Holly Branagan /// Part 1 /// 236 | Forensic Files

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grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] [Music] the brannigans were not rich
but they certainly were comfortable and happy Richard branigan's job as a sales representative for a cement company
based out of New Jersey provided well for his family they were able to buy a house in an
exclusive section of Bethlehem Pennsylvania house on Pine Top Trail was in a secluded wooded area
the driveway allowed for privacy the house came with all the benefits of suburban life in the 1970s
quality schools quality friends and the safety of a well-to-do group of Neighbors
the Brannigan family was a typical 1960s family Peg and Richard had two children Sean
and his little sister Holly and Peg was a stay-at-home mom but life can change on a dime
and it did for the brannigans when Peg was diagnosed with leukemia she fought hard but ended up losing her
battle in November of 1976. throughout her illness the family Dynamic changed at 14 Holly started to take over the
role of the Homemaker she did her best to keep the family unit moving through everyday life as her
mother Slipped Away this role she assumed without complaint and the three of them had pulled
together to keep moving forward three years after Peg passed the children had grown it was 1979. Sean was
a freshman at Lehigh University but Holly was a junior at Freedom High School Sean was interested in cars and he
worked at renters service station in Hanover Township this was a Mobile gas station that also
serviced vehicles Holly grew into a respectful quiet teen she was an average student and saying
Alto in the Senior Choir at school she was also the manager of the boys school soccer team
Holly did work a summer job at the local Holiday Inn as a server but had recently
left the job for part-time work at the mall her plans after high school were to attend Penn State University
with their dad traveling most of the week for work the Brannigan children became very independent
they didn't have the typical parental supervision Holly and Sean both lived their own
lives they looked out for each other but each had their own group of friends and
habits this never was an issue until March 28 1979. yeah foreign [Music] on Wednesday March 28 1979 17 year old
Holly Branigan attended school and took the bus home as usual she entered her house and proceeded on with her day just
like any other this meant calling her friends and talking on the phone at length that day at school Holly had made
plans with friends to go out for pizza she was going to be picked up at her house at 6 pm
Holly was on the phone in her bedroom with one of her friends when at 4 40 PM she told her friend that someone was at
the door Holly placed the phone on her bed and went to answer the door the friend would wait a few minutes
listening to the radio playing in the background a couple of minutes later Holly picked up the phone in the kitchen
and informed her friend that someone was there and she would have to end the call
at 4 45 PM Holly called her father's office and asked his secretary B if her father had already left for his business
trip B told her he had indeed left the office and was on his way to Atlantic City
at 5 PM Holly's friend calls her back side note here there there are two versions of this and it may be important
we can evaluate that later but some reports state that the phone rang but no one answered the phone other Reports say
that the friend heard a busy signal at 6 PM one of Holly's other friends this is her friend Sally arrives to pick
her up to go for pizza the friend knocks on the front door and is greeted by the
family dog the dog's name is Clancy and the dog of course is barking because Somebody's knocking on the door her
friend knocks again but once again nobody answers the friend assumes Holly is either in
the shower running late for their plans or maybe she has changed her plans and was already out of the house so her
friend decides to walk around to the side of the house to a staircase that leads to the kitchen sliding glass door
she stops at the base of the stairs when she quote had a bad feeling end quote her feeling caused her not to ascend the
stairs at the same time as Holly was home after school Sean her brother was at his friend's
house his friend's name is Mark Viola yeah Mark was 18 and Mark lived with his parents at the time when Mark's mother
made dinner that night she asked Sean if he would like to stay for dinner and this was an offer that that happened
regularly and Sean never turned down this offer you know you know how it goes when you're at a buddy's house and
you're a teenager 18 19 and his mom's cooking dinner you stick around right you stick around for a couple hours well
and his his mom just passed away also and so then you know I grew up living with my father so if anybody offered me
food I took it because he didn't have the mom at home cooking the good meal the weird thing here Captain is not only
has his mother passed away but on this night his father would be out of town traveling for work which was not an
uncommon occurrence and then he has his younger sister who's at home but the vibe that I get from this situation is
it wouldn't be be terribly uncommon for Holly even being a minor to stay home by
herself yeah but I think once you get into you know late middle school high school
it's pretty common that you're left home alone well the the two young men uh Holly's
