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[Music] [Applause] % [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:44
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man whose back beat is as big as Liberty devitos he is
00:01:52
the captain I got dumps like a truck truck truck thighs like I said I said back beat not backside hide well it's
00:02:00
good to see and it's good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend tonight we are drinking project
00:02:12
dank by lumbre Brewing Company garage grade 4 and a quar bottle caps project dank is just that a project each recipe
00:02:20
features different Hops and techniques today we are drinking the summer edition thanks to our good friends more
00:02:27
specifically let's say hi to Lindsay and Regina Saskatchewan and big shout out to
00:02:32
Jennifer and Madisonville Louisiana off to the great state of Georgia and here's
00:02:37
a long distance cheers to Tiffany Marie in Chatsworth and Amanda in Dawsonville and a big shout out to deop and Kar and
00:02:45
parts unkknown and last but not least here's a high five to our friend Jason from West Haven Connecticut thanks
00:02:52
everybody for helping out with this week's beer run if you want to help us up and fill up the fridge for next
00:02:56
week's show go to True Crim garage.com and click on the Donate button yeah all the cool kids are doing it all your
00:03:02
friends are donating so you should too and that's enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a
00:03:10
chair grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] [Music] crime the brand Brans were not rich but
00:03:31
they certainly were comfortable and happy Richard branagan's job as a sales representative for a cement company
00:03:39
based out of New Jersey provided well for his family they were able to buy a house in
00:03:46
an exclusive section of Bethlehem Pennsylvania the house on Pinetop Trail was in a secluded wooded area the
00:03:55
driveway allowed for privacy the house came with all the benefits of suburban life in the
00:04:02
1970s quality schools quality friends and the safety of a well-to-do group of neighbors the branagan family was a
00:04:11
typical 1960s family Peg and Richard had two children Shawn and his little sister
00:04:18
Holly and Peg was a stay-at-home mom but life can change on a dime and it did for the Brans when Peg was diagnosed
00:04:29
with leukemia she fought hard but ended up losing her battle in November of 1976 throughout her illness the family
00:04:39
Dynamic changed at 14 Holly started to take over the role of the Homemaker she did her best to keep the
00:04:48
family unit moving through everyday life as her mother slipped away this role she
00:04:54
assumed without complaint and the three of them had to pull together to keep keep moving
00:05:01
forward 3 years after Peg passed the children had grown it was 1979 Shawn was a freshman at Lehigh
00:05:11
University mahol was a junior at Freedom High School Shawn was interested in cars and
00:05:19
he worked at rener service station in Hanover Township this was a Mobile gas station
00:05:24
that also serviced Vehicles Holly grew into a respectful quiet teen she was an average student
00:05:32
and sang Alto in the Senior Choir at school she was also the manager of the boys school soccer team Holly did work a
00:05:41
summer job at the local Holiday Inn as a server but had recently left the job for
00:05:47
part-time work at the mall her plans after high school were to attend Penn State
00:05:54
University with their dad traveling most of the week for work the Branan children
00:05:59
became very independent they didn't have the typical parental supervision Holly and Shawn both lived
00:06:07
their own lives they looked out for each other but each had their own group of friends and
00:06:14
habits this never was an issue until March 28th 1979 [Music] on Wednesday March 28th
00:06:44
1979 17-year-old Holly branagan attended school and took the bus home as usual she entered her house and proceeded on
00:06:53
with her day just like any other this meant calling her friends and talking on the phone at l length that day at school
00:07:01
Holly had made plans with friends to go out for pizza she was going to be picked
00:07:06
up at her house at 6:00 p.m. Holly was on the phone in her bedroom with one of her friends when at 4:40 p.m. she told
00:07:14
her friend that someone was at the door Holly placed the phone on her bed and went to answer the door the friend would
00:07:22
wait a few minutes listening to the radio playing in the background a couple minutes later Holly picked up the phone
00:07:29
in the kitchen and informed her friend that someone was there and she would have to end the call at 4:45 p.m. Holly
00:07:37
called her father's office and asked his secretary B if her father had already left for his business trip be told her
00:07:45
he had indeed left the office and was on his way to Atlantic City at 5:00 p.m. Holly's friend calls
00:07:53
her back side note here there there are two versions of this and it may be important important we can evaluate that
00:08:00
