The Murder of Judith Whitney (New Hampshire)

There are cases that frustrate you because the evidence is thin. And then there are cases where the warning signs seem to be everywhere, but the system still can’t quite turn suspicion into action.

A woman leaves home for a few quiet days away. Weeks later, police find her car in the woods and the man last seen with her is carrying her gun and giving away her personal belongings. Investigators see the pattern. Her family sees the danger. But seeing it and proving it are not the same thing.

As the years pass, the same questions begin following the same man across state lines as he leaves more violence in his wake.

Judith is Missing

In the first days of July 1987, 43-year -old Judith Whitney was preparing to spend some time away. She loved camping and was comfortable outdoors, so a few quiet days in New Hampshire wouldn’t have seemed unusual to the people who knew her.

Judith had plenty on her mind. According to Michael James’ reporting for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, she and her husband, Warren Whitney, had separated and were in the process of divorcing. She had begun moving out of their shared home in Sunderland, Massachusetts, and into an apartment at Village Park in Amherst.

Her brother Joseph Graveline later recalled that Judith told him she needed some peace and quiet without anyone bothering her. She said she would be camping in New Hampshire with a friend named Ed and would miss an upcoming family gathering while she was away.

At first, there was no obvious reason for her family to worry. Judith had left word that she would be away, and a camping trip fit both her interests and what was happening in her life. But a week passed without anyone hearing from her. Then another.

By the middle of July, the silence felt different. Judith hadn’t returned to her apartment. She hadn’t called Warren or her siblings. Warren found the lack of contact unusual, but he didn’t know of any specific reason she might be in danger. He initially thought she was probably still camping, though even to him, it seemed like an especially long time to be away.

On Monday, July 20th, Warren and Judith’s brother reported her missing to the Amherst Police Department.

Police issued an all-points bulletin to law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts and neighboring states. They were looking for Judith, but also for the most tangible clue to where she might have gone: her 1980 Ford Mustang. And they didn’t have to wait long for the car to surface.

By noon that same day, police in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, had located the Mustang in a wooded area. At first, the location seemed to support what Judith had told her family. She had planned to go camping, and now her car had been found near the woods.

The Mustang was locked. Once police gained access, they noticed two items were missing. One was a boom box stereo. The other was Judith’s .22-caliber handgun, which she was known to carry either in the car or on her person. Inside the Mustang, investigators found a receipt dated July 1st for the purchase of 500 rounds of .22-caliber ammunition.

About three miles away, police found Judith’s tent. Again, the discovery fit with the camping trip she had described. But Judith wasn’t at the car, and she wasn’t at the tent.

Those weren’t the only pieces of her trail scattered across southwestern New Hampshire either.

Days before Judith was reported missing, employees at the Green Valley Motel had turned over a collection of abandoned belongings to police: a purse, clothing and other personal items left behind in one of the rooms. Some of the property appeared to belong to Judith Whitney.

At the time, it was simply property no one had returned to claim. Once the all-points bulletin went out with Judith’s name and description, those belongings became evidence of where she had been before the trail went cold.

Motel employees remembered Judith. More importantly, they remembered the man who had checked in with her.

Investigation

Judith checked into the Green Valley Motel in Keene, New Hampshire on July 1st. She paid cash and registered the room for two people.

A bartender at the Green Valley Motel lounge remembered Judith with a man in the lounge on the night of July 1st. The bartender saw them again around noon the next day, this time at a local bank. Records later showed that Judith withdrew $300 from an ATM that day.

When motel staff checked the room on July 2nd, some of Judith’s belongings were still there, including clothing and her purse, but she and the man seemed to be gone.

The following morning, July 3rd, a member of the housekeeping staff saw the man behind the wheel of Judith’s Mustang, but Judith wasn’t with him.

The housekeeper watched the man throw something into the motel dumpster. When he spoke to her, he referred to Judith as his wife. He said she had gone to visit relatives who didn’t like him, so he planned to visit some friends instead and then he drove away in Judith’s car.

The housekeeper went to inspect the room the pair had rented. Neither bed appeared to have been slept in the previous night.

Later that day, someone called the motel and identified himself as Mr. Whitney. The caller said that he and his wife had experienced car trouble the night before and hadn’t used the room, but they still wanted to keep renting it because they had left clothing behind. But no one ever returned for the stuff.

On July 14th, six days before Judith was reported missing, motel employees turned the abandoned property over to police. When the items were checked after Judith was reported missing, police again noted that her handgun and boom box were not among the items turned over by the motel.

The account given by the man calling himself Mr. Whitney didn’t fit what the housekeeper had already seen. The man had driven away in the Mustang on July 3rd, and there had been no obvious car trouble. The housekeeper didn’t know this, but he also wasn’t Judith’s husband. Warren was back in Massachusetts. This guy was identified as Judith’s friend who she told her brother about, Ed. 40-year old Edward H. Mayrand Jr.

Investigators learned that Judith and Edward had met through substance use treatment meetings sometime around June of 1987. Some later reporting indicated that Judith had written in her diary that she and Edward were boyfriend and girlfriend.

What police still didn’t know was where Edward had gone next. By the time the Mustang was found in Fitzwilliam on July 20th, Edward was no longer at the motel. As it turns out, Edward shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

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