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Kylie Lowe (11:02)

On October 7, 1988, Anthony Barnaby was formally arrested and charged with two counts of first degree murder in the deaths of Charlene and Brenda. Armed with Anthony's confession, investigators quickly turned their attention to the other person he implicated in the murders. Authorities issued a nationwide alert for David Kaplan A few days later. David was located in Boston, where he was already being held on an unrelated charge. Nashua detectives attempted to question David about Brenda and Charlene's murders, but he refused to speak with police. They'd hit a brick wall. Beyond the confession from Anthony, there was little to nothing conclusive linking David to the crime to the point of securing an arrest warrant. An FBI hair analysis expert examined the seven pubic hairs collected from the apartment and determined they most closely resembled samples taken from David Kaplan. But with the technology available in 1988, the analysis could not definitively identify the hairs as belonging to David. And then, months later, the prosecution's case against Anthony Barnaby became even shakier. During a pretrial hearing In July of 1989, Anthony dramatically reversed course and recanted his confession Anthony told the court that he had confessed only because the interrogation had gone on for nearly a full day and he wanted it to end. I just wanted them to leave me alone, he said. I wanted to go to sleep, end quote. Anthony claimed police pressured him during the interrogation. He testified that a police captain warned him that he could face lethal injection if he did not cooperate, but that there would be a light at the end of the tunnel if he did. His defense attorney moved to have the confession thrown out, arguing that it had been obtained in violation of Anthony's rights. Police officers who had participated in the interrogation denied any wrongdoing. They testified Anthony had been given proper Miranda warnings, along with food, water and even breaks to smoke during the questioning. Ultimately, the judge refused to suppress the confession, acknowledging that the interrogation had been unusually long, describing it as the longest interrogation in which any of the police witnesses had ever been involved, but ruled that the length of the questioning did not automatically make the statement involuntary. Anthony's confession would remain part of the prosecution's case. Still, according to his updated account, he had nothing to do with the murders. According to reporting by Nancy west for the New Hampshire Union Leader, Anthony claimed that on the night the women were killed, he had been passed out on a couch outside the apartment, asleep when the attack took place. Meanwhile, the situation surrounding David Kaplan was unfolding in a very different direction. As reported by Frank Baker for the Concord Monitor, on August 10, 1989, David Kaplan was released from a Massachusetts prison after serving 10 months of a one year sentence for assault. That conviction stemmed from a disturbing incident in October of 1988, around the same time as the Nashua murders. According to court records, David had lured a man from a bar to an apartment under the pretense of a sexual encounter. Once inside, he attempted to strangle the man with shoelaces, assaulted him and stole food and money before fleeing. While awaiting trial in Boston, David David was also accused of assaulting two sheriff's deputies inside the jail, leading to an additional two years of supervised probation. His criminal history stretched back even further than that. In 1985, David had been convicted in Canada of robbery and breaking and entering and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Though he was released on parole in 1986 after serving about one year. Because of that conviction, Canadian authorities should have been notified when David was arrested in Massachusetts. But according to reporting at the time, that notification never happened. Just weeks after his release from prison in Massachusetts, David was arrested again. On August 28, 1989, he was charged with sexually assaulting a 14 year old girl. In Nashua. Investigators said the assault had occurred shortly after midnight on October 3, 1988, just hours after Charlene and Brenda were believed to have been murdered. The survivor of that assault told police that earlier on October 2, David had visited her apartment with Anthony Barnaby and another man. They stayed briefly before her mother asked them to leave, and the girl's mother left too. Later that night, David allegedly returned several times. The girl said he knocked on the door around 10:30pm and again around 11:00pm and she told him to leave both times. Then a little after midnight, he returned again. This time, she said, he forced his way inside and assaulted her. Interestingly, investigators believed the two knives found behind Brenda and Charlene's apartment building were believed to be the murder weapons may have come from that girl's home. When police interviewed her the day after the murders, she had not mentioned the incident. She said she was scared to come forward. David was also charged with burglary related to that same event, but he still wasn't facing any charges related to the double murder. Anthony Barnaby's murder trial opened in September of 1989 in Hillsborough County Superior Court. Prosecutors charged him as an