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- [00:00]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [00:20]
Mike Morford
Converte to pasione un ne o fio con Shopify. And Shopify Puntos Barra Records I'm Josh.
- [00:51]
Josh Mankiewicz
Mankiewicz and I hope you'll join us for season four of Dateline Missing in America. In each episode of dateline's award winning series, we will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends and the investigators all desperate to find them. You will want to listen closely. Maybe you could help investigators solve a mystery.
- [01:13]
Mike Ferguson
DATELINE Missing in America Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.
- [01:57]
Mike Morford
Hello everyone and welcome to episode 364 of the Criminology Podcast.
- [02:02]
Mike Ferguson
I'm Mike Ferguson and this is Mike Morford.
- [02:05]
Mike Morford
Mr. Morford, how you doing, buddy?
- [02:07]
Mike Ferguson
I'm doing pretty good. How you doing?
- [02:08]
Mike Morford
I'm doing great. Celebrated my wife's birthday this week. We went out to dinner and you know, at this age she doesn't want to kind of do too much for her birthday. We grabbed some bundt cakes. I don't know if you ever had nothing Bundt cake. I don't know if you guys have those down there. They're really good. But no singing, no nothing she doesn't like.
- [02:33]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, well, I mean, sometimes as you get older, you just want the relaxing birthdays and not the exciting, action packed birthdays like you used to have when you were younger.
- [02:43]
Mike Morford
Yeah, I mean, there's no Chuck E. Cheese or anything like that, obviously. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had Jarna Joki Kuzman and Linda Jackson. So great new support. We really appreciate it and thank you.
- [02:58]
Mike Ferguson
So much for that support. It really helps us out. For anyone else that would like to, you can get started supporting the show by going over to patreon.com criminology all.
- [03:08]
Mike Morford
Right, let's go ahead and jump right into this. Part two of the Connecticut River Valley killings. In part one, we laid out the bulk of the cases connected to this series and talked about how overwhelmingly many of the cases mirrored each other in some ways and the areas where the crimes happened often overlapped each other. We concluded part one by talking about one brave woman Jane Baroqueski, who was a would be victim and fought back to not only save her life, but the life of her unborn child. In part two, we're going to talk about a couple more deaths that may be part of this series, or at least at one point were thought to possibly be connected. And then we'll dive into some possible suspects in the murders.
- [03:57]
Mike Ferguson
On June 24, 1989, a motorcyclist near the entrance to Mount Grace State park found severed limbs from a woman in multiple spots near Route 78 in Warwick, Massachusetts, less than a mile from the New Hampshire border. This consisted of a set of legs and arms. The remains were found in decomposed condition and it was believed that someone had dismembered the entire body before disposing of it. The torso and head were never found. A medical examination led experts to conclude that the woman was the victim of homicide. She was thought to have been white, of average height with a somewhat athletic build. For years the remains were unidentified until finally DNA led to answers in May 2024. That's when she was identified as 65 year old Constance Basignani, who was last seen on Memorial Day Weekend 1989 in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Her husband William is considered a suspect in her murder. When she went missing, William had told friends and family that Constance had left and moved to Hawaii and that she wasn't coming back. William died in 1993 and was never charged with his wife's murder.
- [05:08]
Mike Morford
And I can see more of why some people could possibly think that this murder could be related to the Connecticut River Valley killings. You have the geographic location, obviously you have the gruesomeness of the murder dismemberment, which, with only the legs and arms found, I mean, those type of details, they get people's attention. I think what kind of might lead someone away from thinking that this is part of the series is finding out that her husband told friends and family that Constance had just left and moved to Hawaii. I guess my question to you is, is was that something easier in 1989?
- [06:03]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, I think it's, it's clearly possible that back then it would have been easier to tell. Someone, you know, so and so moved across the country and since they don't have, they didn't have social media, they couldn't be posting stuff, it'd be harder to track them. Now, I don't know about you, but if somebody I cared about, a good friend or a family member suddenly disappeared and their spouse told me they went to Hawaii and they're never Coming back, I'd be curious, I'd be making inquiries, calls, whatever I could do to try and verify that. Because that just sounds kind of far fetched that they're leaving. The nerve coming back. You're never going to hear from them again. So I don't know if that was done. We don't have enough information about the case, but it seems logical that that would be something someone close to her.
