This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA. I'm Kristen Sevey. You can connect with the show at murdershetold.com or on Instagram at murdershetoldpodcast. This is part two of the Rebecca Pelkey story. If you haven't listened to part one, I suggest going back and starting with that one first.
This episode contains a description of suicide. Please listen with care. On the afternoon of Monday, November 14th, 1988, five days after 14-year-old Rebecca Pelkey's body was discovered in the rural woods of Maine, friends and family gathered at Brookings Smith Funeral Home in Bangor to memorialize her life. Becky was dressed in her blue prom dress. After the service, everyone headed to South Levant Cemetery for Becky's interment.
just five miles from the spot where her body was found. It was a cool and cloudy fall day, temps in the low 40s, and everyone's hearts were heavy from the sudden loss of Heather's eldest child. The inscription on her headstone read, We love you, and we miss you, and it was signed by her siblings and her mom. Her cousin Christina remembered that it changed her family forever.
I do remember that kind of being a turning point for my family as a whole. It was kind of a heavy vibe around the home. Heather and the children were there a lot. I specifically remember my dad kind of spiraled into a depression. Also Heather, obviously. Substance use became more of a daily prevalent issue among the family itself.
My dad would play the piano when he was sad. So I remember this always being this kind of sad piano music coming from the living room throughout the house. And it kind of set a tone of, you know, what each evening was going to be like. Just very sad. It was a sad time. Eight years after Becky's death, her younger brother, J.R., died in a tragic accident working on a car. He was just 18 years old. And then a year after that,
Her other brother committed suicide on Becky and J.R.'s grave, and my dad discovered his body. By 1997, three of Heather's four children had died young, one by murder, one by accident, and one by suicide. She had only one surviving daughter, the youngest of the four. He was just three years old when her older sister was killed. Heather's fraternal twin brother, Kirk, took it very hard.
He took a lot of responsibility for that, that he wasn't able to protect her or find her. So he carried this heavy burden. He always did. Anything related to Heather or her kids, he took a lot of responsibility for all of them. I think that he internalized that and felt responsible. He felt depressed and it definitely still weighs on him today. He's very quick to get upset when discussing it or Heather or any of the kids.
Kirk's house in Levant was the center of the family, and his 8-year-old daughter Christina remembered when she came home from school on the day that Becky's body was identified.
was getting off the bus and there was cars lined all the way as far as the eye could see both sides of the road. And when I got off the bus, I could see that all of those people were at my house on our porch and our yard. And I remember being kind of whisked away to the neighbor's house. I was eight years old. So what I, I don't remember anything from the rest of that day.
Becky's body was found on the morning of Wednesday, November 9th, and identified the next day. On Friday morning, the Bangor Daily News published an article with her name. And on Saturday, they ran an article with the barest of bones background on Becky. The headline was, Bangor 7th grader attended school sporadically. They described her as a 7th grade student with a, quote, spastic attendance record, but a pleasant young lady to meet.
The fact that they focused on her truancy quietly implied to readers that she was a bad kid and that her own actions imperiled her life. And that is the extent of what was reported about Becky. For the next 40 to 50 articles on the case over the following two years, little else is said about her.
If I had gone by just what the articles had said, all I would know about her is that she was 14, she was white, which we know not to be true, and she skipped school. There was no mention about her heritage, no mention about her personality, and no mention about what she meant to people. Her life is so much more than what little was printed about her in the newspaper when she died.
The day after her body was found, a group of men, all employed by the state of Maine, gathered in a well-lit room in Augusta to study Becky's remains, to learn what they could about her death and document their findings. This information is from Becky's autopsy. There were three members of the Maine State Police present, a prosecutor from the Attorney General's office, and two medical examiners. Her body had been stored and transported in a plastic body pouch, which they carefully removed.
An ID tag with her body said, unidentified white female, though Becky was Native American and by this point on Thursday had been identified. Her blue jean jacket had been pulled over her head to the front of her body and her arms were still trapped in the sleeves.
The field team had carefully put her hands and feet in paper bags to limit their disturbance and preserve trace forensic evidence. After disentangling her from the jacket and removing the bags, they could see her black 80s t-shirt, which had an emblem on the front that said "Bad to the Bone." They checked the pockets of the jacket and found them all empty except the left front breast pocket, which had an unopened package of Black Cat firecrackers.
