{"id":491,"date":"2026-07-31T12:09:01","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T12:09:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businessmovingservicess.com\/?p=491"},"modified":"2026-07-31T12:09:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T12:09:01","slug":"was-my-teacher-murdered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessmovingservicess.com\/?p=491","title":{"rendered":"Was My Teacher Murdered?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n<\/span>eslie Buck had just arrived home from a meeting with her teacher\u2019s sorority, warm from conversations with old friends. There\u2019d been a celebration for one member\u2019s 90th birthday, and she\u2019d snagged a piece of cake for her mother; it would be a nice treat when she went to check on her the next day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Man Detained in Nancy Guthrie Investigation to Sue for $2.5 Million, Says He Was Arrested at Gunpoint<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tAs Leslie closed the door of her white Buick, she heard someone familiar utter her name from the corner of her three-car garage: Russell Kirby, her husband Charlie\u2019s friend and handyman, who had no reason to be lurking on their property at that hour. She\u2019d never liked the man. Before she could ask what he wanted, Kirby attacked, striking her on the head and shocking her in the neck with a stun gun. He punched her in the stomach and tied her hands with white rope so tight the fibers cut into her wrists. Then he tackled her to the ground, bound her feet, and forced her into her own car.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHer knees, beneath the smart cranberry skirt she\u2019d put on only hours ago, were bruised from the attack. Her personalized key chain \u2014 a metal heart engraved with \u201cLeslie\u201d \u2014 jingled as he sped by Angie\u2019s Pizza, where she and Charlie ate dinner every Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tKirby had stopped at his ramshackle home briefly, but they\u2019d been driving for hours now, and Leslie had no idea what he wanted. He had demanded nearly $10,000, but wouldn\u2019t let her write a check. He was \u201cthinking,\u201d he kept saying. But as the car traversed the backroads of her hometown of Mystic, Connecticut, she realized he was stalling \u2014 and hatched a plan. She had a spare car key in her jacket pocket; she just had to get to it.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs they zoomed down I-95 again, Kirby said he felt the car shimmying; he pulled over to check out the problem. This was Leslie\u2019s chance to escape. Kirby even untied her hands when she complained that her wrists hurt. And as he circled the Buick to check on the malfunction, Leslie wriggled into the front seat, jammed her extra key into the ignition and peeled off toward home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen she burst through the door, Charlie rushed to meet her. He had already called 911 twice when she didn\u2019t come home. Instead of falling into his arms, though, she yelled \u201cI hate you and I hate Russell Kirby!\u201d Charlie called the cops for a third time as she wailed in the background.<\/p>\n

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\n\tAt 4:37 a.m. on May 3, 2002, Kirby, 64, was arrested for the kidnapping of 57-year-old Leslie Buck. In Leslie\u2019s car, they found an olive-green duffel bag holding a stun gun, a bottle containing some kind of alcohol, gloves, and a Colt 45 revolver, among other things.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, after a trip to the emergency room, Leslie went back to teaching grade school at Dean\u2019s Mill School that day. Her students needed her. And it was important to her that people understand what she had just gone through.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe wanted people to know that she was kidnapped, and she was showing me the bruises,\u201d says Barbara Hatch, who taught with Leslie. She also wanted her friends to know that her husband of nearly 25 years had been stepping out on her. \u201cCharlie\u2019s got himself a girlfriend,\u201d Leslie told Hatch, adding, \u201cIf I should die in the next couple of days, I want to be buried with all my money. That bitch is not getting anything of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe next day, Leslie was dead.<\/p>\n

\n\tBACK IN MAY 2002, I DIDN\u2019T KNOW any of this. I was 17 years old, no one had asked me to dance at the previous night\u2019s junior prom, and I had to study for an AP Bio exam. When I came down to the kitchen that morning, feeling sorry for myself, my mom was sitting at the table in her flannel nightgown crying, the newspaper spread out in front of her. My first-grade teacher was dead, she told me \u2014\u00a0 her husband had found her crumpled at the bottom of her stairs the night before.<\/p>\n

