Pod Insights Dark Downeast The Murder of Kathy Perry and Rhonda Travers (Rhode Island) Part 2 About this episode For years, the murders of Rhonda Travers and Kathy Perry sat stagnant without any promise of justice, but when an informant surfaced with a story about a suspect who had never before been investigated, it changed everything.
“There's always names that come up in every case,” Sgt. Pierce explained. “You know, look at this one, look at that one, whatever. There's always something, though, that just doesn't fit, you know? And these people get ruled out for whatever reason. They had alibis; they had this or what have you. In these two cases, once his name surfaced, everything fit, everything.”
This is Part Two of a two-part series.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Kylie Low? Every case starts somewhere. A small town, a missing persons report, a family asking the same questions over and over. But sometimes, a story reaches beyond its own community. Its impact extends further, calling for more attention, more conversation, and a wider audience. That's what Crime Junkie does every Monday. Ashley Flowers and Brett Preawat cover the cases you can't stop thinking about, from unsolved murders to missing people to investigations that still need answers. Because every new person who hears the story is another chance to uncover the truth. Listen to Crime Junkie every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:43 Kylie Low? For years, the murders of Rhonda Travers and Kathy Perry sat stagnant, without any promise of justice. But when an informant surfaced with a story about a suspect who had never before been investigated, it changed everything.
1:00 Speaker 01 There's always names that come up in every case. Look at this one, look at that one, whatever. There's always something, though, that just doesn't fit. And people get ruled out, for whatever reason. They had alibis, they had this, or what have you. In these two cases, once his name surfaced, everything fit. Everything.
1:20 Kylie Low? If you haven't already, please go back one episode in your feed and listen to part one of this two-part series before diving in here. I'm Kylie Low, and these are the cases of Kathy Perry and Rhonda Travers, part two, on Dark Down East.
1:47 Kylie Low? Warwick Police Detective Sergeant Fred Pierce was several years into the renewed investigation of the 1986 homicide of 20-year-old Kathy Perry when he received a phone call from Robert "Bob" Catlow, the chief inspector of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections. Chief Catlow had seen the Facebook page that Fred had created for Kathy Perry's case.
2:09 Speaker 01 Long story short, he said, "I have a longtime informant at the AGI who's willing to come forward with information he knows who killed Cathy."
2:17 Kylie Low? When Chief Catlow relayed the name of the person this informant claimed killed Kathy Perry, it stopped Sergeant Pierce in his tracks.
2:25 Speaker 01 And he told me Stanley, he used the name Stanley, and was like, oh, boy.
2:32 Kylie Low? Stanley is not the suspect's real name. Sergeant Pierce requested to use this fake name when referring to the suspect, and we are honoring that request. Fred had first heard the name Stanley several years earlier, when a West Warwick detective called him up following a local news article about the reopening of Kathy's case. The West Warwick detective told him that Stanley had previously been convicted of manslaughter in another cold case, that of Cheryl Johnson, and thought he was worth checking out. Sergeant Pierce looked into the perpetrator for Cheryl's case at the time, but wasn't convinced he was right for Kathy's murder.
3:08 Speaker 01 I wonder how much time I lost because of the fact that I did not pay all that attention to Stanley when he was brought up by the West Warwick detective.
3:19 Kylie Low? Now with an informant claiming that Stanley killed Kathy Perry, Sergeant Pierce intended to make up for that lost time and dove headfirst into learning everything there was to know about his suspect.
3:33 Kylie Low? Stanley's adult criminal history in the state of Rhode Island dates back to at least May of 1987, when he was arrested by Cranston Police on charges of assault with a dangerous substance. Court records show he pleaded no contest to simple assault and battery in that case. He was convicted of breaking and entering in 1988, and then throughout the 90s, he was charged and convicted of sexual assault in the first degree, robbery, another conviction for sexual assault in the first degree, conspiracy robbery, and escape. Also on his laundry list of crimes was stabbing someone with a screwdriver, a Stanley brand screwdriver, hence the fake name Sergeant Pierce chose.
