Cape Breton Three: The Boys on the Tracks
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This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA. I'm your host, Kristen Seavey. You can connect with me at MurderSheTold.com or follow on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast.

In the early morning light of July 10th, 1970, a freight train chugged along its usual route on the Bangor and Aroostook railway line in the wilderness of Smyrna Mills, Maine, 15 miles from the Canadian border. Its powerful locomotive pulled 19 rumbling boxcars along at a brisk 40 miles per hour, and its heavy steel wheels thundered down the tracks.

Despite the roar of the massive machinery in the Aroostook wilderness, the trees were sleepy and peaceful. A dewy summer morning in Maine. The only wind present was that created by the passing train. A typical morning on a typical route from Oakfield to Caribou.

As the train rounded a bend near Timoney Crossing, the conductor, Earl Capon, and an onboard fireman, Ralph Fowler, spotted some debris on the tracks. Earl squinted, trying to get a sense for what it was. It looked like a rubber raft. Suddenly, Ralph's shouting broke his contemplation.

"Sleeping bags! They're sleeping bags!" he screamed. Earl blasted the horn, but the sleeping bags were totally still. With 150 feet to go, Earl frantically slammed on the train's emergency brakes.

Hot steel screeched and sparks flew as the brakes worked in vain to stop 800 tons of steel machinery. But it was too late. The train couldn't stop, and all 19 cars ran over the three sleeping bags along with the people inside them. The caboose finally came to a stop a few hundred feet after the point of impact.

The scene behind the train was something out of a horror movie. Dismembered and crushed body parts strewn about on the grass and upon 100 feet of tracks. Belongings and clothing shredded to pieces, tossed into the woods from the force of the train, or dragged down the tracks. The train personnel contacted dispatch over the radio and they alerted the police.

The local PD showed up and began the difficult task of trying to identify the victims. There appeared to be three men that they estimated to be in their 20s, two of whom were completely unrecognizable, and they couldn't find any of their IDs. How the hell were police going to identify these three young men?

The train came to a halt in Little Smyrna Mills, home to fewer than 500 people in Aroostook County, called the county by locals, a vast area of nearly 7,000 square miles. If you were to travel about 12 miles to the east, you would find the nearest major town, Holton, Maine, perched right on the Canadian border.

And upon finding a pack of Canadian brand cigarettes, they considered the possibility that the boys were not from the U.S.,

Along with the cigarettes, police found some of the boys' other possessions scattered near the tracks: Canadian canned goods, maps, camping equipment, and a piece of paper, bloody stationery from a New Brunswick motel. One of the victims had a wallet with a few Canadian bills in it, maybe $5 worth, and another had an empty Canadian envelope. No IDs were found.

Police discovered a clue from the tattered sleeping bags, a hand-sewed label. It read, Terry Burt, 54 Connaught Street, Sydney NS, confirming what they had already suspected. The boys were from Canada, likely Nova Scotia.

Two of the victims had long hair and wore beads. Hippie types, Deputy Sacoby thought. The Aristic County Sheriff's Department reached out to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to help identify the boys. In the meantime, their bodies were moved to Holton, to Dunn's funeral home, where they awaited an autopsy ordered by the District Attorney Rogers.

The next day, on Saturday, the local medical examiner and the sheriff of Aroostook County, Darrell Crandall, gathered in a clinical room, brightly fluorescent lit, to perform the grim task ahead. If you're particularly sensitive to autopsy details, you might want to skip ahead a minute.

They began with a boy whose body was in the best condition. They believed he was a teenager. He had light brown hair, about 8 inches long. The right arm was broken, white bone protruding from a compound fracture in his upper arm. The right leg was badly broken at the shin. The two shin bones were clearly visible.

All of the bones at the base of the skull were broken. The left shoulder was dislocated. Skin was torn and there was bruising on the entire body. In other words, a ragdoll, misshapen and deformed by the powerful locomotive.

The second boy's body was in an even more savage state. The head was almost completely severed. The face was unrecognizable. Both the left arm and the left leg had been sheared off by the train. The third boy's condition was comparable to the second, mangled and disfigured, brought to the funeral home in pieces.

