Autopsy: Victim was strangled

By JIM FENNELL
New Hampshire Union Leader 
Monday, Apr. 27, 2009

MANCHESTER – An autopsy revealed yesterday that Arlene Lopata-Houle was strangled.

Gary Roy, 51, has been charged with second-degree murder in the 50-year-old woman's death and is being held at the Hillsborough Country House of Correction. He is expected to be arraigned today. He faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Roy

Emergency personnel arrived at 624 Rimmon St., the three-story apartment house where Roy lived, Saturday morning in response to a call that a woman had been killed there. Police had spent most of the day investigating and collecting evidence before removing the victim's body about 4 p.m., 10 hours after the initial call, authorities said.

Roy was arrested that day. Police said the crime appeared to have happened sometime Friday night.

Attorney General Kelly A. Ayotte and Police Chief David Mara announced yesterday that Thomas Andrew, the state's chief medical examiner, called the death a homicide by manual strangulation.

The victim's son-in-law, David Gray, said Lopata-Houle had been dating Roy "off and on" and probably saw him nearly every day.

The Rimmon Avenue neighborhood was quiet yesterday afternoon. A neighbor was raking in the yard next door to Roy's apartment building. A man was having a drink on a porch of a house across the street, and a U.S. flag hung over the door of the second-floor apartment where Roy lived.

A neighbor, who asked not to be identified, said the last time he saw Lopata-Houle was Friday night as she was entering Roy's apartment shortly before 7 p.m.

The neighbor, who said he has known Roy for almost four years, said Roy would become jealous when Lopata-Houle talked with other men. He also said that Roy, who was unemployed after having lost his job at Harvey Industries, had attempted to commit suicide on several occasions.

"He's a coward," the man said. "That lady was harmless."

Karen E. Huntress, the state's assistant attorney general, said the case is still under investigation.