Transcript
A (0:01)
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B (2:08)
One ordinary day During August of 1983, in a quiet patch of parkland just off the road in Pennicook, New Hampshire, a teenager found something that did not belong. What followed rippled through the small community. For years, interviews, rumors, and timelines never quite fit together. Voices clashed over what was seen, what was said, and what couldn't be proved at all. This is a story about how quickly attention can settle on one person and how hard it can be to find the truth once it does. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Bernard Agonis on Dark Down East. It was August 13, 1983, when a young man named Melvin was taking a casual stroll through a park in Penicook, New Hampshire, overlooking the Contacook River. The low hum of the nearby hydroelectric site blended with the steady rush of water over the dam. It was a familiar soundtrack in this small mill town. But beneath a park bench just 20ft from the road, Melvin noticed something unfamiliar that didn't belong in the park at all. A man lay face down on the ground, wearing nothing but his underwear. There was blood pooled beneath his body. Melvin froze. Whatever he'd found, he wanted no part of it. Instead of calling police himself, Melvin waved down his friend Paul and asked him to handle it. When Paul returned with Concord police to the scene, they found the man lying near the corner of east and Bridge streets, very close to the Boscawen town line. The spot was quiet and shaded, tucked into a small grove of trees, a place locals might pass every day without a second glance. That's when Paul realized he knew the guy. He babysat for Paul when he was a kid and painted their family's fence once. The victim was 53 year old Bernard Agones. What began as an ordinary Saturday morning was suddenly the start of a case that would haunt the community for years to come. Bernard was a familiar face around Penacook and the neighboring town of Boscawen, where he was born and raised. His parents had immigrated from Lithuania decades earlier and built their lives in the greater Concord area. They ran a small grocery store in town, and Bernard later followed in their footsteps. With his former wife, Beverly, he opened Bernie and Bev's Market in West Concord. They had a few kids together, but the partnership didn't last. The two separated in 1960, and their relatives later told the Concord Monitor that Bernard's alcohol use played a role in the split. He lost his driver's license after multiple OUI convictions and eventually gave up driving altogether. So most people in town knew Bernard from seeing him out on foot, walking Main street and stopping to chat with locals. With his signature corncob pipe in his hand, Bernard was an outdoorsman at heart. He loved to hunt and fish, and his son Stephen said his father was a good woodsman, someone who could handle himself in the forest and had even done some lumberjacking. Those who knew him described Bernard as old fashioned when it came to manners and relationships. He never used foul language around women, and when walking arm in arm with a date, he always took the outside of the sidewalk. At the time of his death, Bernard worked at the Colby Lumber Company in Boscawen though people said he had fallen on harder times recently. He wasn't a troublemaker, but he drank a little more than the other regulars at the bar in town. Still, when fights broke out, Bernard wasn't part of them. He, his son said that if a tussle started, Bernard would simply turn the other cheek and walk away. Violence wasn't in his nature, and he didn't have any enemies. In fact, Bernard often befriended younger people in town. Many of those friends called him Bernie, though he didn't have much. When payday came, Bernard was generous buying rounds for friends even when his check wouldn't stretch that far. As reported by David Olinger and Sharon Vous, Bernard's son remembered how his dad's paycheck would be gone by Saturday morning, and sometimes he'd have to borrow a few dollars from those young friends to make it through the rest of the week. Investigators learned that Bernard had cashed a paycheck or even multiple checks the day before his death. That Friday night, he spent the evening drinking beer at a pizza place in the Village. It was possible he still had some of that cash on him when he left the the pizza place. So could this have been a robbery that turned into something worse? Some locals told reporters that Bernard had been robbed several times in the weeks before he was killed. The kids who supposedly robbed him were known to hang out at the same park near Bridge and East Streets where his body was found. If this was true, though, police records didn't back it up. Bernard didn't report any robberies before his death. Whatever happened that night, it seemed to start and end in the same quiet patch of grass where Bernard was later discovered. And for investigators, the question now shifted from who Bernard was to who could have done this. The medical examiner determined that Bernard had been stabbed seven times in the chest. His time of death was estimated between midnight and 6am with 2am being the most probable. The coroner noted that the wounds could have been caused by almost any kind of knife. There was nothing distinct enough about them to narrow it down. Reporter Bill Sanderson of the Concord Monitor wrote that investigators collected everything they could find at the trash bottles, bits of debris, anything that might offer a clue. Some of it was sent to both the state crime lab and the FBI for analysis. A pair of pants believed to belong to Bernard was found draped over the park bench near his body. Those, too, would be tested for trace evidence. Now, one of the earliest leads in the case didn't come