1639
Settled in 1639.
about 0:02:28The story
It was settled in 1639 and, according to the show, was the first town in the United States founded by a woman, Elizabeth Pole. The works ran until 1873, after which came shipbuilding, shoe factories, a straw hat factory, a bleachery and a tack factory. The town is affluent and about twice as safe as the state average on violent crime, which makes what follows worse.
The story opens on a quiet street in North Andover on June 22nd, 1968, at 1.30 in the afternoon. Jacqueline Bussieri, 13, was walking her bicycle home from a friend's house. A small blue car passed her several times before stopping ahead of her. The driver, a friendly-seeming man, asked for directions to a neighbour's house. As she turned to point the way, he covered her mouth and nose, showed her an iron bar, forced her into the car and made her lie on the passenger floor. He drove fast for about half an hour, the last stretch through woods.
He caught her, put her back in the car, drove deeper into the woods, tore strips from a bedspread and tied her to a tree by her hands, ankles and torso. He then wound a strip of bedspread round her neck and strangled her with his hands until she lost consciousness. When she woke he was gone. She untied herself, found help and was later able to identify her attacker.
Then the episode turns to Raynham. In 1969 the Aruda family moved there to get away from the city and live in a quiet, safe town. On September 8th, 1978, at four in the afternoon, their 15-year-old daughter Mary Lou was riding her orange 10-speed bicycle home from a friend's house less than two miles away. She stopped on Dean Street to talk to her friend Helena McCoy, who was walking the other way. During those few minutes McCoy saw two cars pass them twice: a blue car driven by a young man with long brown hair, a light beard and a baseball cap, and a small bright green car with a black racing stripe driven by a man with dark, curly hair and glasses.
Shortly afterwards Sheila Barry, driving along Dean Street, had the green car pull in front of her and speed away faster than cars normally went; she noticed a bulky object in the passenger seat. Barbara Lizotte, on the cross street, saw the same green car pull out of Dean Street and its driver leaning over into the passenger side. At about 4.30 a neighbourhood boy found Mary Lou's bicycle at the side of the road and took it to her parents; by five o'clock the police had been called. Officers found distinctive tyre tracks in the dirt and Benson and Hedges cigarette butts in the road. Search teams with dogs spent the next three days combing the area and found nothing.
Police later interviewed McCoy, Barry and Lizotte and had composite sketches made of both cars and both drivers. A couple of weeks later McCoy and Barry were each hypnotised twice. On September 12th Albert Santos, the driver of the blue car, walked into the police station after seeing a sketch of himself in a shop window, gave a full account of his day and offered his car for searching.
He matched the composite sketch exactly: dark curly hair, glasses.
Police asked to search his car and he agreed. In the car park sat a bright green Opel compact with a racing stripe. The right front tyre had an unusual tread that looked like the tracks near the bicycle. Inside were wedding gifts, two pairs of dark-rimmed glasses in the glove compartment and two cartons of Benson and Hedges cigarettes. In the trunk, under some luggage, were the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald American of September 10th, both open to the story of Mary Lou Aruda's disappearance. Part one ends there, with Mary Lou still missing.