The Connecticut River Valley Killer /// Part 1 /// 636 | Forensic Files

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welcome to True Crime garage Wherever You Are whatever you are doing thanks for listening I'm your host Nick and
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get you some and that's enough of the business all right everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's
talk some true crime at least seven women stabbed and murdered a series of murders in the
Connecticut River Valley you suspect it was the work of a serial killer all were stabbed multiple times
times and that's why I'm here to look for results to have results to give those families an answer
34 years have passed since Jane barowski sped through the New Hampshire night pregnant covered in blood and stab
wounds Jan barasi was just 22 years old and several months pregnant and didn't know it that night but she may have been
a Serial Killer's only Survivor late in the evening of Saturday August 6th 1988 Jan barowski is driving home from
the county fair in Kean New Hampshire along the way she decided to stop and grab a soda for the remainder
of her drive she stopped at a convenience store in West Swansea the little store was closed but
no big deal there's a vending machine out front Jane pulls into a spot right in front of the
store by this time it's already dark out the parking area is small and not well lit there does not seem to be anyone
else around she got out of her car and walked up to the well-lit soda machine she put
in a couple of quarters made her selection and bingo the can drops to the open slot in the machine near her
knees she grabbed the can turns around and immediately notices that someone else has pulled pulled into the parking
lot a Jeep Wagoner parked right next to her car Jane returns to her vehicle through her rear view mirror she notices
the driver of the Wagoner walking around the back of her vehicle it's a man and he approached
Jane's open driver side door window he says something like hey is that pay phone working Jane starts to
answer when the man immediately grabs the door handle and opens the car door he grabs her and pulled her from the
vehicle as he's pulling her from the vehicle Jane screams and says to the man please don't hurt me I'm
pregnant now she's out of the car the two struggle during which the man accused her of beating up his girlfriend
and asked if she had Massachusetts plates on her car barowski responded that she had New
Hampshire plates Jane manages to break free from the attack she tries to flee the man chases after he grabs Jane and
then he stabs her 27 times the man then calmly walks back to his vehicle opens the door and gets in
then he drives off this is true crime garage and this is the true story of the still unsolved
case of the Connecticut River Valley killer at least seven women stabbed and murdered the series of murders in the
Connecticut River Valley you suspect it was the work of a serial killer all were stabbed multiple times
times and that's why I'm here to look for results to have results to give those families an
answer on a Wednesday night in October of 1991 I remember being a little boy sitting down to tune in to one of my
favorite television shows Unsolved Mysteries my favorite Mysteries back then were the Legends things like the
Bermuda Triangle and the yeti my least favorite Mysteries featured on the show were the Lost loves selfishly I thought
let these people find each other on their own time because this is my time one hour each week that I get to tune in
and be amazed and intrigued by the Mysteries out there in the real world many of them because of my young age I
was learning about for the very first time all with the great voice and delivery of Robert Stack to lead us
through each story now on the night of October 9th 1991 without any prior knowledge I was going to learn about
something much more terrifying than magnetic and frequency issues leading aircrafts to disappear in the western
part of the North Atlantic Ocean or some mysterious hairy aplike creature that inhabits the Himalayan Mountain range on
this night's episode Mr stack is schooling us all on the subject of serial killers the first mystery of that
week's show flashed on the screen with the bright blue letters the Bold blue word hit my screen and it read wanted
the title of the case was the Connecticut River Valley killer my first thought was well I might have a hard
time falling asleep tonight Stacks lead in was as follows police estimate that there may be as many as 100 serial
killers living among us on our streets and in our neighborhoods they are cruel and calculating choosing victims
indiscriminately with little or no remorse for their actions the overwhelming task for authorities is to
determine how how the serial killer thinks and hopefully learn where and when he might strike again one such
investigation is currently underway in New England since 1978 the bodies of seven young women
have been discovered within a 50m radius in the Connecticut River Valley along the New Hampshire Vermont border near
Route 91 police believe that six of them were abducted and taken to remote wooded
areas where they were murdered all suffered similar stab wounds most were found off
dirt roads none were sexually assaulted and police began to suspect that the murders were the work of the same
individual a serial killer pretty haunting scene you see Robert Stack walking through the woods with his
trench coat on it and I believe the comment was something like FBI believes that there's over a hundred serial
killers out there and you're like well if there's this this herial killer and he's responsible for 7even eight murders
then times that by 100 and you got 800 and some victims out there yeah and he's reciting a stat that was well
delivered for the time anyway so back in the 80s and the 90s one typical conversation that was always being had
about serial killers well how many are there and it was almost like you would think of them like Senators well there's
probably two in every state was the General thought and so that's how you come up with that number of 100 now
while Stacks narration was spoton as usual a few updates one today the estimated number of serial killers
walking amongst us just here the United States is between 350 to 500 another terrifying update here Captain the cases
covered in this segment of Unsolved Mysteries that aired over 30 years ago well they're still unsolved many of them
on the Cold Case shelves in Vermont and New Hampshire and the one that they call
