Is Gordon MacDonald really sick?

Is Gordon MacDonald really on medical leave — or is the New Hampshire Supreme Court managing a crisis of its own making?

In this episode, we trace a pattern that stretches back to 2002, when an Attorney General named Phil McLaughlin refused to believe a state line could stop a scandal from crossing it. Twenty-four years later, we’re asking the same question about a different institution: New Hampshire’s only forensic lab, and the criminalist the State kept putting on the witness stand for decades — despite a disciplinary file that says exactly why it shouldn’t have.

This episode connects the MacDonald leave of absence, the ethics complaint against Jane Young, the structural conflict inside the State Police forensic lab, the 2019 rape kit backlog, and the 2024 Personnel Appeals Board ruling on Kevin McMahon — all under one throughline: institutions don’t self-report. They wait to get caught.

Receipts over vibes. Every claim in this episode is backed by public record, on-the-record sourcing, or documented correspondence.

There’s a version of this story that fits in a headline: state officials asked to alter evidence in an active investigation. That version is true, as far as it goes. But it’s not the interesting part, and it’s definitely not the part that should worry you.

The interesting part is the order things happened in.

On July 3rd, 2017, Jane Young — then Associate Attorney General and Chief of the Criminal Justice Bureau — emailed a coalition public affairs director about a St. Paul’s School yearbook. She’d spoken with the state forensic lab. They believed they could remove a sticker from a page. Could they try?

The next morning, an answer: happy to drop the yearbook off wherever’s convenient.

Four days later, Jane Young is quoted publicly confirming a criminal investigation into St. Paul’s School has begun — and the yearbook is part of the story.

Nobody, at the time, mentioned that the state’s own lab had already altered it.

That gap — between what happened privately on July 3rd and 4th, and what the public was told on July 8th — is the entire story. Not because altering a sticker is inherently sinister. Sometimes evidence needs handling. But because who asked for it, how it was authorized, and what wasn’t said afterward are the kinds of details a defense attorney, a jury, or frankly the public are supposed to get to weigh for themselves. They didn’t get the chance. Not in 2017, and not for years after — because these emails stayed out of public view until a Right-to-Know request pried them loose.

That timing gap is now doing real legal work. A formal grievance filed with the Attorney General’s office argues the statute of limitations shouldn’t be read as having started back in 2017, precisely because none of this was discoverable until recently. The same grievance raises a Brady question — whether information that should have reached St. Paul’s School as the subject of a criminal probe, didn’t. Whether either argument holds is not something we’re going to pretend to adjudicate from a podcast studio. That’s the Attorney General’s job now, formally, on the record.

What we can tell you is what’s provable: the email chain exists. The statute — RSA 641:6, Falsifying Physical Evidence — exists, and it’s a Class B felony. The grievance exists. And the tangle of conflicts around who is supposed to review any of it — a complaint against Jane Young that her own state’s attorney disciplinary body says it can’t hear because Young sits on the committee that would hear it — also exists, and it’s almost farcical in how neatly it closes the loop.

Small state. Smaller room. Same names, different hats — over and over, for years.

We laid out the full paper trail, statute language, and grievance details in this week’s episode. Watch/listen below, and if you’ve got documents relevant to this thread or others in our New Hampshire accountability series, you know where to find us. We protect sources, always.

Receipts over vibes. Every time.

There’s a pattern in New Hampshire, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it: the people closest to the truth are the ones most afraid to speak it.

This episode follows the crisis at the Sununu Youth Services Center — the resignations, the involvement of the Attorney General’s office, and a juvenile justice veteran with two decades on the job who still, even now, won’t put their name to what they saw. We ask why. And we ask what it costs a state when institutional self-protection works exactly as designed: silence the insiders, discredit the outsiders, wait for the story to die of exhaustion instead of disproof.

