Chapter One of Murder in a Small Town: The Tragic Death of Stacey Burns deals entirely with the events in Stacey’s life on Friday, May 8, 2009. It contains these three sentences.

“At about the same time as so many prepared for what promised to be beautiful weekend in all respects, Ed Burns stopped by Stacey’s house to pick up their three younger girls for a Mothers’ Day weekend visit. As the car left the driveway, the girls likely waved goodbye with the characteristic enthusiasm of young children. They would not see their mother alive again; Stacey had about thirty-six hours to live.”

My question for Ed Burns is simple: Why, Mr. Burns? When you suddenly remembered you had another engagement that weekend, why not just return them to Wolfeboro to spend the Mothers’ Day weekend with their mother? Surely, there is a logical explanation.

Chapter Three of the book opens with early Sunday morning of May 10, 2009. It includes a detailed description of Jim Vittum’s visit to Stacey’s house that fateful morning. Here is a portion of that chapter.

“It was shortly after seven on Sunday morning when Vittum says he looked through the slider on the porch. This is the same sliding glass door he peered through less than thirty six hours before. From that vantage point, he states that he could see the coffee pot on the counter and noticed that it was not on. He says that he then made the decision not to proceed any further as there seemed to be no one stirring in the house.”

“The place was quiet,” he says. “I could see that the light on the coffee maker wasn’t on and I know that if Stacey had been downstairs at all she would have started it.”

Jim Vittum has already answered this question and his answer is clear in the book but it is one which a number of people have raised so I’ll mention it here. Did you enter Stacey’s house at all that morning, even to call to her up the stairs?

These questions have surely been asked by police investigators and just as surely satisfactorily answered. (I would hope!)

Duke