“During interviews conducted for this book (Murder in a Small Town: The Tragic Death of Stacey Burns) friends of Stacey Burns identified three women and one additional man besides Jim Vittum and Ed Burns who, they believe, could have killed Stacey Burns.”

This quote appears on page 125 of the draft of Murder in a Small Town . . .  This issue has been addressed in this blog previously, but is important enough to mention yet again. The six possible suspects mentioned in the above quotation do not include three other scenarios which a variety of credible people have related to me. One is the “murder for hire” scheme. A second is Stacey’s knowledge of the “drug culture” in Wolfeboro, and the possibility that she was silenced because of that knowledge. The third is an accusation of a collusion among lawyers and others involved in a wide ranging conspiracy of unethical and illegal behavior.

If one adds all of these possibilities together, you get a plethora of suspects.  So, seven years and seven months after Stacey’s murder, are we no closer to determining what happened? It seems to me (granted, the police see me as an untrained, uninformed or misinformed ordinary citizen) that we have two choices.

  1. The simple scenario-Stacey’s murder was carried out by a single person with a burning rage in his/her heart and/or a singularly strong motive to want Stacey dead.
  2. The complicated scenario- Stacey’s murder was carried out by a group of people who felt that a living Stacey Burns somehow represented a dangerous threat to them.

Is this an over-simplification? It is going on eight years, folks. The longer it goes, the more I am inclined to lean toward the complicated scenario.

Duke