4:17 Kylie Low? And then in 2001, Stanley was indicted for first-degree murder in the case of Cheryl Johnson. According to reporting by the Providence Journal, on December 29, 1990, the body of 22-year-old Cheryl Johnson was found at the bottom of her apartment stairs. She'd been strangled. There was a VCR missing from her apartment. Zachary R. Mider reports that about three months later, Stanley called police and admitted he and a friend drove to Cheryl's apartment together during the last week of December 1990. Stanley claimed he waited in the car while his friend went inside to steal Cheryl's VCR. Stanley and his friend were arrested and charged with theft relating to the stolen
5:02 Kylie Low? VCR, but the charges were later dropped. The friend denied any involvement in the crimes. No doubt, Stanley's admission that he had been at or near Cheryl's apartment the week of her murder, and the fact that he knew a VCR was missing from her place, made him a strong suspect in her death. But Cheryl's murder investigation went cold, and it wasn't until 1998, when Detective Sergeant Richard Silva reopened the case alongside Detective Fernando Arujo, who, of course, put Stanley's name on Sergeant Pierce's radar to begin with. The detectives interviewed witnesses, some ACI inmates among them, and learned that Stanley was going around talking about Cheryl's murder, saying that he did it.
5:45 Kylie Low? In 2001, after further investigation of these claims and other evidence in the case, Stanley was finally indicted for first-degree murder. However, in 2004, he took a deal, pleading no contest to a lesser charge of manslaughter in Cheryl's death. Stanley was already incarcerated at the time and had been since 1991. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison, which would run concurrently with his other sentence, and it was retroactive to the date of his indictment back in 2001, so he was on schedule to complete the sentence in April of 2015, but was eligible to earn credit for good behavior, and he did. Upon his release, Stanley re-offended.
6:30 Kylie Low? In April of 2013, he was arrested on charges of kidnapping, burglary, and assault with intent to commit a specific felony. Those charges were dismissed, and instead, in 2015, Stanley entered a plea of no contest on charges of assault with intent to commit specified felonies, and he was sentenced as a habitual criminal, to 20 years in prison with eight years suspended and probation.
6:57 Kylie Low? Those are just Stanley's convictions I was able to uncover. He is a violent individual with a history of sexual offenses, and was known to talk about his crimes with other inmates, some of whom went on to testify against him in the Cheryl Johnson case. According to the informant brought to Sergeant Pierce by Chief Catlow, Stanley had allegedly claimed responsibility for Kathy Perry's murder, too.
7:24 Kylie Low? I only have a vague background on the informant, and that's by design to protect his identity. Sergeant Pierce told me that the informant had previously served time for homicide himself and had ties to organized crime. He met Stanley in prison by way of Stanley's biological father, who was also incarcerated with them at the same time. The informant was deemed trustworthy by Stanley's father, who had a degree of respect among the prison population, and so Stanley had allegedly told the informant a lot of things, including details about the murder of Cheryl Johnson. The informant cooperated with police and testified as part of the investigation into Cheryl's case.
8:07 Kylie Low? The informant agreed to speak with Sergeant Pierce in the presence of Chief Catlow. And in early January of 2012, Sergeant Pierce finally sat down with the informant. During that interview, the informant shared a long and extremely specific account of what Stanley had allegedly told him about the murder of a woman named Kathy Perry. According to the informant, Stanley said he met Kathy through a friend and thought she was beautiful. He wanted her and intended to have her. When he saw her pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of the night on September 15, 1986, Stanley stopped to see if she needed help. He offered to give her a ride home, but she said no.
8:51 Kylie Low? The informant said that Stanley was persistent, trying to get Kathy to leave with him, but she kept refusing, and then Stanley lunged at her. He allegedly put her in a chokehold, which made her lose consciousness. According to the informant's recollection of what Stanley supposedly told him, Stanley got Kathy into his car and drove to the location where she was found. She regained consciousness while he was removing her clothing, and then he killed her. The informant told Sergeant Pierce something that he believes is the most critical of all details, and something only the real killer would have known. According to the informant's recollection, Stanley was adamant that he did not sexually assault Kathy. At the time Sergeant Pierce was sitting down with the informant,
9:36 Kylie Low? the public assumption remained that Kathy was sexually assaulted, based partly on the state of undress and autopsy findings of sexual activity within 72 hours of her death. But Sergeant Pierce knew otherwise.
