Our card this week is Mary Frankie Harvey, the Jack of Hearts from Massachusetts.

Forty-two years have passed since Frankie was left for dead in a southeastern Massachusetts

gravel pit.

Frankie’s case is unique in a lot of ways, but one reason is because her story straddles

the state line of Rhode Island, where she was last seen alive, and Massachusetts, where

her body was found, which complicated the investigation from the get-go.

And while her case is still unresolved today, recent discoveries have revealed major breakthroughs

that have investigators truly on the cusp of solving her murder.

I’m Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck.

November 29, 1980 was a gray, cool day in the small town of Rentham, Massachusetts.

It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the day had been pretty quiet around town.

Until that afternoon, when Rentham Police Dispatch got a call.

It was close to 3 or 3.30 in the afternoon, they received a call from the media inquiring

as to where the body was located on Route 1.

Rentham Police Detective James Barrett said the dispatcher responded to the reporter’s

call with the question, what body?

The reporter said they heard on scanner traffic that law enforcement was responding to a sand

pit area in Rentham because someone had discovered a woman’s body.

But Rentham Police had no idea what was going on, so a sergeant and an officer drove out

to Route 1, and to their surprise, they found Massachusetts State Police and local media

gathering in a gravel pit just off the highway.

So the reports describe a somewhat chaotic crime scene.

So it’s indicated in multiple reports that there appeared to be between 8 and 12 vehicles

in the crime scene area, like a mix of media vehicles as well as state police cruisers.

When Rentham PD approached, a lieutenant with the state police said that they’d gotten a

call from a property owner of the sand and gravel excavation company around there at

around 1 p.m.

The caller said he found a woman who appeared to have been shot and killed.

The lieutenant said that state police responded and had been roping off the area when reporters

started showing up.

Now right away, there was tension at the scene with Rentham Police and the state police because

both were claiming ownership of the crime scene.

Massachusetts is set up where the state police head up the state’s criminal investigations

on most occasions, but it’s not exactly black and white, and this scene was one of those

gray areas.

So the Rentham officers radioed back to the station and told their chief of police and

a detective to join them at the scene to better assess the situation.

Once the chief of police got there, he took a closer look at the woman, the very young

woman.

She was fully clothed and lying on her back in the gravel area.

She appeared to be in her teens, maybe early 20s tops.

There were shell casings near her body, and the chief of police also observed tire marks

close by.

But because of all the cars at the crime scene, he couldn’t tell if they were relevant

or not.

One of the shell casings even had a distinct footprint over it.

But by the time Rentham PD was there, state police said that they had already taken photos

and were done processing the crime scene.

The woman didn’t seem to have any ID on her, so police knew that they needed to try

and identify her through other means.

While she was being taken away for autopsy by the local funeral home, Rentham Police

set out to do an initial canvas.

There wasn’t much in the gravel pit area besides a parking lot next door, where long-haul

truckers sometimes parked, and a place called Mike’s Truck Stop across the highway.

So officers started there.

They asked truck drivers if anyone had seen anything or heard any gunshots, and they asked

truck stop employees and customers if anyone had seen the young woman or if they noticed

anything out of the ordinary.

When they didn’t get any helpful information, they spent the rest of the afternoon and night

working their way up and down Route 1, stopping at every diner and bar looking for possible

witnesses.

But every stop they made, they struck out.

No one remembered seeing the woman, who they were describing as white and petite with long

brown hair, maybe between 17 and 20 years old.

The next day, November 30th, an autopsy was performed at Ross’s funeral home in Rentham.

Nowadays, bodies in the area are usually taken back to Boston for examinations, but in 1980,

at least in this case, the medical examiner actually went to the private funeral home

and did the autopsy there.

Now, before the autopsy even really got underway, the ME discovered something strange in the

girl’s pocket that police missed at the scene.

It was a note.

The note was dated November 24th and addressed to someone named Frankie.

The letter said, quote, Hey kid, how’s life treating you?

How’s Ruth?

