The Case of Chris Bird

Christopher Bird, a teacher in Massachusetts, disappeared in 1984. His vehicle was found abandoned. 
Mac Dunnan looks into this unsolved case that investigators have deemed highly suspicious.

Transcript

 Case of Chris Bird Podcast Script *Suspenseful music in background (Big River Run)* Chris Bird was last seen at D & Q Stables in Windham, New Hampshire on July 29, 1984. He had visited a friend's home to borrow a ladder at 3:00 p.m. that day.; that was the last time anyone saw him. *Music continues (Big River Run) * You're listening to Gone Cold New Hampshire... I'm Mac Dunnan and you're listening to The Case of Chris Bird. *Music Fades (Big River Run) * Not much is known about Chris Bird, but we do know that before he went missing Bird was a teacher and former Principal in Haverhill Massachusetts. Not exactly the type of person who you’d expect to vanish without a trace. Chris Bird, born November 12, 1958, was a white male in his mid-twenties, he was six feet tall and weighed around 180 pounds, he had brown hair and blue eyes. In a group of pictures online we can see him in the 70’s and 80’s in, what looks like to be, a collection of yearbook photos. The most recent photo is from 1984, it is a black and white very grainy photograph that shows Bird smiling with a large, jolly, bearded face. He looked like a fairly happy person. Bird was reported missing by his wife, Dona Bird, on July 30, 1984. A few days later, on August 3, Bird's tan 1974 Mercury Comet was found abandoned at the mall in Methuen, Massachusetts. Both of its rear tires were flat, but there was never an explanation for why they were flat and who or what deflated them. Donna Bird told Massachusetts State Police that her husband and a guy by the name of Richard Brunt left on a camping trip four days earlier, according to court documents. She said the two had been friends and worked together at the school for about seven months. Brunt was the last person to report seeing him alive. This is where the story gets interesting. Chris Bird’s friend Richard Brunt Has a very Lengthy and complicated past. He has had many run ins with the police. Some charges were dropped but he eventually ended up in jail. I'll tell you more about that in a little bit. I was able to reach out to Richard Brunt’s attorney, Mark Sisti, for an interview. Mark Sisti is a well-known criminal defense attorney based out of Concord and Portsmouth New Hampshire who worked with Brunt on his 1999 New Hampshire rape case. I asked general questions about Brunt and his relationship with Chris Bird to try and establish a better idea of what kind of person he was and what he did in the past. Like I said his criminal past is complicated. This is what I learned from Sisti. Tell me about Richard Brunt, can you describe what kind of person he was? 00:09.33 - 01:23.48 - “Well when I first met him there was I believe some state troopers down in Lakeland Florida and they were basically questioning him or wanted him for questioning in some shape or form. I was contacted by his son and retained by the family at that point I went down to visit him he was incarcerated in Polk county at the jail in Polk county. I met him for the first time in that setting and got a good feeling as to where this thing was going and what the allegations were. At the time there was an alleged rape in Manchester it was an allegation that they claimed had taken years prior to his arrest and there was also an investigation on a cold case, murder case, and that’s what I knew when I went to visit him in Polk county” What do you know about the relationship between Chris Bird and Richard Brunt? 01:34.01 - 02:08.90 - “Well I don’t really know anything personally but I've certainly read through everything that was given to me by the police and certainly any and all things that were relayed to me by my client there was some give and take from the exchange from what I understand concerning antiques there were a few things going on with regard to that. There was a teaching relationship, semi professional relationship in Mass.” Brunt has a significant criminal past, including a conviction for manslaughter in Florida. How can you be sure that he isn’t connected to the disappearance of Chris Bird? 02:27.60 - 03:56.50 - “Lets go back to your initial question he had one conviction. The conviction was in Florida. The sentence was extremely light, it was almost a kin to a self defense type of a case. He was released promptly after serving the minimum sentences. He had no other run ins. He quite frankly lead a fairly boring non confrontational life. His neighbors all knew him in Lakeland. When he was in that area he dabbled in real-estate without any problems in Florida. Him and his son were actually doing quite well in that business and this thing came out of nowhere. How do you prove somebody’s innocent fortunately our constitution and our criminal codes don't force a burden on any individual who proved their innocence. And Why in the world were they even thinking that he had anything to do with it? They had no physical evidence. They didn’t have any scientific evidence and they had no witnesses to sustain enough proof. How does anybody prove their innocent?” *Ominous music (Big River Run) * After hearing Mark Sisti’s statement I had a whole new perspective on Brunt and a whole new list of questions surrounding his life. I began digging around more files looking for information on his past convictions, and although I did not find much information, the details that I found were shocking to say the least. Sheriff's detectives in New Hampshire say, between June 1999 and June 2000, Richard Brunt committed five counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault. According to an indictment, he raped a man and sodomized him with a shovel and rake handle. Brunt had also served 10 years in prison in Florida for manslaughter after pleading no contest to charges that he fatally stabbed his roommate after the roommate announced he was moving out. *Ominous music fades (Big River Run) * How could someone have led what looked like a normal and successful life with all these heinous crimes looming in their past, and for a good portion of time be actively teaching students. All of this just suggests more and more to the possibility that Richard Brunt had something to do with Chris Birds death, but to this day... no one has ever found Chris Bird’s body. Earlier, Sisti mentioned that there may have been a disagreement about antiques.. That's another piece of this story where there’s a detail, but no explanation and no one around to elaborate on it. with cases like Chris Bird’s, where no body is found, it is usually harder for detectives to determine what happened because of the lack of DNA. I contacted Chelsea Hanrahan. She is involved with Redgrave Research Forensic Services, which works in conjunction with law enforcement to use forensic and genetic genealogy to restore identities to the nameless and provide answers to unsolved crimes. I met with her to ask questions about the case. I was wondering what kind of challenges do investigators face when they are going through cases like the ones that