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Marital dispute ends in deaths

A Georgia man trails his wife to Tampa, where he kills her, then himself, police say.

By Alexandra Zayas

January 1, 2006

The "Connecticut River Valley Killer" refers to an unidentified serial killer believed responsible for a series of similar knife murders mostly in and around Claremont, New Hampshire, and the Connecticut River Valley, primarily in the 1980s.

Investigation

In the mid 1980s, three young women disappeared from the Claremont, New Hampshire area. In 1985 and 1986, the skeletal remains of two of the vanished women were recovered within about a thousand feet of each other in a wooded area in Kelleyville, New Hampshire. The condition of the remains made the cause of death difficult to determine, but certain factors pointed to multiple stab wounds. Between the recovery of the first and second bodies, a 36-year old woman was stabbed to death in a frenzied attack inside her Saxtons River home. Ten days later, the remains of the third missing woman were found; postmortem examination revealed evidence of multiple stab wounds.

At this point, investigators began examining prior homicides in the area and found two previous cases, in 1978 and 1981, that further reinforced the presence of a burgeoning serial killer. At the peak of the investigation, and after additional homicides and one non-fatal attack, investigators noted similarities in M.O., oft-used dump sites, and specific wound patterns that linked many of the murders, suggesting a common perpetrator.

Murders

Seven homicides are commonly cited as being conclusively linked to the Connecticut River Valley killer.

On October 24, 1978, 26-year old Cathy Millican was photographing birds at the Chandler Brook Wetland Preserve in New London, New Hampshire. The next day, her body, with at least 29 stab wounds, was found yards away from where she was last seen.

On July 25, 1981, 25-year old Mary Elizabeth Critchley disappeared while hitchhiking. She was last spotted near Interstate 91 at the Massachusetts/Vermont border. Fifteen days later, her body was found on Stage Coach Road in Claremont. Her manner of death has not been disclosed.

16-year old nurse's aide Bernice Courtemanche was last seen by her boyfriend's mother in Claremont on May 30, 1984. She was thought to have set out to see her boyfriend in Newport by hitchhiking along Route 12. She did not reach her destination and was subsequently reported missing.

Two months later, on July 20, 1984, 27-year old Ellen Fried—supervising nurse at Valley Regional Hospital—made a late-night stop to use a payphone outside Leo's Market in Claremont. Fried spoke with her sister for approximately an hour when she suddenly remarked on a strange car she'd observed driving back and forth in the vicinity. She stepped away from the phone briefly to make sure her car's engine would start and then returned. After speaking for a few minutes longer, Fried concluded the call.

The next day, Fried failed to report to work and her car was found abandoned on Jarvis Road, a few miles away from Leo's Market.

On July 10, 1985, 28-year old single mother Eva Morse was seen hitchhiking near the border of Claremont and Charlestown, New Hampshire, on Route 12. This is the last time anyone would see Morse alive, and she too was reported missing.

On September 19, 1985, the remains of Ellen Fried were found in a wooded area near the banks of the Sugar River in Kelleyville, New Hampshire. Postmortem examination revealed evidence of multiple stab wounds.

During the afternoon of April 15, 1986, 36-year old Lynda Moore was doing yard work outside her home in Saxtons River, Vermont, a short distance from I-91. That evening, her husband returned home to find his wife's dead body, bearing multiple stab wounds. The crime scene suggested a fierce struggle had taken place.

Numerous witnesses reported having seen a slightly stocky, dark-haired man with a blue knapsack lingering near Moore's home the day of the murder. The man was thought to be between 20 and 25 years old, clean shaven, with a somewhat round face, and wearing dark-rimmed glasses. The following year, a composite sketch was released.

Four days after Moore's murder, a fisherman happened upon the remains of Bernice Courtemanche about one thousand yards from where Ellen Fried's remains had been recovered. Forensic examination uncovered evidence of knife wounds to the neck and an injury to the head.

Six days later, the remains of Eva Morse were found by loggers about 500 feet from where Mary Elizabeth Critchley's body had been discovered in 1981. Postmortem examination found evidence of knife wounds to Morse's neck.

On January 10, 1987, 38-year old nurse Barbara Agnew was returning from a skiing outing with friends in Stratton, Vermont. That evening, a snowplow driver encountered her green BMW at a northbound I-91 rest stop in Hartford, Vermont. The door was cracked and there was blood on the steering wheel. On March 28, 1987, Agnew's body was found near an apple tree in Hartland. She had been stabbed to death.

There was a heavy snowstorm in the area during the night of Agnew's disappearance, and she was a mere 10 miles from her home. Her reasons for pulling into the rest stop have been puzzling to investigators.

