Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer

It was interesting to read all the information that I wasn’t aware of. This was a terrifying period for all females in New Bedford. My heart goes out to these families.

Great read

Such a haunting story of the tragic deaths of nine women who encountered a serial murderer while in the throes of addiction. (Two more women went missing at the same time but were never found.) The author tells their stories without judgment, but with insight and compassion for both the victims and their grief-stricken families. They victims represented the side of historic New Bedford the tourists didn't see, i.e., the street life of a city plagued in the 1980s by heroin and cocaine addiction – and, too often, violence.The book also portrays the dedicated men and women of the state and local police departments and the County D.A.'s office who interrupted their personal lives to try to find the serial killer and outlines their extensive, albeit unsuccessful, investigative efforts. Without today's technology and ability to analyze DNA evidence, the investigators were stymied trying to find usable evidence in the decomposing bodies and the highway roadsides where those bodies were found weeks and months after the victims went missing. The painstaking work the police put into their street investigations -- solid, old fashioned detective work -- produced two suspects, but never enough evidence to convict either of them or anyone else. Boyle presents moving portrayals of those suspects and the devastating effect the investigations had on these already troubled men, one or both of whom may have been innocent of the killings.It doesn't seem right to say I enjoyed a book about a series of true life murders, but I can say I found Shallow Graves to be a page-turner. There's no happy ending for anyone here, but the story is fascinating and compelling. I highly recommend this book.

Shallow Graves by Maureen Boyle is about the mid-80s serial killing of 11 women from New Bedford. Written with skill and heart, this thoughtful and suspenseful book tracks this true crime from the discovery of the first body discarded along the highway. As it takes us deep into the goals and determination of the investigators, as well as into the worlds of the politicians and suspects alike, this book becomes impossible to put down and impossible to forget. A great work of true crime.

I’ve been a true crime addict for 45 years and I especially like serial killer books starting with Ted Bundy in the early 70’s or Salvo as the Boston Strangler.I’m sorry to report that this book didn’t grab me the way true crime reads are supposed to. I felt this book went on and on about the victims of this killer almost as a tribute to them and their families and their friends of the families on and on. At 109 pages (almost half the book) we still know very little about the killer or anything else except finding bodies and talking about victims.Good true crime for me skips from the victim to the killer to the situation to the investigation with forensics with lots of suspense built in. This was one of those books I kept putting down and forgetting about because it didn’t have any creative storytelling. I’ll bet the actual crime itself was more interesting than the book. I got the sense the author didn’t have a lot of experience with this genre and needs to read books by Ann Rule, Mark Phillips and Caitlin Rother. True crime isn’t good until I get “sucked in” after the first few pages, in my opinion

I read Maureen Boyle’s SHALLOW GRAVES just after reading Carlton Smith’s book on the New Bedford highway killings, TH KILLING SEASON. Boyle’s book approaches the case with a journalistic eye in a way that the preceding book did not. That said, the work sometimes feels too formal. She was a reporter who covered the case, though there’s never any mention of that unless you follow the citations. Still, the book did a great job of laying out what happened in the case. I was a child living in the city (aged 11-14 between 1988 and 1991) and the book brought stuff that I never knew into the light. I definitely recommend it.

I had lived in Massachusetts during the time that these murders had occurred and I always wondered who the killer was and if he had ever been caught. The answer is a resounding No. This book examines the case pretty thoroughly but when all is said and done no offender was ever sentenced for the murders. Maureen Boyle was a newscaster on a local station and she covered the case from the beginning. There are a few suspects mentioned, but the shadow of local politics obscured the facts and eventually the main suspect was declared innocent. As I stated, it is a damn shame that there never was any justice for the many women victims of this serial killer. I can't believe that the FBI didn't get involved more or that DNA samples couldn't be incorporated into the search for the perpetrator. All in all, this is a fairly good read if you are interested in the facts of the case. Still no justice as of now!

I grew up near New Bedford and ended up going to high school there years after these murders. The case has become somewhat of a legend amongst my peers in the community but I have never been able to explore the facts to get a better understanding of what happened - until I read Shallow Graves. I will definitely be recommending this read to my friends. Hopefully this will bring some attention back to the murders of these women and maybe even lead to uncovering answers for their families.