Dark Downeast - The Disappearance of Cathy Marie Moulton Part 1 (Maine)

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

MAINE'S OLDEST MISSING PERSON CASE, 1971: On September 24, 1971, Cathy Marie Moulton stepped out onto Forest Avenue in Portland, Maine heading the direction of home. She had plans to attend the YWCA dance that night... But Cathy never made it.The Portland Police Department dismissed her as a runaway in 1971, but that didn't seem like the daughter that Roy Moulton and his wife Claire knew and loved.This is Part I of the special release two-part series, taking an in-depth look at the longest standing missing persons case in Maine, and one of the oldest cases in the country.This is the Cathy Marie Moulton Disappearance, Part I.If you have information regarding the disappearance of Cathy Moulton, please contact the Portland Police Department at 207-874-8479. Cathy Moulton Missing Endangered by Kevin Cady, Available on AmazonView source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/cathymoulton1/Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-caseDark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low. 

Kathy Marie Moulton was a teenager when she disappeared walking home from downtown Portland in 1971. Her disappearance is the longest standing missing persons case in Maine's history and one of the oldest in the country. The Moulton family still doesn't know where their daughter is, despite what the particularly dedicated investigators have uncovered in the decades since she vanished from that Portland sidewalk. This is the case of Kathy Marie Moulton, part one. I'm Kylie Lowe and this is Dark Down East. At 1.15 in the afternoon on Friday, September 24, 1971, Lyman Roy Moulton bowed to his oldest daughter's request for a ride into town to do some shopping.

It was a quick drive from their home in Deering Center, only about two miles, a straight shot down forest. Before walking out the door, Claire Moulton asked her daughter to pick up two tubes of toothpaste and handed over some change for that and her bus fare home. Lyman dropped Kathy Marie off on the corner of Cumberland and Forest Avenue and watched her walk up the gentle incline towards Congress Street, carrying her favorite hand-tooled leather handbag she picked out as her 16th birthday gift that summer. Kathy loved swing dancing, and there was a dance at the YMCA that night. Her pantyhose had a run in them, so she needed to pick up a new pair before the dance. Between 1.15 p.m. and 5.30 p.m., it's assumed Kathy was shopping in downtown Portland. It's not publicly reported what exactly she was doing during that four-hour window besides making a purchase at Porches, Mitchell, and Braun. We don't know if she was spotted with anyone or met up with

friends on her shopping trip. There aren't any reports on if she actually picked up that toothpaste her mother asked for and the pantyhose she needed before the dance. But it's assumed she bought something because by 5 3030 p.m., Kathy was at Starboard Music on Forest Avenue chatting with her friend Carol Starboard. Starboard Music was halfway between Congress Square, where her father dropped her off four hours earlier, and her home in Deering Center. Kathy told Carol she was walking home because she spent her bus fare on something else. The dance started soon, so she needed to hurry home to take a shower before the festivities began. Kathy told Carol

she'd see her at the YWCA for the dance, and she stepped back out onto Forest Avenue in the direction of home. Starboard Music is still on Forest Avenue today, not in the exact same location as the night Kathy was there, but within the same mile stretch. It's been an institution for Maine musicians since the 50s, and the Starbird family is still in the area too. I can't personally speak to the Forest Avenue of the 70s, but Forest Avenue today is always busy. I dread driving it and avoid it at all costs. It's a four-lane road with businesses lining the entire length for miles, starting just after the 295 on-ramps, weaving its way through Portland's more densely populated neighborhoods and out into Riverton, which has

more of a small neighborhood feel. It's the familiar strip of road that every city seems to have. Your Burger King and Starbucks, complicated and frustrating intersections with never-ending red lights and too fast greens, the local convenience stores and mini malls with nail salons and liquor stores. Can you picture it? I'm willing to wager that not a single person could just disappear from Forest Avenue today, not in 2020. Between the banks and the gas stations on either side, and all of the other businesses now protected with security cameras, you'd probably be able to track anyone's movements along the sidewalk for the entire stretch of road, as long as their CCTV was working that day. But in 1971, when Kathy Moulton stepped out of Starboard Music

