Dark Downeast - The Disappearance of Pauline Rourke (Maine)

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

MAINE MISSING PERSON, 1977: When Honey kissed her sleeping mother goodbye before school on December 15, 1977, it was the last time Pauline Rourke was ever seen again. But this isn’t just the case of Pauline Rourke’s disappearance. This is also the story of Janet Baxter, Patricia Ann Sinclair, and her children Craig, Christopher, and Christine. The one name that connects every person on that list? Albert P. Cochran.This is the shocking timeline of a murderer walking free, leaving victims and trial technicalities and unsolved crimes in his wake, seizing his opportunity to strike again and again.If you have information regarding this case, please contact the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit - Central at [phone] or toll free at 1-800-452-4664. You may also report information about this crime using the leave a tip form. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/paulinerourkeFollow @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.

Christmas was just 10 days away in 1976 when Sandra Wark, also known as Honey, walked into her mother's bedroom to kiss her goodbye before leaving for school. Honey's mother, Pauline, was still in bed and seemed to be asleep, laying on her side. It was maybe a little strange to Honey, but then again, she remembered hearing her mom and Albert up late, arguing the night before. Albert moved in with them, into their trailer off Route 129 in Fairfield that year. Pauline and Albert had grown up in the same household in Oakland together. Pauline was a foster child in Albert's parents' home. The argument Honey heard was really bad. She ran to her room and put a pillow over her head to muffle the sounds of their shouting.

They had been fighting more and more lately, and this was worse than she had ever heard it. Since that day, when Albert drove them out to the banks of the Kennebec to look at something in the woods, things had been especially tense at home. So when her mother was still in bed on a weekday as she left for school, Honey thought she was probably just sleeping off the fight, giving Albert some space. When Honey came home from school that day, her mother wasn't home. Albert said she'd be back later, but Pauline Rourke never returned. Not that night, not even that week or that month. Honey never saw her mother again. In the 44 years since Honey

kissed her mother goodbye before leaving for school, no one has found a single trace of Pauline Rourke. Bruce Hertz wrote in his column Somerset Sawdust in the January 28, 1978 issue of the Bang a wanton, unexpected, and sometimes hideously casual way touches us all. There is the unconscious fear that such a calamity could happen to any one of us, or any member of our family. The longer such a crime goes unsolved, the more uneasy the public becomes, because there is still a murderer ready to strike again. This isn't just the case of 32-year-old Pauline Rourke's disappearance. This is also the story of 30-year-old Janet Baxter,

19-year-old Patricia Ann Sinclair, 10-month-old Craig, 2-year-old Christopher, and 3-year-old Christine. The one name that connects every person on that list? Albert P. Cochran. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Patricia Ann Sinclair was just 15 years old when she married 21-year-old Albert P. Cochran in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Just 15

years young, already a wife. Patricia's parents called her a religious, family-oriented girl. She always wore a Methodist religious medal around her neck. Albert and Patricia, they relocated from Michigan to Illinois in October of 1962 and moved into their first marital home together, a duplex at 1612 Campbell Avenue in Joliet to start their family. Albert was working as a department store manager at a discount store in town. And soon after they settled into Joliet life, Patricia was pregnant with their first child, a daughter named Christine. Then came their first son Christopher a year later, and in 1963, they welcomed their second son, Craig. By the time Patricia was 19, she had three kids, three, two, and ten months old. On Monday, February 10, 1964, a neighbor on Campbell Avenue named Mrs. Swindles

paced her kitchen. She hadn't seen Patricia or any of the three children all day. It was alarming. Three kids, three and under. The family was always seen around the duplex, or at the very least, heard. But Mrs. Swindles hadn't heard a peep. That home sat quiet. So she called the police. When police arrived at the Cochran home, they knocked, but there was no answer. The door was locked, and seeing as there wasn't anything obviously wrong, they didn't just take the neighbor's word for it and bust in. Instead, they hopped back into their cruiser and set off to find Albert at work at the discount store. At the store, they told Albert a neighbor was worried about his wife and the kids, and they needed to get into the house to make sure