later but some reports state that the phone rang but no one answered the phone mhm other Reports say that the friend
00:08:08
heard a busy signal at 600 p.m. one of Holly's other friends this is her friend Sally arrives
00:08:15
to pick her up to go for pizza the friend knocks on the front door and is greeted by the family dog the dog's name
00:08:22
is Clancy and the dog of course is barking because Somebody's knocking on the door her friend knocks again but
00:08:28
once again nobody answers the friend assumes Holly is either in the shower running late for
00:08:35
their plans or maybe she has changed her plans and was already out of the house so her friend decides to walk around to
00:08:43
the side of the house to a staircase that leads to the kitchen sliding glass door she stops at the base of the stairs
00:08:51
when she quote had a bad feeling end quote her feeling caused her not to ascend the stairs at the same time as
00:09:00
Holly was home after school Shawn her brother was at his friend's house his friend's name is Mark Viola yeah Mark
00:09:09
was 18 and Mark lived with his parents at the time when Mark's mother made dinner that night she asked Shawn if he
00:09:16
would like to stay for dinner and this was an offer that that happened regularly and Shawn never turned down
00:09:24
this offer you know you know how it goes when you're at a buddy's house and you're a teenager 18 19 and his mom's
00:09:31
cooking dinner you stick around right you stick around for a couple hours well and his his mom just passed away also
00:09:37
and so then you know I grew up living with my father so if anybody offered me food I took it because you didn't have
00:09:44
the mom at home cooking the good meal the weird thing here Captain is not only has his mother passed away but on this
00:09:52
night his father would be out of town traveling for work which was not an uncommon occurrence mhm and then he has
00:10:00
his younger sister who's at home but the vibe that I get from this situation is it wouldn't be terribly uncommon for
00:10:09
Holly even being a minor to stay home by herself yeah but I think once you get into you know late middle school high
00:10:17
school it's pretty common that you're left home alone mhm well the the two young men uh Holly's brother Shawn and
00:10:26
his friend Mark at Mark's house they were work on a vehicle and even after dinner they decided hey look things are
00:10:33
going good on this project let's just stay and finish up this project so let's after dinner let's get back to working
00:10:40
on the car now Shawn knew that this would run very late into the night and he would probably be spending the night
00:10:48
at Mark's home yeah so he's going to call home to tell his sister that he's spending the night at his buddy's house
00:10:54
he's going to get the Busy Signal though he won't actually speak with Holly and from my standing he tries to call
00:11:01
several times that night to let her know but keep in mind his sister that he's trying to reach she's a junior in high
00:11:08
school and one thing we do know about her typical day is that she spent the evenings on the phone right so calling
00:11:15
home getting the busy signal it's not going to set off any red flags for Shawn because he's at his friend's house he's
00:11:22
calling home trying to reach his sister one could assume that she would be on the phone that night just going about
00:11:29
her normal business well the following day the next morning of March 29th one of Holly's friends arrives at the house
00:11:36
to pick her up for school the friend knocks on the door but the only answer she gets is the dog her friend knocks
00:11:44
again and leaves for school without any contact from Holly now her brother Shawn
00:11:48
arrived home in the morning and found Holly's lifeless body lying on the kitchen floor near the sliding glass
00:11:55
door she was lying in a dried pool of blood with a blade of a 10-in kitchen knife sticking out of her right side of
00:12:04
her back the handle to the murder weapon was lying on the floor near Holly the handle had snapped and broke off Sean
00:12:12
sees the kitchen phone is off the hook and a clock is broken and on the floor the hands of the clock had stopped and
00:12:19
remained at 5:20 Shawn leaves the house and calls the police and then calls his father's
00:12:26
office the office calls Richard and he returns home immediately the police arrive and they start to process the
00:12:35
scene this police force unfortunately has very little experience in Murder investigations they fail to tape off the
00:12:44
house in the yard instead of limiting access to the scene they let several people enter and leave the house they do
00:12:53
process the scene as best as they know how they collected fingerprints and took many photographs the handle to the knife
00:13:01
was collected on further examination it was determined that the handle had been wiped clean it contained no prints there
00:13:10
was talk of a bloody towel being recovered from the scene but no evidence of that exist to this day there was no
00:13:19
sign of anything missing from the house Holly's body was taken to the corner and
