The Fiendish Murder of Rita Bouchard
Rita Bouchard. 1947, Pawtucket, RI.
Rita was paranoid. She kept to herself. She had a fear of crime. Despite this paranoia, though, she had regular dates with different boys, including an older photographer. Rita was just 17. She didn’t drive and took public transportation everywhere. She worked the night shift at the Rhode Island Fabric Company, from 3:00PM - 11:00PM, and this would put her out at night around midnight, taking public transit home. She would often run from the bus to her front door and arrive panting/out of breath because she feared that she was vulnerable walking alone at night. There were some other crimes against women in the area that may have contributed to her fears.
The newspapers reported of a number of attacks on women in Pawtucket in the year leading up to January 1947. An assailant would drag women from the sidewalk and into his car and rape them. The latest attack was on January 26th, a little over a week ago, when a 14-year-old girl on the way home from a movie was seized and punched by a man. But she was able to fight him off and flee to safety. The assailant had not been identified because he always wore a mask.
Rita’s final day at work
By January of 1947, Rita had moved out of her foster home and been reunited with her brothers at the home of her aunt and uncle.
On the night of Friday, January 31st, 1947, Rita went to work for her evening shift, leaving the house at 2:00PM. Her shift wasn’t scheduled to begin until 3:00PM. She arrived for work sometime between 2:00PM and 3:00PM. At the beginning of her shift, she collected her weekly wages ($34.00). Combined with what she brought to work ($5 or $6), she had a total of about $40 in her purse.
At 4:00PM, she asked her supervisor if she could leave for a doctor’s appointment, complaining of illness, but her doctor (Gerald Curreri) said that he didn’t see her that night. She also told her best friend, Theresa Patenaude, that she was feeling ill. She also told her that she was planning to visit her mother (at Rhode Island State Sanatorium, in Burrillville, Rhode Island, approx 40 miles away in the northwest corner of the state!) Rita left some uneaten sandwiches at work, which suggested that she was planning to return to the mill. She told her supervisor that she would be back later. She departed at 5:27PM according to the timecard machine.
It’s unclear what happened exactly, but she never returned to work.
That evening her uncle (Thomas Luminello) went to a club meeting (Stella d’Italia) that ran until midnight. When he returned home, he encountered his nephew (14-year-old brother of Rita’s) in the kitchen. He didn’t say anything about Rita missing, and he assumed everyone was in bed, so he retired. They didn’t know that Rita had not returned.
A startling discovery
A 56-year-old man (Joseph Curry) who lived about 3 blocks away (28 Warwick Road) was out walking on a trail that ran parallel to Ten Mile River. He was off of work from the bleachery, and he would often hike through the woods. He spotted what appeared to him to be either a bundle of clothes or a rock that was unfamiliar to him—he took the trail regularly and recognized its features. On closer inspection, he realized that it was the body of a young woman. He hurried to a nearby house (on Parkside Avenue) and telephoned the police. He remained there, waiting for police, and then directed them to the clearing where he’d made his gruesome discovery. The muddy glen was difficult to reach—requiring that you go through a thicket of small trees, huckleberry bushes, and heavy vines. As they approached, their boots sank several inches into the mud.
Rita was gone—she had been stabbed numerous times and was left for dead. She was found lying on her back, resting on her coat. She wore a light-blue print dress with a white belt, yellow bobby socks (a mid-calf length sock that was usually folded over), sport shoes (brown and white saddle shoes), a gold wristwatch on her left arm, and a light gray coat. Her arms were not in her coat; she was resting upon it. Her clothes showed no obvious sign of struggle. Four feet from her body was a slender birch tree with freshly-slashed bark (likely made with an axe).
Rita’s purse and her money were missing. So were her eyeglasses. But her wristwatch remained, leading police to believe that robbery was not the motive.
Police arrive
Police searched the vicinity for clues while waiting for the medical examiner to arrive. Dr. Gaudet showed up and gave permission for the body to be removed. Police took her body from the clearing on a stretcher to a black hearse stenciled with the letters AMBULANCE which carried to the morgue.
Dr. Gaudet examined her body that evening and said that he believed that she had been dead for no more than 12 hours, which would have put her time of death as after 4:00AM. Rita was stabbed more than 30 times in her throat, chest, and back. Her neck had been cut from ear to ear. The doctor ruled her cause of death to be shock and hemorrhage from the stab wounds. One stab wound went through her breast and cut the heart; another pierced the breast and tore a lung; two in the back severed major arteries. He said that any of those four stab wounds could have caused her death. But he later said that the fatal stab wound was one of the three that went through her coat and into her back.
