NH NH - Connecticut River Valley Killer (1980s)

dark_shadows

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Vermont and New Hampshire;
Stabbing victim IDs attacker years later: Was he a serial killer?..Michael Nicholaou


Could this man be the Blue Ridge parkway rapist?

Michael Andrew Nicholaou


Third victim dies in murder-suicide

Florida slayings reopen cold case

Authorities investigate whether man was involved in more deaths.


ST. PETERSBURG - A murder-suicide in Florida has rekindled interest in a series of unsolved murders along the Connecticut River Valley that separates New Hampshire and Vermont.

Michael Nicholaou shot his estranged wife and stepdaughter before killing himself New Year's Eve 2005, authorities said. Lynn-Marie Carty, a retired Vermont criminal profiler and a New Hampshire cold case detective recognized Nicholaou's name and started investigating, the St. Petersburg Times reported Sunday.

Respectfully,
dark_shadows
 
It would be good for Honaker if the DNA could match that of Nicholaou. One of the articles says that many still believe he was the rapist despite that not being his DNA. The rape victim still says he was the rapist.

Interesting stories Dark_Shadows.
 
It would be good for Honaker if the DNA could match that of Nicholaou. One of the articles says that many still believe he was the rapist despite that not being his DNA. The rape victim still says he was the rapist.

Interesting stories Dark_Shadows.
Hello Tennessee,
Thank-you for taking the time to read the articles.


Respectfully,
dark_shadows
 
There was a book written several years ago called The Shadow of Death about these murderers. Just wanted to post it in case anyone is interested. It's by Philip E. Ginsburg.

The segment on Unsolved Mysteries of the Jane Boroski attack is one of the scariest things I have ever seen.
 
http://www.sptimes.com/2008/01/27/Life/New_interest_in_Conne.shtml

old article: By Ben Mongtomery, Times Staff Writer
Published January 27, 2008


New interest in Connecticut River Valley serial killings
A missing woman. A murderous husband. A man with a long-kept secret. A St. Petersburg investigator is still on the trail.


Anna Agnew's sister, Barbara, was likely the victim of a serial killer who stalked the Connecticut River Valley in the 1980s, slaughtering six young women, maybe more, and dumping their bodies in the bucolic borderlands between Vermont and New Hampshire.

The man was never caught.
 
Link

THE VALLEY KILLER
Wednesday, January 25th, 10pm

The Connecticut River winds lazily through the small border towns of Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire. It's a tranquil place… beautiful, peaceful… where people still stop and lend a hand to a stranger.

But for some, it is a Valley of Death. And for one man, it is his hunting grounds. It's been over 20 years, but New England is still haunted by THE VALLEY KILLER.

Between 1978 and 1988, seven women are snatched from lonely roadside locations — jogging, hitchhiking, stopping at a pay phone, or getting a soda from a vending machine. Each one is brutally murdered; stabbed multiple times in what look like fits of rage, their bodies often left in wooded areas, sometimes side by side.

Who is this predator? And why does he kill? True crime author M. William Phelps seeks answers from a woman who survived the serial killer's brutal attack — and may be able to identify a shocking new person of interest.

To build a portrait of this monster, Phelps turns to master profiler John Kelly, and Kelly's secret weapon — a convicted killer code-named "13", a Dark Mind who knows just what drives a man to take another human life.

Aside from the fact that I think the actual program is nothing special, the cases they profiling are among the most intriguing unsolved mysteries, as it were.

Something I made note of though, the lone survivor of the Connecticut Valley Killer (Jane Boroski), has again identified yet another person as the man that attacked her in 1988.

Four years ago, on an episode of THS Investigates (on E!), she identified Michael Nicholaou as her attacker. On this show, she was shown a photograph of this informants father and said it was the most visceral reaction she had had, to date, and now claims this NEW suspect was her attacker.

I wonder if police ever completed DNA tests on Nicholaou that were being conducted in 2008/9? As I recall, it was thought that there perhaps was some DNA evidence by which LE could exclude or include a suspect.

