Park Predators - The Walk

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

When a 24-year-old New Hampshire woman is found gunned down outside a state park while walking her dog, police embark on a massive manhunt for her killer. The young man responsible would nearly escape their grasp… twice. View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-walkDon’t forget to check out this week's episode of Dark Downeast where Kylie Low covers another case from New Hampshire.  Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the story I'm going to tell you about today is a case that I'm betting many of you have never heard of. There might be a handful of listeners from the New England area of the U.S. who know about it, but it's likely a new one for most of you. case are going to stick with you long after you listen because the victim was doing what so many of us do when we explore a park in our hometown, walking her pet. The crime happened in Odeon Point State Park in New Hampshire, a park that's known for its amazing views of the Atlantic Ocean, vast trail system, and World War II history. A quick note, most of the newspapers back in 1982 called this area Odeon State Park, not Odeon Point State Park, but it's definitely Odeon Point State Park. Anyway, throughout the landscape, there are bike paths, walking trails, and two old bunkers left over from when military installations were set up there to

protect nearby harbors. The lengthy shoreline of the park is dotted with secluded beaches and lots of rocky terrain. Looking out from its 135 acres, you can see four lighthouses in the distance, some of which sit just over the state line in Maine. In March of 1982, a young woman walking her dog set out to see some of these views, but was brutally attacked before getting the chance. Her death and the subsequent search for her killer sent law enforcement on one of the wildest manhunts I've ever researched, and face to face with a formidable adversary who was bound and determined not to get caught or ever answer for his crimes. This is Park Predators. Around 10 o'clock in the morning on Thursday, March 11th, 1982, a man named Carmen Carter was at his home in the small town of Rye, New Hampshire,

when suddenly a young man driving a red car appeared at his front door. Carmen answered, and the guy explained that he'd been driving along Route 1A near the entrance of Odeon Point State Park, when he and another man who'd pulled over spotted a woman's bloody body lying on the side of the roadway. Shocked by this news, Carmen told the guy he would use his home phone to call police and report what the stranger said he'd discovered. After dialing 911, Carmen watched the young man rush out of his house and tear off towards the nearby entrance of the park. About 15 minutes later, around 10.20 a.m., the Rye police chief arrived at the park's entrance, and sure enough, nearby, a woman's body was laying on the side of the road in a pool of blood surrounded by remnants of snow and ice.

She was completely lifeless, but still had all of her clothes on. To the responding officer, she appeared to be dressed for a walk. Holly Young reported for the Portsmouth Herald that initially the Rye Police Department had thought Carmen's 911 call about a body being on the side of the road was some kind of report about a hit-and-run accident. However, after the police chief arrived and physically saw the woman's body, he quickly realized she had not died from being struck by a car. She'd been murdered. Not far from the victim, the officer found several spent shell casings that looked like they belonged to a.22 caliber gun.

That evidence made sense once he got a better look at the victim's head. It was obvious that she'd suffered several gunshot wounds to her face and head, and the fact that the casings were next to her body indicated that was the spot she'd likely been killed. So it wasn't like she'd been shot elsewhere and then dumped on the side of the road.

John Hart reported for the union leader that not long after finding the victim, more police officers arrived and were told about a vacant car parked in a small lot inside the park. The registration information for that vehicle came back as belonging to Valerie Blair, a 24-year-old woman from the nearby town of Portsmouth who was married to a man named

James Blair, who also went by Jim. Jim, who had no idea what was going on, was at his job at a supermarket in Portsmouth. Shortly after IDing Valerie through her car's information, law enforcement officials showed up to his work to break the news to him. He was obviously upset to learn that his wife had been killed and revealed to detectives that Valerie had dropped him off at work that morning just a few hours before she went on a walk in the park with their dog Gaffer, an activity she did regularly. This information about Valerie walking Gaffer was interesting to the police

because when she'd been found, no dog had been with her. Holly Young reported for the Portsmouth Herald, though, that not long after speaking with Jim, officers back at the scene did eventually find Gaffer running along the side of Route 1A, which indicated to police

he'd likely gotten away from whoever had murdered Valerie. Shortly after her body was removed from the crime scene, Jim and his father were escorted by police to go and make an official ID. That afternoon, Rye police detectives and troopers with the New Hampshire State Police fanned out in full force to look for clues in the general area where Valerie had been killed. They scoured the woods of the state park and shoulders of Route 1A and even searched a small creek that crossed the roadway, but no additional physical evidence surfaced.

