Stopping A Serial Killer

On the morning of 22 December 1961 Nancy Ann Frenier, nineteen years old and the mother of a six-month-old son, drove her husband William to work in the family car and left the baby with her mother. She planned to do the laundry and then go Christmas shopping. She never came back. Her husband waited for her after work, telephoned her mother, and reported her missing.

The next day her car was found abandoned in a wooded, gravelly spot in East Providence, close to the reservoir. Inside were a basket of washed and folded clothes, a Mammoth Mart paper bag and wrapped Christmas presents. The car was locked with her purse still in it and there was no blood. A man and a girl told police they had seen a man and a woman walking from the car towards the reservoir on the day she vanished and had heard the woman cry out. A Massachusetts storekeeper later said she had come into his shop between five and six that evening, bought cigarettes and asked the way to New Bedford. At about noon she had stopped at a house on Slocum Road in North Dartmouth to use the telephone, and the family there said she seemed upset. Two ten-year-old boys reported seeing a man and a woman walk into woods in Rumford at about two in the afternoon.

Her husband took a lie detector test and passed it; his only lie was that he had given his mother's address in Seekonk rather than his own in Pawtucket, hoping local police would take more interest. Over Christmas the police searched snow-covered woods and went house to house in two states, and dragging crews cut rectangles through eleven inches of ice on the reservoir. On 19 March 1962, when the reservoir thawed, her body floated up in about a foot of water. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed, and her throat was cut. Her torn clothing lay about five feet away. She was identified by her Attleboro High School class of 1959 ring, a diamond ring, a wedding band and a hairpin engraved with her name. The knife was never found. details of the account remain covered until revealed

On 26 January 1963 Edith Martin, thirty-eight, a bookkeeper at the Allied Anodizing Company in Pawtucket, came home for lunch in South Attleboro, Massachusetts. A heavy-set man of about thirty drove up in a blue 1958 Chevrolet with Rhode Island plates, left the engine running and went inside. At about half past one he came out of the kitchen door and drove off. At half past two her fifteen-year-old daughter Elaine found her in a pool of blood. The house had been wrecked in a struggle. Edith had thirty-one stab wounds; seven knives lay around her, five of them broken, and her skirt and jacket were folded on her bed. There was no sexual assault and nothing had been taken. A man found dead of an overdose in a Pawtucket gas station was quickly ruled out.

Checking 1,144 blue 1958 Chevrolets, of which 117 were local, police reached the third name: a seventeen-year-old with a juvenile record who had twice pulled a knife on women in cars, once three weeks before Nancy Frenier died. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it His green jacket and shoes were stained with blood. At the station he said he did not want to do it again, admitted killing the woman in Attleboro, and then volunteered that he wished he had been caught before he killed the other woman. He described taking his father's car, pulling knives from a steak set and stabbing Edith Martin as she fought and ran through the house, then throwing his bloodied clothes into woods. The next day he re-enacted the Frenier killing at the reservoir, where he had hit her with a log, cut her throat, pushed her under the ice and a week later pulled her out again.

Family court waived him to adult court. 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