9:50 Speaker 01 Not until 2010, when, I mean, I met with the Department of Health, and we went through a lot of evidence. There was some indication there may have been some sexual activity, but even then, they could only say that maybe she was sexually active 72 hours before, which was three days. And she had a boyfriend, and I interviewed her boyfriend, and he said, "Yeah, we were active that weekend."
10:15 Kylie Low? Two big questions here that I'm sure have popped up in your mind already. If this informant knows so much about the case, how do we know he didn't kill Kathy? And why was the informant so motivated to tell a detective this story? The informant was incarcerated at the time of Kathy's murder, so he could not have done it. As far as his motivations, he already tried telling police in a different jurisdiction about Stanley's alleged involvement in Kathy's murder, but he wasn't given the time of day. He wanted to try again because he felt that Stanley was a "sick" person. The prison population is commonly unfriendly to offenders who victimize women. To Fred, the informant seemed trustworthy. Chief Catlow also vouched
11:00 Kylie Low? for the guy's integrity, criminal record be damned. But Sergeant Pierce obviously needed to vet all the information himself. In that process, he encountered a witness whose testimony helped surface a connection between Kathy's case and the case of Rhonda Travers that had never before been investigated.
11:20 Speaker 01 At the time, when I was investigating these, I was getting my master's degree. And one of my instructors told me about what they call routine activity theory, where, you know, everybody goes about their routine, and that's how crimes of opportunity come up. And then I realized that it's not about connecting Kathy to Rhonda. It's about connecting both of them to their assailant. And that kind of, it opened my eyes. What they call linkage blinders in law enforcement, it took away that linkage blinders. And it had nothing to do with Kathy and Rhonda being linked together. It had to do with linking them to their assailant.
12:03 Kylie Low? I've been trying to get a head start on holiday shopping this year, and I've realized that some of the best gifts are just really nice versions of things people already use every day, which is why I always turn to my BFF, Quince. I got my daughter the cutest lightweight puffer jacket, which is perfect for layering during these colder months. And don't worry, she doesn't know how to find the podcast app yet, so she won't hear this and spoil her gift. As a New Englander, high-quality outerwear is key. But I can't justify paying triple digits for a jacket that'll fit her for, like, two snowstorms? Quince is high-quality, everyday essentials, not high prices, because they work directly with factories and cut out the middleman. I know you can find what you're looking for from Quince:
12:47 Kylie Low? cashmere sweaters, organic cotton basics, bedding, luggage, a gift for everyone, and hey, pal, you deserve to treat yourself too. Gold hoop earrings, add to cart. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Dark Down East. It's the best way to support the show.
13:17 Speaker 02 You know that thing where you're scrolling the internet and suddenly you're three hours deep into a celebrity lawsuit? Where you hear a courtroom term and think, wait, what does that actually mean? I'm Eliza Orland, career public defender. And I'm Taya Johnson, law professor and legal analyst. And on our brand new podcast, Criminally Online, we break down the law behind the stories you can't stop talking about. No legal degree required, just curiosity. Find Criminally Online wherever you get your podcasts.
13:55 Kylie Low? Sergeant Pierce began to unpack the informant's story with the help of witnesses who had already cooperated in one of Stanley's previous cases.
14:03 Speaker 01 I basically pigged back my investigation on the Cheryl Johnson case. Why not? Because, I mean, I went through the report, it was like 500 pages, the report was. And these people were willing to talk to the police back then on the Cheryl Johnson case about this guy because they hated him. So I said, why not? If they talked to the police back then, maybe they'll talk to me now. And you know, most of them did.
