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Whether you're into unsolved mysteries, solved mysteries, or creating your own mysteries, Amazon Music's got millions of podcast episodes waiting. Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad free included with Prime.
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Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to Libsyn ads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today foreign
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you're listening to DNAID, brought to you by Abjec Entertainment. Be sure to check out some of the other great true crime podcasts from this network, including the Murder in My Family, Missing Persons, Scene of the Crime, Zodiac Speaking Beyond Bizarre True Crime, Campus Killings, Below the Surface, and Killer Communications. All of these podcasts are available for you to binge on right now. Wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe where you're listening to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. Sa.
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Last week I covered the homicide case of Marilyn Decker, found floating nude in a Davie, Florida Canal in 1987. Today's Doe case bears some similarities. On February 18, 1984, a passerby in Davie, Florida, glanced at a canal and saw a half naked woman's body floating face down. This was in the 2600 block of Southwest 130th Avenue, then an area of the Everglades occupied by orange groves, remote and quiet, the perfect dumping ground for someone familiar with the area. The body proved to be that of a white female. The Broward County Medical Examiner's Office conducted an autopsy on the woman, estimated to have been dead for two days. The cause of death was homicide by asphyxiation, the Miami Herald reported on February 20, 1984. Steve Corey, an investigator for the Medical Examiner's office, wouldn't be more specific about how or when the woman was murdered. It's listed as asphyxiation, he said. It could have been strangulation, or somebody may have held a pillow over her head End quote. The murder victim was 24 to 30 years old, 5 foot 4, 120 pounds. She had bleached blonde curly hair and hazel or light brown eyes. She had a gap between teeth eight and nine that had been filled by a dentist. This was her only distinguishing feature. She was wearing only cutoff jean shorts, but she had a rope tied around her midsection. She had no ID or any other identifying documentation in her shorts pockets at the time. Police spokespersons said that pending lab tests, whether or not the Jane Doe was sexually assaulted was unknown. But apparently if a sexual assault kit was done, it has long since been destroyed or lost. No evidence of this type remains viable in this case. Police ran fingerprints obtained from the deceased woman, but those led nowhere. She had not been printed in the state of Florida. Police canvassing the area where she was found located. No Grove workers or residents who had seen anything. No useful tire tracks were located. Divers found nothing and the rope could not be traced. The investigation into the identity of this Jane Doe stalled out very quickly. She was retained in the unidentified remains room at the Broward County Medical Examiner's office and there she took up residency for decades as missing persons reports from around the country compared to her failed to match her details, Police considered the possibility that the Jane Doe was a victim of serial killer Christopher Wilder. Wilder lived in Boynton beach and is suspected of murdering two women in the area in late February and early March 1984, exactly around the time when our Jane Doe was slain. He is suspected of killing many other women in Florida before he was killed in a melee with New Hampshire police and in April of 84. Wilder is one of those guys who remains a massive question mark in a lot of unsolved homicides. And he remained one in Jane Doe's case as well. Davey PD entered Jane Doe into NamUs as up 1258. Her DNA extracted from her remains in 2011 was also placed on file for comparison purposes should any missing persons be considered candidates to be Jane Doe. Over the years, many reconstruction images were produced of the Davie Canal Jane Doe. But absent an identification by someone who recognized her, all police could hope for was that someone would identify her through namus. Names of many missing women were submitted for consideration. In 2014 there were seven rule outs on NamUs and by 2023 that number was 18. A lot of them looked promising until their DNA failed to match. Jane Doe remained unnamed. Davie Canal Jane Doe's case was reopened in 2022 after the successful identification of a different Davie area victim using IGG that was Carolyn Dunn Moody, also found dead in a Canal. In 1975, the Davey PD decided to make a commitment to solving their cold case homicides and John and Jane does and committed resources