The Murder of Holly Jean Cote (Massachusetts)
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Serious allergic reactions and severe eczema-like skin reactions may occur. Learn more at 1-844-COSENTIX or cosentix.com. Ask your dermatologist about Cosentix. It was a Saturday night and she'd just clocked out of work to join a group of friends down the street for drinks at a favorite local watering hole. Later, when Holly Jean Coat left that bar in the early hours of March 4th, 1984, she was expected to meet up at a friend's house for a nightcap, but Holly never made it.

Since the earliest days of her disappearance, investigators have had a leading theory about what happened when she left the bar and who was involved. But proving it beyond a reasonable doubt is a different story. The suspect might not be going anywhere anytime soon, but for those who know and love Holly, they want the person responsible for her death to be held accountable. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Holly Jean Cote on Dark Down East.

As Saturday night, March 3rd, 1984 spilled over into the early hours of Sunday, March 4th, 28-year-old Holly Jean Cote was finishing up a shift waiting tables at the Mahaki restaurant in South Gardner, Massachusetts. And she was ready to unwind with some friends.

Holly had a six-year-old daughter, and she'd been on her feet all night, so a drink and some socialization was definitely in order. According to reporting by Jason Pfeiffer and Lisa D. Walsh for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, Holly hopped in her 1969 Pontiac Tempest and drove about a half mile away from the restaurant to Mr. D.'s bar on Central Street in Gardner. She parked in a lot behind the building and headed inside to join the festivities.

When bartenders at Mr. D's announced last call around 2 a.m., Holly wasn't ready to end the night just yet. According to an Associated Press report in the AFL Daily News, Holly's friend Katie had invited her and one other person over for a nightcap, and Holly said she'd be there. Katie waited and waited for Holly and the other person to arrive, the early morning hours creeping closer to sunrise with each tick of the clock, but they never showed up.

I don't know what went through Katie's head that night. I don't know if she worried about Holly or dismissed her absence as a simple change in plans. Maybe she thought Holly decided to turn in for the night after all to get at least a few hours of sleep before the demands of motherhood were on her shoulders once again.

But the next morning, Holly wasn't at her home on Graham Street that she shared with her husband and daughter. Her car wasn't parked outside, and there was no indication that she'd come home at all after leaving Mr. D's bar. Holly's husband, Joseph Coate, tried to track her down himself that morning. He drove by the bar and discovered that the Pontiac was right where Holly had left it in the parking lot hours before.

Holly wasn't anywhere to be found. With that, Joseph contacted police to report his wife missing. There was nothing about the circumstances of Holly's life that had her family and friends thinking she would have up and left without telling someone. According to an Associated Press report in the Boston Globe, when her sister, Teresa, learned that Holly didn't come home, she was immediately fearful that something terrible had happened.

Teresa said she talked on the phone with Holly every single day, and she knew that Holly loved her daughter, loved her husband, loved her whole family. And so an unexplained absence could only mean that she wasn't missing of her own free will. Searching began around the small town of Gardner. Between law enforcement and volunteers supporting Holly's family, about 50 people began combing wooded areas in the riverbanks, eventually stretching into the neighboring town of Templeton.

During a search on Wednesday, March 7th, a significant amount of blood was discovered about 10 feet from the banks of the Otter River in Templeton. Samples of the blood were collected for testing. Law enforcement took Holly's disappearance seriously, stating that it was being treated more than a quote-unquote standard missing persons case. Yet they hadn't uncovered any conclusive evidence of foul play either. Testing on blood discovered near the river was determined to be from a dog, not a human.

Search efforts continued for over a week, and by March 12th, police were saying that the Gardner area was pretty much exhausted without clues that led to Holly's whereabouts. While law enforcement planned to expand the search into other areas, Holly's family continued their own efforts too, unwilling to rest until they could find and bring her home. Gardner was a true small-town community where people supported one another.

