Matthew Vining is accused of killing 42-year-old Michael Mitchell in Chaplin on Feb. 22, 2012, Chief State’s Attorney Patrick J. Griffin said in a news release.

Mitchell was found in the driveway of a Mountain Laurel Lane home that afternoon with several stab wounds to his back and abdomen. He was pronounced dead at the scene, and an autopsy ruled his death a homicide.

Police found his body just minutes after a woman, who had also been stabbed in her stomach, called 911 from nearby Miller Road. The two had been together inside the same Mountain Laurel Lane home, and both had managed to flee outside. The woman made it a few blocks away and flagged down a person walking their dog to get help, newspaper archives indicate.

The woman was taken to Hartford Hospital and had emergency surgery to treat her injuries and was able to recover.

Vining has not been charged in connection with the woman’s stabbing, and it is unclear if he will be.

He was arraigned on the murder charge in Danielson Superior Court on Aug. 20 and is being held in lieu of a $1.5 million bond. He is scheduled back in court Oct. 9.

Griffin said Vining’s arrest follows an extensive joint investigation by the Cold Case Unit of the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Connecticut State Police Major Crimes Unit, the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, the state judicial marshals at Superior Court in Danielson and the Willimantic Police Department.

“Through the use of DNA analysis, video surveillance, cell site investigation, and eyewitness accounts, investigators identified Vining as a suspect in the homicide,” Griffin said in the news release.

Evidence included a blood trail through the downstairs of the house and through the rear door, broken glass, displaced furniture, blood spatter on furniture and walls, a knife sheath in the driveway and witness statements about a suspicious vehicle in the area that day.

The Cold Case Unit comprises prosecutors and investigators from the Division of Criminal Justice who work in collaboration with the Connecticut State Police and municipal police departments to investigate and solve violent crime cases.

Drew and his wife poured their hearts into designing a four-bedroom French Colonial stucco house, complete with a large kitchen and a library, French doors and dormer windows. They hired a builder to help make their dream come true.

The whole family loved the house. Many summers were spent in the backyard, where Drew kept the hedges trimmed, the lawn mowed and the fruit trees pruned. The couple and their two daughters would often gather in the kitchen to enjoy Drew’s homemade tomato sauce or spicy peach jam.

“It was a very comfortable house. And it was gorgeous,” daughter Allison Drew said during a recent interview for this story.

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In 1984, only a few years after the couple moved into their bespoke home, Alyce died from cancer. Thomas stayed in the house for two decades after his wife’s passing, his two daughters visiting him regularly and a Siamese cat keeping him company. He went to church, volunteered at a local art gallery and worked part-time in a local clothing store.

Then, in the summer of 2007, Drew vanished without a trace.

“Something happened at the house,” said Allison, who was living and teaching in England at the time but had planned to visit her father that fall. “Or something happened elsewhere.”

Drew was 91 when he disappeared. He had dementia and was frail, only about 125 pounds. After several recent falls, he would often steady himself by holding onto furniture, walls and railings. He could no longer walk long distances alone or drive himself places.

So Drew’s two daughters – Allison in England and Bettina in Missouri – arranged for a full-time caretaker to live at the isolated, woods-surrounded house with their father. The caretaker, in turn, hired part-time help with the family’s approval to work when he needed a day off, in theory ensuring that Drew was never left alone.

“I thought everything was under control,” Allison said.

The day Drew disappeared in 2007 was a Saturday – July 21 – and the part-time caretaker was on duty. She told police later that night that Drew had gotten up from watching television with her after dinner and said he had to “get going,” put on a coat and vanished. Family later confirmed none of Drew’s coats were actually missing.

Initially, the part-time caretaker thought Drew had just stepped outside briefly, but about 10 minutes later she realized he had not come back and started searching for him, she told police. The full-time caretaker returned from dinner with his girlfriend around 7:30 p.m., and he called police at 8:14 p.m. to report the man missing.

The last family member to speak to Drew was daughter Bettina, who had called him around 6 p.m. on Friday, July 20, the day before he vanished. When another family member called on Saturday around noon, she was told by a woman who answered that Drew was sleeping and unable to come to the phone.

A trooper from Connecticut State Police Troop B arrived around 8:30 p.m. on July 21, and after speaking with the two caretakers, determined the man had most likely walked away.

Over the next several days, searches were conducted on the wooded property, as well as on nearby paths and gravel roads. The property was separated from its closest neighbor by a thick row of pine trees. The remaining handful of houses on the quarter-mile road were out of sight from the Drew house.

Volunteer canine search teams picked up a scent on the back patio and led crews across the lawn and on a short wooded trail up near a conservation road, then lost the trail.

The handlers warned, however, that it may not have been a fresh trail, and the dogs lost it fairly quickly, near an old bridge. The nearby waterway, just a few inches deep, did not contain any traces of Drew. A plane with an infrared camera flew over the area but also did not detect any traces of a person.

Friends of the family, local hunters very familiar with the large property, also searched the area, including some marshland. But they found no evidence of Drew having been there, and they said there was no animal activity to indicate a body would be nearby.

“They were very thorough about the physical search,” Allison said.

Several witnesses later reported sightings of an old man in the afternoon or evening hours of July 21, especially after Allison put up posters in the area. The witnesses were several miles away from the Drew home, and it is unclear whether any of those sightings were actually Drew.

“There were other elderly people living in that area,” Allison said. “It could have been them.”

During a search of the house, dogs also alerted handlers inside Drew’s bedroom by barking, but investigators were never able to determine why.

Thomas Drew’s road back to the country

Long before he settled in Connecticut’s northwest corner, Thomas Drew had been at home in rustic surroundings. Born in 1916, he grew up as one of eight children on a farm in rural Georgia, about an hour outside Atlanta. He loved classical music, Siamese cats and the outdoors. His childhood was filled with milking cows and picking cotton on his family farm, and he often walked to school barefoot, his daughter said.

Because of his interest in music, he loved to watch “The Perry Como Show.” He also watched “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” which he found “uproariously funny,” Allison said.

He knew early on that he wanted to work in fashion, after watching his mother make quilts at her sewing machine.

Drew moved to Baltimore to study at the Maryland Institute of Art and later joined the U.S. Army. He served in the Philippines, Japan and the Solomon Islands during World War II and the post-war era. He graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1949, spent time in Paris, and then moved to New York City, where he met and married Alyce, an interior designer, in 1951.

“Both were very much into the arts,” Allison said. “Mom designed handkerchiefs, worked with velvet. They had common artistic interests.”

The family lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, then moved to Larchmont before finally settling in Salisbury.

