The Murders of Boston’s Combat Zone (Massachusetts)

Judy Belfrey. Kathy Williams. Holly Davidson. Melodie Stankiewicz. Four young women whose lives crossed the same few blocks of Boston in the 1970s, and whose deaths left investigators with a pattern they could see but never fully explain. The cases unfolded in different places and under different circumstances, but there was enough overlap to consider a connection. Again and again, investigators were drawn back to Boston’s Combat Zone. The question then – and now – is what that shared geography means. Was one killer returning to the same hunting ground, or were multiple dangerous men taking advantage of a neighborhood where it was easy to disappear?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Kylie Low?

  Judy Belfry, Kathy Williams, Holly Davidson, Melody Stankovich. Four young women, whose lives crossed the same few blocks of Boston in the 1970s, and whose deaths left investigators with a pattern they could see, but never fully explain. The cases unfolded in different places and under different circumstances, but there was enough overlap to consider a connection. Again and again, investigators were drawn back to Boston's Combat Zone. The question then, and now, is what that shared geography means. Was one killer returning to the same hunting ground?

• 1:18Kylie Low?

  Or were multiple dangerous men taking advantage of a neighborhood where it was easy to disappear? I'm Kylie Low, and these are the cases of Boston's Combat Zone, on Dark Down East.

• 1:41Kylie Low?

  By 5 o'clock on Tuesday evening, June 7, 1977, 17-year-old Judy Belfry was at the 663 Lounge on Washington Street in Boston, also called "The 663" by those in the know. It was at the heart of Boston's Combat Zone, once a pulsing adult entertainment district, built around bars, adult theaters, and late-night anonymity. According to reporting by John F. Cullen for the Boston Globe, Judy was there with her friend, 21-year-old Carol, sitting at the bar, having drinks, and talking with some of the people around them. At some point around 6:30, a man joined the conversation. He looked to be in his 40s.

• 2:24Kylie Low?

  According to Carol's later account, before long, the man offered Judy $50 to leave with him. Carol said that Judy didn't immediately say yes. She pulled Carol aside first, and the two spoke privately before Judy decided to accept the offer. She and the man left the lounge together, got in a cab, and went to Carol's apartment at 59 Burbank Street in Back Bay, where Judy had been staying. She returned to the lounge sometime between 7:00 and 7:30 that night, and the man came back too. No one who saw the guy that evening remembered anything that would have made him stand out as dangerous or threatening. And so, when he approached Judy again later that night with the same proposition, another $50,

• 3:08Kylie Low?

  there was no reason to think this time would be any different from the first. At around 8:30, Judy told Carol that she was leaving with him again. She said she'd be back within an hour. 9:30 came and went, and Judy still hadn't returned. By around 9:45, Carol was worried enough to start calling her own apartment, but there was no answer. She tried again, and then a third time. By 10:30, after nearly two hours without hearing from Judy, Carol decided to go and check the apartment herself. Carol took a cab and asked the driver to wait outside. She found her apartment door was cracked open, and the two-chain latches were hanging loose. She pushed through the doorway and stepped inside.

• 3:52Kylie Low?

  Judy was lying on the living room floor. Carol ran to the waiting cab and told the driver to take her straight to the District 4 Police Station to report what she'd found. Bonnie Selway reports for the Boston Herald that when investigators arrived, they found Judy fully clothed, laying partially on her left side with her legs lightly bent and her feet crossed. Her pocketbook had been tossed onto the rug near her head, and her wallet was missing. Her glasses were smashed nearby, and the umbrella she'd been carrying that night was broken into two pieces near her feet. Police theorized Judy had been attacked from behind as she walked into the living room, and that there had been a struggle.

• 4:32Kylie Low?

  The medical examiner later determined that Judy died from asphyxia caused by manual strangulation. There were bruises around her neck, including a mark left by a gold-heart-shaped locket she'd been wearing. Officers canvassed the building and found two people downstairs who may have heard the attack in progress. Two male students, who lived in the apartment directly below, told investigators that around 9:30 that night, they heard a woman screaming upstairs, and then a thump against the floor followed by footsteps. After that, everything went quiet. Police questioned those students at length, wanting to know why neither of them had gone upstairs or called for help.

• 5:13Kylie Low?

