A Decade of Terror: Village of the Damned Part 2
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Strangers, today we're playing part two of Decade of Terror, originally aired May 19th, 2022. What might make one community the focus of so much tragedy, violence, and loss? How much hardship and heartbreak can one small town endure? And when we see human beings suffering and still continuing on, are we more struck by their similarities to us or by how differently we'd handle the same fate?

Welcome to Strange and Unexplained with me, Daisy Egan. I'm a writer and an actor who really wants to believe that humans are inherently good, but after 58 episodes, I'm really starting to struggle with that idea.

Last week, I told you about some of the worst tragedies that befell the people in and around Dryden, New York in the 1990s. The thing is, though, we only got to 1996 before we ran out of time. And if you haven't listened to last week's episode, go do that now. Unless you like living dangerously and being hopelessly lost, in which case, proceed.

This week, we'll pick back up with those missing cheerleaders and dive into the remaining three years of the deadliest decade on record for Dryden, otherwise known as the Village of the Damned. And again, a quick warning, this episode deals with some pretty dark stuff. As always, I don't get too graphic because gross. But there is some violence and references to suicide, so please take care when listening. ♪

Before we move ahead, let's take a quick look back at the first seven years in this decade-long nightmare. It started in 1989 when all four members of the Harris family were slaughtered in cold blood style in their home. The suspected killer was killed by the police in a shootout. A woman buried her two-year-old daughter in the woods, who she very likely smothered to death for not going to sleep as quickly as she wanted her to.

Another woman was murdered by a man whose only defense in court was not that he didn't do it, but that he'd been so drunk and high that he couldn't remember doing it. Two young children died in a house fire. A man was stabbed in the heart by his girlfriend's ex. Another man killed his ex-girlfriend's father in his own home and then killed himself at the grave of his other ex-girlfriend who had killed herself three years earlier.

Two brothers, both members of the football team at Dryden High, died in car accidents one year apart.

A husband and father of two was shot to death by a co-worker at a car dealership. And then, on October 4th, 1996, Dryden High cheerleaders Jennifer Bolduck and Sarah Hodgney didn't show up for a Friday night game, which sent off immediate alarm bells because, fun fact, apparently in high school football land, Friday night games are a super big deal.

Something having to do with Friday Night Lights? I think they made a TV show about it? I don't know. Anyway, because of how unusual it was for anyone to miss a Friday night game, much less a Dryden High cheerleader in all of their royalty, an extensive search was underway before the end of the night. Despite that, though, aside from the Hodgney's blood-stained sedan found in the parking lot of a fly-fishing store, police didn't have much to go on.

On Saturday, October 5th, just one day after the girls went missing, investigator Gary Gallinger sat down with the Hodgney's next-door neighbors, 31-year-old John and his wife, Patricia Andrews. The Andrews' house was so close to the Hodgney's that they could see into the Hodgney's bathroom from an upstairs bedroom. Despite the proximity, though, John Andrews seemed unaware that his neighbor and her friend had gone missing from the house next door.

Not only that, but he was evasive when investigator Gellinger casually questioned him at his kitchen table. Gellinger's hackles went up, and according to E. Jean Carroll, he reported back, quote, end quote. Gellinger's radar for shitbag humans was in tip-top condition, apparently, because John Andrews was, up until that point, a first-class shitbag human.

After graduating from Dryden High in 1984, where he and his wife Patricia met, he joined the Air Force. While John was stationed in Germany, he developed the habit of attacking young women. They were usually small and blonde, just like, wouldn't you know, Sarah Hodgney. On one occasion, John broke into a home and beat a woman with a barbell. This guy sucked.

Andrews served three and a half years at Leavenworth, a military prison in Kansas, and was dishonorably discharged in 1994. I should fucking hope so. When he got out of prison, he and his wife, who, by the way, believed he was innocent, bought the house next to the one that Sarah Hodgney's parents would buy just one year later, in August of 1996. And I just want to point out that this fucking guy could buy a house, and I can't.

In her piece, The Cheerleaders, for Spin Magazine, feminist gonzo reporter E. Jean Carroll said that John Andrews quickly became obsessed with Sarah, but she didn't elaborate.