\n\tEveryone in town seemed to walk through that day in a daze; Leslie\u2019s name was spoken in hushed whispers. I remember rushing out of the grocery store, upset, when I heard two women murmuring that Leslie was in a better place. I cried with my fourth-grade math teacher during yoga at the YMCA; she\u2019d been friends with Leslie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNothing seemed real; I\u2019d just seen Mrs. Buck at the library. In my memory, she was hand-cutting colored paper, a voice reading Clifford the Big Red Dog<\/em>. And that kind of thing didn\u2019t happen in Mystic, a touristy escape from New York City complete with bobbing boats and sea lions doing tricks at the aquarium.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve spent 20 years writing around Leslie\u2019s story \u2014 from the true-crime blog I started in grad school to memorialize shooting victims who the papers ignored to my work with Rolling Stone<\/em> and the young-adult novel I based loosely on her death. I never really felt like I could tell it outright; I worried about hurting people, reopening old wounds, or sullying her memory. Still, I\u2019ve been haunted by what happened for decades \u2014 by her death, yes, but also what a dramatic end does to a person. How it becomes entertainment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tI once asked a friend and fellow crime writer, Sarah Weinman \u2014 who also writes for this magazine \u2014 how she chooses which stories to tell. \u201cA crime story only appeals to me if there are deeper questions to pursue, and they generally seem to revolve around \u2018Who is this person as a person?\u2019 What responsibility do artists have with respect to real-life trauma and pain?\u2019\u201d she told me. That hit home. There were definitely lingering questions about my teacher\u2019s death \u2014 and she deserved to be remembered beyond the dusty newsprint.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd so I started asking around my hometown, determined that if I got any pushback from Leslie\u2019s loved ones, I would drop the story. But, as more and more friends and family wrote back to me, the consensus was unanimous: No one had forgotten her, even all these years later \u2014 and no one was satisfied with the explanation for how her story ended.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, now, after more than a year of delving into police files and court records; interviewing friends, family, law enforcement, and witnesses; donning plastic gloves to look through the contents of Kirby\u2019s kidnaping kit; and digging up information that wasn\u2019t public back in 2002, I\u2019m ready to put the pieces together, to try to find the truth about the violent death of a woman so many people loved.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLESLIE\u2019S BROTHER, DICK EDMONSTON, is a plainspoken man with a Maine brogue and neat gray hair. When I get him on the phone over the summer, he\u2019s anxious to talk. \u201cI think about Leslie a lot now, because I\u2019m dying of leukemia,\u201d he says without a trace of self-pity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s talking to a journalist for the first time in more than a decade; he\u2019s been reticent to talk to the press in the past after, he says, he was tricked into doing an interview with a true-crime TV show after Leslie\u2019s death. I assure him that I don\u2019t really want to talk much about what happened to his sister \u2014 just about who she was. And, over a series of phone calls, he tells me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe siblings grew up in Maine, where their dad worked for the state and their mom was secretary at Farmers\u2019 Almanac.<\/em> It was the 1950s, and the neighborhood kids would gather in the streets every night to play, but Leslie wasn\u2019t all that interested in sports \u2014 save the occasional game of Capture the Flag. Instead, she\u2019d spend hours in the bath reading. She was very much an inside child, Edmonston says; she hated shoveling snow and often tried to wriggle out of the yearly trip to the Christmas-tree farm. She was fiercely close to her family \u2014 even transferring from Boston College to Saint Joseph\u2019s, only 30 minutes from home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tSo, it was a big deal when she finally moved to Connecticut in the late Sixties at the behest of her teacher friends. For a while, she lived the single life in an apartment near downtown Mystic; Edmonston would visit every weekend to do his laundry, listening to Dylan and the Stones on her record player while she went out with friends. \u201cShe kind of picked up after my mother,\u201d he says. \u201cShe spoiled me. Thanksgiving, she\u2019d make a big-enough turkey so I could take home bunches of dinners.\u201d And then she met Charlie.<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie Buck was a native of Stonington, Connecticut, and was well-off, according to his childhood best friend, Neil Baker. His dad ran his own electrical business and his mom kept the books. He had a brother who was much older; they weren\u2019t close. \u201cCharlie had a convertible,\u201d Baker says. \u201cHe was not well-liked, because he could be obnoxious, but he had a lot of toys.\u201d It was Charlie\u2019s cars that led to a friendship with Russell Kirby.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tKirby\u2019s family moved to Stonington when he was young, and while Charlie spent his summers water skiing and hanging at the marina, Kirby rolled up his pants and dug for clams. They bonded over their shared passion of cars, though, after Charlie bought a 1940 Buick Limited from him in 1969. \u201cCharlie had money, and my brother really didn\u2019t have that much,\u201d says Kirby\u2019s brother, Stratton.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat money seemed to keep him insulated from too much trouble \u2014 even the serious kind. Around 1969, Charlie was drunk when he wove into the wrong lane going 80 miles per hour on a side road, slamming into a Ford sedan. The drivers of that car, a doctor and his wife, nearly died. At least, that\u2019s how the couple told it to their daughter, Maggie Jones. Charlie was never charged with a crime. \u201cWe grew up always with that in the back of our minds,\u201d says Jones, who runs the local nature center where I went to camp as a kid. \u201cHe\u2019s a dangerous man and he does awful things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie didn\u2019t come out unscathed; he got more than 100 stitches in his face and suffered what Baker suspects was \u201csome brain injury,\u201d which he believes changed Charlie\u2019s behavior, too. \u201cHe was always chasing after women and making foolish comments,\u201d Baker adds. \u201cI used to have the girls in the bars come up to me and say, \u2018I don\u2019t understand why you\u2019re hanging around with this guy. You\u2019re such a nice person, and he\u2019s a pig.\u2019 But everybody would say, \u2018That\u2019s just Charlie being Charlie.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tCharlie was a different person around Leslie, though, who he met at his cousin\u2019s wedding in 1975, when he was 29. His cousin worked with Leslie at Dean\u2019s Mill School. He was divorced from his first wife at that point, with a daughter and a son he refused to acknowledge as his own, certain that his ex had cheated on him and that the boy wasn\u2019t his, according to Baker. \u201cCharlie pursued [Leslie] pretty heavily \u2014 flowers and candy,\u201d Edmonston says. She turned him down when he first asked her out. When I ask Edmonston what he thought of his sister\u2019s suitor, he says, \u201cHe was such an egotistical person. He basically made her family feel unwelcome. He was OK with my mother, not great with my father, and I think he detested me because I drew her attention from him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMost people Leslie and Charlie knew said the couple made an odd match. I always thought Leslie looked like Beauty from the Disney movie: dark-brown eyes and hair, hairbands that matched her massive shoe collection. She was a devout Catholic, quiet, sweet. Charlie \u2026 even his friend Baker had few kind things to say about him.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two got married at Leslie\u2019s church, Saint Mary, in 1979, when Leslie was 33 years old. Leslie glowed in a white veil; Charlie, then 32, looked \u201cbored to death,\u201d according to Baker\u2019s wife, Marianne, who was also friends with Leslie.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe couple, who never had kids, became staples in the Stonington community, tooling around in Charlie\u2019s cream-colored MG Roadster in matching driving jackets. I\u2019d see them outside our local roadside ice cream stand, Sea Swirl, every summer \u2014 and even years after I was a gap-toothed kid in her first-grade class, she always remembered me, asked what belt I was up to in karate. I don\u2019t recall ever talking to Charlie.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the summer, I meet up with my second-grade teacher, Anna Greene, at a Dunkin\u2019 Donuts not far from where my parents still live in Mystic. She was a close friend of Leslie\u2019s. After regaling me with embarrassing stories about childhood-me, I ask her to tell me about the Leslie the adults knew. \u201cShe had a lot of friends. She would call one of us [teachers] every night,\u201d she says, reminiscing about pool parties in the Bucks\u2019 backyard. \u201cShe remembered every kid,\u201d Greene says. \u201cI guess that was what she found important, was the kids in school.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI wonder aloud if Leslie was lonely. Greene doesn\u2019t contradict me. Neither she nor Edmonston seem to know if Leslie wanted kids of her own, but they knew she would do anything for the ones she taught. She attended her students\u2019 First Communion, and stood up for any kid she felt was treated unfairly. \u201cShe had a couple of twins that were consistently late, and she knew it wasn\u2019t the twins\u2019 fault, it was the mother\u2019s fault,\u201d Edmonston says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tWhat she was putting up with at home, it seems, was much darker.<\/p>\n

