Both men are now held in New Hampshire State Prison, but neither man is allowed any contact with the other. Jim is classified as a Custody Level 3 inmate. Rob was first put into Concord, where he was placed in the Secure Housing Unit, the tightest level of security. Inmates are locked alone in their cells 23 hours per day.
Eventually he was transferred to Custody Level 4. Inmates at that level are locked in their cells for 21 hours per day.
The town is said to still bear the scars of the brutal double murder to this very day.
Melanie Melanson
On the 27th Of October 1989, Melanie Melanson had attended a party in the woods of Woburn, New Hampshire. She was almost fifteen years old and she was doing what most normal girls of this age do, she was partying with her friends.
Melanie was last seen walking with two males who were from the neighbourhood. The three were walking through a wooded area near to Henshaw Avenue. This was where the party was taking place. Rumours at the time had suggested that the girl may have fallen and bumped her head. Her friends may have not even noticed that she fell.
Investigators believed that the girl had never made it out of the woods that night. It may even be that a tragic accident occurred that night and that the details may never be fully known. No remains of her body have ever been found.
The family announced a reward of $5000 dollars for information leading to the recovery of her body and the district Attorney and Woburn Police, are still actively trying to find leads for this long cold case.
After more than twenty years, her disappearance is still a mystery. On what would have been her 35th birthday, friends and family gathered together outside of Woburn Memorial High School, they held Vigil candles instead of birthday candles. They read poems, shared memories and they wept together.
Melanie’s family have posted a page on myspace, hauntingly written as if they were the words of Melanie herself. Anyone with any information is asked to call the Woburn Police Department at 781-933-1212
The Pamela Wojas Smart Story
On New Year’s Eve in 1986, Pamela Wojas was to meet her future husband Gregory Smart at a new year’s party. Within two months, the couple had formed a serious relationship and were married within two years of first meeting.
Both were keen lovers of heavy metal music, and had shared similar tastes. Seven months after the marriage, the first cracks started to appear in the couple’s relationship. Close to the couple’s first wedding anniversary, Gregory had admitted to his wife, that he was in fact having an affair.
The couple continued to argue regularly, and every time that they did, Pamela would choose to bring up the matter of the affair. Pamela had taken a job at Winnacunnet High Scholl in Hampton New Hampshire. She was working as a media co-ordinator. It was here that she would meet a student by the name of Billy Flynn.
Billy Flynn was volunteering in Project self Esteem, which was a local drug awareness program at the school. All freshmen were expected to participate in the program. The friendship grew, as Pamela had an impressive knowledge of heavy metal music, she certainly had impressed on Flynn.
Smart also had another position as a media services co-ordinator with the Hampton school board, where Flynn was a sophomore. It was here Smart met another intern by the name of Ceila Pierce. Celia was friends with Billy Flynn. It seemed that Flynn would go out of his way to do what he could to help Pam, and he paid visits to her office every day.
On the 1st of May 1990, Pamela came home from after attending a meeting at work. On her arrival at home, She found that her condiminium had been ransacked, and that her husband was inside and he had been murdered.
In Derry, murder was seldom seen. In fact this would be the only murder investigation in the whole of that year. The police described the scene as one that was looking like a disrupted burglary.
Smart was later accused of seducing the 15 year old Billy Flynn, but had then threatened that she would stop having sex with him, unless he killed her husband. Flynn recruited his friends to aid him in the gruesome task.
Flynn, along with Patrick Randall, Vance Lattime Jr, and Raymond Fowler set out to kill Pam’s husband. Gregory was held down by Randall and Flynn executed him in cold blood with a gun. Lattime and Fowler had just waited outside in the getaway car.
While the investigation was underway, Lattime’s father found a .38 calibre pistol in his house. He thought it may be the murder weapon and had surrendered it to the police. Around the same time, the police received an anonymous tip off, that a girl named Cecilia Pierce had information about the murder.
Cecilia was bought in for questioning. She agreed for the conversation to be recorded. Investigators hoped that she would say something incriminating, and she did not disappoint them.
On the 1st of August 1990, and unexpected guest appeared at the office of Pamela Smart. As Detective Daniel Pelletier entered her office, Smart recognised him and asked him what was up. The Detective responded that he had some news both good and bad.
He told her that the good news, was that they had solved the murder of her husband, but that the bad news, was that she was under arrest. “What for?” Smart asked. The detective replied.
“First-degree murder. Stand up and face the wall.”
Smart was handcuffed and removed from the building, she was arraigned at Derry district court and jailed at Rockingham County Jail for the murder of her husband.
The trial of Pamela Smart gathered massive media attention. If she was convicted, she would face life in prison. The prosecution portrayed Smart as an evil woman who was hell bent on murder. Her teenage accomplices were portrayed as the naive victims of Smart.
