The Disappearance of Catherine Malcolmson (Massachusetts) - Part 1

In 1985, 16-year-old Cathy Malcolmson left home with somewhere to be and every reason to come back. A bike ride that should have taken only minutes became an enduring decades-long mystery that spread across state lines and outlasted the careers of some of the officers trying to solve it.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:34Kylie Low?

  In 1985, 16-year-old Kathy Malcolmson left home with somewhere to be and every reason to come back. A bike ride that should have taken only minutes became an enduring, decades-long mystery that spread across state lines and outlasted the careers of some of the officers trying to solve it. I was invited to sit down with investigators who worked Kathy's case and examine the original records they accumulated over four decades. I saw the leads they scrutinized, details that challenged the earliest prevailing theories, and footage of a prison interview that pushed me into a deep, dark rabbit hole. There's still one question that hasn't changed since the day Kathy vanished.

• 2:17Kylie Low?

  Where is she? I'm Kylie Low, and this is the case of Katherine Malcolmson, Part One, on Dark Down East.

• 2:37Kylie Low?

  When I first reached out to the Stowe Police Department in Massachusetts about Katherine Malcolmson's disappearance, I was anticipating a response I've heard plenty of times before. "Sorry, we can't release any records or discuss the investigation because the case is still open and active." Still, I always ask and risk the rejection in the greater hope that I might have a chance to learn something from the original case file and better understand what happened, and in turn, bring new attention to a case that hasn't received much in recent years. Less than 24 hours after I sent my request, Stowe Police Chief Michael Salisi contacted me with an unexpected invitation. "Would I like to meet for an interview?" Immediately, yes.

• 3:22Kylie Low?

  A few weeks later, I made the drive to Stowe on a rainy fall morning, fog and clouds so thick that it felt like floating through a grayscale photograph, broken only by the rich red and yellow foliage still hanging onto tree branches. When I arrived, Stowe's business office manager, Phoenix, led me into a conference room. Case file documents, including photographs, police reports, and handwritten notes, covered the tables. An oversized monitor displayed a video, paused just a few seconds in. I knew I was in it for the long haul that day. Chief Salisi arranged for two other people to join our conversation, whose connections to the case and to Kathy date back decades.

• 4:04Speaker 05

  My name's Stephen Sturdivant. In 1985, when Cathy Malcolmson first came up missing, I was a patrolman on the Stowe, Massachusetts Police Department. I was never really introduced to the case in the sense of being actively involved until 1987, when I made inspector.

• 4:20Kylie Low?

  Hudson Police Captain Chad Perry's connection to Kathy began long before he even became a police officer.

• 4:28Speaker 06

  I knew Kathy back in junior high school. And, you know, we were friends. A whole group of us were friends. So I then became, later in life, became a police officer in 98, and then a detective. And when I was in the detective's office, I ended up getting my hands on the file, on the case that Hudson had, anyway. And obviously, just from knowing her, I had kind of a soft spot for it. I wanted to review it.

• 4:52Kylie Low?

  Chief Salisi himself had also grown up in Kathy's hometown, and he'd been familiar with her case throughout his law enforcement career.

• 5:01Speaker 06

  And once I became chief, I wanted to make sure that her name stayed out there and that we continued the case, and the case just didn't fall off the map. So that is what my role is with Kathy's case now, is to make sure that there are plenty of platforms that word gets out how we can put a conclusion onto this case.

• 5:18Kylie Low?

  Over the next few hours, Salisi, Perry, and Sturdivant walked me through witness accounts, evidence, and leads pursued over decades. Even after 41 years, the three people sitting across from me that morning still refused to give up on Kathy. That combined, decades-long commitment began on a Wednesday morning, August 14, 1985, when Mary Malcolmson called Stowe Police to report her daughter missing.

• 5:48Kylie Low?

  16-year-old Katherine Cathy Malcolmson never showed up for work on Tuesday afternoon, August 13. She didn't return home that night. And by the time a Stowe police officer showed up at her home on Sudbury Road, she'd missed summer school, too. Kathy's parents, Mary and Reverend John Malcolmson, had spent the night trying to figure out where Kathy could be, but nearly 20 hours had passed since they'd last seen her, and they still had no idea where she was. Mary and John explained to the officer that the previous afternoon, Kathy had left the house on her white bicycle, headed to her part-time job at the IGA supermarket in neighboring Hudson. It was only a few miles away.