NH Supreme Court rejects lawsuit challenging child protection system

The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a former state employee who accused the Department of Health and Human Services of failing to protect children from abuse and neglect.

www.wmur.com

Jul 21, 2021

https://www.wmur.com/article/new-hampshire-supreme-court-rejects-child-protection-system-lawsuit/37089571

https://www.nhpr.org/health/2020-02-13/dhhs-employee-files-whistleblower-lawsuit-over-child-protection-services

https://www.concordmonitor.com/2019/09/30/st-pauls-school-concord-nh-grand-jury-report-remain-confidential-28809670/

https://indepthnh.org/2020/02/02/spaulding-bewildered-by-ags-request-to-probe-hilliard-for-laurie-list/

Built on public record, on-the-record sourcing, and a standard I don’t budge on: receipts over vibes.

New Hampshire’s Right-to-Know law promises that government records belong to the public. This episode is what happens when you actually try to collect.

Over two weeks, our research team filed records requests with the State of New Hampshire and the City of Concord — about the state forensic laboratory, a criminalist named Kevin McMahon, an internal affairs policy, and a grant check the city signed with its own hand. What came back wasn’t transparency. It was technique.

In this episode, I break down four moves — by name, with the actual letters on screen — so you’ll recognize them the next time your government throws one at you:

* The Hot Potato — your concern gets quietly forwarded to the very agency it’s about

* The Empty Drawer — the wrong office truthfully says it has nothing, and doesn’t tell you where the right one is

* The Slow Clock — nobody says no, the answer just arrives after it stops mattering (mark your calendar: September 25, 2026)

* The Preemptive Maybe — the exemption gets floated before anyone’s even searched

And underneath all four moves sits a real question with a paper trail: sworn 2014 testimony about DNA contamination and a 2011 suspension, a 2024 disciplinary ruling that never mentions either — and a decade of trials in between where a jury may never have heard the difference.

Every request is filed. Every deadline is written down. This show will be here when they come due.

Receipts over vibes — always.

🎙️ New episode of The Gracie Gato Podcast is live.

Skip the Butter: The Forensic Analyst New Hampshire Kept Putting on the Stand

For 43 years, a New Hampshire State Police forensic analyst kept getting walked up to the witness stand — sworn, trusted, in the most serious cases this state has ever tried. This is what his own employer's records say about him. And what the public was never shown.This week on The Gracie Gato Podcast we trace the documented record of Kevin G. McMahon, a longtime criminalist at the NH State Police Forensic Laboratory: a man his own employer formally warned, sent to harassment training at least five times, and ultimately suspended — and who admitted under oath that his own DNA kept turning up on the evidence he was testing. We follow what's in the public file, what's missing from it, and the Right-to-Know request now ticking on a five-business-day clock.No spin. No mob. A citizen, a statute, a deadline, and a paper trail. Receipts first — vibes never.In this episode:The Personnel Appeals Board decision the State signed off on (Docket #2024-D-010)The contamination history he admitted on cross-examination — that prosecutors never raisedState v. Owen Labrie: the case where the system's backstop held, and why that's the scariest partState v. Adam Montgomery: how the pattern completesColorado, Massachusetts, New York — the national crime-lab reckoning McMahon is part ofThe RSA 91-A request that asks the State for the whole file — and starts the clockChapters (adjust to final cut):00:00 — Cold Open: Skip the Butter01:00 — Meet Kevin05:30 — The Contamination File10:00 — The Net Held (State v. Labrie)15:00 — The Pattern Completes (State v. Montgomery)20:00 — Not Just Here: A National Pattern23:00 — The RequestSources & public records:NH Personnel Appeals Board, Appeal of Kevin McMahon, Docket #2024-D-010 (decided March 20, 2024)State of New Hampshire v. Owen Labrie — trial transcript (2015)Nashua Telegraph reporting, State v. Harvey Martel (June 2014)State of New Hampshire v. Adam Montgomery — trial coverage (February 2024)Colorado (Yvonne "Missy" Woods / CBI) and Massachusetts (Annie Dookhan, Sonja Farak) crime-lab casesNH RSA 91-A (Right-to-Know Law)

For 43 years, a New Hampshire State Police forensic analyst kept getting walked up to the witness stand — sworn, trusted, in the most serious cases this state has ever tried. This is what his own employer’s records say about him. And what the public was never shown.

