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It was the morning of April 3, 1990, and Jacqueline Bevins was all smiles, handing out donuts and chatting with the construction crew as they arrived on site for the day. Renovations were underway at the property she and her husband had recently purchased. It was a new entrepreneurial endeavor for the always enterprising Jack and Jackie Bevins.
The quaint Oceanside village of Agunquit, Maine knew Jackie Bevins best for her famous restaurant on Perkins Cove. She served on boards and with the Chamber of Commerce, and she was appreciated for her generous nature, a real figure in the York County community. Jack Bevins, too, was well-known about town, though he wasn't around as much, always traveling for work and other activities.
Together they made quite the pair, but it was anything but a happy marriage between Jack and Jackie. Just hours after the final breakfast pastry was handed out at the construction site, an anonymous phone call came in to the York police station. Something bad had happened at the Bevins' house. This case will challenge you.
It will raise questions in your mind about consequence and justice, and what happens when an individual decides or maybe is forced to take those things into their own hands. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is The Jack and Jackie Bevins Case, Part 1, on Dark Down East. This two-part series contains discussion of domestic abuse and violence. Please listen with care.
John W. Bevins, called Jack, was born in Waltham, Massachusetts on September 19, 1942 to his parents Fred and Evelyn Bevins. He grew up in the Newton area, graduating from Newton High School, and then went on to study engineering and accounting at Northeastern University. By all accounts, Jack was sharp and clever, but also seemed drawn to more nefarious endeavors, even from a young age.
A 17-year-old John Bevins was arrested, along with four others, on charges of assault and robbery of a man in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe detailed the crime, reporting that the five teenagers lured the man into a wooded area where he was assaulted and robbed for $35.
The man had to be hospitalized as a result of the attack. After his arrest, Jack also admitted that he'd stolen some expensive radios from an auto store in Newton Center. According to a piece written by licensed professional investigator Joseph D. Thornton Jr., Jack appeared to leverage his accounting degree to further his career of crime, starting with running numbers and later making book in an illegal lottery scheme.
He reportedly expanded his criminal enterprise to dealing drugs as well as arson for profit. Thornton alleges that Jack was also a low-level member of the Raymond Patriarca crime family out of Providence, whose rise to power and influence in the criminal underworld began to peak in the 50s and 60s.
Patriarca's vending machine company, run out of the Coin-O-Matic building in Providence, was a front for his illegal loan sharking, pornography, and gambling operations extending from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, and to other New England states. Somewhere in the midst of his criminal activities, Jack Bevins was married and became a father to his son Douglas, and then divorced.
By the early 1970s, Jack had met someone new, a waitress at a local restaurant. Her name was Jacqueline Garmallo. Jacqueline Garmallo, called Jackie, grew up in Keene, New Hampshire, where she attended preparatory school and was crowned the homecoming queen. She was married once before she met Jack Bevins, and had a son from that marriage named Peter.
I've scoured vital records and archives to find the date of Jack and Jackie's marriage, but I've come up short on this detail. However, they were at least married by 1973, because public records list both of their home addresses as 107 Truman Road in Newton, Massachusetts.
That's the same address where Mrs. Jacqueline Bevins struck a federal agent with her vehicle as he tried to seize it for non-payment of gambling taxes by Jack. Jack Bevins had been arrested in 1972 in a massive FBI raid as the result of a 17-month-long investigation of illegal gambling operations in the Boston area.
At the time, the raid was the largest in Massachusetts history, with 89 arrests, and resulted in over $3.6 million in liens and collections, as well as jail time and additional charges for those implicated in the scheme. When it came time for Jack to pay up, and the agents came knocking, Jackie showed them that they didn't take these matters laying down.
The Boston Globe reported that IRS agent Robert P. Fletcher, along with three other agents, attempted to serve Jack a notice for payment of $18,584, about $115,000 with today's inflation.
He wasn't home at the time, but Jackie was, and the agents told her they'd be seizing this silver Mercedes in the driveway, but they gave her permission to collect any personal belongings from inside the car first.
Instead, Jackie hopped into the driver's seat and started backing out of the driveway. An agent's car had boxed her in, so she cut the wheel to take off over the front lawn where Agent Fletcher was standing. According to the report, Jackie hit Fletcher, causing him to roll up onto the hood and then land on the ground as she peeled off. He was not seriously injured.
The car was never actually seized, but Jackie Bevins was indicted on a charge of assaulting a federal officer.
In 1974, Jack Bevins was arrested again, this time on indictments charging him and another man with extortionate credit transactions, also known as loan sharking. Source material on what, if any, convictions or jail time came from the multiple arrests over the years is scarce. But it seemed Jack and Jackie's time in Newton, Massachusetts was due to expire.
In 1975, the pair turned the page on that tumultuous chapter and headed north with their family to picturesque Agunquit, Maine. Agunquit's name comes from the Abenaki language, meaning beautiful place by the sea. The Perkins Cove fishing village evolved into a favorite tourist destination with a strong lure for artists and art enthusiasts alike.
