The Year We Disappeared

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48 hours presents imagine being nine years old and learning that someone wanted to kill you your dad your brothers and your mom that's what I found out when I was nine years old it all began on a perfect summer day it was the end of summer August was hot sunny not a cloudless sky and we spent all day at the beach and everything was ideal until that night when everything changed my uncle was a police officer and he worked the midnight shift my dad left for work just like normal he hadn't gone probably half a mile from our house when a car pulled up behind him pulled out alongside him and he was shot through the driver's side window of his car with a shotgun the shotgun blast tore through his face then ripped off his lower jaw before he lost consciousness he wrote not an accident he realized that they were trying to kill him and he feared for his family's life on that summer night my childhood ended it was never alone again we were guarded 24 hours a day everybody had a gun we were fenced in we had an attack dog we had a sniper on the roof with a long-range rifle you couldn't go out I had hidden a steak knife under my mattress and I would just lay there and listen I just knew that the people who shot my father we're not going to stop until we were all dead next door to our house there was an old graveyard it sounds morbid but it was actually this beautiful place to go and play there were these old trees that you were perfect for climbing and grassy lawn to play tag and hide-and-seek and we spent a lot of time over there Falmouth Massachusetts was the ideal place to grow up every summer day we'd get up in the morning my mom would pack a lunch and we would head out to old silver Beach by the end of the summer we'd all be brown as berries and just relaxed and happy that summer it was me my two older brothers Eric and Sean my dad my mom my mom was studying to be a nurse and then my cousin Kelly who was helping out my parents take care of us kids she was there to have fun but she was soon babysitting was how she earned her rent my father was a police officer dad's first day in uniform in his uniform my dad looked incredibly handsome I thought he looked like a movie star to me he seemed invincible my Uncle John was a guy that you didn't mess with he took his job in his position very seriously the John Busbee I fell in love with was an athlete he was handsome he was very self-confident he was one of the nicest fathers he was a wrestler on the ground kind of dad and I hold my little girl close kind of dad John always gave us the sense of safety and that nothing would happen to us as long as he was around August 31st 1979 was what changed our lives forever nothing was ever the same August 31st 1979 this was the Friday the start of Liberty weekend we were out in the driveway painting my dad's car this was my mom's way of getting us out of the house that night so that my dad could sleep because he worked the midnight shaft and this is a photo that my mom took of me that night when I was growing up it was really hard for me to look at because I would look at this girl and I would study her face and I would think what is that girl thinking about like what is her life like because it felt like after that night that child had ended so that night my dad got up to get ready for work my brothers and I would have been in bed when I heard the knock on the door I was watching Benny Hill and in fact I was laughing I can remember I heard someone screaming or crying and um at first I thought it was the TV and um I woke up and I came out of my room and I saw my dad's friend Rick Smith was there and he was in uniform and he was talking to my mom and she was crying and screaming and she kept saying no no no no and she kept trying to push him away from her I said Paulie that's there's been an incident involving John and she goes what happened what happened and I said he'd been shot I made a noise I remember making a noise and falling back against the wall and sinking down I was saying what what's wrong what's going on and she didn't even acknowledge that I had come out of my room there was a great deal of confusion we knew something bad had happened to him and I told Kelly I'll call you as soon as I know what's happening and the next thing I knew I was in the cruiser I could see lights lights everywhere and I could see John's Volkswagen riddled with holes and I thought to myself this is bad this is really bad by the time we get to the hospital there was a doctor in the neuroses and he was he was in a triage unit the doctors were all over him and he kept beckoning that he wanted to write wanted to write my dad managed to write a note he said Paulie and the kids not safe and he wrote that note I knew there was one person in town that was capable of trying to kill John and that person was capable of killing his whole family if felt like I was in a storm and I didn't know how bad that storm was gonna get or if any of us were gonna be safe again ever you my art Polly had just left with the police officer instructions were to stay away from the windows and keep the house unlit and keep the door locked I closed all the shutters and locked all the doors and turned out the lights