The Murders of Brenda Warner & Charlene Ranstrom (New Hampshire)

On a fall morning in 1988, police in Nashua, New Hampshire walked into an apartment and found two women murdered in their bed. What followed seemed, at first, like a case that would never truly reach an ending. 

There were suspects, confessions, trials, and years of legal battles but no final resolution. For decades, the killings of Charlene Ranstrom and Brenda Warner lingered in the background, a file sitting quietly among other unsolved cases. But some investigations refuse to stay buried.

Years later, new detectives took another look. With fresh eyes, new witnesses, and forensic technology that hadn’t existed when the crime was first investigated, the story began to change.

Discovery & Early Investigation

Early on the morning of October 3, 1988, police in Nashua, New Hampshire were dispatched to an apartment building at 7 Mason Street after receiving a call reporting what was described simply as a “sudden death.” It was 7:40 a.m. when officers arrived and made their way upstairs to a second-floor apartment.

Inside the bedroom, they found two women lying on the bed. They were 48-year old Charlene Ranstrom and 32-year old Brenda Warner. Both women had been stabbed repeatedly, and their hands had been bound with strips of a towel. The scene left little doubt for investigators: this was a homicide.

The attack had been vicious. Later autopsy results showed that Brenda and Charlene had been stabbed more than a dozen times each. Carolyn Magnuson reports for the Nashua Telegraph that Charlene also had a black eye from blunt force trauma, suggesting the violence had begun before the stabbing even started.

Investigators collected a white athletic sock, bedding, and seven pubic hairs from the scene. In the backyard, police recovered two small steak knives believed to have been used in the attack.

The fact that there were two knives raised immediate questions. While not impossible, it would be unusual for a single person to use two knives during a stabbing attack, leaving open the possibility of multiple attackers.

Investigators believed the murders had taken place sometime on the night of October 2nd, hours before the bodies were discovered the next morning. And in a tragic twist, someone had unknowingly spent that night inside the apartment.

Charlene’s son, Joel, went to his mother’s apartment that night after being out at a bar in town. He fell asleep on the couch in the living room, unaware that his mother and her partner were already dead in the bedroom just steps away.

Police fanned out through the building and the surrounding neighborhood, going door to door and fielding phone tips to piece together what had happened inside the apartment.

Sometime that morning, a Nashua detective stood beside a parked car in front of the building, resting his hand on the rear window as he spoke with a young tenant who lived downstairs, 21-year old Anthony Barnaby. Anthony leaned back against the car with his arms crossed as he spoke to the officer.

Nashua Telegraph photographer Dean Shalhoup captured a picture of that moment – an informal conversation between a detective and a young man who, at that point, was simply another witness in the building. But that exchange would mark the beginning of a case that spanned the next three decades.

Interrogation & “Confession”

As investigators continued interviewing witnesses, troubling details surfaced. 

One woman who was sleeping below the victims’ apartment that night said she had been awakened around 11 p.m. by unusual noises overhead. She described hearing two sets of knocks, followed by the sound of people running around inside the apartment above her. Moments later, she heard only one set of footsteps running out of the apartment.

She said that earlier the same evening, 27-year old David Caplin had knocked on her door asking to borrow a butter knife, but she refused to let him inside. David had been staying with Anthony Barnaby.

Other residents told police there had been arguments involving Brenda and Charlene and other tenants in the building in the days before the murders. The victims had been specifically running into issues with Anthony Barnaby.

The women had recently reported one of Anthony’s friends for allegedly illegally tapping into their cable TV service. That friend was scheduled to go to trial in just a few days. According to a witness, Anthony had warned the women that they would not live long enough to testify.

Three days after the discovery, on October 6, 1988, police brought Anthony Barnaby into the Nashua police station for formal questioning. The interrogation began at 6:30 that morning and for almost 20 straight hours, detectives questioned him about what had happened inside the apartment on Mason Street.

At first, Anthony denied everything. He rejected any suggestion that he had been involved in the murders. When detectives asked about David Caplin, Anthony said he didn’t even know the guy. But investigators already knew that wasn’t true. Anthony and David had grown up together at Restigouche Mi’kmaq First Nation in Quebec, Canada. The investigation suggested David had recently been staying with Anthony at his apartment just below Brenda and Charlene’s.

As the hours wore on, Anthony’s story began to shift. Eventually, he admitted that he had been inside the apartment when the killings took place, but he claimed he had only witnessed the attack. According to Anthony, it was David Caplin who had stabbed the women.

Sometime during those long hours in the interrogation room, Anthony changed his story again. This time, he admitted participating in the killings. “I stabbed the women, too,” he told police.

According to Anthony’s signed statement, which was prepared by the officers interrogating him, he and David had gone upstairs to the apartment together on the night of October 2nd. They knocked on the door and when Charlene Ranstrom opened it, Anthony said David struck her in the face with a two-by-four piece of wood, knocking her to the floor.

Anthony told investigators that David then instructed him what to do next. He said David handed him a sock to pull over his hand so he would not leave fingerprints on the small steak knife he handed over. He claimed David also told him to tie the women’s hands with towels. According to Anthony, David ordered him to stab Brenda, while David himself stabbed Charlene. And then they switched.

According to later testimony from Detective Wayne MacDonald, one of the officers involved in the questioning, Anthony appeared remorseful at that point. He reportedly told police that he felt bad about what had happened because Charlene Ranstrom had a family member with intellectual disabilities who now had no one to turn to.

At around 2 a.m. on October 7, roughly 20 hours after he was brought into the police station, Anthony Barnaby signed a written confession.

For investigators, Anthony’s confession seemed to explain many of the details they had already uncovered at the scene. Police had recovered two knives from the backyard of the apartment building, consistent with Anthony’s statement that both men had taken part in the attack. The victims’ hands had been tied with towels, another detail Anthony had described. There were no fingerprints found on the knives, which suggested Anthony’s claim of wearing a sock on his hand could be true.

But not everything in the confession perfectly matched the physical evidence.

Anthony claimed that David had struck Charlene with a two-by-four, and while the medical examiner did note that Charlene had a black eye from blunt trauma, the injury did not appear severe enough to clearly support the claim that she had been hit with that kind of weapon.

The FBI had analyzed a denim jacket, a comforter, and a sock recovered during the investigation. Testing showed that blood on the sock belonged to Brenda Warner, but results from the other items were inconclusive and did not directly link either Anthony (or David) to the murders. At the time, forensic testing could not determine who had worn the socks.

The story Anthony Barnaby told in that interrogation room became the centerpiece of the case. But there were serious questions about whether that confession was the whole truth and nothing but, or whether something else had happened during those long hours inside the Nashua police station.

This case continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.