after popping in to chat with her friend before a dance at the YWCA that night, she did exactly that. Kathy Marie Moulton seemingly vanished, just one mile away from her Deering Center neighborhood home. At least, that's what the police believed in 1971. Sometime just before 6.30 that night, about an hour after Kathy was talking with Carol at Starboard Music,

and five hours after her father dropped her off downtown, Claire Moulton started to worry. Kathy wasn't home for dinner yet. She told Portland Monthly Magazine in a 1988 article, "...in our family, we always called when we were going to be late." Knowing the dance would start soon, it was strange that she hadn't returned to shower and get ready. The skirt that Kathy had made for the occasion was still draped on the back of a chair in her room. With no call and no Kathy, Claire phoned the Portland Police Department to file a missing persons report.

Something I learned while researching this case is that the 60s and 70s were a time of frequent runaways. In a 2017 piece by the BBC written by Benjamin Ram titled Why Thousands of Teens Ran Away from Home in the 1960s, the author highlights a song by the Beatles called She's Leaving Home. It's based on the true story of Melanie Coe, a London runaway who had everything, but she left home one day in search of something inside that was always denied for so many years, as the lyrics go. The story told in the song was one that mirrored thousands of stories across the world, especially here in the U.S. The generational divide of teenagers in the 60s was a deep, dark chasm. They lived in a time of the Vietnam War and the draft. There was this growing

obsession and adoption of a counterculture. Between 1967 and 1971, nearly 500,000 people left home to live in experimental communities that promoted a counterculture of like-minded social activists free of social, cultural, moral, and economic expectations and limitations of mainstream society. Maine was not immune to this runaway phenomena of the era, though Portland Police Department received almost 200 reports of teenagers running away each year in the 60s and 70s. That number sounds staggering to me, but even still, the Portland PD didn't have any funding dedicated to missing persons in 1971. And so, when Mrs. Moulton called to report Kathy missing, the dispatcher laughed at her. 72 hours.

That was the minimum time she had to wait before she could report a missing person and before the police would take any action, no matter the instincts of a worried mother. Claire and Lyman didn't sit around and watch those 72 hours tick down. They started searching for Kathy immediately. Claire called the hospitals. Lyman checked in with Kathy's friends, and he drove the route between his home and where he dropped her off earlier that day. His eyes peeled on the sidewalks before continuing on to the police station. He wasn't accepting the 72-hour waiting period to take action for his daughter. Lyman said the desk sergeant explained the facts of life, which I can imagine is a nice way to put

the heated exchange they probably had. Lyman was a persistent father, a concerned father, and he wasn't leaving until he could file that report for his missing daughter. Ultimately, they let him. To shut me up, Lyman said. Police interviewed family and friends, they completed their initial investigation that follows a missing person report, and then the case fell into an ever-growing pile of missing teenagers. The Moultons were really on their own to lead the charge in searching for answers in their oldest daughter's disappearance. One of my key sources for this story was a piece in Portland Monthly magazine titled Lost in the Dreamtime, The Baffling Disappearance of Kathy Moulton, written by Grantland S. Rice in 1988, nearly 20 years after she disappeared. It detailed Lyman and Claire Moulton's efforts to get attention for Kathy's case. Lyman said he would have been more aggressive if he knew what he was up against at the time. He didn't agree with how the police handled it,

but he's also quoted saying, I understand they weren't picking on us. The piece also painted a picture of Kathy as a caring, considerate, and kind young woman. Not the kind her parents believed who would run away and cause her family so much heartache and distress. Two months into her disappearance, in 1971, investigators opened her locker at Deering High School. Among her school supplies was a phone number scrawled on a piece of paper. Investigators thought it could be a clue, but when the Moultons read the seven digits, they realized it rang a phone on Lyman's own used car lot. A few weeks later, the Moultons received a bill from the school for a missing textbook of Kathy's. Deering High School later apologized, saying, don't worry, they found the book. I mean,

can you imagine? Her poor parents. It's actually shocking to me how little media coverage Kathy's disappearance received at the time. Her photo and description was published in the Portland Press-Herald, the Maine Sunday Telegram, and an Oldport newsletter in the first few weeks of October 1971. And that's really it. The more I looked into this case, the more I realized that the lack of media coverage in the years immediately following her disappearance was reflective of the lack of police attention and resources dedicated to investigating it. It wouldn't be until the mid-90s when a new detective was assigned to the case. That real connection started being made, and new leads were followed. But I'll get to that piece of the story later.

