S1E5: A Big Woods Cold Case

Summary

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Blood Trails – Ep. 5: A Big Woods Cold Case

MeatEater | Host: Jordan Sillars | Date: November 27, 2025

Overview

In this episode of Blood Trails, host Jordan Sillars investigates one of Maine’s oldest unsolved mysteries: the disappearance of Ludger Belanger, a 25-year-old hunter who went missing during the season’s first snowstorm in 1975. What began as a presumed case of a lost hunter soon revealed itself as a chilling story of violence, drugs, deception, and the unrelenting drive of family and investigators to seek the truth in the wild woods of Maine. Drawing from first-hand accounts, law enforcement insights, and the work of author Darren Wooster, the episode untangles both the known facts and the perennial pain left behind.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Disappearance of Ludger Belanger

• Timeline & Circumstances ([01:29]–[04:59])
  • On November 25, 1975, Ludger, his wife Linda, and his brother John went out to hunt deer in heavy snow.
  • Linda describes the last time she saw Ludger:

    "And then about 9 o'clock, we just said, well, we're gonna go home... But Ludgi wanted to get off at the top of the hill and walk down through the field in the woods to the county road and then home." – Linda Belanger ([02:51])

  • Ludger planned to hunt for an hour before returning home to drive Linda to work. He never came back. Concern mounted as a neighbor-led search proved fruitless, prompting a call to game wardens.
  • Emotional impact on Linda and her young children is highlighted.

2. Early Investigation & Community Response

• Search and Emotional Toll ([04:59]–[06:08])
  • State police ruled out immediate involvement, but wardens committed to the search.
  • Linda recalls:

    "I kind of got a little messed up emotionally, and they sent me to the hospital in an ambulance." – Linda Belanger ([04:04])

  • The community’s support was crucial, but distressing.

3. Turning a Hunting Case into a Cold Case

• Initial Theories and Local Knowledge ([06:21]–[09:25])

  • Game wardens involved: Lt. John Marsh & Dick Hennessy.
  • Author Darren Wooster’s book provides insights through retired warden recollections, verified by Detective Josh Haynes.

• Wardens’ Perspective:

  "They figured he probably just went out partying. The most plausible thing was that he wasn’t, you know, he didn’t report home because he was out doing something that he didn’t want to tell his wife about." – Darren Wooster ([09:05])

4. Breakthroughs in the Search

• Key Evidence and Reconstruction ([10:12]–[14:18])

  • A neighbor, Clayton Crosby, shows wardens where Ludger would have hunted.
  • Fresh tracks, blood, and a spent cartridge found, indicating Ludger shot and field-dressed a deer before dragging it to a road for pickup.
  • No sign of Ludger or the deer—rising suspicions.

• Linda on Ludger’s Habits:

  "He wasn't a heavy drinker. Anyway, he might have a beer on the weekend if my dad was around, but I don't think I ever saw him intoxicated." – Linda Belanger ([13:51])

5. Clues in the Snow & A Lucky Break

• Details of the Encounter ([14:18]–[16:43])

  • Wardens reconstruct scene: male smoker and passenger with cane picked up Ludger; he rides in the backseat, no struggle.
  • A beer can, boot prints, and notably, a receipt from a local garage under snow, perfectly timestamped.

• On the Receipt’s Significance:

  "Because the receipt had the suspect's residence on it, their phone number, everything was right there. It was sort of like a handwritten note of, here's your suspect, here's where you go and find him." – Darren Wooster ([16:28])

6. Suspects, Garage Visit, and the Buick Special

• Confronting Suspects and Gathering Suspect Profiles ([16:43]–[22:33])

  • Receipt leads to Sully's garage; Sully describes two angry, intoxicated men with a radiator-damaged green '65 Buick Special and a shotgun on the seat.
  • Suspects: A (smoker, large Vietnam vet, imposing and combative) & B (passenger, cane, Vietnam vet, smaller stature).

  "He was home alone and he stonewalled them at first..." – Darren Wooster ([21:04])

  • Wardens confront Suspect A, search home, find hunting gear suspiciously cleaned and a suspiciously locked basement room.

7. Tantalizing but Inadmissible Evidence

• Meat in the Freezer, Missing Gun, and Cleared Out Evidence ([22:33]–[25:36])
  • Marsh finds warm deer meat in freezer—contradicting suspect's claims.
  • Marsh secretly takes a package for testing.
  • Officer concern:

    "Warden Hennessy was a bit freaked out over that because obviously he would never be admissible in court." – Darren Wooster ([25:05])

8. Destroyed Evidence and Mockery

• Return for Search, But House Is Compromised ([27:34]–[31:29])

  • Week later with search warrant, wardens find the house in party chaos, evidence gone, and suspect A mocking them (newspaper article about the crime taped on freezer).
  • Padlock on suspect A’s basement door flipped direction; find only some residue evidence (broken gun sight consistent with Ludger’s rifle).

  "He was mocking them and he was being quite obstinate." – Darren Wooster ([30:04])

9. The Elusive Buick and Physical Evidence

• Impounding the Buick ([31:29]–[33:35])
  • Buick found cleaned, stripped of incriminating material—but warden finds deer hair in trunk, buckshot pellet with beard hair in spare tire well.
  • Forensics at the time unable to definitively tie evidence to Ludger.

10. Theories of the Crime – Informants and Confession

• Suspect B’s Drunken Boast & Family Theories ([33:35]–[36:47])

  • Informant claims: suspects picked up Ludger, stole deer, shot him in car after dispute.

  • Linda’s theory echoes this account:

    "I think that's where he might have made a stink... and then he realized they weren't taking him home. I don't know, but that's where I think they shot him in the back seat." – Linda Belanger ([36:13])

  • Investigators remain skeptical—testimony unreliable due to witness’s substance abuse, eventual death, and Supect B’s steadfast denial.

