Laura Kempton and Tammy Little: The Portsmouth Beauty School Murders
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All right, let's dive in. On Monday, September 28th, 1981, the sun rose over a clear, crisp fall day in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The coastal city of about 25,000 sits at the mouth of the Piscataqua River, where it meets the Atlantic. It's a tourist town, swelling in number every summer. Visitors come to enjoy the quaint shops and restaurants that line its streets. Personally, I adore Portsmouth.

Major employers, the Portsmouth Naval Yard and Pease International Trade Port, also bring a fair amount of traffic on any given day. By sunrise, the city was already coming to life with commuter traffic, opening shops, and the screams of seagulls. Around 9:30 a.m., Officer Ron Griveaux was walking downtown near the Old Harbor.

A longtime member of the Portsmouth Police Department, he knew the winding brick sidewalks of the downtown district well. He paused at the corner of Chapel and Sheaf, looking at the neat, three-story, wood-framed apartment house in front of him. It was 20 Chapel Street. He glanced at the name on the official court summons he carried. Apparently, the young lady in question had been remiss in paying her parking meter violations this past year. He hoped she wouldn't make a fuss.

Officer Griveaux turned the knob to the front door of the building, and the door gave way. It was unlocked. Portsmouth was still a city with its share of burglaries and crimes. This area had a very active nightlife scene and attracted all sorts of characters. He wished that residents and landlords would take their home security a little more seriously.

he stepped into its internal corridors. Each of the building's three floors had two flats, six in total. The unit he was looking for, number two, was on the first floor on the left near the entry door. His shoes made no mark on the tired brown carpet as he approached the door and knocked. The upper left panel on the apartment's four-panel door, the one closest to the doorknob, was missing.

With the panel gone, he could see the substantial thickness of the door's stiles and rails. The hole revealed by the missing panel was partially covered by what appeared to be a piece of matte black sheet metal, affixed from the interior. Looking through the tall Nero portal into the room, he could tell that something was amiss. A beam of light illuminated an untidy pile of bedding just inside the door.

In fact, it looked like the whole bed, including the box spring and mattress, had been upended. Protruding from the blankets on the floor were a pair of long legs, bound at the ankles with what looked like a white cord. As his eyes took in the scene, Officer Grivwa felt his pulse beat faster. He noticed that the far wall of the apartment was marred by dark streaks of drying blood.

The officer backed away from the broken door, the court summons forgotten. He did a quick scan of the hallway and checked the stairwell of the building, but found nothing suspicious. Satisfied that the crime scene was secure for the moment, he stepped out and called on his radio for backup. 22-year-old Laura Kempton was familiar with Portsmouth, New Hampshire when she moved there in 1980.

After all, she had grown up just across the bay in the college town of Durham. It was only a 20-minute drive into Portsmouth, where there was a livelier club and music scene. She likely visited the city growing up, especially in her teenage years as she was spreading her wings. Moving there from Durham must have felt like a real step into adulthood.

In the summer of 1981, she found a ground-floor apartment on Chapel Street. It was small, but coming from a family of five children, having space to herself must have felt luxurious. The building was on the northern edge of the downtown district and close to the Portsmouth Beauty School, where she was a student. She was just about six months away from becoming a hairdresser when she moved in.

Laura was a tall, striking young woman with a strong jawline and large, dark eyes. She wore her long, dark hair in waves, parted down the middle. She had even done some modeling work in the past. The apartment put her in close proximity to the shops and restaurant support smith, where she would pick up work to support herself while going to school.

She worked at Karen's Ice Cream Shop where she scooped sundaes for summer tourists and Macro Polo, a novelty gift shop on Market Street that was just a few years old. Full of joke gifts, toys, and knickknacks, the store had the irreverent humor of its successors like Spencer's or Hot Topic, but with a more family-friendly vibe. You could buy a sassy t-shirt or a pet rock, depending on what caught your eye.

It was a big departure from the usual coastal home goods and clothing shops that dotted Portsmouth's historic district. Laura loved being around people and enjoyed interacting with visitors who came in to explore the store's strange sundries. And then there was the nightlife. Portsmouth was just a fraction of Boston or New York by any measure, but it still had an active club and bar scene in the 80s and some big city problems too.

A Portsmouth detective named Mike LeClair would later reflect, Portsmouth was a tough place in the 80s. It had lots of bars. Recreational use of cocaine was prevalent, and a lot of robberies and sexual assaults occurred. It wasn't uncommon to have two or more homicides a year.

Everyone seemed to be drunk back then, and there were a lot of nasty people. You have this large transient population and many people working at the shipyard in Pease Air Force Base. Laura would frequently go out with friends to hot spots like the Ranger Club in the Riverside. She loved dancing and mingling in a crowd.

While she wasn't in an exclusive relationship, she was dating a man I'll call Charlie, the saxophonist of a band that played at Luca's, a local restaurant.

