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This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and Small Town, USA. I'm Kristen Zivi. You can connect with me at MurderSheTold.com or on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast.
It was the summer of 1971, 18-year-old Lynn Schulze's final summer before heading off to Middlebury College. She was a part of a tight-knit group of about a dozen friends from Simsbury High School, and she found herself spending her last moments of youth in her familiar stomping grounds.
She and her cohorts took turns on the rope swing splashing down in Simsbury Reservoir, a small body of water just walking distance from her house. It was tucked away from the prying eyes of watchful parents, and as she flew through the air, she could almost taste the independence of adulthood.
The suburban Brigands would have their adventures together, exploring the woods in the foothills of western Connecticut, never too far from home, sometimes camping and playing in an abandoned cabin not far from her home with friends.
Lynn was bright and displayed an intuition that revealed itself in her performance on standardized tests. She had aced the PSATs, earning herself a spot amongst those upper echelon of students who were commended by the National Merit Scholarship Program. It paved the way, along with her strong academics, for her to be accepted by Middlebury College, a quaint, private liberal arts school nestled in the valley west of the Green Mountains in rural Vermont.
It is one of the Little Ivies, a group of highly academic private schools in New England that rival their big brothers. Lynn was petite, 5'3", 110 pounds, with straight, shoulder-length dark blonde hair and blue eyes. Her face showed some scars of puberty. She was struggling with acne. Her father, Otto, described her as quite independent and self-reliant, and her sisters said that she was outgoing and got along well with people.
She had a verve for life, a natural curiosity, and she was eager to explore. Her sister said that she enjoyed the challenges of a new adventure. As she walked along the wooden planks carrying her over Hedgehog Trail, she imagined her life at Middlebury with a whole new set of friends and experiences. Though there were a few people from her school who were also attending Middlebury, she would be thrust into a new environment with a whole new set of obstacles and delights.
She followed the power lines to a vista on the West Mountains that overlooked her hometown, and she took a moment to savor it. She looked down where her house lay beneath her and reflected on her family.
She was the second oldest of five siblings. Her older sister, Janet, had just left for college, and she was next in line. Her house was full of commotion. All of the Schulze children had grown up with one another, only eight years separating the oldest from the youngest. Her parents, Otto and Virginia, provided a loving home life for them. She would miss them at school.
Her hometown of Simsbury was a suburban oasis perched halfway between the big cities of Hartford, Connecticut and Springfield, Massachusetts. She was in a small neighborhood on a short street off the main drag called Brook Drive, aptly named for the little brook that ran adjacent to the homes. Brook Drive was marked by big front yards with lots of grass and lines of trees demarcating the boundaries between the homes.
It was a modest house, about 2,800 square feet, and fairly new, only about 15 years old. It was, in many respects, the American dream: safe, middle-class neighborhood, a supportive family, and financial comfort. Everything but a picket fence. Her dad worked in nearby Windsor, Connecticut as a business executive, the primary breadwinner for the family, and her mother was a teacher.
Simsbury was filled with nature. As you drove around the tidy suburb, trees flanked virtually every main street and two-lane country road. Grassy medians dotted with conifers broke up the miles of paved parking lots standing guard outside the strip malls, imparting to the observer that it was a town that cared not just about raw utility, but also about beauty and nature.
But her idyllic American upbringing didn't shield her from the tumult of the world in the late 60s. She was coming of age in a time where America was, in many ways, coming of age herself. Her sister Anne recalled that Lynn liked meeting new people and getting into deep philosophical discussions about politics, art, music, and life in general. And there was no shortage of philosophical fodder to ponder.
When Lin was in high school, the Vietnam War was rising to its height. Every year, more young American men, by the tens of thousands, were being sent to the jungles to fight the Viet Cong, to fight the looming specter of communism. In 1969, when she was a senior, 549,000 American servicemen were deployed, and American generals were clamoring for more, for escalation.
In a period of nine years, the U.S. military drafted 2.3 million young men to fight for a war that many of them didn't believe in. Huge protests all across America, widely attended by young people, championed peace and a withdrawal from the intractable entanglement.
