‘Detectives are tired:’ Vermont sees 6 homicides — plus a suspicious death — in October

Detectives in Vermont are working under the pressure of a significant spike in homicides and suspicious deaths in October — a period that has had more of those investigations than the head of criminal investigations can remember any other month having during his over two decades with Vermont State Police.

“Detectives are tired,” Major Daniel Trudeau said during an availability with reporters Monday afternoon. “They have had a lot of overnight cases, but I think we do a really great job here at the state police as far as allocating our resources wisely to certain cases.”

Trudeau said that many detectives were operating out of the Berlin barracks on Monday, working on their investigations.

There have been six homicides, and one suspicious death in Vermont during the month of October alone. Vermont has seen 20 total homicides in 2023, a statistic that includes a fatal police shooting.

As of Monday, none of the October cases have resulted in an arrest, state police said, adding that they don’t believe any of the cases are connected.

To keep up with the high caseload, Trudeau said that troopers in the Field Force Division have been an important support to the Criminal Division. Some Field Force troopers who have the appropriate experience are even being put to work on smaller crime investigations for now.

“They’re kind of cross working and will be helping out with some of the some of the newer cases that come in, such as untimely death investigations or maybe a low scale type robbery case or burglary,” Trudeau said.

The most recent of the homicide cases is out of Plainfield, where a man was found in the woods with a fatal gunshot wound to his torso on Friday, according to state troopers. The man was identified as Jeffrey Caron, 42, of Barre. Another Barre resident — Tainairy “Tanya” Velazquez Estrada, 23 — was found dead in the woods in Washington earlier in the week. That death has not been classified as a homicide at this point, with results still pending on a toxicology report.

Also last week, autopsies confirmed that the two bodies found in a wooded area off a rural road in Eden were those of two missing men from Massachusetts — 21-year-olds Jahim Solomon, of Pittsfield, and Eric White, of Chicopee. Both of their deaths were ruled homicides.

In Wheelock, Gunnar Watson, 27, was killed in a shooting on Oct. 16. A man from Hartford, Connecticut, identified as 27-year-old Wilmer Rodriguez, was killed in a shooting on Oct. 14 in Newport Town.

Honoree Fleming, a 77-year-old retired dean of Vermont State University at Castleton, was found shot to death on a rail trail in Castleton on Oct. 5.

“There’s a lot of components to these investigations,” Trudeau said. “Whether it’s crime scene examination or interviews of witnesses and family or anything of that nature, and then the component of any digital type evidence that we need to collect or search warrants we need to conduct.”

Troopers urge anyone with a tip to get in touch with state police.