Between 1978 and 1988 women were killed along a stretch of the Connecticut River valley on the Vermont and New Hampshire border, a rural area of small towns and long empty roads. Cathy Millican, Bernice Courtemanche, Ellen Fried, Eva Morse, Lynda Moore and Barbara Agnew are the deaths most consistently attributed to the series, and estimates run from seven to eleven. All were stabbed, most repeatedly and with a particular pattern of wounds to the neck, and several were taken from roadsides where their cars had broken down or where they were walking.
On August 6, 1988, Jane Boroski, twenty-two and seven months pregnant, stopped at a drinks machine outside a shop in West Swanzey, New Hampshire. A man pulled up beside her, accused her of beating up his girlfriend, dragged her from her car and stabbed her twenty-seven times. She fought him off, and when a car passed he ran. She drove herself for help, survived, and her daughter was born healthy. Her description of the man and his vehicle is the best evidence the case has ever had.
No one has been charged. The most discussed suspect is Michael Nicholaou, a Vietnam veteran who killed his wife and stepdaughter and then himself in Florida in 2005, and whose movements, history and appearance fit a good deal of it; nothing has been proved.
The killings stopped after the attack on Jane Boroski. The case is open in both states.