Missing New Hampshire Girl Case Turns 40 With No New Leads, Requests For Info Rejected

CONCORD, NH — A few weeks ago, the Shirley Ann “Tippy” McBride missing person case, said to be one of the most investigated cases in the city, turned 40.

Around 9:30 p.m. on Friday, July 13, 1984, McBride left her half-sister’s apartment on Union Street to pick up babysitting money and then meet her boyfriend at his job at Concord Litho on Old Turnpike Road. After she left the apartment, she vanished and was never seen or heard from again.

Despite leaving many personal belongings, McBride was immediately accused of being a runaway due to her past behavior. At 15, though, she was not living at home and had much more freedom than most 15-year-olds, at the time.

Family members were incensed — and are, to this day, by Concord police's lack of seriousness and diligence in the ensuing weeks of her disappearance. The local newspaper, the Concord Monitor, which had much more staffing than it does today, did not publish a story about the case for weeks, despite family members leafleting the city with missing person posters.

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Investigators have received many leads over the decades, including dead women who were the same age and description as McBride reported around the country, and those cases have been thoroughly investigated. Rewards led to tips, but no breaks in the case. Some former Concord police staffers have said privately it was a mistake for the department to have ignored the case in its early inception. The family had McBride declared legally dead in 1990.

About 25 years after she disappeared, investigators believed DNA technology, which has advanced since then, too, might help with the case. Family members, still furious with the police, refused to give samples.

A break in the case appeared to occur about a decade ago when Stacie Coburn came forward with information after researching the case. She related an incident in Merrimack with the half-brother of a friend, Catherine Raymond (then known as Cathy Jellerson), around the same time McBride disappeared. The incident involved Walter Davis II, who was attempting to burn clothes he had in a bag after claiming to have raped and killed a girl in Concord and dumped her in a river, according to Raymond. It was later learned the clothing matched the clothes McBride was last seen wearing.

After speaking with her mother, a paralegal, about what Raymond had told her, they went to the police. The interview, she said, was recorded, and Raymond, too, spoke with police. Davis, who had connections to Concord — he worked in the area, as did his father, who also owned property in Loudon, was known to Merrimack police due to prior criminal activity. Coburn believed he was a danger to his family, too. Davis died in 2003.

Decades later, after researching missing person cases in New Hampshire and wondering about those clothes, Coburn found the information about McBride and believed the incident in Merrimack with Davis was connected to her case. She called Concord police about it and a detective obtained the investigatory materials from the Merrimack police.

The revelation raised hopes for the family and they gave DNA samples to police in 2014. Robin McBride, Tippy’s older sister, met with Coburn in 2018 and thanked her for coming forward with the information.

According to Robin McBride, no family member has heard from police or the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office for close to 10 years, even for a non-update update. She spent Tippy’s 40th anniversary of being gone and presumed dead on a vacation with other family members. They do not think the case will ever be solved despite all the potential leads and prior comments made by witnesses who never were thoroughly investigated — witnesses who are also beginning to die off, just like members of her family and the cops who worked the case, taking all their secrets and information to their graves.

Five years ago, Robin McBride met with Raymond, and she did not recall the incident concerning the clothes, a puzzling revelation to Coburn. Raymond did tell Robin McBride she remembered her half-brother saying something happened at a nightclub in the area, believed to be the Take Five Music Hall on Garvins Falls Road, and a girl who had been raped. Raymond, a long-time resident of Concord who worked in the medical field, died in August 2019.

In early July, Patch requested documents connected to the case that had either already been released publicly in the 1980s, which should be accessible, or were connected to people who have died since McBride’s disappearance. A request was also made for generic information about the case — including how many people were investigated as potential suspects and how many official sightings of McBride were reported to police in the early part of the investigation but were ruled out. Coburn also requested the opportunity to listen to her interview with Merrimack police and an update about any DNA information from the clothes she helped investigators obtain. Both requests were denied.

Michael Garrity, the department’s director of communications and legislative affairs, said Concord police and the state’s Cold Case Unit were still working to seek answers about McBride’s disappearance and that making the case file public would compromise the integrity of their investigation. He said the department believed McBride “vanished, under circumstances that strongly indicate foul play,” and her whereabouts and the case “remain a mystery.” Garrity said it was rare for a case like McBride’s to remain unsolved after so long.

“The trauma, grief, and sadness for Ms. McBride’s loved ones are unimaginable,” Garrity said. “We continue to actively work to seek answers for them.”

Garrity said detectives and prosecutors were “always seeking new leads from the public” and, in this case, “investigators truly need the public’s help.” He added, “Detectives need people from the community to come forward with information to help us solve it. If you know what happened or have any information, come forward. Even the smallest observation could provide a piece of the puzzle necessary to resolve this case.”

During the past six years, Patch has contacted several former police employees involved with the investigation and other sources, including suspects, attorneys, witnesses, and others outside the family, to see if they would be willing to talk. No one will speak publicly about the case; few have also said much privately.

One of the significant problems with the Cold Case Unit and active investigations of this kind is the one-sided nature of police work with some cases.

As an example, Coburn, who is an indirect witness to someone who may have admitted to killing McBride, said no one has ever interviewed her about her interaction with Davis or Raymond despite leading investigators to the clothes and other information gathered by Merrimack police at the same time McBride went missing. She and her mother still periodically speak about the case.

“I can’t believe nothing has happened,” Coburn said. “My mother and I have always been shocked that no one has ever contacted me. It’s disappointing now that they won’t allow me to hear myself (being interviewed by police).”

Coburn said Davis and the clothes will lead to the case being solved. While optimistic, she added, “The recordings are the answer; they were right then and there, pretty quickly. We were at the police station with the clothes and the story. I believe it is what happened.”

Chloe French, who has been intimately involved in the Trish Haynes missing person case, has also been critical of investigators’ lack of information sharing. A rally and press conference last year after the creation of the New Hampshire Coalition of Families of the Missing and Murdered has not made any progress in more openness but has engaged the families and people interested in helping them. French said the Haynes family, like the family of Maura Murray, missing since February 2004, and the McBrides, too, get the same scripted response, if any at all.

“It is wrong that the police can sit on either a pile of information or on a pile of absolutely nothing, and by law, they can sit on that pile in silence for eternity,” she said. “There is no justice for the victims or their families in New Hampshire, and sadly, that has been proven time and time again.”

French said the coalition will hold a peaceful gathering outside the Statehouse from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Aug. 13 to draw attention to the matter.

“With this latest gathering,” she said, “we are hoping to garner attention not only on the murder and dismemberment of Trish Haynes but to also shed light on the overall lack of communication the state investigators offer as well. It has been six years since Trish was murdered and to the best of the family’s knowledge, there has been no progress in the case. In fact, they are unsure what, if any, of a case has been put together.”

French said the lack of interaction between investigators and families, dozens of them, was “unacceptable” and “we are there to make change.”

Since its inception in 2009, the Cold Case Unit has released nine “annual” reports about cases and updates to the major crime unit’s work. Between 2018 and 2022, there were no reports. No updates, progress, or work on the McBride case are mentioned in the online reports.

As of May, there were 65 people listed on the state’s missing persons list, including McBride.

The current New Hampshire cold case list is located here. The state’s cold case bureau link is here.

Garrity said anyone with any information about the disappearance of McBride, including her whereabouts and activities on July 13, 1984, was asked to 1) call the Concord Police Department at 603-225-8600; 2) provide an anonymous tip to the Concord Regional Crimeline at 603-226-3100; or 3) submit the tip through the Attorney General’s Office Cold Case Unit website at doj.nh.gov/criminal/cold-case/tip-form.htm.”

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