  Both said they'd assumed they were hearing some kind of domestic dispute that didn't need their involvement. Police considered the possibility that robbery was the motive, especially because Judy was reportedly carrying money she received earlier that evening, and her wallet was nowhere to be found. But after speaking with Carol and other women at the 663, investigators also knew that the person responsible may not have been some completely unknown figure. According to witnesses, Judy had willingly left the lounge with a man less than an hour before neighbors heard those screams, and she'd already spent time alone with that same man earlier in the evening. But why Judy was even in that lounge, in Boston's Combat Zone at all,

• 5:58Kylie Low?

  simply did not add up for those who knew and loved her.

• 6:03Kylie Low?

  Just a few months earlier, Judy's life had been centered in Sudbury, where she lived with her family and attended Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School. People at the school described her as attractive, popular, and well-liked, but there was also a quieter side to her. Friends and classmates remembered someone warm and friendly, but who could be private and kept things to herself. Judy loved being outdoors. She hiked and backpacked, and had worked to overcome a fear of heights. By the summer before her death, Judy was climbing mountains and proudly talking about walking along ledges that once would have frightened her. That adventurous streak is part of what had brought her to Boston in the first place.

• 6:45Kylie Low?

  Judy was one of about 20 Lincoln-Sudbury students selected for an experimental school program called Alternate Semester. Instead of spending the second half of the school year in a traditional classroom, the students moved into Boston, lived with post-families they weren't related to, and worked in the city. The idea was to give teenagers some independence while they were still connected to the school, to let them make decisions for themselves, meet people outside the world they knew, and get some experience living in what the program described as "the real world." Beginning that February, Judy lived with the Young family at their home on West Newton Street in the South End. The Youngs said Judy was a nice kid,

• 7:26Kylie Low?

  and a pretty typical teenager who liked knitting and sewing and listening to records. According to James Hammond and Alexander Haas Jr. of the Globe, Judy split her work week between two different places. Three days a week, she worked at Clothware, a women's clothing collective in Harvard Square that manufactured and sold its own clothes. The other two days, she spent at the Children's Museum, working with kids. Her experience at Clothware wasn't entirely smooth. About a month into the job, Judy began missing work. Sometimes she called to say she was sick, other times, she simply didn't show up. Her employers brought their concerns to the coordinators of the school program, and there was a meeting with Judy.

• 8:09Kylie Low?

  Things seemed to improve somewhat afterward, and the people at Clothware tried giving her work that seemed better suited to her. Judy was a talented seamstress, and she initially seemed to enjoy sewing more than working the register or handling other jobs around the store, although even that seemed to lose her interest as the semester went on. The people who worked with Judy were careful not to turn those attendance problems into something larger than they were. They didn't describe her as a bad kid or someone who couldn't handle responsibility. In fact, they said that when Judy was given something to do, she did it very well. Working with children seemed to be where Judy's passion grew.

• 8:51Kylie Low?

  She'd learned American Sign Language during her time at the Children's Museum and was hoping to work at the Deaf Community Center in Framingham that coming fall. She was thinking about summer plans, too. Less than a day and a half before her death, Judy called her mother Shirley, excited to tell her she'd applied for two jobs in Boston: one at a bank, and another as what was then called a television script girl. By then, the alternate semester had officially ended, and Judy moved out of the Youngs' home around May 15. The students took trips together to celebrate the end of the semester, including a bike trip to Cape Cod, and then Judy returned to her parents' home over Memorial Day weekend.

• 9:34Kylie Low?

  Exactly where Judy was living in the days leading up to her death isn't entirely clear. Some contemporary reports say that after leaving the Youngs' home, she began staying with her friend Carol at the apartment on Burbank Street, only a few blocks away. Other reporting described it as more a place Judy visited from time to time rather than her permanent residence. What is clear is that Judy knew Carol well enough to spend time with her there, and that on June 7th, it was Carol who knew where Judy had gone, who she'd gone with, and when she was supposed to come back. Now, according to Carol, she and Judy also spent time together at the 663.

• 10:16Kylie Low?

  Carol worked at a bank during the day, but had also been engaged in sex work in Boston's combat zone for about eight months. Based on conversations with Carol and other women who were involved with sex work in the same bars and lounges of Boston's adult entertainment district, investigators believed Judy had recently begun doing the same. Let's just clear this up right now. Judy was 17, a child. And whatever the newspapers suggested about her possibly making that decision herself in the mid-1970s, today, a child cannot consent to commercial sex. Today, that would be sexual exploitation of a child, what we recognize as child sex trafficking, not sex work.

