Dark Downeast - The Murders of Laura Kempton & Tammy Little (New Hampshire)

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

PORTSMOUTH, 1981 & 1982: In just over a year span during the early 1980s in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the lives of two young women were ended by an assailant who broke into their apartments, violently attacked and beat them, and somehow managed to escape undetected, remaining anonymous for decades.Laura Kempton and Tammy Little’s murders have long been intertwined. As you’ll hear, the circumstances of their deaths and their lives are just too similar to ignore a possible connection, but now in 2023, their cases apparently diverge. The New Hampshire State’s Attorney’s Office announced that they have identified the person responsible for one of those homicides. Laura Kempton’s killer has finally been named.In a 25-page report and press conference, the details of the 40-plus year investigation into the murder of 23-year old Laura Kempton were revealed. Now the question on everyone’s lips: What’s next for the case of 20-year old Tammy Little?If you have information regarding this case, contact the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at [phone], [e-mail], or leave a tip. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/laurakempton Dark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case

In just over a year's span during the early 1980s in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the lives of two young women were ended by an assailant who broke into their apartments, violently attacked and beat them, and somehow managed to escape undetected, remaining anonymous for decades. Laura Kempton and Tammy Little's murders have long been intertwined. As you'll hear, the circumstances of their deaths and their lives are just too similar to ignore a possible connection. But now, in 2023, their cases apparently diverge. The New Hampshire State's Attorney's Office announced that they have identified the person responsible for one of those homicides.

Laura Kempton's killer has finally been named. In a 25-page report and press conference, the details of the 40-plus-year investigation into the murder of 23-year-old Laura Kempton were revealed. Now the question on everyone's lips. What's next for the case of 20-year-old Tammy Little? I'm Kylie Lowe, and these are the cases of Laura Kempton and Tammy Little on Dark Down East. 23-year-old Laura Kempton was a free spirit. She was outgoing and social and had a big personality. In the fall of 1981, she was studying to be a hairstylist at the Portsmouth Beauty School, and sources say Laura was also an aspiring model. A Dark Downies listener wrote to me that although

she didn't know Laura personally, she knew of Laura because she'd posed for a few photo shoots and those photos of Laura were on display at a local salon. In addition to her coursework at the beauty school, Laura worked at the quirky Macro Polo gift shop in downtown to cover her bills and maybe give her some walking around money. Laura liked to go out with friends to the local night spots in Portsmouth, and she was on the dating scene too. On Saturday night, September 26, 1981, Laura Kempton was out for one of her usual nights on the town in the historic city of Portsmouth. Laura met her date for the night, a man that I'll call Jeremy,

at the Riverside Club for some dancing, and they closed the place out. As the lights came on and the revelers poured onto the streets of Portsmouth, Laura hopped in Jeremy's car for a ride home. They stopped into her apartment at 20 Chapel Street around 1.30 a.m., but were only there a half hour before leaving again to grab food. Laura and Jeremy returned together by 3 a.m., and he spent the night. Before they turned into bed, though,

Laura asked him to check the door to make sure it was locked. She lived alone and was always diligent about locking up her door. Laura had to work the next morning, but she did have time for a quick breakfast with Jeremy at Goldie's Deli before her shift at Macro Polo started. Laura said goodbye to Jeremy around 10 a.m., just in time to clock in at work one block away. When her shift ended around 7 p.m. on Sunday, September 27, 1981, Laura returned to her apartment. Her friend Karen stopped over around 9 p.m., and the pair decided to walk over to Luca's restaurant for dinner and drinks while they listened to the band play. According to Karen, Laura had been seeing the guy who played saxophone in the band

and wanted him to come over that night. Laura danced to the live music and chatted with a few guys at the restaurant, and she and Karen stayed until close around 1 a.m. The saxophonist couldn't come over, so the women walked back to Laura's apartment together. Laura invited Karen to stay the night, but Karen had an early shift the next morning and wanted to get back home. Laura then suggested they grab a coffee at Victoria's Spa,

