EP 66 | A Fifty-Year-Old Cold Case Is Solved & The Dark History Of Murder in Bedford, Massachusetts

EP 66 | A Fifty-Year-Old Cold Case Is Solved & The Dark History Of Murder in Bedford, Massachusetts

Five murders in as many decades. How does a seemingly tranquil town like Bedford, Massachusetts, become the backdrop for some of the most chilling crimes in New England history? Travel back in time as we recount this small town's dark past.

In 1970, Emily Morris, a woman suffering from debilitating pain, was killed by her own husband for what he called a mercy killing.

The 1971 brutal murder of Natalie Scheublin went unsolved until a newly-formed cold case unit came together to reexam her case. Thanks to clues left behind by the killer and breakthroughs in forensic technology, her murderer was finally caught.

In 1982, the grisly murder of 19-year-old Robert Crowe in his own home by a drug addict and thief left the town reeling but it was his childhood friend who help put him away.

2024: And the town was rocked just this month by a double murder that opened old wounds. A heartbreaking account of family murder perpetrated by their own daughter; Thelma Tatten and Mark Cavallaro, were a fun-loving and caring couple who were shot on the way to breakfast.

Crime of the Truest Kind
hosted by Anngelle Wood
crimeofthetruestkind.com
@crimeofthetruestkind

NAMI - National Alliance on Mental Illness
Edinburg Center, Bedford, Mass
Behavioral health and mental health services in Massachusetts 

updating 

Chapters

• 0:00 Crime of the Truest Kind
• 2:44 Where is Debra Melo? 24th anniversary
• 3:33 Who Killed Karina Holmer?
• 11:51 Who is Doug Ardito?
• 12:38 A history of murder in Bedford, Mass
• 20:57 Solved Cold Case Murder After 50 Years
• 36:09 Tragic Murder of Massachusetts Family

Transcript

Anngelle Wood: 0:00

Well, hello, my name is Anngelle Wood and this is Crime of Truest Kind. Hello and welcome. Crime of the Truest Kind is about Massachusetts and New England crime. It's told in a narrative style about the things that happen here, the people and the places. In that story. I talk about local landmarks that make our towns and cities great, or things that just make you say, oh yeah, I remember that I tell you a story. I make light of some things, but never at the expense of those affected by these crimes, and from time to time, yes, I say a curse word. Now, I am not a fan of podcast commercials. Who is? I don't really want them, and I was on the radio for years and years and commercials always sucked. And there are certain distributors, who shall not be named, whose commercial load is ridiculous. The truth is, I need to fund this somehow. Sponsorship is a possibility which I've been too busy to get to, but I'm open to ideas. But there are always ways that you can lend your support to the show. Start by telling other people about it. Share Crime of the Truest Kind on social media. Talk about it on the groups, the feeds, the message boards you might frequent. Write a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. Tell me what you like about the show. You can give the dogs a bone by dropping a tip in the tip jar. Beck. Thank you very much, carmen. Michelle. Become a Patreon patron. Tip my hat to you. Superstar EPs Lisa McColgan, Rhiannon yes. Become a patron. Four tiers starting at just $1 at Patreon. I have more Patreon only stories coming. There are a few up now. Time has been tough. I have been working on a new project called Looking for a New Job. Wish me luck. So follow the show Crime of the Truest Kind everywhere. Tell your friends about it. r I love to do this show and have no plans on stopping, but sometimes things get put on the side burner. I have two cases that need your attention. I mean they all need our attention. But this month, J june, marks 24 years since Debra Melo disappeared from her family in Taunton, M massachusetts. Her husband, who was the last person to see her, told police he let her out of their car on a busy roadway in Weymouth. No one saw her and no one has seen or heard from her since. So this the 24th year. We set up a Facebook page called when is Deborah Mello, with the approval of family members. The goal is to give her a presence and to share information and hopefully get some in return. Second case Karina Holmer, 20-year-old woman, very new to the US from Sweden, was killed on June 22, 1996. Her partial remains were found in a dumpster in a lot behind an apartment building in Boston. Now, in addition to the when is Deborah Mello Facebook page, there is a who Killed Karina Holmer? Facebook group. There's a website who killed KarinaHolmer. com? Which is specifically set up for visibility for Karina Homer's case.

