Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 10

i OA TIMES SUNDAY, JUNE 1 1, 2006 mi i i iU 1 St, Petersburg private investigator Lynn-Marie Carty, far right has spent months researching Michael Nicholaou's life and possible connection with the Connecticut River Valley murders in the 1980s. She has amassed a file, below, of his history and the serial killings. is a photo from her collection, showing Michelle Ashley, who had two children with Michael Nicholaou, posing with him and their daughter Joy Lynn. Michelle disappeared from her home in Holyoke, in December 1988. '5 v.

if lL.Lj.sy: 4. 1 1 -r a i ft SfciMmi.ni, nil it 1 i Vv A A Av Times photo DANIEL WALLACE CONNECTICUT RIVER VALLEY KILLINGS L. Killer from 1A In the 1 980s, a man stalked and killed women along Interstate 91, dumping most of their remains in remote locations in the Connecticut River Valley. The killings remain unsolved. Michael Nicholaou frequented this area.

Victim last seen alive Place body found fl Nicholau 'reaD s' shows djZli. 10 miles Sharon Tunbridge VT. la Hanover V. 3S 0u K.T (120' West Claremont r' I Claremont, '106 mi 14 4 HSU- JftuC. i in i I 7JL-U Newport Timet photo DANIEL WALLACE Not far from the pay phone where 26-year-old Ellen Fried called her sister, her body was found near a dirt road next to the Sugar River.

After her death, fear crept into Claremont, N.H., of a killer who targeted nurses. THE VICTIMS Bodies of several women were found within 10 miles of where they were last seen, within 25 miles of each other. One victim survived. Elizabeth Critchley July 25, 1981 Aug. 1981 Bernice Courtemanche May 30, 1984 April 19, 1986 Ellen Fried July 20, 1984 Sept.

19, 1985 Eva Morse July 10, 1985 April 25, 1986 Lynda Moore April 15, 1986 April 15, 1986 Barbara Agnew Jan. 10,1987 March 28, 1987 Jane Boroski (Lived) 7Aug.6,1988 NICHOLAOU IN AREA: Sharon, Vt: Girlfriend Michelle Ashley grew up here. Her aunt thinks Michelle and Nicholaou met at a nearby diner, mid-80s. Tunbridge, Vt: Nicholaou and Michelle visited her grandmother's home for mid-80s Christmas celebrations. Hanover, N.H.: Michelle wrote that she spent Thanksgiving 1986 with Nicholaou in Hanover Hospital visiting her grandmother, Two months later, Hanover nurse Barbara Agnew went missing.

0 Holyoke, Nicholaou, Michelle and their two babies disappeared from their apartment in December 1988. Michelle was never found. i i .1 I I '-of i (1031 Unity 00 It J'" I 1 so- 4 i Swanzey MASS- 1 if id I 1 1 I -t C5g f- about the Tampa murder-suicide, the name jumped off the page. It was him. Her only brush with Michael Nicholaou (pronounced NICK-allow) had been a phone call five years earlier.

Carty was hired by a Vermont mother to a daughter, Michelle Ashley, who had two babies with Nicholaou before she disappeared in 1988. Rose Young begged Massachusetts police for help, but they never found Michelle. The mother suspected Nicholaou, based on something her daughter once said: I'm ever missing, he killed me, and you need to track him down and find the kids. mTIus wasn't the sort of case Carty had in mind when she founded ReunitePeople.com in 2001. She liked happy endings.

Clients sent her butterfly trinkets, symbolizing the new beginnings she made possible. Carty knew about second chances. She had her first child at 16 and left her home in Massachusetts. She wound up in St Petersburg with two kids, living in a motel and driving a $150 car with a broken windshield. Carty was working at a day care in 1995 when a friend told her about baby graves dug up in Royal Palm Cemetery to make way for construction.

She tracked down the babies' families and persuaded a Clearwater lawyer to hire her as a full-time investigator. The class-action lawsuit made the papers, and Carty was on her way to becoming a private detective. She loved the work. She liked piecing together human puzzles and sorting through documents. Her son, Jason Heath, taught her to use the Internet and became an investigator, too.

