Regina Brown, 22 Years Later—

Police Take Up

A Very Cold Case

By Andrew Gorosko

In seeking new clues to answer longstanding questions over a local woman’s suspicious disappearance more than 22 years ago, town police are reinvestigating what happened to Regina Brown.

Ms Brown, an American Airlines flight attendant, was last seen on March 26, 1987, according to police. The mother of three young children, Ms Brown was 35 years old when she disappeared.

Police described her as an African American of Creole descent with very light skin, noting that many people thought she was Caucasian.

“In 1987, Regina Brown was involved in a divorce and had dropped off her daughter and babysitter at…LaGuardia Airport. She was then supposed to have returned home to Newtown…Regina’s vehicle was found. However, her whereabouts are still unknown,” according to a police summary of her disappearance.

Police Chief Michael Kehoe said that last autumn, while reviewing longstanding police cases which remain unsolved, often known as cold cases, police decided to reinvestigate the disappearance of Regina Brown.

Ms Brown has been declared legally dead by probate court, but her body has never been found.

“You have to understand it’s a cold case…It [involves] going back through facts and circumstances, detail by detail…to see if anything was left out,” Chief Kehoe said.

Also, new interviews are being conducted in seeking to develop fresh information on the case, he said.

Ms Brown lived with her three children in a home at 18 Whippoorwill Hill Road.

On March 30, 1987, she failed to show up for work on a scheduled flight. Her parents and the babysitter, meanwhile, became concerned because they had not been able to contact her. They called one of her neighbors and the neighbor called the police on April 2.

When Ms Brown missed work on another flight on April 3, the airline contacted her estranged husband Willis Brown, Jr, then 53, an American Airlines pilot who was then living in Queens, N.Y. He called the Newtown police later that day to file a missing person report.

At the time of Regina Brown’s disappearance, the Browns were going through a contentious divorce and child custody battle. They had been married for less than five years, living all of that time in Newtown.

After Ms Brown disappeared, Newtown police and state police searched the Brown’s house at 18 Whippoorwill Hill Road and the grounds of surrounding properties, including a nearby undeveloped 50-acre property, but found no evidence of foul play.

Based on evidence, police concluded that Ms Brown had returned from the airport to her house before disappearing.

Ms Brown’s 1980 Honda was found on April 6 in New York City with the keys still in the ignition. The vehicle had several parking violation tags on the windshield. Police transported the Honda back to Connecticut for forensic testing, but it yielded no significant evidence.

The police questioned Willis Brown when they learned that he had come to Newtown from Queens on March 26 for a dental appointment. He told police that he went to his Queens apartment immediately after the appointment.

Mr Brown agreed to take a polygraph test — provided that it was administered after the divorce proceedings were concluded — but he later changed his mind and refused.

After Regina Brown disappeared, police and news reports noted similarities between her case and that of another Newtown flight attendant, Helle Crafts, 39, who had disappeared several months earlier, in November 1986.

Both women were flight attendants, married to airline pilots and were going through divorce proceedings. In each case, relatives and friends insisted the women would not have willingly abandoned their children.

While the Brown case remains unsolved, Ms Crafts’ husband, Richard, was convicted of killing his wife, cutting up her body with a chainsaw, and then disposing of the parts through a rented woodchipper. He is serving a 50-year sentence on a murder conviction.

Investigator

Chief Kehoe said that police Detective Jason Frank has been assigned to the Brown case to probe avenues of inquiry that may lead police to solve her very suspicious disappearance. Det Frank is being assisted by others, the police chief said. The police chief declined to allow Det Frank to be interviewed for this story.

The police chief said that more than a dozen interviews have been conducted in the reinvestigation. Det Frank has traveled out-of-state several times and has made long-distance telephone calls in seeking to develop new details on the case, the police chief said. Cold case reinvestigations are time-consuming, he said.

Police have reinterviewed people whom they had interviewed following Ms Brown’s disappearance and also have interviewed people whom they had not spoken to before, he said.

The reinvestigation involves subjecting the evidence that police uncovered after Ms Brown’s disappearance to new technical means of analysis in seeking to glean new information, he said. Police are employing improved investigatory techniques, he said. “We’re going to use all the technologies available,” he said.

“I think there’s a genuine interest [in solving the case] from a variety of viewpoints,” Chief Kehoe said. A solution would provide both Ms Brown’s family members and the police with a sense of closure, he said.

“The family needs closure…The police need closure,” he said.

“We’ve always had it on our ‘radar,’” he said of the unsolved case.

Former Newtown police Detective Sergeant Robert Tvardzik was one of the detectives involved in investigating Ms Brown’s disappearance after it occurred. He retired from the police department in July 2006.

“I think it’s fantastic that they’re doing some reinvestigation,” Mr Tvardzik said. Police did not have sufficient personnel in the past to thoroughly pursue the case, he said. Also, police had encountered a lack of physical evidence in pursuing the case, he said.

“We didn’t have a body then and that’s what was needed,” he said of the possibility that Ms Brown is dead.

Uncovering strong circumstantial evidence in the reinvestigation would help police solve the case, he said. Some information might be found to interconnect various facts which lead to a solution, Mr Tvardzik added.

Lisa Peterson, a former reporter for The Newtown Bee who has done extensive research on the case, covered Ms Brown’s disappearance for the newspaper after it occurred in 1987.

“I’m glad to hear that the Newtown Police Department is reinvestigating the disappearance of Regina Brown,” she said.

“At the time of her disappearance, all the attention in terms of media coverage and law enforcement resources were focused solely on Helle Crafts, the victim of the ‘woodchipper murder,’” Ms Peterson said. 

“Maybe now, Regina’s family and the detectives who worked on this case so many decades ago will have closure,” she said.

The Regina Brown case and the Helle Crafts case are separate, individual cases, Chief Kehoe stressed.

Chief Kehoe said police have developed new information through their reinvestigation, in seeking to formulate theories and timelines concerning Ms Brown’s disappearance. Police have formed several new hypotheses, he said. He declined to disclose any specifics about that new information.

“Every day is progress. We’ve uncovered additional facts and details…We follow the facts and the circumstances,” he said.

“I don’t know where it’s going to lead, but we’re going to investigate it thoroughly and follow the facts,” he said.

“Each and every part of the investigation will be considered as we move forward,” he said. The evidence in the case is “voluminous,” he said.

“It’s going according to plan,” he said of the reinvestigation. “We’ll pursue it as long as there’s an avenue to pursue…We’re leaving no stone unturned,” he said.

Chief Kehoe declined to comment on whether police have identified any “suspects” or “persons of interest” in the case, in the event that Ms Brown was the victim of a homicide.

“These cases are very, very difficult…We’re trying to find a body, alive or dead…It’s very unlikely that she’s alive…The circumstances of her disappearance are suspicious…She loved her children dearly,” Chief Kehoe said.

Police ask anyone with information on the case to contact Det Frank at the police station at 270-4229 or via email at jason.frank@newtown-ct.gov.