The Disappearance of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr. (Connecticut)

Some people disappear from a place you can picture right away: a house, a road, a parking lot, a stretch of woods. But in the case of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr., he seems to vanish somewhere between the parts of his life that made sense on paper. 

He had an office in New York, a home in Connecticut, a train he took like clockwork, and people waiting for him on both ends of the day. When he did not arrive where he was expected, the questions began almost immediately. Did he ever leave the city? Did he make it onto the train? Did he get off before anyone realized something had gone wrong? And if he did, who was waiting on the other side?

If you have any information about the disappearance of Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr., or if you knew Edward, Michael Doran, or anyone connected to them, please contact the Newtown Police Department at 203-426-5841. You can also call Newtown PD’s anonymous hotline for wanted and missing persons at 203-270-8888. Edward’s case number with Newtown Police is N-928-81.

Disappearance

On a Wednesday morning in early June of 1981, 44-year-old Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr. was expected in Manhattan. As a vice president at Hayes-Williams Inc., a public relations firm in New York City, the people who worked with him knew his habits. He kept his schedule. He made his deadlines. If he was running late, he called. So when the workday started without him, and then kept going without a word from him, the concern inside that office sharpened quickly. Like so many, Edward commuted into the city by train from his home on Taunton Hill Road in Newtown, Connecticut. There he kept a collection of prized antiques, a side-hustle and passion outside of his professional life. His days had a familiar route: from home to the train, train to New York, office on Madison Avenue, then back again. It was a life built around timing, and on June 10th, 1981, the timing was all wrong. The Newtown, Connecticut Police Department received a phone call from the city that morning. A Hayes-Williams employee named Alice explained that Edward had not come into work, and to the people who knew him, that alone was enough to set off alarms. Alice told police she thought he might need help. The last time his employer saw Edward was the day before, Tuesday, June 9th. He was seen leaving his office at around 5:05 that evening by the owner of the firm. According to Ruth Lockwood’s reporting for The News-Times, Edward was in a good mood. He was looking forward to important meetings scheduled for the next day, and when he left the office, he said he was running late and would have to literally run three or four blocks to Grand Central Station to catch his train. That train was scheduled to leave at 5:20 p.m. But by the next morning, his predictable routine had broken somewhere, and no one seemed to know exactly where. Edward’s life crossed jurisdictional lines every single day. So, even though Edward’s last known whereabouts were in New York, he lived in Newtown, and if he had gotten on the train as planned, Connecticut could very well be the right place to start looking, so Newtown Police got involved right away. Officers were sent to his home where they found the house locked and secured. There were no cars in the driveway, and at first glance, nothing outside the house explained where Edward was or why he hadn’t made it to work. Later that evening, Newtown Detective Michael DeJoseph made contact with one of Edward’s friends, Glenn Blake, who had a key to the house because he usually took care of Edward’s property when he was away.  Glenn walked through Edward’s house with police, and everything looked mostly normal, but there was one detail Glenn could not make fit. Edward’s beloved dogs, Greta and Muggs, had apparently been inside for a while. They’d gone to the bathroom on the floor and it seemed like they hadn’t been fed. Edward loved those dogs and his two cats, Ming and Baby. The idea that he would have left his animals shut inside long enough for accidents to happen, without food, without making sure they were cared for, did not feel like Edward at all. That same day, Edward’s employer called Newtown Police again. For the second day in a row, Edward had not shown up for work or called the office with an explanation. Newtown Police moved forward issuing an Attempt to Locate message and beginning the work of trying to track Edward and his vehicle. According to the description circulated in the news release: Edward was a white man, 44 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, about 150 pounds, with blue eyes and sandy blond, bushy hair. He was believed to have been wearing a beige or gray silk suit and a gold digital Timex watch. Later that afternoon, police got their first real lead. Edward’s car had turned up, but Edward was not the person who had it.

Early Investigation

Alice from Hayes-Williams called Newtown Police again. She learned that Edward’s blue 1978 Mercury Zephyr with Connecticut plates was in the possession of Edward’s boyfriend, 22-year-old Michael Doran. Police learned that they were living together when Edward disappeared. The next day, June 12th, Milton Williams, the owner of Hayes-Williams, called Lieutenant Michael DeJoseph. Milton had spoken with Michael, and Michael had given him an account of Edward’s last known day. According to Milton, Michael said he had driven Edward to the Bethel train station on the morning of June 9th. He said he talked to Edward on the phone around 4 o’clock that day and was supposed to pick him up that night when the 7:15 train came in, but Edward never arrived. Milton passed along one more detail. A few weeks before Edward vanished, Edward had told him that he planned to end his relationship with Michael as soon as possible. Detective DeJoseph had not yet spoken directly with Michael. But after hearing Milton’s account, the detective wrote that he felt Michael, “may know more about the disappearance of the victim than he would lead Mr. Williams to believe.” In another conversation with Milton and Edward’s friend Glenn Blake a few days later, both men were deeply worried that Edward had met with foul play, and both were concerned that Michael could be involved. Glenn told the detective Michael had given him what he described as “some unbelievable tale” about his movements on the night Edward disappeared. The story involved a kidnapping, a sexual assault, and a car parked near a cliff. Before Detective DeJoseph appears to have sat down with Michael directly to ask about that unbelievable tale, he checked the parts of the story that didn’t depend on Michael’s account. If Edward had left work intending to catch his usual train, had anyone seen him there? On June 16th, Detective DeJoseph boarded the 5:26 commuter train from Grand Central Station, which was the train Edward usually took. Glenn had told him Edward liked to spend time in the bar car and that the bartender’s name was Rudy. Rudy was working that day, and he told the detective he knew Edward well, but he couldn’t say for certain when he had last seen him. Another passenger in the bar car offered something more specific, but still not specific enough. He said he thought he had seen Edward on the train either the previous Monday or Tuesday, and he remembered Edward being with a younger white man, maybe around 22 years old. He said both Edward and the younger man got off the train together at the Bethel stop. His recollection wasn’t super solid though. He really couldn’t be certain of the date, or even whether the sighting had actually been a week earlier or more…But if it was the previous week, that meant the passenger could have seen Edward on the train on June 9th, the day he disappeared. And if that was true, then Michael’s version of events became much harder to square. Edward may have made it to Bethel after all. Almost as soon as Detective DeJoseph returned to the police station that evening, the phone rang. It was Michael Doran himself. Michael asked whether there were any updates and then said he hadn’t been able to get to the police station with photographs of Edward because his car, which was actually Edward’s car, had gotten stuck on a median in Brewster, New York, near the intersection of Routes 121 and 6. But that explanation did not hold up. Detective DeJoseph learned from Glenn that Edward’s car had actually been in an accident, and that Michael had fled the scene before police arrived. A call to New York State Police confirmed it. Edward’s car was towed on June 14th, and the person operating it wasn’t with the vehicle. The car was still at a garage in Brewster. Detective DeJoseph learned that there was a bar in the Peach Lake area of Putnam County, not far from the accident scene called Birds of a Feather. Edward used to hang out there. Glenn told the detective he planned to do some checking of his own to see whether anyone at the bar had seen Edward. Detective DeJoseph still didn’t know whether Edward had returned to Connecticut on June 9th. But after riding the train and that first phone call with Michael, he noted in his report that he would be directing the investigation as though Edward had made it back and was missing from Connecticut, not New York. So, if Edward stepped off that train in Bethel, Michael’s story had to explain the next few hours. And it was about to get a lot more complicated. Edward Sprenkle Dubbs Jr.’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.