The mystery goes on...
 
Looks like you all may have some sleuthing to do!

This guy lived in the area and was born approximately around 1960, so in '78 he would have been 18. The woman he's now accused of murdering was killed in '86. He did leave the area in January of '88 and of all places, was caught in the area I now live in. :eek: Thank goodness he's behind bars!

Now, are there any other cases connected?

Time will tell!

fwiw,
fran

VT - DNA evidence solves '86 strangulation murder of golf pro Sarah Hunter: LE - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community
VT - DNA evidence solves '86 strangulation murder of golf pro Sarah Hunter: LE
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...es-mystery-female-golf-pro-murdered-1986.html


Connecticut River Valley Killer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
As someone who's never believed Michael Nicholau responsible for these murders and that the evidence for his involvement is extraordinarily faulty, it's disheartening to see that his guilt has become, to the internet at least, a foregone conclusion, especially when there's no shortage of suspects. Since it's on my mind and I've been doing some reading, I thought I'd make a list of lesser-known persons of interest:



Paul Oakes: scrapyard worker and local handyman from West Hartford, VT with a criminal history dating back to 1973 when he was arrested for statutory rape. I believe he was named as the suspect "Henry Barker" in the book Shadow of Death, first looked at for the murder of Barbara Agnew. (He worked as a part-time snowplow operator and was clearing roads on the night of Agnew's abduction, which occurred during a blizzard.) Committed suicide in 2010 after allegedly sexually assaulting a woman.

"Richard Bordeau": Clairemont eccentric whose real name I don't know. Suffered from mental disturbances consistent with autism spectrum diagnosis, accused of stalking behavior by several local women. Allegedly owned a knife collection. I don't consider him a serious suspect.

Delbert Tallman/Albert Sargent: Tallman had deep ties to the CT Valley, living in Clairemont for a time. Confessed to the 1984 murder of Heidi Martin in Hartland, VT. At trial, he recanted on the stand. His defense counsel made the case that Tallman, who was mildly retarded, was actually a witness to Martin's murder rather than the perpetrator. Specifically, they accused 45-year-old Albert Sargent, who allegedly confessed to members of his family, had a history of sexual misconduct, and supposedly had inside knowledge of the crime. (Curiously enough, he explained this knowledge as being the result of psychic abilities on his part. There was a suspect in the Lynda Moore murder, which is occasionally listed in this series, who popped up on police radar when he started talking about his own psychic connection to the crime. It's unknown whether Sargent was this man.) Albert Sargent maintained his alibi and was never charged. Tallman was acquitted and later went on to commit numerous sex offenses in Florida.

David Morrison: Former gas station attendant briefly charged in the 1986 cold case murder of golf pro Sarah Hunter in Manchester, NH. Charges were later withdrawn, but Morrison remains in prison for attempted murder/rape/kidnapping. Unlike the other CT Valley killings, Hunter was strangled, rather than stabbed. I believe it unlikely that Morrison was responsible for any of the other murders.

Howard Godfrey: Violent sexual offender and possible serial killer linked to the murder of hiker Patricia Scoville in 1991. Scoville's murder has some parallels of the 1978 murder of Cathy Millican, believed by many to the be the first of the CT River Valley killings. However, I don't see any indication that Godfrey ever used a knife and he was situated in Stowe, which is a bit too far west. He was probably not involved.

Gary Westover and Co.: Westover, a paraplegic and former drug dealer from Grafton, NH confessed on his deathbed in 1997 to involvement with the murder of Barbara Agnew. Westover claimed that he and three friends got high, drove to Vermont, abducted Agnew, killed her in their van, and dumped the body. The names of these men have not been made public.

Claude Moulton/Larry Moulton: Claude Moulton, a local business owner with a long history of domestic violence and statutory rape was accused by his ex-con brother Larry of involvement in the 2004 disappearance of Maura Murray from a roadside in Haverhill, NH. The claim was that Claude killed Maura with a knife and a subsequent search of his home aided by cadaver dogs yielded hits for human remains. Larry later died of cancer. His obituary revealed deep family ties to the Clairemont area.


