The Bennington Triangle

Fall is here and class is back in session. And with an all new school year comes an all new season of our podcast, Campus Killings. I'm Dr. Megan Sachs.

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Over the first four seasons of Campus Killings, we've explored more than 70 of the most sinister crimes to take place on or around school campuses, or the cases we discussed had a school-connected theme.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 425 of the Criminology Podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson.

And this is Mike Morford.

Mr. Morford, how you doing this week, buddy?

Doing pretty good. How you been?

Having a good week. My whole family's back to school. You know, my wife, my oldest daughter, they're both in the education system. I think my wife has like three more years and she is counting down the days. She's ready to retire, man.

So you've got the house back to yourself, it sounds like, and you can do stuff on your own schedule. You don't have to worry about any noise. That's nice when the kids are out of the house and you get a little quiet so you can do your work.

Yeah, it's just me and the dogs now, but I will say it does get a little lonely when you go all day and you don't really have anybody but the dogs to talk to, right? I'm happy when everybody comes home, so you know, I got somebody to talk to.

Well, you don't have to worry about anybody interrupting your, your games. I know you like to do some gaming.

That is true. That is true. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had new support from Sean Hartman and Dominic Samson. So great support. We really appreciate it.

Yeah, it's awesome. Thank you, Sean and Dominic. Thank you to everyone else that helps support the show. If you'd like to help out, head over to patreon.com/criminology to get started.

So a couple of episodes back, we mentioned that we'll be attending Crime Con Orlando in 2027. And we already had a couple of listeners reach out saying they were making plans already and asking us about our annual Crime Con meetup. Well, at this point, you know, we don't really know our schedule yet because it's over a year out, but that doesn't mean listeners shouldn't be booking their Crime Con trips yet because tickets are moving fast as well as rooms at the event. So you don't want to put off grabbing your passes to the world's biggest true crime convention because you might miss out.

Yeah, Crime Con 2027 is happening right here in Florida at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando. It's taking place September 24th through the 26th. And if you want to grab passes, head over to crimecon.com and use our promo code CRIMINOLOGY at checkout, and that's going to save you 10% on your standard badges. We hope to see everyone there.

All right, it's time to jump into this week's case, and we have a really interesting one. I think a lot of listeners have heard of the Bermuda Triangle. This is an area between Florida, the island of Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. And when you connect these points on a map, it resembles a triangle. And for centuries, there have been reports in this area of strange things. Ships and planes have vanished there, even submarines. There have been sightings of strange sea monsters, UFOs, and reports of compasses going haywire when traveling through this area. This was a very infamous area, you know,

back in the seventies, more of when you and I were kids. But today, it doesn't make as much news. You know, with modern technology, navigation, radios, that kind of stuff, some of the strange things that used to happen there, they just don't seem to happen now. Despite the Bermuda Triangle not being quite as mysterious as it used to be, there's another triangle right here in the US where mysteries still happen, and people vanish there without explanation. And if you're ever traveling through this area, known as the Bennington Triangle, you might want to use some extra caution.

The Bennington Triangle covers four counties in southern Vermont. The exact geographic area of this supposed triangle isn't well-defined, and a lot of the cases we'll discuss were in the Glassenbury area, which makes some people wonder why it's not called the Glassenbury Triangle. But it was author Joseph Citro who coined the name Bennington Triangle, not to be confused with the Bridgewater Triangle. The Bridgewater Triangle made up roughly 200 square miles and located in southeastern Massachusetts, has some pretty strange occurrences of its own. There have been many UFO and Bigfoot sightings there. But the Bennington Triangle is said to be more sinister than the Bridgewater Triangle. It's not just on the UFO sightings or reports of strange lights in the sky. Multiple people

vanished from or died in the Bennington Triangle. And these incidents go back to the 1940s. And it's these mysteries in the Bennington Triangle that we're focusing on.

In November of 1943, 37-year-old Carl Herrick went hunting with his cousin Henry. The two were 10 miles outside of Glassenbury, Vermont, when they were somehow split up. Henry couldn't find Carl for three days. When he did, it was too late. Carl had been killed, and it appeared that something or someone had actually squeezed him until he died. His ribs had cracked and the sharp edges of the breaks punctured his lungs. Henry did note that he had spotted large prints from a bear's paws near Carl's body, but there was a lot of doubt that a bear could have attacked a man in this way. The bear

would have had to have been quite large, and also people in the area weren't exactly strangers to what a bear attack would look like. Bears scratch, they bite, they don't normally just crush you to death. This death was different in many ways, and it puzzled and frightened locals. Some people believe there was more to the death, perhaps even something supernatural. And Morph, I'll be honest, there are a lot of things in nature that scare me. I don't like snakes. I'm scared of alligators, crocodiles, things like that. Also scared of bears. You know, bears can be very vicious, deadly, in fact, but you

know, you don't really think of a bear kind of picking a man up and bear hugging him to death. I mean, there is the term bear hug, but you just don't think of a bear kind of killing someone in that way.

