- WCAX/Screenshot
- State police on the scene in Castleton on Friday
The woman killed by a gunshot to the head as she walked on a rail trail in Castleton on Thursday has been identified as Honoree Fleming, a biochemist and retired dean of education from what is now Vermont State University-Castleton.
Fleming, 77, who also taught at Middlebury College, was the wife of
bestselling author Ron Powers. He wrote in a Facebook post that police believe the killer — who was still at large — chose Fleming at random. She died instantly, he wrote.
“I am still in shock. There are moments when I wish to god I could cry,” Powers wrote on Facebook. “Those of you who knew her know that she was beautifully named. I have never known a more sterling heart and soul than hers. She has taken far more than half my own heart and soul with her.”
Powers, who lives in Middlebury, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and critic who is perhaps best known for the New York Times bestseller Flags of Our Fathers, a story he wrote with James Bradley about the soldiers who raised the American flag during the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. It was made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood. Powers wrote an acclaimed biography of Mark Twain, as well.
He also detailed his own family's experiences in the 2017 book No One Cares About Crazy People. His two sons had schizophrenia, and the younger one, Kevin, took his own life in 2005. He was 21.
"I am holding you and Dean in my broken heart," Brett Millier wrote on Facebook, mentioning Powers' other son. "How much can one family take?"
In an essay in the spring 2019 issue of Mizzou Magazine, the University of Missouri alumni publication, Powers described meeting his wife on a plane in May 1976 while he was on a leave of absence from a job at the Chicago Sun-Times.
Fleming, who had recently received a PhD in biophysics from the University of Chicago, was walking down the aisle toward him, and Powers prayed to God “for the few good things I’ve done in my life” that she sit next to him. She did.
“She was, is, the picture of Celtic beauty,” Powers wrote. The two were married in 1978. “We were ardently in love, and still are.”
School officials expressed grief, as well.
“Our hearts go out to the members of our community who taught with Honoree and had her as a beloved teacher during their time at Castleton," said Mike Smith, interim president of Vermont State University. "Our deepest sympathies go to her husband, Ron, family and friends."
It was around 4:30 p.m. on Thursday when police got a call about a body on the trail. A witness reported that, after gunshots sounded, a man about 5 foot ten with short red hair and wearing a dark gray T-shirt and carrying a backpack was walking north on the trail.
It was around 4:30 p.m. on Thursday when police got a call about a body on the trail. A witness reported that, after gunshots sounded, a man about 5 foot ten with short red hair and wearing a dark gray T-shirt and carrying a backpack was walking north on the trail.
Police later said Fleming had entered the trail a half-hour earlier from the pavilion area at the college and headed south toward Poultney. She was wearing a white-and-blue-striped shirt, black pants and black sneakers. They are asking anyone who saw her to contact investigators.
Correction, October 7, 2023: A previous version of this story misreported Kevin Powers' age when he died.
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