including Detective Eddie Velazquez to the cold cases. He turned to the 1984 Davie Canal Jane Doe. In 2022, Detective Velazquez worked with CSI Bertha Hurtado who was also a forensic anthropologist. So they decided to attempt to obtain some scientific based images of Jane Doe. Investigator Hurtado took photos of Jane Doe's skull and mandible and took measurements of both and sent the photos to Louisiana State University's Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services Laboratory which thank goodness has an acronym FACES to create a forensic digital photo of the Jane Doe. I'll post that photo on social media then in order to create a SNP profile to facilitate igg, bone segments from Jane Doe were sent to Marshall University's Science Forensic Center. After confronting the challenge of degraded DNA in a couple of attempts using different bones, a SNP profile was successfully obtained and sent to Parabon NanoLabs. CeCe Moore got to work. In November 2022 she uploaded the SNP profile to GEDmatch. She uploaded to family tree DNA the following month. The top match shared 150 centimorgans of DNA with the DOE and 35 centimorgans of X DNA. All in all, CiCi used about 30 matches ranging from the 157 centimorgan all the way down to 19 matches 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14 and 22 all shared DNA and made up genetic network number one, the most significant one. But building out their trees and determining their relationships to one another was complicated by the fact that the matches traced back to a population in Richmond, Nova Scotia characterized by a high degree of endogamy. CECE found that a lot of the matches in genetic network number one were related in multiple different ways thanks to intermarriage within the population. So the amount of shared DNA could be misleading. I saw the chart she compiled between the matches in genetic network number one and their shared ancestors back into the early 1700s and it is quite complex. The dominant names in the relevant families were Boudreau, de Coste and Goyechi. Sisi knew that the DOE had to be a descendant of these same families, so she followed the lines of those family members who moved to the US specifically to to Massachusetts. Genetic network number two consisted of matches 3, 4, 8, 10 and 15. In that network, CC found another endogamous population pool from St. John's Newfoundland a predominant surname in this network was Circi. And building out these trees, CC Found the union she was looking for. Laura Bucher, born 1911 from genetic network number one, married Robert Kiersey, born 1912 from genetic network number two. Their son, Robert Kiersey of Gloucester, Mass, Was the likely father of Jane Doe. However, CC could not locate the name of a biological daughter of Bob Kearcey who was missing. Bob himself was deceased and in his obituary named surviving daughter Sharon and a daughter named Shelley who had died in 2001, who could not be. Jane Doe gave the Davey investigators, Detective Velazquez and Davie crime scene investigator Bertha Hurtado, these names, and they started making phone calls. The first call was to Bob's surviving daughter Sharon in Massachusetts, who said, yes, I have a missing sister. She disappeared in late 1983 or early 1984. Sharon gave them her sister's name and the name of her niece. Her missing sister's living daughter, Megan Smith of Gloucester, Mass. Was in touch within the hour. The Davie investigators told her, we may have found your mother if it's her. She was strangled and dumped in a canal in Davie, Florida. Megan felt like my breath had been taken away. As she told the Boston Globe, the Davie investigators requested a DNA sample from Megan and sent members of the Gloucester Police Department to collect it. The sample was sent to Bode Technologies, and their testing confirmed the match to the 1984 Davie Canal Jane Doe. The identification was announced in October of 2023. Davie Canal Jane Doe was Lori Jane Kearsi. Photos of her maintained by the family were the spitting image of some of the facial reconstructions done by forensic artists like Carl Coberman over the years. Quote, once everybody saw the pictures and composites, we knew 100% it was her. Her daughter Megan told the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Megan got on a plane to fly down to Davie to see her mother's remains for herself. She told wsbn, I was so overwhelmed because I had come to terms with it. I thought I would probably never know what happened to her. The feeling of picking up her remains and I haven't touched a part of her in 41 years is surreal.
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Whether you're solving murders during breakfast, cracking cold cases on your commute, or playing amateur detective at bedtime, Amazon Music's got millions of podcast episodes waiting. Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite true crime podcasts ad free included with Prime.