- [06:54]
Mike Morford
Would do, but much harder to try to track someone down. Right. In 1989, like you mentioned, no social media. I don't know that many people had cell phones in 1989. I certainly didn't have one. But the social media aspect to me is a big one. I mean, I watch a lot of true crime shows and in the case where someone goes missing in a more recent case, social media is always brought up, you know, the fact that someone is a user of Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever it is, and then all of a sudden they just stop posting or replying to posts. That's a big deal nowadays.
- [07:45]
Mike Ferguson
And back then, without a daily update on Facebook or Twitter, whatever it is, you don't really know what's going on in somebody's life unless they're close enough to you that you see them or talk to them on a regular basis. And sometimes the only thing you have nowadays to see what's going on with someone is what they're posting. So without that, you know, there may have been people that didn't know that she was even missing in the first place.
- [08:11]
Mike Morford
Yeah, because obviously you have close friends, you have family, but then you also have, you know, tertiary friends, people that you know, you know, but you don't get an update from daily or maybe even weekly. Those people are not going to suspect probably much in 1989, whereas today they might just from the usage of social media.
- [08:39]
Mike Ferguson
You know, it took till 2024 to get confirmed answers what actually happened to her. At least her family has, you know, some answers and hopefully maybe one day they'll find the rest of her remains, but at least they have some inkling of what happened to her.
- [08:56]
Mike Morford
The next and final person mentioned in connection to the series is Carrie Moss of New Boston, New Hampshire. On July 25, 1989, the 14 year old left home on her bike to visit friends in Goffstown, a town about seven miles northeast, to go swimming. It's not clear from news reports whether she ever met up with her friends, but what is clear is that when she didn't come back home, her parents quickly became worried. According to oak. Hillresearch.blogspot.com Carrie was not reported missing until late fall, two months after going missing. And then once she was reported missing, her family had to file new missing persons reports for her over the next two years because her name kept getting removed from the missing person's case list. Carrie was originally thought by her family to be a runaway and that she left due to a minor marijuana charge she was facing at the time she vanished. According to that same website, Kerry's family tried to hire a private investigator, but were discouraged from doing so by police, as they claimed it would interfere with their investigation. On July 24, 1991, almost two years to the day after she had gone missing, skeletal remains were found by a boy on a bike in a wooded area in New Boston, about a mile from the moth's home. The remains were identified as Carrie's and her death was classified as a homicide. Although due to the state of the remains, an exact cause of death could not be determined. Carrie's case remains unsolved today and more. To me, this has elements of, you know, a lot of the different unsolved cases that we've done through the years, especially ones that go back to, let's say, the 80s, the early 90s and beyond. You have a young person who goes missing, and we don't have all the details, but it's clear to me from what we do have that it wasn't taken all that seriously in the beginning. Maybe some of that was due to the fact that, you know, even her own parents thought that she might have run away. We know the police in a lot of instances treated some of these as runaways, rather than starting out with the theory that it was a missing person's case. And then you have this kind of strange fact that her name kept getting removed from the missing person's case.
- [11:41]
Mike Ferguson
Listen, Yeah, I think due to the. The delay in her being reported missing followed by the. Her name dropping off the missing person's list, that seems to have hamstrung developments in her case, maybe potential for it being solved. And I don't want to blame the parents. Maybe they had their reasons. But if it was my daughter, whether I thought she had run away or not, I would have gone to the police and reported her missing right away. And then they may have back then said she's probably a runaway, but at least they'd have that on file right away and I'd be voicing my concerns.
- [12:18]
Mike Morford
Yeah, that was one of the things that jumped out to me. I mean, when you're talking about a 14 year old who doesn't come home. And like you said, we don't want to run down the parents. But I think you do have to ask the question, why did it take two months to report her missing? Now, again, was some of that because they thought, you know, she had run away because of this marijuana charge? If I'm with you regardless of that, I mean, I'm going to the police. I got to find out where my, my baby girl is.
- [12:53]
Mike Ferguson
And I think we all know that teenagers at that age can probably tend to overreact to things that aren't all that serious. Like a minor marijuana charge isn't something that would have probably gotten her in a lot of trouble. But in a 14 year old girl's mind, I could see her being, you know, worried and upset and not thinking it through. So I, I could see why someone might consider her runaway.