At the same time, a culture war was being fought at home. It grew to prominence in the mid-1960s and reached a fever pitch in the early 70s. 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. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 was still very present in the minds of many Americans when in the spring of 1968,
Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by white supremacist James Earl Ray, who shot him with a Remington rifle in Memphis, Tennessee, while he stood on the second-floor balcony of a motel. A nationwide wave of riots erupted in more than 100 cities. 300,000 flocked to Atlanta to attend his funeral. At the same time that America was fighting a culture war at home, it was fighting a Cold War abroad.
Russia was rapidly closing the gap in nuclear armament, and America's strategy of overwhelming nuclear force was beginning to fail. There was a growing consensus that in the event there was a Russian invasion of Central Europe, nuclear escalation would result in mutual destruction, making it likely that the West would back down from such a gambit.
The notion that the Berlin Wall would be torn down wasn't even a dream in the era of schoolchildren performing nuclear bomb drills in their classrooms. Even President Lyndon Johnson announced at the end of his first elected term that he would not run for re-election because of his fear for the future of America. He saw a country besieged by strife, and he believed he had become a divisive figure. To say it was a turbulent time would be an understatement.
Looking out the window of her family's car, Lynn watched the trees pass by and contemplated how she would fit into the angry and divided world that she learned about through the headlines of the Hartford Courant and the nightly news of Walter Cronkite. It was on those two-lane roads that Lynn was ferried to Battle Hall, the freshman dorms where she would be calling home for the near future, three and a half hours away and 200 miles from her family.
She joined about 500 other rising freshmen at the picturesque college plopped down in the middle of nowhere. Every building seemed postcard-worthy. 17th-century French architecture dotted the campus with a mountain range backdrop. As the summer turned to fall, the manicured grounds and grassy malls were littered with beautiful leaves from lemon drop to fiery orange.
Lynn's mother, Virginia, said the family talked with Lynn every week on the phone. Lynn always looked forward to the weekly letter she would get from her mom back home. And it wasn't just her, but other members of the family as well. Lynn was a prolific letter writer. Her sister, Anne, said that she would write home as often as twice a week.
The little town was dominated by the college, and the cute shops next to campus catered to the well-heeled young crowd. She loved a knick-knack shop called Little Wings and frequented the Vermont Bookshop. She loved the unique little objects made from leather and woven textiles that caught her eye.
She was crafty herself and took a whittling class in Middlebury's Frog Hollow district, which had just begun offering educational art classes in its inaugural year of 1971. Anne said that Lynn really enjoyed it and showed off her whittling project to several of her college friends. She liked to hike and was in a perfect place to do it, joining the Middlebury College Outdoor Club and traipsing around the state.
Though Lynn didn't have a car on campus, she wanted to explore on the weekends and would catch rides with friends or take buses to reunite with her high school friends who had landed at other various New England campuses.
Her high school friend, Susan Randall, later recalled a time when she hitchhiked to visit Lynn at Middlebury that she had her angst, like we all do, but that she was doing okay. Lynn didn't have a boyfriend and spent much of her energy going on adventures, keeping her vibrant social connections from home alive and making new ones.
As she got into her new rhythm of life, she grew disenchanted with class. She told her friend and fellow classmate, Jan, that she was bored with her classes and thought it was a waste of time to go listen to a lecture. She thought it would be better to simply read the thing on her own. She felt that she could learn more that way. Lynn and Jan had talked about leaving Middlebury at the end of the semester or maybe at the end of the year. Lynn said that she wasn't really happy and didn't like the school.
Lucia Solorzano of Bangor, Maine, described Lynn as a heavy reader and a deep thinker, but evidently not in pursuit of her own studies. Even her father, Otto, conceded that his daughter had become disenchanted with school and was not all that interested in college. She still worried, though, over her grades and her schoolwork.
