EAST MILLINOCKET, ME hope for answers in haunting death of Joyce McLain, 16, 8/8/80

[rem16]

Villagers fund autopsy on teen slain in 1980

EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine - This quiet mill town on the edge of Maine's northern wilderness has not been the same since it buried Joyce McLain 28 years ago.

A promising and beautiful 16-year-old, McLain went out for a jog one summer night in 1980 and never returned. Two days later, her partially clothed body was discovered in a clearing on the edge of town, badly beaten.

The brutality of the slaying horrified residents in this close-knit hamlet of 1,800, where only one other homicide has been recorded since it was incorporated in 1907. Worse, a killer was never found, and something seeped into the consciousness of the town. Mothers like Frances York started locking their doors. Kids like Ritchie Barnett avoided the wooded back roads of the town. For decades, lifelong neighbors and friends have nurtured suspicions about one another.

"You just don't know, is that person still here?" said York, who is now a 60-year-old grandmother. "You could be passing by them any time of day. You could be talking to the person in the grocery store. You just don't know."

"That's something that's stuck with us for 30 years," said Barnett, now 43, who runs a convenience store on Main Street. "Everyone's got their own suspect in the back of their minds."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2008/09/02/in_maine_hope_for_answers_in_haunting_death/

[packy]

Wow, good for them. They did fundraisers for her to be examined again and with all the new technology there is a chance that they will find something. How sad that they go through life having to wonder if one of them is a killer.

Hope they get some answers.

[lost indie]

I would guess that someone is REALLY nervous right about now...

Good...

I hope they get the person ....

[annalyzer]

http://www.wlbz2.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=92108&catid=3

Body Of Joyce McLain Exhumed For Second Autopsy

6 months ago

MEDWAY (NEWS CENTER) -- A second autopsy is scheduled for Joyce Mclain on Friday.

Joyce McLain was sixteen when she was beaten to death in East Millinocket in August of 1980. Police have never filed charges in the case. Joyce's mother, Pam, has been fighting for twenty years to have her daughter's body exhumed for a second autopsy.

A grassroots organization has raised about $18,000 to pay for internationally renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden to perform the autopsy.

Maine State Police Spokesperson Steve McCausland said state police will assist with the investigation any way they can. "We're here today because of the efforts of a very dedicated mother who's here today to try to get justice for her daughter," McCausland said. "State police are as committed today as they were 28 years ago to finding Joyce's killer."

McCausland said the casket is in remarkable shape. The autopsy is scheduled to be performed in Augusta on Friday.

[annalyzer]

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/news/article.asp?docKey=600-200901290928KRTRIB__BUSNEWS_19601-4G6FI54IMVLANNSFT0VUHRQ2HR&params=timestamp%7C%7C01/29/2009%209:28%20AM%20ET%7C%7Cheadline%7C%7CAfter%20s ix%20months%2C%20McLain%20case%20pace%20angers%20m other%3A%20McCausland%20to%20check%20status%20of%2 0probe%20today%20%5BBangor%20Daily%20News%2C%20Mai ne%5D%7C%7CdocSource%7C%7CKnight%20Ridder/Tribune%7C%7Cprovider%7C%7CACQUIREMEDIA%7C%7Crealt edsyms%7C%7C%7CUS%3BTWX&symbol=TWX

01/29/2009 9:28 AM ET

After six months, McLain case pace angers mother: McCausland to check status of probe today [Bangor Daily News, Maine]

Jan. 29--EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine -- The mother of Joyce McLain will give state police a month to tell her what's new with her daughter's 28-year-old homicide investigation or she will push them to seek FBI help, she said Wednesday.

Speaking five months after her daughter's body was exhumed, Pamela McLain vented frustration at seeing no investigative progress despite fresh evidence unearthed by forensic experts Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Henry Lee on Aug. 29. They were paid with $20,000 she and a citizens' group helped raise.

"After six months, I am going to start being loud again," McLain said Wednesday.

"I was OK for a while and I tried to get some answers for the public, but now I need answers for me, because I am starting to get the same feelings I had 28 years ago," McLain said. "How long do I wait this time? I don't have 28 years to wait."If they [state police] don't have anything, perhaps they should ask someone else to help them out. There is always the FBI to help them out," she added. "I want to know if the state police are capable of solving unsolved murders. If they need help and can't do it, then I think they should ask for more help."

Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, said state police sought help several years ago from FBI profilers. He said he would speak today with detectives about the investigation's status.

"The case is open and active and we continue to work on it," McCausland said. "We have tried to keep her [McLain] in the loop as best we can."

State police Detective Troy Gardner visited McLain on Monday, she and McCausland said. But he told her nothing, McLain said.

A 16-year-old Schenck High School sophomore, Joyce McLain was killed sometime around the night of Aug. 8, 1980, apparently while jogging. Her body was found two days later in a power line clearing near the school's soccer fields. Her head and neck had been hit with a blunt object.

Several suspects have been investigated, but no arrests have been made. Never closed, the investigation appeared dormant for several years until the increasingly vocal McLain re-formed the Justice for Joyce Committee in 2007 and announced its intention to have the body exhumed for DNA examination.

State officials said it was unlikely new evidence would be found, but the body was exhumed from Medway's Grindstone Road Cemetery on Aug. 28, and investigators were astonished to find an intact vault seal, vault and a metallic coffin that looked almost new.

Baden and Lee were equally surprised a day later that the body was in remarkably good shape. "Your God has done well by you," Baden told Pamela McLain.

Baden, the chief forensic pathologist for New York State Police and host of HBO's "Autopsy" series, was assisted in his investigation by Boston forensic neuropathologist Dr. Peter Cummings, a former Millinocket and Dover-Foxcroft resident who volunteered his services.

The doctors said new DNA and a great deal of other forensic evidence was recovered. Among the new evidence were letters left in the casket at McLain's funeral, said Lee, who is known for his work on the O.J. Simpson murder case and his TruTV network series, "Trace Evidence: The Case Files of Dr. Henry Lee."

The doctors cautioned that the evidence still must correspond with other case information to produce a suspect and probable cause for arrest -- a formidable task, particularly in a 28-year-old crime.

As many as eight detectives visited town within two weeks and started following mountains of new and old leads and re-interviewing old witnesses and suspects. Some detectives went out of state, all with no visible results. McCausland cautioned that it might be months before results would be apparent, if ever.

"I expect to hear at some point that all 12 or 14 people [suspects] didn't kill her, that they will do DNA comparisons," McLain said. "I feel that will take time. I said six months ago that it would take a year.

"Dr. Baden told me he didn't think it would take that long," she added. "Someone from state police said that maybe he [Baden] should be the one doing it. That's not nice, is it?"

Baden and Lee did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment.

The case has drawn interest from People magazine, which interviewed and photographed McLain and Cummings last fall. That story will likely be published within a month, McLain said. She hoped that it would help create a break in the case.

"I am not too satisfied with them telling the mother nothing. And that's the truth," McLain said.

[packy]

What a shame that it takes so long. I hope her mom can finally get some answers.

[awakening2lite]

Unsolved Murder Victim's Headstone Vandalized

20 hrs ago
Video


http://www.wcsh6.com/video/graphics/playbutton.png (http://www.wcsh6.com/video/default.aspx?aid=52227) Unsolved Murder Victim's Headstone Vandalized (http://www.wcsh6.com/video/default.aspx?aid=52227)
Police say both the gravesite where Joyce Mclain is buried, and the cross marking the place where her body was found twenty-nine years ago have been vandalized.
http://www.wcsh6.com/video/graphics/playbutton.png (http://www.wcsh6.com/video/default.aspx?aid=52228) Unsolved Murder Victim's Headstone Vandalized (http://www.wcsh6.com/video/default.aspx?aid=52228)
Police say both the gravesite where Joyce Mclain is buried, and the cross marking the place where her body was found twenty-nine years ago have been vandalized.

http://www.wcsh6.com/genthumb.ashx?e=3&h=240&w=320&i=/assetpool/images/0856201410_joyce.jpg


EAST MILLINOCKET (NEWS CENTER) -- Police say both the gravesite where Joyce Mclain is buried, and the cross marking the place where her body was found twenty-nine years ago have been vandalized.
At the cemetery, an angel statue that Joyce's mother, Pam, had placed on the headstone was destroyed. Police added that a "dark brown material" was smeared on the headstone. At the site where Joyce's body was found in 1980, the top portion of the cross was torn from the utility pole it was posted on. Pam McLain made a new cross out of materials from her home to replace it. State Police Sgt. Troy Gardner says police aren't sure of the vandal's intent.


