287. Evil in the East: Sara Anne Wood & James Bernardo

Our True Crime Podcast

It was frigidly cold in January of 1994, with snow drifts a foot high, as twelve-year-old Rebecca Savarese made her way to Notre Dame Middle School in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Suddenly, there was a man at her elbow. She was completely taken off guard because he had approached her from behind. She gave a startled jump, and the man said to her, “Do you see this gun I have?” Rebecca said that she had seen it. The man then pointed at his truck and instructed her to get in. Rebecca balked, and although she remained calm, her mother’s words echoed through her mind. Never get in a stranger’s vehicle.
When the man urged her to get into his truck, Rebecca pretended as though she was having an asthma attack. She pretended to have trouble breathing and feigned dizziness. Her actions took the man off guard for just a split second. He grabbed her and got a hold of her backpack. Rebecca wriggled out of it and took off running down the street, leaving the man holding her pack. As she was running Rebecca saw a man standing outside a bank, “Sir, sir, sir! A man tried to kidnap me!” she said. The man ushered her into the bank, where they called the police.
There was no way that Rebecca Savarese could have known that morning when she got out of bed that she was going to inadvertently play a part in catching a child killer. She had no idea that her actions on that day would bring closure to two families and probably stop an untold number of other children from experiencing a horrific early demise. She wasn’t thinking about any of that. But when the moment came, Rebecca knew one thing. She wasn’t getting in that vehicle. “If I’d gotten in that truck, I just knew I was going to end up someplace dead,” she later told reporters.
Of that, Rebecca was most likely correct.
Join Jen and Cam as they discuss "Evil in the East: Sara Anne Wood & James Bernardo"
If you have any information that could help locate Sara Anne Wood's remains, please contact The Major Crimes Unit at 315-366-6000.
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Thank you to our team:
Written and researched by Lauretta Allen
Listener Discretion by Edward October from OctoberpodVHS
Executive Producer Nico Vitesse of The Inky Paw Print
Sources:
https://charleyproject.org/case/sara-anne-wood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Sara_Anne_Wood
https://murderpedia.org/male.L/l/lent-lewis.htm
https://synwrites.blog/2020/03/08/the-crimes-of-lewis-lent/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/545432106/match=1&terms=%22Rebecca%20Savarese%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1098418684/match=1&terms=%22Rebecca%20Savarese%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/472084126/match=1&terms=%22Rebecca%20Savarese%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1098419878/match=1&terms=%22Rebecca%20Savarese%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1066549303/match=1&terms=%22Holly%20Piirainen%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/440696102/match=1&terms=%22Holly%20Piirainen%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1063901310/match=1&terms=%22Jimmy%20Bernardo%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/257050527/match=1&terms=%22Jimmy%20Bernardo%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1076572951/match=1&terms=%22James%20Bernardo%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/257227815/match=1&terms=%22James%20Bernardo%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1076573314/?match=1&terms=%22James%20Bernardo%22
https://charleyproject.org/case/james-donald-lusher-jr
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1065249505/match=1&terms=%22James%20Lusher%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1065249882/match=1&terms=%22James%20Lusher%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1065680133/match=1&terms=%22James%20Lusher%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1066250925/match=1&terms=%22James%20Lusher%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1094973218/match=1&terms=%22Sara%20Wood%22
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1100537302/match=1&terms=%22Sara%20Wood%22