Millennials, here’s the biggest NH news story from the year you were born
New Hampshire millennials: Here are the state’s biggest news stories from the year you were born.
A lot of news was made in the Granite State between 1981 and 1996, the years millennials were born. Here are the biggest stories for each of those years, which were marked by a boom in technology, social media, and the coming of age in the new millennium.
Content warning: This article mentions sexual assault and murder.
1981
The gruesome murder of Portsmouth beauty school student Laura Kempton was discovered on September 28 by a police officer who came to the woman’s first-floor apartment to issue a summons for an unpaid parking meter violation. The 23-year-old, who had been sexually assaulted, died of a blunt-force blow to the head with what was believed to be a wine bottle. Tammy Little, 20, another student from the same beauty school, was murdered similarly in her bottom-floor apartment in Portsmouth, a year after Kempton.
The murders went unsolved until 2023, when genetic evidence linked Kempton’s attack to Ronney James Lee, who was 21 when the murder occurred. But Lee was never charged. He died of a cocaine overdose in 2005 at the age of 45, 18 years before the DNA match was made.
1982
“On Golden Pond,” the 1981 film inspired by and filmed on Squam Lake, was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and wins three, including Best Actress in a Leading Role for Katharine Hepburn, Best Actor in a Leading Role for Henry Fonda, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Ernest Thompson, a New Hampshire writer, actor, and director.
1983
It was all about the precipitation in the winter of 1983. From February 10 through 12, what’s now known as the Megalopolitan Snowstorm of 1983 hammered New Hampshire and the Northeast with up to 30 inches of snow, which fell at a speed of two to five inches an hour.
1984
On February 28, New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primaries were front-page news, kicking off the presidential race to Election Day in November. Incumbent President Ronald Reagan ran virtually unopposed in the Republican primary, and U.S. Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado won a substantial victory over former Vice President and U.S. Sen. Walter “Fritz” Mondale of Minnesota, who ended up the Democratic presidential candidate in the general election.
1985
This was the year that marked the beginning of one of the state’s most insidious murders—a cold case that gained much more attention when New Hampshire Public Radio aired its award-winning true-crime podcast, “Bear Brook,” hosted by journalist Jason Moon. The production highlighted the gruesome murder of three girls and one woman whose bodies were found in two 55-gallon metal drums in Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown.
In November 1985, a hunter in Bear Brook State Park in Allenstown made a horrific discovery. Stashed in a 55-gallon metal drum were the partially skeletonized bodies of a woman and a girl wrapped in plastic who were determined to have died from blunt-point trauma to the head after autopsies were performed on the remains. In May 2000, the bodies of two more young girls who also died from head trauma were found in another 55-gallon metal drum about 100 yards away from the one discovered 15 years before. All four died from a blunt trauma to the head and were believed to have died sometime between 1977 and 1981.
The trail for investigators to identify the four victims or determine how they died was cold until DNA forensic analysis was employed starting in 2015, when Moon began reporting on the case.
In 2019, investigators identified Terry Peder Rasmussen, who used many aliases, including Robert Evans, as the primary suspect in the grisly murders. Rasmussen was already serving 15 years to life in prison for the murder of his former girlfriend, Eunsoon Jun, and was suspected in the death of Denise Beaudin, another former girlfriend. He died of natural causes in a California prison at age 67 in 2010.
That same year, three of the victims had been identified. The adult was determined to be Marlyse Elizabeth Honeychurch, who was between 23 and 33 when she died, and her daughters, Marie Elizabeth Vaughn, aged between 5 and 11 years old, and one to three-year-old Sarah Lynn McWaters. Honeychurch had last been seen alive in the fall of 1978. The fourth girl has yet to be identified, but after DNA testing in 2016, she was determined to be Rasmussen’s young daughter, who was between the ages of two and four when she was murdered. The New Hampshire Cold Case Unit is still trying to identify the remains of the fourth victim.
1986
The state and nation looked skyward on January 28, when Concord High School social studies teacher Christa McAuliffe boarded the space shuttle Challenger. The year before, McAuliffe, 37, beat 11,000 others in a competition to become the first teacher in space. McAuliffe’s students, family, and the world watched her prepare for the trip and, on an exceptionally cold morning at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, bid her farewell as she climbed aboard the spacecraft. Those same spectators watched in horror when, 73 seconds after launch, the Challenger broke apart, killing McAuliffe and the other six astronauts on board.
