The Brutal Murders That Shook Massachusetts.

Introduction

In the winter of 1979, the Freetown State Forest outside of the city of Fall River, Massachusetts, would become the backdrop for a series of brutal murders that gripped the nation. In the span of just a few months, three young women were found dead with striking similarities: all sex workers in the city’s bustling red light district; all killed in brutal ways.

The cases of Doreen Levesque, Barbara Raposa, and Karen Marsden spiraled into national headlines. The ritualistic aspects of the murders, when combined with the infamous reputation of the nearby Freetown State Forest for Satanic activities, only fueled the fire. A Satanic cult. Ritual human sacrifice. A pimp who called himself the son of the Devil.

If this sounds like something out of a horror movie script, it shouldn’t: these cases were all too real. The official trials that would follow and lock three individuals behind bars for decades were based on these accusations. According to the official story, justice was served in at least two of these cases. The public was assured that all was well, and there was nothing to be afraid of.

Could all of this be true? Was justice really served in the case of the Fall River Murders? Or was there more to this case than meets the eye?

Background

Fall River had known violence, prostitution, and drugs for decades in the lead up to the murders. This case would be different from anything that came before, though: a city that had acquiesced to gang violence and poverty had never seen brutality of this nature. From the moment that the details of these cases began to swirl around the city, the public was captivated—and word began to spread across the nation.

Before delving into the details of the murders, we need to zoom out and take a higher-level view of Fall River at the tail end of the 70’s and the environment in which these women lived. All three of them were prostitutes, working the streets in a small area around the Bedford Street’s red light district.

Once known for its factories and mills, the city at this point had become well known for its booming prostitution network. The police were overwhelmed by it all, and judges were hesitant to hand down prison sentences to the women caught up in it as the recidivism rate after release was astronomical. By the late seventies, Fall River was quite literally importing prostitution, with women travelling from surrounding cities like Providence that had stricter enforcement to work the streets. As one of the police who had worked the case would go on to say in a recent interview, “there were so many girls working the streets those days that there were traffic jams on Friday and Saturday nights.”

In the Bedford Street area, the man who ran the show was Carl Drew. At just 26, he had an extremely troubled upbringing that led him to get on the wrong side of law enforcement from an early age. Born into extreme poverty a state away in New Hampshire, he had a viciously abusive father who would frequently beat him in his younger years. By the time he was an early teen, he said that one day he simply “had enough,” knocked his father “on his ass,” and left the house for good.

It wasn’t long before he had gotten into trouble with law enforcement, going to jail when he was around 16 for holding up a convenience store. He was out and back on the streets shortly, though, and took a liking to Fall River’s night scene. He smelled opportunity and began setting up a network of prostitution in his early twenties, developing a reputation for having a raging temper and being very prone to violence.

Here enters Robin Murphy, at the time just 16 years old. While she never worked directly with Drew, they would ultimately come to operate in a similar area on Bedford Street overseeing a large number of prostitutes. If you were thinking that this 16 year old girl is someone who couldn’t handle herself in an area like that, you clearly never met Murphy. She was tough as nails and spoke the same language of violence as Drew.

While they never were particularly close and didn’t like each other, the two of them would learn to coexist.

As the seventies drew to a close, these two were on top of the underworld in the city. As with so much else in life though, all “good” things must come to an end. Just how abruptly this would go down, though, would shock them all.

The Killings

In the early morning of October 13, 1979, two joggers found the lifeless body of a teenage girl under the bleachers at Diamond Regional Vocational High School in Fall River. The scene was unlike anything they could have even imagined. Fall River, as you may have gathered by this point, was not a city where violent crime was uncommon. But when such cases did happen, they were normally muggings, hit-and-runs, and the like.

The scene before these joggers that fateful morning was anything but that. The girl was unrecognizable, as her skull had been crushed in with a large blunt object. She had been bound, her clothing partially removed and sadistically tortured before death. Shocked, they scrambled to find the nearest payphone to call in their finding.

Fall River police were equally stunned when they arrived on scene: none of them had ever seen a murder like this. It would take several days before investigators were able to identify her: this was the body of 17 year old Doreen Levesque, who had a poor relationship with her family and after running away had got herself caught up in the city’s prostitution network.

