The Unsolved Murders of James and Iola Hipp
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I'm Kristen Seavey. This is Murder, She Told. He almost missed it as he drove by. The Vermont state trooper was cruising down a familiar stretch of road in northern Vermont, Route 2, a windy two-lane road that connects the state's capital, Montpelier, with St. Johnsbury. He slowed down, sweeping over the rest stop with his keen eyes.

Route 2 ran along the river valley carved by the Winooski River. The rest stop was in a little slice of land between the banks of the river and the highway. He pulled into the rest stop, descending a steep incline to get to a flat paved area with a number of parking spots. Rest areas like this in 1969 were mostly places for cars to pull over and sit for a spell.

There were few amenities. This one afforded views of the river and a soundtrack, the quiet whoosh of the slow, moving waters of late summer. He made his way to the back of the rest stop where he'd seen it, a car that was off the road. The back end was hovering above the ground, the undercarriage resting on the rocky riverbank. Its wheels were missing. It was a 10-year-old green sedan, reported as both a Pontiac and an Oldsmobile.

Its model was never reported, but its year of manufacture was 1959. Regardless, the two cars were similar. They both had long, sweeping lines in a pale metallic green. It was the kind of car you see animated in vintage drive-in movie ads. The body was huge, extending beyond and overhanging its whitewall tires, which were now gone. The circumstances were strange.

From a distance, it seemed like maybe it was a junker vehicle that someone tried to sink in the Winooski River. But as he approached, he realized that was all wrong. Aside from the missing wheels, the car was in good shape. He stared at the license plates, which were from a state 1,300 miles away. The Sunshine State, Florida. Maybe it was stolen, he thought to himself.

The thief had taken it for a joyride that took them up the entire eastern seaboard. They ran into mechanical issues, and then, boom, ditched the car, keeping only the tires to sell for parts. There was no way the tires could be linked to the stolen vehicle. Or maybe the car was left there by its owner, and then the tires had been stolen from the rest stop. But if that were the case, wouldn't the trooper have known about it?

The owner would have filed a police report for theft, no doubt. He looked through the windows. It looked like there were still some personal items in the car. There was a tow hitch, but nothing attached. Unfinished business. Something wasn't adding up, but he knew he had to get the car out of the rest stop. He called a tow truck driver, who had a hell of a time getting it pulled out and loaded up without any wheels.

As he was waiting, he called into dispatch to give them the plate information in the VIN. The office would work on getting in touch with the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles. He was looking for help tracking down the owner of the mysterious green sedan. It came back as belonging to James and Iola Hipp from Lutes, Florida. The car was taken to Brooks Esso Station, a gas and service station chain. But where were the Hipps? He decided to wait and see.

Two days later, on Friday, September 19th, 1969, two locals, Raymond Doerr and Paul Singleton, went to the Vermont State Police barracks in Montpelier to alert them about a seemingly abandoned camper they'd found. Raymond's brother, Harold, owned some land in Calais, Vermont, and it was on this property that they'd seen it. It was the style camper that was towed behind a vehicle.

It was large, 24 feet long, but just tall enough to stand up straight. It was the spitting image of the 60s, a bubbly sheet metal box similar in look to an Airstream, but it was painted green and white rather than left a raw metallic silver.

It wasn't in perfect condition. There were little dents and dings in its fragile, thin metal skin. The back window had miniature drapes that were pulled to the side and gathered with little cords, creating a charming porthole. The two men thought that the camper was abandoned because they said that they saw occupants get water from a nearby source, presumably a pond, but hadn't seen them in quite some time. They estimated that the camper had been there for about a week.

They said it appeared as though someone drove the camper onto their unpaved land, unhitched it, and drove off in their vehicle. But it wasn't until they told the police one final detail that their ears really perked up. They said that the camper had license plates on it, from Florida. Immediately, things started to click into place.