Though her body had been likely sitting in the woods for a week, it was in good condition. An examination of her fingernails showed no obvious blood or foreign matter under them, but they were clipped and bagged as evidence. They carefully searched her for loose hairs and fibers, and though they found several of her own hairs, and even some animal hairs, they also found a light-colored, short, curly hair that appeared to be a pubic hair on the right shoulder of her t-shirt.
There was a skinny, white nylon rope wrapped around her neck many times and pulled taut. Part of the collar of her t-shirt was trapped in the loops, and so was her hair. As it was unwound from her neck, Dr. Roy discovered that it was looped underneath itself, which he carefully undid. When he got to the final loop around her neck, he found that the length of the rope terminated in a tight knot, so he cut it off her.
There were impressions left on her skin from the rope. It was what Dr. Roy ultimately ruled as the cause of her death, asphyxiation by ligature strangulation. There was also what looked to be a shoe print on the left side of her face and neck. Dr. Roy noted bruising in the areas near the shoe print. Under her t-shirt, Becky's bra had been pushed up above her breasts. She was also bottomless. She'd been discovered with the blue jeans carefully folded and placed over her genital area.
Through a search of the surrounding woods, police were able to recover her underwear. Dr. Roy took sample swabs of her genitals and mouth and turned it over to the Maine State Police for testing, but noted that there was no evidence of recent sexual trauma. After the surface-level observations, he made some incisions to see what could be learned from an examination of her internal organs.
Her stomach contained a large quantity of slightly digested food, including thinly sliced light green pickle, tomato, hamburger, and light green lettuce. Everything else looked normal. Becky was perfectly healthy. The toxicology screening came back positive for alcohol. After they concluded their solemn task, they turned her body over to Brookings Smith, the funeral home in Bangor that would handle her funeral arrangements.
Other than a sweet thank you note for the support, flowers, and cards that was published by Becky's family in the Bangor Daily News, there was no update on the case for several weeks until an explosive day in early December.
At 5 p.m. on Monday, December 5th, a month after her body was found, a prosecutor for the Attorney General presented the facts and evidence to a secret grand jury to indict 24-year-old Ronald Buber for murder. They agreed, and Ron was arrested at 6 p.m. at his apartment on Union Street in Bangor. As he was being led to a waiting police car, he told reporters that he didn't kill her and he didn't know who did.
Detectives told the press that crucial testing results from forensic evidence had come in just days prior leading to the arrest. Two days later, Ron was arraigned and he pled not guilty. Ron couldn't afford an attorney, so he was assigned a public defender, attorney John Hillary Billings, who you might remember from the James Hicks episode. He represented Hicks in his first trial in 1985.
As he was leaving the courthouse, Ron spoke freely to reporters again, saying he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and that he had both an alibi and witnesses. He said that he had dropped the girl off in Bangor a week before she was found and had no idea who killed her.
Three days later, friends of Becky's published a memoriam in the Bangor Daily News. Those we love remain with us, for love itself lives on, and cherished memories never fade because the loved one is gone. Those we love can never be more than a thought away. For as long as there is memory, they will always live on in our heart. Becky, we love you and we miss you. You're friends forever. Love always. Melanie, Holly, Dorinda, and Mike.
The judge held Ron without bail after the arraignment, and there was another hearing a week later to determine whether or not to grant him bail. Ron's family, his mom and his dad, his aunt and uncle, and his grandfather rallied behind him in the pews of Penobscot County Superior Court.
Ron's attorney offered up a number of bail conditions that Ron was willing to submit to, staying in the custody of his parents, checking in daily with the Bangor Police Department, observing a nightly curfew, abstaining from alcohol, and even staying at the jail nightly so that he could continue to work during the day to support his wife and future child. She was in a difficult spot as his landlord had recently evicted them. John said that in just a few short weeks, on
On Christmas Eve, she was due to give birth and asked for grace from the court. Ron's family estimated that they could come up with $8,000 as collateral to secure Ron's release, but the judge ruled for the state and denied him bail because of the seriousness of the offense and the evidence against Ron, which was substantial, so Ron was held in jail until trial.
