NH NH - Joanne Dunham, 15, Charlestown, 11 Jun 1968

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On a Tuesday
The Durham girl, he noted, died on a Tuesday. Her school attendance record showed she had been absent 10 days, 6 of them Tuesdays.

Chief Gibson also said investigators have evidence of a man, who was fishing near where the girl’s body was found, that he saw a light-colored auto cross a nearby bridge the morning of June 11. A man was driving and girl was leaning head-back against the center-post on the passenger’s side of the front seat.

The masking tape used to bind and asphyxiate the girl, authorities said, has been traced to one manufacturer, and that it had been in distribution only about a year at the time of the girl’s murder.



 
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Unsolved murder 55 years ago...
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Joanne Dunham, age 15

On June 11, 1968 at approximately 7:10 a.m., Joanne Dunham, age 15, was last seen while walking from her home at Raiche Mobile Homes in Charlestown, NH enroute to her bus stop on her way to school. She never got on the bus. Her body was found at approximately 4:15 p.m. the following day on a roped off dirt road on Quaker City Road in Unity NH approximately 5½ miles from where she was abducted. An autopsy determined that Joanne died of asphyxiation.

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Couldn't find an existing thread on Joanne.

From the NH Dept. of Justice website:

"On June 11, 1968 at approximately 7:10 a.m., Joanne Dunham, age 15, was last seen while walking from her home at Raiche Mobile Homes in Charlestown, NH enroute to her bus stop on her way to school. She never got on the bus. Her body was found at approximately 4:15 p.m. the following day on a roped off dirt road on Quaker City Road in Unity NH approximately 5½ miles from where she was abducted. An autopsy determined that Joanne died of asphyxiation."

Does anyone know if this case has been investigated as an early Rodney Alcala murder? According to most of the available timelines, Alcala was on the east coast in 1968 and worked as a counselor at a theatre camp near Lake Sunapee, right in between where Joanne disappeared from and the place her body was later found. The details of her murder line up seamlessly with Alcala's known preferences.

Joanne Dunham | Cold Case Unit | NH Department of Justice
I grew up in between where she went missing and where she was found. She went missing a couple of miles in one direction and was found about 3 miles in the other direction, just outside of the boundary line of property my parents had just bought, but hadn't yet started building the house I'd grow up in yet. I don't think her death was connected to the CT River Valley murders that happened in the years following. I think she was killed by someone much closer to home, someone who was familiar with Joanne's morning routine of walking to and catching the bus.
 
Joanne is my cousin. I've been looking for information on her case but there is so little there.
I had read that she had been absent numerous times prior that year, the majority of those days were also Tuesday, just like the day she went missing. I was curious if her parents had been aware of her other previous absences? Did they know where exactly she was on the other days(Tuesdays in particular) that she wasn't at school?
 

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