Pod Insights Dark Downeast The Disappearance of Doreen Vincent (Connecticut) About this episode When a 12-year-old girl disappeared from her home on a summer night in 1988, police took her father’s word that she’d run away just as she had more than once before. But more than 30 years later, there’s still no sign of the missing girl and her father’s story just isn’t adding up.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live US-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. Two, we sound the alarm at points of entry. Three, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.
0:33 Kylie Low? When a 12-year-old girl disappeared from her home on a summer night in 1988, police took her father's word that she'd run away, just as she had more than once before. But more than 30 years later, there's still no sign of the missing girl, and her father's story just isn't adding up. I'm Kylie Low, and this is the case of Doreen Vincent, on Dark Down East.
1:08 Kylie Low? It was the evening of Saturday, June 18, 1988, and Donna Lee Jones was en route to her ex-husband Mark Vincent's new house, where their 12-year-old daughter, Doreen Vincent, was living with Mark and his wife Sharon and her children. Donna hadn't been to the new house yet. They'd moved into the big, purple-painted farmhouse on Whirlwind Hill Road in Wallingford, Connecticut only about 10 days before, but she talked to Sharon earlier that week to ask for directions. Donna was supposed to pick up Doreen on Friday, but when Friday rolled around, Donna called their house several times, and no one answered the phone. She actually hadn't been able to reach anyone at their house for days now. So the next day, Donna decided to just show up.
1:53 Kylie Low? She was looking forward to some mother-daughter time with Doreen, especially after not being able to reach her on the phone for the last few days. According to an award-winning article by Jason J. Berry titled "Where Is Doreen Vincent", published in The Record Journal on May 6, 2001, "When Donna pulled up to Mark's house early that Saturday, he was outside puttering around with a lawnmower. He acted confused and almost annoyed to see her. Donna asked Mark where Doreen was, but Mark threw the question right back at her. As Donna describes it, he said that Doreen wasn't there and that she ran away and was apparently unconcerned. He just assumed that Doreen was with Donna.
2:35 Kylie Low? It wouldn't be the first time Doreen left and went straight to her mother's place." It was true that Doreen had run away before, but every time she left her father's home, she was either only gone a few hours or she showed up at Donna's doorstep. And then she would call Mark to let him know Doreen was safe. But Donna hadn't heard from Doreen. Donna tried to reason with Mark, but he was uninterested in his ex-wife's concerns. He was convinced that after hearing all his daughter's complaints about moving to Wallingford, Doreen had decided to leave and was either with friends in the city or that maybe she was in Florida with her grandparents. Donna had once sent Doreen there amidst a tumultuous custody dispute with Mark. Donna pleaded with her ex-husband,
3:20 Kylie Low? she didn't have Doreen with her and she didn't know where their daughter was. She wanted Mark to call the police to file a missing persons report, but Mark just didn't think that was necessary. Finally, with Donna close to begging, Mark relented and agreed to file a report that day, June 18. But by then, Doreen had already been missing for almost three days. Mark told police that the last time he saw his daughter Doreen was on the night of June 15. According to a 2012 piece published in Connecticut Magazine and written by Michelle Techito-Sulo, Anne DiMatteo, Brian McCready, and Daniela Forte, Mark said he went to his workshop after dinner that night
4:03 Kylie Low? but saw Doreen in the kitchen around 8:00 PM. By 9 o'clock, when he went to Doreen's bedroom, she was gone. Mark believed she took $50 that she'd made from doing chores around the house and some personal items with her when she left. Because Doreen had run away from his house at least once before, and later showed up at her mother's house, he told police he assumed this time was no different, and that's why he didn't jump to alert the authorities when she took off. Donna tried to give a statement as part of the missing persons report too, but she has said that police refused to take it. From the very beginning, Donna just couldn't believe that Doreen left on her own.
