๐ฆCatherine Vaughan “Cathy” Alexander Millican๐ฆ
She was an accomplished young woman who graduated high school with honors.
On October 24th, 1978, at around 5:30 p.m., Cathy was 26-years-old when she was at the Chandler Brook Wetland preserve on Route 11 in New London. She was taking pictures for the New Hampshire chapter of the Audobon society. She failed to returned home that night. The next day, only yards away from where she was last seen, her body was found sprawled out. She died of stab wounds to the throat, which were followed by stab wounds to her lower body. She had been stabbed a total of 29 times.Theft didn't appear to be a motive. Her belongings were scattered on the trail. as well as her car, parked out by the state highway were undisturbed. There was one article that i read that stated her car was a Volkswagon rabbit or the Volkswagon was seen in the area. Another vehicle seen in the area was described as a "grey car."
๐Mary Elizabeth “Betsy” Critchley๐
Mary, who was taking classes at the University of Vermont and planned on hitchhiking to Waterbury, Vermont, where she lived with a friend. She was as last seen alive July 25th, 1981, near Exit 13 of the Massachusetts Turnpike in Framingham, Massachusetts. A friend dropped Mary off at the exit. Her body was found August 9th, 1981, in a wooded area off of Unity Stage Road in Unity. The only thing missing was her sandals and napsack. The medical examiner was unable to determine the cause of Mary's death because of the condition of her body. However, authorities said the circumstances surrounding her disappearance and death are suspicious.
๐ฅBernice Courtemanche๐ฅ
On May 30th, 1984, Bernice was 17-years-old when she was last seen at approximately 3:30 p.m. She had left her nurses' aide job at the Sullivan County Nursing Home in Beauregard Village and was hitchhiking in Claremont. She was on her way to see her boyfriend eight miles away in Newport. Bernice never arrived and was reported missing the following day. Her remains were found by a fisherman just off Cat Hole Road in Newport on April 19th, 1986. She had died from stab wounds to the neck. Bernice also had an injury to her head.
๐ฉ⚕️Ellen Ruth Fried๐ฉ⚕️
Ellen's skeletal remains were found in a wooded area next to the Sugar River in the Kelleyville area of Newport, New Hampsire on September 19th, 1985. The autopsy revealed the cause of death to be undetermined because of the skeletal remains that were found. However, the circumstance of her disappearance and the findings at the scene were consistent with Ellen having been sexually assaulted before her death. The case has been treated as a homicide.
Ellen's and Bernice's bodies were found 1 mile apart from each other.
๐ฉ๐งEva Marie Morse๐ฉ๐ง
She was a 27-year-old single mother of a 10-year-old daughter.
In the morning on July 10th, 1985, 27-year-old Eva was last seen hitchhiking on Route 12 in North Charlestown, New Hampshire. It was 7 a.m. and she had told her supervisors at work that she was going home sick. Before Eva left she made a quick phone call. Later, a co-worker of Eva's told police that she said she was going to visit a one time lesbian lover. A motorist reported that he gave her a lift to the Charlestown/Claremont line. That was the last known sighting of Eva.
On April 25th, 1986, her body was discovered by loggers in a wooded area next to Sugar River in West Unity, New Hampshire. The medical examiner determined that Morse had been stabbed to death in the neck, her head nearly severed.
Eva's body was found about 500 feet from where Mary's body had been discovered in 1981.
๐นLynda Marine Moore๐น
Lynda was born on April 20th, 1949 in Brattleboro, Windham County, Vermont to Harold Frederick Marine and Ruth Alice Staples Marin.
On April 15, 1986, Lynda was home alone doing yard work in Saxtons River, Vermont. That evening, her husband returned home to find his wife's dead body in their kitchen. She had more than two dozen stab wounds to the her throat and abdomen. Lynda also had defensive wounds on her hands and arms. By looking at the crime scene, it was obvious that Lynda and fought her attacker. Lynda's husband was a suspect, but was swiftly cleared.
