Dark Downeast

On a morning when the country’s attention was fixed on unimaginable tragedy, a Rhode Island family was learning that someone they loved was gone. In the hours before Nicole Parsons-Bucki died, there had been violence, a police response, and a relationship already under strain, but 25 years later, no one has been charged. That could be because the deeper you look at Nicole’s case, the less simple it becomes: We’re dealing with an uncertain timeline, evidence that disappeared, unanswered questions about who was actually with her, and the possibility that what has seemed obvious for years may not tell the whole story. If you have any information about the murder of Nicole Parsons-Bucki, please contact investigators with the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office at 401-468-2233 or email [email protected].

In a small New England city, a teenager disappeared after a night in the woods, and almost immediately, the story of what happened fractured. The last people known to be with her gave conflicting accounts. Her family believed the investigation lost precious time. As the years passed, searches kept returning to the same narrow stretch of land, the same handful of names, and the same possibility that someone had been carrying the truth all along. After decades of searches, whispers and shifting loyalties, someone still knows where to find her. And it’s time to speak up. If you have information relating to the disappearance of Melanie Melanson, please contact Detective Mark Roffi at the Woburn Police Department at 781-933-1212, extension 4547. You can also email [email protected]. The Middlesex District Attorney’s Cold Case Unit can be reached at 781-897-6600. Melanie’s family has created a fully anonymous online tip portal at melaniemelanson.com.

Some people disappear from a place you can picture right away: a house, a road, a parking lot, a stretch of woods. But in the case of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr., he seems to vanish somewhere between the parts of his life that made sense on paper. He had an office in New York, a home in Connecticut, a train he took like clockwork, and people waiting for him on both ends of the day. When he did not arrive where he was expected, the questions began almost immediately. Did he ever leave the city? Did he make it onto the train? Did he get off before anyone realized something had gone wrong? And if he did, who was waiting on the other side? If you have any information about the disappearance of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr., or if you knew Edward, Michael Doran, or anyone connected to them, please contact the Newtown Police Department at 203-426-5841. You can also call Newtown PD’s anonymous hotline for wanted and missing persons at 203-270-8888. Edward’s case number with Newtown Police is N-928-81.

When someone has been missing for more than thirteen years, it can start to feel from the outside like the story has stopped moving. Like whatever answers existed back then are either gone now or buried too deep to reach. But for Ryan Blagojevic’s family, time has not softened the urgency. His sister Eve is still living inside the search for her brother, still turning over every possibility, still hoping that one piece of information could finally bring Ryan home. Ryan was last seen in Portland, Maine on March 31, 2013, after he was asked to leave a shelter. At the time, he was vulnerable. He was experiencing homelessness, struggling with substance use disorder, and moving through a world where people in crisis are too often overlooked. But Ryan was never invisible to the people who loved him. He was a son, a brother, a father, a craftsman, a musician, and a person whose life mattered long before he became the subject of a missing persons case. Ryan’s case is not as stagnant as it might appear on the surface. Saying Ryan’s name again, right now, matters more than ever.