- [13:21]
Mike Morford
Yeah, I, I do get that point. You know, something that would crop up to you and I, or to most people listening that might be worrisome to a 14 year old can sometimes seem like the end of the world. We know that, we've talked about it before. Just think about breakups and things. When you were 14 years old, it seemed like, oh my gosh, my life is ending, I'm never going to love again. I mean, little do you know that you're going to have a whole bunch of different relationships probably that aren't going to last long and then eventually you're going to find someone who you settle down with. But at 14, your mind just doesn't work that way.
- [14:08]
Mike Ferguson
And it's sad to know that she was literally less than a mile from home all that time too. And the parents were probably wondering where she was at, wondering what was happening to her, and the whole time she was right down the road.
- [14:21]
Mike Morford
But does that fact of her being found just a mile from home in your mind have a bearing in any way on whether this could be linked to the series or not?
- [14:35]
Mike Ferguson
I think the area certainly fits into our general area that we've been talking about all these cases happening in, but maybe the fact that it's that close to home, unless she just happened to run into the wrong person, maybe it indicates that someone in her orbit or her circle might have been responsible for, for her death. In total, There are generally 15 victims tied to the Connecticut River Valley killings, the ones that we've touched on over these two episodes. But other people have put that number closer to 20 or more because some of those other cases vary greatly in MO details or locations, we won't be touching on those ones. Despite the scary moniker used by a lot of people, the Connecticut River Valley Killer, not everyone in law enforcement circles thinks that one single predator was responsible for all the attacks. But for those that do think there was one, there are a lot of commonalities among many of the attacks that they point to. Most of the victims were stabbed and stabbed at least 20 times in some instances. Additionally, most of the women were alone and outdoors when attacked, and the attacks often happen at night. At least one detective, Detective Thomas Eauclair of the Vermont State Police believed that there was indeed one suspect responsible for the murders. In 1988. He told the Rutland Daily Herald, if we had six homicides that involved multiple stabbings, and if six different people were doing that, we'd be tripping over bodies.
- [16:09]
Mike Morford
And I think some of that for me goes back to the question that you ask a lot more. What is scarier to have one person killing, let's say, 10 or 20 people over a period of time, or multiple people out committing serial murders in the same area at the same time? Now, you could also look at a lot of these as one off killings, not a group of serial killers. Maybe there's one serial killer who, who's responsible for a number of murders and then however many others were killed by one person. Either way, it's scary, right? When you think about that stuff, there's a lot of people losing their lives and either one or a number of people taking them.
- [17:09]
Mike Ferguson
And it makes me wonder what's easier for law enforcement. Would they be more able to identify and catch one serial killer that was doing all this stuff, or would they have a better chance if it was several people, maybe one of them slipping up and then them identifying that person? Statistically, most people are killed by someone they know. They're not running into a stranger, a serial killer. So although it does happen the majority of people, that's not the case.
- [17:42]
Mike Morford
Which is why I always believe that a true serial killer is harder to catch. You know, if that person has no known ties to the victims and the victims are really selected at random, that's got to be tougher to solve. If there really was one perpetrator that was responsible for all of these attacks, and, and the info Jane Borowski gave was accurate, then it seems like police would have a lot to go on and a solid foundation to work with regarding a suspect. But was Jane's attacker responsible for all the attacks? If you recall from part one, Jane said that her attacker seemed Confused and was upset, accusing her of attacking his girlfriend. What if it truly was a case of mistaken identity? Jane's assailant was leaving until she yelled at him about her windshield being cracked. And only then did he turn around and come after her. If this was a serial killer, would he ever have attempted to leave before trying to finish her off? It's possible. While being a very bad guy in his own right, he was not the killer of all the victims we discussed. If that's the case, then maybe police don't have as much to go on as some people thing. If Jane's incident was a one off type of incident, then what that person looked like, what vehicle he drove would not really be of much help to police and trying to solve some of the murders. Jane's the only victim that we know of who was able to escape and tell her story.