The house was searched, road blocks were set up around the area. Neighbors were questioned for any details they could give. Numerous witnesses reported having seen a slightly stocky, dark-haired man with a blue knapsack lingering near Moore's home the day of the murder. The man was thought to be between 20 and 25 years old, clean shaven, with a somewhat round face, and wearing dark-rimmed glasses. The following year, a composite sketch was released.
Her case is still opened and her son thinks it's solvable.
On January 10, 1987, 38-year-old nurse Barbara Agnew was returning from a skiing outing with friends in Stratton, Vermont. She never showed up for work. Three days later, her wallet and blood stained clothing were found in the dumpster at a gas station of White River Junction. In the evening on January 14th, a snowplow driver encountered her green BMW at a northbound I-91 rest stop in Hartford, Vermont. The door was cracked and there was blood on the steering wheel. Her skis were missing but her boots and poles remained.
On April 15, 1986, Lynda was home alone doing yard work in Saxtons River, Vermont. That evening, her husband returned home to find his wife's dead body in their kitchen. She had more than two dozen stab wounds to the her throat and abdomen. Lynda also had defensive wounds on her hands and arms. By looking at the crime scene, it was obvious that Lynda and fought her attacker. Lynda's husband was a suspect, but was swiftly cleared.
The house was searched, road blocks were set up around the area. Neighbors were questioned for any details they could give. Numerous witnesses reported having seen a slightly stocky, dark-haired man with a blue knapsack lingering near Moore's home the day of the murder. The man was thought to be between 20 and 25 years old, clean shaven, with a somewhat round face, and wearing dark-rimmed glasses. The following year, a composite sketch was released.
Her case is still opened and her son thinks it's solvable.
๐ฟBarbara Agnew๐ฟ
She worked part time at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital.
There was a heavy snowstorm in the area during the night of Barbara's disappearance, and she was a mere 10 miles from her home. Her reasons for pulling into the rest stop have puzzled investigators.
On March 28, 1987, hikers found Barbara's body near an apple tree in a remote part of Hartland, Vermont. She had stab wounds to the neck, inflicted from behind. She also had gashes to the lower abdomen.
A criminal psychologist, John Philpin, was called in and interpreted the facts of the case. He came to believe that all the woman, except one, were abducted by the killer and taken to remote places. He liked to scare them and to be in control. He feels like he owns them. He also is probably a loner.
๐คฐJane Boroski๐คฐ
Around midnight on August 6th, 1988, she was 23-years-old and 7 months pregnant and on her way home from a county fair in Keene, New Hampshire. It was hot and muggy and Jane decided to stop and get a soda from a vending machine next to a closed convenience store in West Swanzey. When she returned to her car she noticed of a Jeep Wagoneer parked next to her. Through her rear-view mirror Jane saw the driver of the vehicle walking around the back of her vehicle. The strange man approached her and inquired on whether the pay phone was in working order. He then yanked open her car door and tried to pull her from her vehicle. They struggled and the man pulled out a knife and forced Jane out of the car. The man then claimed that Jane had beaten up his girlfriend. She denied this and tried to run, but he chased her and stabbed her twenty-seven times. Jane's attacker then got in his vehicle and left her to die. As he left he drove passed her, staring her straight in the eyes.
As the blood rushed out of her body, Jane managed to crawled back to her car and to drive to her friend's house two miles away. On her way to her friend's house, Jane was terrified when she noticed that she was right behind the attacker's car. When she got to her friend's house, the occupants of the house came running to her aide. Her attacker performed a U-turn and slowly passed by the house as Jane was being helped before he sped away into the night.
Jane was treated at the hospital, where it was determined that the she had a severed jugular vein, two collapsed lungs, a kidney laceration, and severed tendons in her knees and thumb. Fortunately, the baby was unharmed. Two months later, Jane gave birth to a healthy baby girl, who later was diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy.
As a result of the hypnosis, Jane was able to provide authorities with a composite sketch of her attacker to authorities. She was also able to recall the attacker's car and part of the license plate number. She believed that it was a '75 to '85 Jeep Wagoneer and that the license plate had the numbers "6 6 2". Authorities were able to narrow down the vehicles to approximately 350. Despite this, they were unable to determine who the attacker was.
