The brutal murder last week of 91-year-old Noel Raymond St. Laurent is the latest of what appears to be a series of odd or unusual crimes the small town of Lyndeborough has seen over the years.

Following are capsules describing some of Lyndeborough’s most infamous crimes and bizarre incidents.

* Dec. 7, 1926: When neighbors George Steele and George Douglas found 79-year-old Everett Cram, a Civil War vet, dead on his kitchen floor, local and state police launched an investigation into what the Telegraph called “what’s believed to be one of the most brutal crimes in the history of this quiet little village.” The next day they arrested three men: John Doyle of Milford, L. D. Hazen of Newport and Frank Brigham of Leominster, Mass.

Convinced it was murder-for-money because of Cram’s wealth, evidence of a struggle and the fact the house was ransacked, police hauled the suspects in, arraigning them the following day at Town Hall. The curious gathered, the Telegraph reported, “looking for the first time on a drama enacted daily in the big cities.”

After that report, details are scant, but the Telegraph did mention police pretty much ignored the alternative theory for Cram’s death: An “accidental fall or heart attack after a drinking session.”

A brief story in the Jan. 8, 1927 Telegraph stated, with precious few details, that Hazen and Brigham had been released from jail and sent on their way. Doyle, it stated, had been released earlier.

* May 23, 1981: Michael Carter, 19, of Greenville, was killed when he crashed his car on Route 31 in Lyndeborough during a police chase.

* March 16, 1989: A home on Route 31 in Lyndeborough explodes and burns to the ground early in the morning. More than three months later, the homeowner, David Decoteau, is arrested and charged with Class A arson for setting the fire, allegedly to collect insurance money.

No reports stating the outcome of the case can be found.

* August 1995: Three months after she is reported missing from her hometown of New Britain, Conn. 28-year-old Cheri Newman’s body is found buried under an apple tree at 73 Old Temple Road in Lyndeborough.

A tip led police to the home in mid-August. State Trooper David Kelley and his K-9 partner Kaiser located Newman’s burial site in 20 minutes.

Former New Britain tattoo parlor owner Patrick “Wild Man” Walsh is arrested for stabbing Newman to death, boxing up her remains, driving to the Lyndeborough residence and burying the box the previous May.

Newman, who was positively identified by tattoos that Walsh allegedly gave her, was last seen on May 24. Her 47-year-old mother Joyce, who led a community-wide search for her daughter, collapsed and died of a heart attack upon being notified of her daughter’s fate.

Walsh was later found guilty and imprisoned.

* April 9, 1997: A State Trooper responding to a report of a burglary in progress at a home on Route 31 shoots and kills 16-year-old high school sophomore Spencer Moon when the youth, armed with a rifle and a revolver, threatens officers outside the home.

Moon allegedly pointed one of the guns at Trooper Jeffrey Long, who shot Moon once in the neck.

As Moon’s body lay outside, police tried for several hours to talk the other burglary suspect out of the house. Late at night, a police dog leads officers to the suspect, hiding in the basement.

* Dec. 1, 1999: Walter and Monica Holt’s historic Forest Road homestead goes up in flames, leaving the family and several renters homeless. Three weeks later, investigators determined the fire was arson, and days after Christmas arrested Monica Holt.

Thus began a two-year Monica Holt saga, which culminated with a guilty verdict on arson and insurance fraud charges in 2001. She has served her time and now lives in parts unknown.

Over the two years Holt was charged a number of times with witness tampering, once for trying to run her son, a volunteer firefighter and witness for the prosecution, off the road with her truck.

Prosecutors said Holt was having an affair with another man and set fire to the family’s house so she could benefit from insurance money before divorcing her husband.

Holt was also charged with receiving stolen property for possessing jewelry stolen from her husband’s attorney’s home. She was also charged for calling and threatening witnessess, one of whom was her sister.

Briefly bailed out by her husband, Holt was dragged back to jail hours later on new charges that she offered someone $2,500 to have Nancy-Jo Holt, her husband’s former wife, beaten up or killed.

Nancy-Jo Holt died three weeks before the fire. After Monica Holt was arrested, officials re-examined Nancy-Jo Holt’s death, but found no evidence it was suspicious.

* February 2004: South Lyndeborough is thrust into the national spotlight as details of one of the state’s most astounding spousal and elder abuse cases emerges following the arrrests of 70-year-old Peter Gage and his son, Lyman, for emotionally and physically abusing Mary Gage over the course of 40 years.

For decades a virtual prisoner in the very home her parents bought to help her and Peter start their life together in South Lyndeborough, Mary Gage recovered from her extensive injuries enough to testify at the trial that sent her husband to prison, where he remains today.

Charges against her husband included attempted murder, felonious sexual assault, first- and second-degree assault, witness tampering and criminal restraint for strangling his wife, locking her inside their home, and beating her to the point where she needed emergency medical attention for severe bruising all over her body.

After multiple surgeries, living in constant pain and needing a wheelchair for most of her final six years, Mary Gage passed quietly at the Crestwood at Milford nursing home in October 2010.

–DEAN SHALHOUP