The Murder of Raymond Green (Massachusetts)

When a new manager was gunned down at work during a narrow window of time when most of the staff should have been on lunch break, investigators honed in on two possible suspects among the victim’s employees. To this day, the convicted killer and his supporters are convinced police picked the wrong one, but a key piece of evidence led the jury to a different conclusion.

August 4, 1986

It was lunchtime on August 4, 1986 at the Belchertown State School in Belchertown, Massachusetts and 30-year old Raymond Green had just snagged himself a meatball sub and a soda from an eatery on campus. 

According to reporting by Laurie Loisel for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, as Ray walked back to his office inside the power plant building, he stopped for a minute to talk to some other staff. Even though Ray was in a good mood and seemed happy, he clearly had a few things on his mind, too, like the disciplinary meetings he’d finished just before lunch. 

Ray had been hired as the plant facility manager for the school about four months earlier. He was tasked with streamlining the department and making it more efficient. He was also responsible for enforcing rules related to time off and lunch breaks, assigning responsibilities to his staff of more than 60 employees, and making recommendations for demotions, firings, and other disciplinary action. It was something he didn’t take lightly and Ray was described as being much more strict than the manager who came before him. Sometimes his management style caused some tension among staff, but all in all, Ray seemed to be well-liked by those who really got to know him in the few short months he’d been at his post.

Finishing his chat with the group outside the power plant building, Ray waved them off and then headed up to his office where he planned to enjoy lunch at his desk…But someone else had a different plan for Ray that afternoon. 

An assailant met Ray at the door of his office and raised a gun in his direction. The shooter fired once and then twice, sending Ray to the floor. A third shot was fatal, but the shooter did not stop. He stood over Raymond’s body and fired two more rounds into his head before fleeing the scene.

Only a few minutes passed before Ray’s secretary, Sally, returned to the building. She found Ray in his office, laying in a pool of blood.

Christopher Harder reports for the Transcript-Telegram that Sally ran to find the maintenance supervisor Samuel in a nearby office. Samuel told Sally to stay put while he went to see Raymond’s office for himself. Amidst the blood and Ray’s lifeless body, Samuel saw spent shell casings on the floor. He grabbed the phone in Ray’s office and called campus police and EMTs. He told them, ‘There’s been a murder.’

Campus police roped off the scene as they waited for state and local authorities to arrive. Soon, the Belchertown State School was a flurry of police activity.

About Raymond Green

Raymond Anthony Green was a success story, by any definition. He grew up the third-youngest child in a family of nine children in Charleston, South Carolina. He and his family experienced poverty and hardship while he was a young child. After his mother and father passed away, Ray moved to Massachusetts where he had siblings and other extended family. He graduated from Dorchester High School in 1973 and then went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in marine engineering from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in 1977.

Raymond, whose nickname is listed as “Ronnie” in the Massachusetts Maritime Academy yearbook from 1977, loved travel and sports. Deborah McDermott reports for the Daily Hampshire Gazette that Ray was religious, hard-working, and deeply devoted to his family.

For several years after he graduated, Ray worked as a merchant marine for Gulf Oil Company before returning to the mainland for jobs in California and then back in New England at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. He accepted the position at Belchertown State School in the spring of 1986, a role his brother Reginald told Charlene Postell of the Transcript-Telegram, “[it was] a job that he wanted for a long time.” 

Ray supervised the maintenance, carpentry, and masonry at the school with a staff of over 60 employees. His brother said that Ray may have been a quiet homebody outside of work, but he was a “take charge” kind of personality at the office. He was committed to improving the department and the school as a whole, so much so, that he went beyond the call of duty, sometimes working Saturdays just to make sure the job was done and done well.

Raymond wasn’t married and he hadn’t found a place of his own yet – he had been renting a room at the YMCA in Springfield since late July – but he was well on his way to establishing himself until it was all taken away. 

Early Investigation

An autopsy showed that Ray died from a gunshot wound to the head and sustained other gunshot wounds to his right arm, one below his right eye, and other wounds on his head including two behind his ear. Judging by gunpowder residue in two of the head wounds, associate medical examiner Dr. Thomas Smith concluded the shots were fired at close range. The murder weapon was believed to be a .22-caliber pistol, though it had not been recovered at the scene.

Witness interviews identified a very narrow window of time – just about 35 minutes – that the murder was likely to have occurred. Court records show that the investigation determined Raymond was killed between 12:25 p.m. on August 4 when he was seen walking into the building with his lunch and before 1 p.m. when Sally found him deceased in his office.

Charlene Postell and Jules Crittenden report for the Transcript-Telegram that police couldn’t locate anyone who witnessed the shooting first-hand, and because of the loud machinery that ran inside the building, it was unlikely anyone heard the gunshots. Ray’s office was also in a remote section of the grounds, far away from the housing units and other buildings. However, his office was also typically left unlocked, so if someone wanted to gain access, they probably could.

It’s important to note the controversial history of Belchertown State School before going any further with this case. The school was founded in 1922 to care for children with developmental disabilities. Years after Raymond’s murder, the school would become the subject of lawsuits for its inhumane practices, abuse and neglect of residents. The school closed in 1992, but at the time of Raymond’s murder in 1986, it was home to more than 370 residents.

Administrators had no reason to think that a resident might be responsible for Ray’s murder, and it wasn’t likely any of the residents had access to a firearm. However, the school also had a large staff of 1400 employees with a vast 785-acre campus and over 30 buildings. The gates to the school were unguarded, and the sheer size of it meant pretty much anyone could come and go. Not to mention, the school had a network of underground tunnels that housed the heating, plumbing and electrical systems and connected various buildings. If someone knew their way around those tunnels, they might serve as an escape route to slip away undetected if that was their goal.

Needless to say, investigators had a lot of ground to cover, starting with Raymond’s office itself. 

Investigators recovered a bullet from Raymond’s office, as well as two pairs of sunglasses. One pair was broken and later determined to belong to Ray. A piece of the sunglasses was found embedded in one of the bullet wounds in his cheek. The other pair were a pair of Foster Grant brand sunglasses, but it wasn’t immediately obvious who they belonged to.

Other evidence included pieces of a green scouring or scrubbing pad found on Ray’s face. Later, during a search of school grounds, an officer digging through a large metal trash bin on the first floor of the powerhouse building found a brown paper bag, all crumpled up. The trash bin was located just outside the entrance to the tunnel system. Also inside the bin and next to the crumpled paper bag was a green scouring pad rolled into the shape of a cone. It looked a lot like the fibers of the green scouring pad found on Ray’s face.

The officer collected the paper bag and scouring pad, and both were sent for analysis. It would take months for that testing to lead to any real conclusions. Meanwhile, interviews began with Ray’s staff and other school employees, and it seemed that not everyone was thrilled with their new supervisor.