A piece in the AP said that there was no indication that John was at all interested in his young neighbor. There were no reports of harassment. Though, to be fair, as the AP article points out, they lived 15 yards away from each other for two months. And considering his past proclivity for young women who looked like Sarah, it's not a huge leap to assume he was, at the very least, aware of her. ♪

In a really awful example of irony, John and Patricia's house was the very house Sarah Hodgney grew up in. The Hodgneys had moved away briefly, and by the time they decided to come back, John and Patricia had bought their house. So they bought the house next door. Both houses, by the way, had been built by Sarah's grandfather as family homes. There's something darkly poetic about this setup for me. Shudder.

Meanwhile, the tenor in town, and especially among the rest of the cheer squad, was utter panic. Tiffany Starr, whose dad had been murdered in their home less than two years earlier, was particularly on edge. She told E. Jean Carroll...

We keep hearing different rumors all day Saturday. The house where I live is five minutes from the place where Sarah and Jen have been kidnapped. Of course, I go wild thinking they're coming to get me next. We've been imagining that they're after cheerleaders. And Saturday night and Sunday, it's just me and my mom at home, and everybody knows that. By Sunday, I'm freaking out, and I say, Mom,

We have to leave now. We have to get out of here. And my mom says, okay, let's go. And we throw our stuff in a bag. I can't be in that house another minute. I'm terrified. I'm sure somebody is going to break in. And we just get in the car and go.

On October 6th, the day after John Andrews was questioned by police in his home, former Dryden High student Anne Exlerben heard from her friend Marcus Hutchin. Marcus had been up at the hunting cabin owned by Anne and her fiancé, Bruno Couture. Marcus had called to tell Anne and Bruno that there was a puddle on the floor of their cabin that looked an awful lot like blood. When Anne and Bruno got there, sure enough, they found a large, dried-up puddle of blood on the floor of the tiny cabin.

They immediately called state troopers, who asked her if any of her friends or family lived near the missing girls.

Both Bruno and Marcus look at me, and they're waiting for me to make the call as to what to say, and I've decided beforehand, it's the only way I can live with my conscience, that I will volunteer no information unless they ask me directly. And I look at the trooper, and I say, yes, my brother. And the trooper says, has anybody you know that lives near the girls been up to this camp? And I say, yes, my brother. And he says, who is your brother? And I say, John Andrews.

And the trooper flies by so quickly, he almost knocks me down. He runs into the camp and starts screaming for the senior investigator. And at that point, I just want to vomit because my gut instinct is right. I mean, I love him, but the kidnapper is my brother, John. John was arrested the next morning as troopers scouring the area around the cabin began to make a truly gruesome discovery. One by one, the search revealed pieces of Jennifer and Sarah's bodies dumped in and around the woods.

Anne's brother John, it seemed, had tortured the girls before discarding their bodies. Back at Dryden High, where Jennifer and Sarah's classmates were still anxiously awaiting any news of their missing friend's fates, the students were told, in vague terms, I'm assuming, that Jennifer and Sarah were dead. Tiffany Starr told E. Jean Carroll...

When the teachers read the notes to the classes, people jump out of their seats and run down the hallway screaming. Everybody gathers in the gym and just screams and just cries and cries. And then people speed out to the parking lots and they just, like, leave.

School superintendent Donald Trombley said, quote, within moments, we had mass hysteria. We have an extremely torn up high school right now. The students are very frightened. They don't feel safe at home, end quote. Another student said, quote, this is horrible, horrible, horrible. There's nowhere you can feel safe anymore. I think I'm going to start carrying my dad's gun, end quote.

Poor Katie Savino, Sarah Hodgney's best friend, who was supposed to sleep over at Sarah's house the night the two girls were taken, collapsed when she heard the news. New York State Police Officer Major William Foley told E. Jean Carroll, "There's a driving force. Lust. A desire."

Mr. Andrews was going to attack those girls. Whether he knew Jennifer was there, we'll never know. But he was going to commit this crime. What drove him to do it? The easiest answer is a three-letter word. Sin. People do things that are wrong because they want to. That's all. And... sigh. Can we just pause here for a moment?

An officer of the law can't find any other reason a person might commit a heinous crime than sin? This is like, shrug, what can you do? He needed Jesus. I'm not a religious man, but attributing evil to sin seems like a cop-out. I know God gave us free will and all, but...

