Dark Downeast - The Murder of Mary Catherine Olenchuk (Maine)

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

UNSOLVED MAINE MURDER, 1970: 13-year old Mary Catherine Olenchuk left the beach before her family for a bike ride into town. She was last seen alive just 200 yards from her family's Ogunquit summer home, getting into a maroon car with an unknown man.13 days later, police found Mary's body in an abandoned Kennebunk barn. To this day, speculation continues over what happened to the young daughter of a military general. Did her father's involvement in a a controversial operation play a role in her disappearance and death?If you have information regarding this case, please contact the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit - South at [phone] x9 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/maryolenchukFollow @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.

What is Maine without summer? We traipse through the snow and sleet and brisk wind of winter, and then the mud and rain of spring, but summer in Maine makes it all worth it. Of course, there's a reason my home state earned the Vacationland moniker. The magic of our summers has reached the farthest ends of the country, and without fail each year those folks from away pour into the pine tree state to soak up a bit of our magic for themselves. The traffic on Route 1 through Wiscasset backs up for miles

as the line at Red Zietz stretches almost as long, with locals and tourists alike trying to score themselves the famed lobster roll from the roadside shack. And our neighbors in the north, at least in typical non-pandemic times, cross the border and make their pilgrimage to Old Orchard Beach, a procession of New Brunswick license plates arriving in town like clockwork at the first sniff of pier fries. Camps that sat winterized through the brutal winter weather begin to breathe the fresh air again as their temporary inhabitants flip on the furnace, throw open the windows, and start slamming those spring-loaded screen doors behind them as they pound barefoot towards Sebago or Moosehead, Rangeley, Cobbesee, China,

Moranacook, Damerscotta, and any one of the other over 6,000 lakes and ponds in Maine. And then there's the lucky population of both locals and out-of-staters who have the fortune of claiming a piece of Maine's rocky oceanfront coastline for themselves. They pull into the driveways of their well-kept summer homes and settle in for a season of saltwater and sea breeze and peace. That's how the Olenchak family spent every summer, at their impressive, modern, oceanfront home in a gunquit Maine. They couldn't have anticipated that their retreat to vacation land in the summer of 1970 would have ended any differently from years past. But this would be a summer they'd never forget.

In fact, the entire community still remembers what happened the summer of 1970. This is the cold case of Mary Catherine Olenchuk. On Sunday, August 9th, 1970, Mary Catherine Olenchuk was at the beach with her family, just down the street from their summer home on Israel Head Road in Agunquit, Maine. Agunquit is among Maine's many popular summer destinations for locals and tourists alike. Though the off-season population is in the hundreds, it swells to tens of thousands in the summertime, and it was no different in the 1970s. Israel Head Road is just offshore road, in the heart of a gunquit with hotels and rental condos intermingling with private residences and little

roadside shops and restaurants selling fried seafood, sunscreen, souvenirs, and all the other summer and Maine essentials. Around 4 p.m. that Sunday afternoon, Mary left the beach ahead of her mother and sisters for a solo trip into town. She was going to pick up the Sunday edition of the New York Times and a pack of gum. Mary stopped at home to change out of her beach clothes, throwing on a pair of pink faded shorts and a long white t-shirt with the words Yokomiko, Andrews Air Force Base, printed on the front. Her dad was a military guy. Instead of walking the short distance from their house to the store, not much more than a half mile, Mary passed through her neighbor's yard and hopped on a bike they kept in the backyard. She had a standing agreement with the family friends next door that she could borrow that

bike whenever she needed. As she pedaled the black Hercules English racing bike with its saddlebag holders down Israel Head and onto Shore Road, she waved at a few familiar faces at the Marginal Way House Hotel. She must have taken her time perusing the wares at the little shop in town before selecting that pack of gum in the newspaper because she didn't make her way back to Israel Head Road until around 5 p.m., an hour after she left the beach. On the same street that the lookout hotel shared with many beautiful seaside homes was a woman on her third floor balcony gazing out over the crashing surf. She noticed at the edge of her view, just down below in the street, a young red-haired girl standing next to a maroon car.