• 6:30Kylie Low?

  John said he had lunch outside with Kathy before she left. They'd talked about her bike ride, and he'd expressed some concern about her getting home after work, especially if it was dark out. But Kathy had already thought about that. Mom would pick her up when her shift was over, and they'd bring the bike home with them. Kathy left the house at approximately 1:00 PM. From Sudbury Road, she would have turned onto Route 62, which runs through Stowe and into Hudson. It was a familiar route through a relatively quiet part of Massachusetts, and Kathy was accustomed to getting around on her bicycle. Nobody had any reason to think this particular ride would be any different. According to the recollection of investigators I interviewed,

• 7:13Kylie Low?

  Kathy's shift began at 2:00 PM that day. Around 3:00 PM, someone from the IGA called the Malcolmson home to say that Kathy hadn't shown up. Mary drove along Route 62, looking for Kathy or any sign of her bicycle, but she didn't find either one. The family also began reaching out to her friends. No one knew where she was. The officer took down a description of Kathy's bike and clothing: a striped shirt, light blue pants, sneakers, a silver ring, and two bracelets. She'd been carrying a gray pocketbook and riding her white Murray bicycle. Meanwhile, Mary had gathered a list of Kathy's friends and their phone numbers for the officer to call. The list was long.

• 7:58Kylie Low?

  Kathy was very social and loved meeting new people. She'd grown up in Stowe with her parents and two brothers and was getting ready to enter her junior year at Neshoba Regional High School that fall. Like a lot of kids her age, much of her life revolved around school, friends, and testing the boundaries of the independence her parents were willing to give her. One of those friends was Chad Perry, now Captain Perry at the Hudson Police Department.

• 8:24Speaker 06

  It was a great time to be a teenager. And this was, you know, before we had our driver's licenses. We just rode our bikes for miles. We went everywhere on bikes. You know, there was no cell phones, obviously. There was no social media. There was none of that. You just found each other or made plans from your house phone and then met, and things like that.

• 8:45Kylie Low?

  Back in the early 1980s, he and Kathy had been classmates at a small, private school. They belonged to the same church youth group, went on retreats together, and spent a lot of time with the same circle of friends.

• 8:58Speaker 06

  She was not shy. She, you know, very, very outgoing, a lot of fun, you know, always pushing the boundaries with her parents, with curfews and things like that, and very trusting, too.

• 9:12Kylie Low?

  As investigators spoke with more of Kathy's friends, they heard a rumor that she'd talked about running away after disagreements with her mother, including being grounded the previous weekend. In a written statement, Mary described how the Friday before began with an excited phone call from Kathy about a boy she'd met. Kathy thought her mother would like him and wanted to introduce her. But when Mary got home, Kathy was crying and wouldn't explain why. She asked to go to her friend Jessica's house, and Mary agreed to drive her there and pick her up by 10:45 that night. Later, Mary learned Kathy and Jessica had gone into Hudson against her instructions.

• 9:54Kylie Low?

  Kathy finally came home around 11:30, claiming Jessica's father had driven her, but the car hadn't even pulled into the driveway. Jessica later explained to police that Kathy was upset because she had gone on a date with a boy, then saw him with another girl. That night, the girls spent some time walking around downtown Hudson together before running into a friend we'll call Jeffrey. Kathy knew him from summer school. They got into his car and drove around for a while. According to Jessica, Kathy specifically asked Jeffrey not to pull into the driveway when he brought her home because she knew it would upset her mother. Mary eventually learned that Kathy lied about who drove her home on top of the broken

• 10:35Kylie Low?

  curfew and the trip into Hudson without permission, so she grounded Kathy for the weekend. To me, someone who was once a teenage girl who sometimes did things I didn't tell my parents about, it all sounds so benign. None of this gives a ton of weight to a runaway theory. Besides, she had a lot to look forward to. Diane Williamson reports for The Worcester Telegram that Kathy's family was planning a graduation party for her older brother that coming weekend, and Kathy was excited about the celebration. Plus, she had plans to spend time at the lake with friends that Saturday. She was also expecting a paycheck from her job at the IGA. Her father remembered how enthusiastic Kathy had been about everything coming up in her life.

• 11:19Kylie Low?

