New England’s Unsolved: The Murder of Henry Bedard

In Swampscott, a 50-year-old painful and profound loss is remembered.

In the town center, an image of Henry Bedard, a 15-year-old high school sophomore beaten to death with a baseball bat in December 1974 peers out from a new sign designed to help find his killer.

Meanwhile, Swampscott Police Det. Sgt. Candace Doyle is visiting businesses across town, armed with fliers that carry a very direct message: Justice for Henry.

“He’s a person. He has a family out there. He deserves justice. We want to do the best that we can for him,” Doyle told me.

The day that Henry Bedard was killed was like any other in Swampscott. After school, Henry took the bus to Vinnin Square. He dropped off a roll of film at a CVS store and shopped for a Christmas present for his sister.

In 2004, I interviewed the late Swampscott Police Chief, Peter Cassidy.

He told me he saw Henry cross the street right in front of him on that afternoon on December 16, 1974, as he sat in his cruiser on Paradise Road.

“I just stopped the car, waved at him, he went across. He knew me and I knew him,” Cassidy told me. “He just went up that way, which is the direction of where we found him.”

At it turned out, Chief Cassidy was one of the last people to see Henry Bedard alive.

Sometime between 3-3:30 pm, workers in the Swampscott DPW yard also saw Henry.

Two hours later, Henry was late for supper.

“His family was very much a 5:30 dinnertime, back in the day. That was a very important thing for families,” Det. Sgt. Doyle told me. “So, when Henry didn’t show up for dinner at that time, his family became concerned.”

The next day, children playing in the woods behind the DPW in an area known as Kite Hill or Swampscott View made a gruesome discovery.

In 2004 Chief Cassidy brought me to the site.

“He still had all his clothes on, jacket, the clothes he wore to school,” Cassidy said.

A Little League baseball bat, a Hank Aaron 31″ Louisville Slugger was found next to Henry’s battered body.

“He was on this little stump here of rock. I believe that’s where they hit him again,” Cassidy showed me in 2004.

Fifty years later, authorities are taking a fresh look at Henry Bedard’s violent death.

They are studying again, the murder weapon, the baseball bat.

They want to know who owned the bat, and what hand-carved markings on the handle might mean. Could what appear to be a letter K carved into the handle, be an initial of the bat’s owner?

They want to hear from anyone who has a memory about that awful December day in 1974.

“Henry was a baseball player. He was an athlete. And to have his life taken the way it was, makes it, I think, that much more difficult not only for his family but for the townspeople as well,” Essex County District Attorney Paul Tucker told me.

Detective Sgt. Doyle says, even after a half-century of silence, no one is giving up on Henry Bedard.

“We’re just going over everything, resubmitting things for new DNA testing, just getting in front of everything,” Doyle said.

“Do you think there’s still somebody around the area that has some information and doesn’t know what to do with it?” I asked.

“Definitely,” she said.

“Why do you think that?”

“It’s just such a small town,” Doyle explained. “And it was just really the area was out in the open. Even though it was up on a (train) track, it was really visible. So someone knows something and we just want them to come forward.”

Anyone with information about the Murder of Henry Bedard is urged to contact Swampscott Police at 781-595-1111 or Massachusetts State Police at 1-855-MA-SOLVE.

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