brother Sean and his friend Mark at Mark's house they were working on a vehicle and even after dinner they
decided hey look things are going good on this project let's just stay and finish up this project
so let's after dinner let's get back to working on the car now Sean knew that this would run very late into the night
and he would probably be spending the night at Mark's home yeah so he's gonna call home to tell his sister that he's
spending the night at his buddy's house he's going to get the Busy Signal though
he won't actually speak with Holly and from my understanding he tries to call several times that night to let her know
but keep in mind his sister that he's trying to reach she's a junior in high school and one thing we do know about
her typical day is that she spent the evenings on the phone right so calling home getting the busy signal it's not
going to set off any red flags for Sean because he's at his friend's house he's calling home trying to reach his sister
one could assume that she would be on the phone that night just going about her normal business well the following
day the next morning on March 29th one of Holly's friends arrives at the house to pick her up for school the friend
knocks on the door but the only answer she gets is the dog her friend knocks again and leaves for
school without any contact from Holly now her brother Sean arrived home in the morning and found Holly's lifeless body
lying on the kitchen floor near the sliding glass door she was lying in a dried pool of blood
with a blade of a 10 inch kitchen knife sticking out of her right side of her back the handle to the murder weapon was
lying on the floor near Holly the handle had snapped and broke off Sean sees the
kitchen phone is off the hook and a clock is broken and on the floor the hands of the clock had stopped and
remained at 5 20. Sean leaves the house and calls the police and then calls his father's office the office calls Richard
and he returns home immediately the police arrive and they start to process the scene this police force
unfortunately has very little experience in Murder investigations they fail to tape off the house in the
yard instead of limiting access to the scene they let several people enter and leave the house they do process the
scene as best as they know how they collected fingerprints and took many photographs the handle to the knife was
collected on further examination it was determined that the handle had been wiped cleaned it contained no prints
there was talk of a bloody towel being recovered from the scene but no evidence of that exist to this day
there was no sign of anything missing from the house Holly's body was taken to the corner and
it was determined that she had 18 wounds mostly to the back out of the 18 wounds
15 would have been fatal stab wounds three were less serious wounds and Holly had a couple of defensive wounds on her
hands so let's talk about what that could mean here Captain we see that we have 18 wounds 15 of them were fatal
stab wounds that's a serious that means any one of these 15 stab wounds would have killed her
and we talked about the weapon being a 10-inch kitchen knife so this is something that most likely might have
been grabbed In the Heat of the Moment and she's stabbed repeatedly well wouldn't we know this I mean when we
know if the knife came from inside the house or if it came from outside the house yes it came from the Brannigan's
home it belonged to the brannigans and so we have this situation here where most of the wounds are to her back
she had very few defensive wounds there's a chance that whoever decided to attack her and for whatever reason
waited until her back was turned and then they went after her and she would have died very quickly during this
attack and then she's left on the floor let's just go over this a little bit more so
she's on the phone with one of her friends and she puts down the phone says hey there's somebody at the door so she puts
the phone down right so we don't know if her friend on the phone if she heard dog
barking or not right right her friend heard a radio so when when Holly put the phone down
the radio was playing either in the house or inside Holly's room at that time she was on the phone in her room
right okay so when she put the phone down her friend could hear the music that was playing on the radio so she
could in the background right she never I couldn't find any reports of her saying that she heard the dog barking
um looking at the layout of the house there could have been a decent amount of distance between Holly's room and the
front door yeah and so with the radio being on even you know I have a couple dogs and they bark regardless they bark
whether it's somebody they know or somebody they don't know if somebody knocks on the door so
given the distance between her room and the front door and the added fact that the radio's on that could have drowned
out the noise of the dog I would assume the dog was barking at that time so then
she goes and answers the door Holly goes and answers the door correct she then gets back on the phone in the kitchen
not immediately not immediately yes some time passes a few minutes several minutes pass and
then she it's believed that she picked up the phone in the kitchen and says to her friend hey
um somebody's here I'll have to call you back it almost seems like Holly doesn't
