New Documentary Seeks to Crack Baffling Massachusetts Highway Murders

The team behind the upcoming documentary on the New Bedford highway murders is looking for your help in uncovering one piece of the puzzle that could prove to be vital in solving the now 31-year-old murders.

“We are very happy to report that we are close to completing this project and are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” Aaron Cadieux, co-director of The Highway Murders, said in a new vlog released over the weekend. “But there are still some aspects of this case we’d like to learn more about.”

The five-part series has been in the works for the past few years, as Cadieux and his team have weaved together a comprehensive documentary that examines all of the suspects, the law enforcement and prosecutors involved in the case, and most importantly, tells the human side of the story regarding the victims of this still at-large serial killer.

The vlog focuses on the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body of Mary Rose Santos of New Bedford on March 31, 1989. Her remains were found on the southbound side of Route 88 in Westport. Santos was the eighth of the nine victims of the Highway Killer to be found.

At the time of the discovery of Santos’ body, then-Bristol County District Attorney Ronald Pina informed the public, through the press, that two weeks before Santos’ remains were discovered, his office had received an anonymous letter stating that if a body was ever found near Route 88 in Westport, the person who wrote the letter would come forward to the D.A. and provide more information. Pina publicly asked for the person to come forward, stating the letter “may be a crucial piece to this whole thing.”

Cadieux says allegedly the writer did come forward, but Pina would never answer any questions regarding the letter or the person who wrote it.

Nobody close to the case could provide information about the letter or its author to the documentary team, including State Police investigator Robert St. Jean, who shared all info with Pina on the case.

“He never shared that with me, and he shared as far as I know all the information with me,” St. Jean said in a clip from the documentary, speculating that maybe Pina had determined the information from the letter writer had no validity.

In the vlog, Cadieux said he has two key questions.

“Does this letter exist? The only person to see it is Pina,” he said. “The other question is if it did exist, how was somebody able to determine a body would be found in that location? They either saw the body or knew the person.”

Cadieux said seven of the nine victims had been found in two primary clusters–three on Route 140 in Freetown, and the other four near the Reed Road exit off I-195.

“Somebody just took a guess that a body was going to pop up on Route 88?” he asked.

Cadieux and his team are asking the general public, if anyone knows more about alleged letter writer or the alleged letter itself, to contact them at on their website or call their hotline at (508) 505-INFO.