Yeah, I think of that movie, The Revenant with Leonardo DiCaprio, and that was a very vicious, you know, obviously fictional attack, but I think it was based on real bear attacks. And usually there is scrapes, scratches, bites, that kind of stuff. So for this to only be, you know, crushing that happened is pretty strange. And, you know, if I'm in that area, I'm sort of a Bigfoot believer. I'm thinking, maybe this is Bigfoot, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's somebody, a person that did this to him. And then that's, you know, equally as frightening.

Well, yeah, because then you're thinking about a very powerful person, right? It would take a lot of power to pick someone up or, you know, kind of bear hug them and squeeze them to death, break ribs, all that.

On November 12th, 1945, almost exactly two years after Carl Herrick died in the mountains, a man named Mitty Rivers set off on a hunting trip. The 74-year-old was a very experienced outdoorsman, and his son-in-law had a hunting camp on Glassenbury Mountain. Mitty was actually leading the group of hunters he was with to their destination because he knew the area well. The group made it to Bickford Hollow about four miles east of Bennington and was heading to an area known as Hell Hollow near Route 9. He was walking with his son-in-law, Joe LaZan Jr., when they got to a fork in the trail. Mitty decided to explore on his own a little bit and went ahead of the group. He told Joe he would be back for lunch, but by 3:00 PM, he hadn't returned to camp. They yelled for him, searched,

and even shot their guns, but he was nowhere to be found. Once it got dark, they had to stop searching for the night. The next day, more searches were done, but the only sign of Mitty that was ever found was his handkerchief.

Articles from the time do note that Mitty had been warned many times not to go over the ridge, but to stay on this side. Maybe despite being aware he should be more careful, he lost his footing. Mitty was very familiar with the woods in Bennington where the trip started, but he wasn't as familiar with the Bickford Hollow area where his son-in-law had the hunting cabin. Is it a stretch that he fell into a ravine or a stream? It's also possible that there was some kind of hunting accident. One article from the Bennington Evening Banner noted that many hunters were in the woods for deer season and were unaware

that he was missing. This would mean there were a lot of people out hunting deer. One possibility was that one of them accidentally shot Mitty. However, with this theory, you're left to wonder why they didn't just come forward if it was an accident, and why no one found his body, or really any sign of him. This was now the second strange case in that area in two years, but the mysterious reputation of this area continued to grow. So I may have mentioned it before, Morph, but I'm not much of a camper slash hiker. You know, I know a lot of people love to be out in nature. I like nature. I'm just

not a big hiker, you know, going through the woods. Maybe it's all the scary movies I watched when I was a kid, you know, Friday the 13th, all that kind of stuff. But I can definitely tell you this, Hell Hollow would not be my vacation destination of choice. I don't want to go somewhere named Hell Hollow.

Yeah, it's pretty nefarious, that name. But you know, I assume from everything that we know, this was an experienced hunter, knew the area. He had been there before. But you know, anything can happen out in the woods when you're separated. You know, you could twist your ankle, you could trip, fall down a ravine, as we mentioned, get lost. And then you just go the wrong direction and are never found. So you know, anything could have happened along those lines. But then again, you know, maybe he met with some kind of foul play.

Well, and the fact that it was hunting season, right? Deer season, you know, that's, that's a scary thought as well. You got people, you know, throughout these woods, hunting for deer. How hard would it be for them to, you know, accidentally have shot Midi? It does happen. But then, you know, you have to answer the question of, you know, why no one has found his body? No, it's, it's woods, right? You and I have done a lot of cases where woods have been searched, a body wasn't found, and then it's found sometime later. But his body's never been found.

Yeah, his case is reminiscent of one I saw featured on a documentary called Missing 411, The Hunted. I don't know if you've ever watched those Missing 411 series of people that go out into the outdoors and disappear. But one of them focused on hunters, and one of the hunters was an elderly hunter that went out with a group of guys. And, you know, Mrs., you know, he disappeared and under similar circumstances, and they never found any, any part of him.

No, I don't think I've ever watched that one. So I might have to check it out.

