Murder arrest in old case brings relief in Barre
Toolbox
By David Delcore TIMES ARGUS STAFF - Published: February 20, 2009
BARRE – Granite City residents are greeting news that an arrest has finally been made in the 27-year-old strangling death of Pamela Brown with a mix of surprise and relief.
Karen Lane, director of the Aldrich Public Library, puts herself in the latter category.
"I'm relieved," said Lane, who well remembers the day Brown's body was discovered in a wooded area behind St. Monica School at the height of a homegrown festival that she helped found.
Lane said she was busy coordinating the popular Barre Ethnic Heritage Festival as news of Brown's murder swept through the city on July 17, 1982.
According to Lane, the startling revelation was something of a psychological stomach punch from which the community-wide celebration never fully recovered.
"My memory is that (Brown's murder) was the thing that took the heart right out of the festival," said Lane. "Most of us involved couldn't believe something like that could ever happen in Barre."
It did, raising questions that ultimately ended the annual festival that grew into a major attraction in four short years. By 1982, Lane said the festival, which showcased the multicultural patchwork that is Barre, was drawing as many 30,000 to the Granite City.
"We couldn't feed that many people, we couldn't control that many people," she recalled. "It got to be something that a good, hardworking police force couldn't handle."
Brown's murder underscored that fact and the following year the festival was scrapped and subsequent attempts to revive a scaled-down version of the event have all fizzled.
"To have it become such a tragic event in the life of the community was just heart-breaking," Lane said. "All of us felt a sense of sorrow … It was our work to make this community shine … It was so tragic to think that everybody's good-hearted efforts could contribute, even in an indirect way, to such a sad outcome."
Unlike others who were interviewed, Lane said she wasn't particularly surprised when she learned police had charged Theodore Caron Jr. of Barre with Brown's murder.
According to Lane, it has long been rumored that police knew who committed the crime, but just lacked the evidence they needed to prove it.
Vergilio Bonacorsi, who stepped down as Barre mayor a few months before Brown's murder, counts himself among those who had come to believe the crime would never be solved.
"This was 27 years ago," he said. "I guess you could say I'm surprised."
Make that pleasantly surprised.
"I'm glad to see closure for the (Brown) family," he said.
Current Barre Mayor Thomas Lauzon echoed the sentiments expressed by Bonacorsi.
"It certainly would appear that this case is reaching resolution and if that's the case I'm happy," he said, stressing Caron is innocent until proven guilty.
"What's most important is that no one rush to judgment," he said. Although Lauzon didn't know Brown, they both attended Spaulding High School at the same time and his wife, Karen, graduated with Brown barely a month before she was murdered.
"Karen always spoke very highly of her," he said. At the time of the murder, Lauzon was attending college in Burlington. He didn't go to the festival that year and was shocked to learn that Brown's half-naked body had been discovered behind St. Monica School on Summer Street.
"I saw it on the news like everyone else," he said. Lauzon said he was equally surprised when he learned police were planning to charge Caron for the murder.
"It was such a long time ago and it's not the type of thing you think about," he said, crediting police for their persistence. Caron's arraignment comes even as organizers of Barre Homecoming Days are planning to revive a modified version of the old Ethnic Heritage Festival at Lauzon's urging.
"How ironic is that?" he said.
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