connections. Jim was from New Brunswick, Canada, and still had family there, and it was suggested he may have been traveling north to visit them. Driving through Maine would have been Jim's normal route on the way to Canada. According to Jim's sister-in-law, Evelyn Cassidy, Jim was actually planning a trip around that time to see the new house she and her husband, Jim's brother David, were building on family farmland. Well, we had talked to him on the phone. She was a big deal back then, right? The long distance charges were like astronomical. His father, me and David, we were all excited about this new house, and he was anxious to come see it, but he couldn't come immediately that week, so it was going to be like maybe two weeks or something. So that was our last conversation with him. It was all about the house that was coming up, and you know, check on it out. When Evelyn and David and other family in Canada heard he was missing, they weren't too concerned at first. This was an era before cell phone, so the fact that he was out of touch for a day or so meant to Evelyn, that he was probably on route and would show up at the farm soon. Sure, it was strange that his plans to visit changed, and he hadn't communicated that he was on his way, but it wasn't cause for alarm, until news broke out of Massachusetts, that Jim was a wanted man. We couldn't imagine where he was really. We just kept waiting for him to show up, and then we heard about the embezzlement, and we thought he wouldn't do that, so what possibly could be the explanation you could think of, right? We were just like, you know, randomly thinking what could have happened. The Embezzlement. On April 7, the same day that anonymous caller found Jim's burning car, the FBI had obtained a warrant for Jim's arrest on embezzlement charges. Investigators theorized that his sudden trip north might not have been a family visit at all. He may have been running. By the time Jim Cassidy's burn station wagon was discovered in the main woods, another investigation was unfolding back in Massachusetts. Jim was a vice president at Brookline Trust Company. He'd worked at the bank for nearly two decades. Within the institution, he had developed a reputation as the resident computer expert, overseeing the bank's data processing systems at a time when computerized banking operations were still relatively new. I remember on the TV when we were there after this happened, and they were describing him as a computer genius. He never told me he was any kind of genius. Well, he had taken us to his office. I remember being in his office, and his computer was as big as that wall. He was in charge. He was in charge of all those computers. Those big, massive computers that stamped the size of a fridge in the disks that are the tapes that are running back and forth and stuff. I mean, he just knew what he was doing all the time. Jim's brother, Arthur Cassidy, also held a leadership role at the same institution, serving as a vice president at Brookline Trust as well, though Evelyn recalls that he worked at a different branch of the bank. On March 29, prior to Jim's disappearance and death, officials from the Massachusetts Banking Commission and the FDIC arrived at Brookline Trust unannounced to conduct what was described as a routine audit. The audit was overseen by the Deputy Commissioner of the Massachusetts Banks and Loans Division. The following day, bank officers were informed that the institution had reached a tentative agreement to merge with another institution, the United States Trust Corporation. It was during that meeting that they were also informed of the audit. Reporting indicates that the president of the United States Trust Corporation had a pre-arranged meeting with Jim for either April 5th or April 6th, though it's unclear if this was a routine meeting relevant to the pending merger, or the ongoing audit, or something else entirely. And Jim did show up for work at the bank on Monday, April 5th, but after reportedly telling colleagues he had a dentist appointment, he left the bank and never returned. As far as I can tell, he never went to immediate. After Jim was reported missing, the audit intersected with a specific review of accounts Jim managed. Officials at Brookline Trust met with Brookline Police on April 6th, the first full day of the search for Jim prior to the discovery of his car. According to the FDIC at the time, it was standard procedure when a bank officer goes missing to audit any accounts that person may have access to. According to Deputy Commissioner Steven J. Weiss, quote, "a large chunk of money came up during that review." On April 7th, the FBI obtained a federal warrant for Jim's arrest on embezzlement charges, while he was still considered a missing person. The anonymous call about the burned out car and body came in that day, but he wouldn't be found or tentatively identified until the 8th. According to investigators, the alleged embezzlement scheme began in January of 1976. It involved the use of letters of credit connected to banks in New York, Cleveland, Canada, and Framingham, Massachusetts. Some investigators believed the activity may have been going on for years. However, the federal arrest warrant was narrowly based on an alleged $19,892 and 20-cent treasurers' check, dated March 16th, 1976, and made out to Framingham Trust Company. That was where Jim did his banking for his side business, a rare stamp and coin company. More on that later, investigators suspected the financial losses connected to the case could be much larger. Reports suggested that Jim may have been suspected of embezzling more more than one million dollars, and one report plays the figure closer to $1.9 million. An FBI special agent later said that a full audit of the bank's records was underway to determine the actual amount of money that might be missing. "It was unbelievable. It didn't fit his life or his personality or anybody he was involved with that we knew of." His relatives were trying to grapple with Jim's disappearance, his death, and now the unbelievable allegations