The Connecticut River Valley watershed encompasses over 11,000 square miles including the longest river in America’s New England region. From 1978-87, the bodies of seven women, all stabbed to death, were discovered within a fifty-mile radius near Route 91 along the valley’s southern-central Vermont-New Hampshire border.

In August 1988 a man attacked and stabbed a pregnant woman at a remote rest stop in Winchester, New Hampshire, but she survived.

No arrests have been in the murders of any of the “Valley Victims” or on the attack on the expectant mother. Many believe the acts were committed by the same man.

Seven Women Were Found Murdered In The

Connecticut River Valley

The first victim of the suspected serial killer is believed to be twenty-seven-year-old Cathy Millican, who worked in the marketing department for Addison Publishing. After leaving work on October 24, 1978, she was seen photographing birds at the Chandler Brook Wetland in New London, New Hampshire, ten miles northeast of her Sunapee home.

The following day, Cathy’s body was found in a wooded area only a few yards from where she was last seen. She had been stabbed approximately thirty times in her abdomen and neck.

Cathy Millican

Thirty-seven-year-old Betsy Critchley, a student at the University of Vermont, planned to hitchhike the two-hundred miles to her Waterbury, Vermont, home after being dropped by a friend near Exit 13 of the Massachusetts Turnpike near Framingham on July 25, 1981. On August 9, her body was found in a wooded area off Unity Stage Road in Unity, New Hampshire, approximately eighty miles from where she was last seen hitching along Interstate 91 near the Massachusetts/Vermont border. Investigators believe she was also repeatedly stabbed, but the official cause of death could not be determined.

Betsy Critchley

Around 3:30 p.m. on May 30, 1984, Bernice Courtemanche, a seventeen-year-old high school student and part-time nurse’s aide, was seen walking in her hometown of Claremont, New Hampshire, likely destined for New Hampshire Route 12, a north-south state highway, to hitchhike to her boyfriend’s home in Newport, twelve miles to the east. She was missing for nearly two years when a fisherman discovered her remains near Newport’s Sugar River on April 9, 1986. Her throat had been slit, she had been stabbed multiple times in her chest, and she appeared to have been beaten on her head.

Bernice’s boyfriend, Toby Colby, was cleared of involvement in her disappearance and murder.

Bernice Courtemanche

Two months after nurse aide Bernice Courtemanche’s disappearance from Claremont, another nurse vanished from the only city in New Hampshire’s Sullivan County following an early morning phone call made from a payphone at Leo’s Market.

Leo’s Market

Claremont, New Hampshire

Twenty-seven-year-old Ellen Fried, a supervising nurse at Claremont’s Valley Regional Hospital, had phoned her sister, Gretchen, after getting off work at approximately 2:00 a.m. on July 20, 1984. In the course of their roughly hour-long conversation, Ellen mentioned a car was repeatedly circling the parking lot making her uneasy. At one point, she left the phone to check on her car, a 1967 Chevelle. She returned after a few minutes and told Gretchen everything was fine. They spoke for a few more minutes before hanging up.

The following day, Ellen did not arrive for work and her car was found abandoned on Jarvis Road, a few miles from the payphone. The doors were locked and her purse was inside.

Ellen Fried

Fourteen months later, on September 19, 1985, a body was found in an isolated wooded area along the banks of the Sugar River near Kellyville, eight miles east of Claremont and only one mile from where Bernice Courtemanche was found seven months later.

An autopsy identified the remains as those of Ellen Fried.  Like the three earlier presumed victims of the Connecticut River Valley Killer, she had been stabbed multiple times. Unlike them, she appeared to have also been sexually assaulted, but an autopsy could not definitively confirm so.

Ellen Is Also Found Murdered

On July 10, 1985, ten days short of the one year mark of Ellen Fried’s disappearance from Claremont, New Hampshire, twenty-seven-year-old Eva Morse vanished approximately ten miles to the north.

