Crime of the Truest Kind

[REPLAY] EP 17| Beth Brodie, Crime of the Hometown Kind, Groveland, Massachusetts, with Beth's brother, Sean Aylward (from May 5, 2021)

• Anngelle Wood Media • Season 3

Share episode

Revisiting the story of Beth Brodie, Crime of the Hometown Kind, Groveland, Massachusetts, with Beth's brother, Sean Aylward. First released on May 5, 2021.

Sean, Beth's brother, and I plan a follow-up to get the status of her case this week.
Expect episode 62 soon.  

Her killer is up for parole! CALL TO ACTION below....

I first shared her story in the spring of 2021. I am from the small town of Groveland, Massachusetts, went to the same schools as Beth did, and what happened to her has stayed with me. I think of her ever single time I drive through my old hometown, about her family that remained in the same neighborhood where Beth was killed, and how they have to drive by the house where she took her last breath on November 18, 1992 when she was just 15 years old. 

This is more than about retelling the tragic events of that day, it is about the painfully intimate journey of heartbreak for a family navigating the brutality that took Beth from them. The emotional weight of juvenile sentencing laws that shift with time, and the Brodie family's advocacy efforts as they again face the potential parole of Beth's killer. 

Beth's killer, 16-years-old at the time of her murder, is seeking parole with a hearing scheduled for Thursday, May 16, 2024. Once again, Beth's entire family is facing the prospect of this man being released. It is retraumatizing to a family who has had to live with the reality of their child being violently taken from them. 

Your help is needed! Call to action:

Send a message to the show

Support the show

Follow Instagram | Facebook | X | TikTok | Threads | YouTube
For show notes & source information at CrimeoftheTruestKind.com

Give the dogs a bone tip jar: buymeacoffee.com/truestkind
Become a patron: Patreon.com/crimeofthetruestkind

This podcast has minimal profanity but from time to time you get one or some curse words. This isn't for kids.

Music included in episodes from Joe "onlyone" Kowalski, Dug McCormack's Math Ghosts and Shredding by Andrew King


Anngelle Wood:

Well, hello, my name is Anngelle Wood and this is Crime of the Truest Kind. Welcome back. It is officially May and this is officially my 17th episode of Crime of the Truest Kind. I'm very excited about it. Thank you so very many of you who are supporting the show through listening, of course, following subscribing the truly wonderful reviews that you're leaving on Apple podcasts. Those are. Those have been incredible to receive. Knowing that you're enjoying it and knowing that you feel like I'm doing a good job representing these stories. That is very important to me. Thank you, Susie Harris. Thank you to Susie. Thank you to the Golden Holden. They left a glorious five-star review on Apple Podcast this past week. A wonderful find. What a perfect podcast. Angela's managed to create a perfect balance of gravity, humor and just darn interesting stuff. Thank you, if you like, true crime in New England, this is the podcast you've been looking for. Five stars approved. I love it. Thank you, sandy Lee, Kelly, Jean, Mark, Tom, Brooke, David. I'll be dropping some care packs in the mail too. It's very helpful to support all the various technology that goes along with this production.

Anngelle Wood:

I'm not ready to do a Patreon yet. I know that's a common platform that content creators use, but I'm just not there yet. I just want to keep making good shows. I want to keep building my audience and focusing on the product before I throw a bunch of other stuff into the mix.

Anngelle Wood:

Crime of the Truest Kind Get something for yourself, maybe something for your moms. Happy Moms Day. All you mothers Follow the show Crime of the Truest Kind on Facebook and Instagram. At Truest Kind on Twitter and TikTok you can send an email to the show at any time, crimeofthetruestkind@ gmailcom. And thank you also for your great story ideas. They're really, really good. Your feedback has been incredible, something that is really important to me. I've been in the public eye sort of for a bit and it's really important for me to get this right. And as I continue to produce these shows, I continue to learn, and I continue to learn more about victims of violent crime, crime across the board and, most importantly, how all of these things that we do with these true crime podcasts and YouTube channels and documentaries, how these things affect the families of those who are left behind. I say this all the time. The families who are left behind have a major burden to bear, and what often happens is the person who took their loved one from them goes on to be celebrated and the person they took disappears. So I thank you for being here, I thank you for continuing to listen to the show and I thank you for telling other people about it.

Anngelle Wood:

On this episode, number 17, we go to Groveland, Massachusetts. It is a town that I know well because I spent a big part of my childhood there. It is very familiar to me. The story is very familiar to me. I will talk to a family member directly involved in this case. This is the story of Beth Brodie, Groveland Massachusetts. Groveland, Massachusetts is a small town, a really small town, like 6,400 people. Small. It's considered a bedroom community, meaning people live there, but a lot of people travel outside of the town for work, and it's easily accessible to major highways, including 95 and 128, which is kind of the same thing. It retains all of the characteristics of a quaint, rural town 31 miles north of Boston.

Anngelle Wood:

Groveland still does not have a grocery store. You can go to Haverhill or Georgetown or maybe West Newbury, though I'm not entirely sure you can grocery shop there either. Probably have to go to the next town, which is Newburyport Also gorgeous you should also visit. My mother would call that. Lots of rigmarole, by the way, having to go all over the place to go shopping. But she did her shopping, as I remember, in Plaistow, New Hampshire, which is right over the state line. They had a jack-in-the-box and for me that was extra awesome. The grocery store had a set of swings that I'd play on. I'd just run over there through the parking lot and play. I'm truly shocked I didn't end up on a milk carton. She wasn't what you would call vigilant.

Anngelle Wood:

As a small town, its biggest attraction is probably Cedardale. The Cedardale Groveland Outing Center, as they write on their website, has been making the most of the great outdoors for more than 20 years. Originally a private family swim and tennis club, the facility has been continually expanding and improved to better serve its clients and campers. Today it is the premier facility of its kind in New England. Sounds nice. I seriously doubt I've ever been there.