but Karen wasn't up for it, so she said goodbye and headed for home, leaving Laura alone at her apartment. The 20 Chapel Street building was a multi-unit on the corner of Schaaf Street. Built around the turn of the century and wedged onto one of the many narrow one-way streets in Portsmouth that probably never expected to have full-size automobiles navigating down them someday. I found rental ads for furnished rooms in the building as early as 1937, and it looks like it's still an active rental building today. The exterior hasn't changed significantly since 1981

either. Looking through the report of this case, it seems that at least the front entry door of the apartment building at 20 Chapel Street was not usually locked. A man named Arthur, who was experiencing homelessness during the late summer and early fall of 1981, often snuck into the building and slept in the hallway at night. On the night of September 27th, Arthur had quite a bit to drink and decided that he'd crash in the Chapel Street hallway. But as he got closer to the building, he saw that a man and woman were arguing on the street corner and he didn't want them to see him sneak in the front door, so he left and came back later. He snuck through the front door and found a place to sleep in a cubbyhole on the third floor.

Arthur was awoken from his snooze not long after closing his eyes by the sounds of arguing and a loud crash on the first floor. He didn't want to be found out if police responded to the increasingly loud situation inside that first-floor apartment, so Arthur quickly vacated his cubbyhole and made for the exit, but not before noticing that some of the lights in the hallway were out, and the door of the first floor apartment was slightly open. It sounded to him like the man and woman shouting inside knew each other. These weren't cries for help, at least that's what Arthur

thought as he snuck back out the front door of 20 Chapel Street and found a new place to sleep in a nearby park. Around 2 a.m., another tenant of 20 Chapel Street named Daniel got back to his place. His apartment was just across the hall from Laura's, and as he walked into the building, he noticed that her door looked broken. A panel of wood was missing, and when he craned his neck to look through it, he saw what looked like a sheet of metal covering most of the opening on the other side. There was only an inch or so between the edge of the wooden door and the metal sheet, and Daniel thought he could hear someone fiddling with it inside the apartment.

It raised a red flag for Daniel. He wondered if maybe someone had broken into Laura's apartment, but he didn't inspect the situation further. He unlocked his own apartment door, checked to make sure his place hadn't been broken into, relocked the door behind him, and went to bed. At 6 a.m. on the morning of Monday, September 28th, 1981, a second-floor tenant at 20 Chapel Street, a woman named Rebecca, was leaving the building when she realized the second-floor rear exit door was slightly ajar. It was odd. Rebecca thought that that door was always locked. She made her way downstairs and exited the front door, but noticed something else strange on her way out. The door to her

neighbor Laura's apartment was damaged. A panel was missing, but the opening was blocked with something. The door hadn't been damaged when she passed it the night before. She was sure of it. There was music playing inside Laura's apartment. Rebecca left without taking a closer look or listen. Just before 9.30 that same morning, September 28th, Portsmouth Police Officer Ron Gravoy stepped out of his cruiser at 20 Chapel Street. He had a summons for unpaid parking meter violations in hand, with the name Laura Kempton printed at the top. She lived in apartment number two on the first floor. Officer Gravoy stepped into the building and approached unit two, but even before his knuckles wrapped on the blue wooden door,

the officer noticed with alarm that the upper left section of the door paneling was missing. He peered through the rectangular opening in the old door. Though half of it was obscured by a thin metal sheet of some sort, he could see into the apartment beyond through a small gap on one side. Officer Gravoy would be the first to find Laura Kempton's body that day. He secured the scene and called her backup. According to the report released by the Office of the New Hampshire Attorney General in July of 2023, Laura Kempton's body was found on the floor

of the main room of her apartment, which appeared to be both a living space and her bedroom. She was mostly covered with sheets, bedding, and her mattress and box spring that had been placed on top of her. When investigators removed the pile of stuff, they found that Laura was nude and her ankles were bound with a white electrical cord.