• 11:01Kylie Low?

  Through the papers, Judy's mother was hearing a version of her daughter that she barely recognized. Shirley knew about Carol. Judy told her they'd become friends while she was living in Boston for the school program, but police were now describing something very different from what Judy's family believed to be true. She just couldn't picture her daughter spending time in a combat zone bar, much less willingly leaving with a man who appeared to be around 40. Judy's older sister, Jean, pushed back against the idea that there had been some completely separate life her family knew nothing about. She described Judy as independent but sensible, someone who knew how to look after herself and make her own decisions.

• 11:44Kylie Low?

  What bothered Jean most was the way attention seemed to be shifting towards Judy's choices rather than the person who killed her. Now, there was an important limitation to the police account. Lieutenant Jerome McCallum, who headed Boston's homicide unit, acknowledged that the information connecting Judy to commercial sex came from conversations with women in the combat zone, but at that point, he said investigators didn't have other evidence supporting that part of the story. Those same women, though, were the ones helping police reconstruct the final hours before Judy was killed.

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• 12:51Speaker 02

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• 12:58Kylie Low?

  Every small town has a local legend. The house no one drives past after dark, or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist, stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems. Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts. Carol told police that she saw the man Judy left with twice, and other people inside

• 13:41Kylie Low?

  the 663 saw him too. Their descriptions varied somewhat, but generally pointed to a white man, somewhere between 40 and 50 years old, medium build with broad shoulders, light brown wavy hair, a medium complexion, and a round face. He was wearing a red or maroon jacket, possibly checked, with darker blue trousers. At the same time, investigators were looking at other men who had some connection to Judy or Carol. A few days after the murder, a man called Boston Police and identified himself as a friend of Judy's. He volunteered to come in and speak with detectives. Now, contemporary reporting never identified him or explained what information he might have had.

• 14:26Kylie Low?

  Carol also told investigators about a cab driver who had befriended Judy. He'd twice been arrested on charges described at the time as deriving support from prostitution, although he had never been convicted. When detectives located him, he voluntarily discussed his relationships with both Judy and Carol and was released without charges. Another newspaper account described police questioning a 26-year-old Mattapan man who drove cab part-time and was also identified as a trafficker. It isn't clear from the reporting whether that was the same cab driver, a different man altogether, or the friend who had independently contacted police. Detectives also began working the combat zone itself, speaking with women about clients

• 15:11Kylie Low?

  who had frightened them, threatened them, or become violent. One of those women reported that on Wednesday night, June 8th, the night after Judy was killed, a man had attacked her inside her apartment in Back Bay and tried to choke her. She believed the attacker resembled the man witnesses had described leaving the 663 with Judy. While interviews were ongoing, police also prepared a composite sketch based on witness recollections. You can see it at darkdoun East.com, and let me just say, I've seen many suspect composite sketches in my day, but this one might keep me up at night. Despite the witnesses, the interviews, the detailed description, and widely circulated

• 15:53Kylie Low?

  composite, investigators still couldn't identify the man Judy was last seen with. But as the investigation expanded, detectives were theorizing that whoever this guy was, this wasn't the first time he'd claimed life in the combat zone. We need to turn back the clock about two and a half years to the final days of 1974, because Judy wasn't the first woman last seen leaving the 663 lounge, later to be found murdered. In the early hours of Saturday, December 28th, 1974, Massachusetts State Trooper John Murphy was making a routine patrol through the rest area off Route 125 in Andover, only a few

• 16:36Kylie Low?

  hundred feet away from the state police barracks there. That's where he found the body of a young woman. David Blundy reports for The Boston Globe that she didn't appear to have been tossed from a car or hurriedly abandoned. Whoever left her there had taken the time to position her on the ground. She had no clothing on, and there wasn't anything nearby that immediately told police who she was. Police estimated that she was somewhere between 18 and 20 years old, about 5'2" and just over 110 pounds, with hazel eyes and reddish hair that fell to her shoulders. She had three tattoos, a heart on her chest, a butterfly on the left side of her abdomen, and another tattoo on her shoulder blade.