She'd confided as much in them when she returned home on Saturday, November 13th. And as she was nearing the end of her first semester, she returned home again two weeks later for Thanksgiving on November 25th, hitching a ride with other Simsbury girls who were attending Middlebury. She was glad to be around her family and wasn't looking forward to the return to Middlebury or her impending exams.
On December 7th, she enrolled in classes for the coming spring semester, evidently making a decision to stay. And the next day, on December 8th, she called home and spoke with her mom. Virginia remembered her as being in good spirits and asking how everyone at home was doing. Lynn said that she was eager to be coming home for the Christmas holiday. Little did her mother know, this was the last time that she would ever talk to her daughter.
Lynn had been studying hard for her philosophy and English drama classes. According to the Dean of Students, while she may not have been quite living up to the promises implied by her Simsbury High scholastic record, like so many other first-year college students, she was far from failing. On Friday, December 10th, 1971, she would be sitting for her English drama exam.
That morning, her roommate got up and left the room early around 7:45 AM and reported that Lynn was still sleeping. Some of her friends said that she was preoccupied and sad that morning and that she had planned to buy a bus ticket to New York that same day. At some point later, her financial records indicated that she withdrew $30 from her bank account.
Her exam was scheduled for 1 p.m., but just 30 minutes prior, at 12.30 p.m., she was seen by another student off campus, about a one-mile walk from her dorm, Battle Hall, just outside a health food store in downtown Middlebury, eating dried prunes. Lynn said that she had just missed the bus to New York.
The same building that the health food store was located in also housed the Vermont Transit Authority bus terminal. They then walked back to campus together.
About 15 minutes later, Lynn was seen by a friend of hers in her dorm room. She was in Lynn's English drama class and would be taking the exam with her. Lynn said that she was looking for her favorite pen. Her sister later recalled this idiosyncrasy. Lynn liked to use a cross pen because it had a comfortable size width. She also had a matching pencil. I remember it was green. She loved to write and kept a journal in her senior year of high school.
Around 12:50 p.m., her friend said that she was still in her room, but five minutes later, she disappeared. Her friend assumed that she'd headed over to the classroom, so she hurried over to take the exam. She was surprised to discover that Lynn wasn't there.
According to notes from a later meeting between Otto and the faculty, her professor said that Lynn never missed a class and seemed quite attentive to the lectures, usually sitting near the front. Why would she miss this important test?
At 2:15, Lynn was seen standing again in downtown Middlebury near the bus stop. This time, she was across the street from the health food store near a combo gas station mechanic shop called Keeler's Gulf Station. Then she vanished, never to be heard from again for 51 years.
Her roommate returned to the dorms and didn't see her later that night. And in the morning, Saturday, December 11th, she got up early and left campus to head home for winter break. She noticed that Lynn wasn't there, but didn't think too much of it, assuming she'd already left for the holiday. By that Monday morning, three days after Lynn was last seen, someone alerted campus security that she was missing. One
One of Lynn's close high school friends, who also went to Middlebury, told another mutual friend in Simsbury. And on Tuesday, that friend broke the news to Lynn's mother. Anne said that her family never believed the rumors that Lynn had taken off and was hitchhiking. Her mother, in particular, believed that foul play was involved from the start.
On Wednesday, Otto and Virginia contacted the school. The dean of students said she'd missed a second exam the prior day. Something was wrong. Lynn's parents contacted the Middlebury police and reported her missing. Though five days might seem unthinkable to report someone missing, her sister Anne said it was a different era. It was a more open, freer time. There wasn't quite the concern then, nor the security.
Her room was searched, and it was discovered that she had left most all of her personal belongings. Otto said she'd left $185 in a bank account, $7 in cash and coins in her room, and a $25 check from him in her desk. She also left her Middlebury College ID card, her driver's license, and her wallet in her room, along with all of her clothes and a sleeping bag.
The only things they could deduce were missing were what she was wearing and her backpack.