4:44 Kylie Low? Because where was a 12-year-old girl to go in a rural town where she knew no one? Donna's fears that something else was at play here conflicted with Mark's narrative that Doreen had run away. According to Donna, investigators told her the contrasting statements would be confusing. Police did not believe foul play was a factor in her sudden disappearance. So, based on Mark's statements and Doreen's previous behavior, she was treated as a runaway. Police called friends and family, they checked bus and train stations, and they circulated her description in the media. Doreen was 5'4" tall with brown hair and brown eyes, and weighed about 110 pounds. She was believed to be wearing shorts,
5:29 Kylie Low? a waist-length denim jacket, and white and purple Reebok athletic shoes when she left. Leads trickled in with potential sightings of Doreen. One tipster reported seeing the missing girl at a McDonald's in New Haven, but it didn't turn out to be Doreen, just someone who kind of looked like her. In July, after a month without any new leads, Doreen's family announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to the discovery of her whereabouts. It may have generated a few new calls to Wallingford PD that summer, but none that produced any real answers. Donna took time off work to search for her daughter. She went to New York City scouring the streets hoping to see a familiar face looking back at her.
6:14 Kylie Low? She even hired a private investigator on her own dime, willing to do anything to find Doreen if she was really out there somewhere. But, Doreen wasn't among the crowds of Manhattan, and the PI could turn up no trace of her either. It was like Doreen had vanished into thin air.
6:34 Kylie Low? In the late summer or early fall of 1988, as the search for Doreen continued, something odd happened about 50 miles west of Wallingford in the town of Bethel. Sergeant Paul O’Connell of the State Department of Environmental Protection was out in a section of Collis P. Huntington State Park when he witnessed a downright suspicious scene. Sergeant O’Connell watched as an unknown man took something out of the back of a pickup truck in a wooded area of the park. It looked like his arms were out in front of him, carrying something shaped like a carpet, or a person. The guy took off running deeper into the woods as the officer documented the license plate and the description of the truck.
7:19 Kylie Low? He noted everything from the color down to the dents, the tow hook, and the DIY toolbox attached to the back of it. He didn’t really get a good glimpse at the driver, though, the man who darted into the dark carrying “something” in his arms. Sergeant O’Connell later called the incident into his DEP office, but the potential significance of the bizarre sighting wouldn’t be fully realized until the following summer. After almost a year, the theory that Doreen Vincent simply “ran away” seemed less and less viable. Police couldn’t trace her movements after the time her father said she left home, and none of the sightings they’d checked out were confirmed to be Doreen.
8:03 Kylie Low? Mark Vincent’s version of events just wasn’t sitting right, either. The delay in his reporting Doreen missing to police was at first so easily explained away by her previous behavior, but why not call Donna to let her know their daughter had left? After Donna showed up looking for Doreen that Saturday, why did Donna feel he showed no sense of urgency to find her? Just after the one-year anniversary of her disappearance in 1989, a new detective was handed Doreen's case file. Wallingford PD Detective Tom Hanley told Jason Berry for the Record Journal that he had asked about the case out of curiosity. And when he looked over the sparse case file for case number 88-9112,
8:48 Kylie Low? he was struck by how strange everything seemed. He had this gut feeling there was possibly something more at play. And so Detective Hanley dove in. As part of the renewed investigation, police wanted to locate Doreen's medical records or anything that might help identify her remains should she be found deceased. Things like personal artifacts with her fingerprints, hair samples, or samples of Doreen's handwriting. And a logical place to check for those items was at the homes of her parents, Donna, Mark, and Sharon. Detective Hanley learned that in the summer after Doreen disappeared, Mark and his wife Sharon split. They both moved out of the Wallingford house
9:31 Kylie Low? and Sharon moved in with her brother for a little while before getting her own place in Danbury. When police came knocking, Sharon refused to turn over anything she had of Doreen's to the police. So investigators applied for a search and seizure warrant, and one was issued on July 10, 1989, giving them access to her residence in Danbury as well as her brother's home. The language of the search warrant affidavits in this case was partially disclosed in a 1993 state appellate court decision. The search warrants leave no doubt that police were exploring something other than the runaway theory. What they were seeking as part of the search warrant included,
10:13 Kylie Low? quote, "information that could support different theories of criminal activity, including homicide, sexual abuse, assault and battery, kidnapping, or risk of injury to a child," end quote. Doreen's disappearance may have still been classified as a missing persons case, but what investigators found during multiple searches during the summer of 1989 only generated more suspicion that she could be missing as the result of a criminal act.