Yeah, it's, it's a good series. I liked it. On December 1st, 1946, just over one year after Midi Rivers disappeared, 18-year-old Paula Jean Weldon wanted to go hiking. That year, Paula was a sophomore at Bennington College. She was living in a dorm at Dewey Hall and working at the school's cafeteria during breakfast and lunch. After she got back from work that day, Paula told her roommate that she was going for a walk. Nothing was out of the ordinary about that, even though she had seemed somewhat down lately. But the sun set, it got dark, and Paula still hadn't come back. At first, her roommate figured she was studying in the library on campus and lost track of time. But by morning, she was worried. It seemed clear that her roommate had never come back from her walk.

It seems like Paula planned to make it back to campus that evening. She wasn't wearing clothes warm enough for the overnight temperatures. She was last seen in jeans and a red jacket, and she didn't take any money with her. Students at Bennington College were required to sign a law. If they were going to be out later than 11:00 PM, Paula hadn't signed it, further evidence she planned on returning. The next morning, she missed her classes. Students were also required to check in with campus security when they returned to school after being out later than 11:00 PM. But Paula never checked in. And as a result, she was officially reported missing.

Paula's father offered a reward for information regarding to her whereabouts. He promised $5,000 if she was found alive, and still guaranteed $2,000 in the event that she was dead. He really just wanted to know the truth about what happened to her. He was desperate. Late on December 4th, a local man named Louis Knapp came forward and said that he gave Paula a ride before she disappeared. She had been hitchhiking from the college when he picked her up. He was only going to his house, which was on Route 9, about three miles from her final destination, the Long Trail. But that had been good enough for her. She accepted the ride, and he dropped her off at the end of his driveway at around 3:15. The last time he saw her, as he was heading inside for dinner, which was always

served by his wife at 3 o'clock, Paula was walking the direction of the entrance to the Long Trail.

Man, I thought, we ate early. We usually eat around 5:30. 3 o'clock is really early for dinner.

Yeah, that sounds like he's probably one of those people that's in bed by 8 o'clock.

But the other thing is, this does kind of put Louis on the radar, right? He is presumably one of the last people, if not the last person, to have seen her alive. He gave her a ride. I mean, he's going to be a person of interest when it comes to the police.

Yeah, the last thing you want to do is have the police looking at you for something you didn't do. But, you know, he did the right thing. He came forward and shared what he knew. And, you know, unfortunately, that in the minds of police, sometimes that will get them looking at you.

Investigators had searched other areas for Paula until Louis came forward with his information. Up until then, investigators had no idea she had headed to this area. And he didn't know she was missing until he saw an article about her disappearance. When he saw it, he came forward immediately. Still, valuable time had been lost. Just hours after she would have made it to the trail, it started snowing. At least three inches of snow had fallen since she was last seen. Temperatures dropped. If Paula was out there, conditions would not be ideal for her. It's assumed that Paula did make it to the Long Trail, because a couple who was also hiking that day recalled

talking to her on the trail in Woodford Hollow. She was last seen walking north near the Faithfuller Camp. However, the couple didn't say anything about her wearing a red jacket, which would have been pretty hard to miss. Authorities were also able to confirm that there had been another blonde girl, similar in appearance to Paula, on the trail that afternoon. It could have been her, not Paula, that the couple spoke to. For all anyone knew, something happened to Paula after she hitched another ride toward the trail, or somewhere along the walk there. Whatever happened to Paula, though, she was never seen again. You know what, folks? I didn't know I was a cat person until my daughter moved back in after

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Assuming Paula did make it to the trail and there's no case of mistaken identity with any of the eyewitnesses, we still can't call it confirmed that she disappeared in the woods. She could have made it back to the road and tried to hitchhike back to the college, only for the wrong person to pick her up. And along these lines, there's one suspect that stands out more than others, a man named Fred Godet, who lived on Harbor Road, which was at the time, part of the long trail. He admitted that he saw her the day she disappeared. According to the Bronson Daily News, in 1952, six years after Paula vanished, someone claimed that Fred Godet told them he could locate Paula Weldon's body within a few yards. He would later say this was just a joke. Fred was in Bickford

Hall the day Paula disappeared, and he gave multiple versions of what supposedly happened that day. One of those versions included following her up the trail. He was never charged with anything related to her disappearance.

So I talked about Louis Knapp being a person of interest. Well, obviously, this guy Fred Godet has to be a person of interest as well. Very strange to me, right? I like to joke around, but I would never joke around with somebody and claim that I knew something about a murder, I committed a murder, I could locate a body. That just doesn't seem like to be in any way a joke.