Who Is The Killer?
๐♀️ Heidi Martin๐♀️
On May 20th, 1984, Heidi was 16-years-old when she went for a jog in Hartland, Vermont, on Martinsville Road. The next day, her body was found in a brook off of a logging road behind Hartland Elementary School. She had been raped and stabbed to death. Her body was found about a mile away from where Barbara's body was found.
21-year-old Delbert C. Tallman confessed to the crime and was tried; however, he later recanted his confession and was acquitted.
In 1996, in an unrelated case, Tallman was convicted of two counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child. In 2006, Vermont authorities issued the warrant for his arrest after he failed to respond to a routine registered letter from the sex offender registry that was sent to his last known address on Park Street in Springfield.
Tallman, was born in Claremont, New Hampsire, but grew up in the White River Junction area.
In October of 2010, Tallman was arrested after he stepped off a bus from Florida with his fiancรฉe and her three children in tow. He was taken into custody without incident. Tallman said he had spent the past five years in jail in Florida and had just been released on before hopping the bus back to Vermont.
There is no evidence presently available to the public that Tallman was involved in any of the other cases and little evidence, besides his confession that ties him to Heidi's murder.
There is no evidence presently available to the public that Tallman was involved in any of the other cases and little evidence, besides his confession that ties him to Heidi's murder.
Tallman would have been 25 years old in 1988 when Jane Boroski was attacked. She did hand to hand combat with her attacker and stated his age at between 35 and 40 years old.
๐Michelle Marie Ashley Nicholaou๐
She was born on October 18th, 1966 to Rose Young.
Michelle then met a man named Michael Nicolaou. His birth father, Edward Stafford, was a registered sex offender for molesting children. When Nicolaou was 3-years-old, his mother divorced Stafford due to extreme cruelty. Nicolaou's mother remarried a man named Rudy, who would hit Nicolaou.
Nicolaou grew up in Long Island. While high school he distinguished himself as a wrestler and had a black belt in Karate. In 1978, Nicolaou enlisted in the Army. He served as a helicopter pilot and received two Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars and two Bronze Stars for his service in combat. However, also while in the army, Nicolaou often would leave camp without permission in order to seek out the enemy and engage them in one on one knife fights. Then, in 1970, he and seven other crew men where charged with murder and attempted murder for strafing civilians in Mekong Delta. This means they allegedly flew really low in their helicopter and repeatedly attacked the civilians with bombs or machine gun fire. The charges were dropped after six months due to insufficient evidence. However, Nicolaou was released from active duty and sent home.
Feeling disgraced and bitter, he filed a lawsuit against the United States Army. Nicolaou also was plagued by nightmares, flashbacks and angry outbursts. He received psychiatric treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs for his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Michelle's family weren't to fond of Nicolaou. They found him unsettlingly quiet and creepy. He was very possessive of Michelle and controlling. Allegedly, Nicolaou was so controlling that he wouldn't even let Michelle shave her underarms. Michelle's family also didn't like the fact that her personality changed and she became paranoid.
Michelle soon became pregnant and she allegedly married Nicolaou. They then moved to an apartment in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Michelle gave birth to Joy in 1986 and Nick in 1988.
Even though Nicolaou rarely let Michelle out of sight, she was finally able to confide in her mother that she was afraid of Nicolaou and wanted to leave him. In August of 1988, Michelle left and took her two children with her. Nicolaou was very angry about this and confronted various relatives of Michelle, demanding to know her whereabouts. Michelle told her mother that she was afraid for her life and that if Nicolaou ever accomplished his threats, that she wanted the children rescued from his possession.
Nicolaou eventually tracked Michelle down and convinced her into coming back home with him. Soon afterwards, Michelle expressed her desire to want to leave Nicolaou again. Michelle told her family that she planned to leave Nicolaou once and for all after her sister's wedding in November of 1988.
