Transcript of A Private Matter, Episode 3

You can get an ad-free version of this season for just $20. Go to patreon.com/bearbrook or follow the link in the show notes. Hey there, it's Jason Moon. Since you appreciate the complex, real-life mysteries we bring you in each season of Bear Brook, we want to tell you about another podcast we think you might like. Uncover from CBC Podcasts brings you high-stakes true crime and justice stories one season at a time. The latest season, The Most Wanted, Olympian breaks down how Canadian snowboarder Ryan Wedding allegedly built a deadly global drug empire. Featuring new on-the-ground reporting and original interviews, this podcast investigates the Canadian who the FBI called a modern-day El Chapo and asks, what will it take to bring him to justice?

Do you like scary stories? Think you've heard it all? Well, you've never heard it like this. Radio Arentz is a horror podcast featuring true scary stories told by real people.

He's tapping, tap, tap, tap. He's tapping on the door. He wants us to open the door.

Then another light turns on, and then another light turns on in the shape of a triangle. And I'd say it's probably about the length of a school bus, you know, right above my head.

She had long, ratted hair.

She was wearing a dress.

Her ribs were showing. Her fingers were long.

She looked shriveled, partially decayed.

I'm starting to freak out a little bit. I'm pleading with him to just please let me out.

These eyes started opening. They were pure white, and I lose it. Radio Rental returns October 23rd. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Who was Jay Hickey, this missing man I was spending so much time thinking about? The question had been nagging at me. Civic-minded Christmas tree farmer, kind and gentle to a fault, hell of a mustache— that much I had gotten. But who was he really? And was there something about his past that could help me understand his disappearance? As it turned out, yeah, there was. But getting there, that was a strange journey that took me places I truly could not have imagined. So we're gonna leave the police investigation for a minute while I take you down another rabbit hole. And by the end of it, gonna understand something really important about Jay. Something that will cast a new light on this whole situation. It all started in a Jeep. I'm in the passenger seat.

Lots of woods up here, Chase. Bear Brook State Park is over that— over that rise down that way.

That's Joe Murphy driving. He's wearing a newsboy cap and leather driving gloves. Joe is a retired social worker and a former cop. Military police, a brief stint at the NYPD, and then a long one at the VA. Turns out they have their own police force. He lives in Deerfield, just a few towns over from Epsom. Like a lot of people, Joe found Jay's disappearance strange and suspicious. Unlike a lot of people, he decided he was going to investigate it himself. He wasn't convinced the local police were up to the task. So Joe wanted to bring me by the Christmas tree farm and pitch me on his theory of what happened to Jay. More on that later, because I kept getting hung up on why Joe would be so motivated to get involved. And it turns out Joe was here not because of Jay exactly. He barely knew him. But Joe did know and has a deep loyalty to Jay's grandmother, a woman who died in 1980.

To think that something like this has happened to her grandson, who she raised as a son, that's why it's so important.

From the driver's seat, Joe told me he'd been a kind of student of Jay's grandmother back in the '70s. He kept trying to explain to me who she was, but I wasn't quite getting it. She was some kind of spiritual leader? A mystic? Is that—

is that too strong a word? I would describe her as a cosmic master. She used to refer to astrology as a cosmic science.

Jay Hickey's grandmother was a famous astrologer. And as I would come to learn, if I wanted to understand Jay, I needed to understand her. Jay's grandmother was Isabella Hickey. Many people called her Izzy. And she was a force in the New Age movement of the '60s and '70s. She published books on astrology with titles like It Is All Right and Astrology: A Cosmic Science. She gave astrological readings and public lectures like this one from 1975. There's been just as much damage as there has been good done in the astrological field, because if you don't know The real understanding of astrology— you can make mistakes.

And in astrology, every one of us that are counselors are karmically responsible for everything we say.

Izzy was known as Boston's spiritual spark plug. Online, people are still talking about her today. Astrology: A Cosmic Science.