What really happened that day?

What actually happened the day Thomas Drew disappeared remains a mystery. And in the years that followed, questions emerged about whether the account given that night accurately reflected what had happened.

It is unclear whether Drew was left alone for part of the day. The part-time caretaker at one point said she sometimes took short walks while she was caring for the man, and one witness indicated they had seen her at the pharmacy alone the day Drew went missing.

It’s also unclear whether he had taken his medication that day and whether the caretaker’s timeline of events is accurate. Later interviews with both caretakers provided more inconsistencies and conflicting statements, with both claiming they could not remember specific times or things that had happened that day.

Allison and Bettina also found that someone had erased the call history from the caller ID at their father’s house for the day their father went missing and the following day, Allison reveals in her 2020 book about her father’s disappearance. When questioned, both caretakers said they knew nothing about it.

When police interviewed the part-time caretaker’s family a couple of weeks after the disappearance – a husband and a daughter – they both mentioned an afternoon call during which the caretaker had told them Drew was missing and that she needed help, even though she had told police Drew didn’t go missing until after dinner. Phone records obtained by Allison confirmed a call from the Drew household to the part-time caretaker’s home at 1:17 p.m. that day.

A year after the disappearance, state police said in a news release that Drew went missing “sometime after 3 p.m.” No one has been charged in connection with his disappearance, and police said there was “no evidence of foul play.”

Drew’s daughters initiated a negligence lawsuit against the part-time caretaker in 2008 in order to depose her and others, preserve memories for potential future court proceedings, and get to the bottom of what happened the day their father disappeared. But the depositions did not provide any solid answers, and the sisters did not follow through on the suit.

The part-time caretaker, responding to newspaper coverage of the case in 2012, wrote in a letter published in the Litchfield County Times that she had been “counseled to keep quiet, because of liability issues.” Her letter mentioned integrity, accountability and bias, and provided links to websites for critical thinking and domestic violence awareness, but no actual details from her time caring for Drew.

“There are a lot of questions,” said Allison. “As far as I can tell, I don’t think he’s above ground. Not on his own property.”

Both daughters question the theory that their father just “wandered away,” and say if he did, someone would have seen him, and he would have been found by now, almost 20 years later.

“As his body was obviously too well-hidden for him to have hidden himself, living people likely did it for him, and the continued passage of time reinforces the likelihood that he was removed,” Bettina Drew wrote in a 2014 op-ed published in a local newspaper.

Family memories endure, but closure remains elusive

For Drew’s daughters, memories of their father stretch far beyond the circumstances of his disappearance.

When Allison turned 6, her father took her to the ballet and then to a small shop where she got a cherry milkshake.

“Just he and I,” she recalled fondly.

Drew took great pride in his Salisbury property. In addition to designing the house with his wife, he also got to work on it with his own hands.

“He built the back patio himself, and the side patio,” his daughter said about the Ravine Ridge Road house. “He got a book and learned how.”

Allison described her father as traditional and a little old-fashioned, a man who liked to go to bed early to read, especially as he got older. Drew went to the local Congregational church every Sunday, and would then pick up a copy of the Sunday New York Times at the pharmacy and spend the afternoon reading the paper.

In 2014 – seven years after Drew went missing – the family had him legally declared dead and had a brief memorial service at his local church. The house was sold in 2015.

Drew had made clear that when he died, he wanted to be buried with his wife and the ashes of his two Siamese cats, Bootsie and Dandy, his daughter said.

Almost two decades after he disappeared, his daughters still have not been able to do that.

“It’s so cruel that we cannot bury him,” Allison said. “There’s no reason someone cannot come forward with information if they have it. We want to bury our father.”

Anyone who may have information related to Thomas Drew’s disappearance is asked to call the Connecticut State Police at 860-626-1820.

The cases range from 2010–24; 10 of the victims are men and one is a woman. They include a 15-year-old boy killed in a drive-by shooting in 2023.

Rewards will be paid out for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible, Hartford police said in a social media post.

“If you recognize a name, remember something, or have information—no matter how small it may seem—please contact the Hartford Police Tip Line at 860-722-TIPS (8477),” police urged. “Your information could help bring answers and justice to these families.”

Here are the cases where $25,000 rewards are being offered:

Jeremy Williams, 26

Jeremy “Perk” Williams, a father of two, was found dead inside his burned Mazda in the early morning hours of Feb. 17, 2010. The car had been parked on Pembroke Street near Cornwall Street, and officials later determined Williams had been shot several times before the car was set on fire.

Devon Mitchell, 25

Devon Mitchell, of East Hartford, showed up at Saint Francis Hospital in a private car around 8:30 p.m. on Aug. 1, 2015. He had been shot multiple times, was rushed into surgery but later died from his injuries. He became Hartford’s 20th homicide of 2015. Police learned Mitchell had been shot outside Mr. Pizza on Blue Hills Avenue.

Joshua Steele, 28, and Kevin Campbell, 34

Hartford police responded to two ShotSpotter activations in close proximity on Hillside and Sherbrooke avenues around 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 2, 2018. When officers arrived, they found that Joshua Steele, of Hartford, and Kevin Campbell, of East Hartford, had been shot. Both men were taken to the hospital and later died from their injuries. A third man was found a few blocks away with gunshot injuries to his foot, which police believe was related to the first shooting. At the time, police said they believed the victims were specifically targeted.

Anthony Swaby, 25

Anthony Swaby, was shot in his car in his driveway on Holcomb Street on March 4, 2020, around 6:30 p.m. He was taken to Saint Francis Hospital, where he later died from his injuries. His mother told Fox 61 that her son had dreams of traveling and becoming a model. Police said at the time they believed it was a targeted shooting, and that the shooter or shooters were outside Swaby’s car.

Jassmin Lewis, 26

Jassmin Lewis, of East Hartford, was shot and killed at Buggy’s Bath Car Wash on Homestead Avenue around 2 a.m. on May 23, 2021. A man was also shot and taken to the hospital in critical condition, but survived his injuries, police said. Lewis died at the hospital, officials said. Police were alerted to the shooting via a ShotSpotter system notification.

Elvin Rivera, 43

Hartford police responded to a stabbing on Elliott Street around 4 a.m. on May 28, 2023. There they found Elvin Rivera, with stab wounds to his left leg and back, officers said. Rivera was taken to Hartford Hospital, where he died around 11 a.m. When reviewing surveillance footage from the area, police realized Rivera had been involved in a physical fight with several men prior to being stabbed.