• 17:21Kylie Low?

  After her description appeared publicly, several people contacted police because they believed they knew her. The victim's mother confirmed the identification. She wasn't 18 or 20, as the first description estimated. She was only 16. The girl found beside Route 125 was Kathleen Ann Williams, better known as Kathy. Kathy had reportedly left home when she was about 14 years old, and according to later accounts, she moved in with a woman involved in sex work in Boston. Later reporting said that by the time Kathy was 15, she was involved in commercial sex in the combat zone. About a month before her murder, the vice squad had arrested her on a soliciting charge

• 18:05Kylie Low?

  that had not yet gone to court. Like Judy Belfry, Kathy was a child. The language used in the 1970s often treated girls like Kathy as though they were adults participating in sex work by choice. Whatever the exact circumstances that brought Kathy into that world, a child cannot consent to commercial sex. What was happening to her was exploitation and sex trafficking. The initial autopsy was inconclusive on the cause of death. There were no obvious injuries that immediately explained how she died, and no clear signs of a struggle, although some accounts noted that her nose was broken. A few weeks later, the medical examiner ultimately concluded that Kathy had been strangled,

• 18:50Kylie Low?

  and estimated that she died about two hours before her body was discovered in the rest stop. What's wild here is that Kathy's body couldn't have been lying in that spot for very long. She was so close to a busy police barracks with cars coming and going. Investigators estimated she had been placed there perhaps as little as 20 minutes before Trooper Murphy came through and found her. A reconstruction of Kathy's final hours led police back toward Boston. She was last reported in the combat zone at around 10 o'clock the night before she was found, and police learned that she had left with an unidentified man. The investigation also developed a lead from the rest stop itself.

• 19:34Kylie Low?

  A late-model reddish-brown van was reportedly seen pulling away only minutes before Kathy's body was discovered, and police wanted to find it. By mid-January, police acknowledged that two men were under suspicion in Kathy's murder, though neither was publicly identified in the material they found. Neither of those leads produced an arrest. For a time, Kathy's murder stood on its own. A 16-year-old girl last seen in Boston, strangled and carried north to a place where whoever killed her apparently felt comfortable enough or brazen enough, leaving her within sight of a state police barracks. Then, three months later, another young woman was found just a few miles away.

• 20:18Kylie Low?

  When investigators compared the two scenes, the overlap was striking.

• 20:25Kylie Low?

  On the night of March 24th, 1975, a passing driver spotted a woman lying in a grassy area near an access ramp to Interstate 495 in Methuen. She was wearing only a bra and underwear, and like Kathy Williams, there was no attempt to hide her from view. Investigators believed the woman's body had been deliberately placed, rather than simply dumped. She was identified through fingerprints as 22-year-old Hollis Ellen Davidson, known as Holly. Holly had grown up in Needham and graduated from Needham High School in 1971. Her parents owned several dry cleaning businesses in the area.

• 21:07Kylie Low?

  At the time of her death, Holly was living with a roommate on Beacon Street in Brookline. She was also spending time in Boston's Combat Zone and had been arrested on soliciting charges several times during 1974. But at least one person who knew Holly said that by early 1975, she was thinking seriously about leaving that life behind. About a month before she was killed, Holly had reportedly talked about leaving Boston altogether and finding another kind of job. Whatever plans she was making, never had the chance to happen. Investigators traced Holly's last known movements earlier in the evening of March 24th.

• 21:47Kylie Low?

  At around 7:00 PM, she was seen leaving a bar with a man and getting into his car. Witnesses described him as somewhere between 35 and 45 years old, medium build with dark hair. The car was described only as a large, newer model vehicle. Just like Kathy Williams, the medical examiner determined that Holly had been strangled, with early accounts describing manual strangulation as the likely cause. As with Kathy, there were few external injuries to suggest the kind of prolonged struggle investigators might have expected. The cause of death wasn't the only similarity between Holly and Kathy's murders either. Both had been left near major roads with little or no clothing, in open places where

• 22:32Kylie Low?

  someone would eventually see them. Neither body appeared to have been casually discarded. Whether coincidence or connection, both Kathy and Holly had small butterfly tattoos on their abdomen, and both women had spent time in the bars and lounges of the Combat Zone. Within a day of identifying Holly, according to Patricia Wagner's reporting in The Lowell Sun, investigators were openly considering whether the same person had killed Kathy too. By April, police and the FBI were looking for an unidentified man from the Merrimack Valley, who they wanted to question about several eastern Massachusetts murders, including Kathy and Holly's.

