Episode 195: Edward Mayrand
Judith Whitney pictured left, Kathleen Daneault pictured right. Anyone with a photo of Patricia Paquette is asked to please email us at truecrimene@gmail.com
Edward Mayrand had a lengthy criminal history that escalated quickly to violence. He was known as a drifter who preferred to keep a low profile and stay at campgrounds around Rhode Island and Massachusetts. In December of 1975, Edward was at a bar when he approached a young woman and began talking with her. After several drinks, Edward offered to drive her home. Rather than head in the direction of the woman’s home, he instead pulled over in a remote area and began punching her repeatedly. He then choked her with her scarf before dragging her into a cemetery where he raped her. The woman was miraculously able to escape and run through the cemetery and woods to a nearby house. The homeowners called police, and Edward was arrested. He was released on parole in 1983.
On November 17th, 1983, Edward was seen talking to and drinking with a young mother, 25-year-old Kathleen Daneault, in the Mahaki Restaurant in Gardner, Massachusetts. The two left the restaurant together, and this was the last time Kathleen was seen alive. The next morning, her body was discovered near a furniture factory. She had been strangled to death with a piece of fabric that had been ripped from her blouse. Investigators interviewed witnesses and learned that she had last been seen with Edward, so they approached him and asked if he knew Kathleen, which he vehemently denied. Eventually, he did admit to meeting her at the restaurant that evening, but that he left her at the bar and went home. Unfortunately, there was not enough evidence to convict Edward at this time.
Unsurprisingly, Edward found himself back in jail just a short while after Kathleen’s murder, but it was for violating his parole. He was released in May of 1986, where he went to a halfway house in Northampton, Massachusetts. The conditions of his parole forbade him from leaving the state and required him to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. In June of 1987, while attending a meeting, Edward met 43-year-old Judith Whitney, a mother of three and recent divorcee. The two got along quite well and moved quite fast, and within a month, the pair was taking a trip to Keene, New Hampshire to go camping.
Edward and Judith were seen together on July 1st and 2nd at the Valley Green Motel in Keene, where they were driving around in Judith’s brown Ford Mustang and drinking in the lounge together. It was on July 3rd that a maid at the motel noticed only Edward in the car, and that the woman he had been with had disappeared. It was shortly after this that Edward disappeared in Judith’s car and later called the motel, asking for the room to be held for them as they were having car trouble and couldn’t return immediately, but their stuff was still there. The motel held the room until July 14th before removing their items. On July 20th, Judith’s ex-husband called police and reported her missing. That same day, Judith’s brown Ford Mustang was found abandoned in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire.
On August 4th, Edward was arrested at a Peterborough, New Hampshire apartment, hiding in a closet. He was being arrested as a fugitive from justice, as he had violated parole by leaving the state of Massachusetts. He was also interrogated about Judith and her disappearance, and admitted to driving and then abandoning her car, as well as giving away some of her jewelry. It wasn’t until November 8th, several months later, that Judith’s decomposed body was found, strangled to death with the drawstring of her raincoat. Despite a witness having seen a man in a brown car with a Massachusetts plate and acting suspiciously and Edward admitting to having been in possession of Judith’s gun, there was not enough evidence to tie Edward to the crime, so he was only convicted of the parole violation and he went to prison once more.
Edward only stayed in prison until October of 1988 for the parole violation before being released. In 1989, just barely a year later, Edward was sentenced to sentenced to 2 1/2 to 5 years in prison for having been in possession of Judith’s firearm. During his incarceration, he bragged to two other men in prison with him that he had “done in” two women, one in Massachusetts and one in New Hampshire. Police felt there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him, and Edward was released yet again.
Following his release for this parole violation, Edward moved to Providence, Rhode Island. Here, in December of 1994, Edward met 46-year-old Patricia Paquette at a drinking lounge. Patricia was last seen here with Edward before disappearing for several weeks. Her dismembered body was discovered in late December in several garbage bags in an abandoned building, nearby where Edward was living. It was noted that she had been strangled to death before being dismembered. Due to witness statements and circumstantial evidence, Edward was eventually arrested and charged with Patricia’s murder. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 35-60 years in prison.
Unfortunately, Kathleen Daneault and Judith Whitney’s cases remained dormant for quite some time. It wasn’t until 2010 when New Hampshire’s Cold Case Unit teamed up with the Massachusetts State Police and the Worcester District Attorney’s Office to look more into the two murders and their likely connection with Edward Mayrand. The following September, the investigative team began working on obtaining a warrant for a DNA sample from Edward when they learned that he was gravely ill from metastatic lung cancer. Luckily, noting the severe time crunch in their investigation, the warrant was expedited and the task force was able to obtain a sample of his DNA. This was just in time, as Edward died in later that year.
It wasn’t until 2014 when the DNA results came back and conclusively linked Edward to Kathleen Daneault’s murder. Unfortunately, the DNA found from Judith’s ligatures were far too degraded to get results off of. The investigative team concluded that due to witness statements, Edward’s interrogation, and the similarities between the other two murders he committed that he was responsible for Judith Whitney’s death as well. Due to the fact that Edward had been dead for several years, he was never charged with the other two murders.
Image sources:
wmur.com - “AG: Cold case killing from 1987 solved”
doj.nh.gov - “Judith Whitney”
thegardnernews.com - “When was the last murder in Gardner? Here’s what to know about the city’s homicides”