Rita Bouchard
She was born on November 29th, 1929 in North Providence, Providence County, Rhode Island.
On January 31st, 1947, 17-year-old Rita was last seen alive when she left work at 5:30 p.m. at the Rhode Island Fabrics Company. She usually worked from 3 p.m. until 11 p.m., but she had told her foreman, Albert Degryse, that she was feeling ill and was going to see the doctor. She was then going to visit her mother, who was a patient at the state tuberculosis sanatorium at Wallum Lake where her father died eight years earlier.
Rita did not see her doctor nor did she go to Wallum Lake. She also never return to her room at the home of her aunt at 949 Mineral Spring Avenue, where she had been living with her brothers and sister. All whom were wards of the state, on visit from the State Home and School. Rita's family assumed she had gone to spend the night with a girl friend.
The next day, a man named Joseph Curry was walked down, what was called at the time, "Lover's Lane." Lover's Lane was a path along the Ten Mile River in Pawtucket. He found Rita's blood-soaked body. She was lying on her light gray coat in a thicket-enclosed clearing behind the Notre Dame cemetery. Her throat had been slashed from ear to ear, and she had been stabbed 30 times in the back, breast and neck. Though 13 wounds were counted on Rita's back, including two deep gashes between her shoulder blades, only three holes were found in the back of her coat. A tree near the body bore freshly inflicted “hatchet marks”, which are still there to this day.
There were no signs of struggle at the scene and Rita's blue print dress, brown and white saddle shoes and yellow bobby socks were not disheveled in any way. Her glasses that she always wore and a handbag containing $40 were missing, but she was still wearing her gold wristwatch.
When Rita's family heard the description of Rita over a radio news broadcast Saturday afternoon, they called the police immediately.
The medical examiner stated that there were no signs of rape. He also believed that the murder weapon was a stiletto-like knife. Police theorized that Rita was killed in a vehicle and then place in the clearing where she was found.
The investigation was on. When police questioned the factory foreman where Rita worked, he told investigators that he suspected that Rita's claim that she had an illness was a ruse. He thought that maybe she had a last minute date. This is what investigators were assuming as well, since she had been dressed in such nice clothes. This theory got more fuel when 20-year-old Armand Lemos came forward. He said that he was supposed to have a double date with Rita and her 15-year-old sister, Mildred, on the night of Rita's disappearance. He said the sister's never showed.
When police questioned Rita's best friend Theresa Patenaude. She gave authorities the name of a man that Rita was afraid of. The man in question was 35 years old with a tattoo of a woman on his forearm.
Rita’s aunt was questioned as well. She said that Rita had confided in her that she feared a man she had been dating, and many times expressed the idea she would die a violent death. I'm assuming that this was the same man that Theresa had been talking about.
Police could find no link to her known boyfriends.
A bus driver said he drove a girl resembling Rita to a cafeteria near the Main Street bridge at 5:40 p.m. Friday. Another bus driver who knew Rita said he saw her get into a car in downtown Pawtucket about 6 p.m.
The trail went cold until 18 days after Rita's murder. While walking with friends by Slater Park near an entrance to the heavily wooded Ten Mile River reservation, an eight-year-old boy was kicking the grass at the edge of a sidewalk by the corner of Armistice Boulevard and Parkside Avenue. This was the far end of the “Lovers Lane,” less than a half mile from the crime scene. His foot hit an object, a knife. Its blade was eight and a quarter inches long and was stained red on both sides. When the medical examiner looked at the knife, he stated that the double-edged blade fitted the three puncture holes in Rita’s coat.
Two months later, 17-year-old Eugene Raymond Patenaude was arrested with “carnal knowledge” of an 8-year-old boy. Eugene was Theresa Patenaude's brother and another close friend of Rita's. Eugene and Rita had also previously dated. Eugene also had many brushes with the law and worked at the same factory Rita did, until he took a leave of absence in the middle of January 1947.
Eugene was immediately put under intense questioning. He first insisted that he had been in downtown Pawtucket between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on the Friday before the murder. After 72 hours of relentless interrogation Eugene said, “Alright, I’ll tell you the story.”