His attorney sought to have a key document, the summary of evidence from Detective Zamboni of the Maine State Police, made secret. By default, after a detective's affidavit is filed with the court, it will become public record. John wanted to keep Ron from being tried in the court of public opinion and to reduce the difficulty of finding a jury who had no preconceived notions about Ron's guilt or innocence.
The state expressed no opinion either way, and the judge agreed, impounding it for one-month periods, which were extended several times. Soon after Ron was charged, the prosecutor turned over to him and his attorney all of the evidence that they had against him, known as discovery. His defense attorney got money from the court to hire experts and a private investigator to look into alternative suspects.
About three months into this process, Ron's attorney fired him, saying, quote, Such deliberate, unilateral conduct contrary to the expressed counsel has led to an irretrievable breakdown in our relationship.
He was talking about Ron leaking all of the discovery documents to the press. WABI Bangor was doing nightly TV news reports on it, and John was furious. He had had it with Ron. He filed a motion to withdraw as his attorney to the court, and it was approved. So Ron got a new attorney, Martha Harris.
Most of 1989 passed without any development in the case. In November, Becky's family published a memoriam for the one-year anniversary that read, Her family remembers with deepest sorrow her passing. We extend heartfelt sympathy to her close friends at this difficult time. She is sorely missed and will be forever loved.
In early 1990, there was a lively debate between Martha and the prosecutors about suppressing Ron's interrogation, the same interrogation you heard in Part 1, preventing it from being used at trial.
She contended that Ron's exhaustion, emotional state, and ignorance of the situation rendered his statements inadmissible. She also condemned the tone of the detectives and the interrogation tactics, calling the whole thing fundamentally unfair. The prosecution wrote a devastating and lengthy legal argument that addressed all the points Martha had raised.
The judge agreed with the prosecution and ruled that the interrogation was admissible, explaining that Ron was informed of his rights, which he knowingly and intelligently waived, and that throughout the interview, Ronald was fully responsive and alert as he answered questions from police articulately and clearly.
He also wrote, in response to the claim that Ronald was too tired during the interview, that he agreed to tell the officers if he was too tired to continue, and never suggested during the interview that he was. After some more legal arguments about evidence, which the defense roundly lost, the trial was afoot. On March 12, 1990, one year and four months after Becky was murdered, jury selection began.
From a pool of 112 potential jurors, 90 were dismissed due to them having a more than basic knowledge of the case or knowing potential witnesses, leaving them with just 22. Their goal was to find 47.
By the next day, they had their jury, but before the trial could begin, the attorneys needed to have an evidentiary hearing about a key prosecution witness, Daniel DeAles. Daniel was an Alcoholics Anonymous coordinator and knew Ron from before he was an alleged murderer. He handled all of the AA meetings for the Penobscot County Jail and conducted a couple of telephone sessions with Ron while he was incarcerated. When he took the stand, he
He testified that Ron had told him twice that he had killed Becky. He said that it took him 10 days before he came forward to officials with his statement because he was grappling with a moral conundrum. Was he breaking the code of confidentiality of AA?
Ron's defense attorney immediately objected and moved to suppress the testimony, claiming that whatever Ron had said to him was protected by law as privileged communication. She later supported her argument with a memorandum and explained that although she couldn't find any examples dealing with AA, specifically, by analogy, there were similar communications protected by statute. Lawyer-client, therapist-patient,
Married couples, in Pastor Parishioner. Martha added, again by analogy, that any information that inmates shared with counselors working in a jail by law couldn't be used as evidence. But Daniel was not a licensed counselor. He was a volunteer for AA. Daniel said that Ron had crossed a line and that he had a moral duty to disclose the confession.
Regardless of the legality of the testimony, the public was simply interested in the truth, and this was an explosive revelation. Ron had confessed to the murder in a private one-on-one conversation with someone he trusted. The judge ruled that the testimony would be admissible because there was no statute protecting the conversation, regardless of its similarity to other types of protected speech.