Two abandoned things from Florida in rural Vermont in a matter of a few days seemed an unlikely coincidence. Police followed them to the site. It was just before 6 p.m., and the sun was hanging low in the sky. The roads became increasingly more desolate as they left the familiar and well-traveled roads near Montpelier. It was a hilly, eight-mile drive into the woods of Vermont.

The troopers took in the scene. It was as they described. The trailer sat quietly in tall grass and low bushes. Behind the trailer rose the slopes of Blueberry Hill, a 1,500-foot wooded summit. Fall was in the air. The highs that day were just 59, and it would dip into freezing temperatures overnight. But the tranquility of the picturesque scene was about to be shattered. They smelled it before they saw it.

As they approached the camper, they began to catch whiffs of a foul odor. By the time they got to the door, it was oozing out of every seam of the camper's sheet metal body. The door was unlocked. They opened it, and the smell was overpowering. After retching and coughing for a moment, they covered their noses and went inside. It was a scene they would never forget.

It was warm and stagnant inside the trailer, an airless box that had been fermenting for a week, with two bodies inside. It was a gory scene with blood splattered all over the floors and walls. A woman who looked to be in her 60s was completely naked and lifeless. A man of a similar age was clothed and laying nearby. The two of them had extensive wounds to their heads and upper bodies.

The cause of death was not obvious to the cops, nor even the medical examiner who would later respond to the scene. They described it to the press as "extremely brutal" and "a severe beating." Without ever divulging the specifics, they said that the woman had been carved in a peculiar way with a knife. The scene seemed like a moment frozen in time. It appeared the older couple was eating when the intruder entered.

On a small table was a plate with a half-eaten sandwich. On another plate was some corned beef hash. There were condiments — a jar of mayonnaise, a jar of crunchy peanut butter, and a jar of pickles — sitting out. A woman's blue sweater had been draped over the back of a chair. In a corner was a dish containing dog food. Other than the butter knife on the floor, it didn't appear to the troopers that there was any sign of a struggle.

Despite the obvious violence in front of them, they were struck by how tidy the rest of the camper's interior appeared to be. In the tiny bedroom was a small bed, neatly made with a white tufted comforter. The murder weapon, whatever it was, didn't appear to be left at the scene. They looked around and found mechanic tools, and a couple of fishing tackle boxes loaded with fishing gear. They found a wallet, which was described as empty on the floor.

I believe that the word empty in this case may refer to the fact that there was no money in the wallet. No money was found in the camper, but the woman still had on her finger a valuable diamond engagement ring. But they also said that the wallet aided in identifying the victims as James and Iola Hipp from Lutes, Florida. The Hipps had two things that would prove valuable to the investigation. One, a detailed log of their daily activities.

and two, some rolls of undeveloped film. Around 9 p.m., the family of the victims in Florida were notified that James and Iola had been murdered. They started immediately making arrangements to come to Vermont. They told the cops that they'd expected to see James and Iola home at any time, that their one-month road trip was supposed to be coming to an end.

It was on those calls that the police learned for certain that there were two dogs that James and Iola had taken with them, but there were no signs of the pups at the crime scene. They quickly pieced together that the green car that was sitting at the ESSO station with no wheels belonged to the Hipps as well. They sent people there to secure the vehicle and move it to controlled storage.

The cops called back to their headquarters, and more personnel started to arrive. The investigation was led primarily by the Vermont State Police, with support by the Washington County Sheriff's Office. Washington County included the town of Calais, and Calais didn't have its own police force.

The bodies were transported in the late hours of the same evening to Burlington, where an autopsy was immediately conducted by Vermont State Pathologist Dr. Lawrence Harris and Assistant Dr. Richard Woodruff. Shortly before midnight, Dr. Harris would issue a preliminary ruling on the cause of death, saying, "...the hips had been killed by a series of blows from blunt and sharp instruments to the head and upper body."

