One of Maine's Missing Persons Cases

ONE OF MAINE MISSING PERSON CASES

Ruby Doughty was one of the person’s involved in our HAAD ENOUGH organization. Her daughter Kitty Collins-Wardwell went missing in 1983. Below is a letter she gave our organization to send on to Mid-American Broadcasting Company concerning her missing daughter:

 

 

 

 

 

Letter typed for better reading:

Kitty was here June 5^th with a man. There were no signs of any problems then. He is a jobber who travels back and forth to Providence, Rhode Island buying merchandise and selling to stores all over the Bangor area to be resold.

    As far as I knew they started to Rhode Island on Monday June 5, 1983. He says he left her at the Ranchero Motel in Salem, New Hampshire. No one has seen her since she left here and they say at this motel that they didn’t see her either.

    I have reason to believe that something has happened to her as he threatened to kill her and her baby. A girlfriend in Florida call this house (mother’s home) July 7, 1983 to wish her a Happy Birthday. When I told her girlfriend she wasn’t home, she said Kitty  had called her on the 6^th of June and told her that he had threatened to kill her and her baby.

    He was called into the Salem, New Hampshire Police Department and questioned by Sgt. LaBlanc. He is a born salesman. Sgt. LaBlanc told my son, Dwight, that they think Kitty is lying low somewhere, for what I don’t know.

    I am raising her twelve-year-old son. No matter where Kitty has gone in the past years she has always called me or had a friend call me. (Kitty’s son is now 18 years old.)

    When I talked to him he told me that Kitty was pregnant and that he had given her five hundred dollars for an abortion. Needless to say, I am very worried about my daughter’s welfare.

PLEASE HELP ME FIND HER IF YOU CAN.

A worried mother,

Ruby W. Doughty

Summary Ruby W. Doughty wrote for HAAD ENOUGH:

My daughter was working for an older man in the wholesale business. They traveled to Providence, Rhode Island. He bought things bulk and sold here in Maine.

    They were not getting along. He had threatened her life. They were at my house on the 5^th of June 1983. Everything seemed to be fine. She took her son to the movies that night. He returned home at 10 o’clock.

    That day was the last time I saw her. He was the last one seen with her. This older man had her car and registration. He said he left her at the Ranchero Motel in Salem, New Hampshire. No one has seen her there or ever since.

    She has been missing six-years and it will be seven years June 5^th 1990. Nothing has gone in on her social security since she disappeared.

Ruby’s story as told to me: She had gone north to Allagash, Maine where she had a summer cottage. She took Kitty’s young son, Mark, with her because Kitty had gone to Rhode Island with a man by the name of Frank Julian, a man she was going with at the time, to pick up merchandise for yard sales. She was only gone for a few days. When she returned home she called Kitty but got no answer, concerned she then went to Kitty’s apartment. Kitty wasn’t home but the door was unlocked. The windows were open and it had rained inside the apartment. The cushions on the sofa were missing. A man from one of the other apartments approached Ruby as she was leaving and asked if she knew what had happened there because he had seen a man carrying large trash bags out of the apartment in the night.

    Ruby said when she couldn’t find Kitty she went to Lewiston to see Frank Julian. When she asked Julian where Kitty was he told her he left her at an El Rancho Motel in Salem, New Hampshire. Ruby then asked him “why then do you have her car?” Julian said that Kitty said she didn’t want it. Ruby knew this was not true and accused him of doing something to Kitty. She asked Julian “what did you do to Kitty.” Ruby said that Julian laughed in your face and said I got rid of her.

    Ruby then went to see Maine State Police and met with Detectives Barry Shuman and Ralph Pinkham. She told them about her visit to see Frank Julian and that he had Kitty’s car and that he had laughed in your face and said that he had gotten rid of Kitty.

    Ruby said the detectives told her that there was no evidence that Julian had done anything to Kitty. Ruby told me that she had seen MSP Ralph Pinkham after he retired from the Maine State Police and started his private investigation business. She said Pinkham told her if she wanted to hire him he would look in to Kitty’s disappearance.

Ruby gave me the following photos of her precious daughter Kitty.

October 24, 2011 the Bangor Daily News reported “A body believed to be that of Kitty Wardwell, missing since 1983, was found inside an unplugged freezer in storage Unit 173 at Moore Self Storage in Lewiston.

By Alex Barber, BDN Staff

Posted Oct. 24, 2011, at 6:03 p.m.

Last modified Oct. 25, 2011, at 9:25 p.m.

