Crime & Safety

Cold Case: Regina Brown

Regina Brown's disappearance is among one of the most well-known unsolved cases in Newtown.

Among the three, the suspicious circumstances surrounding Regina Brown's disappearance has been perhaps the most chronicled case in the media.

A segment aired most recently on Fox 61, the News-Times published an extensive story last year on the case and The Newtown Bee also has published several pieces on the case over the years, even resulting in a book a former newspaper reporter wrote.

However, one of the best known accounts of the case is a television news segment Boston's WCVB-TV aired in 1990 in which people associated with the case implicated Brown's ex-husband in her disappearance and possible murder.

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Three years after the news broadcast, the ex-husband, Willis Brown, unsuccessfully sued the station for defamation and invasion of privacy. At the same time, while Brown has been referred to as a "person of interest," no arrests have been made and Regina Brown's body remains missing.

In 2009, renewed their investigation into the case, assigning Detective Jason Frank who re-interviewed witnesses and got in touch with others, according to the Newtown Bee.

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One of the reasons that Brown's disappearance has remained a high-profile case is because it closely mirrors the Craft case in that both women were flight attendants and both had troubled marriages with commercial airline pilots.

While Crafts was a flight attendant for Pan Am and her husband was a pilot for Eastern Airlines, the Browns both worked for American Airlines. News clippings of Crafts' murder also reportedly were found stuffed in a kitchen drawer in Brown's kitchen, according to the News-Times.

Other reasons the case has captured the imagination of many was a report that Brown allegedly told her friends that if she were to disappear, "Willis will have done to me what he's promised to do to me," according to news reports.

In addition, police also discovered a map Willis Brown is alleged to have drawn of a part of Block Island, Rhode Island with the words "Regina, O God" written on it. Although police searched 37 acres of the island, Brown's body, or any remains of it, were never found, according to reports.

Finding her body or evidence of it would appear to be the key in solving the case, officials said.


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