The next day, in a bold move, Martha moved to stop the trial, claiming that there was new crucial information that came up during the first days of jury selection that she needed more time to follow up on. She requested that the trial be continued at a later date. Despite the fact that the jury was already impaneled, the judge granted the request and moved the trial back three months, to June, and dismissed the jury.
After the trial's false start, the release of Zamboni's affidavits, and the release of the discovery materials, the press was armed with a lot of information about the prosecution's case against Ron, and they presented it to the public. Martha felt like Ron was unlikely to get a fair trial in Penobscot County because she thought that many people might already be convinced of his guilt. She filed a motion on Friday, March 16th, the same week the trial had been postponed, and
and asked for it to be moved to a different county in Maine. She explained that one of the defense witnesses, after hearing about Ron's alleged confession, withdrew their support. The judge approved the motion and moved the case from Penobscot to Somerset County, where the trial would be conducted in Superior Court in Skowhegan. On June 11, 1990, jury selection began again, ending with 12 chosen jurors and two alternates.
Over the following eight days, the trial was conducted. The defense had a list of 39 potential witnesses, and there were over 35 for the prosecution. The prosecution also had 94 evidence exhibits, and the defense, 11. They played the full three-plus-hour interrogation recording in the courtroom.
One of the first things the prosecution sought to establish was the time of Becky's death. The medical examiner who conducted the autopsy estimated her time of death as five to ten days prior to when her body was found, in the six-and-a-half-day period that they suggested was accurate and fell right within that timeline.
Martha presented her own expert witness, Dr. George Curtis, who said that he believed that she had only been dead for two to five days, likely three or four, which didn't jive with the prosecution's timeline. He said that her body was not experiencing certain stages of decomp that would typically be present, even under morgue refrigeration, if she had been dead for as long as the prosecution said.
The attorney for the state, later, in closing arguments, contextualized this medical discussion, saying, quote, Both doctors acknowledged there's no real precision in trying to date the time of death. It's simply an educated guess.
Another factor that pointed to Becky's death occurring on the night of November 2nd was the contents of her stomach. The autopsy revealed that she had recently eaten a hamburger with a pickle, tomato, and lettuce. This was consistent with what both Ron and her friends testified that she had eaten that night. From the interrogation, Ron himself explained that they first went to McDonald's but thought it was too expensive and instead went to Burger King.
The defense argued that fast food hamburgers were a regular part of Becky's diet and did little to establish her time of death. The presence of alcohol in her toxicology screening, too, was consistent with what happened that evening. Everyone in the car said that they had gone to the liquor store to pick up some vodka and made screwdrivers with it.
Inside the pocket of Becky's jacket were some firecrackers. Those same firecrackers were also found in Ron's car during the search, further suggesting that the night she was with Ron was the night she died.
But most important of all to establishing the time of her death was that no one in Becky's life heard from her after that evening. Where did she sleep that night if she were alive? Her mom hadn't heard from her, nor had any of her friends. Further reinforcing the time of her disappearance was the fact that even though she made plans with her friends to meet back up at the Bangor Arcade the next day, neither she nor Ron appeared.
The prosecution then sought to place Ron with Becky near the time of her death. Ron himself said that Becky was the last person in the car with him, which was corroborated by other occupants of the car, Ron's friend Scott and Becky's friends, Erica and Melanie. He also said that during their drive that evening, he was going to take Becky out to Levant to let her try driving the station wagon.
Levant is northwest of Bangor, in the same general area where Becky's body was found. Her body was found in Herman, technically, but it was just one mile from the town line of Levant. The prosecutor also established that Ron had a more-than-passing familiarity with the area, since his wife's mother lived there.
Though Ron didn't testify at trial, he did insist in his interrogation that he never ended up going out to the country to drive with Becky that night and dropped her off downtown. The next topic was Ron's sexual interest in Becky. There was the fact, on its face, that Ron was 24 years old and Becky was an attractive and older-looking 14-year-old girl.
Ron had isolated Becky from her friends, deciding to drop her off last. Both of Becky's girlfriends said that they saw Ron and Becky holding hands during the car ride. And finally, there was evidence from the scene and Becky's body which established that she had recently had sex. Pubic hairs and semen were recovered.
