Murder of Two Women Still Unsolved Almost Twenty Years Later

Their names are largely forgotten but the mystery of who killed them still puzzles Law Enforcement and residents of the town of Harwinton.

In October of 1988, twenty-four year old Karen Everett was found murdered at the bottom of an embankment on Valley Road. It was unusual for a homicide to occur in the quiet town of Harwinton. A few months later in January of 1989, the body of thirty year old Mildred Alvarado was found a few hundred yards away from where Everett was located. Both women had been strangled and their bodies dumped and left in wooded areas. The Connecticut State Police theorized that it was possible that the two women may have been the victims of the same perpetrator. The women were both from Waterbury and Police believe the unknown killer chose the Valley Road locations because of its easy access to Route 8.

Both women lived troublesome lives. They both had been arrested for prostitution and drug possession. Sadly, their lifestyle may have made them ideal targets for a cold and calculating killer.

Police eventually thought they had developed a break in these homicides when in 1993, twenty-seven year old Evelyn Betancourt had been shot to death near Valley Road.

The location where her body was found and the fact that she was also involved in prostitution caused fear in town. In 1995, while imprisoned for another crime a Thomaston man named Michael Curry Jr. confessed to Betancourt's murder to another inmate. He was eventually convicted for her homicide and is now serving a fifty-three year prison term at Garner Correctional Institution in Newtown. He randomly chose to murder the pregnant mother of four because he was upset about being dumped by his then girlfriend. He chose the Valley Road location because he had read about the murders of Everett and Alvarado in the newspaper. However, State Police eventually ruled him out as a suspect in their murders.