An inspector and assembler with the J.H. Dunning Corp. of North Walpole, New Hampshire, Eva, like Betsy Critchley and Bernice Courtemanche, disappeared while hitchhiking. She was last seen on Route 12, presumably seeking a ride to her Charlestown home, seven miles south of North Walpole, after getting off work. Her remains were discovered by loggers nine months later on April 25, 1986, sixteen days after Bernice‘s body had been located. The locale was several miles from Route 12 in the woods near Unity, only five-hundred feet from where Betsy Critchley’s body had been found five years earlier.

Eva Morse had been stabbed multiple times in her chest and neck, and her throat had been slit.

Eva Morse

Thirty-six-year-old Lynda Moore was murdered on April 15, 1986, six days after Bernice Courtemanche’s remains were found and approximately ten miles from where Eva Morse’s remains were found ten days later. Lynda had been stabbed twenty-five times, consistent with the manner in which the other women were killed, but if, as many believe, she was the next victim of the suspected serial killer, he had changed tactics: she was killed during an apparent home invasion.

Lynda was last seen at about 2:00 p.m. doing yardwork outside her rural home between Saxtons River and North Westminster, Vermont, near Route 121, near the New Hampshire border. Approximately an hour later, her husband, Steve, found her bludgeoned body in their living room when he returned home from work. The home showed no signs of forced entry or ransacking, but Lynda appeared to have fought violently with her assailant.

Stephen Moore was cleared of killing his wife.

Lynda Moore

Several of the Moores’ neighbors recalled an unknown dark-haired man with a bright blue knapsack lingering near the home several hours before Lynda’s murder. Appearing between twenty to twenty-five-years-old, the man had a slightly stocky build, was clean shaven, and wore dark-rimmed glasses.

A composite of the individual produced no substantive leads.

A Composite Of

Lynda Moore’s Possible Killer 

On January 10, 1987, thirty-eight-year-old Barbara Agnew, a nurse at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, went skiing with friends at Stratton Mountain, in Winhall, Vermont. At 10:00 that evening, despite a heavy snowstorm, she began the seventy-five mile drive to her home in Norwich, Vermont. Several days later, a snowplow driver found Barbara’s abandoned green BMW at a northbound Interstate 91 rest stop in Hartford, Vermont, only five miles from her home. The driver’s side door was open and blood was splattered across the steering wheel and back seat. No one else appeared to have been in her car; Barbara had likely willingly stopped at the facility to use the restroom.

Many of Barbara’s personal belongings were soon found, also bloodstained, in a rest stop dumpster. Two-and-a-half months later, on March 28, her body was found beneath an apple tree in a wooded area near Advent Hill Road in Hartland, Vermont, twelve miles from the rest area. She had been repeatedly stabbed in her chest and neck and had several defense wounds, indicating she had fought will her killer.

Barbara’s former husband, Dr. Kenneth Olsen, was cleared of her murder.

Barbara Agnew

Six of the seven murdered women were found in wooded areas; the exception was Lynda Moore, who was killed in her home. Six of the seven victims are confirmed to have been stabbed multiple times and to have had their throats slit. The seventh, Betsy Critchley, is also believed to have been murdered in the same manner. Betsy, Bernice Coutermanche, and Eva Morse were last seen hitchhiking. Ellen Fried may have been raped; none of the other women were.

The only loose connection found between any of the women were that Bernice Coutermanche was a nurse’s aide and Ellen Fried and Barbara Agnew were nurses. Ellen had occasionally worked at New Hampshire’s Sullivan County Home, where Bernice worked, but they are not believed to have known each other.

Many, but not all, investigators believe the women were murdered by the same person who, many also believe, attempted to claim an eighth life a year-and-a-half after the murder of the last woman, Barbara Agnew.

The Valley Victims

Late in the evening of August 6, 1988, twenty-three-year old Jane Boroski, seven months pregnant at the time, began the thirteen-mile ride to her Winchester, New Hampshire, home after attending the Cheshire County Fair in Keene. She had no sense that anyone had followed her to or from the fair or was watching her while she was at the fair.

