Everett Delano, a hard-working Navy man

Everett Delano stayed busy. Between working security as an overnight watchman, and his part-time shifts at a combo gas station/mechanic shop, he was putting in 60-hour weeks. He had three kids: Daryl, Darlene, and Denise, and he worked hard to provide for them.

The family had lived all over the place with his work in the US Navy in radar and radio operations; from Rhode Island to Florida; from California to South Carolina. Everett had a successful career — achieving the rank of Chief Petty Officer.

He had entered the service in 1941 at the outset of World War 2, and served throughout the war primarily on ships in the Pacific. The family mostly lived in base housing as they moved around, but although their scenery and friendships changed from year to year, they were anchored by visits to see Everett’s extended family in Orange, Massachusetts and his wife’s family near New London, New Hampshire.

Everett would be gone for months at a time when he was at sea on ships in the Mediterranean, but when he was in town working on base, he had regular hours, and would spend a lot of time with his family.

Retiring from the Navy to stay put in Wilmot

Blanche was looking for more stability in their living situation – especially as the kids were getting older – and they decided to settle down near her family in Wilmot, New Hampshire, a small town nestled in the valleys of the mountains that lie between Concord and Lebanon, New Hampshire. So, in 1964, Everett retired from the Navy.

Everett was a high-ranking enlisted man in the Navy with authority and a lot of responsibility, and Daryl suspected that he may have struggled to adapt to his new life as a civilian. He looked for work in radio or television repair, but he couldn’t find anything close enough to Wilmot. And after an entire of career of short commutes while living on base, he wasn’t too keen on an hour-plus commute to nearby larger towns.

Although he was still looking around for other options, in the meantime, he worked as a security officer on the night shift at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, and he picked up shifts at a gas station/mechanic shop in Andover.

An ordinary day in 1966

September 1st, 1966, was an ordinary day for Everett. He drove by the familiar Colonial-style buildings with their signature green shutters and dormer windows as he cruised down Main Street in Andover–another small town that even in 2021 still doesn’t have a stop light–and pulled into Sanborn Auto Body, where he worked. Kenneth Sanborn, the owner, was partnered with Gulf Oil, and had the prototypical Gulf service station: a 2-bay garage attached to a small office area with a walk-up window where most of the gas transactions were handled. The front of the building was flat as a pancake (a fun, New England example of Western false front architecture) and the notched top provided a little architectural interest as well as a nice white siding backdrop for a simple sign. The town’s post office was also contained within the small building and together it was a hub of activity for the little town: get your car fixed, get your mail, and get some gas.

Something goes horribly wrong

At 8:50AM that morning, Kenneth asked Everett to hold down the fort because he was heading out to run some errands. Everett primarily helped in the office to ring up transactions and at the pump, refilling customer’s cars with fuel. This was the era of “full-service gas stations” and “gas station attendants”.

Between 8:50AM and 9:25AM, there was activity every ten minutes or so. The cash register tape indicated 3 sales had occurred.

At 9:25AM, a local who knew Everett (Marilyn Bacon) drove by the station and waved to him. He was backing up a vehicle at that moment. He smiled and waved back.

Between 9:25AM and 9:35AM that morning, somebody robbed Sanborn Auto Body, and Everett was the only employee there at the time.

The thief confronted Everett and absconded with all the money that was in the register’s cash drawer–estimated to be about $75 - $100, but didn’t make off with the cash box hidden below which contained an additional $500.

A few minutes after the thief departed, a white vehicle pulled up and waited for a bit, hoping that an attendant would help them get their tank filled. When no one appeared, they grew impatient.

Around 9:45AM, a couple of guys, Ralph and Bruce, showed up. They saw that white car leave and the woman who was driving shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, I don’t know where the attendant is so I’m taking off. They popped their head into the office and heard some noise that sounded almost like snoring. They saw a man laying face-down on the office floor, and thought that maybe he was passed out drunk.

Closer to 10:00AM, three more men arrived: Leon, William, and Pat. Ralph and Bruce were still there and they told the new group that “someone was asleep inside on the floor.” Leon took a look in the office and discovered a pool of blood forming under the man’s head and immediately called the New Hampshire State Police as well as the nearest hospital in New London. Meanwhile, Ralph, from the first group of two men, drove to the nearby Sanborn residence and fetched Kenneth’s wife.

