In the Dump Truck (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

0:00In June of 2005, a customer at a gas station in Derry, New Hampshire, carried a prepaid cell phone to the counter. They paid for it in cash, and then afterwards, they went out to their car and cut open the packaging. Then, once they had the phone, they dialed a number to activate it. But when the customer service rep asked for their name, the customer hesitated. Because the whole reason they'd bought this prepaid phone in the first place was specifically so nobody could trace the calls back to their real identity. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do.

0:36So if that's of interest to you, please offer to make the follow button a nice home-cooked meal. But be sure you first douse it with liquid laxative. Okay, let's get into today's story.

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1:47Visit Progressive.com to find a car insurance rate that works for you. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company & Affiliates. Price and coverage match, limited by state law. On an afternoon in June of 2005, a 57-year-old truck driver named Jack Reed took a sip of his margarita at a barbecue in a park in Derry, New Hampshire. Now, he usually didn't drink, but today he was celebrating. It was his daughter, Megan's high school graduation party. And this was a big deal for Jack. He'd grown up in the foster care system with nothing, and he'd worked really hard to ensure that his kids were set up for a better life than he had.

2:22So he was just really proud of Megan for making the right choices and finishing school. Now he looked over and he saw Megan sitting at a picnic table with her brother, Jack Jr., and also their mother, Virginia. Even though he and Virginia were not together anymore, they were still on good terms, and he was glad the whole family could be there for this special occasion. But then Jack tensed up as he spotted somebody else who was walking across the grass toward them, Megan's boyfriend, Walter. So Megan and Walter had moved in together recently, and Jack was definitely not thrilled about it. He didn't have anything against Walter in particular, but his daughter was just 18 years old and he thought that she was definitely too young to be living with a boyfriend.

3:02But Jack didn't want to pick a fight about it on a day like this. So instead, he actually got up and walked over to Walter and gave him a big friendly hug and said he was glad to see him. Then they both sat down at the table and joined the family's conversation and as Jack took another sip of his margarita, he actually felt himself relax. That evening, after the party was over, Jack drove his car home and stopped at a gas station along the way. He parked at the pump, he went inside, and then passed the cashier a few bills for a tank of gas, and also a lottery ticket. Jack was a regular lottery player, and even though he'd never won anything particularly big, he was always hoping that one day he would hit the jackpot and strike it rich.

3:43So he put the ticket in his pocket and then went back outside and filled up his car. Then he got in his car and he drove a few more blocks to his home. which was a trailer parked behind a warehouse on the edge of town. And one big reason Jack chose to live here was because there was plenty of room to park all of his work vehicles, including a large red and black dump truck. After years of working as a truck driver, Jack had built his own trucking business from the ground up. He did garbage removal and moving and other odd jobs, and he was making a decent living. But he still lived frugally in his rented trailer so he could save up for retirement.

4:18His goal was to save enough so that in a couple of years, once Jack Jr. was done with school, he could leave the cold New Hampshire winters behind and move to sunny, beautiful Las Vegas. He'd gotten the idea a couple of years ago when he'd done a moving job for a local self-made millionaire who was moving from New Hampshire to Vegas. He saw the millionaire as a huge success story, and he believed that if he worked hard enough, or maybe got lucky enough, he could follow in this same path. Now, Jack got out of his car and he walked over to his trailer. He opened up the door and he went inside. He turned on the lights and he was just about to sit down to take off his shoes when he heard a noise outside.

4:55Immediately, he went to the window and pulled back the curtains and he looked outside into the woods behind the property, but he didn't see anything. Still, he felt his heart racing and he actually had to take a few deep breaths to calm himself down. So almost two years ago, there had been an incident where Jack heard someone creeping around outside his trailer. He'd grabbed his gun and went out to confront them, and he'd seen a man standing at the edge of the woods. The man had stared right at him and actually called out his name. Jack had actually fired his gun at this man, who then ran away into the woods and never came back.

