Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hi, I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast unlike any other. Why? Because every case I cover comes from the heart of my home, New England. From the rocky main coast to the historic streets of Boston to the quiet corners of Vermont and beyond, I investigate stories filled with untold twists, enduring questions, and voices that deserve to be heard.
So if you're ready to explore the darker side of New England, join me every week for Dark Down East. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. This audio check show is brought to you by Toyota. Toyota is the best resale value brand for 2025, according to Kelley Blue Book's KBB.com. And with dependable vehicles for any lifestyle, you can get everything you need today while investing in tomorrow.
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She moved from Florida to New Hampshire on the promise of a job and a place to live. But just a few months later, Eddie Seagal disappeared without a trace. When the vehicle Eddie was driving on the day she was last seen alive turned up abandoned in the woods of a neighboring town, investigators missed opportunities to uncover potentially critical evidence. Evidence that still eludes the case to this day. What happened on that New England summer day in 1977?
Someone, or maybe multiple someones, pulled the answer to that question. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Eddie Seagal on Dark Down East. It hadn't been very long since she'd moved to the Northeast. By the summer of 1977, 33-year-old Eddie Seagal had only been in Nashua, New Hampshire for a little over five months, but she was already a regular at the Woman's World gym and spa in the nearby town of Merrimack.
On June 15th, 1977, Eddie had a routine 2:15 p.m. class to attend, as she did almost every day. The health club was less than 10 miles away from where she was living in Nashua, but Eddie was carless and it was too far to walk. Luckily, the married couple she was living with often let Eddie borrow their vehicle, a 1969 Oldsmobile '88.
So that Wednesday afternoon around 1pm, Eddie walked out the door with the borrowed Oldsmobile keys in hand. Dressed in blue jeans and a white tank top jersey, a pair of green sandals and a brown purse slung over her shoulder. She had nothing else but a towel with her, and off she went. As the hours ticked steadily by, it's possible that the first person who noticed something was amiss was a staff member at the health club.
The 2:15 class began and Eddie wasn't in it. That was odd for the woman described as a faithful regular at Women's World. Later that evening, the couple Eddie lived with began to wonder what was taking Eddie so long to get home with their car. They'd expected her to join them for dinner at their house that night, but Eddie didn't show. The couple started calling around to see if they could track Eddie down that night.
Now, although their names are in the public record, out of respect for their privacy, I'll use only their first names, Stephen and Rosalind. Rosalind's name is actually misreported in other sources as Rosaline with an E at the end, but county deed records confirm her name was in fact Rosalind with a D. Again, Eddie hadn't lived in the area for very long, so her social circle was small. But those Stephen and Rosalind reached didn't have any idea where Eddie might be.
A call to Women's World revealed what staff already knew, that Eddie never even made it to class. According to case file documents, Eddie was supposed to go out with Rosalind after dinner, possibly for a little shopping, but she never showed up for those plans either. At 1.14 a.m. on June 16th, after Eddie was long past due to return home with the car, the couple called Nashua police to file a missing persons report and an attempt to locate for Eddie.
The next day, June 17th, Stephen filed an insurance claim for his vehicle. By June 20th, with no sign of Eddie or the Oldsmobile, the couple filed a stolen vehicle report with the Nashua Police Department.
Leafing through the over 200 pages of case file documents I've received via New Hampshire's right to know laws, it seems as if almost two weeks passed before the unexplained absence of the Nashua newcomer received any serious consideration from law enforcement. And by then, the trail of evidence was already growing cold.
On July 3rd, 1977, Hollis Police received a call from a resident that there was an abandoned vehicle on a logging road deep in the woods off Wheeler Road.
Hollis Police Chief Paul Busque responded to the reported location about two and a half miles down Wheeler Road from Broad Street. About two miles down the logging road, Chief Busque located a 1969 Oldsmobile Delta 88 parked face into a brush pile in Pine Grove. The chief ran a registration check to find that the vehicle had been reported stolen almost two weeks earlier.
