The Security Guard Who Knew He Was Going To Die - And Showed Up Anyway

In 1986, a man named Scott McLean was killed in broad daylight. Police quickly found their suspect, prosecutors convicted him. But now, almost 40 years later, I'm re-examining this case. I really didn't believe any of it was real, and I was like, "Well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job." Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time? He's been too examined, the backfire effect wherever you get your podcasts. Every now and then, someone would die. Risk. True stories. No holding back. It comes up behind me, and Whisper's right there, and nobody knows where you are. In no way you can hear your scream. Some of these stories will make you laugh till you're crying. And then I realize, I'm unconscious. Some will stick with you for life. They catch my mom, poisoning my sister. My brother, he died at the hands of my mother. I said, "Mike, don't make me shoot your face," but he did. People say risk makes them feel less alone and more alive. During my time in prison, I discovered a podcast called Risk. That podcast saved my life so many times. Live your authentic truth, because you never know who may come to your funeral and turn that bitch out. Risk. Show where people tell true stories they never thought they dared to share, wherever you get your podcasts. Every town has a dark side. On the night celebrating America's independence, the life-forth of 2000, a security guard sitting alone in a nearly empty factory watched his car burn to the ground in the parking lot eight feet in front of him. Everything he owned was in that car, everything that mattered to him. When the firefighters arrived and spoke to him, expecting to find a man in distress, what they found instead was someone who was completely impossibly calm, was as if he already knew it was coming. And just two hours later, this guy, he was gone, banished without a trace, and he's never been seen again. And this is the very strange story of Curtis Pishin, and once you hear it, you won't be able to stop thinking about it. Hey guys, it's Andrew, thanks for tuning into every town we're today, we're headed to my neck of the woods to check out a mysterious missing persons case that very well might have been a murder. And if that's the case, and the person or persons who did it, they've been walking free for the past 26 years. So let's head on down to Sea Brook, New Hampshire, and check it out together. This is the disappearance of Curtis Pishin. Curtis Edward Pishin was born on July 11, 1959, down in Columbus, Georgia. His father was a military officer, and that fact left a mark on Curtis early. It made him want to be a cop. And that dream of his to work in law enforcement didn't fade as he grew up. It was always a goal that he worked toward. And because they were a military family, they moved around a lot, 26 times in fact, in 20 years, across multiple states and countries, including Germany. In the 1970s, when the boys were finishing high school, his dad retired from the military and moved back to his own childhood home in Hopkins, New Hampshire. And Curtis went to college briefly in Hawaii, but eventually made his way back to New Hampshire to be near family. He got himself a job as an emergency dispatcher to get a foot in the door. And then in 1980, joined the US Army as military police. And his enlistment ended in '84, while he walked straight into the conquered New Hampshire Police Department, men spent the next 10 years there on the job. And those 10 years were everything to this man, not just a career and identity. The badge wasn't just something he did, it was who he understood himself to be. And he had built his entire adult life around it, piece by piece, from the time he was a kid watching his father. And then tragically in 1990, at just 31 years old, well, Curtis was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. MS is a brutal disease that attacks the central nervous system. It's progressive, unpredictable, and there is no cure. It will eventually kill you. Now quickly that happens, depends on your body and the type of medication you take. If for Curtis, it messed with his mobility first, then came the chronic pain, and eventually, it chipped away at his coordination to the point where he could no longer fire his weapon accurately. If for a street cop, there is no working around that, and so after 10 years on the force, Curtis had no choice and turned in his badge. For anyone, this is a brutal reality to face, and for Curtis, his life was ripped away from him in an instant, and at such a young age. The dispatcher job, the army, the conquered PD. Every step was deliberate to get there, and now his own body took it away from him at 31 years old through absolutely no fault of his own. So, the years that followed were pretty dark and bleak to say the least. Curtis drifted through odd jobs that didn't fit and didn't stick, and he became withdrawn and just got quieter. He retreated within himself, because that's what people tend to do when they have no one really to talk to about their issues, because unless you've been through it, well, you can't really understand what was happening to him. They started drinking a lot more, but people around him who loved him, like his brother Mark, watched it happen and tried to do what they could, but it was difficult. Finally though, in December of 1998, like a Christmas miracle, well, Curtis caught a break. Curtis P. Sean had dedicated his life to public service, but when his health took a tragic turn, he ended up at a factory on the Seacoast as a security guard. The reliable security guard agency took him on and assigned him to the night shift, Venture Corporation, not-of-parts manufacturing plant in Seabra that made plastic components for the big Midwest car manufacturers. The physical demands were manageable, no weapon required, and he could use his instincts in his training in a context that didn't ask his body for things it could no longer give. Essentially, he was there to just keep an eye on things in a town with very little crime at a place that wasn't a prime target for a robbery. And slowly, those closest to him saw that something had started to shift, and the old Curtis began to shine through again. His confidence returned because he had structure again, and somewhere to be and reason to show up. And he was needed for something and had a purpose, which at the end of the day is really almost people want to feel useful. As so quietly and steadily, one overnight shift at a