On a summer day in 1986, 38-year-old Steven Hill, a male resident of Lebanon, New Hampshire, went to collect his paycheck from his job on June 20th and then seemingly vanished. For weeks, his whereabouts remained a mystery, a silence that grew more ominous with each passing day. The quiet community was left to wonder what had become of him, a question that would not find its answer until nearly a month later.
The grim discovery was made on July 15, 1986, along the banks of the
Connecticut River. Hill's body was found near Summer Falls in Hartland, Vermont, a location just across the river from Plainfield, New Hampshire. An autopsy would later reveal the violent end he had met; he had sustained multiple stab wounds. The discovery shifted the narrative from a missing person case to a homicide investigation, casting a dark shadow over the peaceful New England landscape.
Despite the efforts of both New Hampshire and Vermont law enforcement, the case grew cold, leaving a trail of unanswered questions. No suspects were ever publicly named, and no arrests have been made in the decades following his death. The homicide of Steven Hill remains an open and unsolved case. Investigators have considered a possible link to a string of other unsolved murders in the Connecticut River Valley that occurred around the same time. However, this connection remains a theory, as Hill is the only male victim in that series of otherwise similar crimes.