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So who was Lori? Lori was born to parents Robert Kiersey and Linda Catherine McLeod sometime around 1962. She grew up in Massachusetts with sisters Sharon and Shelley. Although their parents split up, a lot of what we the public know about Lori is thanks to an expose in the Boston globe. From the 1950s to 1980, her father worked with his own father, also named Robert Kiersey, in their multi state lobster business. According to Bob's obit, father and son invented the artificial saltwater lobster display tanks we still see in supermarkets today. In 1953, Bob started Bob's Clam Shack, a famous East Gloucester seafood restaurant known for the finest clam on Cape Ann. Tragically, Lori's mother died when Laurie was just five in a shooting incident ruled a suicide. I have zero details about this tragedy. After her mom's death, Lori went to live with Bob and his wife. But Laurie and her stepmom clashed and Laurie quit school after 8th grade and moved in with friends. She gave birth to Megan when she was just 17. She and Megan's father split amicably and Laurie moved in with a friend and started working as a cocktail waitress at the New York New York lounge inside Saugus palace nightclub. The cocktail waitresses were required to dress provocatively and had to be attractive to land the job. Lori fit the bill. She was petite, blonde, fun and carefree, her sister Sharon told the Globe of Lorre. She had a gift that she could talk to anybody and make you feel comfortable. She was so interested in people, end quote. It was at this club that Laurie met a man she liked. He love bombed her, according to her family, and swept her off her feet. She married him in Melrose, Massachusetts on June 7, 1983 at age 21 and then vanished eight months later. At age 22, Laurie was found in a canal in Davie, 1,000 miles away in February 1984. Unbeknownst to her family, Megan was just five when her mom disappeared. When her mom failed to return, she was raised by her father and stepmom. Her family told her that her mom would have come back if she were able to. Megan grew up knowing that something had happened to her mom, but no one knew what Family lore was not settled. Megan told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that there were several family stories about her mom leaving. One of her aunts told her that Lori's husband's best friend drove her to the airport and dropped her off to destinations unknown. Others said they heard she had moved to Florida. Another relative told Megan that Laurie was picked up by some men who said they were law enforcement. Rumors in the family were that she may have been entered into federal witness protection. I know the families of missing persons often speculate about witness protection. It's one of these catch all theories that loved ones cling to out of desperate hope that their missing family member is alive. But in this case, it was a real possibility. Laurie's husband was James W. Anguillo Jr. Age 21 of Melrose, Massachusetts. Detective Eddie Velasquez told me that Anguillo Jr. Was part of a notorious Boston crime family. Apparently Lori's family back in Massachusetts was aware of this when she married Anguillo Jr. And had tried to dissuade her from the nuptials. This is all from the Boston Globe who broke the story of Anguillo Jr. S identity when Florida investigators were were reluctant to name him. Quote, his relatives were among the most powerful organized crime figures in the region. It was an era when la Cosa Nostra, Italian for this thing of ours and commonly known as the Mafia, was the predominant organized crime group in the Nation and the FBI's top priority. Anguillo Jr. S great uncle Gennaro Jerry Anguillo was the underboss who ran the Mafia in Boston and was second in command of the New England family which reporting to the godfather, Raymond L.S. petcherka in Providence. They raked in millions from illegal gambling, loan sharking and extortion. Lori's father in law, James W. Anguillo Sr. Was identified during court proceedings in the 1980s as the son of Vittore Nicolo Anguillo. The reported Consiglieri, an advisor who relayed messages between his brother and Petcherka and helped resolve disputes. End quote. So three months after Lori married Anguillo Jr. Who listed his occupation on their marriage license as real estate, a massive federal racketeering indictment accused many of the men in the family of murder, gambling and loan shark operations and bribing corrupt police officers. Lori's husband was not named, but according to what her sister Sharon told the Globe, it was just two months later, around Thanksgiving 1983 that Lori showed up scared and crying on her doorstep. Quote, she said she made a deal with the FBI and She was going into witness protection. Sharon said Lori stayed with her that night