Chapter 45

Transcript of “The Farley Files Podcast Season Two:

Dead Man’s Hollow—The Disappearance of Heather Ryan”

Episode 4: What Really Happened in Dead Man’s Hollow?

Last week, we learned that Heather Ryan is alive and well.

But that’s only half the story. As I explained in episode 3, Heather now lives in Quebec City. Until we met, she believed she was Chloe Tremblay, a French-Canadian. The months between her disappearance from Dead Man’s Hollow and her reappearance in Montreal remain a blank. Somehow she traveled from Pennsylvania to Montreal, Canada, learned to speak fluent French, and found shelter and sustenance.

Dr. Sofia Marchand, Chloe’s neuropsychiatrist, tells us she may never recover her memories of the time between ceasing to be Heather and becoming Chloe. But she has recovered her memories of the night of May 27th, 1994. And now, for the first time, she shares her story.

CHLOE: I remember dancing at the bonfire. I was trying to avoid Rich.

Rich is Rich Marino, who is now married to one of her sisters.

MAISY: Why?

CHLOE (hesitating): I was … involved with him even though he had a girlfriend. We’d been together for several months, but by May, I was over it. I didn’t want to deal with him that night. I just wanted to have a good time.

MAISY: And did you—have a good time, I mean?

CHLOE: At first, yes. This boy from Allderdice came over while I was dancing. He started chatting me up. He was cute, really friendly.

MAISY: This was Andre Newport?

CHLOE: Yes. Well, he didn’t tell me his last name, but yes, that’s who it was.

While I was in Quebec City meeting Chloe, producer Jordana interviewed Shannon Marshall, one of Andre’s former teachers, to get a sense of what he was like.

SHANNON: Andre was a good kid. He was well-liked by adults and his classmates—especially the girls. He was outgoing. A charmer.

JORDANA: Was he ever in trouble?

SHANNON: Not that I know of. Like I said, he was a good kid. When he went missing, our school community was devastated.

The community’s pain, as well as that of his family, was compounded when the police quickly closed the investigation into his disappearance.

SHANNON: There had been a Gang Peace Summit in the Manchester neighborhood that weekend. The police received a tip that Andre had attended the summit and gotten into a dispute with some rival members. Allegedly, he skipped town for his own safety.

JORDANA: To your knowledge, was Andre in a gang?

SHANNON: Absolutely not.

Andre Newport’s mother is deceased, but his Aunt Tia agreed to speak with me.

TIA: Andre wasn’t in any gang. He wasn’t that kind of kid. He played baseball, kept his grades up, and worked at the carwash. He didn’t have time for that foolishness. He wanted to go to college, get a degree, and work in sports marketing.

MAISY: I’m sure Andre’s mother explained that to the police.

TIA: Of course she did. But they told my sister that tip came from a so-called unimpeachable source.

MAISY: That’s the phrase they used? An unimpeachable source?

TIA: That’s right. And then they just stopped looking for Andre. After seven years of heartache, my sister had him declared dead by a judge.

Chloe just told us that Andre was at Dead Man’s Hollow, not at a gang peace summit. Multiple others who were there that night, including Amy, have positively identified Andre from his photograph. He was in Dead Man’s Hollow. So what happened to him?

CHLOE: After a while, Andre and I broke off from the group and went to a more private spot in the woods where there’s a big flat rock. We were talking and kissing. Eventually, Rich and some of his friends—Chris, Frank, Brett, and I think maybe Andy—stormed up to us. They told Andre to get his hands off me. I was pissed because it was literally none of their business, but then Rich said the police were on their way, and Amy was refusing to leave without me.

MAISY: How would Rich know the police were coming?

CHLOE: Jimmy, his brother, was a rookie officer. Jimmy would always page Rich to give him a head’s up if he could. So I said goodbye to Andre and then started to run back to the fire to find Amy.

MAISY: But you never made it. Why not?

CHLOE: I heard a commotion back where the guys were and I turned around to see what was going on. Rich had stepped up to Andre, and they squared off. Andre shouted for his friends, and three or four guys came running.

MAISY: Was this the fight we heard about?

CHLOE: Yes, it was over quick because the police were arriving. I could hear sirens. Rich and his friends left, and the Allderdice guys took off in the opposite direction. But then Frankie came running back up the hill. Andre was sitting on the ground, retying his shoes. He got up in a hurry. Frankie poked him in the chest twice and basically told him I was Rich’s property. Andre didn’t like that and said someone should have told me. Then, real fast, Frankie hauled off and punched Andre in the chest. It was just the one punch, but Andre staggered back, then collapsed face-down in the dirt.

We stopped the recording so Chloe could gather herself. When she was ready, she continued her story.

CHLOE: Frankie was gone by then. Andre wasn’t moving, so I ran to him and turned him over. He wasn’t breathing. I took CPR as part of a babysitting class, so I tried to give him mouth to mouth and then chest compressions, but … he was dead.