- [19:30]
Mike Ferguson
And this all comes back to. To the frustration of, is the guy that attacked Jane involved in these other crimes? Because there is. They have a vehicle to go on, they have a description, they have a number of things that might help identify the guy, Although it hasn't happened yet. But if he's not, then what do police really have? They might be able to tie him to Jane's case, But then that still leaves them behind. The eight ball. Trying to identify the person or persons responsible for these other attacks. We talked earlier about some of the commonalities in these attacks. Another one is that most of the victims were found near or along Interstate 91, and some were even last seen on the highway. Some were driving along it, one was hitchhiking along it. Four of the victims were found along the Sugar River. And two of those discoveries were just 500ft from one another. Those separated by time in each of the attacks that are generally considered to be part of the Connecticut river valley Killer cases where it was possible to determine the cause of death. The victim was not only stabbed, but their throats had been cut. The location of the stab wounds are said to make a V pattern over the neck, chest and abdominal areas. And in many of the cases, the thighs. These are the kinds of things that have some people convinced that that one killer was likely responsible.
- [20:53]
Mike Morford
And I do think more of, you know, those are the types of things that do cause people to try to group cases together. You know, you have geography, but then you have not only stabbings, but in most cases, a large number of stab wounds, the cutting of throats. And then when you start to talk about this V pattern, well, that to me is even more specific.
- [21:27]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, it doesn't seem like a more a frenzy type of stabbing where there's stab wounds going all over wherever the killer can strike. It seems very deliberate and precise. So maybe that helps build the case that there is one person and we don't have all the information about what kind of knife was used, but maybe investigators know that there was a very similar weapon, a very specific type of weapon that caused those injuries. There was a seven month gap in the series with no activity from the killer or killers between Barbara Agnew's disappearance and Jane Borowski's attack. It's at least a time when no known victims have been tied to the series. If there were victims during this time period, they remain undiscovered. Whether or not there was a single Connecticut River Valley serial killer or multiple killers, there wasn't much movement in any of the cases over the years. But in 2006, it seemed like there was a big break and police finally felt like they had a strong suspect, Michael Nicolau. And as you'll hear, whether or not Nicolau was responsible for these attacks, he was really a disturbed, violent and dangerous man. In 2006, Jane Borowski participated in a press conference that identified a potential suspect, Michael Nicolau. He was one of the top three persons of interest that had been identified over the years.
- [22:54]
Mike Morford
Michael Nicolau was a Vietnam veteran. He was honorably discharged from the army after getting multiple medals, including a Purple Heart. But it was likely to get him out of the military before he caused any further trouble. He and seven of his fellow soldiers were charged after shooting civilians from helicopters at random, though the charges were later dropped. He experienced PTSD symptoms after his service in 1982. Nikolau and his first wife, Susan, divorced just three or four months after Jane Borowski was attacked. Nicolau's girlfriend, Michelle Ashley, disappeared and he left the area with their two children. Michelle was last seen alive at her sister's wedding in November of 1988. Months earlier, she had told her mother that she was afraid Nicolau was going to kill her and that she was planning to leave him. She also worried that he would take their two children, Nick and Joy, and mistreat them. So she told her mother that if anything happened to her, someone needed to find him and help the kids. At the time, they lived together in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
- [24:12]
Mike Ferguson
In December 1988, Michelle's family arrived at the home Michelle shared with Michael to find no one had been there in some time. Everything was still inside the home. The fridge was full of food, which had started to rotate and books belonging to each of Michelle's children were there. Even the Christmas tree had rat presents waiting underneath it. But Michelle, Michael, and both of the children were gone. Her family reported her missing to the police. And to this day, Michelle Ashley is still a missing person nearly 37 years later.
- [24:44]
Mike Morford
And I can't even imagine morph, you know, as a family kind of arriving at the home and. And finding out that everybody was gone. But not only that, you're doing it with the knowledge that Michelle had already said she was afraid that Michael was going to kill her. I mean, I think that there's an added element there.
- [25:10]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, I think investigators, ears probably perk up when they have a detail from someone that says, hey, if anything ever happens to me, look at this person, and then something happens to them. I'm sure the police, that's the first person they. They consider.
- [25:26]
Mike Morford
Michael Nicolau bounced around the United States with his children, living in multiple states, including Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Virginia. Sometime in the late 90s, Nicolau met and began dating Eileen Bowman, and they got married. Things weren't always great in their relationship, and they argued often and used drugs in front of the children. While Nikolau was building a new life with his wife, his former girlfriend Michelle Ashley was still missing, and her family was looking for her. They hired a private investigator named Lynn Marie Carty in 2000. They hadn't heard from Michelle or the children in 12 years. Cardi is actually the one who called authorities about Michael Nicolau in relation to the Connecticut River Valley killings because she just couldn't shake the idea that he was connected. After all of her research and the information that came from it. At the time, Jane Borowski felt sure Nicolau was indeed her attacker.
