This is the first in a two part series. Click here for part two.

Theresa Corley and her sister’s fight for justice

Gerri Houde is one of her mother Pauline’s nine children. She was born in November of 1961, two-and-a-half years after her older sister Theresa Corley. She’s the second youngest. She grew up with Theresa, first in an urban neighborhood in Boston called Mattapan, and then in small-town Bellingham, Massachusetts. Despite her mother shouldering the entire responsibility of raising nine children, they had a great loving childhood together. That is, until her sister was murdered and discarded, like trash, on the side of the interstate in December of 1978 when Theresa was just 19 years old.

Gerri: “At this point—I’m 61 years old—I just like somebody to look at the case... analyze it... and not to point fingers, but tell me why it can’t be solved. Because right from the beginning (in 2015), I’ve been told this a solvable case. But here we are. What happens with these cases is they die with the family. When I’m dead... when my brother’s dead... (I’m not seeing my children pursuing any of this... I don’t want them to), it dies with me.

“Top Cat” Terry

Theresa Corley’s childhood was divided into two halves—the first half, until she was 10 years old, was spent in Boston, and the second half, until her death at 19, was spent in Bellingham. Pauline thought Bellingham would provide a safer environment for her younger children.

The family lived frugally, and survived financially with state assistance.

Gerri: We got hand-me-downs quite a bit from other relatives. We knew she sacrificed. Her whole life she was skinny as could be and I can only imagine that’s because she gave the food to us and didn’t have it for herself. As soon as she could—as soon as we were all old enough—she trained, she went to become a secretary. And then she got a job at Mass General Hospital as a clerk. She did her best, and she got off welfare. But I did not feel deprived. I knew we recycled things like tea bags. You know... you don’t just have one cup of tea; you have a couple. Her faith carried her through a lot of the dark times in her life. She did her best to give us all a great life. 

There was quite an age gap amongst the Corley kids. The oldest, Mary, was born in 1945, at the end of the war. John, the youngest and the only boy, was born in 1963. In between were Diane, Paula, Nancy, Linda, Karen, Theresa, and Gerri. They were all baby boomers. By the time the family left Boston, at least one of the oldest daughters, Paula, had married and left home, but many of the elder kids remained at home.

Gerri: I would say in our preteen to early teen years, we were all very close. We were around each other constantly, and it wasn’t all bickering and fighting. There would be board games we would play. We would interact as a family. But then kids grow... you develop your own interests. But in those earlier years, it was a ‘we’re all in this together’ type of situation. I think it’s only natural as you grow up, as a teenager, you develop more relationships outside the home. You go down different pathways with your friends.

In the family, she was always Theresa, or teasingly called “Top Cat” after the lanky yellow cartoon feline who shared her initials. In school, however, she tried on nicknames like “T.C.” and “Terry,” testing them the in same way she explored the aspects of her identity that were developing beyond the Corley household. Where her mother and siblings tended to be reserved, Theresa was outgoing.

Gerri: I think she was the first one to realize that there were activities outside the home, and outside of school. Meaning sports, drama club, and all those other things she did. It seems like she was more apt to look for new adventures.

Theresa was a free spirit, and didn’t seem to care what other’s thought of her. At Bellingham High, she played volleyball and got roles in the school plays. Drama club was Theresa’s particular passion—she even directed a production of a play called “A Defenseless Creature,” based on a short story by Anton Chekov.

Theresa was a petite girl, just 5 feet 2 inches, with long brown hair and curtain bangs that framed warm brown eyes. She had a heart-shaped face, thin brows, and a wide nose that seemed to accentuate the width of her smile. And Theresa smiled a lot, and she had reason to—she was going places.

Gerri: She loved kids. She would babysit for 3 or 4 different families in town. The kids always seemed to love her. The kids that she babysat, I’ve heard from them as adults. They fondly remember her as someone who was just a fun person to be around and that she really just cared for them. And I think money was tight for us, and being the first one going to college I know she wanted to do something working with children. Her ultimate dream was to be a pediatrician.

Theresa had ambition. After high school, she enrolled in a nearby 2-year institution called Holliston Junior College. She continued to live at home and commuted the twenty minutes north to school each day. She worked to pay for college. She had a job as a cashier at Star Market in the nearby town of Franklin.

Bob Ward, a TV reporter for WFXT Boston 25, worked with Theresa at the grocery store.

