The Disappearance of Iris Brown (Vermont)

From the very beginning of the investigation into the disappearance of Iris Brown, everyone suspected the same person had something to do with it. She left home with the suspect on the night she was last seen alive, the suspect’s behavior in the days following her disappearance raised countless red flags, and forensic evidence pointed to something bad happening inside the suspect’s car, but proving beyond a reasonable doubt exactly what happened wasn’t going to come quick and easy to the investigators tasked with finding answers.

When this suspect was finally apprehended and charged, it was with the crime prosecutors could prove…Not the crime everyone knew deep down he’d actually committed. Decades later, a determined detective re-opened the case with one mission: to give surviving family members a version of closure, even if it meant the killer would never face the consequences.

March 15, 1976

It was early evening on March 15, 1976 and 27-year old Iris Brown had just returned home from work to find a friend waiting at the apartment she shared with a roommate in Burlington, Vermont. 28-year-old Bernard Posey had arrived around 4:30 that afternoon and insisted on waiting for Iris to get home. He had some good news.

No sooner did Iris walk through the door, Bernard announced that he’d received a message from her boyfriend, Martin, who was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, but not for much longer…Because Martin was set to be released the next morning. Bernard himself had been released from FCI Danbury the previous year, which is where he got to know Martin, so he offered to drive Iris down to pick him up.

Iris agreed to go with Bernard to Connecticut. It was a nearly 300 mile trip – over 4 and half hours in the car – so they’d be gone overnight. Bernard started calling around to make arrangements for a hotel along the route, while Iris called her father to let him know she wouldn’t be able to visit him that night. Iris’s father was a patient at Mary Fletcher Hospital at the time.

Despite this phone call, case file documents obtained from the Burlington Police Department show that Iris did end up paying her dad a quick visit that night. Though the exact time is hard to pin down, the general estimate is that Iris arrived at the hospital sometime around 5:30 or 6 p.m. She wouldn’t tell her dad where she was going, but she explained she was going out of town and assured him that she’d be back the next day. After just about 10 minutes, Iris left. That’s the last time Iris’s family ever saw her.

But it’s not where Iris’s trail ends. Tracking Iris and the man she knew as Bernard Posey would become a several years-long effort.

Iris is Missing

Iris was expected home sometime on March 16th, or at least by the 17th. Iris was working at the family business at the time; her father owned a large local chain of home and auto stores across Vermont. She had made a phone call from a gas station on the night she left to ask a friend to cover for her at work on the 16th but she hadn’t made arrangements beyond that, so when she still wasn’t home by March 18th, her roommate Maureen started to worry.

Maureen called over to Bernard’s house in Essex Center where he lived with his wife to see if he knew where Iris was, but Bernard had no idea, he said. They’d made it to Danbury, Connecticut and but Iris didn’t want him to stay so he said he gave her $200 and they parted ways from there. He told Marueen he headed back to Vermont.

Two more days passed without any sign of Iris. On March 20th, Iris’s mother and father got word that she never returned home from the trip to pick up her boyfriend from the federal penitentiary. Their worry mounted when a check with the prison revealed Martin was still incarcerated. He was not scheduled to be released that month, and he hadn’t even spoken to Iris for weeks.

For two days, Iris’s family tried calling Bernard’s house over and over again but no one answered. On March 22nd, they walked into the Detective Bureau of the Burlington Police Department with Iris’s roommate to report Iris missing. Burlington PD’s first ever female detective, Detective Gloria Bancroft, was assigned to Iris’s case, and it’s her narrative of the early investigation that allows me to tell you Iris’s story.

No Sign of Iris

Detective Bancroft requested a General Broadcast Call from Vermont State Police with Iris’s details and description. She was 5-feet-6 and a half inches tall, 135 pounds, fair complexion, long dark brown hair, hazel eyes, slim build, no glasses, no scars or marks, and was last seen wearing a long green wool coat and blue jeans.

The same afternoon, Detective Bancroft and Burlington PD’s Detective Lieutenant Wayne Liberty paid a visit to the Posey residence. They knocked on the door and rang the doorbell several times, but it was clear nobody was home. The detectives dropped a note for Bernard in his mailbox.

When they arrived back at the station, police learned that Bernard was actually on probation, so they got in touch with his probation officer. Apparently, Bernard had called his probation officer on March 22nd to ask permission to leave the state. Bernard explained that his wife’s father was very sick and they needed to visit him in Florida as soon as possible. The probation officer gave Bernard permission for the trip with the understanding that he was supposed to return home by the 26th.

Detectives spent the next several hours following up on possible explanations for Iris’s absence. They learned that Iris used to live in New York City and she still had a brother there, but according to her parents, she would not have made a spontaneous decision to head to the city without telling her brother, and he hadn’t heard from her.

But New York City might have been part of her plan afterall…At least, according to Bernard. He called Burlington PD on the afternoon of March 23, explaining that he was in Florida but a neighbor who was checking his mail for him found the detectives’ note. They’d already heard a second-hand version of Bernard’s story about the night of March 15th and early morning hours of the 16th from Iris’s roommate Maureen, but Bernard clarified a few things for detectives.

According to Bernard, the plan was to go to Danbury but they’d reached the Springfield, Massachusetts area when Iris changed her mind and decided she wanted to go to New York City instead. Bernard told Iris he was too tired for that drive so he dropped her off outside a hotel in Springfield around 1 in the morning. Iris was supposedly going to take a bus to NYC from there. Bernard said he did give Iris $200 to fund her trip but it was a loan. Bernard promised to get in touch with detectives as soon as he was back in Vermont on the 26th, but he wouldn’t leave a number for detectives to reach him in Florida. He said he’d be on the road from that point on anyway.

If red flags weren’t already waving the minds of Detectives Bancroft and Liberty, that first phone call with Bernard had to have set them off. Bernard had told Maureen he left Iris in Danbury, Connecticut, but now he was saying he dropped her off in Springfield, Connecticut. And the inconsistencies just kept coming.

Detectives Bancroft and Liberty confirmed that the whole story about Iris’s boyfriend Martin getting out of prison was a fabrication. Martin’s furlough wasn’t expected for a few more months. But why would Bernard make that up? What motivation did he have to get Iris in his car under false pretenses that night? And where was Iris now?

Investigators set out to answer those questions and more. Among the most foundational of those questions: Who is Bernard Posey? Turns out, that’s not even his real name.

Iris Brown’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.