The 1989 murder of Jessica Briggs on the docks of a Maine wharf, her boyfriend’s potential exoneration after spending 27 years in prison, and this case’s possible connection to the Connecticut River Valley Killer. Special thank you to the following Dark Valley listeners for their dedicated support of the show: M Charles, Tara F, Debie Burton, Sandi C. W., Parker D. and Brian Denman. Join the Crime Junkie Fan Club to enjoy Dark Valley ad-free PLUS gain access to exclusive case files. More details HERE. CASE TIPS OR INFORMATION: New Hampshire State Police- Cold Case Unit at: 603-271-2663 Vermont State Police- Major Crimes Unit: 802-244-8781
Chapter 1: Who discovered Jessica Briggs' murder scene?
There, on the weather-beaten dock, was a large pool of blood. A few feet away was a pack of Marlboro cigarettes, smeared with blood, a single earring, and a pair of black high heels. It felt weird, said Lenny. It felt off. So he went and notified the security guard on duty, who then called the Portland Police Department.
Officer Alan McIntyre arrived on scene and quickly identified bloody drag marks that led to the edge of the dock. He called in a dive team, and by about noon, a diver sunk below the jetty. and just 30 feet down, saw a pair of stark white legs against the murky blackness of the seabed.
They belonged to a woman in a black dress, and there, stuck into the seabed, to the right of the woman's head, was a large knife. When they hauled the female body up to the surface, they discovered that her throat had been savagely slashed, and she had been partially eviscerated. This was 16-year-old Jessica Briggs.
From Audiocheck, this is Dark Valley, an investigation into the Connecticut River Valley Killer. I'm Jennifer Amell. This is Episode 16. Dark Valley Jessica Briggs' case deserves its own multi-episode podcast. It's an epic story of 80s street kids, drug dealers, and homelessness. And the conviction of another teenager for this heinous murder. It was that convicted teenager, Anthony Sanborn.
who eventually came to be represented by attorney Amy Fairfield, a woman I've come to know well. We were introduced by Dr. John Philpin because of our mutual interest in the Connecticut River Valley Killer cases. So why are we talking about Jessica Briggs?
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Chapter 2: What evidence links Jessica Briggs' case to the Connecticut River Valley Killer?
Well, John Philpin, Amy Fairfield, and a guy named Greg McCrary, an FBI profiler with 25 years experience under his belt, all independently believe that Briggs' case matches the MO of the Connecticut River Valley Killer.
We'll discuss why her murder fits the pattern more generally, but it was April, Heidi Martin's sister, who saw the composite sketch in the Jessica Briggs case and said it was the spitting image of her father.
Through this whole journey, I came across another case that has another sketch from a witness sketch, and that sketch is a mirror image to this person. It was... Absolutely terrifying and relieving all at once when I saw this sketch because it is a mirror image of this person that I've thought all along and that it could be connected to the River Valley killings as well.
Composite sketches are tricky. I'm reminded of the sketch done from Jane Borowski's Memory of Her Attack in 1988. Today, Jane would tell you not to put a lot of stock in it. A composite sketch is usually done by essentially flipping through a book of facial features. But Jane was intubated, and she would blink once for yes and twice for no.
Likewise, there's a lot of context for the sketch done in the Briggs case. So this murder occurred in 1989. Anthony Sanborn was put on trial in 1992. But it wasn't until 2017 that the investigating officer in the Briggs case, Jeff Daniels, found an unlawfully stored box of notes in his home attic. In this box was the composite sketch in question.
It was never released publicly, and Sanborn's defense team back in 92 never even saw it. Amy Fairfield told 13WGME that it, quote, does not match what Tony Sanborn looked like in May 1989. So this sketch is the product of no less than 10 witnesses who saw Jessica Briggs walking with an unknown man. Jessica was 16 and lived a rather troubled life.
She had recently run away from the youth home in Portland and was staying with her friend Gloria. She roamed the city streets at night with gaggles of other lost kids, herding from one party to the next, down to the pier, to Peppermint Park, and back again. Some say she would offer sex for money here and there, but she wasn't doing it a lot.
But that May, Jessica decided to get her life straightened out. She got a job as a busser at DeMillo's, a restaurant out on the Long Wharf. She had dated Anthony Sanborn for a brief time that spring, but they broke up in April. Amicably, everyone says. The night of May 23, 1989, Jessica finished her shift at DeMillo's by 10.12 p.m.
and started off walking home to Gloria's apartment on Sherman Street. And this was a little over a mile away. Along her route, she ran into a few friends on Congress Street, a Sean D., Michelle F., and Brian B. Brian snapped a photo of Michelle and Jessica. It would be the last photo anyone ever took of Jessica alive. She arrived at the Sherman Street apartment by about 10.35 p.m.
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Chapter 3: What happened on the night of Jessica Briggs' murder?
Her friend Gloria says she nicknamed it Butchie and said it was for protection. Jessica told Gloria that she was going to her new boyfriend George's house, who lived down on India Street near the waterfront. She left for George's around midnight, but she never made it there.