However, not all hope was lost, because around that same time, witnesses started coming forward with really important information. According to Holly Young's reporting for the Portsmouth Herald, a few different people told police they'd seen a yellow or beige late-1960s Buick Skylark driving away from the crime scene. The reason this vehicle had stuck out to the witnesses was because they remembered it had a black top and it had peeled out of the area pretty fast.

The last person to see it said it was headed north towards Portsmouth. A few of the witnesses said they'd seen a white man behind the wheel of the suspicious car and described him as being somewhere between 25 and 30 years old, with brown hair parted in the middle. He also had a mustache that curled downward around his mouth, a detail police found to be fairly unique. But as helpful as these witnesses' accounts were, the composite sketch authorities created from the information wasn't very good. I included a picture of it on the blog post for this episode at parkpredators.com.

It's pretty generic. Kind of looks like what most young men with dark hair parted in the middle looked like in the 1980s. Even though police had this sketch and a generally good description of a prime suspect, there was one witness detectives hadn't been able to get a hold of, who they felt like might be able to corroborate more details. This witness was a guy that other witnesses said had been driving a brown car and stopped and looked at the crime scene shortly after Valerie was first found. The other witnesses said this man had hung

around at the scene for a little bit, but then left. The police really wanted to speak with this guy, though, because they felt like he might have seen something important. They made it clear to local newspapers that investigators didn't suspect him of being involved in the murder, they just wanted to interview him. Essentially, investigators were desperate for any and all information they could learn, because honestly, at that point, they didn't have much to go on. So they issued a public plea for the mystery witness to contact them. But based on the source material I read, it doesn't appear that he ever did. During the first 48 hours of the investigation, detectives were also trying to figure out if Valerie's killing was in any way

related to a separate violent crime that had happened near the park just a few hours before her murder. According to articles by the Portsmouth Herald, late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, a woman in her 30s who'd been out, quote, unwinding, had called Rye Police to report that she'd been approached by a man held at gunpoint and sexually assaulted. This crime had taken place super close to the entrance of the state park where Valerie was killed. The sexual assault victim described her attacker as a white male, mid-20s to early 30s, with brown hair parted in the middle. That description matched the loose characteristics of the man witnesses had seen driving away from Valerie's crime scene.

So naturally, the detective's antenna went up. Now, the source material isn't super clear regarding all the details of this sexual assault incident, but investigators had to at least look into the possibility that it was the same man who might be responsible for both crimes. Within a day of the murder, the local medical examiner conducted Valerie's autopsy, and the findings were what everyone expected. She died from five gunshot wounds to her face and head.

One shot had gone through her mouth at an upward angle, and the others had passed horizontally through her head, above and behind her right ear. The big revelations to come out of the autopsy were that she had not been sexually assaulted, and her time of death was estimated to be around 10 o'clock in the morning, which meant not much time had passed after she'd been shot to when her body was discovered. The Portsmouth Herald and Union Leader reported that Valerie Slang marked New Hampshire's 10th murder in 1982. The authorities were feeling the pressure to find whoever had done this.

Over the course of the next few days, Rye Police dispatched officers to set up checkpoints all over Portsmouth. few days, Rye police dispatched officers to set up checkpoints all over Portsmouth. The New Hampshire State Police assisted them and helped cover more ground in surrounding cities. One spokesman told the local newspaper, quote, you can't get through the town of Rye without running into a road check. We started about 5 30 this morning and we'll have men on the job until late this afternoon, end quote. And another official claimed, quote, But a few days ticked by with no new information. Valerie's friends and family started the process of arranging her funeral while they waited for updates. News of her murder shook everyone who lived in Rye,

but it also impacted people hundreds of miles away in Valerie's hometown of Deland, Florida, a town about 30 minutes west of Daytona Beach. Just three years before the murder, in 1979, Valerie and her husband Jim had gotten married near DeLand. According to the Portsmouth Herald, by 1981, the couple had decided they wanted to move to New England and chose the Portsmouth area because it had things they were interested in, like theater, and it seemed like a nice place to live.

Jim's family was also from there. Once they made the move, he worked part-time at the local grocery store and occasionally landed roles as an actor. Valerie, who was more behind the scenes when it came to theater performances, was the only daughter of a prominent Florida attorney, and she'd grown up succeeding in school in equine sports.