know this individual because if it was somebody that was common to her and her friend she would say Hey you know Jake
is here well that's that's the tricky thing and uh that is what the investigators were hoping to find out
now the weird thing here though is think about that sequence of events so she puts down the phone goes and answers the
door and her friend remains on the phone for several minutes before Holly returns
to the phone regardless if it's the phone in her bedroom or in the kitchen regardless of what phone several minutes
pass right before Holly then says hey I'm going to have to call you back somebody's here what that tells me is
two things when she answered the door can can we can we agree that there's a chance if it was somebody she didn't
know she might not answer the door I'm not saying it's 100 but there could be a small chance that hey I don't recognize
this person I'm home alone I'm just not going to answer the door right that's a possibility that's a possibility so I
think that that links to the point of either she knew the person or at least the person seemed to be non-threatening
there was no obvious signs of a threat she willingly opens up the door engages in some kind of conversation with this
individual to the point of this person may have been unexpected I think it was somebody that was either expected or
somebody that she knew very well she might know immediately hey I'm going to talk to this person or welcome them in
and then tell her friend almost immediately hey so-and-so's here I'm gonna have to call you back right but
what happens instead is several minutes pass it's almost like when she answered the door and saw this person and then
engaged in conversation with them she did not know from the get go that this was going to turn into a longer
conversation a longer visit than expect and then so there's two things one she doesn't know this individual so that's
why she's telling her friend someone quote unquote someone or she knows this individual it's uh maybe a guy that
she's seeing on the side and that she's not telling her friends about because that happens and so when she goes to
tell her friend hey I mean she could have been sitting there at the door flirting with this guy we don't know and
she gets back on the phone and tells her friend uh somebody's here because I can't tell you who is here
so either or in my mind the tricky thing becomes then she hangs up the phone and
she calls her father's work to find out if he's left on his trip yet right so one it could be
junior in high school has a guy come over wants to make sure her father left you know on his trip and so we can sit
here and hang out have the house to ourselves worst case scenario my brother comes home but that's not a big deal
right right or it's I want to see if my father left because this guy's asking about my
father or I need to speak to my father for some reason I lean towards the point towards the side of she was looking to
speak with her father with knowing how often he traveled for work I think that it wouldn't be tough for her to put
together plans if she had plans of hanging out and doing things maybe that her father wouldn't approve of I don't
think it would have been very hard in a single parent home with the with a father that's traveling often for work
right so more to me I feel like this is almost like she needed to get a hold of her father for some reason and this
reason was unexpected whatever came up came up it just came up and she's trying to get a hold of her father you know
back in the day well before cell phones you have to call the office to try to get a hold of Dad well here's where it
gets a little more tricky because did this individual know her father and say hey I'm here to see your father so she
calls and says hey I'm gonna hey has my dad left yet you know she might not have
went into details of because there's somebody at the house to see him or did this person not know her father
and it was just a ruse to get into the house right yeah I mean like hey I'm here to see your father because if I use
that as a ruse well my father's not here so I mean like um it's kind of like if somebody asks
you is your parents home you're always supposed to say yes if they called on the phone back in the 80s that was the
thing like people would call and be like are your parents at home right and you're supposed to say yes even if
they're not like but they're in the shower or whatever right so but what a great ruse to get inside the house you
know hey I'm here to see your father right oh well he's not here oh where is he at and that to me that makes a little
bit of sense because like you said she would know her father's travel Arrangements a little bit since he's
traveling so much and he's traveling on a school night right but it seems like she almost called the
office to say hey is he available to talk or is he coming back so again but that's where it becomes
tricky because it wasn't just a ruse to get in the house or or did this individual actually know her father but
then you have to question why does the individual want to be in the house in the first place
regardless of if they use a ruse or if or if it was known to Holly who this person was right because we have the
coroner who would later determine that there was no signs of sexual assault they also claim that there might have
been some material under her fingernails so her nails were clipped and preserved
I question If that had anything to do with the actual crime itself was seeing so many of the wounds to her back