- [26:39]
Mike Ferguson
In 2001, when Carty tracked Nikolau down, he was living in Lutz, north of Tampa, Florida, with his second wife, Eileen. She called him for information as to the whereabouts of Michelle, and he claimed he didn't even know Michelle. Carty was persistent, though, and eventually Nicolau dropped the act and admitted that he knew exactly who Michelle Ashley was, but he didn't have anything nice to say about her. He also claimed that she had left him for a Colombian drug dealer. This was the story he gave to a lot of people. But it wasn't the only story he told other people that Michelle had died. Even his children grew up believing that their mother had abandoned them and that their dad was a devoted single father struggling on his own. Until Eileen came along.
- [27:23]
Mike Morford
Well, let's face it, Morph, you know, what man hasn't been left for a Colombian drug dealer? I mean, that's just routine. It happens all the time.
- [27:32]
Mike Ferguson
It's reminiscent of the case we were talking about earlier where the husband says, oh, she went to Hawaii and she's living in paradise and you're never going to hear from her again. I think sometimes the stories just seem too far fetched.
- [27:45]
Mike Morford
Yeah. And to me, when they do, it makes them seem less believable. Right. Because you don't have to go outlandish when you lie, but a lot of people do. They go over the top. And I think in many instances it just gives away the fact that they're lying. But I want to go back to, you know, Michael saying to the investigator at first that he didn't even know Michelle. She was the mother of his two children. It just seems like such a strange thing to say.
- [28:22]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. And I think it just goes to show that if he could lie about something like that, what else might he lie about?
- [28:30]
Mike Morford
Well, at the very least. Right. Knowing that it's hard to believe the rest of the things that a person like that would say. Shortly after speaking with the private investigator, Nicolau and Eileen moved to Georgia. Their marriage didn't last much longer. In December of 2005, Eileen fled the state of Georgia to get away from Michael after he broke her shoulder. Some reports state this injury occurred while he was beating her, while others state that he tried to run her over with his car. Whatever the scenario was, she had had enough. Unfortunately for Eileen, she was not free of Michael Nicolau for long. On December 30, 2005, Nicolau dropped his son Nick off at a friend's house for a sleepover. The next day, he drove to the home of Eileen's sister in West Tampa, where she and her young adult daughter from a previous relationship. We're staying. He took two firearms with him. A semi automatic pistol and a 30 caliber M1 carbine rifle.
- [29:39]
Mike Ferguson
Michael Nicolel got inside the home. It's not clear whether he forced his way in or was let in, but they ended up in one of the bedrooms. It seems like it was the former because Eileen's sister Audrey called 911. Authorities ended up surrounding the home, waiting for their next move. Sadly, they couldn't save Aileen. Michael Nicholas shot Aileen and her daughter before turning the gun on himself, taking his own life. When authorities entered the home, Aileen and Nikolau were pronounced dead. 22 year old Taryn Bowman, Eileen's daughter, was alive but unresponsive due to a gunshot wound. To her head. She died at Tampa General Hospital hours later. Police sorted through Michael Nicholas past and saw a lot of troubling things. But they were left wondering, is he a serial killer? Was he responsible for the Connecticut River Valley killings?
- [30:31]
Mike Morford
There were many things about Nicolau that kind of lined up with whoever committed the Connecticut River Valley killings. He obviously had a temper. He was thought to have killed innocent people for no reason. From a helicopter, Nicolau would have been familiar with Interstate 91, which is near many of the spots where the victims were recovering. He and Michelle drove it every time they went to visit her family in Clermont, New Hampshire. However, this doesn't mean he would have been familiar with all those back roads in the area. More than one victim was a nurse or nurse's aide. Nicolau's mother worked at a hospital, and his first wife was a nurse. There was a theory that the killer was targeting nurses, and there are long held beliefs that serial killers have pent up rage toward their mothers. He and Michelle had also been to the hospital that one of the victims, Barbara Agnew, worked at a few months before her murder.