As a child and teenager, she'd fallen in love with competitive horse riding, poetry, and theater. She frequently made the honor roll in school, and after graduating from Stetson University, earned a Master's of Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Missouri. After moving to New Hampshire,

Valerie took a job at a local bookstore and spent most of her time writing an arts and movie review column for a weekly publication called Seacoast Woman. She worked part-time as an audio technician for a local mime theater called The Kitchen Sink. Everyone who knew her said she was a mild-mannered, shy person who loved being a wife and writing her weekly column.

In fact, she liked her freelance work so much, she didn't even charge Seacoast Woman for her articles. She just genuinely enjoyed the fact that other people got a kick out of reading her work. Her and Jim's neighbors at their apartment complex told the Portsmouth Herald Valerie was, quote, a gentle person who had a wonderful sense of humor and cared a lot about the theater and about art and excellence in art, end quote. With all the lives she touched, it was important for those who knew her for Valerie to have two services, a funeral in her home state of Florida and a memorial service there in Portsmouth. The police's investigation

into her murder, though, stalled out for a while during the first week. Detectives hadn't issued any updates or named a suspect. They were busy behind the scenes processing what little evidence they had and trying to interview as many people as possible. But then, out of nowhere, nine days after the crime, New Hampshire authorities made a shocking move. They'd arrested a man hundreds of miles away in Florida. According to several newspapers, shortly after Valerie's murder, unbeknownst to the general public, detectives working the case learned about a man they believed might be responsible for the crime. This guy's name was Thomas Faragi. He was a 25-year-old Portsmouth native with a criminal record who'd previously worked as a carpenter in

town. Christopher Clark reported for the Bradenton Herald that when officials looked more into Thomas, they learned he'd purchased a plane ticket to Orlando for the afternoon of Thursday, March 18th, and he'd changed his appearance and gotten a haircut. Homicide investigators thought Thomas making a swift plan to leave New Hampshire was kind of sus, so two detectives bought their own plane tickets for a flight to Orlando, which just so happened to land three hours after Thomas was scheduled to arrive. When those investigators touched down, they interviewed people in the area and learned that a man matching Thomas' description

had been seen hitchhiking toward Florida's West Coast. As they tracked him, the detectives realized that Thomas wasn't in a hurry and he likely was unaware they were even surveilling him. In fact, Thomas was doing some mundane things. The Tampa Bay Times and Union Leader reported that within a few hours of leaving Orlando, Thomas had made his way to the town of Winter Haven, Florida, where he enjoyed a Boston Red Sox spring training game, hung out and drank for a few hours, and even approached the vice

president of the team's minor league program to ask if he could try out for the franchise. Wild, right? Multiple news sources reported that Thomas was a good baseball player in high school, and he'd gotten some notoriety in New England as a teenager while playing the sport. I guess he just felt confident enough in his skill

to just straight up ask the staff of the Boston Red Sox minor league team if he could walk on. The team told Thomas, thanks, but no thanks. Anyway, during the baseball game in Winter Haven, detectives from New Hampshire had kept their distance from Thomas, but kept a close eye on him the entire time. They didn't want to let him out of their sight, but based on the source material I read, it appears at some point Thomas did slip away from them for a short period of time, because he eventually resurfaced a few hours later west of Winter Haven in the city of Bradenton, Florida. By that night, New Hampshire investigators and

deputies with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office had synced up and were on the lookout for Thomas. The city of Bradenton Police Department was also looped in on this operation too, or at least the officers working the night shift were. According to articles by the union leader, Tampa Bay Times, and Orlando Sentinel, these city cops working the night shift eventually found Thomas drunk, babbling, and attempting to hitchhike in the middle of the road. He mentioned he was trying to make his way to another spring training baseball camp

for the Pittsburgh Pirates, but had no way of getting there on his own. Now, these city officers knew they needed to arrest Thomas for something, just to give New Hampshire investigators enough time to draft a murder warrant. But Thomas trying to hitchhike while tipsy wasn't really grounds for them to legally take him in.

