For thirty-one years, the family of Kathleen M. Daneault lived with the anguish of not knowing who was responsible for her death. A 25-year-old mother, Kathleen was remembered by her family as someone who loved her young son "more than life itself." Her murder in the autumn of 1983 left a void in the lives of her son, parents, and siblings, a painful mystery that would span more than three decades before finally being solved.
On the evening of November 17, 1983, in Gardner,
Massachusetts, Kathleen arranged for a babysitter for her five-year-old son and went out. She was seen with a 36-year-old man named Edward M. Mayrand, Jr. at the Mahaki Restaurant. Witnesses placed the two together throughout the day and into the evening, and they were last seen leaving the establishment together. It was the last time anyone would see Kathleen alive. The following afternoon, on November 18, her body was discovered by workers from the S. Bent Furniture Company in a wooded area on a dirt path behind Timpany Plaza, not far from the restaurant. An autopsy later confirmed she had been strangled to death with a ligature, a piece of her own blouse that had been torn off.
From the beginning of the investigation, Edward "Ed" Mayrand was the primary suspect. He was a drifter with a violent criminal history, including convictions for rape and assault. In fact, he had been released on parole for a brutal rape just before he met and killed Kathleen. Despite the strong suspicion and witness accounts placing him with the victim on the night she was killed, investigators at the time felt they lacked sufficient evidence to charge him with murder. Mayrand was arrested the following month for a parole violation and returned to prison, but the case of Kathleen’s murder grew cold.
Years turned into decades, but law enforcement did not forget Kathleen. In 2008, State Police detectives assigned to the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office began a review of her case as part of a renewed focus on unresolved homicides. This effort, led by Trooper John Boland, reinvigorated the investigation. In 2011, evidence from the 1983 crime scene, including the ligature used to strangle Kathleen, was resubmitted to the state crime lab for advanced DNA analysis. By this time, Mayrand was a convicted serial killer, serving a 35-to-60-year sentence in a Rhode Island prison for the 1994 murder of Patricia Paquette in Providence. He had also been linked to the 1987 murder of Judith Whitney in New Hampshire.
Before he could be charged with Kathleen's murder, Edward Mayrand died of lung cancer in prison in 2011. However, investigators had managed to obtain a sample of his DNA before his death. In August 2014, the crime lab confirmed a match: Mayrand's DNA was on the ligature used to kill Kathleen Daneault. This breakthrough provided the certainty that had been missing for 31 years. On December 23, 2014, Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. announced that the case was officially cleared, identifying Mayrand as the killer. "We believe we would have had the evidence to arrest, charge and prosecute Edward H. Mayrand Jr. with the murder of Kathy Daneault," Early stated, explaining that because the suspect was deceased, the case was exceptionally cleared.
The resolution brought a measure of peace to Kathleen’s grieving family. While the news did not erase their years of pain, it provided a long-awaited sense of closure. In a statement, her family expressed gratitude to the investigators who never gave up. "Our one solace is that Edward Mayrand passed away in prison alone without loved ones around him to comfort him, just as he left Kathy to die alone," the family said. "While this does bring us some sort of closure, it does not erase the 31 years that the son whom she loved more than life itself, has been without his mother. Siblings have been without their sister and parents without a daughter. No family should have to live with that anguish."
