Episode One: The Missing Candy Heiress

In February 1977, Helen Brach — heir to the Brach’s Candy fortune — vanished without a trace.

She was one of the wealthiest women in America. A widow dividing her time between Chicago, Florida, and her small Ohio hometown.

Then she disappeared.

There was no body. No confirmed crime scene. Almost no physical evidence.

Nearly twenty years later, a horse trader named Richard Bailey was charged in connection with her disappearance — a charge he denies.

In this premiere episode of The Missing Candy Heiress, we return to the beginning.

Through exclusive interviews with Helen’s family, rare archival audio, and newly uncovered material, we examine the life of the woman behind the headlines — and the unresolved questions that have lingered for nearly fifty years.

This is not just the story of a disappearance.

It’s a story about money, influence, and the shadowy world surrounding one of Chicago’s most enduring mysteries.

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The Missing Candy Heiress is produced, directed, and written by Jonathan Rocks and Beth McNamara. All material is copyrighted.

Legal Disclaimer:  All individuals referenced in this podcast are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law in the United States.

Transcript

SPEAKER_09 0:11

Morning, Mr. Bailey. It's Beth McNamara in Los Angeles.

SPEAKER_07 0:15

Oh, this beautiful lady. She'll be a bobby star. You don't know what I look like. I can tell you from talking to you.

SPEAKER_12 0:24

This is Richard Bailey. He's 92 years old, and as you can hear, he's still a bit of a flirt. He even refers to himself as the golden tongue, which is odd given the source of that nickname.

SPEAKER_06 0:38

Golden tongue, incidentally, comes from the prosecutors. Call me the golden tongue, I thought I'm very persuasive and careful what it's saying. Speaker to a woman.

SPEAKER_12 0:47

And prosecutors said it was Bailey's golden tongue that landed him in federal court in 1994.

SPEAKER_06 0:53

When I was first locked up, Judd called me in his chambers and he had the two prosecutors there. He takes out the information on Richard Bailey, looks at that, he threw it to the side. He said, Boys, you better get busy. You got nothing on Bailey.

SPEAKER_12 1:13

Richard is sharp, despite spending most of the past 30 years in prison. But the day of this phone call, he had no idea how we got in touch with him.

SPEAKER_06 1:23

How in the hell did you ever get my phone number?

SPEAKER_09 1:26

We just did some asking around.

SPEAKER_12 1:28

Spoiler. Our research uncovered his number and we dialed it. Wow. That other voice belongs to my producing partner, Beth. As you'll hear, she's the Bailey whisperer. And once she got through to him, the phone kept ringing, and Bailey kept talking. He told us all about his early life, his marriage, and his many business ventures.

SPEAKER_06 1:53

I'm a master of business out there. Yeah, I know what you're doing. I made sure you had the money.

SPEAKER_12 1:59

But we wanted to know more about the one business that ended up ruining his life.

SPEAKER_06 2:04

Some beautiful lady coming by, uh looking for a horse. Well, I had just a horse for her. I picked up a horse for uh a couple thousand, I sell it for ten or twenty thousand or fifty thousand, or two hundred thousand.

SPEAKER_12 2:18

And that takes us back to nineteen ninety-four, to that judge's chambers, where Richard claimed prosecutors were told, You better get busy.

SPEAKER_06 2:26

You got nothing on Bailey.

SPEAKER_12 2:28

But something, or someone, was working against him, because by 1995, Richard Bailey was sentenced to life in prison for, among other things, conspiracy to commit murder.

SPEAKER_06 2:42

They wanted me dead rather than alive when I walked out of that prison. Because they know I'm the only one in the world that knows the truth because I was right in the middle of all of it.

SPEAKER_12 2:56

What Bailey was right in the middle of is one of the most infamous missing person cases of the 20th century. The disappearance of millionaire candy heiress Helen Brock.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Forty years after the disappearance of Candy Airress Helen Brock, one of Chicago's most perplexing crimes now has new legal life.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

The heir to a candy company fortune. Helen Brock was courted by Richard Bailey, a horse swindler who had her millions in mind.