Marion Edwards, 24

Two men were shot outside a pizza place on Barbour Street around 8:15 p.m. on July 18, 2023, police said. A ShotSpotter alert notified police of the 19 rounds fired. Marion Edwards, of Windsor, died from his injuries. A man in his 70s was rushed to surgery and survived the shooting, according to police. It was believed to be a drive-by shooting, and was the 20th homicide of the year in Hartford. The two victims did not appear to be the intended targets, police said.

Jordan Luna, 15

Jordan Luna was killed in a drive-by shooting around 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 9, 2023, on Nelton Way. Police found Luna with gunshot wounds after a ShotSpotter notification. He was taken to Saint Francis Hospital, where he died and became the city’s 32nd homicide of 2023. A white Nissan Rogue was seen leaving the area of the shooting, and that car was later found on fire in Vernon, police said.

Alex Colon, 30

Officers responded to a ShotSpotter notification reporting a single gunshot on New Britain Avenue just after 9 p.m. on Dec. 12, 2024. When investigators arrived, they found Alex Colon with a gunshot wound to his head, close to where he lived. He was taken to the hospital but died from his injuries. Police say Colon had been arguing with a person before he was killed. Police said video evidence indicates Colon knew the person he had fought with, but family has disputed that information.

Terrance Brown, 41

Terrance Brown, was shot and killed around 11:30 p.m. on Aug. 3, 2024. Gunshots were reported near Albany Avenue and Burton Street, and police found Brown in the back of a property with multiple gunshot wounds, but still conscious. He later died at Saint Francis Hospital. Officials believe the shooting stemmed from a fight that broke out at a party.

For more than 40 years, nobody even knew whose body it was. Now that he has been identified, police still don’t know how Nopper ended up there. Who killed him remains a mystery as well.

A person going to the park to pick walnuts found the body and alerted police.

Initially, police released a sketch of the man to see if the public could help identify him. The image showed a man with long, dark hair with blonde roots pulled back into a ponytail, a mustache and a braided goatee. They estimated he was between 18 and 30 years old.

Despite several identifying characteristics like a vaccination scar on his upper left arm and two comma-shaped scars on his upper chest, a mole on his ear and a scar on his knee, police were unable to determine his identity.

Police circulated the man’s fingerprints and his dental records without results, according to old newspaper articles from the time.

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The man had been wearing a white printed T-shirt and a pair of gold corduroy jeans, according to a 1977 Hartford Courant news article.

Head and neck injuries contributed to the man’s death, officials determined, and cause of death was ruled a homicide. They also estimated his body had only been in the park for a day or two before it was found.

The Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in 2023 partnered with Othram, a Texas-based forensic laboratory, to see if advanced DNA testing could help to finally identify the remains.

Othram scientists developed a DNA extract and used Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing to build a comprehensive DNA profile. The team used the profile in a genetic genealogy search to develop new investigative leads.

Using this new information, investigators tracked down a potential relative of the man living in Florida. They collected a reference DNA sample to compare to the unknown man’s DNA profile and confirmed that the body belonged to Nopper.

Remaining family members told investigators they were grateful to finally have some answers. A sister donated money to help with the DNA-match costs, Othram said.

Once his remains were returned to the family, he was buried in Granby Cemetery, according to Find A Grave.

It is unclear if Nopper was ever officially reported missing, or why nobody recognized him from the sketch police released in 1977 and came forward.

Anyone who may have information about what happened to Nopper or how he ended up in the forest is asked to contact the Connecticut Office of Chief Medical Examiner at 860-679-3980 or Connecticut State Police Cold Case Unit at 1-866-623-8058.

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On March 7, 1977, Arthur Lisbon kicked in Geraldine’s door, dragged her outside and forced her into his car, witnesses told police. She was never seen again.

Arthur told police he had hoped to reconcile with Geraldine, and that he had put her on a bus to Boston that night. But he had told one of his girlfriends he would marry her after he got rid of his estranged wife, and that he would bury the wife “so deep in the ground she would never be found,” newspaper articles from the time report.

Later that year – in November 1977 – just as his case was ready for trial, Arthur pleaded guilty to kidnapping his wife. But he was never charged in connection with her death, as police never found a body.

To this day, nobody knows for sure whether Geraldine is dead or alive. If she is still alive, she would be 81 years old.

Geraldine had a son from a prior marriage when she met and married Arthur Lisbon a couple of years before she went missing. The son was around 10 years old when his mother disappeared. He had been a ward of the state because his home was deemed unsafe due to domestic violence, but Geraldine would speak to him on the phone every day and would visit him regularly, newspaper articles from 1977 indicate. When his mother stopped calling him, he thought he had been abandoned.

A witness related to Geraldine told police that Arthur barged into his estranged wife’s East Hartford apartment and abducted her around 7:30 a.m. on March 7, 1977. The witness immediately called police.

Another witness – a neighbor – told police he had seen Arthur drag Geraldine across the parking lot and into his car.

A few hours later, Arthur allegedly went to another girlfriend’s home – he had several – and told the girlfriend he had been to see his estranged wife. The girlfriend later told police Arthur had shown up around 9:30 a.m. and was sweating profusely.

Prosecutors presumed Geraldine had been murdered, but they did not have enough evidence to charge Arthur. Instead, he was charged with second-degree kidnapping, later convicted, and served at least six years in prison.

An online gravesite listing indicates Arthur died in 1995 and is buried in Hartford. No obituary for him comes up in online newspaper archive searches.

Geraldine Lisbon was around 5-foot-5 and weighed around 120 pounds at the time of her disappearance. She had brown hair, brown eyes and a scar on her nose. Anyone who may have information related to this case is asked to call the East Hartford Police Department at 860-291-7100.

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The year was 1969. Her husband reported her missing on Dec. 8, and told police she went missing in the early morning hours.

Despite extensive investigations, especially in the early days of Kinney being missing, police have been unable to solve the case.

Eight years after Kinney went missing, police spent days excavating an old farmhouse property in Canton known as Werner Woods near the Roaring Brook Nature Center. They were acting on a tip that Kinney’s body might have been buried at the site, according to a Hartford Courant newspaper article from 1977.

But despite using a Department of Transportation backhoe to dig around an old fireplace at Werner Woods, in rubble that was believed to be the home’s former basement and near a beehive oven, no body was ever found.

The old farmhouse had still been there when Kinney disappeared, but it had been given to the state as a game refuge and later fell into disrepair. The building itself was knocked down in the early 1970s.

Police at the time said they were still unsure whether something bad had happened to Kinney, or whether she had disappeared of her own free will. The family, however, disputed the theory that she had just wandered off.

