Mary Jane Menard, a 40-year-old mother of two and a substance abuse counselor, was last seen in New Britain, Connecticut, on October 4, 2003. She disappeared that autumn, and the long silence about her whereabouts led family and investigators to fear the worst.

In 2007 a hunter found skeletal remains in woods behind a strip mall on Hartford Road in New Britain. Those remains were later linked to Menard as part of a wider discovery: investigators determined the site held remains of three women who vanished in 2003 — Menard, Diane Cusack, and Joyvaline Martinez — and called the deaths the work of a serial killer. A return search in spring 2015 with an FBI cadaver dog uncovered four more sets of remains at the same location, bringing the known total to seven victims.

Authorities identified William Devin Howell, an East Coast drifter who did odd jobs in central Connecticut in 2003, as the suspect. Howell was already serving a 15-year sentence for the 2003 manslaughter of Nilsa Arizmendi, one of the seven; he was later charged in September 2015 with the other killings. Investigators said Howell used a blue Ford Econoline van he called the murder mobile, and he ultimately confessed to the seven murders, receiving six consecutive life sentences in 2017.

Did anyone who knew Mary Jane Menard or saw a blue Ford Econoline in central Connecticut in 2003 come forward with tips?