Pod Insights Crime Junkie MURDERED: Joan Webster & Marie Iannuzzi About this episode In 1981, a Harvard graduate student vanished after stepping out of Logan Airport the night after Thanksgiving. As investigators searched for answers, they focused on a suspect connected to another murder – a woman who was killed just two years earlier. He was convicted in one case and widely believed responsible for the other. But after reviewing thousands of pages of records, we found gaps that raise difficult questions: Was the wrong man blamed? And is the real killer still out there?
Transcript 14,205 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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3:20 Ashley Flowers? Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. And this story is about what can happen when a case feels solved, even when it may not be. In Massachusetts, two women from very different worlds disappeared within a few years of each other. One was last seen leaving a bar. The other vanished after stepping out of Logan Airport. Police would eventually say that these two cases were connected, and that they had found the man responsible. But after spending more than a year reporting on this case, interviewing witnesses, tracking down survivors, and reviewing thousands of pages of records, we found a story that doesn't sit quite right.
4:05 Ashley Flowers? And our question is, was the wrong man blamed for these crimes? And if so, then is the person or people who actually committed these murders still walking free? These are the stories of Joan Webster and Marie Iannuzzi.
4:53 Ashley Flowers? December 1st, 1981 is a Tuesday, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving break, and the day that Teri Webster really starts feeling anxious about not hearing from her youngest daughter, Joan. Their whole family had been together for the holiday weekend at their home in New Jersey, but instead of driving back to college in Massachusetts with her older sister as planned on Sunday, 25-year-old Joan left on Saturday night because she wanted to make it to a study group. So her dad booked her a flight to Boston Logan Airport.
5:24 Speaker 01 And she's at Harvard, I assume?
5:26 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, so she is in grad school there for architecture. And girl works hard, hence ending her break early just to go home and study, which is probably part of the reason Teri didn't stress out at first when she didn't hear from her daughter on Sunday. Like, you know, that's study group day.
5:41 Speaker 01 She's busy, yeah.
5:41 Ashley Flowers? Whatever, yeah. Didn't hear from her on Monday. Maybe she's just getting settled. But still not hearing a word from her by Tuesday morning, now she knows something is up. And almost at the same time Teri's starting to spiral, the phone rings. It's one of Joan's friends from Harvard, and right away Teri knows something is wrong because the friend tells her that Joan missed that Sunday study group and she didn't show up to class on Monday either. So Teri hangs up and calls Joan's older sister. So she lives close to campus, and Teri asks her to go check Joan's dorm room. But what her sister finds doesn't ease anyone's concerns. I mean, before she even goes into Joan's room, she sees notes on her door from friends, and inside there is unopened mail
6:26 Ashley Flowers? and no sign that Joan's even been in the room since before break. Now Terry is the one to file a missing persons report that same day. And by the next morning, Joan's family has their first clue. Because a call comes into Joan's dad's office from a fisherman. Apparently, he was walking near the marshes in Saugus, Massachusetts, which is like six miles north of Logan Airport. And the guy says he found Joan's wallet on the riverbank. And inside was a driver's license, credit cards, no cash, though. But there was this like card instructing whoever finds the wallet to call Joan's dad's office. So they call him, he calls the police. And when they hear about this, they're worried right away. Because this marsh area where her stuff was found,
7:11 Ashley Flowers? it is a known dumping ground, like for trash, for stolen stuff, and for bodies. So they go out to meet this fisherman and they search the area. And not too far from where he had found the wallet, they find Joan's red leather pocketbook with her checkbook inside. And this is a bad sign. Because of the location, because of how the items were scattered, police wonder if someone could have thrown Joan's things out the window of a moving car as they passed on this highway. It runs right over this area. And if that's what happened, finding Joan and whoever took her might be even harder than anyone thought. Because they're now four days out from anyone last seeing her. And who knows where she could be now?
7:56 Speaker 01 I mean, at least they know that she made it onto her flight and to the Boston area.
8:01 Ashley Flowers? Oh, for her stuff to be there. Yeah, exactly. And they focus a lot of their attention and early searches around the airport specifically, and that marsh area. And they really do pull out all the stops. We're talking officers, dogs, helicopters, even scuba divers to comb the river by the marsh. But there is no sign of Joan or anything else.
8:20 Speaker 01 And is the marsh area like on the way to campus from the airport? Is like on that route?
8:24 Ashley Flowers? No, that's the thing. So this is like in the complete opposite direction.
8:28 Speaker 01 Oh.
8:28 Ashley Flowers? Which is what I think makes people even more certain that if someone intercepted Joan, it was more likely at the airport than anywhere else. Because they also start finding witnesses who say that they saw her there, passengers. On the flight confirmed that Joan definitely made it onto the plane. They say she seemed relaxed for like the whole flight, which landed at Logan Airport around 10:30 PM. And then a few Harvard students who flew that same day tell police they saw Joan in the terminal too. One friend even remembers talking to her at baggage claim. Joan had this like carry-on tote, she had her purse, but she was also waiting on a bag, this like dark suitcase with unique striping. Now, when the bag comes, she just grabbed it and headed out to ground transportation.
9:13 Ashley Flowers? And she told at least one person at the airport that she planned to take a cab straight to her dorm, which is what her family knew her plan to be too. Her dad had even given her 70 bucks in cash for the cab ride back to her dorm. So Joan walking to the exit is the last confirmed sighting of her by anyone who knew her. But the best lead that police get is actually from someone who doesn't even know her at all. Sometime in the first week of the investigation, this cab driver comes forward and says that around 10:45 PM that night, a woman matching Joan's description came up to his cab outside the terminal, like knocked on his window and asked Cambridge, right? That's where Harvard is, feels a lot like Joan.
9:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:57 Ashley Flowers? But the woman wasn't alone. According to the driver, an older man was with her. Not like old, old, but like older than the 25-year-old Joan, right? And the driver thought maybe this guy's like in his 40s. He's a white guy, about 5'7" with curly hair and a beard. And he was wearing these like round glasses, which is like, I think, pretty common for the time. Now, this matches no one that Joan's family claims to know. But the driver said that the woman seemed to know this guy.
10:26 Speaker 01 They felt like familiar.
10:27 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, or the woman who we think is Joan. But here's where things start to get really weird. So this driver's like, yep, Cambridge, I got you. And the driver goes to help them start loading their luggage into the trunk. He goes to pick up the guy's suitcase and it is super heavy. And like, he doesn't know this gig, right? Like, we're all flirting with the bag weight limit. Like, but this was something else. So he makes a comment to the guy about how heavy the suitcase was. And all of a sudden, the man gets really aggressive. He told the driver he didn't like the way that he was handling his luggage. And he told the woman, you know what, we don't even need this cab after all. So he pulls the luggage back out of the trunk and leads her away toward another cab, this blue one.
11:09 Ashley Flowers? And this cab driver just kind of like watches as they drive off in this blue car.
11:15 Speaker 01 So this wasn't like someone grabbing her and forcing her into a car? This is presumably another passenger, maybe even like another student? If they were both gonna take a cab together to Cambridge?
11:26 Ashley Flowers? Could be, or at least somebody who worked at the college or was affiliated with it in some way. His age is what makes me think you gotta like broaden the scope. But yeah, like someone going where she was going. And it's not like she had to bum a ride. Like, she had her own money. She like could get her own cab. So if this was Joan, it seems to me like this guy was someone she recognized from the school or someone she planned to meet up with. But that's the catch. This is the last possible sighting of Joan. If that was her, why hasn't that man come forward? For that matter, why hasn't the cab driver who took them come forward?
12:03 Speaker 01 Wait, they never found the other cab driver? Like, the one that was like in a blue car?
12:08 Ashley Flowers? Nope. The guy who saw them get into the car.
12:11 Speaker 01 The original cab driver?
12:12 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, he couldn't tell which company the cab, that cab was with or who was driving it. Just that the cab was like blue in color.
12:19 Speaker 01 Did Joan say anything about meeting anyone when she was home?