11. Suspects’ Fate and Frustrations

• Insurance Fraud, House Explosion, and Continuing Stonewalling ([39:11]–[40:17])

  • Suspect A attempts to blow up his own home in a staged accident, likely for insurance (and possibly to kill his wife), but is critically injured and dies in hospital before police question him.
  • Suspect B, alive but infirm, never confesses.
  • Family and community members remain fearful of suspects’ kin.

  "They would come onto our page and be very nasty, you know, threatening." – Linda Belanger ([40:26])

12. The Family’s Ongoing Search for Closure

• Desire to Recover Ludger’s Remains ([41:24]–[42:57])
  • Family wants to “lay him to rest with love and dignity.”
  • Not seeking vengeance; only peace and answers.

  "The only remaining suspect is not well and probably not long for this world... So as far as, like, getting justice, that's not going to happen." – Tracy Belanger ([42:20])

13. Unyielding Search and the Cold Case Movement

• Law Enforcement’s Continued Efforts ([43:06]–[44:41])

  • Massive searches, innovative forensic attempts—even draining ponds and quarry dives—turn up nothing.
  • Detective Haynes and current police keep the case open, hoping for tips or relevant evidence like the missing car seat.

• Linda’s Advocacy:

  • Helped establish Maine’s first cold case unit, lobbying for state funding.

  "It was a law. We just wanted, we wanted a cold case unit. It was really great to watch all those lights light up green... It all lit up in our favor and it was really a great feeling to get it approved." – Linda Belanger ([46:03])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Linda on Family Pain:

  "He wasn't here for the moments, the Special Times, the Daily Times, he just... he was robbed of them." ([06:08])

• Investigative Frustration:

  "All the potential evidence the wardens had seen on their previous visit was gone. The hunting clothes, the deer meat, the knife, the gun, the gear, all of it, nowhere to be seen." – Jordan Sillars ([29:29])

• Darren Wooster on Haunted Investigators:

  "They all seem to have experiences and stories that sort of haunts them and they can't put away with. This was the case that for John, I could tell he really had some misgivings about and really just had that personal drive." ([44:09])

• Tracy on Why’s That Never Satisfy:

  "You're not going to get a why that you go, 'oh, that makes sense.' Because you'd have to be psychotic to agree with that. So a why is never going to be good. It's never going to be okay." ([42:02])

• Linda on Hope for Resolution:

  "50 years is a long time. It's been a never ending nightmare. Some days are okay, some days aren't. But to find his remains... and we want to lay him to rest the right way, I can't even explain the feeling." ([46:38])

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Important Timestamps & Segments

• [02:51] Linda details last moments with Ludger
• [07:34] Author Darren Wooster introduces his unique access
• [10:12] Breakthrough: neighbor reveals Ludger’s likely hunting spot
• [16:15] Discovery of incriminating garage receipt
• [17:18] Sully the mechanic describes the suspects’ irate visit
• [21:04] Wardens confront Suspect A
• [25:05] Marsh secretly removes deer meat for evidence
• [29:29] All possible evidence wiped from suspect A’s home
• [33:11] Buick found cleaned, but damning items (deer hair, pellet) discovered
• [36:13] Linda’s theory on where Ludger was murdered
• [39:11] Suspect A’s house explosion and subsequent death
• [41:24] Family expresses hopes for a dignified burial, not vengeance
• [43:06] Description of years-long, multi-agency search efforts
• [46:03] Linda recounts establishing Maine’s cold case unit

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Action & Contact

• If you have any information — especially about the back seat from a green 1965 Buick Special — contact:
  • Maine State Police, Major Crimes Unit, Unsolved Division, at 207-624-7076.

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Tone & Style

Jordan Sillars’ narration balances meticulous investigative detail with deeply human empathy for the Belanger family. Contributions from Linda, Tracy, Darren Wooster, and law enforcement bring authenticity, sorrow, and honesty to the podcast’s true-crime-in-the-wild approach.

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Conclusion

This episode is a masterclass in investigative storytelling, weaving together forest lore, true crime, and unending human hope. Blood Trails continues its mission of spotlighting real, unsolved outdoor mysteries—reminding listeners that, sometimes, even in the wild, the coldest trails deserve to be followed until the story finds its resting place.

Transcript

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[Darren Wooster]

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[Jordan Sillers]

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[Linda Belanger]

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[Jordan Sillers]

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[Jordan Sillers]

AI produced it was the first snow of the season when Ludger Belanger disappeared into the woods of rural Maine. He'd gone out hunting just like he had a hundred times before, but this time he didn't come home. His wife Linda thought maybe he'd gotten lost in the storm. But what game wardens uncovered over the next few days would lead them through a maze of violence, drugs and deceit that no one could have predicted. That's next on blood trails. 25 year old Ludger Belanger was what you might call a typical Maine whitetail hunter. He went out on November 25, 1975, armed with his 3030 lever gun to track a deer through the snow in hopes of bringing home enough meat. Meat to feed his family. He wasn't chasing big antlers and he didn't sit in a tree stand all day hoping a buck would walk past. He went out and found One. And even though we'll never know how big it was, I like to think it was a giant Luger. His wife Linda, and his brother John had all gone out that morning to look for deer. But the falling snow hid the previous night's activity, and the trio didn't have much luck as the gray dawn illuminated the winter landscape. Here's Linda.

[Linda Belanger]

And then about 9 o', clock, we just said, well, we're gonna go home. And I had to get ready for work and John was going home. But Luigi wanted to get off at the top of the hill and walk down through the field in the woods to the county road and then home. It was heavy snow that morning. We'd had heavy snow all night.