14:25 Kylie Low? Sergeant Pierce learned a lot about Stanley and his daily life. A few of his habits stuck out to Sergeant Pierce. According to witnesses, Stanley routinely bought drugs from a dealer named Norman Tate. He was also known to hire sex workers in the Elmwood Avenue section of Providence and would often take them to the same location, an industrial area that was known to be a party spot unofficially called the Fat Path. Sergeant Pierce knew from his investigation that Rhonda used to work the door screening customers for a dealer named Norman Tate. He also knew Rhonda was a sex worker who frequented the Elmwood Avenue section of Providence.
15:06 Kylie Low? And later Sergeant Pierce would realize the significance of the location where Stanley used to party, but were not there yet. Stanley's connection to Rhonda became even more obvious to Sergeant Pierce when a witness agreed to provide a written statement detailing what Stanley said about the murders he allegedly committed. The witness, a guy named Joe, was in federal prison at the time, and said he was a friend of Stanley's back in the day. In the nine-page written statement from Joe that Sergeant Pierce shared with me, the witness said he met Stanley at the ACI decades earlier. According to Joe, Stanley talked about needing to escape prison because of several Massachusetts and Rhode Island homicide
15:49 Kylie Low? and sexual assault cases in which he was a suspect. Joe claimed that Stanley then described several murders. Stanley allegedly admitted to picking up a sex worker on Elmwood Avenue in Providence and taking her to a street in Warwick, possibly Killert or something similar, and killing her there.
16:11 Kylie Low? Elmwood Avenue was where Rhonda was known to meet clients, and the witness struggled to remember the street name where Stanley allegedly killed the woman, but Killert Street sounds a lot like Killvert Street, which was near where Rhonda's body was found. It is the opinion of Sergeant Pierce that Joe was describing Rhonda Travers murder. Another murder Joe said Stanley told him about involved kidnapping a woman from her car. Joe remembered Stanley saying her name was maybe Kathy, but Joe wasn't sure. He recalled Stanley describing the route he took on the night of the murder. The street names and locations lined up with where Kathy's car was abandoned and where her body was found.
16:54 Kylie Low? Sergeant Pierce was convinced that the only way Joe knew these things about Kathy and Rhonda's murders was if the killer himself had described them to him. It was Joe and his written statement that convinced Sergeant Pierce that the murders of Kathy Perry and Rhonda Travers were connected to each other by the same assailant and to an obscure location in the town he grew up in, known only to select locals as the Fat Path.
17:22 Speaker 01 Now, the Fat Path came from the people, the kids that used to hang out there. They used to call it a Fat Path. Let's face it, when we were kids, we used to hang out in our own little places. We had our own names for it and what have you. That's what they would call it.
17:36 Kylie Low? Rhonda's body was found on one end of the Fat Path. The path itself has long since vanished, but back in 1986 and 87, it was a winding dirt path with at least one paved section that started off Kilvert Street and led into an industrial area, like an access or service road. It opened up to a dirt clearing, and two chain-linked fence gates blocked the backside of the Levitin manufacturing property. It was secluded, hidden behind trees and vegetation. It wasn't a destination you'd find marked on a map. The Fat Path was an unofficial landmark used by only those in the know.
18:19 Kylie Low? Both Kathy and Rhonda's cases were tied to opposite ends of the Fat Path. According to Sergeant Pierce, Rhonda's body was found about 1,500 feet away from Ultra Finishers, where Kathy Perry worked and the place she left before she was abducted and murdered.
18:36 Speaker 01 Two women found murdered within nine months, and they're both connected to the same path? I mean, that's coincidence? I don't know. I don't think that's a coincidence. But I don't know if the original investigators even picked up on that, because there was nothing that was ever put in their initial reports that there was a connection there. And I think that was a key element in this case. My opinion is why this case wasn't solved back then.
19:02 Kylie Low? Sergeant Pierce had at least two witnesses who claimed to have been on the receiving end of Stanley's admissions. Both Joe and the informant said Stanley allegedly claimed responsibility for killing Kathy and Rhonda, and described the murders with details only the true perpetrator was likely to know. And what's more, these witnesses and Fred's investigation connected the crimes for the very first time, but it was all secondhand narratives and circumstantial evidence. Was there any physical evidence that could tie Stanley to the murders of Kathy Perry and Rhonda Travers? DNA? Fingerprints? The answer to that question is long and frustrating.