  Whatever she was doing, she was all in, not running away from it. Even still, the runaway rumor was the loudest. Police tracked down Jeffrey. He'd claimed he heard Kathy talk about running away, too. When investigators asked when he'd last seen her, Jeffrey said he'd driven Kathy home from school on August 12th, the day before she disappeared, and that he'd left for Portugal that very same night. There was nothing in Jeffrey's statement that established he'd been involved in Kathy's disappearance, and there wasn't much else about him in the documents I reviewed either. There were reports that Kathy had been seen after August 13th. One person claimed to have spotted her with a boy on August 19th.

• 12:04Kylie Low?

  But when police followed up with the boy's mother, she said her son hadn't seen Kathy in some time and had been away with friends on the day she disappeared anyway. Another tip suggested Kathy might be staying in a log cabin in Hudson. Officers checked the cabin and found no indication that anyone had been there recently. Police also checked a possible home for runaways in Lancaster, but that lead didn't turn up Kathy either. According to the police records, by August 27th, a CHINS warrant was issued for Kathy, a Child in Need of Services warrant. It was a legal mechanism used at the time for juveniles considered runaways or otherwise in need of court intervention.

• 12:45Speaker 05

  Totally wrong aspect to go at the time, but that's what they did, and they put that out that way. And the unfortunate thing is that for a long time, it was deemed that she had been a runaway or a walkaway, whatever you want to call it, which wasn't really what transpired.

• 13:03Kylie Low?

  Near the end of September, one of Kathy's friends told investigators about an answering machine message she'd received sometime earlier that month. The message consisted of just two words: Kathy called. According to the friend, it sounded like Kathy's voice. She believed Kathy might be in Maine with a boy named Stephen. However, the police records I've reviewed don't establish that anyone independently confirmed the voice belonged to Kathy, and she didn't turn up in Maine.

• 13:33Speaker 06

  No one knew where she could have been taken from, if she had been taken at all. There was really no evidence, there was no clues to anything. And I remember everybody was just dumbfounded of, she just literally vanished without a trace, without a witness, without anything.

• 13:58Kylie Low?

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• 14:43Kylie Low?

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• 15:12Kylie Low?

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• 15:57Kylie Low?

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• 16:28Kylie Low?

  For Kathy's parents, the possibility that she had run away offered little comfort. Even if she'd left because she was upset about something at home, where had she gone? She never picked up her paycheck at work, so how was she supporting herself? And why hadn't she contacted them to let them know she was safe? The family kept Kathy's name and photograph in circulation, hoping somebody would recognize her. Her parents spoke publicly about her disappearance, and Mary became increasingly concerned about the way missing teenagers were handled. She believed the runaway label could discourage the kind of response that might help bring a missing child home. Her concern wasn't unfounded.

• 17:12Kylie Low?

  According to reporting in The Worcester Telegram and Gazette, Kathy remained classified as a runaway for at least six months, which prevented her picture from being distributed nationally through the Missing Children Clearinghouse. It would also be nearly a year before Massachusetts State Police investigators were formally assigned to her case, in part because local authorities had initially reported that Kathy left voluntarily. I saw it for myself. The original police records show that officers were following leads from the very beginning, yeah, but the runaway designation had consequences regardless. By the time additional resources became involved, months had passed since Kathy was

• 17:55Kylie Low?

  last seen, and any witnesses' memories of that August afternoon were already getting older. Then, less than two months after Kathy disappeared, another girl vanished in broad daylight from a neighboring Massachusetts town.

• 18:12Kylie Low?

  On the afternoon of Wednesday, October 9, 1985, nine-year-old Sarah Pryor went for a walk along Route 126 near her home in Wayland, Massachusetts. According to reporting by Eric Woodman for The Boston Globe, her family was new to the area, and she wanted to explore. Sarah never made it home. It was a little more than eight weeks after Kathy Melkumson disappeared, and Wayland was only a few towns away from Stowe. Both girls disappeared during the day, close to home. But Sarah's was handled notably different from Kathy's disappearance right from the jump. There wasn't much weighty discussion about whether Sarah might have decided to leave home on her own. She was only nine years old.

• 18:57Kylie Low?

  Her disappearance raised immediate fears that someone had taken her. Stowe and Wayland were close enough that police had reason to compare what they knew. Other agencies, including Massachusetts State Police and the Middlesex District Attorney's Office, also entered the fold. But even with investigators looking at the possibility of a connection, neither case had much to go on. There were still leads coming in for Kathy's case, though not all of them came from reported sightings. In July 1986, Mary visited the Stowe Police Department with information she'd received from psychics. One claimed that Kathy had died on the day she disappeared, and that someone had picked up her bicycle in a green pickup truck.

