that it was impossible to establish the cause of death. In July 1981, the body of Shirley Stewart, a 17-year-old who worked at the Dean Clinic, was found dumped in woodlands to the north of Madison. She had been missing for over 18 months and, again, her body was so badly decomposed that the cause of death could not be determined.
Another year passed. Then on 2 July 1982, 19-year-old student Donna Mraz was on her way home from a diner on State Street, where she worked as a waitress to pay for her tuition. Behind Camp Randall Stadium, she was attacked and stabbed repeatedly. She never regained consciousness. According to the police was “to all intents and purposes… dead when she hit the ground”. There was no evidence of sexual assault and her pay cheque, money and keys were left on the body. Again the police was confronted by a motiveless killing with no witnesses and little hope of any promising leads.
Over two years later, Janet Raasch, aged 20, went missing after a friend had dropped her off on Highway 54 in the town of Buena Vista on 11 October 1984. She was a business major in her third year at the University of Wisconsin and also worked at the DeBot Center on campus. Five weeks later, her partially clad body was found by deer hunters in woods southeast of Highway 54, around two miles from where she was dropped. Once again decomposition made it impossible to ascertain the cause of death. But although the coroner was unable to specify the exact time of death, he said she could have died between a week and 10 days before her body was found. She had been missing for over five weeks.
There the murders ended. It is thought that they were committed by the same hand. In each case there was no clear motive for the attack. All the victims were young women, who wore their hair long and parted it in the same way. This was reminiscent of the victims of the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, who went to the electric chair in 1989. They were all associated in some way with the University of Wisconsin either attending classes there, or living or working on campus. Their bodies were found in and around Madison and concealed in wooded areas a little way from a road.
In 1984, America’s most prolific serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confessed to several of the murders, but later recanted. Lucas had a long history of random slayings, but he also had a reputation for making false confessions. Given that he was in prison when several of the murders were committed, it seems unlikely that he was involved.
Although the cases are reviewed periodically, Captain James Lamar of the Sheriff’s Department Operations Division in Portage County, Wisconsin, pointed out: “There’s not much investigators can do without new information.”
Although everyone was relieved that the series of killings seems come to an end, without the arrest and conviction of the culprit, no one knows whether he has actually stopped, or moved on to some other area or found some better way to conceal his activities. Of course he could be dead or incarcerated. Serial killers rarely give up of their own volition.
Massachusetts’ Murderers
The towns of Marlborough, Massachusetts and neighbouring Hudson appear to have a serial killer on their hands.
On 24 September 2003, pupils from the Hillside School in Marlborough were clearing a track for a cycle path in a wooded area behind the school when they discovered the remains of an unidentified woman. She was white, aged between 20 and 35, and between 4 foot 11 inches to 5 foot 1 inch tall.
The woman had been in her shallow grave for up to three years before her discovery and her body was badly decomposed. But the police deduced that she had been wearing blue plaid flannel pyjama pants from “B-Time”, a black and red long-sleeved “Guess” shirt made in 2000 and, over it, a dark greenish blue zip-front shirt with blue and white stripes on the sleeves. On her wrist, she wore a gold bracelet with “#1 Mom” engraved on it.
Investigators began searching the area for further clues and on 29 September they found a second shallow grave around 100 yards from the first. This time the remains could be identified. They belonged to 29-year-old Carmen Rudy, who had last been seen at her sister’s home 15 miles away in Worcester the previous September. Although the bodies had not been buried at the same time, they were clearly related.
Then on 3 March 2004, a contractor was clearing the undergrowth in the same wooded area, just over the city line in Hudson, when he found the decomposed remains of 33-year-old Dinelia Torres, a resident of nearby Worchester. Forensic examination determined that her body had been buried there three to nine months before. She had been reported missing on 1 November and was identified by dental records. Because of the advanced state of decomposition no cause of death could be established in any of the three slayings.
However, in the case of Torres, the police had a suspect. A year before her body was discovered, she had taken out a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend Robert Toupin, who she claimed had beaten her and threatened to kill her. According the records of Worchester District court, Torres claimed that Toupin had entered her home the morning of 11 March. In the application for a restraining order filed later that day, Torres wrote: “I asked him to stop, he… started to punch me all over and I fell to the floor. He started to kick me all over. He would not let me talk. He just continued to hit me all over. After he was done hitting me, he damaged my house. He told me if I called the cops, he will [expletive] kill me.”
Toupin was married to a woman who he had been married to since high school and was said to be living with her in Oakham. But records show that Torres and Robert J. Toupin had shared a house on Prospect Street in Worchester, owned by one of Toupin’s relatives, and Torres’ family maintain that the couple had a romantic relationship.
However, Dinelia Torres was a known drug user with convictions for prostitution. Carmen Rudy lived a similar high-risk lifestyle. The victims were all of roughly the same height, weight, age and appearance and, while Dinelia Torres’ body was found 1? miles from the other two, both sites were just off Interstate 495.
“We’re operating on the theory that they may be related,” said Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley. “It’s just too much coincidence… I have to say that that increases our concern that the killings are related, and that we may be dealing with someone who fits that description of a serial killer.”
The Boston FBI office offered the DA’s office the services of America’s top serial-killer hunters at the bureau’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico, Virginia. Meanwhile the Worcester Police Department began reviewing its four adult and twelve juvenile missing-person cases. Investigators then looked into possible connection with other murders in Massachusetts, such as that of 37-year-old Sheila Cormier of Leominster who was missing for years before her body was pulled from a swamp in Lunenberg in 2001. That same year, 17- year-old Latasha Cannon was found with her throat slashed on the grounds of the Raytheon Company in Bedford. And the following year, 19-year-old Melissa Doherty was found bound and burned in Andover. Authorities were also checking out missing person reports and unsolved cases throughout the state.
Three weeks after the discovery of Dinelia Torres, the police established the identity of the first body. She was 29-year-old Betzaida Montalvo, a drug addict and mother of five. She had been last been seen in late spring of 2003. Investigations had been hampered by the fact she had never been officially reported missing, but her body was finally identified from dental records. All three women were known drug users and were connected to prostitution in the South Main Street area of Worchester.
Then two prostitutes claimed that they were driven out along the I–290 which leads from Worchester to Marlborough by a client in a pick-up who pulled a cut-throat razor and attacked them. The women said they fought the man off and escaped.
In May 29-year-old Manuel Bonilla was arrested for three attacks on prostitutes in Worcester in March and April. He allegedly slashed two women and attempted to strangle the third. However, the authorities made no connection between him and the murders.
On 13 September 2004, the body of another prostitute was found 80 miles away in York County, Maine. Forty-two-year-old Wendy Morello had been stuffed in a trash can in a wooded area. She was from Millbury, two miles outside Worcester, and had been missing for a week. A drug addict, she was a mother of two and the police initially believed that she was murdered locally before being transported to Maine and dumped there. Later, it was concluded that her slaying murder was not connected with the other killings.
The police in Massachusetts had had similar cases before. From April to September of 1988 a serial murderer haunted New Bedford, Massachusetts, some 60 miles from Worchester. He also picked on drug addicts
