The Murder of Pamela Brown (Vermont)

[MUSIC PLAYING] On a summer weekend in 1982, Barry Vermont was crowded with music, and traffic, and thousands of people moving through town for an annual festival. Somewhere in that noise, an 18-year-old woman disappeared. In the days that followed, investigators tried to make sense of what little they had-- fragments of sightings, possible suspects, conflicting leads, and tests that seemed to narrow the field. But the case did not move cleanly from suspicion to arrest. Decades later, the same investigation that was first shaped by uncertainty was reopened by science. And this time, the evidence pointed back to someone, investigators, had once left behind. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Pamela Brown, on Dark Down East. [MUSIC PLAYING] On a summer night in Barry Vermont, the area around St. Monica's School would not necessarily have been quiet. The school sat near Summer Street, close to a wooded area kids were known to cut through after dark. For people who lived nearby, late-night noise was not unusual. They often heard voices or car doors slamming, the telltale sounds of empty beer bottles clinking together against the ground. At times, even yelling, that sounded at first like nothing more than young people passing through the neighborhood. Sometime overnight and into the early hours of July 17, 1982, a woman who lived near the school heard a yell. According to Tom Severt's reporting for The Times Arches, the woman did not get up to check the time. She did not immediately think something terrible had happened. At first, she thought it was probably a teenage couple or someone teasing someone else as they moved through the woods. The kind of sound that could be easy to dismiss in a neighborhood where noise after dark was not out of the ordinary. But soon, that noise would take on a much darker meaning. Around noon that Saturday, children searching for returnable bottles found the partially nude body of a young woman. She was lying at the bottom of a wooded hill behind St. Monica's school. From the condition of the scene, investigators quickly believed they were dealing with a homicide. Police believed she had been there since the early morning hours. A report by Dan Gilmore for the Rutland Herald later said she may have died six to 12 hours before she was found, but the extreme summer heat complicated any precise estimate. Temperatures reached around 90 degrees that weekend. The location of her body only deepened the challenge of the investigation. That same weekend, Barry was hosting its annual ethnic heritage festival. Just one block away from where the young woman was found, part of the town's streets had been closed off for the celebration. The festival had begun Friday night and continued past midnight, bringing thousands of extra people into the area. In fact, when law enforcement were notified about the body, the festival parade was underway. The crowds, the noise, the late-night movement of people through town, all of it may have helped conceal what happened. And if anyone saw something important, they may not have realized it at the time. Not far from the woman's body, investigators found a pair of jeans and a pair of glasses. There was no person nearby and no identification either, so at first, police didn't know who this woman was. John Taylor reports for the Burlington Free Press that investigators checked missing persons reports in town and neighboring communities, but nothing matched. As word of the discovery moved through Barry, one family began to fear the worst. Their daughter and sister, 18-year-old Pamela Brown, went to the festival the night before, but never made it home. As talk of a murder spread through town, Pamela's family sent one of her brothers to the Barry Police Department with a photograph. That's when police confirmed. The young woman found behind St. Monica's School was Pamela Brown. Pamela Brown was at the very beginning of her adult life. She had graduated from Spalding High School in Barry just two months before. And she hadn't simply made it through school. She graduated with honors. By the summer of 1982, she was in that brief, delicate window between high school and whatever came next. That fall, Pamela was planning to attend Burlington Technical School. Her life was moving forward. She had plans and a future she was preparing for. At Spalding High, Pamela was part of the Glee Club and a church group. She was described as a church going Christian and by all accounts, her faith was an anchor. It shaped the way she moved through the world and the way she treated other people. She volunteered at Central Vermont Hospital and at school, she worked as a teacher's aide helping other students who were struggling in class. Even at 18, she seemed rooted in service and care. And that is part of what made her death so difficult for Barry to absorb. Her family and the community grappled with the impossible question. How could something so violent have happened to someone remembered almost universally for being so gentle? In the first hours after Pamela Brown was identified, investigators were working with two urgent questions at once. The first was physical. What had happened to her? And the second was logistical. How