DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org

Two Claremont police officers lied about their affair during an internal investigation, according to records.

The woman eventually came forward, told the truth, wrecked her career, and ended up on the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule or EES, also known as the Laurie List of police with credibility problems. The man is currently the Chief of the Newport Police Department.

The story of former cop Casey Truesdell and now Newport Police Chief Alex Lee is more than just the affair, though. When she came forward with the truth she was cast as the scorned woman seeking revenge.

At the same time, her accusations of Lee’s disturbing behavior seem to have been ignored by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, Newport town officials, and an outside agency hired by Claremont.

Truesdell acknowledges she broke her silence and contacted the Attorney General’s Office when she learned that Lee had been named the interim chief in Newport, but her speaking out is not simply a form of revenge. She now believes she was manipulated and used, essentially targeted by Lee for exploitation.

“When they made him chief, I just felt so betrayed. My law enforcement career was absolutely ruined because of him. And then they made him chief, and it was just, I had enough. Enough was enough. Somebody deserved to know what he was really like,” she said.

Lee was contacted by InDepthNH.org for this story and he declined to speak on the record. Lee did offer to review this reporter’s questions in advance and then consider answering them via email. Lee was informed that none of the interviews for this story were being conducted via email and he has not responded since.

Lee and Truesdell are almost polar opposites. Lee comes from a privileged family and excelled as a New Hampshire State Trooper, becoming a detective with Troop C.

Truesdell grew up poor in Grantham. As a kid she looked up to local police officer Jerry Whitney, but it never occurred to her she could ever become a cop herself.

“I think it was just always intriguing to me, but we were just poor people. That wasn’t something I was ever going to obtain,” Truesdell said.

That changed around the time Truesdell was around 26 and working for Kearsarge Magazine.

Her boss at the time learned Truesdell always wanted to be a police officer, and as a Christmas gift paid for a couple of classes at River Valley Community College in Claremont. She took criminal justice classes with her gift.

“I just, hook line and sinker, fell in love with it. And I ended up taking … a state exam, and I scored really well,” Truesdell said.

That’s when she decided to apply for an opening with the Claremont Police Department. She got hired and was soon training to enter the state academy. The pre-academy training consisted mainly of running and workouts with another recruit, and supervised by Claremont officer Brent Wilmot and his friend, then-Trooper Alex Lee.

Truesdell would later learn that Lee helped out doing her pre-employment investigation, speaking to people she knew and worked with, and delving into her personal life.

Truesdell was then 27 and the new law enforcement career was something positive in her otherwise chaotic life. At the time, Truesdell’s marriage was falling apart and she was scrambling to take care of her two young daughters. She was also wrestling with a drinking problem that would only get worse.

“But I was, then, I didn’t know I was an alcoholic. I used to call it my monster. I mean, for years, even before I became a cop, I was like, ‘Oh, if I can quit for 30 days, I’ve got control of my monster,’” Truesdell said.

She made it through the academy in 2016, and then completed her field training in Claremont in the spring of 2017. She was soon working solo shifts as a patrol officer. In the meantime, Lee was recruited to come work for the Claremont department as the captain of the detectives. That’s when he started encouraging Truesdell to apply for a new opening in the unit. 

“He handpicked me,” Truesdell said.

Once Lee was Truesdell’s direct superior in late 2017, they began flirting over text messages, and the messages became overtly sexual, according to statements made in the report written by Richard Mello. Mello, the former Lebanon police chief, operates Mello Consulting and Training and was hired in 2023 by Claremont to conduct an investigation.

Lee told Mello that Truesdell began the flirtatious texts and pursued him, while Truesdell said it was Lee who got things started. Truesdell said that when their affair first came under scrutiny in Claremont, Lee told her to destroy the evidence and delete messages off her phone.

In May of 2018, Truesdell and Lee were working with State Police on the still unsolved murder of Jesse Jarvis in Claremont. During a meeting with an investigator and an Assistant Attorney General, Lee sent Truesdell numerous explicit text messages, according to the Mello report. Lee denied doing that when questioned.

Their relationship became physical, with the pair meeting at her house for sex, sometimes during the work day. There was also sexual activity in the police station, as well as in Lee’s unmarked cruiser, according to Truesdell’s statements to Mello. Lee denied sexual contact in the station, but confirmed to Mello the pair engaged in sexual activity in his cruiser.