10:49 Speaker 00 When an intruder approaches a home, they expect a camera. What they don't expect.
10:53 Speaker 02 Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.
10:55 Speaker 00 Using smart AI cameras, live US-based agents help deter intruders in under 30 seconds. Don't just record a break-in, stop it from ever happening. Plans starting around $1 a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime.
11:12 Speaker 02 30 seconds response time requires monitoring plan with outdoor protection starting at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.
11:19 Kylie Low? I've been trying to get a head start on holiday shopping this year, and I've realized that some of the best gifts are just really nice versions of things people already use every day, which is why I always turn to my BFF, Quince. I got my daughter the cutest lightweight puffer jacket, which is perfect for layering during these colder months. And don't worry, she doesn't know how to find the podcast app yet, so she won't hear this and spoil her gift. As a New Englander, high-quality outerwear is key, but I can't justify paying triple digits for a jacket that'll fit her for, like, two snowstorms. Quince is high-quality, everyday essentials, not high prices, because they work directly with factories and cut out the middleman. I know you can find what you're looking for from Quince:
12:03 Kylie Low? cashmere sweaters, organic cotton basics, bedding, luggage, a gift for everyone, and hey, pal, you deserve to treat yourself too. Gold hoop earrings, add to cart. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Dark Down East. It's the best way to support the show.
12:42 Kylie Low? During the search of Sharon's home, investigators recovered several items of particular importance. Among what was seized were things that Mark previously said Doreen took with her when she supposedly ran away. If that was true, how could they still be in Sharon's possession? That wasn't the only thing that didn't make a lot of sense as police executed the search warrants. Detective Hanley interviewed Sharon around the time of the search, and what she told him revealed several inconsistencies in Mark's statements to police. Sharon recounted the evening of June 15th as "she remembered it."
13:23 Kylie Low? She cooked dinner for the family before she left for church, returning around 11:30pm that night. She arrived home to find that Doreen wasn't there. That's when Mark told her that he and Doreen had gotten into an argument, and Doreen stormed off and left out of the front door. That seemingly insignificant detail was actually a big deal the more Sharon thought about it. She explained that their front door had a deadbolt lock on the inside that required a key to open it. Doreen didn't have the key, Sharon did, so Doreen couldn't have left out the front door. According to Detective Hanley's summary of Sharon's statement,
14:07 Kylie Low? after telling her that Doreen ran away, Mark was acting nervous, and then he left in his truck soon after. He was gone for several hours. He told Sharon not to tell anybody. Police learned that in the days after Doreen supposedly stormed out the front door, Mark removed their phone from the wall for some reason? That explained why Donna couldn't get anyone to pick up when she called the house over and over. Around the same time of the search of Sharon's home, Donna consented to a search of her residence. She turned over several items that belonged to Doreen, including furniture and magazines. Interestingly, Donna had received some of those items from Sharon when she'd moved out of the Wallingford house.
14:52 Kylie Low? She gave Donna Doreen's bedroom furniture and curtains and other items, but Doreen's bedspread was missing from the lot. Sharon explained that Doreen had "messed it up."
15:05 Kylie Low? Because Doreen was initially treated as a runaway, there was little, if any, investigation inside the Vincent home. Police didn't search Doreen's bedroom, but who's to say they would have found anything? Because as Sharon told police, she'd cleaned Doreen's bedroom and washed the sheets sometime after Doreen disappeared. It was a giant red flag. Either knowingly or not, did Sharon clean up a possible crime scene?
15:38 Kylie Low? We're going to rewind a bit before the searches at Sharon and Donna's homes, because the exact timeline of the investigation is fuzzy. The documents that could help nail down the order of operations aren't public record, but here's what can be confirmed in court records from an appellate court decision from 1993 and a Supreme Court ruling from 1994. At some point during the first year after Doreen disappeared, police interrogated Mark about the night of June 15, and they managed to shake out new details, some very concerning details at that. When police drilled Mark with questions about the night his daughter disappeared, he admitted, as Sharon had also told them,
16:22 Kylie Low? that there was an argument between him and Doreen that supposedly caused Doreen to storm out the front door. He said that the argument had escalated to the point of physical violence. He said he hit Doreen and pushed her into a window, breaking the glass as she collided with it. In another admission, Mark said that in the weeks before she disappeared, he had taken pictures of Doreen in her underwear. Again, the timeline of when Mark made these admissions is unclear. For quite some time after Doreen disappeared, there was no mention of criminal activity playing a role in her case. So you've got to assume Mark didn't admit to pushing Doreen into a window or taking photos of her immediately,
17:06 Kylie Low? but that they were part of what precipitated the search warrant applications in July of 1989. As you've already heard, the warrants called out criminal activity, including homicide, sexual abuse, assault and battery, and other crimes.