The Agunquit Playhouse puts up world-class summer stock theater productions, and the beach community attracts anyone with an appreciation for Maine's beautiful coastline. Agunquit is also known and celebrated for its LGBTQ plus community.
In the 1970s, it was a similar portrait to what you see in the village today. The local population of 1,200 swelled to over 14,000 in the summer, and beachside parking lots were stuffed like sardines from sunup to sundown.
A 1973 film called The Marginal Way by Bill Benenson describes Agunquit's 1970s population as a collection of artists, fishermen, hippies, hermits, and pensioners. A few of the locals interviewed in the film are clear in their views of the uprising of tourism in their beachside community. One man says, quote, I think the character of the summer visitors which are coming here is deteriorating.
Unquote. In 1970, 13-year-old Mary Catherine Olenchuk disappeared just 200 yards away from her family's agunquit summer residence. Three weeks later, her body was found in a barn the next town over. Her case remains unsolved. I've covered Mary's story in its entirety on Dark Down East.
The tragedy of the little girl's murder did not align with the spectacular summer destination that Agunquit was known to be. Although it remains as a dark cloud over the beaches of the area even today, it did not deter the thousands of summer people who made Agunquit an annual tradition.
When Jackie and Jack Bevins rolled into town in 1975, they weren't just summer people. They settled down as transplant residents and embedded themselves in the community. Jackie set her sights on developing her own entrepreneurial endeavors. She had experience working in restaurants and decided to get into the industry as an owner. First, with a deli-style shop she called Jackie's.
The business grew into a full-service restaurant called Jackie's 2, which remains a favorite sit-down seafood eatery on Agunquit's famous Perkins Cove, even today. Meanwhile, Jack appeared to establish a new career, becoming president of United Truck Leasing Corporation of Boston. The always-enterprising businessman diversified his income with a concrete company in the Cayman Islands.
an operation that private investigator Joseph D. Thornton identifies as more likely a money laundering scheme. Between the two, Jack was on the road a lot, which left Jackie running the restaurant and later managing their real estate investments in town. Beyond running the restaurant, Jackie also ran for and was appointed to a position on the Agunquit Zoning Board of Appeals and served on the Agunquit Chamber of Commerce.
Friends and patrons and co-workers alike knew Jackie to be generous with her time and resources, though with a grit and toughness that often develops as a workaholic entrepreneur. A descriptor that came up frequently in my research was "strong personality." While Jack, too, was known around town, he wasn't as present a figure of the community as his wife.
But what locals started to learn about Jack and Jackie was that they didn't always get along, and their fighting and arguments were frequent and public enough for outsiders to recognize that they had their issues. Quote, End quote.
Jack was flashy with his gold jewelry and suntanned skin. When he was around the Agunquit area, he always seemed to be playing host to a collection of out-of-towners. According to the investigation by Joseph Thornton, it was also rumored that Jack had no qualms about propositioning women who weren't his wife, and his dalliances with the female waitstaff at the restaurant were common knowledge.
However, like in many small-town communities, everyone kept to their own business and dismissed the conflict they witnessed because whose marriage doesn't have challenges from time to time? Jackie did try to end things with Jack more than once. She filed for divorce twice but never went through with it.
According to a close friend of both Jack and Jackie, a man named Vincent Ignico, Jack also tried to end the marriage in the late 80s. Vincent would later testify that Jackie had confided in him and asked for advice to salvage their relationship. But the conversations between Jackie and Vincent weren't always like that.
According to reporting in the Biddeford Journal-Tribune, Vincent claimed that when the marital problems were at their peak, Jackie would joke that if she caught her husband out again, she'd kill him. Reportedly, Vincent would respond to her dark humor, saying, quote, End quote.
Though she shared her relationship struggles with a friend, and the fights were beginning to be more noticeable to the general public, no one on the outside could have known the full scope of what was happening behind closed doors at the Bevins' household. Jackie didn't let on to the magnitude of their marital challenges, that they had escalated far beyond an argument in public or a rumored philandering husband.
Jackie kept it all to herself, documenting her days in her diary. Meanwhile, the restaurant was really taking off, and as the eatery became a must-visit spot for summer people and locals alike, Jackie was known to carry large amounts of cash at the end of the day.
According to reporting in the Biddeford Journal-Tribune by Tom Berg, in 1982, Jackie Bevins called the police to report that someone had busted into the restaurant, stabbed her, and then made off with $10,000 in cash.
According to the report of the incident, her wounds were superficial and not serious. The article also notes that responding officers wondered if Jackie's report of the incident was true, but they did not elaborate on why they questioned the validity of the story. If she had any motivation to fabricate the incident, it's unclear what that would be.
In any case, the reported robbery worried the police chief. He knew Jackie and was apparently concerned for her safety. Private investigator Joseph Thornton learned that the police chief gave Jackie a firearm, a .32 caliber Harrington & Richardson Model 732. It was intended as a form of personal protection.
Jackie didn't know how to use the gun, and so Thornton reports that Jackie took lessons from a lobsterman whose daughter worked at the restaurant. She wanted to learn just enough to protect herself, just in case she ever needed to. In February of 1990, Jackie was at home when the telephone rang. As she pressed the receiver to her ear, she was greeted by an unknown man.