On the night of Saturday, September 27th, Laura was out with friends at the Riverside Club, a popular dance venue that played the kind of new wave music that she liked, and she met someone who caught her eye. A man, who I'll refer to as J.R., asked Laura to dance. The two hit it off, and after last call, they took his car back to her place. Laura invited him to spend the night, which J.R. happily accepted.

The next morning, Sunday the 28th, the young lovers got breakfast together at Goldie's Deli around 9.30 a.m. The meal was quick as Laura had to work at Macro Polo at 10 a.m. A few of her acquaintances would later confirm that Laura left JR at the deli to go to work on time.

It was a slow day, with the summer crowds dwindling and the temperatures dropping. Sometime in the late afternoon, around 4.30 or 5.30, Laura took a break to get some food from nearby Café Patronella. A waitress at the café noticed that she seemed to be in a hurry. She likely needed to get back to the shop to finish her shift, which ended at 7 p.m. After getting off work, she went home, relaxed for a bit, and then got ready to go out again.

Around 9 p.m., her friend Karen Weiss arrived at her apartment. A few years her senior, Karen was actually her boss. She was the proprietor of Karen's Ice Cream on State Street where Laura worked. After catching up and perhaps sharing a drink, the two young women hit the town. Their first destination was Luca's, a popular restaurant in a historic brick building on Hanover Street.

The pair had dinner and drinks while Laura kept an eye out for her saxophonist Paramore, whose band was playing that night. According to Karen, she and Laura danced after dinner, and several men chatted with Laura. Towards closing time, Laura got the chance to talk with Charlie. She wanted him to come back to her apartment that night, but the musician declined. The two women left the restaurant together around 1 a.m.

They ambled down Daniel Street towards Laura's apartment, smelling the salt breeze pick up as they approached the old harbor. There had been a few drinks that evening, and while Laura wasn't too physically impaired, she may have reached the point in the evening when alcohol and fatigue become overwhelming. She asked Karen to stay the night, but her friend declined. She had an early day, starting in just a few hours.

Laura countered with an offer to grab a quick cup of coffee at the late-night diner, Victory Spa, on State Street, but Karen said no. She bid Laura goodnight on the front steps of 20 Chapel Street and started off for her own home. Across Chief Street, a 13-year-old boy had risen from bed to use the bathroom. On his way, he passed through the living room where his mother was sitting, having not yet retired for the night.

The boy, who I'll call R.S., paused for a moment. Their living room window afforded an excellent view of the first floor unit across the street, and he had become used to spotting the good-looking young woman who had moved in that summer. In fact, he had seen her perusing her refrigerator earlier that evening, before she went out. Now, she was sitting on the couch with her back to the window.

He could see the lines of her shoulder blades and an object in her hand. Maybe a cookie or a cracker. Across the empty street, R.S. could hear the faint murmur of voices. Usually, when Laura watched TV, its glow would illuminate the room. But tonight, there was just a lamp. Maybe she was listening to the radio. The boy didn't linger long. His mother was right there. He wished her goodnight and went back into his room.

In the morning, he would be at school, long before the police cars lined the sidewalks of Chapel Street, before the crowd gathered outside, and before the body of Laura Kempton was taken away. It would be some time before he realized that his glimpse of the dark-haired girl sitting alone on her couch would be among the last times that anyone saw her alive.

By mid-morning on the 29th, a small crowd, held back by crime scene tape, had gathered outside of 20 Chapel Street. A steady flow of officers entered and exited the building. Among those gathered were Laura's neighbors in the building, who'd been politely asked to leave their apartment.

Word traveled fast after Officer Grivoire made his grim discovery. Some of Laura's friends had gotten the news and waited outside, afraid and anxious for information. All they were told was that her apartment was being treated as a crime scene. At the apartment building that morning was William Mortimer, who would be the lead investigator on the case.

Mortimer, the seasoned detective, had spent the majority of his career in the Portsmouth PD. Upon arriving at 20 Chapel Street, he instructed his team of detectives to inspect the exterior of the doors and windows of the apartment for any signs of forced entry. As noted by Officer Grevois, the front door had been unlocked when he came to deliver Laura's court summons.

There was also a basement window screen that appeared to have been pushed in, but upon closer inspection, it appeared that there was a layer of undisturbed dust on the ground around the window.

Mortimer stepped into the front room of Unit 2, bringing him directly into Laura's bedroom. Her body was still mostly covered by blankets, the mattress, and the box spring, as if the whole bed and everything on it had been piled on top of her. Only her legs from the knees down were visible. A white cord binding her ankles appeared to be part of an electric blanket.

Beneath Laura's body, a large pool of blood had soaked into her oval-shaped brown rug. Mortimer looked up and took in the rest of the room, which showed signs of a violent struggle. Blood stained the walls in upward strokes. Closets and drawers were ransacked. Clothing, paperwork, and detritus from Laura's life were scattered everywhere.

After they carefully removed the blankets and mattress, Mortimer saw that Laura was nude and on her back. A gray telephone cord from the kitchen was wrapped around her neck and a green pillowcase covered her head. Removing the pillowcase revealed her badly beaten face underneath.

