Today I’m going to be covering a very old case, even by my standards. Theresa Corley was murdered nearly 45 years ago, in December of 1978, and although her family has been able to learn several significant facts about the circumstances, solid answers and any form of justice have remained maddeningly out of reach. All that can be said for certain is that for Theresa, an ordinary night out with friends devolved into a nightmarish ordeal, the facts of which we are still trying to piece together to this day.

Theresa Corley was born on June 1st, 1959, as the seventh of nine children. Her father died when she was quite young, leaving her mother to raise the large family alone. She spent her early years in an urban neighborhood of the Boston area, but the family later moved to the small town setting of Bellingham, Massachusetts. By all accounts, Theresa grew up as an normal, well-liked teenager, working after school jobs to save money for her education. In late 1978, Theresa was nineteen years old and enrolled at a local college in the medical assistant program. Her ultimate goal was to be a pediatrician. She had a job at a factory and often socialized with coworkers after hours. Her mother would state that Theresa seldom had a steady a boyfriend, as she liked to stay focused on her long term goals. However, there does appear to be a man whom people have referred to as being her boyfriend during this time, and he was among those present when Theresa went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday after work on Tuesday, December 4th*, 1978. It should be noted that Theresa has been described as a rather trusting person, and that she, like many young people in Bellingham, frequently hitchhiked due to the lack of available transportation.

The group went out for drinks at a bar called the Train Stop in Franklin, a town close to Bellingham and the same town where Theresa worked. At approximately 11:30 pm, Theresa got into a verbal altercation with another member of the group, possibly her boyfriend, and wanted to leave. No one else was ready to leave yet, so Theresa left the bar on foot. She did not return home, and her family reported her missing the following morning. Two days later, on the afternoon of December 8th, 1978, a man identifying himself as John Burlington phoned police to report what turned out to be her body lying in a ravine off the northbound side of I-495 in Bellingham, about 150-200 feet from the 109 interchange. The location was about six miles from the Train Stop bar in Franklin. Theresa’s body was naked, with her jacket and a pair of jeans nearby. Her shirt, underclothes, and shoes were missing (the detail about the missing shoes will become relevant). Later, her cause of death would be determined as ligature strangulation, possibly with a belt. Although the circumstances–as well as a semen stain on the pair of jeans–strongly implied a sexual motive for Theresa’s murder, sources are non-specific as to whether or not there were signs of sexual assault on her body.

Shortly after the body was discovered, a man reportedly entered the police station and asked if the body found off the interstate was Theresa’s. Some reports state that this man had a similar voice to “John Burlington”, indicating that they may have been one and the same person, although there are also reports that contradict this.

Gradually, investigators were able to piece together some of what happened to Theresa after she left the Train Stop. Two truck drivers came said they had given her a ride between 4:30 and 5:00 am. Without any information to the contrary, I can only assume they came forward voluntarily. Truck Driver One picked her up where she was hitchhiking along Route 140 at 4:30 am. He was driving to his place of employment at Garelick Farms Dairy, and he dropped her off when he got to work. At this point, she got a ride with Truck Driver Number Two as he left Garelick Farms on a delivery route. According to this man, Theresa was “mad as fire”, intoxicated, and said she had been sexually assaulted. When the driver reached Bellingham around 5:00 am, he dropped her off by the police station. At 5:30 am, a group of young men carpooling to work saw someone meeting her description walking by a nearby Dairy Queen, but I tend to consider this sighting a possible rather than a definite. Either way, she does not seem to have ever gone inside the police station.

That left a gap of at least four and a half hours during which Theresa’s whereabouts were unknown, an interval in which she reportedly claimed to have been attacked. Eventually, there would be information about the missing time, although I am unclear as to exactly how investigators came by it. According to all of the up-to-date sources, Theresa was picked up by three (some sources say four) young men, at least one of whom she knew slightly. They then took her to a “party” at the Presidential Arms Apartments in Franklin. There, one or more of the men sexually assaulted Theresa or attempted to. Theresa eventually left the apartment, in such a hurry that she put on two left shoes, one hers and one belonging to one of the men. This account was supported by the fact that the two right shoes were in fact found in the apartment. Much has been made in some media about Theresa being found in mismatched shoes, but this is contradicted by the numerous contemporary newspaper accounts stating that Theresa’s body was found without shoes. Of more crucial importance is the fact that, many years later, the semen sample on the jeans was matched with one of the men from the apartment.

At this point during my research, I had a major question: where did the story about the men from the Presidential Arms Apartments originate, and how did investigators know to look into that angle in the first place? One possibility is that Theresa told one or both of the truck drivers the details of what had happened to her. Another is that someone–either one of the men, a witness, or someone who learned about the incident after the fact–sent in a tip to police. The details do not seem to have been widely reported at the time, although comments made by Theresa’s sister make me think that the family was informed about them much earlier.