Anngelle Wood: 4:13

Next live show is coming Thursday, june 20th at Faces Brewing in Malden. We'll be talking about Massachusetts cold cases. It's Emily Sweeney of the Boston Globe cold case files and myself and we will make time for a Q&A, because I have learned that DebRorah really like the Q&A, so we can talk about whatever you want. You're probably going to want to talk about the Karen Read trial. I know I'm bracing for impact.

Anngelle Wood: 4:37

This is episode 66. Travel with me if you will. I don't have far to go, it's pretty close to me. As we uncover a history of murder in Bedford Massachusetts. A double murder in Bedford, Massachusetts last week brings the total to five in as many decades. It is a quiet, nothing happens here kind of place until it does. That's that true crime meme. They were a happy family until they weren't.

Anngelle Wood: 5:21

Bedford gets a 72 on a scale of 1 to 100 for safety. This is according to NeighborhoodScoutcom. Anybody who's ever looked for a house or planned on moving has been on one of these sites. It provides crime risk analytics for every neighborhood in America with up to 98% predictive accuracy. I don't know what that means, but it sounds good. Bedford Mass ranks 13th on the top 20 safest cities and towns in Massachusetts for 2024. That's according to SafeWise.

Anngelle Wood: 5:51

Massachusetts is below the national average for both violent crime and property crime. The Massachusetts violent crime rate this reporting year is 3.7 per 1,000 people. The US average is 4.0. The property crime rate is 11.3 incidents per 1,000 people. The US average is 19.3. We are the third lowest in the nation. Now I won't run down all the numbers, the data or the data. I say it different every single time. Residents seem most concerned about property crimes and with the TikTok Kool-Aid man challenge fucking up fences across the nation, I can see the concern that's when the kids crash through somebody's fence, like the Kool-Aid man saying oh yeah, you've seen it, or you've seen your fence. And I am a kind and compassionate being. You all know this about me but if you crash through my yard fence and my dogs got out, I would hunt you down, you motherfuckers.

Anngelle Wood: 7:04

Bedford is the small town 14,000 people per the 2022 census. It's about 20 miles north of downtown Boston. Now, not to be confused with the whaling port city of New Bedford. That's some 60 miles south of downtown Boston, a great place with a rich history for New England tourism. That's the money I need to go for. I need to go for the tourism sponsorships. Right? Bedford has none of those port city features.

Anngelle Wood: 7:38

It does have a well-known bike trail, the Minuteman Bikeway, also known as the Minuteman Commuter Bikeway. The paved rail trail stretches 10 miles to Alewife T Station in Cambridge. That is the last stop on the red line on the subway. It also maps Paul Revere's Midnight Ride from the 1775, the 18th century we're talking to alert the Minutemen that the British were indeed coming leading the American Revolution. Today the trail is full of riders going to and fro, avoiding each other on packed afternoons. The trail takes off from the train depot, complete with its own restored passenger rail car and brings you past Lexington Battle Green, where those Minutemen faced the Redcoats.

Anngelle Wood: 8:37

Bedford is also home to Hanscom Air Force Base. It straddles the neighboring communities of Lexington, lincoln and Concord. It opened up during the time when the US had been providing significant military supplies to allies during World War II and in 1940, the US was evaluating a greater role in the war. In May 1941, the Massachusetts legislature authorized the purchase of a large stretch of land bordering the towns of Bedford, lincoln, concord and Lexington for Boston's auxiliary airport. We now know the United States did join the war immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a date that will live in infamy. In mid-1942, the Commonwealth leased the Bedford Airport to the War Department for use by the Army Air Forces. Fighter squadrons would train there and went on to combat in North Africa and in Europe. In February 1943, the airport was renamed Lawrence G Hanscom Fields in honor of a Massachusetts-born pilot and aviation enthusiast who had beena reporter to the Worcester Telegram Gazette. Hanscom had died in February 1941 in an aircraft accident in Saugus, Massachusetts, while he was lobbying vigorously at the state house for the establishment of the airport in Bedford. The Massachusetts Port Authority operates Hanscom Fields, a civil airport that serves as a corporate reliever for Boston's Logan Airport. While both facilities share the Hanscom name, they are different. I had no idea.