12:23 Ashley Flowers? No. I know a guy that she was seeing planned to visit her over Thanksgiving break and they ended up canceling. But like, her parents knew about that guy. Like, that didn't seem like a big deal. Also, that guy was closer to her age, wouldn't be mistaken for 40 something like this other guy.
12:37 Speaker 01 And I assume no one else they know fits this 40 something year old guy's description?
12:43 Ashley Flowers? Well, I don't know for sure because the strangest thing happens. So, police take this account from the cab driver seriously enough to make a composite sketch of the man described, but as far as we can tell, that sketch was never publicly released. We actually spoke to one of Joan's professors and even other students who were at Harvard at the time with Joan. None of them knew that this sketch even existed all these years later.
13:13 Speaker 01 What?
13:13 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, and it's not really clear why. But Joan's professor told us that early on, it felt to him like police just assumed that Joan left and that she was going to come back on her own eventually. Which like, I don't even know where that assumption comes from. Because to me, all of the signs right from the jump are pointing to some kind of foul play. Like, it's not like they were hearing things from like, the family that would make them think she walked away. Everyone who actually knew Joan didn't believe that for a second. They know that she's a good student, she was a resident advisor, she's super responsible.
13:48 Speaker 01 Well, and look at how you found her stuff. Like, why would she walk away and dump her stuff in this marshy area off of an overpass?
13:56 Ashley Flowers? Exactly. I don't know if it was ignorance, if it was negligence, or something else entirely. But there is something so wrong about the way this investigation was run. Like I said, we spoke to one of Joan's professors and they told us that police were coming around at first. They were meeting with students, they were meeting with faculty.
14:16 Speaker 01 They were not showing them the sketch.
14:18 Ashley Flowers? Not showing them the sketch, yeah, to see if they recognized this man who also wanted to go to Cambridge.
14:23 Speaker 01 Right.
14:24 Ashley Flowers? But also, they were telling everyone that interviews are happening. They were telling everyone that leads are being followed. But, here is the wild thing. During one of these like, meetings where they were like, talking to people and bringing people together, they caught the officers in a straight-up lie. So, police are in this meeting, they're saying they're interviewing everyone. They're specifically saying that they've interviewed everyone who was on Joan's flight. But then someone in the room was like, um... Hi, uh, I was on Joan's flight and you never talk to me.
14:55 Speaker 01 Oh.
14:55 Ashley Flowers? Like egg on the face, right?
14:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
14:58 Ashley Flowers? But even if this was like a simple slip up, it was a big one.
15:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:03 Ashley Flowers? Like if investigators missed someone that obvious, it raises a bigger question. What else could they be missing? So this is why when Joan's classmates start getting the feeling that police think she just like ran away on her own, they get right to work. They start calling newsrooms all over New England. They contact local papers. They work the phones nonstop. They're passing out flyers. They're just trying to keep Joan's story in the public eye.
15:31 Speaker 01 It would have been real nice to include a suspect sketch in those appeals to the public.
15:35 Ashley Flowers? For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this wasn't widely distributed.
15:40 Speaker 01 I mean, or distributed at all widely or not, like this.
15:44 Ashley Flowers? Even if you don't want to call this guy a suspect, even if you think there is a chance that that might not even have been Joan, until you can say who it was.
15:52 Speaker 01 We found this guy, we talked to him, we know it's not him.
15:54 Ashley Flowers? And we know that wasn't Joan or whatever, like, like I feel you have to show it. Like you have to find the guy who has this unusually heavy suitcase, last seen with a woman who looked like your missing person. But they don't seem to do anything to find that guy. Instead, most of the press pickup just features Joan's family, who by this point have flown to Boston themselves to help out with searches and speak to the press. By January, even with a $10,000 reward offered for any information, no one knows where Joan could be. She and all of her luggage are still missing. But little did anyone know, Joan's luggage had actually been hiding in plain sight
16:39 Ashley Flowers? since just hours after she walked off that plane. And where it's found could be the biggest clue in this case.
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18:51 Ashley Flowers? On January 29th, 1982, police get word that Joan's missing luggage has been found, but in the strangest of places. Her suitcase is found at a Greyhound bus terminal in downtown Boston. This is around five miles from both Harvard and the airport, and about 10 miles from that Marsh area where her wallet and purse was found. And this is how they find it. So this employee was working at the bus terminal, said that they found the suitcase when going through all of like the lost and unclaimed luggage that they had in their storage. Basically, it was their job to take everything that had been sitting there, like piling up for a while, and they were supposed to take it to a warehouse in New York. Now, I don't know how they made the connection for sure,
19:36 Ashley Flowers? but I assume that there was like, you know, those tags or whatever, and that they recognized her name from the news because they knew to call police when they came across her bag. And what police learn when they have the facility really dig into their records is that the locker that her suitcase was found in was rented about 12 hours after Joan's flight landed. So like right around 10:30 in the morning on Sunday. Now, those temporary lockers are rented for 24 hours. So the way it works is basically like when the time is up and no one came back for it, like-
20:07 Speaker 01 The locker gets opened, you take the stuff out of it, it goes into storage or whatever.
20:11 Ashley Flowers? Right, where it had been sitting for two months.
20:14 Speaker 01 And does anybody remember who rented that locker by chance?
20:18 Ashley Flowers? From the records, it doesn't seem like it, but I don't think this is a place where you like go and like pay someone. It was one of those places where you like go, and you just like put 50 cents in and you like get a little key and you come back for it. If you're not back in 24 hours, the lock basically turns to red. Employees know that they can use their master key to open it, take all the unclaimed stuff out.
20:37 Speaker 01 And if it's Joan who rented it, that doesn't make sense because we know she planned to go straight to campus-
20:42 Ashley Flowers? To campus, right. Also, why store your suitcase, but then like toss your purse in your wallet?
20:47 Speaker 01 And was this like her big checked luggage? Like the one with the stripes or was it her carry-on?
20:52 Ashley Flowers? It was the checked one. The carry-on actually has never been found.
20:56 Speaker 01 Oh.
20:56 Ashley Flowers? So, I mean, I guess you could make an argument that like- If this was her, wherever she's going, she's just like traveling light.
21:04 Speaker 01 Okay, but why check the bag and just like not ditch it once you get to wherever you you need it?
21:10 Ashley Flowers? Yeah.
21:11 Speaker 01 I don't understand why you take it, you take the checked bag to like a storage area.
21:15 Ashley Flowers? And then you're like tossing the wallet and purse.
21:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:18 Ashley Flowers? And this is like the weird thing too, is like, it doesn't seem like anything was taken from the checked luggage. Like, all of her clothes are still in it.
21:26 Speaker 01 So someone else had to have checked it in at the bus terminal.
21:30 Ashley Flowers? You would think, but why? Why run the risk of being spotted? Just like dump it somewhere, burn it. Like, I mean, like,
21:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
21:38 Ashley Flowers? This clue is so confounding to me because like, did they want to keep this for some reason? But then they couldn't come back for it because there was too much publicity around Joan's case by then? Or is this some kind of like sick game they were playing, hoping that someone would find it half a century later? And reporters and podcasters would be speculating about what it means. Like, I think what really gets me is that Joan wasn't reported missing for a few days, right?
22:02 Speaker 01 It was like Tuesday and this was checked on Sunday morning.
22:05 Ashley Flowers? Yes.
22:05 Speaker 01 They could have gotten it by like Monday morning.
22:07 Ashley Flowers? That's what I'm saying. So, so someone, Joan or someone else, they would have had time to anonymously come back, get the stuff, even if they had to go ask staff for it. Nobody knows Joan is missing.
22:18 Speaker 01 Right.
22:18 Ashley Flowers? In that first 24 hours, like what before the locker turns to red, but no one comes back for it. So if you're trying to get rid of the luggage, again, why not just dump it with the wallet and purse? Why not just dump it anywhere else?
22:29 Speaker 01 Dump it like the wallet and purse, not even in the same area.