Jane Boroski attack

The killings remained unsolved and had apparently stopped when, late in the evening on August 6, 1988, 22-year old Jane Boroski, six months pregnant, was returning from a county fair in Keene, New Hampshire when she stopped at a closed convenience store in West Swanzey to purchase cola from a vending machine. Boroski returned to her car and began drinking the beverage when she took notice of a Jeep Wagoneer parked next to her. Via her rear-view mirror, Boroski then saw the driver of the vehicle walking around the back of her vehicle. He then approached her open window and asked her if the pay phone was working, at which time he immediately grabbed her and pulled her from the vehicle. Boroski struggled, and the man accused her of beating up his girlfriend and asked if she had Massachusetts plates on her car. Boroski responded that she had New Hampshire plates, but this did not deter her attacker, who proceeded to stab her 27 times before driving away and leaving her to die.

Boroski managed to return to her car and drive on Route 32 toward a friend's house for help. As she neared the house, she noticed a vehicle driving in front of her and realized that it was her attacker. Boroski finally reached her friend's home at which the occupants immediately came to her aid. Her attacker apparently performed a u-turn and slowly passed by the house as Boroski was tended to before speeding away into the night.

Boroski was treated at the hospital, where it was determined that the attack had resulted in a severed jugular vein, two collapsed lungs, a kidney laceration, and severed tendons in her knees and thumb. Fortunately, Boroski's baby survived, although not without complications; Boroski's daughter would later be diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy.

Boroski was able to provide authorities with a composite sketch and the first three characters of the attacker's license plate.

Cold case

Despite two composite sketches, the formation of a task force, assistance from criminal profiler John Philpin, a handful of local suspects, and an Unsolved Mysteries segment concerning the murders (aired April 10, 1991), no arrests were made in the Connecticut River Valley killings and the case grew cold, as the killings ceased after the attack on Boroski.

In 1993, Scribner published a book, The Shadow of Death: The Hunt for a Serial Killer, by true crime author Philip E. Ginsburg. Both the Unsolved Mysteries segment and Ginsberg book featured substantial input by Philpin.

Suspects

Delbert Tallman

On May 20, 1984, 16-year old Heidi Martin went for a jog in Hartland, Vermont, on Martinsville Road. The next day, her body was found in a swampy area behind Hartland Elementary School. She had been raped and stabbed to death. 21-year old Delbert C. Tallman confessed to the crime and was tried; however, he later recanted his confession and was acquitted.

Nearly three years later, Barbara Agnew's body would be found approximately a mile from where Martin was discovered.

Tallman has resided in Bellows Falls, Springfield, and Windsor, Vermont as well as Claremont, New Hampshire, the locus of most of the Connecticut River Valley killings. He was convicted in 1996 on two counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child and is currently serving time in a Lake County, Florida prison for failure to comply with sex offender registration requirements.

Given the circumstances of Martin's murder, and the dearth of information related to the arrest and trial of a suspect, some websites cite Martin's death as unsolved and part of the Connecticut River Valley killings.Delbert Tallman has NEVER been a suspect in the Connecticut River Valley Serial Murders. Delbert Tallman is a convicted child molester. There is NO evidence of ANY of the Connecticut River Valley Victims being raped. Delbert Tallman would have been 25 years old in 1988 when Jane Boroski was attacked. She did hand to hand combat with her attacker and stated his age at between 35 and 40 years old.

Michael Nicholaou

In 2001, private investigator Lynn-Marie Carty was contacted by the mother of Michelle Marie Ashley, a Vermont woman who had been missing since December 1988, along with her two children. The woman hired Carty to gather information pertaining to the possible whereabouts of her daughter, as well as her two grandchildren, whom she believed to be in the company of Ashley's common-law husband, Michael Andrew Nicholaou.

Michael Nicholaou was a Vietnam veteran who'd served as a helicopter pilot in the Army. Nicholaou had earned two Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars and two Bronze Stars before being charged in 1970, along with seven comrades, with strafing civilians while on a reconnaissance mission in the Mekong Delta. (Years later, military acquaintances would describe Nicholaou as having, on at least one occasion, abandoned his camp to seek hand-to-hand individual combat with the enemy, armed only with a knife, stating that he was going "hunting" for humans.) Murder and attempted murder charges were ultimately dropped, and Nicholaou returned home disgraced and bitter, subsequently filing suit against the US Army. During this time and throughout the remainder of his life, Nicholaou received treatment from the Veterans Administration for Posttraumatic stress disorder.