Anngelle Wood: 10:30

Bedford Mass is also home to the VA. The VA Bedford Healthcare System has 338 total operational beds, including 224 skilled nursing home beds. Apparently they don't have an ER, but they do have an urgent care center that's open weekdays from eight to 430. But don't we know emergencies never happen in that convenient window of time. That veterans hospital is named for Edith Norse Rogers, a member of the Massachusetts Congress serving from 1925 to 1960. Ms Rogers was committed to the care of veterans and co-authored the GI Bill. She was the first woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. The Rogers School in Lowell also named after her.

Anngelle Wood: 11:25

I always look to see what notable people are from a town, sometimes to connect some anecdote to it, or sometimes make a joke about how Bedford has Doug Ardito. You're like who, Doug Ardito? You know the guitar player from Puddle of Mud. I'll spare you my snark Aside from saying Puddle of Mud. I'll spare you my snark Aside from saying Puddle of Mud is murder to your ears.

Anngelle Wood: 11:47

We did play a Milan on WFNX when I worked there, when they were young whippersnappers. That only means when they were starting out. I did peep on his Instagram as one does. There's a photo of him at the Worcester Centrum meeting Aerosmith when he was a little kid. I may have been at that show. I didn't meet Aerosmith, well, only Tom Hamilton when someone thought I was his handler at the Boston Music Awards. Oh, and Joey Kramer when he did a special guest morning show on WZLX when I worked there. I do, however, have this. Hey, this is Joe Perry of Aerosmith and this is the sound of Boston Emissions with Angela Wood. All right, I might just be showing off now.

Anngelle Wood: 12:32

There hadn't been a murder committed in Bedford since October 1982. 19-year-old Robert Crowe was stabbed to death with a screwdriver in his bed, turns out by a 21-year-old coke addict who've been at his house on two other occasions on that day to get dope Dope my universal term for all drugs, by the way, any drugs. This is from the court record. This is from the court record. Just before 9 pm on the night of October 25, 1982, 21-year-old Kurt L Heuenfeld with his childhood friend John Nazaro left Heuenfeld's parents' home at 15 Putnam Road in Bedford and headed out for a night of drinking at the Jolly Porpoise Lounge, the bar located inside the Lord Bedford Motel on North Road, now the Bedford Motel. All these locations are just minutes from each other.

Anngelle Wood: 13:34

Huenfeld wanted cocaine for his night out so he told his friend they were making a stop at 6 School Way. That is the home of 19-year-old Shawshank Technical High School senior Robert Crow. There they all went to Robert's room where Huenfeld freebased some coke. I guess he cooked up some coke and shot it in his arm. That shit is hardcore. You are in trouble if you're doing that.

Anngelle Wood: 14:05

The two, nazaro and Huenfeld, continued on to the lounge it wasn't even a half mile away where they drank together right up until last call, with Huenfeld leaving only once to use more coke that he got at Robert Crowe's house. They left the bar and Huenfeld wanted to go back to Crowe's house. Naturally, that's what happens when you're a drug addict. Nazzaro sat in the car and waited. After what was about 15 minutes Huenfeld came back out and said he had done a little bit more cocaine. No shit. They drove back to Heuenfeld's parents' house where the two were in the basement and Nazaro fell asleep, only to be woken up by Heuenfeld at about 2.30 am when he gave a frantic confession about how he left while Nazaro was asleep, drove the seven or so minutes back to the Crow's house, got into his room to rob him, except Robert Crow woke up to Huenfeld trying to get into his safe. Huenfeld told Nazaro he turned on the light and stabbed Robert Crow four or five times with a screwdriver. Then he jumped out the window leaving him there to bleed.

Anngelle Wood: 15:36

Robert Crowe was found around 11.30 am that morning. His clock radio was going off. Found around 11.30 am that morning His clock radio was going off Probably the exact clock radio everyone had when we used clock radios. You know the one he wasn't answering. When they knocked on his bedroom door His sister asked their dad to go into his room to check on him. There he found his son on the floor next to his bed lying in his own blood. He had 28 stab wounds to his head. It was quite vicious. Everyone who knew Robert described him as quiet, well-liked. A friend who hung out with him fixing up his Chevy said he acted a little older than most of the others their age. Robert Crowe was training to be a machinist. He had a part-time job monitoring computers at Hanscom Field.