LEWISTON, Maine — State police are looking for former Holden neighbors of a woman whose body is believed to be the one found in a storage unit in Lewiston on Friday [October 21, 2011].

    Examination of the body began Monday at the state medical examiner’s office, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety. Police believe the body is that of Kitty Wardwell, who was reported missing in July 1983. “The identification is likely to involve DNA comparisons,” said McCausland. “The Wardwell family has given us some items to compare to. “I don’t know when we will get any answers, but it will not be today,” he said Monday.

    Wardwell and Francis “Frank” Julian shared her No. 3 apartment at the Greenwood Gardens Apartments on U.S. Route 1A in Holden in 1983, according to McCausland. State police urge people who lived in the apartments from January to June 1983 to call the Orono barracks at 207-866-2122. “We’re asking tenants who lived there in that time period to call us,” said McCausland. “Many of [them] we have spoken to over the years, but we may have missed a few. It’s time to update those interviews. [Why talk to neighbors after the man who killed Kitty had died?] “I suspect most who had lived there in 1983 have moved elsewhere,” he added. “It’s a good opportunity to re-explore that aspect of the case.”

    The Moore Self Storage unit where the body was found belonged to Julian, who had rented it since 1992 [Nine years after he killed Kitty. Where did he have Kitty for the previous nine years?] Julian, who grew up in Bangor, died Oct. 1 at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston at the age of 80.

   The body was found in an unplugged freezer. The condition of the body wasn’t released by police. “[The storage unit] was primarily full. It had a variety of household items,” said McCausland.

    Julian reported Wardwell missing on July 11, 1983, telling Salem, N.H., police that he dropped the 29-year-old woman off at the El Rancho Motel in Salem after a fight and then traveled back to Maine without her. In 1983, he occasionally lived with Wardwell at her apartment in Holden, which is about 100 miles from Lewiston. ...

    A state police investigation indicated that Wardwell was likely a victim of foul play in Maine. Because of that, the investigation officially remained open. [She was never listed on the state’s unsolved homicide website.] The freezer was inside a 10-by-10 storage unit at Moore Self Storage, where Julian dutifully paid in advance for the unit, coming around every three months to pay in person, owner Gary Boilard said. The last payment was made on Sept. 6, so the unit was rented through November, he said. The storage company’s previous owner kept good records, indicating Julian rented the unit 19 years ago on Oct. 6, Boilard said. Boilard described the situation as “bizarre. How do you keep a secret that long?” he said. [You can when the State of Maine claims there is no evidence Julian did anything to her.]

    The family was going through boxes inside the storage unit when the remains were discovered, and half of the unit was still filled with boxes when state police alerted Boilard on Saturday. “There were boxes on tops of boxes. From front to back, from top to bottom, it was full of boxes,” he said. Other than the freezer, there was little else of interest stashed in the unit — mostly household items, McCausland said.

    At the time of his death, Julian was operating a secondhand store on Main Street. Before that, from 2001 to 2007, he had run the One Stop Shop in a building owned by Hubert Nadeau selling T-shirts, Christmas decorations, knives and “just about anything,” Nadeau said. Nadeau said he was surprised by the news of the body’s discovery. “He was a very nice guy,” Nadeau said Monday. “I had no idea what it was all about.”

    Both Wardwell’s and Julian’s families are being kept in the loop on the investigation, and both families are cooperating, McCausland said. Wardwell’s older brother, Dwight Collins, said he never met Julian but knew of him. He wonders why the case wasn’t solved years ago when it was still fresh. “That’s the same question we[ve] all got, I guess,” said Collins, 60, of Bucksport. “I don’t know why the cops couldn’t get it.”

    Other family members either couldn’t be reached or declined to comment. The process of determining the body’s identity could be time-consuming because of its condition. Wardwell’s family members have donated DNA samples that will be compared against DNA from the body, McCausland said.

    Julian was 52 when Wardwell disappeared. ... The son, John Julian, declined to comment to a reporter who approached him Tuesday at his store, Dad-E-Os. ...

    In Salem, N.H., officers were searching the attic and an on-site storage unit at the police station for any record of a missing person report on Wardwell. “Our records division is pouring through the old paper files looking for a report, if any was taken on this,” Deputy Police Chief Shawn Patten said. “We’re not sure where it’s going to be.”

    The results of the DNA tests and an autopsy performed on the body that was stashed in the freezer could be released on Wednesday, officials said. A team of detectives gathered in Bangor on Monday to begin interviews, McCausland said.