It wouldn’t take long before word spread throughout the city, and people were nervous. It especially sent shockwaves through the network of sex workers in the area, who were all too familiar with violence used against them.

Shortly after the discovery, a man came forward to the police named Andy Maltais, who told them that he had two friends who had knowledge of the murder. Keen on getting as much information as possible, police urged him to bring them in. Within a day, he would have two young women sitting in front of investigators: the first was Robin Murphy, who we met in the last chapter; the other was an associate of hers named Karen Marsden.

The two took radically divergent approaches, though: Murphy was cool and said almost nothing, sitting back and letting Marsden do the talking. For her part, Marsden was completely terrified. She did not specify what exactly she had seen but repeatedly said that she would be killed if she said anything about it.

One thing that stood out immediately: she was deeply afraid of Carl Drew, who she mentioned by name as the person who would kill her if word got out that she was talking.

Marsden’s insistence that her safety was in danger from Drew would come to play a crucial role in the investigation later on. For the police though, there was little they could do as she would not give any specifics or evidence about much of anything—she wouldn’t even let them place her in protective custody.

While all of this was unfolding, speculation began to escalate throughout the city with many linking Doreen’s death to something more… demonic. The nearby Freetown State Forest had long been rumored to be the scene of an unholy trifecta of gang activity, sexual violence, and Satanic cult worship involving altars, Black Masses, and animal sacrifice. While exact details are a bit murky, it earned this reputation: just a few years prior, it had been the scene of the murder of 15 year old Mary Lou Arruda. There were also several reported cases of mutilated animal corpses turning up, as though they had been offered up as part of a Satanic Black Mass.

Could Doreen’s killing be related? Some thought that was a strong possibility.

Within the next month, there was another disappearance of another woman working the streets in Fall River. On the night of November 7th, 1979, Barbara Raposa failed to pick up her young son from the babysitter and didn’t return home to her father’s place. Raposa, like Levesque, had a challenged upbringing and by this point was a 22 year old single mother with a drug addiction. Seeing little other opportunity in the city, she began using prostitution as a way of funding her lifestyle.

It would take two and a half months before her body would be found, by which point both police and the city more broadly had resigned themselves to the overwhelming probability that Barbara had been killed. She loved her son with all her heart, and never would have abandoned him like that. On a brutally cold January day, hunters in that same Freetown State Forest happened upon her body partially buried in the snow. She had clearly been there for a long time, and her body had frozen in the winter cold after partially decomposing.

The similarities to the murder of Doreen Levesque a few months beforehand were striking: Raposa’s hands were bound, and she had been bludgeoned to death on her skull with a blunt object like a rock. This was not going to be the last of the killings, though: less than a month later, the third and final young woman in this tragic series of crimes would go missing, never to be seen from again.

Karen Marsden, having long been afraid for her life given everything that was unfolding, spoke to the police one final time on February 8th, 1980. Refusing protective custody and offers to get her out of the city once again, she insisted that she wanted to go to Saint Mary’s Cathedral to talk to a priest. Unable to hold her against her will, the police gave her a ride and dropped her off.

Marsden would never be seen from again. The following day, her grandmother called the police to report her missing and provided a name to follow up on: Carl Drew. It would once again take weeks before any trace of Marsden turned up. When it did, it was the most horrific yet: they were only able to find pieces of her skull, traces of hair, tatters of her clothing, and a blood-stained rock.

Fallout

Piecing these murders together was going to be the challenge of these detectives’ careers. As the cases continued to pile up, they knew they needed to act before yet another young woman went missing. But what did they have on these cases at this point?

The first murder, Doreen Levesque, left them with the least amount to go off of. Despite being dumped at a high school, there were no witnesses to the crime. Local police sent the rock found next to her body down to Washington, D.C. to try to get fingerprints lifted off of it—but none were found. Nobody saw her get into a car the night she went missing with anyone, although people did vaguely remember seeing her working the streets that night.

Interestingly, Levesque wanted nothing to do with Drew or Murphy’s “protection.” She was out on her own and tried to generally steer clear of their home turf. The city is not huge, though, and she was still close enough to be seen as competition. Could this have been a motive?

The few leads that they did have originally were all problematic. Murphy said next to nothing when asked about it at the time. Marsden clearly knew something about it, but they couldn’t get her to talk. She was afraid for her life, pointing back at Carl Drew.

