The Connecticut River Valley Killer

Case background and investigation

The Connecticut River Valley Killer is the name given to an unidentified serial murderer believed responsible for at least seven killings of women along the Connecticut River, which forms the border between New Hampshire and Vermont, between 1978 and 1988. The victims were attacked within a roughly fifty-mile corridor near Interstate 91, and most were stabbed repeatedly. Because the murders crossed state lines and county jurisdictions, and because the forensic technology of the era was limited, the cases were never definitively connected by physical evidence, and no one has ever been charged.

The first widely linked victim was 27-year-old Catherine Millican, found stabbed at least twenty-nine times near the Chandler Brook Wetland Preserve in New London, New Hampshire, on October 24, 1978. In 1981, 37-year-old Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" Critchley vanished and was later found slain. A cluster of killings followed near Claremont and Newport: 17-year-old Bernice Courtemanche disappeared in May 1984, 26-year-old Ellen Ruth Fried in July 1984, and 27-year-old Eva Marie Morse in July 1985. The violence then crossed into Vermont, where 36-year-old Lynda Moore was stabbed roughly twenty-five times inside her Saxtons River home in April 1986, and 38-year-old Barbara Agnew was found slain near Hartland in January 1987. Two of the victims were recovered within about a thousand feet of one another near Kelleyville, New Hampshire, one of several details that convinced investigators the killings were the work of a single offender who knew the rural back roads of the valley.

The case's most important witness is Jane Boroski, who was 22 and seven months pregnant on the night of August 6, 1988, when a man attacked her at a convenience store in West Swanzey, New Hampshire, stabbing her twenty-seven times. Boroski fought back, drove herself for help, and survived; her daughter was later born safely. Her description of the attacker and his vehicle produced a composite sketch that remains central to the investigation. After her attack, the string of killings appeared to stop, leading some investigators to believe the perpetrator had died, was imprisoned for another crime, or had left the region.

Over the decades, investigators have weighed several suspects. In 2006, private investigator Lynn-Marie Carty proposed Michael Nicholaou, a Vietnam veteran who murdered his wife and stepdaughter before killing himself in 2005; Boroski, however, later said she did not believe he was her attacker. Gary Schaefer, a Vermont man convicted of a separate 1980s killing, has also been discussed. In May 2024, New Hampshire's cold case unit searched a property in Newport belonging to a longtime person of interest, renewing public attention. Despite advances in DNA analysis and forensic genetic genealogy, the Connecticut River Valley Killer has never been identified, and the murders remain officially unsolved, among the most enduring mysteries in New England crime.