The Murders of Laura Kempton & Tammy Little (New Hampshire)
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朴茨茅斯，1981年和1982年：在1980年代初期的短短一年多时间里，新罕布什尔州的朴茨茅斯，两名年轻女性的生命被一名闯入她们公寓的袭击者结束，他对她们进行了暴力攻击和殴打，并以某种方式成功逃脱，几十年来保持匿名。劳拉·肯普顿和塔米·利特的谋杀案长期以来一直交织在一起。正如你将听到的，她们的死亡和生活情况实在太过相似，以至于无法忽视可能的联系，但现在在2023年，她们的案件显然出现了分歧。新罕布什尔州检察官办公室宣布，他们已确定其中一起谋杀案的责任人。劳拉·肯普顿的杀手终于被揭晓。在一份25页的报告和新闻发布会上，揭示了对23岁劳拉·肯普顿谋杀案超过40年的调查细节。现在每个人都在问：20岁塔米·利特的案件接下来会怎样？如果你对这个案件有任何信息，请联系新罕布什尔州冷案组，电话（603）271-2663，电子邮件[email protected]，或留下线索。查看本集的来源材料和照片，请访问darkdowneast.com/laurakempton。Dark Downeast是由Kylie Low主持的audiochuck和Kylie Media制作的节目。请在Instagram、Facebook和TikTok上关注@darkdowneast。要建议一个案件，请访问darkdowneast.com/submit-case </context> <raw_text>0 Dark Down East is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. The unexpected can happen at any moment, and Amica knows how important it is to be prepared. Whether it's auto, home, or life insurance, Amica has you covered. Their dedicated and knowledgeable representatives will work with you to make sure you have the right coverage in place to protect what matters most. You can feel confident that Amica is there for you. Visit amica.com to get started.

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Navy Federal is insured by NCUA. Equal housing lender. Membership required. Terms and conditions apply. Loan subject to approval. Call 1-888-842-6328 for details about credit costs. In just over a year span during the early 1980s in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the lives of two young women were ended by an assailant who broke into their apartments, violently attacked and beat them, and somehow managed to escape undetected, remaining anonymous for decades.

Laura Kempton and Tammy Little's murders have long been intertwined. As you'll hear, the circumstances of their deaths and their lives are just too similar to ignore a possible connection. But now, in 2023, their cases apparently diverge. The New Hampshire State's Attorney's Office announced that they have identified the person responsible for one of those homicides. Laura Kempton's killer has finally been named.

In a 25-page report and press conference, the details of the 40-plus year investigation into the murder of 23-year-old Laura Kempton were revealed. Now the question on everyone's lips: What's next for the case of 20-year-old Tammy Little? I'm Kylie Lowe, and these are the cases of Laura Kempton and Tammy Little on Dark Down East. 23-year-old Laura Kempton was a free spirit. She was outgoing and social and had a big personality.

In the fall of 1981, she was studying to be a hairstylist at the Portsmouth Beauty School, and sources say Laura was also an aspiring model. A Dark Downies listener wrote to me that although she didn't know Laura personally, she knew of Laura because she'd posed for a few photo shoots and those photos of Laura were on display at a local salon.

In addition to her coursework at the beauty school, Laura worked at the quirky Macro Polo gift shop in downtown to cover her bills and maybe give her some walking around money. Laura liked to go out with friends to the local night spots in Portsmouth, and she was on the dating scene too. On Saturday night, September 26, 1981, Laura Kempton was out for one of her usual nights on the town in the historic city of Portsmouth.

Laura met her date for the night, a man that I'll call Jeremy, at the Riverside Club for some dancing, and they closed the place out. As the lights came on and the revelers poured onto the streets of Portsmouth, Laura hopped in Jeremy's car for a ride home.

They stopped into her apartment at 20 Chapel Street around 1:30 a.m., but were only there a half hour before leaving again to grab food. Laura and Jeremy returned together by 3 a.m., and he spent the night. Before they turned into bed, though, Laura asked him to check the door to make sure it was locked. She lived alone and was always diligent about locking up her door.

Laura had to work the next morning, but she did have time for a quick breakfast with Jeremy at Goldie's Deli before her shift at Macro Polo started. Laura said goodbye to Jeremy around 10 a.m., just in time to clock in at work one block away.

When her shift ended around 7 p.m. on Sunday, September 27, 1981, Laura returned to her apartment. Her friend Karen stopped over around 9 p.m., and the pair decided to walk over to Luca's restaurant for dinner and drinks while they listened to the band play. According to Karen, Laura had been seeing the guy who played saxophone in the band and wanted him to come over that night.