19:44 Kylie Low? Stanley's appearance in 1986 was similar to the unidentified individual that the witness, Thomas, believed he saw standing near Kathy's car in the early morning hours before her murder. That unidentified individual was seen holding a can of some kind. Remember the beer can found in front of Kathy's car? That would have been a crucial piece of physical evidence. Even more so today with advancements in DNA technology and the automated fingerprint identification system, AFIS, which was not widely used in the 80s. Unfortunately, the beer can is gone.
20:23 Speaker 01 The beer can? I looked everywhere for that beer can, so did state police, and they couldn't find it either. The only thing I can think of, and again, I can't say this for sure, but the only thing I can think of is that when Kathy's car was found, they issued a report number for the abandoned vehicle. The beer can itself was tagged under that report number. Later on, when they found her body, a second report number was generated for the homicide. All the evidence from the homicide is listed under the homicide report, except for the beer can.
20:57 Kylie Low? Sergeant Pierce theorizes that when old cases were scrubbed from the system and evidence was purged according to retention schedules, the files and evidence from the abandoned vehicle case, along with the beer can, were destroyed.
21:10 Speaker 01 But what frustrates me more than anything about that is that it was, the beer can was specifically tagged as evidence to be processed for fingerprints. The reports don't even indicate whether or not it was processed or not, so I don't even know if it was.
21:26 Kylie Low? He contacted forensic analysts, who had long since retired from the lab, to see if they remembered testing the beer can, but unsurprisingly, they didn't. This was one beer can from one case decades ago.
21:38 Speaker 01 And it frustrates me completely, because today, we wouldn't have been able to get DNA evidence off that can, I'm sure we would have.
21:46 Kylie Low? So, no fingerprints from the can. What about biological evidence? For decades, the assumption was that Kathy was sexually assaulted, but Sergeant Pierce had since concluded otherwise. And the informant claimed Stanley was adamant that no sexual assault occurred, so no DNA there. There was no evidence of sexual assault in Rhonda's case either, which raises the question: Wouldn't that place their murders outside of Stanley's MO? With his history of sexual assault charges? In Sergeant Pierce's opinion, Rhonda and Kathy's murders were still sexually motivated. He theorized that they were killed before sexual assault occurred because the women fought back. Their attacker lost control, and he retaliated with lethal violence.
22:32 Kylie Low? So, is there any DNA evidence at all in either case? And Kathy's? Yes.
22:40 Speaker 01 There is, but it's very limited. And from an evidentiary standpoint, it's useless. It was found on her shirt, and it was minute. And even the Department of Health couldn't even tell me where that, where it came from. They couldn't tell me if it was skin cells or whatever.
22:56 Kylie Low? Striking out with physical evidence, Sergeant Pierce followed up on the license plate number that Kathy had written down on a slip of paper to see if that evidence could be tied to Stanley, or any other potential suspect for that matter. The original piece of paper with the license plate number was lost at some point throughout the years? But Sergeant Pierce had a report about it, so he was able to look up the registration himself. Now, as I said, original investigators did not appear to interview the car's registered owner back in 1986, but Sergeant Pierce was able to track him down all these years later. The registered owner was indeed enlisted with the Navy at the time of Kathy's murder and was stationed in Chicago, so his alibi held up. The man told Sergeant Pierce
23:41 Kylie Low? that he left the green car with his now former stepfather when he went to Chicago, and never saw it again. He assumed the car was junked because it was in bad shape, but wasn't sure. Not wanting to leave that stone unturned again, Sergeant Pierce tracked down the car owner's former stepfather. The man claimed he couldn't remember what he did with the car either, whether it went to a scrapyard, plates and all, or if he sold it to someone. Now, at the time of Kathy's murder, the stepfather lived on Page Drive in Coventry, Rhode Island, a small community with only one road in and out that loops back to itself, with maybe a dozen or so houses lining both sides of the street.