Chief Busque checked inside and around the car, not finding any signs that a driver or owner was lingering nearby. But on the front seat, he located a black leotard and towel. In the back, a crushed leather cowboy hat was on the seat. Inside the trunk was a folding army shovel, a spare tire, and some miscellaneous tools.
The chief made note that the front seat was pushed forward in a way that seemed to indicate a shorter person had driven the car into the woods. The ignition of the vehicle was intact, yet the keys weren't inside. Chief Busque found them about 150 feet behind the car, on the ground in the middle of the logging road in the direction of Wheeler Road. The car was towed to a local garage and Stephen and Rosalind were notified that their missing vehicle had been recovered.
Stephen took possession of the vehicle soon after. In a later interview, Stephen said that he had to put some gas in the tank as it was nearly empty and the inside was kind of a mess, soaking wet and muddy. However, as far as he could recall, the exterior was not muddy. There was no mud on the hood or the windshield and no mud in the tires.
Otherwise, the car did have some damage. The oil pan, front end, fender, and body were all damaged and the hubcaps were missing. Other than that, there was nothing unusual about the condition of the car when it was returned to him. He noted that the cigarettes in the ashtray were all the same brand that Eddie was known to smoke. Stephen told detectives that the cowboy hat found in the car was his, but he rarely wore it.
He said that it shouldn't have been crushed, as the police chief had found it when the car was recovered, but it also might have been. He wasn't sure. Records indicate that no forensic examination was done on the car, and there's no mention of what happened to the shovel, the miscellaneous tools, or any of the other items found inside. It's hard to say if this skipping forensic examination was an inadvertent error or an intentional choice.
One of the original investigators working Eddie's case, a Hollis PD officer named Joseph Manning, would later say that he didn't see anything out of the ordinary about the vehicle. There was no blood and no sign of a struggle. Two days later, on July 5th, Officer Manning had four divers search a small pond near the location the car was found, but the dive effort didn't produce anything valuable to the case.
Several Hollis officers returned to the woods together to search for evidence for a body or a shallow grave. They didn't find anything either. Over the next several months, Hollis police conducted an investigation into Eddie's disappearance and the circumstances of her life leading up to June 15th, 1977.
Investigators interviewed Stephen and Rosalind, staff at the health club, and a few other individuals who knew Eddie in the few short months she'd been living in Nashua, including the man who was the reason she'd moved to New Hampshire in the first place. There's limited background information about the personal life of Eddie Miltah Seagal.
Her maiden name was Eddie Mermelstein, and census records show that Eddie was born in New Jersey and later moved to Florida where she got married and then divorced in 1973. She kept the Seagal surname. Eddie's mother passed away in 2012, and her father passed away in 2018. He was 93 years old.
According to Nashua PD case file documents, Eddie has a documented history of run-ins with the law in Florida, including charges related to sex work. And it was in Florida that Eddie first met a man who we're going to call by the fake name Charlie. Charlie was on vacation in Miami with someone, possibly a partner or friend, when he first met Eddie in November of 1976.
The exact nature of Charlie and Eddie's interactions isn't explicitly stated in case file documents, but between November 8th and 15th, Charlie met with Eddie three times. There's an obvious implication in the case file that Eddie met Charlie in her capacity as a sex worker.
Before his vacation was over, Charlie asked Eddie to move to New Hampshire to spend more time with him and to work as his secretary. Eddie accepted the offer. Over the next few weeks, Charlie made arrangements for Eddie to move up north. He bought a plane ticket from Florida to Boston and sent Eddie a $30 check for relocation expenses. Eddie apparently cashed that check and redeemed the plane ticket. But when the flight was set to depart, Eddie wasn't on it.
However, on January 17th, 1977, Charlie bought another plane ticket for Eddie, and she did make it on that flight. She flew into Boston, where Charlie picked her up sometime at the end of January. Nashua PD records show that a little over a week after Eddie moved to New Hampshire, around 1.33 a.m. on February 3rd, officers responded to a disturbance at Charlie's house in Nashua.
Charlie told police that Eddie had been drinking a lot and was yelling and swearing. Charlie explained that he'd invited Eddie up from Florida to be his secretary, but she wasn't working out, so he planned to fly her back to Florida. The arrest report notes that Eddie showed signs of significant intoxication, and so police took her into protective custody for the rest of the night. Despite what Charlie said, Eddie did not return to Florida after the incident.