The medical examiner would later report that she likely sustained punches to the face and blunt force trauma to the side of her head so brutal that it nearly caved in her skull. Beside her body was a wine bottle, the likely murder weapon. Also on the floor nearby was a cigarette butt, but Laura Kempton didn't smoke.

After Laura's body was transferred to a gurney, Mortimer and his team found a small black metal hook wrenched from the mailbox in the hallway. It was the type of thing that one might use to hang keys in an entryway. In Mortimer's mind, an inkling of how the killer had gained entry into Laura's unit began to form. He—presumably she had been attacked by a man—

had used the scrap of metal to quietly pry out the pieces of molding that held the top left door panel in place. He could imagine the assailant working quietly in the dark corridor, a shower of chips and paint falling from his work, as he wedged his makeshift tool between the molding and the door rails. Once removed, all that remained was a thin piece of sheet metal that half covered the empty panel.

All the perpetrator had to do was reach in and around the metal sheet to unlock the door and let himself in. The forensic team pulled latent fingerprints from every surface of the apartment, the entryway doorframe, and the stair railings.

As his team continued to work through the night to process the crime scene, Mortimer accompanied Laura's body to Woods Funeral Home, a white Victorian building just a mile or so away. Laura's friends, lingering beyond the police tape, must have felt a sinking sensation as they watched a hearse pull up to 20 Chapel Street. The body wheeled out of the building on a stretcher was covered, but they knew it was their friend.

Laura's autopsy was conducted that afternoon by Rockingham County Medical Examiner Dennis Carlson, who was also a certified pathologist at nearby Exeter Hospital. In addition to confirming that the young woman had died from massive head trauma, Dr. Carlson found signs that she had been sexually assaulted. He collected vaginal swabs, scrapings from the skin on Laura's left upper thigh, and swabs from the telephone cord that had been around her neck.

All of these samples reveal the presence of semen. For technical reasons I'm not going to get into, the medical examiner believed that the samples may have come from two different men. Dr. Carlson estimated that the young woman had died between 1.30 and 3.30 a.m. A toxicology test didn't reveal any drugs or medication, but it did find that her blood alcohol content was 0.11 at the time of her death.

For a woman of Laura's size and weight, this indicated a state that ranged from buzzed to inebriated. This would later be corroborated by Karen, Laura's friend who walked her back to her apartment. As Dr. Carlson worked on the autopsy examination, Detective Mortimer had the unenviable duty of calling Laura's next of kin. It was tough to locate them. Laura's parents were on Prince Edward Island in Canada, where her mother had grown up.

Robert and Mary Elaine were devastated to learn what happened to their daughter. They immediately began the long journey back to New Hampshire to take care of the body of their child. PenFed Free Checking offers zero fees and zero balance requirements for zero hassle. PenFed Access America Checking lets you earn money on your balance for dreams big and small. Choose the best account for you and start making the most of your money. Learn more at PenFed.org.

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The authorities remained tight-lipped about the investigation during that first day, but once Laura's parents were notified of her death, New Hampshire Attorney General Gregory Smith released her name to the media. He declined to offer details about how she had died or what the police knew about her attacker. He even asked the staff at the Portsmouth Beauty School not to speak to the press in case it hindered the investigation.

Mortimer deployed a cadre of detectives and officers to interview Laura's friends, family, co-workers, and schoolmates, virtually anyone who may have interacted with her in the days leading up to her death. A picture began to emerge of a happy, extroverted young woman with an active social life. It was hard to imagine anyone wanting to do her harm.

The police were eager to talk to J.R., given his romantic encounter with Laura. He confirmed that the two of them had sex in the early hours of Sunday, September 27th, and again later that morning, before they left for breakfast. Despite them having showered after, it was possible that J.R.'s semen was among the samples taken from her body. J.R. said that Laura had no cuts or bruises on her body when he was with her.

He also offered some interesting information about Laura's habits that he had observed in their brief time together. First, Laura had been fastidious about locking the door to her unit, including when they left the apartment briefly to get a snack. Upon going to bed around 3 a.m. Sunday morning, she asked J.R. to double-check that the front door was locked.

Secondly, as they were getting ready to leave in the morning, Laura took a wad of cash and placed it in a plain envelope on her kitchen table. She didn't mention what the cash was for, perhaps a utility or rent payment. But detectives didn't find the envelope and the money. It had vanished, presumably taken by the murderer. Interviews with Laura's neighbors colored in the details of what happened after Karen left her in the early hours of Monday morning.

There was R.S. and his mother across the street, who had witnessed Laura in her sitting room around 1.30 a.m. Roughly half an hour later, a man named Daniel Fortier, who lived in Laura's building, arrived home. He walked in through the front entryway and noticed that the hallway light in the ground floor corridor was out. He could barely detect the familiar print of the blue and white wallpaper as he made his way to the stairwell.

