Brutal Murder Rocks Tight-Knit N.H. Town

By Bob Oakes
Oct 7, 2009, 10:47 AM
31 Comments

Christopher Gribble, 19, is escorted into district court in Milford, N.H., for his arraignment on first-degree murder charges. Gribble is one of four teenagers charged in an attack that left 42-year-old Kimberly Cates dead and seriously injured her daughter. (AP)

MONT VERNON, N.H. — A rural community of about 2,300 residents near the Massachusetts border is reeling in the wake of the random, grisly murder of a woman and the maiming of her 11-year-old daughter — allegedly at the hands of four teenagers.

Prosecutors said the teenagers picked the home at random in the early hours of Sunday morning because it was isolated from the main road, and they intended to kill whomever was inside.

Kimberly Cates, a 42-year-old nurse, was slain in her bed. Her daughter, Jaime, is recovering from surgery at Children’s Hospital in Boston. She is expected to survive.

The news was a “complete shock” to the entire town, said John Quinlan, chair of the board of selectmen. “It’s very much that bucolic, Norman-Rockwell-type New England setting.”

On Tuesday, prosecutors charged Steven Spader, 17, and Christopher Gribble, 19, on murder and attempted murder charges. Both are being held without bail. Their two cohorts — William Marks, 18, and Quinn Glover, 17 — are facing burglary and armed robbery charges.

“You look for rhyme, you look for reason, you look for some kind of logic behind it and there just isn’t any,” Quinlan said. “There was no real cause behind this other than somebody went out to do an act of pure evil.”

What makes this tragedy even harder for the town, Quinlan said, is that Mont Vernon is a tight-knit community. Quinlan and his family knew the Cates well: their daughters were in school together and the two families often shared meals and weekend holidays.

“That’s, I think, what makes it the most terrible, because this is not something that’s abstract and far away,” Quinlan said. “A lot of people knew (them) and know them to be good people and nothing like this should ever happen to anybody.”

The school has been offering counseling to students who know Jaime and Quinlan said the town is working out their plans to help members cope.

In addition to grief, Quinlan said many people in town have been feeling vulnerable, and many are probably changing the security around their homes now.

“This brings it home,” Quinlan said, “that people who do bad things are everywhere, not just in big cities.”

WBUR’s Kathleen McNerney compiled this report.

Please follow our community rules when engaging in comment discussion on wbur.org.

http://thegeminiweb.com RB

This immediately brings to mind the Dartmouth professor murders. Small-town New England boys doing terrible things.
Eric

The limp wristed courts need to make an example out of them. Either give them all life in prison or hang them. Send a strong message to other punk !
Lisa Lauzere

I can’t believe this. I want someone to answer the question: WHY do some people desire to experience causing someone else extreme terror, pain, bloodshed, death? Why?
what happens to a little boy to make him grow up to want to do this?????
M. Sweeney

People do need to ask “what has happened to our kids when they feel nothing in doing such a horrid thing?” Do you think we’ve become desensitized to these things? I still think the video games kids play has a part in it and yes, the courts need to get tougher.

Did anyone see any signs of this type of personality in these kids? who knows?
Joseph K

This is shocking & unexplainable. This is happening once too often and when it does, we all throw up arms and ask, Why? Shortly after, we forget and get on with our lives till the next such horrific event takes place. It is time, we as a society/ community, once again ask the question Why?, but this time pursue that question and start doing something about this. We ought to be spending more of our resources on research to find out why & what makes these people do what they do, develop programs in preventing things like this happening, rather than trying to get man on mars. Right now, it’s the Martians who are having the last laugh on us humans, who mindlessly kill our own kind!
Gabriel

This is extraordinary in many ways and those of you who point the finger at the usual scapegoats (i.e., video games, music, television violence, etc.) are part of the problem.

People need to come out of the Stone Age and make an effort to understand and come to grips with the fact that human beings are hard-wired for violence. It’s no mystery that boys are usually the culprits in these crimes. Did anyone notice their haircuts? Don’t be surprised if this turns out to be some sort of racist plot to get at the media, or Jews, or blacks, or Asians, or…
Sam G

I’m from Amherst which is neighbored to and very close with Mont Vernon. I am a Junior at Souhegan High School which is where William Marks and Quinn Glover are from. I didn’t really know William but I did see him around school. Quinn though is a shock to everyone. He was friendly to everyone and I don’t know anyone that didn’t like him. I never expected anyone from my own school to do something so awful, especially Quinn. This whole thing is just completely insane!
Shlomo

If people are truly “hard-wired” to be violent then the killers are not responsible any more than they’d be for needing to breathe.

I bet, however, that the “key” is how they were, themselves, treated when young and vulnerable. That does not EXCUSE what they did, but might explain WHY.

Boys are taught to stuff feelings around 5 years old. They are hit “for their own good” more often than girls by parents, too. So where does their anger go, especially if no one takes their suffering seriously?

