Pod Insights Dark Downeast The Disappearance of Iris Brown (Vermont) About this episode From the very beginning of the investigation into the disappearance of Iris Brown, everyone suspected the same person had something to do with it. She left home with the suspect on the night she was last seen alive, the suspect’s behavior in the days following her disappearance raised countless red flags, and forensic evidence pointed to something bad happening inside the suspect’s car, but proving beyond a reasonable doubt exactly what happened wasn’t going to come quick and easy to the investigators tasked with finding answers.
When this suspect was finally apprehended and charged, it was with the crime prosecutors could prove… Not the crime everyone knew deep down he’d actually committed. Decades later, a determined detective reopened the case with one mission: to give surviving family members a version of closure, even if it meant the killer would never face the consequences.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Kylie Low? Every case starts somewhere. A small town, a missing persons report, a family asking the same questions over and over. But sometimes, a story reaches beyond its own community. Its impact extends further, calling for more attention, more conversation, and a wider audience. That's what Crime Junkie does every Monday. Ashley Flowers and Brett Praywatt cover the cases you can't stop thinking about, from unsolved murders to missing people to investigations that still need answers. Because every new person who hears the story is another chance to uncover the truth. Listen to Crime Junkie every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:47 Kylie Low? From the very beginning of the investigation into the disappearance of Iris Brown, everyone suspected one particular person had something to do with it. She left home with the suspect on the night she was last seen alive. The suspect's behavior in the days following her disappearance raised countless red flags, and forensic evidence pointed to "something bad happening inside the suspect's car." But proving beyond a reasonable doubt exactly what happened wasn't going to come quick and easy to the investigators tasked with finding answers. When this suspect was finally apprehended and charged, it was with the crime prosecutors could prove, not the crime everyone knew deep down he'd actually committed.
1:32 Kylie Low? Decades later, a determined detective reopened the case with one mission: to give surviving family members a version of closure, even if it meant the killer would never face the consequences. I'm Kylie Low, and this is The Case of Iris Brown, on Dark Down East.
2:00 Kylie Low? It was early evening on March 15, 1976, and 27-year-old Iris Brown had just returned home from work to find a friend waiting at the apartment she shared with a roommate in Burlington, Vermont. 28-year-old Bernard Posey had arrived around 4:30 that afternoon and insisted on waiting for Iris to get home. He had some good news. No sooner did Iris walk through the door, Bernard announced that he'd received a message from her boyfriend, Martin, who was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. But not for much longer, because Martin was set to be released the next morning. Bernard himself had been released from FCI Danbury the previous year, which is where he got to know Martin,
2:44 Kylie Low? so he offered to drive Iris down to pick him up. Iris agreed to go with Bernard to Connecticut. It was a nearly 300-mile trip, over four and a half hours in the car, so they'd be gone overnight. Bernard started calling around to make arrangements for a hotel along the route, while Iris called her father to let him know she wouldn't be able to visit him that night. Iris's father was a patient at Mary Fletcher Hospital at the time. Despite this phone call, case file documents obtained from the Burlington Police Department show that Iris did end up paying her dad a quick visit that night. Though the exact time is hard to pin down, the general estimate is that Iris arrived at the hospital sometime around 5:30 or 6:00 PM. She wouldn't tell her dad where she was going,
3:29 Kylie Low? but she explained she was going out of town and assured him that she'd be back the next day. After just about 10 minutes, Iris left. That's the last time Iris's family ever saw her. But it's not where Iris's trail ends. Tracking Iris and the man she knew as Bernard Posey would become a several-years-long effort.
3:51 Kylie Low? Iris was expected home sometime on March 16th, or at least by the 17th. Iris was working at the family business at the time. Her father owned a large local chain of home and auto stores across Vermont, and she had made a phone call from a gas station on the night she left to ask a friend to cover for her at work on the 16th. But she hadn't made arrangements beyond that, so when she still wasn't home by March 18th, her roommate Maureen started to worry. Maureen called over to Bernard's house in Essex Center, where he lived with his wife, to see if he knew where Iris was. But Bernard had no idea, he said. They'd made it to Danbury, Connecticut, but Iris didn't want him to stay,
4:34 Kylie Low? so he said he gave her $200 and they parted ways from there. He told Maureen he headed back to Vermont alone. Two more days passed without any sign of Iris. On March 20th, Iris's mother and father got word that she never returned home from the trip to pick up her boyfriend from the federal penitentiary. Their worry mounted when a check with the prison revealed Martin was still incarcerated. He was not scheduled to be released that month, and he hadn't even spoken to Iris for weeks. For two days, Iris's family tried calling Bernard's house over and over again, but no one answered. On March 22nd, they walked into the Detective Bureau of Burlington Police Department with Iris's roommate to report Iris missing.