accomplice to first degree murder in the deaths of Charlene and Brenda. To convict him, the jury would have to conclude that Anthony had purposely caused the women's deaths and that the killings were deliberate and premeditated. The state's theory was straightforward. Prosecutors argued that Anthony harbored deep hostility towards the women because of their sexual orientation and that he had already threatened them. The prosecution also pointed to Anthony's confession. He may have taken it back, but the details he shared, they argued, could only be known by someone with first hand knowledge. Although the recanted confession pointed at an accomplice, David Kaplan had not been charged with the murders. At the time of Anthony's trial, investigators believed he was involved, but prosecutors said they did not yet have enough admissible evidence to bring charges. That gap in the case quickly became the center of the defense strategy. Anthony's attorneys told jurors that the police had focused on the wrong man. They argued that David Kaplan alone committed the murders and that Anthony had become a convenient suspect after police pressured him into a confession. According to the defense, David had been seen with bloody clothing the night of the murders and had left the city shortly afterward. The defense also offered an alternative version of Anthony's whereabouts that night. They claimed he had spent much of the day drinking, passed out on a couch outside the apartment, rolled off the couch while sleeping, and eventually went inside his own apartment. To continue sleeping, completely unaware of what had happened upstairs. Testimony from defense witnesses suggested that Anthony and David's relationship was complicated. Although they were living together in Nashua and had grown up together, Anthony reportedly did not consider David a close friend. In fact, Anthony referred to him by a nickname, Davey Mental. When Anthony took the stand in his own defense, he insisted that the confession he had given police was not real. He described it as a series of lucky guesses, telling jurors he had never been inside the apartment during the murders. David Kaplan himself was called to testify. But when prosecutors began asking questions that could implicate him in the crime, he invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer. He did offer one key statement before doing so, that he had left Nashua around 10:30pm on the night of the murders, before the killings had occurred. In closing arguments, prosecutor Brian Tucker addressed the defense claim that Anthony's confession had been coerced. As quoted by Joe Mapother for the New Hampshire Union Leader. To think that the police coerced a confession from an innocent man, you have to believe that they were willing to let the real killer walk the streets, and that's ridiculous. End quote. After weeks of testimony, the jury retired to deliberate. The discussions dragged on for more than a week, but in the end, the jurors could not agree. Nine jurors favored conviction, while three held out for acquittal. The judge declared a mistrial. The state fully intended to try the case again, and Anthony returned to court only a few months later. In January of 1990, prosecutors once again attempted to persuade a jury that his confession was the truth. This time, one of the key witnesses was the teenage girl who had accused David of sexually assaulting her while the night of the murders. She testified that Anthony had told her that very night that he hated the two women living in his apartment building and that he intended to kill them. As reported by Michael Cousineau for the Union Leader, the witness told the jury that Anthony sounded angry but was also intoxicated, and she had not taken the statement seriously at the time. Meanwhile, the defense still pointed to an alternate suspect and offered witness testimony that suggested David Kaplan acted suspiciously on the night of the murders. A taxi driver told jurors that shortly after midnight, he picked up a passenger at a pizza parlor a few blocks away from Mason Street. The driver identified David Kaplan as the man he drove. According to the driver, the passenger said he didn't want to wait for a bus because he wanted to leave town immediately. The taxi driver drove him to Lawrence, Massachusetts. Jurors debated the evidence for days. On February 16, 1990, they informed the judge that they were hopelessly deadlocked. For the second time, Anthony's trial ended in mistrial. But this time the jury split seven to five, with the majority in favor of acquittal. The disagreement centered on the same question that had divided the first jury, whether Anthony's confession could be trusted. Some jurors believed it had been coerced and that Anthony had simply repeated details fed to him during the interrogation. So without that confession, several jurors felt the rest of the case was too weak to support a conviction. Despite the second mistrial, the judge refused to dismiss the charges. Instead, prosecutors prepared to try the case once again, and a third trial was scheduled for the spring of 1990. Anthony's request to be released on bail so he could live with his mother in Canada while awaiting the third trial was denied. For almost two years, Anthony had been the only person standing trial for the murders. But his confession had always pointed to someone else, and prosecutors were finally ready to act on it. Foreign.