A gray telephone cord was around her neck and shoulders, and it appeared to be from the phone in Laura's kitchen. She had injuries indicative of blunt force trauma to her head and wounds on her face. The broken door panel was the first and most obvious sign that someone had forced their way into Laura Kempton's apartment. But investigators expanded the search to the exterior doors and windows for further evidence of where and how the assailant got into the building. The windows directly into her apartment were all locked and secured, no broken glass. But there was

a basement window with a screen pushed in. Investigators ultimately ruled out that window as a possible entry point, though, since the dirt on the window ledge was undisturbed. Perhaps the killer had just walked right in the front door. The scene was thoroughly processed and the team collected hundreds of potential pieces of evidence. The primary items included the electrical and telephone cord from Laura's body, a green pillowcase removed from her head and neck, a cigarette butt found on the floor, as well as a glass bottle found next to her body. The autopsy would later suggest that an object similar to the glass bottle could have been the murder weapon. Though an apartment building is likely covered in fingerprints from the tenants and their guests, investigators did not discount the potential importance of latent prints on exterior doors.

Technicians got to work dusting and lifting several from around the building, from Laura's apartment door and several from surfaces inside her apartment too. Investigators shared a photo of the blue-paneled door leading into Laura's apartment in the AEG's report, and you can see the photo on the blog post for this episode at darkdowneast.com. The door wasn't kicked in or smashed. It appeared to be precisely dismantled in place, allowing the perpetrator to reach through the open panel and easily unlock the doorknob. The door was later removed and reconstructed as part of the investigation to better understand how the assailant got in. Inside Laura's apartment, investigators found a bent piece of black metal that looked like it had been torn off of a wall mailbox. It was the hooked part on the bottom of the mailbox that

might cradle a newspaper, for example. That piece of metal appeared to be a makeshift tool used by the attacker to pry off the molding around the upper left door panel. When the molding was off, the wooden panel could be removed from the door, leaving only a thin piece of sheet metal on the other side. Investigators concluded that, too, was pried off with the metal hook from the mailbox. Investigators believed that the perpetrator likely put the sheet metal back in place after gaining access to the apartment so no one could see what was happening inside, which was how Officer Gravoy found it that morning. Meanwhile, Dr. Dennis Carlson performed the autopsy at the

Exeter Hospital. The office of the medical examiner hadn't been established yet in 1981, and Dr. Carlson was a certified pathologist to perform autopsies. Now, I won't be sharing any specifics of Laura's injuries noted in the autopsy report. It's just not necessary to broadcast those graphic details. All I'll say is that her death was the result of, quote, a severe beating about the head with terminal pulmonary edema. Dr. Carlson also determined that Laura had been sexually assaulted. The pathologist collected biological samples, including swabs and skin scrapings. This evidence was secured by Portsmouth police and transported to the New Hampshire State Forensic Lab for future testing. The following day, Laura's father positively identified her body,

and soon the news of what happened on Chapel Street had spread around Portsmouth and the state of New Hampshire. While the investigative team waited for results from forensic testing and analysis on the evidence recovered from the scene, detectives set about interviewing witnesses about the days and hours leading up to the discovery on that Monday morning. Detectives spoke with Jeremy, who had been with Laura the full night before she was killed. He was transparent with police, telling them that he and Laura had been intimate as recently as the morning of September 27th. He also told police that he remembered Laura putting some cash into an envelope and leaving it on her kitchen table before they left for breakfast that Sunday morning. Police never found that envelope of cash. Detectives also interviewed Arthur, the man who sometimes slept in the hallway of the 20 Chapel Street building. He told police about the loud voices and the arguing, and he mentioned that

when he first tried to sneak into the building, he saw a man and woman arguing outside on the sidewalk. When police showed Arthur a photo of Laura, he confirmed that that was the woman he saw. And though it's not clear how from the AG's report of the case, Arthur was also able to identify the person she was arguing with as a man named John. Laura's friend Karen also spoke with detectives and told them everything about their night together at Luca's restaurant, dancing, and then walking back to Laura's apartment together. Karen's timeline helped narrow down when the murder could have happened. Laura's two neighbors, Rebecca and Daniel, also helped narrow down this timeline and provided more details about the

state of Laura's apartment door when they saw it between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. on September 28th. Amidst all of these witness interviews, early leads began to develop, and police wanted to speak further with two men about their activities on the night of September 27th and early morning hours of September 28th, 1981. Laura's neighbor, Daniel, his statement was curious to detectives. He told them he saw the broken panel on the door, that he heard someone messing around with the sheet metal on the inside, and that he felt strongly enough about a possible break-in that he apparently checked his own apartment for intruders. But he didn't bother to take a closer look at what was going on inside