Raposa’s death had slightly more to go off of. The same man who had brought forward Murphy and Marsden in the aftermath of Levesque’s killing, Andy Maltais, would be particularly close to this case. He had been romantically involved with Raposa, and was potentially even the father of her child. They also had a volatile on again, off again relationship that was at the time of her killing very much in the “off again” phase.

Maltais made himself into more of a suspect by constantly getting involved with the investigation. What might have initially been seen as a natural desire to stay informed about a loved one’s fate turned into a daily routine of stopping by the police station, each time bringing new suggestions and possibility of where she might have been, or what could have happened to her.

This turned him from person of interest to lead suspect one day, when he came in holding a Bible, saying he had been with Satan before, but was now with God. He claimed to have had a vision in which two angels showed him the murder of Raposa. The story he presented to the police:

As he floated in the air at treetop level, he saw a man carry a woman and drop her on the ground. Maltais recognized her as Raposa. The man walked away and got an object. He returned, stood behind Raposa’s head, lifted the object (a rock) over his head and struck the victim repeatedly in the face, all the while screaming at her and cursing in bad English.

The victim was screaming, “Andy help me… Andy forgive me.” The murderer told her, “Andy is not going to help you, anymore.” Maltais said the motive for the murder was a love affair: the killer liked Raposa and she double crossed him.

Andy’s fate was cemented when he went with police to the murder scene. As he walked through the area, he kept telling officers that he was “getting vibes and visions,” and that he was heard more than once saying things like “I think they’ve got me now.” He would at one point abruptly stop and point to a specific tree and say, “That’s where the body was.” He also pointed to a spot in the ground a small distance away and said, “that’s where her head was.”

An officer who was there when they first discovered Raposa’s body confirmed that this was the specific location they found her. It should come as little surprise that Fall River police arrested him, charging him with first degree murder on February 7th, 1980.

While it was looking like Raposa’s case was coming to a conclusion, the same could not be said for the other two women. The only thing they had to go on at this point was Marsden, but she was not particularly cooperative and soon would disappear herself. While she did admit she knew who had killed Doreen, she never would say anything else other than that she was deathly afraid of Drew.

That changed with Marsden’s disappearance shortly after Maltais was arrested. Having last been seen entering Saint Mary’s and without a body discovered, police had even less to go off of here than they did with Doreen’s case. What they did have to go off of was the same circle of suspects as before: Robin Murphy, Carl Drew, and Andy Maltais were all associated with Marsden.

After part of Marsden’s skull was found in a wooded area just outside of Fall River, police were able to officially transform the investigation from that of a missing person to a full-blown murder case. They were able to up their game on several fronts, notably securing a wiretap of Robin Murphy herself.

Not long after starting the wiretap, police caught Murphy confessing to Marsden’s killing on a phone call to a friend. This wasn’t a one-off slip of the tongue, but rather a detailed explanation of what had taken place that night from a first person perspective. Murphy was actively involved in all of it, but she wasn’t alone.

The Official Story

The wiretap of Robin Murphy would blow the lid off this case and lead to both her arrest as well as the conviction of Carl Drew and Andy Maltais. Staring down at least one charge of first degree murder for the death of Karen Marsden—which, in Massachusetts, removes the eligibility for parole, effectively guaranteeing a life sentence—she quickly would work out a plea deal. In exchange for providing information about what really happened, prosecutors would reduce her charge to second degree murder—opening a future possibility to parole. She would serve many years behind bars, but she would at least have the chance to live life outside of jail again.

The details that Murphy provided were beyond what anyone had thought possible. She had intimate knowledge of not just Marsden’s murder, but all three of them. All of this had traced back to Carl Drew, who was far worse than anyone had realized. He was not merely a pimp with a violent tendency, but a practicing Satanist who forced the prostitutes working for him to join and partake in his ceremonies and sacrifices.

You have to keep in mind that during this time, America was going through something of a Satanic Panic—a period marked by widespread fear of ritual abuse, occult activity, and alleged underground Satanic cults. Sensational media coverage and the growth of movements such as Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan created a climate where even unproven accusations were accepted without scrutiny as fact. The nearby Freetown State Forest’s nefarious reputation for both crime and the occult made this all too real throughout the city.