the Connecticut River Valley killer has never been apprehended for these homicides nor has anybody else the
Connecticut River Valley killer is the name given to an unidentified American serial killer believed to be responsible
for a series of stabbing murders mostly in and around Claremont New Hampshire and the Connecticut River Valley
primarily in the 1980s yeah that's some scary statistics anyone that would like to view the unsolved mystery segment for
themselves this case was featured on episode four of season 4 of Unsolved Mysteries and that is currently
available to view for free on Amazon Prime yes I just watched it again this week we briefly discussed the attack and
the attempted murder of Jane barasi in today's trailer leading into this week's case she is interviewed on Unsolved
Mysteries for their episode as well her voice is disguised and she appears Only In the Shadows on the show to help
maintain her anonymity now keep in mind if she is as the show portrays the only living Survivor of this killer of women
well this is for not just for her safety number one and the safety of the case as
it stands because if they can prove that any of these cases are in fact connected
to each other or to the horrifying attack that took place and nearly killed Jane barasi some 34 years ago well then
she would have been Paramount to the prosecution in the state's case against the offender once identified arrested
and charged right a Vermont newspaper this is the Rutland Daily Herald did a follow-up article on the
show's coverage of this case now keep in mind at the time in the late 80s even into the early 90s this case had many of
the women in the area terrified and of course the case had the detectives perplexed nobody could really
agree if these cases were all connected or how many of them were connected amongst the cases that they had
outstanding the detectives had some leads but one thing that we are going to see in this case Captain is that the
remains of some of these victims were not located for a considerable amount of time this of course causing a major
issue for these investigations remember we've discussed this all the time here in the garage that time is the killer
time is the killer of evidence of witnesses of their memories what persons with key information in any case can
verify or even remember we just time does not help as it goes by these investigations well in this area too as
well as heavily wooded area New Hampshire Vermont area a lot of back roads a lot of places to hide bodies
here's a good summary of that follow-up article the headline was exciting and intriguing and it reads Mystery Show
leads to tip on i91 murder in fact the article states that the New Hampshire State Police received about 800 tips
from around the nation since Unsolved Mysteries aired their coverage of the case months earlier the article goes on
to state that the New Hampshire and Vermont state police are investigating crimes including the murder of Barbara
agnu a Norwich nurse who disappeared January of 1987 from a rest area off of northbound Interstate 91 near White
River Junction Barbara's body was found 11 weeks later 89 ft off of an isolated Road in Heartland police said her death
was caused by multiple stab wounds Barbara ago's murder at the time was one of seven unsolved homicides in the
Connecticut River Valley since 1978 now this article goes on to point out something very important to this
case and is stated as although police have not officially linked the killings they were portrayed as the work of a
serial killer on Unsolved Mysteries New Hampshire state police detective Sergeant clay young said quote that is
one Theory which we have investigated but have not fully endorsed he said the decision by the unsolved mysteres crew
to portray the killings as serial crimes probably made it more appealing to viewers quote it gave exposure to the
case it did generate phone calls from all over the country anything that keeps it in the eye of the public we welcome
end quote it's really hard to definitively connect these cases because because the physical evidence was so
there was so much Decay that we have a lack of physical evidence in these cases some of them are not found for weeks
months or even years after they disappeared and like the captain pointed out many of these victims are believed
to have been stabbed to death that gets a little complicated when you have such decomposition with some of these victims
to actually discern exactly what took place or how the victim may have even been killed let's get into the victims
here and some of the victimology in this case the short version of it is this that for roughly 10 years between 1978
and 1988 eight women were murdered in the Connecticut River Valley region that straddles the border of Vermont and New
Hampshire all of these victims are believed to have been stabbed many in a specific pattern across the upper body
and abdomen again that gets very hard to decipher in some of these cases because
of such levels of decomposition right two questions remain amongst others are all or some of
these victims connected to one killer or is one or multiple Killers still free the first one in the
series many consider this to be the first one is the unsolved 1978 homicide of Katherine milikin on October 24th
1978 Katherine milikin age 26 she was last seen photographing birds at the Chandler Brook Wetland Preserve
in New London New Hampshire her body was found just yards from where she had been
taking these photographs and it was determined later that she had been stabbed over 20 times she's one of the
cases Captain where she's last seen in this area her body's found not ter terribly far from where she's last seen
there doesn't seem to be any kind of threat that anybody else recognized at the time yet she's found and she's one
that is actually she's one of the few victims that were actually found relatively
quickly next that brings us to Mary Elizabeth kitley the details of her case are as such Mary kitley was last seen on
July 25th 1981 near Exit 13 of the Massachusetts Turnpike in Farmingham Massachusetts Mary had been dropped off
there by a friend and was then going to be hitchhiking to Waterbury Vermont this
is where she lived with another friend Mary was attending classes at the University of Vermont and at the time of
her death was working to get this education finish her schooling and go into a career sadly her body was found
on August 9th 1981 in the woods off of Unity Stage Road in unity New Hampshire the medical examiner was not able to