Laura's apartment. When detectives spoke with Daniel again, they pressed him on the events of that night and why he didn't question what was happening with the panel on Laura's door. He told police he just figured it was Laura fixing her own door and didn't think it warranted any further inspection. His answers in both interviews didn't satisfy investigators. Detectives asked Daniel to take a polygraph test, but he refused, and so he landed himself on the list of suspects for Laura's murder. Interestingly, Daniel contacted police a few days after Laura's body was discovered and told them that when he went to replace a light bulb in the downstairs hallway of the 20 Chapel Street building, he realized that the existing bulb wasn't burned out, it was just

slightly unscrewed and loose in the socket. Detectives immediately collected the light bulb and other components of the light for fingerprint analysis. It was possible that whoever untwisted the light bulb and darkened the hallway was the same person who broke into Laura's apartment. Detectives also took a hard look at the man named John, the guy reportedly seen in an argument with Laura on the street corner that night. The AG's report doesn't get into any investigative details about this guy, John, but it's safe to assume he was interviewed or at least tracked down and checked out because the report does include his full name. John, too, became an early person of interest in the investigation. Forensic analysis of fingerprints,

blood, and biological evidence at the scene was ongoing. The autopsy pathologist theorized that an object similar to a heavy glass bottle could have been used as the murder weapon. And Type A blood, Laura's blood type, was found on both glass bottles on the floor of her apartment. Type A blood, presumably Laura's, was also detected on a green pillowcase and a portion of door molding found beneath her body. The section of telephone cord around Laura's neck was found to have two components of seminal fluid on it, but no sperm. Other samples collected from Laura's body had tested positive for spermatozoa and seminal material. That was as far as 1981 forensics could take it, though. Technology wouldn't reveal anything about the person who left the samples there for many more

years. The investigation continued into the following year. Spring of 1982 rolled around with no arrests and nothing to report. A lingering unsolved murder of such a violent nature didn't align with the image of the city. Portsmouth wasn't considered especially dangerous before Laura's murder cracked the polished veneer of the historic seaside town. A March 1982 article in the Boston Globe by Brad Pokorny described the city's sudden uptick in violent attacks. Five reported rapes, the murder of Laura Kempton, and another homicide in the nearby town of Rye, all within a six-month span.

It had residents banding together to keep their city safe. Two members of a group called Dover Friends Meeting, a community of Quakers in the area, created a project called Friends Who Walk. Armed with only a police whistle, two members walked the dark streets of Portsmouth with their eyes trained on the even darker alleys and shadowed corners of the city. Should they encounter anything nefarious, illicit, or alarming, they'd blow the whistles, stand their ground, non-violently of course, and wait for authorities to respond.

If necessary, they'd testify in court to what they saw. Another newly formed citizen-led task force called the Stop Seacoast Crime Committee called on residents to watch for suspicious strangers and unfamiliar vehicles in their neighborhoods. But despite the effort of citizens to protect their neighborhoods, one year after Laura Kempton was brutally attacked and killed in her own apartment, Portsmouth would experience another alarmingly similar homicide within city limits. 20-year-old Tammy Elizabeth Little lived alone in an apartment on Maplewood Avenue in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, not far from Portsmouth Beauty School where she was taking classes.

She was an aspiring model. She was active and social, and Tammy loved going out in Portsmouth. The Boston Globe described Tammy as a regular at local clubs. There is little public information about the circumstances surrounding the night of October 19, 1982, beyond the fact that Tammy Little's body was discovered in the bathtub of her apartment. She'd been beaten and sustained fatal injuries to her head. Anyone in Portsmouth or even greater New England with any awareness of what had happened just a year prior was quick to pin strings between the still-unsolved murder of Laura Kempton and this new shocking homicide of Tammy Little. It was too obvious to ignore. Both women were students at the same school,

both lived alone in Portsmouth, both were reportedly aspiring models, and both died in similar attacks. And unfortunately similar for Tammy Little's case, it soon went cold too. Because Tammy Little's case is still open, there's just not a lot of details about evidence, persons of interest, possible suspects, or any real substance of what's been going on behind the scenes of the investigation all these years. But any updates in Laura Kempton's case over the following several decades made mention of Tammy Little. These women, whether they knew each other in life or not, became intertwined in death.