involve Chris Bird? 00:12.63 - 01:27.49 - “So in this case if it’s a missing person obviously one of the problems is that they have a suspect, they have a pretty good indication that he has a tendency toward violence but there's no body so its what they call no body no crime. So they can't prove anyone anything and they don’t necessarily have any physical evidence DNA anything linking him to that there's not much of a crime that they can bring they can only bring up the past convictions that he had and infer the case. If someone were to come out now with the experience and time although I think Richard brunt is dead already, that’s another point though is that when some people do die this may be when a son or wife may come out of the woodwork and say ok maybe they made that confession or said some things that I've been holding back and you can get closure on that. If there's not really a DNA profile or something that’s linking that person or if that person just decides to never open their mouth about it that’s extremely difficult.” I then asked her about her thoughts on whether this crime would be easier to solve today... versus 1984. 01:46.16 - 05:18.40 - “Oh yea I think so I think at least they found Chris Birds car at the Methuen Mall they would have taken it and processed it and it would have been one of the first leads I think if I'm remembering correctly they went on a camping trip and after Richard Brunt said he dropped him off someplace and that was the last I saw of him. Right now if that happened and they were looking for a lead they would take the car and process it and go over it and see if there's anything. There's recently been a case in New Hampshire that you might have heard of harmony Montgomery case where they went into the apartment and they processed that and they were able to find from the physical evidence form there that she's probably no longer alive. Sometimes indicators like that that will be in the car if they found a large amount of like blood or something that was cleaned up then they would have an indication that their probably on the right track. There's a lot of things when your looking back at these cases that your like “if I had just collected that or like knew to take a picture of that or like new to ask this question it would have been completely different” but cant blame people for not necessarily knowing the trajectory of science the other thing you didn’t ask me this but the other thing that I kind of think might of played a role in this one and this case is interesting because it almost seems like it was solvable and to me it was weird that the family wasn’t more vocal. And Chris Bird was married and he had a wife and you cant find any articles where she's saying anything its just like radio silence and so I'm wondering just because I know that the man that Richard Brunt killed in Florida they were in a relationship together and although Richard Brunt gets married and all different things I wonder if he and Chris Bird, and I don’t want to speculate on that I'm just wondering if it’s the stigma attached to being gay in a time when it wasn’t necessarily ok especially as a teacher that may have played a part in the fact where everyone is like its almost better to let this one go maybe I don’t know I think the way that it looks the implications of it would have been different today it wouldn’t have played so much into people saying they don’t want to poke much into it its just not an understanding of what that is. Its easier to sell it as two best buds that went camping one didn’t come home even though this guy killed somebody else one time. Another thing while I have an audience is that I wondered about some of the schools that Richard Brunt had taught at because he came back to New Hampshire and got acquitted for this murder and then he teaching at this other random school in Methuen mass where its like ok, and I kind of wonder like so are there other schools” I wonder how he slipped through the system there and got hired again? 05:24.42 - 06:22.45 - “I don’t know that’s very odd that he comes back in the paper you can find articles he actually fled form Florida to New Hampshire and checked himself into a hospital and then was arrested for the murder and then was acquitted of it I don’t think he served any time and then he clearly made his way back up here and started being a principal again so I don’t know if that just didn’t make it of if the records just weren't as good and they didn’t check as much back in the day but that’s always been interesting to me and I've always wanted to see if any students would come out of the woodwork and speak on the case. I also think the school he taught at was a small Christian academy so again the implications of being homosexual in 1984 maybe that’s not coming out I don’t know” *Ominous music (Big River Run) * The fact that Richard Brunt was Gay was not the sole reason for my suspicion, however I do think it could have influenced the way he acted toward men he liked. He had many violent interactions with men in his past and this makes me think that he was responsible for Chris Birds death, and others, but as Sisti said earlier.. There's no way to prove him guilty. I have been researching this case for months now with little to no luck in finding major turning points in the case. Due to the age of this case many people have passed away... In my own research.. I struggled to find articles, the obituary of Richard Brunt, family members, and investigators just aren’t saying much. We have no information from Chris Bird’s wife. And above all no DNA evidence or a body to tell us what happened to Chris Bird. So where does this case go now? Senior Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati who oversees the Cold Case Unit for the State of New Hampshire, says time can make it harder to solve a case.. But sometimes there’s a breakthrough. 5:37 – 5:54 – “Things rotate in and out depending on the information that they have. But they try to apply the best techniques and the best review of what’s there to see if maybe not if something was missed, but is there something that has changed, something that’s new, something that hasn’t been thought of before that could be done now.” *Music in background (Big River Run) * Just because this is one of the more difficult unsolved cases for the Cold Case Unit, doesn't mean it won't be able to be solved one day. Join us next time when we will dive even deeper into the disappearance of Chris Bird... I'm Mac Dunnan thanks for listening to The Case of Chris Bird. *Fade Out Music (Big River Run) * Thank you to the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit for contributing information for this story. Thank you to criminal defense attorney Mark Sisti and Chelsea Hanrahan, who is involved with Redgrave Research Forensic Services. Music in this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions. On the next episode of Gone Cold New Hampshire Kyle Dobrie will discuss The Murder of George Jodoin, a hardworking man who did a lot of work for real estate and his pawn shop, but in the end his decisions would lead him toward a vicious death. *Fade Out Music (Big River Run) *