Curtis Pishon Vanished Without a Trace
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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 and suggest your hometown crime at MurderSheTold.com and follow me on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. For as long as he could remember, Curtis Pishon wanted to be a police officer. Curtis grew up in a military family, and he and his three siblings moved around a lot.

according to their father, Nicholas Pishon, 26 times in 20 years. From overseas countries like Germany to a dozen states in the U.S., Texas to Jersey, Michigan to Louisiana. And Curtis grew up wanting to follow in his footsteps.

I spoke with almost the entire Pishon family about Curtis' life: Nicholas Sr. and his wife Astrid, and Curtis' younger siblings, Nicholas Jr. and Crystal. The only sibling not present was their older brother Mark. This is Nicholas Sr., Kurt's dad, talking about him as a child.

Curtis was fairly quiet and kept to himself.

but he was friendly and well-liked. He could always entertain himself. His dad said he was smart, but he didn't have much motivation. He had a lazy streak when it came to school. Curtis seemed to be fairly accident-prone growing up. The family told me stories about the time he fell into a cactus in the New Mexico desert, and the time he fell into barbed wire, and an accident at the dinosaur park in Arizona.

Being military brats, the four siblings were close. Family was the most consistent part of growing up. They would play basketball and baseball, go horseback riding, hunting and fishing. Despite being the only girl, Crystal fit right in and held her own with her older brothers.

Crystal, who was 10 years younger than Curtis, told me, "...he took me to see The Empire Strikes Back when that came out in the movie theater. That was something he would always bring up in a joking way. It was one of the few things like that. It's a special memory."

One of the favorite things about him that I remember is that he had a very dry sense of humor, and he took glee in finding words that he could use as puns or as a comeback to when he was teasing me or something like that. If he found the right one, he'd have a big smile on his face and

You know, I'm a writer now, so looking back, I really appreciate that he would always search for the perfect thing that he could either zing me with or, you know, something that we could both laugh about. Nicholas Jr. recalled one of his favorite memories of his brother.

One of my fond memories, and I know his, is when we were living in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he used to play basketball with me, and he'd beat me every time. And that brought him great joy. In the mid-1970s, as the three boys were wrapping up high school, Nicholas Sr. retired from the military and moved from Hawaii back to his childhood home of New Hampshire.

Curtis, the middle brother, who had just graduated, decided to stay for college at the University of Hawaii. After his first semester, Curtis realized that college wasn't a good fit for him. Curtis told his father that he, quote, "majored in television watching," end quote. With nothing keeping him in Hawaii, he moved back to the East Coast to be with his family in Hopkinton, New Hampshire.

His father thought that he was too young to join the police academy, so in 1978 he took a job as an emergency dispatcher, a job that his dad helped line up for him. It gave him a taste for police work and some good work experience, and it only stoked his ambition to be a cop.

After two years of dispatch work, his dad suggested that he spend some time in the military police to "make his mistakes" elsewhere before coming back to New Hampshire, the place where he wanted to spend his career. He enlisted in the Army, committed to three years of service, and got the job he was after: military police, the same job his father had done for his entire career.

He was stationed in Korea for most of the time, and from what I understand, he had a blast. In 1984, when Curtis was 25, he finished his military tour and moved home to New Hampshire. And because of his military experience and his good performance on the entrance exam, he had no trouble getting accepted to the Concord Police Academy.

After graduation, he was hired as a patrol officer by the Concord Police Department, realizing his lifelong dream of becoming a cop.

Crystal has some fond, or maybe not so fond, memories from this time. She told me he would practice his training on me under the guise of him teaching me how to protect myself. He would show me his police moves, which was either fun or painful depending on how it went. He always meant well, I think, but it was interesting. In 1990, after six great years on the force, Curtis was given some devastating news.

He was having some vision trouble, bouts of double vision, and after a series of doctor's appointments, each one more worrisome than the last, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a painful autoimmune disease where your body mysteriously attacks its own nervous system, dissolving the protective coating around your nerves. Multiple sclerosis often starts with mild symptoms and gets more serious over time, and that was how it affected Kurt.