Right now, I’m listening to the radio and writing to you.

It’s 1028 p.m.

Has Paula been working lately?

Hope your Thanksgiving day is okay.

I’m sure mine will be.

Well, I really have nothing to say, but I finally made it home.

Sorry, this is so short and sloppy.

Sharon.

End quote.

The ME set the letter aside to give to police later, and they continued on.

At some point, a dentist was called to examine her teeth, which were in great condition,

but it was the dentist who discovered something else interesting.

This woman was no woman at all.

She was probably just a girl, likely much younger than investigators had assumed.

After the autopsy, the ME ruled it a homicide by gunshot wound.

Detective Barrett, who’s working the case today, asked us to keep the specifics, like

where on her body she was shot, under wraps.

But he did say that the bullets they extracted during the autopsy were helpful to the investigation.

So at that point, two .45 caliber bullets were recovered from her body that were consistent

with the shell casings that were recovered at the scene, which I think would lead one

to believe that she was probably shot there at that scene.

The girl’s body didn’t have any other signs of trauma.

And I know you’re all wondering if the ME was able to determine whether or not the

girl had been sexually assaulted.

But the thing is, we were asked not to disclose information specific to those findings.

But here’s what I can tell you.

Even though it was 1980, biological evidence was recovered during the autopsy and preserved.

And other evidence, like the bullets and clothing, were sent to the state crime lab in Boston

right after the examination.

Now while they waited for any kind of analysis to come back, Rentham police were checking

out the letter that was in the girl’s pocket.

Could this young girl be the Frankie that this note was addressed to?

They checked missing persons reports to see if there were any missing Frankies or any

names that Frankie could be short for like Francis or Francine, but they turned up nothing.

So police started contacting high schools and colleges in the area to see if any students

by that name were missing.

It was tricky timing because most schools were on Thanksgiving break, but police were

grasping at straws trying to do anything they could think of to find out who this girl was.

They knew that they were missing out on valuable investigative time simply by not knowing this

girl’s name.

On December 2nd, to try and redeem themselves for the chaotic crime scene, state police

and Rentham police had a sit-down meeting and the case was formally assigned to Rentham

detective John Barrett and Massachusetts state trooper Joseph Brooks.

The two were told to work the case together from that point forward.

And as a quick side note, the detective that you’re hearing from in this episode, James

Barrett, that’s John Barrett’s son.

So the OG detective on this case in 1980 was James’s dad.

James was just a kid when this happened, but he remembers his dad coming home and showing

him a crime scene photo of the girl who’d been shot, hoping maybe he knew her, which

just goes to show you how desperate police were to identify her.

And he kind of held it up.

It was very shocking because I don’t think even at 11, I’d even seen what a dead person

was.

And he’s like, do you recognize this girl?

So you could almost sense the desperation in him when, you know, when you’re showing

a picture of a dead person to your 11-year-old and 12-year-old, because my older brother

is a year older, to see if we recognize her.

It must have been pretty worrisome for him that they didn’t know who she was.

That’s never left me.

It was traumatic.

James and his brother did not recognize the girl in the photo.

As a last resort, police finally decided to turn to the press to see if the public could

help identify her.

The funeral home cleaned her up, and they took a tight close-up photo of just the girl’s

face with her eyes closed and her brown hair splayed out behind her.

And that photo was released to the media, along with a detailed description of her clothing

on December 3rd.

Now, they didn’t feel good about releasing a photo of a young dead girl to the public,

but they felt as if they had tried everything else by that point.

Two local newspapers, the Rentham Sun Chronicle and the Woonsocket Call, ran the photo and

the information police provided.

They reported that the girl was about 5'3", 115 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes,

wearing a waist-length brown jacket with raglan sleeves.

They reported that she was also wearing a Ketchcan brand quilted maroon blouse under

the jacket.

And they even released the size and brand of her bra, hoping that regional clothing

makers might remember her as a customer and come forward.

The other thing police gave to the media were the details of the letter found in the girl’s

pocket.

