MA MA - Kimberly Benoit, 18, & Cynthia Krizack, 17, Berkshires, Nov 1974 & Oct 1976

I've mentioned these two cases on other threads but I thought they deserved a thread of their own:

-On Nov. 16, 1974, a bow hunter found Kimberly Benoit at the bottom of a wooded embankment in the town of Florida, not far from Route 2. Benoit was 18 and living in North Adams, one town over from Florida, and was unemployed and living with friends. No one reported her missing for several days because her friends believed she left on her own volition but police did get involved when she did not pick up her unemployment check. She was found at the bottom of a wooden embankment, strangled, and fully clothed. She was not sexually assaulted.

-On October 7, 1976, Cynthia "Rocky" Krizack, 17, was walking from her home to the library at Williams College in Williamstown when she was abducted. On Halloween of that year, a mink trapper found her body in a condition remarkably similar to Benoit's. Krizack was found at the bottom of an embankment in Windsor, MA (15 miles away from Williamstown but not on a connecting highway), fully clothed except for her feet, and strangled. It is possible that a green BMW was seen near where Krizack was kidnapped.

A third case which may or may not be connected to either or both of these murders is Lynn Burdick, who has already been mentioned on this board here.

I wonder if perhaps the person who committed these murders was a hunter? They were both found in hunting areas during hunting season. Could it be someone coming in from outside the Berkshires to hunt? Many of the major crimes perpetrated in this area have been committed by people coming in from the NYC area.

I'd also be curious in knowing if anyone knows of any similar crimes committed in the southwestern part of Vermont or Albany, NY area in the same time period since they both border the corner of Massachusetts which all these crimes took place.

I did a simple search in the news archives and found something...a little odd.

In late '72, eight coeds were murdered in and around Boston. The murders were similar, some more than others. Most involved strangulation, some stabbing. Some of the girls were later found in remote wooded areas, other hidden in buildings. In December of '72, Anthony J. Jackson was arrested for the murder of the final victim, who disappeared on November 29th. The killings ended with Jackson's arrest, but...
Jackson was not convicted of all the murders, and was acquitted in at least one. Prosecutors only sought indictments in four of the cases. Reading the scenarios, its not too hard to believe that another murderer was at work.

Following the archives chronologically, a pattern of murders develops from that time. Its possible that some of these deaths were explained and arrests followed, but I couldnt find anything indicating so.

In February of '73, Mark Twohey, 19, was stabbed to death and left in a field in Gardner, MA (in the northeast-north central area of the state).
May '73, 18 year-old Donna Boudreau was found in a heavily wooded area near Fitchburg (some 20 miles from Gardner). Cause of death had yet to be determined. She had not been sexually assaulted.
September of '73, Judith Bieweg, 31, was found stabbed to death in the woods near her Townsend, MA home (10 miles from Fitchburg). She was not sexually assaulted.

And other murders...August of '73, an unidentified young man was found along a roadway near Rindge, NH, just north of Gardner. Cause of death was not quickly determined, though it was thought he had been hit by or pushed from a moving vehicle. Then, again in September, an unidentified hispanic male was stabbed to death in Petersburg, NY. He was found at a rest stop, mere miles from VT and MA.

There are others that didn't fit the general pattern I was looking for--no sexual assault and the bodies found outside.
And that's just 1973....

I'm surprised I never heard about those cases in 1972. Did they think it was a serial killer or all unrelated?

It is worth mentioning that all those cases you mentioned outside of Boston also occurred near Route 2, just like Benoit and Krizack. Even Rindge is close to the Route 2 area.

Disregard that first part, obviously I didn't fully process what you wrote about Anthony Jackson.

When the first killings began in the fall of '72, one of the investigators said something to the effect that they were looking for a psychopathic criminal mastermind.
Anthony Jackson was anything but.
I'll pull up some details on each of the murders for comparison and contrast. I honestly believe that someone else may have been responsible for some, or most, of the murders.

And another pleasant thought...The Boston Strangler murders occurred only 8 years prior to this.
Investigators who have looked into those murders since then have stated that Albert DeSalvo could not have committed all 13 murders.

It seems like there is a lot of cases in Massachusetts during the 1960s-1980s where the police narrow in on one person and blame that person for every murder committed in the area. The Boston Strangler is one. I also read about Leonard "The Quahog" Paradiso while researching the cases you mentioned. Paradiso was convicted of killing Marie Iannuzzi in 1984 but has been blamed for the murder of practically every young woman in Massachusetts between 1974 and 1984.

Possible link to murders probed
==================================================
Union-News (Springfield, MA)-July 15, 1993
Author: PETER GOONAN

Law enforcement officials are investigating the possibility of a link between the unsolved 1975 murder of a teen-ager in Greenwich, Conn., and the unsolved slaying of a Williamstown girl in Berkshire County one year later.
In October 1976, 17-year-old Cynthia L. Krizack of Williamstown was found strangled in a rocky gorge in Windsor three weeks after she disappeared.
The Connecticut state attorney's office has conferred with Berkshire County officials to determine if there is any link between the Krizack murder and the slaying of 15-year-old Martha Moxley of Greenwich, according to officials from both states. Inspector John Solomon of the Connecticut state's attorney's office said yesterday his office is investigating possible links between the Moxley murder and at least five other unsolved murders and disappearances in the Northeast and in Florida. The Krizack murder is the only Western Massachusetts case under consideration, he said. There are similarities in the Krizack and Moxley homicide cases but no significant evidence linking the two, Solomon said.