everything was okay. But Albert said he didn't have a key. You see, he and Patricia were separated, and she'd recently filed a separate maintenance suit against him, which is like alimony, but for separation, not divorce. They took his word for it. Without a key, police returned to the home with Albert. He watched as they broke a window to let themselves in. And what they found was shocking, sickening, and completely horrific. Patricia and the three kids were dead, all still wearing their nightclothes. Christopher, Christine, and Craig had been stabbed multiple times in the chest and placed in the bathtub. A steak knife was laying near their bodies.

Patricia's body was in the living room, wrapped in a blanket, her face covered with a towel. Albert showed zero emotion when he came upon the bodies with investigators. Police handcuffed him on the scene and when they searched him, they found a key to the home in his pocket. Upon closer look, Albert also had scratches all over his face, but he couldn't explain how he got them. Police pressed him, digging deeper and deeper, because something about Albert just wasn't right. The line of questioning got more and more intense until finally, they broke him. His story was that on Sunday night after bowling a few frames, he called up Patricia to tell her that he was coming over. With the separate maintenance

suit already filed, tensions were high and a quote, terrible argument broke out. Albert told police that when he left around midnight, his wife and children were still alive. The detectives didn't buy it, so they pressed him further and sure enough, Albert's story changed. The bowling and the late night visit, the argument, they were all still part of his tale. But he didn't actually leave after the fight. Instead, the story changed and Albert said he made for the door and hopped in his car to speed off, only to find that his car wouldn't start. He told police that he went back inside the house and hollered to his wife

that he was going to sleep on the floor and be gone in the morning. Then, Albert explained, he was woken up by his wife standing over him. Patricia said to him, you'll never see Christine again. I've taken care of her. He claims then he went into the bathroom to find his children in the tub. The sight, he told police, made him turn on his wife. I choked her and choked her and choked her until she dropped. That admission was enough to charge him with murder of Patricia Ann Sinclair. The coroner's report concluded that Patricia's neck was broken and she and the children had been dead 12 to 16 hours before police entered the home. Albert was scheduled for a polygraph test but initially

refused. Albert claimed he planned to take his own life after the murder, buying a rope from the discount store where he worked, but he couldn't do it. Then he told police he thought he might drive his car into the Illinois River, but he, quote, chickened out, end quote. He told detectives, I hope the state will do what I didn't have the nerve to do, execute me. In the investigation leading up to his trial, it was learned that Albert had multiple women on the side, and the reason he was separated from Patricia? He was accused of molesting her. As the investigation pressed on, Albert finally agreed to a lie detector test. And it was during that questioning, he admitted what police assumed to be true all along. Not only did he strangle

his wife, Patricia, but the whole thing about his wife standing over him in the night, claiming to have murdered their daughter, that didn't happen. According to the polygraph test, Albert admitted to also killing Christine, Christopher, and Craig. Despite this admission during the lie detector test, when he was arraigned in March of 1964, he pleaded not guilty to the murders of his wife and children. Albert P. Cochran's trial began on September 14, 1964. After 17 days of testimony and questioning, the trial reached an unexpected end on September 30. The judge had just sent the jury out of the courtroom and listened to the original confession tape made by police, the very first one in which he said he only murdered Patricia after she murdered the

three kids. Albert suddenly changed his plea for the killing of his wife to guilty, but the charges for murdering his three children were dropped due to a technicality. Even though Albert confessed to killing all four souls during that polygraph test, he never signed the confession. It was actually the state's attorney, the prosecution, Frank H. Masters Jr., who asked the judge to drop those three murder charges for his children. He feared that the admission of the second unsigned confession into evidence might lead to a reversal of the guilty verdict based on recent precedents set by higher court rulings. If the guilty verdict was reversed, Albert would walk completely free. But dropping the charges and finding him guilty based on his confession for murdering his wife,

