1775
The first attempt at a settlement in the area was in 1775, by Amos Brownson and John Chamberlain; it was abandoned that autumn.
about 0:07:19The story
Richmond, Vermont, is a small town of about 4,100 people in Chittenden County, half an hour south of Burlington and a little over twenty minutes from the state capital, Montpelier. It is farm and ski country, with a sixteen-sided meeting house known as the Round Church, a river running through it and a reputation for being a quiet, family-oriented place. It was also, for a few weeks in the autumn of 1986, the centre of a manhunt that ended with one of the most notorious murder trials in the state's history.
A psychiatrist who examined him in 1971 diagnosed a personality disorder and wanted him hospitalised; his mother refused. He married, had three children, and by the early 1970s was already committing violent sexual offences.
In June 1973, in Florida, he picked up a hitchhiking couple, held the man at gunpoint and sexually assaulted the woman. In July 1976, in New Hampshire, he offered a woman a lift three times, then pulled a gun on her, drove her into the woods, raped her twice and told her he was going to kill her. She escaped.
On 20 February 1980 his wife told him their marriage was over. That same morning, Susan Mackey, twenty-one, who worked for Precision Airlines in Springfield and lived in Claremont with her two-year-old son, stopped to pick up a hitchhiker at the Springfield-Claremont toll bridge. He drove her along back roads, stopped at a rest area and assaulted her twice in the woods. He asked whether she had enjoyed it; she said yes because she was afraid of what he might do if she said no. He told her he liked her and wanted her to stay and be his old lady, then broke into a two-room camp near a dam, changed his clothes and said he would be back in an hour with groceries. She promised to wait, watched until his car was out of sight, ran down the road and eventually flagged down a passing driver, who took her to Grace Cottage Hospital. The ordeal had lasted about six hours.
Three psychiatrists testified about his childhood, his depression and his inability to form relationships. The state argued that he had planned the attack carefully, watching for traffic and choosing a secluded place, and that he knew what he was doing was wrong.
By 1986 he was living in Richmond with his girlfriend, Paul Leader Lewis, building a house in Eden Mills, working as an auto mechanic in Burlington and as the maintenance man for his apartment building. On the morning of 10 September 1986, Paulette Crickmore, fifteen, a tenth-grader at Mount Mansfield Union High School, left home with her flute and a bright blue backpack. Her stepmother, Tammy, was at home with a two-week-old baby; her father, Alan, had gone to work early at the Hayward Tyler Pump Company. Paulette stopped at the Four Corners store in Richmond, cashed a seven-dollar babysitting cheque and bought an apple and some milk, then asked a crossing guard whether the late bus had gone. At about 8.15 she was seen walking east on Jericho Road past the Interstate 89 overpass. It was the last time anyone saw her.
The search lasted ten weeks. Thousands of posters went up across New England, Hayward Tyler gave its workers time off to search and contributed money, a ten-thousand-dollar reward was raised and hundreds of tips came in, but nothing was found. On 19 November 1986 a seventy-five-year-old hunter, Howard Blackmore, found her body in the Duxbury Woods, west of River Road and just south of the Chittenden County line. She had been shot three times with a .32-calibre pistol.
A search of his car produced a loaded .32-calibre Mauser pistol and later two rifles.
Searches of his home found gun parts and ammunition. Two bullets fired into the wall at his workplace matched the three bullets taken from Paulette's body. On 6 December 1986 police found a .32-calibre revolver wrapped in an oily cloth inside a concrete block in the foundation of his house, with three spent shells in the cylinder.
The prosecution, led by state's attorney Janet Murnane, relied on circumstantial evidence: the gun, the bullets, the scratches on his face, his remarks to Bork and fourteen unaccounted hours. The defence blamed Lewis's son, Nelson North, who had access to the gun and had helped build the foundation, but North had an alibi: he was tarring a roof in Winooski that day and was seen there covered in tar by mid-morning.