It’s the morning of October 23, 1984.

Patricia Ann Gonyea, who was supposed to come home late the night before from her boyfriend’s house, wasn’t in her bed. She wasn’t even in the apartment.

Patricia was killed while walking home from a nearby bus stop the night before. She had been bludgeoned to death. Her body was dumped in a window well of a factory building on Grand Street, just two blocks from her family’s first floor apartment on Southgate Street.

Nearly 40 years later, Worcester residents are still asking the same question: Who killed Patricia Gonyea?

It’s around 6 a.m. on January 31, 1989.

A maintenance worker at Anderson Tool and Stamping Company on Mason Street, is taking out the trash.

When the worker steps outside and turns the corner onto the factory’s loading dock, he sees the body of a young black woman laying face down about 10 feet away below the loading dock.

The woman, wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, is covered in blood.

Later that day, she would be identified as 23-year-old Angela Jones.

Angela had been killed just hours before she is found her behind the Anderson Tool building.

She had been stabbed multiple times.

It’s just past midnight on
September 22, 1992.

Paulette Andrea pays her tab at Barney Google’s, a neighborhood tavern on Washington Street in Worcester’s Green Island neighborhood.

She hugs her friends at the bar goodbye and exits the front door, taking a right toward Harding Street and Ellsworth Street.

Paulette has about a 15-minute walk home to her apartment on Lawrence Street. 

But she never makes it.

About four hours later, a passerby finds Paulette’s body face down in a sandbox at a playground at Crompton Park.

She had been strangled to death.

It’s around 1 a.m. on January 13, 1993.

Worcester Police officers arrive at the Public Inebriate Program, or PIP, shelter in Worcester’s Main South neighborhood.

Police are at the shelter to arrest James Earl Johnson…he’s wanted for the murder of 42-year-old Vicki Lehtinen, whose body was found in the basement of a Pleasant Street apartment building just three days before.

Vicki had been beaten and strangled to death.

The last time Vicki was seen alive, she was leaving a Main Street bar with James Earl Johnson.

It’s around 8:45 p.m. on Feb. 23, 1991.
28-year-old Bruce Wood and his 5-year-old son, Bruce, Jr., are walking down Chestnut Street in downtown Worcester.

They’re heading home with their dinner from McDonalds. Bruce Sr. got his son a Happy Meal. They’re spending the weekend together.

The father and son are about 10 minutes away from Bruce’s apartment on Quincy Street when a man ran up to Bruce, stabbing him multiple times. The fatal stab through the heart.

When police arrived moments later, officers found Bruce, Jr., sitting on the sidewalk, crying next to his father’s body.

It’s around 2:15 a.m. on August 1, 2003. 

Worcester’s Main Street bars and clubs have closed for the night. 

Kwaku Osei Owusu and four of his friends pile into his car parked at the corner of Portland Street and Franklin Street.

A sports car pulls up suddenly next to Kwaku’s black sedan. Someone in the sports car points a gun in the direction of Kwaku and within an instant, 10 shots are fired into the driver’s side of Kwaku’s car.

Kwaku and the passenger next to him, 23-year-old Frank Vanney, are killed instantly.

When police arrive, they find Kwaku and Frank dead in the front seats. The car is riddled with bullet holes.

It’s the middle of the summer. Worcester, 1987.

30-year-old Patricia Evans has just returned to the city after spending a month in a detox center in Springfield. 

For over five years now, Patricia has been back and forth, in and out of treatment centers across the state.

The constant battle with her addiction to drugs had taken its toll on the young mother of four.

But leaving detox this time, there may have been some room for optimism. 

But any optimism they may have existed, evaporated quickly. Just a month later, on August 8, 1987, Patricia was found dead in the empty apartment on the third floor above her family on Piedmont Street.

She was strangled to death. 

Walter Palmer climbed one flight of stairs to the second floor of an apartment building at 16 Millbury Street in Worcester’s Green Island Neighborhood.

It’s Saturday evening, August 5,1989, Palmer was surprising his friend John Riley.

The door to John’s studio apartment was locked, so Palmer used his spare key.

When he opened the apartment door, Palmer stood there in shock.  

John Riley sat lifeless in his chair. A pool of blood was at John’s feet.

John was murdered. He had been stabbed 29 times.

What would you do if someone sent you a text message of a photo of the corpse of a family member or loved one?

That’s what happened to Carmen Rivera on Easter Sunday 2009.

Carmen was on her way to Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester when she received a photo of her son, 25-year-old Luis Rosario, dead on a gurney at the hospital.
Luis had been shot twice in the chest outside of a house party on Hammond Street.

The photo of Luis dead at the hospital had been posted on social media with the caption, “Mission Accomplished.”

It’s the oldest unsolved murder case on file with the Worcester Police Department Detective Unit.

March 11, 1951.

20-year-old Irish immigrant Sean Goggin is gunned down inside the entrance of a home on Fairhaven Road in Worcester’s Burncoat neighorhood.

Two men in trench coats, one wearing a handkerchief to cover his face, fired three shots into the Fairhaven Road home, with one bullet striking Sean in the chest and killing him.