They were hoping someone could give them a lead on who Frankie was or even the letter

writer, Sharon.

And the media attention paid off, and people started calling in with ideas about who the

girl might be.

Police spent a few days running down the tips, but ultimately came up with nothing.

Finally, on December 7th, a week after she was found, Rentham police got a call from

someone saying,

That girl in the newspaper?

I think that’s my niece, Frankie Harvey.

Frankie Harvey’s uncle was calling from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which is just 25 minutes south.

As he went on to describe his niece, there was little doubt in anyone’s mind that they

finally had a match.

Not just because his description was spot on, but because he said they were supposed

to spend Thanksgiving Day with her, but she was a no-show, and nobody in their family

had seen her in a while.

There was just one discrepancy.

Her uncle said that Frankie was only 13, which was way younger than anyone had even guessed.

And you might be wondering why a 13-year-old’s family hadn’t reported her missing after

going weeks without seeing her.

But the answer was, she had been reported missing.

Here’s the whole story that her uncle told police.

He said that Frankie had been staying at a girls’ home called the Marathon House

in Providence, Rhode Island.

And her uncle and his wife, Frankie’s aunt, were supposed to pick her up from that house

on Wednesday, November 26th.

She was going to stay that night, have Thanksgiving dinner with them on Thursday, and then stay

through the whole weekend before going back on Monday.

Detective Barrett said that the aunt and uncle were looking forward to spending time with

Frankie over the holiday.

But on Wednesday, before they left to go get her, their phone rang.

They had received a call from Marathon House not to come pick her up because she had run

away.

They were told she was missing in action.

They didn’t know where she was, and to not waste their time coming to pick her up because

she wasn’t there.

Frankie’s uncle told police that she had only been living at Marathon House for a week,

maybe two, and had just been placed there after running away from a different youth

home.

On the phone that day, the staff at Marathon House told her uncle not to worry because

they had already reported Frankie missing to police in Providence, per their policy.

Since Frankie took off on her own pretty often and always showed back up, nobody thought

much of it at the time.

And that missing persons report that was filed in Providence didn’t make it onto Rentham

Police’s radar when they were first trying to identify her because they were checking

reports from Massachusetts, not Rhode Island.

Just so you know, Rentham, Massachusetts is only about 40 minutes north of Providence,

Rhode Island.

But because they’re in two different states, there was a bit of a barrier when it came

to information sharing.

And Providence is a bigger metro area, so while sleepy little Rentham is just 25 miles

up the road, it sort of feels like a world away from Providence.

Rentham police immediately drove to Providence to tell Frankie’s mom about her death.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any reports to tell us what her mom’s reaction was or what

she said, and there are no written reports to explain Frankie’s relationship with her

mom or any explanation as to why Frankie wasn’t living at home with her.

And police say that she’s since passed away.

But Frankie’s little brother, Michael Harvey, who was just six years old at the time, was

absolutely gutted over the news of his sister’s death.

Michael told our reporting team that Frankie was more than a big sister.

She mothered him, and the two were as close as two siblings can be.

She was my best friend.

Are you kidding me?

She got me dressed.

She gave me breakfast.

She got me to go to school.

The last memory I have is me holding onto the casket, and people trying to pull me away.

That’s where it hurts.

That’s where it hurts the most.

He just took my best friend away from me, and my life went to shit afterwards.

My arms weren’t big enough to go around the whole casket, but I was holding on.

I was holding on.

I wouldn’t let go.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

Her family members told police Frankie was a bright light and fiercely independent and

brave for her age.

They said she was trusting of people, and she often hitchhiked different places.

Some relatives said she’d been enrolled in a school for a while but got kicked out for

possibly selling pills.

It became clear to police that Frankie might not have had the best home life and was trying

to make it on her own at the young age of 13.

While her extended family like her aunts and uncles would try and keep her out of trouble,

she was hard to keep track of, bouncing from youth home to youth home.

Which is why when they interviewed the employees at Marathon House, it didn’t reveal a ton

about her.