MAISY (gently): Do you remember where Frank struck Andre? Which part of his chest?

CHLOE: Uh, the left side. Above his heart.

MAISY: Are you sure?

CHLOE: I’m positive.

MAISY: What happened next?

CHLOE: Rich heard me screaming and ran back to the flat rock. He says he saw me pounding on Andre’s chest. When he realized he was dead, he told me to run, that he would take care of it.

Chloe didn’t remember any of this until she returned to Pittsburgh to reunite with her sisters. The morning after she arrived, Rich took her back to Dead Man’s Hollow, telling no one, including Chloe, where they were going.

MAISY: Switching gears for a minute, Chloe, when did you remember these details?

CHLOE: The morning after you brought me and my family here to meet my sisters. We stayed with Amy. She had asked Rich to leave. They were having problems. It turns out that she’d just found out Rich and I had been together in high school. He’d not only kept that fact from her for their entire twenty-five-year marriage, but also the fact that he’d gotten all of his friends to withhold information from the police, basically stonewalling the investigation into my disappearance. So, she felt betrayed. I mean, who wouldn’t?

MAISY: Then how is it you ended up alone in the woods with Rich the next morning?

CHLOE: I guess he came to the house to get some clothes and toiletries. There were lots of people there. It was basically a party. I slipped outside into the garden for a quiet moment because I was getting overwhelmed. Rich showed up and offered to take me to see the house where I grew up. At that point, I still didn’t have any of my Heather memories back, and I was curious, so … I went with him. That was a mistake. He lied about where we were going, and took me to Dead Man’s Hollow instead.

MAISY: Why would he do that?

CHLOE: Once we got there, he got really aggressive with me. He insisted I was lying about having amnesia. He told me I had to admit what I’d done.

MAISY: What is it he thought you’d done?

CHLOE: He said he knew I’d killed Andre. Being in that place again, with Rich yelling at me the way he had that night, it brought it all rushing back. So I knew I hadn’t killed him. But I was afraid to tell Rich my memory of that night was returning because he was so incensed.

MAISY: Why was he so angry?

CHLOE: He claimed he knew I must have killed Andre in self-defense. So he made Andre vanish. After I left, he says he dragged Andre’s body deeper into the woods. Then, in the middle of the night, he came back with two of his friends and they buried Andre somewhere on the property. He kept saying he did it for me and all I had to do was never come back. He was really mad.

So mad, in fact, that he threatened to kill Chloe. I witnessed this myself, along with Chloe’s husband. We’d come to the park looking for her and Rich and heard their exchange, including Rich’s admission that he buried Andre Newport and later phoned in the false tip about the gang summit from his brother’s desk at the police station, as well as his threat to kill Chloe.

My recorder was running the entire time. However, on advice of counsel, I will not be publishing the recording of their conversation. My attorney, Will Volmer, of McCandless, Volmer Andrews explains the reasoning for this decision.

WILL: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is one of the thirteen United States known as a two-party state. This means it is unlawful in Pennsylvania to record a private conversation without the knowledge and consent of all parties to the conversation. There are certain specific exceptions to this law, and there’s an argument that this encounter in the woods falls within one of these exceptions. But, out of an abundance of caution, I’ve advised the Farley Files not to share the recording at this time.

I can recount for you what I heard with my own ears, though, as can Chloe and Bastian. There are others who also have relevant information. The one person you will not be hearing from is Rich Marino. This is because the Farley Files’ mission is to amplify the voices of victims, not their victimizers.

We’re going to take a short break, and then I’ll be back with part two of this two-part episode.

Transcript of “The Farley Files Podcast Season Two:

Dead Man’s Hollow—The Disappearance of Heather Ryan”

Episode 4, Part 2: What Really Happened in Dead Man’s Hollow? Experts Explain

Chloe says Andre collapsed and died after a single punch from another young man. This may seem impossible, but as I recently learned, it’s not only possible, it’s probable. We’ll hear from a renowned forensic pathologist later in this episode, but first, let’s hear again from Dr. Sofia Marchand.

MAISY: Dr. Marchand, you told me you believe Chloe’s amnesia in 2010 was triggered by the stress of seeing her baby daughter fall face down from her infant swing.

DR. MARCHAND: That’s correct.

MAISY: If she had previously witnessed a person falling face down, and that individual died, would that make her reaction even more likely?

DR. MARCHAND: Certainly.

MAISY: This did happen. In 1994, Chloe saw a young man die under these circumstances just moments before she disappeared. She had no memory of that event until quite recently. After that incident, she says she did not know her name or her personal history. Her first memory is arriving in Montreal and finding a police station. Can you offer an opinion as to what may have happened?

DR. MARCHAND: This would be a classic instance of what I described early. An adolescent girl who underwent such a severe trauma as watching a young man die and being unable to help him could experience a break with her identity. The similarity to his death and the position of her own baby daughter’s fall sixteen years later could trigger a second episode. Even though Chloe in 2010 would have no memory of the incident she witnessed in 1994, her nervous system would.

