Cops continue to hunt for gunman who killed 77-year-old academic Honoree Fleming on her favorite hiking trail in her sleepy Vermont town – as her Pulitzer Prize-winning husband says: ‘America came out and killed her’
Vermont police continue the hunt for the gunman who killed retired academic Honoree Fleming on a hiking trail in the sleepy rural town of Castleton.
The 77-year-old was found shot to death on Oct. 5, her 45th wedding anniversary, on the Castleton Trail that runs through Vermont State University, where she was formerly dean.
Now her devoted husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning husband Ron Powers, has said his wife “went for a walk in the meadow and America came out and killed her.”
Powers, 81, believes Fleming’s killer was mentally unwell and certainly should not have been armed.
“One of the ways I’m trying to survive this is by making it clear that we need to change the way we as a society deal with guns and mental illness. Because we’re not dealing with it right now,” Fleming told the Boston Globe.
Fleming’s grieving husband has urged the media not to describe Fleming as “the wife of Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Powers” because it overlooks her significant achievements in academia.
Honoree’s body was discovered on a railroad track about a mile south of the university campus. Police combed the area and interviewed witnesses, who described seeing a 6-foot-2 man with red hair heading toward campus
Vermont State Police have released a sketch of a “person of interest” with a clean-shaven face and short spiky hair who was seen on the railroad tracks around the time of the murder
“This is a woman who has been through so much adversity, but she never gave up, she never gave in,” Ron Powers told the outlet.
“She never let life beat her until life armed itself.”
Powers wrote a book about the plight of people suffering from mental health in America: No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America.
The couple had two sons, one of whom committed suicide after suffering from schizophrenia for years.
“She would have tried to help this man recover from whatever was wrong with him,” he said.
‘Honoree had not an ounce of naivete in her. She knew the evil that was out there. But she had this peace. Despite everything, all the violations, all the losses, I think she believed in the world a little bit.”
Tammy Arruda, a hairstylist and close friend of the Powers family, is one of several locals who have spoken to investigators.
“It had to be random,” Arruda said. “Honoree didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She was so modest.
Honoree Fleming, 77, was an accomplished researcher with a long career in academia, teaching at four schools and even serving as dean at Vermont State University
Fleming and her husband, Ron Powers, 81, settled in Vermont with their two sons before she began her decades-long career in academia
Powers is a successful journalist and nonfiction writer who has received both a Pulitzer Prize and an Emmy Award, but he demands that others recognize his late wife’s achievements
Fleming battled sexism throughout her career, Powers said, describing her as a “visionary” who was denied tenure at Middlebury College after seven years of teaching.
Powers fondly remembered his wife’s dedication to her scientific profession, even completing lab work at the kitchen table in their Carleton home.
Fleming’s 40 years of bioresearch supports the theory of amitosis in cancer cells and has important implications for our understanding of how the cells divide
“You would never have known how brilliant and talented she was.”
There were no witnesses to the shooting, which Powers said police suspect was random but have not ruled out Fleming was the target.
Major Dan Trudeau, chief of the state police criminal division, said investigators are prepared to spend as long as necessary to identify the suspect.
“These types of cases will likely be a mix of old-fashioned detective work,” Trudeau said, “along with new technology-based detective work.”
Police are sifting through hundreds of tips called to a hotline and have released a sketch of a person of interest.
The sketch shows a clean-shaven man with short spiky hair and light eyes.
Detectives also interviewed people who live near the Delaware & Hudson Rail Trail or were in the area Thursday between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.
One witness reported seeing a man walking north on the path to campus after gunshots rang out.
Powers and Fleming met on a flight in 1976. They later married and had children, but both boys were diagnosed with schizophrenia and their youngest died by suicide in 2005.
The couple’s surviving son, Dean, remembered hearing his mother laugh and described her as someone who “wore the cares of the world on her sleeve.”
In a moving post on Facebook, Powers wrote of his late wife: “She took far more than half of my own heart and soul with her.”
He was described as a 6-foot man with short red hair, wearing a dark gray T-shirt and carrying a black backpack.
On Facebook, Powers revealed that the first people to come across Honoree’s body were a middle-aged man and woman.
“The woman ran for help,” he wrote. “The man stayed with Honoree. She was clearly dead, but he still stayed with her. He knelt next to her and, I understand, tried to make her understand that she was not alone.’
He promised to meet the couple along with his son Dean and “say our thanks.”
Powers is a decorated writer whose 2000 book Flags of Our Father was adapted into a film, produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Clint Eastwood.
He also won a Pulitzer for his writing in 1973, becoming the first television critic to do so. This was followed by an Emmy in 1985.
Before arriving at Vermont State University, Fleming was a faculty member at the now-defunct Trinity College in Burlington, Vermont; Middlebury College; and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
In addition to her role as dean and professor, Fleming was a passionate scientist who wrote many articles.
Her four decades of research into cell growth and movement had implications for understanding how cancer cells divide.
Every article she submitted to peer-reviewed journals was published, according to her husband.