Dark Downeast - The Disappearance of Kitty Wardwell (Maine)

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

DEDHAM, MAINE 1983: For nearly three decades, the family of Kitty Collins Wardwell hoped that the whereabouts of their daughter, sister, and mother would be revealed and the secret of what happened to the smart, beautiful Kitty would come out into the light. But they wouldn’t learn the truth about Kitty until someone else passed away 28 years later.You won’t find her name on the Maine State Police Unsolved case list anymore, as cases like Kitty’s are excluded when there is evidence establishing beyond a reasonable doubt that the person responsible is dead, but the death of a key individual is not a true resolution for Kitty Wardwell.Is someone out there, still walking the streets of Maine, holding onto information that could uncover the secret of why Kitty disappeared and the person, or persons, responsible? View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/kittywardwellFollow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case Dark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

The more time I spend digging into homicide and missing persons cases in Maine and New England, the more I am left speechless at the secrets kept hidden. Secrets that span decades and generations, and the lengths that some people will go to keep them locked away. For nearly three decades, the family of Kitty Collins Wardwell hoped that the whereabouts of their daughter, sister, and mother would be revealed, and the secret of what happened to the smart, beautiful Kitty would come out into the light. But they wouldn't learn the truth about Kitty until someone else passed away unexpectedly, 28 years later. You won't find her name on the Maine State Police unsolved case list anymore, as cases like Kitty's are excluded when there is evidence

establishing beyond a reasonable doubt that the person responsible is dead. But the death of a key individual is not a true resolution for Kitty Wardwell. Is someone out there, still walking the streets of Maine, holding onto information that could uncover the secret of why Kitty disappeared, and the person, or persons, responsible? I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Kitty Wardwell on Dark Down East. Kitty Collins was born to her parents, Forrest Collins Sr. and Ruby Collins Dowdy, in Bangor, Maine on July 1, 1953. She grew up in Dedham, Maine, a small town east of Bangor, historically well known for the 1961 crash of a Cold War airplane on Bald Mountain within town limits. The fuselage remains on the mountainside, a shredded metal memorial to the two men whose lives were lost in the accident. Or maybe you're familiar with Lucerne in Maine, a village within

the town of Dedham, referred to as a Beauty Spot of America on the town website. It sits on the shores of Phillips Lake, a favorite summer spot for locals and tourists alike. Growing up in a small town like Dedham, Maine, no one missed Kitty's undeniable beauty. Beauty and cosmetology was a passion of hers. After graduating from Brewer High School in 1971, Kitty attended the Finishing Touch Modeling School in Massachusetts. I've seen what appear to be modeling photos of Kitty, posing against a vintage floral wallpaper backdrop in a woman's suit with a jacket slung over her shoulder, her dark hair blown out in that perfect 70s way. In the midst of pursuing her modeling dreams, Kitty Collins was

married, becoming Kitty Wardwell, and had a son. She worked as a cosmetologist and at a few retail shops around the Bangor area, sticking close to her hometown and family. By 1983, Kitty was divorced. She moved into a new place at the Greenwood Gardens Apartments in Holden, Maine, and was working for a man named Francis Julian, better known as Frank. Frank Julian was born in 1931, making him about 22 years older than Kitty. According to reporting for the Bangor Daily News by Andrew Neff, Frank Julian also grew up in the Bangor area, attending John Bapst High School and playing on the state championship football team in 1948.

After high school, it appears Frank had quite the entrepreneurial spirit. He opened the well-known Pizzaroma on Main Street in Bangor and then went on to become a novelty salesman, buying bulk wares out of state and reselling them in Maine. According to a letter written to the Mid-American Broadcasting Company by Kitty Wardwell's mother, Ruby Dowdy, Kitty worked for Frank in his wholesale business, often traveling to Providence, Rhode Island with him to pick up merchandise that would later be sold to shops in Bangor. Before she passed away, Kitty's mother spoke with Had Enough, an organization that is now known as the Maine Cold Case Alliance.