As Holly's family navigated the unknown, a local business owner donated $1,000 to launch a reward fund. Soon after, donations were pouring in, raising the reward for information to $5,000. But if any tips resulted from the promise of a payday, that's not public information at this point. Months went by without any public updates in her case. Detective Sergeant Richard Morrissey of the Gardner Police Department said in a March 9th, 1984 article, quote,

End quote. It wasn't until several months, and a bout of damaging torrential rain later, that Holly's whereabouts were finally discovered.

For six days in early June of 1984, Worcester County and other areas of Massachusetts were drenched with over seven inches of rain. The water levels of area rivers, including the Concord and the Charles, rose and crested, causing dangerous, damaging flooding in some towns. Residents were forced to evacuate while others were rescued from the rising waters.

The conditions caused over $45 million in damage to farms, crops, and roads, leading Governor Michael Dukakis to declare a state of emergency in the Connecticut River Valley. Upstream from the Birch Hill Dam fed by the Otter River in the town of Royalston, a typically small stream had flooded to create a nearly 2,700-acre lake.

A manager of the dam said that the water was at least 26 feet above normal levels. It was the most full that waterway had been since the dam was built in the early 40s. So on June 4th, 1984, as the rain tapered off but before the floodwaters had totally receded, some people decided to seize the opportunity for a unique adventure on this temporary lake.

Rowing in an area that was usually a shallow, murky swampland, two canoeists navigated around sunken trees. But their trip that day became memorable for an entirely different reason when they spotted the body of a woman wedged between two trees. The body was nude and appeared to have been in the water for quite some time.

The people in the canoes didn't know what to do. Calling for help wasn't an option, and they weren't sure if they'd be able to navigate back to that exact spot if they left to contact police. According to reporting by Jason Pfeiffer and Lisa D. Welsh for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, the canoeists tied the body to their canoe and towed it to shore. When they reached park manager James Bacon, he called police.

Due to the state of decomposition, the medical examiner estimated that the woman had been in the water for at least a month, and the condition of the woman's remains made visual identification impossible. The medical examiner hoped that dental records may be helpful to give this woman her name back, but investigators already had a hunch about who she might be.

At the time of the discovery, seven different missing persons cases of women who had disappeared within the previous six months within a 45-mile radius were still unsolved. Holly Jean Cote was among the list of women. On June 6th, District Attorney John J. Conte announced that dental records determined the body was Holly Jean Cote.

While the medical examiner could not determine a conclusive cause of death, it was theorized based on autopsy findings that Holly had died from strangulation by asphyxiation. Her manner of death was ruled a homicide.

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The Department of Public Safety's Crime Prevention and Control Unit photographed the area and marked the trees where she was found so investigators could return after the waters receded. But anything that may have been helpful to the investigation was believed to have been destroyed by snow and ice after she disappeared or washed away in the floods. According to reporting by Janet Leaser and William Yelverton, the autopsy had revealed just a few other details helpful to the case.

The medical examiner found that her arms had been tied with socks. In addition to being totally nude, Holly's jewelry was also missing. News of Holly's presumed cause of death caused major fear and concern within the Gardner community because it wasn't the only strangulation death that authorities were investigating at the time. The similarities between the two cases were striking.

Mike Elflin reports for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette that another woman in her mid-20s, who was last seen alive at both of the same establishments as Holly, had also been found strangled to death in Gardner on November 18th, 1983, just four months before Holly disappeared. 25-year-old Kathleen Denault was last seen alive on the evening of November 17th, 1983,

She was with a man at Mr. D's bar before they went to the Mahaki restaurant together, a night in reverse order of Holly Coates. The next morning, Kathleen's body was found in the woods behind Timpani Plaza in Gardner, not far from the restaurant. She'd been strangled with a torn piece of her own clothing tied in a granny knot around her neck. Her death was ruled a homicide, and it was still unsolved when Holly's body was recovered.

But police had a strong suspect in Kathleen's case. Police questioned the person Kathleen was with the night before she was killed, a guy named Edward M. Mayrand Jr. Edward had a criminal record, having been convicted of rape in 1975. He was released in May of 1983 and was on parole when Kathleen was killed.

