On a sunny day, a grim find

Freetown State Forest scene (photo by Maureen Boyle)

Deep in the forest, in a lush sea of red and orange brush, the grim discovery was made.

A hunter found the small Honda Accord with the remains of two people inside. Two lives ended in the quiet of the woods. Two lives now dissected by investigators, medical examiners and evidence technicians.

Inside the car was a note. The Bristol County District Attorney's office described it as a suicide note.

The press release to local media was brief, giving the four corners of the discovery. Likely no one will delve deeper. No one will ask who the two lived and loved, what were their dreams, or about the hole in the hearts of those left behind.

It was a sunny and warm fall day as the investigators all too familiar with death the drove along the dirt access roads, SUVs dodging the deep holes gouged by erosion. Elsewhere in the 5,000 acre Freetown State Forest with its 25 miles of trails, motor bike riders crisscrossed the park, blissfully unaware.

Whenever a body, or remains ravaged by time, are discovered, the families of the disappeared can be left with dread. Is it my son? Is it my daughter? My brother? My sister? My mother? My father? Will there be a phone call, a knock on the door, a police cruiser pulling up to the house? Will the uncertainty now make way for grief?

The list of the missing is always too long. There are at least 90,000 people nationally, about a quarter are those under 18, according to National Crime Information Center. Many return home or are located alive. Then there are those who remain immortalized in memory and hope.

On this day, when the call came in that two bodies were discovered in the expansive state forest, my thoughts went a single case - the 1988 New Bedford Highway Serial Killings - and the two women who remain missing. That year, 11 women vanished in the fishing port city; nine were eventually found dead along local highways, weeks and months later. This was why I drove toward the forest, woods one easily can get lost in, to try to find where the investigators were. Would there finally be an answer? Would two families finally be able to bury their dead?

I left my home, where my husband was mowing the lawn, and headed south to Freetown 20 minutes away to find that answer.

It has been more than 15 years since I stood near where teams of police, technicians and those from the medical examiners office worked, leaving daily journalism for teaching and, later, book writing. Walking up, it was a familiar scene with yellow crime scene tape and police vehicles blocking a path to keep away reporters who never arrived, where investigators refer questions to the district attorney's office and Massachusetts Environmental Police officers worked side-by-side with Massachusetts State Police homicide detectives all too accustomed with death.

Earlier, I stopped at the Freetown police station, searching for directions to this spot. The police department was in a new station. The old building up the road, the one I last visited so many years ago, was now a food pantry. The desk officer politely referred me to the district attorney's office for comment instead. If I got lost, calling 911 would lead police to my whereabouts, he noted. Three state police officers assigned to the prosecutor's office who pulled up the station also waved off questions. It is an expected response. Deep down, seeing them at the station, I already suspected pair found was not the two missing women.

Going deep into a forest is disconcerting to me. It is not where I venture and the Freetown State Forest, with its dark history, is a place I have visited just three times before in the more than 30 years I've lived in the area - each to view the tragic spot where a young girl was found murdered decades ago. On this day, I was accompanied by another writer, Mike Campeau, who lives near the forest and is familiar with its weaving paths. He is there, wondering if the remains might be tied to a book he is researching and to make sure (thanks to a dear friend and WBSM host, Chris McCarthy) I don't get lost. There are others who learned of the discovery from afar, like Christine James from radio station WATD in Marshfield, who wonder, like us all, if this find will answer the question haunting New Bedford for years.

But on this bright afternoon, it is just Mike and I standing watch. Neither of us are there to report for a news outlet. We are there wondering if the people we know are missing have been found.

It is clear, as we stand a distance from the scene on this autumn day, that another family will have an answer. Not the ones we know. Not the ones who have waited for decades. Grief will taint the brightness for someone else.