Anngelle Wood: 16:35

When questioned by police, his sister told them that she saw Heuenfeld come inside their home about 12.30 am. While Nazara waited outside, her brother seemed upset that she had let him in the house. She had also told police that she woke up sometime before 2.30 am and heard her brother say what the hell are you doing? That was alarming. So she walked down the hall toward her brother's room and as she reached her door it shut, it locked and a light went out. Shortly afterwards she heard what she thought was the sound of the dog whimpering. I thought, oh no, not the dog that would have done it for me. I'd be getting that dog. But those sounds that they heard were not consistent with what they would find.

Anngelle Wood: 17:36

In the morning. Based on the information provided by the family, bedford police went to interview Nazaro and Heuenfeld. Both stuck to their story that they were out drinking all night. It wasn't until the next day, october 27th, when police called John Nazaro to come in alone to give his account of that night. He showed up with his dad and his attorney and he would agree to tell the police what he knew if he would not be charged with any crimes related to false statements he gave.

Anngelle Wood: 18:14

Based on information from his pal Nazaro, an arrest warrant was issued, along with a search warrant for areas of the Heuenfeld home. They searched the basement, the bathroom, a trash barrel on the porch and they seized many items to include a pair of gray corduroy pants, a hypodermic needle and a blood-stained mattress. And a blood-stained mattress. Kurt Heuenfeld entered a not guilty plea and was ordered held without bail and sent to the Billerica House of Correction. His attorney wanted him sent to Bridgewater State Hospital for observation. He was unsuccessful. A psychiatrist at Emerson Hospital in Concord examined Heuenfeld and testified that he may be dangerous and mentally ill but he could definitely stand trial.

Anngelle Wood: 19:13

Other than what we found out he did, huenfeld seemed like a pretty unremarkable 21-year-old. He worked for a construction company in Wakefield and the only previous record he had with the Bedford police were moving violations. Police said they had no reason to believe that Robert Crowe was dealing drugs until he was killed. They figured out he was selling some dope, that's weed and cocaine. But they didn't find any drugs in his room that night, just scales and unspecified drug paraphernalia. He had about $2,000 in cash locked in that safe.

Anngelle Wood: 19:56

On September 23, 1983, kurt Heuenfeld was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with a possibility of parole After going before the parole board a seventh time. He was granted parole in January 2024 with special conditions. After 41 years, kurt Heuenfeldt will eventually see the outside of a prison. Assistant DA Alicia Walsh of the Middlesex DA's office spoke in opposition of his release. The family of Robert Crowe oppose his release from prison In 2019, the Middlesex DA, marian Mary Ann Ryan, launched a new cold case unit Led by a crack team of experienced law enforcement individuals whose mission is to focus exclusively on solving the toughest and oldest cases.

Anngelle Wood: 20:57

They aim to investigate unsolved homicides, suspicious deaths where foul play is involved and missing persons cases. It is this cold case unit that helped solve a decades-old cold case in Middlesex County. It goes to show never give up. Just a few days ago marked 53 years that the town of bedford was visited by something horrible like nothing they had seen before. A woman was murdered in her home by an unknown assailant. For what reason? This would be a mystery. Owen shouts to the Bedford citizen for their reporting. I love town coverage because it can really bring you into that story in a way the big city papers really can't.

