The Mysterious Disappearance and Murder of Camilla Lyman

Hopkinton Police Chief Jack Scuncio

That might have been the end of it, had it not been for Jack Scungio.

Jack Scungio never thought of himself as a small-town cop.

Born and raised in the sparsely populated town of Hopkinton, by the time Scungio was in his twenties he was more than ready to shake the dust of the old town off his feet. He left town and spent most of a moderately distinguished 24-year career in the state police organized crime unit, chasing mobsters in the big city of Providence. He had always fancied himself a big-time crime fighter, a Mafia buster. But the breaks, as he would later put it, never came his way. By 1996, it had become clear that Scungio had gone as far as he was going to go with the state police. Soon, mandatory retirement would be nipping at his heels.

Flipping through the local newspaper one day, he came across an ad placed by the elders of the town of Hopkinton, who were searching for a new police chief to replace outgoing Chief Weeden. He decided to take the job.

To most veteran cops, particularly guys like Scungio with nearly a quarter-century of police work under their belts, the job of chief in a town like Hopkinton might have seemed a bit tame. A quick review of the incident sheets shows that the 13-member department spends most of its time lighting flares along the side of the road after fender-benders, directing traffic after Sunday morning church services, and shooing randy teenagers away from the countless dirt-road dead-ends that poke into the swampy woods around Hopkinton.

But where others saw a dead end, Scungio saw an opportunity. He decided that to keep himself busy, he'd take another look at the Lyman case.

Allen remembers welcoming the new chief's involvement in the case. He also knew something that the chief hadn't yet discovered: Even in her absence, Cam Lyman had a way of grabbing people by the lapels and not letting them go. As Allen well knew and the chief would soon learn, the mystery of Cam Lyman had a way of becoming an obsession.