had it happened in the middle of a crowded festival weekend in a place with so much foot traffic, so much noise, and so many people moving in and out of town? At first assessment, Vermont's chief medical examiner, Dr. Eleanor McQuillin, said Pamela did not appear to have significant bruises or injuries. But the circumstances of Pamela's death were already pointing in one clear direction. The autopsy confirmed Pamela died by ligature strangulation. And police said the ligature was a piece of her own clothing described as the cord, drawstring, or belt from her blouse. Police would not release the full autopsy findings. They said they were holding back details to protect the integrity of the investigation. So they would not confirm whether Pamela had been sexually assaulted, nor would they confirm or deny whether they believed more than one person had been involved. Pamela's father, Elmer, told detectives that he dropped his daughter off at the festival on Friday night, and she was supposed to meet up with some friends. However, according to witnesses, at some point between 9.30 p.m. and midnight, she separated from the people she had been with. When her father returned to pick Pamela up, she didn't show. That left investigators with a narrow, but complicated window of time. They needed to know who saw Pamela after 9.30 that night. They needed to know where she went, who she was with, and how she ended up behind St. Monica's school. But the festival made all of that harder. Thousands of extra people were in bury that weekend with later reporting by Derek Elkinner for the Rutland Herald, putting the crowd between 25 and 30,000. Many were from outside the community, and the St. Monica's parking lot had been used for festival parking, putting countless cars and people near the area where Pamela was later found. In a smaller, quieter setting, someone walking with Pamela might have stood out. A scream may have drawn attention. A suspicious person leaving the area on foot might have been remembered immediately, but on festival weekend, so much could blend into the background. There was another issue, too. Some of the earliest leads were confusing, and not all of them led somewhere useful. At one point, police looked into whether Pamela's death might have had any connection to a car that was reported stolen from a parking spot less than a block from where her body was found. But according to police, the car had not actually been stolen. They said the owner had simply forgotten where it was parked. On the other hand, the owner strongly disputed that he simply misplaced his vehicle. He told Sarah Wilson of the Times Argus that his car had been within view of the scene of the murder when he left it, but it was later found about a quarter mile away. He also claimed witnesses had seen four youths get into the car and drive away on the night of Pamela's murder. The owner also claimed there were scratches that looked like someone had used a coat hanger to break in through a window he had left slightly cracked. Barry Police Chief Joseph Morrison insisted there was no possible connection between the car and Pamela's murder, though he did not elaborate on what convinced him of that conclusion. Washington County State's Attorney Gregory McNaughton, meanwhile, denied there were signs of forced entry and indicated there was no other physical evidence the car had actually been stolen. Investigators said they had spoken to witnesses who claimed the car had been where it was found on Elm Street since at least 6 p.m. that Friday. Police also noted the car had not been hot-wired and the keys were not inside. Still, the owner was uncomfortable enough that he parked the car in his garage and left it untouched for several days in case it later needed to be processed for evidence. It was just one of several threads investigating had to pull at while trying to separate rumour, fear, coincidence, and fact. In the days after Pamela's murder, police also administered at least one polygraph test right off the bat. The man who took it was described in reporting as being "involved" in another case from about a month earlier, a case with some disturbing similarities. In that incident, a partially nude female victim had been found beaten but alive on the steps of a local church. That case was still under investigation at the time but reporting suggests police expected to rule out that individual in Pamela's case despite any perceived similarities. A little over a week into the investigation, Champlain Valley Crime Stoppers released a reenactment, hoping it would generate new leads. And with it, police made a specific public request. They wanted to hear from anyone who saw Pamela after 9.30pm on Friday, July 16th, and they also wanted tips about anyone seen leaving the berry area on foot or hitchhiking. Maybe investigators were considering the possibility that Pamela's killer had slipped away without a car. Maybe through the festival crowd, maybe through the dark streets around St. Monica's, maybe by catching a ride out of town before anyone even knew a young woman had been killed. The challenge was that, in a city full of visitors, any one of those possibilities could have been true. And somewhere in all of that movement, the music, the