The author of Clueless in New England attempts to tie the 1946 disappearance of Paula Welden and the 1952 disappearance of Connie Smith with an earlier case, that of Katherine Hull in 1936. Katherine was 22 when she disappeared from Lebanon Springs, New York. Her skeletal remains were found in a nearby wooded area seven years later. There wasn’t much left of her and the police had almost zero evidence to go on, so they closed her case as an accidental death and threw out all her investigation files. But as Dooling points out, it could well have been murder. We’ll never know now.
I’m not at all convinced by his serial killer theory — the many years between the disappearances, and the fact that they occurred hundreds of many miles apart, are hard to get over — but I do think this was an excellent book. It provides a wealth of detail on all three women’s cases, as much detail as you’re going to get at this late date, not only about the disappearances themselves but about the investigations and the way police did things back in the day. I will be updating Paula and Connie’s casefiles with additional information from the book.
Well done, Mr. Dooling.
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