determine a cause of death because of the condition of the body so there's extenuating circumstances here Captain
we know that the circumstances surrounding her disappearance and her death are considered by law enforcement
to be suspicious and that's why this victim's name finds itself on this list and as a potential victim in this series
right but the complications in the condition of body did not allow the medical examiner to determine the cause
of death even though she's found relatively quickly notice that we have she's last seen July 25th and her body
is recovered August 9th well again like I said this is a breeding ground for serial killers this is a you have heavy
heavily wooded areas and then those areas which are not highly they're not highly trafficked
by by individuals and then you have a plethora of rodents and other animals that are going to get to these victims
the problem being with a lot of these cases and you take a look at them and when you dissect the case you start to
see similarities you'll see similarities with these victims where some of them were hitchhiking were known to hitchhike
and were known to be in the act of hitchhiking on the day that they were last seen and then you compound that
with the location of where the bodies are recovered from later and it looks like you have if not the same killer in
a lot of these cases you at least have someone with a relatively trite M Mo but a very
similar modus operandi picking up a hitchhiker picking up a stranger and then went discarding of the body in a
remote wooded area yeah I would define all these cases as crimes of opportunity but I believe this killer or
Killers is putting themselves in the right positions for those opportun those opportunities I think
you're spoton and and the experts would agree with you in this case captain that
you're exactly right these are mainly victims of uh crimes of opportunity Predator spots prey random procures them
whether it's snatch and grab talking them into a vehicle or showing some kind of threat gun or
threat and forcing them into to being captive now a captive victim and you're exactly right we often
in anything that we do we often create our own opportunities right and what you have here is very high probability that
if look I I'll go ahead and get it out of the way now we don't need to dance around it too
much I don't think that all of these cases are in fact connected to one killer I do believe however that several
of them are in fact the work of one individual and I think it gets a little difficult to to decide which ones belong
in that category and which ones don't but whoever whoever committed these crimes
is somebody that was out looking for somebody right I think that the the perpetrator of several of these
homicides was somebody that was out trolling in the area trolling near Interstate 91 for a good deal of time
for several years and you're right crimes of opportunity but the killer created their own Opportunity by
constantly be driving out by themselves trolling around in their free time and looking for a potential victim
that brings us to Bernice courtmanche that brings us to Bernice courtman she was only 17 years old she
was last seen alive around 3:30 in the afternoon on May 30th 1984 she was last seing hitchhiking on
Route 12 this is near Claremont New Hampshire she was working as an assistant at a nursing home part-time
while also attending High School course manie was a nurse's aid and she's last seen on the 30th of May 1984 she's
reported missing the very next day authorities said that her skeletal remains were found nearly two years
later so this was April 19th 1986 The Remains were discovered off of cat Hole Road in Newport her body was
decomposed an autopsy revealed that Ki had been stabbed to death Court man's case has been popularly
linked to these this series of crimes the unsolved killings of the Conneticut River Valley killer but Cold Case
officials don't believe that all of the cases that we are going to discuss are connected the thing that they keep
pointing out though when they anytime that they say we don't believe that all of these cases are in fact connected
they usually followed up with a statement that's similar to this saying that the possibility can't be fully in
investigated until one of these cases gets solved which makes sense so you have this this span of and depending on
where you go for your information or who you talk to you get a varying degree of
how many victims are we actually talking about that could be in this series and unfortunately we're going to be telling
you the same thing that we we can't look at all these cases and say they're all 100% connected no ifs ANS or butts but
again I feel strongly that many of these cases very likely are connected so those
numbers we keep seeing saying eight women or 10 women but really those numbers vary captain from as few as
seven victims all the way up to potentially 13 or 14 victims I would actually argue that it could be double
that and the reason why is because like I said this is a these are grounds for every hitchhiker that we have in this
area that we then found the remains of how many of these hitchhikers were never found and so yes we have eight bodies
that are found now we got to figure out if these bodies are connected in any way
shape or form but how many victims did they not find how many missing persons within
this time frame and roughly this area and again law enforcement is putting these crimes within 50 miles is the
hunting ground for this individual or multiple individuals even further than that so if you then figure out that a
couple of these cases might be connected and you got to put them in this group over here group a and then you connect a
couple other of the other victims and they're connected and put them in group b and now we got two killers how many
victims are not found in that area and I think here one thing that I paid close attention to Captain was more so where
the victims were last seen or what evidence suggests to where the abduction took place or where whatever went wrong
started to occur because and this is going to sound very cold of me to say this but this is
nothing new here in the garage we talked about this way back when we first covered the Tony Anthony Muny case we
had seen in several cases in the 80s where victims were either abducted or something went down that which led to
their death their murder in Columbus or the Greater Columbus area but it was not
