Walk Softly Children

After Doreen’s disappearance, Mark forced her stepmother, Sharon, to buy a gun which he knew he couldn’t lawfully possess as a felon. After he was arrested and convicted for that crime, he went on the run, working steadily through a ragtag group of friends and acquaintances from whom he begged, borrowed, and stole. One of them was Kathryn Andrusko, who would soon become his new wife and the keeper of his secrets for the next thirty years. Another was an old friend-turned-enemy who may have held the key to what happened to Doreen since the beginning. Join Jessica as she combs meticulously through brand new evidence on the search for Mark, introducing a motley list of characters who worked to shield him from the consequences of his actions, and those who might still have something to say.

On July 11, 1989, Rozanne Pelloni called the Wallingford Police Department to report that she’d been told Mark Vincent had “offed” his daughter Doreen. In a conversation lasting more than two hours, Rozanne struggled to get through to Sergeant Steve Davis. Despite her disturbing allegations about Mark and her obvious fear for her own safety, Sergeant Davis responded like a product of his time – a stereotypical 80s cop who placed little stock in anything she had to say. Providing historic and recent case studies of violence against women Tracey Thurman, Jennifer Magnano, Jennifer Dulos, and Karizmah Johnson, Jessica examines the struggles and lessons learned when it comes to Connecticut’s role in combating violence against women. And she wonders: if law enforcement had cared more about what the many women in Doreen’s story had to say, would we be any closer to finding her?

Jess & Joe discuss clips from the WPD’s January 2022 trip to Teen Challenge Vermont, about a month before Mark Vincent fled back to Connecticut and was arrested in the parking lot of Milford Christian Church. Listen as the detectives, Mark, and his son Paul discuss the status of the revived investigation, what the police were hoping to get out of father and son, and their thoughts on the podcast as well as Jess & Joe themselves.

In the months after Doreen disappeared, Mark Vincent told everyone he spent every waking moment looking for her. Instead he was perfecting the art of the hobosexual – pursuing relationships with women like Rozanne Pelloni just to have a place to live. When these relationships eventually imploded, secrets about what Mark had really been up to would spill out. So what would the Wallingford Police do with this new information, and would it get them any closer to an answer?

Since we first heard Doreen Vincent’s name six and a half years ago working on Sarah Dimeo’s Faded Out, the Wallingford Police Department have been holding back reams of documents as well as hours of audio and video footage. But now, thanks to FOIA, we have it all. And month afternmonth, scores of sources have continued to call me – to speak about Doreen, her father Mark, and Mark’s latest sanctuary, Pastor James Loomer’s Milford Christian Church, formerly known as Berean. Come along on a deep dive of this story as you thought you knew it, illuminated now by countless new details from police reports, investigator Richard Novia’s notes, interviews with Doreen’s friends as well as Donna, Sharon, and Mark, and writings by Doreen herself. Episode One, Free Bird, is a sharper look into Mark’s past sins, and the lengths he would go to to hide them.