1987
Spring storms and quickly melting snow resulted in a powerful flood that washed over Plymouth and surrounding towns on March 31. It was considered the worst flood in 50 years, displacing over 75 families. At the height of the storm, winds gusted over 50 miles per hour, leaving thousands of residents without power.
1988
On November 8, 62 percent of New Hampshire voters picked Republican Vice President George H.W. Bush of Texas for president, beating out the Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis, governor of neighboring Massachusetts, by nearly 118,000 votes.
1989
On June 5, 1989, hundreds of protestors headed to Seabrook to protest the first atomic reaction at what would become the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. Over 600 demonstrators were arrested for trespassing. Despite the years-long effort by the Clamshell Alliance to thwart the opening, which began organizing against nuclear power in the 1970s, the plant opened the following year.
1990
New Hampshire was in the news a lot this year. Native David Souter was elected to the United States Supreme Court, and Walpole’s own Ken Burns debuted his groundbreaking “Civil War” documentary on public television. But it was the May 1 arrest of 22-year-old Derry teacher Pamela Smart for participation in the murder of her husband, Gregory Smart, that dominated headlines and news shows in New Hampshire and around the country.
Smart was working as a high school media coordinator when she had an affair with William Flynn, her 15-year-old student, whom she allegedly convinced to stage a fake robbery and shoot her 24-year-old husband in the hallway of their condominium. The trials resulting from the murder were among the first to be broadcast on television in the country, and captured the attention of the world.
Smart was convicted of being an accomplice to first-degree murder on March 22, 1991, and is still serving a life sentence in prison. Flynn, who accepted a plea deal, was sentenced to 28 years to life for second-degree murder. Flynn served 25 years of his sentence before being released on parole in 2015.
1991
Three people were killed in a severe thunderstorm while taking shelter beneath a pavilion in Stratham Hill Park in Stratham. On August 18, family reunion celebrants and hospital patients were enjoying a picnic when a quick and powerful storm, which spectators said resembled a mini tornado, blew surrounding pine trees onto the pavilion, causing it to collapse under the weight. In all, about 50 people were gathered in the structure. Three were killed and 11 more were injured, according to an August 20, 1991, article in the New York Times.
1992
Former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton earned the nickname “The Comeback Kid” when coming in a strong second in the New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Primary on February 18. Former U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts might have garnered the most Granite State votes that day, but Clinton’s second-place standing gave him the push to go on and win the presidency in November, beating out Republican Robert Dole, the former U.S. senator from Kansas. This was despite his sinking poll numbers due to reports of extramarital affairs and alleged draft dodging, which came out a few weeks before the primary.
1993
New Hampshire residents were well-prepared for what was called “The Storm of the Century,” a wicked three-day weather event affecting the East Coast starting March 12. The blizzard dumped 20 to 35 inches of snow in New Hampshire, with wind reaching 140 miles per hour at Mount Washington, and freezing temperatures. However, residents were prepared thanks to one of the first successful five-day warnings issued by the National Weather Service.
1994
Nuclear power protester and New Hampshire carpenter, Guy Chichester, the founding member of the Clamshell Alliance, is finally cleared of a criminal mischief charge from a 1990 arrest after sawing down an emergency warning pole outside the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. His first trial ended in a hung jury. However, he was cleared of the crime in 1994, when his lawyer claimed that the New Hampshire Constitution protects a citizen’s “Right of Revolution” to protect themselves against harm if the state fails to protect them.
1995
On March 30, the body of a 26-year-old Boston man was found on Hampstead Road in Salem, New Hampshire. Hai Bo (Paul) Lei had been tied up, strangled, shot, and had his throat cut.
The case remains unsolved, and according to state police, it is still being investigated by the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit. Earlier this year, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella released a statement looking for any information about the 30-year-old case, calling it an “execution style” murder. “We believe there are still people out there who know what happened to Paul,” he said.
1996
In November 1996, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen became the first woman elected governor of New Hampshire, serving a total of three consecutive terms in the office. In November 2008, she was elected to the U.S. Senate, where she is currently serving her third term. She is the first woman elected both governor and U.S. senator from New Hampshire.
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