22:31 Ashley Flowers? Yeah. Trying to like figure out the plan or like the logic behind this, like it makes my head spin. And it's why I keep coming back to like, this was some kind of game. And in the end, this mysterious clue doesn't actually bring police any closer to what happened to Joan. And they do even try testing the luggage for prints and get some. But without anyone to compare them to, like back in the day, like it doesn't mean much. So despite having local, state, and federal authorities all circling this case and following leads, each working off of slightly different theories, nothing is paying off.
23:09 Ashley Flowers? But then, like manna from the heavens, that same year, in 1982, the Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney, this guy Tim Burke, he's the one who has assigned Joan's case. He gets this out-of-the-blue call about a totally different case that changes the trajectory of Joan's. Now, this call ADA Burke gets isn't even about a case in his jurisdiction. The woman's calling from the next county over, hoping that someone in the DA's office in Boston can give her the help that she isn't getting on her sister's case. And her sister is Marie Iannuzzi.
23:49 Ashley Flowers? She was murdered about three years before Joan, but her case has never been solved. And listen, she doesn't even know if she's calling the right guy, but someone suggested to her, like, she just try. And her ask is simple. When she calls the ADA, "Will you at least take a look and help me, please?" So even though it's kind of a side quest, the ADA does a preliminary look into Marie. And so he has the lead detective in her case walk him through some of the basics. And as they did, both of them were struck by one aspect of the investigation. Marie's body was found in that same marshy area where Joan's things were dumped.
24:33 Ashley Flowers? And I don't know if it was just that one detail, or if they got further in, but pretty quickly, ADA Burke has kind of married this random case that he got a call about to the white whale case that he is already working. Maybe they're connected. And from that point on, that becomes almost like fact.
24:53 Ashley Flowers? And I want to pause here because the way that this case, this story gets told even now, says a lot about who gets centered and who doesn't. Joan was a wealthy Harvard student who got immediate attention from the media and from the public and from powerful people who made noise. Marie was working class. She was from East Boston. She didn't have an Ivy League school behind her or a dad in the CIA.
25:23 Speaker 01 Whoa, wait. Joan's dad was in the CIA?
25:26 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, so like the big guns were on her case. And I think that's part of why it got so much attention. But while Joan's case had been everywhere, Marie's case only got attention because of Joan's. And even then, it sort of faded into the background.
25:42 Speaker 01 And they're just connected because of this like known dumping ground area.
25:47 Ashley Flowers? Well, that's the thing that grabs Burke's attention, right? ADA Burke. But there is another big thing that actually links the two forever. But let me lay out a little bit more about Marie's case so you'll hopefully see what they did. Twenty-year-old Marie Iannuzzi's last day was Saturday, August 11th, 1979. Again, this is three years before Joan. That was her dad's birthday. And Marie's sister told us that they grew up in East Boston in this like big, close-knit Italian family. And even though their parents tried to shelter their kids, like they'd really been through a lot. Like Marie's brother had actually been murdered too, in like a totally unrelated way.
26:30 Ashley Flowers? But Marie was still trusting and loved to have fun, so she wasn't suspicious of the world around her. And nothing about the day that Marie died tells me that she thought she was in danger. She spent the morning with her parents and after, Marie went with her boyfriend David to his cousin's wedding. Now, at the reception, David ripped his pants, which is like, what good wedding reception doesn't have ripped pants? But he, at that point, was like, I want to go home. But Marie wanted to go to this after-party at the groom's family's house. So, her and David end up having this argument about this. Witnesses we talked to, who were at the wedding, didn't describe anything violent, just this, like, disagreement. David ends up leaving, and Marie finds a ride to go to this after-party.
27:15 Ashley Flowers? This is like, around 5:30 that evening. Now, by 10, the after-party was winding down, so another guest named Candy agreed to take Marie home. But on the way, Marie asked Candy to just drop her off at a bar, instead one near Logan Airport, which Candy did at around 10:30 PM. Then Candy went back to the after-party where her boyfriend Lenny was waiting for her. Now, at some point, I guess Marie had supposedly left some things in Candy's car, and so Candy and/or Lenny delivered those things back to Marie at the bar. And there were like, two separate trips where they saw her. And the last time was after midnight. So it would now be August 12th. And that was their story, at least.
27:59 Ashley Flowers? Lenny says that the last time he ran in to give her a set of keys, he offered to give her a ride home, but she said no because she was meeting someone. He said, they walked out of the bar, he went to the car where Candy was waiting, and Marie walked around the corner, and that is the last that he saw of her. And a girlfriend, who had met up with Marie at the bar, backs some of this up. She says that Marie was like, making a phone call right before Lenny showed up for the last time. And as Lenny was leaving, so was Marie. But Marie told this friend not to leave because she was gonna be right back in like, 30 minutes. Though, this friend's like, I don't know where she was going. It wasn't totally clear. But this woman confirmed that she saw Marie walk out of the bar, same as Lenny, but then she never came back.
28:42 Ashley Flowers? That was the last they saw of her. So her family reported her missing quickly, but it was already too late. Because, a day later, on August 13th, that's when her body was discovered in the marshy area behind this lobster company. Now, when she's found, she's fully clothed, with all of her jewelry on. The only thing missing were her shoes and stockings, which were never found. But everything else was in place, even her bodysuit that she was wearing. Now, an autopsy determined that she died from ligature strangulation, probably about 12 hours before her body was found. And there were signs of a struggle, bruises and scrapes like on her face and her arms, her legs.
29:28 Ashley Flowers? And the medical examiner said there were no clear signs of sexual assault, but it was obvious that there had been some kind of sexual activity between the night that she went missing and when she was killed, because the ME found sperm after doing a vaginal smear. So after she's found, like in the first, like, you know, early days of this case, there were basically two suspects. And that was Marie's boyfriend, David, and Lenny. But investigators had quickly zeroed in on Lenny, right? I mean, he is the last person seen with Marie. He would have known the marsh area, because turns out he's a fisherman by trade, actually sold fish to the very lobster company near where she's found. Oh. And Lenny had a pretty long rap sheet,
30:12 Ashley Flowers? including the abduction of a 16-year-old girl and attempted rape of a college student that he offered to drive home. Now, he served prison time for that second crime. And Burke told us that, to him, past behavior, especially sexual violence against women, is one of the best indicators of future behavior. He thinks Lenny got bolder in his crimes as the years went on. And that his psychology lined up with the type of murder or murderer in Marie's case, a murder that was sexually motivated. Now, when police originally interviewed Lenny and Candy, their stories stood out to them. I mean, they both had the same story,
30:54 Ashley Flowers? that when Lenny and Marie walked out together, Candy was waiting in the car. Lenny offered Marie a ride home, but she said no, she's meeting someone, and she walks off around the corner. But police noted that, like, Lenny and Candy's stories matched up almost too perfectly. Like, the case file says word for word.
31:11 Speaker 01 I mean, I get what they're like wink, wink, nudge, nudging at here. But if their stories didn't match, I think that would look bad too, right?
31:19 Ashley Flowers? Totally. Again, I think it's like the word for word part. Like to them, it seemed rehearsed, I guess. And in the report, it says that Candy was really nervous, like she was shaking when she talked to the police. Now, she'd been with Lenny for around eight years, since she was 18. And people we talked to who knew them said that she would do anything for this guy. And he would push her to do a lot. Because guess who was his alibi witness for the attempted rape case that he ended up being convicted of?
31:47 Speaker 01 Candy.
31:48 Ashley Flowers? Candy. Problem is, there was nothing here in Marie's case to disprove their story. And nothing else to really go off of. So the case went cold for nearly three years. Which brings me back to 1982 and this call from Marie's sister to ADA Burke. So now that he has gotten up to speed on the details of Marie's case, and he's wondering if he could be looking for the same perp, he goes to Joan's case file, looking to see if there's anything that might tie Lenny to her disappearance. And sure enough, what do you know? Burke learns that a tip had come in January that ties everything together for him.
