Patricia Newsom: East Haven Jane Doe Identified

Murder, She Told

Kristen Seavey

Society & Culture, Documentary, True Crime

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2023

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

1975 - East Haven, Connecticut. On a warm August morning in 1975, a young woman's body was discovered in the drainage ditch behind Bradlee's Department Store in East Haven, Connecticut. She had died of asphyxia and was tightly wrapped in a tarp. Nobody knew who she was. For decades, investigators were haunted by the unknown identity of the woman. As the years passed, hope persisted that the next generation would have the technology to restore her identity and bring her family justice. In April of 2023, Police finally had their break: through genetic genealogy, the East Haven Jane Doe was officially identified as Patricia Meleady Newsom, an 18-year-old girl who had reportedly run away from a boarding school in New York sometime between 1973 and 1974. Maryann Collette has spent the past few years searching for her sister, while East Haven Police Captain Joseph Murgo has been trying to identify their Jane Doe. Listen now to hear the remarkable circumstances that brought them together, the challenges of piecing together Patricia's life from 1973 to August 1975, and get a special look behind the scenes at how investigators today are trying to solve this New England mystery. This is Patricia “Tricia” Meleady Newsom's story on Murder, She Told. If you have any information on the murder of Patricia Newsom, please contact Capt. Joe Murgo of the East Haven Police at (203) 468-3820. Episode sources and photos: https://www.murdershetold.com/episodes/patricia-newsom Support the show: https://www.murdershetold.com/support Instagram: @murdershetoldpodcast TikTok: @murdershetold Facebook: /mstpodcast Website: murdershetold.com ---- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Kristen Ceevy, this is murder she told.
0:23.6	Patricia Newsom was born on June 20, 1957 and in just 18 years she would be dead, murdered
0:32.5	by an unseen monster and her fate would be hidden from her family for 48 years.
0:40.3	Her parents were Don and Betty Newsom, Don was born in 1929 and so was Betty.
0:46.7	Don grew up dirt poor in the Midwest and was a cattle driver as a young man.
0:51.6	She grew up without a father, his dad died in 1929 when he was a baby.
0:57.5	Though Don had many siblings, he was the youngest of his father's six children.
1:02.9	As he grew up, his independence isolated him from the family.
1:07.3	This is his second youngest child, Marianne.
1:10.5	Chad was kind of complicated in a lot of ways I guess everybody is.
1:15.5	He was mostly quiet, never talked about feelings, that wasn't his thing at all, an incredible
1:22.6	voice.
1:23.6	Everybody in my family except for me sings and my dad just had the most beautiful voice
1:29.4	and he would also sing a lot of cowboy songs because when he was a young man he did a lot
1:34.3	of cattle drives.
1:35.3	He had a very difficult childhood, didn't have a father, had some abusive stepfathers,
1:41.3	so basically he and his brother both took off when they were very young to seek their
1:47.5	fortunes.
1:48.5	So he did the cattle drives thing until he was old enough to enlist.
1:52.7	In 1951, Don and Betty, who were both 22, got married in Philadelphia near her family.
1:59.9	She was a staunch Irish Catholic like her mother and father who were Irish immigrants.
2:05.1	She was a registered nurse at Chestnut Hill Hospital and Don was an ambitious and listed
	...

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