She was last seen that early winter day in a hand-knit maroon pullover sweater, a brown nylon ski jacket, blue jeans, and hiking boots, with a distinctive silver Native American-inspired ring adorned with turquoise stones. The high that day was 41 degrees, and there was a little bit of snow on the ground that was quickly melting. The next few days would be primarily in the 40s, typical for the late fall-early winter season.
Two weeks prior to Thanksgiving, she had surprised her parents by coming home for the weekend. Lynn could be spontaneous. Her family started contacting all her friends, thinking that she may have made an impromptu trip to visit one of them. None of them had heard anything. Her
Her father made a number of trips to Middlebury between mid-December and mid-January. What was first alarming but perhaps explicable as a reckless error of youth grew to become their terrifying new reality. She had missed the holidays, a time with family that she treasured.
She had missed her parents' 25th wedding anniversary. Her father was quoted in the paper as saying her next major milestone in life was her 19th birthday on February 9th. They kept hoping for the phone to ring. Initially, Otto had requested that the school and police not publicly disclose her disappearance. But when a month had passed, he lifted the press embargo and sought help from the public to find his daughter.
The response was swift, and within a couple of weeks, articles appeared in the Burlington Free Press, the Hartford Courant, the Addison County Independent, and the Middlebury Campus. Suddenly, the chat she'd had with friends over faking your own death and starting life anew became strangely ominous.
Even her dad admitted that Lynn was quite independent and self-reliant. While in high school, he recalled that she had worked as a waitress and liked the work. Otto said that it is entirely possible she could be working somewhere. She gets along with people and is a very likable girl. News around town in Simsbury of her disappearance and a girl in her mother's class recalled going to the Schulze home for a field trip.
Virginia had invited the entire class home to bake bread. On the refrigerator was a newspaper clipping about Lynn's disappearance along with her photo. Betsy, the young girl, later said, I never forgot seeing that picture on the fridge. Mrs. Schultz never said anything about it, but everyone kind of knew. It was this horrible, unspoken thing.
Police were getting some tips from the public in response to the press. State police were told that she may have been seen in different parts of the state, but everything was turning out to be a dead end. Celine Slater, co-owner at the Addison County Independent, recalled a strange experience at one of her favorite restaurants, Lockwood's in downtown Middlebury.
On January 17th, she settled into her usual booth for lunch alone, as was her custom on Mondays. She noticed a young girl wearing what she described as a prairie dress with a low neckline. It was the beginning of winter, but an unseasonably warm day, perhaps high 30s, and over her dress the girl was wearing only a black open-stitch sweater. When she sat down, Celine noticed that she was shivering and her arms were wrapped around her.
Her face was absolutely white. Her hair was blonde and parted, with one side neatly combed and the other side less so. Celine sized her up as someone associated with communal living. In other words, a hippie. She went over to the girl and asked her if she was alright. She asked if she could get her a storm coat. The girl responded that she was fine and insisted that she had a coat at home and said thank you in a dull tone without any hint of emotion.
News about Lynn's disappearance hadn't broken yet, but on Sunday, six days later, she picked up the Friday, January 21st copy of the Burlington Free Press, the first publication to announce Lynn's disappearance, and saw the young girl's face staring back at her.
She was aware from her experience as a newswoman that whenever a story about a missing person broke, she would get reports of sightings from dozens of sources that were quickly discredited, so she was duly skeptical.
But this was no ordinary sighting. She had already written an editorial about the encounter because it stuck in her mind. But after getting it down on paper, she decided to scrap it. When she saw the photo, though, she resurrected it from the wastebasket and put it in a new context, writing an editorial that both described the encounter and bolstered the credibility of her sighting.
She said that as a reporter, she was well aware of false leads and false hopes, and she wanted no part of that. But she also didn't want it on her conscience that she didn't report the startling resemblance. She promptly notified the college authorities that she may have seen the girl.
Vermont State Police thought that they'd solved the mystery in May of 1972 when they tracked Lynn to a commune in Greensboro Bend in Orleans County, but the tip, once more, proved to be a case of mistaken identity. It was easiest at the time for the police and the media to cast Lynn as yet another counterculture runaway, living in some commune, falling off the grid by her own choice.