Anngelle Wood:

There are some notable people from Groveland. Pat Badger comes up. Yes, he's the bass player for Extreme and for those of you who don't know, they're a pretty big rock band from Boston. It is important for me to note here that Pat Badger has an alpaca farm, and that is not easy to say. I also have a picture that I took with Pat Badger at a party at Ernie Bach's house. Don't expect you to know who that is either. I'll post it on Instagram. So far I have managed to name drop almost the entire band Gary Cherone from Peabody, paul Geary I think I mentioned him and now Pat Nuno Betancourt is from Hudson. We'll see about that and with that I fell into a pretty deep Baby Animals rabbit hole. A couple of you might get that reference.

Anngelle Wood:

Also based in , L arry Dorr. He's managed Blood Sweat and Tears for more than 30 years. They are a jazz rock and roll outfit. Al Cooper was in the band for a minute. He played with the likes of Bob Dylan, the Stones, the who, the Tubes, Neil Diamond, George Harrison, Ringo Starr. Al Cooper was also a professor at Berklee College of Music here in Boston. I think he has since retired, but anyway, the manager of Blood Sweat and Tears is from Groveland. A more familiar name to many of you in the area is Maria Stephanos. Maria is a news anchor, formerly with Fox 25, and has been with Channel 5, WCVB-tv in Boston for at least five years now.

Anngelle Wood:

Also based in Groveland, is John Bryan Jr, owner and operator of Important Records, which has an impressive roster including releases from Dresden Dolls, major Stars, acid, mother's Temple and many, many more. Very cool merch too. Just about everything I touch involves rock and roll or some mention of it. So bear with me. The Congregational Church in Groveland has a bell crafted by Paul Revere. Of the 900 bells made by Revere's company, this is one of two remaining bells in active service. The other is reportedly in Lowell, Massachusetts. I lived one minute from that congregational church. Our bus stop was at the monument right across the street from it, or at least at the corner of the park where the monument sits. Three of my family members were married in that church.

Anngelle Wood:

I used to play with the pastor's daughter who lived in the parsonage next door, and I remember she was from Dunstable, which at that time sounded like a foreign land. You know, the more I talk about this, the more it brings back all of these memories. The country store was nearby then. It's since been torn down or moved. I just know it's not there anymore. We got in trouble for stealing candy once. Pretty dumb, considering a lot of it cost a penny. We were in for the higher ticket items. I think my grandmother, the one I talk about in almost every episode of this podcast, mother, the one I talk about in almost every episode of this podcast and I say it is probably her who influenced me first in true crime. Well, she lived in Elm Park, the downtown, right across the street from Jerry's Variety Store where I walked regularly to get cigarettes from my parents. I remember Winston Lights soft pack. They cost about 85 cents a pack.

Anngelle Wood:

I could never mention my time in Groveland without talking about my dog Duke, a majestic blind-in-one-eye bullmastiff. Duke just showed up with my dad one day. It's very possible he traded him for something A rifle, a carburetor, a case of beer. He would sit atop the hill of our house and bark at the mail carrier, so we had to get a post office box. It was hardly a problem though. In fact he took leisurely strolls down Union Street to the Donut Grove where he'd get a steady supply of treats. There were no leash laws, no vet visits, no raw diets. We had a dog, that's what you did.

Anngelle Wood:

You had a dog. We did love the crap out of him. Among the siblings who were still at home we would often fight who'd get him to sleep in our bed at night. My friend's mother used to work at the Friendly's at Riverside in Haverhill and back then Friendly's had the best crinkle fries and you could sit on a stool at the lunch counter. That friend and me would make the walk across the old Groveland Bridge for lunch. I can't imagine parents letting their kids do that today. If I had to guess I'd say it was half a mile. They have a new bridge now. It was sad to see the old one go. We would swim at Mill Ponds. Do you remember that? It was great. All the kids would go and then they closed it and we were so disappointed because it was contaminated. As far as I know, none of the kids from Groveland turned into a thing.

Anngelle Wood:

Groveland used to have an elementary school that I remember called Shanahan. I don't know what happened to it. I don't think it was contaminated, and they tore it down in 1984. Bagnall became the elementary school and that's where I went till fifth grade, and then my parents moved us to New Hampshire where they put my brother and me in a very Christian school, united Pentecostal. It was terrible and I learned nothing, but I did memorize Bible verses. I still wish my family stayed in Groveland. By that point I had just started to play in the school bands and I was getting pretty good at it. Now New Hampshire is lovely and I lived there for a long time, but this experience was hugely detrimental to all of us at the time.

Anngelle Wood:

In this small northern Massachusetts town where nothing happens, the first murder in 19 years took place on the afternoon of November 18, 1992. Now I was prepared to leave it at that, but once I looked up the 1973 murder case, well, now I know. So. Now I have to tell you. It was Halloween night 1973.

Anngelle Wood:

Groveland police officers Charles William, Billy Blaisdell and Dennis Dunn answered a call to speak to a man in a car on Gardner Street. When they arrived, officer Blaisdell got out of the patrol car, walked toward the man and, without saying a word, pulled out his service revolver and aimed. Now, once Officer Dunn saw what was going on, he got out of the car and approached Blaisdell. He wanted to know what he was doing and telling him this guy hasn't done anything. Dunn drew his weapon as he walked toward Blaisdell and it was at that moment that Blaisdell turned and slammed Dunn in the head with his weapon. As he walked toward Blaisdell, and it was at that moment that Blaisdell turned and slammed Dunn in the head with his weapon, knocking him unconscious. The other man, 21-year-old Daniel Franzoni of Newburyport he turned and ran. Officer Blaisdell chased him down and shot him three times. Officer Dunn was treated for lacerations and Franzoni was dead at the scene. And why Daniel Franzoni? Well, the Boston Globe reported that he'd been seen in a car with Blaisdell's estranged wife and their six children that same night Jealousy.

Anngelle Wood:

There's one other point I found interesting with this 1973 murder story in Groveland, Massachusetts. In the documentation about the story it said that Officer Blaisdell lived at 20 Union Street in Groveland, massachusetts. In the documentation about the story it said that Officer Blaisdell lived at 20 Union Street in Groveland. We lived at number six. I knew nothing about the story. I was too young to know about the story. But I heard nothing ever about this story and like most murder stories, it is as fascinating as it is disturbing. Charles William Billy Blaisdell was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Daniel Franzoni, his romantic rival. They say there are three motives for murder Money, sex, revenge. At least that's what Lieutenant Joe Kenda, homicide hunter, will tell you.

