Gary Schaefer

What the record shows

Gary Lee Schaefer was a Springfield, Vermont, auto mechanic who was convicted of the 1983 kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of 11-year-old Catherine "Katy" Richards and was the prime suspect in the killings of two other Springfield girls between 1979 and 1983. Under a plea agreement he confessed to the 1981 murder of 12-year-old Theresa Fenton, and he was charged with, but never tried for, the 1979 murder of 13-year-old Sherri Nastasia. Sentenced to 30 years to life, he spent most of his sentence at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, where he died on November 26, 2023, at age 72, according to the Vermont Department of Corrections.

According to the Wikipedia article, Schaefer was born in 1951 in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Springfield, where his family belonged to a Christadelphian congregation. He served in the Navy and, after returning to Springfield, worked as a mechanic at a local car dealership and lived in the family farmhouse. Acquaintances described him at the time of his arrest as quiet and religious; a forensic psychologist who studied the case, Tom Powell, told WCAX in 2023 that Schaefer presented himself as a fundamentalist Christian and was able to deceive the people around him.

The first of the three deaths later linked to him was that of Sherri Nastasia, who disappeared from Springfield in late August 1979. The Wikipedia article says she was last seen getting into a man's car and that her skeletal remains were found near a highway rest area in Rockingham several months later and identified through dental records. On August 31, 1981, Theresa Fenton was abducted while riding her bicycle in Springfield and beaten in a wooded area; she was found alive but died the next day at a hospital in Hanover, New Hampshire, according to the Wikipedia article. Both investigations stalled without an arrest.

On April 9, 1983, Katy Richards was walking with a friend in Springfield when a man forced her into his car with threats; the friend ran for help. Richards was found dead in woods near the town the next day, about 18 hours after she was last seen, WCAX reported. The friend's description and other evidence led police to Schaefer, then 31, and he was arraigned on kidnapping charges in Windsor County District Court on April 11, 1983, according to the Brattleboro Reformer. Investigators also tied him to the November 1982 abduction of a 17-year-old Brattleboro girl, who had escaped from his car in White River Junction.

Schaefer was charged with the Richards murder in June 1983 and initially pleaded not guilty. He later changed his plea to no contest and, under a plea agreement, was convicted of kidnapping, sexual assault and second-degree murder in the Richards case and of kidnapping in the 1982 abduction; he was sentenced to 30 years to life, VTDigger and the Department of Corrections reported. VTDigger reported that the agreement also required him to confess to the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of Theresa Fenton, and the Wikipedia article says the deal protected him from prosecution in her death. He was never charged with that killing.

Prosecutors did charge Schaefer with first-degree murder in the death of Sherri Nastasia, but the charge was dropped after a judge ruled that a confession he had given police was improper evidence because it was obtained under hypnosis. VTDigger dates the dismissal to 1985; the Wikipedia article cites a Brattleboro Reformer report from April 1986. The Nastasia killing has never been resolved in court. Prosecutor William Bos explained the limits of the earlier investigations by saying a man could not be charged with murder merely because one crime resembled another, WCAX reported.

Vermont has no maximum-security prison, and in May 1985 Schaefer was transferred to the Kentucky State Penitentiary under the Interstate Corrections Compact. VTDigger reported that although he had served his minimum term, he was not eligible for release because he had not completed required treatment and rehabilitation programs. Just after midnight on November 26, 2023, staff found him experiencing an acute medical event during a routine cell check; he was taken to a hospital, where efforts to save him failed. Corrections officials said the death did not appear suspicious, and the state Defender General's office said it would conduct its own review.