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Authorities are offering few details about what happened last weekend when GOP lawyer Alex Talcott was stabbed in the neck and killed, a story that has rocked his fellow Republicans across the state.

Police found Talcott, 41, dead inside his Bennett Road home in Durham during the early morning hours Saturday after being called there, according to statements released by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. The official autopsy confirmed on Sunday that Talcott’s death was a homicide.

No one has been taken into custody since Attorney General John Formella’s Sunday statement, though investigators seem to know who killed Talcott. And whoever the killer might be, it is possible they may not face charges in the killing.

“The parties involved in the incident have been identified, and based on the information known to investigators, there is no danger to the public. The investigation into Talcott’s death is ongoing and includes whether the person who stabbed Talcott acted in self-defense.”

Under New Hampshire law, a person may claim self-defense when faced with an aggressor who reasonably poses a deadly threat to that person or a third party. If self-defense is deemed justified, criminal charges are not filed.

Matt Mowers, who’s been both a GOP consultant and candidate, knew Talcott well, and he told NHJournal the news “left us all shocked.” Mowers took to social media after the news broke:

“Incredibly sad news. Alex and I were just talking the other day. He was the kind of friend who was there for you in the tough times as well as the good times.”

Talcott lived at the home with his wife, Kristin Talcott, and their three young children. Kristin Talcott did not respond to a message left by NHJournal.

Kristin and Alex Talcott both graduated from Dartmouth College. Alex Talcott entered corporate law and was CEO of New Constellation Capital Residential Real Estate and Venture Capital Investing. He also worked as an adjunct business law and finance instructor at the University of New Hampshire Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics for many years.

A long-time GOP activist, Alex Talcott briefly ran for state representative in Carroll County in 2022 though his name did not appear on the ballot. He was remembered fondly by many in the state party, including former House Speaker William O’Brien, state director of the New Hampshire chapter of the Republican National Lawyers Association.

O’Brien told NBC 10 Boston that Talcott was a skilled lawyer and advocate.

“Within the RNLA, his leadership was unwavering in promoting our shared values, ensuring every member felt empowered and well-prepared,” O’Brien said. “We will forever honor Alex’s selfless dedication and profound contributions to our shared vision of liberty through legal processes.”

Talcott was also one of the regulars on the GOP’s Election Day legal response team.

Chris Ager, chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee and Alex Talcott’s friend, told WMUR that Talcott was always ready to pitch in on behalf of the party.

“He came to me many times just asking, ‘Hey Chris, how can I help?’ Never asking for anything in return. He was that kind of person. We’re really going to miss him a lot,” Ager said.

Alex Talcott won accolades from his UNH students on Rate My Professor, who considered his class easy.

“Easy A! two exams. don’t have to go to lectures even though you should cus their [sic] interesting and he gives very good advice! You know he is a smart guy and super personable. Take any of his classes!” one student wrote.

Kristin Talcott built a career as a clinical social worker and therapist. She taught graduate-level social work classes at Simmons College and built her own practice specializing in anxiety, depression, and helping people with trauma. The couple have two daughters and a son. 

The investigation into Alex Talcott’s death is active. Formella’s office has not said when the investigation’s results will be released.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The story has been updated to add more context to Talcott’s brief bid for state representative in 2022.

It took less than a week for August to bring five homicides to New Hampshire, pushing the 2022 death toll higher than the typical yearly total with five months left to go.

Granite Staters are unnerved, not just by the number but the nature of the killings as well. Already in August, five more people have been killed, including two children in a Northfield triple homicide.

There have been 22 homicides recorded this year, well above the annual five-year average of 18. In the past week alone, a Northfield mother and two of her children, Kassandra Sweeney, 25, and Benjamin Sweeney, 4, and Mason Sweeney, 1, were found shot in the head in their Weathersfield Drive home. There have been no arrests and police have not named a suspect.

In Nashua, 53-year-old Lee Knoetig was allegedly shot and killed by 19-year-old Alexander Wheeler outside a gas station on Friday night.

Also on Friday, Julie Graichen, 34, was found dead of a stab wound in her Kinsley Street home. Miguel Ramirez, age 30 of Nashua, has been charged with second-degree murder.

And then there is the ongoing mystery of the deaths of Stephen and Desjwende Reid, their bodies found on a Concord trail in April. Little progress has been made since. On Friday, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office was again pleading with the public, this time to help identify a “person of interest.”

New Hampshire has consistently enjoyed one of the lowest homicide rates in the nation. But that appears likely to change this year. Another change, as evidenced in the case of the Sweeney brothers, is the uptick in murders of children. The grim trend can be traced back to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic-enforced lockdowns.

Since they started, eight New Hampshire children have been killed in homicides — not including a 15-day-old infant whose death is being investigated as suspicious. And New Hampshire law enforcement continues searching for Harmony Montgomery who went missing from her allegedly abusive Manchester home more than two years ago and has not been seen since.

Cassandra Sanchez, New Hampshire’s Child Advocate, said COVID lockdowns, job losses, and school closures, left vulnerable children and their families under tremendous pressure. And, she says, their effects are still being felt.

“I think we’re battling a lot with COVID,” Sanchez said. “A lot of high stress and the isolation period with COVID, and we’re now trying to get back to some kind of normalcy, which isn’t normal at all.”

Child safety workers with New Hampshire’s Division of Children Youth and Families were unable to get into the homes of children where abuse and neglect were suspected during long stretches during the pandemic shutdowns. Sanchez said that’s improved in recent months, but there are many holdovers from the crisis that will be seen for years to come.

“There is a mental health crisis spiking after COVID. We knew it was coming. We still don’t know how long it’s supposed to last, and we still don’t know if it’s peaked yet.”