uncommon especially in the 80s it's still unfortunately not uncommon today to then find a Columbus victim to
find their body in Delaware County north of Columbus right north of Franklin County and
sometimes unfortunately you have a situation where you find bodies in similar areas over a great length of
time or a period of time and it doesn't necessarily mean that all the cases have
to be connected sometimes unfortunately again this is going to sound cold but sometimes there's just good places to
put a body and therefore people do it well and it's an easy place because of the terrain you just to get lost yeah
and you see that in the Unsolved Mysteries coverage too when it shows Robert Stack and then later shows the
psychologist who helped police on the case them walking through this wooded area and very quickly when you're
looking at this segment and you see them in the woods you go yeah I kind of get it why somebody would place the body
there and that you have these cases where the remains are not found for months or even years we have two years
almost two years in this last case that we just talked about in Bernice's case and you understand why it took so
long for the body to be recovered there's nothing that suggests that anybody held Bernice kche for a long
period of time right it's very likely that unfortunately she was killed shortly after she was abducted or
shortly after she hitchhiked and got into the wrong vehicle and so it you you can look at the terrain as youve pointed
out and understand that there are a reason why a killer or somebody that killed somebody would place a a victim
there it's in the hopes that they're not recovered or if they are recovered that
time is the Killer in evidence has been destroyed due to time that leads us now to Ellen freed from Newport she was age
26 when she was last seen talking on a pay phone she was talking to her sister on the pay phone outside of Leo's Market
this is a convenience store small convenience store in Claremont this took place July 22nd
1984 Fred's sister would later tell investigators that at one point during their phone
conversation her sister Ellen told her that a car had driven by and out of fear freed had checked to make sure that
the engine of her own car was still working that this car had spooked her that had drove by I'm getting the
feeling here that she probably saw the vehicle more than one on one occasion if she's checking to make sure that her
engine is still working and then noting that to her sister there's a bunch of things in this case or these cases that
bother me or give law enforcement trouble one is just lack of eyewitnesses but this case in particular
out of all of them really haunts me because CU we've all been there when we've been somewhere or we feel like a
car is following us or something doesn't seem right seems like in some of these cases like especially with The
Hitchhikers they were hitchhiking and got into the wrong vehicle mhm but in this scenario she's well aware of what's
happening and she's well aware there's something not right going on here and then she goes
missing yeah and her case reminds me Captain of Jane Bar's case the Survivor and it also reminds me of
another one of these cases I can see some connections in some of these cases and some some
similarities as we go through these now she's last seen last heard of talking to her sister
on this pay phone then a few days later Ellen Freed's car was found two miles from the Leo's Market where she was on
the phone with her sister her skeletal remains were found in a wooded area next to the Sugar River this in Kellyville in
the Great Kellyville area of Newport New Hampshire now her remains are not recovered until September 19th
1985 so again we have a situation this is over a year later after she was last heard from alive and well the autopsy
revealed the cause of death to be undetermined again because the the skeletal remains were in such a state of
decomposition that it didn't really give proof positive evidence as to how she was killed however the circumstances of
her disappearance and the findings at the scene where her body was later recovered were consistent with Ellen
having been sexually assaulted before her death the case has been treated as a homicide her body was found in the same
wooded area as Bernice kmane we also have the unsolved homicide of Ava Morse her remains were found in
Unity on April 25th 1986 she was 27 years of age at the time that she went missing she was last seen on the morning
of July 10th 1985 hitchhiking on Route 12 near North Charleston New Hampshire the medical examiner determined that
Morris had been stabbed to [Music] death [Music] this show is sponsored by better help do
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us here in the garage cheers to everybody and Happy Holidays happy holidays Merry Christmas everybody have
a safe wonderful holiday season I want to give a quick shout out here Captain to Dennis and Jack and beautiful Parts
Unknown Dennis checked his Spotify year in review and he has listened to over 29,000 minutes of True Crime Garage in
2022 that's over 483 hours of Captain and Colonel goodness for the earballs big balls so
if you have listened to more then Dennis tweet at me a screenshot at tcgn I I want to hear from
you I'm searching for the garage's most Avid listener of 2022 so big cheers to denn out there and his dog Jax who I
imagine Jax has got to be in great shape as well as Dennis if if the if all of these minutes listening were conducted
during dog walking sessions this now Captain brings us to one of the more difficult victims in
this series for me anyway and this is the victim Linda Moore who was aged 36 and
I'm going to go ahead and throw this out here right now her murder her the details surrounding
her murder and the speculation on her case is is enough to cover one or two episodes on her own and this is the one
to me where I quickly look at it and have a very difficult time lumping it in with the others this case is quite
different in my mind simply because she was killed inside of her house in seon's
River Vermont on April 15th 1986 so we know she wasn't out hitchhiking we know that she
wasn't found you know somebody out trolling around and finds a a potential victim at a rest area or on a pay
phone this woman was found killed in her own home we know where her body was found and her body you know it wasn't
like she was at a pay phone and that that her body was found in the woods like some of the other victims but