Police questioned Edward extensively as part of the investigation into Kathleen's murder, but he was not charged at the time. The similarities in Holly and Kathleen's deaths are enough to make anyone do a double take. Two strangulation deaths in the same town over a few months span, and the victims were last seen alive at the same local bar and restaurant? It's no wonder the public and the media alike were drawing unsubstantiated conclusions that a possible serial killer was on the loose.

Police tried to shut down those rumors fast because as far as their investigation had shown, Holly and Kathleen's cases each had a different leading suspect. It wasn't until over a decade later, when Florida authorities apprehended a man from Massachusetts on an out-of-state warrant, that the name of the leading suspect in Holly's case was finally made public.

It was January 18th, 1996, and law enforcement officials in Pinellas County, Florida, were on the scene of yet another homicide. The fourth in a string of killings over a two-year period, all sharing striking similarities. According to state Supreme Court records, 27-year-old Cynthia Pugh's nude body was found in a commercial district of Clearwater, Florida.

An autopsy determined that Cynthia's hyoid bone was fractured, and she had hemorrhages in her eyes indicative of strangulation, and she also sustained bruises and scrapes on her neck as well as a laceration on the back of her head. The medical examiner would later determine that she died of asphyxiation through manual strangulation. Two months earlier, on November 18th, 1995, 40-year-old Peggy Ann Darnell was found dead under similar circumstances.

Less than a month before that, on October 20th, 1995, 42-year-old Wendy Ann Evans was found dead and she too sustained injuries indicative of manual strangulation, as well as bruising on the left side of her head caused by blunt trauma, three fractured ribs, and a bruise on her inner thigh.

The first of the four victims, who would later be connected to Cynthia, Peggy, and Wendy's cases, was 35-year-old LaDonna Steller, found dead on July 30th, 1994. Her cause of death was labeled homicidal violence. Cynthia had a criminal record related to sex work and was known to meet clients in the Fort Harrison area in central downtown Clearwater. Source material indicates that Peggy, Wendy, and LaDonna also had ties to sex work.

At least Cynthia and Wendy were found nude, their jewelry gone, no identification or clothing nearby. The circumstances, cause of death, and location of the murders were similar enough that investigators theorized they were searching for the same serial suspect in the deaths of these women.

An FBI profiler determined that the killer was likely at least 30 years old, described as a loner and someone who had probably been incarcerated before. The profiler also believed that the suspect killed for sexual gratification. All of those characteristics identified by the FBI profile seemed to more or less fit 41-year-old James M. Randall, who was living in Pinellas County, Florida as of June 1996.

At the time, James had an almost four-year-old outstanding warrant for his arrest from the state of Massachusetts for violating probation. According to reporting by George B. Griffin and Gary V. Murray for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette, on May 5th, 1987, James Randall was sentenced to five to seven years in state prison following a guilty plea on two counts of aggravated rape and one count of kidnapping resulting from incidents involving his wife.

He also received at least eight years of probation with a 15 to 20 year suspended sentence, meaning if he failed to follow his probation conditions or re-offended during that time, he'd go back to prison. When James was released from prison in 1992, he was supposed to report to his probation officer within 10 days, but he failed to do so. The warrant for his arrest was authorized in December of 1992.

Meanwhile, James moved to Florida and started work as a window installer. When Cynthia was found murdered in January of 1996, James Randall was living with his girlfriend in Palm Harbor, Florida. The tires on his girlfriend's truck happened to be one of only four sets of that specific brand and model sold in all of Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Pasco counties in the previous two years.

The tracks left by that kind of tire were found near the body of one of the four homicide victims. Jane Meinhardt and Wilma Norton report for the St. Petersburg Times that James had been under surveillance for several months when on the morning of June 27, 1996, two Florida detectives arrived at his door for a chat.

Over the course of the investigation into the murders of Cynthia, Wendy, LaDonna, and Peggy, law enforcement had uncovered other clues that pointed to James being a likely suspect in their deaths. For starters, after his arrest and conviction for the attacks on his wife back in the mid-80s, James told the psychiatrist that he experienced sexual arousal from choking women. At least Cynthia and Wendy had died from manual strangulation.

