Heidi Allen

Case background and investigation

Heidi Marie Allen, 18, worked at the D&W Convenience Store at the junction of State Routes 104 and 104B in New Haven, a town in Oswego County, New York. According to CNY Central, she opened the store alone at about 5:45 a.m. on Easter Sunday, April 3, 1994. At about 7:55 a.m. the store was reported to be unattended. She was last seen wearing a gray Syracuse University sweatshirt and white sneakers.

WRVO reported that hundreds of volunteers, police officers and military personnel searched for her, without result. Some months later, brothers Gary and Richard Thibodeau were arrested and charged with kidnapping. They were tried separately. Gary Thibodeau was convicted in June 1995 and sentenced to 25 years to life. Richard Thibodeau was found not guilty that September.

Gary Thibodeau maintained his innocence throughout his imprisonment. In 2014 his federal public defender, Lisa Peebles, filed a motion to vacate the conviction, citing what she described as newly discovered evidence that three other men were responsible, and arguing that material had been withheld from the defence at trial, including information that Allen had acted as a drug informant. Around the same time investigators searched the site of a collapsed cabin in the town of Mexico, New York. Oswego County District Attorney Greg Oakes said no evidence had been found to suggest a wrongful conviction. None of the three men named by the defence was charged in the case.

After more than a year of hearings, an Oswego County judge denied the request for a new trial in 2016, finding the new evidence not credible enough. The appellate division agreed to hear an appeal, and the case reached the New York Court of Appeals. On June 14, 2018, that court ruled 4-3 against a new trial; the majority described the new evidence as uncorroborated hearsay, while the dissent called the original trial evidence not overwhelming.

Gary Thibodeau died on August 12, 2018, at Coxsackie Correctional Facility, aged 63, after a chronic lung illness. His lawyer said a planned federal appeal would not go ahead. Richard Thibodeau died in early January 2024, aged 77.

Heidi Allen has never been found. CNY Central reported that the Oswego County Sheriff's Office has kept her missing person case open and continues to ask for information. Her family marked the 30th anniversary of her disappearance in April 2024 with a vigil at the New Haven Fire Department, where the first vigil had been held in 1994.