Edward Mayrand

Soon after his parole, on November 23, Mayrand met 25-year-old Kathleen Daneault at the Mahaki Restaurant in Gardner, Massachusetts. The two were last seen leaving the premises together. The following day, workers at the nearby S. Bent Furniture Factory found her body on a dirt path not far from the restaurant.[4] She had been strangled with a piece of her own blouse, which had been ripped off.[5] The following month, he was arrested for violating his parole and imprisoned until May 1986, when he was released again.[3]

Following this, Mayrand, on conditions of his parole, moved to a halfway house in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he was required to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.[3] In June 1987, through one such meeting, he met 43-year-old Judith A. Whitney, of Amherst, a Kentucky-born divorceé with three daughters who sold firearms at a sporting center.[2] The two got acquainted rather quickly, and the following month, she told her family that she was going on a camping trip with her new boyfriend in New Hampshire. The two were last seen together at the Valley Green Motel in Keene,[3] with a chambermaid later testifying that she had seen Mayrand driving Whitney's 1980 Ford Mustang, although the couple never checked out and didn't return to collect their belongings.[1]

In August, authorities searched an apartment in Peterborough, New Hampshire, belonging to locals Deardre Gladu and Sylvia Taylor. Surprisingly, they found Mayrand hiding in a closet, and swiftly arrested him, as he had violated his parole by leaving the halfway house back at Massachusetts. When questioned about Judith, Edward gave conflicting statements, claiming to have last seen her in the motel, when she got upset and left because Mayrand was seen dancing and talking to other women.[3] He admitted to giving away Whitney's necklace and watch to Gladu and Taylor,[1] as well as being in possession of Judith's gun and the Ford Mustang for about a week,[5] before he abandoned it in Fitzwilliam.[3] Despite this, authorities determined there wasn't enough evidence to charge him with murder, and instead jailed him for violating his parole. On November 8, a hunter discovered Whitney's skeletal remains buried in a shallow grave off Route 119, in Winchester, New Hampshire. Like Daneault, it appeared that she was strangled with pieces of her own clothing, but in Judith's case, the killer also tied a drawstring from her raincoat around her neck.[2]

Mayrand was released yet again in October 1988, but the following year was arrested for possessing a weapon, which felons are prohibited from doing. He was jailed for two-and-a-half years in the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord, where he hinted at his two murders to other inmates, but it wasn't enough to charge him.[3] After his release, he moved out of state to a house in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1994, he met 46-year-old Patricia Paquette at a drinking lounge, and the couple were last seen together.[5] On December 21, Paquette's dismembered remains were found stuffed in several plastic garbage bags, in an abandoned building just around the corner where Mayrand was residing.[1] She had been strangled to death prior to the dismemberment.