5:19 Kylie Low? Burlington PD's first-ever female detective, Detective Gloria Bancroft, was assigned to Iris's case, and it's her narrative of the early investigation that allows me to tell you Iris's story. Detective Bancroft requested a general broadcast call from Vermont State Police with Iris's details and description. She was 5'6 1/2 inches tall, 135 pounds, fair complexion, long dark brown hair, hazel eyes, slim build, no glasses, no scars or marks, and was last seen wearing a long green wool coat and blue jeans. The same afternoon, Detective Bancroft and Burlington PD's Detective Lieutenant Wayne Liberty paid a visit to the Posey residence. They knocked on the door and rang the doorbell several times,
6:03 Kylie Low? but it was clear nobody was home. So the detectives dropped a note for Bernard in his mailbox. When they arrived back at the station, police learned that Bernard was actually on probation, so they got in touch with his probation officer. Apparently, Bernard had called his probation officer on March 22nd to ask permission to leave the state. Bernard explained that his wife's father was very sick and they needed to visit him in Florida as soon as possible. The probation officer gave Bernard permission for the trip with the understanding that he was supposed to return home by the 26th. Detectives spent the next several hours following up on possible explanations for Iris's absence.
6:47 Kylie Low? They learned that Iris used to live in New York City and she still had a brother there. But according to her parents, she would not have made a spontaneous decision to head to the city without telling her brother, and he hadn't heard from her. But New York City might have been part of her plan after all, at least according to Bernard. He called Burlington PD on the afternoon of March 23rd, explaining that he was in Florida, but a neighbor who was checking his mail for him found the detective's note. They'd already heard a secondhand version of Bernard's story about the night of March 15th and early morning hours of the 16th from Iris's roommate Maureen, but Bernard clarified a few things for the detectives. According to Bernard, the plan was to go to Danbury,
7:33 Kylie Low? but they had reached the Springfield, Massachusetts area when Iris changed her mind and decided she wanted to go to New York City instead. Bernard told Iris he was too tired for that drive, so he dropped her off outside a hotel in Springfield around 1:00 in the morning. Iris was supposedly going to take a bus from there. Bernard said he did give Iris $200 to fund her trip, but it was a loan. Bernard promised to get in touch with detectives as soon as he was back in Vermont on the 26th, but he wouldn't leave a number for detectives to reach him in Florida. He said he'd be on the road from that point on anyway. If red flags weren't already waving in the minds of Detectives Bancroft and Liberty,
8:15 Kylie Low? that first phone call with Bernard had to have set them off. Bernard had told Maureen he left Iris in Danbury, Connecticut, but now he was saying he dropped her off in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the inconsistencies just kept coming. Detectives Bancroft and Liberty confirmed that the whole story about Iris's boyfriend Martin getting out of prison was a fabrication. Martin's furlough wasn't expected for a few more months, but why would Bernard make that up? What motivation did he have to get Iris in his car under false pretenses that night? And where was Iris now? Investigators set out to answer those questions and more.
8:56 Kylie Low? Among the most foundational of those questions: Who is Bernard Posey? Turns out, that's not even his real name. Bernard Posey was the chosen alias for a man whose legal name was William John Posey Jr., and he had a criminal record spanning multiple states and severity of charges, everything from lying under oath to aggravated assault. According to case file documents, Bernard had been in the military from 1966 to 1972, but was AWOL several times during that period, and eventually received a dishonorable discharge from the service. Then in December of 1974, he was sentenced to three years in federal prison for false
9:41 Kylie Low? declaration under oath. He was released from Danbury Federal Correctional Institution, December 18, 1975, and was placed on probation. So Bernard was on probation when in February of 1976, South Burlington Police investigated an assault involving Bernard. According to statements by the female victim, Bernard had hired the woman to work as his secretary, and during one of their early conversations about the job, Bernard claimed he dealt "hot diamonds," which I assume means they were stolen or otherwise illegally obtained.
10:17 Kylie Low? The woman said Bernard wanted her to meet an associate of his that she'd be dealing with as part of the gig. But things went sideways as they sat in his vehicle outside Joe Berry's restaurant. She told police how Bernard tried to strangle her, saying that he needed to shut her up. She grabbed a glass and managed to throw it at the windshield to break Bernard's focus. She was able to calm him down enough to say she had to go to the bathroom, and Bernard agreed to let her go inside the restaurant, but told her she had to tell staff that someone had shot at the car windshield. After that, Bernard threatened the woman with more violence, saying he owned two guns and that someone who was about to get out of prison would find her if she took him to court over the assault.
11:01 Kylie Low? The threats didn't stop her, though. She reported the assault to South Burlington Police. She sustained a black eye and marks on her neck in the assault. But when police asked Bernard about the incident, he claimed someone shot at the car while they were driving, and he slammed on the brakes, which caused her to collide with the windshield. Police didn't buy it, and Bernard was charged with aggravated assault. He was supposed to be in court on March 26 to face those charges, which was the day he told his probation officer he'd be back from his urgent trip to Florida. But somewhere along the way, he called the court and asked to have the hearing moved to the 29th. Bernard didn't show up to either of those scheduled court dates, though.