he'd be sentenced to 50 to 75 years in prison. He was 25 years old, so a sentence of that length was pretty near life. However, Albert was eligible for parole in 11 and a half years. And somehow, unbelievably, this wife killer and suspected family annihilator was granted parole. And his parole was transferred to Maine in 1976. So the convicted murderer, Albert P. Cochran, was living in Fairfield, Maine after his parole was transferred back to here, his home state. Albert had moved in with Pauline Rourke and her 12-year-old daughter, Honey, and he was working for his brother's construction company in Fairfield. As an adult, Honey told the Bangor Daily News that her mother, Pauline, was a carefree, devoted mother. Quote, her mother Pauline was a carefree, devoted mother. She was my Girl Scout leader, an artist.

She was teaching me how to bake. And then she shared a story that reminded me of my own mother. She said she was the kind of mother who would come to school and tell them she had a dentist appointment. And when Honey would say, I don't have a dentist appointment, she said, I know, we're going sledding. They did everything together, and she was a wonderful mother.

Pauline knew about Albert's past, but she believed him when he said he only killed his wife after he realized she killed their children. It was all a misunderstanding, he convinced her. He was only retaliating against Patricia for taking the lives of their children. He was a good person. What bad person would be granted parole while serving a murder sentence after only 11 years? And he stuck to that story, and it won Pauline over. Despite those good guy stories Albert told Pauline about himself? Her daughter Honey remembered that he always looked angry. He never smiled, saying, quote, I remember he had huge, huge hands. He always turned beet,

beet red, like a tomato. That's when my mother would back off. So while Albert was living with Pauline and Honey in November of 1976, a shocking news story took over their small community. Just before midnight on November 23, 1976, police in Norridge Walk, Maine responded to a strange scene. A Ford sedan was found off the road, teetering on the bank of the Kennebec River. The motor was running, but there was no driver in sight. The officer searched the driver's seat and popped open the glove box to find the registration, and he surveyed the scene. Given the odd circumstances, the officer continued his search by opening the trunk of the car. Inside, he discovered the half-clothed body

of 30-year-old Janet Baxter. She had gunshot wounds to her head and chest. Less than three hours before police found her body, Janet had left her boyfriend at home with her seven-year-old daughter just for a quick trip to the Waterville A&P market to pick up a few essentials and some medicine for a pesky cold that she had been fighting. When she didn't return home by midnight, Janet's boyfriend called the police. In that short window of time, whoever killed Janet had abducted her from that A&P parking lot, driven her to the riverbank, and as the autopsy showed, that person also raped her before shooting her to death and shoving her body in the trunk of the vehicle. It was a big story,

and the town was talking. They were scared, sure, but Albert became obsessed with the Janet Baxter case. He talked about it with Pauline. He clipped every single newspaper article he could find, leaving them scattered around Pauline's home. According to an article in the Bangor Daily News, police recovered over 300 items of evidence in the car where Janet's body was found, despite the assumed DNA evidence found in the car and on Janet herself. DNA evidence testing just wasn't a thing. The advanced technology didn't exist yet,

and although they had suspects on their radar, they had nothing to definitively tie those individuals to the scene or the crime. Honey told CentralMaine.com that she remembered overhearing a conversation between her mother and her aunt Joy around that time. Pauline was unsettled by Albert's interest in the case. He wasn't home the night Janet was murdered. Pauline was scared. Joy told her to pack a suitcase for her and Honey and leave with her that night, but Pauline hesitated. She didn't want to take Honey out of school. And then one day, Albert took his obsession to an extreme. He made Pauline and Honey visit the scene of the crime. He drove them to the site on the Kennebec,

morbidly curious or maybe grossly impressed by what happened there. Why did he have such a fascination with this murder? That's when Pauline called him out for his infatuation with the case. It was a turning point in their arguments. Things went from bad to worse. Honey said their fights were more intense and frequent, and they reached the height in mid-December when Maine State Police named Albert Cochran a suspect in the case. They took Albert's hair samples and compared them to hair found at the scene, but the FBI reported no positive comparisons. Without advanced DNA testing, Albert's hair samples were just preserved and stored in evidence. But Maine State Police weren't done with Albert Cochran. Because of her closeness to Albert, a suspect,