Anngelle Wood:

Beth Brodie was born October 10th 1977. One of four kids and the second of three girls. I think of Beth often when I'm in Groveland and I drive by the neighborhood where I knew she lived and where I knew she'd been killed. I don't know a lot about her, but I wanted to. We so often hear about the offenders, the perpetrators of crimes, hardly ever the person the crimes were committed against, or so rarely. The true crime genre, as it has become known, is riddled with sexy serial killer t-shirts. And who's the most badass lady killer? You do you. I'm not going to do that. Some of it is kind of embarrassing.

Anngelle Wood:

I have difficulty finding information about victims in these cases, due in part to them being decades old and we didn't chronicle our lives on MySpace or LiveJournal or Instagram. Then Someone wrote about Beth, saying a beautiful light was extinguished in our lives. Beth Brodie was 15 when she died. She barely got to live. Beth's brother, S ean, who I speak to as part of this episode, has been in the forefront of keeping her memory alive. One of the things I have found most difficult about writing these episodes is that there is, more often than not, so little about the person who's been killed, and I always want to include the people closest to the case, closest to the one who was lost. I was able to learn a little bit about Beth from what her siblings have written about her. I'm thankful for them because without them sharing memories of Beth, it's like her story dies with her. On the anniversary of her murder in 2014, her sister, dawn, wrote this.

Anngelle Wood:

Today, November 18th, is the 22nd anniversary of Beth's murder. I remember almost every horrifying detail from that day. There are some I have buried deep down in order to survive. I also remember how pure and beautiful Beth was. She was kind, funny and so smart. Beth was innocently goofy, always laughing. Beth and I were best friends. I still think about her every day. I will tell you about what happened on that day, the day Beth Brody was killed. It's important to provide the facts of the case and give you context to this conversation.

Anngelle Wood:

Beth was a bright and friendly 15-year-old girl, a little shy, I think, smart, and was just coming into her own. She joined the cheerleading squad at school and she was feeling really good about it. She had lots of friends and two sisters at home that she was close to. She'd spent a few afternoons that previous summer with another boy from Groveland, but they were hardly dating. No one dated at 15. Not then. You might meet at a friend's house and drink Diet Cokes and watch a scary movie on the VCR. You might meet up at the mall, sit in the food court, or maybe you would all go to the local swimming hole, provided it wasn't contaminated, still upset about that. Whatever the case, 15-year-olds in 1992 didn't really date. They just kind of hung out.

Anngelle Wood:

On the afternoon of November 18th, Beth was summoned to her neighbor's house. His name was Sky Hall. He was a mutual friend of hers, and another kid they knew named Richard Baldwin. Baldwin was a 16-year-old whose family had recently moved from Groveland to Peabody a few months earlier. There was nothing really about Richard Baldwin that stood out. In fact many people said he was really quiet and while it's not clear how or why Baldwin had this intense interest for Beth, he'd been obsessing over something he construed as a relationship or the desire for one.

Anngelle Wood:

On that day he'd gone to Skye's house to complain and feel sorry for himself and convince Skye to get Beth to come over to talk Immediately. It was odd. Baldwin had asked Beth and Skye if they were afraid as he walked into the bedroom where the two sat talking An ominous greeting. We now know Skye left the room to allow them a few minutes' privacy to talk. Baldwin was pressuring her to be his girlfriend. She was not interested and she said no. She seemed to have sensed something wasn't right with him long before this confrontation. Beth did not give him what he was after. So as a result of his instability or his obsession, a likely mental illness or all of those things, he attacked Beth in that room of Skye's house with an aluminum bat he brought to their meeting.

Anngelle Wood:

He had clearly thought about what he intended to do that day. He made the plan in advance that if he could not get her to agree to what he wanted, he would hurt her when she declined. He said a few awful things and then raised the bat and swung, hitting her and again. Beth's petite frame could not withstand that sheer force and she would succumb to her injuries. In a panic, sky went for help to the Brodies next door.

Anngelle Wood:

Baldwin ran away like a coward. He ended up at Pentucket High School, just down the street from the scene. There he made handfuls of pills, flushed them down with old wine and confessed to murder to the school principal and a teacher. He was arrested, charged and then transported to the hospital. It was still the Old Hill Hospital then on Buttonwoods where I was born and probably Beth too. Once he got there it was determined he had a life-threatening ingestion of alcohol, xanax and ibuprofen. Also there he admitted to a nurse that he killed Beth. Police officers on guard in the hospital overheard him talking to his parents about the murder. One report said that at some point he asked if he made the news.

Anngelle Wood:

As time passed, the Brodie family were forced to deal with the violent death of their beloved 15-year-old girl, the media attention surrounding the case and the indifference to what they were going through. I choose to believe that at her age she was like a lot of us MTV playing our favorite songs over and over. She was into the popular songs on the radio Again, what I imagined Beth to be like the week she was killed. How Do you Talk to an Angel by the Heights was the number one song. I can see her singing along to that. I can see her singing along to that. In 1992, the world was learning about Kurt Cobain and Nirvana and Pearl Jam and the explosion of music that was coming out of Seattle. I wonder if she liked it. I wonder if she'd heard it.

Anngelle Wood:

In the spring of 1994, kurt Cobain would be gone. He preferred to burn out before he faded away. And in the spring of 1994, beth's killer would go on trial charged as an adult. His defense attempted the diminished capacity route, saying he lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. They were trying to say that he had no control over what he was doing. How many times have we heard that one?

Anngelle Wood:

One juror spoke out about how disturbing the crime was and said Baldwin had asked Beth to her face do you want to turn around for this? That juror had to look at those pictures. That juror voted to keep him in jail for life. While the entire jury had to look at those pictures, I imagine the entire courtroom did as well. I hope her family didn't have to look at those pictures. On April 4th 1994, a jury found him guilty of murder in the first degree on theories of deliberate premeditation and extreme atrocity or cruelty for murdering Beth that day with a baseball bat. He got a life sentence, no chance of parole. The family was as happy as they could be with a verdict as happy as a family could be who lost their daughter to a violent crime. Beth didn't get a chance to realize her dreams and her family believes her killer doesn't deserve freedom ever. And then Beth's family were forced into juvenile sentencing advocacy when the laws for juvenile sentencing were changed in 2013. They didn't sign up for that, had no intention of having to do it, and they had to learn how to function in this way.