11:44 Kylie Low? Instead, Bernard was still in Florida, pulling some bizarre maneuvers that only made police more suspicious.
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14:33 Kylie Low? On March 29, 1976, when he should have been at a Vermont courthouse, Bernard and his wife were shopping at a mall in Hallandale, Florida, when he told her he had to go buy a plane ticket so he could get back to Vermont to close on the new house they were in the process of buying. He said he'd be back in an hour to pick her up, but he never returned. When Mrs. Posey finally got back to their motel room, she realized that her Mercedes was gone and her jewelry and fur coat were missing too. Bernard's wife reported the car stolen in Florida, and he was apprehended with the Mercedes and her valuables within a day. He was arrested for reckless driving and later released on $250 bail.
15:16 Kylie Low? When his wife asked why he drove off with her car and left her stranded at the mall, he said he did it just to "shake her up." The day after Bernard tried to "shake her up", Mrs. Posey called Burlington Police. Mrs. Posey explained that she knew Bernard was planning to go to Danbury with Iris on the 15th, and her memory was a little fuzzy, but she believed he got home around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. on the 16th. It was the night of the 19th that really stuck out to her. It was late when Bernard came home, his face all scratched up, and told her he'd been shot at and they needed to leave for Florida ASAP. She said he was acting desperate and panicky.
16:00 Kylie Low? They left a little after midnight on the 20th. She explained that they had a neighbor looking after their house, and sometime after they got to Florida, Bernard called the neighbor and asked him to lock their car, an Audi that was sitting in the driveway. Now, what Bernard said to his wife about needing a plane ticket to make it back to Vermont to close on their new house, the closing part was true, to a degree. They were scheduled to close on a house, either March 29 or 30. So on the 30th, police drove out to the Posey residence again to see if he was home. But something caught the attention of detectives before they even made it to the front door of the house. In the backseat of that Audi that Bernard was known to drive,
16:45 Kylie Low? the one he'd apparently asked a neighbor to lock up in his absence, they spotted a white article of clothing with what appeared to be spots of blood on it. Looking closer, they saw what also appeared to be blood on the car's interior. The officers tried knocking on the door of the Posey house, but no one answered, so they left. Later that day, police obtained a warrant to impound and search the Audi.
17:11 Kylie Low? As detectives zeroed in on possible blood evidence in Bernard's vehicle, they learned from his probation officer that in a recent phone call, Bernard claimed he was tired of running and he needed help. He was supposedly going to get back to Vermont on a bus on April 1st, but none of the buses, or planes for that matter, that arrived in Vermont on that date had a passenger by the name Bernard Posey. Wherever Bernard was, he was now a wanted man. The FBI had entered the chat and informed Burlington PD that there was a federal warrant for Bernard's arrest on charges of interstate flight to avoid prosecution. He was arrested in a Florida restaurant soon after, and held on $10,000 bail, which he posted.
17:54 Kylie Low? On April 7th, his bail was increased to $35,000, and after a bonding company posted his new bail, Bernard called his wife. She agreed to meet him outside a bank in Florida under the impression that he was going to give her power of attorney over all their assets. Thankfully, Mrs. Posey did not meet Bernard alone. She brought her mother along, and when they arrived at the bank, Bernard lunged out from behind a column and tried to drag his wife into a waiting vehicle. Mrs. Posey's mother helped fight Bernard off, who then got in the car and fled the scene. Two weeks passed and there was at least one reported sighting of Bernard documented in the case file.
18:38 Kylie Low? He was in Long Island, New York to see his rabbi. The rabbi reported that both of Bernard's arms were in casts, but he didn't say what caused his apparent injuries. However, Bernard soon told his probation officer, "they" broke his thumbs because he was supposed to, quote, "pay some people off," but hadn't been able to come up with the money. Who "they" were, Bernard didn't say. When the probation officer asked Bernard about Iris Brown and if he knew what happened to her, he responded, quote, "I had nothing to do with that," end quote. This whole time, while Bernard was on the lam, Iris was still missing. She hadn't called home, she hadn't turned up at her apartment.
19:23 Kylie Low? And when police checked the hotel where she and Bernard had reservations on the night of the 15th, they learned nobody had checked in under either name that night. Employees at the hotel near where Bernard claimed to have dropped Iris off in the early morning hours of March 16th didn't recognize either Iris or Bernard. In early April, police printed and distributed 500 missing persons posters around town and to the media as well as nearby police agencies. One of the first stories ran in the Rutland Herald on April 11th with a photo of Iris smiling at the camera. By the end of the month, Iris's family had hired their own private investigator to look into the case too.