Some thoughts:
Several of the POI scenarios listed above involve more than one person. The assumption, during the investigation of these murders, was that a single offender was involved. However, in at least two cases, there were eyewitnesses corroborating the involvement of at least two men. Specifically, Bernice Courtemanche was last seen getting into a vehicle with two men, none of whom have ever come forward. Witnesses also reported seeing a woman matching Barbara Agnew's description being forced into a van at a rest stop on the day of her disappearance. (These witnesses, who were later discounted on account of timeline issues, essentially support Gary Westover's story.) Delbert Tallman's initial confession to the murder of Heidi Martin and subsequent accusations against Albert Sargent also beg the question: what, exactly, was the connection between these two alleged sex offenders? Could they, perhaps, have been working in concert? In fact, the only crime in the CT River Valley series where the evidence is emphatic that only one man was involved is the attempted murder of Jane Boroski in Swanzey, NH, and her assault was radically different in that there was no abduction and no attempt to secure the scene/hide the body (the assailant didn't even stick around to make sure Jane was dead). It was sloppy to the point of being the exact opposite of the initial murders in and around Clairemont. My contention is that we're perhaps looking at something akin to the Hillside Stranglings, a case that was only broken once Kenneth Bianchi, the younger, more impulsive partner, "went solo" up in Bellingham, WA and left behind a disorganized, evidence-rich crime scene that was immediately linked back to him.
 
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Been looking at an old case that happened in my area as a kid does anyone know if Lewis Lent was ever looked into. Not quite his MO but similar in composite. Also lived in the area
 

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"A man called to report that his girlfriend and her mother saw two men apparently forcing a woman into a van on the interstate highway near the rest area. It happened on Saturday afternoon, too early to have any bearing on the Agnew case." Page 269 The Shadow of Death. The same information is also found in the original profiler notes of the CT. Valley case, which I have copies of.
 
[video=youtube;ss9VKX38SFM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss9VKX38SFM[/video] Gary Westover's Aunt. Here are just a few minutes from her taped interview where she talks about the death bed confession of her nephew Gary, regarding the fact that he thought he was going to hell for what he had done with the gang who killed Barbara Agnew. The priest had been called to Gary's bedside, along with Gary's uncle the sheriff and his aunt and others whose names I will keep private but are all on the taped interview. Gary wanted the killers in the gang caught. Gary wanted to confess so he would not, " go to hell." It is also a written documented fact that Michael Nicholaou and his wife Michelle were inside the same hospital where Barbara Agnew worked just weeks before her murder even though they were living in Virginia at the time. They were visiting MY father's neighbor who was Michelle Nicholaou's grandmother. She was on the same floor as Barbara Agnew worked because she had a flair up of her lupus. It is also a fact that on the week that Barbara Agnew was murdered Michael Nicholaou and Michelle Nicholaou were visiting Michelle's aunt and uncle in Plymouth/Grafton New Hampshire. This same aunt and uncle lived on the opposite end of the street as the family of Gary Westover. Gary was living in a home for the disabled in Manchester N.H. at the time. Gary, who was in a wheelchair, used to visit his family by traveling in the handicapped van. Before his death and on his deathbed, Gary Westover told his uncle the sheriff that when the gang brought him along for the ride and killed Barbara Agnew, they had picked him up in the handicapped van. He also said one of the men carried him over to the body of Barbara Agnew, helped him put his one working hand on the knife and made Gary stab Barbara Agnew. This information is consistent with the fact that her autopsy shows she received one stab wound after her death. He said the men did this to insure that Gary would never tell on them. Gary told his uncle the sheriff that the men knew she was a nurse. Gary's aunt assumed that might be because she had on her uniform. That was incorrect. One of Barbara's best friend's went with one of Barbara's sisters to view her BMW after her murder. That person told me that on Barbara's BMW there was a hospital parking sticker. So it was not difficult for all the world to see what hospital Barbara Agnew worked at.
 
