The Murder of Christine Hurlburt (Massachusetts)

It started like so many Saturday nights at Mountain Park – music, crowded dance floors, and teenagers trying to stretch the night a little longer before heading home. But sometime before midnight on October 5th, 1968, a teenager stepped out of that crowd and into the dark, beginning a walk she would never finish.

In the days after she disappeared, there were delays, missed opportunities, and details that didn’t always line up. Some witnesses came forward, while others stayed quiet, and critical information surfaced only long after it might have made a difference. This case has been stagnant for far too long…And it’s time that changes.

Christine is Missing

It was the night of Saturday, October 5th, 1968 and just as it was on many Saturday nights before this one, the ballroom at Mountain Park in Holyoke, Massachusetts was packed to the brim with teenagers dancing to live rock and roll music. 

The main season at the popular amusement park was almost over, but that holiday weekend, the fun and merriment carried on late into the night. The place was packed, with more than 800 people crowded inside – everyone from locals to out-of-towners, all cutting a rug to the music echoing in the fall air.

Among the hundreds of attendees in the ballroom that night was 15-year-old Christine Hurlburt. According to reporting by Charles E. Goddu for The Morning Union, she had left the dance with friends once already, but returned for some time before walking out again. This time, she was alone and on foot.

Christine had options for leaving the dance that night – she’d reportedly been offered several rides home – but for reasons that have never been publicly explained, she turned them down. That decision would become one of the quiet, haunting details of the case.

If Christine was intending to walk home that night, it would’ve been about three miles, first down Mountain Park Road – a dark street flanked by trees on both sides – and then more than half of the distance on Route 5 before she reached her home on Franklin Street. She was last seen walking near a bridge that crossed over Route 91, not far from the park, around 11:35 p.m.

But wherever Christine was going, she didn’t make it home that night. Her mother, Dorothy, wasted no time reporting her missing but at first, there was no clear sign that anything was wrong. By Monday, with still no sign of Christine, Dorothy went to the mayor’s office looking for answers, asking what more could be done. 

According to reporting by the Springfield Republican, Christine’s mother was told something that, even for the time, felt dismissive. Christine had probably just run away, the Mayor said. She would come back, or turn up soon enough.

Behind the scenes, though, the response was more active than that statement suggested. The mayor called in the police chief, who explained that there was already a significant effort underway to find her – more than what was typically done in cases involving missing teenagers, according to the chief.

Still, there were delays. Police intended to organize a search of the area where Christine was last seen walking, but they struggled to gather enough people to do it properly, so the effort kept getting pushed back. By the time a plan started to take shape, the next Saturday dance was approaching, and the heavy traffic it would bring to the Mountain Park area made a search impractical. The search was postponed once again, this time to Sunday, more than a week after Christine disappeared.

A local rescue group called REACT was scheduled to search the wooded areas near Mountain Park on October 13th. But Christine’s family wasn’t just sitting and waiting. They simply couldn’t. 

In the days before any organized search began, her father, Thomas, and her 17-year-old brother, Michael, went out looking for Christine themselves. They walked the same roads and pushed through surrounding wooded areas, looking for any sign of her.

With the search still delayed and no police-supervised effort underway, the Hurlburts were left to do it all on their own. A family should never have to take that on; a father and brother should never be put in the position to make such a devastating discovery. But the day before the coordinated search was set to begin, that’s exactly what happened.

Just before 2 p.m. on Saturday, October 12th, Thomas discovered his daughter’s body in a wooded area off the access road leading to Mountain Park. She was lying in heavy brush, about 30 feet from the west side of the road, and only about 10 feet inside the tree line.

The location was chilling in its proximity – just several hundred yards from the same road where Christine had last been seen walking a week earlier.

Early Investigation

Christine was found nude except for a sweater that had been twisted around her neck. A blouse had been placed over the lower part of her body.

Daniel C. Boyle reports for the Transcript-Telegram that a trampled path through tall grass led from the road to the spot where she was discovered, and several items of clothing were found nearby, including her shoes, stockings, and underwear not far from her head.

It was not immediately clear whether Christine had been killed where she was found, or if her body had been left there after the fact. However, the initial findings painted a violent picture. Medical examiner Dr. Edmund J. Zielinski said Christine had suffered multiple blows to the head and neck, and that she died from asphyxiation due to manual strangulation. Investigators also believed she may have been sexually assaulted, though a full autopsy report was still pending to confirm that and provide additional information.

One of the most critical questions – when she died – remained unanswered. There was early speculation that Christine may not have been in that location the entire time she was missing, and that she may not have been dead for the full week. 

Part of that theory came from the fact that her father and brother said they’d already searched those same wooded areas in the days before her body was found and saw nothing. On top of that, several dozen students from Smith College had been hiking in the area just days earlier, walking on both sides of the road and through the woods, and they didn’t see anything either.

Investigators reasoned that if Christine or her belongings had been there at the time, it would have been difficult to miss. Her shoes, for example, were found just 8 to 10 feet from the shoulder of the road.

The questions were just beginning, but the loss was already being felt in every corner of the small town.

Christine was a sophomore at Holyoke High School. By all accounts, she was the kind of student teachers remembered for the right reasons. Her school principal described her as a “representative young lady. Very good and calm and quiet in class.” The dean of girls at the school echoed that, saying, “Christine was a very good school citizen. She was very friendly and got along well with all teachers and students.”

In the days after her body was found, that picture of who she was became even clearer in the way the community responded. Jim Griffin reports for the Transcript-Telegram that more than 400 people attended her funeral. Classmates, teachers, friends, and neighbors filled the John B. Shea funeral home and Sacred Heart Church, a large crowd coming together to mourn a girl whose life had been cut short.

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