32:34 Ashley Flowers? Guys, I'm doing a bit of a kitchen clean out. I have been getting schooled lately on the effects of microplastics. So I am determined to eliminate as much plastic from my home as possible. And I am especially focused on the stuff that I cook with. So I turned to Wayfair, where I have been getting so many pieces for my home. And I just got all new wood and stainless steel cooking utensils that look beautiful, feel great, and I have already put them to use. And these things are a zillion times better than the gross plastic things that I had in the drawer for a decade. And I'm honestly ashamed that I kept them as long as I did. I also replaced any plastic storage containers I had with glass ones. And I did all of that for 250 bucks. Bougie on a budget.
33:16 Ashley Flowers? You can shop thousands of products across every style and every budget, whether you're simply Replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom for the holiday season. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5% back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com.
33:41 Speaker 02 Wayfair, every style, every home.
33:46 Speaker 01 College is a lot like Halloween. You can become whatever you want to be. The difference? A costume lasts one night, but a college degree lasts a whole lifetime. Try on something new with Southern New Hampshire University. They've got over 200 online degree programs for all kinds of career goals. Business, healthcare, technology, you name it. Plus, with no scheduled class times or live lectures to attend, you don't have to quit your day job to work toward your dream career. And get this, SNHU has some of the lowest online tuition rates in the US, which means you can still be that house that gives out full-size candy bars. So instead of pretending to have your dream job, why not earn a degree that helps you get there for real? Start your free application today at SNHU.edu/crimejunkie.
34:27 Speaker 01 That's SNHU.edu/crimejunkie.
34:35 Ashley Flowers? In January of 1982, a week before they found Joan's luggage, a woman had called police to tell them about this scary incident that she had with a man years before. She never reported it, and admittedly, there are plenty of differences, right? But when she heard about the circumstances of Joan's disappearance on the news, she felt like she needed someone to know about this thing that happened to her. Our reporter Malika Dollywell actually tracked this tipster down back in 2025 so we could hear her story firsthand. And this woman claimed that years before Joan disappeared, when she was in her twenties, she had been out at a club one night, and this guy that she knew from her neighborhood
35:20 Ashley Flowers? was there. And when she was going to leave, he convinced her to give him a ride, saying that he was like sick, he needed help getting to the hospital. But once she was in the car, he told her to go somewhere else, like somewhere out Out by the water. And when she realized that they weren't going to the hospital, he pulled out a gun and tried to assault her. Now, she said that she was able to talk her way out of this situation, reminding him that people had seen them leave together. So like they knew she would be with him. But she said this was the most terrifying moment of her life. And she just could not shake this overwhelming sense when she saw Joan's story on the news. Like, what if it was him? What if he wised up over the years, went after someone that, first of all, he wasn't as closely tied to?
36:04 Speaker 01 And no one could like confirm that he had been with another person that night.
36:08 Ashley Flowers? At a place, right, though the airport where so many people are coming and going, they might not remember who left with whom. And here's the real thing that made her sure she had to call police. She'd heard rumors that the guy who pulled a gun on her was now driving a cab around Logan Airport. Not through a company or anything, just kind of like picking up rides unlicensed. So that is what made her pick up the phone and give police the man's name. Leonard Lenny Paradiso. Now, that tip didn't seem to go anywhere at the time. But now that ADA Burke sees it, it means everything. This is the same Lenny from Marie's case.
36:51 Ashley Flowers? So he kind of strong arms his way into Marie's case and takes over, even though it's outside of his jurisdiction. Because if he wants to get Lenny, he has a much better chance of nailing him for Marie's homicide. Mostly because Joan's case isn't a homicide. They still haven't found her. So he throws himself into that one. And listen, this isn't a slam dunk by any means. It's mostly circumstantial. Even the car that Candy and Lenny say that they drove that night is long gone.
37:21 Speaker 01 Was it a blue car by chance?
37:23 Ashley Flowers? No, it wasn't. And it doesn't even matter. I highly doubt he even had the same car years later when Joan went missing. Because over the last like three or four years, Lenny and Candy reported eight cars and like two boats stolen, damaged, or sunk for basically insurance claims. So I don't think it was the same one blue or not, but it wasn't blue. I know that. Now, one of the things that Burke finds to help his case is a set of notes from Lenny's parole officer. According to the notes, on August 13th, 1979, at around noon. This would have been a few hours after Marie's body was ID'd. Lenny told his parole officer that he was worried about police questioning him about her.
38:05 Speaker 01 Which is like, not something I worry about when a body turns up.
38:10 Ashley Flowers? Same, but I mean, I might be if I was the one last seen with her, seen with her the day before. I mean, it's not like it's some random person. He had a connection to her, so I don't know. Of everything that Burke's got against Lenny, this is kind of like the least concerning to me. Now, there is one problem standing in the way of bringing charges against Lenny, and that is David.
38:32 Speaker 01 Which is Marie's boyfriend.
38:34 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, a good defense attorney would offer up the boyfriend.
38:37 Speaker 01 Obviously.
38:38 Ashley Flowers? Right, like remember, he was an early suspect. They were fighting that night. He still hadn't been ruled out. And actually, there was a lot of suspicious stuff around him too. Like I said, according to police reports, David and Marie argued the day that she's last seen alive. Apparently, she was seeing someone else, so there was motive there too. And he had been abusive to her. He'd even strangled her just a few months earlier. And it left her so scared that she moved out of his place and stayed with a friend. Not to mention, the morning after that wedding they were at together, David called Marie's family saying that she didn't come home and asking if she was with them. And that even struck them as odd because he didn't usually check in like that.
39:22 Ashley Flowers? Ultimately, ADA Burke decides to put this all to a grand jury, and he does this in March of 1982. He's gonna present what they have in Marie's case and let them decide whether to bring charges against David or Lenny. And in his opinion, David was a sympathetic witness. He answers every question, he owns up to what he did, and he claims that he cried for Marie when he was alone. And most importantly, according to Burke, David didn't have any connection to where Marie's body was found, but Lenny did. Again, he sold fish to that lobster company. And I guess the grand jury agrees because they chose to indict Lenny.
40:04 Ashley Flowers? And on July 6th, 1982, he's arrested for Marie's murder and remains locked away until his trial is set to begin. And that time between arrest and trial proves to be invaluable for ADA Burke. Because an inmate named Robert Bond comes forward in early 83. And he tells Burke that Lenny had been doing some talking in jail. Bond said he got close to Lenny when he was moved into the same jail cell as him. And they'd actually served time together at the same prison before. And they got so close that Bond claims Lenny confessed not to just one murder, but two. Both Marie's and Joan's.
40:48 Ashley Flowers? In a letter to Burke, Bond writes that Lenny told him that he drove back to the bar Marie was at without Candy and convinced Marie to get in Candy's car by telling her he needed to pick Candy up. But instead, he drives her to the Marshes, sexually assaults her. And he says that during a struggle, Marie scratched Lenny. And so he made this like specific comment that he didn't want investigators scraping under her fingernails for skin cells. Now, as for Joan, Bond claims that Lenny told him that on the night Joan disappeared, he was doing his unofficial cab thing, picked her up at Logan Airport after she got off her flight. And Bond says that Lenny claimed he told Joan he needed to stop by his office to like pick up
41:29 Ashley Flowers? some papers or something and that after that, he'd take her to Cambridge. But he didn't. He drove Joan to this pier where he kept his boat, the Malafamena, which means evil woman in Italian. And Bond says that Lenny took Joan onto the boat, offered her a drink. And when she said no and rejected him, he hits her in the head, specifically on the right side of the head with a whiskey bottle and sexually assaulted her. And that is when he took the boat way out and dumped her body in the water. So he tells investigators that Lenny claimed there was a lot of blood on the boat after this. And so two days later, he took the boat out again and just sank it.
42:12 Ashley Flowers? Bond says that Lenny showed him pictures of the boat on his like wall that they had. And he said there were two. There's a smaller one and there's a larger one. And the larger one is the one that he sent. He even describes the registration numbers.