So the officers decided to give him a ride to the Pittsburgh Pirates facility. And of course, when the group got there and spoke with the team's administration, the baseball folks were like, what? Who is this? They had no idea who Thomas was and assured the police that he was not scheduled to try out for their team. That situation made Thomas mad. Mad enough that he kind of freaked out, and that gave Bradenton City Police enough probable cause to arrest him for disorderly conduct. What's truly unbelievable, though, is that the night shift city police officers did not tell the day shift officers who arrived for duty on Saturday morning that detectives from New Hampshire

had been tailing Thomas in Florida and wanted him for murder. So the day shift cops clocked in and an administrative judge immediately released Thomas on Saturday morning. Even more bizarre, shortly after walking out of the police station, Thomas returned and wanted to file a harassment complaint

because he said he believed he was being followed by police. Once again, Bradenton City Police working the day shift just let Thomas chat with them for a bit and eventually let him walk out again. A Bradenton Police Sergeant who'd been working the day shift that let Thomas go twice was under the impression that Thomas was being irrationally

anxious, telling the Orlando Sentinel, quote, I had no detectives following him, but it turns out he should be paranoid because the New Hampshire detectives are following him. But here I haven't been informed, so I throw him out of here, end quote. Thankfully, though, all the agencies involved did finally get on the same page by the afternoon of Saturday, March 20th, because information came in that indicated Thomas was going to try and leave Florida, this time via bus. A little before 3.30 p.m. on Saturday, nine days after Valerie's murder and at the request of New Hampshire detectives, deputies with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office converged on a Trailways bus station in Bradenton and found Thomas

sitting on a bus headed for Washington, D.C. The bus was scheduled to leave not long after Thomas had arrived, but thankfully police nabbed him before he could get away. When deputies searched him, they found a gun hidden on him, which was something Thomas, a convicted felon, was not supposed to have. Deputies arrested him for carrying a concealed firearm and hauled him off to the Manatee County Jail. Over the next couple of days, New Hampshire investigators issued an arrest warrant for first-degree murder and scheduled Thomas to be extradited back to New England.

But getting him on a plane was going to take some time because according to reporting by the Portsmouth Herald, it took a few days for Thomas's extradition paperwork to make it to the Florida governor's office for approval. While Thomas waited in Florida, New Hampshire police got a judge in New England to sign a search warrant so they could take a look inside Thomas's family's house in Portsmouth, where he lived with his parents and sister. And that was actually a place he'd lived most of his life. After searching the home, detectives found a.22 caliber handgun that they realized could fire the same type of ammunition

that had been used to kill Valerie. Thomas' father, John Faragi, had revealed the gun hiding beneath a cushion under a sofa in the family's basement. Another lucky break law enforcement caught was when they researched the type of vehicle Thomas was known to drive prior to the murder. And you guessed it, he drove a car just like the one all the witnesses had seen fleeing the crime scene. The union leader reported that a few days after the murder, Thomas had sold his 1968 Pontiac Le Mans sedan, which had a distinct yellow cream-colored bottom and black top. I know I said earlier that the eyewitnesses at the crime scene thought the vehicle speeding away had been a Buick Skylark. But turns out, a late 60s model Buick Skylark and a 1968 Pontiac Le Mans look super alike. And police tracked down

the married couple Thomas had sold his car to and asked them if detectives could inspect it. The new owners had no problem handing over the keys, and right away investigators towed it to the state police lab where it underwent a forensic examination. Inside, detectives found two unused.22 caliber hollow point bullets that were the same type of ammunition that had been used to kill Valerie. The police chief in Rye wouldn't tell the media if his department was going to pursue charges against Thomas for that sexual assault that had happened near Valerie's crime scene a few hours before her murder, but they weren't ruling him out as a suspect either. For the time being, they just considered that investigation on hold. A few weeks later,

in early April, Thomas was still waiting to be extradited back to New Hampshire, but a grand jury in New England indicted him for Valerie's murder anyway. Officially, he was indicted for first-degree murder, felonious use of a firearm, felon in possession of a firearm, and receiving stolen property. The first-degree murder charge, though, was the biggie. At the time, it carried an automatic prison sentence of life without parole. And the more authorities learned about Thomas and his background, the more they were convinced he was their guy.

Stephen Mazurka reported for the Portsmouth Herald that after dropping out of high school after the ninth grade, Thomas had racked up a long rap sheet for burglary, aggravated assault, selling drugs, and drunk driving. These crimes occurred in the early 1970s, and by 1978, he'd spent two years incarcerated at a state-run mental health hospital after being labeled a, quote, dangerous sexual offender, end quote. What had landed Thomas in that facility to begin with was a conviction for sexually assaulting a woman in 1975. The judge overseeing that case ordered he be confined to a mental hospital instead of going to a prison. But after two years of being at that facility, Thomas asked to be released early, and a different judge granted

his request. Hospital psychologists diagnosed him with a depressive neurosis and said his pattern of criminal behavior toward women stemmed from a deep-seated anger toward females. This anger, they said, developed after Thomas' two sisters, ages six and nine, had died in a farm equipment accident during his youth when his family lived in California. The doctors believed the void the girl's deaths had left in Thomas' life put undue pressure on him

to feel like he needed to achieve great things. And when that didn't happen, he'd become resentful and started hating women in general. But detectives overseeing Valerie's case didn't buy that though. They felt in their gut that Thomas was a serial sexual predator who attacked women in order to have sex with them.