time, Curtis was coming back. But then, someone took that from him too. On Tuesday, July 4th of 2000, Curtis arrived at Venture Corp around 9.30 pm. He parked his car, an early 90s green mercury tow pass, and his usual spot just 8 feet from the guard shack. It was a holiday, which meant the skeleton crew out there. Just 12 workers inside the plant instead of the usual 100 or more, so much quieter than normal. Curtis logged in, took his post, and settled into the rhythm of the night. At around midnight, the supervisor checked in on him, and everything was fine, so nothing to report just yet. But in reality, something was already wrong, Curtis just didn't know yet. At 1.42 am, he called the Seabrook Fire Department. His car was on fire, and he tried to fight it himself with an extinguisher that was on sight and couldn't get it under control. By the time firefighters arrived, the mercury tow pass was fully engulfed, parked so close to the guard shack that the fire had singed the walls of the building itself. The deputy chief, Jeff Brown, was on scene that night, and he spent time with Curtis after the blaze was put out. And what he remembered afterward, the detail that stuck with him, was how Curtis seemed. Not devastated, not frantic, not even particularly upset, calm, eerily and explicably calm about the whole thing. Now considering everything going on in Curtis' life, maybe you could chalk the calmness he displayed to having some perspective, and battling a disease that took away your career, and will end your life will change the way a man sees things. However, the chief and, more importantly, his family, sought in a different way. See, Curtis used his vehicle the way other people used a storage unit. His most prized possessions and the things that meant the most to him. All of it was in there, and all of it was now gone. His brother Mark said he would have expected Curtis to be almost in tears over that. Instead, Deputy Chief Brown was describing a man who seemed to have already made his peace with it. Like the burning car was just a fact he decided to move past before the fire was even out. Now, that is not the reaction of someone in shock or who has a different perspective on life. That is the reaction of someone who already knows why the fire started. Someone who is not surprised because he can't be surprised by something you were already expecting. We'll get back to the story in just a second, but first, a quick thanks to today's sponsor, Fast Growing Trees. Fast Growing Trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery. Thousands of trees and plants and over 2 million happy customers. They've got fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs and house plants, all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. 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The fire investigation might have concluded that no accelerants were found at the scene, so nothing definitively confirmed arson. But also, nothing explained how a parked car burst into flames on a still July night either. In the case for it being deliberate, strong. The evidence to prove it, not quite there. Which, as you're going to find out, is a frustration that defines this entire story from beginning to end. At 2am Curtis made his final entry in the security logbook. It noted the fire department's arrival. And shortly after, a supervisor checked on him again, he was fine, calm, everything under control. Around 3.15am, co-workers on a brake spotted Curtis walking around. And this is the last confirmed sighting of Curtis' vision alive. At 3.45am, a worker arriving for the early shift on the guard shack empty, with the burnt-out car still sitting right there. Cigarettes were on the desk, and Curtis' packed lunch, his contact lens solution, and lighter. No Curtis, though. It's notes that he was missing from his position, and two cars were seen driving away at a high rate, high rate of speed, leaving the factory. No note or sign that anything happened. Just absence. Clean and total. As if he had simply evaporated somewhere in that 30-minute window between 3.15 and 3.45am in the morning. In 30 minutes, then. That's the window where the answer lies as to where this man went. In 30 minutes is nothing when you think about it. It's the length of a sitcom. It's how long it takes to eat dinner. It's the time between checking your phone and then checking it again. And somewhere inside that 30 minutes, on or around the grounds of a near-empty factory on a dark July night. Whatever happened, Curtis happened, and yet no evidence as to what went down exists. The police were on top of it pretty fast, mainly because the burnt-out car was the talk of the town at that moment. And now the guy that owns it is gone, so things were getting weird. From there, they checked every taxi company, but there were no pickups from the plant that night. And no company trucks had left the property either. And here's the thing people sometimes overlook about this case. Curtis had MS. This man was in chronic pain to the point that he had difficulty even walking. That's why sitting in a guard shack all night was an ideal job for him. So the idea of him slipping out into the darkness on foot, navigating an industrial area alone in the early hours of the morning, it doesn't exactly hold up. So, I've Curtis left that parking lot, which we know he did. He likely didn't leave on his own. And then, the investigators started finding the other things. Inside the factory, a door had been forced open. There were vending machines, and there was a change machine. The other cafeteria that had been broken into using a fork lift that was on the property. And whoever did it, knew where the machines were, knew how to operate the equipment, and knew they had a window of time. Nobody ever came forward for that, and nobody was ever charged. Now, it was literally Curtis's job to stop such a thing from happening on the premises. So, is it possible he caught whoever did it in the act and they silenced him? Or was Curtis perhaps in a bad frame of mind, and was actually the one responsible? Well, both ideas have been considered. On top of the vending and change machines being broken into, two unidentified cars were seen speeding out of the plant's parking lot around the same time Curtis disappeared. A coworker witnessed it, but those cars were never traced. The people driving them were never identified. A Curtis unaliving scenario was considered in those first hours. He had obviously been struggling, and the very nonchalant response to his belongings