It appears she remained in Charlie's house and continued an intimate relationship, but based on statements in the case file, they had a mutual understanding that on Friday nights, they'd, quote, go their separate ways. According to a witness, this meant Charlie went out and Eddie stayed home. One particular Friday night, Charlie went out to Telly's Disco, just over the New Hampshire border in Tingsborough, Massachusetts, about a nine-mile drive from Nashua.
When Charlie returned home that night, he brought a woman with him, which upset Eddie. She grabbed her stuff from the bedroom she shared with Charlie and moved to a different room in the house. Charlie routinely rented out the rooms in his house to whoever had money to pay. Sometime around February 13th, a new tenant moved into one of the bedrooms. We'll call the new tenant by the fake name Brad.
Over the next few weeks, Eddie and Brad got to know each other, eventually developing an intimate relationship of their own. Sometime during the week of March 17th, Charlie came home to find Eddie alone in a room with Brad. Charlie was irate at the sight of them together. According to Brad, Charlie dragged Eddie from the room and down the stairs, threw her on the floor and started hitting her. Brad intervened and got Charlie to stop, but Charlie was still angry.
He told Eddie and Brad he was going away for the weekend, and he wanted them both gone by the time he returned. Eddie and Brad complied with Charlie's request, and it seems they both found lodging together with one of Brad's co-workers and the co-worker's wife. This is how Eddie came to live with Stephen and Rosalind, whose vehicle she borrowed on the day she was last seen, and the same car that was found abandoned in the woods about two weeks after she drove off in it.
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Investigators learned that when Eddie and Brad moved into Stephen and Rosalind's home, they shared a room and continued an intimate relationship. But Charlie was trying to rekindle his own relationship with Eddie. He sent letters and cards to Eddie's parents that he asked to be forwarded along to Eddie.
According to the narrative within the Hollis PD case file, investigators believed that Charlie didn't know where Eddie was living and he didn't have her phone number, at least until April 17th. The first letter, sent April 7th, 1977, is part apology, part love note. Charlie said he was sorry for the assault in March and professed his love for Eddie. He wrote that he wanted her back.
Charlie sent another letter on April 14th, telling Eddie he loved her and had a great time with her. The letter to Eddie was accompanied by a letter to Eddie's father from Charlie, thanking her father for forwarding the correspondence along. Charlie also wrote in his letter to Eddie's father that he and Eddie got together for drinks recently and things went well. He said Eddie promised to call him again, and he was hopeful that they'd get back together. ♪
Eddie's mother and father told police they did forward the letters on at least one occasion. Eddie's mother sent Eddie a letter of her own on April 18th to tell her she'd received another of Charlie's letters. In a separate letter to Eddie, her mother writes how upset she was to learn that Eddie had been mistreated. Eddie's mother also asked who Eddie was living with and how the job search was going.
When Hollis Police spoke with Charlie on July 7th, 1977, a few days after the car was recovered, he explained that when he met Eddie in Florida, he thought he could change her life. He described Eddie as a quote-unquote challenge to him. But then Charlie also admitted to Officer Manning that once Eddie was in the Northeast, he personally set up a meeting between Eddie and a client in Massachusetts, and she made $40.00.
Now, Charlie gave his own version of the night in March when he assaulted Eddie. He said he didn't really remember much, but he lost his temper and he admitted to throwing Eddie on the floor and he may have hit her. Charlie claimed that his relationship with Eddie was on again, off again after he kicked her out of the house, but they'd recently met for drinks at the 88 restaurant in Nashua. Charlie claimed that after those drinks, they drove to the woods in the town of Hudson and had sex.
Hollis PD interviewed Brad as part of the early investigation, too. He was forthcoming about his relationship with Eddie before and after they lived in Charlie's house together. Their relationship grew from the Friday nights at home when it was just the two of them watching TV together while Charlie was out. Brad said when they moved into Steven and Rosalind's house, he and Eddie also shared a room. And according to Brad, it was, quote, "...common knowledge that Eddie was a sex worker."