She paid loose attention to the scene below and watched as the girl, wearing pink faded shorts and a white t-shirt, climbed into that maroon car with a male driver that she couldn't quite see. Nothing strange or alarming, and the woman turned back to her view of rolling waves. The rest of the Olenchuk family had left the beach by then and followed the path back to their home to wash the sand off their feet and rinse the salt water from their hair, when Mrs. Ruth Olenchuk walked through the front door, she was surprised that her calls to Mary went unanswered. It was after 6 p.m., two hours since Mary had left the beach. Ruth asked her other daughters if they'd seen Mary, but none of them had, not since the beach. Ruth asked the neighbors if Mary was at their house, but she wasn't, and the bike was

still gone. Mary hadn't returned yet. Even on foot, it wouldn't have taken her this long to make the trip into town. By 7 p.m., after checking with friends and all over the seaside neighborhood, Mrs. Olenchuk reported Mary Catherine missing. Local police canvassed the hotels and homes along the route Mary was assumed to follow that day. And it's during those first conversations they develop a loose timeline of her movements. The guests at the Marginal Way house reported their brief and informal greeting as Mary peddled by. The woman, who sat on the third floor balcony at the Lookout Hotel, told police about the red-haired girl she'd seen talking to a man in a maroon car.

Her recollection of what happened after the girl got into the car was sparse. The woman couldn't report the way the car traveled or any distinguishing features about the driver, but the police had their first lead because the description of the red-haired girl matched Mary Catherine. At 11 p.m., police found the bike Mary had borrowed. It was leaning beneath an arch of the Lookout Hotel. The saddlebag holders contained her drawstring shoulder bag, and inside was a pack of gum. The Lookout Hotel was just 200 yards from the front door of the Olenchuk family summer home. Peter Olenchuk was still back in Illinois, where the family lived full-time. But that night, he received a call from his wife telling him their youngest daughter was nowhere to be found. He boarded a plane a few hours later and landed at Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire, driving to Maine to help in the search for his daughter Mary Catherine.

While the initial search began immediately, it began quietly. The public wasn't actually clued into the disappearance of the 13-year-old summer resident for two whole days. You see, the Olenchucks believed that Mary had been kidnapped, and they waited those first 48 hours for a ransom call. Why did the family assume that this was the likely scenario? It had everything to do with Peter Olenchuk's military career and recent events surrounding a controversial new operation. According to his listing on the Arlington National Cemetery website, Peter George Olenchuk enlisted in the Army Corps of Engineers in 1943, and he served in North Africa and the Far East during World War II. He became a commissioned officer in 1945, and went on to serve two tours of duty in the Vietnam War and the command of Fort Detrick near Frederick, Maryland.

From there, Peter was promoted to Brigadier General in 1970 and appointed Commanding General of the Army Ammunition Procurement and Supply Agency in Illinois. He went on to spend the majority of his career in the Chemical Warfare Service and worked on the controversial Operation Chase. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States produced chemical weapons as a deterrent against use of similar weapons by other countries between World War I and 1968. The chemical weapons, including lethal chemical nerve agents like sarin gas, were never used and sat deteriorating in stockpiles across the country. At one point, over 40,000 tons of these chemical warfare agents filled bulk containers in nine sites across the United States. The risk to human health and safety as those stockpiles got older only got greater. Beginning

in 1967, Operation Chase was the choice disposal method of these unused chemical weapons. CHASE was an acronym standing for Cut Holes and Sink Em. For three years, chemical agents were encased in concrete, loaded onto ships, barged over 200 miles off the coast of Florida, and then those ships were intentionally sunk. Scuttled is the formal term. The operation submerged those deadly chemical agents leagues and leagues beneath the sea. As summarized by GlobalSecurity.org, quote,