And, just to be clear, a 14-year-old girl, under any circumstance, cannot consent to having sex with a 24-year-old man. This, combined with Ron's history of alcohol abuse and his admission that he was drinking that night, painted a picture of a sexually motivated crime that was fueled by intoxication. Ron went to two AA meetings the following day, one around noon and the other that evening.
The defense suggested it was a man simply seeking help for his addiction and that the timing was merely coincidental. Ron, in the interrogation, said that he had fallen off the wagon of sobriety again and the night that he went out with the girls was in the final stages of tapering off his alcohol use before getting clean again. The prosecutor said, here was a man racked by guilt who realized he had crossed a terrible line
and was trying to get his life back under control. The next topic was the damage of the trees and rocks near the site of the murder. The cops said that there were two rocks on the tote road that were scraped by the underside of a car.
Ron said in his interrogation that he had recently had some damage to the bottom of his car, specifically the oil pan. He said that it had come from a time when he took this station wagon to a construction job site he was working on, a camp up in Lincoln, and that he had gotten it repaired five days after seeing Becky.
The prosecutor emphasized the suspicious timing to the jury. Detectives asked him, in the interrogation, if he had told his wife about the damage. After all, the station wagon was titled in her name. He said he had told her, but then he hesitated, stumbled, and eventually claimed that he couldn't remember when he had told her about the recent damage.
There was some bluster in the interview about being able to forensically link the damage to the rocks to the damage to the car, but the microscopic comparison of the paint chips recovered from the trees and the vegetation recovered from Ron's car was inconclusive. The black color, however, did match the color of Ron's side-view mirror. The police took Ron's vehicle out to the site and filmed a recreation, which was shown to the jury.
They showed how it would have been possible for the station wagon to make the gouges in the trees and the scrapes in the rocks. The height of his side-view mirror aligned closely with the damage to the trees. Martha criticized the demonstration as unscientific and even called an engineer to the stand who refuted the demonstration, saying that it proved nothing. The prosecutor said that though it wasn't scientific, it was suggestive. From there, they moved to the hairs that were found at the scene.
In addition to the one found on Becky's shirt, there were many other hairs that were found on or around her body. Those hairs were examined under a microscope and compared to hair collected from Ron at the interrogation. A Maine State Crime Lab forensic chemist said that they were microscopically similar, but she couldn't be certain that they were his hairs.
The detectives, during the interrogation, asked Ron about his shoes several times. They wanted to know what shoes he had worn the night he was out with Becky. He said that although he wasn't sure, it could have been only one of two pairs, some work boots or some black sneakers.
They asked if they could have permission from Ron to take them as evidence, and he agreed, somewhat reluctantly because he said it would only leave him with a pair of cowboy boots for his daily use. They then asked him if he had any white sneakers, and he recalled, suddenly, that he had three pairs.
The reason they were so interested is because Becky's neck and face had some shoe prints that looked like basketball shoe tread, and some of the other witnesses had remembered him in white high-top sneakers. They also remembered Ron walking on the hood and roof of his station wagon that night, and when detectives processed his car nine days later, they found shoe prints on the exterior.
They took photos and lifts from the car and compared them to his white sneakers, and they were a match, which reinforced the theory that he had been wearing them the night Becky disappeared.
The detectives had created an impression from Ron's shoes and traced the tread pattern left on Becky's skin onto a transparency and compared it for the jury. The prosecutor claimed that the tread was identical. The defense questioned the techniques that led to his conclusion, again calling it unscientific, and said that other factors, such as where the skin was pinched or stretched taut beneath the sneaker, would affect the impression.
To see an image of this exhibit and other images from the case, check out the blog at MurderSheTold.com. But the prosecution had saved their best evidence for last. They brought four witnesses to the stand, all of whom had direct interactions with Ron, and testified as to what he told them.
Daniel DeAles, the Alcoholics Anonymous coordinator for the jail, testified that Ron, the day after his arrest, during a one-on-one session, had told him twice that he had killed Becky and that only he and one other person knew that he had done it. Daniel said that he had even warned Ron prior to their meeting that they shouldn't talk about the case, but Ron was undeterred.