Back in 1971, with a few months of zero developments, Lyman contacted Portland's FBI office, but frustratingly, the FBI couldn't get involved because there wasn't any evidence of an abduction. However, thanks to Lyman's persistence, Kathy's photo was aired at the end of an episode of a police procedural TV show called The FBI. It sounds like it was a very early predecessor of Law & Order, fun fact. Every episode of that show was actually vetted by the FBI, and J. Edgar Hoover tried to have it canceled on at least seven occasions, citing violence as one of the reasons. So after the airing of that episode of the FBI with Kathy's photo, leads began landing on the laps of investigators. A girl that looked like Kathy was reported hitchhiking on the side of the road in Falmouth, about 10 minutes from Portland. A Parks Department employee said he saw a girl with long hair and glasses like Kathy's get into a 1965 or 1966 Pontiac with front-end damage

driven by a man about a week before Kathy disappeared. Kathy's dance partner was usually a boy named Alvin Drake. His mother told police that the rumor around school was that Kathy was planning to head for Boston after a conversation in study hall piqued her interest. But none of these, as far as I can tell, led investigators to any real answers. And then, after Thanksgiving in 1971, Lyman and Clare followed up on a new lead themselves. A girl who matched Kathy's description was reportedly spotted in Presque Isle, and she may have been living there. Kathy's parents made the 4-hour and 15-minute drive up to the county and met with the sheriff's department there, only to find that local police didn't even know that Kathy Marie Moulton was missing from Portland.

Lyman canvassed the area homes and businesses himself as the sheriff's department distributed photos of Kathy to the area police departments. The girl reported to look like Kathy was actually another teen who had disappeared from her home in Connecticut. While they were in the county, they also followed up on a rumor of a young woman who was living with a man on a Native American or Canadian reserve, and she might match Kathy's description. But at the time, that rumor turned out to be nothing, because the Moultons returned to Portland without their daughter. And then, I reached the end of the newspaper and magazine archives that have covered this case over the last 49 years

and literally said out loud to myself, that's it? Like that's all we've got in nearly five decades of this open missing persons case? But it turns out, that wasn't it. I just had to follow a deep, dark, and winding path through the underbelly of internet forums to find the name of a man who could fill in the blanks about what happened to Kathy the night she disappeared. A man that could expand on all of these one-line descriptions of theories and leads that felt like dead ends. That man was Kevin Cady. I weaved between Reddit and web sleuths, scrolling pages and pages of threads with speculation and theories ranging from possible connection to serial killer Rodney

Alcala, he's also known as the dating game killer, a vague report of sightings on a potato farm in northern Maine, and a story of some sort of psychic or medium who claimed that Kathy actually made it to the dance that night and disappeared after. Of course, these threads, these internet forums, are not to be taken without a grain of salt. They're a great place to hash out theories and speculation and conspiracy, but they're not really known to be a reliable source when researching a cold case. However, on page 3 of a web sleuth thread on Kathy's disappearance was a post from user K. Katie. In 2012, this user posted, I am the retired primary detective from Portland PD and investigated the Moulton disappearance from 1996 to 2004. That cause page he referenced was a dead link, which is not surprising since it was posted over eight years ago. User KKD only posted on WebSleuths three times, and all three of those posts were on the Kathy Moulton thread.

But having his name meant I could search for any interviews or public statements or press releases that may contain his name and Kathy's. That's when I dug up parts of the story I'd never heard before. After retiring from the Portland Police Department, Kevin Cady started his own professional investigation firm. In 2016, Kevin released a book titled Kathy Moulton, Missing and Endangered. It's a date-by-date timeline of his discoveries and findings while investigating the case 25 years after the fact.