By Nok-Noi Ricker, BDN Staff

Posted: Dec. 02, 2011, at 2:37 p.m.

Last modified: Dec. 02, 2011, at 4:32 p.m.

LEWISTON, Maine — State police have confirmed the woman’s body found inside a Lewiston storage locker in October is Kitty Wardwell, Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said Friday [Dec. 2, 2011].

    Wardwell, who was 29 when she disappeared in 1983, was slain, according to Mark Belserene, administrator for the state’s medical examiner’s office.

    “The manner is homicide but we’re not going to release the cause yet,” he said Friday. “It’s being withheld,” McCausland said.

KITTY I. (COLLINS) WARDWELL

Dec.9, 2011

HOLDEN – Kitty I. (Collins) Wardwell, 29, died unexpectedly in 1983. She was born July 1, 1953, in Bangor, daughter of Forrest Collins Sr. and Ruby Collins Doughty. Kitty grew up in Dedham, and was a 1971 graduate of Brewer High School and graduated from Finishing Touch Modeling School in Massachusetts. Kitty worked as a cosmetologist at various retail stores in the Bangor area for several years.

    She had been residing in Holden until June 1983 when she disappeared from all who loved her dearly. Kitty was such a beautiful person, such a shame she was taken from us so soon and we can only dream of how her life could have been. We have spent the last 28 years searching for answers that we thought would never come. She has been missed and always will be, but now she is finally home to rest.

    Kitty is survived by her son, Mark D. Collins and his wife, Laurie and a granddaughter, Ashley, all of Dedham...

December 2, 2011, Kitty was identified as the corpse in the Frank Julian’s freezer. Her brother, Dwight Walsh Collins, died unexpectedly January 5, 2012, one month later. I wonder about this.

 BUCKSPORT – “Dwight Walsh Collins, 61, died unexpectedly Jan. 5, 2012, at his home. He was born Dec. 26, 1950, in Brookline, Mass., the son of Forrest and Ruby (Walsh) Collins. ... In addition to his parents, he was predeceased by two brothers, Forrest Collins Jr. and Scott Allen Collins; and a sister, Kitty Wardwell.”

Ruby (Walsh) Collins died in 2007 never knowing what Frank Julian did with her daughter in 1983, twenty-four years previous. I am so sorry. I am now trying, at nearly 80 years old, to tell what happened with my murdered son, Mike, in 1981, thirty-five years ago, before I also die.

Dear Ruby, 

I am so sorry we were not able to discover what happened to your daughter Kitty before you died. You wanted so much to do that! We tried when we went to the Attorney General’s office asking them to please look into Kitty’s disappearance. And as the years went on, you tried to get Kitty’s social security benefits for her son Mark to use for his education. I was with you when you were told that you would have to prove Kitty was dead despite the fact that she had disappeared more than seven years previous and nothing had gone in on her social security. You said the authorities expect me to prove that Kitty is dead when they are not able to do it.

In the article by Alex Barber of the Bangor Daily News Staff, last modified Oct. 25, 2011, Ruby’s son and Kitty’s brother Dwight told the news that “He wonders why the case wasn’t solved years ago when it was still fresh. “That’s the same question we[ve] all got, I guess,” said Collins, 60, of Bucksport. “I don’t know why the cops couldn’t get it.”

Another one of our HAAD ENOUGH cases was a mother whose 16-year old son had been murdered by drug dealers after the Maine drug agency planned on having him testify against drug dealers. His savage murder had been solved but the mother came to our group for support and we wrote letters on her behalf and attended a commutation hearing for one of the murderers.

The body of 16-year-old Gary Nadeau of Caribou, a central figure in a local drug investigation, was found Saturday night [Oct. 7, 1978] buried in an isolated wooded area near the neighboring town of Perham. ... The youth had been missing since Sept. 15, just five days before he was expected to testify as a witness in court action involving alleged drug violations.

“Gary Allen Nadeau, 16, died Sept. 15, 1978 ... He was an eighth-grade student at Caribou Junior High School and was a former member of the Boy Scout Troop in Limestone.”

GUBERNATORIAL PARDONS ISSUE OPENS DEEP WOUNDS

Bangor Daily News by John S. Day

October 4, 1990

Article typed for better reading:

ELLSWORTH – Not a day has passed, Ruth Nadeau said, that she does not recall with anger the night nearly 12 years ago when her 16-year-old son was beaten by drug dealers, buried alive and hours later stabbed to death with a Japanese ceremonial sword as he attempted to pull himself from his shallow grave.