crowds, the parked cars, the late-night noise that neighbors had learned to ignore, was the answer to what happened to Pamela Brown. Somewhere between the festival crowd and the wooded hill behind St. Monica's school, Pamela had crossed paths with someone who either knew what happened to her or was responsible for it. Investigators were working backward through the night. They talked to friends and witnesses and anyone who might have seen Pamela after 9.30pm. And by the end of July, they had enough information to release a composite sketch of a man they wanted to identify in connection with Pamela Brown's final hours. At that point, investigators were careful with their language. Washington County State's Attorney Gregory McNaughton said it would be unfair to call the man in the sketch a suspect. But he was important. He was believed to have been seen with Pamela a few hours before she was killed, and unlike other people who had been with her that night, he hadn't come forward already. Now, the siding came from a friend who said she spoke with Pamela sometime between 10.45 and 11pm on Friday night outside the country house restaurant on Main Street. According to that witness, Pamela was with a man the witness did not recognize. He was described as thin, about 5'8", around 150 pounds, and wearing a light-colored baseball cap. Investigators had known about this man in the first few days after Pamela's murder, but they did not immediately release the sketch. According to reporting at the time police waited while they followed other avenues of investigation. But once the sketch was made public, calls started coming in. Police received dozens of tips and said they were able to make a few "tonnative" identifications of the man, but even with the sketch, the investigation did not break open, not immediately. Hope rekindled the following month when investigators said they had four possible suspects. Police would not name them at the time, they would only say that all four had some kind of connection to Pamela or to the area where her body was found. Some had been seen with her, some had been seen near St. Monica's school, and others had another connection to her. We know now that one of those possible suspects was a man we'll call by the fake name Jimmy. According to later reporting by Thatcher Moats for the Rutland Herald, Jimmy told police he had consensual sex with Pamela on the night she was killed, and that she was fine very much alive when they parted ways. That admission made him significant to the investigation, of course, but it could also complicate how forensic evidence might be interpreted. Another man, police interviewed in the immediate aftermath of Pamela's murder, was Theodore Karen Jr. Wilson Ring reports for the Rutland Herald that witnesses told police Pamela had been with Theodore on the night of July 16th. Another witness told investigators Theodore was known to be mean to women and allegedly slapped and pushed them around when he didn't get his way. And one witness said Theodore had asked them to lied to police about where he was that night. When police interviewed Theodore, he pointed to an alibi. He said he was with a female friend both nights of the festival and never left her side. The woman later backed this up, but then again, Theodore also admitted he had asked someone else to lie about his whereabouts. According to reporting by Tom Watkin for the Times Argus, the potential suspects were asked to submit to polygraph examinations and they were offered what was known as use immunity. In basic terms, that meant nothing they said before, during, or after the polygraph could be used as evidence against them, incriminating evidence gathered as a result of those statements could not be used either. Maybe it was a strategy to get people talking or at least to get them in the room, but it came with obvious risks. Others might learn something important and still be limited in what they could do with it. So at least two of the suspects submitted to polygraphs and the results are compelling. One possible suspect answered in such a way that indicated he may have killed Pamela or participated in her killing. But after the exam the individual wanted to speak within attorney, officials were not allowed to verify the examination results at that point and the results were left in conclusive. Later reporting suggests this may have been Jimmy's polygraph. According to a 2009 report, Jimmy failed a polygraph with a score of -26, all in the question of whether he was there when Pamela stopped breathing. An investigator familiar with the methodology said a score of only -6 was enough to indicate deception. But again, this did not result in an arrest. In this case, the possible immunity issue and the request for an attorney made the situation even more complicated. Theodore Karen Jr. also agreed to be polygraphed in this case, and he passed. And in part, because of that passed polygraph, investigators did not collect blood or saliva samples from him at the time. For all practical purposes, he was eliminated from the pool of possible suspects. So the case continued moving in other directions. Behind the scenes there was also a secret inquest. Certain people believed to have been seen with Pamela