It's no fluff, just facts and context. It's my kind of true crime writing. Kevin Cady made no soft statements regarding the Portland Police Department's handling of the investigation prior to his assignment, especially in the days, weeks, and months immediately following the report in 1971. They weren't giving it the attention it deserved. 25 years later, he was able to make connections, find witnesses, and get statements from those in Kathy's inner circle at the time of her disappearance. And let me tell you, Kevin Cady is able to truly shed a light on everything that went down. That night Kathy disappeared, it wasn't without a trace. A witness reported that Kathy got into a car. Some reports claim it was a stolen 1963 blue Cadillac. The car was driven by her friend Lester Everett,

who had earlier agreed to give another friend a ride out of town, unbeknownst to Kathy. The nature of Kathy and Lester's relationship may have been more like boyfriend and girlfriend, but if that was the case, she was keeping it on the down-low. He was around 22 years old, she was only 16. Not to mention, Lester had gotten into a bit of trouble with police, which would not have met the approval of her parents. Kevin Cady also uncovered that the kind, caring, and considerate daughter the Moultons knew may also have quietly dipped her toe into rebellion. She picked up smoking cigarettes. She was dating this guy who had a history of run-ins with the law. I read it as Kathy was being 16. She was experimenting. She was rebelling. But to Kevin Cady, it also meant that she wasn't as averse to risk as her parents might have assumed.

Before leaving Portland, Lester picked up his other passenger, his friend named Reed Purley. Kevin Cady described Reed as a vagabond. He hitchhiked from state to state, and he also had a storied history with police. Lester told Kathy he was going to bring Reed wherever he wanted to go, and that was to New Brunswick, Canada, 300 miles out of Portland. It's not known if Kathy asked to be dropped off at home at this point, or if she asked to just get out of the car. As far as Kevin Cady knows and remembers from the investigation, the next sighting of Kathy was in Bangor by a neighbor of Kathy's from Portland who just happened to be in the area. Kathy was still with Lester and Reed. And then the next sighting was at a gas station a few days later in Fort Fairfield, Maine. A man who worked at the gas station was confident in his identification of her, and he said she was with Reed Purley.

And Reed had a firm hand on her neck, guiding her to the bathroom and back to the car. All of the sightings mention a 1963 blue Cadillac. That Cadillac, Kevin learned in 1995, had been stolen from the motel where Lester was doing odd jobs. And inside that Cadillac was a credit card that also belonged to the hotel. Lester used that credit card to get new tires for the car at the gas station where he was spotted with Kathy and Reed, so they likely spent a considerable amount of time there. That credit card transaction is also what led detectives to the same gas station 25 years later. Forgive me here, because this is going to feel like an abrupt ending. Let me assure you though, it's not the end of this story at all, and I won't HBO you. Part 2 is out right now. Kevin Cady knows so much about this case. I read his book on my

Kindle, and I'm just blown away at how much there is to this story and the dark end that Kevin Cady believes Kathy might have faced. The still perpetuated rumor of a young girl's body buried in the dirt basement under a house on the Tobik Reservation in New Brunswick, Canada. I don't want to paraphrase his work for you. Instead, I want Kevin to help me tell the story that he's so close to. So, Kathy Marie Moulton's story is to be continued, as her case has been for her family since the day she disappeared in 1971. Her parents kept the doors unlocked in the years following her disappearance, hoping one day she'd walk back through the front door. They changed their plans and stayed close to the phone, hoping she might call.

Her mother sat in the parlor window, eyes searching down the street, hoping to see Kathy walking towards the house in her blue jacket, the same one she was wearing the night she disappeared. Her father, Lyman Roy Moulton, passed away without knowing what happened to his oldest daughter. He told WGME in 2014, quote, I don't think one day has gone by that I haven't said a prayer for that girl." End quote. Part two of Kathie Marie Moulton's story is out now on Dark Down East. Go listen. Sources for this case and others, including links to all individual articles, are listed in the show notes at darkdowneast.com so you can do some more reading and digging of your own.

I've also linked Kevin Cady's book. Subscribing and reviewing Dark Down East is free, and it not only supports the show, it's the best way to ensure you never miss an episode of Maine and New England True Crime Stories. If you have a story or a case I should cover, I would love to hear from you at darkdowneast at gmail.com. You've really stepped up your game and sent me so many cases, so don't hold back. I love hearing from you.

Thank you for supporting the show and allowing me to do what I do. I am honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones, and for those who are still searching for answers in cold missing persons and murder cases. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.