Laura danced to the live music and chatted with a few guys at the restaurant, and she and Karen stayed until close around 1:00 a.m. The saxophonist couldn't come over, so the women walked back to Laura's apartment together.

Laura invited Karen to stay the night, but Karen had an early shift the next morning and wanted to get back home. Laura then suggested they grab a coffee at Victoria's Spa, but Karen wasn't up for it, so she said goodbye and headed for home, leaving Laura alone at her apartment.

The 20 Chapel Street building was a multi-unit on the corner of Schaaf Street, built around the turn of the century and wedged onto one of the many narrow, one-way streets in Portsmouth that probably never expected to have full-size automobiles navigating down them someday. I found rental ads for furnished rooms in the building as early as 1937, and it looks like it's still an active rental building today. The exterior hasn't changed significantly since 1981 either.

Looking through the report of this case, it seems that at least the front entry door of the apartment building at 20 Chapel Street was not usually locked. A man named Arthur, who was experiencing homelessness during the late summer and early fall of 1981, often snuck into the building and slept in the hallway at night.

On the night of September 27th, Arthur had quite a bit to drink and decided that he'd crash in the Chapel Street hallway. But as he got closer to the building, he saw that a man and woman were arguing on this straight corner and he didn't want them to see him sneak in the front door, so he left and came back later. He snuck through the front door and found a place to sleep in a cubbyhole on the third floor.

Arthur was awoken from his snooze not long after closing his eyes by the sounds of arguing and a loud crash on the first floor. He didn't want to be found out if police responded to the increasingly loud situation inside that first floor apartment, so Arthur quickly vacated his cubbyhole and made for the exit, but not before noticing that some of the lights in the hallway were out and the door of a first floor apartment was slightly open.

It sounded to him like the man and woman shouting inside knew each other. These weren't cries for help, at least that's what Arthur thought as he snuck back out the front door of 20 Chapel Street and found a new place to sleep in a nearby park. Around 2:00 AM, another tenant of 20 Chapel Street named Daniel got back to his place. His apartment was just across the hall from Laura's and as he walked into the building, he noticed that her door looked broken.

A panel of wood was missing and when he craned his neck to look through it, he saw what looked like a sheet of metal covering most of the opening on the other side. There was only an inch or so between the edge of the wooden door and the metal sheet, and Daniel thought he could hear someone fiddling with it inside the apartment.

It raised a red flag for Daniel. He wondered if maybe someone had broken into Laura's apartment, but he didn't inspect the situation further. He unlocked his own apartment door, checked to make sure his place hadn't been broken into, relocked the door behind him, and went to bed.

At 6 a.m. on the morning of Monday, September 28th, 1981, a second-floor tenant at 20 Chapel Street, a woman named Rebecca, was leaving the building when she realized the second-floor rear exit door was slightly ajar. It was odd. Rebecca thought that that door was always locked. She made her way downstairs and exited the front door, but noticed something else strange on her way out.

The door to her neighbor Laura's apartment was damaged. A panel was missing, but the opening was blocked with something. The door hadn't been damaged when she passed it the night before, she was sure of it. There was music playing inside Laura's apartment. Rebecca left without taking a closer look or listen. Just before 9:30 that same morning, September 28th, Portsmouth Police Officer Ron Gravois stepped out of his cruiser at 20 Chapel Street.

He had a summons for unpaid parking meter violations in hand, with the name "Laura Kempton" printed at the top. She lived in apartment number two on the first floor. Officer Gravois stepped into the building and approached Unit 2, but even before his knuckles rapped on the blue wooden door, the officer noticed with alarm that the upper left section of the door paneling was missing.

He peered through the rectangular opening in the old door. Though half of it was obscured by a thin metal sheet of some sort, he could see into the apartment beyond through a small gap on one side. Officer Gravois would be the first to find Laura Kempton's body that day. He secured the scene and called her back up.

According to the report released by the Office of the New Hampshire Attorney General in July of 2023, Laura Kempton's body was found on the floor of the main room of her apartment, which appeared to be both a living space and her bedroom. She was mostly covered with sheets, bedding, and her mattress and box spring that had been placed on top of her.

When investigators removed the pile of stuff, they found that Laura was nude and her ankles were bound with a white electrical cord. A gray telephone cord was around her neck and shoulders, and it appeared to be from the phone in Laura's kitchen. She had injuries indicative of blunt force trauma to her head and wounds on her face.

