After the body of Sarah Hunter, a popular golf pro at Manchester (Vt.) CC, was found in a wooded area two months after she disappeared, David Morrison, who worked at a gas station where she had stopped the night before, immediately became a prime suspect. But authorities could not find enough evidence to bring charges until DNA testing of hair samples found in his car provided a connection.
Prosecutors seeking to bring charges in the slaying of a Vermont country club golf pro nearly three decades ago got a break when authorities said DNA evidence had linked a California man to the crime, the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press reported.
Fifty-four-year-old David Allan Morrison pleaded not guilty last week in Bennington, Vt. to a charge of first-degree murder in the death of 36-year-old Sarah Hunter, who disappeared in September 1986.
Hunter was outgoing and well-liked and loved her job at the Manchester (Vt.) Country Club, the Free Press reported.
On Sept. 19, 1986, John Ottaviano, CGCS, who was then a fellow golf pro at Manchester CC and is now the club’s Golf Course Superintendent, waited for Hunter at a tournament in Bennington, Vt., the Free Press reported. But Hunter, who was always punctual, never showed up and no one had seen her since the night before.
Then word spread that her car had been found, parked behind a car wash at a gas station in Manchester, the Free Press reported. Weeks later, her purse was located in brush along a road in Danby, Vt. and two months after she disappeared, a landowner discovered her body in a wooded area next to a cornfield in Pawlet, Vt. She had been strangled and sexually assaulted, the Free Press reported.
“It’s not a large community and to have somebody abducted and murdered was certainly out of the ordinary,” Ottaviano told the Free Press. “It certainly shook everybody up.”
Morrison, who worked near a gas station and convenience store where Hunter had stopped on Sept. 18, 1986, was a top suspect immediately, but investigators couldn’t find the necessary evidence to bring charges, the Free Press reported.
Morrison then left Vermont in 1988 and was arrested later that year in California, the Free Press reported. He pleaded guilty to charges of attempted murder, sexual assault and kidnapping in a case in Chula Vista, Calif., and is currently serving a sentence of 20 years to life for that crime.
In 2009, the Free Press reported, police in California interviewed Morrison about an unsolved killing in California that was similar to Hunter’s. A detective told Vermont authorities that Morrison denied killing the victim in that case but did not deny killing Hunter, the affidavit said.
Morrison indicated then that the Hunter investigation was something he would deal with when he “felt the time was right” and he did not “think I will take this to my grave,” the affidavit said. He told police he had “made peace with it. I know her family hasn’t,” the affidavit said.
He said if he were going to talk about Hunter, it would have to be with the Vermont State Police detective who interviewed him after her death, the Free Press reported. Retired Sgt. Tom Truex agreed to travel to California and Erica Marthage, State’s Attorney for Bennington (Vt.) County, asked that evidence collected from the Hunter crime scene undergo DNA testing before the interview.
Morrison was then charged in 2012 after hair found in his car was compared to DNA from Hunter’s sister, the Free Press reported. It then took nearly two years to get him transferred to Vermont to face the charges, because of multiple hearings.
A lawyer for Morrison didn’t return a phone call seeking comment, the Free Press reported.
“A lot of people are happy that he was going to be brought back to justice,” Ottaviano told the Free Press.
Manchester CC reinstated a youth golfing clinic named after Hunter, the Free Press reported. Each spring, the club also holds the Sarah Hunter women’s invitational tournament.
“She was very outgoing, always had a smile on her face — just happy to be alive, happy to be around people,” Ottaviano said. “She was helping people to improve a game that they liked and she loved.”
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.