While living in Virginia, Nicholaou opened and operated a sex shop called The Pleasure Chest. The store was raided twice and he and his business partner were charged with selling obscene materials; in one instance, they were convicted, and in the other, there was a mistrial. At the time, Nicholaou remarked to the The Progress, "Evidently the police don't have enough serious robberies, murders and rapes to occupy their time."

It was in Virginia that Nicholaou met Michelle Ashley and soon after moved to Holyoke, Massachusetts, where the couple had two children, Nick and Joy.

Michelle's family, who lived in New England, regarded Michael Nicholaou as strange and quiet. As his marriage to Michelle became more troubled, Michelle attempted to leave him, taking her two children with her. This prompted Nicholaou to pursue Michelle's whereabouts, making contact with her family during this period. Michelle, who told family members that she feared for her life, eventually returned to Nicholaou, but expressed intentions to family to leave him for good. In December of 1988, Michelle's mother dropped by the home of Michael and Michelle to check on her daughter after weeks of no contact; she found spoiled food in the refrigerator, an abandoned baby book, and the apartment vacant. There was no trace of Michelle, Nicholaou, or the two children.

Shortly after being hired by Michelle's mother in 2001, Carty was easily able to obtain Nicholaou's contact information with some cursory Internet research. She called Nicholaou, who was living in Georgia, and he answered. Nicholaou initially asked how she had found him and denied knowing anything about the family's whereabouts. Eventually, he stated that Michelle was a "slut" who had been doing drugs and ran off, abandoning the children. He stated that the children were fine, and Carty confirmed this by reaching Nick the following day, who tearfully described life with his combat-traumatized father, who had since remarried.

By 2005, Nicholaou's second wife, Aileen, had also sought to escape him after he'd attacked her. On December 31 of that year, Nicholaou tracked down Aileen to her sister's home in Tampa, Florida. Wearing a black suit and tie and carrying a guitar case filled with guns, Nicholaou led his wife and stepdaughter, 22-year old Taryn Bowman, into a bedroom while his sister-in-law fled to summon police. While awaiting for the arrival of the SWAT team, Nicholaou shot Aileen, Taryn, and himself. Aileen and Michael Nicholaou died at the scene; Taryn died at the hospital a short time later.

Carty read about the tragedy in the newspaper and was compelled to investigate Nicholaou's past, as well as explore other New England crimes around the time of Michelle's disappearance. It was then that Carty began reading about the Connecticut River Valley killings and suspected that Nicholaou could have been the perpetrator. Among many points of interest to Carty was that Michelle Ashley was a nurse, a profession shared with three of the Connecticut River Valley victims.

While Nicholaou's residence in Holyoke was about 90 miles (140 km) from Claremont, Carty was able to determine that Michelle had relatives in the area, and a note in the abandoned baby book placed her in 1986 at the same Hanover, New Hampshire, hospital from which Barbara Agnew would disappear a year later. It was also determined that Michael Nicholaou owned a Jeep Wagoneer in the 1980s, which is consistent with the vehicle described by Jane Boroski.

Carty began communicating with Boroski shortly after Nicholaou's murder-suicide (both were interviewed in a 2008 episode of THS Investigates: Serial Killers on the Loose that focused on the Connecticut River Valley killer). Carty shared her findings about Nicholaou with Boroski. Boroski was shown pictures of Michael Nicholaou and expressed that there was "some resemblance" between him and the man that attacked her. The culmination of Carty's interactions with Boroski was that Boroski is now convinced that Michael Nicholaou was her attacker and, by extension, the Connecticut River Valley killer.

New Hampshire cold case detectives, in 2007, stated that they were in the process of examining surviving physical evidence, as well as Michael Nicholaou's possible connection to the case. To date, no conclusions have been publicly announced, and Nicholaou has not been conclusively linked to the crimes of the Connecticut River Valley killer.

It's worth noting that Nicholaou's candidacy as a suspect is hampered by the fact that he appears to have been living in Virginia at the time of the Courtemanche, Fried, and Morse murders (reinforced by the date of his obscenity trial), and likely both up to and beyond that time. Furthermore, online sleuths have variously posited Nicholaou as being the Colonial Parkway Killer, the Route 29 Stalker, the Blue Ridge Parkway Rapist, and the murderer of Julianne Williams and Lollie Winans at Shenandoah National Park.

Gary Westover's deathbed confession

In October, 1997, a 46-year old Grafton, New Hampshire paraplegic named Gary Westover related to his uncle, retired Grafton sheriff's deputy Howard Minnon, that he had a confession. Westover told Minnon that, in 1987, three buddies picked him up for what was described as a night of partying. Allegedly, they loaded Westover and his wheelchair into their van and set out to Vermont, where they abducted, murdered, and dumped 38-year old Barbara Agnew, who had long been considered a victim of the Connecticut River Valley killer.