20:04 Kylie Low? Finally, on April 22nd, Bernard was spotted back in Vermont. He was boarding a bus at the St. Paul Street Terminal bound for Montreal, Canada. Officers boarded the bus and located Bernard, taking him into custody that same day. It's a little hard to keep track of all the things Bernard was wanted for at the time of his arrest. Burlington PD wanted to talk to him about Iris Brown, but there was also a federal warrant for interstate flight and that aggravated assault charge out of South Burlington. The assault case seems like it was in flux and SBPD may have dropped the charges at one point as the case was expected to reach a financial settlement, but it was that crime that ultimately got Bernard arrested.
20:49 Kylie Low? Bernard demanded a lawyer and refused to speak to anyone about anything, but the next day, he changed his tune and agreed to a taped interview with Burlington PD about Iris's disappearance.
21:02 Kylie Low? Although the interview was taped, the details of this interview are scant in the case file documents I have access to. But from what is detailed in Detective Bancroft's report, Bernard claimed when he told Iris that Martin wasn't actually going to be released from prison the next morning, he said Iris was upset about it for a matter of seconds, and then was happy to have time off from work so she could go to New York. Over the coming weeks, police continued to uncover bizarre behavior and suspicious evidence as they tracked Bernard Posey's movements immediately before and after Iris disappeared. In another interview with Bernard's wife, she told police how the phone lines
21:46 Kylie Low? in their house had been cut sometime on or around March 18. A telephone repairman came out to fix them on the 19th, but Bernard said it wasn't necessary because no one was going to be home for a while anyway. Mrs. Posey had reason to believe that Bernard cut the phone lines himself. But again, this begs the question, why? At least the cut phone line explained why Iris's family and roommate couldn't reach him for days on end when they tried calling the Posey residence. Mrs. Posey was clearly harboring her own suspicion and even fear of her husband. As of May 10, she had been living elsewhere, but asked police to go with her to their house in Essex. Once inside, they noticed that the house looked
22:30 Kylie Low? like someone had gone through it, throwing open drawers and rifling through the contents in search of something. And then they found something truly bizarre. In the back of a closet tucked away in a clear attempt to conceal them, police found what appeared to be cast-making supplies, like for broken bones, possibly the broken thumbs Bernard claimed to have when he visited his rabbi in New York the previous month. It was clear to police that Bernard had been inside the house since he and his wife had left together after Iris disappeared.
23:05 Kylie Low? Less than a week later, police were back at the Posey residence with Mrs. Posey. She'd called crying and very upset and wanted an officer to come look at something she found in the house. When the officer arrived, Mrs. Posey pointed to two articles of clothing: a men's suede coat with sheepskin lining and a beige sweater, both of which belonged to Bernard, and he was wearing them when he left with Iris on March 15. The officer glanced over the coat and the sweater and saw that there were apparent bloodstains on both items. He placed them in an unused trash bag and brought them to the detective bureau for processing by the FBI lab in Washington DC, where other pieces of evidence recovered
23:48 Kylie Low? from Bernard's Audi were already undergoing examination. For months on end, police had been uncovering countless red flags waving around the man last seen with Iris Brown. He was a slippery guy with a criminal history and a changing story about what happened as they drove off towards Connecticut based on a lie he'd told her. What detectives hadn't yet uncovered was evidence or anything close to proof of what happened to Iris, or where she might be now. But the investigation would soon take on a whole new intensity when results came back from the tests conducted on the apparent bloodstain evidence at the FBI lab.
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25:47 Kylie Low? In July of 1976, four months into the missing persons investigation of Iris Brown, an FBI agent informed Burlington PD that bloodstains found on several items related to Iris's case had come back showing type O blood. Iris had type O blood, but police had not yet been able to determine Bernard's blood type. They needed a liquid sample for further analysis, and they intended to obtain one through court order. A Burlington detective contacted the state's attorney's office to obtain a non-testimonial evidence court order to obtain a blood sample from Bernard Posey.
