Domestic violence moved from a persistent crisis to the center of New Hampshire’s public conscience this year after a 25-year-old woman was killed by her estranged husband in Berlin.
On July 6, 25-year-old Marisol Fuentes-Huaracha was shot and killed at the restaurant where she worked by her estranged husband, Michael Gleason Jr.
Her death exposed a series of systemic failures and sparked renewed scrutiny of how the state’s law enforcement and judicial system respond to warning signs in domestic violence cases.
Domestic violence advocates said the case revealed a dangerously fragmented system. Information related to Gleason’s cases was spread among five judges and one magistrate, with no comprehensive, real-time sharing.
Advocates said that had any one judge seen the full picture, the outcome could have been different.
An internal review by the judicial branch later found that New Hampshire courts missed multiple opportunities to intervene before the violence turned fatal. Just weeks before the killing, Gleason had been released on a $5,000 bail, even though the courts had evidence suggesting he posed a serious danger to Fuentes-Huaracha.
The review committee recommended improving information-sharing systems, so judges have real-time access to critical data when making bail decisions, and called for removing other barriers that prevent effective communication within the judicial system.
Law enforcement failures also came under intense scrutiny. A report from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office described the Berlin Police Department’s response as “wholly insufficient.”
Two days before the killing, a friend of Gleason’s contacted police to report that Gleason was “having a hard time with the woman he married” and had said he should “just kill himself and maybe take her, too.”
Despite the explicit threat, police neither warned Fuentes-Huaracha nor offered her any assistance, safety planning or follow-up support.
A ripple effect
Fuentes-Huaracha’s death has since become a catalyst for change across New Hampshire. Many survivors found their voices and lawmakers put forward bills they hope will strengthen protections for domestic violence victims.
Kya Stoudt, a survivor of intimate partner violence in Concord, said she was compelled to tell her story after reading that Fuentes-Huaracha had a restraining order that did not save her. She said she wanted stronger protections for other victims of domestic violence, like herself.
Stoudt said she was strangled by a man she was dating, who was later released on bail — a decision she said did not feel like adequate protection.
“A restraining order is a piece of paper; it’s not really protection,” Stoudt told the Monitor. “They say New Hampshire takes strangulation very seriously. Why is he out on bail if it’s taken seriously?”
Systemic change
This year also brought changes to the state’s bail system. A new law now requires certain felony-level and violent offenders to appear before a judge before being released, eliminating the system that previously allowed magistrates to set bail.
The changes came amid sobering data on domestic violence in New Hampshire.
Between 2009 and 2023, more than half of all homicide cases handled by the Attorney General’s Office were related to domestic violence. This data excludes cases of negligent homicide and homicides where police were justified in using deadly force.
In 2024, nine of the 10 homicides under the Attorney General’s jurisdiction in the state were domestic violence-related, according to preliminary data from the state Department of Justice.
The year also saw other acts of domestic violence that resulted in a loss of life. In Pembroke, a mother and military veteran killed her 3-year-old son and then herself. In Madbury, a mother killed her two children and her husband before taking her own life.
Together, the deaths have intensified pressure on lawmakers. Among the proposals heading into next year’s legislative session is a bill that would require people subject to domestic violence-related protective orders to surrender firearms and other deadly weapons within four hours of the order having been issued.
Lawmakers are also aiming to fix blind spots in the court system. While docket entries for protective orders are available electronically, underlying petitions and court orders often are not, making it difficult to see patterns of abuse that cross jurisdictions. A new legislative proposal seeks to close that gap by requiring domestic violence and stalking petitions to be filed electronically.
As New Hampshire closes out the year, these deaths stand as painful reminders of what can happen when warning signs are missed, especially when deaths are preventable and not inevitable tragedies.