42:26 Speaker 01 And this all feels like ultra-specific and provable if it's true.
42:31 Ashley Flowers? Yeah. And so around this time, another inmate comes forward and backs up Bond's statements. He claims that Lenny confessed to him too. So if investigators can find this sunken boat, they might have a real case.
42:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:44 Ashley Flowers? So in the summer of 83, Joan's parents announced this reward for any tips that'll lead to its location. And investigators are searching the harbor, they're bringing in divers. And it takes till September 27th, but that's when they find the Malafamena. They raise it from its watery grave, but there's no evidence found. Now, I don't think this makes anyone believe the story isn't true. I mean, like, the thing's been underwater for almost a year at this point. Like, I don't know that you would still see a bloody crime scene.
43:15 Speaker 01 Right.
43:16 Ashley Flowers? So unfortunately, without anything to strengthen Joan's case, Burke has to like just focus on getting justice for Marie. And Lenny's trial for her murder begins on July 9th, 1984. By then, Burke had secured another inmate who says that Lenny confessed to them. So even though he doesn't have any physical evidence, he argues that the similarities and consistencies between those two informants who came forward, between their stories, he says like because they're so similar, it makes them more credible.
43:46 Speaker 01 So did they end up not doing anything with the vaginal smear from her case?
43:51 Ashley Flowers? So on the stand, the lead detective says that the slide wasn't refrigerated. And when the bodysuit was tested, there was no like seminal residue on that. So that was all a bust.
44:01 Speaker 01 Wait, did they ever test her fingernails then? Because isn't that what Lenny told Bond he didn't want them to do?
44:08 Ashley Flowers? No, they didn't, which for me would have been like the first thing.
44:11 Speaker 01 Did go straight to the fingernails.
44:12 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, but for some reason, they didn't. I don't know if they just like thought they didn't need it or what, but they don't test that. And maybe they were right, because on July 21st, the jury comes back with a verdict and Lenny is found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Marie Iannuzzi. He's also convicted of assault with intent to rape and sentenced to life in prison. And for Marie's family, there is relief.
44:39 Ashley Flowers? But it is complicated because while there's a conviction, they can't help walking away feeling a little used because the way it all played out, they never really felt like it was about Marie. They always felt like Marie's case was just a way to get Joan justice.
44:56 Speaker 01 Like a stepping stone. It wasn't justice for Marie, it was justice to find Joan justice.
45:01 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, like they could use this to put this guy away while they look for the smoking gun in the case that like really mattered to them all along. Now ADA Burke told us that Marie's trial focused on her case and he avoided bringing Joan's case into that trial beyond like the cross examinations involving Lenny's girlfriend or whatever.
45:19 Speaker 01 But still, that's how Marie's sister feels and that's like a pretty yucky feeling to walk away with.
45:25 Ashley Flowers? It is, right? And I don't know if it's the trial she's just talking about or even the fact of like how, like the fact that the case got taken on at all.
45:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:31 Ashley Flowers? But I agree, like that's what, that was their experience walking away and that's a terrible feeling. And like I said, complicated. Like would her sister do anything differently? No, probably not because Marie had long been forgotten like altogether before this, but it still sucks. And at the end of this, it's not really like they got Joan total justice because Joan's family is kind of in limbo. And no amount of media coverage or attention from the prosecutor's office is changing things. They're basically told that until we have a body, we have nothing. So that is the thing they have to hope for now. But everyone knows that chances are slim. I mean, per the confession, Joan is like out at sea somewhere.
46:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:15 Ashley Flowers? And the reality is they may never be able to properly lay her to rest. And I don't know if that reality gets harder or easier to accept as time goes on. But I imagine either way, their world gets flipped upside down when Joan is found in April of 1990. And not in deep waters or washed up ashore. Where she's found calls into question the entire confession that their theory has hinged on for the last eight years.
46:51 Ashley Flowers? Guys, I'm doing a bit of a kitchen clean out. I have been getting schooled lately on the effects of microplastics, so I am determined to eliminate as much plastic from my home as possible. And I am especially focused on the stuff that I cook with. So I turned to Wayfair, where I have been getting so many pieces for my home. And I just got all new wood and stainless steel cooking utensils that look beautiful, feel great, and I have already put them to use. And these things are a zillion times better than the gross plastic things that I had in the drawer for a decade. And I'm honestly ashamed that I kept them as long as I did. I also replaced any plastic storage containers I had with glass ones. And I did all of that for 250 bucks. Bougie on a budget.
47:34 Ashley Flowers? You can shop thousands of products across every style and every budget, whether you're simply replacing an appliance or transforming your home from top to bottom for the holiday season. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair Rewards. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5% back on every purchase. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com.
48:03 Speaker 01 College is a lot like Halloween. You can become whatever you want to be. The difference? A costume lasts one night, but a college degree lasts a whole lifetime. Try on something new with Southern New Hampshire University. They've got over 200 online degree programs for all kinds of career goals. Business, healthcare, technology, you name it. Plus, with no scheduled class times or live lectures to attend, you don't have to quit your day job to work toward your dream career. And get this, SNHU has some of the lowest online tuition rates in the US, which means you can still be that house that gives out full-size candy bars. So instead of pretending to have your dream job, why not earn a degree that helps you get there for real? Start your free application today at SNHU.edu/crimejunkie. That's SNHU.edu/crimejunkie.
48:52 Ashley Flowers? Joan's remains end up being found by a woman walking her dog in Hamilton, Massachusetts. Now she initially spotted what she thought was this deflated volleyball in a drainage ditch, but it was a human skull. And after an extensive search by police, they end up locating more bones and a shallow grave buried beneath a pile of logs. Dental records are what confirm that it is Joan that they found. And it's so weird because there were at least two layers of logs and debris that were laid on top of her body at two different times.
49:30 Speaker 01 Which means someone's been like coming back and checking on these.
49:34 Ashley Flowers? Making sure that she stayed hidden. Now, the glaringly obvious thing here is that Joan, in fact, had not been dumped in the ocean off a boat like Robert Bond said Lenny confessed to. But I will say, there is a large fracture on the right side of her skull.
49:55 Speaker 01 Which does match what Bond said.
49:58 Ashley Flowers? Right. Was that a lucky guess? Was Bond lying? Did Lenny lie to Bond? I don't know. What I think is so interesting is the area where she's found and what that could tell us. Hamilton is about an hour northeast of Logan Airport. The marsh area where her purse and wallet were found is like in that general direction.
50:20 Speaker 01 Oh.
50:21 Ashley Flowers? So it could make sense that someone dumped those things as they were driving to Hamilton. And someone, Lenny or otherwise, clearly had this Hamilton, this like specific place in mind because where she was found was this quiet rural road that winds through the woods. I mean, there are houses, but it's like the kind of road that locals use because they live there or because someone knows it well enough to feel okay stopping there without being seen.
50:49 Speaker 01 You have to know this, you have to go out of your way to find it.
50:52 Ashley Flowers? Because you also know that you can have time to like dig a shallow grave, right? Come back and like, and nobody's gonna spot you. Like you're not gonna be seen. But here's what's really odd. We found out that there was a massive fire in the area around the marshes that caused roadblocks and evacuations on the night that Joan went missing. So like even getting to that place would not have been an easy path.
51:17 Speaker 01 I mean, it clearly didn't stop someone, though.
51:20 Ashley Flowers? No, but I think my question is, like, was that someone really Lenny? The location of Joan's body doesn't seem to change much for investigators, though. Like, or for ADA Burke. I mean, it changes his plan, probably. Like, he can't take this to trial because the only thing he had to go on were the stories from these jailhouse informants.
51:40 Speaker 01 Which don't match.