Westover provided the names of the three friends and Minnon recorded them on a piece of scrap paper. Thereafter, Minnon shared Westover's information with his wife, daughter, and law enforcement. Minnon felt, however, that authorities were not interested in his information. Westover died in March 1998, and Minnon died in 2006.HOWEVER before Sheriff Minnon died in 2006, he was in a New Hampshire Hospital reading the newspaper when he saw a story about Michael Nicholaou being named as a suspect in the Connecticut River Valley Murders, he read about the information brought to authorities by the private investigator Lynn-Marie Carty. He read Jane Boroski had to say about Nicholaou. Upon reading all this in his local paper he become very, very upset. He showed the story to his family and told his family " See this, this is Gary's story, this is what I tried to tell the state police Gary told me when I called them to the house, but they treated me like a fool. I have wasted my whole life in law enforcement, they did nothing about what I told them and he killed more people." Then his family tried to encourage him to contact the private investigator. He said not unless we find that piece of paper with the names on it for proof. He said New Hampshire State Police Officer William McGee was one of the officers who was in his livingroom the day he gave him the list of 3 names in October 1997 He could not remember the name of the Vermont State Police Officer who was also there in his living room who was also given the list of the 3 times. Upon checking into what was going on with N.H. Officer William McGee in October 1997, he was busy working on a newly re-opened cold case in the area where the sheriff lived and has been accused of covering up the evidence in that very strange www.dowmurders.com then click on Modern Day Cover up to read about McGee's actions on that case.

In August of 2006, one of Westover's aunts wrote Anne Agnew, sister of the victim, with the information originally given by Westover to Minnon. Agnew forwarded the letter to Carty, who ran the name of Michael Nicholaou by Westover's aunt, who stated that the named "sounded familiar." Carty was told that authorities are in possession of the names Westover provided to Minnon, and further speculated that Westover may have become acquainted with Nicholaou at an area Veterans Affairs hospital, although none of this has been confirmed and the Connecticut River Valley killings have not been solved. Westover provided to his Uncle in October 1997 and his Uncle provided to the State Police in October 1997, and then his surviving family members in 2007 provided to the private investigator, state police and victims family, one DEFINING KEY piece of information that ONLY the killer/killers would know. This can be confirmed by the original criminal profiler who worked on all the Connecticut River Valley cases John Philpin.

Other possible victims

Joanne Dunham, 14, was sexually assaulted and strangled on June 11, 1968, in Charlestown, New Hampshire. Ginsberg cites Dunham as a Connecticut River Valley victim in Shadow of Death, although this inclusion is primarily his own and is made on the basis of geographic proximity to the later crimes.

On October 5th, 1982, 76-year old Sylvia Gray was found bludgeoned and stabbed to death in a wooded area, a few hundred yards from her Plainfield, New Hampshire home, a day after having been reported missing.

Sarah Hunter, 36, was employed as a golf pro in Manchester Center, Vermont. On September 19, 1986, her car was discovered parked at a gas station off Route 7A and she was subsequently reported missing. Two months later, her remains were stumbled upon in a brush at the edge of a cornfield in Pawlet, Vermont. She had been strangled. At the time, Hunter's death was being reviewed by Vermont and New Hampshire authorities as being possibly connected to other unsolved homicides in the area.

38-year old Steven Hill was last seen on June 20, 1986 retrieving his paycheck from his Lebanon, New Hampshire employer. On July 15, Hill's body was found with multiple stab wounds in Hartland, Vermont, across the Connecticut River from where Sylvia Gray's body had been found four years prior.

On July 25, 1989, 14-year old Carrie Moss of New Boston, New Hampshire, left her parents' home to visit friends in Goffstown and disappeared. Exactly two years later, on July 24, 1991, Moss's skeletal remains were founded in a wooded area in New Boston. While her cause of death could not be determined, she was thought to be the victim of a homicide.

New interest in Connecticut River Valley serial killings

A missing woman. A murderous husband. A man with a long-kept secret. A St. Petersburg investigator is still on the trail.

By Ben Mongtomery - St Petersburg Times

January 27, 2008

New lead in 6 murders

June 12, 2006

A murder-suicide in Florida five months ago has rekindled interest in a series of unsolved murders in the 1980s along the Connecticut River Valley that separates New Hampshire and Vermont.

The Florida deaths on New Year's Eve 2005 caught the attention of a private investigator in St. Petersburg because she recognized the name of the killer, Michael Nicholaou, who shot his estranged wife and stepdaughter before killing himself.

