Murders and Mysteries of New England · Marti Shaw

The Connecticut River Valley Killer

·51 min·3 clips

Jane Borowski was stabbed 18 to 27 times and survived while seven months pregnant.

Marty starts by resetting the format. He tells listeners he is going completely off script from his notes, so the pauses and restarts stay in the recording. The schedule is changing too. With school back in session and weekly episodes hard to keep up with, he explains the move to a bi-weekly release, at least for the school year. Then the case takes over. The strongest section follows Barbara, last seen at 10 p.m. heading home in Norwich before snowplows found her green BMW at a northbound I-91 rest stop in Hartford, Vermont. The car scene feels wrong right away. The door was cracked, blood was on the steering wheel and back seat, and blood-stained belongings later turned up in a nearby dumpster. Later that year, on March 28th of 1987, Barbara's body was found near an apple tree on Advent Hill Road in a wooded area in Heartland, Vermont, about twelve miles from the rest stop. Marty keeps returning to the question investigators could not answer: why pull into that rest stop during a heavy snowstorm when she was only about ten miles from home? That is the detail that nags. Her injuries, including repeated stab wounds to the neck and chest, defense wounds, and a disabling wound, make the timeline feel even worse. He then widens the case list. After the confirmed Connecticut River Valley Killer cases, he moves into possible victims, with a clear warning that there was not much information available. Joan Dunham is one possible link. She was fourteen, sexually assaulted and strangled in Charleston, New Hampshire, in 1968, and Marty says the connection rests on geography and when and where she was found. Sylvia Gray follows. She was seventy-six, found bludgeoned and stabbed in a wooded area in Plainfield, New Hampshire, a few hundred yards from home and a day after being reported missing. The episode ends where the case still sits, unresolved, with Marty hoping the killings can one day be put to rest and the killer will atone for what happened.

As heard by us

A careful, slightly rough walk through one of New England's stubborn unsolved cases.

This episode treats the Connecticut River Valley Killer like a live case file, not a tidy mystery package, and that fits the material. Marty Shaw moves from the confirmed killings to the question of how the murders connect, keeping the thread clear with dates, distances, and the…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a grounded Connecticut River Valley killings walk-through, told from notes rather than a polished script.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Murders and Mysteries of New England