And Celine's story fed right into that narrative.
As America's involvement in Vietnam waned and the mandatory draft came to a close in 1973, Lin's story, too, started to fade and become a part of history. Her parents continued to document every conversation, keeping meticulous records. But the hope that Lin would someday return home was but a flicker. Anne later said that after Lin's disappearance, everything changed for her family.
In the late 70s, her father, who was involved in the nuclear industry, moved with Virginia to Iran to help with the development of their civilian nuclear programs.
The Simsbury home on Brook Drive was passed to its new owners in 1977. By the early 90s, they'd returned to Florida, and in 1992, authorities went to Florida to take DNA samples from the parents that, together with dental records, could produce a match for remains that fit Lynn's profile. The Middlebury police reopened the case in order to upload the information to a national database.
Lynn's parents, Otto and Virginia Schulze, died in the mid-1990s without knowing what became of their daughter. Ann said, "...one of my father's greatest wishes was to find answers for my sister's disappearance. He kept an in-depth file of every conversation he had with Middlebury College staff and the police, every letter he ever wrote or received on my sister's behalf."
Reports in the press were quiet again for over a decade, and in 2011, Anne and some of Lynn's friends gave interviews to the Burlington Free Press to shed new light and bring awareness to the case.
They were direct about their theories. Anne spoke for the family, saying, We hope to locate Lynn's remains, or at least get some confirmation about her death. Our family doesn't believe that Lynn is alive and suspect that she was killed or accidentally died soon after she disappeared.
She then cast doubt on some theories that had been advanced over the years, saying, "...anybody who knew her would know that it would be completely against her character to drop out without contacting anyone." We speculate that Lynn got to know a group of people who lived in Middlebury or nearby, possibly Rutland or maybe Burlington, that may know of her demise.
She speculated that Lynn's personality, fun-loving, adventuresome, and fearless, and her love for meeting new people may have led to her death. Middlebury Police Chief Tom Hanley promised, We don't let open cases like this go away. We feel that it is safe to assume that Lynn is deceased, and we are investigating it as a possible homicide. We have kept this case alive for many, many years, and we will continue to do so.
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Less than a year later in 2012, the police got an intriguing tip from a source who has never been publicly named. The tip was simple and straightforward. The health food store that Lynn purchased prunes from was owned by a man named Robert Durst. To understand the significance of this revelation, you have to understand Robert's history.
Robert Durst was a millionaire, born into one of the oldest and wealthiest commercial real estate empires in New York City, the Durst Organization. In 2010, the company won the bid to invest $100 million to co-develop and rebuild one of the most famous addresses in all of New York, One World Trade Center. According to Forbes, the Durst Organization is worth over $8 billion.
In 1971, then-28-year-old Robert met his future wife, Kathleen McCormick, who was 19. Their marriage was not the waspy New York fairy tale it was purported to be. A friend of Kathy's later recalled how Robert's violent mood swings and physical abuse would put her in the hospital. Kathy told her close confidants, If anything ever happens to me, don't let Bob get away with it.
Despite her friends urging her to leave, she stayed. Until one night, a decade later, Kathy disappeared. On January 31st, 1982, Kathy showed up unexpectedly at a friend's family gathering.
Something was off. She appeared distraught and a bit disheveled, which was out of character for her. While she was there, she got a call from Robert, and when she got off the phone, her friend remembered that she was visibly shaken. Shortly afterward, she headed home. The next day, she had a scheduled lunch date with that same friend, but Kathy never showed up.
Robert denied any knowledge of Kathy's disappearance. Three weeks later, Kathy's friend recovered her belongings from the trash at the couple's New York City penthouse apartment. Robert was discarding any trace of her. During the investigation, Robert's close friend, Susan Berman, represented him for all media inquiries, relaying his alibi and answering questions on his behalf.
And for almost 20 years, things were quiet. Until 2000, when Kathy's case was reopened by the Westchester DA. They wanted to talk to Susan about the case, but they never got that chance.