They had an on-again, off-again sexual relationship for about a year when Chief Mark Chase heard rumors about the pair. Chase conducted an internal investigation, speaking to each one separately. Chase, now retired, declined to speak in detail about the matter when contacted by InDepthNH.

“It was an employee issue I dealt with as chief,” Chase said.

Wilmot told Mello he didn’t know about the relationship between Lee and Truesdell until Lee told him. Lee went to his home soon after word about the relationship got to Chase, and Lee told his friend about the affair. 

“[Wilmot] told me that despite having a close relationship with [Lee], he was very upset with him for his actions,” the Mello report states.

Wilmot told Lee to tell the truth about the relationship to Chase. After Lee left his home, Wilmot then called Chase and told him that Lee was coming in to self-report the affair.

Chase told Mello he was concerned about a supervisor having an affair with a subordinate, especially in a small department. Lee had nominated Truesdell for the “Officer of the Year” award and wrote a glowing recommendation for her while they were conducting their affair.

During Chase’s interviews with Truesdell and Lee, both denied any sexual activity inside the police station, according to the Mello report. At the time, Chase was concerned about the department being negatively impacted by the relationship. He acknowledged he believed there were more “rendezvous” than the pair admitted and that he could have pushed harder in his questioning.

“Do I believe they told me everything? No,” Chase told Mello.

Neither Chase nor Wilmot knew about the cruiser sex, or the sex inside the station, according to the report. Nor did they know that Lee instructed Truesdell to lie about the relationship and wipe messages from her phone.

The 2019 internal investigation ended with Chase telling Lee he would be terminated for his conduct. Instead, Lee resigned from the Claremont Police Department within the coming days. Truesdell kept her job, but was reassigned out of the detective’s unit. 

But between the end of the Internal Affairs investigation and Lee’s resignation came a troubling incident. Truesdell took her children on a pre-planned vacation, and Lee entered her empty home without her permission, she said. Lee claimed to Mello that Truesdell had asked him to keep an eye on her house while she was away and told him where the key was hidden.

Inside the empty home, Lee took photos of himself in various stages of undress and texted those to her. He also texted her a video of himself masturbating on a pair of her underwear, which he left on her bed. 

This incident did not come to light until 2023, by which time Lee was the interim chief in Newport, soon to be the permanent chief. 

Lee and Truesdell continued their relationship for a time, but eventually they ended the affair. Lee got hired by Newport Police Chief Jim Burroughs in a part-time capacity to serve as a case officer reviewing reports. Truesdell struggled in Claremont, both professionally and personally. Her drinking was escalating, up to a bottle of vodka a night. She was also burned out from the work and felt she had a target on her back inside the department.

“I was a mess. I didn’t trust anybody in the department. I didn’t trust myself. Those were dark days,” Truesdell said.

Truesdell left Claremont, first for a job with the New Hampshire Liquor Commission. She was still seeing Lee at this point, and he coached her on how to successfully lie on the employment polygraph test in case they asked if she ever had sex while on duty.

The Liquor Commission job, which put her into bars for compliance checks, was a bad fit for Truesdell. After about a year, she got hired by Hinsdale Police Chief Charles Rataj on Lee’s recommendation. 

But Truesdell was dealing with PTSD, alcoholism, and a new set of stressful police incidents in Hinsdale. She was burning out and burning bridges. Clashes with her new chief brought things to a head.

“I got fired for insubordination for calling [Rataj] a fucking pussy,” she said.

While Truesdell’s career was bottoming out, Lee was rebuilding his. Burroughs told InDepthNH that Lee was hired as more of a part-time records clerk than a police officer. Having the talented Lee manage case files was an inexpensive asset for the department. Burroughs was aware of the affair with Truesdell from the pre-employment interview, and did not plan to put Lee back out as a police officer. 

“He was hired for a very specific purpose,” Burroughs said.

That changed after Burroughs retired, and in 2020, Wilmot was hired as the Newport chief. At that point, Wilmot transitioned Lee to a full-time status given the fact he was already working full-time hours in the department. Two years later, Chase retired in Claremont and Wilmot left Newport for the open chief’s position there. Interim Newport Chief Barry Hunter gave Lee more responsibility, and eventually Lee was named interim chief in 2023. Lee was under consideration by Town Manager Hunter Reisberg for the permanent job. Burroughs, then a member of the select board, told InDepthNH, “I shared what I could.”

