The Unjust Story of Carrie Moss

A teenager goes missing in 1989. Her body is found not far from where she lived and investigators are treating it as an unsolved homicide.
Lilli McCormack digs into the story of Carrie Moss.

Transcript

In the small town of New Boston, New Hampshire in the summer of 1989 a fourteen-year-old girl left home on her bike (sound of pedaling), never to be seen alive again. You’re listening to Gone Cold New Hampshire, I’m Lilli McCormack and this is the unjust story of Carrie Moss. 

Introduction: Set the Scene/Introduce Carrie

New Boston is a rural town in New Hampshire, with about 5,500 residents.

They value just a handful of things: community, the fourth of July, and ½ of their 100 miles of roads being dirt. 

Now I’m going to tell you about Carrie.

Carrie Moss was born on March 13th, 1975, to parents Warren and Sally Moss. She was the youngest sibling to Leonard, Wendy, Annette, and Sherry.

Their family lived a typical rural New Hampshire lifestyle, Carrie’s father worked in manufacturing and as a volunteer firefighter. Her mother stayed home to raise their five children, she also tended and harvested the family garden. 

Much like her mother, Carrie had a particular interest in the outdoors. She enjoyed making bouquets of wildflowers and picking potatoes with her dad. 

In a blog dedicated to this case, there are several photos of Carrie from her short fourteen years of life. In one, she’s about 5 or 6 and seen peeling potatoes alongside her dog and bunny. She also raised chickens and took horseback riding lessons. 

Carrie was a beautiful young woman, she had big, blonde, teased Farrah Fawcett type hair. She had light eyes and prominent features that stood out on her small face. She often wore a denim jacket with an AC/DC graphic on the back.

Carrie attended New Boston Central for elementary school and spent her seventh and eighth grade years at Goffstown Junior High School. 

Being from a small town myself, I can understand that the slow pace of life encourages teenagers to mature faster. Carrie experienced this in her early teenage years, often hanging out with older kids and keen on gaining her independence. 

Carrie had a lot of friends, they hung out and did things together than any average teenager would do. They rode their bikes (pedaling), had fires, went swimming(sound), and even got into trouble.

At one point, Carrie’s trouble led her to being on house arrest. I wasn’t able to track down any more information on that. 

BUT

In June 1989, fourteen-year-old Carrie was arrested for the possession of marijuana. In the late 80’s, marijuana was a larger offense compared to today’s standards. Certainly, it wasn’t decriminalized here in New Hampshire like it is today. 

What makes this marijuana arrest significant is the fact that: Carrie was last seen July 25th.

Her court date for marijuana possession was set just one day later, but Carrie was nowhere to be found. 

Here’s what we know about the last day Carrie was seen: On July 25th, Carrie rode her bike to meet her friends in Goffstown to go swimming. 

When she didn’t return home in the morning, her family looked all over for her. They went to court and informed the judge that Carrie hadn’t come home that night. They assumed she missed court on purpose, to avoid the possibility of being on house arrest again. 

The court issued a warrant for Carrie’s arrest.

Her family continued to look all over for her, from Manchester, NH to Lowell, MA. My impression is that they were searching in two of the nearest cities. 

Let me remind you that this is 1989 and were talking about a fourteen year old who was known for getting into some trouble, there was limited suspicions that something terrible might’ve happened to Carrie. 

Carrie was initially viewed as a runaway, there was no evidence indicating that foul play was involved. They assumed she was looking for a way out of New Boston and that she was heading to the city in hopes to gain her independence. 

Carrie’s mother and her sister, Annette, often thought they saw Carrie when they spotted a young woman with big, blonde hair. 

But a few months passed, and still no sign of Carrie.

It wasn’t until late fall that a missing person report was filed. Over the next two years, her family had to refile the report due to Carrie’s name being removed from the list. We’ll get into that in a little bit.

Introduce Ronda Randall/Interview

I was able to contact Ronda through Oakhill research, a website dedicated to New England cold cases. Ronda has been looking into Carrie’s case for a long time. 

Ronda works diligently as a victim witness advocate in the District Attorney’s office in Lincoln County, Maine and has been for about 2 ½ years. This position came as a direct result of her involvement with the Bear Brook podcast with Jason Moon. This podcast helped solve the New Hampshire cold case involving four female murder victims, found in Allenstown, NH in Bear Brook State Park.    

I asked Ronda how she became involved with Carrie’s case.

1:16 “While we were researching the bear brook cold case- someone sent me a message that said are you going to be looking into the Carrie Moss case in New Hampshire. I hadn’t heard about it even though it was from my little hometown.”

Turns out, Ronda went to elementary and junior high school with Carrie’s sister. Despite Ronda leaving New Boston before this case occurred, her hometown connection drew her closer to this case. After reaching out to her former classmate about details on her sister’s case, Ronda’s interest grew and took off from there. 