MAISY: So, in your opinion, did Heather Ryan know who she was at any point between May 28, 1994 and last week, when she returned to the woods?

DR. MARCHAND: She did not. And it’s not particularly surprising that returning to the spot where she suffered her trauma brought back her memory. It doesn’t always happen that way. But it has happened in many cases. Other times, a person regains memory the way she did in the 2010 incident—through a pleasant association—in her case, being at the beloved winter festival and seeing her baby. And in some cases, a person never regains their memories, not even after being reunited with their friends and family. All things considered, I’d say that Chloe is extremely fortunate.

We know that Andre died in the woods, that Heather experienced dissociative amnesia, and that Rich buried Andre’s body because he believed Heather killed him and he wanted to insulate her from the consequences of that action. But how did Andre die?

To answer that question, I turned to one of North America’s most prominent forensic pathology consultants, Dr. Bodhi King. Dr. King has worked on some of the most puzzling deaths in modern history and has solved unsolvable puzzles. He also happens to be a close friend. He insisted I call him by his first name during this interview.

MAISY: Bodhi, you read the transcript of Chloe’s interview. Did it strike you as believable that a healthy sixteen-year-old boy could die as the result of being punched in the chest?

BODHI: Absolutely, particularly when Chloe specified that Andre was struck in his upper left chest.

MAISY: But how? I’ve been hit in the chest. I’m sure you have. We’re both still here.

BODHI: Andre Newport died because of a quirk of timing. The cause of death was almost certainly commotio cordis, which is a Latin phrase that means ‘agitation of the heart.’ It is extremely rare and usually occurs in the context of sports when an athlete is struck in the chest by a baseball or hockey puck. Most recently, it occurred as the result of an impact during a routine tackle in an NFL game, although in that instance the player survived.

MAISY: Can you explain the mechanics?

BODHI: What happens is a blow, be it a fist or an object, hits a person’s precordium, which is the area of the left chest directly above the heart, with enough force and speed to increase the pressure in the left ventricle of the heart. This increase in pressure disrupts the heart’s rhythm. If these two rare events both happen and the disruption occurs at the precise wrong moment of the heartbeat cycle, it interferes with the electrical activity, causing a premature beat. This results in ventricular fibrillation and, ultimately, cardiac arrest.

MAISY: And death?

BODHI: Yes. The individual will usually collapse within seconds and, without intervention, death will occur in under three minutes. Chloe’s instinct to perform chest compressions was the right one, but survival rates are quite low unless there is immediate access to a defibrillator.

MAISY: But this can happen to anyone? Andre didn’t need to have an underlying heart condition, and the punch didn’t have to physically damage his heart itself?

BODHI: That’s right. He was the victim of genuinely bad luck. He was punched in the exact spot with enough force and at the precise time within a forty-millisecond window to interrupt the electrical activity and cause ventricular fibrillation. This is an extraordinary confluence of factors, which is why commotio cordis is so rare.

MAISY: How rare?

BODHI: I’ve seen studies estimating that there are between ten and twenty cases a year in this country. The majority involve athletes playing the sports I mentioned earlier. Andre Newport was tragically unlucky that night in the woods.

In the end, a teenage boy’s life was cut short by the rare timing of a punch. And a teenage girl experienced a rare type of amnesia as result of witnessing this tragedy. But both tragedies were compounded by Rich Marino’s decision to cover up Andre’s death and convince others to lie about who was in the woods that night and when they last saw Heather.

AMY: If Rich had simply told the truth about what happened that night, the Newport family would have been spared all these years of not knowing. And if he’d simply stayed with Heather until the police arrived, maybe she wouldn’t have wandered off. She might not even have experienced amnesia. But if she had, her family and friends could have supported her through it instead of losing her for three decades. (Amy pauses.) But, ultimately, Heather’s story has a happy ending. She has a loving marriage, a delightful daughter, and a beautiful life as Chloe Tremblay. And thanks to your investigation, she’s back in our lives. My heart aches for Tia Newport, though.

Andre’s aunt is getting long overdue closure. Rich Marino is currently in jail awaiting a hearing on charges of abduction and assault and battery and refuses to cooperate with the authorities, but the other boys who were in the woods that night are helping police locate Andre’s grave. In addition, Jenna Novak of the Lewis Foundation for Victims of Violent Crime has partnered with Tia on an initiative to expose and reduce bias in the handling of missing person cases.

JENNA: This thirty-year-old case highlights an unfortunate reality that still exists today. Some cases receive short shrift by the media and law enforcement even though each case represents someone’s child. A child who is loved and missed. All families deserve a wholehearted search for their missing children, not just a select few.

The Farley Files also plans to partner with Tia Newport and the Lewis Foundation on this important initiative. Heather Ryan’s and Andre Newport’s stories have come to an end, but there are countless other missing persons whose stories remain to be told.