Lying on the Merrimack River in south-central New Hampshire, the town of Hookset is between Concord, the Granite State’s capital, and Manchester, its largest city. With a population of approximately 14,000, the community is home to Robie’s Country Store, a National Historic Landmark and a venue frequented by presidential candidates during New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary. While the store is Hookset’s claim to fame, the fortunes of the Paquette family are its claim to infamy.

In 1964, thirteen-year-old Danny Paquette found his mother burned to death in a suspicious fire. Rena Paquette’s death was ruled a suicide, but many believed she had been murdered.

Over twenty-one years later, Danny was shot to death only a few blocks from where he had found his mother. For many years, despite over two decades between the incidents, residents believed the deaths of the mother and son were related. It was ultimately proven they were not.

One of the Paquette deaths has been solved, but the other remains shrouded in mystery.

Rena and Danny Paquette

Two murders occurred near Hookset during the 1960s, when the town’s population totaled only 2,500 people.

On February 1, 1960, eighteen-year-old Sandra Valade disappeared after leaving a YMCA swimming class in Manchester, ten miles south of Hookset. Nine days later, her body was found in a snowbank. She had been sexually assaulted and shot to death.

On January 12, 1964, fourteen-year-old Pamela Mason responded to a newspaper ad asking for a babysitter. The following day, she was believed to have been picked up at her home by the person who had placed the ad. Her remains were found eight days later in a ditch along what is now Interstate 93 near Manchester. She had been beaten, stabbed four times, and shot twice in the head.

The personal items of both girls were found scattered throughout the county. Authorities believed they were killed by the same man and that he was a local.

                                Sandra Valade              Pamela Mason 

Rena Paquette, a fifty-four-year-old housewife and mother of five, told friends and family she believed she knew who had murdered the girls and that Pamela had been killed in the barn on the Paquette family farm. She said she had received several phone calls from a woman with a French accent telling her to search the farm’s pig barn for clues relating to Pamela’s murder. Rena told the police of her suspicions, but they deemed her claims uncredible.

When Danny Paquette, Rena’s youngest child, awoke on the morning of February 3, 1964, he was surprised to find no sign of his mother. As his father, Arthur, was away on a business trip, Danny called his uncle Charlie, a Manchester policeman, but he had not seen or heard from his sister. It was a cold morning and he became alarmed when he arrived at the home and found Rena’s winter clothing accessories still in the house.

Danny and Charlie had searched for over an hour before Danny noticed smoke coming from the pig barn, one mile from the family home. Inside the barn where Rena had told police one of the girls had been murdered, her son found her lifeless body. The temperature was below freezing, but she was wearing only a nightgown and slippers.

Rena had mental issues and she would likely today be diagnosed as suffering from depression. The police ruled her death a suicide, concluding she had set herself on fire and then crawled into the barn to die.

The Paquette family did not share those sentiments, chiefly because no flammable substances or containers were near the barn. They were certain Rena had been murdered, possibly by the same person who killed Sandra Valade and Pamela Mason.

Rena’s Death Is Ruled A Suicide

The man Rena believed had murdered the girls was twenty-eight-year-old local bakery delivery man Ed Coolidge. One week after Rena’s death, he was arrested for the murder of Pamela Mason.

Coolidge was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five to forty years in prison. In 1971, however, his conviction was overturned when the Supreme Court ruled evidence used at his trial was illegally obtained.

 

Ed Coolidge

The link explains in brief the Court’s decision in overturning Coolidge’s conviction.

 

 

Coolidge subsequently pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Pamela Mason and received a reduced sentence.

He was never charged with the murder of Sandra Valade.

Coolidge Convicted of Pamela’s Murder

All of Rena’s children were devastated by her death, but it was the most traumatic for Danny as he was tormented by the experience of finding his mother’s burned body. He grew from a troubled teen into an even more troubled adult. He married and had children, but was crushed when he lost custody of them after his wife Denise divorced him in 1981.

That summer, shortly after the divorce was finalized, Danny went to Denise’s home, demanding to see his children. After he tried to beat down the door, she called the police, and Danny was arrested. He was sent to a psychiatric hospital to undergo hypnosis in an effort to alleviate his anger. The session instead resulted in a shocking allegation.