Employees told police that Frankie had been staying there less than two weeks, so no one

had really gotten to know her yet.

It’s really unclear.

Her existence is something of a mystery because, again, she never stayed anywhere long enough

for people to establish a meaningful friendship with her.

They did find out that Frankie was known to hang out with a couple of other residents

who were a little older than her, closer to 16.

None of them were Sharon or even knew who Sharon might be, but they did learn something

from their conversations with these girls.

One of them said that they’d seen her around the time that she went missing.

I believe the Federal Hill area, Providence, where I guess a lot of kids that were just

out and about looking for trouble and just looking to party or whatever would hang around

at all hours of the night.

Interestingly, one of the witnesses that had seen her said that she had seen her in the

early morning hours of Thanksgiving Day, between two and five o’clock in the morning in this

area of Providence, just outside talking to people through car doors, just talking to

people with another girl.

The girl said that she specifically remembered Frankie being there because she sort of stuck

out since she was several years younger than everyone else who hung around that area.

And because what she was wearing stood out.

She was wearing a light coat, I think in jeans or corduroy pants, but not something that

it looked like it was too cold to be wearing what she was wearing.

And that when they asked if she was okay, when they drove by, she said, she’s fine.

She’s just waiting for somebody.

Unfortunately, the girl didn’t know who Frankie was waiting for.

So detectives set out to talk to the other teenagers who ran in the same circle.

And another one of the girls who was friends with Frankie had more information.

The girl told police that she was at Federal Hill with Frankie when two guys picked up

both of them.

She wasn’t sure if it was November 26th or 27th, and she also wasn’t sure what time

it was.

But she said that she and Frankie cruised around with these guys aimlessly for a little

while and eventually this girl asked the guys to take her home to her mom’s house

in Pawtucket.

The girl said that when the guys dropped her off at her mom’s house, she went inside

to ask her mom if Frankie could stay the night, but her mom said no.

So she went back outside and told Frankie that she couldn’t stay over.

And so Frankie left with the guys.

That was the last contact that anyone had with Frankie.

So who were these guys?

The girl didn’t know their names.

And there’s very little information in old reports to tell modern day investigators who

they were or how police identified them.

But investigators eventually did find them and interview them.

And as far as Detective Barrett can tell, they were cooperative and ruled out as suspects.

It’s unclear.

I think that, again, the leads of who Frankie and her friend were with led to nothing.

Like I don’t believe that they were necessarily suspects.

I think they were initially, but I think that there were enough details given that

they had been re-interviewed.

They were definitely re-interviewed.

But beyond that, I think that the story is just kind of checked out.

Police were really worried about their lack of investigative leads at this point in the

investigation.

It seemed like everyone they interviewed and every corner they turned led to nothing.

But then police got a tip from someone who said that they should be looking for a guy

who went by the nickname T-Man.

The tipster said T-Man was involved with a lot of younger girls from Marathon House.

He had a reputation for trafficking the girls.

Now the tipster didn’t say that Frankie was being trafficked, but they knew that Frankie

hung out with the girls who definitely were victims of T-Man because the tipster herself

said that she had been introduced to T-Man by Frankie.

She said that she knew T-Man.

She knew who he was and that he was a bad guy, that he carried a gun under his front

seat of his car, that he would drop girls off at houses and wait outside while they

went in to have sex with clients.

And a lot of it was done just in exchange for drugs.

This tip sent police on a wild goose chase over the next few months because nobody seemed

to know T-Man’s real name or even what he looked like or what kind of car he drove.

The only information they were able to get about T-Man was that he was white and maybe

in his 20s.

They went everywhere and tried to track this person down.

No one really had a lot of information.

And I think we also have to bear in mind a lot of these interviews were of young teenagers

that were intoxicated at the time when they had interactions with T-Man.

There was also the possibility that people were scared of T-Man.

But the path to finding or even identifying him went nowhere.

And over the next few months, police still hadn’t gotten any helpful information from

the evidence they’d sent to the state lab.