“Her family thinks it’s highly unlikely she would have gone off,” police told the Hartford Courant in 1977.

Kinney’s husband, Gerald, later moved to Maine, but little else is known about him or whether he was ever a suspect in his wife’s disappearance.

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By 1979, police said they were in the process of obtaining a warrant for a Canton suspect believed to be connected to the case. It is unclear if any arrest was ever made.

In November 1985, a legal notice was posted in a Maine newspaper initiating divorce proceedings between Gerald and Jacqueline Kinney, according to the Cold Connecticut Substack, listing Gerald’s whereabouts as “unknown.”

If Jacqueline Kinney is still alive, she would be 92 years old today. When she disappeared, she was 5-foot-4 and about 150 pounds, with reddish hair and blue eyes. Newspapers at the time of her disappearance reported that she might have been wearing her faded black car coat and brown loafers with gold buckles.

Kinney had a stutter, and she had a partial disability of her left arm, officials said at the time. Her NamUs National missing persons record, created in 2014, indicates Kinney also had a surgery scar on the right side of her abdomen, a scar on the back of her left leg and a vaccination scar on one of her legs.

Anyone who may have information related to Kinney or her disappearance is asked to call the Connecticut State Police at 860-626-7975.

On March 14, 1990, Robinson was found bludgeoned to death in his rented music studio on Temple Street in New Haven, less than a block from the New Haven Green.

Police have investigated his killing for more than 35 years and interviewed hundreds of people, but have yet to charge anyone. In the hopes of generating new leads for the investigation, state officials in early June announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the case.

“Just because a case remains unsolved doesn’t mean it’s ever far from our hearts or our minds,” New Haven Police Chief David Zannelli said in a news release. “We’re committed to going back, taking a fresh look, and making sure families know we stand with them and that we will never stop seeking answers with the goal of getting closure and justice to grieving families.”

Robinson, known to his friends by his nickname “Rokked” (pronounced “rock-head”), was 24 years old when he was killed. He grew up in Kansas, but moved to New Haven to live with his father when he was a teenager. Over the years as he grew up, he became “one of the best-known people in New Haven,” according to a 1990 article in the now defunct New Haven Advocate.

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With his band Sold On Murder, he wrote music, sang and played the bass. He was working on his first album when he was killed. Friends and band members later raised money to release the album posthumously.

Police found Robinson’s body in the early morning hours of March 14, 1990, after someone reported a foul odor coming from the second-floor space of a two-story office building at 178 Temple St. His skull had been crushed, and an autopsy determined the cause of death to be “craniocerebral trauma.” Robinson’s death was ruled a homicide.

In the weeks leading up to his death, Robinson had sold marijuana to help raise money for his album, newspaper reports indicate. Police think Robinson may have known his assailant, as there were no signs of forced entry into his unit, which could also be accessed from Chapel Street. The door was locked when police arrived.

Robinson, who was last seen alive around noon on March 12, would regularly sublet his studio to other musicians by the hour. His band also used the studio space to practice.

One clue police revealed in the initial investigation in 1990 was that a drum set used in the studio five days before Robinson’s body was found was missing when police arrived. Some speculation at the time was that a piece of one of the instruments might be the murder weapon.

Friends of Robinson’s at the time also thought it might have taken more than one person to kill him, since he was a fairly large man – he was muscular, 6-foot-3, and weighed about 215 pounds.

Officials also believed Robinson had been staying at the studio after being asked to leave a nearby apartment he had rented but fallen behind on payments.

His younger sister, Jocelyn Jackson, who was only 15 when Robinson was killed, said in a Dark Downeast podcast interview that her brother would often “couch surf,” always trying to make ends meet with the main focus being his music.

“It’s so profoundly clear that he had an unassailable commitment to music and to being a musician and that playing out gig work, finding the way to bring the songs that he wrote into the world was such a clear focus for him,” Jackson said during the podcast.

The state initially offered a $20,000 reward for information in the case in 1990. But despite the reward and what police call “extensive investigative efforts over more than three decades,” the case remains unsolved. Gov. Ned Lamont on June 2 approved the increased award at the request of the New Haven State’s Attorney’s Office and the New Haven Police Department in hopes someone will come forward.

“Members of the public should never underestimate the importance of what they know or assume that investigators already have that information,” State’s Attorney John P. Doyle Jr. said. “Even a seemingly small detail can be the critical piece that helps investigators solve a case and bring about a successful prosecution.”

Anyone with information related to the death of John Robinson should contact the New Haven Police Department at 1-866 -888TIPS (8477) or 203-946-6296 or Text “Tips” to 274637. You can also email missingpersonstips@newhavenct.gov.

But her life was cut short on May 15, 1986.

Walls was sexually assaulted, stabbed and dumped on a baseball field behind an elementary school in Virginia Beach, where she lived.

Now – 40 years after her body was found – police have arrested the man they believe is responsible. It took decades to confirm his identity.

Walls was seen in the evening on May 14, 1986, leaving Bayside Public Library. The library is right across the street from where her body was found. She went to spend time with friends, one of whom received a phone call from Walls around midnight. Just over six hours later, a passerby found her body in the field.

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Police at the time collected DNA samples from 41 different suspects, according to The Virginian-Pilot newspaper. All were eventually ruled out. By 1988, the case had gone cold and was handed off to the Virginia Beach Police Cold Case Unit.

Through the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, detectives developed a DNA profile in 2001, which was entered into the National DNA database, according to a news release from the Virginia Attorney General’s office.

But it wasn’t until 2017, with the help of a forensic technique called Snapshot DNA Phenotyping, which uses only genetic material to predict an unknown person’s appearance, that police were provided a composite photo of the killer and a potential suspect profile. Police learned they were looking for a white man with brown or black hair, blue or green eyes and freckles on his face. He was believed to be in his 20s at the time of the assault and murder.

“It eliminated more than half of the people we had on the cast of characters list,” Detective Angela Curran told media outlets during a 2017 news conference.

Thanks to a grant from the Virginia Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, police were able to dig deeper and do a forensic genealogy investigation. This led them to Charles Randell Berry, of Newington, Connecticut, now 66 years old. Through a warrant, they obtained Berry’s DNA and confirmed it was a match.

Berry had no known ties to Walls but had served in the U.S. Navy and was stationed in Virginia Beach at the time of her murder, according to NBC News.

Newington police arrested Berry on May 18 and charged him with being a fugitive from justice. Court records indicate he is being held at a Hartford correctional facility in lieu of bond, awaiting an extradition order before being transferred to Virginia.

