The Murders of Joan Gray Rogers and Bernard Ewen (Vermont)

For almost fifty years, the murders of two people in the tiny northern Vermont village of Hardwick have gone unsolved. The rumors in town ran almost as rampant as the fear, but whether any of the chatter about what happened to the victims is true remains to be seen nearly five decades later.

Discovery in Apartment 5-A

Archie Parkhurst had been waiting hours to catch a glimpse of his best friend 64-year old Bernard Ewen. It was almost 3 in the afternoon on Saturday, July 16, 1977, and Bernard should have left his downstairs apartment hours ago.

Bernard was retired, but there was nothing about him that enjoyed an idle weekend. He was a constant figure in the small town of Hardwick, Vermont, walking everywhere and anywhere, usually with his beloved radio in one hand and a walking stick in the other. If you found yourself in a conversation with Bernard, clear your schedule, because he loved to talk and many said you “couldn’t get a word in edgewise” with him. But that was part of his charm – always friendly, always social – that was Bernard Ewen.

According to reporting by Gene Novogrodsky for the Rutland Daily Herald, Archie lived across the hall from Bernard in the Bemis Block on Main Street in Hardwick. The three story weathered gray building was home to about 20 apartments that sat above a few commercial units on the first floor – a general store, a dress shop, a discount shop – and it made up a large part of the village center.

The building had been the target of several break-ins over the previous few months – anywhere from 4 or 5 all the way up to 20, depending on where you got your data at the time. In January of that year, there was even a bomb threat at the building, though a bomb was never found. The owner of the building had petitioned for police patrols along Main Street to cut down on criminal activity, but the town was lacking in law enforcement resources as it was. Hardwick Police was a two-person department plus the Chief, but then a patrolman injured his back, making the entire force for the roughly 2200 residents just one officer and the chief.

So, when Archie had heard some strange noises coming from the direction of Bernard’s apartment earlier that day, he didn’t dare stick his head out and see what was going on in the halls, given the break-ins at the building. But now, hours later without any sign of Bernard, Archie’s worry mounted. Were those sounds coming from his friend Bernard’s place? He decided to go take a look and see what had Bernard holed up for the better part of his Saturday.

When Archie tried the door to unit 5-A, he realized it was locked, so he went to the back of the building where one of the window’s to Bernard’s apartment was open. He hoisted himself up onto the porch and over the windowsill inside, but Archie knew as soon as his feet hit the ground that his friend was not okay. One glimpse of Bernard laying on the kitchen floor and Archie flung himself back out the window to call Hardwick’s chief of police.

Early Investigation

When Chief Michael Lauzon arrived at the apartment, he found Bernard Ewen in his kitchen and an unusual scene around him. Mary Beausoleil reports for the Boston Globe that there was a folding metal chair on top of a table and a slipper or shoe was caught in part of the chair. The Chief noted that it looked like a crack in the wall or a section of torn wallpaper was taped, perhaps as a makeshift repair.

At first glance, the scene might have told the story of an accidental death. Perhaps Bernard was standing on the folding chair on top of the table to reach the area of his wall in need of a patch. Bernard could have slipped or the chair could have partially folded and then Bernard fell to his death, losing a shoe on the way down. But as the Chief looked closer at Bernard’s body, he noticed something odd.

Bernard had bruises on his face and neck…Bruises that didn’t seem like they could’ve been caused by a fall off a chair. Chief Lauzon picked up the phone to call Vermont State Police. Bernard’s injuries were simply too suspicious to make assumptions about what happened there in apartment 5-A. That this could be a murder in his small town was at the back of the Chief’s mind.

As the state police investigation into Bernard’s death began to unfold, Archie told investigators about the noises he’d heard earlier in the morning. He said around 5:30 a.m. he heard groaning and moaning, and he believed now that they were coming from Bernard’s apartment. Another neighbor who lived above Bernard’s place also reported a commotion of some kind in the middle of the night.

