Henry Bedard, 15, murdered in 1974 with baseball bat

[GoodAim]

Henry Bedard was 15 years old in December 1974 when he was found murdered just off a main road, up on a rocky ridge, in Swampscott, MA. It was a spot kids gathered at during warmer months. It was not on his route home.

He had left school for the day, had done several errands in town, was waved to by a police officer as he crossed the street in a hurry; he greeted several DPW workers as he cut across the Public Works yard to a ridgetop just above their offices.

His body was later found there along with the murder weapon, a baseball bat with unusual markings.

Investigators think he was hurrying there to meet someone and that the person who murdered him may have been within a close circle of friends. The proximity of the railroad tracks also left open the possibility of a vicious random act, but that did not seem as likely.

Here's a link for an article from the Boston Globe:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/12/16/regarding_henry

This really seems to be a crime worth re-opening. I wish a crime writer would get involved here.

[maima]

How horrible! Yes, it has been far too long for this case to have gone unsolved.

From what I can determine, based on location info in the article, Henry's body was found here:

http://www.wikimapia.org/1222977/

In the image linked above, the Dept. of Public Works yard is in the small center box. The small hill and rocky clearing (where the body was found) are located just next to it. The old railbed slopes along horizontally, directly below the hill (and stretches the length of the map area shown).

From the article: "By 3:40, Bedard was almost a mile south of the CVS when several town workers spotted him walking across the DPW lot. 'He looked up and said, "Merry Christmas," ' said Tom Scanlon, who remembers seeing Bedard walking toward the abandoned railroad tracks that sit next to the DPW yard. Scanlon said Bedard held up a bag and told the town workers he was going home to wrap Christmas presents. The men watched Bedard disappear into the woods, onto the path of the former rail line. Scanlon then went back to work inside the wooden building just 10 feet underneath the ledge. Within the next 15 minutes, Bedard would be attacked just above the workers' heads and left to die. 'We never heard anything,' said Scanlon."

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/12/16/regarding_henry/?page=2

According to the article, a couple of boys (and later a third) spotted Henry's wallet -- which was empty -- and the CVS bag with the bottle of perfume purchased as a Christmas gift for his sister.

I suppose Henry might have been murdered while being robbed, but I can't imagine that he had much money in his wallet. Still, he apparently had earned/saved $900 from working two part-time jobs -- perhaps he had been carrying a big chunk of that money with him? It may be that someone he knew, who knew he was saving to buy a car, wanted that money...

[KarlK]

Perhaps he had been summoned to the location by some other kid in order to "settle accounts" over some silly teenager issue (a girl perhaps?) and he was inadvertently killed by someone whose intent was to rough him up instead. If it had been a planned robbery I don't think the attacker would have left evidence such as the wallet and the bat at the scene. It's pure luck (in the form of rain) that this evidence proved useless. The presence of the bat at the scene could suggest that the attacker panicked, but on the hand, he emptied the wallet... it's a difficult case.

[Richard]

It was Christmas time thirty five years ago that Henry Bedard, age 15 was murdered. His case is still unsolved.