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Sandra Valade

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Sandra Valade1

Sandra Valade

Real Name: Sandra Valade
Nicknames: No Known Nicknames
Location: Manchester, New Hampshire
Date: February 1, 1960

Case[]

Details: Eighteen-year-old Sandra Valade worked as a secretary and coil winder for a factory in Manchester, New Hampshire. On February 1, 1960, she left work and went to the local library. Then she took a swimming class at the YMCA. After that, she went to see a movie. Once it was over, she got on a bus to head home. At 9:14pm, she got off the bus and began a mile walk to her home. She never made it. The next day, her bag, coat, wallet, and one of her boots were found in a canal. Nine days later, her body was found in a snowbank; she had been sexually assaulted, beaten, slashed, and then shot four times with a .22 caliber gun. Authorities had few leads in this case and it soon grew cold.
Then, in winter 1964, fourteen-year-old Pamela Mason responded to a newspaper ad asking for a babysitter. On January 13, 1964, she was picked up by the person who had placed it and then vanished. Eight days later, she was found stabbed and shot to death in a snowbank near Manchester. She was found just two miles from the spot where Sandra was found. Authorities began investigating that case and found that it had several similarities to this one.
A few weeks after Pamela's murder, a local woman named Rena Paquette began telling people that she knew who was responsible for Pamela's death. On February 3, she was found burned to death in a barn on her property. Surprisingly, her death was ruled a suicide.
On February 19, deliveryman Edward Coolidge was arrested and charged with Pamela's murder. His .22-caliber Mossberg rifle was determined to be the weapon that killed her. Further testing indicated that it had been used to kill Sandra as well. In March, he was charged with her murder. However, at Pamela's trial, he testified that he had won the weapon in a contest in 1961, after Sandra's murder. The prosecutor rebutted by showing that the weapons do not have serial numbers, meaning that he could have had two rifles (one from the contest and one that was used to commit the murders). In the end, he was convicted of Pamela's murder, but the charges against him in his case were dropped by the attorney general in August 1965.
Decades later, on November 9, 1985, Rena's son, Danny, was shot to death near his home. Although authorities believe that these cases are not related to one another, the Paquette family is convinced that Rena knew the identity of Pamela and Sandra's killer, was silenced about it, and that Danny also had information about the cases and was silenced as well.
Suspects: Edward Coolidge
Extra Notes: This case first aired on the October 24, 1990 episode.
Results: Unresolved. Coolidge's sentence was later reduced due to a legal technicality, and he was released in 1991. He was never charged again in his case. He was also never charged in Rena's case, although her manner of death was later changed from "suicide" to "undetermined". Danny's case was later found to be completely unrelated to the others; he was killed by Eric Windhurst, a friend of his stepdaughters. In 2006, Windhurst pleaded guilty and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He was released on parole in 2020.
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