[Jordan Sillers]

Ludra had been dropped off about a mile from the home he shared in Washington, Maine, with Linda and their three young children. He only planned to hunt for about an hour before returning home and driving Linda to her waitressing gig. But he didn't show up. And after another hour had passed, Linda's annoyance turned to concern.

[Linda Belanger]

11, 11:30 or so, I called next door and said, luj ain't home yet. So they went looking on snowmobiles, hollering his name and stuff.

[Jordan Sillers]

As nightfall approached and the search party still hadn't found any sign of the missing hunter, they called the game wardens. The state police wouldn't get involved until Luder had been missing for 72 hours. But since the incident involved a hunter, the wardens were happy to help with the search. You might assume that Lier had just found a deer track and lost track of time, but Linda wasn't buying it. She knew right away that something terrible had happened.

[Linda Belanger]

I kind of got a little messed up emotionally, and they sent me to the hospital in an ambulance.

[Jordan Sillers]

Linda's reaction to her husband's disappearance might sound extreme, but keep in mind that Linda was only 20 years old. She and Ludra already had three daughters between the ages of three and a half years and three months. The prospect of those girls losing their father was unbearable. And one of Linda's most vivid memories from those difficult days is of her middle daughter, angel, happily playing around the feet of the game wardens and neighbors who were searching for her father.

[Linda Belanger]

I remember getting up the next morning is what I remember. And the house had game wardens and trackers and family all through it. They must have given me something, and I just was out of it. But angel was eating snow off from one of the game Odin's boots. That's a memory that I have in my mind.

[Jordan Sillers]

The friends and family who filled that house knew that losing Luger would be a blow. And not only to his wife and kids, but to the larger Washington community.

[Linda Belanger]

You know, he was a down to earth guy. He would have done anything for anybody, anything he'd be there for. He loved life, he loved his family. We were building a house and making memories and making plans for the future. But that, that all got taken away.

[Jordan Sillers]

Ludra Blander's disappearance remains one of Maine's oldest unsolved cases. But this isn't your typical cold case with scant clues, no suspects, and more questions than answers. The game wardens who investigated Luger's case believed they knew what happened to him. But the trail got wilder and more unexpected with every twist and turn. It led them from Maine's big woods to drug fueled parties, to threatening suspects, to a house explosion, to insurance fraud, to murder. It's the story of great detective work, even more devious suspects, and ultimately a family who never got to say goodbye to the father and husband they loved.

[Linda Belanger]

We had three children together now, 19 grandchildren and two great grandchildren. He wasn't here for the moments, the Special Times, the Daily Times, he just, he was robbed of them.

[Jordan Sillers]

I'm Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails A Big Woods Cold Case, Part one Deer Tracks. When Linda called to report her husband missing, the Maine Warden Service sent out two officers to investigate. Lieutenant Warden John Marsh and District Warden Dick Hennessy. Though they were joined later by other wardens and Maine State Police officers, Marsh and Hennessy were the two primary investigators of Luger's disappearance. The problem from where we're standing in 2025 is that Hennessy passed away in 2012 and Marsh followed him in 2023. Since this is still an open investigation, the Maine State Police can't release any case files and they decline to sit down with us for an interview. We wouldn't know much more about this case than I've already told you if it wasn't for an author by the name of Darren Wooster. Darren published a book in 2017 called Open True Stories of the Maine Warden Service, which is a great book that I highly recommend. Darren spoke with 12 game wardens about the 20 cases he covers in that book, one of which was Luger's.

[Darren Wooster]

It happened to be that my father in law was a game warden and he would always tell me stories and I got to thinking that this would be a great way to write a book and he would give me some of his stories and we would slowly chip away at it and he would always encourage me. Hey, I know a lot of people who are wardens and they've got great stories too. Like, you shouldn't just have stories from me, we should. Or get others involved.

[Jordan Sillers]

One of those wardens was John Marsh, who gave Darren an inside view into this investigation. This isn't information that was ever made public, but since Marsh was already retired, he apparently wasn't too concerned about explaining what happened. Now, normally I'd be skeptical about reporting secondhand information, but Darren did his homework. I sent his chapter to Detective Sergeant Josh Haynes, who is currently in charge of Luger's case with with the Maine State Police. Haynes told me in an email, quote, this information in the book is very accurate to the facts I know of the case. Names have been changed and some of the other minor details are different, but the majority of the narrative and content is factual. Darren was kind enough to sit down with us and walk us through what he found. And let me tell you, you have no idea what's coming over the next hill. When Marsh and Hennessy arrived at the Belanger home, they had some theories as to what might be happening and they weren't overly concerned. The area Luger was hunting was basically his backyard. He knew it well and there were no real dangers in those woods, no mountains, cliffs or rivers for him to get swept away in.

[Darren Wooster]

When the wardens came in, they just didn't. I don't want to say they didn't take it seriously, but they'd done this a thousand times before. He was a young man, he was 25. They figured he probably just went out partying. The most plausible thing was that he wasn't, you know, he didn't report home because he was out doing something that he didn't want to tell his wife about.

[Jordan Sillers]

To their credit, the wardens didn't let their personal opinions keep them from doing their job. In fact, they spent the entire night of November 25th and into the 26th scouring the woods where Lujer had been hunting. But they couldn't find him. By the next morning, they began to be really concerned. If he was still in those woods, he was almost certainly hypothermic and might not last much longer. The first snowstorm of the year was in full swing and the wet, slushy precipitation had turned light and fluffy as a cold front rolled through. The warden service was stretched thin after the snowstorm and calling a full on search party would take time, maybe more time than Luger had. So they kept at it and before long they caught a break. As they were pacing the side of the road where Linda had left Luger to go hunting. A neighbor approached them.

[Darren Wooster]

They caught a lucky break. You know, they found a neighbor who, when they knocked on his door the night before, nobody had answered, but he had come out and said, yeah, I saw where Luja went in. I can. I was about to go hunting myself. I can. He's a good kid. I can take you right where I'm willing to bet he was. He was hunting.