To his left, he saw that the wooden panel on Laura's door was missing. Noises from within led him to believe that someone was in the apartment fixing the door, possibly after a break-in. Daniel hurried upstairs to check that his own unit had not been burglarized and then went to bed.

It was later discovered that the lightbulb illuminating the hallway had been perhaps deliberately loosened. If his estimation of time was correct, the sounds from inside Laura's apartment were probably from her killer.

Around 6 a.m., a second-story tenant named Rebecca Kennedy noticed that the rear exit door was ajar, which was unusual. As she left the building through the front door, she also noticed Laura's apartment door had a missing panel. Though she didn't look into the unit, she did recall she heard music playing on the radio inside as she passed by.

Perhaps the most critical statement, and the most perplexing, came from Arthur Edwards, a homeless man who often slept in the hallways of the apartment buildings in the neighborhood.

Arthur was familiar with 20 Chapel Street and planned to sleep there on Sunday night. As he approached the building, he saw a man and a woman arguing on the corner of Chapel and Sheaf Street. He claimed that the woman was Laura, and the man he would later identify from police photos was John Shea. Arthur decided that it wasn't a good time to sneak into the apartment building, so he left.

Whether his recollection was correct or whether he was recalling something that happened on a different night is unclear. Late Sunday night, Arthur returned to 20 Chapel Street, entered the building through the front door, ascended the stairs to the third floor, and slept overnight in a cubbyhole.

He didn't remember seeing anyone in the building, though he did hear some talking in Rebecca's second-floor apartment. Arthur remembered sleeping for a brief spell before he was awakened by a loud noise and what he thought was arguing on the first floor. Afraid that he would be arrested if the police responded to a domestic violence incident, he quietly left the building through the front door.

Arthur recalled that the lights in the hallway were dimmer than usual, and that Laura's door was slightly open, with the sound of a heated argument within. It didn't occur to him that the woman was in dire trouble, so he simply walked to nearby Prescott Park to sleep. When he woke in the morning, Arthur walked to the Victory Spa restaurant. That's where he first heard the murmurs that the young woman at 20 Chapel Street had been killed.

I do believe that Arthur's account of that evening, and all of Laura's neighbor's accounts for that matter, should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. It was early in the morning. They were tired, intoxicated, or both, and it was possible to mix up details from one day to another. Still, their collective accounts seemed to agree enough to form the broad strokes of a story.

Her killer had likely dimmed the first floor corridors by loosening a bulb and broken in around 1.30 or 2 a.m. by prying loose the panel on her apartment door.

But whether or not she knew her murderer was unclear. The early 80s saw an unusually high rate of crime nationally, and New Hampshire was no exception. Laura's murder was one of 26 in New Hampshire that year. Her death was preceded by a series of five rapes in the Portsmouth area. The rise in violent crimes had the residents of the seacoast on edge.

As Mortimer and his team slowly worked the case, the community grew restless. September gave way to October and November without an arrest or even a named person of interest.

At the beginning of 1982, numerous community crime watch groups formed. A citywide task force called Stop Seacoast Crime Committee, the Sagamore Avenue Crime Watch, and a band of local Quakers calling themselves the Friends Who Walk.

Putting eyes on the streets of Portsmouth at night gave its citizens a sense of agency. The assistant director of the New Hampshire Historical Society noted that the neighborhood patrols harkened back to the city's colonial days, where there was no permanent police force and residents policed their own streets. Despite the efforts of the community, the seacoast still saw its share of violence.

In March of 1982, a 24-year-old Portsmouth woman named Valerie Ann Blair was shot in the head as she walked her dog at a state park in the nearby town of Rye, New Hampshire. In October of 82, a 46-year-old Portsmouth man named Dennis Chase was shot in his home by an acquaintance. And just six days after that, the community was rocked by another death, one that felt all too familiar.

You can't say the name Laura Kempton without mentioning Tammy Little as well. While we don't know if the pair knew each other in life, the two are inextricably linked in death. If Laura had a more classical glamour, Tammy was a punk rock pixie straight out of the 1980s. A petite girl who only weighed 100 pounds, she sported an asymmetrical spiked blonde mullet, dangling earrings, and an impish grin.

Tammy was a native of Portsmouth and graduated high school there in 1981. Her yearbook profile lists her nicknames as kinky and punk. Her philosophy reads, ironically, "'Live like you'll die tomorrow. Learn as if you'll live forever.'" A quote from Gandhi. Tammy dreamed of one day becoming a professional model and, like Laura, had already done a little modeling work herself.

But she was practical and knew that she needed a career should those things not work out. And so she enrolled at Portsmouth Beauty School, the same cosmetology program that Laura attended. Tammy was four years younger than Laura. In what now seems to eerily mirror the steps taken by Laura the year before, Tammy found an apartment for herself in the summer of 1982.

Even though her family was local, it was nice to have a little space and independence. The unit was on the ground floor of a two-story apartment house with blue wood siding, located at 315 Maplewood Avenue, about a mile northwest of Laura's apartment.

