The Disappearance of Patrick Merrill (New Hampshire)

One spring evening in 1987, a college student got into a green car in Plymouth, New Hampshire and vanished. His friends believed he was coming back. His family knew he would have called if he’d left on his own. But he was gone, and the man believed to be with him on the night he disappeared had a long history of run-ins with the law. What started as a missing persons investigation soon stretched across state lines, into jail breaks, forged identities, strange searches in the Vermont woods, and disturbing yet inconclusive physical evidence. Police identified one suspect at the time. The missing man’s family believes they know what happened. But nearly four decades later, no one has ever been charged.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime, in real time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 0:31Kylie Low?

  One spring evening in 1987, a college student got into a green car in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and vanished. His friends believed he was coming back. His family knew he would have called if he'd left on his own, but he was gone. And the man believed to be with him on the night he disappeared had a long history of run-ins with the law. What started as a missing persons investigation soon stretched across state lines into jailbreaks, forged identities, strange searches in the Vermont woods, and disturbing, yet inconclusive, physical evidence. Police identified one suspect at the time. The missing man's family believes they know what happened.

• 1:14Kylie Low?

  But nearly four decades later, no one has ever been charged. I'm Kylie Low, and this is the case of Patrick Merrill on Dark Down East.

• 1:34Kylie Low?

  It was April 6, 1987, and 21-year-old Patrick Merrill had quite a few plans for his Monday night. He and his friend Nancy were supposed to meet up around 8:00 PM to hang out, but before that, Patrick had to take care of some pre-arranged business. A few of his close friends knew exactly what kind of business Patrick was up to. In fact, some had a stake in the transaction. And I can imagine they were waiting for him to come back that night, maybe watching the clock, maybe feeling a little anxious for him to return. Of course, Nancy was waiting too. According to reporting by Paul R. Lassard for the New Hampshire Union Leader, 8:00 PM came and went. Then more time passed.

• 2:19Kylie Low?

  And at some point, what might have started as an annoyance or confusion turned into something sharper. Patrick wasn't just late, no one knew where he was.

• 2:30Kylie Low?

  Nancy started checking in with Patrick's other friends, many of them students at Plymouth State College in Plymouth, New Hampshire, like Patrick. They all got the unsettling feeling that something was wrong. The last time anyone had seen him, Patrick was getting into a green car, and he looked nervous. Word reached Patrick's family out of state that Patrick was unaccounted for, including his sister, Lori Merrill.

• 2:55Speaker 03

  His friends from Plymouth State University said that he was missing. And the last time he was seen was in a car with this man. And my mother called to tell me. And we both drove up there immediately with the feeling of doom. You know, our only hope was that he would return quickly.

• 3:15Kylie Low?

  That feeling of doom never really left. But in those first hours and days, Patrick's family had to hold it alongside hope. Maybe he was scared. Maybe he was hurt. Maybe there was some version of this where he came home and explained what had happened. Police and local media circulated details of Patrick's last known whereabouts. He was last seen around 7:30 PM on April 6 in the center of Plymouth, sitting in the front seat of a green Mercury Comet or Ford Maverick with Vermont license plates. The driver of that vehicle was described as "average build with dark hair." Police also released a description of another man they wanted to question, someone wearing a tan poncho with red stripes,

• 4:00Kylie Low?

  a T-shirt, blue jeans, sneakers, and carrying a backpack. As police focused on the car, the men, and the last place Patrick had been seen, Lori and her family were thinking about the person they were waiting for. Not a case, not an investigation, but Patrick. Lori loved her little brother from the first moment she laid eyes on him.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Friends and family had gathered for the great homecoming of Patrick Dundas Merrill. And it was like a party of celebration. And I couldn't believe it when I saw him because he was just this beautiful baby. He had red sheets and pearly hair and blue eyes. And anyway, I loved him so immediately, right away, with the "think sister" protection and love.

• 4:49Kylie Low?

  Patrick was the youngest of three children, born on March 17th, 1966. His birthday, St. Patrick's Day, became his namesake, given to him by the nurses who cared for mother and baby after he was born. From the way Lori describes him, Patrick was one of those kids who came into the world with his own powerful current running through him.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Well, he was always exceptionally smart. He was outgoing, and he was funny, and he was friendly. He loved sports. He loved chess. So, he started beating me in chess when he was about five years old, or a little bit older than that. And so, I stopped playing with him because I was too competitive.