• 23:14Kylie Low?

  Paul Carsetti reports for the Boston Herald that he was believed to be around 25 years old, and possibly outside Massachusetts, hiding out in Canada or on the West Coast. But nothing in the material I found shows that that lead ever resulted in charges in either case. Almost exactly three months later, another woman would be found dead across state lines. But all roads pointed back to Boston's Combat Zone.

• 23:56Kylie Low?

  Around 3:00 PM on June 30th, 1975, the body of a woman was discovered in a secluded body of water off Hooker Farm Road called Captain Pond. She was floating face down in a shallow area near the eastern shore. She was nude. Her clothing was found nearby. The woman had been stabbed repeatedly in the chest and abdomen, at least 28 times, according to investigators. They believed the weapon had a relatively short blade, and estimated that her body had been in the water for more than a day. A few days later, she was identified as 27-year-old Melody Stankovich of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• 24:37Kylie Low?

  Investigators began working backward from Friday night, June 27th. According to reporting by David Blundy for the Boston Globe, that evening, Melody had put her infant son to bed at home before changing into green shorts and a t-shirt. A boyfriend reportedly drove her toward the Combat Zone and dropped her off around 9:45 PM. From there, the timeline gets muddy. Somewhere between Cambridge, Boston, and Captain Pond, roughly 30 miles north of the city, Melody disappeared from view. Police wanted to hear from anyone who had seen Melody between June 27th and the time her body was found, and they were particularly interested in a man she was seen with in

• 25:19Kylie Low?

  Cambridge's Central Square that Friday night. Police said Melody had been a sex worker, meeting clients in the bars and clubs of the Combat Zone for only a few months. They also learned that she had previously done the same in upstate New York before moving to Massachusetts. Now, her murder didn't match Kathy Williams and Holly Davidson's in every respect. Kathy and Holly had both been strangled and their bodies left beside roads. Melody was stabbed many times and placed in water. There was no butterfly tattoo, and the location where she was found was farther north across the New Hampshire border. But by then, investigators had already spent months looking at the murders of women who

• 26:03Kylie Low?

  were known to spend time in Boston's Combat Zone. Now Melody had left for that same part of the city on a Friday night and turned up dead miles away. Did those similarities add up to a pattern? By the time Judy Belfry was killed in June of 1977, Kathy Williams, Holly Davidson, and Melody Stankovich had all been dead for nearly two years, and none of their murders had been solved. Police had already spent considerable time comparing the three earlier cases. When Judy was strangled to death after leaving the Combat Zone with a man, almost immediately, Boston homicide detectives began looking at Kathy, Holly, and Melody once again, trying

• 26:47Kylie Low?

  to determine whether Judy's murder could be connected too. The unidentified man seen with Judy was the clearest suspect police had in any of these cases, but did he fit with what was known about the assailant and the others? Holly had also been seen leaving a bar with a man before she died, but the description was too broad to say for sure. Kathy was reportedly last seen with a younger man, so maybe the 40- to 50-year-old individual in Judy's case didn't fit that? As for Melody, there's no public description of that guy to make a meaningful comparison. Even still, there was something that could tie them all together from the very beginning, and it wasn't one proven killer.

• 27:31Kylie Low?

  It was a place: the Combat Zone. A few blocks of downtown Boston where the lights stayed on late, where bars and theaters crowded Washington Street, where women met men whose real names they sometimes never knew, and where danger could blend into the background noise of nightlife. For all the notoriety attached to its name, Boston's Combat Zone wasn't enormous. Much of it was packed into just a few blocks around Lower Washington Street, where adult theaters and bookstores sat alongside bars, lounges, and clubs with nude dancing. In 1974, Boston formally designated this small stretch of Lower Washington Street

• 28:12Kylie Low?

  as its "Adult Entertainment District," essentially drawing a boundary around businesses that city officials feared would otherwise "spread farther into Boston." The Combat Zone already existed. The city's answer was to try to keep it contained. The people, including women in sex work who spent time there, knew there were risks. Contemporary reporting described an informal safety system among women engaged in sex work in the zone: work in pairs when possible, tell someone who you were leaving with and when you expected to return, and don't get into an unfamiliar car. Those precautions weren't foolproof, though.