Smart was portrayed as a mastermind who had seduced her young lover and controlled him. It was claimed that Smart had seduced Flynn in order to persuade him to murder her husband. In doing so, she would be spared the expense of divorce proceedings, and she would also reap the rewards of a $140,000 life insurance policy.
Smart accepted that she had in fact had an affair with the teenager, but claimed that the murder was wholly down Flynn and his friends. She had wished to end the affair and work at repairing her failing marriage. She insisted that she had not participated in, nor that she had any knowledge of the plot to kill her husband.
Flynn claimed that he had fallen in love with Smart the first time that they met, but Cecilia Pierce testified that the couple were just friends. It changed in February when Smart had confessed to Pierce that she loved Bill. Flynn claimed that he was a virgin until he had sex with Smart.
The trial lasted for fourteen days, and resulted with Smart being found guilty of being an accomplice to first degree murder. This was largely due to the testimony and secretly taped conversations, in which the conversations appeared to contradict the earlier claims That Smart had made, that she had wished to repair her marriage, or that she had no knowledge of the plot to murder.
Smart was to claim that the media had influenced the outcome of the trial, and the subsequent conviction. She was given a mandatory life sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. She could have been charged with capital murder but the prosecution had decided against it.
The Pamela Smart trial was the first fully televised trial in the United States. It was viewed by millions of people live on television, and perhaps it is true that this may have had some influence on the outcome of trial in some respects.
Smart has never admitted responsibility for any part in the murder, but she did concede that if she had not had the affair with Flynn, then her husband would still have been alive. She continues to teach other inmates and has completed two master’s degrees while serving her sentence..
William Flynn received a sentence of forty years to life, with twelve years suspended. In 2015 he will be made eligible for parole after serving twenty five years. He later apologised to Gregg Smart’s family for murdering Gregg.
Patrick Randall received a sentence of forty years to life, again with twelve years suspended. In
2015 he will be made eligible for parole after serving twenty five years.
Vance Lattime received a sentence of thirty years to life also with twelve years suspended. This was reduced by three years in 2005 and he was paroled.
Raymond Fowler received fifteen to thirty years. He was paroled in 2003. He later returned to prison for a parole violation in 2004.
Cecillia Pierce signed a $100,000 option for the screen rights to her story.
Kathy Gloddy
In November of 1971, 13 year old Kathy Gloddy Left her home in Franklin, New Hampshire. Kathy was making her regular trip to the ice cream store, and she took her constant companion her German Shepherd named Tasha along with her.
Tasha had returned later in the day, but she was without Kathy. The dog was climbing up at the door, scratching and clawing trying to get in the house. The family were concerned that Kathy had not returned. On entering the house, he dog frantically ran around seemingly searching for her.
The family were panic stricken and set out to find Kathy, but they could find no sign of her. That night they called the police, they also called in the neighbours to assist with the search, of the area, and they searched the area but with no success.
The police informed the family that they would have to wait 24 hrs before they could file a report that she was missing. The family continued to search all through the night, but it was in vain. Kathy had just simply vanished.
The next day was to bring terrible news. News that no family would ever wish or should be forced to hear. The body of a young girl had been found dumped in a patch of woods a mile and a half from the family home. The girl had been raped and killed. It was that of Kathy Gloddy. The police had no suspects and no leads at all.
A hunter passing through the forest had stumbled across Kathy's body, clothed only in a pair of knee socks, and thought, at first, the hunter had thought that it was a deer carcass. Her sister Karen stated:
"That's not what you expect in a little town, that she had been brutally raped and murdered," said Karen Gloddy. She went on to say:
"To think that she was left there, you know?
In the cold of a dark winter's night, and with no clothes on.
And what had happened to her just came crashing down. It was really hard.
My mom was sobbing. My dad was crying. I just stood in the doorway and I said, 'What's wrong?' And they just blurted out they found Kathy and she's dead, she's been murdered."
Tom Shamshak is a private investigator whose pro bono work on the case has given the Gloddy family new hope. He went on to describe the murder to ABC news as
"This was a savage killing. It's one of the most heinous crimes that I have encountered in my 31 years of professional experience."
As the years went on, the family was to hear more and more details about the cruel fate that had befallen their daughter. She had been strangled. She had also suffered from a massive blow to the head. She had also been run over by a car four times.
The case was been left without hope of a resolution for almost 40 years.
The Murder of Dr. William Dean
On the 13th of August 1918, close to the latter end of the First World War, Dr William Dean was brutally murdered at his farm in Jaffrey New Hampshire. To this day it remains the only unsolved murder in Jaffrey.