[Jordan Sillers]

This neighbor, a guy named Clayton Crosby said that he hunted and trapped that section of the forest all the time. And he knew a ridge along a stream that was a good place to look for deer tracks. If Ludra knew the woods as well as he did, that would be a place to start. The wardens accepted Clay's offer to accompany them, and when they reached the spot Clay led them to, they searched through the fresh powder for tracks Ludra had made in the slushy, now frozen snow underneath. It didn't take them long to find Ludra's boot prints, and as they followed his trail, a spent.30 30 cartridge. They found blood spatters in the snow a short distance away, and as they continued to follow Ludra's footprints, a dark pool of frozen blood and guts. At that point, it was easy to see what had happened. Luger had shot a buck and had gutted it there in the woods. Then, instead of dragging it back towards his house, he had pulled it about a quarter mile through the woods to an old road. It was a shorter distance to drag the deer, and he figured he'd walk back home, get the car, and pick up the animal along the road. It was a good plan, but it hadn't worked. Lujer was still nowhere to be found, and neither was his deer. Rather than give them an answer for Linda about what had happened to her husband, what they found along that forest road raised even more questions and gave them the first suspicions that Luger was in more trouble than they had ever imagined. Linda credits the game wardens for always treating her with kindness and keeping her in the loop on the latest developments in the case. But those days were still incredibly hard.

[Linda Belanger]

The sick feeling, being alone with my kids, not having my husband around, thinking somebody hurt him. I was 20 years old. Very scary, very hot rope. It was gut wrenching. I. There weren't a day go by that I didn't just sit and cry.

[Jordan Sillers]

Part two Clues in the Snow to the trained eye of the game wardens, the snow along the road told a clear story. The car had driven in at some point before the cold front, the driver and passenger had gotten out to take a leak, and from that, the wardens knew both were male. The driver was a smoker and had left two cigarette butts along the road, while the passenger appeared to be walking with a cane. The pair had gotten back into the car and driven about 100 yards down the road, which is when they met Lier. They had helped him load the deer into the trunk of the car, and then Lier got into the back seat. There were no signs of a struggle anywhere along the road. It took me only a few seconds to explain what they found, but I want to highlight how difficult it was to decipher the crisscrossing footprints and tire tracks along the road. Remember, all of these prints were covered in a layer of powder, and they had to figure out which prints belonged to which man and construct a timeline of who did what and when. Their findings told them that Luger hadn't spent the night in the woods. Maybe Luger had met some guys he knew, and the trio had gone out to celebrate a successful hunt. A discarded Budweiser can indicated that the car's occupants had been drinking. But Linda had been insistent that her husband wasn't a drinker.

[Linda Belanger]

No, that's not him. He wouldn't do that. No, he wouldn't even think to do it. He'd come home and celebrate with his brothers, probably, and his dad and the kids, but he wouldn't take off and go somewhere. He didn't have people like that. He wasn't a heavy drinker. Anyway, he might have a beer on the weekend if my dad was around, but I don't think I ever saw him intoxicated.

[Jordan Sillers]

Warden Marsh also noticed something that ignited his suspicions. As they'd been tracking Luger through the woods, they noticed that before he began dragging the deer, he walked a little ways ahead, leaned his gun against a tree, and came back to pull the deer with both hands free. He repeated this pattern until he got to the road where he'd left his 3030 as he started to walk out. But Marsh noticed that after Luger had gotten into the back seat of the car, the driver had gotten out, walked around the car to the other side of the road, and retrieved Ludra's gun from where it was leaning against a tree. Ward Marsh was an avid hunter, angler, and outdoorsman. If you're a hunter as well, you know how weird it would be to let someone else get your gun for you if you're capable of doing it yourself. But what if, Marsh wondered. Ludru wasn't capable of doing it himself. That thought worried him more than any other. But he knew that finding the car and its driver was going to be a serious challenge. But that's when they caught their second big break in the case, this one also thanks to the neighbor, Hunter and trapper Clay Crosby.

[Darren Wooster]

The receipt that was found was really a lucky break on their part in that it was actually found by the neighbor who had kind of shown him around and shown him to where Luja was probably hunting. And they had asked him to kind of stay out of the way to make sure he wasn't trampling any evidence. So as this person was stepping back to get out of the way, he felt something crunch under his shoe and looked down, and it was the receipt to a local garage. And the receipt was found under 4 inches of powder, but above, like, the thick, heavy, wet snow that had come down early and then froze. So that really meant, you know, with the timeline of how everything went and when the snow came in, that the receipt was really at the same layer of the snow as the tracks were. Right. So it clearly was tied to the vehicle.

[Jordan Sillers]

The receipt was dated for the previous day, the day Luger went missing. But this wasn't just any old receipt. I don't know if they made receipts differently in 1975, but this thing was like an identity thief's dream come true.

[Darren Wooster]

Because the receipt had the suspect's residence on it, their phone number, everything was right there. It was sort of like a handwritten note of, here's your suspect, here's where you go and find him. Like that just never happens, right? That in itself was a pretty lucky break.

[Jordan Sillers]

The snow along the road told them Ludra was alive when he got into the car and that he might be in trouble. But it also showed them what to do next. Part three. Sully's Marsh and Hennessy knew the names of the guys they were looking for, but they wanted more information before confronting them. So they went to the auto garage listed on the receipt in the nearby town of Union. The owner, a guy named Sully, was more than happy to talk to them about the two men who had visited his shop the day before.