• 28:54Kylie Low?

  Investigators believed Kathy, Holly, and Melody had each ended up leaving with someone without that usual safety net in place. For years, the Combat Zone operated with less policing than you might expect with the multiple murders connected to it. As reported by Robert B. Carr for the Boston Globe, "One major turning point came after 22-year-old Andrew Poopolo was killed during a night out in the area with a group of Harvard classmates." There was a noticeable shift afterward, with police dramatically increasing enforcement throughout the zone. Right in the middle of it all was the 663. The lounge had already attracted plenty of police attention before Judy Belfry ever walked through its doors.

• 29:38Kylie Low?

  One profile written by Eleanor Roberts for the Boston Herald after Judy's murder included a small detail. The relationship between the 663 and commercial sex wasn't simply an assumption made after these murders. In early 1977, the Boston Licensing Board suspended the lounge's license amid allegations that the crime classified as prostitution was being allowed inside. Later that year, after police testified that women regularly used the establishment to solicit customers, the board revoked its license. In May 1978, a Superior Court judge went further and ordered the 663 closed as a nuisance,

• 30:19Kylie Low?

  although attorneys for the lounge temporarily blocked that order on appeal. By then, though, the name 663 Lounge had already become part of these murder investigations. After Judy was killed, Boston police publicly said Kathy Williams, Holly Davidson, and Melody Stankovich had all been seen leaving that same lounge before their deaths.

• 30:44Kylie Low?

  By the spring of 1978, even if some answers seemed like they could be found in the middle of the combat zone, investigators were looking far beyond Boston. One possible lead took them all the way to Los Angeles, where police there were investigating a series of murders then being attributed to the so-called Hillside Strangler. The Massachusetts connection came through two men with roots in Dorchester, Peter Mark Jones and George F. Shamshock. Shamshock had been arrested in Cambridge that February after escaping from a pre-release center in Shirley, where he'd been finishing a sentence for armed robbery.

• 31:25Kylie Low?

  He had previously worked as a confidential informant, and with prison hanging over him again, an unfriendly place for so-called snitches, he began telling police that he knew about serious crimes allegedly committed by Jones. According to Shamshock, after escaping Massachusetts, he went to California and reconnected with Jones. He claimed that while the two were there, he drove a van as Jones killed two women inside it. Los Angeles police took the allegation seriously enough to arrest Jones and bring Shamshock west for more questioning. Jones was pressed specifically about the murders of Kathleen Robinson and Jill Barkome,

• 32:07Kylie Low?

  two women whose deaths were being examined as part of the Hillside Strangler investigation at the time. The van described in Shamshock's story was seized by Los Angeles police, too. It was that van that caught the attention of investigators back in Massachusetts. Remember the reddish-brown van reportedly seen leaving the Andover Rest Area only minutes before Kathy Williams' body was discovered? That vehicle had never been accounted for. Now investigators had two men from the Boston area tied to a van that had become part of a major murder investigation on the other side of the country. Essex County District Attorney John Burke said his office, along with police in Massachusetts

• 32:51Kylie Low?

  and Salem, New Hampshire, began checking whether there could be any connection between the California investigation and the unsolved murders of Kathy Williams, Holly Davidson, and Melody Stankovich. He didn't mention Judy Belfry. Her murder was a Suffolk County case because she was killed in Boston, which may explain why she wasn't part of Burke's review. Melody's was not an Essex County case either; she was found in New Hampshire, but by then, investigators in both states had already been treating Melody's case as potentially connected to Kathy and Holly's. So investigators were checking dates, movements, vehicles, and whatever else might place Jones or Shamshock in the orbit of the women found dead north of Boston, but at that point, they

• 33:35Kylie Low?

  did not have a definitive link. Ultimately, Jones and Shamshock were not determined to be the Hillside Strangler or Stranglers either. The Hillside Strangler theory became one more avenue investigators explored, only to leave it behind without any conclusions. But it wouldn't be the last time a new name was pulled into the orbit of these murders. By the time Leonard "The Cohog" Paradiso died in prison in 2008, a former Suffolk County prosecutor had spent years convinced that Paradiso had left far more victims behind

• 34:13Kylie Low?

  than the one murder for which he was convicted. Every small town has a local legend: the house no one drives past after dark, or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist: stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems.