The St. Petersburg Times reported yesterday that the investigator, along with a retired Vermont criminal profiler and a New Hampshire cold case detective, have been piecing together Nicholaou's life. DNA test results that could be ready by the end of the summer may complete a puzzle and solve six murders that have baffled investigators in the two states for two decades.

Lynn-Marie Carty was startled on New Year's Day as she read a news story about the murder-suicide in Tampa, because she knew of Michael Nicholaou (pronounced NICK-allow). Five years earlier, a Vermont mother hired Carty to find a daughter, Michelle Ashley, who had two babies with Nicholaou, then disappeared in 1988.

Carty said the mother suspected Nicholaou, based on something her daughter once said: "If I'm ever missing, he killed me, and you need to track him down and find the kids."

After a few minutes at the computer in 2001, Carty found a phone number for Nicholaou.
As she recounted it for the newspaper, Carty called the number and asked about Michelle. At first, Nicholaou denied knowing her, Carty said, but when she pressed, Nicholaou said Michelle was a slut who was doing drugs and had run off, abandoning the kids.

Carty asked about the children, Nick and Joy. He had them, he said. They were fine. The conversation was short, and when Carty called back the next day, Nicholaou's phone was disconnected.

Carty tracked down Nick Nicholaou on the phone and told him she didn't think their mother had abandoned them. He and his sister had always thought otherwise. Nick cried as he described their hard life, being dragged around by a father still traumatized by his duty in Vietnam.

In Vietnam, Michael Nicholaou flew helicopters for the 335th Aviation Company, called the Cowboys. The Times interviewed a dozen Cowboys, who recalled Nicholaou as a brave and duty-bound man with a dark side. A least once he left camp on his own, carrying only a knife and seeking hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. It became a legend in the company.

Back at home, friends noticed evidence of posttraumatic stress disorder, a mental illness for which he later sought treatment in Miami and Tampa.

Michelle's family thought Nicholaou was creepy, too quiet during visits to Vermont, where Michelle's mother and grandmother lived. He and Michelle had an apartment in Holyoke, Mass., about 110 miles down Interstate 91.

Once, Carty said, Michelle told her mother she feared Nicholaou and planned to leave him after her sister's November 1988 wedding.

In December 1988, her mother went to the couple's Holyoke apartment. The Christmas tree was up, presents unopened. The refrigerator was full of spoiled food.

In the years that followed, Nicholaou, with kids in tow, visited his mother in Virginia, friends in Florida and Army buddies across the country. He told some people Michelle had run off with a drug dealer. He told others she was dead.

A few days after reading that Nicholaou had killed his latest wife, Carty punched words into Google.com: New England. 1988. Murder.

She clicked on the story of a pregnant New Hampshire woman who was the sole survivor of a series of attacks known as the Connecticut River Valley murders.

The remains of at least six other young women had been dumped beside back roads along Interstate 91 in a stretch that straddled Vermont and New Hampshire. A killer had slit throats and stabbed victims repeatedly in the lower abdomen.

The dead included Mary Elizabeth Critchley, a hitchhiker; Bernice Courtemanche, a 17-year-old nurse's aide; Ellen Fried, a nurse; Eva Morse, a single mother; Lynda Moore, a housewife; and Barbara Agnew, another nurse. Only Jane Boroski survived.

Noticing that several victims were nurses, Carty remembered hearing that Nicholaou's first wife was a nurse and that his mother worked at a hospital. She later learned that Michelle and Nicholaou had been at a Hanover hospital on Thanksgiving, 1986. A nurse from the hospital disappeared two months later.

She also learned the killer used a martial arts grip on the surviving woman. Nicholaou had a black belt in karate. Relatives remembered Nicholaou taking Christmas gifts out of a station wagon with wood-paneled sides in the mid-1980s. The surviving victim had told the police her attacker drove a wood-paneled Jeep Wagoneer.

At the time of the murders, fear crept into the area. Security guards shuttled nurses to their cars. Boyfriends armed girlfriends with guns. People locked their doors.

"It was the worst thing that ever happened in this area," said Carla Hawkins, sitting on a stool at McGee's, a bar in Claremont. Her family took in one of the victim's daughters.

"I was freaked out about it," she told the Times. "Still am."

Carty learned that the last attack was only four months before Michelle and Nicholaou disappeared from the area.

Carty read online about John Philpin, a criminal psychologist who, in the 1980s, helped the police profile the serial killer. She called Philpin in Felchville, Vt., and told him what she knew about Nicholaou.

Philpin agreed Nicholaou could be the killer.

"This is the first, I'd call it major, lead in three or four years," Philpin told the Times.