In December of 2000, Susan Berman was found dead, shot execution-style in her home in Beverly Hills, California. During this time, Robert was hiding out in Galveston, Texas, and only appeared in public disguised as a woman. He remained incognito until the following year, in 2001, when he was arrested for the murder of his 71-year-old neighbor, Morris Black, whose dismembered remains were discovered floating in the Galveston Bay.
Robert got out on bail and skipped town. A month later, he was discovered when he got into some hot water at a Wegmans in Pennsylvania. While in his feminine disguise, he had attempted to steal some Band-Aids, a newspaper, and a chicken salad sandwich. Despite having nearly $40,000 in cash, he was caught and held at the supermarket.
During a search of his car, police found his neighbor's driver's license and directions to the address of Kathy's friend's home in Connecticut, the last place Kathy was seen alive.
Despite the strong circumstantial evidence, Robert was found not guilty by a Texas jury of premeditated murder on the grounds that Black's death was accidental as a result of a struggle that Black had initiated by brandishing a handgun. Robert was immediately released but still had to face charges of jumping bail and evidence tampering.
Ten years later, in 2015, an HBO documentary series about Durst and his potential crimes called The Jinx was released. Durst himself cooperated with producers and gave pompous interviews for the series. While he was in the bathroom, he incriminated himself on a hot mic when, in between nonsensical mutterings to himself, he uttered, "'What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.'"
Just before the final episode aired in 2015, Robert Durst was arrested and charged with the murder of his friend and spokeswoman, Susan Berman. In addition to his musings caught on tape, they had letters and other evidence that had come in.
It was clear he was trying to flee the country. Agents found fake IDs, stacks of money, his passport and real IDs, maps of Louisiana and Cuba, and a full-face latex mask that matched his skin tone that the assistant DA said was not a mask for Halloween. Having learned from past mistakes, this major flight risk was not granted bail.
In a long and convoluted legal process, he was finally convicted six years later of first-degree murder in September of 2021. At the age of 78, he was sentenced to life in prison, but it was short-lived. Robert died three months later on January 10th, 2022. Robert Durst was a serial killer, and when he was 28 years old, Lynn Schulze was last seen in front of his shop.
Was it a benign coincidence? Or the answer to a decades-old mystery? The Middlebury police held a bombshell press conference in 2015 in the midst of the release of the jinx and Durst's arrest, describing the link to Robert as one of the most interesting leads that they'd ever had on the case, catapulting the 44-year-old missing persons case into the national spotlight.
Police Chief Tom Hanley said that they'd been investigating the connection since the tip came in in 2012. Chief Hanley said that he wouldn't use the term suspect per se, but described Robert as a person that was very interesting to them. There was no evidence that Lynn and Robert even knew one another, let alone had any interaction on December 10th, 1971.
But the circumstances of Lynn stopping at the store to purchase prunes, the day she disappeared, and her propensity to spend time off campus in downtown Middlebury was too coincidental to ignore. Roberts' high-profile defense attorney, Dick DeGaran, responded to the link between his client and Lynn, saying...
Bob Durst had no connection to the case in Vermont or any other case that some law enforcement people have seen fit to draw suspicions about. He's an easy target for this game of blame it on Bob. There is no connection. It's cruel to the Schulze family for police to bring this up. Friends and family may think there's new evidence where there is none.
Hanley explained that Robert was in the Middlebury area in 1971 and 1972. He could have known Lynn and was possibly in contact with her in the final day she was seen alive. Lynn told friends the day of her disappearance that she was buying a bus ticket to New York, where Durst's family resided and he had deep connections. Was there any connection between the two?
Hanley said that police, in 2014, had searched a property near Middlebury, where Robert had lived in 1972, but found nothing of interest. Hanley told the press that Robert and young Kathy lived in a commune-type setting in the Middlebury area in the early 70s, but he didn't confirm an address. It's believed that property the police focused on was in the woods in Ripton, a 15-minute drive away.