• 19:42Kylie Low?

  The information also pointed investigators toward a particular area off a dirt road near Wilken Street. Police checked the location. They recovered a shoe and a pair of headphones, but Mary said neither belonged to Kathy. So by the summer of 1986, after a year of no confirmed sightings and no real evidence that Kathy had started a new life somewhere, investigators were increasingly concerned about foul play. State police were formally involved around the first anniversary. With additional resources and comparing notes with other departments, police started looking into several persons of interest whose histories of violence raised concerns about their possible involvement.

• 20:29Kylie Low?

  In 1967, John Robert Wordy pleaded guilty to murdering 15-year-old Rosemary Martin in Texas. After serving about 17 years in prison, he was released on parole and returned to his home state of Massachusetts. Investigators found that he was working in the general area when both Kathy and Sarah Pryor disappeared. Then, in the fall of 1985, just weeks after both Kathy and Sarah disappeared, Wordy was arrested in nearby Newton for attacking a woman. According to court records, he'd approached the woman with a knife and attempted to force her into his vehicle. She managed to escape, and Wordy was subsequently convicted of kidnapping and assault and

• 21:13Kylie Low?

  battery with a dangerous weapon. Wordy's history of violence against women and girls, combined with his presence in Massachusetts when both Sarah and Kathy disappeared, made him worth a closer look. However, during the initial investigation, a coworker of his told police that Wordy had been quite a distance from Stowe and Hudson on the day Kathy disappeared. Police couldn't establish that he'd encountered either Kathy or Sarah, but we'll come back to Wordy later. Another person of interest in both Kathy and Sarah's cases, another man with a propensity for violence against women and girls, was Jeffrey Allen Ward.

• 21:55Kylie Low?

  Ward had a particularly troubling history by the time investigators traveled to Virginia in January of 1987 to question him. Alan W. Fletcher reports for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette that Ward had confessed to a series of violent crimes in that state, including the murders of women and a teenage girl. Authorities in Massachusetts were interested in whether he might be responsible for other unsolved cases in their state, too, including Kathy and Sarah, as well as a young woman from Townsend, Judith Vuig, and another child, Deborah Quimby. According to employment records in the police file, Ward worked for C&W Fabricators &

• 22:35Kylie Low?

  Gardner, about 35 miles west of Stowe and 45 miles from Wayland when Kathy and Sarah disappeared. His time card for August 13, 1985, the day Kathy was last seen, indicated that he'd left work at 4:30 that afternoon, but that time had been written onto the card rather than stamped by the time clock. So investigators needed to establish whether the time card reliably accounted for his movements. Remember, Kathy had left home around 1:00 PM, and she was already missing when the supermarket called her parents at 3:00. Ward told investigators that he'd left Massachusetts in the fall of 1985, right after Sarah's disappearance.

• 23:19Kylie Low?

  When questioned about the unsolved cases in Massachusetts, he denied knowing anything about them and maintained that he couldn't have been in Stowe or Wayland at the relevant times. This was a man who committed serious acts of violence, and who had lived in the same state where several young people had disappeared. So his denials didn't necessarily resolve investigators' concerns, but there was still a substantial gap between Ward's criminal history and evidence that he'd actually encountered Kathy, and still no physical evidence available in Kathy's case to compare him against. But that was about to change. On February 3, 1987, Massachusetts State Police divers entered the Assabett River,

• 24:03Kylie Low?

  searching for the white bicycle Kathy had been riding when she left home nearly 18 months earlier. Divers spent hours in the water near the mill complex in Gleesendale and an area across from the Whispering Pines condominiums in Hudson. The search came up empty. But then, the very next day, a man named Jean walked into the Hudson Police Department. He believed he had the bicycle police were looking for. Jean explained that sometime around the end of June or beginning of July 1986, he'd been driving south on Route 62 one weekday morning around 8:00 or 8:30, when he needed to pull over and use the bathroom.

• 24:45Kylie Low?

  Jean made a U-turn, stopped his vehicle, and walked about 60 feet into the woods near the Hudson Rod and Gun Club. As he turned to leave, he noticed a bicycle lying on top of some branches. It was a white Murray 12-speed, and according to Jean, it looked like someone had deliberately placed it there. He had some trouble getting it out of the brush, but eventually freed it and loaded it into the back of his Ford Bronco. Jean noticed that the rear wheel was warped and the brakes were tight. Despite the damage, he figured the bicycle might be worth keeping, so he brought it home and put it in his garage. There, it sat for months, until sometime around Christmas, when Jean was cleaning junk out of his garage and decided to get rid of it.