"It would be irresponsible of us not to consider the possibility that this activity was more intentional or more meaningful than just being a random act of vandalism" Garnder told NEWS CENTER.


The group "Justice For Joyce" raised enough money to have a second autopsy done on Joyce Mcclain's body last year. Police say that autposy produced new evidence for them to use. Anyone with information about the vandalism or the homicide investigation is asked to call state police at 866-2122.


http://www.wcsh6.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=109698&catid=2

[Nut44x4]

UPDATE!!!!!!!!

Judge links child porn convict to 1980 McLain slaying case
12/8/09
BANGOR, Maine — A Millinocket man sentenced Monday to 6 1/2 years in prison for possession of child pornography was identified by a federal judge as “a person of interest” in the homicide of Joyce McLain.

Just before sentencing 48-year-old Philip Scott Fournier, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock urged him to disclose to investigators whatever information he has about the 1980 slaying of the 16-year-old sophomore at Schenck High School of East Millinocket.

“If you know anything about that case,” Woodcock told Fournier, “I urge you to think long and hard about telling the police. That case has hung like a dark cloud over that community and been very painful for many people. If you can help people in that community remove that cloud, I would urge you to do that.

“I don’t know what you know,” the judge continued, “but there are many people in that community and in this state who deserve to have answers.”

Fournier did not react or respond to Woodcock’s comments. Defendants in federal court rarely address the judge unless asked a direct question.

“My client has done everything that was within his power to assist the authorities [in the McLain investigation],” Virginia Villa, the federal public defender who represented Fournier on the pornography charge, said in a telephone interview after the sentencing.

Woodcock said he did not consider Fournier’s possible connection to the McLain case in imposing the 6½-year sentence. The judge said the information about Fournier being a person of interest in the investigation came from the presentence report prepared by the U.S. Department of Probation and Pre-trial Services.

The victim’s mother, Pamela McLain, said Monday that it wasn’t clear to her how “person of interest” differs from “suspect.” She identified Fournier, whom she knows as Scott, as among the top six names out of 12 to 14 people mentioned to her by state police and others in connection with her daughter’s death.

His name emerged within a month of the homicide, she said.

“I have just always heard his name, so this is not a surprise to me that it was mentioned in court,” McLain said. “His is one of the top names, I would say, of interest. There have been at least six of them that are the most talked-about suspects, loudly, through the years. He is in that group.”

Joyce McLain was last seen the night of Aug. 8, 1980, while jogging. Her body was found two days later. Her head and neck had been hit with a blunt object.

“There were so many names,” Pamela McLain said. “A few were being said right from the beginning, and we know that all of them didn’t do it, but it [the list of people of interest] hasn’t changed much in all these years.”

Fournier, McLain said, is a person of interest because sometime after midnight on the night of her daughter’s disappearance or death, he allegedly stole an oil truck and was involved in a crash with another vehicle. The timing of the theft, McLain suspects, left investigators wondering why Fournier was behaving so rashly.

In describing Fournier’s life at the sentencing hearing, Woodcock mentioned that the defendant was seriously injured in a car accident in the early 1980s but did not give the exact date.

Fournier suffered a skull fracture in the accident and was in a coma for eight days, the judge said. As a result of lingering problems from that accident, Fournier has been receiving Social Security disability payments since the mid-1980s except for a short period between 2004 and 2006.

It was not clear whether the judge was referring to the same accident as the one mentioned by McLain.

“I don’t know if anyone knows where he was going or what he was doing [the night of the oil truck accident],” McLain said.

Fournier was 19 at the time of Joyce McLain’s death and knew her and the McLain family. Almost all of the 12 to 14 people whose names police and others connected to the case were known to the McLains as friends, acquaintances or neighbors, Pamela McLain said.

McLain wondered why the judge would mention Fournier as a person of interest in open court. She knew of Fournier’s recent arrest and looming conviction, she said, and questioned whether it might push him to cooperate with homicide investigators — assuming he hadn’t already done so.

“I don’t understand this,” she said of why his name came out now. “Is the state police doing it? Or is he doing it? Who brought it up for the judge to say? For what reason?”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gail Malone said after the sentencing that Woodcock told her and Fournier’s attorney before the sentencing hearing began that he was going to urge the defendant to tell investigators all he knew about the case because of the pain it had caused the Katahdin area community.