So by 1981, the investigation into Frankie’s murder went cold.

Detectives retired, other murders took precedence, and years flew by.

The detectives were forced to look square at Frankie’s case again 13 years after her

murder when someone, completely out of the blue, sent a letter to the Rentham Police

Department with a tip.

The letter said Frankie was last seen with a pimp named Johnny at a truck stop one town

over from Rentham right before she was killed.

The tipster said that her body was then dumped in Rentham, and Johnny, the pimp, was later

murdered in Pawtucket.

This obviously reignited a flurry of activity on the case.

However, his lack of knowledge of the details of the Mary Harvey homicide basically led

detectives to believe that it was just a made-up story for the purpose of either doing harm

to other individuals or for whatever reason.

Even though police basically decided this letter writer was a liar, it was enough to

spark some new interest in Frankie’s case.

A detective at the time decided to try and re-interview old witnesses and go back through

old reports.

He even submitted a 15-page questionnaire to VICAP, the FBI’s Violent Crime Apprehension

Program that identifies similarities in cases, but nothing came from it, and Frankie’s

case went back on the shelf.

Until 1998, when Frankie’s little brother, Michael, who was in his 20s by then, called

to ask if they were any closer to catching his sister’s killer.

Michael said losing his sister ruined him, and he called police because he wanted to

at least know if someone in power was still trying to do something about it.

He said for years, he would think about all the things Frankie was missing out on, all

the memories that he was making that he would have shared with his big sister, and all the

firsts that she didn’t get to have.

But she never had a family, she never got to have anything, nothing.

Not a chance for a boyfriend, not for a chance to have kids, not to have grandkids, have

a career, have a life, nothing.

Gone.

Like that.

And you know what?

It took mine, too, because I had no ambition, I had no f***ing stride in life.

Michael’s call prompted the Rentham PD to take a hard look at Frankie’s case again,

This time, they submitted the biological evidence which had been preserved for all these years

to see if they could generate a DNA profile.

Everyone had their fingers crossed and was literally, you know, on the edge of their

seat hoping that if this DNA profile was good enough, it could be instrumental in helping

us to identify a suspect, or at least a person of interest.

But the technology wasn’t advanced enough back then, and the evidence didn’t produce

enough markers to be submitted to the national database.

But it did produce a partial profile that they submitted to the Massachusetts State

Database.

Which was, you know, problematic, clearly, Mary Harvey, you know, was identified as someone

from Providence, Rhode Island, and that the person who murdered her may not even be from

Massachusetts or have a profile in the Massachusetts database.

They never got any hits in Massachusetts.

Even after the years passed, nothing popped up.

So in 2018, Detective Barrett decided to take a look at the case and see if there was anything

worth reexamining using more advanced technology.

I think I was just curious about it.

I think, you know, going back through my time as a police officer, in my recollection, this

is a case that kind of was always just sitting on the shelf in the Rentham Records room.

And knowing that my dad had worked on it, my dad passed away in 99.

But I know that it always troubled him that they were never able to solve this case.

And I figured, you know, I don’t know how many years I have left on the department.

Like, you know, maybe it’s time now where technology is improved to at least take a

look at the case again.

So it was just kind of on my mind.

It’s always been on the back of my mind.

But I think I figured I’d just make a phone call and find out.

Detective Barrett called the state crime lab in Boston to ask if the DNA evidence from

the Frankie Harvey homicide could be enough, per modern standards, to submit to CODIS.

While he waited for that, Detective Barrett got a call from Michael, who was again inquiring

to see what progress had been made in his sister’s case.

So I was able to tell him, no, we’re actually, we just started looking at your sister’s

case again.

And he just, he started bawling.

This was good news for Michael, which was followed by more good news.

The state crime lab reanalyzed the DNA evidence and was actually able to get enough markers

this time to submit it to CODIS.

But two steps forward, one step back.

There were no matches in the national database once it was submitted.

But the case was heating up again.