SPEAKER_12 3:20

According to Bailey, he and Helen Brock were in love.

SPEAKER_06 3:23

Helen Brock, a real classy lady. I was dating her for four years.

SPEAKER_12 3:28

Bailey also has his own version of what he claims really happened on the night she disappeared in February 1977.

SPEAKER_06 3:35

I know what happened to Helen. I don't want to know, I know. There's about four or five of them waiting for her. She tried to get out of there, they grabbed her. I couldn't do a thing about her, they would have killed me.

SPEAKER_12 3:50

In 1977, Helen Brock was one of the wealthiest women in America. And her disappearance remains one of the most perplexing missing persons' cases in history. There was no body, no official crime scene, and almost no evidence at all. Certainly nothing that indicated Richard Bailey's involvement. But nearly 20 years later, Richard was the subject of a RICO investigation, which means he was on trial for fraud and racketeering. And when prosecutors saw Helen Brock's name on a long list of wealthy women, he'd allegedly whined, dined, and defrauded. Richard also found himself charged with conspiring to commit the murder of the missing candieras.

SPEAKER_05 4:34

As far as you see someplace where I pleaded guilty, no way in the world. Give me a polygraph test. I told him, come on. I passed like flying colors. They know I think.

SPEAKER_12 4:52

And as for their motive?

SPEAKER_06 4:56

Money, money, money, money. The mob was involved.

SPEAKER_12 5:02

This is the investigative podcast The Missing Candierus. And in our first episode, we're gonna go back to day one to unwrap the story of Helen Brock, the millionaire candieras, who one cold winter day simply vanished without a trace. My name is Jonathan Rox. I'm a writer and producer, and I come from a family of detectives. Growing up, our dinner table conversations often revolved around crime scenes, cold cases, and victims seeking justice. I'm also part of the VDOC Society, a members-only cold case think tank that brings fresh eyes to unsolved cases that many have written off, which is probably why I'm drawn to unsolved cases like the disappearance of Helen Brock.

SPEAKER_09 5:52

And I'm Beth McNamara, a TV documentary and podcast producer based in Los Angeles, California. John and I got connected four years ago when I was looking into a different unsolved murder. My investigation became the podcast Murder at Ryan's Run.

SPEAKER_12 6:10

It's been nearly 50 years since Helen became known as the Missing Candy Aris, leaving behind a massive$100 million fortune and a mystery that sounds like something out of a Cohen Brothers movie. Over the past four decades, Helen's disappearance has been the subject of countless news stories, books, and thanks to social media, a never-ending flood of online theories about what happened to her.

SPEAKER_18 6:36

They understand there was some kind of dispute, something happened, uh she was probably ground up in a meat grinder and fed to the dogs.

SPEAKER_17 6:45

The boyfriend just didn't have the guts to do it. The houseman hey, the motive is there, the opportunity is there, he could get the job done.

SPEAKER_16 6:59

Somebody says, Come with me. You never found anybody in the world that ever saw her appointment in O'Hare.