00:13:25
it was determined that she had 18 wounds mostly to the back out of the 18 wounds 15 would have been
00:13:32
fatal stab wounds three were less serious wounds and Holly had a couple of defensive wounds on her hands so let's
00:13:40
talk about what that could mean here Captain we see that we have 18 wounds 15 of them were fatal stab wounds that's a
00:13:48
serious that means any one of these 15 stab wounds would have killed her mhm and we talked about the weapon being a
00:13:56
10-in kitchen knife so this is something that most likely might have been grabbed
00:14:01
In the Heat of the Moment and she's stabbed repeatedly well wouldn't we know this I mean would we know if the knife
00:14:08
came from inside the house or if it came from outside the house yes it came from
00:14:13
the branigan's home it it belong to the Brans and so we have this situation here
00:14:19
where most of the wounds are to her back she had very few defensive wounds there's a chance that whoever decided to
00:14:28
attack her and for whatever reason waited until her back was turned and then they went after her and she would
00:14:35
have died very quickly during this attack and then she's left on the floor let's just go over this a little bit
00:14:41
more so she's on the phone with one of her friends mhm and she puts down the phone says hey there's somebody at the
00:14:49
door so she puts the phone down right so we don't know if her friend on the phone
00:14:55
if she heard dog barking or not right right her friend heard a radio so when when Holly put the phone down the radio
00:15:05
was playing either in the house or inside Holly's room at that time she was on the phone in her room right okay so
00:15:12
when she put the phone down her friend could hear the music that was playing on the radio so she couldn't in the
00:15:18
background she never I couldn't find any reports of her saying that she heard the
00:15:23
dog barking um looking at the layout of the house there could have been a decent
00:15:29
amount of distance between Holly's room and the front door yeah and so with the radio being on even you know I have a
00:15:37
couple dogs and they bark regardless they bark whether it's somebody they know or somebody they don't know if
00:15:42
somebody knocks on the door MH so given the distance between her room in the front door and the added fact that the
00:15:51
radio's on that could have drowned out the noise of the dog I would assume the dog was barking at that time so then she
00:15:58
goes and answers the door Holly goes and answers the door correct she then gets back on the phone in the kitchen not
00:16:05
immediately not immediately yes some time passes a few minutes several minutes pass and then she it's believed
00:16:13
that she picked up the phone in the kitchen and says to her friend hey um somebody's here I'll have to call
00:16:21
you back it almost seems like Holly doesn't know this individual because if it was somebody that was common to her
00:16:28
and her friend she would say Hey you know Jake is here well that's that's the tricky thing and um that is what the
00:16:38
investigators were hoping to find out now the weird thing here though is think about that sequence of events so she
00:16:46
puts down the phone goes and answers the door and her friend remains on the phone
00:16:51
for several minutes before Holly returns to the phone regardless if it's the phone in her bedroom or in the kitchen
00:16:57
regardless what phone several minutes pass right before Holly then says hey I'm going to have to call you back
00:17:05
somebody's here what that tells me is two things when she answered the door she can can we can we agree that there's
00:17:15
a chance if it was somebody she didn't know she might not answer the door I'm not saying it's 100% but there could be
00:17:22
a small chance that hey I don't recognize this person I'm home alone I'm just not going to answer the door right
00:17:27
that's a Poss that's a possibility so I think that that leans to the point of either she knew the person or at least
00:17:34
the person seemed to be non-threatening there was no obvious signs of a threat she willingly opens up the door engages
00:17:41
in some kind of conversation with this individual to the point of this person may have been unexpected I think if it
00:17:48
was somebody that was either expected or somebody that she knew very well she might know immediately hey I'm going to
00:17:55
talk to this person or welcome them in and then tell her friend almost immediately hey so and so's here I'm
00:18:02
going to have to call you back right but what happens instead is several minutes
00:18:06
pass it's almost like when she answered the door and saw this person and then engaged in conversation with him she did
00:18:12
not know from the get-go that this was going to turn into a longer conversation a longer visit than expected and then so
00:18:19
there's two things one she doesn't know this individual so that's why she's telling her friend someone quote unquote
00:18:26
someone mhm or she knows this individual it's uh maybe a guy that she's seeing on
