Police Probe Haverhill Deaths

  • New Hampshire State Trooper Quentin Gillilland watches the home of Chrystal Lewis in Haverhill, N.H., on Aug. 15, 2017. Two bodies were found in the home. The New Hampshire major crime unit mobile unit is parked in the driveway. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Valley News — Jennifer Hauck

  • New Hampshire Assistant Deputy Medical Examiner Mike Raymond, left, looks over paperwork at the scene of two deaths in Haverhill, N.H., on Aug. 15, 2017. New Hampshire State Police Sgt., Nathan Hamilton, middle, and Trooper Quentin Gillilland were guarding the scene. (Valley News - Jennifer Hauck) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Valley News — Jennifer Hauck

  • Chrystal Aldrich, center, owner of The Dragonfly's Den salon in the Old Village School in Wells River, Vt., talks with her sister, Cassidy VanNamee, right, who does massage at the salon, while working with client Michele Thayer, of Piermont, N.H., left, on Sept. 30, 2010. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.

Valley News Staff Writer
Published: 8/15/2017 10:55:17 AM
Modified: 8/16/2017 12:03:45 AM

Haverhill — A Wells River hair salon owner and her ex-boyfriend were found dead in her home on Tuesday morning in what authorities initially have characterized as “untimely deaths.”

The bodies of Chrystal Lewis, 44, and Robert Taylor, 45, were found at 9 a.m. inside of Lewis’ Pine Park home in Haverhill, according to an afternoon news release from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.

Autopsies are scheduled to take place this morning to determine the “exact cause and manner of their deaths,” New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon J. MacDonald said in the release.

“At this junction, there is no evidence to suggest that there is any threat of harm to the general public,” MacDonald said in another release issued earlier in the day.

Interim Haverhill Police Chief Wally Trott wasn’t available for comment on Tuesday.

Friends and neighbors said Lewis and Taylor were known for their love of draft horses, which they exhibited at the North Haverhill Fair, just down the road from Lewis’ home.

Family members could not immediately be reached for comment.

Ted Van Kleef Sr., who lives a few doors away, said he regularly saw the pair riding horses around the cul-de-sac, but otherwise had little contact with them despite living for years in the same neighborhood.

“I never knew them,” he said, adding that he felt “shocked” to learn of their deaths. “You wouldn’t expect it because this is such a quiet neighborhood.”

Other neighbors who declined to give their names said Taylor, an auto and heating technician from Bradford, Vt., had been Lewis’ boyfriend until recently.

The pair’s social media profiles have numerous photos of them posing arm-in-arm; Taylor’s Facebook page, however, lists him as “single.”

Lewis co-owned The Dragonfly’s Den, a hair salon in nearby Wells River, with her sister, according to an office neighbor.

The lights were off on Tuesday afternoon inside the business, which opened in 2010 in the old village schoolhouse at 74 Main St. “Very sorry closed family emergency,” read a sign handwritten in pink crayon and taped to the door.

Allison Andrews, a licensed independent clinical social worker whose office is directly adjacent to the salon, remembered Lewis as a playful and open person who doted on her son, Stephen.

“Her son was everything to her,” Andrews said. “He was the light of her life.”

Authorities outside the Pine Park house declined to comment on Tuesday, deferring to the Attorney General’s Office. A large truck from the New Hampshire State Police Major Crime Unit was parked in the driveway, and workers wearing plastic booties moved in and out of the home.

An initial news release on Tuesday described Lewis and Taylor’s deaths only as “untimely,” and said that more information about them would be released as it became available.

Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.


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