The last was Chase 10, delayed for various reasons, but finally completed in August 1970. It disposed of about 3,000 tons of nerve agent rockets encased in concrete vaults. Environmental concern over the sea dumping of chemical weapons led to a public law, the Marine Protection Research and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, prohibiting further such missions. Unquote. That final mission, Chase 10, of Operation Chase in August of 1970, began in Kentucky, where the nerve agents had been stored. The 113 concrete coffins, as the Park City Daily News in Bowling Green, Kentucky called them, were loaded onto trains and transported via an undisclosed route to Sunny Point, North Carolina, where they were then placed on ships and sunk

offshore in 16,000 feet of water. The controversy of this mission and the entire operation was more than just concern over sinking lethal chemicals into our deep blue ocean. The transportation method on railways, the use of animal detectors aboard those trains, meaning rabbits carried closely to the chemicals, that would signal a leak of the gases if they died. All aspects of Operation Chase were protested by groups across the country, but especially in Kentucky where chemicals were stored. On August 8th, 1970, just as the transportation of those concrete coffins filled with chemical agents from stores in Kentucky began, a Kentucky student group told the media that they would make those responsible for Operation Chase pay for their actions. According to a piece by Downeast magazine, the group threatened to kidnap the families of people in charge.

The next day, August 9, 1970, was the day Mary Olenchuk went missing. For two whole days, the Olenchuk family awaited a ransom call. They waited to hear a breathy voice of an angry protester demanding payment for the return of their 13-year-old daughter, an innocent victim of her father's controversial military involvement. But the call never came. In those two days, the search quietly carried on. But it makes you wonder, if the public had been alerted to her disappearance immediately,

if the tens of thousands of tourists knew to keep their eyes peeled for a red-haired girl in a maroon car, if the police had more to go on in those first critical 48 hours before the weekend crowd thinned out, maybe Mary's disappearance in the summer of 1970 would have had a different ending. On the third day, the Olenchuks went public and the search for Mary intensified. Her description was printed on flyers and posted across a gunquit and neighboring villages. Five foot, three inches tall, 80 pounds, dark red hair, and freckles.

New information surfaced as the media spread the story across the state and beyond, including witness statements that claimed the maroon car in question had a scratched hood and the man driving it had dark hair. He was also described as looking like, quote, not a hippie, end quote. According to a report in the Bangor Daily News dated August 12, 1970, four FBI agents aided local and state officials in the investigation. On the ground, a state police sergeant reported that officers walked shoulder to shoulder, almost on their hands and knees, seeking any sign or indication of where Mary might be. In the air, an Army helicopter from

Fort Devens, Massachusetts, circled the landscape, paring down from its bird's-eye view on abandoned buildings, suspicious cars, and wooded areas. The Olenchuk family said very little to the press during the first days of the search. One statement from Ruth in the Bangor Daily News on August 14, 1970, said that Mary was, quote, a very stable girl, just not the type who would up and take off, unquote. The phone at the Agunquit police station rang off the hook with leads, but each were checked and dismissed. For a week straight following the public announcement of her disappearance, Mary's name was reported across the country from Maine to Louisiana to Florida, Texas, California, Illinois, and beyond. The headlines often pointed out Mary's father,

quote, General's daughter feared kidnapped, unquote. They'd covered miles of shoreline, surveilled the landscape several times over, fielded every lead, and searched every suspicious abandoned maroon car. But Mary wasn't anywhere to be found. On August 20th, the 12th day of the search, General Peter Olenchuk spoke to the media and fielded questions about his connection to Operation Chase. He confirmed that yes, he was the officer in charge of the movement of the nerve gas from two depots in North Carolina to dumping sites in the Atlantic Ocean. As reported by the Pittsburgh Press, Peter spoke about the speculation that this might have been motive to harm his family,

saying, quote, I can't discount the possibility, but I think it is highly improbable, unquote. As the search continued, a well-known practitioner of ESP weighed in on the case. Mrs. Shirley Harrison, a clairvoyant recognized for her help in the infamous Boston Strangler case, shared what she believed to be true about Mary Olenchuk's disappearance. Shirley felt that Mary was still in the state of Maine and that she would be located somewhere secluded in a structure with peeling paint. Shirley graded herself with an 80 to 85 percent success rate. She told the Bangor Daily News, quote, I'd give anything if I could tell them where they could find her, end quote. In an editorial published in the Portsmouth Herald on August 22nd, 1970,

