Drown Soda
02-05-2017, 03:23 PM
Like many, I've always found Susan Walsh's disappearance to be completely bizarre—probably in part because of all of the rumors about the Russian mafia and the vampire subculture she was writing about for the Village Voice at the time. It's one of those cases that's been shrouded in rumor and lore.
That said, I was browsing unsolved.com and came across this post on Walsh's entry on the site:
Submitted by Sam Frank (not verified) on Mon, 01/02/2017 - 16:42
I have followed this case for years. I was born and raised in Nutley and still reside there. I never knew Susan Walsh but I remember when this happened. I was told a very interesting story about this case by the brother of her ex husband Mark. Several years after her disappearance I met Mark's brother when he came to work for the same company I was working for. We struck up a friendship that continued for years until we lost touch after we both left that company. I asked him what he thought happened to Susan and he told me he knew exactly what happened to her. This is what he told me:
Mark and Susan were separated and Susan was living with their son David in the apartment upstairs while Mark was living in one room in the basement. All Mark had was a bed, a dresser, a telephone and his few personal belongings. Susan would come down and use his phone frequently but he would not allow her to use it to call her boyfriends or her drug dealers. In exchange for using the telephone, she would allow him upstairs to use the kitchen to cook his meals. The day of her disappearance they had a huge argument about her using the phone so she went across the street to use the pay phone. When she returned from using the pay phone she did not go to her apartment, she went to the basement where she and Mark continued fighting. In a fit of rage he grabbed a frying pan and smashed her across the head with it, killing her. It was not intentional but nonetheless it was murder. He hid the body in his basement room and once her boyfriend had gone to work he took David to Staples. Later that night or early the next morning he took the body to a reservation where he was known to hike and disposed of the body. He returned and later that day reported her missing.
He also told me that Mark did not have much money and when he visited his brother about a week before the disappearance Mark had shown him the new frying pan he had just bought and how expensive it was. When my friend went to see his brother after Susan disappeared he noticed the frying pan was gone. When he questioned Mark about it mark just said he must have misplaced it. He also told me that Mark removed the page from the calendar because there was something written on it he didn't want the cops to see. I didn't know what to make of his story but I told him he should go to the police if he was so sure that Mark had done it. He said he did go to the Nutley PD and sat with a detective and told him everything. The detective said they would investigate and they would be in touch, but he never heard a word from them. He said he called several times to see how the investigation was going but they just kept telling him they were still checking it out and would contact him. He finally gave up after not hearing anything. He said his brother became distant and remote from the rest of the family and concentrated on raising his son David.
I don't know if any of this is true and I'm not accusing Mark or anyone else of anything. This is the story his brother told me and he seems to believe it. I've never met Mark or his son but I find this theory pretty intriguing. I also wonder why the Nutley PD did not follow up. Or if they did maybe it was all a lie. One more fact about this story that is pretty interesting is that Mark Walsh and my friend are the younger brothers of Joe Walsh, the rock star. I've never seen that mentioned in any of the stories I've read about Susan Walsh.
I was blown away by this. I guess I never suspected her husband for the mere fact that police apparently ruled him out (I believe this is stated in the UM segment, as well as on the Disappeared episode). I did a bit of research and found a NY Post article from 2006 that states that, while Mark wasn't a suspect, he had recurrently refused to allow police to do forensic tests in their home—why?
Based on the post made by Sam Frank, I'm beginning to believe that this is what in all likelihood happened. I think all of the hoopla surrounding her disappearance really obscured that which is obvious and clouded rational thought about it. The investigative journalism she was doing that had her crossing paths with the purported "vampire" subculture, her investigation into the bar owned by the Russian mafia, etc. Also the fact that she was a stripper and recovering addict, which put her in a vulnerable position in the first place—I'm beginning to feel that all of these things, while fascinating, probably had nothing to do with her disappearance.
