Unsolved The Valley Killer #truecrime #serialkiller

An unknown killer terrorized the border area between New Hampshire and Vermont from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. This monster is suspected of 7 murders though the actual number maybe much higher. Many of his victims were ambushed in wooded areas and stabbed repeatedly before being left to die.

The. Valley. Killer.

The first victim was attacked on October 24, 1978 in the Chandler Brook Wetlands Preserve in New Hampshire. Cathy Milican had been bird watching in the area when she failed to return home. Her body was found the following day with almost 30 stab wounds.

In late July, 1981 a 37 year old woman named Mary Elizabeth Critchley went missing while hitchhiking on Interstate 91 along the border of Massachusetts and Vermont. Her remains were found on August 9th in a wooded area near the city of Unity in New Hampshire. Investigators were unable to determine the cause of death to decomposition.

Next to die at the hands of the killer was a 17 year old nurses aid named Bernice Courtemanche. On May 30th 1984 she had been hitchhiking along route 12 in New Hampshire to meet her boyfriend in Newport. When she never arrived, she was reported missing. She was not found until a fisherman stumbled across her remains in April of 1986. Medical examiners were able to determine that she had been stabbed in the neck as well as bludgeoned in the head.

Less than a month after Bernice Courtemanche went missing, Ellen Fried went missing. That night the 27 year old nurse had been using a pay phone to speak with her sister in Claremont, New Hampshire. During the call, Ellen commented on a vehicle which had driven past slowly several times. The next day, she did not show up for work. Her car was found abandoned a few miles from the pay phone on Jarvis Road. Ellen Fried’s body was not discovered until September 1985 in the woods near Kelleyville New Hampshire. She had been stabbed repeatedly and the medical examiner found evidence of sexual assault.

In July 1985, a 27 year old woman named Eva Morse was hitchhiking on Route 12 near Charlestown New Hampshire when she went missing. A year later, her body was found by logggers a few hundred feet from where Mary Elizabeth Critchleys remains had been discovered in 1981. She had been stabbed in the neck multiple times.

The next victim was not killed while hitchhiking or traveling along the highway. 36 year old Lynda Moore was working in her yard in Saxtons River, Vermont, on April 15 1986. When her husband got home that evening he found his wife murdered. She had been stabbed to death and the home was in disarray as if there had a violent struggle. In this case there had been several eyewitnesses that reported seeing a man in the neighborhood. They described him as a dark haired man with a medium build and carrying a blue backpack. The police would make a composite sketch with the information supplied by the neighbors.

Less than a year later, on January 10th, 1987, the Valley Killer struck again. 38 year old Barbara Agnew was driving along I-91 home from a ski trip when she was killed. A snow plow driver found her car at a rest stop in Hartford, Vermont, with the door open and blood on the steering wheel. Her body was found in late March among some trees near Hartland, Vermont. It was snowing heavily on the night that Barbara went missing and police do not know what led to her pulling into the rest stop, since she was only 15 minutes from her home.

On August 6th, 1988 a 22 year old pregnant woman named Jane Boroski was on her way home from the county fair in Keene, New Hampshire when she was attacked. She had stopped in West Swanzey to buy a drink. She pulled into a closed convenience store which had a vending machine out front. As she walked back to her car she saw a Jeep wagoneer had parked nearby. Once inside her car, she watched in her rear view mirror as the other driver walking around her car.

He asked her if the pay phone outside the convenience store was working, and when she opened her door to respond, he pulled her from the vehicle. As he did so he was shouting that she had attacked his girlfriend. Despite her denials, he stabbed her over 2 dozen times before jumping into his car and fleeing the scene.

Borowski was able to climb into her car and started to drive toward a friends house along New Hampshire Route 32. At this point she realized that the vehicle in front of her was the attacker. When she reached her friends house they came outside to help her and called an ambulance. The jeep turned around and drove past the house slowly before driving off.

In the hospital, doctors found that Jane Boroskis jugular vein had been partially severed, both lungs had collapsed, her kidney had been damaged, and several tendons had been slashed in her hands and knee. Thankfully her baby survived, but would later be diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Boroski was able to provide police with a description of her attacker and the first 3 characters of his license plate. However, the attacks seemingly stopped after Jane Boroski and the case went cold.