00:18:31
the side and that she's not telling her friends about cuz that happens mhm and so when she goes to tell her friend hey
00:18:39
uh I mean she could have been sitting there at the door flirting with this guy we don't know and she gets back on the
00:18:45
phone and tells her friend uh somebody's here cuz I can't tell you who is here so
00:18:52
either or in my mind the tricky thing becomes then she hangs up the phone and she call calls her father's work mhm to
00:19:01
find out if he's left on his trip yet right so one it could be junior in high school has a guy come
00:19:10
over wants to make sure her father left you know on his trip mhm and so we can sit here and hang out have the house to
00:19:19
ourselves worst case scenario my brother comes home but that's not a big deal right right
00:19:26
or it's I want to see if my father left because this guy's asking about my father or I need to speak to my father
00:19:33
for some reason I lean towards the point towards the side of she was looking to speak with her father with knowing how
00:19:39
often he traveled for work I think that it wouldn't be tough for her to put together plans if she had plans of
00:19:46
hanging out and doing things maybe that her father wouldn't approve of I don't think it would have been very hard in a
00:19:53
single parent home with a with a father that's traveling often for work right so
00:19:58
more to me I feel like this is almost like she needed to get a hold of her father for some reason and this reason
00:20:04
was unexpected whatever came up came up it just came up and she's trying to get a hold of her father you know back in
00:20:12
the day well before cell phones you have to call the office to try to get a hold
00:20:16
of Dad well here's where it gets a little more tricky because did this individual know her father and say hey
00:20:23
um I'm here to see your father so she calls and says hey I'm I'm going to hey has my dad left yet you know she might
00:20:31
not have went into details of cuz there's somebody at the house to see himh or did this person not know her
00:20:38
father and it was just a ruse to get into the house right you know what I mean like hey I'm here to see your
00:20:44
father because if I use that as a ruse well my father's not here MH so what I mean like um it's kind of like if
00:20:53
somebody asks you is your parents home you're always supposed to say yes if they called on the phone back in the '
00:20:59
80s that was the thing like people would call and be like are your parents at home right and you're supposed to say
00:21:05
yes even if they're not like but they're in the shower or whatever right so but what a great ruse to get inside the
00:21:12
house you know hey I'm here to see your father right oh well he's not here well where is he at and that to me that makes
00:21:21
a little bit of sense because like you said she would know her father's travel Arrangements a little bit since he's
00:21:28
traveling so much mhm and he's traveling on a school night right but it seems like she almost called the office to say
00:21:35
hey is he available to talk or is he coming back mhm so again but that's where it becomes tricky because was it
00:21:42
just a ruse to get in the house or or did this individual actually know her father but then you have to question why
00:21:49
does the individual want to be in the house in the first place regardless of if they use a ruse or if or if it was
00:21:56
known to Holly who this person was right because we have the coroner who had later determined that there was no signs
00:22:03
of sexual assault they also claimed that there might have been some material under her fingernails so her nails were
00:22:10
clipped and preserved I question If that had anything to do with the actual crime
00:22:16
itself with seeing so many of the wounds to her back and very few what we would call defensive wounds I almost wonder if
00:22:26
there was really no defense put up at all well it seems like this perpetrator did not bring a weapon with them gets in
00:22:33
the house at some point grabs a knife starts stabbing her why she's back facing him mhm um and then like you said
00:22:42
it's so vicious I mean 15 stab wounds that are fatal I mean that seems um like there's some
00:22:50
rage yes this is a strong angry person that did this this is a strong angry person so yeah keep that in mind that's
00:22:58
what I think we're dealing with here we I think we're dealing with somebody that
00:23:02
that might have been welcomed into the home for some reason that showed up to the house with didn't intend to kill her
00:23:09
because they or maybe they did well they they could have but not bringing a murder weapon to a murder scene usually
00:23:16
suggests that they weren't planning to kill the individual but if you knew this family pretty well and that you knew
00:23:22
that she was going to be home alone uh father's going to be out on a trip mhm all I have to do is get into the house
00:23:30
and get to the kitchen again no signs of sexual assault and the thought is that nothing had been stolen from the
00:23:37