and in the morning was picked up to be driven to the airport by a police officer from Randolph who told her Lori was going into the witness protection program. Lori called her within a day or so and said, I'm okay, I'm in Florida, but I can't talk, I'm being taken somewhere else. Lori was in touch with her family members back in Boston for a month so, maybe six weeks after that time, sometime in January 1984. She never called again. She did not even contact family. When their sister Shelly was killed in a hit and run in Chelsea in 2001. Her family assumed she was in witness protection, which is why I assume she was not mentioned as a surviving daughter in her father Bob's obituary from 2011. But Laurie was not a witness protection. The FBI's Boston field office told the Boston Globe, quote, FBI Boston doesn't have any records relating to Lori Kiersey, aka Lori Anguillo. Detective Velazquez said that the U.S. marshal Service and the FBI told him there was no documentation showing that Lori had been in witness protection and they had no record of her in their systems at all. Her name never came up in the trials that in 1986 sent several of the high ranking men in the Anguillo family to prison. Lori's father in law, Anguillo Sr. And his uncle and cousin were all convicted of running an illegal gambling ring employing 180 plus people from the globe. Again, quote, a handful of retired agents, state police and prosecutors who investigated organized crime during that era said they never heard of Kiersey. They said it was unlikely that a witness against the Mafia would have been sent to South Florida. The region was a magnet for organized crime figures, end quote. I asked Detective Velazquez, did Laurie make up the witness protection thing or was she forced into it? No. He said he believes Laurie was fooled and believed that she was being taken away and rehomed for her own safety and presumably that of her daughter. Lori's sister said she was very naive and she fell in love with the wrong guy and the wrong family and they used witness protection as a ruse to get rid of her for unknown reasons. But I know what you're thinking. Wait a minute. A police officer came to Sharon's house and spoke with her and told her that her sister was going into witness protection. Was he lying? The answer is almost certainly yes. What was going on was this. In the early 1980s, the Anguillos had a massive hold on the area, targeting Businesses for extortion, running illegal operations and using corrupt cops to advance their illicit interests. But the FBI and other authorities were closing in on the Anguillo crime family, a longtime target of their anti corrupt organization squad. FBI agent John Connolly was so hell bent on destroying the Anguillos, he joined forces with Whitey Bulger and his cronies in the Winter Hill Gang. Bulger provided information on the Anguillo operations that the FBI used to essentially cut them off at the knees. We all know what happened with Whitey Bulger going on the run. And Connolly was eventually indicted for racketeering. But the point is the back then these mobbed up families had significant connections with corrupt police and many officers in their back pockets. According to the Boston Globe, Connally warned Bulger that the powerful Anguillo family would use its corrupt police contacts to set up Bulger and his gang. The Anguillos had untold numbers of corrupt police officers on their payroll. And that is how we circle back to Laurie's case. Whoever that police officer was who picked Lori up and assured her and her sister that she was being placed into witness protection, he was almost certainly aligned with the Anguillos. According to Detective Velasquez's investigation, that family ran drugs all the way up the east coast between Boston and Miami. It's unclear what they were afraid Lori knew, but they got her out of town into a place where they could dispose of her and no one would recognize her or realize who she was connected to. And their plan worked. They got rid of her in the Everglades, a totally undeveloped landscape back then, consisting of miles of upon miles of swamps and agriculture grow operations and nothing else. Detective Velazquez believes that the rope tied around Lori's waist indicates that she was tied to something heavy and thrown into the water to sink, never to be seen again. But when her decomposing body filled with gases, the rope broke as she floated to the surface. It's just luck that she was found.
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For everyone who solves crime from their couch, knows more about forensics than their own job and has trust issues with small town sheriffs. Amazon Music's millions of podcast episodes are calling. Just download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite true crime podcasts ad free included with prime.