\n\tCHARLIE BUCK\u2019S REPUTATION AS A \u201chorn dog,\u201d as Baker puts it, was apparently common knowledge in downtown Mystic, which was much less-upscale back in the 1990s and early 2000s than it is today. Most people only know my hometown because Julia Roberts filmed Mystic Pizza<\/em> there, but fellow \u201cMystic Kids\u201d remember the way it used to be before it became what The New York Times<\/em> has dubbed \u201cConnecticut\u2019s Culinary Corridor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMystic has always been a tourist town, with its quaint downtown and historic houses, but now, developers have swooped in and built sleek businesses along the main drag in glass and gray-scale. My childhood bookstore, which my brother-in-law now owns, relocated to facilitate a massive jewelry emporium. A James Beard Award-winning restaurant opened right down the street from where there was once a bare-bones bar called, simply, John\u2019s. The few businesses that have withstood the test of time include the Army Navy Store and the record store, Mystic Disc, whose owner once told me that he\u2019d die on the floor before selling.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Mystic of my childhood, though, had a modicum of edge \u2014 kids with anarchy symbols on their jackets skateboarded outside a coffee shop that reeked of weed, and locals got rowdy at a dysfunctional watering hole called the Draw Bridge Inne. That spot \u2014 which boasted a dusty jackalope head on the wall \u2014 stood in the shadow of the Mystic River Bascule Bridge, a 1922 marvel that lifts on command to let ships pass. The DBI also employed a woman named Carol Perez, a raven-haired beauty who manned the bar. She became the object of Charlie\u2019s intense admiration in the winter of 2002, 23 years into his marriage, when the company he inherited from his father was doing electrical work at the bar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie started coming in even after the work was done to nurse a Coke at the bar and stare at Perez, who was more than 20 years his junior. \u201cHe would eat her with his eyes,\u201d Jennifer Wolcin says. She worked at the DBI with Perez. \u201cBut she was eating it up at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSoon, Charlie started giving Perez money and expensive gifts. \u201cOne day we\u2019re sitting, rolling silverware, and she\u2019s like, \u2018Buck\u2019s coming today. What should I ask him for?\u2019\u201d says Wolcin. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018Could you ask for some art supplies and you could give them to me?\u2019\u201d But the gifts were much more substantial than paintbrushes. All told, according to the local paper, The<\/em> Day,<\/em> Charlie gave Perez $235,000 to buy a house, $3,000 for a downpayment on a Monte Carlo, as well as a laptop, shoes, money for bills \u2014 you name it. His electrical business was apparently thriving.<\/p>\n

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\n\tCharlie\u2019s spending was a longtime issue in his marriage to Leslie. She was terrified of dying poor, and was an avid bargain-shopper and coupon-cutter. Charlie liked shiny things. \u201cCharlie always talked about building a pole barn over at their house because he had a couple of collector cars, and he wanted a place to put them. And she said, \u2018No, I don\u2019t want to spend the money on a pole barn,\u2019 which kind of irritated him,\u201d Baker says. \u201cAnd then he wanted to buy a new boat, and she said, \u2018No, you don\u2019t need a new boat.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt some point, Leslie found out about Perez; a DBI employee named Ralph Hill found Charlie in tears in his car one day behind the bar, according to The Day.<\/em> He had told Leslie about the other woman, he told Hill, and now he was worried that his wife would \u201ctake him for everything he has.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd he wasn\u2019t shy about the solution to his woes. Harry Longinidis, the owner of Angie\u2019s Pizza \u2014 where Charlie and Leslie would go every Friday \u2014 remembers that Charlie bellied up to the bar, joking that he wished his wife was dead, in between creeping on the waitresses. He also directed his ire at Perez\u2019s ex; he asked Hill if he knew anyone who could take care of the man for him. \u201cI don\u2019t want him breathing,\u201d he said, The Day <\/em>reported.<\/p>\n