- [31:34]
Mike Ferguson
Nikolai was a black belt in karate, so that may have given him an advantage in overpowering women that he targeted and getting them into a position where he could slit their throat from behind, as investigators believe happened in the Connecticut River Valley killings. As a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, he was likely able to handle pressure. Jane's attacker calmly walked to his car and slowly drove past her. As he left the parking lot, he was totally calm. We know from all of these details that Michael Nicolau was a bad guy. But was he a serial killer? As far as hard physical evidence connecting him to any of the murders we discussed, there's nothing that we know that.
- [32:12]
Mike Morford
Links him and Morv. I think sometimes that is one of the big hurdles or one of the big problems in a case like this, where it's thought or believed by many that there could be one person responsible for, if not all, a number of these killings. Well, Nikolau looks like possibly a good guy for these, but as you said, and there's no hard physical evidence connecting him, but it's hard to discount him. Right. He does fit the profile in many ways.
- [32:52]
Mike Ferguson
And I think there are some people that are critics of him being involved that would say that his only known victims are people that he's in a relationship with, you know, excluding the helicopter attacks he was accused of. So they. They think that sort of is at odds with the. The possibility that the killer of all the women we talked about was Likely a stranger to them.
- [33:21]
Mike Morford
But is it possible that this killer not only targeted individuals whom he didn't know, but also chose to kill some people in his life? I think that's possible, and I think.
- [33:36]
Mike Ferguson
For police, they can't. They've got to consider all the possibilities and look at all the potential suspects, and until they can rule that person out.
- [33:45]
Mike Morford
At the time of the 2006 press conference, Jane Borowski and private investigator Cardi seemed sure that Nicolau could have been responsible for the attacks. And with Jane saying, I'm totally convinced. However, Jane has since said that she does not think Nikolau is responsible for her attack and seems to believe that Cardi swayed her opinion earlier. With so much focus on him, it seems that if there was a solid link to Nicolau and these murders, it would have been found by now. Many people still consider Nikolao a worthy suspect, but many have written him off as a bad and dangerous guy with ties to the Connecticut River Valley area and nothing more. And I think that is a big deal. Right. We kind of listed all the places that he lived over the years. Well, he lived in the Connecticut River Valley for periods of time. That's another thing that probably draws people's attention to him. But with so much attention on him, it does seem as though they probably would have found something by this point to link him to at least one or some of the murders. And as far as we know, that that just never happened.
- [35:10]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, that's a good point. Because he had such a light shined on him, such a magnifying glass after what he did that, you know, that if there was anything to be found, it seems like that would have happened. But, you know, he was in the right areas, he was a dangerous person. So, you know, unless police found something solid to eliminate him, they probably had to keep him on the back burners as possibly being involved. There was another potential break in the case in May 2024, when investigators executed multiple search warrants on Ayres Road in the Kellyville neighborhood of Newport. This is very close to where Eva Morse's remains were found and not very far from multiple other victims. Authorities were tight lipped and refused to comment on what they were searching for or why they were in the area. But News 9 claims to have a source that confirmed the search warrants related to the Connecticut River Valley killings. The searches took place at the home of Jeffrey Champagne, who some locals apparently call the Kellyville Killer. If you believe people online claiming to be residents in the area, there might be some truth to these Rumors, as Champagne himself admitted to vnews.com they asked me years ago about Ellen Freed. Champagne has been described by locals as a little off and different, but Champagne.
- [36:34]
Mike Morford
Was not arrested following the search. Many doubt his involvement and believe he's just a little weird, but he's not a killer. The searches in the area wrapped up by the next day, and investigators have not commented on whether anything of interest was found. It's been over a year, and there's been no further news or public movement in the case, but that doesn't mean the case isn't being worked behind the scenes. Former Senior Assistant Attorney General Miles Mattson told wmur. A lot of the investigative activity that we're engaged in is not visible to the public, and I think that's true in a lot of cases. Just because you don't see an updated report in the media doesn't mean there's not things happening. We know police don't divulge everything, but as it relates to Jeffrey Champagne, and first of all, not great when people are calling you the Kellyville Killer and then you have locals describing him as a little off, different. Well, okay, there are quite a few people who are different. Does that mean that you're a killer? No, absolutely not. But in many towns, if you're the one person kind of singled out as being different from everyone else and a little off, as was the phrase used by some people, well, is your name going to come up when just about anything happens? And that could be the case here. I don't know.