this is what I think makes it so difficult for law enforcement about connecting these cases is because if you
have these killers and we've see this all the time these killers could have a loop oh
well I I drive to this gas station because they have a pay phone and I see if anybody's at the pay phone and then I
go to this rest stop and I see if anybody's there and then I drive along the freeway and see if anybody's
hitchhiking and see if if anybody's car broke down right and is it possible that
this killer stops at a convenient store and and sees her and follows her back to
the house that's a possibility too the good thing for the investigation in her case is that you have a good deal more
of evidence and information to really try to hone in on what exactly went down and who is responsible for her homicide
where you don't have that in many of these other cases so in the case of Linda Moore look that afternoon her husband is
the one that found her stabbed to death inside their home and the there there's this tragic story this true tragic story
of not only of this wonderful lady this mother of two who was killed in her own home but they tried
to okay so her husband finds her in the afternoon he drove home from work discovers his
wife has been murdered and inside their home the police are now on the scene and
they're looking through the evidence and trying to figure out what happened but at the same time they are scrambling to
stop the school buses so the school buses are out in the area and they're driving the kids home from school that
day Linda Moore's two children were on a bus in route to their home they were scheduled to be dropped off at any
minute that's awful and of course the father and police nobody wanted the children hopping off the bus walking
right into this murder scene and and seeing their mother and this condition they hadn't even removed the body from
the scene yet and the police tried their damnedest but this is one of those additional tragic stories that
comes along with these stories that we tell each week that they kept stopping bus after
bus they couldn't get a car to the bus that actually had Linda Moore's children on it in time the kids showed up and
were dropped off at the driveway of their home now fortunately by that time of course we already have their father
on the scene he's the one that discovered Linda having been stabbed to death but the grandparents had also been
notified and were on on the scene and able to intercept the children put them in their car
and unfortunately deliver the bad news then and there to them at that time so they didn't have to witness anything
unnecessarily but it just one of those weird stories where police did their damnest to try to spare further
trauma now prior to being stabbed Linda Moore was sunbathing on her lawn several people were seen
outside of Linda Moore's household including a mysterious dark-haired man with cheap sunglasses I I should be
clear with cheap glasses there's nothing to indicate that they were sunglasses and a blue napsack although Linda Moore
was not left in the woods like the other victims her body she was stabbed in that
specific pattern shown in other stabbing victims in the valley profiler John philpin who we talked about he's the
psychologist that assisted police in this investigation and others related to the Connecticut River Valley
homicides he believes that it's possible that the killer had been interrupted which prevented him from then moving the
body to a more secluded area or more secluded location like we found with some of the other victims the other
thing that gets difficult in these cases Captain is trying to determine where the
victim was killed I'm of the belief that it's it's possible that some of the victims were killed where they were
found or near where they were found but like you had said earlier there's also the possibility in one two or several of
these cases they may have been killed in a vehicle or killed elsewhere and then transported to the secluded area for the
purposes of hoping that the bodies would not be found and like we said there's not a lot of
eyewitnesses that are connected to these cases so we don't have a vehicle that we're looking at that connects all these
cases together after the murder of Linda Moore this brings us to what many believe to be the last of the deceased
victims this is Barbara agnu who was 38 when she vanished agnu was a divorce a with a young son she was working as a
nurse at a cardiac unit Barbara was last seen at the Stratton Vermont ski area where she had been skiing with her
friends in January of 1987 her V vehicle this is a BMW was found at a Interstate 91 Northbound rest
stop in Hartford Vermont on the 10th this is just a few miles from her home on March 28th her
body was found and it was determined that she had been stabbed to death in the rural area of Heartland Vermont she
too displayed that v-shaped stabbing pattern this case is is really weird to me too because where her B where her
vehicle is found is just a few miles from her home so police friends and family have been baffled as to why
Barbara agnu would stop her vehicle that night she's heading home and as said her car was later
located just a few miles from her home now some have suggested that look the snow was heavy that night maybe she
decided to take a break from driving maybe she wanted wanted to throw out some garbage from her vehicle or even
make a phone call at a pay phone at that rest area but or the simplest thing is that she had to use the restroom yes
that that's on that list of of speculation why why did she stop again many people have said but if she if it
wasn't an emergency why stop at all when the vehicle she's just a couple miles from her home you know 2 three four more
minutes she's at home I look at this and wonder if we have a completely different
situation in this case that we might not have in some of the other ones I wonder
if she had been forced off of the road or someone someone tricked her into stopping somewhere along the way and
that could this be a situation where the killer or Killers moved her vehicle after yeah very possible but like I said
and and it's scary to think about and once we get to Jane's case because Jane stopped
um cuz in Jane's case she stopped to get a a soda at a vending machine so to just
to think about this we have a killer that is going in some kind of pattern and he's checking the areas that people
hitchhike at he's checking convenience stores he's checking for people that or uh their cars have broke down on the