on the night she was killed were called to testify, but when some of those witnesses realized they were not just being asked what they had seen, that they were being questioned about possible involvement in Pamela's murder, they asked for attorneys and were advised to plead the fifth. Even so, states attorney McNaughton said investigators had enough probable cause to demand fingerprints from some people, so they could compare them to evidence through a non-testimonial identification order. But no one was charged. A year after Pamela's murder, the case was still unsolved. By then, the urgency had changed shape. Pamela's case wasn't forgotten, but like so many unsolved homicides, it had to compete with new crimes and new demands on the department. Still, investigators said, whenever a similar crime happened in the area, police checked to see whether there could be a connection, to determine if Pamela's killer might have struck again. Whoever killed Pamela had the cover of a crowded festival weekend, and by the time police knew a murder had happened, the person responsible may have already been gone. For years the investigation circled around men whose names surfaced in tips, interviews, polygraphs, and closed door proceedings, but Pamela's case went cold. When people talk about DNA solving a cold case, it can almost sound automatic, like science finds a name, and that name gives you the answer. But DNA is evidence, and evidence still has to be interpreted. It can tell investigators that someone's biological material was present, it can sometimes tell them where it was found or what kind of sample it came from, but it does not always explain how it got there when it got there or what happened after. For years, the investigation of Pamela's murder had circled around several possible suspects. One of them was Jimmy. According to later reporting, Jimmy told police he had consensual sex with Pamela on the night she was killed. He said she was alive when they parted ways. So when in 1997 a DNA profile found on an article of Pamela's clothing was consistent with Jimmy, it was significant, but it wasn't simple. On its face, DNA connected him to Pamela, but because Jimmy had already claimed to have sexual contact with her that night. presence of his DNA did not automatically prove he had killed her. It could potentially be explained by the contact he claimed they had. That did not make the evidence meaningless. It just meant it was not on its own, the answer. Then, in 2002, investigators took another step. A different DNA profile, not Jimmy's, identified from seminal fluid on Pamela's body was entered into state and national DNA databases. The hope was that someday, if the right person's profile entered the system, the case might finally generate a new lead. That someday came in 2007. 25 years after Pamela was murdered, there was a hit in the Vermont DNA database. The profile from Pamela's case matched Theodore Karen Jr. The same Theodore Karen Jr. who had been interviewed in the immediate aftermath of Pamela's murder. who witnesses said had been with Pamela on the night of July 16th. who had admitted asking someone to lie about where he was. And the same Theodore Karen Jr. who had taken a polygraph, past it, and for all practical purposes had been eliminated or at least discounted from the early suspect pool. The reason Theodore's DNA was in the database had nothing to do with Pamela's case. His profile was entered into the state and national DNA databases after a 2006 conviction for his third driving under the influence offense. But a database hit was not the end of the process. Investigators needed a fresh sample from Theodore to confirm the match. In 2008, police watched as Theodore threw away a cup of coffee outside a state office building. They collected that discarded cup and tested it. And the DNA from the cup matched the profile from Pamela's case. Now the old case looked different. Investigators were turned to the people who had helped shape the original case, including the friend who had supported Theodore's alibi back in 1982. At the time, she had told police Theodore was with her both nights of the festival, including the night Pamela was killed, and that he never left her side. But when police interviewed her again during the renewed investigation in 2008, her certainty appeared to fracture. According to a leader, Affidavit, she broke down crying and said she probably would have concealed the truth from investigators if it meant protecting a friend. The Affidavit did not specify that she fully admitted to lying about Theodore's alibi in this specific case, but her statement cast the old alibi in a very different light. Now as you would expect, police also interviewed Theodore again in 2008. He told them he could not remember much about Pamela's case, but he did admit he had seen her on the night before she was killed. His account was brief, he said he had met Pamela in a group and described her in a derogatory way saying she was "snobby" because she was sober while the rest of them were drunk. He claimed he only met her for about five minutes before she disappeared. That version of events sat uneasily beside what investigators now had. His alibi no longer looked as solid as it once did, and now