In February, Carty called the New Hampshire State Police and spoke with Detective Steve Rowland. Rowland usually hears from family members of the victims who are seeking updates, or from people who want to share theories about the killer.

But Lynn-Marie Carty had more. It was the first time Rowland had heard of Michael Nicholaou, and Carty's information revived the investigation. She also suggested the police might try to match Nicholaou's DNA with evidence from the crime scenes.

By April, authorities considered Nicholaou one of their three strongest suspects, Rowland said.

The other two are still alive. The police can't check their DNA without probable cause. That's not the case with Nicholaou.

"His profile fits the profile of somebody that would commit this type of crime," Rowland said. "There's no question about that."

Rowland now has Nicholaou's fingerprints, and he's working to get DNA from the medical examiner in Florida. The forensics lab that tests DNA is backed up with current homicide cases, Rowland said, so he doesn't expect an answer until late in the summer.

But he told the newspaper he wouldn't be surprised if the results point to Nicholaou.

Decades-Old Homicides Might Soon Be Solved

June 15, 2006

TURNBRIDGE, Vt. -- Half a dozen unsolved murders in Vermont and New Hampshire that are decades old may soon be solved, thanks to a private investigator from Florida.

Five years ago, Lynn-Marie Carty was asked to find Michelle Ashley, of Tunbridge.

Ashley had been missing since 1988 and, at the time, she was married to Michael Nicholaou.

"They said she went missing off the face of the Earth in 1988, and right before she went missing she told her mother, 'If I ever go missing, Mom, please look for Michael and save the children,'" Cary said.

Ashley's body has never been found.

Also in the early to mid-80s, six other women in the Upper Valley disappeared. Almost all of their bodies were found within a 30-mile radius of Claremont, N.H.

Carty thinks the deaths might be linked to Nicholaou, who killed himself, his wife and his stepdaughter on New Year's Eve in Florida.

"I found out that the man has been through a lot of trauma and fit the profile of somebody who would commit crimes like this," Cary said.

John Philpin, a retired psychologist and author from Reading, studied thse cases 20 years ago. He said he was asked by the New Hampshire State Police to develop a psychological profile of the killer.

"The biggest piece of evidence came from the medical examiner who looked at bones of some of the victims and was able to determine that they'd all be stabbed. So, we know from that that we were looking for someone who worked with a knife," Philpin said

According to Philpin, Nicholaou fit the profile he created two decades ago because he never had a fixed address and frequently made trips to the area where the bodies were found.

"The connection of him to the area is what the main interest is. That, and given all of the characteristics, the habits that he did and would've done in the area," he said.

Carty and Philpin agree that Nicholaou needs to be ruled in or out as a suspect in the deaths.

"I think it's a blessing that these families can get the answers that they've deserved for decades and thru the diligent work of the police department, that will happen," Carty said.

"As far as Nicholaou, if it turns out that he's the person who is involved, (there's) no question he's a serial killer," Philpin said.

Forensic tests will reveal whether Nicholaou was involved in any of the murders from the Upper Valley.

The tests should be complete by the end of the summer.

His bullets cut families' hope for answers

When Michael Nicholaou shot his wife, her daughter, then himself in Tampa, say police, he left mysteries.

By Alexandra Zayas - St. Petersburg Times

January 8, 2006

To the Cowboys of the Army's 335th Assault Helicopter Company, Michael Nicholaou was frozen in time as "Nick the Greek," a fearless 20-year-old gunship commander who flew through 57 bullets to save a comrade's life.

He earned medals that included two Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars and two Bronze Stars. Then, in October 1970, he and seven others were accused of strafing civilians on a reconnaissance mission in the Mekong Delta. The soldiers languished in a stockade in South Vietnam for six months until the Army dropped murder and attempted murder charges.

Nicholaou left Vietnam, feeling bitter and betrayed, but Vietnam never left Nicholaou. He hired a lawyer to sue the Army. He spent his life both fleeing the war and clinging to it, glory days captured on news reels and shared by fellow Cowboys at reunions. He became obsessed with telling his story and found a teacher he hoped would write it.

Decades blurred into a roaring whirlwind of paranoia, failed jobs, criminal charges, disconnected phone numbers and dysfunctional relationships.

The noise ceased when the bullets did, a week ago in Tampa.

Nicholaou had a Massachusetts detective on his trail over the 1988 disappearance of former wife Michelle. Georgia police had questions, too, after his latest wife, Aileen, claimed he and his son ran her over with a Jeep last month, breaking her shoulder.

Wearing a black leather trench coat, hiding guns inside a guitar case, Nicholaou, 56, appeared at Aileen's childhood home on Walnut Street in West Tampa, where she was recovering.

