95 Metropolitan Drive, Warwick, RI 02886
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Author: Jewls Krueger
The Heaton family home sits on Metropolitan Drive in the Buttonwoods section of Warwick, Rhode Island. In September 1989 it became the scene of one of the state's most notorious crimes, when 39-year-old Joan Heaton and her two daughters, Jennifer and Melissa, were killed by a 15-year-old neighbor named Craig Price.
Two years earlier, Price had murdered another woman, Rebecca Spencer, a short distance away. Because Price was a juvenile, the case exposed a gap in Rhode Island law that would have freed him at 21, and it launched a years-long public campaign to keep him behind bars.
Joan Heaton was 39 and raising two daughters in the quiet, middle-class Buttonwoods neighborhood. She was active in her church, and a neighbor later recalled that she had served as his wife's Confirmation sponsor. Her daughters were Jennifer, 10, and Melissa, 8. Over Labor Day weekend in 1989, after relatives had not heard from the family, Joan's mother, Marie Bouchard, and her sister, Mary Lou, went to the house to check on them. Joan's car was in the driveway but no one answered the door, and when they went inside they discovered the three bodies.
Craig Chandler Price was born in Warwick in October 1973 and grew up in the Buttonwoods neighborhood, a short walk from the Heaton home. Neighbors described him as friendly and well liked, a high school football player who did not seem out of the ordinary, though he had a juvenile record for burglary and theft. He is often described as the youngest serial killer in United States history, having committed his first killing at age 13. He later became known in the press as "the Warwick Slasher."
On the night of September 1, 1989, Price entered the Heaton home by removing a screen from a rear window. He encountered Joan Heaton, and the struggle woke her daughters. All three were stabbed to death. Investigators described the attack as exceptionally brutal, noting that some of the knives Price used broke apart during the assault.
Price later told investigators he had gone in intending to steal and was under the influence of marijuana and LSD. Before leaving, he covered the victims, telling detectives in a later confession, "I couldn't look at that." The bodies were not found until three days afterward, on Labor Day, when Joan's mother and sister came to check on the family.
The savagery of the crime, and its resemblance to the unsolved 1987 killing of Rebecca Spencer nearby, led Warwick police to consult FBI profiler Gregg McCrary. McCrary concluded that both killings were likely the work of the same local person and that the frenzied stabbing had probably left the attacker with a hand wound.
The day after the bodies were found, detectives, one of whom had coached Price in a youth basketball program, spotted him in a neighborhood park with a bandaged hand. Price claimed he had cut it punching out a car window, but he failed a polygraph, and a search of a shed behind his family's home turned up a trash bag holding bloody knives and clothing.
Price was arrested on September 5, 1989, a month before his 16th birthday. He confessed to the Heaton murders and, under further questioning, to the killing of Rebecca Spencer.
Because Price was 15, he was tried as a juvenile and pleaded guilty. Under Rhode Island law at the time, a juvenile offender could be held only until age 21, when his records would be sealed, and the maximum penalty available was five years at the state training school. The prospect of his release outraged the community and drew national coverage. Lawmakers changed state law to allow juveniles to be tried as adults for serious crimes, but the new rules could not be applied to Price retroactively. Residents formed a group, Citizens Opposed to the Release of Craig Price, to lobby for his continued imprisonment.
Book Recommendation
A Call for Justice by Denise Lang is the definitive book on the Craig Price case, focusing less on the killings than on the family members, police, and prosecutors who fought for years to keep a confessed juvenile murderer from walking free at 21.
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Price ultimately stayed behind bars because of crimes he committed while incarcerated, including contempt of court for refusing a psychological evaluation, extortion for threatening a corrections officer, and repeated assaults, all of which added time to his sentence. In 2004, Rhode Island transferred him to Florida, citing security concerns.
In 2017, he stabbed a fellow inmate, Joshua Davis, at the Suwannee Correctional Institution. In January 2019, Price pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years in Florida, to be followed by a long probation term. As of 2026, he remains incarcerated in Florida.
The Heaton home remains a private residence on Metropolitan Drive in the Buttonwoods section of Warwick, a quiet residential neighborhood near Oakland Beach on Narragansett Bay. The house is unmarked, and the surrounding streets are ordinary blocks where families still live. Anyone who wishes to see the area should stay on public roads and sidewalks, avoid contacting or photographing current residents, and remember that this is a private home and, for the people who lost family here, a place of lasting grief.
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