Reisberg, who left Newport in July of 2023, did not respond to a request for comment. Truesdell said Reisberg had been the only person to take her seriously when she finally came forward in 2023, and she still does not know why he left.

“He was wonderful. He’s the only person who has ever been like, ‘holy shit, I cannot believe this happened to you,’” Truesdell said. 

Truesdell went to the Attorney General’s Office with everything, she said, and they declined to pursue an investigation.

“I never even got to sit down with them. I never met with anybody. I was absolutely blown off,” she said.

One of the troubling matters Truesdell reported to the Attorney General’s Office is the fate of her thumb drives. When Lee told her to erase evidence of their relationship from her phone, Truesdell first saved the data to a thumb drive she kept.

That drive was among about half a dozen drives she had on her desk in Hinsdale. Before she was fired in 2022, Truesdell was on leave from her job for weeks. Rataj told InDepthNH that the Hinsdale department was in turmoil at the time, and at some point Truesdell’s thumb drives needed to be reviewed.

“We found some information on the drive that belongs to the Claremont Police Department,” Rataj said.

Truesdell told InDepthNH she kept old Claremont reports on her thumb drives to use as templates. Chase drove to Hinsdale to retrieve the drives, and when they were returned the old phone data was erased. Rataj said he could not comment on anything found on the drives connected to Lee and Truesdell’s relationship.

But the Attorney General’s Public Integrity Unit took a pass on Truesdell’s allegations. Michael Garrity, spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, provided a prepared statement rather than provide an attorney to answer questions as requested.

“Speaking generally, the New Hampshire Department of Justice Public Integrity Unit reviews complaints to determine whether available evidence supports a criminal investigation; not every complaint meets that legal threshold. Some matters may be more appropriate for internal administrative review,” Garrity said in the statement.

“The Department of Justice maintains the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule but does not place individuals on it. Inclusion decisions are made by the Chief for that agency under constitutional and evidentiary standards, and an individual’s EES status may not be publicly disclosed during ongoing litigation.

“Because these matters involve confidential personnel and review processes, the Department cannot comment on any specific EES status until someone is placed on the public list pursuant to RSA 105:13-d,” Garrity said.

The Public Integrity Unit did contact Wilmot in Claremont with Truesdell’s new information. Wilmot said he was concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest, and spoke to city attorney Shawn Tanguay. It was then decided to hire Mello’s outside firm to investigate Truesdell’s new information.

Mello’s investigation found that both Truesdell and Lee lied during Chase’s 2019 investigation, and that they should both be reported to the Attorney General for inclusion on the EES. He found the accusation about Lee’s entry into Truesdell’s home un-sustained since there was no definitive proof that he did not have permission to enter the home.

Truesdell did not fight her placement on the EES. She told InDepthNH she knew that would be the end of her law enforcement career. Lee wanted to fight it, and was given a hearing in front of the Claremont Police Commission, which voted to accept the Mello report and report Lee for the EES.

Commissioner John Hunt told InDepthNH that Wilmot did send the Attorney General’s Office EES notification for Lee, and the Attorney General sent Wilmot confirmation they received the EES letter. 

Lee ended up filing a lawsuit against the Claremont Police Commission to overturn their vote. The lawsuit, among other complaints, alleged defamation by the commission for reporting him to the Attorney General. That lawsuit was resolved in February of 2025, when Sullivan County Superior Court Judge James Kennedy ruled that the commission did not err in agreeing with the Mello report findings.

“To be clear, and at the very least, the Commission had a basis to sustain the Mello Report findings that Plaintiff was untruthful relative to his on-duty sexual relations with [Truesdell],” Kennedy wrote.

Lee’s lawsuit was filed under seal, but the records are publicly available through the court’s information kiosk system.

But in the year since Kennedy’s ruling, Lee is still not on the EES. Garrity’s statement declined to address Lee’s EES status, saying he could not comment on pending litigation. Officers who are reported to the Attorney General for EES placement are able to bring anonymous lawsuits to stay off the list. It’s not clear if Lee has a “John Doe” action pending.

Truesdell has a new job outside of law enforcement. She’s in a stable relationship, and she’s sober. But she still has regret that she’ll never be a cop again, even though she knew it was over when she reported everything. 

“Honest to God, I loved being a cop. I’m a very socially awkward human being, if you will. There’s not many things that I do, places I go where I feel like that … the first time I walked into Claremont Police Department, I felt like I belonged. And I had never felt that way in my life,” Truesdell said. “I was for sure meant to help people.”