Police are investigating the unexpected death of a young Winooski mother early this month, the overlapping suicide of her fiance, and the circumstances surrounding both deaths that they say are “suspicous.”
Hannah Keyes, 28, was found dead in her apartment by Winooski police on Nov. 2, after her employer, a senior living center in Shelburne called The Arbors, called for a wellness check on her when she didn’t show up for work that day.
When police arrived at the scene, around 10 p.m., they found Keyes dead in the basement apartment at 65 Audet St., where she lived with her fiance, Keith Gaston, and their two young daughters.
Gaston worked at Global Foundries in Essex.
Winooski Police Lt. Justin Huizenga, who has been leading the investigation, said an on-scene examination of the body and the execution of a search warrant at the residence revealed no obvious cause of death.
Huizenga said even the medical examiner’s initial tests weren’t very fruitful. Investigators are waiting on toxicology results to try to determine exactly how Keyes died. Huizenga said he expects those results in the next week or so.
The apartment was so small, Huizenga said, that the search didn’t take very long, and didn’t turn up anything of interest. But the one clue that police did have, he noted, was Gaston’s disappearance.
“We wanted to locate him to have a discussion as far as what had happened,” Huizenga said. “And we weren’t able to.”
Police were aware that the couple was engaged because of previous law enforcement interactions, Huizenga said. Gaston had a criminal record including an aggravated assault charge for allegedly punching another detained inmate at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland.
Law enforcement was, however, able to locate Gaston’s car — an older Volvo, on West Canal Street. An officer who had been writing parking tickets on Nov. 3 noticed a vehicle that fit the description from the department’s investigation, and reported his find to the team investigating the case.
At that point, Huizenga said, police were able to find surveillance footage showing Gaston on the night of Nov. 1 getting out of his vehicle, walking across the bottom of the Winooski rotary, ultimately jumping in the river, and not resurfacing.
“We talked to the chief of Colchester Technical Rescue, and viewed the video with him,” Huizenga said. “His opinion was that the jump in the video was not survivable.”
He said the combination of flooding from the Halloween rainstorm, the cold temperatures of the water, and the fact that Gaston didn’t resurface all support the conclusion that he died in the water, despite his body having not yet been found. Police noted that there was nothing suspicious found in Gaston’s car.
Huizenga said that while it’s entirely possible that Keyes’ death was also a suicide, the fact that police weren’t able to locate Gaston initially, and then ultimately saw the video of him taking his own life added a few questions to the circumstances surrounding the death.
“Anytime a healthy, 28-year-old person dies and we can’t immediately determine their cause of death, obviously that’s suspicious in and of itself,” Huizenga said.
Once law enforcement receives the final autopsy report for Keyes, Huizenga said they’ll contact Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George, let her know what happened, and let her determine if or how the case moves forward.
The couple’s 3-year-old and 4-year-old daughters are “safe, unharmed, and in a good position now,” he said. The Department for Children and Families initially helped the children, before turning them over to the care of Keyes’ family.
“I think this is an uncommon thing for anywhere in Vermont,” Huizenga said. “It’s not every day, fortunately, that we see circumstances so out of the ordinary like this. It’s certainly not something we like to see.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Death of Winooski woman and suicide of her fiance puzzling police.