How are we mere humans supposed to resist the devil? The devil's a powerful being, wily, cunning, and us? We're just dumb, dumb humans. It's supposed to be up to us to resist a literal angel, fallen though he may be, and if we can't, how can we be blamed? If the devil made him do it is an actual thing an officer of the law believes, then that should be a legal defense.

Come on, man. I bet if you sat down and gave it a good think, you might be able to come up with one or two slightly more tangible reasons someone might be driven to murder. Here's one. Lack of proper mental health care. Here's another. A bone-deep hatred of women? Misogyny?

But John's sister Anne asked, quote, What makes us do things? What makes us not do things? What pushed my brother over the edge? The police tell us it was some kind of woman hate crime because of the way the bodies were mutilated. But John idolized my mother. Oh, Anne. Anne, Anne, Anne. Come sit. Let's have a little chat, shall we?

One only need read a very small collection of books or watch any amount of true crime TV to know that idolizing one's mother is a staple ingredient in the recipe of how to make a womanizer. Conversely, so is demonizing one's mother. Conversely, so is not having a mother at all. Conversely, so is being a loving father and husband. Come now, let's be grownups about this.

What you're literally saying here is, he couldn't have hated women, he loved his mommy. You can do better, Ann. I believe in you. E. Jean Carroll had another equally troubling theory as to what drove John to kidnap, torture, and murder these two children. Carroll pointed out that John's father, Jack, another paragon of humanity, killed himself in 1988, three years after being accused of sexually abusing young girls.

Carol asked if John blamed his father's accusers for his father's suicide. Or, she wondered, was John, quote, so ashamed and angry that he took revenge against young women for his father's suicide? And I ask, who cares? It doesn't necessarily matter why John hated women. It only matters that he did. Listen, friends, if it walks like a misogynist and quacks like a misogynist, it's a misogynist, you know?

Like that TikTok and Netflix trend asks, is it cake or is it misogyny? I think that's what it asks. And I'm pretty sure this wasn't cake. You dig? There's a five-part documentary series called The Village of the Damned about the 10 years of heartbreak the people of the town of Dryden experienced.

From the series, it's obvious this event, the kidnapping, torture, murder, and dismemberment of these two girls was the darkest chapter in the town's already very dark history. Everyone who spoke to the camera crew for the series can hardly get through the story, 20 years after it happened, without breaking down. This one really struck deep.

No one really knows the details of what John put those poor girls through. He never confessed, and of course there were no witnesses.

E. Jean Carroll had her guess, though. This is what she put together from the clues left at the crime scene and Andrew's official indictment. It is, I should warn, pretty much complete conjecture because, as I said, no one, aside from Andrews himself, knew what happened, and he didn't cough up much info. That said, it's the only account we have, so here it is.

John Benjamin Andrews ducks under the Hodgney's garage door. He cuts the phone wires. Over his thinning, dark hair and fleshy cheeks, he pulls down a brown ski mask. He knows there's going to be a mess, so he puts on yellow rubber gloves, the kind people wear to wash dishes. The door to the kitchen is unlocked. He enters, turns, and creeps down the steps to Sarah's room.

What does this grotesque, greasy-eyed nightmare carrying a bag holding duct tape, extra yellow gloves, and six knife blades look like to her?

Side note, I have to give it to her. Grotesque, greasy-eyed nightmare really paints a picture. But six knife blades? First of all, what is a knife blade? As opposed to just, say, a knife. Or a blade. Secondly, who was this guy? Wolverine? And thirdly, again, where did this fact come from? Who said he had six knives or blades?

He weighs close to 250 pounds. His bulk must overpower the small, vibrant girl. He binds the little flyer with black plastic ties and seals her mouth with duct tape. Is he surprised to hear the shower running? Does he realize two girls are in the house? Does he know that Jen Baldock, whose might and muscle have tossed entire squads of cheerleaders in the air? Does he know that courageous Jen will stand and fight?

He must be amazed when he lurches into the bathroom and Jen claws him, kicks him, and who knows, slams him in the face with a shower caddy. John Andrews is out of shape, but he has many knives. She is naked and outweighed by well over 100 pounds. Sarah and Jennifer are soon trapped in the trunk of the Lumina.

Carol then takes us on a theoretical road trip she assumes Andrew took up to the cabin with the girls in his trunk, at one point surmising that the girls were, quote, "folded together like fawns." Whatever that means. At some point, John Andrews builds a bonfire. Some point, he tortures the girls. He cuts Jen and Sarah into small pieces. He drives back down Reet Road, throwing bloody body parts out the window.