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Kylie Lowe (23:30)

What happens inside a courtroom rarely tells the whole story, and no one knows this more than my friend Brandi Churchwell, host of 13th Juror, the podcast where she pulls back the curtain on real trials. Brandi explores both the prosecution and defense. So you'll hear the testimony, the tension, the turning points, and then you decide what it all means. Step into the courtroom every Thursday with the Brandi Churchwell and listen to 13th Juror wherever you get your podcasts. After Anthony's second trial ended in a mistrial, prosecutors were forced to confront a question that had been hanging over the case since the beginning. What about David Kaplan? Prosecutors acknowledged publicly that that they believed they had enough evidence to charge David. But they hesitated. Prosecutors feared that much of the evidence they did have, including Anthony's confession, which he had since recanted, might not ultimately be admissible in court. However, by the summer of 1990, the investigation had apparently uncovered enough to assuage that fear. In June of 1990, David was formally charged with two counts of being an accomplice to murder in the deaths of Charlene and Brenda. With David finally facing charges, prosecutors prepared to try Anthony Barnaby's case for round three. It began in the summer of 1990, and this time the state approached the case differently. It had to. In earlier trials, prosecutors had portrayed Anthony as an accomplice who had fallen under David's influence. This time, the state aimed to present Anthony as a calculated killer, someone who had deliberately targeted the two women. After weeks of conflict, the new prosecutor, Paul Maggiotto, told jurors that Anthony had an ongoing feud with Charlene and Brenda. According to Maggiotto, the conflict had escalated over time. Pat Grossmith reports for the Union Leader that Anthony had slashed the women's tires after they complained to the landlord about him taking their parking space face, and he had hurled insults at them during arguments in the building. Joel Ranstrom, Charlene's son, testified that on the day of the murders, he saw Anthony attempt to enter his mother's apartment. According to Joel, Brenda forced him back out and slammed the door in his face. Joel also said that Anthony had been wearing faded blue jeans that day. That detail became important because Anthony had previously told investigators he had been wearing a pair of dungarees, which he later handed over to police as evidence. Joel's testimony suggested that Anthony may have lied about what he was wearing that night and the real evidence might not have been tested. The defense reminded the jury of something that had troubled the case from the beginning. There was no physical evidence placing Anthony inside the apartment during the murders. No fingerprints, no DNA, no forensic evidence tying him directly to the crime scene. In fact, a Nashua detective testified that investigators had difficulty recovering fingerprints from almost anything inside the apartment. Many surfaces were covered in dust and a greasy film from cooking oils, which prevented clear prints from forming. Investigators noted that they couldn't even find Brenda or Charlene's own fingerprints on some of the items removed from the home. Still, prosecutors argued that certain pieces of evidence were aligned with Anthony's earlier confession. A blood stained denim jacket and a white sock recovered during the investigation matched details Anthony described about the crime, even though the testing itself could not conclusively link the items to either suspect. But the defense returned again and again to that very confession. Anthony's attorney, Mark Sisty, argued that the statement Anthony signed had come only after an extended interrogation during which police gradually fed him information about the crime. The interrogation had not been recorded, and Sisty claimed officers had not even taken rough notes during much of the questioning. The Defense also introduced testimony suggesting that just days before the murders, Anthony had taken a knife away from David because he didn't trust him with it. Another piece of evidence became a point of contention. The seven pubic hairs collected from the crime scene. The hairs had been found on the underwear of one victim and in the hand of the other. Although