MA MA - Warwick, Route 78 rest area, UncFem 21-53, UP13193, skeletal remains found on land, Jun'89

[believe09]

Hi all-I spent quite some time on the phone with a phenomenal person from the State Police DNA Lab in MA. She did me the kindness of explaining that there were going to be some problems likely with how these remains were logged because each time the remains were moved, they were likely assigned a different number. I did not have any number since PD and DA told me the remains had been transferred. I tried the office of the Chief Med Ex as well with no luck in finding them.

The bottom line is the the Detective in Holyoke has the option of contacting a Case Manager for the State Police and having them search for the remains and see if a sample was taken for DNA purposes. She believed it likely was because it was common practice then. Now, depending on how degraded the sample is, they can process it and run it agains Michelle Nicholaou who is still a candidate for me for these limbs.

i emailed the Detective so we will see if this goes anywhere.....he is dedicated so I think he will run it down.

Phew.

 

[hmg]

I am so happy to hear this as I had heard when I was first researching this case that DNA was likely not taken. I truly, truly hope it was taken and they are able to make a comparison.

 

[hmg]

It looks like they are in fact looking to match DNA between Michelle Ashley Nicholaou and the Warwick remains. On October 27, the Dr. Phil Show did a segment on Nick Nicholaou, the son of Michael and Michelle, who continues to grieve and feel mixed emotions about his father and his mother's disappearance. In the course of the show Dr. Phil was talking to Lynn Marie Carty, the PI who has spearheaded the case against Michael Nicholaou in relation to the Connecticut River Valley Killings, and they mentioned that the Warwick remains were currently in the process of being tested against Michelle!

What a way to hear that our work here at Websleuths may be paying off in this case! Here is a link to the conversation: Sins of a Father: Nick

Even if these remains are not Michelle's I'm glad it's given some publicity both to Michelle's case and the case of this UID.

 

[hmg]

Still no word as far as I know about whether these remains were that of Michelle Ashley Nicholau but I happened to take a long drive up Route 78 the other day and, of course, thought a lot about this case.

Here's what continues to strike me as unusual: This place is far removed from pretty much everything. Unless you're going to Warwick there's absolutely no reason to be there, it's not the type of place you just happen upon if you're in Massachusetts. The closest point of entry from I-91 would be the exit in Gill. If you were coming from that direction and wanted to inconspicuously dump a body, you'd probably do it on the deeply forested road between Northfield and Warwick. Coming off Route 2 and driving down 78 to dump a body seems plausible but again with so many rural areas in between, why would you drive to this area?

By far the most plausible explanation to me is that the killer (and most likely the victim) was from New Hampshire, possibly Vermont, and wanted to drop the body in Massachusetts to create a legal jurisdiction problem. I am uncertain which side of the road the body was found on, but that might be useful information to have in terms of determining whether the person was coming from New Hampshire or up through Orange. Of course, then again, this could just be an area the killer was familiar with-- perhaps he frequented Mount Grace nearby.

Either way, I don't think this was a randomly chosen dump spot.

And I'm still very, very curious to see if this could be Michelle. If Nicholau was the CT River Valley Killer, there's no denying that one of the few locations Warwick is easily accessible from is Swanzey, NH. You literally can draw a straight line from where Jane Boroski was stabbed to the body dump location of this victim. That in itself is very troubling.

 

[EmmaliLucia]

Bump. This thread has not been touched in a very long time.

Let's fix that.

 

[amputate]

Was this UID ever ruled out as Michelle?

 

[UnderSea]

Hey, I've been lurking forever, but finally decided to make an account today.

I have a question. Edward Mayrand (NH - NH/MA/RI - Edward Mayrand, tied to murders of three women, 1983-94) was clearly active in this area. For anyone not familiar with 78, it basically connects the North Quabbin area to New Hampshire. I've driven Warwick to Winchester plenty of times. Peterborough, Gardner, Amherst--these are all under an hour from Warwick.

It's not clear to me whether he was incarcerated at the time this woman went missing/was found. If he wasn't, then this seems of interest: "Mayrand died of lung cancer in a Rhode Island prison in 2011, where he was serving a 35-to-60-year sentence for murdering 46-year-old Patricia Paquette in Providence in 1994. Paquette was reported missing on Dec. 8, 1994, and her body found two weeks later in a vacant house near where Mayrand was staying. She had been strangled and dismembered." (

https://www.gazettenet.com/Archives/2014/12/coldcasewhitney-hg-122414)

That article suggests to me that he was in prison at some point between 1987 and 1994 (when he murdered Patricia Paquette), but not whether he was out around the time that this victim was left in Warwick. He was connected to both the area and to dismemberment of a victim. None of this helps identify this poor soul, but perhaps if we knew who did this to her, it might be easier to uncover who she was?

(Additional article here: AG: Cold case killing from 1987 solved)

 

[sonz82]

Trying to find more information on this uid, the only thing I found lists the discovery date as 1988 not 1989. Confusion lol

 

[UnderSea]

Trying to find more information on this uid, the only thing I found lists the discovery date as 1988 not 1989. Confusion lol

Definite confusion, .

78 is one of those roads used a lot by locals and not very much at all by outsiders. I agree with HMG that it's not likely to have been randomly chosen by someone. I don't know where the body was found, but once you get away from the fire station/school area of town, the road is wooded and quiet to both sides.

 

[UnderSea]

Been driving 78 a lot recently, and thinking about this poor woman. She has a name and a story somewhere.