In the spring of 1986, after almost four and five years of no updates in the investigations into the murders of Laura Kempton and Tammy Little, their names began to circulate as part of media coverage about two homicides in Massachusetts. According to an Associated Press report in the Lewiston Sun Journal, a Manchester, New Hampshire man was arrested and charged with the murder of two women in March of 1986. These women, Kathleen McGuire and Hema Cornier, engaged in sex work in the Boston area, and the suspect was accused of strangling them. The suspect was a known element to Manchester and Portsmouth, New Hampshire police. With both the Laura Kempton and Tammy Little homicides still unsolved in 1986,

and a New Hampshire local charged with the murder of those two Boston women, it wasn't surprising to me that the media asked about a possible connection to Laura and Tammy's cases. Detectives in Portsmouth said that they were monitoring the developments of the double homicide investigation in Boston, but commented that there didn't appear to be any connection to the Portsmouth murders. The MO didn't align, and besides, Laura and Tammy's cases hadn't been definitively proven connected to each other, despite their similarities on paper. Few details were released about Tammy Little and Laura Kempton's cases throughout the next decade. In 1996, though, a special weekly series running in the Boston Globe

raised the question of connection between the two of them once again. Detective William Mortimer, who had at one point worked on both cases, had since retired, but the cases stuck with him. Mortimer spoke with Globe correspondent Robert George about his lingering frustrations with the unsolved mysteries that remained on the books when his tenure was up. Mentions of a suspect or any solid leads in either case were scarce in the preceding 15 years. But in this interview, retired Detective Mortimer stated in no uncertain terms that there was a prime suspect. For obvious reasons, Mortimer didn't give the name of the guy he suspected, but he did say that the man worked as a, quote,

manual laborer and had tremendous strength. The man still lived in Portsmouth, where he was from. Mortimer himself exchanged empty pleasantries with the guy when they ran into each other at the grocery store, despite believing he was responsible for two heinous unsolved murders. The evidence against this quote-unquote number one suspect was flimsy and circumstantial at best, according to the article. There was no physical evidence against the man, but he consistently refused to provide an alibi, and detectives believed they had other good cause to suspect him, though Mortimer wouldn't elaborate on what that cause was. The suspect would call Mortimer, apparently just to talk, and then would later demand that police

stop harassing him. Robert George wrote that the suspect bragged about being a suspect. Mortimer said the man was, quote, playing head games with us, end quote. The article reignited conversation about the possibility that Laura Kempton and Tammy Little were killed by the same person. At the time of the article's release in 1996, two new detectives, James Tucker and Michael Ronke, had Laura and Tammy's case files. They continued to run down any new information and hoped that one day in the near future, they'd get a hit from the FBI database or another source that linked a possible suspect to the evidence found at either murder scene. Over the next four years, speculation over who was responsible for the homicides continued.

A 1998 arrest in a Dublin, New Hampshire rape and homicide case from 1987 bore similarities to Kempton and Little's cases, but Senior Assistant Attorney General Michael Ramsdell would only say that investigators were continuing their efforts on those cases. Quote, it would be a stretch to say we are close to an indictment, end quote. Technology was slowly catching up, though. Behind the scenes, as connections to other cases were speculated and explored, new forensic testing would soon give investigators breakthrough information to work with. As detailed in the Attorney General's report released in 2023, the Portsmouth Police Department submitted two biological samples from the case of Laura Kempton for testing at Cellmark Diagnostics in Maryland. I'm not an expert here, so it's always incredible to me that

evidence, especially biological evidence, can be and has been preserved so well for so long that science can actually learn something from it that was previously impossible to see. From the thigh scraping sample, which contained traces of spermatozoa, Cellmark Diagnostics developed a partial male profile with six alleles. It didn't break the case wide open, but two years later, in 2002, Maine State Police Crime Laboratory's forensic DNA analyst Kathy McMillan also analyzed and tested biological evidence from Laura's case. McMillan was able to identify a full 13 locust male profile from one of the swabs, as well as a partial male profile from the cigarette butt found at the scene. The full and partial male profiles on the two pieces of evidence matched.