Shortly before midnight, she stopped at the remote and closed Gomarlo’s Supermarket along Route 10 in West Swanzey, roughly halfway between the two towns, to get a soft drink from a vending machine. Upon arrival, hers was the only vehicle in the parking lot, but someone drove to the locale and parked beside her car while she was at the vending machine.

Gomarlo’s Supermarket

West Swanzey, New Hampshire

Shortly after Jane had returned to her car and was drinking her soda, she looked in her rearview mirror and noticed the other car’s driver, a man, walk around the back of her car and approach her on the driver’s side. Jane’s window was open and he asked her if the parking lot payphone worked. Before she could answer, the man pulled her out of her car and put a knife to her throat. He then quietly but angrily accused Jane of harming his girlfriend and asked her if her vehicle had Massachusetts license plates. When a panicking Jane responded she had New Hampshire plates, the man began beating and stabbing her. He did not relent after Jane told him she was pregnant.

Jane broke free and ran, but the attacker caught her and again stabbed her, all the while staying calm and never becoming rattled. He continued puncturing her until Jane feigned being dead.

After Jane heard the man drive out of the parking lot, she, bleeding profusely, made it to her car and proceeded to rush to the home of a friend who lived approximately two miles from the convenience store on New Hampshire Route 32. As she neared the residence, she came behind her assailant’s vehicle. He continued driving once Jane reached her friend’s home.

While Jane’s friend was phoning for help and tending to her, the attacker had apparently made a U-Turn, as he was seen sitting in his vehicle and staring at them for several seconds before again driving off.

Jane Boroski

Jane was rushed to the Cheshire Medical Center in Keene where it was determined she had been stabbed twenty-seven times, suffering two collapsed lungs, a lacerated kidney and liver, a severed jugular vein, and several severed tendons in her thumb and knee. Part of her liver had to be removed, but none of the stab wounds had hit any of her vital organs or struck her baby.

Jane recovered and gave birth to a girl, Jessica, two months later.

Baby Jessica And Jane

Under hypnosis, Jane recalled her assailant’s vehicle was a 1975-84 Jeep Wagoneer with grain trim and having the numbers 662 on the license plate, but she could not recall the state. Approximately 1,350 such vehicles with those license plate numbers were found registered throughout the New England states, but they led to no solid suspects, nor did a police composite produced from Jane’s recollections of her attacker.

The attempted murder of Jane Boroski is the last attack officially attributed to the Connecticut Valley Killer. Police believe if her assailant is the man who murdered the seven other women, he may have left the New England area after learning Jane had survived.

A Composite Of Jane’s Attacker

Twenty-two-year-old Michelle Nicholaou of Holyoke, Massachusetts, was last seen at her sister Tammy’s wedding in November 1988. Her disappearance was not believed connected to the attack on Jane Boroski from three months earlier or to the murders of the Connecticut River Valley victims until the possibility was raised seventeen years later following the murder of forty-five-year-old Aileen Nicholaou in Tampa, Florida.

The common link between the women: both had been married to Michael Nicholaou.

                                              Michelle               Aileen

                                            Nicholaou          Nicholaou

Having served as an Army helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, Michael Nicholaou was released from active duty in April 1971. He was awarded multiple medals, including two Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars, and two Bronze Stars for his service in combat. Being commended for his war service was a far cry from the predicament he had faced six months earlier.

Michael Nicholaou

In October 1970, Nicholaou and seven other helicopter crewmen were charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder in the strafing of Vietnamese civilians in the Mekong Delta. Although several men who served with Nicholaou said he relished killing noncombatants as much as enemy soldiers and that he had sought opportunities to do so when not in combat or while on duty, the charges against him and his fellow crewmen were dropped for insufficient evidence.

Upon returning home, Nicholaou suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), for which he received treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs and was, for a time, institutionalized at a Miami veteran’s hospital.

A Tormented Veteran

Nicholaou married his first wife, Susan, in 1978, but within two years he had begun seeing Michelle, who had a child from a previous relationship. He and Susan divorced in 1982.