The broken door panel was the first and most obvious sign that someone had forced their way into Laura Kempton's apartment. But investigators expanded the search to the exterior doors and windows for further evidence of where and how the assailant got into the building. The windows directly into her apartment were all locked and secured, no broken glass. But there was a basement window with a screen pushed in.

Investigators ultimately ruled out that window as a possible entry point, though, since the dirt on the window ledge was undisturbed. Perhaps the killer had just walked right in the front door. The scene was thoroughly processed and the team collected hundreds of potential pieces of evidence.

The primary items included the electrical and telephone cord from Laura's body, a green pillowcase removed from her head and neck, a cigarette butt found on the floor, as well as a glass bottle found next to her body. The autopsy would later suggest that an object similar to the glass bottle could have been the murder weapon.

Though an apartment building is likely covered in fingerprints from the tenants and their guests, investigators did not discount the potential importance of latent prints on exterior doors. Technicians got to work dusting and lifting several from around the building, from Laura's apartment door and several from surfaces inside her apartment, too.

Investigators shared a photo of the blue-paneled door leading into Laura's apartment in the AEG's report, and you can see the photo on the blog post for this episode at darkdowneast.com.

The door wasn't kicked in or smashed. It appeared to be precisely dismantled in place, allowing the perpetrator to reach through the open panel and easily unlock the doorknob. The door was later removed and reconstructed as part of the investigation to better understand how the assailant got in. Inside Laura's apartment, investigators found a bent piece of black metal that looked like it had been torn off of a wall mailbox.

It was the hooked part on the bottom of the mailbox that might cradle a newspaper, for example. That piece of metal appeared to be a makeshift tool used by the attacker to pry off the molding around the upper left door panel. When the molding was off, the wooden panel could be removed from the door, leaving only a thin piece of sheet metal on the other side. Investigators concluded that, too, was pried off with the metal hook from the mailbox.

Investigators believed that the perpetrator likely put the sheet metal back in place after gaining access to the apartment so no one could see what was happening inside, which was how Officer Gravoy found it that morning.

Meanwhile, Dr. Dennis Carlson performed the autopsy at the Exeter Hospital. The Office of the Medical Examiner hadn't been established yet in 1981, and Dr. Carlson was a certified pathologist to perform autopsies. Now, I won't be sharing any specifics of Laura's injuries noted in the autopsy report. It's just not necessary to broadcast those graphic details. All I'll say is that her death was the result of, quote, a severe beating about the head.

with terminal pulmonary edema.

Dr. Carlson also determined that Laura had been sexually assaulted. The pathologist collected biological samples, including swabs and skin scrapings. This evidence was secured by Portsmouth police and transported to the New Hampshire State Forensic Lab for future testing. The following day, Laura's father positively identified her body. And soon, the news of what happened on Chapel Street had spread around Portsmouth and the state of New Hampshire.

While the investigative team waited for results from forensic testing and analysis on the evidence recovered from the scene, detectives set about interviewing witnesses about the days and hours leading up to the discovery on that Monday morning. Detectives spoke with Jeremy, who had been with Laura the full night before she was killed. He was transparent with police, telling them that he and Laura had been intimate as recently as the morning of September 27th.

He also told police that he remembered Laura putting some cash into an envelope and leaving it on her kitchen table before they left for breakfast that Sunday morning. Police never found that envelope of cash. Detectives also interviewed Arthur, the man who sometimes slept in the hallway of the 20 Chapel Street building. He told police about the loud voices and the arguing, and he mentioned that when he first tried to sneak into the building, he saw a man and woman arguing outside on the sidewalk.

When police showed Arthur a photo of Laura, he confirmed that that was the woman he saw. And though it's not clear how from the AG's report of the case, Arthur was also able to identify the person she was arguing with as a man named John. Laura's friend Karen also spoke with detectives and told them everything about their night together at Luca's restaurant, dancing, and then walking back to Laura's apartment together.

Karen's timeline helped narrow down when the murder could have happened. Laura's two neighbors, Rebecca and Daniel, also helped narrow down this timeline and provided more details about the state of Laura's apartment door when they saw it between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. on September 28th.

Amidst all of these witness interviews, early leads began to develop, and police wanted to speak further with two men about their activities on the night of September 27th and early morning hours of September 28th, 1981.

Laura's neighbor, Daniel, his statement was curious to detectives. He told them he saw the broken panel on the door, that he heard someone messing around with the sheet metal on the inside, and that he felt strongly enough about a possible break-in that he apparently checked his own apartment for intruders. But he didn't bother to take a closer look at what was going on inside Laura's apartment.

