The Murder of Walter Page (New Hampshire)

Walter Page was a longtime member of the Freemasons in Manchester, New Hampshire. As treasurer of his local lodge, Walter had overseen the philanthropic efforts of their chapter for years, and he had also helped sort out the mess following more than one major financial theft. In the days before his death, Walter was on the verge of exposing yet another.

Investigators have been exceptionally vocal about their views of what happened on that snowy night in December of 1995, and have even named a primary suspect in the case. But as the 30 year anniversary approaches, she has not been arrested. No one has, and Walter’s family is still waiting for the day that their father and grandfather gets the justice he deserves.

The Fire

It was almost 3 p.m. on Thursday, December 14, 1995 when a 9-1-1 call alerted local authorities that the home at 123 Walnut Hill Road in Manchester, New Hampshire was on fire. According to reporting by Cissy Taylor for the New Hampshire Union Leader, by the time firefighters arrived at the scene, the house was fully involved. It was a massive blaze burning through the heavy wet snow that fell around it.

When the flames were finally contained, firefighters made a terrible discovery. A resident and owner of the home, 76-year-old Walter Page, was found deceased in his basement office.

Investigators surveyed the scene, looking for a source that may have triggered this apparently fatal fire. As reported by Pat Grossmith for the Union Leader, the basement itself was coated in inches-deep heating oil. Walter was reportedly known to keep two of everything – even oil tanks, especially after the 1970s oil storages – and one of those tanks had split open and exploded. Everything in the immediate vicinity was covered with oil. What wasn’t had been blackened by the fire’s dense smoke, or damaged by the torrent of water from the firehoses.

But from the very start of the investigation into the fire at Walter’s home, something was off about it. Mere hours before the 9-1-1 call, local police had actually received a bulletin that called for special attention at the home of Walter Page, as well as two other residences. All three of the homes belonged to members of the Freemason organization. Within the 48 hours before the fire broke out, Walter and these two other men had all received alarming phone calls from an anonymous caller who threatened to blow up their homes.

Walter reported the threat to police almost immediately, spurring the bulletin that was shared with local authorities that morning, and no doubt it was fresh in the minds of police when they responded to Walter’s home address. But the red flags just kept getting bigger…Because investigators learned that it was not the house fire that killed Walter. Autopsy results revealed that Walter had suffered twelve stab wounds. And it appeared that someone intentionally set his house ablaze in an attempt to cover the evidence.

Walter’s home was not just the scene of a fire, but a homicide.

Background on Walter Page

Walter Page was a respected and celebrated member of his community, both within and outside of the Freemason lodges he had been a member of since 1963. Nancy Meersman reports for the Union Leader that he was once the master of Manchester’s Washington Lodge Number 61 and as of 1995, Walter served as the lodge’s treasurer.

Beyond his involvement with the Masons, Walter also worked as an investment broker and was vice president of) Tucker Anthony Investment Services. But even his job circled back to the organization, as he worked as an advisor for local Masonic groups to invest their funds.

At the time, working in the financial realm of the Freemasons organization in Manchester came with a degree of controversy, on no part of Walter’s. The Masons and associated entities had recently fallen victim to embezzlement and theft.

According to Mike Recht’s reporting for the Concord Monitor, a year earlier in 1994, a respected Manchester Mason and former master of the local Lafayette Lodge named Leonard Newell Sr. was accused of stealing $100,000 in dues from five separate Masonic organizations. At the time, Leonard was being paid to maintain the Masonic Temple. He served a 90 day sentence and was ordered to pay just over $10,000 in restitution, money he was still working on paying back as of December 1995 when Walter was killed.

As treasurer of two of the Masonic groups Leonard had stolen from, Walter helped to navigate the financial issues that resulted from the embezzlement. He also furnished authorities with financial records, but never actively participated in the investigation against Leonard.

And just two days before Walter’s murder, on December 12, an administrator of the New Hampshire Masonic Home, Rene Lemire, was sentenced to 4 ½ to 7 years in prison for embezzlement. Records show he embezzled $49,000 in Social Security and Medicare funds from residents of the home, which was an assisted living facility open to Masons and their wives or widows.

Rene was also accused of helping to steal more than $50,000 from the Hillsborough County Superior Court with his wife, Faith Yanez-Lemire, who worked at the court.

The day of Rene’s sentencing was the same day Walter and two other Masons received threatening phone calls, and the phone call Walter received directly mentioned Rene’s name. The caller was described as either a man trying to sound like a woman or a woman trying to sound like a man. The caller told Walter they would blow up his house for, “what he did to Rene Lemire.”

In the case of Walter’s fellow Mason, Conrad Ekdahl, the threat went far beyond anonymous words on the telephone. The same night, Conrad found an improvised incendiary device, described by many sources as a Molotov cocktail, placed at the door of his home. The homemade firebomb consisted of a root beer bottle filled with lamp oil and a cloth wick, and it was placed between the front door and storm door. Luckily, it fizzled out before it could spread.

A third, unidentified Mason also received a threatening phone call saying he was next.

But the Lemire case being the motive for Walter Page’s murder and the firebombing at Conrad Ekdahl’s house didn’t hold water. According to Nathaniel Foss, who was President of the Masonic Temple Association, none of the people who were threatened, not even Walter Page, were connected to the Lemire case in any capacity. The only connection between the men was that they were all Freemasons.

The case of Walter Page continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.