- [38:16]
Mike Ferguson
And it seems like whatever the case, that investigators felt they had enough to get search warrants, because you can't get search warrants by saying that the person's weird. We want to check him out. I think they needed some kind of hard or compelling evidence to get those search warrants. So we don't know what that is, what led them to him to get those warrants, but certainly seems like they thought there might be something there.
- [38:45]
Mike Morford
But at the same time, it also seems like, you know, they. They didn't find anything of note or at least anything that they could use to charge him with anything, or they would have.
- [38:58]
Mike Ferguson
And you have to feel for this guy in some capacity, because if he's ever deemed innocent of these charges or they identify somebody else and he's not responsible, then his name's out there as the Kelly Phil Killer. And how do you put that genie back in the bottle? I don't think you can ever fully get that off of your reputation, and you're tied to Your name?
- [39:23]
Mike Morford
No, I don't think people do. And it's astounding how many people are kind of floated right as suspects in so many different cases. And it turns out that they've never done any of the stuff that people thought. And that's a tough position to be in.
- [39:44]
Mike Ferguson
There's another unnamed but very compelling potential suspect that we want to mention who has been pointed to by those with access to the case files. This suspect has ties to Maine and was at the Moore house the day Linda was killed. Among many other interesting points that we can't confirm because the records aren't available to us. The main connection would be interesting because some people wonder whether the Connecticut River Valley killer made his way that far out of the Connecticut river Valley. In 1989, 16 year old Jessica Briggs was found in the harbor in Portland, Maine. She had been stabbed multiple times and her throat had been cut. In 1992, Anthony Sanborn Jr. Was convicted of her murder, but was released in 2017 after new evidence was presented in the case that cleared him, leaving Jessica's real killer unidentified. We'll have to see if any more of a case can be built against this last suspect or see if any physical evidence links him to any of the murders.
- [40:46]
Mike Morford
And obviously it's tough morph because we're talking about this person, but we have so very little information about him, so few details. But that doesn't mean the police don't have a lot that they're working on. We just don't know. And I also want to touch on, you know, you know, Anthony Sanborn Jr. Unfortunately, we've seen this quite a bit. Right. Especially as technology has advanced. It has freed a lot of people who spent many, many years behind bars for something they didn't do, which I can not even imagine how horrible that would be. But the other side of that coin is that it left whoever the real killer was unidentified because you're not searching for anyone else after there's a conviction.
- [41:48]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, it certainly leaves the real killer a lot of time to maybe cover their tracks and distance themselves from the murder. But Jessica's murder, despite happening in Maine, certainly sounds like a lot of the cases we've discussed. You know, the stabbings, the throat had been cut. So I can see why some people say this sounds a lot like these other killings.
- [42:15]
Mike Morford
All of these cases are still unsolved. It's been decades. We can only hope there is a shred of DNA in one or more of the cases that can be discovered on another round of testing that can be done, or a witness or some other piece of evidence will blow one or more of the cases wide open. Maybe if just one of the cases could be solved, there would be a domino effect leading to other cases being linked. It seems like the enemy to solving a lot of these cases is the time they happened. In a time when DNA collection was, you know, in its infancy. I don't know that all departments even knew about that or how it should be collected, handled, stored properly. This is a time when not everyone had a cell phone to track cell signals in the areas of the murders. A time when we didn't have safety monitoring apps that may have helped some of these victims, and a time when there weren't cameras mounted all over the place that might have given the authorities answers. By now, it seems like a series of murders this big would not likely happen today with all of the tools that would make getting away with murders like these extremely hard. We'll have to stay tuned and see if law enforcement has any tricks up their sleeve that will one day reveal the identity of the Connecticut River Valley killer or killers. And I do think more if it would be harder, right, to get away with some of these murders today with all of the new technology. It doesn't mean it still doesn't happen though. People get away with murders today.
- [44:08]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, I just think it would be certainly harder. But back then, again, we're talking in a time where there just wasn't the same types of tools that were able to be used to solve some of these cases.