I wonder why LE would think that there was a connection between the Moxley case and Krizack's? Moxley was not strangled and was murdered over 100 miles away. The detective quoted in the article would not comment on why he thought the cases were connected. Obviously, given what we now know about the Moxley case, they were not connected but I'd be curious to know what made Krizack's case stand out.

and I still live in Williamstown. I still think of them often but never hear anything about them and assume they have been long forgotten. Do you know if there are any investigations still going on?

shadowangel said:

Investigators who have looked into those murders since then have stated that Albert DeSalvo could not have committed all 13 murders.

Click to expand...

And DNA evidence retrieved from an exhumated victim has ruled DeSalvo out in at least one case. Apparently DeSalvo had some sort of disorder that made him seek infamy, which made it easy for some investigators to pin a bunch of murders on him but other BPD investigators never believed he was involved, or that there even was a Boston Strangler. More likely the murders were committed by several unrelated individuals. Victimology appears to confirm that as well.

http://www.thetranscript.com/ci_21919366/decades-old-violence-kim-benoit-rsquo-s-cold

Decades-old violence in Kim Benoit's cold case still casts shadows

By Jennifer Huberdeau, North Adams Transcriptthetranscript.com
Posted: 11/03/2012 01:05:05 AM EDT


Very interesting article.

Thanks for the article Kat.

It's great to see that there's some interest in these cases still and I hope the families can one day get the closure they need.

Edited to add: I guess that also answers the question I asked earlier about the Moxley case. The tutor who was initially suspected in the Moxley case was in Williamstown that night and was an alumni of Williams College.

hmg said:

I wonder if perhaps the person who committed these murders was a hunter? They were both found in hunting areas during hunting season. Could it be someone coming in from outside the Berkshires to hunt? Many of the major crimes perpetrated in this area have been committed by people coming in from the NYC area.

Click to expand...

Why? It seems to me that this leap is being made solely based on the fact that it was hunting season alone, and so hunters would be the most likely group responsible. If you're familiar with the area of Massachusetts where the bodies of Kim Benoit and Rocky Krizack were discovered, you could logically say that any killer, hunter or not, would have used these remote areas to dump a body, far away from where they were abducted (North Adams and Williamstown, Mass., respectively).

Boytwnmom said:

and I still live in Williamstown. I still think of them often but never hear anything about them and assume they have been long forgotten. Do you know if there are any investigations still going on?

Click to expand...

They're certainly still cold cases but I doubt they're very active 40+ years later.

Kim Benoit and Cynthia Krizack could very well be connected. Kim Benoit was last seen at the Sons of Italy in North Adams and Cynthis Krizack was last seen walking to the Williamstown College library. Sons of Italy is ten minutes from Williamstown College.
A lot of sources that I've read said that the two crime scenes were very similar. Kim Benoit was found in an embankment by Hoosac Tunnel. Cynthia Krizack was found off of Main Dalton Road in Windsor, MA. If you look at the map Main Dalton Road doesn't go through Windsor but when it ends its by a river, and Kim Benoit was found next to Deerfield River.
It does seem like these two cases are connected.

I live in the Berkshires and just read this morning about Kim Benoit, I had no idea this happened here. I was too young when it happened to remember anything. I grew up within walking distance to where Cynthia was found. Even though the road is fairly well traveled, the woods are right off of the road. But I feel like you really have to know that area in order to dump a body there. In high school, it was a party spot for us, just through the woods a little bit, close enough to see the police if they drove by. Dalton/Windsor is very small town, the police were very present during those years, they were bored honestly. I truly believe it has to be a local person.
Cold Case: DA Increases Reward For Information About Kim Benoit's Death In 1974

hmg said:

I've mentioned these two cases on other threads but I thought they deserved a thread of their own:

-On Nov. 16, 1974, a bow hunter found Kimberly Benoit at the bottom of a wooded embankment in the town of Florida, not far from Route 2. Benoit was 18 and living in North Adams, one town over from Florida, and was unemployed and living with friends. No one reported her missing for several days because her friends believed she left on her own volition but police did get involved when she did not pick up her unemployment check. She was found at the bottom of a wooden embankment, strangled, and fully clothed. She was not sexually assaulted.

-On October 7, 1976, Cynthia "Rocky" Krizack, 17, was walking from her home to the library at Williams College in Williamstown when she was abducted. On Halloween of that year, a mink trapper found her body in a condition remarkably similar to Benoit's. Krizack was found at the bottom of an embankment in Windsor, MA (15 miles away from Williamstown but not on a connecting highway), fully clothed except for her feet, and strangled. It is possible that a green BMW was seen near where Krizack was kidnapped.

A third case which may or may not be connected to either or both of these murders is Lynn Burdick, who has already been mentioned on this board here.

I wonder if perhaps the person who committed these murders was a hunter? They were both found in hunting areas during hunting season. Could it be someone coming in from outside the Berkshires to hunt? Many of the major crimes perpetrated in this area have been committed by people coming in from the NYC area.

I'd also be curious in knowing if anyone knows of any similar crimes committed in the southwestern part of Vermont or Albany, NY area in the same time period since they both border the corner of Massachusetts which all these crimes took place.

Click to expand...

I lived in Williamstown ,Mass when these women were abducted. I walked the same path behind St. Patrick's church then up the hill behind the library to Spring Street. There is a patch of woods going up the hill and very dark. I've always got the shivers walking up that path feeling like someone was watching. Rocky was a very nice kind of hippy girl that was a few grades ahead of me at Mnt. Greylock RHS. Did not know the Benoit girl,but Lynn Burdick has always troubled me that she has never been found. It's pretty obvious that a serial killer was in the Berkshires at that time. What about this Lentz guy living in Lansbough Mass? He is a killer of young women and should be a suspect. Also, the same night that Lynn disappeared on Florida mountain, a Williams college student was assaulted but got away. I'm relatively sure it's the same person but police really never followed though. A better job STILL needs to be done!!!!!