Anngelle Wood:

I want to thank Beth's older brother, sean Aylward, who's been front and center in the fight to keep Beth's killer in prison for life. I spoke to Sean about Beth and what families of murdered loved ones go through and how the victims are all too often forgotten. This is our conversation. We spoke via Zoom this weekend. Zoom is wellZoom. Well, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate it. No problem, I gave you a little bit of background on me. You know I've been in radio for a long time. I've gotten, you know, a lot of great researching and writing skills and you know media relation skills and all of that. But why I do this? It's for a different reason. It's not, for if I had to put it into words, it would be that these stories need to be told, and I really hate the way a lot of people tell these stories.

Sean Aylward:

I agree with that. I agree with that, but I think it's just the world we live in these days. Like I said in one of the emails, there are more people on the criminal sympathizer side than there are on the victim, which, if they actually heard some of the stories hopefully the way that you're going to portray them then they would start to understand.

Anngelle Wood:

I've read a lot of you know reputable news organizations that dehumanize the person who's dead.

Sean Aylward:

Right.

Anngelle Wood:

It's like what the hell are you doing? You're just trying to sell papers. At this point, nobody buys the paper.

Sean Aylward:

They leave the victim out completely and all you hear about is the offender who they want you to believe is the actual victim. Victim of the system.

Anngelle Wood:

Well, and that's a major problem that I have had finding information about the person not and that's a major problem that I have had finding information about the person not the person who's in jail.

Sean Aylward:

Right.

Anngelle Wood:

I mean, I know a little bit about Beth very little. It was really close to my heart when I found out what happened. I don't know when you left Groveland, but my family was on Union Street, so right near the congregational church, right, so we were pretty close and I still drive. Every time I drive through Groveland I go to my old stomping grounds. I think of Beth every time I drive down that street, every time I think about that. Awesome, because it's you know we weren't. We're not that close in age. You and I are probably closer in age, but you know I was a 15-old girl who just wanted to have fun, who, just you know, wanted boys to like me. I wanted to hang out with all my pals. No one could have anticipated what was going to happen that day. Can you tell me a little bit about what life was like for your family before this happened?

Sean Aylward:

It's funny. Since we spoke the other day, I asked my mom how long the family had been in town because as far as I knew, it was my stepdad's father and his father were the first, which would have made it about turn of the century. But my mom took a walk over to the cemetery yesterday and took some pictures of some Brody headstones that date back to the early 1800s. So the family has been in town forever. I moved, well, we moved here in 74. My folks bought the home that they still live in, which, if you're even a little familiar with that area, is about 200 yards from where Beth was killed, is about 200 yards from where Beth was killed.

Sean Aylward:

So every time they leave or come to the house they drive past it, which is in my mind it's got to be torturous. I mean it's in my mind every time I drive past the house, so it's got to be the same for them. Beth was one of three girls which are much younger than I am. Beth was eight years younger than I am. I'm the only one from my mom and my father and my mom and stepfather had three girls, one of which lives in Raymond, new Hampshire now. The other one lives in Plymouth, new Hampshire. So nobody's at home, just my folks. They both retired.

Sean Aylward:

Back then it was pretty simple. The two older girls, dawn and Beth, were both cheerleaders, but Beth was very quiet. She was shy, no boyfriends to speak of. We had a small neighborhood. You know where the Groveland Manor is, it was right behind us. So she had some friends down there, but a very small circle of friends back then. And by the time she got to middle school, closer to the end of middle school ninth grade, 10th grade she really started to become herself, her own person. She joined the cheerleading squad with her older sister and they bonded like you wouldn't believe, because now they had even more in common and Dawn got to share her circle of friends with the cheerleaders and, you could say, the popular girls, where Beth was more of a bookworm, she would rather study, she had great grades, she's probably the smartest of all the kids and she just led a very simple, quiet life until she got to that age where boys start to become interesting. I don't know how she ever connected with this one had she ever spoken of him before or anything you?

Anngelle Wood:

had you ever met him?

Sean Aylward:

never. Well, I was out of the house for a couple of years at that point, so they weren't, they were never really boyfriend and girlfriend. Um, I mean, if you think about that age, a boyfriend is the guy you sat at the lunch table with that's right.

Anngelle Wood:

You know, walked home from school together well they lived.

Sean Aylward:

They even took different buses, so there was even less interaction, though they had a common friend that lived right down the street, so that's where they would connect. Um, but apparently there was something about him that she didn't like, because when he wanted her to be his girlfriend, she said no, and more than once. So that's when he must have developed this plan that he would make her hers or nobody's.

Anngelle Wood:

So it happened at a neighbor's house. They had a mutual friend About that day. You know this person. Uh, I understand. It's a now a man, a boy named sky, that they knew. Yeah, the person came over. I don't even want to say his name because you probably don't want to hear it anymore it's a vital part of the story but, like you said, I don't like to say it I understand why.

Anngelle Wood:

I totally understand. I don't even like posting pictures of these people when I talk about them, right, because they're not really, unfortunately. They created this part of the story, but they're not the main source of the story, if that makes sense.

Sean Aylward:

Of your story, but to many people it is.

Anngelle Wood:

That's right, that's right. So tell me what you know or remember about that day. He, the perpetrator, came to the friend's house and was feeling bad, feeling sorry for himself, she doesn't want to be with me, I'm going to kill myself and then convinced this neighbor to go and get her and bring her over.

Sean Aylward:

Right To talk is what they said. Neighbor, to go and get her and bring her over. Right To talk is what they said. So they went back to his house and they wanted to separate themselves so they could talk. So they went to an upstairs bedroom where Skye stayed downstairs and I don't think it was a long conversation and when it didn't go his way he raised the bat above his head and said and then this is a quote and I wanted to be a baseball star. So in that quote, wanted would indicate to me he knew exactly what these consequences were going to be, because he could no longer be a baseball star if he finished swinging that bat.