Though time of death estimates are sometimes inaccurate, he figured that they had died four days prior. Meanwhile, back at the site, the cops were getting ready to tow the camper and impound it for further analysis. Investigators later dusted the camper and the green sedan for fingerprints and submitted their findings to the FBI. Vermont did not have the facilities to examine fingerprints themselves.

According to the press, the seven officers who responded to the bloody scene were puzzled and had little to say. They said, This one really has us stumped. It's weird. Really leaving us in the dark.

James and Iola were already riding high from their trip to Mexico when they decided to embark on another epic adventure. They had just purchased a 24-foot-long green and silver tow-behind camper. It was a little older, but James was handy and gave it a little bit of TLC, getting it ready for a month-long trip from Florida up to Canada and back.

James' sister, Mary, had recently taken a similar trip, and she was the one who gave them the idea. So they piled their two dogs, a poodle named Missy and a terrier named Lady, into their car, hitched up the camper, and left their home in Lutes on a sunny summer Florida day, Sunday, August 10th, 1969, one month before they would be murdered.

They made it all the way up to Prince Edward Island, a small province in eastern Canada, and an incredible 2,000 miles from Lutes. They were planning on heading back through Kentucky and then Alabama as they made their way back to Florida. James Hipp was born in 1902, and he was 67 years old. Iola was born in 1907, and she was 62. James was born in a small town in Georgia and Iola in a small town in Illinois.

They had four daughters and ended up settling into the Tampa, Florida area. Iola was an active member of the Seminole Heights United Methodist Church for nearly two decades. She held different leadership positions, and she sang in the choir. She was a meticulous bookkeeper. And it was Iola who had been keeping a detailed log of their trip. The Hipps had not lived long in Lutes, Florida. Lutes is situated about 15 miles north of Tampa.

They found a nice property on the shores of a tiny lake called Compton Lake. They purchased their home on 2nd Avenue in 1966, and they bought it from a colleague of James who also worked at Railway Express Agency. James had worked at the company for 18 years as a foreman and had done some mechanic work. The Railway Express Agency, or REA for short, was a major player in delivering packages in the U.S. at the time.

They had created a nationwide network of railroad parcel delivery, but it had been fading in popularity since the conclusion of World War II. James, too, was a longtime member of the Seminole Heights United Methodist Church and held different leadership positions as well. He was also involved in the local Tampa Masons chapter called the John Darling Masonic Lodge.

In other words, both James and Iola were part of the fabric of the community of Tampa. They were in their early retirement years, and this fateful trip was one of their first big adventures. This episode is sponsored by Lumen.

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From the developed film and the detailed log, the police were able to reconstruct their final days. From Prince Edward Island, they came back through western Maine and cut through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. On the night of Thursday, September 11th, a week and a half before their bodies were discovered, they spent the night in a small town called Lancaster in northern New Hampshire, right on the border with Vermont.

They had no friends or family in the New Hampshire-Vermont region, so they were just tourists checking it out. The next morning, Friday, September 12th, exactly one week prior to their bodies being discovered, they went to the Maple Museum in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. This brought them to Route 2, the road off of which their car would later be found, stripped of its wheels and abandoned.

From the Maple Museum, it seems that they drove west on Route 2 toward Montpelier. They pulled over in a small town called Marshfield and got gas for 35 cents a gallon. They got back on the road and pulled into the rest stop just outside of Montpelier, where their car would later be discovered. It was about noontime, and they'd stopped to have lunch. They, quote, staked their two dogs to tethers under some shady trees and prepared a picnic lunch.

A witness recalled seeing the hips camper around 2.45 p.m. Police estimated that sometime between 2.30 and 3 p.m. that Friday afternoon, the hips were murdered in their camper at that rest stop. Their kids thought that it was likely somebody they had offered a kindness to, someone they had invited in, someone that turned out to be a violent predator.