What's more, the two profiles also matched the previous partial profile that Cellmark identified from the thigh scrapings. Translated simply in the AG's report, these three partial and full profiles did not prove that the same person's DNA was on all three pieces of evidence, but it did establish that the person whose sperm was on the swabs could not be excluded as the person who left DNA on the cigarette butt or the person whose sperm and or seminal fluid was found on Laura's body. These male profiles were significant because they allowed investigators to finally test against their existing suspect pool. The men whose names lingered on the list for almost 20 years were about to be ruled out or in. Jeremy, the man who Laura spent the night with

on September 26, was ruled out as a contributor to the DNA found on the swab and the cigarette butt and the scrapings. John, the man seen arguing with Laura on the street a matter of hours before the estimated time of the murder, was also ruled out following DNA testing. It wasn't Jeremy, and it wasn't John. Laura's neighbor Daniel, he had long frustrated investigators with his unsatisfying answers about what he saw during the early morning hours of September 28th, and his refusal to take a polygraph test was questionable too.

But once again, DNA testing and analysis effectively crossed Daniel's name off the suspect list too. There was no match. Side note, at the moment, I'm unable to connect the dots between the suspect that retired Detective Mortimer talked about in that news article from 1996 and the men who were cleared as suspects with DNA in 2002.

I wanted to track down Bill Mortimer to ask him about his work on the case, but he passed away in 2019. Anyway, although the suspect mail profiles didn't immediately rule in a suspect that had already been on the case radar since day one, it gave investigators a clear path forward and momentum that they hadn't felt in decades. According to the Attorney General's report, the mail profile was added to as many databases as possible, including CODIS and Interpol, and analysts continued to compare the profile to hundreds of persons of interest. All persons of interest known to the case throughout the years were eliminated as being possible contributors. That same year, 2002, investigators also decided to release a suspect profile that had been previously developed by the FBI's National

Center for the Analysis of Violent Crimes. According to an Associated Press report in the Valley News, this profile had been part of the case file since the mid-1990s, but it had been kept confidential to protect the ongoing work of detectives. Law enforcement hoped that releasing it so many years later would jog memories and bring new information in that could inch the case of Laura Kempton, and perhaps Tammy Little's case too, closer to closure. According to the FBI profile, the killer was possibly a white male under the age of 30. He'd be known as disorganized, spontaneous, impulsive, with difficulty controlling his rage, and he might be familiar with the victim, but perhaps only by sight. The killer may have lived alone or with a parent, he was presumed to live and work near the crime scenes, and he would

demonstrate poor work performance and inconsistency with his job. The profile also suggested that the killer was a quote-unquote night owl who wandered his neighborhood. He may also have below-average intelligence, low self-esteem, and limited social skills. He likely had a history of relationships or involvement with women either much older or much younger than him. Finally, the FBI determined that the killer would have shown an unusual interest in talking about the murders, and that his eating and alcohol consumption habits likely changed after the date of the killings. The profile was published widely, alongside an announcement of a $20,000 reward for information in both Laura Kempton and Tammy

Little's case. And just a few days after the profile was released, new leads did come in. The investigations of both cases were abuzz with activity after sitting dormant for so long. Of course, investigators wouldn't say what they were learning from these new tips, but they were following up on them. Just as quickly as the uptick in leads started, though, it slowed down again. Lead after lead proved to be a dead end, and the cases cooled off. Another decade and a half would pass before even more developments in DNA analysis advanced the case forward, and actually proved part of the FBI's suspect profile wrong. The mid-2010s was the beginning of a really important era for many long-standing

unsolved homicides across the country, thanks to breakthroughs in DNA analysis and research known as forensic genetic genealogy. In January of 2015, police in Phoenix, Arizona arrested a man for the murders of two women in the early 90s. The case got its big break after so many years thanks to the work of forensic genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick from Identifinders International. Colleen was and continues to be a leading figure in the genetic genealogy field. So when Portsmouth Police Sergeant John Perocchi heard about her work and the successful identification of a suspect for the homicide cases in Phoenix, he called her up to see if the evidence in Laura Kempton's case would fit the parameters for a genetic genealogy search.