Over the following six years, Michael and Michelle were considered to have a common-law marriage, living in Louisiana, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia, and Massachusetts. The couple had a daughter, Joy, born in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1986, where Michael and a partner opened a pornography shop called The Pleasure Chest. Though their convictions for selling obscene material were later overturned, they were forced to close their business. Michael and Michelle then moved to Holyoke, Massachusetts, where their son, Nick, was born in nearby South Hampton in 1988.

In August, Michelle took the kids and left Michael. He located them and, although Michelle had told her mother, Rose Young, that she was fearful of him and planned on permanently leaving him, Michael convinced her to return to him.

Michael, Michelle, And Four-Month-Old Joy

Three months later, Michelle disappeared shortly after attending her sister Tammy’s wedding. Michael said she had run off with a drug dealer. Shortly thereafter, he took the children and returned to Virginia.

On December 20, after over a month with no word from Michelle, her family reported her missing. Michael repeated that she had run off with a drug dealer. Police found no evidence supporting the claim but also found nothing suggesting what had happened to her.

Michelle Vanishes

Michael Nicholaou’s actions and whereabouts over much of the following thirteen years are murky, as he lived a nomadic lifestyle, often leaving his kids for extended periods of time with family members while he traveled. In one instance, they were with his brother for over a year; in another he left them with his mother before he absconded with her van.

By 1992, Nicholaou had taken his kids to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where, for a time, they lived out of their car. He later dumped them with some former Army friends for a time before again hitting the road.

When again pressed about Michelle, Nicholaou sometimes repeated the story of her running off with a drug dealer; at other times, he said she was dead.

Nicholaou The Nomad

By 2001, Nicholaou was living in Lutz, Florida, fifteen miles north of Tampa, with his third wife, Aileen, whom he had met through a personal ad. When contacted by a private investigator looking into Michelle’s disappearance, he again claimed she had run away with a drug dealer; this time, he specified the peddler was Columbian.

Shortly thereafter, Michael and Aileen moved to Georgia. In November 2005, he broke her shoulder in an argument and allegedly tried to run over her with his car.

On December 31, while Aileen had taken shelter and was recuperating at her sister’s West Tampa home, her estranged husband shot her and her twenty-year-old daughter, Terrin Bowman, to death.

Terrin Bowman And Aileen Nicholaou

As police closed in on him, the fifty-six-year-old Michael Nicholaou turned the gun on himself.  Authorities have named him a person of interest in the disappearance of his previous common-law wife Michelle and, upon further researching his past, named him a person of interest in multiple murders, rapes, and disappearances of women in New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia, Florida, Massachusetts, New York and Illinois.

Nicholaou Kills His Wife and Then Himself

Among the murders of which Michael Nicholaou is a possible suspect are those of the women killed in the Connecticut River Valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont from 1978-87. Though he and his first wife, Susan, settled in Massachusetts, Nicholaou had relatives in Vermont whom he frequently visited. Michelle also had family in the Green Mountain State whom the couple also often saw.

Three of the Connecticut River Valley victims, Bernice Courtemanche, Ellen Fried, and Barbara Agnew, worked in the nursing field. While married to Nicholaou, Susan was a nurse, as was his mother. Furthermore, he had visited an a acquaintance at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, where Barbara worked, a few months before she disappeared, and he was visiting relatives who lived not far from where she was last seen in January 1987.

Nicholaou is also confirmed to have owned a Jeep Wagoneer during the 1980s, the kind of vehicle driven by Jane Boroski’s assailant. I could not find anything about the license plate numbers (i.e. if it contained the numbers 662.)

Nicholaou Is Posthumously Named A Person Of Interest

In The Connecticut River Valley Murders

Nicholaou also generally matched the physical description of the man seen near Lynda Moore’s home shortly before her murder.

Nicholaou Resembles Lynda Moore’s Likely Killer

Jane Boroski did not initially believe Nicholaou was her attacker when she first viewed photos of him in 2006, but later came to believe he could have been the culprit.

Was Nicholaou Jane’s Attacker?

