Major Takeaways:
The murder of Rebecca Coer began as a deceptive cover-up that unraveled through persistence, forensic science, and one critical fingerprint.
The case revealed how jealousy, control, and violence against women can destroy entire families and communities.
Urban City Podcast’s “Secrets of the Morgue” transforms real-life tragedy into storytelling that honors victims and seeks truth beyond the headlines.
Secrets of the Morgue: The Fire on the Hill – The Chilling Murder of Rebecca Coer
Her body was charred beyond recognition. Nobody knew who she was. Nobody knew what happened to her. She was missing her nose, her ears, her fingers, her toes. Not only was it horrifying, it was personal.
In a quiet corner of Connecticut, a roadside blaze would unravel a murder so twisted it took two states, a fingerprint, and a mother’s intuition to solve it.
This is Secrets of the Morgue: The Fire on the Hill, brought to you by the Urban City Podcast Network.
It was just after midnight on a desolate stretch of road outside Stonington, Connecticut, the kind of backroad where headlights disappear into darkness. The air that night was heavy with fog and pine smoke, the kind of stillness that makes you feel like something is watching you.
A passing driver thought he saw a brush fire on the shoulder of the road. He slowed down, thinking it was a trash pile or maybe an old mattress. But the smell wasn’t wood or rubber. It was something else something that made his stomach turn.
When the local fire chief arrived and sprayed his extinguisher across the flames, what appeared beneath the smoke wasn’t a pile of burning debris. It was a human body.
Wrapped in layers of plastic, blankets, and duct tape, it looked like someone had tried to mummify their guilt. The chief froze. He’d been on the job for thirty years, but he’d never seen anything like this.
State troopers were called in immediately. They shut down the road, combed through the brush, and searched for tire tracks. The medical examiner arrived just before dawn, and beneath the soot and char, one thing became clear this wasn’t where the woman had died. It was a dump site.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Ira Caner was the one who examined the body. He’d seen thousands of autopsies, but this one was different. The body had been almost completely destroyed by fire, yet certain things stood out — small things that told a story.
The woman was young, maybe mid-20s. Light-skinned, possibly Black or Latina. She was small-framed, with short dark hair that had been mostly burned away. Whoever she was, someone had gone to great lengths to erase her identity.
No fingertips. No tattoos. No trace left behind. Her teeth were mostly intact, though, and that turned out to be the one thing her killer couldn’t destroy.
For two long days, the woman was known only as “Jane Doe.” Then, through dental records, investigators finally had a name. Rebecca “Becky” Coer. Twenty-four years old. From Long Island, New York.
Becky worked as a nursing assistant. She loved to laugh, dance, and spoil her younger cousins. Friends said she had a heart that couldn’t say no to anyone in need. Her mother said she had a light that filled every room she entered.
The day Becky didn’t show up for work, her mother knew something was wrong. It wasn’t like her to disappear. When the police came to the door, her mother fell to the floor before they even said the words. She knew. Somehow, she already knew.
Someone had killed her baby.
Investigators began retracing Becky’s last known movements. The night she disappeared, she had gone out with friends to a neighborhood bar. She laughed, danced, and was seen talking to a man no one recognized.
He called himself “Jay Brown.” He was older, mid-30s, well-dressed, smooth talker. The kind of man who buys drinks but doesn’t blink enough.
Witnesses said he was pushy, made women uncomfortable, and kept trying to get Becky alone. One friend said he even grabbed Becky’s phone and typed his number into it before she could stop him.
That number a 617 area code would become the last call Becky ever received. Just minutes before she vanished.
When detectives traced it, they hit a dead end. The number was unregistered, a prepaid burner phone that had been purchased two days before the murder. Whoever “Jay Brown” really was, he’d planned this.
Meanwhile, the medical examiner confirmed what everyone feared. Becky had been stabbed multiple times — in the liver and in the neck. She wasn’t burned alive. She was murdered first, and then set on fire.
The question was why.
Was it a robbery? A jealous lover? Something darker?
Detectives searched Becky’s apartment. Nothing was missing. They checked her phone records and bank activity. No sign of trouble. But in her text messages, they found one new contact “Jay B.”
The messages were flirty at first, then strangely possessive. He wanted to know where she was, who she was with, and why she hadn’t answered sooner. In one text, just hours before she died, Becky wrote, “You’re being weird. Stop calling me.”
That message was never read.
Weeks passed with no arrest. Then came a break.
Crime scene technicians managed to lift fingerprints from the sticky side of the duct tape used to wrap Becky’s body. That almost never happens, but luck — or maybe karma was on their side.
The prints belonged to a man named Evans Ganthier, a 36-year-old from the Bronx with a record for assault, domestic violence, and pimping.
When police found him, he didn’t deny knowing Becky. He didn’t even deny wrapping her body. What he said instead made detectives sick.
“Yes, I wrapped her up. I burned her body. But I didn’t kill her.”
He claimed it was an accident that she fell and hit her head on a dumbbell during an argument. He said he panicked, didn’t know what to do, so he tried to cover it up.
But the autopsy told a different story. There was no head injury. No fall. Just stab wounds deliberate, forceful, and fatal. Becky didn’t die by accident. She was murdered.
When confronted, Evans broke down. He told police Becky had wanted to leave him. That she wasn’t going to “listen anymore.” He said she made him angry. Too angry.
He stabbed her, wrapped her in blankets, drove her body across state lines, and set her on fire in the woods.
He thought the flames would make her unrecognizable. He thought nobody would ever know.
But the thing about secrets especially the ones kept in the dark is that they always find light.
The trial lasted four weeks. Becky’s mother sat through every minute of it, holding her daughter’s picture in her hands. When prosecutors showed the photos of the burned remains, she didn’t look away. She wanted to see what he’d done. She wanted him to know what he’d taken from her.
The defense tried to argue that Evans hadn’t meant to kill her. That it was a fit of rage, not premeditation. But the evidence said otherwise.
The phone records. The duct tape. The blood in his SUV. The trail of lies he left behind.
After five and a half hours of deliberation, the jury returned. The courtroom was silent. Becky’s mother held her breath.
“Guilty,” the foreman said.
Evans Ganthier was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
But no sentence could ever fill the silence left behind when a daughter’s voice is gone. No justice could erase the nightmares that came after.
For Becky’s family, the fire never went out. It still burns — not in the woods that night, but inside them. The fire of loss. The fire of anger. The fire of memory.
Rebecca “Becky” Coer was more than a victim. She was a daughter, a sister, a healer, and a dreamer who wanted to make the world better. The only thing she ever wanted was to help people. In the end, it was evil that took advantage of that kindness.
And that’s the real tragedy of it all.
Because in this story, the real fire isn’t the one that burned her body. It’s the one her family carries every day for justice. It’s the one that refuses to go out until her name is remembered for who she was not how she was found.
This is Urban City: Secrets of the Morgue, where every scar tells a story and every story demands the truth.
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