I've never understood why people would connect themselves to a serious crime like that. It's, you know, it's one thing if you want to tell a tall tale about a fish that you caught and how big it was and it got away. You know, that's one thing to play around with your friends, but something like this, this is very serious.

No matter what befell Paula after she left the campus, one key question remains, why was Paula even trying to get to the long trail so late in the afternoon? Some people think Paula was experiencing mental health issues. She hadn't returned home to Connecticut for Thanksgiving, just days before she went missing, because she was upset with her family at the time. Articles note that she and her father had some kind of disagreement, and that she felt her parents loved her siblings more than they loved her. This has led many to believe that Paula could have gone into the woods, underdressed for the weather on purpose, as a way to end her life, but none of the witnesses that saw her that day recall

her being upset or seeming depressed. In fact, she seemed cheerful. This has caused speculation that Paula ran away on purpose to start a new life for some reason.

Some people speculate that Paula's mental health was suffering because she was in a relationship with one of her professors. It's interesting to note that many books have been inspired by Paula's disappearance, including Shirley Jackson's Hangs a Man. Her husband Stanley Hyman was a professor at Bennington and went on to marry one of his former students after Shirley passed away. Author Hillary Wall raised the idea that Paula was dating a professor. Author Susan Scarf Merrill seemed to have believed that Shirley and Stanley were involved in Paula's disappearance. And biographer Judy Oppenheimer noted that Stanley often carried out affairs with his students. Paula was also unsure about her future. She was majoring in art, but was starting to wonder if it

was really for her. She was considering studying botany instead. A seedy professor could definitely extinguish your passion for the subject, but it's also common to change interest as you get older.

So as is often the case, right? There's a lot of speculation regarding Paula's disappearance, but this angle that some people have, you know, brought up, that maybe she was dating a professor, or was in some type of relationship with a professor, I don't really know how that factors into her disappearance. Maybe people hypothesize that this professor was at the root of it. I'm not sure.

Yeah, I think in cases like this, you know, when somebody goes missing, their life gets looked at with, from different angles and spotlights cast on it and they just, you know, people will start looking for anything to try and explain, you know, what might have happened. And I think in this case, there's just not real evidence of, to go in any one direction.

Paula is still missing to this day, and no sign of her was ever found, but her disappearance would have a lasting effect on every missing person's case that came after hers in Vermont. Weak points in the investigation and the search for Paula directly led to the creation of the Vermont State Police. Paula's father never gave up looking for his daughter and always questioned what really happened to her, but he was proud of her legacy. That being that the Vermont State Police was created to help keep Vermont residents safe and investigate when they vanish. And people did continue to vanish.

68-year-old James Tedford didn't disappear in the woods, but he was last seen on December 1st, 1949, exactly three years after Paula Weldon disappeared. Over the years, details have been inserted into the story of his disappearance, each version becoming more and more spooky. The most modern retellings have James disappearing between stops, vanishing from a bus while it was in motion, but that's not what actually happened. It's not exactly known when or where James actually disappeared. What we do know is that at the time of his disappearance, he was living at the Bennington Soldiers' Home. There's no specific information as to why he was living there, but the home was intended to shelter disabled veterans,

and James was a veteran of World War I. His wife Pearl was living in Franklin, about three hours north of Bennington. In November, he was visiting Pearl and her family. December 1st was the day he was set to return to Bennington. He got on the bus in St. Albans at 6:15 PM, but by the time the bus arrived at its final stop, James was gone.

It might have been easy to track James down if the search had started right away, but he had been away from the Soldiers' Home for a week before he was even reported missing. The bus driver recalled James, or at least someone fitting his description, getting off at the stop in Brandon around 8:00 PM. And the same night that James reportedly got off the bus in Brandon, a taxi driver noticed someone, the Bennington Evening Banner, described as, quote, "acting queerly downtown around 11:00 PM." At the time, that term meant that the taxi driver noticed someone acting kind of strange. It's sort of the

old timey version of recalling that you saw a suspicious person, but there's no further information about his behavior. All we know is that he was acting in such a manner that someone noticed and remembered it as a. But the man did fit James's description and was wearing clothing very similar to his last known outfit.

Different articles list various ages for James, 65, 68, 69, but the only marriage record that seems to match James placed him at just 54 at the time of his disappearance. 69 sounds right to be living in any kind of care home, but 54 is quite young for that kind of thing. It's unclear the extent of James's involvement in the war and what kind of injuries he may have suffered while serving. No matter which of those ages was accurate, we know he was experiencing something in his life that meant he wasn't able to live at home. James was a World War I veteran and could have been suffering from mental health issues like PTSD, which were poorly understood at the time, or cognitive issues like dementia. He was described in various articles as frail and thin to the point of

emaciation, and one person even said he was despondent on the day he was last seen in Bennington.