DNA from Pamela's body had been matched to him. The case that had once moved away from Theodore Caron, Jr. had taken a sharp U-turn back in his direction. On February 12, 2009, police arrested Theodore Caron, Jr. for the first-degree murder of Pamela Brown. He was 47 years old. Back in 1982, people knew him as Teddy, and according to later reporting, his name was not unfamiliar to local law enforcement. As reported by Wilson Rang, Pamela's own brother, Brian Brown, was training to become a police officer at the time his sister was killed. Years later, he said most officers in the area knew the name Teddy Caron, Jr. Even Brian did not suspect Teddy and Pamela's murder back then. That's part of what makes this case so difficult to look back on. Theodore was not some anonymous stranger who appeared for the first time after the DNA hit. He was someone investigators knew about. There were already troubling reports about his behavior towards women. Sam Hemingway for the Burlington Free Press reports that in 1979, Theodore was charged with assaulting a teenage girl and locking her into a baby out of a house. According to later reporting, he told the girl he could knock her out if he wanted to, but that case was ultimately dismissed. Then in June of 1982, just about a month before Pamela was killed, Theodore was accused of assaulting another teenage girl he knew after the two were seen together at a party in Barry. No charges were filed in that incident. And then only two weeks before Pamela's murder, there was another allegation. Theodore was charged with aggravated assault and sexual assault after an incident in Water Berry on July 4. In that case, Theodore was accused of knocking a teenage boy unconscious with the stick and then attempting to sexually assault the teenager's girlfriend. The boy regained consciousness and he and his girlfriend were able to escape. It's unclear from the available source material exactly when Theodore was arrested in that case, but he was not in custody on July 16, 1982, the night Pamela disappeared from the festival. He was arraigned later on August 24, more than a month after Pamela's murder. Theodore later pleaded no contest and was convicted of aggravated assaults in that case. He was sentenced to five to 10 years in prison. The other assault and sexual assault charges were dismissed. Pamela's case was not the last time Theodore would be accused of violence against a woman either. In 1986, Theodore was charged with aggravated assault in the beating of a 20-year-old woman. The woman survived after Theodore tried to drag her between two houses and choke her. In 1987, he was sentenced to another five to 10 years in prison. In 1999, he was convicted of domestic assault and served a year in prison. His criminal history also included other charges over the years, including petty larceny, grand larceny, receiving stolen property, escape, and violations of probation and release conditions. Looking back, those allegations and convictions are troubling. But that's not the same thing as saying investigators in 1982 had a clear path to arrest him for Pamela's murder. They didn't. Police later said there were two other strong potential suspects at the time Theodore was interviewed and polygraphed. So investigators weren't looking at Teddy and Isolation. The combination of investigative findings at the time, the alibi, the past polygraph, those other possible suspects, appears to have made it easier for investigators to move on from him in 1982. But after Theodore's arrest in 2009, former Washington County State's attorney Gregory McNaughton said something striking. He said he hadn't known about Theodore's other assault arrest at the time. If he had known, he said Theodore would have stayed in the suspect pool. McNaughton wasn't sure how that information was missed. He said it may have been because his time in the State's attorney's office was winding down, and the other case had been assigned to a deputy State's attorney. It all shows how a cold case can turn not just on evidence, but on information flow, what one investigator knows, what another does not, what gets weighed heavily, what gets overlooked, and what seems important only years later when a new piece of evidence forces everyone to re-examine the old decisions. The part of Pamela Brown's case that is so hard to shake is not just that Theodore Karen Jr. passed a polygraph. It's what happened after he passed. Polygraphs occupy a strange place in criminal investigations. They might be called lie detector tests, but that phrase gives them more certainty than they deserve. A polygraph does not detect lies directly. It measures physiological responses, things like breathing, pulse, blood pressure, and perspiration, while a person answers questions. The examiner then interprets those responses, and that interpretation has always been controversial. In 1998, the United States Supreme Court upheld a military rule that barred polygraph evidence from court martial proceedings. In United States, where sheffer, the court noted that there was no consensus that polygraph evidence was reliable, and said there was simply no way to know in a particular case whether a polygraph examiner's conclusion is accurate. A few years later, the National