The neighborhood was more residential than Laura's, but Maplewood Avenue was the main drag. It was close enough to school, seasonal jobs, and the nightlife that Tammy enjoyed.

In the fall of 1982, on Friday, October 15th, Tammy went with some friends to see a concert in Boston, about an hour away. It was early the next morning, about 4.15 before she was dropped off back home on Maplewood Avenue. She waved goodbye as she unlocked her door and ducked in. That was the last time anyone saw Tammy Little alive.

Over the next two days, she didn't show up at school, nor did she answer any calls. Several friends tried to get a hold of Tammy. Tammy's mother, Kim Durgan, grew concerned after several days had passed without speaking to her. On the afternoon of Tuesday, October 19th, she went to Tammy's apartment after work and let herself in.

Her daughter's cat was there, but there was no sign of Tammy until she entered the bathroom and looked in the tub. It was a sight that no mother should ever have to see. Kim Durgan ran out of the apartment and across the street to the corner store, Chase's Minute Market. The clerk called the police, and the first squad car arrived within minutes, followed by an ambulance that would be unable to help Tammy.

Throughout the evening, the Portsmouth police collected evidence. They were once again led by Detective Mortimer. It must have felt like deja vu to the officers who had worked on Laura Kempton's case just 13 months prior. A beautiful girl, alone in her apartment at night, killed by an intruder.

The police turned away the neighbors and friends, who came to demand what had happened to Tammy, just as Laura's had done the year before. Around 11 p.m., the detectives determined that there was little more they could do for the evening. Detective Mortimer posted a watch. A uniformed officer was present at all times, securing the scene.

Two attendants arrived from Ronald Remick Funeral Home in Hampton. They respectfully moved the body into a protective bag and then onto a stretcher. A sergeant held Tammy's striped tiger cat as he watched the hearse take her away. It didn't take long for the public to draw a connection between the murder of Laura Kempton and Tammy Little.

Damie's autopsy revealed that she was killed by a massive injury to her head, but the medical examiner couldn't narrow down a time of death, just that it was between Saturday and Monday. It didn't escape anyone's attention that the person or persons who killed the two young women had disfigured their faces during their attacks. Both women were in their early 20s, single, and lived alone in a ground-floor apartment.

Their address was only about a mile apart, and both women had only just moved in a few months before their respective deaths. They were both regulars at the same local night spots and ran in the same social circles. Both had been killed in the fall in the early morning hours after a night out with friends. And then there was the beauty school connection. Some of Tammy's friends indicated that she at least knew who Laura was.

It was unclear if they were friends, but many believed it was impossible that they weren't at least acquaintances, given that they went to the same school at the same time. And then there was the modeling. Laura and Tammy had both done some modeling shoots for local photographers. Had they come across the same person during one of those shoots? Or in the course of their studies at the Portsmouth Beauty School?

Despite the strong parallels between the two cases, Detective Mortimer was hesitant to link them prematurely. There was no solid evidence that the two crimes had been committed by the same perpetrator. Perhaps fingerprints would place the same intruder at both scenes. On Wednesday, the day after Tammy was discovered, Mortimer did not yet have a suspect.

On Friday, October 22nd, Attorney General Gregory Smith met with the investigative team. At that point, there were 11 detectives on the case full-time, seven from Portsmouth and four with the state police. Each was working 16-hour shifts to try and catch Tammy's killer. During a press conference, the Attorney General told reporters that they were out on assignments in connection with the case.

Beyond that, he wouldn't offer any details on how Tammy died and if there was any connection between her death and Laura's. The investigators interviewed nearly 200 people over the weeks that followed, friends of the victims, local ex-convicts and troublemakers, and sailors who were in Portsmouth near the time of the murders.

The trouble did not seem to be locating one suspect, but rather sifting through a rogue gallery of likely candidates. It was the type of investigation that would take time. Residents were already angry and frustrated with Laura's stalled case, and Tammy's case just added fuel to the fire. As the fall of 1983 approached, residents at Portsmouth were once again on edge.

The murders of Laura and Tammy had each taken place in autumn. One year apart, would there be a third?

There was a heavy police presence throughout the town. Officers stationed on rooftops, walking through alleyways and cruising neighborhoods by car and bike. The community watch groups increased their patrol. They all stood ready for a scream in the dark or the wail of an ambulance moving through the city's winding streets. But to everyone's relief, that moment didn't come.

If Laura and Tammy's cases grew cold, it wasn't for the lack of public awareness. The cases became locally known as the Beauty School Murders. In 1984, three years after the death of his daughter Laura, Robert Kempton traveled from Prince Edward Island to meet with Detective Mortimer and offered a $25,000 reward for any information that would lead to an arrest.

The detective was still working the case with a fervor that some called obsessive. He updated Mr. Kempton on the progress of his daughter's case and shared his frustrations that they were yet to make an arrest. But that didn't mean there hadn't been any suspects.

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From the very beginning of his investigation into Tammy Little's murder, Detective Mortimer had his eye on an individual that he was convinced could be responsible for both crimes. The details of the detective's suspicions and his bizarre relationship with the individual would not come to light publicly for many years, but the whole of Portsmouth PD was aware of his focus.