Detective Barrett teamed up with a detective from the Massachusetts State Police, Dave

DiCicco, to read all of the reports associated with Frankie’s murder.

And deep in the file, they came across a really interesting ballistics report that

changed what Detective Barrett thought he knew about Frankie’s case.

Get this.

So apparently, way back in like 1982, another man was killed with the same weapon that killed

Frankie.

So you got to get a load of this story because it is a strange connection that I can’t

quite wrap my head around.

So on October 3rd, 1982, an officer with Pawtucket Police Department was dispatched to a sand

and gravel pit for a car that had been abandoned.

The officer went to check it out and ran the registration of the Oldsmobile, which came

back to a Providence, Rhode Island man named Frank Cannon.

The officer looked around the immediate area and didn’t see anyone.

So he tried to find Frank by going to his listed address, but no one answers the door.

The officer was able to track down Frank’s sister though.

And she said that she hadn’t seen her brother that day, but she would be on the lookout

for him.

Pawtucket Police cold case detective Susan Cormier said after a few hours, Frank’s sister

decided to round up some relatives and go check things out for themselves.

Later on, his sister and sister-in-law responded out there to go find the car.

And they had a couple of other family members and friends with them, and they kind of spread

out calling out his name, looking for him.

And the sister-in-law ended up finding him in the bushes a little ways away.

Frank was dead with several obvious bullet wounds.

When officers were called to the scene, they found a shell casing and blood on the ground.

They also observed what looked like drag marks, making them wonder if whoever shot Frank had

killed him near his car and then dragged him to the bushes.

Police interviewed Frank’s sister, who said that her brother worked at the Urban League

in Providence as a counselor and that he was actively involved in a local political campaign.

And interestingly, Frank’s sister said that this was not the first time Frank had been

targeted.

She said that the year prior, in 1981, Frank had been abducted by two men who shot him

multiple times, but he survived the attack.

The only problem was Frank refused to tell police who shot him.

He was even hospitalized after the shooting, but Frank would not give up a name or even

a reason for the shooting.

Now when they sent the shell casings from his scene to Boston to get analyzed, the ballistics

analysts said with 100 percent confidence that the gun that killed 33-year-old Frank

Cannon in Rhode Island was the same gun that killed 13-year-old Frankie Harvey in Massachusetts.

Now at the time, it seems like nothing was done about it.

Or if police in both Rentham and Pawtucket did get together to further investigate how

the murders were connected, it wasn’t documented in any reports.

You would think, but it doesn’t appear based on the reports that we have that that was

done.

But I think that’s because at the time, they just couldn’t fathom how they could

be connected.

Like on paper, as far as victimology goes, Frank Cannon and Frankie Harvey had nothing

in common.

Different genders, different races, different ages, different hometowns, different lifestyles.

I mean, the only thing that the crime scenes had in common, besides the bullets, were the

locations.

Even though they were in different states, both Frank and Frankie were shot and killed

in gravel pits.

Also, kind of weird that both of their names are similar, right?

I mean, like no one brings this up, and I’m sure it has nothing to do with it, but it

stands out to me.

But at the time, police in Pawtucket had started leaning into a theory that Frank Cannon’s

murder was connected to organized crime, mostly because of his political work.

And listen, him being so closed lip about who was trying to kill him the first time

around, that’s got funny business written all over it.

I think Frank was scared of people.

But as far as Frankie goes, how could a 13-year-old girl be caught up with a crime family?

So Detective Barrett thinks investigators at the time might have just dismissed the

ballistics connection as a coincidence, like maybe it was a street gun that got tossed

around.

Whether or not there’d be an organized crime connection to the murder of a 13-year-old

girl in Rentham, I don’t know if they would have made that connection, if that would have

actually been connected, or if the investigators at the time really gave it much thought.

You know, I don’t know.

But fast forward to 2018 when Barrett comes across this report, and he doesn’t buy it

as a coincidence.

I contacted the cold case detective down in Pawtucket because I don’t believe really

in coincidences.

