Clueless in New England: The Unsolved Disappearances of Paula Welden, Connie Smith and Katherine Hull

"Dooling is not just a dogged researcher who knows his ways around archives like few others, he s also a clear-eyed writer who allows the information to lead him where it will." --Republican-American

I recently read a book by Michael Dooling, a news librarian at another newspaper in Connecticut. He's also a writer with many published items, including two other books. Interesting historical topics seem to be a theme in his writing. The Middlebury resident's most recent book, "Clueless in New England," is a true crime story with an historical perspective. It presents a mystery, teasing the reader with the possibility of the disappearances of three young women as the work of a serial killer. We are teased because the disappearances have never been solved. Years and miles separate each disappearance, but the remains of only one of the women have ever been found. Dooling uncovers threads that could tie together the disappearances of Paula Welden, a Stamford resident who was a student at Bennington College in Vermont when she disappeared in 1946; Connie Smith of Wyoming, who left a Lakeville summer camp in 1952 and was last seen trying to catch a ride to the village center; and Katherine Hull, from Syracuse, N.Y., who disappeared a few years earlier when she went for a walk during a visit to her grandmother in Lebanon Springs, N.Y. Seven years later, hunters found her skull in the woods outside Pittsfield, Mass. Dooling leads the reader to wonder whether the three disappearances could have been solved if modern-day investigative techniques and tools had been available when they occurred. He applies profiling techniques to available information on the cases and presents the possibility that they could be connected by a serial criminal. He also explains the impact the disappearances had on the police forces of the day, especially the Vermont State Police. Welden's disappearance sparked the largest search in Vermont's history, but also highlighted the state's need for a better way to handle such situations. The three women had some things in common that Dooling looks at in the context of what might have attracted a predator's attention. The most obvious one? They were each hitchhiking prior to disappearing. Another possibility raised in the book is that there could have been other victims, too. A little history, a little mystery, and the underlying horror that this isn't fiction all add up to a book to be read when you are safely ensconced in a cozy location. Inside, with the doors locked. --Danbury News Times

It can be easy to be lulled into a false sense of security in New England. Even someone crammed into the noisiest neighborhoods of our cities can drive an hour or less and be surrounded by peaceful and comforting forest. Seemingly, in the arms of nature, nothing should ever go wrong. But things do go wrong, and people can lose their way. In this, his third book, Mr. Dooling recounts the movements of these three young women who vanished while hitchhiking on remote rural roads and the mechanics and shortcomings of each search effort. Paula Welden, a Stamford resident and student at Bennington College in Vermont, disappeared in 1946 while hitching a ride along the Long Trail, resulting in the largest search in Vermont history. Katherine Hull, visiting her grandmother in Lebanon Springs, N.Y., vanished in 1936. Her skull was found perched in a tree seven years later in Pittsfield, Mass. The police inexplicably ruled out foul play in the Hull case; likely, in Mr. Dooling s opinion, because they knew the case would be unsolvable seven years after she had vanished. Nothing was ever found of 10-year-old Connie Smith, who wandered away from YMCA Camp Sloane in Lakeville one day in the summer of 1952. She had had her nose bloodied and glasses broken earlier that day exactly why was unclear, but it was likely roughhousing session with her bunkmates and was probably going to call her parents in Wyoming from a phone in town because she was homesick. Connie was big for her age, Mr. Dooling reports, and smart, too. Her father, an imposing, tall figure in dungarees and a cowboy hat, flew out from his cattle ranch in Wyoming and chartered his own plane to search for her. The Connecticut State Police far and away the most competent and high-tech law enforcement agency in the tri-state area at that time exhausted all its reserves. People are far less naïve about the dangers young women face than they once were. Mr. Dooling said there is a marked difference between the 1940s and 50s and today concerning how people view missing persons, and the nature of police work has evolved. In the 50s when girls disappeared, [it was] assumed they got lost, ran away, had amnesia, were roaming around a distant city, joined a convent or something like that, Mr. Dooling said. Rape and murder were the bottom of the list. Nowadays, I think that s the first thing they think of. The police officers who investigated these cases are all now passed away, and he was unable to contact any of the victims relatives. Mr. Dooling did, however, contact one person who was close to that happened long ago: a man now in his 80s, living out West, who was with the hunting party in Pittsfield that found Katherine Hull s skull perched in a tree. It was his first hunting trip, at age 15, and that was what they found, said Mr. Dooling. He absolutely remembered that day. The skeletons of Connie Smith and Paula Welden are still somewhere waiting to be found out there in those forests, perhaps beneath six decades of decomposed leaves or in the bottom of a centuries-old iron mine shaft. And if they met their ends at the hands of another person rather than from wild animals or the elements, the perpetrators may still roam free somewhere. Each day is a little harder to face, Connie Smith s mother, Helen, wrote in a desperate letter to The Hartford Courant two years after her child vanished. We all know we might lose our children. But not to know what happened to her isn t human. Please do all you can. Sometimes all we can do simply may not be enough. --Litchfield County Times

Michael C. Dooling is a historical writer, antiquarian bookseller, and a news librarian for the Republican-American in Waterbury, Connecticut. He is the author of two previous books - An Historical Account of Charles Island and Milford Lost & Found - and has written articles published in historical journals and magazines. His writings have appeared in Naval History, The Log of Mystic Seaport, Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter, and Writer's Digest. Michael has a Master of Arts degree in psychology and puts this background to good use in Clueless in New England. His present work merges meticulous historical research with modern technological resources and good old-fashioned detective work.