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So now they know that Lori ended up murdered in their town, 1,000 miles from home and Davey investigators are trying to retrace her steps to figure out who killed her. And to do that, they're attempting to determine where she was and who she was with, if anyone, in her brief stay in the Sunshine State. But it's an uphill battle. Per the Boston Globe, a close friend of Lori's said that another friend told her Lori moved on her own to South Florida. This friend bought Laurie's furniture. The friend sent Laurie two checks for the furniture to an address in South Florida. Laurie cashed the first one, but never cashed the second, and eventually it was returned to sender. Unfortunately, this friend is now deceased and cannot answer any questions about where she sent the checks or what Laurie said about why she was leaving Massachusetts. But if she sold her furniture, it supports the theory that Lori was a willing participant in her relocation because she believed she would be safe. That was her second mistake. Her first was marrying into the Anguillo family in the first place. The Boston Globe reported that Lori's former husband, Anguillo Jr. Lives in Florida and works in the Cape Coral Facilities Management Division. Detective Velazquez and investigator Hurtado interviewed Anguillo Jr. Who told them simply that his wife, Lori, had left him back toward the end of 1983. He didn't report her missing, he said, because she had just left on her own. Eight years after Lori vanished, Anguillo Jr. Remarried and on his marriage certificate claimed it was his first marriage. A notable omission. Laurie was just one of several women found in canals in the Davie area in the 1980s. Another was Marilyn Decker, who was killed by Donald Lawless and whose case I covered last week. Yet another was Kerry weldgen, found in 1985 just two miles from Laurie. Her case remains unsolved, and Detective Velazquez told me he cannot rule out Donald Lawless in Kerry's case, but he does not have evidence of his involvement. As for Laurie, Detective Velazquez does not believe Donald Lawless had anything to do with her death. Rather, Anguillo Jr. Or someone associated with him is a person of interest. Detective Velazquez told the Boston Globe, quote, I know that there are people in Florida who were involved, and they also might be people up there, that is, in Boston who know what happened. Velazquez said police have a person of interest and are awaiting results of additional DNA testing. To try to identify the suspect. What they are testing are the shorts Lori was found wearing and the segment of rope that was around her waist. The hopes are that male DNA will be found on those items that can connect someone specific to Laurie's murder. For Lori Kersey's daughter Megan, just having her mom back has been a tremendous source of comfort. Megan told WSVN of her mom, quote, she dropped me off over the weekend and just didn't come back. She told the South Florida Sun Sentinel, quote, I never actually knew how much I needed that closure until it happened. My whole life I knew something happened to her. But now to have the closure, I she was a kid. She could have grown up. She never got a chance. End quote. Megan has her own daughters who are in their 20s. They never knew their grandmother. The Globe reported that Megan was eternally grateful to the Florida authorities for identifying her mom because now she had proof that her mom did not just abandon her. I have a sense of peace that I never knew I needed, she said. Megan had to get Laurie's husband, Anguillo Jr. To agree to be removed as Laurie's next of kin because the two had never been divorced. Megan wanted to be the one to claim her mom's remains. And speaking of Anguillo junior Megan was quoted in the South Florida messenger saying, I always knew that she was married to someone in a crime family. In the early 80s. They were married for just eight months before she was murdered. It's so painfully obvious, but it's hard to prove cases. And she told Fox News, quote, they're hoping they'll get a little bit more leads now that the public knows he's still alive. This man probably has children and grandchildren who adore him. Him going to jail doesn't do anything for my life, but he probably won't sleep very well for the rest of his life. Whoever did this can always be wondering. There's so many new answers in testing evidence. They'll be scared that the one thing they thought would never come up came up. That's good enough for me. End quote. So police are following leads but need the public's help to identify Lori's killer and close her case. Quote and that is our goal in this case. To bring about further closure. We but also to bring to justice those who were involved in this criminal case. Davey Police Sergeant Kevin Urbez said at a press conference in October 2023, let's all hope that modern DNA extraction techniques can pull off a miracle. For Laurie's sake. Thanks for listening to this episode of dnaid.
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Before you leave, please let me tell
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you about some important things related to the show. If you'd like to support this podcast
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and in the process get access to early and ad free episodes as well as bonus content like crime scene photos, you can sign up for a Patreon subscription for only $5 a month by heading over to patreon.com dnaid. Of course, you're welcome to contribute more than $5 a month. We rely on Patreon funds to pay for the original source materials I use
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to research each episode.
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If Patreon isn't your thing, you can
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you can also show your support with
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an AbJack Insider subscription through Apple Podcasts. It costs just $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. Your Abjak Insider subscription will give you the same benefits for not only DNA ID but for all of the shows on the ABJ Network like Killer Communications and Campus Killings. Head over to Apple Podcasts and find the DNAID page or look for the
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abjak Network to get started. If you're on social media, we'd love
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to interact with you there. DNAID is on every major social media platform. Search your favorite platforms for DNAID Podcast to find us. We also have a YouTube channel and our website is DNAIDpodcast.com. you can find links to all of these anytime in our show Notes. If you need to reach the show, contact us by emailing dnaid Podcast. Finally, if you want to pick up some fun DNAID merch and represent the show, visit the store at www.customizedgirl.coms DNAIDpodcast. DNAID is researched, written and hosted by me, Jessica Bettencourt. It's produced by me and Mike Morford of Abjack Entertainment Music by Connor Bettencourt.
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