51:41 Ashley Flowers? No, but like, oh, well. In his mind, the case is already closed. Now they've at least found her. I mean, truthfully, people probably could have seen this coming because he seemed to be disregarding anything he considered bad facts along the line. Bad facts being those things that didn't fit his, like, Lenny did it theory. I mean, at one point, it's realized that the night Joan went missing was super stormy by, like, the harbor. Like, there's no way anyone could have gone out on a boat that night. And Burke had to even publicly admit that. Also, plot twist. Lenny didn't even have his boat when Joan went missing.
52:20 Speaker 01 What do you mean he didn't have his boat?
52:23 Ashley Flowers? And this is what I'm saying, like, so they were, like, disregarding the stuff before Joan's even found. He told investigators this early on. He said that the rudder was broken and it had sank. He even filed an insurance claim, like, he was known to do for it. And court records for a federal bankruptcy trial show that the judge in the case believed that the boat was sunk by August of 1981. This is months before Joan went missing.
52:46 Speaker 01 But, like, was it actually, though? Because insurance claims on cars and boats and things, like, that was kind of his racket with candy, right?
52:55 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, but when they recovered his boat, like, it, the story lined up. The rudder was broken, just like he said, and it was found right where he said it would be.
53:03 Speaker 01 And either way, we know. Nothing is actually found on the boat. Like it's like finding the boat is like, okay, cool.
53:09 Ashley Flowers? It doesn't even matter. Because now everyone agrees that he didn't kill her on the boat. So they say like, oh, so sorry, we got that part wrong. But everything else is still right.
53:18 Speaker 01 Okay, what is everything else, though?
53:21 Ashley Flowers? No one can really say for sure. But Burke continues to publicly insist that Lenny is responsible for Joan's murder, even though he's never been charged. Honestly, this insistence might help explain why the suspect sketch in Joan's case never became more publicly tied to the case. I mean, it doesn't explain to me like the first month or so.
53:44 Speaker 01 Like the initial like searches and interviews and stuff.
53:47 Ashley Flowers? But after they lock in on Lenny, it feels like they just like write this guy off completely because it like, it doesn't look like Lenny, right? Sketch is a white guy, curly hair, beard, 5'7". He was in his 40s. Lenny is 6'2". He's heavyset, didn't have curly hair, didn't wear glasses. Like dude's a hard guy to miss.
54:07 Speaker 01 He could have been the other cab driver, though?
54:10 Ashley Flowers? Maybe, but even that gets a little murky when you dig in. So the tipster who called and had that bad experience with Lenny told us that she heard word on the street was that he was driving that unlicensed cab, right? We couldn't find any evidence of that. When he picked up the hitchhiker that he assaulted, he didn't introduce himself as a cab driver. And in Bond's statements, he never claims that Lenny drove a cab either.
54:35 Speaker 01 Wait, then what's the story of how he got Joan in his car?
54:38 Ashley Flowers? Just that Lenny picked her up at the airport. But he doesn't specifically say like he was driving a cab or pretended to be a cab driver or whatever. As far as I can tell, he didn't really give other specifics around that. And like, it is a big question for me, too. Like, well, how would Lenny get her in the car? But I don't think anyone was pressing him for those details. So I don't know.
54:58 Speaker 01 Okay, so say Lenny was doing this like unmarked cab thing.
55:03 Ashley Flowers? Mm-hmm.
55:04 Speaker 01 There's something that like just I cannot make sense. Her luggage.
55:07 Ashley Flowers? Hmm.
55:08 Speaker 01 Like if he's pretending to be a cab driver, I don't think he convinces her to check her luggage. Or like gets out and does it and leaves her in the car. Like that would have been an instant red flag.
55:20 Ashley Flowers? It would have been. And like here's, I mean, we know whoever checked it didn't do it right away. Right? Like it happened the next day at 10:30 a.m. So theoretically, like one scenario could be like someone picks up Joan. They kill her either in Hamilton or then they take her thereafter. And whether she's already buried or not, her luggage is driven back? Like back south to downtown Boston and then left at the station.
55:45 Speaker 01 Or Joan is still alive at 10:30 and she did it for some unknown inexplicable reason.
55:51 Ashley Flowers? And, and if that's the case, then she's not with Lenny.
55:54 Speaker 01 Right.
55:54 Ashley Flowers? Like she had zero ties to this man. He would have been a stranger to her. So I think, I, I really believe someone else did it. And the more I think about it, I keep coming back. I think whoever did it wanted it to be found, but maybe not to play with people. Maybe they wanted it to look like Joan was like caught a bus somewhere. Like think about it. Like earlier I said that her wallet could have easily been tossed on the way to Hamilton. But what, what if it was on the way back? Like say Joan's killed in Hamilton, just like ditch her stuff. Right? Why drive all the way back? And if you're going to, why not put all her stuff together?
56:35 Ashley Flowers? They separate the purse and the wallet from the luggage because that kinda makes it look like she took those things with her. And why would you need to make it look like she took off if you have zero ties to her?
56:50 Speaker 01 If you knew her.
56:51 Ashley Flowers? Especially if you were last seen with her.
56:54 Speaker 01 Wait, didn't you say they got fingerprints from her suitcase? Like, do we know who those are?
56:59 Ashley Flowers? Oh, so here's another thing. Those are not Lenny's. They tested him against those right away in 1982. Not a match. I don't know if they've ever been entered into a modern database. We would have loved to ask, but the Essex County District Attorney's Office didn't respond to our requests for comment. But I know they tested them against at least one other person over the years. But whoever that was, that wasn't a match either.
57:25 Speaker 01 I mean, I say start there, right? Like, it seems like it could be pretty freaking important.
57:31 Ashley Flowers? Could be. I mean, like, at the same time, it also came from an airport where it's being handled by other people. A stranger could have touched it, thinking it was their bag. Like, it might not be the thing.
57:42 Speaker 01 Well, and even, like, someone put it in the locker, but then someone had to take it out of the locker, put it into storage, and they were sorting it in storage to put into further storage.
57:49 Ashley Flowers? And that's where I'm like, I pray to God they, like, checked the people who worked at the Greyhound bus or whatever. But, like, I don't know. Like, even if we... Yes, it might not be connected, but like, that sure feels like something...
57:59 Speaker 01 But also, it could be.
58:00 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, it feels like something you want to, like, know or rule out.
58:03 Speaker 01 Did they get anything usable when they found her remains? Like, was there anything other than her remains with her?
58:09 Ashley Flowers? By that point, it had been so long, I don't think they got much. I mean, I know there were, like, a few hairs found at the scene, but, like, I mean, those may have been Jones. We couldn't confirm if those have ever even been tested. I mean, it was 1990 when she was found, and they had a suspect.
58:27 Speaker 01 So they didn't compare the hair to Lenny even?
58:30 Ashley Flowers? Oh, no, they did that. It wasn't his, that's why, like...
58:33 Speaker 01 That's why the answer is, like, who knows?
58:35 Ashley Flowers? Could be Jones, yeah.
58:35 Speaker 01 Probably Jones.
58:36 Ashley Flowers? Yeah.
58:36 Speaker 01 So I assume...
58:37 Ashley Flowers? It's like giving tunnel vision for me.
58:39 Speaker 01 Yeah. Like, I assume no one's racing to exhume her to see if there is anything else they could use.
58:45 Ashley Flowers? I don't think they would be. I mean, again, but I, there is not even an option to do that because after Joan's body was found, her family quietly and quickly cremated her, which actually technically is illegal. I was actually about to say that, like, because the case is open. Yeah, it's technically still open. And according to Massachusetts law, you can't cremate a body that's part of an open investigation. And listen, I don't say that to insinuate anything shady. They had been grieving her loss for a very long time. Like, they probably didn't even know that. But it seems like something the investigator who was working her case should have known. But I think they were so set on their theory that like, when they're like, we're gonna have a cremate, nobody stopped them. Does Joan's family believe that it was Lenny?