I don't know how much time had passed but I saw the lights of a car pull into the driveway I was expecting a police cruiser to pull into the yard and it was not it was a guy in a red car and he had a rifle I didn't recognize him I can remember that the children at least Shawn was very panicked saying who's that guy he's got up he's got a gun is he coming to kill us I was scared I was in great fear that that individual was going to come in and kill whoever was in the house get in the back of the house get in the back of the house it was a lot of things going through my mind to flee was not an option there was no way out all I could think of is we need to hide and make it look like there's nobody still at the house everything was whispers I said we need to be quiet until they go away then we heard someone knock at the door knocking louder knock knock knock Kelly just said stay quiet stay quiet I'm just talking to myself saying he's gonna go away it's gonna be okay we're gonna be okay please stop knocking at the door please go away and then it stopped I took a deep breath thinking thank God it's over he's going away and suddenly I heard knocks at the back door it was then that I realized they weren't going away that's when Kelly said this is the plan I want you guys to go into the attic and hide in there do not come out of the attic until I come and get you or until your mom comes home don't come out for anybody else all I could think was we're gonna go up in the attic and this guy's gonna come looking for us and we have to be so quiet and not move it was hard to balance on the rafters and I was in a nightgown I didn't want to fall into the insulation which was very prickly so I was trying to stay still really hard and not move or make a sound and we just waited for whoever was gonna whoever was going to come up there the kids are in the Attic guys still knocking at the backdoor not going away and I remember thinking what am I going to do the first thing I had to do is protect those children and make it look as though they weren't home and if there was entry into the house that I was the only one in the residence I walked over to the window which is right beside the door and at that moment the guy pulled out a police badge he said he was a Falmouth police officer and that he was here to watch over John Busby's family we heard Kelly say he's a cop it's okay you can come down and then once we heard that we were like okay it's safe throughout the evening more police officers showed up to watch the home and at that point I realized that it just wasn't going to be okay the next day they were trying to get an airway down they couldn't get it down so they started giving me morphine and I heard somebody say he won't go down we can't get him to relax and get the airway in one of the officers behind me and I think it was Rick Smith he said we have somebody at the house with the kids I've got somebody there and others on enroute and it was like you could see John just relax he relaxed he laid back and they slipped an airway in I really believe that John overwhelmed the doctors at the Falmouth Hospital they've never seen anything like that they didn't know quite what to do John looked like a monster his beautiful handsome face went right to here normal and then it was like tissue had stretched and stretched and stretched and read about here on his chest was his chin there was no jaw I wondered how how are we going to repair this how are we going to put this back together from the Falmouth Hospital they took him by ambulance to Mass General Hospital they reassured me that they'd gotten him there in enough time to keep him from bleeding out but it would depend on how strong he was to come through the surgery police in Falmouth today are looking for suspects who fired into the face of an officer they're 36 year old John Busby was driving the morning after the shooting we left to go stay with my uncle near the hospital where my dad was staying in Boston Nolan was told where we were going and when we got there we were told not to tell anyone where we were saying or who we were staying with this was the beginning of the year that we disappeared what do you think of the police response chat now on Facebook and Twitter when John became aware in the recovery room his eyes fluttered some and then he started going from tube to tube and then he realized he couldn't talk and I saw a look in his eyes almost of you know I can't talk and then he saw me sitting there and he wrote don't leave me like this he didn't want to be on a respirator or be an envelope like that and if the choice came I needed to let him go I needed to let him die I said you can't leave me here you can't leave me with these three kids I I can't be left alone you have to stay you have to come back we'll make it he couldn't speak he couldn't breathe he couldn't eat he couldn't even drink water he couldn't do anything because I had wired shut what was left of his face once I saw him I thought wow they really meant to kill him and I remember going to bed some nights and I would just lay in bed and think my dad everybody likes my dad who could want to kill my dad my father knew the instant that he was shot who was trying to kill him and he was able to communicate that to the officers