Around 3 p.m., another witness told police that he saw the hip's car and camper being driven north to Calais. The witness said that it looked like they were stuck, so the witness pulled over, intending to offer assistance. Before the witness got to the car, the driver managed to free the vehicle and drove off, but not before they got a good look at him.

According to the witness, he was about 5'11 and weighed 150 pounds, was in his early 20s, and had long, light brown hair. He clarified that it was not, quote, hippie long, but down past his ears. The person he saw was clearly not one of the hips. He was much younger and appeared to be by himself.

The killer, it seemed, had driven the hip's vehicle and camper north while they were dead in the back. A second witness, a local man who was driving on the back roads near the rest stop, remembered stopping his vehicle for a little terrier dog that had strayed into the road. After coming to a halt, he reported seeing the car and the camper pulled over to the side of the road with a black poodle nearby.

After waiting for a moment, the second witness drove away without seeing the driver. When he passed by the same spot later that day, the two dogs, the camper, and the green sedan were all gone. A third man, local Montpelier resident Cecil Blanchard, found the hips two dogs on a local road not far from the rest stop.

The dogs had tags with a Hillsborough County stamp and registration. Lutz was in Hillsborough County. He took the dogs to a local vet. The vet determined that the terrier was blind due to an illness she must have had for a few years, and in a move that feels so outrageous, recommended that she be put down. He agreed, and the terrier named Lady was euthanized that day.

He took the larger black poodle, Missy, home with him. This all happened on Friday, September 12th, the week before their bodies were later discovered. The hips were not reported missing during that week. They were a thousand miles from home and planning their route as they went. Their families weren't missing them yet, and no one was expecting them. The next day, Saturday, September 13th, their green sedan was spotted back at the rest stop.

By Tuesday, a man, who was not believed by police to have any connection to the killer, noticed that the vehicle's back end was lifted up with a type of car jack called a screw jack, as though someone tried to get it to go further down the riverbank. He said that the vehicle was locked and the keys were inside. He saw them through a window in the ignition.

He stripped the wheels off the vehicle and left, stealing them, later turning himself into police who did not charge him with a crime. It was on Wednesday that the trooper discovered the vehicle and had it towed from the rest stop at the ESSO station. And it was on Friday that the two men came to the station to report the abandoned camper.

The medical examiner said in his autopsy report that the immediate cause of James Hipp's death was multiple blunt impacts to the head with skull fractures and bilateral acute subdural hematomas. In other words, massive trauma and bleeding to the brain. He continued, "...the approximate interval between onset and death was less than 10 minutes."

The report by the second medical examiner said that Iola Hipp died of extensive brain lacerations, depressed skull fractures, and severe crushing force by a blunt instrument. He said that she died instantly. He also said that there was, quote, no evidence of sexual assault. It was later divulged that they believed the murder weapon was a ball-peen hammer.

This is the type of hammer that has a flat face on one side and a metal ball on the other. At first, when I was learning about the details of the case, it seemed to me like the hips were killed at the location where their camper was discovered. Though the exact positions of their bodies weren't described, I imagined them on the floor in the kitchen area of the camper, with their meal sitting half-finished on the table, as though they had been interrupted.

There were condiments and plates sitting undisturbed. The distance between the rest stop and the location of the camper in Calais was nine miles. Nine miles of windy and hilly two-lane country roads. Even after getting to the spot in Calais, the trailer had to be driven off-road for a couple hundred feet. Why weren't the plates and food on the floor?

But if it were the hips who had driven to Calais, picked out this remote clearing to camp for the night, and had lunch, some other things wouldn't add up. The 3 p.m. witness sighting of the car and the camper being driven by a young man in his early 20s. The only explanation for that sighting is that the hips were in the back and that they were dead. But by the time this sighting was conveyed to the police, it had been over a week.

Could the witness have been mistaken? How distinct was a green sedan with whitewall tires towing a large green and white camper? To me, in 2024, seems like it probably would stand out, that it would be memorable. But in 1969? I have no idea.