Over the next four years, he developed some of the common symptoms associated with MS: tingling or pain in parts of the body, prolonged double vision, numbness or weakness in the limbs, and most serious of all, lack of coordination and an unsteady gait. Not a good thing for such a physical job.

Despite the diagnosis, he remained positive and continued working for the Concord PD. As the disease progressed, however, Curtis couldn't hide it anymore. Sadly, in 1994, at age 35, after 10 successful years on the force, he could no longer fire his gun accurately, and he was forced to give up his lifelong dream. Curtis turned in his badge and was medically retired. Here is Nicholas Sr.,

Yeah, the pistol range was his final test that he failed. You know, he would have had trouble running after somebody anyway. But, you know, they tolerated much of that stuff. But when he got to the range the last time, there was just no chance of him passing the firearms qualification, which is an automatic disqualifier, of course. So Conklin treated him fairly well.

They medically retired him, paid his salary for a couple of, full salary for a couple of years. And then, you know, that kind of came to an end. Always a drinker, he started drinking more heavily towards the end of his police career as a way to cope with the inevitable and wound up in rehab while still on the force.

All of the photos I have of Curtis show a healthy and strong able-bodied man, handsome and smiling, and undoubtedly one whose future was full of hope.

But this disease stole Curtis's life from him. Oh, that was a life changer. That was tragic for him. He struggled to cope with that for years. Yeah, I don't think he never came to terms with it, I don't think. Curtis had a hard time finding another job and had a bout of unemployment. The force had given him a couple years of full salary and benefits, and he wasn't too motivated to find new work.

The jobs he did manage to get didn't give him much fulfillment, and he fell into a deep depression. He drank a lot and kept to himself, spending most of his free time at his two-story walk-up apartment, the Highland Inn, in the small beach town of Hampton, New Hampshire. He was no longer able to enjoy some of the activities he used to love, like baseball and basketball.

Curtis started to come to terms with his disability, and he was trying to beat his drinking problem, but not before the habit impacted his life in a significant way. He was fired from one of his jobs for showing up to his shift with alcohol on his breath.

Before, while he was still a cop in Concord, I used to help him out. I used to go and clean up his apartment, and he used to gather cans and cans of coins, loose change, and I'd count them up for him and get a percentage of it. So I would talk to him quite a bit and see him in his off time. And he'd have beer around, and he'd be drinking it, but I never saw him really drunk, like you would think if you're calling somebody a drinker. But afterwards...

afterwards, after his diagnosis, I think he did take more to the drink simply because, I mean, his world had been destroyed. So I think he turned to alcohol to kill some of that pain. But I don't think he ever was the drunk as portrayed in some of the media coverage that he received. So

So I think he was just, he was really in pain, and that's how he handled it. Until, you know, later on when it looked like he was trying to turn things around, as my brother said. Yeah, I agree with that assessment. That's a fair characterization. In December of 1998, four years after his medical retirement, Curtis got a job with a private security company, Reliable Security Guard Agency, and they assigned him to night guard duty at the now-defunct Venture Corp.

which had a plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire that manufactured plastic parts for the big Midwest automobile manufacturers. But this job was not his dream, and the graveyard shift at Venture Corp was as close to being a cop as a shaky-handed Curtis was ever going to get again. Working as a security guard, Curtis was using some of his skills that he had developed in his career with the police, and the reduced physical requirements made it a pretty good fit.

Curtis was observant, and at a family dinner, he told his family he suspected that some of the employees of Venture Corp were dealing drugs in the parking lot, and that some of the employees struck him as aggressive or violent. His mother, Astrid, said that he was worried if something went wrong, he had no backup available. That was the last time his parents ever saw him.

He came home that weekend and he was going to see my sister. He hadn't seen her in a year or two and her daughter. And he just came and we sat down and he had dinner and he he

He was concerned about something that night, he told me. But, you know, we just thought everything's going to be okay. According to his brother, Curtis was doing all right financially and decided to pay off a loan his dad had given him. His dad held onto his gun that had sentimental value as collateral. Curtis repaid the $200 to his father and retrieved his handgun. This may have been in connection with his safety concerns at work.

