Serial Killer Happy Meal

Plymouth, New Hampshire, sits in Grafton County in the eastern central part of the state, a town of 6,916 people and 28 square miles of woods with Plymouth State College at its centre. Its motto is 'bridging the lakes region and the white mountains'. It was incorporated in 1763 on the site of an Abenaki village burned by Captain Thomas Baker in 1712. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it In the early 1900s the Draper and Maynard Sporting Goods Company sold equipment directly to the Boston Red Sox, and Babe Ruth came to the store to pick out bats and gloves.

The first murder came in 1991. Theresa Ann Reed, known as Tess, was 30 and worked as assistant registrar at Plymouth State College, which she had graduated from with a business degree in 1983. She lived alone in an apartment in a three-apartment building a short walk from her job. She did not turn up for work, and after two days she was checked on and found inside, wedged between her bed and the wall, with nine stab wounds. The town panicked. The state police major crimes unit took over, students and then hundreds of other people were interviewed, dorms were locked around the clock, escorts were provided and shops sold out of door locks and mace. Investigators could not establish a time of death, ruled out a disgruntled student and had nothing else to go on. The case went cold, and for more than 20 years Theresa Reed's family had no answer.

Three years later, on 3 December 1994, Mary Lou Sale, a 49-year-old tax accountant, was killed in Lexington, Massachusetts, about 25 minutes outside Boston. She had moved from Los Angeles a few months earlier, worked at the firm of Friedberg and Garlic in Wellesley, and rented a two-storey house at Massachusetts Avenue. Her daughter was a student at Wheaton College in Norton. That night she went up to her second-floor bedroom, put on her pyjamas, read and fell asleep. Neighbours noticed her lights went off around 9:30 p.m. One was woken by breaking glass between 11:30 p.m. and 12:15 a.m. She did not appear at work on 5 or 6 December, and on the morning of 6 December police did a check. A pane in the back door was shattered. They found her on the bedroom floor between the bed and the wall, almost naked, her pyjama top ripped open and two buttons torn off, one never recovered. A nylon stocking was tied around her neck and her skull had been struck seven times. The cause of death was blunt force trauma and strangulation. Tests for sexual assault were negative. Jewellery was scattered, two purses, her wallet, credit cards and some jewellery were missing, and there was blood on the bottom drawers of her dresser that was not hers.

this part of the story is covered for now He had asked her out several times and been refused, and he had a fiancee. He told a tenant that Mary Lou had probably gone to California. When police asked what he had seen in the drawer he had opened while pretending to move a dresser, he replied: 'Why, was she strangled with a nylon stocking?' That detail had been withheld from the public. He said he had been at an office holiday party in Braintree from seven to ten and home by midnight, but his fiancee had fallen asleep at 11:30 and did not see him until 10 the next morning. He described himself as an insomniac who drove around at night. He agreed to give fingerprints, then refused a polygraph and a DNA test, and he left town. He later moved to Oregon and invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than testify.

The fingerprint evidence pointed elsewhere. details of the account remain covered until revealed He lived five doors from Mary Lou at Massachusetts Avenue and had a record for a 1990 sexual assault in Concord. He had been picked up drunk in the McDonald's car park more than once, and on 8 December he was found wandering there drinking and disoriented and taken to the Bedford VA Hospital, where he was fingerprinted. On 29 December a latent print from Mary Lou's bedroom matched his left ring finger, and a palm print matched the bedroom door. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He first said he had never been in the house; then he said he had gone in after hearing a scream, found her dead, felt for a pulse, washed his hands and left because he did not want to get involved.

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 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 On 23 August 1992 he had been suspended from McDonald's, needed money, and broke into the basement apartment of a yellow bungalow on Ridge Road, where Catholine Dempsey, a 31-year-old graphic and textile designer, was asleep. She woke and begged him not to hurt her. He pressed her face into the mattress, put a pillow over her head and stabbed her 17 times in the neck and torso with a pocket knife, slashing her diaphragm and aiming at her kidneys. He left around 5:30 a.m. She managed to call 911 and say 'I've been attacked', but the part-time dispatcher, Kenneth Robishaw, could not understand her address and treated the call as a hoax. The next shift's dispatcher worked out the address at about 10 a.m., and police arrived at 10:57 to find her dead near the foot of the bed, still holding the phone. Her family settled with the town of Lexington for $100,000, the cap, and the state brought in enhanced 911 so that dispatchers automatically see the caller's address. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

He also told the police to contact New Hampshire. this part of the story is covered for now He said he had gone to her apartment one night in September 1991 to burgle it, chose it at random after a police car frightened him away from a larger house, and stabbed her when she screamed. details of the account remain covered until revealed He said he was in the apartment for about two minutes, then slept in the woods and walked to his parents' house in Dorchester the next day. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now He asked whether he could have the death penalty instead; it was not available for a crime committed in 1991. details of the account remain covered until revealed The family said the case had never been on the back burner. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He remains in the Massachusetts system, with an agreement that he may be transferred to New Hampshire.