This is Murder She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and small town USA.

I'm your host, Kristen Ceevy.

You can connect with me at MurderSheTold.com or follow on Instagram at MurderSheTold podcast.

In the early morning light of July 10, 1970, a freight train chugged along its usual route

on the Bangor and a rustic railway line in the wilderness of Smirna Mills, Maine, 15 miles from

the Canadian border. Its powerful locomotive pulled 19 rumbling box cars along at a brisk 40 miles

per hour and its heavy steel wheels thundered down the tracks. Despite the roar of the

massive machinery in the rustic wilderness, the trees were sleepy and peaceful, a dewy summer

morning in Maine. The only wind present was that created by the passing train, a typical morning

on a typical route from Oakfield to Caribou. As the train rounded a bend near Timiny Crossing,

the conductor, Earl Capon, and an onboard fireman, Ralph Fowler, spotted some debris on the tracks.

Earl squinted, trying to get a sense for what it was. It looked like a rubber raft. Suddenly,

Ralph's shouting broke his contemplation. Sleeping bags, they're sleeping bags,

he screamed. Earl blasted the horn, but the sleeping bags were totally still. With 150 feet

to go, Earl frantically slammed on the train's emergency brakes. Hot steel screeched and sparks

flew as the brakes worked in vain to stop 800 tons of steel machinery, but it was too late.

The train couldn't stop, and all 19 cars ran over the three sleeping bags along with the people

inside them. The caboose finally came to a stop a few hundred feet after the point of impact.

The scene behind the train was something out of a horror movie, dismembered and crushed body parts

strewn about on the grass and upon a hundred feet of tracks. Belongings and clothing shredded

to pieces tossed into the woods from the force of the train or dragged down the tracks.

The train personnel contacted dispatch over the radio and they alerted the police.

...