I asked Ronda what else she could tell me about this case.

2:09 “Well it’s really interesting with that case, we did receive two pieces of information over the last two years and both times we turned that information to the New Hampshire state police because of the nature of what it was. They asked us to kind of take a step back – and – clear to the family that they were following up on information and they really wanted to be the ones to pursue it.” 

I couldn’t help but wonder what this information was and how it might help solve Carrie’s case. When Ronda started our interview with this, I was a little worried there wasn’t a whole lot of details she could give me on this case. 

I couldn’t get some of the specific details I would’ve loved to hear about, but I did receive information from Ronda that helped me understand WHY Carrie’s case still remains unsolved. 

Let’s go back to the 1989 when Carrie first went missing. Although the media interpretation of this case made it seem like Carrie’s family waited several months before filing a missing person’s report, they really only waited a couple of weeks. 

7:19 “I think some news stories make it sound longer but they actually filed two or three missing persons reports that were thrown out.” 

This played a role in the police’s ability to solve this case and solve it quickly. When weeks and months had passed, questions were finally being asked and information was being gathered on Carrie’s case. 

16:46 “People couldn’t really remember a timeline like did you see her on this day or that day.” 16:55 “I can’t even remember what I did last Saturday” (?)

Senior assistant attorney general Ben Agati oversees the cold case unit in New Hampshire. Agati says that time is of the essence in any case.  

54:57 “as time goes on the chances get worse –- so you want to hit a case very hard with as many resources as you can as quickly as possible.”

Ronda told me that there were several friends of Carrie’s that left the area in the months after her disappearance.

Those friends never came around, never spoke to the Moss family, and never spoke up about those last few weeks that Carrie was alive. 

14:35 “A number of people, between 5 and 10, have just refused to talk at all.” 

Ronda put it blankly, 14:35 “it does make you wonder, what do they know?”

(music)

Here’s what we do know about when Carrie’s body was finally found.

It was TWO years after she had gone missing.

She was found in a small clearing near a campsite where teenagers sometimes partied, just TWO miles from her home … in her hometown of New Boston. 

The autopsy could not accurately be done due to the state of Carrie’s body. But Agati mentioned said it was clear that this wasn’t a natural death. 

1:29:27 “we’ve treated it as a homicide even though we were not able to determine a cause of death.”

If Carrie never left her hometown, she should’ve been found way sooner than she was. 

I’ve been studying this case for a couple of months, interviewing people who know the case best. What I’ve come to realize is the decade in which Carrie went missing plays a large role in the outcome of this case. 

Back in the 80’s, missing teenagers were often swept under the rug. They were assumed to be runaways trying to rebel against their parents. 

7:29 “back then, there weren’t the amber alerts and the type of information and knowledge that there is today about missing kids. The family kept being given the impression that, ya know, she’s just a runaway.”

There was a lack of urgency when trying to locate these missing teens and get them home safely. This stems from that assumption that it’s normal for teens to run away from their families. 

If authorities looked for Carrie as soon as they found out about her disappearance, is there a possibility she would’ve been found, alive?

The way Ronda sees it, the police should’ve approached it differently. “I also think there was a lot of ways that the police could’ve been a lot more aggressive and a lot more communicative.”

If they instilled these tactics into their work at the time, would Carrie be here today?

Let’s go back to that handful of people that refused to talk. They’re now nearly 50 years old, they’ve gone on to live their own lives. More than likely they’ve established careers, had families, or live in a different place. If they shared what they knew at the time, would this case still be cold?

But to this day, we still don’t know who killed fourteen-year-old Carrie Moss back in 1989.

The Moss family holds hope that something can still be done. 

4:02 “I think while at times they get discouraged with either lack of progress or lack of communication – they still remain very hopeful that it can be solved” 

Carrie’s family still resides in the little town of New Boston today. 

They’re still open to receiving new information and tips about the strange disappearance of their beloved Carrie Moss.   

If you or someone you know has any information regarding this case, please contact Carrie’s sister, Annette. You can reach her at carriemossNH@gmail.com or 603-486-4753. 

If you’d like your tip to be anonymous, mail it to Annette Brendle at 59 Whipplewill Rd, New Boston, NH. 

If you’re interested in helping to solve this case for the Moss family, consider joining the private Facebook Carrie Moss: Summer of 1989.  

Thank you to the New Hampshire cold case unit and Ronda Randall for contributing information for this story. 

Music and sound effects in this podcast were provided by Pixabay and Bluedot sessions. 

Up next on Gone Cold NH, Katelyn Arp explores a suspicious 1980’s fire that led to the deaths of an entire family in Keene, NH.