DNA testing has so far failed to link Michael Nicholaou to any of the Connecticut River Valley murders. Skeptics of his being the killer of all of the women note he was living in Virginia at the time of the murders of Bernice Courtemanche, Ellen Fried, and Eva Morse.

Nicholaou’s Virginia acquaintances, however, say he bought, sold, and delivered large quantities of cocaine through the state as well as and up and down the east coast and New England for over a decade, including the time of the Connecticut River Valley murders.

Nothing Connects Nicholaou To The

Connecticut River Valley Murders

In 1985, thirty-four-year-old Edward Honaker of Montvale, Virginia, was convicted of the kidnapping and rape of a Newport News woman occurring the previous year along the Blue Ridge Parkway. He was sentenced to life in prison plus thirty-four years.

Honaker was released from prison and exonerated of the crime in 1994 after DNA testing proved he was not the assailant. He was awarded $500,000 from the Commonwealth of Virginia for his nearly decade-long wrongful incarceration. He died of cancer at age sixty-five in 2015.

Michael Nicholaou is a potential suspect in the Blue Ridge Parkway rape because he had previously lived in the area and because he resembled Edward Honaker, but no physical evidence or DNA connects him to this crime as well.

Left: Michal Nicholaou

Right: Edward Honaker

Believed to have been abducted while she was jogging, sixteen-year-old Heidi Martin was murdered on May 20, 1984, in a manner similar to those of the suspected Connecticut River Valley victims in that she had been stabbed to death and her body was found in a wooded area behind the Hartland, Vermont, Elementary School, not far from where Barbara Agnew’s body was disposed two-and-a-half years later.

Although it appeared Heidi’s killer had likely removed her clothes from her body and then redressed her, she did not appear to have been raped.

Heidi Martin

Twenty-one-year-old Delbert Tallman was charged with Heidi Martin’s murder after several people reported seeing him near the woods or emerging from the woods near where her remains were found. Under police questioning, he admitted to the killing, but he was acquitted of the crime after his defense team showed he was autistic with a limited comprehension of the charges against him and that the police had coerced his confession.

Delbert Tallman

At his trial, Tallman testified he confessed to the murder because he saw an acquaintance, Albert Sargent, kill Heidi Martin, and that he was afraid of him. Sargent was never charged with the crime.

Albert Sargent

Despite Heidi Martin’s being found in the Connecticut River Valley during the time period of the suspected serial killer, most investigators believe her still unsolved murder is an isolated incident because she was younger than any of the slain women. In addition, the women had been stabbed upwards of twenty times and their throats were slit while Heidi had been stabbed only four times and her throat had not been slashed.

Heidi’s Murder Is Believed An Isolated Incident

Following his acquittal, Delbert Tallman was dismissed as person of interest in the Connecticut River Valley murders. In 1996, however, he was charged with committing lewd and lascivious acts with a child in Windsor, Vermont, after an eleven-year-old girl claimed he twice touched her beneath her underpants while she slept. He pled no contest, was sentenced to sixteen months in jail, and was required to register as a sex offender upon his release.

Tallman later moved to Broward County, Florida, where he was again jailed after twice failing to register as a sex offender in 2005 and 2008. He was released from prison in 2010, but he is still listed as a sex offender in Florida.

Tallman Back In Trouble 

In the fall of 1997, forty-seven-year-old paraplegic and small-time drug dealer Gary Westover told his uncle, Howard Minton, a retired Grafton County, New Hampshire, deputy, that he had been coerced into aiding in the murder of Barbara Agnew. Westover lived in Plymouth, approximately sixty miles northeast of where Barbara’s remains were found near Hartland, Vermont. He said after three friends had picked him up for, “a night of partying” on the evening of January 10, 1987, they abducted and murdered Barbara.

Minton provided authorities with the names of the men mentioned by his nephew. He says little was done with the information.

Gary Westover died several months later, in March 1998. I could not find a picture of him.