James' prior conviction also pointed to a propensity for violence against women. Now, Florida officials knew that James had an outstanding warrant for his arrest for the probation violation at the time, but they didn't intend to arrest him right away as he met the two detectives at his front door. They wanted to get some information from him first. It was part one of an investigative strategy.

They asked James about Wendy Evans and Cynthia Pugh, and explained that they were investigating the murders of two other women as well. They asked James if either Wendy or Cynthia had ever been in his girlfriend's truck. James' girlfriend at the time was also known to engage in sex work, so maybe she'd met the women.

James said that his girlfriend wasn't home and told the detectives that he had never met or even seen any of the victims. James' hands shook as he handled photos of Cynthia and Wendy.

The conversation lasted about 10 minutes. Soon after, James got in his girlfriend's truck to leave. Part two of the investigative strategy was coming together. Police wanted to arrest James on the Massachusetts warrant while he was in the truck so it could be seized and searched for evidence. Remember, the tires on that truck were believed to leave tracks near one of the victim's bodies. However, when officers tried to pull James over, he stepped on the gas, starting a car chase.

James had a passenger at the time who jumped out of the vehicle at some point during the chase. When deputies stopped to get the passenger, James abandoned the truck and took off over a 10-foot-tall barbed wire fence. James was last seen running into the woods out behind Countryside High School. A four-day-long manhunt ensued. More than 100 police officers on foot and in the air were looking for him.

Around 2 a.m. on July 1st, 1996, a detective posted up inside James' home heard the doorbell ring. When she opened the door, a man was standing on the other side, his head and chest wrapped in a torn-out window screen. The sight confused the detective, and in that split second of hesitation, the man pushed her to the floor, struck her with a blunt object, and bolted.

A tracking dog quickly picked up the scent, and about 15 minutes later, the dog located the suspect about a half mile from James' home in the woods behind a nearby elementary school. Beneath the screen disguise was James Randall. James was facing additional charges in Florida, including burglary, battery, and fleeing and eluding. He was not immediately charged with the murders of any of the four women at the time of his arrest.

Now, I'm telling you all of these high-level details about four cases far outside of the New England region because if James Randall hadn't been under investigation in the murders of these women, we might not have learned that James Randall was a suspect in Holly Jean Coates' murder.

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That's joinmochi.com. Results may vary. Eligible GLP-1 patients typically lose one to two pounds per week in their first six months with Mochi, combined with a healthy lifestyle. Court records related to the investigation of Cynthia Pugh and Wendy Evans revealed that James Randall was under investigation for the unresolved 1984 murder of Holly Jean Cote.

Court records also disclose that in the early morning hours of March 4th, 1984, Holly left Mr. D's bar with none other than James Randall. It was James who was supposed to join Holly at her friend Katie's house for a nightcap after her last call that night, but neither of them showed up. According to an interview with Holly's husband, Joseph, Holly and James knew each other through James' wife, who was Holly's best friend.

And Joseph himself had attended the same high school as James, though several years apart. In 1996, as news of James' connection to Holly began to circulate, Joseph said that he, quote, couldn't stand the guy. I had as little to do with James as possible, end quote. Not only was James the last person with Holly before she was killed, the location where her remains were discovered was, according to Joseph, one of James' favorite fishing spots.

and Holly's presumed cause of death mirrored that of Wendy and Cynthia. All the victims were strangled. James was heavily questioned early on in Holly's case, but there was never enough evidence to charge him with anything.

Holly's brother-in-law, Leonard, who was married to her sister, Teresa, said he was present when police questioned James. Quote, End quote.

James claimed he had an alibi for the night Holly was last seen alive. He told police that when he left the group of people he'd been with at Mr. D's, he drove to a friend's house in Gardner. When he got to the friend's house, all the lights were off, so he decided not to knock and slept in his car. Not the strongest alibi in the whole world, given everyone was supposedly sleeping when James got to the house, but it was a good alibi.

And I should mention that this friend's house wasn't far from the river area where Holly's body was ultimately found. But lacking physical evidence and anything conclusive to tie James Randall to Holly's murder, investigators couldn't do anything about it. Sometime after he was arrested following the manhunt in Florida, James Randall was also charged with first-degree murder for the deaths of Wendy Evans and Cynthia Pugh.