Hi Lynn-Marie,

I've been one of your chief critics for a long, long time now and feel like you have hopelessly compromised this case with your Michael Nicholau obsession, to the point where you've led witnesses as well as survivors (Jane Boroski, who's since ID'ed someone else as her attacker and Nicholau's surviving family members) and the general public to the foregone conclusion that Michael Nicholau and the CT River Valley Killer are one in the same. Even a cursory look at the evidence compared to the behavior patterns of Nicholau would lead in precisely the opposite direction.

Nicholau (Who I will hereby refer to as MN) has all the profile traits of a domestic abuser/mass killer than that of a serial murderer. It's important to note that he committed suicide after killing his wife, a common hallmark of the domestic murderer. It's very much a cut-and-dried case.

You also go out of your way to link MN to Gary Westover and have pressured his family into conceding that it's a possibility. His name isn't on the list of people Westover gave, though, and you well know this. Why you continue to push this assertion is beyond me.

MN was a transplant to New Hampshire, especially the area where the crimes took place. He is not known to have lived in or even visited Claremont and the places where the bodies of Courtemanche, Fried, and Morse were found were remote and not well-known even to many locals. This points directly toward someone with deep, longstanding ties to the area, which MN simply did not possess.

I already discussed the Agnew murder above, and there's no evidence to link MN to that one especially and I'm not even convinced it's a part of the original series of crimes in and around Claremont. If the Westover confession is true (and to me, that seems to be the case), when taken with the physical evidence, we have a highly disorganized offender or group, which is a stark contrast from the Claremont/Kellyville crimes, which were the work of a highly organized offender determined to leave no trace of his activities. (All three bodies were mere bones when discovered.)

I'm leaving Lynda Moore out completely because I'm 100% that one was an isolated incident and the young man that police zeroed in on in that case was most certainly the killer or, if he wasn't, someone very much like him was.

Lastly, Jane Boroski. Yet another disorganized crime that left a survivor, and the strongest feather in your case against MS due to the Jeep Wagoneer. Yes, Jane ID'ed MN, but only many years later and after much prodding by you. And let's not forget that she later fingered someone else, so one can only conclude that her recall of the attack is clouded by time and the fog of trauma. It's unfortunate, but not a unique situation.

Oh, and let's not forget your attempt to link MN to the Colonial Parkway Murders in Virginia, crimes in which the killer's motive, victimology, and signature could not be more different from the CT River Valley Killings. Never mind the fact that MN's move to VA predates the first crime in that series by less than a year. He was surely no more familiar with the backroads and waterways of the Parkway area than he was with Claremont and Kellyville in the CT River Valley region of NH, and though the Parkway crimes were investigated by a ton of different agencies and private investigators who came to conflicting conclusions at times, one thing they all agreed on was that whoever was responsible had a high level of comfort and confidence in his knowledge of local geography - something MN could not have had.

I commend your efforts, as a new set of eyes is always welcome, but respectfully, you've gotten way too close to your theory and it seems, at this point, to be driven more by ego than evidence. Michael Nicholau was not one of the CT River Valley Killers, nor was he the Colonial Parkway Killer. Instead, he was a domestic abuser, a wife-killing creep of the sort that are way too common in this world.

EDIT:
The most important thing against Nicholau is the part I left out - he lived in Massachusetts during the CT River Valley murders!
 
I'm not concerned with your opinion of my investigation. I stand with professional profiler John Philpin and others, including the lead police officer who actually worked on the cases at the time. We are in total disagreement with you. I stand with the New Hampshire sheriff and his wife who contacted me to give their facts and truth for the record regarding the gang who murdered Barbara Agnew. I have much more information on the subject than you can imagine. Hoping touch dna will be done one day so the cases can be closed once and for all.
 