According to records found by Web Sleuths user Zephram, David and Rita Villner bought the home on May 5th, 1971 from the Buger family, and the Villners sold it a year later on July 12th, 1972 to a man named James Minchin.
In the 70s, it was known as the Charlie Miller Camp or Cabin. This was the commune-type location where Durst reportedly lived, but his name wasn't part of the ownership records. A woman named Paula Israel, who married the owner of Wild Mountain Time, a clothing store that still stands in Middlebury today, told the Rutland Daily Herald in 2015 that at the time, Robert and Kathy did indeed live in Ripton, Vermont, in the middle of the woods.
Users on Websleuths also found others who allegedly confirmed the Ripton location. A longtime postal worker who didn't recall Durst offered this nugget. It wasn't uncommon for wealthier people from major cities who were looking to connect with a simpler life to rent cabins in the area.
Though I have no idea what the Charlie Miller camp in Ripton looked like, if it was a commune, I would guess there were a number of small rustic dwellings that were built on the same land. It's been reported in more modern articles that some of the, quote, site buildings no longer exist on the property.
In 2014, a man visited Ripton and asked where he could find the old Charlie Miller camp where he stayed as a kid, and he was sent to Robbins Crossroad, a short street cutting through some woods outside of Ripton that now only has a handful of houses along it. Despite there being no physical record that Robert lived in Ripton, police have sufficient undisclosed reasoning to know that he did live there. But what we don't know is for exactly how long.
From the Jinx documentary, in Kathy's own handwriting, she mapped out the timeline of 1971 and 72. She said that she had met Bob in the fall of 1971 in New York City, when he was in town visiting from Vermont. He told her that he owned a health food store. They went on just two dates when Robert asked her to move to Vermont and live with him. She agreed, and in January of 1972, a
A month after Lynn's disappearance, Kathy joined him in Middlebury. She started working in the store immediately. By December of 1972, All Good Things was sold and the couple moved away, settling into a home in Bedford, New York. They got married in April 1973 and the health food store was a thing of the past.
But when Robert talked to the filmmakers about this period of time, his answers didn't quite fall into place in the way I'd hoped. He said, quote, I had this health food store in my mind, and then I met Kathy. We got along great, and she was right away in favor of it.
What's frustrating about this quote is that even though Kathy wrote in her diary that Bob already had a store in Vermont where he was living, his quote implies that his dream became a reality when she inspired him, after they met. He also stated that this store was his dream. He never wanted to work for his father. This is it. This is what I wanted to do, he said.
It is well established that he was in Vermont in the fall of 1971, but was he running a health food store at that time? Thanks to Web Sleuths, we turned to the Middlebury Campus, a hyper-local publication for answers.
Throughout 1971, a health food store located at 15 Court Street was advertised under the name Ohm Natural Health Food. It was advertised under that name on December 9th, the day before Lynn went missing, and on January 28th, 1972. Its name was written on a crudely illustrated barrel, reading Ohm, Open Mondays.
Something changed between January and February because the health food store was advertised under a new name. It had a list of bulk food prices for various grains and flours, and in an eccentric hand-drawn font, it read All Good Things, formerly called Ohm Health Foods. The name changed somewhere around this time frame from Ohm to All Good Things, which begs the question, did the name change coincide with a change of ownership?
If the timing of the advertising is correct, then it appears that the transition took place around February 1972.
Was Durst working at Ohm before he took it over? Or was it strictly run by the proprietors, who were also identified in the Ohm advertising as David and Rena Villner, the same owners that owned the Ripton property and the commune where Robert reportedly lived? And strangest of all, when asked in the Jinx documentary what happened to the store, Robert replied, we sort of sold it.
What does that mean? Did he sort of own it? What was the arrangement between Durst and the Villners? According to Websleuths, David Villner said that he ran and operated the store, and then temporarily, quote, sold it for cash to Durst for about eight months before getting it back. Based on the timing of the ads, it seems that if Lynn did buy prunes from a store that day, it wasn't from All Good Things, but from Ohm Natural Health Food.
Which begs the question, could the Robert Durst lead just be a red herring?