• 5:28Kylie Low?

  Patrick also had a very clear sense of himself from early on. He didn't seem all that interested in bending himself into whatever shape other people expected.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  He was also a little bit of a radical, a maverick, because we went to summer camp together. And he, like, wouldn't wear his shoes, and he didn't want to shower. So, he was like... But everyone thought he was so cool. You know, this kid that walked around like Pigpen from Charlie Brown. Because he was always, like, dirty and barefooted, and he didn't want to conform, you know? So, he always had a strong, you know, like, self-opinion to do his own thing, his own way, without worrying about public opinion.

• 6:07Kylie Low?

  As he got older, that independence sometimes collided with structure. School was a place where Patrick's intelligence was obvious, but the rules around it did not always fit him.

• 6:20Speaker 03

  There was a certain period of his time when he was very rebellious against authority. And he wound up dropping out of high school, along with a couple of his best friends. They all dropped out at the same time. And they got their general equivalency degrees. And then Patrick started taking classes at Plymouth State University, and he wanted to be a warrior. He was very... He was always very good at school. He just wasn't good at following the rules.

• 6:47Kylie Low?

  Patrick was finding his way back towards structure, towards school, toward a future. By 1987, he was a college kid doing college kid things, maybe still a bit rebellious, but nothing that crossed into a pattern of serious lawbreaking.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  The only crime he committed was smoking marijuana, which was illegal in the 80s.

• 7:10Kylie Low?

  He was not a criminal mastermind. He was a young guy who thought the world was safer than it was. Maybe that is why, in the days leading up to his disappearance, Patrick said yes to something without fully understanding how dangerous it could be.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  He was really idealistic. He thought the world was a safe place. He had never dealt drugs before.

• 7:35Kylie Low?

  During the early investigation, police learned from witnesses that Patrick was believed to be the middleman in a drug transaction. He was planning to buy 10 pounds of pot using money he'd collected from a group of friends. Some sources say he was carrying upwards of $13,000 with him when he got into that green car. In the days following his disappearance, investigators had obtained a search warrant for Patrick's room in his shared apartment. And they collected a few articles of his clothing to use as scent for bloodhounds in ground searches. While police did not find any weapons or contraband that was of any interest, Lori tells me there was some cash discovered in his room.

• 8:19Kylie Low?

  It was equivalent to the cut Patrick was believed to make from the deal.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  His cut was 2,000. And he hid it in his comic book collection, which is one of the... I think that's such a brilliant symbol of where he was at. He was a kid who loved to read comic books.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  And he got murdered.

• 8:42Kylie Low?

  From the beginning, police had considered the possibility of foul play in Patrick's disappearance. But the case was not ruled a homicide. Patrick's case was still a missing persons investigation. And detectives were still trying to identify and speak with the people connected to that unidentified green car.

• 9:02Kylie Low?

  On Monday, April 13th, a week after Patrick was reported missing, Rumney's police chief spotted a green Ford Maverick with Vermont license plate driving in the Quincy Bog Baker State Forest area. It matched the description of the car Patrick was last seen getting into, so the chief turned on his lights to pull the car over. But the driver didn't comply. Instead, the car sped off. According to reporting by Mike Donahue for the Burlington Free Press, the chief pursued the car up over a hill where it came to a stop. The two men inside got out, and according to police, one of them handed a bag to the other before that man took off running. Forty-year-old George Prejean was arrested at the scene.

• 9:48Kylie Low?

  Police tracked the second man down about a half mile away roughly an hour later. With the help of a bloodhound, police also recovered the bag George had allegedly handed off. Inside was about an ounce of pot. Both men were arraigned on drug charges, including transportation of a controlled drug and possession with intent to sell. George was held on $55,000 cash bail, while bail for the other man who I'll call by the fake name Reggie was set at $12,000. The difference in their bail amounts might have had something to do with their backgrounds. Reggie didn't have much of a criminal history to speak of aside from some motor vehicle violations. But George, on the other hand,

• 10:34Kylie Low?

  he was a well-known criminal with charges spanning multiple states.

• 10:46Speaker 00

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• 11:11Speaker 01

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• 11:23Kylie Low?

