Anna Kenneway Missing 6/4/54 CTIn Cold Case, Police Dig Deep
High-Tech Hunt For Woman's Remains
August 18, 2006
By DAVID OWENS And DAVE ALTIMARI, Courant Staff Writers
MANCHESTER -- Police put high-tech ground-penetrating radar to work Thursday in an effort to defrost a 52-year-old cold case: the disappearance of 42-year-old Anna Kenneway.
Police said they won't know for a week whether "anomalies" the device detected in soil beneath a concrete garage floor at 14 Little St. might be the remains of Kenneway, who was last seen the evening of June 4, 1954.
Anna and her husband, Philip Kenneway, had an odd relationship, and when she vanished, her family suspected Kenneway was responsible, police and family members said Thursday. Kenneway, who died at age 80 in 1995, never reported his wife's disappearance to police. He obtained a divorce from her two years after she disappeared.
The granddaughter of Anna Kenneway who asked police in June to look into the matter, said family lore was that Philip Kenneway murdered Anna and buried her in the garage, then poured a concrete floor to cover the body, Manchester police Sgt. Chris Davis said Thursday.
Family members told police that Philip Kenneway poured the concrete floor around the time Anna disappeared, Davis said.
Manchester Det. Paul Lombardo began looking into the case and asked the current homeowner, who has no relation to Kenneway, for permission to check the property.
A technician dragged the device around the garage floors, upper and lower; in a shed; and in parts of the backyard. The device captured electronic images that will be examined by experts at Fuss & O'Neill, a Manchester engineering firm, and police.
Don Wilson of Fuss & O'Neill, who operated the device, said it spotted several anomalies 6 feet to 7 feet beneath the concrete floor.
"We don't know what they are, but they are anomalies that stand out from the fill material in the garage," he said.
Despite her husband's apparent lack of interest in her disappearance, one of Anna Kenneway's sons from a previous marriage - Richard Lavallee, who was 24 and lived in Massachusetts - began asking questions. He placed a classified ad in The Courant on July 21, 1954, asking his mother to contact him. She had been missing six weeks. The next day, Manchester police opened a missing persons investigation that apparently yielded no results. Lavallee died about a year ago.
Philip Kenneway, who worked as a machine operator at Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, told The Courant in 1954 that he last saw his wife on June 4.
Lavallee told The Courant that Kenneway had told him that he had left the house after arguing with his wife and had gone to the movies. When he got home, he said, Anna Kenneway was gone and had taken some clothing, a religious statue, about $3,000 in cash and about $9,000 in savings bonds. The couple, married about 12 years, argued frequently, Philip Kenneway told The Courant.
Davis said police have no records of the case. Anna Kenneway was declared dead in 1991 after her survivors petitioned in Manchester Probate Court.
Her family and neighbors in the quiet neighborhood suspected something sinister had occurred.
Philip Lavallee, 71, who is Anna Kenneway's only surviving son, said he suspected his mother ended up in the garage floor.
"I was there once, years and years ago," Philip Lavallee said Thursday. He said he saw the cellar in the back of the garage. "I always wanted to go back there and see if it was filled in."
"Anything was possible with him," Lavallee said. "He was a slime to me."
At the time of his mother's disappearance, Philip Lavallee was in a Worcester hospital recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident. "She used to come see me every two weeks ... and then it stopped," he recalled.
"She is not the kind of woman just to get up and leave like that," Lavallee said. "She wouldn't leave us alone."
Neighbor Frank Duncan, 92, who moved next door just a few months before the Kenneways arrived, said he also observed an odd relationship between the two.
"They both worked on the third shift at Pratt & Whitney and he charged her a buck a week to ride with him," Duncan said.
Duncan also recalled Anna Kenneway bringing half a cake she had baked to his home to give to his wife. "`I'm not going to give him the other half, that's mine,'" Duncan recalled her saying.
As for his wife's disappearance, Kenneway "never mentioned anything about it," Duncan said.
Philip Kenneway obtained a divorce from Anna in January 1956 and Duncan said he recalled seeing Kenneway come running with the papers and exclaim, "Now I'm free."
As investigators unloaded their gear Thursday afternoon, Duncan grabbed his cane and stepped into his yard to watch the search. "I've got to see this," he said. "This has been bugging me for 50 years."
Contact David Owens at
dowens@courant.com
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