and very few what we would call defensive wounds I almost wonder if there was really no defense put up at
all it seems like this perpetrator did not bring a weapon with them right gets in the house at some point grabs a knife
starts stabbing our why she's back facing him um and then like you said it's so vicious I mean 15 stab wounds that are
fatal I mean that seems um like there's some rage yes this is a strong angry person that
did this this is a strong angry person so yeah keep that in mind that's what I think we're dealing with here we I think
we're dealing with somebody that that might have been welcomed into the home for some reason that showed up to the
house with didn't intend to kill her because they or maybe they did well they they could have but not bringing a
murder weapon to a murder scene usually suggests that they weren't planning to kill the internet but if you knew this
family pretty well and that you knew that she was going to be home alone uh father is going to be out on a trip all
I have to do is get into the house and get to the kitchen again no signs of sexual assault and the thought is that
nothing had been stolen from the house foreign [Music] cheers me mateys cheers Captain alright
so I have a couple questions so at 4 40 she's talking to her friend she tells the friend hey somebody's at my door at
4 45 according to the secretary Holly then calls her father's work to see if he's left yet on the business
trip then we have this broken clock at 5 20. correct so maybe their clock is a little off some people's clocks are a
little off in their house but let's assume that is correct or or even roughly correct if it's within a few
minutes it's still helpful right so we can assume that the attack probably happened around that point correct that
so talking with somebody last week about this case I did throw this out there and
I know it's not a very high probability but I did throw this out there just for my own personal experience I told him I
said you know uh at any given point in my life it's very likely that I had one Broken Clock
hanging on a wall somewhere in my house I just do like they quit running I never
look at them for actual time and they're more there for decoration the battery goes out at some point and it stops
running until I change it months and months and months later correct so that we're not ignoring that as a very small
slight possibility that it was just a clock that happened not to work that it's said 520 all the time right
um that yeah but that but the likelihood seems very incredibly slim because here's the deal I think what we can
assume here is that with her being found dead inside the home yeah I think we can
assume that she's already dead by 6 pm because of the friend coming to visit I I think that there's no evidence to
suggest anything otherwise right we have we have her on the phone we know she's alive at approximately 4 40 p.m if the
secretary's timing is right and I I tend to believe secretaries when they give quotes on time why because think about
the typical setup at an office you're stationed at a desk your phone your secretary phone is on your secretary's
desk there's almost always a clock in the room and sometimes you're trained to you know when I used to answer the phone
for my boss one of the things he wanted to know about what time the person called right you know that was included
in my little note to him so um I tend to believe that the secretary's time is fairly accurate so
we know that Holly is alive at 4 45 p.m we know at 6 PM approximately 6 p.m when
her friend shows up the door is not answered she knocks several times so I think it's only likely to assume assume
that she may have been lying dead in the house at 6 pm and that clock somehow was
broke in the altercation that took place between Holly and the offender okay those were some of my bonehead questions
so how about you lead us down the initial investigation not bonehead questions at all Captain because the I
will tell you what my questions are the time the time frame on this is very important I think and so will the
investigators so after the police are finished up at the house and everything's been cleaned up Richard and
Sean moved back into the home the police begin their investigation interviewing the friends who had last contact with
Holly the friend who was on the phone was interviewed but could not recall any details out of the ordinary she states
that it was just an unremarkable conversation between two teenage girls when asked about the exact times of the
call and when Holly left to answer the door the girl was not too sure about any of these times
the police then interviewed the friend who stopped by around 6 pm to pick up Holly to go for pizza both girls could
not provide any information for the police to start their investigation with no leads from either of these the ear
witness or the person that stopped by the house we will Circle back to this Captain I assure you of that
so the police then decide to widen their investigation Sean Holly's brother and his friend Mark well they fall under
suspicion but very quickly their Alibi checks out and was confirmed also not only their Alibis but
one it's weird that you'd ring the door and you can kind of roll out the father because why would the father show up she
talks to the father then calls her father's work unless the father was like makes her call
