Ten years passed between the eccentric woman's disappearance and the discovery of her remains in a septic tank on her Hopkinton estate.

01:00 AM EDT on Monday, August 11, 2003

BY KATIE MULVANEY
Journal Staff Writer

HOPKINTON -- Towering and eccentric, Cam Lyman appeared more at home in the world of dogs than humans.

She preferred a tweed jacket and tie to a skirt, clipped her gray hair short and cultivated a thin mustache. She disliked menial tasks so much that a friend and lawyer handled most of the affairs of her million-dollar estate. She seldom communicated with her three siblings other than to exchange Christmas cards.

It's a portrait of a complex, if not isolated, woman. It's such idiosyncrasies, in many respects, that let Lyman's disappearance, in July 1987, go unreported for more than a year. It took another decade for her body to be discovered tied to a cinder block in the septic tank of what was once her secluded Hopkinton estate.

Journal photo / John Freidah When he became Hopkinton's police chief in 1997, former state trooper John Scuncio took an active interest in the case of heiress Cam Lyman, who had not been seen in 10 years. Her remains were soon found at her estate, background.

Lyman's murder remains unsolved, 16 years after the reclusive millionaire vanished at age 54, leaving 58 dogs and a $1.9-million trust fund behind.

The investigation into her disappearance, and ultimately her death, has spanned from a transgender subculture in Western Europe to a failed real-estate deal in Cranston. It has frustrated police, private investigators and Lyman's family, and put Hopkinton Police Chief John Scuncio and the attorney general's office at odds.

Scuncio assessed the case recently on a moody summer day, as the skies shifted suddenly from sunny to gray over Lyman's former estate. Despite two changes in ownership, the property has varied little in 16 years. The imposing Victorian house sits on a hillside surrounded by a stockade fence. The sound of barking dogs still fills the air, but now Weimaraner pups have replaced the Clumber spaniels Lyman so loved.

"There's tons and tons of evidence . . . I think there's more than enough to indict -- right now," Scuncio said. "Really everything is in the [attorney general's] hands."

The attorney general's office says the case falls short of being airtight. "There is not sufficient evidence to convict any one person for murder," Deputy Atty. Gen. Gerald Coyne said late last week. "It doesn't do any good to return an indictment that we can't sustain."

The state police agree. "There are several people we looked at, are looking at," said Capt. Steven O'Donnell, whose detective division is working with the Hopkinton police. "We don't have enough to prosecute."

Fewer than a dozen individuals could have potentially committed the crime, Coyne said. As the investigation continues, that number dwindles.

Retired prosecutor Roy Fowler handled the case full-time for three years until his retirement in March 2002. Now, Cindy Soccio, head of the attorney general's Washington County office, has the Lyman case, in addition to her other duties, according to Michael Healey, spokesman for the attorney general's office.

The investigation remains "a couple of breaks" away from an arrest, O'Donnell and the attorney general's office say.

Cam Lyman

WHEN SCUNCIO inherited the case from retired Chief George Weeden in 1997, Lyman's disappearance was detailed in five, double-spaced pages.

Arthur T. Lyman reported his sister missing Dec. 12, 1988, 17 months after she had her last known conversation. It was with her friend and fellow dog enthusiast, George T. O'Neil, of North Kingstown.

Arthur told the police Cam was "odd in her ways and didn't want anything to do with her immediate family. Mr. Lyman feels that she could be in Europe or anyplace, but would just like to know she's in good health." Friends and family members became concerned when they didn't receive their usual poinsettia and card at Christmas, often their only contact with Lyman.

Weeden published a missing-person report, but for nine years that was the extent of police involvement in the case. Her 42-acre Collins Road estate had never been searched; no one had been questioned.

With no body, the police had no reason to believe a crime was committed, Weeden once said. Weeden is away for the summer and cannot be reached for comment.

But a private investigation was well under way. Lyman's family had hired Charles John Allen, a Boston private detective, to pursue the case.

Allen staked out Lyman's house, rooted out contacts in the European transvestite scene, and delved into the dog-show world. After a worldwide search, he concluded that she had likely been dead since her disappearance.

Allen's findings were part of a bitter Probate Court battle over the distribution of Lyman's estate that pitted her family against O'Neil, the North Kingstown accountant she had named sole beneficiary in her will in 1984. The family asked the judge to declare Lyman, who never married or had children, dead so they could split up the estate and protect her investments.

During the probate hearings, O'Neil said he and his wife first met Lyman on the dog-show circuit in the late 1970s. At the time, Lyman lived in Westwood, Mass., the wealthy Boston suburb where she grew up.