There are also several other potential victims which have been connected to the case. In Charlestown New Hampshire, Joanne Dunham was a 14 year old in June 1968 when she was sexually assaulted and strangled to death. She is thought of as a potential victim of the Valley killer due to the proximity to the later victims.

In October 5, 1982, a 76 year old named Sylvia Gray was beaten and stabbed to death outside her home in Plainfield, New Hampshire just a day after she was reported missing.

A 38 year old man named Steven Hill went missing in June, 1986. In mid July, his body was found in Hartland, Vermont just across the Connecticut river from where Sylvia Grays body had been found 4 years earlier. He had also been stabbed to death.

In June 1989, a woman’s severed arms and legs were found along Massachusetts Route 78 near the town of Warwick. The woman was never identified nor were the rest of her remains found. Her death was ruled as a homicide and has never been solved.

On July 25th, 1989 a 14 year old girl named Carrie Moss left her parents house in New Boston, New Hampshire and disappeared. 2 years later her skeletal remains were found in some woods near her hometown. Her death was considered a homicide despite the cause of death being impossible to determine.

There have also been a handful of suspects throughout the years but none have been conclusive. The three primary suspects were Delbert Talman, Michael Nicholau, and Gary Westover.

Delbert Talman was 21 when he confessed to the 1984 murder of a 16 year old named Heidi Martin in Hartland Vermont. She had been raped and stabbed to death. He would later recant his confession and was eventually acquitted. The location where Heidi Martin’s body was found was barely a mile from where Barbara Agnew’s body would be found in 1987.

In addition to the proximity of the 2 dump sites to one another, Talman lived in the area where the other murders occurred. In 1996 he was convicted of lewd acts on a minor and imprisoned until 2010. There is no concrete evidence connecting Talman to the Valley killer murders other than his recanted confession, however he was considered a person of interest.

Michael Nickolau was a Vietnam veteran who had been dishonorably discharged from the military after he and several others were accused of shooting into civilian villages in 1979. He was initially charge with murder and attempted murder but these charges were dropped. There were also reports of him leaving the base with only a knife, after telling others he was going out to “hunt humans.”

After being kicked out of the military he married a nurse named Michelle Ashley. The couple had 2 kids and lived near the area where the murders occurred. She would go missing in 1988 and was never found. In addition to living in the area Nicholau drove a Jeep Wagoneer which was the same vehicle Jane Boroski reported her attacker as driving.

Nicholau later married a woman named Aileen Bowman. After he broke her shoulder, Aileen fled with her daughter. In 2005, Nicholau found them at Aileen’s sister, Audrey Leon’s, house and forced his way inside. He was wearing a black suit and tie similar to those in Reservoir Dogs and he was carrying a guitar case filled with guns. Aileen’s sister called the police and told them the situation.

When law enforcement arrived, Nicholau brandished a firearm before retreating into the house. Before police could enter the home they heard gunshots and found Nicholau and Aileen dead. Aileen’s daughter was taken to a hospital and later died of her injuries.

In addition to his history of violence and the jeep wagoneer, Michael Nicholau also looked remarkably like the composite made of the man who neighbors had seen the day Lynda Moore was murdered. When a private incestigator approached Jane Boroski, she intially said that Nicholau somewhat resembled her attack, but later was almost certain he was the man who stabbed her. One issue with Nicholau is that he was in Virginia during some of the murders, however this does not necessarily preclude him one hundred percent.

Gary Westover was 46 in 1997 when he confessed to his uncle Howard Minnon, that he had been involved in the murder of Barbara Agnew in 1987. Westover was a paraplegic and claimed that he and 3 friends had driven from Grafton, New Hampshire to Vermont. He was wheelchair bound and his friends helped load him into the truck he claimed they used to abduct Agnew.

Minnon was a retired sheriffs deputy and relayed the information to the police, but they did not find it credible enough to investigate seriously. Westover died in 1998.

To this day the Valley Killer murders have not been solved.