Brad admitted to referring clients to Eddie, including several of his and Steven's coworkers, and Eddie maintained contracts with these clients. Brad said Eddie met with most of the clients in their room at Steven and Rosalind's home.
According to Officer Manning's initial report, dated August 2nd, 1977, Charlie, Brad, and Stephen all agreed to submit to polygraph tests as part of the ongoing investigation into Eddie's disappearance. It was Officer Manning's opinion at that point that Eddie's disappearance was the result of a homicide. ♪
Though there's no official record of it in either the Nashua or Hollis files I've received for this case, a letter written by Charlie himself indicates he sat down for his polygraph examination on November 5th, 1977, and it didn't go so well. I obtained a copy of a letter written by Charlie to Officer Manning following the polygraph examination. In barely legible script handwriting, Charlie titled the letter, quote,
The five-page long letter lists 26 total items that Charlie felt impacted the results of his polygraph examination that day.
The stressors included a breakdown in his relationship, including a big fight on the same day, financial and business troubles, mounting debt, worry that the Catholic Church wouldn't grant him an annulment for his first marriage in time to marry someone else who he described as his entire life, as well as owed back taxes.
The letter also mentions that several people had shown him a newspaper article, possibly about Eddie's disappearance, though it doesn't say what the article was actually about, just that the people who showed it to him, quote, weren't too nice about it, end quote. Though it's not explicitly stated, it appears that Charlie failed the polygraph examination. On January 7th, a polygraph examination was administered to Brad,
By this point, New Hampshire State Police Sergeant John Broderick and Detective Corporal Clayton Young were assisting local authorities in the investigation. Among the questions the detective asked Brad during the polygraph exam were, quote,
The detective found a score of minus two based on three charts, which was far from conclusive. Quote, there is barely a leaning towards deception, end quote. The detective also noted that the subject appeared to have a mild cold on the day of the test. Brad was reportedly cooperative throughout the test and told police he was willing to do whatever it took to get answers or obtain information about Charlie.
Brad referred back to that night at Charlie's house when Charlie attacked Eddie, saying that Charlie had a quote, crazed glare in his eyes that scared him. Brad said that when he went to intervene, he actually took a chair and a bottle with him to fend Charlie off. State and local detectives were taking a critical look at the life and times of Charlie and managed to reach one of Charlie's ex-girlfriends.
According to a supplemental report contained in the Nashua Police case file, the ex-girlfriend said that Charlie was known to take out life insurance policies on the people who rented rooms in his house and his girlfriends, including the ex-girlfriend and allegedly on Eddie. The woman said the policies were usually in the amount of $100,000.
The woman also told police that she had consented to Charlie taking nude photographs of her, and Charlie had shown her photos of Eddie in which she was performing sex acts.
The ex-girlfriend believed the photos were all kept in a file cabinet in Charlie's home office. According to the report, Charlie had previously admitted to Officer Manning that he had nude photographs of Eddie. Though I can't seem to track that down in the case file outside of this secondhand mention. But we're going to come back to the topic of photos.
On January 23rd, about a week after speaking with Charlie's ex-girlfriend and learning about these alleged life insurance policies and other possible evidence, New Hampshire State Police executed a search warrant at Charlie's residence and home office.
The inventory return listed on the warrant indicates that investigators seized photographs, pornographic films, birthday cards, medical and entertainment receipts, checks made out to Eddie Segal, five firearms, and assorted ammunition. The firearms and ammo were turned over to the state police lab for indexing and examination, and it appears that some evidence of potential insurance fraud was also found,
But I don't see it spelled out that a life insurance policy that Charlie held on Eddie was specifically found during the search. The same day that the search warrant was executed, Detective Young and Sergeant Broderick interviewed a number of people, including Brad. During Brad's interview, he admitted that at one point during his life, he was involved in the quote-unquote drug trade. But that was in the past.
He also said that he'd previously taken a polygraph examination and would do it again if asked. But when the interview concluded, he changed his mind. After speaking with his attorney, Brad told the detective he didn't want to take a polygraph. And from the case synopsis directly, quote, end quote.