right to set up an alibi but it just doesn't seem you know I mean and and if it and if your father
did show up you'd tell your friend on the phone hey my father's here I gotta go what was really weird about this
though this is supposed to be a tight-knit safe community there didn't seem to be a whole lot of
people that were willing to help the investigation along so her high school friends the friends of Holly that were
under the age of 18. their parents kind of stepped in and wouldn't allow them to
be interviewed or answer questions from the police the high school friends that were over the age of 18
a lot of times attorneys were hired and they refused to be interviewed as well that's Cheney very shady so the police
now hit a serious dead end not much evidence at the scene no fingerprints and no one to interview to provide any
leads so the police decide to request the help of the amazing creskin George Kreskin is a mentalist he is
known for hypnotizing people to pull details from their memory that they could not do with normal recall in this
case he hypnotized the friend who was on the phone with Holly when the murderer or when someone had arrived at the door
he was able to hypnotize her and have her identify the songs that were playing in the background while Holly went and
answered the door they then took this information to the local radio station and they were able
to determine the exact time that Holly answered the door this is back in the day when there's actually DJs probably
picking the song and playing the song right that's probably not pre-programmed computer stuff back in back in that day
yeah so let's see here let's say she was on hold for two or three minutes maybe maybe four so I'm guessing the way
that they're determining this is the sequence of the songs that she heard like okay you I heard this this and then
maybe the start of this song and they take it to the station they say well that occurred around 4 40 p.m on that
Wednesday which is very interesting and it's actually a very creative way to try
to get this time frame because the way we're reporting this Captain it it's not so much a mystery to you and I because
we know the facts later afterwards right the initial investigations they gave us
the facts yeah but the initial investigation the what they get from that person on the phone yeah they don't
have any times they have no times to go off of it was sometime in the afternoon I think she originally told the police
that it was sometime between four and five PM that they were on the phone and that's as much as they had right so they
were able to really narrow this down instead of having a 60 Minute window or even a little more beyond that they're
really able to nail this down to hey at about 4 40 p.m is when somebody knocked on the door so very key piece of
information to know what time that phone call took place and what time it is believed that somebody had arrived at
the door the other thing here too Captain the investigation what they're working with is they're seeing a scene
where somebody took the time to clean scene somebody took the time to wipe fingerprints off of the handle of the
knife and off of other locations in the house so police start working with a theory here that there was a very good
chance that at six o'clock when Sally arrived to pick Holly up for pizza that either the murderer was still on the
scene or had just left and was in the immediate area right this is why when she had that gut feeling that something
was wrong Sally may have saved herself from an encounter with the murderer now with no leads the investigation stalls
and Sean her brother started spreading rumors on May 10 1980 the mayor of Bethlehem Pennsylvania declared it Holly
Brannigan reward fun day they set up a hotline for donations in holley's high school performed a play with the
proceeds going to the reward fund they collected over five thousand dollars the lack of progress in the
investigation really upset her brother Sean he started to spread a rumor that he and the police knew who had killed
Holly yeah it's not a bad tactic well and he also starts telling people that not only only do they know who did it
but the police were getting ready to make an arrest yeah his father Richard warned him that this kind of talk might
upset the murderer and make Sean a possible Target uh Sean didn't seem to care he continued
to spread these rumors to everyone that was willing to listen that's a kind of a
weird thing for the father to say well I don't think so I think he's been a victim once he's worried about something
could happen to his son right so Sean is a sophomore at college and on September
9 1979 there was an explosion at the Renner service station where he worked at 9 30 a.m as part of a regular cleanup
routine Sean and his friend Mark were scrubbing the floor with two cups of gasoline to loosen the grease off of the
floor the boys were scrubbing prior to using a power washer to wash away the grime Mark walked out as a customer had
pulled up to get gasoline the doors to this area were shut when the explosion occurred inside the service station with
Sean still inside Mark ran to the doors but the Flames were too great for him to
enter he went around to the side and he found Sean climbing out of the window Sean was still on fire and had been
burned over most of his body Mark put out the flames and comforted Sean until medical help could arrive
Sean begged Mark not to leave him during this time the ambulance arrived and transported Sean to the hospital he was
