Winterbottom's love of a life cut
short
By Sam Hemingway
Laura
Winterbottom's huge, nearly finished quilt was a beauty --
sunshine yellow with a striking multicolored star bordered in
black emanating from its center.
"This is so amazing,"
Alicia Frank of Colchester said, running her hand across the
ripples in the fabric. "Look, she did it by hand. It's all
hand-stitched."
Lisa Kenerson of Burlington nodded,
then grimaced.
"We still don't know who she was making
this for," she said.
There was a pause in the
conversation among the members of the Outing Club, an informal
group of outdoors enthusiasts, who had gathered at a home in
Burlington's Old North End on a cool Wednesday
night.
Winterbottom had been an original member of the
group. Now, her fellow club members were standing in a circle,
each one gripping an edge of the quilt. They were thinking of
her, what happened to her. The grief, five weeks later, was
still so strong.
On the snowy, blustery night of March
8, police say, Winterbottom, 31, was kidnapped after she left
a Burlington bar where she had met some of her Outing Club
friends and celebrated Frank's birthday. She was later found
raped, strangled and beaten to death in her car.
Gerald
Montgomery, 33, of Burlington, was eventually charged with her
kidnap, rape and murder. Police say Winterbottom did not know
her alleged attacker and believe he climbed into the passenger
side of her parked car on College Street moments after she had
gotten into the vehicle and started the engine.
The
brutal and apparently random nature of the crime has
reverberated across the city ever since. Winterbottom, a shy,
talented, active woman, epitomized the kind of new
Burlingtonian who has made this city a mecca for the young,
socially conscious and well-educated.
"It makes you
realize how small a town this is," Alex Bertoni, her former
boss at Champlain College, reflected in an interview. "We're
all intercon- nected, so when something like this happens, it
hits us all. If there is such a thing as six degrees of
separation among people, in Burlington it's more like two
degrees."
Jim Nordberg, an Outing Club member and host
of last week's meeting, looked around the room as the quilt
was being folded up. The quilt will be on display at a
memorial service for Winterbottom on Saturday at the Unitarian
Church.
"The sun is shining and it was nice outside
today," Nordberg said. "This is when we'd be spending more
time with Laura. Spring is not going to be as bright this year
as it should be."
Early years Laura Winterbottom was born
Sept. 12, 1973; she was the second of Ned and Joann
Winterbottom's three children. The family lived in Bedford,
N.Y., an upscale suburb of New York City best known as the
home of domestic diva Martha Stewart.
"Laura was always
energetic, very curious," said Joann Winterbottom, speaking
for herself and her husband. "We lived in a rural area near
the woods and Laura was interested in nature, bugs and
leaves."
Laura was an honor roll student at Byram Hill
High School. She enjoyed art and jazz dance, but was also a
runner and shot-putter on the school's track team. She was
shy, her mother said, careful in the way she selected friends
and not interested in drawing attention to herself.
The
family's favorite story about Laura as a little girl concerns
the time the Winterbottoms were vacationing on Chincoteague
Island on Virginia's coast. The family was returning from a
day at the beach when Laura, then 10, spotted a caterpillar
hanging off the window of the car.
"She screamed to Dad
to pull the car over," Laura's older sister, Leigh
Winterbottom, said.
As the story goes, Laura carried
the furry critter over to the side of the road. She put the
caterpillar down, only to watch in horror as it began to crawl
back on the road.
"Laura was crying and saying, 'No,
no, you're going the wrong way. You're going to get killed,'"
Leigh Winterbottom said. "So she picked up the caterpillar and
walked off into the woods" to find a safer spot to deposit it.
College days Laura Winterbottom followed in her older
sister's footsteps and enrolled at St. Lawrence University in
Canton, N.Y., in 1991, a decision that did not surprise her
mother. The Winterbottoms are a close-knit family, she said,
and the two sisters have always been best
friends.
Travis Barrett of Waterford, who also attended
St. Lawrence and dated Laura for two years, said she was a
woman who enjoyed dancing, loved the music of Neil Young and
reveled in the quirkiness of the movie "The Rocky Horror
Picture Show."
As reserved as she was, he said, Laura
could also be incredibly trusting.
"She'd not always
wear her glasses when we'd go biking," Barrett said. "So
sometimes she'd see someone she thought she knew and would be
very friendly to absolute strangers. And who could resist this
pretty lady smiling and waving at them?"
After
Winterbottom graduated from St. Lawrence in 1995, she lived
again in Bedford and eventually decided to pursue a master's
degree in graphic arts from the College of New Rochelle
nearby.