Research Council reviewed the science behind polygraph testing. It's 2003 report found that polygraph testing could distance language lying from truth-telling at rates well above chance in some specific incident investigations but well below perfection. The report also warns that accuracy was weaker and more uncertain in screening situations and that overconfidence in polygraph results could create serious risks. So a polygraph may give investigators something to work with, it may help guide an interview, it may prompt a confession, expose inconsistencies or push police toward a lead they need to explore. But it can also do the opposite, it can make someone look more suspicious than they are or it can make someone look less suspicious than they should. Another notable New England example of a misleading polygraph result is the case of helicrafts in Connecticut. He disappeared in 1986 and her husband, Richard Krafts, was eventually convicted of murdering her in a case built largely on circumstantial and forensic evidence. But early in the investigation, Richard reportedly took and passed a polygraph. According to crime writer Mark Gatto's account of the case file documents, that past test affected how at least one investigator viewed him. The detective wrote in a report that he did not believe Richard knew where he was. A jury ultimately reached a different conclusion though, after a first trial ended in a mistrile, Richard Krafts was convicted of murder in a second trial. Especially in the pre-DNA era when investigators didn't have the same forensic tools available now, a past polygraph could feel like a meaningful data point. It could narrow the field and help police decide where to focus their limited time and resources. It could make one suspect seem less urgent, while another lead appeared more promising. But a past polygraph is not a substitute for evidence, we know that. That may be one of the most important lessons of Pamela Brown's case. Not that investigators should have magically known in 1982 what DNA would prove decades later, but that no investigative tool, especially one as imperfect and contested as the polygraph, should be allowed to end a question that is not truly been answered. After theodore Karen Jr. was arrested in February of 2009, he entered a not guilty plea to first degree murder. He was held on 500,000 cash bail and if convicted as charged, he faced a possible life sentence. For Pamela Brown's family, the arrest was a long-awaited development, but even then, the case wasn't simple. One former Vermont State Police officer, Robert Duhame, made a striking comment after the case came back into public view. In his opinion, the other possible suspect, Jimmy, may also have been present when Pamela died. Duhame pointed to the polygraph question Jimmy reportedly failed, whether he was there when Pamela stopped breathing. But to be clear, Jimmy has never been charged with any crimes relating to the death of Pamela Brown. But that lingering uncertainty is part of what made the case so complicated. Multiple men had surfaced in the investigation. Even when DNA finally identified Theodore Karen Jr., it did not answer every question about who knew what, who was present, or exactly how Pamela's final moments unfolded. In December of 2009, the case ended without a trial, when Theodore Karen Jr. accepted a plea agreement. Instead of going forward on the original first-degree murder charge, he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 15 to 35 years in prison, yet because Pamela was killed in 1982, Theodore was sentenced under the rules that applied at the time of the crime. After those rules, he could receive 15 days of credit for every 30 days served, and with the time he was already in custody awaiting trial, he was expected to become eligible for a release much sooner than the sentence might sound at first, possibly in about 7 years. Pamela had lost her entire future. Their family had waited 27 years for an answer, and the man who pleaded guilty to killing her could potentially serve far less time than many people might assume for a murder conviction. As of this recording in 2026, Theodore Karen Jr. is furloughed and under community supervision. My attempts to reach him for this episode were unsuccessful. The people who knew Pamela Brown remembered a young woman who was kind, thoughtful, and deeply giving. Her father said she talked to everyone and liked to help other people. Her friends told Kathleen M. Norton of The Bennington Banner that, "Pamela was generous with her time, her energy, and her encouragement. The kind of person who seemed to notice when someone needed an uplifting word." One school administrator put it simply, "There weren't any neon lights around her, but she was friendly to most everybody." She wasn't loud or flashy. She wasn't someone who demanded attention. She didn't need to. Pamela was remembered as warm, steady, and gentle. The kind of person whose goodness may not have announced itself from across the room, but was obvious to the people close enough and lucky enough to know her. Or then 40 years later, that is worth remembering. 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 Dark Down 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.