Murder rate Boston75 (10 year high) Vermont 7 (11 year low) – 2 stories
Date: Dec 29, 2005 7:13 AM
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Vermont and Boston have similar populations. Boston has strict gun control;
Vermont focus on prosecuting violent criminal acts. Stories below show the result.

Yet, Boston’s Mayor Menino says lax gun laws in Vermont (NH & ME) are responsible
for violent crimes in Boston. Mayor Menino bet the farm on gun control and his city is losing.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2005/12/27/vermont_homicides_down_in_2005/

Vermont homicides down in 2005
December 27, 2005

BURLINGTON, Vt. –The number of murders committed in Vermont in 2005 sunk to its lowest point in 11 years, statistics show.

Seven people were killed in six incidents, according to calculations done by the Burlington Free Press. The figure is the lowest since 1994 when five people were killed.

The 2005 murders included a random killing in Burlington that frightened residents, an unsolved sniper-style shooting in Sheldon, and a double homicide in Montgomery.

The highest number of homicides in the last decade came in 1999 when 17 people were murdered.

The yearly figures mean little in Vermont, which has such a small number of homicides, said Max Schlueter, director of the Vermont Criminal Information Center in Waterbury.

“It’s very difficult to suggest a pattern,” Schlueter said last week.

The VCIC figures includes two men killed in hunting accidents, which are considered manslaughter, not murder, and the case of a woman missing since 1983 whose remains were discovered in November.

Schlueter said the center’s 2005 data would not be finalized until next year.

The random killing in March of Burlington resident Laura Winterbottom, 31, shocked the city. She was abducted from a Burlington street, sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled, according to court papers.

A 33-year-old Burlington man, Gerald Montgomery, has pleaded innocent.

No arrests have been made in the July sniper-shooting death of farmhand Kenneth Jerome, 33, in Sheldon.

Investigators searched several properties in Sheldon during the days after the shooting, but no suspects have been named and no one has been charged.

In October Tom Patras, 47, and Valerie Papillo, 36, were shot to death Patras’ home on Vermont 242 in Montgomery. Two Connecticut residents are in custody in that case.

Also killed in 2005 were: Thomas Oxton Jr., 19, in March in Readsboro; Harold Wood, 37, in August in Rutland; and Douglas Bartlett, 50, in September in Whitingham. The suspect in Wood’s killing, 18-year-old Aaron Sears of Rutland, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter.

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http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/28/four_people_shot_in_boston/

Four people shot in Boston
December 28, 2005

BOSTON –Four people were shot, one fatally, on a street in Boston’s South End on Wednesday evening, raising the number of murders in the city this year to 75, police said.

Boston police responded to a call on Lenox Street, near Shawmut Avenue, just after 6 p.m. No arrests have been made.

Three people were found on Lenox Street suffering from gun shot wounds and a fourth person was found on Shawmut Avenue. One person was pronounced dead at a local hospital. Injuries to the others are not life threatening, police said.

No identifications or ages were immediately available. No motive has been determined, police said.

The corner of Shawmut and Lenox is near an athletic field and playground that includes a basketball court where 23-year-old William “Biggie” Gaines was shot to death in July 2004 as he coached a youth basketball game.

Boston’s murder rate is at a 10-year high.

On Dec. 13, four men were fatally shot in the basement apartment of a home in the Dorchester section of the city. There have been no arrests in that case.

Information from: The Burlington Free Press, http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com