There’s a connection.

Detective Cormier took Detective Barrett’s call, and they all agreed that the gun connection

was worth investigating further.

I wasn’t even aware of the case in Rentham with Mary Frances Harvey until sometime last

year when I started working with Jim Barrett from Rentham and Dave DiCicco from the Mass

State Police.

I mean, there’s certainly some interesting facts on both cases that, you know, shows

that type of connection.

We’re just trying to connect the dots.

One of the first things they did was process of elimination.

Now that they had the DNA profile from Frankie’s crime scene, they wanted to test Frank Cannon’s

DNA against it.

And through a family member’s sample, they were able to rule him out, at least forensically

as a suspect in Frankie’s murder.

There is always those missing puzzle pieces.

And I’ve said many times, a cold case like this is like somebody handing you a puzzle

and dumping it out on the table and taking away the box with the picture on it.

And some of those pieces may have fallen, you know, where you just try and put it all

together and the best that you can.

In this puzzle, there are a few missing pieces.

First, the gun has never been found.

Second, motive.

Police can’t say in either case what made Frankie or Frank targets.

Frank Cannon had his wallet and cash on him, so police knew that it hadn’t been a robbery.

It’s very hard to say because while we can say the same gun killed both people, who pulled

the trigger is a lot more difficult to prove.

So depending on how this goes with all of the different theories, you know, you have

people saying, well, there was the mafia.

Well, could it be a racial thing?

Well, he worked, you know, as a counselor here.

It’s finding out what the motive for each one of them was to see who was the trigger person.

The pandemic severely delayed the collaboration on the cases, but a week after our reporting

team was in Massachusetts and Rhode Island for this episode, Detective Cormier, Barrett

and DiCicco finally got together to compare notes.

At the meeting, they made a to-do list.

They’re now working with Parabon NanoLabs to put together a snapshot of the suspect

in Frankie’s case, and they’re using genealogy databases to see if they can get any familial

matches to a possible perpetrator.

The team’s also getting creative to try and look at other avenues.

They’re doing archival research to see if there are any old records of residents who

stayed at Marathon House back when Frankie lived there who were never interviewed.

Because even today, they still don’t know who Sharon is, the person who wrote that letter

to Frankie.

In addition to that, they’re doing some boots-on-the-ground investigative work, just

trying to find T-Man’s real name, which, of course, is where you come in.

I think T-Man is definitely, if there’s any of your listeners that are from this area

that are old enough to maybe have been around the Providence area, if they recognize that

name would definitely.

I think he’s a pivotal person in this investigation.

If he wasn’t that much older, the likelihood that he may still be alive, if not incarcerated,

is pretty high.

I mean, it’s been 42 years, but, you know, we can keep our fingers crossed.

If there are people that listen to the podcast in Providence, Rhode Island, that area that

may have lived there in the 80s, they may recognize that nickname.

Oh, I knew that guy.

You know, he was a bad dude who was constantly at Federal Hill, and, you know, that would

definitely be helpful.

This is a very solvable case.

Whether a match gets generated in CODIS or a familial hit comes from their new genealogy

efforts or a significant tip comes in, it is just a matter of time.

So if you have any information that you think could help detectives close this case for

good, please speak up.

There are three different detectives from three different agencies who right now would

love to hear from you.

If you have any information about Frank Cannon’s 1982 murder, call the Rhode Island Cold Case

tip line at 877-747-6583.

Or if you know anything about Frankie Harvey’s 1980 murder, please call the Rentham Police

Department at 508-384-2121.

Or you can call the Massachusetts State Police at 855-627-6583.

Their families deserve justice.

Michael Harvey deserves to know what happened to his big sister.

That’s all I’m really looking for is the answer, the reason why.

What was the whole reason why I was killing her?

What was so bad that you had to kill my sister for?

What did she know?

Forty years, I have not given up one day.

Every day I think about her, every day I f***ing, I cry about her.

I’m not giving up.

The Deck is an AudioChuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis.

To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

So, what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?