Berry is expected to be charged with rape and murder in Virginia, related to the 1986 case. His grand jury indictment there is currently sealed.

Virginia Beach officials touted advancements in forensic science, long-standing police work and state funding for being able to solve this case, and said the police department remains committed to bringing justice for all families impacted by homicide, no matter how long it takes.

“There are families and loved ones in this community that have not yet received the closure and the justice that they deserve,” said VBPD Police Chief Paul Neudigate in a statement. “For those families, there is hope for the future, and we want families to know our team is not giving up on them.”

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Both men went overboard and were reported missing. A few weeks later, Brinegar’s body washed up about 30 miles downstream at Bellows Falls Dam, about halfway to Brattleboro. But Canfield’s body was never found.

Five years later – in October 2006 – Connecticut hunters found a skull on the banks of the Connecticut River in East Haddam and reported it to Connecticut authorities. That’s a distance along the river of well over 150 miles. The skull was recovered and stored with the chief medical examiner’s office.

All officials could tell at the time was that the skull belonged to a man between ages 35-45. A Weathersfield, Vt., resident, Canfield was 38 years old when he disappeared.

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Initially, there was no DNA testing done, police said, and they were unable to determine the man’s height and weight from the skull alone.

“Despite a lengthy investigation, the person could not be identified,” according to a news release.

The case was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) in 2011. But it wasn’t until 2022 that officials reached out to Othram, a Texas-based forensic laboratory, for help.

“Othram scientists successfully developed a DNA extract from the provided evidence and then used forensic-grade genome sequencing to build a comprehensive DNA profile for the person,” the company said in a release. “Othram’s in-house forensic genetic genealogy team used the profile in a genetic genealogy search to develop new investigative leads that were returned to law enforcement.”

The medical examiner’s office notified Connecticut State Police in August 2025 that DNA results from the skull had been processed and were analyzed using Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy. The skull most likely belonged to Canfield, officials determined.

A follow-up investigation tracked down a potential relative in Delaware in December 2025, and thanks to DNA testing and a familial match, in May 2026 officials confirmed that the skull was Canfield’s.

“The persistence of law enforcement, the medical examiner and the cooperation of two State Police agencies, along with DNA advances, collaborated to bring this missing person/cold case to a conclusion,” police said in their news release.

It’s one of several cases of a body or partial remains being found in or near the Connecticut River in recent years.

Earlier this month, a passing boat came across the body of an adult man in Old Lyme near the Chester-Hadlyme Ferry. That person appears to have been in the water for an extended period of time, officials said, but they are still working to identify him and how he got there.

Last year, a boater called police about a woman’s body in the river in Rocky Hill. The remains were identified as a 72-year-woman who had been missing for over a month.

In 2024, a man’s body that had been in the water for an extended period of time was found in Hartford.

In 2023, human remains were found in Greenfield, Mass., on a small island in the Connecticut River, and were identified as belonging to a 57-year-old man who had been missing for almost three years.

In 2016, a couple fishing found the body of a missing 19-year-old woman in the river in Middletown. The woman had been missing for five days.

In 2013, suspected human remains were found on the banks of the river near Saint Clements Castle in East Hampton.

The body of an adult man in his 50s was pulled from the river in February 2005.

Data shows that more than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native women – that’s almost 85 percent – have experienced violence in their lifetime and more than half – 56 percent – sexual violence. Often, these cases aren’t properly investigated or taken seriously by authorities.

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Many missing women from tribal communities aren’t even logged in national databases like NamUs.

Related: See BIA’s list of missing & murdered Indigenous people

In Harris’ case, however, two perpetrators were eventually brought to justice. In her honor, then-President Joe Biden established a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Day in 2017 to be recognized annually on Harris’ birthday, May 5.

MMIP Awareness Day is observed to honor victims, support families and raise awareness of the high rates of violence against Indigenous people.

Here in Connecticut, two lawmakers led a commemoration ceremony last week at the state Capitol to recognize the high rates of assault, abduction and murder of Native American tribal members.

“We’ve come a long way in raising awareness about missing and murdered indigenous people, but we have an even longer way to go to solve this problem,” said state Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, in a statement after the event. “No one should be satisfied until we’ve reversed this shameful history of assault and murder of Native Americans.”

Osten’s Senate district includes the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribal nations.

“Each year, we reserve this solemn day to raise awareness for missing and murdered indigenous persons and learn about this social and civil rights tragedy that must be addressed,” said state Sen. Eric Berthel, a Watertown Republican whose Senate district is home to the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington.

Berthel said Connecticut has joined the national day of awareness to honor the many victims and extend support for the families impacted by these tragedies.

“Our state has benefitted so much from our Tribal Nations, and it’s important that we continue to recognize the injustices happening to indigenous persons and take action,” Berthel said.

The two senators were joined by several members of the Eastern Pequots, Golden Hill Paugussetts, Mashantucket Pequots, Mohegan and Schaghticoke tribal nations. They were also joined by newly elected state Rep. Larry Pemberton, a Democrat and the first Native American in the Connecticut General Assembly.

“I stand with everyone in here,” Pemberton said. “Together, we can keep the awareness going.”

Part of the ceremony included a “Red Dress” display and a performance of a Red Dress Song, which are meant to honor the lost lives of Indigenous women at the hands of violence.

CT Insider found that about 700 Native American groups are represented in Connecticut. New Haven County has the most diverse Native American population in Connecticut, data shows.

Native American and Alaska Native rates of murder, rape and violent crime are all higher than the national averages – many of them up to 10 times higher – and Native American and Alaska Native women make up a significant portion of missing and murdered people, the two senators said.

“Community advocates describe the crisis as a legacy of generations of government policies of forced removal, land seizures and violence inflicted on Native peoples,” the two senators said in a news release.

Overall, it’s estimated that more than 1.5 million American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence.

The “Not Invisible Act,” enacted by Congress in 2020, is meant to bring together law enforcement, tribal authorities, federal partners and others to study solutions and to establish better systems of coordination when investigating missing people’s cases or murders.

The Act created a new position within the Interior Department dealing specifically with murder, trafficking, and missing Native Americans, and it appointed the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs to coordinate prevention efforts, grants and programs relating to murder of, trafficking of, and missing Native Americans, across various federal agencies, officials said.

For the family of Hanna Harris, some closure was provided when a South Dakota woman and her common law husband pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2014 and were sentenced to 22 years and 10 years, respectively. That’s not long enough to match the crime, family members said during the sentencing hearing.

Harris’ mother told the court about a local saying: “If you want to get away with murder, go to the reservation.”