According to the Burlington Free Press, Curtis had a concealed carry permit. Curtis knew that there was going to be a skeleton crew the night of the 4th of July. Normally, there were around 100 people at any given time who worked at the plant, including the night shift. But because of the holiday, most of them had the night off, leaving Curtis with only 11 other people.

He'd recently been threatened by a Venture employee when Curtis gave him a parking ticket and began fearing working the graveyard shift because he was alone, unarmed, and not physically capable of defending himself. My impression of Venture Corp was that it was fairly remote and not the safest place to work.

It's not a checkpoint. The guard shack is closer to the building. The parking lot is kind of freestanding. It wasn't like what you would assume for a higher security facility where you'd have a gate that you had to enter. There was just a long driveway. I think it was Route 1 is the route that it was off of. Entryway had a gas station right next to it.

And you'd drive into the parking lot. The parking lot, you know, was pretty dark, too, at night. Independence Day is usually a time of barbecues and swimming, of ice cream and watermelon and fireworks. For Curtis, it was just another day at work.

On the night of Tuesday, July 4, 2000, Curtis arrived for work around 9.30 p.m. and parked his car, an early 90s model green Mercury Topaz, in its usual spot close to the booth and took his position. Because of his MS, Curtis struggled to walk the grounds, so the guard that he was relieving helped him out and did it for him, and reported nothing out of the ordinary.

The two men chatted briefly about the Red Sox, one of Curtis' favorite topics, and he later reported that Curtis seemed to be in a fine mood. Around midnight, a supervisor called to check in on Curtis, and there was nothing to report. Very few people were coming and going. It was a quiet night with a small crew at Venture Corp, while the rest of Seabrook's holiday celebration came to an end.

But by 2 a.m., this quiet holiday night was disrupted. Curtis made a phone call to the Seabrook Fire Department to report that his car was engulfed in flames, burning just eight feet from the booth.

Kurt's car was parked right next to the guard shed. You can see the burn marks on the guard shed from when his car caught on fire that night. Jeff Brown, a deputy chief at the Seabrook Fire Department, later told Unsolved Mysteries, "He pretty much said that he saw a bunch of smoke, went to find a fire extinguisher and put the fire out. One fire extinguisher isn't going to have much effect. We did notice that he tried to put out the fire."

I don't have any idea or gut feeling how the fire started or why the case ended up the way it did." Chief Brown also reported that Curtis seemed surprisingly calm, despite the fact that his car was a total loss. Not only that, but Curtis kept most all of his prized possessions inside his car, which meant he not only lost his car, he lost everything he loved inside the car too.

His family was confounded by the fireman's account of Curtis, and they suspected that Curtis may have been in shock, experiencing his pain inwardly rather than showing it outwardly. Kerr was what you'd call almost semi-transit. He was having a series of jobs. Not this one, he had it. He was taking one of the kind of like beach rentals. I think it was on Hampton Beach. Yeah, and...

But he didn't have a place to store all his stuff. So like a lot of people, we found my dad and I went and inspected the vehicle. He had all his personal possessions, anything that he really cared about inside the car. And they were burned up. So his reaction to that still haunts me to this day that he must have been destroyed, even though you might see in the portrayals that he was burned.

unshaken by it. I think he'd probably be more stunned than anything. It must have been pretty hard on him. Yeah, I'd agree with that. A lot of the interviews with the fire people or others that were there, that he seemed unaffected. Kurt was kind of quiet anyway. And yeah, my guess is that he just went in to internalize that and that's

and that he was probably in a lot of pain, but he wasn't going to show that to anybody. I asked the family where in the car the fire appeared to start, and they said that it looked like it began in the passenger seat. It's unclear where exactly Kurt was at the time his car caught fire. It's possible that he was on a walk of the grounds at the time it began. It's also possible that he was in the guard shack, and how it started is anyone's guess.

It's possible that he dropped a cigarette in his car by accident, and its smoldering eventually stoked into a blaze. It's possible that someone else started the fire, perhaps while he was on patrol. The family said the fire department used a scent dog to determine that there were no accelerants present.