The autopsy for each boy includes a section entitled "Narrative Summary of Circumstances Surrounding Death." It reads: "This individual was one of three individuals who apparently went to sleep between the B&A railroad tracks just north of Timoney Crossing. The three were in sleeping bags and did not move as the train rounded the corner and came upon them. They were carried beneath the train as it tried to stop.

The next day, Sunday, July 10th, two days after the incident, Canadian Mounties had gotten promising leads on the identities of the boys. A scrap of paper was found at the crime scene with a couple of addresses, handwritten, and they decided to visit one. A young girl named Margie remembered sitting down with Canadian police at her house.

The Mounties asked her if she'd given out her home address to anyone recently. She responded that the only person she could think of was David Burroughs. This clue, along with the name found in the sleeping bag, led them to the identities of all three boys. The next step was for the families to confirm their identities, and all three boys' fathers traveled to Maine to face the harrowing task of identifying their children.

The youngest victim was 15-year-old Kenneth Novak, who went by Kenny. He was the youngest of seven children, the baby of the family. His father, Frank, wished he could bring his son home. The other two boys were 17-year-old David Burrows and 20-year-old Terry Burt. Terry sometimes went by Terry, the name he had written on the label.

All three were residents of the large working-class town of Sydney in Cape Breton Island on the northeast tip of Nova Scotia, a whole time zone away, which meant these boys were close to 500 miles from home. Their fathers, angry and afraid, traveled the same path the boys had taken just days prior to identify their bodies.

Ken Jessom, a friend of the boys who was 15 at the time, remembers hearing the rumors of the news. Friday night, we went to the dance at the gym and there was a rumor that Terry and Kenny were dead. That was the rumor. I can't remember offhand if they were run over by a train, but the rumor, and we just didn't believe it. For one thing, you know, we don't die. People

People are, and we don't die in weird circumstances, but for damn sure. And everybody I talked to said the same thing. They went home from the dance Friday night. You know, there's this foolish rumor that nobody believed that dismissed it. I dismissed it. My memory is I just dismissed it. And then the next day you get up and you see when the Cape Breton post great train kills three young men. It was an accident.

That means that the Cape Breton Post picked that up Friday afternoon to get it out probably Friday night. They put their paper, you know, printed around nine at night or something, I think it was. But anyway, yeah, we see that. And again, like, my memory is, you know, vague memory of looking at it and going, wow, they're dead. You know, it's just wow. Lorne Novak was 18 at the time his little brother Kenny had died. He survived.

He saw the black hearse drive by his house in Sydney River Monday afternoon, carrying three gray caskets, two side-by-side and one on top.

Kenny's friend Dan Smith worked at a local radio station and was at the station when the news came in over the wire. His boss asked him if he knew the boys. Dan said, To say the least, I was shocked and numb. I remember going in and waiting at Fillmore's funeral home on the day their bodies returned.

Newspaper headlines and the Cape Breton Spectator declared it an accident. Freight train kills three young men. Possible Cape Bretoners were asleep on the tracks. Sleeping on the tracks sounded pretty unlikely, but the newspaper carried a lot of authority at the time. People took it as truth. The police were right and headlines didn't lie. But two young people did question it and tried to do something about it.

Ken remembers a girl named Rose, who was 16 at the time. And she had dated Terry a couple of times. She walked her home from the dance a couple of times. And she mentioned listening to Jeff LaTolka the first time at Terry's place. And she came along with the petition, her and her friend Jane. And I remember we were all, we were in the park in the pier and we're all, you know, standing around, sitting around smoking, shooting the breeze, whatever. And they come along and

We have a petition. Was that some, I don't know, it was two days later, three weeks later. And I remember an older boy, 17, 18, saying, did you get permission from their parents? I remember him like he was like being the responsible, mature one. And not one of us spoke up. Not one of us signed the petition. Who said you had to get anyone's permission to put a petition saying we want an investigation into this? We would have been something, try something, write a letter somewhere. We didn't do anything.