MAINE GOVERNOR COMMUTES MURDERS PRISON SENTENCE

Nor can Nadeau understand why former Gov. Joseph E. Brennan, in one of his final acts as chief executive, reduced by 2 years the prison sentence of Brenda Younk-Smith, the person Nadeau believes plunged the three-foot sword into her son’s chest.

    The commutation decision has become controversial because the Nadeau murder was one of the most gruesome in recent Maine history, and the prisoner who sought clemency is a woman.

    Brennan made his decision over the objections of 23 of 27 persons the former governor’s pardons and commutation board solicited for comment during a Nov. 25, 1985 public hearing. [Brennan was the Maine Governor who appointed District Attorney David Cox as a District Court Judge over the objections of Bangor attorneys.]

    The case provides a contrast between Brennan’s clemency policies and those of his successor, Gov. John R. McKernan, who turned down a petition by Younk-Smith last year seeking another two-year reduction in her original 25-year sentence.

    During his eight years as governor, Brennan commuted the sentences of 27 defendants, eight during the final weeks of his administration. During his four years as chief executive, McKernan has reduced the prison term of only one petitioner, an inmate at the Maine State Prison in Thomaston who was being treated for cancer.

    Sources familiar with McKernan’s 1989 rejection of Younk-Smith’s commutation petition said that the governor ignored the recommendations of several rehabilitation specialists in turning down the petition. Members of the Nadeau family lobbied against the commutation.

    Those listed as opposed to Brennan’s 1987 commutation decision reportedly included the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Department, Aroostook County district attorney, Caribou Police Department, State Police investigators and Fernand LaRochelle, the head of the Maine Attorney General’s Criminal Division, who prosecuted the murder.

    Brennan’s commutation document was signed on Jan. 6, 1987, the former governor’s next-to-last day in office, which was more than a year after the 1985 public bearing record indicated that law enforcement officials involved with the case had voiced strong opposition to any reduction of sentence.

    During the 1979 trial, Younk-Smith exhibited few signs of remorse. Trial transcripts quoted her as telling a jail matron that “the kid got what he deserved.”

    “I was shocked when I read about (the commutation) in the newspaper,” Nadeau said, while nursing a cup of coffee at the Ames Department Store restaurant in Ellsworth. She works in the area as a chamber maid. Nadeau said she felt betrayed because Brennan, in a series of letter, had expresses compassion for the grief her family felt following the murder of her youngest son.

HAAD ENOUGH CRITITAL OF MAINE GOVERNOR

The recent pardons controversy in Maine’s gubernatorial campaign, Nadeau said, has opened deep wounds for herself and other relatives of crime victims. A Bangor-based support group for crime victims HAAD ENOUGH [Homicide and Accidental Death – End Numbers of Unsolved Growing Homicides], has become critical of Brennan’s handling of pardon and commutation decisions.

    Lee Cochran, who heads HAAD ENOUGH, and Nadeau said that their decision to speak out publicly on the issue resulted from a guest column by Brennan in the Bangor Daily News on Oct. 1 in which the former governor accused McKernan of “smearing” the reputations of persons who were pardoned or given reduced sentences during the final weeks of Brennan’s eight-year term as governor.

    A NEWS story last month documented instances in which Brennan pardoned a former campaign aide and figures linked to an insurance scandal masterminded by Bruce Taliento, a former Democratic mayor of Portland.

    In his guest column, Brennan did not respond to the issue of political favoritism. Instead, he charged that the newspaper had smeared the reputations of “people who have made a mistake; who paid the price; who struggled to put their lives back together again ... (only to) face the heartbreak of seeing their distant past dredged up across the front-page headlines of the Bangor Daily News.”

    Brennan wrote, “Sometimes the crime was a youthful indiscretion, but now looms as a permanent obstacle to going on to college, the military, professional school, or productive employment. There is time to forgive.”

    On Wednesday, Brennan’s press secretary, Barbara Reinertsen, said she would look into the rationale behind Brennan’s 1987 reduction of Younk-Smith’s prison sentence.

    In a letter to the NEWS, Cochran accused the former governor of showing more sensitivity about the reputations and employment prospects for persons convicted of crimes than for crime victims. She asked, “Do you care about the Nadeau’s family’s hurt, the price they paid, the loss of a 16-year-old son, and their struggle to put their lives back together? ... How do you think the Nadeau family felt when they read in the newspaper that you reduced by two years the sentence given for the brutal murder of their brother and son, Gary Allen Nadeau?

