A man is found deceased behind a barn On a summer day in Sheldon, Vermont, the life of 33-year-old Caucasian male, Kenneth Jerome, was brought to a sudden and violent end. On July 7, 2005, while working as a farmhand at the Magnan Farm, Jerome was in the process of feeding calves when he was fatally shot. His body was discovered shortly after noon behind a barn on the East Sheldon Road property where he worked. The investigation by the Vermont State Police quickly determined that Jerome was the victim of a homicide.
An autopsy revealed he had been killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest, fired from a distance.
The investigation into Kenneth Jerome's murder remains unsolved, and no arrests have been made directly in connection with his death. In the years following the homicide, suspicion within the community reportedly fell on Dennis Harness, the ex-husband of Jerome's girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Miller. This suspicion was fueled by a history of animosity and prior criminal activities, including arson convictions against Harness. A few days before his death, Jerome had expressed fear to a friend, an attorney, claiming that someone had tried to run him off the road and made a threatening gesture in the shape of a gun.
While the murder of Kenneth Jerome remains without a suspect officially named by law enforcement, the case did lead to a related arrest. In August 2005, frustrated by the lack of progress in the investigation, an acquaintance of Jerome's, Timothy Callan, fired a rifle at the home of Dennis Harness, wounding him. Callan believed the Harness family was responsible for Jerome's death. He was subsequently arrested and pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and DWI. Despite this separate act of violence, the central question of who killed Kenneth Jerome endures, leaving his case an open and unsolved homicide.
