CAPSTONE PROJECT LOG—ENTRY 2

What happened next in the Andie Bell case is hard to piece together from the newspaper reports, so I have to fill in the gaps with guesswork and rumors until the picture becomes clearer. Hopefully, interviews with Ravi and Naomi—who was one of Sal’s best friends—will help.

According to what Angela said, the police would have asked for details about Andie’s friends early on, presumably after taking statements from the Bell family.

After some serious social media stalking, it looks like Andie’s best friends were two girls named Chloe Burch and Emma Hutton.

This post was from almost two weeks before Andie disappeared. It looks like neither Chloe nor Emma lives in Fairview anymore, but I’ll message them to see if they’ll do a phone interview.

Chloe and Emma did a lot on that first weekend (April 19 and 20) to help spread the Connecticut State Police’s Twitter campaign: #FindAndie. I don’t think it’s too big of a leap to assume that the police contacted Chloe and Emma either on the Friday night Andie went missing or the next morning. What they said to the police, I don’t know. Hopefully, I can find out.

We do know that police spoke to Andie’s boyfriend at the time. His name was Sal Singh, and he was attending his senior year at Fairview High along with Andie.

At some point on Saturday, April 19, the police contacted him:

“Detective Richard Hawkins confirmed that officers had questioned Salil Singh as to his whereabouts the previous night, particularly the period of time during which it is believed Andie went missing.”^*1

Friday night, Sal had been hanging out at his friend Max Hastings’s house. He was with his four best friends: Naomi Ward, Jake Lawrence, Millie Simpson, and Max.

Again, I need to check this with Naomi next week, but I think Sal told the police that he left Max’s around 12:15 a.m. He walked home, and his father (Mohan Singh) confirmed that “Sal returned home at approximately 12:50 a.m.”^*2 [Note: the distance between Max’s house (Courtland) and Sal’s (Grove Place) takes about thirty minutes to walk.]

The police confirmed Sal’s alibi with his four friends over that weekend.

Missing posters went up. House-to-house inquiries started on the Sunday.^*3

On the Monday one hundred volunteers helped the police carry out searches in the local woodland. I’ve seen the news footage; a whole ant line of people in the trees, calling her name. Later in the day forensic teams were spotted going into the Bell residence.^*4

And on the Tuesday everything changed. I think chronologically is the best way to consider the events of that day, and those that followed, even though we, as a town, learned the details out of order and jumbled:

Midmorning: Naomi Ward, Max Hastings, Jake Lawrence, and Millie Simpson contacted the police from school and confessed to providing false information. They said that Sal had asked them to lie and that he actually left Max’s house around 10:30 p.m. on the night Andie disappeared, not 12:15 a.m.

I don’t know for sure what the correct police procedure would have been, but I’m guessing at that point, Sal became the number one suspect.

But no one could find him: Sal wasn’t at school and he wasn’t at home. He wasn’t answering his phone. It later came out, however, that Sal had sent a text to his father that Tuesday morning, though he was ignoring all other calls. The press would refer to this as a “confession text.”^*5

Tuesday evening, one of the police teams searching for Andie found a body in the woods.

It was Sal.

He had killed himself.

The press never reported the method by which Sal committed suicide, but by the power of small-town rumor, I knew (as did every other student at Fairview at the time).

Sal walked into the woods near his home, took a huge dose of sleeping pills, and placed a plastic bag over his head, securing it with an elastic band around his neck. He suffocated while unconscious.

At the police press conference that night, there was no mention of Sal. The police only revealed the information about security footage placing Andie driving away from her home at 10:40 p.m.^*6

On Wednesday Andie’s car was found parked on a small residential road (Monroe).

It wasn’t until the following Monday that a police spokeswoman revealed the following:

“As a result of recent intelligence and forensic information, we have strong reason to suspect that a young man named Salil Singh, aged eighteen, was involved in Andie’s abduction and murder. The evidence would have been sufficient to arrest and charge the suspect had he not died before proceedings could be initiated. Police are not looking for anyone else in relation to Andie’s disappearance at this time, but our search for Andie will continue unabated. Our thoughts go out to the Bell family, and our deepest sympathies for the devastation this update has caused them.”

Their sufficient evidence:

• They found Andie’s phone on Sal’s body.

• Forensic tests found traces of Andie’s blood under the fingernails of his right middle and index fingers.

• Andie’s blood was discovered in the trunk of her abandoned car.

• Sal’s fingerprints were found around the dashboard and steering wheel, alongside prints from Andie and the rest of the Bell family.^*7

The evidence, they said, would have been enough to charge Sal. But he was dead, so there was no trial and no conviction. No defense either.

In the following weeks there were more searches of the woodland areas in and around Fairview. Searches using cadaver dogs. Police divers in the river. Andie’s body was never found. The Andie Bell missing persons case was administratively closed in the middle of June 2014.^*8

Eighteen months later a court order was filed and Andie Bell was declared dead in absentia, based on the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. Andie Bell’s death certificate was issued.^*9 Despite her body never having been located, she has now been legally declared dead.

After the ruling the district attorney said: “The case against Salil Singh would have been based on circumstantial and forensic evidence. It is not for me to state whether or not Salil Singh killed Andie Bell; that would have been a jury’s job to decide.”^*10

And even though there has never been a trial, no conviction by a jury; even though Sal never had the chance to defend himself, he is guilty. Not in the legal sense, but in all the other ways that truly matter.

When you ask people in town what happened to Andie Bell, they’ll tell you without hesitation: “She was murdered by Salil Singh.” No “allegedly,” no “might have,” no “probably,” no “most likely.”

He did it, they say. Sal Singh killed Andie.

But I’m just not so sure.