After an hourlong police standoff, Nicholaou, 56, lay dead.

With him, police say, he took Aileen, 45, and her 20-year-old daughter, Terrin Bowman.

And he took the answers to so many questions.

Whispered gossip from family members surrounded his childhood in New Jersey.

Nicholaou told people his mother molested him and his father beat him. He was always finding substitute father figures - a high school buddy's dad, a superior soldier, his father-in-law.

He was a portrait of teen bravado. He rode a motorcycle to Farmingdale High School in Long Island, where friends cheered him at wrestling matches.

Afterward, they would take their girlfriends to a local hamburger joint.

It was Nicholaou who came up with the idea of dropping a rooster into the women's bathroom and skipping out on a check, said Mark D'Angelo, a lifelong friend.

"Okay," he remembers Nicholaou saying, "when the girls start screaming ..."

He craved adventure. In the Army he could fly Huey helicopters with no college degree. He boasted about stealing a helicopter while in boot camp and leaving it on a roof.

After boot camp, the stories slowed. At a welcome home party, Nicholaou said he wasn't allowed to talk about Vietnam.

"To get Silver Stars, you had to be a really good warrior, and we realized what he was and what he did," D'Angelo said. "Not that we held him up as a hero. It was a rude awakening to us that this guy did some really good military stuff."

They lost touch. D'Angelo went into the insurance business.

Nicholaou worked jobs in restaurants and on construction sites. He always seemed to be moving. Charlottesville, Va. Richmond, Va. Holyoke, Mass. Fort Lauderdale. Great Bend, Kansas. Tampa. Dade City. Houston. Lutz. Hiawassee, Ga.

With Michelle Nicholaou, he fathered two children; his next wife, Aileen, already had Terrin.

Over the years, people confused him with a Virginia cousin by the same name, causing problems for the cousin. There were unpaid fines. A hit-and-run crash.

"Bring back my daughter," cussed and screamed Michelle Nicholaou when she thought cousin Nicholaou was her husband. That was 1986, the year their first child was born.

Michelle Marie Ashley had met Nicholaou in New York. They married in the mid 1980s, and she went from being a bubbly young woman to a paranoid wife, her family said.

"He ran her life," said her aunt, Linda Glamuzina. "It was like taking over another person."

When Nicholaou and Michelle visited the Glamuzinas in Louisiana, he wore skimpy shorts Glamuzina found indecent. He brought a stash from his Charlottesville, Va., porn shop. Disgusted, Glamuzina threw it in the Mississippi River.

"There was something scary about him," Glamuzina said.

Michelle thought so, too, her family said.

In December 1988, relatives entered the Nicholaou apartment in Holyoke and discovered it deserted. Michelle's baby diaries were there. There was food left behind. But no people.

Family hadn't seen Michelle, or her toddler Joy and baby Nicholas, in a month.

Just days after the family vanished, Michael Nicholaou met up with a female acquaintance in Charlottesville. The kids were dirty and hungry, and he stole the woman's brand new car, the woman later told Michelle's aunt.

There were calls to police, but nothing panned out. Michelle's family hired a private investigator. Her mother, Rose Young, told the investigator something Michelle had once said.

"If I'm ever missing, he killed me, and you need to track him down and find the kids."

Michael D'Angelo and his son Mark bumped into Nicholaou when he was working at Pete's Restaurant in Boca Raton in 1992.

He told them Michelle was dead, Michael D'Angelo said. He had told other people that she ran off with a Cuban drug dealer.

Nicholaou later visited D'Angelo and his wife at their home. Joy, then a mature 6-year-old, told them she brewed her dad coffee every morning. Nicholas, 4, asked D'Angelo if he could be his grandfather. Their sneakers were worn, and they looked hungry. They had been living in Nicholaou's car, Nicholaou later admitted in a letter to D'Angelo.

Nicholaou wanted D'Angelo to help write a book about Vietnam.

In 1996, Nicholaou wrote from an in-patient unit of the post traumatic stress disorder clinic at a Miami veteran's hospital. He had been under treatment for a year.

He complained that the military had left him with "isolation and avoidance behaviors" that kept him from flying, yet he drew just $338 a month in disability benefits.

"Not too many commercial qualified pilots are afraid of heights and give up careers in aviation to become bums," he wrote.

He said he left Fort Lauderdale because the state wanted his kids.

He called them his "sole reason for living."

Once, in 1997, he and his kids stayed with a friend in Dade City. Nicholas, then 9, got into a fight with the boy next door. Nicholaou later pleaded no contest to torching the neighbor's car and got three years probation.

It was October 2001 when the private investigator, Lynn-Marie Carty of St. Petersburg, tracked down Nicholaou, living with Aileen in Tampa, and called.