SPEAKER_12 7:11

Helen Brock wasn't just anyone. Her connection to the Brock's Candy Empire made her one of the wealthiest women in the country. To this day, Helen remains the richest woman in America to ever disappear and never be found. That would be like Paris Hilton, the hotel heiress, going missing. Just imagine the headlines and speculation. The story of Helen's disappearance is full of twists and turns, shady characters and dark secrets. Almost like the plot of the next Knives Out movie. But it's all true. Beth and I have gone down every rabbit hole, traveling across the country, uncovering new leads, and going deeper than anyone ever has to ask the questions that need to be answered. But before we dive into our investigation, I want to first tell you about Helen Brock. Not the myth, not the millionaire Candieris, but the real woman at the center of this story. She was born Helen Voorhees on November 11, 1911. That's 1111-11. In Unionport, Ohio, a town of fewer than 400 people. Life there was simple, predictable. But Helen wasn't. In high school, she was known for her striking auburn hair. Some said she looked like a young Rita Hayworth and carried herself with that kind of confidence. She married her high school sweetheart, which was pretty common at the time. But when the marriage fell apart, Helen did something not so common for a woman in the 1930s. She filed for divorce. Helen then worked full-time. She sold train tickets. She worked in a factory during the war. And eventually, she landed in Buckeye Lake, a small Ohio resort town, where she worked as a hostess at the Starlight Ballroom. This was her first glimpse of the glamorous life, and she liked what she saw. So in her mid-30s, Helen moved to sunny Florida to work at an exclusive country club on Indian Creek Island, where the membership was old money, rising politicians, and captains of industry. And this is where Helen met Frank Brock, owner of the Brock's Candy Company, one of the biggest candy empires in the world. Brock's was best known for Valentine's Day Conversation Hearts. And of course, Candy Corn at Halloween. Based in Chicago, Brock had over 2,000 employees producing over a hundred million pounds of candy every year. Their products were in every grocery store and corner market across the country. And their commercials played on every radio station, like this one. Frank was over 20 years older than Helen when they met, and still married to his second wife. So for Helen and Frank to be together, it would mean a costly divorce, lawsuits, scandalous headlines about their affair, and ultimately Frank's decision to leave the Catholic Church, since both he and Helen had been divorced. But in early 1951, Frank and Helen were married in a private ceremony, followed by a honeymoon in Hawaii. Frank then moved Helen into his sprawling seven-acre estate outside Chicago, where she had closets full of fur coats, a private ice cream parlor, and a fleet of luxury cars, including a pink Cadillac and a purple Rolls-Royce, the colors of the Brock brand. But her favorite indulgence? Well, that was pampering their rescue dogs, aptly named Candy and Sugar. For almost 20 years, Frank and Helen lived a dream life. They hosted parties for powerful friends and celebrities, used their wealth to fund causes they cared about, and split their time between the North Shore of Chicago and a luxury condo in Florida. But by the late 1960s, their 20-year age gap became harder to ignore. In his mid-70s, Frank's health had declined. And the mansion they shared, once filled with laughter and the clink of champagne glasses, grew silent. Then, in 1970, at 80 years old, Frank Brock died. At just 59, Helen was a widow. An extremely wealthy widow, because Frank had left her over$20 million, which would be well over a hundred million today. Over the next few years, Helen's life grew quieter and a bit stranger. She dabbled in spiritualism and gave generously to animal causes, even as the people around her grew more and more focused on her fortune. Then, in February 1977, at 65 years old, Helen Brock vanished. Helen's only sibling, her younger brother Charles Voorhees, reported her missing to the police in Glenview, Illinois. Charles had never left the small Ohio town where he and Helen had grown up, and he mostly avoided speaking publicly about Helen's disappearance. But we've uncovered a rare interview that Charles gave later in life.

SPEAKER_04 12:58

Did you have brothers and sisters? I had one sister. She was over. She born November 11, 1911. And she met a guy in a country company, and he was uh had a rock county company. And then um in 77 she disappeared. She what? Disappeared. Disappeared?

SPEAKER_12 13:15

And you've never heard from her again, or this interview also offers a glimpse into his take on Helen's disappearance.

SPEAKER_04 13:24

Did you ever try to find her? Oh yeah. Sure. Um they didn't want to do it.

SPEAKER_12 13:34

What Charles just said is they didn't want to find his sister. We would have followed up with Charles, but he passed away in 2002, leaving behind five children. So we contacted Charles's children, Helen's niece and nephews. Despite having been raised to follow their father's strict no media policy, they do harbor unanswered questions about what really happened to their Aunt Helen. So they agreed to speak with us exclusively.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Hello. Hey Jonathan Scott calling. Hey Scott, how are you? I'm wonderful. Adding my sister here. Aaron, you there?