Perhaps most persuasively, the cops who were living and breathing the investigation full-time for weeks and months came to the conclusion that the only explanation that made sense was that they were killed in the rest stop. So, in that theory, the Hipps had pulled over for some lunch in a scenic rest stop that overlooked the Winooski River. They gave their dogs a chance to stretch their legs, and they went to the camper, where they prepared sandwiches.

They were sitting inside, eating their meal, when a knock came upon the camper. They may have had the door to the camper shut as it was a little cool for Floridians. It was in the mid-60s around noon, but with the heat of the sun coming in through the camper windows, it was comfortable. James may have gotten up to greet their visitor. Perhaps the visitor explained that they were having car trouble and asked if they could borrow a tool.

Maybe James invited the man inside for a moment while he looked for his tools. But as soon as his back was turned, the visitor may have struck him with a hammer, rendering him instantly unconscious. The killer then turned his attention on Iola, whom he struck with the same hammer. Wanting to get the bodies away from the rest stop, he cleaned his hands in the camper sink and got into their green 1959 sedan. He was already hooked up to the trailer.

He was local, so he knew of a spot up in Calais where he could leave it. He was about to pull away when he realized he needed to do something with the dogs. He gathered them into the car. For some reason, he decided to spare their lives. On the way to Calais, he got a little stuck. He had to pull over to ditch the dogs. He looked into the side-view mirror and saw some do-gooder who was walking towards the driver's side door.

He had to get out of there. He rocked the car back and forth a few times and got it free before the man arrived. But he saw his eyes as he pulled away. He pulled over once more and released the dogs, driving away with their murdered owners. Little did he know, one of the dogs would be killed that day as well, by a vet. He drove into the clearing in Calais and backed the trailer up to its final spot. He unhooked the trailer hitch and stabilized the camper.

He went back inside and retrieved the bloody murder weapon. He pulled out James' wallet and grabbed some cash, but didn't look too hard for valuables. He stripped Iola of her clothing and cut her flesh with a knife. He drove back out with a hips-green sedan. He wasn't sure what to do with the car, but he decided to put it back where he found it at the rest stop off Route 2. After all, that's where his car was waiting for his return.

He pulled back into the rest stop and placed the sedan at the far end. He scanned his surroundings, making sure that no one was around, and switched back into his own vehicle. He had blood on his clothes and wanted to be sure that nobody would see him too closely. And then he drove off, vanishing until later that night when he returned to the rest stop, keys in hand. Maybe he tried to drive the car into the Winooski River, but failed.

The undercarriage got hung up on some rocks and roots, so he used a screw jack to try and lift the back end of the vehicle. But it was no use. It was stuck. He cursed his luck, put the keys in the ignition, and locked the doors. Let it be someone else's problem. And then he drove off in his vehicle, thinking to himself that it was a little messy, but he had gotten it done.

The killer had made life difficult for the police. The bodies were not discovered for a week, a week of fading memories, of deteriorating physical evidence, of rain washing away tracks. But the Vermont State Police and the Washington County Sheriff's Department put the full weight of their offices behind the investigation.

One of the first things they told the press was that they were offering immunity to whoever stole the tires from the Hipps vehicle. And sure enough, the thief, sheepishly I'm sure, showed up and returned the whitewall tires to the cops. He explained all the details and mentioned the screw jack that was propping up the rear end of the vehicle. The cops perked up at this. The screw jack wasn't there when the vehicle was towed to the ESSO station on Wednesday.

Where had the jack gone? They did a follow-up announcement that they were in search of a heavy-duty truck type of screw jack, and again, promised immunity for anyone coming forward. Something else that was missing from the vehicle were some large side-view mirrors, hand-painted a green color, that were designed to give adequate visibility for towing the camper. They were successful in getting these back. Again, someone had taken them.