At this point, you might be wondering about a few things yourself. One is why were none of these men ever charged with attacking Theresa, and the other is if these same men could be responsible for her murder. I cannot claim to have a great answer for the first, but I’ll give you what I have. According to the victim’s sister, there was not enough evidence to actually charge any of the men with sexual assault. The accounts were too vague, contradictory, and in some versions they denied committing any assault at all by trying to claim that any sex was consensual (allegedly, one of the men claimed that Theresa said she would have sex with all of them if they only let her leave, which is a really generous definition of consent, but I don’t want to start a tangent). Also, by the time the semen stain on the jeans was linked to a specific individual, the statute of limitations had expired for sexual assault and there was not enough evidence to link that person to the murder.

This leads directly to my response to the second question, which is yes, the involvement of one or more of the men from the Presidential Arms Apartments is considered a serious possibility. They had already been violent towards Theresa earlier that night and would have had an added motive if they thought she might report them to  police. In fact, some people see two broad possibilities in this case–either one of the Presidential Arms men caught up with Theresa and killed her, or she was picked up by a predatory stranger and murdered before she could reach her home. One also has to wonder about the second truck driver as well as Theresa’s reported boyfriend. In the case of the truck driver, we only have the one supposed sighting of Theresa by the Dairy Queen by people who did not know her as proof that he ever dropped her off at the police station. He was also the one who first brought up Theresa saying that she had been assaulted previously. Looked at through a sinister lens, these statements could be read as something darker than a Good Samaritan giving a ride to a scared, intoxicated young woman. That being said, I don’t find this particularly likely. The Garelick Farms driver was giving Theresa a ride as part of his professional milk delivering duties, and would likely have had to get his work done within a certain period of time. In addition, I am operating under the assumption that he and the other Garelick Farms driver voluntarily provided information. If this man had been involved in the murder, it is unlikely he would have come forward at all. As for the boyfriend, there are reports that he and Theresa did not part on the best terms the previous night. He would have known where she lived and could have intercepted her without alerting her suspicions. If he heard about the “party” at the apartment complex–and there is some indication that he did, which I will explain later–he may have interpreted this as her being unfaithful. Still, one source did mention him as having an unspecified alibi and none of the accounts I have read or listened to mention any particular suspicion towards him. So, moving forward, I am going to be focusing on the first two possibilities.

There is yet one more possibility that I want to introduce connected to the Presidential Arms men. It has been stated that Theresa knew at least one of them, if not terribly well. So it is not unreasonable to think that they may also have had friends in common. Is it be possible that the men from the apartment complex told someone they knew, perhaps someone living in Bellingham who was also friends with Theresa, that they were worried about Theresa reporting them to police? To help out the men, the “friend” then could have tracked down Theresa before she got home and perhaps volunteered to give her a ride.

We’ll start with the idea that one or more of the men Theresa had encountered in Franklin or someone acting on their behalf killed Theresa. There was certainly a motive, but would there have been an opportunity for them to find her? To my mind, yes. If at least one of them knew her, he may have known where she lived, and the route from Franklin to Bellingham is essentially a straight shot west on Route 140/West Central Street. Also there is some evidence that the men were actively looking for her that night. It’s unclear where the story originated, but some sources say that one of the men showed up at the apartment where Theresa’s boyfriend lived looking for her and asking where she was. This could be interpreted as them deciding that they needed to stop Theresa in case she reported them, checking her boyfriend’s place to see if she had gone there, and then realizing she probably went back to Bellingham instead.

Another piece of evidence which could point to the Franklin men–or at least to the involvement of more than one person–is that there were no drag marks leading down the embankment to Theresa’s body, raising the possibility that two people might have carried her. I do not necessarily put a ton of stock into this, as a strong person could still have carried her over their shoulder and it’s not certain if anyone even checked for drag marks before entering the crime seen. However, it is an item worth noting.

What evidence is there that Theresa may have been picked up by a stranger or an unrelated person? The primary evidence here is the body disposal sight. As Ken Mains pointed out in his excellent Unsolved No More series about the case, the location off of the highway is more consistent with someone passing through town than it is with a local. There were plenty of places in the Franklin/Bellingham area to hide a body, including several ponds of various sizes and the Franklin State Forest. Yet the killer chose to get rid of her body while in the process of leaving town. Theresa was reportedly half a mile from her home when she was last seen, but on a cold December morning she may still have wanted a ride the rest of the way. She was accustomed to hitchhiking and had already accepted two rides from strangers earlier that morning. However, the location alone should not rule out the possibility that anyone in the Franklin group was involved in the murder. While it’s been assumed that one of the men lived at the Presidential Arms apartment, it is not known that all of them did or that all of them even lived in Bellingham or Franklin. If one of them did live outside of town–specifically north on 495–that would be an important piece of information.