unable to talk but the police wanted to interview Sean about his sister's murder
in case he had a deathbed confession to give they asked Sean yes and no questions
that he responded to by moving his head he was asked if he had killed Holly or if he knew who killed Holly he signaled
no to both questions Sean would die from his injuries the following day now Richard his father had lost his whole
entire family right an investigation into Sean's accident was conducted by the State Fire Marshal it was concluded
that the power washer had a faulty switch which caused an electrical Arc to ignite the gasoline fumes
Richard would go to his grave believing that Sean was murdered by someone involved in Holly's death he believed
the rumor Sean was spreading made the murderer frightened enough to kill Sean this belief was deepened in Richard's
mind when the owner of the power washer was found dead under suspicious circumstances six years after Sean's
death there's a lot to unpack here yes so they're working at the service station
they they claim that the there's a faulty switch and the electricity that would go through the faulty switch that
sparked and ignited the gasoline that would be all over the floor and all over the shop right and so then this guy ends
up dead the guy that owned the power washer correct okay how did he die well let's go through that real quick and
then we can we can Circle back yeah this is there's a lot of death here okay so the power washer that caused the
explosion that killed Sean was borrowed from a restaurant from a business a few doors down from the renter's service
station the owner of this place and it's called The King Chef lent the power washer to rent her service station on
August 12 1985 Tony Soriano the owner of the King Chef Restaurant was found dead
in his car two people on their way to go fish fishing past his car which was still running and discovered his body on
the initial exam there was trauma to the back of Soriano's head this led people to believe that he was murdered but
during the autopsy it was discovered that Mr Soriano had strychnine in his system and after this discovery the
coroner ruled his death a suicide adding to the rumors of explain strychnine so it's it's it's it's highly poisonous
okay if you take it you're going to die okay don't ever take that so strychnine don't take it right so but this is just
one of these weird things here I think this is a weird coincidence it was his death was ruled a suicide okay and
Sean's death was ruled an accident these both both these incidents were looked into they were looked into and they were
ruled by people that that are paid to do so they have experience in this area it's it's not like both deaths are are
labeled undetermined all these years later and I spoke with a uh a firefighter regarding the the Sean
accident and you know there's not we don't have official documents to review but what we could find we reviewed
together and he said look I used to I used to do these types of Investigations there's no reason to
believe that this story isn't correct there's nothing that points out that this is not correct that's very likely I
mean that's one of the reasons why they'd say I mean you can have static electricity off your clothes could start
a huge fire in a gas station or your cell phone usage can start a fire so a faulty switch on a power washer
uh definitely could start a fire well and I tell you what we you know we have so so much experience with gas and we
use it daily I think that a lot of people take take it for granted how dangerous and how flammable some people
yes can be yeah some people have more gas than others well the thing is though I think people forget how explosive gas
can be given the right circumstances and if this is exactly how it went down the
way we just told this it seems almost like I mean forgive me for saying so you're
playing with fire here right well also if you're cleaning and you know they said he's inside the service station
they're using gasoline to be cleaning things inside the service station then you're also having all those fumes
that they're not going anywhere right those places weren't properly ventilated back in the day no and I would guess
that that normal protocol and procedure would be when cleaning with gas to open up and vent out the place they may have
simply just turned on this power washer too quickly thus causing some kind of spark that ignites into this explosion
so if you have a faulty power washer or a faulty engine or any piece of electrical part of that of that power
washer is faulty right you could get a spark that in a closed environment filled with gas fumes would in fact
create some type of explosion now when Sean was hanging out with Mark is this his buddy Mark that he spent the night
with correct correct I mean it's kind of odd that he's hanging out with Mark the
day his sister has murdered and then he's hanging out with Mark yeah he dies no I agree with that it's it seems like
hey a little odd two coincidences in one unless you're hanging out with this guy
every day anyways right then it appears that they work together that they worked
on vehicles together we also have witness statements of of Sean saying that Mark he wanted Mark by his side
when as he was dying it was one of those situations man his injuries were so bad
they knew he was going to die they knew when we take him to the hospital he's not going to recover from this it's only