Bob: I worked with Theresa Corley at Star Market. It was my first job here in Franklin. She was a couple of years older than me, but she was a warm, friendly person, and just a great person to be around—someone I always looked forward to seeing when I went to work. She was just an awesome person. My last memory of Theresa Corley (it’s just a stupid little memory): I was in one of the aisles in the store, I was stocking some shelves, she just kinda walked by and floated down the aisle like she didn’t have a care in the world. She was probably on a break or ending her shift. It was carefree Theresa just walking by, saying ‘Hey, how are you?’ (that sort of thing). She just kept walking. Whenever you saw her, she gave you a lift. She was a good kid. It was a nice little moment. And that is my final memory of her.

After Star Market, Theresa found work at another Franklin business—Penthouse Sales. It was a factory that made rope, flip flops, hammocks, handbags, and other goods. Theresa worked in the rug department, typically covering the 3:00-7:00PM shift. This allowed her time for her classes during the day, and a bit of time after her shift to study or socialize. After work, it wasn’t unusual for her to go out with other young co-workers in the evenings, or to meet up with her high school friends or the boy she was seeing—Rick Cogliano, who went by ‘Cog.’ Because she didn’t have a car, she would often hitchhike across town or to and from Franklin.

Tuesday, December 5th, 1978

The sun rose on a crisp, sunny day in Bellingham on Tuesday, December 5, 1978. Theresa got dressed and went about her usual schedule. She caught a ride from her home to Holliston College with her friend, Ann. Theresa was a sophomore at the end of her fall term and Tuesday was when her favorite class, clinical assistance, was held.

The New England winter sun was already starting to set when Pauline picked her daughter up from school and dropped her off at Penthouse Sales, in time for her 3:00PM shift. Theresa worked for a few hours and then called her mom at home again at 6:45PM. She said that she was going to work a little longer and then head to a friend’s birthday party. Pauline worried about how she would get home later—she didn’t like Theresa’s hitchhiking. Pauline figured she would get a ride from a friend, so she said goodbye to her daughter, not knowing that it would be the final time she would hear her voice.

Between 7:00PM and 10:30PM, Theresa was at a friend’s nearby apartment, and at 10:30PM, she arrived at a popular dive bar on Main Street in the center of Franklin called the Train Stop. It was appropriately named, as it sat directly across from the actual train station. In 1978, the legal drinking age was still 18, and the younger crowd turned out for the cheap booze.

At the Train Stop, Theresa met up with several friends and coworkers, including her boss and his sister. But she was not enjoying the evening. For one thing, she spotted her boyfriend, Cog, talking to an ex-girlfriend. The couple got into a heated argument, witnessed by several people. Sometime between 11:30PM and 12:30AM, Theresa decided that she’d had enough. She asked one of her friends, Alana, for a ride home, but Alana wasn’t ready to leave. It was a decision she would later regret. Impatient, Theresa said that she would walk home. It was a 5-mile trek, and the temperatures were in the 20s, but, fueled by alcohol and anger, Theresa took off.

The hours that followed her departure from the Train Stop have always been at the heart of this case. Different narratives have emerged about how Theresa may have spent the early morning hours of Wednesday, December 6th.

We know for sure that after leaving the bar, she ended up at a flat at the Presidential Arms Apartments on Central Street in Franklin, about a mile and a half from the Train Stop.

Theresa arrived sometime around or after midnight. At some point, she asked David—one of the men who lived there—if she could lie down in his bedroom. Theresa fell asleep and stayed in the room for several hours. What happened in that bedroom is the subject of much debate. According to David, at 4:00AM, a group of four young men entered the bedroom and either sexually assaulted Theresa or attempted to do so.

She fought them off, and in the commotion, Theresa slid her feet into two left shoes, one that was hers and one that belonged to one of her alleged attackers. She then fled the apartment. According to David, both he and one of the assailants offered her a ride. The other man followed her out the door. Understandably, she did not take him up on this offer.

Sometime before dawn, between 4:00-5:00AM, a man on his way to work spotted the petite brunette sitting on a guardrail by the side of Route 140, thumbing for a ride. It was a cold morning, so he pumped the breaks and offered her a lift. It was a short ride west to his employer, the dairy distributor Garelick Farms, and she was heading that way. He dropped her off at the entrance to his work. A second man, who was also a driver for Garelick, agreed to take her a bit further into Bellingham, which was only a mile from home.

Both Garelick drivers later said that she seemed disheveled, upset, and inebriated. One of them described her as “mad as fire.” The second driver, asked what was the matter, and Theresa told him she had been sexually assaulted that night. He later told authorities that he dropped her in front of the Bellingham police station, then located on Mechanic Street.