[Darren Wooster]

The guy at the garage was all bent sideways over these guys coming in. He said that they were drunk, intoxicated, on whatever. Drugs, too. They had a radiator issue with the car. It, I think, had a crack and was leaking, and he just wasn't equipped at that garage to handle that. And he had told them that, and they yelled at him. They swore at him. And he just kind of did some quick fix to get him out of there, just to get him going and get him away from him.

[Jordan Sillers]

Sully thought he'd gotten rid of these two yahoos. But then later that same day, they came back to the garage again after they had picked up Blue Jerk.

[Darren Wooster]

And he said when they came back in, the car was just white, walled with steam. It was completely filled with steam. These guys were sitting in the car. They were even drunker, more intoxicated than when they had been in that morning. And they just drove the car right in on the lift. They didn't get out. They didn't park outside. They just drove it right into the garage, right on the lift, and were yelling out the window and demanding that he fix it, that he was a crook, that he had cheated them before, even though he had told them, guys, there's nothing I can do here. You know, I can't fix this.

[Jordan Sillers]

Sully told the wardens that at this point, he was actually kind of nervous. These guys were clearly intoxicated, clearly angry. And he also spied a shotgun in the front seat of the car and a box of shells on the dashboard. But he said he didn't see anyone in the back seat, even after all the steam from the radiator had cleared. And he didn't try to open the trunk. He just wanted them out of his shop as quickly as possible. So once again, he fixed them up the best he could and probably breathed a sigh of relief as they drove away. Josh Haynes with the Maine State Police confirmed to me that the car in question was a 1965 Buick Special. Haynes told me that the two men driving the car have been identified, but their real names haven't been released since. They've never been officially named as suspects. Darren used fake names in his book, and we're just going to call them suspect names A and suspect B. Suspect A is the smoker, the driver of the car, and suspect B is the passenger and the one who walks with a cane. At this point, Marsh and Hennessy knew a few things, and none of them spelled good news for Luger. These men were not in their right mind. They were armed and had almost certainly picked up Luger from the road in the woods. But Luger wasn't in the back seat when they arrived at the garage the second time. And there were at least a few hours between when they'd picked up the hunter and when they drove onto the lift at Sully's. Plenty of time to do who knows what with Luger. Belanger. Part 4 suspect A after confirming with Linda that Luger didn't know either of the men in the car, the wardens made their way to Suspect A's house in Camden, about half an hour from Washington. They arrived around one in the afternoon, but based on the appearance of the man who answered the door, it could have been 6 in the morning or 11 at night. He was wearing pajama pants and his disheveled hair made it seem like he'd just woken up. But the beer can in his hand suggested that maybe he'd just never gone to sleep. And the bloodshot eyes peering out from the bushy dark eyebrows told the wardens that he'd much rather be left alone. He was also about 6 foot 2, and the wardens later learned, a US Marine who had served in Vietnam, he'd survived a grenade blast and along with a Silver Star and Purple Heart, had earned a metal plate in his head for his trouble. He'd been arrested several times for bar room boxing, along with two DUI charges and to complete the picture, public urination. Point is, this wasn't some schlub they could push around. If he'd done what they thought he'd done, they had to be careful.

[Darren Wooster]

He was home alone and he stonewalled them at first. Basically just said he hadn't been hunting that day, hadn't been to Washington, didn't know where Washington was.

[Jordan Sillers]

But Warden Marsh wasn't someone to be trifled with either, and he was in no mood to play games.

[Darren Wooster]

The wardens, at that point, they had been. They'd pulled an all nighter. You know, they had been up for probably 36 hours or something. At that point his patience was wearing thin and he just bottom lined it with a guy that, look, we know your car was there, we found this receipt, we know you were there, so you better start telling us the truth. Because there's the two ways to do this. It's going to be the easy way or the hard way. And the way this is going, it sounds like it's going to be the hard way.

[Jordan Sillers]

The way things turned out, the wardens should have gone right to the hard way, but they didn't know what was going to happen. So I'm sure they were relieved when Suspect A let them into the house and they sat down with him at the kitchen table. After telling a BS story about selling the Buick the night before, Suspect A eventually admitted that yes, he had visited Sully's garage and yes, he'd been hunting near Washington, but he claimed never to have met or even seen lier. He said they saw his tracks in the snow, but that a second car must have picked up the hunter before they got there. The wardens didn't believe this story either, because there had been only one set of tire tracks on that forest road. But suspect A stuck to his story, so the wardens asked to see his hunting clothes and gun. They figured that if the suspects had done something to Luger, there would likely be evidence on their clothes or equipment.

[Darren Wooster]

And he said it was down in the basement. So what they ended up doing is the warden split up. You know, one of them asked to use the restroom, so he stayed upstairs while the other warden went downstairs with the suspect. In hindsight, that kind of turned out to be probably something they regretted to not both being there. So the other warden goes downstairs. This would have been warden Hennessey. And the guy shows him around and shows him the hunting gear that he was wearing. It had all been cleaned already. Shows him his rifle, already cleaned. They see there's a room down there with a padlock on it that's locked up. And the warden asked to see inside there. And suspect A tells him, I can't get in there myself. I don't have the key to it or the combination, whichever one it was, you know, the guy bought the house from, gave it to me. I lost it. It like I've. I don't even know what's in there myself, he tells him. Which, in and of itself, that's pretty sketchy and hard to believe, especially from a guy who had just lied to them for a few minutes before that.

[Jordan Sillers]

Meanwhile, upstairs, Warden Marsh was poking around. He noticed a box of federal shotgun shells on the table which matched what Sully had said he saw on the dashboard of the Buick. When he peeked inside, he saw that one of the shells was missing. He also noticed a knife on the table that had already been cleaned, which made him start to wonder. So he walked over to the refrigerator and opened the door to the freezer.

[Darren Wooster]

Anyone who hunts will know what I mean when I say there were a bunch of packages of meat wrapped in white freezer paper. He went and tested one of the packages with his hands, and it was still soft. So, you know, they hadn't been in the freezer for long. It wasn't frozen through, clearly.