While much of it was, with the benefit of hindsight, overblown, there were nevertheless those who used the rise of Satanism as a cover for nefarious acts. This was especially true in the Freetown State Forest, where criminals had acres of wooded isolation to do as they pleased. Over time, it escalated enough that the Freetown Police Department assigned Detective Lieutenant Alan Alves to focus specifically on alleged Satanic crimes in the area.

Murphy’s claims of further Satanic cult activity were by no means stretching the imagination of anyone at the time. Drew had become a hardcore, dedicated Satanist during his time running the streets in Fall River, pushing his followers deeper and deeper into ceremonies of initiation before they could work for him. Many of these women were in very difficult situations and had little choice but to go along. The legitimacy of his beliefs have been questioned, but prosecutors largely settled on a dual-track approach that Drew participated in Satanic rituals out of genuine belief—he allegedly went so far as to call himself the son of Lucifer—as well as enjoying the more secular impact of terrifying the daylights out of the young women he surrounded himself with.

As newcomers to his organization, both Murphy and Marsden had to take part in his Satanic initiation ritual. On this night, he wasn’t merely going to sacrifice an animal—he planned to up his game to sacrifice another human. Per Murphy’s testimony, Doreen Levesque was killed by Carl Drew on October 13th, 1979 as an offering to the devil and as a way of “baptizing” both Robin and Karen into his cult. They both were there, and both had to watch the brutal ritual unfold.

Levesque had been chosen because she was working alone, refusing the “protection” that Drew and his cult had offered. She was competition, and this was one way of keeping his share of the market uncontested.

Drew was also responsible for the death of Marsden, Murphy told police and testified to in court. If Levesque’s death was brutal, it paled in comparison to Marsden, whose body was dismembered and scattered throughout the area to conceal the evidence. She provided horrifying, detailed descriptions of sadistic, ritualistic acts of barbarism that were performed on the victims that shocked both prosecutors and the juries alike.

Drew had miscalculated with Marsden, she told prosecutors. While he had originally intended for the sacrifice of Levesque to terrify Karen out of ever crossing him, it had accomplished its goal—just a little too well. The girl had become a nervous wreck, and was quickly becoming something nobody in that situation ever wants to be seen as: a loose end, too emotionally volatile to be trusted. By the time word had gotten back to Drew that Marsden was talking to the police, he knew what he had to do.

Marsden knew too much, as she even admitted to those around her. She had to be silenced.

Drew and Murphy would lure Marsden into their car, taking her deep into the Freetown State Forest. By the time that they got to their destination, things had already taken a turn for the worse: she was pulled from the car by Murphy—who, keep in mind, had a romantic relationship with Marsden at the time as well—by her hair, screaming. Murphy gave lengthy, specific accounts about how the following events went down: while the exact details are too gory to recount, everything from torture to decapitations to acts of necrophilia were involved.

For her part, Murphy maintained the entire time that she was coerced into doing this by Drew out of fear for her own life. She knew what he was capable of, and she knew the consequences of crossing Drew. She was, of course, downplaying any culpability for herself in these brutal killings—but nevertheless still pleading guilty to a reduced charge of second degree murder.

Then, there was Raposa’s case. As it so happened, Murphy was present for that one as well. She rode in Maltais’ car, sitting in the passenger seat, deep into the Freetown State Forest—which, by this point, hardly needs to be said is a pretty bad idea. Raposa and Maltais at that time were separated, which Maltais was none too happy about. The environment in the car started off bad and only got worse the deeper into the forest they got. Murphy could only hope this trip wouldn’t end the way she grew afraid it would.

After the car came to a stop deep in the forest with nobody around for miles, Murphy remained in the car listening to music in an attempt to drown out the noise of Maltais forcing himself on Raposa. He was intent on killing her that day, and none too soon. He would make several trips back to his trunk to take out tools for the killing.

Murphy’s testimony proved to be the linchpin in the prosecution’s case. They would secure guilty verdicts for murder in the first degree against both Carl Drew and Andy Maltais. Both men would be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. For her testimony, the prosecution lessened the charge against Murphy to second degree murder, which she would plead guilty to.

Robin Murphy, at just 18 years old by the time the trials came to an end, had quite a track record. She had risen the ranks of the street in Fall River to be on-par with the likes of pimps like Carl Drew, been at the scene of the crime to three separate murders, was deeply involved in a Satanic cult, and played star witness in multiple murder trials.