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The investigation was very open and active through the first few months of 1978 after state police joined the effort. Witness interviews continued into February, including conversations with a few friends of Charlie's who were familiar with the goings-on at his house in Nashua. The witnesses had met and became acquainted with Eddie during the time she lived at Charlie's house.
One of the witnesses, a woman, said that she had a few opportunities to speak with Eddie and said Eddie was quiet and didn't talk much about her personal life. But the woman knew that Eddie was engaged in sex work. When asked about Charlie taking nude photos of Eddie and other people, the woman said she didn't know anything about it. But it was the detective's opinion that she had more to say than she was letting on. The witness did say something that was worth noting about the photos though.
She thought Eddie might have used the photos to blackmail her clients under Charlie's pressure. And another witness backed this accusation up. The other witness, a man, said that a friend of his who previously dated Charlie had been pressured by him to extort money from someone, but she declined to participate. When she did, the witness claimed that Charlie assaulted his friend.
Interestingly, this witness said that Brad was also known to have many photographs of women engaged in sex acts that he apparently took himself and sold for a profit. The witness claimed there were so many photos that Brad kept them in a big brown suitcase.
When investigators followed up with the woman who this witness claimed had been pressured to extort money from someone under Charlie's direction, she said it never happened, but that Charlie did assault her and attempt to break her arm. The case file documents obtained from Nashua PD show the investigation fizzling out not long after those witness interviews.
There was a tip from a psychic in February of 1978 regarding a safety deposit box that Eddie was supposed to have, but it didn't turn into anything. The psychic continued to provide information to state police through 1979 to no avail. After that, the files I received from both Nashua and Hollis PD from the original late 1970s era investigation end.
Eddie's case went cold except for what looks like a standalone tip that came in on January 21st, 1981. A witness said that they'd overheard a conversation about a relative who was bragging about, quote, taking downers and beating a polygraph test given by Nashua police and it was related to a homicide investigation. There's no evidence that this tip received any follow-up.
As of this episode's recording, I haven't received any documents from New Hampshire State Police, so it remains possible that more investigative effort was dedicated to Eddie's case beyond what the files I have access to show. But what I can say for sure is that after Eddie's case went cold somewhere along the line, it would be more than 30 years before Eddie Seagal received a renewed law enforcement investigation.
In 2010, the police department in the town where the borrowed Oldsmobile was recovered reopened the case. Hollis PD were the first to admit that more could have been done back in 1977 and 78. Lieutenant James Sartell told Kathy Cleveland for the Nashua Telegraph that the original investigation didn't meet present-day standards and said there were a lot of loose ends.
The choice to reopen the case was in part because Eddie's family was still looking for closure, and that was well worth it to police. When Sergeant Richard Mello reviewed the original case file more than 30 years after the fact, he concluded that there was no indication Eddie Seagal was missing by her own choosing. Bank records revealed that Eddie was writing checks for bills up to two days before she disappeared, but there had been no activity on her social security number since.
Rosalind informed police that Eddie left all of her personal belongings behind at their house, and no one heard from her, not family or friends, since June 15th, 1977. The new investigation began quietly, with police reaching out to witnesses for interviews.
Detective Angelo Corrado and Sergeant Richard Mello spoke with former Hollis officer Joseph Manning, who you'll remember was one of the first officials on Eddie's case after the car was discovered. Investigators also spoke to Eddie's father, they re-interviewed Rosalind, who had since been divorced from Stephen, and they talked to others who knew and dated Charlie, and they also tracked down Charlie himself.
Now, most of what detectives spoke with Joseph Manning about on March 23rd, 2010 was already contained in his original reports from 1977 and 78. But Joseph said that after he moved on from the police department, he came into some other information that he felt was relevant to Eddie's disappearance. Joseph shared two names with the detectives, both of which had not come up in previous reports in the case file.
Joseph said that the two individuals had known ties to the drug trade in Nashua. He alleged that there was an active operation in the area that included dropping large quantities of weed from small airplanes into the town forest in Hollis. Joseph also suggested that the person who paid for Eddie to move up to New Hampshire, the man we're calling Charlie, was possibly using Eddie to move drugs from Florida.