Lois and Howard Minton

Gary Westover’s Aunt and Uncle

Another person of interest in the Connecticut River Valley murders is Rodney Stanger, who was convicted of stabbing to death his girlfriend of twenty-five years, Crystal Morrison, in their Summerfield, Florida, home in 2008. Stanger had previously lived in the New England area, predominately in Southbridge, Massachusetts.

Shortly before she was killed, Crystal had told her sister, Bonnie Kiernan, that Stanger had implied committing several murders, including the highly publicized killing of sixteen-year-old Molly Bish, whose remains were found in 2003, three years after she had disappeared from Warren, Massachusetts, sixty-five miles east of Stockbridge.

When shown a picture of Stanger, Jane Boroski did not believe he was her attacker.

Rodney Stanger

In 2012, the son of a man who had died four years earlier told authorities his mom suspected her husband was the Connecticut River Valley Killer. The son said his mom had told him his father had come home one evening in blood-drenched clothes, which his mother, fearing her husband’s violent temper, had helped him burn. On the news the following day, she saw that one of the murdered women had been killed within a mile of a bar that her husband frequented.

The man, who has not been identified by police, is described by his son as a “sexual deviant” who had anger toward women for most of his life. During the time period of the murders, the family lived for several years on a Massachusetts farm and the potential suspect drove a Jeep Wagoneer, the kind of vehicle driven by Jane Boroski’s attacker.

When shown a photograph of the man, Jane felt he could have been her assailant.

Is The Unidentified Man Jane’s Assailant?

On May 21, 2024, investigators searched a residence in Newport, New Hampshire, near where Bernice Courtemanche’s remains were found in 1986, for evidence relating to the Connecticut River Valley murders. It is not known if anything pertinent was found during the search.

A Recent Search

The property owner, sixty-six-year-old Jeffrey Champagne, has lived in the area his entire life. Some sources state he has long been considered a person of interest in the Connecticut River Valley murders. He acknowledges being questioned by police about the 1984 murder of Ellen Fried, whose remains were found in Kellyville, roughly only three miles from Champagne’s home.

Jeffrey Champagne

In an eight-and-a-half-year period, all seven victims of the possible serial killer were found within a fifty mile radius of the Connecticut River Valley region along the southern to south-central New Hampshire-Vermont border. Five of the women were found in New Hampshire; two in Vermont.

The Valley Of Victims 

Some Investigators believe approximately fifty other unsolved murders in the New Hampshire-Vermont-Massachusetts area could also have been committed by the Connecticut River Valley Killer.

More Victims?

Fifteen-year-old Joanne Dunham was last seen walking from her Charlestown, New Hampshire, home to the bus stop at approximately 7:15 a.m. on June 11, 1968. Her body was found the following afternoon in Unity, ten miles to the northeast. She had been strangled to death.

In addition to being much younger than the women killed by the suspected Connecticut River Valley killer, Joanne’s murder occurred much earlier and she was killed in a different manner. Nevertheless, she is considered by some as the first possible victim of the serial killer because she was from the same hometown as Eva Morse, whose body, along with that of Betsy Critchley’s, was also found in Unity.

Joanne Dunham

Seventy-six-year-old Sylvia Gray, though much older than any of the Valley victims, is also considered a possible casualty. On October 5, 1982, one day after being reported missing, her bludgeoned body she was found in a wooded area near her Plainfield, New Hampshire, home in Sullivan County, where Ellen Fried lived and where Bernice Courtemanche’s remains were found.

An autopsy determined Sylvia had been beaten with a tire iron and repeatedly stabbed.

Sylvia Gray

Thirty-eight-year-old Steven Hill is the only male mentioned as a possible victim of the Connecticut River Valley Killer. He disappeared after picking up his paycheck from his employer in Lebanon, New Hampshire on June 20, 1986. On July 15, his body was found fifteen miles across the Connecticut River and the Vermont border in Hartland. He too had been stabbed multiple times.

Steven worked in the same city as Barbara Agnew and his body was found in the same town as hers as well as that of Heidi Martin.

