Serial Killer Jeffrey Mailhot #truecrime

Jeffrey Mailhot

From February of 2003 to July of 2004 3 women disappeared from the streets of Woonsocket Rhode Island. While a suspect did confess to taking their lives, only 1 of the bodies was discovered. The monster would tell police how he had pick up his victims who were working girls, then strangle them. To dispose of their remains, he cut them into pieces in his bathtub taking inspiration from an episode of the Sopranos, put the parts in garbage bags, then threw them into various dumpsters. Based on his methods and targets, the monster was given the ominous classification as a ripper. It was not until a victim was able to escape the creatures apartment that police were pointed in the right direction to catch:

Jeffrey Mailhot, the Rhode Island Ripper

Jeffrey Mailhot was born on November 9th 1970. He grew up in Woonsocket Rhode Island and graduated from the local high school. Jeffrey seemed to be simply part of the background and unnoticed in many ways, which is summed up by the fact that on his senior yearbook, there is no photo for him, just a note that he was camera shy.

His childhood and young adult life had not been easy. When he was 9, his parents divorced, when he was 17, his mother died of lung cancer, and when he was 22 his father died of the same disease. Mailhot lack of social recognition was not for lack of trying. Residents recall periods where he would swagger around, riding a Harley Davidson, and trying to find a place among a group of bikers.

Friends recall him as social when in their company and a heavy drinker, but it seems that when in public he sipped at the same drink hidden in a corner of the crowd as remembered by the local bartenders. Jeffrey also showed a dark side, going into dark moods and making alarming statements.

Around this time in the mid 90s several prostitutes had gone missing, but they were typically found to be isolated and unconnected incidents. But things changed in the first years of the 21st century when a string of murders shocked the small densely populated city. At the time, Jeffrey was the only tenant in a small apartment building at 221 Cato street in Woonsocket.

It started on February 9th 2003, when Mailhot picked up a 33 year old woman named Audrey Harris. The creature took her to his apartment and the moment they walked in the door, he attacked, strangling the poor woman to death. Then, not knowing what to do with the body, Mailhot simply kept it in his apartment for more than a day.

While watching the HBO show, the Sopranos, he got an idea. In the episode called Whoever did this, in the 4th season, Tony strangled Ralphie then Tony and Chrissy use a cleaver to chop up the body in a bath tub before dumping it in various locations. Inspired, Mailhot went to a nearby hardware store and bought a saw. Just like the show, he put the body and cut it into pieces, then wrapped the parts in plastic and dumped them in several different dumpsters.

In April Harris was reported missing and her mother, Claudette Harris, put flyers up around the parts of Woonsocket where her daughter had hung around. Unfortunately, even after the monster was arrested, her body was never recovered.

Just over a year later in April of 2004, Jeffrey Mailhot was ready to take another life. 42 year old Christine Dumont was working the street when the creature picked her up for a date. Christine had a hard life she had been attacked by customer and once she had even been hit by a train.

Like he had done with Harris, Jeffrey took her to his apartment then attacked. Since it had seemed to work with Harris, Jeffrey once again used the bath tub method before disposing on the body parts in dumpsters around the city.

Christine’s disappearance did not go unnoticed by law enforcement. She had been beaten with a metal pipe shortly before her disapearance and was scheduled to testify against her attacker. The monster, a man named Timothy Scanlon, was still convicted because another of his victims was still available and he eas convicted in 2005. But since police had been monitoring him at the time of Christine’s disappearance, he was not considered a suspect.

However, Scanlon could also not be connected to the disappearance of Audrey Harris and so investigators knew there was at least one other culprit behind the string of attacks in the area. And he was not done yet.

On the 4th of July in 2004, a woman named Stacie Goulet was reported missing by her boyfriend. The 24 year old had been leaving a fireworks show when she was picked up, never to be seen alive again. Mailhot followed the same procedure as with his previous 2 victims and Goulet was soon discarded in local dumpsters.

Growing desperate, the police department had female officers go undercover as working girls to try to find the person responsible for the 3 unsolved missing persons cases of Harris, Dumont, and Goulet. However the sting was unsuccessful, and it was not until an anonymous tip came in that there was a break in the case.

An unidentified man called police and told them that they should talk to a woman named Jocelin Martel. She had told him about a customer who had attacked her from behind after they arrived at his apartment, but that she had managed to escape. From prison, Martel deacrived the location of the apartment and after searching for other reports, investigators got a similar story from a woman named Teese Morris who said it had happened to her on February 15 2004.

The owner of the apartment was listed as Jeffrey Mailhot. Arriving at the apartment, police found it to be nearly spotless and totally organized, that is aside from the bathroom which was a mess and coated in what looked like bloodstains. Their suspicions were confirmed using luminol testing which showed that something truly horrific had occurred in the bathtub.

When questioned, Mailhot denied any involvement with the missing women and his accusers initially, but soon admitted to patronizing the working girls in the city. When confronted with the photos of Harris, Dumont, and Goulet, he was unable to restrain himself and soon confessed to the 3 murders.

Jeffrey described how he had approached his victims from behind and choked them before dismembering them and dumping the pieces around the city. Despite the confession and a thorough search of the landfills in the area, only the body of Stacie Goulet was ever located, but dna testing of the bathroom confirmed that both Harris and Dumont had lost their lives at the creatures hands.

Jeffrey Mailhot was charged with 3 murders, one count of assault with the intent to murder, and one count of felony assault. In February of 2006, he plead guilty and was sentenced to multiple life terms plus 10 years. However despite his victims families telling the court the impact of his actions, the creature is still eligible for parole in the year 2047. Jeffrey Mailhot is currently housr in the maximum security prison in Cranston Rhode Island.

#crime #serialkillers #documentary