Even today, boys are neglected more, drugged more, punished more than girls for similar behaviors. They also grow up in a lot of “single mother” homes where there are no good male role models and/or amidst a lot of male-bashing. So, again, what happens when all the attention is on the emotional needs of females and the “utility” of males (who are expected to do the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs)?

Males who aren’t valued aren’t likely to value others. If few show them empathy they are likely to reciprocate disdain. The further tragedy is that they will often wreak vengeance not on their abusers, but other “innocents”…who remind them of their weaker, vulnerable selves. Forbidden to “hate” their parents, they seek to bury the feelings that arise when they see others in situations they were once in. They act out what had been done to them, continuing the cycle of violence.

Let us not forget, too, that women abuse/neglect children, equally…if not more. An adult woman is a giant to a young boy who is less powerful than her, yet dependent for food and feelings. He learns to “love” the Mom who beats him. That’s a recipe for disaster if no adult takes his side (even if the witness can’t change things).

So again: What happened to these teens when they were younger? They didn’t exit the womb as killers. If there is no “reason” for their crime, then we should treat it like a hurricane: Awful, but not immoral. If, however, there is “logic” to what happened we better figure out how to prevent future horrors. Imprisoning them, while necessary, won’t solve the problem. There are ever-growing millions of unemployed, mocked, angry young men who will act out (versus women who act “in” via eating disorders, cutting, etc.).
http://paul@paulhorn.com Paul Horn

It’s interesting that Gribble looks remorseful, not scornful or defiant, as he is being led away by the police. What does that say about him, his state of mind, his motives? It seems fair to assume he and his partners knew they would be caught and punished, so I doubt that “tougher courts” (while arguably necessary) would have changed their intentions. I think Shlomo’s comments are right on target.
Marilyn Greenstein

Why is the father not arrested for accessory to murder. He knew his son was leaving the house with a kid with a criminal record, carrying a 5″ bladed knife. If more parents were part of the crime for reasons like this..we would see much more parental responsibility.
Anonymous

Now that I’m a mom of two little girls, I see that we don’t control our children’s actions as much a we might think we can. I have seen time and again my kids do things I don’t like at all and don’t agree with and I reprimand and punish and scold and they still do it again!!!! These kids might have come from nice loving families. But, for some reason the kids were angry and disappointed with life, and in that awkward teenage stage and did something really stupid. A lot of kids do stupid things like shoplift, or drive drunk and nothing bad happens. And other kids do something like what happened here. Both cases have bad judgment, but one escapes without harm to self or others, and the other causes a life of agony for everyone else.

I think it is often the people without kids that think that every time a kid does something wrong, it is because the parents did a bad job. Believe me, kids are their own people from an early age – especially strong willed children – and controlling their actions isn’t aways as easy as I thought it would be.
Ron

I honestly don’t care why they did it. There is NO excuse for such a heinous act. All I want is for them to be convicted (if they are guilty, of course) and then they should be publicly hanged. Justice, swift and brutal. I think that would go a long way towards detering others from commiting such crimes.
Diana

Boys need more things to belong to that channel their natural aggression in okay ways. If a boy gets bad grades he can’t play sports. I understand the rationale for this, but the boys who are having trouble with grades and aren’t allowed to play are often the ones who need something positive to belong to. Where do those boys go to get attention and to bond with other guys? To gangs, to crime and so on.
Better to have them be with the coaches who can be positive role models and keep an eye on them.
I think the police also need to be more involved in positive ways like at the PAL boxing gyms. It is critical that men in general are involved with teenage boys. Boys are surrounded by female teachers in schools and elsewhere. Women are lovely people, but cannot teach a boy how to be a man, or model how to contain and channel a man’s level of aggression.
Men in general need to step up to the plate in the community as far as teenage boys are concerned, not just with their own families. This is a society-wide problem, and the number of men in our prisons shows us that our work is cut out for us.
Anonymous

For Marilyn Greenstein–don’t go blaming the parents for this heinous crime–you don’t know the whole story. I happen to know one of the families. The son was adopted, and as a teenager started showing symptoms of bipolar disorder. They placed him in a psychiatric hospital for a time, spent practically every cent they had to get him help. Before you go blaming people, you should know all the details first, you self-righteous cow.
VetInRindge

Why waste thier lives in prison? Put them on the front lines in Afganistahn maybe land mine detectors, or disarming bombs. Why use good boys for that? Use the bad ones. And.. if they happen to live after that, throw them to the wolves in prison. SEMPER FI!
http://007keiko@bellsouth.net newKeith

Hang them. Publicly.
http://worldnetdaily.com george

Without God ,all manner of evil is possible.
Andrew

Things like this used to be rare. Why? Because morality in the state was stronger, in that murderers would be hung quickly rather than granted help from th ACLU. And because morality was stronger in the individual where rverenc for God was the normal teaching from schools, parents, public figures. Liberals have ruined the courts by preventing swift capital punishment, and hav ruined public institutions by warring against God and morality. This naked evil is the result. Liberals want “credit” for having good intentions in the last 40 years of social engineering. No. No credit. Just the stark facts, the results of then .vs. now.
Dave

