CONNOLLY

BURRILLVILLE — Marc K. Connolly Jr., 11, had been told that his mother might be the person who was found dead, under suspicious circumstances, in the Black Hut Management Area. He had hoped for the best.

But yesterday afternoon, his father returned from the Burrillville Police Department and ended the mystery, telling him that his mother, Vicki L. Connolly, 33, was the one found in the woods and that the police were investigating the possibility that someone had killed her.

It was a lot to absorb.

Marc dealt with it in the company of his family, at the same Woonsocket house where he had occasionally visited with his mother since last year, when his father took custody and he moved to Burrillville.

The sixth grader was a jumble of emotions, by turns talkative and capable of a chuckle, but also momentarily quiet and eager for a hug.

He acknowledged that his mother had fallen into drugs after her divorce from his father in 2005. But he and she still visited from time to time, he said.

The last visit was in early September, perhaps on Sept. 3, just a few days before she vanished.

She had invited him to eat a spaghetti dinner with her in the Woonsocket home of some close family friends, he said. That wasn’t possible.

“I had to go somewhere,” he said.

At one point, she also promised to pay for him to play football this fall, he said.

“Then, she just disappeared,” he said.

Vicki Lori Ann Connolly had been missing about two months before some hunters found her body last week. The police had said she was last seen on Sept. 6.

Some hunters discovered her around 8:30 a.m. Friday in the vicinity of a dirt turnaround area at the end of Spring Lake Road in the Glendale area of town.

Police investigators found evidence that made them suspect homicide, according to Burrillville police Lt. Kevin S. San Antonio.

As of yesterday afternoon, the state medical examiner had not determined if Connolly was the victim of homicide but San Antonio confirmed that the case was being investigated as a homicide.

Burrillville and Woonsocket detectives are working together on the case, he said.

Both agencies are looking at some “persons of interest,” he said. He declined to provide any additional details.

Marc’s father, Marc K. Connolly Sr., said he took his son to stay with one of the family’s close friends at the house at 45 Libbeus St. in Woonsocket yesterday and headed for the medical examiner’s office.

Connolly, a truck driver, said he went to the office to identify his former wife.

“They said there was nothing to identify,” he said.

The identification was made with dental records, he said.

After dealing with the police, Connolly returned to be with his son at the hillside house on Libbeus Street. By the late afternoon, his current wife, Karen Connolly, was there.

On the patio outside the house, the boy talked with a television crew.

Soon after that, he and other family members harked back to their most recent visits with Connolly, including a birthday party they held for her on Aug. 25.

They remembered the good: her jokes, her smile, her interest in Marc’s work in school, the Christmas holidays she had enjoyed with her immediate family prior to her divorce in 2005.

They didn’t flinch from revealing some of the more difficult memories.

Marc said Vicki Connolly asked him to live with his father in April 2006, telling him that she was unable to take care of him.

He said his mother was addicted to marijuana and he had heard stories about her smoking crack cocaine. She had been arrested for prostitution, he said.

He described a few of the male companions she had spent time with over the past two years.

One of the men wrapped his hands around the base of her neck one day after she had angered him, the boy recalled.

He said he had told the man to get his hands off her. This was the last time that Marc was allowed to stay overnight with his mother.

The man was enrolled at a drug rehabilitation center during the time his mother was missing, according to Marc and other family members. They did not have any strong conviction about anyone who might have wanted to kill Connolly.

“She did a lot of things wrong, but she didn’t deserve this,” said the boy’s stepmother, Karen Connolly.

“I just hope they find out who did it,” she said. “I really want to see him pay.”

Marc, who had just returned from a game of catch with his uncle, heard his stepmother’s comment.

“He’s going to be in jail forever,” he said.

mreynold@projo.com