Though it's not clear if it was ever done, the police were looking into the possibility of draining the river completely so that they could search its depths. They theorized that the killer may have thrown something into the river near where the car was found. They asked any dry cleaners in the area who had recently been given bloody clothing to come to the police. They developed the film that was left by the hips, the last images of them alive. It must have been eerie looking through the prints.

The last shots were of James and Iola the morning of their death at the Maple Museum in St. Johnsbury. They scrutinized the travel log. At each of the stops, Iola would write down the mileage on the odometer. They compared the final reading of the odometer of the hips vehicle in their impound with the last reading that Iola had recorded. It was a difference of 34 miles.

The cops drove the route and calculated the mileage to see how it compared. They concluded that the killer had not taken the green sedan any further than necessary. I did my own calculation with Google Maps directions from Marshfield to the rest stop, from the rest stop to Calais, and from Calais back to the rest stop, and it added up to 33.8 miles. Almost 34 exactly. The cops had a good point.

They repeatedly searched both the rest stop and the locations of the abandoned trailer, and one of those searches turned up a fascinating clue. Though they wouldn't announce it for a month, the police discovered a valuable men's ring at the rest area. It had a thick 14-carat gold band. It was size 10.

slightly above the average size for a man, and it had one large flat stone cut into an oval. It was a plain, light blue-gray agate. Inscribed on the inside of the band was the number 585, which evidently denotes the purity of the gold, 58.5%, similar to carats. Jewelers studied the ring and believed that it likely came from Europe.

One jeweler had seen similar rings in London. They estimated its value at $50 to $100, or $400 to $800 in today's money. The police sent images to the ring to the family in Florida, but nobody recognized it. Images of the ring were published in the papers, and you can see those on MurderSheTold.com. It's also linked in the show notes. It wasn't clear if it belonged to the killer, or if it was just a red herring.

Most interesting about the ring was that it was, quote, caked in blood. Preliminary tests by the Vermont Crime Lab failed to determine if the blood from the ring matched the blood type of either of the hips, so they sent it to the FBI. The blood was so old that it was difficult to do any testing. The FBI came back with disappointing results. They said that it wasn't even blood at all.

Even two months after the murders, there were still five officers with the Vermont State Police working the case full-time. The district attorney for Washington County said at the time, I'm not optimistic, but the investigation is still going on. By November of 1969, the missing carjack had been turned in to the police, but they said that it had been handled so much that whatever fingerprints they could recover would be meaningless.

They got a lead on a particular pickup in a camper that was believed to be in the rest area around the time of the murder. The camper was a tow-behind unit, and the truck was maroon in color. In a somewhat dismal statistic, the press reported that there were about 5,000 trucks that answered that description in Vermont.

the media was doing their part as well. About a week after the discovery of the bodies, the Burlington Free Press, one of the biggest papers in Vermont, offered their own reward leading to the Hipps murderer, $1,000, or about $4,000 today. They wanted to protect the potential anonymity of the tipster, so they came up with a little system.

They suggested that a writer might send in a letter and rip off the top left corner of the sheet of paper that they wrote on. They told the tipster to write a number on the ripped-off corner and a matching number on the bottom right corner of the letter. If a tip proved successful, they promised to publish the letter in a future issue of the Burlington Free Press.

The tipster could then claim the reward or send someone else in their stead, with a ripped-off corner in hand to collect it for them. They received at least two letters that were forwarded to the state's attorney's office, but no reward was ever paid. The single most promising clue that police developed was from the camper. They were able to identify and lift two good fingerprints that did not belong to James or Iola.

I'm sending my brother money directly to his bank account in India because he's apparently too busy practicing his karaoke to go pick up cash. Thankfully, I can still send money his way. Direct to my bank account.

The retired couple was found on Friday, September 19th, and in less than 24 hours, three of their daughters had arrived in Vermont.