Sean Aylward:

So all this junk brain science that they talk about is nonsense. Because he knew exactly what he was talking about and he knew what was going to happen and what would happen after that. And he hit her twice with this aluminum baseball bat, not just once. She did not die that moment. What happened then? Skye saw what happened, or went up and saw what happened, and then ran to my folks' home and naturally told them something was happening. He was virtually speechless, but they knew something was bad. So they ran down the street and Beth actually died in my stepfather's arms, so she was still breathing when he got there, though he claims she was barely recognizable at that point.

Anngelle Wood:

She was small. She was a petite girl, wasn't she?

Sean Aylward:

She sure was yeah.

Anngelle Wood:

That's an impact that no one's difficult to imagine. That someone's going to be able to walk away from that at some point.

Sean Aylward:

And you know if any lasting effect were to come to either of them, because my mom walked into the room too, so she got to see the scene. Nobody wants to see that it's all. It's one thing when it's on television and you're watching a movie and you kind of know what's going to happen, but you know it's a movie, that's right, so so to to see it for yourself. I guess I'm blessed that I didn't have to.

Anngelle Wood:

The thoughts are there and you can't, we can't help but wonder and sort of make things up based on the things that we know, and that's, that's a burden to bear.

Sean Aylward:

You know it took me years to figure out that, yes, we're all a family, but we all experienced it differently. My youngest sister didn't go to the scene, so she was spared that. I was living in Sandown, new Hampshire at the time and if you consider it now, we all live on our cell phone. But when I got home from work there was a message on my machine, so there was no conversation in between. It happened roughly 4 pm. I got home at 530 and there's my sister saying something bad has happened. This guy hit her and beat her up and the first thing I thought was she just got braces, like two weeks ago. If he messed up her mouth, I'm going to be mad.

Anngelle Wood:

Yeah, yeah.

Sean Aylward:

I had no idea what I was in for. So on my way from Sandown to Groveland I stopped at the police department to find out what was going on, because it was just before the house and I don't know if you know any of the police. You might've been too young to know them. I don't. But one of them was a family friend, graduated high school with my stepdad and he came into the lobby and all he could say he struggled to say it was just go home. My memory of it all is much, much different than my sister, dawn, who saw she was on scene, my folks and my youngest sister. She was spared that, but it was horrible.

Anngelle Wood:

Was the boy whose home it was ever implicated at all in what happened.

Sean Aylward:

He was a key witness, but there was never any indication that he was involved.

Anngelle Wood:

And does the family share that sentiment that he wasn't involved, that he was just a dumb kid that didn't really know how to handle the situation?

Sean Aylward:

I think there's probably some animosity there. It makes me wonder why he couldn't stop it. You know, was there something else he could have done? He did invite her over. He, you know, put the meeting together, so it's tough, tough to swallow that, you know. Though it's probably not his, you know. I can't say it's his fault, I don't know. I don't care to see or talk to him either.

Anngelle Wood:

Right. I tend to think about that on the human level, like there's some culpability there, like it's his house. I mean, all these years later, who really knows right? Who really knows what he was thinking? And unfortunately, we know what the other?

Sean Aylward:

guy was thinking he took off. He went down to pintucket, ate a bunch of pills and then said, oh, get me some help. He had some cheap bottle of wine and some mixed pills. They weren't even all the same thing. So I don't know where, whether he brought them with him or if he grabbed them from sky's house or whatever he did, but another failed attempt at suicide. So yeah, he's a coward. He pulled off this act and obviously if he didn't think it was going to be that serious, he wouldn't have tried to kill himself. You know, like in many other cases would have just carried on with his life and, you know, probably bragged to his friends or whatever.

Anngelle Wood:

Tell me a little bit about what it was like when they were ramping up At first. Of course, a kid that age they always go for the juvenile sentencing first, and the DA's office was like no, we're not going to have that. So there's a period of about a year's time before they ramped up to charging him as an adult. Is that accurate?

Sean Aylward:

You know it may have been a year, but I would say in my memory it was very quick. Either that or we just knew right off the bat that it was going to be an adult charge. So all of those early court cases, I think I've kind of blacked them out. I remember being in the courtroom in one of the cases I don't know if it was a transfer hearing or not, but it was in Haverhill and I was two rows behind him and nobody between us. But he had detectives on both sides and one of them.

Sean Aylward:

I know who he is, I can't remember his name, but he was big. He was a big guy and I remember in my head thinking that I could, before anybody could stop me, I could reach over this row and twist his neck, but it wouldn't have done anybody any good. I don't even know how I ended up sitting behind him. You know the rest of my family was on the other side of the courtroom and I don't I don't know, but it was. I can still clear his day. I remember thinking I could just reach up there and snap his neck.

Anngelle Wood:

He wasn't a particularly big kid either, right Just 16 years old.

Sean Aylward:

No, yeah, those early court cases. The court appearances are pretty blank in my head these days, so it was a long time ago now.

Anngelle Wood:

Right, so we're fast forwarding to 94. Right, so we're fast forwarding to 94. He was convicted, sentenced to life in prison, no possibility of parole, because of the brutality and the circumstances around his actions.

Sean Aylward:

Right and the family at that point must feel some relief. Sure, they told us right then. That's it, he's gone for the rest of his life, you'll never have to deal with him, you won't even have to think of him and we could focus all of our energy on Beth and her memory. He's not even part of it anymore. You know, we got the best that we could possibly hope for.

Anngelle Wood:

And you are now a unwitting advocate for juvenile sentencing. Didn't sign up for this right you were thrown into this and back in. Well, 2012 was the first ruling, and then the massachusetts ruling came in 2013, that they were changing life sentences for juveniles.

Sean Aylward:

Let's talk a little bit about that well, we didn't pay much attention to the 2012 because it was still, it wasn't local, it hadn't really touched home. And in 2013, believe it or not, I found out from a friend of beth's that this was a possibility. We had not been contacted by the da, which um we laid into him about. You know, it's it's not fair that I find out from a newspaper clipping that this is going to happen. So we put out a letter writing campaign and we bombarded Blodgett's office with hundreds and hundreds of letters. How could you do this type of letters? You know the family needed to know this beforehand, to somewhat prepare, if you can prepare Right. And before I knew it he was on my phone him personally, not somebody from his office, but Jonathan himself and he was trying to explain his way out of it. And I told him you know I can't really accept an apology here, because the family should have heard from you a while ago. We should have known that this was coming.