Joseph had always felt that Eddie's demise had something to do with drugs, and that she may have known too much about something. This conversation with Joseph is among the few mentions of a working theory in Eddie's disappearance, if you want to call it that. Maybe Eddie was wrapped up with a crowd involved in illegal activities, including the sale of weed or other drugs.
As the 2010 interviews continued, detectives raised the subject of drugs with other witnesses, including Charlie. Charlie sat down with a detective on September 13th, 2010 at the Hollis police station. And from the beginning, I think the detective braced himself for an interesting conversation. After informing Charlie that he was not under arrest, he could leave at any time, and that the interview would be recorded, Charlie consented to being interviewed.
And then Charlie apparently took the lead and started sharing some unsolicited information with the detective. According to a Hollis Police Department summary of the interview, Charlie began telling Detective Corrado that he nearly died in a car accident several years earlier. And he reasoned that if he'd done anything wrong to Eddie Seagal, he would not have survived the injuries. So that's where the interview started.
The detective went on to ask Charlie some background questions about his drug and alcohol use. Charlie said that he'd never done drugs except the three times he smoked pot in his life, and then he went on a quote tirade about his disgust for drugs. He said that the only thing he was guilty of was chasing women and drinking too much.
Detective Corrado described Charlie as, quote, Charlie talked about how he met Eddie in a bar in Florida and asked her to move up to New Hampshire to spend time with him and work at his insurance business. Charlie said that time in his life and the scene at his house in Nashua was a complete party, though he continued to deny any drug use.
He said he rented out rooms to whoever would pay and he moved Eddie in there with him too. He was fairly unfiltered talking about the nature of his sexual relationship with Eddie and admitted that on the night he found her in a room with another man, he quote, Charlie avoided specific descriptions of the assault on Eddie but did not deny it happened. He said that he wasn't good to Eddie but that was the only time he touched her.
Interestingly, Charlie said he couldn't remember the name of the person he found Eddie with that night. It was the same person who intervened during the assault and the same person Charlie told to move out of his house at the same time as Eddie, yet he couldn't remember the name. However, when the detective said the name of that individual, Charlie agreed that's who it was. Charlie went on to tell the detective that he didn't know where Eddie went after she moved out, and then he changed the subject.
Charlie thought it relevant to mention that he used to have breakfast at the Howard Johnson's on Lake Street near the highway as a matter of habit. And then things circled back to Eddie again. Charlie said he didn't care where she was living and he didn't try to find her. But he did see her again on at least two occasions. Once when he claims Eddie sought him out and they had sex in the woods in Hudson.
and another time at a club called Brothers 4 in Nashua. Details of that night are redacted in the case file. There's more from Charlie we gotta talk about, but I wanna pause here to drill down into this seemingly random tidbit he offered up about having breakfast at the Hojo's on Lake Street.
In more than one witness interview conducted during the original 1977 and 1978 investigation, it's mentioned that Charlie was routinely seen parked on Lake Street in Nashua between 7 and 7.15 in the morning, almost every day. But after Eddie disappeared, his car wasn't seen there again except for June 17th when an unidentified female drove by in the car.
Now Lake Street intersected the street where Eddie was living with Rosalind and Steven. At first, this seemed like it could have been a coincidence, but did Charlie bring up his breakfast habit as a way to set up a reason for him to be near Eddie's place of residence leading up to her disappearance? Towards the end of the interview, Detective Corrado began to question Charlie's honesty.
He asked Charlie if he knew where he was on the day Eddie disappeared. And Charlie said he was probably sitting by the pool and anticipating a date he had later in the day. But the detective pointed out that according to his records, this was a much different explanation than what was contained in the police file. Charlie's secretary at the time told investigators that he was in Massachusetts with clients or work associates in the morning and then in the office that afternoon, but
There was no evidence this story was corroborated or indication that Charlie was specifically questioned regarding his whereabouts on June 15th, 1977. Charlie thought it necessary to mention that the secretary stopped working for him after he physically tried to, quote, get in her pants, end quote. Needless to say, something is up with this Charlie guy.