Yeah, obviously, you know, this case goes back many, many years. So we don't have all of the details of what was going on with James, but we did say, right, he was married. He had a wife who lived, what, two or three hours north of where he was living in the home. So whatever the reason was, for him to be living there must have meant that she wasn't able to take care of him, or he wasn't able to make it on his own, living with her.

Yeah, and maybe, you know, if he was suffering PTSD or something like that, he may have, you know, not wanted to frighten his wife or, you know, go into rages or anything like that. So maybe he thought it would be better if he lived in this home.

Whether these actions by James were due to mental health issues in general, or due to living at the Soldiers' Home, it's not really surprising that he wasn't happy with the idea of going back there. He had actually been very vocal about his plan to never return to the home. Before he left to see his family, he told others at the home that he wasn't coming back. However, at the bus stop before he boarded, he told his friend Walter that he was headed back to the Soldiers' Home. Maybe he was just trying to stop anyone from interfering with his plan to get off at a random stop, or maybe he was planning on returning home and something happened along the way. No sign of James Tedford has ever been found.

I think what's frustrating in this case, there's a couple possibilities, you know, that seem to stick out. PTSD, he mentioned that he was in poor health, you know, he told someone of a plan not to come back. You know, to me, that really jumps out. If you tell someone you're not coming back to this home, and then you disappear, that's going to stick with me.

Yeah, I think that's much different than a lot of the unsolved cases we cover, right? You have a person who is in the middle of, you know, their everyday life. They haven't given anyone any indication that they're unhappy, that they're, you know, thinking about, uh, starting a new life. This one's a little different, just for that fact. He actually did tell someone he had no plans of returning to that home. But then what, you know, would he have done? Start a new life? And then there would never have been a sign of him? That part is a little strange, not saying it can't be done or couldn't be done.

I think it probably was even easier in the 1940s. But it's also very likely that, you know, he met with foul play. You know, could someone have viewed him as vulnerable? And taken advantage of that and made him a target?

Yeah, I think elderly people not in the best health are often preyed upon by, you know, people that are looking to do harm and they look at them as easy marks. So that definitely can be the case. I also wonder, could he have chosen to take his own life? And he just went out someplace peaceful. And this is an area we talked about is, you know, it sounds like it's pretty open. Maybe he found a spot where, you know, he took his own life and he's just never been found.

Yeah, I think that's, that's obviously a possibility you have to consider.

Less than a year later, on October 12th, 1950, eight-year-old Paul Jepson disappeared while his mother was doing chores. He was last seen around 3:00 PM when he and his mother arrived at the Bennington Dump. The Jepsons owned pigs that were kept there and she had to tend to them. She left Paul in the car while she took care of them. When she got back to the car about an hour later, Paul was gone. He could have been taken from the car, or he could have managed to get out on his own and wander off. There were woods nearby and unfortunately, Paul was wearing a brown and tan outfit, which may have effectively acted as camouflage. If he was somewhere in the woods, he may have blended right in. It's possible he was right there and no one was able to see him.

One theory is that a passing driver accidentally hit him while he was wandering in the street. It's not a location where you would expect to have to watch out for a child with no one else around. The driver may have panicked and put Paul into the car, effectively getting rid of evidence that a crash happened. This theory gets brought up a lot in missing persons cases, but there's really no evidence to back it up. If you're afraid because you hit someone with your car, you're adding a slew of charges. Once you move them from the scene and don't try to get them any help, you then also have to deal with the issue of disposing of a body without leaving a trace. And that's not as

easy as it sounds. This makes the hit and run and the disposing of the body theory very unlikely, in the opinion of many people who discuss this case. And I get the first part, Morf, you know, if you're out in the country somewhere, let's say a rural location, you probably don't expect to have to watch out for kids, right? Much different if you're driving through a neighborhood or something like that. But if you're out on the backroads, it's not somewhere that you expect a child to be playing in the street or run out into the street. But I don't know how many people, you know, if this was truly an accident,

would then try to cover it up and dispose of the body, right? Truly an accident, you call the authorities and, you know, go from there.

Yeah, or you take them immediately to a hospital and obviously they checked that out. That wasn't the case. He didn't show up in any hospital. So, you know, we're left to wonder what happened to him. A search was done for Paul and it included scent dogs. And it turns out a scent dog did track from the car Paul was last seen in to a nearby intersection before losing the scent. This seems to imply that Paul could have been taken from the scene in a car. It could have just been an abduction. But according to his father, Paul had recently started expressing a strong desire to go into the mountains. Paul was said to have special needs and this could have been a tragic case of elopement. To this day, no sign of Paul Jepson has ever been found. After the disappearance of Paul Jepson, there would be more people who vanished or died mysteriously.

