Christine Cole

On Wednesday, January 6, 1988, Christine returned home from school at approximately 3:15 p.m. Later that afternoon, she left 67 West Avenue on a  errand. The reported time Christine left home  shifted from approximately 4:00 p.m. to as late as 5:15 p.m.

The earliest police account described ten dollars in food stamps and a trip to buy milk. Later reports added clams, potato chips, gum or gumballs along with changing descriptions of cash, food stamps and change. 

Over the next several hours witnesses placed Christine at Red’s Seafood, Wilmarth Court and Saint’s Market. Those accounts preserve parts of her movement through the neighborhood but, they do not form one settled route. The record establishes that Christine left home on an ordinary errand. It does not establish precisely when she left, everything she intended to purchase or the exact order of the places she visited.

Christine’s story has often been retold as though her movements on January 6 were settled. The surviving record shows otherwise. Accounts changed while the search was still underway and later retellings often selected one version without acknowledging the others.

Christine disappeared during a period of dangerous winter cold. Police searched door to door through the Woodlawn neighborhood, while officers, volunteers and other agencies examined the places a ten-year-old child might have reached on foot.

The search expanded beyond the immediate neighborhood. The FBI assisted. A helicopter searched from above, and search dogs were brought in to follow possible routes. Contemporary reports identified two dogs, Justice and Lady, used at different points in the search, a distinction that later retellings sometimes lost.

As the days passed, the public explanations changed. Police initially considered whether Christine had wandered away or found shelter somewhere warm. Later statements raised the possibilities of exposure, abduction or death. These were developing investigative positions, not established conclusions.

Despite the scale of the search, no publicly documented account established where Christine went after Saint’s Market. The search widened. The central gap in her story remained.

On February 28, 1988, more than seven weeks after Christine disappeared, her body was recovered along the northern shoreline at Conimicut Point in Warwick. 

Her mother, Margaret, and Oscar Waldron identified her through photographs.

Police initially stated that the tide had carried Christine to Conimicut Point and later described a possible twelve mile water route from the Seekonk River. That explanation entered the public story quickly but, the surviving record does not establish where or when Christine entered the water or the path she traveled before reaching the shoreline.

On March 1, police declared Christine’s death a homicide. The medical findings identified asphyxia with submersion and noted that subtle mechanical asphyxia could not be excluded. They did not establish the location of the fatal events or account for Christine’s movements after she was last reported at Saint’s Market.

Christine had been found. The central questions surrounding her death remained.

The surviving record establishes parts of Christine’s final documented afternoon and evening. It does not provide a complete sequence of what happened to her.

The unresolved questions include:

• Where Christine went after she was reported at Saint’s Market.
• Whether her clothing changed after she left home.
• Whether the six dollars in food stamps recovered from a pants pocket were the same food stamps she carried when she left.
• How the conflicting accounts of her necklace can be reconciled.
• Where and when the fatal events occurred.
• The source and significance of the carboxyhemoglobin found in her blood.
• Where, when and how Christine entered the water.
• Whether the proposed twelve-mile tidal route can be independently established.
• Who was responsible for her death.

These are not gaps to be filled with assumption. They are the questions the record leaves behind—and the reason Christine’s story must remain open to careful examination.

Christine’s story is the first season of remember. dont forget. the documentary podcast from Return to the Record.

The season follows the surviving record as it unfolded: from Christine’s final documented afternoon through the search, her recovery and the questions that remain. It does not smooth conflicting accounts into one convenient version or claim to solve her homicide. It returns to the original reporting, preserves the contradictions and keeps Christine at the center of her own story.

Season One: Christine Cole is currently in production. 

Audio excerpts and release information will be added here.

This page is drawn from the Christine Cole Combined Documentary Chronology, a source-controlled reconstruction of the surviving public record.

The chronology includes contemporaneous newspaper reporting, broadcast transcripts, public statements from law enforcement, medical findings, court records, later retrospective coverage and other available documentary material. Sources are placed in chronological order so that early reporting remains distinguishable from later interpretation.

Where accounts conflict, both versions are preserved. Where a detail cannot be traced to an original source, that limitation is identified. Evidence, inference and unresolved questions are kept separate.

This page will be updated as additional records become available or existing information is corrected. Substantive changes will be dated so the development of the record remains visible.

Last reviewed: September 20, 2026