Prosecutors did not pursue charges in the cases of LaDonna Steller or Peggy Darnell. I guess the evidence just wasn't there. Prior to trial, there was discussion about whether prosecutors could talk about the case of Holly Jean Cote, perhaps to demonstrate a suspected pattern of escalating violence against women. However, a judge decided that there wasn't enough evidence to make the connection between Holly's case and the cases of Cynthia and Wendy.

James faced trial for Wendy and Cynthia's murders in February of 1997. Prosecutors presented some unique evidence against James, including expert testimony about hair found on Wendy's body that turned out to be dog hair. During the investigation, detectives posed as dog groomers and went to James' apartment offering to give his girlfriend's dog a bath

They gave Penny the pug a bath and then collected the towel they used to dry the dog for testing. Analysis on the dog hair at an FBI laboratory showed that Penny's hair was consistent with the dog hair found on Wendy's body. The dog hair, along with all the other evidence, was enough for a jury to convict James of first-degree murder. That April, a judge sentenced James to death by electric chair.

Capital punishment cases in Florida triggered an automatic appeal. So in 2000, James' conviction and sentence was reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court. The court ultimately found that he could only be found guilty of second-degree murder because prosecutors did not prove that the murders of Cynthia and Wendy were premeditated. With that, he was resentenced to two consecutive life sentences, taking the death penalty off the table.

The primary suspect in Holly's case may have been behind bars already, but that didn't stop the investigation into her case. About 10 years after James Randall was sentenced to spend twice his life in a Florida prison, the Worcester County District Attorney's Office announced that they intended to pursue new testing on evidence in Holly's case.

On July 25th, 2007, Sergeant Daniel G. Richard, who was head of the Worcester District Attorney's Office Unresolved Case Unit at the time, delivered a box of evidence previously collected in Holly Coates' case to the State Police Crime Lab in Sudbury, Massachusetts. The evidence included clothing that was taken from James Randall in 1984.

Gary V. Murray reports for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette that a chemist noted a reddish-brown stain on the clothes that looked a lot like blood. Tests on those stains came back positive for the presence of human blood. So, investigators wanted to conduct additional forensic analysis to determine if that human blood belonged to Holly Coate.

It's reported that the kind of testing investigators wanted to pursue on the presumed human blood would prevent further testing of the specimen, which I take to mean the sample would be destroyed during the necessary steps to test it. James Randall was given the opportunity to hire a lawyer and an expert to be present when the testing happened to protect his interests.

During a hearing on January 9th, 2008 in Worcester Superior Court, James Randall's lawyer asked a judge to pause the testing on the evidence until a hearing could be held to determine if the clothing was obtained legally and to determine how the clothing was stored for 24 years, which alluded to a possible chain of custody argument. However, the judge said that James really had no standing to make that request because he wasn't charged with anything at that time.

Newspaper articles at the time indicate that the judge didn't make a final ruling on the request for a hearing at the time, but continued the matter for the following week. Frustratingly, I can't find any updates beyond that. I don't know if there were any follow-up hearings or if the testing was ever conducted, and if so, what the results might be. I contacted former Sergeant Daniel Richard, who was instrumental in the early work of the Unresolved Homicide Unit.

He retired as Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant Colonel in 2024 after a 36-year-long career in law enforcement. He told me he did a considerable amount of work on Holly's case, but he couldn't speak to me on the record without the DA's permission. I asked him still if the DNA testing was ever done on the evidence in Holly's case, but he again directed me to the DA's office for any comment.

I've reached out to the Worcester County District Attorney's Office, which lists Holly's case among the dozens currently under investigation by the county unresolved homicide unit. I also spoke to a very helpful person in the Worcester Superior Court Clerk's Office, trying to track down any records from the hearings in 2008 regarding the potential DNA testing on James Randall's clothing.

But so far, I haven't heard back from the DA's office, and despite all the help from the clerk's office, we haven't been able to track down records of these hearings as of this episode's original recording. At this point, I can't say if the testing ever happened or what the results might have been. Hawley's case is still unsolved, more than 40 years later. There's at least one source online that claims James Randall died in 2024.