side of the road he's checking rest stops he's checking pay phones he's checking places that are vending
machines and it's probably there's there's probably some kind of high that he's getting just by going into these
locations knowing that he might be finding a victim well then once you see somebody at these locations well how
many people are around is their opportunity for you to pounce yeah and I think you're exactly right here in this
situation Captain I think that it's very similar to some BTK activity you know after Dennis Raider
was arrested and even tried and convicted and and and he pled guilty to a lot of
charges one thing that was weird was they the experts and the authorities kept pointing out to him you know you're
one of the the stranger serial killers because you unlike most of them stopped killing well first of all very few
serial killers killed for the length of time that right Dennis Raider did and so
naturally there are going to be times when they stop killing and stop is a weird word to use because it's more like
a pause right it's a pause between homicides and Raider pointed out he said look no I never stopped killing I made
not have actually killed anybody after this this last homicide but the Act of Killing involved so many other things
for him and a large part of that was trolling and driving and and the excitement that he got looking for
victims or his projects as he would later call them and you may have a similar situation here where this guy
doesn't ever truly stop killing he just didn't acquire a victim he was always out driving and looking around and like
you said had his spots where he would like to go these hot spots that he's checking for a potential victim and a
pay phone given the time frame and given the cases that we've brought up and the
victims that we've brought up payones seem to be wrapped up into a lot of this guy's trolling or the methods that he's
using the other thing going back to this idea where maybe you have have this one
case where Barbara anu's car may have been moved later to throw off investigators I think you can go back to
the Ellen freed case as well age 26 she's on the pay phone talking to her sister they find her vehicle a couple of
miles from that Leo's Market that convenience store where she was last known to be alive and
well you know did did this killer find a way how do you find a way if Ellen gets
back in her vehicle and starts to drive off when they find her vehicle there's no signs that there was a struggle in
the vehicle there's no signs that the vehicle wasn't working she had mentioned to her sister hey this car has spooked
me that's driven by it spooked me so much I was double-checking to make sure that my engine still works so I can get
in the vehicle now could she have run into car trouble and they weren't able to trace that when they found her
vehicle yes that could be a situation but if her car was working fine as she indicated to her sister then how does
she get back in her vehicle she's already spooked she's already said that to her sister spooked enough to double
check that the engine worked how does then somebody trick her out of her vehicle or get her out of her vehicle to
me it almost looks like a situation where she may have never got back into that vehicle and whoever got a hold of
her did it before so and then chose to move her vehicle because they when they spotted their victim they spotted her on
the pay phone they wanted to distance that vehicle or finding Ellen freed from that pay phone yeah or the attacker
attacks her in her car and takes off in her car uh then doubles back on foot to get his vehicle and you're right captain
that could be the scenario because we know with Jane Bar's case our surviving victim that she was taken from her
vehicle so yes we could see a similar Mo in some of these other cases all right I
think it's now time this is the part of the case captain that I like to call the
great debate the reasons for and reasons against that these cases are in fact all
connected now a great website New England un solved blog spot made a list for similarities between the cases as
well as a list of a case against a serial killer offender in these cases let's go ahead and review those
now for similarities between cases the first that they know is that all of the cases except for critchley's
definitively involved a knife attack and yes this is true we see the choice of weapon here in most of these cases but
one we have a knife attack that is involved four of the cases had a specific stabbing pattern across the
upper body and abdomen the other cases may have also displayed this pattern but were too decomposed to tell although an
attack to the upper body was present yeah so similar injuries this is interesting this is a little more
specific than just victim after victim being stabbed to death this is a specific stabbing pattern across the
upper body and abdomen which is found in at least four of these cases could have
been present in some of the other cases but due to decomposition we can't tell third on the list Captain is with
the exception of Linda Moore and Jan barasi all of the victims were killed in a wooded area that they had been
transported to whether they were transported there and then attacked or if they were
attacked and then transported afterward that is certainly Up For Debate but what
we do know is that with Jane bok's attack her attacker attacked her in that parking lot in that small parking lot of
the little convenience store that was closed and essentially just left her there to die and as you pointed out may
have even thought that she was close to death when he left her and then we have Linda Moore who we
point out is very different just simply for the fact that she was killed and found in her
home some of the experts in this case share the opinion that Linda Moore in that attack in her home that the killer
may have been interrupted and some even say that the attack on Jan barasi who survived May simply have been
interrupted as well they go on to point out the two sets of victims were found in very close proximity to each other
that's one thing that look we pointed out that sometimes you just have a good location where people tend to for a lack
of better word dump bodies or try to hide bodies but one thing that we cannot move off of is the fact that two
sets of victims were found very very close to one another it's almost like a Green River Killer type situation where
he was dumping and discarding of victims in clusters right one thing that's problematic for the the