Colleen explained that this type of forensic research required a YSTR profile, that is, a male Y chromosome profile. Laura's case didn't have that type of profile developed yet, but it was possible they could identify one. In 2016, Portsmouth Police worked with Kathy McMillan at the Maine Crime Lab, who was successfully able to obtain a YSTR profile from the cigarette butt found next to Laura's body that September morning.

With that YSTR profile, Colleen Fitzpatrick determined through genetic genealogical analysis that the suspect was a male with African-American heritage. At the time, however, that's as far as she could take the research. Once again, no slam dunk for the case, but it further narrowed down the suspect pool in a way that previous investigative efforts hadn't been able to. Five years later, in 2021, Portsmouth Police, New Hampshire State Police, and the Attorney General's Office once again revisited Laura Kempton's case. They met during September as the 40-year anniversary of Laura's murder approached, and they discussed any remaining steps, any new strategies they could take to

slam this case shut once and for all. In the previous five years, the world of forensic genetic genealogy had identified suspects in high-profile investigations, perhaps most notably the Golden State Killer case. It was sending a message to families, investigators, and to perpetrators that answers were possible after decades and decades of waiting. So in 2022, investigators on Laura's case secured the resources for whole genome sequencing based on biological evidence collected from vaginal swabs. The swabs were sent to Identifinders International for testing, and several months later, in May of 2022, Portsmouth Police got the call that a suspect profile had been successfully

obtained, and it had been added to a third-party genetic genealogy database, think 23andMe, GEDmatch, and the like. Just three days later, a millisecond in comparison to the decades that had already passed, the male profile matched a relative in the database with connections to Rockingham County, New Hampshire. From that familial connection, the biological parents of the sample contributor were identified, and those two people shared only one biological son. His name was Ronnie James Lee. Ronnie James Lee was 21 years old and living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with his mother in 1981. He had an extensive criminal history with the Portsmouth Police Department,

including several residential burglaries and one commercial burglary. In 1987, he was convicted of burglary and sexual assault charges and was incarcerated for three years, getting out in July of 1990. Lee died of acute cocaine intoxication in 2005. After Ronnie James Lee was identified as the possible contributor of DNA left at the scene of Laura Kempton's murder, detectives had more work to do before they could definitively conclude that he was their guy. Looking back through the 40-plus years of case documents, there was no indication that Laura Kempton knew Ronnie James Lee. But his criminal history did show a pattern of breaking into homes,

attacking women he didn't otherwise know, and stealing their money and valuables. Because the suspect had passed away, investigators couldn't go get a blood or DNA sample from him in 2022, but there was an autopsy performed on Ronnie James Lee following his death, which meant the office of the medical examiner had a blood card for him. That blood card was enough for Maine State lab analyst Kathy McMillan to compare Ronnie Lee's DNA profile to the full DNA profile from the evidence swabs. Everything matched. Further direct comparison of the DNA profile to the cigarette butt, to the pillowcase, and to the thigh scrapings confirmed the match even further. In June 2023, after 41 years of waiting, investigators finally had their answer as to who broke into Laura Kempton's research and writing for this show, a Dark Down East listener DM'd me a link to a YouTube channel.