\n\tLeslie didn\u2019t seem happy, either. Despite her strict Catholic upbringing, according to the police investigation, she asked a friend about divorce and restraining orders before her death.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich brings us back to her great escape \u2014 how she outsmarted Russell Kirby on the side of the highway, returning home bruised, beaten, and livid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBEFORE LESLIE FINALLY ARRIVED HOME, Charlie had called 911 twice \u2014 first at 10:17 p.m., then at 10:30 p.m. On the first call, he told the operator that Leslie had been due home an hour and a half ago from an event with her teachers\u2019 sorority at the nearby Hilton. \u201cHave there been any accidents or anything around?\u201d he asked over the crackly line, before oddly launching into his whereabouts that evening. He had some meetings at the various fire departments he volunteered with, he said, adding that he\u2019d arrived home after 10 p.m. to find the house empty.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the next call, he told the operator that he\u2019d rang two of Leslie\u2019s friends who were also at the meeting \u2014 including Anna Greene, my second-grade teacher \u2014 who told him Leslie had left the Hilton at a quarter past eight. The hotel was only an eight-minute drive from the Bucks\u2019 house on Mason\u2019s Island, a tony community on the water. During a third 911 call, at 11:07 p.m.,\u00a0 Leslie screamed in the background.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cHe\u2019s so sick!\u201d she yelled as Charlie told the operator that his wife had been kidnapped by his best friend. \u201cI told you I never liked him.\u2026 He punched me in the stomach.\u2026 He has our house keys.\u201d Leslie seemed most concerned about that \u2014 her 90-year-old mother\u2019s house keys were on that key ring. Luckily, when Kirby was arrested early the next morning, the keys were apprehended. Leslie never got them back, though. I know because I held the heavy ring in a gloved hand under the buzzing lights of the New London Superior Court last summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen police brought Kirby to the station early the next morning, he refused to give a statement. \u201c[He] stated that he did not want to go through the trouble of talking and just wanted to be charged with his crimes,\u201d according to a police report.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill shaken and bruised, Leslie was taken by ambulance to Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in nearby New London. When Charlie arrived, the ER doctor attending to Leslie felt like he wasn\u2019t getting the full story. A nurse also suspected the couple were leaving things out, and another medical professional told police that Charlie didn\u2019t seem emotional at all. But when staff wheeled Leslie away to get an X-ray, Charlie told them, \u201cTake care of her. She\u2019s my whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSeparated from her husband Leslie became much more animated, the X-ray tech told police, rattling off the details of her abduction and fidgeting with a gold bracelet. \u201cWhy would someone give something like this if they\u2019re going to do this?\u201d she asked one of the techs. When Leslie got back from getting X-rays at around 3 a.m., Charlie asked if they could leave. And, according to one of the techs, Leslie went \u201cback into her shell.\u201d She had a voice \u201clike a little girl\u2019s,\u201d the tech told police. She had abrasions on her hands and legs, and broken capillaries around her eyes and throat.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother staff member watched the couple leave the hospital not much later. She \u201csaw Charles grab Leslie by the upper right arm with his left hand and pull her with force,\u201d according to a police report. \u201c[She] said it was not affectionate at all and she thought to herself, \u2018She was just kidnapped, why is he pulling her like that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA few days later, Charlie called the police at 5:38 p.m. \u201cOh, sweetheart,\u201d he cried over the phone while the 911 operator listened on. He described a bruise on his wife\u2019s neck, a cut on her head. \u201cOh, she\u2019s cold, her face is ice-cold,\u201d he moaned. The police and paramedics arrived moments after. When they saw her, at 6:05 p.m., they knew she was dead.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tNEIL BAKER AND HIS WIFE, MARIANNE, went over to Leslie\u2019s mother\u2019s house the morning after Leslie\u2019s death, worried about their friend Charlie\u2019s state of mind. Surrounded by Leslie\u2019s teacher friends, Charlie\u2019s emotions ping-ponged all over the place, though. He went from describing, in detail, how Leslie\u2019s body looked crumpled at the bottom of the stairs to crying hysterically.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe thing that strikes me is I\u2019ve never seen Charlie have any kind of emotion \u2014 not anger, not love,\u201d Marianne says when we talk last summer. But that morning, the display just seemed like \u201cthis faking, fakey thing,\u201d she says. \u201cI thought, \u2018That\u2019s a fake emotion.\u2019 Leslie was always true.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBaker says, \u201cThat\u2019s when we realized that he was responsible for her death.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bakers went home and mulled over the things they previously overlooked or dismissed about Baker\u2019s childhood friend. How Charlie had told Baker about something he called \u201cthe Equalizer,\u201d a heavy length of wire he kept in the spare room at the top of the stairs for protection. He cut a length of the same material and gave it to Baker; a cop friend later told him that it was considered a \u201cdeadly weapon.\u201d They remembered the couple\u2019s money issues, and how Charlie had chased one of their babysitters around a room. They later gave that information to the cops, who\u2019d begun investigating Charlie for his wife\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\n\tDave Knowles, Joe Coco, and Cody Floyd were all on the case back in the early 2000s, and they are eager to tell me about their investigation into Charlie Buck. Floyd, then a detective, has been bothered for decades by Charlie\u2019s last 911 call, during which he described Leslie\u2019s injuries in detail, including a deep cut on her forehead. \u201cYou can\u2019t tell that there\u2019s a cut to her forehead, initially,\u201d Floyd says. \u201cIf you look at the autopsy photos, obviously you can see that cut. But at the crime scene, between her hair and the blood, there\u2019s no way. So there\u2019s no way he would have known that, right? Unless he put the cut there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThose wounds, Floyd and the other cops say, match the scalloped pattern of the wires that make up the Equalizer \u2014 which went missing after Leslie\u2019s death. It had to be murder, they all thought.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd then there were Charlie\u2019s actions. The day of Leslie\u2019s death, Charlie, a volunteer fireman, didn\u2019t respond to an emergency call right near his house \u2014 despite usually being the first one out, the cops say. They wondered if it was because he was with Perez. Perez came to the police station in the days after news of Leslie\u2019s death broke to tell police that Charlie was at the DBI the day his wife died. \u201cI took a statement from her, which, looking back, she left out certain parts,\u201d Coco, a detective at the time, says wryly. Namely that she and Buck were involved. That came out later, via police interviews and The Day.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Read more Storm Owner Suspended After Clash With Sophie Cunningham Supporters<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat we always surmised about Carol [Perez] is she wouldn\u2019t give you information, but if you hit her with it, she would provide that information,\u201d Knowles, a former detective sergeant, says. \u201cSo she was always playing both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCharlie\u2019s behavior at Leslie\u2019s funeral also raised suspicions, despite telling the press days before, \u201cI keep hoping I\u2019ll wake up and it isn\u2019t true.\u2026 She was just everything to me. She was my whole life.\u201d The church where Charlie and Leslie got married decades before flooded with more than 300 mourners, including Leslie\u2019s fellow teachers, who arrived on a yellow school bus. Many steered clear of Charlie, though, including Leslie\u2019s mother, who jerked away from him when he tried to take her arm, clinging to her son instead. Baker was alarmed when Charlie slipped him a card for his newly-hired lawyer at the reception, in case he needed bailing out, adding, \u201cMurder cases are expensive.\u201d He\u2019d already spent $310,000 on a defense, he told Baker.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, the news \u2014 both local and national \u2014 seized on the case, churning out story after story peppered with allegations about Charlie\u2019s relationship with Perez. \u201cIt was something you would read in the New York Post, <\/em>with all the details about the girlfriend and the crazy circumstances that led up to this,\u201d says Joe Wojtas, who has worked at The Day<\/em> for 37 years and was one of the reporters on the case. \u201cWe started to get tips from the community.\u2026 He kind of became a pariah. People thought he killed his wife, and, as you know, you had the beloved elementary-school teacher.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was the story in the paper in which Perez alleged that on the day of Leslie\u2019s death, Charlie told her, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing in the world I wouldn\u2019t do for you.\u201d The one where Perez claimed that Charlie had called her multiple times after Leslie died, telling her he \u201cwould have to mourn for about a year for appearances sake,\u201d and then they\u2019d run away together. Charlie denied the alleged affair, dismissing it as \u201cvicious rumors,\u201d according to The Day.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThen there were the allegations that didn\u2019t make the papers. A year after Leslie died, the owner of the DBI sold the venue, and finally talked to the cops. \u201cCarol told [the DBI owner] that Charlie told her that he had killed his wife,\u201d Coco remembers. \u201cShe hadn\u2019t spoken about this before; she was afraid because Buck was still around.\u201d In police records, Perez denied telling the DBI owner that Charlie killed Leslie. \u201cCarol\u2019s version is that [her boss] offered her opinion that Buck killed her and Carol agreed with her,\u201d according to those documents. The owner has since died.<\/p>\n