The wounds to her body corresponded to cuts in her clothing, which suggested that she was fully clothed when she was attacked. Her back had 13 stab wounds, but there were only 3 holes in her jacket, implying that after the first three pierced her jacket and dress, the killer removed her jacket and continued to stab her another 10 times through the dress alone.
Because of the lack of blood in the marshy clearing and the fact that her shoes were free of mud, police believed that Rita had been stabbed to death elsewhere and her body taken to the nearby trail by car, and carried to the clearing. So they were on the lookout for cars with bloodstains on the upholstery.
She had no identification on her, so they were at a loss as to her identity.
Rita identified
Around 4:30PM, a radio broadcast went out about a young woman’s body found in the woods with a description of her. She was 5FT 3IN, weighed around 120 lbs, and had brown hair. Rita’s uncle heard the broadcast and believed that it could be Rita. He then went to his son’s (Rita’s cousin’s) home and telephoned the hospital. They referred him to the police and two detectives went to meet him at his home. Rita’s uncle and his son accompanied the two policemen to the hospital and, at 7:10PM, identified her body.
Armand Lemos, a 20-year-old man who was courting Rita, arrived at the Luminello home early in the evening to keep a date with her, only to learn of her death.
The murder site
The spot where her body was found was between Notre Dame Cemetery and Ten Mile River. From the back of the cemetery to the river’s edge was a distance of 500 feet, and if you walked through the woods, you would cross two paths. The first was a dirt road that ran behind the cemetery, barely wide enough for a vehicle, that nearby residents said was used as a lovers’ lane. The second was an overgrown walking path that traversed the river’s bank; it had been carved out by some boys to gain access to a swimming hole off the river they called “Black Beauty” in the summer months. And it was between these two paths—the dirt road and the walking path—where Rita’s body was found. She was about 125 feet off of the dirt road, which police had presumed had been used. The dirt road was accessible from nearby residential streets on either end of the cemetery, and it was assumed that someone either drove Rita there in their own automobile, or was dropped off nearby by a taxi or bus. It was about 2.5 miles away from her work at the Rhode Island Fabric Mill.
Next day - Sunday, Feb 2, 1947
The next afternoon the medical examiner announced he had submitted her vital organs to the state pathologist for testing to see if she had consumed alcohol prior to her murder.
Rita’s family looked through her things and discovered an address book that contained names and addresses of her girl friends. They turned it over to authorities.
Police continued to search the area for Rita’s eyeglasses that she always wore (which were not found with her body). And her handbag—which contained about $40. They also searched for the murder weapon—a thin dagger called a stiletto.
Retracing Rita’s final steps
Rita’s boss and other employees said she usually walked a block to Prospect Street to get a bus to downtown Pawtucket and from there transferred to a Mineral Spring Avenue bus that took her to North Providence. From door to door, the trip from work to her home was 4 miles. Another worker at the plant said he took the same bus as her each day and that Rita invariably sat alone, if possible, and rode without speaking to other passengers.
Police spoke to all of the city bus drivers from Friday night and there were several drivers that recalled seeing Rita.
Her regular bus driver, who took her from the mill to downtown Pawtucket, said that he remembered, “a girl with tortoise-shell spectacles and a light coat” boarding his bus at 5:35PM on Friday, which would coincide exactly with her 5:27PM departure from work.
But the driver of the bus that ran from downtown Pawtucket to her home on Mineral Spring said that Rita was not on any of the three buses that night that he drove.
After that, there were a few sightings between 6:00PM and 9:00PM from other bus and streetcar drivers, but none of them were on her typical route, and may have misidentified her. After her bus ride from work to downtown, little could be certain.
Rita’s difficult childhood
At 8:00AM the next morning, a service was held at the same funeral home and at 9:00AM a mass was held at the Church of the Presentation in North Providence. Afterward, Rita was buried in St. Francis Cemetery in Pawtucket.
No obituary was published for Rita Bouchard in the Pawtucket Times or the Providence Journal.
Rita was born in 1929 or 1930 in North Providence. If she were alive today (in 2023) she would be 94 years old. Rita was the second-oldest of five siblings. Altogether, there were two brothers and three sisters.