“All too often, the perpetrators of this violence against Native women face minimal to no consequences,” according to the Domestic Violence Awareness Project. “Native women need action now.”

You can submit a tip or report information for a missing or murdered person’s case to the Bureau of Indian Affairs at 1-833-560-2065.

Though he lived to be 90 years old, Joseph Hann never found out what happened to his father. But his children and grandchildren – John’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren – finally got some answers in 2025, when a salvage company identified the wreck of the World War I-era fishing vessel off the coast of Nantucket.

Twenty-one people had been onboard. There were no survivors.

The ST Seiner left port on Jan. 9, 1929. Crews last made their daily report to the Portland Trawling Co. in Groton on Jan. 18, 1929, then all communication ceased. When the vessel didn’t return to port as scheduled four days later, private fishing vessels, patrol boats and destroyers were sent out on rescue missions to search for the trawler and its crew.

A damaged life boat was found, but no survivors.

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John Hann had moved to Connecticut from Canada in 1928 to provide a better life for his family. He was one of three Connecticut residents on the vessel, whose captain was from Brooklyn, New York. The trawler’s assistant engineer, Edward Morgan, was from New Haven, and Fireman Jack Wilson was from New London. The remaining crew were from New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Newfoundland, Canada.

The theory at the time was that the Seiner had been caught in a bad storm and foundered.

In 2022, Atlantic Wreck Salvage first detected the Seiner through a side-scan sonar while on a mission to find a French passenger ship called the Le Lyonnais that had sunk in the Atlantic Ocean in 1856. Unfortunately, time constraints and poor weather conditions didn’t allow for any diving exploration at the time on the eastern edge of Georges Bank, about 125 miles off the Nantucket coast.

“Anything that was not Le Lyonnais just got catalogued somewhere and kind of put on a shelf … until we got the wreck that we were really looking for,” Jennifer Sellitti, managing member of Atlantic Wreck Salvage, told CT Insider.

However, the salvage crew came back three years later, did several dives and positively identified the 139-foot, steel steam trawler as the Seiner, which was found in about 200 feet of water.

“The team was able to identify Seiner from features such as the double-drum trawl winch, remains of the raised forecastle deck, shape of the stern, and the presence of a steam engine and boiler,” Capt. Eric Takakjian said in a news release. “No other steel or iron hull steam trawlers of this size are known to have sunk on Georges Bank.”

Takakjian had known about the Seiner since the 1990s, and had hoped to one day come across the wreckage to provide closure for the families of the 21 people onboard.

The find has been “a miracle for our family,” one of John Hann’s relatives told the New London Day. But the discovery brought a “beautiful sadness” knowing Joseph Hann, who had been missing his father for most of his life, was no longer alive to hear the news. He died in 2008 in Groton.

“The discovery of a new shipwreck can be bittersweet,” said Jennifer Sellitti of Atlantic Wreck Salvage in a news release. “While the team celebrates this important historical find, we are mindful of the loss endured by the families, colleagues, and loved ones of those who went down with the ship. We hope this discovery can provide some measure of closure to the descendants of those who perished.”

Rosa “Rosita” Camacho was last seen walking to a store with her mother in the Parkville section of Hartford’s west side on Oct. 24, 1997. She was 4 years old.

Both were reported missing. The mother’s body was found – with her head and hands cut off – a month later in a New Jersey lake. If Rosa is still alive, she would be 32 years old.

Read our past coverage of the case here

Back in 2000, then-Gov. John G. Rowland authorized a $50,000 reward at Hartford State’s Attorney James E. Thomas’ request, and the FBI authorized $50,000. But no useful tips came in.

In early April 2026, the FBI’s Connecticut office renewed its announcement of the reward and asked the public to contact them with any information that could help the investigation.

The girl, who went by both “Rosita” and “Rosie,” spoke mostly Spanish at the time of her disappearance. She was last seen wearing a black jacket and blue pants, the FBI said. She was 3 feet tall, weighed 38 pounds, had brown hair and brown eyes.

Anyone who may have any information related to the case can call the Hartford Police Department at 860-527-6300, the FBI at 203-777-6311 or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov.

He was assigned to Company F, 2nd Battalion, 371st Infantry Regiment, 92nd Infantry Division and sent off to Tuscany, Italy, where he encountered strong German fortifications, land mines and intense battles.

Pfc. Gibson was awarded nine medals, including the Silver Star.

After a mission advancing up the Northern Apennine Mountains on Nov. 18, 1944, Gibson was reported missing at age 30. He was presumed killed in action. But it wasn’t until May 2025 – with the help of DNA testing, dental records and anthropological analysis – that his family finally got closure. His remains, initially buried with no name at Florence American Cemetery in Italy, were finally identified.

About a month ago, Gibson’s body was moved and reburied at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. A rosette was placed next to his name on the Tablets of the Missing at Florence American Cemetery in Italy to indicate he is now accounted for.

At the time, the 92nd Infantry Division was composed of Black soldiers with mostly white officers, as the Army was still racially segregated. The division saw heavy combat against Axis forces in northern Italy.

After each battle, the American Graves Registration Service, U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, were tasked with the investigation and recovery of missing American soldiers.

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After Gibson’s disappearance in 1944, the AGRS search teams recovered one set of remains from Monte Canala that they were unable to identify. These were designated X-272 Castelfiorentino (X-272).

Unidentified remains were buried as “Unknowns,” and Gibson’s remains were declared nonrecoverable in 1949, meaning all active searching stopped.

In the past decade and with access to advanced technologies, researchers recommended exhuming the X-272 remains from the Italian cemetery for further analysis. The Department of Defense and the American Battle Monuments Commission in July 2017 moved the remains to a DPAA laboratory for forensic analysis.

It took several years, but based on laboratory and circumstantial evidence, officials were finally able to confirm in 2025 that X-272 was Gibson.

In August 2025 – 81 years after Gibson went missing – his family was briefed on the new information. It was released to the public by the Department of Defense in the spring of 2026.

“I’m so proud of my dad for pushing for this all these years, and grateful our family finally has closure,” a family member wrote on Reddit, saying Gibson was his great-uncle. “The DPAA does the work of saints, for all who have served around the world.”

Lee, who died this week at age 87, was finalizing a book regarding missing persons investigations when he died, according to the University of New Haven, home to the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science.

“Think about these cases,” Lee said in October 2025 during the institute’s 33rd annual Arnold Markle Symposium, which was focused on missing and unidentified persons investigations. “Think about the families.”

Lee, who spent more than 65 years as an investigator and worked on many high-profile cases across the country, stressed that two things are of utmost significance when it comes to missing persons cases: Time and collaboration.

