FAIRHAVEN, MA – Settled comfortably beside a warm fireplace in a charming coastal home with walls covered in captivating artwork, Kathleen Brunelle has spent many nights wondering about what happened to the subjects of her latest book. “We can’t just let these things happen and not talk about it anymore,” she explains, sharing the stories of five strong-willed, independent women who were game changers of their time – and all mysteriously vanished.
Always drawn to powerful women in history (and a good crime show), it’s no surprise Kathleen turned her talents as a writer to unraveling cold cases and call for justice. Well, not to me at least – as Kathy’s sister, producing an incredible work of art like this one is just kind of what she does, giving her all to pull the tiniest bits of information and unraveling them like a string to reveal the full story.
“The more I dug, the more I found,” she shared as we discussed the five mysterious cases of women who had disappeared over the last century: Anna, Agnes, Jean, Dorothy and Simone. The chilling true crime book shines a bright light on a criminal – but largely normalized – practice that has taken the lives of more women than have even been realized over the years. “Their husbands would often say, ‘Oh she was a bad mother, she didn’t want her children anymore, she was a terrible wife, she didn’t want to be married anymore, she didn’t want to have a family’ – they would just be gone and that’s it,” Kathy explains. “They wouldn’t even have to report them missing. Nothing would be in the paper.”
The haunting scenario was one that didn’t discriminate: from wealthy heiresses disappearing in broad daylight to single mothers and even those whose children testified to witnessing atrocities, Kathy doesn’t miss a mark in calling out the outdated ‘old boys club’ mentality that helped mask what very well may have been murder. “In the case of one of these women, nothing came to light until 2 years later. When the case came to trial and one of the officers was asked about it, the lawyer said ‘Are you telling me that this woman has been gone for 2 years and you don’t have one piece of information in the station about her disappearance?’ and he said very smug-like, ‘No. nothing’. You could disappear and nobody knew. Nobody cared. they would just take your husband’s word for it and that would be the end of it and this happened all the time. All the time.”
From Anna whose community was baffled at her disappearance in a case that has never yet been publicized, to Agnes who was a prominent Manhattan lawyer in the 1930’s, an aspiring actress named Jean who was a single mother aiming to inspire her daughter, 17-year-old Simone who left from Framingham to meet family on Martha’s Vineyard and the wealthy heiress Dorothy who is a well known case in history that disappeared in broad daylight – Kathy has been searching for answers for all of them.
On May 21st, all that she’s found will be revealed in her new book, “She’s Gone”. “When they disappeared their voices were taken away from them, and I wanna give their voice back,” says Kathy. “Somebody needs to speak for them because they just disappeared and that’s the end of it – and I don’t want that to be the end of it.”
Based on the reaction of flickering lights as we wrapped our last interview (which had me SHOOK!)…I think it is clear these women are grateful to Kathy for sharing their stories.
To pre-order Kathy’s latest book, visit Amazon or Barnes & Noble. To learn more about Kathleen Brunelle, visit her website here.
To see more stories like this or if you have an event you’d like to pitch to Emmalyn to cover, email emmalyn@emmalynreid.com.
Emmalyn Reid 