By Nicholas Brown
Staff Writer

Victor Paquette, the older brother of Danny Paquette who was killed in Hooksett 21 years ago, fields questions from reporters after Hopkinton’s Eric Windhurst was sentenced to 15 to 36 years in prison for the murder. (The Hooksett Banner/Bruce Preston)

A decades-old case came to a close as Eric Windhurst pleaded guilty to the 1985 murder of Danny Paquette.

Prosecutors said Windhurst was angered by his own father’s alleged sexual abuse of his sisters when he shot Paquette, the stepfather of a high school friend who said Paquette repeatedly abused her.

Windhurst, 38, a builder from Hopkinton, will serve 15 to 36 years in state prison after Merrimack Superior Court Chief Justice Robert Lynn accepted the plea deal for second-degree murder on Monday, Aug. 21.

Windhurst shot Paquette once through the heart with a rifle while Paquette was working on a bulldozer in front of his Hooksett home.

Moments before his sentence was handed down, Windhurst offered a tearful apology to members of the Paquette family. Danny Paquette’s nephew, Doug Paquette, urged Windhurst to turn, face them and, “Spit it out,” as Windhurst was choking up.

“I have no words to express how sorry I am for what I’ve done,” said Windhurst.

Paquette’s family members asked Lynn to inflict the harshest possible penalty.

“Twenty years you lived a lie, Eric,” said Paquette’s nephew Lance Larrabee. “You never took responsibility for your actions that day.”

Windhurst will serve a minimum 15-year sentence before the possibility of parole, said Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin.

Windhurst’s lawyers had been crafting a case that Windhurst shot Paquette to protect Paquette’s stepdaughter, Melanie (Paquette) Cooper, and members of her family.

Cooper, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, has told investigators she was repeatedly raped and physically and emotionally abused by Paquette when she was about 10 or 11 years old.

Before both sides reached a plea agreement, Lynn suggested the defense claim could be tenuous given evidence from the state that Paquette didn’t pose an imminent threat to Cooper.

When Paquette was shot, he hadn’t seen Cooper since she and her mother fled to Alaska more than two years earlier.

Prosecutors also challenged the possible defense of a third-party claim based on grand jury testimony introduced by Windhurst’s ex-girlfriend, Heather Bouchard.

Bouchard said Windhurst told her he was able to commit the murder out of his own anger over his father’s sexual abuse of his half-sisters.

Strelzin said investigators confirmed John Windhurst Sr. sexually abused his stepdaughters, Eric Windhurst’s half-sisters, but that the statute of limitations has prevented him from being charged.

The murder

Windhurst was 17 when he shot Paquette once through the heart from 100 to 200 yards, using a rifle with a telescope. Paquette was 36.

Windhurst was accompanied on the day of the shooting by Cooper, who said she agreed to go with Windhurst because she loved him, Strelzin said.

Windhurst and Cooper became friends while playing together on the Hopkinton High School soccer team.

Windhurst called Cooper on the morning of Nov. 9, 1985, and picked her up in his Volkswagen Rabbit.

According to Cooper’s testimony, the two drove to a field near Paquette’s Whitehall Road home and Windhurst rubbed mud on the Volkswagen’s license plate.

Strelzin said Windhurst removed a rifle and possibly another smaller gun from the car before he and Cooper stopped and talked at a stone wall.

There Windhurst said he was going to “do it” once the flavor of his gum went away, according to court records.

Cooper told police she waited while Windhurst walked deeper into the woods nearer to Paquette’s yard before she heard a single shot.

Windhurst then ran back to the car and eventually told Cooper he’d shot Paquette, Strelzin said.

Court Burton, who was working with Paquette, found Paquette lying with a hole in his chest, and was losing blood, Strelzin said.

Doctors later confirmed Paquette had been shot once from a .270 caliber rifle.

The bullet was found lodged in cable wire days later after residents in Paquette’s neighborhood complained that their phone service was down.

The investigation

Windhurst was arrested at a construction site last December, after investigators from multiple agencies followed the case for more than two decades.

During that time, police got three anonymous letters ­ one of which was eventually determined to be from one of Windhurst’s sisters-in-law ­ pointing to Windhurst as the murderer, Strelzin said.

The case fizzled around 1999, Strelzin said, but got new life in 2004, when Cooper changed her story about the events leading up to, and since, the 1985 shooting.

Police found Cooper living in Wyoming with a husband and five children when they asked her to take a polygraph test.

“She requested a break so she could pray and get some things straight in her head,” said Strelzin.

Cooper’s testimony led police to follow up with family and former friends of Windhurst’s, at least five of whom said Windhurst admitted to them that he murdered Paquette, according to court records.

In some cases, those people spread that information to others, records show.

Martha Windhurst, who was married to Windhurst’s brother, John, who died in 2000, said she and her husband passed Eric Windhurst’s secret on to his parents, John Sr. and Barbara Windhurst.

Cooper, who still lives out west, wasn’t at Windhurst’s sentencing, but Strelzin said she’ll soon be scheduled for a plea and sentencing hearing of her own.

For her cooperation, Strelzin said, Cooper’s being charged with hindering apprehension.