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\n\tMeanwhile, Russell Kirby was working his way through the criminal-justice system for Leslie\u2019s kidnapping, and cops uncovered a piece of evidence that potentially tied him to Buck \u2014 a note with a series of times and dates on it, which police put together was Charlie and Leslie\u2019s comings and goings the day before and the day of the kidnapping.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut that note was never entered into evidence. It was found in Kirby\u2019s truck, which the cops didn\u2019t have a warrant to search, since it wasn\u2019t involved in Leslie\u2019s abduction. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t tie it to the actual kidnapping,\u201d Knowles says. That also meant it was useless in any case against Charlie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to the lost note, Floyd tells me, Kirby\u2019s brother Stratton had been visiting him in the days before the kidnapping, and had overheard Kirby on the phone with someone who sounded like Charlie. It seemed like they were discussing dates and times, Floyd says. (Stratton did not recall this when we spoke for this story.)<\/p>\n

\n\tLeslie\u2019s family filed civil suits against Charlie in 2005 \u2014 three years after her death \u2014 seeking both to take control of Leslie\u2019s estate and accusing Charlie of paying Kirby to kidnap and murder her. But the cops were still jammed up by 2006, mainly because the medical examiner didn\u2019t definitively rule her death a homicide. They brought in experts, including Barbara Wolf \u2014 who helped get O.J. Simpson acquitted \u2014 and Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner of the city of New York, who worked on the Phil Spector case, as well as, recently, the George Floyd murder. Both concluded that Leslie had been hit over the head and strangled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMuch to the cops\u2019 chagrin, Kirby wasn\u2019t talking \u2014 the cops tried to get to him multiple times while he sat in jail awaiting trial, and he stonewalled them all.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen people complained about the seemingly stalled wheels of justice, the chief state\u2019s attorney told the press, \u201cCSI <\/em>and Law and Order <\/em>offer some nice fiction. But they\u2019re not the reality we deal with every day.\u201d In 2006, four years after Leslie\u2019s death, the cops called in reinforcements: the cold-case unit.<\/p>\n