against him, but just as quickly as the investigation opened, it closed. The $19,900 federal embezzlement case was formally dismissed when Jim's death was confirmed. However, the FBI reportedly continued investigating the case trying to determine whether anyone else may have been involved, yet many aspects of the investigation remain hidden from public view. The arrest warrant itself was never made public, and today, even the paper trail surrounding the case has largely disappeared. A Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI filed by Jim Cassidy's niece Jillian produced an unexpected response. When agents searched for records related to the embezzlement investigation, they could not locate them. After attempting to find the missing files and failing, the bureau closed the request. A separate records request I submitted to the U.S. District Court in Boston, where the charges originated, yielded a similar result. According to a clerk who searched the archives, Jim's name did not appear in the system. The official response stated that after a, quote, "Diligent search from 1970 through 1989 archives and microfiche," no records could be located relating to James Cassidy or Brookline Trust. If he really was involved with illegally taking any amount of money by any method, Jim's family didn't and still don't believe it was self-motivated. We know we didn't do it for self-gain, so how did it, how did all this happen? Pretty out of our range of thinking, I would say, you know, modest family, not like he had the $1 to keep up with us. His family tells me that it just wasn't in Jim's character to steal, and beyond that, he didn't seem to be struggling financially, nor was he obsessed with money. He lived a modest life in a home he inherited from his mother, and he had a few side hustles to supplement his primary income from the bank, like helping people with their income taxes at night. He was a hard worker who took pride in providing for his wife and children, but he wasn't money-hungry to the point of embezzling over a million dollars. He didn't have a use for it or a need for it. Our class of people, we were working people, he came from a farm, and I came from lumbermen, you know, lumberjacks. We wouldn't take charity, you know, Jim would be the same, like he didn't, everybody had such pride in what they earned themselves. As far as I can tell, investigators were never able to determine the whereabouts of the treasurer's check identified in the arrest warrant. There was no clear evidence that Jim had spent the money, and reports indicate there wasn't a dime found with his body when it was discovered. There's no why, there's no reason for him to take it, unless he was forced to. While the embezzlement allegations didn't seem to match Jim's life or personality, there were examples from that same era of bank officials who found themselves entangled sometimes unwillingly in criminal networks with a reputation for getting what they want by any means necessary. Just a few years before Jim Cassidy's death, another bank vice president in Massachusetts was killed under circumstances investigators believed may have involved organized crime. According to Bob Ward's reporting for the Boston Globe, around 7 p.m. on the evening of December 15, 1973, James R. Morse Jr. left his home telling his wife he was going out to meet someone, though he didn't say who. He said he'd be back by 9 p.m., but he would never return. Around 830 p.m. a resident in the area of Lincoln and Port Smith Streets in Brighton, Massachusetts, called police to report that a car appeared to be on fire and that there was a man inside who looked like he had been shot. By the time police arrived at 8.47 p.m., passers-by had already pulled the man from the car worried the vehicle might explode. Authorities confirmed that the man was 36-year-old James R. Morse Jr. The autopsy leader determined that he died from multiple gunshot wounds to the head and neck. From the very start of the investigation, police believed James likely knew his killer and did not fear the person. Investigators believe the gunman could have been sitting with James shortly before the attack. The driver's side window of the station wagon had been shot out, but investigators determined that the car had not actually been on fire. Instead, steam from a broken heater hose and the radiator had been pouring out from under the hood, creating the appearance of flames. Within 15 hours of the murder, investigators uncovered what appeared to be an important lead. An 11-year-old boy discovered a 38-calibur revolver near Western Avenue and Waverley Street, about a quarter mile from where James had been found. It was consistent with the murder weapon. Not far from the firearm police located an abandoned vehicle that had previously been reported stolen. The license plate on the car did not belong to it. They had been taken from another car reported stolen in Nadek, Massachusetts, earlier that year. That vehicle was recovered two weeks before the murder. Investigators believed the abandoned car may have been positioned as a getaway vehicle, though it appeared it had never actually been used for that purpose. The revolver itself had been sold in Texas 15 years earlier and detectives began trying to reconstruct its chain of ownership. The next leads came from James' own pocket. Investigators found a diary inside his jacket containing several names and started tracking down those contacts, which included social and business associates and even some people described as celebrities. Richard Connellese reporting in the globe states that police also discovered a separate piece of paper listing names alongside dollar amounts. At the time of his death, James was a former vice president at United States Trust Corporation. The Morse family had deep roots in the institution. In fact, they had been connected to the bank since it was founded in the late 1800s. James, however, had recently resigned from the bank, though he reportedly gave no specific explanation beyond saying he was tired of banking and had many things