O'Neil and lawyer Robert Ragosta, of Cranston, arranged for her to buy an 11-room Victorian house at 163 Collins Rd. in Hopkinton in 1984, according to court reports. She moved to the 42-acre estate after building a 20-run kennel for about $525,000. That same year, she granted O'Neil power of attorney, authority she later gave to Ragosta as well.

Soon O'Neil was handling daily tasks, picking up Lyman's mail and cashing checks.

Lyman increasingly blurred her gender, O'Neil testified.

She used hormones intended for dogs to grow a mustache, and began wearing men's clothes, according to family member and Allen.

In 1985, the 6-foot Lyman changed her name from Camilla to Cam.

She was inclined, O'Neil said, to ask for $10,000 to buy milk.

At times temperamental, Lyman was having a tantrum during a phone call with O'Neil about a dog show when the line went dead around July 20, 1987, he testified. When he went to her house the next day, the phone had been ripped from the wall. Lyman had disappeared along with an attaché case stuffed with $200,000, heirloom jewelry and photos of her dogs, O'Neil testified.

O'Neil testified he didn't notify anyone of Lyman's disappearance because it was not out of character for her to leave for long periods without notice, according to court papers. There was talk that she might have headed to Europe seeking a sex change. O'Neil hired John and Judith Weekes to care for the dogs.

In 1995, Probate Judge Linda Urso declared July 20, 1987, the date of Lyman's death. In the ruling, Urso said he deemed O'Neil's statements "not wholly credible . . . the circumstances surrounding Lyman's disappearance as described by Mr. O'Neil are sketchy and his actions for a long period of time thereafter are unsettling."

The parties eventually agreed to split Lyman's holdings, with the family to divide $1.9 million in trust funds and O'Neil to get the Hopkinton estate. He later turned that over to a charitable trust in Lyman's name.

O'Neil and Ragosta later settled a lawsuit in U.S. Distict Court that accused them of illegally draining that $1-million trust Lyman intended to bequeath to the American Kennel Club Museum of the Dog in St. Louis. They admitted they violated Lyman's wishes and broke federal tax code when they used the trust to finance real-estate deals. They agreed to give the museum the $235,000 remaining in the trust and pay $900,000 in compensatory damages and interest.

LESS THAN two years after the settling of the probate dispute, Scuncio came on the scene, determined to find Lyman. His department and the state police had cadaver-sniffing dogs on hand in September 1997 when the property's new owner lifted up the septic tank cover and found a skull.

The state medical examiner took more than a year to conclude that the skeletal remains belonged to Lyman.

Lyman had been shot, her body weighted down with a cinder block, Scuncio said.

The discovery of her remains did not come as a surprise.

"Ever since the day I read that report, I knew before I walked on the property that I was going to find Cam Lyman," Scuncio, a former state police detective, said in a recent interview.

"We never bought the fact that she went anywhere; she'd never leave the dogs," added Mary Margaret Goodale, Lyman's sister from Santa Ynez, Calif., during a recent phone interview.

"I always thought she met with foul play," Goodale said.

Pursuing her sister's disappearance, financial affairs and murder has proven very complicated and difficult, said Goodale, 76, the only living member of Lyman's immediate family. She rarely speaks with police, but compliments their efforts. Her one major regret is that the body was not found much sooner. "I think very strongly that they know who committed this," she said. But, she says, the concrete evidence just isn't there yet.

Tips continue to trickle in to police and private investigator Allen from an Unsolved Mysteries segment dedicated to Lyman's murder that occasionally airs on cable TV.

The 1990s were spent trying to stimulate law enforcement interest in the case, Allen said. Then in 2001, he said, he appeared before a grand jury that questioned him not just on financial matters, but on circumstances surrounding Lyman's murder.

In March 2002, a grand jury indicted O'Neil, now 70, of 413 Tower Hill Rd., North Kingstown, on the charge of embezzling $15,000 from Lyman's trust. A year later, he entered an Alford plea in that case, meaning that he did not admit guilt but conceded that he could have been found guilty if brought to trial. He was sentenced to one year probation and $450 in court costs.

Gerard H. Donley, O'Neil's lawyer, at the time said the plea "was just a way to make it all end."

O'Neil, reached at home last week, had little to say about his former friend. "She's dead. I don't know anything about it," he said, ending the conversation abruptly.

O'Neil is said to remain active in the dog-show circuit, raising world class Clumber spaniels at his Wicksford Kennels.

Most recently, Allen's efforts have focused on tracing an estimated $2 million in missing furniture, jewelry and art from Lyman's estate. One tip led him to New York in search of a painting of a dog valued at $1 million. Another took him to a pawn shop on Cape Cod.

Despite the passage of time and the stalled leads, Allen remains committed to solving the crime. So does Scuncio.

Cold Case contact: Anyone with information involving this case may call Scuncio at 401-377-7750.