they could not be conclusively linked to anyone, an FBI expert testified that they most closely resembled hair samples taken from David. We know now that identification based on visual characteristics of hair samples is a flawed science. But at the time, the defense argued that the hair resemblance pointed towards David as the real killer, even describing the murders as possibly psychosexual, ritualistic killings. Prosecutors dismissed that theory. They suggested the hairs could have come from a shared washer and dryer in the apartment building. Investigators also said at the time that there was no evidence of sexual assault in the case of. For the third trial, prosecutors introduced testimony from a new witness. He was a former inmate at the Hillsborough County House of Correction who said he shared a cell with Anthony shortly after the arrest. The witness claimed that Anthony had described details of the murders to him while asking for help getting his confession thrown out. But under cross examination, the witness's credibility quickly collapsed. Jurors learned he had been arrested 30 times since 1979, had a reputation for making false reports to police, and even admitted that he had lied during his pretrial deposition in this very case. His testimony became so questionable that it sparked a separate investigation into possible perjury charges against him. David Kaplan was also called to testify, but much like before, he answered very few questions and repeatedly invoked his fifth amendment right against self incrimination. When the trial reached closing arguments, both sides tried to dismantle the other's version of events. Defense attorney Mark Sisti took the jury through Anthony's confession line by line, pointing out what he said were contradictions and inaccuracies indicative of a false story coerced and pressured out of an innocent man. He described the confession as a classic case of put garbage in, get garbage out, arguing that investigators had taken the limited information they had about the crime and gradually fed it to Anthony during the 20 hour interrogation in a small interrogation room. Prosecutors responded by doing the exact opposite. They walked jurors through the confession as well, but this time highlighting the details that did match the crime and the scene. Yes, the case had gaps, they admitted, but those gaps did not change the larger picture. The prosecution claimed that Anthony had described the crime in ways that only someone involved could have known. They argued that some of the inconsistencies pointed out by the defense could easily be explained by faulty memory, intoxication, or Anthony's attempts to shift the blame onto David. At one point, prosecutors described the two men in vivid terms. Anthony and David, they told the jury, were like a match in gasoline. Anthony, driven by hatred towards the victims, and David, with a history of violent behavior. For the third time, the fate of the case was placed in the hands of a jury. For three days, jurors weighed the evidence, and when they returned, it was a result that had already become hauntingly familiar inside that courtroom. Deadlock again. This time the jury was split 7 to 5 in favor of conviction, but they could not reach a unanimous verdict. The judge declared a third mistrial. The case had entered uncharted territory. A fourth trial would have been unprecedented. According to reporting at the time, no criminal case in New Hampshire had ever gone to trial four separate times. Despite this, prosecutor Paul Maggiotto said he was willing to try again. But In July of 1990, New Hampshire Attorney General John Arnold made the final decision. There would be no fourth trial. Despite the state's belief that Anthony was guilty. Arnold said another prosecution would simply be a waste of time and resources. Legally, the state could still reopen the case someday if new evidence emerged. But at that moment, the prosecution was over. On July 10, 1990, Anthony walked out of prison after being held through all three trials and began the trip back to his home in Quebec. For the families of Charlene and Brenda, the decision felt like a miscarriage of justice. Anthony, meanwhile, continued to maintain his innocence. With that, the case that had consumed investigators for nearly two years seemed to come to an end. But the story of what happened on Mason street in 1988 was far from finished.

