Dark Downeast - The Murder of Debra Dill (Maine)

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

MAINE MURDER, 1973: When a passing driver discovered 18-year old Debra Dill's car on the side of a rural back road near Litchfield, Maine on September 16, 1973, it began a fifteen year search for answers and a journey to justice in the random, violent killing of a beloved young woman.This is the story of a woman’s life stolen, a bizarre confession and imperfect investigation, and the complex criminal justice issue of parole. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/debradillFollow @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.

Maine is crisscrossed with an intricate web of side streets and back roads. We've got little camp paths with two worn grooves of dirt, tall grass sprouting up between the tire tracks and tickling the underbellies of every car that drives over. There are roads that don't even have names, but you know it by the granite boulder sitting heavy just a few feet before it, or the red mailbox that signals it's time to turn, or a simple tree that looks a little different than the others, marking your route with more clarity than a GPS ever could. I still remember the back road routes that wind from my parents' house in central Maine to the homes of my high school friends. The shortcuts didn't have street lights

or homes flanking either side of the road, but there was safety and comfort in the familiarity of the route. I remember turning up a particularly melancholic teenage breakup anthem on the 6 CD player and rolling the crank windows down and driving along those roads at night like I was in a music video. And then I'd pull into the driveway, cut the enginewill Road in the early morning hours of September 16, 1973. And maybe she was listening to her own teenage heartbreak anthem after an argument with her fiancé. Maybe when she saw the headlights in her rearview mirror, she wondered who else would be out on this back road at that hour. This is the story of a woman's life stolen. A bizarre confession and imperfect investigation, the family's 15-year wait for answers,

and the conversation surrounding the complex criminal justice issue of parole. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Deborah Dill on Dark Down East. She was beautiful. I'm looking at a photo of Deborah Dill right now. Her dark hair was full and shiny, with a perfect little flip at the ends. Her cheekbones were pronounced as she smiled, a sweet, closed-mouthed grin. The hue of the vintage photograph makes her bright eyes look a rich hazel color, with flecks of green catching light. From what I've read about Debra, she was beautiful in ways not captured by photographs, too. She was one of several girls and one boy in the Dill family, and she had a close bond with her little sisters,

taking them swimming and treating them to sweets and promising to always be there when they needed her. The Dill family, including Debra's sisters and mother Janice, shared their story on a TV show called Motives and Murders, Cracking the Case, in 2016. Vicki Dill was 10 years old in 1973, and even though her big sister was 8 years older, she said Debbie always looked out for her. Deborah moved out of her mom's home in West Gardner, Maine by the time she was 18 years old. With so many kids younger than her in the same household, she sought space to be independent, and so she got a place with some friends in Gardner. Debbie was in love with her fiancé, a Lewiston police patrolman named Kenneth

Gilman. She was dreaming up their wedding plans, and with her eyes on becoming a missus, Deborah left school before finishing her senior year. I think of Debra as a full of love and life young woman. Her mother and sisters reflected on her excitement to marry Kenneth. Debra even had invitations made. In a short phone call on Saturday, September 15th, 1973, Debra told her mom Janice she'd be by the house with the printed invitations later that night, after she spent some time with Kenneth at his place in Litchfield. It was maybe a 10 or 15 minute drive, all back roads from West Gardner.

According to reporting by the Biddeford Soaco Journal, Deborah got out of work at the Value House at 5pm that evening, and would have typically walked down the block for a shift at Pizza Hut soon after, but she didn't show up that night. Whether she cut work out of the blue for a little extra time with Kenneth, or she just wasn't needed that night because maybe it was slow. That detail is unclear. Although Debra's mom was expecting her, wedding invites in hand, Janice didn't worry when Debra didn't show up. She thought maybe her daughter lingered a little longer at Kenneth's, or maybe she had a change in plans, or maybe it got late, and instead of winding those back roads in the pitch black September darkness, she stayed put. But the next morning, a heartbreaking discovery on those

quiet, familiar back roads in central Maine began a 15-year mystery. Who killed Deborah Dill? There's a place in Maine called Purgatory. As local legend goes, the little village of Purgatory in Litchfield, Maine, earned its peculiar moniker thanks to a joke by Mr. William Gardner in 1776. After a night in the woods in the general area, he told friends they'd camped out in purgatory, saying, the mosquitoes and black flies were so thick we couldn't get a wink of sleep. If you've ever spent time in the woods in central Maine or really anywhere in Maine, you know that sounds quite accurate. Now according to the Historical Society of Litchfield, Maine, preachers and mapmakers and even the U.S. Post Office have tried without success to rename the village to something more appealing, like Pleasant Valley

