Paula Jean Welden - Connecticut State Police Investigation

Connecticut State Police Investigation

Alternative theories speculated that Paula was depressed and may have committed suicide, that she had been in unusually high spirits and had decided to run away to start a new life, was going to meet a secret lover and went off with him, or had become injured and suffered from amnesia. Darker theories speculated that she might have been kidnapped or murdered.

At the time of Paula's disappearance there was no state police organization in Vermont, and the state's attorney, county sheriff and state investigator Almo Franzoni were responsible for the investigation. Paula's father pressed the investigators and the governor to bring in additional professional law enforcement help. Vermont's governor asked Connecticut's governor to lend assistance. Connecticut State Police detective Robert Rundle and state policewoman Dorothy Scoville were assigned to the case. They interviewed every person who saw, or thought they saw Paula, who lived along the route she took, or who were simply in the vicinity of the Long Trail on that December afternoon.

Investigators discovered that one of the last people to see Paula alive was a man who lived along Harbour Road. He was in the midst of an argument with his girlfriend when she walked by. The man stormed off in a jealous rage shortly thereafter and depending on different statements he made, he went to his shack and spent the evening by himself, or he drove his truck up the travel portion of the trail (where Paula was heading). He lied to police on several occasions and was a person of interest in 1946 and again in 1952 when the case was revisited. Reportedly, he told at least two people that he knew within a hundred feet where Paula was buried but later claimed it was just idle talk. When no evidence was found that a crime had actually been committed, no body was ever discovered, and no forensic clues were identified, this avenue of the investigation ended.