When detectives spoke with Daniel again, they pressed him on the events of that night and why he didn't question what was happening with the panel on Laura's door. He told police he just figured it was Laura fixing her own door and didn't think it warranted any further inspection. His answers in both interviews didn't satisfy investigators. Detectives asked Daniel to take a polygraph test, but he refused, and so he landed himself on the list of suspects for Laura's murder.

Interestingly, Daniel contacted police a few days after Laura's body was discovered and told them that when he went to replace a light bulb in the downstairs hallway of the 20 Chapel Street building, he realized that the existing bulb wasn't burned out, it was just slightly unscrewed and loose in the socket. Detectives immediately collected the light bulb and other components of the light for fingerprint analysis.

It was possible that whoever untwisted the lightbulb and darkened the hallway was the same person who broke into Laura's apartment. Detectives also took a hard look at the man named John, the guy reportedly seen in an argument with Laura on the street corner that night. The AG's report doesn't get into any investigative details about this guy John, but it's safe to assume he was interviewed or at least tracked down and checked out because the report does include his full name.

John, too, became an early person of interest in the investigation.

Forensic analysis of fingerprints, blood, and biological evidence at the scene was ongoing. The autopsy pathologist theorized that an object similar to a heavy glass bottle could have been used as the murder weapon. And Type A blood, Laura's blood type, was found on both glass bottles on the floor of her apartment. Type A blood, presumably Laura's, was also detected on a green pillowcase and a portion of door molding found beneath her body.

The section of telephone cord around Laura's neck was found to have two components of seminal fluid on it, but no sperm. Other samples collected from Laura's body had tested positive for spermatozoa and seminal material. That was as far as 1981 forensics could take it, though. Technology wouldn't reveal anything about the person who left the samples there for many more years.

The investigation continued into the following year. Spring of 1982 rolled around with no arrests and nothing to report. A lingering unsolved murder of such a violent nature didn't align with the image of the city.

Portsmouth wasn't considered especially dangerous before Laura's murder cracked the polished veneer of the historic seaside town. A March 1982 article in the Boston Globe by Brad Pokorny described the city's sudden uptick in violent attacks. Five reported rapes, the murder of Laura Kempton, and another homicide in the nearby town of Rye, all within a six-month span. It had residents banding together to keep their city safe.

Two members of a group called Dover Friends Meeting, a community of Quakers in the area, created a project called Friends Who Walk. Armed with only a police whistle, two members walked the dark streets of Portsmouth with their eyes trained on the even darker alleys and shadowed corners of the city. Should they encounter anything nefarious, illicit, or alarming, they'd blow the whistles, stand their ground, non-violently of course, and wait for authorities to respond.

If necessary, they'd testify in court to what they saw. Another newly formed citizen-led task force called the Stop Seacoast Crime Committee called on residents to watch for suspicious strangers and unfamiliar vehicles in their neighborhoods.

But despite the effort of citizens to protect their neighborhoods, one year after Laura Kempton was brutally attacked and killed in her own apartment, Portsmouth would experience another alarmingly similar homicide within city limits.

20-year-old Tammy Elizabeth Little lived alone in an apartment on Maplewood Avenue in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, not far from Portsmouth Beauty School where she was taking classes. She was an aspiring model. She was active and social, and Tammy loved going out in Portsmouth. The Boston Globe described Tammy as a regular at local clubs.

There is little public information about the circumstances surrounding the night of October 19, 1982, beyond the fact that Tammy Little's body was discovered in the bathtub of her apartment. She'd been beaten and sustained fatal injuries to her head.

Anyone in Portsmouth, or even greater New England, with any awareness of what had happened just a year prior, was quick to pin strings between the still-unsolved murder of Laura Kempton and this new shocking homicide of Tammy Little. It was too obvious to ignore. Both women were students at the same school, both lived alone in Portsmouth, both were reportedly aspiring models, and both died in similar attacks.

And unfortunately similar for Tammy Little's case, it soon went cold too. Because Tammy Little's case is still open, there's just not a lot of details about evidence, persons of interest, possible suspects, or any real substance of what's been going on behind the scenes of the investigation all these years. But any updates in Laura Kempton's case over the following several decades made mention of Tammy Little.