The video was only a placeholder at the time, a picture of the city of Portsmouth seal and plain text that read, The Attorney General's cold case announcement will begin shortly. Attorney was actually spelled incorrectly, which made me think I'd clicked on a spam link or something, but after quickly vetting the profile and realizing it was the official YouTube account for the city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I figured I was safe. As the placeholder screen transitioned to a live feed, Attorney General John Formella stood at the podium. Beside him was a large projection screen

with big, white, bold letters. Cold Case Closure, 1981 Homicide of Laura Kempton. Today we can announce that after a four decades long investigation led by the Portsmouth Police Department in conjunction with our cold case unit and with the aid of advancements in DNA testing, the perpetrator of this crime has been identified as Ronnie James Lee. Mr. Lee died on February 9, 2005, at the age of 45. So even though I have concluded that we have gathered sufficient evidence to prosecute Mr. Lee for first-degree murder and the death of Mrs. Kempton, criminal charges cannot be brought.

That said, based on the review of the evidence available and the fact that I have determined that we would have had sufficient evidence to go forward with the prosecution, this case will be closed and identified as solved. We understand that today's announcement is truly a bittersweet one for Ms. Kempton's family and all those she left behind and for this community and all those that were affected by this terrible crime. We know that while a victim's loved ones often experience a sense of relief and closure when an unsolved crime is finally resolved this type of news can also open old wounds today our hearts are with laura kempton's family and her friends and all those who knew and loved her and again for all those who were affected by this crime we hope today brings at least some sense of closure and peace we also would ask that the privacy of Ms. Kempton's family and anyone who might have known her be respected and that everyone recognize that this is both a day of

relief and closure and also a difficult day for them. The surviving family members of Laura Kempton were represented at the press conference by the victim witness advocate for the Attorney General's office, Sonny Mulligan Shea. Sonny read a statement on their behalf. The Kempton family wishes to express our deepest gratitude to the Portsmouth Police Department for solving Laura's case. Their diligence and determination, along with extraordinary personal commitment over the past decades, have led to this moment for Laura. The family would like to acknowledge retired Captain John Perocchi, Portsmouth Police Department

Investigative Division, and his team members past and present who have worked tirelessly on Laura's case. Their extraordinary efforts have led to this important moment today. Many, many other hands have touched Laura's file over the past 41 years, and the family expresses our deepest gratitude to all who contributed. The Kempton family would like to request privacy at this time as we process this information. Thank you all. At the end of the July 20th, 2023 press conference announcing the closure of Laura Kempton's case, members of the media and others in attendance were invited to ask the attorney general

and the other officials any questions that lingered after the presentation. The very first question, though difficult to hear the exact wording on the live stream, asked of the investigation that closed Laura's case, offered any information that indicated her murder was connected to the 1982 murder of Tammy Little. Attorney General John Formella responded without missing a beat, perhaps expecting to hear Tammy Little's name that day. So that case remains under investigation. We're not prepared to speak about that case today.

It is our hope that what we're announcing today may lead even to some additional information about that case. But that case remains under investigation today. We're just focused on Laura Kempton's case. So we're not prepared to comment further on Tammy Little's case today. The names Laura Kempton and Tammy Little have long been interwoven. The similarities in their deaths and in their lives make it easy to speculate on a possible connection. If anything is abundantly clear after hearing the 41 years of work that went into closing Laura Kempton's case,

it's that solving a cold case takes time, even when theories and speculation and perceived connections seem so obvious. I can only hope that one day in the near future, I'll be updating you on Tammy Little's story. Perhaps genetic genealogy will come through for Tammy too. Maybe it's in the works right now as we speak. History has shown that breakthroughs often arise unexpectedly, and the key to solving Tammy's case may lie in the tiniest of details or a technological advancement still yet to come. Or maybe, with all of the details, all of the evidence out in the open about the case of Laura Kempton, someone will find the courage they've needed to share what they know about the night in October of 1982 when a still-unknown assailant decided to end Tammy's life. If you have information that could aid in the investigation of Tammy Little's homicide,

please contact the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at 603-223-6270. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. Sources cited and referenced for this episode are listed at darkdowneast.com. Please follow Dark Down East on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now. And if you could, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. I love to hear what you think of the show and what you want to hear next, and reviews are really the best way to support this show and the cases I cover. If you have a personal connection to a case and you want me to cover it on this podcast, please contact me at hello at darkdowneast.com. Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do. I'm honored to use this platform for the

families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and homicide cases. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.