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Ohio man arrested in connection with bodies found in 1995

TOLLAND, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) --  Robert Honsch, 70, of Dalton, Ohio, was arrested Tuesday night and charged with the murder of his wife Marcia Honsch, whose body was found 19 years ago here in the Bay State.

Mass. State Police said Robert, a man who left his family for dead in 1995, started over in Ohio with a new wife and family.

Our Bob Ward covered this story as part of New England's Unsolved. In 1995, police in two states made heartbreaking discoveries. One discovery was the body of Maria Honsch and the other was the body of her daughter.

In Tolland State Forest, on Oct. 6, 1995 a hiker found a woman's body near the entrance to the park. She was shot to death. A guard rail still bears a bullet hole from the attack. And it turns out, just one week before, on Sept. 28 the body of a younger woman was found 40 miles away in New Britain, Conn. behind a shopping plaza. Only this time it appeared the killer wanted the victim found, as she was wrapped in a sleeping bag and found beneath a floodlight.

DNA testing revealed the Tolland victim was the New Britain, Connecticut victim's mother. For almost 20 years, this mother and daughter were nameless, but that all changed in June, with a call from a woman in Virginia Beach about her relatives who disappeared from Brewster, New York, a hundred miles south of Albany.

DNA revealed the Tolland victim's identity, Marcia Honsch, 53, and that the New Britain victim was her daughter Elizabeth, 16.

The relative also told police about Marcia's husband Robert, who, until this week was living in Ohio as Robert Tyree, with a new wife and children. He will appear in an Ohio court Thursday, and Mass. authorities are already working on bringing him back here to face murder charges. He has not yet been charged in the death of Elizabeth.

And, one more wrinkle to this story, in New Britain, Connecticut, where Elizabeth was found, authorities in 2007 found the remains of three other women.