who were there on the scene when I first saw him he was shaking shaking like a dog he was holding the towels up to his face and I asked him who did this John and he got out a pen and a notebook that he always carried with him and he wrote not an accident no raining John did not see who shot him but he knew exactly who would want him dead Melvyn rainy was in the trash hauling business he had contracts all over Cape Cod and it was very lucrative he was a convicted arsonist he had a reputation of getting even with individuals by sneaking in the night and burning properties his favorite saying was I smell smoke I smell smoke which meant you know without directly threatening it meant there's going to be a fire in your future your house your car whatever I'm going to burn something of yours Melvin Rainey was also suspected of murder he was suspected of killing three people and in two of those cases the bodies have never been recovered Melvin Rainey was married to a woman named Juan de Medeiros rainy and in 1971 she went missing he claims that he dropped her off at the bus station and she was never seen again about a year later a teenage boy in Falmouth named Jeff Flanagan went missing he was dating a 17 year old girl who had been babysitting for the Rainey family who Melvin was also interested in Jeff Flanagan was found shot to death his body was recovered in a cranberry bog directly across the street from Melanie Lee's home and then a former employee of Melbourne Rainey's a 17 year old boy named Paul all word was set to testify against Melbourne in the grand jury arson investigation the police promised that he would be protected they escorted him to the Martha's Vineyard Ferry where he could go to where he had some family and stay there until the trial he got on the ferry he didn't get off Melbourne Rainey basically walked free on all of those accounts I think because people are afraid to prosecute him and I'm talking about police been afraid of them because they had families and they go to bed at night and you don't know if he was going to burn the house down with your kids in the house I knew that the police chief's car had burnt his yard everybody assumed that it was you know Melvin but nobody could prove it I think Melvin Rainey considered himself untouchable and that extended to his immediate family so if the police tried to give a ticket to anyone in his family he would march into the police station and have the ticket torn up and have it erased from the logbook my dad was either brave enough to take on Melvin Rainey or he was foolhardy enough to take him on if you broke the law he didn't care who you were who you were connected to you were going to get a ticket we were going to go to court so he had run-ins with them my dad was conducting traffic at a roadblock at a fatal accident and Melvin Rainey's brother John Rainey was there in his semi and instead of waiting for this scene to be cleared he just decided to drive straight through the accident scene and he actually hit my father with his truck he went to his house and arrested him and charged him with assault and battery with a deadly weapon and just prior to that court hearing John Busby was shot I thought instantly that Melvin Randi had shot him and now we're going to stop after Melvin I think there were a lot of cops on the force who wanted to go straight to Rainey's house and drag him out but there were a lot of other people people who were positions of power who were really too scared to do anything about it I would challenge anyone to go to any Police Department and ask the question if one of their officers was shot in the line of duty what would they do and I can tell you the response will be they're not going to stop investigating that crime until an arrest is made this did not happen in the town of Falmouth when John Busby was shot this is the police log from that night you know the local paper does the log of accident fight in progress disorderly group noisy house at the hour of my dad shooting there was nothing they didn't put it in they took it out of the police log I mean they've got everything else in here dog barking two drunks near Russell and Falmouth Heights you know every single teeny thing in town is in here and for some reason the police log doesn't state for that night that a police officer was shot to my knowledge the Falmouth Police Department never interviewed Melvin Rainey regarding the John Busby shooting I've often wondered just exactly how this little guy could get away with the stuff that he got away with without even being questioned it was clear to a lot of us that there was something behind the scenes that was much more powerful than Melvin Melvin Rainey had something on someone whether he was paying people in envelopes or whether he had pitches from some sort of sexual act he clearly had so much control that the police didn't go after him nobody was going to do anything about a crime involving Melvin Rainey Michael John did not want to die my Uncle John wanted to live and live to take care of what happened to him their biggest mistake was they didn't kill him that was their biggest mistake 48 hours presents will continue my name's Don Bob's been identified verbs but I did someone's wanted to a voiceover for me I'm a little hard