This has been one of my favorite books.

I kid you not, I read the entire thing in one She was really notorious for being just such a gifted astrologer. She really wanted to help people.

The grand dame of American astrologers, Isabel M. Hickey.

As you might know, astrology draws meaning from the positions of the planets and other objects in space. Maybe you know your astrological sign. which is based on the position of the sun during the time of year you were born. I'm a Pisces, which is supposed to mean I'm sensitive, moody, and introspective.

Hmm.

Izzy's particular brand of astrology was especially expansive, or maybe inclusive is the word. She mixed in other spiritual concepts like a Christian God, reincarnation, earthbound spirits, karma, and psychic realms. She liked to use a kind of spiritual wordplay. Her students called them Izzy-isms— little turns of phrase that often broke words apart into smaller pieces. Things like disease is dis-ease, or discipline is disciple-in. You get the idea. At Boston University, Izzy gave a weekly talk called the Friday Night Fix. A young Joe Murphy was a graduate student at BU at the time, and he found himself enthralled by Izzy.

I would compare her as a healer to Mother Teresa, very much so.

It's not exactly what I had expected when I first climbed into Joe's Jeep, but now I had to know more. Jay Hickey was grandson to the Mother Teresa of astrology? What? This is the intro to a show formerly on Manchester, New Hampshire public access TV. It was called Turn to the Stars.

Hi, thanks for tuning in to Turn to the Stars. My name is Andrea Klim, and I'm an astrological counselor and shamanic practitioner from the local area. And today we are going to—

10 years before he disappeared, back in 2013, Jay Hickey was a guest on Turn to the Stars.

Uh, Jay is Isabelle Hickey's first grandson.

Yes.

At the time, it turns out, Jay had just co-authored a book about Izzy and his life growing up with her. It's called Never Mind. 2 words. Another Izzyism.

And what— I'm sure everybody's saying, what is Nevermind about? Could you give us a brief overview of Nevermind?

Uh, for me, Nevermind started very early in my life. Izzy had a place in Nottingham that we used to go to for summers, and as she was fixing it up, one of the first things she did was build a chapel. And I was 5 when she had the house and the chapel was done, and she used to take me along with her for the weekends. I was the oldest of 5 boys. I was closely followed by 2 brothers that basically my mother was happy to have me going with Izzy to have some space.

Yeah.

But the—

This interview and another appearance on Turn to the Stars that same year are the only recordings I have of Jay. He was in his mid-60s at the time, wearing a checkered button-down, hands folded in his lap, his voice emanating from somewhere behind his feathery mustache.

In the chapel, she taught me, um, how to meditate and how to pray. And I remember asking what the difference was, and she said praying Praying is praising God and talking to God, and meditating is listening. And when she was teaching me to meditate, she would tell me, don't use your mind, come from your heart center.

I found listening to Jay kind of mesmerizing. His voice is so soft, like a spiritual Bob Ross. And the stories he tells are so wholesome.

What, what was nice growing up was the people in her astrology and meditation groups would come there for weekends and work like crazy starting Friday night and Saturday. But on Sundays, we would have meditations in the chapel and have fun. Saturday nights for me as a young boy were great. There was no Bedtime for me. I could stay up as late as I want. Izzy said you can stay up as late as you want.

Jay's book, Never Mind, is part Izzy's biography, part her final unpublished manuscripts. Jay co-authored the book with a woman named Amy Shapiro, who was a student of Izzy's. Jay's section of the book is largely autobiographical. He describes his childhood growing up at that summer home and spiritual retreat Izzy had in Nottingham, New Hampshire, She called it Harmony Hill. Reading the book, it's clear that Jay revered his grandmother. One of Jay's brothers told me Jay was closer to Izzy than he was with his own parents.

And Izzy was an awesome teacher. She was patient. She wasn't strict, but she was encouraging to, to get you over the hump of something that you just weren't understanding. And the meditations and the spiritual awareness that she gave me has lasted my whole life and protected me my whole life.

