CONCORD, NH – After half a century of uncertainty, authorities in New Hampshire have finally identified the man who raped and strangled a young mother in her apartment in 1975, leaving her toddler son alone to be discovered days later.
Judith Lord was just 22 years old when a maintenance worker found her body on May 20, 1975, in her Concord apartment. He had come to collect unpaid rent and instead discovered a crime scene. Lord had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Her 20-month-old son was found unharmed in another room, having survived alone for an unknown period of time.
Investigators at the time collected crucial evidence from the scene, including hair samples and seminal fluid. They quickly focused on three potential suspects: Lord’s estranged husband and two neighbors. The husband and one neighbor were cleared through alibis and lack of evidence.
Suspicion centered on Ernest Theodore Gable, a 24-year-old neighbor. Multiple witnesses told police that Lord was afraid of him, and his fingerprints were found on her windows. But FBI microscopic hair analysis conducted at the time concluded that Gable could not have contributed the hairs found at the scene.
That flawed forensic conclusion effectively killed the case. New Hampshire prosecutors felt the FBI’s findings created an insurmountable barrier to prosecution.
The case went cold for decades until modern DNA testing breathed new life into the investigation. Testing of seminal fluid recovered from the scene matched Gable. The FBI’s acknowledgment in 2015 that microscopic hair comparison tests had produced “flawed testimony” in numerous cases allowed investigators to reexamine the evidence. Corrected analysis confirmed the hairs belonged to Gable.
Justice, however, will never fully be served. Gable died in Los Angeles in February 1987 at age 36, making prosecution impossible.
“This resolution proves that no cold case is ever truly closed until the truth is found,” New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella stated.
The case is now officially classified as solved.
