Middle Schooler Maryann Measles Was Abducted and Killed by Her Friends While Waiting for Her Mom at the Grocery Store

Cindi Measles was grocery shopping for just 10 minutes on October 19, 1997, when her 13-year-old daughter, Maryann, seemingly vanished from their family car in the supermarket parking lot.

What happened next is every parent’s worst nightmare: Cindi reported her daughter missing, and flyers were posted around town. Police spent 700 hours over the next nine months searching for the seventh grader.

Before her disappearance, Maryann had warned her mother that two older men might be coming after her. In July 1998, Maryann’s body—decomposing and wrapped in a blanket and chains—was found in Connecticut’s Lake Lillinonah.

In the weeks leading up to her abduction, Maryann, a student at Schaghticoke Middle School, had informed her mom that she had sex with two local men, ages 19 and 21, who were in her circle of friends. In early October 1997, Cindi filed statutory rape charges against the 19-year-old and planned to do so against the other man.

The day of the abduction, Cindi met her daughter, who had spent the weekend with friends, at the Veterans Plaza shopping center in New Milford. Maryann became worried after she noticed a van circling the area and called her mom to pick her up, the Associated Press reported. As Maryann sat with her mother in their family car, she reportedly said, “They’re going to kill me, Ma, if they find me,'' according to The New York Times.

“She was terrified, but I didn’t think she literally meant ‘kill’ her,” Cindi later said. “I thought she was scared that they’d beat her up,” 

While her mother shopped at New Milford’s Big Y Supermarket, Maryann, feeling hungry and cold, decided to stay in the car, according to the AP. By the time Cindi returned to the vehicle, Maryann had disappeared. She officially reported her daughter missing two days later.

As police searched for Maryann, they conducted more than 80 interviews and tracked 60 potential leads. 

On July 15, Maryann’s body was found floating on Lake Lillinonah, located several miles south of town. Investigators confirmed the body was Maryann through her dental records, with the cause of death said to be asphyxiation, according to CT Insider. 

In December 1998, Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland offered a $50,000 reward for information that might implicate the person or people responsible for Maryann’s death. But by July 2001, police had come to a dead end, and new detectives were assigned to the case.

In October 2002, those investigators discovered new evidence that led to the arrests of eight suspects—seven in Connecticut and one in Texas. Five were men, and three were women, most in their late teens or early-to-mid 20s at the time of the crime.

"The information didn't come out as a faucet," Frank Maco, the Litchfield County state's attorney, said at a press conference. "It came out in drips and drabs.”

The day of her abduction, several suspects allegedly forced Maryann from her family’s car in the New Milford shopping center and took her to a remote spot on River Road in New Milford, where the circle of friends typically drank alcohol and smoked marijuana on the banks of the Housatonic River. According to court documents cited by The New York Times, the female suspects sought revenge against Maryann for having sex with their boyfriends. 

"I talked to Maryann and told her everyone was mad at her because she was trying to step on everyone's territory," one of the suspects, June Segar, told investigators in 2002. “Maryann wanted to go out with everybody, and that was making everyone mad.” Prosecutors thought the men killed Maryann to silence her and prevent her from pursuing statutory rape charges against them.

The group screamed at Maryann before shoving, beating and choking her, reported The Register Citizen, citing the arrest warrants.

“The whole thing got out of control,” Walter said in his police statement, according to the Connecticut news outlet. “Everybody just was taking turns hitting her.”

Three of the men reportedly proceeded to take turns raping her before at least one held her underwater until she became unresponsive. After binding Maryann’s wrists and ankles with electrical tape, they wrapped her body in a blanket along with a heavy chain and padlock, which they attached to a heavy cinderblock.

The eight suspects made “conflicting and self-contradictory statements,” but they were all ultimately held criminally responsible on a range of murder, sexual assault and kidnapping charges, according to The Hartford Courant. Two men—Alan M. “A.J.” Walter Jr. and Deaneric Dupas III—were charged with capital murder and, if convicted, could have faced the death penalty. Walter, believed to be the group’s ringleader, pled guilty in 2004 and was sentenced to 60 years in prison. Dupas did the same and received a 47-year sentence.

“I’m very ashamed of this and will always be ashamed for this," Dupas said at his sentencing.

All the other suspects—except for one—accepted plea bargains and faced prison time. Defendant Keith Foster’s case went to trial, and he ultimately received a maximum prison sentence of 110 years. The courts later rejected Foster’s bid for appeal.

Ronald Rajcok, identified as the driver who took Maryann to the secluded area on River Road, eventually asked judges to reconsider his 36-year sentence. Instead, they added six years to his sentence, with the review panel saying he had “ultimate control” over her “horrific fate.”

Maryann’s family still lives with the pain of the tragedy.

“There is nothing to make it easier,” Cindi said in 2008 after Rajcok requested less prison time. “I cry about it every day.”

In 2023, Maryann’s sister, Jennifer Measles Mankus, held a vigil for Maryann on the 26th anniversary of Maryann’s death, writing on a Facebook event page that she hoped “for a great turnout and sharing a lot of love.”

“Twenty-six years is a long time to heal a broken heart,” Ashley Horton, a friend of Maryann, said at the event. “I wish I could have created a lifetime of memories but our time was cut short.”

Cindi echoed at the vigil, “Thirteen years wasn’t long enough, not nearly long enough.”