This week on The Gracie Gato Podcast, we trace the documented record of Kevin G. McMahon, a longtime criminalist at the NH State Police Forensic Laboratory: a man his own employer formally warned, sent to harassment training at least five times, and ultimately suspended — and who admitted under oath that his own DNA kept turning up on the evidence he was testing. We follow what’s in the public file, what’s missing from it, and the Right-to-Know request now ticking on a five-business-day clock.

No spin. No mob. A citizen, a statute, a deadline, and a paper trail. Receipts first — vibes never.

In this episode:

* The Personnel Appeals Board decision the State signed off on (Docket #2024-D-010)

* The contamination history he admitted on cross-examination — that prosecutors never raised

* State v. Owen Labrie: the case where the system’s backstop held, and why that’s the scariest part

* State v. Adam Montgomery: how the pattern completes

* Colorado, Massachusetts, New York — the national crime-lab reckoning McMahon is part of

* The RSA 91-A request that asks the State for the whole file — and starts the clock

Chapters (adjust to final cut):00:00 — Cold Open: Skip the Butter01:00 — Meet Kevin05:30 — The Contamination File10:00 — The Net Held (State v. Labrie)15:00 — The Pattern Completes (State v. Montgomery)20:00 — Not Just Here: A National Pattern23:00 — The Request

Sources & public records:

* NH Personnel Appeals Board, Appeal of Kevin McMahon, Docket #2024-D-010 (decided March 20, 2024)

* State of New Hampshire v. Owen Labrie — trial transcript (2015)

* Nashua Telegraph reporting, State v. Harvey Martel (June 2014)

* State of New Hampshire v. Adam Montgomery — trial coverage (February 2024)

* Colorado (Yvonne “Missy” Woods / CBI) and Massachusetts (Annie Dookhan, Sonja Farak) crime-lab cases

* NH RSA 91-A (Right-to-Know Law)

The Owen Labrie Transcripts.

“Welcome back to the Gracie Gato Podcast. Pour something, settle in.

Here’s a riddle for you. What do you call a man running for Congress who won’t take money from corporations, won’t take money from PACs, won’t take a dime from the wealthy — and won’t even take five bucks from you*, the voter who likes him? You call him Matthew Emerson. And you call him my guest tonight.*

Nine Democrats are clawing each other for Chris Pappas’s old seat. The Shaheens are circling, the consultants are billing, the lawn signs are breeding like rabbits. And way up in Conway, there’s a guy running the whole thing on less than the cost of a used Subaru, calling the entire field ‘insulated and tone deaf’ to their faces.

Now — is that prophecy, or is that a man making a virtue out of an empty wallet? That’s what we’re here to find out. Because around here, we don’t do press releases. We do questions. So Matthew — welcome. Don’t get comfortable.

She filed for Congress yesterday. Today she’s in the Speakeasy. Carleigh Beriont is a Harvard-educated union organizer, mom, Marshall Islands teacher, and Hampton Select Board Chair who looked at New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District — packed with establishment money and dynasty names — and said: not today. No AIPAC. No social media. No apologies. Just Medicare for All, a ban on Congressional stock trading, and the audacity to show up anyway. This is what a people-first campaign sounds like before the consultants get to it.

Starting today, Gracie Gato’s Speakeasy has a new recurring segment.

Every week, Concord City Councilor Stacey Brown sits down with me to give you a direct, unfiltered report on what is happening inside Concord City Hall — the votes, the budget decisions, the things that get approved quietly and the things that get cut loudly. No spin. No press releases. Just a city councilor with a stack of documents and nowhere to be except honest.

We’re calling it The Concord Report.

And we are starting with a story that made me put down my coffee.