Maine State Police Detective Brian Strout attended the sentencing Monday but declined to comment on whether he was there because of the pornography charge or because of Fournier’s alleged connection to the McLain investigation.

Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the state police, confirmed after the sentencing that Strout is one of the detectives assigned to the McLain case but declined to confirm whether Fournier had been named a person of interest in the investigation.

“We are not naming suspects or persons of interest in this case,” McCausland said.

He also declined to say what the difference was between a person of interest and a suspect in the McLain case.

“Since we’re not naming suspects or persons of interest in this case, that’s not a question we’re going to answer,” McCausland said in response to a question about the difference between the two.

“I would also like to say that we have made great progress in the case since [the] exhumation of [Joyce McLain’s] body,” he continued. “Our detectives have done a number of interviews — either new or they’ve gone back to re-interview folks. They are making substantial progress.”

McLain’s body was exhumed in August 2008. When her casket was opened, forensic investigators made what they described as a near-miraculous find: an extremely well-preserved body and several pieces of new forensic evidence.

The presentence report Woodcock referred to at Fournier’s sentencing is prepared by probation officers for every defendant convicted of a federal felony to assist judges at sentencings. The reports are not public documents, but Woodcock routinely refers to information in them when sentencing defendants before him.

Fournier faced up to 10 years in prison, but under the prevailing federal sentencing guidelines the recommended sentence was between 6½ and eight years and one month in federal prison. His criminal history included convictions in state court for burglary and unauthorized taking in 1979, burglary and theft in 1980 and burglary in 1984. Those convictions were too old to affect his sentence on the child pornography charge.

The number of images found on his computer and the nature of those images did affect Fournier’s sentence, Woodcock said. Fournier previously admitted that he had more than 600 images and videos, including pictures of children from around the world who have been identified in previous investigations as being victims of pornographers, on his computer.

The forensic analysis of the computer revealed 635 images that depict children from 37 different groups of child pornography photos, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. All of the children were photographed outside Maine, and there were videos of adult males having sex with infants and toddlers, the judge said.

Fournier also was the subject of a 2001 investigation by what is now the Maine Department of Health and Human Services after his then-6-year-old daughter alleged that he touched her inappropriately. The department concluded, Woodcock said Monday, that it was likely Fournier had abused the girl, but criminal charges were not filed.

The defendant admitted having a sexual interest in girls between the ages of 10 and 12 when he began downloading child pornography in 2005, defense attorney Villa told the judge. She urged Woodcock to impose a sentence of 2½ to three years because since Fournier’s computer was seized, he had not sought out child pornography.

“I’m severely sorry for the pain these children have gone through,” Fournier told Woodcock. “In the past year, I’ve become aware of how devastating child sex abuse is to children and society as a whole. Through counseling and the support of my family, I’ve become aware of why I began seeking it out. I don’t think I’ll be a threat to society.”

Fournier came to the attention of officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in June 2006 when they learned he had used his credit card to purchase access to a Web site known to contain child pornography, according to court documents. On Nov. 30, 2006, investigators seized Fournier’s computer.

He was indicted on the charge of possession of child pornography by a federal grand jury in January 2009. Fournier pleaded guilty to the charge in May and has been held in the Somerset County Jail while awaiting sentencing. That time is expected to be applied to his sentence.

A half-dozen members of Fournier’s family attended the sentencing but none addressed the court.

McLain expressed sadness for the Fournier family at the defendant’s being tagged as a person of interest by the judge. McLain seldom discusses her understanding of the homicide in detail, fearing that she might make investigators’ work more difficult.

Nor, she said, would she want innocent people bearing the crushing humiliation of being thought of as Joyce McLain’s killer. That’s why McLain had hopes that the exhumation of her daughter’s body last year, and discovery of new DNA evidence, would lead to the elimination of suspects.

“That’s why I wish they [state police] would do some weeding out here. These people need some closure, too,” McLain said. “If they are not [suspects], did not kill her and know they did not kill her, imagine the hell that they are going through. I think it’s a shame. I think they [investigators] ought to weed them out and let them have some kind of a life for how many years they have left.”

http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/132393.html

[packy]

It is odd to me that the judge would say that in open court. Hopefully this case will be solved.