After these three were sent to jail, though, questions would begin to arise around just how truthful her testimony had been. Could it be that this 18 year old had played the Fall River police, the district attorney, and the judicial system just like she had on the streets?

Cracks Form

Cracks had begun to appear in the case from the start. Something about Murphy’s testimony was just not quite right—she just so happened to have been at all three murder scenes with two different killers? And managed to get away, unscathed, each time? She may have had a case in saying she had to follow Drew’s orders, but why would she have ridden in a car with Maltais deep into the forest, especially given his long history of having abused her?

She had also testified that during Raposa’s death, she had stayed in Maltais’ car listening to music, too afraid to get out and hoping the stereo would drown out the sound of what was happening just feet away. She also said that Andy had returned to the trunk on more than one occasion to get “tools” used in the killing. Cars at the time did not have inner-release buttons for the trunk—you had to physically take the key to the trunk and unlock it by inserting the key there. This meant that there were already impossibilities to Murphy’s testimony, as there was only one key and by her own account it had remained in the ignition.

Nevertheless, Maltais had a sordid history of sexual deviancy that made him a deeply unsympathetic character to the jury. Remember, he was accused of exploiting children as young as 11, including Murphy herself. That does not, however, automatically mean he was guilty of Raposa’s murder. Could a jury have overlooked these discrepancies because of his deeply unpleasant background? Other than Murphy’s testimony, there was no first-hand account of seeing Maltais at the scene.

The credibility of her testimony provided in the early 80s came under intense scrutiny roughly two decades later, when she was up for her initial parole hearing. During her new testimony, she informed the judge that she had fabricated large parts of it—especially surrounding Drew. It would ultimately take years and several more iterations of recanting before her story was more or less finalized: she was not there for any of the murders. A variety of factors, including pressure from the police and the fear of being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole while in her teenage years had led her to make up so many aspects of her testimony.

The police had already made Drew to be a leading suspect in the death of Marsden, especially given how insistent she was that Drew could kill her. The people in Fall River and surrounding communities were terrified with a series of brutal killings back to back; was it so unlikely that the police would put some pressure on Murphy to embellish what she had seen, perhaps?

As for Maltais, Murphy would go on to say in an interview for a 2021 docuseries on the case that she didn’t make up that part of the story because of what he had done to her when she was young, but to prevent him from ever doing that to anyone else. Here, she would get her wish: after being convicted for Raposa’s murder, Maltais would spend the remainder of his life behind bars before dying in 1998. Despite not having been there for the killing, she along with many others remains convinced that he was in fact responsible.

Alternative Theories

Okay, let’s take a step back here. Murphy was undoubtedly the star witness in the conviction of both Maltais and Drew. Given that she recanted, wouldn’t there have to be a retrial? And if these two weren’t responsible for the killings, what could have happened to those three women all that time ago?

We may never know for sure what actually happened to those three girls. The killings took place nearly a half a century ago now, and one of those accused—Andy Maltais—died years ago.

Nevertheless, a number of theories have been presented as alternatives. One in particular has gained traction since a 2021 Epix docuseries investigation. However, none of them are without their own flaws.

I. The official story is a lie.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts was in a bit of a “caught with its pants down” moment after Murphy officially recanted her testimony. Not having any DNA evidence from the scene, they had relied heavily on Murphy’s account of the ordeal. Drew’s repeated requests for a retrial in light of these recantations were denied by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court though, which ruled that Murphy’s original testimony was credible, and that her more recent declarations were unreliable. This did not meet the threshold of “new evidence.”

In the following years, the only other people who testified against Drew on circumstantial grounds—including a girlfriend of Drew at the time who originally testified in his court hearing that he had given her a ring belonging to Marsden—also recanted their testimony.

It did not help Drew’s case at all that he was served by a very under-qualified lawyer at his original trial. Unable to afford an attorney himself, he was provided a public defender—who had never tried a murder case and never would again. This enabled the prosecution to pull off quite a feat in Drew’s trial for the murder of Karen Marsden: they used details of Levesque’s case against him, despite never charging him for it. While a more experienced defense attorney may have been able to dismiss the details of Levesque’s murder from being brought in front of a jury, Drew had no such luck here.