or simply North Litchfield. But Purgatory can't shake its historic and humorous name. Purgatory sits between Cabasacante Stream and Woodbury Pond, and you'll pass through it if you're making your way from Monmouth or Litchfield to West Gardner. Depending on where in Litchfield you find yourself, you might take the route around the north side of the pond and choose the unlined, tree-bordered Whippoorwill Road as your route back to town. At 7.45 in the morning on September 16, 1973, a passing driver on Whippoorwill Road noticed something unusual. There in the woods, just about 10 feet off the road, was a car, but it didn't appear damaged. Still, wanting to make sure its driver was okay if there had been an accident,

they stepped out of their own vehicle for a closer look. Just a few feet from the abandoned car, in the sticks and leaves, lay the partially undressed and beaten body of a young woman. First responders to the scene identified the victim as 18-year-old Debra Dill. Police knocked on the door of Debra's parents' house, and Janice stepped outside to hear the news that no mother is prepared to process. Debra's siblings remembered watching through the blinds as their mother, for reasons they didn't know at the time, collapsed into their father's arms. Debra's little sisters said in an interview that when their parents got home that Sunday afternoon, their father told them that Debra, Debbie, their big sister who promised to always be there when they needed her, she had died in a car accident.

The information didn't immediately process. It was all too surreal for the young kids to take in. That story, that Debra Dill died in a car accident on a dark back road in rural central Maine, was the story that her little sister Vicky believed for years. She told Motives and Murder that her parents wanted to protect them from the horrible, chilling truth. Debra was murdered. Their parents managed to shield their other children from headlines that hit the papers as fast as they could be printed. Blunt Weapon killed Deborah Dill and slain girl's friends gathered by police. As the investigation into who was responsible began, police started with Debra's friends and those closest to her.

Most importantly, the Lewiston police officer whose name was on those wedding invitations. Kenneth Gilman's evening plans with Deborah Dill got cut short when he needed to respond to several calls just before 1 a.m. on September 16th. According to his interview with state police, that only added to the tension between him and Debra that night. Although Debra was wrapped up in wedding plans and picking a date and dreaming of a life as Mrs. Kenneth Gilman, Kenneth himself had a different view of their relationship. It seemed Kenneth hadn't fully committed to Debra, and when she showed up with wedding invitations that night, it caused a bit of an argument. Add to that Kenneth having to go back to work,

and the terms they ended on weren't good. Kenneth was the last person to see Debra alive just hours before that passing driver found her body, and it was clear their last interaction wasn't positive. Kenneth Gilman, a police officer himself, became the primary suspect. In the days following her death, a friend of Kenneth's noticed he was acting strange, just off somehow. Was it a sign of his guilt, or was it the behavior of a man whose fiancé was just found murdered? But as quickly as he landed on the investigation's radar, Kenneth Gilman was ruled out. Detailed time records of the calls he responded to while on duty that night put him far away from the crime scene between the one-hour window from 1.30 a.m.

to 2.30 a.m. when the medical examiner determined that Deborah died. If Deborah left Kenneth Gilman's house in Litchfield that night when he went back to work, where did Deborah go? In a piece by the Biddeford Socko Journal, Deputy Attorney General Richard Cohen said they learned Debra might have headed to a bar in Lewiston, but this detail about a bar isn't consistent across sources. But here's a detail that is a little more consistent. According to an article in the Kennebec Journal, Deborah got pulled over by a Lewiston police officer at 1.20 a.m. for what they called a routine safety check. That was the same police force for which her fiancé Kenneth worked. And she was pulled over 30 to 60 minutes after she left his house,

within an hour of her death. The loss of Deborah Dill shocked the community, and the fear that an unknown, unprovoked, unconscionable killer was still walking amongst the small town demanded that over 12 investigators join the effort to locate this monster as soon as possible. They conducted hundreds of interviews with Deborah's friends and family while reviewing every piece of evidence they could find at the scene.

But no matter how closely they looked, one key item eluded them, the murder weapon. While the autopsy report detailed what that weapon was likely to be, One key item eluded them, the murder weapon. While the autopsy report detailed what that weapon was likely to be, police didn't release the details of that item to the public, because it would be a crucial piece of the puzzle to verify the story of any possible suspects. On the night of September 18, 1973, just two days later, Portland police officer Terrence St. John sat at his favorite table in a Portland restaurant.

