GOSHEN — Vermont State Police have confirmed that human skeletal remains found at the side of the Gap Road in Goshen on Dec. 22 are those of Denise Hart, a 24-year-old woman who had been missing from the Sudbury area since Jan. 25. Authorities have ruled her death a homicide, based on examination of the remains and the crime scene.
The remains were discovered by a group of people who were in the area at around 1 p.m. on Dec. 22, according to state police. The Vermont State Police Crime Scene Search Team processed the scene and the remains were taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for identification.
The case remains under investigation.
This break in the case follows many months of hard work by investigators to find Hart, a Hartford, Conn., resident last seen leaving a friend’s home in Sudbury almost a year ago.
The Addison Independent was among media present on Aug. 18 when the Vermont State Police Scuba Team and other search-and-rescue divisions of the VSP took advantage of a low water mark in the Otter Creek to investigate a roughly six-mile stretch of the waterway near the Cornwall-Salisbury border for Hart’s remains. On that date, elements of the VSP Marine Patrol launched their boats into the creek from a parking area adjacent to the single-lane covered bridge on Swamp Road in Cornwall. It was in this parking area that state officials in February found the burned remnants of a borrowed, silver 2001 Pontiac Grand Am that Hart had been driving while in the area.