When Jeanne Dominico woke up on the morning of August 6, 2003, she didn’t expect to die that day. She was a hard-working divorced mom of two teenagers, so every day was busy. After working one of her three jobs, Jeanne would go home to fix dinner and clean up the house for her son, Charlie, and her daughter, Nicole. Nothing was more important to Jeanne than her children.

For the past three years or so, 43-year-old Jeanne had been in a loving relationship with a co-worker named Chris McGowen. He got along well with Jeanne’s children and they planned a future together as a family. But in the months leading up to August 6, Jeanne had been having trouble with 14-year-old Charlie, who was hanging with a rough crowd, and 16-year-old Nicole, who had become obsessed with a new boyfriend.

Join us at the quiet end for First Comes Love, Then Comes Murder. It was Chris McGowen who called the police after finding Jeanne unresponsive in her home. Interviews with Chris and Jeanne’s ex-husband were done that evening, but Charlie, Nicole, and Nicole’s boyfriend weren’t immediately found. The police had their suspicions about what had happened to Jeanne, but a confession that night would surprise detectives, devastate family members, and leave their New Hampshire community in shock.

Sources

Because You Loved Me by M. William Phelps

Daughter Sentenced To 40 Years For Mother's Death, WMUR9, 9/8/2005

Hartford Current Archives, retrieved 4/22/2022

Snapped: Killer Couples, S1 E9, 2013

State of New Hampshire v. Nicole Kasinskas, Bernstein & Mello P.L.L.C., The Telegraph (Nashua, NH), 9/9/2005

State of New Hampshire v. William Joseph Sullivan, The Supreme Court of New Hampshire, 4/18/2008