• 25:30Kylie Low?

  He said he loaded the bicycle into a dump truck, along with some other things he planned to throw away, but before he could take it to the dump, a man named Tim saw the bicycle and asked about it. Tim thought a friend's son might be able to use it, so Jean told him to take it. Tim brought the bicycle to his friend Jim's house, but Jim had already bought his son a bike. So instead, Jim kept the Murray in his garage, thinking he might eventually have it repaired for his wife. Fast forward a little over a month or so to that week in February of 1987. Jean explained that his wife had read a newspaper article about the ongoing effort to find Kathy, including the white bicycle she'd been riding when she disappeared, and the recent search

• 26:15Kylie Low?

  of the river. That's when he realized the bike he found in the woods could be Kathy's. By February 6, investigators had tracked down the bicycle at Jim's home in Ashland. When detectives arrived that evening, Jim's wife led them to the garage. Sitting inside was a white boys' Murray 12-speed bicycle. Investigators snapped some Polaroids, and you can see them at darkdoun East.com. Jean had described the bike's warped rear wheel, though it's not very obvious in the photos I have. According to reports I viewed, there was visible damage elsewhere on the frame, too. It suggested the possibility that Kathy could have been hit by a car, either deliberately

• 26:59Kylie Low?

  or accidentally, and someone moved her bicycle into the woods afterward. But it also could have occurred under different circumstances, including the time it spent in the elements, if that's where it was the whole time, or while it was being handled afterward. Police took possession of the bike that night so Kathy's family could identify it. Kathy's brother knew something about her bike that most people wouldn't. He'd helped assemble it, and when he installed the gear shift levers, he realized he was missing a bolt. To make it work, he borrowed a bolt from the rear reflector and left the reflector off entirely. When he examined the recovered bicycle, he found that same unusual detail, the borrowed bolt, right where he put it. It was definitely Kathy's bike.

• 27:44Kylie Low?

  When I asked retired detective Steven Sturdivant if the guys who played hot potato with the bike were suspicious at all, he didn't see it that way.

• 27:51Speaker 05

  I mean, face value was nice enough for the guy to come forward, you know, seeing this information that was out there and saying, whoa, wait a minute, I think I can add to this and maybe help. And it was a great gesture. I mean, it gave something to start with, as far as the investigation, you know, to progress.

• 28:13Kylie Low?

  For the first time since August 13, 1985, investigators had recovered something connected to Kathy, and it pointed to a location for further searches. On February 10, Jean accompanied Stowe Police, Massachusetts State Police detectives, and a Connecticut State Trooper with a search dog to the area where he remembered finding the bicycle. It was near the old railroad bridge, not far from what was then called the Hudson Rod and Gun Club, but Jean couldn't be certain of the precise spot with the deep snow covering the ground. Search dogs worked through the area, and investigators used metal detectors to look for anything that might have been overlooked.

• 28:55Kylie Low?

  They recovered some old cans and cable, and later, either during that search or a different follow-up search, collected some gray plastic debris that was lodged on a nearby pole. Nothing was, obviously and immediately, connected to Kathy. They didn't just search the woods, either. Investigators also checked at the club itself. It was the Hudson Rod and Gun Club, right next door. Hundreds of members. All those were looked at. All the delivery people were looked at. All the names, all the companies, all the vendors. Any possibility of anybody seeing anything or knowing any sort of information. Meanwhile, investigators sent the bike for examination by the state crime lab.

• 29:38Kylie Low?

  I'm told it was processed for fingerprints at some point, but I didn't encounter any records of that in the files I reviewed. I'm assuming those are held by a different agency, possibly state police or the DA's office, and I wasn't able to obtain them. However, I did get a chance to review laboratory reports dated April 18 of 1990, when the bike was examined and specifically compared against a few vehicles registered to a person of interest: Jeffrey Ward.

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• 31:22Kylie Low?

  One of the vehicles was a 1977 light blue AMC Pacer station wagon, which had been involved in a serious accident on October 24th, 1985, a little more than two months after Kathy disappeared. The vehicle had extensive damage to its front end, left side, and rear bumper. Investigators also documented white smudges on the left front fender and quarter panel. Inside the Pacer, investigators recovered hair from the driver's seat, and examined a sleeping bag that contained several reddish-brown stains. Chemical testing indicated the stains were blood, although subsequent testing couldn't establish whether it was human blood.