The prosecution knew that it would be a difficult battle to convict Drew of the murder of both women. They already would have an uphill battle convicting him for Marsden’s death, so they decided to exclusively charge him in her case. By doing this, they were actually able to use the insufficient evidence in Levesque’s case against Drew. In all honesty, it probably would have gone better for him if they had charged him with both girls’ murders.

The prosecution was also accused by Murphy of pressuring her into providing this testimony against Drew. While they were within their rights to offer lesser charges in return for cooperation, Murphy now testifies that there was significant pressure placed on her not to say what she knew, but what they wanted her to know. However, given Murphy’s extremely long track record of manipulation and deceit, it can be hard to figure out what is the truth and what is more lies.

II. Maltais Did All Three

The 2021 docuseries’ investigation heavily hinted at the possibility that Maltais was responsible for all three of these women’s deaths. Not for nothing, they have some convincing points:

First, all three of these deaths occurred within a narrow time span and had striking similarities. All three women were sex workers in Fall River, all of them ultimately were killed by blunt-force trauma to their skulls, and all of them would be found with their hands bound with thin white rope. As it would turn out, Maltais just so happened to have been known to have very similar white fishing line in his car. Did two separate people really decide to go about killing people in such a brutal yet similar way, right at the same time?

Unbeknownst to the prosecution at the time, Maltais had already been to jail. He was arrested in the Freetown State Forest in 1957 for picking up girls at various high schools in Fall River and bringing them there against their will. While hard to imagine today, police did miss things like this more than you may think before the internet due to a lack of centralized criminal record systems.

Before her disappearance, Marsden had also apparently told her grandmother that Andy had threatened her. Knowing that he was becoming a suspect in the Raposa killing, he had told her if he was arrested for it, he believed that Karen’s safety was in jeopardy. To this theory’s credit, that is exactly what happened: Marsden was there when Maltais killed Levesque, which is why Maltais had to take her out once police attention was cast on him.

But how could Maltais do anything to Marsden if he was arrested? Well, this is where the docuseries’ smoking gun is revealed: after being arrested for the murder of Raposa, he was released on bail just hours before Marsden went missing. Given the close personal relationship Andy had had with Raposa, this was believed to have been a one-off crime of passion.

However, this theory is hardly bulletproof. There is no physical evidence putting Maltais—or anyone else—at any of these crime scenes. While he had a terrible, sadistic background, these killings are distinctly not his MO. The revelations that he was raping young women all the way back in 1957, if anything, shows that he was remarkably consistent in his approach: he would lure in potential victims, gain their trust, and then strike.

In over twenty years of doing this, though, he had never killed anyone. While he did have motive to kill Raposa out of passion, what about the other two women? While people can escalate, such a rapid shift is unlikely: FBI profiling research shows that sexual offenders who kill typically exhibit homicidal behavior early, rather than abruptly transitioning to it later.

Furthermore, most serial offenders—including pedophiles—follow a relatively consistent modus operandi. True to this, Maltais had established his MO: he had been sexually abusing underage girls for decades by the time he was arrested when he was well into his 40s.

Perhaps the largest flaw in this, though, is just how afraid Marsden was of Drew. Much of this theory rests on the premise that she had been present at the scene when Levesque was killed, which is why Maltais would target her—for having seen too much. Once he became a suspect in one of the murders, he couldn’t risk losing his control over her: he had to strike while he still could, out on bail.

If this was the case, then, why was Marsden so deathly afraid of Drew while discussing the situation with police? Drew invariably had a fearsome reputation for violence, but if she had just witnessed Maltais brutally torture and kill a girl, it is a bit of a stretch to think that her concern would be with anyone other than him.

While this is not an exhaustive list of possibilities or alternative hypotheticals, it is at least a broad overview of what happened during and shortly following the murder of those three women.

III. Murphy Was More Involved

Being at the scene of three separate murders in the span of just a few months is one hell of a streak. In all of her original stories, she was present but either not involved or forced under threat of losing her own life to participate.

Could it be that Murphy knew her original story would be hard to get past a parole board, and thus recanted her testimony? She maintains that her original testimony was made up, but it leaves a few questions if so. Remember, she was arrested after a wiretap caught her confessing to a murder in great detail to a friend. This was before the police had anything substantial on her, let alone had charged her for murder.