Beaver Meadow Golf Course is a city-owned municipal course off Sewall’s Falls Road. It has been part of Concord’s civic landscape since 1897, when Scottish golf architect Willie Campbell designed its original nine holes. For decades, the city operated it as a self-sustaining enterprise. In fact, the official mission statement — adopted in 1994 — explicitly committed that the course would operate “without the need to supplement revenues with tax dollars.”

That language was removed in 2008. Quietly. Without public fanfare. Nine months into Jim Bouley’s first term as mayor.

What followed was thirteen years of General Fund transfers — your property taxes flowing into golf operations, year after year, sometimes tens of thousands more than the city publicly budgeted. The golf fund accumulated debt the city approved in increments: $138,000 in FY2018, $310,000 in FY2019, $310,000 in FY2020. When you add interest and obligations through the present day, the total debt exposure tied to Beaver Meadow exceeds $11 million.

Now here is where it gets personal.

In the most recent budget cycle, the Concord City Council needed to cut spending to reduce the tax rate. Here is some of what got cut:

• Hoopla — the public library’s digital audiobook service — $38,000

• Bagged leaf pickup service (spring and fall curbside collection) — $99,225

• A UNH graduate student contracted to do a city tree inventory — $4,000

• The city’s ICLEI sustainability membership — $1,200

Here is what did not get cut at the golf course:

• $92,000 for grounds and horticulture — including $55,600 in chemicals and $3,000 for flowers and shrubs

• $8,630 in professional development — including $3,200 in tournament entry fees for the course’s two golf pros and $3,000 for “continuing education”

And here is what was added to the golf course budget:

• $5,000 for a new ball picker

• $20,000 in temporary labor increases

• $10,000 in additional overtime wages

• $46,140 in total new golf course requests

The library lost its audiobooks. Your leaves will sit at the curb. The golf pros are entering tournaments on the city’s dime.

—

Stacey Brown has been documenting all of this — budget document by budget document, fiscal year by fiscal year, going back to 2013. She attended the Golf Course Advisory Committee meeting in February 2025 and presented evidence — from a published reference book, The Architects of Golf by Geoffrey S. Cornish and Ronald E. Whitten — that Beaver Meadow has been falsely marketed as the oldest golf course in New Hampshire. (It isn’t. Waumbek Golf Course opened in 1896. Beaver Meadow opened in 1897.) The room’s response was to call her an attacker and suggest the golf course hire a public relations person.

She kept going anyway.

That is the kind of city councilor Stacey Brown is. And that is why The Concord Report exists.

—

This episode is the first installment of what will be a weekly conversation. Every week, Stacey brings me what she is watching — the votes coming up, the budget lines worth questioning, the decisions being made in your name with your money. If you live in Concord, this is your city. You deserve to know what is happening in it.

All source documents referenced in this episode are linked below. I encourage you to read them.

📄 SOURCE DOCUMENTS

• Beaver Meadow Golf Course Mission Statements, 1994 and 2008

• Golf Fund Budget Documents, FY2013–FY2021 (City of Concord Operating Budgets)

• Council-approved debt: FY2018 ($138,000), FY2019 ($310,000), FY2020 ($310,000)

• Irrigation and Clubhouse Debt Service documents, FY2018–FY2026

• Golf Course Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes, February 20, 2025

• Concord Finance Committee Budget Adjustment Document, June 4, 2026

• The Architects of Golf — Geoffrey S. Cornish & Ronald E. Whitten (HarperCollins)

Listen to the full episode above.

Tips and documents: [email protected]

www.graciegato.com

FOUR BEDS AND A BOARDROOM — EPISODE 2: THE FAMILY TREE

Last week, we followed the money.

This week, we follow the people.

One city councilor with two jobs and zero recusals. One lawyer with six hats and one sealed grand jury report. One professional network stretching from the New Hampshire Supreme Court to a $12,500 line item in a municipal budget — and somehow, every thread leads back to the same zip code, the same law firm, the same coalition.

Tonight on the Gracie Gato Podcast: the day job Amanda Grady Sexton doesn’t mention at the dais. The conflict of interest David Vicinanzo was warned about — in writing, twice — and kept going anyway. The Deputy AG who sent the warning, then hired his son. The grand jury report that nobody outside the parties has read. The bill that would have protected survivors like Marisol Fuentes. And why it died.