At least they tried. You know, I give them credit. And then the rest of us, I mean, you know, we went on with our lives. We went on with our lives. Nobody ever

But back then, none of us were sharp enough to look through the articles to say, like, Jesus, let's go through this in detail. Let's, you know, send a letter off somewhere. Let's see if some paper will print that. The whole thing, you know, I thought, yes, it always bothered me. I always, the thing that bothered me the most, more than like, you know, of course it was sad and I knew them, but

But the thing I have to say that bothered me the most is how ridiculous we were. What the hell were we doing? What kind of community were we? Three people from our community, 15, 17, 20, are run over and proposed, said to be run over in these ridiculous circumstances. And what the, not a peep, not a peep. With time, this story disappeared, only remembered by the locals, friends, and family who still bore the pain of such a devastating loss.

The funerals were held the following day, on Tuesday, July 14th, four days after the boys were discovered dead. There were two funerals and a wake, one for Kenny at the Fillmore Funeral Home and a double funeral for Terry and David at the church. Two of the boys couldn't have an open casket, so it was decided that all three would be closed. According to a comment made by Lorne, there was also a wake for all three at the church as well before burial.

Terry and David's final resting place is in Forest Haven Memorial Gardens. Kenny is at the Alfred Smith Memorial Cemetery. Lorne attended both funerals. On the night Kenny was killed, his dog, a smooth fox terrier, had a spell of aggression. He was ordinarily a mild-mannered dog who would only travel in the backyard and the fields behind the Novak family's house.

Tippy, as he was called, went to Kenny's room and ripped his pillows and sheets to pieces. Even more strangely, a month later, Lauren's family found Tippy's lifeless body by the road. He had been hit and killed by a car. I asked Ken to tell me a little about their town of Sydney. Cape Breton Island is, okay, so it's an island. We've got a causeway about half a mile to the mainland in Nova Scotia. And

I think it's 150 miles from one end to the other and 85 miles at its widest. It's really a lot of beauty. You want to visit it sometime. The park they were at, that's part of the Cabot Trail. We were in industrial Cape Breton. Sydney was a steel town. It was called a city. Legally, it was a city, but it was a town, 33,000 people. Sydney was like the hub. Would it be the center? We were surrounded by mining towns, Glace Bay.

And so people would come in here. This is where, you know, where a little bit more was happening. There was more clubs, more dances, more, you know, movie theaters, plays. And a little local junior college was in Sydney. And yeah, so it was very lively, actually. And lots of young people. It was the boomers thing, right? All big families. And there's a lot of life, you know, for the small town with a lot of life.

In 2017, 47 years after the tragedy, Ken, who was 15 at the time, revived this story of his youth in a series of articles that were published by the local newspaper, the Cape Breton Spectator. According to Ken, the popular hangout spot for teens was a two-block stretch from the post office to what they called the gym, known as the Holy Redeemer Parish Center to the Adults.

where they'd play floor hockey and basketball, bowl downstairs in the basement, and attend the dances on Friday nights. There was tables set up. You'd go in there, and Sonny, he was the DJ, and he'd play the records. And, you know, he'd be playing the music. And so there'd be more, like, popular music. We were, you know, by the standards of that kind of music, we listened to, like, the better stuff. But anyway, there's danceable music, and he'd be playing the records and stuff.

The dances were from 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock. Sometimes somebody would walk a girl home and kiss the night. It was closer to an Archie comic than anything. Usually we'd have a couple of drinks before we'd go to the dance, like maybe a puff of weed once in a while and a couple of bottles of beer and drink that and then go up to the dance. It was not fast lane life at all.

On those blocks, kids ruled the streets, bumming cigarettes, making plans, and chatting with friends. There may have been the occasional surreptitious swig of a flask, too. We were a pretty decent bunch, but we weren't saints. We had our share of stupidity and badness, bullying and sneakiness, irresponsibility and moral cowardice. They seem, to some degree or another, to be part of the adolescent journey, Ken wrote.

The culture war of the mid-60s reached a fever pitch in the early 1970s. It was an anti-establishment movement that extolled the virtues of free love, radical expression, and experimentation. Public support for the Vietnam War was waning. Draft dodgers and conscientious objectors were a hotly debated issue, and a line was being drawn between long-haired hippies and pro-war hawks.

Protest songs like CCR's Fortunate Son and John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance were playing on the radio. In Sydney, the same cultural debates raged, and the boys searched for answers and expressed themselves through music. So we would listen to music of that time, the Doors, Van Morrison, the Beatles, of course, Let It Be, I think, was around that time. Dylan was very big with us.