And when they resisted, he resorted to physical violence. Not long after being indicted for Valerie's murder, Thomas's extradition papers finally went through, and he was flown back to New England for his arraignment. A local Portsmouth defense attorney agreed to represent him, and Thomas pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him. A week or so later, a judge set his bail at $300,000, which he couldn't pay, so he remained behind bars pending his trial. The Concord Monitor and Associated Press reported in June 1982 that authorities in New Hampshire

had made the decision to charge Thomas for the sexual assault that had happened a few hours before Valerie's death. You know, the one where the woman in her 30s said a guy held her at gunpoint? Well, just like with the murder charges related to Valerie, Thomas pled not guilty to that crime too. Coverage by the Portsmouth Herald explained that the sexual assault case was scheduled to be tried after the murder case. Initially, prosecutors thought they might want to merge all the charges together into one big case, but ultimately the state decided against that. Jury selection for the murder trial got underway in late November 1982

with Valerie's family in attendance. Leading up to the proceedings, Thomas told Portsmouth Herald reporter Stephen Mazurka that he wasn't worried about how his trial was going to end. He said he felt confident his defense attorney would prove the state's case was weak and everyone would realize he was innocent. He also claimed that he'd been inaccurately portrayed by the news media

as a greedy transient who had no education or life. He also claimed he'd been harassed by guards in jail. On the morning of the first day of his trial in early December, before his lawyer or the prosecutor gave their opening arguments, the judge ordered something interesting. He wanted the jurors to visit the crime scene in person. So as a group, the panel toured a small parking lot that sat just outside of the state park where Valerie had been found. They also walked across a small bridge, stood next to the spot where she'd been shot, and gotten a chance to view the parking lot inside the park where her car had been. The judge wanted the jurors to see for themselves exactly

where everything had gone down so they'd have a clear understanding of the crime scene's layout. What prosecutors couldn't provide to the jury, though, was a clear picture of what happened on the morning of Valerie's death. There had been no eyewitnesses to the shooting, and to make matters worse, there wasn't much physical evidence that proved Thomas had killed Valerie. The case was almost entirely circumstantial. The prosecution argued that the.22 caliber handgun

detectives had recovered from beneath the sofa cushion at Thomas's family's house was the murder weapon. Ammunition found inside that gun matched the shell casings found around Valerie's body and the fragmented bullets retrieved from her skull. But no fingerprints were found on the weapon or any of the casings left at the crime scene, which was a downside for the prosecution.

However, to help support the prosecution's circumstantial evidence about the gun, the government called a local store clerk to the witness stand, who testified she'd sold Thomas the same type of.22 caliber ammunition used in Valerie's death the day before the murder. The big problem was the bullets taken from Valerie's head were too damaged to do a full ballistics

conclusive comparison. And even though the government had a lot of witnesses who identified Thomas's Pontiac as driving on Route 1A at some point on the morning of the crime, none of them could definitively place him with Valerie outside the entrance of the park. The timeline of the murder was also a bit unclear. It came out during the trial that law enforcement believed Valerie had likely arrived to walk her dog around 9 a.m. She'd been scheduled to meet an insurance adjuster in Portsmouth at 10.30, but never made it. So the theory was that whatever had happened between her and Thomas had occurred sometime toward the end of her walk with her dog Gaffer. But Thomas' defense attorney claimed he'd been eating breakfast with a friend

between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. on March 11th, and then was back home with his father, John, by 8.45 a.m. When John testified in court, he assured jurors that his son was not a murderer. He'd been home with him on the morning of the murder. But a critical witness who was dubbed the prosecution's star witness was a guy named Ronald Vachon. He told jurors that he was the first person to notice something disturbing on the roadway outside of the state park on the morning of the murder.