from debris in the park. Surveillance footage from a nearby bank captured Bernard sometime the day before his murder, easily recognizable with his trademark corncob pipe in his hand. When police found his body, though, that pipe was missing. Later in the investigation, they learned that someone else in town had been seen carrying it around. For a moment, it seemed investigators could have a break in the case. If Bernard's pipe had been stolen, maybe the person who had it also possessed critical information about Bernard's murder. But as quickly as that lead appeared, it faded. Police questioned the witness who had seen a guy named John with the pipe, but nothing solid came of it, and attention had already started to shift elsewhere. According to reporting by David Olinger and Sharon V. For the Concord Monitor, a woman told police she'd seen Bernard arguing with a man named David Gray around 9:30pm on the night of the murder. A shop owner in Boscawen recalled seeing Bernard and the same guy, David, together late that night near the leather tannery just across the street from where Bernard's body would later be found. The witness said Bernard looked drunk, standing unsteadily in the middle of the road. David seemed to be waiting for him to cross. A Concord police officer also reported seeing the two men together walking down Main street that night. Then there was a witness who saw David the morning Bernard's body was found. She remembered him crouching beside her car, all jittery and uneasy. When she glanced down, she noticed a reddish stain on his shirt, what she assumed at the time was blood from a nosebleed. Once David Gray's name entered the conversation, it never seemed to leave it. Before long, he was no longer just a person of interest, but he was the suspect. If Bernard was last seen with David and hours later found dead just across the street, it seemed to them more than a coincidence. So naturally, investigators tracked him down for questioning. The very same day Bernard's body was discovered, Concord detective John Reilly found David at his father's apartment above the Buggy Barn Tavern. During that threshold conversation, Riley the detective asked David repeatedly if he had seen Bernard recently. Even if they didn't talk, David was insistent that he hadn't seen Bernard since the previous weekend and definitely not in the days immediately before he died. At that point, the detective asked David to come to the police station to give a full account of his whereabouts on August 13th, and David agreed. Once in the interview room, David explained that he'd been at a friend's place that day and then went to the Buggy Barn. And then he went to a party in Boscawen. He told the detective he also went to his sister's house and then Got some pizza at the Pennecook House of Pizza. The detective paused the interview for a moment and stepped out of the room to find the Concord officer who reported seeing David and Bernard together. The detective wanted to make sure the other officer wasn't confusing David with his brother. But the officer was sure he could tell them apart, and he definitely saw David. When the detective returned to David, he read him his Miranda rights and then continued his line of questioning. He asked David if he was sure, absolutely positive, he didn't see Bernard again. David said he hadn't. And then the detective told David that another officer had seen him with Bernard. At that, David paused. He sat quiet for a few seconds before responding. He thought Bernard had a bag of beer with him, he said. David continued saying that he was leaving his father's apartment above the Buggy Barn Tavern and heading to the Pennecook House of Pizza when he encountered Bernard. Bernard offered him a beer, but David said no, thanks, and he went into the pizza shop. The detective emphasized to David that the other officer saw him and Bernard together walking down South Main street past the House of Pizza. David thought about it briefly and then told the detective he was probably right. He thought maybe he did walk down the street with Bernard, and they continued onto east street at center street, which was only a few blocks away from the park where Bernard's body would be recovered. The next morning, David told the detective that Bernard planned to hitchhike home, and he suggested that Bernard go wait down near East Street. He'd probably have better luck finding a ride down there, he said. David explained that he then turned around and started thumbing for a ride himself, hoping to get back to a friend's place in Concord, but ultimately went back to his dad's place for the night. David agreed to hand over the clothing he was wearing when he saw Bernard for testing, and he removed his shirt right then and there so police could check for any wounds possibly inflicted during a struggle with Bernard. But he wasn't under arrest, and the detectives sent him on his way. They'd speak again a few days later. But once again, David was free to go. Almost two months passed, and police had yet to make any arrests. They needed more information, new information. So Concord PD offered a $2,500 reward, supported by donations from the community. Behind the scenes results had come back from the state and FBI labs. There was no physical evidence linking David to the scene. No fingerprints, no trace of blood that could definitively connect the suspect to the victim. Not a single fiber or strand of hair that backed up what witnesses and even David himself had said about them being together within hours of the fatal stabbing. Still, investigators pressed ahead, building their case largely on overlapping statements and circumstantial details. It took a few months, but the case eventually came together with the help of a new witness claiming the lead suspect had confessed to the crime.