  By 1987, George Prejean already had convictions under his belt for receiving stolen property and escape. And his history with law enforcement went back more than a decade. In June of 1973, George was considered a missing person out of Norwich, Connecticut, after failing to appear for a third time for a pleading related to an April 26 arrest for possession of marijuana with intent to sell. A few months later, on September 13, 1973, he was indicted for obtaining money by false pretenses and attempted conspiracy to violate the Controlled Drug Act.

• 12:03Kylie Low?

  Then, on April 12, 1974, George was arrested in Portland, Maine, under the alias George Prevost after what began as a minor traffic issue. While he was being questioned, he escaped from the Portland Police Department's detective bureau. When police searched the rented cottage where he had been staying on Little Sebago Lake in Gray, Maine, they found five stolen Volkswagen's and other related evidence. And that was just the beginning. The setup looked similar to a suspected car theft ring in Burlington, Vermont, that the National Auto Theft Bureau had been tracking with Burlington Police. The scheme was extremely organized.

• 12:47Kylie Low?

  According to Mark O'Howland's reporting for the Rutland Daily Herald, cars from model years 1968 through 1972 were targeted because, at the time, no title was required to sell cars from before 1972. The VIN would be removed, replaced with a fake one, and the cars were stored in rented garages under fake names before being listed for sale in newspapers. Some of those cars were even stolen, sold to new owners, and then stolen again so they could be sold a second time. In February of 1976, George was arrested for coordinating the theft of 32 Volkswagen cars over an 18-month period.

• 13:30Kylie Low?

  At the time of his arrest, he was using another alias: George Barclay. George pleaded not guilty in Vermont to charges of grand larceny and possession of stolen property, but in May of 1976, he changed his plea to guilty on two lesser counts of receiving stolen property. The next month, he was sentenced in Vermont to five to eight years in prison. But George did not stay put after his plea and sentencing. In July of 1976, he escaped from the Chittenden Community Correctional Center along with three other inmates. He was not apprehended again until he surfaced in Boston in September of 1978, and once again, he was using an alias.

• 14:14Kylie Low?

  George was arrested at the DMV by the FBI on charges of false impersonation. He returned to prison to serve an additional 14 months to four years for escape, and then resumed serving his original sentence for the receiving stolen property convictions. George was paroled in August of 1981, and not too long after that, he said he'd found a better path. After his time in prison, he claimed to be walking the straight and narrow, and he wanted to help others, specifically, young people, to avoid his criminal missteps. At least, that's the story he peddled when applying for a teaching job and got hired.

• 14:57Kylie Low?

  While on parole, George applied for a teaching position at Lemoyle Union High School Vocational Center. According to the superintendent, George came "highly recommended" as a skilled printer and graphic arts teacher. During his interview, he said he had paid his debt to society and wanted to help students avoid the same criminal path he had taken. That was the pitch. George Prejean was not just asking for employment, he was asking for trust. His resume claimed that he had graduated from Keene State College with high honors. That turned out to be a farce, yet that claim apparently was not caught at the time. George did, however, receive training in graphic arts while in prison, giving him the

• 15:42Kylie Low?

  skill set the school was looking for. In September of 1982, despite everything in his past, George got the job and went to work as the graphic arts teacher at the Vocational Center. The superintendent and school board had worked with George's parole officer and decided to give him a chance. According to reports, they warned George that he better not betray them. The people who hired him later explained that they believed George would be an asset to students. Superintendent Gail Utley later called George "an extremely bright man and one of the best teachers I've ever had the opportunity to work with."

• 16:22Kylie Low?

  But that version of George, the gifted teacher who had turned his life around, did not last long. George was arrested on December 19, 1984, for possession of a firearm and allegedly inciting a felony by planning a break-in and theft at the Copley Hospital Pharmacy. One report by Maura Weber for the Rutland Herald said the alleged plan included extorting drugs from a pharmacist by kidnapping his wife. Investigators accused George of trying to recruit someone to help him commit the theft, but that person became an informant. That informant wore a wire during a conversation with George, during which George allegedly outlined the crimes they planned to commit.

• 17:07Kylie Low?

  George also allegedly told the informant he would be compensated for his role in the heist. George pleaded not guilty and was held on $15,000 bail. He was also suspended from his teaching position the day after his arrest, and then formally discharged from his duties at the school on February 2, 1985, due to what the school district said were "drug-dealing suspicions." Officially, he was discharged for "conduct unbecoming a teacher."