When she was just 4 years old, while she was living with her parents in Pawtucket, she was out playing near the Moshassuck River. She lost her balance and fell six feet into its waters. Her friends ran to fetch help and found a 17-year-old boy who ran to the bank, dove in fully clothed, and pulled her out. She was semi-conscious. He administered CPR and revived her quickly. It’s unclear what—if any—long-term effect this had on her life, but it’s easy to think her later general fear and paranoia might be related to this childhood trauma.
Her father soon became stricken with tuberculosis, and he went to live full-time at a medical facility called a sanatorium. Unfortunately, her father succumbed to the disease. He died in 1939 when Rita was 9 years old at the Rhode Island State Sanatorium in Burrillville. And her mother soon contracted tuberculosis as well and ended up at the same facility.
Rita became a ward of the state, split up from her siblings, and not long after her father’s death, her mother, too, went to Burrillville hoping for a better outcome.
During the war years, Rita and her younger sister, Mildred, lived with a foster mother—Mary Lewis—in Pawtucket. Her brother lived with her aunt and uncle, Thomas and Mary Luminello. Rita was a student at the Baldwin Street School, but was grouped with other special-needs children. At 15, she left school and started work.
Rita’s early start to work
Prior to working at the fabric mill, Rita was employed at Memorial Hospital as a kitchen helper. And, curiously, when she left the hospital, her part-time kitchen job was given to her younger sister, Mildred.
Rita spent most of her time outside of work at the movies with her sister Mildred or at home listening to the radio.
Rita had worked at the fabric mill for approximately one year and was well-liked by her boss, Alberic Degryse—she was obedient and conscientious—but frequently absent.
According to her foster mother, Rita (15-years-old at the time) met an older photographer when he came to their residence to take photos of her soldier son was home visiting from being overseas. She said she disapproved of him because of the age difference and she forbade her to see him. Despite this, Rita’s best friend, Theresa Patenaude, said Rita and “Al” went steady for some time without her family's knowledge. Mary recalled a time that she came home late from a work shift and confessed that the older photographer had brought her home. Mary said that her rule was that men had to come by the house to pick her up. Despite this transgression, Mary described Rita as quiet and obedient, but not quick-witted.
In August of 1946, after having worked at the mill for 9 months, Rita moved in with her aunt and uncle and reunited with her brothers. This is where she was living when she was killed. The address was 949 Mineral Spring Ave in North Providence. Around this time, Rita took out a $1,000 life insurance policy on herself and named her younger sister, Mildred, as the beneficiary.
According to her uncle, Rita was “a very good girl” who “didn’t go out with the boys.” She was very quiet and retiring and very devoted to her siblings. Her aunt described Rita as being very timid and expressed fears of being attacked by men. She read about them in the newspaper. “Many nights she came running up the stairs, panting with fear. Rita customarily asked the bus driver who drove her home to ride past the usual stop so he could leave her directly at her door.” Her sister said she “was afraid of death not only at the hands of some man—she was even afraid of death in crossing streets where traffic was heavy.”
Her mother, Dora, who was confined at the state sanatorium, described her as a good girl with no bad habits.
Raymond Patenaude
On Tuesday, a 17-year-old boy that worked with Rita at the mill, Raymond Patenaude, was detained for questioning by police. Police had asked a judge to extend his detention another 24 hours, so it was going on 48 hours of questioning.
He had been off for 2 weeks because of illness, but he dropped in to see his sister at the mill on Friday—the day of Rita’s disappearance—to borrow a dollar. He told his foreman that he would be returning to work (as a dishwasher) because he was feeling better. His sister was Theresa Patenaude, Rita’s best friend. He was friends with Rita from school and had been on four dates with her in the six weeks leading up to her disappearance.
He said that he saw Rita at work around 3:30PM, and he later went to a movie and took a long walk until about 11:00PM when he got on a bus and went home. He wasn’t around on Saturday morning when his family woke up, and he said that he had been unable to sleep, so he left early (6:00AM) to go to a restaurant for some breakfast. Though he had initially made no mention of it in his account to police, a cab driver said that he had given Raymond a ride on Saturday afternoon from Providence into Pawtucket. The cab driver also made note of a deep scratch on his neck and a conversation about removing bloodstains from a coat sleeve. Confronted by the cab driver, the youth defiantly admitted that he had been in his cab. “Yes, I came out from Providence in a taxi. What of it!?”