26:29 Kylie Low? The court order would be prepared under the state statute of kidnapping, not homicide. Bernard managed to dodge the court order to submit to a blood draw until the end of September. When that sample was finally obtained and submitted to an FBI lab, the results revealed that Bernard had type A blood. The blood found on his clothing and in his car was not Bernard's blood, but it did match Iris's blood type. It felt like a breakthrough, and it was, but it wasn't enough for an immediate arrest. Someone's blood, the same type as Iris's blood, was on items related to the case, sure, but without more advanced DNA testing that wasn't available to the case in that era,
27:14 Kylie Low? the blood couldn't be further identified as belonging to Iris. What's more, its presence on the evidence didn't show how it got there or who, if anyone, caused it to spill. Investigators kept at it, and they believed Slippery Bernard wouldn't be going anywhere while they continued to build the case against him. He'd pleaded no contest to a lesser charge of simple assault for the attack on the woman in South Burlington and was sentenced 10 to 12 months with credit for time served. He was paroled not long after, but the US Marshal's Service had filed a detainer charging that Bernard had violated parole when he was convicted of assault, among other violations, so he was jailed once again and remained in custody for the better part
27:58 Kylie Low? of a year. Towards the end of his federal sentence, Bernard was housed in the Community Treatment Center in New York City. That is, until he escaped. According to Mike Donahue's reporting for the Burlington Free Press, on December 5, 1977, Bernard Posey walked away from the center and never returned. He was still a fugitive when four months after his escape, in April of 1978, following a two-year-long investigation by Burlington Police, the FBI, the US Attorney's Office, and the Chittenden County State's Attorney's Office, a federal grand jury indicted William
28:38 Kylie Low? Bernard Posey on kidnapping charges relating to the disappearance of Iris Brown. The charge carried a potential life sentence if he was convicted. Frustratingly, Bernard managed to evade capture for over two years. While he was on the lam, he was free to live his life and claim the life of another woman. It was the night of January 24, 1980, and 37-year-old Judith Ann Bishop was sitting at a motel with her sister-in-law Joyce, enjoying an all-woman band that was performing in the lounge.
29:19 Kylie Low? According to an Associated Press report published in The Pantograph, somewhere over the course of the evening, Judith and Joyce met two truck drivers named Harry and Jim. They left with the men around 1 a.m., Joyce pairing off with Harry, and the last time anyone saw Judith, she was sitting in her vehicle with the trucker she knew as Jim. She never made it home that night. On the next morning, Judith's husband found her vehicle abandoned in the motel parking lot with bloodstains inside.
29:50 Kylie Low? Police were able to track down the trucker named Harry, who said Jim had asked for the keys to the truck at one point that night. And when Harry returned to the truck to sleep, Jim's belongings were gone. He actually didn't know much about Jim. Harry picked him up as a hitchhiker somewhere in Kentucky earlier that week. An Associated Press report in the Carmody Times indicates that Harry passed a lie detector test regarding his account of the evening. As the search for the suspect, known only as Jim, continued, the search for Judith ended. On Sunday, January 27, Judith's nude body was found in a wooded area near Kinmundi, Illinois. She'd been strangled with a pair of pantyhose.
30:33 Kylie Low? Her time of death was estimated around 2:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. on January 25, and her death was ruled a homicide. Early media coverage suggested that the physical description of the guy known only as Jim sounded a lot like a prison escapee named Alan Lightheart. Alan had fled Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois over a week earlier. Alan had been serving a six-to-15-year sentence for a rape conviction at the time. Brad Betker reports for The Southern Illinoisan that the suspect in Judith's murder was believed to be 160 to 170 pounds and 5'10" with a full beard, a bald spot, and a neat appearance.
31:14 Kylie Low? But that wasn't an exact match for Alan Lightheart, who was 5'8" and around 205 pounds. However, that description did match another escapee on the run at the time, and Illinois authorities had reason to believe this other fugitive was the true suspect in Judith's slaying. Over the course of the investigation into Judith's murder, Illinois authorities had recovered some jewelry from a pawn shop near Dallas, Texas, that they believed was stolen from Judith on the night of her murder. At the same time, federal authorities were tracking a new alias for a fugitive known in Vermont as Bernard Posey.
31:54 Kylie Low? And someone using that new alias had checked into a motel just outside of Dallas in January of 1980.
32:04 Kylie Low? An FBI law enforcement bulletin, published in February of 1980, listed off several more names for the man suspected of kidnapping Iris Brown, and who was now a suspect in the killing of Judith Ann Bishop. According to the bulletin, William Bernard Posey also used the names Earl D. Cox, James Joseph Lutz, James William Lutz, Russell Martin, William Snyder, Robert Tibidore, and more. The bulletin also included photos of William, aka Bernard, aka all those other names, with the warning that he was “an escapee from custody, who has been armed with a pistol in the past, who is sought in connection with a series of assaults on females,
32:48 Kylie Low? including the kidnap and apparent murder of one victim. Posey, who has been characterized as a schizophrenic with a propensity for violence against women, should be considered armed, dangerous, and an escape risk.” End quote. Federal authorities had been tracking Bernard and his many aliases, including a new one, James Thomas Scorpion, when a person using that name checked into the Motel 6 in Mesquite, Texas. On February 11, 1980, federal agents chased Bernard just briefly before they were able to take him into custody. He was under arrest for the kidnapping of Iris Brown, and there were those outstanding federal charges resulting from his escape from the New York City facility over two years earlier, too.