• 17:37Kylie Low?

  The superintendent later clarified that the suspicions were never proven. "They had not proven George sold drugs to students," he said. "But there were minimal reasons to believe it happened." While George was being held on bail, he ran an ad in the transcript newspaper. It read, "Help. Incarcerated Hyde Park schoolteacher who is innocent of inciting to felony charges needs help. Not much money, but will barter when money runs out. Will any retired lawyer, police officer, legal professional, or other concerned citizen please contact George Prejean at the St. Johnsbury Correction Center?" I don't know if anyone answered that ad specifically,

• 18:21Kylie Low?

  but George did have a large group of supporters. Some people offered to serve as character witnesses at his trial. Former coworkers from a job before his teaching position described him as, "Responsible. A man of impeccable character who knew the Lord." Another person told Joseph Graemer for The News and Citizen that she would trust George with her life, and insisted that he's not capable of being violent. In April of 1985, George pleaded no contest to two lesser counts of attempted unlawful trespass, rather than the original charge of inciting another person to commit a felony. He received an eight-to-12-month sentence,

• 19:05Kylie Low?

  served concurrently with his parole violations. By December of 1986, he was paroled again. So by the time Patrick Merrill disappeared in April of 1987, George had only been out for a few months. But it was enough time for Patrick and George to cross paths.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  We don't just alert. We help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe: Ahead of Crime, in Real Time.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 20:00Kylie Low?

  Every small town has a local legend. The house no one drives past after dark, or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist. Stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems. Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  People knew that George was in town, and Patrick used to call him "This Cool Dude George."

• 20:44Kylie Low?

  According to witnesses, Patrick Merrill met George Prejean about two months earlier while Patrick was hitchhiking back from a trip to University of Massachusetts Amherst. He had friends there and often traveled between UMass and Plymouth by hitchhiking. Many people described George as smart, clever, and intelligent. Maybe that's why Patrick was drawn to him. They both smoked pot, so maybe that was part of it, too. But if he knew the extent of George's criminal past, Patrick probably didn't see it as a warning sign. He probably didn't know enough to read George as a potential threat. George had, allegedly, tried to recruit someone into a criminal act before.

• 21:28Kylie Low?

  So if George chose Patrick as a target for something, maybe it was because Patrick still believed people were mostly who they said they were.

• 21:38Speaker 03

  Patrick was an innocent kid. An innocent, happy-go-lucky, fun-loving kid in college. And he didn't know that... He didn't know he wasn't a streetster. He didn't deal with lowlifes. He didn't deal with con artists. He didn't deal with criminals.

• 21:55Kylie Low?

  George refused to talk about Patrick after he was arrested in Rumney. He was said to fit the description of the person last seen with Patrick, but investigators could not establish a direct link between George and Patrick's disappearance at the time. So even though the green car was impounded after George's arrest, it could not be searched in connection with Patrick's case. On May 26, 1987, George was sentenced to time served, one year of probation, and a $250 fine for the intent to distribute marijuana charge. That charge had been reduced to a misdemeanor when he pleaded guilty. As for the other guy in the car, who we're calling Reggie,

• 22:38Kylie Low?

  he was eventually fined $330 after he pleaded guilty to resisting arrest, and the drug charge was dropped. He also received a suspended 30-day sentence for one year. Side note: Reggie was revealed to be a former student from the same vocational school where George had taught. Reggie reportedly did not have any classes with him, but it was a small school, so it's probable that's how they met. Almost at the same time, George was facing another case. The same month he was sentenced, he was indicted on new charges for theft of services. The indictment said that between April 4th and April 6th of that year,

• 23:22Kylie Low?

  he used a fake name and address at a mechanic shop, then removed his car from the garage before paying more than $1,000 for work already done on the car. April 6th? Was the night Patrick disappeared. So as of July 1987, George was again in custody at Merrimack County Jail for that theft of services case. But not for long. He was a slippery guy. Around 10:45 PM on July 5th, a guard making rounds saw a sheet hanging from the roof of the facility. According to Billy Bell's reporting for the Concord Monitor, jail officials discovered that George and another man

• 24:04Kylie Low?

  had used a smuggled-in hacksaw blade to cut through the bars in a skylight and escaped through that skylight using bed sheets to lower themselves about 30 feet from the roof. Police warned the public that George and the other escapee were dangerous and no strangers to guns. The other inmate was caught a few days later, on July 10th, but George was still on the loose. He knew how to disappear. He'd done it before.