Steven Hill

On June 24, 1989, the partial decomposed remains of a woman were found dumped alongside Massachusetts Route 78 in Warwick, less than a mile from the New Hampshire border. Her body was believed to have been dismembered; only her arms and legs were recovered.

The woman’s death was ruled a homicide and she was considered another possible victim of the Connecticut River Valley Killer before being positively identified in May 2024, as sixty-five-year-old Connie Bassignani, of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, where she had last been seen during the 1989 Memorial Day weekend.  She had previously lived in Franklin, Massachusetts, eighty miles southeast of Warwick.

Connie Bassignani

Connie Bassignani’ s second husband William claimed she had returned to her native Hawaii, but investigators found nothing indicating she had done so.

William, who died in 1993, is considered a person of interest in her murder.

William Bassignani

The final person most often mentioned as a possible victim of the Connecticut River Valley Killer is fourteen-year-old Carrie Moss, who vanished after leaving her New Boston, New Hampshire, home to go swimming with friends in Goffstown, seven miles to the northeast, on July 25, 1989. She had been arrested in June for marijuana possession and placed for a time under house arrest. Because she had a court hearing scheduled for the following day, a warrant was issued for her arrest.

Carrie’s skeletal remains were found in a wooded area in New Boston almost exactly two years later, on July 24, 1991. She is believed to have been murdered, but her cause of death could not conclusively be determined.

Carrie Moss

The seven slain women found in the Connecticut River Valley region from 1978-87 are believed by many to have been killed by the same man. Investigators, however, are far from united in that assumption because no physical evidence links any of the murders. Some believe that some, but not all, of the killings may have been committed by the same perpetrator, while others believe the women’s murders are all separate incidents.

https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/584581

Are The Murders The Work Of A Serial Killer?

Criminal Psychologist Dr. John Philbin performed the hypnotic sessions on Jane Boroski. He believes her assailant also likely committed the murders of the seven Connecticut River Valley women, none of whom were specifically targeted for murder.

Dr. Philbin surmises the killer is a loner with few friends who largely lives in his own fantasy world. He does a lot of driving, he does not like intrusion, and he has an extreme hatred of women.

 The killer selects specific sites for attacks as opposed to specific women. The venues he ultimately chooses are those that present a small amount or risk because they are generally low-traffic locales. Once the site of opportunity has been selected, the man waits for a crime of opportunity. If it does not present itself after some time, he may then go seeking a prey, abduct her, and take her to his pre-determined locale. Once the woman is under his control, Dr. Philbin says the attacker relishes the fear he instills in her before ending her life.

Dr. John Philbin

Clinical Psychologist

In 1988, the man who attempted to murder Jane Boroski and who many suspect is the Connecticut River Valley Killer was approximately five-feet-seven to five-feet-eight inches tall, weighed between one-hundred-fifty and one-hundred-eighty pounds, was clean shaven, and had blond hair. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties to early-forties, and drove a golden-brown 1975-84 Jeep Wagoneer with license plates containing the numbers 662.

If you have any information that may help identify this man, please contact the Vermont State Police at 802-244-8781 of the New Hampshire State Police Major Crime Unit at 603-271-2663 or email them at [email protected]

Jane’s Attacker, And the Possible Connecticut River Valley Serial Killer

Remain Unknown

Born in August 1988, two months after her mother was attacked, Jessica Boroski soon developed a mild case of cerebral palsy. As she grew up, she had problems with speech, learning, and motor skills; all are likely affects her mother’s repeated stabs.

Since her attack, Jane Boroski has been hospitalized for several mental health issues, including depression and suicidal thoughts.

Jane and Jessica Survived But Have Struggled

SOURCES:

• Brattleboro (Vermont) Reformer
• Burlington Free Press
• Charley Project
• Doe Network
• Nashua (New Hampshire) Telegraph
• Rutland (Vermont) Daily Herald
• Petersburg Times
• Tampa Bay Times
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Valley News (Lebanon, New Hampshire)
• WMUR ABC Affiliate Channel 9 Manchester, New Hampshire