FBI seeks clues in 1981 cold case killing involving NH couple
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Oct. 22—The FBI is reinvigorating efforts to find a New Hampshire man wanted in the killing of his girlfriend in Massachusetts 40 years ago.
Andrew Peter Dabbs was sharing an apartment on Hampstead Road in East Derry with Robin Shea when Shea was killed on Oct. 10, 1981. Afterward, Dabbs cleaned out his belongings from the apartment and spent the night with his ex-wife and children in their Manchester home.
He's been on the lam ever since.
The FBI is offering a $20,000 reward for anyone who can provide information about his whereabouts. He would be 78 if still alive.
"We're trying to get a timeline, what he has been doing, who has had contact with him, who has seen him," Sarah De Lair, the FBI agent working the case, said Thursday. "We're trying to put the pieces together."
Dabbs faces charges of murder and unlawful flight involving the killing of Shea, who was 21 when she died.
On the day of the fatal shooting, they visited friends in western Massachusetts. Dabbs allegedly shot Shea in the chest with a .45 caliber handgun in the southeastern Massachusetts town of Norton and pushed her out of the car.
Shea was found beaten, shot and unconscious on Route 123 by a passing motorist and died later at a nearby hospital.
Shea's father, Robert Shea, was principal of Matthew Thornton Elementary School in Londonderry at the time, according to Union Leader archives. He didn't know his daughter had died until he saw her photo in Massachusetts newspapers.
"He's out there somewhere," said Shea's sister, Joyce Carter, in remarks distributed by the FBI. "Maybe he's dead, and if he is, I would love to know that, and if he isn't dead, if he's alive, he needs to pay for what he did."
Dabbs lived in southern New Hampshire for years and owned Dabbs Auto Service on South Beech Street in Manchester, according to Union Leader archives.
He and his brother also operated a Texaco station on Eddy Road but eventually closed it in the 1970s when the gasoline shortage created friction between the oil company and Dabbs.
"When we asked them to lower the rent, they simply refused with no explanation," he told a reporter in 1974.
Newspaper articles about the birth of a child, an assault arrest and a bicycle theft give his Manchester address of 284 Central St.
Dabbs was 5 foot, 10 inches and 180 pounds at the time of the murder. His race kept coming up when the FBI interviewed people.
"He literally was the only Black man in town. Everyone knew him, and he was very charismatic as well," De Lair said.
Two weeks after the murder, police believed they had tracked him to Mount Vernon, N.Y., a town just north of the Bronx. But he ran out of the back of a residence when police knocked on the front door.
That was the last sighting.
Photographs that the FBI distributed of Dabbs come from a 1980 arrest in Goffstown for impaired driving. They also issued an aged-progressed depiction of what he may look like today.
De Lair said Dabbs could very well be dead, given his regular use of cocaine. Still, authorities would like to know about his death.
De Lair said Dabbs' ex-wife and two children, who are now 45 and 41, have cooperated with investigators. They knew nothing of Shea's death when Dabbs spent the night with them, and they have not heard from him since, the agent said.
They now live in Massachusetts.
Anyone with information should call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324). Tips can also be electronically submitted at tips.fbi.gov.