Maine Cold Case Alliance documented what Ruby told them about her daughter and the circumstances of her life in relationship to Frank Julian in 1983. Ruby claimed that in addition to working with Frank, Kitty was also going with him, meaning dating or at least involved in some sort of relationship beyond employer and employee. Documents seem to confirm this. News 8 WMTW obtained copies of the lease agreement for Kitty Wardwell's apartment at Greenwood Gardens Apartments in Holden. Frank Julian's signature also appears on the lease. Whatever the true circumstances of their relationship, they were physically together in early June of 1983, the last day Ruby Dowdy

saw her daughter alive. It was around 10 p.m. on June 5th, 1983, and Kitty Wardwell had just dropped off her 12-year-old son at her mother's house after going to see a movie together. Kitty was getting ready to head out on another road trip to Providence with Frank Julian, so her son would stay in his grandmother's care while she was away. According to what Ruby told Had Enough, Kitty and Frank were having problems and not getting along recently, but Ruby had seen both of them on that night of June 5th,

and everything seemed to be okay. While Kitty was on the Providence trip, Ruby took her grandson to their cottage in Allagash, a tiny town in Aroostook County, Maine. It was peak Maine summer weather. Who didn't want to be at their camp, soaking up every single bit of sunshine they could get? While Ruby was in Allagash, she didn't hear from her daughter, which was a little out of the ordinary for Kitty. Ruby said that in the past, she always called home to check in. Ruby returned home from their trip to the Allagash with Kitty's son a few

days later and tried to call Kitty at her apartment, but got no answer. Kitty should have been home. The no call, no show was concerning. Concerning enough for Ruby to go knock on her daughter's door to see why the heck she hadn't gotten in touch. When she arrived at the apartment, Ruby noticed that the door was unlocked. She stepped inside and called out for her daughter, but no one responded. She glanced around the space

and noticed that the windows were open and summer rainfall had splashed inside. It was odd. The couch was otherwise where she remembered it to always be, but Ruby recalled that the cushions were missing. That gut instinct of a concerned mother told her something was wrong inside that apartment. Ruby stepped backward and turned on her heels to leave, making her way back to her vehicle. Before she reached the car, though, another tenant stepped out of his unit and made a beeline for Ruby. According to the recollection of the Maine Cold Case Alliance that they documented on their post about Kitty Wardwell's case, the man wanted to know if Ruby had any clue what went on inside that apartment she'd just walked out of. The man told Ruby that he saw somebody leaving the apartment carrying large trash bags in the middle of the night. We can assume that Ruby was shaken

and had even more worry about her daughter, leaving the apartment with no sign of her. Ruby left and headed home, but her mind went straight to the man that Kitty was last known to be with, Frank Julian, who signed on the dotted line of Kitty Wardwell's lease agreement in Holden, Maine, also lived or was staying in Lewiston, Maine at the time, about 115 miles south of the Bangor area. According to Ruby's statements to the Had Enough organization, she located Frank Julian in Lewiston and asked where Kitty was and why she hadn't returned home from Providence when clearly Frank himself had. Frank told her that he and Kitty had a disagreement about something on their way back to Maine.

They stopped at the El Rancho Motel on North Broadway in Salem, New Hampshire, and that's where he left Kitty. He drove back to Lewiston, and that was that. Not satisfied with his answer, Ruby pressed further. That's when Frank allegedly told Ruby something completely shocking for a mother to hear. She wrote in her letter to the Mid-American Broadcasting Company, When I talked to him, he told me that Kitty was pregnant and that he had given her $500 for an abortion. Needless to say, I am very worried about my daughter's welfare.

Signed, A Very Worried Mother, Ruby W. Dowdy For an entire month after she last saw her daughter, Ruby Dowdy waited to hear from Kitty while trying to get police to pay attention. When Ruby expressed concern regarding her daughter's disappearance, authorities told her that Kitty was probably just laying low somewhere. No matter how much Ruby insisted that it would be extremely out of character for Kitty to just up and leave without contacting her or her son, she was brushed off. One month later, in July of 1983, a friend called Ruby's house to wish Kitty a happy birthday.

She would have been 30 on July 1st. Ruby told the friend that Kitty wasn't there. She hadn't been there for over a month. The friend was confused by Ruby's response, and by the end of their phone call, Kitty's friend had resolved to report Kitty Wardwell missing herself. That's when the first formal report was filed in Kitty's disappearance. Then, in November of 1963, several months later, Kitty's sister Marla Collins also filed a report with the Maine State Police. The document reads, Kitty Wardwell, possible homicide, missing person.

How the earliest days of the investigation into Kitty's disappearance were handled is unknown. Maine State Police won't release any documents pertaining to the case because it's still considered open. But I do know that 10 years later, an entire decade after Kitty Wardwell was last seen alive by her mother Ruby, detectives sat down with Frank Julian to ask him a couple of questions about June 5th and 6th, 1983. Frank told state police detectives the same thing he told Ruby.