Cream, I remember, was popular with us. Everybody went to somebody's basement, like, you know, where you would listen to music. There would be the room fixed up a bit there. You know, we used to go. Usually, we would go and have tea and cookies. Yeah.

and a friend of mine his grandmother was you know it was really nice tea biscuits and tea we'd listen to that listen to music once in a while we'd smoke a joint actually block hash at the time and uh that was big uh with us and uh uh they're varying how much people are smoking uh the stuff i guess weed and hash i think some people are smoking it a lot more than others i guess looking back i mean we were very um you know once i don't know it's kind of like our

a couple of times in the weekend or something like that. You'd have a proper groove and listen to some music. But that was certainly a big thing with us. And you'd go to the dance on Friday night. Terry Burt was the oldest of the trio. He was 20 in July of 1970 and from Whitney Pier, a neighborhood in Sydney. He reminded Ken of John Lennon, sporting similar long hair and circle glasses. He was thoughtful and introspective, polite and wise.

a gentle spirit searching for answers. Terry loved music, and like most young people in Cape Breton, the music of Jethro Tull, an avant-garde rock band led by an eccentric rock flutist. He also loved his chopper, a motorcycle with the high handlebars, and drove it everywhere. I like Terry. He was quiet. He

He seemed like kind of, at the time, our slang was heavy, like a guy who had some substance to him. But he seemed like a serious guy. He seemed, you know, to be thoughtful. He wasn't somebody who was loud or showing up. So I liked him. I kind of respected him a bit. People

People would go to Terry's basement, listen to music, sometimes smoke a joint. Terry liked Jethro Tull. I had another basement where I would go to to listen to Jethro Tull and sometimes smoke a joint. So we all knew each other like that. And so that's how I knew Terry. People who I've talked to since then, they liked him. He was a good-looking fellow. You see his picture in the Cape Breton Post, and that's about as much as I knew of him personally.

Ken wrote that after Terry had officially given up cigarettes, he would occasionally fall off the wagon, joking that cigarettes were poisonous drugs while sheepishly lighting up his own to smoke. Other than this vice, Terry seemed to take care of himself.

David Burrows was 17 and from Sydney River, a small town right next to Sydney. He attended some of the Friday night dances at the gym. In a Facebook group dedicated to the memory of the boys, a woman named Karen commented on a photo posted of David on a motorbike with his gang of friends. He looks effortlessly cool in an army green jacket and leather vest and gloves, short and wavy golden hair reflecting the sun.

aviator glasses framing a slender face. She said David didn't change his appearance from junior high to high school and that his appearance was more conservative than hippie, like many of his counterparts.

Apparently, David was growing out his hair, much to his parents' chagrin, who threatened to kick him out until he got a haircut. According to some, David was also a free spirit, who wore his heart on his sleeve. Others who knew David chimed in with memories of him, calling him a well-liked and easygoing guy with a great smile. A woman named Janice wrote, "'We hung out together and skated together. He would visit my house,'

My mom adored him. I'm pretty sure she wished we would date. He was a hippie, I guess. Perhaps we all were. I'll always have a place in my heart for him.

Kenny Novak was 15 and from Sydney. Kenny was described as tall and slender and had shoulder-length light brown hair with soft curls that had a mind of their own and hid his youthful face. He was always flipping them back. Friends described him as sweet, energetic and funny, yet contemplative and thoughtful. He was popular with girls and had a wide network of friends. He easily fit into any group,

A friend named Karen said he wore a Burberry military style jacket in the winter and his Army surplus jacket in the spring. His older brother, Lorne, the closest in age to him of the seven siblings, remembered that he had taken three years of Latin and was a bright kid. Ken wrote about a memory another friend named Pat had of both of them at a dance one night at the gym.

A few of us had arrived early to put out the tables and chairs and return for free admission. It was about 9 p.m. because the doors had just opened, and Soul Sunny, the regular gym DJ, was on stage getting ready to start the music. I remember Terry was sitting by himself on the edge of the stage, having a smoke. People were just starting to drift in.

Sol Sunny put on a rock song, "Mississippi Queen," that opens with cowbells, and Kenny jumped up on the stage and started dancing. Terry looked up at Kenny and burst out laughing. That was the last time I remember seeing Terry. It's a good last memory. Terry laughing with his friend and Kenny dancing. Fall is the perfect time to cozy up with a hot drink and enjoy the season. And now with the Northwest Federal Credit Union credit card, you can make the most of this time of year.