Before long, she was charging people $2,100 to find a missing relative. It took her 15 minutes at the computer in 2001 to track down a phone number for Michael Nicholaou. Mow did you find me? she remembers him asking. asked about Michelle. He dehied knowing her, but Carty pressed on.

jlut, he said finally. She was doing drugs. She ran off and abandoned the kids. Carty asked about the children, Nick and Joy. He had them, he said.

They were fine. The conversation was short, and when Carty called back the next day, Nicholaou's phone was disconnected. She hadn'tthoughtmuch abouthim since, but that New Year's Day, there he was in the headlines: Marital dispute ends in deaths. He had killed his latest wife and her daughter. What about Nick and Joy, now teenagers? Who would take care of Michelle's kids? Carty tracked down Nick Nicholaou the next day on the phone and told him she didn't think their mother had abandoned them.

He and his sister had always thought otherwise. Nick cried as he described their hard life, being dragged around by a father still traumatized by Vietnam. vowed to reunite Nick with his mother's family, a gift for his 18th birthday. the woman with the butterfly business card holder couldn't stop wondering about Michelle. mmm 1 Growing up in the Connecticut River Valley, Michelle Marie Ashley was a tomboy who built tree forts with her cousin in the thick woods.

Source: ESRI; TeleAtlas; The Shadow of Death: The Hunt for a Serial Killer by Philip E. Ginsburg; N.H. State Police Times graphic DANA OPPENHEIM With Michelle in mind, she punched words into Google.com: New England. 1988. Murder.

She clicked on the story of a pregnant New Hampshire woman who was the sole survivor of a series of attacks known as the Connecticut River Valley murders. The remains of at least six other young women had been dumped beside back roads along 1-91 in a stretch that straddled Vermont and New Hampshire. A killer had slit throats and stabbed victims repeatedly in the lower abdomen, leaving some of them fully clothed. There was Mary Elizabeth Critchley, the hitchhiker. Bernice Courtemanche, the 17-year-old nurse's aide.

Ellen Fried, the nurse. Eva Morse, the single mother. Lynda Moore, the housewife. Bar-, baraAgnew, another nurse. And Jane Boroski, the pregnant woman who survived.

Carty, who wouldn't even let her kids watch horror movies, felt drawn into a serial murder investigation. She noticed right away that several victims were nurses. She remembered hearing that Nicholaou's first wife was a nurse and that his mother worked at a hospital. She read that the killer knew the area. Michelle's family lived in the heart of the Connecticut River Valley.

One woman's body was found near their town, and Claremont, N.H., setting for several of the slayings, was between there and Holyoke, just off 1-91. The killer used a martial arts grip on the surviving woman. Nicholaou had a black belt in karate. What Carty found most curious was that the last attack was only four months before Michelle and Nicholaou disappeared from the area. Carty read online about John Phil-pin, a criminal psychologist who, in the 1980s, helped police profile the serial killer.

She called Philpin in Felchville, Vt, and told him what she knew about Nicholaou, hoping he would take her suspicions to police. Carty had heard about DNA testing. Couldn't someone check samples from Nicholaou? Philpin wanted more information. So did Carty. She rush-ordered a book Later came fashion and men.

She met one and ran away with him. The next time family saw Michelle, in 1984, she had a baby she turned over to the father. It wasn't long before she had met another man, her mother's age, and was pregnant again. That man was Nicholaou. He had a deep voice and a thick New York accent Michelle told family they were married, though it couldn't be confirmed through public records.

She gave birth to Joy in August 1986 and Nick in January 1988, keeping detailed notes in their baby books. Her family thought Nicholaou was creepy from the beginning, too quiet during his visits to Vermont, where Michelle's mother and grandmother lived. He and Michelle had an apartment in Holyoke, about 110 miles down Interstate 91. The two were always in the car. Connecticut Virginia.