Jay says Izzy told him once his astrological chart showed he was protected in this life. And from Jay's perspective, that was proven true again and again. Like when Jay turned 18 in 1965 and had to register for the draft during the Vietnam War. Jay writes in the book that everything he'd learned up to that point had taught him that life was precious. He was willing to serve, but not to kill. He applied for status as a conscientious objector. Thanks to a letter on his behalf written by one of Izzy's astrology friends, His application was granted. Jay trained as a medic and was stationed in Germany, not Vietnam. And maybe because of moments like that, Jay took Izzy's teachings to heart, and they shaped his own spirituality. Jay believed that through meditation, he could hear what he called the voice of the high self. It was a voice that seemed to point him in the right direction in life. Jay finished his military service and returned to New Hampshire. One day, he decided to take a meandering drive down unfamiliar roads. And somehow, Jay found himself in Epsom, driving up a mountain and then coming upon a beautiful farm.

And as soon as I saw it, I, I felt like that I wanted to be there. that it was my home. So I called up the owner and he said, uh, he was grouchy, I've got 8 or 10 people on a list and I'll put you on but don't expect anything. So 12 or 13 months later I woke up on a Saturday morning and the voice told me to call him, my higher self, and I called him up.

Jay calls the owner and learns that the people ahead of him on the list to buy the farm had all backed out. Jay says he'll take it, not even knowing the asking price. Then, just a few hours later, someone ahead of Jay on the list changes their mind and calls back. But it was too late. The farm was now promised to Jay. As Jay tells it, if he'd called at any other time, he might never have run a Christmas tree farm in Epsom.

So just from listening to the higher self, that, that happened, and it was meant to happen. I know that.

Yeah, well, obviously you've been there a long time.

It was meant to happen. Now that I knew to look for it, I kept seeing Izzy's influence— dare I say her spirit— everywhere in this story. It was even, I realized, in Patty's interrogations. When state police ask Patty why she wasn't concerned about Jay's prolonged absence, she invokes Izzy.

So I'm not really worried about him because he told me a long time ago not to worry about stuff because worry doesn't help it.

Sure.

And his grandmother, who was his favorite She wrote a book called It Is All Right, and he just tried to kind of teach me.

Okay.

It doesn't help to worry about stuff. It doesn't make it better. It makes you worse. It wears you out.

Jay is gone, but it is all right. The book's title is another bit of wordplay from Izzy. All Right is 2 words: ALL in all caps and then the word right. It is all right. I'm not sure Patti's interpretation of the text is quite doing it justice. What to do when your spouse goes missing is not a subject Izzy covers. Believe me, I've read it. Still, it was just one more example of Izzy's influence. Her teachings had indirectly led Jay to the Christmas tree farm in the first place. And now, her legacy had brought Joe Murphy into the picture as a private investigator. You can get an ad-free version of this season for just $20. Go to patreon.com/bearbrook or follow the link in the show notes. Private investigator Joe Murphy might never have entered the picture if not for a call from this woman.

But your Sun, this little circle with a dot in it, in Pisces, the sign of service, Happens to be in your 3rd house, which emphasizes the role of communicating and being able to ask questions and pursue information all the more. I mean, it's central to your—

That's Amy Shapiro reading my astrological chart. Amy co-wrote the book about Izzy with Jay, Never Mind, the one that landed the both of them on Turn to the Stars.

Um, you have what I would call a grand trine, and I'm not saying this just to flatter you.

Okay, but go ahead anyways. But go ahead anyway.

So you see the degree, your Sun is 21 Pisces. That's a watery—

Like Jo Murphy, Amy was a student of Izzy's, a protégé who followed directly in her footsteps. She publishes her own books on astrology and does astrological counseling for people at her home office. On her desk sits a portrait of Izzy positioned behind some crystals. I'm not sure I ever fully grasped the nuances of astrology. I'm a skeptic at heart, but I got the appeal. As I told Amy, something about it was fun.