The suspect was described as a laborer with tremendous strength and high intelligence, a lifelong native of Portsmouth with a minor criminal record. For years, Mortimer would visit the man every time a violent crime occurred, just to check his alibi. Conversely, the suspect would sometimes call Mortimer just to talk or to ask him to attend a ballgame. The suspect's behavior was erratic.

One time, he barged into the police department and demanded to stop being harassed by the officers. But then he was later heard bragging about being a suspect. Mortimer continued to run into him in public and was forced to maintain a veneer of civility. A 1996 article by the Boston Globe detailed one such incident.

Quote, as they passed each other in the aisle, the man spoke first in that friendly way that so frustrated the retired police officer. Mortimer, once known as Portsmouth's best detective, always returned the hello. But that was all he said, having told the man a long time ago, he knows how I feel. He's the number one suspect.

An entire room next to Mortimer's office was dedicated to the two cases. Each woman had a desk piled with notebooks, binders, folders, and index cards. Mortimer showed the room to a journalist from the Hartford Courant.

He told them, We constantly go over the case. In addition, we've looked into any murder suspects caught anywhere in the country who appear to have a similar MO. We've interviewed every relative and friend both women knew in the last 10 years of their lives. It's difficult because it appears we don't have any witnesses. And as we've said, we're an instrument of society. People actually solve crimes.

I will continue to investigate forever. As long as I'm here, it's a full-time investigation. He might have kept working on the two cases well into retirement had it not been for the stroke his wife suffered in 1990. Mortimer retired to become her caregiver full-time, while the two cases were handed to two new homicide detectives, Jim Tucker and Michael Raunchy.

He advised the two investigators that, should the body of another young woman turn up, the first thing they should do is talk to the unnamed suspect.

His advice was not forgotten. Other members of the Portsmouth PD continued to keep an eye on Mortimer's nemesis, spotting him in the street and at popular hotspots. They traded information about his habits, the vehicles he drove, where he was last seen. If the suspect knew he was still under casual surveillance, he didn't seem to mind. Mortimer told a reporter, whether he's the murderer or not, he's playing head games.

In the mid-90s, Portsmouth PD asked the FBI for help. Details of the homicides were logged into a federal database to compare them to other cases throughout the country. A team at the FBI produced a profile of the murderer.

They believed the killer was likely a white male, under 30 years old, with below-average intelligence, low self-esteem, and limited social skills. He was impulsive and disorganized and had difficulty controlling his anger. It was possible that he knew the victims, or at least by sight. He may have been something of a prowler who walked near their homes at night and struck when he saw an opportunity.

Though investigators did have persons of interest, it's unclear if the profile was put to work, how it was deployed, or how Mortimer's nemesis stacked up against it.

In November of 1998, Mortimer came out of a 10-year hiatus from law enforcement to run for the position of Portsmouth Police Commissioner. He was so popular that he won by a landslide and earned the distinction of having received the most votes in any recorded Portsmouth election. The beauty school murders were very much on his mind and remained at the top of his priorities as commissioner. And he even had new tools available to him.

DNA had taken hold in the industry, and labs were springing up all over the country. In July of 2000, nearly 19 years after Laura's murder, detectives submitted two DNA samples for testing at Selmark Diagnostics in Maryland. The samples came from the scraping on Laura's thigh area and a swabbing from the gray telephone wire that was around her neck.

In August, Cellmark returned its results. While they were unable to develop a DNA profile from the gray telephone wire, they did obtain a partial male DNA profile from the thigh sample. Two years later, in 2002, Portsmouth PD sent evidence to the Maine Crime Lab for testing.

They tested the vaginal swabs and the cigarette butt that was found near Laura's body. Forensic analyst Kathy McMillan developed two DNA profiles from the vaginal swab, one that belonged to Laura and the other to an unknown male.

From the cigarette, she got a partial male profile that was a match to the vaginal swab. When Kathy compared these results to the previous cellmark testing of the thigh scrapings, she found that the partial profile from Laura's thigh also matched the full profile from the vaginal swabs. In other words, all of the DNA was likely from a single male contributor.

The first person that Portsmouth PD wanted to test was J.R., Laura's last known consensual sexual partner. And to their surprise, he was not a match. In fact, it was determined that though they had sex early on in the morning of September 27th, J.R.'s DNA was not found on her body at all.

They then ruled out John Shea, the man who was purportedly seen arguing with Laura in the street outside of her apartment the night of her death. Investigators would continue to obtain comparison DNA samples and eliminate hundreds of persons of interest over the next decade.

Portsmouth PD uploaded the suspect DNA profile into as many databases as possible in hopes of a match. It was submitted to CODIS, sent to every crime lab in the country, and even to the international organization Interpol. In December of 2016, Portsmouth Sergeant John Peracci learned about a cold case homicide in Arizona that had been solved with the assistance of Colleen Fitzpatrick, founder of the company Identifinders International.