Despite the persistent questioning, Raymond remained unflappable and answered all questions with extreme politeness—a habit he said he had learned when he was at the Sockanosset School (a school for kids that were, quote, “idle, vicious, or vagrant.”)
Thursday, Feb. 6, 1947 – Raymond released
Raymond was finally released after having undergone more than 48 hours of police interrogation. Even though they had permission from a judge to hold him longer, they released him. His alibi was confirmed and police determined he was not involved in Rita’s death. Police said that a taxi driver told them that he had picked up Raymond at 11:00PM the night of Rita’s disappearance and drove him about a half mile along Prospect Street. Raymond, who had an affinity for taxi rides, said that he was looking for a girl who had been fighting with her boyfriend—who was a friend of his. He hoped to mediate the situation. After driving around for about 15 minutes, unable to find the girl, the taxi driver let him out near his home. Police located the girl and she confirmed that her boyfriend was a close friend of Raymond’s and that she was, in fact, angry with him.
Also this night, a black-handled hunting knife—a type often used by Boy Scouts—was found at a diner’s parking lot and turned into police as a possible clue.
The next morning the knife was sent to the state laboratory for analysis, and by the afternoon, they had their results. The knife had no traces of blood—the marks on it were rust. It was ruled out as the potential murder weapon.
Police theory revised
A week after Rita turned up dead, police walked back their theory about where Rita had been killed. They said it was possible that she had been lured to the spot by someone she trusted and killed there in the marshy clearing. They also said that it might have been a woman who was responsible for Rita’s death.
Murder weapon found?
On February 18th, a thin dagger, about 12 inches long, called a stiletto, was discovered by 8-year-old boy near the entrance of the Ten Mile River park, approximately half a mile from where her body was discovered. He and four other companions were on bikes and had just returned from nearby Seekonk, Massachusetts.
He told police that as he was walking near a bus stop he kicked a hard object on the ground along the inner edge of the sidewalk and discovered it was a knife.
The 8” long blade was one and one-eighth inches wide at its center and tapered down to a sharp point. The black handle was four inches long and was capped off with a brass knob. The guard bent down on one side and upward on the other.
The medical examiner said that the knife could have inflicted the wounds to Rita’s body and that the stains could be blood. He turned it over to the state to do testing. Acting Chief Wadsworth said that the knife, was “the best lead yet.”
The next day a state pathologist and toxicologist said that the staining on the knife was, in fact, human blood. There was so little, though, that they couldn’t determine the blood type. No fingerprints were found on the knife.
On February 20th, two days after the knife was discovered, a photo of it appeared in the newspaper, adjacent to a ruler, with a precise description. The acting chief said, “It is possible someone lost this knife... or it was stolen. If so, we would like to know to whom it belonged.”
Raymond confesses?
On Wednesday, March 19th, a month and a half after Rita was found, Raymond Patenaude was apprehended by police on a sexual offense involving an 8-year-old boy.
Raymond told police that he dreamt several days ago that he had committed Rita’s murder, so they decided to question him again. He said that he realized that it hadn’t been a dream at all, but a repressed memory. The Pawtucket Times printed the dream, word for word.
“I dreamed that the night of Jan 31, when Rita disappeared, I went to a movie downtown... early in the evening. Then, all of a sudden, I turned around, and there was Rita sitting beside me. I said, ‘Let's go out for a walk.’ We walked up Main Street and went to Collyer's Park. We sat on a bench for a while.
Then an automobile pulled up and a man I don’t know called out to Rita and asked if she wanted to go for a ride. She said ‘alright’ so we all went to Slater Park and sat on a bench near the entrance. Then I wanted to come back downtown, and I asked to be driven back. They dropped me off near a restaurant and the man asked Rita if she wanted to go back to Slater Park.
Rita said she wanted to go back so they left me. After a while, I took a bus to go back and see what was happening to Rita. I got to the park and there she was sitting on the bench. She was crying. I asked her what she was crying about, and she slapped my face then she kicked me in the groin! I passed out!
When I came to, I found myself lying on the ground in the woods. I turned and there was Rita lying alongside me. I called to her but she didn’t answer. Then I noticed she was covered with blood and that a knife was near her. I got up and walked away. After a short distance, there was a small bridge and I leaned up against the bridge support... I was feeling tired. Finally, I got out of the woods, took a bus, and went home. It was about 9:30PM by that time.”