Why would she falsely make up details assigning blame to herself for a murder of a woman she was involved with?

Furthermore, if she was more involved with the murders than she cared to admit but felt remorse at falsely blaming—or, at the very least, exaggerating—Drew’s role in it, this recantation could help with both. She wasn’t there for any of the killings, so she should be free. She doesn’t know anything about Drew killing them either, so he should be let go.

Conclusion

This case, unfortunately, leaves us with more questions than we started out with. Given how long ago these crimes took place, as well as the fact that Maltais has been dead for over two decades, we likely will never know exactly what happened to these women.

Carl Drew has maintained his innocence in both cases since the day he was convicted. He has continued to petition for a retrial, only to be denied time and again. While Marsden’s fear of him in the lead up to his disappearance was striking, it must be said that almost every piece of evidence—almost exclusively witness testimony—used against Drew in his original trial has collapsed. The star witness, Murphy, recanted the entirety of her testimony about him.

His girlfriend at the time, Leah Johnson, has also recanted her testimony. Nevertheless, he remains behind bars today because of this same testimony.

Murphy, for her part, was released on parole in 2004, but she would end up back in prison after violating its terms. Earlier this year, she was released on parole a second time. She maintains that Drew was not responsible for either of these women’s deaths.

Nobody has ever been charged with the murder of 17 year old Doreen Levesque. To this day, no further remains of Karen Marsden have ever been found.

For all the attention paid to the case—the headlines, widely circulated confessions, the whispers of Satanic sacrifices—the reality is chillingly simple: three women are dead. Doreen Levesque. Barbara Raposa. Karen Marsden. All young. All vulnerable. All brutally murdered.

Despite the convictions of both Andy Maltais and Carl Drew, there remains a real possibility that justice was never truly served for their victims. As for the families of these women, we know it wasn’t: nobody was ever charged with the murder of Doreen Levesque, and Karen Marsden’s body was never found.

In the end, it may not have taken a cult to destroy these lives—only fear, a sensational lie, and a justice system unwilling to look back.

Key Takeaways

• Three young women were brutally murdered in Fall River, Massachusetts in 1979.
• The murders were initially linked to a Satanic cult due to ritualistic aspects.
• Carl Drew and Andy Maltais were convicted based on testimony from Robin Murphy.
• Murphy later recanted her testimony, casting doubt on the convictions.
• Alternative theories suggest Maltais may have committed all three murders.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who were the victims in the Fall River murders?

The victims were Doreen Levesque, Barbara Raposa, and Karen Marsden.

What were the similarities in the murders?

All three victims were sex workers in Fall River, killed by blunt-force trauma to the skull, and found with their hands bound with thin white rope.

Who were the primary suspects in the Fall River murders?

The primary suspects were Carl Drew, Robin Murphy, and Andy Maltais.

What role did Robin Murphy play in the trials?

Robin Murphy was a key witness who initially testified against Carl Drew and Andy Maltais but later recanted her testimony, claiming she had fabricated parts of it.

What was the significance of the Freetown State Forest in the case?

The Freetown State Forest was notorious for its reputation of Satanic activities and was the location where two of the victims’ bodies were found.

What was the outcome of the trials for Carl Drew and Andy Maltais?

Both Carl Drew and Andy Maltais were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

What alternative theories exist regarding the Fall River murders?

Alternative theories include the possibility that Andy Maltais was responsible for all three murders, that Robin Murphy was more involved than she admitted, and that the official story is a lie.

What was the impact of Robin Murphy’s recantation on the case?

Robin Murphy’s recantation raised doubts about the credibility of the original testimonies and led to questions about whether justice was truly served in the case.

What was the role of the Satanic Panic in the Fall River murders case?

The Satanic Panic of the time influenced public perception and the prosecution’s approach, leading to sensationalized media coverage and a focus on alleged Satanic cult activities.

What is the current status of the Fall River murders case?

The case remains unsolved in many aspects, with no one ever charged with the murder of Doreen Levesque and Karen Marsden’s body never fully recovered. Carl Drew continues to maintain his innocence and has been denied retrials.

Sources

• Original Into the Shadows video: The Brutal Murders That Shook Massachusetts.
• Hero image source by 4300streetcar / openverse, by.

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