24:25 Kylie Low? Who else has a connection to Page Drive? None other than Stanley. Cheryl Johnson's mother, Carolyn, lived on Page Drive.
24:35 Speaker 01 Like a matter of three houses away. So I can only assume that there's some type of connection there. I don't know for sure. But it's like, you know, you put a whole bunch of coincidences together, and it's a pattern here, something, it means something. And this whole case is circumstantial, and I get that. And I know it's tough to prosecute, but you start putting all these circumstances together, and they add up to something, in my opinion, anyway. At least probable cause.
25:00 Kylie Low? So the woman who Stanley was convicted of manslaughter for killing had a connection to the same street where the person who last had possession of the green car with the license plate Kathy wrote down was living at the time of her death.
25:14 Speaker 01 You know, there's no six degrees of separation in Rhode Island. There's only two. And it does happen. You'd be surprised. But no, something like that, no, that's not a coincidence. That's, no, that's not a coincidence, not at all.
25:28 Kylie Low? We may never know why Kathy wrote down that license plate number, but Sergeant Pierce has a theory. As he looked deeper into Kathy's life and the people in it at the time of her murder, Sergeant Pierce learned that Kathy confided in her classmates and her mother that she was scared.
25:45 Speaker 01 Kathy wanted to quit her job because she was so afraid that somebody was after her. She confided in her friends that she was being stalked.
25:58 Speaker 02 You know that thing where you're scrolling the internet and suddenly you're three hours deep into a celebrity lawsuit?
26:03 Speaker 03 Where you hear a courtroom term and think, wait, what does that actually mean?
26:07 Speaker 02 I'm Eliza Orland, career public defender.
26:10 Speaker 03 And I'm Taya Johnson, law professor and legal analyst.
26:13 Speaker 02 And on our brand new podcast, Criminally Online, we break down the law behind the stories you can't stop talking about.
26:19 Speaker 03 No legal degree required, just curiosity. Find Criminally Online wherever you get your podcasts.
26:35 Kylie Low? In the months before she was killed, Kathy told her mother and classmates at the cosmetology school that she was being stalked by someone. Whoever it was, Kathy believed that person followed her home from work one night.
26:49 Speaker 01 Kathy was on her way home from work, from ultra finish, so like 2:00 in the morning when she left. As she pulls up onto East Granja Javon, where she lived, a car came up from behind her and bumped her from behind. And she didn't stop. And she knew, she confided in her mom, that somebody was after her. She said someone was after her.
27:08 Kylie Low? Kathy told her mother that the stalker was a guy who hung out at a restaurant called Ferrucci's New York System across the street from the cosmetology school she attended. Kathy said the guy had a motorcycle, and she described him as having long, shoulder-length hair, similar to the man the hypnotized witness described seeing with Kathy outside of her car on the night she was killed. Stanley had long hair in 1986. According to Sergeant Pierce, his investigation determined that Stanley owned or had access to a motorcycle. So was Kathy's stalker the same person who bumped into her car that night? Was he driving a car with the license plate number that she wrote down? And was this person also her killer?
27:53 Kylie Low? That question really can't be answered until the case is solved. But...
27:58 Speaker 01 What's the chance that she was, you know, being stalked by somebody other than the person that killed her, if you really think about it?
28:04 Kylie Low? Sergeant Pierce can't fully explain the license plate piece of the puzzle at this point, but in his opinion, it is a relevant detail in Kathy's case. On the topic of green cars, let's not forget that Rhonda Travers was last seen getting into a green car too.
28:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, another green car. It's crazy. A green car. Green cars everywhere. I mean, I think, I don't know. I know green was a popular color in cars back in that, back in the day, but again, like you said, coincidence? I don't know. I don't believe it. Come on, man.
28:35 Kylie Low? Let's talk about something else that looks like a coincidence on the surface. Unless you know what Sergeant Pierce knows about these cases and his suspect Stanley.