They got into a fight or disagreement of some sort, and he left Kitty at the El Rancho Motel in Salem, New Hampshire. He added that someone picked her up and Frank returned to Maine, not giving Kitty a second thought. But investigators checked with that motel, and they had no record of Kitty ever being there. Well, maybe Frank's name was on the room. Maybe that's why they didn't have a record of Kitty. But it still didn't add up for investigators. Retired detective Brian Strout spoke to News 8 WMTW in 2011

about his time working Kitty Wardwell's case. He had interviewed Frank Julian and said that Frank was cordial and nice and went along with his line of questioning, but then abruptly stopped the conversation and told Detective Strout, quote, when you get something, come back and see me, end quote. Without a crime scene, without a trail to follow, getting something? That was the whole challenge. Investigators asked Frank Julian if he'd agreed to a polygraph test, but according to reporting by the Bangor Daily News, Frank refused. Whatever information he was concealing about the last day he spent with Kitty Wardwell

would stay hidden for the rest of his life. There's little public information about what happened in the investigation during the nearly 30 years after Kitty Wardwell disappeared. Kitty's family desperately waited for any developments in her case, while her son grew up with Ruby, his grandmother, then got married and had a child of his own. Ruby Dowdy wrote that letter to the Mid-American Broadcasting Company, pleading for help in finding her daughter. Meanwhile, Frank Julian appeared relatively unfazed by the disappearance of his employee-slash-girlfriend. Frank Zamboni, also retired from the Maine State Police, told the Associated Press, quote,

the impression I got from him was that he didn't really care, end quote. According to reporting by the Bangor Daily News, from 2001 to 2007, Frank ran a store called the One Stop Shop, selling Christmas decor, knives, t-shirts, and a random assortment of trinkets and shotskis. Frank didn't seem to slow down, even into his late 70s. In fact, his obituary says that Frank worked right up until his death on October 1, 2011. Any hope of interviewing Frank Julian for a second time and finding out what he knew about Kitty Wardwell's disappearance was lost. Except his death would prove to be the very thing that answered the biggest question her family had been asking for nearly 30 years. Where is Kitty? In late October 2011, the family of Francis Frank Julian began sorting through the possessions of their late father and grandfather.

There were family heirlooms to retain and Monday and everyday items to be disposed of. He lived 80 years and had 80 years worth of life to be sorted. Frank rented a storage unit in Lewiston for 19 years, signing a lease for unit 173 at Moore Self Storage in Lewiston. It was a 10x10 unit. He paid three months in advance and was never late with his rent a single time since 1992. When his family rolled up the garage-style door of the storage unit, they encountered boxes upon boxes of household items, stacked high from front to back, top to bottom. It was nearly full to the brim. The family had quite the task ahead of them. As they sorted the boxes, possibly making sense of what was worth keeping, donating, or disposing as you do when sorting the belongings of a deceased loved one,

the piles thinned out, and the light at the end of the storage unit tunnel was almost visible. As they tackled yet another stack of boxes, flipping open their cardboard lids to survey the contents inside, a very different kind of box became visible at the back of the unit. It was a chest freezer. About six feet in length and unplugged, the hefty appliance was unassuming and yet incongruent with the packed items around it. Just as they'd done with the dozens of boxes before it, a family member flipped open the hinged lid to see what Frank had been storing inside.

That's when 28 years of secrets began to unravel. Then-spokesman Steve McCausland for the Maine State Police told the Bangor Daily News, quote, Relatives of a Lewiston on the afternoon of October 21, 2011, to collect the remains and search the remnants of the storage unit, which was still about half full when they arrived. Though State Police could not confirm the identity of the remains on site, speculation was rampant that the body belonged to the 29-year-old mother, Kitty Collins Wardwell, who'd been missing for nearly three decades. Family members of both Kitty and Frank were cooperative with police

during their investigation of the discovery, and both families awaited news of an identification. The condition of the remains was not released immediately, however, the freezer was unplugged and appeared to not have been plugged in for quite some time, making visual ID impossible. The lab in Maine was not equipped with the technology to perform DNA analysis to confirm the identity of the remains, so they were shipped to Pennsylvania for advanced testing. Meanwhile, both the press and the Maine State Police seemed to operate on the assumption that it was, in fact, Kitty Wardwell inside that chest freezer. State Police petitioned the public for information, asking anyone who lived in the Greenwood Gardens apartments on U.S. Route 1A in Holden during 1983 to please contact them. Steve McCausland told the Vanguard Daily News that they'd spoken to many of Kitty's