• 24:34Kylie Low?

  The investigation into Patrick Merrill's disappearance was entering a strange and painful kind of limbo. Police had a suspect. They had theories. But they still did not have Patrick, and his family couldn't just sit still and wait. His mother, Zaida, did everything she could to keep Patrick's name in the public eye because she knew Patrick, and she wanted everyone else to know him too.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  She set up a situation in which she and I were getting interviewed by the local press. And so we were sort of the representatives of Patrick Merrill. So the public could realize that he was a precious boy who was very deeply loved and grew up with people that adored him.

• 25:20Kylie Low?

  There was this fear that because Patrick was believed to be involved in a drug deal, that it might paint his disappearance in a negative light. Zaida and Lori's hope was that, by talking about him beyond that choice, it could help bring in new information that would lead to Patrick.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  He was part of this family. You know, he was a smart, likable person who made a bad decision. And the decision, not that it's okay to deal drugs, but it wasn't, even though it was a crime, it wasn't a crime against anybody. He wasn't hurting anybody.

• 25:57Kylie Low?

  If Patrick was alive, his family believed he would have contacted them or come home. To make the ordeal even more painful, Patrick's father was battling cancer at the time, and they were all worried about him. Patrick's family believed he would have wanted to be by his father's side. So the idea that Patrick had run off and started over somewhere did not make sense to them at all.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  When Patrick didn't turn up in a few days, you could hope out some hope at the beginning that maybe he's been kidnapped, or maybe he's so high, or something happened, or he's hurt. But when you haven't heard from your brother or your son, and he hasn't contacted anybody, and this is a happy kid who loved life, loved school, was going to be a lawyer, had no reason to stop being in touch with anybody, there'd only be one reason.

• 26:48Kylie Low?

  Patrick's father died in October of 1987, just months after Patrick disappeared. If Patrick was alive somewhere, he never came home to see his father or mourn with his family. And if he wasn't alive, his father died without knowing where his youngest son was. By the time Patrick's family decided they had to operate from the belief that he was dead, the legal system still had a high bar to clear. A grand jury reportedly heard evidence in the case, but there wasn't enough evidence for an indictment. Meanwhile, the only suspect was still on the lam.

• 27:28Kylie Low?

  George would not be apprehended again until January 22, 1989, about 18 months after he escaped from jail in New Hampshire. Beth Velikat reports for the Chapel Hill News that police in Carboro, North Carolina, had warned businesses in the area to be on the lookout for counterfeit checks after some started popping up around town. In January of 1989, police arrested a man after he was suspected of trying to cash a forged payroll check at a grocery store using the name Kenneth Wayne Peel.

• 28:04Kylie Low?

  When police picked the guy up, he had three sets of ID on him, including birth certificates, driver's licenses, and social security cards. And it turned out, those identities had been taken from gravestones in cemeteries in Massachusetts. All of the names belonged to children who had died. When police tried to identify the guy for real, he refused to be fingerprinted or sign anything, so he was held on contempt charges in an Orange County jail as officers tried to determine his true identity. Eventually, officials received information from New Hampshire. Photos of the man sitting in the North Carolina jail matched photos of George Prejean.

• 28:47Kylie Low?

  It sounds like George may have been making use of the same graphic design skills he had once taught to students, only now they were being used to forge documents. George had created realistic-looking birth certificates with stolen names, used those birth certificates to get driver's licenses under the fake names, and then created fake payroll checks for businesses in the area and attempted to cash them. A Carboro investigator named Tom Hall described him this way: "He would be considered a professional criminal. We found through our investigation that he does not hold a legitimate job for any long period of time. He seeks employment only long enough to get information to commit some sort of fraud."

• 29:32Kylie Low?

  End quote. George was convicted of forgery in that case, but there was still no resolution for Patrick's family. In 1989, after almost two years of waiting, Patrick's family made a decision no family ever wants to make. They held a memorial service on March 18th, one day after his birthday. The Merrill family was grieving without answers, and police were still trying to build a case without Patrick's remains. But then, in May of 1990, police announced plans for a search in Proctor, Vermont. Investigators believed that a swampy area of the woods there might hold the evidence they had been looking for.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime, in real time.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 30:54Kylie Low?