They confirmed identification on Saturday, and by Sunday morning, the police had turned over to them the bodies of their parents, and they made arrangements to have them flown back to Tampa on Mohawk Airlines, along with a surviving dog, the black poodle named Missy. They'd been held temporarily at a funeral home in Montpelier while arrangements were made.

On Thursday the 25th, an obituary was published for the Hipps in the Tampa Times. And on Saturday, one week and one day after they were discovered in Vermont, their funeral was held in Florida. The service was conducted in the morning at Seminole Heights Methodist Church, the church where they had been members and leaders for nearly 20 years. Despite the decomposition and disfigurement, they were able to have an open casket funeral.

They were interred in Tampa at the Garden of Memories Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family asked for donations for the church, which would be utilized for medical equipment for a hospital in Bolivia, the country in South America. As the Hipps were being buried in Florida, police were uncovering another body in Vermont.

At 12:30 p.m. that Saturday, two young boys who were hunting birds had come upon the headless, decomposed body of a woman in the woods, 15 miles south of where James and Iola were left in their camper. It was near the summit of West Hill, a gently sloping wooded peak west of Berry, Vermont. Authorities were quick to say that they didn't believe the two incidents were connected, but the timing and the location were hard to ignore.

The same medical examiner in Burlington who autopsied the hips studied this new cadaver and estimated that the woman had been dead for a few months and that she was middle-aged. No missing persons report matched this description, and the only clue to her identity was a name on a tag inside the lining of a brown corduroy coat found at the site, which read, L. Baker.

Within a couple of weeks, the Berry police chief announced that they were looking for a missing woman, Lorette Baker. And two days later, he confirmed that the remains found on West Hill were likely hers. The crime went unsolved. Residents immediately connected that name to another unsolved murder in Berry that happened 10 years prior, in 1958.

A 45-year-old woman had been found dead behind the counter of a flooring store, her head beaten with a hammer, her body cut in various places, and her throat slit with a particular type of flooring knife in the dead of winter. The wounds were very similar to those sustained by Iola Hipp. Her name was Doris Baker. Her husband was Leo Baker.

His initials, L. Baker, were the same as the ones found in the corduroy coat. The state's attorney dismissed the connection, though, saying that it was probably just a coincidence and nothing more. On a Monday in November in 1969, a 17-year-old named Jennifer was teaching a dance class to third graders at a school in Berry. She left shortly before noon and was hitchhiking, looking for a ride back to Goddard College, which was about 10 miles away.

She got picked up by a predator who raped her, shot her, and left her in the woods to die off Route 2, just five minutes from the rest stop where the Hipps pulled over to have lunch. Incredibly, she survived. She crawled and yelled for help, and eventually someone heard her cries. She was taken to the hospital where she was in critical condition in the intensive care unit. The lead investigator in the Hipps case questioned Jennifer when she was there.

She was able to eventually describe her assailant as a young man driving a compact car. She said that she didn't know him. 24 hours after her interview, state police arrested Dale Finson, a resident of Berry, at his work at 4 p.m. He was arraigned the next day with charges of rape and attempted murder. He entered no plea, and he was held without bail.

He would later be found incompetent to stand trial and was committed to a psychiatric hospital where he spent three years and then was released back to his family. Dale was never publicly linked to the Hipps murders. A year prior, in September of 1968, there was an unsolved double homicide of a young couple who were shot and left in their vehicle in a remote area.

There was a triple homicide that occurred in December of 1969, and another dead body found in October of 69. There was a staggering amount of murder for rural Washington County, but police maintained that none of the crimes appeared to be connected.

Even the fact that the hips vehicle, which was left at a rest stop, within just days had its wheels stolen, the screw jack supporting its back end, and its side view mirrors, is startling. Washington County was starting to seem like a dangerous place, and the locals were taking note.

Richard Curtis, a lieutenant with the Vermont State Police, said, The hips were just traveling through and knew no one in the area. Nobody could have a grudge against them. The person who did this was out of their mind. Anybody who could do this would do anything. Was there a maniacal murderer running loose in Washington County? Probably.