59:30 Ashley Flowers? Well, we couldn't talk to any of her immediate family. So her parents have passed, and we reached out to her siblings, but they haven't gotten back to us. The person we were able to talk to, though, was Joan's former sister-in-law, Eve. So she was married to Joan's brother back in 81, when Joan went missing. And they were still married when Joan was found in 1990. According to her, Joan's parents and brother kept telling the same story. Lenny killed Joan. But that's a story that she never really believed. I mean, so much so, it's part of what caused a rift with her and her husband. And they've since divorced, and she's like, made it her life's mission to get people asking questions
1:00:12 Ashley Flowers? about Joan's case again. And she's been doing her own investigation, even hired a P I to help her pull records and interview witnesses and review trial transcripts. And she sees a lot of the tunnel vision I think that we do. And she validates the way that Marie's family feels, that her case was a lot about Joan. Like, apparently, they even did a search of Candy's place. Again, Candy's related to Marie's case. But the items that investigators hoped to find were ones tied to Joan.
1:00:43 Speaker 01 So what's Eve's stance on Marie's case? Does she think Lenny did one, but not the other? Or?
1:00:50 Ashley Flowers? Well, she feels like both investigations left loose ends, albeit a lot more in Jones. But even in Marie's case, she still has questions, mostly about David, the boyfriend. And I wish I could tell you a lot about the conversations police had with him. I should be able to because they did over 20 interviews with the guy.
1:01:10 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:01:11 Ashley Flowers? But when the lead detective took the stand in Lenny's trial, he admitted that he didn't take any reports on any of those 20 interviews.
1:01:22 Speaker 01 What?
1:01:23 Ashley Flowers? But I bet they were illuminating because he was just acting straight up odd after her murder. Like on Monday morning, shortly after Marie's body was identified, family members went to David's house to pick up a dress for the wake. And according to court documents, they found Marie's belongings all packed up and what they believed was blood on the stairs. Now, ADA Burke told us that he doesn't believe that David's home was processed at the start, but he says once he learned about the staircase, that he had a lead detective inspect it and they determined that it was paint, not blood. But Marie's family also testified in front of the grand jury that they noticed scratches on David's hands.
1:02:07 Ashley Flowers? And the explanation for the scratches kept changing over time. Like first, he said it was a cat. And then it was like work and then it was a car accident, then a bar fight. And we're not talking like small marks. These were like deep gouges and Marie had long fingernails. Now, as far as we know, just like Joan's family, Marie's family believes that Lenny was her killer. Still, one family member remembers something else that stuck out with them. On the drive to Marie's wake, David asked if he should start dating again. And when
1:02:41 Speaker 01 Timing.
1:02:42 Ashley Flowers? And when he got there, Marie's family member claimed that David threw a joint into Marie's coffin, which like just felt out of place to them. Now, David said in his grand jury testimony that he struggled with substance use, though. So that might explain some of this behavior, but it doesn't make it any easier to understand from Marie's family. And then there's what happened just before Marie's funeral. David never showed up to the funeral because he had flown to New Jersey under Marie's stepbrother's name, and he ended up getting arrested in Newark Airport for stealing luggage.
1:03:19 Speaker 01 What?
1:03:20 Ashley Flowers? It's weird, right? Like
1:03:22 Speaker 01 Yes, but I don't even know what to like make of it. Like, what does it even?
1:03:28 Ashley Flowers? I don't know. It only stands out in my mind because of Joan's case. But if you divorce the two, like, what the hell was he doing?
1:03:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, I'm trying to even come up with something that makes sense if you don't divorce the two. Like, it still doesn't really work for
1:03:45 Ashley Flowers? No.
1:03:45 Speaker 01 Joan's case.
1:03:46 Ashley Flowers? No, it doesn't really make sense.
1:03:47 Speaker 01 And if he didn't have any connection to Joan, the only thing tying them together was Lenny.
1:03:52 Ashley Flowers? Well, so here's the thing. So he didn't know Joan personally, but guess what a local newspaper reported? David worked as a shuttle bus driver at Logan Airport.
1:04:05 Speaker 01 So he has a connection to the airport?
1:04:07 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, a loose connection. But to me, about as loose as the idea that Lenny just like swung by the airport and picked Joan up.
1:04:14 Speaker 01 Right. Does he look like the sketch?
1:04:17 Ashley Flowers? So not to me. That like, that's a good point. So he's in his twenties at the time.
1:04:22 Speaker 01 Which is younger than like
1:04:24 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, the 40-year-old guy they sorrow with. And listen, I know that they looked at David for Joan's case at least a little bit, but investigators say that he was ruled out. They just don't say how he was ruled out. And I need to say, David did have an alibi for Marie's murder. He lived with his mom, who told police that he came home from the reception without Marie around 4:30 PM. He went out briefly that evening, was back by 9:00. The issue, all these years later, is we spoke with wedding guests who remember David returning to the party later that night. And no one ever placed David inside the bar where Marie was last seen. But his house was only a few blocks away.
1:05:07 Ashley Flowers? You know, if you were just gonna like, walk over and be right back in 30 minutes? Totally doable.
1:05:14 Speaker 01 It could have been who she called from the bar to see if he was home.
1:05:18 Ashley Flowers? Would have been nice to know, but those records were never pulled.
1:05:21 Speaker 01 Of course.
1:05:22 Ashley Flowers? Or at least they're not in the files that we have today. But I didn't see anywhere where David admits to getting a call from Marie. He said that he didn't think he was gonna see her that night at all because Marie told him that she was gonna go, like, stay at her parents. But apparently she told her parents that she was gonna stay at David's.
1:05:39 Speaker 01 But at the end of the day, she's still last seen leaving with Lenny, who was already a bad dude before this.
1:05:46 Ashley Flowers? For sure. Her friend last saw her leaving with Lenny. But apparently, one of the bar owners told police that he remembered Marie being there, like, near closing time, at around 1:45 in the morning. And then another person we spoke to, who was at the bar that night, remembered that last call was around 1:25, and Marie was still there. And he doesn't remember seeing Lenny at that time. And if Lenny and Candy were telling the truth, that might make sense.
1:06:15 Speaker 01 So if she maybe came back after leaving with him, then really, all investigators have is jailhouse confessions and the fact that Lenny knew the marshes. And like, jailhouse confessions, by the way, that like, don't always add up.
1:06:29 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, and by the way, turns out you could say the same thing about David. One man told police and later testified that David confessed to killing Marie at some party in 1981, saying that Marie was seeing someone else and he, quote, "did what he had to do." And that same witness also claimed that David tried to kill him twice after he went to police. And it turns out that those marshes where she's found is near a trash dump site, like this local landfill. And David worked in garbage collection at the time. ADA Burke told us that he asked the lead detective to follow up on the allegation
1:07:13 Ashley Flowers? that David confessed, and that witness was determined not to be credible. But I have real concerns when I look at the documents in Lenny's case. Because after his conviction, there are a series of sworn affidavits submitted alleging that witnesses who testified in front of the grand jury were pressured to change or soften their testimony about David before the trial, and even threatened with arrest or losing custody of their children. So like, this idea of like, oh, I put both of them in front of the grand jury, and the grand jury is who chose Lenny. Was it? Based on the testimony of coerced people? Yeah, and listen, Lenny's defense lawyer told us that he could imagine pressuring,
1:07:58 Ashley Flowers? or at least like them changing witnesses' minds, like telling them that like- Don't you want to do the right thing? Yeah, and don't you want to get like a bad guy off the streets? ADA Burke told us that the safeguard against witness intimidation at the time was the court. He said that any witness who felt pressured could just like bring it to a judge. Oh, okay. But I ask, could they really? Like, I get it, on paper, yes, but in practice? Yeah. Because according to an investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, in the years surrounding Lenny's prosecution, Massachusetts prosecutors were repeatedly found by the state's appellate and Supreme Court to have violated defendants' rights to a fair trial.