Theresa never went into the police station. If she had, her life might have been saved.

The last sightings of Theresa Corley alive were around 5:15AM or 5:30AM, when motorists passing through Bellingham saw her hitchhiking north on Rt 126, not far from the police station. Soon after, three men carpooling to work spotted her walking near the Dairy Queen, just a mile from her house. At the time, it didn’t seem remarkable—just an underdressed traveler trudging home in the pre-dawn darkness.

Northbound on I-495 - Theresa is discovered

Two days later, at about 5:00PM on Friday, December 8, a Bellingham police cruiser sped northbound along I-495.

The officer spotted a green sign that said “Entering Medway,” indicated he was on the very edge of the town of Bellingham. He was just feet away from the borders of both Medway and Milford. Just minutes prior, Bellingham PD had received a call from a man who claimed he was from Connecticut and said he had found the body of a young woman on the side of the highway.

The man, who identified himself as John Burlington, said that he had been driving north on 495 when his engine overheated just south of exit 48. He pulled over to give it time to cool and used the opportunity to empty his bladder. It was on the embankment, past the guardrail separating the pavement from the steep drop below, that he spotted the body. When asked why he didn’t report it right away, Burlington confessed that he had been frightened and didn’t want to get involved in whatever misfortune had befallen the young woman. But, sometime during the two-hour drive back to Connecticut, he had had a change of heart and made the call.

The location from which he made the call and the timing of it has been reported two different ways: Bob Ward was told by police that John Burlington pulled off the highway at the next exit, went to a payphone, and made the call right away. The other way it has been reported is that he drove home and called from Connecticut.

The body was located at the confluence of several towns—Franklin, Medway, Milford, and Bellingham. The signage closest to the location of the body—just a couple hundred feet north—would have indicated Milford. The signage 2 miles to the south would have indicated Bellingham and Medway. He happened to choose the exact jurisdiction where the body was located—Bellingham. To reach Bellingham PD, he likely dialed 4-1-1 (directory assistance), and they would have connected him to the police. Though 9-1-1 was operational at the time, he contacted the PD directly. And according to a 2015 article by Joseph Fitzgerald published in The Call, the phone line that rang at the PD was a so-called “inside line” or a “business line,” one which only local residents would know.

Pale in the overcast light, the young woman was fully nude and lying face up just past the guardrail and down the steep embankment. He approached and discovered a string of dark bruises circling her neck. He could tell immediately that she was deceased, and likely had been for a while. Around her were scattered a few articles of clothing—a brown corduroy jacket with orange and tan plaid lining, a pair of blue jeans.

The crime scene was cordoned off in short order. From the lack of drag marks on her body, investigators concluded that she had been thrown or placed. They also noted that some items of clothing—namely, her shoes, shirt, and undergarments—were missing from the scene.

Among the first officers who arrived were Bellingham Detective Sergeant Richard Boucher, Franklin Detective Sergeant Thomas Curran and Franklin Patrolman Harry Plausse. They already knew the identity of the victim. Her mother and sisters had been calling the Franklin station for nearly two days, and her friends and classmates had papered the town with flyers bearing her face.

A few miles away, a man walked into the same police station that Theresa had stood in front of two days before. He asked the dispatcher about the activity on 495 and if it was Theresa Corley who had been found in the ditch. The dispatcher was surprised, because the discovery of the body had not been shared over the police radio. That man was one of the men who may have assaulted Theresa at the Presidential Arms apartment.

Just another runaway

On North Main Street, Pauline Corley paced. Her daughter had been missing for nearly two days. She thought back to Wednesday morning—the morning that Theresa went missing.

Theresa’s friend Ann had come by the Corley home that morning to pick Theresa up for school. The Corley family broke then news she was missing, and when Ann got to class, she let her schoolmates know. Theresa never made it to class, nor to her 3:00PM shift at Penthouse. In the afternoon, Pauline reported her missing to both the Bellingham and Franklin police. Initially, the officers urged her to be patient. Most likely, they suggested, Theresa had found herself overwhelmed with school and work and had taken a few days to blow off steam. They noted that young runaways typically came back after a couple of days when their money ran out.

The Corleys were frustrated with the lack of urgency of the police. The family though it impossible that Theresa had voluntarily left. She had just paid tuition on her next term. Why would she depart before finals and risk failing the term? They were also concerned about the cold weather—Theresa was last seen wearing jeans and a corduroy jacket—if she were injured somewhere, she wouldn’t last long.