28:44 Speaker 01 And I later found out from a suspect's girlfriend who dated him in 1986 to 1987 that he worked at La Croix Catering. I called La Croix Catering, I talked to the owner and I talked to the general manager, and they couldn't say that he actually worked there. But what they told me was there was a lot of people that worked there, under the table, and some of the drivers for the catering business hired guys on their own just to help them out, that kind of thing. But from, according to his girlfriend, which is solid, she said, yes, he did. I actually called there one time, looking for him, and he went outrageously, he was so irate about the fact that she called him there.
29:25 Speaker 01 And she was at him, and he worked there in September and October of 86. And September 86 is when Kathy was killed.
29:33 Kylie Low? From witnesses interviewed at the roadblock during the first 24 hours after Kathy's murder was discovered, police learned that many of the people who routinely traveled Route 2 in the early hours of the morning worked at La Croix Catering. So was Stanley on his way to or from work at the catering company when he saw Kathy on the side of the road? Did he see it as an opportunity?
29:57 Speaker 01 According to an informant, he did. And that's exactly what happened.
30:04 Kylie Low? Stanley was never part of the original investigation into Kathy and Rhonda's murders. He was not seriously considered a suspect in either case until the informant disclosed Stanley's alleged admissions. Sergeant Pierce isn't surprised by this.
30:19 Speaker 01 In Kathy's case and in Rhonda's case, they were looking for a murderer. Not just one, they looked for two separate murderers. And I think that's where they made the mistake. What they should have been looking for was a serial rapist, a sexual predator.
30:36 Kylie Low? A sexual predator like Stanley.
30:39 Speaker 01 He was right there. He was arrested so many times. In 1987, he was arrested 10 times, almost once a month for violent crimes. Nine days after Rhonda was killed, a guy Stanley gets arrested by Providence Police for abducting and raping a prostitute on Elmwood Avenue, three blocks away from where Rhonda was last seen.
31:06 Kylie Low? That case was not prosecuted. Sergeant Pierce has personally interviewed Stanley as part of his investigation into Kathy and Rhonda's cases. And when the subject of this attack on a woman just over a week after Rhonda's murder came up, Stanley told Sergeant Pierce that it was just a misunderstanding.
31:24 Speaker 01 Well, police had him in custody in 1988. He abducts a woman in Providence, brutal abduction, just snatches her off to the street, takes her to Tocqueay High School, where he brutalizes her terribly sexually. If they had paid attention back then, he was living with a guy named Todd. And he had Todd's car when he was doing, not a green car, it was gray at the time. Later, I found out Todd is Kathy Perry's cousin. Kathy, if they paid attention to that, if they were looking for the right offender, they had him in custody.
31:56 Kylie Low? Coincidences abound in this case, or are they connections?
32:01 Speaker 01 There's always names that come up in every case, you know? Look at this one, look at that one, whatever. There's always something, though, that just doesn't fit, you know? And these people get ruled out for whatever reason, they had alibis, they had this, or what have you. In these two cases, once his name surfaced, everything fit. Everything.
32:22 Kylie Low? Stanley has not been charged with any crimes as it relates to the murders of Kathy Perry and Rhonda Travers. But it's not like there haven't been attempts to do just that.
32:33 Kylie Low? In 2015, the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office agreed that there was probable cause to pursue an indictment for Stanley in the murder of Kathy Perry and presented the evidence to a grand jury. Despite Sergeant Pierce's findings that the cases were connected to the same suspect, the murder of Rhonda Travers was not included in the grand jury proceedings. At minimum, Sergeant Pierce hoped that the grand jury would serve as an investigative tool. Certain witnesses unwilling to speak on the record could be compelled to testify. He was hopeful. He shared this hope with Kathy Perry's mother Marilyn. But after five months, the grand jury failed to return an indictment.
33:14 Speaker 01 One of the prosecutors said, "All right, you're gonna go back and tell Mrs. Perry why we're not prosecuting this case." I said, "No." "No, I'm not gonna tell them. You tell them." And he said, "You know what? You're right. You're right." And we did. He sat down and basically, he said that there is enough probable cause to charge Stanley. There's enough probable cause to charge him. However, we don't think that we'll be able to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt because it's a circumstantial case.