Sean Aylward:

Since Jonathan and I have become very close, we talk a lot him and a couple of the girls on his staff. We talk all the time about certain issues relative issues, I should say. But at the time some of Beth's friends started the Facebook page that we have now. I wasn't all that involved in Facebook at the time. It was one of those. Whatever you know, I could do without it.

Sean Aylward:

And then this happened and it was the best way to possibly communicate with Beth's friends and people from town and stuff like that people that would remember. I thought it would be more of a local issue where you know, we'll just get some people together from Groveland, we'll put this thing to bed and happily ever after. But the more we found out and the deception by Deval Patrick was just devastating. I had never till that day, till I found out it was Deval Patrick that put the stamp on this thing, had zero interest in politics, none. With a lot of help we reached out to some senators and some representatives. Before I know it, we got 50-odd people together with 5,000 signatures on a petition to go to Deval Patrick's office and we had arranged the meeting with his staff so he knew we were coming and it was an appointment and we got there, all of us walking down the hallway it was on the news and everything and he wasn't there, completely dissed us, left us standing there in his office with no resolution.

Anngelle Wood:

Because at that point they had changed it from no longer life in prison and they in Massachusetts they tiered it right. Right, based on the brutality level of the offenses, like 15 to 20 you get. You can go before the parole board in 15 to 20 years for light brutality and then you know you have to serve a full 30 years for brutal, inhumane crime and then you can go before the parole board. Am I kind of accurate? Yeah?

Sean Aylward:

In also being a wise ass about it. Well, I mean, it's nonsense is what it is, the way they did it. And there's a lot of arguments about mandatory minimum sentencing. It's a pretty blurry line as it is anyway. And they claim that you know, any juvenile convicted of first degree murder must serve life. And they say, well, you can't really do it that way because some of them their brains underdeveloped. But if there is no mandatory minimum, then you need to judge each case on its own merits. But then they throw this blanket policy over it, saying we're not going to judge each case on its own merits. If you're a juvenile, you're a juvenile, you're a juvenile and that's it.

Anngelle Wood:

Well, we have certainly seen, we certainly have a lot of evidence in the Commonwealth by itself. I know the story of Jamie Fuller who brutally murdered his 14-year-old girlfriend. I know the story of Philip Chisholm who brutally murdered a teacher in a bathroom.

Sean Aylward:

I just told the story of both of those families.

Anngelle Wood:

Rod Matthews.

Sean Aylward:

Yeah.

Anngelle Wood:

That story is horrendous.

Sean Aylward:

Yeah.

Anngelle Wood:

And he's been before the parole board a couple of times now. We went to the lab in 17.

Sean Aylward:

And Jeannie had no idea we were there. It was part of my mission to go and get involved in these juvenile cases and you know that's not an easy ride for me to get down at Natick from New Hampshire. No way we would go down the night before, get a hotel room for the night and just go in support of the family. Because if you've ever been in that office in the parole board there's about 20 seats for each side and it's pretty cozy. And to be 10 to 15 feet away from the offender is chilling. And to hear the way some people remember these cases, no matter what the case Rod Matthews is a good one, or Jeffrey Ribeiro, those cases are just brutal to listen to. I don't know if it were my own case, how I would restrain myself from reacting inside that little room.

Anngelle Wood:

And you haven't had to face Beth's killer yet, because he did have a parole hearing but he canceled it. Is that right?

Sean Aylward:

He scheduled one and never went, and why do you think? Well, we put on a huge push. We were all over the media and the newspaper, social media. We were on the news. So it was pretty obvious that there was going to be a lot of opposition to his parole and I hope to. I like to think that that's why he canceled even last minute, Although what it does to us as a family mentally is awful.

Anngelle Wood:

Well, and that's a question that I've been thinking a lot about what is it like to emotionally prepare for something like this? You've never had to face this before. Now you're forced to, you're forced with the prospect of going before this, essentially this person that did this, that decimated your family in 1992. What is that like?

Sean Aylward:

It's torture? I would say definitely torture, because now, for the longest time, like I said earlier, we only had to memorialize Beth, and now the thought of parole brings that day right back to the forefront of your memory and you don't want to relive those days. It happened. I won't say you got over it, but you were able to safely tuck it away where you could access it when you want. But now we're forced to think about it and how it affected you and, like I said, that's when I realized the way I experienced it would be different than the way my sisters faced it or handled it, and my parents and even her friends.

Sean Aylward:

There's really no preparation For me. The way I prepared was to go to those other hearings and see what happened. Good point, and I learned a lot, because what people tend to do is get up and say the same story and now each side the victim side gets five witnesses for five minutes. So to tell the same story five ways doesn't really get a point across and I don't think it's going to do any good to convince a parole board member. So I tried to educate my family about it and the other people that might speak. Is you need to make it different from what they've already heard. They know the details of the case, they know what his incarceration has been, they know what his record is. So you need to bring Beth back into the story, that's right. Not so much what life would be if she were still here, but what the world missed out on, and there's no way to do that. Where she was so young, it's hard to say.

Anngelle Wood:

What do you think in your best imagination? What do you think Beth's life would be like today? What kind of person would she be?

Sean Aylward:

I think she would have been in some sort of care type services. She was very caring and attentive. Other people have suggested she might've been an attorney. She was smart. She would have been a terrific mom because she was a good big sister. She was a good little sister. I'm sure she would have been happily married. She was pretty selective with her friends. The world missed out on it. Now she's a bright star in our life. But she was just everybody's little sister. She was everybody's good friend.

Anngelle Wood:

She was just starting to blossom, like those, you know, those butterflies that she loved.

Sean Aylward:

Yeah.

Anngelle Wood:

How was your family? How are your parents?