Andrew said it best. He is exactly on the point. The liberals have destroyed this country and all our youth. Without God and Morality there is NO chance for Americas survival. As you can see since Obama has taken over he continues to appoint Godless people to high positions. The situations grow worse by the day. Just this weekend he spoke to the Godless queers and tells them all will be OK. Obama is a Godless queer himself I believe.
Dart

More reason to have guns and a good dog!!!! That would have stopped these devils.
Stefanie

This is EXACTLY like “A Clockwork Orange.” I just read it in a high school psych class and the fact that this happens in real life is horrifying.
Cornelius

In the dispensation of justice, “why” ceases to be relevant…unless of course, where self-defense is involved (obviously not the case here).

We can distill the “why” all the way down to a basic acknowledgment of the human capacity for evil and leave it at that. I’m much less interested in understanding “why” than I am in seeing justice done.
Steven

America needs to repent and follow Jesus. All other paths will lead to more hell on earth.
http://www.branchknives.com Branch Shepherd

many questions, were they, as so many others of their ilk these days, on brain altering meds while in school? Why was the cause of death(knife) not mentioned, I would bet that had they been shot something would have been made of it. Meds would not be an excuse but an explanation. These screws need to be Bubba’s girlfriend for a couple of decades while the appeals process finishes, before the firing squad of .22s
Laura

Hate to say this, most people are lousy parents. They don’t give their children what they need. Anyone who cares about all of this violence should take a stand and boycott those awful horror movies that give our disaffected youth a road map on how to exact revenge against society. Say no to gore! Maybe if nobody bought tickets, they would stop making these movies. And if anyone disagree with me, one of the guys who did this crime was a big fan of those show, Dexter, about a serial killer. Nice.
M. Wilson

“God” will not save anybody from anything. Only children could look around at the world and believe such a thing. Only we can save ourselves. If you need a God answer, tell yourself this: God gave us powerful and complex brains, and we’re smart enough to figure out how to identify and treat mental disorders in people destined to do such things. Blaming “Godlessness,” “young people today,” etc., is cheap and easy, but gets us absolutely nowhere. Let’s be mature, not mindlessly reactive.
Lyn-a-saurus

M. Sweeney… you have the right idea.

If you look at Union Leader, you can see in their facebooks after the killing they referenced Dexter. Despite the fact that I don’t enjoy watching Dexter, it’s a show that glorifies a serial killer. Come on people! What smut are we filling our minds, and the minds of our children with? Look at your top rated shows, Law and Order, NCIS, Dexter, Weeds, CSI.. They all capitalize on Drugs, Suicide, Violence, Rape, amongst other horrible things. Turn on the news, what do you hear about??? All of those terrible things in fiction are true. I wouldn’t even consider our news rated for youth! It’s terrifying! All of us are to blame, society causes things like this. Who in their right mind would let their 8 year old children play violent games like grand theft auto ( a child a few years ago drove his parents car because he knew how to drive in GTA), or first person shooters. All you do in a first person shooter is violently kill other players! How is that not desensitizing?!?!?!

Why don’t our kids read, or play music, or play outside or make art to express their feelings? (This may help america’s obesity level, literacy level ect.) We don’t teach our children how to cope or manage their feelings. We don’t teach our children how to direct their feelings in a healthy way instead we just pump them with antidepressants, anti psychotics and other drugs for every minuscule issue.

We’ve become a nation that thrives off of violence, drugs, drama, sex and self destructive behavior.

And in the kids defense this world is different than the world that most people commenting on this grew up in. I’m 20 and since I can remember there’s been Columbine, 911, Virgina Tech, the DC shootings, and a variety of other severely violent crimes involving young people. Ever wonder why this is? our nation is mentally getting sicker and sicker. 1/4 of all american’s are mentally ill says the NIMH.

My feelings go out to the families of the lost boys and the victims.

All of us had a hand in this… and all of us must change to stop tragedies like this.
BR

Let’s find out if they watched the movie “The Strangers”.
Teenagers terrorize and kill young couple in a remote house…because they can.
AM

Im sick of reading comments on how these boys should be “hung publicly” and otherwise treated. If you are thinking that way, your just as bad as these kids. You know nothing of them or their lives or how they have lived. I agree it is terrible and wrong, but only 2 of them are charged with murder. You have no idea how some of these kids have grown up. So if you suggest hanging and blame this on television, then you are plain narrow minded. Please note, I agree this is a horrible horrific crime but some of these comments are just a waste of time
Ronster

This crime is sickening. However, as a young man myself I was very violent. NOT murderous, but violent. It is human nature. Young boys that have no outlet for this violence will find themselves doing things like this. That is why sports, military and these kind of outlets are good for young men. I don’t think them evil per se, just misguided with no direction. And human….
Joe

Justice will be served, by the human law & God’s law.
God Bless the family of this poor defenseless woman, whose innocent life was sadly taken, for ‘absolutely no reason’ NONE!