You might remember Colleen from the Patricia Newsome episode as well. Sergeant Peracci reached out to Colleen to see if Laura's case would be suitable for her review. Her process, she explained, involved analyzing a portion of the suspect DNA known as the YSTR profile.

Kathy McMillan at the Maine State Lab was able to obtain a YSTR profile from the cigarette butt found at Laura's apartment, and Colleen was able to determine that it belonged to a black male. Given the predominantly white population of Portsmouth, this drastically narrowed the pool of potential suspects. Further, it directly contradicted the 1996 FBI profile that suggested that the killer would be a white male.

So that's where the case stood in the fall of 2017, 26 years after Laura's death and 25 since Tammy's. A standing $20,000 reward was offered by an organization called Crimeline. Detectives hoped the killer would slip up, get caught for another felony, and have his DNA uploaded into CODIS.

The Portsmouth PD welcomed a new chief later that month, a man named Robert Murner, who had long served as a detective in Boston and Seattle. When he was relocating to Portsmouth that summer, he found an online listing for a nice little apartment on Maplewood Avenue within walking distance to the station, a brief and peaceful commute. Several months later, going through the cold case files, Chief Murner made a startling discovery.

He was now living in the apartment where Tammy Little had died. On April 24th, 2016, a man named Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested in his home in Citrus Heights, California, bringing to rest a decades-long manhunt for the serial rapist and murderer known as the Golden State Killer.

In addition to bringing some closure to D'Angelo's many victims and their families, his arrest launched into the public discourse a relatively new technique known as genetic genealogy. The approach combines several fields to unmask identities of unknown suspect DNA profiles: DNA testing, big data from genetic databases, and traditional genealogical research.

Formerly, DNA testing would only lead to an arrest when there was a direct comparison. That is, when a suspect's DNA was compared to the DNA found at the scene.

With genetic genealogy, investigators can identify a perpetrator's family and trace their lineage until a suspect emerges. In September of 2021, members of the Portsmouth PD, the New Hampshire State Crime Lab, and the AG's office met to discuss the possibility of using genetic genealogy on their cases, and they decided to re-engage identifinders on Laura Kempton's case.

They sent the vaginal swab samples for new analysis, and then they waited. Eight months later, in May of 2022, the lead investigator on the case was notified that the unknown male's DNA profile had been successfully obtained and submitted to a third-party public genetic genealogy database called GEDmatch. Three days later, he got word that there was a match to a close relative in the database.

And through the quick work of genetic genealogist Linda Doyle, it was determined that the unknown male had to be an offspring of two specific individuals. An incredible leap forward. Further investigative work determined that they only had one biological child. And that child was the killer that Portsmouth PD had long been searching for.

The lead detective discovered that the child had passed away nearly 20 years prior, a great disappointment. If he were living, the detective would have gotten a search warrant to obtain his DNA for direct comparison to the forensic evidence. But he contacted the office of the medical examiner, and to his great relief, they still had the blood card from his autopsy.

The Maine State Crime Lab compared the DNA on the blood card to the vaginal swab from Laura, and it was a perfect match. Authorities were now certain. They had a name to give the faceless specter that they'd been chasing for over 40 years. Ronnie James Lee.

Is your vehicle stopping like it should? Does it squeal or grind when you brake? Don't miss out on summer brake deals at O'Reilly Auto Parts. O-O-O'Reilly Auto Parts. Ronnie was born in Fort Myers, Florida on January 16, 1960. His obituary lists his parents as Charlie James Lee and Janie Mae Castleberry Lee, though they may not both be his biological parents.

Ronnie was third in line of Charlie and Janie Mae's six children. Sometime during his childhood, his parents divorced. We don't know a lot about Ronnie's youth, but we do know that he enlisted in the Army in his teens, during the late 70s. His service records show that he remained in the Army until May 15, 1981.

By then, he was living with his mother in Portsmouth on Rock Hill Avenue, located in the city's north end. The district is about an eight-minute car ride or a 40-minute walk to the old harbor where Laura Kempton lived. In June of 1981, Ronnie began working as a security guard for the Liberty Mutual building in Portsmouth, just a few blocks from his mother's home. This would have been around the time that Laura moved into her apartment on Chapel Street.

In September of 1981, Ronnie broke into Laura's apartment and killed her, but remained elusive to law enforcement.

Ronnie's run-ins with the Portsmouth PD did not begin in earnest until November of 1982, when he was arrested for attempted burglary. The following summer, he went on a spree of burglaries across the city, robbing four residences in one commercial building. In one of the robberies, he broke a window pane and reached in to unlock it for entry, similar to the way he broke into Laura's apartment.

Another incident, to which he was never officially connected, is particularly notable. A young woman who looked strikingly similar to Laura was watching television in the bedroom of her Portsmouth home one night when she observed that her hallway light was off.

She got up to flip the switch on and found a man matching Ronnie's description leaning against it. When she demanded to know what he was doing there, he put a finger to his lips and said, the young woman screamed for her sister and the intruder ran off, fleeing down the stairs and out the back door. Perhaps the possibility of encountering two defiant women spooked him.