According to evidence obtained by private investigator Joseph Thornton, the caller had a warning. Jack Bevins had placed a bounty on his wife's head. The caller was allegedly offered $15,000 to kill Jackie Bevins, but, as the voice on the phone explained, he didn't like Jack Bevins. He didn't like how Jack approached him and forced the proposition on him.
So, the man rejected the offer, and instead, was now on the phone to warn Jackie of her husband's attempted plan. What Jackie did, after hanging up that call, isn't available in any of the sources I could dig up on this case. I can only assume that she was shell-shocked, and afraid, at least at first. But it doesn't appear she reported the incident. Instead,
Jackie seemed to keep her head down and trudge forward. Evidence later revealed, however, that Jackie made an appointment with a divorce attorney sometime after that bizarre phone call. It appeared she was ready to get out of her marriage and move on from Jack Bevins once and for all.
On the morning of April 3rd, 1990, Jackie Bevins was handing out those donuts and greeting the crew as they funneled into the job site for the day. Jackie led with generosity. That was just Jackie's way, one of the workers told the Biddeford Journal-Tribune, knowing that it made the events of that afternoon all the more shocking and upsetting for everyone who knew Jackie Bevins.
Just after 1 p.m. on April 3rd, 1990, the telephone rang at the York Police Station. On the other end of the line was an urgent but steady voice. Detective Sergeant Bernard M. Hill thought the voice sounded vaguely familiar. The caller spoke plainly. "There probably was a situation here at the residence," the voice said. The caller provided the address: Valley Road in York.
The dispatcher pressed the anonymous caller for more information as they dispatched the appropriate first responders. It was a shooting. They'd find the victim in the bathroom. They'd have to kick down the door. A few more words were exchanged before the caller hung up. A quick check of records revealed to the dispatcher that the address belonged to Jack and Jackie Bevins.
The large gray house sat at the end of a secluded, tree-lined dirt driveway off Valley Road. The oceanfront Cape Nettick neighborhood was known for its picturesque, nubble lighthouse, the exclusive high-end homes perched on the water's edge. Sounds of waves crashing against the rocks were a constant. Sounds of gunshots were not.
As reported by the Biddeford Journal Tribune, York Police Detective Kevin Leconte was first on the scene. He announced himself at the front door, knocking several times, but got no response. He circled the perimeter of the home, peering into first floor windows for any signs of its inhabitants. When he came to a rear window, he stopped, cold, in his tracks.
The shades were open, giving him a clear sight line into the bathroom. There, next to the bathtub on the tile floor, was a body laying in a pool of blood. Just as the anonymous caller had warned, police had to kick down the door to get into the bathroom. A quick assessment of the scene made it obvious that the individual was deceased. Detective Deconti sent the medical personnel away,
there was nothing they could do. The Biddeford Journal Tribune obtained investigative documents describing the scene, which showed signs of a struggle. A picture frame, shampoo bottles, and a bar of soap were scattered around the body, as well as shell casings from a .32 caliber revolver. A gun that appeared to be the same weapon used to fire those bullets was just sitting there, right there on the counter.
It was obvious to detectives that this was the scene of a homicide, and their victim was John Jack Bevins. Meanwhile, 40 miles north at Maine Medical Center in Portland, a woman stepped through the automatic sliding doors of the hospital. As detectives were in York collecting evidence at the scene of Jack Bevins' death and attempted to piece together what exactly went down in that bathroom,
Jackie Bevins was at the hospital, admitting herself for voluntary psychiatric treatment. It would be a few hours before police caught up with Jackie to arrest her for murder. On the next episode of Dark Down East, why did Jackie kill her husband? The why becomes a big part of this case because it was the basis of Jackie's defense.
And until that point, a defense like Jackie's had never been used at trial in the state of Maine. What was the relationship of Jack and Jackie Bevins really like? What drove the successful business owner and well-known community figure to murder?
We'll explore a form of PTSD, known as battered woman syndrome, and how the defense team planned to present Jackie's side of the killing at trial. The investigation, the court proceedings, the result, and the aftermath of the Jack and Jackie Bevins case. It's all on the next episode of Dark Down East.
Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. Source material for this case and others is listed at darkdowneast.com. Follow along on Instagram at darkdowneast. And don't forget to send me an email if you have a case in your hometown that deserves coverage. Email me at hello at darkdowneast.com. Now through the end of 2021, I'll be sharing information about missing and unidentified persons in New England.
According to the Maine State Police listing for this case, Cullen Airy was last seen in January of 2017 when he was driven to the Brewer Auditorium in Brewer, Maine by his stepfather. He was reportedly going to begin a new job in Bangor.
Since that day, family and friends have not had any contact with Cullen. His social media accounts have not been updated and he does not have a cell number to be contacted. He has never had a driver's license and he is not known to drive. He went by the nickname Cole. If you have any information about Cullen's whereabouts, please contact Maine State Police at 207-
973-3750 or toll free at 1-800-432-7381. This information and photos are listed at darkdowneast.com slash missing. Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do.
I'm honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and murder cases. I'm not about to let their names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.