Anngelle Wood: 21:51

Natalie Scheublin was 54 years old, a mother who dedicated herself to raising her two children, a son Kenneth and a daughter, carol, both of whom were married and out of the house. Natalie Scheublin enjoyed hobbies like gardening and painting and she was the president of the Bedford Arts and Craft Society group Society group Club. I'm sorry I got that wrong, but she was a cancer survivor. Knowing that seems even more cruel because she was attacked so viciously. A neighbor told the Boston Globe that Natalie Scheublin had been ill for several years and was recuperating from major surgery. When that neighbor heard the door bang at the Scheublin home at about 2.30 that afternoon it was rather unexpected as she hadn't seen Natalie Scheublin outside of her house for some months. Mrs. Scheublin, I feel like I should address her the way she would have been addressed in 1971. Back in the 1970s women were called their husbands' names. She'd be Mrs. Raymond Scheublin. in The Scheublin home at 75 Pine Hill Road was a modest two-story Cape Cod style home in what the papers will call a well-to-do, heavily wooded section widely spaced from neighboring houses section widely spaced from neighboring houses. Today the home is 1,900 square feet with three bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. I can only assume it was the same 50 plus years ago. Thursday June 10th 1971 changed everything in the lives of the Scheublin family. Natalie's husband, Raymond, returned home after his workday as president of the Lexington Trust Bank on Great Road. They call it the Great Road in many of the old articles that I have read about Bedford. When Mr Scheublin arrived his wife wasn't around to greet him. Oh, but she was home in the basement. When Mr Scheublin found her, she was face down on the floor her feet tied together at the ankles, with a pair of brown shorts, and a white T-shirt was stuffed into her mouth. He called police immediately post-haste and the officers arrived within minutes. The medical examiner said Mrs Scheublin had only been dead for a short time. If her husband returned home after 5.30 and the neighbor heard something around 2.30, that matches the Emmy's window of three hours. An autopsy report determined that she was hit several times in the head by some kind of heavy hammer. She suffered massive blunt force injuries to her skull by an unknown object and she was stabbed repeatedly on both sides of her body. The weapons used were never found. The investigating officer said there was no evidence of a sex crime. Puzzling still a wallet and two pocketbooks were dumped on a bedroom floor and it appeared as though nothing of significant value was missing from inside the house. They found bloodstains in different rooms, but with no sign of forced entry. Her killer must have talked his way in and ran out through the back door, as it was found open just a little bit. And Mr Shublin told investigators that his wife always locked the doors, and you know how I feel about that. What would eventually close this case 50 years later is Natalie Scheublin's 1969 Chevrolet Impala. It was the one thing missing from her home on that day. Police canvassed the area, knocked on doors, talked to all the neighbors. At 8 42 pm that night police located the blue and white Impala in the parking lot of the VA administration hospital, which was just a short walk through fields behind the Scheublin house and less than half a mile from the crime scene. That certainly triggered an investigation into the patients at the hospital. Now the car had been wiped clean of fingerprints most fingerprints. Investigators were able to collect latent fingerprints, including one from the right rear window that would become very important much later in her case. They followed up on several leads, leads that went nowhere, fast forward to 1999. Mass State Police fingerprint analysts used the FBI's new tool, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, to connect the prints found on the Impala and at the crime scene. Through AFIS, they were able to identify a person whose thumbprint matched the one recovered from the Impala. Police interviewed that man. He denied having any knowledge of the murder. Investigators conducted interviews with that man in 2000. He said he'd never been to Bedford and that he was in Charles Street Jail in Boston at the time. That man was interviewed again, at which time he claimed he had been solicited by an organized crime associate to murder the wife of a banker and make the murder look like a break-in. I will interject this that a set of bank keys was reportedly taken from the Shublin home on that day. What became of those keys, I don't know. This person claimed that he had refused the solicitation and that his cousin took the job. Let it be known that investigators found no corroborating evidence that at any time Mr Shublin was involved in any plot to have his wife killed at any time at any time. It never happened, so they just took this criminal's word for it. I've never been to Bedford. Oh, I was in Charles Street, jill, which is it? Ten more years would pass and in 2019, the cold case unit created by District Attorney Ryan refocused on this case Throughout 2020 and 2021,. Mass State Police and Bedford detectives carefully examined the case, gathering information about that man's past in an effort to identify new witnesses, and a woman surfaced, someone who admitted that she had been involved with the same man in bank defrauding scams in the 1990s. She revealed that the man carried a knife and often bragged about having stabbed someone to death. That information, along with other evidence collected in the case, was presented to the Middlesex County Grand Jury, which returned an indictment. That man was charged with the 1971 murder of Natalie Scheublin. That man, a career criminal, was named Arthur Lewis Massei. He was 76 years old old, from Salem Massachusetts. He was arrested in March 2022 and charged with first degree murder. I do wonder what took so long. They had forensic evidence and a person of interest with a criminal record longer than a CVS receipt. And faced additional charges, including solicitation to suborn perjury in a capital case to get someone to lie for him. Attempted extortion. Solicitation to commit usury which is loan sharking essentially and threatening to cause physical injury or death. Massey was running his loan shark hustle with a 100% interest rate from inside the Billerica House of Corrections. He was ordering people to collect on his debt. He was also sending threatening letters to a woman now unclear if it was the same woman in the banking scams, but he wanted her to pretend to be a witness and lie to the prosecution to make it look like Massey had been framed. He would pay her $1,000. He'd even write the script for her. What a guy, giving her detailed instructions about what to say, including what she had heard, who she had heard it from, about what to say, including what she had heard, who she had heard it from and where she was when she heard it. Oh, and he ratcheted up the threats and said he would get someone to kill her if she didn't do what he said. He's what we call a real beaut. On May 14th 2024, Arthur Massei was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Natalie Scheublin, 53 years after she was found in her Bedford Massachusetts home. Incredible Never, ever give up hope that your case will be solved. Natalie's son and daughter-in-law were present for the verdict. Natalie Shublin's son gave a victim impact statement. Her son, Kenneth, talked about when he got that call from the Bedford police informing him of his mother's murder. He said it was so traumatizing that it was 10 years at least before I could hear a phone ring without my heart pounding in my chest, and that even now, at 78 himself, he dislikes using a telephone. He shared that his father was planning an early retirement. Raymond Scheublin was in his mid-50s then His parents were planning to move to Cape Ann and the northern shore of Massachusetts the Gloucester, Essex, Ipswich area Well, and not too terribly far from where we learned her murderer was living. Kenneth Scheublin's father lived to be 92 years old. He was a widower for 40 years. He was robbed of those golden years. He was a widower for 40 years. He was robbed of those golden years. He died in 2011, never knowing what happened to his beloved wife, Natalie. For decades he said that he had resigned himself to the fact that her murder would never be solved. Kenneth Shublin even mused that Massey may have thought he got away with murder. And then Kenneth Shublin said directly to his mother's killer it didn't quite work out that way, did it, Mr Massei? In response, the now convicted murderer yelled out something to the son of the woman he brutally murdered 53 years before. This is the kind of person he is and, knowing he's from Salem Mass, he probably yelled fuck you, cocksucker. He is now serving a life sentence at his new home at Hotel Sousa- Baranowski in Shirley. It is truly the remainder of his life, as he's teetering on 80,. You almost got away with it.