The Associated Press reported that Curtis' auto insurance company ruled the fire an arson, but Seabrook Fire Department still considers it a mystery. They still don't know how it began or who did it. Considering Curtis' favorite things were inside his car, he didn't stand much to gain by setting it himself.

But it's important to note that Curtis's junk was all throughout the car. Neatness was not one of Curtis's good tendencies. He kind of threw stuff around, and when he went to get the car or check the car out, there was stuff everywhere, both in the front of the car, in the back seat, in the trunk. Stuff had been put in there. Because it was hard for him to move around, it wasn't impossible, but harder for him to move around, he had a second-story walk-up.

And he wasn't going to drag his stuff up those stairs, so he just left it in his car. And so there were books and magazines and papers and wrappers from past sandwiches and all kinds of stuff in the car. So it wasn't hard to get a fire started. Whether somebody tossed a match in there or whether Kurt Litter made a mistake with his cigarettes, we don't know and we may never know.

After the fire department left, Curtis made an entry in the logbook regarding the incident at 2 a.m. An hour or so later, around 3.15 a.m., a security supervisor spoke with Curtis on the phone about the fire and reported that he seemed relatively normal, nothing noteworthy about his behavior.

Coworkers also noticed Curtis walking around the building shortly after, something he didn't do often as walking long distances often caused pain from his MS. At 3.45 a.m., one of his colleagues showed up to the guard booth to start their shift, and they found it empty. Curtis was nowhere to be found.

Right around this time, a night foreman noticed two vehicles speeding away from the plant, through its dark parking lot back to Route 1 from the opposite side of the building. His colleague discovered the burnt carcass of Curtis's car, still sitting close to the booth, where his lunch, cigarettes, lighter, glasses, and contact solution all sat, suggesting he'd probably be back shortly.

But Curtis never came back. The search that night yielded nothing, and when the sun came up, every employee was accounted for except for Curtis. Nicholas Sr. told me that he and his wife Astrid reported Curtis missing that same day, Wednesday, July 5th. Almost immediately, police suspected suicide.

Frankly, the family suspected suicide initially as well. The fact that Curtis retrieved his handgun haunted their thoughts. It seemed plausible for somebody suffering from deep depression and substance abuse who was struggling to find their way after a drastic life change would choose to end their life.

It was possible that Kurt set his own car on fire as a symbol of leaving his life behind. But if Curtis died by suicide, where was his body?

He was unaccounted for between 3.15 a.m. and 3.45 a.m., just 30 minutes, and he had no car. He couldn't walk quickly, and he couldn't have gotten far on foot. Could he have gotten a ride with a Venture Corp worker? Where could he have gone?

Shortly after his disappearance, his family was invited by the Seabrook PD to join them for a walkthrough of his home, the Highland Inn. They eagerly accepted, hoping to find some clues. His mother, Astrid, told me she found the fridge stocked with food. Underneath weeks of clutter, the family discovered something that completely dispelled the idea that Kurt had died by suicide.

I think he was concerned about something, and he bought his gun back, as Nick told you. And his brother Nick here found it in a bag in the closet the same way we gave it to him. And so I think if he was going to do something to himself, he would have done it.

I mean, from the very beginning, the only thing you can do is reach for reasons why. And it was pretty clear early on that this wasn't Kurt taking his own life. Nothing added up in that. And it wasn't too much longer after that that we were able to kind of substantiate that. At least in my mind, I can't speak for everybody else.

Nicholas Jr. told the Burlington Free Press that if Curtis had killed himself, he probably would have gone back to his room, had a few drinks, and shot himself. Curtis also had plans and hopes for the future. Later that month, he had plans to vacation with his family, something he was looking forward to. He also had plans to buy a new car, and had bought a lottery ticket for the July 5th drawing.

Another possibility that was considered was that Curtis just abandoned his old life and set out to start a new one. But aside from the fact that walking any long distance was extremely difficult for him, the most conclusive evidence was that he had absolutely no financial activity after July 4th.