[Jordan Sillers]

According to Sully, suspect A had made a point to complain about how there weren't any deer left in Maine and that they hadn't had any luck the previous morning. He also told the wardens that even though he'd been hunting in the Washington area. He hadn't killed anything. But the still warm packages of deer meat in his freezer proved he'd been lying about the deer. And Marsh wondered if that meat had come from the one Luger had killed the suspect.

[Darren Wooster]

And Warden Hennessey came back up. And basically, he could tell from Warden Hennessey's demeanor and the things that he was saying is, let's get out of here. Like, we gotta go talk. So, you know, they got out of there.

[Jordan Sillers]

The pair exchanged information once they were back in their cruiser, which is when Warden Marsh pulled one of those packages of deer meat from his pocket.

[Darren Wooster]

Warden Hennessy was a bit freaked out over that because obviously he would never be admissible in court. And Warden Marsh didn't care. You know, at that point, he basically just said, look, this guy's dirty. We're going to get a lot on him. But if this package of meat helps us identify that these are the guys and helps us find Ludger Belanger or his remains, like, I don't care. Like, we need to get this in the lab. We need to figure this out.

[Jordan Sillers]

What Marsh and Hennessy discovered inside that house was only the beginning. The deeper they dug, the more perilous the trail became. Evidence destroyed, witnesses intimidated, a home burned to the ground, and a shocking confession that would take years to surface. That's after the break on blood trails.

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[Jordan Sillers]

Part 5 the Party the evidence the wardens had collected thus far was either circumstantial or, in the case of the deer meat, inadmissible. They knew they needed more, so they took the case to the Maine State Police and applied for search warrants for the homes of suspect A and suspect B. The state police sent them officers to assist, and the local judge granted them the warrants they requested. But that process took time. Ludra went missing the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm sure there were people in government offices taking long weekends. The wardens and state police continued to investigate. They drove the various routes the suspects may have taken to see if they could decipher where they had gone between picking up Luger and Sully's garage. But they didn't find anything, and they weren't able to execute the search warrants on the suspect's homes until the next Friday, a week after Luger went missing. Destroying evidence of a murder or kidnapping is tough for even the smartest criminals, and investigators figured they'd be able to pull trace amounts of blood from hunting clothes or hairs from hacksaws. But when Marsh and Hennessy pulled up to suspect A's home, along with two state police officers, they realized they should have tried to search the home sooner.

[Darren Wooster]

When they showed up, there were cars all up and down the road. The guy was having a rip roaring party. The place was packed with people all throughout the house. And you know, they're looking at it like, is this guy serious? He's the lead suspect and potentially a murder case and he's having this huge party and you know, whether it was intentional or not, in some ways, potentially was a smart thing for him to have done because it showed that, you know, he wasn't worried, he didn't think, you know, he was in trouble. But also, if there was evidence, you know, blood splatter on the floor, things like that, he had 40, 50 people tracking dirt all through the house and covering it up.

[Jordan Sillers]

To make matters worse, all the potential evidence the wardens had seen on their previous visit was gone. The hunting clothes, the deer meat, the knife, the gun, the gear, all of it, nowhere to be seen. They hadn't seen the Buick in the driveway on their previous visit, but it could have been somewhere else to on the property or they could have found information in the house that led them to it. But the car had also been disappeared without a trace. To add insult to injury, Suspect A had taped a newspaper article on Ludger's disappearance to the door of the upstairs freezer.

[Darren Wooster]

He was mocking them and he was being quite obstinate. And basically when they were confronting him, they asked him where all the hunting clothes were. He said he didn't know what they were talking about. There were no hunting clothes there. He had never had any because he knew that Warden Marsh never came downstairs and never saw it. So it was just his word against Warden Hennessy.

[Jordan Sillers]

There was no smoking gun, either literal or figurative. But no criminal is perfect. And Suspect A was no different. They noticed that the padlock on the door in the basement, the one that the suspect was claimed he'd never opened, had been turned around.

[Darren Wooster]

So clearly Suspect A was going in and out of the room and he had carelessly switched the direction of the lock.

[Jordan Sillers]

They cut the lock off the door, hopeful that Suspect A had failed to clean up all traces of his crime. They were right, but not as right as they had hoped.

[Darren Wooster]

The only thing they found in there is on a bench that you could see markings in the dust where looked like a gun had been laid there and potentially a 3030 because it wasn't too long. And that was the gun that Lujer Belanger had been hunting with. And they found a broken piece of a V notch sight that, you know, they got it tested and it was consistent with the type of sight that was used on a 3030 at that time.

[Jordan Sillers]

They noticed the light bulb had been changed recently. But other than than that, it didn't seem like Suspect A used the room very often. They didn't find any evidence that anyone had been locked in the room or a body had been kept there. They came up empty at Suspect B's house as well, which a different team had searched at the same time. Both men stuck to their story and without any additional evidence, the wardens were forced to drive away empty handed. Part six the Buick to any investigator, the primary crime scene is of utmost importance. But in this case that crime scene was mobile. And the fact that the suspects tried to hide the Buick was reason enough to assume it held key evidence. That's why I'm sure Warden Marsh was excited to hear that. Just a few days after they searched the suspect's homes, the forest green car was spotted on a residential road in the town of Northport, about 20 miles from suspect A's home. And the VIN number was registered to the same man. Warden Marsh rushed out to the scene to inspect the car himself. But what he saw made his stomach drop. The car's headliner floor mats and rear seat had all been removed. The trunk had been cleaned with heavy duty cleaner and Marsh could still smell the pungent sterile aroma. The trunk matt spare tire and car jack had also been removed from the wheel well. But when Marsh looked up as he inspected the trunk, he noticed something on the lid. A deer hair. It wasn't the evidence they were hoping for, but again, Suspect A had claimed he never brought home a deer. That hair was enough to impound the car so the state police forensic team could get a closer look.

