Along the gravel-and-dirt shoulder of a country road outside a sleepy Massachusetts town, the body of a New York union official and former state employee from Brooklyn Heights was found over the weekend. The woman was stabbed to death, the authorities said yesterday.

About 1:30 p.m. Sunday, a passing motorist spotted the body of the union official, Jan Stackhouse, 52, who worked for a local of the Service Employees International Union and had been a financial analyst at the State’s Economic Development Corporation.

Her body, fully clothed in blue jeans, a jacket, and sneakers, lay on the side of a dirt road outside Stockbridge, a town of 1,900 in western Massachusetts where the artist and illustrator Norman Rockwell lived.

Stackhouse had left her residence in Brooklyn Heights to visit friends in Stockbridge for the weekend, a trip she had made many times before, local law enforcement officials said yesterday.

About 1 p.m. Sunday she left her friends’ home for a walk down a dirt road. Her body was found with a single puncture wound to the neck. She had already bled to death, officials said. It was unclear what type of weapon or object was used to create the wound, officials said.

In a telephone interview yesterday, the lead investigator in the case, the Berkshire Country district attorney, David Capeless, declined to discuss any further details of the case or potential motive for the murder.

Teams of police officers and investigators had been dispatched to scour the wooded areas and a brook near where the body was found with metal detectors and surveillance equipment, Mr. Capeless said.

Other investigators were interviewing potential witnesses, friends of Stackhouse, her colleagues, and members of her family.

“We’re working diligently to solve it, and solve it properly,” Mr. Capeless said. “We think people are more interested in solving this case than knowing about it.”

In Stockbridge, the murder was said to be the first in more than three decades.

“We’re all just shocked,” a longtime resident, Carol Crawford, said. “This kind of thing just doesn’t happen. This is a very small town. All of the surrounding towns are very small. Everyone knows everyone around here.”

According to state records, Jan Stackhouse began working for the state’s Empire State Development Corporation in 1987. After four years, she became a commerce policy analyst with the Department of Development, earning a salary of about $61,000 a year, a spokeswoman for the state agency, Deborah Wetzel, said.

Stackhouse, who was divorced and had no children, was laid off in January 1998. For the past three years she had worked as director for membership and dues at the SEIU local 1199 at 310 W. 43rd St.

A spokesman for the union, Christopher Fleming, said in a statement that Stackhouse was “a dedicated and very valuable” employee.

“Our hearts and prayers go out to her family,” he said.

The slain woman’s sister, Jill Stackhouse, lives in Syracuse. Their parents, Heywood and Jane Stackhouse, who live in St. Augustine, Fla., said the family was too grief-stricken to comment.