They noticed that the cash register drawer was left open and empty and they started to put two and two together. This was a crime scene… and a tragedy.

Everett is shot 3 times, and never regains consciousness

Both the police and the paramedics arrived promptly and Everett was transported to New London Hospital where he was stabilized. Police initially believed that he was the victim of a vicious beating and it wasn’t until he was inspected by medical professionals that it was discovered he had been shot three times in the head by a .22 caliber handgun.

Everett was in critical condition. He was transferred to a major hospital, Mary Hitchcock Hospital, in Lebanon, with dim prospects for recovery.

The next day, at Mary Hitchcock Hospital, Everett passed away, and a father and husband was stolen from his family.

Two strokes of luck

Meanwhile, the police were processing the crime scene.

In an extraordinary stroke of luck, nobody turned off the water that had been running in the men’s restroom since the horrid scene was discovered. When Sanborn’s wife arrived, she was careful not to disturb the handles of the faucets either, and in order to kill the flow of water, she instead shut off the water pump from outside (I presume that they were on well water). The police believed that the robber may have been the last person to touch the bathroom faucet and the shiny chrome of the fixture would provide an excellent surface for pulling a fingerprint. The state police crime scene technician worked carefully and pulled a good quality latent fingerprint from the faucet.

The police interviewed everyone present and also canvassed the neighborhood. They were the ones to discover Everett’s friend, Marilyn (the woman he waved to), and they even found a man who heard the three gun shots as he was driving by the service station. He estimated the time of the shots as 9:45AM, but it was Everett’s watch that would have the last word. His watch was struck by a bullet which froze the hour and the minute hand at the exact time of the shooting: 9:35AM.

An autopsy was performed shortly thereafter and the medical examiner determined that two of the gunshot wounds to his head had happened when Everett was upright, and the third one, which had gunpowder residue near the entry wound, was inflicted while Everett was on the ground, and the gun was held nearly touching his head. The murderer clearly intended to leave no witnesses.

Investigation continues

On September 7th, 6 days after the crime, the New Hampshire State Police sent the fingerprint lifted from the faucet to the FBI to add to their large national collection.

In the months that followed the state police checked purchase records of .22 caliber firearms and collected many guns from nearby residents in Andover and from outsiders who had recently purchased .22’s in the vicinity. These guns were subjected to ballistic testing, but none of the guns collected fired the bullets recovered from the scene or the victim.

They also searched the nearby waterway, Blackwater River, hoping that the killer had ditched the weapon, but the searches turned up nothing.

By the end of 1966, the case went cold.

Fingerprint technology advances (1966 - 1999)

In 1975 a technology company called Rockwell International won a contract to create five automatic fingerprint readers that were collectively dubbed “Finder.” They delivered them to the FBI and in the years that followed the FBI successfully converted 15 million criminal fingerprint cards into digital records.

Over the following 10 years, Rockwell sold systems to many major metropolitan police departments in the US and the modernization of the old ink and paper fingerprint card system was truly underway.

By 1999, the FBI’s database, called IAFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System), still the world’s largest fingerprint database, contained fingerprints that identified 64 million individuals and was available on-demand to law enforcement around the country.

New Hampshire Cold Case Unit (2009 - 2013)

In 2009, the state of New Hampshire formed its cold case unit and they did an inventory of all the unsolved homicides in the state’s history, but Everett’s name wasn’t included on the list. He had been forgotten. It wasn’t until 2013 when Everett’s youngest daughter, Darlene, called up and brought it to their attention that efforts were renewed to solve the (then) 47-year-old cold case, and... they didn’t have to look very far.

A fingerprint match!

The fingerprint found at the crime scene had never been entered into and compared to known criminals in IAFIS database. Long were the days of manually comparing fingerprints. By this point in 2013, the digital database, handled by the FBI, was a speedy method to matching fingerprints found at a scene against millions of people with a criminal rap sheet.

When investigators submitted the fingerprint taken from the bathroom faucet, it came back with a match... and after cross-checking it with the State Police Forensics Lab, the match was confirmed as belonging to Thomas Cass, who was 20 in 1966.