[Darren Wooster]

When they did find the car and they impounded it, one of the things that they also found found was a bullet hidden way down in the wheel well or where the spare tire well, excuse me, would be. And it had a beard hair attached to it. And Luder Belanger at that time had a semi goatee I guess you could call it. It was more chin than lip.

[Jordan Sillers]

The bullet was actually a buckshot pellet of the same kind that would have been loaded in the 12 gauge shells. Marsh saw on Suspect A's table how it came in contact with a beard hair and how that beard hair and pellet came to be in the trunk of suspect Ace car is perhaps the most disturbing piece of evidence the wardens had uncovered thus far. Unfortunately, it was still inconclusive. Forensic DNA testing wasn't really an option in 1975. And when they sent the beard hair to the FBI lab in Washington D.C. investigators weren't able to use use its color or dimensions to match it with Luger or either of the suspects. It was close, but it still wasn't quite enough to make an arrest. Part 7 suspect B suspect A gets a lot of attention in this story, and he still has one more act to play. But Suspect B is also important. In fact, he's the reason we know much of anything about what happened to Luger on that road. He also may have been the one to pull the trigger. Suspect B was also a Vietnam veteran who had been wounded in battle, which is likely the reason he walked with a cane. The pair shared experience of war apparently brought them together because they didn't have much else in common, besides a love of alcohol. While suspect A was large and imposing, Suspect B was short and slender. Suspect A was married. But suspect B lived alone. And while suspect A is never known to have told anyone about what happened that day, Suspect B just couldn't keep the story to himself. A few months after Luder disappearance, a man came to the police with what he said was important information. He had been partying with suspect B, and in a drunken stupor, suspect B told him the entire story. According to this informant, suspect A and B had seen Luger on the road with his deer. Not having had any luck themselves, they decided to steal Luger's. So they pretended to want to help, got the deer in the trunk and invited Luger into the backseat. But when suspect A told Luger they were keeping the deer as a shipping and handling fee, Luger pushed back. He said he needed the deer to feed his family and asked to be let out of the car. That's when suspect B turned around in his seat, lowered the shotgun at Luger, and pulled the trigger. We can assume that the pair spent the next hours and days hiding the body and cleaning the car. But the informant says he was afraid to ask where they had buried Luger's remains. Linda has a similar, though slightly different theory about what happened to her husband.

[Linda Belanger]

I believe that when he got into the car, they got the deer in the trunk. He got in the backseat of the car, and they got to the end of that road, they turned left instead of right to bring him home. And I think that's where he might have made a stink when he. He started getting anxious that they were going wrong way, and then he realized they weren't taking him home. I don't know, but that's where I think they shot him in the back seat. Was there.

[Jordan Sillers]

Why suspect B would admit to doing such a thing over something as trivial as a deer has baffled investigators. Not to mention Ludger's family. The pair of men were obviously intoxicated and not in their right minds. But there's a giant gap between being drunk or high and murdering a stranger over some venison. The details of Luja's case were well known at the time, so it's possible the informant was fabricating a story for some ulterior motive. Maybe the gun went off by accident, there was a fight in the car, or a third party was involved. Marsh and his colleagues knew the informant's testimony would never hold up in court. They needed more details from a more reliable witness than one of suspect b's drinking buddies. Ideally, they wanted him to confess in a less alcohol soaked setting. And a short time later, they got their chance. Suspect B had been incarcerated for stealing in an effort to fund his drug habit. Law enforcement told suspect B's cellmate that they'd let him go early if he could get suspect B to tell him what happened. But the alleged murderer stuck to his original story. He didn't know anything about Luger's disappearance, and that original informant died of a drug overdose a short time later. With suspect B refusing to speak, investigators remained hopeful that suspect A would one day crack. They sent undercover agents to the VFW where suspect A hung out. And while these agents were successful in befriending him, they never got him to talk about the case. Suspect A was obviously smart. He hid or destroyed all the evidence that could have sent him to jail and maintained his innocence even while dealing with severe drug and alcohol addictions. But you know that old saying about being too smart for your own good? Suspect A may have been too smart for his own good. In July of 1976, about seven months after Luger went missing, Warden Marsh got a call. Suspect A had blown up his own house in what was probably an attempt at insurance fraud. And according to Darren, possibly an attempt to kill his wife. Suspect A had filled a bunch of washtubs with gasoline and lit a candle as a fuse. He'd purchased a plane ticket to Orlando, and his plan was to be out of the state when his house went up in flames. So the insurance company couldn't accuse him of starting the blaze himself. But there was a flaw in his plan.

[Darren Wooster]

It is believed that his refrigerator, with all the fumes in the air, triggered the explosion prematurely before he got out of the house. He did have an air ticket that day to take him to Orlando, Florida. So he was, you know, trying to make it look like he wasn't at home at the time of the explosion. But the explosion went off when he was in the house. It blasted him clear through the picture window and outside into the yard.

[Jordan Sillers]

Suspect A suffered severe burns and was taken to a military hospital in San Antonio. Doctors didn't expect him to last long, so the state police rushed down to Texas. They wanted to see if suspect A would confess on his deathbed and maybe tell them what he'd done with Luger. But they were too late. Suspect A died before they could get there, taking what he knew about the young hunter's disappearance to his grave. Suspect B, however, is still alive. Tracy, Luger and Linda's youngest daughter, told Me, he's not in good health, but he's remained in the area since 1975.

[Tracy Belanger]

He went on, he had children, and he continued with his life.

[Jordan Sillers]

Tracy and Linda believe there are people who might know where Ludra's body was buried, but they're too afraid to come.