  Every small town has a local legend. The house no one drives past after dark, or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist. Stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems. Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 31:32Kylie Low?

  In 1987, the same year Patrick disappeared, an informant told police something disturbing. Maura Webber reports for the Bennington Banner that the informant said he had seen George with body parts, specifically limbs, in a plastic bag. According to the informant, these were not minor injuries. They were body parts a person could not survive losing unless they had been removed in a hospital setting. The informant also said he heard George went to a swampy bog area in Proctor, Vermont, the day after he saw that bag. Investigators had another reason to look there, too. Their investigation suggested that about a week after Patrick disappeared,

• 32:17Kylie Low?

  George's Jeep was seen in the area of the bog. And then there was the jar. That same informant told police about a one gallon jar containing decomposed human skin. It is a deeply disturbing detail, and it's one of those parts of the case that's even hard to say out loud. There was speculation that the jar may have been saved as a trophy by the killer, or possibly as some kind of test to see how long it would take the skin to decompose.

• 32:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, just the gruesomeness of it. It just became more and more gruesome.

• 32:56Kylie Low?

  Police did follow up on the informant's information early on. Investigators documented tire tracks and other evidence near the bog that suggested someone had walked in that area. And in 1987, they located the jar in another wooded area in Proctor. The skin inside was believed to be from the bottoms of human hands and feet. Testing suggested the contents of the jar could have come from Patrick because they matched his blood type, type AB, which is rare. They tried DNA analysis, too.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  My brother, my mother and I all provided DNA samples, and they weren't able to, there wasn't enough evidence to make a match.

• 33:41Kylie Low?

  So, police had the informant's account, they had the jar, they had tracks near the bog, but they still did not have Patrick's remains. And they did not have a specific enough location to search for the body parts. That is part of why it took two years for a larger organized search of the bog area to happen. Investigators were trying to narrow down where the reported body parts might be, and they were also waiting to see if the swampy area would drain naturally. When it didn't, police eventually sought and received permission from the Agency of Natural Resources and the landowners to drain the area since it was environmentally sensitive.

• 34:27Kylie Low?

  The site was about a mile and a half up a trail off Kane Street in Proctor, in an area some locals called High Ledge. The bog itself was about two acres in size, and the plan was to drain the water, then search through what was left behind. During the search, cadaver dogs indicated there might be human remains on the west side of the bog. They signaled at that same spot three times, but searchers didn't find anything there. Then, on Wednesday, May 9, 1990, the search took an unexpected turn. A trooper stepped away into the woods to relieve himself and discovered five bones, ranging from four to seven inches long. They were located east of the bog,

• 35:12Kylie Low?

  on West Mountain, near a stone wall. At first, investigators didn't know whether the bones were human or animal, so they were sent to a University of Vermont anthropologist for examination. Because Patrick had a rare blood type, investigators believed that if the bones were human, it might be possible to determine whether they were connected to him. But a few weeks later, the results came back. The bones were animal. Still, Vermont State Police Detective Sergeant Brian Abbey said investigators had a, quote, "very, very strong case." A grand jury was expected to consider the evidence and determine whether the case was strong enough to bring charges.

• 35:56Kylie Low?

  If that presentation ever happened, though, it did not result in charges. Even after the bog search failed to produce Patrick's remains, George Prejean's name did not disappear from the public record. In 1994, he was finally convicted for that second escape, back in 1987. Then, in 2002, 54-year-old George was arrested again for what Concord Police said was the largest marijuana recovery in the department's history. Stephanie Haynes reports for the Concord Monitor that the total value was estimated somewhere between $135,000 and $195,000 worth of, quote, "good quality marijuana."

• 36:40Kylie Low?