The rural area of Calais where the camper was found was clogged with traffic the days after the discovery, as residents drove out to see the macabre scene. They were both curious and frightened. Several residents of Montpelier told the press that they were locking their doors more frequently than usual. They were far more cautious when meeting strangers. They were leaving their porch lights on at night.

Some residents moved their guns to more accessible locations and kept them loaded. The local animal shelter told the press that they had been fielding calls from residents asking if they had any vicious dogs to help with home protection. Gun shops and stores reported an uptick in gun and lock sales. People were battening down the hatches, especially since it was the prevailing opinion of both police and the community that the perpetrator was a local.

He could be anyone. The pressure was on to bring the crime to a resolution, but the police had little to work with. They had witness memories that were at least a week old. Some of the most important people to track down would have been those who happened to stop in or drive by the rest stop where the hips were killed. But those witnesses were scattered in the wind. Route 2 was the main artery of travel in northern Vermont.

and anyone who came through on that fateful Friday could be literally anywhere. Adding to that difficulty was that during the one-week period, there was a significant rainfall that washed away evidence. The Hipps' vehicle was checked carefully in police impound. The fact that the killer had driven it after committing a brutal, bloody crime made it seem almost a certainty that it would contain important physical evidence.

But despite a thorough search, police reported that there was no evidence recovered. James' younger sister wrote to the Burlington Free Press after she learned that they were putting up a reward. She said, in part, I want to thank you on behalf of the family for what you're doing to bring this criminal or criminals to justice. I do hope the County of Washington will not stop until this is done. We do appreciate all your efforts.

My brother and his wife were kind people who loved outdoor life and did nothing to harm anyone. They did good deeds wherever they could. We're at a loss to understand how, in such a beautiful little state, so quiet and harmless-looking as Vermont, such a tragedy could happen.

I've made several trips through the New England states and on and up to Canada during fall time, and I told my brother of the beauty of the scenery. They were looking forward to this trip so much. Again, I want to thank you for your efforts and hope that through them, the authorities can apprehend the murderer before he has time to inflict such sorrow on others. Despite the passage of time, I still have hope that this crime could be solved.

I have a special place in my heart for older cases, and it seems like more and more lately we're seeing older cases from the 60s, 70s, even the 50s being solved. This case reminds me a lot of the Everett Delano case that we covered in December of 2021.

Everett was killed in 1966, three years before the hips. There was a fingerprint recovered from the faucet of the bathroom of the service station where he was working when he was killed. And it wasn't until 2013, 47 years later, that police connected the fingerprints to the killer. The New Hampshire Cold Case Unit submitted the latent prints to the FBI database, APHIS, and they got a match to a convicted felon named Thomas Cass.

In the case of James and Iola Hipp, if the description of the killer is accurate, he was likely in his 20s in 1969 and would be in his mid-70s today. It's hard to imagine that someone who committed such a vicious crime so early in their life would not have gotten into criminal trouble again over the years. And, if so, the police department would have taken his fingerprints.

Depending on the timing of their felony, those prints may have made it to the FBI's national database. What was once an impossibility due to the laborious nature of manually matching fingerprints is now done with a click of a few buttons. So I leave this story with a question. A question for the Vermont State Police. When was the last time you checked those fingerprints?

If you have any information at all on the murder of James and Iola Hipp, please contact the Vermont Major Crimes Unit at 802-244-8781 or by texting the word VTIPS to 274637, which spells out crimes.

A detailed list of sources and photos from this episode and more can be found at MurderSheTold.com. You can find more Murder She Told on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Thank you to Byron Willis for his writing and research, and to Erica Pierce and Chelsea Hanrahan for additional research. If you have a case suggestion, you can always email me at HelloAtMurderSheTold.com. I'm Kristen Seavey. Thank you for listening.