the writer urged prayer and answers for the Olenchuk family. Quote, The slow passing of the days since Mary's disappearance serves only to deepen the mystery as to what happened, and, sadly, each lead-weighted hour in those days means only increased agony for the Olenchuk family. Unquote. About six miles from Agunquit, a short drive if traffic isn't bad along Route 1, sits the impressive Riverhurst Farm and Estate in Kennebunk, Maine. It's a riding stable today, listed as a full-service equine facility with 80 acres of rolling fields and riverside landscape for equestrian endeavors through the spring and summer months. In 1970, it's unclear if the property had a formal or public use. Each of the homes on the property were unoccupied, but the estate did have caretakers. The close

proximity to Parsons Beach made it a favorite spot for campers, pitching their tents around the sprawling acreage only to be shooed by caretakers for trespassing. Fishermen also liked to park their cars near the estate and traipse through the fields towards the Moosom River that was known for striped bass. Around noontime on Saturday, August 22, 1970, four of the workers at the Riverhurst estate noticed an odor coming from an abandoned barn on the property. Assistant caretaker Peter Gunn contacted Kennebunk Police. An officer, George G. Labarge, was first on the scene. He was already in the area, continuing the search for the missing teenager from Agunquit. It had been 13 days since Mary Olenchuk was last seen. A chain and a heavy padlock secured the road to the abandoned barn,

but the structure itself was unlocked. As they entered, they walked towards an unbailed pile of hay, and beneath it, lying face up, was the decomposing body of 13-year-old Mary Catherine Olenchuk. Almost two weeks after she disappeared just 200 yards from her home, Mary Catherine Olenchuk's case became a homicide investigation. The autopsy revealed that Mary died as the result of strangulation by a ligature made of potwarp, a specialized rope used in the construction of lobster pots or traps. The rope found wrapped five times around Mary's neck was tested, but whatever came from that test, if anything, is unknown. The medical examiner found no evidence

of sexual assault. From the very start, the circumstances of the discovery were perplexing. The estate where she was found, with its many residences and outbuildings, had been checked as part of the 13 days of air and ground searches. But Mary wasn't discovered until that Saturday, August 22nd. In one report published by the Bangor Daily News, a member of the Riverhurst estate caretaker family said there was no possible way a car could have driven past the chain and padlock or under it. While another report by Ken Buckley in the Bangor Daily News quoted State Police Lieutenant Charles R. Bruton, who said a car could have easily driven around the barricaded road and onward to the barn. So if the estate was searched in the days prior with no indication

that Mary was there, how long had she been there? Ken Buckley's reporting on this case included a thorough assessment of the location of Riverhurst Estate. He wrote, quote, It is doubtful that a person unfamiliar with the territory would have known where the Riverhurst Estate was located or that it held a large barn. The barn is obscured from view by anyone approaching from Kennebunk until Route 9 is reached. In a car traveling at the posted speed for the area and taking into consideration the winding roads, the barn would hardly be noticed as it sits close to a quarter of a mile off the road between trees close to the Moosum River, unquote. Investigators scoured the barn and surrounding land for clues but didn't find much. What they did find, however, pointed straight to a local

teenager. Inside the barn near Mary's body was this boy's personal Bible. With the discovery of the Bible, the teen was called in for questioning and a polygraph test. Though the evidence was compelling, the polygraph and further investigation cleared him as a suspect. The small-town rumor mill didn't care, though. By the time he returned to school that fall, he earned a cruel nickname that followed him throughout his life. Just one year before Mary turned up dead in that Kennebunk barn, two other young girls were also murdered in neighboring New England states. Police wondered could these cases with similarities between the victims and geographical proximity be related?

