How Bill Shackford helped solve 1985 Hooksett murder
HOOKSETT - Investigator Bill Shackford remembers the day Melanie Paquette Cooper came on his own stepfather with murder. It was during the year 2004, almost 20 years after Danny Paquette, 36, was shot dead in his Hooksett farm.
Cooper has lived with her husband and five children in Boise, Idaho. She did not know Hooksett’s cold case was reopened, and therefore could not know, Shackford had discovered they lied about his alibi for the day of the killing.
Shackford two guards and the state of New Hampshire, Sgt. Mark Mudgett and Sgt. Mark Armaganian, Boise, and has traveled to knocked at the door of Cooper.
“We said, ‘Melanie, we are in New Hampshire,’” remembers Shackford. “We declare that we were, if we were in the region and had a number of questions about old cases.
Local and state law enforcement agencies had worked for the case to the east, which he is chased Hooksett Police Chief Steve Paquette Agrafiotis, since the murder of Danny, November 9, 1985, as police were Agrafiotis a policeman.
Bill Shackford the Hooksett was one of the investigators, with a view to solving the murder of Danny Paquette 1985. (GRETA CUYLER)
When he was appointed chief in 1999, Agrafiotis decided to review the murder, and up to the year 2003, his department has enough money to hire part-time consultants. He therefore sent Shackford, a veteran who has more than three decades of repression by the police and Hooksett Merrimack County Sheriff’s Department.
Cold Case-investigation, Agrafiotis said, is “boring, but the details … It’s all small things of the thing is what has resulted.”
And he said: “If anyone you find a needle in a haystack, it’s Bill.”
Over time, he came to Boise, Shackford had discovered that the needle was found a huge hole in Cooper’s alibi. Finally, the details in murder cases Paquette would add an advocacy convicted for a second-degree murder charge in Cooper’s childhood friend Eric Hurst wind and 15 months in prison for Cooper.
Family History
According to court documents, Cooper was 4, as his mother, Denise, married Danny Paquette, and Cooper said that the physical abuse of Paquette began shortly thereafter. If the couple divorced in the year 1981, Denise Paquette, to ensure a moderating against Danny, who says it is Stalking the family.
Court documents show that Danny Paquette was unintentionally obligation to the state psychiatric hospital, and he had the honor of visiting rights with Cooper and his two half-sisters after his release. As the evidence, Cooper said Danny Paquette sexually abused and threatened to kill them, his mother, Denise Paquette that fled with her three daughters, Alaska in 1982.
Three years later, Cooper has drawn once again to New Hampshire to live with her aunt, Kathleen McGuire - then murder of state prosecutor, who now has a Merrimack County Superior Court judge - and uncle Hopkinton. Living in Hopkinton, Cooper was friendly with Eric Hurst wind, then 17
Shackford discoveries
Shackford read files on Paquette murder investigation and the police discovered two letters, according to a segment of the television series “unsolved mysteries.” These two letters of reference wind Hurst.
In several interviews, and the wind Cooper Hurst, it had maintained in a field hockey game in Plymouth, when the murder took place. And when an old friend came we were told years later, Cooper said this, she participated in the murder, she refused.
But Shackford was convinced wind Hurst Cooper and other stories may be necessary.
“If you go to school homicide is one thing, if you say that you are working on a case of cold: The answers are there, you just have to find them,” says Shackford.
Shackford related to newspaper articles in the year 1985 and discovered the field hockey for the day Danny Paquette was murdered. The detective also knew that even if a friend of wind Hurst’s claims that the teenager was a Ruger 270, a high-powered pistol Hirsch, it was not the weapon wind Hurst police.
“Things were kind multiply, and I told the chief, we have to walk and talk with him, but it is a great game of chance,” says Shackford.
At Boise, investigators learned that Cooper refused to participate in the murder of Paquette. She asked him graphics on a poly-test. You agreed.
When investigators from the courtroom, Cooper burying his head in his hands as Shackford and State Police observed via video camera.
Mudgett went back into the room and sat down in front of Cooper, Shackford recalled.
“He sits, watching her straight in the eye and said Melanie, you will tell me the truth?” She says nothing, “remembers Shackford.
He again asked, ‘Do you want me to tell the truth? “And she said,’ Could you please me minutes to one hour?”
Once the prayer ended, she told investigators the truth.