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Kylie Lowe (33:37)

What happens inside a courtroom rarely tells the whole story, and no one knows this more than my friend Brandi Churchwell, host of 13th Juror, the podcast where she pulls back the curtain on real trials. Brandi explores both the prosecution and defense so you'll Hear the testimony, the tension, the turning points, and then you decide what it all means. Step into the courtroom every Thursday with Brandi Churchwell and listen to 13th juror, wherever you get your podcasts. Even as Anthony's third trial collapsed into another mistrial, prosecutors were still trying to build a case against the other man, whose name had been tied to the murders from the very beginning. But the prosecution of David Kaplan wasn't going to be easy. Prosecutors were no longer certain that they could rely on Anthony's confession to prove David's guilt. If Anthony refused to testify or contradicted the confession in court, the state would lose the most direct piece of evidence tying David to the murders. The situation worsened when the courts excluded statements David had made during earlier court proceedings. Prosecutors had hoped to use those statements against him at trial, but judges ruled that doing so would violate his Fifth Amendment rights, and the New Hampshire Supreme Court upheld that decision. Forensic evidence offered little help. Hair samples recovered from the crime scene resembled David's, but experts could not definitively identify them as his, and other testing failed to directly connect him to the murders. With the confession withdrawn, the statement suppressed, and the forensic evidence inconclusive, prosecutors described the remaining case as very circumstantial. So on June 13, 1991, prosecutors dropped the murder charges against David while leaving open the possibility of filing them again if stronger evidence ever emerged. The investigation stalled. For nearly two decades, the murders of Charlene and Brenda remained unresolved. The case file sat quietly in storage while the suspects went back to their lives and the investigation faded from public attention. But in 2010, Nashua detectives began taking a fresh look at several old homicide cases, as reported by Joseph G. Cody for the Nashua Telegraph. That fall, Detective Sergeant Frank Bourgeois began reviewing unsolved murders after attending a cold case investigation school the month before. When he returned to Nashua, the Warner Ranstrom murders immediately stood out. Unlike many cold cases, investigators already knew who their primary suspects were. The challenge wasn't identifying a suspect. The challenge was proving it. Detective Bourgeois contacted the New Hampshire Attorney General's cold case unit, led by Senior Assistant Attorney General William Delker, and the agencies began working together to reopen the investigation. Advances in forensic technology and the possibility of new witness information had created an opportunity to revisit the murders. Investigators began contacting people who had been interviewed during the original investigation and the earlier trials. According to reporting by Kimberly Houghton, who covered the reopened case extensively for the New Hampshire Union Leader, those conversations produced new information and at least one additional witness who was now willing to testify. One of those witnesses told investigators that about a week or two before the murders, Anthony had told her and her boyfriend that he was going to kill two women in Nashua who lived above him. The witness explained she had never reported the threat at the time because she believed police already had enough evidence. Both suspects had already been in jail, and she assumed investigators knew what had happened. Another witness told detectives that Anthony had described details of the killings to him before speaking with police. The witness had refused to cooperate during the original investigation because he did not want to travel to New Hampshire to testify. But during the cold case review, he said he was now willing to come forward. At the same time, investigators returned to the physical evidence that had been collected inside the apartment more than two decades earlier. Items including bloodstains, hairs recovered from the scene, A denim jacket, and socks believed to have been worn during the attack Were submitted for new testing Using forensic techniques that did not exist in 1988. The results were significant. DNA testing determined that a hair recovered from Brenda's body matched David Kaplan's DNA profile. An independent forensic laboratory also found that blood on a denim jacket matched Brenda's DNA, While hair recovered from that same jacket was consistent with David's DNA. Additional analysis revealed that blood found on the socks recovered during the investigation came from two male contributors. Although the strongest DNA evidence pointed to David, the forensic findings also supported the prosecution's theory that two people had committed the murders and was consistent with the confession Anthony had given decades earlier. By early 2011, investigators believed they finally had enough evidence to move forward. In April of that year, Canadian authorities arrested both Anthony Barnaby and David Kaplan. Both men were charged with two counts of first degree murder in connection with the deaths of Charlene and Brenda. After their arrests in 