At the time of his death, Dr Dean had a lodger living in his home. It was thought that the lodger was in fact a German spy. It was believed that the lodger was being investigated by the F.B.I. Dr Dean is believed to have had information relating to his lodger, and had decided to travel to Boston to inform the authorities.
The evening before he was to travel to Boston, Dr Dean was murdered. During the summer of that year, there were hundreds of sightings of strange lights around the peaks of Mount Monadock, and Temple Mountain. The lights were of differing colours and some suspected they were signals to German submarines in nearby Boston harbour.
Dr Dean had confided to another local, named Mrs Morrison, that he had information to tell the authorities, but it was too dangerous for a woman to know. That same night he was murdered.
His body was placed in a cistern. It was completely bound, and his head was covered with a bag. A large rock was placed in the bag which was used to weigh the body down. When the body was discovered, it was found in six feet of water.
After the murder, there were many suspects, including the Doctors wife, his friends and his tenants who rented the main house on the farm. Despite investigations and Government inquiries, and even a full grand jury investigation the murder still remains unsolved. No one has ever been able to prove who was responsible for the Doctors death.
The Connecticut River Valley Killer
In the mid 1980’s, three young women named Ellen Fried, Eva Morse and Bernice Courtemanche, all disappeared from around the Claremont in New Hampshire area. Skeletal remains of two of the women appeared in 1985 and 1986. Between the two bodies being discovered, a third woman was repeatedly stabbed to death during a frenzied knife attack.
Due to the condition of the skeletal remains the causes of death were difficult to determine. The bodies were found within a thousand feet of each other in a wooded area in Kelleyville, New Hampshire. Ten days later the remains of the stab victim were found, her post mortem examination revealed multiple stab wounds.
It was around this point that the investigators began searching for prior murder cases in the same area, and they came across two previous cases that had occurred 1978 and in 1981. They began to suspect that this was in fact the work of a serial killer.
The killer had developed certain patterns, he would often use dump sites and the wounds followed specific patterns. There was also a non fatal attack, and the evidence mounted that the attacker was indeed the same man.
The 16 year old Bernice Courtemanche, had last been seen by her boyfriend’s mother. The nurse’s aide was last seen in Claremont on the 30th of May 1984. She had set off to see her boyfriend in Newport, and had decided to hitch hike along route 12. She never arrived at her destination and was subsequently reported missing.
The next woman to disappear was Ellen Fried. On the 20th of July 1984, the 27 year old supervising nurse had stopped late at night to use a payphone. She used the phone outside of Leo’s Market in Claremont. Ellen spoke with her sister for about an hour, when she suddenly remarked that she had seen a strange car had been driving back and forth in the area.
Ellen stepped away from the phone for a few seconds to ensure that her car would still start, and then she returned to the telephone. She spoke for a few minutes longer, and then she ended the call. The next day, she had failed to turn up for work and her car was found abandoned on Jarvis Road, it was just a few miles away from the telephone that she had used the night before.
On the 28th of July, Eva Morse, who was a single parent, was seen hitch hiking near the border of Claremont and Charlestown, New Hampshire. Again she was on route 12, again this was the last time that anyone would see her alive. Soon after she was also reported missing.
The disappearance of Ellen Fried was resolved on the 19th of September on 1985. Her remains were later found in a woodland area close to the banks of the Sugar River in Kelleyville, New Hampshire. Her post mortem revealed that she had signs of multiple stab wounds and probably had been sexually assaulted.
On the afternoon of April the 15th 1986, Lynda Moore was outside doing some work in the yard of her home in Saxton’s river in Vermont. That evening her husband returned to find the body of his 36 year old wife. The body bore multiple stab wounds, and the crime scene suggested that she had struggled and had tried to fight off her killer.
There were numerous witness sightings of a man spotted near the murder scene that day. The man was described as being slightly stocky, with dark hair and was wearing a blue knapsack. He was assumed to be around 20-25 years old, with a clean shaven round face and was wearing dark rimmed glasses. The following year a composite sketch of the man was released.
It was just four days after the brutal stabbing of Lynda Moore, when a fisherman had chanced upon the remains of Bernice Courtemanche. The body was found around a thousand yards from where the body of Ellen Fired had previously been found. She had knife wounds to the neck and also an injury to her head
Six more days passed, before the remains of Eva Morse were found by loggers. Her body was around 500 feet from where the body of Mary Elizabeth Critchley had earlier been found in 1981. The post mortem also revealed that she had knife wounds to the neck.
On the 10th of January 1987, 38 year old nurse Barbara Agnew was on her way back from a skiing trip in Stratton, Vermont. The same evening a snow plough driver was to come across her abandoned green BMW at a northbound rest stop in Hartford, Vermont. The car door was cracked and the steering wheel was stained with blood.
The Killers Trilogy Page 9