1:08:41 Ashley Flowers? Judges overturned at least 120 convictions since the mid 1980s, in part or entirely because of prosecutorial misconduct, things like withholding evidence, failing to disclose information that could undermine witness credibility, or misrepresenting evidence to juries. Which makes you call into question even those supposed confessions. Those two informants may have had something to gain. Like when it comes to Robert Bond, in one sworn statement, another inmate says that he personally saw Bond with Lenny's court papers, copying information into a yellow legal pads. And then after that, the inmate says that Bond started talking openly about how police
1:09:26 Ashley Flowers? were trying to tie Lenny to the Marie Iannuzzi murder and Joan Webster's disappearance. And that he planned to write the district attorney claiming that Lenny confessed. He says that Bond talked about money, talked about legal help and getting his own case overturned, and even asked this guy to like go along with the story, but the inmate said no. And then there's a whole nother story from a different inmate that's like very similar to that one. The other guy who snitched on Lenny had an even fishier story, like, and I won't bog you down with all the details, but basically the inmate helped a lawyer with some like legal work and the lawyer that he worked for represented Lenny? And court records?
1:10:06 Ashley Flowers? And that inmate's sworn affidavit show that after he cooperated with prosecutors, including testifying against Lenny, he was allowed to plead to a lesser charge in his own murder case and he was released after about 14 years, even though he originally faced a life sentence. None of that context was shared with the jury at Lenny's trial.
1:10:30 Speaker 01 So does Lenny have a lawyer fighting all of this?
1:10:33 Ashley Flowers? He did for many years, but it didn't get anywhere. And in 2008, Lenny died in a prison hospital, maintaining his innocence. You know, he had a daughter and she told us that she knows her dad hurt women. Like, that's not like up for discussion. She doesn't excuse that. But what she does push back on is the idea that he committed these murders. And she says that once police zeroed in on her dad, their minds were made up. In the months after Lenny's arrest, she told us that she was followed and questioned by undercover officers. She was approached at Logan Airport and then later at her workplace.
1:11:16 Ashley Flowers? And they were pressing her to say that she knew something about her dad. And she said it got so overwhelming that eventually she left the state for more than a year just to like get away from it. But it seems to her like it is just her and Eve who believe that Lenny didn't get a fair shake. To them, the rest of the world seems satisfied that the right man was put behind bars. ADA Burke actually published a book expanding on the case that he won at trial. And in it, he claims that Lenny wasn't just responsible for Marie and Joan's murders. He suggests that Lenny was a serial killer who committed more murders than he
1:11:56 Ashley Flowers? was ever charged with. And listen, in a courtroom, a prosecutor is bound by rules. Like, there's the standard of proof. Outside of court, those standards don't really exist the same way, especially when you're talking about a convicted murderer. About 20 years earlier, Lenny tried to sue Burke for liable in connection with an article he published calling him a suspect in Joan's murder. But Lenny lost. Not because the claims were proven true, but because the court ruled that Lenny didn't have any reputation left to protect. Now, listen, I don't know if Lenny was innocent, but I do see real problems with his trial
1:12:38 Ashley Flowers? and the investigation, especially the investigation into Joan's case, which got no trial.
1:12:45 Speaker 01 So if not Lenny, then who?
1:12:49 Ashley Flowers? I don't have an answer to that. I can tell you where I would start looking if, like, I had the badge, though. First of all, I'm not convinced these cases are connected. So first things first, I would treat them as two distinctly separate cases. In Marie's case, I would want to know a lot more about David. I would want to know if Marie really was seeing someone else. I would want to know, who did she call from the bar that night? For Joan's case, I would be looking close to Harvard. Someone she knew. That area where her body was found, where someone visited to make sure that her remains would stay buried. Like, you had to know it. And guess what we found out?
1:13:30 Ashley Flowers? The area where Joan was found was actually close to Harvard-owned property. And the woman who found Joan's skull was married to a man who had connections to Cambridge.
1:13:47 Speaker 01 I'm sorry, that seems super relevant here.
1:13:50 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, now, according to Eve, that guy was cleared. But like, knowing how hard they focused on Lenny, I'm like, you know, let me just like-
1:13:59 Speaker 01 What does cleared mean?
1:13:59 Ashley Flowers? Yeah, let me just see who this guy is and if he's done anything wild or committed any crimes in the last 50 years. You know, this is like, I usually do this in a lot of our cases. I'm like, I just like do background checks on like the people involved.
1:14:10 Speaker 01 Just want to check, yeah.
1:14:11 Ashley Flowers? You'll get surprised. So like, I was fully ready to go down a rabbit hole on this one.
1:14:17 Speaker 01 You usually are.
1:14:18 Ashley Flowers? But this is where it got stranger for me. So that man who lived near the property owned by Harvard was a guy named Dr. Jonah Churkin. He was a social sciences professor at a college in Maryland in the 70s, even ran for mayor of the college town at some point before he resigned without really any statement or explanation in 1974. By the time Joan was at Harvard in 1981, he was working there as an administrator. Not in Joan's school and no connection between them, as far as we know. But this is what's so weird. There is like, nothing on this guy online. I mean, not nothing, like I found a book written by him
1:15:02 Ashley Flowers? that only existed on eBay, so like, I bought it. It just came in, I haven't even gotten to read it yet, we'll report back. And there were like a couple of old newspaper articles about his early career, like a few blips in 1978, maybe one thing I found in 86, like some property sale, if it's the same guy in Florida. But then, this dude just does not exist. And I'm not just talking about on Google. When we searched databases, this guy does not come up, which I hardly ever see. Now, maybe he went off the grid. He and his wife, because by the way, I couldn't find anything for her either. And I think this is extra weird because like there were in in the few articles I've
1:15:46 Ashley Flowers? seen about him, it talks about how he has like all these academic accolades, these multiple degrees, he was, you know, wrote that book, he was like publishing a paper that people were talking about and then just like poof, nothing. And so I like I had this weird, probably wrong idea. But listen, call me crazy, but it's 2026 in a world where we still aren't getting everything in the Epstein files and there have been zero arrests and I trust the government about 0%. Right. Here are the things I know and the things that I find strange. When you put them all in one place, yeah. Joan's family had confirmed ties to the CIA. It is pretty well documented that
1:16:30 Ashley Flowers? during the Cold War and into the 1970s and 80s, the CIA recruited on college campuses through academic departments, through research programs and administrative roles. And to me, it's like, when you dig into this case, Joan's case, you keep just like running up against dead ends, just like missing records, unanswered questions, and entire chapters of people's lives that just stop, like Jonah's. And that kind of murkiness makes it harder, not easier, to ever be certain about what really happened. Now, even though he was in
1:17:11 Ashley Flowers? his late 30s when Joan went missing, I don't know that Jonah looked much like our sketch. Based on at least like the two pictures I could find of this guy online, which notably are from years before. Not from like around the time Joan was murdered. And again, to be extra clear, police later told a private investigator that Eve hired that this guy was ruled out as a suspect in Joan's case. But like Jonah, Jonah's family, if you're out there, like, send me a smoke signal, like, let me know you're real, let me know you're alive, I would love to talk to you about who else like was on that like property, knew that property by where you live, like, who would come and
1:17:55 Ashley Flowers? go, I have all of the questions. So Joan Webster's murder is still unsolved and open. Marie Iannuzzi's case is considered closed, and the man convicted of her murder has passed away. Is that the truth of what happened to her? Maybe, but I don't know because of how both cases were handled. Joan and Marie both deserve investigations based on evidence, not assumptions. So my question isn't just who killed Joan and Marie. It's why didn't anyone want the truth? But I think someone out there knows what happened. Maybe the man who drove that blue taxi that Joan got into.
1:18:36 Ashley Flowers? Or maybe it was someone who was at the bar the night Marie was last seen alive. Just because this episode ends doesn't mean we stop. You know that. We never stop. So if anyone out there has any bit of information to share about the cases of Joan Webster or Marie Iannuzzi, email us, [email protected] .
1:19:11 Ashley Flowers? You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com.
1:19:16 Speaker 01 And you can follow us on Instagram at @crimejunkiepodcast.
1:19:19 Ashley Flowers? We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
1:19:58 Ashley Flowers? Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.
1:20:06 Speaker 03 When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir. And that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker. Every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather around, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.
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