they called Pauline Rourke in for questioning. But she never had a chance to share what she knew about him, what she thought to be true about Albert and his involvement in the case. Because Pauline disappeared the very day she was scheduled to be questioned about the Janet Baxter murder investigation. After that kiss goodbye from Honey on December 15, 1977, Helene was never seen again. When she got home from school that night, Honey remembered Albert acting strange. She asked where her mother was, but didn't get a straight answer. She went to bed scared. Honey told the Bangor Daily News that

Albert woke her up at 11 p.m. that night and then drove her to his mother's house. Then he woke Honey up again at two in the morning and told her to wash the dishes. She said she was tired and she wanted her mother. Honey tried to make a phone call, but Albert snatched the phone from her. He grabbed Honey's shoulder and forced her to the sink, but eventually she was able to run to her bedroom and push her bed against the door. The next day, Albert called Pauline's sister Joy

and asked Joy if she'd seen Pauline. Albert told Joy that Pauline hadn't been home in two days. Joy didn't hesitate for a single second. She drove up to Maine and picked up Honey, and that was the last time Honey and Albert ever saw each other. Joy raised Honey as her own. A tiny little blip of an article in the Bangor Daily News on December 22, 1976 read, Fairfield Center woman missing. Maine State Police are looking for a Fairfield Center woman missing since December 15. She is Pauline Rourke, 32.

Anyone having any knowledge of her whereabouts is asked to call the Maine State Police toll-free. I scoured newspaper articles, scanning decades of publications, looking for Pauline's name in the columns, but here is where the timeline of events in Pauline's case gets kind of sparse. Honey lived her life in Vermont with her Aunt Joy. She stopped speaking to Albert. And even though Albert was a suspect in Janet Baxter's murder, even though he was obsessed with her case and was called out for that obsession by Pauline the night before she disappeared, Albert somehow slipped off to Florida in 1977, apparently unnoticed. The 70s roll into the 80s and then the 90s, with no developments in either Janet Baxter or Pauline Rourke's cases.

But the 1990s did bring significant developments in DNA testing and the acceptance of DNA evidence in criminal trials. Advanced DNA testing, the kind that would allow investigators to crack the Janet Baxter case wide open, didn't arrive in Maine until 1997. 1998 was the year that the FBI launched the National DNA Index System, or the NDIS. This national database meant states could submit samples from known criminals and unknown persons at crime scenes. Meanwhile, Albert had settled down in Stewart, Florida. He was going by his middle name, Pat, and he got married again to a woman named Kathy. Medium.com reported that Albert was working as a cabinetmaker up until a heart attack, and a series of surgeries forced him into retirement in the early 1990s. His wife Kathy later told reporters she had no idea he was a convicted murderer.

Albert had told her and friends that his first wife and children died in an accident. In 1998, just months after the advanced DNA technology reached the Maine State Crime Lab, investigators submitted the evidence in Janet Baxter's case for DNA testing. The hair that had sat in evidence for decades was going to be tested against other DNA found at the scene. And remarkably, they found a match. The semen found in Janet Baxter matched the hair of Albert P. Cochran. Sharon Mack wrote for the Bangor Daily News on March 18, 1998, quote,

The timeless hand of DNA reached back 21 years Tuesday to snatch a former Fairfield man now living in Florida to stand trial for a 1976 Norwich Walk murder. Using DNA from biological samples stored for more than two decades, police arrested Albert P. Cochran, 60, of Stewart, Florida, for the 1976 murder of Janet Baxter of Oakland, end quote. Albert was arrested on his birthday. Now, it's no surprise that Albert had a story for the night of Janet's murder. He told police he dropped his car in the A&P parking lot where Janet was last seen alive, continuing to a bar where he met three men who offered him weed and beer. He hopped in their car to head to a party,

but apparently got freaked out, he said, and concerned about the guy's intentions, so he jumped out of the car and ran to his brother's house in Norwich Walk around 3 a.m. His brother lives just across the river from where Janet Baxter was murdered. His brother drove him back to his car in the AMP lot, he said. The trial of Albert Cochran lasted nine days, during which the defense tried to pin the murder on those three men Albert claimed to be with that night and attempted to discredit the DNA evidence that got him charged in the first place.