The next witness was a man named Joseph, who Ronald had carpooled with to an AA meeting in Millinocket about a week after Becky's body was discovered. Joseph told the court that Ron said he had "cleaned his car of evidence" and that he had, quote, "gone parking with Becky the night of her disappearance," lending credence to the sexual motivation theory. The next witness was Charles Kimball, who shared a cell with Ron in jail.
He said that he had overheard Ron talking on the telephone, saying, He said that Ron had told him directly that Becky and he went parking and began arguing.
Last was Richard Everett, another inmate at Penobscot County Jail. He said that in January of 1989, about a month after Ron was arrested, he was playing cards with Ron and several other inmates. Somebody asked him if he killed Rebecca Pelkey, and he just come out right and said, casual as can be, yes, he did. Richard knew Becky personally because he had given her a ride one time when she and her friend were hitchhiking between Bangor and Hermann.
He remembered her saying that she wanted to go first to New York and then to Arizona, where her biological father lived. The defense tried to impeach the testimony of the four men, one by one, by attacking their credibility. For example, Richard, the man he was playing cards with, took a year before coming forward with his account. Why the long wait? She further suggested that Ron had only admitted to the murder at the jailhouse to try and be perceived as tough.
The prosecution had finished, and the defense had the opportunity to present witnesses. Martha called Ron's mother, who tearfully recalled that Ron had brought his family together to tell them that he was a suspect in the case. Quote, He started crying, and he said he was innocent, that he didn't do it. She called Ron's father, who helped to establish some of the damage that had happened to the station wagon.
But most of all, Ron's greatest defense was his complete cooperation with the investigation. He agreed to be interviewed by investigators immediately. He stayed with them for four hours in the middle of the night, answering all their questions.
He submitted hair samples and blood samples. He gave them permission to search his cars, take his shoes. He agreed to take a polygraph examination. He said that he had confessed to previous crimes that related to theft and found that he liked jail. And throughout it all, he remained steadfast in his denial.
His story, from which he never swayed, was that Becky was alive and talking and healthy when he dropped her off in front of the arcade at 9.15 or 9.30 that night.
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Go to knix.com and get 15% off with promo code TRY15. That's knix.com, promo code TRY15 for 15% off life-changing period underwear. That's knix.com. After closing arguments, the judge gave the jury instructions. He explained that in addition to the murder charge that the prosecution presented, they could also find Ron guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
On Thursday, June 21st at 4 p.m., the case was turned over to the jury. At about 5.30, they asked to hear a portion of Ron's interrogation. It was given to them, but they were told that they had to listen to it in its entirety. It was almost four hours long. As it got into the evening hours, the jury was sequestered at a local hotel, and they picked it up the next morning.
At 11.45 a.m., they returned to the courtroom with a verdict. The judge asked the foreman if they had reached a unanimous decision. He said that they had. The foreman read for the court, we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder. When the decision was shared, Ronald stared straight ahead, showing no emotion. His mother, friends, and other family members sobbed once it had been read.
In a press conference, Ron complained that he and his attorney couldn't present a defense. He said that Daniel DeAles was mistaken in what he heard and that the physical evidence was bogus. He said, What they did in this case is instead of going out and finding evidence to get a suspect, they went out and got a suspect and made the evidence fit. And of Detective Zamboni, Ron said, Well, there's no love lost between us.
Ron told the press that he wasn't surprised by the outcome, but he said that he maintained his innocence and would appeal the verdict to the Maine Supreme Court. You ain't heard the last from me, he continued. There's one sick cookie out there, and eventually, it's gonna happen again. Becky's uncle, Ron Small, thanked the prosecution and investigators and stated that the end of the trial was a tremendous relief for the family.
We've tried to stay quiet to protect Ron's constitutional rights. He'd like to send out sympathy to his mother because it's been equally as hard on her. Immediately following the conviction, Somerset County started billing Penobscot County for the cost of housing Ron, and there was an argument in the news about who was responsible for paying for his incarceration and other related costs, including medical bills.
For five months, a series of psychological tests and interviews were conducted, until finally, in November of 1990, right around Thanksgiving, Ron was scheduled to appear in court.
His attorney met with him the morning of the hearing and said that he was neither capable of understanding her nor would he be able to grasp the impending proceedings because he was doped up on a, quote, big spread of tranquilizers that he was given by a jail physician. The judge agreed to continue the hearing and they reconvened in mid-December.