SPEAKER_11 14:12

Yes. Hi, John. How are you?

SPEAKER_12 14:15

Doing well. Thank you for making time for me. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_11 14:18

No problem.

SPEAKER_12 14:19

After a few calls, Helen's niece and nephew invited me to meet them in person to talk about their Aunt Helen. Seven hours later, I arrived in the small town of Cadas, Ohio, in front of the kind of stunning brick mansion you might find on the cover of Architectural Digest.

SPEAKER_15 14:36

Look at this place. Wow.

SPEAKER_12 14:40

Set back from the road, the Voorhees home has an eye-catching profile. Red brick and white columns distinguish it from the rest of the quaint Cape Cods in town, which is why neighbors have taken to calling it the mansion on the hill.

SPEAKER_15 14:55

Like there's a little cat in the door. I like these guys already.

SPEAKER_12 15:00

This is the home of Helen's nephew, Scott Voorhees, and his husband, Ben.

SPEAKER_15 15:06

Hey! How are you doing?

SPEAKER_12 15:10

After decades in Southern California, they recently returned to Ohio to be closer to family. Inside, we're met by a spiral staircase at the center of the home. It's painted in a soft pink, Helen's favorite color. The walls along the staircase are where Scott and Ben have displayed a series of portraits of Helen at different stages of her life. Scott then shows me a portrait of Helen at about 13 years old, taken just a few miles away in Unionport, Ohio. She looks every bit as angsty as a typical teenager.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

This is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_12 15:53

Another shows Helen and Frank smiling as they cut the cake on their wedding day. Frank in a dark suit and bow tie. Helen in a shiny satin dress, accentuated by an oversized collar. These photos have never been shared publicly, but there are other signs of Helen on display too. Her jewelry, art, dishware, and even some of her furniture. Also joining us is Scott's older sister Karen. She's Helen's only niece. In preparation for my visit, she baked one of her Aunt Helen's favorite recipes. It's a collection of personal photos and mementos from the time they spent with their Aunt Helen.

SPEAKER_15 16:51

So what are we looking at with the photos and the folder you have here?

SPEAKER_11 16:55

I was a senior at Kent State University in Ohio. And Aunt Helen asked if I would be able to get excuses and glasses and go to Expense Inaugurate because Uncle Frank was too ill to go. I said, Oh, absolutely. There's a picture of us ready to go to the inaugural ball.

SPEAKER_15 17:20

That's so funny. It almost looks like a prom photo.

SPEAKER_12 17:24

The photo shows Helen and Karen in their Washington, D.C. hotel suite as they prepare to attend Richard Nixon's inaugural ball in 1969. Helen shimmers in an ice blue sleeveless gown and elegant white gloves. Beads and sequins cascade down to a hem finished with bright white feathers. And Helen's long auburn hair, styled in an ornate updo, frames her face like a braided halo. Seated beside her is Karen, smiling from behind a pair of those great cat's eye glasses. She also wears a blue gown, though hers is more of a robin's egg blue, which Helen had selected to complement her own. These weren't gowns that were purchased off the rack. Helen had them custom made.

SPEAKER_11 18:12

She had a limousine that took us into every event that happened. We went to the governor's ball.

SPEAKER_15 18:19

And this really speaks to the lifestyle. This was something she normally would have gone to with Frank, you think?

SPEAKER_12 18:24

Oh absolutely. Oh yes. He was you know too ill. Another photo shows Helen on inauguration day in mid-conversation with Richard Nixon's vice president at Spiro Agnew. But perhaps most revealing are the candid photos of Helen with her parents, uh her brother, and Scott and Karen as children.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

That's a picture we're showing her laughing. I mean we could tell it was a joke or something that we did that was tickling her. I guess telling her laugh.