He and a fellow officer were enjoying their meal when a man, pacing and mumbling approached their table. What he told them made the two officers wonder if their monstrous killer might be standing right beside them. His name was Howard Johnson, and his ramblings were largely incoherent, but what they could make out was concerning. Howard told Officer St. John that he had a fight with a woman at a Lewiston bar. He said she was young and she had dark hair. And then he said he buried some hammers and a watch that belonged to his dead brother, because he told the officers too many people were being hurt and killed. Howard said he buried hammers, and to anyone else that might have sounded random, but only police knew at the time that Deborah Dill died by multiple blows to the head, and the shape and size of her wounds

could only be attributed to a hammer. According to court documents, police located Howard Johnson's car and under close inspection found traces of blue paint on one of its fenders, blue paint that was similar to the color of Debra's car. Investigators believed that whoever killed Debra had first run her off the road by bumping her car, causing her to veer into the shoulder and several feet into the woods. The paint was a compelling piece of evidence, yes, but police needed more. Though it's unclear who exactly or what exactly led them to the discovery, police found a hammer. And on that hammer was a small blood stain. Immediately, they sent it off for testing, along with a bloody jacket that police

believed to belong to their suspect, Howard Johnson. The results of the blood tests would take some time, and as investigators waited, the stories from Howard only got more difficult to follow. He told police that he'd actually been in Camden, Maine the night of the murder, not Lewiston. Then he told them he was in a park in Lewiston, not a bar, but the description he gave matched a park in Portland. With every sentence that came out of his mouth, investigators wondered if they were dealing with the truth, or false confessions, or the incoherent words of a man battling with his mental health, words that aligned with case details only by coincidence. Then, as the investigation into his possible connection to the case continued, Howard Johnson walked to the end of a pier and jumped into the icy, cold Maine waters.

Howard survived the jump, but was hospitalized. Around the same time, those earlier blood test results returned, and they were inconclusive. They couldn't be sure that the blood on the hammer or the jacket matched Debra's blood type. Then investigators learned that the tire tracks at the scene didn't match Howard's car. According to court documents, this new information combined with Howard's mental state, quote, strongly indicate that any rational person would place absolutely no trust in these statements of Mr. Johnson at all. Unquote. It seems Howard Johnson wasn't their guy. The following month, October 1973, Detective Lieutenant Russell Bruton told the Bangor

Daily News that they had nothing startling to report on the Dill investigation. Quote, we're working like mad on it though, unquote. The original 12 investigators were scaled back. And just as Maine was sinking into a gray, cold autumn, Deborah's case grew cold with it. Seven years later, only halfway through what would become a 15-year waiting period for justice, Debra's little sister learned the truth about her death. In an interview with Motives and Murders, Vicky reflected on the moment she found the collection of news articles and documents clipped and carefully filed inside a binder, all about her big sister Debbie's murder. At that moment, the past seven years all made sense. Why her parents kept the truth a secret. Why people in town looked at their family with eyes that said more than just sympathy for their loss,

but with concern and maybe even fear that the killer, still walking free, could carry out another brutal attack. The town continued to wonder and whisper. Theories perpetuated over beers, unfamiliar faces scrutinized across the grocery store aisle. One reported confession by a guy trying to freak out his girlfriend gave authorities a story to check, but it didn't lead the case any closer to answers. Meanwhile, a woman named Anita Boucher couldn't stop thinking about that night in September 1973. The night her then-husband Michael came home drunk and staggering, demanding she wash his bloody clothes in the kitchen sink. September 8th, 1988, almost 15 years to the day of Deborah Dill's death, Assistant Attorney General Michael Westcott went before a Kennebec County grand jury to present new evidence in the brutal killing of

the beloved 18-year-old girl a decade and a half earlier. Two days later, a Connecticut State prison inmate was indicted for the murder of Deborah Dill. His name? Michael Boucher, and his arrest was based on a jailhouse confession that he murdered someone in a bar fight in Lewiston, Maine in 1973. Now, Maine State Police, when they heard of this confession, they checked. They didn't have any record of an unsolved bar fight murder in 1973. But what they did have was the unsolved murder of Deborah Dill. In 1973, Michael Boucher worked as a cook in Lewiston. Reporting about his

past is scant. He may have been a child of the foster care system, his upbringing sounds not so stable, but what is clear about Michael Boucher is that he had a vicious hatred for women. As whispers about Michael Boucher made it to the new detective assigned to Debra's case, police looked into his criminal history. They learned the name of a woman who had survived an attack by Michael Boucher almost around the same time of Deborah Dill's death. They asked the woman if she could share what happened the night that Michael Boucher ran her off the road. The woman told police she was driving down a quiet back road one night when she noticed headlights creeping closer and closer in her rearview mirror. So close that the car actually nudged her back bumper

several times. She stopped and got out of the car to take the license plate information, but Michael Boucher came after her. As he lunged, she got back into her car and tried to pull away, but Michael grabbed her. She fought back, she yelled, she laid on the car horn, and ultimately caused enough of a scene to make her assailant retreat. The attack on this woman happened just months after Debra was killed, and the circumstances of the attack matched the version of events they believed occurred on the night of September 16th, 1973. Following the jailhouse confession and the story from a survivor,ators were convinced that they were on the trail of Debra's killer, but it was circumstantial at best. They sought out Michael's ex-wife, Anita. What she told them