These women, whether they knew each other in life or not, became intertwined in death. In the spring of 1986, after almost four and five years of no updates in the investigations into the murders of Laura Kempton and Tammy Little, their names began to circulate as part of media coverage about two homicides in Massachusetts. According to an Associated Press report in the Lewiston Sun-Journal, a Manchester, New Hampshire man was arrested and charged with

with the murder of two women in March of 1986. These women, Kathleen McGuire and Hema Cornier, engaged in sex work in the Boston area, and the suspect was accused of strangling them. The suspect was a known element to Manchester and Portsmouth, New Hampshire police. With both the Laura Kempton and Tammy Little homicides still unsolved in 1986,

and a New Hampshire local charged with the murder of those two Boston women, it wasn't surprising to me that the media asked about a possible connection to Laura and Tammy's cases. Detectives in Portsmouth said that they were monitoring the developments of the double homicide investigation in Boston, but commented that there didn't appear to be any connection to the Portsmouth murders.

The M.O. didn't align, and besides, Laura and Tammy's cases hadn't been definitively proven connected to each other, despite their similarities on paper. Few details were released about Tammy Little and Laura Kempton's cases throughout the next decade. In 1996, though, a special weekly series running in the Boston Globe raised the question of connection between the two of them once again.

Detective William Mortimer, who had at one point worked on both cases, had since retired, but the cases stuck with him. Mortimer spoke with Globe correspondent Robert George about his lingering frustrations with the unsolved mysteries that remained on the books when his tenure was up.

Mentions of a suspect or any solid leads in either case were scarce in the preceding 15 years. But in this interview, retired Detective Mortimer stated in no uncertain terms that there was a prime suspect. For obvious reasons, Mortimer didn't give the name of the guy he suspected. But he did say that the man worked as a, quote, manual laborer and had tremendous strength.

The man still lived in Portsmouth, where he was from. Mortimer himself exchanged empty pleasantries with the guy when they ran into each other at the grocery store, despite believing he was responsible for two heinous unsolved murders.

The evidence against this quote-unquote number one suspect was flimsy and circumstantial at best, according to the article. There was no physical evidence against the man, but he consistently refused to provide an alibi, and detectives believed they had other good cause to suspect him, though Mortimer wouldn't elaborate on what that cause was.

The suspect would call Mortimer, apparently just to talk, and then would later demand that police stop harassing him. Robert George wrote that the suspect bragged about being a suspect. Mortimer said the man was, quote, playing head games with us, end quote.

The article reignited conversation about the possibility that Laura Kempton and Tammy Little were killed by the same person. At the time of the article's release in 1996, two new detectives, James Tucker and Michael Ronke, had Laura and Tammy's case files. They continued to run down any new information and hoped that one day in the near future, they'd get a hit from the FBI database or another source that linked a possible suspect to the evidence found at either murder scene.

Over the next four years, speculation over who was responsible for the homicides continued. A 1998 arrest in a Dublin, New Hampshire rape and homicide case from 1987 bore similarities to Kempton and Little's cases, but Senior Assistant Attorney General Michael Ramsdell would only say that investigators were continuing their efforts on those cases. Quote, End quote.

Technology was slowly catching up, though. Behind the scenes, as connections to other cases were speculated and explored, new forensic testing would soon give investigators breakthrough information to work with. As detailed in the Attorney General's report released in 2023, the Portsmouth Police Department submitted two biological samples from the case of Laura Kempton for testing at Cellmark Diagnostics in Maryland.

I'm not an expert here, so it's always incredible to me that evidence, especially biological evidence, can be and has been preserved so well for so long that science can actually learn something from it that was previously impossible to see. From the thigh scraping sample, which contained traces of spermatozoa, Cellmark Diagnostics developed a partial male profile with six alleles.

It didn't break the case wide open, but two years later, in 2002, Maine State Police Crime Laboratory's forensic DNA analyst Kathy McMillan also analyzed and tested biological evidence from Laura's case.

McMillan was able to identify a full 13 locus male profile from one of the swabs, as well as a partial male profile from the cigarette butt found at the scene. The full and partial male profiles on the two pieces of evidence matched. What's more, the two profiles also matched the previous partial profile that Selmark identified from the thigh scrapings.

Translated simply in the AG's report, these three partial and full profiles did not prove that the same person's DNA was on all three pieces of evidence, but it did establish that the person whose sperm was on the swabs could not be excluded as the person who left DNA on the cigarette butt or the person whose sperm and or seminal fluid was found on Laura's body.

These male profiles were significant because they allowed investigators to finally test against their existing suspect pool. The men whose names lingered on the list for almost 20 years were about to be ruled out or in. Jeremy, the man who Laura spent the night with on September 26th, was ruled out as a contributor to the DNA found on the swab and the cigarette butt and the scrapings.