33:33 Kylie Low? Only after he’d been apprehended did the agents realize this was the same person who was wanted in Illinois for the murder of Judith Ann Bishop. Before any of the charges would land, though, the court had to prove who the suspect was at an identity hearing. According to Margot Howland’s reporting for The Times-Argus, the man repeatedly denied being the person named William or Bernard Posey, and insisted his name was James Thomas Scorpion. Whatever the guy’s name was, he was being held without bond on the federal charges while the identity issue was sorted out. Interestingly, police in Ohio had arrested a man named James Thomas Scorpion about five months earlier.
34:17 Kylie Low? He'd been charged with criminal trespass on September 13th, 1979, but failed to show up for his arraignment after posting bail. The name wasn't a known alias listed in the National Crime Information Center Index at the time, so Scorpion, or William, AKA Bernard, slipped out from under the noses of police until that name landed on their radar months later. The identity issue was finally put to rest when fingerprints proved that the man claiming to be Scorpion was, in fact, William John Posey, AKA Bernard Posey. Bernard was returned to federal prison where he would await trial. He was supposed to first face the murder charge in Illinois for the homicide of Judith
35:02 Kylie Low? Anne Bishop, but pretrial appeals caused delays in that case, which had him back in Vermont sooner than anticipated. In May of 1981, William, AKA Bernard, pleaded not guilty to the federal kidnapping charge for the disappearance of Iris Brown. In August of 1981, William Bernard Posey faced a judge and a jury for the kidnapping of Iris Brown. The case against him was largely circumstantial. Witnesses testified to his changing stories and strange behavior. The fact that no trace of Iris was found after she left in Bernard's car that night. Iris's boyfriend, Martin, testified that he wasn't going to be released until May of that year.
35:45 Kylie Low? Despite Bernard's claim, he received a telegram stating that Martin would be released on March 16th. He said he never contacted Bernard about his release. The defense called no witnesses, and Bernard did not testify in his own defense. A US District Court jury found Bernard guilty of kidnapping after just one hour of deliberations. The case may have been built on circumstantial evidence, but it was strong enough for that conviction and strong enough for the maximum sentence of life in prison. Bernard later filed an appeal, but his conviction was upheld. Meanwhile, Illinois officials announced their intent to seek the death penalty if Bernard
36:28 Kylie Low? was found guilty of murder in the death of Judith Ann Bishop. The sentence was warranted in cases where murder was committed during another felony, and they believed Bernard had robbed Judith before killing her. Securing that sentence was not a guarantee, but the mention of capital punishment was enough to shake a guilty plea out of Bernard. William H. Braun reports for the Burlington Free Press that in August of 1982, Bernard pleaded guilty to murdering Judith and was sentenced to the maximum 40 years in prison to be served concurrently with the life sentence for Iris Brown's kidnapping. If Bernard earned all the credit available for good behavior, he might be eligible for
37:11 Kylie Low? parole in about 20 years. After Bernard's conviction for kidnapping and Iris Brown's disappearance, it seems like the case was stuck in purgatory. Her name rarely surfaced in news reports after the early 80s, and lacking any indication to the contrary, it appears police let the search for Iris or her remains fall down the list of priorities, as other homicides and missing persons cases took over their caseload. In all the years the case was left to linger without true closure, Iris never came home. Her parents and many siblings were left without answers, but they always believed that the man convicted of kidnapping Iris knew much more about what happened on the
37:56 Kylie Low? night of March 15, 1976. 25 years after Iris disappeared, a new detective with the Burlington Police Department wanted to give them the closure they deserved.
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39:27 Kylie Low? Burlington Police Detective Ahmed Helrick assigned Iris Brown's case to himself in 2001. Interesting factoid about Detective Helrick: He actually advised author Gillian Flynn on police procedure for her book Gone Girl. His name is listed in the acknowledgements. After meeting with two of Iris's sisters and her father, who was still living in the community, it was clear to Detective Helrick that all the Brown family wanted was to recover Iris's remains. Prosecution wasn't their goal, not anymore. In fact, they were so determined to just bring Iris home after so many years, that they wanted the suspect offered immunity in exchange for revealing the location of her remains.
40:11 Kylie Low? Detective Helrick contacted US District Attorney Peter Hall with his proposition. By the time Detective Helrick tracked Bernard down in the early 2000s, he was housed in the medical unit of the federal correctional facility in Butler, North Carolina. He was suffering from a vascular disease and not doing very well. After hearing the circumstances of Iris's case, the years of unknown faced by the family, and the convicted kidnapper's health condition, the DA agreed to draft a letter of immunity, promising no prosecution if Bernard was forthright about what happened to Iris. A Chittenden County State Attorney prepared a similar letter. On April 24, 2003,
40:54 Kylie Low? Detective Helrick and AG's investigator Peter Batino met with Bernard at the correctional facility. When the investigators entered the room, Bernard remarked that he always wondered when someone would be coming to see him. The officer showed Bernard the two letters of immunity, and he seemed to consider them seriously. He went on to tell the detectives about his disease. He had to have parts of his feet removed because of it. He said he would talk to the detectives once he was able to consult with an attorney, and his wish was to live out the rest of his days on his sister's porch in Pennsylvania. Bernard wanted assurance that he'd be released on parole when he was up for consideration in April of 2011.