There were a number of letters that were written in support of Ron from his family and friends. His mom didn't attend the sentencing. On, quote, the advice of her therapist. And her letter, which was also signed by his father, seemed strangely irrelevant to the matter at hand.
She clarified that he wasn't responsible for a house fire that happened 20 years prior, when Ron would have been just six years old. Rather, it was due to faulty electrical wiring. And she also clarified that he had a normal and not contentious relationship with his sister. Odd.
Ron's aunt, with whom he had spent a great deal of time with, said she knew him very well. He was always well-behaved and brought a lot of joy to their lives. She said that he was anxious to please and be loved.
But the most personal letter was from Ron's sister, Susie. She said that Ron was a bit of a loner. He never had a best friend. She found it difficult to believe that he could physically harm someone. She recalled times from their youth when he would get into fights with other boys because of his mouth, but he would never fight back. She acknowledged the times that he had been in trouble with the law for breaking in, stealing, and forgery, but insisted that none of his crimes were violent.
Susie wrote, To sum this up, if you would have come to me and told me that Ron robbed a gas station or even a bank, I would have believed it. But as far as him hurting, let alone killing another human being, it's just something he's not capable of. I'm not saying this because he's my brother. If I thought for a moment he could have done this, I would want justice done and for him to get help. But to me, this is something he just didn't do.
Ron told the judge, I'm no angel. I'm far from it. I made a lot of stupid mistakes, but one of them is not murder. Becky's family spoke at the hearing as well. Her mom, Heather, said, My hatred lives inside for Ronald Buber, who took Becky away from me. The pain of losing my daughter is beyond words to phrase.
The prosecutor said that Ron had nearly committed a crime that was unsolvable by leaving her body in the woods, where winter weather, animals, and decomposition would have erased evidence. Had those fur tippers not discovered it so promptly, perhaps Ron would have never been held accountable.
The Pelkey family urged the court to consider a life sentence, but the law said that it could only be applied in certain circumstances, such as the killing of a police officer, a multiple homicide, or in the case of torture. The judge sentenced Ron to 60 years in prison. Three years later, Ron appeared with his same attorney, Martha Harris, before the Maine Supreme Court to appeal his conviction.
They heard arguments on January 6, 1994, and decided the case two months later. They challenged the admissibility of most of the key evidence, Ron's interrogation, the video demonstration with Ron's car, the footprint evidence, Daniel DeIsle's testimony, and the evidence that proved sexual activity.
Though it wasn't reported in the news coverage from the first trial, there was a closed hearing about whether or not the defense could present an alternative suspect theory. The man that they had in mind lived with the Pelkey family and was the subject of a DHS investigation two years prior to Becky's death, when she was 12 years old. He was still in touch with Heather at the time of Becky's death and had come by her apartment on the day of Becky's disappearance.
Martha also said that even if you consider the totality of the evidence against Ron, it wasn't sufficient to reach the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. The high court disagreed and ruled against Ron on all points. Five years into his sentence, Ron's life in prison was spotlighted by the Biddeford Journal Tribune. I can imagine that the reporter contacted the warden and asked them for a recommendation for a man who was doing well, and his name came up.
Ron was thriving in prison. He was the leader of his AA chapter, was an AIDS counselor for new prisoners, and the president of the Longtimers Club, a position he campaigned for and was voted into by other prisoners. Ron said,
What goes on in this institution is important to me. This is my town. I'm going to be here for the next 40 years. If you were going to be in a town for 40 years, wouldn't you get involved? You got people who do hard time and people who do easy time. Early on, he divorced his wife and cut off visits from his son, saying it was a lot easier not to deal with some things. The article very briefly mentioned the crime for which he was convicted.
saying only, she was found in the woods, nude, from the waist down. And then in the next breath said, Ron was a carpenter from Bangor with a wife and a child. It seemed to cast Ron as a responsible, salt-of-the-earth family man, especially in the context of the rest of the glowing piece on him. And it's infuriating to read. The author never mentioned Becky by name.