He heads towards a state game land and disposes of more. He slashes motor oil over himself, the front seat, and the dash to conceal clues, and leaves the car at Cortland Line Company. He tosses the yellow gloves in the trash can. On November 2nd, less than a month after being arrested, John Andrews was found hanged to death in his jail cell with shoelaces. And if it strikes you as odd that a 250-pound man can hang himself with shoelaces, you're not alone.

And that was that. The people of Dryden were left with so many unanswered questions about the grisly murders of two of their young residents. But what answers could John Andrews have given that would have helped to make sense of any of it? There is no reasoning behind this kind of senseless act. Nothing he could have offered would have helped anyone heal or move on. With Andrews gone, once again the people of Dryden got a brief respite from tragedy for a couple years.

I wonder if everyone started to maybe let their guard down a little, lower their shoulders down from their ears. If they did, they would learn it was too soon. Whatever curse was hanging over their town wasn't done with them yet. On June 8th of 1999, as the school year was coming to an end, Dryden High athletic coach Gary Cassell died suddenly of a heart attack at just 49 years old.

Cassell had stepped in as a sort of surrogate father to the Stargirls after their father had been shot and killed by Amber Starr's human garbage can of an ex-boyfriend, J.P. Merchant, five years earlier. Cassell's sudden death was enough to throw the community, and especially the athletes at Dryden High, back into chaos.

And then, only three days after that loss, the town was dealt another tragic blow when former Dryden High student and cheerleader Katie Savino died in a car accident. Katie was the girl who almost slept over at Sarah Hodgney's house the night Sarah and Jennifer were kidnapped and killed by John Andrews. Tiffany Starr, who had been on the cheer squad with all three girls, was at home when her mom asked to speak to her and just said, Katie Savino.

Katie had been at a party with friends on the night of June 10th. Her college friend Cheryl Thayer, who was leaving for California the next day, later told E. Jean Carroll...

We left around 2 o'clock in the morning. When we got to the car, I could feel alcohol in my system, so I called shotgun. And Katie would never drive if she's even had one sip of a drink. I told the three guys we were taking home that one of them should drive, but the guys said they were all too wasted.

Thayer continued,

I was driving her home first. She told me to take the back roads because they were quicker. I had no idea where we were going. I didn't see the stop sign and we got hit by the truck. It was so dark. I didn't know the roads. I didn't see the sign. It's 2:30 in the morning. The roads are deserted and here comes this truck out of nowhere. We were dragged a couple hundred yards under the truck and the car caught on fire.

As soon as the truck got stopped, the three guys climbed out. There were flames. My door was wedged closed. The truck driver pulled me out. The moment I was taken out of the car, it exploded. Cheryl took full responsibility for Katie's death and pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence. And then Katie's mom, Liz, did something that may be the only good thing to come out of this entire nightmare.

Rather than wasting another life having Cheryl serve a long prison sentence, Katie's mother appealed to the judge for a lighter sentence in exchange for promising to raise awareness for the dangers of drunk driving. Cheryl served six months in prison and five years probation, during which she helped form a program that spread the word about drinking and driving.

Liz said, quote, I truly believe she is guiding me, end quote.

Personally, I think if this helped to prevent just one more needless drunk driving death, it was worth it. And that, friends, is what prison reform looks like. Anyway...

It's hard to imagine how low general morale was at this point, especially for the kids at Dryden High who, for some reason, really bore the brunt of these tragedies, with their football coach, two football players, and three cheerleaders all gone in the span of a few years. Kids are resilient, sure, but there's only so much people can take.

It was Katie's untimely death, the 19th in seven years, that prompted a Dryden High student to tell E. Jean Carroll that they felt like they were living in the village of the damned. Although I think it's important to note that the moniker actually came from outsiders and was, generally speaking, really resented by the people actually living through the experience.

Small-town rivalry is a long-held tradition, but it's usually things like the people in the next town over don't know how to drive, not the devil has literally cursed the next town over. One friend in particular took Katie's death really hard. Dryden High IAC Division All-Star Middle Linebacker, I have no idea what any of those words mean, Mike Vogt, fell into a major depression following Katie's death.