And we've talked many times about how amazing, you know, these dogs are. Here we are in the 50s, right? And they're using scent dogs and they're able to track Paul from the car to an intersection, but that's where they lose the scent. And that comes up in, in a lot of cases. And the first thing that pops into most people's minds is, okay, the scent was lost because that's the point where the person they were searching for got into a car. And there's no way for the dog, obviously, to, to follow the scent from there.

Yeah, it's very frustrating. I can't imagine what his family was feeling, you know, just wondering all the possibilities because there's nothing that really points to one of them happening. And then having to go the rest of their lives and never find out what happened to him. That's got to be a really tough situation.

And I can only imagine the guilt, right? On, on the part of the mother. Yeah, she left him in the car for an hour, which is a long time for an eight-year-old. They probably didn't think about it as much in the 1950s as, as we do today. Most people wouldn't do that today for sure. But I'm sure there was a lot of guilt there that she had to deal with. Like Mitty Rivers, 53-year-old Frida Langer was an experienced hiker and hunter. She disappeared in the woods near Somerset Reservoir, just 16 days after Paul Jepson vanished. During a hike on October 28th, 1950, she lost her footing and fell

into the stream. She told her cousin to wait there while she ran back to the camp and changed. She was supposed to take a shortcut to save time, but she didn't make it back to the campsite and she didn't catch back up with her cousin. When her cousin finally decided to go back and check on her, the camp was exactly how they had left it. No one had seen her. It was clear that something had happened to her on the way back to camp.

Frida Langer's body was found on May 12th, 1951, seven months after she vanished, about three miles from where she was last seen. The area had been searched before, but not thoroughly. If she had fallen in a ravine or was in the stream, she may not have been spotted during the first cursory search. Investigators also believe that her body was washed downstream by melting snow once the temperatures rose, moving her body to an area where it was more easily found. An interesting side note is that one of the fishermen who discovered Frida's body had actually found human remains before. This was nothing new to him. This probably didn't help dispel the rumors about the Bennington Triangle. And if this were happening today, there likely would have been a ton of theories about his involvement in all of the disappearances in this area.

Yeah, pretty rare, right? To find, uh, human remains, to have it happen more than once. All right. I mean, are police going to possibly think something of it? Yeah, maybe. But this guy's a fisherman, right? He's out there a lot. So I guess it could happen.

Yeah, that's not something, you know, it's like the odds of getting struck by lightning or hitting the lottery. This is probably something that you're, um, not wanting to do more than once or once at all.

No, it's, it's definitely something you don't want on your resume. Due to how much time had passed, investigators weren't able to determine how Frida died. But police believe that the most likely explanation is an accidental drowning. It's possible that Frida had a seizure, which caused her to fall into water and drown. She had been experiencing seizures since a brain operation five years before her death. A metal plate in her skull placed during that surgery was used to help identify her remains. It's rare, but sudden exposure to cold can trigger seizures in some people. Even with no direct or known trigger, looking back, it's also possible that the first time she slipped

into the stream was due to an oncoming seizure. Whether she lost her footing or briefly blacked out, this kind of thing, warning signs and symptoms is common in people who experience seizures, the same way someone can tell a migraine is coming on well before the pain is actually there. Loss of coordination, dizziness, confusion, and even muscle jerks can all happen long before the actual seizure occurs. In the end, with no evidence one way or another, we can only guess what happened to Frida Langer. And to be honest with you, there are numerous possibilities as to what could have happened to Frida. But those possibilities

exist in a lot of the cases that we talk about. Now, the fact that a lot of these are happening, you know, out in the woods or, uh, in areas where it's easier, I think, to have a mishap. You gotta take a look at that, right? It was known she'd already fallen into the water once. So was that a sign that, you know, she was having some type of medical issue and that got worse?

As she was trying to make it back to camp. And I think that's a definite possibility. And always you have to look at foul play, you know, on her way back to camp. Did she run into someone who was looking to hurt someone?

Yeah, I think, you know, that both options are certainly on the table to me. I think it's a little less likely that you're going to run into some violent killer. That means you harm out in the woods. We know it happens, but you with a history of these medical issues. You know, I can see a situation where she seizure comes on, she falls into a creek and then she's helpless. And dies. And then, as we talked about, you know, the weather, the snow melting, you know, carries her body to a different location where it's found. But unfortunately, we'll probably never know what happened to her. On November 29th, 1950, just over a month after Frieda Langer headed back to her camp and into the unknown.