\n\tJACK EDWARDS HAD BEEN TRYING to retire for decades. He was a cold-case inspector for the Connecticut State Police, though, and it\u2019s all he really liked to do \u2014 dig into a case until it cracked. Edwards wasn\u2019t the lead investigator in the Leslie Buck case, but he was arguably the most obsessed. \u201cJack is 100 miles an hour,\u201d Knowles tells me, laughing.<\/p>\n

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\n\tI meet Edwards at the Stonington police station, which is across the street from my old high school. It\u2019s a cozy little brick building, but the conference room has fluorescent lights befitting a morgue, and we squint under the glare as he takes me through some case materials. Edwards, who is in his eighties \u2014 and finally retired \u2014 has the air of an old-school cop: a raspy, low voice and steely gaze. But he smiles with his whole face and has a propensity for telling me \u201cgood job\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m proud of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe launches into all the things that bothered him about Leslie\u2019s death when he started digging in. How when Charlie called 911 when Leslie went missing, he needlessly brought up his own whereabouts that day, as if he was giving himself an alibi. That mysterious note from Kirby\u2019s truck that wasn\u2019t allowed into evidence. How her autopsy pointed to something far different than a fall down the stairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe has many more injuries than she had from the kidnapping,\u201d Edwards explains, pointing out that gash that the cops homed in on. \u201cThere was also a deep impression on her throat that wasn\u2019t there when she went to the hospital after escaping Kirby,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tBack in 2002, Charlie clashed with cops over Leslie\u2019s hospital records following her kidnapping, and their intention to interview the staff. He claimed he didn\u2019t want them obtaining the files because he was considering suing the hospital, and wanted the records himself, implying that they missed something that night which then later led Leslie to get dizzy and fall down the stairs. He never did file a suit \u2014 and the cops ended up getting their way \u2014 but an X-ray tech claims that everything was aboveboard. \u201cHer husband tried to say that the hospital was negligent, that she had a head injury [from the kidnapping] and that we didn\u2019t do a CAT scan,\u201d the tech tells me. \u201cBut she did not have a head injury when she was brought in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEdwards was also struck by the lack of blood at the scene. If she\u2019d fallen and hit her head, there should have been tons. His theory is that Leslie was actually killed at the Bucks\u2019 other house, where Leslie\u2019s mother lived, then driven back to the place on Mason\u2019s Island and staged at the bottom of the stairs. A neighbor had seen them driving by that day, Edwards says that when the neighbor waved, neither Leslie nor Charlie responded as usual. Charlie looked mad, the neighbor said. No one got warrants to search Charlie\u2019s car or the other house. \u201cWhen you looked at the photographs and the autopsy, she was beaten up pretty bad,\u201d Edwards tells me. \u201cIt appeared that she had been dragged on her knees or something. So I thought that the attack happened somewhere else, because there wasn\u2019t anything at the scene that would lead to those kinds of injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe other cops don\u2019t ascribe that theory \u2014 they think she was killed at home.<\/p>\n