17:21 Kylie Low? In the source material I have access to for this case, there's no mention of police recovering any photos of Doreen that Mark admitted to taking. However, court records show investigators tried to find them at Mark's residence as of November of 1988. After the split from Sharon, Mark moved into a house in Wallingford with a woman named Roseanne. Police asked Roseanne if he had any photographs in the house, and she told them that Mark took pictures all the time, but she didn't find any in his belongings. A few months later, after searching Sharon and Donna's homes in July of 1989, police were granted another search warrant, this time for Mark Vincent's truck
18:04 Kylie Low? and his mother's home on Mary Wood Road in Bethel where he'd recently been staying. Mark told police that he didn't have anything of Doreen's anymore, but that turned out to be false. A search of his truck turned up a jersey that was similar to clothing that belonged to Doreen. But that wasn't the only interesting thing about Mark's truck.
18:27 Kylie Low? Remember that strange incident in Huntington State Park? With the truck and the guy running into the woods? Well, Mark's vehicle fit the description of that truck Sergeant O'Connell spotted in the forest that day, right down to the dents and toolbox. Investigators moved on to the attached garage of Mark's mother's home. As one officer turned over a pile of clothes that was tucked between the wooden wall studs, he found a paper bag. Inside the paper bag was a handgun. Mark stepped into the garage almost simultaneously and told officers the gun was his, but they couldn't take it. Pursuant to the search warrant, investigators were supposed to be after Doreen's personal
19:12 Kylie Low? belongings as they may relate to her sudden and unexplained disappearance. Mark argued that the gun wasn't part of that. The officers conducting the search knew that Mark had previous felony convictions, including charges of larceny dating back to 1984 and three burglary charges between 1974 and 1984. In Connecticut, those with felony convictions cannot legally possess a firearm. So, despite Mark's insistence, police seized the revolver as contraband.
19:45 Kylie Low? Police also collected other pieces of evidence during their search of Mark's mother's house, including Doreen's birth certificate and photos of Doreen, though it's unclear if those photos were the pictures of Doreen that Mark admitted to taking. Mark was later arrested and charged with criminal possession of a firearm. He'd ultimately be convicted following a jury trial and sentenced to four years in prison. The gun charges were unrelated to Doreen's disappearance. Mark was not charged with any crimes connected to Doreen's disappearance. After those searches, her case remained open, with still no indication as to where she might be.
20:26 Kylie Low? Updates on the investigation fizzled out after the one-year anniversary. Police said they searched Huntington State Park with cadaver dogs each spring, trying to discover what the unidentified man with a truck that looked an awful lot like Mark's truck might have been doing in the woods when Sergeant O'Connell saw him. But if they discovered anything in the park, it wasn't Doreen. Six whole years passed until there was a major public announcement in the case, when Doreen's mother shared a new nationwide effort to find her. Mark Cerulo reports for The Hartford Current that in October of 1994, Doreen's mother was
21:06 Kylie Low? working with a direct mail company called Advo Inc. to create an info card with Doreen's photo and description, as well as a new age-progressed photo generated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children depicting what she might look like at the age of 18. The photo was sent out in a packet of coupons to 53 million homes across the United States and at least 750,000 within Connecticut alone. At the time, Advo Inc. had featured over 500 children in mass mailers since they began the effort in 1985, and they claimed to have located 67 of those children.