I find it fun too.

It makes you introspective. In a way that is almost sort of flattering. It's like, oh, you get to think about yourself.

Yeah, who doesn't like to have— be seen?

Yeah, exactly.

You know, I mean, that's really at the heart of it, you know.

But I wasn't here only to be seen. I wanted to talk with Amy about a few strange encounters she had with Patty. After Amy and Jay published their book on Izzy in 2012, they stayed in touch sporadically. Amy would send Jay a check for his share of the royalties from the book sales every year. In 2024, Amy was shocked to learn from a mutual friend that Jay was missing, and then as word spread about the strange circumstances, she became concerned. Amy had been in touch with Patty not long before Jay was reported missing, and now she looked back on their conversations with suspicion. Take an email Patty sent her in October 2023. And remember, according to Patty, that's the last month she saw Jay. In the email, Patty tells Amy that Jay is, quote, off and on with his memory. He's not driving anymore and has gone to Massachusetts to visit some old high school buddies. It seems like a variation on the gone to visit his brother story. But by this point, Amy realizes Jay was likely already missing when she received this email. Her antennae go up. She checks her bank statements. She finds the most recent royalty check she sent to Jay.

It's from January 2024, the month before Jay is finally reported missing. The check for $134 is made out to Jay and was deposited, but on the back, There's no signature. It seems Patty has deposited the check. Amy decides to forward this information to the police, but she doesn't contact Patty.

I decided it was better that I not talk with her because I felt, you know, uh, I wasn't sure what— how much more I wanted to know, frankly.

But then, several months later, just before Christmas, something else really weird happens. Amy gets a few texts from Jay's phone. The messages are a little manic. Good news, one message reads. 4 degrees.

Brrr.

I still have heat. Bad news. My computer got hacked by someone claiming he was looking for a scammer. The message goes on to explain that they are opening a new bank account and taking their computer to the Geek Squad. Amy realizes it must be Patty texting from Jay's phone. But it's odd because Patty and Amy had never spoken about Jay's disappearance.

It was— it seemed to be somebody pretending to be Jay, talking in a very casual tone about this and that.

That's pretty weird.

Yeah. Yeah. It was exceedingly weird. Obviously, it was in anticipation of the fact that the time was coming up for my annual royalty payment to come due. And— but the fact that it was a message using Jay's cell number, it— Really, I can't even describe the feeling that it gave me.

Amy types back a curt reply. She points out that Patty had never discussed Jay's disappearance with her, and she tells her she'd need to see a will to know what Jay wanted for his royalties going forward. Patty doesn't respond. Amy was unsettled by the whole thing. Actually, even before these texts with Patty, Amy felt like something was off. Not long after she heard about Jay's disappearance, she mentioned it to another person from Izzy's orbit, someone she thought might be able to help, an ex-cop who's now a retired social worker.

Well, last year I got a call from a woman who lives in Gloucester Her name is Amy Shapiro, and she called me to tell me that Jay had been reported missing.

Joe was frustrated by what he saw as a lack of progress from the local police. So he pokes around, and he develops his own theory of the case. And it's a bold one.

More than a mere suspicion, we got a reasonable suspicion based on all the lies of conspiracy to commit a homicide.

To understand this theory, you have to know about something big that happened not long before Jay went missing. Something that surprised some people. Jay and Patty sold the Christmas tree farm. The sale happened in September 2022, about 7 months before the last credible sighting of Jay and a year and a half before he was reported missing. The deal itself contained an interesting provision. Even though Jay and Patty were selling the property, they could continue to live on the farm until they died. In real estate parlance, it's called a life estate. Emily Hickey had told me her dad had always planned to pass the farm down to the kids. But that's not what happened. Jay and Patty sold the farm to one of their neighbors' adult children. And what's more, the Hickies sold it to the neighbors for a surprisingly low price. According to public documents, for 119 acres and a 3-bed, 1-bath house, The neighbors paid $268,700.