  George was ultimately charged with four felony counts of possession with intent to distribute in that case. Then in 2008, George was charged in a case out of Worcester Central District Court in Massachusetts with possessing or receiving a motor vehicle with a defaced VIN, attempting to sell a motor vehicle with a defaced VIN, possession of Viagra, possessing or using a false or stolen registry of motor vehicle document, selling a vehicle with a defaced VIN, larceny over $250 by false pretenses, attempting to commit a crime, and receiving a stolen vehicle. In other words, decades after the first Volkswagen theft ring, George was again facing charges

• 37:23Kylie Low?

  tied to vehicle fraud and altered identification. In January of 2009, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four concurrent two-year terms for the defaced VIN, false or stolen document, larceny, and receiving stolen vehicle charges. The Viagra possession and attempting to commit a crime charges were dismissed. New Hampshire State Police Officer Wayne Fortier and Lieutenant Anthony Raymond of Plymouth Police said in 1989 that the only suspect in Patrick's disappearance was George Prejean. However, the case remains unsolved. George Prejean has not been charged with any crimes in connection to Patrick's disappearance or presumed death.

• 38:08Kylie Low?

  I attempted to reach George for this episode. The phone number I located for him was not active, but I did send him a letter to his last known address. I have not heard back as of this episode's original recording. You might be wondering about Reggie, the other man in the car with George when police stopped them a week after Patrick disappeared. I don't know if he has been helpful to the investigation in the past. I also found no source identifying Reggie specifically as the informant who led police to the jar of human skin or to the bog area in Proctor. Reggie has not been charged in Patrick's case either. I was not able to locate him for an interview to learn more.

• 38:51Kylie Low?

  There is a way that grief can freeze someone at the age they were when they disappeared. For everyone who lost Patrick, he is still young, still funny, still the kid who called his big sister when something went wrong.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  I remember one time, he was playing with matches and his mattress caught on fire. And he just yelled my name, Lori. And I came running in to his room and I took that mattress and I dragged it out the front yard. And then I hosed it down, but we still called the police. So I was always the one that he would call to be taken care of because I was, you know, I was reliable and we were close. He trusted me and I trusted him.

• 39:34Kylie Low?

  Patrick's brother Ken remembers one fishing trip with their dad in Montauk, New York. They stopped for lunch at a local restaurant and something a group of guys said at a nearby table struck the brothers as funny. They tried to hold it in, but once they started laughing, they could not stop. It turned into one of those sibling moments that is not really about the joke anymore. It's about the two of you trying not to laugh, which only makes it worse, until the whole thing becomes part of family history. That is the Patrick his family still carries. Not the Patrick at the center of an investigation, but Patrick in motion, reading science fiction, collecting comics, recognizing great writing and great art before the rest of the world caught up. He loved

• 40:19Kylie Low?

  writers and artists like Chris Claremont and Frank Miller. And he believed The Dark Knight Returns was one of the best Batman stories ever written, long before that version of Batman became so culturally defining. He was also the kind of person who could disappear into games for hours or days. Dungeons and Dragons, risk campaigns that stretched on and on, video games, chess. Ken said Patrick was way too smart. He read books about chess, played against the computer, and won. Patrick was their little brother. He is still loved in the ordinary, intimate ways families love each other, through childhood

• 41:02Kylie Low?

  stories, through inside jokes, through memories that become family lore years later.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  And Patrick just, he was so loving and so delightful and so cheerful and...

• 41:17Speaker 03

  He went out of his way to make people laugh. Like, he just was sensitive and he was just a really wonderful human being. You know, the kind that makes the world better just by smiling at people in it.

• 41:32Kylie Low?

  For his family, Patrick's absence has been part of every year since 1987.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  I guess if I were to be completely in touch with my emotions, that I'm really angry that he wasn't here, that he hasn't been here these 39 years, that he hasn't been here as a family member, as a loved one, as a support system, as a confidant, as a comrade, as someone who could have been there for my wedding and the birth of my children and all of life's milestones, the Christmases, the Thanksgivings, you know? All the things that we all thought we'd be doing together, and Patrick was missing from those. There's a piece of our heart that went with.

• 42:18Kylie Low?

  If you have information about the disappearance of Patrick Merrill, please share it with the New Hampshire State Police Cold Case Unit using the tip form linked in the description of this episode.

• 42:34Kylie 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.

• 43:06Kylie Low?

  Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and AudioChuck. I think Chuck would approve.

• 43:18Speaker 04

  If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But soon they'll find it.

• 43:27Speaker 05

  He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly.

• 43:31Speaker 03

  They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff.

• 43:35Speaker 06

  And I says, maybe she'll find out where this girl is. I saw him, I backhanded her, pow!

• 43:44Speaker 07

  Listen to The Devil's Quarry, Season Two, in the Bone Valley feed, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.