It's not clear where the prunes tip came from, and the prunes are what linked her directly to the store. In the original 70s coverage of the case, there was no mention of prunes. It shows up for the first time in a March 2015 article in the Burlington Free Press. Though doubtful, is it possible that the 2012 tipster, 41 years after the fact, identified the food that Lynn was eating that Friday afternoon?
Another rumor floating around is that Lynn may have known Kathy since they were nearly the same age, and there are reports that Kathy took classes at Middlebury. But Kathy didn't arrive there until January 1972 by her own account, so the timelines just don't add up.
I spent hours digging deeper into the rabbit hole on this Robert Durst Vermont timeline, trying to figure out the exact details that would pave the way for clarity. And let me tell you, it's extremely frustrating. There's a lot of little holes and conflicting details. I think I ended up with more questions than answers. If I'm able to fill in these gaps, I'll publish an update.
Another strange coincidence in this case is the seismic shift that was happening in Lynn's father's industry at the same time she went missing. In January of 1972, as Otto was grappling with the disappearance of his second oldest daughter, he was also confronting a groundswell of opposition by the world's increasing appetite for nuclear power plants.
Otto Schulze was no ordinary nuclear engineer. He was one of the most prominent nuclear energy industry leaders in the U.S. He was one of the pioneers of the industry. By 1971, Otto had moved on to combustion engineering, and though I don't know his title at his new job, I think it's safe to say he was a bigwig.
In 1970, growing skepticism over the safety of nuclear power plants began to mount. At the heart of the issue was this question. What would happen should there be a cooling system failure in the nuclear reactor's core? Many industry execs pointed to the unlikeliness of such a failure. But scientists were unimpressed.
A novel nonprofit known as the Union of Concerned Scientists, supported by a growing group of experts and insiders, publicly challenged these claims, and citizens nationwide appeared in front of power plants in widespread protest. The pressure was mounting on the nuclear industry to prove that they were operating safely. The consequences of a meltdown were catastrophic, and the public was losing confidence that the risks were being properly managed.
Things were coming to a head in January of 1972 at congressional hearings, later known as the Bethesda hearings. Experts squared off to debate the future of nuclear power, and the stakes were high. Scientists and industry leaders were under extraordinary pressure to choose sides, and billions of dollars were at stake.
Could Lynn's disappearance be in any way related to her father's prominence in the nuclear industry? It's merely speculation and is likely totally unrelated, but in extraordinary cases, expect the extraordinary. Middlebury Police continued to investigate, but there haven't been any meaningful updates on the case since the news about the Robert Durst link broke in 2015. It's been another seven long years without answers.
I can't help but think that the Schulze family must long to return to the simplicity of their Simsbury childhood. All of Lynn's siblings are still alive today and have had to live their entire adult lives with this terrible question mark. Her parents passed away without ever having the answers that they deserved. Lynn was loved by her brothers, her sisters, her friends, and especially her parents.
One of her friends described the childlike joy of their suburban youth, the wild parties, the smoking and the drinking, and then he wrote, "...they all shuffled off to their respective liberal arts colleges like the good little yuppies they were supposed to be." Despite the gale force winds that were reshaping the landscape in America, she was protected by her community, by her family, in quaint Little Simsbury, Connecticut.
There was something magical about that time. Traipsing through the forest on hiking trails with her friends, debating philosophy, rock climbing on the boulders, and complaining about her acne like most teenage girls. She had her whole life ahead of her, but that future was stolen from her and from those who loved her.
The age-progressed simulated photos of Lynn give a modicum of hope. She could be living safely in some remote town under an assumed identity. But I believe the story of Lynn Schulze is that of innocence lost. ♪
I want to thank you so much for listening. A detailed list of sources can be found on the blog at MurderSheTold.com linked in the show notes. Thank you to Byron Willis for his research and writing support. If you would like to make a suggestion for a future episode or a correction, feel free to reach out to me at hello at MurderSheTold.com. My only hope is that I've honored your stories and 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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