burning up. And plus, in the weeks before he disappeared, he had also bought a 9mm handgun from his father. So, when he went missing, people's minds went to the darkest place first. However, when police searched his apartment at the Highland Inn in Hampton, well, that gun was right where he left it, still wrapped in the paper bag his father had sold it to him in. It was untouched, and his fridge was fully stocked. He also had a family vacation coming up that he'd been genuinely looking forward to. On top of all that, this was the happiest Curtis had been in years, like I said, at a purpose with this new job. The more you look at it, the more it looks like this wasn't someone who walked away from life. This was someone who had it taken from them. And, the authorities agree, the New Hampshire Department of Justice has been clear from early on, that the circumstances surrounding Curtis Fishing's disappearance point to foul play. So then, who would have the motivation to kill a security guard struggling with MS? In the weeks before he vanished, Curtis had been telling people close to him that something felt wrong at venture corporation, and he believed drug deals were going down in the exact parking lot he was protecting. He had raised concerns about his safety, and on the very night he disappeared, he told someone he was uneasy, and he had no backup if anything went sideways on his shift. And he could see it coming, and he set it out loud, and then it came. But still, no charges of any sort have been filed. In 2005, five years after Curtis vanished, a tip point of police toward a man named Robert April. April had worked at Venture Court, and there had been a conflict between him and Curtis, stemming of all things from a parking citation, Curtis issued him at work, the kind of petty workplace friction that normally amounts to nothing. But April had allegedly threatened Curtis over it. In Curtis, a man who had been telling his family he was scared, who had gone back to buy his gun from his dad in the weeks before he disappeared. May have had April specifically in mind when he said just that. He was arming himself against something, and the gun was found in his apartment because he likely figured that if something were to go down, it wouldn't happen at work, because that would be too obvious. Now if April were going to do something, he wouldn't do it where they both were employed. "April had a history, too, and there was really a path." pattern, and confrontations where witnesses had a habit of going quiet before anything good stick. And people who came forward about him in this specific case, or would later recant or simply not show up in court, and then in a separate case, while something happened that's hard to just move past. According to a sea-brook police arrest affidavit, April allegedly cornered a 17-year-old boy, grabbed him and told him in words documented by police, but he had killed the missing man from sea-brook and buried him in his yard, and that the boy's brother was next. And as teenager reported it, and charges were filed, and then, just like every time before, while the witness didn't appear in the charges, they were dropped. Police chief Mike Gallagher spent five years personally leading the Pishin investigation, and he spoke with Robert April multiple times, but April offered nothing useful. When asked to take a polygraph, he refused, and police searched his property, and they came away with nothing they could act on, and Gallagher later told reporters he had countless sleepless nights over the case, as words exactly were, "We have a pretty good picture of what happened." But a picture is not a warrant, a warrant is not a conviction, and without a body, without forensic evidence, or a single witness willing to stay on record, the machinery of justice cannot move. The senior assistant attorney, General Jeff Streslin, confirmed publicly that the state firmly believes foul play was involved, and the case has remained officially open with the New Hampshire cold case unit, but the last meaningful lead dried up around 2010. And since then, 16 years of silence have followed, but Curtis' family has never accepted the silence. In '08, they launched the Fine Kurt Campaign, opened up a tip line, and raised a reward that eventually reached $10,000. They built a website and gave interviews every year on the anniversary. "Pisham family says the most important thing for them is to find his remains. They have offered a $10,000 reward for information that leads to the recovery of Curtis' body and the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for his death." His brother Nicholas, who called Curtis' best friend, has said plainly, "Well, somebody took him and made sure the body would never be found." If Curtis were alive, he would have reached out, and he would never have put his family through this, never. In 26 years is a long time to carry something with no resolution to watch a case go cold while the person you believe is responsible gets up every morning and goes about his life like nothing happened. And the Pisham family is lived through that every single day, and they are still out here refusing to let Curtis become just another name on a list. So, let's just say clearly what we do know. Curtis was a man who had everything taken from him by illness, and who had fought his way back to something worth living for. And he was afraid in the weeks before he died, and he told people so. He bought a gun because he was scared and he showed up to work anyway, because he needed the job and that sense that he still had a place in the world. He was alone on a quiet holiday night, starting a building where something criminal was already emotion. His car then burned in circumstances that were never explained, and two unidentified vehicles fled the scene. And when the next shift arrived at 3.45 AM, Curtis's cigarettes were on the desk, his lunch was packed, but he was gone. And he has never been found, and nobody has ever answered for what happened to him. And somewhere out there, someone knows exactly where he is, and they have known for 26 years. It's long past due, it'd be brought to justice. So, that's going to do it for this week's episode of Every Town, I appreciate you tuning in. If you want more insane true crime stories, well, we got a ton, so subscribe and go check some others out. I'm going to come back here next week for another episode of Every Town filled with scary strange and mysterious stories, because you never know, maybe your town will be next. [BLANK_AUDIO]