“It is so important to take action right away,” he told those gathered in the University of New Haven lecture space.

He also stressed that these cases are a team effort, with the person’s family, community, the media, the police and forensic investigators all helping each other.

“Be honest. Communicate,” Lee said. “You have to work together. That’s the key.”

Details of Lee’s book in progress are scarce so far, but it appears he was close to finishing it and it is expected to still be published in the near future. Lee has authored or co-authored 40 other books, most related to forensic techniques or specific cases he worked on through the decades.

Lee, who taught at UNH for more than 50 years, was involved with the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the killing of JonBenet Ramsey and the Scott Peterson case. He also investigated the disappearance of flight attendant Helle Crafts, later known as the Connecticut woodchipper murder case, the first case in Connecticut that led to a murder conviction without ever finding the victim’s body.

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Lee’s career was not without controversy, particularly in recent years. In 2023, a federal judge found Lee liable in a lawsuit for fabricating evidence in a murder trial. Two innocent Connecticut men were sent to prison for decades because of Lee’s testimony related to a towel found at a crime scene. Their convictions were overturned in 2020, and they later sued Lee, the police and the town of New Milford. The two men later received a $25 million settlement from the state.

Lee, however, always denied the accusation he had falsified evidence and defended his work and reputation. He said the evidence on the towel in question may have degraded in the 20 years between the crime and when experts for the defense tested the towel, according to the Associated Press.

“I have no motive nor reason to fabricate evidence,” Lee wrote in a 2023 statement.

The case was one of about 8,000 he was involved with during his decades-long career. In the 2007 murder trial of record producer Phil Spector, Lee was accused of taking evidence from the crime scene – something he has denied.

From 1978 to 2000, Lee oversaw the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory. He was also a commissioner of the state’s Department of Public Safety and Connecticut State Police from 1998–2000.

Lee founded the forensic institute with his name in 1998, and it moved into a new home on the UNH campus in 2010 with cutting-edge forensics investigation technology, a new crime scene center and a high-tech forensic room, according to the university.

“His contributions to our University as well as forensic science and law enforcement are extraordinary and unmatched,” UNH President Jens Frederiksen said in a statement after Lee’s passing. “His legacy lives on in the generations of students and law enforcement professionals he impacted throughout his brilliant career.”

Bianca Lebron, then a fifth-grader at the former Elias Howe School on Clinton Avenue in Bridgeport, went missing Nov. 7, 2001. She was 10 years old. If she is still alive, she would be 34 years old today.

We wrote about her case before – you can read it here.

Just before school started that day, Bianca told her friends she was going shopping with her uncle. She does not have an uncle. She was picked up by a man driving a two-toned brown van with tinted windows. She was never seen again.

Bridgeport police said they have some new information and that an excavation has taken place at one location in the city, but would not share details of what might have been found. Police previously searched a local park.

The family is pleading with anyone who may know something to come forward.

A reward of $62,000 is being offered for any information that leads investigators to Bianca, who is described as Hispanic, with brown hair and hazel eyes and a birth mark on her forehead. Police said there is hope that Bianca is still alive.

Anyone with information about the disappearance or whereabouts of Bianca Lebron is asked to call the Bridgeport Police Department at 203-576-7671.

Friends came together to search areas of New Haven where she had last been seen. Her sisters and daughter shared her missing person flyer and photo several times a week on social media, urging anyone who may have information to call them or the police.

It took a month for them to get answers. And when they did, it wasn’t at all what they had hoped for. In fact, it was an answer of the worst kind: Chamberlain’s body had been found.

New Haven police say the 59-year-old woman was last seen on Feb. 10 on Davenport Avenue and then near the corner of Columbus and Howard avenues in the Hill section of the city. On March 9, police responded to a park at the end of Hallock Avenue – just about a mile from where Chamberlain was last seen – after some children who had been playing came across an unresponsive woman under trees near the fence of the park.

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First responders pronounced the woman dead at the scene. She was later confirmed to be Chamberlain, police said.

“My sister Cindy was a beautiful soul and she will be missed by so many,” Terry Love Rivera wrote on her Facebook page. “I hope she knew how special she was.”

Rivera also thanked everyone who has supported her family and helped search for her sister.

Autopsy results are still pending as officials are awaiting toxicology results – which takes several weeks – but there was no apparent trauma to the body, according to the New Haven Independent.

Police are hoping those results will help shed light on what happened, they told the New Haven Register.

It is unclear how long Chamberlain’s body had been in the park when she was found. It is also unclear how she got there, police said, but it is within walking distance of where she was last seen alive. The park is near Sargent Drive and the I-95 highway.

Anyone who may have information about what happened or may have seen Chamberlain in the time she was missing is asked to call New Haven Police at 203-946-6304 or the police department’s anonymous tip line at 866-888-TIPS (8477).

But things took an unusual turn at the end of February when McGeachie was found – she had been arrested in Sonoma County, California, and charged with bank fraud, conspiracy and identity theft – all felonies.

McGeachie has two upcoming court dates this week in Sonoma County, court records show.

Police say she had met up with several people in New York, traveled to California with them and together they made fraudulent withdrawals at several banks throughout the Bay Area. Her co-conspirators were also arrested, police said. They had been staying in a hotel in Vacaville, police said.

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Details about how she ended up in California are still emerging, but New Haven police said one of the men she was arrested with was seen with her in the New Haven area before she disappeared.

McGeachie is not the first missing person to face criminal charges.

A 62-year-old North Carolina woman who had been missing for 24 years was arrested a few days after she was found on an outstanding warrant from 2001 charging her with failure to appear in court.

Michele Hundley Smith, a mother of three children, disappeared after Christmas 2001, after telling her family she was going shopping at Kmart in nearby Virginia. She was found alive and well in Rockingham County, North Carolina, at the end of February 2026. But she told police she did not want police to tell her family where she was and asked not to be contacted, according to NBC News.

Police, who acted on a tip when they found Smith, said there are no charges related to her disappearance, but that the district attorney’s office is doing a full review of the case.

In 1983, a Kentucky mother and her 3-year-old daughter were reported missing.

Debra Newton told friends she and her daughter were moving to Georgia for a new job. Instead, they both disappeared. Charges were filed for custodial interference, and Newton ended up on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for parental kidnapping fugitives, according to Fox 35 News.

More than 40 years later, police found Newton living in Florida under a new name and with a new husband. Her daughter, Michelle – now 46 years old – had no idea she had been listed as a missing child in several national databases.