Around 12.15 a.m., the Bath Ironworks shift let out, and 18 workers filed out of the factory and began boarding a company bus, which was parked facing Commercial Street. Two ironworkers who were leaving in a pickup truck saw a girl matching Jessica's description. She was pushing a bike, and a man was walking close to her right side.
These two in the pickup truck described this man as around 5'11", 170 pounds, with quote, long arms and blonde hair that hung over his ears, wavy and thrown back. They passed the parking garages and headed down toward the pier. The company bus driver also saw Jessica and this mystery man. He said the man was walking about six feet ahead of Jessica as she pushed the bike.
He described the man as 6'2", 170 pounds, and 22 to 28 years old. He had sandy brown hair that blended with his beard and mustache. He was wearing a multicolored shirt and jeans. He said the bike was a stingray style with a banana seat. The bus driver said his cheeks looked reddened and he had a cocky smile. It seemed like he'd been drinking.
And then seven more men on the bus saw Jessica pass under a street lamp with this man. Their descriptions are relatively consistent, citing a young man, teens to late 20s, no facial hair, 5'5 to 6'2, with a slim to medium build. He had dirty blonde hair, dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and jean jacket. At 12.20, the young man took the bike from Jessica and straddled it.
Jessica hiked up her skirt and climbed on the seat behind him. Some of the men on the bus called out to Jessica and she laughed. The pair cycled off together down the pier. Between 12.30 and 12.45 a.m., three men were out on a late-night cruise in the harbor. According to them, they were passing by the Bath Iron Works dry docks to see what kind of vessels they had.
And as they passed by these docks, they saw a woman at the end of the pier, about 50 yards away. She was backlit by the security light, so they couldn't make out her features. The woman waved and yelled, Hi! And then two of the boaters noticed a man standing behind her. He didn't wave or call out. The boaters estimated the woman's height to be around 5'6", and the man at 6'3".
Beyond that, they couldn't give any more details. It is under this pier that Jessica's body is discovered in the sea the next day. The medical examiner estimates that Jessica's time of death was between 3.15 and 5.15 a.m., but noted that it's challenging because she was found in the cold water.
There was minimally digested macaroni found in her stomach contents during an autopsy, which suggested that it was eaten two to four hours before death. So that would put Jessica's time of death around 3.30 a.m., So if she's last seen at 1245, where her body was later found, and died at 330, what was Jessica Briggs doing for two hours and 45 minutes? And with whom? Who is that boy on the bike?
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Chapter 4: Who is Anthony Sanborn and why was he convicted?
Amy made available to me any documents I requested, among them trial transcripts, crime scene video footage, autopsy photos, and an independent FBI review of the case. I tried my best to look at this case holistically. So here's what I found. Anthony Sanborn, or Tony as he's known, became a person of interest to the Portland police in June of 1989 because of statements made by three people.
The first is Glenn B., a teenager at the time and a friend of Sanborn's. Glenn said he saw Sanborn and Jessica Briggs going for a friendly walk on Sunday, May 21st. Then Glenn says he ran into Sanborn on May 23rd, the night of the murder. Sanborn asked him if he'd seen Jessica. He seemed mad at her, Glenn noted.
He said Sanborn told him he was going to go looking for Jessica at her new boyfriend's house. Then, according to Glenn, Sanborn pulled a knife from his pocket. A few days later on Thursday, Glenn ran into Sanborn again. Sanborn said he hadn't seen Jessica, but then he quickly changed his story. Sanborn said he actually did find Jessica that night at her boyfriend's house.
He said they took a walk, had sex, and then argued for half an hour after. On July 7th, 1989, Portland police brought in Anthony Sanborn for questioning about a, quote, unrelated matter. But they quickly pivoted to Jessica Briggs. Sanborn denied having seen Jessica at all between May 21st and 29th, when he was in Portland, and he flat out denied murdering her.
Nine months passed, and detectives had nothing to tie Sanborn to the murder, save for one vague story from an unreliable street kid. That all changed when a man named Jerry Rossi, who was imprisoned in Volusia, Florida, came forward. Rossi was a pedophile. He was facing charges for sex acts with minors. He said he knew Tony Sanborn well. They even lived together.
And he fancied himself a kind of father figure. Yikes. Rossi said that Sanborn had confessed to him three times that he murdered Jessica Briggs. And his story went like this. Sanborn went to DeMillo's the night of the murder to find Jessica and met her as she left work. He tried to get Jessica to go with him to Virginia Beach. Rossi said Jessica wouldn't go and wouldn't, quote, hustle for him.
Sanborn demanded her tip money from that night's work, but she refused. So Sanborn got angry and killed her There are a lot of problems with this story, chiefly that Jessica was not found in her work clothes, but had gone home to change. But we'll get into all that in a bit. But because of Rossi's testimony, Tony Sanborn is arrested for the murder of Jessica Briggs on April 17th, 1990.
And it's after Sanborn's arrest, with his picture plastered all over the local papers, that the final nail is hammered in. A 13-year-old girl named Hope Katie came forward to the police, claiming she witnessed the murder. Hope Katie's story is tragic. She was just a little girl, and she had run away from home, and she was in and out of shelters, living on the streets sometimes.