You can't buy an acre for that today. This was, what, 3 years ago?

Joe has a point. The average home price in New Hampshire is over half a million dollars, much less a home with 119 acres. Patty maintains it was Jay's decision to sell the farm to the neighbors. She tells police he did consider leaving it to the kids, but with all the estrangement in the family, he didn't want them fighting over the property. And it's true that Jay signed the deed transfer document himself, along with Patty. But given everything we know about Jay's condition during this time, I can't help but wonder if he truly understood what he was signing. Jay's decline had already begun by the time he sold the farm. Andrea Novotny, the town employee who bought the wrong toilet paper, she noticed Jay began to have memory issues before he retired 2 years before the sale in 2020. That's the year Emily Hickey says she started noticing it too. I've seen 2 photos of Jay post-retirement. Patty gave them to police when they asked for a recent photo of Jay for the missing persons report. The photos don't give the impression of a man with all his faculties. In one of them, taken from about selfie distance, Jay looks right into the camera with a blank expression.

He has a full gray beard. His hair is long and spectacularly unkempt. Think mad scientist, but sadder. The other photo is even less reassuring. It shows Jay slumped forward in a chair, Apparently asleep. His hair is combed this time, but his beard is even longer. One wonders why Patty even took the photo. Even Jay's signature itself on the deed transfer document is cause for concern. It was witnessed by a notary public, so I don't think it was forged. But it looks weak, like Jay just managed to scratch the suggestion of his initials followed by a squiggle. I've compared it to 6 other examples of Jay's signature. In those, Jay always draws a big loopy J at the beginning of his name and includes his middle initial, F. On the Deed transfer, the J looks more like a jagged backward 7, and there is no middle initial. But there was something else That was maybe even more startling. Just 2 months before Jay signed the deed transfer, he had threatened to kill himself. It was documented in Epsom police records. They show that on July 25th, 2022, Patty called 911 to report that Jay was suicidal.

Patty describes the episode during one of her interrogations.

Maybe that was the beginning of his dementia, but I didn't realize it. He was going out the door and he was halfway across the lawn and not toward the car, just like straight toward the woods. And, um, he said, I'm just gonna— we weren't fighting or anything. I didn't— he's just turning around. I said, where are you going? And he said, I'm just I'm just gonna go kill myself. I said, no, honey, please. And, um, he didn't have his gun with him or any— any, you know, I walked over to him to try to talk to him.

Sure.

Or try to get him to talk to me.

Right.

And I don't— one of the things I remember was He said, I'm not going to kill myself. I just need to go for a walk. I said, okay, do you promise? And he said, yes. So then he just went for a walk and he came back later.

What to make of all of this? What was Jay's state of mind in those final years? Did he truly decide of his own will to sell the Christmas tree farm that is higher voice had led him to? The Epsom police chief actually raised this point with Patty during one of her interrogations, and Patty gives an interesting response. If we can't prove that he has passed, there's going to be all kinds of issues. There's going to be issues with the way you and Jay sold that house.

Yeah.

Why would that be an issue?

It's probably going to call into question whether Jay was in his right mind to sell the house.

Well, I was.

Well, I was. Was it a tacit admission by Patty that Jay was not in his right mind to sell the house? Later, Patty says unequivocally that Jay was of sound mind when he signed the paper. The truth may be impossible to find. Dementia can be a years-long process, and identifying exactly when someone has crossed a certain threshold can be impossibly messy. When is it time to retire, time to stop driving, time to stop making financial decisions? Answering those questions isn't easy. They can even tear families apart. Sometimes the person with dementia is adamant that they don't need to give up their autonomy. Other times, loved ones can disagree on whether a certain threshold has even been crossed. Dementia can also change someone's personality. They might act in ways their old self never would have. One study also found older adults diagnosed with dementia are more than twice as likely to die by suicide. But does all of this mean they shouldn't make their own choices anymore? What if there is a conflict between what a person said they wanted before the dementia and what they're absolutely sure they want now that it's happening? Like I said, impossibly messy.

