The Murder of Peggy Flynn (Rhode Island)

It was early January in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, when a discovery in a quiet stretch of woods changed a family forever. A young woman had crossed paths with a violent killer close to home. The investigation led to a swift arrest and a conviction that should’ve brought some measure of justice and safety, but what came next defied reason. 

The man convicted of her murder was given chance after chance to walk free – opportunities that no one could ever justify to the people who loved her. Each time he reentered the world, he proved exactly who he was.

Discovery

It was January 5, 1984 and a young man was out riding his dirt bike through Feurer Park in North Kingstown, with his dog keeping up alongside him. Holiday decorations still hung in the windows of some neighborhood houses, but Feurer Park itself had settled into the quiet of mid-winter. Frost clung to the grass that had long-since lost its green, and the air was sharp enough to sting his lungs as he rode.

As they wove the lonely trail on two wheels and four paws, a flash of blue caught the man’s eye. It was an old blanket, rolled and set against the slope of the wooded hillside, strangely out of place off the seldom used dirt road. It looked oddly deliberate, like it had been placed rather than tossed aside. But tucked beneath that blanket was something even more alarming. 

The blanket had been loosely concealing the body of a young woman. She was wearing a blue coat but missing a shoe and sock. She’d been bound and gagged with bandanas.

A North Kingstown Police incident report states that the medical examiner later found the woman had suffered five stab wounds through her clothing. A five-inch serrated knife blade was found still protruding from the woman’s chest, but the handle was missing.The victim had also been beaten. The autopsy did not find any conclusive evidence that she had been sexually assaulted.

There was no identification or a wallet to speak of at the scene, but the woman was wearing a necklace with a single pendant: The letter P. Without much else to go on, police photographed the victim’s face and showed it around to area businesses and residents on nearby Lafayette Road, trying to see if anyone recognized her, but nobody could place the woman’s face. 

With that, a description of the victim was broadcast on the radio. Kathleen Flynn was at work when the static of a breaking news report cut through the monotonous drone of office life. 

“ I’m in work and the radio’s on, and all of a sudden they said a young woman was found murdered in Feurer Park,” Kathleen began. “Well, I never even heard of Feurer Park, and all I can think of was fury; rage. And I turned around and I looked at the people I worked with. I said, oh my dear God, it’s Peggy. That’s when I had this bad feeling. So I started calling everybody.”

Kathleen had been feeling off for days. She’d recently had a terrible nightmare that her younger sister, 20-year old Peggy Flynn, had died. The vivid image in her head jolted her from sleep, tears blurring her eyes. The vision and the fear it conjured in her mind was so real. But everyone she told, even Peggy herself, assured Kathleen it was just a dream. 

Now with over 40 years of perspective, and knowing what she knows now about those early January days in 1984, Kathleen is certain that it wasn’t just a dream, but a prophecy. 

After hearing the radio report, Kathleen started calling family and friends, her sister’s boyfriend, hoping someone could put eyes on Peggy. Kathleen last saw her on New Year’s day, but she was unaccounted for after January 2nd.

Meanwhile, as North Kingstown’s Det. Sgt. Frederick J. Heise Jr. was trying to find anyone who could help give the victim her name back, an unsettling thought surfaced in the detective’s mind. He remembered the still-unsolved murder of another young woman four years earlier, and the nature of her violent death. Motivated by a hunch, he sent a detective to knock on some doors at a nearby apartment complex at 1185 Ten Rod Road. Sure enough, that’s where police finally got some answers.

Hattie Bernstein reports for The Standard-Times that though her face was bruised, two neighbors recognized the woman in the photo. A family friend later confirmed this, and ultimately, the victim’s father viewed her body. Everyone said the same name.

“ It was probably about 5:15, my ex-husband comes into the office and he said, Kath, you’ve gotta come home. You’ve gotta leave now. And I knew right away when he said that,” She continued, “And I said to him, you either tell me now or sit in the car and give me ‘til 6 o’clock. That’s when I finished work. Because after you say these words, my life will never be the same.”

The woman in the park was Peggy.

“ I had the dream of her wearing the blue coat I bought her for Christmas, missing, missing the shoe, laying in leaves. And that’s how she was found.”

