A Bloody Path To A Monster

In November 1976 Lori Ganyo was twenty-nine and living in a trailer on twenty acres in East Enosburgh, a small community in Franklin County in the far north-west corner of Vermont. She had been born Lori Arms in Burlington on November 30, 1946, graduated from Essex Junction High School and spent a year at Johnson State Teachers College. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it The couple moved to East Enosburgh in 1974 and rented a house down the road from a plot they hoped to buy. They saved cash and eventually bought the twenty acres, a trailer and a horse barn outright. Lori kept two horses of her own and looked after an Arabian stallion belonging to her sister, Karen Champ, in Connecticut. Ricky was a carpenter and was building a house for his father-in-law in Essex, about an hour away.

On November 4, 1976 Ricky left for work at 5.30 a.m. after taking Lori a cup of coffee in bed. When he came home in the afternoon the front door of the trailer was open and Lori was gone. A television tray had tipped against the couch, an empty teacup and a tea bag lay on the floor, and a small wet tea stain was on the couch. Nothing was broken or missing. Her jacket, boots, purse, money and cigarettes were all still there, and the horses had not been fed. Ricky called the state police. The next day troopers Leo Willie and Corporal William Kitchell brought bloodhounds, but the dogs found no scent and no trace of a struggle. The police treated Lori as a missing person who had left of her own accord. Ricky disagreed and told every newspaper that would listen that she must have been carried out of the trailer.

The case became a small-town obsession. Lori's mother Barbara Arms, her father Willard Arms and her sister Karen gave the papers different theories, and a family acquaintance, Penny Holcomb, described a vision in which a tall, husky, white-haired man with slicked-back hair carried Lori out of the trailer in his arms. Ricky and his friends searched the woods for days. On November 21, seventeen days after she vanished, the family was increasingly afraid. On December 2 a three-day inquest opened at St Albans. In January 1977 Ricky sold the trailer and the horse barn and moved to Florida, saying he was following a lead. By May the police described the case as at a standstill.

On August 5, 1977 two Connecticut residents launched a canoe into the Lamoille River about fifty yards off Vermont Highway 108 in Jeffersonville, roughly twenty miles from the Ganyo trailer, and struck something in the water. They found a nude, badly decomposed female body, hands and feet bound with rope, wrapped in a rubberised tarp and weighted down with concrete blocks. Dental records identified Lori rather than the other missing local woman, Iris Brown. The autopsy found that she had been manually strangled, with a broken hyoid bone, and that she had been sexually assaulted. The police had no leads. this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed He lived in a nearby trailer with his wife and children, kept horses, worked for his parents' farm equipment business and, unknown to Ricky, was having an affair with Lori. The two rode horses together. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He then spent a few months in Massachusetts before settling in Florida in 1978. this part of the story is covered for now One woman said he kidnapped her, suspended her from a truck hoist, beat her with a leather belt and tools and sodomised her with truck tools. details of the account remain covered until revealed In 1979 a Florida prosecutor called the complainants prostitutes and transient street people who made poor witnesses.

The break came early in 1990. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He said Lori had come to their house that morning, that she and his father had argued outside, and that his father had told her he would kill her if she came back. He said his father had broken his routine of slicking his hair back with half a jar of Vaseline, had gone next door to the Ganyo trailer and returned fifteen minutes later telling the boys to keep their mouths shut. He also produced nude photographs of Lori that his father had kept, and police found a love letter from her. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now She stood by him throughout, insisting that everyone was lying about her son. His defence lawyer, Dan Warren, called him an easy-going, hard-working old country boy and said the case was a character assassination. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it With credit for time served since March 1990 he had done sixty-four months. He walked out at 8.02 a.m. on July 19, 1995. Ricky Ganyo was waiting outside and told him: 'You know who I am. I'm going to follow you like wind in a hurricane.'

this part of the story is covered for now In the two weeks after his release he attempted to settle in seven communities in New York and Vermont and was driven out of each, ending up in a homeless shelter. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now Ricky Ganyo later remarried, had children and moved back to Vermont. Lori's family finally had an answer, though not the one they wanted.