Pour something neat. This one we take slowly.

The paper is real. The emails are public. The family tree is yours now.

Listen. Then ask your city councilor if they’ve heard of any of this.

SPECIAL EDITION: “She Begged Them”

The Marisol Fuentes Story — and the institutions still not answering for it

Marisol Fuentes went to court.

She begged them to protect her from her husband.

They didn’t.

On July 6th, 2025, he killed her in Berlin, New Hampshire.

What happened next is a masterclass in how powerful institutions manage catastrophe — not by fixing it, not by owning it, but by going quiet in exactly the right places, at exactly the right time.

In this special edition of The Gracie Gato Podcast, I’m pulling the thread on a story that has more layers than a New Hampshire winter:

A brand-new magistrate who set bail, watched a woman die, and then resigned — leaving a very interesting legal question about who’s now exposed without her umbrella of protection.

A Right to Know request that Executive Councilor Janet Stevens has been pursuing for months — and that Berlin Police Department is blocking, citing privacy concerns for a woman who is no longer alive to need them.

A press release from the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence calling for more training — issued by the very organization that runs the training the police were supposed to have completed.

A judicial selection commission that approved the magistrate who resigned. A commission that included, among its members, NHCADSV Executive Director Lyn Schollett.

And one question that nobody — not the police department, not the coalition, not the crisis center — has answered:

Was a victim’s advocate present when Marisol Fuentes went to court and begged for her life?

The silence around that question is not nothing. It’s everything.

This episode connects the dots between Berlin PD’s stonewalling, the sovereign immunity doctrine that may have just lost its roof, the NHCADSV’s conspicuous PR pivot, and the funding structures that give powerful nonprofit institutions every incentive to manage optics over accountability.

I want to be clear: this is journalism, not prosecution. We don’t have all the answers. But we have the questions — and we have the names.

Marisol Fuentes deserved better.

So does the next woman standing in a courtroom somewhere in New Hampshire, asking the system to protect her.

New Hampshire courts have extended this protection to nonprofits before. There’s precedent from a case involving CASA NH — Court Appointed Special Advocates — where a judge ruled that because CASA volunteers function as an arm of the court, they get the same immunity protections as a judge.

Here’s why that matters in Berlin.

RESPONSE, the local crisis center, provides advocates to attend court hearings with victims. That’s literally on their website. Victim advocacy in court settings is their *job.*

If RESPONSE had an advocate present — or was supposed to have one present — in Marisol’s case, their liability exposure is significant. *Unless* they can claim sovereign immunity.

*But.* Sovereign immunity in these cases flows through the judge — or in this case, the magistrate.

Stephanie Johnson *resigned.*

When a magistrate resigns in disgrace after a catastrophic failure, does the sovereign immunity umbrella she could have extended to nonprofits working under her court... disappear with her?

That is a legal question I am not qualified to definitively answer. But I can tell you this: it’s a question that *someone* in a law office is asking right now. And the answer to that question may have a lot to do with why Berlin Police are stonewalling a Right to Know request.

Think about it. If both the PD and RESPONSE dropped the ball — and the magistrate who could legally shield RESPONSE is gone — you’ve got a situation where a crisis center under the NHCADSV umbrella is potentially exposed.

And if RESPONSE is exposed, NHCADSV is exposed.

And if NHCADSV is exposed...

Funding. Federal funding. State grants. Millions of dollars that flow through that organization annually.

Now the wall makes a little more sense, doesn’t it?

Listen. Share. And if you know something — you know how to find me.

Listen now — available on all major podcast platforms and right here on Substack.

Sources with relevant documents are always welcome. I protect sources. That’s not a tagline. It’s a promise.

Leave a comment, share this post, or upgrade your subscription to support independent journalism that doesn’t look away.

Gracie Gato’s Speakeasy — because the truth doesn’t need a spin cycle.