A tip led police to Newton’s home in Florida, news outlets report. Thanks to DNA testing, they were able to confirm it was the same woman who had been missing for decades from Kentucky. She was arrested at The Villages while out walking her dog, extradited to Kentucky and taken to court on the custodial interference charge.

A California woman who went missing from the Los Angeles area in July 2024 later found herself in a Miami jail.

Destiny Riddle, 39, was reported missing by family after they hadn’t heard from her in weeks, according to NBC Miami.

But in March 2025, she was charged with battery and aggravated battery after a car crash that resulted in a confrontation, an attack and later an assault. She was taken to the Miami-Dade County Jail. In court, she denied any wrongdoing.

The court ordered a psychological evaluation and Riddle was later deemed incompetent, online court records show. However, since then she has faced several more assault charges, most recently in January 2026 for an incident at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Facility involving the assault of a corrections officer.

Kyle Seidel loved Chevy trucks, fishing and the outdoors. A father of three young children, the 34-year-old worked as a crane operator, dock builder and a general jack-of-all-trades at Essex Island Marina.

Just after 8 p.m. on Dec. 21, 2012 – after he left his home to pick up takeout food for his family from a Waterford Chinese food restaurant – he was shot and killed in a Boston Post Road shopping plaza that now houses a supermarket.

Seidel’s killing is one of Connecticut’s many unsolved cold cases, and the state is offering a $25,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible. His face is also part of Connecticut’s Cold Case Playing Cards deck, distributed in local prisons with a tip-line number.

Seidel was the kind of man who would help anyone in need, his wife Kate told NBC Connecticut in a 2013 interview. The couple met in 2001 and were married in April 2003. They later welcomed two daughters and a son to their family. The children were 8, 6 and 2 years old when their father was killed.

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Seidel grew up in the Giants Neck area of East Lyme and graduated from East Lyme High School in 1996, according to his obituary. He was a hard worker and always tried to do things right. He loved being on and near the ocean, his family said.

“His love for his family goes beyond words,” family members said in his obituary. “His sense of humor, common sense, cooking skills and love of animals were some of the many instruments in Kyle’s toolbox.”

Seidel’s body was found in the parking lot of the former Halftime Lounge and Bowling Alley in Waterford with a single gunshot wound to the neck. He had been on his way to the Lucky Inn Chinese restaurant to pick up dinner, about a half-mile away from where he was found.

It was a family tradition to get Chinese food on Friday nights: spare ribs, lo mein, sweet and sour chicken.

It is unclear how he ended up in that plaza instead of at the restaurant. He was found on the ground just outside his black Ford Focus, the car still running and the driver’s-side door still open, a witness told the New London Day at the time.

Seidel was taken to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, where he died of his injuries, Waterford police said in a social media post. His death was ruled a homicide by the chief medical examiner’s office. The police have investigated ever since.

Thirteen years have now passed.

Waterford police said they have followed up on any leads that have come in through the years, but are still missing important pieces of the puzzle. New witnesses have been interviewed, old witnesses re-interviewed.

“A local family was destroyed by the senseless murder of Kyle Seidel,” Waterford police said on social media. “We know that there are people out there that have information. We need these people to step up and share it with us.”

Kate Seidel said she hopes to one day have some answers on what happened to her husband and why.

“That’s what we keep going for. I want to know,” she told NBC Connecticut.

Anyone with information related to this case, or who may have been in the area of Boston Post Road and Clark Lane that night, is asked to call the Waterford Police Department tip line at 860-437-8080 or Waterford detectives at 860-442-0645.

To the outside world, she appeared to live a good life.

But on July 25, 2025, the 32-year-old woman disappeared without a trace from River Valley Services in Middletown, a community-based mental health facility.

Police have been looking for her ever since.

A Silver Alert was issued by Middletown police after she was reported missing, then re-issued in December 2025 as police had made no progress in the case. They hoped that getting Maturo’s photo circulated on social media and on the local news might help produce some leads, but so far they are no closer to finding her.

“Our detectives are currently trying to track down Leah, but so far have not been able to locate her whereabouts,” Capt. Mike DeSena, Investigative Services division commander at Middletown police, said this week. “It is still an active case and we are following every possible lead that comes in, however, they have been dead ends so far.”

Maturo was known by the nickname “Dolly” among friends and colleagues, police said. It is unclear what her exact affiliation was with River Valley Services, but the facility treats psychiatric illness and substance abuse.

Under Connecticut law, a Silver Alert is issued for those under age 18 or over 65, but can also be issued for a missing person of any age with mental health issues.

Maturo, who did not renew her massage therapy license with the state when it expired in September 2025, is 5-foot-3 and weighs about 130 pounds. She has brown hair and brown eyes. Anyone who may have seen her is asked to call the Middletown Police Department at 860-638-4000.

But when she failed to show up for Thanksgiving dinner in November 1987, her family got worried and reported her missing to Milford police.

Kovalik has now been missing for 38 years, and police are no closer to solving the case.

When Milford police first started investigating the disappearance, they learned Kovalik – whose son was 3 when she went missing – had been driven to New Haven by an acquaintance and that she had been seen near Chapel Street on Nov. 14 and possibly spent the night with a friend in the city.

Kovalik had also missed three days of work at Dictaphone Corp. in Stratford – Nov. 9, 10 and 11 – before returning on Nov. 13, then failing to show up again, police said.

A friend told police they had dropped off Kovalik at her Barton Road home in Milford on Nov. 15, but her missing person report in NamUs indicates her date of disappearance as Nov. 13.

For decades, the family has been waiting for answers, holding their breath every time they hear of new human remains found and waiting for them to be identified.

“It stirs a lot of emotions,” Kovalik’s sister, Jeanette Patton, told the New Haven Register in a 2012 interview. “I pray if her remains are out there that we could bring her home.”

Patton ended up raising her sister’s son.

Years after her disappearance – in 1994 – the family had Kovalik declared dead. They placed a memorial plaque in her honor at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Milford, providing some comfort but no true closure.

Police don’t know if she is dead or alive. They have received tips over the years, but nothing substantial that could help solve the case.

If she is still alive, Kovalik – whose maiden name was Monks – would now be 66 years old. She is described as a white woman with brown hair and brown eyes, and at the time of her disappearance was 5-foot-5 and weighed 144 pounds.

Kovalik had some skin discoloration on her right arm and a birthmark on her inner right forearm, her NamUs file indicates. She was last seen wearing blue jeans and a brown sweater.

Anyone who may have information about Kovalik or her disappearance is asked to call Milford police at 203-878-6551.