Although Theresa’s case has never been linked to a specific serial killer, there were certainly murders occurring that bear some resemblance to hers. In the fall of 1978, at least four teenage girls were murdered in Roxbury, Reading, East Bridgewater, and Raynham. Suspects were arrested in some of these cases, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to theorize that there could have been serial offenders operating in the area, and that one of them could have crossed paths with Theresa Corley in the early morning hours of December 5th, 1978. That being said, I’m not confident that this is any more likely or more well-supported than Theresa coming in contact with one of the men who knew where she was likely headed, who may have been actively looking for her, and who had motive for silencing her.

There are some pieces of evidence that do not fit with either theory or that could fit with both depending on interpretation. Even the murder weapon, a ligature, could be interpreted as a stranger getting a sexual thrill out of strangulation or simply someone using a weapon of opportunity. There is a detail that a family member of Theresa’s believes they remember seeing on the original autopsy report, a statement that “quaaludes and eggs” had been found in Theresa’s stomach. Theresa was not known to use hard drugs, leading to speculation that she was drugged at some point during the night. I do not know how long quaaludes can be expected to last in the human stomach, although food typically takes two to four hours to leave the stomach and enter the small intestine. It is plausible to me that Theresa took quaaludes, willingly or unwillingly, at either the Train Stop or at the apartment. The eggs are a bit more difficult to explain. Unsolved No More mentioned that there was an all-night diner near the point where Theresa was last seen, and that she may have gone inside to get some food. If true, it indicates that Theresa would have died less than four hours after this point. As a scenario, it is entirely possible, but as far as I know no one has ever claimed to have seen her at this diner even though 5:30 in the morning could not have been a busy time. Ultimately, I have to treat this entire piece of information as a “maybe” simply because I cannot say with confidence that there is any merit to the quaaludes and eggs scenario at all. One person might have seen it on an autopsy report decades ago, a report that no one has current access to. So I want to discuss it, but not treat it as a confirmed fact.

I also want to talk about “John Burlington”, and his possible connection to the crime. This person contacted police on a private line, saying that he was a businessman from Connecticut and that he had stopped on the side of the road to urinate in the early afternoon and seen the body in the gully. The problem was that no one named John Burlington existed, and there were claims that the caller and the person who came into the police station to ask about the body were the same individual. According to some later statements, police did eventually find out the real identity of the caller (who is apparently now deceased) and do not believe him to be connected to the crime.

Here are my thoughts on not-John Burlington: he was either a random passerby who honestly reported the body and did not want to be identified, he was connected to the crime, or he was someone who learned about the murder after the fact, went to the spot where the body was reported to be to see if the story was true, and decided inform police under a fake name. If he was directly involved in the crime, then the scene was staged to look like something it wasn’t, and the police were meant to find Theresa when and where they did. I can’t think of any other reason that someone would hasten the discovery of a murder they had helped to commit. If this happened, it is because Theresa’s body had been placed there to create a counter-narrative to what actually happened–for instance, to make it look like Theresa had been killed by an outsider passing through town.

One crucial piece of information has never been satisfactorily addressed: how long had Theresa been dead when her body was found on December 8th? According to an interview with Theresa’s sister, the family was told that Theresa had been placed off the highway sometime on December 6th. This is made murky by the fact that the source where this was quoted was using the timeline with Theresa going out with her friends on the evening of December 5th, even though I personally find the December 4th timeline more logical. So depending on how we interpret this, Theresa’s body was placed in the gully at some point on the day that she was last seen, or the following day. If it was the latter, then we have to ask where she was during entire prior day. Also, this statement did not specify if Theresa had been killed shortly before her body was disposed of, or if she had already been dead for a period of time. There’s no mention of lividity or time of death, even though surely this would not have been beyond the capabilities of forensic science in the late 1970s.  The temperature on the days in question did not quite drop below freezing at night (the low was 34° Fahrenheit) but the cool December temperatures could have slowed decomposition and limited insect activity. Yet none of this is specified in any of the sources I have been able to access, leaving a crucial gap in our understanding of the crime.

There is one last bit of evidence I want to mention here, and that is the jeans that were found with Theresa’s body. Several sources, including one of the interviews with her sister, have described them as “male” jeans. What is not clarified was if they were the jeans that Theresa had been wearing that night. There is nothing particularly strange about Theresa buying a pair of boys’ jeans and wearing them because they were comfortable, but it’s never been specified if these were jeans that belonged to her or if they were jeans belonging to an unknown man. If they were not Theresa’s, it’s possible that she grabbed them in her flight from the apartment, and if that is true, the semen stain might have already been there and not been related to the assault on Theresa. This is all getting highly speculative, but I want to make sure all possibilities are considered and that there is room for interpretations beyond the most obvious.

