In 1985, Hooksett, New Hampshire, was a small, rural, primarily blue-collar town, only a generation removed from being a farming and dairy town. Located north of Manchester, it hadn’t yet become part of its urban sprawl. It was a typical clannish New England town, rife with gossip, and everyone knew everyone’s business.
November 9, 1985
Danny Paquette, a mechanic and expert welder, was a lifelong native of Hooksett. He had a sprawling property outside of town with a house, barn, and outbuildings. There he could work on vehicles and do welding jobs for customers.
On the morning of November 9, 1985, thirty-five-year-old Paquette was outside his barn, welding a damaged part on a tractor for a customer. Two other men were there, one working on their vehicles and hanging out with Danny. A typical morning, but it would be Danny’s last.
When a shot rang out, neither of the other men heard it. They didn’t realize anything had happened until they spotted Danny lying on the ground next to the tractor. Even then, they didn’t realize it was a shot. They thought he’d been electrocuted by the tools he was using. Only when they got closer did they see the blood on his chest.
A neighbor called Emergency, and Danny was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Danny Paquette
According to his male friends and his brother Victor, Danny, an expert mechanic, and welder, was a great guy, always willing to help a neighbor.
But if you asked women their opinion, Paquette wasn’t such a great guy. His second wife was Denise Messier, who he’d dated in high school. They reconnected and married in 1973. She had one daughter from a previous relationship, Melanie, who would become a key player in the saga of Danny Paquette. The couple had two daughters, and Danny legally adopted Melanie.
By 1980, the marriage fell apart, and things got ugly. Danny violated a restraining order and was committed to a mental hospital for a year. By the time he got out, Denise and the three girls would be far away from New Hampshire. He would never see them again.
Despite the loss of his family, Danny went on with his life and business. He dated, started his business, leading a seemingly everyday life. His current girlfriend had three sons, none of whom liked Danny or approved of his relationship with their mother.
The connection
Denise was the sister of Phillip Messier who was married to Kathleen McGuire, who’d kept her maiden name. Kathleen was an ambitious homicide prosecutor in the New Hampshire justice system. The question of whether or not she’d used her influence in the case would come up repeatedly.
The investigation
Hunting season had opened the day before, so it was natural for the first police on the scene to assume a stray bullet from a hunter in the woods behind the house had hit Danny. As required by law, the New Hampshire State Police took over the investigation. They searched the scene, but the bullet that had gone through Danny’s heart was nowhere to be found.
It was not found during the autopsy either. The single bullet had gone through Paquette’s back and out of his chest. It was estimated that Danny Paquette was dead before he crumpled to the ground. Several days later, the bullet would be found by a telephone maintenance worker, lodged in a telephone line.
The police knew such a shot hadn’t been accidental. Only an expert could have made it. But who? And why?
Melanie Paquette
Melanie, Danny’s step-daughter, who he adopted, frequently moved with her mother and sisters. In September 1985, she moved in with her aunt and uncle, Kathleen McGuire and Phillip Messier, in Hopkinton, fifteen miles away from Hooksett. Maybe living with the well-to-do, successful couple would be the break Melanie needed, the adults around her thought. But Melanie and Kathleen wouldn’t get along at all.
Everyone agreed that Melanie had to be protected from Danny, who she’d accused of molesting her as a child. Years ago, a counselor had filed a report on the charges with the Department of Health and Human Services. There was no doubt that Melanie had had a rough time of it.
Eric Windhurst
At her new school, attractive Melanie made friends with a handsome fellow soccer player named Eric Windhurst..
The investigation is reopened
The case remained open, but it would not be solved until 2004, when funds were approved to hire a retired investigator, Bill Shackford, to work on the case. He started with Melanie, who in 2004 was the married mother of five and living in Idaho.
On July 14, 2004, she sat in a sheriff’s interrogation room with investigators from New Hampshire to tell what happened that Saturday in 1985.
Her story was that back in high school, she’d told Eric about her stepfather’s abuse when she was a child. An earnest, sincere teenager, sixteen-year-old Eric felt bad that no one had protected the girl and took it upon himself to do what it took. A chivalrous knight wanted to get justice for all the wrongs done to Melanie.
The Danny Paquette murder
Melanie and Eric drove from Hopkinton to Hooksett. She directed Eric to a dirt road that ran behind the house where she and her family had once lived. In the back seat of the Volkswagen was a Ruger 77 rifle. Holding the rifle, Eric, an experienced hunter, got out of the car, squatted in the treeline across the field behind the house, and watched Danny Paquette at work on the tractor. With two other men walking around the area, it was important for Eric to pick the correct target.
Only thirty-two inches of the man was exposed in the cutout of the seat and control area. From three hundred yards away, Eric aimed at the approximate middle of that open target : seventeen and one-half inches from the top of the man’s head. That also happened to be where the heart was. p.216, Our Little Secret:The True Story of a Teenager Killer and the Silence of a Small New England Town,
Eric made the shot. He and Melanie ran from the scene, jumped into Eric’s car, and drove away as sirens blared in the distance, on their way to the Paquette place.
The arrest
With Melanie’s testimony, the New Hampshire investigators could now solve the case.
On Dec. 14, 2005, Eric Windhurst, still living in Hooksett, was arrested for the murder of Danny Paquette.
Eric had stayed in town and became an expert carpenter. He would later say the murder changed the trajectory of his life, which, though blameless, had not lived up to his early promise.
He even admitted to his circle of close friends that he had shot Danny Paquette. His family knew; he’d used his father’s gun in the crime. But the town had kept his secret; no one spoke up. Two anonymous letters were sent to the police, and the case was featured on a TV show, but it remained unsolved.
The trial of Danny Paquette murder
The judge was Robert Lynn, and the trial was scheduled for August 28, 2006. Eric pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to fifteen to thirty-six years with the chance of parole.
Melanie testified against Eric but insisted she did not ask him to kill her stepfather, nor did she assist him that morning by pointing Danny out to him. But the judge didn’t believe her story saying, it was too much to ask him to accept. Melanie was sentenced to three to six years in prison.
The town’s long-held secret was out, no longer a secret.
Questions
Was justice done? Was Danny Paquette a child molester who deserved to die? Or were those false charges brought against him during an ugly divorce? Had the New Hampshire justice system been intentionally stalled for so many years? Both claims were made by Victor Paquette, Danny’s brother and staunchest defender.
Those questions would not be answered even after Melanie Paquette Cooper and Eric Wyndhurst served their sentences.
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