 The lockdowns and isolation have created a social/emotional developmental gap for many children, similar to the learning gap children are suffering from because of the lockdowns closures. It could take years to deal with the increased need for treatment, and the current lack of resources, Sanchez said. 

At least three of the children killed or reported missing during the pandemic had contact with DCYF before their deaths — Manchester’s Mason Tremblay, 2, who was reportedly killed by his mother, Mercedes Tremblay, 25, before she killed herself; Elijah Lewis, 5, the Merrimack boy who was missing for a month before authorities were called. His body was eventually found in the woods in Massachusetts and now his mother, Danielle Dauphinais, 35, is currently charged with his murder. And Harmony Montgomery’s father, Adam Montgomery, is currently charged with assaulting the child before she went missing.

A report released by Gov. Chris Sununu’s office in March found New Hampshire’s DCYF missed several potentially key opportunities to protect Harmony Montgomery, then 7, before she was declared missing in December 2021.

Montgomery’s family was designated as high risk by DCYF during home visits in 2019, but case workers failed to track her down after learning she was no longer living in the same house in early 2020. It also took DCYF workers several months to disclose that the child was missing.

The DCYF failure to protect Harmony Montgomery is reminiscent of the failures that led to the murder of Nashua’s Brielle Gage in 2014. She was 3 when her mother, Katlyn Marin, beat her to death over a late-night snack the child took. Brielle Gage had been removed from her mother’s care a dozen times by DCYF before the murder because of the mother’s abuse. But in each instance, the agency returned the child to Marin.

The girl’s father, William Boucher, eventually settled a lawsuit with the state over the lack of protection for his daughter. The Gage case, and other high-profile DCYF failures, forced then-Gov. Maggie Hassan to initiate a third-party review of the agency that found it regularly failed to protect children, with managers forcing caseworkers to record abuse cases as unfounded and close them — despite evidence of abuse and neglect — in order to report better rates of closure.

Early Sunday morning, Hooksett Police found the body of Jason Wirtz, stabbed in the neck and bleeding, on Main Street. Later that day, they arrested Dillon Sleeper, age 26, formerly of Franklin, and charged him with second-degree murder.

It was the 17th homicide in New Hampshire, a state that’s averaged 18 murders a year since 2017. And it’s still July.

New Hampshire is generally one of the safest states in the country when it comes to violent crime in general and homicide in particular, according to FBI records. It’s certain to blow past its average murder rate this year.

“We’ve responded to 14 separate callouts for investigations that have involved 16 different deceased individuals,” said Michael Garrity, director of communications for Attorney General John Formella said Friday. “These include matters where investigations involved allegations of self-defense/defense of another.”

Among the dead this year is a Hudson infant who died last month in what is now considered suspicious circumstances. The 15-day-old infant was taken from the parents’ home, at an apartment on Burns Hill Road in Hudson, to a local hospital in medical distress. While the case is deemed suspicious, the official cause and manner of death are still pending an autopsy.

Most suspicious deaths are resolved quickly by law enforcement. For example, earlier this month Timothy Hill, 72, of Winchester, was found shot in his home. Police soon arrested Keegan Duhaime, 26, of Winchester, and charged him with two counts of second-degree murder.

In some cases, the alleged killer is already dead by the time police arrive, as in the recent Alstead incident where authorities were called to a reported murder-suicide involving a man killing his domestic partner, then himself.

However, there are still unsolved cases in New Hampshire this year. The April murders of Concord couple Stephen and Djeswende Reid remain a mystery. Police recently announced a reward of $50,000 for information that leads to an arrest and indictment of whoever is responsible for their deaths.

According to law enforcement, the Reids left their home in the Alton Woods apartment complex on the afternoon of Monday, April 18, and went for a walk to the area of the Broken Ground Trails which are off Portsmouth Street in Concord. Family and friends did not see or hear from them. The Reids’ bodies were found in the early evening of April 21 in a wooded area near the Marsh Loop Trail.

Now, with a little more than five months left in the year, New Hampshire is on pace to beat the current five-year average of 18 homicides by the end of 2022.

The most recent FBI data runs through 2020, and it shows New Hampshire had one of the lowest homicide rates in the country that year with 12 total. In 2019, New Hampshire had a spike in homicide with 30. In 2018 there were 19 homicides, in 2017 there were 12, and in 2017 12 homicides were recorded.

While this year could reveal an uptick in murder, New Hampshire has historically seen a low ratio of violent crimes, as New Hampshire’s violent crime rate has dropped every year since 2017.

The state recorded the second-lowest violent crime rate in the country in 2020. According to the FBI data compiled from New Hampshire law enforcement agencies, the violent crime rate in New Hampshire was 195.7 incidents per 100,000 people in 2017. It fell to 146.4 per 100,000 in 2020.

Even as New Hampshire’s crime rate fell, it skyrocketed nationally. The FBI found a 30 percent spike in murders in 2020, and the violent crime rate went up to 398.5 incidents per 100,000 people.

President Joe Biden and his allies in Congress have proposed gun control laws to address the nation’s spike in violence. Last week the House Judiciary Committee passed a ban on rifles labeled “assault weapons” by politicians. The ban is backed by all four members of the New Hampshire congressional delegation.

However, Second Amendment advocates note the Granite State’s low crime rate is accompanied by one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the country–the second-highest number of guns per capita according to one survey. New Hampshire also makes it easy to buy guns. It’s also a relatively easy place to buy and own guns.

New Hampshire is the only New England state in the top 25 rankings for gun rights. Guns and Ammo rank the Granite State number 17 on its Best States for Gun Owners list, ahead of Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida. There are no bans on so-called “assault weapons” in New Hampshire.