By late 1996, she had nearly finished work on
her master's degree. She'd also met Dan Brindise, who worked
at Bicycle World in Mount Kisco, N.Y., and had sold her a
mountain bike. His love of snowboarding prompted him to move
to Burlington in early 1997. A month later, she decided to
move there, too.
Putting down roots Laura Winterbottom's
first year in Burlington didn't go well. While working a
temporary job at Gardener's Supply Co., she came down with
strep throat. It worsened and became rheumatic fever. A friend
drove her back down to her parent's house in
Bedford.
"It was touch and go and for a while there. It
had advanced pretty far," Joann Winterbottom said. "She was
very ill. She couldn't walk and she was taking megadoses of
penicillin. We were afraid her heart might have been affected,
but it wasn't."
Laura was determined to return to
Burlington as soon as she was well. Barrett had first
introduced her to Vermont when he brought her home to meet his
folks while in college. Now she was making a life here with
Brindise.
She took a job at Together Networks, the
Internet service provider. And, in early 2001, she responded
to a classified ad announcing the formation of an outdoor
activity club and went to a meeting at St. Michael's
College.
"I had volunteered at the meeting to pass
around a sign-up sheet so we could send e-mails out to
people," said Barry Cogan of Colchester.
Laura had been
too shy to sign the sheet, he said. "So I went over to her and
asked, 'Who are you?'"
Over the next four years, the
club evolved from being a way for friends to enjoy the
outdoors to being a social organization, as well, with Sunday
evening suppers and periodic happy hours at downtown
bars.
"She had the best laugh," said Debbie Gilbert of
South Burlington, one of Laura's closest friends. "She could
make you laugh even if you didn't know what she was laughing
about."
A new start, then tragedy Laura turned 30 in 2003,
and in the year that followed, she began to rethink how she
was living her life. Her relationship with Brindise had ended.
In mid-2004, she moved out of her apartment and joined
HomeShare Vermont, a program that allowed her to care for an
elderly woman in Burlington's New North End in return for free
rent. In October, she quit her job at Champlain
College.
"She was ready to step off one track and move
to another," Kenerson said. "Part of the reason for the
HomeShare was so she could reduce her expenses, not pay rent,
and free up her cash flow so she'd have more flexibility in
her job search."
She was also hoping to meet someone,
get married and have children, and even tried placing personal
ads on the Internet in her search for Mr. Right. Gilbert told
about a time Laura colored her hair to give it a reddish look,
went out for the evening and was crushed when her date didn't
notice the difference in her hair.
"She was so upset,
she excused herself and went to the bathroom," Gilbert said.
"When she came back, she told the guy that she didn't think
his hair looked that great, either."
Her search for a
new career went better. She began teaching art to children in
the Young Rembrants after-school program in January. By early
March, she was excitedly filling out job applications for art
teacher positions.
"The last conversation I had with
her, the day she died, she told me, 'Mom, I think I've finally
found my niche,'" Joann Winterbottom said. "She asked me to
help her put together a cover letter and resume. I told her,
'Let's discuss this later. Go have a good time with your
friends tonight and give me a call when you get back.'"
Aftermath The Winterbottom family and Laura's friends are
full of praise for the way the Burlington Police Department
handled the investigation into her death, and particularly
with how detectives checked in with the family on a daily
basis.
"I felt so comforted," Kenerson said of the
police. "The detectives were very courteous, very caring, not
intimidating."
Gilbert said she was uneasy when it
became apparent Laura's killing might have been random, but
never feared "the same thing could happen to me." Nordberg
said he understood the police's reluctance to divulge any
details about the case that might compromise the
investigation.
Still, Laura's violent death haunts
those who knew her. Gilbert and Kenerson won't drive the
section of Pearl Street where their friend died. Cogan said
that when members of the Outing Club go for a hike his year,
they will be retracing paths once walked with
Laura.
"It is very difficult to talk about this," said
Leigh Winterbottom, who moved to Burlington two years ago to
be closer to her sister. "It's been devastating. I don't think
I've begun to grasp the fact she is not here."
Laura
was making the star quilt for herself, her sister
said.
Joann Winterbottom said the best she can do now
is hold on to Laura's spirit. To that end, she's been living
temporarily in Burlington the past two weeks.
"There
are so many memories of her here," she said. "When I talk to
people who knew her, even people I don't know, it makes it
seem she's more alive. It's as if Laura's here, too. But as
soon as they leave, I start to cry." Contact Sam Hemingway,
state news columnist, at 660-1850 or e-mail at shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.comMemorial
service
A nondenominational memorial service
celebrating the life of Laura Winterbottom is planned for
Saturday in Burlington. All those who knew or were touched by
her are invited to attend.
WHAT: Laura Winterbottom's
memorial service.
WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: First
Unitarian Universalist Society Church, 152 Pearl St.,
Burlington.
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