to understand but these are my words and this is my story I was on my way into work the midnight shift the vehicle pulled up behind me pulled out as if the pass it didn't pass it matched my speed I got worried while I was in the hospital that the investigation had been totally botched I determined there was only one way that justice was going to be done and I was gonna have to supply it I was gonna have to get healthy get out of the hospital and kill this guy we came back from Boston we drove to our house and when we pulled into the driveway there were police cars in the driveway the police made it clear that we needed to be protected we had at least two guards at our property 24 hours a day and they were well-armed everywhere I went there was a cop I had a police officer follow me to school wait outside my classroom all day in the lunchroom everywhere I went my first day back to school we went down to the lunchroom a boy came over to the table leaned over to me and said you know why that cops here don't you because somebody wanted to kill your dad and somebody's going to come and kill you they were thought of as being different at that time and not in a special way but in a way of almost like a virus kids had been told don't sit by her they were transferred out of my classroom because what parent wants their kid next to you know a ticking time bomb basically life was spent speculating who somebody was who was traveling too close to you didn't matter where you were he thought about who's beside me and what could they do to you we had police protection for the first few months when we were home when it started costing the town so much money that it was busting the bank I guess they decided to protect us in a different way an 8-foot fence an alarm system in a guard dog his name was max I did not like max if I was in the yard without my dad that dog had to be chained up if he thought somebody was gonna hurt my dad even if it was me he would just bite your throat out getting him that that our family dog Tigger had to be given away because she was terrified of him we had gone from a really regular family where my parents were really loving to things being very serious all the time we used to go the beach do things together as a family and now we just I mean we really just didn't leave our house as a group anymore my uncle is very quiet and you could almost see the turmoil in his thought process you could see he was thinking thinking all the time there was a simmering anger that was building all physicality between us and him ended because he was injured you felt like you couldn't get close to him physically or emotionally anymore his personality was just so different he just seemed like he was in a different world two or three days would go by and I would just stay in my room felt like my head was gonna explode I started pushing my family away from me pushing my wife the children away from me we were living in our own prison and the people who had done that to me will live in their normal lives the only way out of this mess was leaving town moving my family somewhere safe by then I would be healthy and strong and able to I'm myself with an untraceable weapon I was gonna cut through the woods across from the dump and I was gonna wait for Melvin to empty his truck there was no way I could miss him he'd be a sitting duck and that was my plan put a hole in his head right through the windshield and finish him off you I would come home from school sometimes I would just go into my room and sit on my bunk bed and I would just stare out the window and wait for it to get dark I just wanted the day to be over I just wanted the days to go by I wanted the waiting to end for whatever whatever was going to happen the only place we could think of that no one would ever think that we would live is in the middle of the country and when we put the names of places that it accepted me as a nurse in a hat in drew out Tennessee we gave it a go once we knew where we were moving my parents made it very clear to us that we couldn't tell anyone anything about where we were being relocated max our Killa dog was sold back to the training center and the town of Falmouth was kind enough to let us keep the money and we would need every cent of it my compensation for getting shot in the line of duty was $200 a week he was shot twice he was shot once physically by a shotgun and he was shot the second time by the town when they gave him the boot they said it's it's easy for you to just go live someplace else than live here and we'll save money and you'll be on your way the town ordered a police escort for us as far as the Bourne Bridge goodbye and good riddance we weren't their problem anymore I assumed the so-called investigation into my shooting would end as soon as we clear the bridge that morning and I was right as we are driving south it was August when we moved and it just got hotter and hotter every day that we were driving it felt like we were driving into hell and I do remember thinking you know after everything that we've been through and how crappy our lives had become and now this is what we get this is our escape our new life was to move to this place which was in the middle of nowhere it just felt like you know adding insult to injury it was