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It was summertime in Cape Breton, and the kids were out of school and taking trips with their friends. On Sunday, July 5th, Kenny's mother, Isabel, drove Kenny and his friend, 20-year-old Terry Burt, 90 miles up the coast to a beautiful Canadian national park called the Cape Breton Highlands, where they stayed in a campground in Inganish, likely spending time at the popular beach there. When his mother waved goodbye, she expected that he would make it home in about a week.

hitchhiking, a common way to get around in 1970. Little did she know that she would never see her son again. According to Ken Jessam, another friend joined them there, Alan Crawley. He remembered hitchhiking to Inganish to meet Kenny and Terry. It was his first experience camping, and he remembered how difficult it was to set up the tent and the metallic taste of cold beans in the morning for breakfast.

Shortly thereafter, 17-year-old David Burrows joined the group. Alan had never met him before. According to Alan's account, David, for a reason Alan couldn't remember, proposed that the boys hitchhike to the States. There are some rumors that they met some girls from Boston and D.C. while at Inganish, and they concocted a scheme to visit them on a wild 1,000-mile adventure.

Three of the four boys decided to make the journey, but Alan turned down the offer to join and opted to head back to Sydney instead, perhaps saving his life. Another small piece of the puzzle that suggested that this trip was spontaneous was the fact that Terry had made plans with a Sydney girl, Rose, to see a local band, Peppertree, at the Sydney Forum on Thursday night.

She said that she went that Thursday and looked for him all night to no avail. Unbeknownst to Kenny's mother, the three U.S.-bound boys returned to their hometown in Sydney within just a day or two of being dropped off in Inganish, cutting their week-long trip short. They set off on their adventure before their families even knew they had left.

David met up with a girl, Margie Burke, with whom he was close and asked for her address before they left Sydney. He told her of their plan and wanted to be sure that he could find her when they returned. She wrote down two addresses for him, one at her home and another in Halifax, where she might be visiting some family later that summer. She spoke regularly to David's mother, and that's how she learned of the boy's plan for international travel.

The three boys hitchhiked 471 miles from Sydney to Holton, Maine. And along that trip, David gave Margie a call. She remembers it clearly. It was a sunny afternoon and the call was crystal clear, making her think that it was definitely not from a payphone, more like a house line. He said they were tired of the road.

running out of money, and were coming home. Perhaps it was from the motel that they stayed at in Fredericton on the evening of Wednesday, July 8th. The Aroostook County Sheriff's Department said that the trio had crossed the border near Holton without alerting the Border Patrol around 11 p.m. on Thursday, July 9th, the last night the boys were seen alive.

William Butterfield, a U.S. border patrolman, was somehow alerted that there were three unidentified men who had crossed at an unmanned station and sought them out. Assuming they'd most likely tried a hitchhike, Butterfield got into an unmarked car and tried to follow them, but they saw him and scattered, eluding him.

The boys ended up at an ice cream shop near Drake's Hill in Holton, and as 21-year-old Royden Hunt was leaving with his friend Mike, Royden found himself saying yes when asked by a young man if he would give him and his two friends a ride down through town. He and Mike were leaving anyway, so why not, he thought. It was a nice night, about 70 degrees.

Royden noticed that the trio was young, maybe mid to late teens, and they looked a bit disheveled. Royden agreed, and all five young men hopped into his blue Pontiac car. The three hitchhikers stuffed into the backseat with their knapsacks.

Less than 15 minutes after the blue Pontiac full of boys pulled out of the ice cream parlor, Butterfield and his border patrol showed up. They poked around, asking the people who were still there if they'd seen the three hitchhiking Canadians and were pointed in the direction in which they'd left. Butterfield went after them, looking for the boys.

Maybe if they'd been caught by Border Patrol, things would have turned out different. The worst thing they would have returned home with was a bruised ego and maybe a slap on the wrist. At least they would have returned home. But the boys got away, and Royden and Mike were possibly the last two people to see them all alive.