Ronnie's booking photos from September of 1983 show a young black man, just 23 years old, both in profile and head-on. His eyes are big and defocused, looking far beyond the camera's lens. His head tilts slightly upward, showcasing a strong chin. In his profile, his neck is taut. He looks lean and strong. I can imagine him as an athletic runner. His expression is almost one of surprise.

as if he did not expect to find himself in this predicament. It's unclear if he was sentenced to prison time for the run of burglaries in 1982 and 83, and, if so, for how long. Sometime after his arrest, he relocated to Manchester, New Hampshire, and began working for Freudenberg N.O.K., a company that manufactured industrial and residential sealants.

The work seemed to have kept him out of trouble for a time, or he got better at not being caught. In 1987, Ronnie was convicted of a burglary and sexual assault in Keene, New Hampshire, a college town in the western part of the state. A young woman who was home at the time of the robbery woke up around 3.30 a.m. to find somebody touching her. She opened her eyes to see Ronnie standing over her and screamed, waking her roommates.

He fled, taking with him a large number of items he'd stolen from the house, including cash and jewelry. Ronnie was arrested and charged with both the burglary and the assault. He was sentenced to three years in prison from 1987 to 1990. Ronnie's story ends in 2005, when he overdosed on cocaine at 45 years old.

His obituary charitably states that he died at Manchester's Catholic Medical Centre of a sudden illness. He left behind a son, a number of step-siblings, and a trail of havoc that would not be uncovered until nearly two decades after his death.

On a hot and sunny afternoon in late July of this year, 2023, a room full of reporters and law enforcement agents gathered in Concord, New Hampshire, at the State Police Communication Center. The murmur of the crowd fell quiet as two men in dark suits approached a podium with a nest of microphones.

Joined by Portsmouth Chief of Police Mark Newport, the New Hampshire Attorney General, John Formella, announced that the 1981 homicide of Laura Kempton had finally been solved. He named Ronnie James Lee publicly for the first time as her killer. His office was convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he had broken into her apartment that morning with the intention of robbing Laura, sexually assaulting her, or both.

The AG explained that if Ronnie had lived, he would have been 63 years old and would be facing charges of first-degree murder, aggravated sexual assault, battery, and robbery. Unfortunately, justice had come too late. Laura's family, in a victim impact statement, wrote, The Kempton family wishes to express our deepest gratitude to the Portsmouth Police Department for solving Laura's case.

Their diligence and determination, along with extraordinary personal commitment over the past decades, have led to this moment. The family would like to acknowledge retired Captain John Peracci and his team members past and present who worked tirelessly on Laura's case. Many, many other hands have touched Laura's case file over the past 41 years, and the family expresses our deepest gratitude to all who contributed.

William Mortimer, the first of the lead detectives on her case, did not get to see her killer finally named, having passed away in 2019 at the age of 95. At his retirement party in 2002, he expressed his confidence in those who came after him and his faith that the perpetrator would not outrun the rapid growth in forensic science.

Ronnie Lee James will never be charged for the murder of Laura Kempton or for the other crimes that may be linked to him via genetic genealogy. We can never know why he chose Laura that night. He died thinking he got away with her murder, but he didn't.

In the coming days, investigators on New Hampshire's cold case unit will peer more closely into the details of Ronnie's life to see if it intersected with other victims of unsolved crimes. Many still believe he was responsible for the murder of Tammy Little in 1982. There are plenty of parallels between the two, and Ronnie was still living in the area at that time.

Alternately, the similarities between the two crimes may be a series of striking coincidences. Tammy may well have been killed by another predator active on the seacoast in the early 80s. Whoever murdered Tammy Little did so with a sense of impunity, believing that their cunning and their ability to overpower a 100-pound woman gave them license to do what they pleased.

As the years slipped past, they probably grew more confident that they would never face any consequences for their actions. But somewhere in the state's forensic laboratory, samples from Tammy's body and the apartment have been preserved. They have been waiting for the day when science and genealogical research can narrow the field of suspects to a bloodline, to a dark branch of a sprawling family tree.

One day, hopefully soon, the detective working Tammy's case will trace along the roots and branches of that tree, scratching off names until their finger comes to rest on one that cannot be crossed out.

If you have any information about the murder of Tammy Little, I encourage you to contact the Portsmouth Police Department at 603-427-1500 or leave a tip at the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. I always say it, but I couldn't do this without you, and I'm incredibly grateful you're here.

If you want to support the show or buy me a coffee, there's a link in the show notes with options to support. Follow Murder, She Told on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. A detailed list of sources and photos from this story can be found at MurderSheTold.com. Thank you to Morgan Hamilton for her writing, and Byron Willis, Erica Pierce, and Brittany Healy for their research. If you have a case you want to suggest or even a correction, you can email me at hello at MurderSheTold.com.

I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder, She Told. Thank you for listening.