RAYMOND - Murder victim and former Police Chief Walter Lyman lived a simple life, and never bothered anybody.

That fact has bothered Lyman's youngest daughter, Brenda Bourgeois, 69, for the last 37 years.

She remembers visiting him in the small, two-room cabin he rented on what was then Old Manchester Road and walking in through the unlocked door.

“He was at his kitchen table reading and eating something and I said, ‘Dad, you know something, this is not good, you can't keep doors unlocked,' and he said, ‘Listen, everybody loves me, I love everybody; nothing is going to happen to me.'”

But on May 14, 1974, Lyman's body was discovered in his home, badly beaten. The 76-year-old had been stabbed three times.

His killer was never brought to justice and the case remains open today.

Raymond Police Sgt. Scott Payne inherited the case in 2010. He believes he knows who killed Lyman, but thinks that person is now dead.

A month after Lyman's body was found, police interviewed a 16-year-old runaway who Payne said would stay in Lyman's cabin without his knowledge when Lyman would visit a daughter in Virginia each winter.

“That's what we're still trying to figure out today, why he was never prosecuted,” Payne said.

Discussion about Lyman's killing was renewed last week when police found the body of Robert “Scott” Dickinson, 50, in his home on Floral Avenue March 25. Damien J. Tisbert, 20, also of Raymond, has been charged and is due back in Candia District Court Wednesday.

Nearly 20 years before, police made an arrest in another murder. Police discovered the body of Joanna Kozak in the Scribner Cemetery in December 1992. Steven Roy of Fremont was convicted of killing her and burying her body.

Hitting home

While the recent homicide brought up memories of the Lyman and Kozak murders for many, it hit especially close to home for Bourgeois.

Her dad served as police chief in the 1930s, and again from 1940 to 1946, Payne said.

“He hated crime of any kind and hated people that caused a row and I think he just kind of stepped into that position,” Bourgeois said.

She said everybody was devastated when they learned of her father's murder.

“He would be the last man you would think someone would do that to,” Bourgeois said. “He liked everybody, everybody liked him ... it was so tragic because he did feel that way and while he was being murdered, he must have thought, ‘Why is this happening to me?”

Bourgeois said she is glad her father has not been forgotten. A picture of him still hangs in the Raymond Police Department, and there is a memorial stone in his name at the Raymond Town Common, an area he lovingly took care of until the day of his death, she said.