Michelle's sister's wedding came and went and after not hearing from Michelle for weeks, her mother went to the couple's apartment to check up on her. The apartment was deserted. The Christmas tree was up but the presents were unopened. The refrigerator was full of spoiled food. The baby books that Michelle meticulously and religiously filled in were left incomplete. The family filed a missing person's report, but Michelle was never found.
In 1992, Nicholaou was working at Pete's Restaurant in Boca Raton. Nicholaou and the children had been living in the stolen car.
In 1996, Nicholaou was an in-patient unit of the post traumatic stress disorder clinic at a Miami veteran's hospital. He had been under treatment for a year.
In 1997, he and the kids stayed with a friend in Dade City. Nick, then 9, got into a fight with the boy next door. Nicholaou later pleaded no contest to torching the neighbor's car and got three years probation.
In 2001, Michelle's mother hired private investigator, Lynn-Marie Carty, also known as the "Reunion Angel." Carty went to work right away, tracking Nicolaou's movements across the country. Sometimes he had the children with him, and sometimes he left them in the care of relatives or friends. Nicolaou had told some people that Michelle was dead and others he told that she had run off with a drug dealer.
Aileen M. Bowman Nicolaou (Alina Torrens)
She was a a Cuban fireball who charmed every man she met. Her only flaw was that she had poor judgement. Aileen had a daughter named Terrin Lee Bowman.
"I love you. Life will bring us again, trust that."
Terrin was born on Mar 21st, 1985. Her father was Gordon Bowman and she had a sister named Vicki and a brother named Danny.
Tampa relatives learned Aileen was recovering in a hospital, and brought her to her father's Walnut Street home.
On the night of December 30th, 2005, Nick's father bought some beer for him and dropped him off at a friend's house.
On December 31st, around 3 a.m., a friend saw Terrin heading home to her aunt's house in Town 'N Country. It was believed that Nicholaou held Terrin hostage in her bedroom for at least five hours as her aunt and uncle slept. Terrin's room was usually tidy, but cigarette ashes peppered her room, along with marijuana residue, pills and fiberglass tape.
Just after noon, when Aileen's sister, Audrey Leon, opened the door on Walnut Street, a terrified Terrin rushed in and hugged her tightly. Wearing a black trench coat, Nicholaou came in right behind Terrin with a .30-caliber M-1 carbine rifle and a semiautomatic pistol concealed in a guitar case. He went straight to the dinning room and confronted Aileen. Audrey told Nicolaou to get out, but he wouldn't listen. When Aileen asked him what he was going with the gun, Nicolaou said he was going to shoot himself.
As Audrey scrambled to get her two children out of the home, call her father and call police, Nicholaou and Aileen walked toward a bedroom. Aileen calmly told her sister that it would be ok, that they were just going in the bedroom to talk. Audrey tried to get Terrin to leave with her, but Terrin either didn't want to leave her mom or was too afraid to go and followed Nicolaou and Aileen in the bedroom.
Carty had a nagging feeling and decided to look deeper into Nicolaou's past as well as searching the Internet for unsolved killings in the Northeast, where the family was living when Michelle disappeared. Carty googled "New England 1988 Murder." This led her to articles about the Connecticut River Valley Killer. Carty noticed that the victims had been nurses. She remembered that Nicolaou's first wife had been a nurse and that Nicolaou's mother had worked in a hospital.
Susan had married Nicolaou in 1978. The two divorced in 1982. Nicolaou had taken off with their daughter shortly she was born. Susan was terrified of Nicolaou. A year before the divorce Mary Critchley disappeared off I-91.
When Carty looked in the baby books that Michelle had left behind, it placed Michelle and Nicolaou at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital on Thanksgiving 1986. In January 1987, Barbra Agnew, who was a nurse at that hospital, disappeared a few miles from Michelle's parents' Vermont home where Nicolaou and his family spend Christmas and the month after.
In August 2006, one of Westover's aunts wrote to Barbra Agnew's sister with the information originally given by Westover to Minnon. Agnew forwarded the letter to Carty, who ran Nicholaou's name by Westover's aunt, who stated that the named "sounded familiar."