SPEAKER_15 18:55

What's this here?

SPEAKER_11 18:57

That was a doll she gave me one year for Christmas. And it was of course very, very large.

SPEAKER_12 19:04

Nearly a foot tall, with a cherubic porcelain face, the doll is posed alone on the couch, wearing a full wedding dress, veil included. Scott and Karen told me whenever their Aunt Helen would visit, she always brought extravagant gifts or took them shopping so they could pick their own. With wraparound windows and a balcony overlooking the beach through clusters of palm trees. The photos look like scenes from the set of the Apple TV show Palm Royale.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

And she'd like to get up first thing in the morning and go down and swim in the pool, and she'd swim laps back and forth. And one of my favorite recollections is that she had a swimming bathing cap that had its fake red hair coming out of it. And watched her swimming back and forth with its red hair coming out of it. That's just one of my favorite recollections of her.

SPEAKER_12 20:15

Scott and Karen also shared that though she had no children of her own, Helen really enjoyed celebrating the holidays with them, especially Halloween.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Our house was the house to hit, because a week beforehand we would get like 20 cases of every brock candy that was imaginable. And when you walked up to our door, you didn't get a candy bar. You got a box of this, a box of that, here's a couple of these candy bars, here's this. It was everything.

SPEAKER_11 20:42

I had that same experience when I was in college. She send me huge boxes of candy. In the pink candy boxes. Yeah, that's a design.

SPEAKER_12 20:55

According to Helen's family, she played a key role in the redesign of the Brock's candy logo in the 1960s. Gone was the deep red logo with white and black accents, replaced instead with Helen's favorite colors pink and purple. It was a marketing success, and remains the brand's iconic signature to this day.

SPEAKER_15 21:19

Oh really? What was that like?

SPEAKER_11 21:20

Oh, it was wonderful. I think very good assembly line. And Uncle Frank was the type of thing. He didn't sit in his office and say, I know I own this coffee. He was always out in the factory talking. That was just his personality, too. And that's another reason they kind of like that. They both love to have fun and love each other. And it just meant so much to me.

SPEAKER_12 21:57

These are all lovely photos and memories that Karen has. Have of their Aunt Helen from childhood. But they're all from before she vanished in February 1977. So I asked them, gently, what do you remember about her disappearance?

SPEAKER_02 22:13

I was at home on the patio outside of our house, and my mom came out, and she told me something's happened to Helen, she's disappeared, and we don't know what's happened to her. We're gonna have to go to Chicago, but we'll find out what's going on. After that, it gets a little gray. Things were happening quickly, and I think they were trying to protect us and keep us out of the story.

SPEAKER_12 22:34

Scott was a teenager when Helen disappeared, so it's understandable that his memory of that time is a bit fuzzy. But Karen is 14 years older than Scott, and at the time she was married with children. So I asked Karen what she remembered. When she went missing, can you just walk me through what the sort of reaction was in terms of the family?

unknown 22:58

I don't remember.

SPEAKER_10 23:00

I don't remember. Um at one point Aunt Helen disowned me. To be perfectly honest, she didn't like who I was gonna marry.

SPEAKER_11 23:15

She had someone picked out for me. Helen didn't my Uncle Frank's nephew. He was in Florida.

SPEAKER_12 23:22

Gonna be well off going into the business. Karen wasn't interested in Frank's nephew. She was already in love with her own high school sweetheart, and planned to marry him upon his return from serving in the Vietnam War. Helen's response was cold. She cut Karen out of her will and out of her life entirely. When Karen was eventually married, neither Helen nor her parents nor siblings attended the ceremony. The last time Karen saw her Aunt Helen was in 1973, four years before she vanished. Over the past 47 years, Scott and Karen have never closely followed the police investigation or media coverage of Helen's case. But Ben, Scott's husband of 35 years, sometimes does, especially if it shows up on social media.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Um, I have this problem where I'm addicted to TikTok. As a almost 70-year-old man, so I'm a little embarrassed to talk about it, but I will. You know how you go down that TikTok rabbit hole, and you never know where you're gonna end up. And so this one day, I ended up in this young girl, horrible eye makeup, really bad green eye makeup, and she was talking about Helen Brock.