I don't see any way to definitively declare that Jay wasn't of sound mind to sell his Christmas tree farm. But I also think it's reasonable to have serious doubts that he was. And this brings us back to Joe's theory. Joe's theory is complicated. It involves property tax valuations, water runoff issues, and the economic interests of local plumbers. I'm gonna spare you the details. The upshot is that Joe suspects Patty and the neighbors got together and cooked up a scheme to get rid of Jay. Then they could all get rich from splitting up the Christmas tree farm and selling it off, something he thinks Jay would never have agreed to.

Honey, let's take a walk. Let's go take a walk up into the woods. Let's see what we can find. And get hit over the head with a shovel and buried. And that's what my gut tells me.

It's a bold opinion. Dramatic, sensational, and ultimately, I think, unconvincing. I agree the timing of the property sale and Jay's questionable ability to understand it raises an eyebrow. Maybe 2. But I've seen nothing that would suggest any foul play by the neighbors who purchased the property, and for that reason, I haven't named them. I did reach out to them for their take on all this, but they politely declined to speak with me. Maybe more to the point, I just don't see a motive related to the property sale. Jay signed off on the deal while he was alive, so I'm not sure how getting rid of him benefits the neighbors. And Patty still lives at the farmhouse to this day, so the life estate is still in effect. Patty also offers the police some interesting context on the low sale price. She says the neighbors paid off the existing mortgage on the house all at once, but then Patty says the neighbors were also making monthly payments to her and Jay for the remaining value of the property. Suggesting the total sale price may have been closer to $450,000. Still a good deal, and the whole arrangement is unusual, but none of it required Jay being out of the picture.

So I don't think the neighbors were involved in some scheme to kill Jay, and neither do the Epsom police. Joe also laid his theory out for them. They didn't seem impressed. Lieutenant James Keir writes in a report that Joe was, quote, unable to provide any evidence to back up his claims.

With my intuition and my spiritual higher self. And I remember being 4 and 5 and 6, and she'd work with me and spend the time meditating and teaching Joe's private investigation doesn't end up going anywhere.

But thanks to Joe, I now had a much better sense of Jay. Watching him on old episodes of Turn to the Stars, I could see the gentle, earnest man that so many people missed, and how his grandma, Izzy, always seemed to be right there with him.

The chapel was awesome. In the spring, it was filled with lilacs and lilies of the valley. And I can— if If I think about her in those times, I can still smell the flowers.

Oh.

It was special.

It was really nice.

Yeah.

That's really nice.

Is the chapel at Harmony Hill?

Joe wasn't able to solve the mystery of what happened to Jay. But back on the police side of the investigation, that mystery was getting even weirder.

You know, and I wrote down, she said, you know, I, I found him.

That's coming up on A Private Matter. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline A Private Matter is written and reported by me, Jason Moon. It's edited by Katie Culinari. Additional editing and production by Lauren Chooljian. More editing support came from Dan Barrick, Rebecca Lavoy, Taylor Quimby, Annemarie Timmons, and Marina Henke. I learned a whole bunch about astrology by reading Astrology: The Cosmic Science by Isabel Hickey, Never Mind by Isabel Hickey, Jay Hickey, and Amy Shapiro, and What Science Says About Astrology by Carlos Orsi. Photos and video by Elena Eberwein and Raquel Zaldívar, with the New England News Collaborative. Fact-checking by Danya Suleiman. Legal review by Jeremy Eggleton. Our website, barebrookpodcast.com, was created by Sarah Plourd and Matt Tobin. There you'll find photos, videos, and more. Original artwork by Judith Poitras-Reynaud, and original music and scoring by me, Jason Moon. If you have more information or story tips, get in touch with us at barebrookpodcast.com/contact. A Private Matter and Bear Brook are productions of the Document Team at New Hampshire Public Radio.

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