2011, both men challenged the extradition orders in Canadian courts, Appealing the decision and delaying their transfer back to the United States. It took years, but In April of 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada Authorized the extradition of both men. David was the first to be brought back in May of 2015, and Anthony followed soon after. Anthony was scheduled to face a fourth trial, and David his first in this case. But the courtroom showdown many expected never happened. The murders were now nearly 30 years old. Some witnesses had died, others had moved away, and memories had faded. And there was always the possibility that another jury could deadlock. There was still plenty of risk that the suspects would walk free once again. In 2018, David agreed to plead guilty to two counts of second degree murder and received a lengthy prison sentence of 20 to 40 years, with five years suspended from the minimum sentence in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors. As part of the agreement, David agreed to testify against Anthony if the state chose to call him as a witness. But that wouldn't be necessary because Anthony took a plea deal, too. He entered what is known as an Alford plea, a legal arrangement in which a defendant maintains innocence, but acknowledges that prosecutors likely have enough evidence to obtain a conviction. Under the agreement, Anthony pleaded to two counts of second degree murder and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison on each charge, with four years of the minimum sentence suspended because of credit for time already served. Anthony was expected to serve about four and a half years in prison and before being released, neither David Kaplan nor Anthony Barnaby are listed in the New Hampshire Department of Corrections inmate locator database. As of the release of this episode, I have been unable to track them down. For the families of Charlene Ranstrom and Brenda Warner, the legal battles, mistrials, and appeals that stretched across decades were never just about courtrooms or verdicts. They were about the two women whose lives had been senselessly stolen. Brenda's brother, Leslie Warner, remembered his sister as someone who refused to be intimidated even when tensions in the apartment building escalated. She'd tell them where to go, and that's what killed her. She was small, but she was very brave, end quote. During victim impact statements delivered decades after that, relatives spoke about the lasting hole left in their lives. Brenda was remembered as someone who was deeply loved by her family and whose absence had never stopped being felt. Charlene was remembered alongside her as Brenda's life partner. Family members spoke about the life the two women had built together in Nashua. They talked about the ordinary moments that would never happen again. The holidays they would never celebrate together, the birthdays that would come and go, Even simple days like Valentine's Day. Moments meant for love and companionship had become reminders of what had been lost. When the case finally returned to court nearly 30 years later, Leslie addressed David directly during the sentencing hearing. He told him that he did not hate David, but he hated what he had done to his sister. Then he shared a memory that had stayed with him all those years. Brenda loved to watch movies. Sometimes she would cry during emotional scenes and ask her brother questions about what was happening on the screen. And he would reassure her. Brenda, it's just a movie, he would say. But what happened in October of 1988 was not a movie. It was real, Leslie said. And it was something he could never explain to her. What ultimately reopened the case was something that didn't exist. When the murders Modern DNA testing evidence collected in 1988 that once yielded little information was tested again decades later. Samples that had been inconclusive before suddenly carried new meaning. But the case also showed how difficult it can be to prove what happened so long ago. Even with new forensic evidence linking David to the crime scene, the case against Anthony still largely revolved around the confession he gave during that long interrogation in 1988, the same confession that had divided three juries years earlier. In the end, those questions were never fully resolved in a courtroom. For the families, though, what mattered most was that the long fight for justice was finally over. And beyond the legal battles and the decades of uncertainty, the story of this case remains what it always was, the story of Charlene Ranstrom and Brenda Warner, two women whose lives were taken far too soon and whose families never stopped seeking justice. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case@darkdowneast.com Be sure to follow the show on Instagram arkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Dark down east is a production of Kylie Media and Audio. Chuck. I think Chuck would approve. We often look to the outdoors as a reset, but sometimes our serene nature setting becomes the scene of something sinister. Every week on Park Predators, investigative journalist Delia d' Ambra shares stories of the dark secrets hidden by the world's most scenic landscapes. Just like the stories I tell here on Dark down east, every episode of Park Predators is gripping, atmospheric, and deeply human. Listen to Park Predators today anywhere you get your podcasts.