16 year old Martha Jeanette Jones was reported missing by her parents. She hadn't been seen in a month by that time, but no one knew she had disappeared because she didn't live at home. She lived there at school, Burton Seminary in Manchester. And when she disappeared, her parents thought she was safe and sound on campus. While staff at the school thought she had gone home to see her family. So you can imagine how this delayed anyone realizing she was missing. There's also mention of a soldier she was in contact with who was stationed somewhat nearby. At first, her family didn't worry because they thought if she wasn't at school, she must have gone to see the soldier. But eventually they realized she was actually missing. Four years later, 1954, Martha was found alive.

It turned out she was using an alias, living her life near Fort Belver, Virginia, where she worked as a waitress. So while her case initially bore a resemblance to some of the other mysterious cases, there was no mystery here. Martha chose for personal reasons to leave her old life behind.

And it's cases like this more that I always think about when we're discussing unsolved cases. Cause you know, very often in an unsolved case, there is that possibility that someone just left their old life behind to start a new one. Now, I, I normally think that that is the least likely scenario. But we know it does happen. There's proof. There's been many cases where someone is thought to, you know, have gone missing. Maybe been killed only to find out that, no, they just up and left and they're alive and well.

Uh, living their life. They just wanted to get away.

And I think back in the 1950s, it probably would have been easier to disappear and start over. You know, not having social media and electronics and tracking and stuff like that. So she was probably able to, to do that relatively easy, but at least her story has some kind of resolution. We know what happened to her. If we didn't, then we might be, you know, wondering to this day, what mysterious thing might have happened to her out there.

There's no doubt that in the 1940s and 50s, the Bennington Triangle earned quite a reputation due to the cases we discussed, but it seems as if the list of mysterious cases there dwindled a bit as the decades passed. And in some cases, when things happen there, there were simple explanations. For example, in 2008, a man got lost in the woods in the Bennington Triangle, but luckily made it out and survived to tell what that experience was like. 27 year old Robert Singley actually went hiking at the very same spot that Paula Weldon was supposed to go hiking the day she disappeared.

His story can help us understand just how quickly things can go wrong in the woods. Especially once the sun starts to going down. It can get completely dark in many spots in the woods and in the mountains long before the sun actually sets. Due to peaks and trees blocking out the light, using a site called Shade Map. You can see that some parts of Glastonbury Mountain can be in darkness by 4:00 PM. While the sun doesn't actually set until closer to 7:30. In the winter, when some of these disappearances happen, the effect is much more dramatic. Shadows start being cast around 2:00 PM.

And once it's 4:00 PM, you have less than half an hour before you're in complete darkness. Robert experienced this and it was confusing and frightening. He told the Bennington Banner of this phenomenon, he said, it just suddenly got dark. Robert thought he was about a quarter mile from his car and had no idea that he had actually ended up about seven miles from it. The panic and confusion and lack of clarity is common when people get lost in the woods.

Yeah, I've gotten lost in the woods a couple of times. I've got lost in the woods once when a bad snowstorm happened and you start getting white out and everything literally starts looking the same. And I think you've got to really stop, compose yourself and, you know, grasp the situation. Try and take a mental note of, okay, what do I have to look for? What do I have to do? Get a plan to, to find your way out. Luckily, you know, for me and for Robert here, that happened. But there's undoubtedly cases where, you know, somebody gets lost, gets turned around and they never come out of the woods, unfortunately.

So I said earlier, right? That I'm not a big hiker. I mean, this episode is not going to help me, uh, pick up that hobby. I mean, it's just not. The thought of just getting lost in the woods, uh, is, is pretty frightening. And I think it's clear that it's not an isolated occurrence. It does happen.

There's one more case of a missing person in the Bennington Triangle that is not always associated with the cases we've discussed. On or around October 11th, 1942, 13 year old Melvin Hills disappeared while hiking the long trail. There are not any news articles about him that we could find from the 1940s. And it's not until 1996 that articles started to mention his disappearance. And every article just mentions that the 13 year old also disappeared. There are no further details. For now, his case seems like an interesting possibility when considering the Bennington Triangle mystery.

Maybe the answer to what has happened in the Bennington Triangle lies within the triangle itself. And for hundreds of years, strange things have happened. Multiple locals and people who have hiked in the woods near Glastonbury have described having an odd sense that they were being watched the whole time. And also describe a general eerie feeling in the area. Just a weird unsettling energy coming from the woods. This feeling may be due to rumors of the Bennington Monster, Glastonbury Mountain's version of Bigfoot. Rumors of this monster go back to the 1800s.