like and then after this here's your prize here's what you get you know we had to assume disguises almost to fit in and to not stand out and make make ourselves too obvious I became like the girls at school I pretended I had a southern accent I got a perm I started wearing lip gloss and I lied I lied about our past why we had moves there what had happened to my father what was wrong with his face you know when you tell a lie for long enough and it sort of becomes your reality those people that lived in Cape Cod that little girl and my dad and all of us they really did disappear I mean we relocated to Tennessee but the people that we were are gone forever the first couple of years that we lived in Tennessee we watched very carefully we lived in a very isolated area Jon watched cars that went by the house to see if they slowed down and that finally wore away it went away he kind of looked like the old John except for the fact that he had this huge mountain man beard I believe that John needed that type of place for a healing process we lived on a large farm he did a lot of work on that farm when he was physically able he split wood we would never need just for the physical smashing of an an ax through a piece of something from time to time I had to return to Boston for surgery and I met shaving my beard off and every time I shaved my beard off I would see what they had done to me the anger would just come flooding back well I was up in Boston I visited my uncle he always called me nephew he said nephew come down in the cellar I got something I want to show you we went down the cellar he opened up a gun case and there was a 22 caliber rifle it had a scope on it and on the end of it was a silencer it was everything I needed I looked at the gun my Uncle Ed put together I wrote a few words in my notebook and showed it to him thank you for your effort I won't need it when John returned from that surgery he came through the door and before he said allo or anything else he looked me straight in the eye and he said I'm done I'm done with surgery I'm done with going back there I'm really done and I said I'm done - I really felt we had turned a corner that he was leaving the revenge and his hatred behind and that he was going to embrace his family in his life we were heading forward with the person that John grew into to be the man he is today in 2003 there was actually a break in my dad's case there was a confession the Raney's had started turning on each other fighting over money and they'd gone into the police and started spilling family secrets 24 years after my dad's shooting John rainy finally came clean he placed the entire blame for my dad's shooting on his brother Melvin raining Melvin's brother told the whole story of the night of John's shooting Melvin said in the backseat he had a ski mask on according to his brother he had a shotgun which he put out the back window as they slowly passed John's Volkswagen he shot around from the shotgun which went through John's face in a sense it was vindication John was right all those years he'd been right it was Melvin Rainey who wanted him dead they remain unpunished and they will remain unpunished because the statute of limitations the sad part of this vindication was the fact that it came to light after the statute of limitations so no legal process would happen in some ways Melvin did get punished Melvin is in a state institution he has what is reported to be pics disease which is a disease that affects the brain I'm told that he's in a state of dementia you know what goes around comes around he's getting what's rightly his I guess this is the only childhood I had to have lived through it and be here today I just feel like it's made me who I am it's touched every part of my life I write books for kids I'm a mom and I'm a wife well I can't think of anything else that I would yeah I have it all quite frequently I compare what has happened to Melvin and what I'm going through now there's no doubt in my mind that I won no question we now live in paradise and we are so content with one another we've come through a storm and now we're peace you another amazing story of survival I opened up the door and said it's the police department Marty are you home something was wrong because she would not just miss work marty is a big bunch of dynamite in a little bitty package she might weigh 97 pounds soaking wet there was a person laying on the floor covered head-to-toe and blood I started crying and saying all I want to do is talk to my mom who did this who did this to you Marty someone had broken into my grandma's house and maybe was the same person and maybe someone was after our family whoever did it was still out there 48 hours presents live to tell coming up 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Channel: 48 Hours

Views: 2,427,949

Rating: 4.6783352 out of 5

Keywords: video, cbs, news, 48 hours

Id: MB9TvB7ermE

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 42min 35sec (2555 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 28 2013

Reddit Comments

I highly recommend this for anyone who likes semi-wholesome, gruesome true crime. John Busby is an amazing person.

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/deadindogyears_ 📅︎︎ Apr 17 2019 🗫︎ replies