SPEAKER_12 24:46

We found the video Ben is referring to. It was posted by a TikTok user named B underscore Morticia.

SPEAKER_13 24:52

February 17th, 1977. The richest woman in Chicago, Illinois goes missing and is nowhere to be found.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

And I was like, oh my gosh, what does this young woman know about her? And the things she was saying, I wanted to respond to her and say, you have no idea what you're talking about. And she was saying terrible things about Scott's dad.

SPEAKER_14 25:17

And when he did come to make the police report, they started going through Helen's stuff and they started burning her diaries because there was supposed to be a note that said.

SPEAKER_03 25:26

I'm watching this and I'm thinking, gosh, I can't even tell Scott about this because I don't want him to see her talking about, especially about his family the way it was. Um so I didn't say anything. And uh and you did end up I didn't understand it.

SPEAKER_21 25:40

It didn't end up very disturbed. Yeah, yeah. I'm just gonna look at unfounded the stuff she was saying. It was so salacious and just so over the top.

SPEAKER_12 25:49

There is a younger generation of the Voorhees family who Helen never met before she disappeared in 1977. Some of them weren't even born. Great nephews and nieces, like 39-year-old Sarah Voorhees.

SPEAKER_08 26:03

Hi. Hello. Can you see us? There we go. Oh, I had to download Zoom to do this. I've never been on the Zoom call.

SPEAKER_12 26:12

The moment our Zoom call began, as Sarah turned her head to the side, Beth and I both noticed she's the spitting image of her great aunt Helen.

SPEAKER_09 26:21

You are a Vorhees for sure. You have Helen's nose.

SPEAKER_08 26:26

Yeah. I definitely have the Vorhees nose and also the unfortunate Voorhees chin, which I have spent a lot of money trying to get rid of.

SPEAKER_12 26:35

Growing up, Sarah had never been told about Helen's disappearance.

SPEAKER_08 26:39

I found out about it by watching an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. I saw my grandpa on TV and I thought, what? And had to ask my dad, like, who is this woman?

SPEAKER_12 26:52

The woman on Unsolved Mysteries was the same woman in a portrait that hung in Sarah's childhood home, her great Aunt Helen.

SPEAKER_08 27:00

I thought the photo was Lucille Ball growing up, just because it was a glamorous redhead in the photo. And she seemed so different from us. I actually just connected with my cousin Gary at the family reunion this summer. He was talking a little bit about her belongings, they are still not completely released to the family or something along those lines.

SPEAKER_19 27:25

I'm the one that told him that there was stuff still up in Chicago at the police department.

SPEAKER_12 27:31

Gary Voorhees Jr. is Helen's great nephew.

SPEAKER_19 27:35

So I called the police department and was like, is the stuff still there? I mean, what is going on?

SPEAKER_12 27:41

The day I met him, I was visiting with Scott and Ben when Gary pulled into their circular driveway in his truck. He left the engine running and the radio still blasting heavy metal as he hopped out and hurried into the kitchen, carrying a folder of photos and documents about Helen. Gary was eager to share them. He's the family member most directly involved in the search for answers about what happened to his great aunt. And the stuff that Gary told Sarah about at their family reunion. Well, that's the boxes and boxes of Helen's belongings that have been sitting in the Glenview Police Department for nearly 50 years.

SPEAKER_19 28:16

The chief of police basically told me it's still really considered an open case, uh you'll never get the stuff back.

SPEAKER_12 28:25

The Glenview Police Department still holds several boxes of Helen's belongings, even one of her diaries, all locked away in evidence. When we reached out to Glenview, our first question was about whether the case was considered open or closed. Their answer was unusual. They told us the case is open-ish, and that set us off on a years-long quest for public records about this case, and for an interview with the Glenview Police Department.