a matter of time so Holly and Sean's mother passes away with cancer Holly is then murdered inside their home
Sean then dies and what we think is an accident it's almost as if like their father or something made a
deal with the Devil and that the devil's coming back to collect well that's the first thing that
jumps off the page to you when you look at this case there's so much death there's so much
tragedy surrounding Richard Branigan and you know I hate to say this because my initial suspicions
they went toward Richard Branigan right just because it seemed to me that this just seems like too much but here's the
thing we do know that his wife died from cancer I can't give you cancer I can't make you get cancer I can't make you die
of cancer that's just that's just something that happened that's just something that happened and
unfortunately in our lives nowadays we know it happens to have somebody we know somebody we love it happens in every
family it's just an unfortunate terrible thing so that we need to ignore that that
can't be part of the coincidence for us the other thing that we need to keep in mind here though too is her father from
nothing that I could find was ever a suspect in her murder or in the investigation the
investigation never seemed to lean that way that tells me a few things just like her brother Sean who had an
airtight Alibi right you know we don't have to use our imagination too much to come up with an airtight Alibi for Sean
Sean's actually received more suspicion over the years than his father Richard but see Sean we know was at his friend's
house and we know that they stayed there that night and we know that the friends
still lived with at least his mother if not both parents so Sean more than likely has multiple Alibis for the time
of his sister's death as far as the father goes I'm going out on a limb here captain and
I'm making the assumption that he has an alibi as well and I'm doing that based off of just that he was never listed as
a suspect he was never discussed as a suspect where we even have Sean publicly being discussed as a suspect at some
point well we do have a record of her calling her father's office at 4 45 and asking if the father's there and the
father is gone on business so you would think that whether he's driving a car he
would have had to have some Rental receipt or if he's flying on a plane he would have the airline ticket so those
could be your airtight Alibis well he's going to have as you said receipts this could include gas receipts this also
could include checking into a hotel somewhere and they could be able to easily verify that hey if if the
secretary says he left at this time we have this gas receipt from here and he checks into the hotel at this time then
there's very likely little possibility that he could have had the time to go out of his way return to his home attack
and kill his daughter and then continue on his trip sometimes it's just an impossibility there's just
not enough time and I think in all fairness we need to add in here that Holly's Father Richard never stopped
searching for her killer it was not one of these parents that just disappeared moved off to another city went about his
business as though nothing happened this man was severely affected by the loss of
his whole family he was severely affected by the loss of his wife by his daughter and by his son and the man
continued to live in that home in the home that Holly was murdered in until he was very late in age
[Music] foreign thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend make sure you get your filling
family shirt at the discounted price of 19.99 in honor of Fami Malek passing and until next time be good be kind and
don't let him [Applause] thank you [Music]

Holly Branagan /// Part 1 /// 236

Part 1 of 2

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On Wednesday, March 28th, 1979 - 17 year Holly Branagan was murdered inside her family’s home. The following day her brother found her lifeless body, laying in blood on the kitchen floor. Through the years many have speculated as to who could have killed her. Her own brother has been considered by some to be a good suspect. Tonight we talk about the murder of a young lady and the events of that day. Beer of the Week - Project Dank by La Cumbre Brewing CompanyGarage Grade - 4 and a quarter bottle caps out of 5

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Brief Summary

Holly Brannigan was murdered in 1979, leading to a stalled investigation and further family tragedies.

Key points

The Brannigan Family's Tragedy. A typical family faces an unimaginable loss when Peg is diagnosed with leukemia.
Holly's Last Day. On March 28, 1979, Holly's normal day takes a dark turn.
The Discovery of Holly's Body. Sean returns home to a horrific scene, discovering his sister's lifeless body.
Holly's Mysterious Death. The investigation reveals Holly was likely dead by 6 PM, raising questions about the timeline.
The Power Washer Incident. A faulty power washer leads to a tragic explosion, killing Sean Branigan.
Sean's Tragic Accident. Sean Branigan suffers a fatal accident, leading to speculation about his sister's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This role she assumed without complaint.

Holly taking on the homemaker role after her mother's illness.

4:00WatchNov 24, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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