neighbors throughout the years, but with this new discovery, revisiting the night of June 5th, 1983, was an important part of the investigation. Though it had been almost 30 years, detectives held out hope that someone saw or knew something about the last night Kitty was known to be alive. In December 2011, Maine State Police finally confirmed what everyone had assumed since that storage unit discovery. DNA testing concluded that the remains belonged to Kitty Wardwell. The cause of death was not released, but the manner of death was clear. Kitty was the victim of a homicide.

It's now been over 10 years since Kitty Wardwell's surviving family members learned the truth about where she was all that time. Though Kitty's mother passed away before her remains were discovered, Kitty's siblings await the answers to their next biggest question. Who did this to their sister? Assumptions surrounding the man who rented the storage unit, but with his passing, Frank Julian can never answer any questions about what they found inside that freezer. Retired Detective Strout told David Charnes for News 8 WMTW in 2016, quote, I had a pretty good idea that it was Mr. Julian based on previous interviews, based on the fact that it was his storage shed, based on the fact that the body was discovered, end quote. But the possibility remains that this case does not start

and end with Frank Julian. Detective Strout was confident about one detail. The freezer that served as Kitty's burial site for who knows how many years? It was moved. Frank started renting the Lewiston storage unit in 1992, nine years after Kitty disappeared. Where was the freezer before then? How did it get to the storage unit? A big appliance like that is heavy, bulky, impossible for one person to maneuver on his own.

Strout said to David Charnes, quote, Could somebody have helped him not knowing what was in there? Absolutely. Could somebody have helped him knowing what was in there? Absolutely. End quote. I think it's important to note that the surviving family members of Francis Frank Julian did not speak to the press at the time of the discovery or since. On an online memorial website that lists Frank Julian's obituary, family and friends left their condolences in their posts mourning his loss. One reads in part, I don't care about what some people are saying about what has happened this week. I know the real you, and I feel really bad for those who never got the chance to know you. It only compounds the heartbreaking nature of this case for me.

You have a family facing the loss of their father and grandfather, only to be rocked by a discovery that challenged what they thought they knew about the man. The rumors and assumptions were undoubtedly painful for his relatives, who may have never anticipated what they'd find in that storage locker, or maybe never even heard the name of the woman who was once part of Frank's life. Unable to speak for himself, his legacy is forever altered without due process. Frank Julian's alleged involvement in Kitty Wardwell's disappearance and death will stand in limbo until someone can answer the questions that linger.

As of 2016, the homicide of Kitty Wardwell remained an open case, and to my knowledge today, still considered open, though not active. Her name isn't on the Maine State Unsolved Homicide list. As the website itself states, when the likely perpetrator is deceased, the names of their victims are omitted from the public-facing database. With the status of the case seeming to be open, obtaining records about her case is proving to be difficult. I've submitted requests specifically for the autopsy of Kitty Wardwell. There's one question that keeps nagging at me, something that her mother wrote in that letter to the Mid-American Broadcasting Company, but I couldn't independently verify. She claimed Kitty was pregnant, and I'm wondering, did the autopsy reveal that to be true?

If I'm able to obtain any documents in Kitty's case, I'll update it here on Dark Down East. What if someone is out there who can answer the questions that remain for Kitty's family? If her name ceases to be spoken, and her story lost with time, will there ever be a true end to this story? Kitty Collins Wardwell's obituary was published in 2011 alongside a high school photo. It reads in part, 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. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. Sources for this case include reporting by the Associated Press, Nashua Police Department, April Jean Bailey was last seen in Nashua, New Hampshire on January 15, 2020. She was staying at a residence on Lynn Street and stepped out to take out the trash. April never returned. She was 36 years old at the time of her disappearance, 5 foot 2 inches tall, with brown, black hair, blue eyes, and about 130 pounds.

April was wearing a black jacket, PJ pants, and slippers. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Nashua Police Department at 603-594-3500. This information and photos are listed at darkdowneast.com slash missing. Thank you for supporting this show and allowing me to do what I do. I'm 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 homicide 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.