The Night of the Barking Dog
As we approach Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for the more than 70 curious souls who came to my presentation, “The Night of the Barking Dog: A Journalist’s Memory of Regina Brown’s Disappearance in the Wake of the Woodchipper Murder,” at the C.H. Booth Library in Newtown, Connecticut on 11/19/24 – the 38th anniversary of “Storm Carl.” I’m also thankful for my husband, Ray, who excelled as a greeter and handed out postcards to all the guests.
Afterward, many of you sent emails and reached out via my website, lisanpeterson.com, FB messenger, and, most appreciatively, more than 25 of you subscribed to this newsletter. I value the outreach and the many comments and ideas you shared with me.
These two cases of missing flight attendants, one white and one Black, but both married to commercial airline pilots, mothers with three young children, amidst a divorce in Newtown, Connecticut, are more intertwined than most would think.
Your genuine interest in whatever happened to Black flight attendant Regina Brown motivates me as I continue to explore why there was never an arrest in her disappearance compared to the media sensation and murder conviction of white flight attendant Helle Crafts’s husband, Richard Crafts.
Reporter’s Notebook – Dates in History – Nov. 17-23, 1986
Nov. 18 – Helle Crafts is dropped off by a fellow flight attendant in her Newfield Lane home driveway. She had just returned from a flight from Germany. She remarked to her friend and co-worker Trudy Horvath, “Oh. Richard’s Home.” It was the last time she was seen alive.
Nov. 19 – Helle Crafts, the Woodchipper murder victim, disappeared. Regina Brown made the fateful mistake of asking her estranged husband, Willis Brown, back to the family home on Whipporwill Hill Road. A judge had issued a restraining order just two months prior to keep Willis away from the home and Regina based on multiple domestic violence episodes, including an assault arrest.
Regina needed help getting the heat and hot water working after an area power outage caused by Storm Carl. My Reporter’s Notebook was filled with notes about the storm. I came to work later that day after photographing the ice all around the landscapes in Newtown and Southbury.
Nov. 21 – I’d been working my sleepy crime beat at The Newtown Bee for about a year when Timothy Dalton and John Saputo got into a fight at a party where other teenagers had snuck beer into a party at a Newtown home.
Dalton passed away the next day due to his head injuries. On this date, my story about this tragedy appeared on the front page. I was new to contacting families about writing obituaries and it was tough on this cub reporter.
Here’s an excerpt from The Night of the Barking Dog manuscript:
The funeral home calls me on Tuesday afternoon, a chilly day in November 1986, to dictate the obituary. The five other reporters crammed into the small newsroom of The Newtown Bee only hear my side of the conversation as I type the information into the glowing, green visual-display terminal with its blinking cursor.
“Name?”
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack.
“Age?”
“Only seventeen?”
“Survived by?”
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack.
“Photo? No Photo.”
Later in the day, during my usual rounds, I pick up the police report at police headquarters. Armed with more details about this untimely death, I call the dead teenager’s mother to request a photo to accompany the obituary/crime story since one had not been given to the funeral home.
“Hello, Mrs. Smjekal?”
“Yes?”
“How are you?” Damn, did I just say that? Only silence on the other end of the telephone receiver. I hadn’t yet learned to say, “I’m sorry for your loss, my condolences,” or other words to build rapport with a grieving member of the community. At twenty-five, a year after college graduation, my reporting skills were growing, but my people skills needed work.
“I’m writing... your son’s... obit.” More silence.
“I need a photo of Timothy for the article.” I don’t like asking for things from grieving people. It makes me nervous asking for a photo of her dead son. I’m sure she has better things to do than talk with me. But it is my job as the obit writer and police reporter.
“I only have one copy of his school photo,” she says weakly. “I don’t want to lose it. It’s all I have left of him.”
“I promise you if you bring it here to the paper, we will photograph it and give it right back to you.” After I cajole her son’s photo out of her, she tells me her husband, the dead boy’s stepfather, died four months earlier in a plane crash that also killed a local industrialist.
“Oh no! That’s horrible,” I say. No shit, Sherlock. My chest tightens. I want to ease her pain as she seems helpless, but I also want to know more.
“Tell me about Timothy,” I say. And for the next half hour, the sadness pours out of this newly grieving mother and still grieving widow. She perks up when she tells me how proud she is of Timothy and how he is going, or should have gone, off to college next year.
Later that afternoon, someone comes to the newsroom with a small wallet-sized picture of Timothy, which eventually accompanies my front-page story, “Fight Leads to Teen’s Death and Manslaughter Charges.”
Thankful for dogs
I’m also thankful for my four Norwegian Elkhounds – Adele, Polo, Puck, and Pink for keeping me warm while I wrote this post and snuggled with them in bed last night.