朴茨茅斯，1981年和1982年：在1980年代初期的短短一年多时间里，新罕布什尔州的朴茨茅斯，两名年轻女性的生命被一名闯入她们公寓的袭击者结束，他对她们进行了暴力攻击和殴打，并以某种方式成功逃脱，几十年来保持匿名。劳拉·肯普顿和塔米·利特的谋杀案长期以来一直交织在一起。正如你将听到的，她们的死亡和生活情况实在太过相似，以至于无法忽视可能的联系，但现在在2023年，她们的案件显然出现了分歧。新罕布什尔州检察官办公室宣布，他们已确定其中一起谋杀案的责任人。劳拉·肯普顿的杀手终于被揭晓。在一份25页的报告和新闻发布会上，揭示了对23岁劳拉·肯普顿谋杀案超过40年的调查细节。现在每个人都在问：20岁塔米·利特的案件接下来会怎样？如果你有关于此案的信息，请联系新罕布什尔州冷案组，电话（603）271-2663，电子邮件[email protected]，或留下线索。查看本集的来源材料和照片，请访问darkdowneast.com/laurakempton。Dark Downeast是由Kylie Low主持的audiochuck和Kylie Media制作。请在Instagram、Facebook和TikTok上关注@darkdowneast。要建议一个案件，请访问darkdowneast.com/submit-case </context> <raw_text>0 约翰，在谋杀估计时间前几个小时与劳拉在街上争吵的男子，也在DNA检测后被排除在外。不是杰里米，也不是约翰。

劳拉的邻居丹尼尔，他在1981年9月28日清晨的目击证词让调查人员感到沮丧，他对自己所见的回答令人不满意，而且他拒绝接受测谎测试也让人质疑。但再次通过DNA检测和分析，丹尼尔的名字也有效地从嫌疑人名单中划去。没有匹配。

顺便提一下，目前，我无法将1996年那篇新闻文章中退休侦探莫提默提到的嫌疑人与2002年通过DNA被排除的嫌疑人联系起来。我想追踪比尔·莫提默，询问他在此案中的工作，但他在2019年去世了。

无论如何，尽管嫌疑人男性档案并没有立即排除自案件开始以来就已经在雷达上的嫌疑人，但它为调查人员提供了一条明确的前进道路和他们几十年来未曾感受到的动力。

根据检察长的报告，男性档案被添加到尽可能多的数据库中，包括CODIS和国际刑警。分析师们继续将该档案与数百名感兴趣的人进行比较。多年来，所有已知的感兴趣人员都被排除为可能的贡献者。

同年，2002年，调查人员还决定发布一个之前由FBI国家暴力犯罪分析中心开发的嫌疑人档案。

根据《美联社》在《山谷新闻》中的报道，这个档案自1990年代中期以来一直是案件档案的一部分，但为了保护侦探的持续工作，它一直被保密。执法部门希望在这么多年后发布它能够唤起记忆，并带来新的信息，从而使劳拉·肯普顿的案件，或许还有塔米·利特的案件，接近结案。

根据FBI的档案，杀手可能是一名30岁以下的白人男性。他被认为是无组织的，自发的，冲动的，难以控制自己的愤怒，并且他可能对受害者有所了解，但也许只是通过外貌。杀手可能独自生活或与父母同住，推测他住在犯罪现场附近并在那里工作，并且他的工作表现差，工作不稳定。

档案还建议，杀手是一个所谓的夜猫子，徘徊在他的邻里。他可能智力低于平均水平，自尊心低，社交技能有限。他可能有与比他大得多或小得多的女性的关系或参与历史。

最后，FBI确定，杀手可能对谈论谋杀案表现出异常的兴趣，并且他的饮食和饮酒习惯在谋杀日期之后可能发生了变化。该档案被广泛发布，并伴随着对劳拉·肯普顿和塔米·利特案件信息的2万美元奖励公告。就在档案发布几天后，新的线索确实出现了。

在长时间沉寂后，这两个案件的调查活动如火如荼。当然，调查人员不会透露他们从这些新线索中学到了什么，但他们正在跟进这些线索。然而，随着线索的增加，情况又迅速放缓。一个接一个的线索证明是死胡同，案件又冷却下来。

又过了十年半，DNA分析的进一步发展推动了案件向前发展，并实际证明了FBI的嫌疑人档案中的部分内容是错误的。2010年代中期是全国许多长期未解谋杀案的重要时代的开始，这要归功于DNA分析和被称为法医遗传家谱的研究的突破。

