Episode 197: The Suspicious Deaths of Janet and Stephen Dow
Richard Dow, nicknamed “Dick,” was a well-respected man in his community as a part-time police officer and a state trooper. He married a lovely woman named Janet Cook Medeiros about a year after her divorce from her previous husband Manuel, nicknamed “Wally.” He eventually adopted Janet’s son Stephen in 1964. Janet worked as a postal carrier and enjoyed this, and Stephen enjoyed cars, sports and had a beautiful girlfriend. They lived in Thornton, New Hampshire.
On December 10th, 1982, neighbors woke up at around 6:00 a.m. to the sound of an explosion. Two of the neighbors, men named Roland Gooch and John Spurling, ran out of their homes to see what was going on and saw a car in a ditch on Route 175 that was completely engulfed in flames. Upon closer inspection, the car was identified as a Saab 900, specifically Dick Dow’s Saab 900. Upon even closer inspection, the men saw someone sitting in the driver’s seat. By the time they arrived on the scene, the victim trapped inside the car was devastatingly beyond saving.
When police and first responders arrived, they discovered that there were two people in the car. They were identified as 40-year-old Janet Dow and 18-year-old Stephen Dow. The car was just 500 feet away from their home.
Despite this horrific accident happening right outside their house, Dick did not come outside to investigate or see what was going on. He was awake and moving around the home at the time of the accident because John Spurling commented on there being lights on in the house. John also took note of the fact that the scene was secured a little too quickly due to no evidence being collected.
There were no autopsies completed despite the horrific accident, and both bodies were cremated. Multiple neighbors heard the explosion, Roland Gooch and John Spurling ran over to try to help, and John also possessed a wealth of knowledge as a recently retired fire chief, yet no interviews were completed. The car was towed and destroyed just days later. State Police almost immediately took over the case after arriving on scene, specifically State Police Troop F at Twin Mountain. This troop was where Dick was employed for over a decade until his retirement in 1981. Dick’s leadership, commander Richard Tuck and assistant commander Thomas Kennedy, had been at the scene of the car crash.
Fellow Trooper Brian Van Deinse took a statement from Dick, and his statement quickly became the final word about the tragic yet suspicious deaths of his wife and stepson. Dick claimed that Janet and Stephen left the house after an argument about whether Stephen could stay home from school to work on his car and fix the carburetor. Janet and Stephen put the carburetor in an open bowl of gasoline in the back seat of the Saab to drive to the gas station to allow Stephen to work on the car there. Dick theorized that Janet must have been distracted from the argument and the gasoline spilling in the car that she lost control of the wheel. This caused blocks of cement Stephen had in the back of the car for traction to get knocked loose, striking both Stephen and Janet in the head and then knocking them unconscious. The car then caught fire from the spilled gasoline. State Troopers determined that the car accident was just that, a tragic accident, and the case was closed.
In 1984, two years after the car crash, Dick Dow began dating a woman named Karen Saffian. The two dated for eight years and the relationship began after Karen graduated from college. On a completely random day, Dick opened up to Karen about the losses of his wife and adopted son, but this story was completely different from the one he had told police. Dick told Karen that he had gone into the basement of their house to put coal in the furnace, and while he was in the basement he heard popping sounds. Dick knew these were gunshots and grabbed an axe before running upstairs to see Stephen shooting Janet with one of his police issued guns. Dick hit Stephen with the axe multiple times before dragging both bodies into the Saab and then rolling it down the hill into the ditch.
Seeing the flaws in his story and becoming alarmed by Dick’s sudden change in behavior and increased violence after he told her this story, Karen left him and went to police in 1993. The case was reopened and escalated, and an accident specialist named Thomas Bohan of Medical & Technical Consultants of Portland, Maine was hired for his input and expertise. Thomas and his team began putting together a reenactment of the fire and how it likely happened.
They were able to find a 1982 Saab and pushed the car down the hill into the ditch at the speed Thomas calculated it would have been traveling at. Rather than burst into flames, nothing happened. After multiple attempts, Thomas stated “We only got it to ignite when a rag was thrust inside the vehicle, and a window was left open to let air feed the fire."
Thomas and his team felt that someone would have had to have set the fire from the outside and lit the car on fire that way. The process of rolling the car into the ditch caused a good amount of damage to the car, much more damage than what was on Dick and Janet’s car. This also led Thomas to believe that the car was intentionally dumped into the ditch rather than it rolling down the hill and then catching on fire in the “accident.” The carburetor that allegedly started the entire incident was also never found in the original car based on police reports. It is speculated that Dick’s former commander Richard Tuck, who had a history of “unethical activities,” helped cover for Dick after he did something to Janet and Stephen.
Dick died in 2012 at the age of 67, and he is suspected as having killed Janet and Stephen and making it seem like they died in a car accident. The case is still open and considered unsolved.
Image sources:
cbsnews.com - “Accusations of Murder”
truecrimediva.com - “The Suspicious Deaths of Janet Dow and Stephen Dow in 1982”