21:47 Kylie Low? Doreen's mother was hopeful that this national awareness campaign would generate new leads in the case, which had slowed down to a near halt in the last few years. A Wallingford police detective told John Paddett of The Record Journal that they'd followed up on a tip as recently as that summer, but there had been no leads or sightings for a very long time before that. The national mailer with Doreen's photo really turned up the volume on her case. As it began arriving in mailboxes, Wallingford detectives were flooded with tips and sightings of people who matched Doreen's description from all over the country. If they didn't have much to look into before, they were busy now.
22:29 Kylie Low? According to Daryl Campagna's reporting for The Record Journal, police looked into new tips that Doreen had enlisted in the military, that she was modeling in a magazine, and that she was a dancer at a bar. They also checked out a bogus lead that resulted in charges of filing a false report. No matter where they looked, though, none of the sightings generated from the mailer turned out to be the real Doreen Vincent. The search for Doreen continued locally as the influx of sightings tapered off. Investigators said in February of 1995 that they planned to search for Doreen's body in Huntington State Park again that coming spring.
23:09 Kylie Low? But talk of searching for her remains led to questions about the status and classification of the case. If the mailer from a few months back hoped to find Doreen alive somewhere, did something change how police were viewing the case? Wallingford PD would only say that evidence didn't support murder. Doreen was still considered missing under suspicious circumstances.
23:36 Kylie Low? Amidst the mailers and the ongoing searches, Mark Vincent was working his way through appellate court for the firearm conviction. At the center of his appeal was his argument that the revolver evidence should have been suppressed. He claimed that the discovery of the gun in his mother's garage didn't fit the search warrant, and that the search warrant itself lacked probable cause due to the amount of time that had passed since Doreen disappeared, among other issues. Mark's appeal also raised the issue of what constitutes the discovery of evidence in plain view. That terminology essentially means when officers have a valid search warrant for one type of evidence, their authority may extend to looking wherever that evidence could reasonably
24:21 Kylie Low? be found. If, in the course of a search under that warrant, they discover other incriminating items inadvertently and in plain view, they may seize them without obtaining an additional warrant. Mark argued that police already knew he had a gun, because he told them he did in a recorded statement two weeks before the search, and that the search warrant for Doreen's personal belongings at his mother's house was essentially a front to seek out his firearm. The appellate court did not agree with Mark's arguments, though, and his conviction was upheld in 1993, finding that the discovery of the gun was inadvertent and in plain view, and his reasoning that too much time had passed since Doreen's disappearance to execute
25:06 Kylie Low? a search warrant was irrelevant. The decision reads in part, "We refuse to adopt an arbitrary cutoff date, expressed either in days, weeks, or months, beyond which probable cause ceases to exist." Mark didn't stop at the appellate level. He took his arguments all the way to the state Supreme Court, but his claims were rejected there, too. After serving two years in prison, Mark was released and moved to Milford with his third wife. He knew he was the subject of police scrutiny, despite not being officially named a suspect. Mark always felt like police had their blinders on from the very start of the case, and he was tired of investigators, quote, "running after the wind," end quote.
25:51 Kylie Low? He said that he loved his daughter, and he missed her, and he hoped she was all right. As for Donna, she believed Mark undoubtedly knew more about Doreen's disappearance than he'd ever admit. She feared that any information he had about what really happened and where Doreen was now would go with him to his grave.
26:20 Speaker 00 The real cost of a break-in isn't your valuables. It's the feeling that your home stopped being safe. SimpliSafe keeps danger away from your family with three layers of protection. One, smart AI cameras and live US-based agents help stop intruders before they break in. Two, we sound the alarm at points of entry. Three, our agents request emergency response. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.
26:50 Kylie Low? Picture this: snow falling outside, nowhere you need to be, and you're tucked into bed with a good book? Or in my case, hundreds of pages of court records for a new case, because we all have our ways of unwinding. I've been really intentional about making my bedroom feel like a cozy retreat. And my latest addition is the Dream Comforter from Boll & Branch. It has this beautiful, relaxed texture that makes my bed look like something out of a boutique hotel. And the layered organic cotton is incredibly soft and cozy, without feeling like too much or too heavy. It's the kind of bedding that makes getting out of bed on a cold morning even more difficult. Pros and cons, but mostly pros. It's all one piece, too, which means you're not wrestling with a duvet cover.