Mike was a known prankster. One time, he took a friend's car and covered it with condoms he'd gotten from the school nurse. Kudos to mid-90s Dryden High for its progressive, and correct, stance on safer sex. I was in high school in Manhattan's Greenwich Village at this time, and I'm pretty sure the school nurse didn't have condoms. Actually, this is the first time it's occurred to me that I was the same age these kids were when this decade-long nightmare was unfolding.

When I think of myself at 16, I can't imagine how I would have handled something like this. Mike Vogt was funny and musical, and playing against the stereotype of a typical football player would also act in the school plays, though E. Jean Carroll claimed he drank real beer on stage, which is a questionable claim that I hope isn't true.

Apparently, one of his favorite pastimes was something called mudding, where you bury a car up to its axles in mud. This was before the internet was an everyday thing, remember. It's amazing what passed for entertainment in the old days. I mean, it beats doing drugs in your buddy's basement while watching porn, or even cow tipping, for that matter.

Mike's best friend since grade school, Johnny Lepinto, said it was impossible to not have a good time when Mike was around. He always made the best of every situation, or at least found the humor in it. But, Johnny said cryptically, Mike was a complicated guy. Following the loss of his teammate Scott Pace in a car accident three years earlier, and then losing his good friend Katie in another one, Mike spun out emotionally.

Three months after Katie's death, he went out into the woods and shot himself.

I have to say that it's actually almost miraculous that more Dryden High students didn't die this way. I remember the mid-90s feeling like everyone was dying by suicide. It felt like a plague. And teenagers, as I've talked about a lot on this show, have terrible impulse control coupled with underdeveloped brains that are being flooded with hormones in a way that really makes you question what the evolutionary value is in how the teenage brain works.

It's like adolescence is just this minefield that we all have to somehow survive. First as teenagers and then as people who have to interact with teenagers. It's awful. If you're a teenager and listening to this podcast, please know that it won't always be like this. Everything feels the most extreme when you're a teenager. And then you get out on the other side and you're like, Jesus Christ, how does anyone do that?

But if I was able to survive my teenage years, which were, let me tell you, pretty awful, you can too. Give yourself a hug. You deserve it. And tell your parents you appreciate them. And clean your room. And make your bed. And don't pick at your zits. Trust me. I love you.

And I'm sorry the weight of the world feels like it's on your shoulders, as it probably seemed for happy-go-lucky Mike Vogt, who reached his untimely end out in those woods. But I'm here to tell you, it's not. Who knows what was in the air in that decade between 1989 and 1999. Ultimately, I think it was just a few bad actors in a town of otherwise good people.

Maybe one tragedy led to another because traumatized people sometimes do horrible, unpredictable things. Who knows? If Michael King hadn't killed the Harris family in 1989, setting off this awful series of events, maybe any number of the other 16 souls would have somehow been spared?

On the five-part docuseries The Village of the Damned, the survivors of this decade of terror say that it was just a relatively brief period of time where really good people experienced terrible luck. While it was happening, many of them faltered in their faith or started to wonder if maybe they were cursed, but ultimately the consensus in the town is one of pride and, it seems, a lot of love for thy neighbor.

The town funeral home director said that if you could be dropped anywhere on this earth, you'd be pretty darned lucky to land yourself in Dryden, New York. The three members of the cheer squad that lost their lives, Sarah Hodgney, Jennifer Bolduc, and Katie Savino, were buried next to each other on a small hill in the town cemetery, adorned with gifts from their family and friends, their classmates and neighbors.

Only in a small town with such a strong bond would this kind of outpouring for three high school girls be on display, evidence of how much they all meant to each other. It's hard to look at so much pain, loss, and violence over the course of 10 years and try to find something positive, but...

Maybe Dryden's resilience and their enduring sense of community is the lesson that can be learned from all this. Love, community, support can heal all wounds. Or at least those things can make it so that you can go on to survive another day.

Next time on Strange and Unexplained, one of my favorite episodes, How Sad, How Lovely, The Disappearance of Connie Converse. This episode was originally produced by Becca DiGregorio and Natalie Grillo, with research by Jess McKillop, editing by Eve Kerrigan, and sound engineering by Jennifer Swatek. Our voice actors for this episode were Luther Creek, Andrea Jones-Sogiola, and Lauren Hooper.