By Maggie Cassidy
Valley News Staff Writer

Windsor — It was a typical Friday evening in Windsor on Dec. 5, 2014, as snow blanketed downtown. Inside the Windsor Station Restaurant & Barroom, the scene was bustling.

Among the patrons were William “Billy” Henne III, a longtime Windsor resident whose minor run-ins with the law had made him known to local police, and Windsor Police Chief William Sampson, a Massachusetts native who worked in Florida law enforcement for years before returning north four months earlier to become Windsor’s top cop.

Also present was another longtime Windsor resident, Windsor police Officer Ryan Palmer, who three weeks before had shot White River Junction resident Jose Burgos during a drug sting.

Both Palmer and Sampson were off-duty, having walked over together after a holiday party with town employees. Sampson said he had a beer or two. Henne was drinking, according to police reports. Palmer’s beverage of choice that night was ginger ale, the bartender told police.

On all those points, there seems to be no dispute. But determining what happened when Palmer and Henne had a brief scuffle around midnight would result in two investigations by Windsor police and a third one by state police.  Continue reading →

Part One: Intruder at the Border: A Toxin Emerges As Health Threat, But Official Action Comes Slowly

By Sarah Brubeck and Maggie Cassidy · June 30, 2013

Hanover — Industrial pollution involving toxic chemicals is often associated with abandoned factories in Rust Belt towns. The last place it might be expected to pose a hazard is near a residential neighborhood and a new school in an Ivy League college town.

But that’s the case in Hanover, where earlier this year officials acknowledged that a cancer-causing chemical had been found at the border of the Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory on Lyme Road. The chemical, trichloroethylene, or TCE, is a solvent that had been used at CRREL for nearly three decades until 1987.

In March, the Army Corps of Engineers began tests to determine if TCE had spread beyond the lab to reach Richmond Middle School across the street, along with Dartmouth College housing to the south and neighboring properties.

No unsafe levels have been detected so far, but officials say the contaminants migrate slowly and will need to be monitored for years to come.

While the news of potential TCE contamination came as a shock to many neighbors, government records examined by the Valley News show that it is far from a new development.  Continue reading →