In the summer of 2004, the small city of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, was gripped by a quiet fear. A series of women had vanished, their disappearances unsettling the community and leaving families desperate for answers. The last of these women to disappear was Stacie L. Goulet, a 24-year-old female who was pregnant at the time. Her life was cut short in early July, another victim of a man who would come to be known as "The Rhode Island Ripper."
Stacie was last seen at a Fourth of July
fireworks display at the World War II Veterans Memorial State Park. After that evening, she vanished. Her boyfriend reported her missing on July 4, 2004, launching an investigation that would soon connect her case to the disappearances of two other local women, Audrey L. Harris and Christine C. Dumont. The families of all three women contacted police and began their own searches, refusing to let their loved ones be forgotten.
The break in the string of disappearances came not from a discovery, but from an escape. Another woman, whom machinist Jeffrey S. Mailhot had brought to his apartment, managed to fight back and flee after he began to choke her. Her survival and subsequent report to the police led investigators directly to Mailhot's first-floor apartment in downtown Woonsocket. On July 17, 2004, police arrested the quiet, polite 33-year-old on his own doorstep.
During interrogation, Mailhot confessed to the murders of Stacie Goulet, Christine Dumont, and Audrey Harris. He told investigators he had an "uncontrollable urge to kill" and that he was glad he had been caught because he knew he wouldn't have been able to stop. He detailed a horrifying pattern: he would pick up the women, strangle them in his home, and then dismember their bodies in his bathtub with a saw, a gruesome method he said was inspired by an episode of "The Sopranos." He would then place the remains in garbage bags and discard them in various dumpsters around the city.
Mailhot's confession led to a massive and painstaking search for the victims' remains. For ten days, about 30 police officers combed through a football-field-sized section of the Central Landfill in Johnston. On July 27, 2004, their grim task yielded a discovery: the partial, dismembered remains of Stacie Goulet. She was the only one of Mailhot's three murdered victims whose body was ever recovered. A search of Mailhot’s apartment uncovered the saw used on Stacie and blood evidence from all three women in his bathtub.
On February 16, 2006, Jeffrey S. Mailhot pleaded guilty to three counts of murder, one count of assault with intent to commit murder, and one count of felony assault. His plea deal spared him a trial, though he showed little remorse during the court proceedings. He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus an additional 10 years.
The capture of Jeffrey Mailhot brought an end to the terror he had inflicted on the Woonsocket community. His crimes highlighted the vulnerability of women living on the margins of society, women he wrongly believed no one would miss. Stacie Goulet's family, however, never stopped searching for her. Her tragic death, and that of her unborn child, remains a painful wound for her loved ones and a chilling chapter in Rhode Island's history. Mailhot is currently incarcerated at the Rhode Island Maximum Security Prison.
