Episode 170: The Murder of Kathy Frost
After his second wife divorced him in May of 1987, 35-year-old Dennis Larson made a trip from Montana to Maine to work as a construction electrician in East Millinocket, Maine. Shortly after he moved to Maine, he joined a dating service and placed personal ads in two local newspapers advertising that he was looking for a new wife, specifically mentioning that he was seeking a “childless lady.” Three women responded, one being 26-year-old Kathy Frost. Kathy was working as a nurses aide at the time and lived in Dexter, Maine, and the two spoke on the phone soon after she responded to the ad.
They met in person, and just seven weeks later on September 20th, 1987, the two got married. The day after their wedding, the couple met with Timothy Callahan, a sales representative for Allstate Insurance at Sears in the Bangor Mall. They purchased a combined life insurance policy of $300,000 coverage on Dennis and $200,000 on Kathy, with double for accidental death. They named each other the primary beneficiaries and both prepaid the policies for two months.
People close to Kathy reported that she was having a hard time dating and was lonely, and after her marriage to Dennis she had told friends that she didn’t love him but thought that she could learn to love him. Over the next few weeks she grew more and more unhappy and regretful of her decision, and she told her friends that she would talk to Dennis about wanting to get out of the marriage. On the weekend of October 9th, the same weekend that Kathy was going to talk to Dennis, he told her that they were going up to Bar Harbor, Maine where Acadia National Park is. Kathy was not one for swimming, hiking, or being out in nature, and she was especially not a fan of heights. Thinking that this would be a good opportunity to talk to him and wanting to make him happy, she agreed to the weekend trip even though she told friends and family she didn’t want to go.
On October 11th, the couple was in Acadia National Park as dusk was approaching. They were heading towards Otter Cliff, a famous spot in the park with one of the highest Atlantic coastal headlands at 110 feet high. Dennis claimed that Kathy had been walking on a separate path to get to the cliff’s edge when he heard her scream. He went running to see her nowhere to be found until he looked over the edge to see Kathy lying on the rocks 80 feet below. She wasn’t moving. Dennis led park rangers to Kathy’s body, and rescue teams rappelled down the cliffs to help her. Her body had to be removed by boat. It was determined that because of the height she fell from and the way she landed on the rocks that her death had been instant and likely painless.
Investigation began promptly the next day led by Maine State Police Detective Jeffrey Harmon, who was immediately suspicious of Dennis and his story. While police were investigating, on November 4th, Dennis boarded a flight at the Bangor International Airport to head back home to Montana. Before he boarded the plane he left several packages on the floor of the terminal at the airport that had to be detonated by a demolition team as the day before, police searched Dennis’ apartment and found multiple sticks of dynamite. On November 12th, while he was still in Montana, Dennis called Timothy Callahan with the life insurance company and told him to begin the process with the life insurance he had on Kathy.
On February 2nd, 1988, State Police Detective Jeffrey Harmon flew out to Montana to talk to Dennis and further question him about Kathy’s death. The interview was over six hours long, and towards the end, Dennis told Detective Harmon that he and Kathy had gotten into an argument and Kathy shoved him and said that she was leaving him. He admitted to pushing her off the cliff out of retaliation, stating “I pushed her too hard, I guess.” He was immediately arrested and the process was started to extradite him back to Maine. He was indicted for Kathy's murder on two counts: intentionally or knowingly causing her death and causing her death through conduct manifesting depraved indifference to the value of human life. Dennis pleaded not guilty. He later waived his right to a jury trial. After an eight-day trial, the court found him guilty on the count of intentionally causing Kathy’s death. Dennis motioned for acquittal as well as a new trial, but these were denied and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
A man named Joseph Wanago had testified against Dennis as he was the insurance claims adjuster from Montana who had processed a claim on the death of his Dennis’ first wife about 12 years prior to Kathy’s murder. This prompted police to look further into the suspicious death of Dennis’s first wife, 20-year-old Leslee Gail Reynolds. Leslee was last seen in Wolf Creek, Montana on June 10th, 1975. Dennis claimed that they were picking mushrooms by Little Prickly Pear Creek, about a mile from Wolf Creek, when Leslee fell into the creek that was overflowing and powerful from spring runoff. He claimed he tried to save her before she washed away. Police noted that his clothing was dry when they arrived on scene.
While he was in prison in Maine for Kathy’s murder, a former Montana Department of Justice investigator interviewed him. Dennis confessed to Leslee's murder, saying he'd pushed her into the creek and watched her drown, and he took her to the creek that day to kill her. He was charged with Leslee's murder in October of 2000.
On December 31st, 2000, now 50-years-old, Dennis was in a craft room at the prison when he put a piece of duct tape over his mouth, pushed a bench up to the window, got up on it and jumped out. He hit a wall on the way down from the third-story window and fell onto the ground in the courtyard. He was pronounced dead shortly after 8:00 p.m. A note was found in his cell, and while the specifics have not been released, he had expressed concern about being extradited to Montana for the murder of Leslee Reynolds.
Leslee’s remains have not been recovered. She was born in Great Falls, Montana and graduated from C.M. Russell High School in 1972. She completed a dental assistant training course and worked for a dental office for a short time before her marriage. Anyone with any information on the murder of Leslee Gail Reynolds is asked to please call the Lewis and Clark County Coroner's Office at 406-442-7398.
Image sources:
findagrave.com - “Kathy Lynn Frost Larson”