He had just paid his dad $200 for a Smith & Wesson, money he would surely need if he were walking away from his life. Furthermore, Curtis needed medication, which isn't easy to get without appointments and identification. Also, Curtis was a smoker, and smokers don't leave cigarettes behind.

Police searched the nearby waters and woods with a K-9 team in case Curtis walked off into the woods nearby. If Curtis had either died by suicide or from the elements, his body would have been found. There was no trace of Curtis Pishon. They had theories and questions, but no evidence and absolutely no answers. Curtis was 40 years old, just a week shy of his 41st birthday.

He was 5'9", white, and about 165 pounds. He had a mustache, salt-and-pepper brown hair, and brown eyes. The night of July 4th, he was wearing his blue reliable security uniform and new boots.

New Hampshire State Police Sergeant Joseph Ebert told WMUR that the case was treated as a missing person. But I think from the very beginning, it was unusual and suspicious. Michael Gallagher, who was a patrolman for the Seabrook Police Department, would often stop by to see Kurt when he was burning the midnight oil on a slow night.

In an interview with the Newburyport Daily News, he said that they would often shoot the breeze and talk about the Red Sox, and that Kurt was a pleasant guy to talk to. Five years after Kurt's disappearance, Michael was promoted to detective sergeant and took over the case, and then Seabrook chief of police. Gallagher strongly suspects foul play was involved.

"A couple of things happened that night," Chief Michael Gallagher said. "One was that the car caught on fire. Two, which we later discovered, was that there were vending machines and a change machine that was broken into using a forklift that was on the property. Additional damage was done to the locked door of the union office on the building's second floor. Somebody had broken in by kicking in the door, though nothing was reported stolen from the office.

Police believed that there was a strong possibility that Curtis's car could have been set on fire to create a diversion, while the forklifts were being used to attempt to break into the vending machines. Curtis was last seen standing near those machines at 3:15 a.m. Chief Gallagher believed he may have stumbled on people trying to steal money from them while getting a Coke, and that he may have been hurt or killed when he was confronted by the perpetrators.

The identities of the vandals are still unknown, and it's unclear if the theft played any role in his disappearance. People weren't always so convinced that there was foul play involved. Initially, the lead detective on the case, Seabrook Detective Sergeant Carlene Thompson, was convinced that it was a suicide.

Yeah, I don't think they did the initial investigation well, being a former supervisor of investigators. One of the problems that investigators have sometimes is that they form an opinion, and then they chase their opinion to the exclusion of all other possibilities.

And I think that's what happened in this case. So she was sure that Curtis had committed suicide, given all the circumstances in his case, his doldrums and his loss of his police job and all of that. And so she was searching the assault flags and she was searching alongside the highways and doing all the things, looking for the body without looking for any perpetrators. And I think that retarded the whole operation.

People also believed it was possible that Curtis could have come across illegal activity on the Venture premises, which may have factored into his disappearance. In the weeks leading up to this night, he had told his brother, Nicholas, about what he suspected was happening at Venture. Nicholas theorized, quote, "He did mention that he thought there were drug deals going on down in the parking lot. He probably saw something that night.

The person knew it and knocked him out, put him in a truck, and dropped him off somewhere." As I mentioned earlier, Curtis had given out a parking ticket to an employee at the plant in the previous weeks, and he reacted badly, threatening to kill him. But police looked into that angle and discovered that he had a strong alibi for the night of the disappearance.

For the most part, Curtis was a well-liked guy, but that didn't mean he didn't have a few people who weren't fans. Curtis had a habit of getting involved with women who were married or in relationships. While working for the Concord PD, he had affairs with two of his fellow officers' wives, which got him into trouble.

In fact, in the weeks just before his disappearance, his mother asked him, "If something were to happen to you at work, who should we go asking about it?" He told her a woman's name, which was later discovered to be the name of a woman who was in a relationship with one of the daytime workers at the plant. Was it possible that an angry boyfriend or husband had taken out their vengeance on him?

Both Gallagher and the family believe it was most likely one thing. Curtis was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nicholas Jr. said, quote, There is no doubt in my mind that Kurt was murdered that night because he caught somebody or multiple people in the act of doing something wrong. We are not sure they intended to kill Kurt, but they did, and we just want to bring him home. End quote.