\n\tSEVEN YEARS AFTER LESLIE\u2019S DEATH, and three years after the cold-case unit was brought on, Charlie was arrested on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2009, right outside the doughnut place where he\u2019d get his morning coffee. Joe Coco, one of the cops on the case, had retired by then, but he came back to see the man in cuffs. In the back of the cop car, Charlie told officers, \u201cYou know, this case is just based on innuendo,\u201d Coco says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt that point, the cops had no physical evidence. The Equalizer had gone missing, and, of course, Charlie\u2019s DNA was all over the house. He lived there.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, Kirby\u2019s kidnapping case orbited Charlie\u2019s murder case like a distant moon. Charlie refused to testify in Kirby\u2019s trial in 2004, since he was under investigation for Leslie\u2019s murder, and Kirby refused to talk to the cops about Charlie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOh, Kirby, we wanted to talk to him,\u201d Dave Knowles, one of the other cops on the case,\u00a0 says. \u201cHe wouldn\u2019t talk to us. He canceled everybody on his visitation list.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2004, Kirby was convicted, but it was overturned two years later after the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that Leslie\u2019s statements to the police should not have been admitted as evidence, as she was already safe at home. At his second trial, Kirby argued that the contents of his kidnap kit were actually meant to ward off an angry dog he encountered during a job repairing heavy machinery. Leslie had attacked him,<\/em> he claimed. No one bought that. In 2010, Kirby was found guilty of kidnapping for a second time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tKirby was sentenced to 21 years; he was released early in 2020. I tried to reach out to Kirby several times over the past year, but he never replied.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter his arrest, Charlie spent 20 months in MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution awaiting trial, roughly an hour and a half from home, where he apparently found Jesus. He wrote letters to Leslie\u2019s mom about God, Dick Edmonston, Leslie\u2019s brother, says. He\u2019s not sure if their mom ever read them. Charlie was released on bond two months before the trial, scraping together the $1.5 million by leveraging his houses. The trial was swift \u2014 about a month and a half \u2014 and Leslie\u2019s teacher friends took turns sitting in the courtroom. Charlie\u2019s lawyers opted for a three-judge panel rather than a jury, so the prosecutors were left to present the cold, hard facts, as opposed to playing on 12 people\u2019s emotions. And that proved to be an issue for the prosecution, who didn\u2019t have much in the way of physical evidence. \u201c[I was bothered by] the fact that we were never able to find what we considered to be the weapon that inflicted the injury,\u201d prosecutor Paul Narducci tells me.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cWe knew going in that it was a problematic case, and that there certainly was no guarantee that we were going to get a conviction, but we had gotten to the point where we didn\u2019t think the case was going to get any better. We had a sincere belief in his guilt, but we knew that some of the evidence that convinced us probably wasn\u2019t admissible,\u201d adds his fellow prosecutor Larry Tytla, who points to the note from Kirby\u2019s truck as an example. \u201cAnd so, at that point, you try the case and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the trial, Narducci ran into Charlie at Mystic Pizza, where the prosecutor was picking up a Hawaiian pie. \u201cCharlie turns to me, and he goes, \u2018I don\u2019t know much Hawaiian, but I do know a couple of phrases,\u2019\u201d he tells me. \u201cHe said, \u2018The only thing I know is, \u2018Come on, you want to lei me.\u2019 At which point I blushed.\u201d Narducci wasn\u2019t sure if Charlie recognized him \u2014 why would he tell a dirty joke to the man trying to put him away from murder? But Narducci says Charlie\u2019s lawyer told him her client was well-aware who he was talking to. \u201c\u2018Oh, he\u2019s so incorrigible,\u2019\u201d he recalls the lawyer saying. (Charlie\u2019s lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAs it turns out, Charlie was right to feel buoyant. He was acquitted on Dec. 15, 2010, and the civil cases were withdrawn; Charlie and Leslie\u2019s family agreed to split her estate. I\u2019m not able to tell you exactly what went down at trial \u2014 those records are now sealed \u2014 but, in the end, it came down to dueling medical professionals. The state\u2019s experts said Leslie was murdered, the defense argued that she died of a previously undiagnosed heart condition that struck while she was standing at the top of the stairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat shocked me that two people at the very top of their profession could have such diametrically opposed conclusions,\u201d Tytla says. \u201cMy experience had usually been that experts would be nuanced and come to different conclusions, but I mean, these two would look at the exact same evidence and draw completely contrary conclusions from it.\u201d The medical examiner for the defense has since died.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was upset,\u201d says Floyd, one of the detectives. \u201cI\u2019d lived that case for eight years. It was a hometown couple.\u2026 In my mind, there was no doubt in my mind that Charlie murdered her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWHEN I FOUND OUT ABOUT THE ACQUITTAL, I was living in New York City in a shabby apartment, trying to be a journalist. It was a shock to hear that this saga that engulfed my hometown for nearly a decade was finally over, that a man everyone was convinced was guilty had walked free.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tIt\u2019s not like Charlie went back to life as normal, though. He was banned from one of his favorite pizza joints, Angie\u2019s, and after making a crude comment to a waitress at a volunteer-firefighter party, he was kicked off one of his squads. His life became very small.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2016, Charlie fell off the roof of his childhood home, where he\u2019d moved after losing his house to pay for his lawyers. He died not long after at the same hospital where Leslie was cared for after her attack; there was no funeral. His name was carved on the same gravestone as Leslie\u2019s, on a shady plot near the sea, but his ashes were scattered somewhere far from her bones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEverybody thought I [pushed him],\u201d says Jack Edwards, the retired cold-case cop. \u201cSeriously, it wasn\u2019t me. St. Michael, he\u2019s the protector of the policeman. There\u2019s no doubt in my mind, [Charlie] killed that girl. So, St. Michael fixed his ass.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSince Charlie can\u2019t speak for himself, I set out to try to get his side of the story. Neil and Marianne Baker have changed their minds regarding their friend, and Charlie\u2019s daughter died years ago. I managed to connect with his niece, Kelly Bonser, but she didn\u2019t know him well. In fact, she was shocked to learn she had another cousin: Charlie\u2019s estranged son (who didn\u2019t reply to my letters). Her father and grandmother \u2014 now both deceased \u2014 believed Charlie was innocent, but no one else agreed. \u201cShe needs justice,\u201d Bonser says of Leslie. \u201cIt\u2019s a shame how he got away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI find Charlie\u2019s old Facebook profile; he\u2019s smiling awkwardly in one photo, shirtless in another. He has only four friends, all pretty young women. I message them all, and connect with Nanette Wilson, who met him through a friend at a local pizza joint. He was always kind to her, she says; they never talked about Leslie beyond him saying he missed her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe was a sad person. I mean, everything had been stripped from him,\u201d she says. She used to work with older people, and has a soft spot for the lonely ones. \u201cWe used to ride through Stonington, and people would see his convertible and say, \u2018You fucking murderer.\u2019 I mean, they would scream it. When people think you killed your wife, even if you\u2019ve been [acquitted], it doesn\u2019t matter. Of course you\u2019re gonna be lonely \u2014 especially in this town. \u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s right. For some foolish reason, Charlie and Carol Perez, the DBI bartender, appeared on Dr. Phil<\/em> in 2016, where they denied ever having a physical affair \u2014 plus, they\u2019d both since moved on, they said. Perez also accused Charlie of trying to kill her more than once. Charlie smiled and seemed to revel in the audience\u2019s laughter. I found out about the appearance at a friend\u2019s wedding, and remember the palpable disgust of my tablemates, some of whom had Leslie as a teacher too. I couldn\u2019t watch that video for years. I struggled to watch it again to write this story.<\/p>\n