• 32:04Kylie Low?

  Two hairs recovered from the sleeping bag were compared with a known sample of Kathy's hair, but the examiner determined they were dissimilar. Another vehicle connected to Ward, a blue 1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass, had foreign white smudges on its body, including the right front quarter panel and driver's side door. Samples were collected for comparison with Kathy's white bicycle. There was also a 1977 Ford station wagon, but this report lists the victim as Sarah Pryor. Inside that vehicle, investigators found several areas that tested positive for blood, including the radio knobs, keys in the ignition, and portions of the front passenger compartment.

• 32:48Kylie Low?

  A metal hook recovered from the vehicle also tested positive for blood, although the laboratory couldn't determine whether any of the blood was human. Inside the Ford, examiners recovered hairs from the passenger compartment. Even though this car was being examined in the context of Sarah's case, Kathy's name comes up. Some of the hairs found on the driver's side had microscopic characteristics similar to a known sample of Kathy's hair. Now, that finding certainly caught my attention when I reviewed the reports, but it's important to consider the limitations here. Hair comparison in 1990 relied on examining physical characteristics under a microscope.

• 33:32Kylie Low?

  Two samples being described similar didn't establish that they came from the same person, and the laboratory couldn't definitively identify the hairs as Kathy's. The same caution applies to the blood evidence. A positive chemical screening test can indicate the presence of blood, but it doesn't establish whose blood it is. In several instances, the follow-up testing couldn't even confirm that it was human. The laboratory records I reviewed describe scrapes and damaged areas on several parts of Kathy's bike, along with material that appeared foreign to the bike itself. There were gray substances on the wheel supports and frame, gray paint on the chain guard,

• 34:17Kylie Low?

  blue smears on the handlebars, and white material on the pedal support and seat. The left side of the seat was also damaged. If that damage and those smudges were from a car hitting it, let's say, the transferred material might provide a physical connection between the bike and a known car. Examiners looked at the foreign white paint and other material alongside known samples taken from the vehicles associated with Ward. But the results do not establish a match. The foreign substances on Kathy's bicycle were not consistent with the known paint samples from the two vehicles examined in that comparison. And then, remember those small pieces of hard gray plastic collected from the pole near the bicycle location?

• 35:02Kylie Low?

  Those were also found to be inconsistent with the bicycle and the vehicles. There were, and still are unanswered questions about how the bicycle had been damaged and where the foreign material on it had come from. After at least one forensic examination, police were no closer to establishing how the bike came to be in the woods. Even if the bike didn't present a forensic breakthrough at the time, as of February 1987, Kathy's bike was the first physical evidence that might help narrow down where something had happened to her, and it produced renewed attention on her case in the media. That meant police were also receiving new information.

• 35:44Kylie Low?

  Some tips were vague, others were extraordinarily specific. One of them arrived via anonymous letter. Sometime in March 1987, an envelope arrived at the Hudson Police Department. There was no return address, and whoever sent it hadn't signed their name. It says, verbatim, "On a narrow dirt road that winds through Stowe and Hudson, there is a handkerchief-sized, old and long-forgotten cemetery enclosed a low granite wall. In the cemetery and near an opening in the wall, gateway, is the body, skeletal state, of Cathy Malcolmson." Police couldn't simply dismiss it.

• 36:28Kylie Low?

  There was a small cemetery in the area that seemed to fit the description, and investigators did follow up on it, but it didn't lead them to Kathy. The records I reviewed don't establish who sent the letter and whether that person had any actual knowledge of her disappearance. The year Kathy's bike was recovered, in 1987, Stephen Sturdivant became inspector at Stowe Police. He took lead on Kathy's case for the department, and one of his first priorities was making another thorough search of the area where Kathy's bicycle was found. On April 8th, police returned to the wooded area near the Hudson Rod and Gun Club with search dogs and metal detectors. This time, crews cut back the brush and went over the ground much more extensively.

• 37:13Kylie Low?