27:35 Kylie Low? Honestly, that might be my favorite part. Upgrade your sleep now with Boll & Branch during their best sale of the year. Get 25% off plus free shipping and extended returns at bollandbranch.com/doneast with code DONEAST. That's B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com/doneast. Code DONEAST to unlock 25% off. Exclusions apply.
28:10 Kylie Low? According to reporting by Dave Altamari for The Hartford Current, in January of 2000, a confessed killer named Haddon Clark led police in Maryland to the body of one of his known victims, six-year-old Michelle Dorr. He'd murdered the little girl in 1986. Evidence also connected him to the death of 23-year-old Laura Hodling in Bethesda, Maryland on October 18, 1992. Haddon was convicted and given a life sentence for those crimes. But he said those weren't the only murders he'd committed. Haddon claimed he killed other people in the northeast states where he once lived, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
28:55 Kylie Low? Authorities in these states were alerted to Haddon's ties to their area and his timeline, so it could be checked against any unsolved homicides or missing persons cases. When Wallingford PD and Connecticut State Police reviewed Doreen's case file, the timeframe and victimology seemed to fit Haddon's MO. Though there was doubt among the departments that Doreen's disappearance was tied to a serial killer, investigators still chose to run it down to the very end. The same month that Haddon led police to Michelle Dorr's body, he was transported to Connecticut to guide police through potential burial sites for the people he claimed he murdered in their state. For five hours, Haddon guided state police detectives on a tour
29:40 Kylie Low? through areas near or at his former residences and properties owned by his family members. Haddon specifically claimed he buried a victim's body in the town of Meriden, but initial searches of the areas he identified didn't lead to any discoveries. As reported by Evan Goodenow for the New Haven Register, in April of 2000, Haddon once again rode along with Connecticut law enforcement to undisclosed locations where he claimed to bury victims. State police cadaver dogs were brought in to sniff out these areas, but the dogs didn't find anything of note. Haddon had documented mental illness, on top of a history of exaggerated or demonstrably false claims,
30:24 Kylie Low? so Connecticut police had a hard time discerning whether he really did bury victims in these areas, or if it was all some sort of fantasy or joke to him. Searches with Haddon in other New England states had similar results. In April of 2001, about a year after the ride-alongs, a reporter interviewed Haddon in prison. He doubled down on his stories about having other victims. Haddon claimed he abducted a girl outside of a bowling alley in Wallingford and buried her in front of Castle Craig in Meriden, but wasn't sure about the year. The town lined up with Doreen's case, but police later searched that area, again, to no avail.
31:06 Kylie Low? It seems like the serial killer angle faded out after that, putting what was believed to be a wild goose chase to an end. In the blink of an eye, more than a decade passed, and Doreen's case went cold. Her name pops up in occasional news coverage highlighting Connecticut's unsolved cases, but there were no significant updates in the case until the 30-year anniversary of Doreen's disappearance had come and gone. In December of 2019, the Wallingford Police Department entered a courtroom for an evidentiary hearing over a Freedom of Information complaint relating to Doreen Vincent's case.