Sean Aylward:

I'm good. I think they deal with it differently. Each of them deal with it differently and each of us kids deal with it differently. I chose to be very in the face out in public and pushing where my parents. I think they've simply had enough talking about it. They don't want, first of all, they don't want their words misconstrued and taken the wrong way, but it's tough to talk about for them. I've grown a little I don't want to say cold, but I'd say accustomed to talking about it. I've told Beth's story to thousands of people in front of thousands of people at different events and stuff. Kelly was much too young, but she already has her speech prepared for parole and she has for a long time. And when I read it is when I realized that she's not as absent from that day as we thought, because again she's got a different perspective. Where she was, she was kept at the house, she was separated. Everybody thought, ah, she's eight years old, she shouldn't have to deal with this.

Anngelle Wood:

So she dealt with it, but just in a way that none of us could recognize when do you anticipate there will be another parole hearing that you will likely have to prepare for and attend? When do you anticipate that might be?

Sean Aylward:

Anticipate a hope. I would hope that we never have to. I was kind of hoping that COVID might have taken him in prison, but that didn't happen. I would like to think we're not going to have to because he has a horrible disciplinary record. I would like to think we're not going to have to because he has a horrible disciplinary record. He has spent the equivalent of about 10 years in solitary confinement. He's got lots of disciplinary problems. He's heavily medicated and I don't think he can survive without those things. From what I've heard from other people, we've talked to a woman in prison services or something like that. So she has worked with him and when he is not on his medication he cannot behave himself.

Anngelle Wood:

So it's not likely, but I never want to rest on that is there any documentation about horrible behavior leading up to this with this guy? I haven't been able to find any. I call them my red flags.

Sean Aylward:

There's none of that, you know, like killing neighborhood cats or anything like that type stories. There was one woman that lived in the same apartment complex as him for a little while down in the manor that said he always had this like blank stare to his face and sometimes he was trying to be like the tough guy, but there was no violent outrage or anything like that with him.

Sean Aylward:

What would you like the public to know about the re-victimization of families?

Sean Aylward:

That's a great question because it's tough to explain without having to live it and all I can say is, the more I tell this story to people you can actually identify the moment, when you tell Beth's story, that they realize, holy shit, that could have been me, it could have been my kids or my niece or whatever it was, and I wouldn't say they well up, but that realization definitely dawns on them that this was not some drive-by shooting, it was not a car accident that took somebody's life, it wasn't a mistake.

Sean Aylward:

Premeditated murder is completely different, where the victim is chosen by the offender. Obviously, nobody chooses to be a victim and if you can't honor the innocent, then there's no sense in any of it, then there's no sense in going to court and that's, that's just a horrible way to live. So I guess the message I would like to portray is we must honor those victims and nobody's going to be able to realize what it is to be the victim, or even to be a survivor of a victim, until it happens to you, and nobody wants that. I've always said if a crime like this could land on the right person's doorstep, the law would change.

Anngelle Wood:

Absolutely, because no one really pays that much attention until it happens to them.

Sean Aylward:

And it doesn't affect them. The result doesn't affect them. It's just another piece of paper that comes across the desk and they sign off on it.

Anngelle Wood:

It's my understanding that the public can attend parole hearings for people that are sentenced to life, I believe. Would you want people from the public not directly involved to come and support the family? Sure, would you be open to that?

Sean Aylward:

The room is very, very small so there's not a lot of people that can actually get in the room. There is an overflow room that holds maybe another dozen people, but there's lots of room outside. When we were planning for parole that was our plan we were going to line both sides of the street in Natick and just join hands, kind of like a parade of support leading up to the parole office of support.

Anngelle Wood:

Leading up to the parole office, I was contacted by the parents of one of the stories that I told early in this podcast and it has affected me and will stay with me forever, and I invited them to come on. I said if you would ever like to come and talk and clear the air and fill in the lines that I didn't get right or I didn't have, Because they were very gracious and they said you got the story right, based on all the court documentation. But there's other things that happened and I'm like I have no way to know that, but you're welcome to come, and this was in 1997 that their daughter was murdered. They still can't. They're like we just don't think we can do that, we just don't think we can talk about it.

Sean Aylward:

Yeah, I think you'd get the same reaction from my parents, so I think it's easier for me to do their bidding, if you will. They trust me with my perspective, though not at first they weren't all that happy with it, but I think it shields them a little bit from it, whether they realize it or not with it, but uh, but I think it shields them a little bit from it, whether they realize it or not.

Anngelle Wood:

I would say, based on the information that I have learned about covering these cases and most of them are very brutal if you beat someone to death premeditatively if that's even a word, I don't know that you should get 30 years and get out Right.

Sean Aylward:

There's a lot of talk about they can be rehabilitated. Ok, so if rehabilitation starts on day one of incarceration, when does the punishment start? Because there needs to be a punishment. So what if you, if you did this and we think that we can fix you, then you serve no punishment.

Anngelle Wood:

Well, prison isn't a place where people get. They get worse in prison. Do human beings get better in prison?

Sean Aylward:

Well, when they find God.

Anngelle Wood:

Because he's hiding there. That's where people usually find them. I don't know that there is a. Is there a possibility for someone to be rehabilitated in probably the worst place that they can ever go?

Sean Aylward:

You know I tend to believe that. But if you think about I call it the benefit package that they get, it's kind of like a poorly decorated resort. They get free medical, they get free dental, they get free eye care, they get free haircuts, they get a free gym membership, they get a college education if they want. They get to go to church, they get three meals a day all for nothing. It's a pretty good package. You pay a lot of money for those benefits.

Anngelle Wood:

It's a very interesting take on that, Sean.

Sean Aylward:

Inmate benefit package.

Anngelle Wood:

I have really learned quite a lot in the research that I've done on these stories that I've been covering and my intention is always to have compassion and empathy for the people who have been through this and even the parents of some of these kids. You know, because some of these parents they did not do this, you know they didn't. Some parents are really terrible and we know that Some parents contribute in, are really terrible and we know that some parents contribute in a major way and we know that. But it's really easy to say, oh, the parents didn't parent, so that's why the kid's the way he is Not necessarily Correct.

Sean Aylward:

I agree with that wholeheartedly, and I heard on your other podcast that we didn't all grow up in these. You know fantasy land, marriages and family atmospheres. You know some families are just different. They handle things different ways. They have different personalities and you know I'm tired of hearing the broken home story and sympathize for me. Sympathize for them because you can survive that without killing people, because if that were the case, there'd be a whole lot more juvenile killers out there.