Ron's earliest release date is February 13th, 2026. Meanwhile, Becky's family's struggles were only amplified. You know, looking back as an adult, I can see that like a co-occurring issue that was going on. It was the depression and the substance use and then the depression from the substance use and then using because you're depressed and it was just on and on. And I would say that that didn't go away.
In the years that followed her death, depression and alcoholism and darkness set in. Heather fell into substance abuse. It was a tipping point where the family took a turn for the worst. Becky's name would come up and put everyone in a funk, listening to sad country music. Becky's uncle, Kirk, and his wife were involved with the Parents of Murdered Children group. Christina remembered that her dad played piano for one of their events.
When Christina grew up, she became a social worker and looked back at her family trauma, trying to understand and process it. This trauma is no stranger to many families like hers.
Becky's heritage is such a rich part of Maine's history. And sadly, it also plays a part in her tragedy too. We're actually a part of two tribes, but you can only be recognized by one tribe in the state of Maine. So we are registered Roostick Band of Mi'kmaqs. It's actually called Mi'kmaq Nation now, but we're also Maliseet, which are just two tribes that are up in northern Maine. Becky was never identified in the newspapers as Native American.
She was only ever referenced as white. We only learned of her heritage through her family.
Native American and Indigenous women are victims of violence and rape at a much higher rate. Pioneers of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Movement, or MMIW, are starting to get the recognition that they are long overdue. In studies that have been conducted, it has been found that Indigenous victims are less likely to get media coverage and their cases are not often investigated with the same rigor. Indigenous victims are also less likely to get justice.
30% of Indigenous homicides are covered in media, opposed to 51% of white homicides that are covered. And then only 18% of Indigenous female homicides are covered in media. So one in three Native women are victims of sexual assault, and 67% of those assaults are perpetrated by non-Natives. And Native women are murdered or sexually assaulted at 10 times higher rate.
84% of Indigenous women experience violence, 56% experience sexual violence, 55% experience domestic violence, 48% experience stalking, and 66% experience psychological violence. In 2016, 116 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women were logged into the Department of Justice database when over 5,500 incidents occurred.
We asked her if she believed the underlying causes of these disparities were relevant to Becky's case. I've been thinking a lot about this. I think there's a couple of different things that play into it. I think there's unresolved family trauma that makes people more susceptible to violence. I think there's the sexualization of the way Indigenous women look like that puts them at a higher rate.
She was beautiful. She was strikingly beautiful. She had beautiful dark hair and eyes and beautiful skin and looked older for her age. And then also, I think he could see that she lacked supervision.
I think it was a recipe that he or maybe some perpetrators can see. You know, if this kid is out and kind of roaming the roads, then they're more susceptible to being able to take a ride. Whereas if a kid has good supervision and parenting, they'd be less susceptible to be taken out for a booze cruise.
At the end of the day, no matter how mature Becky looked and acted, no matter what the newspaper said or didn't say, or what the police said or what the public thought based on all of these things, Becky was just a kid. A 14-year-old girl who was adored by her friends and family. A girl who was just beginning her life, and who had it stolen from her by a predator. Christina believes in the inner strength of her cousin.
I like to think that she would have made it. Like, I think that she would have made it through and made good choices and kind of broke the cycle of poverty and substance use. I just feel strongly. She just had a presence about her. She was very maternal and, like I said, like a leader of the family. And I feel like she would have made it through.
To learn more about the MMIW movement, check out the resources in the show notes. And to learn about more MMIW cases like Becky's that need your attention and haven't gotten justice, follow the Murder, She Told Facebook page where I highlight at least one case every week. ♪
I want to thank you so much for listening. I am so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. Thank you. If you would like to support the show, there's a link in the show notes with options. A very special thanks to Christina and Kirk Small for sharing their memories and trusting me with Becky's story. A detailed list of sources and photos can be found at MurderSheTold.com.
Thank you to Byron Willis for his writing and research, and to Bridget Rowley for her research support. If you have a story that needs to be told or a correction, I would love to hear from you. My only hope is that I've kept the memories of your loved ones alive. I'm Kristen Seavey, and this is Murder, She Told. Thank you for listening. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. She's the self-proclaimed bingo queen of Manila, and I know better to interrupt her on bingo night, even to pick up cash. Hey!
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