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2023 all right cheers M mes cheers Captain all right so I have a couple question questions so at 4:40 she's
00:26:00
talking to her friend she tells the friend hey somebody's at my door mhm at 4:45 according to the secretary Holly
00:26:08
then calls her father's work to see if he's left yet on the business trip then we have this broken clock at 520 correct
00:26:17
so maybe their clock is a little off some people's clocks are a little off in their house but let's just assume that
00:26:24
it's correct or or even roughly correct if it's within a few minutes it's still helpful right so we can assume that the
00:26:33
attack probably happened around that point correct that so talking with somebody last week about this case I did
00:26:42
throw this out there and I know it's not a very high probability but I did throw
00:26:46
this out there just from my own personal experience I told him I said you know uh
00:26:51
at any given point in my life it's very likely that I had one Broken Clock hanging on a wall somewhere in my house
00:26:58
I just do like they quit running I never look at them for actual time and they're
00:27:02
more there for decoration the battery goes out at some point and it stops running until I change it months and
00:27:09
months and months later correct so that we're not ignoring that as a very small slight possibility that it was just a
00:27:17
clock that happened not to work that it said 520 all the time right um that yeah
00:27:23
but that but the likelihood seems very incred L slim because here's the deal I think what we can assume here is that
00:27:33
with her being found dead inside the home yeah I think we can assume that she's already dead by 6:00 p.m. because
00:27:41
of the friend coming to visit I I think that there's no evidence to suggest anything otherwise right we have we have
00:27:48
her on the phone we know she's alive at approximately 440 p.m. if the secretary's timing is right and I I tend
00:27:55
to believe secretaries when when they give quotes on time why because think about the typical setup at an office
00:28:02
you're stationed at a desk your phone your secretary phone is on your secretary's desk there's almost always a
00:28:09
clock in the room and sometimes you're trained to you know when I used to answer the phone for my boss one of the
00:28:15
things he wanted to know about what time the person called right you know that was included in my little note to him so
00:28:22
um I tend to believe that the secretary's time is fairly accurate so we know that Holly is alive at 4:45 p.m.
00:28:31
we know at 6:00 p.m. approximately 600 p.m. when her friend shows up the door is not answered she knocks several times
00:28:38
so I think it's only likely to assume that she may have been lying dead in the house at 600 p.m. and that clock somehow
00:28:46
was broke in the altercation that took place between Holly and the offender okay those were some of my Bon head
00:28:53
questions so how about you lead us down the initial investigation not bonehead questions at all Captain because the I
00:29:00
will tell you what my questions are what they're not the time the time frame on this is very important I think and so
00:29:08
will the investigators so after the police are finished up at the house and the everything's been cleaned up Richard
00:29:15
and Shawn move back into the home the police begin their investigation interviewing the friends who had last
00:29:22
contact with Holly the friend who was on the phone was interviewed but could not
00:29:26
recall any details out of the ordinary she states that it was just an unremarkable conversation between two
00:29:33
teenage girls when asked about the exact times of the call and when Holly left to
00:29:40
answer the door the girl was not too sure about any of these times the police then interviewed the friend who stopped
00:29:49
by around 6:00 p.m. to pick up Holly to go for pizza both girls could not provide any information for the police
00:29:57
to start their investigation with no leads from either of these uh the ear witness or the person that stopped by
00:30:05
the house we will Circle back to this Captain I assure you of that so the police then decide to widen their
00:30:12
investigation sha Holly's brother and his friend Mark well they fall under suspicion but very quickly their Alibi
00:30:21
checks out and was confirmed also not only there aliis but one it's weird that you'd ring the door and you can kind of
00:30:30
roll out the the father because why would the father show up she talks to the father then calls her father's work
00:30:37
MH unless the father was like makes her call mhm right to set up an alibi mhm but it just doesn't seem you know I mean
00:30:48
and and if and if your father did show up you'd tell your friend on the phone hey my father's here I got to go what
00:30:53
was really weird about this though this is supposed to be a tight-knit Safe Community there didn't seem to be a
00:31:00
whole lot of people that were willing to help the investigation along so her high
00:31:04