5:27But Jack had never figured out what the encounter was about. As far as he knew, he didn't have any enemies, so it really just didn't make any sense. But again, since this strange guy was never caught, Jack was still very on edge whenever he heard strange noises outside and around his trailer. Now, as he looked out the window and he felt sure that there was nobody there, Jack closed the curtains and took the lottery ticket out of his pocket. He sat down at the table and he started scratching off the silver foil with a coin. And he was not a winner this time. But it didn't dampen his mood. Next time he knew might be his lucky break.

6:05A couple of weeks later, on the morning of Monday, June 27th, Jack climbed up into his dump truck and rolled down the windows. It was already pretty hot outside, and he was on his way to the only job he had lined up for that day, a trash disposal gig that would likely only take a few hours. So he started the truck, and as he pulled out onto the road, his cell phone rang. He answered it, and a man spoke and said his name was Charlie, and that he had heard Jack did some work, you know, hauling stuff away, and that, you know, he had this new barn that really needed to be cleaned out, and could Jack do it?

6:38Jack said sure, he could actually do it that afternoon. And then he grabbed his logbook off the passenger seat and he flipped to a blank page and he scribbled down Charlie's name and address, which was in Deerfield, almost 30 miles away. Jack told Charlie he would let him know as soon as he was on the way and then the two men hung up. Around 3 p.m. that afternoon, Jack drove down a very secluded two-lane road in Deerfield. It was sweltering outside and he was already exhausted and dripping with sweat from his trash disposal gig that morning. He had no idea what to expect going into this barn cleaning job with this guy Charlie, but he was hoping it wouldn't take too long.

7:15Jack slowed down as the trees to his right parted and a gravel driveway appeared. He turned onto the driveway and a few seconds later, he pulled up right outside of a white two-story house with a big barn out back. Jack parked his dump truck and walked right up to the front door. He rang the doorbell and a moment later, the door opened. Two days later, on the afternoon of June 29th, Jack's daughter, Megan, and her boyfriend, Walter, walked up to the front door of Jack's trailer. Megan noticed that Jack's dump truck was not parked outside, which seemed wrong, and so she immediately felt this knot in her stomach.

7:49About an hour earlier, Megan had gotten a call from her mother, Virginia, saying that Jack had not shown up to a job that morning, and he was not answering his phone. This was unlike him, so Megan had said that she and Walter would just go over to his trailer and make sure he was okay. Now, initially, Megan had assumed her dad had just overslept or maybe forgot about the job. But now it looked like he'd actually left for work because the dump truck wasn't there, but never actually made it to the job. But nonetheless, Megan knocked on the trailer door just to be sure her dad really wasn't home and there was no answer.

8:22And so at this point, Megan called her mom to tell her what she had seen and, you know, the fact that her dad wasn't here. And she also told her mom that she was starting to feel pretty worried. And then a few minutes later, Virginia pulled up in her car. Megan, Walter, and Virginia all just stayed there right at the trailer all afternoon, hoping that maybe Jack would just show up at some point. And the whole time they're calling him over and over again, but it just kept going straight to voicemail. And then finally, around 6.30 p.m., when still they had not seen or heard from Jack, they decided it was time to call the police.

8:57On Tuesday, July 5th, so six days after Jack was reported missing by his family, Derry police detective Mike Hull pulled into the parking lot of a Target store about an hour's drive south in Saugus, Massachusetts. Hull slowed down and began to sort of slow roll through the rows of cars, keeping an eye out for one particular vehicle. Hull was in charge of Jack's missing persons case, which had not really been going anywhere so far. According to his family, the last time anybody had seen or heard from Jack was actually on June 27th, so two days before he was reported missing to the police. But his family could not think of anywhere Jack might have gone or anybody who might want to hurt him.

9:37So initially, Hul had figured that Jack must have just driven off for some time alone and that he would just come home sooner or later. But that morning, he'd gotten another call from Jack's daughter, Megan. She said the family had put up all these missing posters around town for Jack, and somebody had called her and said they actually saw Jack's dump truck at this particular target in Saugus, more than 40 miles away from Derry. Now, this tip was unique enough that Houle decided he would just drive out and take a look for himself. And now, as he slowly made his way towards the back of this parking lot, he saw it, a red and black dump truck parked near the back corner.