  The search ended without finding her or establishing what had happened along that stretch of Route 62. Meanwhile, Detective Sturdivant was following leads that came from well beyond the immediate search area. There were people who claimed they'd seen Kathy in other towns. There were reports of unidentified remains found in other states and tips from people who believed they had information about where she might be. Each one meant another set of phone calls, letters, records requests, or trips to determine whether the information could be substantiated. One lead in particular caught his attention toward the end of 1987. Detective Sturdivant received information suggesting that a large delivery truck, possibly carrying beer, wine, or liquor,

• 37:56Kylie Low?

  might have traveled along Route 62 on the afternoon Kathy disappeared. So he started writing to businesses throughout the area that sold alcohol, companies that supplied them, and the Rod and Gun Club itself, asking whether they could check their records for August 13th, 1985. He was trying to establish whether a delivery driver had, in fact, been on the road that day. The documents I reviewed don't make clear what originally prompted the truck inquiry or whether Detective Sturdivant ever identified a particular vehicle or driver. Detective Sturdivant also spent many years comparing Kathy's description with unidentified remains found across the country. I reviewed a collection at least a foot tall

• 38:40Kylie Low?

  of bulletins from other police departments and medical examiners, many describing women or girls whose identities weren't known. Again and again, Detective Sturdivant pursued every possibility, even when they seemed unlikely or required considerable effort. That level of care and dedication wasn't lost on Chief Salisi.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  Looking through the file, I was always impressed with the work that Detective Sturdivant did. Because back in the day, it was, you had a type, everything was a typewriter. So all the letters he wrote over the years to other departments, other investigators, other agencies, everything was typed out, and there was no copy paste, there was no emails, just a forward, "Hey, here's the information." Everyone was a unique letter, specific to that agency, and the details that he was requesting or providing. And these letters, for years, make up a lot of this case file, too. "Hey, I'm reaching out, I'm reaching out," never stopping, never wavering.

• 39:40Kylie Low?

  One especially disturbing account that Detective Sturdivant tried to make sense of surfaced over a decade later, in April of 1996, when a woman met with Stowe Police accompanied by her pastor. She told investigators that, years earlier, she'd been involved with a satanic cult and wanted to share something she'd witnessed. According to the woman's account, she'd been riding around in a white van with several men when they encountered a teenage girl near her bicycle. She claimed the girl was lured into the van, taken to a sand pit, and killed. The woman described railroad tracks and a bridge, details that could be relevant to the area where Kathy's bicycle had been found,

• 40:23Kylie Low?

  but there were serious problems with her account. She initially placed the incident in 1983, two years before Kathy disappeared. And when police showed her a photo of Kathy, she couldn't say whether it was the same girl. Investigators nevertheless took the woman and her pastor around Stowe to see whether she recognized any of the locations. She reacted to several places, including an area near Sudbury Road, which was where Kathy lived, but she couldn't identify a burial site. She later changed parts of her account and suggested the incident may have occurred in Berlin, Massachusetts. Stowe Police shared the information with the district attorney's office, though the records I reviewed don't establish what, if anything, came of the subsequent inquiry.

• 41:08Kylie Low?

  I tried to find this woman myself, by the way, along with the other people she named in her statement. I haven't heard back. There was nothing to corroborate the woman's allegation or connected to Kathy, but it's yet another example of the difficult position investigators were in. When there was nothing solid to stand on, nearly every new tip introduced a new possibility.

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• 42:15Kylie Low?

  By the time that woman came forward with her story in the mid 1990s, Kathy had been missing for more than a decade. There were still some rumors that she'd run away and started a new life somewhere, but with no confirmed contact, no reliable sightings, and no record of her using her identity, that possibility had become increasingly difficult to reconcile with what investigators knew. Then, in January of 1998, there was a development in the disappearance of Sarah Pryor, the nine-year-old who went missing from Wayland just weeks after Kathy. According to reporting in The Boston Globe, authorities confirmed that a fragment of a human skull discovered in Wayland three years earlier, in April of 1995, belonged

• 42:59Kylie Low?

  to Sarah. Sarah's family had an answer to one of the questions they'd been living with since 1985, but her case was still unresolved. What that discovery meant for Kathy's case was even less clear. For now, the search continued. For Captain Chad Perry, Kathy wasn't just a photograph in a missing person bulletin throughout the years. She'd been his classmate and friend. There were reminders of her everywhere.

• 43:28Speaker 05

  As a member of, now a member of, the Rotting Gun Club and someone who drives down 62 regularly, I still, to this day, don't drive by there and not think about it.

• 43:39Kylie Low?