It's obvious from how witnesses talked about him in 1977 and 1978 interviews, and his own statements in the 2010 interview don't really give me any warm fuzzies either, to put it very informally.
But a case can't be built on weird vibes. As far as can be discerned from the case file, investigators still have yet to uncover hard proof of their suspicion that a crime was involved in Eddie's disappearance. Recovering Eddie's remains would certainly change the direction of the case. And efforts to do just that were well underway as part of the renewed investigation.
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The natural landscape in the woods of Hollis, New Hampshire has changed a lot since 1977.
Logging roads that were once more clearly worn into the forest floor have been reclaimed by root systems and moss. Construction projects have changed the footprint of previously recognizable plots, and landmarks that might once have been helpful to navigate to a specific location have changed too.
According to notes within the original case file, the abandoned Oldsmobile Delta 88 was found on a logging road off Wheeler Road, but questions remained in 2010 as to the precise location of the car. In November, Hollis PD, assisted by former officer Joseph Manning, narrowed down with quote approximately 99% certainty the location of the vehicle Eddie was last known to be driving.
It was believed to be in Hollistown Forest, very near Parker Pond. So, with 99% certainty, Hollis PD requested the assistance of the Canine Alert Search Team cadaver dogs and began a grid search in that area. Two cadaver dogs and their handlers divided up the areas north and south of the vehicle's location. The dogs searching the points north of the car identified an area of interest near Parker Pond
And the handler asked that the other dog search in that area too. The other dog also alerted in the same area of interest. But the handler explained that since this spot was downhill from the resting point of the car and water holds scent for a long time, it made sense that the dogs were reacting there.
Two Hollis officers accompanying the search dogs penetrated the ground in the area of interest and allowed the scent to rise for about 20 minutes before the dogs were brought to the location to check it again. Once again, the dogs signaled in the area of interest. With that, the officers narrowed down the search location and planned to return again in a few weeks. A second search on December 9th did not generate any new information.
However, it appears other searches were conducted with additional cadaver dogs because Sgt. Corrado states in a future report, "...the area has been identified as a possible clandestine grave by six cadaver dogs."
Over the next few months, Sergeant Corrado contacted Dr. Alan Gantz, a professor at UMass Boston in the field of coastal geology and geophysics with experience in ground-penetrating radar. The professor agreed to help search the area previously identified by the search dogs and their handlers deep in the woods of Hollis.
On August 18th, 2011, Dr. Gantz trekked into the woods alongside the canine handler, Lieutenant Mello, and Sergeant Corrado with sonar equipment at the ready. The professor directed a systematic search of the area, noting the findings for analysis.
According to a report by Sergeant Corrado in the case file, Dr. Gantz determined that there was a three foot by five foot area of the ground approximately two feet below the surface that showed signs of being disturbed, consistent with digging and returning the soil back into place.
When that spot was compared to the entire area of the grid search with the sonar, a section about 15 feet by 20 feet surrounding the smaller 3x5 area was undisturbed. But here's where the story comes to a screeching halt.
The report about the ground-penetrating radar search and Dr. Gaunt's findings is the last page in the 25 pages of Hollis PD documents that were shared with me for Eddie's case. I reached out to Detective Kurt Thompson at Hollis Police Department, who, according to my sources, is currently assigned to Eddie Seagal's case. He responded to me via email and said to ask anything I wanted and he'd answer as much as he could.
Unfortunately, he has not yet responded as of this episode's recording. I don't know what has been done about the suspected clandestine grave, or if it has since been ruled out as a possible location of Eddie's remains. As far as I can tell, the person we've been calling Brad is deceased. But Charlie? Charlie is still out there. So I tried giving him a call. Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging service
I have not heard back from Charlie either.
Part of the source material that got me started on Eddie's case was originally obtained by a fellow New Englander with a special interest in unsolved missing persons cases and disappearances dating back to the 1970s. She has collaborated with another researcher who is digging into the possibility of an unidentified serial killer active in and around Massachusetts in the mid-1970s.