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\n\tI wish I could say I had some smoking gun, some final puzzle piece that would click in place and bring the truth to light. I have some leads: the note, rumors that Charlie confessed on his death bed \u2014 that he saw Leslie\u2019s ghost in his hospital room. I\u2019m still digging. I\u2019ve tried to contact Russell Kirby, who\u2019s 89 years old and lives in his car somewhere in Connecticut. But when I ask his brother Stratton for Russell\u2019s number, he writes back: \u201cNO! He is to be left [alone],\u201d a sharp turn from the friendly man who had chatted on the phone with me before. As for Perez, I emailed, called, texted, and wrote her physical letters. No response. Finally, a year after I began reporting, I knocked on her door.<\/p>\n

\n\tIT\u2019S A HUMID EVENING IN MAY, the lush green trees humming with birds, when I pull into Carol Perez\u2019s driveway in Gales Ferry, about 20 minutes from my parents\u2019 home. Her house \u2014 which I\u2019m almost certain is the one Charlie bought her \u2014 is a pleasant robin\u2019s-egg blue, with a wheelbarrow in her yard, which abuts the darkening woods. I expect to feel more nervous as I knock on her door. At first, no one answers \u2014 but, soon, a light turns on upstairs, and I watch as the silhouette of a woman approaches the door.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen it opens, I feel the same sense of disorientation I sometimes do when interviewing a favorite actor: There\u2019s the version in my head, and the reality. And there she is now \u2014 Carol Perez, now Stephens \u2014 a spectre from childhood. Not a boogeyman, quite, but something adjacent. She\u2019s still strikingly beautiful, even in leggings and a T-shirt, hair long and graying now, but eyes bright.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been trying to reach you,\u201d I say, my voice higher and younger-sounding than I\u2019d like. \u201cI\u2019m a former student of Leslie Buck\u2019s, and I have a story about her coming out in a few months. I\u2019d just \u2026 like to hear what you have to say.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI brace for her to yell at me, slam the door in my face, but she just leans against the jamb. \u201cSure,\u201d she says slowly. \u201cI can\u2019t right now, but \u2026\u201d I key her number into my cell and text her my name.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI kind of wanted to write a book,\u201d she says softly as I type. \u201cI never wanted to [do] any news media, because I was damned already. This guy, he\u2019s insane,\u201d she continues, referring to Charlie. \u201cI had to wait.\u201d Until he died, I guessed.<\/p>\n

\n\tI soften toward her then. I don\u2019t know much about her life before Charlie, but I know that it wasn\u2019t easy. And that awful Dr. Phil<\/em> episode. Still, I\u2019m not sure why, but I doubt she\u2019ll answer when I call her, so I take my chance right then.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve spent 24 years wondering what happened to my teacher,\u201d I say, my voice even higher than before. I sound like I\u2019m 17 again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe rushes to speak before I finish. \u201cI never met her, but I met that guy after everything happened. I had no idea what happened to her. It was so creepy. I didn\u2019t believe it, that she died \u2014 that he would, that he could do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI tense up. I know that half of what she just said is untrue. She didn\u2019t meet Charlie after Leslie died \u2014 several people reported to the police that Charlie was at the bar all the time, that he showered her with gifts. I cut in gently, not wanting to scare her. \u201cDid he tell you he did?\u201d I ask, meaning: Did Charlie confess to murder to you?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNo, I would have already been to the police,\u201d she rushes out. My head is spinning; she did go to the police. Does she mean before Leslie\u2019s death?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe never talked about it?\u201d I press.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNo, no, he didn\u2019t trust me like that,\u201d Perez continues, her hand on the door now. \u201cHe trusts me more than most people, but he still wouldn\u2019t trust me. I definitely will talk to you.\u201d She blinks at me. Conversation over. It\u2019s clear now that it\u2019s time to go, so I say goodbye and confirm that I\u2019ll call her the next day.<\/p>\n

\n\tI call once, twice, three times over the next week. I text \u2014 more than once. She answers once and tells me she\u2019d had a family emergency. I wait a week, then try again. Nothing. I still haven\u2019t given up hope, though, that Perez will answer one day. That she\u2019ll be willing to tell me the truth about everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the end, no, I didn\u2019t solve a murder, but I did learn more about Mrs. Buck, someone I\u2019ve spent decades thinking about. Dick Edmonston, who died last winter, taught me that Leslie perfected the art of the chocolate chip cookie. Neil and Marianne Baker told me about the pool parties Leslie threw every summer. \u201cThat\u2019s the memory I will hold onto,\u201d Marianne says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Anna Greene, my second-grade teacher, told me about the poems she found in Leslie\u2019s desk after she died \u2014 that she read at the funeral. There\u2019s one about the kids who are different, \u201cwho don\u2019t fit,\u201d who \u201cdance to a different drum.\u201d For some reason, that hit me harder than police reports or autopsies. More than the horrors that true-crime often focuses on. I still can\u2019t read it without crying. Maybe because I definitely was one of those kids, or maybe it\u2019s just because it shows that she truly saw her students \u2014 all of them. Or maybe it\u2019s a much-needed reminder that Leslie Buck isn\u2019t a story, a case to be solved. She was a person. And she deserves to be remembered.<\/p>\n

Read more Musk to Spend Millions Boosting MAGA Candidates in Midterms<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2002, Leslie Buck died under mysterious circumstances in Mystic, Connecticut. 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