Louisiana. Massachusetts. He wouldn't let Michelle shave her underarms, according to Chicki Merrill, her aunt Nicholaou seemed to follow Michelle everywhere. At times she acted as if she wanted to confide in her family, but Nicholaou was always on her heels, cousin Julie Virgin said. Michelle had been good about writing to Virgin, dropping baby pictures in the envelope, but her letters slowed.

Finally, she told her mother She feared Nicholaou. She planned to leave him after her sister's November 1988 wedding. In December 1988, her mother walked into the couple's Holyoke apartment looking for Michelle. The Christmas tree was up, presents unopened. The refrigerator was full, food spoiled.

Michelle's baby books had been left behind, incomplete. In the years that followed, Nicholaou, with kids in tow, would visit his mother in Virginia, his friends in Florida and Army buddies across the country. When people asked about Michelle, he told some that she had run off with a drug dealer. He told others she was dead. It was days after Carty first read of Nicholaou's Tampa rampage.

wide wonder, at the joy they had found, The head nurse spoke up, and she said-leave this one alone She could tell-right away, that I was bad to the bone. Aileen Nicholaou's family The Tampa deaths of Aileen Nicholaou, 45, right, and her daughter Terrin Bowman, 20, got the attention of an investigator. from Amazon.com about the murders: The Shadow of Death, by Philip E. Ginsburg. The book explored 11 deaths, but police thought only some were related.

Carty read it in bed, skipping over the bloody parts. She left it in another room at night so she could feel safe. The book never mentioned Nicholaou. But in her mind, he became its main character. One of the Connecticut River Valley victims was Ellen Fried, supervising nurse at Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont, N.H.

Before the age of cell phones, 26-year-old Fried would use a public phone at Leo's Market to catch up with her out-of-town sister, usually at night after work. Leo's was on Main Street, a straight shot from 1-91. Their last conversation was recreated in The Shadow of Death. For almost an hour on July 20, 1984, the two talked. Then, something spooked Fried.

"That's strange," she said. "What?" "A car. Just drove through." There was a pause. Then Ellen spoke again. "Hold on a minute." The sister heard an engine turn over.

When Fried returned to the phone, she said she wanted to make sure her car would start They talked for a few minutes, then hung up. Fried was the third woman to disappear. The police began to suspect they were dealing with a serial killer with a penchant for nurses. Fear crept into Claremont Security guards shuttled nurses to their cars. Boyfriends armed girlfriends with guns.

People locked their doors. Claremont hasn't changed much from those days. Roadside signs say "Moose Crossing" and advertise maple syrup. Paper mills loom large and empty. And the conversation is seldom far from the fear that took the town 20 years ago.

"It was the worst thing that ever happened in this area," said Carla Hawkins, sitting on a stool at McGee's, one of the town's two bars. Her family took in one of the victim's daughters. "I was freaked out about it," she said. "Still am." Most everybody, knows about the book. Librarians keep four copies at the Fiske Free Library, behind the counter to discourage theft.

Inside the book are details that colored rumors at the time, stories of an elusive man who left police few clues. The one people remember is that someone kept calling local radio stations back then, obsessively requesting Bad to the Bone. It was a wildly popular song in the 1980s, all over MTV. It was Michael Nicholaou's favorite song. On the day I was born, the nurses all gathered 'round And jhey gazed in Carty tracked down a phone nuife ber for Susan Nicholaou, the Con-; necticut nurse Nicholaou married in 1978, before he hooked up with-Michelle.

The two divorced in 1982,. a year after the first valley victim, Critchley, disappeared off of 1-91 in; Massachusetts and later turned up New Hampshire. Though little is known of the short marriage, Nicholaou took off with, their daughter soon after she was born, infuriating his wife, according, to relatives. If Nicholaou was involved, Susan Nicholaou suspected somef; thing, Carty reasoned. Carty called.

She remembers the ex-wife's' response and the way her voice shook on the phone. I'm not going to talk to you. I'm no going to talk about him. Carty pressed on. What kind or cars did he drive? Susan said she barely saw him.

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