The defense going so far as to say, Sex is not murder. You cannot assume Albert Cochran killed her because you believe he had sex with her. End quote. The jury deliberated just two hours and 20 minutes before returning a verdict. Guilty. Albert was convicted of the rape and murder of Janet Baxter and sentenced to life in prison.

Honey was in the courtroom when jurors read the verdict. She told the Bangor Daily News, quote, Now I don't have to be afraid anymore. I'm hoping that maybe now he'll give us some answers about my mother, end quote. Police had always suspected Albert Cochran to be involved in the disappearance of Pauline Rourke, and with a life sentence to serve, they now had access to Albert. They needed him to confess to that suspected involvement

in the disappearance of Pauline Rourke. In the years following his second murder conviction, Maine State Police quietly worked with Albert in hopes of learning the whereabouts of Pauline Rourke. Investigators had lengthy conversations with him, trying to pry any shred of detail from the man. Honey herself visited Albert in prison, hiding a tape recorder in the room whenever she went to see him.

She tried to be nice to him, willing to try anything to learn she went to see him. She tried to be nice to him, willing to try anything to learn what happened to her mother. He'd tell her lies, and then he'd slip up and mention little things about how her mother had died, how he killed Pauline, how he shot her in the head, how cold the water was in the well where he left her body. And then he'd switch his story again. It was all just a game to Albert, but still those half-truths were pieced together, and they gave police more and more to go on. It wasn't until Albert died on June 27th, 2017, that police revealed just how close to answers they had come. In April and early June of 2017,

as Albert's health deteriorated, police drove him around Smithfield, Maine on what may have been a wild goose chase. Or maybe the killer was ready to reveal the answers they'd been seeking for over four decades. As reported by the Bangor Daily News, Cochran told police that Pauline's body was in a well. He stopped short of admitting that he killed her,

only telling investigators that they would find her in a well on a property with a dilapidated barn half-caving it. The well would be lined with slate rocks on top with a hayfield out back. Investigators went so far as to search three wells in Smithfield and excavate two of them, also tearing up property in Fairfield. But still, no sign of Pauline's remains.

Maine State Police spokesperson Steve McCausland said, quote, throughout a number of meetings with him, the impression I got was that he would only give so much, and then he'd just hold back, almost like he was scheming and calculating. It's a mystery we came very close to resolving. But whether Cochran was mistaken about the well location, or whether he was just manipulating, we don't know, end quote. Albert very well may be the only person who knew the real location of Pauline Work's body, but her remains are still out there, and Honey will never stop searching. Honey told the BDN, quote, I just never got to say my goodbyes. I have a horrible time knowing her remains are out there. I just want people to realize it's very important for me to find her.

I really need to have the closure. I will have a funeral, but I won't bury her again. I won't put her in the ground. She was too young, end quote. Chicago Tribune, The Times in Streeter, Illinois, The Bangor Daily News, The Portland Press Herald, Medium.com, and charlieproject.org. All of my sources for this episode and others are linked at darkdowneast.com so you can dig in and learn more. Don't forget that subscribing and reviewing Dark Down East is free and it really supports the show and it's the best way to ensure that you never miss an episode of Maine and New England true crime stories.

I've loved seeing your lobster emojis pop up in reviews. So if you leave a review after listening to this episode, could you leave a pine tree emoji? I just love tracking them. It's really fun. Don't forget, if you have a story or a case I should cover, I'd love to hear from you at darkdowneast at gmail.com. Follow along with the show at darkdowneast.com and on Instagram at darkdowneast. 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 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.