[Tracy Belanger]

Forward because there's definitely people out there that.

[Linda Belanger]

No, but they're scared of the family, too. Their sons, even the kids of interest. People are scared, I think. Scared of them. Intimidation, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, they're very threatening. They would come onto our page and be very nasty, you know, threatening. So we had to block a few of them, and I can't blame them for sticking up for their dad. But they don't know.

[Jordan Sillers]

Part 8 the search continues. It's tempting to think of this case as solved or that justice, at least in the case of suspect A, was somehow served. But the family is far from feeling closure. They never got the chance to face in court the person who killed their husband and father, and they've never been able to put him to rest in the way he deserves.

[Linda Belanger]

Above all, we just want to lay him to rest our way, not thrown like a bag of trash somewhere. We want to lay him to rest with love and dignity, you know, because that's what he deserved. He didn't deserve what he got. No one does.

[Jordan Sillers]

You might expect Linda and her children to want an explanation for why their husband and father was murdered. But Linda and Tracy say answering that question isn't important to them at this point. They don't buy the excuse that the suspects were drunk or high or suffering from ptsd and given suspect A's attempt to kill his wife, and they don't believe it was an accident.

[Tracy Belanger]

You're not going to get a why that. You go, oh, that makes sense. Because you'd have to be psychotic to agree with that. So a why is never going to be good. It's never going to be okay. It's never going to be right. That's never going to bring closure or feel like an answer.

[Jordan Sillers]

They also aren't motivated by a desire to see suspect B behind bars.

[Tracy Belanger]

The only remaining suspect is not well and probably not long for this world. And so, as far as, like, getting justice, that's not going to happen.

[Jordan Sillers]

All they really want is to find Ludra's remains, not only for themselves, but for the grandchildren and great grandchildren who never got the chance to know him.

[Tracy Belanger]

The family goes on. I don't want it to always be like, oh, this story that's in the fam and Never been solved and never been a thing. So they still hear about, you know, what went on. And they know that that's their grandfather. And the little ones eventually will know that that's their great grandfather. And so I just feel like it's just important to have an end.

[Jordan Sillers]

The mission to find Luger's remains has been top of mind for every investigator assigned to this case. That's just as true today as it was back in the 70s.

[Darren Wooster]

In the years that followed, they did anything and everything. The next spring they had a huge search at the scale that the warden service had never done before. They literally brought in all wardens. My father in law recalls being a part of this too, and it wasn't in his district. They brought in volunteers, they filled up a couple hotels. You know, they had aircraft flying around looking for crow circles, things like that. That would suggest that animals are gravitating towards remains in certain areas. They drained one farmer's pond because there was a tip that the body was in there. And this is an area down eastern Maine where there's a lot of quarries. So they sent divers into a whole bunch of quarries and different bodies of water. Suspect A himself lived on a pond. They dragged the pond, they, you know, sent divers in the pond, they looked everywhere and unfortunately all that came up empty handed.

[Jordan Sillers]

Wardens Marsh and Hennessy won't be able to see it, but bringing this case to a close would mean more to them than most other investigators.

[Darren Wooster]

One thing that really struck me, you know, with John and with a lot of these wardens in particular, is that they all seem to have experiences and stories that sort of haunts them and they can't put away with this was the case that for John, I could tell he really had some misgivings about and really just had that personal drive. I know he stayed in contact with the family for years after the case was over because he just, he really personally just wanted to help bring closure for them. So he was really motivated.

[Jordan Sillers]

The state police have continued to search as additional tips have come in. In fact, according to a June email from Detective Haynes, ground and water searches have been conducted in recent weeks and additional searches have been planned. They're especially interested in the back seat from the Buick. There's a reason the suspects got rid of it, but it may still be around somewhere, sitting in an old barn or garage collecting dust. Modern forensic techniques can do things detectives in the 1970s could only dream of. And that seat may hold the clues to finally solving this case. If you know or know someone who Might know anything about a back seat from a green 1965 Buick Special. Get in touch with the Maine State Police at 207-624-7076 and ask for the Major Crimes Unit Unsolved Division. Detective Haynes would ask the same of anyone who might know anything about Luger's disappearance, no matter how minor. Again, that number is 207-624-7076. Part of the reason Detective Haynes has resources to investigate Luger's disappearance is thanks to Linda's advocacy. Linda worked with a group called the Maine Cold Case alliance to lobby the state legislature to provide funding to solve cold cases. Many states have a dedicated cold case division, but until 2015, Maine didn't.

[Linda Belanger]

It was a group of us. We were at State House and we were pushing. It was a, it was a law. We just wanted, we wanted a cold case unit. It was really great to watch all those lights light up green. Nobody was against it, you know, all the Senate. It all lit up in our favor and it was really a great feeling to get it approved.

[Jordan Sillers]

Linda is hoping that 50 years after her husband's disappearance and 10 years after she helped fund a cold case unit, someone will have the courage to come forward and give the Belanger family the closure they've been searching for.

[Linda Belanger]

50 years is a long time. It's been a never ending nightmare. Some days are okay, some days aren't. But to find his remains, no matter what it is, and we want to lay him to rest the right way, I can't even explain the feeling. It's something that we've always wanted and never got. It's something that we've always wanted to do for him and he got dealt a raw deal and just want to bring him home.

[Jordan Sillers]

Thanks for listening to this episode of Blood Trails. If you'd like to see images from this case, head over to themateater.com blood trails and click on the case file for this episode. A big thanks to Darren Wooster, Linda and Tracy for their time and willingness to speak with me. I also appreciate Detective Josh Haynes for verifying the details of Luger's disappearance. If you have a tip about this case or another case you think we should cover, send us an [e-mail] that's B L o o d T R A I l [e-mail] See you next time. Stay safe out there.

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