33:43 Kylie Low? The circumstantial nature of the case is undeniable. But there's something else that may have contributed to the case falling apart at that phase. The grand jury is a system for adult offenders. Stanley was a minor at the time of Kathy's murder, literally just days shy of his 18th birthday. While it is possible to try a minor as an adult, the prosecutor would have had to first petition for a waiver to do so in family or juvenile court? That step was not taken prior to the grand jury proceedings. Stanley's age at the time of the homicide was a known fact, so it's hard to explain why the proper procedures weren't followed, or what else may have been going on behind closed doors that caused the breakdown here.
34:28 Kylie Low? The issue was never rectified. Stanley was not indicted. To this day, Kathy Perry's murder remains unsolved. There have been no arrests in Kathy's case or in the case of Rhonda Travers. Whether Stanley is the true perpetrator and the sole perpetrator, or if another undetected suspect is still out there, has yet to be proven. The cold case sergeant at Warwick Police Department was out on leave for an unspecified period of time when I called to speak with someone about the current status of Kathy Perry and Rhonda Travers cases. So I don't know where the investigations stand as of the original recording and release of this episode.
35:10 Kylie Low? Fred Pierce is retired, but maintains the Kathy Perry Facebook page on his own time. And as I mentioned earlier, he is working on a book about his investigation with the working title, "The Fat Path Murders." Fred agreed to speak with me about these cases for a few reasons. But one of the biggest motivators was that it could generate new information that current investigators could use to seek a successful indictment, should that become a possibility again. According to Rhode Island Department of Corrections records, Stanley remains incarcerated in a maximum security facility. His expected good time release date is in September of 2027.
35:51 Kylie Low? Sergeant Pierce fears what will happen if or when Stanley is released.
35:57 Speaker 01 He's going to reoffend. There's no doubt about it in anybody's mind that he's going to reoffend. And God forbid if he does.
36:09 Kylie Low? Kathy and Rhonda met violent and undeserving deaths at the hands of a killer or killers who have yet to face the consequences of their crimes. Kathy's mother Marilyn battled the grief of losing her only daughter for the remainder of her life. She died in 2023 without a conclusion in the form of an arrest for Kathy's death. Sergeant Pierce did everything he could to provide answers for Marilyn, and he hopes that despite how things played out with the grand jury, Marilyn had at least some of her questions resolved before she passed. According to reporting by Laura Mead for the Providence Journal, Rhonda's mother Lorraine remembered her as "a friendly, outgoing young woman." Substance use interfered in her life. Lorraine brought Rhonda to see a counselor and tried to help her find
36:54 Kylie Low? work, but she was not ready to accept or seek that kind of help. Rhonda left home less than two months before she was killed. She was never given the opportunity to claim the future and potential her family knew she had. Over Memorial Day weekend in 1988, Lorraine ran an ad in the local paper. It contained a message for Rhonda's killer. Quote, "May they suffer as they made Rhonda suffer, as we who know her are still suffering," end quote. If you have any information relating to the 1986 murder of Kathy Perry or the 1987 murder of Rhonda Travers in Warwick, Rhode Island, please contact the Warwick Police Department Detective
37:36 Kylie Low? Division at 401-468-4233. You can also share information with retired Warwick PD Sergeant Fred Pierce via the Kathy Perry Facebook page linked in the description of this episode. Any information shared with Sergeant Pierce will be forwarded to the appropriate enforcement agency.
38:04 Kylie Low? 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, @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 Low, and this is Dark Down East.
38:35 Kylie Low? Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and AudioChuck. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
38:46 Kylie Low? In New England, investigations can shift with the tide. And my friend Delia Diambra, host of Park Predators, knows just how the landscape can shape a case. From beaches to national parks around the world, Delia investigates true crime cases as compelling as the places where they occurred. Through her signature boots-on-the-ground reporting, she goes beyond the headlines and speaks directly with those closest to the case. If you're ready to follow the evidence beyond the trail, listen to Park Predators every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.
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