investigation is that three of the victims were known to be hitchhiking at the time that they were last seen two of
the attacks this is in the freed and the barasi attack definitively involved a pay phone and were near payones at the
time of the attack we know that Fred was on the phone with her sister and then she vanishes we know that in the barasi
attack the killer or the attempted killer for whatever reason used the phone as a way to communicate with the
victim saying hey does that phone work what we don't know is with some of the other cases it is possible that a
pay phone or soda machine or a stop at a convenience store may have been an element in some of the other cases the
agnu case the moris case the kitley and the courtmanche cases that's certainly a
possibility just because we don't know exactly when our victim was abducted or how right that makes sense and as the
captain pointed out earlier and John filbin points out with his assessment of these
cases that he speculates that it's possible that the killer would regularly check these areas looking for
spots along his route his trolling route that that include payones that include soda machines or places where victims
May potentially stop at a rest area he John Philbin goes as far to suggests that it would be interesting to learn of
who would service these machines the payones or the soda machines the vending machines yeah or similar to like the BTK
I believe BTK or Dennis Raider got his job with ADT because it gave him the opportunity to hunt when he was
working and so like you said is somebody servicing these payones or servicing these vending
machines or possibly even cleaning these locations rest stops or convenience stores or or even maybe
trash pickup or multiple different jobs that would allow this individual to be trolling or hunting for a victim and
you're right with BTK that job with ADT gives him Insight gives him Intel into people's homes and their concerns with
their own safety while they're at home and that's very interesting it's it's like on the job training right
where he's out there he's getting a job and and doing a job that he's getting paid for but at the same time he's
getting Intel and he's getting insights into things that of his Fantasy Life of his cubed life of the cubed version of
Dennis Raider the one that wants to gain access to somebody's home and then kill whoever he finds inside we
also don't know how large the hunting ground was because there could be a difference between the
hunting ground and the dump sites so there could be a a smaller area where this person can go out oh I'm I'm
going to tell my wife I'm going to the store real quick to to pick up a couple items but I can drive around for about
30 to 40 minutes without her suspecting that I'm doing this I think he would get
off on the hunting as much as he did the actual killings I think you're right and
I think that there's plenty of evidence to suggest that you're right in this case here they also list a case against
a Serial offender and here are some of the items they suggest that would say hey these are not all connected we're
not looking at one killer who's committed all of these crimes so and they point out that in the past 20 years
the Vermont and New Hampshire State Police have officially declared their opinion
that these attacks could not all be related one case to be made was that all of the women LED very different
Lifestyles had different appearances and were a variety of Ages they go on to point out the serial
killers often work within a particular group such as young women with blonde hair another concern was the timing even
if a few attacks were related and occurred within a short amount of time what could explain the long Gap between
the killing of milikin and then kitley but then a very abbreviated period of attack between the other women
to sum these attacks off the timeline seemed unrelated to the three attacks that occurred in just one year and two
months in Claremont New Hampshire finally one must question why so many different suspects have Arisen with
different physical attributes the person believed to be involved with Linda Moore's attack was described as having
dark hair and then in some of these cases we have a suspect that is described as having blonde or light
hair I think that the this list here is a little problematic I I like that it was put together and to be honest with
you if someone asked me to create such a list I would put together the exact same
list of a case against a serial killer however we keep referencing BTK and that's not by mistake that's because you
and I or I and you and hopefully I'm not talking at a turn here Captain but from
our conversations about this potential serial killer here right I've already stated I do not think that all of these
cases are connected I think that likely some of them are the the result of one single killer
however it's not by mistake that we're referencing BTK because if you look at the extended
profile of this individual it aligns with that of somebody like Dennis Raider BTK somebody that is not just fits into
the general public but is a part of the public that is a part of the community could be a father could be a husband and
a father probably works a job may maybe even attends church and is a member of their Community an active member in
their Community I think that there's a chance chance for that here I also think that there could be reasons that would
explain a way why you have these weird gaps in the killings so we know with Dennis Raider he took gaps in his
killings and a lot of it had to do just with what was going on in his regular life in his normal person life right
that that life got in the way of his Hobby and his hobby was hunting and killing and we know that with Gary
Ridgeway the Green River Killer that happened with him as well you know he went through a couple of different
marriages and when he was in love and in the early stages of his marriage he wasn't out hunting and killing and we've
also reviewed other serial killers and other offenders that only offended when their wife was
pregnant or when they were triggered by something some event in their normal life they were laid off from a job and
and because they had nothing to do for 6 weeks they managed to kill two people in
a six week window where they had only killed one person a year leading up to that or what we we' seen with a lot of
different serial killers is they they kill somebody and then they tell themselves they're not going to do it