• 34:47Kylie Low?

  Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts. Former Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Timothy Burke knew Paradiso from the courtroom. He had prosecuted him for the strangulation and sexual assault of 20-year-old Marie Iannuzzi, which ended with Paradiso convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. But Burke came to believe Marie's murder was only one piece of a much larger pattern. In Burke's book, The Paradiso Files: Boston's Unknown Serial Killer, he argued that Paradiso

• 35:31Kylie Low?

  was responsible for several other unsolved murders around Boston, including the 1981 murder of Harvard graduate student Joan Webster and the earlier deaths of Kathy Williams, Holly Davidson, and Melody Stankovich. Burke's theory in Jones' case was that Paradiso, who sometimes drove a cab, picked her up at Logan Airport after she arrived back in Boston in November 1981 and killed her aboard his boat, the Malefemenah. Loose translation: the wicked woman. Jones' remains were found years later in Hamilton, Massachusetts, while her purse was recovered near the place where Marie Iannuzzi's remains had been found.

• 36:13Kylie Low?

  Paradiso was never charged with Jones' murder. My friends at Crime Junkie have covered both Marie Iannuzzi and Joan Webster's cases extensively, examining Burke's theories and others around those cases, so I'll link that episode in the show notes for you. But why was Burke convinced that Paradiso could explain what happened to Kathy, Holly, and Melody? Well, in part, Paradiso already had a documented history of violence against women that intersected with the same world we've been talking about. He had a previous conviction stemming from the kidnapping and sexual assault of a woman from the combat zone in 1970. Then in 1974, police caught him in Andover, attempting to sexually assault a hitchhiker

• 36:58Kylie Low?

  he had picked up in Boston. Paradiso was convicted, but remained free on bail while he appealed. That period of freedom overlaps almost perfectly with the three murders. Paradiso was out on bail from the fall of 1974 into the summer of 1975. Kathy Williams was killed in December. Holly Davidson was killed in March. Melody Stankovich disappeared in June. Paradiso's 1974 assault had taken him from Boston to Andover. Kathy was found in Andover, Holly in neighboring Methuen, and Melody farther north in Salem, New Hampshire.

• 37:40Kylie Low?

  To Burke, Paradiso's access to that corridor, his history in the combat zone, and his violence against women made those locations more than coincidence. The timing of Melody's murder is especially compelling. On June 24, 1975, Paradiso learned that his appeal had been denied and that he would have to surrender by July 1. Melody disappeared on June 27, just days before Paradiso was due back in custody. Judy Belfry is absent from Burke's theory, and there's a straightforward reason for that. According to Burke's own chronology, Paradiso was incarcerated when Judy was murdered

• 38:24Kylie Low?

  in June 1977. He wasn't released on parole until May 10, 1978, so unless there was some period outside custody that I haven't accounted for, Paradiso could not have killed Judy. Paradiso was never charged in Kathy, Holly, or Melody's deaths, and nothing in the material I've found establishes that he killed any of them. His family said Paradiso maintained his innocence in the additional murders attributed to him until his death. Still, Burke's theory accomplished something the previous leads hadn't. More than three decades after Kathy, Holly, and Melody died, authorities went back to their files and started looking again.

• 39:09Kylie Low?

  In 2008, the Essex County District Attorney's office went back to the files on Kathy Williams, Holly Davidson, and Melody Stankovich. Burke said he was told the investigations had been reopened because of the information in his book. According to Jonathan Saltzman's reporting in The Globe, the DA's office was a little more restrained publicly confirming that prosecutors were reviewing the cases based on Burke's representations. However, as of today, those three cases are still unsolved, as is Judy Belfry's case. In July 2025, New Hampshire State Police were publicly asking for new leads in Melody's murder.

• 39:50Kylie Low?

  A month later, when the state announced it was expanding its cold case unit, Melody was specifically named in reporting by Jamie Alcosta as one of the cases currently being pursued.

• 40:03Kylie Low?