Anngelle Wood:

I know a lot of people who came from my family. Life was not great, but none of us killed anybody, right? And I understand. I definitely understand that there are contributing factors to people's behavior and I'm not going to deny that. But we're talking about somebody who brutally murdered somebody who's in prison and it's questionable if that person's going to be safe out on the street again, or rather, other people will be safe when that person comes out on the street again.

Sean Aylward:

How does somebody that's been in prison for this amount of time come out to a world that we live in right now, with almost global Wi-Fi and cell phones, and I mean life is just so much different today than it was when they went in. I think the learning curve is way too steep for them to survive.

Anngelle Wood:

I just don't know that there's support Legitimately. I don't know that there's support for someone to come out of prison after being in there for 30 years.

Sean Aylward:

Which is why they end up back in prison.

Anngelle Wood:

I just don't know that society has that level of support. There's no provisions for that and that's an honest take. I just don't know. In theory, it'd be great if these. You know, one of the conversations I plan on having soon is marijuana and the criminal justice system we are legalizing. I'm going off on a rabbit hole and I understand that. We've legalized marijuana everywhere and we have people that are in prison for years and years and years for just pot Right, Like they didn't hurt anybody.

Sean Aylward:

Right, how about? Bernie Madoff is my favorite example. Didn't hurt a soul. He was sentenced to 150 years in prison and recently died. Didn't kill anybody.

Anngelle Wood:

Billions of dollars that man got. How did he do that?

Sean Aylward:

Well, the key there is who he offended. The rich John.

Anngelle Wood:

Malkovich Right, yeah, this is something I can talk about for hours. I've taken up a lot of your time In closing. You know, and I've said this to the family that reached out to me I will keep my eyes and ears open for whatever information is coming about a potential parole hearing, and I might even go.

Sean Aylward:

You should. It's eye-opening for sure. If you need any help with like. Unfortunately, I've gained a pretty big circle of friends when it comes to victims like. Amy Cannavale's cousin and I are good friends. The Downing family and I know you mentioned them recently in a podcast. We're definitely friendly with them. And then there's another case. I don't think I've heard you mention Lewis Jennings, who was an older guy. I don't know that one. You could look him up. Lewis Jennings and Jeffrey Roberio was the offender. They broke into this guy's trailer looking for money and ended up beating him to death. He's been up for parole a couple of times and he has been. He has been paroled, though I'm not sure he's been released yet.

Anngelle Wood:

Oh, I will definitely look it up. I do want to cover the Amy Carnevale case. When I talk about these cases, the word that continues to come out of my mouth is unfathomable Right. I cannot fathom the darkness in someone's soul to do these things.

Sean Aylward:

His may have been an errand. His mom tried to break him out of prison.

Anngelle Wood:

So there you go. There's a situation where you have somebody that has something in there that's welling up and then it's fostered by some really bad parenting and probably some, you know, bad wiring. Our parents did all kinds of things. When I made a joke about moms drank when they were pregnant a lot, that's true, mothers did drink when they were pregnant, you know, back in those days. So yeah, I would.

Sean Aylward:

When they invented car seats, it wasn't that long ago, right?

Anngelle Wood:

No, I remember the story of my mother. I'm the youngest of five, so my mother, you know she had kids. You know, all the way through the, you know through the 60s, into the 70s, into the 80s, it was just like here you go. Just, you just put them on the front seat, they'll be fine.

Sean Aylward:

And did you ever ride around in the back of a pickup truck?

Anngelle Wood:

Yes, on a lawn chair.

Sean Aylward:

Right.

Anngelle Wood:

Yeah, on 95?.

Sean Aylward:

Right, yes.

Anngelle Wood:

I did.

Sean Aylward:

Imagine what would happen now.

Anngelle Wood:

I would like to keep in touch with you.

Sean Aylward:

Sure Anytime.

Anngelle Wood:

If you're open to that, I would like to follow what happens. I will definitely follow what happens. If this clown goes up for parole, I will be on top of it.

Sean Aylward:

Yeah, you know, the attorney get assigned to them for parole and it's state funded Is that right. Meaning they get paid, win or lose.

Anngelle Wood:

Cause the law affords that he has a right to that. Is that different? Was that not the case before?

Sean Aylward:

It was not. You had to fund your own attorney. Expert witnesses and stuff like that were all on your dime, on the defense dime, and now the state pays for it all.

Anngelle Wood:

Well, I really appreciate this. Thank you so much. This is the perspective that I really want. There's only so much you can read in the Globe archives. You don't know anything about the people involved. The only real information you can find is the information on the parole stuff and him going before the parole and then it was scheduled and then your family found out that he called it off Right. That's brutal. You're being offended over and re-offended over and over again.

Sean Aylward:

Right and mentally that's. It's painful to go through that.

Anngelle Wood:

All right, my friend, my new friend, take care of yourself and love to your entire family. I'm sorry this had to happen to you.

Sean Aylward:

Well, don't let me down. Make sure it's focused on the victim.

Anngelle Wood:

Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Sean Elward, the entire Brody family. There are a few resources I want to draw your attention to. One is the Facebook group Justice for Beth Brody, and there's a website, justiceforbethorg. The Brody family could very possibly have to face her killer in a parole hearing. I hope they don't. It's very taxing and a burden that her family must bear. In closing, I'm going to ask you for a couple of things. Go to those pages, support the family, listen to the show, subscribe everywhere you listen to podcasts and there are a few of those platforms where you can leave reviews Apple Podcasts five-star reviews are my favorite Podchaser, stitcher and CastBox. It's not clear to me why the other platforms don't allow you to do reviews, but thank you to those of you who have left them. I am honored and humbled by your response. Everything about the show at CrimeOfTheTruestKindcom. I share all of my sources up there. I do a lot of research, I dig deep into archives, etc. All right, thank you for listening. No-transcript.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Anngelle Wood

Host
Contributor

Nicky Peacock and Lisa Shepard

Co-host

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

Open Investigation Artwork

Open Investigation

Melanie Perkins McLaughlin