10:14So Hul stopped his car and he walked over to look at this truck. And right away, he saw the license plate confirmed this truck was definitely Jack's. When Hul peeked in the driver's side window, though, he didn't see anybody inside. But there were flies buzzing around the back of the truck, basically the open section of the dump truck. There was something in there the flies were attracted to. And there was also very clearly a rotten, awful smell wafting out of the back of this truck. And so Hool put on some gloves and he climbed up the side of the dump truck. Now, the actual bed of this dump truck was covered by a tarp.

10:48And so Hool grabbed the tarp and he pulled it back, but he still did not have an unobstructed view because whatever was in the bed was also wrapped in plastic and quite a bit of it. So he pulled out a knife and began cutting through the plastic. Less than an hour later, Detective Hool stood by as workers from the medical examiner's office loaded Jack's body into their van, and he was still wrapped up in plastic. Hull really wanted to get a look at Jack's body to figure out how he died, but that would require cutting through all the plastic that he was wrapped in, and Hull knew he needed to leave all that intact for evidentiary purposes.

11:24So he'd just have to wait until the autopsy to find out the cause of death here. But from the way Jack's body had been disposed of, hidden in a parking lot 40 miles from his house, Hull was already guessing that this was one, a murder, and two, it was carefully planned, probably by somebody that Jack knew. Hul had already found out from the family that Jack had five children with two different women and so he figured there could be some hidden tensions between any of them. But he also thought the murder could be tied to Jack's business. Now, as far as Jack's family knew, everything Jack did with his business was above board.

11:57But it's entirely possible that he might have gotten involved with sketchy people or maybe done something that made a client angry that the family didn't know about. Also, I mean, leaving Jack's dead body in the back of his own dump truck definitely seemed like a way to send a message. So, once the forensics team had taken photos and swabbed the truck for DNA and fingerprints, Poole pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened up the driver's side door. There was no blood inside the cabin of the truck, no sign of a weapon, and really nothing that struck him as unusual or helpful. That is, until he saw the logbook that was tucked into a pocket on the passenger side door.

12:33He reached for it, pulled it out, and began to flip through it, and he saw there was a list of all of Jack's appointments, along with the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the clients who had hired him. The last job that was recorded in this book was on the morning of June 27th, back in Derry, where Jack lived. Now, there were no other jobs noted down for that day, but a couple of pages later, on an otherwise blank page, Hull found an entry that Jack seemed to have scribbled down in a rush. It was just an address, 145 North Road. No town listed, and the name was just Charlie for the client.

13:07Hull placed the logbook inside of an evidence bag, and he sealed it. And then, as he sort of looked around the area, he noticed all the security cameras on light posts all over the parking lot. And there happened to be one that was pointing directly at Jack's truck.

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16:29Expedited transfers available for a fee. Tips are voluntary and don't affect the service. Available in select states, terms and restrictions apply. Visit Earning.com for full details. The next day, so Wednesday, July 6th, Houle was back at the precinct in Derry, reading over an autopsy report that had just been sent over from the Massachusetts Medical Examiner. The description in the report said that Jack had been severely beaten. He had broken ribs, skull fractures, and a softball-sized hole in the side of his head. His face had been so mangled that they'd actually had to pull Jack's dental records to confirm that it was actually him.

17:06Hull thought this level of violence definitely made this murder feel really personal, and it only made it more confident that Jack's killer or killers was somebody who knew him. Just then, Hul heard a knock at his door and he looked up as an officer peeked his head into Hul's office and asked him to come take a look at something. So Hul stood up from his desk and he followed the officer down the hallway to another room where a team of investigators were pouring over that security footage from the target parking lot. Hul watched over their shoulders as the investigators pulled up a specific clip And he could see from the timestamp in the corner of the screen that this footage was from around 5.30 p.m.

17:44on June 27th, which was the day of the last job written in Jack's logbook. Once it was up on the screen, Will nodded for the investigators to press play. And then he watched as the footage played on screen. And it showed Jack's dump truck pulling into the parking lot, followed closely by a white minivan. After Jack's truck parked, two people got out of the truck. And unfortunately, it was impossible to identify really anything about these people. They couldn't tell if they were men or women or man and woman. It was just totally unclear. However, there was one thing that was definitely true about these people, and it was what they were actually doing.