anymore and they're not going to succumb to these urges that they have so that it
was just a mistake it was a one-time thing I'll never do it again I lost control right so this whole to me it's
poppycock every I'd say not every but I would say the majority the majority high
percentage of serial killers have gaps in their killings so to me it's a poppycock statement I think where I fall
is a little differently than than where you're at I think that traditionally the
the killers that I have reviewed they tend to kill and then they increase the frequency in which they kill but at the
same time they're they're also going off the rails they're losing control of themselves while they might be getting
better in the early stages with the first handful of victims right eventually they start to go off the
rails and they're losing control of themselves and start to create a whole lot of mistakes and then they get caught
the problem with applying that here is if in fact the serial killer is responsible for the majority of these
cases we're talking about a killer that has has not got caught right somebody that is different from those that do get
caught so I think when you review this list of a case against a potential serial killer you could easily take
serial killers that we've reviewed here on the show and otherwise and look at this and say yes while all of these
items certainly do present a case against a serial killer you could then argue okay well here's three examples or
five examples of why it fits with this this other type of killer that we know about that we caught that that we are
fully aware of who he was what he did and who his victims were right but I I'd make an argument look I agree with you
yes there's a lot of killers that you can look at that they kill somebody and then then there's a Time Gap then they
kill somebody else and there's a Time Gap and then eventually those gaps become small smaller and smaller that
happens a lot of the time but I would still argue that before that urge and and we've heard it
from dmer we've heard it from Bundy some of these guys go look at some point it just got to the point where I'm
not going to fight it anymore I am what I am and I'm just GNA do this and I'm just G to go full full
bored but I would argue before that moment that you could find gaps in all of all of their killings that brings us
to another interesting question are the victims that we discussed are they all the potential victims of the Connecticut
River Valley killer now if you do some digging on this case there are at least five other cases that some people
include as part of this series there's one still unsolved case way back in 1968 then there's an elderly woman in
198 2 there's even a male victim in 86 we have unidentified remains found in 1989 and then we have the Cold Case of
Carrie Moss of New Boston who went missing in 1989 and then her skeletal remains were found almost exactly two
years later a cause of death in her case has never been determined due to decomposition her case has been treated
as a homicide though now one thing here Captain due to time constraints and due to the fact that we already agree as do
so many others that when you review this list of seven or eight victims and it gets hard to quickly discern who is
connected and who is not it seemed a little rambunctious to me to try to dissect all of these other
five cases U the male victim seems to be an outlier where doesn't seem to fit just because of the victimology and then
the first one 1968 may just be way too early in the series and then you have the
complications with the cases in 1989 uh with the the unidentified remains and then the cause of death unknown in the
carry Moss case well again we don't know if these killings just stopped or if this killer relocated and for armchair
detectives out there that want to do a little further digging themselves the New Hampshire Department of Justice has
a victim map that is helpful it's not limited to the river valley case but if you go to dj. nh.gov
you can navigate from there to the interactive victim map and a victim list for New Hampshire homicides and missing
persons cases should someone want to troll that map and see if any other New Hampshire homicides fit into this
potential series [Music] want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage so much more to get
to in part two so stick around why don't you and until then be good be kind and don't
[Music] litter [Music] is it possible to predict the unpredictable could surgeons use use a
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The Connecticut River Valley Killer /// Part 1 /// 636

Part 1 of 2

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For about ten years between 1978 and 1988, eight women were murdered and the bodies scattered in wooded areas in the Connecticut River Valley region near Interstate 91 along the Vermont and New Hampshire border. Many of the victims were stabbed to death. Some stabbed in a specific pattern across the upper body. With some of the victims a cause of death could not be determined due to decomposition. Was this the work of a serial killer? Many think so. Join us in the Garage as we take a look at this strange case and review some of the suspects. A very special thank you to Jane Boroski for joining us and talking about her experience as the only known survivor of this vicious killer. Check out Jane’s podcast - Invisible Tears.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses the unsolved Connecticut River Valley murders and the potential connection between the victims and a serial killer.

Key points

The Connecticut River Valley Killer. A series of murders in the Connecticut River Valley remains unsolved, with at least seven victims.
Jane Barowski's Survival. Jane Barowski survived a brutal attack, potentially by a serial killer.
The Unsolved Cases. Exploring the chilling connections between multiple unsolved cases of missing women.
Linda Moore's Tragic Murder. Linda Moore was found murdered in her home, raising questions about her killer's identity.
Barbara Agnu's Mysterious Disappearance. Barbara Agnu vanished after skiing, her body later found with a puzzling connection to her car.
The Great Debate. Exploring the connections between various cases and the possibility of a serial killer.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Please don't hurt me, I'm pregnant.

Jane Barowski's plea during her attack.

5:47WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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