A tip to look into the employees who were working at Venture that night came to Gallagher's attention some five years later. The Pishon family told me that the people who were working there that night weren't regular employees of Venture. They were mostly made up of cleaning crew hired to come in for that night. One of the people who had worked there that evening was a man by the name of Robert E. April.

In 2005, Robert April was named as a public person of interest. Gallagher said there was also a second person of interest, but that name has never been released. Three years later, in October of 2008, 40-year-old Robert April was arrested for assaulting 17-year-old David Horvitz and threatening to kill his brother because he owed him $30.

Though he was initially arrested for assault and criminal threatening charges, his comments to the boy during the interaction outright implicated him in the disappearance of Curtis Pishon.

According to an arrest affidavit filed by Seabrook Police, the boy claimed that he was cornered by April and asked about the money that his brother allegedly owed him. When the 17-year-old Horvitz didn't have an answer, April grabbed him and threatened him, saying, quote, When I see your brother, boy, I'm gonna slice his throat and nobody will find his body, just like the missing person from Seabrook.

"Yeah, that's right. I killed him. And your brother is next. And nobody will find him. I buried him in my yard. And your brother is next." End quote. Curtis Pishon is Seabrook's only missing persons case. An additional report filed stated that April also allegedly told Horvitz how many guns he had at home and how easy it would be to kill his family.

In February of 2009, however, the charges were dropped because David Horvitz recanted his statement on the witness stand. When asked about the threats that had been made against him and his family, David said he couldn't remember. He later admitted that April had met him and asked for forgiveness, and because of that, he wanted the charges dropped.

Several years later, in 2012, April was accused of breaking into a home and threatening two people with a knife. These charges were also dropped after the key witness for the prosecution failed to show up in court. Gallagher said that he has spoken with Robert April over the years about Curtis and that he hasn't provided any relevant information about the case. When asked to take a polygraph test, April refused.

To this day, the Seabrook Police Department continues to lead this investigation rather than the state police because it is officially classified as a missing persons case. If it were classified as a homicide, it would be under the jurisdiction of the state police.

In 2008, the Pishon family launched the Find Kurt campaign, offering a $5,000 reward and opening up a tip line for information. Tips came flooding in, a lot of which were remarkably similar and darkly detailed. Informants didn't hold back names, and the names that kept popping up were consistent with the other tipsters and with what police already had.

A few tips matched exactly what Gallagher's theory was. According to the Newburyport Daily News, the caller named the alleged perpetrator, but it was redacted for print. For now, we'll call him John. The caller said, quote, "'John was caught stealing at Venture on the night of Kurt's disappearance. Kurt caught him stealing and John hit him or beat him, but eventually he was dead.'"

"John took care of the body by dismembering it and hiding it, and burying it in the back of his yard. From what I was told, the body was decapitated, dismembered, and spread all about. I hope this information helps you." Gallagher has said, "Nothing that the Pichon family has brought to us for review is inconsistent with the theory we developed from our own investigation and interviews.

Additional tips that came in included possible locations of remains in the Seabrook area. Shortly after receiving that tip in 2010, police got permission to excavate a Seabrook home's backyard to look for remains.

The previous owner had passed away in 2005, and based on the information they'd collected, the new homeowner's in-ground pool, which had been filled in with concrete, could be hiding something sinister. Who exactly was the previous owner of this house? Wilson Bubb April, the brother of Robert April.

On April 6, 2010, Seabrook and state police dug up the backyard on South Main Street with heavy machinery used by the highway department. They returned the following day to conclude the search for remains, but ultimately they found nothing.

Crystal remembered it as an emotional high when the family got the call from police before the dig and told Seacoast Online, something like that will come up and it does bring it all right back. We are sitting on the edge of our seats. Is this the time they're going to figure it out? And then there's a huge letdown. But it wasn't a surprising letdown at this point. It

It's been, for whatever reason, difficult for the police to find some kind of traction. This 2010 dig was not the first search for Kurt's remains.