This researcher determined that the circumstances of Eddie's case do not align with the other cases enough to conclude that she was a victim of the possible serial killer he is tracking, but he wanted to see the case covered somehow. Enter Dark Down East.
The 25 pages of the heavily redacted Hollis PD case file he shared led me to hundreds of unredacted documents from other agencies, allowing me to decipher names and locations and details about the case that were previously unknown to the public.
Side note, this researcher is seeking information about a different case, the 1972 homicide of Beverly A. Johnson in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. If this name rings a bell, send me a DM at darkdowneast on Instagram.
So after months up to my neck in documents for this case, it's safe to say that Eddie's case could fill an entire miniseries. Honestly, I'm tempted because there are so many angles to follow up on and interviews to pursue and more to uncover, tons of loose ends to tie up into much more satisfying bows. Like the shovel. I want to talk about the shovel for a second because it's this odd thread that's woven throughout the case file documents.
I don't know if the shovel reportedly found in the trunk of Stephen and Rosalind's car was ever tested for any sort of forensic evidence relative to Eddie's disappearance. Actually, no one can seem to agree if the folding army shovel, as it is described in the initial report from Hollis PD, was truly in the trunk of the car when it was found.
The Hollis police chief noted that there was a shovel in the trunk of the car on the day it was found in the woods. A detective asked Rosalind about the contents of the vehicle when Eddie borrowed it, specifically about the shovel found in the trunk of the car. Rosalind said she knew the shovel that police were referring to and it belonged to a neighbor, but she didn't think it was in the car when Eddie borrowed it.
Interestingly enough, Rosalind believed that Brad borrowed it from the neighbor before going out searching for Eddie after she disappeared. According to Brad's interviews, he did go out searching for Eddie with another person after the car was found and brought the shovel with him. Brad even said he'd found what he believed to be an area of interest about a mile from the car's location and had taken police to that spot, but they didn't find anything.
Was the police chief mistaken when he put in his report that there was a folding army shovel in the trunk of the car? If not, and if Eddie is out there somewhere in a yet-to-be-unearthed clandestine grave, did someone use that shovel to conceal her remains? I can't confirm that at the moment. Here's another detail within the case file that continues to nag at me.
Among the items obtained during the search of Charlie's home were birthday cards, which on the surface sounds fairly innocuous. But there are scans of some birthday cards within the case file documents, and I don't know if they're the same ones collected during the search or what, but one really stuck out to me.
The front of the card is a cartoon character clutching their hands together, head tipped back and apparently yelling the text above, quote, I'll never let you go. Never, I tell you. Never. Inside the card is the message, you know too much, end quote. It is signed with a nickname that happens to be a Zodiac sign.
Now, the Zodiac sign lines up with Eddie's birthday. So maybe she gave that card to Charlie. But on the other cards in the case file, Eddie signed her name, not this Zodiac sign nickname. So who sent who the card about knowing too much? I don't have an answer to that question, nor can I answer the biggest question of all. What happened to Eddie Seagal?
Did a meeting with a client turn dangerous? Is it possible that Charlie, angry that Eddie had moved on with Brad, did something to her? Or could it have been the theory that Officer Manning has suspected all along, that Eddie was wrapped up in something illegal and she knew too much?
The theories don't stop there. Nothing has been ruled in or out. No one has been charged with any crimes related to Eddie's disappearance. This case needs information. If the establishments I mentioned, the locations I talked about, the circumstances and the people in Eddie's orbit at the time of her disappearance sound like the rumors you've heard whispered in your New England communities or beyond, speak up.
This case turns 48 years old this year. It's time for some answers. It's time to prove that time does not erase the truth. It only strengthens our resolve to find it. Eddie needs to be found.
Finding her remains could lead to critical information about what happened to her, or even who was responsible, and she deserves the dignity of being laid to rest. Every tip, every recollection, every small detail shared brings us closer to uncovering the truth. So if you have information about the 1977 disappearance of Eddie Seagal,
Please contact Hollis Police at 603-465-7637. You can also submit a tip to the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit via the form linked in the description of this episode or call the New Hampshire State Police Major Crime Unit at 603-271-2663.
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 Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. ♪
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