Vermont golf pro's murder to be CBS-TV feature

By Ted Cohen

The true-crime television program “48 Hours” will air the story of Sarah Hunter, a Vermont golf pro abducted and brutally murdered four decades ago.

Called “Sarah Mattered,” the CBS production is scheduled to air at 10 p.m. November 28, according to a published report.

It will be released on Paramount’s streaming services the following day.

David Morrison, 64, confessed to investigators a year ago that he killed Hunter, 32, and disposed of her body.

Morrison was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Hunter was the pro at Manchester Country Club.

Morrison was a prime suspect at the time of Hunter’s killing, but police weren’t able to find evidence connecting him to it.

Hunter was reported missing by a co-worker on September 19, 1986. Her body was found two months later in a wooded area of Pawlet.

Morrison was a prime suspect at the time of Hunter’s death, police said.

He worked at a gas station in Manchester near where Hunter’s car was found, according to a police affidavit.

But police weren’t able to find evidence connecting him to the killing.

Two years later, Morrison was suspected of abductinh a woman in California, holding her at gunpoint and forcing her to perform sex acts.

He was later arrested and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison on charges of kidnapping, attempted murder and sexual assault, according to the Bennington Banner.

In 2012, Bennington County State’s Attorney Erica Marthage charged Morrison with killing Hunter after DNA testing appeared to link strands of hair from his car to Hunter.

But Marthage dropped the charges several years later due to errors in how the evidence was handled.

“When I dismissed this case in 2015, I thought there was no way in hell this case was coming back — but here we are,” Marthage said last year.

Three years ago, authorities in Massachusetts were investigating an unsolved missing persons and attempted kidnapping case that appeared to have links to Morrison.

Vermont and Massachusetts state police began to work together, and two summers ago a team of investigators, including former Vermont State Police Detective Thomas Truex, the original investigator in Hunter’s death, went to a California prison to talk to Morrison.

Truex, who came out of retirement for the interview, was the only person that Morrison wanted to talk to about Hunter, Marthage said.

Morrison told investigators that Hunter came into the Manchester gas station where he was working to buy cigarettes.

He said he tied her up in a back room of the gas station before stabbing her to death and disposing of her body, according to a police affidavit.