Wednesday night passed and on Thursday, and there was still no sign of Theresa. Diane, her elder sister, recalled that the whole family tried to get the Bellingham Police to organize a formal search for her, without success. “We tried for two days before they would believe us. They kept saying she was a runaway. But she wouldn’t do that. I remember [Theresa] saying, ‘Mom, I wouldn’t ever hurt you like that.’”

The house on North Main Street was full of activity as various friends and siblings came and went, searching haunts and hotspots. The knock on the door came in the evening, after sunset, and must have hung in the air like a dark omen. A stone-faced officer stood before Pauline and told her the news that they had all been dreading: Theresa was gone. Chief Norman McLinden of the Bellingham PD had identified her body from the pictures that the Corleys had been distributing.

Theresa Corley’s Autopsy

On the afternoon of the following day, December 9, Theresa’s autopsy was performed in Franklin at Jackson Funeral Home by Dr. Harold Shenker, the district’s medical examiner, and the state pathologist, Dr. Ambrose Keeler. Though the police initially thought that she had been strangled manually (due to the uneven bruising around her throat), the medical examiner determined she had been killed with a ligature. He also said that the autopsy did not prove she was raped. Due to the cold weather’s preservation of the body, no time of death could be determined.

Months after Theresa’s death, Gerri got curious about some of the papers that her mom had stashed above the refrigerator. She decided to take a look and discovered a document that she believes was “an official report.” In addition to revealing the cause of death, it identified the contents of Theresa’s stomach, which included eggs and Quaaludes. Gerri said that the reason she still remembers the incident is because she had no idea what a Quaalude was at 17 years old. She also tried to research how long it would take for eggs to be digested. Gerri later asked the DA’s office about this detail, and they have denied those findings.

Bob Ward has also heard that she had eggs in her system, and he has an idea where those eggs may have come from:

Bob: Apparently, they did find something in her system that suggests she was killed not long after she was at the Train Stop. I remember at the Train Stop they used to have a big jar of hard-boiled eggs to eat. It was just a thing back then. Pickled hard-boiled eggs. Just in a big jar that I remember sitting at the bar. It seems that she was killed not long after someone picked her up outside that Dairy Queen.

Saying goodbye to Theresa

The family held Theresa’s wake on Monday, December 11, at Cartier Funeral Home, just down the road from Pauline’s house. Theresa lay in an open casket, her eyes closed. Some attendees would later comment that it was unnerving to see the marks on her neck, but Gerri believes they were covered by Theresa’s prom dress, which she herself had worn to her sophomore prom.

The days that followed were a blur for Gerri. She recounted the effort it took to act “normal,” and the bitterness of seeing Theresa’s friends’ behavior—the same friends who let her walk drunkenly away from the Train Stop on the night she disappeared.

Struggling with her grief, Pauline insisted that the family return to some degree of normalcy. She put up the Christmas tree that year, though her children could not have felt less festive. She seemed determined to forge on, leading her family into the routines of life that they shared before Theresa’s murder. It was particularly strange for her younger siblings, Gerri and John, who had to return to school.

Gerri: I remember trying to act normal. ‘Um, yeah, my sister’s dead, but I’m good.’ And we would have family gatherings, and not talk about it. We would leave (my boyfriend who is now my husband)—we would leave and I’d start to cry. ‘Nobody talked about her.’ But maybe everybody felt that way. It was tragic, but in a sense my mother said, ‘No, we’re going on, and we’re not gonna let this destroy all of us.’ Someone who took my sister’s life in such a heinous way... I’m not gonna let them take mine too. And you know, I think that’s where I developed strength and determination to live a good life despite what happened to us. And we on as a family.

Pauline’s personal thoughts

Despite the strength and determination she was modeling for her children, Pauline was struggling inside. Several years after Theresa’s death, Pauline wrote a letter to her daughter, Diane, and in beautiful, looping cursive script, she expressed herself freely. She recounted how she prayed to God for the strength not to fall apart in front of her children. She asked Him for the strength not to dwell on the suffering that Theresa endured during her final hours. She worried about her youngest children, describing the year following as “hell.” She constantly struggled to restrain herself from holding them too closely, writing,

“I was so afraid God was punishing me for wanting too many materials things and not being grateful enough for his nine beautiful gifts. I still worry when they go out. But I put my trust in God and thank Him for you and for all your sisters and brother.”

She concluded by telling Diane that she saw Theresa frequently in her dreams but could never speak to her, could not tell her how much she loved her. Instead, she resolved to tell her surviving children how much they meant to her. One by one, she listed their traits. Of her youngest daughter, Gerri, she wrote: “Gerri is so intelligent and wise it frightens me because she knows my faults and still loves me.”

