The Story Of This Unsolved Series Of Murders In New Hampshire Is Truly Chilling
Fortunately for all of us, New Hampshire is one of the safest states in the nation, and most of us worry more about encounters with wildlife than with criminals. But horrifying murders can occur in even the most surprising places, and the Granite State is not immune. In the 1980s, the Connecticut River Valley was terrorized by a serial killer who murdered at least 7 victims, and the identity of the killer has never been found. Have you heard this horrifying story?
The Connecticut River Valley, straddling New Hampshire and Vermont, is usually a peaceful place where neighbors live in rural harmony. But in the 1980s this community was shaken to its core by a series of grisly murders of women.
The pattern first started to emerge when three young women disappeared from Claremont. Their bodies were later separately discovered in the woods near Kelleyville, and the evidence that remained pointed to death by stabbing. During that period of time, a woman was brutally stabbed to death inside her home in Saxtons River, Vermont.
After those four murders, investigators looked back to earlier cases in 1978 and 1981 that fit a similar pattern (young woman who disappeared and whose bodies were found in the woods), suspecting that the same culprit was to blame in all of those cases.
Eerily, one of the women who disappeared from Claremont had used a payphone in the town to place a late night call to her sister on her way home from a shift at the hospital where she worked as a nurse. While in the car, she remarked to her sister that a strange car had been driving back and forth. After that call, she never made it home.
In 1987, another woman disappeared on her way home from a ski trip. Her car was found at a rest stop just 10 miles from her home, with blood on the steering wheel. Her body was found several months later.
Thirty years later, the case remains unsolved – investigators followed a few leads and theories, but they all ended in dead ends. Three other murders from that time period may or may not have been connected. The Upper Valley has moved on from the crimes, but the mystery and horror surrounding the Connecticut River Valley Killer lingers to this day.