school friends the friends of Holly that were under the age of 18 their parents kind of stepped in and
00:31:12
wouldn't allow them to be interviewed or answer questions from the police the high school friends that were over the
00:31:18
age of 18 A lot of times attorneys were hired and they refused to be interviewed as
00:31:25
well that's shady very shady so the police now hit a serious dead end not much evidence at the scene no
00:31:33
fingerprints and no one to interview to provide any leads so the police decide to request the help of the amazing
00:31:42
keskin George keskin is a mentalist he is known for hypnotizing people to pull details from their memory that they
00:31:50
could not do with normal recall m in this case he hypnotized the friend who was on the phone with Holly when the
00:31:59
murderer or when someone had arrived at the door he was able to hypnotize her and have her identify the songs that
00:32:08
were playing in the background while Holly went and answered the door they then took this information to the local
00:32:16
radio station and they were able to determine the exact time that Holly answered the door this is back in the
00:32:22
day when there's actually DJs probably picking the song and the song right it's probably not pre-programmed computer
00:32:31
stuff back in back in that day yeah so let's see here let's say she was on hold for 2 or 3
00:32:37
minutes maybe maybe four so I I'm guessing the way that they're determining this is the sequence of the
00:32:44
songs that she heard like okay you I heard this this and then maybe the start of this song and they take it to the
00:32:50
station they say well that occurred around 4:40 p.m. on that Wednesday which is very interesting and it's actually a
00:32:59
very creative way to try to get this time frame because the way we're reporting this Captain it it's not so
00:33:06
much a mystery to you and I because we know the facts later afterwards right the initial investigation the ones that
00:33:14
gave us the facts yeah but the initial investigation the what they get from that person on the phone yeah they don't
00:33:20
have any times they have no times to go off of it was sometime in the afternoon I think she originally told the police
00:33:27
that it was sometime between 4: and 5:00 p.m. that they were on the phone and that's as much as they had right so they
00:33:34
were able to really narrow this down instead of having a 60-minute window or even a little more beyond that they're
00:33:40
really able to nail this down to hey at about 4:40 p.m. is when somebody knocked
00:33:46
on the door so very key piece of information to know what time that phone call took place and what time it is
00:33:53
believed that somebody had arrived at the door the other thing here too Captain the investigation what they're
00:34:00
working with is they're seeing a scene where somebody took the time to clean the scene somebody took the time to wipe
00:34:08
fingerprints off of the handle of the knife and off of other locations in the house so police start working with a
00:34:15
theory here that there was a very good chance that at 6:00 when Sally arrived to pick Holly up for pizza that either
00:34:24
the murderer was still on the scene or had just left and was in the immediate area right this is why when she had that
00:34:32
gut feeling that something was wrong Sally may have saved herself from an encounter with the murderer now with no
00:34:41
leads the investigation stalls and Shawn her brother started spreading rumors on
00:34:47
May 10th 1980 the mayor of Bethlehem Pennsylvania declared it Holly branagan reward fund day they set up a hotline
00:34:57
for donations and Holly's High School performed a play with the proceeds going to the reward fund they collected over
00:35:07
$5,000 the lack of progress in the investigation really upset her brother Shawn he started to spread a rumor that
00:35:17
he and the police knew who had killed Holly yeah it's not a bad tactic well and he also starts telling people that
00:35:26
not only do they know who did it but the police were getting ready to make an arrest yeah his father Richard warned
00:35:34
him that this kind of talk might upset the murderer and make Shawn a possible Target uh Shawn didn't seem to care he
00:35:43
continued to spread these rumors to everyone that was willing to listen that's a kind of a weird thing for the
00:35:49
father to say well I don't think so I think he's been a victim once he's worried about something could happen
00:35:56
happened to his son right so Shawn is a sophomore at college and on September 9th
00:36:03
1979 uh there was an explosion at the rener service station where he worked at 9:30 a.m. as part of a regular cleanup
00:36:13
routine Shawn and his friend Mark were scrubbing the floor with two cups of gasoline to loosen the grease off of the
00:36:21
floor the boys were scrubbing prior to using a power washer to wash away the grind
00:36:27
Mark walked out as a customer had pulled up to get gasoline the doors to this area were shut when the explosion
00:36:35
occurred inside the service station with Shawn still inside Mark ran to the doors