13-year-old Michelle Wilson was found strangled in Boxford, Massachusetts in 1969. Her killer was later discovered to be a carnival worker named Charles Pierce. He'd confessed to attacking her as she rode her bike, then strangling and sexually assaulting her. He led police to her body 10 years later. Upon his arrest for Michelle Wilson's murder, police asked Charles Pierce if he had other victims, to which Charles replied, there are so many. On his deathbed in 1999, he confessed to two more murders. Among the homicides officially linked to Charles Pierce, Mary Catherine Olenchuk is not one of them. 11-year-old Debbie Lee Horn of Allentown, New Hampshire, disappeared from her home in January of 1969. Eight months later, her body was discovered in the trunk of an abandoned

car in Sandow, New Hampshire. Her case remains on the New Hampshire unsolved homicide list to this day. Debbie Lee's case has not been officially linked to Mary Catherine Olenchuk. Who could have killed this sweet young girl who was a well-known summer resident about town and well-liked by everyone who knew her? Mary's parents told the press that their daughter was shy and not very trusting. Getting in the car with a stranger just didn't fit Mary's personality. With that, police believed Mary knew her killer. Or at least, she knew the man whose car she willingly got into that day. On October 30th, 1970, the Bangor Daily News published an article headlined

Several Suspects Found in Murder Investigation. Detective Sergeant Jerry Boutelaire was assigned to the case alongside State Police detective Sherwood Bassett. And in the article, the pair noted that one suspect of focus included an individual with previous violations against teenagers. As it was an open investigation, they did not elaborate on those details, but simply said it was one of several, quote, good suspects, unquote. As police continued to search for clues and interview suspects, the Olenchucks prepared to bury their youngest daughter. Ruth and Peter created a scholarship to honor Mary's name. On January 9th in 1971, John Moore III was out target shooting in a remote area of Wells, Maine

when he came upon the badly beaten, strangled, and nude body of a teenage girl. The scene was just five miles from Kennebunk, where Mary was found, and only five months after her body was discovered in that abandoned barn. An extensive autopsy revealed that this was, without question, a homicide. For over a month, that victim remained unidentified, and she was buried without a name for her headstone. A tiny blip of an article carried the headline, One Mourner, and it read, quote, One mourner attended the funeral of an unidentified teenage girl whose beaten, nude body was found beside a road on January 9th. If I had a daughter that age, I'd want someone there, said Mrs. Phyllis Emery of Kennebunk at Tuesday's funeral, unquote.

As far as my research could reveal, that young girl, that victim, is still a Jane Doe. The questions only continue to mount for me. Who is responsible for the deaths of these teenage girls in Maine's coastal towns in the early 1970s. In August of 1971, one year after her murder, police still had no more information about the person responsible for 13-year-old Mary Olenchuk's death. Lieutenant Charles R. Bruton, chief of the Homicide Squad, told the Bangor Daily News,

The older they get, the harder they are to solve. But we never got completely cold on this one. We've kept it going steady and plan to continue. Unquote. He hoped someday Mary's name would be crossed off his list. It's 2021, and Mary Catherine Olenchuk's name is still there. Mary is 13, trying hard to be 14. That's what her father said in the earliest days of the search,

before they found her body, before they knew Mary would be eternally 13. The father's reflections of his youngest daughter were steeped in love and admiration. She was a beautiful youngster, he told the Portsmouth Herald. He admitted he may be biased, but Peter thought that his daughter Mary was also quite talented, with a warm personality that gave more love to others than could ever be given to her. He remembered how the sun would change the color of her hair as it reflected off its red and auburn tones. Mary loved fishing. She loved her dog and Irish setter. They almost had the same color hair, her father often joked. After 1971, Peter Olenchuk stopped speaking

publicly about Mary's death. Her mother, Ruth, passed away in 1998. Peter Olenchuk died in 2000. Ruth, Peter, and Mary are together again, all buried next to one another at Arlington National Cemetery. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. All the sources for this case and others are located in the show notes at darkdowneast.com so you can dig into the research and learn more. Subscribing and reviewing Dark Down East is free and it supports this show big time, but it's also the best way to ensure that 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 hello at darkdowneast.com. Follow along with the show at darkdowneast.com and on Instagram at darkdowneast.

I continue to be humbled and 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, like Mary Catherine Olenchuk, 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.