Danny Is Arrested . . .

Under hypnosis, Danny said that shortly after waking on the morning of February 3, 1964, the day over twenty years earlier when he found his mom dead, he had seen her arguing with a delivery man. He then said he briefly returned to bed before awakening again to an empty house.

In a subsequent session, Danny claimed the man he saw was Ed Coolidge and that he had threatened to kill Danny’s mother.

. . . And Drops a Bombshell  

After the sessions, police re-examined their investigation into Rena Paquette’s death.

They found no evidence linking Ed Coolidge to the incident and stood by the suicide ruling.

Rena’s Suicide Ruling Stands

Danny Paquette was released from the psychiatric hospital after five months. By mid-1985 he had remarried and his mental state had improved.

On November 9, Danny was repairing a bulldozer at his home while his friend Kevin Cote was working in the garage. At approximately 11:00 a.m., Kevin heard a loud pop. When he went outside, he found Danny lying on the ground. Paramedics quickly arrived but pronounced Danny dead at the scene.

Kevin initially believed Danny had been electrocuted, but an autopsy found he had been shot in the heart. Phone service was stopped at the time, and authorities pulled the bullet from the telephone cable.

Because it was the first day of hunting season, police suspected Danny had been accidentally shot by men hunting in a local gravel pit, approximately one mile away. Ballistics experts, however, determined such a shot was impossible. They concluded the shot was fired deliberately from close range, a finding supported by two sets of footprints found near the crime scene. After shooting Danny, the culprit apparently fled into the woods.

Many Hookset residents believed Danny’s murder was related to his mother’s death over twenty-one years before, which many also believed was a murder.

Danny Is Shot to Death

After serving twenty-five years as a “model prisoner,” Ed Coolidge was paroled in 1991.

Coolidge Paroled

That same year, Rena Paquette’s body was exhumed. New Hampshire State Medical Examiner Roger Fossum found the burn patterns on her body inconsistent with self-immolation patterns. He believed Rena may have been stabbed or suffocated in another location and was then moved to the barn.

Rena’s original autopsy report stated her arms appeared to have been bound and semen was found on her body.  Dr. Fossum changed the cause death from “suicide” to “undetermined.”

After the ruling was made public, retired police officer David Lord came forward saying his superiors had told him to disregard the finding of two logs placed outside the pigsty barn door, an obvious attempt to prevent the door from being opened from the inside. Lord also said he and many others involved in the investigation did not believe Rena had taken her own life, but, again, were ordered by superiors not to make their suspicions public. He suspected the orders were given by then New Hampshire Attorney General William Maynard, who always insisted her death was a suicide.

Dr. Fossum’s ruling further fueled suspicions that the same person had killed mother and son. It has, however, been determined that Danny’s murder was not related to his mom’s death.

Rena’s Remains Are Exhumed

In 2005, twenty years after the murder of Danny Paquette, Eric Windhurst was charged with the crime. At the time of the murder, the seventeen-year-old was dating Danny’s seventeen-year-old stepdaughter Melanie Cooper.

When questioned, the young couple said they were attending a field hockey game at the time Danny was shot. Twenty years later, however, Cooper admitted she was with Windhurst when he killed Danny because, she claimed, her stepfather was sexually abusing her.

Victor Paquette, Danny’s brother, said family members had received anonymous phone calls and two letters in 1992 stating Windhurst was the killer. Windhurst’s relatives told police it had been an open secret among the family that he had killed Danny Paquette.

Melanie Cooper was sentenced to fifteen months in prison for hindering the investigation into her stepfather’s murder. Eric Windhurst pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to fifteen to thirty-six years in prison.

Eric Windhurst and Melanie Cooper

Melanie Cooper was released from prison in 2008.

Eric Windhust was paroled in October 2020 after serving fifteen years.

Released From Prison

Some articles from the New Hampshire Union Leader say Danny Paquette did in fact sexually abuse Melanie, but others say he allegedly did so.

He was never charged with the crime.

Accused But Never Charged

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/111270011/rena-rene-paquette#

 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/204617966/danny-neal-paquette

 

SOURCES:

• Boston. com
• Boston Globe
• Dailymail. Com
• FOX News
• The New Hampshire Union Leader
• Unsolved Mysteries