on his mind. About a year into the investigation, detectives publicly suggested a possible motive. Despite having left the bank weeks before his murder, investigators believed James may have been targeted by members of organized crime because of his unusually relaxed lending practices. According to investigators, James was known to issue loans to borrowers with poor credit, who might otherwise have been unable to secure legitimate financing, loans that could potentially compete with loan sharks operating in the area. Another possibility was that James had attempted to collect roughly $60,000 in delinquent loans and someone had killed him over it. Friends reported early on that James spoke about having trouble collecting on loans he made to what he described as "underworld figures". Interestingly, at one point during the investigation, Michael Polici, a man accused of loan-sharking for organized crime families in nearby water town, reportedly asked an undercover police officer posing as a corrupt cop if he could see the names listed in James's diary. The reason for this guy wanting to see the list of names isn't publicly known, but it sure raised some suspicion. The Morse murder case was brought before a grand jury in December of 1974, but that effort did not result in any charges. James Morse's case was still unsolved when Jim Cassidy was found dead in 1976 and is still unsolved today. Two vice presidents at banks found dead in their cars within three years of each other. There has never been any evidence publicly linking the two cases, but the face value parallels raised plenty of questions. The same bank where James Morse had once served as vice president, United States Trust Corporation, was the institution that had tentatively agreed to purchase Brookline Trust Company where Jim had been serving as vice president at the time of his disappearance and death. Could Jim have been involved in something similar, perhaps dealing with criminal elements that investigators believed James Morse encountered? We couldn't imagine Jim being involved in anything like that voluntarily, but see that word voluntarily was in there. We don't know. But there's another layer to this story. In 1978, new information was released about Jim Cassidy's case, and it changed the entire public lens of the investigation. Jim was believed to be carrying around $350,000 invaluable stamps with him when he left Massachusetts. According to reporting by Richard J. Connolly for the Boston Globe, when his burned out car was found in the main woods, those stamps were nowhere to be found. You see, outside of his work at the bank, Jim had a side business that grew out of a childhood hobby, stamp collecting. The formal term for a stamp collector is a "follot list." Jim also bought and sold rare coins, running a small mail-order operation first out of his home, and then an office on Boyleston Street in Newton. While stamps might sound harmless, the reality is that the rare collectibles world wasn't as quiet as it seems. High-value stamps could be easy to move, difficult to trace, and valuable enough to attract the attention of people operating outside the law. Stamps even overlapped with organized crime during Jim Cassidy's time. In the early 1970s, members of Boston's Winter Hill Gang stole a stamp collection worth roughly $500,000 from a Boston stamp business and then used networks of other coin and stamp dealers to fence the stolen stamps. It wasn't an isolated incident either. So if Jim Cassidy had crossed paths with what some people described as "underworld figures," the connection might not have come from banking at all. It might have come from his stamps. On the next episode of Dark Down East, Jim Cassidy had collected stamps since he was a kid, and as an adult, he turned that hobby into a side business, buying and selling stamps through a mail order service. In true Jim fashion, he was humble about the whole thing. Jim never talked about having valuable stamps or anything like that. He said how he enjoyed getting them from different places and how some were rare and how they'd been worth more money, but he never mentioned anything about the value of them. But they were valuable, and Jim was reportedly carrying a package of stamps with him when he disappeared worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that were never recovered. As the investigation deepened, detectives began pulling on threads that led in unexpected directions. Toward organized crime figures in Boston, and a mysterious pair of men seen and made around the time Jim disappeared. One of them, a known stamp collector while in state prison. Jim's family has questioned everything over the last 50 years, and unexplained break-in at his brother's house during the funeral. "I'll tell you, we were all scared to death." An unusual meeting with the man believed to be the last person who saw Jim alive. "Very strange, on characteristic of Jim," he said, "I've only used to be you, excuse us, and we need to talk for a bit." And whether the embezzlement allegations against Jim were really what they seemed. "You wonder. You know, if it would make a difference, you know, and that man I thought I had really nothing to do with this, and he was forced to do it." Could Jim's quiet side business have pulled him into a world he never meant to enter? The case of James Cassidy continues on the next episode of Dark Down East. And if you don't want to wait, you can listen to part two right now, early and ad-free, in the Crime Junkey Fan Club app. If you have any information about this case, please contact the main state police major crimes unit north at 207-973-3750 or use their toll-free line at 1-800-432-7381. You can also submit information anonymously by using the form linked in the description of this episode. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at DarkDown East.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram @DarkDown East. 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 Low, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Adia Chuk. I think Chuk would approve.