He said around 9.48 a.m. while driving to work, he'd seen a car leaving the small parking lot outside the entrance of the park, and a man matching Thomas' description was behind the wheel. Laying on the ground where the vehicle had been was a crumpled heap of something. Ronald said when he got closer, he realized the thing on the ground was a woman,

and she was bleeding badly. Ronald explained that he waved down a passing car and asked that driver to go call for help. Meanwhile, he stayed put with the woman and unfortunately had been unable to help her. He said he watched in horror as she bled out and gasped for air. Ronald's testimony really hit jurors hard because what he described meant that Valerie had still been alive for a short time after being shot. She'd suffered and tried with all of her might to cling to life. Not only that, photos of her left hand after she

was found indicated she may have tried to defend herself or raise her hand as her attacker fired the first shot. Another witness who packed a punch for the prosecution was a female jogger who described a car matching Thomas's pass her twice just a few hours before the crime. This woman told jurors that the man behind the wheel had scared her so much that she'd made sure to remember the license plate, which was 763067. And you guessed it, the number for the plate that had been on Thomas' car on March 11th was super similar. Just some of the numbers were rearranged from what the female witness wrote down. So you might be asking yourself, what on earth was the defense's strategy to refute

all this damning testimony? Well, they had their own star witness, Thomas Faragi himself. Stephen Mazurka reported for the Portsmouth Herald that about a week after his trial started, Thomas decided he would tell his side of the story from the witness stand. He vehemently denied killing Valerie, saying, quote, I've done a lot of things in my life I'm not proud of, but I could never take a gun and kill anyone, end quote. The prosecutor wasn't buying Thomas's story, though, and on cross-examination, he grilled him about several inconsistencies with his story. Thomas was forced to admit

that he'd had a gun he shouldn't have, and at times, he'd intentionally provided incorrect or false information to purchase the ammunition for it. But he emphasized he was not a murderer. He tried to explain that his trip to Florida immediately following Valerie's murder had been planned for months. He said to explain that his trip to Florida immediately following Valerie's murder had been planned for months. He said he'd been looking forward to trying out for a few minor

league baseball teams. He also denied the allegation that him cutting his hair around the time of the crime was his way of altering his appearance so he wouldn't look like the man in the police's composite sketch. But choosing to testify in his own defense ended badly for Thomas, like it does for a lot of defendants who take the stand. The jury weighing his fate took less than two hours to find him guilty of murder. He was immediately sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. None of the source material I read mentioned if prosecutors ever moved forward with the sexual assault case that predated Valerie's murder, so I don't know exactly what

ended up happening with that. But in 1983, Thomas appealed his conviction for murder and argued that he should be granted a new trial. He claimed his first defense attorney had been incompetent by not challenging the gun evidence more thoroughly. But in August 1985, the New Hampshire Supreme Court firmly denied the appeal. In 2014, during an interview with the Portsmouth Herald for Seacoast Online, 57-year-old Thomas maintained his innocence. He said he believed the bullets that killed Valerie

had come from his gun, but he claimed he wasn't the shooter. He explained that he'd used drugs as a teenager to get over the trauma of losing his younger sisters, and eventually his recreational drug use spiraled into using psychedelics and cocaine on a regular basis. He said by March of 1982, he'd accepted the fact that he was never going to amount to much and had settled for being a drug dealer as a way to make money. Today, Thomas is still incarcerated at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men. He's in his upper 60s.

Jim Blair, Valerie's husband, eventually remarried and moved from the home they'd once shared. A woman named Genevieve Aeschel, who was good friends and neighbors with Valerie before the murder, told reporter Elizabeth Dinnan that losing her friend was one of the hardest things she'd ever experienced. She explained that for nearly a decade after the crime, she stayed away from Odeon Point State Park because of the painful memories it brought her. For years, Genevieve has kept cuttings from local papers that publish stories about Valerie's murder. She clings to these scraps of coverage

as a way of dealing with the loss. Many of the stories about Valerie's case are not available digitally online. I had to personally write and ask researchers at the Portsmouth and Manchester libraries to scan me copies of any archives they had. Thankfully, the libraries were able to find a trove of old articles, and those clippings were instrumental in me being able to write this episode. Valerie's friend Genevieve told the Portsmouth Herald that the most important thing to her is that Valerie's name is not forgotten. She said, quote,

there are not a lot of people left that remember. I would just like her to be remembered, end quote. So this is for you, Valerie. May you rest in peace, knowing your killer will never be a free man again, and that you are not forgotten. Valerie's story is unfortunately one of many in the New England area that broke hearts when it happened. Investigative journalist Kylie Lowe, over on her show Dark Down East, is going to tell you about another case from New Hampshire this Thursday, June 6th.

It's a crime that's even older than Valerie's case and still needs resolution. Be sure to give it a listen on the Dark Down East feed on Thursday, June 6th. Park Predators is an Audiochuck original show. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?