2015年1月，亚利桑那州凤凰城的警方逮捕了一名男子，因其在90年代初谋杀两名女性。经过多年，这个案件终于迎来了重大突破，这要感谢来自Identifinders International的法医家谱学家科琳·菲茨帕特里克的工作。

科琳是遗传家谱领域的领先人物。于是，当朴茨茅斯警察局的约翰·佩罗基警官听说她的工作以及在凤凰城谋杀案中成功识别嫌疑人的消息时，他打电话给她，看看劳拉·肯普顿案件中的证据是否符合遗传家谱搜索的参数。

科琳解释说，这种法医研究需要一个YSTR档案，即男性Y染色体档案。

劳拉的案件尚未开发出这种类型的档案，但他们有可能识别出一个。在2016年，朴茨茅斯警方与缅因州犯罪实验室的凯西·麦克米兰合作，成功从九月早晨发现的劳拉尸体旁的香烟头中获得了YSDR档案。

通过该YSTR档案，科琳·菲茨帕特里克通过遗传家谱分析确定嫌疑人是一名具有非裔美国人血统的男性。然而，当时她只能将研究推进到这一点。再次，没有明确的证据。但这进一步缩小了嫌疑人范围，而之前的调查努力未能做到这一点。

五年后，在2021年，朴茨茅斯警方、新罕布什尔州警方和检察长办公室再次审视劳拉·肯普顿的案件。随着劳拉谋杀案40周年的临近，他们在九月召开会议，讨论任何剩余步骤，以及可以采取的新策略，以最终解决此案。

在过去五年中，法医遗传家谱的世界已经在高调调查中识别出嫌疑人，最显著的可能是金州杀手案件。这向家庭、调查人员和犯罪者传达了一个信息，即在经历了几十年的等待后，答案是可能的。

因此，在2022年，劳拉案件的调查人员根据从阴道拭子收集的生物证据获得了全基因组测序的资源。

这些拭子被送往Identifinders International进行测试，几个月后，在2022年5月，朴茨茅斯警方接到电话，称成功获得了一个嫌疑人档案，并已将其添加到第三方遗传家谱数据库中。想想23andMe、GEDmatch等。

仅仅三天后，与已经过去的几十年相比，这一时刻微不足道，男性档案与数据库中与新罕布什尔州罗金汉县有联系的亲属匹配。通过这种亲属关系，样本提供者的生物父母被识别出来，这两个人只有一个生物儿子。他的名字是罗尼·詹姆斯·李。

罗尼·詹姆斯·李在1981年时21岁，和母亲住在新罕布什尔州的朴茨茅斯。他有着广泛的犯罪历史，包括几起住宅入室盗窃和一起商业盗窃。1987年，他因入室盗窃和性侵犯罪被定罪，入狱三年，1990年7月出狱。李于2005年因急性可卡因中毒去世。

在罗尼·詹姆斯·李被确定为劳拉·肯普顿谋杀现场DNA的可能贡献者后，侦探们还有更多工作要做，才能明确他就是他们的嫌疑人。回顾40多年的案件文件，没有迹象表明劳拉·肯普顿认识罗尼·詹姆斯·李。但他的犯罪历史确实显示出他有闯入他人家中、攻击不认识的女性并偷窃她们的钱财和贵重物品的模式。

由于嫌疑人已经去世，调查人员在2022年无法从他那里获取血液或DNA样本。但在罗尼·詹姆斯·李去世后进行了尸检，这意味着法医办公室有他的血液卡。该血液卡足以让缅因州实验室分析师凯西·麦克米兰将罗尼·李的DNA档案与证据拭子的完整DNA档案进行比较。一切都匹配。

进一步直接比较DNA档案与香烟头、枕套和大腿刮擦的结果进一步确认了匹配。在2023年6月，经过41年的等待，调查人员终于找到了谁在1981年9月28日闯入劳拉·肯普顿的公寓并夺走了她的生命的答案。

在2023年7月20日早上，就在我坐下来开始为这个节目进行另一轮研究和写作时，一位Dark Down East的听众给我发了一条DM，链接到一个YouTube频道。视频当时只是一个占位符，显示了朴茨茅斯市的印章和简单的文字，写着“检察长的冷案公告即将开始”。

“检察长”这个词拼写错误，这让我以为我点击了一个垃圾链接，但在快速审核了该账户并意识到这是新罕布什尔州朴茨茅斯市的官方YouTube账户后，我觉得我很安全。当占位符屏幕转换为直播时，检察长约翰·福梅拉站在讲台上。他旁边是一个大型投影屏幕，上面用大白字写着。