- [44:20]
Mike Morford
I mean, at the very least, right today, police would have a lot more at their fingertips to use a lot more tools to help them. But that doesn't mean that some of the technology today can still be used. I mean, we see it all the time, new technology being used to solve older cases. Now there's a lot of things that go into that. You know, what was the evidence collection like, what was the storing like? Can any DNA be extracted from any of the evidence at any of these scenes? There's a lot of factors, yeah.
- [45:04]
Mike Ferguson
And I wonder, we don't know all the details, what's going on behind the scenes, but I wonder if maybe at some point in the past they tried to look at these cases to get DNA potentially from the killer and using the standards and the things that were in place years ago weren't able to do that, but now maybe in 2025, maybe they can. So hopefully they're always looking back at the evidence with new modern advancements, trying to re examine it and see if there's a potential to get DNA because that seems like it would probably be the best way to solve one or more of these cases, if there is any.
- [45:47]
Mike Morford
Yeah, I agree with you with how old some of these are. I just don't, don't know what other way it would happen. I mean, the most likely scenario to me would be something along the lines of, you know, the Golden State Killer. If this is one person or a few people who committed all these murders, you know, getting some kind of DNA hit and maybe using genetic genealogy or something along those lines.
- [46:19]
Mike Ferguson
And I'm really scratching my head here. I don't know about what you think, but I'm having a hard time deciding if I think this might be one person or a bunch of people. Because if it was one person, I kind of wonder what happened to them to make them stop. Did they go to jail, did they die? Or did they just grow tired of doing it like some killers do? And if it was multiple killers, how would all of them sort of slip through the cracks and never be identified and linked to any of these crimes? It's really fascinating to sort of wonder what the true answer is here.
- [46:56]
Mike Morford
Yeah, I mean, in my honest opinion, I think it's probably a mix. I think you might have had one or more serial killers operating in the same areas, overlapping in the years. And then I think some of the murders were probably one off type killings, most likely committed by someone that the victim knew. But I think it's part of what makes this such a fascinating case or series of cases is that unknown the idea of one Connecticut River Valley serial killer. Okay, that's, that's a scary thought. That's, you know, the Golden State Killer, esque, maybe not with the same numbers, maybe I don't, I don't know. The other thing about this morph is, you know, there's no way for us to be sure that there's not other cases that are, could be connected. You have a guy like Nicolau, and I know a lot of people don't believe that it's him, but just a guy like him who lived in a bunch of different states. I can't help but think when you have someone like that, you know, you just asked what happened to this person? Did they stop? Well, maybe they didn't stop. They just decided to move and pick up in a different area. That's a scary thought as well.
- [48:30]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah. That makes me wonder if, if people should be digging in other areas of the country, maybe looking for similar patterns or similar crimes that happened maybe right before these murders or right after these murders that this person may have continued doing what they were doing.
- [48:48]
Mike Morford
Well, the one thing I know is that the fascination with this Connecticut River Valley killer or, you know, the series of murders and is not likely to stop anytime soon. There are going to be people out there who continue to look into it. Law enforcement's going to continue to look into it. I mean, the real question is, will we ever see some movement like a big break in the case?
- [49:18]
Mike Ferguson
Yeah, this would be a big one to solve. And if all these cases do turn out to be linked together and it's one person that's doing this, that would be a major identification for a big time serial killer.
- [49:32]
Mike Morford
Yeah, no doubt about it.
- [49:34]
Mike Ferguson
If you have any information about the murders we've discussed in this two part series, please give your information to authorities, no matter how unsure you are that it could be related. You can give your tip to the New Hampshire Department of justice by calling 603-271-3658. Or you can use their online tip form at business.nh.gov coldcasetips tip aspx or you can send your tip to the Vermont State police by texting VTIPES to the number 274637.
- [50:09]
Mike Morford
So that's it for our series on the Connecticut River Valley killings. If you love the show but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a review, a rating. Also, keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast really helps us out.
- [50:26]
Mike Ferguson
If you want to interact with us on social media, you can find us on all major social media platforms to search for Criminology Podcast and you can join our Facebook discussion group Criminology Podcast Discussion and fans of course. We also we also have our webpage.
- [50:42]
Mike Morford
Criminology podcast.com so that's it for another episode of Criminology. But Morph and I will be back with everyone next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So for Mike and Morph, we'll talk to you next week.
- [50:55]
Mike Ferguson
Take care everyone.
- [51:27]
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