18:20They were clearly dumping Jack's body. One of them went around to the back of the dump truck and checked to make sure that tarp was secure, and then they both walked over to the white minivan, got in, and drove away. And so Hul's mind was racing now, because it looked like there were at least three people involved in Jack's murder. There were the two people that were just out and about sort of dealing with the truck and then whoever was driving the white minivan. But another unfortunate reality was this footage was so fuzzy that they couldn't even pull the license plate for that minivan. And Hull was naturally pretty frustrated by that.

18:53But then the investigator said there was actually one more thing he wanted to show him. And he pulled up another portion of security video. This one was from the evening of July 4th, which was seven days after Jack's dump truck was left abandoned in the parking lot, and one day before police, i.e. Hool, found the truck parked in that lot. The investigator told Hool that this footage he was about to see was from a different security camera, which was positioned on the other side of the parking lot from where the dump truck was parked. And then when he hit play, he directed Hool's attention to one particular car pulling into the parking lot.

19:30Now, the angle on this car was much closer, so there was a lot more detail visible than in the first video. And as Hull watched, he saw what clearly was a young woman get out of the passenger seat and walk toward the store. Hull leaned in close and squinted, and he realized he knew this woman because it was Jack's own daughter, Megan. Later that day, Hull walked into an interrogation room in the Derry police station, where Megan was waiting for him. When Hull walked in, he made a point to shake her hand and smile, acting as friendly and sympathetic as possible. He did not want to let on that he was looking at her as a suspect.

20:08So he didn't mention that they had video of her in the same parking lot where Jack's body was found just a day before they found it. But as they started talking, Megan actually brought it up herself that she happened to have been in the exact same lot that her father was ultimately found in. She said she had been shocked when she found out, one, that her father was dead, of course, but also that he was dumped in that Target lot. She had been there recently. She said her boyfriend Walter's sister lived in Saugus, and they had visited her for the 4th of July in an attempt to get their mind off their father's disappearance because at the time, you know, he had not been found yet.

20:46Megan said they had unexpectedly decided to spend the night there, so they had driven to the nearest Target to get a contacts case. And when she said that, she just shook her head and said she couldn't believe her dad had basically been right there. She was so close to him. Hull had to admit, this story did not sound totally crazy. After all, in the security video, Megan didn't go anywhere near the actual part of the lot where Jack's truck was parked. But still, he had a hard time believing that this was just one big coincidence. Especially because when he was reviewing what Megan had told the police when she had first reported her father missing, he realized that she had said she last saw her dad on the night of Monday, June 27th, when she and her boyfriend Walter had gone to his place to pick up an air conditioner.

21:30But now, Hull knew that was impossible, because the security video showed that Jack was already dead in the parking lot on the night of June 27th. So during this interview with Megan, Hull asked Megan again, when was the last time you saw your father? And once again, without missing a beat, she said it was the night of June 27th. Hull asked her if she was positive about the date, and she said yes, absolutely. So, without tipping his hand that he felt like for sure Megan was lying here, Hull let her go and immediately called in her boyfriend Walter, who had been waiting in the hallway. According to Megan, Walter was the one who actually drove her to that target in Saugus.

22:10Hull wanted to question the couple separately so he could see if there were any contradictions in their stories. But when he spoke to Walter, Walter repeated the exact same things Megan had said about why they were in the area and why they went to that target to get a contacts case. Walter also included the detail about the last time they saw Jack being the night of the 27th. So basically, Walter and Megan's stories are the same. But to Hul, the only thing he thought when he heard this consistency is that clearly what's happened here is Megan and Walter have rehearsed this story because it is their alibi.

22:44But they don't realize there was time-stamped security footage that would contradict it.

22:53The following afternoon, Hool sat at his desk combing through a copy of Jack's phone records. He'd sent officers out that morning to interview all of Megan's family and friends to see if they knew anything that could really help them pin the blame on Megan. And they quickly learned that Megan and Walter had moved in together recently and Jack did not approve. So Hul began to wonder, you know, maybe the young couple might have killed Jack so he would stay out of their way. Now, Megan at some point here found out from her friends who were being spoken to that clearly Megan was being investigated.