31:47 Kylie Low? The creators of a podcast called Faded Out had requested access to the entire case file in May of that year, but Wallingford PD denied the request, saying that the case was open and active and releasing the documents could jeopardize the integrity of the investigation. The podcasters fought to have the documents released, fully doubting that Wallingford PD could prove the case was open and active as they claimed more than three decades later. But while the appeal was under review, investigators made several stunning announcements. According to reporting by Lauren Takoras for The Record Journal, in February of 2020, the state's attorney's office reclassified Doreen Vincent's disappearance, confirming
32:31 Kylie Low? what so many people assumed to be true all along. Doreen's case was now considered a homicide, a change that was reportedly made a month or two prior to the hearing while the appeal was pending. And not only that, police stated during the evidentiary hearing that they were investigating a suspect and expected to submit an arrest warrant within the next year. A few weeks later, and without being ordered to do so, investigators released dozens of previously undisclosed documents with what they considered to be dead leads in Doreen's case. The Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission weighed the appeal and ultimately dismissed
33:14 Kylie Low? the complaint for the entire case file to be released. But not for nothing, the pressure from this FOIA appeal definitely seemed to get the engines turning again after sitting idle for so long. I mean, plans to submit for an arrest warrant within a year? That's a big deal for a 30-plus-year unsolved homicide. But I'm here to tell you, that more than a year has passed since that statement was made, and no one has been arrested for Doreen's murder. According to reporting by Lauren Salu for The Record Journal, in July of 2021, police interviewed Mark Vincent's estranged wife, Kathy. Kathy explains that in the more than 20 years they were married, Mark talked about Doreen's
33:59 Kylie Low? disappearance only a couple of times. Court documents do not elaborate on the specifics Kathy may or may not have provided to police regarding what Mark said about his daughter, but Kathy's interview was how police learned Mark was living out of state in Vermont. He and his son, Doreen's brother Paul, were living and working at a Christian teen substance use recovery program in Johnson. About a half a year later, in January of 2022, police paid Mark a visit in Vermont. They interviewed both Mark and Paul as part of the ongoing effort to get answers in Doreen's case. Now Paul told police that he didn't have any firsthand knowledge of what happened to his
34:43 Kylie Low? sister, he was very young at the time she disappeared. But he said in no uncertain terms that he knew his father did, but believed he would never come forward with the truth. As for Mark's interview that day, police would later write in court documents that he "provided inconsistent and vague accounts of the events surrounding Doreen's disappearance and did not provide any information to advance the investigation." End quote. The interview didn't result in any arrests, but a few days later, a Wallingford detective received a phone call from Paul Vincent. He told the detective that his father had been acting differently since police visited them.
35:28 Kylie Low? He started giving away personal belongings. And then on February 10th, Mark said goodbye and left their residence at the recovery center. Paul told police that his gun was missing from its hiding place, and it was possible his father had taken it when he left. The last Paul heard, his father was on his way to a pastor's house in Connecticut. With that, police set up surveillance at the pastor's home and spotted Mark leaving on February 16th. He was arrested in a church parking lot the next day, when police found a handgun and more than 100 bullets in his possession. Mark was charged with two counts of criminal possession of a firearm and theft of a firearm, and ordered held on $200,000 bond.
36:13 Kylie Low? Mark later pleaded guilty to one count of criminal possession with the other counts dropped. He was handed a six-year prison sentence suspended after three years, plus a fine of $5,000. Once again, a firearm was discovered in Mark Vincent's possession while investigating Doreen's case, but the charges are considered unrelated to her case.
36:36 Kylie Low? Outside of the serial killer theory that was explored in the early 2000s, I could find no mention of suspects or persons of interest involved in Doreen's case, other than her father. To this day, Mark maintains his innocence and has vocalized his frustrations at being at the center of attention each time the case returns to the public eye. Others close to Mark have also previously expressed their doubts he did anything to cause Doreen to disappear. There's one detail that resurfaces a few times in source material, about how Mark visited a friend and his mother in the days after Doreen disappeared. Yet he didn't mention or discuss Doreen supposedly running away.
37:18 Kylie Low? The people he visited reasoned that he had tried to create a solid family life for Doreen, but she just wasn't happy living in Wallingford, and he was probably embarrassed she left. As for the other details that have generated suspicion around Mark, like a truck that matched the description of his vehicle spotted in Huntington State Park after Doreen disappeared, he claimed he was never in the park and he could prove it, though I'm not sure what that proof is or if he ever presented it to investigators. To be clear, Mark has not been charged with any crimes as it relates to the disappearance and murder of his daughter, Doreen Vincent. Until the evidence stacks up to present probable
38:00 Kylie Low? cause, no one will be arrested and charged in this case.
38:06 Kylie Low? Doreen Vincent was only 12 years old when she disappeared, and she is still out there somewhere. If you have information about the 1988 disappearance of Doreen Vincent from Wallingford, Connecticut, please contact the Wallingford Police Department Investigative Services Division at 203-294-2845.
38:39 Kylie Low? Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at @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.
39:10 Kylie Low? Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and AudioChuck. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
Previous The Murder of Austin Colson (Vermont) Next The Murders of Mark Harnish & Theresa Marcoux (Massachusetts) Page updated November 5, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated