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Murder stillmysteryDeath of reclusive dog trainer recently went to4grand jury.By LISA MARIE PANE*The Associated PressHOPKINTON. R.I. - It’s beenseven vears since Camilla Lymanwas declared dead, vet her killer’s¥identity has remained a mvsterv.• ¥ 0A breeder of champion spaniels who had begun transforming herself into a man by using steroids intended for her does. LvmanG? wwore men's clothing, sprouted a mustache and had started to look eerih like her dead father.The near-recluse disappeared in 1987. A decade later, her skeletalremains were found at the bottom of a septic tank on her sprawling 40-acre estate, and police finally had the proof of what they’d long suspected: Lyman hadn’t just gone off to Europe for a sex-change operation. as some of her friends speculated.‘There's a guy out there, there’s amurderer who did this.’- Hopkinton Police ChiefJohn ScuncioShe’d been murdered.Now. law enforcement authorities hope new scientific tests will help them solve the murder mystery that has gripped this rural southwestern Rhode Island town.“There’s a guy out there, there’s a murderer who did this,’’ saidHopkinton Police Chief John Scuncio, who said justice will beserved if new technology allows investigators to unravel the case.Sources familiar with the investigation say a grand jury is reviewing the evidence in Lyman's death.The Attorney General’s office is unable to confirm that a grand jury has been convened on the matter, but spokesman Jim Martin called it a “very active investigation that got a boost when money was secured to conduct scientific reviews of existing evidence.“It’s not an investigation withoutleads. Martin said. “The investigation has led to some newly received information.”Martin said that if that information doesn't win a conviction in Lvman's mysterious death, “at least we’ll be able to determinewhat happened to her.”The daughter of a prominentBostonian, L\man vanished from¥her estate in rural Hopkinton, but no one immediately told policeshe was missing.There was the talk that she'd gone to Europe for a sex change. Then, in 1997, her bodv was found in a septic tank on her sprawling property by the two men who had just purchased her house.Lyman was the daughter of Arthur T. Lyman, who before his death in 1968 had more than 30 years of public service in Massachusetts. including stints as commissioner of corrections and commissioner of conservation.The reclusive spinster moved into a large Victorian house in Hopkinton, not far from the Connecticut border, in 1984 after selling the Lyman family homesteadin Westwood, a Boston suburb.Using steroids intended for her dogs, she grew a mustache. Shecropped her hair and began calling herself “Cam.” She went to doghows wearing tweed jackets and bolo ties.She was 54 when she disappeared.Although she was estranged from her siblings, Lvman's relatives began to grow concerned when an elderly friend of the fam-rilv said she had not received the customary Christmas card from Camilla.The Lvman family hired a private investigator in 1988 to trackher down.When six years of searchingturned up nothing, her siblingsfiled a petition in 1994 in Hopkinton Probate Court asking that shebe declared dead so that an estimated $2 million in family trust funds wouldn't fall into the wrong hands.A probate court judge declared Lyman legally dead in June 1995.The case drew the attention of TV’s “Unsolved Mysteries,” which produced a few tips but nothing that led immediately to an arrest.The question was - and still is -who killed her?
Newspaper Details
Nashua Telegraph
Nashua, New Hampshire, US
Sun, Jan 20, 2002
Page 18
Full Page
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Chad G.
USA 02 May 2023
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