New York Post article: http://nypost.com/2006/07/16/96-stripper-vanish-clue/
Susan's entry on unsolved.com, if you want to read the comment in context—it's at the bottom of the page: http://unsolved.com/archives/susan-walsh
That said, I was browsing unsolved.com and came across this post on Walsh's entry on the site:
Submitted by Sam Frank (not verified) on Mon, 01/02/2017 - 16:42
I have followed this case for years. I was born and raised in Nutley and still reside there. I never knew Susan Walsh but I remember when this happened. I was told a very interesting story about this case by the brother of her ex husband Mark. Several years after her disappearance I met Mark's brother when he came to work for the same company I was working for. We struck up a friendship that continued for years until we lost touch after we both left that company. I asked him what he thought happened to Susan and he told me he knew exactly what happened to her. This is what he told me:
Mark and Susan were separated and Susan was living with their son David in the apartment upstairs while Mark was living in one room in the basement. All Mark had was a bed, a dresser, a telephone and his few personal belongings. Susan would come down and use his phone frequently but he would not allow her to use it to call her boyfriends or her drug dealers. In exchange for using the telephone, she would allow him upstairs to use the kitchen to cook his meals. The day of her disappearance they had a huge argument about her using the phone so she went across the street to use the pay phone. When she returned from using the pay phone she did not go to her apartment, she went to the basement where she and Mark continued fighting. In a fit of rage he grabbed a frying pan and smashed her across the head with it, killing her. It was not intentional but nonetheless it was murder. He hid the body in his basement room and once her boyfriend had gone to work he took David to Staples. Later that night or early the next morning he took the body to a reservation where he was known to hike and disposed of the body. He returned and later that day reported her missing.
He also told me that Mark did not have much money and when he visited his brother about a week before the disappearance Mark had shown him the new frying pan he had just bought and how expensive it was. When my friend went to see his brother after Susan disappeared he noticed the frying pan was gone. When he questioned Mark about it mark just said he must have misplaced it. He also told me that Mark removed the page from the calendar because there was something written on it he didn't want the cops to see. I didn't know what to make of his story but I told him he should go to the police if he was so sure that Mark had done it. He said he did go to the Nutley PD and sat with a detective and told him everything. The detective said they would investigate and they would be in touch, but he never heard a word from them. He said he called several times to see how the investigation was going but they just kept telling him they were still checking it out and would contact him. He finally gave up after not hearing anything. He said his brother became distant and remote from the rest of the family and concentrated on raising his son David.
I don't know if any of this is true and I'm not accusing Mark or anyone else of anything. This is the story his brother told me and he seems to believe it. I've never met Mark or his son but I find this theory pretty intriguing. I also wonder why the Nutley PD did not follow up. Or if they did maybe it was all a lie. One more fact about this story that is pretty interesting is that Mark Walsh and my friend are the younger brothers of Joe Walsh, the rock star. I've never seen that mentioned in any of the stories I've read about Susan Walsh.
I was blown away by this. I guess I never suspected her husband for the mere fact that police apparently ruled him out (I believe this is stated in the UM segment, as well as on the Disappeared episode). I did a bit of research and found a NY Post article from 2006 that states that, while Mark wasn't a suspect, he had recurrently refused to allow police to do forensic tests in their home—why?
Based on the post made by Sam Frank, I'm beginning to believe that this is what in all likelihood happened. I think all of the hoopla surrounding her disappearance really obscured that which is obvious and clouded rational thought about it. The investigative journalism she was doing that had her crossing paths with the purported "vampire" subculture, her investigation into the bar owned by the Russian mafia, etc. Also the fact that she was a stripper and recovering addict, which put her in a vulnerable position in the first place—I'm beginning to feel that all of these things, while fascinating, probably had nothing to do with her disappearance.
New York Post article: http://nypost.com/2006/07/16/96-stripper-vanish-clue/
Susan's entry on unsolved.com, if you want to read the comment in context—it's at the bottom of the page: http://unsolved.com/archives/susan-walsh