Pauline’s letter is an attempt to put into words the immensity of her grief and her love for her children. To move forward, she wasn’t able to engage with the mystery of what had happened to Theresa. When she passed in 2006, at the age of 82, she still had no answers.

Doreen Picard and the New Bedford Highway Murders

In the 1977 Bellingham High School yearbook, Theresa was photographed alongside the rest of the Hawks volleyball team. She wore the number 31 and a smile, her long hair loose. Also in the picture, wearing the number 12 jersey, is Doreen Picard, the reigning homecoming queen. Just a few years after Theresa’s death, Doreen was also murdered. She had wandered into a violent altercation in the laundry room of her apartment building in Woonsocket, RI, and was beaten and strangled by a stranger. Two young women from the same town, buried too young in their prom dresses.

Bob: “This 19-year-old girl, in December of 1978, only wanted to get home. And instead, was sexually assaulted, murdered, and then dumped on the side of the road naked on 495. How could that happen to Theresa Corley? And the second part of that question needs to be answered. Who did this? Who is responsible? We need to know.”

When Theresa’s body was recovered from the side of the highway on December 8, 1978, she became the fifth woman murdered in Massachusetts in the space of two months. It was a particularly violent autumn that year. In the late 1980s, a spree of hitchhiker murders, attributed to the New Bedford Highway Killer, would rekindle interest in unsolved cases like Theresa’s. To this day, there have been no arrest in those deaths.

But not every victim has a sister like Gerri Houde. Ever since childhood, Gerri has been the type of person who can’t stand seeing injustices go unaddressed. And it was that conviction that led her to St. Mary’s Cemetery on a brisk day in May 2017, as a backhoe dug into the grass over her sister’

For part two, click here.

This text has been adapted from the Murder, She Told podcast episode, The Theresa Corley Story, Part One. To hear Theresa Corley’s full story, including Gerri’s interviews, find Murder, She Told on your favorite podcast platform.

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Sources For This Episode

Newspaper articles

Various articles published by the Boston Globe, MetroWest Daily News, Milford Daily News, South Middlesex News, and The Call. Written by various authors including Bill Shaner, Bob Ward, Christopher Gavin, Etta Walsh, Glenna LaVerdiere, Joseph Fitzgerald, Julia Spitz, Linda Prophet, Mark Arsenault, Matt Tota, Michael D. Holtzman, Nan Gebhard, Norman Miller, Robert Mills, Sandra L. Glynn, Stacy Drumtra, Timothy Dwyer, and Lonnie Isabel. Complete listing here.

Photos

Photos courtesy of Gerri Houde. Scanned and edited by Murder, She Told. Additional photos from the Milford Daily News, Google Maps, and the Bellingham High School Yearbook.

Interviews

Special thanks to Gerri Houde and to Bob Ward for speaking to us about Theresa.

Written records

Private investigation report, Kenneth Mains, 10/12/2016

Letter from Theresa’s mother, 1/1/1981

Death certificate, 12/11/1978

Online written sources

'Justice For Theresa Corley - Facebook Page' (Facebook), 4/15/2015

'Plea for Answers... Theresa Corley's 1978 Murder' (NBC News), 2/21/2016, by Rachael Trost

'Who killed Theresa Corley? 40 years later mystery surrounds woman...' (Mass Live), 4/13/2016, by Scott J. Croteau

'Family Raising Money To Solve Theresa Corley's 1978 Murder' (CBS Boston), 11/24/2016

'Bellingham woman's body exhumed after almost 40 years' (Boston 25 News),5/3/2017

'Records request for Asst. DA's Office' (Muckrock), 3/14/2018

'Unsolved: Can DNA unlock the mystery of who killed Theresa Corley?' (Boston 25 News), 9/30/2018, by Bob Ward

'New push for evidence on 40th anniversary of teen's murder' (Boston 25 News), 12/6/2018, by Bob Ward

'Case Of Teen Found Dead Along 495 Gets New Police Attention' (Patch), 2/18/2022, by Nean McNamara

'Bellingham High School Yearbooks 1974-1977' (Internet Archive), 1975-1977

'Homicide: Theresa Corley, age 19, Bellingham, Massachusetts 02019' (Bellingham MA), no date, by Franklin Police Dept

Credits

Vocal performance, research, and audio editing by Kristen Seavey

Research, writing, and photo editing by Byron Willis

Writing by Morgan Hamilton

Additional research by Ericka Pierce

Murder, She Told is created by Kristen Seavey.