Theresa’s body was exhumed in the spring of 2017 to test for DNA under her fingernails. Sadly, the samples were not enough to yield any new information. However, DNA would still end up playing a role. The semen sample on the jeans found with Theresa’s body which had been saved, and this was able to generate a DNA profile. There is conflicting information about this DNA sample. A article in The Call from December 2018 reports that it was ultimately not complete enough to enter into the National Criminal Database . However, other sources, including interviews with Theresa’s sister, state that not only was the DNA eminently usable, but it was matched to one of the men that had been with Theresa at the Presidential Arms Apartments that night. 

Theresa’s younger sister, Geri, has been a tireless advocate for her case and a spokesperson for her family. She has even spoken personally with some of the people who interacted with Theresa the last night she was seen alive, including the men who took her to the Presidential Arms Apartments (showing a remarkable degree of courage and restraint, to my mind). She has described their accounts as being “inconsistent”, and the pertinent points of these discussions have been included in the above paragraphs.

If I had to describe what I think happened to Theresa Corley, the narrative would go something like the following: Theresa left the Train Stop with the intention of hitchhiking home. A young man she knew slightly approached her and either offered to take her home or invited her to a party at the apartments. She accepted and got in the car with him and two or three other men. She may have spent some time hanging out at the apartment before the situation took a darker turn. She probably consumed more alcohol there, hence why she was still obviously intoxicated hours after leaving the Train Stop. She may or may not have ingested quaaludes or been forced to ingest them. She was sexually assaulted by one or more of the men, perhaps while drugged, and one of them left the semen stain on the jeans. At around 4:00 am, she was able to bolt for the apartment door, grabbing one of her shoes and a shoe belonging to one of the men as she fled. She hitchhiked down Route 140 towards Bellingham and got rides with two Garelick Farms drivers. Possibly, they noticed the mismatched shoes, or she told them about them. The second truck driver dropped her off near the police station, but she decided she did not want to report what happened to her in Franklin. If she did eat some eggs, she likely did so at this time at the nearby diner. At this point, she was purportedly only about half a mile from her home. Before she got there, someone approached her in a car. It may have been someone she knew and trusted, or it may have been one of the men from the Presidential Arms Apartments, apologizing and saying he wanted to talk to her. It could even have been a stranger offering a ride. This person then took her someplace and used their belt to strangle her, possibly after sexually assaulting her (again). If she was still wearing any clothing at that point, the person removed it and deposited Theresa’s body off of 495 along with her jacket and jeans. Her shirt, underclothes, and shoes were kept by her killer or disposed of elsewhere. Two days later, a man identifying himself as John Burlington either found her body or claimed to, setting the investigation in motion.

This case is ice cold and getting colder, but that should not be taken to mean that it doesn’t matter. It’s sad and infuriating to think that all Theresa wanted was to get home to the safety of her own bed, and that even now, more than 40 years later, her family still doesn’t know what exactly happened to her in that last half mile. What makes it all the more frustrating is that it seems painfully obvious that there are people that do know exactly what happened, and that some of them are almost certainly still alive and able to tell the truth. If you have any information regarding Theresa’s case, you are can contact the Bellingham Police Department tip line at (508) 657-2863 or the Franklin Police Department tip line at (508) 440-2780.

Resources

How long does it take for your stomach to empty?

Unsolved No More With Ken Mains

2023 Chipchick.com Article

Facebook Page Maintained by Family

Southcoast Murder Mysteries

Franklin and Bellingham Map

Gold Mine of Newspaper Sources Compiled by the Murder, She Told Podcast

Specific articles used from the above archive:

• Bellingham Girl Found Murdered, Milford Daily News, 12/9/1978, no author credited
• New Push for Evidence on 40th Anniversary of Teen’s Murder, Boston 25 News, 12/6/2018, Bob Ward
• Murder Probe is Continuing, Milford Daily News, 12/13/1978, no author credited
• Bellingham Cold Case Heats Up, Milford Daily News, 2/25/2007, Julie Spitz
• Family Searches for Answers, Milford Daily News, 5/4/2017, Mike Gleason and Anne Brennan
• DNA Sample Gives Hope…The Call, 12/31/2017, Joseph Fitzgerald
• Billboard Seeks Info…The Call, 12/22/2018, Joseph Fitzgerald

Cocktails, Mocktails, and Crime Podcast (features lengthy interview with Theresa’s sister)

*Even the reporting of the dates of events have been inconsistent in this case. Some sources state that this was actually the evening of December 5th. I went with the December 4th date because several of the early newspaper articles indicate that it was a Tuesday night. December 4th of 1978 was a Tuesday.