During the car ride, the youngest, Kenny, fell asleep. Long-haired Terry and David smoked two or three cigarettes each while chatting about their recent travels. Royden recalled Terry saying something about Washington, D.C. and going to see a girl. They also joked that Royden shouldn't worry because they weren't carrying any drugs.

Around 11.45 p.m., Royden dropped them off at the Smyrna exit on the interstate, not far from where the train accident occurred.

Royden dropped off Mike a little further down the road at his work, the Irving gas station in Oakfield, and then headed home to Island Falls, just a short drive further down I-95. The boys thanked him for the ride and disappeared into the woods of Aroostook County. And what happened after that, we may never know. The only thing we know for sure is that the boys were struck on the tracks a little over a mile away from where they were dropped off.

Ken wrote in his article for Go Cape Breton that Royden told him the boys were covered with grass and dirt during that car ride, and that their shoes were wet and muddy. He had to wipe out and clean the back seat with a vacuum cleaner to remove it all the following day. When detectives came by to investigate a few days later, they weren't able to scrape any evidence from the Pontiac. Royden thought that they were maybe looking for drugs.

The only thing left untouched were the ashtrays, but they ultimately left detectives empty-handed. The earliest newspaper reports of this incident refer to it as an accident, as determined by local Aroostook County Sheriff Darrell Crandall. Even before they knew their names, police concluded that the boys had chosen to camp on the tracks and were fast asleep when they were struck and killed by the train.

The autopsy report completed the following day further reinforced the police's theory. It concluded that the boys were killed on impact and that they were alive before, ruling out the possibility of foul play in the investigator's mind. Deputy Sheriff Sacobi said that based on the medical evidence, it was impossible that the boys could have been placed on the tracks.

Furthermore, he found it was impossible that if they were killed elsewhere that somebody would have moved and staged all their personal belongings with their bodies. Despite making it clear that they weren't entertaining foul play seriously, officials still waited to make a final determination until the toxicology report came back from the state medical examiner's office in Augusta. But despite the strong opinions that this was all one big unfortunate accident,

Nobody could answer the question on everyone's mind. Why would the boys choose to sleep on railroad tracks? I wanted to understand how three boys could fall asleep on the tracks and not wake up in time to save themselves from an oncoming train.

According to an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer, almost 1,100 Americans were killed in 2018 on train tracks, the majority being what is termed trespassers. In other words, pedestrians who are walking or sleeping on tracks. But wouldn't they wake up? The train conductor blew the horn. Surely if the rumble of the tracks didn't wake the boys up, the train's horn would.

I watched a video put out by the Rossen Report in 2016 on the Today Show that made me question what I assumed I knew to be true. It claims that trains are actually much quieter than we think they are and said that oftentimes people don't know they're there until it's too late. According to an expert interviewed for the segment, it takes a train at least a mile to stop after the emergency brakes are pulled.

The video showed recent examples of young people accidentally killed by trains. Young people who were awake and standing. The most unsettling example was an accident that killed three teenage girls in Utah taking group selfies on the train tracks.

The train conductor saw them for about 12 seconds and blew the horn to no avail. Their ominous final photo from that day shows the oncoming train in the background, seconds before impact. Couldn't they hear the train?

The Rossen Report included an experiment to see if their reporter could hear the train approaching. Standing in front of the train, the rumble you'd expect is much quieter than you'd think. The reporter didn't hear the oncoming train until it would have been only a few seconds from impact. But once the train passed him, the roar was deafening. It's a strange thing to think that such a massive piece of machinery can be upon you with no warning.

The toxicology report came back from the Augusta lab on July 23, 1970. The Bangor Daily News quoted the following day that the report said everything was normal. This was not a murder. The second-page headlines the next day read, Foul play is ruled out in train deaths. By July 25, the death of three Canadian boys was yesterday's news.

This is the last article that was ever published about them. The newspapers had something much more lucrative to tease and print out on their front page than the small-town deaths of three unknown boys.

On July 24th, the whole world was waiting in anticipation as day one of the Tate-LaBianca murder trial against Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten in Los Angeles began, dominating all print and television news real estate. They were all convicted on multiple counts of first-degree murder in January of 1971.

