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!