Anngelle Wood: 33:44

Before Sehublin's Shublin, the town of Bedford had another murder. This was not a stranger. In August 1970, a Bedford man killed his wife in what he described as a mercy killing. Peter S Morris, 43, was sentenced to three to ten years in prison for the August 4, 1970 murder of his wife, emily Morris. He was initially indicted for first-degree murder in the stabbing death, but was allowed by the judge to plead guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter. The story goes that Emily Morris was dealing with rheumatoid arthritis that got considerably more painful over time, and her life consisted of hospital visits for treatment. As a result, emily Morris's husband took over running the household and caring for the children. Did this push him over the edge? His defense was that the suffering of his wife was enormous and her pleas to him to let her die caused him to fall into a psychotic depressive state, and he stabbed his wife to death. He was convicted and eventually free to go on with his life, to remarry and to be with his children and his grandchildren. Peter S Morris died in 2009 at the age of 82. Two children MasseI listed in his obituary, a son and a daughter.

Anngelle Wood: 35:18

So what got me to dig into Bedford's murder history in the first place? Well, it's always been on my list and it's near where I live, and the news of the first murder in the town in 42 years? Well, that got my spidey senses sensing and I ended up learning about these other murder cases in this idyllic Massachusetts village. When the news broke last week about a double murder in Tiny Town, I got to reading about the case and well, I fell face first into these other crimes. The most recent headlines coming from Bedford, massachusetts, is the double shooting of two parents by their adult daughter. There was not much to know at this time. Their adult daughter there was not much to know at this time, but I'll tell you what I found out.

Anngelle Wood: 36:09

On Thursday, june 6th, 24-year-old Jessica Cavallaro got up and went to her job as a patient service representative at Emerson Health in Concord. Now, this is, according to her CV, that she had been there since March 2024. She attended Bedford High Class of 2018. She went to Middlesex Community College, which is in Bedford and Lowell, and she studied health care administration. I believe she just recently graduated.

Anngelle Wood: 36:34

On June 6th she went to work but left and returned to the home on Washington Street where she often stayed some or all of the time with her boyfriend and his family. She claimed to have been having a panic attack and her parents were taking her to breakfast. She was reportedly inside the Washington Street house for about 30 minutes. She came back out, met her parents and got in the back seat of their car to go to breakfast. But as she got in, jessica allegedly shot them both in the head at close range and then went back inside the house and told her boyfriend's parents what she had done. The gun she used was recovered inside of the car. When the police arrived, a man identified as the father of the boyfriends told investigators he suspected that she took the gun from a safe inside his home. He said his son also owned guns and there were at least four more in the house, according to a police report.

