Investigation Continues In Poverty Hollow Homicide

By Andrew Gorosko

Police this week were assembling the pieces of a homicide investigation into the death of Elizabeth Gough Heath, a 32-year-old woman who was reported missing from her 89 Poverty Hollow Road home 26 years ago, on April 6, 1984, by her husband John Heath.

Town police and state police were meeting on Wednesday, April 21, at the town police station in their efforts to solve the crime.

The police probe into Ms Heath’s death was set into motion Wednesday, April 14, when while making some improvements to a former ground-level efficiency apartment in a barn, the 89 Poverty Hollow Road property’s current owners discovered what would later be identified as Ms Heath’s skeletal remains, which someone had hidden within a dry well in the building.

Through dental records, the chief state medical examiner’s office identified the remains as those of Ms Heath. Asked about the cause of death, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner simply said, “The investigation is ongoing.”

Last week, Jordan Wright and his father, Kenneth Wright, MD, started working to clean the former apartment in their barn at the Poverty Hollow Road property.

As part of the project, they pulled up some flooring which consisted of a layer of linoleum, two layers of plywood, and an underlying layer of planking.

Below that, they found a square concrete slab that was lying atop a circular dry well. A crowbar and shovel were needed to lift the concrete slab off the dry well, which was located in the apartment’s kitchen, Jordan Wright explained.

A black plastic garbage bag was found inside the dry well. It contained a pillow and a bed sheet. Initially, those findings did not seem out of the ordinary.

While doing more cleanup in the dry well, though, a mattress cover was found to hold a femur, or the large upper bone of a human leg, Jordan Wright said, noting his surprise at the grisly discovery.

Kenneth Wright confirmed that the bone was a human bone, his son said.

Police Alerted

At 1:09 pm on April 14, Kenneth Wright called police to the property to investigate a report of a “suspicious bone” found in the barn, after which town police called in the state’s police’s major crime squad for investigatory help.

State police have declined comment on the case, referring questions on the matter to town police.

Police detectives eventually uncovered the many bony components of a human skeleton inside the dry well. The bones were then transported to the medical examiner’s office, after which the skeleton was positively identified.

Jordan Wright speculated, “Whoever did it, it’s not going to be easy to prove…That was 26 years ago.”

Sandra Wright, who is Jordan’s mother, termed the discovery of the hidden skeleton “a horrible event. We’re just relieved that it’s been found,” she said.

Police removed various material from the dry well area as part of the investigation, Jordan Wright said.

On April 6, 1984, Mr Heath had reported to police that his wife Elizabeth was missing.

As time passed, what was considered a “missing person” case became, in police terms, a “cold case,” or an investigation into which the investigatory leads had gone cold.

Repeated attempts to contact Mr Heath via telephone at his Bridgewater home for comment have been unsuccessful. Mr Heath operates a business known as Heath Painters, Inc, which does painting and wallpaper hanging.

Attempts to reach Mr Heath’s attorney, similarly, have been unsuccessful.

The Heaths were married in May 1978. They had one child, Meghann, who was born in September, 1979.

Following Ms Heath’s disappearance, Mr Heath obtained a divorce on the grounds of desertion. In 1985, Mr Heath remarried, with his new wife later legally adopting his daughter.

In 2000, the probate court declared Ms Heath as presumed dead.

Based on town assessment records, the owner of the Poverty Hollow Road property from 1973 to 2005 was John Heath. In 2005, that property went into foreclosure.

The three-acre property is currently owned by a firm known as 89 Poverty Hollow Road, LLC, of which the Wrights are principals.

 

Probe

At an April 15 news conference at the Poverty Hollow Road property, town police Lieutenant George Sinko explained that the evidence which police uncovered in their investigation led them to categorize the crime as a homicide.

“We have a complete skeleton,” Lt Sinko said at a press conference. Police are pursuing several leads in the case, he added.

Lt Sinko declined to disclose specific aspects of the police investigation into Ms Heath’s death.

The lieutenant explained that there are certain difficulties in investigating a criminal case that dates back 26 years. Police, though, are hopeful that advances in forensic science will aid them in their probe, he said.

The lieutenant declined to say whether police sought Mr Heath to interview him about his former wife’s skeletal remains having been found.

“We’re looking into a lot of different things…We have to investigate all leads and avenues,” Lt Sinko said. Lt Sinko said that police do not expect to uncover any other human remains at the property.

 

Police Chief

“This is a very serious case and we want to solve it,” Police Chief Michael Kehoe said this week.

“It’s in the hands of the medical examiner’s office,” he said of the medical probe into the cause of Ms Heath’s death.

“We’ve taken evidence to the forensics lab…There’s always evidence left behind at crime scenes,” he noted.

“What you’ve got is a 26-year-old case. And what have you got?…Bones,” he said.

But now that some evidence exists in the form of Ms Heath’s skeleton, police will pursue every available lead and will seek clues to solve the crime, he said.

The facts and circumstances of the case lead police to believe that Ms Heath’s death was a homicide, he said. “No cause of death [is] yet established,” he said.

Sometimes a cause of death in such cases is not obvious, he added.

“You want to take your time,” he said, explaining the need for thoroughness in such an investigation.

On April 19, Chief Kehoe said that police already had already interviewed between 15 and 20 people in the crime probe. He declined to say whether police have talked to Mr Heath, and whether Mr Heath is a suspect in the case.

Police have spoken to the family members and friends of the late Ms Heath, the police chief said.

The chief declined to discuss the location where police believe Ms Heath was killed.

Also, Chief Kehoe declined to describe the extent of the original investigation that police conducted after receiving the 1984 report of Ms Heath’s disappearance.

“It was a missing person case...All missing person cases are given a high priority,” he said.

When police receive a missing person report, they follow the leads, he said.

However, after leads do not produce results, such cases may become “cold cases,” he said. “These kind of things lose steam after a while,” he said.

Police have talked to Mr Heath over the years about his wife’s disappearance, Chief Kehoe said.

The Heath case had been one of three pending cold cases on missing persons that police have been reinvestigating. The other cases involve the separate disappearances of Regina Brown and Edward Dubbs, he said. (See related story.)

In pursuing such cases, police sometimes need “breaks” to help them, Chief Kehoe said.

Of the Heath case, he said, “The location of the call for service, and the detective that got the call for service let the detective match up the call and the [cold] case that he was investigating for the last four to five months,” Chief Kehoe said. Detective Joe Joudy is the lead investigator.

“We have so many things to go through,” the police chief said of the complexity of the crime.

Much evidence awaits police analysis, he said.

“We’re going to go where the evidence takes us,” he said.

Much of the information for the police probe will be developed through forensic investigation, he said. Forensic science has advanced rapidly during the past 20 years, he said. DNA or genetic evidence may play a role in such an investigation, he said.

“We’re going to be very close-lipped on these types of things because it helps us to investigate,” he said of the police’s need to withhold evidentiary details.

Police have conferred with the Danbury state’s attorney’s office about the homicide investigation, Chief Kehoe said.

Such investigations take time, he added. 

Police anyone with information on Ms Heath’s death to contact them at 203-426-5841.