The autopsy indicated that there was no sign of alcohol or drugs in their system and concluded that their death was instantaneous, caused by the impact of the train. A very tragic and unfortunate accident. The sheriff raised the points that after speaking with Royden Hunt, who picked up the hitchhikers, he learned that Kenny was sleepy in the car, assuming that the boys were fatigued from their all-day trek across the border. The

The boys also told Royden when he dropped them off that they were going to walk the tracks to stay off the main road. Why would they sleep on the tracks instead of the ground? Well, according to the sheriff, the answer was simple. It had rained heavily during the day on Thursday, and while the ground was still wet, the tracks were dry.

And with that, two weeks after the incident occurred, Sheriff Crandall officially closed the case. Not that there was any doubt in his mind of the possibility of anything nefarious. To Crandall, this was clear as day.

But despite the official ruling, doubts lingered. Why would three sound-minded boys choose to sleep on railroad tracks? What if instead the boys had been killed sometime that night and their bodies were placed on the tracks?

All three boys were from the industrial, working-class towns near Sydney, a region crisscrossed with railroad tracks. Kenny's mother, Isabel, said her son was sensible and knew better than to sleep on the tracks. Kenny's father, Frank, was a steel plant diesel mechanic. Surely Kenny knew the dangers of giant machinery.

The distance between the rails was only 4 feet 8 and a half inches, and the boys were reported to be in between the rails, lying parallel to the tracks. For this arrangement to be possible, they would have had to have been lying on their sides, spooning one another, huddled tightly together. An unlikely arrangement, especially for this group of teen boys.

Moreover, they would have been lying on the very uncomfortable track bed, tar-covered lumber beams and sharp granite rocks. Why not the soft earth in the nearby field? Secondly, why wouldn't the boys have moved in time, or at least stirred, showing some signs of life? Approximately one mile before the train struck the boys, it crossed Timoney Road, a lighted crossing.

where it would have sounded its very loud horn, perhaps 140 decibels, for 20 whole seconds, and it would have been audible, but distant from the boy's location. The train crew reported that they identified the sleeping bags from about 150 feet away and sounded the horn. At 40 miles per hour, that would be approximately 4 seconds of blaring air horn, plus the sound of the train itself.

certainly enough to alert at least one of the three youths. But the railroad crew all reported no movement from the sleeping bags. There were even comments that the sleeping bags were zipped up all the way over their heads. Not only the sound of the train, but the light of the day could have awakened the boys. Sunrise was at 4:50 AM that morning. They were struck around 7 AM, two hours and ten minutes after sunrise.

Third, there were things that were missing. No identification was found with their bodies. Perhaps the youngest, Kenny, may not have been carrying ID. But certainly the other two, a 17 and a 20-year-old, both of whom drove motorcycles, would have had theirs with them. Also, there was money missing. Only $5 was found. One of Kenny's friends, Dan Smith, shared this story with Lorne.

I was to go on this trip with Kenny. We were planning to pool some cash and source out a buy stateside. In other words, a substantial drug purchase. With the exception of David Burrows, he didn't partake. At the time, I was working part-time at CJCB, a Cape Breton radio station.

I ended up being scheduled for work at that time and had to back out, but because of the initial plan, I hooked up with Kenny at the casino to contribute $180 to the cause, and off they went.

I know for a fact that they had at least $500 or $600 between them. So I'm convinced, always have been, that they were murdered. As I told Lauren, I'm very much open to testify under oath with this information. The man who gave the boys a ride from Holton, Royden Hunt, told Lauren that they had a roll of money with them and that they were counting it in the back seat. What happened to it?

Lastly, the investigation was closed suspiciously fast, in a matter of hours. Police arrived within 15 minutes of the boys being struck by the train. If they had taken core temperatures of the bodies, they likely could have answered the question on everyone's mind.

How long had the boys been dead? If they had in fact been killed by the train, their bodies would have still been warm. It was about 62 degrees that morning, and the human body's core temperature is around 98 degrees, and it takes hours for the body's core to cool. And suppose they were moved, how would their bodies have been transported? There are no paved roads that go to the spot where they were hit. The closest paved road is I-95.

But it seems unlikely that the would-be murderers would have felt comfortable parking on a highway, even under the cover of darkness, to carry out their plan.

