The Murder of Denise Hart (Vermont)

Whenever Denise Lynette Hart was away from her young son, she called home every day, multiple times a day to check on him. But then one January night in 2015 those calls stopped. When Denise’s family tried to report her missing, they got the runaround, and no one would know where Denise was until almost a year later when the missing persons case became a homicide investigation.

Car On Fire

It was near midnight on January 25, 2015, almost January 26, and flickering light from bright orange flames was reflecting off the waters of Otter Creek, illuminating the Salisbury-Cornwall covered bridge in Cornwall, Vermont. When the Cornwall Volunteer Fire Department arrived at the scene off Swamp Road, they found a burning car parked in a dirt lot near the fishing access and boat launch for the creek. Firefighters were able to knock down the flames and snuff out the fire completely, but what was left of the vehicle was badly damaged and charred by the blaze.

According to reporting by Brent Curtis for the Rutland Herald, arson and forensic investigators surveyed the remnants of the silver 2001 Pontiac Grand Am for any clues as to the source of the fire and later deemed it to be suspicious in nature, but didn’t say much else. The investigation by Cornwall fire officials and Vermont State Police was ongoing at the time. As the case developed, police would soon learn that the burning vehicle was connected to the disappearance of a young mother from another state.

That same weekend, nearly 200 miles away from the suspicious car fire in Vermont, the family of 24-year old Denise Lynette Hart in Hartford, Connecticut was growing more concerned by the minute. Denise had left for one of her usual trips to see friends in Vermont on January 23 and she’d been in touch with her mom and son back home every day she was gone, but when Monday, January 26 rolled around, there were no more calls from Denise.

Investigative journalist Jackie O’Brien covered the case of Denise Hart extensively in the limited series podcast, Buried in Snow, which she released independently back in 2021. According to Jackie’s interviews with Denise Hart’s mother, Dedre Robinson, she’d talked to her daughter multiple times throughout the days she was gone, including January 25.

Denise told her mom that it started snowing that day which could potentially impact driving conditions, but she was still planning to head back to Connecticut later that night. Denise ended the final conversation they had on the 25th saying she had to run to the store but she’d call back later. It was already 10 p.m. but Dedre said she’d wait for Denise’s call. Several hours passed and the phone didn’t ring. By midnight, Denise still hadn’t called so Dedre went to bed figuring she’d hear from her daughter in the morning.

But Denise never called the next morning, or ever again. She went radio silent. Repeated calls to Denise’s cell phone went unanswered. It struck Dedre as extremely unusual and incredibly concerning, but she hoped there was a logical explanation. Historical weather records show that New England was hit with considerable snow that weekend, and Denise had said herself that the weather could slow her down on the way home, so maybe she was stuck somewhere in a remote Vermont town waiting for the streets to be plowed. Except, the weather didn’t explain the no contact. She never missed a phone call home to check in on her son.

Dedre waited all day to hear from Denise on January 26th, and again the following day. By the night of January 27th, that’s as long as she could stand it. Dedre started calling around to Denise’s local friends and family to see if they’d heard from her, but no one had.

According to a report by Brent Curtis for the Rutland Herald, Dedre didn’t know much about the Vermont trip, but after talking to several of Denise’s friends, she learned that Denise was likely in the Rutland area, and she was probably with two individuals, 32-year old Josh Preseau and another man I’ll call Mark, who let Denise borrow a car.

Not knowing what else to do after two days with no contact from her daughter, Dedre called Rutland City Police Department to file a missing persons report, but she was instructed to instead call her local department in Hartford. When Dedre called Hartford PD they told her no, you have to speak with police in the town where Denise was last seen. Dedre told Jackie O’Brien that the Hartford Police actually called Rutland City PD on her behalf to explain the situation, and finally, Dedre was assured that someone would call her to take a report. An officer did call, but not until January 29th.

Missing Persons Report Filed in Rutland

When she finally had an audience with law enforcement, Dedre told the officer what she knew – that to her knowledge, Denise left for Vermont from Connecticut on January 23 and she was heading to the Rutland area to visit two men named Josh and Mark and she was probably driving Mark’s car.

According to the Buried in Snow podcast, Rutland City PD were able to track both Josh and Mark down but they didn’t disclose much about how they knew Denise or the circumstances of the last time they saw her. However, police did suss out that Denise had been staying at Josh’s house. That’s where she was on January 25, the night she was last seen. Josh’s house wasn’t in Rutland though. He lived in Sudbury, 25 miles away, which is under Vermont State Police jurisdiction.

On January 31, two days after a Rutland officer finally took a report from Dedre, Denise Hart’s case became a state police investigation. Now, because of this gap in time between Rutland City PD’s investigation and the case getting turned over to state police, some media coverage makes it sound like Denise wasn’t reported missing until January 31, almost a full week after her last contact with family, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. You’ve already heard how Dedre tried to report Denise missing almost immediately, but got the runaround, and the gap in time was no fault of the family’s. In fact, Dedre and several other of Denise’s family members were doing whatever they could to find Denise on their own.

Before State Police opened a case for Denise’s disappearance, Denise’s uncle and a friend drove up to Vermont and started asking around in the towns where she was known to visit. They hung up missing persons posters and even knocked on Josh Preseau’s door. He reportedly allowed the uncle and friend to search his house and the room where Denise had been staying.

Looking through that room, Denise’s uncle noted several of Denise’s belongings were still there – most notably, her sneakers and her weed. When the uncle asked Josh what he knew about Denise’s disappearance, he allegedly claimed that he last saw Denise when she left his house wearing slippers in the middle of a snowstorm to go meet someone who owed her money. It also seemed to Josh that Denise had taken her clothes with her, too, so when she didn’t show back up at his house, Josh assumed that Denise decided to go back to Connecticut. When she left his place that night, she was driving the borrowed car from Mark: a silver 2001 Pontiac Grand Am.

None of it made any sense to Denise’s family. They were immediately suspicious of Josh, so they provided all the information they learned from their own reconnaissance mission to police. Denise’s family feels it was this, plus all the noise they made while in town and on social media with the hashtag #FindDenise, that encouraged State Police to open an investigation into Denise’s disappearance. They’re not so confident it would have happened otherwise. Denise Hart was a Black woman. Census records show that Vermont is the second whitest state in the United States.

According to reporting by the Addison County Independent, on January 31, 2015 around 12:20 p.m. Vermont State Police were “made aware” of a missing persons report out of Sudbury. The details provided in that report are scarce. The short blurb says that Denise was last seen leaving a friend’s house on the evening of January 25 and she was known to have connections to Harford, Connecticut as well as Rutland and Addison counties in Vermont. It mentioned that Denise was known by two other names: One of them, Tiffany.

Vermont State Police have previously stated that their investigation began immediately, but if that’s the case, Denise’s family was left in the dark as far as any developments or new information goes. It’s not altogether uncommon for police to hold investigative findings close to the vest – even from family members, as frustrating as it is – but one major detail of Denise’s case, one that changed everything for her family, they had to hear from one of Denise’s friends.

About a week after that car was found burning near the Cornwall-Salisbury Covered Bridge, Dedre learned that it was the same vehicle that Denise was driving on the night she disappeared. When Dedre asked the lead state police detective on Denise’s case, Detective Julie Scribner, about the car, she reportedly wouldn’t disclose anything to Dedre about it. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that the car was publicly confirmed to be connected to Denise’s disappearance, and with that, Vermont State Police also disclosed that her case showed a strong indication of foul play.

Denise Hart’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.