was even more damning. According to court documents, Anita told police that Boucher came home drunk and bloodied the same night Debra was murdered. He said he'd gotten into a fight with a telephone pole or some other booze-fueled rationale, and then he told her to wash his clothes in the kitchen sink. Several days later, while helping her husband clean his car, she found a letter in the back seat. It appeared to be signed by Deborah Dill. Anita also found a hammer, and though she offered to clean off what appeared to be rust and dirt, Michael insisted on just getting rid of it. Over the course of their marriage, Michael was abusive. He threatened Anita, saying that she'd end up just like Debra if she ever

revealed what she knew. When he drank, it seemed the liquor dredged up the stories he could only conceal while sober. He talked about Debra at least eight separate times, Anita said. Again, it was more compelling information, but what they needed was something physical. While searching Michael Boucher's property, they found it. A box of apparent souvenirs, trophies from his victim, items belonging to Deborah Dill. It would take two years for Michael Boucher to be transferred to Maine to stand trial for the murder of Deborah Dill. When he finally went to court in 1990, he entered a plea of innocent. His defense attorney argued that police botched the investigation from the start. What about that hammer and bloody jacket they found, the evidence tied to the earlier suspect Howard Johnson? Where was that evidence now?

As it turned out, the police lost it. After testing the blood on both items, they seemed to disappear without a trace. According to reporting of the trial by the Bangor Daily News, Boucher's attorney argued that the hammer in the jacket would have led them to Deborah's real killer, and the real killer was not his client. As much as the defense tried to douse the case in reasonable doubt, the testimony of Michael Boucher's ex-wife Anita and his other ex-wife Norma, plus the box of Deborah's belongings and Michael's own confession, it was all enough to convince the jury that the right man was on trial. The Kennebec County Superior Court jury found Michael Boucher guilty of murdering Deborah Dill.

Deborah's mother Janice told the Bangor Daily News she'd nearly given up all hope as the years rolled on without justice for her daughter. But with the guilty verdict, her hope was restored. Quote, I am so happy that it is over. Unquote. Deborah's sister Vicky told the media, quote, I think we've all been patient. Debbie's going to rest peacefully. Unquote. At the conclusion of his trial, Justice Bruce Chandler handed down the sentencing decision, life in prison.

But because the murder was committed in 1973, the sentencing laws from that year also applied to the case, which meant Michael Boucher was eligible for parole in 11 to 12 years with good behavior. Parole has since been abolished in Maine and many other states, replacing the parole eligibility for convicted murderers with a minimum 25-year and maximum life sentence. But the remaining cases, with the murders committed under the old parole laws, they fall into a tricky grandfathered gray area, a sentencing purgatory, if you will, that put the Dill family into a painful cycle of reliving their emotions and memories and trauma each and every time Deborah's killer was up for parole. Susan Sharon for Maine Public Radio examined the complex issue

of parole as lawmakers in Maine considered reinstating the once-abolished system this year in 2021. Abolishing parole was originally intended to instill confidence in the public that violent offenders would remain in prison. But as some argue, if the criminal justice system is supposed to be a system of reform, parole is part of that reform system. State Representative Jeff Evangelos of Friendship Maine told Maine Public Radio, quote, yes, I feel deeply for the victims as well, but society is not made safer when Maine's correction system frustrates hopes and redemption, unquote. The family of Deborah Dill is part of the opposition for reinstating parole in Maine. Every single time Michael Boucher is up for parole, they're at the prison, begging the parole board to keep Deborah's killer there.

Vicki Dill told Maine Public Radio, quote, my family and I go through sleepless nights, fear, anxiety, nervousness, lack of eating, and trauma of that day every five years. This is very trying in our family, and it's cruel at best. Considering this legislation, we'll just add unnecessary anxiety to more families should it be passed into law, unquote. In an interview with The Lineup, Vicky Dill, who was only 10 years old when her big sister was ripped from her world, had words for other families who may be walking the same difficult path as the Dills. Quote, quote, don't stop talking to family, friends, and folks that know the victim.

Don't ever let your loved one be forgotten. Celebrate the victim's birthday, holiday, favorite meal, favorite color, whatever keeps their spirit and memory alive with you. It isn't easy to do at first, but tears are your sign of the deep love you had for this person. I have shed many tears, and they aren't done yet. the Biddeford Saco Journal and Bangor Daily News, as well as motives and murders. It's all listed and linked at darkdowneast.com. If you're a new listener, thank you so much for tuning in to hear

these important true crime stories in the history of Maine and New England. If you have a story or a case I should cover, one that you have a personal connection to, I'd love to hear from you at hello at darkdowneast.com. Follow along with the show and see photos on Instagram and Facebook. Just search Dark Down East. 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.