The lab also tested the hair found in the cash register and the cigarette butt found on the ground, but were unable to pull DNA from either of them.

Prime suspect: Thomas Cass

Thomas Cass was no stranger to the law. He accrued 13 convictions between 1966 and 2000 in NH, MA, and VT for repeat charges of theft, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and escaping from prison.... twice. His final conviction in Vermont in 2000 was for manufacturing drugs at a federal prison.

His convictions are summarized in a table below.

Cass questioned

In the fall of 2013, 47 years after the crime was committed, New Hampshire investigators met with Thomas Cass.

Thomas Cass told investigators that he joined the army at 18 around 1963, and left three years later under a “general discharge”, which in most cases means something wasn’t quite up to standard.

Immediately after, in 1966, he moved back home to Vermont and got married before moving to Springfield, Massachusetts. The couple lived there until 1967 when he was arrested for robbery. In this particular incident, Cass said the robbery was at a gas station in Springfield using a sawed-off shotgun as a weapon. Cass and two accomplices, Ray Bennett and Frank Hutchins, were arrested while attempting to flee the scene.

Cass told them that he had spent most of his life behind bars, and acknowledged his criminal history. But he denied having any involvement in Everett’s murder—he didn’t know who he was—and even claimed to not know where Andover, NH was, saying he’d only ever been to the state once in his life. Though in the same interview he also mentioned he’d once stolen a car from Vermont and drove it to NH... but apparently that time didn’t count. Or the time that he was convicted for two criminal offenses in Grafton County District Court in New Hampshire.

A few months later investigators met with Cass a second time, asking if he would submit DNA samples to which he agreed, however when asked to take a polygraph test, he refused.

People who knew Cass confirm his violent tendencies

Around this time, people who were close to Cass were also interviewed. Friends, family, and an ex-wife, who told them that Cass first introduced himself to her as a “business man and a crook.” She said that when they first met, Cass was working as a roadie for a rock n’ roll band, Myles Connor and the Wild Ones, who was known at the time for his “wild New England rock n’ roll” in a similar vein to the hip-shakin’ piano tunes of Jerry Lee Lewis.

Myles Connor also moonlighted as an art thief who robbed from museums. He was featured in the Netflix documentary, This is a Robbery, about the infamous 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist. He was also convicted of a double homicide in 1981, but the conviction was overturned a few years later during a second trial. Myles Connor and Thomas Cass were best buddies, Myles even acknowledged him in his book, The Art of the Heist: Confessions of a Master Thief, saying “Tommy Cass: you’ll always be my pal”.

Also around the time he was a roadie for Myles, Cass broke into a family’s home and terrorized them, an incident that once again landed him in prison.

Cass’s ex-wife told investigators that his home life growing up was rough—his father was an alcoholic and the household was abusive. She also said that he was a very violent person, and on multiple occasions had threatened to kill her. She subsequently got a restraining order, and ultimately, a divorce.

She mentioned Cass would frequently brag about his crimes, proudly calling himself a “career criminal”. She also believed that he had no problem with hurting people to get what he wanted.

Another ex-wife told investigators the company Cass kept was no better than he, telling them of a conversation she overheard between his friends laughing and boasting over a murder they’d allegedly gotten away with in the 70’s. She also recalled an evening where Cass stormed out of their home, gun in hand, to go take care of somebody who owed him money. On occasion, she would witness the bloody and beaten aftermath of people who crossed Cass, and she remembered a time he used the butt of one of his many guns to get his point across.

Cass refuses to return to prison

A few months later, in February 2014, the investigators made a surprise visit to Thomas Cass. They said that forensic evidence had been collected at the scene of Everett Delano’s 1966 murder that linked him to the crime. Cass refused to speak and requested a lawyer. Following the interview, a search warrant was granted in an attempt to find the .22 caliber handgun, but they didn’t find the murder weapon.

Four days later, on February 24th, 2014.... Thomas Cass shot himself with a .45 caliber handgun and died by suicide at the age of 67.

His girlfriend, Jane, told the 911 operator that he believed the police were coming to arrest him that day in relation to a cold case, so he beat them to the punch, refusing to go back to prison again.