00:36:41
but the Flames were too great for him to enter he went around to the side and he
00:36:46
found Shawn climbing out of the window Shawn was still on fire and had been burned over most of his body Mark put
00:36:55
out the flames and comforted Shawn until medical help could arrive Shawn begged markot to leave him during this time the
00:37:04
ambulance arrived and transported Shawn to the hospital he was unable to talk but the police wanted to interview Shawn
00:37:12
about his sister's murder in case he had a deathbed confession to give they asked
00:37:17
Shawn yes and no questions that he responded to by moving his head he was asked if he had killed Holly or if he
00:37:25
knew who killed Holly he signaled no to both questions Shawn would die from his injuries the following day now Richard
00:37:35
his father had lost his whole entire family right an investigation into Shawn's accident was conducted by the
00:37:42
State Fire Marshall it was concluded that the power washer had a faulty switch which caused an electrical Arc to
00:37:51
ignite the gasoline fumes Richard would go to his grave believing that Shawn was
00:37:57
murdered by someone involved in Holly's death he believed the rumor Shawn was spreading made the murderer frightened
00:38:04
enough to kill Shawn this belief was deepened in Richard's mind when the owner of the power washer was found dead
00:38:12
under suspicious circumstances 6 years after Shawn's death there's a lot to unpack here yes
00:38:22
so they're working at the service station they they claim that the there's a faulty switch and the electricity that
00:38:30
would go through the faulty switch that sparked and enited the gasoline that would be all over the floor and all over
00:38:37
the shop right and so then this guy ends up dead the guy that owned the power washer correct okay how did he die well
00:38:45
let's go through that real quick and then we we can Circle back yeah this is there's a lot of death here okay so the
00:38:51
power washer that caused the explosion that killed Shawn was borrowed from a restaurant from a business a few doors
00:38:58
down from the rener service station the owner of this place and it's called The King Chef lent the power washer to rener
00:39:07
service station on August 12th 1985 Tony Sorano the owner of the King Chef Restaurant was found dead in his car two
00:39:17
people on their way to go fishing past his car which was still running and discovered his body on the initial exam
00:39:25
there was trauma to the the back of sorano's head this led people to believe that he was murdered but during the
00:39:31
autopsy it was discovered that Mr sanana had strick nine in his system and after
00:39:38
this discovery the coroner ruled his death a suicide adding to the rumors of explain strict nine so it's it's it's
00:39:47
highly poisonous okay if you take it you're going to die okay don't ever take that so strict nine don't take it right
00:39:56
so but this is just one of these weird things here I think this is a weird coincidence it was his death was ruled a
00:40:03
suicide okay and Shawn's death was ruled an accident these both both these incidents were looked into they were
00:40:11
looked into and they were ruled by people that that are paid to do so that have experience in this area it's it's
00:40:17
not like both deaths are are labeled undetermined all these years later and I spoke with a uh a firefighter regarding
00:40:28
the the Shawn accident and you know there's not we don't have official documents to review but what we could
00:40:36
find we reviewed together and he said look I used to I used to do these types of Investigations there's no reason to
00:40:43
believe that this story isn't correct there's nothing that points out that this is not correct yeah it's very
00:40:49
likely I mean that's one of the reasons why they'd say I mean you can have static electricity off your clothes
00:40:55
could start a huge fire in a gas station or your cell phone usage can start a fire so a faulty switch on a power
00:41:04
washer uh definitely could start a fire well and I tell you what we you know we have so so much experience with gas and
00:41:11
we use it daily I think that a lot of people take take it for granted how dangerous and how flammable gas can be
00:41:19
yeah some people have more gas than others well the thing is though I think people forget how explosive gas can be
00:41:27
given the right circumstances and if this is exactly how it went down the way we just told this it seems almost
00:41:35
like I mean forgive me for saying so you're playing with fire here right well also if you're cleaning in you know they
00:41:41
said he's inside the service station if they're using gasoline to be cleaning things inside the service station then
00:41:48
you're also having all those fumes that they're not going anywhere right those places weren't properly
00:41:55
ventilated back in the the day no and I would guess that that normal protocol and procedure would be when cleaning
00:42:01
with gas to open up and vent out the place they may have simply just turned on this power washer too quickly thus
