The Murder of Laurie Gonyo (Vermont)

In the fall of 1976, a woman vanished from her home in rural Vermont sometime between a cup of morning coffee and the end of an ordinary workday. What followed was years of suspicion, rumor, and silence until a witness with questionable credibility stepped forward.

Laurie Gonyo’s case has an ending but not the kind of clean resolution people imagine when they hear the word solved. This is a story about what happens when justice feels incomplete, when a sentence seems too small for the violence at the center of it, and when the killer in one case leaves a trail of suspicion wherever he goes.

Laurie is Missing

The last time Ricky Gonyo saw his wife, it was still dark out. He moved through the quiet of the house as he made a cup of coffee in the kitchen and carried it carefully into the bedroom to find 29-year old Laurie Gonyo still in bed. He handed her the cup, told her he loved her just like he always did and then he left for work by 5:30 a.m. on November 4, 1976.

There was nothing unusual about it. Nothing that would suggest this would be the last normal moment.

According to Ted Tedford’s reporting for the Burlington Free Press, when Ricky came home that afternoon, the first thing he noticed was the door. It was open. That alone didn’t make sense. Laurie wouldn’t just leave the door open in early November in Vermont. He stepped inside, expecting to find her somewhere in the house, but she wasn’t there.

At first glance, everything looked… normal. Her jacket was there. Her pocketbook, her money, even her cigarettes hadn’t been touched. Her boots were sitting in their usual spot, the kind you don’t go without that time of year or with the horses out back that she tended all day long.

Ricky moved through their home, trying to make sense of it. Then he noticed something off near the couch. A TV tray was tipped over. A cup sat halfway underneath it. There was a teabag on the floor and a stain on the cushion, still wet. Something had happened here.

There was one more place to check. Ricky walked outside to the backyard, the cold air sharp, the silence heavier the closer he got. The small horse barn behind their home was quiet. Laurie wasn’t there and the horses hadn’t been fed. That’s when the unease turned into something else. 

Ricky called a Vermont State Police trooper in Enosburg Falls, who then contacted a detective. But it wasn’t until the next afternoon that bloodhounds arrived to search the property. They picked up “some scents, but nothing really strong.” After checking out the house, investigators said there was no evidence of foul play or violence.

But Ricky didn’t believe that. Nothing about this felt like Laurie had simply walked away. Not without her things. Not without feeding the horses. Not with that scene by the couch with the spilled tea.

To him, it looked like she had been taken.

As the hours stretched into night and there was still no sign of Laurie, Ricky couldn’t sit still. He grabbed a rifle and stepped out onto the road. Back and forth, he walked, stopping every car that passed, asking each driver the same question: Had they seen Laurie?

About Laurie Gonyo

Laurie grew up in Vermont, attending Essex Junction High School and later Johnson State Teachers College. But before she met her husband and they built a life on a plot of land in Enosburg, her life had taken her somewhere else entirely.

In her early twenties, Laurie moved to Philadelphia and New York City. Mike Donoghue reports for the Free Press that her family said it was during those years she may have started hanging around the “wrong kind” of people. A rough crowd, the kind that could have followed her, even after she left it behind.

Yet by the mid-1970s, Laurie’s life had landed in a peaceful place. At the time of her disappearance, she and Ricky had been married for about four and a half years. In 1974, the two of them moved to Enosburg Falls and settled into a quieter life. They bought a home on about 20 acres of land and Ricky built a horse barn for her.

Laurie spent her days taking care of the horses. They were saving money and working toward something bigger – they dreamed of building a new house on the top of the hill and filling it with children. The plan was to get everything in place before starting a family.

To her parents and sister, Laurie was happy in life. She wouldn’t have walked away from it, not by choice.

As the days passed with no sign of Laurie, Ricky kept searching. He followed leads himself, feeling like the state police weren’t doing enough. He spent the money they had been saving for that house on the hill trying to find her.

Police said they were doing what they could, but without clear evidence of a crime, they had to treat the case as a missing persons investigation. And so everyone waited for a piece of evidence to surface that would heighten the urgency of the search effort.

Laurie’s family and friends were left in limbo, hoping she would come home and spiraling with possibilities in lieu of anything solid to hang on to. One of her friends later said she had a vision one night. In that vision, a tall, husky man with light, combed-back hair carried Laurie out of her house, her head dangling, her mouth covered or maybe unconscious so she wouldn’t struggle. She couldn’t shake the scene from her mind.

Months went by. Ricky was forced to sell the land – the house, the barn, everything they had been building toward – and he left Vermont for Florida. He said it was too painful to stay there without Laurie. But Laurie’s father believed there may have been another reason Ricky chose Florida in particular.

He thought Ricky had heard Laurie had a friend there, someone who might know something about what happened to her.