Do you know who killed 17 year old Rita Bouchard in 1947? In the winter of 1947, the life of 17-year-old Caucasian female Rita Bouchard was brutally cut short in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. A mill worker, Rita was last seen on the evening of January 31st. Her disappearance caused immediate concern among her family. The grim reality of her fate was uncovered on February 1st, when her body was discovered in a wooded area near a local lover's lane, not far from the Ten Mile River and Notre Dame Cemetery.
The scene was one of extreme violence; she had been stabbed over 30 times in the throat, chest, and back, and her throat had been slashed from ear to ear. The medical examiner determined that any one of four particular stab wounds could have been fatal, one of which pierced her heart and another her lung.
The initial investigation by the Pawtucket Police was intense, with all available officers assigned to the case. Investigators initially believed Rita had been killed elsewhere and her body transported to the woods, as there was a lack of blood at the scene and her shoes were clean. Her handbag, containing about $40, and her eyeglasses were missing. The murder weapon was believed to be a thin dagger, possibly a stiletto. A week into the investigation, police revised their theory, considering the possibility that she had been lured to the spot by someone she trusted and killed there. They also did not rule out the possibility of a female perpetrator.
A significant break in the case appeared to come a month and a half after the murder. A teenage boy named Raymond Patenaude, the brother of Rita's best friend, was brought in for questioning on an unrelated matter. During his interrogation, he told police about a dream he had in which he killed Rita. He then claimed to realize it wasn't a dream at all, but a repressed memory of the actual event. In his account, he described meeting Rita at a movie, going to a park where she became upset and slapped him, and then blacking out, only to awaken next to her body. Despite this seemingly detailed confession, no arrest was ever made in connection with Rita's murder.
The case of Rita Bouchard's murder grew cold over the ensuing decades, leaving more questions than answers for her family and the community. The brutality of the crime, often compared to the infamous Black Dahlia case in California which had occurred just weeks earlier, left a lasting scar. In 2019, the case was officially reopened by a Pawtucket Police Detective. As part of this renewed effort, Rita's story was included in a deck of cold case playing cards distributed in hopes of generating new leads. Despite these efforts, the murder of Rita Bouchard remains one of Rhode Island's oldest and most haunting unsolved mysteries.