I'm not concerned with your opinion of my investigation. I stand with professional profiler John Philpin and others, including the lead police officer who actually worked on the cases at the time. We are in total disagreement with you. I stand with the New Hampshire sheriff and his wife who contacted me to give their facts and truth for the record regarding the gang who murdered Barbara Agnew. I have much more information on the subject than you can imagine. Hoping touch dna will be done one day so the cases can be closed once and for all.

Of course you're not concerned with what anyone else thinks. That's what makes your dominance of virtually all of the media surrounding this case all the more troubling. You worked it backwards: found a suspect you liked and decided to retrofit all the available evidence to match him, which it doesn't.

I'd love to be proven wrong and be able to say you've solved the case, but you haven't. You've merely muddied the water and made it all the more difficult for any subsequent investigators to wade through it without having to brush off the muck stirred up in your wake. It's irresponsible and unethical.

As for the other principals you've named, I'm not even going to get into it.
 
I stand with Rose Koske and her husband David Koske. They knew Michael Andrew Nicholaou personally. Rose traveled in his Jeep with him in the summer of 1988. I believe in the information they were eager to share. Connecticut River Valley Serial Murders shared their post.
January 17 ·

Connecticut River Valley Serial Murders
January 6, 2016 ·
Rose Koske to Connecticut River Valley Serial Murders
Hello my name is rose koske.i live in saxtons river vt..where one of the conn valley murders happened..linda moore..i moved here in 1993...i want to tell everything i know about michael nicholeau...back in 1988 before i was married i lived in the chicomansett villiage which are now called chicopee townhouse apts i believe...it was my first apt..i went by rose lehenry..i lived with my boyfriend david koske who is now my husband and my son brian who was turning 5 att the time...a new family moved in..michael and michelle nicholeau with their 2 children..a girl joylynn who was almost 2 and a son..i believe if i remember correctly his name was nick..he was just an infant..i befriended michelle..come to find out my husband was related to her by marriage..her mom rose married my husbands fathers brother john koske...we became friends..michael was quite a few yrs older than michelle and from first meeting with him i could tell he ruled her..we would be outside with the kids and if he called she would run to the phone to make sure she didnt miss his calls...we picnicked quite a few times..he was very domineering told us stories of his vietnam days..of why they moved..their house in holyoke burnt down...anyway he was self employed as a drywaller...got a job redoing a condo on mckinstry ave in chicopee ...he hired another neighbor and friend dave howell and then offered me a job cleaning up after them for $15 an hour which was great $ in 1988..i jumped on it..i drove to work with him in his jeep wagoneer..the same jeep in the cover photo..my job was to take the old drywall and throw it out 2nd floor window to a big dumpster..very easy work....i had been working a couple weeks or so and one day michael and david were going to lunch..i stayed behind becuase i brought my own lunch..i was sitting on floor eating when i noticed an open box in a closet..there were no doors on it..nothing else was in the place so i got curious and looked in the box..i was appalled at what i saw...there was a box full of bondage pictures with michael and a variety of different woman. Some were with him clean shaven some with facial hair, some with glasses and some with out. In every photo there was different types of bondage... explicit poses and in most the woman looked scared. i then proceeded to take a few pictures home to show my husband as i was scared, i also showed dave howell and the next day when i went to work the pictures were gone and i wondered if howell had said something to him. Michael acted very different towards me and made me uncomfortable. So i did not go back to work. A few days later they were gone. They moved everything in the middle of the night. Michelles family did not hear from her and knew nothing of her where abouts, never heard nothing more until about seven or eight years ago when i read the keene sentintel and saw a picture of him about the conn valley murders, showed the article to my husband and proceeded to get in touch with lynn marie carty to tell her my story. Nothing has ever been done or no one has ever contacted me as i was told they would. I wonder if them leaving so abrubtly had to do with the incriminating photos i had found. Just makes me happy i wasnt a victim. But wondering why the case was never closed.
 
Fact. In the early 1970's, after the Pentagon let him go free on the war crime charges he was jailed for, Michael Andrew Nicholaou then murdered a man in New York. He claimed it was self defense. He was let go for that murder as well.
 

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