41:37 Kylie Low? "That was all up to other officials," Detective Helrick explained to Bernard, "but it was something they could check into." And then the detective asked Bernard a few hypothetical questions. "Hypothetically, did Iris suffer when she died?" Bernard said that hypothetically, she did not suffer. He did not go any further. The officers asked Bernard what county they might be dealing with in this case, and he responded that it was only Chittenden County. But that's where he stopped talking. He did not give the investigators any further useful information that day. After speaking with Bernard, Detective Helrick consulted with the federal parole office and learned that there was no scenario in which Bernard would be released from prison
42:22 Kylie Low? due to his prior history, and he would not be offered any deals by the government. After that, the case stalled again for a few years, until Detective Helrick had a gut feeling he decided to act on. In March of 2008, Detective Helrick contacted the North Carolina Correctional Facility again and learned that Bernard's condition was getting worse, and so he scheduled an interview on April 25th of that year. When the detective and other officials arrived for the meeting, Bernard was very obviously ill. He said he didn't remember the detective. Detective Helrick again presented two letters of immunity, and Bernard read them slowly before remarking that they were pretty straightforward, and he knew what he was being promised should
43:06 Kylie Low? he choose to disclose the information he had about Iris Brown, but also said that one thing he'd learned while incarcerated was to always talk to a lawyer first. Detective Helrick explained that an attorney wasn't necessary because as the letters promised, no charges would come from what Bernard told them, and because he wasn't being read his Miranda rights, nothing he said could be used against him in court. Bernard sat in silence for a while, considering everything the detective had just told him. Detective Helrick finally broke the silence, saying that he did not believe Iris ever left Vermont, and reminded Bernard of the hypotheticals they discussed a few years earlier, that hypothetically, Iris had not suffered.
43:50 Kylie Low? Bernard responded, quote, "Yes, that's true," end quote. The investigator said that they were prepared to sit with Bernard all day, but Bernard said that wasn't necessary, because the whole story would only take two minutes. He read the two letters of immunity again, and glanced back up at the detectives before him. He agreed to tell them everything.
44:16 Kylie Low? Bernard began by admitting that the story about a telegram from his old prison pal was all part of a scheme to make a quick buck. Bernard explained that he'd secretly taken $10,000 from his wife's bank account and needed to make it back quickly. He figured selling drugs, specifically cocaine, was the easiest way to do that. His goal that day, March 15, 1976, was to get Iris to join him in a cocaine distribution enterprise. He thought Iris might be able to talk to her boyfriend Martin, who was at that time incarcerated on cocaine charges, into supplying the product, and then Iris would sell it in Burlington. Bernard presented this idea to her soon after they left her apartment that night. An argument ensued.
45:01 Kylie Low? Iris didn't want to help him. As has been made clear by Iris's loved ones, she did not use drugs and was not associated with that scene at all. They stopped at a gas station in Waterbury, and Iris made a call from a payphone there, which checks out with records from the original investigation. But Bernard said that once they got back in the car, they headed back north towards Burlington, and did not continue on to Springfield, Massachusetts, or Danbury, Connecticut, as he'd previously claimed. They'd reached an area near the Shellburn Museum in Shellburn, Vermont, less than 10 miles outside of Burlington, when he stopped to relieve himself off the side of the road. He said he never actually got the chance to do that because he claimed Iris was calling
45:45 Kylie Low? him names and yelling at him. He said Iris wanted to fight him, so he reached inside the driver's door and grabbed her by the arm. He pulled her out of the car and onto the ground. He strangled her with his hands. Bernard said he panicked when he realized he'd killed Iris. He placed her body on the floor of the front seat of the car and then got back onto the interstate heading south. Somewhere just south of the Waterbury exit, he pulled over on the side of the road. He took Iris's body out of the car and, quote, "I just laid her in a stream," end quote. Thinking back, he wasn't sure if it was actually a stream or just trickling water from snow melt. He couldn't be sure if Iris would have been carried downstream by the water because he
46:30 Kylie Low? remembered it being very shallow. Bernard said he got back in the car and drove south on the interstate until he was south of Berry, and then turned around and headed north again. He ran out of gas near the Berry exit, and a cop helped him get gas before sending him on his way. This part of the story also checks out. It was all out in the open now, but Bernard was either unable or unwilling to get any more specific about the location of Iris's remains. The detectives offered to have US Marshals bring Bernard to Vermont to point out the area where he left Iris's body, but he said that would be a waste of money. He really wasn't sure.