SPEAKER_19 28:57

There's stuff of hers. In Chicago. I mean, there's something there that she had that night. It was her suitcase, her luggage, and her belongings. That's it now. I mean, everything else is gone. That right there is the last of her.

SPEAKER_12 29:16

Before I got back on the road, Scott and Ben wanted to show me a few places around their small town that were central to Helen's story. First, we passed by her childhood home in Unionport, Ohio. The two-story home, built at the turn of the century, has clabbered siding and a covered wooden porch at the front entrance. Next was the house that Helen bought for her father, perched high on a hill with a sweeping view of Tappan Lake, a cozy community nearby where several members of the Voorhees family still have vacation homes.

SPEAKER_15 29:48

So this is it here.

SPEAKER_12 29:49

And that top is the part she built. Yeah, this whole side. Oh, she built more than double the size without permission. Down by the shoreline, Scott pointed out the dock where Helen kept the largest pontoon boat on the lake. Something people in town still talk about, because, as the story goes, it couldn't even fit under the bridge into Tappan Lake. But Helen insisted that the boat was big enough to fit their entire family, with a full-sized deck shaded by a blue and white canopy. It was the height of luxury at the time.

SPEAKER_04 31:02

Oh yeah. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_12 31:05

Amongst the modest headstones, we arrived at one of the largest cemetery monuments I've ever seen. It's massive, over 40 feet long and 13 feet high, with arches and columns of granite. Their surfaces chiseled with the names Voorhees and Brock.

SPEAKER_15 31:22

I've seen it so many times in photos, but it is really impressive.

SPEAKER_12 31:27

Helen had it designed after her mother's death in 1966, and it's rumored to have cost nearly$500,000 at the time. Adjusted for today? That's about$5 million. Helen's parents, Walter and Daisy Voorhees, are buried on the left side of the monument. Frank Brock is on the right. And at the base of the monument, Helen's beloved rescue dogs.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

So here's Candy and Sugar. These were dogs that were dumped out in front of Unionport in front of her the house there.

SPEAKER_12 31:58

That's where she got candy and sugar.

unknown 32:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_12 32:00

When they died, Helen gave candy and sugar full funerals, and even had them buried in custom-made satin-lined white caskets. Before she vanished, Helen made sure that fresh flowers would be delivered to the gravesite every week. Now, the built-in planter boxes have sat empty for decades. Just before we left, Ben and Scott said something that resonated.

SPEAKER_03 32:27

You know, this is this is Frank Brock right here.

SPEAKER_12 32:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:32

And Helen.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

When she seems just there, it's an empty tomb.

SPEAKER_12 32:40

This story doesn't end with Helen Brock's disappearance. It begins there. And almost five decades later, one question remains unanswered. What happened to Helen? To answer that question, there's really only one place to begin.

SPEAKER_03 32:59

Okay, Mrs. Brock came home by airplane.

SPEAKER_20 33:02

She did, sir.

SPEAKER_03 33:03

What time did the flight arrive?

SPEAKER_20 33:05

It was in mid-afternoon.

SPEAKER_12 33:07

This is the voice of Helen Brock's houseman, Jack Matlick. He's the last person to ever see Helen alive, and the first person interviewed by police.

SPEAKER_20 33:17

Now, if you get me, what do they call us where they can't prosecute you? Immunity? Immunity, I can tell you some more. And I can also prove what I am about to say. Alright, I can't tell him the truth until I have this immunity.

SPEAKER_12 33:31

You'll hear more about what he had to say next time on The Missing Candieras, Episode 2, The Houseman. Beth and I would like to thank Aaron Elson for providing the archival interview with Charles Voorhees. You can find Aaron's work on Substack at Substack.comslash Aaron Elson and the number one.