Eugene claimed that on the Friday afternoon, the day before Rita’s body was found, he went to the Rhode Island Fabrics Company to ask the foreman if it would be alright to come back to work on Monday. He left at about 3:15 p.m.
He said that he then went to downtown Pawtucket, where he entered the Capitol Theater at about 4 p.m. At about 7 p.m. He said Rita coincidentally came and sat down next to him. They talked for five minutes and then left the theater and walked up Main Street to Collyer Park at the junction of Main and Mineral Spring Avenue, where they sat down on a bench.
They had been there only a few minutes when a car with yellow registration plates drove up and the driver addressed Rita by name. She went over and spoke to the man, then called to Eugene to come over to the car, and finally persuaded him to get inside.
They drove to the entrance of Slater Park on Armistice Boulevard. Eugene told them he wanted to go back downtown, so they drove him back and dropped him at the Capitol Theater. As he got out, the driver asked Rita, “Do you want to go home or go back to the park?”
Eugene thought Rita replied she wanted to go back to the park. When they drove away, he got a cup of coffee and then started to worry about Rita. Shortly after 8 p.m., he hopped a trackless trolley and went back to the Slater Park entrance where he found Rita, alone, sitting on a bench, and crying.
He asked her, “What’s the matter?” and she slapped his face then got up to walk way. Eugene followed her to a nearby bus stop, and asked her again, “What’s the matter?” This time she slapped his face and kicked him twice in the groin. Eugene said this is when his mind went blank.
When Eugene came to, he was lying on the ground in the woods with a girl’s body beside him. After asking twice, “Is that you, Rita?” he saw a knife on the ground, got up, and, following a path out of the woods by moonlight, he took the trolley and bus back to his home, arriving there shortly after 10 p.m.
It wasn’t until a week after Rita died that Eugene had a dream in which the incidents he now described to police came back to him, where after he woke up and realized that what had happened “was real.”
Police took Eugene to the park and had him retrace his steps from the story he had spun. His path and description of things that happened that night were “packed with inconsistencies.”
His description of the knife, did not answer the description of the blood-stained dagger found at the corner of Armistice and Parkside weeks earlier.
When asked how Rita’s body lay on the ground, Eugene indicated her head was pointed toward the river, when actually it was at a right angle to the river when discovered by police. The spot where her body was found was marshy, and the mud was at least two inches deep. Eugene was asked that since he had been lying down in the mud he must have soiled his clothes. Eugene replied that he only had a couple of leaves on his coat.
Rita had no mud on her shoes corresponding to the mud surrounding the place where her body was found, and so they had ruled out that she walked even a short distance in the woods. Police also decided that since Eugene only weighed 90 pounds, he wouldn't have been able to carry Rita through the underbrush, even if a car did drop them close by.
Another thing that didn't match, the medical examiner placed Rita's time of death no earlier than 6 a.m. Saturday morning; at least eight hours after Eugene said he woke up in the woods. And, when Rita’s body was found at 2:40 p.m. Saturday afternoon, there was no knife anywhere to be found
Eugene was deemed crazy and wanted public attention. He was admitted to the Charles V. Chapin Hospital where is was held in the mental ward. At first, Eugene was cooperative, neat, calm and helpful. Occasionally he complained of headaches. During the last two weeks of his stay, however, he became irritable and showed feelings of hostility toward some of the medical staff. He refused to obey the nurses, and was reluctant to go through the occupational therapy shop, saying that he thought his old rheumatic fever was beginning to flare up again. He also expressed the idea that he was being held as a prisoner.
Doctors came to the conclusion that Eugene was a clinical “moron” and defective delinquent, with a psychopathic personality. But, as they could neither prove nor disprove his statements to police. He was at last discharged from the hospital, and remanded to the custody of the Juvenile Court for his previous charge.
Shortly after Rita’s death, her aunt and uncle were evicted from their home, and Rita’s brothers and sister were placed out into foster homes and institutions.
Rita's case remains unsolved.