冷案结案，1981年劳拉·肯普顿谋杀案。今天我们可以宣布，经过朴茨茅斯警察局与我们的冷案组的联合调查，以及DNA检测技术的进步，这起犯罪的实施者已被确定为罗尼·詹姆斯·李。李先生于2005年2月9日去世，享年45岁。

因此，尽管我已经得出结论，我们已经收集了足够的证据起诉李先生一级谋杀和肯普顿女士的死亡，但无法提出刑事指控。也就是说，基于对可用证据的审查，以及我已确定我们有足够的证据继续起诉的事实，此案将被关闭并标记为已解决。我们理解，今天的公告对肯普顿女士的家人和她留下的所有人，以及对这个社区和所有受到这起可怕犯罪影响的人来说，确实是一个苦乐参半的消息。

我们知道，虽然受害者的亲人通常在未解案件最终得到解决时会感到一种解脱和闭合，但这种消息也可能会打开旧伤口。今天，我们的心与劳拉·肯普顿的家人、朋友以及所有认识和爱她的人同在。再次，对于所有受到这起犯罪影响的人，

我们希望今天至少能带来一些闭合和安宁。我们还希望尊重肯普顿女士的家人和任何可能认识她的人的隐私，并让每个人认识到，这既是一个解脱和闭合的日子，也是他们的一个艰难日子。

劳拉·肯普顿的幸存家属在新闻发布会上由检察长办公室的受害者见证倡导者桑尼·穆利根·希亚代表。桑尼代表他们读了一份声明。肯普顿家族希望向朴茨茅斯警察局表达我们最深切的感谢，感谢他们解决了劳拉的案件。他们的勤奋和决心，以及过去几十年的非凡个人承诺，导致了这一时刻的到来。

家族还想感谢退休的约翰·佩罗基警长，朴茨茅斯警察局调查部门，以及他过去和现在的团队成员，他们在劳拉的案件上不懈努力。他们的非凡努力导致了今天这一重要时刻。在过去的41年中，许多其他人也参与了劳拉的档案，家族对所有做出贡献的人表示最深切的感谢。

肯普顿家族希望在此时请求隐私，以便我们处理这些信息。谢谢大家。在2023年7月20日宣布劳拉·肯普顿案件结案的新闻发布会结束时，媒体成员和其他与会者被邀请向检察长和其他官员提出在演讲后仍然存在的任何问题。第一个问题，尽管在直播中很难听清确切的措辞，

询问关闭劳拉案件的调查是否提供了任何信息，表明她的谋杀与1982年塔米·利特的谋杀有关。检察长约翰·福梅拉毫不犹豫地回应，或许期待在那天听到塔米·利特的名字。所以我们...

劳拉·肯普顿和塔米·利特的名字长期以来一直交织在一起。

她们的死亡和生活中的相似之处使得推测可能的联系变得容易。如果在听到关闭劳拉·肯普顿案件的41年工作后有什么是显而易见的，那就是解决冷案需要时间。即使理论、推测和感知的联系看起来如此明显。我只能希望在不久的将来，我会向你们更新塔米·利特的故事。

也许遗传家谱也会为塔米带来突破。也许现在正在进行中。历史表明，突破往往是意外出现的。解决塔米案件的关键可能在于微小的细节或尚未到来的技术进步。或者，也许，随着关于劳拉·肯普顿案件的所有细节和证据的公开，

有人会找到他们所需的勇气，分享他们对1982年10月那个夜晚的了解，那时一名仍然未知的袭击者决定结束塔米的生命。如果你有信息可以帮助调查塔米·利特的谋杀案，请联系新罕布什尔州冷案组，电话603-223-6270。感谢你收听Dark Down East。

本集引用和参考的来源列在darkdowneast.com。请在Apple Podcasts、Spotify或你现在收听的任何地方关注Dark Down East。如果可以的话，请在Apple Podcasts上留下评论。我很想听听你对节目的看法以及你想听什么，评论真的是支持这个节目和我所覆盖案件的最佳方式。

如果你与某个案件有个人联系，并希望我在这个播客上报道，请通过[email protected]与我联系。感谢你支持这个节目，让我能够做我所做的事情。我很荣幸能利用这个平台为那些失去亲人的家庭和朋友，以及那些仍在寻找冷案和谋杀案答案的人服务。我绝不会让这些名字或他们的故事随着时间的推移而消失。

我是凯莉·洛，这是Dark Down East。