But on close inspection, I found that there is an unpaved 4x4 trail that runs parallel to the tracks, that is accessible from Route 2, the road where they were dropped off on by Royden Hunt, which could have been used to transport their bodies. Also, where they were found seems like a particularly good spot to leave a body, just around a bend in the tracks.

in a place where the sun comes up over the trees around the time that the train crew would have been coming around a corner. Surely somebody with local knowledge may have known these things. So suppose that the boys were killed, what would the motive have been? Perhaps money? Perhaps the money was just an excuse to make an example of these long-haired hippie youths.

The only other explanation for the boys' deaths would be suicide, though it seems awfully unlikely.

First off, the odds for three boys who weren't even that close to one another to each have independently contemplated suicide and spontaneously agreed to do it together in the same manner seems like a virtual impossibility. Second, they made plans for the future. They had collected money from friends with a promise to return with drugs from the U.S.,

A month after the tragedy, Lorne went to the U.S. to visit the site. He remembers seeing tattered bits of sleeping bag still littering the field neighboring the tracks, where his brother was found dead, and his death has remained fresh in his memory ever since.

Many of the important details that we know now have come to light because of Lorne's tireless effort to look under every rock to uncover the truth about Kenny's death. Lorne was able to track down the original autopsies, as well as the death certificates for the boys. He tracked down Royden, who gave the boys their final ride, and was able to get him on the phone to tell what he remembered about that night from more than 40 years ago.

Lauren and his allies have created a very active Facebook group that has become a clearinghouse for much of the information about this case, including newspaper clippings, maps of the area, timelines, and even the autopsies themselves. Many friends who knew the boys have become members and have shared details that are nowhere else found.

Lorne and his supporters have also created a petition which is addressed to the Aroostook County Sheriff's Office to reopen the investigation. It has 2,800 signatures. Though Lorne has made substantial progress, he has his share of roadblocks. He's looked into getting private investigators from Holton to take his case, but they haven't been interested.

Even with Lorne's family, there is division. Some of his siblings, of whom there are three living, want him to let the case be. But Lorne will not be satisfied until he has answers. He wants the police case files from Holton, which he has repeatedly requested. And he wants the incident report from the train company, B&A Railroad. He has yet to receive any of this.

Lorne created a memorial plaque for the boys. He made it himself. A thick steel plate of welding beads spelling out the names of the boys and the date of their deaths. In the summer of 2020, he had it installed on a rock ledge by the tracks so that the train crew could see it as they pass.

It's been 51 years since Lorne lost Kenny, and he still fights for him today. Because Kenny is his brother, Kenny is his family, and family is forever. Ken Jessam feels a duty to tell this story to right a wrong from his childhood. Though kids have limited power, Ken believes that he could have done more, that the community could have done more.

His voice, heard through his writing today, betrays his own guilt from the past and proves that it is never too late to make a difference. His writing has shined a light on this mystery and through the power of technology, a community, scattered in the wind, has re-emerged, recollecting personal stories about the boys and the community that they all shared in Sydney.

We may never know what truly happened to Kenny, Terry, and David. We may never have the answers we wish we did. But their story lives on through the community who still remembers them, and the community who still seeks answers to the questions that haunt them. ♪

I want to thank you so much for listening. I'm so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. Thank you. There is a giveaway happening right now on Instagram at Murder She Told Podcast and on the Facebook page, and you do not want to miss it. If you haven't entered, you have until Thursday. There also won't be a new episode next week.

I have family in town who are visiting Maine for the first time, and I'm showing them all the beautiful things the state has to offer and maybe a lobster roll or two. But I'll be back the week after. Thank you for understanding.

My sources for this episode include the Bangor Daily News, the Cape Breton Post, Ken's articles for the Cape Breton Spectator, Holden Pioneer Times, and Lauren's Searching for Answers Facebook group. Thank you to Ken Jessam for sharing his stories and memories, and to Jonathan Manley at the McConnell Library in Sydney for his help. All links for sources and images for this episode can be found on MurderSheTold.com linked in the show notes.

Special thanks to Byron Willis for his research and writing support. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or on social media or leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.

It's one of the best ways to support an indie podcast. If you are a friend or a family member of the victims, you're more than welcome to reach out to me at hello at MurderSheTold.com. If you have a story that needs to be told or would like to suggest one, I would love to hear from you. My only hope is that I've honored your stories in keeping the names of your family and friends alive. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder She Told. Thank you for listening.

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