Carty believes that authorities are in possession of the names Westover provided to Minnon, and that Westover may have become acquainted with Nicholaou at a local VA hospital.
When Carty studied the testimony of Jane Boroski, she discovered that the attacker used a martial arts grip. Carty remembered that Nicolaou had a black belt in Karate and also wore dark rimmed glasses like the man in one of the composite sketches of the Connecticut River Killer.
Carty also talked to Michelle's relatives who said that they remembered in the 1980's taking Christmas presents out of a station wagon with wood paneled sides. Jane had told her attacker's vehicle had wood panels.
When Jane was attacked, it was only four Months before Michelle disappeared and Nicolaou left the area. The Connecticut River Valley allegedly stopped after Jane's attack.
The people that had been in Nicholaou's life said that he was in the business of buying, selling, and delivering large quantities of cocaine in Virginia and up and down the east coast to New England for over a decade, including during the time frame the Connecticut River Valley murders occurred. A witness rode with him in the Jeep Wagoneer to work. She found his collection of bondage photos in a closet at the construction site. The collection of pictures were taken over time. He was pictured in the bondage photos sometimes with facial hair, other times without, sometimes with glasses, sometimes without, with many different woman who appeared drugged and out of it.
Carty contacted John Philpin, who agreed that Nicolaou could be the killer. She also called the New Hampshire State Police and spoke with Detective Steve Rowland. It was the first time Rowland had heard of Nicholaou, and Carty's information revived the investigation. She also suggested the police might try to match Nicholaou's DNA with evidence from the crime scenes.
Nicholaou is now one of their three strongest suspects. As far as i know, his DNA still sits in a police storage locker waiting to be tested.
Other Possible Victims Of The Connecticut River Valley Killer.
JoAnne Dunham
On June 11, 1968 at approximately 7:10 a.m., 15-year-old JoAnne, was last seen while walking from her home at Raiche Mobile Homes in Charlestown, New Hampshire. She was on her way to her school bus stop, She never came home from school. Her parents learned that she had never even made it on the bus that day and filed a missing person's report.
JoAnne's body was found at approximately 4:15 p.m. the following day on a roped-off dirt road on Quaker City Road in Unity NH approximately 5½ miles from where she was abducted. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Some think that JoAnne might have been the first victim of the Connecticut River Valley Killer due to the geographic proximity to the killer's later crimes.
Sylvia Edwina Waite Gray
Sarah Hunter
Sarah was born on April 13th, 1953 in Greenville, Pennsylvania to Albert L. Hunter and Mary J. Hunter. She was the daughter of a doctor and had two sisters and two brothers. Sarah grew up playing golf at a country club, and learned to love and respect the game there. She believed golf courses were places to teach children about life, how to behave around adults and how to learn and enjoy competition. She was passionate about teaching, especially teaching kids.
Sarah graduated from Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa. She spent her summers in Florida working on the staff of the Ben Sutton Florida Golf School in Sun City Center. She was a member of the Ladies Professional Golf Association.
Sarah's car was discovered parked at a gas station off Route 7A. Her purse was found sitting upright on a rock by two boys a few weeks later. Two months later, her remains were stumbled upon in a brush at the edge of a cornfield in Pawlet, Vermont on Thanksgiving day. She had been strangled. At the time, her death was being reviewed by Vermont and New Hampshire authorities as being possibly connected to other unsolved homicides in the area.
Steven Hill
Carrie Moss
She was restless and independent.
Carrie loved being outdoors and also loved animals. She raised chickens and bunnies as well as taking riding lessons at Betsy Moody's stable.
Carrie's family never stopped looking for her and doing everything they could to try to find her. They even hired a psychic.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI'm currently researching the muder of Cathy Millican and I can't find any of the original newspaper articles online. You wrote that you read some, can I ask you where you found them?
Thanks
Oh my gosh that was quite awhile ago. You can email me at Rbnprov@aol.com and i'll see what i can do to help.
ReplyDelete