  Chad would occasionally pull out Hudson's case file and page through it again, looking for something that might have been overlooked or that could mean something different with the benefit of time. In November 2007, then-Detective Chad Perry contacted Stowe Police with some information he'd received from a psychic who claimed she could help locate Kathy's burial site. The woman had prepared a hand-drawn map pointing to an area behind the Warren Insurance Building on Gleesendale Road. There was no physical evidence supporting the psychic's claim, but investigators decided to check the location anyway. Chad went to the property with personnel from the Middlesex County Sheriff's Office and a search dog.

• 44:24Kylie Low?

  The dog alerted at a particular location. Then a second dog was brought in, and according to the police records, that dog alerted in the same area. Two dogs independently showing interest in the same spot was enough for investigators to consider additional searches. The landowner agreed to cooperate and gave permission for police to examine the property, including potentially excavating the ground or using ground-penetrating radar. But later that month, Massachusetts State Police returned with a cadaver dog. This time, however, the dog didn't alert to anything of interest.

• 45:02Kylie Low?

  In the years that followed, Detective Sturdivant retired from the Stowe Police Department, and responsibility for Kathy's case eventually passed to then-Sergeant Michael Salisi, now Stowe's police chief. I didn't realize how much. You can see in front of us, there's a lot of reports, a lot of information that has come and gone, and a lot of people that have come and gone. So it is difficult to rewind the clock, but we have to really build on how we do police work now. And that's important because there's a lot of technology advances since 1985 that we want to take advantage of, get some new leads, and really put closure, help the family find out what happened.

• 45:43Kylie Low?

  There was a lot that time had taken away from this investigation. Memories had faded, witnesses had moved on, and some opportunities to collect evidence were gone for good. But the passage of time might also work in investigators' favor. Someone might finally be willing to talk, especially if they knew they were running out of time. The video, paused on the big screen when I had walked in that morning, was still waiting for us to press play. Chief Salisi told me the man in the video was John Robert Wordy. Remember, Wordy was a convicted murderer who'd been released on parole and returned to Massachusetts in 1984.

• 46:24Kylie Low?

  He was living and working in the region when Kathy and Sarah Pryor disappeared, and investigators had questioned him about both cases over the years. A coworker had previously given police an alibi for Wordy on the day Kathy disappeared. Turns out, it was false.

• 46:42Speaker 05

  The detectives from the Massachusetts State Police developed his name and tried to pursue what they could find out about him, and they were led down a road of misinformation at some point, that he wasn't in this particular area on that particular day. And in fact, I believe he was two towns away from us. So as far as Route 62, he had a perfect opportunity to come this way.

• 47:10Kylie Low?

  By 2017, Salisi learned that Wordy was seriously ill and reportedly receiving hospice care. He wondered whether, after all these years, Wordy might be willing to share something he'd never told investigators before. I'm talking about two girls that came up missing. Okay? The investigation back then put you in close proximity to where both girls came up missing. No, no. Don't make it tragic. Listen to me.

• 47:44Kylie Low?

  Over more than two and a half hours, investigators challenged his memory, his explanations, and the circumstances that had brought him under suspicion. What began as a relatively calm conversation became an increasingly tense confrontation. Wordy alleged conspiracies, claimed he'd been wrongfully imprisoned, and downplayed the violent crimes that had landed him behind bars in the first place. And the longer the interview went on, the harder it became to separate what Wordy genuinely couldn't remember from what he simply didn't want to talk about. There's a very deep John Wordy rabbit hole to fall into, but he is far from the only

• 48:26Kylie Low?

  person investigators have considered since 1985. In the original case files, I found records of searches and investigative leads involving at least two other convicted killers. There's a lot more to Kathy's case, and I want you to hear all of it. Somewhere in these details might be something that sounds familiar to someone who hears this story. A place, a person, a conversation they haven't thought about in decades. And if sharing even one of those details brings back a memory or encourages someone to finally come forward, then it's worth taking the time to tell Kathy's story in full in two parts.

• 49:06Kylie Low?

  Listen to Part Two of Cathy Malcolmson's Story next week, or early and ad-free right now inside the Crime Junkie Fan Club app. Anyone with information can contact the Stowe Police Department's Cathy Malcolmson Task Force at 978-897-4545, extension 1985, or email [email protected].

• 49:44Kylie Low?

  Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram, @darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Low, and this is Dark Down East.

• 50:16Kylie Low?

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

• 50:26Kylie Low?

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