... Joel Smith, an alleged drug dealer who was the son of the deputy warden of the Maine State Prison at Thomaston, also was convicted for the murder of Gary Nadeau and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Smith married Younk shortly after their arrests.

THE EVENTS LEADING UP TO NADEAU’S MURDER

    On Tuesday, Nadeau recalled the events leading up to her son’s murder. “My boy was killed for #10 worth of drugs and a $10 witness fee,” she said. Gary Nadeau had witnesses a drug transaction between Joel Smith and another man. She said a Caribou police detective, pressured her son to testify in court against Joel Smith. “(Gary) said he couldn’t testify because (Joel Smith) would kill him. They told Gary that the only way he would be safe would be if (Joel Smith) was put behind bars,” Nadeau said. Days before the murder, Nadeau said police learned that Smith and his cohorts were conduct[ing] “dry runs” of a planned kidnapping of Gary Nadeau.

    Ruth Nadeau described the murder, which was detailed in court testimony and confessions. “Paul Akerson (another defendant) dropped off Gary near Perham [a small town a few miles outside of Caribou]. He told Gary there was a six-pack under the tree and asked Gary to get out and get it,” Nadeau related. Akerson drove away. “Joel Smith and Brenda Younk came out of the woods. He struck him in the head, breaking his nose and jaw, and then kicked him in the groin. They put him in the back seat of their car. When Gary came to, they hit him across the knees and over the top of the head with a shovel, nearly decapitating him,” Nadeau said.

    “They used the shovel to dig a shallow grave and put him in it. Then they returned to Caribou to attend a birthday party to establish an alibi,” Nadeau said. Uncertain whether Gary Nadeau was dead, Smith and Younk-Smith returned to the shallow grave. “They had a three-foot Japanese war sword. She stabbed him twice in the chest and racked the sword through his kidneys, “Nadeau related. “That was what killed him.”

... According to James Howard, an official at the Correctional Center at South Windham, Younk-Smith’s scheduled release date is July 4, 1997, but that deadline is being advanced by as much as 12 days each month if the prisoner meets meritorious good-time requirements. Howard said he could not disclose the amount of meritorious good time Younk-Smith had accumulated to date. All that’s required to meet the requirements, he said, is that the prisoner “stay out of trouble and comply with her work assignments.

    The day that Brenda Younk-Smith walks out of jail will be a dark one for Ruth Nadeau. “If she served every minute of that 25 years, that’s not enough. She’s still breathing. She’s not dead. My boy is dead,” Nadeau said.

SLAYING VICTIMS FAMILY SUES CITY OF CARIBOU

June 6, 1979

The complaint alleges that on or about June 21, 1978, [Detective Ricky] Thibodeau and other officers of the police department requested the assistance of Nadeau in providing Caribou police with information on the identity of persons involved in illegal drug trafficking here.

    The complaint alleged that the local police department insisted that Nadeau provide it with whatever information he had, despite Nadeau’s fear that harm could befall him as a result.

    The complaint alleges that Nadeau and his mother were assured no harm would come to Nadeau as a result of his cooperation; that persons against who Nadeau gave information would be arrested and held; that all necessary police protection would be provided and that the fact that Nadeau provided the information would be kept secret.

    The complaint said that on or about July 6, 1978, Nadeau was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. The complaint alleged that before and after the grand jury session threats were made against Nadeau and that his family’s residence was placed under surveillance by persons against whom he had provided information, or persons acting in cooperation with them.

    The complaint alleges that the day of the grand jury hearing Nadeau was seen entering and leaving the Caribou police station by person against who he had provided information, or persons related to or cooperating with them.

    The complaint alleges that the Nadeau family continued to be subjected to threats, harassment and surveillance, following the grand jury testimony.

    The complaint further alleges that Nadeau was not provided with police protection on the day of the grand jury hearing and that protection was withdrawn subsequently and was not further given.

CITY CLAIMS IMMUNITY IN NEGLIGENCE LAWSUIT

JUNE 25, 1979

The city has declared itself immune from lawsuit under Maine law in answer to charges brought by Ruth Nadeau, the mother of slain 16-year-old Gary Nadeau of Caribou, that negligence on the part of the Caribou Police Department was a cause of the youth’s death. ... In further answer, the city said that any alleged negligence of the defendants and resulting injury, death or damage to the plaintiff were caused by the negligent acts and omissions of the plaintiff.

Copyright © 2012 by Leola Cochran.  All Rights Reserved.

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