About Peggy Flynn

As one of eight children, Peggy Flynn grew up in a household where noise and activity filled every room. In the bustle of a big family, it wasn’t difficult for a quieter child to go unnoticed, and Kathleen recalls Peggy often keeping to herself, content to stay on the margins.

“Peggy, when she was little, she was a beautiful, beautiful child. Her hair was really blonde and she had big blue eyes and she was very quiet. There were six girls and two boys, and Peggy was named after my mother. And we’d be having dinner and my mother would look at the table and there’d be an empty chair. And she’s like, who’s missing? Your namesake mom, your namesake,” Kathleen chuckled. “And Peggy would be like out in the yard, sitting in the bushes, you know, drawing or something. She was just really quiet. And then we’d have to go out looking for her.”

She may have been quiet, but she was also silly. Peggy loved Mad Libs and riddles and jokes. She was creative and a gifted artist. Kathleen showed me a picture Peggy drew recreating the cover of a Led Zeppelin album in pencil on paper. Music was a recurring theme during our conversation. There are many songs that remind her of Peggy.

“There’s a song called Starry Night, and it’s about Vincent Van Gogh. One of the lines in the song was, you took your life as lovers often do, I could have told you, Vincent, the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you. That was Peggy.”

Their mother left when Peggy was still young, leaving the kids in the care of their father. As the eldest daughter, Kathleen stepped into the motherly role for her siblings.

“My dad worked nights for the Providence Journal and my dad was the provider,” Kathleen explained. “He really, he didn’t know our middle names. He didn’t, you know, he just, all he did was work just to keep us going. So when my mom left there was no mom, no mom figure. And so I took the position, I had the position helping my mom and bathing them when they were little and all that ’cause she just didn’t have enough hands. But after my mother left, they needed a mom.”

The arrangement birthed a closeness that went beyond a sisterly bond. They were connected on a cellular, energetic level, even as adults when their five-year age difference put them in different stages of life.

When Peggy and Kathleen’s father remarried, he decided that all the kids old enough to live on their own, should go out and live on their own. Kathleen was married by then, but Peggy was still at home. Since she was 18-years old and legally an adult, Peggy was more-or-less pushed from the nest, perhaps too early. Her wings weren’t quite ready to take flight. She did the best she could, living with friends, and then working at a hotel in exchange for board, but as Kathleen put it, Peggy floundered for a while. 

Things started looking up when she enrolled in community college classes. Peggy took classes in secretarial studies part-time and worked at Zayre Department Store in her off hours, but it wasn’t much money for a student living on her own. 

Kathleen said, “My dad had lent her some money for a car so she had transportation so she could go back and forth to school. It was a light baby blue Buick Skylark. Things were starting to come together.”

But then one day Kathleen visited Peggy at work, and she learned Peggy had been living in that baby blue Buick Skylark. Kathleen insisted that Peggy move in with her, and she did…For a little while. Kathleen said that unfortunately, after a few months, her spouse started putting the pressure on Peggy to find her own place again.

So, Peggy started shopping around for apartments. Her budget wouldn’t stretch very far, but Kathleen remembers the day in August of 1983 when Peggy was so excited to show off the place she’d found, right in North Kingstown.

“And she described it, didn’t say much. She really actually didn’t say anything except the price was right. And she goes, I’ll take you to see it. And I said, okay. So we’re driving and we’re getting closer, and she pulls in the driveway and I went, oh my God, no,” Kathleen remembered her shock and horror in that moment before she continued, “I said, Joanne Reynolds was murdered next door, Peggy, they never found out who did it. I said, you can’t live here. Our whole lives, every time we went by this place, we had this creepy feeling long before Joanne ever died.”

A few years earlier, 24-year old Joanne Lee Reynolds was found dead in the very same building at 1185 Ten Rod Road in North Kingstown. Despite her sister’s fear and protests, despite a still-unsolved murder in the same building, Peggy moved in. 

This is an excerpt from the full episode covering the case of Peggy Flynn. Press play wherever you get your podcasts to hear Peggy’s story on Dark Downeast.