Raymond was a troubled boy. He was described as nervous, impulsive, and restless. At the full moon, he was said to become irritable and impatient and suffer headaches on the side of his head and his forehead. He left school at 15 years old, when he flatly refused to go back. He was illiterate—the only thing he could write was his name. When Raymond was 16, he was sentenced to nine months at the Sockanosset School for Boys on charges of stealing cars and committing “immoral acts” with boys and girls—on numerous occasions. He had been released in September of 1946, five months before Rita’s murder. After his release, he spent time both at home and working at the mills. He loved taxicabs—being driven around—so much so, that his father commented that he thought he spent too much money doing so.
A closer look at Raymond’s story
Though police were desperate to solve the murder, there were inconsistencies in Raymond’s story that they couldn’t overlook.
Raymond said that he awoke next to her in the dark, and the acting chief asked him if he had soiled his clothes. Raymond replied casually, “Oh, I only had a couple of leaves on the front of my coat, and I brushed them off.” The area where her body was found was a few inches deep with mud. It was the beginning of February in New England, and though the ground might typically be frozen, there had been a couple of uncharacteristically warm days. The day of Rita’s murder, the high was 61 degrees, and there were trace amounts of rain. The top layers of the ground would have thawed and been quite muddy. The fact that the mud didn’t stand out in Raymond’s dream, and that his clothing was unsoiled seemed off.
Raymond was a very small boy—just 90 lbs. Rita outweighed him by 30 lbs. Police were uncertain whether she had been carried to the spot in the woods or walked there under her own power. One of the clues that pointed toward her being carried was that her shoes were not muddy. They ruled out the possibility that Raymond could have carried her there, though, because they figured that it would take someone with more strength to carry her body the considerable distance it was between the nearest parking area and spot in the woods where she was found.
Police asked him to describe the knife that he used. “Well, it was about so long,” he said, indicating with his hands a knife with a four-inch blade and a two-inch handle. While it was possible that such a knife was used, it didn’t match the description of the stiletto knife that had been found, which had an eight-inch blade.
Police walked the murder scene with him and asked him to recall the position of her body. He said her head was pointed toward Ten Mile River, but police said it was just the opposite.
Raymond made no mention of her missing pocketbook or missing glasses in his story. He also didn’t say that he took the murder weapon with him, and a knife was not found near Rita’s body.
Police asked him, point blank, if he was responsible for Rita’s murder, and he replied, “I don’t remember. Maybe I did it. I don’t know. I only remember waking up beside Rita, and I can't stand dead bodies, so I walked away.” It was hard to believe that he was coming forward with this confession, but had no recollection of the events leading up to the killing, or the murder itself. “But don’t you realize this dream of yours is fantastic?!” a detective said in exasperation. Raymond stared blankly at him.
But most of all, the thing that discredited his story, was the time of death. Raymond said that he left her lifeless body at around 9:00PM, but the Medical Examiner said she couldn’t have been dead any earlier than 4:00AM the next morning.
The police chief believed Raymond needed mental care and he asked that he be sent to a hospital for psychiatric treatment and mental tests.
Raymond ordered psychiatric care
Raymond was admitted to the Charles Chapin Hospital in Providence where he was received by Dr. Goldstein—a psychiatrist and former administrator at (what at the time was called) the Exeter School for the Feeble-Minded. Raymond would spend about 3-4 weeks there before being released to the juvenile courts to answer to his ‘morals’ charge involving the young boy. Doctors determined that he was learning deficient and had a psychopathic personality disorder. The doctors had no opinion on whether his confession was true.
Though we don’t have the full record of everything that Raymond said to police, they believed that the inaccuracies overshadowed any possibility that Raymond was the killer. He was never charged.
Eerily similar crime – Ethel Ellard
On February 9th, 1951, 4 years after Rita’s death, a woman was murdered in Arlington, Massachusetts (a suburb northwest of Boston), about an hour away from Pawtucket. She was a 22-year-old switchboard operator, and she was killed in her home—stabbed nearly 40 times in the chest and back with a long thin stiletto-type knife. She was fully clothed and not sexually assaulted, which was reminiscent of Rita’s murder.
Her body was found by a relative the next day. There were signs of a struggle in her bedroom. The assailant had taken chunks out of the wooden footboard of her bed. The murder weapon was not located.
The Pawtucket police chief and an officer spent several hours going over the details of Ethel’s death. They said that the wounds on her body were almost identical to Rita’s.