  More than 50 years later, I don't think the evidence lets us force all four murders into one clean theory. Kathy and Holly are the closest match. They were killed within three months of each other, both strangled, both left exposed beside highways north of Boston. Melody shared the combat zone orbit and northbound geography, but she was killed differently. Judy was strangled, like Kathy and Holly, and reportedly came through the same lounge but almost two years later, in a very different crime scene, with a specific unidentified man seen leaving with her. Then there's Paradiso. The timing works remarkably well for Kathy, Holly, and Melody, as does some of the geography

• 40:47Kylie Low?

  and his history of violence against women, but Paradiso was back in custody by July 1975 and remained there through Judy's murder, so whatever you make of Burke's theory, Paradiso cannot neatly explain all four cases. But Paradiso isn't the only man whose known violence against women intersects with the places and patterns we've been tracing. In April 1978, another woman left the 663 with a man and was murdered, and a suspect was swiftly identified. George J. Hughes later admitted that he met 26-year-old Beverly Trumble at the 663 and

• 41:29Kylie Low?

  took her to the Hotel Bradford, where he stabbed her 37 times. Hughes claimed Beverly had taken $50 from him. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. The question is, was he ever looked at for other cases? Melody is the one that jumps out. By 1977, Boston police were publicly saying Melody had last been seen leaving the 663 with a man, and she was stabbed at least 28 times. Hughes later met Beverly at that very lounge and killed her by repeated stabbing. That is a real behavioral overlap, but not proof. I haven't found any public record identifying Hughes as a suspect in Melody's murder, and

• 42:13Kylie Low?

  I've found no indication he was ever charged in connection with it. Judy is intriguing for a different reason. Both Judy and Beverly reportedly left the 663 with the men who killed or are suspected of killing them, and the money was part of both encounters. Judy's man offered her $50. Hughes later claimed his confrontation with Beverly involved $50. Maybe that amount was common, but it still feels worth noting. Kathy and Holly are weaker fits for Hughes. Nothing we currently have about Hughes connects him to the locations they were found, the reddish brown van in Kathy's case, or the MO.

• 42:53Kylie Low?

  I don't know if he was ever actually looked into for their cases, but there was yet another convicted killer moving through this same world at almost exactly the same time, and in his case, we know investigators did ask these questions. On June 1, 1978, 22-year-old Karen Blumenthal was found stabbed 43 times with a serrated knife inside a rooming house on Chandler Street in Boston's South End. Karen was last seen in the combat zone the night before. Police arrested Glenn J. Brees for Karen's murder. He was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

• 43:34Kylie Low?

  While he was in custody, detectives questioned Brees about Judy Belfry, Melody Stankovich, Holly Davidson, and Kathy Williams. Brees's known victim, Karen Blumenthal, had spent time in the combat zone, just like Kathy, and Holly, and Judy, and Melody. Melody is interesting in particular because she, too, was killed by repeated stabbing. But again, similarity isn't identification. Whatever police learned while questioning Brees, he was never charged in Melody's murder, or Kathy's, or Holly's, or Judy's. Maybe the combat zone common thread, and particularly the 663, is evidence of one perpetrator

• 44:17Kylie Low?

  returning to the same hunting ground. Or maybe it was a place where multiple dangerous men knew they could meet women, leave with them, and disappear back into a neighborhood built around anonymity. Which leaves the questions that no theory has answered. Who was the man in the maroon jacket who left with Judy? Who was driving the reddish brown van seen near where Kathy was found? Was Leonard Paradiso responsible for any of the earlier murders? And are these four women connected by the person who killed them, or only by the place they all passed through before they died? The combat zone is gone. The 663 is gone.

• 45:02Kylie Low?

  These unresolved cases have survived all of it. If you have information about Judy Belfry's murder, contact the Boston Police Homicide Unit at 617-343-4470. If you have information about Kathy Williams or Holly Davidson, contact the Massachusetts State Police Unresolved Case Unit at 1-855-MA-SOLVE, or 1-855-627-6583. And if you have information about Melody Stankovich, contact the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at 603-271-2663.

• 45:56Kylie Low?

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

• 46:40Speaker 03

  If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body, but soon they'll find it.

• 46:49Speaker 04

  He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly.

• 46:53Speaker 05

  They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff, and they said, "Maybe she'll find out where this girl is." I saw him violent. Backhanded her, pow!

• 47:06Speaker 06

  Listen to The Devil's Quarry, Season 2, in the Bone Valley feed, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.