In August of 2007, police and canine teams searched multiple acres in and around the Veterans Memorial Park in connection to Kurt, though they ultimately didn't recover anything. The park is close to a home owned by Robert April's mother and stepfather.

I've seen it mentioned that Seabrook has its own code of silence, that the community knows who killed Curtis, but nobody is stepping forward on the record to talk out of fear. Gallagher has mentioned he believes there are two killers responsible for Curtis' death.

"Seabrook has a code of silence and there are people out there who have the information we need to make an arrest and find Kurt's remains. Most of the information we get is second or third hand and not enough for probable cause to get a search warrant. Over the years things have trickled into me, but people are adamant about remaining anonymous.

But there are people in the community who have the information we need to close this case. I urge them, for the sake of bringing closure to the Pishon family and to bring the perpetrator to justice, to come forward.

In 2011, Crystal wrote a letter to the editor in the Daily News of Newburyport titled "A Plea to Help Solve My Brother's Murder," begging the Seabrook community to come forward with something that might help them bring her brother home. She wrote: "The statute of limitations have run out for all involved except the one who actually committed the murder. Perhaps the person who did this is threatening you or your family.

Ask yourself if it's worth it. Living in fear of this person who may have already done this to someone else, they may yet still harm you or your family. Lies and deception never bring healing. Secrets rarely stay hidden for long.

Michael Gallagher, who has had many sleepless nights over this case, said in 2011, "I think the community knows what happened. Everyone knows that we know. He's a local. I think he stays in his trailer, maybe on a self-imposed prison term. So maybe there's a little justice in there." Curtis' disappearance has had a lasting impact on the Pishon family.

The 4th of July is no longer a celebration, but a sad reminder that Curtis is no longer with them. And knowing that his remains could be so close to them but are unattainable is heart-wrenching for a family who just wants to put him to rest. After 8 years with no answers, the family had him legally declared dead in 2008.

In the New Hampshire Veterans Cemetery in Boscoen sits an empty gravestone with the headstone date of July 5th, 2000. The most important thing to the Pishon family today is to find Curtis' remains. The reward for information leading to a discovery or a conviction has grown over the years and it now sits at $10,000.

But despite publicity like a segment on unsolved mysteries shortly after his disappearance, Curtis' case still remains unsolved. Nicholas Sr. isn't so sure we need to wait and hope for the information to arrive. This is what he thinks was missing from the initial investigation and what could still be done.

As a professional investigator in the military police for over 20 years, he found that sometimes the key person needed to solve a case was

was simply waiting for someone to knock on their door and ask. Relationships change. Attitudes change. Reasons for silence may disappear. Perhaps all that's needed to solve this case is asking the right person the right question at the right time. ♪

If you have any information about the murder of Curtis Pishon or where his remains may be located, I urge you to call the New Hampshire Crime Line 603-474-2640 or leave a tip at the link in the show notes. Help the Pishon family bring Curtis home.

My sources for this episode include articles from Seacoast Online, Newburyport Daily News, WMUR, The Providence Journal, The Burlington Free Press, The Portsmouth Herald, The Charlie Project, and Unsolved Mysteries. A very special thanks to Nicholas Sr. and Astrid Pichon, and Nicholas Jr. and Crystal for sharing their personal stories with me.

Additional thanks to Byron Willis for his research and writing support. Murder, She Told is co-produced by AKA Studio Productions. All links for sources and media can be found on MurderSheTold.com linked in the show notes. You can also connect with me on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. If you loved this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend and 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 victim, you are more than welcome to reach out to me at MurderSheToldPod at gmail.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 and keeping the names of your family and friends alive. Murder She Told will be back next week with another episode. Thank you for listening. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. Oh!

She's the self-proclaimed bingo queen of Manila. And I know better to interrupt her on bingo night, even to pick up cash. Sending money direct to her bank account is super fast, and Aunt Tina gets more time to be the bingo queen. Western Union, send money in-store directly to their bank accounts in the Philippines. Services offered by Western Union Financial Services, Inc., NMLS number 906983, or Western Union International Services, LLC, NMLS number 906985. Licensed as money transmitters by the New York State Department of Financial Services. See terms for details.