When a horse drawn carriage got stuck on a trail, all around the carriage, large footprints could be seen in the mud. They were much too big to have been made by a human. The carriage was said to have been attacked by the Bennington Monster. The carriage was thrown onto its side while the helpless and terrified passengers waited for it to be over. A pair of eyes could be seen and a roar could be heard. Then the creature was gone. In 1879, hunters shot at a wild man with red hair they spotted in the woods north of Powell. Later sightings of the monster brought more detailed descriptions.

More than six feet tall and covered in thick black hair. In addition, there are Native American legends that say the Bennington Triangle and the surrounding woods is all cursed land. There is even an Algonquin tale of an evil stone that could swallow people whole.

So after hearing all these stories and, and legends from that area, are you ready to go hiking?

No, I am that much less ready to go.

Now, I know you've said it before, Morf, that you've talked about Bigfoot and things like that. I don't believe any of that stuff. And I know there are a lot of people out there that do. I just feel as though if there were such things, we would have found, you know, concrete evidence of them. But I get it. People believe in different things.

Yeah, I think, you know, there are still things that we don't know about as advanced as we've become and as many tools and technologies that we have, there are still things that we can't explain. And, you know, in an area where this where strange stuff happens, I think it's only natural that people might think about some of this stuff and just wonder if if there's anything to it.

Yeah, I do think it's very interesting that a lot of different civilizations or cultures have their own form, right? Whether you call it Bigfoot, Sasquatch, there's all kinds of different, the Loch Ness Monster, that people over the years have come up with these things to, I don't know, maybe help try to explain certain occurrences. I'm not sure why. Or maybe they're all real.

So one thing I'm curious about is what listeners think. What's going on in the Bennington Triangle? Is this a series of accidents separated by miles and years? Is there something mysterious and supernatural? There's some kind of giant hairy monster? Joseph Citro, the author who started calling the area the Bennington Triangle, told the Bennington Banner that the area is dangerous for a number of reasons, including this aura of spookiness that people bring with them when they go there. It's become a sort of self fulfilling prophecy. Maybe if you're the adventurous type and you find yourself in the southwestern part of Vermont, you can take a trip into the Bennington Triangle and see if you can find answers.

So as we wrap this episode up, Morf, my take on this is that there is some truth, I think, to that idea of it being a self fulfilling prophecy, right? Once you start to give a place or an area this air of mystery, well, then it's very likely that everything that happens around there, or a lot of things that happen around there can kind of get lumped in.

Yeah, I think there's a catchall that sort of you look at a specific area and you start saying, okay, well, this person disappeared here and this person, a different time disappeared here, this person died mysteriously there. I almost think that if it's, you know, an area, especially a wilderness type area, where it's easy to get lost or hurt or, you know, injure yourself and nobody find you, that could explain a lot of things. I bet if you looked at, you know, several similar areas, you might find a variety of different things that have happened there.

Yeah, that was my thought exactly. I think if you looked at any heavily wooded area, you could probably find very similar disappearances. But it's interesting, right? That this area has been given the moniker, the Bennington Triangle. And then, you know, like I said, when things happen, it kind of gets swept up under that moniker.

These are definitely still mysteries, too. As long as we don't know the answers and they're unexplained, they still will interest people. And, you know, after all this time, it seems like they'll, they'll probably never be solved.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. They're mysteries, but are they quite as mysterious as some people make them out to be? And my take on it is, I actually kind of doubt it. I think there, at least for many of these, there are probably very benign explanations, you know, whether that's a tragic fall or a medical issue. And then, you know, given the fact that we're in dense woods here, you know, is it all that strange that, you know, the person just was never found? You know, there's a lot of animals. There's inclement weather.

When you weigh the things that are more likely to happen out there versus some things that are a lot less likely to happen, it seems like those are bound to be more the likely answers. Unfortunately, we may never find out.

Yeah, to me, given the how old a lot of these mysteries are, I don't think we will ever find out about many of them. But that's it for our episode on the Bennington Triangle. As always, if you love the show but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a review, leave a rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast really helps us out.

If you want to find us on social media, we're on every major platform. Just search for Criminology Podcast on your favorite. And for news about the show, old episodes and more, head over to our website, criminologypodcast.com. And if you want to join a discussion about the show and the cases we discuss, head over to Facebook and search for the group, Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans.

So that's it for another episode of Criminology, but Morf and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, from Mike

And Morf.

We'll talk to you next week.

Take care, everyone.