What now?

The Cold Case Unit told the Delano family in 2014 what they had learned about the fingerprint match and that the primary suspect had died by suicide. With his death, they said that they were confident who the killer was and that they would make an official announcement and issue their findings in a report.

That report took five years to produce.

In November 2018, the CCU interviewed Jane again about Cass, perhaps hoping to get that final ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ confirmation that he was the killer, but she reiterated that Cass had never said anything to her that would incriminate him. The closest he had come was what he had said about ‘keeping quiet when you commit a crime that has no statute of limitations’.

Four months later, on February 20th 2019, New Hampshire Cold Case Unit finally released its formal report on the 1966 murder of Everett Delano, and announced that after 52 years, the case had officially been solved.

Susan Morrell, an asst attorney general for NH who oversaw the cold case unit stated that the reason it took five years to announce, despite knowing since before Thomas Cass’s death in 2014, was because of the intense verification process and lack of resources and staffing for the department.

Delano family issues a statement

In response to the news, the Delano family issued this statement: “Our family would like to take the opportunity to not only thank the initial investigators of our father’s homicide, but also the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit. Without their diligent efforts, we would not be here today. We are happy this day has come where our family has been given a small measure of justice. For almost 53 years, our family has wondered what happened on Sept. 1, 1966. There was a very long time our family didn’t know if we would ever receive the answers about what happened that day. Today, our family has the long overdue answers we have been waiting for.”

The depravity and boldness of the crime

Thomas Cass killed a man in cold blood—a dad with a loving family; a responsible, honest, and hardworking member of the community who was just doing his job—all because he didn’t want to leave any witnesses behind. The biggest thing Thomas Cass robbed that day was not from the cash register. Not only did he shoot Everett twice, he fired a third and final round at close range to the back of his head after he’d had already fallen to the ground, defenseless. A vicious act that showed Cass’s true colors and would refute any claims of self-defense that he may have invoked if he’d been caught.

Thomas Cass was brazen: he robbed a gas station post office building on Main Street in the prime time of the morning—likely one of the busiest spots in Andover. It’s possible he was interrupted, which is why the faucet was left on, but he wasn’t caught. He got away. What are the odds he wasn’t caught in act? He was very lucky. While I’m not sure if this senseless act of violence could have been prevented, I’m sure if it happened today, the killer would be caught.

There is always hope. Never give up.

In a way, Everett Delano and his family never got justice. Cass evaded law enforcement by taking his own life. He fled from justice. At least the Delano family has some solace knowing their father’s mystery killer isn’t still out there.

Despite this, Everett’s story is still one of hope. Hope that a case can be solved, even after a lifetime’s worth of years have passed. Hope against the naysayers who say “this will never be solved.” Hope that fights against the odds.

So, here’s to the ones who fight for justice, whose cases have gone on 5 decades without answers. There is always hope. Ask about your family’s case. There might just be fingerprint on file that’s waiting for its match to be made.

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Sources For This Episode

Newspaper articles

Various articles from Greenfield Recorder Gazette, The Burlington Free Press, The Portsmouth Herald, and The United Opinion written by the associated press, Rik Stevens and other various uncredited authors. Full listing here.

Online written sources

'AG: How Police Recently Solved…' (InDepthNH), 2/20/2019, by Bob Charest

'The 1966 Delano case, solved' (Defrosting Cold Cases), 2/20/2019, by Alice de Sturler

'Modern forensics solves an Andover…' (Eagle Times), 2/21/2019, no author credited

'Finally, after more than five decades…' (Concord Monitor), 2/21/2019, by Ray Duckler

'New Hampshire's Oldest Cold Case Cracked…' (Oxygen), 2/26/2019, by Ethan Harfenist

Official documents and correspondence

Attorney General’s report on the case, issued 2/20/2019 (likely authored by the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit)

Photo Sources

Images of Delano family, compliments of Daryl Delano

Gravestone images, FindAGrave.com

Thomas Cass and crime scene images, New Hampshire Cold Case Unit

Interviews

Daryl Delano

Credits

Created, researched, written, told, and edited by Kristen Seavey

Research, writing, photo editing support by Byron Willis