Anngelle Wood: 37:40

When police arrived at the scene, they found their car had rolled across to 11 Washington Street. In that car, a white Honda HR-V based on photos on the news, were the badly injured Thelma Tatton and Mark Cavallaro, both 56 years old. Thelma Tatton was in the driver's seat, mark Cavallaro was in the passenger side. Thelma Tatton was pronounced dead at the scene while Mark Cavallaro was transported to a local hospital where he died. Later that afternoon the couple shared a Facebook page that said Thelma Tatton and Mark Calvillaro had been together since 1998. A post on April 11th about Mark Calvillaro fundraising for the Spring NAMI Walk on May 18th in downtown Boston. Nami, or the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a nonprofit founded by family members of people diagnosed with mental illness. Mark Cavallaro spoke of his own dealings with social anxiety and bipolar II disorder since the age of 12, and how the Edinburgh Centre helped him through cognitive behavioral therapy. Mark Cavallaro was to be honoured at their Night of Shining Stars as a 2024 Shining Star recipient.

Anngelle Wood: 39:08

The very day he was shot and killed there was a photo of the family posted on their Facebook page with the parents in the front seat, moms driving and Jessica smiling in the back seat with a big Dunkin Donuts coffee. Wonderful Until the events of June 6th. When you look at their photos, you see a normal couple outside of that shared Facebook page. That's a little weird. Photos from shows, the one being used most in the media, the one where they're sitting together. That appears to be from a KISS show. One or both of them is from Waltham, and in a web search I did, I found a Thelma Tatton listed as a web content production specialist at New England Journal of Medicine's group education, based in Waltham. Thelma Tatton, not a common name. And there was a son, ryan Tatton, who shared on a GoFundMe page that he is in utter shock over what happened with his family A complete loss for words. So understandable, ryan. He spoke of Thelma and Mark as both very happy and outgoing people who love to laugh and joke, to attend shows, and they loved their grandson, jameson, very, very much.

Anngelle Wood: 40:39

All who were questioned by news reporters indicated that this behavior exhibited by Jessica Cavallaro was not common. It was out of character for her. A woman named Danielle who used to live on Jannetty Street in Bedford, all of about three minutes from the scene of the crime, said she lived near the Cavallaro family for about five years. In that time, she said the Cavallaros appear to be a regular family. There was nothing weird about them. Incidentally, though, I learned another connection to this case.

Anngelle Wood: 41:17

In April of 1974, a Lexington, massachusetts, police officer named Robert Muller was shot and killed. He was a member of the Lexington police force for 20 years and he lived at 19 Junetti Street in Bedford. It's the address. That is just simply an eerie coincidence. The story is that Officer Muller, who was not on duty at the time, was shot as he stood in the doorway of a house in Hampton, new Hampshire, that belonged to a woman named Catherine Williams. Around 11 30 pm, 41-year-old Joseph J Williams of Methuen Mass shot the 42-year-old officer in the forehead. He would later die at Exeter Hospital in New Hampshire. You may have put the pieces together that the shooter, joseph J Williams, was the estranged husband of Catherine Williams, whose house they were in. Domestic Violence 1974. Jessica Cavallaro was charged with two counts of murder, two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury and illegal possession of a firearm. She was ordered held without bail and her next court date is on August 20th. She will undergo a mental health evaluation at the request of her attorney. It is senseless. Did she have a mental break? I'm not going to insult you by trying to explain away mental illness. It would simply be irresponsible of me. I will say that it is simply awful that her dad, who worked so hard on his own mental health and was so dedicated to mental health issues, and this is what happened to his family. It is tragedy on an epic scale. I have no doubt her family tried to help her however they could with what they knew. She had to have reached out to him. That morning they came to get her. We will learn more in time, but for now a family is reeling from this profound loss and a 24-year-old woman sits in jail and could very likely spend many, many years in prison. Thank you for listening. My name is Anngelle Wood. This is Crime of the Truest Kind Massachusetts and New England crime stories the things that happen here. The things that happen here. Follow the show at Crime of the Truest Kinds. Come to the next live show Thursday, June 20th at Faces Brewing in Malden. It is my birthday weekend and you will help send me to the True Crime Podcast Festival in Denver in July. I'm very excited. I'm also hosting a panel. Hope to see you Thursday. Maybe I'll see you in Denver. I will be going now. Lock your goddamn doors.