"How did you find me?" she remembers him asking.

He said he had the kids, and they were fine. Carty asked about Michelle.

"She's a slut," he said. "She was doing drugs at the time. She ran off, and she just abandoned the kids."

The next day, his phone number was disconnected.

Holyoke police detective Kevin Boyle, in an interview last year with a Boston television station, said, "The factors surrounding this case are suspicious, and Michael's actions are suspect."

Boyle did not return a telephone call from the Times.

Relatives describe Aileen Nicholaou as a bola de humo, a Cuban fireball who charmed every man she met. Her only flaw, her sister Adnery Almirola recalled, was that she had poor judgment.

Aileen and Michael connected eight years ago through a newspaper personals ad. Two weeks later, Nicholaou and his kids moved into Aileen's Tampa home. When relatives visited, Joy sat on Aileen's lap and called her "mom."

"They were love-starved, it seemed," Almirola said.

Nicholaou seemed charismatic. He called Aileen's father, Arnaldo Toranzo, papi as he helped him cook Christmas Eve dinners.

About four years ago, they married in a Las Vegas wedding chapel. In the wedding photo, their faces are superimposed over other people's bodies.

Then, in September 2004, a family friend discovered an online news story about Michelle Nicholaou's disappearance. Aileen had no idea. Nicholaou convinced her Michelle had run off, but her family suspected he had killed her.

Four weeks ago, after a heated argument with Aileen in their Hiawassee, Ga., home, Nicholaou and his son got in their Jeep to leave. According to a Towns County Sheriff's Office report, Aileen approached the Jeep. She needed Nicholaou's military sticker to get on base to buy groceries. She told deputies Nicholaou threatened her with a pistol and told Nicholas to step on the gas. The Jeep hit Aileen and the two men took off.

Through a family spokesman, Nicholas denied doing anything wrong. Towns County has a warrant for his arrest, confirmed Tampa Police spokesman Joe Durkin. Nicholas' attorney, Allison Perry, did not return a Times call.

Tampa relatives learned Aileen was recovering in a hospital, and brought her to her father's Walnut Street home. Her daughter Terrin brought magazines to her bedside.

Terrin Bowman, 20, had a firm handshake and a flirtatious wink. She had a job waiting tables but was so bright she had taken college courses as a 16-year-old.

"She wanted to fly to the moon," said her cousin Shawn Lhota, 21.

Terrin had friends across the world she met while backpacking through Europe. Her friend Lorena Bledsoe recalls Terrin's favorite quote: "The purpose of living is to prepare for dying."

About 3 a.m. Dec. 31, a friend saw Terrin heading home to her aunt's house in Town 'N Country.

Relatives, after talking with police, think that Nicholaou held Terrin hostage in her bedroom for at least five hours as her aunt and uncle slept. Cigarette ashes peppered Terrin's typically tidy room, along with marijuana residue, pills and fiberglass tape, relatives said.

They think Nicholaou used Terrin to get access to the West Tampa home where Aileen was staying.

Just after noon, when Aileen's sister, Audrey Leon, opened the door on Walnut Street, Terrin rushed in and hugged her tightly.

"I could tell she was scared," Leon said.

Leon remembers what happened next:

Nicholaou stepped into view.

"You didn't think you were ever going to see me again," Nicholaou announced, entering the house. He approached Aileen in the dining room.

"What are you doing with a gun?" Aileen asked him.

Leon told him to get out.

"No, no, no," Nicholaou responded. "I'm going to shoot myself over your mother's grave."

The sisters had struggled with their mother's recent death.

As Leon scrambled to get her two children out of the home, call her father and call police, Nicholaou, Aileen and Terrin walked toward a bedroom.

"Alina (Aileen) tells me really calmly, she goes "Look, we're going to go to papi's room to talk, okay?' I'm like "Terrin, Terrin, come here.' She wouldn't budge. She went in there. She wouldn't come out. Either he had her afraid or she didn't want to leave her mom," Leon said.

Leon greeted police in the driveway. When an officer announced herself and walked toward the bedroom, Nicholaou pointed a rifle at her. Aileen threw herself at the door, closing it.

Outside the door, police and family heard the gunshots.

In the room, they found Aileen and Terrin, both shot in the head. Terrin, fatally wounded, was lying on her mother's body. Terrin died the next day. Her mother was already gone.

Police said Nicholaou shot them before turning a gun on himself.

In Massachusetts, Michelle's sister Tammy Patla hopes for a reunion with Nicholas and Joy.

She also hopes for more.

That the answer to Michelle's disappearance didn't die with Michael Nicholaou.