1951, Raymond’s crimes
Also in 1951, Raymond Patenaude continued his life of crime. He and two accomplices held up a filling station in Hadley, Massachusetts, and brutally beat the 56-year-old man who operated it—a disabled war veteran—for $3.15 worth of gasoline. They struck him in the head with a pistol twice. They later abandoned their vehicle in Amherst.
The next day, on August 7th, Raymond was arrested at gunpoint and charged with “assault with the intent to rob,” “assault and battery with a dangerous weapon,” “larceny of an automobile,” “carrying a gun without a permit,” and “theft of registration plates.”
He and one of the other men were arraigned and held with a $10,000 bail until their next hearing.
In October, Raymond was sentenced to five years in prison.
Theories
There were never charges brought in Rita’s case, just lingering suspicions. Could it have been Raymond? After all, he confessed to the crime, even if the details weren’t quite right. Or was it the man who had been assaulting other women in Pawtucket? Had he decided to escalate his crimes to murder? But then again Rita was not sexually assaulted. Was it someone close to her—maybe in her family—that stood to benefit from a life insurance policy? Was it someone she had dated? She had told friends of a man that had pursued her of whom she was disgusted. Or was it a woman? Perhaps a girlfriend—unknown to her—of a man she was dating.
Modern renewal
Over the next 70 years, little new information from the police was forthcoming leaving more questions than answers. If the murderer who took Rita’s life were 20 years old in 1947—the year of her death—then he would be 96 years old today.
In 2019, Pawtucket Police Detective Sue Cormier decided to reopen the case. She got in touch with Rita’s family—her niece and nephew (who are now in the august of their lives). They said that they were very familiar with the tragedy—even though they never met Rita themselves. Mildred’s daughter, Sue, said that her mother could never bear to visit Rita’s grave. She said that Rita had told her mother a secret the night before she was killed—that she was afraid. Perhaps she knew what was coming.
They walked the trail to the murder site and found the tree near the clearing still bore the scars of the axe that had been made so many years ago—a grim reminder of the open wound that still remains today.
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Rita Bouchard (third from left) with her siblings (left to right, Robert, Mildred, and Henry)
Rita Bouchard
Rhode Island State Sanatorium (Wallum Lake, Burillville, RI); Rita’s father treated her for tuberculosis
Capitol Theater (Pawtucket, RI), one of Rita’s favorite pastimes
Pawtucket Police Chief Inspector Wilfred Wadsworth (left) and Chief Leonard Mills
The black hearse that took Rita’s body from the crime scene to the hospital for medical examination
Thomas Luminello, Rita Bouchard’s uncle
Pawtucket Police Chief Inspector Wilfred Wadsworth, displaying the potential murder weapon
“Lovers Lane” now the Greenway Bikepath in Pawtucket, RI, adjacent to Ten Mile River
“Lovers Lane” now the Greenway Bikepath in Pawtucket, RI, adjacent to Ten Mile River
Hatchet marks/scars still left on the tree found by the clearing where Rita’s body was found
Susan Cormier, detective, Pawtucket Police Dept
Sources For This Episode
Newspaper articles
Various articles from Biddeford Daily Journal, Burlington Daily News, Daily News, Fitchburg Sentinel, Lowell Sun, Pawtucket Times, Providence Journal, The Boston Globe, Transcript-Telegram, here.
Written by various authors including George Popkin, Jack Thompson, Jonathan Bissonnette, Laura Crimaldi, Matt McKinney, Peter E. Howard, Rob Levin, Tom Horgan, William J. Lewis.
Online Written Sources
'A Fiendish Murder: The Rhode Island Cold Case You Never Heard Of' (Medium - The Asylum Antiquarian) 5/16/2016, by Jason Carpenter
'Detective reopens investigation into vicious 1947 murder' (WPRI 12 News), 5/3/2019, no author credited
Online Video Sources
'THE BLACK DAHLIA of the East - The Horrifying Tale of Rita Bouchard' (YouTube), 8/23/2022
Other handy links
A custom Google map of the relevant locations in this case, here (likely author is Jason Carpenter)
Photos
Photos from historical Pawtucket Times and Providence Journal articles, WPRI, and Medium.
Credits
Vocal performance, audio editing, and research by Kristen Seavey
Writing, research, and photo editing by Byron Willis
Research support by Ericka Pierce, Sofia Ricker, and Brittany Healey
Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey