Ellen Ruth Fried, a 26-year-old nurse from Claremont, New Hampshire, was last seen on the evening of July 22, 1984, using a payphone outside a convenience store in Claremont while speaking with her sister. She disappeared that night and over a year later her skeletal remains were found on September 19, 1985, in a wooded area near the Sugar River in Newport, New Hampshire. Advanced decomposition prevented determining a precise cause of death, but investigators suspected sexual assault and classified the death as a homicide.

Fried’s killing has been linked to the Connecticut River Valley murders, a series of unsolved killings of young women in New Hampshire and Vermont during the late 1970s and 1980s; similarities in victim profiles and violence prompted investigators to consider a possible serial offender. Michael Nicholaou, a Vietnam War veteran with a documented history of violence, has been mentioned among suspects; one survivor of a 1988 attack, Jane Boroski, identified Nicholaou as her assailant, but no definitive evidence has established his involvement in these cases.

Did anyone in the Claremont or Newport area remember seeing Ellen the night she vanished or notice a vehicle or person near the convenience store payphone?