She said that on the night of the murder, she was sitting on the dock about three piers away from Bath Iron Works. She recognized Jessica Briggs with three others walking down the pier. She said an argument broke out and that she recognized the voices of Anthony Sanborn and a teenage girl named Michelle.
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Chapter 5: What evidence was used to convict Anthony Sanborn?
It makes me wonder how close Tallman was to a conviction. For 27 grueling years, Tony Sanborn maintained his innocence from prison. I have the benefit of hindsight, and I'm saying with confidence that the state of Maine got it wrong. I believe Anthony Sanborn is innocent, and I'll tell you why. Nearly all of the key witnesses who testified against Sanborn in 1992 have since recanted.
I cannot stress this enough. Glenn B., who said he saw Sanborn on the night of the murder, angry, armed with a knife, stalking off to go find Jessica, admitted to lying under oath. He claimed that the Portland police and the attorney general threatened to arrest him if he didn't testify. And then there's Hope Cady, the state's star witness.
First of all, she had never even spoken to Toni Sanborn or to the other girl she accused, Michelle. So the fact that she said she recognized their voices is a lie. Hope Cady also had terrible vision, 20 over 200 when tested in 1990. But this wasn't told to Sanborn's defense until November of 2016. Hope Cady could never have seen the murder taking place, three peers away in dim light.
And finally, no less than six witnesses, when interviewed back in 1990, said they saw Hope Cady elsewhere that night and that she couldn't have been on the pier and seen the murder happen. And after all this, Hope Cady said she lied about witnessing the murder because she was, quote, scared the cops would arrest her.
And that leaves Jerry Rossi's testimony that Sanborn confessed to him three times. Rossi never recanted. But there's some important context to when Rossi became a prison informant. In his first interview, police audiotaped Rossi. And in this tape, Rossi says Sanborn never confessed to him. In his second interview, only a day later, police didn't record this.
And this is apparently when Rossi tells them that Sanborn did confess. Not once, not twice, but three times. And then it came out that a detective allegedly threatened Rossi with additional rape charges. A young woman named Bam BG said she was pressured for a brief time by Portland police to pursue rape charges against Rossi. These charges against Rossi never materialized.
So the allegation here is that Portland police threatened to charge Rossi with several rapes unless he testified against Sanborn. The fact that all the charges against Rossi were dropped is evidence of this.
FBI profiler Greg McCrary wrote in his 2017 report that quote, "...well-trained detectives know that using threats or promises to gain information during an interview violates basic police practices." Okay, and then get this. Remember those files found in the attic of the lead investigator, Detective Daniels? Those files were found and made available to Sanborn's team in May of 2017.
In Daniels' notes, it was discovered that Hope Cady was actually interviewed three days after the murder in 1989. Hope's first statement is that she was at home and didn't know anything. Then she said she saw Jessica Briggs in the park. Then she said she saw her on Commercial Street, quote, talking to a man in a pickup truck.
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Chapter 6: Why is there controversy surrounding Anthony Sanborn's conviction?
I want to thank you for being someone that had integrity and had the guts to do what you did. And I don't know where your stance is or what you believe in, and I know at this stage you can't tell me, but thank you for being someone that, because I didn't believe in anything in the system, so thank you.
Thank you. I understand you've lost your faith in the justice system, and my only goal is to ensure justice is done and to give everyone a fair hearing, fair trial. And I hope that you leave here with that conviction today. Thank you.
All rise, please.
Tony wrote back in 1993. I know that the system will now make me spend time in jail. I accept the jury verdict and I will do the time even though I know that I was not responsible for Jessica's death.
Tony Sanborn walked out of prison after serving 27 years. He's now married and reportedly living a happy life on the outside. However, Sanborn's conviction still stands. Though he was able to gain his freedom and maintain his innocence, his conviction weighs on him every day. Same with Amy. As long as Sanborn is guilty in the eyes of the state of Maine, Jessica Briggs' case remains closed.
So if Sanborn didn't do it, who killed Jessica Briggs? We've been over April's theory that her father, Barry, may have been involved. But I can't find any evidence to support that at all. The looming question remains. The question that brought Amy and I together in the first place. Is Jessica Briggs a victim of the Connecticut River Valley Killer?
As I mentioned at the top, John Philpin and Greg McCrary have both gone on record saying that Briggs indeed looks like a Valley Killer victim.
Jessica Briggs was 16. Prosecutors say she was a prostitute and her former boyfriend, Anthony Sanborn, killed her on the Portland waterfront in 1989. Her throat had been slashed and she was also stabbed and her stomach was virtually cut out. Experts say Sanborn could not have possibly committed that kind of murder.
Criminal forensic profiler John Philpin, who's from Vermont, says in a court briefing, it is my opinion that Jessica went to the pier on the night in question and to meet someone in a sex-for-money transaction. Philpin went on to say the killer in the Briggs case took great pleasure in his actions.
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