00:42:09
causing some kind of spark that ignites into this explosion so if you have a faulty power washer or a faulty engine
00:42:17
or any piece of electrical part of that of that P power washer is faulty right you could get a spark that in a closed
00:42:25
environment filled with gas fumes would in fact create some type of explosion now when
00:42:32
Shawn was hanging out with Mark is this his buddy Mark that he spent the night with correct correct so I mean it's kind
00:42:38
of odd that he's hanging out with Mark the day his sister is murdered and then he's hanging out with Mark when he dies
00:42:47
no I agree with that it's it seems like hey little odd two coincidences in one unless you're hanging out with this guy
00:42:53
every day anyways right it appears that they worked together that they worked on
00:42:57
vehicles together we also have witness statements of of Shawn saying that Mark he wanted Mark by his side when as he
00:43:05
was dying it was one of those situations man his injuries were so bad they knew he was going to die they knew when we
00:43:12
take him to the hospital he's not going to recover from this it's only a matter of time so Holly and Shan's mother
00:43:20
passes away with cancer Holly is then murdered inside their home sha then dies and what we think is an accident
00:43:32
mhm it's almost as if like their father or something made a deal with the devil and that the devil's coming back to
00:43:42
collect well that's the first thing that jumps off the page to you when you look
00:43:47
at this case there's so much death there's so much tragedy surrounding Richard branagan and you know I hate to say this
00:43:57
because my initial suspicions they went toward Richard branagan right just because it seemed to
00:44:05
me that this just seems like too much but here's the thing we do know that his wife died from cancer I can't give you
00:44:12
cancer I can't make you get cancer I can't make you die of cancer that's just that's just something that happened
00:44:19
that's just something that happened and unfortunately it in our lives nowadays we know it happens to somebody we know
00:44:26
somebody we love it happens in every family it's just an unfortunate terrible thing so that we need to ignore that
00:44:34
that that can't be part of the coincidence for us the other thing that we need to keep in mind here though too
00:44:40
is her father from nothing that I could find was ever a suspect in her murder or
00:44:47
in the investigation the investigation never seemed to lean that way that tells me a few things just like her brother
00:44:55
Shawn who had an airtight Alibi right you know we don't have to use our imagination too much to come up with an
00:45:02
airtight Alibi for Shawn Shawn's actually received more suspicion over the years than his father Richard but
00:45:09
see Shawn we know was at his friend's house and we know that they stayed there that night and we know that the friend
00:45:15
still lived with at least his mother if not both parents so Shawn more than likely has multiple aliis for the time
00:45:23
of his sister's death as far as the father goes I'm going out on a limb here captain and I'm making the assumption
00:45:31
that he has an alibi as well and I'm doing that based off of just that he was never listed as a suspect he was never
00:45:39
discussed as a suspect where we even have Shawn publicly being discussed as a suspect at some point well we do have a
00:45:46
record of her calling her father's office at 4:45 and asking if the father's there and the father has gone
00:45:53
on business so you would think that whether he's driving a car he would have had to have some Rental receipt or if
00:45:59
he's flying on a plane he would have the airline ticket so those could be your airtight Alibi well he's going to have
00:46:07
as you said receipts this could include gas receipts this also could include checking into a hotel somewhere and they
00:46:13
could be able to easily verify that hey if if the secretary says he left at this
00:46:19
time we have this gas receipt from here and he checks into the hotel at this time then there's very likely little
00:46:28
possibility that he could have had the time to go out of his way return to his home attack and kill his daughter and
00:46:35
then continue on his trip sometimes it's just an impossibility there's just not enough time and I think in all fairness
00:46:43
we need to add in here that Holly's Father Richard never stopped searching for her killer it was not one of these
00:46:52
parents that just disappeared moved off to another city went about his business as though nothing happened this man was
00:47:00
severely affected by the loss of his whole family he was severely affected by the loss of his wife by his daughter and
00:47:07
by his son and the man continued to live in that home in the home that Holly was
00:47:12
murdered in until he was very late in [Music] age all right thanks for listening
00:47:23
thanks for telling a friend make sure you get your filling FY shirt at the discounted price of $1
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