47:13 Kylie Low? When asked if he had anything to say to Iris's family and if he felt any remorse, Bernard responded, quote, "Tell them I'm very sorry. I've always felt remorse. One thing I can say is that it was pretty fast. There was no torture and no sex." End quote. He said that he never intended to kill her that night. It just happened. With that, Bernard signed the back of the prosecutor's letters, and the detectives handed him their business cards, should anything else come to mind. When Iris's sister received the call from police that the man suspected in her disappearance all along had confessed, she said it was, quote, "The best call of my life." End quote.
47:56 Kylie Low? Iris's family was relieved if that word can even capture their range of emotions following the news, but this form of closure did not put an end to their pain. Quote, "Closure is a word that people reach for in situations like this, but it does not mean that a terrible experience comes to an end. It does mean we finally understand with certainty what happened to Iris and the horrible chain of events that resulted in her death." End quote. After William Bernard Posey's confession, an attorney who was federal prosecutor back in the 70s, Jerome O'Neill, said in no uncertain terms, "He was a very dangerous man. I have no doubt that if Posey had not been caught when he was,
48:41 Kylie Low? he would have killed more women." Did he kill more women? Is it possible that this dangerous man is responsible for other homicides and missing persons cases that have yet to be linked to him? His movements before and after Iris's disappearance were traced from Vermont to Florida to New York, across the United States border into Canada, back into the US in Ohio and Kentucky and Illinois, and then Texas before he was apprehended. I'm putting it out there that if any cases in those states between 1976 and 1980 sound similar to the strangulation deaths of Judith and Iris, and if those cases are unsolved, maybe take a look at William, aka Bernard Posey.
49:25 Kylie Low? And remember, he might not have used that name at the time. Over the last few months, I've been trying to track down information about William Posey. I'm super curious to find out if his DNA was ever entered into CODIS. Quick refresher on CODIS. It stands for the Combined DNA Index System, and it is a nationwide program using FBI-developed software that allows DNA profiles to be added to a database under certain categories, like forensic crime scene samples, convicted offender samples, unidentified human remains, and relatives of missing persons. Comparisons can be made among samples to hopefully generate new investigative leads. In every state in the United States
50:10 Kylie Low? and at the federal level, there are laws that require certain convicted individuals to provide DNA samples for inclusion in CODIS.
50:19 Kylie Low? But CODIS, in its current form, was established well after the crimes and convictions of Bernard Posey. Trying to figure out if his sample was collected as a retroactive participation in these requirements has not been easy. I actually got in touch with Detective Helrick, who has since retired from police work, and he didn't collect anything from Posey to generate a DNA profile for CODIS, and we know that back in 76, that wasn't even a topic. So was a DNA profile ever generated and submitted? If not, is it still a possibility? I know that William Posey is deceased. He died in 2020. But at one point during the investigation, he gave a blood sample.
51:04 Kylie Low? Does that specimen still exist? Can that be used for anything? Clearly, I'm still working on this. Something is just nagging at me to get Bernard's DNA profile checked against unsolved crimes in the places he tore his way through while on the run. So TBD. But you know I'll update you when I can.
51:25 Kylie Low? Iris Brown's name and photo are now listed on the Vermont State Police website of unsolved cases. Her remains have not yet been recovered. Police have dental records on file for Iris. Should unidentified skeletal remains ever be recovered? And in 2010, Burlington Police thought they might have had a hit from the NCIC index. On September 13th, 2010, Burlington Police received a teletype from the Records Division regarding human remains that were recovered in the state of Delaware in 1977. The teletype apparently matched the NCIC dental records from Iris Brown's missing persons case. However, upon direct comparison between Iris's dental charts and radiographs on file,
52:10 Kylie Low? the victim in Delaware was not a match. So Iris is still missing. Iris's parents have since passed away, but she has surviving siblings who love and miss her each day. They want to bring her home. She's out there. If the person who confessed to her murder is to be believed, her remains may be located somewhere in Chittenden County, somewhere just south of the Waterbury exit, somewhere in a wooded area just beyond a guardrail, possibly in a stream. If you have information that could help bring Iris Brown home, please contact Vermont State Police via the tip form linked in the description of this episode.
52:50 Kylie Low? You can also submit a tip anonymously by texting VTIPS to 274637. 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 Dark Down East. 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.
53:31 Kylie Low? I'm Kylie Low and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audio Check. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve? (growling) In New England, investigations can shift with the tide. And my friend Delia Diambra, host of Park Predators, knows just how the landscape can shape a case. From beaches to national parks around the world, Delia investigates true crime cases as compelling as the places where they occurred. Through her signature boots-on-the-ground reporting, she goes beyond the headlines and speaks directly with those closest to the case.
54:15 Kylie Low? If you're ready to follow the evidence beyond the trail, listen to Park Predators every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts.
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