The investigation revealed that Bernard had spent the day before, Friday, July 15th, the same way he usually spent his days. He walked around town and at one point stopped into Merrill Electric to replace the batteries in his radio that he always carried with him. Around 5:30 p.m. that night Bernard was seen at the IGA grocery store on Main Street just down the road from his apartment. He cashed a state rent rebate check for $138 dollars. Those were his last known movements before his body was found the next morning.

Knowing he likely still had that cash on him or in his apartment, police searched for the money to determine if it had been stolen. Now, this is one detail that no one has been able to agree on throughout the years…Whether or not the $138 dollars or any portion of the money was found during a search of Bernard’s home. Several early reports said that nothing was taken from Bernard’s apartment. Other sources said anywhere from $5 to the entire $138 cashed check was unaccounted for among Bernard’s things.

So, if money was indeed missing, was this a robbery gone wrong? Or was this an accident despite the suspicious bruising on Bernard’s neck and face? The chair with the stuck slipper and the table nagged at investigators. Assistant chief medical examiner Dr. Eleanor McQuillen was called to the scene and then Bernard’s body was transported to the state police morgue later that night. An autopsy would examine the suspicious bruising and determine if Bernard’s cause of death was something other than a fall.

Even without an official cause and manner of death determination yet, Hardwick residents were already understandably shaken by the circumstances of Bernard’s passing. But it was only the beginning of what would become one of the darkest weekend’s in the town’s history. The same night Bernard’s body was transported for a complete autopsy, a man named Clayton Gray walked into the Hardwick Police Department. He was there to report his daughter missing.

Discovery at the Farm

The last time anyone had seen 39-year old Joan Gray Rogers was around 8 p.m. on Friday night, July 15th. She dropped one of her teenage sons off at the Idle Hour Theatre on Main Street in Hardwick for the 8 o’clock showing of a horror film called Day of the Animals. It’s a very 70s production that tells the story of a world where the ozone is so severely depleted that UV exposure causes animals to become highly aggressive. There are attacks by rats and mountain lions, and one character wrestles with a grizzly bear and loses.

According to a UPI report by Jennifer Small published in the Bennington Banner, Joan was supposed to pick her son up at the end of the movie, which had a total run time of 97 minutes. But as the movie let out around 9:40 p.m. her son was left waiting. Joan never showed, and she didn’t turn up at her father’s house at any point that night either.

Joan and her husband, Earl Rogers, had been separated for at least two months and she’d filed for divorce that spring so she was staying at her father Clayton’s place in the village in the meantime. However, despite the pending divorce, Joan continued to work on the family business with Earl: a 265-acre farm about four miles outside of the village in an area called the Number 10 District. It was just past the landfill, which small town people will know is as good a landmark for navigation as any.

The Rutland Daily Herald reports that Joan and Earl had owned and run the farm for about six years. Source material describes the farm as average and it made enough money to support Joan and Earl and their two sons.

Joan was in the military before they started the family farm, as was Earl. They were both members of the American Legion Auxiliary and they liked to socialize at the Post in Hardwick. Joan was known as a hard-worker and someone who made friends easily, though she was not the kind of person who found herself the center of attention. She was more quiet and reserved, in contrast to the man she married, who was older and more likely to command a crowd down at the American Legion Post.

That Saturday morning, July 16th, Earl called Joan’s father Clayton. Joan should’ve been at the farm by now to help with the day’s chores, but she never showed. Not showing up now to two appointments was extremely out of the ordinary.

Clayton waited a few hours for Joan to turn up with an explanation, but by 8 p.m. when there was no sign of her, he spoke to Chief Lauzon to report his daughter missing.

The Chief was just a few hours into the Bernard Ewen investigation at that point, but he knew that one person dead and another missing was cause for immediate concern. Joan’s friends and family began searching for any sign of Joan and her truck. Then on Sunday morning, as the assistant chief medical examiner was beginning an autopsy for Bernard at the state morgue in Burlington, the phone rang at her office. She was needed back in Hardwick for a second suspicious death in 24 hours.