 

[marble]

It's here in namus. No rule-outs but DNA entered

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

By bringing people, information, forensic science and technology together, NamUs helps resolve cases.

www.namus.gov

 

[UnderSea]

Bump.

It seems like there's a perfect storm of serial killers and their missing girlfriends and wives in this area. There's the aforementioned Michelle Ashley Nicholaou and the person of interest in her disappearance and a number of murders, Michael Nicholaou. There's the aforementioned Edward Mayrand, who killed a woman from Amherst, MA, and raped a woman in Warwick, MA. And there's Denise Beaudin and Bob Evans/Terry Rasmussen. Denise went missing from Manchester, NH. Bear Brook State Park is under two hours from Warwick, as is Manchester.

Mostly, though, there's this poor woman waiting to be identified and returned to the people who cared for her. So bumping this for her.

 

[UnderSea]

Bump. She deserves a name. The people who cared about her deserve an end to the endless wondering what became of her.

 

[DS2021]

Still no word as far as I know about whether these remains were that of Michelle Ashley Nicholau

She's finally officially listed as a ruleout.
She is the only ruleout.

 

[DS2021]

And as mentioned up thread there are the 2 missing NBSK victims

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

By bringing people, information, forensic science and technology together, NamUs helps resolve cases.

www.namus.gov

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)

By bringing people, information, forensic science and technology together, NamUs helps resolve cases.

www.namus.gov

 

[citizen_sleuth]

Vicki Ritterband, "Human remains found off road in Warwick," Recorder [Greenfield, MA], 26 June 1989, 1, 14.
[part 1] [part 2]


The corpses of two animals -- one a dog and the other not yet identified -- were found about 10 or 12 feet from the human remains on Saturday, according to Warwick Police Chief Brian Peters.

[...]

A Warwick motorist in his 40s found the limbs when he stopped at a turn around at the side of the road to urinate late Saturday afternoon, said Peters.

The partially decomposed limbs were at the bottom of a steep embankment about 20 feet from the edge of Route 78, a rural two-lane highway that runs north and south through the middle of Warwick, from Orange to Winchester, N.H.

While investigators are not positive that the limbs are from the same body, they are treating the case as a homicide because the limbs were not intact and appeared to have just been dumped, said [Northwest District Attorney Judd] Carhart. He would not elaborate.

Vicki Ritterband, "Warwick search continues," Recorder [Greenfield, MA], 27 June 1989, 1, 12.
[part 1] [part 2]

When two dog carcasses were found near the body, questions about satanism and cult involvement in the homicide were raised.

According to state trooper Jay Bowman, the investigator looking into whether the slaying is tied to satanism or another cult, nothing found at the site Monday morning indicates it is a cult killing.

[...]

[State Police Sgt. Norman] Roberts said it appears the animal carcasses were not put at the site at the same time as the human remains and that both dogs seemed to have been shot.

[...]

Warwick Police Chief Brian Peters said a motorist found the human remains in the woods off Route 78 at about 5:25 p.m. Saturday. Peters said the search was suspended late Monday afternoon.

[...]

The scene is about two miles from the New Hampshire border and police there have also been combing the woods, Peters said.

"It's like a jungle in there," Peters said. "You can't even see you[r] feet" because of overgrown vines and briars, he said.

Vicki Ritterband, "Body parts found in Warwick were woman's," Recorder [Greenfield, MA], 27 September 1989, 1, 8.
[part 1] [part 2]

[Sgt. John] Delmolino said the tests, performed at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., revealed that the victim was a white woman with a "robust" frame who was about 5 feet, 5 inches tall.

Northwestern District Attorney Judd Carhart said forensic anthropologists were able to determine from the pitting on a leg bone that the woman probably gave birth.

[...]

The remains were found about two miles from the New Hampshire border. Extensive searches of the surrounding area after the discovery turned up no clues.

The parts were originally thought to belong to a white husky man of average height in his 30s.

 

[UnderSea]

I know the stretch of road. I find it very hard to believe that someone not local or not very familiar with the area would dump a body/parts of a body there. With zero personal information beyond a passing knowledge of the road and Warwick, I'd put my money on at least the murderer being from the North Quabbin/Southern NH area.

 

[UnderSea]

It is a cold case that Gagne, the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office and Massachusetts State Police hope to solve with the help of Othram, a Texas corporation that specializes in using forensic genetic genealogy to resolve unsolved murders, disappearances, and identification of unidentified decedents or homicide victims.

Gagne said the decision was made to reach out to Othram due to the company’s recent success in identifying the so-called “Granby Girl” as Patricia Ann Tucker, a 28-year-old woman found shot to death in 1978 but who went unidentified until this spring.

DA’s office hopes to crack 34-year-old cold case in Warwick​

Fingers crossed that this woman finally regains her name and maybe some justice as well.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

David Mittelman, founder and CEO of Othram, explained his company tests DNA based on hundreds of thousands of markers, whereas the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) uses 20. He also said victims are often not in CODIS because it was designed about 30 years ago to track the repeat offenses of known criminals. But Othram, which employs 60 people, can work from evidence generally considered unusable because it is too old or too degraded.

“It’s really efficient,” Mittelman said of his system. “It is very hard to seek justice ... in a crime if you don’t even know who the victim is. We want to make sure nobody remains unnamed.”

DA’s office hopes to crack 34-year-old cold case in Warwick

WARWICK — About 1½ miles north of a parking lot for Mount Grace State Forest is a pull-off on the same side of the road, for motorists to safely stop or turn their vehicles around on Route 78.This seemingly unremarkable spot was the scene of a...

www.recorder.com