But there are so many factual inaccuracies and embellishments in the text that I was compelled to check the article in an AI detector, and sure enough, 100% AI generated. Florida Department of Corrections records show that James Randall is still incarcerated, serving his two life sentences at the Jefferson Correctional Institution in Monticello, Florida. He has not been charged with the murder of Holly Coate or any crimes related to her disappearance and death.

The other unsolved case in Gardner, Massachusetts at the time of Holly's murder, that of Kathleen Denault, did reach an eventual conclusion. The suspect from the very beginning of the investigation, Edward Mayrind Jr., was also the primary suspect in the 1987 murder of Judith Whitney and the 1994 murder and dismemberment of 46-year-old Patricia Paquette. Both Judith and Patricia were last seen alive with Edward before their murders.

Edward was arrested in February of 1995 and charged with Patricia's murder. He ultimately pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 35 to 60 years in prison. For years after he was arrested and charged in that case, Edward refused to talk to any other law enforcement agencies about other cases in which he was a suspect.

In 2011, when investigators learned that Edward's health was deteriorating due to metastatic lung cancer, a search warrant was obtained for a sample of Edward's DNA for comparison against physical evidence in both the cases of Judith Whitney and Kathleen Denault. Edward died on June 29, 2011, shortly after the sample was obtained. But the investigation proceeded.

Both the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit and investigators from Massachusetts agencies collaborated to obtain forensic testing. The results of that testing showed that Edwards' DNA was on the piece of clothing used in the strangulation murder of Kathleen. However, the DNA on the evidence in Judith's case was too degraded to do additional DNA testing.

In 2014, Massachusetts investigators determined that there was no innocent reason Edward's DNA would be on Kathleen's clothing. He himself denied having physical contact with her when he was questioned early on in the case. Evidence supported the conclusion that Edward murdered Kathleen, and so the case was closed without prosecution.

In the case of Judith Whitney, despite the degraded DNA, New Hampshire investigators concluded that the totality of the circumstances and other evidence in the case indicated Edward was also responsible for her murder. Judith's case was also closed without prosecution.

According to the Assistant New Hampshire Attorney General Benjamin Agati, at the time the Judith Whitney case was closed, Edward Mayrand Jr. was not believed to be linked to any other active cold cases. Holly's husband said of his wife, quote, She was a very gentle, thoughtful person. I just can't imagine something like this happening to the most gentle person I ever knew. She was everything to me. End quote.

Holly meant a lot to the people in her life, and when she was killed, parts of their world fractured and splintered. Holly's sister Teresa suffered significantly following the loss of her big sister. She died in 2001, and her husband Leonard believes that Teresa's death was the result of heartbreak commingled with substance use that began in the depths of her grief.

Holly's daughter, who was only six years old at the time of her mother's murder, also struggled later in life. Without her mom and her biological father not present in her life, she was raised first by her Aunt Teresa and Uncle Leonard. But conflict within her family had Holly's daughter moving in with a different relative when she was a teenager.

In 2007, when the news of a possible break in Holly's case reached her family, Holly's daughter spoke to reporters for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. She said she couldn't remember a time when she didn't know the circumstances of her mother's death. She was in treatment for substance use disorder at the time of the interview. She explained that the program had taught her that a lot of things were out of her control, but she still hoped that someday justice would be done for her mother.

Holly's sister Mary said in 2007, quote, I would like to see it proven that James Randall or someone else did it. I'm not sure he did it. It's never been proven, but everyone thinks he's connected to it, end quote. As for law enforcement, Gardner Police Lieutenant Gerald J. Poirier said in 2007, quote, There is a difference between solving and proving.

I don't even know I want to go that far to say it's solved, but I feel very confident that Mr. Randall was responsible, end quote. If you have information relating to Holly's case, please contact the Massachusetts State Police Detectives assigned to the Worcester County District Attorney's Office at 508-453-7589 or email worcesterdaunresolved at mass.gov.

Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. ♪

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